out prejudice or partiality, and never ceasing till the scandal be removed, the kirk be purged, and the offender, if it be possible, be won unto God; and all this, as being Christ's own work, he doth with Christ's own weapons, that is, with the spiritual sword of the word, which is mighty through God to subdue everything exalting itself against God, and to bring sinners to repentance." Whereas, the Prelate passed small offences without any censure, and treated greater sins so partially that the greatest sinners escaped uncensured, or so superficially, that boldness in sin was encouraged rather than repentance. He swayed the course of discipline as best pleased him. "Processes begun for trying of slanders, if the party, never so wicked, have argument of weight for my lord, or his receiver, are incontinently, by the word of his monarchical authority, stricken dead. Hereby it cometh to pass, that where prelates rule, sin reigneth, and the nearer the bishop's wings, the greater liberty for sin, as is seen in their own houses and trains. And for this reason is it that both atheists and papists like the episcopal discipline better than the pastoral, which they call strait-laced, because it troubleth their corruption, whereas the other layeth the reins upon their necks. And if the prelate happen to proceed against offenders, his discipline consists not so much in spiritual censure, as in worldly power and civil punishment, as fining, confining, imprisoning, &c., which have no power to work upon the consciences of sinners, to bring them to repentance, though this be what is sought by the preachers of the gospel, and the chief end of kirk discipline."2 "The Prelates never durst, indeed, take upon them to suspend all scandalous persons from the sacrament; for if they had, it had been said unto most of them, 'Physician, cure thyself,' besides the losing of many of their party." Moreover the proceedings of the lordly prelate "in ecclesiastical censures, came neither from Christ, nor from the purest antiquity, but from the Pope's canon law. What then hath presbytery to do with prelacy?" Popery and Prelacy "all church discipline . . . degenerated into tyranny." "The prelates did presume to make law binding the conscience, even in things indifferent, and did persecute, imprison, fine, depose, excommunicate men for certain rites and ceremonies acknowledged by themselves to be indifferent (setting aside the will and authority of the law makers). This the presbyterial government abhorreth. . . . They did excommunicate for money matters, for trifles, which the presbyterial government condemneth. . . . The

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prelates and their high commission court did assume potestatem utriusque gladii, the power both of the temporal and civil sword. The presbyterial government meddleth with no civil nor temporal punishments." Again, if we turn to the last period of prelatical domination over the Church of Scotland, we find that in that "Diocesan Erastian Prelacy, underprop't by blood and Perjury, headed by a civil papacy, embracing in its bosome all foul errours,' " the sword and keys were "made one, promiscuously used, and put into the same hands.” As for the time of the Restoration, the same eminent authority says:- -"What an Inundation and Deluge of Debauchery, and Profanity of all sorts, came into this nation pari passu with Prelacy, and attended their wicked ejecting of a Godly, faithful, conscientious ministry, to the number of three or four hundred, and filling their places with such a gang and set of men, as were for the generality, the shame and scandal of the Gospel, and guilty of most notorious profanity, . . . all Scotland have such a sense, and hath so long smarted under the effects thereof, as neither this, nor probably any succeeding age will blot out the remembrance and impression of the same." The same author (Principal Forrester) refers to the efforts of the Prelatists after the Revolution, in getting " many profane, debauched wretches . . . to withdraw from the inspection of the Lord's servants, and from the deserved censures of their scandalous immoralities."

...

It is not for a moment asserted that any church discipline can purify men, and work in them the power of godliness, for that is the work of God by His word and Spirit. But it cannot be denied that the faithful exercise of discipline has always acted as a powerful curb on irreligion and vice, and without it there can be no practical Reformation in keeping the ordinances of Christ from pollution, in shaming away profaneness and scandals, in commending and magnifying piety, or in extirpating heresy and unsound, dangerous doctrines. " How prophetic have the words of our great Reformer proved :—" If the hedge of discipline be taken away, the doctrine, and even the evangel will not long stand." The old church-refining and sin-censur1 Aaron's Rod Blossoming, book 2, chap. 3.

2 Rectius Instruendum, 1684. Preface.

3 Ibid, part I, page 49.

4 Review and Consideration of two late Pamphlets, 1706, pp. 37, 40.

5 Alexander Henderson, in describing the Church of Scotland at the Second Reformation, said :—“ No scandall of proud sinners escapeth censure, no heresie or error is sooner hatched, but is either presently spied out and crushed by some of the inferior assemblies, or, if it be kept on foot and gather strength, it is quite suppressed and extinguished in the generall assemblie which meeteth once in the year, and never suffereth such bastard births to grow to be one yeare old."Government and Order of the Church of Scotland. 1641, p. 61.-How different

now!

ing discipline, has fallen into abeyance, and the name, as well as the reality has almost been forgotten. And what are the results? The Church of Scotland, once beautiful as Tirzah, and eomely as Jerusalem, has been shattered into fragments. And though the gospel is faithfully preached in many of the pulpits of all the sections of the Presbyterian Church, the beauty of the larger bodies is greatly marred by the prevailing laxity in doctrine, discipline, and worship, while the government of some is undermined. Let us take the Free Church for example, and we do so the more readily, as she so vauntingly claims identity with Knox, Melville, and Henderson. Her dawning glory soon "became shaded and clouded after she began to occupy the position of a settled institution in the land," and the late unionmovement accelerated her downward course. She has long practised free-communion, and dispensed private baptism; she has sanctioned human hymns in God's worship, and instrumental music seems likely to follow; the festival days of popery are beginning to be observed in some of her churches, and the mark of the beast has been freely adopted as an architectural ornament on her buildings; while something suspiciously like private-communion has been lately mooted by one of her ministers. Not only are the bastard articles of Perth making way within her borders, but rationalism is openly sapping in her the very foundations of the Christian faith. For long her misfortune has been to be ruled by a little coterie of self-elected tyrannical men, whose monopoly, if unchecked, threatens her ruin. She has made the humbling confession that her supreme court is incapable of judging fairly and calmly in cases of discipline; and is considering the advisability of appointing a committee to hear the cases appealed to the Assembly. The present proposal is acknowledged to be part of a scheme, for changing the whole judicial functions of the Church. No doubt the powers of the proposed committee are restricted, and well guarded, but the past history of the Church shows how all such caveats can be violated. We need not point out how this scheme is a slur upon the presbyterial form of churchgovernment, (discipline being government in operation), nor how it may be worked by "the leaders;" for, its tendency to bite is clearly shown by the anxiety displayed to have it properly muzzled.

