If the Kirk confines human nature too strictly, it will break out in secret ways, for men and women are born… — John Buchan

And at times I'm tempted to think that our way and the Kirk's way is not God's way, for we're apt to treat the natural man as altogether corrupt, and put him under over-strict pains and penalties, whereas there's matter in him that might be shaped to the purposes of grace. If there's original sin, there's likewise original innocemce.

The profession of religion was not the same thing as godliness, and he was coming to doubt whether the insistence upon minute conformities of outward conduct and the hair-splitting doctrines were not devices of Satan to entangle souls.

[T]he Kirk of Scotland as at present guidit […] is a kind o' Papery wi' fifty Papes instead o' ane.