THE HISTORY OF SCOTTISH THEOLOGY

The History of Scottish Theology, Volume I

Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy
The History of Scottish Theology, Volume II
The Early Enlightenment to the Late Victorian Era
The History of Scottish Theology, Volume III
The Long Twentieth Century
 EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

PROFESSOR ALEXANDER BROADIE

(University of Glasgow)
PROFESSOR STEWART J. BROWN
(University of Edinburgh)
PROFESSOR SUSAN HARDMAN MOORE
(University of Edinburgh)
PROFESSOR COLIN KIDD
(University of St Andrews)
PROFESSOR DONALD MACLEOD
(Edinburgh Theological Seminary)
PROFESSOR CHARLOTTE METHUEN
(University of Glasgow)
PROFESSOR MARGO TODD
(University of Pennsylvania)
PROFESSOR IAIN TORRANCE
(University of Aberdeen)
The History of Scottish
Theology
Volume I

Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy

Edited by
DAVID FERGUSSON
and
MARK W. ELLIOTT

1
 3
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 Acknowledgements

We wish to record our thanks to several people who have assisted with the
production of this three-volume work. Dr Sandy Forsyth has provided valuable
support with contracts, organization of conferences, and regular communication
with authors. As associate editor, he has contributed much to this project and we
are greatly indebted to him for his labours. Initial copy editing was undertaken by
Dr Cory Brock, Revd Craig Meek, and Dr Laura Mair. Three conferences were
held which enabled contributors to present initial drafts of their work; these were
held in 2016–17 at Princeton Theological Seminary and New College, Edinburgh
with financial support from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. We
are also grateful to the members of the Editorial Advisory Board for their advice
and encouragement, particularly during the early stages of the project.
David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott
 List of Contributors

Alexander Broadie is an honorary professorial research fellow at Glasgow University and

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has been Henry Duncan prize lecturer in
Scottish studies at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology at
Aberdeen University, and Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at Glasgow University. He is the
author of some twenty books, most of them on the Scottish philosophical tradition.
Simon J. G. Burton is the John Laing Senior Lecturer in Reformation History at the
University of Edinburgh. His published work includes The Hallowing of Logic: The Trini-
tarian Method of Richard Baxter’s Methodus Theologiae (2012). He has also co-edited
Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World (2019) and published articles
in journals such as Reformation and Renaissance Review, Ecclesiology, and History of
Universities, as well as a number of book chapters.
Euan Cameron is Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History at Union
Theological Seminary in New York City, and Professor of Religion at Columbia University.
His books include The European Reformation (1991, 2nd edition 2012), Waldenses (2000),
Interpreting Christian History (2005), Enchanted Europe (2010), and the edited works Early
Modern Europe: An Oxford History (1999), The New Cambridge History of the Bible vol. III
(2016), and The Annotated Luther vol. 6: The Interpretation of Scripture (2017). He is a
priest in the Episcopal Church of the USA.
Richard Cross has been John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre
Dame since 2007. Before that, he was Professor of Medieval Theology at the University of
Oxford, and a Fellow of Oriel College. He is the author of seven monographs on medieval
philosophy and on the history of theology, including The Metaphysics of the Incarnation:
Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (2002) and Duns Scotus on God (2005). He has also written
over one hundred articles on subjects ranging from Patristic theology to Disability Studies.
Peter Damian-Grint is a member of the Adam of Dryburgh research group at the
University of Glasgow. He is also an honorary research fellow in history at the University
of St Andrews. His works include The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance:
Inventing Vernacular Authority (1999).
Aaron Clay Denlinger is Department Chair in Latin at Arma Dei Academy, Colorado and
Adjunct Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania.
His publications include the edited volume Reformed Orthodoxy in Scotland: Essays on
Scottish Theology 1560–1775 (2015).
Martin Holt Dotterweich is Professor of History at King University in Bristol, Tennessee,
where he also serves as Director of the King Institute for Faith and Culture. Among his
publications on the early Scottish Reformation is the edited booklet George Wishart
Quincentennial Conference Proceedings (2014).
x   

James Eglinton is Meldrum Lecturer in Reformed Theology at New College, University of

Edinburgh. He holds degrees in law and theology, and a PhD in systematic theology. He is
the author of Trinity and Organism (2012) and works primarily on the Dutch neo-Calvinist
tradition.

Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner was educated at Munich and Tübingen Universities. At

Tübingen, she wrote her PhD thesis on The Education of Dominican Sisters in Southern
Germany from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries (Die Bildung der Dominikanerinnen
in Süddeutschland vom 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert). She is Lecturer in Church History at the
University of Aberdeen. Her main research area is medieval female monastic piety and
practical devotion. In recent years, she has also explored the spirituality of theologians in
north-east Scotland, who were deeply influenced by medieval and early modern continental
mysticism.
Mark W. Elliott, formerly Professor of Historical and Biblical Theology at the University of
St Andrews at St Mary’s College, School of Divinity has been since February 2019 Professor
of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. Glaswegian by birth, he was further educated at
Oxford, Aberdeen, and Cambridge, where he wrote a PhD on The Song of Songs and
Christology in the Early Church. His main focus is the relationship between biblical
exegesis and Christian doctrine, both ancient and modern, but has a particular interest in
Scottish theology in its international context.

David Fergusson is Professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. He is a Fellow of

the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the British Academy. His publications
include The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach (2018).

Whitney G. Gamble is Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Provi-

dence Christian College in Pasadena, CA. She received her PhD in Historical and System-
atic Theology from the University of Edinburgh. Her published work includes Christ and
the Law: Antinomianism at the Westminster Assembly (2018).

Giovanni Gellera is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne. He received his

PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2012, and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of
Fribourg and the University of Edinburgh. His research expertise is in the relations between
scholasticism and early modern philosophy, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment.
His major work is the critical edition and translation of the manuscript Idea Philosophiae
Moralis (1679) by James Dundas (forthcoming, with Alexander Broadie).
Thomas M. Green is a former postgraduate and doctoral candidate at the School of
Divinity, University of Edinburgh, a former British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the School
of Law, University of Edinburgh, and a former Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Law,
University of Glasgow.
Ian Hazlett was educated in history and divinity at universities in Belfast, St Andrews,
Strasbourg, and Münster (Westphalia) where he did his doctorate in theology. After
research posts in Geneva and Paris, followed by a lectureship in church history at Aberdeen,
he moved to Glasgow where he later became Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and
Principal of Trinity College. Currently Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at Glasgow
    xi

University, his research interests and publications have been mostly in the area of
Reformation history and theology, especially text-critical editing of primary sources includ-
ing ones for the Opera Latina of Martin Bucer, Reformierte Bekenntisschriften, and the new
expanded edition of Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliunque decreta. He is chief editor
of the international journal, Reformation & Renaissance Review.

Stephen Mark Holmes is Rector of Padstow, St Merryn and St Issey with St Petroc Minor in
Cornwall, an Honorary Fellow at Edinburgh University School of Divinity, and teaches at
the Scottish Episcopal Institute. He is a graduate of the universities of St Andrews,
Maynooth, and Edinburgh and has published books and articles on church history, liturgy,
and historical theology.
David G. Mullan retired at the end of 2016 as Professor of History and Religious Studies
from Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia. He is the author or editor of eight
books, including Scottish Puritanism (2000) and Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-
Modern Scotland (2010). He has also prepared sixteen journal articles and book chapters
in multi-authored volumes. In retirement, he lives with his wife and near their family in
St Albert, Alberta.
Stephen G. Myers is Professor of Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological
Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Previously, he served as a pastor in the
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. His publications include Scottish Federalism
and Covenantalism in Transition: The Theology of Ebenezer Erskine (2015).
Thomas O’Loughlin is Professor of Historical Theology in the University of Nottingham
and a specialist in tracing how Latin theology developed in the aftermath of Augustine. In
this quest he has paid particular attention to the practice of theology in the British Isles and
how writers received theological questions and models from late antiquity, transformed
them, and then bequeathed them to the university theologians. He is the Director of Studia
Traditionis Theologiae.

Guy M. Richard is Executive Director and Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at

Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, GA. He holds a B.I.E. from Auburn University,
a M.Div. from RTS, and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Before moving into his
current position, he served as the Senior Minister of the First Presbyterian Church in
Gulfport, Mississippi (PCA), for almost twelve years. He is the author of three books,
including The Supremacy of God in the Theology of Samuel Rutherford (2008) and many
articles on Reformation and Post-Reformation theology.
Lydia Schumacher is Reader in Historical and Philosophical Theology in the Department
of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London. From 2017–2021 she holds a
major grant from the European Research Council for research on the early Franciscan
intellectual tradition. Previously, she held posts at the University of Edinburgh and
University of Oxford, where she was also a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. She has
written four monographs: Theological Philosophy (2015), Rationality as Virtue (2015),
Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge (2011),
and Authority and Innovation in Early Franciscan Thought (2019).
xii   

John T. Slotemaker is Associate Professor of Medieval Christianity at Fairfield University.

He has co-authored Robert Holcot (2016) and co-edited A Companion to the Theology of
John Mair (2015) and Augustine in Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology (2017) with
Jeffrey C. Witt. Professor Slotemaker recently completed Anselm of Canterbury and the
Search for God (2018). The focus of his research is the development of late medieval
Trinitarian theology and the influence of medieval thought on the sixteenth-century era
of Reform.
R. Scott Spurlock is Senior Lecturer in Scottish Religious Cultures at the University of
Glasgow, the only designated Scottish church history post in the world. He is editor of the
peer-reviewed journal Scottish Church History, co-editor of the book series Scottish Reli-
gious Cultures: Historical Perspectives (Edinburgh University Press) and Christianities in the
Trans-Atlantic World (2016), and author of Cromwell and Scotland: Conquest and Religion,
1650–1660 (2007).
Iain R. Torrance is honorary professor in Early Christian Doctrine and Ethics at the
University of Edinburgh. He is a professor emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary, a
former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and president
emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books including
Christology after Chalcedon (1998). He was also the co-editor of the Scottish Journal of
Theology from 1982–2015.
 1
Scottish Theology
Contexts and Traditions
David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott

This three-volume study of the history of Scottish theology begins with the
monastic period prior to the foundation of the universities and concludes around
the end of the twentieth century. In covering fifteen hundred years of theological
work, we have sought to combine breadth of coverage with selection of key themes
and writers. Inevitably, this has resulted in some difficult decisions about inclusion
and exclusion; but our central aim has been to provide a synoptic view of Scottish
theology that is more comprehensive and diverse than any previous scholarly
effort. We have resisted the temptation to work with a ‘great men’ approach to
the subject by concentrating on contexts, themes, and texts. Some of those
contexts are far from well known, for many major movements and trends in
Scottish church history and history remain under-researched. However, the
point of our project is not to foreground church history as res gestae but instead
to situate Scottish theology through the generations. While contextual work is
necessary to understand the meaning of the key concepts and themes in the text,
we have sought wherever possible to let the texts as theological works speak for
themselves.
Hitherto, we have lacked a useful textbook treatment of Scottish theology
that affords a clear and scholarly guide to the various movements, controversies,
figures, and outputs. Now a period piece, James Walker’s The Theology and
Theologians of Scotland, chiefly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(Cunningham Lectures; revised edition, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1888) is almost
part of the history itself. Some of Walker’s insights one might characterize as
‘antinomian evangelical’, e.g. he criticizes James Fraser of Brea and the Marrow-
men for believing that God was ‘necessitated’ to atone for sin. Although there are
other important one-volume studies to which we remain indebted (Macleod 1943;
Drummond and Bulloch 1973, 1975, 1978), the history of Scottish theology has
not been properly narrated with sufficient attention to its diversity and breadth,
nor updated for at least a generation. And, given the progress that has been made
in the study of other areas of Scottish culture—history, literature, and
philosophy—the time is now overdue for a similarly concerted treatment of our
theological traditions.

David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott, Scottish Theology: Contexts and Traditions. In: The History
of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson
and Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0001
2     . 

Three recent models have also helped shape our thinking. First, T. F. Torrance’s
Scottish Theology (1996) offers a book-length treatment of the continuous stream
of Scottish theology over almost four centuries, while also bringing to light long-
buried treasures. At the heart of the Scottish Reformation, not least in the Scots
Confession of 1560, Torrance discerns a devout and pronounced Christocentrism.
Yet within a generation the truly evangelical stream (as Torrance would see it) had
gone largely underground, though it was still observable in John Davidson of
Saltoun’s Catechism, the Aberdeen Forbeses, in some of the works of Samuel
Rutherford and James Fraser of Brea (d. 1689)—a warrior in the lists against
‘limited atonement’—the Marrowmen, and those who might be called ‘Romantic
Presbyterians’ such as Thomas Erskine, Edward Irving, and John McLeod Camp-
bell. Torrance himself burrowed into the texts of this tradition and his method
displays a commendable critical empathy with his own Scottish theological heri-
tage. He found it regrettable that so often ‘the focus is not so much upon Christ
himself as upon (a) doctrines, with attention given to reasoning out their inner
connections with a view to deepening and clarifying believers’ grasp of their truth
on the solid ground of four “warrants to believe”, and (b) upon probing into the
ground and sincerity of personal convictions and testing whether they reveal
evidences of true faith in the soul and of their personal reconciliation with God’
(Torrance 1996: 121). This intense and pugnacious engagement of Scottish theo-
logical traditions is much indebted to biblical interpretation, spirituality, and a
strong missiological impulse. But it suffers arguably from a binary distinction
between a pure Reformed tradition and its later declension in Reformed ortho-
doxy. Since the appearance of Torrance’s work, there has been a re-evaluation not
only of ‘Puritan theology’ (by Richard Muller et al.), but also of Enlightenment
theology, in which reason and faith are viewed as having a more harmonious
relationship, together with a revisioning of the Romanticism (and Idealism) that
buoyed Scottish theology in its ‘silver age’ through the nineteenth and into the
twentieth century. In any case, while Torrance’s work begins in the early modern
era and concludes in the mid-Victorian age, this present work will cover a
significantly broader chronological span.
A second precursor was the production of the Dictionary of Scottish Church and
Theology (1993), largely through the leadership and scholarly acumen of David
F. Wright. Although its style was more akin to reportage, partly because of its
genre as a work of reference, it included longer and more evaluative essays
(e.g. Andrew Walls’ magisterial survey of ‘missions’). Yet its welcome exposure
of the breadth and richness of Scottish theology has set down a marker for further
scholarly activity, even if its slant was towards Presbyterianism, with only a few
worthwhile but hardly sufficient nods to Catholicism and Episcopalianism. Our
present project is more in-depth and selective, yet with greater ecumenical
breadth. Its multiple and diverse authorship has ensured the absence of a single
history of one grand narrative, whether of rise and fall, progressive maturation or
  :    3

prolonged struggle between orthodox and heterodox trends. The dictionary and
edited collection formats are complementary in many respects and our hope is
that the emergence of this present collection may eventually facilitate a new
edition of the Dictionary by T&T Clark.
Third, recent work on the history of Scottish philosophy, also published by
Oxford University Press (Garrett and Harris 2015; Graham 2015), has revealed the
extent of academic interest in thinkers many of whom had close links with the
Scottish church in one or other of its branches. This applies not only to Thomas
Reid and his associates, but also to other scholars, including David Hume whose
more sceptical work cannot be understood apart from the proximity of Scottish
philosophy to the Kirk. One might conclude that a revealed theology structured
around the Bible and the Westminster Confession was supplanted by a natural or
moral theology concentrated on practical matters. Instead of election, sin, atone-
ment, and effectual calling, the focus shifted to providence, ethics, and an afterlife
of reward and punishment. Yet the moderate theology that emerged in the
Enlightenment reflected distinctive Reformed elements, in particular its ethical
preoccupations and stress on our epistemological limitations. Though in some
ways distinct, the stories of theology and of philosophy have largely been inter-
twined for most of the period under review.
The construction of our three volumes has been governed by several editorial
decisions. First, we have resolved to interpret ‘Scottish’ with a degree of latitude.
As a result, we have sought to include all significant work that has been under-
taken within Scotland (i.e. anything undertaken north of the River Tweed to the
Orkney and Shetland Islands), the work of those who came from Scotland but
plied their theological trade elsewhere (e.g. Richard of St Victor, Duns Scotus,
P. T. Forsyth, and John Macquarrie), the extensive crossover with Ireland, and
also those who divided their careers between Scotland and other parts of the
world. In particular, we explore in later volumes the Scottish diaspora in other
English-speaking locations (Australasia and North America) and in missionary
activity in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Second, we have sought to avoid an
exclusive concentration on the universities. Much important theological work has
taken place outside the state-funded institutions in colleges, churches, manses,
and by freelance writers. Less familiar voices need to be heard, including those of
women who were prevented from preaching and teaching but whose theological
convictions were expressed in poetry and hymnody. Third, we have become
increasingly mindful of the importance of looking back to the richness of the
medieval period and beyond the post-Reformation Presbyterian churches to
consider other traditions. Tom McInally has described the Scots Colleges in
Europe as Scotland’s sixth university, a reminder that Scottish Catholics found
their theological voice often outside Scotland but in ways that were significant for
the enrichment of church life on home soil (McInally 2011). Hence, other
traditions—independent, Episcopalian, and Congregational—are also considered.
4     . 

Fourth, we have sought to balance a stress on key theological figures with the study
of movements, themes, and challenges. So for example while we profile familiar
figures such as Scotus, Mair, Knox, Melville, Rutherford, McLeod Campbell,
Robertson Smith, and Torrance we also consider inter alia the sacraments,
spiritual practice, the atonement, biblical criticism, Darwinism, slavery, the
Gifford Lectures, and feminism. Finally, we have resolved to consider more
popular expressions of theology that had a wide impact upon church and society,
perhaps more so than some academic efforts. Several essays are devoted to
theological media—Bible translation, liturgy, art, reference works, popular writ-
ing, and some of the most important figures in the canon of Scottish literature—all
of which represent the expression and reception of theology.
One question that arises is whether there is a distinctively Scottish theology,
analogous to Scottish philosophy. Gordon Graham and Alexander Broadie have
pointed to ways in which there is a continuous Scottish philosophical tradition
from the time of Hume and Reid until at least the early twentieth century (Broadie
2009: 1–6; Graham 2015: 303–22). This can be defined narrowly or broadly.
On one reckoning, it can be considered in terms of allegiance to a single doctrine
regarding the so-called principles of common sense—‘a spiritualistic philosophy,
cautious and measured, designed to meet scepticism’ (Davidson 1925: 261)—or to
a shared set of convictions that exclude idealism and other speculative trends
(McCosh 1875: 2–6). More capaciously understood, Scottish philosophy repre-
sents a tradition spanning a time period from about the late seventeenth century
(when the first chair of philosophy was established in Glasgow) to about the
middle of the twentieth century. Within this more broadly conceived tradition,
philosophy is characterized by a common set of questions, an acknowledged set of
resources, and an institutional context in which its study was a required compo-
nent within a broad curriculum. As a moral project, moreover, philosophy was
tasked with equipping students with skills of knowledge and wisdom that would
serve them well in a variety of professions. Hence, there was a time when many
people entering the medical, legal, or teaching professions would have undergone
some instruction in philosophy. Much of this work was closely aligned both
institutionally and intellectually with the Scottish Kirk. Graham notes that in
T. E. Jessop’s review of seventy-nine distinctively Scottish philosophers, about half
were also clergy (Jessop 1938: 75–184; Graham 2015: 315). Not unexpectedly, this
fusion of religious and philosophical interests also generated a theological climate
that was marked by the constraints of philosophical work, a confidence in the
power of reason allied to an awareness of its limitations, a commitment to the
unity of church and society, and a pathway into ministry that often required a
prior training in classics and philosophy. Although this milieu allowed a good deal
of diversity in relation to method and content, the institutional setting of much
(though not all) theology with its proximity to other disciplines shaped much of
the output of the divinity professoriate. It is not surprising therefore to discover
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that McCosh, in his survey of Scottish philosophy, judges Thomas Chalmers not
only the greatest preacher of his age but also the foremost exponent of the unity of
philosophy and theology. For example, with his commitment to the design
argument, especially with reference to the human mind, Chalmers establishes a
theistic philosophy of conscience which is strikingly matched with the Christian
doctrine of the forgiveness of sins (McCosh 1875: 393).
Notwithstanding this context, as far as theology is concerned we see little
evidence of a single, distinctive tradition with leading authorities and methods
of study. In this respect, Scottish theology does not track Scottish philosophy.
While planning these volumes, therefore, we have not assumed that we are dealing
at any stage with a demarcated tradition in the sense of a body of thinkers whose
work acknowledges discrete authorities and magisterial texts as a point of refer-
ence, or one set of common problems, or a single universe of discourse or a social
purpose that sets Scottish theologians apart from other traditions. Although
Scottish theology has been marked by recurrent themes, influences, and orienta-
tion, it does not constitute a single tradition of enquiry in the MacIntyrean sense
(MacIntyre 1988). Obviously, the Reformed tradition has been the province of
many Scottish thinkers since the middle of the sixteenth century but not to the
exclusion of other trends. In any case, the Reformed tradition itself is very
capacious, to the point that some have accused it of bending in the direction of
every prevailing cultural breeze. Within Scotland, Reformed theology has com-
prehended Amyrauldian thinkers in the seventeenth century, the moderates of the
eighteenth century, the liberal evangelicals of the late Victorian period, as well as
those who might be characterized as neo-orthodox, existentialist, and liberationist
in the twentieth century. And, although the Westminster Confession of Faith
(1646) may have commanded widespread subscription amongst all the Presby-
terian churches, it hardly induced theological uniformity.
Another hallmark of Scottish theology is the strong continental influence
especially from Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany. Much has been
written on this and it characterizes Scottish theology throughout the entire period
under review. But these three volumes also display the very significant influence
of English influences upon much of what has been written. The Reformation
was supported by English allies and, as Jane Dawson’s recent biography shows,
Knox was both a Scottish and a British figure (Dawson 2016). The Westminster
Confession was produced in London, as was the Marrow of Modern Divinity.
Deism influenced the Moderates. Newtonian science, the Cambridge Platonists,
and the natural theologies of Butler and Paley left their mark on Scottish theolo-
gians including Chalmers and Flint. From the seventeenth century, Episcopalian
theology and spirituality made a distinctive contribution even when representing
only a small minority. More recently, John Baillie’s Diary of Private Prayer (1936),
probably the best-selling work by any Scottish theologian, reveals the steady
influence of the Book of Common Prayer. One can find many more examples of
6     . 

Anglican influences in Scotland and we should not disregard these by singular

concentration on the continental impact, important though this remains.
In terms of its orientation, Scottish theology has generally been directed
towards the ends of the Church and therefore the nation. Most theologians were
ordained and preached regularly. Some of them produced important devotional
books. Their work assumed an academic and public influence that can be difficult
to understand today. Writing for an informed and engaged public, their output
was not directed exclusively to a specialist audience. If we, for our part, might
wonder at how they would have fared in a research assessment exercise, they
would surely have been puzzled, even dismayed, by the extent to which contem-
porary academic writing is so inaccessible to a wider audience.
Largely for presentational reasons, the three volumes are divided chronologic-
ally—(i) from the middle ages to the early Enlightenment; (ii) from the Enlight-
enment to the mid-nineteenth century; and (iii) from the late nineteenth century
until the very early twenty-first century. But these boundaries are intended to be
porous and we fully recognize that they are somewhat arbitrary. In any case, some
essays intentionally offer broader perspectives that traverse two or more periods.
Fittingly, this has been an international effort in gathering scholars from several
continents to coordinate current expertise in the field. Conferences were held in
Princeton and Edinburgh to facilitate discussion of early drafts of papers. These
events in turn revealed significant gaps in the initial plan and enabled us to
commission additional essays and scholars.
Each essay must speak for itself, but several themes have come more clearly into
focus through this collective endeavour. Though less well known, the medieval
period has emerged as a rich era in terms of its theological artefacts, monastic
traditions, and the foundation of three universities. Much of this earlier period
reveals a theology that was presented less by text and more through architecture,
images, ritual practices, and liturgical forms. And even while written manuscripts
and printed books dominated later Scottish theology, other media remained
important, not least in the wider reception of theologies. Several influential figures
achieved prominence in medieval Europe including John Duns Scotus, Richard
of St Victor, and John Mair. Much of what was achieved in these centuries was
inflected rather than abolished in the Reformation, a process itself that was
gradual and shared a good deal with other reforming movements in the late
middle ages.
Given its indebtedness to the catholic traditions of the Church, we should not
be surprised that so much Scottish theology reflected a commitment to spiritual
practice; its image as relentlessly cerebral, hair-splitting, and arid now needs to be
debunked. From Henry Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man, through the
poetry of Gaelic women and the hymns of the Borthwick sisters, to John Baillie’s
Diary, Scottish theologians proved capable of generating spiritual classics that
revealed a devotional intensity bordering on the erotic, as well as deep pastoral
  :    7

bonds with the people they served. And, although the relationship of the
Reformed churches to the arts could be fraught and complex, this was never
simply iconoclastic or repressive in the way that some critics of Calvinism have
suggested. One-sided fictional caricatures of the Scottish clergy now need to be
discarded in favour of more historically alert and nuanced portraits.
Produced in London, the Westminster Confession of Faith has shaped much of
Scottish Reformed theology whether through allegiance, contested interpretation,
or the outright opposition it has generated. From 1647, it became the subordinate
standard in the Presbyterian churches, though some dissent surrounding its
teaching on the role of the magistrate, the destiny of the ‘heathen’, and double
predestination emerged in succeeding centuries. The different ways in which it has
been read, defended, and accommodated have provided a point of reference for
several essays in these volumes. As the companion document to the Confession,
the Shorter Catechism, was arguably more influential in shaping the mind-set of
successive generations of Scots through recitation and testing, until the mid-
twentieth century. Its theology was thus internalized by much Scottish Protestant
culture. While more attention to its influence is now required in historical study,
what seems clear to us is that there has seldom been a time in when this theological
paradigm has commanded universal consent throughout the Scottish Presbyterian
churches. To this extent, its durability is itself quite remarkable and confirms the
absence of any other influential Reformed confession in Scotland after 1647.
As already noted, a prominent feature of Scottish theology throughout its
history has been its European dimension. This has played out in different ways.
The commerce of ideas is apparent from the early middle ages and continues into
the Reformation with important French, Swiss, and Dutch influences all apparent
into the seventeenth century. Scottish theologians themselves made their way to
the continent whether to take advantage of opportunities to study and teach or as
exiles. This is apparent not only during the political turbulence and religious
ferment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but also through the achieve-
ments of beleaguered Scottish Catholics who maintained colleges across Europe
for the training of priests. Given these contexts, it was inevitable that Scottish
theology would be European in character. This continued into the later nine-
teenth century and beyond with the ‘Scottish caravan’ that travelled to Germany
each summer, thus ensuring that the works of Schleiermacher, Hegel, Ritschl,
Herrmann, Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, and Bonhoeffer would become translated
and thereafter line the walls of manses throughout the country.
But the European dimension of Scottish theology should not obscure the links
with other parts of the UK and Ireland. The connections between Presbyterians in
Scotland and Ireland ensured a steady flow of students across the Irish Sea to
Glasgow and other centres of learning, while many of the theological disputes that
divided Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were played out,
albeit rather differently, in Ireland. The aforementioned influence of theologians
8     . 

in England is also apparent from the very beginning so that the more inclusive
term ‘insular’ may be preferred to ‘English’ or ‘Scottish’ in characterizing the
theology of the British Isles in the pre-scholastic era. These links continued
through the Reformation—Knox had ministered to English exiles in Frankfurt
and Geneva, and of course it was the English Bible that was adopted in Scotland.
Further influences can be discerned during the era of the Puritans, the Enlight-
enment, and the Oxford Movement which had a significant impact upon Scottish
Episcopalianism.
By the 1830s, a majority of Scots were already worshipping outside the
established church (Brown 1987: 61). Much of this plurality both reflected and
generated divisions not only within the Presbyterian church, but amongst
Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and a variety of evangelical groups. Each of
these manifested different theological tendencies and social contexts which
require some consideration. Other voices on the margins of the Church and
in alternative spiritualities have not received adequate scholarly attention but we
seek to register their presence in some of these essays.
The extent to which theology has shaped Scottish society, contributing to its
ethos, mind-set, and overseas export, is considered by several contributors. Tom
Devine has written of the ‘parish state’ that emerged in the eighteenth century as
an enabling condition of the Scottish Enlightenment (Devine 1999: 84–102).
This may apply a fortiori to much of the nineteenth century in the work of
scientists, architects, politicians, diplomats, and scholars. Though understated
and unpretentious, a Presbyterian self-confidence seems to have manifested
itself in a commitment to education, industriousness, and social improvement.
Disseminated through para-church organizations such as the Boys’ Brigade, this
was a powerful force through Scottish society. Much of the architecture in our
towns and cities continues to attest this, albeit in markedly different social and
religious milieux. Even today, the obituary notices of those steeped in this
culture (until about the middle of the twentieth century) continue to reveal its
formative influence. The social theology of the Scottish churches reflects an
ethos largely shaped by the dominance of a Presbyterian culture, though admit-
tedly this could manifest itself in very different ways including political quietism,
a commitment to social justice, bouts of sectarianism, and a readiness, as in the
case of the wartime Baillie Commission, to commit to a programme of reform
for both church and society.
These three volumes tell the story until around 2000. As a historical project,
our work does not attempt to take the pulse of Scottish theology today or to offer
a prescription for its future. But a few comments may be in order here. Charted
by Callum Brown, the rapid dechristianization of British society since the 1960s,
puts the churches and their theologians in a different social space (Brown 2001).
With the shift from a culture of obligation to one of consumption (Davie 2015:
133–74), there is a much greater degree of plurality evident in the study of theology
  :    9

and religion. This has generated an ecumenical and multi-faith dimension in the
universities accompanied by the relative decline of the Church of Scotland as the
national church. One significant institutional indicator is the quiet disappearance
of the statutory committees comprising equal numbers of church and university
representatives to appoint professors in the Divinity Faculties. While several faith-
based theological colleges continue to survive and prosper, the universities have
increasingly combined their traditional theological pursuits with more compara-
tive and less confessional approaches to the study of religion. This has coincided
with the arrival of scholars representing other faith traditions—Mona Siddiqui is
one prominent example—whose work suggests that more comparative approaches
will prevail in the future. From this vantage point, it is surprising how little
attention was devoted to the study of other faiths by Scottish theologians, though
they were hardly egregious in this respect. Occasional attempts were made to show
that the practitioners of different faiths could be included in the economy of
salvation, but these were largely intra-Christian exercises intended to solve an
intellectual and moral puzzle. In part, this dearth of reflection may reflect the
relatively late appearance of other faith communities in Scotland—not until the
early nineteenth century is there evidence of a Jewish community in Edinburgh
(Daiches 1929). Contact with other faiths being more evident through missionary
activity, this resulted in attempts to present Christianity as the fulfilment, correc-
tion, or clarification of what could be discerned in other cultural contexts.
A fulfilment model enabled Scottish theologians to see different faiths on a similar
path, but with Christianity surpassing the others. In the process of encounter,
however, the Christian faith would develop through the enrichment offered by
other traditions ‘as a gradual process of absorption rather than an abrupt one of
confrontation’ (Stanley 2009: 246). This was the approach favoured in 1910 at the
World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. Chaired by David S. Cairns of
Aberdeen, Commission IV attracted a good deal of attention in advocating this
model, though as Stanley notes the success of the approach was limited, particu-
larly in relation to Islam which did not seem to fit the model at all. While
missionary endeavour continued, it became more effective when Christianity
was presented as a novum rather than as the development of what was already
present (Stanley 2009: 247). Academic work that involved greater reference to the
empirical study of other religions similarly resulted in Christianity being presented
in Hegelian manner as the sublimation of other faiths or in treating the incarnation
as the high point of religious self-consciousness (Caird 1893). More focused
reflection has taken place on the empirical study of religion, partly through the
Gifford Lectureships (Hick 1989; Pannikar 2010), but this has largely been the
work of scholars from other contexts using paradigms less recognizably Hegelian.
The future is likely to involve more work in comparative mode, perhaps on a much
less ambitious scale, as theologians from different faith traditions identify prob-
lems, themes, and questions for common exploration.
10     . 

Despite the apparent secularization of Scotland where a significant majority

now self-identify as belonging to ‘no religion’, the Faculties (now Schools) of
Divinity in the ancient universities of Scotland appear to attract more students
than at any other time in their history. In part, this reflects a perennial fascination
with religion. But it is also indicative of the strength of faith communities in other
parts of the world. With staff and students increasingly recruited from other parts
of the world, Scottish theology is now much more of a net importer than an
exporter. For the future, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge. The
opportunity is in the excitement generated by a more diverse and international
body. Meanwhile, for faith communities in Scotland, the challenge is to nurture
scholars who, in altered circumstances, can continue the work of their predeces-
sors. But perhaps it was ever thus. If H. R. MacIntosh was even half-right when he
said (allegedly) that theology is created in Germany, corrupted in America, and
corrected in Scotland, then Scotland might see itself today not only as a bridge
between Europe and North America, but also to and from other global places, and
not all of these by former colonial churches and nations. Even if the status of
Scottish theology is no longer as internationally significant as it was for MacIntosh
in the early twentieth century, Scotland and its theologians can continue to play a
facilitating role. Moreover, both in its political and cross-cultural theological
endeavour and in its resolute attempt to keep biblical studies, church history,
and theology (whether historical, systematic, or practical) on the books of the
universities, Scotland is fairly unique. This may even ensure that theology will
continue to negotiate its place alongside other fields of knowledge and forms of
enquiry as a integrative project that has been consistently pursued in Scotland
since the middle ages.

Bibliography

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University Press.
Brown, Callum (1987). The Social History of Religion in Scotland Since 1730. London:
Methuen.
Brown, Callum (2001). The Death of Christian Britain. London: Routledge.
Caird, Edward (1893). The Evolution of Religion, 2 vols. Glasgow: Maclehose.
Cameron, Nigel M. de S. (ed.) (1993). Dictionary of Scottish Church History and
Theology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Daiches, Salis (1929). ‘The Jew in Scotland’, Records of the Scottish Church History
Society 3: 196–209.
Davidson, William L. (1925). ‘Scottish Philosophy’, in James Hastings (ed.), Encyclo-
paedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. XI. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 261–71.
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Davie, Grace (2015). Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox. Oxford: Wiley.

Dawson, Jane (2016). John Knox. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Drummond, Andrew L. and James Bulloch (1973). The Scottish Church 1688–1843:
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Drummond, Andrew L. and James Bulloch (1978). The Church in Late Victorian
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20th Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 303–22.
Hick, John (1989). An Interpretation of Religion. London: Macmillan.
Jessop, T. E. (1938). A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from
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Reformation. Edinburgh: Free Church of Scotland.
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Torrance, Thomas F. (1996). Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod
Campbell. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
 2
Theology in Scotland before
Scholasticism
Thomas O’Loughlin

The beginnings of most histories of theology are shrouded in fog. As a collection

of disciplines, theology’s modern practice is no more than a couple of centuries
old, though it is clearly recognizable from the twelfth century onwards: learned
works, displaying specific formats which investigate the content of Christian faith
and the problems thrown up by that faith. However, for the period before the
twelfth century, it is far more difficult to identify ‘theology’ and it is clear that one
does not encounter anything like the later formalized, academic endeavour.
Two other factors bring further confusion. Later theologians, almost down to
our own day, explicitly saw themselves as standing in the tradition of theologians
stretching back to early Christianity, most famously to Augustine of Hippo
(354–430), and so it was meaningful to use the word ‘theology’ to cover both
the modern academic practice and the very different styles of thinking and writing
found before the scholastics—and we should note that some expressions, most
notably the biblical commentary, remained remarkably similar both in form and
inspiration from the fourth to the eighteenth century. But on this criterion the
only insular writers who could be assured of the status of ‘theologian’ would be
Bede (c.673–735) and Eriugena (c.810–c.877) in that their works could be seen as
analogous to those of later academics. But to place Adomnán of Iona (c.624–704)
or the anonymous compiler of a systematic collection of canons on a par with
Jerome (c.345–420), Bede, Duns Scotus (c.1265–1308), or John Knox (c.1513–72)
seemed to be stretching that notion of ‘theologian’ as an authoritative author of
continuing significance to breaking point. For many, Adomnán might be a saint
and an ‘ecclesiastical author’ but he was not thought of as ‘a theologian’. On such a
reckoning, pre-scholastic Scotland would be a theology-free zone.
The other factor works in almost the opposite direction. Recent modern
theology has altered its self-perception of its presence both now and in the past
by seeing ‘theology’ as a way of doing: there are theologies ‘at work’ in many
writers and in practices. But that theology takes many shapes and is latent within
other artefacts; and it has to be uncovered by patient scholarship. On this
reckoning the Ruthwell Cross (probably eighth century) is not simply a significant
Christian artefact but an expression of the theological outlook of its creators—and

Thomas O’Loughlin, Theology in Scotland before Scholasticism. In: The History of Scottish
Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0002
      13

from it one can recover a theology of the Cross and a theology of redemption
(Herren and Brown 2002; Ó Carragáin 2005). Similarly, work like Adomnán’s
Vita sancti Columbae (Anderson and Anderson 1961) is not merely a record of
the founder of Iona (if it is that), nor an expression of a mythic view of holiness
divided into books of visions, wonders, and prophecies (second preface, 3b),
but manifests a theology of discipleship, an understanding of grace, and an
ecclesiology—and the modern exegete can extend that recovery by ingenuity
and diligence. If this assessment seems to ascribe too much to a work like the
Vita, one has but to think of the theological profundity of Adomnán’s other work:
the De locis sanctis. In that book, Adomnán combines a description of the Holy
Places of the biblical story which responds to our human curiosity, with an
exegetical manual that shows how geographical knowledge can be used to resolve
contradictions in the sacred texts, while also establishing that the domain of
the incarnate Logos is contiguous with the world of ordinary experience. It is little
wonder that this work was widely copied during the middle ages across Europe and
its author deemed to be an ‘illustrious’ (O’Loughlin 2007). On this reckoning
any artefact from a single inscribed grave slab to the ruins of a monastery, or from
a gloss of a few words in a biblical manuscript to lengthy martyrology can be
used as a witness to an earlier era’s theology which can then be sourced, compared
with other theologies, and tracked as to its influence. It is this perspective and
method that makes this chapter possible, but therein lies the difficulty. While this
approach’s origins can be traced to the nineteenth century in the work of William
Reeves (1815–92) on Columba (Reeves 1857; O’Loughlin 2017), he had few
successors until very recently; and it was only in the latter part of the twentieth
century that theologians began to accept that such historical investigations yielded
really significant contributions to our understanding of how Christian thought
evolved, sometimes expanding and sometimes contracting, in the past which was
owned by them as their memory. The result is that we are still in the exploratory
stage of a long, slow process. Moreover, while most investigators engage with these
religious artefacts and seek to contextualize them within the Christianity of their
place and time, it is a far smaller number that engage with them with the purpose of
seeing them as expressions of the theology of their makers or of those who
subsequently used or valued them. This chapter is, therefore, more a sketch map
for would-be explorers than a campaign map of achievements.
A second preliminary difficulty relates to what is meant by ‘Scotland’ in the
period before 1100. That there were ‘Scotti’ in the land area of present-day
Scotland for many centuries before that time is not in doubt, but when does Scottus
cease to refer to an inhabitant of Ireland and become a Scot? For our purposes it is
at some point between John Scottus Eriugena (literally: ‘born in Ériu’/Ireland)
and John Duns Scotus, the most eminent Scottish scholastic. Likewise, when does
it begin? We know that many inhabitants of the island of Britain whose self-
identification would have been as ciues Romani were Christians—Patrick (? fifth
14   ’ 

century) is the most famous example—and that there were Christians among
the Scotti for quite some time before 431 (Charles-Edwards 1993), and that neither
the sea nor the various walls were barriers for Christianity. The traditional answer,
founded in Bede (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 3, 4), is of St Ninian and
Whithorn (Candida casa) succeeded by a seventh-century missionary pincer
movement from Iona and Anglo-Saxon England which finally converted the
Picts (Colgrave and Mynors 1969: 220–5). But the reality is certainly more
complex and we get but tantalizing glimpses of what was happening. Take, for
example, the 2010 discovery of a Roman shrine for the worship of Mithras
(a Mithraeum) in East Lothian at Inveresk. The shrine had been dismantled in
antiquity, but ‘[t]he two altars had been carefully placed parallel on a west-east
alignment with their tops to the east’ lying face down (Hunter et al. 2016: 122).
Does this action of thoughtfully burying the altars—clearly the work of people who
had reverence for them—simply represent the departure of the Roman garrison
stationed there or the arrival of the new religion among them which rendered these
altars obsolete? If the latter is the case—and the care exhibited in the disposal
makes this seem probable—then we have a most interesting manifestation of a
theology. Altars dedicated to the Sun and Mithras were no longer to be tolerated
alongside their replacements: Christian altars—as Eucharistic tables were invari-
ably understood in the period. However, those who now had new altars for their
public worship still appreciated the sanctity—and probably the power (uirtus)—of
the older order and so rather than destroy them or recycle the stone, they laid them
down with respect. At the very least, it reminds us that Christianity never entered a
religious tabula rasa nor was it immune from religious insights of a community’s
memories. While an earlier generation of scholars would have viewed this as
‘syncretism’, indicative of a failure of conversion, or a ‘pagan survival’ showing
that Christianity was but veneer, the processes of Christianization were slow and
lacked the clear demarcations of later investigators trained systematically in
doctrine. Christianity embedded itself within a culture as rich in ideas as itself
and it involved reimagining that culture (and its past) as well as Christianity being
reimagined within that culture by that culture. Indeed, it is this local slant within
the larger pattern of theology in the Latin West, rather than some exotic and
unique ‘Celtic’ element, that makes the study of those theologies worthwhile, and a
contribution to the larger discipline.
Similarly where was Scotland for this chapter? We can think about this by
analogy: one problem that has dogged many of the debates about the great gospel
books relates to whether they are ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘Irish’—or in the case of the
Book of Kells (Dublin, Trinity College, 58) whether it came from Iona and so from
‘Scotland’. The reality is that when definite localization is not present within an
artefact, then it is safest to describe it as ‘insular’. This is not simply a case of
academic indecision, but corresponds to the location which the creators of these
books gave to themselves as groups of people (defined by native language) situated
      15

on the islands ‘in the Ocean’ but with a common bond of faith and the use of Latin
as their common medium: ‘there are five languages in Britain . . . all devoted to
seeking out and setting forth one and the same kind of wisdom . . . namely English,
British [Welsh], Irish, Pictish, as well as the Latin languages; through the study
of the scriptures, Latin is in general use among them all’ (Bede, Historia 1, 1
(Colgrave and Mynors 1969: 17)). And in these islands people, books, skills, and
ideas moved freely from place to place: there were English monks off the coast
of Mayo and Irish monks off the coast of Northumbria. Books passed from
England to Ireland by way of Iona, and vice versa. So if we think of an insular
continuum with Kerry at its western pole and Kent as its eastern pole, then
‘Scotland’ is where the Irish blend into the Picts and the English, and where
English blend into the Picts and the Irish. It is an image of fuzzy borders that
seeks to recognize the then perceived differences while respecting both fluidity
and the sense of larger identity.

Landscape

The two most distinguishing features of Christianity in Scotland, in comparison

with Graeco-Roman or even the Frankish world, were its non-urban environment
and its reliance on a non-native language, Latin. Both were novelties for Western
Christians and were more significant than whether or not a particular place was
once on the Roman or non-Roman side of a wall. Christianity had emerged within
an urban society (Meeks 2003) and its memory was filled with references to cities:
the biblical Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nineveh, and the sees of Alexandria and
Rome. Perhaps more significantly, it was at councils in the cities of southern Gaul
in the fifth century (Munier 1963) that a pastoral paradigm emerged that would
dominate Western practice until the Reformation (Klingshirn 1993). When these
decisions were being read in Scotland (as we know they were by Cú chuimne on
Iona in the early eighth century) they could only be given meaning by means of
drastic, if possibly unwitting, cultural translation. Conversely, they imagined the
structures specifically needed within their own societies through an imported
urban imagery. So, for example, the need for refuges (in all probability these
were monastic settlements) that could terminate feuds between families were
legislated for within their insular canonical practice as new ‘Cities of Refuge’
echoing those in Josh 20 (O’Loughlin 2005).
The focus of religion was not the town or village, but the farmstead
(Ó Carragáin and Turner 2016) and the services that the structures of the city
provided—a location for a bishop, a focus for clergy, and a place of learning and
books—had to find another expression. The place of the diocese seems to have
been replaced with the wider kinship group of the local kingdom, while the
physical centre became the monastery. In turn, the monastery was imagined as
16   ’ 

a city, not only a centre of monastic holiness but supplying the needs of the
Christians within that territory (Jenkins 2010). It is, therefore, more accurate to
see a monastery like Iona as functionally more akin to episcopal cities such Tours
or Marseilles than to a monastery which is withdrawn from the business of city
life such Monte Cassino (Benedict (c.480–c.550)) or Vivarium (Cassiodorus
(485–c.580)); while the specific features of island monasteries (such as we see in
Lérins) can be seen in the relationship of monastic settlements on the islands near
Iona to the main monastery on Iona (Mac Donald 2010).
The landscape also contained a theological value. With the apparent authority
of Matt. 13:38—‘The field is this world’—and a hermeneutic derived from
Eucherius of Lyons (d. c.450) their surroundings could be ‘decoded’ as a book of
nature revealing the work of the creator (O’Loughlin 1995a). While this practice
may have been attuned to an inherited sacral view of the landscape, it was not (as
has been suggested by some modern commentators on ‘Celtic Christianity’) an
inherent sacrality but rather a view of the creation as the parallel of the book: and
as the accounts of objects in Genesis was read physically, allegorically, and
teleologically, so could the objects themselves. The actual sacrality within the
landscape came from the fact of a well (wells, so valuable as a source of clean
water, were very frequently seen as the gift of a local holy man and under his
protection—sometimes the dedication is our only record of that saint; on other
occasions the well bears a known name and on such occasions we have evidence
of a cult’s diffusion) or a church—and the dispersed settlement pattern resulted
in very many small churches—being dedicated to a saint who, in turn, took
that church or well under his or her patronage and protection. This sense that
the saints care for the people can be seen in the responses of communities to
plagues through taking relics on circuit and using litanies to call for protection
(O’Loughlin 2000: 147–65). Bede supplies a missiological rationale for this Chris-
tening of the landscape and presented it as a novel idea (Historia ecclesiastica
1, 30), but the widespread onomastic (e.g. Kilbride = ‘St Bridget’s church’, or
Kilmarnock = ‘St Marnóg’s church’) and hagiographical evidence (e.g. Columba
being presented by Adomnán (Vita Columbae 2, 27) as offering protection at the
River Ness (Borsje 1996)) shows that it was deep rooted.
So where did they imagine themselves located within the world? Ironically,
while we have difficulty in knowing how they would have named the land around
them, we can be very precise regarding how they saw themselves globally. Based
on references reflecting their usage of maps in the works of Isidore of Seville, we
know that they saw themselves on a group of islands in the ocean off the north-
west extremity of Europe, and that one would head inland towards ‘the centre’ of
the inhabited world, past Rome, past Constantinople, until one reached Jerusalem
at ‘the centre of the nations’ (Ezek. 5:5) (Adomnán, De locis sanctis 1, 11 (Meehan
1958: 11)). While they were explicitly conscious of their own position on the fines
terrae, this was not equivalent to a sense of peripherality. Rather, they were just
      17

another Gentile land which happened to be farther from Jerusalem, and so they
could describe their own situation in exactly the same terms as those used to
describe the churches and monasteries of the Judean or Egyptian deserts
(O’Loughlin 2007: 143–76).

Books

The arrival of Christianity is, for the most part, the marker between prehistoric
and historical evidence: literacy comes with clergy—and that literacy is primarily
in Latin. This meant that all formal prayer, study, and teaching, in any context,
presented additional difficulties. Firstly, all had to be done in a second language
which had to be mastered in addition to learning the relatively rare skills of
reading and writing; secondly, they needed to compensate for that lack of imme-
diacy they found among continentals using a language that (however complex the
relationship of its sounds to its letters (litterae)) was still their mother tongue
(‘Latin’ as a language in sounds and writing distinct from the vernaculars only
began to emerge in the ninth century); and, thirdly, they faced the challenge to
translate preaching and paraliturgical materials in the local languages while
simultaneously having to create a Christian lexicon in that language. However,
this need to work in an acquired second language also resulted in their becoming
linguistically sensitive—and diligent students of grammar—and has given to us
the earliest corpus of vernacular Christian writings (paraliturgical material, hagi-
ography, and sermons) that is found in Western Europe. This vernacular material
is, for the purposes of critical investigation, still more in the domain of linguists
than historians of theology. Latin was both the medium and the message: anyone
who could communicate in Latin was, by that fact, part of the ecumenical
conversation reaching every land and back to the Fathers, and, indeed, the
Scriptures (recall Bede’s comment quoted above); the native languages were
marked by their restrictive locality: one could not expect anyone, at any distance,
to know one’s mother tongue.
The academic agenda—and the bibliography—for theology in Scotland was set
by Cassiodorus’ Institutiones (Mynors 1937). Having mastered the means of study
(language and grammar), the focus was upon the Bible. Cassiodorus (485–585)
did not teach a method or practice for its study, but he did guide its users to where
that skill was found. Then for every part of the Bible he provided a list of ‘the
Fathers’ (a concept he did much to propagate) who had supplied the best
commentaries. The Institutiones thus became the list of desiderata for every
monastic library. In addition, from the mid-seventh century, the works of Isidore
(560–636) provided the background tools (encyclopaedic works, summaries,
teaching manuals) which filled out the exegetical scenario sketched in Augustine
and Cassiodorus, while allowing insular teachers to begin to produce works of
18   ’ 

their own in the footsteps of ‘the illustrious’. Consequently, we possess a rich

selection of biblical exegesis in Latin; and, while for some of these texts we have
known authors (Adomnán being the insular author who is later named as ‘an
illustrious’ (O’Loughlin 1995c), most are anonymous: the theologians seeing them-
selves within the corporate personality of the Christian teacher (O’Loughlin 1997).
This exegesis is often decried as repetitive and concerned, staccato fashion, with
details, but this fails to recognize the twin tasks they set themselves: to filter the
volume of patristic exegesis into its salient core, while resolving conflicts (aenig-
mata) in their authorities. These aims explain their fondness for the gloss and the
question/answer dialogue as favourite formats for their work.
Turning to the Bible itself—note that they were using the long Western canon
as sectioned by Cassiodorus (O’Loughlin 2014a) and used the word ‘apocrypha’ in
a very restricted sense (O’Loughlin 2009)—much attention has been given to the
question of their use of the Vulgate or whether a particular strand of the Vulgate
can be identified. While this is valuable to modern scholars as a diagnostic for
tracing particular links between people and books, it has proved a distraction in
the study of their biblical endeavours. There was a clear preference for the Vulgate
as the text ‘corrected’ by Jerome—perceived as the master of the three languages
(O’Loughlin 2012), but they were aware of the older version (the Vetus Latina)
and, more importantly, knew that they had to continue to interact with its
traditions even though it had been superseded (O’Loughlin 1994, 1995b). This
results in their scholarship appearing quaint to us, but this is a false judgement.
Their works reflect a larger conviction of early medieval Latin culture that the
whole content of Christian revelation, and by implication all human knowledge,
was known, and, consequently, scholarship had to digest it, arrange it, and
provide short-cuts (compendia) so that each teacher and pupil could grasp it
in its totality. And in the quest for the totality of the truth, biblical exegesis held
the eminent place and its role was to locate other knowledge within the edifice
of the creation. That biblical exegesis also belongs within this world of compen-
dia seems strange to our ears, but one of the dominant motifs in Latin theology
in the period after Augustine was that understanding the Bible could transform
into a finite task through having suitable explanatory tools. In this endeavour,
Eucherius of Lyons supplied the model manual, while Cassiodorus supplied the
bibliography.
However, while we can state the fact of this centrality of the Bible within
learning, we are on less certain ground in trying to quantify it. What have survived
from early medieval Scotland are but fragments, and often we have to make our
judgements on a couple of connected but widely scattered pieces of evidence and
interpolate what must stand between them. Thus, for instance, we find an
expository division system for the book of Revelation in an early ninth-century
manuscript from Uí Neill territory (north-east Ireland and south-west Scotland)
      19

which is only otherwise attested in one continental codex: how many other books
contained this tool, how was it diffused, or was it an insular work that spread to
the continent or vice versa (both routes are equally probable) (O’Loughlin 2015)?
Likewise, we should be on our guard for medieval romanticism stressing ‘unique’
developments or that Iona ‘for two centuries kept civilization alive’ (Clark 1982: 25):
the evidence, albeit partial, shows wide variations in understanding and attention.
Take, for example, the standard Eusebian apparatus (this is more elaborate than
the frequently shown Canon Tables because there must be room made for the
marginal notes which allow the tables to function (O’Loughlin 2010)) found in
gospel books. In the case of the Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College, 57),
almost certainly from Iona, we see this presented with the utmost care and under-
standing such that it marks a new level of ‘the grammar of legibility’ (O’Loughlin
1999); but the Book of Deer (Cambridge C.U.L.: Ii.6.32) shows but its mangled
remains and a complete lack of understanding (O’Loughlin 2008). Similarly, one can
compare the exegetical work of Adomnán with that of his exact contemporary, Julian
of Toledo (c.644–90) and observe similarities of sources and agenda (O’Loughlin
1993); while noting that the notion of Iona as the sole preserver of Christian
antiquity is wide of the mark.

Christian Practice

The Bible was, of course, not primarily a scholarly object but a liturgical com-
modity: it provided lections for most liturgies, its study was a part of the monastic
endeavour (lectio diuina), its prayers, primarily the Pss., marked each ‘hour’ of
the monastic day, and as a codex (almost invariably these individually contained
only portions of the Bible) it was a ritual object. But it was the liturgy, as such,
that was the central element in their understanding of what it meant to be a
Christian: the Christian worshipped—and other praxis flowed from or prevented
that worship.
We can see this directly in the way that the liturgy was perceived to cohere with
the basic cyclical structures of the creation: the Office sanctified the day, Sunday
and its Eucharist sanctified the week, the sequence of liturgical seasons—especially
those of penitential fasting—sanctified the year, and all the while the liturgy
was perceived as mirroring and marking the agricultural year (e.g. the St Mark’s
Day rituals on 25 April), just as its festivals supplied markers to the human year
(Hennig 1962; O’Loughlin 2003). We can observe liturgy’s centrality indirectly in
the penitentials, that characteristically insular contribution to the evolution
of Western pastoral theology (Kursawa 2017). A penitential is first and foremost
a prescribing-list to be used in a liturgical situation, most of its prescriptions
(whether that be fasting or prayer) are linked to liturgical time and practice, and
20   ’ 

it has as its object the removal of barriers to the penitent’s full participation in
the liturgy.
This liturgical centrality is for most modern theologians, for whom liturgy is a
peripheral or derivative study, one of the great difficulties in assessing the theo-
logical worth of artifacts from the pre-scholastic period. To scope this liturgical
dimension we could start with the great works of art that have survived on
parchment, in metal, or on stone. Very often these are either objects used in
worship or occasions of ritual: a cross in a landscape is not merely a memorial
marker but a site of cultus. There may be a pattern of devotion linked to it—as is
virtually certain for the Ruthwell Cross (Ó Carragáin 2005)—in the same way as
there was an annual round of cultus linked to a saint’s well. One can see the
connections also in this sequence: every monastery had a sundial (several survive)
for deciding on the ‘day hours’ of the liturgy and schemes for working out
particular times during the hours of darkness. This led to practical interest in
the measuring and understanding of time, this in turn (with encouragement from
Augustine of Hippo) linked up with the study of the dating of Easter which
became a distinct branch of learning (computistics)—and it is in this light that
the disputes between rival mathematical formulae between various factions should
be seen. But the movable feasts were only a small part of the calendar: mostly it was a
sequence of saints’ feasts, and hence the need for a martyrology (read each day in
common). This had to include all the early martyrs and saints, and all the saints of
the places through which that list had passed, and onto it had to be added the local
saints. The martyrology was a liturgical book, an historical resource, and the roll of
honour for each region and family of monasteries (Ó Riain 2002): whether a saint
was waiting for resurrection in the sands of Egypt or in the nearby graveyard
hardly mattered. This need to recall the saints within that annual cycle is also the
key to hagiography: these texts were written to be read in a liturgical setting, and
their miraculous accounts have to be understood to be in a continuity with the cycles
of wonders one finds in Sam./Kgs. and in Acts. They imagined themselves living
in the final age of the creation, but there was no chasm separating them and their
experience from an earlier ‘golden age’/‘age of the saints’/‘biblical times’.
One other aspect of their liturgical practice needs comment: its lack of uni-
formity. Much energy has been expended seeking out ‘a Celtic rite’ (Warren 1881;
Stevenson 1987) or to finding fixed families of liturgical-text types (somewhat
similar to textual families in biblical studies), without taking account of either the
sparseness of our evidence and that every liturgical manuscript reflects a tradition
of local adaptations. All we should say is that our evidence forms part of the
evidence base for the early medieval Latin liturgy; we get few contemporary
comments on liturgical variation (though it is clear it existed), and most of the
comments that do exist relate to the exotic (as in Adomnán’s De locis sanctis on
the ritual in Jerusalem (O’Loughlin 2014b)), and so we should conclude that the
quest for uniformity of practice still lay long in the future.
      21

An Agenda

One significant development in theology—and the study of its history—in recent

decades has been the attention to the variety of theological genres: theology is,
and has been, pursued in many different ways by Christians—and the university
paradigm (dominant in Western Europe since the thirteenth century) is but one
form among many. This should have led by now to a much more nuanced and
detailed appreciation of Scottish theology prior to the scholastics, and that it has
not done needs comment. The major difficulty lies outside the domain of the-
ology. The evidence is still in the discovery stage or not far beyond it; the material
is linguistically difficult, requiring languages not usually part of theologians’ skill-
set, and the editions are produced with linguists rather than theologians in mind.
Moreover, the level of the survival of the evidence is probably far lower (though we
cannot quantify this) than from regions on the European mainland—we get a
glimpse of this in that much of our most important manuscript evidence survives via
mainland monastic libraries (e.g. St Gallen) than in the insular lands themselves: so
we have to work with scatted fragments and have to build up larger pictures by
scholarly interpolation. From the theological side, the material falls within the gap in
interest covering the period between the fifth and thirteenth centuries, and has been
dogged by peripheral issues such as the quest for distinctiveness: for either ‘a Celtic
Church’ or an exotic spirituality (Meek 2000). The reality is more prosaic: another set
of local variations, given a certain unity by the underlying cultures of the insular
region, within the mosaic of Latin Christianity. However, the theology produced in
early medieval Scotland remains an area where there are discoveries to be made
through diligent research, and it retains an interest not simply because it can be seen
as the precursor of later Scottish theology, but because it is a tantalizing comparator:
it is the familiar questions that relate to the patristic period on one side and the
scholastic period on the other, but between these poles it is distinctive and challen-
ging of our assumptions about the past.

