Among the Scottish people there were earnest aspirations after the Gospel: but in that country, as in France, the priesthood and the government forcibly repressed them. The more the state separated itself from the pope in the south of Britain, the more it clung to him in the north. The king, now become the direct instrument of the clergy, required the parliament to check the progress which the Bible seemed to be making in Scotland; and on June 8 this body, adding severity to the former laws, enacted that whosoever possessed a New Testament should deliver it to his bishop under pain of confiscation and imprisonment, and that all _discussion_ about _religious opinions_ was prohibited. It gave permission, however, to _clerks of the schools to read that book, in order that they might the more efficiently contend against its adherents_. Many priests, monks, and students therefore read the New Testament; but this reading produced a quite contrary effect, for it led them to receive and to defend the Gospel. This could not but irritate the king and his priests, and make them feel still more the necessity of an alliance with some ultramontane power. The conversion of a Churchman who, through his family, was connected with the court, especially attracted their attention. [Sidenote: THOMAS FORREST.] In a small island in the Firth of Forth, not far from Edinburgh, stood the ancient abbey of St. Colme, occupied by Augustinian canons. Distinguished among them was the son of the master of the stables to King James IV. His name was Thomas Forrest, and he is not to be confounded with the Benedictine, Henry Forrest, of whom we have already spoken. A quarrel had broken out between the abbot and the canons; the latter, in order to support their claims, seized the deeds of foundation of the monastery. The abbot came in, scolded them sharply, recovered the volume, and gave them in its place an old folio of St. Augustine. The canons scornfully turned their backs on the book and went back to their cells. Forrest, left alone, looked at the volume. A work of the great Augustine interested him. He took it into his cell, read it, and ere long was able to say, with the bishop of Hippo--‘That which the dispensation of works commands, is accomplished by the dispensation of grace. O happy and blessed book!’ he would often say, ‘God has made use of thee to enlighten my soul.’[189] St. Augustine led Forrest to the Gospel, and he was not long in making known to his brethren the treasure which he had found in the writings of this Father and in the New Testament. Aged men stopped their ears. ‘Alas,’ said the son of the king’s master-stabler, ‘the _old_ bottles will not receive the _new_ wine.’[190] The old canons complained to the abbot, and the abbot said to Forrest, ‘Look after your own salvation, but talk as other men do.’