Here, at least, although the candlestick
of the Church of England had been in some degree removed from its place,
it yet afforded a glimmering light; there was a hierarchy, though
schismatical, and fallen from the principles maintained by those great
fathers of the church, Sancroft and his brethren; there was a liturgy,
though woefully perverted in some of the principal petitions. But in
Scotland it was utter darkness; and, excepting a sorrowful, scattered,
and persecuted remnant, the pulpits were abandoned to Presbyterians, and,
he feared, to sectaries of every description. It should be his duty to
fortify his dear pupil to resist such unhallowed and pernicious doctrines
in church and state as must necessarily be forced at times upon his
unwilling ears.
Here he produced two immense folded packets, which appeared each to
contain a whole ream of closely written manuscript. They had been the
labour of the worthy man's whole life; and never were labour and zeal
more absurdly wasted. He had at one time gone to London, with the
intention of giving them to the world, by the medium of a bookseller in
Little Britain, well known to deal in such commodities, and to whom he
was instructed to address himself in a particular phrase and with a
certain sign, which, it seems, passed at that time current among the
initiated Jacobites.
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