Without accuser, without summons, without trial, any ecclesiastical court, however inferior, sometimes pretended, in a summary manner, to denounce excommunication, for any cause, and against any person, even though he lived not within the bounds of their jurisdiction.[*] And, by this means, the whole tyranny of the inquisition, though without its order, was introduced into the kingdom.
But the clergy were not content with the unlimited jurisdiction which they exercised in ecclesiastical matters: they assumed a censorial power over every part of administration; and, in all their sermons, and even prayers, mingling politics with religion, they inculcated the most seditious and most turbulent principles.

Black, minister of St.
Andrew's, went so far,[**] in a sermon, as to pronounce all kings the devil's children; he gave the queen of England the appellation of atheist; he said, that the treachery of the king's heart was now fully discovered; and in his prayers for the queen he used these words: "We must pray for her for the fashion's sake, but we have no cause: she will never do us any good." When summoned before the privy council, he refused to answer to a civil court for any thing delivered from the pulpit, even though the crime of which he was accused was of a civil nature.

The church adopted his cause.

They raised a sedition in Edinburgh.[***] * Spotswood.
** 1596.
*** 17th Dec.

1596.
The king, during some time, was in the hands of the enraged populace; and it was not without courage, as well as dexterity, that he was able to extricate himself.[*] A few days after, a minister, preaching in the principal church of that capital, said, that the king was possessed with a devil; and that, one devil being expelled, seven worse had entered in his place.[**] To which he added, that the subjects might lawfully rise, and take the sword out of his hand.