Six years after the death of John Knox, Andrew Melville led the Assembly in Magdalen Chapel in Edinburgh, in 1578. After much discussion the Second Book of Discipline was put together, which focused mostly on reforming the Protestant Church on a proper Presbyterian basis. It would be this Presbyterian form of governance, which was democratic in nature, that would cause a serious clash with royal tyranny, leading to civil war, and ultimately to our democratic Parliament. The divine right of a monarch to be Head of the Church had been accepted in England from the time of Henry VIII onwards, but the system of papal control had simply been replaced by the control of the monarchy. The wording of the 1578 document was very clear and exact:
‘For this ecclesiastical power flows immediately from God, and the Mediator Jesus Christ, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head on earth, but only Christ, the only spiritual King and Governor of his kirk. It is a title falsely usurped by Antichrist to call himself head of the kirk, and ought not to be attributed to angel nor man, of what estate that ever he is, saving to Christ, the only Head and Monarch of the kirk.’
With this radical and restored New Testament church governance came a desire for casting aside all remnants of Romanism in the Church of Scotland. The Romanist version of autocratic bishops was abandoned, along with its title of ‘lords’, and secular power and abuses. The church leaders were now simply referred to as disciples, ministers, or servants, and ought to emulate the servant-leadership example of Christ. They were determined to obey Christ’s call ‘and to take away all occasion of tyranny’, for ‘he will that they should rule with mutual consent of brethren, and equality of power, every one according to their functions.’ With the utter demolition of the papal structure came the New Testament roles of pastors, teachers, elders and deacons in the church. The leaders of the church must be chosen by the people, for ‘in the order of election, it is to be eschewed [abstained] that any person be intruded in any of the offices of the kirk contrary to the will of the congregation to whom they are appointed, or without the voice of the eldership.’
During the next century we would go through a dark night of the soul as successive kings would seek to control the Scottish church through their lords, the bishops, and forcibly and violently intrude both church and nation. The 1578 document also rejected the patronage system, by which the landowner or wealthy person could appoint the pastor of the local church. It states that ‘patronages… have flowed from the Pope and the corruption of canon law’, so that people intruded unbiblically into the church to control it, and that such a practice ‘has no ground in the word of God, but is contrary to the same, and to the said liberty of election’. It would be the patronage system that was thrust on the Church of Scotland in 1812 by Parliament as a form of State Control, which would lead to the Disruption of 1843, thus causing a major division in the Church of Scotland, and ushering in the Free Church of Scotland. The Presbyterian model of church governance would have an incisive impact, not only in biblical church practice, but also in our UK Parliament. It would be this model of Christian democracy which would spread to much of the world in the following centuries.
‘Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock’ (1 Peter 5:2-3, NKJV).
Image: Elected elders praying, John Henry Lorimer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons