Preface
Who can doubt, Christian reader, that innocence must rely on the courtesy and mercy of those who hate it, and that being subjected to the lawless judgment of a vicious tongue is a real form of martyrdom? Christ, the prophets, and the apostles of our Lord all went to heaven branded as traitors, seditious troublemakers, and people who turned the world upside down. False accusations of treason against Caesar were part of Christ's suffering, and therefore the author is all the more willing to drink from that same cup that touched His lips, since He is our glorious forerunner. If conscience toward God and a good reputation with men cannot both accompany the saints to heaven, the author is satisfied with the former companion and willing to let the other go. Truth to Christ cannot be treason to Caesar, and for his part, he judges that truth has a closer relationship to Christ Jesus than the excessive and unlimited power of any mortal prince.
He believed that Catholicism and apostasy had made serious inroads in Britain, and that arbitrary government had overflowed all legal boundaries. It had reached its highest point, and this tide of absolute power, having reached the furthest edge of imagined supremacy, was now about to recede. The plain truth is that prelates (a wild and aggressive breed threatening Christ's lambs and flock) had created a terrible uproar. The wheels of their chariot moved at the same bloodthirsty speed as the Whore of Babylon. Prelacy, the daughter planted in her mother's blood, had to fulfill that word: "As is the mother, so is the daughter." But don't the prelates suffer now? Yes, but their sufferings have nothing in common with the calamities of those about whom Lactantius said, "How honorable was the willingness with which these wretched ones suffered" (*O quam honesta voluntate miseri erant*, l. 5, c. 19). The causes of their suffering are: 1. Hope of gain and glory, steering their course toward a destination they greatly desire: a church of gold and purple, yet really of clay and earth. 2. The lie works more powerfully on people's minds, not because of its own strength, but because people are more receptive to error than truth. And opinions that thrive in the world's prosperity, or that have a conquering nature (whatever ideas align with the world) are very effective on prelates and men like them.
There is another cause of our time's sickness. God used heresy as a plague to produce atheism and complacency, just as atheism and complacency had produced heresy. It's like how clouds, through a reciprocal process, create rain, rain produces vapors, vapors form clouds, and clouds make rain. In the same way, sins spread across our troubled times in a circular pattern.
And now judgment presses down on the kingdoms. Of all the heaviest judgments, the sword is the worst, and of all swords, the civil sword threatens devastation. Yet I hope it won't be like the Roman civil sword, about which it was said, "Wars were waged that would have no triumphs" (*Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos*).
I hope this war will be Christ's triumph and Babylon's ruin.
What motivated me to write wasn't (as my excommunicated opponent claims, boasting like a braggart) that some careless writings forced my hand. Many before me have already covered this ground with great skill. I simply wanted to add my own witness to our times.
I don't have time to examine the Prelate's entire preface. I'll just give you a taste of his bitterness here, along with a sample of his venomous style (I recognize the pen and spirit of a braggart). In this preface, he works hard to prove how incompatible presbyterian government is with monarchy or any other form of government.
1. He denies that the crown and scepter fall under any coercive power of pope or presbytery, or that they can be censured or dethroned. To this we say: presbyteries openly profess that kings do fall under the coercive power of Christ's keys of discipline. Prophets and pastors, as Christ's ambassadors, hold the keys to God's kingdom. They can open the door to let in believing princes, and they can also shut them out if they rebel against Christ. Christ's law makes no exceptions (Matt 16:19; 18:15, 16; 2 Cor 10:6; Jer 1:9). If a king's sins can be forgiven through ministerial authority (as in Job 20:23, 24), the way prelates and their priests absolve kings, then we believe the same hand that loosed can also bind. Presbyteries have never dethroned kings or usurped that power. Your father, Prelate (I mean the Pope), has dethroned many kings. By your own admission (chapter 5, page 58), his power differs from yours only in extent, not in divine right.
2. When sacred hierarchy (the order Christ instituted) is overthrown, what happens to sovereignty? Answer: It becomes more secure than before, when prelates were deposing kings. Second answer: I fear Christ will never recognize this order.
