Part IV. The Pastor and the Prelate Compared by the Reformation and Proceedings of Our Own Kirk

PART IV. THE PASTOR AND PRELATE COMPARED BY THE REFORMATION AND PROCEEDINGS OF OUR OWN KIRK. The discipline and government of the kirk at the first began to be reformed, and the prelate to be cast out.—The pastor proceedeth in this point of reformation and the prelate in his avarice and ambition.—At last prelacy is rooted outt with consent of the whole kirk—The kirk, now reformed in doctrine and discipline, useth her authority against all sorts of sin till men of episcopal disposition make a new division again.—The pastor standeth to the reformation against episcopatus, which the prelate attaineth to at last by many degrees and much working—The way of the pastor’s reformation, and the prelate’s defection, very contrary.—The pastor beareth witness against the several degrees of defection, and feareth a change in the worship of God, which the prelate entereth upon so soon as the government is altered, and he come to his power.—The pastor resolveth to be constant to the end against all heresy aad corruption, which is entering every day by the prelate’s misgovernment—Objection, The superintendents in the beginning were prelates.—Answer, Showing particularly that the superintendents were not prelates. As no family or civil society where the fundamental laws are neglected, and the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are followed, can continue long except it be reformed, even so the kirk of God, through the disregard of the laws of God and direction of Scripture, and through the ambition and covetousness of kirkmen, did fall away so far from the first integrity that there was a necessity of reformation, and nothing more certainly looked fin, and more plainly foretold, a long time before any of our reformers, or Luther himself, came into the world. This reformation, that could no longer be delayed, was often urged, but never likely to be obtained in a general council, nor with consent of the clergy and court of Rome, to whom reformation was a certain ruin; and, thereibre, in several kingdoms, countries and states of the Christian world, it was wonderfully wrought by the Lord’s mighty power in his weak servants. Such were, amongst others, Baldus of Francfort, Huss of Bohemia, Jerome of Prague, Luther of Germany, Wickliffe of England, and our Knox of Scotland; whereupon it came to pass, that although one part of Christiandom knew not what another was doing, yet they all agreed (as may be seen in the Harmony of Confessions, published to the world) in the most essential and fundamental matters of faith, because the Lord was master of that work, but had also their own differences and degrees of reformation, because men were the instruments, and they were not angels but men that were to be wrought upon; for whose divers dispositions in sundry nations there behoved to be divers disadvantages to the work. We are not rigid censurers of other reformed kirks, nor are we separatists from them; but this we think, that a twofold duty lieth upon us and them all, whatsoever be the measure of reformation. One is, (albeit there be ever some catholic moderators that will be trysters betwixt us and Rome, and think to agree Christ and antichrist,) that we all with one heart praise God for separating us from Sodom, resolving never to return again where there be so many heresies both against the common principles and particular articles of faith, so manifold idolatry both against the first and second commandment, so proud .a hierarchy as can neither stand with the spiritual kingdom of Christ nor the civil kingdoms of princes, and so bloody a tyranny against alt who believe their heresies, to practice their idolatry, and to be slavish to their hierarchy. Returning to any point of their pipfession is an approbation of their cruelty against them that have denied it; and whosoever approve their worship they bring upon themselves the blood of so many saints and faithful martyrs of Christ, who have testified the word of God, and have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. The other duty is, that aLbeit there be ever some adiaphorists, who for their own particular ends make many things, and show more thiup to be indifferent in the worship of God, that under this pretext they may bring them back that have been advanced before them in the work of reformation; that we all praise God with one heart for the measure that every one bath attained unto; and they that are behind in reformation, whatsoever their outward splendour be, envy not them who have run before, or study to draw them backto their degree, lest both return to Rome; but that all, against all impediments, press forward to farther perfection, ever reforming somewhat according to the pattern,—there being no staying neither for the Christian nor for the kirk. The kirk of Scotland hath little cause to be pleased with herself when she looketh upon her late sudden and shameful defection, but great and angular cause to praise God when she looketh to his gracious dispensation. For as Scotland, albeit far from Jerusalem, was one of the first nations that the light of the gospel shone on when it appeared to the Gentiles, and one of the last that kept the light when the shadows of the hills of Rome began to darken the earth; so when the sun came about again at the Reformation, if this blessed light shone upon others, all that had eyes to see, both at home aad abroad, have seen and said, that it shone 6irest upon us. Divine providence delighting to supply the defect of nature with abundance of gtace, and to make this other side of the earth, lying behind the visible sun, by the clear and comforting beams of the Sun of righteousness, to be the sunny side of the Christian world, whereof these following testimonies are sufficient proof:

