Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

350 THE SCOPE.
advocats, decerned one of his good priests to have an augmentation out of
his patron's rents, though equivalent to as much more as was pofsefsed by
his predecefsor in that church ; and the churches of the other parish, in
spite of both law and reason, to be disunited, and to each of the ministers
thereof more stipend mortifyed, then to them both formerly was thought
to be sufficient. This is one of the chips of the block of Presbyterial go-
vernment, which, because the violent afsertors thereof would, by a pre-
tended jure divino authority, pertinaciously obtrude upon our consciences,
and co-efsentiat it in the object of our faith with the most orthodox eccle-
siastical doctrine, the Author very civilly, without falling upon the com-
mon school-controversies, twists out a discourse concerning fables, sor-
cerers, and distracted people, wherein they will be found as erroneous in
their opinions as in their rule opprefsive. The Author desires to have the
prolixity of the digrefsion for this cause excused, that who would encoun-
ter with such an adversary must step a little aside to cope with him aright.
He walks in no known tract, his actions are arbitrary, and pafsion directs
his motions ; and where he finds evasions suitable to his hypocrisie, Pro-
teus never transformed himself into so many shapes as he will doe for his
own ends. What the Author speaks of the devotion of his ancestors be-
fore the nativitie of our Saviour, and when afterwards the only Romish
faith was embraced by them ; of the antiquitie of bis tenandrie, and their
skilfulnefs in the ceremonies of pristine sacrifice ; of vindicating old cus-
toms from the aspersions of Neoterick Sciolists, and maintaining the in-
geniositie of fables ; of the consistence of poetical fictions with true divi-
nity, and sympathie twixt old and new Rome in their rites and mysteries
of religion; and, lastly, of hypocondriack and fanatical braines, and the
great perpetrations of horrible unjustice in Scotland, by the too frequent
mistakes of their diseases, is to no other purpose, but in view of the cour-
teous Reader to career his spirits along the bounds the rigid presbyter would
not have to be trod upon, and to make that judicatory perceive, to whom
he makes his appeale, how unfit it were that any consistorian vaile should
darken the light of his elucubrations. After all, he closeth with the covet-
ousnefs and inflexibility of the selfish Kirkist, which, as it is connexed with
foregoing pafsages, to the discretion of the gentle peruser cannot come un-
seasonably.