any arguments to stimulate them to resort to arms. They had now thrown off the mask of hypocrisy which they had so long worn. At the Tables, resolutions were passed for the collection of military stores and arms; and to tax the landholders for the maintenance of their army, which was put under the command of General Leslie who had considerable experience in the religious wars of Germany. They also petitioned the King of France for military and pecuniary assistance, and addressed him in the style of subjects to their natural sovereign, "Au Roi." All these preparations were in a state of forwardness, before the king had any thought of appealing to the sword, to settle the affairs of the nation. But here again, as was usual, the king was betrayed by his own counsellors and servants; for the rebel chiefs "made great use of some persons about the king from whom they received constant intelligence; amongst whom the Marquis of Hamilton was suspected by the king's friends, and even accused of being one of the chief."

The original ground of discontent, was the legal revocation of such church property as had been illegally seized to the prejudice of the crown and the mitre; the second was the commission appointed for relieving the clergy in point of maintenance from the grinding oppression of the impropriators of the tithes. The tithes were rated, and the abbots who had been made temporal peers and had secured the lands of their abbies were allowed to purchase the tithes. Both the clergy and the landholders were satisfied with the result of this commission; and the clergy had their livings improved and put on a more secure footing.

Although the excommunication of the Glasgow Assembly was ecclesiastically null and void; yet it carried all the legal and civil pains and penalties along with it. It confiscated the properties of the persecuted prelates, and placed their lives at the mercy of the law or of any assassin that might attempt their lives without danger from the law. To save their lives therefore they all fled to England, where in a few years they all died except Bishop Sydserf, who survived till the Restoration; and so connected the line of Archbishop Spottiswoode which was extirpated, with that of Archbishop Sharpe which was disestablished at the Revolution of 1688. From the days when S. Ninian, Bishop of the Candida Casa,

or Galloway, gathered the scattered members of the Church in Scotland till the present day, episcopacy has never ceased to exist in that Church; but since the Reformation it has ever been persecuted with more or less rancour. Three of its prelates have been murdered in cold blood since the Reformation; and nine were now obliged to fly for their lives, under threats of murder; and the whole order have ever suffered that moral martyrdom "of cruel mockings for Christ's sake, besides bonds and imprisonments which befel the saints, of whom S. Paul says "the world was not worthy."

Throughout the diocese of S. Andrews, Edinburgh and Glasgow the Covenanters expelled the episcopal clergy which had been legally inducted from their parishes; and they settled unordained men in their cures.

In April 1639, the rebels raised an army of horse and foot amounting to thirty thousand men, and took post at Dunse Law a little hill on the left bank of the Tweed. The king and his army encamped on the right bank in a field called the Birks ; and a sort of peace was for the present patched up. The Covenanters disbanded the undisciplined part of their army; but reserved the veterans in their pay and service. Whereas the king, in good faith, disbanded his army in terms of the pacification.

Charles remained some time in Berwick; and consented to the meeting of a Parliament and of a General Assembly; and he appointed the treacherous Earl of Traquair commissioner to both. Among other weak concessions, which from the exigency of his affairs the king was obliged to make, He allowed "that episcopacy be abolished . . .; and the Covenant 1580 for the satisfaction of our people to be subscribed, provided it be so conceived that thereby our subjects be not forced to abjure episcopacy as a point of Popery, or contrary to God's law or to the Protestant religion; but if they require it to be abjured as contrary to the constitution of the Church of Scotland, you are to give way to it rather than to make a breach."

The king madly hoped to soften the tempers of the Covenanters; but they soon shewed him that it was impossible either to satisfy or to conciliate them; for Nalson writes "that the ink was scarcely dry which had written the Articles

of the accommodation, before they had broken it in almost every particular;" and The Tables continued to sit and to act with sovereign authority. The bishops petitioned the king to prorogue the assembly and parliament; because as one of the three estates they were forcibly prevented from taking their seats in either; but Charles knowing the personal danger to the prelates both from the law of excommunication and also from the lawless rabble, absolutely discharged their being present at these meetings; "and for absence, this shall be to you and to every one of you, a sufficient warrant you cannot but know that what we do in this, we are necessitated to."

