Soon after this exploit, however, having been ad- | self that, in perpetrating these atrocities, he was mitted to an interview with the king, he began actuated by a pure regard for the interests of his to show a disposition to desert the banner of the sovereign. But it is vain to deny, and indeed imCovenant. Naturally haughty, jealous, and con- possible to explain his conduct without admitting ceited, anxious to distinguish himself, and im- that there was mingled with this romantic and patient of all rivalship, superiority, or control, mistaken feeling, motives of private animosity it is supposed on good authority, which has never against Argyle and the other chieftains of the yet been disproved, that he was induced to change Covenant; and that having forfeited for ever the sides from wounded vanity and disappointed am- mercy, and roused the resentment, of the nation bition, at seeing Argyle preferred before him in by imbruing his hands so deeply in the blood of the council, and General Leslie in the field. In his countrymen, he became as reckless as daring, 1640, he was detected in a clandestine correspond- determined apparently to elevate himself on the ence with the king, at a very critical conjuncture; ruins of his country, and gain the darling object but, having craved pardon for the offence, he was of his heart, though he should convert the whole of generously forgiven. In the following year, he Scotland into a field of slaughter and desolation. His was accused of being involved in a plot to assas- humanity and discretion, while acting under the sinate the Earls of Argyle and Hamilton, gene- banner of the Covenant, were such as to elicit rally known by the name of The Incident, which the warm commendations of Baillie and his party, is still involved in considerable mystery. In who dreaded nothing so much as tarnishing the 1643 he threw off the mask, openly joined the honour of their victories with deeds of cruelty or king's party, and raised an army for the purpose needless severity; to what extent his character of ruining the cause which he had so solemnly may have been altered by his becoming a renegade pledged himself to maintain. from his religion and a traitor to his country, we shall not say, but the change which marked his conduct may be estimated from the following brief recital of his career after that period. The character of Montrose, as might be expected, from the prominent part which he took in defence of the king, is variously estimated by historians, according to their political leanings and predilections. In the eyes of the admirers of Charles and arbitrary power, who are animated by any thing but a kindly and charitable feeling towards the Covenanters, Montrose appears in a character little inferior to that of the most illustrious heroes of antiquity,-invested with all the dazzling interest of romance; a high-spirited gentleman, accomplished in mind and body," his heart overflowing with lofty and generous sentiments;" and they dwell with rapture on the splendid victories which he achieved over his countrymen, while they bewail his untimely fate as that of a martyr, and can hardly find epithets sufficiently strong to express their detestation of the bigots and barbarians by whom it was inflicted. By others, again, he is represented as a meanspirited, vindictive, and ruthless bravado; as the blackest criminal, destitute of either public or private principle; the chief of a lawless banditti of savages, committing murder and devastation in the spirit of cold-blooded, indiscriminate, unmanly, vengeance; and justly meriting, on these accounts, the ignominious end to which he was brought. It is extremely difficult, in drawing the character, and tracing the history, of such a man as Montrose, to avoid extremes; and that both of the pictures we have given are in the extreme, can hardly be denied. Mindful of the ancient adage, that "No man ever became most base all of a sudden," we are willing to allow that this nobleman, when he first took up arms in the cause of Charles, may not have contemplated the atrocities into which he was afterwards led, by placing himself at the head of a barbarous horde, who had no feelings in common with his countrymen, and whose sole object in following him was pillage and plunder; and he may have persuaded him The regular troops of Scotland being now engaged under General Leslie in England, Montrose suddenly appeared in Perthshire in September 1644, at the head of an army composed of Highlanders and wild Irishmen, most of the latter of whom had been engaged in the bloody scenes of the Irish massacre, and gained an easy victory at Tippermuir over the raw and undisciplined troops who were hastily called out to arrest his progress. Having made himself master of Perth, he advanced north, flushed with success, to Aberdeen. Here also the troops of the Covenanters, unprepared for such treachery, were taken by surprise; and after a brave resistance of two hours, were compelled to retreat. A drummer, who had accompanied a commissioner sent to summon the town to surrender, having got drunk, and been unhappily killed on his return, Montrose, irritated by the refusal to submit to his victorious arms, made this incident a pretext for an indiscriminate slaughter, and gave the inhuman "charge to his men to kill, and pardon none.' Orders so congenial to the savage dispositions and the merciless habits of his soldiery, were promptly fulfilled to the letter; and the scene which followed, I give in the homely language of Spalding, a cotemporary townsman of Aberdeen, whose account being that of a staunch loyalist and an admirer of Montrose, cannot for a moment be suspected of exaggeration. "The Livetennand (Montrose) followis the chais in to Abirdene, his men hewing and cutting down all maner of man they could overtak, (within the toune, upon the streits, or in their housis, and round about the toun as our men wes fleing) with brode swordis but (without) mercy or remeid. Thir cruell Irishis, seeing a man weill cled, wold first tyr him (that *Spalding, Hist. of Troubles, ii., 264, Bannatyne Ed. is, strip him) and saif the clothes onspoyled, and syne kill the man. Montrois followis the chais in to Abirdene, leaving the bodie of his army standing clois unbroken till his returne, except such Irishis as faucht the field. He had promesit to them the plundering of the toun for their good service. Alwaies (yet) the Livetennand (Montrose) stayit not, bot returnit bak fra Abirdene to the camp this samen Frydday at nicht, leaving the Irishis killing, robbing, and plundering of this toune at their plesour. And nothing hard bot pitiful houlling, crying, weiping, murning, throu all the streittis. Thus thir Irishis continewit Frydday, Setterday, Sonday, Mononday." The conduct of these monsters to the unfortunate women whom they found in the town cannot here be rehearsed. But to complete the picture, our faithful historian (too faithful to be quoted in this part of his narrative by the panegyrists of Montrose) adds, "It is lamentable to heir how thir Irishis who had gotten the spoyl of the town did abuse the samyn. The men that thay killit thay wold not suffer to be bureit, bot tirrit them of their clothis, syne left their nakit bodies lying above the ground. The wyf durst not cry nor weip at her husband's slauchter befoir her eyes, nor the mother for the sone, nor dochter for the father; whiche if thay war heard (doing) then war thay presently slayne also." This horrible scene of carnage, lust, and rapine was perpetrated in the presence, under the anthority, and by the express orders of "the gallant Montrose," who was lodged in the town, and kept the main body of his troops in the neighbourhood, that these wretched Irish might revel at pleasure, and reap the full reward he had promised them for their good service;" and the next day he marched off with the rest of his army, leaving the city in the possession and at the mercy of the inhuman instruments of his vengeance. And yet this reckless and infatuated man could so far forget himself as to declare, before his execution, that he "did all that lay in him to keep back his soldiers from spoiling the country; and for bloodshed, if it could have been thereby prevented, he would rather it had all come out of his own veins." If the remembrance of his former behaviour, in pressing the inhabitants of this unfortunate town to embrace the Covenant, could make no impression on his sense of shame, we might have thought that their wellknown partiality to the cause of Charles might have recommended them to his mercy; and the army of the Covenanters, by whom alone the resistance to his progress had been made, having fled, his conduct in giving up the unoffending and unarmed inhabitants to pillage and massacre is deprived even of the feeble defence which has been set up for it, on the ground of his taking reprisals on the enemies of the king. But next to the guilt of being accessory to such an atrocious scene, which has at least the palliation of having been committed during the rage of a civil war, is that of attempting to vindicate it; and when we hear Dr Wishart, the panegyrist of Montrose, coolly describing the scene by telling us that "he entered the city and allowed his men two days to refresh themselves,” and a later historian, who calmly surveys it in the nineteenth century, declaring that Montrose "stands as completely exonerated as any general under whose command blood ever flowed or misery followed," we are almost tempted to say that the conduct of that general, bad as it was, was not so inexcusable as the spirit which dictated such a vindication of it. For four days did this monstrous cruelty continue, and it ceased only then, because the approach of Argyle obliged the rebels to evacuate the town. As Montrose was not in a situation to cope with Argyle, he retreated northward, and having gained fresh adherents, he penetrated, in the midst of winter, into Argyleshire, and, in the absence of their chief, overran that country with a vindictive barbarity of which only the brutal Irish of that age and the savages of the mountains could have been found capable. The houses and the corn were burned, the cattle destroyed, and all the males fit to bear arms that fell into their hands massacred in cold blood. * Argyle, resenting this dreadful invasion of his territory as a personal wrong, hastened to the scene with a party of soldiers, who being mostly raw recruits from the Lowlands, were easily routed by Montrose at Inverlochy. The conduct of Argyle on this occasion, in taking to his boat on the lake instead of leading on his men, has given occasion to his enemies to reproach him with pusillanimity. Baillie vindicates him from this, by informing us that "having a hurt in his arm and face, gotten by a casual fall from his horse, whereby he was disabled to use either sword or pistol, he was compelled by his friends to go aboard his barge." But Argyle was a senator, not a soldier; he never professed to excel in those martial exploits which, in the eyes of worldly men, are deemed of sufficient value to atone for the absence of almost every moral and religious qualification. His firmness as a patriot, his fidelity to his country at this awful crisis, and the services he rendered to the cause of the Covenant by the wisdom of his counsels and the energy of his measures, exposed him to the slanders of the cavalier party, who, while