It has always been a principle of the presbyterian church of Scotland, that the ministers of religion ought not to be distracted from the duties of their office by holding civil places. The first General Assembly (Dec. 1560) agreed to petition the Estates, to “remove ministers from civil offices, according to the canon law.” Buik of the Universall Kirk, p. 2. At the request of the regent Mar, the assembly, or convention, which met at Leith in January 1571‒2, allowed Mr Robert Pont, on account of his great knowledge of the laws, to act as a Lord of Session. Buik of the Universall Kirk, p. 54. But in March 1572‒3, the regent Morton having laid before them a proposal for appointing some ministers Lords of Session, the Assembly “votit throughout that naine was able nor apt to bear the saides twa charges.” They therefore prohibited any minister from accepting the place of a senator; from this inhibition they, however, excepted Pont. Ibid, p. 56. In 1584, Pont resigned his place as a Lord of Session, or rather was deprived of it, in consequence of the act of parliament passed that year, declaring that none of the ministers of God’s word and sacraments――“in time cuming sall in ony waies accept, use, or administrat ony place of judicature, in quhatsumever civil or criminal causes, nocht to be of the Colledge of Justice, Commissioners, Advocates, court Clerkes or Notaris in ony matteris (the making of testamentes onely excepted).” Skene’s Acts, fol. 59, b. Edinburgh, 1597. Lord Hailes’s Catalogue of the Lords of Session, p. 5, and note 34. The name of Pont often occurs in the account of ecclesiastical transactions during the remainder of the sixteenth century. The writer of Additional Notes to Lord Hailes’s Catalogue of the Lords of Session, calls him by mistake, “the first presbyterian minister of the West Kirk,” p. 8. Edinburgh, 1798. William Harlaw preceded him in that situation, (Keith, 498,) and continued to hold it in August 1571. See Letter to him from the duke {348} and Huntly, in Bannatyne’s Journal, 217. Pont was also commissioner of Murray, and provost of Trinity College, Edinburgh. Upon the death of the earl of March, James VI. offered him the bishopric of Caithness, but he declined accepting it. Keith’s Scottish Bishops, 129. He was the author of several publications, besides the sermons against Sacrilege, repeatedly mentioned. The time of his death, and his age, appear from the following inscription on his tombstone, in St Cuthbert’s churchyard: ILLE EGO, ROBERTꝰ PONTA‑ Nꝰ IN HOC PROPE SACRO CHRISTI QUI FUERA‾‾ PASTOR GREGIS AUSPICE CHRISTO ÆTERNÆ HIC RECUBANS EX‑ SPECTO RESURGERE VITÆ. OBIIT DIE‾‾ ÆT 81, MEN‑ SIS 8 MAII, A. D. 1606.[355] Note Z, Footnote 272.