298 EDITOR. 



and had been accepted as pleaders, at the bar of the 

 Court of Session, how could the Free Presbyterian Church 

 claim exemption from their jurisdiction ? A perusal of 

 the report of the Dunbar trial in the records of the Court 

 of Session showed, what any one acquainted with the 

 historic position of the Sir William Dunbar section 

 of Scotch Episcopalians might have guessed before- 

 hand, that the cases were essentially distinct. Sir 

 William Dunbar and his section claimed relations with 

 the Church of England, and repudiated the jurisdiction of 

 the Scottish Episcopal Church. This independence con- 

 stitutes, in Scottish ecclesiastical history, the very mean- 

 ing and ratio essendi of the little knot of Episcopalian 

 congregations referred to. In relation, therefore, to 

 the Primate of the Scottish Episcopalian Church, Sir 

 William Dunbar was a layman ; and the plea of 

 Sir William, when the Bishop flung his ecclesiastical 

 net over him, was substantially that the latter had no 

 more right to meddle with him than with the editor of 

 the Scotsman. To determine the question of fact, 

 both parties came, and rightly came, before the Court of' 

 Session. Mr MacMillan, appearing in his character as a 

 Free Church minister, demanded that the Court of 

 Session should compel the Eree Church to remove the 

 ecclesiastical censures which she had pronounced upon 

 him. On the question whether she owed him money, 

 or the question whether she had masked a private 

 attack under ecclesiastical forms, or any other question 

 involving the civil rights of Mr MacMillan, the Eree 

 Church declared herself ready to plead : but she main- 

 tained that, if Mr MacMillan admitted her ecclesiastical 

 jurisdiction over him, which he did, and if his claim was 

 not for money, which it was not, and if the proceedings 

 against him were allowed to have been ecclesiastical, 



