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The Confession of Faith
which Knox, with the assistance of his five colleagues, John Wynram,
John Spottiswoode, John Willock, John Douglas, and John How,
prepared, was publicly read, first in audience of the Lords of
Articles and afterwards in audience of the whole Parliament. The
Bishops of St. Andrews, Dunblane, and Dunkeld were present, and
certain of the ministers put in an appearance in expectation that
objection would be taken to some of its clauses. In this they were
agreeably disappointed. The representatives of the old Church kept
silence, and only one or two of the lay members, among them the Earl
of Athole, made any opposition, for which they could produce no
better reason than "we will believe as our fathers believed." The
doctrine of the Confession was unanimously approved of, and ratified
by the whole body of the Estates.
Knox was not a
stranger to the task that he had thus been suddenly asked to
discharge. We saw that while in England he had a hand in the final
revision of the Second Prayer Book of Edward vi.; and when on the
Continent, both at Frankfort and Geneva, he had been engaged in
preparing Confessions for his congregation. In addition, it was the
age of Confessions. They were so numerous and so formidable that
Roman Catholics called them in derision "Paper Popes." Their
authority was great, and they governed the minds of those who
accepted them much in the same way as the Vicar of Rome ruled his
Church. In these days there is a widespread feeling that it might be
better if there had been fewer Confessions, and if their treatment
of the doctrines of Christianity had been less full, elaborate, and
minute. Many are oppressed by the burden of belief which the symbols
of the Church lay on their spirit, and the difficulty of shortening
or of simplifying them makes that burden all the heavier. We are apt
to criticise and condemn somewhat severely our Protestant
forefathers for having put the free spirit of Christianity into
bonds and fetters which we have not the power to break, but we
should remember that there can be no Church without a Confession,
and that in the days of the Reformers it was absolutely necessary,
for the very existence of the Church, to have subordinate standards
which all the members could accept as a bond of union, and round
which they might rally.
Comparing this
Confession of Knox with some that went before and came after it, we
cannot help admiring its free spirit, and the frankness and
joyousness almost with which it expresses the doctrinal convictions
of those who drew it up. Dr. Hume Brown complains of Knox's
Medievalism, and declares that in method he was no better than the
Schoolmen. He surely cannot have read this Confession with a quite
unbiassed mind, for we can imagine nothing less medieval in form,
and matter. It is much more modern in conception and style than the
Westminster Confession of Faith which replaced it. The very first
sentence of the preface reveals the spirit in which it was
undertaken. "Long have we thirsted, dear brethren, to have notified
unto the world the sum of that doctrine which we profess, and for
the which we have sustained infamy and danger." That is not how men
speak who intend to produce a tame and stilted performance; it is
the utterance of those whose hearts are full and who are desirous of
proclaiming to the world the convictions for which they have
suffered.
Nor can we help
admiring the spirit in which they regard their completed task. It is
one of charity. "If any man will note in this our Confession any
article or sentence repugnant to God's holy Word, that it would
please him of his gentleness and for Christian charity's sake to
admonish us of the same in writing, and we of our Honour and
fidelity do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God
(that is, from His holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that
which he shall prove to be amiss." A recent historian is kind enough
to suggest that this was only a phrase in the mouth of the
Reformers, and not to be taken seriously. In this he shows less
charity than those he is accusing of the lack of it, and Knox's
controversy with the Jesuit Tyrie, the very last work published by
him, in which he answers the charges of his opponent point by point,
is surely proof enough that he and those who drew up the Confession
with him meant what they said.
Dr. Mitchell points
out that although four days only were allowed for presenting the
Confession, instructions to prepare it were probably given as early
as the month of April, at the same time that the nobles and barons
asked Knox, when signing one of their "godly bonds," to draw up the
Book of Discipline. The matter would thus be gradually arranging
itself in his mind even though not a word were written, and when the
time came for putting the Confession as a whole into shape he would
be quite prepared for doing so. Randolph, the English envoy, wrote
to Cecil two days afterwards, "I never heard matters of so great
importance neither sooner despatched nor with better will agreed to.