One of Mr. George Wishart, martyr.—"This realm shall be illuminated with the light of Christ’s gospel as clearly as ever was realm since the days of the apostles. The house of God shall be built in it, yea, it shall not lack (whatsoever the enemy imagine to the contrary) the very top-stone; the glory of God shall evidently appear, and shall once triumph in despise of Satan. But, alas! if the people shall be after unthankful, then fearful and terrible shall the plagues be that after shall follow.”—Hist. of the Kirk of Scotland, p. 108.

Another of Beza.—"This is a great gift of God, that ye have brought into Scotland together pure religion and good order, which is the band to hold fast the doctrine. I heartily pny and beseech for God’s sake, bold fast those two together, so that ye may reaember that if the one be knt the other cannot long remain. As bishops brought forth popery, so false bishops the relics of popery, tall bring into the world epicureanisn Whosoever would have the kirk safe let them beware of this pest; and, seeing ye have timely dispatched it in Scotland, I beseech you never admit it again, albeit it flatter with show of the preservative of unity, which hath deceived many of the best of the ancients."{1} A third of the body of "Confessions of Faith.”— “It is the rare privilege of the Kirk of Scotland befor . many, in which respect her name is famous even among strangers, that about the space of four and fifty years, without schism, let be heresy, she hath kept and held fast unity with ty of doctrine. The greatest help of this unity of the mercy of God. was, that with the doctrine the discipline of Christ and his apostles, as it is prescribed in the word of God, was, by little and little together, resumed; and according to that discipline, so near as might be, the whole government of the kirk was disposed. By this means all the seeds of schisms and errors, so soon as they began to bud and show themselves, in their very breeding and birth were smothered and rooted out The Lord God, of his infinite goodness, grant unto the king’s most gracious majesty, to all the rulers of the kirk, to the powers that are nurses of the kirk, that, according to the word of God, they may keep perpetually that unity and purity of doctrine! Amen.”{2} The fourth is of king James our late sovereign.— “The religion professed in this country, wherein I was brought up, and ever made profession of, and wishes my son ever to continue in the same, as the only true rm of God’s worship, &c. I do equally love and honour the learned and grave men of either of these opinions, that like better the single form of policy in our kirk than the many ceremonies in the kirk of E’land, &c. I exhort my son to be beneficial to the good men of the ministry, praising God that there are presently a sufficient number of good men of them in this kingdom, and yet are they all known to be against the form of the English kirk.”

He praised God that he was born to be a king in the sincerest kirk in the world, &c. Assembly, 1590. The prelates themselves, and the maintainers of conformity, dare not for shame open their mouths against the work of God in the reformation, and against the purity of their mother kirk, and therefore would have her open her mouth in the defence of their hierarchy and ceremonies, and do wrest her authority and proceedings to that sense. Let us then ask of herself whether she liketh the pastor or the prelate.

1. The PASTOR and men of God, at the acceptable time of reformation, as they were moved by the Spirit of God, laboured to reform not only the doctrine, sacraments and whole worship of God, but also the discipline and whole government of the house of God, by abolishing the jurisdiction of prelates, and all that Roman hierachy; as is manifest by their acknowledging no other ordinary and perpetual office-bearers in the kirk but pastors, doctors, elders and deacons;{4} by their petitioning that the rents of the prelates and of their traiu should be converted to other uses; by their. subscribing the Helvetic Confession,{5} which censureth prelacy for the invention of man, and by the letters which they received from foreign kirks, congratulating that they had timely purged the kirk of this proud prelacy, that they had received with the doctrine the discipline of Christ and his apostles, and willing and obtesting them to beware of the pest of prelacy as they loved the weal of the kirk.{6} The PRELATE, not only in respect of his popish religion, but also in respect of his papal and eplopal jurisdiction, was one of the great evils that cried tin reformation of the kirk; and, therefore, albeit he kept still the title, the rent and civil place of the prelate’s (which the kirk could not take from him, and which inaketh many to mistake his descent) ecclesiastical authority was so far abolished that neither were their successors designed to such prelates as continued obstinate papists, nor was episcopal authority continued in their persons that were convened, nor were superintendents ordained to be new prelates. Only some of the converted prelates, for want of means to furnish others, were designed to be commissioners of the kirk, as other ordinary pastors were, but with bad success; for never one of them did good to the kirk.

