=22. Religious Sects.=--When the Presbyterian polity was re-established by law in 1690 the _Episcopalians_ took in some degree the place which had been held by the _Covenanters_. As they would not acknowledge _William_ and _Mary_ as lawful sovereigns, they were looked on as a dangerous and obstinate sect of dissenters, just as the _Cameronians_ had been considered in the reign of James. They had been turned out of the churches, but they were forbidden to have private meeting-houses. In _Queen Anne's_ reign an Act of Toleration was passed to protect such of them as would use the _English Liturgy_ and pray for the Queen in the course of the service. After the Rebellion of 1715 new laws were passed against them; the validity of orders from Scottish bishops was called in question, and the ministration of all clergymen who were not licensed was forbidden. After the Rebellion of 1745 they fared still worse; many of their meeting-houses were burned or dismantled by Cumberland's soldiers. An Act was passed forbidding any clergyman to read the service to more than five persons at once, and no letters of orders were considered valid unless given by some _Irish_ or _English_ bishop. In 1755 a clergyman named _Connacher_ was accused of illegally celebrating marriages, and, by an Act passed against the Covenanters in the reign of Charles the Second, he was banished, and forbidden to return on pain of death. Hence it came to pass that, just after the two kingdoms were politically united, they were more widely severed in religious opinion than they had ever been before, so that a conscientious member of the Church established by law in the one kingdom would have been looked on as a dangerous dissenter in the other. It was not till 1792 that an Act was passed relieving the Episcopalians from the penal laws in force against them. In 1784 _Dr. Samuel Seabury_, from _Connecticut_, was consecrated by three Scottish bishops, _Petrie_, _Skinner_, and _Kilgour_ the primus, at _Aberdeen_, so that the Episcopal Church of America is an offshoot from the once proscribed and persecuted Episcopal Church in Scotland. Besides the Episcopalians there were many sects of Presbyterians who seceded from the Establishment chiefly on the question of patronage. At last, in 1843, the Church of Scotland split into two parties. This is called the _Disruption_. About ten years before this time _Edward Irving_, Minister of the Scotch Church in London, a very eloquent preacher, was forced to secede from the Presbyterian Church for holding extravagant views with regard to the power of speaking in unknown tongues and working miracles. His followers founded a new sect, which has since won many adherents in both kingdoms. In its rites and ceremonies it now resembles much more nearly the Roman than the Presbyterian Church.