nobles, barons, and representatives of boroughs, met at Edinburgh, on
the 21st of October, 1559, to bring this important point to a solemn
issue. To this assembly Knox and Willock were called; and the question
being stated to them, they were required to deliver their opinions
as to the lawfulness of the proposed measure. Willock, who then
officiated as minister of Edinburgh, being first asked, declared it
to be his judgment, founded on reason and scripture, that the power
of rulers was limited; that they might be deprived of it upon valid
grounds; and that the queen regent having, by fortifying Leith,
and introducing foreign troops into the country, evinced a fixed
determination to oppress and enslave the kingdom, might justly
be divested of her authority, by the nobles and barons, as native
counsellors of the realm, whose petitions and remonstrances she had
repeatedly rejected. Knox assented to the opinion delivered by his
brother, and added, that the assembly might, with safe consciences,
act upon it, provided they attended to the three following things:
First, that they did not suffer the misconduct of the queen regent
to alienate their affections from due allegiance to their sovereigns,
Francis and Mary; second, that they were not actuated in the measure
by private hatred or envy of the queen dowager, but by regard to the
safety of the commonwealth; and, third, that any sentence which they
might at this time pronounce, should not preclude her re‑admission
to office, if she afterwards discovered sorrow for her conduct, and
a disposition to {298} submit to the advice of the estates of the
nation. After this, the whole assembly, having severally delivered
their opinions, did, by a solemn deed, suspend the queen dowager
from her authority as regent of the kingdom, until the meeting of
a free parliament;[451] and, at the same time, elected a council for
the management of public affairs during this interval.[452] When the
council had occasion to treat of matters connected with religion,
four of the ministers were appointed to assist in their deliberations.
These were Knox, Willock, Goodman, and Alexander Gordon, bishop of
Galloway, who had embraced the Reformation.[453]
It has been alleged by some writers, that the question respecting
the suspension of the queen regent was altogether incompetent for
ministers of the gospel to determine, and that Knox and Willock,
by the advice which they gave on this occasion, exposed themselves
unnecessarily to odium.[454] But it is not easy to see how they could
have been excused in refusing {299} to deliver their opinion, when
required by those who had submitted to their ministry, upon a measure
which involved a case of conscience, as well as a question of law and
political right. The advice which was actually given and followed is
a matter of greater consequence, than the quarter from which it came.
As this rests upon principles very different from those which produced
resistance to princes, and limitation on their authority, under
feudal governments, and as our Reformer has been the object of much
animadversion for inculcating these principles, I shall embrace the
present opportunity to offer a few remarks on this interesting subject.
* * * * *
Among the various causes which affected the general state of society
and government in Europe, during the middle ages, the influence of
religion cannot be overlooked. Debased by ignorance, and fettered
by superstition, the minds of men were prepared to acquiesce without
examination in the claims of authority, and tamely to submit to every
yoke. In whatever light we view popery, the genius of that singular
system of religion will be found to be adverse to liberty. The court
of Rome, while it aimed directly at the establishment of a spiritual
despotism in the hands of ecclesiastics, contributed to rivet the
chains of political servitude upon the people. In return for the
support which princes yielded to its arrogant claims, it was content
to invest them with an absolute authority over the bodies of their
subjects. By the priestly unction, performed at the coronation of
kings in the {300} name of the holy see, a sacred character was
understood to be imparted, which raised them to a superiority over
their nobility which they did not possess according to feudal ideas,
rendered their persons inviolable, and their office divine. Although
the sovereign pontiffs claimed, and on different occasions exercised,
the power of dethroning kings, and of absolving subjects from their
allegiance; yet any attempt of this kind, when it proceeded from the
people themselves, was denounced as a crime deserving the severest
punishment in this world, and damnation in the next. Hence sprung the
doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule independently of their
people, and of passive obedience and non‑resistance to their will;
under the sanction of which they were encouraged to sport with the
lives and happiness of their subjects, and to indulge in the most
tyrannical and wanton acts of oppression, without the dread of
resistance, or of being called to an account by any power on earth.
Even in countries where the people were understood to enjoy certain
political privileges, transmitted from remote ages, or wrested from
their princes on some favourable occasions, these principles were
generally prevalent; and, availing himself of them, it was easy for
an ambitious and powerful monarch to violate the rights of the people
with impunity, and upon a constitution, the forms of which were
friendly to popular liberty, to establish an administration completely
arbitrary and despotic.
