r.
Robert Kirke, minister of Aberfoyle.]

Now, it may at first sight seem strange that the Christian religion
should have permitted the existence of such gross and impious relics of
heathenism, in a land where its doctrines had obtained universal
credence. But this will not appear so wonderful when it is recollected
that the original Christians under the heathen emperors were called to
conversion by the voice of apostles and saints, invested for the purpose
with miraculous powers, as well of language, for communicating their
doctrine to the Gentiles, as of cures, for the purpose of authenticating
their mission. These converts must have been in general such elect
persons as were effectually called to make part of the infant church;
and when hypocrites ventured, like Ananias and Sapphira, to intrude
themselves into so select an association, they were liable, at the
Divine pleasure, to be detected and punished. On the contrary, the
nations who were converted after Christianity had become the religion of
the empire were not brought within the pale upon such a principle of
selection, as when the church consisted of a few individuals, who had,
upon conviction, exchanged the errors of the pagan religion for the
dangers and duties incurred by those who embraced a faith inferring the
self-denial of its votaries, and at the same time exposing them to
persecution. When the cross became triumphant, and its cause no longer
required the direction of inspired men, or the evidence of miracles, to
compel reluctant belief, it is evident that the converts who thronged
into the fold must have, many of them, entered because Christianity was
the prevailing faith--many because it was the church, the members of
which rose most readily to promotion--many, finally, who, though content
to resign the worship of pagan divinities, could not at once clear their
minds of heathen ritual and heathen observances, which they
inconsistently laboured to unite with the more simple and majestic faith
that disdained such impure union. If this was the case, even in the
Roman empire, where the converts to the Christian faith must have found,
among the earlier members of the church, the readiest and the soundest
instruction, how much more imperfectly could those foreign and barbarous
tribes receive the necessary religious information from some zealous and
enthusiastic preacher, who christened them by hundreds in one day? Still
less could we imagine them to have a