Rev J R Tallach
Last month’s article provided a survey of the initial stages in giving the Scottish Church a Presbyterian structure, at the time of the Reformation.
In 1567 the Church Act was passed by Parliament. This Act defined the Church of Scotland in terms of its known teaching and The Scots Confession and declared it “to be the only true and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm”. The Church Jurisdiction Act of the same year stated that “there is to be no other face of Kirk nor other face of religion than is presently by the favour of God established within this Realm”. The third such Act of that year was the Coronation Oath Act, which required all future monarchs to swear to protect the true Church as established and to root out all those opposed to its teaching. These Acts represent the establishment of the Protestant Church in Scotland. As Professor Lyall points out, they left unresolved the question whether these acts were an acknowledgement of a right possessed by the Church or if this was a grant from the state to the Church. If it was something given by the state, then the state could take it away or modify its terms. This unresolved question was to reappear; it was to be the source of much debate in the Ten Years’ Conflict leading up to the Disruption of 1843.
Furthermore, the Scottish Church was, as indicated above, heavily in debt to Calvin for its polity as well as its doctrine. Thus the French Church formed under Calvin’s influence had a great influence on the form adopted here. G D Henderson states that the General Assembly was “borrowed from France where, as in Scotland, an independent Church required central boards of control. Without the Assembly, the Church would have fallen permanently under the dominion of the civil authorities as happened in England. The Assembly remains peculiarly symbolic of spiritual independence.”
Though the Scottish Reformers drew on the example of the French “colloquies” and the Swiss “classes”, membership of presbyteries differed from both these bodies. The Scottish bodies were made up of neighbouring ministers, each accompanied by one elder. These meetings would take place four times a year and the purpose would be “not only for the end that ministers in their respective turns may handle a common place in divinity from the Scriptures but that by mutual common counsel they may compose those emergent difficulties which trouble their churches”. The “exercise”, held weekly in the first instance, was set up in the Scottish Church along the lines of the French model in the mid-1570s and had a similar constitution and aims. In 1579 it was established by the General Assembly that, “the exercise may be judged a presbytery”.
Over the succeeding years, the Crown sought to weaken and control the Church through Episcopacy, while the nobles impoverished it by diverting funds away to serve their own ends and fill their own pockets. This was the parlous state in which Andrew Melville found the Church when he returned to Scotland from Geneva in 1574. Melville was a brilliant scholar and had been a professor of humanity at Geneva. He was subsequently appointed Principal of Glasgow University, and later still of St Andrews University. Above all he was a godly man of fearless character.
The Church was indebted to Melville for the large part he played in drawing up the Second Book of Discipline, which, after much careful discussion, was adopted by the General Assembly of 1578. In this volume, the government of the Church is defined more carefully than it was in the First Book. The offices in the Church were reduced to four – minister, elder, doctor or teacher, and deacon – while the positions of superintendent and reader were dropped. The book claimed the right of Church courts, as courts of Christ, to convene and settle business independently of the civil power. Indeed, with the claim made by Melville that the Church had the right to tell the civil authority how to exercise its own civil authority in accordance with the Word of God, there was a move from the freer order under Knox to something closer to a theocracy. The courts established were sessions, presbyteries, synods and general assemblies. Significantly the parity of pastors was laid down, with no office superior to the teaching elder.
Ministers must not be intruded into a congregation; there must be “the assent of the people over whom the person was to be placed, as the practice of the apostolical and primitive kirk and good order craves”. This was a particular expression of Knox’s view of the dignity of the common man. Knox said, “Before God all men are equal. In matters of religion God requireth no less of the subject, be he ever so poor, than of the prince and the rich man.” His reply to Mary, the young queen, is to the same effect. “What have ye to do,” said she, “with my marriage? Or what are ye within this Commonwealth?” “A subject born within the same, Madam,” said he. “And albeit I neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.” This estimate of the biblical standing of the ordinary man before God is best expressed by the Presbyterian form of Church government.
Over the following years King James I & VI (reigned 1567-1625), who was at heart Episcopalian, sought by kingcraft to subvert this Presbyterian order and at times he succeeded in weakening Presbyterian Church polity in Scotland. However, by 1590 the Presbyterians were in the ascendant, and in 1592 the General Assembly Act was passed, which is seen as “the statutory foundation of the Presbyterian character of the Church of Scotland”. The Act incorporates statements from the Second Book of Discipline and thus laid the foundation for the Church to be established in civil law. This law was subsequently grafted into the constitution of the country at the Union of Scotland and England. Despite this, James managed by subtlety to retain some control. By preserving patronage he left a mechanism of control in the hands of the civil authorities. He also retained in his own hands the power to call assemblies. Presbyterianism was strongest in Edinburgh and, by convening Assemblies at a variety of other venues, James was able to exercise some control over assembly business and decisions.
In the following century, in 1647, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith as the confession of the Church, while expressing their understanding of a few points. In 1649 the Scots Parliament approved and ratified the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. Although this Act was struck down by an Act of 1661, it was ratified after the Revolution settlement of William and Mary in 1689 by an Act of 1690, “Ratifying the Confession of Faith and settling Presbyterian Church Government”.
