'The constitutions and practice of the Primitive Church': a wise defence of episcopacy from Jacobean Scotland

John Spottiswoode, Archbishop of Saint Andrews 1615-39, has made occasional appearance on laudable Practice. He offered a masterly defence of the Articles of Perth, emphasising how they restored to the Church of Scotland practices common elsewhere in some of the Reformed Churches. He - along with the Laudian divine Brian Duppa - regarded the Church of Scotland's previous system of superintendency as exercising episcopal office, thus providing precedent for the restoration of episcopacy under James VI. His presbyteral orders, received before the restoration of episcopacy in Scotland, were also accepted by Bancroft, the robust champion of Jacobean Episcopalian Conformity.

Spottiswoode, in other words, embodies what could have been - indeed, should have been - the future of the Church of Scotland: episscopal order with elements of presbyterian government; Reformed doctrine with liturgical practices and ceremonies known in England and other Reformed Churches. It was the crisis following 1688, in which a combination of Covenanter extremism, very foolish political decisions by the Scottish bishops, and the contingent circumstances which resulted in William's managers losing control of the Scottish Parliament, which resulted in the lamentable loss of the ecclesiastical vision articulated and embodied by Spottiswoode.

Amongst Spottiswoode's allies, also championing this vision, was David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin 1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38. In 1621 he published a defence of the 1618 Perth Assembly, which included Spottiswoode's famous sermon. The work also included a rebuttal of allegations made by those who rejected both episcopal order and the Articles of Perth. One of the allegations was that the Perth Assembly was illegitimate and therefore nullified as it had it "no Moderatour ... lawfully elected in this Assembly" from amongst the presbyters. Lindsay's response was a wise, modest, and yet robust defence of the episcopal order of the Church of Scotland. This order, he stated, was that "of the Primitive Church":

In this, as in all the rest almost of their exceptions against the Assembly, there is a false rule laid, whereby to try the lawfulnesse thereof: To wit, the Acts and Custome of the Church of Scotland vnder Presbyteriall Gouernment, which must not rule vs now, seeing the true forme of Church-gouernment now restored is much different from the estate of these times. It is true, that when the Church was gouerned by a paritie of Ministers, they choosed a Moderator by suffrage, though without any warrant or example, eyther out of Scripture or Antiquitie, but being compelled thereto of necessitie in regard of that forme of Gouernment, wherein no man had any ordinary prerogatiue aboue, or before others: but now the forme of Gouernment being altered, and each man knowing his owne roome and station, we are not tyed to obserue that custome, but ought rather to follow the Constitutions and practice of the Primitiue Church, which was ruled by the same forme of Episcopall Gouernment that now is established in this Land. 

Such episcopal order, under the government of a Christian king, also contrasted with papal tyranny:

And it is manifest, that euer, while the Pope of Rome did tyrannically arrogate vnto himselfe and his Legats Presidencie in all Councels, this course was obserued, that eyther the Christian Prince himselfe, when he was present, was President, as Constantine the Great, in the first Councell of Nice, and Constantine called Pogonatus in the third Councell of Constantinople; or else by the Prince his permission and appointment, the Bishop Metropolitan, or Patriarch of greatest authoritie in these bounds, where the Councell was holden, who was alwayes acknowledged President.

What is more, episcopal order is rooted in apostolic precedent witnessed in the Scriptures:

And if we looke through the whole Ecclesiasticke History, wee shall find this euer to haue beene the order; yea, in that Apostolike Councell, Act. 15. according to the iudgement of the most learned, both old and new Writers, the Apostle Iames was there President as Bishop of Ierusalem ... And so is it probable out of the Text, because hee pronounced the sentence in the conclusion of the action, which is the speciall dutie of a Moderatour, and according to the words of his sentence are the Synodicall Letters written to other Churches. This exception therefore of not lyting or electing a Moderator, being grounded vpon a Custome or Constitution now abolished, in the place whereof hath succeded, the commendable order alwayes obserued by the Primitiue Church in her purest times, is not to bee respected.

In her otherwise excellent Bishops and Covenanters: The Church in Scotland 1688-1691 (2012), Ann Shukman suggests that the episcopal order of the Restoration Church of Scotland lacked intellectual weight when confronted by the presbytery by divine right claims of the Covenanters. This is not the case. Not only can we point to the 'Aberdeen Doctors', that group of eirenic thinkers around Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen 1618-35. Spottiswoode, as we have seen, offered a significant defence of this order. And there was Lindsay. What they all have in common is a commitment to a Hookerian vision of episcopacy. 

Notice how Lindsay roots episcopal order in apostolic and patristic practice: he does not employ 'divine right' discourse. This is not - as Shukman and others seem to imply - a weakness. Rather, it is a wise means of gathering support around episcopal order without the alienating and controversial claims of 'divine right'. It reflects the Hookerian defence of episcopacy to which English Episcopalian discourse returned, in a rejection of more extravagant Laudian claims, amidst the divisions and confusions of the early 1640s. It also echoed how the Reformed Churches of Hungary and Transylvania understood their form of episcopacy. Nor, however, was it a purely pragmatic or erastian understanding of episcopacy, as is clear from Lindsay's invocation of James at the Council of Jerusalem. 

Lindsay, therefore, also offers us a glimpse of what could have been in Scotland, if wiser heads - amongst the Scottish bishops and William's counsellors - had prevailed post-1688. This would also have been substantially aided if much wiser heads had prevailed in 1637 and Charles I had, following the example of his father, realised the sensible limits of royal power when it came to Scottish opinion and sentiment. Put bluntly, maintaining episcopal order was significantly more important than imposing a Prayer Book on Scotland. Perhaps above all, however, Linsday exemplifies an attractive stream of 17th century Scottish theological thought - a stream which, if it had endured, would have led to a Church of Scotland much closer to the continental Reformed mainstream than that reshaped by Covenanters at the end of the century.