62.
** Spotswood's Hist.

of the Church of Scotland, p.

65.
The clergy were at that time reduced to great difficulties, not only in Scotland, but all over Europe.

As the reformers aimed at a total subversion of ancient establishments, which they represented as idolatrous, impious, detestable; the priests, who found both their honors and properties at stake, thought that they had a right to resist, by every expedient, these dangerous invaders, and that the same simple principles of equity which justified a man in killing a pirate or a robber, would acquit them for the execution of such heretics.

A toleration, though it is never acceptable to ecclesiastics, might, they said, be admitted in other cases; but seemed an absurdity where fundamentals were shaken, and where the possessions and even the existence of the established clergy were brought in danger.