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76

CONFESSION OF FAITH.

a Confession of the Faith of Scotland for the future.

This was done in four days. The Lords of the Articles had been chosen, the Spiritual by the Temporal, the burgesses by themselves. "The two old bishops are none of the [Lords of the] Articles." 18 In fact, the "Spiritual" Lords now included laymen, like Lord James and others, holders of Church lands and titles. The Confession seems to have been ready about August 15, and the Archbishop of St Andrews was permitted to have a copy. The document had been first submitted to Lethington and Wynram, men of this world. Randolph says that they "mitigated the austerity of many words and sentences, which sounded to proceed rather of some evilconceived opinion than of any sound judgment. The author" (observe the singular) "of this work had also put in this treaty a title or chapter of the obedience that subjects owe unto their magistrates." Lethington and Wynram "gave their advice to leave it out." 19 Knox prints this chapter (xxiv.) While acknowledging the civil rulers as of divine institution, it is announced to be their duty to put down the old Church, "suppressing of idolatry and superstition." To resist the Supreme Power ("when doing that which appertains to his charge") is to resist God's ordinance. It follows, apparently, that to resist a ruler who does not put down idolatry, is legitimate enough. The consequence, for Mary Stuart, is obvious. 20

Randolph's remark on this important point is perplexing. By Knox's account, Wynram was one of the makers of the Confession; why, then, should he help Lethington to amend it? 21 Again, the chapter on the Magistrate still stands in Knox's published Confession. Dr Mitchell suggested that the draft of the chapter may have contained something as to the limits of obedience ; as, practically, it still does. In a Genevan formula we are not to obey the ruler if he commands what God forbids-that is, of course, whatever we please to say that God forbids. "God is to be obeyed rather than men." In practice this meant that the preachers were to be obeyed rather than the magistrate. Now, though Dr Mitchell does not remark it, this theory of his tallies with Randolph's words as to the peccant chapter: it "contained little less matter in few words than hath been otherwise written more at large." 22 Randolph may here refer to one of the Genevan books. Knox, of course, acted later, in opposition to Mary, on the Genevan maxim. The articles on Baptism and the Sacrament, as Mr Tytler

CIRCULAR REASONING.

77

remarks, closely follow the Articles of Edward VI. The general complexion, as Dr Mitchell shows, is of the purest Geneva. Into the theology we cannot enter deeply. "We utterly abhor the blasphemy of those that affirm that men who live according to equity and justice shall be saved, what religion so ever they have professed," is one sweeping statement. The old Church is "that horrible harlot, the Kirk Malignant."

As to the interpretation of Scripture, the article is a reasoning in a circle. "We dare not receive and admit any interpretation which directly repugneth to any principal point of our faith," for our faith is based on our own interpretation of the Scripture. Interpretation "appertaineth to the Spirit of God," who, we presume, has officially guided Knox and Calvin and other framers of our faith, a fact which, of course, needed to be proved. On this point hinged the later troubles of James VI. with the preachers, who claimed to interpret by direct inspiration. As to ceremonies; such as men have devised "are but temporal, so may and ought they to be changed, when they rather foster superstition than that they edify the Kirk using the same." On the article as to the Holy Sacrament it were unbecoming to enter, but it certainly bears the impress of a lofty mysticism. The sacrament is no mere commemoration. "The bread which we break is the communion of Christ's body, and the cup which we bless is the communion of his blood." The Confession, according to the learned Dr Mitchell of St Andrews, an admirable and amiable example of the Kirk of the last generation, displays "a liberal and manly, yet reverent and cautious spirit." The liberalism, to a liberal age, seems dubious; and, if the Scots are really a logical people, they may think the logic of chapter xviii. rather womanly than "manly." The authors, indeed, protested that if any man noted anything "contrary to the Scriptures," they were ready to offer him "satisfaction fra the mouth of God, that is, from His Holy Scriptures," or else emendation. But the Parliament swallowed the whole Confession-only some five laymen and three bishops dissenting. With an irony too fine for the occasion, which Lethington reported, and no doubt appreciated, the prelates of St Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, with two peers, said that they "were not ready to speak their judgment, for that they were not sufficiently acquainted with the book." 23 Indeed, if Hamilton, still an "idolater," had read the book to the end, he

78

PERSECUTING ACTS.

would have learned that such as he were to be "tormented for ever, as well in their bodies as in their souls." But perhaps he had not reached this appalling passage. According to Knox, who varies from Randolph, among laymen only Atholl, Somerville, and Borthwick dissented from the expeditious compendium of the counsels of Eternity. They "produced no better reason but 'we will believe as our fathers believed"": not a bad reason for laymen. "The bishops, papistical we mean, spoke nothing." Does this imply that there were other than papistical bishops, or are converted bishops the subject?

The attitude of the prelates and priors was imbecile. If the Convention was legal, they should have attended in force and voted. If it was illegal, they should have protested and withdrawn. It is said that Châtelherault menaced his brother, the Archbishop, with death if he spoke out. The tale is improbable. Nobody could be afraid of Châtelherault, and Randolph represents the brothers as on the most convivial of terms.