3. The mitre cannot suffer while the diadem remains secure. Answer: Do kings have no pillars for their thrones except antichristian prelates? History teaches us that prelates have trampled both diadem and scepter under their feet.
4. Don't the Puritans arrogantly claim that kings exist not by God's authoritative commission but only by His permission, forced by human demands, so they can serve as a punishment for sinful people? No unclean spirit from hell could speak a blacker lie. We believe that the king, in his office, serves as the church's nursing father, a sacred institution, God's delegated power. But according to the Prelate's system, all inferior judges and God's deputies on earth (who are also our fathers according to the fifth commandment) need not be obeyed by any divine law. The king, misled by prelates, can forbid obedience to them, which makes him, in plain truth, a mortal civil pope who can release and free subjects from the binding force of divine law.
5. His attacks on ruling elders and the removal of antichristian prelacy, without any scriptural support for his position, I dismiss as the ravings of a malcontent. After all, he has been justly excommunicated for perjury, popery, Socinianism, tyranny over men's consciences, seizing civil offices, abandoning his calling, and deserting Christ's camp.
6. None were anointed in ancient times except kings, priests, and prophets. Who, then, is more obligated to uphold the Lord's anointed than priests and prophets? The church has never enjoyed more beauty and prosperity under any government than monarchy, which God most favors and Scripture most exalts.
*Answer:* Pastors must defend the rights of the people and a true church just as much as they defend the rights of kings. But prelates, those court parasites and creatures of the king who exist only to glorify their monarch, can do nothing less than profess this in words. Yet what Tacitus wrote about such men is true (Histories, book 1): they speak more willingly about the prince's fortune than to the prince himself (*Libentius cum fortuna principis, quam cum principe loquuntur*). It's also true that the church has prospered under kings, not so much because they were kings, but because they were godly and zealous. Unless the Prelate means to say that the oppressing kings of Israel and Judah, and the bloody horns that made war with the Lamb, were not really kings. In the rest of his epistle, he heaps base flattery on the Marquis of Ormond, praising his loyalty to the king and his supposedly admirable prudence in negotiating the treaty of cessation with the rebels. A curse is due to this false prophet who calls darkness light, for the Marquis's loyalty was nothing but abominable and treacherous apostasy from the Lord's cause and from God's people, whom he once defended. And the cessation was a selling of the blood of many hundred thousand Protestants: men, women, and nursing children.
This cursed Prelate has recently written a treatise against the presbyterian government of Scotland, which is packed with lies, hellish slanders, and gross errors.
1. The first lie is that we have lay elders, when in fact they are men who rule but do not labor in the word and doctrine (1 Tim 5:7, p. 3).
2. The second lie is that deacons, who only serve tables, are joint rulers with pastors (p. 3).
3. The third lie is that we never, or rarely, use the lesser excommunication, that is, barring people from the Lord's Supper (p. 4).
4. The claim that church courts in Scotland impose financial penalties, threaten excommunication against those who can't pay, and refuse to accept the repentance of anyone unable to pay is false. Only the civil magistrate levies fines for drunkenness, adultery, and blaspheming God (sins that prelates themselves commit regularly).
5. It's a slander to say that ruling elders have equal authority to preach the word as pastors do (p. 7).
6. The claim that laymen serve as members of presbyteries or general assemblies is false. Buchanan and Mr. Melvin were doctors of divinity and could have taught an ignoramus like John Maxwell.
7. The claim that expectants intrude on the sacred function is false. As sons of the prophets, they simply exercise their gifts for trial in preaching.
8. The claim that the presbytery of Edinburgh has superintending power is false. They merely communicate the affairs of the church and write to the churches about what they hear prelates and their allies plotting against Christ and His church.
9. The claim that the king must submit his scepter to the presbytery is false. The king's scepter represents his royal office, which is not subject to any court, any more than any lawful ordinance of Christ is. But if the king, as a man, blasphemes God, murders the innocent, or elevates gluttons (such as most of our prelates were) above the Lord's inheritance, then the ministers of Christ have the right to say, "The king troubles Israel," and they hold the keys to open and shut heaven to, and upon, the king if he persists in offending.