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Columba. Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
Borsje, Jacqueline (1996). From Chaos to Enemy: Encounters with Monsters in Early
Irish Texts—An Investigation Related to the Process of Christianization and the
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Charles-Edwards, Thomas (1993). ‘Palladius, Prosper, and Leo the Great: Mission and
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Clark, Kenneth (1982). Civilisation. London: Pelican.
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Hennig, John (1962). ‘Martyrologium and kalendarium’, Studia Patristica 5: 69–82.
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Mac Donald, Aidan (2010). ‘Adomnán’s Vita Columbae and the Early Churches
of Tiree’, in Jonathan M. Wooding, with Rodney Aist, Thomas Clancy, and
T. O’Laughlin (eds.), Adomnán of Iona: Theologian, Lawmaker, Peacemaker. Dublin:
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Meehan, Denis (1958). Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis. Dublin: Dublin Institute for
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Meek, Donald E. (2000). The Quest for Celtic Christianity. Haddington: Handsel Press.
Meeks, Wayne A. (2003). The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle
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Mynors, R. A. B. (1937). Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Munier, Charles (ed.) (1963). Concilia Galliae: A. 314–A. 506. Turnhout: Brepols.
Ó Carragáin, Éamonn (2005). Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English
Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ó Carragáin, Tomás and Sam Turner (eds.) (2016). Making Christian Landscapes in
Atlantic Europe: Conversion and Consolidation in the Early Middle Ages. Cork: Cork
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O’Loughlin, Thomas (1993). ‘Julian of Toledo’s Antikeimenon and the Development of
Latin Exegesis’, Proceeding of the Irish Biblical Association 16: 80–98.
O’Loughlin, Thomas (1994). ‘The Latin Versions of the Scriptures in Use on Iona in
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O’Loughlin, Thomas (1995a). ‘The Symbol Gives Life: Eucherius of Lyons’ Formula for
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 3
Richard of St Victor
Lydia Schumacher

Richard of St Victor (d. 1173) was a master of biblical exegesis, contemplation, and
Christian doctrine who spent his entire career at the Augustinian abbey of
St Victor, which was founded in 1113 in Paris (Bonnard 1904–7; Chatillon
1952). In scholarly circles, he has garnered scant attention by comparison to his
earlier contemporary Hugh of St Victor (d. 1141), not to mention other leading
twelfth-century monastic thinkers, such as the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux
(1090–1153). Although Hugh likely died well before Richard’s arrival in Paris,
Richard has often been interpreted as an inferior to Hugh, who simply followed his
master in many respects (Kirchberger 1957: 15). In particular, Richard supposedly
mimicked Hugh’s attempt to synthesize the long-standing tradition of Augustine,
while mainstreaming the work of the sixth-century Greek thinker, Pseudo-
Dionysius, whom scholars at this time believed to be a convert of St Paul and to
whom they attributed nearly apostolic authority (Dumeige 1952: 24–32; Chenu
1976). Admittedly, Hugh played a key role in forming the intellectual identity and
project of the school of St Victor, which is known for subjecting the study of
Scripture, doctrine, and indeed all sciences to the goal of achieving contemplation.
In this chapter, however, I will demonstrate that Richard was an innovative scholar
with his own significant legacy.
Most of the little that is known about the life of Richard of St Victor can be
found in the Liber antiquitatum sancti Victoris of John of Toulouse, a Victorine,
who gathered information on the history of the order between 1605 and 1659
(PL 196: 9–14). In this work, Toulouse mentions two epitaphs on Richard, dating
to the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, which refer to his Scottish origins
(Walker 1958). These origins have been debated, however, on the grounds of a
letter written jointly in 1166 with Ernisius, abbot of St Victor, in which the authors
express a special affection for the English church, ‘nature prompting’ (natura
suadente) (Chatillon 1987: 594, 628).
From Toulouse’s records, in any event, it has been deduced, albeit not with
certainty, that Richard came from Scotland to St Victor before 1155, because of its
reputation for learning and piety, and died while still relatively young. At the time,
it was common for gifted young men to be sent in early adolescence to study in
Paris—the centre for theological enquiry at the time—and in some cases, never to
see home again. Most likely, Richard shared this experience, such that his thought,
Lydia Schumacher, Richard of St Victor. In: The History of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic
Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0003
26  

like that of other scholars in the period, was primarily formed by the ethos and
aims of the religious order to which he committed his life, rather than his national
identity.
By contrast to Hugh, Richard eventually took up positions of leadership in
St Victor, becoming sub-prior in 1159 and prior in 1162. His forty-two works,
most of which can be found in J. P. Migne’s Patrologia Latina, vol. 196, can be
classified either as exegetical, contemplative, or doctrinal (Haren 2004). While it is
extremely difficult to date Richard’s writings with any precision, works in the first
category were probably written before 1153 and exhibit most markedly the
influence of predecessors like Hugh (Kirchberger 1957: 20). Between 1153 and
1165, Richard entered into his greatest period of productivity, composing more
contemplative works, most famously, Benjamin Minor and Benjamin Major,
which will be discussed below. The final period of Richard’s output shows a
growing interest in dogmatic theology, as evidenced by his celebrated De Trinitate,
which will also be treated in more detail below (Kirchberger 1957: 23).
Whereas Hugh of St Victor followed earlier tradition in emphasizing the
importance of a literal interpretation of Scripture as the foundation for a spiritual
or mystical interpretation thereof (which included the allegorical, tropological/
moral and anagogical/eschatological), the second and third phases of Richard’s
thought bespeak an eventual departure from this tradition in favour of an exclu-
sive emphasis on the tropological and to some extent allegorical interpretations
(Kirchberger 1957: 24, 35; Smalley 1978: 106–11). As we will see, Richard ultim-
ately styled himself as a constructive thinker; indeed, he was the first to system-
atize a theology of contemplation. In this respect, Richard can be regarded as a
transitional figure who anticipated the early thirteenth-century rise of a theology
in many ways set apart from, albeit not unrelated to, scriptural interpretation. The
following analysis of his thought will focus on his three most well-known, lengthy,
and influential works, mentioned above.

Thought
Benjamin Minor (The Twelve Patriarchs)
In his edition, J. P. Migne aptly subtitles Benjamin Minor, ‘of the preparation of
the soul for contemplation’, anticipating Benjamin Major’s treatment ‘of the grace
of contemplation’. Following the long-standing tradition established by Gregory
the Great to associate Jacob’s wives Leah and Rachel with the active and
contemplative—affective and intellectual—lives, respectively, Richard tropologi-
cally interprets the twelve sons of Jacob in terms of the way they represent various
virtues to be cultivated and vices to be overcome in the process of achieving the
state of contemplation (Butler 1966: 157–88). Whereas Leah’s sons and those
of her handmaid facilitate love’s labour towards the knowledge of God, the
     27

sons of Rachel and her handmaid help in the attainment of the highest joy of
contemplating wisdom itself (III, 55). The handmaid of Leah, Zelpha, represents
sensation, which serves the purposes of the affections; whereas the handmaid of
Rachel, Bala, stands for the imagination, which enables reason’s reflection (V, 57).
By stating this, Richard notably affirms the place that ‘ordinary’ knowledge of
the visible world holds in making possible the knowledge of the invisible things of
God (Coulter 2006). In his account, the seven offspring of Leah represent seven
virtues or ordered affections of the soul, which can also be disordered in certain
cases. These include hope and fear, joy and grief, hatred, love, and shame (VII, 60).
Leah’s first son, Reuben, represents an appropriate fear of divine punishment for
sin (VIII, 60). Her second son, Simeon, signifies the grief over sin that follows
from that fear (IX, 61). In turn, Levi stands for the hope of forgiveness from sin,
whereas Judah indicates the love or intimacy between God and the soul that
begins to develop as a result of forgiveness (X, 62).
Out of jealousy over Leah’s success in childbearing and frustration at her own
barrenness, Rachel elicited children through her handmaid. These include Dan
who pertains to the consideration of future evils, and Naphtali, who stands for
future goods. Through Dan, Richard contends, we curb our own vices, and
through Naphtali, we kindle good longings (XXII, 74). In this regard, Richard
writes that Naphtali sometimes employs translation and at other times compari-
son. The latter infers on the basis of the physical delights that spiritual ones must
be far greater. The former transfers any description of visible things to the
signification of invisible things, i.e. as light illumines our eyes so God illumines
the eyes of the heart (XX1, 73).
Following Rachel’s success, Leah herself seeks offspring by her handmaid,
through whom Gad and Asher are born. These two respectively represent the
rigour of abstinence and the vigour of patience, which teach us to be temperate
towards goods and strong in enduring evils, thus assisting Dan and Naphtali in
their work (XXV, 77). If these four succeed, then Leah’s next son is born,
representing a true joy that fosters a peace, which passes all understanding. This
son is Issachar, who is the reward for so many prior labours (XXXVI, 89). After
Issachar, Zabulon is born; he pertains to a sound and ordered hatred of the vices.
His birth order is appropriate, in Richard’s view, ‘since after tasting the sweetness
of eternal reward, the soul is marvellously strengthened against the arguments of
temptations’ (XL, 96). Finally, Leah’s daughter Dina is born, to represent a good
and ordered shame over sin that results from its hatred (XLV, 101).
While this and the other virtues mentioned are indeed virtues when properly
ordered, Richard explains how they can become vices when they are not moder-
ated by discretion (LXVI, 123). This leads him to discuss the sons of Rachel, the
first of whom is Joseph, representing discretion (LXVII, 124). ‘To the function of
Joseph pertains the care and keeping of all his brothers; to it pertains the discipline
of each one; to it the arrangement of things to be done; to it, the foresight of future
28  

things’ (LXX, 128). As we understand the grace of discretion by Joseph, so Richard

goes on to say that Benjamin represents the grace of contemplation. Both are born
from the same mother because knowledge of God must be learned by reason,
which she represents. Nevertheless, Benjamin is born much later, because the soul
must practise long in order to obtain knowledge of God (LXX1, 129).
In this connection, Richard contends that self-knowledge is key. For ‘the
rational soul discovers without doubt that it is the foremost and principal mirror
for seeing God’ (LXXII, 129). In that sense, the mirror must be wiped clean and
gazed into for a long time before the splendour of divine light can begin to shine
into it. We must know ourselves—through Joseph—before we can know the
invisible God—through Benjamin—and indeed through all the visible things
that lead us to this point. ‘The mind of its own activity can never attain to such
grace. This gift is from God; it is not a reward to man. But without doubt no
person receives such and so much grace without a mighty effort and burning
longing’ (LXXIII, 130). Thus, ‘Benjamin is born and Rachel dies because when
the human mind is carried above itself, it passes beyond all narrowness of
human reasoning . . . What is the death of Rachel except the failure of reason’
(LXXIII, 130)?
To Richard’s mind, the height of knowledge this death involves is paradigmat-
ically instanced in the transfiguration of Christ on a mountain. The three disciples
he took with him on this occasion—Peter, James, and John—represent the effort
of work, meditation, and prayer that lead us to this mountain (LXXIX, 136). The
vision of Christ glorified through a divine ‘showing’ (revelatio) is in fact the
reward for all our striving. However, there are two kinds of contemplation that
pertain to Benjamin: ‘the first is above reason but not beyond reason; the second is
both above reason and beyond reason’ (LXXXVI, 145). In the first category are
those things that seem to contradict human reason, like the unity of the Trinity
and many things concerning the body of Christ. ‘For no human reason experi-
ences that three persons are in one simple essence, or that one and the same body
is able to be in various places at one time’ (LXXXVI, 145). In the first, Benjamin
causes his mother’s death and transcends reason. In the second, he goes even
beyond himself and supersedes all human understanding in that which he comes
to know from divine showing.

Benjamin Major (The Mystical Ark)

In Benjamin Major, Richard turns from his tropological study of the Twelve
Patriarchs, which concerned the necessary preparation for contemplation, to
consider the grace of contemplation itself, through a tropological interpretation
of the Ark of Moses, which he takes to signify the grace of contemplation by which
we become holy, as God is holy (I.I, 153). According to Richard, there are six
     29

kinds of contemplation. Each pair of two in Richard’s view represents a pair of

wings—like those of the cherubim mounted on the Ark, which stand for the fullness
of knowledge—that ultimately enables the flight of contemplation (I.X, 168).
The first four types emerge from our own activity; the latter two by divine grace
alone (I.XII, 172).
The first is in the imagination according to the imagination only. In this
instance, we simply know visible things and wonder at their creator. The second
is in the imagination according to reason and allows us to discern the rational
principles of visible things, that is, their order, cause, and benefit. On this matter,
Richard contends, nothing prevents us from ‘borrowing the gold of knowledge
from external knowledge and secular disciplines, provided that we know how to
cleanse ourselves from all the dross of falsity or vanity and to purify ourselves in
the innermost part to a full and perfect purity such as the dignity of these works
requires’ (II.X, 188).
The third is in reason according to the imagination and allows us to speculate
about invisible things on the basis of visible things. The fourth is in reason
according to reason. Here, we achieve self-knowledge that makes us fit for
knowledge of God (III.VII, 232). At the fifth level, we know things above but
not beyond reason, such as the unity of God, while in the sixth we know things
both above and beyond reason, like the Trinity (IV.XVII, 290: unity; IV.XIX,
296: Trinity). Such matters can only be understood through a divine showing,
experienced at the height of contemplation, after which we are impressed with a
memory of the showing that helps us bring this understanding to bear in the
world (IV.XII, 278). At such a showing, we experience ecstasy or the alienation
of the soul and enter into a cloud of ignorance—caused by the fire of illuminated
understanding—that causes us to forget things known and experienced in the
world and to understand things previously unknown and experienced. ‘For at
one and the same time human understanding is illumined with respect to divine
things and darkened with respect to human things’ (IV.XXII, 302).

De Trinitate

The narrative of De Trinitate picks up where The Mystical Ark leaves off, in an
attempt to demonstrate what is taken on faith concerning the Triune nature of
God. While Richard previously pronounced such a demonstration impossible, he
seems to have acquired a new confidence in the powers of reason by this point in
his career (Kirchberger 1957: 46). Thus, Richard argues that necessary things
which we believe concerning the nature of God cannot lack not only plausible but
also necessary reasons—a notion seemingly derived from Anselm—even though
faith is needed to understand those reasons—another idea stemming from Anselm
and Augustine before him (I.IV, 75).
30  

Although the Triune nature of God had long been affirmed on the basis of
authority, Richard argues that such reasons have not yet been given. Since there
are so few arguments in the writings of the Fathers from which conclusions on this
score can be deduced, consequently, Richard states that he will have to complete
his study not according to scriptural or historical texts but simply through his
own effort and passion (III.I, 115). While he certainly draws on authorities—
nonetheless virtually never cited—it is obvious from this statement that Richard
truly sees himself as building a rationale for orthodox belief from the ground up:
as a thinker working independently though not outside of tradition. Such an
attitude was still rather exceptional at the time—though it soon became the
norm in the universities that sprang up in the early thirteenth century.
Richard’s treatise consists of six books, the argument of which will be outlined
below. The focus of the first book is on providing evidence for faith’s assertion that
there is only one God (I.V, 76). To demonstrate this, Richard follows John Scotus
Eriugena—whose translations of certain Greek Fathers, particularly Dionysius,
Richard likely knew well—in postulating three possible modes of being, namely,
from eternity and deriving its existence from itself; neither from eternity nor from
itself; or from eternity but not from itself (Divisione I.1, 441b; cf. Spinelli 1990: 56).
Echoing Eriugena, he notes that a fourth possibility—the opposite of this last
one—is impossible, because there cannot be any being that is not from eternity but
is from itself, otherwise there would have been a time when nothing existed that
could have given rise to the existence of other things (I.VIII, 79).
On this basis, Richard concludes that a supreme being, both eternal and from
itself, necessarily exists. Seemingly invoking Anselm’s famous argument from the
Proslogion, he states that, ‘we define as supreme over all things that of which
nothing is greater, nothing is better. Without a doubt, the rational nature is better
than the reasonless nature. It is indispensable then that a rational substance be
supreme over everything’ (I.XI, 81). On Richard’s account, two such non-identical
beings cannot exist, otherwise one would have to be superior to the other and
could not be the most powerful (I.XIV, 83).
The second book focuses on the attributes of God. Here, Richard emphasizes the
infinity of God—the fact that he has no beginning or end, and is uncreated, as the
maximal being that gives rise to all other beings (II.II, 93: everlasting; II.I, 92:
uncreated). Since he is infinite in terms of his eternity, Richard argues that he is
also infinite in terms of his greatness (II.V, 95). That is to say, he is immense—
there is no measure to his goodness, which cannot be comprehended. As such a
being, God is immutable: he cannot deteriorate or improve, since his greatness is
unsurpassable (II.III, 93). Once again, there can only be one immense being,
otherwise there would be multiple beings that cannot be comprehended by
others, such that each would be superior to the others, which entails a contradic-
tion (II.VI, 95). Such a supreme being cannot lack any desirable attributes; his
definition is to be all that is good (II.XVI, 104). In that sense, Richard follows a
     31

long-standing tradition, upheld by Anselm, which posits a unity of God’s essence

and his attributes (II.XVIII, 105). According to this tradition, God is or is the
definition of the properties he has—he has them in their fullness—whereas crea-
tures simply have those properties in limited or qualified ways. God is whatever it is
best to be: the Supreme Being. As such, he is one thing, and simple, not subject to
the complex components or alterations that characterize his creatures (II.XX, 107).
After treating de deo uno, Richard moves on—seemingly after the pattern of
Augustine—to cover de deo trino in the third book of his treatise. On the basis of
the previous argument that God is the Supreme Being, Richard proceeds to argue
that he must be a God of Love. After all, a being that withheld the good it had from
another, or withheld love, could not be considered truly good. Since love is
necessarily aimed at another, there must be at least two persons in God (III.II,
116). In order to achieve perfection, however, the love of these divine persons
must be equal in terms of its quality, intensity, and direction. Thus, Richard
concludes that the first two persons must share a qualitatively and quantitatively
identical love for a third person, who is the full expression of their love.
This love is what Richard calls condilectio, or ‘co-love’, which arises ‘when a
third person is loved by the two in harmony’ (III.XIX, 132). On Richard’s
argument, such love cannot exist when two persons merely exhibit a reciprocal
desire for one another, represented by a third—as in the traditional Western
doctrine of the Trinity advocated by Augustine—because love in this case is
variously directed and requires a return for its fulfilment. Whereas Augustine
seemingly took the psychological or interpersonal model of self-love as the
foundation for his understanding of the Trinity, consequently, Richard proposes
a social model that seems analogous to the relationship of two parents to a child—
although he rightly forswears all attempts to compare the relations amongst the
members of the Trinity with human relations.
In book four, Richard proceeds to enquire into the nature of divine personhood
and how it can be reconciled with a single divine substance (IV.IV, 145). To
illustrate the relationship between substance and person, he asks his readers to
imagine they see something from afar. In this case, he argues, we would ask, ‘what
is that?’ On coming closer, however, and seeing that the something is a person, we
would then ask, ‘who is that?’ In other words, we would ask about an individual
rather than a common property. Thus, Richard concludes that a substance is a
property that is common to all things of a kind—a ‘something’ or a ‘what’, as it were.
However, a person in his view implies ‘someone’, a ‘who’, and thus an individual
who is unique from all others by an incommunicable property (IV.VII, 147).
Although Richard assents that all persons are substances of a rational nature,
and share rationality as a common property, he denies that this has any bearing
when it comes to determining a person’s proper nature or reality (IV.VIII, 148).
On his account, this nature is defined in terms of a person’s existence, which is
individual, rather than the essence or substance that is shared in common with
32  

other persons. By definition, then, multiple persons do not imply multiple

substances. Correspondingly, there is no contradiction between the single sub-
stance and three persons in God (IV.IX, 149). For just as the plurality of substances
in the human being—for example, body and soul, mortality and immortality,
visibility and invisibility—do not destroy the unity of the person, so the plurality
of persons does not destroy the unified substance of God (IV.X, 149–50).
To explain why this is so Richard elaborates on what he means by personal
existence. On his account, this is defined with reference to one’s nature and origin,
which can vary either individually or at the same time (IV.XII, 151). For instance,
human beings differ both in terms of their individual natures and their origins,
which consist in different reproductive acts. By contrast, there is no difference of
nature amongst the divine persons. ‘Since they possess an entirely single, identical
and supremely simple being, it is not possible for them to differ from one another
according to any qualitative distinction’ (IV.XV, 154). On this basis, Richard
contends that the difference between the divine persons is entirely a question of
their diverse origins.
Whereas their common substance upholds certain common properties—such
as wisdom, power, and love—their diverse origins underline what Richard calls
their respective incommunicable properties, which the Greeks described in terms
of ‘subsistence’ (hypostasis). For example, the Father is unoriginate, while the Son
originates or proceeds from him (IV.XVI, 156). On this basis, he concludes that ‘a
divine person is an incommunicable existence of the divine nature’ (IV.XXII, 163).
In book five, Richard turns to consider more carefully the properties of the
individual divine persons, in particular, their origins. On his account, the first
person is characterized primarily by the fact that he is the initial source of divine
love; the second proceeds immediately from the first. In turn, he passes on the love
he receives from the first to the third, who thus stands in a mediated relation to the
second and an immediate relation to the first.
In affirming this, Richard reinforces the Latin belief in the filioque, namely, that
the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. At the same time, however,
he departs from the Western tradition in favour of the Greek tendency to define
the divine persons in terms of their origins rather than relations. In closing his
discussion with a renewed emphasis on God as love, Richard posits that the first
person is marked by a purely gratuitous or self-giving love; the second both gives
and receives love; and the third is simply the object and reflection of divine love.

Innovations

In the discussion above, I have mentioned various points of connection between

Richard’s thought and that of Augustine (OGHRA), Anselm (Gilson 1952: 306),
Eriugena, and Dionysius (Kirchberger 1957: 47–56). While Richard is certainly
     33

indebted in different ways to a range of sources, my objective in this context will

be to highlight some key ways in which he worked in a highly innovative and
independent-minded fashion. In the two Benjamins, among other exegetical
works, for instance, Richard departs from Hugh and preceding tradition by largely
dispensing with the need to establish a literal, historical reading of Scripture as the
basis for the tropological interpretation. In this regard, he anticipated the theo-
logical method that eventually developed in the early thirteenth-century univer-
sities, which broke from the long-standing tradition of merely glossing Scripture
and the Fathers in favour of deploying them to creative and original ends.
Another remarkable feature of Richard’s Benjamins concerns his insistence that
the senses, imagination, and all forms of ordinary knowledge, including the
sciences and philosophy, can help achieve contemplation. Particularly noteworthy
is the fact that Richard makes this claim before the works of Aristotle had become
available in sound Latin translations and made it fashionable to speak of sense
knowledge. Admittedly, Hugh had advanced a similar view to Richard in his
Didascalicon, thus departing in a typically Victorine way from a long-standing
tradition according to which all forms of knowledge are inferior to that of God
(Kirchberger 1957: 38). Still, Richard was the first to illustrate extensively the role
each form of ordinary knowing plays in facilitating the contemplation of God
himself.
In doing so, Richard rather than any other Victorine merited the credit for
systematizing a theology of contemplation. Previously, the likes of Augustine and
Gregory the Great had described contemplation primarily in terms of individual
experience (Kirchberger 1957: 37). There was by and large no pedagogical text
available with instructions on how to achieve it. Richard offers the first such major
text, inaugurating a new strand of mystical theology that continued to develop in
the later middle ages, as we will see below. For this reason, Bonaventure described
him as a modern master of contemplation, equalling Dionysius (De reductio
atrium ad theologiam 5), while Dante hailed him, ‘in contemplation more than
human’ (Paradiso 11: 132).
Another remarkable feat is accomplished in Richard’s account of the Trinity.
As Théodore de Régnon has demonstrated in his landmark study of this doctrine,
Richard stands at the head of a new line of Latin Trinitarian thinking (de Régnon
1892–8). On the one hand, this tradition is distinctly Western insofar as it affirms
the filioque or the procession of the Spirit from the Son as well as the Father.
Nevertheless, it is clearly influenced by Greek thought when it comes to defining
persons in terms of origins and situating them within a social model. In these
respects, Richard clearly broke with the Western tradition which stemmed from
Augustine and was perpetuated over the course of the middle ages by the likes of
Anselm, Peter Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas.
Though he combined aspects of both the Latin and Greek traditions, Richard’s
doctrine is ultimately exactly what he originally proclaimed it to be, namely,
34  

an invention of his own that stands independently of any conclusions that can be
deduced from the Church Fathers or from Scripture. There is virtually no prece-
dent in the Christian tradition for his account, which remains one of the most
creative and sophisticated in the history of Trinitarian theology. As we will
discover below, Richard’s account had a profound influence on later medieval
Franciscans and has even been invoked more recently by Greek-leaning ‘social
Trinitarians’.
Yet there are other novelties to be found in Richard’s treatise on the Trinity.
One concerns his conception of a divine person as an ‘incommunicable existence
of a rational nature’. By defining personhood along these lines, Richard rejected a
long-standing definition delineated by Boethius, at least in its application to the
Trinity, which in his view obscured the irreducible individuality of persons by
casting them as mere instances of a universal substance. In placing a new emphasis
on the individual, to say nothing of personal experience, self-knowledge, and
interior awareness, Richard anticipated trends that would soon gain a great deal
of traction in later medieval and even modern thought.
In Richard’s work, however, this emphasis did not yet give rise to ‘individual-
ism’ strictly speaking. After all, Richard emphasized equally strongly not only the
‘communitarian’ nature of divine love but also the responsibility—stressed sig-
nificantly in the Victorine tradition—of human beings to care for and teach one
another as equals, rather than to relate to God in relative independence from one
another (Bynum 1973). Richard makes another significant departure from the
preceding Latin tradition—represented by the likes of Augustine, Anselm, Lom-
bard, and later Aquinas—in defining the general nature of God first and foremost
in terms of his infinity or immensity, rather than his simplicity. This represents a
radical shift in the history of the Western doctrine of God that would have
significant further ramifications. In the section below, Richard’s influence on
subsequent thinkers will be explored in greater detail.

Influence

The influence of Richard of St Victor upon later thinkers can be identified at a

number of levels. As already noted, his contemplative scheme exerted a significant
influence on subsequent contemplative literature. His six-level contemplative
scheme was appropriated by the early thirteenth-century Victorine, Thomas
Gallus, who in turn influenced Bonaventure and the author of an anonymous
fourteenth-century English text, The Cloud of Unknowing (Kirchberger 1957:
59–74; Coolman 2017). Although Richard had described contemplation as a
deeply intellectual affair, Gallus rendered affective union with God the height of
contemplation. Bonaventure followed suit in his Itinerarium mentis in Deum,
adding to Richard’s six levels a seventh entailing ecstatic union with divine love
     35

(Andres 1921). The influence of Richard’s scheme can also be detected on famous
late medieval mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Theresa of Avila, and John of the
Cross, among numerous others (Constable 1971).
As noted already, members of the Franciscan intellectual tradition that was
founded in the thirteenth century became some of the foremost advocates of
Richard’s thinking on key issues. The Franciscan school of the middle ages has
long been known for its theological and philosophical innovations and for its
influence not only on further medieval thought but also on the development of
the modern tradition. What is not often recognized is that some of the school’s
most significant innovations are derived precisely from Richard. The influence
of this Victorine is markedly detectable in at least three areas already mentioned:
the doctrine of God as Infinite Being, ideas of personhood, and Trinitarian
theology.
The Franciscan shift from an emphasis on God’s simplicity to his infinity
represents a profoundly significant historical-doctrinal development that
occurred largely at the impetus of Richard’s writings (Schumacher 2017).
There are those who argue that it had the effect in modernity of construing
God as an ‘ultimate being’ of the kind we can know, rather than a being that is
wholly other to our experience. In short, it domesticated God, who was after-
wards conceived as subject to human analysis and comprehension (Pickstock
2005). Such claims regarding the implications of the doctrine of divine infinity
are highly contentious, however. While this doctrine may have been adapted in
modernity in the ways described, it served in its own time to establish the
comprehensive scope of God’s reach into a world that was growing as a source
of fascination for late medieval thinkers, while maintaining the utter transcend-
ence of God.
A further result of adopting the doctrine of God as Infinite Being was a new
emphasis—latent in Richard but extrapolated by the Franciscans—on the indi-
viduality of finite beings. As Infinite Being, God contains the models for such
beings and knows them in terms of their uniqueness, not merely in terms of the
species to which they belong. The resources needed to develop this heightened
emphasis on individuality were found again in Richard’s work and specifically his
new understanding of personhood. Yet it is Richard’s work on the Trinity that
ultimately left the most pronounced mark on Franciscan thinkers, who adopted
his doctrine almost wholesale.
Although some modern social Trinitarians have picked up on the Franciscan
version of Richard’s doctrine, a number have turned directly to Richard himself,
including Hans Urs von Balthasar (1988: 274), Scottish theologian T. F. Torrance
(1966), and Colin Gunton (2003: 42–55), whose theory draws on the notion of
personhood in community developed by Scottish theologian John Macmurray
(1961). Rightly, such noteworthy theologians have found in Richard a ‘middle
way’ between Augustine’s emphasis on the unity of God, achieved through his
36  

psychological models of the Trinity, and the modern Orthodox emphasis on the
individual persons and the social or communal nature of their coexistence (Den
Bok 1996).
In recent years, factions between proponents of essentially Western ‘psycho-
logical’ and Eastern patristic ‘social’ approaches to the Trinity have been exacer-
bated. In this context, Richard of St Victor points a way forward in which
seemingly divergent approaches can be reconciled to one another, as they were
in the patristic period during which they were first developed (Ayres 2004). Given
the natural affinity of those approaches in their own time, one might go so far as to
question the dichotomy between ‘psychological’ and ‘social’ models that has been
projected onto the Western and Eastern traditions respectively in recent years and
to identify the natural origins of social Trinitarianism not in the Greek Fathers so
much as in the second strand of Trinitarian theology that Richard initiated in the
West. This Trinitarian theology, along with other doctrines pioneered by Richard,
clearly influenced subsequent thinkers in the middle ages, above all, Franciscans
like the Scot John Duns Scotus. Through these Franciscans among others, Richard
bequeathed a rich set of theological concepts which have continued to influence
modern theologians in Scotland and beyond.

Bibliography

Primary Literature
Angelici, Ruben (2011). Richard of St Victor: On the Trinity. Eugene, OR: Cascade
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Chatillon, Jean (1986). Trois opuscules spirituels de Richard de Saint-Victor. Paris:
Études Augustiniennes.
Chatillon, Jean and W. J. Tulloch (eds.) (1951). Richard de Saint Victor. Sermons et
opuscules spirituels inédits. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.
John of Toulouse. Liber antiquitatum sancti Victoris. MSS.B.N. lat. 14368–74. BN,
Paris; repr. in PL 196, pp. 9–14.
Kirchberger, Clare (ed.) (1957). Richard of St Victor: Selected Writings on Contemplation.
London: Faber and Faber.
Migne, J. P. (1855). Patrologiae latinae cursus completes, vol. 196. Paris.
Zinn, Grover A. (ed. and trans.) (1979). Richard of St Victor. New York: Paulist Press.

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Andres, F. (1921). ‘Die Stufen der Contemplatio in Bonaventuras Itinerarium mentis
in Deum und in Benjamin major des Richards von St Viktor’, Franziskanische
Studien 8: 189–200.
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Ayres, Lewis (2004). Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitar-
ian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bonnard, F. (1904–7). Histoire de l’abbaye royale et de l’ordre des channoines réguliers
de Saint-Victor de Paris, 2 vols. https://archive.org/stream/histoiredelabbay01bonn
Butler, Dom Cuthbert (1966). Western Mysticism. New York: Harper & Row.
Bynum, Caroline W. (1973). ‘The Spirituality of the Regular Canons in the Twelfth
Century: A New Approach’, Medievalia et Humanistica 4: 3–24.
Chatillon, Jean (1952). ‘De Guillaume de Champeaux à Thomas Gallus: chronique
histoire littéraire et doctrinale de l’école de Saint Victor’, Revue du moyen âge latin 8:
139–62, 247–72.
Chatillon, Jean (1987). ‘Richard de St Victor’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité XIII.1.
Paris: G. Beauchesne, 593–654.
Chenu, Marie-Dominique (1974). ‘Civilisation urbaine et théologie: l’école de Saint-
Victor au XIIe siècle’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 29/5: 1253–63.
Chenu, Marie-Dominique (1976). La théologie au douzième siècle. Paris: Vrin.
Constable, Giles (1971a). ‘The Popularity of Twelfth-Century Spiritual Writers in the
Late Middle Ages’, in Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (eds.), Renaissance:
Studies in Honor of Hans Baron. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 5–28.
Constable, Giles (1971b). ‘Twelfth-Century Spirituality and the Late Middle Ages’, in
O. B. Hardison, Jr (ed.), Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 27–60.
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Thomas Gallus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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St Victor (d. 1173). Turnhout: Brepols.
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de Régnon, Théodore (1892–8). Études de théologie positive sur la sainte Trinité,
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Den Bok, Nico (1996). Communicating the Most High: A Systematic Study of Person
and Trinity in the Theology of Richard of St Victor (d. 1173). Turnhout: Brepols.
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Presses Universitaires de France.
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view/article/23511, accessed 29 July 2015.
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Pollmann, Karla, Lydia Schumacher et al. (eds.) (2013). The Oxford Guide to the
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Journal of Theology 11: 37–52.
 4
Adam of Dryburgh
Peter Damian-Grint

Life

Most of what we know about the life of Adam of Dryburgh comes from the
short biographical sketch De vita et conversacione Magistri Ade written shortly
after his death (Wilmart 1933: 215–31). Although a first-hand account, it is
also a hagiography;¹ nevertheless, we have no reason to doubt its general
accuracy.
Adam was born in the Borders, ‘in the land of the English and the kingdom of
the Scots’ (De triplice tabernaculo II.13, §120), probably of the knightly class
(Thompson 1932: 486). He is described as intelligent and eloquent, a keen student
with an excellent memory, and he may have studied at St Victor in Paris (de Fraja
2010: 54); certainly, his writings show him to be profoundly influenced by the
Victorines.
Adam’s biographer hints at a personal religious crisis that led to his abandoning
his academic studies after gaining his Master’s degree.² Returning to Scotland, he
entered the Premonstratensian house of Dryburgh in Berwickshire, an institution
known for its austere religious life. This sudden change in trajectory can be seen
reflecting a tension within Adam’s life. Intelligent, personable, and an excellent
speaker, he had all the qualities required for a brilliant career in the Church or in
royal service; but, as the Vita Hugonis put it, he was also
. . . overtaken by love for the contemplative life, for which he burned with a happy
desire from the earliest flower of his youth.
(Adam of Eynsham 1962: 340–1)

When the tension became too great, Adam made a decisive break with his
active life in favour of the contemplative. It is a pattern we find repeated later
on in his life.

¹ It draws heavily on the vitæ of St Benedict and St Bernard.

² He is consistently given the academic title of magister.

Peter Damian-Grint, Adam of Dryburgh. In: The History of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic
Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0004
40  -

Given his learning, eloquence, and reputation for virtue, it is not surprising
that Adam should soon have been encouraged to preach; he was a popular
preacher to both clerics and layfolk (Wilmart 1933: 218; Palleschi 1964: 23).
When the abbot of Dryburgh, Gerard, fell ill in c.1181, Adam was unanimously
elected to succeed him, but did not receive his abbatial blessing until Gerard’s
death three years later.
As abbot, Adam was bound to attend the yearly chapter at the mother-house,
Prémontré (Aisne). While there he was treated with marks of special consid-
eration, reflecting his reputation within the Order, for his erudition and literary
gifts made him one of the outstanding Premonstratensians of his time, while
his skill as a preacher led to his being chosen in 1188 to go on a preaching tour
through France with the abbot-general of Prémontré, Robert. The Third
Crusade was being preached at this time, and it is possible that Adam may
have been asked to involve himself in this in his preaching to layfolk, but we
have no evidence of this; indeed, Adam never mentions crusading and shows
interest only in the soul’s spiritual fight against the enemies of its sanctification
(Leinsle 2003).
More importantly, during his preaching tour Adam visited the Carthusians in
the Val Saint-Pierre near Vervins (Aisne). The result was dramatic: on leaving
France Adam did not return to Dryburgh but went instead directly to the
Carthusian house at Witham (Somerset) and asked to be admitted there.
This second major change in trajectory, his leaving the Premonstratensian
order, mirrors Adam’s first change, his relinquishing of academic life. He had
become a Premonstratensian in order to devote himself to a life of prayer; but once
in Dryburgh, more and more calls were made upon his time, first as preacher and
writer, then as administrator and abbot. More than once he refers to the lack of the
time he needs to finish his writings. The contemplative life to which he felt such a
strong call was rapidly receding from his grasp; and the only way to escape from
his situation was to make a second break, as radical as the first. He had been a
Premonstratensian for over twenty years.
The general chapter of Prémontré, unwilling to lose a theologian and preacher
of Adam’s stature, ordered him to return to Dryburgh under pain of excommu-
nication; but he enlisted the help of St Hugh, bishop of Lincoln and himself a
Carthusian, and was permitted to remain at Witham. The letter releasing Adam
attests to his reputation both as a holy man and as a writer:

We made great efforts to recall to our Order brother Adam, your monk and once
our canon, on account of his goodness of life and his literary outpourings, for
which reasons we felt that his return to be to the honour of our Order . . .
(Wilmart 1933: 223)

Adam spent the remaining twenty-four years of his life at Witham; he died in 1212
(Palleschi 1964: 26), after a painful illness.
    41

Writings

There is a certain irony in Adam’s complaints of lack of time to work on his

theological texts; he is one of the most prolific of all Premonstratensian writers,
even without counting the lost works from his Carthusian period.³

Sermones

According to his biographer, Adam first showed his talents as a preacher. Some
eighty of his sermons survive, ranging from about ten minutes to over three-
quarters of an hour long: if they have not always been appreciated by modern
scholars, they clearly spoke powerfully to Adam’s contemporaries. As a measure
of their standard, a sermon previously attributed to St Bernard was reattributed,
on good grounds, to Adam (Jones 1999: 21; Petit 2011: 49).⁴
The fact that Adam was in the first place a preacher is reflected in his
idiosyncratic and very characteristic prose writing, which is very ‘oral’ in style—
designed not to be read but to be listened to. All his works abound in wordplay of
different kinds: François Petit (2011: 199) tells us that they
embrace many stylistic devices; he frequently employs pleonasm, paronomasia,
repetition, mirrored phrases, anaphora, and antitheses.

But if Adam’s style is idiosyncratic, it is not inelegant, and indeed shows the
influence of St Augustine in many places. Even one of Adam’s most characteristic
stylistic elements, a form of chiasmus transposing noun and adjective or verb and
adverb (as in ‘superfluitatem enormem et enormitatem superfluam’, Sermo 42, 10,
or ‘et amando inhabitas, et inhabitando amas’, De quadripertito exercitio, ch. 16),
can be found in a number of St Augustine’s works.

Liber de ordine, habitu et professione

Adam’s beginnings as a preacher are also reflected in the earliest dated of his
theological works, a commentary on the Augustinian Rule, the Liber de ordine,
habitu et professione Canonicorum ordinis Præmonstratensis (c.1178), which is
composed in the form of a series of sermons. This work shows the way in which
Adam’s thinking at this early stage in his career as a theologian naturally falls into

³ Adam’s edited works add up to well over 350,000 words; he wrote numerous other works which
are not extant.
⁴ The sermon, for Palm Sunday (PL 185, cc. 869–80), quotes verbatim from Adam’s De triplice
genere contemplationis (cf. PL 185:877 and 198:814).
42  -

the sermon structure; later works see him moving away from the homiletic form,
although to the end his style remained deeply marked by his preaching.
The idea of a commentary on the Rule was not an original one, but Adam may
have been inspired to write his De ordine by the Expositio in Regulam Beati
Augustini attributed to Hugh of St Victor. In it we see already one of Adam’s
major themes, holiness of life expressed in prayer and contemplation: thus in
his exegesis on St Norbert’s prescription that his canons were to wear ‘white
[i.e. undyed] like the angels, and wool like penitents, and linen in the sanctuary’
(Vita Norberti B, ch. 9, PL 170, c.1293), Adam links the canons’ use of the surplice
with the Levites, who leave earthly things to enter the Temple:
. . . in a certain sense, we enter our heavenly homeland when, raised above
ourselves by pure and refined desire, we begin to enter into holy contemplation.
When we have finished, we put back our vesture as we go out to the people.
(De ordine III, §7)

And he links the Premonstratensian’s white habit to the white robes of those who
have conquered (Rev. 3:5) and the white robes of the saints who stand in the
presence of the Lamb in St John’s vision of heaven (Rev. 7:9).
In the whiteness of clothing . . . are we accustomed to see the brightness of a holy
way of life, and accustomed also to see the solemnity of future happiness. Where
there is merit, there too is the reward. (De ordine III, §9)

Above all, however, we see Adam in this early work as a convinced Augustinian.
Inevitably in a commentary on his Rule, there are numerous references to
Augustine, but the warmth of his language is striking: ‘our father and advocate
Augustine’, ‘our great father Augustine’; ‘the most learned physician of souls, our
blessed father Augustine’ (De ordine VIII, §11; IX, §1; VIII, §14; X, §1; XII, §19).
He names Augustine over sixty times (Van Geest 2013: 491).

De triplice tabernaculo

When he composed the De ordine, Adam must have already been working on his
longest book and only surviving work of exegesis, the De triplice tabernaculo
(1180).⁵ He tells us he composed it in response to the request of John, abbot of
Kelso, to whom he refers in the most affectionate terms.
De triplice tabernaculo is exegesis in the purest Victorine tradition. Adam’s
exploration of the literal, allegorical, and anagogical interpretations of the Tent of
Meeting in Exodus, each taking up almost exactly one third of the total of 65,000

⁵ Adam refers to the Tabernacle in De ordine XIV, seeing the lampstand, the golden table, and the
altar as spiritually signifying the activities of lectio, actio, and oratio.
    43

words, closely mirrors the Victorine programme as set forth by Hugh of St Victor
in his Didascalicon and followed by Richard and Andrew. In addition, it seems
clear that Adam’s work was directly inspired by Hugh’s De formatione arche:
Patrice Sicard (1993: 147) notes close structural similarities and numerous literary
echoes of Hugh’s work in Adam’s, while Valeria de Fraja (2010: 55–7) sees Hugh
as ‘a sort of guide for Adam’ in his task, and highlights the way in which Adam
follows Hugh in creating a complex image or pictura to provide a visual rendering
of his argument, as an aid to understanding and memorization (although neither
Hugh’s nor Adam’s pictura has survived).
But Adam’s debt to the Victorines does not stop there. Alongside his frequent
quotes from the De formatione arche, he also cites Hugh’s Adnotationes in
Pentateuchon and his De tribus diebus, and Richard’s Expositio de tabernaculo.
He has a whole chapter of material taken over wholesale from the Historia
Scholastica of Peter Comestor, another major figure in the Victorine orbit.⁶
He makes copious use of Andrew of St Victor’s Expositio super Heptateuchum
and especially his In Exodum, and praises Andrew repeatedly, using terms such as
‘a certain man of venerable life and a diligent examiner of the Word of God’
(I.4, §8), or ‘no less eloquent than pious’ (I.21, §47). The references to Andrew’s
piety as well as to his learning seem to suggest personal acquaintance, or at least a
knowledge of the man as well as his writings; he is the only scholar to whom Adam
refers in such terms, and the only modernus other than Hugh whom he mentions
by name (I.1, §2).⁷
At the same time, Adam is no slavish imitator. His citations occur mainly in
Book I, which explores the literal interpretation of Scripture, and here he con-
denses and reorders his sources as he goes along, sewing them together with
connecting passages of his own, so that the final result is—despite its length—
much crisper and more tightly structured than his originals.
In Book II, the allegorical interpretation which deals with the tabernacle as a type
of the Church, Adam identifies Church with the Christian people—christianitas,
crestienté, cristendome—in a way typical of the period, with lists of emperors and
kings as part of a developed discussion of the place of the lay faithful within the
Church.
What is less commonplace is Adam’s foregrounding of the holiness of the
Church and of its members:
From that picture, although it may not be very elegant, one can have something
of an idea how very beautiful and noble the visible tabernacle of Moses was. But
that other tabernacle is far more beautiful and precious and sublime than this one

⁶ He calls Peter ‘a certain learned man and a master among masters, extraordinary in knowledge’
(De triplice tabernaculo I.25, §54).
⁷ He names Hugh twice (De triplice tabernaculo II.8, §92; II.13, §124), and Andrew once (I.1, §2).
44  -

was: more beautiful in its nobility, more precious in its material, and more
sublime in its holiness—that is Holy Church.
(De triplice tabernaculo II.6, §86)

But it is Book III, the anagogical interpretation, which is the most original. Here
Adam brings up one of the key paradoxes of Augustinian thought, that of
predestination—a question he also touches upon in his sermons.⁸ In Chapter 8
he sees the Ark of the Covenant as a figure of Christ and the three objects it
contains—the jar of manna, Aaron’s rod, and the tables of the Law—as repre-
senting Christ’s dealings towards human souls:
So there are in the Ark these three: the manna of gentleness, the rod of justice, the
tables of truth. For justice belongs to the reprobate, gentleness to the elect, truth
to both. Thus gentleness to the elect, for it belongs to the sweetness of his mercy
that they be forgiven; and justice to the reprobate, for the equity of his strict
justice judges that they be condemned; and truth to both, for in showing justice
to these, mercy to those, he shows himself true to both . . . This is the truth that is
in our Ark since all eternity, in which immutably both they who are to be saved
are predestined, and they who are to be damned are foreknown.
(De triplice tabernaculo III.8, §154)

Later on, he spends the whole of Chapter 15 sketching out the same theme in a
context that he will develop in a later work: the act of contemplation as consid-
eration of God under three aspects: in himself, and in his dealings with the elect
and with the reprobate.
God speaks to Moses the contemplative: and says . . . what he is in himself, what
he is to the elect, and what he is to the reprobate. And our contemplative hears
God saying in his own ears that his Lord is entirely incomprehensible in himself;
lovable to the elect; and terrible to the reprobate.
(De triplice tabernaculo III.15, §172)⁹

This is followed by a detailed discussion of each of these three considerations,

beginning with a long and impassioned reflection on the incomprehensibility of
God in himself, and then in his dealing with his creatures: his love for the elect
and his severity towards the reprobate. These considerations are developed at
much greater length in Adam’s next major work, but with a significant shift.

De triplici genere contemplationis

It was probably while serving as administrator of Dryburgh in the early 1180s

that Adam composed what is generally considered to be his masterpiece, his De

⁸ See Sermones 12, 23, 30.

⁹ The same triad occurs in Adam’s Sermo 30 (§18): ‘In te ipso incomprehensibilis, terribilis in
reprobis, suavis in electis’.
    45

triplici genere contemplationis,¹⁰ a guide to contemplative prayer which André

Wilmart (1930: 159) describes as ‘full of brilliant Augustinian theology’ and which
Jeremy Worthen (1997: 339–40) sees as intriguing, original, and hinting at later
developments.
It is possible that Adam’s text may have been inspired by De contemplatione et
ejus speciebus, a discourse devoted to contemplation and attributed to Hugh of St
Victor. But there is no direct link with Hugh; the three kinds of contemplation
which form the structure of Adam’s work have already been sketched out, as we
have seen, in De triplice tabernaculo, and the expression ‘triplex genus contem-
plationis’ appears in his De ordine,¹¹ albeit in a different context.
Rather than the Victorines, Adam here connects directly and vitally with
Augustine. He borrows from, and develops, several passages in Augustine’s
Confessions, in order to portray the inward ascent to God, the search for the
mystery of God which is the subject of the first part of his work; for Pierre
Courcelle (1963: 287–90), this first section is almost a meditation on Book X of
the Confessions.¹² At the same time Adam develops in an intensive way the notion
that all of creation is sacramental, all created things are signs pointing towards
God. Even smells and tastes have this dimension:
This, Lord God, my sense of smell tells me: ‘Behold’, it says, ‘which and how
many kinds of fragrances I show you. See which and what kinds of beauty of
fragrances are coming from herbs and trees, and breathing from confections of
many kinds of things; but all with one voice say: We are not your God. We are
fragrances; but God is your fragrance, and of great sweetness, a fragrance that no
wind can disperse . . . ’ And also my sense of taste, Lord God, within me: ‘Exam-
ine’, it says, ‘what and what kinds of flavours are placed by me before you.’ As
I examine them, they cry out loudly to me, and say: ‘Far more appetising than us
is your God. If we taste well to you, better will taste the flavour most flavourful of
all flavours, your God.’ (De triplici genere contemplationis, I.12–13)

Adam returns to this sacramental apprehension of God in the third part, using it
as a springboard for his exploration of Trinitarian theology. Adam’s starting point
here is psychological, beginning with his apprehension of his own being, knowing
and loving:
You are . . . and you know you are, and you know, too, that you know you are.
And behold, if you consider it clearly, and if you examine it carefully, you see
truly that in you, out of these two things, that is out of your being and knowing,
proceed a certain third thing, that is, love . . . A certain trinity arises in you, while

¹⁰ ‘Le chef-d’œuvre d’Adam Scot est sans conteste son livre De la triple contemplation . . . Ce livre
n’est pas un traité mais bel et bien des confessions, à la manière de saint Augustin’ (Ardura 1995: 120).
¹¹ De ordine IV, §9.
¹² ‘Confessions X.6 is the most important single chapter for part I of the De triplici genere
contemplationis, although the two following chapters are also used; elsewhere, Adam clearly recalls
Confessions XI.4 and 6 and XIII.11’ (Worthen 1997: 341).
46  -

the unity remains. Unity, for you are one substance and one spirit. Trinity also:
that is, your essence, your knowledge, your love. There is essence, and from
essence knowledge . . . And love proceeds, not indeed from essence alone, nor
from knowledge alone, but from essence and knowledge at once; for you both
love your being and love your knowing, and love belongs to each, for it arises
from each. (De triplici genere contemplationis, I.28)¹³

In the second part, Adam presents the mystery of negative predestination—the

fact that God knows from eternity that some souls will be lost—in such a way that,
while not contradicting or denying Augustine’s vision, he nevertheless draws
much of the sting of his master’s position. As the whole work, although theological
in substance, is in style not a theological treatise but a spiritual exercise, readers are
invited to consider their own possible damnation only so as to elicit the appro-
priate prayerful response before moving on to the third part, the consideration
of the joys of heaven; their acceptance of God’s inscrutable justice—and of the
possibility that they will be lost—is presented as a strong indication that they will
in fact be among the saved.
This approach to God, downplaying the hardest element of God’s predestin-
ation of his creatures, is no accident. Adam has altered the dynamic of the
question from his first sketch of it in De triplice tabernaculo, moving the consid-
eration of the reprobate from the end to the middle of his exercise and making it
drastically shorter than the other two sections: it takes up less than 15 per cent of
the total text.¹⁴ Thus although he does not shy away from addressing the thorny
question, Adam’s focus is elsewhere: for him, as ever, the contemplation of God in
himself is the foundation and goal of the life of prayer. The whole text is not only
brilliant Augustinian theology but experiential and personal in a way that recalls
Augustine himself.

Soliloquium de instructione animæ

It was probably while Adam was abbot that he composed his last major work as a
Premonstratensian, the Soliloquium de instructione animæ (1184  86), a dialogue
on the canonical life dedicated to Walter, prior of the cathedral priory of
St Andrews (Palleschi 2007: 201). The first book of the Soliloquium is a discussion
of the difficulties faced by canons in their way of life; the second, a conversation on
the Premonstratensian formula of profession (in which Adam draws heavily on
his De ordine), filling out the vision of the canonical vocation in a positive way.

¹³ This idea may come from Augustine’s De civitate Dei XI.26.

¹⁴ Book II is marginally over one-seventh of the total. Characteristically, it is Book III, on the
contemplation of God, that is the longest.
    47

Here again Adam turned to the Victorines for inspiration: the dialogue form in
which the work is composed was not common when he was writing, but it had
been used by Hugh of St Victor in his De vanitate mundi, and Adam gives the
same names—Ratio and Anima—to the participants of his dialogue as Hugh did
to his.¹⁵ There is significance to this, for the dialogue structure might suggest
more specific and concrete names as more appropriate than those Adam uses;
indeed, one copyist remedied the supposed error by changing Anima to Mon-
achus (Palleschi 2007: 234–6). But the names Adam has chosen should alert us
to a deeper dimension of his work, a dimension also underlined by the title he
gives it: it is a soliloquium, not a dialogus. As he explains at the beginning of the
first chapter:
I will sound out with questions the secrets of my soul, and gather together its
hidden things, so that I might instruct the ignorant, settle the wavering,
strengthen the standing, lift up the fallen and bring the one in error back to
the path of truth. (Soliloquium, I.1)

Adam is here foregrounding the experiential dimension of his theology. The

reader is invited to follow not a conversation between a discontented canon and
a novice-master who guides him towards a more supernatural understanding of
his vocation, but rather Adam’s own inner questionings, which he exposes with a
frankness that again reminds one of Augustine.
Nevertheless Palleschi (2007: 202–3) is surely exaggerating when he sees in the
text the reflection of a ‘profound and acute interior crisis’ in Adam’s ‘lacerated
soul’. While Adam no doubt experienced struggles in following his vocation,
Anima’s questions are designed to cover all possible difficulties and reflect in
part a desire for completeness. The text has some elements of a confessio, but it has
at the same time a very practical purpose: to provide solid advice for novices.
Lively and with a characteristic touch of humour, Adam’s Soliloquium shows a
profound knowledge of the canonical life and its difficulties;¹⁶ and it gives a
response that is at the same time humane and supernatural. As an eminently
practical handbook for novice-masters, it is little surprise that it should become
Adam’s most widely-copied work and should circulate far beyond the boundaries
of the Premonstratensian Order.

De quadripertito exercitium cellæ

De vita et conversacione Magistri Ade lists nine works composed by Adam as a

Carthusian, together ‘many other worthy works . . . which do not come to my

¹⁵ Worthen (1997: 340) assumes that Augustine is again Adam’s model.

¹⁶ Ardura (1995: 122) describes Adam as a ‘fin psychologue de la vie conventuelle’.
48  -

memory at the moment’ (Wilmart 1933: 231), but only one survives: De quad-
ripertito exercitium cellæ. Adam bases the structure of his work on the Scala
Claustralium of his older contemporary Guigo II (Green 2017: 198–212). He
quotes from Guigo I’s Institutiones, Augustine’s De Trinitate and other works,
perhaps most significantly Eriugena’s version of the Angelic Hierarchies of
Pseudo-Dionysius with reference to the via negativa, which he carefully dissects
without losing sight of the fact that it is a via, a path to God:
We know, inhabitant of the cell, how to say what God is not, but who can say
what he is? . . . And yet if we do not know what he is, nevertheless we know that
he is. For unless we know that he is, how can we love him?
(De quadripertito exercitio cellæ, ch. 29)

And this leads naturally into a lengthy citation from his own Triplice genere
contemplationis concerning the contemplation of the incomprehensible God.
This text again proclaims Adam’s debt to the Victorines: the last of his four
‘exercises of the cell’ is labor, which is unparalleled in any Carthusian text (Green
2017: 252) but is the fourth of the spiritual exercises explored by Andrew of
St Victor (the other three being lectio, meditatio, and oratio). This is all the more
striking given Adam’s focus on contemplative prayer in his writings; although it is
true that Adam devotes only one chapter to work, and twelve to oratio, by which
he means contemplative prayer.
In Adam’s description of meditatio we see again the consideration of the
reprobate, treated in detail and presented in a way that strikes the reader as
noticeably more immediate and personal than that found in De triplici genere
contemplationis. The second mode of meditatio, intended to beget fear and sorrow
for sin, includes the exercise of reflecting on one’s own sinfulness and God’s
hidden judgement:
. . . how terrible is the Creator of all creatures in his counsels towards the children
of men (Ps. 65:5), neither lessening the evils nor accepting the good deeds of the
reprobate, but more, by his just but hidden judgment not softening their hearts
but even hardening them, lest they should turn and he should heal them (Is. 6:10).
Think within yourself what Ecclesiastes says, how there are righteous and wise,
and their deeds are in God’s hand, and man does not know whether he be worthy
of love or hate (Eccles. 9:1); but all this is reserved for the future.
(De quadripertito exercitio cellæ, ch. 19)

Yet despite its vividness and immediacy, Adam’s consideration is again limited in
scope; indeed, it forms an even smaller part of a much more developed structure,
for it is only the second of eight steps in the second mode of meditatio—and there
are eight modes. To consider the possibility of being numbered among the
reprobate is, then, seen as a step on the path leading to the summit of contem-
plative prayer: necessary as a preparation, but then to be left behind.
    49

In the prologue of his work Adam protests his inadequacy for the task, a
conventional captatio benevolentiæ. Although the grounds—that he has only
recently become a Carthusian—are plausible, in fact the Quadripertito exercitio
cellæ is a recognized ‘classic of eremitic literature’ (Jones 1996: 17–18), not only
reflecting Adam’s literary abilities but also suggesting that Witham was indeed
where he belonged.

Importance and Influence

Adam of Dryburgh is not a name to conjure with. But if his importance as a

theologian has been underestimated, a primary reason for this must be the
damnatio memoriæ he suffered after abandoning the Premonstratensians for the
Carthusian Order. The Liber Sancte Marie de Dryburgh avoids mentioning
Adam’s abbacy; indeed, all traces of Adam’s life at Dryburgh seem to have been
removed, to the point of even deleting his name from the abbey’s collection of his
sermons. His works often circulated either anonymously or attributed to other
writers: of the surviving manuscripts of the Soliloquium de instructione animæ, five
attribute the text to Adam of St Victor, one to Adam of Rewley, another to Adam of
Perseigne, while his De quadripertito exercitio cellæ went under the supposed
authorship of Guigo II. Had Adam remained a Premonstratensian, his influence
and fame, both within and outside the Order, would surely have been far greater.
Adam’s direct influence is hard to judge; but as early as c.1200, an English
writer copied several long quotes from Adam’s sermons into the margins of a
collection of the letters of Peter of Blois, describing him admiringly as ‘gloriosus
magister Adam’ (Palleschi 1965). And his influence seems to have become greater,
not less, as time went on: the great majority of surviving manuscripts of his work
date from the fifteenth century. The Soliloquium de instructione animæ (his most
popular work) survives in over forty-five manuscripts, many originating in the
Low Countries or Central Europe, and was translated into German; it is clearly
linked to the devotio moderna, appearing in the company of works by such figures
as Thomas à Kempis, John of Ruysbroeck, and John of Schoonhoven, and is
bracketed in two manuscripts with Nicolas Love’s Mirrour of the Blessed Lyf of
Jesu Christ, a best-seller of Middle English literature.
The link with Love, who was prior of the Carthusian house of Mount Grace in
Yorkshire, underlines Adam’s place in the burgeoning interest in Carthusian
spirituality we see in devout lay circles in England. Adam was evidently known
to the authors of the Middle English Ancrene Wisse (Barratt 1980), Myrror to
Devout People (Patterson 2006), and Myrour of Recluses (McAvoy 2011), all works
produced in the same context of Carthusian spirituality.
In this context it is not surprising that Adam is known best for the centrality and
primacy of prayer, particularly contemplative prayer. Although he is extremely
50  -

reticent about his own experience, there is little doubt that Adam, following in
St Augustine’s footsteps, writes a theology of the contemplative life that is fully
experiential. His frequent use of the term dulcedo to refer to the mystical
experience of God calls to mind Richard Rolle, although there is no direct
evidence that Rolle had read Adam. Some scholars have been misled by the
humilitas motif in Adam’s Quadripertito exercitio cellæ into thinking that he had
no experience of the higher stages of contemplative prayer, but this is clearly not
the case (Jones 1996, 1999).
As Worthen (1997: 343) points out, Adam’s De triplici genere contemplationis
finds itself in the crossroads between traditional Augustinian theology and the
emergence of new forms of self-understanding, so that
the dogma, as it were, of predestination gets processed into late twelfth-century
religious life; and . . . Adam subordinates predestinarian doctrine to a form of
spiritual practice . . . It is here that Adam appears most remote from his chosen
models and most significant for subsequent developments.

In this as in other respects, Adam can be said to anticipate developments in the

later middle ages and early modern period.
Previous generations of scholarship consistently taxed Adam with being an old-
fashioned theologian. It is true that, as an Augustinian and a Victorine, he has no
time for what he considers to be the rationalistic ‘new learning’ of the inchoate
scholastic method which he had experienced in his youth, the ‘empty’ and ‘sterile
philosophy’¹⁷ with its emphasis on reasoning to arrive at intellectual rather than
experiential knowledge; and in this sense he can be seen as a representative figure
of the monastic theology of the pre-scholastic period. Yet his writings are also
marked by scholastic influence; it is little surprise that André Wilmart (1930: 160)
described him as ‘a witness to the past who also prefigures the new spirit’.
Richard of St Victor and Duns Scotus both made their careers abroad in the
major academic centres of Europe; Adam is the only medieval theologian of
international stature who lived and worked almost entirely in Scotland. This
fact is also reflected in his theological style. He is not a man of the Schools:
hence he is so often pigeonholed as nothing more than a monastic theologian. He
is in fact much more. One can see in his work a link to the Cistercian way of doing
theology, but he is also entirely at home with figures like Peter Comestor and
Andrew of St Victor. He is not a transitional figure in the chronological sense only,
for there is a remarkable range in a man who can be mistaken not only for
St Bernard, but also for the liturgical poet Adam of St Victor, the Carthusian
Guigo II, and the schoolman Adam of Rewley.

