Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/17

 supremacy; to force their Covenant on the King himself and all his subjects throughout the three kingdoms, without the right or liberty to dissent. Until this claim should be acknowledged, they renounced their allegiance to the king, witholding the title from him, refusing to pray for him as such in their conventicles, and vilifying and threatening his person, under the name of "the man, Charles Stuart." Those of them who suffered for their disloyalty died the death of rebels, many of them taken with arms in their hands, or found concealed in their houses. They were offered their lives if they would acknowledge the royal authority, and accept the legalised indulgence, under which their more reasonable fellow religionists lived in peace and safety. But their avowed aim was to force their religion upon all at the point of the sword. And their suppression by the sword was an act of positive necessity, unless anarchy and a reign of terror were to ensue. As I have said, it is so much the fashion in these days to represent those rebellious fanatics as poor, oppressed, hunted sufferers for conscience, if not for truth's sake, that it needs a certain amount of boldness to represent them in their true colours. And I cannot help thinking that it is a matter of regret, as I have indicated, that there is a manifest disposition in certain circles of Scottish Churchmen to sympathise with these firebrands of sedition, rebellion, and schism, and to accuse the Restoration Government of harshness and cruelty towards them. Our predecessors of the last century, many of whom I have known and conversed with, when they were old and I was young, inherited truer traditions and beliefs about the great Rebellion and policy of the Restoration Government; which taught them to beware of treating the history of those times in the mawkishly sentimental way which is now so fashionable in certain circles of Churchmen. They taught me to believe that it was—a stern necessity to stamp out treason and rebellion, at work under the mask of religion; that this probably was not done, and could not be done, with rose water; but that persecuted for their religion, mixed up as it was with principles and practices which rendered settled rule and order impossible, those enthusiasts certainly were not.

All throughout those troubles, the northern Dioceses, and among them the Diocese of Aberdeen, were so many green spots in the desert. The arts of insurgency had been so successful in other districts as to create a specious but false appearance of national sympathy with, and adherence to, the Covenant, and of disaffection to the Church and the Throne. Throughout the larger half of Scotland, and especially in Aberdeenshire, all that was sober-minded, well ordered, and loyal, was in the ascendant. The two northern Universities spoke out, true as ever to Church and King. The University Chairs, and the city pulpits were filled with the famous "Aberdeen Doctors," who did battle with the Puritan preachers, and held their own against the Apostles of the Covenant, Dickson, Henderson, and Cant, who were despatched to recruit in the city of