THE COVKNANTERS. — IMPROVEMENTS. 9T 



watcli* on some neighbouring eminence, so as to apprize them of the soldiers' 

 approach, and give them time to escape. Afterwards they began to carry arms 

 for personal defence, and the protection of their wives and children against the 

 violence of men who were constantly hovering round their peaceable meetings, and 

 where they spared, never failed to insult. The language of their persecutors, so 

 to speak, was — Crois a I'ange Gabriel ou je te tuef — a species of despotism which 

 none could have borne with so long and patiently, but those who evinced, in their 

 humble submission, the power of religion over the mind. Beyond adopting the 

 means of self-defence, and signifying their resolution to maintain their faith 

 inviolate, they never proceeded ; and notliing but a perversion of language 

 could caU this rebelUon. Wlien men's lives were attacked without law, and 

 contrary to law, as in the present case, it could be no extenuation of the crime 

 that the assassin bore the king's commission. J 



The treatment experienced by the Scotch Covenanters was in no respect less 

 severe and unrelenting than that by which the court of Savoy endeavoured to 

 exterminate the Waldenses. The parallel, indeed, is abundantly striking ; but 

 what Louis XII. said of the latter might have been apphed with equal truth 

 to the Covenanters — " lis sont meilleurs Chretiens que nous." 



But to prosecute this subject to the extent which an impartial review demands, 

 would be to perpetuate the recollection of wrongs and sufferings which it were 

 more consonant with the dictates of true Christianity to commiserate and forgive. 

 The facts, however, are too appalling to be forgotten even by the present 

 generation : and although the poor Covenanters, professing a religion which 

 was pronounced " unfit for a gentleman," may be paraded before the public 

 eye as " ignorant fanatics,"§ or branded with the name of rebels, many of them 

 were men who did honour to human nature, and gave a bright illustration 

 of that patient endurance, inspired by religious devotion, which, among the 

 Scottish peasantry, has still, happily, many Kving examples. The martyrs to 

 their religion, with the gray cairn piled over them, will be remembered and 

 revered when the marble tombs of their persecutors shall have crumbled into 

 dust. Their undaunted courage, had they been heathens, would have entitled 



• A beautiful enfrraving on this subject has just appeared. f See Volt. Maliomet. 



J Fide M'Gavin's " Scots Worthies ;" Dr. M'Crie— " Review of the Tales of my L dlord ;" " Vindi- 

 cation of the Covenanters ;" Wodrow's " History," &c. &c. ; Defoe's " Memoirs of the Church of 

 Scotland/' &c. 



§ But that they were not so, is proved by this fact, that when learning could not be obtained at home, 

 many went to Holland and Geneva for it, and considered the learning of the schools an indispensable 

 qualification for a preacher. Not an instance is on record where one had been licensed to preach, who 

 had not completed a course of Greek and Roman learning.— &e Lives of Rutherford, Melville, dc. 



C C 



