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Conformity in Conscience: The Structure of the Perth Articles Debate in Scotland, 1618–38

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

John D. Ford
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Extract

Most Scots have heard of the National Covenant subscribed in Edinburgh around the end of February 1638. Few, by contrast, know anything about the five acts or articles (requiring the observation of holy days, episcopal confirmation of the laity, kneeling in the act of receiving the eucharist, and permitting the celebration of both communion and baptism in private) passed by a general assembly of the Church at Perth twenty years earlier. Yet those who took time to read the Covenant through would find that its signatories were, among other things, renewing a fifty-year-old pledge to resist all ‘vain allegories, ritis, signes, and traditions brought in the Kirk, without or againis the Word of God and doctrine of this trew reformed Kirk’, and were agreeing more immediately to refrain from the ‘practice of all novations, already introduced in the matters of the worship of God’ until they could be ‘tryed & allowed in free assemblies, and in Parliaments’. Those who examined the aftermath of the Covenant would also learn that it was one of the first acts of the general assembly convened at Glasgow later in 1638 to abjure the Perth Articles. If the National Covenant remains a crucial component of Scottish national consciousness, few Scots, for all the talk of Laud's Liturgy and Jennie Geddes, have much awareness of the debate about church ceremonies that helped to form the context in which the Covenant was produced.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 256 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 The Perth Articles and the National Covenant are reproduced in Dickinson, W. C. and Donaldson, G., A source book of Scottish history, Edinburgh 1961, iii. 95 and 63Google Scholar.

2 For example Maxwell, W. D., A history of worship in the Church of Scotland, Oxford 1955, 74–7Google Scholar; Burnet, G. B., The holy communion in the reformed church of Scotland, Edinburgh 1960, 64–87Google Scholar; Cowan, I. B., ‘The Five Articles of Perth’, in Shaw, D. (ed.), Reformation and revolution, Edinburgh 1967, 160Google Scholar; Mackay, P. H. R., ‘The reception given to the Five Articles of Perth’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society xix (1973), 185Google Scholar; Foster, W. R., The Church before the Covenants, Edinburgh 1975, 182–92Google Scholar; and Lee, M., Government by pen: Scotland under King James VI and I, Urbana, Ill. 1980, 155–94Google Scholar.

3 For example Williamson, A. H., Scottish national consciousness in the age of James VI, Edinburgh 1979Google Scholar; Stevenson, D., The Covenanters: the National Covenant and Scotland, Edinburgh 1988, 1–44Google Scholar; Morrill, J. (ed.), The Scottish National Covenant in its British context, 1638–51, Edinburgh 1990, 1–89Google Scholar; and Macinnes, A. I., Charles I and the making of the Covenanting movement, 1625–41, Edinburgh 1991Google Scholar.

4 Mullan, D. G., Episcopacy in Scotland: the history of an idea, 1560–1638, Edinburgh 1986, 151–62Google Scholar, provides a broader view from the episcopalian perspective. Generally the book shows how debate about episcopacy was conducted in similar terms.

5 Ford, J. D., ‘The lawful bonds of Scottish society: the Five Articles of Perth, the Negative Confession and the National Covenant’, Historical Journal xxxvii (1994), 45Google Scholar.

6 The reasons of a pastors resolution, touching the reverend receiving of the Holy Communion, London 1619, 11Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., dedication.

8 Ibid. 8.

9 Ibid. 12.

10 In The life and death of the reverend father, and faithfull servant of God, Mr. William Cowper, bishop of Galloway, London 1619Google Scholar.

11 Ibid. sig. D3r–v.

12 The lawfulnes of kneeling, in the act of receiving the sacrament of the Lords Supper, StAndrews, 1620, dedicationGoogle Scholar.

13 Ibid. 91.

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20 Ibid. vi. 5, 8–11.

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22 Ibid. vi. I. Calvin's, Treatises against the Anabaptists and against the libertines, trans. Farley, B. W., Rapids, Grand, Mich. 1982, 271–5Google Scholar, also deal with the theme.

23 Institutes, vi. 12.

24 Ibid. vi. 14.

25 Ibid. vi. 32.

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30 Ibid. iii. 19. 15.

