more, and particularly the Carse of Gowrie and Stratherne, afforded a plentiful store of provisions; and the glen, as well as another passage where Macduff's Cross now stands, between Abernethey and Newburgh, opened an easy communication with Pichtlandia, now called Fife.

The town of Abernethey, seen at a distance, appears like a grove of trees. It consists of one street, with a few narrow alleys, or wynds. It is divided among as many proprietors almost as there are householders, and these, I think, must be about a hundred. Every one has a garden behind his house, narrow, but of great length, sloping northward to the plain, or rising gently on the lowermost parts of the great hill on the south, which they call the Muckle Benn, or Binn. They have also, most of them, some acres of land, from three to five or six, adjoining to the town. The Muckle Binn is common to all the burgesses of Abernethey. It affords pasture for sheep and a few young bullocks. It has been the custom for ages, I suppose, and certainly for many years, for the lairds of Abernethey, in imitation, no doubt, of lords and greater lairds, to decorate their residences with rows of trees, one planted on each side for the whole extent of their gardens; so that, before you enter Abernethey, it looks liker a wood than a town. It is a burgh of barony, holding of the lord of BALVAIRD, an old castle in the neighbouring hills, belonging to the family of Stormont, now Mansfield. Lord Balvaird is one of his titles. In this small village there are not less than three churches, or kirks: the established church, in the yard or

burying-ground of which stands the Pictish tower; the Seceder Kirk; and the Kirk of Relief.

As Abernethey was once the religious metropolis of the Seceders, as well as the metropolitan see of Scotland in the time of the Picts, I shall here mention some leading features in the doctrine and character of a sect still very considerable, once so numerous as to equal the whole established church, and that has, from Scotland, ramified into England and all countries speaking the English language.

It might, perhaps, be sufficient to observe, in general, that the Seceders are religionists, whose great aim is, to restore not only the severe and gloomy spirit of the Covenant, so famous in the history of Scotland, but the Covenant itself. At a certain age, every Seceder, male and female, swears to observe the Covenant. Nay, they hold it a duty to renew or take the solemn league and covenant from time to time. Scotland, say they, is a covenanted kingdom. One of their principal leaders, Mr. Moncrieff, the laird of Culfargie, and minister at the same time of Abernethey, near which his estate, one of the most considerable in that parish, lay, when they first broke off from the kirk, was not restrained, without much difficulty, from going to London, in order to call upon the king, George II. to take the Covenant.

Their ecclesiastical theory is a mixture of Popish tenets with those of English Dissenters and Congregationalists. They maintain, that it is not the king and other lay patrons, but the christian people in their respective congregations, that have the right

of nomination to ecclesiastical benefices; and that the Kirk ought not to pay any regard to royal proclamations for thanksgivings, or for fasts. All these things, they maintain, fall within the councils. of the church in national concerns; and to those of synods and presbyteries in those that are local. The only head of the church, they observe, is Jesus Christ, and the church ought to be governed solely by his ministers. They are severe disciplinarians, insisting on offenders, if not doing public penance, yet professing their repentance, on receiving a private rebuke and admonition, on account of little slips of life, too common (though, no doubt, both immoral and irreligious) to excite any general or lively abhorrence.

Nay, they see sin where others do not perceive it. They hold it to be a great sin for men and women to dance together, which they call promiscuous dancing, and the common people dancing promisky, as being wholly incompatible with a holy frame of mind. The dancing of men with men, and women with women, they tolerate, though even this they do not altogether approve.

The fervour of every sect, religious, political, or philosophical, is greatest in its first ebullitions. The discipline of the Seceders is now so far relaxed, that it is no difficult matter for a rich man, like sinners in the Romish Church, to escape public penance by presents to the minister; thereby induced to lend a deaf ear, and even to be active in quashing scandalous reports: which naturally gives great offence to the poorer Seceders. Indeed, it is scarcely possible for the poor ministers to be very severe towards

the rich men of their flocks, on whom chiefly they depend for their support, for the most part miserable.

With regard to spiritual doctrines, they are rigid Antinomians, stiffly maintaining the particular or arbitrary election of some individuals, in preference to others, without any regard whatever to merit or demerit.

The Seceders are very fond, like all religious fanatics, of applying to themselves passages in the prophetical writings of the Old Testament. There is a passage in some of the prophets to this purpose. Though Israel were as the sand of the sea, a remnant only shall be saved." Hence they affect to call themselves the witnessing remnant, witnessing and protesting against the errors and corruptions of the church.

They are very scrupulous about the characters of those to whom they administer the sacraments, or rather about the state of their soul respecting matters of faith; carrying their inquiries on this point almost the full length of auricular confession; particularly inquiring into the date or moment of their conversion, and whether they be sure, or at least pretty sure, of their being among the number of the elect.

They condemn private baptism, nor will they admit those who are notoriously ignorant or profane, sponsors for their children.

to be

They also condemn all clandestine and irregular marriages, though recognized and held valid by the law of Scotland: nor will they marry any persons unless they have been proclaimed in the parish

church on two different Sundays, or as they call them, Lord's Days.

About seventy years ago, this sadly-serious sect, actuated, it is to be acknowledged, by the purest and most honourable motives, seceded from the esta blished church. As Perth was the punctum saliens from which the Reformation proceeded in the days of John Knox, so it was also the starting post of this reformation of the Reformation. In 1732, Mr. Ebenezer Erskine, minister of Portmoak, at that time moderator of the synod of Perth and Stirling, opened the meeting at Perth with a sermon from Psalm cxviii. 22. "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head-stone of the corner;" in which he inveighed with great boldness against certain abuses that had crept into the church, particularly an act of the preceding assembly relating so the settlement of ministers; alleging, that it was contrary to the word of God, and the established constitution of the Kirk. Mr. Erskine was cordially joined and supported by Mr. William Wilson, minister of Perth, Mr. Alexander Moncrieff, minister at Abernethey, and Mr. James Fisher, minister at Kineleven. A number of other ministers joined these, and the sect of the Seceders increased rapidly.

The general assembly of the church of Scotland, both by their proceedings and by a formal decree, had declared that, according to the rules of the church, a patron's presentation to an ecclesiastical benefice was a sufficient ground for proceeding to the ordination of a minister in a parish, not only without the concurrence of a majority of the heads of families, or even of heritors and elders; but not