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THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION
[Illustration: [Handwritten: yrs always cordially Alex F. Mitchell]]
THE
SCOTTISH REFORMATION
Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and
Distinctive Characteristics
(Being the Baird Lecture for 1899)
BY THE LATE
ALEXANDER F. MITCHELL, D.D., LL.D.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY
IN ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY
EDITED BY
D. HAY FLEMING, LL.D.
_WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR
BY JAMES CHRISTIE, D.D._
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCC
PREFACE.
Few men have shown more indomitable application to an arduous duty, amid
physical weakness and bodily pain, than did the author of these Lectures
in their preparation and revision. In the MS. there are a goodly number
of additions and minute alterations in his own hand--some of them very
tremulous, some of them in ink, some of them in pencil. He intended to
revise them still more carefully ere they were published; but expressed
the desire that, if he were not spared to do so, I would see them
through the press. The Master, whom he served so long and so faithfully,
having released him from the work he loved so well, and from the
suffering he so patiently endured, the final revision has devolved upon
me.
On the suggestion of Professor Robertson the book has been arranged in
chapters. The sixth lecture having temporarily gone amissing before its
delivery, Dr Mitchell prepared a rescension of it. The original and the
rescension are now combined in chapter x. He intended to devote an extra
lecture to Alesius, and another to Andrew Melville, but unfortunately
was unable. The chapter on Alesius is therefore taken from two of his
class-lectures, some of the longer extracts being thrown into
appendices, and a few passages being slightly compressed. This is at
once the fullest and the best account of Alesius that has yet been
published. The facts concerning Melville in chapter x. are supplemented
to a small extent in the paper quoted in Appendix A.
Comparatively few of the authorities were entered in the MS. when it was
placed in my hands. I have filled in many, and have taken care, in
almost every instance where volume and page are given, to check the
quotations with the originals. My notes, and my additions to Dr
Mitchell's notes, are enclosed within square brackets; but when I have
merely supplied authorities, they are not so distinguished. The list
which he had drawn up of the works of Alesius was partly in an obsolete
form of shorthand, which to me was quite undecipherable. Having been
privileged to examine a good many of these rare treatises in various
public libraries, I have been able, though only to an inconsiderable
degree, to supplement the list; these additions being marked like those
in the notes and other appendices. In revising the Lectures themselves,
I have corrected a number of trifling slips, but have made no alteration
of which Dr Mitchell would not have cordially approved had his attention
been drawn to it.
In preparing the Lectures, Dr Mitchell availed himself of elaborate
articles he had written at various times for periodicals and other
publications. The present volume is valuable in several ways, not the
least of these being that it embodies, on many obscure and important
points, the matured views of one of the most competent and cautious of
historical students--of one who grudged no time and spared no labour in
eliciting and elucidating the truth.
D. H. F.
_December 1899._
[Illustration: (signed) yrs always cordially Alex. F. Mitchell]
THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION CONTENTS.
PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DR MITCHELL xiii
CHAPTER I.
THE NATURE AND NEED OF THE REFORMATION 1
CHAPTER II.
PATRICK HAMILTON 19
CHAPTER III.
THE OPPRESSED AND THE OPPRESSORS 34
CHAPTER IV.
GEORGE WISHART 56
CHAPTER V.
KNOX AS LEADER OF OUR REFORMATION 79
CHAPTER VI.
THE OLD SCOTTISH CONFESSION OF 1560 99
CHAPTER VII.
THE BOOK OF COMMON ORDER 123
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST BOOK OF DISCIPLINE 144
SECT. I. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH 145
II. THE DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH 162
III. THE PREROGATIVES AND DUTIES OF CHURCH MEMBERS 169
IV. EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG AND UNIVERSITY REFORM 174
V. CARE OF THE POOR 179
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN KNOX 184
CHAPTER X.
THE SECOND BOOK OF DISCIPLINE 214
CHAPTER XI.
ALESIUS 239
APPENDICES.
A. THE PÆDAGOGIUM, OR ST MARY'S COLLEGE, ST ANDREWS 285
B. CITATIO PATRICII HAMILTON 289
C. CARDINAL BETOUN'S INCONTINENCE 292
D. CONDITIONS ON WHICH THE USE OF THE CHURCH OF THE WHITE LADIES
AT FRANKFORT WAS GRANTED TO THE ENGLISH EXILES 294
E. THE THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL OPINIONS OF ALESIUS 295
F. THE DREAM OR VISION OF ALESIUS CONCERNING THE DECAPITATION OF
ANNE BOLEYN 297
G. THE DEPARTURE OF ALESIUS FROM ENGLAND 298
H. ALESIUS' INVITATION OF MELANCHTHON TO HIS DAUGHTER'S WEDDING 300
I. THE WORKS OF ALESIUS 301
* * * * *
ADDENDA 307
INDEX 311
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF
THE VERY REV. ALEXANDER FERRIER MITCHELL, D.D., LL.D., PROFESSOR OF
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN ST MARY'S COLLEGE, ST ANDREWS.
A pathetic and almost melancholy interest attaches to this volume of the
Baird Lectures. Their scholarly and accomplished author may be said to
have entered on the last stage of the malady to which he succumbed when
they were read for him in Blythswood Parish Church, Glasgow, by his
friend and former student, Professor Robertson, the closing one, indeed,
having been delivered but a few days before his death. In proof of the
deep interest which he took in the subject of these Lectures, and of his
desire to present them in as perfect a form as possible, it may also be
mentioned that he employed his time in revising them while confined to
bed during the protracted and painful illness through which he passed.
The editing of them he intrusted to another friend, Dr Hay Fleming of St
Andrews, with whom he had much in common--similarity of tastes and
interest in the same literary pursuits having led to an intercourse
between them which ripened into mutual confidence and esteem. Had
Professor Mitchell lived to see the work through the press himself,
there is hardly room to doubt that, as in the case of most of his other
publications, additional explanatory and supplementary notes on obscure
points would have been appended by him. As it is, the editor in
executing his task has done what he could in this respect.
When the decease of the venerable Professor took place at St Andrews
towards the end of March of this year, it was felt that the Church of
Scotland had been bereft not only of one of her ablest and most trusted
leaders, but of one of the wisest and warmest friends of her missions;
and the many tributes paid to his memory, both from the pulpit and in
the press, were all expressive of the high regard in which he was held,
and of the sense of public loss caused by his removal. But the loss was
not that of his own Church alone, nor of the University with which his
name had been so long and so honourably associated. There are those in
other communions who had learned to look upon him as "a master of
Israel," and in all Presbyterian Churches especially he was recognised
as one of the ablest and most learned exponents of the principles which
they hold in common, and as one of the most earnest defenders of "the
faith once delivered to the saints."
As many of those who are familiar with Professor Mitchell's writings may
know little or nothing of his personal history, it has been suggested
that a short biographical sketch of him would form an appropriate
introduction to this posthumous volume. The particulars woven together
in the following narrative have been collected from various sources,
some of them having been furnished by members of his own family.
