much work to do, and, to accomplish that work, we need robust and vigorous natures, whose every function has been freely exercised without let or hindrance. Never before, was the practice of life so arduous; never were the problems presented to the human mind so numerous, or so complicated. Every addition to our knowledge, every fresh idea, opens up new difficulties, and gives birth to new combinations. Under this accumulated pressure, we shall assuredly sink, if we imitate the credulity of our forefathers, who allowed their energies to be cramped and weakened by those pernicious notions, which the clergy, partly from ignorance, and partly from interest, have, in every age, palmed on the people, and have, thereby, diminished the national happiness, and retarded the march of national prosperity.

In the same way, we constantly hear of the evils of wealth, and of the sinfulness of loving money; although it is certain that, after the love of knowledge, there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind as the love of money. It is to the love of money that we owe all trade and commerce; in other words, the possession of every comfort and luxury which our own country is unable to supply. Trade and commerce have made us familiar with the productions of many lands, have awakened curiosity, have widened our ideas by bringing us in contact with nations of various manners, speech, and thought, have supplied an outlet for energies which would otherwise have been pent up and wasted, have accustomed men to habits of enterprise, forethought and calculation, have, moreover, communicated to us many arts of great utility, and have put us in possession of some of the most valuable remedies with which we are acquainted, either to save life or to lessen pain. These things we owe to the love of money. If theologians could succeed in their desire to destroy that love, all these things would cease, and we should relapse into comparative barbarism. The love of money, like all our appetites, is liable to abuse; but to declaim against it as evil in itself, and, above all, to represent it as a feeling,

the indulgence of which provokes the wrath of God, is to betray an ignorance, natural, perhaps, in former ages, but shameful in our time, particularly when it proceeds from men who give themselves out as public teachers, and profess that it is their mission to enlighten the world.

Injurious, however, as all this is to the best interests of society, it is nothing in comparison with the doctrines formerly advocated by the Scotch divines. What their ideas were, I have shown from their own sermons, the reading of which has been the most painful literary task I ever undertook, since, in addition to the narrowness and the dogmatism which even the best of such compositions contain, there is, in these productions, a hardness of heart, an austerity of temper, a want of sympathy with human happiness, and a hatred of human nature, such as have rarely been exhibited in any age, and, I rejoice to think, have never been exhibited in any other Protestant country. These things, I have resuscitated from the oblivion in which they had long been buried, partly because it was necessary to do so in order to understand the history of the Scotch mind, and partly because I desired to show what the tendency of theologians is, when that tendency is uncontrolled.

Protest

ants, generally, are too apt to suppose that there is something in their creed which protects them against those hurtful extravagances which have been, and, to a certain extent, still are, practised in the Catholic Church. Never was a greater mistake. There is but one protection against the tyranny of any class; and that is, to give that class very little power. Whatever the pretensions of any body of men may be, however smooth their language, and however plausible their claims, they are sure to abuse power, if much of it is conferred on them. The entire history of the world affords no instance to the contrary. In Catholic countries, France alone excepted, the clergy have more authority than in Protestant countries. Therefore, in Catholic countries, they do more harm than in Protestant countries, and their peculiar views are developed with greater freedom. The differ

ence depends, not on the nature of the creed, but on the power of the class. This is very apparent in Scotland, where the clergy, being supreme, did, Protestants though they were, imitate the ascetic, the unsocial, and the cruel doctrines, which, in the Catholic Church, gave rise to convents, fastings, scourgings, and all the other appliances of an uncouth and ungenial superstition.

On

Indeed, the Scotch divines, in some of their theories, went beyond any section of the Catholic Church, except the Spanish. They sought to destroy, not only human pleasures, but also human affections. They held that our affections are necessarily connected with our lusts, and that we must, therefore, wean ourselves from them as earthly vanities.197 A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others; and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people, that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish." They might go; none but their wives and children would suffer, and that was nothing in comparison with breaking the Sabbath. So, too, did the clergy teach, that on no occasion must food or shelter be given to a starving man, unless his opinions were orthodox.199 What need for him to live? Indeed. they taught that it was a sin to tolerate his notions at

198

197"A Christian should mortifie his affections, which are his predominant lusts, to which our affections are so much joined, and our soul doth so much go out after." Gray's Spiritual Warfare, p. 29. "That blessed work of weaning of affections from all things that are here." Gray's Great and Precious Promises, p. 86.

198One of our more northern ministers, whose parish lies along the coast between Spey and Findorn, made some fishermen do penance for sabbathbreaking, in going out to sea, though purely with endeavour to save a vessel in distress by a storm." Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, vol. i. p. 173.

