The Church was ignorant, bloody, and relentless. In Scotland the "Kirk"
was at the summit of its power. It was a full sister of the Spanish
Inquisition. It waged war upon human nature. It was the enemy of
happiness, the hater of joy, and the despiser of religious liberty. It
taught parents to murder their children rather than to allow them to
propagate error. If the mother held opinions of which the infamous
"Kirk" disapproved, her children were taken from her arms, her babe from
her very bosom, and she was not allowed to see them, or to write them a
word. It would not allow shipwrecked sailors to be rescued from drowning
on Sunday. It sought to annihilate pleasure, to pollute the heart by
filling it with religious cruelty and gloom, and to change mankind into
a vast horde of pious, heartless fiends. One of the most famous Scotch
divines said: "The Kirk holds that religious toleration is not far from
blasphemy."