10. King James did say that a Scottish presbytery and a monarchy agree as well as God and the devil, and that's true. But King James meant this of a wicked king. Otherwise, he spoke merely as a man.
11. The claim that the presbytery, out of pride, refused to answer King James's honorable messengers is a lie. They simply couldn't return an immediate answer to a prince who was constantly seeking to abolish presbyteries on a matter of such high importance.
12. It's a lie that all sins, even all civil business, fall under the church's authority. Only publicly scandalous sins come under their power (Matt 18:15-17; 2 Thess 3:11; 1 Tim 5:20). It's a slander to say they search out secret crimes, or that they ever disgraced the innocent, or divided families. When there are flagrant scandals and strong suspicions of scandalous crimes, they do investigate those: for instance, the incest of Spotswood, Prelate of St. Andrews, with his own daughter, or the adulteries of Whiteford, Prelate of Brechin, whose illegitimate child came weeping to the assembly of Glasgow in the arms of the prostitute. These they investigated, but not with the damnable oath *ex officio* that the high commission forced on innocent people to make them accuse themselves against the law of nature.
13. The presbytery doesn't hinder lawful trade. They may forbid scandalous extortion and unjust lawsuits, and Scripture does the same, calling such things scandalous for Christians (2 Cor 6).
14. They don't repeal civil laws. They preach against unjust and oppressive laws, as Isaiah does (Isa 10:1), and they censure violations of God's holy day, which prelates profaned.
15. We know no parochial popes. We don't remove godly ministers, only mute dogs, non-residents, scandalous, wretched, and apostate prelates.
16. Our moderator has no dominion. The Prelate absolves him when he says, "All is done in our church by common consent" (p. 7).
17. It's true we have no popish consecration, such as the Prelate contends for in the mass, but we have the kind that Christ and His apostles used in consecrating the elements.
18. If anyone sells church property, the presbytery disciplines him. But if anyone takes bribes of malt, meal, or beef, there's no law against it here, any more than there is against the bishop's five hundred marks or the year's stipend that the new minister gave to the Lord Bishop for a church. And whoever took bribes in those days (as King James, through the Earl of Dunbar, bought episcopacy at a rigged assembly through corrupt bribery), they were either supporters of the episcopal system or traitors who broke their oaths to become bishops. All personal faults of this kind blamed on presbyteries actually belong to them in their role as episcopal men.
19. The leading men who covered up the sins of the dying man and thereby lost his soul were episcopal men. And though some men were presbyterians, the faults of individuals can't undermine God's truth. But the prelates always complain about the harshness of presbyteries in disciplining scandals. Because they themselves do wrong, they hate the light. Yet here the Prelate condemns them for being too lenient in discipline.
20. Satan, a liar from the beginning, says the presbytery was a breeding ground for fiends, conflicts, and bloodshed because they excommunicated murderers against King James' will. This is like saying prophecy breeds bloodshed because the prophets cried out against King Ahab and the murderers of innocent Naboth. The men of God must be on one side or the other, or else preach against retaliation for wrongs.
21. The claim that presbyteries are usurping both swords (spiritual and civil authority) simply because they censure sins that the civil magistrate should also punish is false. By that logic, Elijah could be accused of meddling in the kingdom's civil affairs when he prophesied against idolaters who killed the Lord's prophets, even though punishing that crime fell to the civil magistrate. The truth is that the Assembly of Glasgow in 1637 condemned the prelates not for exercising spiritual discipline, but because these men, while serving as pastors, also insisted on being lords of parliament, members of the Court of Session, members of the Privy Council, members of the Exchequer, judges, and barons. Through their lawless High Commission, they wielded the sword by imposing fines and imprisoning people.
22. He reveals his ignorance when he says a provincial synod is an associate body chosen from all judicial presbyteries. In reality, all pastors and doctors attend provincial synods by virtue of their office, not through any delegation or selection process. They consult and vote there without any choice being involved at all.