Alexander Ferrier Mitchell was born on 10th September 1822 in the old
ecclesiastical city of Brechin, with which his ancestors had had an
honourable connection for several generations. His grandfather,
Alexander Mitchell, and his father, David Mitchell, were both known as
Convener Mitchell, probably as having succeeded each other in the
convenership of the local guilds. On the maternal side he was descended
from another Brechin family, some of the members of which had in their
day served in various capacities abroad, one of his granduncles,
Alexander Ferrier, after whom he was named, having been a doctor in
India, and another, Captain David Ferrier, "a brave and bold
sailor,"--in memory of whom there is a tablet on the east door of the
old Cathedral,--having made a voyage round the world in the Dolphin, in
which also he ran the blockade in time of war into some of the French
ports. Elizabeth, daughter of James Ferrier at Broadmyre, the
Professor's mother, was a woman of good judgment and deep piety, and
from her he seems to have inherited some of the most prominent features
of his character. He was one of a family of three, his brother and
sister having died, the former at Bloemfontein in South Africa, many
years ago. In childhood he had a narrow escape, a cart having run over
his body. He was picked up and carried home by the minister of the
Episcopal church. As a boy he passed through more than one severe
illness, and when taken for a change to Glenesk one summer he was
described by a sympathetic friend as "a deein' laddie." To a mother's
unwearied care and attention he owed, under the divine blessing, the
recovery of his health, and to a mother's religious training he owed in
no small degree that knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and that pious
disposition by which he was distinguished from his earliest years. His
elementary education he received at the grammar-school of his native
town, and when fifteen years of age he proceeded to St Andrews to
prosecute his studies with a view to the Christian ministry.
In those days the journey thither was not made with the comfort and
facility with which it is now accomplished; and the Professor himself
has told how, on landing from the North off the ferry-boat at Newport,
he walked all the way to St Andrews--a distance of eleven miles--along
with the carrier's son by the side of the cart which conveyed his
luggage to its destination. Widely different as were the future careers
of those two youths, there were various interesting points of contact in
their lives, the one becoming an eminent doctor in the University, and
the other filling the honourable position of a magistrate in the ancient
city, while both were associated as members of the kirk-session of the
Town Church.
At the very outset of his career at St Andrews the young student from
Brechin gained the highest distinction, having won the first bursary
open to students entering the University, as the result of a competitive
examination in classical scholarship. Throughout his course, both in
Arts and Divinity, he maintained a highly honourable place in all the
classes, distinguishing himself particularly by proficiency in Hebrew
and other Oriental languages; while he won the commendation of his
professors and the esteem of his fellow-students not more by his
attainments in learning than by the sterling integrity of his character
and the example of his consistent Christian life. Among his
contemporaries at College were not a few who in after-life rose to
prominent positions in the Church, one of these being his future
colleague, the late Principal Tulloch, with whom he continued to have
most cordial relations during a lifelong friendship.
On completing the usual curriculum of study at the University, Mr
Mitchell was in 1844 licensed to preach the Gospel, and after acting for
some time as an assistant, first to the minister of the parish of Meigle
and then to the minister of the parish of Dundee, he was in 1847
ordained by the Presbytery of Meigle to the pastoral charge of the
parish of Dunnichen in his native county.
The Professor had been no passive spectator of the exciting and
momentous events which were taking place in the Church of Scotland in
the years which immediately preceded and followed his entrance on the
work of the ministry; and in his address as Moderator of the General
Assembly, four decades afterwards, he gives a graphic account of the
impressions made upon him by his visits to the Supreme Court of the
Church during that period of acrimonious controversy and painful
separation. He says: "My first view of the General Assembly was gained
in 1840, where from the public gallery of the Tron Church, in near
proximity to Dr John Ritchie, of the Potterrow (whose thoughts were
already running in the same direction as those of his successors are
now), I listened to the thrilling eloquence of Chalmers, and the calm,
thoughtful utterances of Cook, and witnessed the first of those titanic
encounters between Cunningham and Robertson, which the pen of Hugh
Miller and the histories of the period have made classical. My next
glimpse of the Assembly was in 1843, when, from the students' gallery of
St Andrew's Church, beside my friend William Smith, afterwards of North
Leith, I witnessed that sad sight which was never to fade from our
memories, nor cease to influence the course of our thought and
action--the scene when Welsh, Chalmers, Gordon, and many more good and
devoted ministers, abandoning in despair the contest of ten years,
withdrew from the Church of their fathers, to rear another in which they
hoped to enjoy greater freedom and peace. My next view of the Assembly
was in 1848, when, along with Dr Tulloch, and two or three other college
friends, I took my place for the first time as a member of the House,
and when my old preceptor, then Professor of Church History in St Mary's
College, filled the chair. The Church at that time was but slowly
recovering from the staggering blow she had received in '43, and the
great Dr Robertson was shaping out the splendid scheme which was to
constitute her mission for the immediate future, and give to her the
consciousness and confidence of reviving life. There were plenty of aged
men there, whose lives had been honourably worn out in her service; a
goodly band of young men, with not a little of the ardour and enthusiasm
of youth; not a few of riper years, who, after weary waiting, had at
last been promoted to pastoral charges. But that class which is the
mainstay of a Church--the men who have attained to experience by years
of labour in her service, and are still able to bear the burden and
heat of the day--was more scantily represented."
The young minister, with so many conspicuous gifts and graces, was not
allowed to remain long in the quiet pastoral charge at Dunnichen, where
his ministry had been very acceptable; and in 1848--only one year after
his ordination, and when not more than twenty-six years of age--he was
appointed to the chair of Hebrew in St Mary's College, St Andrews,
through which he had so recently passed as a student. He has himself
told of the cordial welcome which he received from the venerable
Principal Haldane and the other members of the professorial staff, and
of the harmony with which they co-operated in the work of the College.
It was not then a common thing that so young a minister should be called
to occupy such a position of dignity and responsibility, nor was Hebrew
then so popular a branch of study as it has, for various reasons, since
become in our Divinity Halls; but the ability and success with which the
Professor discharged the duties of his chair, and the salutary influence
which he exerted in many ways upon the students, more than justified the
appointment. He was one of the first in Scotland to introduce a
scientific method in the teaching of Hebrew, and his class-room became a
place of very real work, necessitating careful preparation on the part
of the students. Some of these, perhaps, thought him rather exacting,
and the strict discipline which he enforced was not altogether to their
liking; but there were very few who did not value his good opinion, or
who would not have considered it a kind of degradation to incur his
displeasure; while many, imbued with something of his own spirit,
attained under his guidance to such a degree of proficiency in the
knowledge of the sacred tongue as made the reading of the Old Testament
in the original a source of interest and pleasure to them in subsequent
years. Dr William Wright, one of the greatest of Orientalists, was one
of his students, and two others of them are occupants of Hebrew Chairs
in Scottish Universities.
The appointment of the Professor to the Convenership of the Committee on
the Mission to the Jews in 1856 marked a new era in its history, in
respect both of the method of its operations and the field in which
these have ever since been carried on. One of the results of the Crimean
war, which had then but recently closed, was the opening of the Turkish
empire for evangelistic enterprise; and it may be said that the
Professor laid the foundations of the Mission in the Levant at the
several stations occupied by the Church of Scotland, which are now known
not only as places of great historic interest but as important centres
of missionary activity in which the Church bears an honourable part. In
the autumn of 1857 he undertook a journey to the East at the request of
the Committee, and in the course of his travels there visited not only
the principal Turkish cities on the coast, but Jerusalem and other
places in Palestine and Syria, collecting information with a view to
find openings for the planting of the Mission at suitable stations in
addition to the two which had been already occupied. The report which he
presented on his return led by degrees to a great expansion of the
Mission, and several of his own students and others were through his
influence induced to enter the service of the Committee. With many other
claims on his attention, he ungrudgingly gave up a great part of his
time to the administration of the affairs of the Mission, over which for
nineteen years he continued to preside with great zeal and wisdom,
pressing its claims on the members of the Church, and guiding and
encouraging the missionaries by an intelligent and sympathetic interest
in their arduous work. When in 1875 he retired from the Convenership,
the General Assembly expressed its sense of the value of the
distinguished services which he had rendered to the Church in this
department of her work in the following terms: "The Assembly are
satisfied that the present prosperity of the Jewish Mission, and the
remarkable progress which it has made, has been mainly owing to the
great labour, the learning, enthusiasm, and warm and intelligent
Christian interest which Dr Mitchell has devoted during these years to
the cause of Jewish conversion in connection with the Church of
Scotland." After his retirement from the Convenership he but seldom
attended the meetings of the Committee, for the reason, as he was once
heard to say, that he did not wish to appear to hamper his successors;
but he never ceased to take a deep interest in the Mission, and none
rejoiced more than he in its growing prosperity.
