son in the parish use and read the same." The same order is repeated in the first Book of Discipline:— "In the great towns we think it expedient that every day there be either Sermon or Common Prayer, with some exercise of reading the Scriptures." It is clear, too, that Knox individually continued to use a liturgical service in the worship of God. He entertained, it is true, certain objections to the English service-book, as it stood in the reign of Edward VI. and therefore employed the influence which he justly possessed over his brethren, to introduce in place of it, the Liturgy used at Geneva; and which, in consequence, has been frequently called by his name, as well as by the title of the "Old Scottish Liturgy." We are informed by Spotswood, that he had set forms of prayer read in his house every day, and Richard Bannatyne, his secretary or amanuensis, tells us in his journal, that his master continued to the last to conduct his private devotions according to the ritual of the Church, and that a few hours before he expired, he repeated aloud the Lord's Prayer and the Belief. "The Tuysday after this, the said Mr. Knox was stricken with a grit host (severe cough), whairwith he being so feebled, caused him upon the 13 day of November (1572), lieve his ordinarie reading of the Bible; for ilk day he red a certane chapter in both the Old Testament and New, with certane psalms, whilk psalms he passed through everie moneth once."

At this period, indeed, there was no aversion to a Liturgy among either Ministers or people in Scotland. It was not till afterwards, when prayer became a vehicle of sedition, or an instrument for inflaming party spirit, that the manifold advantages of extemporaneous devotion were perceived and fully appreciated. From the resolutions of the Lords of the Congregation, it is perfectly clear that the antipathy to set forms of prayer, which, at a subsequent period, was so strongly felt in Scotland, had at the commencement of the Reformation, no existence among the learned or the unlearned.

From 1560 to the year 1572, the affairs of the Scottish Church remained in the precarious and unprecedented condition which we have attempted to describe; exhibiting a prelacy with limited powers, and except in one or two instances, without canonical consecration, or indeed any orders whatever; and possessing a stated form of prayer, which, however, every Minister was at liberty to neglect. The Popish hierarchy, retained in general, during this period, their titles, and even a large part of their revenues, but without the liberty of exercising their religion in public

At length, in the year 1572, an assembly of the Church was held at Leith, who delegated six of their brethren to hold a conference with an equal number of Deputies appointed by the Regent's Council, and to treat, reason, and conclude, concerning the settlement of the polity of the Church. After divers meetings and long deliberations, as: Spotswood expresses it, they came to an agreement, which was in effect, "that the old polity should be revived and take place, only with some little alterations which seemed necessary from the change of religion;" that they who were to have the office and power should also have the names and titles of Archbishops and Bishops; that the old division of

the dioceses should be restored, the patrimony of the Church properly applied, and every Bishop have spiritual jurisdiction in his own diocese. In a word, if we except the neglected article of the consecration of Bishops, which still continued to be overlooked, every other part of the constitution now adopted, seems to have been regulated by the principles of true and primitive episcopacy.

Much controversy has been maintained between the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, both with regard to the authority of the Leith Assembly, and also as to the precise import of the conclusions in which their deliberations ended. We cannot enter into the arguments which are employed on the one side or the other: nor do we think it necessary, because the arrangements made at Leith were acted upon throughout the whole kingdom, and sanctioned by the acts of several successive assemblies.

Matters being so far restored to the primitive model of ecclesiastical regimen, there was some reason to hope that the spirit of reformation, which had sent forth its light and its truth over the greater part of the kingdom, would have been permitted quietly to work out its beneficial effects. But the course of events was soon to be otherwise directed. In the year 1574, Mr. Andrew Melvil, the father of presbyterianism in Scotland, made his appearance on the stage; and this personage, though possessed of talents very inferior to those of Knox, and altogether a stranger to the courage and honesty which shed no small lustre over the dark character of his predecessor, had address enough to recommend his views of Church government to some of the leading men of the day; and ultimately to introduce, on the ruins of episcopacy, the scheme of ecclesiastical rule which exists in that country at the present day.

