t for such a change, and because among
its followers were to be found the only men of property and influence
who acknowledged presbytery. But the Cameronians continued long as a
separate sect, though their preachers were bigoted and ignorant, and
their hearers were gleaned out of the lower ranks of the peasantry.
Their principle, so far as it was intelligible, asserted that paramount
species of presbyterian church-government which was established in the
year 1648, and they continued to regard the established church as
erastian and time-serving, because they prudently remained silent upon
certain abstract and delicate topics, where there might be some
collision between the absolute liberty asserted by the church and the
civil government of the state. The Cameronians, on the contrary,
disowned all kings and government whatsoever, which should not take the
Solemn League and Covenant; and long retained hopes of re-establishing
that great national engagement, a bait which was held out to them by all
those who wished to disturb the government during the reign of William
and Anne, as is evident from the Memoirs of Ker of Kersland, and the
Negotiations of Colonel Hooke with the Jacobites and disaffected of the
year.

A party so wild in their principles, so vague and inconsistent in their
views, could not subsist long under a free and unlimited toleration.
They continued to hold their preachings on the hills, but they lost much
of their zeal when they were no longer liable to be disturbed by
dragoons, sheriffs, and lieutenants of Militia.--The old fable of the
Traveller's Cloak was in time verified, and the fierce sanguinary
zealots of the days of Claverhouse sunk into such quiet and peaceable
enthusiasts as Howie of Lochgoin, or Old Mortality himself. It is,
therefore, upon a race of sectaries who have long ceased to exist, that
Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham has charged all that is odious, and almost all
that is ridiculous, in his fictitious narrative; and we can no more
suppose any moderate presbyterian involved in the satire, than we should
imagine that the character of Hampden stood committed by a little
raillery on the person of Ludovic Claxton, the Muggletonian. If,
however, there remain any of those sectaries who, confining the beams of
the Gospel to the Goshen of their own obscure synagogue, and with James
Mitchell, the intended assassin, giving their sweeping testimony against
prelacy and popery, The Whole Duty of Man and b