scandall alone of criminall persons, and have used their spirituall censures only to bring the party to repentance, some of the ruling elders, by virtue of their civill office or commission, will impose a mulct, or send to prison or stocks, or banish out of the bounds of some little circuit, according as the act of parliament or counsell do appoint it. But that the eldership should imploy its ecclesiastick and spirituall power for any such end, none of us doe defend. That either in Scotland or any where else in the world the haire of any person is commanded to be cut by any church judicatory for disgrace and punishment, is (as I take it) but a foolish fable. That any person truely penitent is threatened in Scotland, with church censures for non‑payment of monies, is in the former category of calumnies.” Historical Vindication of the government of the Church of Scotland, p. 17, 18. Lond. 1646. I have in my possession (extracted from the records of a kirk session) a commission, granted in 1701, by the sheriff‑depute of Berwickshire, constituting one of the elders session‑bailie, for executing the laws against profaneness, agreeably to an act of parliament authorizing the appointment of such an officer in parishes within which no ordinary magistrate resided. I may add the following quotation from another able and strenuous assertor of the presbyterian discipline and government. “Ubi originalis causa excommunicationis est delictum violans jura et libertates ecclesiæ, &c. When the original cause of excommunication is an offence violating the rights and liberties of the church, either in the way of loss being sustained or injury being done, I confess that the assistance of the secular arm may be implored, {319} and the guilty person may be forced to repair the loss and to give civil satisfaction; or even if the person already excommunicated shall testify a disposition to disturb the religious service, or to violate the rights and liberties of the church. But where no loss or injury to the rights and liberties of the church arises from the offence or from the contumacy, but scandal alone is given, I know not whether any person is to be forced to what is called penitential satisfaction, by imploring the assistance of the secular arm. For as the church has no coactive power in herself, so neither ought she to use it indirectly to extort confessions which are constrained, and consequently counterfeit.” Calderwood, Altare Damascenum, p. 312‒3. edit. Lugd. Bat. 1708. Note Q, Footnote 113.