Cargill, Cameron, and Renwick, and the Society people; when the large
majority of the Presbyterian ministers in Scotland, followed by great
numbers of the people, proved recreant to sound scripture principle, and
unfaithful to the sacred engagements of their fathers. However belied
and misrepresented the persecuted covenanters were in their own day,
impartial history has not failed to do justice to their memory, and to
show that their faithful contendings had no little influence in the
nation's deliverance from degrading oppression.


II.--THE LIMITS OF PUBLIC AUTHORITY, AND OF A PEOPLE'S ALLEGIANCE.

A question was raised in the later times of the persecution of difficult
solution, but of vast practical importance. This was the due limit of
submission to civil rulers, and the withdrawal of allegiance and
submission from those who had violated their compact with the people,
and had trampled under foot their constitutional rights. It is ably
shown by Dr. D'Aubigné,[2] as had been done before, that civil freedom
and religious reformation, originating with the people, have ever been
closely united and advanced together. Wherever the principles of
evangelical truth have been rightly understood and firmly maintained,
the people have refused to tolerate civil oppression. "_He is a freeman
whom the truth makes free._" All genuine civil freedom is based on
religious liberty. Calvinism, as is admitted even by many who are
opposed to it as a doctrinal system, has been the irreconcileable foe of
despotism all over the world;--by the heroic struggles, and cheerful
sacrifices of its adherents, the battle of freedom has been fought, and
its triumphs achieved in many lands. Particularly in Scotland, where the
Reformation, from the first, originated with the people, and was carried
forward in opposition to the mandates of arbitrary rulers, and