mer. But Knox's churchmanship did not
fail. It might well have been contended that the freedom of the Church
had been compromised by the legislation which was granted or petitioned
for. But that was not the Church's view, and the internal organisation
which nobles and politicians refused to sanction, the Church, claiming
to be free, instantly took up as its own work. In each town or parish
the elders and deacons met weekly with the pastor for the care of the
congregation. And these 'particular Kirks' now met half-yearly
representatively as the 'Universal Kirk' of Scotland. From its first
meeting in December 1560 onwards, the General Assembly or Supreme Court
of the Church was convened by the authority of the Church itself, and
year by year laid the deep foundations of the social and religious
future of Scotland. It was a great work--nothing less than organising a
rude nation into a self-governing Church. And there were difficulties
and dangers in plenty, some of them unforeseen. The nobles were
rapacious, the people were divided, the ministers leaned to dogmatism,
the lawyers leaned to Erastianism, the Lowlands were menaced by
Episcopacy, the Highlands were emerging from heathenism, and between
them both there stretched a broad belt of unreformed Popery. There were
a hundred difficulties like these, but they were all accepted as in the
long day's work. For in Scotland the dayspring was now risen upon men!

What we have here to remember is, that of this huge national struggle
the chief weight lay on the shoulders of Knox, a mere pastor in
Edinburgh. And during the first seven years of its continuance this
indomitable man was sustaining another doubtful conflict, in which the
issues not for Scotland only, but for Europe, were so momentous that it
must be looked at separately.

[84] The writers of the Scottish Confession in 1560 protest 'that if any
man will note in this our Confession any article or sentence repugning
to God's holy word, that it would please him of his gentleness, and for
Christian charity's sake, to admonish us of the same in write; and we of
our honour and fidelity do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth
of God (that is, from His Holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that
which he shall prove to be amiss.'--'Works,' ii. 96.

Wishart, the translator in or before 1545 of the First Helvetic
Confession, adds to it this similar and very beautiful declaration:--

'It is not our mind for to presc