¹⁷ De triplice tabernaculo, Proœmia II, §1, 3 (quoted approvingly by Adam from John of Kelso’s
letter to him).
    51

In this sense, Adam’s De triplice tabernaculo is an emblematic work: for in it we

can see the intellectual rigour of a man who is ready to explore the puzzles of small
details of literal interpretation, such matters as the brass gratings under the altar of
holocausts; but we also see the pedagogical brilliance of the complex pictura he
himself paints in order to bring together the three interpretations of Scripture;
and, no less, we see a tender lyricism in pure Augustinian terms: theology as
prayer.
Recent studies of Adam point again and again to an originality which is not
revolutionary, but which nuances the positions of contemporaries and looks
towards new understandings of what he has inherited. In fact, although he sets
no store by originality, one can argue that Adam’s style of theology looks forward,
rather than back: his affective and experiential theology leads, in the thirteenth
century, to Franciscan spirituality and then, in the fourteenth, to the devotio
moderna (Gilson 1966); thus he comes not at the end but rather at an important
crux in the development of the Western theological tradition.

Bibliography

Primary Literature
Adam of Dryburgh (1659). De triplice tabernaculo, ed. Godefridus Ghiselbertus. PL
198, 609–796.
Adam of Dryburgh (1659). De triplici genere contemplationis, ed. Godefridus
Ghiselbertus. PL 198, 795–842.
Adam of Dryburgh (1659). Liber de ordine, habitu et professione Canonicorum ordinis
Præmonstratensis, ed. Godefridus Ghiselbertus. PL 198, 439–610.
Adam of Dryburgh (1659). Sermones, ed. Godefridus Ghiselbertus. PL 198, 97–440.
Adam of Dryburgh (1988). Soliloquium de instructione animæ, ed. Jean Bouvet.
Collectanea Cisterciensia 50: 113–71.
Adam of Dryburgh (2015). Adam of Witham, De quadripartito exercitio cellæ: a
critical edition, ed. John Clark and James Hogg. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik
und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.
Adam of Eynsham (1962). Magna vita sancti Hugonis/The Life of Saint Hugh of
Lincoln, ed. Decima L. Douie and D. H. Farmer. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Secondary Literature
Ardura, Bernard (1995). ‘Adam Scot’, in Prémontrés, histoire et spiritualité.
Saint-Étienne: Université de Saint-Étienne, 115–24.
Barratt, Alexandra (1980). ‘Anchoritic Aspects of Ancrene Wisse’, Medium Ævum 49:
32–56.
52  -

Courcelle, Pierre (1963). Les Confessions de Saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire.
Antécédents et postérité. Paris: Études Augustiniennes.
de Fraja, Valeria (2010). ‘Figurae tra littera e spiritus: il tabernaculum di Mosè e le sue
rappresentazioni medievali (da Cosmas Indicopleustes ad Adam di Dryburgh)’, in
Alessandro Ghisalberti (ed.), Pensare per figure: diagrammi e simboli in Gioacchino
da Fiore. Rome: Viella, 47–69.
Gilson, Étienne (1966). ‘Préface’, in Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au XIIe
siècle. Études de philosophie médiévale. Paris: Vrin, 1–10.
Green, Rosalind C. G. (2017). ‘ “Perfectissimus”: The Carthusians in England, c.1178–
c.1220’. PhD thesis, University of Durham.
Harkins, Franklin T. and Frans van Liere (2015). Interpretation of Scripture: Practice.
A selection of works of Hugh, Andrew, and Richard of St Victor, Robert of Melun,
Maurice of Sully, and Leonius of Paris. Turnhout: Brepols.
Jones, David B. (1996). ‘Adam Scot: The Tension in the Psyche of the Man of Prayer
between Active and Contemplative Life’, in James Hogg (ed.), The Mystical
Tradition and the Carthusians, vol. 11, i–iii. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und
Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1–37.
Jones, David B. (1999). An Early Witness to the Nature of the Canonical Order in the
Twelfth Century: A Study in the Life and Writings of Adam Scot, with particular
reference to his understanding of the Rule of St Augustine. Salzburg: Institut für
Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.
Leinsle, Ulrich G. (2003). ‘Charitati militare: der klösterliche Kampf um den Frieden
nach Adamus Scotus († 1212)’, Analecta Præmonstratensia 79: 5–24.
McAvoy, Liz Herbert (2011). Medieval Anchoritisms: Gender, Space and the Solitary
Life. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer.
Palleschi, Francesco (1964). ‘Ricerche su Adam Scot [I]’, Analecta Præmonstratensia
40: 17–40.
Palleschi, Francesco (1965). ‘Ricerche su Adam Scot III: Gloriosus Magister Adam’,
Analecta Præmonstratensia 41: 79–92.
Palleschi, Francesco (2007). ‘La prière dans les écrits d’Adam Scot’, in Robert Bindel
(ed.), 35 Années de recherche et de spiritualité. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und
Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 241–58.
Patterson, Paul J. (2006). ‘ “Myrror to Devout People” (“Speculum Devotorum”): an
edition with commentary’. PhD thesis, University of Notre Dame.
Petit, François (2011). ‘Adam Scot’, in Spirituality of the Premonstratensians: The
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, trans. Victor Szczurek, ed. Carol Neel. Trappist,
KY: Cistercian Publications, 197–235.
Sicard, Patrice (1993). Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle. Le ‘Libellus de
formatione arche’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Turnhout: Brepols.
Thompson, E. Margaret (1932). ‘A Fragment of a Witham Chronicle and Adam of
Dryburgh’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 16: 482–506.
    53

Van Geest, P. J. J. (2013). ‘Adam Scotus’, in Willemien Otten (ed.), The Oxford Guide
to the Historical Reception of Augustine, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
490–1.
Vones-Liebenstein, Ursula (2002). Review of David Jones, An Early Witness to the
Nature of the Canonical Order in the Twelfth Century. Cahiers de civilisation
médiévale 45/180: 379–80.
Wilmart, André (1930). ‘Magister Adam Cartusiensis’, in Mélanges Mandonnet.
Études d’histoire littéraire et doctrinale du moyen âge, vol. 2. Paris: Vrin, 145–61.
Wilmart, André (1933). ‘Maître Adam, chanoine prémontré devenu chartreux à
Witham’, Analecta Præmonstratensia 9: 209–31.
Worthen, Jeremy F. (1997). ‘Adam of Dryburgh and the Augustinian Tradition’, Revue
des Études Augustiniennes 43: 339–47.
 5
Liturgical Theology before 1600
Stephen Mark Holmes

What is Liturgical Theology?

Liturgy is the public worship of the Church. It uses a system of signs accessed by
the human senses and these signs require interpretation; bread remained ordinary
bread until Jesus said ‘This is my body’. Such liturgical interpretation is found in a
series of texts from patristic mystagogical catecheses to developed commentaries
such as the Rationale divinorum officiorum of William Durandus of Mende
(c.1230–96). Liturgical interpretation is a form of theological discourse because
it seeks to understand Christian revelation as it is mediated to humanity through
the symbolic world of the sacred liturgy. In this it is similar to biblical theology
and, as Durandus makes clear in the preface to his Rationale, it used the same
historical and allegorical methods as contemporary Scripture scholarship. As an
exegesis of visible rites, it depends on a symbolic epistemology, often rooted in
Augustine’s theory of signs in chapters 2 and 3 of his De doctrina Christiana.
The cleric formed in the theological world-view of liturgical interpretation
would instinctively see the church building and the liturgy in symbolic terms
and these would keep the truths of the faith constantly before his eyes. Function-
ing in a way similar to the ‘memory palaces’ of the medieval educational practice
of the ars memorativa, the liturgy thus had a central place in medieval and early
modern theological education. Liturgical interpretation was also an important site
for the practice of theology, for example the interpretation of the fraction of the
consecrated host at Mass was shown by Henri de Lubac in his Corpus Mysticum
(1944) to be central for the development of ecclesiology and sacramental theology.
It was perhaps modernity, with its view of the world as a mechanistic system
rather than as a web of interconnected symbols, which caused both the decline of
this theological method in the seventeenth century and its neglect in modern
scholarship. There has, however, been a revival of interest in the last few decades
marked by the critical edition of the Rationale (Durandus 1995–2000).¹

¹ For a detailed study of the genre and method of liturgical interpretation see Holmes (2013) and
Holmes (2015: 13–50).

Stephen Mark Holmes, Liturgical Theology before 1600. In: The History of Scottish Theology
Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0005
     55

How Was It Practised in Scotland? In Education, Schools,

Universities, Clergy Education, 1552 Catechism

It is difficult to judge how this method of liturgical theology was used in medieval
and early modern Scotland. No liturgical commentaries were written there and
evidence is scattered and fragmentary, but, although not previously noted by
scholars, the method was of central importance in Scottish culture especially in
education. This was because Scotland was part of Latin Christendom and it raises
the question of whether there was anything distinctly Scottish in its use.
Liturgical commentaries by Ivo of Chartres and Hugh of St Victor are found in
the earliest extant Scottish library lists from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
and the early Irish commentary on the Mass in the ninth-century Stowe Missal
shows that the genre was part of the religious culture of the medieval Gàidheal-
tachd. The main evidence of liturgical theology in Scotland are the thirty-seven
liturgical commentaries in Scottish hands before 1600.² These include sixteen
copies of the Rationale, five copies of that by Gabriel Biel (c.1420–95), and two
each by Amalarius of Metz (c.775–850), Rhabanus Maurus (776–856), Rupert of
Deutz (c.1075–1129), and Pope Innocent III (c.1160–1216). Of the commentaries
whose provenance is known, most belonged to secular clergy associated with
Catholic Reform, especially in the diocese of Aberdeen. A similar association of
interest in liturgical interpretation and Catholic Reform was revealed by a study of
the book-buying policy of the Italian Benedictine Congregation of Santa Justina
(Holmes 2015: 53).
Many of the Scottish commentaries show signs of use and the marginalia in the
Rationale given to Aberdeen Cathedral in 1488 and ordered to be chained in
the choir, together with a grammar book, suggests that it was used for education.³
Many of the noted sections concern instruction in the meaning of ceremonies,
such as six reasons why candles were carried in the Candlemas procession, but
most are in the commentary on the canon of the Mass where Durandus uses the
liturgy to teach about the Eucharist and the doctrine of transubstantiation,
covering the same ground as the Sentences of Peter Lombard 4.8–13. These
markings suggest the possibility that this Rationale was used to teach the meaning
of the liturgy to boys in the cathedral Song School. This is confirmed by liturgical
commentaries belonging to the Precentors, responsible for the Song Schools, at
Glasgow and Aberdeen cathedrals and by extant regulations for Scottish Song
Schools at Seton Collegiate church and King’s College, Aberdeen where the boys

² For example, Holmes (2015: 223–8) and a copy of the Rationale in the library of Alexander
Seton (1555–1622), Ian Campbell, ‘An “Inventair of som of the earill of Dunfermline his buiks in
Pinkie June 1625”: A Fragment of the Library of Alexander Seton (1555–1622)’, Innes Review 67/1
(2016): 31–54, at 47.
³ London, Senate House Library, Incunabula 88. Other copies of the Rationale were kept in the choir
at Crail collegiate church and university chapels at Aberdeen and St Andrews.
56   

were to be taught liturgy and ceremonies as well as music. A study of English Song
Schools came to the same conclusion (Flynn 1995: 180). Regular participation in
the liturgy marked the life of grammar school pupils too and Latin was learned
from liturgical texts, psalms, hymns and sequences, as well as grammars. Only one
copy of the Ars minor of Donatus has survived from pre-1560 Scotland but it is
bound with a commentary on the hymns and sequences and there are two other
such extant commentaries together with eight glossed psalters. The commentaries
contain theological and liturgical interpretation as well as grammatical notes. An
example from the commentary on the Transfiguration sequence Benedicta semper
shows the sophistication of the theology taught to young boys:
The grammatical construction is clear. However where it says the Son himself is
one true God and the Holy Spirit pours forth, that is proceeds, from both, namely
the Father and the Son, this confounds the sect of the Greeks who assert that the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. Therefore among the Romans they
are called schismatics. (Rouen 1506: fol. 55r)

Boys taught in these schools, of which over a hundred are known from before
1560, would thus have learned theology from the liturgy and also been formed in
the method of liturgical interpretation. There are no extant vernacular commen-
taries on the liturgy for the laity such as the English Lay Folks Mass Book but
liturgical interpretation would have been a major tool for theological and moral
formation as the 1549 Provincial Council followed other Catholic Reform initia-
tives on the continent by recommending that sermons should explain the meaning
of the Church’s liturgy. Liturgical interpretation is also found in Archbishop
Hamilton’s vernacular Catechism of 1552. The Catechism taught that water was
the ‘matter’ of baptism because of its ‘significatioun’ of washing (from sin) and the
pouring of water or dipping three times represented Christ’s burial by which the
Christian is raised from sin to new life. On the Eucharist, the elements, bread and
wine mixed with water, were said to symbolize nourishment, strengthening, and
making glad; they also ‘signifie and betaken the unitie of the mistik body of our
salviour Christ’ as they are made of many grains of corn and grapes. The mixing of
water with the wine was said to signify the union of humanity with Christ by
baptism through the merits of Christ’s passion. The Catechism provided a coher-
ent and simple system of liturgical interpretation, close to Scripture and drawn
from the late medieval educational tradition in which each element was given one
symbolic interpretation (or at most two) as opposed to the variety of interpret-
ations found in the Rationale.
Many Scottish clergy did not progress beyond a grammar school education
followed by an apprenticeship with a priest but they would have been formed in
liturgical theology and recent studies of Scotland, like Leonard Boyle’s studies
of England, have refuted contemporary complaints by Catholic and Protestant
Reformers of the low educational standards of the Scottish lower clergy
     57

(Holmes 2015: 92–5). Archibald Hay noted in 1540 that candidates for ordination
were examined by an archdeacon and ecclesial legislation prescribed what priests
should know. Some of this was contained in pastoral manuals. Andrew Forman,
archbishop of St Andrews (1516–21), prescribed that each curate in his diocese
should possess the Manipulus Curatorum of Guide de Monte Rochen. Four such
manuals survive from pre-1560 Scotland and three of them contain liturgical
interpretation in commentaries on the vestments and order of Mass. Two copies
of a book written to assist the examination of ordinands have survived from this
period, the Examen ordinandorum of the Franciscan Johann Wild (1497–1554),
one of which belonged to William Gordon, bishop of Aberdeen 1545–77. The
examination in the Examen was in three parts for each major order, subdeacon,
deacon, and priest; it includes an allegorical commentary on the vestments and the
last part of each was an allegorical commentary on the Mass, which was described
in these words:
What is the mass? It is the contemplation of the passion of Christ and like a
representation (quasi representatio). For from the introit to the canon the advent
of Christ and his life up to the passion are represented; from the canon to the
completion, the passion; from the completion to the blessing, the burial and
resurrection. The blessing signifies (significat) the very blessing of the ascending
Christ. (Wild 1554: fol. 297r)

The work ends by directing ordinands to the Rationale, which suggests that the
copy chained in Aberdeen Cathedral choir was indeed for educational use. We do
not know how well this reflected actual practice in Scotland but, when read with
the other evidence, it does suggest that this form of liturgical theology was a major
part of priestly formation.
The higher clergy were mainly university educated even if not all graduated.
Liturgical interpretation did not have the prominent role in the universities that it
had in schools but it was still present as seen in the copies of the Rationale in
university chapels and the inclusion of liturgical interpretation in the theology
curriculum. The main site for this was in Book 4 of the Sentences of Peter
Lombard, especially distinctions 12 and 13 on the Eucharist. Liturgical interpret-
ation is found in the sixteen surviving commentaries on Book 4 known to have
been in Scotland before 1560 and in the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas
(ST 3a, q.83, a.4–5) and we can see it deployed by the Scottish theologian John
Major (1467–1550) in a supplementary question entitled ‘how does one celebrate
[the sacrament]’ in his Commentary on Book 4 of the Sentences. There is some
liturgical interpretation in the 1512 edition, for example that the corporal sym-
bolized Christ’s shroud, but in the 1519 edition he adds more, for example that the
chalice and paten symbolized Christ’s tomb and the stone covering it and an
allegorical commentary on the priest’s six vestments which represented the
passion of Christ in the way taught by Durandus. At the end of this lecture,
58   

however, Major concluded, ‘I think that seeking the mystical sense of these things
is worthless, it is the sort of thing which anyone can make up according to his own
wishes’. This may reflect humanist cynicism or just be a pedagogue’s joke but it
does not mark a serious repudiation of the method. Major not only included
liturgical interpretation in his lectures, he added it to a later edition and thus
clearly thought it should have a place in the theological curriculum. This was not a
central place and it may be that some saw it as more suited to the lower curriculum
of the grammar school. It did, however, remain part of the intellectual apparatus
of high culture as we see the humanist Archibald Hay using an allegorical
interpretation of the cardinal’s vestments in his Panegyricus in honour of Cardinal
Beaton (Paris 1540, fols. 51r–54v). Outside the universities, a well-annotated
Rationale from the Abbey of Dunfermline, marginalia revealing liturgical interests
in a bible belonging to a monk of Pluscarden, and the use of liturgical interpret-
ation in a sermon by a monk of Kinloss suggest that liturgical theology was a part
of Scottish monastic life in the sixteenth century (Holmes 2015: 105–6, 181–4) but
we are not able to go further than this.

Alexander Galloway, a Theologian in Stone

The great reforming bishop of Aberdeen, William Elphinstone (1431–1514),

gathered a group of learned clerics who collaborated in the composition of the
Aberdeen Breviary (1507) and, from their books and benefactions, had a strong
interest in the liturgy. Among these ‘Aberdeen liturgists’ was Canon Alexander
Galloway (d. 1552) who produced a fine inventory of the liturgical furnishings of
St Machar’s Cathedral but is best known for a series of church buildings and
furnishings which express the theology of liturgical interpretation in stone.
In his prebendal church of St Michael’s, Kinkell he erected a crucifix plaque
dated 1525 and a font, both with his initials. The font is carved with symbols
of Mary and Jesus emphasizing the passion: Mary’s heart pierced by a sword, a
cross with the crown of thorns and the five wounds or arma Christi. Few pre-
Reformation fonts survive in Scotland but a number share this passion symbolism,
a crucifixion on the Eynort and Fowlis Easter fonts and a crucifixion with passion
symbols at Meigle. St Paul taught with reference to the symbolism and meaning of
the baptismal rite ‘Do you not know that all of us who are baptized in Christ Jesus
are baptized in his death’ (Romans 6:3) and we find Durandus teaching and
interpreting this in words (Rationale 6.83) whereas the fonts teach the same
theology by images. The plaque, no doubt originally brightly coloured, uses the
same liturgical theology to interpret the Mass. At the bottom of the plaque is an
altar with a priest on one side and what are perhaps souls in purgatory on the
other. The altar crucifix is huge and has Mary on one side and on the other
an angel collecting Christ’s blood in a chalice of the same design as on the altar.
     59

An early report speaks of sockets for wires linking Christ’s wounds to the chalices
and the holy souls. This is a theological interpretation of the Mass in visible form,
recalling the popular contemporary portrayals of the ‘Mass of St Gregory’ such as
that in the Arbuthnot Hours (produced between 1471 and 1484). Liturgical
commentaries interpret all the elements of the rite of Mass as a re-presentation
of the passion and the outer and inner aspects of that are shown here by the
priest and altar and by the crucifix together with the efficacy of Mary’s prayers.
The souls in purgatory and the viewer are the beneficiaries of this and the placing
of the image, probably by an altar against the rood screen and in full view of the
congregation, suggests that it was designed to teach the people.
Galloway was also responsible for a series of six surviving decorated sacrament
houses, for reserving the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, in the north-east of
Scotland dated between 1524 and 1551. The use of an angels with a monstrance
motif on a sacrament house of c.1450 at St Andrews may have been an anti-
Hussite device (in 1433 a Hussite was burnt in the city) and Galloway’s use of
the same image at Auchindoir, Kintore, Cullen, Deskford, and perhaps Fintray
and Pluscarden had an anti-Protestant edge. The use of texts from John 6 at
Cullen and Deskford and the words ‘Hic est corpus dominicum’ (here is the
Lord’s body) at Auchindoir, all proclaiming the real presence, suggest that this
was so. This assertive liturgical theology existed alongside a more subtle form of
material liturgical interpretation. Galloway built a bridge and chapels for a
hospital and the Observant Franciscans at Aberdeen but he probably also rebuilt
his prebendal church. It has the proportions 1:4 which are the same as those of
the visionary temple in Ezekiel 40–1. This is unlikely to be coincidence as
Durandus taught that the church building takes its shape from the Old Testa-
ment Temple and a study of a number of churches in Scotland reveals that many,
such as King’s College chapel Aberdeen, Iona Nunnery, St Salvator’s Chapel,
St Andrews, Crossraguel Abbey, and Glasgow Cathedral choir, follow the pro-
portions of Solomon or Ezekiel’s Temple, as do most of the surviving medieval
chapels at Oxford and Cambridge. This is not true of many parish churches in
Scotland and Ireland and so patrons formed in liturgical interpretation may have
been responsible. Rosslyn Chapel has the same plan as Glasgow Cathedral nave
and this follows exactly the Ezekiel plan as it is drawn in contemporary copies of
Nicholas of Lyra’s Postillae and Richard of St Victor’s Commentary on Ezekiel.
Thus it seems that liturgical interpretation determined the form of Scottish
churches and even the monstrance-bearing angels on the sacrament houses
may have represented the cherubim over the Ark in the temple’s Holy of Holies
(Holmes 2015: 125–36).
Contemporary written evidence proves that the design of James VI’s 1594 new
Chapel Royal at Stirling was based on Solomon’s Temple, but this was in a long
tradition of Scottish church design, influenced by liturgical interpretation, before
the Scottish Protestant Reformation (Holmes 2015: 116).
60   

Catholic and Protestant Reform

Liturgical interpretation was part of the currents of Catholic Reform in Scotland

before 1560 as seen with the Aberdeen Liturgists and in the 1549 Provincial
Council and 1552 vernacular Catechism which were part of the Reform pro-
gramme of Archbishop Hamilton. This was typical of the ‘humanist’ type of
Catholic Reform found in Johann Gropper’s Enchiridion and the Canons of the
1536 Council of Cologne in Germany, and the 1537 Bishops’ Book, 1543 King’s
Book and unpublished liturgical official commentary of 1540–3, Ceremonies to be
used in the church of England, and Thomas Watson’s 1558 Holsome and Catholyke
Doctryne in England under Henry VIII and Mary (Holmes 2015, 154–8). These
works used liturgical interpretation with a clear educational intent and it was of
the type found in the catechetical tradition with one or at most two interpretations
per liturgical action. The Council of Trent only used this type of liturgical theology
once when it related the mixed chalice to the blood and water from the side of
Christ in chapter seven of the Decree on the Sacrifice of the Mass and it is largely
absent from the 1556 catechism of Peter Canisius (translated into Scots by Adam
King in 1588) and the 1566 official Roman Catechism.
In Scotland, although the stone sacrament houses show that the sacraments
were a site of conflict, the liturgy only became central to the battle between
Catholic and Protestant Reformers through the influence of John Knox from the
late 1540s. This was rooted in the Swiss Reformed theology imported by George
Wishart (c.1513–46). Knox aggressively promoted two principles that caused this:
an insistence on total abstention from idolatrous worship, as in Calvin’s campaign
against the Nicodemites, and on an exclusive scriptural principle of worship. Knox
presented the latter in a 1550 sermon preached before Bishop Tunstall of Durham:
‘All worship, honour or service invented by the human brain in the religion of
God, without God’s express commandment, is idolatry’, and he based it on a
composite text from Deuteronomy, ‘All that the Lord thy God commands thee to
do, that do thou to the Lord thy God: add nothing to it; diminish nothing from it’
(Deuteronomy 12:32; 12:8). This Calvinist principle is found in the 1560 Scots
Confession, First Book of Discipline and 1581 Negative Confession as well as in
other Reformed texts such as the 1561 Belgic Confession and 1563 Heidelberg
Catechism, although man-made ceremonies in conformity with Scriptures are
tolerated by the 1560 Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession approved by
the General Assembly in 1566, and the preface to the Book of Common Order
(Holmes 2015: 164). Because of this, Protestant controversialists attacked most
ceremonies of the Latin liturgy and Catholics had to defend them. In a 1547
disputation at St Andrews between Knox and the Catholic Reformers John
Winram (who later joined the Protestants) and Alexander Arbuckle, three of the
nine concerned these ceremonies and Winram began his defence with these, using
liturgical interpretation and the key verb ‘to signify’,
     61

It is in faith that the ceremonies are commanded, and they have proper
significations to help our faith as the hards [rough cloth] in baptism signify the
roughness of the law, and the oil the softness of God’s mercy. And, likewise, every
one of the ceremonies has a godly signification.⁴

In his 1550 sermon, printed as A Vindication that the Sacrifice of the Mass is
Idolatry, Knox attacks allegorical interpretation of the words of consecration in
the Mass and the priestly vestments.
On the Catholic side, in a flurry of polemical works published between 1561
and 1565, Ninian Winzet used liturgical interpretation in his The buke of
fourscoir-thre questions (Antwerp, 1563) and Quintin Kennedy, abbot of Cross-
raguel, defended the Mass and liturgical ceremonies against the Knoxian view of
liturgy in his polemical works deploying the methods of liturgical interpretation.
An appendix to his Ane Compendious Ressonyng took the form of a liturgical
commentary (Kennedy 1964: 174–83) which, by the order of its contents, seems to
be responding to Knox’s 1550 Vindication. In it Kennedy teaches that the sign of
the Cross recalls Christ’s victory; raising hands in prayer in the liturgy recalls
Moses in Exodus 17; the elevation of the host at Mass causes one to remember
Christ on the cross; the adoration of the uplifted host recalls the adoration of the
Magi; and the priest’s vestments represent Christ in his passion. In all this, the
prime purpose of vestments and ceremonies for Kennedy was to remember such
things as the passion of Christ because without such outward aids one would even
forget God. These outward rites were particularly fitted to assist the limitations of
human nature and by showing that they were legitimate and useful, Kennedy
hopes to strike a fatal blow at Knox’s critique. Knox in his turn was eager to
engage, as in Kennedy and Knox’s 1562 disputation at Maybole, we see him trying
to divert Kennedy from the substance of the sacraments to their ceremonies.
These debates and texts show that Knox’s decision to reject much of the Latin
liturgy as idolatrous rather than indifferent propelled liturgical theology to the
centre of the Reformation debate in Scotland. David Fergusson’s Ane Answer to
ane Epistle by Renat Benedict . . . to John Knox (1563) provides elements of a
Protestant anti-liturgical commentary, for example interpreting the clerical ton-
sure as the mark of the Beast, but the best example on the Protestant side is a 1564
poem, De Papistarum superstitiosis ineptiis (On the superstitious stupidities of the
Papists) by Patrick Adamson, who had been sent to plant Protestant congrega-
tions in the Aberdeen area. In it he gives an anti-liturgical commentary on the
Catholic liturgy with marginal references to Durandus but also applies the same
method to the pared-back liturgy of the Reformed church in a section ‘On the
body of Christ in the Supper’:

⁴ John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, 2 vols., ed. William Croft Dickinson (London:
Nelson, 1949), 1.88.
62   

Why therefore is it accustomed to be called ‘the body’?

Because mystic signs often take their names from the things signified.
We do not, however, thus confess to you bare signs;
But being united to the Word of God they do whatever they signify
And we feed on the holy body of Christ and by faith grow together
into one body.

The second group of Scottish polemical pamphlets published in the period

1577–81 covered the sacraments but did not include liturgical interpretation,
but the acquisition of copies of Catholic liturgical commentaries by Andrew
Melville, the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and the émigré Roman
Catholic Colleges in Paris and Madrid in the next half-century (Holmes 2015: 194,
256, 287) demonstrated a continued interest as did the Protestant appropriation of
its method indicated by Adamson’s poem.

Reformed Liturgical Theology; Adamson,

Bruce, and Ane Breif Gathering

The type of liturgical theology which included the luxurious growth of interpret-
ation found in the Rationale had its roots in the New Testament sacramental
principle by which invisible spiritual things are shown by visible signs such as
bread and wine. These visible signs then need to be interpreted, as Paul does in 1
Corinthians 11:26–30 and Romans 6:3. Although contemporary polemic made
Catholic and Reformed liturgy in Scotland seem radically opposed activities, they
were both rooted in New Testament commands and so it is not surprising that, as
Adamson’s poem demonstrates, liturgical interpretation was found on both sides.
Many of the early Scottish Protestant Reformers such as John Winram and John
Douglas, were formerly Catholic Reformers or at least formed in the flourishing
spiritual and intellectual culture of Scottish Catholic Reform in St Andrews and
elsewhere. The pared-down, educational nature of the liturgical interpretation
practised in this environment may also have been easy to translate into a Prot-
estant culture, as is found in Calvin’s Institutes where such interpretation is
educational (4.10.12), leads people to Christ (4.10.14, 15, 29), and helps one
understand the visible sign ordained by Christ (4.14.4). To this may be added a
desire to distinguish Scottish Reformed sacramental theology from Zwinglian, as
the 1560 Confession twice condemns those who claim that the Scottish Kirk
teaches ‘Sacramentis to be nathing ellis bot nakit and bair signis’, proposing an
Augustinian interpretation that moves from the sign (signum) to that which is
signified (res).
There were different Protestant ways of using the Rationale and its tradition of
liturgical theology. Its allegorical excesses were attacked, as Luther had done, but
     63

as seen in Adamson’s poem this was more an attack on the Latin liturgy than on
the method. Another way is expressed in a note in his own copy of the Rationale
by Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury 1559–75:
Writers of this kind can give the reader abundant evidence about what was the
form of doctrine throughout the whole church at the time when this author
flourished, and whether for this reason it is to be preserved.⁵

The Rationale is thus no longer an authoritative compendium of a tradition which

can be used creatively in new situations but a relic of a past age of the Church
which could be used both as an example of false doctrine or as a quarry for facts
about the past. It was used in these ways by Adamson and by Scottish theologians
in the ecclesial debates of the first half of the seventeenth century (Holmes 2016).
A third way was the silent appropriation of its method to interpret the Reformed
liturgy.
Ane Breif Gathering of the Halie Signes, Sacrifices and Sacramentis Institutit of
God sen the Creation of the Warlde . . . (Edinburgh, 1565), a translation from the
French, was printed as a response to a treatise by Ninian Winzet. It is a Reformed
liturgical commentary in three parts. The first argues that sacred signs ordained by
God have always been corrupted by men, the second, called ‘our litil treatise of ye
Messe’, is an anti-commentary on the Mass and vestments, and the third a
commentary on the Reformed liturgy. This was rooted in Augustine’s epistemol-
ogy of signs which, following Calvin, was seen as a concession to the embodied
limitations of fallen human nature. It is clearly stated that these sacred signs are
few and need interpretation and, although the language is clearly Reformed, the
book ends with an allusion to the Eucharist as a sign of unity symbolized by
the one loaf made of many grains found in the Didache, Cyprian, Augustine, and
the 1552 Catechism:
It behuifs us to be reulit after the halie interpretatioun of our halie Doctour Iesus
Christ, and of his Apostils, to honour and reverence his halie sacramentis,
institutit of him be outward signes, to lift our Spirit to hevin, to comprehend
that quhilk is be the signes representit . . . Lat us than be assurit in Iesus Christ, as
members of his bodie, lat us reduce us all to unitie, to communicat the self
same bread, and drink the self same wine, made of monie cuirnis, unitit and
knit together . . . speciallie in his halie Sacramentis, qukilk he hes left to us as
plegis . . . for memorie and remembrance of the death and Passioun of our
salviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

This teaching is also found in that script for Reformed worship, the Book of
Common Order which ordered that passages of Scripture about the passion of

⁵ Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge SP 51 (1503), title page.

64   

Christ should be read as the bread and wine were consumed, explaining it in an
Augustinian manner:
To the intene that our eyes and senses may not onely be occupiede in these
outwarde signes of bread and wine, which are called the visible woorde: but that
our hartes and myndes also may be fully fixed in the contemplation of the lordes
death, which is by this holy Sacrament represented.
(Maxwell 1931: 126–7, 139–40)
As with Catholic Reform, this mode of interpretation is also prominent in the
Scottish Reformed catechetical tradition. It is found in Calvin’s 1541 Catechism
which was printed with the Book of Common Order from 1564 to 1611 and those
in Latin or Scots by Patrick Adamson (1572, 1581), Robert Pont (1573), and John
Craig (1581 and 1592). These all frequently use the verbs to signify, represent, or
figure. They generally concentrate on the material signs, as bread signifies spiritual
nourishment, but Craig’s Catechism displays a special interest in the liturgical
action, for example:
What signifieth that breaking of that bread? The breaking and suffering of
Christis bodie upon the cross / What meaneth the powring out of the wyne?
The shedding of his blood even to the death / Whereunto then doth the Supper
lede us? Directly to the Crosse, and death of Christ . . . / What meaneth the
giving of that bread and wyne? The giving of Christis bodie and bloode to our
soules . . . What signifyeth the taking of that breade and wyne? The spirituall
receaving of Christis bodie in our soules / What meaneth our corporall
eating and drinking here? Our spirituall feading upon the bodie and bloode of
Christ . . . / What meaneth the neare coniunction we have with meat and drinke?
That spirituall union, quhilk we have with Jesus Christ / What signifieth the
confort quhilke we receave of meat and drinke? The spirituall frutes, quhilk we
receave of Christ / Why is bothe meat and drink given here? To testifie, that
Christ onlie is the whole foode of our soules. (Craig 1883: 78–9)

Robert Bruce (1554–1631) used this type of interpretation of the Reformed liturgy
in the first three of his Sermons vpon the Sacrament of the Lords Supper printed at
Edinburgh in 1590. He distinguishes between two types of sacramental signs, the
‘elemental’ or material and the ‘ceremonial’ action and, like Craig, gives special
attention to the latter:
Christ is als bissie working inwardlie in your saull as the minister is working
outwardlie toward your bodie. Look how bissie the minister is in breaking that
bread, in pouring out that wine, in giving that bread and wine to thee; als bissie is
Christ in breaking his awin body to thee, and in giving thee the juyce of his awin
bodie after a spirituall and invisible manner. (Bruce 1843: 27, cf. 43)

He even teaches that the separate breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine
signify the separation of Christ’s body and blood in his death so that the fruits of
     65

the passion may be applied to the soul, an interpretation favoured by his Roman
Catholic contemporaries such as the Jesuit Gabriel Vasquez (1549–1604) (Bruce
1843: 43; Holmes 2015: 202–3). Adamson and Craig’s special interest in liturgical
interpretation may have been influenced by their formation in Scottish Catholic
Reform circles, at St Andrews or in the Dominicans respectively, and by their
controversies with Catholic Reformers in the diocese of Aberdeen, who had a
special interest in the liturgy, but this was not so for Bruce. A foundational figure
for the Scottish Presbyterian, Puritan, and Covenanting tradition, his theological
education was under the Melvilles at St Andrews and he made it clear in the
sermons that the roots of his interpretation were Augustinian. He said the
Catholics went wrong because they were not sufficiently Augustinian and directed
them to Book 3 of De doctrina christiana (Bruce 1843: 86). He summed up his
own principle of interpretation in words that could have been written by
Durandus:
Every signe and ceremonie hes the awin spirituall signification, sa that there is
not a ceremonie in this haill action that wants the awin spirituall signification.
(Bruce 1843: 43)

Ecumenical and Historiographical Implications

There is thus a continuous tradition of liturgical theology in Scotland which goes

back to the earliest evidence and was still lively at the dawn of the seventeenth
century. It interpreted public worship in an allegorical way rooted in Augustine’s
epistemology of signs and in examples from Scripture. In medieval and early
modern Catholicism it was a flexible mode of discourse, for example being read by
learned clerics in complex commentaries, used by scholastic theologians like John
Major and humanists like Archibald Hay, and taught to non-graduate ordinands
and the laity in parishes. It also influenced religious material culture including the
design of churches. It was not, however, unchallenged, and was criticized by
writers from Florus of Lyons in the ninth century, through Albert the Great in
the thirteenth, to Erasmus, Luther, and John Major in the sixteenth. This method
was brought to the forefront of religious controversy in the middle of the sixteenth
century by John Knox’s promotion of an exclusive scriptural principle of worship
which shifted interest to the disputed ceremonies of the Latin liturgy. As the
theology of both main parties was rooted in Scripture and Augustine, the forms of
liturgical interpretation used by Catholics found a home in the Reformed Church,
both in an anti-commentary on the Latin liturgy and as a commentary, in the
catechetical style favoured by Catholic Reformers, on the Reformed liturgy.
This was certainly ‘Scottish’ theology. It was theology (an attempt to under-
stand Christian revelation mediated by the sacred liturgy using the methods of
66   

contemporary biblical interpretation) and it was practised and taught in Scotland,

but how Scottish was it? Most of the treatises used were from outside Scotland and
there is little original writing by Scots before the religious revolution of 1559–60:
just the 1552 Catechism, fragments by Archibald Hay and John Major, allusions in
marginalia, and hints in stone. The crisis of 1559–60 did, however, reveal that this
way of thinking theologically was part of the common intellectual world of
educated Scots and it had an important part in early polemical writing. It was
its use in the Reformed Kirk in catechetics, anti-Catholic polemics, and above all
in interpreting the simple ceremonies of the Reformed liturgy in catechisms and
Bruce’s sermons that evidence is found of its importance in Scottish theology. This
is a tribute to the roots of Scottish Reformed theology in the flourishing intellec-
tual world of Scottish Catholic Reform. The importance of Calvin and continental
Reformed works such as that translated as Ane Breif Gathering show that even
here this was no native growth but, at least in part, an adaptation of continental
theology. It is, however, unfair to expect originality because Christian theology
is always an appropriation of the revelation given in Christ, but one may ask
if there is any distinct Scottish flavour. The importance of this way of interpret-
ing the liturgy was certainly a distinctive mark of Scottish theological discourse
in this period but one emphasis that survived the Protestant Reformation was
perhaps an interest in the liturgical action itself, rather than in just the words
and material elements of worship. This was particularly found in John Craig’s
1581 Catechism (Holmes 2015: 172–4). It is possible that this can be traced back
to the Aberdeen Liturgists around Elphinstone and their influence on Catholic
Reform in St Andrews and also to the influence polemical encounters with such
liturgically-formed Catholic Reformers had on Scottish Protestants such as
Adamson and Craig.
This continuity warns us against taking the polemical dichotomies of the
Reformation at face value. The Scottish Reformation, seen historically, was
more a dispute between Latin, mainly Augustinian, Christians than a war
between light and darkness. The protagonists had more in common that they
would allow. A common education using common authorities was part of this
and perhaps, in addition to the adversarial personalities of such as John Knox and
a belief that salvation was at stake, it was a common formation in the method of
the scholastic disputation that encouraged the adoption of extreme positions. In
reality all sides continued to live in a common thought-world of which this
method of liturgical interpretation was a part. It may be that the Reformed
commentators were more faithful to the Catholic tradition of liturgical interpret-
ation and its Augustinian roots than was contemporary Roman Catholicism. In
the Tridentine Catholic world, emphasis on the ‘res’ of the Eucharist against the
attacks of the Protestants, especially an emphasis on the presence and sacrifice
defined at Trent, collapsed the distance between sign and what is signified to leave
no room for the complex and polyvalent web of interpretations found in
     67

Durandus or even from the simplified interpretations of the catechetical tradition.

This may explain the declining interest in liturgical interpretation in the post-
Tridentine Roman Catholic world, noted above in the Scottish polemical pamph-
lets published between 1577 and 1581 and witnessed by the dramatic decline in
numbers of liturgical commentaries published from the early seventeenth century
(Holmes 2015: 45–7).
In addition to historical and theological conclusions suggesting a new way of
understanding the Scottish Reformation (as outlined in Holmes 2015: 206–12),
the study of liturgical interpretation in Renaissance Scotland does have some
ecumenical implications for today. All the main ecclesiological traditions in
Scotland, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic, share a common origin
in the Catholic Reform movements of late medieval and early modern Scotland.
This common Catholic identity is reflected in the official formularies of the
churches which affirm their Catholicity, but it is not sufficiently appreciated by
their members. All these traditions also share as part of their patrimony the method
of liturgical interpretation outlined above. With the late twentieth-century ecumen-
ical consensus on public worship reflected in the 1969 Missale Romanum, 1982
Scottish Liturgy, and 1994 Book of Common Order, there is perhaps room for a
common retrieval in theology and catechetics of this method of understanding
worship, rooted in the common tradition, which in the past was applied to radically
diverse liturgies. As a common method of interpretation survived radical division,
so it may enable a rediscovered unity rooted in common worship.

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Holmes, Stephen Mark (2016). ‘ “Out of their Reasonless Rationalls”: Liturgical

Interpretation in the Scottish Reformations’, in John McCallum (ed.), Scotland’s
Long Reformation: New Perspectives on Scottish Religion, c.1500–1660. St Andrews
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Cornelis Henricus Kuipers. Nijmegen: Gebr. Janssen.
Maxwell, W. D. (1931). John Knox’s Genevan Service Book, 1556. Edinburgh: Oliver &
Boyd.
Rouen (1506). Expositio Sequentiarum. Edinburgh: Printed for Andro Myllar.
Wild, Johann (1554). Examen ordinandorum. Antwerp: apud Jean Bellere.
 6
Duns Scotus
Richard Cross

Accustomed as we are to reading scholastic theology through a historiography

that was the invention of the nineteenth century, we frequently assume that the
Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas (c.1224–74) was the leading thinker of
the high middle ages. Given this, it is not without irony that the nineteenth
century represented a time of genuine ignorance and forgetfulness of medieval
thought, a nadir in the history of ideas (see Inglis 1998). And I very much doubt
that our nineteenth-century way of thinking of the narrative of medieval theology
would have been at all recognizable to (Catholic) theologians of the seventeenth
century, or (even more so) of the fourteenth, at least outside the confines of the
Dominican order. For these theologians, the towering genius of the post-patristic
era, the most creative, original, and influential theologian and philosopher, was
John Duns the Scot (Bak 1956).
Duns Scotus (c.1266–1308) was born in the borderland town of Duns. At a
young age he joined the Franciscan order, and sometime during the 1280s was
sent to study at Oxford. We know that he was ordained in Northampton (in the
same diocese as Oxford) in 1291. During these years he wrote (presumably as
teaching material for use within the Oxford convent) questions on some of
Aristotle’s logical works (Duns Scotus 1997–2006, vols. 1–2) and the De anima
(Duns Scotus 1997–2006, vol. 5), and perhaps spent some time in Paris, at the
time the main centre of philosophical and theological learning in Europe. In
1298–9 Scotus delivered his lectures on the four books of Peter Lombard’s
Sentences, one of the requirements placed on a Bachelor of Theology in order
for him to ‘incept’ as a Doctor of Theology. Two books of these lectures—the
Lectura—survive (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, vols. 16–19). In 1300 we know that
Scotus was working on revisions to his lectures to produce a polished copy—the
Ordinatio—in preparation for publication (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, vols. 1–14), a
task that remained in progress at the time of his death. In 1302 or thereabouts
Scotus was sent to Paris to lecture on the Sentences for a second time, in order to
incept at the more senior of the two principal universities. These lectures survive
in a series of student reports: the Reportatio (Duns Scotus 1639, vol. 11; Duns
Scotus 2004–8; Duns Scotus 2016). Meanwhile, Scotus continued working on his
Ordinatio, supplementing the earlier Oxford material with parts of his Paris

Richard Cross, Duns Scotus. In: The History of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to
Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0006
70  

lectures at points on which his thinking had developed in the few years separating
the works. Matters of chronology are hard to ascertain, but as far as I can make out
the material in books 1 and 2 of the Ordinatio by and large pre-dates the parallel
texts in the Reportatio (and Scotus’ attempts to supplement the Ordinatio material
with insertions from the Reportatio have sadly been obscured by the decision of
the modern editors of the Ordinatio to remove the added texts from the body of
their edition and place them in footnotes); the material in books 3 and 4 of the
Ordinatio post-dates the parallel texts in the Reportatio.
Scotus incepted in theology at Paris in 1305, and during his time as a ‘Regent
Master’ at Paris held a quodlibetal disputation—a disputation in which any topic
for debate could be proposed by anyone—one of his duties as Regent Master
(Duns Scotus 1639, vol. 12). In 1307, having served in Paris for two years, Scotus
was sent to Cologne to teach in the Franciscan studium generale there, and he
died in Cologne a year later, around the age of 42. In addition to the works just
mentioned, Scotus also authored an (incomplete) set of questions on the first nine
books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Duns Scotus 1997–2006, vols. 3–4), presided
over various in-house disputed questions in the Franciscan convents in Oxford
and Paris, and a produced a systematic treatise devoted to an attempt to prove
God’s existence (De primo principio), culling and arranging material from relevant
parts of the Ordinatio.
As should be apparent from this brief account of Scotus’ life and work, Aristotle
was a significant source for Scotus’ thinking. This was par for the course in the
later middle ages—some of the basic principles of Aristotelian philosophy, novel
in the twelfth and early thirteenth century, had become by the end of that latter
century central parts of the theological and philosophical endeavour. But Scotus’
Aristotle was inflected through another philosopher who was just as important for
Scotus as Aristotle was: the Muslim philosopher Avicenna, whose work owed a
great deal to the Neoplatonic tradition. Neoplatonism came to thirteenth-century
thinkers from other, Christian, sources too: in particular, Augustine, and John of
Damascus. And Scotus was highly attentive to the views of earlier medieval
theologians—in particular, Anselm and Scotus’ fellow Scot Richard of St Victor.
This is in sharp contrast to the approach of Aquinas. Commentators have over the
past three quarters of a century drawn attention to Platonic elements in Aquinas’
thought. This presence, for a scholastic, is standard. What is startling about
Aquinas compared with his theological contemporaries is the extent of his Aris-
totelianism, and the influence of Aristotle’s medieval Islamic philosophical com-
mentator Averroes.
But if Scotus’ tools are, relative to Aquinas’, rather traditional, the edifice that he
constructed is anything but. If one were to try to articulate Scotus’ fundamental
intellectual goal, it would be theoretical generality: that the formal structures of
God (the Trinity) and creatures should be expressible using just the same meta-
physical paraphernalia—in particular, the same theories of unity and distinction.
   71

This approach allows Scotus to demystify the hardest parts of Christian

theology—the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation—explaining them using
analyses that can be derived more or less straightforwardly from the creaturely
realm. Again, Aquinas is a strong contrast: Aquinas would have supposed that
such a striving for theoretical generality was wrong-headed from the very outset,
looking for explanation and clear comprehension where none is to be found.
Central to Scotus’ account of the ontological structure of the created realm is a
sharp distinction between concrete and abstract objects—between items that are
the subjects of non-trivial properties and those properties themselves. As Scotus
sees it, any such item is constituted by a cluster of inseparable features called
‘formalities’. For example, a created substance—say, Socrates—includes at least
two formalities: a humanity, and an individuating feature, a Socrateity (Socrates’
‘haecceity’) unique to Socrates. As Scotus sees it, kind-membership can be
explained only by an item’s in some sense sharing its nature in common with
other things of the same kind—hence, humanity in Socrates must have some kind
of commonality with humanity in Plato (Scotus, Ordinatio II: d. 3, p. 1, q. 1, n. 18
(Duns Scotus 1950–2013, VII: 398)). Humanity is repeatable or, in the technical
Scholastic jargon, divisible (into ‘subjective’ parts—into parts each of which is a
particular human being). If Socrates and Plato had nothing in common, then there
would be no extra-mental basis for their both being human. But what they have in
common cannot be identical in each of them, since they are inseparable from their
natures, and thus the persistence of humanity—in Plato, for example—would
requires Socrates’ persistence too: contrary to the evident fact that Socrates pre-
deceased Plato (Scotus, Ordinatio II: d. 3, p. 1, q. 1, n. 39 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013,
VII: 408)). So what is in common must have some kind of unity that falls short of
identity:

There is some real unity in a thing, less than numerical unity—that is, less than
the proper unity of a singular. This lesser unity belongs to the nature by itself. In
accordance with this unity, which is proper to the nature in itself insofar as it is a
nature, the nature is indifferent to the unity of singularity. Therefore it is not of
itself one by that unity—that is, the unity of singularity. In a way, one can see how
this should be understood from Avicenna, Metaphysics V, where he says ‘Horse-
ness is just horseness. Of itself it is neither one nor several, neither universal nor
particular.’ I understand: It is not from itself one by numerical unity, or several by
the plurality opposite to that unity.
(Scotus, Ordinatio II: d. 3, p. 1, q. 1, nn. 30–1 (Duns Scotus
1950–2013, VII: 402–3; Spade 1994: 63))

What this is supposed to show is that the nature is not intrinsically particular. But
it exists in Socrates as a particular—a particular formality—one that gains its
particularity from something extrinsic to it: Socrates’ haecceity. The nature cannot
explain its particularity, or Socrates’ particularity, since nothing about the nature
72  

itself is particular. What explains particularity must have nothing in common with
anything else (else its particularity would require explaining):
Just as unity in common follows per se on entity in common, so too does any
unity follow per some entity or other. Therefore, absolute unity . . . follows per se
on some per se entity. But it does not follow per se on the entity of the nature,
because that has a certain per se real unity of its own . . . . Therefore, it follows on
some other entity that determines this one. And that other entity makes up
something per se one with the entity of the nature, because the whole to which
this unity belongs is perfect of itself.
Again, every difference among the differing is reduced ultimately to some
items that are diverse primarily. Otherwise there would be no end to what differ.
But individuals [in the same species] differ, properly speaking, because they are
diverse being that are yet something the same [i.e. have something in common].
Therefore their difference is reduced to some items that are diverse primarily.
(Scotus, Ordinatio II: d. 3, p. 1, qq. 5–6, n. 169 (Duns Scotus
1950–2013, VII: 474–5; Spade 1994: 101))

So Socrates is a cluster that includes at least two inseparable formalities: Socrates’

nature and Socrates’ haecceity.
Scotus arrives at this view by rejecting alternative theories. The context is the
individuation of angels. According to an important list of propositions con-
demned by the bishop of Paris in 1277, the view associated with Aquinas and
others that there could be no more than one angel of a given kind, was not to be
held (articles 81, 96, 191 (Piché 1999: 104, 108, 138)). Aquinas’ view derived from
the claim that what individuates particulars in a given kind is matter: angels are
immaterial, so there cannot be more than one in a kind (Aquinas, De ente et
essentia: c. 4 (Aquinas 1882–n.d.: XLIII, 376)). Scotus thinks that there are
insuperable philosophical objections, as well as philosophical ones, to the thought
that matter individuates co-specific substances. In particular, matter ‘is not of
itself a this’: it is stuff, and not intrinsically indivisible. So it cannot do the required
work (Scotus, Ordinatio II: d. 3, p. 1, qq. 5–6, n. 201 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, VII:
490; Spade 1994: 110–11)).
There are two things to note about Scotus’ theory that a material substance
includes two inseparable formalities, a nature and a haecceity: the fact of cluster-
ing, and the fact of the nature’s divisibility, such that there are as many humanities
as there are human beings. As Scotus sees it, the analysis of the doctrine of the
Trinity—as three persons sharing the same nature—exhibits the first of these
features, the clustering, but not the second: the co-extension of natures and
persons. As Scotus puts it, the divine nature is ‘communicable without division’:
there are three divine persons that really share one and the same nature (Scotus,
Ordinatio I: d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4, n. 381 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, II: 346)).
‘Communicable’ is the technical term for being shareable: created natures and
   73

the divine nature are shareable (by their instantiations), and are really the same
as their instantiations without being identical with them; but only created natures
are divisible (Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4, nn. 379–81 (Duns Scotus
1950–2013, II: 345–6)).
What about the clustering? According to Scotus, the divine essence is common
to three persons—supposita, in the scholastic jargon—whereas the persons are not
thus common. So there needs to be some explanation for their non-commonality
over and above the divine essence:
Here there remains a further difficulty. For it does not seem intelligible that the
essence is not multiplied and the supposita are many unless some distinction is
posited between the notion of essence and the notion of suppositum. And
therefore, to preserve the compossibility just mentioned [viz. that there are
many persons and just one essence], we need to examine this distinction. And
I say, without asserting it in prejudice to some better opinion, that the notion by
which a suppositum is incommunicable—call it ‘a’—and the notion of essence as
essence—call it ‘b’—have some distinction preceding every act of the intellect,
whether created or uncreated. And I prove it thus: the first suppositum [viz. the
Father] really or formally has communicable entity, otherwise [the Father] could
not communicate it; and [the Father] also has incommunicable entity, otherwise
[the Father] could not be a suppositum positively and really.
(Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4, nn. 388–90
(Duns Scotus 1950–2013, II: 349–50))

So each divine person is a cluster of divine essence (numerically the same in each
person, unlike a created nature) and ‘the notion by which a suppositum is
incommunicable’—known technically as a ‘personal property’. Note the parallel
between the clustering in created substance (nature + haecceity vs. essence +
personal property), and note too the identity of technical apparatus involved in
the two analyses—all instances of Scotus’ aim at theoretical generality. (There is
no significant difference between nature and essence here, just different terms in
different contexts.)
Given this, it is no surprise that Scotus should prefer the definition of ‘person’
found in Richard of St Victor—‘incommunicable existence of intellectual
nature’—to that proposed by Boethius—‘individual substance of rational nature’
(Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 23, q. un., n. 15 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, V: 356–7)). The
divine persons are not individuals, albeit that the divine essence is; and the divine
persons are not communicable, albeit that the divine essence is (Scotus, Ordinatio
I: d. 23, q. un., n. 15 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, V: 357)).
As this discussion shows, Scotus in positing distinct formalities in a divine
person significantly relaxes the constraints on divine simplicity traditionally found
in Augustinian and Western theology. He himself makes just the same kind of
distinction between God’s essence and attributes—God includes (for example) a
74  

wisdom-formality and a goodness-formality, in addition to the divine essence

itself: these are part of the cluster that makes God, and God is a substance the same
as (but non-identical with) each divine person. The reason for the distinction
between wisdom and goodness is that the extensions of these items are different
(fewer things are wise than are good), and this extensional distinction must be
grounded in some kind of intensional one (Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 8. p. 1, q. 4, n.
192 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, VI: 261)). (Scotus expressly appeals to John of
Damascus’ distinction between the divine essence things ‘around the essence’,
and contrasts this with the strong account of divine simplicity that he finds (and
rejects) in Augustine: see Cross 2016.) This argument presupposes that there are
concepts of goodness and wisdom that are equally applicable in divine and
creaturely cases. And this is indeed what Scotus supposes. He reasons that unless
concepts such as these were so applicable, it would be impossible to engage in
theology as a rational argumentative discipline—as, in short, something like an
Aristotelian deductive science of the sort that Scotus and his contemporaries
imagined it to be (and that Scotus imagined the Church Fathers to hold it to be
too) (Scotus, Lectura I: d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1–2, n. 113 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, XVI:
266–7)). And this is his theory of the univocity of being and other such ‘transcen-
dental’ concepts (one, good, true, and pure perfections such as wise) (for the
univocity of being, see Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1–2, nn. 26–55 (Duns
Scotus 1950–2013, III: 18–38); for the transcendentals, see Scotus, Ordinatio I:
d. 8, p. 1, q. 3, nn. 112–15 (IV: 205–7)). Positing the univocity of the concept of
being enabled Scotus to resolve a long-standing dispute on the subject matter of
metaphysics. Aristotle sometimes identifies the subject matter of metaphysics as
being (i.e. substance), and sometimes as God. Positing a univocal concept of being
enables Scotus to posit that the subject matter of metaphysics is the whole
of being, including both God and all material objects (Scotus, Quaestiones super
libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis VI: q. 4, nn. 10–12 (Duns Scotus 1997–2006,
IV: 87–8)). (In Aristotle’s division of the sciences, metaphysics is distinguished
from physics and mathematics: physics studies the physical properties of bodies as
objects that change and move, and mathematics the mathematical properties of
bodies as extended in space.)
It is important not to misinterpret Scotus’ views about univocity, especially
given that misunderstanding is widespread in some currently fashionable theo-
logical metanarratives, such as those proposed by the Radical Orthodoxy theolo-
gians. Scotus is not claiming that these concepts correspond to something really
shared by God and creatures (as a common nature is shared by things of a given
kind). Univocity is a theory about concepts, not one that involves any claim about
what it is about reality (divine and creaturely) that allows it to be represented in
these various ways (i.e. by these various univocal concepts).
It is true, however, that we might reasonably think of Scotus as continuing
the (hyper)-rationalistic theological methodology practised by twelfth-century
   75

theologians such as Anselm, Abelard, and to some extent Richard of St Victor. For
these theologians, not only was it a desideratum to attempt to show as much as
possible of the Christian faith from rational first principles, independent of
revelation; they also believed, to a far greater extent than most thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century theologians, that much or all of it could be so shown. And, as
we shall see, Scotus lives very much within this tradition.
Scotus proposes an argument for God’s existence that bears more than a
passing resemblance to Anselm’s ontological argument. (At one point, he refers
to part of his argument as a ‘colouration’ of the ‘ratio Anselmi’ (Scotus, Ordinatio
I: d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1–2, n. 137 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, II: 208–9)).) The argument is
a modal cosmological argument, from (1) the possibility of something’s being
caused, to (2) the possibility of something’s causing, to (3) the possibility of
something’s being a first cause (via the impossibility of an infinite regress of
causes), to (4) the possibility of something’s being essentially uncaused, to (5)
the actual existence of that possible being. The crucial move from (4) to (5) rests
on the insight that the existence of an essentially uncaused thing is either impos-
sible or necessary, and the steps from (1) to (4) aim to demonstrate that the
existence of this being is possible (i.e. not impossible). (For the whole argument,
see Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1–2, nn. 56–8 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013,
II: 161–5).)
Richard of St Victor had proposed an argument to show that God must be a
Trinity of persons. According to Richard, God’s personal nature, as love, requires
that love to be directed to some perfect (and thus uncreated) object; and given that
there is only one God, that object must be something—a person—within God
(Richard, De trinitate III: c. 2 (Richard of St Victor 1958: 136–7)). But divine love
is not perfectly exhibited in the love that two persons have for each other, because
shared love for some third object is a different kind of love from simple mutual
love. So there must be a third divine person (Richard, De trinitate III: c. 11
(Richard of St Victor 1958: 146–7)). Scotus agrees that it is possible to argue for
the existence of a Trinity of persons. But he disagrees with Richard’s argument. He
reasons that mutual love cannot be a prerequisite for perfect love, since in that
case ‘the Father is not formally beatified in himself as object, but only in the Son,
which is heretical’ (Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 12, q. 1, n. 32 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013,
V: 42)). Mutual love makes us more lovable, since loving someone gives that
person more reason to love back. But this is not so in God (Scotus, Ordinatio I: d.
12, q. 1, n. 33 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, V: 42–3)). And in this case the basis for
Richard’s argument is undermined. Scotus argues instead on the basis of certain
divine perfections that he takes to be necessarily productive. A perfect mind
thinks—construed as the production of cognitive acts—and a perfect will
loves—construed as the production of appetitive acts: acts that reach out to
their objects, the things known and loved. In the case of God, the things known
and loved are the divine essence. But perfect instances of knowing and loving
76  

nevertheless involve the production of such acts, with the divine essence as their
object (Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4, nn. 221–6 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013,
II: 259–63)). In creaturely cases, the products are qualities inhering in the soul.
But there are no accidents in God, so the products must be in some sense instances
of the divine essence:
Intellect . . . is by some act of its productive of an end term equal to it (adaequati),
viz . . . . But nothing produces itself (De trinitate I, c.1); therefore what is pro-
duced by an act of the intellect, is distinguished in some way from the producer.
But it is not distinguished essentially, because the divine essence, and any
essential perfection intrinsic to it, cannot be multiplied . . . . Therefore the product
is distinguished personally from the producer. There is therefore some person
produced by an act of intellect. The same is argued about the thing produced by
an act of will.
(Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4, nn. 355–6 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, II:
336), referring to Augustine, De trinitate I, c. 1, §1 (Augustine 1968: 28))