31 Ibid. iii. 19. 16.

32 The history of the concept is explored in Manschreck, C. L., ‘The role of Melanchthon in the Adiaphora Controversy’, Archiv für Reformationsgcschichte xlviii (1957), 165Google Scholar, and Verkamp, B. J., The indifferent mean, Athens, Oh. 1977Google Scholar. Meylan, E. F., ‘The Stoic doctrine of indifferent things and the conception of Christian liberty in Calvin's Institutio religionis Christianae’, Romanic Review xxviii (1937), 135Google Scholar, considers the background to Calvin's use of the concept.

33 Russell, C., The causes of the English Civil War, Oxford 1990, 49Google Scholar, suggests that th e publication in England of works defending ceremonial changes was timed to tie in with moves in Scotland. Milward, P., Religious controversies of the Jacobean age: a survey of printed sources, London 1978, 24–33Google Scholar, reviews the Scottish material in connection with the English literature.

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35 The solution of Doctor Resolutus, his resolutions for kneeling, n.p. 1619, preface.

36 A defence of our arguments against kneeling in the act of receiving the sacramentall elements of bread and wine impugned by Mr. Michaelsone, n.p. 1620, preface.

37 Perth Assembly, n.p. 1619. Although all three of these books, like almost all the Presbyterian contributions to the debate, were for good reason printed anonymously, Calderwood admitted authorship of Perth Assembly in his True history of the Church of Scotland, n.p. 1678, 732, and it is admitted in the other two books that they were written by the same hand. All the same, Calderwood is gradually coming to seem rather less prolific as works conventionally imputed to him are taken to have been written by others. A reply to Dr Mortons general defence of three nocent ceremonies, n.p. 1622, and A reply to Dr Mortons particular defence of three nocent ceremonies, n.p. 1623, for example, are attributed to Calderwood in The new Cambridge bibliography of English literature, Cambridge 1974, i. col. 2457Google Scholar. However, though Calderwood was certainly aware of the influence that Thomas Morton, bishop of Durham, was having north of the border, only one of the three ceremonies defended was relevant to the Scottish debate. The attribution of the two replies to William Ames, who wrote Afresh suit against human ceremonies in God's worship, n.p. 1633, an answer to an earlier response to the two replies in defence of Morton, seems eminently more plausible.

38 Solution of Doctor Resolutus, 5.

39 Ibid. 55.

40 Ibid. 54.

41 Ibid. 55.

42 Defence of our arguments 56.

43 Ibid. 57.

44 N.p. 1624. The attribution of authorship is standard, though not established beyond doubt.

45 Altare Damascenum, n.p. 1623, 495–568. Calderwood acknowledged authorship in his History of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. Thomson, T., Edinburgh 1842–1849, vii. 5831Google Scholar. Earlier in the same book he wrote that ‘About this time, Tilenus, a Silesian by birth, a Professor in Sedan, came to England, looking for great preferment and benefite, for a pamphlet intituled “Paraenesis ad Scotos Genevensis disciplinae zelotas”, wherin he defendit the state of bishops and the Five Articles. The booke was confuted soone efter by Sir James Semple of Beltrise, and by the author of the booke intituled “Altare Damascenum”’ (vii. 450). Sir James Sempill of Beltrees would appear to have been the author of a reply to Daniel Tilenus entitled Scoti tou tuchontos paraclesis, n.p. 1622, of which the first part was ‘De episcopali regimine’, like the opening chapters of the Paraenesis ad Scotos, Genevensis disciplinae zelotas, London 1620Google Scholar. Only the first part appeared, however, ending: ‘We shall provide the two parts that remain, namely De senioribus and De quinque ceremoniis obtrusis ecclesiae Scoticanae, in due time (God willing) in the same method’ (p. 232). The other parts do not seem to have ever been published. Likewise, Calderwood attached a ‘confutatio’ of Tilenus' defence of episcopacy to his Altare Damascenum, but did not respond directly to his defences of the five ceremonies. It would be misleading to suggest, as Milward, , Religious controversies, 30Google Scholar, seems to do, that the new chapter on things indifferent ‘largely took the form of a refutation of Tilenus' Paraenesis’. A direct ad hominem refutation was never published, and Tilenus' arguments, both in the Paraenesis, 40–63, and in his De disciplina ecclesiastica brevis & modesta dissertatio, ad Ecclesiam Scoticam, Aberdeen 1622, 43–101Google Scholar, made little structural difference to the Perth Articles debate, though some light was shed on the episcopalians' predilection for citing Calvin when Tilenus observed that the Presbyterians might be expected to pay more heed to the founder of the Genevan discipline (Paraenesis, 48).

