Q.E.D. But, secondly, came the trying point of lay-patronage, which
David Deans had ever maintained to be a coming in by the window, and over the
wall, a cheating and starving the souls of a whole parish, for the purpose of
clothing the back and filling the belly of the incumbent.
    This presentation, therefore, from the Duke of Argyle, whatever was the
worth and high character of that nobleman, was a limb of the brazen image, a
portion of the evil thing, and with no kind of consistency could David bend his
mind to favour such a transaction. But if the parishioners themselves joined in
a general call to Reuben Butler to be their pastor, it did not seem quite so
evident that the existence of this unhappy presentation was a reason for his
refusing them the comforts of his doctrine. If the Presbytery admitted him to
the kirk, in virtue rather of that act of patronage than of the general call of
the congregation, that might be their error, and David allowed it was a heavy
one. But if Reuben Butler accepted of the cure as tendered to him by those whom
he was called to teach, and who had expressed themselves desirous to learn,
David, after considering and reconsidering the matter, came, through the great
virtue of IF, to be of opinion that he might safely so act in that matter.
    There remained a third stumbling-block - the oaths to Government exacted
from the established clergymen, in which they acknowledge an Erastian king and
parliament, and homologate the incorporating Union between England and Scotland,
through which the latter kingdom had become part and portion of the former,
wherein Prelacy, the sister of Popery, had made fast her throne, and elevated
the horns of her mitre. These were symptoms of defection which had often made
David cry out, »My bowels - my bowels! - I am pained at the very heart!« And he
remembered that a godly Bow-head matron had been carried out of the Tolbooth
church in a swoon, beyond the reach of brandy and burnt feathers, merely on
hearing these fearful words, »It is enacted by the Lords spiritual and
temporal,« pronounced from a Scottish pulpit, in the proem to the Porteous
Proclamation. These oaths were, therefore, a deep compliance and dire
abomination - a sin and a snare, and a danger and a defection. But this
shibboleth was not always exacted. Ministers had respect to their own tender
consciences, and those of their brethren; and it was not till a later period
that the reins of discipline were taken up