We now proceed, in the fourth place, to the main object of this paper. What is the present ecclesiastical condition of Scotland? What are the prospects of the established church? Why have there been secessions from her ranks? How has the Scottish character been affected by the church policy? What

and its privileges were subsequently confirmed and extended by royal charters and parliamentary statutes. The discipline is administered by a court, consisting of the rector, (now Rt. Hon. Sir J. Graham,) the principal, (Duncan Macfarlane, D. D.,) and the 21 professors. The common business of the college is managed by the principal and 13 professors. The number of charitable foundations is 29, of the average annual value of £1165, and extended to 65 students. The principal and members possess the right of nominating ten students, members of the church of England, to exhibitions in Baliol College, Oxford. University and King's College, Aberdeen, was founded by Bishop Wm. Elphinstone. A papal bull was issued for its erection on the 10th of Feb. 1495. The affairs of the college are conducted, and its discipline administered by a Senatus, which consists of the principal, (Wm. Jack, D. D.,) and 9 professors. The fees, in the complete course of instruction, in the faculty of arts, do not exceed £20. The charitable foundations are 32, of the value of £1771 per annum, and extended to 134 students. Marischal College and University of Aberdeen was founded by George, fifth earl of Marischal, by a charter, dated April 2, 1593, and in the same month, it received the sanction of the General Assembly, and in July was ratified by parliament. The number of bursaries is 115, of the aggregate value of about £1160 annually; about 67 are open to public competition. The rector is the Hon. J. C. Colquhoun; principal, Daniel Dewar, D. D. The whole number of professors is 13. The university of Edinburgh was founded in 1582, by James VI. The principal is John Lee, D. D., one of the ministers of Edinburgh. There is no chancellor nor rector. The number of professors is 32: 4 in law, 3 in divinity, 12 in medicine, and the remainder in arts. Bursaries 34, of the value of £1172 per annum, and extended to 80 students. The whole number of students, at all the Scotch universities in 1837, was above 3,400, of whom Edinburgh had 1580; of the remaining 1820, Glasgow had above two thirds. Edinburgh, in 182223, had 2,234 students. The number has been regularly diminishing since that time. In 1835-6, they were thus distributed: law 217, divinity 173, medicine 679, arts and literature 511. SECOND SERIES, VOL. V. NO. II.

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are the lessons which are taught by the interesting crisis which the national communion is now passing through? Our limits will forbid us to answer these questions with that fulness which we could desire. In order to accomplish our object with any degree of satisfaction, we must briefly advert to a few prominent points in the history of the Presbyterian church.

The reformation from Popery began at an early period in Scotland, but made little progress till the time of John Knox. This distinguished reformer was born in 1505. He was educated in the University of St. Andrews, where he took a degree in arts. He was at first a zealous Romanist. About 1544, he renounced that religion and became an equally zealous reformer. Soon after the accession of queen Mary, he retired to Geneva, where he remained till 1555, and where he became acquainted with the doctrines and polity of Calvin.* On the 24th of August, 1560, Popery was abolished in Scotland, and the Protestant religion established by act of parliament. The system of ecclesiastical policy, introduced in room of that which was abolished, was embodied in a work, entitled "The First Book of Discipline, or the Policy and the Discipline of the Church." It was laid before parliament in 1560, as a necessary accompaniment to the legal constitution of the national reformed church; but, though not formally ratified by the legislature, it was subscribed by many of its members. It was approved, in the same year, by the General Assembly at Edinburgh. Though the parliament did not ratify the first book of discipline, it accepted and confirmed the confession of faith drawn up by the Protestant ministers, the object of which was to abjure Popery; and hence it was called the negative confession. Another confession or national covenant was subscribed in 1580, 1581, and on subsequent occasions. In 1581, the Assembly first divided the country into presbyteries and synods. Three years afterwards, Episcopacy was established by act of parliament, and the Presbyterian ministers were persecuted or banished. In June, 1592, the Presbyterian form of government was restored, and it received, for the first time, the sanction of parliament, as the authorized government of the established national church. Manses (parsonage-houses) and glebes were provided for the ministers. From 1606 to 1638, Episcopacy

* See the Life of Knox, prefixed to his History of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland, Vol. I. Paisley, 1791.

again prevailed. In 1640, the Presbyterian government received the sanction of Charles I., and of his parliament. At the Restoration in 1660, Episcopacy again attained the ascendency, which it with difficulty maintained, and at the expense of much persecution and martyrdom, till the Revolution in 1688; soon after which it was abolished, and the national church of Scotland declared Presbyterian; a form which it has ever since maintained. By an act of the parliament of Scotland, 1706, it is "provided and declared, that the true Protestant religion, contained in the Confession of Faith, with the form and purity of worship then in use, within the church of Scotland, and its Presbyterian church government and discipline, that is to say, the government of the church by kirk-sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods and general assemblies, shall remain and continue unalterable."

