matters of property and are not members of church courts. Neither superintendent nor reader now appears; all the functions of bishops and superintendents are vested in the elderships, or church courts, and it is urged that the parts which still remain in Scotland of the old system should be cleared away and the sole jurisdiction of the kirk, as then constituted, recognized. The assembly is to have the right to fix its own time of meeting, and its decision in matters ecclesiastical is not to be subject to any review. Kirk-sessions and presbyteries are not named, but the principles are clearly laid down on which these institutions were to rest.
By committing herself to this system the Church of Scotland established between herself and the Church of England a division which became more and more apparent and was the cause of much of her subsequent sufferings. It is no doubt strange that she should have endured so much Presbyterian principle. not for any great Christian principle, but for a question of church government. On the other hand, Presbyterianism stood in Scottish history for freedom, and for the rights of the middle and lower classes against the crown and the aristocracy; and it might not have been held with such tenacity or proved so incapable of compromise but for the opposition and persecution of the three Stuart kings. The history of the Scottish church for a century after the date of the Book of Discipline is that of a religious struggle between the people and the crown.
For some years after its inception Presbyterianism carried all before it. The presbyteries came quickly into existence; that of Edinburgh dates from 1580. In that year it was found that there were 924 parishes in Scotland, but not nearly all supplied with ministers; it was proposed that there should be 50 presbyteries (in 1910 there are 84) and 400 ministers. A great part of the country, especially in the north and west, had not yet been reached by the Reformation. At this time began the long series of attempts made by James VI. in the direction of curbing Presbyterian liberty and of the restoration of Episcopacy. In 1584 were passed the acts called the Black Acts, which made it treason to speak ill of the bishops, declared the king to be supreme in all causes and over all persons, thus subverting the jurisdiction of the church, and made all conventions illegal except those sanctioned by the king. The bishops were to do what had hitherto been done by the assembly and presbyteries, and no attacks were to be made at religious meetings on the king or council. Other acts followed by which the episcopate was strengthened, though the act of 1587 annexing the temporalities of the bishops to the crown, while fatal to the old episcopate, made the prospects of the new more doubtful. In 1588 a change took place. A Roman Catholic rising threw James into the arms of the kirk; in 1592 the acts of 1584 were abrogated, the Second Book of Discipline legalized and Presbytery established. The church was at the time very powerful, the people generally sympathizing with her system, and her assemblies being attended by many of the nobles and the foremost men, Discipline was strict; the temper of the church was in accordance with the Old rather than the New Testament.
Another sudden change took place a few years later, James falling out of humour with the church on the question of the restoration of the Roman Catholic lords and angered by the free criticism of some of the ministers. His Basilicon Doron, published in 1599, shows a determination to make the church episcopal. With this end assemblies, from which Melville was excluded, and which were otherwise tampered with and terrorized, were got to agree that a number of ministers should sit in parliament, and to surrender the assembly's right of meeting. On his accession to the throne of England in 1603 James entered on a new set of attempts to assimilate the Scottish church to that of England. Melville was brought to London, imprisoned and sent abroad; other ministers who had acted or spoken too freely were banished. The powers of the bishops were increased, and their brethren brought in various ways under subjection to them, and in 1609 two courts of high commission were set up by the royal authority with plenary powers to enforce conformity to the new arrangements. In 1610 three ministers were called to London to be consecrated as bishops, as if there had till now been no bishops in Scotland; these on their return consecrated ten others. In 1612 the act of 1592 which established Presbytery was rescinded, and Episcopacy became the legal church system of Scotland.
In all this it was the position and rights of the clergy that were assailed; and James showed kindness to the church in seeking to secure that stipends should be paid and that new churches should be provided where required. The people had been less interfered with; the change Articles of Perth. of church government involved no change in the conduct of worship. But the articles passed by the packed assembly of Perth in 1618 touched on the religious habits and postures of the people, and in this it soon appeared that a crisis had been reached. These famous articles were: (1) That the communion should be received kneeling; (2) That it might be administered in private; (3) That baptism might be in the home; (4) That children of eight should be taken to the bishop for examination and his blessing; (5) That Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Whitsunday should be observed. These articles were opposed in parliament and were strongly resented throughout the country. When Charles became king in 1625 he at once let it be known that the Articles of Perth were not to be abrogated, and that no meeting of the assembly was to be allowed. During the first years of his reign he was occupied in other directions; but when he came to Scotland in 1633 to be crowned, Laud came with him, and though like his father he showed himself kind to the clergy in matters of stipend, and adopted measures which caused many schools to be built, he also showed that in the matter of worship the policy of forcing Scotland into uniformity with England was to be carried through with a high hand. A book of canons and constitutions of the church which appeared in 1636, instead of being a digest of acts of assembly, was English in its ideas, dealt with matters of church furniture, exalted the bishops and ignored the kirk-session and elders. The liturgy was ordered to be used, which had not yet appeared, but which proved to be a version, with somewhat higher doctrine, of the Anglican Common Prayer. The introduction of this service book in St Giles's Church, Edinburgh, on the 16th of July 1637, occasioned the tumult of which Jenny Geddes will always figure as the heroine. National covenant. The sentiment was echoed throughout Scotland. Petitions against the service book and the book of canons poured in from every quarter; the tables or committee formed to forward the petition rapidly became a powerful government at the head of a national movement, the action of the crown was temporizing, and on the 28th of February the National Covenant was signed in the famous scene in Greyfriars church and churchyard. This document consisted of three parts: (1) A covenant signed by King James and his household in 1580, to uphold Presbyterianism and to defend the state against Romanism; (2) A recital of all the acts of parliament passed in the reigns of James and Charles in pursuance of the same objects; and (3) The covenant of nobles, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers and commons to continue in the reformed religion, to defend it and resist all contrary errors and corruptions. The Covenant was no doubt an act of revolt against legal authority, and can only be justified on the ground that the crown had for many years acted oppressively and illegally in its attempt to coerce Scotland into a religious system alien to the country, and that the subjects were entitled to free themselves from tyranny. The crown was unable either to check the popular movement or to come to any compromise with it, and the Glasgow assembly of 1638, the first free assembly that had met for thirty years, proceeded to make the church what the Covenant required. A clean sweep was made of the legislation of the preceding period; the five articles of Perth, the service book and book of canons and the court of high commission were all condemned. The bishops were tried not for being bishops but on exaggerated charges of false doctrine and loose living; and all were deposed from the ministry. Many ministers were also deposed on the charge of Arminianism. It was by an assembly that the second reformation was effected; but the assembly contained the most
