We never can adjust it;
What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.
As regards the questions of doctrine there were in the church two main parties, known as the Auld Lichts and the New Lichts. The former were high Calvinists, emphasizing the doctrines of election, predestination, original sin, and eternal punishment. The latter comprised many of the younger clergy who had been touched by the rationalistic tendencies of the century, and who were blamed for various heresies—notably Arminianism and Socinianism. Whatever their precise beliefs, they laid less stress than their opponents on dogma and more on benevolent conduct, and Burns had strong sympathy with their liberalism. He first appeared in their support in an Epistle to John Goldie, a Kilmarnock wine-merchant who had published Essays on Various Important Subjects, Moral and Divine. Though he does not explicitly accept the author's Arminianism, he makes it clear that he relished his attacks on orthodoxy. A quarrel between two prominent Auld Licht ministers gave him his next opportunity, and the circulation in manuscript of The Twa Herds: or, The Holy Tulyie made him a personage in the district. With an irony more vigorous than delicate he affects to lament that
The twa best herds in a' the wast, pastors, west
That e'er ga'e gospel horn a blast gave
These five an' twenty simmers past—
Oh, dool to tell! sorrow
Hae had a bitter black out-cast quarrel
Atween themsel, Between