that they maintained the principle of Divine Right in the line of the kingly succession; a principle, accounted I fear, in these more enlightened days, but an antiquated superstition. Yet I am bound to mention that this is one of the principles which the great divines that adorn the later Church, including the saintly Bishop Andrewes, and the martyred Archbishop Laud, and the entire catena of the Caroline Bishops, whom we all admire, praise, and are ready confidently to fall back upon in defence of truths which happen to please us better, had taught, not merely as a political duty, but, as regards the principle of obedience, and the inviolability of vows, part of the depositum of the Faith. Indeed, on any other principle, one fails to see how persistent loyalty to the sovereign who, by the grace of God, now rules over us is possible. Should a democratic upheaval,—which may God avert,—drive Queen Victoria from her throne, and substitute that human device, a republic; or should a continental invader conquer the country; then, upon Revolution principles, loyalty gives in, sheathes its sword, makes its bow, and success justifies the iniquity. In fact, Revolution principles are founded on robbery and violence; on the tyranny of the footpad; your money or your life!
The dispossessed Church although stripped of her endowments to the last penny, and vested interests, as we have before stated, totally disregarded, did not at first suffer much active persecution at the hands of the Revolution Government, beyond the abject poverty and distress into which the outed Clergy and their families were immediately plunged. Of this, deplorable instances are on record. But it suffered every kind of molestation and annoyance at the hands of the now dominant religious faction, which, by an immutable law, hated with a heart-hatred the divine Institution which it had injured and supplanted.[1] Queen Anne had written to the Scottish Privy Council expressing her wish that the Episcopal Clergy and their flocks,—some of the Clergy still in possession, and others worshipping in Meeting-Houses,—should be protected in the peaceable exercise of their religion. Encouraged by the royal wish and intention, the Earl of Strathmore in 1702 proposed in Parliament that a toleration should
be granted to all Protestants in the exercise of religious worship. Against this measure a strong representation was given in by the Commission of the General Assembly. The Moderator signed the Paper, in which the opinions of the Commission in regard to any concession to Episcopacy may be judged of from the following passage:—" We do, therefore, most humbly beseech, yea we are bold in the Lord, and in the name of the Church of God in this land, earnestly to obtest your Grace, and the most honourable Estates, that no such motion of any legal toleration to those of prelatical principles be entertained by the parliament; being persuaded that to enact a toleration for those of that way (which God of His infinite mercy avert,)
- ↑ The proverb is as old as it is true, "odisse quem læseris.'