23. It's a lie that some leading men rule everything here. In fact, episcopal men created factions to tear apart the synods. And though men abuse their power to create factions, this can't prove that presbyteries are incompatible with monarchy. If it did, then the Prelate (the monarch of his diocesan group) would be anti-monarchical in an even greater way, since he rules everything at his will. 24. The leading men, like Mr. R. Bruce, that faithful servant of Christ, were honored and followed by all because of his suffering, zeal, holiness, and fruitful ministry in winning many thousands of souls to Christ. So even though King James cast him off and swore by God's name that he intended to be king (the Prelate makes blasphemy a virtue in the king), yet King James swore he couldn't find an honest minister in Scotland to be a bishop, and therefore he was forced to promote dishonest scoundrels. But he sometimes said, and wrote it in his own hand, that Mr. R. Bruce was worthy of half his kingdom. But will this prove presbyteries incompatible with monarchies? I would rather think that dishonest bishops, by King James' own judgment, were incompatible with monarchies.
25. His lies about Mr. R. Bruce, taken from the lying manuscripts of apostate Spotswood (in that he wouldn't stop preaching against the king's recall from exile of some bloody popish lords to undo everything), are nothing compared to the incests, adulteries, blasphemies, perjuries, Sabbath violations, drunkenness, profanity, and so on, committed by prelates in broad daylight.
26. Our General Assembly is nothing other than Christ's court (Acts 15), made up of pastors, doctors, and brethren, or elders.
27. They should have no negative vote to block the decisions of Christ in His servants.
28. It's a lie that the king has no power to appoint the time and place for the General Assembly. But his power isn't meant to destroy the free courts of Christ; rather, it's meant to add to them, to aid and assist them.
29. It's a lie that our General Assembly can repeal laws, command and expect the king to obey them, or excommunicate those subject to them, or force and compel the king, judges, and everyone else to submit to them. They cannot force the conscience of even the poorest beggar. No Assembly is infallible, and it cannot place restrictions on the souls of judges that they must obey with blind obedience. Their power is ministerial, subordinate to Christ's law. When civil parliaments make laws that contradict God's word, the Assembly can authoritatively declare those laws unlawful. For example, if the emperor had commanded fornication and eating blood (Acts 15), couldn't the Assembly have forbidden these things in the synod? I believe the prelates, if they had the power, would repeal the act of parliament made in 1641 in Scotland (with his majesty personally present) along with the three estates concerning the annulling of those acts of parliament and laws that established bishops in Scotland. Therefore, bishops set themselves up as independent monarchs above kings and laws. What they condemn in presbyteries and assemblies, they practice themselves.
30. Commissioners from burghs, and two from Edinburgh (because of that church's size, not because of any cathedral superiority), sit in assemblies not as representatives sent from burghs, but as those sent and authorized by the church session of the burgh. They sit there in a church capacity.
31. We desire doctors both in academies and in parishes, and our book of discipline sets forth such positions. 32. They hold (I believe with warrant from God's word) that if the king refuses to reform religion, the inferior judges and assembly of godly pastors and other church officers may reform it. If the king will not kiss the Son and do his duty in purging the House of the Lord, may not Elijah and the people do their duty and cast out Baal's priests? Reformation of religion is a personal act that belongs to all, even to any one private person according to his place.
33. The people may swear a covenant without the king if he refuses, and they may build the Lord's house themselves (2 Chr 15:9). They may also relieve and defend one another when oppressed. My duty to defend myself and the oppressed doesn't bind my conscience conditionally (only if the king consents), but absolutely, just as all duties under natural law do (Jer 22:3; Prov 24:11; Isa 58:6; 1:17).
34. The Prelate condemns our reformation because it happened against the will of our Catholic queen. This reveals what he really thinks of Catholicism and how much he actually hates Protestant religion.
35. They deposed the queen for her tyranny but crowned her son. All of this is defended in the following treatise.
36. The killing of that monstrous and wickedly corrupt cardinal in the Castle of St. Andrews, and the violence done to the prelates (who against all law of God and man forced a mass service on their own private authority in Edinburgh in 1637), proves nothing against Presbyterian government unless our doctrine actually endorses these acts as lawful.
