CHAP. III. tion to persist in it might have renewed the calamities of a 1567 religious war."* The Church resists the of the civil power; protest of Dua. The resistance which these proceedings encountered on usurpations the part of the church, and the noble remonstrance which they drew forth from one of the church's ablest champions, Erskine of Erskine of Dun, serve very conclusively to show how rapidly, under the training of the times, the mind of the reformers was maturing on the great principles that should regulate the relations of church and state. "There is," said Erskine, addressing the Regent Mar, who had given his concurrence to the proceedings of Morton, "a spiritual jurisdiction and power which God has given unto His kirk, and to them that bear office therein, and there is a temporal jurisdiction and power given of God to kings and civil magistrates. Both the powers are of God, and most agreeing to the fortifying one of the other if they be right used. But when the corruption of man enters in, confounding the offices, usurping to himself what he pleases, nothing regarding the good order appointed of God, then confusion follows in all estates. The kirk of God should fortify all lawful power and authority that pertains to the civil magistrate, because it is the ordinance of God: but if he pass the bounds of his office, and enter within the sanctuary of the Lord, meddling with such things as appertain to the ministers of God's kirk, then the servants of God should withstand his unjust enterprize; for so are they commanded of God." The Regent abandons to introduce prelacy without the This strenuous opposition was not in vain. The governthe attempt ment desisted from the further prosecution of the measures complained of, till they should first obtain some such sanction of acquiescence on the part of the church as might enable them to say, it is the church's own doing. And so far the fact is by no means unimportant. It plainly shows that the the Church. Vol. i. p. 109. to 1592. 1599. tion of Leith, The Convenand the which that irregular assembly sanction 1567 reformed church was constituted, from the beginning, on CHAP. UI to the principle of the right of self-government, and that no surrender of that principle was either made or intended to be made, when she entered into union with the civil power. By abandoning the attempt to introduce the prelatic scheme on the strength of secular authority, the state virtually confessed that, as being a matter ecclesiastical, it belonged to the province of the church. The church did not, indeed, follow up her victory as courageously as she had achieved it. The superintendents and ministers who met, at the regent's request, to consider his proposition, not only assumed, without warrant from the church, the functions and powers of a general assembly, but gave their consent to the introduction of a modified episcopacy. This injudicious and unfaithful conduct of the "Convention of Leith," as that irregular assembly is commonly called, occasioned much trouble to the church, and would have occasioned far more but for the important limitation which, in sanctioning the order of bishops, it put on their power. They were declared to be subject in all things to the authority of the general assembly. Mere tools of the leading statesmen as the bishops were, they would have proved both the fit and the willing instruments to ensure the subversion of the church's liberty had they really been made the church's governors. But the supreme power being reserved to the general assembly, the battle of the church's freedom could still be maintained on constitutional ground; and on this ground it was, in point of fact, both fought and won. What the church needed at this eventful era of her history was a leader adequate to the emergency: nor was this want left unsupplied. When God has a great work to do, He never fails to provide the workman. When the time comes, so does the man. Knox, the hero of the great conflict with popery, was already old and infirm when gave to the prelatic scheme. A master mind greatly needed for that crisis of the Church's God's care affairs; and in providing one." CHAP. III. the struggle with erastianism had little more than begun. 1567 Eulogy pro- And when the Earl of Morton, now regent of the kingdom, nounced by the Regent pronounced over the reformer's grave the memorable eulothe grave of gium, "there he lies who never feared the face of flesh," Morton over Knox. ville returns to 1592 it was, perhaps, with a secret satisfaction at the thought, that the chief hinderance to the success of his tyrannical and selfish schemes was now out of the way. The aged soldier of Jesus Christ had, indeed, been summoned to his rest, but it was only that the banner he had so valiantly displayed for the truth might be transferred to younger hands. Within two years after the convention of Leith, another champion appeared in the field. In the year 1574, Andrew Mel- Andrew Melville returned to Scotland. His character was to Scotland. already well known. His great learning, his sound judgment, his vigour of mind, and above all, his unbending integrity and