Session.[1] The time was not fully arrived, and the friends of the Clergy permitted the Bill to be laid aside. The bare proposal filled the Presbyterians with alarm. "They published several books against it, and were the aggressors in the paper war that then commenced upon that subject. Mr. George Meldrum, a chief man amongst them, and moderator of their General Assembly, preached his sermon against Toleration before her Majesty's High Commissioner."[2]
Meldrum had been an Episcopalian; but in consequence of some offence he joined the Presbyterians in 1687, and now wished to persecute his old friends. Sage's Work, consisting of several Letters, originated in Meldrum's Sermon. In the close of his Preface he says: "I cannot think but that all good men, and true sons of the Church of England, are sensibly affected with the calamities of their sister Church of Scotland; and it must move their pity to see her in the dust, for no other reason, but because she is Episcopal, and consequently Apostolical."
The intolerable tyranny exercised at this time, by the Presbyterians in Scotland, may be illustrated by the case of Mr. James Grame. This gentleman was a complying Episcopal clergyman at Dumfermline. Not only did he comply, but he was even a defender
- ↑ Life of Queen Anne, vol. i. 183, 185, 186. Account of the Parliament of 1703, pp. 38–42. Tindal, iv. 599.
- ↑ Sage's Reasonableness of a Toleration enquired into, purely on Church Principles. London, 8vo. 1705. Preface. This is a very learned and able work, as indeed are all the productions of Sage. See the Petition to the Parliament against the proposed Toleration in Boyer's Life of Queen Anne, p. 65. See also the Somers' Tracts for specimens of Presbyterian hostility to a Toleration, vol. xii. 490-1.