37. What was preached by the servant of Christ (whom on page 46 he calls the Scottish Pope) is in print, and the Prelate didn't dare and couldn't cite anything from it as Catholic or unsound. He knows perfectly well that the man he slanders so viciously knocked down the Pope and the prelates.
38. Getting rid of the wealthy abbeys and bishoprics is a bloody heresy to this worldly-minded Prelate. The Confession of Faith, praised by all the Protestant churches as a strong defense against Catholicism, and the Book of Discipline (which the servants of God labored over for twenty years with fasting and prayer and frequent consultation with all the reformed churches) are to the Prelate nothing but a negative faith and pious fantasies. It's a lie that episcopacy was ever agreed on by law in Scotland by both sides.
39. Mr. Melvin taught that presbyter and bishop are the same function in Scripture, and that abbots and priors aren't found in God's books (tell me where you read that). The Prelate calls this heresy, but how does this prove that presbyteries can't coexist with monarchy?
40. The Prelate considers it heresy when the church appoints a fast while King James appointed an inappropriate feast during a time when God's wrath was on the land, contrary to God's word (Isa 22:12-14). But how does this prove that presbyteries are incompatible with monarchies?
41. This Assembly has the authority to judge what doctrine is treasonable. So what? Surely in a properly constituted church, the privy council and king don't have the authority to determine synodically what is true or false doctrine, any more than the Roman emperor could establish church canon (Acts 15).
42. Mr. Gibson and Mr. Black preached against King James' support for the tyranny of bishops, his sympathy with papists, and other flagrant sins, and were absolved in a General Assembly. Does this make presbyteries incompatible with monarchy? No, it only proves they're incompatible with the wickedness of some monarchies. Meanwhile, prelates have acted like the four hundred false prophets who flattered King Ahab, and those men who preached against the sins of the king and court have been imprisoned, banished, had their noses slit, their cheeks burned, and their ears cut off by prelates in both kingdoms.
43. The godly men who held the Assembly of Aberdeen in 1605 stood for Christ's prerogative when King James took away all General Assemblies, as events proved. The king has no more warrant to prohibit all Assemblies for church discipline than he does to prohibit all Assemblies for word and sacrament.
44. They don't excommunicate for light faults and trifles, as the liar claims. Our discipline says the opposite.
45. This assembly never tried to choose the king's counselors. But those in authority did remove the young King James from the company of a corrupt and seductive papist, Esme Duke of Lennox, whom the Prelate calls noble, worthy, and eminently gifted.
46. It's true that the Glasgow Assembly of 1637 voted down the high commission, because the church had never consented to it, yet it claimed to be a church court. This commission presumed to judge ministers' doctrine, remove them from office, and encroach on the liberties of the established, lawful church courts.
47. This Assembly had every right to forbid Mr. John Graham, a minister, from enforcing an unjust decree, since it's scandalous for a minister to oppress anyone.
48. Even though nobles, barons, and burgesses who profess the truth serve as elders and therefore members of the General Assembly, this doesn't make the church the house and the commonwealth merely the decoration. We're willing to have our constituent members examined by the pattern of synods: "Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas" (Acts 15:22, 23). How is this inconsistent with monarchy?
49. The commissioners of the General Assembly are: (1.) A purely occasional court. (2.) Appointed by and subordinate to the General Assembly. (3.) They have the same warrant from God's word that the messengers of the synod had (Acts 15:22-27).
50. Everyone knows about the false accusations made on December 17th: (1.) The claim that the ministers planned to remove King James from the throne and wrote to John L. Marquis of Hamilton to become king because James had abandoned the true religion. Satan invented this lie, Spotswood and this Prelate spread it. I trust everyone now knows the real story. The most godly pastors and professors in the kingdom supported this government, suffered for it, and only challenged authority when it sinned, never challenging the power and office themselves. Those on the other side were men of a different character, focused on worldly things, whose god was the world itself. (2.) All the fabricated claims about presbyteries and monarchies being incompatible amount to opposition against absolute monarchy and apply with equal force against parliaments, all synods on either side, and against the law and gospel that are preached, to which kings and kingdoms must submit. Lord, establish peace and truth.
