Excerpt from A Discourse on Scottish Church History: From the Reformation to the Present Time, With Prefatory Remarks on the S. Giles's Lectures, and Appendix of Notes and References And then, as we approach the period of the Reformation, we appreciate and admire the contrast, vividly drawn, between the noble and upward course of the pioneers of the recovery of Gospel Light and Truth - especially Patrick Hamilton, Alexander Alesius, and George Wishart, and the perverse downward course of their opponents, the champions of Darkness and Error - the ill-fated Cardinal Beaton, the double-minded Earl of Arran, and the weak and dissolute King James V. (Lect. 4). In these first four Lectures, it is scarcely necessary for me to say there is little or nothing which we Episcopalians should not have listened to with pleasure, or should have hesitated to welcome, had they been heard from any of our own pulpits; and though, when we reach the Reformation itself, it was not to be expected that this harmony of sentiment would continue to be maintained to the same extent, yet we thankfully observe that the points on which we become constrained to differ from the positions of the succeeding Lecturers, are still very few in comparison with those upon which we can cordially and unreservedly agree with them. With this observation, we enter upon the fifth Lecture, which it is necessary to notice in more detail. No one can be more ready than the present writer (as, indeed, I showed in a discourse preached and published more than twenty years ago on occasion of the Tercentenary in 1860) to pay to Knox the honour he deserved for his "supreme loyalty to the Word of God" (p. 151), his unswerving "vindication of the paramount authority of Holy Scripture" (p. 133). But when it is objected to our "landed gentry," that they "stand aloof from the Church of Knox" (p. 148), I must be permitted to reply that it is Presbyterians themselves who, at the present day, stand further aloof from the Church of Knox than Episcopalians do. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.