Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

instantly crushed. Hardly a week passed without a
Protestant sermon or tract issuing from the press.
Written with a searching and incisive logic, a
scathing wit, and an overwhelming power of
argument, they consumed and burned up the
Romanist defenses as fire does stubble. The
exposure was complete, the rout total; and the
discomfited Romanists could only exclaim, in
impotent rage, that it was exceeding bad manners
to treat the king's religion with such contempt.
Tillotson and his companions, however, did not
aim at playing the courtier; they were in deadly
earnest; they saw the Protestantism of England and
of Christendom in danger of perishing; they beheld
scaffolds and stakes coming fast upon them; they
felt assured that the horrors of Mary's reign were
about to renew themselves under James; and they
resolved to wield voice and pen with all the energy
they possessed, before they should be stifled in
dungeons and strangled at stakes. The moral
courage and dialectic power of these men largely
contributed to the saving of England, for, while on
the one hand they diffused among the people a
clear and full intelligence on the point at issue, on
563