3. Church Government and Discipline
D Hay Fleming
In the Scots Confession, evil works are defined as: not only those that are expressly done against God’s commandment, but those also that, in matters of religion and worshipping of God, have no warrant except the invention and opinion of man, which God has from the beginning ever rejected; as we are taught in these words: “In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men”.
And, in the opening sentence of the Book of Discipline, it is urged as necessary that Christ’s gospel “be truly and openly preached in every kirk and assembly of this realm; and that all doctrine repugnant to the same be utterly suppressed as damnable to man’s salvation”. It is explained that, by the contrary doctrine, is to be understood whatsoever men, “by laws, counsels, or constitutions, have imposed upon the consciences of men, without the expressed commandment of God’s Word”. As examples of this, the following are mentioned: “vows of chastity, the superstitious observance of fasting days, prayer for the dead, keeping of saints’ days and feasts invented by the Papists, as the feasts of apostles, martyrs, virgins, and of Christmas and feasts of Our Lady. Which things, says the Book of Discipline, as they have neither commandment nor warrant in the Scriptures, ought to be utterly abolished from the realm, and the obstinate maintainers and teachers punished by the civil magistrate.
This uncompromising condemnation of such days as Christmas was no hasty, ill-considered, passing outburst in the heat of a great struggle. Six years afterwards, in heartily approving of the Second Helvetic Confession, the Scots took care, in writing to Beza, to guard themselves on one point: “With regard to what is written in the 24th chapter of the aforesaid Confession concerning the festival of our Lord’s nativity, circumcision, passion, resurrection, ascension, and sending the Holy Ghost upon His disciples, that these festivals at the present time obtain no place among us; for we dare not religiously celebrate any other feast day than what the divine oracles have prescribed”. It is only within recent years that the Church of Scotland (in its larger sections) has departed in practice from this deliberate principle of its Reformers.
The final article in this series, abridged from Hay Fleming’s The Reformation in Scotland. The sub-title of last month’s extract was: “God Speaks Plainly in His Word”.
In another passage of the Book of Discipline, in which the civil rulers are urged to suppress all idolatry, it is said: “By idolatry we understand the mass, invocation of saints, adoration of images, and the keeping . . . of the same: and finally all honouring of God not contained in His holy Word”. This definition cuts very deep. This principle is inconsistent with what is implied in one passage in the Confession of 1560, as understood by some people. The passage runs thus: “Not that we think that a policy and an order in ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times and places; for as ceremonies (such as men have devised) are but temporal, so may and ought they to be changed, when they rather foster superstition,” rather than edify the Church using them.
As William Cunningham has said, “This is somewhat loosely expressed”.Cunningham, Discussions on Church Principles, Edinburgh, 1863, p 252. David Calderwood held that “the words are not to be so taken as if the Kirk had power to institute sacred rites; but only to make institutions of order and decency, in the ministration of such rites and parts of divine service as the Lord had already instituted”. The Book of Discipline, explains policy as being of two sorts, the one “utterly necessary” and the other profitable but not absolutely necessary. The true preaching of the Word, and the right administration of the sacraments, are utterly necessary, but not the number of days in a week on which a congregation ought to assemble. These interpretations harmonise the passage with the statements already quoted, which so emphatically condemn will worship.
In the Confession of 1560, the marks by which the true Church is distinguished from the false are given as: (1) “the true preaching of the Word of God”; (2) “the right administration of the sacraments of Christ Jesus”; and (3) “ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered, as God’s Word prescribes, whereby vice is repressed and virtue nourished”. Wherever these marks are found and continue for any time, there is the true Kirk of Christ, though the number of the flock be never so few above two or three, and there Christ Himself, according to His promise, is in the midst of them.
To these three things the utmost importance was attached. For example, the Book of Discipline described the Word truly preached, the sacraments rightly ministered, prayers publicly offered, children and ignorant persons instructed in the chief points of religion, and offences corrected and punished, as things so necessary that without them there is no “face of a visible kirk”. Again, although there was a great dearth of “godly and learned men”, a high standard of qualifications was fixed for those who might be admitted to the ministry, for they believed “it was just as well, perhaps better, to have no minister than to have an incompetent or unprofitable one”.
