ones of the first reformation, patronage somewhat modified, with other evils, was entailed on the country. Something of the light and heat of the more recent, as well as more brilliant period, still, however, remained; and in the settlement of the church made by the parliament in the year 1690, patronage in its direct form was set aside, not as an antichristian abomination, and incompatible with Christian liberty, as it ought to have been, but as "inconvenient and subject to abuse." Though this act, however, was the act only of a civil court, it was less remote from scripture and common sense, than this act of the highest ecclesiastical court in the nation. By that act "upon a vacancy, the heritors, being protestants," (by a subsequent act it was provided, that they should be qualified protestants,)" and the elders, are to name and propose the person to the whole congregation, to be either approven, or disapproven by them; and if they disapprove, the disapprovers to give in their reasons to the effect the affair may be cognosced by the presbytery of the bounds, at whose judgment, and by whose determination the calling and entry of a particular minister is to be ordered and concluded." By this act, which we by no means admire, the heritors it would appear might have proposed one candidate to the congregation, and the elders another; nor, whether there was but one candidate or two, had the election been completed till the congregation had given their voice. But by the assembly's act, the heritors and the elders elected as one body; the work was by them completed; and, however much the congregation might be dissatisfied, except they could prove the elected person immoral in conduct, or erroneous in doctrine, they had no resource but to submit quietly to the choice of their superiors, the heritors and the elders.
The act of 1690 was liable to great abuse; yet, by the prudent conduct of presbyteries, complaints were for many years comparatively few, and but for the restoration of patrons to their antichristian power, might have continued to be so long enough. For ten or twelve years previous to this period, 1732, patrons had been gaining ground every year, and this act was unquestionably intended to accommodate any little appearance of liberty which remained in the Scottish church to the genius of patronage, which was now by the leaders of the dominant party declared the only sure if not legitimate door of entrance to the benefice, whatever it might be to the affections and the spiritual edification of the people. The measure, however, was incautious and premature. There was a spirit abroad which the ruling faction wanted the means to break, and which their frequent attempts to bend ought to have taught them was already far beyond their strength. As an overture and an interim act, it had been almost universally condemned; and, now that it was made a standing law, without having gone through the usual forms, and neither protest, dissent, nor remonstrance allowed to be entered against it, nothing remained for its opponents but, as occasion offered, to testify against it from the pulpit or the press, which many embraced the earliest opportunity of doing. Scarcely, indeed, had the members of assembly reached their respective homes with the report of their proceedings, when, in the evening of the Sabbath, June 4th, in a sermon from Isaiah ix. 6, the subject of this memoir attacked the obnoxious act with such force of argument as was highly gratifying to its opponents, but peculiarly galling to its abettors, who were everywhere, in the course of a few days, by the loud voice of general report, informed of the circumstance, with manifold exaggerations. Public, however, as this condemnation of the act of assembly was, Mr Erskine did not think it enough. Having occasion, as late moderator, to open the synod of Perth on the 10th day of October, the same year, taking for his text, Psalm cxviii. 22, "The Stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the Head Stone of the Cor-