they ridiculed his religious principles, which they were incapable of appreciating, were too glad of an occasion to exaggerate his deficiency in point of natural courage, a quality in which it was their pride and glory to excel. These slanders, carefully preserved and transmitted by successive historians, continue to be repeated down to the present day; and the memory of this excellent nobleman lies under a cloud of obloquy which is only beginning to clear away, as the principles for which he contended are beginning to be better understood. Meanwhile the state of the country continued to get worse and worse. Almost every man who • Brodie's History of the British Empire, vol, fii., p. 534. * could bear arms having been called out to serve in effect of these exhortations, which were echoed the wars, agricultural operations were almost totally through all the pulpits of the land, was highly ensuspended, and the consequence was that famine, couraging. "The Covenanters," as one observes, and its general attendant pestilence, soon made "betook themselves to their old shift of fasting their appearance. It might truly have been said, and prayer." The minds of the people, instead in the language of the prophet, "The sword is of yielding to despair, were roused to more vigorwithout, and the pestilence and the famine within; ous exertion. Shortly afterwards, the country he that is in the field shall die with the sword, was delivered from its fears by the defeat of the and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence royal forces at Naseby in England, and this pershall devour him." Ezek. vii. 15. The plague, mitting the return of the regular army under Lieuwhich spread quickly through the southern parts tenant-General David Leslie, the brother of Alexof the country, had slain its thousands. The ander Leslie, who had been made Earl of Leven, greatest alarm prevailed in consequence of the the Marquis of Montrose was speedily discomfited excesses of Montrose, whose hands were by this at Philiphaugh; from which time it may be contime deeply embrued in the blood of his country-sidered that the strength of the king's cause was men; and who, elated by his successes, conceived broken, and "none of his men of might could find himself already master of the whole kingdom. their hands." "Only give me leave," wrote this vain-glorious noble to the king, "after I have reduced this country to your Majesty's obedience, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your Majesty then, as David's General did to his master, Come thou thyself lest this country be called by my name."" The savages under the conduct of this leader and of Alaster Macdonald, a Popish outlaw, exercised every where the most "horrid and unheard of cruelties," so that the inhabitants fled in all directions, at the slightest notice of their approach; and nothing was heard but the cries of widows and children, wailing over the loss of husbands, fathers, and brothers. In these circumstances, the country may be said to have been saved from absolute ruin by the firmness and zeal of the Scottish Church. At an extraordinary meeting held in February 1645, the General Assembly addressed a spirited remonstrance to the Scottish Parliament, urging them to execute exemplary punishment on the authors and abettors of the civil war; they also addressed "a solemn and seasonable warning" to all classes, and to the armies both in England and Scotland, pointing out the various sins of which they had been guilty, and which they viewed as the causes of God's wrath against the land, and urging them to the duties of fasting, repentance, and prayer. Having pointed out the miseries, sins, and dangers of the country, they say, "Unless men will blot out of their hearts the love of religion and the cause of God, and cast off all care of their country, laws, liberties, and estates, yea, all natural affection of themselves, their wives, children, and friends, and whatsoever is dearest to them under the sun, they must now or never appear actively, each one stretching himself to, yea, beyond his power. It is no time to dally, or go about the business by halves. If we have been so forward to assist our neighbour kingdoms shall we neglect to defend our own? Or shall the enemies of God be more active against his cause than his people for it? God forbid. If the work, being so far carried on, shall now miscarry and fail in our hands, our own consciences shall condemn us, and posterity shall curse us; but if we stand stoutly and stedfastly to it, all generations shall call us blessed." The Much has been written in reprobation of the severity shown by the Covenanters to the pri soners who were taken after this victory; and, particularly, in putting to death a number of the rebels, who were some time afterwards compelled to surrender at discretion at Dunavertie in the Highlands. It is impossible for the Christian mind to contemplate these horrors of war without shuddering, nor will we undertake to vindicate all the measures taken by the Church at this trying period; but certainly if ever severity was justifiable it was in the case before us. It is truly ridiculous, though somewhat disgusting, to see some writers of history gloating with evident delight over the massacre of six thousand trembling fugitives after the battle of Kilsyth, a feat which Montrose and his savages accom plished in their shirts, with "the sleeves tucked up like a butcher going to kill cattle;" and yet pretending to whine over the military and judicial execution of some two or three hundred rebels, mostly Irish, taken with arms in their hands, and reeking with the blood of our countrymen.