proposal eluded by the men of carnal wit and policy, as he called them, as
being inapplicable to the present times, and not falling under the modern model
of the church. The reign of Queen Anne had increased his conviction, that the
Revolution government was not one of the true Presbyterian complexion. But then,
more sensible than the bigots of his sect, he did not confound the moderation
and tolerance of these two reigns with the active tyranny and oppression
exercised in those of Charles II. and James II. The Presbyterian form of
religion, though deprived of the weight formerly attached to its sentences of
excommunication, and compelled to tolerate the co-existence of Episcopacy, and
of sects of various descriptions, was still the National Church; and though the
glory of the second temple was far inferior to that which had flourished from
1639 till the battle of Dunbar, still it was a structure that, wanting the
strength and the terrors, retained at least the form and symmetry, of the
original model. Then came the insurrection in 1715, and David Deans's horror for
the revival of the Popish and prelatical faction reconciled him greatly to the
government of King George, although he grieved that that monarch might be
suspected of a leaning unto Erastianism. In short, moved by so many different
considerations, he had shifted his ground at different times concerning the
degree of freedom which he felt in adopting any act of immediate acknowledgment
or submission to the present government, which, however mild and paternal, was
still uncovenanted, and now he felt himself called upon, by the most powerful
motive conceivable, to authorise his daughter's giving testimony in a court of
justice, which all who have been since called Cameronians accounted a step of
lamentable and direct defection. The voice of nature, however, exclaimed loud in
his bosom against the dictates of fanaticism; and his imagination, fertile in
the solution of polemical difficulties, devised an expedient for extricating
himself from the fearful dilemma, in which he saw, on the one side, a falling
off from principle, and, on the other, a scene from which a father's thoughts
could not but turn in shuddering horror.
    »I have been constant and unchanged in my testimony,« said David Deans; »but
then who has said it of me, that I have judged my neighbour over closely,
because he hath had more freedom in his walk than I have found in mine? I never
was a separatist, nor for quarrelling with tender souls about mint, cummin, or
other the lesser tithes. My daughter Jean may have a light in this