so long and
so severely compressed, exploded with violence. The heads and the hands
of the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh,
carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid
in the earth with solemn respect, [264] It would have been well if the
public enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy
form. Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of the
Established Church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled.
The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these
outrages. For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the
reverence paid by the prelatist to the ancient holidays of the Church.
That such reverence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true. But a
philosopher may perhaps be inclined to think the opposite extreme
not less absurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid of
associations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilised to have
a calendar, and which are found by experience to have a powerful and
often a salutary effect. The Puritan, who was, in general, but too
ready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and
jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in the Old Testament quite
as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for
assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives. He certainly did
not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in abhorrence;
for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertions of Calvin that
Christmas was, after an interval of some years, again observed by the
citizens of Geneva, [265] But there had arisen in Scotland Calvinists
who were to Calvin what Calvin was to Laud. To these austere fanatics
a holiday was an object of positive disgust and hatred. They long
continued in their solemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins which
would one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that the
Court of Session took a vacation in the last week of December, [266]

On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters by
concert in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the
nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which
at that season were probably better stocked than usual. The priest of
Baal was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His
furniture was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turned
out of doors in the sn