NEW BOOKS.

Most of the accounts from our hop districts have become more favourable than for several weeks past, and our hop trade consequently very dull at last week's prices. The betting on the duty-a system of gambling, by which many are said to have been ruined-is, whether it will or will not be 150,000l.

Beasts, 2,738 Sheep and Lambs, 23,100 | Calves, 180 | Pigs, 220.

The accession of his late Majesty George III. brought with it the dawn of better days to the Scottish Episcopalians. It is true that the laws against them were in force, but that excellent sovereign loved religion too well to induce him to take rigorous measures with his subjects, while they were peaceable and subordinate to the Government. By the laws then in force, enacted in 1746 and 1748, every person "exercising the functions of a pastor or minister in any Episcopal meeting-house in Scotland, without registering his letters of orders, and taking all the oaths required by law, and praying for his Maejsty King George and the royal family by name, should, for the first offence, suffer six months imprisonment, and for the second, be transported to some of his Majesty's plantations for life." Every ordinary house (for at this time the chapels were all either shut up, burnt, or otherwise destroyed) in which five or more persons besides the family assembled, and every uninhabited house in which five persons assembled, were declared to come within the meaning of the Act. The first of September, 1746, was the date specified for the registration of letters of orders; after which, no registration could take place, except the letters of orders were granted by a Bishop of England or Ireland. The laity, also, had their share of the Act, which rendered it of course the more severe: they were subject to fine and imprisonment. No peer of Scotland was to be eligible as one of the sixteen peers of Parliament, and no person could be chosen a member of the lower house, who had been twice present, within the compass of a year, in any Episcopal church not qualified according to law.

Being thus situated, many of the indigenous clergy who, though zealous Episcopalians, were not Jacobites, repaired to the proper magistrates, took the required oaths, got their letters of orders registered, and thus made their chapels legal. But this availed them nothing; for, in 1748, the Act of 1746 was altered, and it was enacted, "That no letters of orders not granted by some Bishop of the church of England or of Ireland should, from and after the 29th of September, 1748, be sufficient to qualify any pastor or minister of any episcopal meeting in Scotland, whether the same had been registered before or since the 1st of September, 1746; and that every such registration, whether made before or since, should, from and after the said 29th of September, be null and void." It was evident that this Act was levelled, not so much against the persons, as against the religion of the Scottish Episcopalians, as it utterly precluded them from the privileges of even political repentance. From their peculiar circumstances, as having been ordained by their own bishops, they could not possibly get themselves qualified by any English or Irish Bishop, and therefore it was, just as usual, an attempt to extinguish Scottish Episcopacy altogether. The consequences were what might have been anticipated. Some clergymen who had actually prayed for the king by name were imprisoned, among whom was the celebrated John Skinner, grandfather of the present Bishop of Aberdeen, who was confined for six months; others took refuge in England and elsewhere; while others again scrupled not to evade the law by per

1

forming divine service from the window of a house, the people standing out of doors. The most sacred ordinances of the church were performed in private-the Sacrament of baptism being often administered in woods and other obscure retreats. Nor were the clergy personally safe from ill-treatment by mobs. Many of them, besides having their chapels gutted by bands of miscreants, were often insulted, and even assailed by sticks and stones, and other missile weapons, while their congregations were scattered about, literally like sheep having no shepherd.

Such was the political situation of the Scottish Episcopalians from the year 1748 to 1792; and although the severity of these laws was somewhat relaxed, and, in fact, had entirely ceased, after the accession of George III., still they were in existence, and the laity who resorted to Episcopal chapels were deprived of some of their most valuable political privileges. We shall now proceed to notice the ecclesiastical state of Scottish Episcopacy, with respect to its acknowledged standards and subscriptions.

The Thirty-nine Articles are now received by the church, subscription to which is imperative to all the clergy; but these articles were only received during the last century. The old Confession of Faith, drawn up, in 1567, by the first Scottish Reformers-Knox, Winram, Erskine of Dun, and others-was the acknowledged standard both of Episcopalians and the moderate Presbyterians, until the more zealous of the latter party introduced the Westminster Confession, which not only greatly differed from, but in many points was directly opposed to, the one of 1567. After the attempt to introduce the Scottish liturgy in 1637, the failure of which in Edinburgh, caused by a vulgar riot, was productive of so many disastrous consequences, no liturgy or form of public prayer was generally used in the Scottish Church. Bishop Burnet (then minister of Salton, in East Lothian), after the Restoration, was the only incumbent who used the English liturgy entire, which he continued to do undisturbed during the time he held that benefice. Either it or the Scottish service-book was attempted to be used in Dumfries, but the Cameronians entered the church one day while the clergyman was officiating, forcibly took it from him, and burnt it publicly in the streets, which was the common fate of all the prayer-books they found in their fanatical excursions. "Many, indeed," says Dr. Russell, " of the Episcopal clergy, we are assured, compiled forms for the use of their particular congregations, with some petitions and collects taken out of the English liturgy; and all of them uniformly concluded their prayers with the Lord's Prayer, and their singing with the doxology, both of which observances the zealots of the other side denounced as being superstitious and formal. The two Sacraments were administered by both (Episcopalians and Presbyterians) nearly in the same manner, without kneeling at the one, or singing with the sign of the cross at the other; only in baptism the Episcopal clergy required the Apostle's Creed, and the Presbyterians, in general, the Westminster Confession, and some of the more rigid of them, the solemn League and Covenant to be the model of the child's religious education. With regard to discipline, the