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The Prelatic persecution in Scotland, which commenced with the restoration of Charles II. to the throne of his ancestors in 1660, had continued for nearly twenty-three years, when Renwick entered on his ministry.
From that time forward, he held an undisputed position among the foremost of the distinguished men by whose talents and energy the Church of Scotland was delivered from prelatic despotism.
It was not, however, so; the Gospel-taught people of Glasgow were, notwithstanding their prelatic thraldom, moved far otherwise, and their shouts and scoffings were against a townsman of their own, who had reviled the man of God on seeing him a prisoner among the soldiers in the guard-house.
But on the royal office of Immanuel, their prelatic training and associations seem to have blinded their minds. "No bishop, no king," is a maxim which seems to lie at the foundation of all their political disquisitions and speculations, and which gives a tincture to all their expositions of prophecy.
It may be assumed as a point which no person of competent knowledge and candid mind will deny or dispute, that the Reformed Church of Scotland was, from its very origin, Presbyterian; equally opposed to the prelatic superiority of one minister over others, and to the authority of the civil power in spiritual matters.
Many of the Protestant ministry, especially of the prelatic order, are posting back to Rome; and the growing ritualism, with its gaudy and splendid "attire of a harlot," which characterizes others, plainly indicates their tendency in the same direction.
There is evidence that, chiefly through the Divine blessing upon Renwick's faithful preaching, and his singular wisdom in council, those Societies increased, instead of diminishing, in the latter part of the prelatic persecution.
In the meantime, our Covenanters of the West assembled at their trysting-place, to the number of more than six thousand armed men, ready and girded for battle; and this appearance was an assurance that no power was then in all the Lowlands able to gainsay such a force; and next day, when it was discovered that the alarm had no real cause, it was determined that the prelatic priests should be openly discarded from their parishes.
Witness the history of the bloody house of the Stuarts of Britain. In vain did the victims of papal and prelatic cruelty plead, in their just defence in the seventeenth century, the constitution and laws of their native land! Those who have done violence to the law of God, will always disregard human enactments which stand in the way of their ambitious schemes.
He made the Prelatic form of Church government, of which he was the recognized head, the bulwark of his assumed supremacy over the Church and his tyranny over conscience, and took every occasion to assert his power. The General Assembly had appointed the date and place for a meeting in 1604. The king arbitrarily postponed the meeting one year, and at the expiration of the year postponed it again.
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