were the assurance of the indifference, or the equal balance of reason between all systems, still, doubt would be no more legitimate than faith; faith would then be rational, being just as possible as doubt, even without any direct motives urging us to believe. But this is not at all the case. There exists no such equality, before reason, of faith and doubt. For every motive which existed as an impulse to the inquiry of reason, exists still as an impulse to a faith above reason; and, further, every fact which had not weight sufficient as an argument to turn the scale against opposing difficulties, in favor of Theism against Atheism, has full weight without counterpoise, as a motive to believe, on the proper evidence of Revelation. The difficulties are admitted; but they are remanded to their proper place, as arising from the limitations of our faculties, not inherent in the nature of things; difficulties unconquerable so long as we determine to accept no assistance to our reason, but out of the arena when we acknowledge the ray of truth sent down from above. The axiom of causality, though incapable of application to the rational proof of the creation, exists as a motive to believe in the Scripture revelation of a great First Cause; and the idea of unity, though insufficient of itself as an argument to demonstrate the Unity of the Creator, is forcible as a motive to believe the Unity in the Trinity which the Scripture proclaims.

And if the finite mind's idea of unity be thus a motive to believe the Unity of God, on the sufficient evidence of Revelation, is not the correlation and contemporaneousness of the idea of multiplicity equally inseparable from consciousness, a motive equally strong to believe the Revelation of the Three Persons,-triplicity not destroying unity, unity not swallowing up triplicity? True, we cannot comprehend the mode of this existence; but our argument has shown that, against any apparently comprehensible theology, lies the graver objection of inherent contradictions. Faith puts aside these difficulties, in the humble admission that the nature of God is beyond the reach of limited faculties, and contents itself with seeking in the Christian evidences sufficient assurance of the trustworthiness of Revelation. The Revelation attested by the witness of the Church, the Sacred Scripture, presents us, on giving it our adhesion, the reward of a doctrine which is the centre and equipoise of all unsatisfying opposing systems of philosophy or heresy, the balance of Truth midway between contrary forms of error. This doctrine is not Unitarianism (so-called); it is not Polytheism; it is not Tritheism; it is not Sabellianism or Arianism,-it is the Catholic faith in the Holy Trinity. Reason finds itself unable to evolve the multiple

from the one, or the one from the multiple. The attempt is as old as the Parmenides of Plato; and its failure is confessed alike by the eloquent expounder of eclecticism, and his equally distinguished opponent. But that consciousness which will not furnish data for a reason-system of theology, furnishes both its elements, as motives to believe when unity and multiplicity are presented to it, in mysterious conjunction, in the Scripture doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.

W

III.

E have seen the Church in Scotland relying upon the State, instead of on its own spiritual power, to maintain its authority over the consciences of men at the time of the Reformation. We have seen the Church dependent on the State to determine its particular form of ecclesiastical government, in opposition to the prejudices and conscientious convictions of the people before the great rebellion. We have seen the Church attempting to manage the affairs of State, as well as Church, according to its peculiar ideas of fitness, during that rebellion. We have seen the Church submitting itself to be the tool of the State as the price of its temporalities after the Restoration. We have seen its failure in every case from causes connected with these political entanglements. We have now to consider its history, first in actual hostility to the State, arising out of the same evil leaven of politics disturbing its spiritual peace; and then, after it had at length shaken itself free when almost in the gasp of death, gathering fresh life, and setting itself steadily to do its proper work. work. We shall then have an opportunity of comparing Episcopacy thus free with the modified Presbyterianism, now the established religion of the land, and of deciding as to the worth and efficiency of the two systems for doing the work of a National Church in reaching and harmonizing all classes of the community.

xcviii.-5

In the first place, it will be well to have a clear idea of the position of Episcopacy in Scotland at the time when it came into collision with the State at the accession of William and Mary.

Presbyterianism was established by law in 1689 as "that Church government in this kingdom which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people;" but by this was meant only those people who were the active supporters of the new administration in the State. Bishop Sage asserts of this very time, "I can affirm, with a wellgrounded assurance, that if by the people you mean the commonalty—the rude, illiterate, vulgar—the third man throughout the kingdom is not Presbyterian; and if by the people you mean those who are persons of better quality and education (whose sense, in my opinion, ought in all reason to go for the sense of the nation), I dare boldly aver, not the thirteenth." And a chaplain in one of King William's English regiments corroborates his assertion: "The Church party, both for number and quality, are predominant in this nation. The nobles and gentry are generally Episcopal, and so are the people, especially northward, where, to my own knowledge, they are so well affected that it would be no hard task to bring them to subscribe to the rites and worship of the English Church, as Buchanan says the ancient Scots did. My frequent reading of our service, and preaching in their churches to the auditories' satisfaction, the caresses of the gentry and respect of the ordinary people whereever I met them, infers so much, and plainly discovers that they neither abhorred me, nor my way of religion." The Presbyterian general, Mackay, who was defeated by Dundee at the Pass of Killiecrankie, gives what may be regarded as more unbiassed testimony: "Let men flatter themselves as they will, I tell you, who know Scotland, and where the strength and weakness of it doth lie, that if I were as much an enemy to the Presbyterian interest as I am a friend, I would engage to form in Scotland a more formidable party against it, even for their Majesties' government, than for it."

Yet this Church (so strong in the number of its adherents, and in the wealth and consideration of its supporters, that Viscount Tarbit, afterward Earl of Cromartie, balancing the two opposing religious bodies, declared, "The Presbyterians are more jealous and hotter, the other more numerous and powerful") was forced to see, at the very moment of the banishment of King James, great numbers of its clergy driven by mobs out of their parishes with accessory circumstances of extraordinary barbarity, and with scarcely a hand raised for their protection.

It might be imagined, and it has indeed been asserted, that the personal characters of these clergymen had something to do with the virulence of this persecution; but calm investigation justifies the language of Dr. Leslie, the English non-juror: "I have made inquiry, and am told by persons of known integrity and undoubted reputation, who lived upon the place, that the Episcopal clergy of Scotland, particularly in the west, where this rabbling was, were, at the time of the revolution, for piety, learning, and diligence in their vocation, the most eminent that country had seen since the reformation, or most Churches have enjoyed since the primitive times. And we have seen the proof of it here [London], by the conversation of several of them, who have been driven hither, as well as by the learned works of others, well accepted in this nation by scholars of the first form." This conclusion appears all the more probable when we remember that the saintly Leighton was, for many years, the prelate of the west.

Nor did the Church have in William a personal enemy such as Presbyterianism found in Charles II. William's latitudinarianism prevented him from feeling a preference for any particular form of doctrine and worship, but he was so desirous to have uniformity of religion throughout his dominions, that he actually sent the Bishop of London to the Bishop of Edinburgh with a message, that if the bishops would serve him to the purpose that he was served in England, he would take them in hand, support the Church and their order, and throw off the Presbyterians. But here the unfortunate mixture of politics with religion interfered. The bishops had all been chosen by Charles and James from among the most intensely devoted maintainers of the divine right, not merely of civil government in the exercise of its authority within the sphere appointed for it by God, but of a particular individual to the possession of that authority on the ground of hereditary descent; and, therefore, they held and taught it to be a sin to resist the power of that person, even though arbitrarily and unjustly exercised, and still more damnable to withdraw allegiance from him. So the Bishop of Edinburgh answered in their name, that they could neither make William their king, give their suffrages for his being king, nor acknowledge him when made king.

The Bishop of London therefore felt constrained to inform them that the king held himself excused for standing by the Presbyterians; which, as a political measure, he proceeded at once to do, leaving the Episcopal clergy to take the consequences of their avowed hostility to him.