King, in his Inventions of Men in the Worship of God, &c..

On the other side, the Church of England has been attacked by several Papists, particularly by the Jesuits, Harding, in his Controversy with Bishop Jewel; Fisher, in his Conference with Archbishop Laud; and Malone, in The Jesuits' Challenge, which was answered by Archbishop Usher.

And by the Dissenters, directly or indirectly, in Neal's History of the Puritans; Towgood's Letter to White; Dr. Gill's Dissenters' Reasons for separating from the Church of England; and, I may add, in The Protestant Dissenters' Catechism, a work which, I humbly think, reflects no credit on the author, whoever he was, or on those whose principles it is meant to support.*

* Should any think it necessary to ask, why the author has given less attention to the subject of this article, than to that of several others in his work; or, in other words, why he has not taken more pains to illustrate the doctrine, worship, constitution, &c. of the church from which he himself received his orders, and in whose service he spent the first years of his ministry? He answers, That when writing on this subject, (but then only) he wishes to consider himself, with our great poet, the author of Paradise Lost, as of no church or sect whatsoever.-Besides, "`A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid;" and had not most other denominations stood much more in need of illustration than the United Church of England and Ireland did, he should never have taken the trouble of writing, or given the public the trouble of reading, a work of this nature.

THE

EPISCOPAL CHURCH

IN

SCOTLAND.

HISTORY.-The society of Christians which forms the subject of this article, is not one of those novel sects whose first appearance and distinguishing tenets are only of yesterday, but the venerable remains of what was formerly the Established Church of this country. It holds spiritual communion with the more flourishing and distinguished branch of the Catholic Church just considered, and also with the Episcopal Church in America; but disclaiming all foreign jurisdiction, its members are united, in all matters of ecclesiastical concern, under the regular successors of those Scottish Bishops, who, in consequence of the Revolution, in 1688, were deprived of their temporal honours and privileges, but still continued to exercise their spiritual powers, for the benefit of that part of the Church of Christ which had been committed to their charge.

The title of Nonjurors, by which they were chiefly known for about a century from the above æra, and which was imposed on all those, both in Britain and Ireland, who refused to swear allegiance to King William and Queen Mary, and their successors, is now very justly dropt, the occasion of it having ceased, at least as far as this church is concerned. For, on the death of the last person who maintained his claim to the crown of Britain, in opposition to the reigning family and existing government, its members made offer of their dutiful allegiance to our present beloved and most gracious sovereign; and no sooner could they have done it, without a dereliction of their principles.

This religious society has subsisted in various circumstances of prosperity and adversity; it has been blessed with good fortune, and fostered by the hand of earthly power; and, through the instability of human authority and grandeur, it has likewise been plunged into the very depth of adversity, there to learn the lesson of patient endurance for conscience sake, and to give glory to God, by humbly acquiescing in the justice and righteousness of his judgments. Almost ever since the Reformation, and particularly for about a century from the æra of the Revolution, its history, like the mystic scroll of the prophet, is inscribed, within and without," with lamentation, and mourning, and wo." No portion, indeed, of the Catholic Church of Christ, has undergone a greater variety of fortune; nor, perhaps, is there

at this day, any religious society that has been more conformed to primitive Christianity, either in its external or internal condition.

It is well known to those who are acquainted with the history of the church in this country, that the Reformation which began to dawn here in 1527, but received not a legal establishinent till 1560,* was carried on with much tumult and confusion; and that for many years, various forms of ecclesiastical polity were adopted, one after another, and under as many different denominations. The Lords, or leaders, of the Congregation, which was the name assumed by the first reformers, disliking the name much more than the reality of episcopacy, at first set up a shadow of it, projected by the celebrated John Knox, or copied from the Lutherans in Germany, under the name of a Superintendency. This was a new and anomalous form of church polity; for, though the superintendents held their office for life, and their power was Episcopal, yet some of them had not even the form of an ordination, and none of them were possessed of any higher commission than those over whom they presided..

No wonder then that this strange device was of short continuance; it was found to fail in answering the purposes of church government, and was soon very generally disapproved, so that a new form was

*

Or, according to others, not till 1567.

VOL. II.

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