The first step taken in pursuance of this object, appeared in a protest made, at the suggestion of Melvil, by Mr. Durie, one of the Ministers of Edinburgh, in the Assembly held in the year 1575, stating "that the trial of the Bishops (that is the review of their official conduct during the previous year) might not prejudge the opinions and reasons which he and other brethren had to propose, against the office and name of a Bishop." Melvil followed up his plan of attack with great pertinacity, deriving all along much countenance and aid from the instructions of the celebrated Theodore Beza, who was now at the head of the Geneva school and at length, after several disappointments, his endeavours were crowned with success, for at an Assembly held in Dundee, 1580, his party carried with them a majority of the brethren in favour of an Act, by which the episcopal form of government was again put down, or at least suspended. This resolution was expressed as follows:-" Forasmuch as the office of a Bishop, as it is now used within this realm, hath no sure warrant, authority, nor good ground out of the word of God, but is brought in by the folly and corruption of man's invention, to the great overthrow of the true Kirk of God; therefore the whole Assembly in one voice, findeth and declareth the said pretended office, used and termed as aforesaid, unlawful in itself, and ordaineth that all persons who brook, or hereafter shall brook the

manent in the Church, being calculated only to meet the pressing exigencies of the infant community. Calderwood and other writers of a later date, have taken infinite pains to represent the appointment in question, as merely introductory to the more perfect system of parity, by which it was at length succeeded: But Dr. Cooke, the most recent authority on this subject, exposes the absurdity of that opinion, and readily allows that Knox and his coadjutors entertained no intention of making any farther change. "They who have embraced Episcopacy," he observes," although they are not averse to maintain that the First Book of Discipline, in fact sanctioned a form of prelacy, would have preferred to that form an exact resemblance of the Church of England: while the successors of the first reformers, who afterwards embraced with so much zeal, the exclusive and divine authority of the presbyterian model, consider it as a stumbling block which they are eager to remove. They have accordingly represented the institution of Superintendents as not designed by Knox to continue in the Church. But the ground upon which they rest this assertion is not sufficient to bear it. It is apparent from the manner in which Knox has spoken of the state of religion while Superintendents were recognized,-from the uniformity with which he inculcated deference and obedience to the higher Ecclesiastical powers-and from the language used in the Acts of the successive Assemblies, in some of which Superintendents are explicitly classed among the needful members of the Church-that he was firmly persuaded his plan ought to be permanent-that so far from being only a devout imagination,' as some of the nobility characterised it, it was the best scheme which presented itself to his mind."

There is not, indeed, the slightest ground for any reasonable doubt that the modified scheme of Episcopacy introduced by Knox, was meant to be permanent, and that, consequently, the first reformers in Scotland were in no respect presbyterians. "Superintendents," said the celebrated person whom we have just named, were nominated, that all things in the Church might be carried with order and well”– a reason, as Bishop Sage justly remarks, which, as it has held since the Apostle's times, will continue to hold as long as the Church continues. Again, under the head "Election of Superintendents," in the First Book of Discipline, are the following words: "Such is the present necessity, that the examination and admission of Superintendents cannot be so strict as afterwards it must,"-an expression which clearly imports continuance and succession in the office. In the same Book are laid down rules for supplying vacancies in the event of any Superintendent departing this life or happening to be deposed; and it is added, “After the Church shall be established, and three years are past, no man shall be called to the office of a Superintendent, who hath not two years at least given a proof of his faithful labours in the ministry of some Church." What arrangement, we ask, could more plainly import that the office was intended to be permanent?

The order and form for the election of Superintendents, as inserted in the Old Scottish Liturgy, directly implies that this class of churchmen was not called into existence for the purposes of a day. At the

admission the people are asked, "If they will obey and honour him as Christ's minister, and comfort and assist him in every thing pertaining to his charge." He himself was asked, "If he knew that the excellency of this office to which GOD CALLED him, did require that his conversation should be irreprehensible." And again, it was put to the clergy and people, "Will ye not acknowledge this your brother for the Minister of Jesus Christ, your Overseer and Pastor? Will you not maintain and comfort him in his ministry and watching over you against all such as would wickedly rebel against GOD AND HIS HOLY ORDINANCE?" After the instalment of one we find in the prayer used on that occasion, the following words: "Send unto this our brother, whom in thy name we have charged with the CHIEF CARE of thy Church within the bounds of Lothian."-May we not then ask, in the words of Bishop Sage, if the office of Superintendent was regarded as God's HOLY ORDINANCE, upon what ground could it be esteemed by the early reformers as a mere temporary expedient of human invention?

