God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  Although there was no unambiguous agreement about what a restored church would look like, it did seem clear to many Protestants that the principal enemy of that restoration was the Bishop of Rome. The favoured term of abuse for unwelcome practices was therefore ‘popery’: a term which gave a comforting polemical clarity when debating complex issues. Polemic about the nature of the true church, or of its opponents, was often couched in terms of anti-popery, and the language of anti-popery was used to mark the boundaries of acceptable belief and practice. What popery might mean in any particular context was highly contestable, of course – it was the opposite of truly Christian belief and practice, but if people differed on what true belief and practice were, they automatically identified popery differently too. The Pope, in this view, was the agent of the Antichrist, or even actually the Antichrist – the promoter of practices and beliefs inimical to the salvation of good Christians. The control exercised by the Bishop of Rome over the church was the equivalent of the Babylonish captivity of the Israelites. Complex debates about scriptural justification for particular elements of belief and practice, about the authenticity of the tradition that they represented, or about the effects of political compromise on the promotion of reform, might easily dissolve into shouting matches about popery and the Antichrist.18

  This radical simplification could raise the issues to apocalyptic levels since it was often said that these battles corresponded to the battles in the biblical last days: the triumph of reformation over popery would, it was hoped, lead to the reign of Christ and the saints. Obviously, the radicalism, and simplicity, of this rhetoric made the negotiation of a harmonious consensus difficult. The clarity of the polemic was a contrast to the complexity of the identity problem to which it related; the certainties it offered were perhaps comforts in the face of the anxieties generated by that complexity. Popery was an important discourse within Protestantism precisely because the boundary between the purified church and the corrupt Roman Catholic church was both crucial and indistinct.

  These arguments about reformation raised questions about how churches should be governed and about the relationship with secular authorities which would protect these churches. On both of these crucial questions, however, the reformers” message was pragmatic, and therefore a little ambiguous. Calvin’s first, and most influential, publication was the Institutes, which was the first statement of Protestant belief to discuss civil government at length. This interest in the relationship between religious and secular authority was a product of the experience of the second generation of religious reformers, who were frequently men forced into exile by the hostility of their own rulers to reform. In exile in Geneva, Calvin oversaw the establishment of a Presbyterian ecclesiastical organization, which was often catering to the needs of an exile community. This stood alongside a secular authority, membership of which was not open to refugees. The refugee experience therefore fostered, in practice and theory, parallel systems of religious and secular government: two kingdoms, in fact. Secular and religious affairs were separated, and placed in the hands of different kinds of authority. Pushed to an extreme position, this might suggest that secular rulers had no role in religious affairs.19 Most monarchs were very suspicious of ‘two kingdoms’ theory, for obvious reasons.

  Although Calvin had developed an influential argument about the appropriate constitution of the church, and its relationship with civil authority, that was not the essence of the Reformation message, even for Calvin. Calvin had distinguished four functions for the clergy – doctors, ministers, elders and deacons – but these four functions were not associated with any particular form. Doctors ensured the purity of doctrine, ministers preached, elders oversaw discipline and deacons gave an example of Christian charity. All four functions could be identified in scripture, but there was no clear prescription as to how to allocate these disparate functions in actual offices.20 There was no necessary assumption that in following Calvin’s teaching in other political contexts it was necessary to establish Presbyterianism on the Genevan model. The Presbyterian organization of Calvin’s church offered a model for others, but by comparison with the fundamentals – preaching, sacraments, reformation – how the church was governed was of secondary significance, a practical question. Reformation came to different places by various means, resulting in a variety of settlements of this practical question.

  Rather than a prescriptive view of how churches should be organized, Calvinists looked for signs that particular churches had the marks of a ‘true church’. Even those who held very strict predestinarian views agreed that it was not possible to be certain about who was a member of the elect and who was damned. This gave rise to a distinction between the visible church of all practising Christians and the invisible church of the elect. Protestants tended to assess visible churches according to the agreed marks of a true church – the signs that members of the invisible church might be present. Naturally enough, there was room for disagreement about what the marks of a true church were, but they always included the preaching of the Word and administration of the sacraments (rightly understood).

  Beza and others added discipline to the list – a collective effort to combat sin and teach the true religion. For the very reason that it was not possible to know who was saved and who was damned, it was incumbent on everyone to secure the purification of the visible church, and also of the society around them. Avoiding sin, and abhorring the sins of others, did not secure a place in heaven, but they might be evidence of membership of the invisible church. In alliance with the secular power, the ecclesiastical authorities should put down sin wherever possible: an alliance of magistrate and minister aimed at the eradication of sin transformed a church reformation into a societal one. The discipline of the flock – both in worship and in their everyday lives – was therefore of central concern to the reformers.

