s and barons signed one of those
"godly bands" or covenants[104] by which they pledged themselves to
stand by each other in setting forward the Reformation of religion
according to God's Word; and it can hardly be supposed that that book
should have been taken in hand some months before the Parliament met,
and that no attempt should have been made in this interval to prepare
materials for the 'Confession of Faith.' Besides, Knox has not stated
that within four days after the charge was formally issued the
Confession was _prepared_, but only that it was _presented_, so that we
may hold with Dr M'Crie that "the ministers were not unprepared for this
task," which was then formally devolved on them by the Parliament. Knox
has further stated that the Confession was accepted by the Parliament in
the form in which it was laid before them _without change of a single
sentence_.[105] Others supplement his statement by explaining that
before it was publicly presented it was submitted privately to certain
lords of Parliament, and by their direction was handed for revision to
the rather time-serving Wynram and the anon time-serving and
vacillating Laird of Lethington, who softened many harsh expressions in
it, and even recommended the omission of a chapter or part of a chapter
from it. This they say was a chapter bearing the title, "Of the
obedience and disobedience due from subjects to magistrates."[106] But
the chapter on the "Civil Magistrate" still found in the Confession
treats so fully and expressly of the obedience due to magistrates, that
it is difficult to see how place could ever have been sought for an
additional chapter on the same subject. There may possibly at first have
stood in the chapter still retained some such clause or sentence
regarding the _limits_ of obedience as we find in the corresponding
chapter of some of the Genevan symbolical books,[107] and this may have
been the matter deemed unfit to be "entreated of" at that time, and
recommended by the revisers to be omitted; or it may be that, after all,
their recommendation and the suggestions of the English ambassador on
the subject were not followed in this instance, and that we have the
chapter still as it was originally framed by Knox and his
associates.[108]

In endeavouring to form an estimate of the real merits of this
Confession, we must make due allowance for the circumstances in which it
was composed. Even though we suppose that the materials of it had