n
unlawful and perfidious act on her part. Again, in the summer of 1560,
the baillies of Edinburgh--while Catholicism was still by law
established--denounced the death penalty against recalcitrant
Catholics. The Kirk also allotted lawful ministers to several of the
large towns, and thus established herself before she was established
by the Estates in August 1560. Thus nothing could be more free, and
more absolute, than the Kirk in her early bloom. On the other hand, as
we saw, even in Knox's lifetime, the State, having the upper hand
under the Regent Morton, a strong man, introduced prelacy of a
modified kind and patronage; did not restore to the Kirk her
'patrimony,'--the lands of the old Church; and only hanged one priest,
not improbably for a certain reason of a private character.

There was thus, from the first, a battle between the Protestant Church
and State. At various times one preacher is said to have declared that
he was the solitary 'lawful minister' in Scotland; and one of these
men, Mr. Cargill, excommunicated Charles II.; while another, Mr.
Renwick, denounced a war of assassination against the Government. Both
gentlemen were hanged.

These were extreme assertions of 'spiritual independence,' and the
Kirk, or at least the majority of the preachers, protested against
such conduct, which might be the logical development of the doctrine
of the 'lawful minister,' but was, in practice, highly inconvenient.
The Kirk, as a whole, was loyal.

Sometimes the State, under a strong man like Morton, or James Stewart,
Earl of Arran (a thoroughpaced ruffian), put down these pretensions of
the Church. At other times, as when Andrew Melville led the Kirk,
under James VI., she maintained that there was but one king in
Scotland, Christ, and that the actual King, the lad, James VI., was
but 'Christ's silly vassal.' He was supreme in temporal matters, but
the judicature of the Church was supreme in spiritual matters.

This sounds perfectly fair, but who was to decide what matters were
spiritual and what were temporal? The Kirk assumed the right to decide
that question; consequently it could give a spiritual colour to any
problem of statesmanship: for example, a royal marriage, trade with
Catholic Spain, which the Kirk forbade, or the expulsion of the
Catholic peers. 'There is a judgment above yours,' said the Rev. Mr.
Pont to James VI., 'and that is God's; _put in the hand of the
ministers_, for "we shall judge the angels,