ed churches as should be assigned to them by the
Scottish Privy Council. This "indulgence," though clogged with harsh
conditions and frequently renewed or capriciously recalled, was still an
acceptable boon to the wiser and better part of the presbyterian clergy,
who considered it as an opening to the exercise of their ministry under
the lawful authority, which they continued to acknowledge. But fiercer
and more intractable principles were evinced by the younger ministers of
that persuasion. They considered the submitting to exercise their
ministry under the controul of any visible authority as absolute
erastianism, a desertion of the great invisible and divine Head of the
church, and a line of conduct which could only be defended, says one of
their tracts, by nullifidians, time-servers, infidels, or the Archbishop
of Canterbury. They held up to ridicule and abhorrence such of their
brethren as considered mere toleration as a boon worth accepting. Every
thing, according to these fervent divines, which fell short of
re-establishing presbytery as the sole and predominating religion, all
that did not imply a full restoration of the Solemn League and Covenant,
was an imperfect and unsound composition between God and mammon,
episcopacy and prelacy. The following extracts from a printed sermon by
one of them, on the subject of "soul-confirmation," will at once exemplify
the contempt and scorn with which these high-flyers regarded their more
sober-minded brethren, and serve as a specimen of the homely eloquence
with which they excited their followers. The reader will probably be of
opinion that it is worthy of Kettledrummle himself, and will serve to
clear Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham of the charge of exaggeration.

There is many folk that has a face to the religion that is in fashion,
and there is many folk, they have ay a face to the old company, they
have a face for godly folk, and they have a face for persecutors of
godly folk, and they will be daddies bairns and minnies bairns both;
they will be _prelates_ bairns and they will be _malignants_ bairns
and they will be the people of God's bairns. And what think ye of that
bastard temper? Poor Peter had a trial of this soupleness, but God
made Paul an instrument to take him by the neck and shake it from him:
And O that God would take us by the neck and shake our soupleness from
us.

Therefore you that keeps only your old job-trot, and does not mend
your