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Updated: May 15, 2025
"But we have been so far from such endeavours, that there hath been a stupid submission to our rulers and great ones, breaking down and ruining the whole work of reformation, razing the bulwarks thereof, rescinding the laws in favour of the same, and not only breaking but burning the covenants for preserving it, enacting the breaches thereof, and declaring the obligation thereof void and criminal to be, owned; and, upon the ruins thereof, setting up abjured Diocesan Erastian Prelacy, with its concomitant bondage of patronages a blasphemous and sacrilegious supremacy and arbitrary power in magistrate over church and state.
When the parliament 1690, had changed the form of patronages, by taking the power of presentations from patrons, and lodging it in the hands of such heritors and elders as were qualified by law, excluding the people from a vote in calling their ministers, this Erastian act, spoiling the people of their just privilege, was immediately embraced by the church, as is evident from their overtures for church discipline, 1696, where they declare that only heritors and elders have a proper right to vote in the nomination of a minister.
Sae I wad hae ye ken that I hand a' your gleg-tongued advocates, that sell their knowledge for pieces of silver and your worldly-wise judges, that will gie three days of hearing in presence to a debate about the peeling of an ingan, and no ae half-hour to the gospel testimony as legalists and formalists, countenancing by sentences, and quirks, and cunning terms of law, the late begun courses of national defections union, toleration, patronages, and Yerastian prelatic oaths.
It is a common Notion, that gathers as it goes, and is almost become a vulgar Error, That Dedications in our Age, are only the effects of Flattery, a form of Complement, and no more; so that the Great, to whom they are only due, decline those Noble Patronages that were so generally allow'd the Ancient Poets; since the Awful Custom has been so scandaliz'd by mistaken Addresses, and many a worthy piece is lost for want of some Honourable Protection, and sometimes many indifferent ones traverse the World with that advantagious Pasport only.
The Defence of the first is left to the Reverend Gown, but the departing Stage can be no otherwise restor'd, but by some leading Spirits, so Generous, so Publick, and so Indefatigable as that of your Lordship, whose Patronages are sufficient to support it, whose Wit and Judgment to defend it, and whose Goodness and Quality to justifie it; such Encouragement wou'd inspire the Poets with new Arts to please, and the Actors with Industry.
Rough old Samuel Johnson, blustering Boreas and rugged Arctic Bear as he often was, defined himself, justly withal, as a polite man: a noble manful attitude of soul is his; a clear, true and loyal sense of what others are, and what he himself is, shines through the rugged coating of him; comes out as grave deep rhythmus when his King honors him, and he will not "bandy compliments with his King;" is traceable too in his indignant trampling down of the Chesterfield patronages, tailor-made insolences, and contradictions of sinners; which may be called his revolutionary movements, hard and peremptory by the law of them; these could not be soft like his constitutional ones, when men and kings took him for somewhat like the thing he was.
Only I hope it will be a scule, and not a kirk, because of these difficulties anent aiths and patronages, whilk might gang ill down wi' my honest father.
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