Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/18

 the "Malignants." The citizens, at the breaking out of the rebellion, when the Covenant was imposed upon them at the sword's point, had unwillingly submitted to brute force. The rural districts were scarcely molested, and followed the guidance of their natural leaders, Huntly, and the host of loyal nobles and lairds of the north. With these, puritanical cant did not pass current for piety, nor the ravings of fanaticism for the out-pourings of the Spirit. On the approach of the Covenanting rebel army to Aberdeen, Bellenden, the Bishop of the see, certain of the Professors of the two Universities, and the principal burghers, took shipping, and sought safety and shelter abroad from the persecution which had come to their doors. At that time, Dr John Forbes, the son of the late Bishop of Aberdeen; Dr William Lesly, the Principal of King's College, of the same family as the famous nonjuror and divine, Charles Lesly; and Doctors Scroggie and Barron, Professors of Divinity, occupied the University chairs; Doctors Sibbald and Ross were the city clergymen. These defenders of the nation's Faith and loyalty were, of course, the butts of the Covenanting attack. With such antagonists as these, it is not surprising that the ministers who had visited Aberdeen on their proselytizing mission had been so utterly worsted, that their historian Rutherford bitterly complains that they had not been able to gain a single adherent in that grace-forsaken city of the "Malignants."

At last the weary nation, on the death of Cromwell, came to itself, and "spoke of bringing back the King." Scotland joined heart and soul in accomplishing the Restoration, and the bulk of the people hailed as a blessing one of its earliest acts, the rehabilitation of the Church and its hierarchy. Beyond dispute, this was the popular feeling "north of the Tay, that is to say, in the larger half of Scotland, and at that time probably the more populous; and this candid Presbyterian writers are now forward to admit. On the Restoration of the Monarchy, the northern Synods, which had been silenced during the Commonwealth, immediately met, and among them the large and influential Synod of Aberdeen; and gave expression to the feelings and principles which had been forcibly kept down by Cromwell and his Ironsides. In the north, the Synods were Episcopalian unmixed, and as a consequence loyal. Throughout that half of Scotland the principles of the Church and order had taken deep root, and had never been extirpated. But such was the violence of the times, that both Clergy and people had mostly succumbed to the pressure. Now, however, they looked forward with quiet satisfaction to that change of which none had any doubt.

At the re-placing and re-adjustment of the Church as the religious establishment of Scotland, Sydserf, Bishop of Orkney, was the sole survivor of the Hierarchy which the Covenanting rebels in 1638 pretended to depose, and succeeded in overcoming. Four of the most distinguished of the moderate Presbyterian ministers, Sharp,