History of the Scotch Church from the Introduction of Christianity to the Establishment of the Great Charter of the Church (3)

From Scotch and Irish Seeds in American Soil by Rev. J. G. Craighead

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CHAPTER I.continued

Thus, by the act of the State, the Protestant religion became the national religion of Scotland. But Parliament, though it had annulled the papal jurisdiction, created no ecclesiastical authority in its stead. During these distracted times little comparatively had been done to organize even local churches. Converted priests and laymen taught the doctrines which they had received as opportunity offered. There were very few stationed preachers. Most of those capable of presenting the Reformed faith in a suitable manner to the people itinerated in different parts of the kingdom. But the circumstances had so changed that all felt there was a pressing necessity to adopt measures for a national ecclesiastical organization. The vacant field was in need of diligent and wise cultivation; it was plainly their duty to secure the vantage-ground gained for the Reformation.

To this end the first General Assembly of Scotland was convened at Edinburgh, December 20, 1560. It owed its authority to no earthly power, and hence was free to adopt a system of doctrines and a form of government which it considered most consonant to the Scriptures. Scotland escaped for the present the evil under which the English Church had long suffered—the forced acknowledgment of the supremacy of the civil power as her spiritual head. But the principle which was now conceded was afterward to become an object of fierce and protracted conflict.

The Assembly consisted of but forty members, and only six of these were ministers. While few in number, however, the clergy were men of ability and piety and raised up by God for the work given them to do. Great simplicity and unanimity characterized the proceedings. Seven different meetings were held without a moderator or president. The Assembly in many of its features resembled a missionary organization, having been called into being by the exigences of the occasion. The papal organization had been abolished, and they were under the necessity of making immediate provision for the spiritual instruction of the people. And as the purity of the Church was essential to its well-being, and as this could in their view only be maintained by the power of discipline, their first work was to draw up a complete system of ecclesiastical government. This task was devolved upon the same eminent men who had framed the Confession of Faith which had been ratified by Parliament—John Knox, John Mirriam, John Spottiswood, John Douglas, John Row and John Willock. The work they divided among themselves; and having finished their several parts and examined the whole together, they laid it before the General Assembly, by whom it was approved. Whether it was formally adopted, as opposition was made by some of the nobility with whose selfish schemes it interfered, there is some reason to doubt. The probabilities are that it was adopted at a meeting held in the following January. This much we do know—that this, the FIRST BOOK OF DISCIPLINE, was afterward referred to and regarded as the standard book of the Church, regulating her practice and guiding her decisions.

As this is the constitution of the Church of Scotland and contains the matured opinions of the Scotch Reformers, it is very desirable that we have clear views respecting its provisions. The leading ideas of the book of discipline were suggested by Knox, who was at the head of the commission, and the principles of church government embodied in it bore a striking resemblance to those of the Genevan Reformers. Nor is this surprising. For years Knox and Calvin had been intimately associated, and we have before seen that their views were remarkably accordant in doctrine, as they were now respecting the polity of the Church. These two great men, in common with the early Puritans, recognized four classes of church officers—pastors, who were to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments; doctors or teachers, whose province it was to interpret Scripture and refute error and to teach theology in schools and universities; ruling elders, who assisted the pastor in exercising discipline; and deacons, who had special charge of the revenue of the church and of the poor. But in the Scottish as in other Presbyterian and Congregational churches, the distinct office of teacher fell into disuse. As merely academical or theological, or of the nature of an aid to the pastor, as in the Congregational churches of New England, it lacked the position and prominence which were essential to its permanent recognition.

The session, consisting of the pastor, elders and deacons, managed the affairs of the individual congregation. They were chosen by the people, and met weekly or oftener for the transaction of business. There was also held in every principal town a meeting, called the “weekly exercise,” composed of ministers, teachers and educated men in the vicinity. This was subsequently converted into the presbytery and had the oversight of the neighboring churches. The provincial synod discharged kindred duties, only on a wider field. The General Assembly, which was composed of ministers and elders commissioned for the purpose, and meeting twice or thrice a year, attended to the general interests of the national Church.

