akes far more than is warranted of the
strong language in which it occasionally indulges against the old
church, with which he contrasts the more restrained and balanced
utterances of the Second Book.[259] I do not yield to many in my
admiration of the courage and calmness of Melville; but I could no more
think of placing him, scholarly and bold, yet calm, as he generally was,
nor the Book attributed to him, more logical and unimpassionately
didactic though it be, before the eager, impetuous, yet sagacious Knox,
with his wealth of rude eloquence and thrilling tenderness, and his Book
in which these qualities of head and heart are so clearly mirrored, than
I would think of placing Calvin, highly as I honour him, before Luther,
or his Catechism before the Wittenberg hymn-books.

I do not believe that the principles of the two Books are so widely
different as they have sometimes been represented to be, or that the
grand ideas of Knox concerning the place of the laity in the church, the
education of the young, and the support and kindly treatment of the aged
poor, were meant to be rejected or ignored by his great successor; but I
do think these matters fall considerably into the background. Some of
the noblest conceptions of the earlier Book are narrowed, and the whole
system stiffened; and in the contests in which the church had then to
engage with the young monarch, in vindication of her independence in her
own province, positions were laid down which were soon pressed to
consequences from which Knox and his associates would have shrunk.

[Sidenote: The Supreme Power.]

They, who had been obliged long to contend with a corrupt and obstinate
clergy which would grant no real reform in doctrine, no substantial
concessions for the alleviation of practical grievances, boldly laid
down the principle that "to kings, princes, rulers, and magistrates ...
chieflie and most principallie the conservation and purgation of the
religioun apperteinis; so that not onlie they are appointed for civill
policie, but also for maintenance of the trew religioun, and for
suppressing of idolatrie and superstitioun whatsoever.... And therefore
wee confesse and avow that sik as resist the supreme power doing that
thing quhilk appertains to his charge, do resist Goddis ordinance, and
therefore cannot be guiltles."[260] Melville, who was called to contend
with a king bent on securing autocratic power in the church as well as
in the state, laid down,