According to Augustine, nothing is a self-producer. So what is produced must be

in some sense distinct from the producer. And what is produced in a maximally
perfect production must be (at least) as perfect as the producer. But it cannot be
another God (something ‘distinguished essentially’), since there is only one God.
So it must be a further instance of the numerically singular divine essence: another
person, in other words. And if the productions are—as Scotus argues—necessary,
then they must be eternal (Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 9, q. un., n. 7 (Duns Scotus
1950–2013, IV: 331)).
Note again how closely Scotus’ account of God tracks the structure of created
reality—part of his quest for theoretical generality. It presupposes, for example,
that God is a mind, and that that mind functions in crucial ways like created
minds do. Other more-or-less a priori arguments Scotus posits make similar
assumptions. In Cur deus homo Anselm had argued for the necessity of the
incarnation on the grounds that the Fall of humankind would frustrate divine
purposes if there were no being able to make satisfaction for the infinite debt that
the Fall incurred. Only God could make the satisfaction, only a human being
should make the satisfaction: hence a God-man. Scotus does not think that there is
an a priori argument to the incarnation. But he thinks that, given the incarnation,
it is possible to show that God’s reasons for becoming incarnate cannot have been
as Anselm supposed. Scotus imagines what is involved in perfectly rational
decision-making: the end is willed before the means, and greater goods willed
before lesser ones. God wills glory for the saved antecedently to his foreknowledge
of their sin. And the glory of Christ’s soul is the greatest of all. So it must have
been willed prior to God’s foreknowledge of sin. But a necessary condition for the
glory of Christ’s soul—a means to the end of glory—is the divine person’s
assuming the human nature of which Christ’s soul is a part. So God must have
   77

willed to become incarnate antecedently to his foreknowledge of sin. So in creating

the universe, God’s principal aim was the glorification of Christ’s soul, for which
the incarnation was the means (see Scotus, Ordinatio III: d. 7, q. 3., nn. 61–6
(Duns Scotus 1950–2013, IX: 287–9)). In a sense, God created the world in order
to become incarnate: a conclusion that we derive not from Scripture but by
reflection on the way in which a maximally rational agent would make decisions.
Similar considerations drive another distinctively Scotist theological doctrine:
the Immaculate Conception of Mary. In this case Scotus speculates on what the
most perfect form of mediation is. Given that Christ is ‘the most perfect medi-
ator’, it follows that ‘Christ had the most perfect degree of mediation possible
with respect to some person with respect to whom he was mediator’ (Scotus,
Ordinatio, III: d. 3, q. 1, nn. 17–19 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, IX: 174–5)). We
learn from Scripture that this person is Mary (see Luke 1:28 in the Vulgate
translation—gratia plena). But what is it to have the most perfect degree of
mediation possible? According to the Anselmian atonement theory that Scotus
(more or less) accepts, mediation in this context is a kind of reconciliation
between two parties, one of whom—call them w—has been wronged by the
other—call them w*. The aim of the mediator is to bring it about that the
wronged party is placated. Scotus reasons that the most perfect form of recon-
ciliation under this general schema is to bring it about that w is not offended in
the first place. But what offends God in the case of human sin is guilt. So the most
perfect form of mediation would involve bringing it about that (at least) one
human person does not have guilt at all. But original sin is sufficient for guilt in
whomever it is transmitted to. So lacking original sin is necessary for lacking
guilt. Hence,

Christ does not most perfectly placate the Trinity for some guilt to be contracted
by the children of Adam if he does not effect it that the Trinity is not offended in
someone in the first place, and that the soul of some child of Adam does not have
such guilt. And consequently the soul of some child of Adam does not have such
guilt, or it is possible that it does not have such guilt.
(Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 3, q. 1, n. 20 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, IX, 176))

This argument focuses on the role of sin and guilt as offensive to God. But
medieval theologians hold that sin and guilt are evils that also constitute their
own punishment. So Scotus’ second argument focuses not on the role of God (as
offended party, as in the first argument) but on the role of w*: someone is best
delivered from an evil (such as punishment) by a mechanism that prevents them
from undergoing the evil in the first place. Sin and guilt are punishments, so the
most perfect form of reconciliation requires w* lack sin and guilt. And this, again,
requires someone lacking original sin (see Scotus, Ordinatio III: d. 3, q. 1, n. 21
(Duns Scotus 1950–2013, IX: 176–7).
78  

In both of these arguments, considerations of fittingness are wholly absent:

Scotus’ method is to proceed simply from the rational analysis of a particular
concept given in revelation—in this case, reconciliation. Scotus does not only rely
on reason and revelation as sources of truth: he also believes that phenomenological
practice—introspection—can yield important truths about creatures and God.
The most significant case is his defence of what we today call ‘contra-causal’ free
will: the ability to choose between two different courses of action in precisely the
same circumstances. Scotus wonders ‘why this kind of indeterminacy should
be posited in the will, if it cannot be proved simply from the nature of the will’
(Scotus, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis IX: q. 15, n. 27
(Duns Scotus 1997–2006, IV: 682)), and responds: ‘this is proved a posteriori.
For someone who wills experiences that they are able not to will, or to nill’
(Scotus, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis IX: q. 15, n. 30
(Duns Scotus 1997–2006, IV: 682–3)). ‘Not willing’ and ‘nilling’ are distinct: to
‘nill’ is a technical term that means ‘will not’: contrast willing some action a, not
willing a, and willing not-a. Not willing a is compatible with willing nothing at
all. In claiming that we cannot prove that the will has or is such a power ‘simply
from the nature of the will’, Scotus means that the nature of the will remains
mysterious to us: we do not know what it is about the will that enables it to be
this kind of power. It is the phenomenology that gives us grounds for supposing
that, despite this, the will is indeed this kind of power.
Scotus holds that the existence of the will is necessary for contingency—like all
other medieval thinkers, he has no conception of simple randomness. And he
holds that if there is contingency in the created order—as there seems to be—there
must be contingency in the divine will too (see Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 2, p. 1,
qq. 1–2, nn. 79–80 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, II: 176–7)). The assumption is that
God’s causal concurrence is required for everything that happens. If the acts of
one of two concurring causes are necessary, then the acts of both are. So both
causes are free. (Scotus does not have a convincing account of how to make this
compatible with divine foreknowledge of contingents.)
Scotus is indeed well-known for a strong emphasis on divine freedom, par-
ticularly with respect to his relation to the moral law. The position is rather
complex, and we can best approach it by considering Scotus’ account of moral
obligation. Basically, Scotus holds that good actions—actions with a goal or end
appropriate to the agent and the object of the act—are such that ‘they ought to be
chosen and wanted’ (Scotus, Quodlibetum: q. 18, n. 16 (Duns Scotus 1639, XII:
479)). God can certainly command such actions, and prohibit their opposites—
Scotus believes that God has done this in the Decalogue. But according to Scotus
he can, for any action-type, prohibit the action, and command its opposite.
For example, while Scotus does not believe that God could command other than
the first table of the Decalogue—the commands to do with God—he certainly
believes that God could do so in relation to the second table, for the reason that
   79

the norms expressed in that table have no necessary connection to the ultimate
goal of human existence—the beatific vision (see Scotus, Ordinatio III: d. 37,
q. un., nn. 17–18 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, X: 279–80)). In relation to the first
table, it seems that God’s commands conform to duties that he has to himself
as the necessary object of love, and God cannot dispense from these commands
(see Scotus, Ordinatio IV: d. 46, q. 1, n. 29 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, XIV: 205)).
It is not clear what constraints there might be on God’s willing in relation to the
second table of the Decalogue, and various authors have proposed different
accounts, ranging from God’s nature, to creaturely natures, to considerations
of aesthetic fittingness. In at least some of the examples Scotus gives, God
permits or commands contrary to the second table in cases in which so doing
furthers the primary human goal of the beatific vision (see e.g. Scotus’ discussion
of God’s allowing bigamy in the time of the Patriarchs (Scotus, Ordinatio IV:
d. 33, q. 1, n. 16 (Duns Scotus 1950–2013, XIII: 426))).
God’s freedom makes a difference to Scotus’ account of grace. According to
standard thirteenth-century views, salvation—being justified—requires the pos-
session of a habit of grace, a quality inherent in the soul, created and infused into
the soul directly by God, in virtue of which the saved person is rendered pleasing
to God. Scotus sees no reason why God could not save someone simply by
‘accepting’ them, irrespective of their possession of a habit of grace:

God by his absolute power could well have accepted, by special acceptation . . . a
beatifiable nature existing in its purely natural state; and similarly, he could have
accepted as meritorious an action to which it had a merely natural inclination.
But it is not believed that he did dispose to accept a pure nature or its act, because
for ‘an act from a purely natural state to be meritorious’ approaches to the error
of Pelagius.
(Scotus, Ordinatio I: d. 17, p. 1, qq. 1–2, n. 115 (Duns Scotus
1950–2013, V: 196))

Being justified consists in God’s accepting someone as saved, and accepting their
actions as meritorious of further supernatural reward—that is the ‘special accep-
tation’ that Scotus is talking about. The idea here is that God could accept
someone in a ‘purely natural state’—without any justifying habitual grace—and
could likewise accept their morally good actions as meritorious. But had God
decided to have done so, he would have set up a Pelagian salvific order. According
to Scotus, we know that in fact the Pelagian view is false; so God did not act in the
way that he could have done, and that Scotus outlines here.
The account of freedom here is fully in accord with Scotus’ overall theological
methodology. An integral part of close attention to conceptual analysis is a
concern with discerning which concepts have necessary connections to others,
and which do not. What we learn is that a theory of habits of grace does not—
despite assumptions made by theologians in the thirteenth century—have any
80  

necessary connection to justification. And this is not mere nit-picking, though it is

of course a function of the whole scholastic method as envisaged by Scotus:
without Scotus’ insights, inherited by Ockham, the way to later theologies that
assume a caesura between justification and inherent grace—Protestant ones, for
example—would not have been opened up.

Bibliography

Aquinas, Thomas (1882–n.d.). Opera omnia. Vatican City: S.C. de Propaganda fidei.
Augustine (1968). De trinitate, ed. W. J. Mountain. Turnhout: Brepols.
Bak, Felix M. (1956). ‘Schola Scoti numerosior omnibus aliis simul sumptis’, Francis-
can Studies 16: 144–65.
Cross, Richard (1999). Duns Scotus. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cross, Richard (2005). Duns Scotus on God. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Cross, Richard (2016). ‘Duns Scotus on God’s Essence and Attributes: Metaphysics,
Semantics, and the Greek Patristic Tradition’, Recherches de théologie et philosophie
médiévales 83: 353–83.
Duns Scotus, John (1639). Opera omnia, ed. L. Wadding. Lyon.
Duns Scotus, John (1950–2013). Opera omnia, ed.C. Balić et al. Vatican City: Vatican
Press.
Duns Scotus, John (1997–2006). Opera philosophica, ed. G. Etzkorn et al. St Bonaventure,
NY: Franciscan Institute.
Duns Scotus, John (2004–8). Reportatio I-A, ed. Allan B. Wolter and Oleg V. Bychkov.
St Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute.
Duns Scotus, John (2016). Reportatio IV-A, ed. Oleg V. Bychkov and Trent Pomplun.
St Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute.
Inglis, John (1998). Spheres of Philosophical Enquiry and the Historiography of Medieval
Philosophy. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Piché, David (1999). La condamnation Parisienne de 1277: Nouvelle édition du texte
latin, traduction, introduction et commentaire. Paris: Vrin.
Richard of St Victor (1958). De trinitate, ed. Jean Ribaillier. Paris: Vrin.
Spade, Paul Vincent (1994). Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals:
Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Vos, Antonie (2018). The Theology of John Duns Scotus. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
 7
John Ireland and the Transformation
of Scotist Theology
Simon J. G. Burton

Introduction

John Ireland, the most distinguished Scottish theologian of the fifteenth century,
was in his day a ‘scholar of international repute’ (Macpherson, ‘Introduction’, in
Meroure I: xv). His debt to Scotus has already been the topic of some important
discussion, most notably by Alexander Broadie in his fascinating Shadow of Scotus
(Broadie 1995). In this and other works Broadie has sought to place Ireland within
the broader context of late medieval Scottish philosophy, showing the continuity
of important Scotistic themes from the fourteenth-century Nominalist thinker
Lawrence of Lindores through Ireland to John Mair and his Circle in the early
sixteenth century (Broadie 1995, 2012). Other scholars such as Bonaventure
Miner, James Burns, Roger Mason, Sally Mapstone, and Craig Macdonald have
highlighted different aspects of Ireland’s thought, shedding important light on his
wider debt to late medieval Nominalism and Augustinianism, to conciliarism, and
to contemporary humanism and poetry.
Over time we have therefore gained a picture of a creative and fascinating
theologian and a true light of late medieval Scottish intellectual culture. Yet, as
Broadie himself points out, a great deal of work remains to be done on Ireland
(Broadie 1995: 55), especially in placing him in the broader context of late
medieval intellectual and scholastic culture. An important aspect of this, high-
lighted by both Broadie and Burns, is Ireland’s notable debt to John Duns Scotus
and the Scotist theological movement inspired by him (Broadie 1995: 56; Burns
1996: 24–5). Building especially on the work of these two scholars, I will hope to
reveal something of Ireland’s place in the wider Scotist tradition of the fifteenth
century. I will also hint at Ireland’s possible legacy in sixteenth-century Scottish
theology. The focus of this chapter will be on Ireland’s perfect-being theology and
his reflections on predestination, grace, and freedom.
Before proceeding to a discussion of these two topics it will be important to give
an overview of Ireland’s life and his principal works, as a way of providing some

Simon J. G. Burton, John Ireland and the Transformation of Scotist Theology. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0007
82  . . 

context for his intellectual and theological endeavours.¹ Ireland was born c. 1435–40,
apparently in St Andrews. He received his early training as a scholastic phi-
losopher at the Faculty of Arts at the University of St Andrews, where he
determined (i.e. matriculated) in 1455. However, following a dispute with another
student he left without a degree around 1458 and moved to the University of Paris,
where he became a Bachelor in 1459 and Licentiate in 1460. By 1466 he had
become Master of Arts and was appointed chaplain to the German Nation in
Paris. During this time Ireland was also studying theology and in 1469 he became
a Bachelor in that subject.
As a philosophy lecturer we know that Ireland taught according to the (Nom-
inalist) via moderna, specifically following the teaching of William of Ockham.
It is therefore no surprise to find him in the early 1470s becoming embroiled in the
ongoing Realist–Nominalist disputes at Paris. While the disputes between Realists
and Nominalists had had their beginnings in the fourteenth century as a philo-
sophical conflict over the theory of universals, by the fifteenth century they had
spilled over into a whole range of theological, ecclesiological, and political issues,
causing open division in universities across Europe (Hoenen 2003). This was
especially true in Paris, where lobbying by Realists led Louis XI to impose a
celebrated ban on Nominalist texts in 1474. Significantly, Ireland was one of the
professors chosen as part of a delegation opposing this royal ban, indicating his
contemporary prominence. Certainly, this did no harm to his reputation, as a year
later, in 1475, he was appointed a Doctor of Theology.
The ban was repealed in 1481 and Burns suggests it was probably around
this time that Ireland completed his theological magnum opus, his commentary
on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Burns 1955: 82). Books three and four of this are
fortunately still extant in the University of Aberdeen library as MS 264, but we
know that Ireland commented extensively on all four books—something rather
unusual by the late fifteenth century (Hobbins 2003: 1315–16). So far there has
been scarcely any research on this commentary, which presents prodigious palaeo-
graphical challenges to its reader. However, what we know of Ireland’s theological
stance, and can infer from his other works, suggests that he drew on an impressive
array of authorities from right across the theological spectrum. In particular,
despite his allegiance to the ‘new doctours’ of the via moderna he clearly had a
deep appreciation for the ‘old doctours’ of the via antiqua (Ireland, Meroure, II: 45).
In this regard his commentary might reflect something of the encyclopaedic
tradition of the fifteenth century, and perhaps shows an attempt to transcend
the divisiveness of the schools—an impulse also evident in other theologians
of the late fifteenth century, including Gabriel Biel (Rosemann 2007: 161–70).

¹ The brief account of Ireland’s life and works here is drawn from Burns (1955) and Quinn,
‘Introduction’, in Meroure II pp. xii–xviii.
      83

Apart from Scotus, whom he refers to as ‘doctor subtilis that was a gret clerk of paris
and borne of this land’ (Meroure, II: 106), Ireland was clearly deeply indebted to
Ockham, the great Parisian Nominalists Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, and the late
medieval Augustinian theologians Thomas Bradwardine and Gregory of Rimini
(Meroure, I: 48; II: 145). As we shall see, Ireland was at his most creative theologic-
ally in his quest to reconcile these divergent traditions.
In 1469 Ireland served as Rector of the University of Paris and his prominence
in university politics from this point onwards may well have brought him to the
attention of Louis XI. Whatever the reason it is clear that in the 1470s Ireland
became an intimate adviser of the king of France serving on a number of
important diplomatic missions for him. Clearly, he attracted the regard of
James III who was himself deeply interested in theology. In the early 1480s Ireland
wrote two theological treatises on the Immaculate Conception and on the doc-
trine of grace at the request of James III and by 1483, following the death of Louis
XI, he had returned to Scotland as the king’s chaplain and confessor. From this
point on he became involved in the intricate web of Scottish politics, and his close
relationship with the king seems to have earned him the bitter enmity of
Archbishop William Scheves. However, while he must have grieved the death
of his royal master at Sauchieburn in 1488, this did not prevent him from
continuing as chaplain, at least for a time, to James IV. Yet his influence
undoubtedly waned and he seems to have lived out the rest of his days as a
simple priest in the Borders.
Following his return to Scotland, Ireland seems to have become increasingly
concerned about the moral and spiritual tone of the court and country.
He therefore set himself to preaching and writing vernacular treatises, the most
famous of which, completed in 1490, was the Meroure of Wyssdome, written for
the instruction of the young James IV. Conforming in part to the traditional
‘Mirror of Princes’ genre, Ireland also chose to distil into it important material
from his Sentences commentary. Addressed to the king, he also hoped it would
benefit the Scottish nobility, clergy, and nation, serving as an antidote to immor-
ality and the heretical teachings of the Wycliffites and Lollards (Burns 1955: 88).
Its seven books thus provided in-depth exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave
Maria and the Apostles’ Creed—together referred to by Ireland as the ‘ABC of
cristianite’ (Meroure, I: 14)—as well as a reasoned defence of Christianity, a
treatise on grace and predestination, a treatise on the sacraments, and important
reflections on ethics and politics. James IV seems to have politely ignored it, but
for us it offers both a unique vantage point on Scottish theological culture at the
end of the fifteenth century and an insight into the complex interaction of Scottish
and European, scholastic and vernacular, currents of thought. It also gives us a
vital index into Scotus’ influence in his native land at the end of the middle ages
and in the decades before the Scottish Reformation, much of which remains
uncharted theological territory.
84  . . 

Perfect-Being Theology

Book four of Ireland’s Meroure sets out to offer a defence according to ‘natural
reason and persuasion’ of all the articles of faith—something he rightly says is
‘na litle thing’ (Meroure, II: 81). It therefore belongs within the tradition of natural
theology, which in the fifteenth century was undergoing a series of important, and
controversial, developments. As we shall see, Ireland was at the forefront of this
movement and any stereotypical expectations we might have that Ireland as a
fifteenth-century Nominalist would want to drive a wedge between faith and
reason are rudely shattered on reading the Meroure. In fact, his concern to
harmonize faith and reason goes considerably beyond Aquinas or even Scotus,
and reaches back to an earlier medieval tradition, represented especially by
Anselm of Canterbury and William of Auxerre, whose ‘noble buk and some of
theologie’ he cites at the beginning of book four as an important source, together
with Augustine, for his reflections (Meroure, II: 81). Nevertheless, the method
which he employs in this book is manifestly indebted to Scotus and thus reveals
the profoundly Scotist character of his theological reasoning.
Ireland’s starting point is a distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘probable’ reasons.
This he immediately glosses with the standard scholastic distinction between a
priori and a posteriori demonstration—namely between those which reason
deductively from a cause to an effect, or from a first principle to a conclusion,
and those which reason from an effect back to its cause (Meroure, II: 81–3). While
this distinction provides a basic dividing structure for book four, with chapters
two to four handling a priori proofs in depth and chapter five giving a brief
summary of a posteriori arguments, Ireland significantly chooses to overlay it with
a more complex threefold division drawn from an Aristotelian account of mental
operations. Thus, in chapter two he focuses on what Aristotle had called the
‘intelligence of simples’, in chapter three on the operation of ‘composition and
division’, and in chapter four on ‘discurs and argumentacioun’ (Meroure, II: 91–2,
95–6). Throughout all these chapters Ireland is careful to avoid a posteriori
arguments from Christian authorities, although this does not prevent him, on
occasion, from seeking to justify his general approach from Scripture and the
Church Fathers—perhaps to disguise the truly radical nature of what he is actually
attempting.
Sounding a distinctively Renaissance theme, Ireland opens his discussion of a
priori demonstrations by signalling his desire to reveal the ‘dignite of man’
(Meroure, II: 84). Axiomatic to him is the human mirroring of the divine, leading
him to explore the human mind as a crucial site for a priori reflection on the
nature of God. Ireland reasons that, as creatures, humans must be dependent on
one greater than them, namely God, for all their characteristics. For him this
means that humans cannot think in their minds something greater than God. Yet
since he holds that the thought, intelligence, and desire of man ‘may grow evir mar
      85

and mar infynitlie’ it follows that God is actually infinite. Notably, from this chain
of reasoning Ireland derives what he calls ‘a reule to pruf all maner of perfeccioun
conuenient that may be fundin in god’. In essence, this is simply Anselm’s famous
principle in the Proslogion that ‘God is [that] than which nothing greater or better
is able to be thought’ and its corollary that ‘God is whatever it is better to be than
not to be’ (Anselm 1998: 87–9; cf. Meroure, II: 84–8). Yet Ireland’s version of
Anselm’s famous ontological argument comes with a twist, for his own emphasis
is not on the primary distinction between existence in reality and existence in the
mind, but rather on the difference between the potential infinity of the human
mind and the actual infinity of the divine mind. In other words, he seeks to root
the ontological argument not in abstract reasoning but in the definite context of
human nature—a crucial point we shall return to below.
In fact, we can see from the remainder of book four that what Ireland is
interested in is not Anselm’s ontological argument per se, but rather the whole
method of perfect-being theology which developed out of it. In this he can be
connected not only to Anselm himself and early scholastic theologians, like
Auxerre, who were indebted to Anselm, but also to an important fourteenth-
century tradition, represented especially by Scotus, his followers, and Bradwardine
(Auxerre 1980: 21–35; Duns Scotus 1949: 77–81; Bradwardine 1618: I c. 1). While
his desire to develop a priori arguments for all the articles of faith goes well beyond
Scotus—not to mention Aquinas!—his reasoning, nevertheless, shows important
Scotistic distinctives (cf. Cross 2007: 127–30). Thus, for example, Ireland’s proof
of the Trinity from the infinite perfection of production within the Godhead, and
his further identification of two kinds of production ‘by mode of nature and [by
mode] of will’ (Meroure, II: 88–9), signals a clear debt to Scotist Trinitarian
theology, even though Scotus himself denied the strictly a priori character of
this argument. In particular, the emphasis that the generation of the Son is ‘by
mode of nature’, and not simply by mode of intellect, is a hallmark of the
Franciscan and Scotist approach (cf. Duns Scotus 2004–2008: 1.385–404).²
The same is emphatically true of Ireland’s position that the Son of God would
have become incarnate even if humans had never sinned. For from the principle
that ‘in temporal things there is nothing greater than that God was made man’,
Ireland argues, following Scotus, that sin cannot possibly be considered the
principal cause for the incarnation (Meroure, I: 68–71; cf. Duns Scotus 2003:
213). Like Scotus, Ireland also extrapolates the reasoning of perfect-being theology
into his Mariology, arguing that Christ could not be considered the perfect son if
he had not preserved his mother from the original sin she would have been liable
to (Meroure, I: 101; cf. Duns Scotus 2003: 123). Indeed, in his Tractatus de
Immaculata Conceptione Virginis Mariae, dedicated to Louis XI, he tells us that

² Importantly such reasoning can also be found in Sabunde (1501, c. 51). See below for the
significance of Sabunde.
86  . . 

it was the writings of his fellow Scot which inspired him to write a defence of the
Immaculate Conception (Miner 1966: 24). While it is true that Ireland’s insistence
on the necessity of Christ’s satisfaction for sin is emphatically not Scotist (cf. Duns
Scotus 2004: 51–2), it is worth noting that even this is not untouched by Scotist
logic. In fact, as his much-discussed dialogue of the ‘four daughters of God’
illustrates—in which divine truth, justice, mercy, and peace agree on the incarna-
tion and passion as the best mode of salvation—he clearly desires to place
salvation in a covenantal framework—evidence of a characteristic Scotist and
late medieval concern (Meroure, I: 90–3, 106–25; II: 109; cf. Courtenay 1984).
Importantly, the same emphasis on divine covenanting comes through in his
theology of creation and certainly he never loses sight of Scotus’ teaching of the
radical contingency of the world (Meroure, II: 109, 115).
While Ireland’s natural theology and his perfect-being thought has deep
affinities with Anselm, Auxerre, and especially Scotus, none of these theologians
are in fact its proximate source. Rather, almost the whole of book four of the
Meroure, as well as much of books five and six, appears to be drawn, unacknow-
ledged, from the controversial Theologia Naturalis of Ramon de Sabunde, a
fifteenth-century French philosopher and theologian. In this work, completed
around 1434, Sabunde famously sought to show the complete harmony of
the ‘Two Books’ of Nature and Scripture. In doing so he made extensive use
of the Anselmic-Scotist pattern of perfect-being theology in order to prove all
the articles of faith (Sabunde 1501, ‘Prologus’; c. 64). At the same time, however,
as Jean Probst has demonstrated, Sabunde also made tacit use of the Trinitarian
and encyclopaedic Ars of Ramon Lull, which Lull had developed in order to
prove the doctrines of the Christian faith to Jews, Muslims, and all unbelievers
(Probst 1912). Yet what was most distinctive about Sabunde’s method, and here
we may see the obvious link with Ireland’s exposition, was his concern to root
all his arguments in human nature itself, and especially in what was best for
humanity (Sabunde 1501: c. 1, 64–8). In him, as in Ireland who follows him, we
may therefore see a marked anthropological—and ultimately Christological³—
shift in theological methodology.
To show the impressive extent of Ireland’s borrowings from Sabunde would
take us much too far afield. Apart from the definite anthropological shift in
articulating perfect-being theology, the most distinctive features of Sabunde’s
influence on Ireland are his assertion of the (potential) infinity of human nature,
his attention to ‘perfect-will theology’—in other words, his attempt to reveal the
nature and character of God from the structure of human will and desire—and his
insistence that human nature (i.e. humanity qua humanity) can be regarded as the

³ Ireland’s Scotistic view on the incarnation means that all human existence is oriented towards its
fulfilment in Christ, a perspective which comes through especially clearly in his Sabundian account of
the sacraments in book six (Meroure, III: 19–43; cf. Sabunde 1501: 286–92).
      87

metaphysical measure of all reality (Meroure, II: 84–8, 91–4, 113, 119–22;
cf. Sabunde 1501: c. 1, 6, 65, 82). Drawing on Scotist perfect-being theology
Sabunde had adapted Lull’s Ars into a new science of theological reasoning and
Ireland takes this method up wholesale. According to this any theological prop-
osition can be judged to be true or false by comparing it and its negation together
and then judging which of these achieves the best for human nature (Meroure, II:
91–4, 113; cf. Sabunde 1501: 65, 68). Importantly, this led to a definite ‘moralizing’
of Ireland’s own scholastic logic and may also be seen to fit into his wider interest,
conspicuous in the Meroure, in the ethical and rhetorical patterns of humanist
argument. This is fully in evidence in chapter five of book four, where his
distinctive concern to harmonize scholastic and humanist sources led to a fusing
of a posteriori arguments drawn on the one hand from Scotus and on the other
hand from the topical tradition of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian (Meroure, II:
106–12). In this, as much as in his anthropological drive, Ireland proves himself to
be a true man of the fifteenth century.

Predestination, Grace, and Freedom

In turning to Ireland’s view of predestination, grace, and freedom, expounded in

book five of the Meroure, we are confronting one of the most divisive issues in
late medieval theology. For, as is well known, the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries saw an important confrontation between the doctrine of grace put
forward by Ockham and his school and the resurgent Augustinianism of Thomas
Bradwardine and Gregory of Rimini. For, despite important philosophical and
theological differences between them, Bradwardine and Rimini were united in
opposing the covenantal soteriology espoused by Ockham and his followers,
upholding an Augustinian account of prevenient grace against the so-called
‘modern Pelagians’ (cf. Rimini 1980: 58–60). For good reason Ireland has often
been thought of as a champion of this broad-based late medieval Augustinian
movement (Broadie 1990: 69–72; Burns 1996: 22–3), yet as we shall see his own
approach to these issues is both subtle and complex. In fact, it seems that Ireland
was self-consciously trying to find a middle, reconciling, way between these two
positions.
In approaching these complex issues an important starting point is Ireland’s
discussion of freedom and contingency. Before Scotus, the prevailing, Aristotelian
understanding of contingency was couched in terms of temporal succession.
Freedom was therefore understood as openness to the future, meaning that the
present moment was always considered entirely necessary. By contrast, Scotus put
forward a radical new understanding of synchronic contingency (Knuuttila 1981).
This defined contingency not as a function of time, but in terms of a simultaneous
power towards opposites ‘without succession’. Thus, for example—to cite a
88  . . 

celebrated example—a hypothetical will existing only for a single instant of time
could still be considered free and meritorious, due to its power, in that very same
instant, to will the opposite of what it actually did will (Duns Scotus 2004–2008:
2.476–7).
Ireland’s own possible debt to Scotus’ principle of synchronic contingency has
already been touched on by Broadie, who remarks in his Shadow of Scotus that ‘the
concept of free will that Ireland appears to have in mind is that developed by Duns
Scotus, according to whom to be free is simultaneously to be able to produce
opposite effects’ (Broadie 1995: 56). Certainly, it is unquestionably true that
Ireland was profoundly influenced by the contingency revolution inaugurated
by Scotus. Thus, where thirteenth-century theologians would generally argue for
the necessity of the divine knowledge, Ireland is at one with Scotus and the
broader tradition of late medieval theology in holding that the prescience of
God is ‘nocht presciens be necessite, bot be fredome and contingence’ (Meroure,
I: 72; cf. Duns Scotus 2004–2008: 2.467–70). Likewise, Ireland’s view of the human
will clearly has strong affinities with the Scotist view of will as a self-moving power
capable of freely determining itself towards opposites without the need for any
external actualization, including by God himself (Meroure, II: 113–18, 140;
cf. Frank 1992).
Yet whether Ireland would subscribe to Scotus’ precise account of synchronic
contingency is a rather different question. For there are some clear signs that
Ireland’s reasoning in these matters derives not from Scotus but rather from his
opponents Ockham and Rimini, who strongly criticized the concept of synchronic
contingency even as they affirmed, like Scotus, the radical contingency of the
created order and of the divine intellect and will (Ockham 1983: 71–6; Rimini
1984: 258–71). It is notable, for example, that Ireland does not make use of Scotus’
characteristic language of ‘instants of nature’ which he often employed to analyse
the logical structure of a temporal moment or an instant of eternity and which his
Nominalist opponents entirely rejected (cf. Ockham 1983: 87). While the objec-
tion that we would not expect to find such technical language in the Meroure is
reasonable and carries some weight, it is worth noting that elsewhere Ireland does
not hesitate to use highly sophisticated scholastic concepts.
Even more significant is the fact that Ireland’s distinctive analysis of future
contingent propositions suggests a strong Nominalist bias. In a number of places
in the Meroure Ireland insists that a future contingent proposition may be true,
and known eternally by God as true, yet, due to the action of human free will, it is
possible that it may be false and may have been eternally false—for example, God
may know eternally that John Ireland will sin at a certain time tomorrow, but it is
possible that he chooses not to sin. In this case, he argues, the future contingent
proposition ‘John Ireland will sin at a certain time tomorrow’ will be false and will
be known by God as such from eternity. As Ireland pithily expressed this, ‘happin
it that god knew eternaly it is yit in my power to do sua that god knew it nivir’
      89

(Meroure, II: 135–40). Strikingly such reasoning precisely mirrors that offered by
Ockham in his celebrated Treatise on Predestination and his Ordinatio, which
held that God has certain and determinate knowledge of future contingents, yet
their present truth is settled only in the moment of their actualization. Like
Ockham, Ireland also grounds contingency explicitly on the free outcome of a
successive sequence of temporal events. Thus, future contingent propositions
always remain open to change until their very moment of actualization (Meroure,
I: 72–3; Ockham 1983: 78–9). Importantly, Ireland’s implied position also differs
markedly from Scotus, whose account of synchronic contingency led him to argue
that the divine will eternally and immutably determines the truth-value of every
future contingent proposition (Duns Scotus 2004–2008: 2.457–60).
In light of this clear debt to an Ockhamist account of future contingents it is
important to ask whether Ireland’s account of predestination reflects that offered
by Ockham himself. Certainly, Ireland opens his discussion of predestination with
a profoundly Ockhamist move, namely by grounding it in a discussion of divine
foreknowledge. Indeed, Ireland’s considered opinion is that the spiritual eye of
God eternally sees every creature which will ever be made, electing those who
make good use of their free will and God’s gifts and reprobating those who persist
in making evil use of these (Meroure, II: 143–6). Moreover, Ireland also seems
highly sympathetic with the kind of account of general election favoured by
Ockham, which held that God wills to save all, but finally only predestines those
who do not provide an obstacle to his universal offer of grace. Drawing on one of
Ockham’s favourite illustrations for this, Ireland describes God’s grace as being
like light which is continually shining on the chamber of the human soul but
which is obstructed by closed shutters. It is only when the will flings wide the
shutters of the soul that the light of God’s grace is able to flood in. Like Ockham,
Ireland therefore affirms that ‘god gevis help and suple sufficient to all be his
grace’, notably through the preached Word and sacraments, so that if someone is
not saved it is entirely their own fault and cannot be imputed to the divine will
(Meroure, II: 133–4; cf. Halverson 1995).
Yet there are a number of points which may militate against a purely Ockha-
mist interpretation of Ireland’s doctrine of predestination. For Ireland actually
positions his own solution to the causal ground of predestination as a kind of
via media between what may be identified as clear Ockhamist and Scotist-
Augustinian views. Thus while Ireland does accept Ockham’s position that pro-
positions concerning creatures can be the logical, not ontological, cause of divine
action—such that, for example, God’s decision to reprobate Antichrist is
dependent on his foreknowledge of the proposition ‘The Antichrist will finally
persist in sin’—he is very careful to qualify this. In particular, he argues that such
propositions must be ‘formyt of the termes in divinitie and nocht of the creaturis
precise’ (Meroure, II: 145–9). What exactly Ireland means by this is left rather
opaque, and perhaps purposely so, but it seems likely that he is concerned not to
90  . . 

separate too sharply God’s foreknowledge from his causal initiative or will.
Certainly, in presenting God as calling down to his creatures from the ‘high
tower’ of eternity, he is clearly seeking to integrate God’s grace and the human
response to this into his intellectualist or intuitionist account of divine foreknow-
ledge (Meroure, II: 143). Ireland may well have borrowed this Boethian imagery
from Aquinas, suggesting a further demarcation between his views on time and
eternity and those of Scotus (Aquinas 1948a: 83).
Despite his caveats, Ireland’s account of predestination remains extremely
puzzling in a theologian who otherwise prides himself as an ardent opponent of
Pelagianism and a follower of the late medieval Augustinians. For the kind of
Ockhamist account of general election that he offers was one that was vehemently
opposed by Bradwardine and Rimini. Indeed, the Augustinian account of the
‘special help’ (auxilium speciale) of grace that they developed, was explicitly
developed in opposition to the view of election on the basis of foreknowledge
(Zumkeller 1983: 6). This view was championed by Ireland in his Sentences and
Meroure and he felt so strongly about this issue that he even wrote a whole book
on the topic, sadly no longer extant, at the request of James III (Meroure, I: 48; II:
130–4). Given his explicit adherence to Rimini and Bradwardine, how may we
reconcile this with his pronounced Ockhamist tendencies? At this stage, before a
detailed analysis of relevant passages in the Sentences commentary, it would be
premature to pronounce on this issue. Instead, I will simply summarize the key
points and suggest, very tentatively, a possible resolution.
Ireland is emphatic that the ‘singulare and speciale help of grace’ is necessary to
avoid sin, to do good works and to merit glory. He also attacks the view, affirmed
by Ockham among others, that man ‘by virtue of free choice is able to merit from
pure naturals’ as the Pelagian heresy. In all this he clearly and explicitly aligns
himself with Aquinas and the late medieval Augustinian theologians (Meroure, I:
48; II: 131). However, like Scotus and Ockham and in this following a broader
fifteenth-century trend, Ireland also seeks to place the action of grace within a
covenantal framework. As he says:

Sene I have fre arbiter and help of him my repentance and remissioun of my syn
and my salvacions standis in my self in my will and fre arbiter for and I do my
part that I may do god falyeis nocht to me and he prevenis me and helpis me thar
to . . . for his grace evir strikis one the saule and gif thou will nocht opin the will
and consent to him wyt thai self . . . and thou hauld thi window stekit that thi
chamber be myrk and nocht licht it is nocht the falt of the sone bot of thi self.
(Meroure, II: 73)

Once again we see Ireland trying to engage in a very delicate balancing act between
an Ockhamist and Augustinian doctrine of grace. Ireland’s account is further
complicated by the fact that he never clearly distinguishes the special help of grace
from the universal offer of sufficient grace in the sacraments. Nevertheless, as this
      91

quote suggests, he did want to retain within his covenantal framework some kind
of notion of prevenient or operative grace. As he expresses this in the Sentences
commentary, God is always ‘moving the soul by knocking on it and exciting it to
grace and good works through good motions and special help’ and the soul
‘follows close after by consenting to these good works’ (Aberdeen MS 264 fol.
64v; cited from Burns 1996: 23, trans. Burton). In this sense he might perhaps be
seen as holding, like the mature Aquinas, that all preparation for grace itself comes
under grace (Aquinas 1948b: 1141).
Significantly, it seems likely that it is his understanding of Scotus that is able
to hold together these two conflicting strands of his theology. For it is notable
that Ireland’s account of auxilium speciale draws on the Augustinian and Scotist
understanding that grace operates by drawing a soul freely to God through the
working of its own desires (Meroure, II: 131–2). From this, and also from his
clear division in the above quote between the soul’s part and God’s part, we may
suspect that Ireland is drawing implicitly on Scotus’ account of partial causation
(cf. Frank 1992), which was favoured strongly by Rimini.⁴ Adapting this Scotistic
device, which itself had deep roots in Augustine, enabled Rimini to argue that
God’s grace is necessary for every good and salvific action while safeguarding
the freedom of the human will, and such a position would seem to fit Ireland
rather nicely (Rimini 1984: 485–7). It is also just possible that this focus on
concausation might explain Ireland’s important, but rather mysterious, modifica-
tion of Ockham’s account of predestination. If so then it may well be that Ireland
is using Scotistic tools to forge a new kind of Augustinian and pastoral theology, in
which divine initiative and human response are placed in a definite reciprocal and
covenantal relationship.

Conclusion

Like John Mair and his Circle, Ireland was certainly not a slavish adherent of
Scotus’ theology. Yet the influence of Scotus on him is undeniable. Indeed, Ireland
had an undoubted pride in the British tradition of theology, and in his Meroure
he is always careful to indicate whether a theologian comes from England or
Scotland (Meroure, I: 48; II: 104, 106, 131). Thus his concern to crush the Pelagian
movement was partly motivated by an awareness that the heresy had a British
origin (Meroure, I: 48), although it is ironic that he seems to have been blind to the
new Pelagianism that many, including his own hero Rimini, found in the theology

⁴ Significantly, the Scotist doctrine of partial causation was entirely foreign to Bradwardine’s
theological metaphysics (Bradwardine 1618: III c. 1–2). However, investigation of Ireland’s Sentences
commentary would be necessary to confirm the precise influence of Rimini and Bradwardine on his
doctrine of auxilium speciale.
92  . . 

of Ockham and others of the ‘britannici’. It therefore seems right to see Ireland’s
theology of grace as an ongoing phase of the dispute over the ‘modern Pelagians’
showing its important Scottish as well as English and European valence. At the
same time, it is notable that Ireland positioned his own Scotistic perfect-being
theology as an antidote to another English example of deviant theology: the
claim of Robert Holcot that theology must abandon ordinary logic in favour
of a supernatural logic derived from Scripture (Meroure, II: 104; cf. Holcot 1967:
1 q. 5 ad. 5). In fact, Ireland’s own recourse to Sabunde could well be seen in this
light as marking his own attempt to construct an alternative ‘logic of faith’.
Remembering that the desire for a logic of Scripture was also one of the hallmarks
of the Wycliffite and Lollard movements (Levy 2003: 81–122), it may well be that
his recourse to Scotus marked an attempt to head off this heretical threat coming
from England, and thus maintain the purity of the Scottish Church.
Given the particularly British, and indeed Scottish, character of Ireland’s the-
ology we are justified in asking about his influence on his native land. While the
Meroure sadly seems to have languished and have become forgotten, the Sentences
commentary—perhaps stripped of its more speculative first two books—was
purchased by Bishop William Elphinstone for his new foundation of the Univer-
sity of Aberdeen. Leslie Macfarlane points out that Elphinstone may have known
Ireland in Paris and certainly came to know and respect him later during his time
in Scotland. For this reason, and bearing in mind Ireland’s ‘distinguished reputa-
tion’, he suggests that it would have been natural for him to authorize the teaching
of his Sentences commentary at his new Theology Faculty in Aberdeen. Certainly,
we have good evidence that Hector Boece, the first principal of Elphinstone’s new
foundation, used Ireland’s commentary as a textbook in his teaching of theology
(Macfarlane 1994: 71–2). One can easily imagine too that Ireland’s ‘balanced
Augustinianism’, his humanism, and his Christological focus on ‘conformity to
Christ’ would have appealed to the reforming bishop, who was strongly influenced
by the currents of the devotio moderna (Holmes 2015: 138). Elphinstone’s desire
was to establish a distinctive Scottish Church with its own ecclesiological and
liturgical identity (Macfarlane 1995: 231–46). It therefore made perfect sense to
equip his new, flagship university with a theological training programme offering
the very best of contemporary Scottish theology.
The presence of Ireland’s work on the syllabus at Aberdeen also suggests the
probability that he could have had an influence on some of the first generations of
Aberdeen theology students, including John Adamson, who later became vicar-
general of the Scottish Dominican province. In this light it is interesting to note
that the library catalogues of sixteenth-century Scottish Dominicans show a
definite interest in Scotus (Foggie 2003: 112, 259, 270). Even more interesting is
the fact that in a copy of Pierre d’Ailly’s Sentences commentary owned by Ireland’s
arch-rival Archbishop Scheves, and later passed on to St Leonard’s, we find layers
of annotations which appear to reference Holcot and Sabundus, as well as the
      93

controversy over whether the Trinity could be proved by natural reason.⁵ Much
more work is needed to decipher these, but they suggest the possibility that
Ireland’s influence, for a time at least, continued to be felt in his native land.

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Davies and G. R. Evans. New York: Oxford University Press.
Aquinas, Thomas (1948a). Summa Theologica: Volume One: 1a QQ. 1–119, trans.
Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benzinger Bros.
Aquinas, Thomas (1948b). Summa Theologica: Volume Two: 1a IIae QQ. 1–114, trans.
Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benzinger Bros.
Bradwardine, Thomas (1618). De Causa Dei contra Pelagium. London.
d’Ailly, Pierre (1483). Quaestiones super libros Sententiarium Petri Lombardi. Brussels.
Duns Scotus, John (1949). The De Primo Principio of John Duns Scotus: A Revised Text
and Translation, trans. Evan Roche. New York: The Franciscan Institute.
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Fratrum Minorum Opera Omnia: Tomus 20: Lectura in librum tertium Senten-
tiarum: a distinctione prima ad decimam septimam, ed. Carolus Balić. Vatican
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Duns Scotus, John (2004). Doctoris Subtilis et Mariani Ioannis Duns Scoti Ordinis
Fratrum Minorum Opera Omnia: Tomus 21: Lectura in librum tertium Senten-
tiarum: a distinctione decima octava ad quadragesimam, ed. Carolus Balić.
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Duns Scotus, John (2004–2008). The Examined Report of the Paris Lecture: Reportatio
1-A, ed. Allan B. Wolter and Oleg V. Bychkov, 2 vols. New York: The Franciscan
Institute.
Holcot, Robert (1518; repr. 1967). In Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Quaestiones.
Lugduni; repr. Frankfurt: Minerva.
Ireland, John (1926). Johannes de Irlandia’s Meroure of Wyssdome, Vol. I, ed. Charles
Macpherson. Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons.
Ireland, John (1965). Johannes de Irlandia’s Meroure of Wyssdome, Vol. II, ed.
F. Quinn. Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons.
Ireland, John (1990). Johannes de Irlandia’s Meroure of Wyssdome, Vol. III, ed. Craig
McDonald. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

⁵ The work in question is Pierre d’Ailly, Quaestiones super libros Sententiarium Petri Lombardi
(Brussels, 1483) [Special Collections, University of St Andrews, TypNB.A80FA]. Relevant annotations
occur in ‘Prologus’, d. 2 and d. 3. I am very grateful to Professor Mark Elliott for arranging for me to be
able to see Archbishop Scheves’ books and to the staff of Special Collections for their kind help.
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Ockham, William of (1983). Predestination, God’s Foreknowledge, and Future Contin-

gents, 2nd edition, trans. Marilyn McCord Adams and Norman Kretzmann. Indian-
apolis and Cambridge: Hackett.
Rimini, Gregory of (1980). Gregorii Ariminensis OESA Lectura super Primum et
Secundum Sententiarum: Tomus VI: Super Secundum (Dist. 24–44), ed. A. Damasus
Trapp and Venicio Marcolino. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
Rimini, Gregory of (1984). Gregorii Ariminensis OESA Lectura super Primum et
Secundum Sententiarum: Tomus III: Super Primum (Dist 19–48), ed. A. Damasus
Trapp and Venicio Marcolino. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
Sabunde, Ramon de (1501). Theologia Naturalis. Strasbourg: Martin Flach.
William of Auxerre (1980). Summa Aurea. Liber Primus, ed. Jean Ribaillier. Paris:
Spicilegium Bonaventurianum.

Secondary Literature
Broadie, Alexander (1990). The Tradition of Scottish Philosophy: A New Perspective on
the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Polygon.
Broadie, Alexander (1995). The Shadow of Scotus: Philosophy and Faith in Pre-
Reformation Scotland. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Broadie, Alexander (2012). A History of Scottish Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Burns, James (1955). ‘John Ireland and “The Meroure of Wyssdome” ’, Innes Review 6:
77–98.
Burns, James (1996). The True Law of Kingship: Concepts of Monarchy in Early-
Modern Scotland. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Courtenay, William (1984). ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion’, in William
Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought: Studies in Philosophy,
Theology and Economic Practice. London: Variorum Reprints, 26–58.
Cross, Richard (2007). Duns Scotus on God. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Foggie, Janet (2003). Renaissance Religion in Urban Scotland: The Dominican Order,
1450–1560. Leiden: Brill.
Frank, William (1992). ‘Duns Scotus on Autonomous Freedom and Divine
Co-Causality’, Medieval Philosophy and Theology 2: 142–64.
Halverson, James (1995). ‘Franciscan Theology and Predestinarian Pluralism in Late-
Medieval Thought’, Speculum 70/1: 1–26.
Hobbins, Daniel (2003). ‘The Schoolman as Public Intellectual: Jean Gerson and the
Late Medieval Tract’, American Historical Review 108: 1308–37.
Hoenen, Maarten (2003). ‘Via Antiqua and Via Moderna in the Fifteenth Century:
Doctrinal, Institutional and Church Political Factors in the Wegestreit’, in Russell
Friedman and Lauge Nielsen (eds.), The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Meta-
physics and Modal Theory, 1400–1700. Dordrecht: Springer, 9–26.
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Holmes, Stephen (2015). Sacred Signs in Reformation Scotland: Interpreting Worship,

1488–1590. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knuuttila, Simo (1981). ‘Time and Modality in Scholasticism’, in Simo Knuuttila (ed.),
Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theories.
Dordrecht: Reidel, 163–258.
Levy, Ian Christopher (2003). John Wyclif: Scriptural Logic, Real Presence, and the
Parameters of Orthodoxy. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
McDonald, Craig (1987). ‘John Ireland’s “Meroure of Wyssdome” and Chaucer’s “Tale
of Melibee” ’, Studies in Scottish Literature 21: 23–34.
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Macfarlane, Leslie (1995). William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland 1431–1514:
The Struggle for Order. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Mapstone, Sally (1989). ‘A Mirror for a Divine Prince: John Ireland and the Four
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Mason, Roger (1987). ‘Kingship, Tyranny and the Right to Resist in Fifteenth Century
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 8
John Mair as Theologian
John T. Slotemaker

The Person and his Work

John Mair was born in 1467 (or possibly 1468) to a farming family in Gleghornie,
Scotland, a small town fifteen miles east of Edinburgh in the diocese of St Andrews
(CTJM, Farge: 13–22).¹ He began his education in Haddington and entered
Cambridge University (studying at God’s house, later Christ’s College) around
1490, but soon moved to Paris in either 1491 or 1492. At Paris Mair was a member
of the Collège Sainte-Barbe and as a Scotsman belonged to the English-German
Nation (see Broadie 2009). He earned the licence in the arts in 1494 and the
magister artium in 1495, having studied philosophy and logic under Jean Bolu,
Thomas Bricot, and Jerónimo Pardo. Mair continued his education at the Collège
de Montaigu where he studied for the doctorate under Jan Standonck and was in
close contact with Noël Beda, the famous critic of Renaissance humanism. Mair
completed his doctorate in November of 1506.
Mair began teaching at Paris during the period of his doctoral education and
remained at Paris, in the Collège de Montaigu, until 1518. During this time he
taught students in both the Faculty of Arts and Theology. Between 1518 and 1526
Mair returned to his native Scotland and served first as regent and principal of the
University of Glasgow (1518–23), and second as professor of Arts and Theology
at the University of St Andrews (1523–6), as well as Treasurer of the Chapel Royal.
Mair returned to Paris in 1526 and taught there until his return to St Andrews in
1533 to become the Provost of St Salvator’s College. It is unclear why Mair left
Paris—after all, he became a French citizen in 1528—although the move clearly
marked as shift in his intellectual efforts and scholarly production. Mair ceased to
publish after returning to Scotland; however, he continued to teach both in the
Arts and Theology. These last two decades of his life remain the most opaque as
there are few historical records. Mair lived to be about 83 and died on 1 May 1550.

¹ In what follows I cite individual papers in (Slotemaker and Witt 2015) as ‘CTJM, Author’s name:
page(s)’.

John T. Slotemaker, John Mair as Theologian. In: The History of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic
Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0008
     97

Mair’s Theological Works

John Mair’s literary output is extensive and includes works of history, philosophy,
and theology (see CTJM, Farge and Zahnd: 376–80). Further, Mair was actively
engaged in editing several works that indicate his lifelong interest in the philo-
sophical theology of the fourteenth century. In particular, Mair edited John Duns
Scotus’ († 1308) Parisian commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard as well
as an abridged version (by Henry Totting of Oyta, † 1397) of Adam Wodeham’s
(† 1358) commentary on the Sentences (CTJM, Farge and Zahnd, 380). The focus
here, however, will be on Mair’s theological works.
John Mair wrote two biblical commentaries: the first was published in 1518 and
treated the gospel of Matthew; the second was published in 1529 and examined all
four gospels. These are important works, particularly for establishing Mair’s
political theology (see Ganoczy 1968; Sabean 1976). However, his greatest work
of theology is his magisterial commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
published between 1509 and 1530 in numerous redactions and reprints.
Mair published his commentary on Book I of the Sentences in Paris between
1510 and 1530 (Kitanov et al. 2015: 375–83). The first redaction was printed in
1510 and 1519 with a second redaction, adding new material, in 1530. This first
book of the Sentences treats the doctrine of the triune God. In the first redaction
Mair was not comprehensive in treating all of the distinctions of Book I (omitting
over a dozen distinctions)—thus, in the second redaction, Mair expands his
discussion and treats almost all of the distinctions (omitting only dd. 32–34).
Book II went through three redactions that were each printed once in 1510, 1519,
and 1528 respectively. While the first redaction of Book II is comprehensive in
treating all of Lombard’s distinctions (unlike Book I), in the second redaction
printed in 1519 Mair expands greatly the number of questions in many distinc-
tions. This second redaction is the longest of the three, while the third is textually
closest to the first and a much shorter text. Book III is the only one Mair did not
substantively rework and the single redaction was printed twice in 1517 and 1528.
The two versions are similar in treating every distinction with at least one question
(and the table of questions for both works is identical). However, the text itself is
somewhat distinct and Mair frequently changes or supplements his arguments
throughout. Book IV went through two redactions, the first being printed in 1509,
1512, and 1519, the second redaction in 1516 and 1521. The first redaction is itself
a sizeable work commenting on every distinction of the Lombard’s text; however,
the second redaction is almost twice the length of its predecessor.
Mair’s commentary on the Sentences is a comprehensive systematic presenta-
tion of Christian thought. Thus, beginning with Book I it investigates the nature of
God, while the second, third, and fourth books treat issues of creation (including a
theology of the human person), Christ and redemption, and the sacraments of the
Church respectively. While this short description of Mair’s theological works is
98  . 

complete in a formal sense, it should be noted that his theology cannot be easily
divorced from his philosophical works. Mair’s logical works—published both
prior to and after he began his commentary on the Sentences—must be read
alongside his explicitly theological works.

An Overview of Mair’s Theology

John Mair’s first theological work was his commentary on the fourth book of
Lombard’s Sentences, and while it was customary to begin with Book I—and thus
to offer in a prologue to Book I an overview of the theological project—Mair
attaches to Book IV a substantial prologue. This prologue is the necessary point of
departure for the study of Mair’s theology, because here Mair presents a meth-
odological outline for his theological project.
Writing at the beginning of the sixteenth century John Mair surveyed the
previous fifteen centuries of Christian theology and was intimately familiar with
both scholastic and humanist methodologies. His prologue to Book IV establishes
his generally conservative or traditionalist approach to Christian thought that,
following the humanists, engaged with an ad fontes approach, while simultan-
eously following the scholastics in developing a systematically ordered theology
grounded in the use of Aristotelian logic. A significant aspect of this method, for
Mair, is not weighing down theology with material from other sciences (Mair,
Sent. IV, prol., 1509, a1ra). Thus, while Mair agreed with humanist criticism of
frivolous speculation, he retained the formal structure and method of argumen-
tation that was the foundation of the scholastic method.
Perhaps Mair’s commitment to both methodologies is clearest in the dialogue
he used to introduce his commentary on the first book of the Sentences (Mair,
Sent. I (1519), a1v–a2v). Here, in the personae of David Cranston and Gavin
Douglas, Mair presents both sides of the dialectic for and against scholasticism,
leaving the reader with no resolution and hundreds of pages of dense argumen-
tation awaiting. In the end it is the reader who must judge the outcome of the
debate after reading Mair’s text; the reader, that is, must confront Mair’s human-
istically informed scholastic method.
Mair’s thought has often been charged with being both Nominalist and eclectic.
The problem, of course, is that neither term does justice to Mair’s deep commit-
ment to seeking out a via media both between the competing schools of the
Wegestreit (i.e. the nominales and reales) and between the scholastics and
humanists. Mair is not a Nominalist in either the fourteenth- or fifteenth-
century uses of the term. He is neither a Nominalist in the strain of William of
Ockham or John Buridan—though aspects of his philosophy and theology
remind one of both—nor one in the sense of the Wegestreit Nominalists who
defined themselves over and against the Realists. Mair’s approach is more
     99

conciliatory and methodologically speaking he often attempts to demonstrate

that his position is consistent with aspects of both the Nominalists and Realists.
Thus, while he adopts a Nominalist theory of language, for example, he will also
go to great lengths to show that that position should be acceptable—when
applied to a particular theological case—to someone who holds Realist tenden-
cies. The methodological complexity of Mair’s thought has led some to label him
an eclectic thinker. While this is true in the sort of trivial sense that Mair borrows
from a diversity of sources, it does not adequately account for the fact that
behind his diverse borrowings is a unifying and comprehensive method that is
continually seeking out a via media.

The nature of theology

The Sentences of Peter Lombard was the normative textbook for the study of
theology from the thirteenth century up through the beginning of the sixteenth
century; however, in Mair’s description of theological method at the beginning
of his commentary, it is clear that he is open to rethinking the centrality of the
Sentences.
The prologue to Mair’s commentary presents the reader with four distinct
propositions that delineate the nature of theology (CTJM, Witt: 64–7). The first
proposition states that the theologian is one who knows the common places (loci)
of Scripture and understands how to expound the truths that are contained
therein. Here, what is striking about Mair’s introduction to theological method
is that he begins with Scripture (something that is not often placed front and
centre in the Sentences commentary tradition). Mair expands upon this claim in
the second proposition, arguing that theology ought to build deductively from the
statements found in Scripture. This method, as Jeffrey Witt argues, follows closely
a position articulated by Gregory of Rimini in the mid-fourteenth century (CTJM,
Witt: 65). The third proposition states (in response to Peter Aureoli) that theology
is not to be deduced from or begin with probable propositions. That is, theology is
grounded in Scripture and not propositions that are not certain. However, what is
the result of such theological discourse? In the fourth proposition Mair argues that
the assent to theological discourse grounded in Scripture leads to faith. Theology,
as Rimini argued, leads to assent by means of faith.
Mair, therefore, is cautious to delineate the boundaries between theology,
which is grounded in the truths of Scripture, and other forms of reasoning that
are grounded in probable arguments. Like other medieval theologians and his
contemporaries, Mair does think that probable arguments can lead to a form of
opinionative assent that is important to human reasoning. And, as such, Mair
makes some space for probable reasoning within his theology; however, one
should not confuse such reasoning with theology proper (CTJM, Witt: 73).
100  . 

