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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Presbyterianism has always tended to be a misleading name for the Reformed Church-order. It suggests the absence of any office superior to that which in Anglican and Roman terminology is called the priesthood; and as neither Roman nor Anglican priests possess power of ordination, it further suggests that Presbyterian clergy have never been able to ordain. Their orders are taken to be invalid from the start, and thus its mere name kills a Church. But the usual assumption, that the Scottish parish minister is equivalent (however imperfectly) to the English parish priest, is a distortion of both doctrine and practice in Scotland; and it is the chief purpose of this paper to maintain that when the ecclesiastical idioms of the two countries are translated, the minister must be called, not a parish priest, but a parish bishop.
page 238 note 1 See the relevant entries in the Fasti Eccl. Scot.
page 238 note 2 Spottiswoode, , History (1677 edn.), p. 174.Google Scholar
page 239 note 1 Cf. especially Knox's, ‘Order of Absolution’ (in Works, VI, p. 460)Google Scholar; ‘If thou unfeignedly repent thy former iniquity and believe in the Lord Jesus, then I in His Name pronounce and affirm that thy sins are forgiven, not only on earth but also in heaven, according to the promises annexed with the preaching of His Word, and to the power put in the ministry of His Church.’
page 239 note 2 Aquinas, Summa Theol. IIIae Partis Suppl. Quaest. XL, art. 5.
page 239 note 3 In his De Rep. Eccl. (quoted by Gillespie, ‘Dispute v. English-Popish Ceremonies’, in Presbyterian's Armoury, I, p. 165).
page 239 note 4 Act. Parl. Scot., ii, 289.
page 239 note 5 Melville, James, Autobiography and Diary (1842 edn.), p. 483Google Scholar; he refers to a ‘Canon of Nicaea’, but is probably thinking of Can. Apost., LXXXI (LXXX).
page 240 note 1 The full letter is in Calderwood, History, III, pp. 156–62.
page 240 note 2 Scots Confession (1560), art. XVIII.
page 240 note 3 Knox, History, IV, chap. 2.
page 240 note 4 James VI, ‘Basilikon Doron’ in Political Works of James I (ed. C. H. McIlwain, 1918), p. 12.
page 240 note 5 ibid., p. 272.
page 240 note 6 Spottiswoode, , History, p. 531.Google Scholar
page 241 note 1 Cf. Laski, H. J., Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (1917), p. 30.Google Scholar
page 241 note 2 Melville, James, Autobiography and Diary, p. 370.Google Scholar
page 241 note 3 Gillespie, P., ‘Aaron's Rod Blossoming’ II, chaps. 4 and 7 (in Presbyterian's Armoury, II, pp. 86 and 107)Google Scholar; cf. the same author's ‘Brotherly Examination’ (ibid., I, p. 7): ‘I suppose he hath seen the co-ordinate governments of a general and of an admiral … or of parents over their children … he who is subject to one man as his master, is subject to another man as his father’.
page 241 note 4 McCrie, T., Life of Andrew Melville (1819), I, p. 47.Google Scholar
page 242 note 1 MacMillan, , Law and Other Things (1937), p. 66.Google Scholar
page 242 note 2 Rutherford, , Lex Rex (1642), Quest. 38 (p. 384 in the 1644 edn.).Google Scholar
page 242 note 3 Baillie, , Letters and Journals, III, p. 18.Google Scholar
page 242 note 4 Hewison, J. K., The Covenanters (1908), II, p. 1.Google Scholar
page 242 note 5 Ius Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici (1654 edn.), p. 2; first publ. 1646.Google Scholar
page 242 note 6 Major, Historia Maioris Britanniae, IV, cap. 17.
page 243 note 1 Buchanan, , De Iure Regni apud Scotos; see the English edn. (1680), p. 126.Google Scholar
page 243 note 2 Knox, , ‘Second Blast of the Trumpet’ in Works, IV, p. 539.Google Scholar
page 243 note 3 Rutherford, , Lex Rex, Quest. 14 (1644 edn., p. 96).Google Scholar
page 243 note 4 See Calvin, Inst., IV.iii.7.
page 244 note 1 In fact, Presbyterians have never recognised a national Assembly as supreme in the Universal Church; the Second Book of Discipline (chap. VII) is careful to leave room for an ecumenical Council at the top.
page 244 note 2 The First Book of Discipline speaks of Superintendents as ‘expedient at this time’, ‘in this present necessity’; cf. Calvin, Inst., IV.iii.7.
page 244 note 3 Cf. Lusk, D. C. in Scottish Journal of Theology (March 1955), VIII.i, p. 8.Google Scholar
page 244 note 4 Calvin, Inst., IV.iii.4 (Norton's translation).
