On the 28th of July the Provost and Baillies of the town promised to provide for the peaceful introduction of the Liturgy on the next Sunday, and for the security of the persons concerned in it. The Privy Council wished for an assurance on the part of the citizens, over whom the magistrates had not complete power. The arrangements made for this purpose were thereupon to be proclaimed with beat of drum, but the repugnance to the measure exhibited itself [A.D. 1637.] so strongly that no one ventured to stir it up to fresh outbreaks. On Saturday, July 29, the Archbishop and Bishops saw reason to propose that the use of the new Book of Common Prayer in Edinburgh should be postponed until the King should make known his pleasure in respect of the punishment of the tumult which had occurred, and should have taken measures for its peaceful execution. Meanwhile neither the old nor the new Liturgy was to be enforced, but only the sermon was to be delivered by obedient and compliant ministers[90]. The Privy Council assented to this. The civic authorities took a fatal step when they gave way to an outbreak of the seditious feeling of the capital, and claimed the immediate interference of the distant sovereign in its behalf. In order to explain the commotion, people compared the noisy crowd with Balaam’s ass, which was obliged to speak because men held silence: an expression in the Biblical phraseology of the time, which however may intimate the silent agreement of the upper ranks with the masses. They had been told that the Liturgy would destroy the old faith and bring back Popery. But what is more popular among great Protestant peoples than hatred of Popery? The ministers had from the first aimed at teaching the people that in matters of religion no blind obedience was due to the ruling powers, but that God must be obeyed rather than men. And with this doctrine on the present occasion an uprising of the multitude in the town against the magistrates was immediately connected, like those which had accompanied religious excitement on countless occasions, especially in the sixteenth century. The magistrates would have been glad to conform; but the populace held out and carried the day. The public peace in the kingdom of Great Britain rested upon the undisturbed observance of the ordinances introduced, and on the customary obedience paid to constituted authority: the monarchy as we have seen was without weapons. But if order was to prevail anywhere, it must be disturbed nowhere. If a breach occurred in any one place, as at this time in Edinburgh, it affected the whole [A.D. 1637.] country. The capital of the second of the two kingdoms had, by throwing aside its spiritual, at the same time thrown aside its temporal obedience.