46 Calderwood explained in his True history, 814, how several of the works examined here were printed in the Low Countries and smuggled into Scotland. A Latin version of the first two parts of his Perth Assembly – Parasynagma Perthense et iuramentum ecclesiae Scoticanae, n.p. 1620 – was printed along with Melville's tongue-twisting Antitamicamicategoria.

47 Described in the long title as ‘Scoti tou tuchontos aphorismi’, the work is ascribed to Melville in McCrie, T., The life of Andrew Melville, Edinburgh 1819, ii. 512Google Scholar, and in Aldis, H. G., A list of books printed in Scotland before 1700, Edinburgh 1970Google Scholar. The copy in the National Library of Scotland has on the spine of its renewed binding ‘Melvinus de Adiaphoris 1622’, and the work is tentatively listed under Melville's name in the library's catalogue. But a pencil note has been added on the flyleaf reading ‘By Thomas Scot of Utrecht? See Hazlitt II, 536’. The work is ascribed to Thomas Scot, one time chaplain to James VI, by 1622 preacher to the English garrison at Utrecht, in Hazlitt, W. C., Second series of bibliographical collections and notes, London 1882, 536Google Scholar. It did not, however, appear in The workes of the most famous and reverend divine Mr Thomas Scot, Utrecht 1624Google Scholar, nor is it included in the list of his works in the article by Cooper, T. in the DMB xvii. 1006Google Scholar, nor do the views it contains seem consistent with those examined in Lake, P. G., ‘Constitutional consensus and Puritan opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish match’, Historical Journal xxv (1982), 805CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Aphorisms of a Scot rather than of Scot, surely. Row, John, History of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. Laing, D., Edinburgh 1842, 441Google Scholar, remarked that the Scoti tou tuchontos paraclesis was ‘written by a Scotts man’. The similarly named De adiaphoris was not written in the same method as Sempill's book, nor was it any more a direct response to Tilenus' arguments than the new chapter in the Altare Damascenum, None the less, it could be that Melville, in his declining years a professor at Sedan, was provoked into writing by the intrusion of a German colleague into Scottish affairs, and that his work was thought to fill the gap left by Sempill's reply on church government.

48 De adiaphoris, 13.

49 Ibid. 15.

50 Ibid. 4.

51 Ibid. 6–8.

52 Ibid. 9. At p. 18 the author proposed as a general principle that ‘What man appoints to be done in worship, this ought never to be done.’

53 Rait, R. S., ‘Andrew Melville and the revolt against Aristotle in Scotland’, English Historical Review xiv (1899), 250CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kearney, H., Scholars and gentlemen, London 1970, 53–9Google Scholar, deal with the reforms generally. The reforms in one university are considered more thoroughly in Durkan, J. and Kirk, J., The University of Glasgow, 1451–1577, Glasgow 1977, 262–99Google Scholar.

54 [Murray, John] A dialogue betwixt Cosmophilus and Theophilus anent the urging of new ceremonies upon the Kirke of Scotland, n.p. 1620Google Scholar, preface. This is another of the works often imputed to Calderwood, but Mullan, , Episcopacy in Scotland, 243 n. 50Google Scholar, points out that Row, , History, 254–5Google Scholar, stated clearly that Murray was the author.

55 N.p. 1622. The authorship of this work is not entirely cléar. It was once usual to attribute it to Calderwood until David Laing, in editing Row's, History, noted (p. 442 n. 3)Google Scholar, that on the title page of his own copy a contemporary hand had inscribed ‘By M.W.S.’. Laing did not himself conclude that it was by Scot, and he added that Calderwood, , True history, 539Google Scholar, had suggested that part of the work was written by James Melville.

56 N.p. 1624.

57 N.p. 1624. It is not certain that Calderwood wrote these tracts, though his authorship has not to my knowledge been questioned.

58 Ibid. 12.

59 For a particularly clear account see Rutherford, Samuel, A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience, London 1649, 1–14Google Scholar.

60 Course of conformitie, 1–103.

61 Ibid. 43–7.

62 Ibid. 95.

63 Ibid. 104.

64 Ibid. 110.

65 Ibid. 143.

66 Ibid, preface.

67 A true narration of all the passages of the proceedings in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, holden at Perth, London 1621Google Scholar.

