The state of society, depicted by the Committee of Assembly, disproves this up to the hilt. Half a century afterwards, Edinburgh, the centre of the Reformation movement, was said " to be the ordinary place of butchery, revenge, and daily fights "; while more than fifty years after that, from my reading of church records of Scotland, the state of morality and the respect for religion most certainly
The state of society, depicted by the Committee of Assembly, disproves this up to the hilt. Half a century afterwards, Edinburgh, the centre of the Reformation movement, was said " to be the ordinary place of butchery, revenge, and daily fights "; while more than fifty years after that, from my reading of church records of Scotland, the state of morality and the respect for religion most certainly
The state of society, depicted by the Committee of Assembly, disproves this up to the hilt. Half a century afterwards, Edinburgh, the centre of the Reformation movement, was said " to be the ordinary place of butchery, revenge, and daily fights "; while more than fifty years after that, from my reading of church records of Scotland, the state of morality and the respect for religion most certainly had not improved among the masses. It is only just to say that exception must be made with regard to ministers. No such cases came under my observation as reported in St Andrews and some other printed kirk-session records. Fenwick records, to my mind, are even worse in the respect indi- cated than any I have dealt with. Lying, false swearing,, and a host of grossly worse immoralities positively occupied nearly the whole time of the kirk-session meetings. Some writer informs us, " As this was a newly erected parish, the people had been very much neglected." Surely this does not redound to the credit of the mother parish, when its population, including Fenwick, is not supposed to have been more than 1400. Pages 9 and 10 of the original records were in the handwriting
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