'The order, form and manner are to left to be determined by the Church': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and what could have been

Today is the final post - of a series which commenced in late August last year - on the 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth, by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38). I return to the preface of the work, in which Lindsay sets out the very basis for the moderation and eirenicism which accepts the Articles of Perth. Holy Scripture, he stated in Hookerian fashion, provided latitude to the Church in ordering its life and worship:

Finally, to end this point of the power of the Church, when the people are conuened in the ordinarie place, and at the times appointed, the Scripture hath not set downe, whereat the Pastour should beginne, how hee should proceed, and wherewith hee should close vp this Seruice: as whether hee should beginne with singing of Psalmes, or praying, or reading, or preaching; and when hee prayes, with what petition he shall beginne, what he shall subioyne next, and so forth: what order he shall obserue in baptizing and celebration of the Supper, in Marriage, in censuring of notorious offenders by Excommunication, in Absolution: and to bee short, in all such other points of Doctrine, Discipline, and Diuine Seruice, there is nothing particularly prescribed. Although the substance of all be in the Word, yet the order, disposition, forme, and manner are left to be determined by the Church. Many of which points, are of farre greater moment, then any of the Articles concluded at Perth.

Underpinning this latitude is the wise understanding that the diversities of times and cultures permits - indeed, requires - a diversity in rites and ceremonies in the Church catholic: 

because the Ceremonies and circumstances left to the determination of the Church, cannot alwayes be one and the same, by reason of the diuersity of Ages, Times, People, and Nations, touching them no constant Law can bee set downe, as is acknowledged in the one and twentieth Article of the Confession of our Faith confirmed by Parliament; but altered they may be, and altered they should be, when necessitie requires: In which case Charitie (sayes Caluine) can best iudge, what is most expedient, Hanc si moderatricem patiemur, salua erunt omnia.

Invoking both the Scots Confession of 1560 and Calvin points to an enduring theme throughout Lindsay's defence of the Articles of Perth: these Articles both stood in the mainstream of Continental Reformed thought and cohered with the 1560 Confession. As the Confession stated:

Not that we think that one policy and one order in ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times, and places; for as ceremonies (such as men has devised) are but temporal, so may and ought they to be changed, when they rather foster superstition than that they edify the Kirk using the same.

The Articles of Perth flowed from this definitively Scottish and Reformed understanding.

And so we end our consideration of Lindsay's defence of the Articles of Perth, Articles which were not at all imposing a supposed 'English order' on the Kirk. They were, rather, the outcome of the legitimate deliberations of the Kirk with the chief magistrate, justified by the practices and formularies of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation, confirming the Jacobean Church of Scotland's place amongst the Churches of the Three Kingdoms, and placing the Kirk within the mainstream of the Continental Reformed tradition. The radicalism of the Covenanting tradition would overturn all this, aided and abetted by Charles I's lack of prudence and moderation. To read Lindsay is to lament what could have been, a Church of Scotland which embodied an eirenic Reformed, episcopal vision, in communion with its sister churches in these Islands - something that was again glimpsed between 1660 and 1690, when, much to the discomfort of William III, Covenanter radicalism triumphed. And, as Ann Shukman's Bishops and Covenanters: The Church in Scotland 1688-1691 (2012) demonstrates, the victorious Covenanter tradition in 1690 had nothing but contempt for the Continental Reformed tradition embodied in the Dutch Church.

The last words in this series, and a final glimpse of what was lost, rightfully belong to Lindsay, echoing Hooker:

These things, I shall beseech you Brethren to ponder; and the Lord giue vs all in meekenesse, and humilitie, to trie what veritie requires; and holding that fast, to keepe the vnitie of the Spirit in the band of peace. The God of veritie and peace knit vs together in his truth, by the Spirit of his Sonne Iesus Christ our Peace. Amen.