Andrew Melville | Page 2

of both kingdoms could not
probably have been checked. The least that can be said with truth on
this matter is, that the Protestantism of the country was gravely
imperilled in his reign and in the reigns of his two immediate
successors, and that the resolute attitude of Scotland counted more than
any other one influence in preserving it.
Nor was it only the preservation of the freedom of the Church that was
involved in the struggle. The cause of civil freedom was also at stake.
'True religion,' says a classic of the Scottish Church, 'and national
liberty are like Hippocrates' twins--they weep or laugh, they live or die
together. There is a great sibness between the Church and the
Commonwealth. They depend one upon the other, and either is
advanced by the prosperity and success of the other.' Where a people
make a stand for spiritual liberty, they always by necessity advance
civil freedom. Prelacy was bound up with the absolutism of the throne
in the State as well as in the Church; Presbytery with the cause of free
government and the sovereignty of the popular will, as declared in their
laws by the chosen representatives of the nation.
But that is not the whole case for the Presbyterians. The opposing
system was discredited in their mind by the policy by which it was
promoted. It was a policy of coercion, of bribery, of dissimulation and

artifice, of resort to every kind of influence that is intolerable to a free
and high-spirited people. It was a policy that harassed the most faithful
and honourable men in the Church, and preferred the most
unscrupulous and obsequious to places of power. There was not one of
those concerned in it, from the king downwards, who came out of the
business with undamaged character. How could the Scottish Church but
resist a system which it was sought to thrust upon it by such methods as
these? If Melville's claims on our interest rested on no other ground
than the services he rendered to the Church and to the nation in
maintaining Presbyterianism in the land, that alone would make them
good.
But Melville was not only the greatest ecclesiastical controversialist of
his day; his name is pre-eminent in another sphere. He was the most
learned Scot of his time; and our Universities never had a teacher
within their walls who did so much to spread their reputation. His fame
as a scholar not only checked the habit among the élite of Scottish
students of resorting to the Continental Universities; it drew many
foreign students to Glasgow and St. Andrews. His academic distinction
has been overshadowed by his fame as the leader of the Church in one
of the most momentous struggles in her history, but it was equally great
in its own sphere. A Scottish historian--John Hill Burton--has sought,
with a singular perversity, to belittle Melville as a scholar, and speaks
of M'Crie as having endeavoured to make out his title to distinction in
this respect from the natural ambition to claim such an honour for one
of his own ecclesiastical forebears. The chapter which follows will
show the value of such a judgment.
There is still another and a higher ground for our interest in Melville,
namely, his massive personality. It is not so much in the polemic or in
the scholar we are interested, as in the man. The appreciation of his
character by his countrymen has suffered from his proximity to Knox.
Had he not stood so close on the field of history to the greatest of Scots,
his stature would have been more impressive. In historic
picturesqueness his life will not compare with that of Knox, although it
had incidents, such as his appearances before the King and Council at
Falkland and Hampton Court, which are unsurpassed by any in Scottish

history for moral grandeur. There were not the same tragic elements
mixed up with Melville's career. His life fell on duller times and among
feebler contemporaries. He had not such a foil to his figure as Knox
had in Mary; there was not among his opponents such a protagonist as
Knox encountered in Mary's strong personality. And yet it may be
justly claimed for Melville that in the highest quality of manhood, in
moral nerve, he was not a whit behind his great predecessor. He never
once wavered in his course nor abated his testimony to his principles in
the most perilous situation; in the long struggle with the King and the
Court he played the man, uttered fearlessly on every occasion the last
syllable of his convictions, made no accommodation or concession to
arbitrary authority, and kept an untamed and hopeful spirit on to the
very end. The work a man may do belongs to his own generation;