Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

amplest measure of political freedom cannot profit
nations when the conscience continues to slumber.
It is like clothing a dead knight in the armor of a
living warrior. He reposes proudly in helmet and
coat of mail, but the pulse throbs not in the limbs
which these cover. Of all the nations of
Christendom there was not one in so torpid a state
as Scotland. When the sixteenth century dawned, it
was twice dead: it was dead in a dominant
Romanism, and it was dead in an equally dominant
feudalism; and for this reason perhaps it was
selected as the best example in the entire circle of
the European nations to exhibit the power of the
vitalizing principle. The slow, silent, and deep
permeation of the nation by the Bible dissolved the
fetters of this double slavery, and conscience was
emancipated. An emancipated conscience, by the
first law of nature -- self-preservation --
immediately set to work to trace the boundary lines
around that domain in which she felt that she must
be sole and exclusive mistress. Thus arose the
spiritual jurisdiction -- in other words, the Church.
Scotland had thus come into possession of one of
her liberties, the religious. A citadel of freedom
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