Page:Babell, a satirical poem (1830).djvu/15

popery. The Revolution, however, defeated this design, and wrought an important change in the aspect of church affairs in Scotland. The abolition of Episcopacy, and the re-establishment of Presbytery, as the national religion, by a monarch professing the same faith, gave great encouragement to the presbyterian clergy, who, in the preceding reigns of James and Charles, had sunk into insignificance and degradation. On arising from such an abject state to the height of power, it is hardly to be wondered at, that they should forget the christian spirit of moderation and forgiveness, and should retaliate upon their ancient enemies, the bishops and the curates, all those ills which they had themselves so recently suffered: that in the heat of contest, and with a desire to root out every thing that approached, in the slightest degree, towards the doctrines or rites of papistry, (for they considered episcopacy as nearly assimilated), they should run into 'right hand extremes and left hand defections,' and hold opinions, which might be viewed, with some justice, as the offspring of fanaticism and intolerance. Their manners too, were, in general, austere and unbending, and the least slip by an individual in rectitude of conduct, was readily seized upon by his enemies, as a vulnerable point through which the whole body might be assailed. Among the ousted curates^[1] were many men of genius, who wreaked their revenge by ridiculing either the personal defects—the private character—the bigotry, or the