fearless courage, had secured for him the esteem and confidence of the continental reformers. "The greatest token of affection the kirk of Geneva could show to Scotland," said the famous Theodore Beza, “ was that they had suffered themselves to be deprived of Mr. Andrew Melville." His arrival was not unnoticed by the regent. Haughty, daring, and despotic as Morton was, he felt that the presence of Melville would prove a formidable barrier in his way. His first effort, accordingly, was to seduce him by bribes and flattery, and when these failed he betook himself to his more congenial weapons, terror and force. Melville in- Neither corrupted nor intimidated, Melville threw himself courage into heart and soul into the struggle in which he found the church engaged. Not contented with resisting further encroachments, the assembly, under his bold and energetic guidance, proceeded to purge out from the presbyterian constitution of the church that leaven of prelacy, the introduction of which the convention at Leith had so rashly and irregularly sanctioned three years before. In the fuses fresh the assem bly. 1592. 1567 assembly of 1575, the question was formally raised, CHAP. III. to "Have bishops, as they are now in Scotland, their function from the word of God; and ought the chapters appointed for electing them to be tolerated in a reformed church?" The former branch of this twofold question was decided in the negative by the assembly of the following year; and not long afterwards, the latter branch of it received a not less emphatic reply in the total abolition of Abolition of Episcopacy. Episcopacy, and in the order which the assembly issued, requiring the existing bishops to resign their offices under pain of the highest censure of the church. Meanwhile the assembly had been carefully revising and perfecting its whole system of ecclesiastical policy. The second book of discipline, completed and approved in the year 1578, was the fruit of these labours. Of this work, the most competent judge of modern times has said, “it has secured the cordial and lasting attachment of the people of Scotland; whenever it has been wrested from them by arbitrary violence, they have uniformly embraced the first favourable opportunity of demanding its restoration, and the principal secessions which have been made from the national church have been stated, not in the way of dissent from its constitution as in England, but in opposition to departures, real or alleged, from its original and genuine principles." As this standard came, in the language even of a late leader of the moderate party, to be "a charter of the church,"† an authoritative exposition of the church's views on the great question involved in the recent controversy, it may be necessary to advert a little to the statements which it makes: first, on the nature and limits of church power, as contradistinguished from the M'Crie's Life of Melville, p. 125. + Dr. Cook-Speech on the Independence of the Church, 1838. The Second Book of Dis cipline preadopted by pared and the Assem bly. CHAP III. power of the state; and second, on the subject of the civil 1567 law of patronage, and the rights of the christian people in Character and contents of Second Book of the election of their ministers. It would, perhaps, be difficult to find in any treatise, either ancient or modern, a more luminous, comprehensive, Discipline. and at the same time, carefully guarded definition of the respective provinces and mutual relations of the civil and gives of the junctions of the ecclesiastical authorities, than will be found in the first chapter of the second book of discipline. Treating of the View which it power of the church, it says:- This power ecclesiastical powers and is an authority granted by God the Father, through the the Church. mediator Jesus Christ, unto his church gathered, and having its ground in the word of God, to be put in execution by them unto whom the spiritual government of the church is by lawful calling committed." "This power and policy ecclesiastical," it continues, "is different and distinct in its own nature from that power and policy which is called the civil power, and appertains to the civil government of the commonwealth: albeit they be both of God, and tend to one end if they be rightly used-to wit, to advance the glory of God, and to have godly and good subjects. For, this power ecclesiastical flows from God and the mediator Jesus Christ, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head on earth, but only Christ, the only spiritual king and governor of his church. Therefore this power and policy * * of the church should lean upon the word immediately as the only ground thereof, and should be taken from the pure fountains of the scriptures, the church hearing the voice of Christ, and being ruled by His laws." To guard against the abuse of this general doctrine, the same chapter goes on to draw the line between the civil province of the state and the spiritual province of the church, and that with a precision and a firmness which protects with equal jealousy the independence of both. It leaves as little room for the to 1592. |