But though Sir Thomas Urquhart was a Royalist in politics, and an Episcopalian in religion, he was certainly no bigot in his devotion to the King or the Church. In a passage in _The Jewel_, he plainly declares his belief "that there is no government, whether ecclesiastical or civil, upon earth that is _jure divino_, if that divine right be taken in a sense secluding all other forms of government, save it alone, from the privilege of that title."[94] Indeed, he treats such an idea as merely a pious fraud, by which despotism is established and maintained at a very cheap rate over tender consciences by threatening them with the vengeance of Heaven in case of disobedience. Such a man was not likely to be a blind partisan of any cause. Differences in religious beliefs and practices he attributed to differences of temperament among individuals, and to climatic and national peculiarities; and in no obscure terms he hints that he was of the opinion of Tamerlane, "who believed that God was best pleased with diversity of religions, variety of worship, dissentaneousness of faith, and multiformity of devotion."[95] However powerfully such opinions may appeal to a certain class of minds, it is hard to conceive of their being associated with deep religious feeling; and accordingly we can scarcely be wrong in concluding that one of the reasons why Sir Thomas Urquhart held aloof from the Covenanting movement was that he was at the antipodes to the majority of his fellow-countrymen in the matter of religious belief. A certain measure of aversion, suspicion, and horror is still manifested by many towards those whose creed is supposed to be of too limited and negative a character; and we can easily believe that in the middle of the seventeenth century this attitude was taken up even more openly and emphatically. On a later occasion, when, as we shall relate, Sir Thomas Urquhart applied to the Commission of the General Assembly to pardon his having taken part in the capture of Inverness, his case was referred to the minister of that town, Mr John Annand, "that he might confer with him [Sir Thomas] concerning some dangerous opinions, which, as is informed, he hes sometimes vented."[96] In the view of the Commission of Assembly the guilt of cherishing "dangerous opinions" was as great as that of rekindling the flames of civil war, if, indeed, it did not surpass it. FOOTNOTES: