s), that, about the beginning of the third century,
those of the highest dignity in the nation, voluntarily enlisted
themselves under the displayed banner of CHRIST, the captain of
salvation, and became nursing fathers and nursing mothers to his church,
employing their power to root out Pagan idolatry, and bring their
subjects under the peaceful scepter of the SON of GOD. This plant of
Christianity having once taken root, did, under all the vicissitudes of
divine providence, grow up unto a spreading vine, which filled the land,
and continued to flourish, without being pressed down with the
intolerable burden of prelatical or popish superstition: the truths and
institutions of the gospel being faithfully propagated and maintained in
their native purity and simplicity by the Culdees some hundreds of years
before ever that man of sin and son of perdition, by the door of
prelacy, stepped into the temple of God in Scotland. Those early
witnesses for CHRIST, having no other ambition but that of advancing
piety and the doctrines which were according to godliness, were
therefore called _Culdees_, that is, _Cultores Dei_, or worshipers of
God. The doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the house of
GOD being thus established, continued for many years, taught and
exorcised, according to divine institution. But, in process of time, the
Church of CHRIST in this land came to be assaulted with the corruptions
of the see of Rome, by means of Palladius, the Pope's missionary to the
Britons, who made the first attempt to bring our fathers' necks under
the anti-christian yoke, which gradually increasing by little and
little, clouded the sunshine of prosperity the church then enjoyed, till
about the eleventh century, when the Romish fraternity fully established
themselves, by usurping a diocesan supremacy over the house of God;
after which a midnight darkness of popish error and idolatry overwhelmed
the nation, for near the space of five hundred years. Yet, even in this
very dark period, the LORD left not himself altogether without some to
bear witness for him, whose steadfastness in defense of the truth, even
unto death, vanquished the inhuman cruelty of their savage enemies. The
honor of the church's exalted Head being still engaged to maintain the
right of conquest he had obtained over this remote isle, and raise up
his work out of the ruins, under which it had lain so long buried; he,
about the beginning of the 15th century, a