On August 24 three Acts were passed. One abolished the Pope's authority, and all jurisdiction by Catholic prelates; another repealed the old statutes in favour of the old Church; the third denounced against celebrants or attendants of the mass, for the first offence, confiscation and corporal punishment; for the second, exile; for the third-death. All magistrates, in town or country, were to be inquisitors of this wicked heresy.24 The tables were turned. Persecution was nominally direr than it had commonly been in the days of the Regent. But in practice things moved otherwise. The Catholic rites were but rarely practised, and then secretly, as a rule. The preachers, Lesley says, urged the enforcement of the penal statutes later; but "the humanity of the nobles must not be passed over in silence, for at this time few Catholics were banished, fewer were imprisoned, none was executed." 25 Secular sense and mercy resisted the furious theocrats. From at least one contemporary monarch Knox and his faction might have learned Christian justice and mercy. That monarch was the Sultan. In a paper of foreign intelligence of November 1561 we read "the Grand Turk commanded" a Christian prisoner "to be let alone, not wishing to bring any from his religion by force." 26

Apparently more Acts were passed in August 1560 than are set down. Bishop Keith, who died in 1756, a prelate of the suffering Church Episcopal in Scotland in Hanoverian days, was naturally a

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Jacobite. From another Jacobite, Father Thomas Innes, of the Scots College in Paris, he received transcripts of certain documents of this period. They were preserved by James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, who left Scotland with the French forces in July, and, later, was Ambassador at Paris for Mary and James VI. An article of the Arrangement of July 6 (xiii.) had ordered that the complaints of injured ecclesiastics were to be heard by Parliament, and that none should disturb them in the enjoyment of their property. Now, from a paper of Beaton's it appears that the churchmen "gave in their bills" for redress, but did not appear to defend and urge their cases. Meanwhile the leases let off collusively by the Archbishop of St Andrews, the Bishops of Dunkeld and Dunblane, the Priors of Whithern and Pluscarden, and the Abbot of Crossraguel were to be nullified, with all such leases granted since March 6, 1558.27 As to clerical property, we have other evidence. Archbishop Hamilton, writing on August 18 to Beaton in Paris, says, "All the bills they keep them as yet, and no man's livings or houses restored, and yours and mine in special. I cannot say what they will do after this." He adds, "All their new preachers persuade openly the nobility, in the pulpit, to . slay all kirkmen that will not concur and take their opinion." They especially urge Châtelherault to slay his brother or imprison him for life. In the same spirit did Goodman, an English preacher in Scotland, urge Cecil "not to suffer the bloody bishops in England to live." 28 Fortunately the

State was not utterly in the hands of the preachers.

As to the non-appearance of the Scottish bishops to urge before Parliament their claims to their property, on August 28 the Archbishop's factor, Archibald, wrote to say that, on the last day of the Parliament, the Lords of the Articles called on the bishops, who had all gone away "because they would not subscribe with the Lords of the Articles, and therefore they were called because of their departure." Keith remarks that Knox and Buchanan leave this vague because they had not the skill "to varnish over this dirty job with any appearance of equity." 29 Francis II. regarded the "dirty job" as another infringement of the compact of July 6.

Here we may approach the famous Book of Discipline, though it does not seem yet to have been presented to the Estates. This book, drawn up by Knox and other preachers, must have been finished by August 25, 1560, when Randolph says that it was being translated for Calvin, Beza, Bullinger, and others in Geneva and

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Zurich. Randolph saw that the authors would not accept the Anglican prayer-book, which had for a while been used in Scottish churches, though they did not refuse to consult the English doctors.30 Randolph's opinion was correct. We are now to consider the new

model of the Church, or Kirk, in Scotland. The nature of the Kirk is but little understood in England, yet an organisation which still endures, whether in the Established or the other Churches, successors of that of Knox, deserves attention. We have seen that for a while the Prayer-Book of Edward VI. was used, possibly with modifications, in Scotland. But Knox's revised opinion of that work is expressed in a letter of April 6, 1559, to Mrs Locke. He says that he will never counsel any man to use the English Prayer-Book. It is vitiated by "diabolical inventions," such as crossing at baptism, kneeling at the communion, "mummelling," or singing the Litany, and a relative neglect of preaching. Mr Parson patters his "constrained prayers," and Mr Vicar, "with his wicked companions," is a "mass-monger." 31 In place of the prayer-book, the Book of Discipline of 1560-61 preferred what is often called The Book of Common Order,' which was used by Knox's congregation at Geneva, was based, apparently, on the 'Liturgia Sacra' of Pollanus (itself founded on Calvin's service), and was accepted by the General Assembly of 1564.32 The Order lasted till 1637, when the effort was made to introduce Laud's Liturgy.

As to what has been called "Knox's Liturgy," the Book of Common Order, it is confessedly not a set of "constrained prayers" to be used without deviation, but merely a model or guide. The minister may repeat the prayers, but he may vary at will, saying something "like in effect." Before the sermon he "prayeth for the assistance of God's Holy Spirit, as the same shall move his heart." 33 The doctrine appears to have been that the minister was directly inspired. We read of ministers with "a great gale on them," like the disciples at Pentecost. The writer is informed, by a modern Cameronian, that he has been present when an aged Cameronian preacher seemed to be under this "gale,"-in the psychological phrase his was "automatic speaking."

If I correctly understand Knox's doctrine, the enormous influence in politics which he claimed for the preachers was based on their direct inspiration by the Spirit. A Scottish service then proceeded thus: First, the minister read aloud one of two Confessions, or spoke words "like in effect." No directions are

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