LEE'S LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.
* " Da. LEE was appointed Professor of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, in the year 1812 ; and it was while he held this office that, in the session 1816-17, hewrote and read to his students the Lectures which are now pub- lished, and which formed part of a more comprehensive course." Carefully written and elaborated, they comprise a brief notice of the Church of Scotland before the Reformation, and an account of the progress of the Reformation down to the final settlement of the Kirk, at the time of the Revolution. There are some useful analyses in the volume, and its spirit of anti-anglican an- tagonism may be valuable as suggesting thought or provoking reply. Real living humanity in it there is none ; large-hearted sympathy or Catholic reflection, or artistic appreciation must be sought elsewhere. No discussion of first principles ; no acknow- ledgment of difficulties or weaknesses ; no explanation of disputed or equivocal passages need be expected here. On the other hand, its pages indicate research ; its narrative is clear, and its dis- quisition suggestive. The book in short is a serviceable com- pendium, which the orthodox in Scotland will read with satis- faction. Thoroughly respectable and presbyterian, and so far as we can judge little more, we recommend it to all for whom it seems intended. Its small surplus of more general merit may be attributed to its occasional novelty of information, its provo- cative assertions, and the interesting appendices supplied by the editor.
Under the first head, we would instance the account of the con- demnation of James Resby, an English priest of the school of 'Wy- cliffe, condemned for heresy, in the year 1408, by a clerical tri- bunal, presided over by Laurence de Lindoris, an inquisitor, and delivered to the secular arm and to the flames, at Perth—a trans- action previously unknown in Scotland. Under the second head, we would cite the passage relating to the Act of Uniformity (1661) in which it is contended that " as the Book of Common Prayer was then undergoing alterations, none of which had transpired, the clergy (pf the Church of England) were in fact required to subscribe it book which they had never seen ; " and under the third --- category we would refer to the papers on Witchcraft and Sabbath- breaking.
In the first of these two documents, Dr. Lee "corrects the rash
and inaccurate statements" in Bishop Hutchinson's popular essay, and contends that the imputations against Scotland, as being the native country of witchcraft and the fontal source of the severest enactments against it, are quite unfounded. That this baleful superstition did not first arise in Scotland is undeniable. That it was of longer standing in England than in Scotland, or in Scot- land than in England, we have at present no conclusive evidence, any more than we have that the zeal of James I. against it, " was assumed for the purpose of ingratiating himself with the English nation, where a passion for the wonderful has always been much stronger than in this more frigid clime." It seems clear, how- ever, that " long before the death of Queen Elizabeth some of the most learned men in the English Church had been preaching and publishing elaborate discourses against witchcraft ; " among others "Dr. John Rainolds, as early as the year 1585, in his theological lectures at Oxford, argued vehemently against the insane doc- trines of Reginald Scott, in a work of stupendous erudition, on the composition of which he spent seven years. To the question,
—• did the penal laws against witchcraft originate in Scotland, Dr. Lee answers, that the only act of the Scottish parliament on the sub- ject was not passed till 1563, after there bad been two Acts against witchcraft in England, one of 33 Henry viii.—and another 5 Eliza- beth. The southern kingdom would thus seem to have inaugurated the wicked and mischievous anti-witchcraft legislation ; though judging from the evidence afforded in Chambers' " Domestic Annals of Scotland," her northern sister was not slow to follow the ill example, or to compensate for the relative recency of her action by her implacable hatred of this imaginary crime, burning its sup-
Feed perpetrators in batches of twenty, thirty, and even fifty. ere are in this note on witchcraft other interesting facts. Of se the most singular, perhaps, is that a law of Ireland, of 28 rlyabeth, which "describes the crime (it is said) as minutely as the statute of James," appears not to have been repealed when the British act was rescinded, " so that," continues Mr. W. Lee,
"if we are not misled by Mr. Christian's notes on Blackstone, it continues still in force." Is this really the ease ? In the appendix of the second volume of these " Lectures," we find some edifying extracts from the records of the Kirk Session of St. Andrews. The bitter observance of the Sabbath seems early to have been a favourable subject of penal legislation
• Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, from the Reformation to the Revolution Settlement. By the late Very Reverend John Lee, D.D., LL.D., &c. Edited by his Son, the Reverend William Lee. Published by
William Blackwood and Son.
in Scotland. We regret to see the oppressive intervention of the civil power, in the support of this fanatical Pharisaism, apolo- getically treated in an editorial note. Ultra-Sabbatarianism per- plexes us, both in its statements and its logic. In his second' lecture, Dr. John Lee refers us to " the divine ordinance enjoin- ing the religious observation of one day in seven." We know of no such ordinance. There is, indeed, an injunction in the Mosaic law, imperative on persons of the Jewish persuasion, which re- quires abstinence from labour on the seventh day, that is, on Saturday ; but that this enactment made for Jews is not formally binding on Christians, is clear, both from its repeal in the Pauline Epistle (Col. ii. 16), and from the historical evidence of its dis- regard ; while the perversion of the seventh day into " one day in seven " is a free translation, of which Dr. Cumming, the Great Tribulator, might himself be, and we believe is, proud. The truth is, that Sunday is a Christian festival, originating in primitive usage. Rightly understood, no institution can well be more beneficent or more humanly sacred. As " made for man," we trust it will be perennially observed, but we protest against humanity being immolated to it. To what extent the real " desecration of the Sabbath" was carried in Scotland be- tween two and three centuries ago, we gather not only from the " Domestic Annals," already cited, where we read of a gentle- man who was prosecuted for bringing home a millstone on Sun- day, and of another who was arraigned fer gathering gooseberries in time of sermon ; but, from the instructive " extracts " in the ap- pendix to the second volume of Dr. Lee's lectures, where we find, among many other sentences, that of James Allan, for breaking of the Sabbath, to be scourged in the Tolbooth by one of the town officers, at the sight of the magistrates ; of Jane Morris, for send- ing " ane lade " to the mill on Sunday, to sit in the repentance stool in her awin habit, and pay forty shillings ; of a woman, for seething bark on the Sabbath day, to be " jogged" three several days, and the last day to make her repentance before the pulpit ; of David Dugald, for carrying shoes to Cramond on the Lord's Day, to be publicly rebuked, and obliged to find caution that he shall never be guilty of a similar offence, under penalty first of fine and ultimately of banishment from the parish ; of Patrick Hardie and John Rankin, for tying up peas on the Lord's Day, to be fined and rebuked ; of Robert White, for going to see the May games, to be fined twenty shillings ; and so on through a long catalogue of crimes, comprising, among the lighter atrocities, those of selling milk, taking larks, carrying water, and. pulling peas.
Such was the system of vexatious interference with individual right and liberty ; such the tyrannical practice of an exacerbated fanaticism or a mistaken zeal in the noble sister kingdom in the " good old days."
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