The contest between papal sovereignty and the authority of general
councils, which was carried on {301} during the fifteenth century,
elicited some of the essential principles of liberty, which were
afterwards applied to political government. The revival of learning,
by unfolding the principles of legislation, and modes of government
in the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, gradually led to more
liberal notions on this subject. But these were confined to a few, and
had no influence upon the general state of society. The spirit infused
by philosophy and literature is too feeble and contracted to produce a
radical reform of established abuses; and learned men, proud of their
own superior illumination, and satisfied with the liberty of indulging
their speculations, have generally been too indifferent or too timid
to attempt the improvement of the multitude. It is to the religious
spirit excited during the sixteenth century, which spread rapidly
through Europe, and diffused itself among all classes of men, that we
are chiefly indebted for the propagation of the genuine principles of
rational liberty, and the consequent amelioration of government.
Civil and ecclesiastical tyranny were so closely combined, that it was
impossible for men to emancipate themselves from the latter without
throwing off the former; and from arguments which established their
religious rights, the transition was easy, and almost unavoidable, to
disquisitions about their civil privileges. In those kingdoms in which
the rulers threw off the Roman yoke, and introduced the Reformation
by their authority, the influence was more imperceptible and slow;
and in some of them, as in {302} England, the power taken from the
ecclesiastical was thrown into the regal scale, which proved so far
prejudicial to popular liberty. But where the Reformation was embraced
by the great body of a nation, while the ruling powers continued
to oppose it, the effect was visible and immediate. The interested
and obstinate support which rulers gave to the old system of error
and ecclesiastical tyranny, and their cruel persecution of all who
favoured the new opinions, drove their subjects to enquire into the
just limits of authority and obedience. Their judgments once informed
as to the rights to which they were entitled, and their consciences
satisfied respecting the means which they might employ to acquire
them, the immense importance of the immediate object in view, their
emancipation from religious bondage, and the salvation of themselves
and their posterity, impelled them to make the attempt with an
enthusiasm and perseverance which the mere love of civil liberty
could not have inspired.
In effecting that memorable revolution, which terminated in favour
of religious and political liberty in so many nations of Europe, the
public teachers of the protestant doctrine had a principal influence.
By their instructions and exhortations, they roused the people to
consider their rights and exert their power; they stimulated timid and
wary politicians; they encouraged and animated princes, nobles, and
confederated states, with their armies, against the most formidable
opposition, and under the most overwhelming difficulties, until their
exertions were ultimately {303} crowned with success. These facts are
now admitted, and this honour has at last, through the force of truth,
been conceded to the religious leaders of the protestant Reformation,
by philosophical writers, who had too long branded them as ignorant
and fanatical.[455]
Our Reformer had caught a large portion of the spirit of civil
liberty. We have already adverted to the circumstance in his
education which directed his attention, at an early period, to
some of its principles.[456] His subsequent studies introduced him
to an acquaintance with the maxims and modes of government in the
free states of antiquity; and it is reasonable to suppose that his
intercourse with the republics of Switzerland and Geneva had some
influence on his political creed. Having formed his sentiments
independently of the prejudices arising from established laws, long
usage, and commonly received opinions, his zeal and intrepidity
prompted him to avow and propagate them, when others, less sanguine
and resolute, would have been restrained by fear, or by despair of
success.[457] Extensive observation had convinced him of the glaring
perversion of government in the European kingdoms; but his principles
led him {304} to desire their reform, not their subversion. His
admiration of the polity of republics, ancient or modern, was not
so great or indiscriminate as to prevent him from separating the
essential principles of equity and freedom which they contained,
from others which were incompatible with monarchy. He was perfectly
sensible of the necessity of regular government to the maintenance
of justice and order, and aware of the danger of setting men loose
from its salutary control. And he uniformly inculcated a conscientious
obedience to the lawful commands of rulers, and respect to their
persons as well as to their authority, even when they were chargeable
with various mismanagements, so long as they did not break through all
the restraints of law and justice, and cease to perform the great and
fundamental duties of their office.
But he held that rulers, supreme as well as subordinate, were invested
with authority for the public good; that obedience was not due to them
in any thing contrary to the divine law, natural or revealed; that,
in every free and well‑constituted government, the law of the land
was superior to the will of the prince; that inferior magistrates
and subjects might restrain the supreme magistrate from particular
illegal acts, without throwing off their allegiance, or being guilty
of rebellion; that no class of men have an original, inherent, and
indefeasible right to rule over a people, independently of their will
and consent; that every nation is entitled to provide and require that
they shall be ruled by laws which are agreeable to the divine law,
and calculated to promote their {305} welfare; that there is a mutual
compact, tacit and implied, if not formal and explicit, between rulers
and their subjects; and, if the former shall flagrantly violate this,
employ that power for the destruction of the commonwealth which was
committed to them for its preservation and benefit, or, in one word,
if they shall become habitual tyrants and notorious oppressors, that
the people are absolved from allegiance, and have a right to resist
them, formally to depose them from their place, and to elect others
in their room.