199The master of a family may, and ought to, deny an act of humanity or hospitality to strangers that are false teachers." Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 176. "The Holy Ghost forbiddeth the master of every Christian family to owne a hereticke as a guest." Ibid., p. 219. See also p. 235.

all, and that the proper course was, to visit him with sharp and immediate punishment. Going yet further, they broke the domestic ties, and set parents against their offspring. They taught the father to smite the unbelieving child, and to slay his own boy sooner than allow him to propagate error. 201 As if this were not enough, they tried to extirpate another affection, even more sacred and more devoted still. They laid their rude and merciless hands on the holiest passion of which our nature is capable, the love of a mother for her son. Into that sanctuary, they dared to intrude; into that, they thrust their gaunt and ungentle forms. If a mother held opinions of which they disapproved, they did not scruple

200 We hold that tolleration of all religions is not farre from blasphemy." Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 20. "If wolves be permitted to teach what is right in their own erroneous conscience, and there be no 'Magistrate to put them to shame,' Judg. xviii. 7, and no King to punish them, then godlinesse and all that concernes the first Table of the Law must be marred." Ibid., p. 230. "Wilde and atheisticall liberty of conscience." p. 337. "Cursed toleration." p. 400. See also, in the same work (pp. 110, 244), Rutherford's remarks on the murder of Servetus. In 1645, Baillie, who was then in London, writes, "The Independents here plead for a tolleration both for themselfes and other sects. My Dissuasive is come in time to doe service here. We hope God will assist us to remonstrate the wickedness of such an tolleration." And on account of the Independents wishing to show common charity towards persons who differed in opinions from themselves, Baillie writes next year (1646), "The Independents has the least zeale to the truth of God of any men we know." Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. ii. pp. 328, 361. Blair, who was in London in 1649, was sorely vexed with "the most illegal, irreligious, and wicked proceedings and actings of the sectarian army;" one of their crimes being the attempt "to ruin religion by their toleration." Continuation of the Autobiography of Mr. Robert Blair, Minister of St. Andrews, p. 213. For other evidence of this persecuting spirit, see Dickson's Truth's Victory over Error, pp. 159, 163, 199-202; Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 215; Durham's Exposition of the Song of Solomon, p. 147; Durham's Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation, pp. 141, 143, 330; and Shields' Hind let loose, p. 168.

201A third benefit (which is a branch of the former), is zeal in the godly against false teachers, who shall be so tender of the truth and glory of God, and the safety of the Church (all which are endangered by error), that it shall overcome natural affection in them; so that parents shall not spare their own children, being seducers, but shall either by an heroick act (such as was in Phinehas, Numb. xxv. 8), themselves judge him worthy to die, and give sentence and execute it, or cause him to be punished, by bringing him to the Magistrate," &c. . "The toleration of a false religion in doctrine or worship, and the exemption of the erroneous from civil punishment, is no more lawful under the New Testament than it was under the Old." An Exposition of the Prophecie of Zechariah, in Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. iii. p. 203, 8vo, 1654.

to invade her household, take away her children, and forbid her to hold communication with them.202 Or if, perchance, her son had incurred their displeasure, they were not satisfied with forcible separation, but they laboured to corrupt her heart, and harden it against her child, so that she might be privy to the act. In one of these cases, mentioned in the records of the church of Glasgow, the Kirk-Session of that town summoned before them a woman, merely because she had received into her house her own son, after the clergy had excommunicated him. So effectually did they work upon her mind, that they induced her to promise, not only that she would shut her door against her child, but that she would aid in bringing him to punishment. She had sinned in loving him; she had sinned, even, in giving him shelter; but, says the record, "she promised not to do it again, and to tell the magistrates when he comes next to her, "203

She promised not to do it again. She promised to forget him, whom she had borne of her womb and suckled at her breast. She promised to forget her boy, who had ofttimes crept to her knees, who had slept in her bosom, and whose tender frame she had watched over and nursed. All the dearest associations of the past, all that the most exquisite form of human affection can give or receive, all that delights the memory, all that brightens the prospect of life, all vanished, all passed away from the mind of this poor woman, at the bidding of her spiritual masters. At one At one fell swoop, all were gone. So potent were the arts of these men, that they persuaded the mother to conspire against her son, that she might deliver him up to them. They defiled her nature, by purging it of its love. From that day her soul was polluted. She was lost to herself, as well as lost to her son. To hear of

202 Selections from the Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark, pp. x. 33, 56, 63, 65, 73.

203 I copy the exact words from Wodrow's Collections upon the Lives of Ministers of the Church of Scotland, vol. ii. part ii. p. 71. An order had been previously obtained from the government, "requiring the magistrates to expell furth of the Toun all excomunicated persons."