† Blinded by prejudice, they can see no distinction between the cry for justice against these murderers, which rose from every quarter of the country, and a base thirst for private revenge; nor will they condescend to make the smallest allowance for the outraged feelings of a people suffering under the combined scourge of war, famine, and pestilence, towards those whom they regarded as the authors of all their miseries, and in whom they often recognised the very ruffians who had murdered their relatives during the Irish rebellion. Cruelty, in every form, is justly an object of detestation; but it betrays a strange perversion of mind to sympathise in its perpetration, and only to revolt at its punishment. * Sir James Turner, who was on the spot, and no friend to the Covenanters, distinctly refutes Guthrie's account of this affait and declares that no quarter was promised to these prisoners. Memoirs, p. 47. † Napier's Montrose and the Covenanters, vol. ii., p. 442-473. Printed and Published by JoHN JOHNSTONE, 2, Hunter Square, Edinburgh; and sold by J. R. MACNAIR & Co., 19, Glassford Street, Glasgow; JAMES NISBET & Co., HAMILTON, ADAMS & Co., and R. GROOMBRIDGE, London; W. CURRY, Junior, & Co., Dublin; W. M'COMB, Belfast; and by the Booksellers and Local Agents in all the Towns and Parishes of Scotland; and in the principal Town in England and Ireland. Subscribers will have their copies delivered at their Residences. THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD, CONDUCTED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF MINISTERS AND MEMBERS OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THE ENGLISH SECTARIES. In the course of these sketches of the history of Presbyterianism may be now said to have gained the ascendancy, not only in Scotland, but in England and Ireland. The Assembly of Divines, called by the English Parliament to settle platform of doctrine, worship, and government, in which all the three kingdoms might unite, had, with a few exceptions, agreed to a set of standards which met with the entire and cordial approbation of the Church of Scotland. The Presbyterians had a powerful party in the English Parliament; and the vast body of the English clergy had become decidedly Presbyterian. There cannot be a stronger proof of this than the fact, that on the restoration of Charles II., no fewer than two thousand ministers, most of whom had previously been Episcopal, were in one day ejected from their charges, and silenced for non-conformity; and when so many were found willing to suffer for conscience' sake, we may conceive that there would be a still greater number who, though they conformed to the Episcopal government, would have remained contented with the Presbyterian, had it continued the established religion. various provincial assemblies. Mr Baxter informs us in his history that this arrangement took effect only in London and Lancashire; and that though the ministers held meetings for Church affairs in various other counties, they did not enjoy the civil sanction. Most of the pulpits were filled with Presbyterian ministers, who alone enjoyed the benefices, and continued to do so till the Restoration; they also filled the chief places in the universities; and, in short, Presbyterianism was considered the established form of religion in England. The same success followed the cause of Presbytery in Ireland. In 1644, the Solemn League had been administered to the Protestants in that country by four ministers deputed by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The manner in which these ministers executed their commission was highly praiseworthy. Not the shadow of force or constraint was employed. The officers and soldiers, and the Irish inhabitants in general, with all the chivalrous ardour and enthusiasm of the national character, testified the greatest alacrity in entering into the Covenant. It was carefully explained to them, before they were admitted to swear it; and the only complaint was that the ministers were "over scrupulous" in admitting persons to subscribe. "The Covenant was taken in all places (says an Irish writer of these times) with great affection: partly sorrow for former judgments, and sins, and miseries; partly joy in In 1646 the Parliament, urged on by the West- the hopes of laying a foundation for the work of minster Assembly, and by petitions from various God in the land, and overthrowing Popery and parts of England, as well as by the strenuous Prelacy, which had been the bane and ruin of that exhortations of the Scottish Church, granted a poor Church. Sighs and tears were joined topartial establishment to Presbytery. The king-gether. Indeed they were assisted with more dom of England, instead of so many dioceses, than the ordinary presence of God in that work was now divided into provinces, each of which in every place they went to; so that all the was to hold a provincial assembly, made up of representatives from the several presbyteries, or classes as they were called, within the boundary; and a proper subordination of judicatories was arranged, the supreme court being a National Assembly, to be formed of deputies from the No. 39. SEPTEMBER 28, 1839.