Two great objects were sought to be secured by these arrangements—the one the freedom and vigor of the individual congregation, the other a system of order and discipline common to all the churches. The first was vindicated by declaring it as a principle founded upon the word of God that “it appertaineth to the people and to every several congregation to elect their minister.” The last was promoted through the influence exerted by synods and the General Assembly, constituting as they did the missionary and aggressive organization for all the churches. Public worship was held twice on the Sabbath, and in every town a sermon was preached also on one other day of the week. Baptism, when administered, was accompanied with preaching, and the Lord’s Supper was observed four times a year with appropriate sermons and instruction. A school was to be established in every parish, and in every “notable town” it was proposed to erect a college for the higher education of the youth. Measures were adopted to secure the instruction of all classes, those who were able being obliged to do it at their own expense, while a fund was provided to educate the children of the poor. To carry all these important measures into effect, the patrimony of the former ecclesiastical establishment was divided between the ministry, the schools and the poor.

These were the principal features of the government and discipline of the Church of Scotland as set forth in the book of discipline. As thus constituted, the Church was purely Presbyterian. It had, it is true, one peculiar feature—that of a system of superintendence, which some have claimed favored a modified form of episcopacy. But the office of a superintendent had little if anything in common with that of a bishop. Superintendents were required to be preachers and to remain in a particular place for months, exercising the pastoral office, and were subject to the censure and control of the clergy. While visiting the churches they were to preach not less than three times weekly, were not to relax their efforts until all the churches were supplied with ministers, and if condemned for any offence they were deprived of their office like any ordinary pastor. All these restrictions are inconsistent with the privileges and the dignity of the office of a prelatic bishop.

Their duties more nearly resembled those of a synodical missionary than of any other officer in the Church of the present day. They exercised a general supervision over extended districts—a provision greatly needed at that time, owing to the want of properly qualified ministers and the destitute condition of the congregations. The superintendents were not a separate order of the clergy, and their authority was carefully guarded, so as not to infringe upon the parity of the ministry. Yet their own usurpations of power and authority, together with the intrigues of certain of the nobility, who wished to use them for their selfish purposes, and with this object in view conceded to them episcopal titles, soon rendered the office very obnoxious with the people. By way of derision they were called tulchan bishops, and a more contemptuous term than this could scarcely have been devised. The “tulchan” was a calf’s skin stuffed with straw, which was laid beside the cow to induce her to give her milk more freely. “The bishop,” it was said, “had the title, but my lord had the milk.”

The plan to make them bishops was not owing to any zeal for episcopacy on the part of the people, but, as before stated, grew out of the avarice of the nobility, who were anxious to get hold of the episcopal revenues. At the period when the attempt was made to invest the superintendents with the title and authority of bishops Knox was on his deathbed, and his last hours were embittered by a knowledge of the proposed innovation. He gave his “dead hand and dying voice” against it. Like Calvin, he was willing to allow expediency a large place in the outward constitution of the Church, and he saw nothing unscriptural in the appointment of superintendents who should supervise large districts in the capacity of missionaries in order to provide the means of grace to destitute congregations, and to organize churches where they were needed, but to the very last he steadfastly refused to acknowledge them as a distinct order of the ministry, and would never give his consent to their ordination as such.

On the 5th of December, 1560, her young husband, Francis II., who occupied the throne but for a few months, died, and Mary returned to her native country from France. She landed at Leith, and was conducted to Holyrood House with many demonstrations of joy by a people who were ready to be loyal to their queen, provided they could at the same time maintain their higher allegiance to the King of kings. From motives of policy, and with the design to secure the confidence of the Protestants, she was led to make many concessions to them, since they were the predominant party in the kingdom. But in all these measures the queen was insincere, and was distrusted by the Protestant party. It was known that she still adhered to the tenets of the Romish faith and was at heart a bigoted papist, and her subsequent conduct confirmed the worst fears of Knox and the other Reformers. She refused to ratify the acts of Parliament that had established the Reformation, she repeatedly attempted to restore to the papal prelates their civil jurisdiction, and in 1563 she sent a letter to the Council of Trent, professing her submission to its authority, and expressing the hope that she would succeed in time in bringing both England and Scotland under the dominion of the Roman see. To the petition of her Protestant subjects for the suppression of the superstitious rites and worship of the papal Church she in great anger replied that “she hoped before another year to restore the mass throughout Scotland.” But her crowning act of perfidy was her subscribing the treaty of Bayonne, formed between the queen-regent of France, the queen of Spain and the duke of Alva, which contemplated the total and universal extermination of the Protestants by fire and sword.[3] Thus, with a duplicity characteristic of Romanism in all ages, Mary, by proclamations and acts of councils, wished to be regarded as favoring the Reformed ministers, while she was secretly negotiating for the subversion of the Protestant religion throughout Europe.

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NOTES

[3] Hume.