page 244 note 5 ibid., IV.iii.5.
page 244 note 6 ibid., IV.ii.1.
page 244 note 7 John 10.4–5; cf. Calvin, Inst., IV.ii.4.
page 244 note 8 ibid., IV.iii.4.
page 245 note 1 John 10.45; cf. Calvin, Inst., IV.iii.6.
page 245 note 2 ibid., IV.ii.6.
page 245 note 3 ibid., IV.iii.8; disliking the title ‘Priest’ for similar reasons, Calvin none the less grants a certain sacerdotal power to the Christian ministry: ‘this is the priesthood of the Christian pastor, that is, to sacrifice men as it were to God, by bringing them to obey the Gospel’ (Comment, in Rom., 15.16).
page 245 note 4 Calvin, Inst., IV.iii.8–9.
page 245 note 5 Compare Acts 20.17 and 28; and see 1 Pet. 5.1.
page 245 note 6 The distinction is drawn in 1 Tim. 5.17.
page 245 note 7 Calvin, Inst., IV.iii.9.
page 245 note 8 ibid., IV.iv.1.
page 245 note 9 ibid., IV.iii.7.
page 246 note 1 Book of the Universal Kirk (Bannatyne Club, 1839), I, p. 342.
page 246 note 2 Second Book of Discipline, II.2–3.
page 246 note 3 ibid., II.9.
page 246 note 4 Henderson, , Government and Order of the Church of Scotland (1691 edn.), p. 1.Google Scholar
page 246 note 5 ibid., p. 53.
page 246 note 6 Baillie, , Letters and Journals (ed. Laing, David), I, p. 182.Google Scholar
page 246 note 7 Baxter, , The Reformed Pastor, Preface (1950 edn., p. 61).Google Scholar
page 247 note 1 Shields, Alexander, A Hind Let Loose, p. 227.Google Scholar
page 247 note 2 An example is supplied in the provision made for unsettled times at the conclusion of the Westminster Form of Church-government; Scottish instances are the acts of seceding Ministers, and the appointment of ‘riding committees’ to replace recalcitrant Presbyteries.
page 248 note 1 See the First Book of Discipline, on Schools and Colleges; Mathieson, W. L. (Politics and Religion, 1902, I, p. 206Google Scholar) is wrong in calling this zeal for education ‘almost the sole link of continuity between the old Church and the new’.
page 248 note 2 See Bingham, J., Antiquities of the Christian Church II.x.5Google Scholar, where examples are given.
page 250 note 1 Gillespie, , ‘Aaron's Rod Blossoming’, II.4 (in Presbyterian's Armoury, II, p. 89).Google Scholar
page 250 note 2 Jerome, , Epist., cxlvi. 1.Google Scholar
page 250 note 3 Bernard of Clairvaux, Vita Malachiae, x.
page 251 note 1 Calvin, Inst., IV.ii.1–2.
page 251 note 2 Froude, , Short Studies, I, pp. 419–420Google Scholar, instances the case of John Smart, Abbot of Wigmore, while engaged at Rome about the year 1530 in negotiations for his mitre and apparently not yet consecrated, himself performing a number of ordinations.
page 251 note 3 Calvin, Inst., IV.ii.2, 3 and 11; IV.iii.4; IV.v.2.
page 251 note 4 Gillespie, , ‘Miscellany Questions’, cap. 4 (in Presbyterian's Armoury, II, p. 27).Google Scholar
page 251 note 5 Ius Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici (1654 edn.), pp. 264sq.Google Scholar
page 253 note 1 Strype, Life of Grindal, VI, cap. 13.
page 253 note 2 Whitgift, , Life and Acts (ed. Strype, ), III, pp. 222–223.Google Scholar
page 253 note 3 Hooker, , Ecclesiastical Polity, VII. xiv. 11.Google Scholar
page 253 note 4 Andrewes, , Opuscula, pp. 191 and 211.Google Scholar
page 253 note 5 Heylin, , Life, p. 54Google Scholar; Hallam (Constitutional History, I, p. 394) says that Laud's plan for the Church was ‘just such as low-born and little-minded men, raised to power by fortune's caprice, are ever found to pursue’.
page 254 note 1 Grub, , Ecclesiastical History (1861), II, p. 296.Google Scholar
page 254 note 2 Some years ago, when the writer mentioned to a Bishop and a Dean of the Scottish Episcopal Church that in the seventeenth century their predecessors had admitted a Presbyterian ministry as valid, both confessed that they had never heard of the fact.