The Christian God

Mair’s doctrine of God is complex and benefits from extensive engagement with
fourteenth-century theologians. And, in many ways, Mair’s theology proper is
strongly influenced by William of Ockham and the tradition of theological
Nominalism that emerged in the writings of subsequent thinkers such as Robert
Holcot and Gregory of Rimini. Here we can consider two topics that present a
sampling of Mair’s thought: his understanding of the divine attributes, and his
account of Trinitarian theology.
One of the central theological questions in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries had to do with the divine attributes. God is said to be good, wise, just,
loving, etc., however, it remains unclear whether or not there is a distinction
between God and his various attributes. Some thirteenth-century theologians,
such as John Duns Scotus, held that there was some kind of distinction (rational,
formal, or otherwise) between God and his goodness, for example. William of
Ockham, however, argued that there is no distinction between God and God’s
goodness, God simply is good, wise, just, and loving. According to Ockham,
positing any kind of distinction between God and the divine attributes violated
the absolute simplicity of the divine nature. Mair agrees with Ockham. He denies
any kind of distinction between God and God’s attributes and references Anselm,
in this context, who argued in the Monologion c.16 that justice is not something
God has, but something that God is (Sent. I, d.8, q.1; 1519 f. 42rb). This under-
standing of God’s divine simplicity is related to Mair’s Trinitarian theology, which
also developed a minimalist approach to predicating unnecessary distinctions
within God.
The Christian tradition teaches that the one God is three distinct persons, a
divine Trinity. This belief—that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct
persons but one God—poses certain philosophical and theological challenges. The
challenges, as understood in the fourteenth century, and up through the sixteenth,
are in articulating precisely how it is that the three divine persons are distinct.
That is, how can the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be distinct if they are one thing
(one substance)?
The scholastic doctors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries posited three
basic models regarding the distinction of persons. The first model was generally
held by Dominicans and can be called a relational model; according to this view
the divine persons are distinct by relations of origin such that an active and passive
relation is posited between each divine persons (e.g. the Father is distinct from
the Son such that the Father has the active relation of paternity and the Son has the
passive relation of filiation). The second model was generally held by Franciscans
and can be called a processional model; according to this view the divine persons
are distinct by means of the divine emanations (e.g. the Father is distinct from the
Son because the Father generates the Son). A third model, traditionally linked to
     101

Praepositinus of Cremona († 1290), can be called a minimalist model; according

to this view the divine persons are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis). This
model had often been charged with tritheism; however, it avoids it by simply
stating that there is one God who is three distinct persons: three persons who are
distinct in and of themselves. And defenders of this position would often claim
that any attempt to explain how this is the case (that there is one God who is three
distinct persons) simply confuses the issue and provides little by way of explana-
tory value. John Mair was not particularly interested in the heated debates of the
late thirteenth century between the Dominicans and Franciscans, and instead
followed a more minimalist approach to Trinitarian theology. In defending a
version of Trinitarian minimalism Mair returns to the Sentences of Peter Lombard
and finds support for this view in both Augustine and Jerome (CTJM, Slotemaker:
104–12). Mair also links this view with William of Auxerre († 1231).
Theologically, therefore, Mair supports a kind of Trinitarian minimalism that
argues that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct in and of themselves. This
implies that, in the end, explanatory models used to articulate the distinction
between the divine persons are not actually useful when discussing the nature of
the divine Trinity. In many ways, Mair’s rejection of the processional or relational
models is also related to his Christology, where, as we will see, he rejects certain
accounts of the hypostatic relation.

Jesus Christ

Christian theology teaches that the second person of the Trinity (the logos, the
Son) became incarnate in human flesh, such that Jesus Christ is both fully divine
and fully human, God and man. Of course, precisely how Christ is understood to
be fully human and fully divine has exercised theologians for millennia as they
attempt to provide some account of how it is metaphysically possible for some
being to be both divine and human. In the scholastic period, the central question
was with regard to Christ’s constitution: i.e. what type of constituent parts is
Christ made of, and how are these parts related to each other and to the whole
person (CTJM, Cross: 115)? In his treatment of Mair’s Christology, Richard Cross
argues that Mair holds a metaphysical account of Christ’s constitution that is
grounded in Scotus’ theology and is refined by the logical and linguistic approach
of Ockham (who modified Scotus in important ways).
Mair follows Scotus in arguing that the divine logos (the second person of the
Trinity) sustains Christ’s human nature such that the human nature is dependent
upon the logos (CTJM, Cross: 126–7). This implies, of course, that there is a
relationship—one of accidental dependence—between the logos and the human
nature. Therefore, just as a substance sustains its accidents, the divine logos
sustains the human nature through a relation of dependence. Duns Scotus, of
102  . 

course, used similar language to talk about the two natures, and further argued
that the two relata (i.e. the logos and the human nature) are related by means of a
relation of hypostatic dependence that is something distinct from the two relata
(in the sense that there is a real relation). Mair would follow Scotus in his language
of ‘sustaining’ and ‘dependence’, but would break with Scotus’ understanding of
relations as a result of his thoroughgoing nominalism.
Ockham, who shared Mair’s nominalist leanings, was also shaped by Scotus’
Christology; however, Ockham navigated the discussion of the relations in a
different way. Ockham had argued that all-natural relations are not real things
above and beyond the relata, the foundations of the relation. However, in the-
ology, Ockham was infamously willing to grant certain theological exceptions to
his theory of relations: he argued that the Trinitarian relations (e.g. the relation of
paternity between the Father and the Son) and the relation between Christ’s two
natures required something more. Following Scotus, Ockham was willing to
concede an exception to his basic philosophical position, arguing that in the
case of the logos and the human nature, there must be some ‘relation of hypostatic
dependence’ that obtains (CTJM, Cross: 128–9).
Mair, for his part, disagrees with Scotus about the nature of the relation and
argues that the ‘relation’ of hypostatic dependence is not some thing, but is simply
the assumed human nature. Thus, as with Scotus, one can talk about the ‘relation’
of hypostatic dependence, although for Mair it means something quite different.
The ‘relation’ in question is not a real thing that has a mind-independent reality; it
is simply the assumed human nature. The relation is, as such, the assumed flesh:
the person of Jesus Christ. As Richard Cross argues, Mair follows Scotus in a
general sense, as Ockham had, but is more consistent than Ockham in applying
his philosophical view of relations. Ockham’s Christology (and Trinitarian the-
ology) have the unsavoury consequences of supporting a view of relations that he
outright rejected in his philosophical works: thus, as it were, driving a wedge
between philosophy and theology. Mair’s position is more consistent in its
approach and develops a unified view of relations as applicable to natural objects,
Christology, and Trinitarian theology (CTJM, Cross: 138).

Salvation

Mair’s understanding of the processus iustificationis is grounded in a thoroughly

medieval understanding of God’s grace, the human response to grace, and the
sacraments of the Church. First, Mair is clear that God initiates salvation by
means of grace, and grace is a habit of charity that is infused into the soul
(CTJM, Fink: 225–30). Here Mair follows other scholastic theologians, such as
Thomas Aquinas, in breaking with Peter Lombard who had argued that saving
grace in the soul really is the Holy Spirit (Sent. I, d.17). That said, Mair does
     103

concede that while grace is a created habit, there is an analogy between grace as a
created habit and the divine nature (CTJM, Fink: 228). However, if the process of
salvation begins with an initial grace of God—which is a created habit—how is
one to speak about human merit in relation to salvation?
Mair follows the late medieval theologians in distinguishing between two kinds
of merit: (1) condign merit (meritum de condigno), and (2) congruent merit
(meritum de congruo). Traditionally defined condign merit is merit that meets
the standards of God’s justice, whereas congruent merit is merit that meets the
standards of God’s mercy. However, Mair has a rather unique understanding of
how these two categories apply to the viator. He concedes that condign merit is
indeed possible—as witnessed to in Scripture—but argues that the prerequisite for
condign merit is the grace of the Holy Spirit, the caritas creata described previ-
ously. Congruent merit, according to Mair, is merit that is present when the sinner
ceases to resist the grace offered by God (CTJM, Fink: 232–3). In this sense, Mair
has a rather unique view of condign and congruent merit but insists that the
former kind of merit bestowed is on the Christian who has been given the initial
gift of charity.
Finally, it should be noted that Mair holds that the discussion of human
salvation described above, and its relation to the penitential cycle, is what is
normative given God’s ordained order. That said, by means of his absolute
power (potentia absoluta) God could save individuals independent of the pro-
cesses described above and further defined by the penitential system of the
Church. For example, the good thief described in the gospel of Luke was saved
not according to the normal order, or God’s ordained power (potentia ordinata),
but by means of God’s radical saving work.

Christian ethics

The Sentences commentary of John Mair is a massive treatise that often examines
in excruciating detail particular ethical cases. For example, a quick look at
distinction 15 of Mair’s 1521 commentary on Book IV reveals that this single
distinction contains an unprecedented 50 questions (CTJM, Slotemaker et al.:
337–47). Here Mair works out his high casuistry: his methodological approach to
ethical questions.
Casuistry is an approach to ethics or jurisprudence that focuses on case (casus)
studies. High casuistry is often distinguished from low casuistry in that high
casuistry is the attempt to find some guiding principles or controlling insights
within the cases studied (CTJM, Keenan: 204–5). Thus, as James Keenan has
argued, John Mair develops his approach to ethical questions by focusing on cases
and attempting to establish some guiding principles that govern a particular set of
ethical questions. To give a particular example that has been much discussed in
104  . 

the literature, at one point in his commentary on the Sentences (Sent. IV, d.15, q.3,
casus 15; 1521 f. 103va) Mair examines the case of maritime insurance. In 1237
Pope Gregory IX argued that it was usury for someone to receive some kind of
financial credit for taking on risk: as such, it became illicit to provide maritime
insurance (CTJM, Keenan: 195–6). However, in the early sixteenth century some
Spanish merchants asked the University of Paris to reconsider the issue, asking
whether or not it would reconsider the moral status of maritime insurance. Mair,
in response, provides a detailed case study of maritime insurance examining the
Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, positive law, natural law, and the initial
papal decree by Gregory IX. In response, Mair concludes that maritime insurance
is not ruled out by any of the sources he studied and, as such, should be permitted
(CTJM, Keenan: 197–8).
However, as Keenan and others have argued, what is important about high
casuistry is not necessarily the individual conclusions established in response to
case studies, but the methodological process involved in establishing certain
norms or guiding principles. This process relies on giving analogies and argu-
ments, as well as providing context by means of examining extenuating circum-
stances and individual cases. All of this, of course, being used to make a clear and
persuasive argument for a given ethical decision and some broader guiding
principles. What is unique about John Mair’s ethics, therefore, is not individual
positions he held, but his broader methodology. Mair was one of the last of the
great sixteenth-century scholastic theologians and he applied both his scholastic
method and his high casuistry to re-examining the Christian moral life.

Biblical Commentaries

Mair’s central theological contribution is undoubtedly his extensive commentary

on the Sentences. However, a summary of Mair’s theology would not be complete
without some discussion of his biblical commentaries. Here we can briefly con-
sider his commentary on Matthew that was published in 1518.
Mair’s commentary on the book of Matthew is an extensive work that treats
all 28 chapters. The work contains 26 pages of indices (a.iiv–b.iiiir), the gospel
of Matthew in Latin (A.ir–C.iiiiv), and about 204 pages of biblical commentary.
The two indices are quite useful: the first provides detailed outline of the book
by chapter listing each quaestio and dubitatio litterales; the second provides an
alphabetical index of people, events, concepts, etc. Thus, the reader can quickly
navigate the text and get a general sense of the types of questions that Mair is
entertaining throughout the work. For example, the first chapter contains
eleven formal questions ranging from questions about the marriages of Salmon,
Rahab, Boaz, and Ruth as present in Jesus’ genealogy (q.2) to whether or not
there was a verum matrimonium between the Virgin Mary and Joseph (q.11).
     105

The latter, of course, being motivated by the medieval debate regarding whether
or not a true marriage was marriage by mutual consent (consensus animorum)
or by sexual relations (copula corporum). The first impression the reader gets,
by analysing the list of questions, is that Mair’s commentary often remains
close to the biblical text. That said, there are some important theological
discussions that Mair entertains throughout the commentary and here we can
consider one case.
Matthew 16 begins with a discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees and
Sadducees. Jesus engages them in some debate and warns the disciples to beware
of the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matt. 16:1–12). Following this
discussion, Jesus famously asks his disciples ‘who do people say that the Son of
Man is?’—to which Peter replied, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living
God’ (Matt. 16:13, 16). Further, in response to this answer, Jesus says to Peter,
‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church . . . I will give you the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound
in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ (Matt.
16:18–19).
John Mair’s commentary on Matthew 16 begins with a question about the
difference between the Christian Church and the Jewish Synagogue. That question
transitions into a series of eight more that deal, at least in part, with issues of papal
power. Here, Mair defends a conciliarist ecclesiology—over and against the power
of the pope—that he traces back to the fourteenth century. He argues that Paris
traditionally supported conciliarism going back to Pierre d’Ailly († 1430) and Jean
Gerson († 1429)—a tradition, he argues, that has been unbroken at Paris up
through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And, while this is not the place to
discuss Mair’s political theology, what we notice here is that Mair’s commentary
often contains substantive discussion of theological topics treated by means
of several questions. This is the case not only with respect to the discussion of
political theology in his commentary on Matthew 16, but also in Mair’s extensive
treatment of Matthew 26. He dedicates some twenty-eight questions to the
passion of Christ in the Garden and one gets an extensive treatment of Christ’s
suffering in relation to human redemption.
The other unique aspect of Mair’s commentary on Matthew is the biblical text
itself. Mair produces a Latin edition of the book of Matthew that provides in the
margins extensive notation (proto footnotes) that cross-references a given passage
in Matthew with other biblical books. For example, in the margins to his com-
mentary on chapter 1 (A.ir) of Matthew he presents references from Old Testa-
ment works (e.g. Gen. 21, 29, 30, II Sam. 12, I. Kgs. 2, I Chr. 3, Isa.7, etc.) as well as
parallel texts found in the other gospels (e.g. Luke 3, 15; John 1). The gospel
parallels are extensive and offer an interesting intra-textual feature that the reader
can use alongside Mair’s other commentary written on all four gospels (In quatuor
evangelia . . . , 1529).
106  . 

Conclusion

John Mair was an important Scottish theologian who developed an extensive sys-
tematic theology in his massive commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. This
work, alongside his biblical commentaries, provides an important glimpse into how a
scholastic theologian who flourished during the first decades of the sixteenth century
responded to the age of Protestant Reform. In this respect Mair’s theology is an
important witness to the end of medieval scholasticism (as distinct from early
modern or ‘second’ scholasticism) and the type of theology produced in dialogue
with both Renaissance humanism and the developing theology of the Reformers.

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Sentences, Book I
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apud eundem Badium. Paris: J. Badius [1st redaction].
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tri Sententiarum disputations et decisiones nuper repositae, cum amplissimis materi-
arum et quaestionum indicibus seu tabellis. Paris: J. Badius et J. Petit [2nd
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1. 1509. Quartus sententiarum Johannis Majoris. Paris: P. Piquochet [1st redaction].
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3. 1516. Joannis Majoris doctoris theologi in quartum Sententiarum questions utilis-

sime suprema ipsius lucubratione enucleatae, cum duplici tabella, videlicet alphabe-
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ibus formulisimpressae, cum duplici tabella, videlicet alphabetica materiarum
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Biblical Commentaries
1518. In Mattheum ad literam expositio, una cum trecentis et octo dubiis et difficulta-
tibus ad eius elucidationem admodum conducentibus passim insertis, quibus perlectis
pervia erit quatuor evangelistarum series. Ed. Jacques Godequin. Paris: Pierre
Vidoue for Guillaume Desplains, Jean Granjon.
1529. In quatuor evangelia expositiones luculente et disquisitiones et disputationes
contra hereticos plurime, premisso serie literarum indice, et additis ad finem operis
quatuor questionibus non impertinentibus. Paris: Josse Bade.

Secondary Sources
Biard, Joël (2000). ‘La toute-puissance divine dans le Commentaire des Sentences de
Jean Mair’, in Guido Canziani, Miguel A. Granada, and Yves Charles Zarka (eds.),
Potentia Dei. L’onnipotenza divina nel pensiero dei secoli XVI e XVII. Mailand:
Franco Angeli, 25–41.
Broadie, Alexander (2003). ‘John Mair’, Dictionary of Literary Biography 271/2:
178–87.
Broadie, Alexander (2009). ‘John Mair’s “Dialogus de materia theologo tractanda”:
Introduction, Text and Translation’, in Alasdair A. MacDonland, Zweder R. W. M.
von Martels, and Jan R. Veenstre (eds.), Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of
Arjo Vanderjagt. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 419–30.
Broadie, Alexander (2010). A History of Scottish Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Broadie, Alexander (2012). ‘John Mair on Divine Creation and Conservation’, in
L. A. J. R. Houwen (ed.), Literature and Religion in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Scotland. Leuven: Peeters, 167–76.
Broadie, Alexander (2013). ‘Assentiment et volonté: la pré-Réforme écossaise’, in
Laurent Jaffro (ed.), Croît-on comme on veut? La controverse classique sur le rôle
de la volonté dans l’assentiment. Paris: Vrin, 117–32.
Burns, J. H. (1954). ‘New Light on John Major’, The Innes Review 5: 83–100.
108  . 

Concha, Sergio R. (1971). ‘La teología del matrimonio en Ioannes Maior. El propósito
del acto matrimonial’, in Anales de la Facultad Pontificia de Teología 22. Santiago de
Chile: Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.
Farge, James K. (1980). Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of Theology. 1500–1536.
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
Ganoczy, Alexandre (1968). ‘Jean Major, exégète Gallican’, Recherches des sciences
religieuses 56: 457–95.
Kitanov, Severin V., John T. Slotemaker, and Jeffrey C. Witt (2015). ‘John Major’s
(Mair) Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: Scholastic Philosophy and
Theology in the Early Sixteenth Century’, in Philipp W. Rosemann (ed.), Mediaeval
Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: Volume III. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
369–415.
Oakley, Francis (1965). ‘Almain and Major: Conciliar Theory on the Eve of the
Reformation’, American Historical Review 70: 673–90.
Rosta, Francisco (1941). Johannis Maioris de praedestinatione doctrina. Rome: Ponti-
fica Università Gregoriana.
Saarinen, Risto (2011). Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sabean, John W. (1976). ‘The Biblical Exegesis of John Mair of Haddington. A Study in
Scholastic Methodology’. PhD thesis, University of Guelph.
Slotemaker, John T. and Jeffrey C. Witt (eds.) (2015). A Companion to the Theology of
John Mair. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Torrance, Thomas F. (1969–70). ‘La philosophie et la théologie de Jean Mair ou Major,
de Haddington (1469–1550)’, Archives de Philosophie 32 (1969): 531–47, and 33
(1970): 261–293.
Vereecke, Louis (1977). ‘Liberté humaine et grace divine à la veille de la réforme’, in
H. Boelaars (ed.), In libertatem vocati estis. Rome: Academia Alfonsiana, 503–22.
Wood, R. Neil (1997). ‘John Mair: The Human Dimension of Faith’, The Innes Review
48: 125–43.
 9
Sixteenth-Century Philosophy and
Theology after John Mair
Giovanni Gellera

This chapter investigates the concept and theological use of philosophy in

Scotland after John Mair. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first
section covers the progression from John Mair to Andrew Melville. The second
discusses the differences between scholasticism and humanist Aristotelianism.
The third and fourth sections analyse some late sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century texts by Andrew Melville, Robert Rollock, and four
university philosophers: William Robertson, William Craig, John Adamson,
and John Petrie.

From Mair to Melville

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (1530), John Mair writes

that:
In almost all Aristotle’s opinions he agrees with the Catholic and true Christian
faith in all its integrity. He constantly asserts the free will of man . . . . in so great
and manifold a work [i.e. the Ethics] you meet scarcely a single opinion unworthy
of a Christian gentleman. (Broadie 2009: 58)

A few years earlier, Martin Luther had famously attacked Aristotelo-scholasticism

in the Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam (1517):
§41. Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. Against all
the scholastics.
§43. It is wrong to say that no one can become a theologian without Aristotle.
§50. Briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness to light. Against all the
scholastics.¹

¹ ‘§41 Tota fere Aristotelis Ethica pessima est gratiae inimica. Contra scholasticos; §43 Error est
dicere sine Aristotele non fit theologus; §50 Breviter totus Aristoteles ad theologiam est tenebre ad
lucem. Contra scholasticos.’ Translations are my own.

Giovanni Gellera, Sixteenth-Century Philosophy and Theology after John Mair. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0009
110  

For John Mair and his ‘Circle’ logic and philosophy were ‘theologians’ tools’
(Broadie 2009: 87). The ‘theological use’ of philosophy was to provide logical
and dialectical resources for the intelligence of faith. Their commentaries on
Aristotle’s corpus, especially logic, display a largely humanistic attention to the
Greek text but always as part of a broader theological outlook.
A man of the old system, John Mair was nonetheless aware of the complex
relations between philosophy and theology, humanism and scholasticism. The
tensions between scholastics and humanists are discussed in his fictional Dialogus
de materia theologo tractanda in the commentary on the first book of the
Sentences (1510). Gavin Douglas, humanist poet and provost, complains of the
excessive reliance on Aristotle over the Church Fathers, that philosophy is a
source of obscurity rather than clarity for the theologians, and claims that only
salvation matters, as in Paul II Timotheus 3:14–15. David Cranston, scholastic
theologian and philosopher, replies that theology cannot be inconsistent with
philosophy because of the unity of truth, and that Aristotelian logic is comple-
mentary to theology. Douglas ascribes the prolixity of the scholastics’ books to ‘the
vain pride of those thinkers’ (Broadie 2009: 55). Between Mair’s and Luther’s
opposite attitudes towards philosophy, in post-Reformation Scotland the concept
of Aristotle, and of philosophy, was closer to Mair’s ‘Christian gentleman’ than to
Luther’s ‘destroyer of good doctrine’ (Kusukawa 1995: 36).²
Luther’s hatred for philosophy (Büttgen 2011: 7) and Calvin’s understanding
of philosophy as a sceptical self-defeating discipline set much of the respective
philosophical agendas in Wittenberg and Geneva. In Scotland, the Reformation
was a communal enterprise without a single leading figure (Wright 2004: 176) and
John Knox, arguably the most prominent Scottish reformer, exerted only an
indirect influence on philosophy. A student of Mair’s, Knox was a preacher, not
a systematic thinker, who had little to say in the way of philosophy provided that
philosophy remained within due limits. A similar communal character is true of
sixteenth-century academic philosophy, a remarkable fact also in consideration of
the uniform content of the philosophy texts from the 1590s and 1600s.
In the years after the Reformation scholasticism lingered in the Scottish uni-
versities. Although it lacked originality, it is unfair to describe it as generally
conservative since ‘quite a large number of Scottish Aristotelian purists carefully
expound[ed] Aristotle’s ideas’ with a humanist spirit (Broadie 2009: 96). Calls
for the reform of the ‘old scholasticism’ of the universities were common but it
was only with Andrew Melville’s university reform from the 1570s that a new,
comprehensive, and consciously post-scholastic account of the relationship of
philosophy to theology emerged.

² Letter to Latomus (1521): ‘Thomas [Aquinas] wrote a great deal of heresy, and is responsible for
the reign of Aristotle, the destroyer of good doctrine.’
       111

Melville overhauled the curriculum with the introduction of humanist studies

and specialized teachers, the dismissal of metaphysics, and a specific theological
use of humanist philosophy, namely Ramism. In logic, dialectic, and rhetoric,
Pierre de la Ramée conceived a reform of the arts curriculum characterized by
anti-Aristotelianism, order as the universal method, the practical orientation of
theory, and innovative methods of presentation, such as the dichotomous dia-
grams. Melville used Ramism as a quick and effective way to disseminate the new
curriculum inspired by Presbyterianism, so that ‘it was precisely the “pragmatism”
of Ramism that Melville found attractive, not its radicalism’ (Reid 2011: 60).
A new theology and a new method of presentation came with new philosophical
content: the curriculum was broadened to include humanist disciplines and
Ramist dialectic, but its philosophical content retained a ‘near-monolithic focus
on Aristotle’ (Reid 2011: 9), especially in natural and moral philosophy. Melville’s
humanist strategy to ‘subvert the scholastic version of Aristotle . . . should not be
interpreted as constituting opposition to Aristotle himself ’ (Holloway 2011: 80).
Hence, ‘at its core, the “Melvillian” reform programme comprised a humanist
refocusing on Aristotle in the original Greek’ and ‘the small set of theses extant for
the “Melvillian” period are almost entirely occupied with the exposition of Aris-
totelian texts and ideas’ (Reid 2011: 49, 195).
The next section analyses the distinction of scholasticism and Aristotle, and
how Melville’s specialized humanist curriculum promoted a conscious and
discipline-specific use of Aristotle.

Scholasticism and Aristotelianism

Far from ‘revolt[ing] against Aristotle’ (Rait 1899), Melville regarded Aristotle as
an intellectual and pedagogical resource. In the histories of the Scottish Reforma-
tion, old and recent alike, the perception of Catholicism, scholasticism, and
Aristotle as correlated somehow led to overlooking the most immediate back-
ground of the Reformation and to regarding it as intrinsically conservative. In the
past decades, scholars in different areas have revised the relationship of Reforma-
tion and scholasticism. Among others, Charles Schmitt has given currency to the
idea of a distinction between scholasticism and Aristotelianism and of the varieties
of Renaissance Aristotelianisms (Schmitt 1983), and Richard Muller has argued
for the enduring importance of scholasticism in the formulation of Reformed
orthodoxy (Muller 1987). John Durkan has shown how pervasive Latin culture
was in pre-Reformation Scotland and argued that some intellectual resources of
the early Reformation could come only from pre-existing institutions, such as
grammar schools and universities (Durkan 1959).
Richard Muller has described scholasticism as a technical and logical approach
to theology lasting from around the twelfth to the eighteenth century. It is a
112  

method, mostly academic, of exposition of a truth considered as orthodox. It

cannot be a descriptor of a thinker, at least not any more than ‘analytic’ is today.
Scholastic theology is different from, but also consistent with and complementary
to, catechetical, exegetical, and homiletical theology. Scholasticism does not indi-
cate a specific theologico-philosophic content, although changes in method tend
to produce changes in form: for example, from a scholastic treatise to a pulpit
sermon. The Reformers consciously worked in a plurality of theologies (Muller
2004: 140–1).³ Late sixteenth-century Scottish philosophy belongs to the ‘early’
period of the formulation of ‘“Calvinist” orthodoxy’ (Muller 2004: 134). The
received body of philosophy was adjusted to the new faith: the systematic elabor-
ation and institutionalization of theology, apologetics, pastoral duties, and teaching.
What remained in the post-Reformation Scottish universities is scholasticism
as a method of exposition, consciously detached from the specific content and
curriculum inherited from medieval scholasticism. When the Reformed theolo-
gians read the Scriptures without the medieval commentators, traditional scho-
lasticism fell out of favour. Some specific philosophical content was connoted with
Catholicism, such as natural theology and metaphysics as the science of God, but
philosophy remained predominantly Aristotelian, especially in logic, physics, and
moral philosophy, with the addition of classical authors such as Cicero, Seneca,
and Pliny. The shift in the enduring importance of Aristotle is captured by Broadie:
‘Identifying Aristotle as the philosopher, just as the scholastic philosophers did,
post-Mair Scottish philosophers sought (unlike the scholastics) to return to his
system and to see it in its pristine state, in Greek’ (Broadie 2009: 102). The question
is how and why this ‘pristine Aristotle’ fit in the newly Reformed universities.
While Melville predictably ‘comdemn[ed] those aspects in Aristotle’s “doctrine
directlie impugning the grounds of religioun” ’ (Kirk 1994: 298), he integrated into
the curriculum the many positive aspects of Aristotelianism. In a humanist fashion,
reference to the Greek Aristotle was anti-scholastic as well as anti-Catholic. The
Scottish humanist Aristotle did not represent a world-view incompatible with
Christianity; however, he spoke of God and metaphysics disproportionately less
than of biology, the movement of falling bodies, and logical inferences. Aristotle was
divorced from scholasticism and celebrated for giving a consistent account of the
world described with the powers, and within the limits, of the unassisted human
mind. Also, Aristotle still provided a usable set of doctrines, terms, concepts, and
arguments: a ‘scholastic’ Aristotle in the sense of being tuned to the needs of
academic teaching, but not anymore Aristotle as the cornerstone of the scholastic
world-view.
Philosophy remained propaedeutic to theology and the theoretical and practical
need of a ‘synthesis’ of theology and philosophy was defined? in different terms.

³ For a different account, see Alexander Broadie’s chapter in this volume.

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For the late sixteenth-century Scottish academics the ‘theological use’ of philoso-
phy was to separate the respective spheres of validity of theology and philosophy
in order to minimize overlaps and conflicts. While Catholic scholasticism was the
product of centuries of harmonization of the conflicts between reason and reve-
lation, the Scots separated in order to harmonize. Philosophy was self-contained
and silent on matters spiritual and of salvation. Natural theology and metaphysics
were dropped by Melville as problematic and excessively rationalizing in religion.
Philosophy, especially moral and natural, was applicable only within strict, mun-
dane limits. Also, the new theological practices prompted discussions on philo-
sophy’s own method and limits: particularly important were Ramus’ Dialectics
and Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. Whereas the consistency of Aristotle in the
absence of revelation had troubled the medievals, the Scots saw it as a resource,
and in the long term this separation helped legitimize (again) philosophy vis-à-vis
theology.
The enduring importance of Aristotle in post-Reformation Scotland was both a
necessity and an innovation of the best humanist scholarship of the time, not a
survival of the old Catholic system. The intelligence of the Reformed faith became
less reliant on the Christianization of Aristotle.

Melville and Rollock

Melville wrote the Scholastica Diatriba de Rebus Divinis (1599) for the graduand
class of St Mary’s College, St Andrews. The adjective ‘scholastic’ refers principally
to the institutional setting of the theses, although the question–response structure
is suggestive of the scholastic method in theology. Melville has a positive opinion
of philosophy. The opening section is a list of questions for the students to debate
on graduation day, such as whether theology and scripture ought to be judged by
the arts and sciences, products of human ingenuity, or the contrary; whether the
spiritual teaching of Paul ought to be submitted to the scientific criteria of
Aristotle’s Analytics; or whether natural truth and physics, and supernatural
truth and Mosaic physics, contradict one another (Melville 1599: 1, 5, 9, 11).
Melville teaches that the Fall has inescapable consequences for humankind but
his view is a moderate one. He argues against the pretension that all knowledge
has an empirical origin: ‘it is surely not certain that famous dogma of the
Peripatetics, that nothing is in the intellect which has not been first in the senses’
(Melville 1599: XVI).⁴ Since Adam’s mind is the root of all science and his mind is
in the image of God’s mind, then Adam’s mind possesses some original (that is,
non-empirical) knowledge.

⁴ ‘Ergo non adeo certum dogma illud Peripateticorum, nihil esse intellectu quod non prius fuerit in
sensu.’
114  

The discussion of free will and grace is a common place for the exhibition of the
‘limits’ of philosophy. Melville is a voluntarist in moral agency:
Free will is the free faculty of the soul, by its own movement without coercion, to
approve or disapprove, to choose or to reject that which the intellect or mind says
it ought to be chosen or rejected. (Melville 1599: XXIII)⁵

The origin of evil is in the deficient free will because all created things are good so
they cannot be the origin of evil (Melville 1600: II). Human free will is acknow-
ledged with the crucial remark that ‘we believe that the fallen man is still left with
mind and will’ only in the everyday moral decisions (Melville 1599: XXIII).
Concerning the spiritual kingdom of Christ and salvation ‘although man can
will some natural and moral goods, nonetheless in this way or without grace
man cannot will what he ought to: so that no matter how remarkable these
faculties seem to be before humankind, before God they only deserve eternal
death’ (Melville 1599: XXIII).⁶
The autonomy of philosophy in moral matters and its blindness in spiritual
matters is mirrored in the distinction between natural and divine law. ‘Natural
law, by way of notions naturally common to us, informs us naturally by what
natural way we can reach our natural goal.’ So men are naturally inexcusable in
their conscience with respect to natural law. Divine law instead stems from
revelation and pertains to the things ‘above nature’. Human law is born out of
natural and divine law, and it is less perfect ‘because of human weakness’ (Melville
1599: XXVI).⁷
In the Diatriba, Melville accepted the possibility of a limited natural knowledge
of God, of the natural world, and of our duties, but he denied the possibility of a
functional natural knowledge which could be used to construct a true and reliable
natural theology. Hence, his distaste for metaphysics but not for philosophy tout
court.
Martin Luther’s hatred for philosophy found scriptural justification in Paul’s
Epistle to the Colossians 2:8. In Robert Rollock’s Lectures, the passage reads:
‘Beware least there be any man that spoyles you through Philosophie, and vaine
deceit, through the traditions of men, according to the rudiments of the world, and
not after Christ’ (Rollock 1603: 151).⁸ Rollock’s analysis of this passage is

⁵ ‘Liberum arbitrium est libera animae facultas probandi vel improbandi eligendi vel respuendi sua
proprio motu sine coactione, id quod intellectus seu mens eligendum vel respuendum esse dicat.’ And
Melville (1597: IX).
⁶ ‘Licet autem quaedam Naturalia et moralia bona velle possit, tamen neque eo modo nec sine ea
vult aut velle potest quo debet: adeo ut quantumvis speciosa illa coram hominibus videantur esse,
coram Deo aeternam mortem mereantur.’ And Melville (1600: XXVI).
⁷ ‘Lex Naturalis notionibus natura communibus naturaliter informat via naturali ad finem natur-
alem obtinendum, Divina notionibus supra naturam et communibus et singularibus informat
divinitus . . . Utriusque veluti partus est lex humana, quanquam ab utraque non parum deficiat ob
humanam infirmitatem.’
⁸ Here and below emphasis is original.
       115

instructive of the differences from Luther. The discussion of Colossians 2:8 in a

sermon suggests that the argument of the separation of the spheres of validity of
theology and philosophy was directed at a lay audience, and not confined to
academic discussions.
Rollock uses the metaphor of the believers as ‘sheepe’ who are ‘pray[ed] away’:
‘The manner how they doe this; is not by strong hand or by violence, but it is by
Philosophie, by deceiving of the sheepe’. The targets are the papists, who deceive
people with ‘their Philosophie, that is their deceit, and vanitie in doctrine . . .
Philosophie. A faire name to be called wisedome, but hee gives it as foule a
name afterward, when he names it vaine deceit’. Besides this anti-papist polemic,
Rollock has a moderately positive view of philosophy:
the wisedome of man so long as it is within the bounds of things that are earthly
and wordly, thaings naturall, thaings concerning policie; it will have some
soliditie: but so soone as the head of a man, albeit never so ingenious and learned,
reacheth without the bounds of earthly and naturall things, & begins to climbe up
to heaven, and to seeke out God and his worship; there the head of man
vanisheth and becomes foolishness. (Rollock 1603: 152)

For Rollock, there is an improper use of philosophy, when philosophy concerns itself
with matters spiritual and falls prey to foolishness and arrogance, when deception is
‘dyed with the colour of wisedome’; and a proper use of philosophy, limited to things
natural and of societal life. The improper use of philosophy beyond its limits
deceives men, not philosophy itself. In the Analysis Dialectica on Paul’s Epistle to
the Romans, Rollock makes a similar argument with respect to moral life. Human
beings are inexcusable because God’s light shines in the visible things, hence a
natural theology is available without revelation (Rollock 1593: 17–18). After the
Fall, some sanctity is left because humans are in the image of God: this little spark
(‘sanctitatis scintillulam’) is enough to incline us towards human and natural good,
but not to spiritual good (Rollock 1593: 157–8).⁹ Only sanctity will modify free will
from indifference and openness to opposites (good and evil) to spontaneity towards
the good (Rollock 1593: 153).
The concepts of philosophy and natural reason in Melville and Rollock share
important features with the philosophy teaching of the Scottish universities.

Academic Philosophy

There are only a few philosophy graduation theses available from the 1590s and
1600s. The theses are handy compendia of the philosophy and of the interpretation

⁹ ‘Hoc enim esset dicere in voluntate humana aliquid rectitudinis et sanctitatis quae est ad imaginem
dei, etiam post lapsum permanere . . . naturam hominis certo quodam modo propendere ad ista quae
moralia ac humana bona dicimus, abhorrere vero a coelestibus ac spiritualibus.’
116  

of Aristotle that were deemed fitting for Reformed institutions. They also hint at the
‘long seventeenth-century’ trajectory of Scottish academic philosophy (see Conclu-
sion). The earliest theses available are some years later than the peak of Melville’s
influence on the universities, so they shed light on his immediate legacy. The earliest
are the Theses philosophicae (1596) by the Edinburgh regent William Robertson.
The theme of the Fall is treated after Logic, and it introduces physics. It is not clear
whether the regent believed that logic is somewhat less affected by the Fall than
natural philosophy.
Because of the lamentable Fall, not only is the will darkened throughout its acts, due
to a paralysis through licentious affects, but also the mind . . . The grievous human
condition is not only in need of the cure of practical training, but also of the eye-
medicine and sun of the contemplative science. (Robertson 1596: Th.Ph. 1)¹⁰

Human mental powers are essentially affected by the Fall, but contemplative
science is regarded as a partial remedy to it. The view that some truth is available
to the unassisted powers of the mind echoes Rollock’s idea that the knowledge of
the natural world falls within the ‘proper’ use of philosophy. Optimism regarding
the autonomy and heuristic powers of philosophy is present in Robertson’s view
of metaphysics:
Metaphysics, is given the name of ‘first philosophy’ as well as of wisdom, because
of its amplitude and of the elevated nature of its subject. Theoretical happiness of
the mind is the contemplation according to metaphysics, that is, according to the
highest intellectual virtue. (Robertson 1596: Th.Eth. 9)¹¹

Interestingly, this view of metaphysics is in the section on moral philosophy, thus

indicating a moral dimension to the theoretical enterprise. Against the anti-
scholastics and anti-Aristotelians, Aristotle is praised for connecting the moral
life and the contemplation of God:
1. Theoretical happiness, even according to Aristotle, is best placed in the contem-
plation of God the Blessed . . . 3. We are not afraid to go against that famous
sentence that Aristotle shrouded all philosophers in darkness: in truth, the sparks
and glowing ashes of religiosity shone in him. (Robertson 1596: Th.Eth. 10)¹²

¹⁰ ‘Lapsu flebili, non modo paralysi dissoluti affectus, transuersum acta voluntas, sed . . . tenebris
obtenebrata mens. Lugubris conditio humana non modo disciplinae practicae medelam, sed & scientiae
contemplativae collyrium & solem requisiuit.’
¹¹ ‘Metaphysica, tum propter amplitudinem, tum etiam propter rerum illius scientiae sublimitatem,
sicut primae Philosophiae, ita etiam sapientiae nomen fortita est. Foelicitas theorica animi contemplatio
est secundum Metaphysicam, hoc est, virtutem optimam dianoeticam.’
¹² ‘1. Foelicitas theorica etiam secundum Arist. Doctrinam, in Dei benedicti contemplatione sita
est. . . . 3. Non veremur itaque in eam sententiam ire . . . Aristotelem . . . Philosophis omnibus caliginem
obduxisse: verum etiam pietatis scintillas et favillas in eo emicuisse.’
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Calvin’s image of the sparks and glowing ashes still present in the mind after the
Fall serves for a reappraisal of Aristotle. Robertson proposes the equally well-
known locus of Aristotle the ‘Christian gentleman’, as in John Mair.
In the 1599 theses for the University of Edinburgh regent William Craig
addressed the relationship between Aristotle and the Fall on the crucial question
of whether human powers are sufficient to achieve happiness. He seems to regard
Aristotle less highly than other regents do.
Aristotle considers the sort of human reason by itself pure, complete and
uncorrupted, as the first origin of happiness, and of the deliberation and election
of good virtue. On the contrary, since it is revealed by the established truth that
humans are intimately deprived by the primeval fall of the faculty of well
understanding, willing, deciding, choosing, and acting, we concur to move
away from Aristotle’s opinion on the origin of happiness, virtues, and good
actions. (Craig 1599: Th.Eth. 1)¹³

Moral philosophy unassisted by faith is useless because even the philosophers

fall prey to vice despite their deep moral instruction (Craig 1599: Th.Eth. 2.2).
Nevertheless, Aristotle is helpful to analyse how to apply the universal knowledge
of good and evil to particular conditions (Craig 1599: Th.Eth. 2).
Regent John Adamson (1600), University of Edinburgh, is on the contrary quite
laudatory of Aristotle’s epistemology, to the point of addressing him as ‘divine
philosopher’:
If humans had remained in primeval integrity, they would have known the
affections of things by their very proper and proximate causes, according to the
way of knowing explained by Aristotle most ingeniously and wisely in his Posterior
Analytics . . . Even if we do not have many demonstrations which meet the level of
accuracy demanded by Aristotle, the analytic doctrine should not be judged
useless, but rather the divine philosopher ought to be admired for it.
(Adamson 1600: Th.Log. XV)¹⁴

Adamson argues that Aristotle’s ‘epistemic optimism’ is not tenable after the Fall
because our knowledge of things and of their causes is obscure, and that Aristotle
describes the prelapsarian human epistemic situation. Nevertheless, Aristotle’s
method serves in the postlapsarian state as a limiting method, as a desirable degree

¹³ ‘Aristoteles primum quasi fontem faelicitatis, virtutis deliberationis bonae, et electionis, constituit
rationem humanam per se puram, integram et incorruptam. Nos itaque, quibus ex agnita veritate
revelatum est hominem bene intelligendi, volendi, deliberandi, eligendi, et agendi facultate a lapsu
primaevo penitus destitutum esse, ab Arist. sententia de foelicitatis, virtutum, ac bonarum actionum
fundamento recedere cogimur.’
¹⁴ ‘Si perstitisset homo in primaeva illa integritate, affectiones rerum scivisset per proprias proximas-
que causas, secundum sciendi modum ab Aristotele iis Analyticis Posterioribus ingeniosissime simul et
sapientissime enarratum . . . Etsi non ita multas . . . ea accuratione quam requirit Aristoteles, praeditas
habeamus demonstrationes, non tamen ideo Doctrina illa Analytica censenda est inutilis, sed suspi-
ciendus potius divinus Philosophus.’
118  

of perfection to pursue, at least in natural and moral knowledge. Both Craig and
Adamson interpret Aristotle as speaking of the ‘ideal man’ for he lacked the
Christian revelation of the original sin.
Adamson answers positively to Melville’s question in the Scholastica Diatriba
whether Paul’s teaching is, in principle, open to investigation with the method of
Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. When correctly followed, logic and the rules of
inference are reliable in the postlapsarian state, also in theological matters. An
interesting addition to Melville’s question is that Adamson declares to be follow-
ing here ‘the majority of the theologians’ (‘theologorum turba’, Adamson 1600:
Th.Log. XVI).¹⁵ A remark perhaps suggestive of an appreciation of scholasticism,
which would regain popularity in the seventeenth-century disputes on orthodoxy.
Elsewhere Adamson seems to overlook the difference between Aristotle and the
Christian teaching on happiness and virtue. He even finds a way to condemn the
heretics—who unsurprisingly include the papists—by the letter of Aristotle:
‘according to truth as well as Aristotle, the heretics are the worst and most
unhappy people’, for the human happiness described by Aristotle is the same as
Christian happiness (Adamson 1600: Th.Pol. V.3, VI.1).¹⁶
Regent John Petrie taught philosophy at St Salvator’s College, St Andrews,
when Andrew Melville was dean of the Faculty of Divinity. Petrie’s graduation
theses of 1603 are evidence of the type of influence exerted by Melville.
Two sets of passages are interesting for the discussion of the concept of
philosophy. In the first set, the regent presents a brief theory of the division
of science. Metaphysics, whose scientific achievements are ascribable to the
ingenuity of the human mind, is not a science superior to all others. A subor-
dinate science is ‘that which receives the subject-matter from a superior science,
and also retains the main way to treat it. . . . It is therefore false that particular
sciences are subordinate to metaphysics, because they do not retain the same
method’ (Petrie 1603: Th.Disc. 19).¹⁷ Petrie uses Aristotle’s view that each
discipline has its own method to argue that theology is a unique discipline
because its method is unique. Theology is best understood as ‘the shorter and
more exact comprehension of true philosophy’ (Petrie 1603: Th.Disc. 24).¹⁸ This
understanding of metaphysics dismisses the role of terminological repertoire

¹⁵ ‘Cur non etiam Paulinae αποδειξεις πνευματικαι, astipulante doctissimorum Theologorum turba,
ad Analyticum Aristotelicae eruditionis modum, revocandae sunt et exigendae?’
¹⁶ ‘ex veritate, ita etiam ex mente Aristotelis, haereticos, qui omnes nervos intendunt ad veritatem,
quae de Deo est, pervertendam . . . (quod faciunt portentosi illi Pontificii) omnium hominum pessimos
esse et miserrimos.’ And ‘Felicitas ergo humana Aristoteli, quod et nos Christiani dicimus’.
¹⁷ ‘Scientiam subalternam voco . . . quae a superiori subiectum accipit, retento principe eiusdem
consyderandi modo . . . Falsum est ergo particulares scientias Metaphysicae subalternatas esse, cum
modum eius consyderandi non retineant.’
¹⁸ ‘non videtur S.Sancta Theologia sacris biblijs consignata in unam aliquam specie Disciplinam tota
cogi posse, quin potius ea fuerit totius vera Philosophiae brevior exactiorque comprehensio.’
       119

and logical connector between theology and natural philosophy which meta-
physics played in Catholic scholasticism.
Petrie’s view of Aristotle, natural reason, and human happiness is worth
quoting at some length. Human happiness as in Aristotle is humankind’s ‘inner
perfection’ (Petrie 1603: Th.Eth. 5), suggestive of a teleological and perfectionist
anthropology. Petrie argues that ‘acting according to virtue, living well, and
glorifying God with our life, all go in the same direction’, that is, towards the
‘acquisition of that goal which the most noble theologians say is the ultimate goal
of theology’:
Why would it be absurd to say, with Aristotle, that the essence of happiness is
placed in acting according to virtue? Beyond the talk of essence, we acknowledge
some errors in Aristotle’s view of happiness and we full-heartedly reject them:
such errors concern happiness’s origin, because he ignored God’s supernatural
grace and faith . . . Yet, even if we place true happiness not in action but in the
communion with God, Aristotle does seem to have grasped it as well, when he
writes that the blessed becomes similar to god . . . even if he did not put the
essence of happiness in this specific type of happiness . . . How much closer than
all other philosophers did our Aristotle get to the truth!
(Petrie 1603: Th.Eth. 11)¹⁹

‘Our Aristotle’ was a fallible man, but his idea of happiness is not in opposition to
the Christian ideal of the blessed life.

Conclusion

The sources investigated here belong to the late sixteenth-century early formula-
tion of Reformed orthodoxy. A general agreement on the nature and scope of
philosophy gradually emerged. The humanist Aristotle of the sixteenth-century
Scottish scholastics found a new place in Melville’s curriculum. Melville’s prefer-
ence for Ramus’s analysis logica over syllogistic in the interpretation of the Bible
(Kirk 1994: 283), and the sola scriptura principle dismissed traditional scholasticism
as the framework of the relations of theology and philosophy. However, coherently
with Melville’s idea of specialized university teaching, Aristotle remained central
in logic, and in natural and moral philosophy, where no competing alternative was

¹⁹ ‘Cum igitur secundum virtutem agere, bene vivere, et Deum vita glorificare, in eandem sensum
omnia redeant, cur is prorsus absurde sentiat qui cum Arist. hactenus de faelicitatis essentia statuat, ea
in actione secundum virtutem esse positam. Nam praeter essentiam, errores nonnullos Arist. in
faelicitatis negotio nos agnoscimus et ex animis reijcimus: cuiusmodi est error de eius origine, ignorata
supernaturali Dei gratia et fide . . . Quin etiam si ponamur veram faelicitatem non in actione sed in
coniunctione cum Deo, et illam attigisse videtur Arist. quatenus scriptum reliquit beatum Deo similem
fieri . . . etsi in haec faelicitatis essentiam non posuerit . . . . quanto proprius omnibus alijs Philosophis ad
veritatem accesserit Arist. Noster.’
120  

available. Rather than just being conservative or old scholastic, Aristotle had a
specific place in the Reformed universities.
In the early seventeenth century, philosophy kept developing in connection
with Reformed orthodoxy. Following the great Reformed confessions on doctrine,
the need for a systematic presentation of Reformed orthodoxy became more
important. Apologetics, anti-Catholic polemics, and the needs of university teach-
ing argued for a more systematic use of scholasticism along with Aristotle.
Medieval authors such as Aquinas and Scotus and contemporary authors such
as Suárez and Bellarmin were freely used as well as criticized. This prompted some
re-alignments with themes traditionally associated with Catholic scholasticism.
The Aberdeen Doctors and Robert Baron are a different type of intellectual from
the late sixteenth-century philosophy regent and are representative of a return to
scholasticism in the Scottish universities from the 1610s. Quite tellingly, the
subtitle of Baron’s Philosophia Theologiae Ancillans (1621) reads: ‘A pious and
modest explanation of the philosophical questions in the theological disputations’
(original emphasis). In the Metaphysica Generalis (1654) Baron treats metaphysics
as the architectonic, connecting science between philosophy and theology. The
harmonization of revelation and reason is structured as a theoretical discipline,
not just as a spiritual matter.
The interpretation of Aristotle responded to new theological needs as well. Not
only was Aristotle compatible with Reformed orthodoxy, he also became an
apologetic tool against the Catholics. The Scottish regents believed that the literal
interpretation of Aristotle on substance and accident proved the Catholics wrong
in the debates on the Eucharist. In Aristotle they found the reductionist view that
the accidents cannot exist without their natural substance. The first explicit
reference to Aristotle is in Stevenson’s Theses philosophicae of 1629 but the
argument is already in Craig 1599 (Gellera 2013: 1095 and 1106).²⁰ The Catholic
transubstantiation thus has no foundation in Aristotle’s texts and the Scottish
regents celebrated the Calvinist doctrine of the Eucharist as good Aristotelian
philosophy. It is arguably the first explicit apologetic use of Aristotle in the
Scottish universities.
John Mair’s view of the Christian Aristotle did not last forever. The roots of its
eventual obsolescence were laid in the sixteenth-century separation of theology
and philosophy, sanctioned in Melville’s curriculum and never retracted by later
academics. The prince of the philosophers lost his throne when Aristotelianism
was no longer theologically serviceable, but especially when it ceased to be an

²⁰ Stevenson (1629: Th.Log. XVI): ‘accidens ex Porph. semper existit in subjecto, et ex Arist. non
potest seursum existere ab eo in quo est’; Craig (1599: Th.Log. 21.I): ‘[accidentia] quae promanant a
natura subiecti, eoque a subiecto penitus inseparabilia’.
       121

effective description of the natural world. Speaking of the limits of human nature,
the Calvinist doctrine of the Fall prompted a systematic interest in the applica-
tion of new philosophical and empirical methods to nature and the mind.²¹
Aristotelianism turned from usable to disposable because in Scotland it did not
have the same intrinsic relationship with theology as in the Catholic world. As a
result, by the 1660s there was little Aristotelian conservatism in the Scottish
universities and the new philosophies of Descartes and the English experimen-
talists were appropriated without raising much concern of orthodoxy (Gellera
2016).²²

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Primary Literature
Adamson, John (1600). Theses Philosophicae. University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh:
Robertus Charteris [sic].
Baron, Robert (1621). Philosophia Theologiae Ancillans. St Andrews: Eduardus
Rabanus.
Craig, William (1599). Theses Philosophicae. University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh:
Henricus Charterus.
Lidderdale, Robert (1685). Theses hasce Philosophicas. University of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh: Andrew Hart.
Luther, Martin (1517). Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, 4 September.
Mair, John (1510). Dialogus de materia theologo tractanda, in In Primum
Sententiarum. Paris.
Mair, John (1530). Ethica Aristotelis Peripateticorum Principis. Cum Johannis Majoris
Theologi Parisiensis commentariis. Paris.
Melville, Andrew (1597). De Libero Arbitrio Theses Theologicae. University of
St Andrews. Edinburgh: Robertus Waldegrave.
Melville, Andrew (1599). Scholastica Diatriba de Rebus Divinis. University of
St Andrews. Edinburgh: Robertus Waldegrave.
Melville, Andrew (1600). Theses Theologicae de Peccato. University of St Andrews.
Edinburgh: Robertus Waldegrave.
Petrie, John (1603). Theses Aliquot Philosophicae. University of St Andrews. Edin-
burgh: Robertus Waldegrave.

²¹ The main thesis of Harrison (2007: 7, 11).

²² The most explicit claim is in Lidderdale (1685: Endnote): ‘Nihil est rectae rationis aut Religioni
Christianae contrarium, quod non adversatur Principiis Philosophiae Cartesianae distincte perceptis’,
Gellera (2016: 166).
122  

Robertson, William (1596). Theses Philosophicae. University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh:

Henricus Charterus.
Rollock, Robert (1593). Analysis Dialectica. Edinburgh: Robertus Waldegrave.
Rollock, Robert (1603). Lectures upon the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians. London:
Felix Kyngston.
Stevenson, Andrew (1629). Theses Philosophicae. University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh:
Andrew Hart.

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Broadie, Alexander (2009). A History of Scottish Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
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Büttgen, Philippe (2011). Luther et la philosophie. Paris: Vrin—EHESS.
Durkan, John (1959). ‘The Cultural Background in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, The
Innes Review 10/2: 382–439.
Gellera, Giovanni (2013). ‘Calvinist Metaphysics and the Eucharist in the Early
Seventeenth Century’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21/6: 1091–1110.
Gellera, Giovanni (2016). ‘The Scottish Faculties of Arts and Cartesianism
(1650–1700)’, History of Universities 29/2: 166–87.
Harrison, Peter (2007). The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Holloway III, Ernest R. (2011). Andrew Melville and Humanism in Renaissance
Scotland 1545–1622. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Kirk, James (1994). ‘ “Melvillian” Reform in the Scottish Universities’, in Alasdair
A. MacDonald, Michael Lynch, and Ian B. Cowan (eds.), The Renaissance in
Scotland. Leiden: Brill, 276–300.
Kusukawa, Sachiko (1995). The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of
Philip Melanchthon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Muller, Richard A. (1987). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and
Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725. Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Academic.
Muller, Richard A. (2004). ‘John Calvin and Later Calvinism: The Identity of the
Reformed Tradition’, in David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz (eds.), The Cam-
bridge Companion to Reformation Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 130–49.
Rait, Robert S. (1899). ‘Andrew Melville and the Revolt against Aristotle in Scotland’,
The English Historical Review 14/54: 250–60.
Reid, Steven J. (2011). Humanism and Calvinism: Andrew Melville and the Universities
of Scotland, 1560–1625. Farnham: Ashgate.
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Schmitt, Charles B. (1983). Aristotle and the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Wright, David F. (2004). ‘The Scottish Reformation: Theology and Theologians’,
in David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to
Reformation Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 174–193.
 10
John Knox and Andrew Melville
Euan Cameron

I marked the wounderfull guidnes and providence of God towards his

Kirk in this realme, wha, as first efter the blud of these martyrs,
Mr George Wischart and Walter Miln, steired upe Mr Knox to
effectuat the wark of Reformation; and taking him to his rest, send
ham Mr Andro Melvill for continuance of zeall and sinceritie, with
exquisit literature and knawlage, and for putting on of the ceapstean
of the trew and right discipline and polecie.
Melville (1842: 72)

This chapter does not propose to offer a biographical survey of either John Knox
or Andrew Melville. Jane Dawson has recently produced a wholly admirable
biography, which traces Knox’s involvement in the politics of Scotland. She
depicts the ebbs and flows of his religious psyche, as he saw Scotland providen-
tially freed from the idolatry of the Roman Catholic mass and hierarchy, only to
become entangled in the political intrigues that made the last ten years of his life
so painful to him (Dawson 2015). This chapter will not attempt to address or
reopen these aspects of Knox’s life. The purpose of this enquiry is to evaluate Knox
as a theologian and as a religious thinker, and to locate Andrew Melville, his very
different successor, as a link in the longer intellectual chain of which they both
formed parts. Again, no attempt will be made to trace the tortuous and troubled
story of Melville’s life, on which several monographs and collaborative volumes
already exist. What is offered here are some suggested insights into the theologies
of Knox and Melville, as viewed from the perspective of a generalist in the
Reformation in Europe as a whole. The Europe of the Protestant Reformation
was a world to which Scotland, then as now, passionately wished to belong.

Themes in the Theology of John Knox (1514/15–1572)

The historian who seeks a clear, systematic, codified theological statement in the
works of John Knox will find relatively little from his own pen to work from.
Knox’s writing tended to be practical, occasional, and written in response to
particular circumstances and pressures (Dawson 2015: 314). Even his one

Euan Cameron, John Knox and Andrew Melville. In: The History of Scottish Theology Volume I:
Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0010
      125

substantial theological treatise, his text on predestination, may have been an

occasional piece intended to re-establish his credit with John Calvin (Knox
1846–64, V: 7–468). For this reason, as one seeks to characterize Knox’s overall
theological posture, it is tempting to turn to the Scots Confession of 1560 (Knox
1846–64, II: 93–120; cf. Hazlett 2009). However, that raises an immediate ques-
tion: is one entitled to read the Confession as though it were by Knox? The
Confession contains some turns of phrase not characteristic of Knox’s other
writings; it was probably not drafted wholly by him.¹ However, Knox certainly
approved it, and included it in his History describing it as ‘hailsome, trew, and
onlie necessarie to be beleivit, and to be resavit within that Realme’ (Knox 1846–
64, II: 92). It can therefore be taken as representative of the theology with which he
identified himself, if not necessarily with his ‘unique’ voice. Even then, in its
flowing, discursive, even rambling quality, it reflects Knox’s typical mode
of expression. It does so in contrast to the economy and succinctness typical of
other Reformed confessions, or even the doctrinal sections of the First Book of
Discipline, drafted by a committee of which Knox was a member (Knox 1846–64,
II: 183–258; Cameron 1972).
John Knox was, obviously, a Reformed theologian, shaped by the traditions of
Zürich and Geneva. He measured his theology by a yardstick drawn from
Scripture, as interpreted by the Reformed divines. He embraced the Reformed
theology of justification by grace through faith, with the characteristic image that
God’s grace and Christ’s merits ‘covered’ the believer’s sins and protected the
sinful soul from the judgement that it otherwise deserved. God ‘coverith our
workis, which ar defyled with many spottis, with the justice of his Sone’ (Knox
1846–64, II: 107). Elsewhere the Confession observes that ‘albeit syne remane and
continuallie abyd in these our mortall bodyes, yit it is not imputed unto us, but is
remitted and covered with Christis justice’ (Knox 1846–64, II: 119). This the-
ology of grace ‘covering’ sin, while sin does not entirely cease to exist in the elect
believer in this life, went back to Luther and was incorporated into the mature
Reformed tradition (Calvin 1960: III. xi. 2). It underpinned the stringent
Reformed critique of any form of worship that aspired to earn merit before
God, or to place God under any kind of obligation to reward: on that more will
be said later.
In what ways, if any, might one regard the Scots Confession as embodying a
particular approach to Reformed Protestantism? Such was clearly not its object.
It aspired to present the Gospel as the Reformers understood it; so any distinctive
aspects may not necessarily be its most important features to those who framed it.