While the Professor still occupied the Hebrew Chair, he had shown a
special aptitude for another branch of learning, in which he was yet to
make a reputation for himself in the Churches not only of Britain but of
America. In 1866 he published a lecture, primarily addressed to his
students, on 'The Westminster Confession of Faith: A Contribution to the
Study of its Historical Relations and to the Defence of its Teaching,'
which, as a reply to views then current in certain quarters, attracted
no little notice at the time of its publication, and which is not only
of special interest as illustrating his theological standpoint, and the
calm and temperate, yet earnest and vigorous, manner in which he could
defend it, but is of permanent value as a contribution to the literature
of the subject with which it deals. In the following year he published
'The Wedderburns and their Work, or the Sacred Poetry of the Scottish
Reformation in its Relation to that of Germany'--a subject which was
treated by him much more fully in one of his most recent works.
The Professor was known to possess a most extensive and accurate
knowledge of Church History in general, and of Scottish Church History
in particular; and when in 1868 he was called to occupy the Chair of
Ecclesiastical History in St Mary's College, the appointment was hailed
with satisfaction alike by the University and the Church. With an
absorbing interest in his subject, and with the true instinct of the
historian, he was most painstaking in ascertaining historical facts,
never reaching his conclusions but as the result of patient and careful
investigation; and those who knew him intimately can tell how little he
grudged the trouble of a journey to Edinburgh or London, or even of an
occasional excursion to the Continent, in order to prosecute his
researches in libraries there with the view of verifying a statement, or
of obtaining indubitable evidence on some controverted point. Besides
those who had the privilege of listening to his prelections from the
professorial chair, there are many in the Churches on both sides of the
Atlantic who have profited by his great erudition; and his published
writings, which all bear the impress of a master-hand, will always be
reckoned standard works in Ecclesiastical History.
It is no part of the purpose of this notice to describe his various
works in detail, but the mere enumeration of them will show what a life
of unremitting study he lived. Besides those already referred to, he
edited, along with the late Dr Struthers, in 1874, 'The Minutes of the
Westminster Assembly from November 1644 to March 1649,' to which is
prefixed an elaborate Historical Introduction written by himself; in
1882 he wrote a 'Historical Notice of Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism'
(first printed at St Andrews in 1551), prefixed to Paterson's
black-letter reprint of the same; in 1883 he published his Baird
Lecture, 'The Westminster Assembly: Its History and Standards'; in 1886
he published 'The Catechisms of the Second Reformation'; in 1888 he
edited, for the Scottish Text Society, 'The Richt Vay to the Kingdome of
Heuine,' by John Gau, the earliest known prose-treatise in the Scottish
dialect setting forth the doctrines of the Reformers; and in 1897, for
the same Society, 'The Gude and Godlie Ballads,' reprinted from the
edition of 1567, with a full and most interesting Introduction. For the
Scottish History Society he also edited in 1892 and 1896, along with the
writer of this sketch, two volumes of 'The Records of the Commissions of
the General Assembly,' covering the period 1646-1650, from the original
manuscript in the Assembly library, with an introduction, notes, and
appendices by himself. To these must be added the present volume of the
Baird Lecture, 'The Scottish Reformation.'
The Baird Lecture on the Westminster Assembly was received with great
favour in America as well as in this country, and a new edition of it
was published at Philadelphia in 1897, in a notice of which in the
'Presbyterian and Reformed Review' the following statement occurs: "The
book at once took its rank as the most trustworthy and sympathetic
account of the Westminster Standards in existence, and rapidly ran out
of print. The public is to be congratulated that Dr Mitchell has
permitted himself to be persuaded by the [Presbyterian] Board to revise
the text and allow a new edition to be issued to meet the present
demand. The revision does not much alter the text. A phrase is more
felicitously turned here or rendered a shade more exact or emphatic
there; a few additional references are added in the notes; and a few
additional citations and remarks incorporated in them: that is about
all. But so good a book needed only these little touches of betterment."
The Professor also contributed to various journals and encyclopædias
many important articles, chiefly on historical topics relating to
Scotland, which, if collected, would form a volume of miscellaneous
papers of great interest and value. The most important of these are
included in the subjoined list: In the 'British and Foreign Evangelical
Review,' January 1872, "Our Scottish Reformation: Its Distinctive
Characteristics and Present-Day Lessons," pp. 87-128; October 1875, "Dr
Merle D'Aubigné on the Reformation in Scotland," pp. 736-760; October
1876, "Killen's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland," pp. 713-741: in the
'Catholic Presbyterian,' March 1879, "Calvin and the Psalmody of the
Reformed Churches": in the 'Scottish Church,' November 1886, "St Andrews
in Covenanting Times": in the 'Year-Book of the Church of Scotland,'
1886, "Brief Sketch of the History of the Reformed Church of Scotland":
in 'St Giles' Lectures,' First Series, 1880-81, "Pre-Reformation
Scotland"; and in Fourth Series, 1883-84, "The Primitive or Apostolic
and Sub-Apostolic Church," being the first of the lectures entitled,
"The Churches of Christendom." To Dr Schaff's Encyclopædia he
contributed separate articles on "St Columba," "The Culdees," "Patrick
Hamilton," "Iona," and "The Keltic Church"; and to the 'Presbyterian and
Reformed Review,' published at Philadelphia, he contributed a review of
Dr Hume Brown's 'John Knox.' Besides many Reports on various matters
presented to the General Assembly, he issued for special purposes a
"Statement regarding the Eldership," and a "List of Acts of the Scottish
Parliament, and of Acts, Overtures, and Resolutions of the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland, adopted at various times for the
Acknowledgment of the True Reformed Protestant Religion, the Maintenance
of Sound Doctrine, and the Subscription of the Confessions of Faith of
1560 and 1647." When at Geneva, on one of his visits to the Continent,
he prepared for private circulation, from the original, which is still
preserved among the historical treasures in the Hotel de Ville, "Livre
Des Anglois, or Register of the English Church at Geneva under the
pastoral care of Knox and Goodman, 1555-1559," with a Prefatory Notice
and a Facsimile of pp. 49, 50. To this list of his minor works may be
added a sermon on "The Unsearchable Riches of Christ," published in
1879.
The Professor accorded a generous and helpful sympathy to those who were
workers in the field in which he laboured himself with so great
assiduity and success; and he was not only a member both of the Scottish
History Society and of the Scottish Text Society, but took an active
interest in their affairs. He was also one of the representatives of the
Church of Scotland in the General Presbyterian Alliance from the date of
its formation, and took part in the business of all its General
Councils, at the first of which, held at Edinburgh in 1877, he laid on
the table a paper which he had drawn up on "The Harmony between the
Bibliology of the Westminster Confession and that of the earlier
Reformed Confessions, exhibited in parallel columns." He was appointed
Convener of the Committee on the Desiderata of the History of the
Presbyterian Churches; and at the following General Council, held at
Philadelphia in 1880, it fell to him, in consequence of the death of
Principal Lorimer, who was Convener of the British section of the
Committee on Creeds and Formulas of Subscription, to give in the report
containing "Answers to Queries regarding Creeds and Confessions." The
Answers as regards the Church of Scotland, which had been prepared by
himself, are to be found in the Report of the Proceedings of the
Council, pp. 969-984. When in America he also delivered a course of
lectures at Alleghany. His connection with the Alliance brought him into
close contact with some of the leading Presbyterian divines of Britain
and America, with whom his opinions on the history of the doctrine,
worship, and government of the Church carried great weight; and Dr
Schaff has acknowledged his obligations to him, among others, in his
well-known work entitled 'The Creeds of Christendom.'
