Presbyterian Principle.—By committing herself to this sys tem the Church of Scotland established between herself and the Church of England a division which became more and more apparent and was the cause of much of her subsequent sufferings. It is no doubt strange that she should have endured so much not for any great Christian principle, but for a question of church government. On the other hand, Presbyterianism stood in Scot tish history for freedom, and for the rights of the middle and lower classes against the crown and the aristocracy; and it might not have been held with such tenacity or proved so incapable of compromise but for the opposition and persecution of the three Stuart kings. The history of the Scottish church for a century after the date of the Book of Discipline is that of a religious struggle between the people and the crown.
For some years after its inception Presbyterianism carried all before it. The presbyteries came quickly into existence; that of Edinburgh dates from 1580. In that year it was found that there were 924 parishes in Scotland, but not nearly all supplied with ministers; it was proposed that there should be 5o presby teries and 400 ministers. A great part of the country, especially in the north and west, had not yet been reached by the Ref orma tion. At this time began the long series of attempts made by James VI. in the direction of curbing Presbyterian liberty and of the restoration of Episcopacy. For a few years his attitude was different. A Roman Catholic rising threw James into the arms of the kirk; in 1592 the Second Book of Discipline was legal ized and Presbytery set up. The church was at the time very powerful, the people generally sympathizing with her system, and her assemblies being attended by many of the nobles and the foremost men. Discipline was strict; the temper of the church was in accordance with the Old rather than the New Testament. On his accession to the throne of England in 1603 James entered on a new set of attempts to assimilate the Scottish church to that of England. In 1609 two courts of high commission were set up by the royal authority with plenary powers to enforce conformity to the new arrangements. In 1612 the act of 1592 which established Presbytery was rescinded, and Episcopacy became the legal church system of Scotland.
National Covenant.—In all this it was the position and rights of the clergy that were assailed. The people had been less inter fered with ; the change of church government involved no change in the conduct of worship. But the articles of Perth, passed by a packed assembly in 1618, foreshadowed what was soon to be the policy of the crown. During the first years of his reign
Charles was occupied in other directions; but when he came to Scotland in 1633 to be crowned, Laud came with him, and though like his father he showed himself kind to the clergy in matters of stipend, and adopted measures which caused many schools to be built, he also showed that in the matter of worship the policy of forcing Scotland into uniformity with England was to be car ried through with a high hand. A book of canons and constitu tions of the church which appeared in 1636, instead of being a digest of acts of assembly, was English in its ideas, dealt with matters of church furniture, exalted the bishops and ignored the kirk-session and elders. The liturgy was ordered to be used, which had not yet appeared, but which proved to be a version, with somewhat higher doctrine, of the Anglican Common Prayer. The introduction of this service book in St. Giles's Church, Edin burgh, on the 16th of July 1637, occasioned the tumult of which Jenny Geddes will always figure as the heroine. The sentiment was echoed throughout Scotland. Petitions against the service book and the book of canons poured in from every quarter; the committee formed to forward the petition rapidly became a powerful body at the head of a national movement, the action of the crown was temporizing, and on the 28th of February the National Covenant was signed in the famous scene in Grey friars church and churchyard. This document recited the cove nant, signed by King James and his household in 1580, to uphold Presbyterianism and to defend the state against Romanism, and then declared a new covenant of nobles, barons, gentlemen, bur gesses, ministers and commons to continue in the reformed religion, to defend it and resist all contrary errors and corruptions. The Covenant was no doubt an act of revolt against legal author ity, and can only be justified on the ground that the crown had for many years acted oppressively and illegally in its attempt to coerce Scotland into a religious system alien to the country, and that the subjects were entitled to free themselves from tyranny. The crown was unable either to check the popular movement or to come to any compromise with it, and the Glasgow assembly of 1638, the first free assembly that had met for thirty years, proceeded to make the church what the Cove nant required, and effected the "second Scottish reformation." The assembly contained many influential laymen and was carried on the crest of a great national movement. The Covenant was accepted by parliament in 1639.