¹ For example, the Confession uses the phrase ‘in samekill’ (= in so much) multiple times, and with a
peculiar orthography that is not found in Knox’s own writings. Knox does use other versions of the
expression himself, but relatively rarely.
126  

Nevertheless, the Confession betrays some interesting choices through its structure
and phrasing. The earlier sections of the Confession could be regarded as an
exegesis of the Apostles’ Creed in Trinitarian form. Articles I–II focus on God
the creator; articles VI–VII, IX–XI on Jesus Christ; and article XII on the Holy
Spirit. However, within that overall structure there are some significant interpol-
ations. Articles III–V introduce the Fall of humanity, original sin, and the ‘prom-
ises’ (in effect the covenant, though not so described) of God to redeem humanity
despite human disobedience. Article VIII, directly after introducing Jesus Christ
and the atonement, introduces the eternal decree of election, albeit somewhat
sparingly. Election appears as the divine means of salvation, even ahead of justifi-
cation by faith (Knox 1846–64, II: 100–1). Subsequent developments would greatly
increase the weight assigned to election in later Reformed theology: but its prom-
inence in a 1560 document is arguably significant.
In subsequent articles the Confession lays particular emphasis on the new
life of the regenerate. The spirit of sanctification within such people produces
good works, but only those works already deemed good by God, not those
devised by humanity and supposed to earn divine favour (articles XIII–XIV).
Most famously of the distinctive claims made in the Confession, the ‘marks of
the Church’ listed in article XVIII include the discipline of the Church,
alongside the traditional Reformed pair of doctrine truly preached and sacra-
ments duly administered (Knox 1846–64, II: 110; cf. Calderwood 1842–9, iii:
540). While one would hardly say that discipline was unimportant in (for
example) Geneva or the French Reformed churches, only in the Scots Confes-
sion was it raised to an essential mark of the True Church. The concluding
article XXV stresses that the visible church will always contain in itself the true
believers and the temporary, hypocritical followers. For all their emphasis on
discipline, the Scots Reformers were committed to a national church, not a
gathering of the self-proclaimed elect.
Overall, the Confession is practical: it focuses on how a church is to be built up
as well as on why. It defines election as the means by which God eternally chose
those who would be true members of the Church: but then goes into considerable
detail as to how they are to lead their lives, in terms both of correct worship and
correct life. The First Book of Discipline elaborates in even greater detail on this
topic; naturally enough, since the Book seems to have been envisaged as a twin
document to the Confession. The Confession is not always orderly: it betrays a
tendency to verbosity and to free-associating links between one theme and
another, as for instance when the discussion of ‘marks of the Church’ includes a
discussion of how Scripture is properly to be interpreted. Finally, it is a didactic
document. Like the Scots Book of Order, it sets a very high premium on the
instruction of its readers. That emphasis—that the life of the Church must be
supported by constant exposition of doctrine and instruction of the worshippers—
is classic Knox (cf. Knox 1873: 100–44).
      127

Knox on Right and Wrong Worship

The primary suggestion at this point is that Knox’s theology is not speculative
but practical (which itself represents a significant theological choice). Knox was
passionately concerned with the right way to live, and especially with the right
way to worship. His theological insights formed in the 1550s, when he served the
regime of Edward VI in England (in Berwick, Newcastle, and London) only to be
faced with the appalling choices forced on Protestants by the Catholic regime of
Mary I Tudor from 1553 onwards. In exile, and in the crucible of the disputes
among the English-speaking Protestants at Frankfurt, Knox formed his militant
opinions about right and wrong worship in the context of the English Book of
Common Prayer.
A key concept which Knox manifested from early on was an extreme sensitivity
to ‘idolatry’ in both the substance and the details of worship (Knox 1846–64, III:
29–70). Knox stretched the term ‘idolatry’ far beyond its traditional meaning as
the giving of divine worship to a material image. ‘Idolatry’, for Knox, meant
anything that had been added by human invention to the worship of God as
specifically prescribed in Scripture (Knox 1846–64, III: 34ff.; cf. II: 188–9). Christ
was, of course, the sole sacrifice for human redemption, and must not be added to
or contaminated or ‘mingled’ with other sacrifices (Knox 1846–64, III: 61ff.; cf.
Latimer 1968: 46). Knox went further even than many of his most fastidious
Reformed colleagues: he applied this principle to the details of worship as well
as its essence. God’s judgements pronounced through the prophets of Hebrew
Scripture against the people of Israel for their ‘idolatry’, that is, the worship of other
gods, applied directly to erroneous Christian worship as well. Knox’s objections to
the canon of the Mass rather evoked Bullinger’s historical-critical dismantling of
the mass in his On the Origin of Error (Bullinger 1528 and 1539). His warnings
against ‘Nicodemite’ participation in Catholic worship recalled Calvin’s rhetoric
against similar behaviour in France (Knox 1846–64, III: 157–216, at pp. 195–6;
cf. Calvin 1970).

Knox and the English Book of Common Prayer

Knox’s theology of wrong worship as ‘idolatry’ sharpened and deepened through

the controversies over the Book of Common Prayer in the exile communities
in continental Europe during the reign of Mary I (1553–8). The ‘troubles at
Frankfurt’ ought not to be read as a foreshadowing of the later debates over the
Prayer Book in Elizabeth I’s England. The party of Richard Cox and his friends did
not seek to preserve even the radically reformed 1552 Prayer Book in its entirety.
However, they refused to condemn the whole idea of the English liturgy, not least
while its chief author sat in prison awaiting trial for heresy and inevitable
128  

martyrdom (Cameron 1998). Knox’s hostile and often bitter response to the
controversy might have been foreseen. He found in the Prayer Book ‘things
superstitious, impure, unclean, and unperfect’ (Knox 1846–64, IV: 44). He was
surely aware that it rendered much of the medieval Sarum rite into English,
whether for the Litany, the Collects, the Communion service, or the pastoral
offices. Its structure of versicles and responses followed medieval precedent,
even though Cranmer had taken scrupulous care to embody a Reformed theology
into a traditionally constructed liturgy. Knox claimed that at first he tolerated the
book, but became virulently hostile when other Marian exiles insisted on using it
more completely (Knox 1846–64, IV: 43). His reaction could be compared to that
taken by hardline Lutherans after the Schmalkaldic war to those conservative
liturgical changes which were insisted upon as part of the settlement under the
1548 Augsburg Interim. Something might be an adiaphoron, a matter of indiffer-
ence, so long as neither side insisted upon maintaining or suppressing it. Once it
was insisted upon by one side, the other side would take the opposite extreme view
(Kolb 1977, 1978: 69–112).
When Knox and William Whittingham were seeking to enlist Calvin (who had
already helped negotiate the liturgy of the Frankfurt exiles before Cox and his
friends arrived) they summarized what they found to be the objectionable elem-
ents of the Prayer Book in a letter sent to Calvin at Geneva (Knox 1846–64, IV:
22–7; Calvin 1853–1900, xv: cols. 337–44). Whittingham and Knox then took
advantage of writing in Latin rather than English to render the names of all the
traditional versicles and responses in their medieval forms, including the Kyries in
Greek, quietly omitting to mention that they were in fact said in English (Calvin
1853–1900, xv: cols. 340–1). Calvin refused to rise to the bait and may well
have sensed that he was being manipulated (Knox 1846–64, IV: 28–30; Calvin
1853–1900, xv: cols. 393–4). Circumstances increased Knox’s hostility to English
worship after the Frankfurt affair. While Knox was excluded from England
following the inopportune publication of the First Blast of the Trumpet, English
politicians planned to restore the 1552 book, with a fascination over detail which
bewildered even some of the former English exiles (Robinson 1842: 23). Writing
to Mrs Anna Lock on 6 April 1559, Knox insisted:

He threateneth death and damnation to such as, either in forehead or in hand,

beare the mark of the Beast. And a portion of his marke are all these dregges of
Papistrie which were left in your great Booke of England, any jote whereof will
I never counsell any man to use. One jote, I say, of these Diabolicall inventiouns,
viz. Crossing in Baptisme; Kneeling at the Lord’s table; mummelling, or singing
of the Letanie, a fulgure et tempestate: a subitanea et improvisa morte, & c.
(Knox 1846–64, VI: 12)

Here again Knox emphasized the relationship between the English Litany and its
medieval antecedents, by wilfully quoting the Latin text as though it were the English.
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Knox and the Elect and the Reprobate

One must ask how Knox regarded the difference, in life and experience, between
those chosen by God and those condemned by God. Discerning between the
hypocrite and the true devotee was acknowledged to be very difficult; though
Andrew Melville, in particular, would be credited with exceptional insight in
this respect (at least by his nephew James). The deeper underlying question was,
could the workings of God’s predestinating grace be observed either in the life
and conduct of believers or in the experiences which they underwent? In a
pastoral setting, Knox would stress that God’s protecting hand was always upon
the elect, but that this might by no means be obvious at the time: in fact, God
might be protecting the elect despite copious evidence to the contrary (Knox
1846–64, III: 322–9).
In this context one should discuss John Knox’s longest and most substantial
theological work, An Answer to a great Nomber of Blasphemous Cavillations
written by an Anabaptist, and adversarie to God’s eternal Predestination (1560)
(Knox 1846–64, V: 9–17* [introduction] and 17–468 [text]).² According to the
received version of the story, the work was probably written in Geneva in the
late 1550s in response to an alleged Anabaptist, probably named Robert Cooke,
who was believed to be in some favour at the English court but who held
radically heterodox ideas. It was first published by Crespin in Geneva in 1560
and ultimately reprinted in London, long after Knox’s death, in 1591 (Knox
1846–64, V: 9–17*, at pp. 16–13*).³ An alternative and in a sense complemen-
tary theory is that Knox may have chosen this topic in imitation of Calvin, in
hope to re-establish his credit with Calvin after the Frankfurt episode (Kyle
and Johnson 2009: 117). The work certainly shows affinities with the much
shorter twin works by Calvin on predestination and providence published in
1552, which were also provoked by hostile criticism (Calvin 1552). Knox
borrowed, in an entirely unsurprising fashion, from the 1550 recension of
Calvin’s Institutes, even to the extent of near-precise verbal quotation in some
places (Knox 1846–64, V: 31, 36).
Knox inferred predestination as others had done before him since the middle
ages. He observed that to an eternal and entirely sovereign God, the entire story of
creation is simultaneously present. God cannot be surprised by anything that
happens, nor can anything happen without divine decree and control (Knox
1846–64, V: 35). Knox adopted a pastoral tone, where he insisted that the doctrine
of predestination needs to be taught publicly, versus those who believe it should be

² The original edition was published by Jehan Crespin at Geneva in 1560 (STC 15060) and a second
edition by R. Field for Thomas Charde at London in 1591 (STC 15061).
³ There is an error in the pagination of the Laing edition, such that pp. 13*–17* follow immediately
after p. 16.
130  

suppressed (Knox 1846–64, V: 25). Here he echoed Calvin’s tacit and rather gentle
reproach to Melanchthon in the Institutes: Calvin had written that to disparage
the teaching of predestination as though it were a dangerous and unwanted piece
of baggage was ‘to reproach God, as if he had unadvisedly let slip something
hurtful to the church’ (Calvin 1960: III. xxi. 4, xxiii. 12–14). Properly understood
and received, the doctrine of predestination was a source of great comfort to the
godly. Finally, Knox insisted that predestination must always be active in the life of
the believer. The elect ‘may be assured of their adoption by the justification of
faith; which working in them by charitie, maketh their workes to shyne before
men to the glorie of their Father’. Consequently, Knox rejected the idea that the
elect might show no signs of their election. Against his ‘adversarie’ he rejected the
claim ‘that we imagin it sufficient, that we be predestinate, how wickedly so ever
we live. We constantly affirme the plain contrarie; to wit, that none living wickedly
can have the assurance that he is predestinate to lief everlasting’ (Knox 1846–64,
V: 36). This pastoral and practical promotion of predestination continued to
manifest itself in Knox’s other writings, for example in the Bowes correspondence
(Frankforter 1987).
Predestination raises an interesting paradox, which is relevant to many aspects
of Knox’s thought (and that of the Reformers more generally). Does the fact that
God’s elect are predestined in eternity have any impact on how the church is
constituted? Can a church be made up of the mutually recognizable elect? While
according to Dawson, Knox tended to envisage the True Church as made up of
‘the suffering, faithful few’ (Dawson 2015: 316) the operation of the Church of
Scotland does not seem to reflect that belief. The Church of Scotland, after the
‘privy kirks’ phase in the 1550s, was never run on sectarian principles. Knox’s
insistence on the visible manifestations of election might be thought to lead in
the direction of a community of ‘visible saints’: but in practice the Church of
Scotland developed on inclusive principles as a corpus mixtum (Knox 1846–64,
II: 119). Like Geneva but on a much larger scale, Scotland took the view that
pastoral discipline was for everyone (Todd 2002). Moreover, pastoral discipline
might play a part in how the process of predestination worked itself out over
time. God might have predestined the person who was, to human eyes, only
brought to a godly life by the exercise of pastoral discipline and exhortation.
Consequently, Reformed Protestantism always spoke in a somewhat divided
fashion. On the one hand, theologians preached the fact that, by any coherent
theological system, God acted autonomously and with complete sovereignty. On
the other hand, they constantly exhorted their congregations to live up to the
highest possible standards of which the grace within them made them capable.
Never did the belief in election in any way reduce the fervour with which
Reformed ministers sought to bring as many people as possible to right faith
and godly living.
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History and the Covenanted People

God, for Knox, was a provident and sovereign deity, whose working could be
seen in the lives of individuals and of church communities. So, how was the
providence of God to be manifested in the experience of the Church of
Scotland? That appears to have been the theological question behind Knox’s
History of the Reformation. Dawson has described Knox’s History of the Refor-
mation as a providential story of the relationship between God and the people,
which seems a fine summary of its overall purpose (Dawson 2015: 251–7).
Moreover, Knox wrote with a polemical intent, to demonstrate that the Refor-
mation enjoyed an astonishingly quick and decisive success in the years between
1558 and 1561, thanks to its intrinsic theological merits rather than through
the political astuteness of its supporters. Nevertheless, for much of the time
the purpose of the History has to be inferred rather than discerned from
Knox’s explicit words. In general, Knox compiled an annalistic account with
blow-by-blow details of events, rather than a philosophical or theological unrav-
elling of the Reformation process. In this respect Knox’s History followed the
model of narrative chroniclers such as Johannes Sleidan, rather than (say) that
of Melanchthon and the Philippists’ philosophical histories of the Church (Kess
2008; Cameron 2012). There is evidence that he began work no later than 1559,
as the events were unfolding; and then continued to revise the account until the
first four books reached a reasonably finished state around 1566. After 1567
plans to publish it were postponed due to the regency of Moray (who received a
very bad press in the History but subsequently became a supporter of the Kirk).
A plan to print it in England around 1587 appears to have been suppressed
(Knox 1846–64, I. xxxii, STC (2nd edn.) 15071); a first full printed edition
appeared in London in 1644 and a more complete edition, accompanied by
other writings by Knox, in Edinburgh in 1732 (Knox 1644, 1732, 1949).
Knox adopted the technique used since Eusebius of Caesarea and Bede: he
incorporated original documents into his History to illustrate his narrative beyond
the reach of cavil. The History included letters and negotiations; extensive reports
of diplomatic interactions (which, one supposes, were not meant to be made
public quite so soon); sermons and prayers; forms of words for the installation
of superintendents and the election of elders and deacons; and the entire texts, in
Knox’s versions, of the Confession of Faith and the first Book of Discipline. By the
mid-1560s Knox confronted the challenge that the course of the Scottish Refor-
mation had not played out as he hoped. The rapid and decisive victory of the
Reformation became entangled in the messy feuds of crown and nobility in
Scotland, where none of the participants was left with remotely clean hands.
The paradox of Knox’s interpretation appeared particularly powerfully in the
untypically rhetorical apostrophes in the introduction to the fourth book, dated
132  

1566 from the evidence of the text. In the first paragraphs Knox reflected on the
astonishing success of the enterprise:
For what was oure force? What was our nomber? Yea, what wisdome or warldlie
pollicey was into us, to have brought to ane goode end so great ane interpryse?
Oure verray enemyes can bear witnesse. And yit in how great puritie God did
establisse amanges us his treu Religioun, alsweall in doctrine as in ceremonyes!
To what confusion and fear war idolateris, adulteraris, and all publict transgres-
soris of Goddis commandimentis, within short tyme brought?
(Knox 1846–64, II: 263)

By 1566, the God-given victory had turned into vindictive political chaos and
backbiting. Knox could have laid most of the blame at the feet of Queen Mary, and
the tormented struggles among the aristocracy that her arrival in Scotland pro-
voked. In fact, much of the blame is laid on precisely those political effects, once
Mary had insisted on keeping her own Catholic religious practices in the Scottish
court. However, Knox chose to frame these events in the context of the backsliding
of the Scottish people from their pledge to the cause of Reformation:
But frome whence (allace) cumeth this miserable dispersioun of Goddis people
within this Realme, this day, Anno 1566, in Maij. And what is the cause that now
the just is compelled to keap silence? good men ar banished, murtheraris, and
such as ar knowin unworthie of the commoun societie, (yf just lawis the caus war
put in deu executioun,) bear the hoill regiment and swynge within this Realme?
We answere, Becaus that suddandlie the most parte of us declyned from the
puritie of Goddis word, and began to follow the warld; and so agane to schaik
handis with the Devill, and with idolatrie, as in this Booke we will hear.
(Knox 1846–64, II: 265)

Once again, the fatal error made by weak Protestants was to forget Knox’s
admonition that participating in anything less than perfectly Reformed worship
entailed the sin of idolatry. Idolatry called down, from Knox, not only the
judgement of God but the denunciations of the prophet.

Knox as Prophet

Something curious happened as the apparently providential course of the Scottish

Reformation unfolded. From proclaiming God’s judgements against sin, Knox
slipped by degrees into believing that he could foretell the specific judgements of
God before they happened. When Mary of Guise displayed and left in the open the
naked bodies of those killed in battle against her, Knox reported:
Against the quhilk Johnne Knox spak oppinlie in pulpeit, and baldlie affirmeit,
“That God sould reveange that contumelye done to his image, not onlie in the
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furiouse and godless souldiaris, bot evin in sick as rejoysit thairat.” And the
verray experience declairit, that he was nott deceavit; for within few dayis thair
efter, (yea sum say that same day,) began hir bellie and lothsome leggis to swell,
and sa continewit, till that God did execute his judgementis upoun hir, as efter we
sall heir. (Knox 1846–64, II: 68)

Knox could deploy his prophetic threats as warnings to achieve a specific effect,
as in the ‘supplication’ delivered to the Scottish Reformation Parliament: ‘Quhilk
gif ye do not, than in the feir of God, and by the assurance of his word, We
foirwairne you, that as ye haif ane grevouse yock, and ane burding intollerabill
upoun the kyrk of God within this Realme, so sall thay be thornis in youre eyes,
and pryckis in your sydis, quhom efter, quhen ye wold, ye sall have no power to
remove’ (Knox 1846–64, II: 92). As the years passed, and legends accumulated
about Knox’s prophetic powers, his foretellings were reportedly fulfilled not just
in general, but in detail. Some of the most notorious predictions were recorded by
James Melville, nephew of Andrew. In his sermons about the siege of Edinburgh
Castle, Knox foretold graphically that the castle mound would ‘run like a sand-
glass’ and that the Captain of the Castle, Knox’s lost former friend William
Kirkcaldy of Grange, should tumble down by the walls rather than leaving by
the gate, and be hanged against the sun. When Knox preached these details in a
sermon, Robert Hamilton asked on what grounds he made these predictions. In a
subsequent sermon following the challenge, Knox repeated his threats against the
castle and then added:

“Thow, that will nocht beleive my warrand, sall sie it with thy eis that day; and
sall say, What haif I to do heir?” This sermont the said Mr Robert’s servand wrot;
and, being with his maister in Edinbruche a twa yeir thairefter, at the taking of
the Castell, they ged upe to the Castell-hill, saw the forwark of the Castell all
demolished, and rinning lyk a sandie bray; . . . the Captan, with a lytle cut of a
staff in his hand, takin doun ower the wall upon the leathers; and Mr Robert
[Hamilton], troublet with the thrang of the peiple, sayes to his man, “Go, what
haif I ado heir?” And, in going away, the servant remembers his maister of that
sermont, and the words; wha was compellit to glorifie God, and say, he was a trew
prophet. (Melville 1842: 33–4)

The report—true or not—stresses the persistence of Knox’s predictions, and his

conviction that even the circumstantial details of his prophecy should be fulfilled.
After the fall of the castle it was decided that the hapless Kirkcaldy of Grange must
be hanged for his part in defending against the siege, as Knox had foretold. Grange
himself reportedly said before his execution on 3 August 1573, some months after
Knox’s own death:

“Fathe, Mr David [Lindsay],” sayes [Grange] “I perceave weill now that Mr Knox
was the trew servant of God, and his thretning is to be accomplissed;” and desired
134  

to heir the treuthe of that againe. The quhilk Mr David rehersed; and added
thairunto, that the sam Mr Knox, at his retourning, haid tauld him that he was
ernest with God for him; was sorie, for the love he buir him, that that sould
com on his bodie, bot was assurit ther was mercie for his saull . . . . “And tak
heid,” sayes he [Grange], “I hope in God, efter I salbe thought past, to giff yow
a taken of the assurance of that mercie to my saull, according to the speakine of
that man of God!”
The whole grisly business of Grange’s execution thus became surrounded with
prophecies, both by Knox and by his adversary (Melville 1842: 35–6). These
stories—despite Melville’s desire to authenticate them with the names of those
who had recorded them—probably improved in the telling. However, a generation
later, Knox was credited with particular and special insight into the purposes and
will of God, even to the extent of the destiny of the souls of those who had opposed
the Kirk and its cause.
Prophetic foretelling of the judgements of God seems, following Knox, to have
become an attribute and even an expectation made of the more eloquent of the
Scottish Reformers. While teaching at St Andrews, Andrew Melville was insulted
by the public posting of a placard denouncing him in Italian and French. Melville
discerned (without any need for special gifts) that the only possible author was the
student James Learmonth of Balcomie. He then publicly predicted that Learmonth
would die childless: and so it turned out (Melville 1842: 125–6). For those who
were hostile to the ‘prophets’ of course, alternative and more hostile interpret-
ations were available. Queen Mary allegedly suspected Knox of necromancy
(Knox 1846–64, II: 280–1): the chief grounds for such an accusation would have
been his tendency to foretell events. (Demonologists could of course have advised
her that magic was never supposed to yield true predictions.) A century later the
investigator of folk-culture and Fellow of the Royal Society, James Aubrey, would
write at length on the Scottish belief in second sight (Aubrey 1857: 174–94).

Knox’s Political Theology

Knox was sensitive to the limits of political allegiance and was willing to consider
forms of resistance for the sake of suppressing ‘idolatry’. However, his was not a
political theory in the pure sense, since the determining consideration was always
theological and practical. An external criterion, namely the true worship of God,
always took priority over questions of principle about how a realm should be
governed (Cameron 1998: 69–71). All the same, Knox early on acquired the
reputation of speaking intemperately against rulers who upheld wrong religion;
and the image of a fomenter of rebellion remains with him to this day (Eire 2016:
360–1). While at Frankfurt, Knox was denounced to the magistrates as an
advocate of treason and tyrannicide—ironically, by his fellow exiles who wished
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to be rid of a troublesome colleague. The accusation was based on certain passages

in Knox’s A Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God’s Truth in England,
published in 1554 (Knox 1846–64, III: 251–330). In the Faithful Admonition,
Knox had indeed included a prayer to God to ‘stirre up some Phinees, Helias, or
Jehu, that the bloude of abhominable idolaters may pacifie Goddes wrath’; but the
emphasis, there and elsewhere, lay on the special judgement of God against
idolatry, rather than indiscriminate encouragement to tyrannicide. Elsewhere, in
the Godly Letter, Knox so far restrained himself to say only that ordinary people
should not set about the killing of idolaters; that belonged to the civil magistrates,
whereas ordinary citizens should only ‘avoid participation and company of their
abominations’ (Knox 1846–64, III: 194). In the History of the Reformation Knox
recalled a long debate with Queen Mary over the contents of his First Blast: he
there insisted that he was content to live under her ‘as Paul lived under Nero’. Like
other Reformers he urged subjects to disobey their ruler if the ruler insisted on
imposing wrong religion (Knox 1846–64, II: 276–86). Yet one could not interpret
this exchange as a coherent debate on the principle of political power: Knox’s fixed
purpose was to defend the Reformed faith and practice against all adversaries.
In the fraught circumstances of the mid-1560s, when civil war was brewing in
Scotland and the regime of Mary Stuart was unravelling, resistance to the regime
was not only thinkable, but rapidly becoming an inescapable reality. Hence it is
not surprising that Knox scholars have detected a more fully articulated theory of
resistance in his works by that date (Dawson 2015: 317–18). However, Knox’s
priority remained what he saw as true worship; everything else depended on that
principle. Rulers who did not measure up to his standard could expect his
criticism: as witness his comment on Elizabeth in the History: ‘And yit is scho
that now reigneth ovir thame, neather gude Protestant, nor yit resolute Papist:
Lat the warld juge quhilk is the thrid’ (Knox 1846–64, II: 174).

Context: From Knox’s Era to Melville’s

The Scottish political world of Knox’s last years and the world of Andrew Melville
were very different, and the demands made of these two figures correspondingly
called forth different emphases. In the reign of Mary Stuart, despite her own
aversion to the Reformed Church, there was a measure of political stability until
the catastrophic last years of the murder of Darnley (February 1567), the queen’s
marriage to Bothwell (May 1567), the civil war, her abdication and her defeat at
Langside (May 1568) and escape to England. In the early 1560s the main challenge
for the Reformed Church was to establish the financial basis for supporting the
ministry, and to try to provide a remotely competent and adequate supply of
ministers. With the exile of Mary and the regencies for her infant son James VI,
both the political climate and the challenges made to the Scottish Reformers
136  

changed significantly. As the Scottish polity became slippery and harder to

control, keeping a hold of the Kirk became an obsessive concern for the political
elite and in due course for the king. The Church of Scotland had at this point a
hybrid polity. On one hand the Reformers of Knox’s generation believed that the
church polity associated with Genevan Calvinism and the French Reformed
Church, where an ascending hierarchy of sessions, presbyteries, and synods
governed the Church with power from beneath, represented the best (perhaps
the only) godly option. On the other hand the First Book of Discipline, which was
never quite fully implemented, had envisaged ‘superintendents’ for Scotland who
would perform some of the roles of the former bishops, as well as providing roving
ministry in places ill-supplied with Reformed preachers (Knox 1846–64, II: 201–3;
also Kirk 1989: 154–231). By the early 1570s it was resolved instead to appoint
Reformed ministers to some of the old episcopal sees, which had never really
lapsed. As the young James VI grew to a precocious political maturity, he became
more than ever convinced that ‘godly bishops’, appointed by and answerable to
the crown, were essential to control the unruliness inherent in the Presbyterian
system. The Kirk was caught in a paradox. On one hand its aspiration, in
principle, was to exist autonomously of secular society, where church leaders,
whatever their standing in secular society, exercised authority as kirkmen, and not
as nobles or politicians. On the other, such a solution could hardly be achieved
without meddling deeply in the messy world of Scottish secular politics.
Into this state of affairs came Andrew Melville. On the face of it, Melville is a
surprising figure to have assumed such a prominent place in the legendary of the
Church of Scotland. In the first place, whereas Knox wrote and preached copi-
ously in the slightly Anglicized Scots that his career of travelling and range of
correspondents made natural to him, and only expressed himself in Latin when
necessary (Smith 2010), Melville, by contrast, wrote and published relatively little,
certainly for such a renowned scholar; and wrote mostly in Latin. He wrote much
neo-Latin poetry, in which he was something of an expert (Holloway 2011; Mason
and Reid 2014: 127–54, 177–99). Recent scholarship has recovered more and
more of Melville’s poetic compositions. Melville even wrote Latin verses on the
margins of books that he was reading while imprisoned in the Tower of London
(Mason and Reid 2014: 11–45, at 40–3; Melville 1620). Although Melville is
credited with prodigious abilities in biblical languages, relatively little of this
skill was manifested outside the classroom. Of his theological writings, the most
substantial was a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans copied from his
lectures around 1601 and published in the original Latin many years later, in the
mid-nineteenth century (Melville 1849). The work, still untranslated, has not
enjoyed a strong reputation among those who have studied it (Mason and Reid
2014: 102–7). On his favoured subject of academic and scholarly approaches to
theology, Melville published his sixteen-page Scholastic Diatribe on Divine Mat-
ters, addressed to his theological students at St Andrews (Melville 1599).
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Melville as Educator

Andrew Melville’s first calling, where he seems to have borne most fruit, was as an
educator, in the humanities in general and in biblical languages in particular.
He was both most successful and happiest between 1574 and 1580, when he served
as principal and reformer of the University of Glasgow. In 1574 Melville returned
from Geneva, supposedly against the wishes of the Genevans (Melville 1842: 43–4;
cf. Holloway 2011: 36). With the help of his nephew James, only twelve years his
junior and closer to a younger brother than a nephew, he embarked on an
ambitious programme to modernize the educational approaches of the decayed
fifteenth-century university. In 1577 Glasgow was re-founded, as it would seem
with the help of Archbishop Boyd of Glasgow, a bizarre historical irony in the
light of what was to come. Even in his academic roles, however, Melville could
be oppositional, not to say cantankerous. Melville returned from Geneva as a
convinced defender of the approach to dialectic associated with the French
Protestant Peter Ramus (1515–72). The Ramist approach became his yardstick
in the formation of curriculum and in scriptural exegesis (Holloway 2011:
159–60). Consequently, Melville aspired to make many of the traditional teachers
of philosophy, raised in earlier Aristotelian methods, obsolete and redundant. In
Glasgow, dwindled into almost nothing before his arrival, the costs of this app-
roach were not heavy. Once in St Andrews, where the academic community was
more heavily invested in the older ways, Melville’s approach stirred up dissent at
all kinds of levels. One is tempted to speculate whether his academic career
prepared Melville for the sharper controversies in church polity that defined his
later career.

The ‘guid cause’

For Andrew Melville is chiefly remembered as a man of action in church

politics. He became inextricably linked to what his nephew called the ‘guid
cause’ (Melville 1842: 26, 32, 57, 127, 165, 174, 179, 181, 185, 322, 383) or of the
‘cause of the kirk’ or the ‘cause of Chryst’ (Melville 1842: 122, 143, 166, 167,
250). To this ‘cause’ Andrew Melville sacrificed much of his time, his energies—
including much of his poetic endeavours—and his career and freedom. At times
this phrase could mean the cause of the Reformation in general: however, by
the 1570s and 1580s it had become a shorthand expression for the cause of the
Presbyterian polity in Scotland. Specifically, it meant the parity or equality of the
ministers of the Kirk (Calderwood 1842–9, iii: 533). That entailed upholding of
the authority of regional presbyteries, always the most contentious part of the
Scottish Church polity, against the repeated attempts of Regent Morton and
later King James VI to re-establish the authority of bishops, whose office was
138  

repeatedly and usually ineffectually abolished by General Assemblies in the

1570s and 1580s. Here, once again, one encounters a problem of method. The
most characteristic statements of the cause which became associated with
Andrew Melville cannot, with any certainty, be attributed to his own compos-
ition. Of these the most important is the Second Book of Discipline of 1578. This
text, produced by a large committee for the General Assembly, was a collective
endeavour by a group of ministers and theologians, but may be taken as represen-
tative of the theology with which Melville aligned himself (Calderwood 1842–9,
iii: 529–55; Kirk 1980).
The Second Book of Discipline enunciated a series of interlinked principles.
First, it postulated a sharp distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical polity.
The latter was to be ruled by ecclesiastical persons, acting under the direct
command of God in Christ. Therefore, no secular ruler could claim the title of
head of the Church. Precisely following Calvin, the Book stated that ‘There are four
ordinary functions or offices in the kirk of God: the office of the pastor, minister or
bishop; the doctor; the presbyter or elder; and the deacon’ (Calderwood 1842–9, iii:
533). True ‘bishops’ (who were equivalent to pastors and ministers) ‘should addict
themselves to one particular flock, which sundry of them refuse; neither should they
usurp lordship over their brethren, and over the inheritance of Christ, as these men
do’ (Calderwood 1842–9, iii: 548). The whole thrust of the text tended to outlaw
supervisory episcopacy:

It agrees not with the word of God that bishops should be pastors of pastors,
pastors of many flocks, and yet without one certain flock, and without ordinary
teaching. It agrees not with the scriptures that they should be exempt from the
correction of their brethren, and discipline of the particular eldership of the kirk
where they shall serve. (Calderwood 1842–9, iii: 548)

As a corollary, the Book called for the removal of all the remains of the old
ecclesiastical structures, revenues, offices, etc. which were still remaining in effect
in Scotland. The Scottish Reformation had succeeded, in part, by a pragmatic
acceptance that the medieval structures of church governance could only be
dismantled and reassigned to the Kirk in a gradual, incremental fashion. By the
late 1570s such half-measures were no longer acceptable. The ideals had not
changed; however, after such a lapse of time, patience with a half-made order
had run out.
A detailed letter from Melville’s hand attests his attitudes both to church
government and to the tortuous and conflicted politics of the early 1580s. Melville
wrote this letter in 1583, in response to a memorandum that Patrick Adamson,
archbishop of St Andrews, had sent to the French Church in London and to the
churches of Geneva and Zurich. This memorandum, entitled ‘The Ordour
apointed be the Ministers of Scotland obtrudit to the king be tham’ had laid out
the issues in debate. Adamson’s memorandum first summarized (in hostile but
      139

fairly accurate terms) the working of the Presbyterian polity through a hierarchy
of sessions and synods, and the insistence that the civil power remain entirely
separate from church government. The ministers’ ‘ordour’ concluded by denoun-
cing the system of benefices and patronage, arguing that all church revenues
should be collected by deacons and disbursed by them (Melville 1842: 148–51).
Adamson’s response argued, first, that princes should lead the government of the
Church, and that it was a Catholic clericalist error to exclude the secular power
from church affairs. It then argued for episcopal government in all aspects of the
management of the Church’s ministry. Bishops should also participate in secular
government. The old system of patronage and benefices was vindicated (Melville
1842: 151–153).
Melville’s reply to this memorandum, drafted in Latin but preserved in Scots,
was sent to the churches of Geneva and Zurich (Melville 1842: 154–64). Melville
affirmed the continuity of the Scottish Church with its own Reformed principles,
and its conformity to continental Reformed models. He accused Adamson of
being a hypocritical turncoat, who had accepted a bishopric after previously
denouncing his predecessor and declaring his loyalty to the Reformed polity.
Melville depicted the restoration of episcopal authority as a Machiavellian stroke
of intrigue, done in defiance of Scottish political laws and customs. After review-
ing the political chaos of recent years, Melville then expounded some key
principles:

That it perteines nocht to the Prince to prescryve ather Relligion to the Kirk, or
Discipline to the Pastors thairof; bot, be his authoritie, to confirme bathe the an
and the uther, apointed be God, and sincerlie declarit out of his Word, be the
ministrie of his servantes; to revenge and punishe all corrupting of clein
doctrin, contempt of holie Discipline, and perturbation of lawfull Ordour, for
the quhilk use and purpose he hathe receivit the sword; to decore the Assem-
blies, giff neid beis, with his presence; to arme the innocence of this Ministrie
be his saiffgard and defence . . . utherwayes does he sitt in the Synods amangs
the Pastors then he does in the throne of the kingdome amangs the Esteattes;
heir, to mak lawes for subjects and command, bot ther, to receave lawes from
God to obey. (Melville 1842: 162)

Melville argued that a correct church order had room neither for episcopacy nor
for monarchical supervision of the Church. It has at times been supposed that this
stringent anti-monarchical strain was Melville’s own contribution. However,
Melville himself was emphatic that it was not: he ascribed this exclusion of the
civil power from church government to the Reformed tradition itself. Modern
scholarship has on the whole confirmed this analysis. The key point was
that between the early 1560s and the early 1580s the circumstances had changed.
In the years of Queen Mary, an avowed foe of the Reformed cause, it was self-
evident that the Kirk would be ruled by its political supporters in the Assemblies.
140  

Twenty years later, with a teenage king well educated in Reformed principles
growing to maturity, the issues were quite different. In the fractious politics of the
time, politicians could argue for royal and episcopal oversight as a means to make
themselves and their arguments attractive to a young king desperate to achieve
control and escape noble tutelage.

‘God’s sillie vassal’

Perhaps only a scholar could have been so naïve and graceless in handling the
political situation as Melville turned out to be. Most of the agents in this
struggle sought to make themselves and their arguments attractive to James VI
(with the exception, perhaps, of the Ruthven raiders of 1582, who aspired to
guide the king’s policy by kidnapping him from the tutelage of the opposing
faction). Melville did not so much lose the struggle for control of the king’s
conscience as refuse to compete for it in the first place. His intemperate
insistence on the principle of church self-government brooked no contradic-
tion and admitted no compromise. Even his nephew acknowledged the prob-
lems that this approach caused. In August 1596 James VI called a gathering at
Falkland, to which several of the ministers, but not Melville, were summoned.
Melville insisted on coming anyway, and presented himself before the king
unbidden (Melville 1842: 368). He argued against the readmission of Catholic
lords to favour and was sent away by the king: the other ministers expressed
the same opinions, but more moderately. At a subsequent meeting at Falkland
in September, ‘the rest [of the ministers] leyed upon me [James Melville] to be
speaker, alleaging I could propone the mater substantiuslie, and in a myld and
smothe maner, quhilk the King lyked best of ’(Melville 1842: 369–70; cf. Mason
and Reid 2014: 211–13). Notwithstanding their best efforts, when the king
complained of the ministers meeting without warrant and causing alarm in the
nation, Andrew Melville could not contain himself. Instead he ‘bot brak af
upon the King in sa zealus, powerfull, and unresistable a maner, that whowbeit
the King used his authoritie in maist crabbit and colerik maner, yit Mr Andro
bure him down, and outtered the Commission as from the mightie God, calling
the King bot “God’s sillie vassal” ’. Melville went on to make his notorious
claim that there were in truth two kings and two jurisdictions in Scotland: and
that in the kingdom of Christ, the worldly king was but a member. In this
controversy Melville upheld a perfectly clear principle that the management of
the Church rested on the ministry by divine appointment: the king was a
protector of the Church but could not be its governor (Melville 1842: 370–1).
However, few monarchs, and certainly not James VI, could have been expected
to bear with such an affront to their own political understanding of the place of
the Church.
      141

Knox and Melville: Philosophical Theologians?

It would be too easy, given the stresses and struggles described in this chapter, to
dismiss both Knox and Melville as reactive thinkers, driven chiefly by the twists
and turns of post-Reformation Scottish politics. Yet their very incompetence in
handling subtle political intrigue demonstrates that both these men were in fact
theologians of stark, simple principle, too often at sea in the foreign environment
of courts and parliaments. Certain key principles mattered to Knox, Melville, and
their generations of ministers. They believed in the utter sovereignty of God and
all that this implied in the Church and the world. They aspired to see a church
purified of what they saw as extraneous, non-biblical elements. They internalized
Calvin’s conviction that the discipline of the Church belonged to the Church
alone. They sought to see the fruits of grace and faith at work in the sanctification
of the people of Scotland. Their tragedy was that implementing these ideals, which
gleamed so brightly for them, entailed delving into the murky worlds of politics
where they were so often outmanoeuvred and overwhelmed. Andrew Melville,
dying at Sedan in 1622, might have remembered the words attributed to Pope
Gregory VII: ‘I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I am
dying in exile.’⁴

Bibliography

Primary Literature
Aubrey, John (1857). Miscellanies upon Various Subjects, 4th edition. London: John
Russell Smith.
Bullinger, Heinrich (1528). De Origine erroris, in negocio eucharistiae, ac missae. Basel:
Thomas Wolff.
Bullinger, Heinrich (1539). De Origine Erroris Libri Duo . . . Zurich: Froschauer.
Calderwood, David (1842–9). The History of the Kirk of Scotland, 8 vols., ed. Thomas
Thomson. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society.
Calvin, John (1552). De la predestination eternelle de Dieu, par laquelle les uns sont
eleuz à salut, les autres laissez en leur condemnation; Aussi de la providence par
laquelle il gouverne les choses humanines (Genève: Jehan Crespin). Latin ed. as De
Aeterna Dei Praedestinatione, qua in salutem alios ex hominibus elegit, alios suo
exitio reliquit: item de providentia qua res humanas gubernat, consensus pastorum
Genevensis Ecclesiae a Io. Calvino expositus (Genevae: Joannes Crispinus).

⁴ ‘Dilexi iustitiam et odivi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio.’ The source of the alleged
quotation is the ‘Relatio de obitu Gregorii papae VII (1085)’ in Monumenta Germaniae Historica:
Scriptores, ed. G. Waitz, SS 5, 1844, p. 563.
142  

Calvin, John (1853–1900). Joannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, vols. 29–87,
59 vols., ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss. Corpus Reformatorum. Braun-
schweig and Berlin: Schwetschke and Son.
Calvin, John (1960). Institutes of the Christian Religion. Library of Christian Classics,
vols. 20–1, ed. J. T. McNeill, trans. F. L. Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
Calvin, John (1970). Excuse à messieurs les Nicodemites, in Three French Treaties, ed.
Francis M. Higman. London: Athlone Press.
Cameron, James K. (ed.) (1972). The First Book of Discipline. Edinburgh: St. Andrew
Press.
Hazlett, Ian (ed.) (2009). ‘Confessio Scotica, 1560’, in Andreas Mühling and Peter
Opitz (eds.), Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften, vol. 2/1, 1559–1563. Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener, 209–300.
Kirk, James (ed.) (1980). The Second Book of Discipline. Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press.
Knox, John (1644). The Historie of the reformation of the Church of Scotland contain-
ing five books: together with some treatises conducing to the History. London: John
Raworth for George Thomason and Octavian Pullen.
Knox, John (1732). The Historie of the Reformation of Religioun within the realm
of Scotland: conteining the manner and be quhat persons the lycht of Chrystis
Evangell has bein manifested unto this realme . . . : together with the life of Iohn
Knoxe the author, and several curious pieces wrote by him . . . Edinburgh: Robert
Fleming.
Knox, John (1846–64). The Works of John Knox, 6 vols., collected and edited by David
Laing. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Society.
Knox, John (1873). The Book of Common Order: commonly called John Knox’s liturgy,
translated into Gaelic anno Domini 1567 by . . . John Carswell, ed. Thomas M’Lau-
chlan. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas.
Knox, John (1949). John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, 2 vols., ed.
William Croft Dickinson. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
Latimer, Hugh (1968). Selected Sermons of Hugh Latimer, ed. Allan G. Chester.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Melville, Andrew (1599). Scholastica diatriba de rebvs divinis ad anquirendam et
inveniendam veritatem, à candidatis S. Theol. habenda (Deo volente), ad d.XXVI
et XXVII Iulij in scholis theologicis Acad. Andreanae . . . Edinburgh: Robertus
Waldegrave.
Melville, Andrew (1620). Viri clarissimi A. Meluini musae et P. Adamsoni vita et
palindoia [sic] et celsæ commissionis ceu delegatæ potestatis regiæ in causis ecclesias-
ticis brevis & aperta descriptio. Netherlands?: no publisher given.
Melville, Andrew (1849). Commentarius in divinam Pauli epistolam ad Romanos.
Edinburgh: Societatis Wodrovensis.
Melville, James (1842). The Autobiography and Diary of Mr James Melvill, with a
Continuation of the Diary, 2 vols., ed. Robert Pitcairn. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society.
      143

Robinson, Hastings (ed.) (1842). The Zurich Letters: Comprising the Correspondence of
several English Bishops and others with some of the Helvetian Reformers, during the
early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Cambridge: University Press.

Secondary Literature
Cameron, Euan (1998). ‘Frankfurt and Geneva: The European Context of John Knox’s
Reformation’, in R. A. Mason (ed.), John Knox and the British Reformations.
St. Andrews Studies in the Reformation. Aldershot: Ashgate/Scolar Press, 51–73.
Cameron, Euan (2012). ‘Primitivism, Patristics and Polemic in Protestant Visions of
Early Christianity’, in Katherine van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan
(eds.), Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 27–50.
Dawson, Jane (2015). John Knox. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Eire, Carlos (2016). Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Frankforter, A. Daniel (1987). ‘Elizabeth Bowes and John Knox: A Woman and
Reformation Theology’, Church History 56/3: 333–47.
Holloway III, Ernest R. (2011). Andrew Melville and Humanism in Renaissance
Scotland 1545–1622. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Kess, Alexandra (2008). Johann Sleidan and the Protestant Vision of History.
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Kirk, James (1989). Patterns of Reform: Continuity and Change in the Reformation
Kirk. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Kolb, R. (1977). ‘Dynamics of Party Conflict in the Saxon Late Reformation: Gnesio
Lutherans vs. Philippists’, Journal of Modern History 49: D1289–1305.
Kolb, R. (1978). Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483–1565): Popular Polemics in the Preser-
vation of Luther’s Legacy. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf.
Kyle, Richard G. and Dale W. Johnson (2009). John Knox: An Introduction to his Life
and Works. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
Mason, Roger A. and Steven J. Reid (eds.) (2014). Andrew Melville (1545–1622):
Writings, Reception, and Reputation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Reid, Steven J. (2011). Humanism and Calvinism: Andrew Melville and the Universities
of Scotland, 1560–1625. Farnham: Ashgate.
Smith, Jeremy J. (2010). ‘Scots and English in the Letters of John Knox’, in Kevin
J. McGinley and Nicola Royan (eds.), The Apparelling of Truth: Literature and
Literary Culture in the Reign of James VI; A Festschrift for Roderick J. Lyall.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 1–10.
Todd, Margo (2002). The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
 11
Political and Ecclesial Theology
in the Sixteenth Century
Mark W. Elliott

Around 1500 there was in the Scottish courts a strong movement of spiritual
poetry, a facet of religious humanism for which John Durkan has offered a
theological explanation, namely an incarnational principle, according to which
all the arts were viewed as having their source in the Saviour, wherein divine
virtues and human virtues corresponded. However, the lady who was once
sculpted at the entrance to St Mary’s College, St Andrews was not primarily
Mary but rather Lady Wisdom of a humanistic ilk, and Durkan concludes: ‘Beaton
used the dedication of the Assumption to symbolise the assumption and transfig-
uration of human wisdom and human virtue in a divine context . . . The unity of
doctrine and discipline is based on the traditional view of wisdom, a view alien
to hard-hearted men of the world then as now . . . ’ (Durkan 1959: 401). More
mundanely, and riffing on Aesop’s fables the Dunfermline Abbey-based poet
Robert Henryson (d. 1506) drew dark lessons for those who refused to control
their appetites. Yet, as Roderick Lyall concludes: ‘Dark as this conclusion is,
Henryson’s Morall Fabillis are not lacking in positive doctrine. Seen against the
backdrop of later medieval theology, the sequence seems to offer a perspective that
is essentially Augustinian: however fallen the world may be, and however recid-
ivist sinful man, divine providence is never entirely withdrawn’ (Lyall 2006: 104;
see also Lyall 2005).
In the Surrexit dominus de sepulchre by William Dunbar (d. 1520) Christ is
treated as a heroic soldier in a Renaissance hue. Both Dunbar (whose dreamer is
awoken by the earthquake and then experiences Christ’s passion re-enacted in his
heart), and Walter Kennedy (d. 1518) composed works on the passion, the latter
strongly indebted to Ludolphus of Saxony’s Life of Christ, with a particular focus
on the mocking that Christ endured. When it comes to the third of the great
Renaissance poets, Gavin Douglas, famous for his translation of the Aeneid, in his
own poetry that bard ‘frequently links Scriptural persons and events with classical
ones: Ahithopel and Sinon are paired as examples of treachery and corrupted
“sapience” (lines 231ff.); Solomon and Aristotle lead the procession of “clerkis” in
Minerva’s train (lines 250ff.); Diana’s court is led by Jephthah’s daughter (lines
337ff.)’ (Bawcutt 2006: xlvi). Perhaps one of the last pieces written by Douglas

Mark W. Elliott, Political and Ecclesial Theology in the Sixteenth Century. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0011
 -     145

after his appointment as bishop of Dunkeld in 1516, but before going to London in
1521, will suffice—‘Conscience’ (1515):
And from Conscience the
Con they clipped away,
And made of Conscience Science and no more;
. . . And fra Sci of Science wes adew,
Than left thai nocht bot this sillab Ens,
Quhilk in our language singnifies that schrew
Riches and geir, that gart all grace go hens;
. . . or thé that thief Judas his Maister said;
For thé Symon infectit Halie Kirk;
To poysoun Justice thow dois nevir irk;
Thow fals Ens, go hens, thou monsture peralous,
God send Defens with Conscience in till ws!

At Aberdeen Hector Boece testified that his mentor Elphinstone in later years
meditated on Christ’s saving sufferings, and when retired he had bible, commen-
taries, and works of moral philosophers for company in his solitude (Boece 1825:
69). Spiritual and theological reflection tended to come after, not before or during, a
busy life’s work as canon lawyer and administrator, including paying to embellish
St Machar’s as a cathedral worthy of Solomon’s temple (Boece 1825: 65), although
his lawyer’s training for the former imported much theology through having
Gratian’s Decretum as its base. For theology students proper, whom he encouraged
at Aberdeen from around 1500 onwards, training in the Bible (with Lyra’s gloss)
and Lombard’s Sentences for the Bachelor’s degree (and the commentators like
Scotus and Biel for those working to be called ‘doctor’; Macfarlane 1985: 374)
provided the core. Elphinstone’s Aberdonian pupils such as John Vaus borrowed
prayers from Erasmus’ Colloquies. Marsilio Ficino had deeply influenced Boece who
in turn befriended the young George Buchanan. Elphinstone was a canon lawyer,
Boece a classicist, so neither were principally theologians and in any case Lefèvre
and Erasmus were mostly read in Arts faculties. Yet at Glasgow, Archbishop
Blackader insisted that doctrine and the disciplines belonged together, for even
Aristotle told one to look for the summum bonum in the contemplation of the
higher and divine things. The association of Cambuskenneth Abbey with St Victor
in Paris and the Augustinians at Windesheim (Dilworth 1994: 166) gave the
Scottish house and its canons a prestige, although also some peril in the shape of
Robert Richardson whose Paris sojourn included dabbling with Lutheranism.
There were intellectual and spiritual resources in Scotland, and religious orders
valued the presence of the new universities, even as they sent regulars abroad to
train in letters and theology. Still, the Lefèvre-taught Giovanni Ferreri at Kinloss
Abbey made that place into a ‘radiating centre of learning’ for the north. Yet the
movement was conservative in theological terms. Hence in 1539 Archbishop
146  . 

Beaton rounded up Henry Forret vicar of Dollar. ‘During the interview censuring
Forret’s biblical teaching, Crichton of Dunkeld remarked, ‘I thanke God, that
I never knew what the Old and New Testament was . . . I will know nothing but
my portuise and my pontificall’ (Dawson 2007 144).
John Mair or Major (c.1467–1550), the best known Scottish scholar-theologian
of the late medieval period, schooled in Haddington, went to Paris via Cambridge,
coming home only in 1518 to teach at Glasgow and then St Andrews. Apart from
knowing Erasmus and Lefèvre, he attended the first classes in Greek given by the
Italian Girolamo Aleandro. He, however, was to stay ‘scholastic’ in his interests
and methods, as befitting one associated with the conservative Parisian Collège de
Montaigu, writing commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. His Scotist sym-
pathies account for what T. F. Torrance has noted as an empiricism in method, or
at least working up from a species in medio towards intuition of the object
(Torrance 1969: 533–4). As he wrote in the preface to his History of Greater
Britain: ‘with those who have given themselves to the pursuit of knowledge it is of
more moment to understand aright, and clearly to lay down the truth of any
matter, than to use elegant and highly coloured language’ (Mason 1990: 184). In
other words, dialectic was affirmed to the exclusion of rhetoric, while Mair was
also a sworn enemy of Luther and the latter’s negligence towards the niceties of
theological distinctions.
Meanwhile the zenith of Louis XII of France’s experiment in radical conciliar-
ism saw himself calling a council in 1511. This encouraged Mair in his conviction
of the requirement of General Councils to lead the Church, and that the Church
should stay out of temporal matters. Not even Christ as man was temporal lord of
the world. ‘In the commentary on Matthew, for example, Mair argued that, just as
a king who acts contrary to the common good “must be deposed by the commu-
nity over which he rules”, so if a pope “proceeds from one error to another, and
this is well known and he remains incorrigible, he must be deposed” ’ (Mason
1990: 207). A monarch did not have rights of dominium but was someone
entrusted with an office of rule—and not directly by God but by the subjects—
so tenure was conditional on performance. This meant in practice the three
Estates of a people acting together under the constitution to keep him in check.
However, any deposition would be unusual in practice and at the same time Mair
wanted a coming together of equal English and Scottish crowns so as to strengthen
the weak Scottish monarchy. The papacy could intervene with a power of ruler-
ship where sacral kingship was failing, but that power was held in common among
the Church’s bishops.
Such was the learning of Scottish religious life that ‘In Scotland canons who are
graduates in theology are as common as snakes in Ireland or dormice in Glasgow’
(Burns 1951: 74). In the dedication to Archbishop James Beaton of his 1519
Matthew commentary, Mair urged a rooting out of the tares in the Lord’s field,
quite contrary to the plain sense of the parable (Matt. 13:24–30). Yet it meant
 -     147

plucking out not individuals but their teaching, as he goes on to advocate

combating the heresy with a herbal medicine (sycophantically observed to equate
to the etymology of ‘Beaton’), to prevent the Lutheran infection from spreading.
When it comes to the lapsed, one should note the errors but spare the people. This
was before the extent of the Protestant threat became known, when individuals
like Patrick Hamilton would not be so spared.
One of Mair’s prayers show how his was a spirit of Pilgrimage:

Following your lead and by our merit as pilgrims, to the glory of the blessed
which we glimpse from afar, which from the waters of this sea we already
salute . . . Jesus Christ, God born of God, our refuge and our strength, our sole
consolation, whom in the distance, like the star of the morning and the sun of
justice, standing on the shore of our heavenly home, we long to see and yet can
barely discern for the tears in our eyes, govern our ship with thy right hand,
marked as it is with the nails of thy cross, lest we perish in the waves . . . we may
securely come to port at last. (Cited by Durkan 1959: 392)

As for his ecclesiology, on Matthew 16:18 (fol. LXV) Mair comments: ‘the church
is the gathering of the faithful, yet is taken to be represented by the prelate of the
church as we shall later say’. Some translators wrongly substitute ‘church’ for
‘sacred altar’ in the text. How to reconcile the belief that the Church is always holy
with the fact that no one church is constantly holy? Well, because there is always
someone kept in grace in the Church. As one falls the other takes care. The Church
mystically goes back to Abel. For the reason of this holy mystical body, the
presiding pope is called ‘holy father’. The book of Proverbs tells us that correction
matters, as does Matthew 18. The Church is tasked by Christ with preventing venial
sins from turning into mortal ones, so that no one should descend to hell through
lacking absolution (fol. LXVIII). Major is not all that interested in the nature of
‘binding and loosing’.
In this earliest (Matthew) of the gospel commentaries, on the Last Supper in
Matthew 25 (fol. XCVII) there is a lot about the date of Easter, the Pascha and the
Parasceve, the length of fast before receiving communion, and those not allowed
to communicate, but very little on the theology of the Eucharist. By the time of the
Mark commentary (fol. CLIII) the very bread is declared ‘transubstantiated into
the body of Christ, hence the body is the first and formal term’. Later again, on
Luke 23 Mair comments (fol. CCXXXI) that Christ broke the bread to indicate to
the apostles the breaking of his body which he would gladly carry to the altar
of the Cross. There is no mere symbolism here. He takes the Lutherans to task that
their ‘priesthood of all believers’ implies women’s ordination, since the point is
that only those from the apostles are able to announce the words of consecration.
In John 6 ‘this body does not bear a shadow of the flesh of Christ as the typical
plump lamb might, but really is the true flesh of Christ which for the life of the
world will endure a harsh death on the altar of the cross, so as to give life to his
148  . 

own.’ The words of Jesus here look forward to the Cross and through and beyond
it to the Eucharist. ‘Christ does not say “I give” but “I will give” ’, i.e. in the masses
to be celebrated in the future.
So it should not be thought that Catholic theology in Scotland was a pushover
for Protestantism. Bishop Robert Reid in Kirkwall’s idea of theology was to
controvert heresy. At King’s College in Aberdeen, Boece’s friend William Hay’s
theology lectures in 1535 majored on the theme of the authority of the papacy
(Taylor 1959: 91), but earlier he expounded the Paris condemnation against
Luther ‘without hesitation, rejecting Luther’s denials of the three Sacraments
of Extreme Unction, Orders and Matrimony as heretical’ (Barry 1951: 11). The
Protestant exile Alesius also tells us that one of the pressure points in the trial
of the martyr Patrick Hamilton was the Nominalist teaching on grace in which
de congruo merit is transformed by first grace into de condigno merit. Grace was
required for deeds to be meritorious, though not for deeds to be good. William
Manderston (d. 1552) argued accordingly that baptism is a meritorious act in
man’s free power, even if it is not in man’s free power that it is meritorious (Taylor
1959: 99). People like John Winram, for all that he would debate with Knox at
St Andrews in 1546, nevertheless were theologically flexible, while others like
Archibald Hay (Principal of St Mary’s in 1546 for two years) believed that
theologians should lead the call to repentance and they had ‘little [new] to
add to the Philosophia Christi’ (Cameron 1980: 283). Prudence is all: the world
is often more prudent than the children of light. (Luke 16:8 was a motto.) In
1553 Hay’s posthumous influence inspired curriculum reform. ‘In these the
mediaeval programme of the 1538 bull is replaced by one proposing the liberal
arts, with Grammar, Rhetoric and Poetry, as well as Medicine, Theology and
Laws. No mention is made of Dialectic, nor any of Physic.’ . . . ‘There is particu-
lar emphasis [in the 1549 Council Statutes] on the need to have the Scriptures
studied and expounded in the monasteries and in the attached churches by
theologians, who were to be maintained where possible by the bishop’ (Cameron
1980: 283). These reforms intended for St Mary’s study of the three languages
and advanced semitics were effected by John Douglas under Archbishop Ham-
ilton at St Mary’s in 1548 with the help of the English Dominican Richard
Marshall, the main author of the 1552 Catechism (Durkan 1959: 329). But with
that catechism there is a positive appreciation of Scripture followed by that of
the Fathers and then general councils; one should read in the Spirit, which
would lead to Charity.
The catechism places emphasis on ‘special faith’ or ‘true and living faith . . .
I trust’, which sounded a bit Lutheran, while the words of baptism ‘I baptise thee’,
are interpreted as meaning, ‘I declare to thee plainly that all thy sins are forgiven
thee’, and by the sacrament, we are said to ‘clothe ourselves with his (i.e. Christ’s)
righteousness and repute it as our own’ (Taylor 1959: 105–6).
 -     149

The 1552 Catechism echoed the ecumenical Cardinal Gropper’s Enchiridion,

with its emphasis on incorporation as a means to justification, but also in the
relationship of works to grace:
Ch3 Si in preceptis meis ambulaveritis . . . and mony other paces of the auld
testament, GOD promises temporal prosperitie to the people quhilk keipis his
commandis; and Christ confirms (Seek first the Kingdom of God and . . . )

This moderately reformed Catholic theology could occupy the same place as the
moderately catholic and reformed theology of William Maitland of Lethington
(1525–73). Even in Knox’s report (History of the Scottish Reformation) of their
debate in 1565, Queen Mary’s Secretary Maitland seems to have held his own, not
only on the question of whether idolatry ought to be opposed but whether a royal
‘idolater’ ought to die.
‘Then will ye’, said Lethington, ‘make subjects to control their princes and
rulers?’ ‘And what harm’, said the other [viz. Knox], ‘should the commonwealth
receive if that the corrupt affections of ignorant rulers were moderated and so
bridled by the wisdom and discretion of godly subjects that they should do
nothing wrong nor violence to no man?’
‘But there is no commandment given to the people’, said the Secretary, ‘to
punish their king if he be an idolater.’ ‘I find no more privilege granted unto
kings’, said the other, ‘by God, more than unto the people, to offend God’s
majesty.
I grant’, said Lethington, ‘but yet the people may not be judges unto their
king to punish him, albeit he be an idolater’ ‘God’, said the other, ‘is Universal
Judge, as well unto the king as to the people; so that what His Word commands
to be punished in the one is not to be absolved in the other’.
(Mason 1993: 182–208)

George Buchanan (1506–82)

George Buchanan was deservedly the most famous Scottish early modern Latin
poet. His play Jephthes, probably written in the early 1540s, recognized that
Hebrews 11:32 portrays Jephthah as a saint; yet he was in the wrong, illustrating
the danger of being too clever, although deserving of empathy. Stubbornness to a
dogma is lamented, ideology swallowed makes one sad, and the wise priest in the
central episode is Buchanan’s mouthpiece. There is a sympathy for the evangelical
simplicity of the people, and dislike of ecclesiastical interference (McFarlane
1981: 151). Idolatry is a prominent theme. Jephthah had strayed from the right
and reasonable way.
150  . 

