Book Description

Excerpt from the opening chapter: "Although the parliament had abolished the papal jurisdiction and worship, and ratified the protestant doctrine, as laid down in the Confession of Faith, the reformed church was not yet completely organized in Scotland. Hitherto the Book of Common Order, used by the English church at Geneva, had been generally followed as the rule of public worship and discipline. But this having been compiled for a single congregation, and for one that consisted chiefly of men of education, was found inadequate for the use of an extensive church, composed of a multitude of confederated congregations. Our reformers were anxious to provide the means of religious instruction to the whole people in the kingdom; but they were very far from approving of the promiscuous admission of persons of all descriptions to the peculiar privileges of the church of Christ. From the beginning, they were sensible of the great importance of ecclesiastical discipline, to the prosperity of religion, the maintenance of order, and the preservation of sound doctrine and morals. In the petition presented to parliament in August, the establishment of this was specially requested.4 And Knox, who had observed the great advantages which attended the observance of a strict discipline at Geneva, and the manifold evils which resulted from the want of it in England, insisted very particularly on this topic, in the discourses which he delivered from the book of Haggai during the sitting of parliament.5 The difficulties which the reformed ministers had to surmount, before they could accomplish this important object, began to present themselves at this early stage of their progress. When it is considered, that Calvin was subjected to a sentence of banishment from the senate of Geneva, and exposed to a popular tumult, before he could prevail on the citizens to submit to ecclesiastical discipline,6 we need not be surprised at the opposition which our reformers met with in their endeavours to introduce it into Scotland. Knox's warm exhortations on this head were at first disregarded; he had the mortification to find his plan of church polity derided as a 'devout imagination, ' by some of the professors of the reformed doctrine;7-and the parliament dissolved without coming to any decision on this important point.