r, but mainly from the
treatise ultimately entitled the First Book of Discipline. I believe
that a careful study of these will lead to a pretty definite conclusion
as to what these opinions actually were, and to a pretty decided
conviction that, like their opinions respecting matters of doctrine and
ritual, they were substantially in harmony with those to which the
Scottish nation has been so long and firmly attached. It may be admitted
that there were some of Knox's associates who, whatever may have been
their own private sentiments, would, on grounds of expediency, have been
contented to retain the former hierarchical government of the church;
and if on such a point any weight is to be allowed to the assertions of
Spottiswoode,[181] the popish Archbishop of St Andrews might possibly in
that case not have refused to follow the course taken for a time by his
relatives in St Mary's College, and to remain at his post at the head of
the reformed church. But from the disastrous issue of the compromise in
their case, as well as from what is known and indisputable of his own
history and character, there is no reason to suppose that anything was
lost, but on the contrary that incalculable gain accrued to the reformed
church from this temptation not being put in his way. It was long
maintained by the leaders of the Scottish episcopalians that Knox
himself, to a certain extent, yielded to the wishes of his less
thoroughgoing associates, and was implicated with them in certain
attempts to continue or restore the semblance of a hierarchy in the new
church. In fact, some of them went so far as to assert that it was not
till after his death that controversy arose as to whether the episcopal
or presbyterian form of government was the more primitive and
scriptural. These views, if I understand rightly, are now abandoned by
their ablest men; and it was full time that they should be so. The works
of Whitgift, which have been republished in our own day and made more
generally accessible, clearly show that the controversy about the
presbyterian government of the church had been formally raised even in
England at least as early as 1568; while the Later Helvetic Confession,
approved by the Church of Scotland in 1566 at the request of Knox
himself,[182] as clearly shows that the principles on which the
controversy fell to be decided had been generally adopted by the
followers of Calvin even at an earlier date. These principles were:
First, th