In 1885 the Church showed her appreciation of the Professor's character
and work by electing him to the Moderatorship of the General Assembly,
an office which he filled with a union of dignity and authority which
reflected honour upon the Church. If there are parties in the Church of
Scotland, he never identified himself with any of them, and had learned
to call no man master but Christ. He knew his own mind, and could give
forcible expression to his convictions when occasion required. Naturally
of an unassuming disposition and unobtrusive manners, he never courted
popularity nor sought to thrust his opinions upon others; and it was for
this reason, perhaps, that he was deferred to even by those whose views
were in some respects widely divergent from his. It was doubtless for
this reason also, as well as for others, that he wielded so great an
influence in the counsels of the Church, and probably few men had more
to do than he with the shaping of her policy in recent years. In paying
a tribute to his memory at a meeting of the Presbytery of Edinburgh a
few days after his decease, the Very Rev. Dr Scott of St George's said
that "by Professor Mitchell's death the Church had lost a laborious,
faithful, successful, and honoured minister and professor, and perhaps
one of the soundest and wisest counsellors that the Church ever had. He
was a man who had friends in all the Churches. He knew how powerfully
his influence had told in the Church--always for conciliation, not only
so far as those without their own Church were concerned, but those
within the Church also. Had it not been for Dr Mitchell's influence the
relaxation of the formula regarding the subscription of elders would
never have been carried through."
A man of a very catholic spirit, and a lover of peace and concord, the
Professor, like many others who longed for a comprehensive union of the
Scottish Churches, would willingly have made all reasonable concessions
for the attainment of so desirable an object. But he was too loyal a son
of the Church of Scotland to consent to any unworthy compromise, and in
the hour of danger no one was more ready than he to exert all the
influence at his command in her defence. Readers of Dr Boyd's
'Twenty-five Years of St Andrews' may remember the account there given
of the impression made by the Professor's sermon in the Town Church in
the height of the contest in 1885, when the question of Disestablishment
was brought so prominently before the electors of the St Andrews Burghs.
Dr Boyd says: "It had been intimated at the services during the day that
Dr Mitchell, our Professor of Church History, would lecture in the
parish church in the evening on 'Some aspects of the Church Question
deserving of consideration in the present crisis.' Dr Mitchell was that
year Moderator of the Kirk: and he very seldom preaches. The church was
filled by a great congregation. I should not in the least degree have
been surprised to hear Dr Mitchell preach wisely and devoutly: that is
his usual way. But it did surprise me to find that man of calm and
well-balanced mind fire up into a pathos and vehemence which I have
rarely seen equalled and never surpassed. The question of
disestablishment had been raised: and one was made to realise how it
stirs the blood of good men here. And not merely were there this evening
a fire, a keenness, a power of stirring a multitude to the depth of
their nature, which are rare indeed, but an incisive severity of
denunciation which few had expected from that calm, cautious man. And if
the preacher was at white-heat, so was the congregation long before he
was done. Several times there would have been loud applause, had it not
been hushed."
The attitude which the Professor maintained in regard to the doctrine
and worship of the Church was a strictly conservative one, and may be
best described in his own words, taken from an article included in the
list of his minor works. In that article, after quoting the advice
tendered by an eminent minister of the Church of England to a minister
of the Church of Scotland--"Stick by your own Kirk: it is an honest
Kirk, one of the few that has fairly rid itself of sacerdotalism and
ritualism, and you have no cause to be ashamed of it"--he goes on to
say: "The advice is not unneeded in the present day by others than he to
whom it was originally tendered, and I give it this publicity for the
benefit of all whom it may concern. The Reformed Church of Scotland from
the first rid herself of these medieval corruptions, and the attempt to
bring her again under the yoke issued in dire disaster to those who made
it. This surely is no time for the Presbyterian Churches to swerve from
the testimony they have so long and resolutely borne against all such
errors. When we think of the mischief they are now causing in the Church
of England, and the grief they are occasioning to many of her most loyal
sons, rather does it become us to bear more decided testimony to the
truths, that under the New Testament there is but one Priest, who ever
liveth to make intercession for us, and one sacrifice once offered,
which perfects for ever them that are sanctified; that He has not
communicated His priestly office to His ministers either by succession
or delegation, nor authorised them to repeat or continue that sacrifice
which is the propitiation for sin; and that He has neither Himself
imposed, nor warranted others to impose, a load of 'fondly' invented
ceremonies in His worship."
If the Professor thus strenuously opposed sacerdotalism on the one hand,
he had as little sympathy with Broad Churchism on the other. The
non-natural sense in which the narratives of the New Testament miracles
are understood and interpreted by some of the modern critics he rejected
as subversive of Christian truth, a common saying of his being, "If the
Gospel is not true historically, it is not true at all: 'If Christ be
not raised, your faith is vain'"; and while he mellowed with advancing
years, he never wavered in his deep religious convictions, nor for a
moment relaxed the tenacious grasp which he had of the doctrines of
Christianity as set forth in the standards of the Reformed Churches. One
of his latest sayings was, "I die in the faith which I have always
professed."
From his _Alma Mater_ the Professor had received the degree of D.D. in
1862, and in 1892 the University of Glasgow conferred upon him the
degree of LL.D. in recognition of his eminence as a teacher and an
author. A young minister of the Church, himself one of his most
distinguished students, has drawn a picture of him as he appeared about
the latter of these dates, which is so true to the life that no excuse
is needed for introducing it here. He says: "St Andrews and Professor
Mitchell are inseparable. For forty-four years he has taught in the
University: first the Hebrew Tongue; next the History of the Church of
Christ. As a Professor, Dr Mitchell comes into contact with a
comparatively small number of students. The classes in St Mary's are
diminutive--in some ways a source of much gratification to the writer
and others--consequently he is little known by most men here. Of course,
all are familiar with the Figure pacing the town in the bright of the
forenoon; or, arm-in-arm with a youthful Professor, walking as far as
the Swilcan; or, at a Graduation Ceremony, scanning the audience, if
perhaps he may get a glimpse of some old pupil among the crowd of
interested spectators. For many of his students have risen high: and
some of them have a weight of years to bear. But all are not aware that
in the Church History Class-Room English is spoken as she is nowhere
else in St Andrews. The beautifully rounded and perfectly balanced
sentences, and the elegance of the language, will hardly be excelled. To
make the study of Church History what is called popular is one of the
few impossibilities of life, but there is no man living who can invest
the subject with more interest; for Professor Mitchell is thoroughly up
to date with all his facts, and loses no opportunity of visiting the
great German authorities.... To be reproved in class by the Professor is
not to be desired: to be 'spoken to' in his ante-room still less so.
Many men stand in awe of him--I have always thought unnecessarily so."
The Professor continued to take a warm interest in his students after
they had left the Divinity Hall, and had entered on the work of the
ministry; and when attending the General Assembly he could generally
tell how many of its members had passed through one or other of his
classes in St Mary's College. When he retired from the duties of his
Chair in 1894, the occasion was regarded as affording a suitable
opportunity of giving public expression to the esteem in which he was
held by his friends, and to their grateful appreciation of his services
both to the Church and the University; and in 1895, while the General
Assembly was in session, he was presented, in name of a large number of
his former students and other friends, with an illuminated address, a
cheque for 200 guineas, and his portrait by Sir George Reid--acknowledged
to be one of the best that have yet come from the studio of the
President of the Royal Scottish Academy. The Right Hon. James A.
