back to the setting up of Calvinism in Scotland and saw that it was done in a revolutionary way, and by autocratic authority armed physically. The Presbyterian Movement in Scotland, which had Calvinism for its philosophy, was a militant protest against Popery and Prelacy, and won its seat by the sword. No one can truly maintain that the Papacy in Scotland was got rid of in an intellectual or spiritual way, or that Prelacy was disposed of by mental argument; their deposition was almost wholly by military force and political diplomacy.

The introduction and establishment of Calvinism in Scotland was entirely aristocratic and sacerdotal. The Presbyterial standards were set up by a Church Decree, and the people passively submitted. Scot land was declared Calvinistic by Act of Parliament, and Parliament then represented the Lords more than the Commons.

But, beneath all its dogmas, the Presbyterian Movement had a fundamental principle and motive, namely, civil and religious liberty. It was for individual freedom in

politics and religion that the Covenanters fought. They were, no doubt, mixed in their thoughts, like their powder at Bothwell Brig, but withal it was for personal liberty of body and mind that they went into battle.

The most essential statement in the Confession of Faith is 'God alone is Lord of the Conscience.' The Confession practically arrested the Scots Conscience and imposed upon it certain ideas as a permanent conviction, but still it declared freedom of conscience and the Lordship of God alone in matters pertaining to religion.

The Unitarian invaders actually took their stand on the principle set forth by the Covenanters. It is quite plain that the right of private judgment is the primary assertion of Calvinism. That gave it its rational warrant for presenting itself in place of the Papacy. That is the thing for which Scottish Presbyterianism professes to stand. All the strifes, struggles, and secessions of a pious sort have been motived thus.

Here, then, we place the primary justification of the Unitarian Movement in Scotland. The one fundamental, continuously asserted principle in the historic religious life of Scotland is freedom of conscience. All along the line of Presbyterian activity, ever asserted in secessions and protests, and eminent also in the Movements of the Independents, we find that principle uppermost and strenuously acted upon.

The Disruption of 1843 in the Established Church was an irrepressible expression of that principle. The Free Church of Scotland was ushered in and maintained by the energy of the idea of mental freedom. The inward urgings in the Established and the Free Churches, evidenced by their heresy cases, all made for the practice of the principle. The Churches were not enlightened and courageous enough to grant the divinelyurged men their liberty, but still the undertow of their fundamental principle was upon them. They were discovering that the principle upon which they had

come out from Popery was wider and of deeper application than they had thought. It implied freedom from their own dogmatic temper and restrictive formulæ. It had to be carried into the interpretation of the Bible as a release from traditional exegesis, but they were not ready for its full application. That meant another Exodus, a continuous going forward.

The Unitarian Movement signified the will and purpose of applying the principle of liberty thoroughly. It was a practical declaration that the principle holds all round, the carrying out of a determination of following it throughout the whole circle of its application. Its leaders found that orthodoxy not only halted in its following of the principle, but loaded itself with restrictions which prevented its starting in any path of advance. Presbyterianism was actually false to its own liberating impulse. Its Confession became a curb. The plenary pressure of it suppressed the spirit of freedom, and the General Assembly consented to the silencing or expulsion of the progressive men who

had the emotion of heightened thought.

The exigencies of the situation as well as the logic of the principle necessitated the Unitarian Movement. The cause of liberty and the need for progress required it. If once the principle of liberty of conscience is admitted, Unitarianism is inevitable. Any vital action made upon it must tend toward the Unitarian position. It cannot be partial or halting but must be comprehensive and continuous. It applies to the claim of infallibility for the Bible as pertinently as to the claim of infallibility for the Pope. If the mind is free to judge' the worship of images,' it is equally free to judge the Deity of Christ.'

All that has come to Unitarianism, its attitude of observation and reflection, its advanced philosophy, is a legitimate issue of its thorough adoption of the principle of liberty of conscience. And all that has happened in the evolution of theological thought in Scotland is a justification of the Unitarian Movement. Heroic, though severe, effective, though narrow, were the struggles of the Covenanters and