THE
GENERAL ASSEMBLY,
AT EDINBURGH, 1639.
Before proceeding with a detail of the Acts and discussions of the Assembly of 1639, it is fitting, in conformity with the general plan of this work, to state briefly the occurrences which resulted from that of the preceding year—events, the character of which must, in some measure, have been anticipated in the perusal of the numerous documents which we have already concentrated in the foregoing pages.
It is evident, from many indications in the correspondence and public documents of the period, that, from the first movements of the Covenanters against the Service Book and Prelacy, both the King and the Scotch Leaders contemplated the contingency of an appeal to arms, although both parties disguised, as much as possible, their mutual anticipations and arrangements. The rupture which ensued on the Commissioner’s dissolution of the Assembly on the 29th of November 1638; the continuance of the Assembly in defiance of the King’s authority, (apart altogether from the nature of its subsequent proceedings;) and the proclamations by Hamilton, after his retirement from the Assembly—in which all who continued in it were denounced as liable to the penalties of treason—amounted, in substance and effect, to a declaration of war, on the part of Charles, against the great body of his Scottish subjects, as rebels. Nor, in the circumstances, could aught else be expected; for, with the Sovereign’s notions of the royal prerogative, and influenced by the spirit disclosed in all his letters and instructions to the Commissioner, nothing, save consciousness of utter want of power, was likely to deter him from enforcing full and unlimited authority over all his subjects; while, on the other hand, the bold, numerous, and influential representatives of national feeling that composed the Glasgow Assembly of 1638, must have been prepared, from the first hour of its meeting, to raise the standard of revolt in the field, unless the objects at which they aimed with such intense enthusiasm, were otherwise attained. In fact, even before the meeting of that Assembly, both the King and the Covenanters had secretly prepared for a conflict; and, after its dissolution, and the scornful rejection of its supplication for a sanction to its Acts, the exertions of both parties were commensurate to their means and their relative positions.
The chief Acts of the Assembly of 1638—some of which have been made subjects of controversy—were, 1st, The election of their Moderator and Clerk, and their constituting the Court before receiving the Declinature tendered by the Prelates; 2d, The Acts approving of the Registers; 3d, The continuing to sit after the Commissioner ordered it to dissolve; 4th, The Act condemning the spurious Assemblies from 1606 to 1618, inclusive; 5th, The Act condemning the Service Book, and other Books forced on the country and Church, by the royal prerogative, without the sanction of Parliament or of the Church; 6th, The deposition and excommunication of the Prelates and others; 7th, The prohibition, by its own authority, of Episcopacy and the practice of the Five Articles of Perth, under the pains of censure and excommunication; 8th, The Act against the Press.
Of these, the first five, and some other relative Acts, reviving former laws of the Church, appear to be quite unexceptionable, and fully within the competency of a free General Assembly, according to the laws of the land, and the consuetudes of the Reformed Church, from the time of the Reformation; and these were all Acts, legitimately within the range of spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. We know not on what ground it can be contended that it was bound to dissolve itself on the mandate of the King or his Commissioner. It was confessedly convened by the royal proclamation; but we know of no authority by which the executive power was at that time warranted to dissolve a General Assembly, by its mere fiat, after being so assembled, upon an anticipation that it was about to act ultra vires and illegally.
