The practical result of this claim on the part of the preachers to
implicit obedience was more than a century of turmoil, civil war,
revolution, and reaction. The ministers constantly preached political
sermons, and the State--the King and his advisers--was perpetually
arraigned by them. To "reject" them, "and despise their ministry and
exhortation" (as when Catholics were not put to death on their instance),
was to "reject and despise" our Lord! If accused of libel, or treasonous
libel, or "leasing making," in their sermons, they demanded to be judged
by their brethren. Their brethren acquitting them, where was there any
other judicature? These pretensions, with the right to inflict
excommunication (in later practice to be followed by actual outlawry),
were made, we saw, when there were not a dozen "true ministers" in the
nascent Kirk, and, of course, the claims became more exorbitant when
"true ministers" were reckoned by hundreds. No State could submit to
such a clerical tyranny.

People who only know modern Presbyterianism have no idea of the despotism
which the Fathers of the Kirk tried, for more than a century, to enforce.
The preachers sat in the seats of the Apostles; they had the gift of the
Keys, the power to bind and loose. Yet the Book of Discipline permits no
other ceremony, at the induction of these mystically gifted men, than
"the public approbation of the people, and declaration of the chief
minister"--later there was no "_chief_ minister," there was "parity" of
ministers. Any other ceremony "we cannot approve"; "for albeit the
Apostles used the imposition of hands, yet seeing the miracle is ceased,
the using of the ceremony we judge it not necessary." The miracle had
_not_ ceased, if it was true that "the commandments" issued in
sermons--political sermons often--really deserved to be obeyed, as men
"would obey God himself." C'est la le miracle! There could be no more
amazing miracle than the infallibility of preachers! "The imposition of