h. To the moderate Presbyterians the
settlement which had been made was on the whole satisfactory. Most of
the strict Presbyterians brought themselves to accept it under protest,
as a large instalment of what was due. They missed indeed what they
considered as the perfect beauty and symmetry of that Church which had,
forty years before, been the glory of Scotland. But, though the second
temple was not equal to the first, the chosen people might well rejoice
to think that they were, after a long captivity in Babylon, suffered to
rebuild, though imperfectly, the House of God on the old foundations;
nor could it misbecome them to feel for the latitudinarian William a
grateful affection such as the restored Jews had felt for the heathen
Cyrus.

There were however two parties which regarded the settlement of 1690
with implacable detestation. Those Scotchmen who were Episcopalians on
conviction and with fervour appear to have been few; but among them were
some persons superior, not perhaps in natural parts, but in learning,
in taste, and in the art of composition, to the theologians of the
sect which had now become dominant. It might not have been safe for the
ejected Curates and Professors to give vent in their own country to the
anger which they felt. But the English press was open to them; and they
were sure of the approbation of a large part of the English people.
During several years they continued to torment their enemies and to
amuse the public with a succession of ingenious and spirited pamphlets.
In some of these works the hardships suffered by the rabbled priests of
the western shires are set forth with a skill which irresistibly moves
pity and indignation. In others, the cruelty with which the Covenanters
had been treated during the reigns of the last two kings of the House
of Stuart is extenuated by every artifice of sophistry. There is much
joking on the bad Latin which some Presbyterian teachers had uttered
while seated in academic chairs lately occupied by great scholars. Much
was said about the ignorant contempt which the victorious barbarians
professed for science and literature. They were accused of
anathematizing the modern systems of natural philosophy as damnable
heresies, of condemning geometry as a souldestroying pursuit, of
discouraging even the study of those tongues in which the sacred books
were written. Learning, it was said, would soon be extinct in Scotland.
The Universities, under their new rule