fore promise, before the majesty of God and
his congregation, that we, by his grace, shall with all diligence
continually apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives, to
maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed word of God
and his congregation; and shall labor, by all possible means, to have
faithful ministers, truly and purely to minister Christ's gospel and
sacraments to his people: we shall maintain them, nourish them, and
defend them, the whole congregation of Christ, and every member thereof,
by our whole power, and at the hazard of our lives, against Satan, and
all wicked power who may intend tyranny and trouble against the
said congregation; unto which holy word and congregation we do join
ourselves; and we forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan, with
all the superstitious abomination and idolatry thereof; and moreover
shall declare ourselves manifestly enemies thereto, by this faithful
promise before God, testified to this congregation by our subscriptions.
At Edinburgh, the third of December, 1557."[*]

* Keith, p. 66. Knox, p. 101.

Had the subscribers of this zealous league been content only to demand
a toleration of the new opinions, however incompatible their pretensions
might have been with the policy of the church of Rome, they would
have had the praise of opposing tyrannical laws, enacted to support an
establishment prejudicial to civil society: but it is plain that
they carried their views much further; and their practice immediately
discovered the spirit by which they were actuated. Supported by the
authority which they thought belonged to them as the congregation of the
Lord, they ordained that prayers in the vulgar tongue[*] should be used
in all the parish churches of the kingdom; and that preaching and the
interpretation of the Scriptures should be practised in private houses,
til God should move the prince to grant public preaching by faithful
and true ministers.[**] Such bonds of association are always the
fore-runners of rebellion; and this violent invasion of the established
religion was the actual commencement of it.

Before this league was publicly known or avowed, the clergy, alarmed
with the progress of the reformation, attempted to recover their lost
authority by a violent exercise of power, which tended still further
to augment the zeal and number of their enemies. Hamilton, the primate,
seized Walter Mill, a priest of an irreproachable life, who had e