. . . The old Lord Lindsay, as grave and godly a man as ever I saw,
said, 'I have lived many years, I am the oldest in this company of
my sort, now that it hath pleased God to let me see this day where
so many nobles and others have allowed so worthy a work, I will say
with Simeon, Nunc dimittis."
Whatever may be said about this and
other Confessions of the Reformation time, it should never be
forgotten that they bore witness to religious thought which found
expression in conduct. There was nothing mediaeval about them in
that respect. They were not the mere quibbling of Schoolmen, but the
assured beliefs of those who were persuaded that their salvation,
here and hereafter, depended upon the acceptance of these beliefs,
and also upon the measure of success with which they carried them
out in their daily life. Their duty to God they did not feel to be
perfectly realised until it found expression in service to man.
It is impossible, and perhaps on the
whole unnecessary, to deal in detail with the first Confession of
the Reformed Church of Scotland, but one or two outstanding features
of it must be referred to. We cannot, for instance, agree with Dr.
Mitchell that with regard to the doctrine of Election Knox's
Confession is as explicit in content and purpose as the Westminster
Confession itself. On the contrary, the way in which the first
Confession of the Reformed Church handles this difficult subject
makes it much easier for the modern man. The Confession's treatment
of it is general, and it declines to enter into details and to
forecast the unknown future; problems which offered no difficulty to
those who drew up the Westminster Standards. While putting in the
forefront the sovereignty of God, it does not fail to emphasise His
Fatherhood. Indeed, in the very chapter which treats of Election the
filial relationship of the believer towards God is duly notified,
and again and again throughout the document similar references
occur, freeing Knox's Confession, at any rate, from the charge of
sternness, and of glorying only in the terrible judgments of the
Almighty.
Knox's doctrine of the Church is perhaps the most outstanding
feature of the whole Confession. It may interest those who find in
our Reformer's teaching nothing save hard-and-fast and, to them,
repellent Calvinism, to know that this doctrine was held by Zwingli
the earliest theologian of the Reformed Church, and that Knox's
theology on the whole had taken definite shape long before he had
seen Calvin or probably read many of his books. "Those who drew up
the Confession of Faith of 1560," says the late Professor Hastie,
"laid it down that the true Church of which they were members was
essentially grounded in an Invisible Church, which had existed in
the world from the beginning of all true religion, and was
coextensive with all true religion. And in so far as this Invisible
Church, the true Kingdom of God, the holy communion of saints,
became visible, it was distinguishable by certain clear and perfect
notes whereby any branch of it could be easily and certainly
recognised: namely, first, the true preaching of the Word of God as
the highest, divinest truth known to man; secondly, the right
administration of the Sacraments as the sealing of that truth on the
hearts and lives of men; and, lastly, ecclesiastical discipline
uprightly ministered as God's Word prescribeth "whereby vice is
repressed and virtue nourished." Such was the large and
comprehensive conception of the Church accepted and advocated by
John Knox, and indeed it was upon this idea of the Invisible Church
that "the leaders of the Reformed Church took their stand and did
their imperishable work for God and the world. It is a Church that
embraces in its fold the saved and purified spirits of all time, the
spiritual elect of the race, even the saintly souls that had
whitened into the pure radiance of eternity amid the foul
corruptions of the idolatry of Rome."
This large and generous conception of
the Church was held by the Reformed Churches everywhere; they
cultivated intercommunion, for they regarded themselves as members
of the one Church. It is after a revival of this ideal that many are
striving at the present moment. The exclusiveness, or, as it might
be justly enough phrased, the ecclesiastical snobbery of certain of
the Reformed Churches was a later growth. It took its rise in the
Church of England, under Laud, and since his day it has gone on
increasing. Nor
can we help admiring the broad way in which Knox deals with General
Councils and Ceremonies. While paying every respect to the judgments
of Councils, he does not by any means accept them without
examination. He will test their actions by the Word of God. Nor does
he admit that any order of Church Government can be accepted as
divine or can be regarded as binding for all time. Episcopacy and
Presbytery he puts on this footing; and as for Ceremonies, "such as
men have devised, they are but temporal, so may and ought they to be
changed when they rather foster superstition than they edify the
Kirk using same." This is surely a saner deliverance than that of
some moderns, who on the one hand condemn the narrowness of the
Reformer, and at the same time regard as of divine institution
articles of Church millinery and forms of ritual which, in the words
of Knox, are "such as men have devised."
