by Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale
(Continued from page 49)
Such a document as the First Book of Discipline could not be expected to be received whole-heartedly by a people whose morals were at a very low ebb. Many of the nobles opposed the Book of Discipline because it opposed the rapacity with which they seized upon the patrimony which formerly belonged to the Popish Church. This patrimony, as was before noticed, was intended by Knox and the other Reformers for the payment of the Protestant clergy, the education of the rising generation, and the upkeep of the poor, but neither section got much of it. Knox mentions the Earl of Mar as one of the chief noblemen who refused to sign the Book of Discipline, and assigns as reasons for it, that he has a very Jezebel for his wife, and second, that “if the poor, the schools, and the ministry of the kirk had their own, his kitchen would want two parts and more of that which he now unjustly possesses.”
At the first General Assembly after the arrival of Queen Mary from France, the courtiers did not present themselves in deference to the presence of the Queen in this country. They were reproved for this and attended the second Assembly. At this Assembly there was a sharp passage-at-arms between Knox and Maitland, who had been made Secretary. Maitland’s contention was that the Book had not been sanctioned by the Queen. When the Church’s patrimony fell to be divided it was proposed that the Book of Discipline should be sanctioned by the Queen but that was something she would never condescend to do being a most bigoted Roman Catholic. It was finally decided that the ecclesiastical revenues should be divided as follows; that two parts be given to the ejected Popish clergy, and that the third part should be divided between the Court and the Protestant ministers. “Well,” exclaimed Knox, when he heard of this disgraceful arrangement, “if the end of this order, pretended to be taken for sustentation of the ministers, be happy, my judgment fails me. I see two parts freely given to the devil, and the third must be divided between God and the devil. Who would have thought, that when Joseph ruled in Egypt, his brethren should have travelled for victuals, and have returned with empty sacks unto their families? O happy servants of the devil, and miserable servants of Jesus Christ, if after this life there were not hell or heaven.” The Queen’s opposition was based on the assumption that she would before very long succeed in overthrowing Protestantism and setting up again the Popish religion. As was noticed before, she was a bigoted Roman Catholic and was determined, at all costs, to be the servant of the Pope and to win Scotland back to his dominion. In this she reckoned without her host. To John Knox, more than to any other man belongs the credit of thwarting her purpose. He could neither be bribed, flattered, nor overawed, and he was determined to set up a pure church in this realm, which meant that it would be taken from the pattern shown in Scripture, in doctrine, government, practice and discipline. This is clearly shown in the First Book of Discipline, Chapter IX. “As no commonwealth can flourish or long endure without good laws, and sharp execution of the same, so neither can the Kirk of God be brought to purity, neither yet be retained in the same, without the order of ecclesiastical discipline, which stands in reprovying and correcting of the faults which the civil sword either doth neglect or may not punish.”
On the point of discipline the nobility were not prepared to yield, but with the Reformers it was a principle which could not be destroyed. Hetherington puts the case very well, as far as the struggle between the Reformers and the nobility were concerned, when he says, “Arrangements may be altered almost at will; but principles, when once fully stated, can never be destroyed. They may be repressed, fettered, turned awry in their operations; but they continue to operate powerfully even when unseen, causing convulsion after convulsion as they rend asunder and throw off the unconforming external moulds into which they have been forced; and must inevitably continue thus to act, till they obtain a free and unconstrained development, congenial to their own nature. The principles stated in the First Confession of Faith, and the First Book of Discipline, of the Church of Scotland, were disliked, opposed, repressed, and turned aside by the worldly-wise statesmen of that day, as they have often been in subsequent times; but they took up their abiding residence in the mind and heart of Scotland, — in the deliberate judgment and conviction of its intellect, and the fervent regard of its affection; and the struggle then begun will continue, till, sooner or later, they be completely realized. “Hetherington’s History of the Church of Scotland, 6th ed. p. 31.
The Regent Morton endeavoured to take to himself and to others of the nobility the revenues of the Church. He set up an order of bishops known as “tulchan bishops.” It is supposed that the word “tulchan” is a Gaelic word for the skin of a calf stuffed with straw and put under a cow to make her give her milk. The nobility found some creatures who, for a nominal salary, took the name of bishops but the real revenues attached to the office went to the nobility. Thus the saying arose that there were three kinds of bishops in Scotland, that is, the Lord’s bishops, which were the ministers, my lord bishop, which applied to bishops appointed ecclesiastically, and my lord’s bishops, which were the tulchan bishops. The Book of Discipline condemned the last two classes of bishops and only recognised the first kind. This occasioned great trouble between the civil powers and the Reformers. The latter held that to the Church belonged spiritual power, and in all matters ecclesiastical they had a ruling which was distinct from the civil Magistrate, and that this ruling was given them by the Lord Himself in his Word. The Regent Morton, who was keen on the tulchan bishops, resigned his office in 1578 as regent, and King James VI., at the age of twelve years assumed the reins of government. He was in favour of Episcopacy and tried to foist it on the Church of Scotland, but there were men in the Church of Scotland who were not to be brow-beaten even by royalty. The civil powers might refuse to sanction the Book of Discipline but that did not prevent our ecclesiastical rulers from including it among the laws of the Church. The struggle then began ultimately cost the Stewarts their throne, but the Church of Scotland continued Presbyterian and became the mother church of all the Presbyterian Churches throughout the world.