Buchanan had moved in ‘Lutheran’ circles in Scotland but moderated such

views at Bordeaux when André de Gouvea had him read works by Clichthove
and Fisher, who had combated Oecolampadius. However, he was imprisoned in
Coimbra by the Inquisition not least for claiming that Augustine’s view of the
Eucharist had more in common with the Protestant version (McFarlane 1981:
197). Buchanan’s thinking was shaped by Augustine’s doctrine of ‘signs’ from On
Christian Doctrine, and there was enough to charge him of belief in a figurative,
non-sacrificial presence of the Lord’s body; but also that he hesitated on purga-
tory, and believed in sola fide; that charity followed justification; that he doubted
confession as divinely instituted; and that 2 Corinthians 6:2 (ecce nunc tempus
acceptabile) showed fasting in Lent to be a ‘man-made regulation’ (McFarlane
1981: 136–44). The discovery of Calvin’s Institutes in his Bordeaux room in
1551, combined with his friendship of Beza in his Paris period in the early 1540s
and his being Moderator of the General Assembly in 1567, all suggest certain
‘Reformed’ affinities, without being conclusive. For once back at St Andrews
he fought to give more rounded, humanist education to students. As Principal
of St Leonard’s, he had to give twice weekly theology lectures as tutor to the
young James.
Buchanan had a copy of Münster’s Hebrew dictionary and showed a certain
fidelity to the Hebrew text in his poetic paraphrases of the Psalms, while eschew-
ing a mock-Hebrew style in favour of a living ‘biblical Latin’, trying in turn to
express the sentiments of the Psalmist. Psalm 3:3 in his version omits ‘animam’
(soul) since the Hebrew just means ‘self ’; nor will he take v. 6 onwards in the past
tense, for God may do it now. Roger Green notes an anti-Stoic thrust: on Psalm
40:13 there is an inveighing against those who ascribe events to the ‘swirling
violence of fate’ (Green 2011: 71–3). ‘The Psalmist does not share the typical
Stoic’s attitude to emotion . . . Buchanan has nothing corresponding to the Stoic
self-sufficiency to which Horace deftly alluded’ (Green 2011: 75). It is clear from
Buchanan’s biography that religion played a large part and that the expression of
this can often be called ‘theological’.
According to his political masterpiece, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, written
in 1567 but published twelve years later, the king who is elected and controlled
by law can also be removed if he rules by his passions not wisdom. Kings are
accountable to the people according to the pristine version of monarchy
(Mason 2012: 25). ‘Laws will be made by the representatives of the people—
the Three Estates of the Realm—in consultation with the king’ (Burns 1950: 93).
Idolatry is a prominent theme in the work. Buchanan’s ideal society required no
legislator because of reason in the minds of people. As with Erasmus the NT is
historicized, so one should contextualize Romans 13 (Williamson 2009: 100).
Such biblical exegesis in some ways anticipating Spinoza could be troubling:
e.g. the OT really viewed the installation of kings as attack on the people not
on God.
 -     151

But the Italian Neoplatonist style of his ‘Morning Hymn to Christ’ encouraged
a somewhat abstract piety:
Arise, O Sun! most pure, most bright!
The world irradiate with thy light;
Shine on my darkness, and dispel
The mists of sin that round me dwell:

Quintin Kennedy (1520–64)

Trained in St Andrews and Paris, from a landed family in Ayrshire, and Abbot of
Crossraguel, on his death in 1564 Kennedy’s estate would pass to Buchanan as
payment for the latter’s tutoring services at court. During his famous duel with
Knox at Maybole, Kennedy admitted that the Church has acknowledged the truth
of Scripture as over it, and she testifies to the divine truth there in Scripture.
However, the Church is judge of the ‘true meaning of Scripture’ (Kuipers 1964: 49).
‘In his Ane little brief tracteit prevand cleirlye the real body of Iesu Crist to be present
in the sacrament of the altare [1558] Kennedy argues that the Reformers refuse to
recognize the most wonderful act of God’s omnipotence, and that it is more
profitable to receive Christ both spiritually and really than spiritually only’
(Kuipers 1964: 53). It seems that the grace received through the Mass disposes
man to penance and helps him to resist sin. Kuipers claims a contradiction here: ‘In
the Litil Breif Tracteit he insists on the identity of the Christ who is in heaven and
the Christ who is in the Eucharist. In the Compendious Ressonyng on the other
hand, he concentrates on the relation between the mass and the historical sacrifice
of Christ. There is a gap between the two tracts which he fails to bridge’ (Kuipers
1964: 73). However, these are really two distinct questions, rather than points in
mutual opposition.
In Ane Compendious Reasoning (1559) Kennedy here poses a choice between
the Catholic Eucharistic doctrine and that of Oecolampadius: which of the two is
more to the glory of God and profit of the congregation? ‘This is my body’, just
like ‘This is my beloved son’, is meant literally; after all it was Arius who said
Christ was Son of God only in a ‘figurative’ sense. His risen flesh or humanity has
been spiritualized by the presence of the divine nature and he can be in any
place. Hence the bread ‘is changed in the same self body of Christ’, just as Jesus
had godly powers far above the order of nature when he appeared to disciples.
How can any man not go against conscience when he believes he is eating bare
bread? Due to heretical denial of this real presence, the Church brought in
‘transubstantiation’, just as it did with homoousion. Kennedy gives nine proofs
for Mass as a sacrifice (and ‘unbloody’, anticipating the Council of Trent the
following year), much more than mere representation. In that sense the Mass is
152  . 

‘a new sacrifice’, which does not duplicate Calvary but applies its merits with a
propitiatory action.
According to 1561’s Ane Oratioun the patriarchs as far back as Abel invented
a worship of God without ‘express command’, yet it was acceptable. Even the
religion of Cornelius pleased God. Saul’s case (1 Sam. 13) is more one where there
was an express command of God against something. And Saul was hardly an
idolater here, he was just not observing commands, ‘and albeit the scripture dois
affirme that stubbornness is as the wicketnes of ydolatrie, nochttheles stubborn-
ness is nocht ydolatrie’. Even Luther and Melanchthon agree with Cyprian and
Ambrose there is a Eucharistic real presence.
In Ane familiar ressonyng (1561) Kennedy goes further to argue that the
Eucharist has always been understood as ‘mass’, a sacrifice. The word ‘missa’ is
there in Clement’s Epistola 3 ad Jacobum fratrem Domini (and in Ignatius,
Smyrnaeans), but the effect signified by this term is already present in the New
Testament. In conclusion he calls his reader to ‘at least suspend judgement for
now’ and ‘recant and cum in obedience to the kirk of God’. Of course, there is
commemoration of Christ’s death and passion but also ‘the body and blude of
Iesus Christ (under the formis of breid and wyne) ar offerit to the Father of hevin
and ar ressavit as the heavinlie fude of oure saull . . . by the powar of the lordis
worde, quhilk is omnipotent’. But the sacrifice of the Mass is an unbloody one. For
in Luke 22 Christ declared it to be offered up by apostles and ministers until the
end of the world. It is unbloody in that it is of the order of Melchizedek, not
Aaron. It is the same body of Jesus, but in the Mass that body is invisible and
insensible. Anticipating Trent, Malachi 1:11 cannot be about the body offered on
the Cross, since that was only in Jerusalem, whereas the prophet spoke of a
sacrifice offered all over. By its use we become partakers of the fruit of the passion.
Jesus said ‘given for you’ not just ‘to you’, so a sacrifice, not communion is meant.
The glory of the Cross is advanced by the Mass’s application of a medicine which
doesn’t detract from its perfection; for daily sin, a daily remedy, just as Christ told
disciples to baptize, yet without stipulating the form of this, so just the substance
and effect is mandated. In the OT the sacrifices were to record the blessings but
with the Cross it was the blessing itself as liberation from sin and the devil’s
captivity. So, another immolation was needed. ‘Quharifor it was necessary that by
the immolatioun of the paschale lamb ane other immolatioun, besydis it done on
the croce, suld be signifeit, the quhilk in the latter supper was done.’
According to the ‘Ressoning’: report of the debate with Knox at Maybole
(September 1562), Knox declined to say Mass was blasphemous; it was enough
that it had no warrant in the express word of God. The bread and wine Melchiz-
edek brought (Gen. 14:18) was refreshment, perhaps a thanksgiving for victory.
Kennedy disagreed: it had to be ‘ritual’ not ‘ordinary’ because one man could not
carry enough bread to feed an army. ‘I define the Messe, as concerning the
substance and effect, to be the sacrifice and oblation of the Lord’s bodie and
 -     153

blude, given and offered by him in the Latter Supper.’ Knox argued there was
much more going on in Roman Mass in terms of action and ceremonies than Jesus
intended. Kennedy insisted it is a propitiatory sacrifice, whereby satisfaction is
made to the justice of God, offended by sins. ‘But I tak the Sacrifice upon the croce,
to be the onelie Sacrifice of redemption, and the Sacrifice of the Masse, to be the
Sacrifice of commemoration of Christ’s death and passion.’ But did Melchizedek
offer anything to God, that this might be an appropriate type of Christ’s offering
his body and blood in his ‘latter supper’? Kennedy’s answer is that the text had
Protuli or proferens, in the singular, so that ‘there was no refreshment for many
but onelie to make Sacrifice conforme to my beginning’. This leaves it a bit vague
as to whom it was directed by Melchizedek, but he was a priest after all, so God
was the beneficiary.

Ninian Winzet (1518–52)

Winzet was not a trained theologian but a schoolmaster at Linlithgow. Generally,

he observes that Calvinists make out as though all theologians of the past were
wrong. He was an implicitly conciliarist Catholic without being anti-papalist.
Fearing for his safety he left for the continent, ending up by re-founding the
Scots monastery at Regensburg.
His The Buke of Four Scoir Thre Questions (Antwerp, 1563) was delivered to
Knox. In the preface (dated 7 October 1563) Winzet states that judgement starts
now with the house of God (the faithful Catholics), firstly for their sins and then for
the sake of truth they suffer with Christ their Head in order to enter eternal life with
him. Lamentations 2:6 tells him: ‘The Lord hes forzet in Zion (that is, in His Haly
Kirk) the solennit tyme and the Sabbath day.’ The Calvinian rulers are like the
Babylonians ruling over the Church. They cannot show their authority to come
either from God or from man but have been claiming more illumination of the Holy
Spirit. He is aware of the Kennedy–Knox debate. The Fathers attest that the Church
is united through time and space. Why would the Spirit change his tune? Protest-
ants use flattery and seduction, just like Jannes and Jambres (2 Tim. 3:9). He may
not be a theologian but while abhorring abuse and idolatry he would never be as
arrogant as to be a schismatic or as wilful to be a heretic. He belongs to those who
are being persecuted, and wants to discuss the issues, to regain some ‘uniformitie’.
To give a flavour of the body of this text, which might best be described as a
miscellany:
They contest Christ’s descent into hell: ‘quhen ze affirm be thai wordis to be
signifiit the dolour and anguis quhilk Christe sufferit? Will ze that our Salviour
sufferit panis eftir that He was deid and buriit?’ Are we to give preference to what
has been taught recently at Geneva over the history of the church? Are we to
154  . 

believe that Mary had original and actual sin and not take account of her being so
full of grace? There is also the issue of baptism and the fate of unbaptized. We
may know the articles of common faith ‘but refer mony things if obscuir and dirk
places in Scriptuir to a General Counsel’. Those who think there can be faith
without charitie are in peril. The Epistle of James tells us about venial and mortal
sin. There are many things our Saviour and Apostles taught but were not
expressly written. Saints should be kept buried and revered: there need not be
anything showy. To be consistent Protestants should not call the Supper ‘com-
munion’, which is not a biblical term for it, whereas mass (missa) is scriptural, it
being Hebrew for ‘oblation’. Scripture shows there is efficacious grace in the
sacraments (as in the third chapters of Titus, 1Peter, and James). Where in the
bible does white cloth at communion come from, or the use of several cups? If
manna from heaven is a miracle then so should the eucharist be regarded, which
has greater excellence as the NT has over the OT. Christ’s resurrection body was
not so ordinary that it has to have fixed location. Yet if you deny Christ’s
humanity by reason of the conjunction you are confuted by the visit of the
three kings. Malachi (1:11) speaks of ‘ane clene new oblatioun, to be offerit in
the new law to the name of God in all places’. Extreme unction is just giving the
eucharist to the sick. The church through the ages has used the terms priest,
offering and altar. People under Babylonian kings were not commanded to
rebel, but to pray. The Protestants idolize Calvin and his odd opinions.
Knox is not a priest and hence unable to ordain as a bishop; if he is called by
God then where are his miracles? By God’s providence in all species is there a
superior: Peter was it then and it is the same now. John 20 gives proof that
apostles received the Holy Ghost to forgive sins. Making satisfaction in giving
alms to others is the fruit of turning to God with fasting and prayer. The new
teaching wants to jump from faith to renewal of life without sombre penance and
virtue. They don’t pay debts, they just make promises and don’t care for their
neighbour, yet think they are elect. They teach that after baptism the concupis-
cence remaining amounts to damnable sin. The OT priests abstained when on
service (Leviticus), so should not ‘priests in the new law be as beautiful as thai in
the old?’ The question of whether the patriarchs are already in glory or have to
wait until resurrection day is moot. For those who believe in the resurrection of
the body so much why have you disinterred our holy forerunners—all in the
name of ‘idolatrie’? It is inconsistent not to burn everything in churches: other-
wise it is like Saul sparing Agag in 1 Samuel 13. It seems too much to be a
coincidence that the stuff they took from altars was valuable for sale. ‘Invisible
kirk’ does not appear in Scripture and means undermining the Kirk and visible
allegiance and most of all receiving the sacrament visibly. Many queens are
mentioned in bible approvingly. Only as married must the queen submit, ‘except
ze will euiry lady in the land to be subdecit to hir awin cuik or horsboy’? Further,
why teach that each body in the resurrection will have equal glory, since the
guidnes of God sall reward the hail man in body and saul, and nocht in saull
only? ‘As a sterne differis fra an wthir sterne in brychtnes, sua sal be, says St Paul,
 -     155

the resurrection of the deid.’ What is the problem with images? We have them on
shields, coins and Solomon was praised for the temple décor without express
command to do so. One can use scriptures to side with the devil as the Jews did to
Christ. The saints are like angels and we are able to ask the angels for help with
our welfare. If in Numbers 14 Moses prays for the people who will not make it to
the promised land, he is praying for those undergoing painful correction. Sin is
forgiven at baptism but misery and death still follow. Can the catholic doctrine of
human freewill be called ‘a papisticall inventioun’, when even Bullinger and
Melanchthon hold to it? Catholics are not Pelagians, for they know God’s help
is required to please him: ‘grant with Sanct Paull that wil is adiacent till ws.’

He concludes by rejecting the term ‘Papist’:

we only follow Popes if their teaching accords with the express Word of God, as
interpreted by the historic and universal church. The sectarians have overseers,
the same as bishops. But they are not real unless they are ordained by true
bishops, as Pope Anacletus taught. Since earliest times the whole church
accepted ‘priest’ for minister, as in Isaiah 66:9: ‘I will take out of the nations
priests and levites’.

This farrago of point-by-point pricking of Protestant positions shows a serious

concern for the need of order in the outward as well as the inward part of religion.
As with the 1552 Catechism, there is a reluctance to identify the Church with
the papacy.
In his later Flagellum sectariorum (1582) Winzet insists that not only prophets
and apostles but also the consensus of their interpreters in the early Church carry
authority. Tradition is second only to Scripture and the Spirit speaks through the
Church. Indeed, the Holy Spirit taught the apostles or full councils concerning
festivals and Eucharistic fasting, and this not to be vilified unless their lives and
teachings are repugnant to reason, equity, and the divine law (Scripture). For
example, in 1 Samuel 14, Saul commanded a fast without explicit divine com-
mand; this is also the case at Esther 1 and Jonah 3. Protestants argue from sola
scriptura, yet often these are corrupted by translation. It was the same council that
condemned Arius that fixed the uniform celebration of Easter. Recently monks
have broken the Nicene canon law in wandering around and getting married.
Discussion of method soon turns into material argument. The Calvinists claim
that something has expressly to be in Scripture when it comes to divine worship.
But it took the early Church some decades to work out the form of ordination. In
the Second Helvetic Confession (Zürich 1566) there is (shockingly) nothing about
the church’s sacraments.
Now what the iconoclasts do is the kind of thing Turks did to crucifixes at
Constantinople. Whereas for centuries Christians did not know anything of
idolatry but showed reverence as is befitting the true worship of God to his
servants, when in the most solemn vows they joined to the name of God that of
156  . 

the blessed virgin Mary, the Gospels and the holy angels. The Protestants say that
God gave a law which could not be fulfilled. But no God nor emperor would give
such a Law! Indeed, the Protestants are the false prophets Jesus warned about.
Just like Simon Magus and the Manichees they deny human free will and ridicule
the altars that would commemorate Christ’s martyrdom. Luther claimed the
New Law abrogated all the old human and divine laws against lust: similarly, they
want to be rid of the laws made by godly emperors. There is the example in 2
Kings of the coronation of Joash. In the Joash covenant there was no mention of
the power of the people over the king, but simply what the king was to do. The
priest is charged with overseeing and receiving tribute, and hence the king
derives his power via priest (Deut. 17). Jeremiah 18 shows how good priests get
despised. With no priests there is no salvation; the column of truth falls and there
is no church. In fact, priests ruled the people of God when there was no king
(roughly 400 –300 ). Nowhere in Scripture is there encouragement to take
up the sword for Christ against the civil authorities and Peter. Madmen like
Luther sow disruption and war. The ‘invisible church’ idea causes chaos (just as
infighting does).
Since Christ said there that the church would preach truth, the claim that it
never has been done is an insult to the Word of God. Were all who remembered
Mary in the past idolaters? And in the bible the people did not have the right to
go to war over idolatry. Be mild and don’t add to Scripture what isn’t there about
rebellion! The Emperor who holds his power from God is more to be looked to
than sectarian preachers who teach as if from the Lord’s mouth when God has
not spoken. Great emperors such as Constantine, Theodosius, Charlemagne
protected and guarded the faith. The kingdom of Christ is the Church of Christ,
which cannot stand without sound doctrine, and proper use of and faith in the
Sacraments. And the word of God (Isaiah 59) tells us clearly enough that the
Church will not have an end.

From Regensburg in February 1581 Winzet then sent to Archbishop Albert

what was a response to Buchanan’s De Iure Regni, his Velitatio, published at
Ingolstadt in 1582. It was dedicated to Wilhelm, duke of Bavaria. He warns that
rebellion against God’s priests is soon followed by sedition against princes. There is
an unrighteous hatred of kings that motivates rebels, not just love of truth. The
king is not very much like a medic, but more like a parent, chastising, yet with
appropriate clemency. On the authority of 2 Maccabees 7, the Church has to obey
the law of Moses rather than the king in matters of faith and religion, over which
nobody doubts God has priority, yet he also gives power to princes—except for
Protestant kings who have no more authority as princes than do the Turks. Whom
does one trust? The doctrines of Protestant princes and magistrate or those
directing the churches? He muses that the Fathers teach enough that traditions
against the truth are not to be followed where useless and heavy: but one must be
cautious not to innovate. Arius and company were all innovators. Buchanan might
think that the king be liable to death if he breaks the law. True the king has to watch
 -     157

in case he sins against people and falls into hands of the Lord, but he has more
given to him than the people do, whereas Buchanan sees them as equal partners. To
obey the king is a religious command, for kings are appointed by providence just as
in the Old Testament. Even Saul was legitimate. To serve a good king is simply
freedom, and even wicked emperors are to be prayed for. Buchanan cannot get
Chrysostom to back him, and he is harder on the king than on misbehaving church
ministers. And is too ready to shout ‘tyrant’, yet not all bad kings are tyrants.
Buchanan’s failure (in De Iure) to find a scriptural instance of the punishment
of a king by his subjects was no surprise to Winzet, since Holy Writ could not
recommend by precept or example a course that was manifestly wrong. Authority,
Winzet several times insists, comes not simply from God, but from God and the
people, with the nobles in theory having the power to declare a tyrant’s crown
forfeit. But in practice, Winzet has all the caution of the medieval thinkers
whose views he is echoing: tyranny must, he insists, ‘be flagrant and obviously
a menace to the public weal before it can have these drastic consequences’
(Burns 1963: 102).

Towards the End of the Century

Other Catholic (Jesuit) attempts at debating the faith with Knox (James Tyrie) and
with King James in 1585 (James Gordon) were confined to the occasional public
appearance. In his De Vinculo (Paris, 1575), Adam Blackwood traced the intrinsic
connection between heresy in religion and sedition in politics. ‘Therefore, because
war has been declared against God and religion, Kings are necessarily implicated
in it, sharing as they do in the divine nature.’ A number of polemical texts
followed, published from the safety of exile, such as Archibald Hamilton, On the
confusion of the Calvinist sect in Scotland (Paris, 1577), John Hay SJ, Certaine
Demandes concerning the Christian Religion and Discipline (Paris, 1580), and
George Thomson, De antiquitate Christianae religionis apud Scotos (Rome,
1594). William Barclay’s De regno et regali potestate (1600) would firmly oppose
both Presbyterian pretensions and papal claims of indirect temporal authority.
For Barclay, anticipating Hobbes, only the king can adjudge between competing
interpretations of natural law. An attempt to give a Protestant version of the
divine right of kings was written by James VI before he became James I, first in The
Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1594), the year after John Napier in his dedication
of his Revelation Commentary to James had urged him to purge the realm of the
Antichrist, which is the whole point of the book. James believed ‘Kings are called
Gods (Ps. 82:6) by the propheticall King David because they sit upon God his
Throne in the earth, and have the account of their administration to give unto
him’ (p. 55, quoted in Patterson 1997: 21). The king has power to judge the people
but in turn was accountable only before God. In sending delegates to the Synod of
Dort in 1618 James would resist supralapsarianism and allow for some question
158  . 

about perseverance. Already in Basilikon Doron (1599) he would warn of Pur-

itanes; this godly prince was theologically as well as classically educated. He had a
high view of the sacraments and their grace and in the case of the Eucharist,
Christ’s real presence, and in the Five Articles of Perth promoted private euchar-
ists. Sacramentalism was the focal point of so much of these debates: the power of
priest and king went hand in hand.
In conclusion, the importance of a sacramentally administered spiritual power
for those who would support faithful princes for the upholding of the Church
seemed at stake for these writers, with the obvious exception of Buchanan, who
provides something of a counterpoint.

Bibliography

Barry, John C. (1951). ‘William Hay of Aberdeen: A Sixteenth Century Scottish

Theologian and Canonist’, The Innes Review 2: 82–99.
Bawcutt, Priscilla (2006). ‘Introduction’ and ‘Religious Verse in Medieval Scotland’, in
Priscilla Bawcutt and Janet Hadley Williams (eds.), A Companion to Medieval
Scottish Poetry. Cambridge: Brewer, i–xii; 119–32.
Boece, Hector (1825). Hectoris Boetii Murthalecensium et Aberdonensium Episco-
porum Vitae. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club.
Burns, J. H. (1950). ‘Three Scots Catholic Critics of George Buchanan’, The Innes
Review 1: 92–109.
Burns, J. H. (1951). ‘The Scotland of John Major’, The Innes Review 2: 65–76.
Burns, J. H. (1963). ‘The Conciliar Tradition in Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review
42: 89–104.
Cameron, Evan (1980). ‘Archibald Hay’s “Elegantiae” Writings of a Scots Humanist at
the College of Montaigu in the time of Bude and Beda’, in Acta conventus neo-latini
turonensis, volume 1. Paris Vrin, 277–301.
Cameron, James K. (1953). ‘A Disputation on the Authority of a Council’, in M. Spinka
(ed.), Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus. Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 175–84.
Dawson, Jane (2007). Scotland Reformed 1488–1587. New Edinburgh History of
Scotland, vol. 6. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Dilworth, Mark (1994). ‘Canons Regular and Reformation’, in A. A. MacDonald,
Michael Lynch, and Ian B. Cowan (eds.), The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in
the Literature, Religion, History and Culture. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 164–82.
Durkan, John (1950). ‘John Major: After 400 Years’, The Innes Review 1: 131–9.
Durkan, John (1959). ‘The Cultural Background in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, The
Innes Review 10: 382–439.
Durkan, John (1982). ‘Scottish “Evangelicals” in the Patronage of Thomas Cromwell’,
RSCHS 21: 134–7, 148–9.
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Green, Roger P. H. (ed.) (2011). George Buchanan, 1506–1582; Poetic paraphrase of the
Psalms of David = Psalmorum Davidis paraphrases poetica, trans. Roger P. H. Green.
Travaux d’humanisme et Renaissance 476. Geneva: Librairie Droz.
Kirk, James (1984). ‘Aspects of the Lutheran Contribution to the Scottish Reformation
1528–1552’, RSCHS 22: 1–12.
Kuipers, Cornelis Henricus (1964). Quintin Kennedy, Two Eucharistic Tracts:
A Critical Edition. Nijmegen: Gebr. Janssen.
Lyall, Roderick J. (2005). ‘Henryson, the Hens and the Pelagian Fox: A Poet and the
Intellectual Currents of his Age’, in Sally L. Mapstone(ed.), Older Scots Literature.
Edinburgh: J. Donald, 83–94.
Lyall, Roderick J. (2006). ‘Henryson’s Morall Fabillis: Structure and Meaning’, in
Priscilla Bawcutt and Janet Hadley Williams (eds.), A Companion to Medieval
Scottish Poetry. Cambridge: Brewer, 89–104.
McFarlane, Ian D. (1981). George Buchanan. London: Duckworth.
MacFarlane, Leslie J. (1985). William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland
1431–1514. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
McRoberts, D. (ed.) (1962). Essays on the Scottish Reformation, 1513–1625. Glasgow:
Burns and Sons.
Mason, Roger A. (1990). ‘Kingship, Nobility and Anglo-Scottish Union: John Mair’s
History of Greater Britain (1521)’, The Innes Review 41: 182–222.
Mason, Roger A. (ed.) (1993). John Knox, On Rebellion. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Mason, Roger A. (2012). ‘From Buchanan to Blaeu: The Politics of Scottish Chorog-
raphy, 1582–1654’, in Roger A. Mason and Caroline Erskine (eds.), George Buchanan:
Political Thought in Early Modern Britain and Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 13–48.
Patterson, W. B. (1997). King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Maurice (1959). ‘The Conflicting Doctrines of the Scottish Reformation’, The
Innes Review 10: 97–125.
Torrance, T. F. (1969–70). ‘La philosophie et la théologie de Jean Mair’, Archives de
Philosophie 32 (1969): 531–47 and 33 (1970): 261–93.
Wiedermann, G. (1984). ‘Martin Luther versus John Fisher: Some Ideas Concerning
the Debate on Lutheran Theology at the University of St Andrews, 1525–30’, RSCHS
22: 13–34.
Williamson, Arthur (2012). ‘George Buchanan and the Patriot Cause’, in Roger
A. Mason and Caroline Erskine (eds.), George Buchanan: Political Thought in
Early Modern Britain and Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 87–110.
Wright, David F. (2004). ‘The Scottish Reformation: Theology and Theologians’, in
D. Bagchi and D. C. Steinmetz(eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Reformation
Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 174–93.
 12
The Bible in Sixteenth-Century Scotland
Iain R. Torrance

The Bible before the Scottish Reformation

Though Patrick Hamilton is usually cited as the proto-martyr of the Scottish

Reformation, he was not the first to show evidence in Scotland of early protestant
dissent. Around 1433 a Bohemian/Czech protestant called Paul Craw had been
burned at the stake in St Andrews. In 1494 a group of some thirty Lollards in
Kyle were summoned by the archbishop of Glasgow to appear before King James
IV on a charge of heresy. One of them, Murdoch Nisbet, subsequently fled
overseas, taking with him the manuscript he had been working on—a translation
into vernacular Scots of Purvey’s 1395 revision of Wycliffe’s Bible (Law 1905;
Dotterweich 2009). Nisbet probably returned to Scotland in the 1520s bringing his
translation with him. Hamilton was burned in 1528 and two Lollards, Jerome
Russell and Alexander Kennedy, were burned in Glasgow in 1538. George Wishart
was burned in St Andrews in 1546 and John Knox tells us that Wishart sang Psalm
51 from the collection of the Gude and Godlie Ballatis on the night before his
arrest (Mitchell 1897).
Under James V, an Act of Parliament of 1525 prohibited the importing and
distribution of the works of Luther. The Act was reinforced two years later, but
contemporary evidence (Cardinal Wolsey’s spy, John Hackett, in February 1527)
indicates that, despite the Act, large numbers of heretical books were imported to
Edinburgh and St Andrews. William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament
was published in Worms in 1526 and quickly imported to England and Scotland.
It may reasonably be assumed that Coverdale’s Bible (1535 and dedicated to
Henry VIII), Matthew’s Bible (printed in 1537 with the ‘Kinges moft gracyous
lycece’ obtained by Thomas Cromwell at Cranmer’s request), and the Great Bible
(1539) made their way to Scotland. So Scotland was not totally bereft of the Bible
in the vernacular. It was, however, the Geneva Bible of 1560 which became the
distinctive biblical artefact of the Scottish Reformation. More of a portal than a
single work, the Geneva Bible project is intriguing for the complexity of its
editions, its bundling of complementary documents, and its lasting impact.
Following the death of her half-brother Edward VI and the short-lived proc-
lamation of Lady Jane Grey, Mary Tudor ascended the throne of England in

Iain R. Torrance, The Bible in Sixteenth-Century Scotland. In: The History of Scottish Theology
Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0012
    -  161

August 1553. By the end of 1554 the Heresy Acts were revived and around 800
protestants chose exile to persecution, with many finding refuge in Geneva.

The Origin of the Geneva Bible Trajectory

The origins of the Geneva Bible project may be traced to 1557 where in Geneva
there was published a small octavo English translation of the New Testament
printed by Conrad Badius (Nevve Testament, 1557). This version is distinct from
the much more famous version of 1560. The 1557 version was edited by William
Whittingham, the Calvinist dean of Durham, who was married to Catherine
Jacqemaine, the sister of Calvin’s wife. The text, though not identical with that
of 1560, influenced it, and the majority of the marginal notes from 1557 were
adopted in 1560. The 1557 edition is prefaced by The Epistle declaring that Christ
is the end of the Lawe by John Calvin. This is followed by a greeting from the
translator ‘To the Reader Mercie and peace through Chrift our Sauiour’ (four
pages), explaining that the outer margin of the translation tends to give annotation
and comment while the inner margin tends to offer cross-references. At the end
there is a Table (forty-five pages), listing words, concepts, and Bible references,
‘That which many haue fearfely atteyned vnto by longe ftudy and great diligence is
offered here vnto thee Reader’, and finally there is a ‘Perfecte Svppvtation of the
Yeres and time from Adam vnto Chrift’ (and this Supputation is reprinted in later
editions of the Geneva Bible). It can be seen immediately that this was a study
Bible with significant aids to the reader and was trying to supervise and implant
new practices of bible reading.
The first edition of the so-called ‘Geneva Version’ was published in Geneva in
April 1560. It was the earliest English Bible printed in roman type and with verse
divisions. It is often unhelpfully called the ‘Breeches’ Bible because of its rendering
‘breeches’ for ‘aprons’ at Genesis 3:7 but this had already appeared in Wycliffe’s
manuscript Bible (Herbert 1968). It was quarto and was translated by William
Whittingham, Anthony Gilby, Thomas Sampson, and others in Geneva. The New
Testament is a revision of the 1557 edition with further reference to Beza’s Latin.
The Old Testament and the Apocrypha are mainly based on the Great Bible,
corrected from the Hebrew and Greek and compared to the Latin of Leo Juda. In
form and size it is exactly the same as the French Bible published by A. Davodeau
in Geneva that year. Its illustrations were taken from the French edition and the
‘arguments’ to the Books of Job and Psalms were translated almost word for word
from the French (Pocock 1882–4).¹ This testifies to the closeness between the

¹ See Pocock’s seven articles in The Bibliographer, vols. 2–5. The details of the 140 or so editions of
the Geneva Bible present a practically irresolvable puzzle and Nicholas Pocock, a bibliographer,
provides closer study of the detail than anyone else.
162  . 

English and French communities in Geneva. It was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth

and the cost was defrayed by the congregation in Geneva, among whom was John
Bodley (the father of the founder of the Bodleian Library), who received from
Elizabeth a patent (8 January 1561) for the exclusive right to print the version in
England for seven years. This edition printed in Geneva was undoubtedly
imported to Scotland.

English Editions of the Geneva Bible

A Geneva New Testament was first printed in England in 1575 by Thomas

Vautroullier, a Frenchman, for Christopher Barker. It was printed in London
and Edinburgh. This edition, like that of 1557, contains the letter of John Calvin
that Christ is the end of the law and the letter to the reader. Vautroullier had
earlier (June 1574) obtained a royal licence to print Beza’s Latin New Testament.
The first full Geneva Bible to be published in England was a small folio of
1576 printed by Christopher Barker. At key points (for example the end of
the prophets), Barker shows the tiger’s head crest of his patron, Sir Francis
Walsingham, with a lamb beneath it and an Italian motto.
In the same year, Laurence Tomson published separately his revision to the
Geneva New Testament. The revisions were based on Beza’s Latin New Testament
of 1565. The marginal notes were based on Beza’s. The edition was dedicated to
Walsingham and some of the ornamentation contains Walsingham’s crest.
In 1568 the bishops had published the Bishops’ Bible (the successor to the Great
Bible of 1539). Their hope had been that this would supersede the imported
Geneva version. They supplemented their folio (for use in church) with a quarto
for family use. In England, these editions are indicative of the deepening struggle
between Puritans and Establishmentarians for the imagination of the Bible read-
ing laity. Bible size mattered as the quarto editions were for family rather than
public use and fed a demand to have a bible of one’s own.
In 1578 Barker published a folio Geneva Bible which had the Book of Common
Prayer printed at the beginning. In this edition, the word ‘priest’ was always
rendered as ‘minister’ and it omitted the office for the Private Baptism of Infants
and that for Confirmation.
Once it had been published in England, by a rapid succession of editions,
especially of a smaller size, the Geneva version gained dominance. In 1579 a
quarto Geneva Bible was produced which inserted between the Old and New
Testaments three pages which contained (a) ‘The summe of the whole Scripture of
the bookes of the olde and newe Testament’ and (b) a short catechism, ‘Certaine
questions and answeres touching the doctrine of predestination, the use of God’s
word and Sacraments’. The inclusion of this catechism, which is inserted into
every black letter Geneva Bible from 1579 to 1615, illustrated the growing power
    -  163

of the Puritan party and their wish for a visible Calvinist perspective to be in the
hands of every reader.

The Variety of Textual Forms

What has been described so far may be called the ‘pure Geneva’ text type. That is,
the Old and New Testament followed the Geneva text of 1560. This text form
continued from 1560 to 1615.
As already noted, in 1576 Laurence Tomson published a new translation of the
New Testament. He claimed to translate from the Latin of Beza. Beza often
rendered the Greek article ὁ with the Latin demonstrative pronoun ille, and
thus rendered John 1:1 as ‘In principio erat Sermo ille, et Sermo ille erat apud
Deum, eratque ille Sermo Deus’. Tomson renders this as ‘In the beginning was that
Word, and that Word was with God, and that Word was God’. Although this style
was not adopted uniformly, it indicated a more wooden, even literalistic, way of
handling the transition from Greek to Latin to English.
There were significant changes to the marginal notes in Tomson’s New Testa-
ment with the Calvinist slant being much more pronounced. The Tomson-Geneva
form became extremely popular and in 1577 was reprinted in octavo form. All
of the separate Tomson New Testaments (with two exceptions) were in Roman
font. Where the New Testament was printed alone, the Tomson version
entirely superseded the Genevan text form which only continued as part of
entire bibles.
The first edition of the Geneva Old Testament with the Tomson New Testa-
ment was in a quarto of 1587. And it went through thirty-three editions in this size
until 1615. As Pocock notes, the dominance of the Tomson-Geneva form indi-
cates the gradual spread of a less diluted Calvinist perspective. There was a further
step. After 1578, at the end of the Geneva bibles, there was inserted an eleven-page
black letter document entitled, ‘Two right profitable and fruitfull Concordances
etc’. This is dated 22 December 1578 and was intended for insertion in the black
letter Genevans as well as editions of the Bishops’ Bible.
The preface says that the concordances were designed to explain to the
unlearned the doctrines of Predestination and Reprobation, and of the duties of
Bishops and Pastors, Elders or Ministers. The tone is Calvinist and congregation-
alist. Under ‘Bisshoppe’ it says, ‘Bishops, called Elders and Ministers indifferently’.
Under ‘Predestination’ it says, ‘The Predestinate cannot be damned’. Under
‘Elect’, it says ‘The Elect onely believe’. The last sentence of the insertion reads,
‘And so beseeching Almightie God to give us his grace to be studious of unitie and
bringing forth such fruites as may declare our undoubted election in Jesus Christ,
I take my leave of this’. This hints at the desire for a totalizing perspective on
behalf of the Puritan party for how Scripture was to be read.
164  . 

Tomson’s notes are of a low sacramental and predestinarian tendency. Notes

indicated by ‘figures of arithmetic’ (i.e. numerals) explain the sum or effect of the
doctrine in a passage, while notes indicated by the letters of the alphabet expound
and lighten ‘dark words and phrases’. The theological commentary is at times very
extended (for example at Romans chapter 9).
For example, Matt. 26:26 the note reads, ‘Marke saith Had giuen thankes and
therefore bleffing is not a confecrating with a conjuring kinde of murmuring and
force of wordes: and yet the bread and the wine are changed not in nature but in
qualitie, for they become undoubted tokens of the body and blood of Chrift, not of
their own nature or force of words, but by Chrift his institution, which must be
recited and laid forth that faith may find what to lay hold on both in the word and
in the elements.’
At John 6:37 the note reads, ‘The gift of faith proceedeth from the free election
of the Father in Christ, after which followeth neceffarily everlafting life. Therefore
faith in Chrift Jefus is a fure witness of our election and therefore of our
glorification which is to come.’
At Acts 10:47 the note reads, ‘Baptifme doeth not fanctifie or make them holy
which receive it, but fealeth yp and confirmeth their fanctification.’
At 2 Tim. 2:19 the note reads, ‘A digrefsion: wherein hee falveth that offence
that arofe by their falling away fhewing firft that the elect are out of all danger
of any fuch falling away: fecondly that they are known unto God and not to vs:
and therefore it is no marveile if we count hypocrites oftentimes for true
brethren . . . ’.
At 2 Thess. 1:11 the note reads, ‘So then faith is an excellent worke of God in us,
and we fee here plainely that the Apoftle leaueth nothing to freewill, to make it
checkmate with God’s working therein as the Papifts dreame.’
At 1 Tim. 3:1 the note reads, ‘A bifhopricke or minifterie of the worde is not an
idle dignity, but a worke and that an excellent one: and therefore a Bifhop muft bee
furnished with many vertues both at home and abroad . . . ’.
At 1 Tim. 4:12 the note reads, ‘Nowe hee returneth to the exhortation,
fhewing which are the vertues of a Paftour, whereby hee may come to be
reverenced, although hee be but yoong, to wit, fuch fpeech and life as are witneffes
of charitie, zeale, faith and puritie, but here is no mention made of the crofier ftaff,
ring, cloake, and fuch other foolish and childish toyes.’
The marginal annotation in the pure Geneva text of the Apocalypse was no
more dense than that, say, in the Book of Job. And with a couple of exceptions, it
did not engage in particularly virulent anti-Roman Catholic polemic. It picked on
the locusts of Revelation chapter 9:3 noting that ‘Locuftes are false teachers,
heretikes, and worldlie futil Prelates with Monkes, Freres, Cardinals, Patriarkes,
Archebifhops, Bifhops, doctors, Bafchelers & mafters which forfake Chrift to
mainteine falfe doctrine.’ The note to Revelation 16:2 said, ‘This was like the
sixt plague of Egypt which was fores and boiles or pockes: and this reighneth
    -  165

comunly amog Canons, monkes, friers, nonnes, Priefts and fuch filthie vermin
which beare the marke of y beaft . . . ’.
In contrast, Tomson’s New Testament was comparatively light in its annotation
of the Apocalypse. Instead he prefaced the book with a page and a half long note
beginning, ‘I have not thought good to pvt forth any fuch thing as yet vpon the
Revelation as I have vpon the former Bookes . . . ’. So what ground the Puritan party
gained in the rest of the New Testament with Tomson, it lost in the Apocalypse.

The Advent of Junius’ Text of the Apocalypse

But not for long. In 1592 Robert Dextar published in London a small book,
Apocalypsis. A Briefe and learned commentarie vpon the Revelation of Sainte
John the Apostle and Euangelist, applied vnto the historie of the Catholike
and Christian Church. This had been written in Latin by M. Francis Junius
(i.e. Francois de Jon [1545–1602], a Huguenot divine) who was a professor in
Heidelberg. The 1592 edition was an English translation.
In 1599 Junius’ Revelation was reprinted and substituted for Tomson’s Reve-
lation and (somewhat meagre) notes and added to Tomson’s translation of the
rest of the New Testament (and in complete bibles, of course, added to the
standard Genevan Old Testament, ‘breeches’ and all). This was first published
by Barker in London in 1599.
This gave a third text type: there had been pure Genevas and Geneva Tomsons
(Tomson’s New Testament added to the Geneva Old Testament), and there was
now a Geneva Tomson Junius form (in which Junius’ Revelation replaced
Tomson’s).
The Junius text of Revelation was of a different genre. Obviously an insertion,
and far lengthier than the text of Revelation itself, the annotation moved from the
genre of commentary to being a thesis in its own right. The translation of
Revelation is related to Tomson’s but appears more closely aligned to Beza’s
Latin. As has been noted, Beza had a tendency to render the Greek ὁ by the
Latin ille and Junius goes somewhat further. Revelation 22:16 is sometimes
rendered, ‘I am that roote and that offspring of David, and that bright morning
starre’ (my italics).
The editor of the Junius version retained the notes from Tomson but printed
them in italic font at the beginning of a chapter or on top of a column rather
than against the verse to which they referred. Junius’ own notes were in roman
font and referred to by Arabic numerals. It is a remarkable example of the
typesetter’s art and its orderly, dense visual impact is that of completeness and
giving the last word.
Though in the 1560 text it is explained that the locusts of Rev. 9:3 are prelates,
monks, friars, etc., the Junius insert is less concerned with easy point scoring
166  . 

and could be called less directly anti-Catholic. Its intent, at times based only
tangentially on the text of Revelation, is to build conviction in a world in which the
hand of God may be seen powerfully at work, first in the pre-Christian world, then
in the early Christian centuries, and most definitively since the papacy of Gregory
VII (d. 1085). This scheme is created by distinguishing between the book which
contains the secrets of the whole world (Rev. 5:1) and remains with the Creator,
and the book which contains the secrets of the Church (Rev. 10:2) which remains
in the hand of the Redeemer. Though highly comprehensive, it is a retreat from
the plain sense of Scripture and exemplifies a different way of reading text.
The ‘five months’ of Rev. 9:5 is taken as 150 days which equal 150 years,
and refers to the period from the papacy of Gregory VII to Gregory IX. Gregory
VII is described as ‘the moft monftrous necromancer’ who before his papacy was
called Hildebrandus Senenfis. The ‘moft wicked firebrand of the world’ (note
‘Hildebrand’ and ‘brand’), he excommunicated the Emperor Henry IV and set
Rodolph the Swede over the Empire. The 150 years ended with Gregory IX who
had ordered a new compilation of the papal Decretals. This appeared in 1234 and
was known as the Decretales Gregorii IX or the Liber Extra. In his comment on
Rev. 9:4 Junius maintained that this ‘fleight’ [of hand] at length enabled the popes
to arrogate authority to themselves to kill whom they wished. And so began a
butchery which the trumpet of the Fifth Angel had hindered until that time.
The 42 months of Rev. 11:2 are taken as 1,260 days (= years) from the passion
of Christ to the papacy of Boniface VIII. The ‘beast which came from the
bottomless pit’ of Rev. 11:7 was, according to Junius, the Roman empire, which
had originally been a civil authority but under Boniface VIII became an ecclesi-
astical power as well. Thus Boniface persecuted holy men, beginning with
the Waldenses (Junius’ comment on Rev. 11:7). Junius linked the earthquake of
Rev. 11:13 to that which occurred on St Andrew’s Day 1301 and the image of the
beast in Rev. 13:14 to the tradition of reverence for images in the false church since
the Second Council of Nicaea.
The mark of the beast on the right hand or forehead of his subjects (Rev. 13:16)
is taken by Junius to be ‘their Chrifme, by which in the Sacrament (as they call it)
of Confirmation, they make feruile vnto themselues, the perfons and doing of
men . . . For whom Chrift has ioyned vnto himfelf by Baptifm, this beast maketh
challenge vnto them by her greafy Chrifm . . . ’. The number of the beast, 666, at
Rev. 13:18 is taken by Junius to refer to the further addition to the Decretals by
Boniface VIII in 1298 known as the Liber Sextus. (Very differently, in the 1560
Geneva text, 666 is related to Lateinus or Latin.) In the woman who sat upon a
scarlet beast in Rev. 17:3 Junius found the reason wherein the Roman clergy so
much delight in this colour.
Overall, Junius’ Revelation teaches the presence of an enduring remnant of the
saints, ultimately impervious to persecution, because they are preserved by the
election of God. The angel with an everlasting gospel of Rev. 14:6 is taken to be a
    -  167

type of those faithful servants whom God has raised up since Boniface VIII,
including Peter Cassiodorus, Occam, Dante, Petrarch, and John Wyclif in
England. This ecclesiology of a remnant of true believers is far from unique to
Junius’ Revelation but it is there presented in the most systematic way. The
comment on Daniel 11.34 (for example) says, ‘As God wil not leaue his Church
deftitute, yet wil he not deliuer it all at once, but fo helpe, as they may ftil feme to
fight vnder the croffe . . . ’. In Scotland, a highly charged reading of this kind
inevitably fostered polemical sectarian ecclesiologies.

A Strategy behind the Different Versions

We have seen that ‘the Geneva Bible’, far from being a single version, refers to a
publishing phenomenon of three textual types in 150 or so editions, printed in
roman or black letter font, with complex annotation using numbers and letters in
roman and italic script. Using the British Library’s holding of 80 of the editions
and 110 complete bibles, Femke Molekamp took stock of the output as a whole
(Molekamp 2006).
Her object was to look at the material features of the collection, including their
differing paratextual elements. She notes that England in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries had a partially literate society. Level of literacy related to
gender and class. In material terms, the Geneva Bible was most printed in smaller
formats, quarto and octavo. This made it highly portable. She notes how the entry
of Scripture into oral culture provoked various anxieties and on the basis of the
British Library collection suggests that the publishers organized ‘the vast array of
reading aids and supplements across the various editions’ to target different
editions at different kinds of readers, and ‘to supervise their reading act’.
She notes that the Geneva Bible was renowned for its roman quartos: a portable
bible with a modern typeface. However, from 1578 the Geneva Bible was also
printed (in England by Barker) in the older typeface, black letter. She suggests that
black letter (which was used for children’s reading aids, the ABC, the Lord’s
Prayer and Psalter) was easier to read by the semi-literate and that its use was a
deliberate decision by the printer to appeal to the less educated.
Further, she suggests that there is a difference in the paratexts or ‘reading aids’
bundled with black letter editions as opposed to those in roman type. Some aids
only appear in black letter editions and she suggests that these are of a more
discursive and instructive kind than those appearing only in roman editions. For
example, only black letter editions have the short insert, ‘Certaine questions and
answers concerning predestination’, the ‘Summe of the whole scripture’, and the
‘Glossary of strange names’. In contrast, certain aids which appeal to people of
better education (on the Golden Number, the change of the moon and the cycle of
the sun, which might be more typical of almanacs) occur only in roman editions.
168  . 

She notes that when new updates (like Tomson’s New Testament and Junius’
Revelation) became available, these replaced the earlier version in roman type
editions but not in black letter (except for a few folios). Consequently we must
understand the Geneva Bible as a many layered project to educate, frame vocabu-
lary, shape a world-view, and supervise reading.

How Did This Apply to Scotland?

Though there is evidence that William Tyndale’s translations of the New Testa-
ment were secretly shipped to Scotland, individuals were prosecuted for possess-
ing it. In March or April 1533 Alexander Alesius published an open letter to James
V appealing that he annul a recent decree by the Scottish bishops prohibiting
possession and distribution of the New Testament in the vernacular (Alexandri
Alesii epistola contra decretum quoddam episcoporum in Scotia, quod prohibit
legere Novi Testamenti Libros lingua vernacula). Sir David Lyndsay’s ‘Dialog of the
Miserabill Estait of this World’ (1553) wrote, ‘I wuld prelatis, and doctouris of the
law / With us lawid pepill wer nocht discontent; / Thocht we into our vulgare
toung did knaw, / Of Christ Jesus the lyfe and testament’.
After the Reformation, it appears that the Geneva version (in an imported
form) was widely used in Scotland. John Knox tended not to follow any printed
version very closely and seems sometimes to follow Tyndale, sometimes Geneva.
In his small work, ‘An Answer to a Letter of a Jesuit named Tyrie’ (written 1568
and published by Robert Lekprevik in St Andrews in 1572) he almost universally
quotes the Geneva Bible. David Fergusson, minister of Dunfermline, in his
‘Answer to Renat Benedict’ (printed 1563) uses the Geneva Bible but accommo-
dates it to Scottish pronunciation, substituting gif for if, quhilk for which, behauld
for behold, teinds for tithes, etc. The same shift in spelling is found in the published
sermons of Robert Bruce and Robert Rollock. In February 1565 Robert Lekprevik
obtained a letter under the Privy Seal authorizing him to print the Acts of Queen
Mary and her predecessors’ parliaments and the Psalms of David in metre. In
1568 Lekprevik was licensed to print the Geneva Bible but did not do so and bibles
continued to be imported.
The first bible printed in Scotland was by Alexander Arbuthnot, printer to the
king, at Kirk o’ Field in Edinburgh in 1579. This was a reprint of the 1562 second
edition (and the first in folio) produced probably by John Bodley in Geneva. It was
a pure Geneva version, though Tomson’s New Testament had been printed in
London in 1576. It is a beautiful edition with a full display of the royal arms of
James VI (with two unicorns) on the title page and is dedicated ‘To the Richt
Excellent Richt Heich and Michtie Prince James the Sext King of Scottis’. It is in
roman font, and after the opening epistle contains tables explaining the Roman
and Hebrew calendars and the cycle of the moon and times of the full tide at Leith
    -  169

(the principal port in Scotland). It contains the Apocrypha. The title page for the
New Testament also shows a full display of the royal arms, and is printed by
Thomas Bassandyne, in Edinburgh 1576. After Revelation there is a table inter-
preting proper names, a ‘Table of the Principal things that are conteined in the
Bible’, a table of the years from Adam to Christ, and a chronology of the life of
Paul the Apostle.
By order of the General Assembly (March 1575), every parish in Scotland
subscribed the purchase price of £4 13s 4d Scots before printing began. An Act
of Parliament in 1579 ordered every householder worth 300 merks of yearly rent
and every yeoman or burgess worth £500 stock to have a bible and psalm book in
the vulgar tongue in his house under penalty of £10. Privy Council records
indicate that a searcher was appointed to visit every householder and the policy
was enforced (Lee 1824: 41).
In 1610 a second Geneva Bible was printed in Scotland by Andro Hart and
offered for sale ‘at his Buith, on the North-fide of the gate, a little beneath the
Croffe’. This was of the Geneva Tomson Junius text and was in folio and with roman
font. Like the Arbuthnot-Bassandyne edition of 1579 it was beautifully done and
for many years it was counted a recommendation for editions elsewhere to ‘conform
to the edition printed by Andro Hart’ (see the Amsterdam edition of 1640).

The Advent of the King James Version

A revision of the Geneva Bible had been proposed in the General Assembly at
Burntisland in May 1601 but nothing seems to have come of it. The diocesan
synod of St Andrews, in a minute dated 2 April 1611, instructed ‘Forasmeikle as it
was thought expedient that there be in every kirk ane commoune Bible, it was
concludit that every brother sall urge his parochiners to buy ane of the Bybles
laitlie printed be Andro Hart’. Failure to do so incurred a fine of £6 Scots
(Lee 1824: 56).
Lee notes that in 1610 the General Assembly in Glasgow potentially changed
the governance of the Church of Scotland by requiring every person provided with
a benefice to swear that ‘the right excellent right high and mighty Prince James the
Sixth is the only lawful supreme governor of this realm, as well in things temporal,
as in conservation and purgation of the religion’. The Scottish Parliament in
October 1612 rescinded the Act (5 June 1592) ratifying the liberty of the true
Kirk and the Presbyterian church governance and ratified this oath of supremacy,
enacting that ‘James the Sixth, King of Scotland, England, France and Ireland,
Defender of the Faith . . . is the only lawful supreme governor of this realm, as well
in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical as in things temporal’ (Lee 1824: 57).
It follows that just at the time King James was acknowledged as supreme governor
in matters spiritual that the latest (and most sectarian) version of the Geneva Bible
170  . 

was required to be used in churches, a year after a new translation (the Authorized
Version of 1611) had been published in England.
No specific translation of the Bible was required by the General Assembly in
Aberdeen in 1616 or by the Perth Assembly of 1618 (which reluctantly accepted
the Five Articles of Perth). The King James Version was not published in Scotland
until 1628, when the New Testament (only) was printed in Edinburgh by the heirs
of Andro Hart (after the death of King James in 1625). There was no attempt
to insist on use of the King James Version until the Canons and Constitutions
Ecclesiastical of 1636 under Charles I. These instructed that every parish should
possess a bible and a prayer book, and ‘The Bible shall be of the translation of King
James’. Though originally put together by four Scottish bishops, the Canons had
been edited by Archbishop Laud and Bishop Juxon of London and embodied the
Five Articles of Perth. Extempore prayers or prayers not in the liturgy were not to
be used. With the Book of Common Prayer (1637), the Canons were condemned
by the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 and paved the way for the National Covenant in
the same year.
Despite this, until about 1640, the Geneva Bible seems to have been used in
Scotland by supporters of the king as much as the Authorized Version. It is not
impossible that Laud’s opposition to the Geneva Bible in England added to its
attractiveness north of the border (Anderson 1936: 10). For example, William
Guild, a chaplain to Charles I, from 1615 consistently used the Geneva version, as
did William Couper (1568–1619), dean of the Chapel Royal in Scotland and
bishop of Galloway. Zachariah Boyd of the Barony Church, Glasgow, used the
Geneva Version for his ‘Last Battle of the Soul in Death’ (1629), and Robert Bruce
of St Giles (d. 1631) used nothing else. Certain Geneva usages, ‘in my Father’s
house are many dwelling places’ (in place of ‘mansions’) continued. The Directory
of Public Worship (1645) specified that Scripture in the Old and New Testaments
(but not the Apocrypha) should be read publicly in the vulgar tongue out of the
best allowed translation. No version was specified, but by then the Authorized
Version was less expensive and plentifully available. The Geneva version lives on
in the painted ceilings at Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire and at Traquhair. It
appears to be the version used in the 1633 refurbishment for Charles I’s visit to
Falkland’s Chapel Royal. And between 1642 and 1715 eight editions of the King
James Bible were published with Geneva notes, an intriguing hybrid form.

The Characteristics of the Geneva Tradition

How, in retrospect, may the Geneva tradition be characterized? Two aspects in

particular may be identified.
Jane Dawson (Dawson 1994: 82, 84) describes how the guilt experienced by the
Marian exiles on leaving their home was transformed into an understanding of the
True Church as a persecuted minority. The martyrdoms gave them a sense of
    -  171

closeness to the early Church. Calvin’s own preface to William Whittingham’s

New Testament of 1557 invoked Tertullian’s image of the dying seed which
produces a crop. Use of the Psalter entrenched this sense of how the righteous
are persecuted for a while. There is a recurring theme of fearing God rather than
the king (see Acts 4:19). It is well known that the marginal note to Exodus 1:19
commenting on how the midwives saved the Hebrew baby boys said, ‘Their
difobediece herein was lawful but their diffenbling euil’. The note on verse 21
added, ‘When tyrats can not preuaile by craft, thei braft forthe into open rage’. As
Dawson notes, the Genevan congregation was energized and radicalized by anger
(Dawson 1990: 266, 269, 271; see also Dawson 2019). The belief that persecution
formed part of the identity of the Kirk of Scotland took deep root. The anti-papal
sermons of Christopher Goodman influenced John Napier (1550–1617). The
inventor of logarithms, he was intrigued by the Book of Revelation, using the
Geneva Bible and writing A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St John
(1593) (Dawson 1994: 90; Corrigan 2014). The Geneva version became the natural
bible for a small country with a grievance. It is a version with an attitude and its
inheritance runs deep. Traces of that eschatology can still be discerned in Thomas
F. Torrance’s sermons on Revelation preached in Alyth and Aberdeen in the 1940s
(Torrance 1960).
The Geneva Bible was not the first to add marginal notes. The Bishops’ Bible
was well supplied. But the Geneva version’s sheer argumentativeness and honest
engagement with the Hebrew text took this to a different level. It was pro-
foundly aware that especially Hebrew poetry could not be translated into
English at a word for word level. In consequence, the marginalia encouraged a
dialogical reading of text and an awareness that the Word of God mysteriously
lay beyond our human encapsulation, must be wrestled with, and our transla-
tion must always be revised. At its best, that encouraged another strand in
Scottish bible reading, the conviction that meaning is not to be found finally in
literal forms, but that through the transparency of Scripture, God may be heard
speaking to us.

Bibliography

Anderson, Duncan (1936). The Bible in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Life and Litera-
ture. London: Allenson & Co.
Corrigan, Alex (2014). ‘John Napier of Merchiston’s Plaine Discovery: A Challenge to
the Sixteenth Century Apocalyptic Tradition’. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh.
Dawson, Jane (1990). ‘Revolutionary Conclusions: The Case of the Marian Exiles’,
History of Political Thought 11: 257–72.
Dawson, Jane (1994). ‘The Apocalyptic Thinking of the Marian Exiles’, in Michael
Wilks (ed.), Prophecy and Eschatology. Studies in Church History, vol. 10. Oxford:
Blackwell, 75–91.
172  . 

Dawson, Jane (2019). ‘ “Satan’s bludy clawses”: How the Exile Congregation in Geneva
Reacted to the Marian Persecution’, Scottish Journal of Theology 71: 267–86.
Dotterweich, Martin (2009). ‘A Book for Lollards and Protestants: Murdoch Nisbet’s
New Testament’, in Crawford Gribben and David G. Mullan (eds.), Literature and
the Scottish Reformation. Farnham: Ashgate, 233–45.
Herbert, A. S. (1968). Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of the English Bible
1525–1961 (revised from the edition by T. H. Darlow and H. F. Moule). London:
British and Foreign Bible Society.
Law, Thomas G. (ed.) (1905). The New Testament in Scots, being Purvey’s Revision of
Wycliffe’s Version Turned into Scots by Murdoch Nisbet c. 1520. Edinburgh: William
Blackwood for the Scottish Text Society.
Lee, John (1824). Memorial for the Bible Societies in Scotland containing Remarks on
the Complaint of His Majesty’s Printers against the Marquis of Huntly. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh Bible Society.
Mitchell, A. F. (ed.) (1897). A Compendious Book (The Gude and Godlie Ballatis).
Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society.
Molekamp, Femke (2006). ‘Using a Collection to Discover Reading Practices: The
British Library Geneva Bibles and a History of their Early Modern Readers’,
Electronic British Library Journal 2006: Article 10, 1–13.
Nevve Testament of ovr Lord Iefus Chrift. Conferred diligently with the Greke, and beft
approued tranflations (1557). Geneva: Conrad Badius, and facsimile by London:
Paternoster, 1842.
Pocock, Nicholas (1882–4). ‘Some Notices on the Genevan Bible’, seven articles in The
Bibliographer, vols. 2–5.
Torrance, Thomas F. (1960). The Apocalypse Today. London: James Clarke.
 13
Habit and Belief in the Early Scottish
Reformation
Martin Holt Dotterweich

No picture of early Protestant theology in Scotland can be particularly expansive,

for it must be framed small by the paucity of sources. Nor can that picture be
terribly sharp; few hard lines of confessional boundary or allegiance are available.
But even if the image is small and rather hazy, it reveals the colours and outlines of
something real and lasting, and holds a significant place in the long gallery of
Scottish theology. To begin with such an apologia is to concede that, in the end, we
are left with more questions than answers about the growth of Protestant theology in
the years before the return of John Knox and other exiles; those questions, never-
theless, help us understand something of the theological interests of those involved.
The picture drawn here consists of brief analyses of the handful of theological
or devotional tracts by Scots from 1527 to 1548, with relevant contextual detail;
but there is no getting away from the problem of sources. Most of the tracts were
either translated copies of other texts, or heavily dependent on them; some were
produced by exiles who never returned; there is no indication that any of these
tracts were distributed or read widely in Scotland.
Despite these difficulties, these sources do offer a broad picture of the import-
ance to some Scots of a theology of justification by faith alone. How that theology
could be found in Scripture, how it stood opposed to certain Church practices,
how it formed Christian devotion, how it could withstand persecution: these
practical concerns, rather than theological fine-tuning, emerge from the sources
as a whole. And in the end, the practical application of justification by faith alone
points to the significance of habits formed, perhaps the most durable legacy of
early Protestant theology in Scotland.
The other problem to address at the outset is that of labels. To what degree can
these Scots be called ‘Protestant’? Of course, in the early Reformation, labels are
generally difficult, but in Scotland that difficulty stretches well into the 1560s.
Scots who believed in justification by faith alone, who met for Bible reading and
prayer, who levelled sharp criticism at Church practices and teaching, also
attended Mass and seem to have had little sense of themselves as ‘the true church’
as a replacement for the parish. A useful way of characterizing them is ‘evangel-
ical’, which will be used here.

