Round these chiefs therefore the hostile factions gathered.
The votes were counted; and it appeared that Hamilton had a majority of forty.

The consequence was that about twenty of the defeated party instantly passed over to the victors, [291] At Westminster such a defection would have been thought strange; but it seems to have caused little surprise at Edinburgh.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the same country should have produced in the same age the most wonderful specimens of both extremes of human nature.

No class of men mentioned in history has ever adhered to a principle with more inflexible pertinacity than was found among the Scotch Puritans.

Fine and imprisonment, the sheers and the branding iron, the boot, the thumbscrew, and the gallows could not extort from the stubborn Covenanter one evasive word on which it was possible to put a sense inconsistent with his theological system.
Even in things indifferent he would hear of no compromise; and he was but too ready to consider all who recommended prudence and charity as traitors to the cause of truth.