Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/20

 been the forfeit on his non-compliance. They denounced all compilers with the Restoration and its Acts as "Limbs of Anti-Christ," and "brats of Babylon," whom at all opportunities they were commissioned to slay. "The man Charles Stuart," was branded as a perjured wretch and malefactor, and allegiance to him renounced. Their treasonable Covenant, which had worked such mischief in the reign of the first Charles, was eagerly renewed and sworn to; and with arms in their hands, they refused to accept the toleration offered to them, and denied the same to all others; claiming supremacy for "King Jesus and the Covenant;" that is to say, for themselves and their teachers. This ought to be steadily kept in view as the key to the treatment to which they were necessarily subjected. Conventicles were held among the hills and mosses where they could best, and with least hindrance, organise their opposition to the Government, and were attended by armed multitudes. The disaffected districts were in open rebellion. Now, it ought not to be forgotten that the Episcopal Establishment of the Restoration was cautiously framed,—far too cautiously, as the subsequent history of the Scottish Church has proved-so as to shock Presbyterian sympathies and prejudices as little as possible. Of ritual, as we now understand the word, it had absolutely none. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, which had been prepared for the use of the Church of Scotland in the reign of Charles the First, and had been riotously rejected in the Cathedral Church of Edinburgh, was not re-imposed. The worship in the Parish Churches was conducted in much the same fashion as in the indulged Meeting Houses, and, indeed, with much less formality than in many of the Parish Churches at the present day. It was essentially an extemporaneous worship, with this exception, that the Established Clergy were in the habit of introducing the Lord's Prayer and the Doxology into some part of the service, both of them the abomination of the fanatics, as savouring of Liturgical forms. Occasionally the Apostles' Creed was said, and the Ten Commandments; but there was no direction for this. Every Parish Minister exercised his own discretion. Even in the Cathedral Churches, nothing beyond this bare and meagre service was attempted. The King and the Royal Family were, of course, prayed for, instead of being denounced and cursed, as in the Conventicles; and peace and order, and submission to the constituted authorities in Church and State were preached and prayed for. So far as appears, the rite of Confirmation was held in abeyance under the restored Episcopacy; so cautious were the Bishops not to offend Presbyterian prejudices. To the outward eye and ear that Episcopacy was hardly distinguishable from the legalised indulged Presbyterianism except that the Bishops, with no official dress beyond a preacher's black gown, were the perpetual moderators of Synods. Synods, Presbyteries, and Kirk Sessions went on much as at present; General Assemblies were not convoked. Probably the only Liturgical formulary in use was the English Ordinal, which, to secure beyond