It is alleged by some, who base their
statements on the information which Randolph sent to Cecil on the
7th of September 1560, that before the Confession was publicly
presented it was remitted privately to certain Lords of Parliament,
and revised by Wynram and Lethington, who went the length of
recommending the omission of a chapter, that on "Obedience and
Disobedience due from Subjects to Magistrates." Professor Mitchell
does not believe that anything of the kind took place, and holds
that the chapter which treats of the Civil Magistrate is the
original and only chapter written on the subject. In it Knox,
following the other great theologians of the Reformed Church,
regards the State as a divine institution, maintained under the
Providence of God for the well-being of man and the manifestation of
His own glory. If God is to be found in nature, much more should He
be found in man, and especially in man's ordered life under civil
government. It
followed, therefore, as a necessity, that with this conception of
the State there should be a union between it and the Church; for the
Church regarded the State to be like itself a divine institution
under the universal headship of Christ, and the State saw in the
Church an institution which was possessed by a spirit fitted to
maintain and promote its own highest well-being. The co-ordinate
relation of Church and State, which is a distinctive note of the
Church of Scotland as the Established Church of the land, was first
of all conceived by John Knox, and by his wise and far-seeing
statesmanship put into the form which from then till now has never
changed nor varied.
At the present moment, when the tendency
all round would seem to be towards shorter and simpler creeds, it is
not surprising to hear a desire expressed that we should revert to
the Confession of John Knox, for the other doctrines with which it
deals, such as the authority of the Scriptures, the unity and
attributes of God, the effects of the Fall, the nature and work of
the Holy Spirit, and the Sacraments, are treated in much the same
frank and free spirit as those we have more fully discussed. We can
therefore quite understand this modern tendency, although those who
support it may not be able altogether to endorse the high eulogium
passed upon Knox's Confession by Edward Irving. "This document," he
declares, "is the pillar of the Reformation Church of Scotland,
which hath derived little help from the Westminster Confession of
Faith ; for, though the latter was adopted as a platform of
communion with the English 'Presbyterians in the year 1647, it
exerted little or no influence upon our Church, and was hardly felt
as an operative principle either of good or evil until the
revolution of 1688, so that the Scottish Confession was the banner
of the Church in all her wrestlin gs and conflicts, the Westminster
Confession but as the camp colours which she hath used during her
days of peace,—the one for battle, the other for fair appearance and
good order." Irving was in the habit of reading it twice a year to
his own congregation in London, for he felt there was "a freshness
of life about it which no frequency of reading wore off."
But there are one or two features in
Knox's Confession, apart altogether from its conception of the
doctrines of the Church, which would make a return to it practically
impossible. It contains certain vituperative clauses and expressions
that refer to the pre-Reformation Church which would not be at all
to the taste of the modern mind. The Roman Catholic Church is
characterised as the "pestilent synagogue," the "filthy synagogue,"
and the "horrible harlot and kirk malignant"; and in the last
chapter the language of Revelation xiv. 11 ("the smoke of their
torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day
nor night who worship the beast and his image ") is adduced to point
to the doom of those who delight in superstition and idolatry.
Many critics, of course, seize upon
these and similar expressions as the chief notes, not only of the
Confession but of the teaching of the Reformers as a whole. They
make considerable capital out of such language, and feed the popular
mind with their comments thereon. But such critics ought to remember
what has already been pointed out, that Knox and his colleagues were
engaged in a life-and- death struggle, and that the terrible
corruptions of the Romish Church, which they saw with their own
eyes, but which we only know, after the lapse of long centuries, by
hearsay, impressed them so profoundly as to make such language to
their minds more than justifiable.
