Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

complaints against them for neglect of duty, or
irregularity of life, or tyrannical administration.
The ministers, who felt that these abuses were
debasing the purity and weakening the influence of
the Church, sought means to correct them. But the
Government took the side of the Tulchan
dignitaries. The regent, Morton, declared the
speeches against the new bishops to be seditious,
threatened to deprive the Church of the liberty of
her Assemblies, and advanced a claim to the same
supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs which had
been declared an inherent prerogative in the crown
of England.[1] Into this complicated and confused
state had matters now come in Scotland.
The man who had so largely contributed by his
unwearied labors to rear the Scottish ecclesiastical
establishment, and who had watched over it with
such unslumbering vigilance, was now in his grave.
Of those who remained, many were excellent men,
and ardently attached to the principles of the
Presbyterian Church; but there was no one who
possessed Knox's sagacity to devise, or his
intrepidity to apply, the measures which the crisis
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