what finishing touches it needed at the hands of Laud and two other English prelates; and then brought back the treasure, accompanied with an order from the prerogative royal issued under the great seal, bearing date 23d of May, 1635, enjoining its strict observance on all the dignitaries and presbyteries of the Church of Scotland. This book subverted the whole constitution of the Church. It excommunicated all who denied the king's supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, and who should say that the Book of Common Prayer, which somebody was going some day to write, was contrary to Scripture, and all who should assert that Prelacy was unscriptural. It enjoined all ministers to adhere to the liturgy yet to be written, on pain of deposition. It decreed that no General Assembly should meet but by order of the king; no ecclesiastical matter discussed but in the prelatic courts; no private meetings, conventicles, presbyteries or sessions held for expounding Scripture, and that on no public occasion should a minister pray but from the book! Minute arrangements were also decreed respecting forms and ceremonies, fonts and altars and ornaments, and whatever "other fooleries Laud's busy brain could devise or fantastic Rome suggest ;" and, to cap the climax, all this was

said to be compiled from former acts of the General Assembly!

Verily, now Scotchmen and Scotch Presbyterianism must have become something other than what they had been in the days of Knox and the Melvilles, or this book will make a stir among them! And indeed it was indignantly condemned in terms the most unsparing, while many of the nobles secretly exulted at its glaring offensiveness, knowing as they did that the Scottish neck could never be made to bow to such a yoke. The mass of the people looked upon it as popish in its nature and as the entering wedge of Popery itself. But the general hostility, instead of at once breaking forth in popular tumult, only fed itself upon the fuel and stored up force for the hour of need.

The year following the publication of the Book of Canons was spent by the prelates in possessing themselves of every possible instrument of civil and ecclesiastical power, and by their persecuted victims in pleading at the throne of grace, and teaching the people the condition of things and the nature of the present and impending conflict. In the scramble for official position and emolument the prelatists began to snarl at and bite each other. Traquair, who, by his casting vote, in heart had

murdered Balmarino, and Maxwell, the new-fledged prelatic zealot, quarrelled over the office of lord high treasurer, and thenceforward became bitter and irreconcilable foes. While these contests went on the Book of Canons was in a measure lost sight of, but anti-presbyterian zeal soon revived, and ere long the liturgy which Charles had, in advance, enjoined upon the Church was framed by Ross and Dunblane, on the model of the English Prayerbook, and of course transmitted to Laud for revision. Having made it as nearly popish as he thought Scotland would bear, he remitted it to his faithful imitators across the border. A royal proclamation also followed, commanding all faithful subjects to receive with reverence and conform themselves to the public form of religious service therein contained.

The keystone was now let into the arch. The various arbitrary acts of the king, warmly carried out by the prelates, crowned by the Book of Canons, had remodelled the government of the Church, and the liturgy had done the same for its form of worship; and now, at last, the labour of two reigns was completed, and the Scottish Church was lying submissive under the heels of Charles and Laud! NOT YET!

THE IMPENDING CRISIS.

If a strange seed is put into the hand, the recipient must possess a strange power of insight, or be master of a marvellous process of analysis, if he can determine what contents lie close-folded in its little bosom. And the crisis now impending in Scotland was a seed destined to evolve a marvellous vegetation—a tree from whose prolific boughs the whole world was to gather a delicious and healthful fruitage. To comprehend the contents of this seed we must take into view the political situation into which Charles I., helped on by wily, unscrupulous coadjutors, had thrust himself.

Charles had inherited to the full the despotic spirit and principles of James. This spirit had been inflamed and these principles urged to high development both by the character of contemporaneous governments and the mad zeal of phantic advisers, and, above all, by the inflated notions of divine royal right instilled into his mind by his prelatic adulators.

syco

At this time the government of France was in the hands of Cardinal Richelieu. On his accession to power, this able and unscrupulous ecclesiastic had formed the purpose to make the crown thor

oughly, absolutely despotic. In pursuance of this scheme, he seized, tortured, threw into prison or put to death all who ventured in any way to withstand him, and at length climbed to complete success, and delivered the nation, bound hand and foot, into the hands of the king.

Upon this millennial condition of affairs in France Charles looked with envious eye, and longed for the hour when the Anglican spirit should be constrained to bow to the despotic rigours of Gallic rule. It vexed his royal soul beyond endurance that he should be hampered and hindered in the execution of his own august will, while his brother in France was revelling in a power worthy of the name. Impertinent Parliaments and a stubborn people were always in his way. The English people unfortunately had been born and bred in the air of constitutional freedom, and what was bred in the bone it was hard to get out of the flesh. But a consummation so desirable surely could not be impossible. But to reach it he must have money, and little or no money could he lay hands on, except as it was voted to him by a free Parliament, and this Parliament was too shrewd to volunteer, and too bold to be overawed, and too powerful to be coerced into a vote for