seventeen, with large brown eyes, and, when he pleased, a very attractive
manner. To Murray, more than to any other man, was due the Rising of
1745.

Meanwhile, in secular affairs, Scotland showed nothing more remarkable
than the increasing dislike, strengthened by Argyll, of Walpole's
Government.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE FIRST SECESSION.

For long we have heard little of the Kirk, which between 1720 and 1740
passed through a cycle of internal storms. She had been little vexed,
either during her years of triumph or defeat, by heresy or schism. But
now the doctrines of Antoinette Bourignon, a French lady mystic, reached
Scotland, and won the sympathies of some students of divinity--including
the Rev. John Simson, of an old clerical family which had been notorious
since the Reformation for the turbulence of its members. In 1714, and
again in 1717, Mr Simson was acquitted by the Assembly on the charges of
being a Jesuit, a Socinian, and an Arminian, but was warned against "a
tendency to attribute too much to natural reason." In 1726-29 he was
accused of minimising the doctrines of the creed of St Athanasius, and
tending to the Arian heresy,--"lately raked out of hell," said the Kirk-
session of Portmoak (1725), addressing the sympathetic Presbytery of
Kirkcaldy. At the Assembly of 1726 that Presbytery, with others,
assailed Mr Simson, who was in bad health, and "could talk of nothing but
the Council of Nice." A committee, including Mar's brother, Lord Grange
(who took such strong measures with his wife, Lady Grange, forcibly
translating her to the isle of St Kilda), inquired into the views of Mr
Simson's own Presbytery--that of Glasgow. This Presbytery cross-examined
Mr Simson's pupils, and Mr Simson observed that the proceedings were "an
unfruitful work of darkness." Moreover, Mr Simson was of the party of
the _Squadrone_, while his assailants were Argathelians. A large
majority of the Assembly gave the verdict that Mr Simson was a heretic.
Finally, though in 1728 his answers to questions would have satisfied
good St Athanasius, Mr Simson found himself in the ideal position of
being released from his academic duties but confirmed in his salary. The
lenient good-nature of this decision, with some other grievances, set
fire to a mine which blew the Kirk in twain.

The Presbytery of Auchterarder had set up a kind of "standard" of their
own--"The Auchterarder Creed"--which included this formula: "It is not