During the whole period from 1690 to 1712, the most important deliberations in the General Assembly turned on subjects of internal regulation. It was a principal object to provide Presbyterian ministers for the remote districts, which were inthe greatest need; and, till this could be done effectually, to supply the vacant parishes in the mean time, by individuals. sent from the southern counties, who, at intervals, officiated in succession for a limited period.

In 1712, lay-patronage was revived, or the right of nominating to a vacant parish by a lay-patron. The idea of patronage took its rise from the canon law. Neither James VI. nor any of his successors before the Revolution were willing to abolish the right, though it was unquestionably the doctrine of the church, that no minister should be intruded upon any congregation, either by the prince, or any inferior person, without lawful election, and the assent of the people over whom the person is placed. The acts of parliament, while they are authoritative and explicit in enforcing the right, at the same time contain clauses of restriction, by which it was evidently intended to be limited. From 1690 to 1712, it was abolished, and the right of presentation was lodged in the landholders of parishes and the members of kirk-sessions. In 1712, patronage was revived, and continued the law of the church, uninterruptedly, till 1834. After a presentation had been sustained by the presbytery, the presentee was appointed to preach in the vacant church for one or more Sabbaths; and a day was fixed posterior to his preaching, on which a call was to be extended to

him by the people, notice to that effect being given from the pulpit. At that meeting, after a sermon had been preached by a member of the presbytery, the parishioners were invited to subscribe a written call to the presentee, to be their future minis

At one period, the call was essential to a presentation, but its efficacy was gradually given up, till, at length, without any alteration being made in the law, it virtually fell into desuetude, that is, a presentation was reckoned valid, if a single name, or perhaps not a single name, was attached to it.*

The act of 1712 had long been a favorite object with the episcopal and tory party in Scotland; an act which was certainly intended by them to operate against the whigs of Scotlands, but which no whig administration afterwards could be persuaded to repeal. For many years after the date of the act restoring patronages, presentations were, by no means, introduced into general practice. There were, however, abuses which early created serious disorders. One of the abuses was the practice by which patrons presented individuals, who held rich livings, to very small benefices; being certain that they would not accept of their presentations. The patrons thus protracted the vacancies; and under the law, as it then stood, they were enabled, in the mean time, to retain the vacant stipends.

In 1732 the General Assembly passed an act, decreeing, that where an accepted presentation did not take place, the decisive power of electing ministers for the supply of vacant congregations is lodged only in a conjunct meeting of landholders and elders, no other qualification of those landholders being required but that they should be Protestants.† A few days before this enactment, the assembly had decided a question relating to the settlement of a minister in Kinross, in the presbytery of Dunfermline, to which great opposition had been made by the parishioners and the presbytery, and in which the Rev. Ralph Erskine of Dunfermline, and the Rev. Thomas Mair of Orwett, were deeply involved. The assembly had commanded the set

See Macculloch, Vol. II. p. 432; and Moncreiff, p. 24. + Mr. Wellwood thinks that the act of 1732 goes no farther than almost every overture on the subject framed by the assembly for 20 years before, and not beyond what had been the general practice of the church after 1690. The secession of the Erskines and others he attributes very much to the exasperated feelings produced by the Kinross case.

tlement of Kinross to be carried into execution, with circumstances of peculiar severity, and had prohibited the clerks from receiving any dissents from their sentence, or a protest offered from the bar, signed by 42 ministers, or a petition subscribed by many hundreds of elders and people. In 1733, Mr. Ralph Erskine, Mr. Mair, and others were rebuked at the bar for their determined refusal to enrol Mr. Stark, then minister of Kinross, as a member of the presbytery of Dunfermline. In the high tone of church authority, they were commanded to acknowledge Mr. Stark as minister of Kinross, though, after his enrolment by the assembly, they had already judicially declared their willingness to treat him as a brother. The Commission of 1733 pronounced a sentence on four refractory ministers, Messrs. E, Erskine, Wilson, Moncreiff and Fisher, "loosing their relation to their parochial charges, and appointing this sentence to be intimated from their pulpits respectively." In several instances, the people tumultuously resisted this intimation, and prevented it from being made. The opposition excited against the act of 1732 became so general and decided, that the assembly found themselves compelled to repeal it in 1734. In 1734 and 1735, there were two feeble and ineffectual attempts made to obtain a repeal of the act of 1712, restoring patronages. In 1736, a more conciliatory assembly passed an act against the intrusion of ministers into vacant congregations, affirming that an intrusion of a minister, contrary to the inclinations of a congregation, is in direct opposition to what had been the principle of the Scottish church since the Reformation. In the spirit of this act, a number of presentees were set aside by the assembly in deference to public opinion.

In the mean time, the Erskines and their associates, who appear to have acted somewhat intemperately, constituted themselves into a presbytery at the Bridge of Gairney, near Kinross. By printed documents, as well as by public declarations from their pulpits, they renounced all subjection to the judicatories of the church. On the 15th of May, 1740, eight ministers were deposed by the General Assembly, and their parishes declared vacant. To these ministers the name of Seceders was given;

A large committee acting in the interval of the meetings of the Assembly. It may include all the members of the Assembly.

† See, on the one side, the account of these proceedings by