184 EDITOR. 



that the spiritual independence of the Church and the 

 non-intrusion rights of congregations were essentials of 

 the ancient ecclesiastical constitution of Scotland. If this 

 statement is incorrect, the whole world has mistaken the 

 character of the Kirk ; Knox, Melville, Henderson have 

 been totally misunderstood ; and such Presbyterians as 

 Dr Thomas M c Crie and Dr William Cunningham knew 

 nothing of the subject wilich was the study of their lives. 

 Whatever version you may give of the proceedings of the 

 Church, in the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, in relation to the Patronage Act, you cannot impair 

 the force of an appeal to the fundamental principles of 

 the Scottish Reformation. Is your theory that the Church 

 did her best to neutralize the Patronage Act and to resist 

 and protest against it ? Then the Evangelical majority 

 had a right to carry on the contest until it became 

 hopeless. Do you affirm that the Church failed in her 

 duty and practically accepted the law of patronage ? 

 Then the sooner she roused herself and harked back on 

 nobler days and native principles the better. Will you 

 admit that the Church, on the whole, shilly-shallied, 

 that she was content with laying a thin film of plausi- 

 bility and compromise over a wound in which lurked 

 poison ? Once more, the party representing her funda- 

 mental principles had a clear right to content themselves 

 with no half-measures, with no prudent evasions, but to 

 breathe a new spirit into the policy of their fathers, and 

 to proclaim that the patronage bane was to be removed 

 at all hazards. 



The intention of the Veto Act, passed by the Church 

 as soon as the Evangelicals took the lead in her councils, 

 was to annul the Patronage Act of Queen Anne. In 

 putting the veto into the hands of congregations, the 

 Church did openly and decisively what, for many years 



