The document presented to the estates was the famous Book of Discipline—the most interesting and in many respects the most important document in the history of Scotland. If any proof were needed that the revolt against the ancient Church was no ill-considered act of irresponsible men, we assuredly possess that proof in this extraordinary book. Though in its primary intention the scheme of its ecclesiastical polity, it is in fact the draft of a "republic," under which a nation should live its life on earth and prepare itself for heaven. It not only prescribes a creed, and supplies a complete system of church government: it suggests a scheme of national education, it defines the relation of church and state, it provides for the poor and unable, it regulates the life of households, it even determines the career of such as by their natural gifts were especially fitted to be of service to church or state. As we shall see, the suggestions of the Book of Discipline were to be but imperfectly realized; yet, by defining the ideals and moulding the temper and culture of the prevailing majority of the Scottish people, it has been one of the great formative influences in the national development.
It was on this memorable document that the estates were now to sit in judgment. In the case of the Confession of Faith they had been practically unanimous; but that had been a mere statement of abstract doctrines which involved no question of worldly interests, and might be subscribed with a light heart and with any degree of spiritual conviction. With the Book of Discipline it was very different. The fundamental question that had to be answered in that book was the question of the "sustentation" of the new Church. The answer given was the most natural in the world: the reformed Church had an indisputable right to the entire inheritance of the Church it had displaced. There were, however, two formidable difficulties in the way of this claim. Without manifest injustice the ancient clergy could not be deprived wholesale of their means of subsistence. The second difficulty was also formidable. Of late years a considerable amount of Church property had passed into the hands of the nobles, barons, and gentry. Would these persons now be willing to lay their possessions at the feet of the ministers from whom they professed to have received the true Gospel? The proceedings of the convention left no doubt as to the answer. As in the preceding August, the assembly was a crowded one, but on this occasion there was no such unanimous action. "Some approved it," says Knox, "and willed the same have been set forth by law. Others, perceiving their carnal liberty and worldly commodity somewhat to be impaired thereby, grudged, insomuch that the name of Book of Discipline became odious unto them. Everything that repugned to their corrupt affections was termed in their mocking 'devout imaginations.'"
After long and heated debates, no definite conclusion was reached. A large number of the nobles and barons, however, signed the Book as being "good and conformable to God's Word in all points"; but they signed it with a qualification that did them credit. The old clergy should be allowed to retain their livings on condition of their maintaining Protestant ministers in their respective districts. The denunciations of Knox have given an evil name to this convention of the estates, yet the act of spoliation to which he would have had them put their hands would have done little credit to a religion whose special claim was to have reproduced the purity and simplicity of the primitive gospel.
While the supporters of the Reformation were thus divided among themselves, the prospect of the Queen's approaching return was further confounding their counsels. That she must be their open or their secret foe, they could have no manner of doubt. Her character and opinions had been formed under the immediate supervision of her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine; and to the French Protestants the Cardinal was already known as "le tigre de France." As a Catholic and as a Queen, her natural desire must be to undo the work of the late revolution, which she could only regard as the work of rebels and heretics. "Whenever she comes," wrote Randolph, the English resident, "I believe there will be a mad world." Mary might prove to be as able as her mother, and she would possess many advantages over Mary of Lorraine in any contest with her subjects. She was the legitimate sovereign of the country; and, now that the immediate danger from France was removed by the death of her husband, there was no reason why the national party, as distinguished alike from Catholic and Protestant, should not return to its natural allegiance. Moreover, though, with the help of England, Protestantism had triumphed in the late trial of strength, the great majority in the country—nobles, barons, and commons—were still on the side of the old religion.
Even before her return Mary had clearly indicated the policy she intended to follow. In February she had sent deputies to the estates to urge the renewal of the ancient league with France—a step which, at their meeting in May, the estates decisively refused to take, as being the virtual abandonment of their cause. In view of her imminent return, Mary's supporters began to bestir themselves in a fashion that boded ill for the future peace of the country. At Stirling the bishops met in council to consider their best policy; and we have it from one of their own number that they were acting in concert with the earls Huntly, Athol, Crawford, Marischal, Sutherland, Caithness, and Bothwell. As the result of their counsels, a proposal was sent to Mary which she had the prudence to reject in her own interest as well as in the interest of her kingdom. The proposal was that she should land at some point on the northern coast where the earls would be ready to support her with twenty thousand men. As a safer course for the immediate future, Mary chose the advice proffered to her by the party for the present in the ascendant. Through the lord James Stewart as their deputy, the Protestant leaders urged upon her the necessity of leaving religion as she would find it, and of adopting as her advisers the persons now at the head of affairs. When at length, on August 19, 1561, Mary landed at Leith, it appeared that at least for the time she was content to take things as she found them. That she would accept them as definitive, no one, and least of all John Knox, could so far delude himself as to believe.
THOMAS CARLYLE
In the history of Scotland I can find properly but one epoch: we may say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor, barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance! "Bravery" enough, I doubt not; fierce fighting in abundance, but not braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors, whose exploits we have not found worth dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now, at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes, kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth, whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true man!
But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price—as life is. The people began to live: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle over all these realms; there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we all call the "Glorious Revolution," a Habeas Corpus Act, Free Parliaments, and much else! Alas, is it not too true, that many men in the van do always like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnest, rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, bemired—before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over them in official pumps and silk stockings, with universal three-times-three!
It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world; intrinsically for having been, in such a way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland had not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to it any million "unblamable" Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controversies enveloping the man, into the man himself.