of Kirkaldy see Barbe's Kirkaldy of Grange, Famous
Scots Series, pp. 108-124.

[255] For a different interpretation see Taylor Innes's John Knox,
Famous Scots Series, pp. 30, 31.

[256] [Morton's testimony to Knox, as recorded by Melville, was: "That
he nather fearit nor flatterit anie fleche" (Diary, p. 60). As recorded
by Calderwood: "Here lyeth a man who in his life never feared the face
of man; who hath beene often threatned with dag and dager, but yitt hath
ended his dayes in peace and honour. For he had God's providence
watching over him in a speciall maner, when his verie life was sought"
(History, iii. 242).]

CHAPTER X.

THE SECOND BOOK OF DISCIPLINE.

In a previous lecture I have endeavoured to give a pretty full account
of the First Book of Discipline. It remains yet to say a few words about
the Second Book of Discipline.

[Sidenote: The Two Books Compared.]

Principal John Cunningham has said: "The First Book exhibited a system
of polity sagaciously suited to the circumstances of the country and the
church: it seemed to grow out of the times."[257] I will add that it was
not only suited to the times, but to many of the practical needs of the
church of all times. I therefore hold that even yet it is worthy of a
higher place than to be deemed merely a "collection of parchments and
coins deposited beneath it [_i.e._, the Second Book] by which future
generations may read the story of the times in which the building was
begun."[258] The Second Book is more a book of constitutional law; and
aims, as the Principal says, at elaborating a system from the New
Testament without reference to circumstances, and bears far more
resemblance to the Ordonnances of Calvin than to the less ambitious and
more comprehensive Church Order Books of Germany. But the Second Book of
Discipline has even fewer practical details than the ordinances of
Geneva. Of course, so far as it actually abolished or modified the
regulations of the First Book, these fell to be disused; but in so far
as it did not actually do so, they still had a certain validity: and
even in the Covenanting times it is generally the Books, not the Book of
Discipline, to which reference is made in Acts of Assembly.

No one in our times, perhaps, has shown a more thorough appreciation of
the real merits of the First Book than the Duke of Argyll in his
well-known essay on "Presbytery." Mr Hill Burton, who depreciates it in
comparison with the Second, m