'Enemies to the peace both of Church and Kingdom': the force of Conformity and the Jacobean Church of Scotland

One of the accusations historians often make of those who defended episcopal conformity in the 17th century Church of Scotland is that their case lacked force. Moderation and eirenicism, we are told, could not hold against the passion and conviction of Covenanters. There are good grounds for doubting this in the latter part of the century. (Indeed, the victory of the Covenanter tradition was the chiefly the result of contingent political circumstances, not force of argument.) And, in his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618, David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - demonstrates that this also was not the case in the Jacobean Church of Scotland. 

Addressing those who rejected the authority of the Articles of Perth, as accepted by the General Assembly at the request of James VI/I, Lindsay has no hesitation in directly addressing how they disorder both Church and State:

And if any will still oppose themelues thereto, we doubt not to cal them troublers of the Estate, seditious Persons, Schismatickes, louers of Diuision, and direct Enemies to the Weale, and peace both of the Church, and Kingdome. 

What is more, those invoke their solemn duty to stand before Christ on the Day of Judgement as justification for their actions in disrupting Church and State, were, Lindsay insisted, merely using that Day as a pretext for their subversion of the good order of church and polity, failing to recognise that these actions will be judged on that Day:

That ye would bee called such men, ye might well prophesie, seeing ye be priuy to your owne intentions; but where ye adiect [i.e. add] that account must be made one day of such contumelies and reproches, I would but aske you, whether yee doe thinke to passe free in the Day of that account, and not be brought to your answere, for calling the Seruants of Christ, mercenarie men, and thereby implying his Maiestie, your Souereigne to be another Balak in giuing the wages of iniquitie, to hirelings: for condemning all, that are obedient to the voyce of the Church in these matters, as men periured, and without all conscience, and diuers others your malicious speeches, vttered in this Pamphlet: or if you thinke it no fault to make a rent in the body of Christ, which is his Church, which it appeares euidently ye are only about ...

It was not, in other words, mere Erastianism that defined those supporting Conformity in the Jacobean Church of Scotland: it was an understanding that, at the end of the ages, standing before the Judgement Seat of Christ, answer would have to be given for rending the peace of Christ's Kirk. An obstinate refusal to conform in things indifferent, duly required by ecclesiastical authority and the magistrate, was not - as the Reformed confessions demonstrated - a small matter which would be overlooked on that Day.

Lindsay also returns to the reality that the Articles of Perth were indeed adiaphora. As he prepares to give a more in-depth defence of each of the provisions of the Articles, he reminds his readers that such adiaphora do not and cannot alter the state of the Church of Scotland as Reformed kirk, and therefore do not in any way mark a departure from the Scots Confession:

The answeres following will cleere to all men, that the estate of our Church is no way preiudged by any Act concluded in the Assembly at Perth, and that the obedience thereof, will not inferre a defection from our former profession.

(The picture is of a late 17th century drawing of Brechin, Lindsay's See.)