the ministers
still adhered to its principles, and preached the Puritan theology
undiluted. These men were democratic in their ecclesiastical views,
and stout protestors against Patronage, which has always been the
bugbear of the sects in Scotland. As Burns expresses it, they did
their best to stir up their flocks to

Join their counsel and their skills
To cowe the lairds,
An' get the brutes the power themsels
To chuse their herds.

All Burns's instincts would naturally have been on the side of those
who wished to resist patronage and "to cowe the lairds," had not this
his natural tendency been counteracted by a stronger bias drawing him
in an opposite direction. The Auld Lights, though democrats in Church
politics, were the upholders of that strict church discipline under
which he was smarting, and to this party belonged his own minister,
who had brought that discipline to bear upon him. Burns, therefore,
naturally threw himself into the arms of the opposite, or New Light
party, who were more easy in their life and in their doctrine. This
large and growing section of ministers were deeply imbued with
rationalism, or, as they then called it, "common-sense," in the light
of which they pared away from religion all that was mysterious and
supernatural. Some of them were said to be Socinians or even pure Deists,
most of them shone less in the pulpit, than at the festive board. (p. 019)
With such men a person in Burns's then state of mind would readily
sympathize, and they received him with open arms. Nothing could have
been more unfortunate than that in this crisis of his career he should
have fallen into intimacy with those hard-headed but coarse-minded
men. They were the first persons of any pretensions to scholarly
education with whom he had mingled freely. He amused them with the
sallies of his wit and sarcasm, and astonished them by his keen
insight and vigorous powers of reasoning. They abetted those very
tendencies in his nature which required to be checked. Their
countenance, as clergymen, would allay the scruples and misgivings he
might otherwise have felt, and stimulate to still wilder recklessness
whatever profanity he might be tempted to indulge in. When he had let
loose his first shafts of satire against their stricter brethren,
those New Light ministers heartily applauded him; and hounded him on
to still more daring assaults. He had not