The sacraments were declared to be rightly dispensed when, before the administration, a lawful minister instructed the people, putting them in mind that God’s free grace is offered in Christ Jesus, and when God’s promises were rehearsed, the purpose of the sacraments explained – in their own language – and when no change was made from the institution of the Lord and the practice of the apostles. From holding the mass in the highest reverence, worshipping the wafer as if it had been Christ Himself, there was now a great recoil.
The necessity of discipline is thus stated in the Order of Geneva: “As no city, town, house, or family can . . . prosper without . . . governance, so the Church of God, which requireth more purely to be governed than any city or family, cannot without . . . ecclesiastical discipline continue, increase and flourish”. And the discipline itself is thus described: “As the Word of God is the life and soul of this Church, so this godly order and discipline is, as it were sinews in the body, which . . . join the members together. . . It is a bridle to stay the wicked from their mischiefs. It is a spur to prick forward such as be slow and negligent; yea . . . it is the Father’s rod . . . to chastise gently the faults committed, and to cause them afterward to live in more godly fear and reverence. Finally, it is an order left by God unto His Church, whereby men learn to frame their wills and doings, according to the law of God, by instructing and admonishing one another, yea, and by correcting and punishing all obstinate rebels.”
The object of this discipline was threefold: (1) that men of evil life be not numbered among God’s children, to their Father’s reproach, as if the Church of God were a sanctuary for wicked persons; (2) that the good be not infected by the company of the evil; (3) that a man thus corrected, or excommunicated, may be ashamed of his fault and through repentance come to amendment. There are many notable statements in the Book of Discipline, but perhaps none more so than this: “To discipline must all estates within this realm be subject, if they offend, as well the rulers as they that are ruled . . . and the preachers themselves, as well as the poorest within the Church. And because the eye and mouth of the Church ought to be most . . . blameless, the life and conversation of the ministers ought most diligently to be tried.”
This theory was most impartially carried out in practice. For a grave breach of the Seventh Commandment, Paul Methven, minister of Jedburgh, who had a good reputation for honesty and godliness, was publicly excommunicated, and deprived of all function in the Church. About a year later, the Lord Treasurer of Scotland, for a breach of the same commandment, had to give public satisfaction in the Church of St Giles. In 1567, the Countess of Argyle, for assisting at the baptism of James VI, “in a Papistical manner”, was ordered “to make public repentance in the chapel royal of Stirling”, the chapel in which the baptism had been performed.
The discipline, stern in its nature, was carried out vigorously as well as impartially. Obstinate offenders might occasionally refuse to comply, but had eventually to submit. In spite of the apparent harshness of some of the methods of subduing proud sinners, tenderness was not infrequently manifested for the feelings of transgressors, and also a reluctance to take extreme steps. Usually one or more members of a kirk session were magistrates, ready enough to support ecclesiastical authority with civil power and penalties. The fear of excommunication, or the desire to have their children baptized, made some culprits willing, even anxious, to submit to discipline and face the ordeal of the penitent stool. The Kirk Session of St Andrews ordained in 1594 that all those appointed by the Session to make public humiliation should attend “the exercise of the Catechism” to learn the doctrine of true repentance, so that, when they came to the stool, they might answer whatever questions about repentance the minister would put to them.
Yet some sinners uttered “proud and quarrelling speeches, testifying thereby the pride of their hearts and the little regard to God and discipline”. It was resolved that such offenders should be repelled for the time being, and imprisoned till they showed another attitude. Some were so hardened in iniquity that the kirk session had to forbid them to bring a sword or gun to the stool of repentance, or to come before the session with such arms.
The stool of repentance was not confined to Scotland. In England, Archbishop Grindal said, “Let the offender be set directly over against the pulpit during the sermon or homily . . . It is very requisite that the preacher, in some place of his sermon, or the curate after the end of the homily, remaining still in the pulpit, should publicly interrogate the offenders, whether they do confess their fault, and whether they do truly repent.” Some of the means taken to humiliate offenders may seem to us absurd, but they might give a very different impression to the Scots of the sixteenth century.