68 The first book of the Irenicum of John Forbes of Corse, trans. Selwyn, E. G., Cambridge 1923Google Scholar. Lunan was presumably the regent of Forbes's college who features in Stevenson, D., King's College, Aberdeen, 1560–1641, Aberdeen 1990, 81Google Scholar.

69 Irenicum, 98–9.

70 Ibid. 68, 148.

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72 Reasons of a pastors resolution, preface.

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75 Ibid. 146.

76 Altare Damascenum, 496.

77 Ibid. 496–500.

78 Irenicum, 175.

79 Ibid. 168–78, 184–5.

80 Ibid. 167–8.

81 Canons and constitutions ecclesiasticall, Aberdeen 1636, vi. 6Google Scholar.

82 N.p. 1636.

83 N.p. 1637.

84 The letters and journals of Robert Baillie, ed. Laing, D., Edinburgh 1841–1842, i. 177–84Google Scholar.

85 Ibid. i. 90.

86 Ibid. i. 189.

87 Dispute against the English-Popish ceremonies, preface.

88 Ibid. iv. 1.

89 Ibid. iii. 16.

90 Ibid. iv. 6.

91 Ibid. iv. 43.

92 Ibid. iv. 8.

93 Ibid. iv. 9.

94 The replacement of the rule of decency with the rule of purity may be said to have taken the argument of the Altare Damascenum and the De adiaphoris a stage further. The rule of decency had been used to persuade people of their need to comply with legislation on worship. If the first response was to insist that it did not justify the creation of new ceremonies, but merely urged decorum in the performance of instituted ceremonies, the second was to ignore the rule altogether and stress instead the need to scrutinise all legislation in conscience. Although Gillespie did not spell out the fact that he was replacing one rule with another, and although not all writers referred to the three rules of piety, charity and decency – Forbes, for example, spoke more elaborately in his Irenicum, 144, of the ‘rules of order, dignity, peace, and edification’ (set out at p. 90) – the move Gillespie was making would surely have been appreciated by anyone familiar with the debate.

95 Dispute, iv. 9–10.

96 Letters and journals of Robert Baillie, i. 8–9, also expressed reservations about some of Rutherford's opinions.

97 Letters of Samuel Rutherford, ed. Bonar, A. A., Edinburgh 1891, 551–2Google Scholar.

98 In Mitchell, A. F. (ed.), Catechisms of the second Reformation London 1886, 161, at p. 216Google Scholar.

99 Ibid. 197–8.

100 ‘An introduction to the doctrine of scandal’, in his Divine right of church-government and excommunication, London 1646, 647Google Scholar. The same volume contains A dispute touching scandall and Christian libertie, based, Rutherford explained, on disputations engaged in with the Doctors of Aberdeen during his confinement there.

101 ‘Introduction’, 648–9.

102 Ibid. 656.

103 Ibid. 654.

104 Dispute, iii. 135.

105 Tuck, R., ‘Power and authority in seventeenth-century England’, Historical Journal xvii (1974), 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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107 Williamson, , Scottish national consciousness, 140–6Google Scholar; Levack, B. P., The formation of the British state: England, Scotland, and the Union, 1603–1707, Oxford 1987, 128–9Google Scholar. The millenarian side to Presbyterian thought is explored in Burrell, S. A., ‘The apocalyptic vision of the early Covenanters’, Scottish Historical Review xliii (1964), 1Google Scholar; Williamson, A. H., ‘Scotland, Antichrist and the invention of Great Britain’, in Dwyer, J., Mason, R. A. and Murdoch, A. (eds), New perspectives on the politics and culture ofearly modern Scotland, Edinburgh 1982, 34Google Scholar, ‘Latter day Judah, latter day Israel: the millenium, the Jews, and the British future’, Pietismus und Neuzeit xiv (1988), 149Google Scholar, and ‘The Jewish dimension of the Scottish apocalypse: climate, covenant and world renewal’, in Kaplan, Y., Mechoulan, H. and Popkin, R. H. (eds), Menasseh Ben Israel and his world, Leiden 1989, 7Google Scholar; and in Steele, M., ‘The “Politick Christian”: the theological background to the National Covenant’, in Morrill, , Scottish National Covenant, 31Google Scholar.

108 Course of conformitie, 99–103.

109 See n. 5 above.