James Melville speaks of 1596 as to be 'markitt for a special perriodic and fatall yeir to the Kirk of Scotland,' and he enters on his narrative of it 'with a sorrowful heart and drouping eyes,' so 'doolful' was the decay it ushered in. The declension is not to be wondered at; for where has a Church been found in which such prolonged oppression as the Scottish Church had been subjected to, did not weary the patience and damp the zeal of all but the most resolved members of its Communion? Had we been present at one of the diets of the Assembly, held in March of this 'fatall' year, we should have witnessed a scene which might have been taken as an augury of good to the Church, rather than of evil. It was a day set apart for humiliation and the renewal of the Covenant, and no day had been seen like it, since the Reformation, in the spiritual fervour which was evoked. The exhortations of the preacher drew forth such sighs and sobs and weeping, that the House was turned into a Bochim; and when those present were asked to signify their entrance into a new covenant with God, the congregation rose _en masse_ and held up their hands. Similar scenes took place in the Synods and Presbyteries to which the movement extended. 'I am certaine,' says James Melville, 'by the experience found in my selff and maney others present in these meittinges, that the Assemblies of the saintes in Scotland wes nevir more beautiful and gloriouse by the manifold and mightie graces of the presence of the Holy Spirit.'