Campbell of Stracathro, M.P., with whom he had long had intimate
relations, presided at the ceremony and made the presentation. The reply
of the Professor, as containing many interesting reminiscences, and as
showing the view which he took himself of his life and work, is here
inserted _in extenso_. He said:--
"Mr Campbell, I thank you, sir, with all my heart, for the many kind
things--far more kind than I deserve--which you have just said of me,
and for the many kind services which you have rendered to me in the
course of our lifelong friendship; and I thank, with all my heart, you,
my many esteemed friends and pupils, who have united in presenting me
with this address expressive of your warm affection, this speaking
likeness and munificent gift. Kindness far more than I have merited has
followed me all my life through--never more conspicuously than at the
close of my public career; and now in retiring from the professorial
work I loved, and from the College for which almost for half a century I
lived and laboured, it is a consolation to me to know that I carry with
me into my retirement the esteem of so many honoured friends and the
affectionate regard of so many former pupils. Some have been speaking
lately of the loneliness of a Scottish student's college life. I can
only say for myself that the years I spent as a student in St Mary's
College were among the happiest of my life, and that the friendships
then formed within the little band of my fellow-students were among the
most valued and lasting of those I have enjoyed. I have but to name John
Robertson, afterwards minister of Glasgow Cathedral; John Tulloch,
afterwards Principal of St Mary's College; William Milligan, afterwards
Professor of Biblical Criticism in Aberdeen; William Dickson, afterwards
Professor of Divinity in Glasgow; Drs W. H. Gray, Gloag, and Herdman,
and with these some who afterwards joined the Free Church: Dr Thomson,
long at the head of the Free Church Jewish Mission at Constantinople; Dr
Thomas Brown, younger brother of my late colleague, Dr William Brown,
agent for the Turkish Missions Aid Society; and Edward Cross, afterwards
Free Church minister at Monifieth, with whom I laboured in happiest
intercourse in Dundee, he being assistant to the Free Church minister in
the same district of the town when I was assistant to the Parish
minister. When in my twenty-sixth year I returned as a Professor in the
College where so shortly before I had been a student, I can never forget
the kindness with which I was received by my aged instructors there,
especially by Principal Haldane, whose kind counsels were then
invaluable to me, nor the kindness of Professors Duncan and Alexander,
the only two of my instructors remaining in the Old College. St Andrews
about that time had the reputation of being rather a hot place. The
conviction that I was a man of rather placid temper, who would not add
fuel to the flame, I believe weighed considerably with Lord Advocate
Rutherfurd in finally recommending me for the Chair. Within St Mary's
College we were a happy family, and the youth of twenty-six and the two
aged Professors beyond threescore and ten continued to work in unbroken
harmony--the youth deeming it a special privilege to aid the venerable
Principal in his class-work during the last year of his life, as well as
to aid him and his aged colleague in their pulpit work. It was soon
after this that I began to take an active part in Church work, attending
the General Assembly as an elder and as Convener of the Jewish
Mission--doing what I could to reorganise it in Turkey, first in
conjunction with such venerable fathers as Drs Muir, Hunter, Grant, and
James Robertson, and with several brethren nearer my own age, who were
bearing the burden and heat of the day--Drs Crawford, Nicholson, Nisbet,
William Robertson, and Elder Cumming, and such laymen as Sheriff Arkley,
David Smith, Henry Cheyne, John Elder, John Tawse, and the good Edmund
Baxter, all now gone to their rest and their reward. Principal Haldane
was succeeded by my old class-fellow, Principal Tulloch, in harmony with
whom I wrought for thirty years in the College, occasionally taking part
of his work, as I had of his predecessor's, when he was laid aside by
ill-health, and also taking part with him in Church work, especially in
the work of the Anti-Patronage Committee, on whose success so many in
the Church had set their hearts. After his untimely removal, though I
had served for seven or eight years beyond the statutory thirty, I
continued at my post, and in the most kind and cordial relations both in
Church and University work with his successor, Principal Cunningham,
heartily co-operating with him in the repeal of what has been termed the
Black Act of 1711, and in the restitution of the old formula for
ministers and elders, which are now so generally welcomed, and have been
acknowledged by one at least of the three who protested against the
change to be a great boon. I have often spoken of the pleasure I have
had in superintending the work of my students, and my gratification at
the zest with which they took to the study both of Hebrew and Church
History. The circumstances which led to my resignation are already well
known to you all, and I need only say that it was to me a very regretful
necessity. I leave in each of the three other Divinity Faculties at
least one distinguished pupil, and in St Mary's College two who, with
their younger colleagues, I trust will strive to make it more than ever
a School of the Prophets, a nursery for earnest, faithful, scholarly,
and devoted ministers, who shall set high above all passing isms Christ
the personal Saviour, and those great truths as to His divine nature,
incarnation, atoning death, and glorious resurrection, to which the
historic Church of Christ through so many centuries has clung as her
life and strength and joy. Christ before, Christ behind,--according to
St Patrick's prayer,--Christ above, Christ beneath, Christ in the
heart, Christ in the home. I heartily thank you all for your great
kindness, and especially Principal Stewart and Mr Wenley, and one who
once said I had been as a father to him, and of whom I may truly say
that he has been as a son to me."
In 1852 the Professor married the eldest daughter of the late Mr Michael
Johnstone of Archbank, near Moffat, who belonged to an influential
yeoman family that has been connected with Annandale for the last two
hundred years. The late Mr Peter Johnstone, brother of Mrs Mitchell's
father, who was a proprietor as well as a large farmer, is still
remembered as having done a great deal to promote the cause of education
in the district where he resided; and her brother, the late Mr James
Johnstone, was tenant of Bodsbeck farm, which is the scene of the
Ettrick Shepherd's well-known Covenanting story--"The Brownie of
Bodsbeck." How much Mrs Mitchell did to brighten the life and to
minister to the happiness of the Professor can be known only to those
who have had the privilege of being admitted into the inner circle of
their friends, and there are not a few who have very pleasant
reminiscences of delightful intercourse with them in their house at 56
South Street, where the duty of entertaining strangers seemed never to
be forgotten. Their family of four sons and two daughters all survive,
with the exception of the eldest son, Robert Haldane, who died several
years ago in Australia, to which he had emigrated along with his brother
Johnstone.
Probably few are aware that the Professor spent many of his happiest
days, and did much of his literary work, at Gowanpark, his country
residence near Brechin, which, with its charm of seclusion and
restfulness, no one who has visited it can ever forget, and which his
family came to regard as their home almost as much as St Andrews. There
he found relaxation in the interest which he took in the work of his
little farm, which was his own property, and as long as he had health he
enjoyed a ramble among the neighbouring hills, or a walk, varied by an
occasional drive, along the quiet country roads. His home in the
country, however, was with him no mere place of recreation, still less
of idleness, and there, as elsewhere, he never failed to find his chief
source of pleasure in the prosecution of his favourite studies.
When the Professor retired from the duties of his Chair he did not cease
to take an interest in the affairs of the College, of which he was an
ornament while he lived, and with which, as was said in a notice of him
at the time of his death, his name will always be associated--like those
of Andrew Melville, Samuel Rutherford, and others in remote and
troublous times, and that of Principal Tulloch in our own more peaceful
days. Nor did he cease to interest himself in the work of the Church
which he loved so well and had served so faithfully. Perhaps it was to
show his love for the Church as much as to gratify his own feelings
that, amid great bodily infirmity, he undertook the journey to
Edinburgh, in May 1898, to attend the General Assembly. He was unable,
indeed, to be present there more than once or twice, and when on one
occasion he occupied the Moderator's chair for a few minutes, a thrill
of respectful sympathy passed through the House. In a letter written a
few days after his return home he says, "I am very pleased to have been
able to give even such limited attendance," adding, with a touch of
pathos, as if anticipating that the visit would be his last, "in the
fiftieth year since Mr John Tulloch and Alex. F. Mitchell were first
returned as members."
Soon afterwards he removed to his loved retreat at Gowanpark, but his
health did not improve, and he was but seldom able to leave the house.
