of duty and for personal misconduct by the
General Assembly, but was also liable to be charged with such offences
before his own synod, and to be judged and punished by it. On these
grounds I am so far from admitting that the superintendent was in all
respects identical with the bishop, that I am inclined to hold that it
was just because he was so completely stripped of all real episcopal
power that, when the hierarchy was revived, even the most moderate of
the bishops found they could not contain themselves within the limits
prescribed to the superintendents in the First Book of Discipline; and
that one of the main obstacles in the way of their success in the
struggle with their refractory presbyters was occasioned by their own
hasty promise to observe the caveats founded on the previous practice in
the case of superintendents, and especially by their promise to be
subject to the judgment and censure of the General Assembly.

[Sidenote: Gradation of Church Courts.]

The form of church government in Scotland was still further connected
with that of the Calvinistic churches on the Continent (particularly
that of France) by the establishment and gradation of church courts--the
General Assembly having jurisdiction over the whole church, the
provincial synod over the ministers and congregations within a
particular province, and the session or lesser eldership or consistory
over one or more neighbouring congregations.[199] What afterwards came
to be known as the greater eldership, or presbytery, or classical
consistory,[200] does not appear at first under that distinctive name;
but even the germ of this was implanted in that weekly meeting of
ministers and elders for the interpretation of Scripture termed the
exercise, which was authorised both by the Book of Common Order and the
First Book of Discipline.[201] It was soon established in all the
considerable towns in Scotland where there was a fully constituted
reformed church, and though at first it may possibly have confined
itself to the object it was immediately intended to serve, and may have
intervened only by advice in matters of discipline, yet it was not in
the nature of things that such a gathering of ministers and elders from
neighbouring churches should take place from week to week without such
cases as occupied the attention of parochial consistories being
discussed and advised on, as well as the doctrinal and critical
questions arising out of their exercises, w