I'M sorry, but the letter from John W Elliott (Untouched by soul-destroying Calvinism, December 4) was too much for my delicate constitution. I can take only so much of the myth that Epicopalianism is a tolerant, easy-going religion without a blot on its character, whereas Presbyterianism is a harsh, bigoted faith, its history stained with blood. It is particularly infelicitous that Mr Elliott should express regret that Scotland rejected Laud's Prayer Book in 1637. How much healthier, he opines, would Scottish society have been!

Full-blown Laudian episcopacy was, of course, imposed on Scotland by royal decree in 1661. In the 30 years that followed, attendance at the parish church was compulsory, even though the curates, according to their own archbishop, Alexander Burnet, were the worst preachers a man had ever heard. Conscientious Presbyterians couldn't thole it, but they paid a high price: a reign of terror unsurpassed, according to Daniel Defoe, in the long annals of Christianity.

Never did Christian deal more barbarously with Christian. Rev James Guthrie, Rev Hugh MacKail, Rev Donald Cargill, and Rev James Renwick were hanged. Isabel Allison and Marion Harvey suffered the same fate, as did 200 others in Edinburgh alone. Margaret Wilson and Margaret MacLauchlan were sentenced to death by drowning. John Brown of Priesthill was shot in front of his pregnant wife and children. Countless others suffered torture by boot and thumbkins while hundreds more perished on the death-ships carrying them to banishment.

These years of unimaginable brutality were still fresh in the national memory when the Scottish Parliament agreed the Union with England in 1707. That is why it insisted that Presbyterianism should remain the official religion of Scotland for all time coming.

In the years following the Union, Britain suffered constant Jacobite agitation. Novelists (and even historians) have crowned that agitation with a halo of romance. It is time we saw it for what it was: an attempt to reimpose on Scotland a despotic absolutism determined to reign unchallenged over the souls and bodies of its subjects. Far from standing forth as a champion of tolerance and freedom, Scottish Episcopalianism was an enthusiastic coadjutor in that attempt to strangle British democracy in its cradle.

The charge that Calvinism is soul-destroying is a variant, I suppose, on the familiar mantra that it destroyed the Scottish artistic imagination. Those who have imbibed this idea would do well to ponder one fact: when Walter Scott was ordained as an elder of the Kirk he affirmed unreservedly that Calvinism was his personal faith.

A good deal of the correspondence provoked by the Alasdair Morrison episode has lurched perilously close to racist abuse and religious hatred. Is it possible that David Blunkett's otherwise hideous anti-terrorist bill will give Highland Presbyterians some protection against those who incite editors to sack us and our schools to write us out of Scottish history?

Professor Donald Macleod,

Free Church College, Edinburgh.

JAMES Macleod (Letters, December 3) may well be disgusted with previous correspondents who criticised the Free Presbyterian Church's refusal to baptise Alasdair Morrison's children - but he's wrong. More, his letter sums up all that is so un-Christlike about his church.

Christ, after all, is the Jesus who enjoyed life and people; who turned water into wine at a wedding; who counted among his friends Mary Magdalene, a lady of decidedly dubious virtue; who reached out to the sinners - and the children - and embraced them; and who finally gave everything for each one of us, touching lives, changing people, and welcoming all who both need him and are open to him. Baptism is the sign and seal of all that - not a weapon to be used to punish or deny anyone, least of all the children of a practising Christian mum and dad.

An old minister from the West Highlands told me about 30 years ago that: ''A Presbyterian is a man who suspects that someone, somewhere, is enjoying himself - someone who must be found and taught the error of his ways!'' Is that man John MacLeod?

Rev Doug McRoberts,

82 Lethame Road, Strathaven.

DEREK Parker (December 4) quotes ''Judge not that ye be not judged'' at those who attack the Free Presbyterian Church. Perhaps they should pay a little more attention to the beam in their own eye before hiding behind precisely those injunctions of Christ to which they have paid least attention. What have they done if not judged Alasdair Morrison and his children? As for his reference to ''people who vilify their fellow humans'', I can only refer him to the feature ''Protestant View'' in the Free Presbyterian Magazine, a regular article devoted to the vilification of the Catholic Church.

Marcus Pitcaithly,

Worcester College, Oxford.