Most of the letters he wrote at this time, some of them in pencil, with
his head resting on the pillow, were evidently intended to be his
parting words to those to whom they were addressed. In one of these,
written in the middle of September, he says, "For the first fortnight
after I came here I was able to go out of doors, and in my invalid chair
bask in the sun for an hour a-day. I am still keeping my bed in the hope
of being able to return without risk to St Andrews in the end of the
month;" and then, alluding to a subject his interest in which seems to
have helped to keep him alive, he says, "I have got five of my six
Baird Lectures transcribed. Of course I must get some one to read them
for me."
When he returned to St Andrews, the burden of his infirmities grew
heavier, and as the spring approached it was manifest that he was
nearing the end. He was greatly affected by the tidings of the tragic
death of Dr Boyd, who had paid him a visit shortly before his departure
for the south. On the Monday before he died he repeated the words of the
second paraphrase in a clear, strong voice, and quoted almost the last
recorded words of St Paul, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished
my course, I have kept the faith." On Tuesday evening he desired some
one to sing to him, and as Miss Mitchell was unable to control her
feelings to do so, Mr Smith, his amanuensis, who had come in, was asked
by him to sing "Jesus, Lover of my Soul." When this was done he turned
to Miss Mitchell, and said, "What would you like?" and they sang
together "Rock of Ages." With uncomplaining patience he had suffered
much, but welcome rest came to him on the morning of Wednesday, 22nd
March. Having served his own generation by the will of God, he fell
asleep amid the tender regrets of his family, leaving behind him a
memory that will always be held in honour, and an example of laborious
service, of deep piety, and of fervent trust in Christ.
In compliance with his own wish, his remains were conveyed to Brechin,
where they were laid to rest beside those of his fathers under the
shadow of the old Cathedral, the members of the local Presbytery, in
token of their respect, being present on the occasion. "The world
passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever."
_Gilmerton Manse, December 1899._
THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
THE NATURE AND NEED OF THE REFORMATION.
[Sidenote: Its Animating Principle.]
With the single exception of the period which covers the introduction
and first marvellous triumphs of Christianity, the Reformation of the
sixteenth century must be owned as perhaps the greatest and most
glorious revolution in the history of the human race. And the years of
earnest contendings and heroic sufferings which prepared the way for its
triumph in many lands and issued in its cruel suppression in others, and
the story of the men who by God's grace were enabled to bear the brunt
of the battle and to lead their countrymen on to victory or to
martyrdom, will ever have a fascination for all in whose hearts faith
in the great truths, then more clearly brought to light, has not yet
altogether evaporated. The movement then initiated was no mere effort to
get quit of acknowledged scandals, which had long been grieved over but
never firmly dealt with; no mere desire to lop off a few later
accretions, which had gathered round and obscured the faith once
delivered to the saints;[1] no mere "return to the Augustinian, or the
Nicene, or the Ante-Nicene age," but a vast progress beyond any previous
age since the death of St John--a deeper plunge into the meaning of
revelation than had been made by Augustine, or Anselm, or St Bernard, or
À Kempis, or Wycliffe, or Tauler. Its object was to get back to the
divine sources of Christianity,--to know, and understand, and
appropriate it as it came fresh and pure from the lips of the Son of God
and His inspired apostles, not excluding that chosen vessel to whom the
grace had been given "to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable
riches of Christ." It was, in fact, a return to the old Gospel so
attractively set forth by him in his Epistles, and verified to the
reformers by their own inmost spiritual experience under deep
convictions of sin and shortcoming. The cry of their awakened
consciences had been, How shall we sinners have relief from our load and
be justified before God? And this, as has been said, was just the old
question put to the apostle himself by the jailer at Philippi, What must
I do to be saved? And the answer their own experience warranted them
with one accord to proclaim was still, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
believe in the riches of His pardoning mercy, in the merit of His
atoning death, in the freeness and power of His efficacious grace. By
believing, however, they meant, and were careful to explain that they
meant, not a mere intellectual assent to the truth of the facts, but
such an assent as drew with it the trust of the heart and the personal
surrender of the soul to Christ; or--to use language of somewhat later
origin--the individual _appropriation_ of the freely offered Saviour,
with all His fulness of blessing, pardon, and righteousness by His one
offering once offered, and renewal into His own image by the continuous
indwelling of His Holy Spirit.
[Sidenote: Infusion of a New Life.]
Such was the animating principle which gave power to the teaching of the
reformers in all lands, and which constitutes still the central article
of a standing or a falling church to all their true-hearted
successors--Christ crucified for our sins, raised again for our
justification, and now exalted to the right hand of the Majesty in the
heavens as Prince and Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sin
and all needed grace to those who thus believe in Him, and are brought
into union with Him. And the Reformed Church will never perish or decay
while it continues to set forth this Gospel, and is honoured by its
divine Head to bring it home to the hearts and consciences of men, with
the same power as its first teachers were honoured with in the brave
days of old. For it must never be forgotten, I repeat, that the
Reformation movement was not only the introduction of a more scriptural
and scientific method of exhibiting Christian doctrine, and simple
unfolding of its teaching as to man's fallen state and the remedy their
heavenly Father had in His love provided for them; not only the
reassertion of the supremacy of the written Word of God over human
traditions, as well as of the right of all Christian men and women to
have direct access to that blessed Word; not only the translation into
the vernacular--German, English, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian,
Spanish--and the circulation throughout Western Europe of that which for
ages had been to the Christian laity as a book that is sealed; but it
was also, above all this, the infusion of a new and higher life into the
churches. We fall short of a full comprehension of the movement if we
fail to recognise that the God of all grace and blessing was then
pleased to "send a plentiful rain to confirm His inheritance when it was
weary," to grant a second Pentecost to the church, to make the people
willing in the day of His power, and to pour out His Spirit in rich
abundance upon men.
With all the conscious and unconscious preparation which had paved the
way for them, the men who were God's chosen instruments at that crisis
were made deeply to feel and humbly to own that it was God Himself who
had led them on--at times by ways they had not thought of; that it was
He who had upheld them in their extremity when all human power seemed to
be arrayed against them; that it was He who, when their resources were
exhausted, was pleased, in the day when they cried unto Him, to hear
their prayer and revive their hopes by the plentiful outpouring of His
Spirit. How feelingly this was acknowledged by Luther at various crises
in his life is known to all who are in any measure acquainted with his
thrilling story. No one could have more constantly in his heart or more
frequently on his lips the Hebrew psalmist's song of holy confidence,
"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the
mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.... There is a river, the
streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." There was also that
other which, under reverses and discouragements, was the solace of our
own reformer, "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men
rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick.... Blessed be
the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth." As they mused
the fire burned and found expression in such songs of holy confidence
as--
"A sure stronghold our God is He,
A trusty shield and weapon;
Our help He'll be, and set us free
Whatever ill may happen.
* * * * *
Through our own force we nothing can,
Straight were we lost for ever,
But for us fights the proper Man,
By God sent to deliver.
Ask ye who this may be?
Christ Jesus named is He,
Of Sabaoth the Lord
Sole God to be adored,
'Tis He must win the battle."[2]
"If God were not upon our side
When foes around us rage,
Were not Himself our help and guide
When bitter war they wage,
Were He not Israel's mighty shield,
To whom their utmost crafts must yield,
We surely must have perished."[3]
[Sidenote: Decay of the Medieval Church.]