2. The PASTOR and men of God, proceeding in the work of reformation, acknowledged no government of the kirk by the lordly domination of prelates, but by the common consent and authority of assemblies, which were of four sorts,—national, provincial, parochial and presbyterial. The lineaments of the last were drawn at the first when the weekly assemblies were appointed for exercise of discipline and interpretation of the Scriptures, but were not, nor could not be, accomplished and perfectly established till the light was spread, and particular kirks were planted in the several quarters and corners of the land, that they might make a number, and conveniently assemble in presbyterial meetings.{7} The PRELATE is restless, proceeds whither his avarice and ambition carry him, and willing, in those times, rather to be a titular or a tulchan{8} (as he was then named) than to be nobody above his brethren. He taketh upon him the title of bishop, with a small part of the rent, permitting the greater part to my lord, whose bishop he was, and proudly again arrogates authority over the kirk.

3. The PASTOR and men of God, learning not from Geneva, but from Scripture and daily experience, that the government of prelates was full of usurpation and of all sorts of corruption, whereof many did complain that it had no warrant, and was never like to have any blessing from God, resolved at last to strike at the root;{9} and, therefore, after many disputations in private and public, consultations with the greatest divines of other reformed kirks, and after long and mature deliberations, the Second Book of Discipline, pronouning the jurisdiction and rule of the prelate to be unlawful, was resumed by consent of the whole kirk; an ordinance made that bishops betalçe themselves to the charge of one congregation, and that they exer else no civil jurisdiction; the Confession of Faith sworn and subscribed, wherein they oblige themselves to continue in the doctrine and discipline of this kirk. The same year it was declared in the General Assembly, that the office of the prelate was unlawful in itseif, and had no warrant in the word of God, thereafter renewed in covenant.{10} The PRELATE and men of that disposition, having in the end nothing to oppone, professed that they agreed in their consciences, consented to the Acts of the kirk, swore to and subscribed the Confession of Faith, renewed the covenant with the kirk, and helped to put on the cope-stone of the kirk of God with their own hands; like as the same Confession of Faith was subscribed by those that are now in the proudest places of prelacy, and who have proved since the chief instruments of all the alterations in the discipline and external worship of God, and ring-leaders in the defection of the kirk, with what conscience may be seen by their dishonest excuses, their poor shifts and their shameless railings against that which they did once so much reverence, all to be seen, as they are published in print. {11}

4. The PASTOR and men of God, desiring to testify their thankfulness for so singular favour vouchsafed upon this kirk and nation, and to employ the benefit of the discipline now established for the liberty of the kingdom of Christ and against the tyranny of sin and Satan, addressed themselves, all as one man, with great fidelity and courage for the work of God, urged residence and diligence in ministers, kept, with succss from heaven, their public and solemn humiliations, made the pulpits to sound against papistry and profaneness, and set all men on work, as they had grace or place, for purging the country of all corruptions, and defending the kirk against her professed enemies, who never ceased, by negotiating with the Pope and the Spanish king, unnaturally to labour for their own and her ruin, whereof the divine providence had disappointed them in 1588. The PRELATE’S authority at this time lay dead, and men of that disposition made no great din. But the kirk then (unlike that which she is now,) comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners, against all her enemies did stand whole and sound in unity and concord of her ministers, authority of her assemblies, divine order of her ministry, and purity of external worship, with great power and presence of the Spirit of God hi many congregations of the land, till, at last, for unity, division entered into the kirk, prelacy, that had slept before, was wakened again, and this mystery beginneth to woik anew, neither by any cause offered by the pastors of the kirk at the 17th of December (as the enemy calumniates,) for after long trial they were found faultless and faithful by his majesty’s own testimony, nor yet upon that occasion, for the meeting of the kirk for making that charge was indicted before the 17th day;{12} but the cause was a plot contrived before for procuring peace to the popish lords, to make war among the ministry and to divide them among themselves. For this effect fifty-five problems were framed to call the established displine of the kirk in question, and, at one and the same time, way was made for renconciliation of the popish lords, and for restitution of the popish prelates. And the schism of our kirk, so well compacted before, began at that time, not upon their part who stand for the discipline, but by some of the prelate’s disposition, that is, of flattering and worldly-minded ministers, who gave other answers to thirteen of the fifty-five articles concerning the government of the kirk than their worthy brethren desired; so that, if the cause or occasion maketh the schismatic, the prelate is the schismatic and not the pastor.