For 20 years the Church of Scotland had no presbyteries, nevertheless its government was Presbyterian in spirit. The first General Assembly was held in December 1560 and usually it met twice a year thereafter. From the first, kirk sessions were subject to the general assembly. There were so few ministers that it was simply impossible to set up presbyteries at the beginning, but their germ may be traced in the weekly meeting called the exercise, prescribed in the Book of Order. The spirit of parity was so strong that no evidence of a moderator has been found in the earlier general assemblies.
In the Book of Discipline three permanent offices are recognised: ministers, elders and deacons – and two temporary ones: readers and superintendents. Owing to the great dearth of ministers, the two temporary offices were at that time absolutely necessary. The readers were intended to supply congregations for whom ministers could not be found, and were to be chosen from “the most apt men that distinctly can read” the prayers in the Book of Common Order and the Scriptures. When they showed that they had qualifications enough, they were to be promoted to the ministry.
The scarcity of qualified preachers was so great that if all the ablest men had been settled in particular towns or parishes, there would not only have been widespread murmuring among the people, but the salvation of many might have been endangered for lack of the gospel. Therefore the framers of the Book of Discipline say, “We have thought it a thing most expedient for this time” that 10 or 12 superintendents should be selected and each set over a province “to plant and erect churches, to set order and appoint ministers”. They were not to be suffered to live in idleness as the bishops had done, but they were to be preachers themselves, preaching at least thrice every week, examining into “the life, diligence, and behaviour of the ministers” and the manners of the people, not staying more than 20 or 30 days in one place, and not more than three or four months in the principal town of their residence.
If found negligent in any of his duties, a superintendent was to be deposed; and he was subject to the censure and correction of the ministers and elders, not only of his chief town, but also of the whole province of which he was overseer. In this respect there was a radical difference between the office of a hierarchical bishop and that of a superintendent, and there were important distinctions. In the Episcopal Church, only bishops have the power of ordination, but a superintendent could be set apart to his office by a single minister. Calderwood pointed out how the two offices differed in 13 ways, and Brown of Wamphray pointed out as many as 24.
It has been suggested that, although the office of superintendent was proposed only as a temporary expedient, there may have been an intention from the first to develop it into that of a hierarchical bishop. This suggestion would have been more plausible if there had not been bishops in the Church that was overthrown. In the Book of Common Order, the office of doctor is recognised as scriptural, but the duties as defined there are not prelatic. In short, while Prelacy is not expressly condemned in the Book of Common Order, in the Book of Discipline, or in the Confession of Faith, no room is left for it. No form of Prelacy was a blessing to Scotland; and, at the present day, the prelates of England are doing wondrously little to counteract the pernicious ritualism which is sapping their Church.
The office of doctor corresponds to teacher in Ephesians 4:11. The Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology states that “the Reformation doctor is best represented in the non-pastor teacher of theology”. “Pastors and teachers” may be seen as forming one office.
The elders were to assist the minister in all the public affairs of the Church, especially in looking after the behaviour of the people; they were also to take heed “to the life, manners, diligence, and study of their ministers”. So the Book of Discipline declares, and if a minister was worthy of admonition, the elders were to admonish him; if worthy of correction, they were to correct him; if worthy of deposition they, with consent of the Church and superintendent, might depose him. Deacons were to gather the alms of the Church and distribute them. Both elders and deacons were to be elected yearly, “lest, that by long continuance of such officers, men presume upon the liberty of the Church”, but they might be re-elected. Those nominated for election were to be “men of best knowledge in God’s Word, of cleanest life, men faithful, and of most honest conversation”.Later, ministers could only face discipline at presbyteries, which of course included elders. Also the annual election of elders and deacons came to an end.
Presbyteries were not set up throughout the land until 1581, but the commissioners of the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly said that the Reformers of Scotland intended “from the beginning the government of the Church by assemblies and presbyteries, although they could not attain that perfection . . . in the infancy of reformation, but gave place to necessity”.