64 FAMOUS SCOTS 



Mackintosh upon Burke, out of the humblest of their 

 rivals and never have been missed. It was really 

 high time that something should be done, when Lord 

 Medwyn could pose as an ecclesiastical scholar by a 

 few garbled quotations from Beza, professing to set in 

 their true light the views held by the Reformers upon 

 patronage ; and when these very extracts, together with 

 the copious errors of the press, had been worked up by 

 Robertson of Ellon to be quoted by Lord Aberdeen 

 third-hand as an embodiment of oracular learning and 

 wisdom ! 



No apology, therefore, need here be made for the 

 inclusion of an extract from that remarkable work by 

 Dr. William Alexander Johnny Gibb to which we 

 have before had occasion to refer, and which must ever 

 rank as the classic of the movement with which Miller's 

 own name is associated. It deals with the sort of windy 

 pabulum then served up by the Aberdeen papers to 

 obscure the real issues, and it describes in the raciest 

 and most mellow style of the lamented writer the meet- 

 ing in the schoolhouse of Jonathan Tawse, at whose hos- 

 pitable board are assembled the three farmers and the 

 local doctor. Readers in the North of Scotland can 

 from their own knowledge read much between the 

 lines ; and they will not forget that Mr. Adam and 

 Mr. Joseph Robertson were the only two men who 

 could be found with effrontery sufficient to shake hands 

 with Mr. Edwards in the ail-too notorious induction at 

 Marnoch. 