5. The PASTOR and men of God., as they had been diligent to establish the government of the kirk according to the will of Christ, and after it was, by the blessing of God, established, were faithful in using it for the honour of God and good of the kirk; so now, when it began craftily to be called in question, were careful, according to their office and oath, to stand to the defence thereof, both against professed enemies and against the schism begun by their own brethren; albeit they could not at the first have been persuaded that their brethren would ever so foully forgot themselves, as, against their great oath in the sight of God and the world, to take upon them the dominion of prelates, and, for their own back and belly, to trouble the kirk, and mar all the worship of God as they have done. The PRELATE, through the schism at that time begun by himself, savouring the sweetness of wealth and honour, forgetteth his oath, his office, and all, followeth greedily upon the scent, and clirnbeth craftily, by degrees and betimes, to the height that he could not advance himself to at once. First, With much ado, and many protestations that he meant nothing against discipline established, but desired to vindicate the ministry from poverty and contempt, he gets liberty to vote in parliament fax the kirk, but with such caveats as would have kept him from his present prelacy if he had kept them as he was obliged.{13} Secondly, five years thereafter he was made constant moderator, and that of the presbytery only where he was resident, and not of the synods, upon as fair precepts, with the like protestations and cautions.{14} Thirdly, Being lord of parliament, lord of council, patron of benefices, modifier of ministers’ stipends, he was armed also with the power of the high commission, and, having two swords, might do against the kirk what he pleased.{15} Thereafter incontinent, he usurped the power of ordination and jurisdiction; {16} and, at last, albeit without consent or knowledge of the kirk of Scotland, went and resumed consecration in England,{17} and, since that time, hath taken upon him, and bath exercised, the plenary power and office of a bishop in the kirk, no less than if the assembly of this kirk had chosen him to the name and office of a bishop, which, as yet, they have never done,—the most corrupt of their own assemblies granting only the negative power of ordination and jurisdiction to them, who were never called bishops by any warrant from tht kirk, but only in the vulgar speech, from the titles they had to benefices, in which respect civil persons beneficed were called bishops in former times.

6. The PASTOR and men of God, seeking neither profit nor preferment to themselves, expelled the prelate and all his ceremonies out of the kirk of Christ, by no other means but such as became faithful ministers of Christ, as preaching, praying, writing, advising with the best reformed kirks, reasoning in assemblies, and, after liberty granted to all, to oppone the consent, oath and subscription of the adversaries. The PRELATE, seeking nothing but his own profit and preferment, is restored again, by such means as better beseem his ministers who hath been a murderer and a liar from the beginning, than the sincere ministers of Jesus Christ; for craft and cruelty hath been their ways. Their craft was to remove their strongest opponents out of the country, that they might not be present in assemblies to espy their proceedings, and to reason against them, to abolish the true liberty and authority of assemblies, to protest that they were seeking no prelacy, neither of the popish nor English kind, and that they had no purpose to subvert the discipline received, but to deliver the kirk from disgrace, and to be the more mighty to oppose her enemies, Jesuits and papists, who falsify the acts of the kirk, to promise to keep all the cautions and conditions made to hold them in order, which now they profess they never minded to do, &c.; their cruelty hath been to boast, to banish, imprison, deprive, confine, silence, &c.