  It was these fundamentals – Word, sacrament and (for some) discipline – which marked out a true church. If these things were present there was ample room for accommodation to apparently uncongenial forms of ceremony, and no significant school of thought identified a particular form of church government as one of the marks of a true church. It also became common among Calvinists to distinguish between churches which were under the Cross – that is, those which did not enjoy the protection of a godly civil authority – and those which did.21

  When Charles proposed changes in Scottish practice emphasizing formality and ceremony in worship he was not necessarily betraying the Reformation message, even if he was denounced by his opponents as popish; and using his authority as monarch to achieve this was not necessarily a betrayal either. Many Protestants might have viewed these ceremonies as harmless and remained confident that the kirk remained a true church under a godly civil authority. But that is clearly not how it seemed in Scotland. That fact owes as much to the history of the Scottish Reformation as to the nature of the changes actually being proposed.

  Reformation had come to Scotland by means of a coup against royal authority in 1560. The ‘Lords of the Congregation’, a group of Protestant nobles, led an armed rising against the unpopular French regent, Mary of Guise. Following their success French interest was excluded from Scotland by the Treaty of Edinburgh and a parliament was called which, among other things, legislated for a reformation. John Knox, recently returned from religious exile in Calvin’s Geneva, gave spiritual leadership to the movement and in doing so imported the Calvinist vision of reformation. But the coming of reformation nonetheless involved compromises. The parliament of 1560 had legislated in the light of a confession of faith and a Book of Discipline. According to later legend this was the result of the irresistible pressure for Protestant reformation, but in fact it owed much to opportunism and political chance – the Scottish Reformation was not completed in a single step or according to a blueprint.22

  Important practical compromises were made in the interests of domestic peace. The bishops, who after all were not the means by which reformation had arrived
, were not allowed to say Mass but they were not compelled to subscribe to the confession of faith either, and neither was anyone else. Some of the bishops joined in the promotion of reform and their efforts were supplemented rather than supplanted by superintendents, appointed to direct the pastoral effort in areas without a sympathetic bishop. These new offices were not really rivals to the episcopal office, therefore, but a means of strengthening its pastoral role where that was perceived to be weak.23 Since the monarch was a devoted Catholic she could not oversee the Reformation in Scotland and as a result a General Assembly was formed modelled on the composition of the Scottish parliament.24 The role of the parish was perpetuated in the kirk sessions, later claimed on dubious authority to have grown out of voluntary Protestant congregations – privy kirks – operating prior to 1560. This version of the history of the Reformation emphasized again the roots of the Reformation among the flock, rather than its debt to the head. If their significance to the origins of the Reformation has been exaggerated or distorted, however, they were certainly of crucial significance to the subsequent development of Scottish Protestantism. Through the sessions the parish remained the fundamental unit of church organization, providing preaching, sacraments and discipline of the flock. It was these institutions which, over time, became the motor of Scottish reformation.25 Finally, weekly exercises took root, meetings where preaching could reach an audience beyond the parish, or reach parishioners not well served with a preaching ministry at home.26 In all, this was a hybrid and pragmatic solution, which supplemented the ancient institutions of the church by giving some of its functions to new bodies, and it developed over time in an organic way.

  A second ambiguity, or compromise, was that the legislation setting up these new arrangements was not ratified. When Queen Mary returned from France in August 1561 she issued a proclamation enjoining obedience to ‘public and universally standing practices’ then current. While this did allow for the prosecution of ‘mass mongers’ it did not validate or endow the new church. Only after 1567, when Mary was deposed in favour of her infant son, James VI, was legislation counter to the Reformation rescinded. The provisional nature of the arrangements of the 1560s is also reflected in the fact that in 1573, when the position of Protestantism was clearly established, it was suggested that the General Assembly had served its purpose and the stewardship of the church might now return to the crown.27 It was certainly not the case that the General Assembly was by law the supreme authority in ecclesiastical matters. The founding vision of reformation in Scotland had not given the kirk a clear constitution or an unambiguous relationship to civil authority.

  Over the following years there was growing pressure to adopt a Presbyterian model of church government in order to promote reformation, but this met with monarchical resistance. The institutions of the reformed church had been set alongside those of the old church, supplementing rather than supplanting them in order to promote the pastoral work of the reformers. The priority was the promotion of a pastoral ministry – supporting the preaching of the Word, true sacramental worship and discipline. As time passed, however, the institutional compromises of the 1560s came increasingly to be seen as presenting obstacles to that. Old church institutions were deprived of their pastoral role but not of their endowments, whereas the new institutions were given pastoral functions but inadequate endowments.28 Evangelists pushing for the establishment of a more active ministry might easily identify kirk sessions, weekly exercises, superintendents and the General Assembly as their allies; bishops and the monarch, however, were less unambiguously on the side of the saints.