-1&d.] hearers did bear them witness that God was with them. Yea, even the malignants who were against the Covenant durst not appear on the contrary; for the people generally held these ministers as servants of God, and coming with a blessed message and errand to them." [SECOND SERIES. VOL. T. The first symptoms of a disposition to recede from these sacred engagements were manifested, I am sorry to say, by the English Parliament. In this Parliament a great many of the members were now become either Erastians or Indepen- | dents. The Erastians are so called from Erastus, a German physician, who first vented the opinion that all Church authority is derived from the State, or civil government of the country. The Erastians maintained, therefore, that the Church was the creature of the State, or at least dependent on the State in the exercise of her judicial authority--a principle precisely the reverse of the Popish one, which is, that the State is dependent on the Church. Between these two extremes the Church of Scotland endeavoured to steer a middle course; while she acknowledged the jurisdiction of the State in all civil matters, she claimed a jurisdiction independent of the State in all spiritual matters. Recognising no other head of spiritual authority but the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Zion, she had to contend for his divine prerogatives, as we have seen, almost from the commencement of her history. During the reign of James, she maintained a constant battle on this point. This battle she won under the reign of Charles; and now, when Presbyterianism had obtained a footing in England, she found herself, strange to say, engaged in the same contest with the Long Parliament. The grand point which the English Presbyterians wished to gain in this Parliament was a civil sanction to the divine right of Presbyterial government; in other words, to acknowledge that it was the government appointed by Christ in his Word. The Parliament, however, saw that if they sanctioned this principle, without any modification, they would strip themselves of all power and control over the Church; for it was an essential principle of Presbytery that the Church possessed intrinsic powers wholly independent of the State. They determined, therefore, to oppose the Presbyterians in this matter. The Independents and other sectaries, afraid that, if the independence of the Church were sanctioned by the State, they would not obtain toleration, concurred with the Erastians in refusing to acknowledge the principle. The lawyers, who if not the most numerous, were the most active and loquacious portion of this Parliament, were almost all to a man, as might be expected from their profession, against acknowledging the independent authority of the Church. It is worth while, once for all, to vindicate the English Presbyterians from the misrepresentation and abuse with which they have been assailed, from almost every quarter, for their conduct, or rather their designs, at this period of their history. "The Presbyterians," says Neale, in his History of the Puritans, "were now in the height of their power, the hierarchy being destroyed, and the best, if not all the livings in the kingdom distributed among them; yet still they were dissatisfied for want of the top-stone to their new building, which was church-power; the pulpits and conversation of the city were filled with invectives against the men in power, because they would not leave the Church independent on the state." Again, "the Presbyterian hierarchy was as narrow as the prelatical; and as it did not allow a liberty of conscience, claiming a civil as well as ecclesiastical authority over men's persons and properties, it was equally, if not more intolerable." Similar charges pervade the whole of Mr Neale's history, and they have been repeated by writers of all different persuasions, prelatical, infidel, and sectarian. "Presbyterianism (says another writer) displayed the same intolerance as Episcopacy had done. Religious tyranny subsists in various degrees. Popery is the consummation of it, and Presbyterianism a weak degree of it. But the latter has in it the essence of the former, and differs from it only as a musket differs from a cannon." Now, what was this church-power which the Presbyterians were so anxious to secure, and which Neale would represent as "a civil authority over men's persons and properties?" Will you believe, that it was neither more nor less than the power of keeping back scandalous and unworthy persons from the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper? This was, in fact, the great point in dispute between them and the Parlia ment; for the Parliament had insisted on having the supreme power in ecclesiastical matters, and had passed a law to the effect, that if any person was refused admission to sealing ordinances by the Church Courts, he might appeal to Parliament, which might, by virtue of its authority, compel the Church Courts to receive him, whatever his character might be. The Presbyterians, as Neale himself admits, "were dissatisfied with the men in power, because they would not leave the Church independent on the State." And would Mr Neale, himself an Independent, have had the Church to be dependent on the State? Would he have had the Presbyterians tamely submit to see the royal prerogatives of Christ assumed by a Parliament, after they had succeeded in wresting them out of the hands of a monarch, against whom, for this very reason, the nation had long been engag ed in a bloody war? But the real intentions of the Presbyterians must be judged of from their own writings, with which Neale seems to have been unacquainted, and to some of which he had no access. "In the Assembly, (says Baillie, writing in 1646,) we are fallen on a fashious proposition, that has kept us diverse days--to oppose the Erastian heresy, which in this land is very strong, especially among the lawyers, unhappy members of this Parliament. We find it necessary to say, 'that Christ, in the New Testament, has institute a Church government, distinct from the civil, to be exercised by the officers of the Church, without commission from the magistrate.' None in the Assembly (Westminster) has any doubt of this truth but one Colman, a professed Erastian; a man reasonably |