The heads and the hands of the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh, carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid in the earth with solemn respect, [264] It would have been well if the public enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy form.

Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of the Established Church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled.
The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these outrages.

For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by the prelatist to the ancient holidays of the Church.
That such reverence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true.

But a philosopher may perhaps be inclined to think the opposite extreme not less absurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid of associations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilised to have a calendar, and which are found by experience to have a powerful and often a salutary effect.

The Puritan, who was, in general, but too ready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in the Old Testament quite as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives.