ted to the crown. Nor were the previous steps requisite before
pronouncing this sentence, formal or regular, in proportion to the
weight of it. Without accuser, without summons, without trial, any
ecclesiastical court, however inferior, sometimes pretended, in a
summary manner, to denounce excommunication, for any cause, and
against any person, even though he lived not within the bounds of
their jurisdiction.[*] And, by this means, the whole tyranny of the
inquisition, though without its order, was introduced into the kingdom.

But the clergy were not content with the unlimited jurisdiction which
they exercised in ecclesiastical matters: they assumed a censorial power
over every part of administration; and, in all their sermons, and even
prayers, mingling politics with religion, they inculcated the most
seditious and most turbulent principles. Black, minister of St.
Andrew's, went so far,[**] in a sermon, as to pronounce all kings
the devil's children; he gave the queen of England the appellation of
atheist; he said, that the treachery of the king's heart was now fully
discovered; and in his prayers for the queen he used these words: "We
must pray for her for the fashion's sake, but we have no cause: she
will never do us any good." When summoned before the privy council,
he refused to answer to a civil court for any thing delivered from the
pulpit, even though the crime of which he was accused was of a civil
nature. The church adopted his cause. They raised a sedition in
Edinburgh.[***]

* Spotswood.

** 1596.

*** 17th Dec. 1596.

The king, during some time, was in the hands of the enraged populace;
and it was not without courage, as well as dexterity, that he was able
to extricate himself.[*] A few days after, a minister, preaching in the
principal church of that capital, said, that the king was possessed with
a devil; and that, one devil being expelled, seven worse had entered in
his place.[**] To which he added, that the subjects might lawfully rise,
and take the sword out of his hand. Scarcely, even during the darkest
night of Papal superstition, are there found such instances of priestly
encroachments, as the annals of Scotland present to us during that
period.

By these extravagant stretches of power, and by the patient conduct of
James, the church began to lose ground, even before the king's accession
to the throne of England; but no sooner had that event taken place, than
he made the Scot