Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/202

marked severity. At several meetings of Synod they were openly accused and subjected to the most inquisitorial examinations. Attempts were also repeatedly made to compel them to sign anew the Confession of Faith, not as it was originally received by the church of Scotland in the year 1647, but as it was explained by the obnoxious act of 1722. These attempts however, had utterly failed, and the publication of so many of Mr Erskine's sermons had not only refuted the foolish calumnies that had been so industriously set afloat, but had prodigiously increased his reputation and his general usefulness. The same year in which Mr Erskine was removed to Stirling, a paper was given in to the general assembly, complaining of the violent settlements that were so generally taking place throughout the country, which was not so much as allowed a hearing. This induced upwards of fifty-two ministers, of whom the subject of this memoir was one, to draw up at large a representation of the almost innumerable evils under which the church of Scotland was groaning, and which threatened to subvert her very foundations. To prevent all objections on the formality of this representation, it was carefully signed and respectfully presented, according to the order pointed out in such cases ; but neither could this obtain so much as a hearing. So for was the assembly from being in the least degree affected with the mournful state of the church, and listening to the groans of an afflicted but submissive people, that they sustained the settlement of Mr Stark at Kinross, one of the most palpable intrusions ever made upon a Christian congregation, and they enjoined the presbytery who had refused to receive him as a brother, to enrol his name on their list, and to grant no church privileges to any individual of the parish of Kinross, but upon Mr Stark's letter of recommendation requiring or allowing them so to do, and this in the face of the presbytery's declaration, that Mr Stark had been imposed on the parish of Kinross, and upon them, by the simple fiat of the patron. Against this decision, protests and dissents were presented by many individuals, but by a previous law they had provided, that nothing of the kind should henceforth be entered upon the journals of the courts, whether supreme or subordinate, thus leaving no room for individuals to exonerate their own consciences, nor any legitimate record of the opposition that had been made to departures from established and fundamental laws, or innorations upon tacitly acknowledged rules of propriety and good order. This same assembly, as if anxious to extinguish the possibility of popular claims being at any future period revived, proceeded to enact into a standing law an overture of last assembly, for establishing a uniform method of planting vacant churches, when at any time the right of doing so should fall into the hands of presbyteries, tanquam jure devoluto, or by the consent of the parties interested in the settlement. This uniform method was simply the conferring the power of suffrage, in country parishes, on heritors being protestant, no matter though they were episcopalians, .and elders, in burghs, on magistrates, town council, and elders, and in burghs with landward parishes joined, on magistrates, town council, heritors,—and elders—joined, and this to continue "till it should please God in his providence to relieve this church from the grievances arising from the act restoring patronages." This act was unquestionably planned by men to whom patronage presented no real grievances, and it was itself nothing but patronage modified very little for the better. But the authors of it had the art to pass it off upon many simple well-meaning men, as containing all that the constitution cf the Scottish church had ever at any time allowed to the body of the people, and as so moderately worded that the government could not but be amply satisfied that no danger could arise from its exercise, and of course would give up its claims upon patronage without a murmur. In consequence of this, the act passed through the assembly with less opposition than even in the de-