At the time of the Reformation, how appropriate were the words of the Psalmist "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedest room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.” 1 See "The Decline of the Free Church."

2 See three very able articles on "Oligarchical Rule in the Free Church," in the Watchword, Nos. 68, 72, 75.

That heavenly discipline whereby brotherly amity, and sacred harmony were so continued and increased, that all as one man did stand together for the doctrine, sacraments, and kirk-government, against the adversaries either lurking or professed, was a wall for defence, and a bond for peace and progress of the gospel. "It was the hedge of the Lord's vineyard, and the hammer whereby the horns, both of adversaries and disobeyers, were beaten and broken." 1 Now it becomes us to say with the Psalmist :-"Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we beseech Thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine."

11 2

1

It is frequently remarked that people now-a-days would not submit to the discipline of the Reformation. But, why not? will Christians of the present day not submit themselves to the strict rule of Christ's house? No doubt the profane and the vicious would stoutly object, but the carnal heart has always been enmity against God. "Calvin was subjected to a sentence of banishment from the senate of Geneva, and exposed to a popular tumult before he could prevail on the citizens to submit to ecclesiastical discipline." And when Knox first proposed it in Scotland, it was derided as a "devout imagination." And he was not the only preacher who was dreaded and hated by the licentious and profane for reproving their vices; for, some of the ministers even suffered violence on that account. Carnal reason suggests that:-"Reformation must not grieve, but please; it must not break nor bruise, but heal and bind up; it must be an acceptable thing, not displeasing; it must be 'as the voice of harpers harping with their harps,' but not 'as the voice of many waters,' or 'as the voice of great thunders.' Thus would many heal the wound of the daughter of Sion slightly, and daub the wall with untempered mortar, and so far comply with the sinful humours and inclinations of men, as, in effect, to harden them in evil, and to strengthen their hands in their wickedness; or at least, if men be moralised, then to trouble them no farther. Saith not the Apostle, 'If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ?'

So that either we must have a reformation displeasing to God, or displeasing to men. It is not the right reformation which is not displeasing to a Tobiah, to a Sanballat, to a Demetrius, to the earthly-minded, to the self-seeking politicians, to the carnal and profane; it is but the old enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent (Gen. iii. 15); nay, what if reformation be displeasing to good men, 1 Preface to the Books of Discipline.

2 Life of Knox, p. 206.

in so far as they are unregenerate, carnal, earthly, proud, unmortified (for 'who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin,' Prov. xx. 9)?" The divisions of the Church are a great hindrance to the revival of the discipline of the Reformation, still the Churches could do much to restore its exercise. These divisions cannot excuse the want of it, more especially since they were mainly caused by its relaxation. The abounding iniquity and fearful apostasy of the present day call loudly for its revival. "Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk therein."

Dr. Ross says, that, "The leaders, both of the First and Second Reformation in Scotland, . . . . did not attempt to legislate for all time as to the methods to be employed for securing the great ends they wished to bring about. It is distinctly laid down in the Second Book of Discipline that the assemblies of the Church have power 'to abrogate and abolish all statutes and ordinances concerning ecclesiasticall matters that are found noysome and unprofitable, and agrie not with the time, [the italics are his] or are abusit be the people.' There are sticklers for old forms and methods in the present day, who would be considered sad laggards by the very men whom they profess so greatly to revere. It might be asked, whether this taunt was thrown out to screen the defections of the Free Church, or to reproach the small Presbyterian bodies, who-keeping their garments clean,-have faithfully testified for the whole covenated work of Reformation? It is to be feared that the sentence quoted from the seventh chapter of the Second Book of Discipline, is often quite misunderstood. It must be taken with the parallel passages in the Confession of 1560, and in the Westminster Confession. In the 20th article of the old Scotch Confession it is stated:-"Not that we think, that any policie, and an order in ceremonies, can be appointed

1 Gillespie's sermon to the House of Lords, 27th August, 1645.—The Erastians held that Church censures should be "put forth only upon heretics, apostates, or such as are unsound in the faith, but not upon profane livers in the Church." This seems to have originated in the popish opinion, that "the Pope might be deposed for heresy, but not for a scandalous life." On the other hand, Arminians and English Sectaries held, that the censure of excommunication should be "put forth upon loose and scandalous livers within the Church, but not for those things which the reformed churches call heresies." Treatise of Miscellany Questions, chap.

xii.

2 Pastoral Work in the Covenanting Times, p. 106.-Notwithstanding the blots we have pointed out in this book, it is an excellent volume, and one that was much wanted. Every true blue Presbyterian who reads it, will find in it a great deal to please, profit, and instruct.

3 Gillespie, in replying to the Bishop of Edinburgh, shows that the word cere