This letter fully shews how much the king was distressed and embarrassed by the audacious conduct of the rebel Covenanters. On receipt of the king's letter the primate assembled those bishops who were at Newcastle; and they agreed to a protest and declinature to both the parliament and the assembly; . "That the present pretended assembly be holden and reputed null in law, as consisting and made up partly of laical persons that have no office in the Church, partly of refractory, schismatical and perjured ministers, that contrary to their oaths and subscriptions, from which no human power could absolve them, have filthily resiled, and so made themselves to the present and future ages most infamous, and that no churchman be bound to appear before them; nor ... any act whatsoever proceeding from the said pretended meeting be prejudicial to the jurisdiction, liberties &c. .; but to the contrary that all such acts and deeds are and shall be unjust, partial and illegal." David Dickson was chosen moderator; but as he was not the right man for the right place, Henderson was appointed as his Assessor. On the 17th August George Graham, Bishop of Orkney gave in a written abjuration of his episcopal office. An act was passed to compel those episcopal clergymen that had been excommunicated by the Glasgow Assembly, to quit their benefices which were declared vacant; and to revive and enforce all former and obsolete acts against Papists and excommunicated persons, and their abettors. Traquair ratified the acts which condemned episcopacy and established the covenant, contrary to his instructions; for which Charles severely reproached him. The assembly next

expelled all the professors from the universities, and placed determined Covenanters as principals and professors in each of them. An act was passed to compel every man in the kingdom to sign the covenant; an intolerable species of persecution. Formerly it was optional for any one to sign it; but now, being enforced by the authority of an Assembly and of the Privy Council, it was dangerous to life, liberty and property to refuse to sign it; now, says bishop Russell "that it could be enforced by the zealots of a sect upon all whom they chose to harrass, it must be abhorred, as occasioning to the conscientious part of the community much wretchedness, and as calculated to diffuse that relaxation of principle which is the bitter fruit of every deviation from the tolerant spirit of true religion."

Parliament met on the 31st of August; but the rebel party proposed the entire alteration of that court; to supply the place of the first or spiritual estate, they divided the peers into the higher ranks and the barons which with the commons they called the three estates. They had formerly petitioned for an act of Oblivion; but now they passed an act to justify their rebellion; and another to compel the loyal part of the subjects to pay the expences of their rebellious movements. On being made acquainted with these proceedings the king ordered Traquair to prorogue the parliament; but before he did so, Traquair ratified all the acts of the assembly; and he gave secret notice to the Table chiefs who were ready with a protest, claiming that the parliament could not be prorogued without its own consent!

CHRIST'S PROPHECY ON THE MOUNT OF

OLIVES.

(Continued from p. 376, vol. xi.)

WE have been prevented by other matter from pursuing this interesting subject, and the signs of the times are multiplying daily; among others, the present complication with France gives us reason to apprehend, that it is the germ of a new war with that power which will of course draw on a general European war. There can be no doubt but that the Emperor Louis Napoleon is the seventh-and-eighth head of the Beast,

of the western Roman empire; consequently until a certain time he "wears a charmed life;" and he himself is reported to have said with great truth:-"I fear nothing from the attempts of assassins. There are existences which are the instruments of the decrees of Providence. As long as I shall not have finished my mission, I am in no danger." He is right; for as the Angel said, "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." And what is His testimony? it is, "And the [head of the secular] Beast was taken and with him the False Prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast and them that had worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." (Rev. xix. 10. 20.)

Before the universal preaching of the Gospel our Lord warns His disciples that many shall be offended at the pure word of God, and shall betray and hate one another. This we see plainly in the Roman Church sternly and under pain of eternal condemnation, prohibiting her people from reading the Scriptures. Her court of inquisition is filled with its victims by the parent betraying the child, and the child the parent under pretence of "heretical pravity;" and the whole Roman church hates with the most intense and blood-thirsty hatred every Christian who is not of their communion; and when it is in their power causes them to be put to death with the most cruel tortures. We see also among ourselves as well as throughout the world that iniquity abounds; and that the love of the many is waxen cold. These are all signs that the time of the end" is approaching, but the true church shall still be preserved as a witness in the midst of this lukewarmness; "not a hair of your head shall suffer;" therefore let us in this favoured land stand fast and endure to the end with patience, possessing our souls in the full faith that the Judge of all the earth will do right. Perhaps our Lord's words might be paraphrased thus: Do not. let any one mislead you by representing the calamities that will occur in the order of nature or the course of events, or the greatest adversities that will befall the church, such as persecutions, heresies, schisms, and false doctrines as the signs of the dissolution of the world. Many ages will evolve, during which the church will be afflicted with many such