In 1592 the authority of presbyteries was acknowledged in statute law, but as early as 1581 these courts were recognised to have the following functions: “The examination, ordination, admission (and, indeed, deposition) of ministers, the supervision and visitation of the parishes, the formulation of enactments and the execution of ordinances made in the higher courts, the licensing of marriage contracts, the correction of manners and the ultimate sanction of excommunication”.
As with the “exercises” noted above, the minister and an elder from each adjacent congregation attended the presbytery. At the initial admission of a man to the ministry of the Word, a high standard was set, with the candidate being publicly examined by ministers and elders for their ability to teach and defend the gospel. Evidence was also taken of the candidate’s integrity and orderly walk, and public notice was to be “given in the homes of his childhood and youth that those who know anything to his discredit must give information thereof”. The First Book of Discipline demanded only the “public approbation of the people and declaration of the chief minister that the person there presented is appointed to serve the kirk”. The Second Book required that after sermon the presiding minister call on the ordinand to stand and to “describe his call” and to engage with him about its gravity and weightiness and to call on the ordinand to vow solemnly, by holding up his hand before God and His Kirk, to discharge his office faithfully and, if he violated any part of these vows, both God and Kirk would be witness to his condemnation.
The imposition of hands at ordination was not prescribed by the First Book as it was considered that the office of apostle was past and that it might encourage superstition. The imposition of hands was, however, formally restored by the Second Book of Discipline for “the separation and sanctifying of the person appointed of God and His Kirk”. This was preceded by “fasting and earnest prayer”. Ministers were settled in a congregation by election of the people. The ministers so ordained “must do their work steadily and without reproach, preaching on [Sabbath] and on one weekday at least, catechising children, superintending and examining schools, showing special care for the poor, and studiously avoiding respect of persons. Should a minister fail to edify the Church by neglecting wholesome doctrine, by moral carelessness or even by sloth, he must be admonished by his elders, and should he prove stubborn they may appeal to the ministers of two adjacent churches, who shall be entitled to suspend him from office until he repent.”
Elders were associated with pastors “for establishing of good order and execution of discipline”. The First Book of Discipline had appointed elders to be elected annually but the Second Book made the office a lifelong appointment and a “function spiritual, as is the ministry”. Elders took public oaths with hands uplifted to perform their duties diligently and, like ministers, to adhere to the highest standards of Christian life and conversation. Once lawfully called to this spiritual office they might not leave it, although where there were many elders they might serve in rotation. One of their number was elected annually to the higher courts. The elders were associated with the work of the ministry of the Word and sacrament, in upholding the hands of the minister and exercising oversight of the congregation, yet their responsibilities were clearly separate from those of the minister. Readers were appointed to read the common prayers and Scripture. But the office of reader was abolished some 20 years later as it was always seen as an interim measure; yet readers continued to operate in rural areas for many years thereafter.
There was a hierarchy of Church courts from congregational to national level, and each court met at a time of its own choosing. Their purpose was to keep religion and doctrine pure, to make rules for the good of the people and to discipline transgressors. Because there was a hierarchy, the acts of the lower court could be reviewed by the higher. Presbyteries were not specifically defined by the First Book of Discipline, but it would appear that the “district eldership” was not then confined to one congregation as now and that, having been given powers of ordination and visitation, the “exercise” became the equivalent of a modern presbytery. The Second Book of Discipline abolished the office of reader and agreed to divide the land under 50 presbyteries, 13 of which were set up immediately. As the Lord had prepared the leaders and the people, scriptural Church government was set up in Scotland in a comparatively short time and recognised in civil law.
Francis Lyall, Of Presbyters and Kings, Aberdeen University Press, 1980, p 16.
Quoted in James Kirk, Patterns of Reform, T & T Clark, 1989, p 86.
James Moffat, The Presbyterian Churches, Methuen, 1928, p 51.
For the exercise, see p 365 in the last issue.
Stirling Presbytery Records 1581-1587, Scottish History Society, 1981, p xii.
Lyaill, Of Presbyters and Kings, p 17; R H Story (ed), The Church of Scotland, London, 1890, vol 2, p 471.
Quoted in Thomas M’Crie, The Story of the Scottish Church, Free Presbyterian Publications 1988 reprint, p 68.
Quoted in J J Murray, The Reformation 1560, p 50.
Lyaill, Of Presbyters and Kings, p 18.
Lyaml, Of Presbyters and Kings, p 20.
Stirling Presbytery Records, p xviii.
A R MacEwen, A History of the Church in Scotland, Hodder & Stoughton, 1918, vol 2, p 163.
Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland, Yale University Press, 2002, p 387.
MacEwen, A History of the Church in Scotland, vol 2, p 163.
Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland, p 371.
Gordon Donaldson, Scottish Historical Documents, Neil Wilson Publishing, 1997, p 146.
J H S Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland, Oxford University Press, 1960, p 201.