The 6th, 7th, and 8th classes of Acts to which we have alluded, were of a different character, and imported an assumption of civil power and jurisdiction. Had that Assembly, upon the points referred to, confined itself to an expression of opinion in the first instance, or taken cognizance only, and in an orderly manner, of the moral and ministerial delinquencies of the prelates and ministers, there does not appear to be any good ground for challenging its procedure; and, having exhausted its proper spiritual jurisdiction, it could then have applied to the supreme legislature for a ratification of its ecclesiastical conclusions, and thus avoided the rock on which it split, and, for many “evil days,” made shipwreck of the genuine and legitimate Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
It would be disingenuous, as well as absurd, to disguise the fact, that several of the Acts of the Assembly of 1638 were violations of, and irreconcilable with, the existing law of the land, and imported an assumption of authority identical with that of the State. In fact, that Assembly was a Political Convention, as much, at least, as an Ecclesiastical Synod—having fully a hundred Members of Parliament in its composition; and, in many of its enactments and decrees, it directly rescinded and superseded a great number of Acts of Parliament. Without entering at all on controversial ground, we may remark, as a matter of fact and of notoriety, established on the face of the Statute Book, and by the tenor of the Assembly’s Acts, that that Assembly, virtually and explicitly, abrogated a series of Acts of Parliament, by which Prelacy was fully and distinctly settled as the Established Church of Scotland, for a period of above thirty years preceding, under which the greater number of the Clergy in that Assembly had received ordination and benefices, and in which the lay members had acquiesced without any visible opposition.[141] In addition to the assumption of civil authority, in practically repealing Acts of Parliament, the Assembly sustained Complaints against the Prelates and others, at the instance of miscellaneous and self-constituted public prosecutors—a practice never recognised as competent in the law of Scotland at any period.[142] It deposed the Prelates, not solely for erroneous doctrine or immoralities, which was quite competent to the spiritual jurisdiction of the Assembly, but chiefly because they held offices conferred on them under the existing law of the country. It superseded the uniform and settled law, both of the Church and State, from the time of the Reformation, on the point of ecclesiastical presentations to benefices, and transported ministers from place to place, regardless of the rights of patrons and the wishes of incumbents. It imposed an absolute veto on the liberty of the press; and, above all, it issued an edict for coercing the whole people into an adoption of the Covenant or Confession, and, in obedience to its decrees, under the terrors of excommunication, (a penalty which, at that time, was tantamount to outlawry, confiscation of property, and proscription,) in each and all of these particulars deviating from the spiritual into the civil track of jurisprudence and legislation. Of this, indeed, that sagacious and gifted man, Henderson, the Moderator, was fully aware; for he says explicitly—“Neither can we thinke ourselves secure in peace and quyetness, till civill auctoritie ratifie what is heir done by ecclesiasticall constitution.”
One of the most unaccountable characteristics of the Reformation in this country, is the intolerance and coercive courses adopted by the Protestants, from their Popish predecessors, for compelling uniformity to the new doctrines and worship. This appears to be inconsistent, and indeed irreconcilable with the great first principle of the Reformation—the right of private judgment in matters of religion, and in interpreting the Scriptures according to the conclusions of that judgment. It was the assertion of this right which shook the Papal domination; and nothing contributed more largely to the overthrow of Popery in Scotland, than the civil persecutions which ushered in the dawn of the Reformation, and which excited the sympathy and indignation of the people; yet no sooner were our first Reformers disenthralled from that bloody yoke, than they resorted to similar methods of compelling assent to their principles, and obedience to the authority of the Kirk. From 1449, in the reign of James II., “cursing” or “excommunication” by the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, for nonconformity or other kindred offences, inferred imprisonment and forfeiture of property in the recusant; and the unhappy victim of ecclesiastical censure was doomed to exclusion from society and all its charities, to destitution, to imprisonment, to exile from his native country, and even to death. Self-preservation may, perhaps, have prompted this course at first, when the Reformers were struggling to secure that religious liberty which was the great object of their zeal; and “The Booke of the Universall Kirk” affords numberless examples of the eagerness betrayed for constraining, by civil penalties, all persons to profess the reformed doctrine, and submit themselves to ecclesiastical authority. During the space of 140 years after, the spirit of intolerance continued to govern every party that was dominant for the time; in the reigns of Mary, James VI., and his son Charles, and his grandsons Charles II. and James VII. The triumph of the Covenanters was not more distinguished than any other portion of the period referred to, for greater relaxation in this respect, than either the Popish or Episcopal Churches; and, during all the vicissitudes of their fortune, as already in some measure disclosed, and to be further illustrated, we cannot find even a trace of any proposal to give freedom of conscience to others, even when they were waging war against Popery and Prelacy in the name of religious liberty. This strikes us as an anomaly in the moral history of our country, of which we have never seen any satisfactory solution; but the rigorous enforcement of the Covenant and submission to the Presbyterian Kirk, and the excommunications, which were directed against the Prelates and others at the time to which our attention is more immediately directed, perhaps paved the way, in some degree, as a precedent, for the interdicts, intercommunings, and diversified persecutions, which have rendered the reigns of the two last monarchs of the Stuart dynasty, a byword and a reproach to the land in which these horrors were perpetrated. It was not till the year 1690 that the civil penalties on religious nonconformity were blotted from our statute-book, after the settlement of William and Mary on the throne of Britain.