ing in other words, children in a Christian land are not entitled to know from Christian rulers at least, any difference between a Christian and a heathen government. Nay more, our civil rulers are at full liberty to legalise and so provide for the education of the young in a knowledge of heathen gods, but Voluntaryism emphatically protests against their making similar provision for their instruction in the knowledge of their own God-the God of heaven and earth.

On these respective grounds the Original Secession Church occupies a separate position, and is resolved to remain apart from these respective Churches so long as these grounds of separation continue. We now proceed to state more minutely the distinctive principles of the O. S. Church, and for the judicial maintenance of which she continues in a state of separation from, because they are not even owned by, the larger Presbyterian Churches. But as neither the Established nor United Presbyterian Church have made any particular profession of adherence to the ground occupied by the Church at the Second Reformation, whereas the Free Church did so in 1843, and that too in a most demonstrative manner, and continues still periodically to call attention to her distinctive principles, we shall restrict ourselves to the consideration of the several points of difference between the Free and O. S. Church, in other words, we shall draw a parallel between them, and thereby show the ground of the latter remaining separate from the former, and thus by implication from the remaining larger Presbyterian Bodies.

I. The Original Secession Church stands upon the ground occupied by the Church at the Second Reformation, whereas the Free Church Constitution is based upon the Revolution Settlement. The two Churches thus having different bases, their constitution must be different in a corresponding degree. Hence with whatever defects the Revolution Settlement was chargeable, the Free Church must of necessity be chargeable with the same, and by parity of reasoning, whatever difference there was between the Constitution of the Church established at the Second Reformation, and her establishment at the Revolution, the same must be the difference between the constitution of the Original Secession, and that of the Free Church. While we speak thus, we are not to be understood as speaking in terms of total condemnation of the Revolution Settlement. Rather are we called upon to bear testimony to whatever excellencies it possessed. We feel it to be our duty to commemorate the power and goodness of God in appearing as the Deliverer of the Church and land at a most seasonable time, when they were just emerging from the twenty-eight years hot Prelatic persecution, "and when the designs were open and declared,

for bringing them under Antichristian idolatry and darkness." We are also called upon to express our gratitude for the fact of the abolition of Prelacy, and establishment of Presbyterianism, leaving out of view in the meantime the ground on which this work was gone about and accomplished. At the same time we do not feel warranted to speak of it in terms of unqualified commendation, as the Free Church at the Disruption in 1843 all but did. In vague and general terms the Free Church, in some of her original documents, condemn wherein the Revolution Settlement was defective, but nothing specific is mentioned. Whereas the Original Secession Church has in her judicial Testimony minutely detailed the serious defects of said Settlement, and condemned them accordingly. The following points among others may be noted as an illustration of our meaning. We find testimony borne against their indifference in not mourning over the gradual course of defection the Church and land had pursued during the forty years that had elapsed from the period of the Second Reformation, in not acknowledging that their backsliding had been the ground of the Lord's controversy with them, during the twenty-eight years fiery trial under which the nation had groaned, and against their ingratitude in not making mention of the Lord's goodness in working deliverance for them, and in not confessing their unworthiness of such a signal display of mercy. How unlike in these things they were to their reforming ancestors forty years before! Again, testimony is borne against the defective procedure of the first Session of Parliament after the Revolution, 1690, and to the equally defective procedure of the first General Assembly. In the former, Prelacy was abolished, not on the ground of its being an unscriptural system, but on the low ground of expediency, viz., its being an intolerable grievance to the nation, and contrary to the inclination of a number of the people-and in the following session of same meeting of Parliament, the Presbyterian Form of Church Government was established, not because of its having the exclusive Scripture warrant, but on the same low ground of expediency, viz., its being more in harmony with the feeling of the nation. In the latter (ie., first General Assembly), these proceedings were endorsed, Prelacy condemned, and Presbyterianism approved of, because the former was not and the latter was expedient, and more convenient in the circumstances. Further, in the establishment of religion on this low basis there was a deliberate ignoring of the legal securities given to the Church, during the Covenanting Period, from 1638 till 1650, the Parliament having gone back to the year 1592, to find their model of an Established Church, thereby taking no more notice of the great and glorious work of Covenanted Re