We entreat the patience of the reader to one or two more facts connected with this question, after which we will give our reasons for dwelling upon it at so much length. The assembly holden at Edinburgh, in 1561, addressed a petition to the Council, that special and certain provision might be made for the maintenance of the superintendents, ministers, &c. and that superintendents and ministers might be planted where none were. A similar petition, as to the planting of superintendents, was ordered to be presented to the Queen three years after; namely, to require that superintendents might be placed in the realm where none were, in the Merse, Tiviotdale, Forest Tweddale, and the rest of the Dales in the south not provided. Even in 1574, fourteen years at least after the Reformation had been established, we find, among the Acts of Assembly, a petition to the Lord Regent, praying that "Stipends be granted to superintendents in all time coming, in all countries destitute thereof, whether it be where there is no Bishop, or where there are Bishops who cannot discharge their office, as the Bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow." Surely the expression, in all time coming, as applied to the maintenance of superintendents, is altogether irreconcileable with the opinion, that their office was meant to be but temporary, and to meet the particular exigency of the times. Our apology for the minuteness with which we have detailed the above facts, must rest on the circumstance, that almost every Presbyterian writer has either concealed or misrepresented them; insisting that the Church of Scotland was, from the very era of the Reformation, founded on the principle of parity in her ministers, and decidedly hostile to every appearance of prelatical government. Besides, therefore, the importance which belongs to historical truth in general, it is of some consequence to ascertain precisely the opinions of the first Scottish Reformers on the subject of ecclesiastical polity, because, as we have just remarked, not a few very disingenuous arts have been employed by some writers, to disguise their proceedings and pervert their language. As an instance of the unfairness now alluded to, we may mention the well-known fact, that the address or superscription of a letter,

said office, be charged forthwith to desist, quit, and leave off the same, and sick-like to desist and cease from preaching, ministering the sacraments, or any way using the office of pastors, till they receive admission anew from the General Assembly, under pain of excommunieation."

It was not, however, till 1592, that James, who was now on the throne of Scotland, could be prevailed upon to sanction the new ecclesiastical discipline: and even then, so far was it from being established on a firm or permanent basis that, in the short space of five years after, the King obtained the consent of the Kirk Commissioners to an Act, importing "that such Pastors and Ministers as his Majesty should provide to the place, dignity, and title of a Bishop, or other Prelate at any time, should have a voice in Parliament as freely as any ecclesiastical Prelate had in times past."

Episcopacy once more obtained the ascendancy; but still the Bishops were mere priests, and the spiritual powers attached to their office extremely limited. The accession of James to the English throne, forms the era of a better system; and soon led to the establishment of a hierarchy in the north, from which all Churchmen in that country usually date the beginning of the Scottish Episcopal Church, as a regular ecclesiastical body, constituted according to the example of the purest antiquity. In 1606, the temporal estate of Bishops was restored by Act of Parliament, and four years after, the spiritual power was again renewed by the consecration at London of three Bishops, who had been already promoted to the Sees of Glasgow, Brechin and Galloway. These three Prelates, on their return home, conveyed the episcopal authority, which they had now received in a canonical way, to all their titular brethren north of the Tweed: and then, after fifty years of confusion, and a multiplicity of attempts to improve, or to set aside the system adopted in 1560, there was an Episcopal Church once more established in Scotland, and the regular apostolical succession revived. So little opposition was shewn to this re-establishment of the Church, that at an Assembly which was held in 1616, it was ordained, that "the Acts of Assembly should be collected and put in order to serve for Canons of Discipline, that children should be carefully catechised and confirmed by the Bishop, or in his absence, by such as were employed in the visitation of Churches; and that a Liturgy or Book of Common Prayer should be formed for public use."

The compilation of a Liturgy was reserved for the zeal and piety of the first Charles; who, finding that the Scottish Bishops, from a feeling of jealousy, would not receive without alterations the Common Prayer of the English Church, gave his commands that they should prepare a book of service for their own use; to be submitted from time to time to the revision of Archbishop Laud, and of the Bishops of London and Norwich. The first Liturgy of Edward the Sixth was made the basis of the new Scottish Liturgy, particularly in the Eucharistical part of the service; and this good work being completed, was, together with a collection of Canons, ratified by his Majesty, and authorized by Royal proclamation.