Had not your self begun the weiris,
Your stepillis had been standand yit;
It was the flattering of your friers
That ever gart sanct Francis flit:
Ye grew sa superstitious
In wickednesse,
It gart us grow malicious
Contrair your messe.[400]
Scarcely any thing in the progress of the Scottish Reformation has been more frequently or more loudly condemned than the demolition of those edifices upon which superstition had lavished all the ornaments of the chisel and the pencil.To the Roman catholics, who anathematized all who were engaged in this work of inexpiable sacrilege, and represented it as involving the complete overthrow of religion,[401] have succeededanother race of writers, who, although they do not, in general, make high pretensions to devotion, have not scrupled, at times, to borrow the language of their predecessors, and have bewailed the wreck of these precious monuments in as bitter strains as ever idolator did the loss of his gods.These are the warm admirers of Gothic architecture, and other relics of ancient art; some of whom, if we may judge from their language, would welcome back the reign of superstition, with all its ignorance and bigotry, if they could recover the objects of their adoration.[402] Writers of this stamp depict the ravages and devastation which marked the progress of the Reformation, in colours as dark as ever were employed by the historian in describing the overthrow of ancient learning, by the irruption of the barbarous Huns and Vandals. Our Reformer cannot be mentioned by them but with symptoms of horror, and in terms of detestation, as a barbarian, a savage, and a ring‑leader of mobs, for overthrowing whatever was venerablein antiquity, or sacred in religion. It is unnecessary to produce instances.
Expectes eadem a summo minimoque poeta.