years. The
situation is that analysed by Thomas Luber, a Professor of Medicine at
Heidelberg, well or ill known in Scottish ecclesiastical disputes by his
Graecised name, Erastus. He argued, about 1568, that excommunication has
no certain warrant in Holy Writ, under a Christian prince. Erastus
writes:--

"Some men were seized on by a certain excommunicatory fever, which they
did adorn with the name of 'ecclesiastical discipline.' . . . They
affirmed the manner of it to be this: that certain presbyters should sit
in the name of the whole Church, and should judge who were worthy or
unworthy to come to the Lord's Supper. I wonder that then they consulted
about these matters, when we neither had men to be excommunicated, nor
fit excommunicators; for scarcely a thirtieth part of the people did
understand or approve of the reformed religion." {117}

"There was," adds Erastus, "another fruit of the same tree, that almost
every one thought men had the power of opening and shutting heaven to
whomsoever they would."

What men have this power in Scotland in 1559? Why, some five or six
persons who, being fluent preachers, have persuaded local sets of
Protestants to accept them as ministers. These preachers having a
"call"--it might be from a set of perfidious and profligate murderers--are
somehow gifted with the apostolic grace of binding on earth what shall be
bound in heaven. Their successors, down to Mr. Cargill, who, of his own
fantasy, excommunicated Charles II., were an intolerable danger to
civilised society. For their edicts of "boycotting" they claimed the
sanction of the civil magistrate, and while these almost incredibly
fantastic pretentions lasted, there was not, and could not be, peace in
Scotland.

The seed of this Upas tree was sown by Knox and his allies in May 1559.
An Act of 1690 repealed civil penalties for the excommunicated.

To face the supernaturally gifted preachers the Regent had but a slender
force, composed in great part of sympathisers with Knox. Croft, the
English commander at Berwick, writing to the English Privy Council, on
May 22, anticipated that there would be no war. The Hamiltons,
numerically powerful, and strong in martial gentlemen of the name, were
with the Regent. But of the Hamiltons it might always be said, as
Charles I. was to remark of their chief, that "they were very active for
their own preservation," and for no other cause. For centuries but one
or two lives stood