Note 434 — Chapter IV

‘The power of those kirk-sessions, which are now private assemblages, in whose meetings and proceedings the public take no interest whatever, is defined to be the cognizance of parochial matters and cases of scandal; but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially during the Covenanting reign of terror after the outbreak of the Civil War against Charles I., the kirk-sessions of Scotland were the sources of excessive tyranny and oppression—were arbitrary, inquisitorial, and revengeful, to an extent which exceeds all belief. It is truly stated by the author of the “Memoirs of Locheill”—“Every parish had a tyrant, who made the greatest Lord in his district stoop to his authority. The kirk was the place where he kept his court; the pulpit his throne or tribunal from whence he issued out his terrible decrees; and twelve or fourteen sour ignorant enthusiasts, under the title of Elders, composed his council. If any, of what quality soever, had the assurance to disobey his orders, the dreadful sentence of excommunication was immediately thundered out against him, his goods and chattels confiscated and seized, and he himself being looked upon as actually in the possession of the devil, and irretrievably doomed to eternal perdition.”’ Introduction to The Kirk-Session Register of Perth, in The Spottiswoode Miscellany, vol. ii. pp. 229–230, Edinburgh, 1845. In regard to the perdition which the sentence of excommunication was supposed to involve, one of the most influential Scotch divines of that time merely expresses the prevailing notion, when he asserts, that whoever was excommunicated was thereby given up to Satan. ‘That he who is excommunicated may be truly said to be delivered to Sathan is undeniable.’ Gillespie's Aaron's Rod Blossoming, or the Divine Ordinance of Church Government Vindicated, 1646, 4to, p. 239. ‘Excommunication, which is a shutting out of a Church-member from the Church, whereby Sathan commeth to get dominion and power over him.’ Ibid. p. 297. ‘Sure I am an excommunicate person may truly be said to be delivered to Sathan.’ p. 424.