formation that had occurred in the interval, than if it had never been. And as they overlooked the good work of the Lord, they were so far consistent in carrying out their principle, in passing over in silence the evil deeds of man, for it is most significant, that they left untouched the infamous Act Rescissory of Charles II., by which the work of the Lord at the Second Reformation was razed so far as man could raze it, and the solemn covenant engagements into which God entered with these lands were denounced as seditious and treasonable deeds. This piece of infamous procedure was also endorsed by the first General Assembly. And their sitting down under the shadow of this defective civil establishment, the door of admission to Church fellowship was made as wide as with any show of consistency it could be. Never having condemned Prelacy as unscriptural, nor approved of Presbyterianism as being the only Form of Church Government founded upon Scripture, they could not debar the adherents of Prelacy from communion, and the result was, the almost unrestrained admission of "perfidious prelates and their underlings" to Church fellowship. Thus in an Act of Assembly 1712, we find these words,-"We cannot but lay before your Majesty (Queen Anne) this pregnant instance of our moderation,- that since our late happy establishment, there have been taken in and continued, hundreds of dissenting (i.e. episcopal) ministers, upon the easiest terms." When these things are considered, and contrasted with the Establishment of the Church at the Second Reformation, when a previous course of defection was confessed and mourned over, their seasonable deliverance from Popery thankfully and humbly acknowledged, perfidious prelates excommunicated or deposed, Presbyterianism ratified as the only Scripture form of Church government, and when former Covenant engagements were solemnly acknowledged and renewed, while their violation in previous years was deplored; when the latter flimsy fabric is compared with the former stately and glorious temple, our heart might well be filled with sorrow, and "How hath the gold become dim and the most fine gold changed," become our mournful plaint. We again repeat, that the ground of the former is that occupied by the Original Secession Church, while that of the latter is the basis of the Free Church, and hence she stands identified with its defects as well as with its excellencies. Like the Revolution Church she never did, and does not yet hold the Divine Right of Presbytery, as appears from Question IV. of Free Church Formula. Like said Church she practically homologates the infamous Act Rescissory, for what else does her persistent ignoring of the National Covenant of Scotland and Solemn League amount to? And what does her persistency in keeping the Presbyterian For

Church goverment on the low basis of expediency amount to, if not to a virtual admission that Prelacy and Independency may be equally Scriptural, and hence that in certain circumstances either may be substituted for Presbytery? As the questions anent the Jus Divinum of Presbytery and the continued obligation of the National Covenants have of late been discussed in the pages of the Magazine, we shall not enter upon them now. We may only add here, that our having given a correct description of the position of the Free Church in respect of Presbytery and National Covenant obligation, appears further from her explicit approval of the Treaty of Union, one of the fundamental articles of which treaty being, the maintenance and preservation of the doctrine, worship, government and discipline of the Church of England. To approve then of this treaty, as is done by the Free Church, as appears from the fact of her Claim of Right being specially founded on it, and from the terms of unqualified approval in which it is once and again referred to in said document, is to homologate the violation of the Solemn League, and to place Presbytery and Prelacy on all but an equal footing.

(To be concluded in our next.)

THE PRAYING SOCIETY OF ST. ANDREWS.

BY D. HAY FLEMING.

MEETINGS for Christian fellowship and study of the Scriptures have long been held in Scotland. The existence of the Lollards in Ayrshire can be traced from the time of Wicliffe to the days of George Wishart. One of the ancestors of the gallant John Nisbet of Hardhill, who suffered martyrdom in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh in 1685, possessed a manuscript copy of Wicliffe's translation of the New Testament previous to the year 1500, which he concealed in a vault, and read to his family and acquaintances during the night. Alexander Gordon, one of the ancestors of William Gordon who was killed on his way to Bothwell Bridge, was an early favourer of the disciples of Wicliffe, and at their meetings in the wood of Airds near Earlstoun, read the New Testament to them in the vulgar language. Scriptural knowledge was thus diffused, when there does not seem to have been a single public teacher of the truth in Scotland.1

And

When Knox went to Geneva in 1556, during his absence he wrote a letter of instruction for the guidance of the Protestants of Scotland, and there is every reason to believe, that its directions were 1 M'Crie's Life of Melville, 2nd. ed., vol. i., pp. 8, 419. Life of Knox, ed. 1861, p. 20.