The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

It now remained to be seen to what uses the Protestant party would put their victory. The simultaneous departure of the French and English troops relieved them from all restraint; and four days later the great deliverance was signalized by a solemn thanksgiving in the Church of St. Giles. For the effectual spreading of the Protestant doctrine, preachers were planted in various parts of the country—Knox being appointed to the principal charge in Edinburgh. But it was the approaching assembly of the estates to which all men were looking with hopes or fears, according to their desires and interests. The estates met on August 3d, but it was not till the 8th that the attendance was complete. It was to be the most important national assembly in the history of the Scottish people; and the numbers of the different classes who flocked to it showed that the momentous nature of the crisis was fully realized. Specially noteworthy was the crowd of smaller barons from all parts of the country. So unusual was the appearance of these persons that it had almost been forgotten that their right to sit as representatives dated from as far back as the reign of James I. A question raised, as to the legality of an assembly which met independently of the summons or the presence of the sovereign, was decisively set aside; and the House addressed itself to the great issues involved in the late revolution. The question of religion, as at the root of the whole controversy, took precedence of every other. The first proceeding showed the national instinct for the logical conduct of human affairs. The estates instructed the ministers to draw up a statement of Protestant doctrine, which might serve at once as a chart for their future guidance and a justification for their present and their future action. In four days the task (an easy one for Knox and his brother-ministers) was accomplished; and under twenty-five heads the estates had before them what was henceforth to be the creed of the majority of the Scottish people. Article by article the Confession was read and considered, and, after a feeble protest by the bishops of St. Andrew's, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, approved and ratified by an overwhelming majority of the estates.

The way being thus cleared, the next step was the logical conclusion of all the past action of the Protestant leaders. In three successive acts, all passed in one day, it was decreed that the national Church should cease to exist. The first act abolished the jurisdiction of the Pope; the second condemned all practices and doctrines contrary to the new creed; and the third forbade the celebration of mass within the bounds of Scotland. The penalties attached to the breach of these enactments were those approved and sanctioned by the example of every country in Christendom. Confiscation for the first offence, exile for the second, and death for the third—such were to be the successive punishments for the saying or hearing of mass.

Thus apparently had Knox and his fellow-workers attained the end of all their labors; and it is instructive to compare the history of their struggle with the experiences of other countries where the same religious conflicts had successively arisen. In Germany the terrible Peasants' War had been the direct result of Luther's revolt from Rome; and in England the ecclesiastical revolution had been followed by the religious atrocities of Henry VIII, by the anarchy under Edward VI, and by the remorseless fanaticism of Mary Tudor. While the Congregation was in the midst of its struggles with Mary of Lorraine, Philip II was dealing with heresy in Spain. How effectually he dealt with it is one of the notable chapters in the histories of nations. Here it is sufficient to recall a single fact in illustration of the relative experiences of Scotland and Spain. In 1559 Philip and his court, amid the applause of a crowd of above two hundred thousand from all parts of Castile, sanctioned with their presence the burning at Valladolid of a band of persons, mostly women, accused of the crime of heresy. In France the appearance of a new religion had evoked passions, alike among the people and their rulers, which were to give that country an evil preeminence in the ferocity of national and individual action. The chambre ardente, the Edict of Châteaubriand (1551), the massacre of Amboise (1560), the thirty years of intermittent civil war (1562-1592)—these were the events of frightful significance that mark the development of religious conflict in France. Compared with the tale of blood and confusion that has to be told of Germany, France, England, and Spain, the history of the Reformation in Scotland is a record of order and tranquillity.

What is thrust upon us by the narrative of events in Scotland is the singular moderation alike of the representatives of the old and the new religion. Heretics had been burned indeed, but the number was inconsiderable compared with that of similar victims in other countries; and, even in the day of their triumph, the Scottish Protestants, in spite of the stern threat of their legislation, were guiltless of a single execution on the ground of religion. What is still more striking is, that difference of faith begot no fanatical hate among the mass of the people. In France and Spain men forgot the ties of blood and country in the blind fury of religious zeal, but in Scotland we do not find town arrayed against town and neighbor denouncing neighbor on the ground of a different faith. That this tolerance was not due to indifference the religious history of Scotland abundantly proves. It was in the convulsions attending the change of the national faith that the Scottish nation first attained to a consciousness of itself, and the characteristics it then displayed have remained its distinctive characteristics ever since. It is precisely the combination of a fervid temper with logical thinking and temperate action that have distinguished the Scottish people in all the great crises of their history.