The real power of the Scottish kings was, indeed, always limited, and
there are in our history, previous to the era of the Reformation, many
instances of resistance to their authority. But, though these were
pleaded as precedents on this occasion, it must be confessed that we
cannot trace them to the principles of genuine liberty. They were the
effects of sudden resentment on account of some extraordinary act of
male‑administration, or of the ambition of some powerful baron, or
of the jealousy with which the feudal aristocracy watched over the
privileges of their own order. The people who followed the standards
of their chiefs had little interest in the struggle, and derived no
benefit from the limitations which were imposed upon the sovereign.
But, at this time, more just and enlarged sentiments were diffused
through the nation, and the idea of a commonwealth, including the
mass of the people as well as the privileged orders, began to be
entertained. Our Reformer, whose notions of hereditary right, whether
in kings or {306} nobles, were not exalted, studied to repress the
insolence and oppression of the nobility. He reminded them of the
original equality of men, and the ends for which some were raised
above others; and he taught the people that they had rights to
preserve, as well as duties to perform. With respect to female
government, he never moved any question among his countrymen, nor
attempted to gain proselytes to his opinion.[458]
Such, in substance, were the political sentiments which were
inculcated by our Reformer, and which were more than once acted upon
in Scotland during his lifetime. That in an age when the principles
of political liberty were only beginning to be understood, such
sentiments should have been regarded with a suspicious eye by some
of the learned who had not yet thrown off common prejudices, and that
they should have exposed those who maintained them to a charge of
treason from despotical rulers and their numerous satellites, is far
from being matter of wonder. But it must excite both surprise and
indignation, to find writers in the present enlightened age, and under
the sunshine of British liberty, (if our sun is not fast going down,)
expressing their abhorrence of these principles, and exhausting
upon their authors all the invective and virulence of the former
anti‑monarcho‑machi, and advocates of passive obedience. They are
essentially the principles upon which the {307} free constitution
of Britain rests; and the most obnoxious of them were reduced to
practice at the memorable era of the Revolution, when the necessity
of employing them was not more urgent or unquestionable, than it was
at the suspension of the queen regent of Scotland, and the subsequent
deposition of her daughter.
I have said _essentially_: for I would not be understood as meaning
to say, that every proposition advanced by Knox, on this subject,
is expressed in the most guarded and unexceptionable manner, or that
all the cases in which he was led to vindicate forcible resistance
to rulers, were such as rendered it necessary, and as may be pleaded
as precedents in modern times. The political doctrines maintained at
that period received a tincture from the spirit of the age, and were
accommodated to a state of society and government comparatively rude
and unsettled. The checks which have since been introduced into the
constitution, and the influence which public opinion, expressed by the
organ of a free press, has upon the conduct of rulers, are sufficient,
in ordinary cases, to restrain dangerous encroachments, or to afford
the means of correcting them in a peaceable way; and have thus happily
superseded the necessity of having recourse to those desperate but
decisive remedies which were formerly applied by an oppressed and
indignant people. But if ever the time come when these principles
shall be generally abjured or forgotten, the extinction of the boasted
liberty of Britain will not be far off.
{308} There are objections against our Reformer’s political
principles which demand consideration, from the authority to which
they appeal, and the influence which they may have on pious minds.
“The doctrine of resistance to civil rulers,” it is alleged, “is
repugnant to the express directions of the New Testament, which
repeatedly enjoin Christians to be subject to ‘the powers that be,’
and denounce damnation against such as disobey or resist them on
any pretext whatever. With the literal and strict import of these
precepts the example of the primitive Christians agreed; for, even
after they became very numerous, so as to be capable of opposing the
government under which they lived, they never attempted to shake off
the authority of the Roman emperors, or to employ force to protect
themselves from the tyranny and persecutions to which they were
exposed. Besides, granting that it is lawful for subjects to vindicate
their civil rights and privileges by resisting arbitrary rulers, to
have recourse to forcible measures for promoting Christianity, is
diametrically opposite to the genius of that religion, which was
propagated at first, and is still to be defended, not by arms and
violence, but by teaching and suffering.”
These objections are more specious than solid. The directions and
precepts on this subject, which are contained in the New Testament,
must not be stretched beyond their evident scope and proper import.
