passive obedience, which made itself heard from the pulpits of Laud, Montagu, and Mainwaring, and in the treatise of Filmer. Passing from the more servile ranks of the clergy to those of the laity it appeared as the party cry of a class. To many it has often appeared strange how such an absurd and illogical doctrine could become even the shibboleth of a political party. Yet at bottom the doctrine of the divine right of the king was not very unfavourable to the divine right of squires, and king and cavaliers were bound together by obvious ties of interest in the maintenance of the royal prerogative against the rising tide of political opposition. Holy Alliances in recent times have not found this doctrine strange to them, and a high elevation of the prerogative and the mitre was the very breath of existence to a church whose being depended on the stability of the throne. Passive obedience was a convenient cry for those who never dreamed that the breath of the king could unmake them as a breath had made. Never till James VII. began to oppress the clergy did they begin to see what was logically involved in their abject protestations of loyalty, and in their professions of turning the right cheek to the royal smiter. Only when the seven bishops were sent to the Tower, not for any loyalty to the country or to the constitution, but through a selfish maintenance of their own interests as a class, did the Anglican body bethink themselves of resistance, and of texts that reminded them of the hammer of Jael and the dagger of Ehud no less than of the balm of the anointed of the Lord. History has repeated itself. The landed and clerical classes associated their triumph with the triumph of Episcopacy, and their humiliation with the triumph of the Independents. The exaltation of the prerogative, therefore, again made its appearance at the Restoration, to be shaken by the high-handed measures of James, and pass to extinction at the Revolution. The same thing has practically been seen in Spain. Spain, remarks Borrow, is not naturally a fanatical country. It was by humouring her pride only that she was induced to launch the Armada and waste her treasures in the wars of the Low Countries. But to the Spaniard, Catholicism was the mark of his own ascendency; it was the typification of his elevation over the Moor. The Most Catholic King was therefore flattered to exalt the claims of the Holy See no less than the English clergy had exalted the prerogative of the king. Far different the condition of affairs in Scotland. When Knox landed at Leith, in May 1559, he found the whole people ripe for a change, so that by August of next year the Scottish Parliament could pass a resolution to abolish the Papacy with the entire consent of the nation, and in December 1560 the First General Assembly met. Its laic element was strong and was emphasised from the beginning. To six ministers there were thirty-four elders, and it met by no sanction of