Erskine of Dun, a layman, was Superintendent of Angus.

A new anti-Catholic Kirk was thus set up on July 20, before the Convention met and swept away Catholicism.

{170} Knox preached vigorously on "the prophet Haggeus" meanwhile, and "some" (namely Lethington, Speaker in the Convention) "said in mockage, we must now forget ourselves, and bear the barrow to build the houses of God." The unawakened Lethington, and the gentry at large, merely dilapidated the houses of God, so that they became unsafe, as well as odiously squalid.

That such fervent piety should grudge repairs of church buildings (many of them in a wretched state already) is a fact creditable rather to the thrift than to the state of grace of the Reformers.

After all their protestations, full of texts, the lords and lairds starved their preachers, but provided, by roofless aisles and unglazed windows, for the ventilation of the kirks.
These men so bubbling over with gospel fervour were, in short, when it came to practice, traitors and hypocrites; nor did Knox spare their unseemly avarice.