offences against the State were only cognizable by the State. This point was settled by the law: yet, in persecuting the Episcopal Clergy, the Presbyterians were permitted to violate the principles of law and of equity. Thus it is clear, not only that the Act securing Episcopal Clergymen in their benefices was violated, under the pretence of treason, after the Rebellion; but also that the benefit of the Toleration Act was not for a long period extended to Episcopalians in Scotland, who were not permitted to use the Liturgy in private.
In 1719 an Act was passed "For making more effectual the laws appointing the Oaths:" but as several years had elapsed since the Rebellion, there was some relaxation in the persecutions, to which the Clergy had been subjected. By this Act an Episcopal Minister, performing divine service without taking the Oaths, was subjected to imprisonment; but the Government had grown wiser, and it was not rigorously enforced: so that from a few years after this period until 1746 the Episcopal Church enjoyed much prosperity.[1]
But we must now turn to the divisions, which began to exist soon after this period among the Clergy
- ↑ Keith, by Russell, 509. In 1718 a collection was made in England for the suffering Clergy after an application attested by Campbell and Gadderer. In a note to the Case of the Church of Scotland, we have the following melancholy proof of Presbyterian violence. "There are at present about an hundred and twenty Priests of the Church of Scotland, whose melancholy circumstances cry loudly, and plead more powerfully than can be expressed by words: and since the suppression of the chapels and meeting houses for the Service of the Liturgy, and some other desolating emergencies, the number of individual sufferers is growing daily greater, and God only seeth the end thereof: whose blessed will be done." Somers' Tracts, xii. 492.
