SCOTLAND. 231 



on his making an offensive and defensive league with Charlemagne, 

 king of France ; or, as others say, on account of his victory over 

 Athelstan, king of England, when he vowed in the kirk of St. Andrew, 

 that he and his posterity should ever bear in their ensigns the figure 

 of the cross on which that saint suffered. It has been frequently ne- 

 glected, and as often resumed. It consists of the sovereign and twelve 

 companions, who are called Knights of the Thistle, and have on their 

 ensigns this significant motto 5 JVemo me imfiune lacesset, " None shall 

 safely provoke me" 



Religion... .Ancient Scottish historians, with Bede and other wri- 

 ters, generally agree that Christianity was first taught in Scotland by 

 some of the disciples of St. John the Apostle, who fled to this northern 

 country to avoid the persecution of Domitian, the Roman emperor ; 

 though it was not publicly professed till the beginning of the third cen- 

 tury, when a prince, whom Scotch historians call Donald the First, 

 his queen, and several of his nobles, were solemnly baptised. It was 

 farther confirmed by emigrations from South Britain, during the per- 

 secutions of Aurelius and Dioclesian, when it became the established 

 religion of Scotland, under the management of certain learned and 

 pious men, named Culdees, who seem to have been the first regular 

 clergy in Scotland, and were governed by overseers or bishops chosen, 

 by themselves from among their own body, and who had no pre-emi- 

 nence of rank over the rest of their brethren. 



Thus, independent of the church of Rome, Christianity seems to 

 have been taught, planted, and finally confirmed in Scotland, as a na- 

 tional church, where it flourished in its native simplicity, till the arri= 

 val of Palladius, a priest sent by the bishop of Rome in the fifth centu- 

 ry, who found means to introduce the modes and ceremonies of the 

 Romish church, which at length prevailed, and Scotland became in- 

 volved in that darkness which for ages overspread Europe ; though its 

 dependence upon the pope was very slender, when compared to the 

 blind subjection of many other nations. 



The Culdees long maintained their original manners, and remained 

 a distinct order, notwithstanding the oppression of the Romish clergy^ 

 till the age of Robert Bruce in the 14th century, when they disap- 

 peared 



Soon after the power of the pope in England was destroyed by Hen- 

 ry V4II,a similar reformation began in Scotland, in the reign of James 

 *V : it made great progress under that of his daughter Mary, and was 

 completed through the preaching of John Knox, who had adopted the 

 doctrines of Calvin, and was the chief reformer of Scotland. 



The religion at present established by law in Scotland, differs chief- 

 ly from that of the church of England, in having for its fundamental 

 principle a parity of rank and authority among its clergy: all its eccle- 

 siastics, or presbyters, being equal in dignity, and forming among 

 themselves a kind of ecclesiastical commonwealth of the democratic 

 species. It agrees with the reformed churches abroad in its opposi- 

 tion to popery; but it is modelled principally after the Calvinistical 

 plan established at Geneva. This establishment, at vai'ious periods, 

 proved so tyrannical over the laity, by having the power of the great 

 and lesser excommunication, which were attended by a forfeiture of 

 estate, and sometimes of life, that the kirk sessions, and other bodies, 

 have been abridged of all their dangerous powers over the laity, who 

 were extremely iealous of their bein'rr revived. Even that relic of 



VOL. I. O o ' 



