sideration [of] the law of God ordains the
persons who hear the doctrine of salvation at the mouths of his
ministers, and thereby receive special food to the nourishment
of their souls, to communicate temporal _sustentation_ on [to]
their preachers: Their answer is, That having just title to
crave the bodily food at the hands of the said persons, and
finding no others bound unto them, they _only require at their
own flock_, that they will sustain them according to their
bounden duty, and what it shall please them to give for their
sustentation, if it were but bread and water, neither will they
refuse it, nor desist from the vocation. But to take from others
contrary to their will, whom they serve not, they judge it not
their duty, nor yet reasonable.'[100]

The principle so admirably laid down by Knox has become the principle of
modern Presbyterianism throughout the world. And even in that day it
required nothing to be added to it except the recognition that
Catholics, and others outside the 'flock,' who were merely statutory
'auditors,' were not bound to its pastor in the tithe, or other
proportion, of their means. Elementary as this may now seem, it was of
course too much for that age. The same Assembly went on to declare that
'the teinds properly pertain to the Kirk,' and while they should be
applied not only to the ministers, but also to 'the sustentation of the
poor, maintaining of schools, repairing of kirks, and other godly uses,'
such application should be 'at the discretion of the Kirk.' It was all
right, provided the intolerant establishment were to remain. For in that
case the tithes as a State tax were the proper means for the State
maintaining church and school and poor; and as the Church had already
been set by the State over both poor and school, it was the fit
administrator of all. And all this ascendancy was about to be renewed;
for two months after this Assembly Bothwell murdered Darnley, and three
months later Mary married Bothwell and abdicated. And the great
Parliamentary settlement of 1567 commenced with the long delayed
ratification of the three old statutes of 1560; two Acts being now
added, one declaring that the Reformed Church is the only Church within
the realm, the other giving it jurisdiction over Catholics and all
others. It was fit that between these two later Acts should be
interposed another,[101] giving the ministers a first claim on the