treacherous. One week Lennox was reported to be wavering, and Angus to have again relapsed to Beton. The next week brought news that Angus and his brother were prisoners in Blackness. Among the various offers and informations, one proposal was made which requires particular mention, affecting as it does the character of a remarkable party and of many remarkable men.
In the novelty of a first acquaintance with the Old Testament, the Scotch Protestants beheld in the history of the chosen people a counterpart of their own position. They, too, were a 'remnant' whom idolatrous tyrants would compel to burn incense to Baal. They, too, were betrayed by apostate governors who had turned away from the truth and had joined with the enemies of the Lord. And seeing how, under 'the covenant,' the oppressors were disposed of—how the letter of the law was set aside by the spirit—how the Ehuds, the Jaels, the Jehus, the Jehoiadas—how those who smote tyrants in the field with the sword, or in the closet with the dagger, were accounted faithful servants,—they imagined that conduct which in the Bible was emphatically applauded was a safe precedent for imitation.[1] As
- ↑ The ordinary rules of conduct will not, and cannot, act as a restraint upon minds possessed with religious passion, whatever be their religious opinions. The higher obligation supersedes and dispenses with the lower. The plots to murder Elizabeth and William of Orange received the sanction of the Popes; a medal, struck at Rome, commemorated the massacre of St Bartholomew; and the Powder-plot conspirators were conscious only that they were attempting a sacred duty. It is startling, however, to find Sir Thomas More applying the principle of assassination to ordinary war: and if not justifying the actual perpe-
