are extracted in a short sentence of his own, which is far from being a full expression of the meaning of the compilers. History, p. 158. Lond. 1677. This is the more inexcusable as he says, that for “the clearing of many questions which were afterwards agitated in the church,” he “thought meet word by word to insert the same [the First Book of Discipline] that the reader may see what were the grounds laid down at first for the government of the church.” Ibid. p. 152. He could not be ignorant that the grounds of the appointment of superintendents formed one of the principal questions agitated between {284} him and his anti‑episcopal opponents. I have examined the copy of the First Book of Discipline, inserted in an old MS. copy of Knox’s Historie, and find that it exactly agrees with the quotations which I have made from the editions published in 1621, and by Dunlop. Dr Robertson has been misled by the archbishop. “On the first introduction of his system,” says he, “Knox did not deem it expedient to depart altogether from the ancient form. Instead of bishops, he proposed to establish ten or twelve superintendents in different parts of the kingdom.” As his authority for this statement, he refers solely to the mutilated account in Spotswood. Hist. of Scotland, ii. 42, 43. Lond. 1809. Mr Laing, from an examination of the original documents, has given a more accurate account, and pronounced the appointment of superintendents to have been a “temporary expedient.” History of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 17, 18. Lond. 1804.