This Confession was the doctrinal
standard of the Church for nearly a hundred years, until it was
replaced by the Westminster Confession, and it has never been
abrogated. Upon it, as Edward Irving points out, the theology of the
Scottish Church was founded. It is not responsible for the narrower
views and less liberal practices which prevailed during the earlier
half of the seventeenth century, and which led up to the Westminster
Confession of Faith. Had the type of theology of the first
Confession of the Reformed Church of Scotland been more closely
followed, and had the influence of English sectaries been resisted,
the religious spirit, doctrinal teaching, and ethical principles of
the Church of a bygone age would commend themselves more to our mind
than they now do, and would have saved the Church of Knox from many
of the troubles and trials which since his day have time and again
grievously afflicted it.
The same Parliament which ratified the
Confession passed three Acts which abolished the Church of Rome so
far as it could be abolished by legislative enactments. By the first
of these Acts the power and authority of the Pope were destroyed; by
the second condemnation was passed on all doctrinal practices
contrary to the new Confession; and by the third the celebration of
the Mass was prohibited. The penalties involved for disobeying the
last enactment were: to hear the Mass was to incur confiscation, to
say or hear it for the second time exile, and for the third time
death. This also may seem harsh to many, and contrary to the more
tolerant spirit that prevails in our time, but it should not be
forgotten that Scotland had just passed through a political
revolution as well as a religious reformation, and that the elements
which respectively belong to such movements were so bound up as to
make it impossible to separate them. In considering the laws passed
by nations that have just gone through some great civil crisis, and
which are much harsher and sterner than those decreed by the
Scottish Parliament of 1560, we say that they were necessary, that
had not the supreme power asserted its authority the fight for
freedom would have been fought in vain. If we thus justify the acts
of Cromwell, why should we condemn the deeds of Knox? And, as a
matter of fact, however stern the enactments which the Scottish
Reformers countenanced may seem, they were more honoured in the
breach than the observance.
Acute minds have recently been
exercising themselves about the reason why the Scottish people
accepted at the Reformation the Calvinistic type of theology. Mr.
Lang rather superciliously declares that it suited the national
spirit because of its cheapness, and Dr. Hume Brown maintains that
it was agreeable to the national mind because of its metaphysics;
but the vast majority hold that it was Knox, the pupil of Calvin,
who by his strong will and personality imposed it upon the people.
We believe that all three reasons are beside the mark. The Scottish
Reformation was not transacted in a day or hour. In the end it may
have been sudden and complete, but, like all great movements, it was
a growth.
The seeds were sown
in the fourteenth century by the followers of Wyclif . They were
nourished by the blood of Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart, and
by the sacrifice of pure and noble spirits who suffered exile and
death rather than deny the truth. Knox himself and his
fellow-Reformers had spared neither time nor labour in teaching the
people, and rousing them to a sense of their spiritual birthright.
Books and pamphlets, hymns and ballads, all saturated with the life
of the Reformed Faith, had done their part. The fetters of
superstition, of ignorance and idolatry, by which the nation had
been bound, were being gradually loosened; the yoke of Rome was
being thrown off; a new spirit was possessing the people, they were
attaining to self-consciousness; and after having learned, studied,
and examined the truth, so far as their abilities and opportunities
permitted, they of their own accord embraced the type of theology
which is found in Knox's Confession; and so strongly attached to it
were they, even from the very first, that Randolph, who sounded them
as to the possibility of arriving at a uniformity with England,
wrote to the effect, that however much they might like such a
uniformity they would not for its sake give up those special
features of their own creed, worship, and policy, to which they were
deeply attached.
It is very cheap to sneer at Calvinism,
but it should be remembered that the theology of Knox was not
technically Calvinistic; it was the theology of the Reformed Church,
and the real founder of that theology was Zwingli, and not Calvin.
Besides, Scotland had only other two types of theology to choose
from, Lutheranism and Arminianism. We know the types of national
life which these two religions have produced, and we also know the
type Calvinism has produced; and if religion be the dominating
factor in a people's life, as we hold it to be, very few will be
prepared to maintain that the mould into which Calvinism has cast
Scotland is inferior to that into which Arminianism has cast England
and Lutheranism Germany. Those who condemn the religion of their own
country should be consistent, and condemn their country at the same
time, for we fail to see how they can separate the one from the
other. |