They do not give greater power to magistrates than they formerly
possessed, nor do they supersede any of the rights or privileges to
which subjects were {309} entitled, by the common law of nature, or
by the particular statutes of any country. The New Testament does not
give directions to communities respecting the original formation or
subsequent improvement of their civil constitutions, nor prescribe the
course which ought to be pursued in certain extraordinary cases, when
rulers abuse the power with which they are invested, and convert their
legitimate authority into an engine of despotism and oppression.[459]
It supposes magistrates to be acting within the proper line of their
office, and discharging its duties to the advantage of the society
over which they are placed. And it teaches Christians, that the
liberty which Christ purchased, and to the enjoyment of which they
are called by the gospel, does not exempt them from subjection and
obedience to civil authority, which is a divine ordinance for the
good of mankind; that they are bound to obey existing rulers, although
they should be of a different religion from themselves; and that
Christianity, so far from setting them free {310} from obligations
to this or any other relative duty, strengthens these obligations,
and requires them to discharge their duties for conscience‑sake, with
fidelity, cheerfulness, patience, long‑suffering, and singleness of
heart. Viewed in this light, nothing can be more reasonable in its own
nature, or more honourable to the gospel, than the directions which
it gives on this subject; and we must perceive a peculiar propriety
in the frequency and earnestness with which they are urged, when
we consider the danger in which the primitive christians were of
supposing, that they were liberated from the ordinary restraints of
the rest of mankind. But if we shall go beyond this, and assert that
the scriptures have prohibited resistance to rulers in every case,
and that the great body of a nation consisting of christians, in
attempting to curb the fury of their rulers, or to deprive them of the
power which they have grossly abused, are guilty of that crime against
which the apostle denounces damnation, we represent the beneficent
religion of Jesus as sanctioning despotism, and entailing all the
evils of political bondage upon mankind; and we tread in the steps
of those enemies to christianity, who, under the colour of paying
a compliment to its pacific, submissive, tolerant, and self‑denying
maxims, have represented it as calculated to produce a passive,
servile spirit, and to extinguish courage, patriotism, the love of
civil liberty, the desire of self‑preservation, and every kind of
disposition to repel injuries, or to obtain the redress of the most
intolerable grievances.
{311} The example of the primitive christians is not binding upon
others any farther than it is conformable to the scriptures; and the
circumstances in which they were placed were totally different from
those of the protestants in Scotland, and in other countries, at
the time of the Reformation. The fathers often indulge in oratorical
exaggerations when speaking of the numbers of the christians; nor is
there any satisfactory evidence that they ever approached near to a
majority of the Roman empire, during the time that they were exposed
to persecution.
“If thou mayst be made free, use it rather,” says the Apostle; a maxim
which is applicable, by just analogy, to political as well as domestic
freedom. The christian religion natively tends to cherish and diffuse
a spirit favourable to civil liberty, and this, in its turn, has
the most happy influence upon christianity, which never flourished
extensively, and for a long period, in any country where despotism
prevailed. It must therefore be the duty of every christian to exert
himself for the acquisition and defence of this invaluable blessing.
Christianity ought not to be propagated by force of arms; but the
external liberty of professing it may be vindicated in that way both
against foreign invaders and against domestic tyrants. If the free
exercise of their religion, or their right to remove religious abuses,
enter into the grounds of the struggle which a nation maintains
against oppressive rulers, the cause becomes of vastly more importance,
its justice is more unquestionable, and it is still more worthy,
{312} not only of their prayers and petitions, but of their blood and
treasure, than if it had been maintained solely for the purpose of
securing their fortunes, or of acquiring some mere worldly privilege.
And to those whose minds are not warped by prejudice, and who do
not labour under a confusion of ideas on the subject, it must surely
appear paradoxical to assert, that, while God has granted to subjects
a right to take the sword of just defence for securing objects of
a temporary and inferior nature, he has prohibited them from using
this remedy, and left them at the mercy of every lawless despot, with
respect to a concern the most important of all, whether it be viewed
as relating to his own honour, or to the welfare of mankind.
* * * * *
Those who judge of the propriety of any measure from the success with
which it is accompanied, will be disposed to condemn the suspension
of the queen regent. Soon after this step was taken, the affairs of
the Congregation began to wear a gloomy aspect. The messenger whom
they sent to Berwick to receive a remittance from the English court,
was intercepted on his return, and rifled of the treasure; their
soldiers mutinied for want of pay; they were repulsed in a premature
assault upon the fortifications of Leith, and worsted in a skirmish
with the French troops; the secret emissaries of the regent were
too successful among them; their numbers daily decreased; and the
remainder, disunited, dispirited and dismayed, came to the resolution
of abandoning Edinburgh on {313} the evening of the 5th of November,
and retreated with precipitation and disgrace to Stirling.