her guard at a critical moment and while she slept the enemy sowed tares
among the wheat.

The regent, the person who was acting as king while the coming king was
a child, called a convention of ministers and others who favored the
king's supremacy over the Church. The convention at his dictation
introduced Prelacy. This occurred on January 12, 1572, a dark day for
Scotland.

Prelacy is little else than Popery modified; Popery in another dress,
trained and taught to speak a softer dialect. The power of Popery had
been broken, but the residuum still remained, and now there appeared
"the strange heterogeneous compound of Popery, Prelacy, and
Presbyterianism" in the Church.

The Church awoke to find herself in the grasp of a horrible octopus,
from which she did not escape for three generations, and only then at
the loss of much precious blood.

The first effort of the Church, when awakened to her real condition, was
to control the bishops that had come into her ministry, and whom she was
powerless to remove. The next step was to attempt their removal, on the
ground that the office of the bishop was unscriptural. Difficulties
rapidly increased; opposing forces were daily growing stronger; the
Civil government was against the Church; the regent, Scotland's chief
ruler, bent all his energies in the defence of the bishops. From whence
shall light and deliverance now come? Listen to the words that seem to
be on ten thousand lips: "The Covenants; the Covenants shall be
Scotland's reviving!" "The Covenants" now became the watchword of the
faithful. A wave of hopefulness and enthusiasm spread over the Church;