Andrew Melville | Page 8

learning. Through all
the stormy controversies into which he was plunged he never forsook
his first love, but continued his work in our Universities up to the close
of his career in Scotland.
CHAPTER IV
THE 'DINGING DOWN' OF THE BISHOPS--MELVILLE AND
MORTON
'Who never looks on man Fearful and wan, But firmly trusts in God.'
HENRY VAUGHAN.

We must go back to the year of Melville's return home, 1574, in order
that we may review the supreme labours of his life. It was a time of
confusion: Knox was dead, and the Church needed a leader to shape its
discipline and policy in order to conserve the fruits of the Reformer's
work. Two years before Melville's return, viz. in 1572, the electroplate
Episcopacy--the Tulchan[4] Bishops--had been imposed on the Church
by the Regent Morton. Up to this time the constitution of the Church
had been purely Presbyterian. There was no office superior to that of
the minister of a congregation. The Superintendents were only
ministers, or elders appointed provisionally by the General Assembly,
to whom such presbyterial functions were delegated as the exigencies
of the Church required. They had no pretensions to the rank or
functions of the Anglican bishops; they had no peculiar ordination, and
no authority save such as they held at the pleasure of the Assembly.
[Footnote 4: A Tulchan was a calf's skin stuffed with straw placed near
the cow to induce her to give milk.]
Side by side, however, with the Presbyterian ministry there still existed
the old Roman Hierarchy, who had been allowed to retain their titles,
the greater part of their revenues, and their seats in Parliament. The
prelates had no place within the Church, their status being only civil
and legal; and when any of them joined the Church they entered it on
the same footing as the common ministry.
This was far from being a satisfactory or safe state of things. It had
elements, indeed, which obviously threatened the integrity of the
Presbyterian order; and it is little wonder that the Church was impatient
of its continuance and eager to end it, to clear the Roman Hierarchy off
the ground, and secure for its own economy a chance of developing
itself without the entanglements that were inevitable to the existing
compromise.
The financial arrangements that had been made at the first for carrying
on the Church's work were unjust and inadequate. A portion of the third
part of the benefices was all that had been assigned for the support of
the ministry, and even this had not been fully or regularly paid, so that
in many parishes the ministers' stipends had to be provided by their

own people. In these circumstances the Church very naturally wished
the ecclesiastical revenues of the country to be transferred to her own
use, and she made the claim accordingly. But for this claim no party in
the State would have resisted the sweeping away of the Hierarchy. The
nobles, however, had set greedy eyes on the Church's patrimony, and so
they became the determined opponents of this step. They could well
have spared the bishops, but they could not forego the benefices, and to
secure this plunder to the nobles was the main object of the Tulchan
device. By this notable plan the benefices were taken from the old
Hierarchy and bestowed on the nobles, who then conferred the titles
without the functions on any of the clergy who could be bribed into
compliance.
Morton, who was the chief supporter of the scheme, was notoriously
avaricious--'wounderfully giffen to gather gear.' He hoped to enrich
himself by it, and succeeded in doing so; but he had other motives. He
wished--and this was always the main Governmental reason for the
preference of Episcopacy--to keep the clergy under his control; and he
sought also to please Elizabeth, on whom he was dependent for the
stability of his own position, by bringing the Scottish Church into some
degree of conformity with the Anglican.
The Assembly, while accepting the compromise had done what it could
to safeguard its own constitution by putting it on record that it had
assented to the continuance of the bishops only in their civil capacity,
and in order to give a legal claim on the benefices to those who held
them, and that it allowed the bishops no superiority within the Church
over the ordinary ministers, or, at any rate, over the superintendents.
There is no doubt that it was only the hope, on the part of the Church,
that she would secure a portion at least of her patrimony by it that
reconciled her to this scheme. The ministers had little heart in the
business, and the best of them did not conceal their dislike of the
arrangement and their fear of the evils to