By the time at which reforming influences began manifestly to show
themselves in Scotland, that grand medieval organisation, which had
supplanted the simpler arrangements of the old Celtic church, had in its
turn exhausted its life powers, and shown unmistakable signs of
deep-seated corruption and hopeless decay. Whatever good it may have
been honoured to do in times past,--in keeping alive the knowledge of
God and of things divine in the midst of "a darkness which might be
felt," in promoting a higher civilisation than the Celtic, in
alleviating the evils of the feudalism which Anglo-Norman settlers had
brought in, in founding parishes and universities and some other
institutions which, with a purified church and revived Christian life,
were to be a source of blessing after it was swept away,--yet now at
last it had grossly failed to keep alive among the common people true
devotion, or to give access to the sources at which the flame might have
been rekindled; it had failed to provide educated men for its ordinary
cures, to raise the masses from the rudeness and ignorance in which they
were still involved, and even to maintain that hearty sympathy with them
and that kindly interest in their temporal welfare which its best men in
its earlier days had shown. It continued to have its services in a
language which had for ages been unintelligible to the bulk of the
laity, and was but partially intelligible to not a few of its ordinary
priests. It had no catechisms or hymn books bringing down to the
capacities of the unlettered the truths of religion, and freely
circulated among them.[4] It did not, when the invention of printing put
it in its power, make any effort to circulate among them the Holy Book,
that they might read therein, in their own tongue, the message of God's
love. No doubt it had its pictures and images, its mystery plays and
ceremonies, which it deemed fit books for children and the unlearned.
But it forgot that these children were growing in capacity, even if
allowed to grow up untrained; that "to credulous simplicity was
succeeding a spirit of eager curiosity, an impatience of mere authority,
and a determination to search into the foundation of things"; and that,
if it was to maintain its place, it must not only keep abreast but ahead
of advancing intelligence and morality. But the old church began greatly
to decline just as the laity began to rise. Bishop Kennedy, I suppose,
was almost its last preaching bishop; and the character of the
preaching, so far as preaching was still continued by the friars and
some of the inferior clergy, was not generally fitted to supply the lack
of Bibles and catechisms, and other vernacular books of instruction. It
never grappled, as it ought, with the problem of lightening the burdens
it had long exacted of the peasantry; but refused almost to the last
moment to ease even the most galling of them. It never grappled, as it
ought, with the problem of the education of the masses; and what was
done for those of the community in more fortunate circumstances was done
more by the efforts of a few noble-minded individuals than by any
corporate action of Church or State. There is not among all its codes of
canons anything approaching to the clear ringing utterances of our
First Book of Discipline concerning the necessity and advantages of
education.[5]
[Sidenote: Lethargy of the Medieval Church.]
Not only had the life powers of the medieval church been exhausted and
decay set in, but corruption, positive and gross corruption, had reached
an alarming height. There were the indolence and neglect of duty which
wealth too often brings in its train; the covert secularising of that
wealth, just as in the old Celtic church, by various devices, to get it
into the hands of unqualified men and minors; luxury, avarice,
oppression, simony, shameless pluralities, and crass ignorance; and
above all that celibate system, which nothing would persuade them
honestly to abandon, though it had proved to be a yoke they could not
bear, and was producing only too generally results humiliating and
disastrous to themselves and to all who came under their influence. The
proof of this does not rest merely or even mainly on the statements of
Knox, Alesius, and Spottiswood, nor on the representations of Lindsay
and the Wedderburns. The fact, as both the late Dr David Laing and Dr
Joseph Robertson have shown, and the late Bishop Forbes has sorrowfully
acknowledged, is confessed and deplored in the canons of their councils,
in the Acts of the Scottish Parliament, and in the writings of their
own best men.[6] The harsh measures to which men themselves so
vulnerable had recourse to maintain their position, the relentless
cruelties they perpetrated on men of unblemished character, amiable
disposition, deep-seated conviction and thorough Christian earnestness,
could not fail in the end to turn the tide against them, and arouse
feelings of indignation which on any favourable opportunity would induce
the nation to sweep them away.
[Sidenote: Corruption of the Medieval Church.]
The corruptions in the doctrine of the church were hardly less notable
than those in the lives of its clergy. The sufficiency and supremacy of
the written Word of God were denied, and co-ordinate authority was
claimed for tradition. The Virgin Mary and the saints departed were
asserted to share the office which Scripture reserves for the one
Mediator between God and man. Penances and other external acts of
work-righteousness were alleged to co-operate in the pardon of sin with
the "one obedience" by which "many are made righteous." The sacraments
were asserted to produce their effect _ex opere operato_,--not by the
working of the Spirit in them that by faith receive them. Belief in the
literal transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper
was rigidly enforced and substituted for that spiritual presence and
spiritual manducation which the earlier church had maintained. The
doctrine of a purgatory after this life was invented, and the virtue of
masses for the dead therein detained was persistently taught and
required to be believed. The Roman church was affirmed to be the mother
and mistress of the churches, and its head to be the successor of St
Peter and the Vicar of Christ.
[Sidenote: The Reforming Priests.]
Yet it must never be forgotten that, even in these degenerate days,
there were those among the ministers of the church who wept in secret
over the abominations that were done, who longed for the dawn of a
better day, and, in their parishes or cloisters or colleges, sought to
prepare the way for it, and who succeeded in doing so with many of
their younger comrades, and only made up their minds in the end to
abandon the old church when all their efforts for its revival proved
vain. Nay, the men who initiated and carried to a successful issue the
struggle for a more thorough reformation than the others desired, the
martyrs, confessors, and exiles, were almost all from the ranks of the
priesthood of the old church--from the regular as well as from the
secular priesthood; from the Dominican and Franciscan monasteries as
well as from the Augustinian abbeys; and from none more largely than the
Augustinian Priory of St Andrews, and the College of St Leonard founded
in connection with it, notwithstanding that its prior for the time being
was so far from what he ought to have been. At least twenty priests
joined the reformed congregation of St Andrews in 1559-60, and among
them more than one who had sat in judgment on the martyrs and assisted
in their condemnation.[7] A much larger number were ultimately admitted
as readers in the Reformed Church.
[Sidenote: Precursors of the Reformation.]
How was the great revolution which was to bring the church back from
these corruptions of life and doctrine prepared for? Ebrard supposes
that witnesses for holy living and simple faith, but partially connected
with the dominant church, were never from Celtic times entirely wanting
in Britain; and it may have been that, through Richard Rolle and a few
other hermits, the feeble spark in the smoking wick continued to
smoulder on till it was blown into a flame by Wycliffe. At any rate it
was blown into a flame by him and his poor priests; and from their time
witness after witness arose to contend for the right of the laity to
read the Word of God, and to maintain that men were saved by the merits
of Christ and should pray to Him alone, that there was no purgatory in
the popish sense, and that the pope was not the Vicar of Christ.
Wycliffe's poor priests, when persecuted in the south, naturally sought
shelter among the moors and mosses of the north. The district of Kyle
and Cunningham was "a receptakle of Goddis servandis of old," where
their doctrines were cherished till the dawn of the Reformation. In 1406
or 1407 James Resby, one of these priests, is found teaching as far
north as Perth, and for his teaching he was accused and condemned to a
martyr's death. A similar fate is said to have befallen another in
Glasgow about 1422, in all probability the Scottish Wycliffite whose
letter to his bishop has recently been unearthed in a Hussite MS. at
Vienna; and in 1433 Paul Craw or Crawar, a Bohemian, for disseminating
similar opinions, was burned at the market cross in St Andrews. These
were not in all probability the only grim triumphs of Laurence, Abbot of
Lindores, one of the first rectors in the University of St Andrews, who
during so many years "gave no rest to heretics," but they are all of
whom records have been preserved to our time. The fact that every Master
of Arts in the University of St Andrews had to take an oath to defend
the church against the Lollards,[8] and the other fact that the Scottish
Parliament in 1425 enjoined that every bishop should make inquiry anent
heretics and Lollards, and that where any such were found, they should
be punished as the law of holy church requires,[9] speak more
significantly of the alarm they had occasioned than these sporadic
martyrdoms. Still more, perhaps, does the abuse Fordun, or rather his
continuator, heaps on them, bear witness to the alarm they had caused.
