ainst any breaking-up or
impeding of that religious organization which alone enabled Scotland to
withstand the claims of the Crown. In jealously asserting the right of
the General Assembly to meet every year and to discuss every question
that met it, they were vindicating in the only possible fashion the
right of the nation to rule itself in a parliamentary way. In asserting
the liberty of the pulpit they were for the first time in the history of
Europe recognizing the power of public opinion and fighting for freedom
whether of thought or of speech. Strange to modern ears as their
language may be, bigoted and narrow as their temper must often seem, it
is well to remember the greatness of the debt we owe them. It was their
stern resolve, their energy, their endurance that saved Scotland from a
civil and religious despotism, and that in saving the liberty of
Scotland saved English liberty as well.

[Sidenote: Andrew Melville.]

The greatest of the successors of Knox was Andrew Melville. Two years
after Knox's death Melville came fresh from a training among the French
Huguenots to take up and carry forward his work. With less prophetic
fire than his master he possessed as fierce a boldness, a greater
disdain of secular compromises, a lofty pride in his calling, a bigoted
faith in Calvinism that knew neither rest nor delay in its full
establishment throughout the land. As yet the system of Presbyterian
faith and discipline, with the synods and assemblies in which it was
embodied, though it had practically won its hold over southern Scotland,
was without legal sanction. The demand of the ministers for a
restitution of the Church lands and the resolve of the nobles not to
part with their spoil had caused the rejection of the Book of Discipline
by the Estates. The same spirit of greed secured the retention of a
nominal episcopacy. Though the name of bishops and archbishops appeared
"to many to savour of Papistry," bishops and archbishops were still
named to vacant dioceses as milch-cows, through whom the revenues of
the sees might be drained by the great nobles. Against such
"Tulchan-bishops," as they were nicknamed by the people's scorn, a
"Tulchan" being a mere calf-skin stuffed with hay by which a cow was
persuaded to give her milk after her calf was taken from her, Knox had
not cared to protest; he had only taken care that they should be subject
to the General Assembly, and deprived of all jurisdiction or authority
beyon