'The several Confessions of our Faith, which is one': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and 'the Britannick Churches'
So began the bidding prayer required to be said, according to the 1604 Canons of the Church of England, by preachers before "all Sermons, Lectures, and Homilies" (Canon LV). It sets before us the Jacobean ecclesiastical vision of the national Churches of the Three Kingdoms, with "the King’s Power within His Realms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and all other his Dominions and Countries ... the highest Power under God" (Canon I, on the King's Supremacy).
Crucial to this vision was that the Church of Scotland did not stand apart from the Churches of England and Ireland. This did not mean that diversity was unacceptable. The Church of Ireland, after all, had the 1615 Articles of Religion, different to the English Articles. The Church of Scotland also had its own Confession of Faith. What the Churches of England and Ireland shared, however, was a common episcopal and liturgical order. The Jacobean vision of the Churches of the Three Kingdoms increasingly incorporated the Church of Scotland into this order, reflecting the shared faith of the three national Churches.
It commenced with James VI instituting bishoprics for the Church of Scotland in 1603. In 1610, he directed that those holding these sees receive episcopal consecration from English bishops. Bishops were also then required to be distinctively vested, in black cassocks to the knee, black gowns, academic hoods, and black craips. In 1612, the General Assembly accepted the direction given by James that "That a liturgy be made, and form of divine service, which shall be read in every church, in common prayer". In 1618, the Articles of Perth were agreed by the General Assembly (the debate around their reception stalled progress on a liturgy). All of this demonstrated that the Church of Scotland did not stand apart from the other national Churches of James' realms.
The title I have previously given to this Jacobean ecclesiastical vision is a term later used by the Laudian Bramhall, "the Britannick Churches". In his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth, David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), invokes this vision. Lindsay challenges an opponent, who quoted Lancelot Andrewes affirming the Coronation Oaths taken by James, to uphold, respectively, the Church of Scotland and the Church of England. The opponent mischievously proposed that the Articles of Perth were a contravention of the Oath to maintain the Church of Scotland. Lindsay's response emphasised the unity of the Churches of the Three Kingdoms, grounded in what was "essentiall":
As to the Oath which (as you say) the Bishop of Ely, now Bishop of Winchester, affirmeth his Maiestie twice to haue giuen, for maintaining that forme and manner of Gods worship established by the Lawes of both Kingdomes, you might easily haue perceiued, that he did not by the forme which he mentioneth, vnderstand these indifferent points of policie, wherein some little disconformity there is, and cannot but be, in regard of the different estate of our Church and theirs; but by that forme, her vnderstood that same fashion and manner of worshipping God, as is prescribed to vs in his Word, is proponed in the seuerall Confessions of our Faith, which is one, and the same both with them and vs. So you depraue that reuerend Fathers speech, and craftily insinuate his Maiestie to be guiltie of periury, in that by his Highnesse most lawfull and earnest desire, the alteration of these indifferent things hath beene wrought: but yee should know, that these are but things accessory to the essentiall forme of Gods worship, whereunto his Maiesty did sweare at his Coronation, which to this day constantly he hath maintained, and will by the grace of God for many yeares after, yea, euen vntill that temporall crowne bee changed with that eternall.
Crucial to Lindsay's point is that the Church of Scotland did not stand apart from the Churches of England and Ireland. On "indifferent points of policie" there was "some little disconformity" - but these did not define the Church of Scotland. In other words, the particular ceremonial stance of the Church of Scotland prior to the Articles of Perth - e.g. sitting to receive the Sacrament, not observing the great festivals - were but matters indifferent, not "the essentiall forme of God's worship". The King, as the chief magistrate, had, according to his "most lawfull and earnest desire", brought about "the alteration of these indifferent things".
By contrast, the Churches of the Three Kingdoms were united by "the severall Confessions of our Faith", which articulated "the essentiall forme of Gods worship", "as is prescribed to us in his Word", under the Crown. This Jacobean vision of the Churches of the Three Kingdoms - increasingly made visible in the episcopal and liturgical order which James brought to the Church of Scotland - offered a compelling, coherent alternative to those radicals who proposed a Scottish Church which stood apart from the other national Churches of James' realms.
Too easily dismissed by later historians, who tend to view the troubles of the 1630s and the post-1688 Scottish ecclesiastical settlement as inevitable (rather than dependent upon contingent circumstances), this Jacobean ecclesiastical vision, embracing an episcopally-ordered Church of Scotland, sharing liturgical practices with the Churches of England and Ireland, had strengths, attractions, and potential worthy of serious consideration and reflection. This is what we see in the defence of the Articles of Perth offered by Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin, a significant insight into what it was for the Church of Scotland to take its place amongst "the Britannick Churches".
the essentiall forme of Gods worship, whereunto his Maiesty did sweare at his Coronation, which to this day constantly he hath maintained, and will by the grace of God for many yeares after, yea, euen vntill that temporall crowne bee changed with that eternall.
It was the Jacobean ecclesiastical vision: it was explicitly James' vision. As Lindsay states earlier in his work, "his Maiesties good and godly intentions" were to "procure the weale of the Church". That this Jacobean settlement was violently attacked in Scotland in the 1630s (initiating the bloody Wars of the Three Kingdoms) and rejected in 1690 (after being restored in 1660) should be a matter of deep regret for those who value James' eirenic vision for "the Britannick Churches".
(The first picture is of a late 17th century drawing of Brechin, Lindsay's See.)
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