PATRIOT AND PRESBYTERIAN. 167 



high as when the covenanting army marched to assist 

 the Puritans against Charles I. ; few worse civil go- 

 vernments have ever existed than that which oppressed 

 Scotland and the Church of Scotland together under 

 Charles IT. ; and in the interval between the reigns of 

 Charles I. and Charles II., when England, Scotland, and 

 Ireland alike lay prostrate at the feet of Cromwell, the 

 Church of Scotland had the felicity to represent a pitch 

 of national hatred against the victor of Dunbar keener 

 than was ever known in Scottish bosoms against the 

 race of Stewart. Thus, in Scotland, ' patriot ' and ' Pres- 

 byterian ' became convertible terms. 



It may strike English readers as a mystery that a 

 Church intensely loved by a nation should have been 

 a Church of the loftiest ecclesiastical pretensions. Two 

 reasons make this appear strange to observers south 

 of the Tweed : first, that the Church of England has 

 been more willing to sacrifice the nation to its kings 

 than any Church in Christendom; and, secondly, that 

 the word ' Church ' has been immemorially connected in 

 the English mind with the priesthood and not with the 

 people. Under cover of the theory that the sacraments 

 can be rightly administered only by men ordained by 

 episcopal successors of the apostles, the Anglican priest- 

 hood have had no difficulty in identifying themselves 

 with the Church, and they have been practically so iden- 

 tified by the English laity, whenever question arose as 

 to the spiritual powers of the Church. In the Reformed 

 communions, the word ' Church ' conveyed no such im- 

 pression. For them the Church had reverted to her 

 apostolic acceptation as the assembly of the faithful, not 

 the members of a sacerdotal caste. The only reformer, 

 in the strict and complete sense of the word, was Calvin. 

 Luther, far more amiable and human-hearted, had no 



