It may be proper here to introduce a note from Bishop Keith's history, illustrative of the fate of the earlier records above alluded to.* "When the restoration of the royal family, in the year 1660, had restored likewise the episcopal government of the church, the fore-mentioned books of register were carefully preserved by some of the presbyterian form, until one day a search having been appointed within the city of Edinburgh for apprehending of suspected persons, these records, together with many other papers pertaining to the kirk, chanced to be siezed in a private corner. The Bishop of Edinburgh (John Paterson) had allowance of the privy council (of which himself was a member) to convey these books of register, &c. to his dwelling-house, and they continued in his custody even till after the Revolution in 1688. Some time afterward, that prelate put these registers into the hands of the Honourable Master Archibald Campbell, cousin of the family of Argile, now residing in London. And to this gentleman those of the present establishment have lately made proposals for recovering them; but hitherto they are, as I am informed, come to no agreement in the matter. By this account the reader will easily discern that the registers in the possession of Mr. Campbell do contain all the original minutes, overtures, &c., according as they have occurred in the course of business. And from these books it is that the present register of Assemblies (abusively so stiled) has been extracted, which contains nothing else but an abbreviate of such acts, overtures, minutes, &c. as have been deemed proper for the public view, digested into form and * Edit. 1736. method. Several MS. copies of this extract (made most probably after the year 1638) are to be found in our publick repositories and elsewhere, and which, I suppose, will be found likewise to agree pretty uniformly, as having been all copied from one. But then, besides this register (I call it so still for conformity of speech only), there is another more large than the former, which Mr. Calderwood, who lived in the time, and inspected, no doubt, the original books, presented to the Assembly in 1638, has, for the embellishment of his large church history, copied out and inserted into the same." Since the time thus referred to by Bishop Keith, when the registers fell into Mr. Campbell's hands, the history of their obscuration is brief. He bequeathed them to the trustees of Sion College, under absolute and rigorous conditions that they were never to be restored to the presbyterian church of Scotland, although he had not and could not possibly have the most slender shadow of a legal title either to possess or to bequeath them. Hitherto all the means which have been adopted for defeating this unlawful abstraction of the public records of our national church, effected by the morbid and bigotted antipathy to our establishment of a devotee to episcopalian polity, have proved abortive. But at the General Assembly 1829 measures were taken, by an application to the legislature, for restitution to the church of its undoubted property; and we trust the resolutions then adopted will be vigorously followed up, not by the church only, but by the people of Scotland petitioning earnestly for the restoration of a record which is not less interesting to the histo rical inquirer, than to those who trace the civil and religious privileges which the presbyterian church enjoys, to the ardent and pious exertions of those Christian patriots who laid the foundation of civil and religious liberty in the land which we inherit from our forefathers. The following notices from Dr. Lee's letter to the editor (7th April 1830) are pertinent to our present purpose : "The books in Sion College form the whole of the existing Record of the Assemblies of the Church prior to the year 1638. Nothing of that period is extant in Scotland, with the exception of an abstract, of which there are two copies in the Advocates' Library, one in possession of the Church, and one at Glasgow. "The reprinted acts from 1638 to 1649 have not been preserved. Some fragments remain, but they are unauthenticated. I obtained a number of them about twelve years ago in Fife, and I had no difficulty in tracing them to Bishop Paterson,* as part of his family papers were mixed up with them. "Bell's Abridgment of the Acts of Assembly is far more meagre than Dundas's. It extends to 88 pages 12mo, or rather 18mo, and it is printed in a large type. It goes back to 1638. "You are aware that there is no convenience * JOHN PATERSON, son of John Paterson, Bishop of Ross, was first a minister at Ellon, in Aberdeenshire, afterwards minister of the Tron Church, and Dean of Edinburgh, and was appointed Bishop of Galloway 23d October 1674, in which see he continued till 29th March 1679, when he was translated to that of Edinburgh, where he continued till 1687. He was promoted to the Arch-episcopal see of Glasgow, of which he was deprived at the Revolution in 1688. He died at Edinburgh 8th December 1706, in the 76th year of his age.—ED. at present for consulting the books of the Assembly, such as they are." These particulars are necessary to be stated in submitting to the public any Abridgment of the Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; and it is by gleaning the scattered materials from the sources now alluded to, that the following Abridgment has been made up. It is only necessary further to explain, that in making up that portion of this Abridgment which embraces the period betwixt 1560 and 1638, it has been considered expedient to give the substance of the acts, in their chronological order, under the head "ACTS OF ASSEMBLY," rather than in detached shreds, arranged alphabetically, with reference to the different subjects of them-leaving it to the reader, by consulting the index, to trace out the acts upon any particular subject upon which he may desire information. With this exception, the more prominent subjects of the acts will generally be found in an alphabetical order somewhat similar to the classification in Dundas's Abridgment. Edinburgh, 22d April 1831. ALEX. PETERKIN. CONTENTS. I. ACTs of the GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the CHURCH of SCOT- LAND (abridged) from 1560 to 1830, from p. 1, to 1. Chronological Summary of Acts from 1560, when the Page |