Yet at the very close of the century, and in the old haunt, we find no
fewer than thirty processed, and through the kindness of the king more
gently dealt with than the ecclesiastical authorities wished; three of
the most resolute--namely, Campbell of Cessnock, his noble wife, and a
priest who officiated as their chaplain and read the New Testament to
them--being released when at the stake.
[Sidenote: John Major.]
Reforming tendencies in the sixteenth century, it has been said, first
showed themselves in Scotland in the reassertion of "those principles,
catholic but anti-papal," which had been maintained in the preceding
century in the Councils of Constance and Basle. The decisions of the
former were received in Scotland in 1418, and allegiance to Benedict
XIII. was finally renounced.[10] A Scottish doctor[11] had taken a
rather prominent part in the proceedings of the latter, though the
Scottish Church, like the others, ultimately fell away from that council
and the pope elected by it, and under Bishop Kennedy was reconciled to
the Roman See and to Pope Eugenius.[12] Scotland had had no Grosteste,
no Anselm or Bradwardine among its prelates in the middle ages, no
Wycliffe among its priests. Duns Scotus, the one theologian before the
sixteenth century who claimed Scottish birth and European fame, never
seems to have taught in his native land. Chief among its doctors in the
beginning of the sixteenth century stood John Major, a native of East
Lothian, who taught with distinguished success, first in Paris, then in
Glasgow, after that in St Andrews, then once more in Paris, and finally
in St Andrews again. Melanchthon, while ridiculing his scholastic ways,
places him at the head of the doctors of the Sorbonne. The remembrance
of his early labours in Montaigu College had not died out when Calvin
entered it, and probably he had returned to it before Calvin left.
Patrick Hamilton and Buchanan may possibly have been brought into
contact with him while there, as they, Alesius, and John Wedderburn
afterwards were in St Andrews, and John Hamilton and Knox in Glasgow. He
was a true disciple of D'Ailly and Gerson, but like them was warmly
attached to the dominant church and opposed to the heretics of his time.
He taught, as they had done, that the church, assembled in general
council, may judge and even depose a pope and reform abuses in the
church; that papal excommunications have no force unless conformed to
justice, and do not necessarily prevent a man who dies under them from
going to heaven. He sharply censured the vices of the Roman court, and
of the bishops and clergy of his time, particularly those of his native
land. He is especially severe in censuring their immorality and
ignorance; and, like Wycliffe, condemns the monks and friars for
inveigling into their order young novices who had no vocation for a
celibate life, and ought rather to have been encouraged to enter into
honest wedlock. But he was a stern opponent of heresy--Lutheran as well
as Wycliffite--a subtle defender of Roman doctrine; and in dedicating to
Archbishop Betoun his Commentary on St Matthew's Gospel, he
congratulated him on the success of his cruel measures against Hamilton
and the heretics.[13]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As Lord Acton has so well said, "The modern age did not proceed from
the medieval by normal succession, with outward tokens of legitimate
descent. Unheralded, it founded a new order of things, under a law of
innovation, sapping the ancient reign of continuity. In those days
Columbus subverted the notions of the world, and reversed the conditions
of production, wealth, and power.... Luther broke the chain of authority
and tradition at the strongest link; and Copernicus erected an
invincible power that set for ever the mark of progress upon the time
that was to come.... It was an awakening of new life; the world revolved
in a different orbit, determined by influences unknown before. After
many ages, persuaded of the headlong decline and impending dissolution
of society, and governed by usage and the will of masters who were in
their graves, the sixteenth century went forth armed for untried
experience, and ready to watch with hopefulness a prospect of
incalculable change" (Lecture on the Study of History, 1895, pp. 8, 9).
"There are no true 'cycles' in human development; history never repeats
itself; the Greco-Roman world has only distant analogies with the
Feudal-Catholic world, just as this has only distant analogies with the
Revolutionary world. The great phases of human civilisation are
contrasted rather than compared; they differ as infancy, childhood,
manhood, and senility differ in the individual" (Harrison on "Freeman's
Method of History," in the 'Nineteenth Century' for November 1898).
[2] Miss Winkworth's Christian Singers of Germany, pp. 110, 111.
[3] Ibid., p. 117.
[4] [Hamilton's Catechism, which was not intended for indiscriminate
circulation among the laity, was not published until 1552; and The
Twopenny Faith was not issued until the spring of 1559.]
[5] [For these utterances see _infra_, chap. viii. sec. iv.]
[6] Because of its permanent importance, I deem it best to insert here a
note from my Introduction to 'The Gude and Godlie Ballatis,' p. lxiv:
"We do not need to call in Knox, or Lindsay, or the satirists, in
evidence of this humbling fact. The testimony of their own councils, of
the Acts of Parliament, and of some of their best men, as Principal Hay
in his congratulatory address to Cardinal Betoun, and Ninian Winzet in
the sad appeals and confessions inserted in his 'Tractates,' as well as
that of impartial modern historians like Tytler and Dr Joseph Robertson,
is more than sufficient to establish it beyond contradiction. The
testimony of Conæus, who died when about to be raised to the purple,
covers almost all that Alesius and Knox have averred: 'In multorum
sacerdotum aedibus scortum publicum ... nec a sacrilego quorundam luxu
tutus erat matronarum honos aut virginalis pudor.' More notable still is
the representation given in the 'Memoire' addressed to the Pope by Queen
Mary and the Dauphin, evidently at the instance of Mary of Guise, in
which the spread of heresy is expressly attributed to the ignorance and
immorality of the clergy. See Appendix B, vol. ii., of Mr Hume Brown's
recent biography of Knox."
[7] [So early as the 23rd of June 1559, Knox wrote to Mrs Anna Lock:
"Diverse channons of Sanct Andrewes have given notable confessiouns, and
have declared themselves manifest enemies to the pope, to the masse, and
to all superstitioun" (Laing's Knox, vi. 26). In all probability some of
these canons were included among the fourteen canons of St Andrews
Priory who are mentioned as Protestants in January 1571-72, and of whom
twelve were then parish ministers ('Booke of the Universall Kirk,'
Bannatyne Club, i. 222). None of these fourteen is found signing the
General Band of 13th July 1559, which in St Andrews was adopted as "the
letters of junctioun to the Congregatioun"; but eighteen priests did
sign it; and of the other thirteen ecclesiastics who there made sweeping
recantations, at least six may be held to have joined the congregation,
for they not only confessed that "we haif ower lang abstractit ourselfis
and beyne sweir in adjuning us to Christes Congregatioun," but they
promised "in tyme cuming to assist in word and wark with unfenyiet mynde
this Congregatioun" ('Register of St Andrews Kirk-Session,' Scot. Hist.
Soc., i. 10-18). In 1573 it was stated that "the most part of the
persons who were channons monks and friars within this realme have made
profession of the true religion" ('Booke of the Universall Kirk,' i.
280).]
[8] [Enacted by the University on 10th June 1416 (M'Crie's Melville,
1824, i. 420).]
[9] [Enacted by Parliament on 12th March 1424-25 (Acts of Parliament,
ii. 7).]
[10] Robertson's Concilia Scotiæ, vol. i. p. lxxviii.
[11] [For an account of this Scottish cleric--Thomas, Abbot of
Dundrennan--who so greatly distinguished himself at the Council of
Basle, see 'Concilia Scotiæ,' vol. i. pp. xcvii-xcix.]
[12] [The bull of Eugenius the Fourth, addressed to Bishop Kennedy, and
dated 6th July 1440, orders the excommunication of the followers of the
anti-pope, Felix the Fifth, elected by the Council of Basle, to be
published in Scotland (Ibid., p. c.)]
[13] [Dr Mitchell, no doubt, had the Commentary itself before him. Those
who have not access to it will find the dedication in the Appendix to
Constable's 'Major,' Scot. Hist. Soc., pp. 447, 448.]