According to the accounts of the reformers, confirmed by several popish writers, the manners of the Scottish clergy were indecent in the extreme. Cardinal Beaton celebrated the marriage of his eldest daughter with the son of the Earl of Crawford, with an almost regal magnificence, and maintained a criminal correspondence with her mother to the end of his days. The other prelates were not more exemplary than their primate, and the contrast between their lives, and those of the reformers, failed not to make a considerable impression on the minds of the people. Instead of disguising their vices the Popish clergy affected to despise censure; instead of endeavouring to colour over the absurdity of the established doctrines, or found them on Scripture, they left them to the authority of the church and decrees of the councils; the only apology they have ever been able, even to the present day, to offer for the monstrous absurdity of their system. The duty of preaching was left to the lowest and most illiterate of the monks.
The following anecdote will give a lively idea of their mode of preaching:--The prior of the Black Friars at Newcastle, in a sermon at St Andrews, asserted that the Paternoster should be said to God only, and not the saints. This doctrine not meeting the approbation of the learned of that city, they appointed a Gray Friar to refute it, who choose for his text, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” which he illustrated in this manner. Seeing we say, good day, father, to any old man in the street, we may call a saint pater, who is older than any alive; and seeing they are in heaven, we may say to any of them, “Our father who art in heaven;” seeing they are holy, we may say, “hallowed be thy name;” and, since they are in the kingdom of heaven, may add, “thy kingdom come;” and as their will is God’s will, “thy will be done;” but when he come to “give us this day our daily bread;” he was much at a loss confessing it was not in the power of the saints to give us our daily bread; “yet they may pray to God for us,” he said, “that he may give us our daily bread.” The rest of his commentary being not more satisfactory, set his audience a laughing and the children on the streets calling after him, Friar Paternoster, he was so much ashamed that he left the city.