Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/255

Rh cardinal Beaton, Hamilton was translated to the archbishopric of St Andrews. Unmindful of the fate of his predecessor, he commenced his inauspicious career with blood. A man of the name of Adam Wallace, was tried before him in a synod, in the Blackfriars' church of Edinburgh, and being- found guilty of acting as a vagrant preacher, baptizing his own children, and cf inability to discover the term "mass" in the Holy Scriptures, he was delivered over to the civil judge, and burnt at the stake. But the archbishop was not one of those who welcomed the rising strength of the Reformation with fire and sword. He was a strong thinking and acute man, with a mind conversant in the weaknesses and prejudices of men, and well adapted to hold the balance firmly and cautiously between contending parties. He was not of those spirits framed to be the scourges of the earth, but fate had cast him in evil days on an unhappy land, where men were not accustomed to scruple at the measures by which they gratified their passions or prejudices, and the minds formed in more peaceful times for the best things, burst the regulating power, which might have restrained them in a period of less temptation.

Hamilton saw the coming enemy, and the moderation and firmness with which he defended the church, protracted for a short period the fall of the crumbling fabric. He used his utmost endeavours to put to rest a fiery controversy, which inflamed his district, on the subject of addressing the Lord's prayer to the saints; a heterodox English priest having maintained that it should be addressed to the Deity alone, while an orthodox friar of St Andrews proved, by a syllogistic examination of each department of the prayer, that there were good reasons why it ought to be addressed to the saints, because there were no references in it which would not apply to their situation, excepting towards the end, where requests were made which it was entirely beyond the power of saints to grant, and in which their intercession only should be presumed to be requested. Out of the discussions on this matter, arose disputes on the exact mental value of the appeal to the saints, some maintaining it to be made to the saints materialiler, while it was made to the Deity formaliter—others, that while it was addressed to the Deity principaliter, it came before the saints minus principaliter: and the grades of distinction being too numerous for the consideration of the primate, who was never a casuist without having some purpose in view, he remitted them to a provincial synod, which duly attended to the interest of the saints. At this synod the archbishop performed one of those prudent acts of reconciliation, ,by which he sought to avert the fall of his order. He had prepared a catechism containing an exposition in English of the commandments, the creed, and the Lord's prayer, which was formally approved of by the synod, and ordered to be read to the people on Sundays and holidays, by the curates of the respective churches, and which was afterwards circulated through the country at such a small price as might remunerate the hawkers by whom it was vended. In the year 1551, the days of this ambitious priest appeared to be nearly ended by a stubborn asthmatic complaint, which defied the skill of the Scottish physicians, who pronounced his recovery as hopeless. The celebrated Cardan was induced, by a magnificent remuneration, to visit him, and the disease yielded either to the medicines of the empyric or to nature. M'Kenzie has taken much pains to prove that, in calling for the assistance of this singular individual, the primate did not appeal to the powers of magic, as Buchanan and others have accused him of having done; but it is much to be doubted whether, from the character of both parties, the patient did not suppose he was receiving, and the physician that he was administering, the aid of unholy powers. The influence of Hamilton's mind over that of his brother, is shown by the advantage taken of his sick-