the younger man from
Haddington are a despair of reform, and a disbelief in revolution.

Let us turn, therefore, from abroad to the Church at home. It is
admitted on all hands that the clergy of this age in Scotland were
extraordinarily corrupt in life, a reproach which applied eminently to
the higher ranks and the representative men. But corruption of churchmen
is always a symptom of deeper things. It does not appear that Scotland
was much influenced by the spirit of the Renaissance, whether you apply
that term to the intellectual passion for both knowledge and beauty
which spread over most parts of Europe during the three previous
centuries, or to the more specific and half-Pagan culture which in some
parts of Europe was the result. It may be more important to observe that
the Church in Scotland had not enjoyed any period of inward religious
revival--any which could be described as native to it or original. On
the contrary its great epoch had been its transformation, through royal
and foreign influence, into the likeness of English and continental
civilisation, as civilisation was understood in the Middle Age. And that
transformation in the days of Queen Margaret and her sons was
accompanied, and to a large extent compensated, by a less desirable
incorporation into the western ecclesiastical system. The later 'coming
of the Friars' had not the same powerful effect in the remote north
which it had in some other realms. And in any case that impulse too had
long since yielded to a strong reaction, and the preachers were now
regarded with the disgust with which mankind usually resent the attempt
to manipulate them by external means without a real message. But there
were two great sources of ruin to the Scottish church, both connected
with its relation to a powerful aristocracy. One was the extraordinary
extent to which its high offices were used as sinecures for the
favourites, and the sons of favourites, of nobles and of kings. This did
not tend to impoverish the church; on the contrary, it made it an object
to all the great families to keep up the wealth on which they proposed
that their unworthy scions should feed. 'In proportion to the resources
of the country the Scottish clergy were probably the richest in
Europe.'[8] But the wealth, accumulated in idle and unworthy hands, was
now a scandal to religion, and a constant fountain of immorality. Still
worse was the extent to which that wealth was in Scotland diverted fr