7. The PASTOR and men of God, all this time of defection, gave testimony to the truth, opposed the several steps of the prelate’s ambition by all the means that became them to use, as public preaching, supplicating, reasoning, protesting, and suffering, and when the prelate was triumphing in the height of his dignity, they could not, comparing the first temple with the second, but declare the grief of their hearts for the change; and their great fear of alteration to be made in the worship of God, when now the hedge of the kirk was broken down, and an. open way made for all corruption. The PRELATE is of the clergy that seldom are seen penitent, and therefore, as against all the means used by the pastor he had altered the government of the kirk, so he enters next upon the worship and service of God, and will have a new confession of faith, new catechism, new forms of prayer, new observation of days, new forms of ministration of the sacraments,{17} which he first practised himself against the Acts and order of the kirk, and since convened an assembly of his own making to draw on the practice of others;{18} and, thirdly, he hath involved the honourable estates of the kingdom, into his great guiltines by their ratification in parliament, which hath brought an inundation of evils into this kirk and country.{19}

8. The PASTOR and men of God, considering what the kirk was before, and what it is now, what the Reformation was, and what conformity is, what the proceedings of the one and the other have been,— seeing religion wearing away, he pitieth the young ones that never have seen better times, laments over the multitude that cannot see the evils of the present, and resolveth for himself to hold constant to the end, against papists, prelates, Arminians, and whatsoever can arise, to wait with patience what the Lord will do for his people, and, when he is gone, to leave a testimony behind him of the twofold misery of impiety and iniquity that he hath seen in this land. The PRELATE hath forgot what himself and the kirk were once; he hath wrought a greater defection in this kirk in the short time of his episcopacy than was in the primitive kirk for some hundreds of years, and is.so’far yet blinded with the love of his place in the world, that he maketh his worldly credit the canon, and his prelacy the touchstone for the trial of all religion; thePope shall no more be antichrist, papistry may be borne with, Arminianism may be brought in, because they can keep company with prelacy. The Reformation is puritanism, preciseness, separation, and intolerable, because it cannot cohabit with prelacy. The gods of the nations were social, and could live together, but the God of Israel is a jealous God. The Prelate’s objection.—The PRELATE will object that, albeit he can neither justify all his own proceedceedings of late, nor yours of old, as all men have their own infirmities, yet that ye do him wrong by your deduction, in confounding times that should be distinguished; because from the Reformation to the coming of some scholars from Geneva with presbyterial discipline this kirk was ruled by prelates, and the superintendents in the beginning were the same in substance that the prelates are now. The Pastor’s answer.—All men have their own infirmities, but good men are not presumptuously bold for the love of the world, to hold on in a course of defection against so many obligations from themselves, and so many warnings from good men. Infirmity is one thing and presumption is another. The pastors of the kirk of Scotland had begun to root out bishopry, and to condemn it in their assemblies, before these scholars came from Geneva, but never condemned but allowed the charge of superintendents, appointed for a time in the beginning of the kirk, the one and the other being different in substance: For,

1st, The superintendent, according to the canon of the kirk, was admitted as another minister, without consecration of any bishop. The prelate is chosen, for fashion, by dean and chapter, without any canon of the kirk, and with solemn consecration of the metropolitan and their bishops.

2d, The superintendent appropriated not the power of ordination and jurisdiction, but both remained cornmon to other ministers. The prelate hath taken to himself the power to ordain and depose ministers, and to decree excommunication.

3d, The superintendents made not a hierarchy of archsuperintendents, and others inferior, some general and some provincial; some primates and some suifragans, some archdeans and some deans; &c. The prelates have set up a hierarchy of all these.

4th, The superintendent was subject to the censure not only of the national but of the provincial kirk where he superintended. The prelate is subject to no censure, but may do what, and may go whither, he will, and no man ask him why he hath done so.

5th, The superintendent’s charge was merely ecciesiastical, and more in preaching than in government. The prelate is more in ruling than in preaching, and more in the world than in the kirk.

6th, The superintendent acknowledgeth his charge to be but temporary, and often desired to lay it down before the General Assembly. The prelate thinketh his office to be perpetual by reason and in virtue of his consecration.

7th, The superintendent had no greater power than the commissioners of provinces, and, in respect of his superintendency, was rather a commissioner of the kirk than an office-bearer essentially different from the pastor. The prelate neither hath received commission from the kirk, nor meaneth to render a reckoning to them, nor account of himself as of a commissioner, but thinketh his office as essentially diverse from the office of the pastor as the pastor’s office is from the deacon’s. The Pope may as well say that the evangelists were popes as the prelate, that the superintendents were prelates.