ded
that the imposition of Episcopacy would ultimately undo the work of the
Reformation, and bring the nation once more under the yoke of Rome.
Here, too, history has justified them. Had it not been for the
conjunction of the forces of the Scottish Presbyterians and the English
Puritans during the reign of Charles the First, the designs of that
monarch against the Protestantism of both kingdoms could not probably
have been checked. The least that can be said with truth on this matter
is, that the Protestantism of the country was gravely imperilled in his
reign and in the reigns of his two immediate successors, and that the
resolute attitude of Scotland counted more than any other one influence
in preserving it.

Nor was it only the preservation of the freedom of the Church that was
involved in the struggle. The cause of civil freedom was also at stake.
'True religion,' says a classic of the Scottish Church, 'and national
liberty are like Hippocrates' twins--they weep or laugh, they live or
die together. There is a great sibness between the Church and the
Commonwealth. They depend one upon the other, and either is advanced by
the prosperity and success of the other.' Where a people make a stand
for spiritual liberty, they always by necessity advance civil freedom.
Prelacy was bound up with the absolutism of the throne in the State as
well as in the Church; Presbytery with the cause of free government and
the sovereignty of the popular will, as declared in their laws by the
chosen representatives of the nation.

But that is not the whole case for the Presbyterians. The opposing
system was discredited in their mind by the policy by which it was
promoted. It was a policy of coercion, of bribery, of dissimulation and
artifice, of resort to every kind of influence that is intolerable to a
free and high-spirited people. It was a policy that harassed the most
faithful and honourable men in the Church, and preferred the most
unscrupulous and obsequious to places of power. There was not one of
those concerned in it, from the king downwards, who came out of the
business with undamaged character. How could the Scottish Church but
resist a system which it was sought to thrust upon it by such methods as
these? If Melville's claims on our interest rested on no other ground
than the services he rendered to the Church and to the nation in
maintaining Presbyterianism in the land, that alone would make them
good.

But Melville was not