CHAPTER III 



THE SCOTTISH CHURCH, 1560-1843 'THE WITNESS* 



' The fate of a nation was riding that night.' 



Paul Reverts Ride, LONGFELLOW. 



WHEN Andrew Melville said to King James vi., ' Sir, 

 as divers times before have I told you, so now again 

 must I tell you, there are two kings and two kingdoms 

 in Scotland ; there is King James, the head of the Com- 

 monwealth, and there is Christ Jesus, the King of the 

 Church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose 

 kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but 

 a member,' he expressed what, from its foundation as 

 an Establishment in 1560 till now, has been in every 

 one of its constituent parts the belief and practice of 

 the indomitable Kirk of Scotland. 



These were words which the British Solomon was to 

 remember. Over the border, where the obedient Eng- 

 lish clergy, who looked from the humblest curate to the 

 highest dignitary to the throne alone for their support, 

 professed to find in the pedantic pupil of the great 

 Buchanan the wisdom of a present deity and regarded 

 his slobbering utterances as 'the counsels of a god,' 



