d been rendered the easier by the
arbitrary acts of Charles and Laud in a preceding period, we find a
clear indication of the spread of opinions strongly opposed to the use
of prescribed forms of prayer and, indeed, of any ritual in the
exercises of public worship. It may be urged, as has already been
remarked, that this opposition was not the result of an unprejudiced
consideration of the subject on its merits, but that it was rather an
outcome of the spirit which had been aroused by the persecutions
through which the Stuarts had endeavored to force a ritual upon the
Church of Scotland. This may be granted, and yet it is not to be
forgotten that many of those who held these views were among the
excellent of their age, men who did not hesitate to bear persecution
and to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ for conscience' sake,
and who, while doubtless influenced by the sentiments of those who
stood to them either in the relation of friends or foes, were not men
to allow prejudice to blind both reason and conscience alike. They had
found a ritualistic worship associated with practices which they could
not but judge to be ungodly and unjust, and engaged in by men who made
much of form, but little of truth and charity and justice. It is not
surprising, therefore, that in their desire for a revived spiritual
life in the Church they should consider such a life to be most
effectively forwarded by a departure from those forms that had been
associated with the decay of true religion in their midst.

But, in the second place, this sentiment in favor of absolute freedom
from form was not confined to sectaries or their sympathizers in the
Church, it made itself manifest among the leaders of religion in the
land and in the Church courts. The proposal of the General Assembly of
1643 to prepare a Directory of Worship, and the subsequent action of
the Scottish Church in uniting with the Westminster Divines in the
preparation of that Directory, clearly indicate that the Church had
changed its attitude since the day in which the Assembly refused to
alter any of the prayers in the Book of Common Order. The adoption of
the Directory by the Scottish Church was in a measure an endorsation of
the views of those who were opposed to the use of prescribed forms, and
while it is true that the Scotch Commissioners would have preferred the
retention of parts of the Book of Common Order, it is surely
instructive that even these men wer