  As a result there was a tendency for convinced Calvinists to push for greater institutional security for an independent kirk. This was also associated with a desire to secure the four functions of the clergy in a form more akin to Genevan Presbyterianism, to develop the new institutions established alongside the skeleton of the old church in a Presbyterian direction and to separate their authority from that of the crown. The guiding spirit for this is usually assumed to have been Andrew Melville, former exile in Geneva and close ally of Beza, although there is little direct evidence to show that he did direct these developments. But from the 1570s onwards it was thought that the promotion of reform meant endowing the pastoral ministry at the expense of the remnants of the pre-Reformation church, and making it more answerable to the needs of the flock. This created a pressure to transform the kirk sessions, weekly exercises, superintendents and General Assembly into a fully developed Presbyterian church.29

  Melville was certainly influential in the General Assembly which adopted the second Book of Discipline in 1578. This stated that the authority of the kirk flowed directly from God and had no temporal lord, and condemned the office of bishop. Bishops were excluded from the General Assembly and from 1581 membership depended on nomination from the kirk sessions. The political influence of Presbyterians was enhanced during a Catholic scare around 1580, when the dominance of the Earl of Lennox in secular affairs seemed to threaten rapprochement with the Roman church. In 1581 a Negative Confession was drawn up, denouncing popery in general and in a number of particular forms, and Lennox agreed to subscribe, again seeming to confirm that the kirk, not the civil power, was the guardian of the reformed faith.30 It was to become a key text in the Covenanting crisis, a benchmark of shared belief, promoted in the face of an ungodly civil power.

  Although the General Assembly could adopt the second Book of Discipline as a programme, it would require crown and Parliament to give it legal force and the assembly certainly could not prevent the continued appointment of bishops by the crown. In 1582 Lennox was overthrown as a result of the Ruthven Raid, in which several prominent Presbyterian nobles, led by William Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, abducted James VI while he was staying at Ruthven’s castle. The King was kept in captivity for a year and during that time government was in Ruthven’s hands. A series of pro-Presbyterian proclamations followed, but when James was eventually free of the power of the Raiders he quickly revealed a determination to curb Presbyterianism. Legislation the following year (later known as the Black Acts) reasserted episcopal and royal authority. An Act of 1592 recognized the jurisdiction of Presbyterian courts and removed the bishops” jurisdiction, but did not acknowledge that Presbyterian discipline drew its authority directly from God. Neither did it abolish episcopacy, and although the General Assembly was given a statutory authority to assemble every year, the crown could still name the time and place of the meeting.31

  James’s hostility to Melville’s views is often attributed to his political rather than strictly theological preferences. Indeed, there were few if any monarchs who would have welcomed Presbyterianism, because it was associated with ‘two kingdoms’ theory. The initial triumph of Protestantism, and the subsequent elaboration of Calvinist reform in Scotland, had come in opposition to a weakened monarch (and, indeed, with the military help of the English). Doctrines stressing a very clear separation of church and state were therefore a particularly worrying threat to monarchical authority in Scotland, where the nobility had plenty of recent ‘form’ in this respect. At a conference in 1596 Melville notoriously told James that he was ‘God’s silly vassal’: His representative in civil affairs but just another member of the kirk. By the late sixteenth century there were two respectable views of the Scottish kirk – one based on ‘two kingdoms’ theory, and associated in particular with Melvillians; and another based on ‘one kingdom’ theory, which emphasized monarchical authority over all the bodies and institutions of the kingdom, including the church.32

  James may therefore have had particular reasons for hostility to Presbyterianism, but he was not flying in the face of the reformed tradition in Scotland in seeking to preserve a role for bishops and the crown, and his views were not completely outside the mainstream of Scottish Protestant opinion. In fact, Melville’s outburst in 1596 more or less coincided with a reaction against the very clericalist view of Presbyterianism. Ironically, by emphasizing the separation of ki
rk and state matters, and arguing that authority in the kirk was a manifestation of divine will, Melville could appear to be raising up the clerical caste once more. Jure divino presbytery – Presbyterian organization justified as by the law of God – might seem little more than the old popery writ large, and was certainly not the only authentic view of authority in the reformed church. James had some support in resisting it. In 1600 ‘parliamentary bishops’ were appointed – they sat in parliament as representatives of the church but did not have any ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Within the kirk, commissioners had been appointed to oversee its discipline, and over the years these positions sometimes went to parliamentary bishops: clearly this pointed towards a revival of modified episcopacy.33

  Following his accession to the English throne James also tried to make Scottish and English practice more alike, both in matters of church government and in forms of worship. He successfully manipulated a series of General Assemblies to establish the reality of his power to summon them and to secure meetings more amenable to his views. By 1610 he had intruded bishops first as permanent moderators of kirk sessions and then of synods, and the admission of ministers was made their responsibility rather than that of presbyteries. Estates and consistorial powers were restored. In the same year, normal episcopal succession was restored by the consecration of Scottish bishops, normal except that it was done in Westminster by English hands.34