He assigns his reasons for warning them so particularly against the seduction of these erroneous teachers. Under the cloak of mortification, and the colour of a godly life, they “supplanted the dignity of Christ,” and “were become enemies to free justification by faith in his blood.” The malice of papists was now visible to all the world; the hypocrisy of mercenary teachers and ungodly professors would soon discover itself; and seldom had open tyranny been able to suppress the true religion, when it had once been earnestly embraced by the body of any nation or province. “But deceivable and false doctrine is a poison { 211} and venom, which, once drunken and received, with great difficulty can afterward be purged.” Accordingly, he charged them to “try the spirits” which came to them, and to suffer no man to take the office of preacher upon him of his own accord and without trial, or to assemble the people in secret meetings; else Satan would soon have his emissaries among them, who would “destroy the plantation of our heavenly Father.”[300] His admonitions, on this head, were not without effect; and the protestants of Scotland, instead of being distracted with these opinions, remained united in their views, as to doctrine, worship, and discipline.
His letter to the protestant lords breathes an ardent and elevated spirit. Its object was to purify their minds from selfish and worldly principles――to raise, sanctify, and christianize their views, by exhibiting and recommending to them the examples of those great and good men whose characters were delineated, and whose deeds were recorded, in the sacred annals. The glory of God, the advancement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the salvation of themselves and their brethren, the emancipation of their country from spiritual and political bondage――these, and not their own honour and aggrandizement, or the revenging of their petty private feuds, were the objects which they ought to keep steadily and solely in view.
In this letter, he also communicates his advice on the delicate question of resistance to supreme rulers. { 212} They had consulted him on this subject, and he had submitted it to the judgment of the most learned men on the continent. Soon after they had agreed to the marriage of their young queen to the dauphin of France, the Scots began to be jealous of the designs of the French court against their liberties and independence. Their jealousies increased after the regency was transferred to the queen dowager, who was wholly devoted to the interest of France, and had contrived, under different pretexts, to keep a body of French troops in the kingdom. It was not difficult to excite to resistance the independent and haughty barons of Scotland, accustomed to yield a very limited and precarious obedience even to their native princes. They had lately given a proof of this by their refusal to co‑operate in the war against England, which they considered as undertaken merely for French interests. And, encouraged by this circumstance, the duke of Chastelherault had begun, under the direction of his brother, the archbishop of St Andrews, to intrigue for regaining the authority which he had reluctantly resigned.