Martin Holt Dotterweich, Habit and Belief in the Early Scottish Reformation. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0013
174   

There have been attempts to label theological waves in Scotland: Lutheran,

then Zwinglian, then Calvinist. While it is possible to identify three important
returning exiles with these three labels (Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, and
John Knox, respectively), this progressive reading obscures the more important
point that they had a deep agreement on justification, and what justification
suggested its followers should do, embedded in the evangelical theology of the
1520s–1540s.

Patrick Hamilton

It is impossible to know exactly how or when evangelical theology made its way
to Scotland; the coming and going of scholars, merchants, and soldiers was
probably the first conduit. At least one can be named, a French retainer of the
duke of Albany called de la Tours, who was burned in Paris in 1527 for having
spread heresy in Scotland some years earlier (Bourrilly 1910: 363–4). Others
surely carried ideas with them into Scotland without consequence (and hence
without documentation), and some carried books as well. By 1525, Parliament
had declared that although ‘the heretic Luther and his disciples’ had spread
‘damnable opinions of heresy’ elsewhere, Scotland had never wavered from its
faith; it thus decreed ‘that no manner of stranger who happens to arrive with
their ships within any part of this realm bring with them any books or works of the
said Luther, his disciples or servants, dispute or rehearse his heresies or opinions,
unless it be to disprove them, under the pain of escheating of their ships and goods
and putting of their persons in prison’. Evidently there was a loophole here, and in
1527 the council tried to close it by adding ‘and that by clerks in the schools only’ to
the phrase about discussion for the confutation of heresy (Brown et al. 2007–18:
1525/7/32).
In 1528, the faculty of Louvain would write to Archbishop James Beaton with a
similar message: ‘Let vs have Inquisitours, & espyers of books, containing that
doctrine, especially that is brought in from farre countreys, whether be apostative
Monkes, or by Marchauntes, the most suspected kynde of men in these dayes’
(Foxe 1583: 975). Recalling these events three decades later, John Knox suggested
the same phenomenon. At the time, he says,
the knowledge of God did wonderouslie increase within this realme, partlie by
reading, partlie by brotherlye conferance, which in those dangerouse dayis was
used to the comforte of many, butt cheaflie by merchantis and marinaris, who,
frequenting other countreis, heard the trew doctrin affirmed, and the vanitie of
the Papisticall religioun openlye rebucked. (Knox 1846–64: 1.61)

It was thus in an environment officially hostile to Luther that Patrick Hamilton

(1504?–28) emerged as the first outspoken advocate of Luther’s theology in
         175

Scotland. Hamilton had studied at Paris and perhaps Louvain; he had certainly
encountered Luther’s ideas at Paris, as he was there when the Faculty of Theology
condemned the German in 1521. But he seems to have embraced Luther’s
doctrine after returning to St Andrews, perhaps after reading John Fisher’s
Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio (1522). Like other polemical works, this vol-
ume contained the entire text it set out to repudiate, Luther’s Assertio Omnium
Articulorum (1521), and Hamilton was reading it legally by the terms of the 1525
Act and its revision. But he appears to have decided for Luther over Fisher
(Wiedermann 1986). Summoned for heresy, Hamilton fled in 1527, arriving
in Marburg, where he spent time with Francois Lambert, who would later recall
with fondness this student from ‘that corner of the world, namely Scotland’
(Lorimer 1857: 240).
At Marburg, Hamilton delivered a disputation which was translated and
printed in the slim volume known widely as Patrick’s Places, published posthu-
mously for an English audience by John Frith first in 1531 and thereafter
reprinted widely; it appears in various primers as well as Foxe’s Actes and
monuments (from the third edition) and Knox’s History. This short tract
began life as an academic disputation in Marburg but had a number of pithy
flourishes added later by Hamilton, and it is the first evangelical tract by a Scot.¹
While its readership in Scotland can only be guessed, it offers insight into
Hamilton’s theology, for which he was forced to flee and for which, eventually,
he was burned.
Patrick’s Places offers a general digest of justification by faith alone, influenced
by Luther’s Freedom of a Christian and Babylonian Captivity of the Church.
Hamilton begins by asserting that humans cannot obey God’s law; that which is
‘impossible for us’ is commanded in order to drive sinners to ‘seek remedie at
summe other’ (Haas 1973: 149).² This other is in fact Christ, whose righteousness
is given to the sinner through faith, which is not merely intellectual assent but
‘surenesse’ (Haas 1973: 152). In a series of twenty-one short sentences, Hamilton
defines the gospel in terms of Christ’s work. For example:
Christ is the savioure of the worlde
Christ is oure savioure
Christ dyed for us
Christ died for oure synnes. (Haas 1973: 149)

¹ Although widely published, the claim that Patrick’s Places was ‘perhaps the most widely read of all
early English Protestant writings save the Bible translations’ is probably an overstatement (Clebsch
1964: 83). Rainer Haas offers an almost complete publication history, apart from one edition; the
correction may be found in Wright (1978: 475 n. 2).
² The critical edition of Patrick’s Places, from which quotations are taken here, is appended to Rainer
Haas’ dissertation.
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Several sentences describe the difference between law and gospel:

The lawe sheweth us oure sinne
The gospel sheweth us remedie for it . . .
The lawe is the worde of Ire
The gospell is the worde of grace . . .
The lawe sayeth / paye thy dette
The gospell sayeth Christ hath payed it. (Haas 1973: 150)

Faith cannot therefore include confidence in one’s own good works; to believe that
works aid in salvation is in effect to say ‘I save my selfe’, even ‘I am Christ’ (Haas
1973: 160). Works not only do not make a person good; they do not make him evil
either. Following Luther, Hamilton cites the analogy of a tree and its fruit: ‘Good
frute maketh not the tree good / nor evell frute the evell tree / but a good tree
beareth good frute & an evell tree evell frute’ (Haas 1973: 159). Hamilton
anticipates a charge of antinomianism in light of this doctrine and replies that
good works are a sign of faith whereas evil works cannot come from faith. The
important distinction, for Luther as well as for Hamilton, is that works are the
heartfelt response to faith, and not what brings salvation.
The theology of Patrick’s Places is thoroughly evangelical, distilling Martin
Luther’s understanding of righteousness through faith into short, memorable
form. It is neither original nor technical, but it does reveal a fully digested
evangelical theology, and the desire to spread that theology in usable form. Its
teaching is corroborated by the charges against Patrick Hamilton leading to his
burning; and while the tract’s influence in Scotland is not clear, Hamilton’s
personal impact can be seen in tracts by others from St Andrews at the time.

John Gau and John Johnsone

One who seems to have been at St Andrews before leaving for exile, John Gau (d.
1553), would eventually serve as a minister in the Danish Lutheran church. In
Malmö or Copenhagen, Gau produced in 1533 a translation into Scots of a Danish
catechetical text by Christiern Petersen for his homeland. Petersen’s text, in turn,
was itself a translation from a German work by Urbanus Rhegius. Gau’s text, the
Right Way to the Kingdom of Hevine, seems to have had little impact; a single copy
survives, and no direct reference to the work has survived elsewhere. But it offers
insight into what an exile thought would be useful for those back at home.
The Right Way is catechetical, more a work of instruction than persuasion; it
offered explanations of the Ten Commandments, the twelve articles of the Apos-
tles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Magnificat. In the sections of the introduc-
tion and conclusion which are original to Gau, Hamilton’s influence is tangible,
both in a description of Hamilton’s death and some near-quotation from Patrick’s
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Places. Certainly in line with Hamilton’s teaching is the content of the Right Way
on justification which Gau translated, though here the themes are developed more
fully. For example, the Ten Commandments are explicated positively rather than
negatively, as in Luther’s short catechism.
In his conclusion, Gau describes justification in phrases similar to Patrick’s
Places: ‘the law schowis you your sicknes the evangel schowis to you remedy / the
law is the ministracione of unrest and death / the evangel is the ministracione of
life and peace / the law schowis to you your sinnis the evangel schowis you
remissione’ (Gau 1888: 105). Gau’s basic definition of righteousness from faith
is thoroughly in line with Hamilton’s:
We are made righteous when we beleve in the word of grace the evangel whilk
God promist to us in Christ the whilk is forgiffiness of our sinnis and we inhere
to him by faith douting not but his richtusnes is ouris his holines is ouris / his
satisfactione is ouris / his resurrectione is ouris / schortlie not douting but
our sinnis are forgiffen through him and we are received in the favoris of God.
(Gau 1888: 107)

Going beyond Patrick’s Places, Gau’s translated work is spiced with invective for
those who reject justification by faith alone. Clergy who oppose the use of the
vernacular Bible, for example, are ‘blynd guiders and pastors’ who are guilty of
‘ignorance’, ‘voluptuous and fleshlie life (whilk thay have of the sweat and bluid of
the poor)’; their lack of preaching is responsible for the rise of sects which ‘preaches
dremis and fablis’ (Gau 1888: 104). The pope is accused of ‘manifest lyinge and
haldis the peopil in errour’ for promoting the sale of indulgences (Gau 1888: 84).
Since the true Church is ‘all christine men and the congregacione of sanctis whilk
are upone the earth’, it is the congregation that holds the power of the keys and
which should elect ministers (Gau 1888: 59). The keys which belong to the pope
and the bishops are in fact the keys ‘to preach godis word the law and the evangel’,
and the Petrine succession of the papacy is denied (Gau 1888: 61–2). By contrast,
the ‘fals kirk’, although it claims to be ‘ane christiane kirk’ is heretical and will be
condemned (Gau 1888: 58). Christians should expect trials: ‘we must come to the
hevine throw suffering and by no other way under the heavine’ (Gau 1888: 90).
Gau’s text (from Petersen) encouraged habits of evangelical piety for the
persecuted flock, none more than the reading of Scripture: ‘we must furthir see
and read the holie writ and not only these xii articulis [of the Apostles’ Creed]’.
Thus, those who are ‘learnit and can read and understand shuld see and read in
the bibil whilk is the ground and full of all godlie doctrine and heavenlie wisdom
neidful to know’ (Gau 1888: 12). Householders are required to teach their ‘bairnis
in the christiane faith’, and this before they teach them ‘the gentile buikis’, for
Scripture is superior to heathen philosophers, and guided by it ‘now ane simpil
man is wiser in the right and godlie philosophy than was Aristotil cheif and prince
of philosophors’ (Gau 1888: 12, 34).
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John Gau did not in fact compose more than a few pages of the Right Way, but
the fact that he selected it is nevertheless instructive. He must have expected a
utility for this text in particular over the many others to which he must have had
access in Denmark and must have been able to raise funds for its publication
abroad. What may particularly have commended this text to Gau is its usefulness
as a manual of household devotion; J. K. Cameron suggested that it was meant ‘to
engender an atmosphere of personal evangelical piety’ (1986: 6).
Of another exile who was present at Patrick Hamilton’s burning, John John-
sone, nothing is known with certainty beyond his 1535 tract Ane comfortable
exhortation: of oure mooste holy Christen faith/and her frutes. Like the Right Way,
this was printed by Johannes Hoochstraten, probably in Antwerp. Johnsone made
it clear that he was out of the country but intended to return to Scotland: ‘I will
exhort you by worde (yea by the worde of God) as my deare bretherne in the
lorde . . . until a prosperous journey (by the will of God) fortune me to come unto
you’ (Johnsone 1535: A3r). That in saying this, Johnsone was quoting Rom. 1:10 is
indicative of the text as a whole, which consists mostly of quotation from the 1526
Tyndale New Testament, the 1531 Isaiah of George Joye, and some edition of the
1535 Coverdale Psalms.³ In form this is a commonplace book, and it develops
Lutheran themes with numerous quotations, which are usually presented in the
order in which they appear in the Bible.
Johnsone’s primary focus is justification by faith alone, and like Hamilton and
Gau, he presented the progression of the soul from the faith that justifies to the
love of God that winsomely compels good works: ‘nether is [God’s] law heavy to
suche a man’ but is ‘an easy yoke / and an light burden through love’ (Johnsone
1535: D2v). But Johnsone’s particular emphasis is the fact that faith will bring
trials, especially in ‘these evyl and peralouse dayes’ of ‘persecution and trouble’,
and this forms a major theme in the text (Johnsone 1535: D3r). Johnsone inserted
a quotation from William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man to explain why
such trials come: ‘when [God] byldeth / he casteth all downe first. He is no thatcher /
he can not bylde on another mans foundacion’ (Johnsone 1535: D5r).⁴ Patrick
Hamilton is held up as an example of one who suffered for his faith, but his
persecutors’ ‘hungre is not slakned / but they abyde for theyr praye watchynge
as raveninge wolves / if they may see any of Christes poore shepe to devoure’
(Johnsone 1535: E2v). Johnsone encourages his readers that those who have the
Holy Spirit will have the ‘power . . . to suffre for Gods worde’, but even if one
‘cleane agenst his herte . . . have denied as did Peter / or have delyvered his boke
to the tyrauntes or put it awaye secretlye’, this should not bring despair, for

³ To demonstrate the use of Tyndale 1526 as opposed to 1534, cf. the quotation from Gal. 5:20 in
Johnsone (1535: B1v). The Isaiah quotations are from George Joye (1531), The Prophete Isaye/
translated into Englysshe, Antwerp.
⁴ Cf. William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, ed. David Daniell (London: Penguin,
2000), 6. The quoted section is lengthier than the selection above.
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sometimes God takes away their strength to make them rely upon his strength
(Johnsone 1535: E8r).
Johnsone thus assumes that his evangelical readers have a developed sense
of identity as a persecuted group. His practical advice is to persevere, as the
‘power . . . to suffre for Gods worde’ distinguishes them from the children of the
devil and will lead them to everlasting life; by contrast, their persecutors will be put
‘out of the waye accordynge unto the comfortable ensamples of the holy scripture’
(Johnsone 1535: E4r, E5v–E6r). The persecuting ‘worldly bisshoppes and theyr
disciples’ are not only guilty of ‘worldly preachynge’, but they ‘murdre and burne
youre men childerne which manfully confesse that Jesus is the lorde’ (Johnsone
1535: E1v–E2r). Johnsone further criticizes clerical celibacy and abstinence from
meat during fasts as ‘erroure / and devilyshe doctrine’; while fasting could still be
useful, it should no longer be compelled (Johnsone 1535: F5v–F6v).
Johnsone also stressed, as an implication of justification by faith alone, the
central importance of reading the Bible. The form of the work itself, a collection of
scriptural passages thematically arranged, underscores this point, but Johnsone
also articulates it himself: ‘of . . . consolation are the psalms full / the lorde open
youre hertes / to reade them and understande them perfectly in the spirite’
(Johnsone 1535: E6v). Those who ‘despise Gods worde: countinge it as a phantasy
or a dreame’ are persecutors who will be punished (Johnsone 1535: E7r).
Like Gau’s Right Way, Johnsone’s Comfortable exhortation is only known in its
printed form. No other contemporary references to the volume, two copies of
which survive, have emerged (Cameron 1979). But the fact that Johnsone wanted
to publish what appears to have been his own commonplace book is again
instructive. Like Gau’s work, this is meant to be practical and accessible to an
audience which embraces justification by faith alone and feels persecuted because
of it. Johnsone assumes that his readers will have a tense relationship with church
authorities, and a desire to underscore their belief with Scripture.
These two tracts, printed in the 1530s, show the importance of the teaching
and death of Patrick Hamilton. Readable, practical, and devotional, they
enjoined a piety centred on the righteousness that comes through faith, assum-
ing that the audience they sought would be under duress for its belief. They also
point to the habit of Bible reading which would take on great importance in later
years. While the reach of these tracts in Scotland cannot have been long, it may
be noted that in 1534, John Grierson, provincial of the Blackfriars, and John
Bothwell, warden of the Greyfriars, petitioned James V to extend the 1525 Act
by providing for ‘destroying of these new bookis made by the said Luther’s sects
both in Latyne, Scottis, Englis and Flemys’ (emphasis mine), and for punishment
of offenders and those who were ‘harborers’ of the ‘strangearis and utheris’ who
came into the country with ‘their bookis’. James responded that he was aware of
‘divers tractatis and bookis translatit out of Latin in our Scottis toung by
heretikis . . . of the sect of Luther’ (Kerr 1932: 422–3). No other Scots translations
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survive from this era, so perhaps Gau’s Right Way was in view, or the more
Anglicized Comfortable exhortation.

Alexander Alesius

Patrick Hamilton himself had gone into exile rather than face trial at first but then
returned; more would remain in their exile permanently, many finding distin-
guished careers elsewhere. Several found patronage from Thomas Cromwell in
England, though many then had to flee a second time after the passage of the Act
of Six Articles in 1539. An example is John MacAlpine, who after leaving England
pursued the D.D. in Wittenberg before accepting a chair in Copenhagen, where
under his assumed name Maccabeus he would eventually serve as a translator of
the Danish Bible (Durkan 1983). Some returned, like John Willock; more stayed
abroad, like Alexander Seton or John MacDowell.
Some of the exiles remained keenly interested in theological developments in
their homeland, particularly Alexander Allane (1500–65), who became known as
Alesius. An Augustinian canon, Alesius had distinguished himself at St Andrews
for anti-Lutheran disputation, in the spirit of the 1525 legislation. Moved by the
trial and execution of Patrick Hamilton, though, by 1529 Alesius was preaching to
a provincial council the need for amendment of the lives of clergy to fulfil their
pastoral duty, for which he was incarcerated. He managed to leave the country,
arriving in Malmö, before moving to Wittenberg, where he formed a friendship
with Philip Melanchthon and continued his studies (Wiedermann 2004). But he
remained aware of Scotland, and in 1533 published a tract opposing the passage
of episcopal legislation forbidding the reading of the Bible in the vernacular.
Entitled Alexandri Alesii epistola contra decretum quoddam episcoporum in
Scotia, this open letter to James V followed a humanist line in arguing for Bible
reading, and it called forth a response from Johannes Cochlaeus, striking back in
favour of the now-lost regulation. Alesius responded in turn with Alexandri Alesii
Scotti responsio ad Cochlei calumnias, a volume which ends with a story about
James IV allowing a Lollard household to read the Bible. Cochlaeus responded a
second time, but it was clear that the king was unmoved and Alesius did not
pursue the matter.
In 1535, Alesius travelled to England to present a copy of the Loci Communes to
Henry VIII on behalf of Melanchthon, was in the court of Anne Boleyn briefly,
and took up a position at Cambridge. Within a year, his teaching and Anne’s
downfall brought him trouble, and he set to practising medicine, until in 1537
Cromwell had him address the bishops on the question of the authority of
Scripture, which put him in a heated debate with Bishop Stokesley of London
on the number of sacraments. Alesius wrote an account of this event, later
published in English as Of the auctorite of the word of god agaynst the bisshop of
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london (1544), which shows his skill as a polemicist, both forceful in its appeal to
Scripture and careful in its reasoning. Shortly after this debate, Alesius is thought
to have written A treatise concernynge generall councilles, the byshoppes of Rome,
and the clergy (1538), a compendium of scriptural texts on authority designed for
debate.
After the Act of Six Articles, Alesius returned to the continent, participating in
the Colloquy of Worms in 1540 and the Diet of Regensburg in 1541 before settling
at Leipzig, where he would go on to produce numerous commentaries, disputa-
tions, and other theological material. The commentaries included Romans (1553,
with a preface by Melanchthon), 1 and 2 Timothy (1550, 1551), Titus (1552), John
(1553), and the first book of the Psalms (1554), the latter of which included a
lengthy section on Patrick Hamilton. His disputations were spread in many
directions. He wrote against Roman Catholic theologians, returning to themes
he had discussed in the 1538 tract; he wrote four disputations against Servetus; he
took part in intra-Lutheran disputes regarding the necessity, though without
merit, of good works that follow faith; on the Eucharist, he reflected Melanch-
thon’s moderate position and criticized Luther’s extremity on the real presence
(Wiedermann 2004).
The career of Alesius embodies some of the difficulties in assessing this period
in the history of Scottish theology. Certainly he was a Scottish theologian of
distinction, a writer of great volume and importance in the Reformation. But his
influence was far greater elsewhere than in Scotland, in spite of his fame and
significance. At some level, this is simply because Alesius had moved beyond the
state of affairs in his homeland: while ‘privy kirks’ were still meeting for Bible
reading in the early 1550s, Alesius was involved with the Council of Trent and the
anti-Trinitarians. He and the other permanent exiles were important Scottish
theologians, but minor players within Scottish theology.

Evangelical Theology at Court

Although he did not take particular notice of Alesius’ appeals, James V

(r. 1513–42) had a complex relationship with evangelical theology. While heresy
trials occurred with some frequency during his reign, he dangled the threat of
reform in letters to Rome to exact royal privileges over the Church, and flirted
with his uncle Henry VIII’s appropriation of church land. James’s biographer
suggests that the king ‘did not care greatly what his nobility thought about
religion’ (Cameron 1998: 322), and his appointment of evangelicals at court in
the late 1530s and early 1540s shows a similar lack of concern. Among these were
the playwright and poet Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, whose ‘Linlithgow
Interlude’, a play which lampooned clerical abuse and called for secular appro-
priation of church lands, pleased the king at Epiphany 1540.
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One court evangelical fell victim to the rise of Cardinal David Beaton; in 1540,
Sir John Borthwick (d. 1569) was tried in absentia, and his portrait burned, as he
had fled the country. By 1559, he produced a refutation of the charges for John
Foxe, showing a solid layman’s grasp of Protestant theology, though after two
decades, it is impossible to know how much these answers reflect the sophistica-
tion of his belief in 1540. What Borthwick’s trial does show is the cardinal’s
blanket assertion of ‘English heresies’, a conflation of Henrician ecclesiastical
policy and evangelical theology that muddies the waters of belief at court. With
the perspective of years, Borthwick did not hesitate to affirm that he wanted James
to follow Henry’s lead; the Scots clergy should have thanked him, he says, for
wishing them ‘so happye a fall’ (Foxe 1563: 581).
If it is difficult to distinguish them, the evangelicals and Anglophiles at court
do show that evangelical theology could ‘break out of its clerical and mercantile
ghetto to secure . . . early support from lairds and nobles’ (Ryrie 2006: 34). After
James’s death in 1542, the court evangelicals seemed to be on sounder footing, as
the regent for the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, was the apparently Anglophile
James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran. Under Arran’s regency, in March 1543
Parliament decreed:
It is statute and ordained that it shall be lawful to all our sovereign lady’s lieges to
have the holy scripture, both the New Testament and the Old, in the vulgar
tongue, in English or Scots, of a good and true translation, and that they shall
incur no crimes for the having or reading of the same, providing always that
no man dispute or hold opinions under the pains contained in the acts of
parliament. (Brown et al. 2007–18: 1543/3/25)

Rather Anglophile than evangelical, this legislation forbade discussion or ‘opin-

ions’, though it did legalize the vernacular Bible. For evangelicals, this still must
have felt like a victory, though Knox was convinced that some of the exultation
was posturing; those who ‘had never read ten sentences in [the Bible], had it most
common in thare hand; thei would chop thare familiares on the cheak with it, and
say, “This hes lain hyd under my bed-feet these ten yearis” ’ (Knox 1846–64:
1.100–1). In the event, the Anglophile ascendancy was short-lived. By June, the
Privy Council was expressing concern about printed matter and declaring its
opposition to ‘sacramentaris’ (Kerr 1932: 527–8). By December, Arran himself
advised Parliament about the spread of heresy and called for prelates to make
examination, though the legalization of the vernacular Bible was unchallenged
(Brown et al. 2007–18: 1543/12/63).

Henry Balnaves

Following the events of 1543, Scots evangelicals came into contact with the wider
Protestant world, but wrote little theology. An exception is the lawyer Henry
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Balnaves (d. 1570), an Anglophile and evangelical who had risen to the Court of
Session, and began to work as a diplomat. In late 1546, some months after the
murder of Cardinal Beaton, Balnaves joined the conspirators and others taking
refuge in St Andrews Castle, though he left on at least two occasions under heavy
French fire to negotiate English support. When the castle fell, Balnaves was taken
prisoner in Rouen, and while there, according to Knox, he composed in 1548 The
confession of Faith, conteining how the troubled man should seeke refuge at his
God.⁵ This manuscript found its way to Knox on the galleys, where he added notes
and a précis, and eventually back to Scotland, where it was lost by 1566, then found
by Richard Bannatyne in 1584, ‘in the hands of a child, as it were serving to the childe
to playe him with’, and published by Thomas Vautrollier (Dotterweich 2004a).
Clearly, this is another problematic source, not only because of Knox’s account
of its writing, but also because of the time elapsed, the nature of its discovery, and
its publication in English rather than Scots. Even if the story of The confession of
Faith is taken at face value, its readership in the 1540s or 1550s could only have
been small. However, there is no reason to doubt the basic account of the text’s
creation and survival, and it offers an extended theological argument. The argu-
ment was not original but showed Balnaves’ exceptional familiarity with Luther’s
commentaries on Genesis and Galatians, and perhaps Tyndale’s Obedience and
Parable of the Wicked Mammon.
Balnaves began his treatise with persecution, which he assumed his evangelical
readers in Scotland were facing. Beginning by explaining that the godly have
always suffered for believing in justification by faith alone, Balnaves sketches a
history of persecution beginning with Cain and Abel, quoting as a refrain from
Luther’s Galatians commentary, ‘Let Abell dye and Cain live; that is our law,
sayeth the ungodly’ (Knox 1846–64: 3.457). Because the persecutors of the ‘article
of justification’ are leaders in the Church, Balnaves introduces a distinction
between the visible and invisible churches: the visible church ‘consistes in the
godly and ungodly’. Christ’s ‘faithfull litle flocke’, by contrast, would always be
‘pursued with the wicked, and never pursueth, by which the Disciples and
servauntes of Christ are knowen’ (Knox 1846–64: 3.459). Clearly, the identity of
the persecuted was important to Balnaves.
In spite of persecution, Balnaves charged his readers to be good citizens, and to
give no cause for charges of sedition. On the other hand, Balnaves defied eccle-
siastical authority, encouraging the habit of Bible reading; he enjoined his readers
to ‘Feare nor dread not to reade the Scriptures’, regardless of episcopal prohib-
itions. They could do so with confidence, for the Holy Spirit would serve as
‘Schoolemaister of his Scriptures’ who will ‘teache you all veritie necessarie for
your salvation’ (Knox 1846–64: 3.469).

⁵ Reprinted in Knox (1846–64: 3.405–543), the version that will be used here.
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The bulk of the Confession of Faith is a sophisticated and fulsome explanation

of justification, offering scriptural passages in support, developing nuance, and
answering objections. It shows confidence in the audience of Scots evangelicals
that he anticipated: they were capable of understanding a case both lengthy and
complex. In addition, Balnaves was at pains to connect justification to vocation. If
works did not bring righteousness, Christians should nevertheless not neglect
them, but focus rather on the task to which God had called them. This, Balnaves
maintained, would bring reformation:
For, will the prince and superiour do his duetie to the subject, and the subject his
duetie to the superiour, there would be no disobedience. The minister of the
Word to the auditour and flocke committed to his care; the auditour to the
minister of the Worde, there would be no division in the church. The father and
mother to the children, and the children to the parents, there would be no
dishonouring. The lord to the servant, and the servant to the lord, there would
be no contempt nor trouble in the Common weale. (Knox 1846–64: 3.525–6)

The language is similar to William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man,

and shares its intent to distance the theology of justification by faith alone from
rebellion in the body politic. Perhaps, having been imprisoned twice, Balnaves felt
a need to make the point that justification by faith does not lead to rebellion but to
the fulfilment of vocation. Each particular vocation is given a particular charge,
including bishops and kings, who should not involve themselves in each other’s
business. Balnaves, then, extends justification beyond the habits of the faithful to
the reformation of a kingdom of dutiful citizens, though few ever read his treatise
to take up its call at the time.

George Wishart

A fuller and more confessional theology came to Scotland with George Wishart
(d. 1546). Having studied at Louvain, Wishart returned to his native Scotland as a
schoolmaster by 1535, but fled after a charge of heresy in 1538 to England. In
Bristol, Wishart was quickly swept up in local religious controversy, and he was
charged, improbably, with denial of the merits of Christ’s passion. This resulted in a
forced recantation and exile in Zürich. By 1543 he was back in Cambridge, and then
returned to Scotland a second time (Dotterweich 2004b, 2014). From 1543 or 1544
until his burning in 1546, Wishart preached across the country, with occasional
interference but protected by evangelical gentry. Although only traces of his preach-
ing survive, Wishart’s theological convictions may be found in the record of his
heresy trial, as well as in his translation of the First Swiss Confession of Faith.
This confession was written in 1536 by Heinrich Bullinger and others to unify
Protestants in Switzerland and beyond, and enumerates Reformed theology on
         185

major confessional points from Scripture and the work of Christ to the role of
magistrates and the nature of the sacraments (Hazlett 2014). Bullinger himself
gave the document to ‘the Scot, George’, whose translation into English published
in 1548 was the first printed edition of the confession (Henrich et al. 2011: 149).
Like other Reformed theological statements, this embraces justification by faith
alone, though Reformed distinctives emerge, such as concern about idolatry:
‘vescels, garments, waxe, lyghtes, alters, golde, sylver . . . and chefely Idols and
Images’ should be ‘put awaye’ (Wishart 1548: B4v). Likewise, the Confession
uses Reformed language for the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, which are
‘badges and tokens of Christian societie’, not ‘naked sygnes, but . . . sygnes and
verities together’ (Wishart 1548: B1v), ‘exhibiting the thinges that they sygnifie’
(Wishart 1548: B3v).
Elements of Wishart’s adherence to the Reformed theology of the First Swiss
Confession can be found in his actions. In the printed account of his trial,
Wishart’s answers to charges follow Reformed positions, not least his repeated
insistence on biblical warrant (Lindsay 1548). Wishart also engaged in Reformed
sacramental practice, as recorded much later by George Buchanan in Rerum
Scoticarum Historia (1582). While awaiting execution, Wishart refused an offered
Mass, as it would not be both bread and wine; later, while eating breakfast with the
governor of the castle, he gave an extemporaneous sermon on the sufferings of
Christ, broke the bread, and gave out communion in both kinds as a ‘memorial of
Christ’s death’ (Buchanan 1827–32: 2.356–7).
Wishart maintained a level of confessional clarity that went beyond the evan-
gelical emphases of the preceding decades. His preaching tour marks a turning
point in Scottish Protestant theology, and his martyrdom, so close to the site of
Patrick Hamilton’s, took on a similar symbolic prominence. But his most lasting
impact was made on the disciple of his final five weeks, John Knox (Dawson 2016:
28–32).

A Legacy of Belief and Habit

Within its small frame, this picture of early Protestant theology in Scotland
provides little useful detail when examined closely; the lines do not connect, the
colours blur, and sharp edges only appear at one corner. But standing back and
looking at the whole, an image appears whose colours and shapes recur in
subsequent Scottish theology. Seen as a whole, the central theological image
here is justification by faith alone. The early tracts spend considerable time
explaining this idea, finding it in Scripture, and defending it against criticisms;
occasionally they show some of its implications for church practices. This the-
ology was not sophisticated, but it demanded commitment, and many fled or died
because they believed it so fervently. Protestant theology would always assume the
186   

importance of justification afterward, even as debates and distinctions arose. Also

affecting later theology is the habit of Bible reading, forming the background of
our small framed picture. This new habit caught on quickly from the 1520s to
1540s, and became such a given in the Scots theological tradition that we may
forget its significance in the background, but we can find its origins here.

Bibliography

Primary Literature
Alesius, Alexander (1533). Alexandri Alesii epistola contra decretum quoddam Episcoporü
in Scotia, quod prohibet legere noui Testamenti libros lingua vernacular. Wittenberg.
Alesius, Alexander (1534). Alexandri Alesii Scotti responsio ad Cochlei calumnias.
Wittenberg.
Bourrilly, V. L. (ed.) (1910). Le Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris sous le Régne de
François 1er (1513–1536) in Collection de Textes pour Servir a l’Étude et à l’Enseigne-
ment de l’Histoire, 2nd edition, vol. 43. Paris: Libraire Alphonse Picard et fils.
Brown, K. M. et al. (eds.) (2007–18). The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to
1707. St Andrews: University of St Andrews. Accessed 20 December 2018.
Buchanan, George (1827–32). The History of Scotland, ed. James Aikman. Glasgow:
Blackie, Fullarton & Co.
Cochlaeus, Johannes (1534). Pro Scotiae Regno Apologia Iohannis Cochlei, Adversus
Personatum Alexandrum Alesium Scotum. Leipzig: Michael Blum.
Donaldson, Gordon and C. Macrae (eds.) (1942–4). St. Andrews Formulare 1514–1546,
vols. 7 and 9. Edinburgh: Stair Society.
Foxe, John (1563). Actes & monuments of these latter and perillous dayes . . . London:
John Daye.
Foxe, John (1583). Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous dayes . . . London:
John Daye.
Gau, John (1888). The Richt Vay to the Kingdom of Heuine, ed. A. F. Mitchell. Edinburgh:
Scottish Text Society.
Henrich, Rainer, Alexandra Kess, and Judith Steiniger (eds.) (2011). Heinrich Bullinger
Werke, Zweite Abteilung: Briefwechsel, vol. 14: Briefe des Jahres 1544. Zürich:
Theologische Verlag.
Johnsone, John (1535). An confortable exhortation: of oure mooste holy Christen faith/
and her frutes Written (vnto the Christen bretherne in Scotlande) after the poore
worde of God. Antwerp: Johannes Hoochstraten.
Kerr, Robert (ed.) (1932). Acts of the Lords of Council in Public Affairs 1501–1554.
Edinburgh: General Register House.
Knox, John (1846–64). The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing. Wodrow Society.
Edinburgh: Thomas George Stevenson.
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Lindsay, David (1548). The Tragical death of Dauid Beato[n] . . . wherunto is ioyned the
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Reformation. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable.
Wishart, George (1548). The confescion of fayth of the Sweserlandes. [London?].

Secondary Literature
Cameron, James K. (1979). ‘John Johnsone’s Ane Confortable Exhortation of Our
Mooste Holy Christen Faith and Her Frutes: An Early Example of Scots Lutheran
Piety’, in Derek Baker (ed.), Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent
c.1500–1750, SCH 2. Oxford: Blackwell, 133–47.
Cameron, James K. (1986). ‘Aspects of the Lutheran Contribution to the Scottish
Reformation 1528–1552’, RSCHS 22: 1–12.
Cameron, Jamie (1998). James V: The Personal Rule 1528–1542, ed. Norman Macdou-
gall. East Linton: Tuckwell.
Clebsch, W. A. (1964). England’s Earliest Protestants 1520–1535. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Dawson, Jane E. A. (2016). John Knox. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Dotterweich, Martin Holt (2004a). ‘Henry Balnaves’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, online edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dotterweich, Martin Holt (2004b). ‘George Wishart’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, online edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dotterweich, Martin Holt (2014). ‘George Wishart in England’, in Martin Holt
Dotterweich (ed.), George Wishart Quincentennial Conference Proceedings. London:
Scott Wishart.
Durkan, John (1983). ‘Scottish “Evangelicals” in the Patronage of Thomas Cromwell’,
RSCHS 21: 127–56.
Durkan, John (1992). ‘Heresy in Scotland: The Second Phase, 1546–58’, RSCHS 24:
320–65.
Haas, Rainer (1973). ‘Franz Lambert und Patrick Hamilton in ihrer Bedeutung für die
Evangelische Bewegung auf den Britischen Inseln’. Inaugural dissertation, Univer-
sity of Marburg.
Hazlett, Ian (2014). ‘George Wishart and the Swiss Confession of Faith’, in Martin
Holt Dotterweich (ed.), George Wishart Quincentennial Conference Proceedings.
London: Scott Wishart.
Kirk, James (1991). ‘The Religion of Early Scottish Protestants’, in James Kirk (ed.),
Humanism and Reform: The Church in Europe, England, and Scotland, 1400–1643:
Essays in Honour of James K. Cameron. SCH.S 8. Oxford: Blackwell, 361–411.
Ryrie, Alec (2006). The Origins of the Scottish Reformation. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
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Torrance, Iain R. (1974). ‘Patrick Hamilton and John Knox: A Study in the Doctrine of
Justification by Faith’, ARG 65: 171–85.
Wiedermann, Gotthelf (1986). ‘Martin Luther versus John Fisher: Some Ideas concern-
ing the Debate on Lutheran Theology at the University of St Andrews, 1525–30’,
RSCHS 22: 13–34.
Wiedermann, Gotthelf (2004). ‘Alesius, Alexander’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, online edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, N. T. (1978). The Work of John Frith. Appleford: Sutton Courtenay.
 14
Reformed Theology in Confessions
and Catechisms to c.1620
Ian Hazlett

Introduction

Until the late sixteenth century one cannot convincingly speak of a distinctively
Scottish Reformed theology. Instead, there was in Scotland the import, reception,
appropriation, recycling, and dissemination of the Reformed theology genre in
its various articulations and nuances, a diversity which is now better appreciated
(Muller 2011: 11–18; Muller 2012: 13–50; Campi 2014; Denlinger 2015: 101). This
implanting resulted from the cumulative impact of international Protestantism on
Scotland, making the country open to impulses of the ‘transregional Reformation’
(Foresta 2015: 189). Multiple stimuli occurred through various means of trans-
mission. One landmark was the preaching of a returned exile, the martyred
George Wishart (d. 1545). His specifically ‘Reformed’, but more particularly,
purported ‘Zwinglian’ credentials (Locher 1981: 372–3) tend to be exaggerated.
For in his heresy trial (reported in Knox’s History) Wishart exhibited common
Reformation axioms rather than any partisan ‘confessional’ slant. Yet he had
uncommon Reformed associations. Around 1540 he had visited Oswald Myco-
nius, Oecolampadius’ successor in Basel, and Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich who
furnished him with some contemporary theological documents on Eucharistic
matters. Moreover, an English translation (Laing 1844: 7–23) by Wishart of the
circumspect Latin version of the First Helvetic Confession (1536) was posthu-
mously published in London in 1548—the only printing in any language of that
confession before 1581 (Saxer 2006: 38). That Latin version had toned down more
controversially Zwinglian sacramental notions for diplomatic reasons which had
the Wittenberg Lutheran theologians in mind. Wishart’s translation arguably
helped nudge British Reformation thinking towards the moderate Swiss and
mediating Strasbourg theology associated with Martin Bucer, especially on the
sacraments. This was consolidated by the Geneva-Zurich Consensus of 1549,
disseminated implicitly by the best-sellers of Calvin’s Institutes and Heinrich
Bullinger’s Decades (Campi 2014: 121).
Scottish alignment with Reformed theology occurred in the wake of earlier
Lutheran and Erasmian humanist impacts, neither of which was completely

Ian Hazlett, Reformed Theology in Confessions and Catechisms to c.1620. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0014
190  

submerged. The Reformed impetus was from not just the Continent, but also
England. From the late 1550s, the 1552 English Book of Common Prayer (to
which John Knox had contributed as a Church of England cleric) was used in
Scotland among pro-Reformation groups (Donaldson 1996: 39). And the English
Forty-Two Articles of Religion (1552/53) also helped encourage the adoption of
Reformed theology among Scots—bearing in mind that that confession has been
assessed as ‘arguably the most thorough and advanced systematic expression of
Reformed doctrine at the time’ (Kirby 2009: 373). However, after the 1560
religious revolution, the priority for a generation was implementation of Refor-
mation basics. Relatively speaking, Scotland was a fragile, fringe country with
limited human and financial resources. Most time was consumed on staffing the
financially depleted new Kirk, on re-educating the people on religion, on educa-
tional reform, and on contentious matters like church government (presbyterian,
episcopal, or mixed) as well as on tug-of-war relations with the civil authority.
Papal authority and systems were not easily replaced; the historic ecclesiastical
hierarchy was side-lined, and the crown was unstable, so that filling the vacuum at
any level was problematic.
Both John Knox and Andrew Melville cemented links with Geneva. Yet Knox’s
role in the new Kirk was essentially exhortative and prophetic as a ‘preacher-
theologian’ (Torrance 1996: 2) rather than scholarly. This and continuing reli-
gious insecurity also help explain why post-1560 there was a dearth of creative
theology in Scotland until the Reformed orthodox theologian and teacher in
Edinburgh, Robert Rollock (c.1555–99). His work on covenant theology synthe-
sizing Law and Gospel and re-aligning sacramental dimensions with predestin-
ation (Elliott 2014) helped strengthen that configuration in general Reformed
theology. Rollock’s publications at home and abroad made him the first Scottish
Reformed theologian to have an appreciative European audience.
However, public awareness of religious affairs in the country largely focused on
other matters. These were practical issues relating to worship and practical
ecclesiology. They are frequently misrepresented as being among the chief iden-
tifiers of Reformed theology in Scotland, although none of them features in
confessions of faith and catechisms.

Issues and Priorities in Scottish Public Theology

This refers to headline topics mentioned above. Specifying them straightaway will
clear the air. For ‘Reformed tradition(s)’, ‘Reformed theology or theologies’,
‘Reformed confessions’, ‘Reformed catechisms’, ‘Calvinism’, ‘Scottish Protestant-
ism’, ‘Scottish Presbyterianism’, etc. were not wholly synonymous, irrespective
of commonalities. They are prisms, rather, of ‘single but variegated Reformed
tradition’ (Muller 2004: 141) or constitute a ‘flexible unity’ as in Scripture
     . 191

(Jacobs 1959: 22). Yet some high-profile causes and attitudes in Scotland were not
essential to such mainstream Reformed thinking. Nor did they have a confessional
status. They did sit within Reformed ‘traditions’, but with no universal acceptance
in the Reformed world. Four examples follow.
One was John Knox’s political theology of direct, active resistance to ‘tyran-
nical’ (Catholic) and female rulers, often wrongly cited as emblematic of ‘Calvin-
ism’. But in Scotland and elsewhere, this was a minority view despite some appeal
in the late 1550s. It was not an agreed doctrinal or confessional tenet, rather a
matter of opinion. The predominant Reformed attitude, as expressed by Calvin
and Bullinger, was conservative, guided by Romans 13 (Hazlett 2016: 252–3).
Discussions of resistance by Reformed theologians were predominantly subdued
and politic before the seventeenth century. Till then, prudential, but still formally
qualified, obedience to the civil authority irrespective of its religion or oppressive
behaviour was the norm. Some progressive political thinkers of a Reformed
background (like George Buchanan in Scotland) or Reformed lay theologians
(like Philippe Duplessis-Mornay in France) did promote active resistance to real
tyranny. This was based on emerging covenant and social contract concepts in
which divine law was a factor. Such thinking was generally speculative and had no
formal connection with prudential Church theology at the time.
A second more widely, but also not quite universally, accepted phenomenon
in Scotland was shared with Wittenberg radicalism (e.g., Andrew Carlstadt,
d. 1541), early Zwinglianism, and increasingly influential English puritanism.
This was the pursuit by the precisionists in the Kirk of a strictly biblicist,
‘regulative principle’ on secondary religious customs and usages which others
viewed as permissible. The radical application in the name of Scripture and of the
(Neoplatonizing) ‘pure worship of God’ untainted by material aids and rituals
ruled out what some other Reformers saw as things indifferent (adiaphora)
in religious practice. The justification was the lack of ‘express’ sanction in,
or necessary deduction from, the Bible (Wright 2004: 179; Allen 2016: 41). In
Scotland, the policy eliminated the major Christian festivals and ‘non-biblical’
liturgical usages as illegitimate, human innovations. This contrasted with the
attitude of several other Reformed churches, and especially the Church of
England. However, the prevailing austere stance of the Kirk was neither unani-
mously assented to in Scotland nor axiomatic in Reformed theology, as it verged
on binding the conscience. It was contrary to confessions like the Tetrapolitan
Confession (art. 22), the Lausanne Articles (art. 10), the First Helvetic Confes-
sion (art. 24), the Second Helvetic Confession (chap. 27), the Forty-Two Articles
(art. 33), and the Thirty-Nine Articles (art. 34). And the 2:1 majority in the
so-called episcopalian General Assembly at Perth in 1618 that was willing to
accept the liturgical changes proposed by James VI had obviously no difficulties
reconciling such usages with their faith, conscience, and general Reformed
theology which was non-prescriptive on the matter.
192  

A third contention was church government. Within Reformed Protestantism

three paradigms conflicted: the episcopal, the presbyterian, and the congregational
polities (Hazlett 2016: 248–9). All claimed biblical warrant. Yet for the early
Reformers including Knox, precise church polity was not an article of faith—
even if most Reformed thinkers favoured ministerial parity. In Scotland, however,
doctrinaire presbyterianism belonging to the visible Church’s essence and claim-
ing New Testament authority was adopted ultimately into the banner of faith and
national identity, as in the National Covenant (1638). The Second Book of
Discipline (1578) had presupposed such a doctrine, derived from Theodore Beza
in Geneva.¹ Presbyterian tradition cited it as the hallmark of Scottish Reformed
Christianity. Yet such a reductionist notion was never accepted by all Scots. Nor
was it explicit in any Reformed confession (not even Westminster) or catechism
anywhere as the divinely prescribed form of Church government. But it has often
been cast as an obligatory Reformed article of belief. For those who claimed divine
prescription, presbyterian church polity became mandatory.
Lastly, there was the question of balancing the spheres of Church and civil
power in religion and society—sometimes projected in binary Church–State terms
(Hazlett 2016: 249–52). The issue was linked to Church discipline. Scottish
Reformed thinking tends to be depicted as inherently oppositional, that is, keen
to keep secular authority at arm’s length. This was certainly true of the (presby-
terian) Kirk. The position can be legitimately categorized as ‘Calvinist’ or at least
‘Genevan’, due to the paramount concern for autonomous church discipline or
internal authority, even if Calvin, unlike the Scots Confession (chap. 18), did not
make it a third, essential ‘mark’ of the Church. No Genevans advocated separation
between Church and State. Rather, their distinctive roles must be demarcated: the
civil power, being also grounded in divine authority, has a legitimate interest in
religion (in sacra), whereas the internal spiritual and doctrinal jurisdiction (in
sacris) of the Church should be sovereign to avoid mixing and confusion of secular
and spiritual spheres. However, if Scottish rulers, legislators, presbyterians, and
episcopalians were divided on the issue, this was also because there were incom-
patible doctrines in the wider Reformed world.
The alternative view emanated from the Zurich tradition. It granted the civil
power so much religious competence that the outcome was a unitary entity, a
quasi-Byzantine, single sphere embodying a fusion of church and society. This
meant not just a religion of the state, but also a state church, as most notably in
Swiss German churches and England. Such a Reformed ‘Erastian’² model was
rooted in the Imperial Early Church, Old Testament Jewish kingship, and appealed

¹ In contrast, Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances were based on the premise that the presbyterial
order was beneficial for the Church, but not a necessarily constitutive element of its essence.
² From a Swiss background, Thomas Erastus in Heidelberg was the chief theoretician in the late
sixteenth century of the ultimate supremacy of the civil authority in all church affairs.
     . 193

especially to Caesaro-papist, monarchical ‘nurse fathers’ of the Church, as the New

or Aberdeen Confession of 1616 in art. [24] put it (Shaw 2004: 531; Dennison 2008–
14: 4.111); Hazlett 2020). Rulers broadly committed to Reformed theology and with
ambitions of supremacy in the Church (like King James) heartily subscribed to that.
This general situation, then, disclosed ecclesiological fissures within Reformed
churches. Authoritative textbooks and confessions of faith skirted around the
issue. If Reformed confessions usually had a section on the civil magistrate, this
rarely went beyond general declarations of loyalty to secular government as divinely
instituted, and expectations of rulers’ responsibilities as ‘lieutenants of God’ to
‘maintain the true religion’ of the first table of the Law (Scots Confession, chap. 24).

Summary Texts in Scotland Illustrative

of Reformed Theology

Various confessions and catechisms in Europe disseminated Reformation the-

ology from the Reformed perspective. Confessions can be located in modern
editions among which only the first here cited is text-critical (Faulenbach and
Busch 2001–; Cochrane 2003; Pelikan and Hotchkiss 2003; Dennison 2008–14).
There were three Scottish confessions: the Scots Confession (1560), the King’s
(or Negative) Confession (1581), and the proposed New (or Aberdeen) Confes-
sion (1616). Reinforcing these were external confessions especially promoted in
Scotland. These were the 1556 English Genevan Confession (attached to the Book
of Common Order), and particularly the prestigious Second Helvetic Confession
(1566) by Bullinger. The last was endorsed and commended by the Kirk’s General
Assembly while dissenting from the Confession’s acceptance of major Christian
festivals. The acclaimed Heidelberg Catechism (1563) was to fortify such external
impact (see below).
The catechetical domain was more assorted. There are fewer modern editions,
none text-critical (Bonar 1866; Torrance 1959). Published output in Scotland was
modest compared to that in England (Green 1996: appendix), yet Scottish cat-
echisms, probably not all printed, were manifold—and according to James VI, far
too many, creating confusion! He complained about ‘the number of ignorant
Catechismes set out in Scotland, by everie one that was the Sonne of a Good man;
insomuch as, that which was Catechisme doctrine in one congregation, was in
another scarsely accepted as sound and Orthodox’ (quoted in Milton 2018: 239).
A less-biased modern observer also detected ‘individualism and reluctance to be
tied to a standard version . . . a uniform scheme of instruction . . . with the same
theology’ (Donaldson 1990: 75–6).
The first Reformed catechism published in Scotland involving creative input by
a Scot was the edited Gaelic version of a Genevan catechism done by John
Carswell (d. c.1572), Reformed bishop of the Isles (Thomson 1980: 95–108).
194  

This related to his Gaelic translation (1567) of the Book of Common Order.
Rather than translate the large Genevan Catechism of Calvin which was included
in that, Carswell produced an expanded Gaelic version³ of the Genevan Little
Catechism as also found in the Book of Common Order (1564). Thereby he
transformed this shorter catechism into a basic apologetic text for use in Gaelic
Scotland (and Ireland) to assist the conversion of Catholics.
As for Reformed, English-language catechisms in Scotland, the first one used up
to the early 1560s was the Church of England Prayer Book Catechism. Soon to be
more normative was the translation of Calvin’s influential Genevan Catechism in
French of 1542 (373 questions). Along with the Genevan Little Catechism, it was
sponsored by the Church of Scotland as part of the Book of Common Order, and so
was influential. Calvin’s larger Catechism was republished regularly in Scotland up
to the seventeenth century. Its dialogical and didactic format had been adopted by
Calvin from Renaissance humanist and Reformation patterns (Kayayan 2009). Then
came the Kirk-approved ‘Craig’s Catechism’ in 1581 (c. 900 questions), by John
Craig (1512–1600), the royal chaplain, followed in 1592 by ‘Craig’s Short Catechism’
or ‘Communion Catechism’ (ninety-six questions). A less well-known catechism of
1602 was an elaborate one—partly question and answer, partly discursive
exposition—published by John Davidson (c.1549–1604), author and minister in
East Lothian. Known as ‘Davidson’s Catechism’ (1602), it was intended partly for
pre-Communion candidates, and partly for Sunday catechism. Against spiritually
destabilizing tendencies at the time (anxiety about, or indifference to, salvation) it
emphasized assurance (Torrance 1996: 53–5), and so met an increasing need.
A major German Reformed catechism implicitly responding to the Council of
Trent and reaching out to Lutheranism was the 1563 ‘Heidelberg Catechism’ (129
questions), drafted by Zacharias Ursinus and Kaspar Olevianus. Its Latin original
was translated into English in 1572. The Latin version, also republished in
Scotland in 1591 and several times later, was used by Robert Rollock for teaching
in the new Edinburgh college. In the same year, at the instigation of James VI, a
new English version was issued in his name for use in Scotland, and later
reprinted. Referred to as ‘The Palatine Confession’, but entitled ‘A Catechisme
of Christian Religion’, this Scottish edition included notes and commentary from
the Heidelberg theologian, Jeremias Bastingius. Subsequently it was sometimes
appended to the Church of Scotland’s Psalm Book and Book of Common Order,
as in 1615 (Bonar 1866: 113). The Heidelberg Catechism thereby acquired ‘semi-
official status’ in Scotland (Milton 2018: 239). This corresponded to the high
esteem accorded to it and the Heidelberg theology in England (Milton 2018:
237–9) and elsewhere, a theology which maintained predestination in the Calvinian
sense (Lee 2009), if not manifestly in the Catechism, which was common practice.

³ ‘Foirceadul Aithgearr an Chreidimh Chriostaidhe’ [Short Catechism of the Christian Faith]. The
full Genevan Catechism was not published in Gaelic until c.1630.
     . 195

The escalating kudos and status of the Heidelberg Catechism was sealed at the
international Reformed Synod of Dort (1618–19), at which it was adopted as
one of the three components of the ‘Formulary of Unity’⁴ (Selderhuis 2015: 9).
This endorsed the Catechism’s standing in the Reformed world as well as the
pedagogic value of its distinctive, human experiential structure of guilt, grace, and
gratitude—the subjective side of the Covenant of Grace.
There were also Scottish catechisms in Latin for use in grammar schools.
Influential was the 1595 Rudimenta pietatis (forty-one questions plus prayer
samples) by Andrew Duncan (c.1560–1626), grammarian, educationist, minister,
then professor of theology in France (Torrance 1959: 279–81). There were previ-
ous Scottish Latin catechisms. A metrical version of the Genevan Catechism,
Catechismus Latino carmine redditus (Catechism Put Into Latin Verse) (373
questions), was published in 1573 by Patrick Adamson (1537–92).⁵ Also in 1573
a smaller metrical catechism in iambic verse, Parvus catechismus (Little Catech-
ism), was produced by the churchman and author, Robert Pont (1524–1606).⁶
This was a shorter catechism (forty-one questions) designed for pre-Communion
use by youths with Latin. It was also based on Calvin’s fourfold structure in the
1542 Genevan Catechism. This, as in the Institutes, followed the themes of faith
or belief (Apostles’ Creed), Christian living under the Gospel and the Law (Ten
Commandments), prayer (Lord’s Prayer), and the sacraments (Jacobs 1959:
24–36; Torrance 1959: xii–xiii).
Lastly, there was input from Robert Rollock. The first was his 1596 catechism of
102 questions on God’s covenant: Quaestiones et responsiones aliquot de foedere
Dei (Some Questions and Answers Concerning God’s Covenant), now accessible
in English (Denlinger 2009). The second is an instructive text for theology
students that Rollock inserted into his 1593 Romans commentary (Analysis)
between chap. 8:30 and 31. It was among loci or Ramist-style epitomes dealing
with various doctrinal heads. This was ‘On the Sacrament’ in relation to the
Covenant—a somewhat side-lined topic in the study of Rollock and of evolving
Reformed orthodoxy (Hazlett 2016: 254–5; Muller 2016: 174). It also is now
available in English (Denlinger 2013).

Backdrop of Reformed Theology and Confessions

Since confessional and catechetical material used in post-1560 Scotland belonged

to the relatively commodious Reformed genre, we will sketch its general nature for

⁴ That is: the Canons of Dort, the Belgic (Dutch) Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism.
⁵ Chaplain to the Scottish Regent, and later archbishop of St Andrews. He also translated the Scots
Confession into Latin (1572).
⁶ Provost of Trinity College, Edinburgh, at the time. Six-times Moderator and co-author of the
Second Book of Discipline (1578).
196  

orientation (Allen 2016; Backus and Benedict 2011: 1–21; Busch 2003; Campi
2014: 57–81, 151–68; Campi and Kirby 2016; Jacobs 1959; Muller 2000a, 2000b:
3–17, 2004, 2016: 168–70; Nimmo 2016; Rohls 1998, 2003). All the Scottish texts
belong to this brand. It can be characterized under (a) status and role, (b) form, (c)
historical profile, and (d) theological nucleus.
(a): The doctrinal status and role of Reformed confessions and catechisms was
mostly well understood, if not always explicitly expressed. They were subordinate
and replaceable statements of testimony (expository or dialogical) to belief
responding to the revealed Word of God in Scripture—the ‘oracles of God’
(Hebrews 5:12). The new media claimed to recover ‘true religion’ and provide a
road map to divine truth and salvation. They were human aids to understanding.
Beliefs necessary for salvation are only those found in Scripture or proven by it, the
supreme authority in faith and worship, as affirmed in the Thirty-Nine Articles,
art. 6, and the Aberdeen Confession, arts. [8–11].⁷ And although Reformed
confessions had a common biblical fons et origo along with an imperative to
witness, none could bind the conscience. This facilitated liberty of expression
and some doctrinal variation. There was no Reformed ecclesiastical headquarters
or magisterium. There was no sovereign, confessional monolith, individual or
school commanding total allegiance (Muller 2000b: 6). Instead, confessional
proliferation obtained in the vacuum, although by the time of the Synod of Dort
(1618/19) a common mind or consensus functioning as a hypothetical doctrinal
norm wary of permissive diversity was emerging (Dennison 2008–14: 4.152–3;
Foresta 2015: 196–8). Yet while aspirations to regulated consensus, harmony, and
uniformity were expressed, no Reformed, single, universally joint declaration on
all key theological topics materialized; there remained nothing equivalent to the
status of the decrees, the Confession and Catechism of the Council of Trent
(1545–66) (Pelikan and Hotchkiss 2004: 821–74), or of the corpus of authoritative
texts included in the 1580 Lutheran Book of Concord (Pelikan and Hotchkiss 2004:
29–203).
Compared to its Lutheran sibling, confessional Reformed theology was not
confessionalistically immured. Reformed confessions had no claim to be compre-
hensive, universal, or authoritative digests of symphonic Reformed theology
(although the Second Helvetic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism were
highly prestigious). In an international and polycultural context, identifying
marks of Reformed confessions within limits were: fluidity, pluralism, multipli-
city, heterogeneity, and provisional relativism (‘we, here, now, confess this’). They
were a working consensus and a moving mosaic, but within agreed orthodox

⁷ This Confession’s articles were unnumbered—numbers here and throughout are from Hazlett
(2020).
     . 197

parameters determined by foundational Reformation doctrines. This pattern was

contingent and fortuitous, not a strategy. The statements reflected a recognizable
religious climate rather than a fixed dogmatic canon. Such documents were ad
hoc, occasional texts with a DNA of territorial particularity (rather than univer-
sality), provisionality, conditionality, and conscious fallibility. This implied that
that there was no definitive interpretation of Scripture on everything. The Scots
Confession’s preface made the point, echoing Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles
(1523), the Synod of Berne’s Foreword (1532), the First Confession of Basel
(1534), the Latin (1536) and English (1548) versions of the First Helvetic Confes-
sion (1536). However, that confessions only embodied what certain people at
particular times made of Scripture was also unambiguously maintained by (some)
Lutherans, as in the 1577 Formula of Concord (Pelikan and Hotchkiss 2003: 169).
(b): On the form of Reformed confessions there was no prescriptive template,
so that structural variations abounded. In Scotland, for example, the short 1581
King’s (or Negative) Confession is not obviously conventional. Its core just
catalogues anathematized Catholic beliefs and practices. It has been usually
overlooked by later historians, however, that its author, Craig, placed the Confes-
sion at the end of his lengthy Catechism for pedagogic reasons. Normally the
Apostles’ Creed undergirded most Reformed confessions. This resulted in two,
commonly constitutive, elements enabling thematic flexibility. First, the re-
affirmation of ancient Christian beliefs, and second, contemporary controversial
topics like Scripture, Law, Gospel, justification, sacraments, etc. Systematically, the
binding chain became: God doctrine (or Scripture), anthropology, Christology,
soteriology, ecclesiology (plus sacraments), eschatology, and civil authority. The
Scottish confessions of 1560 and 1616 reflect this sequence, as do catechisms.
(c): On historical profile: sixteenth-century Reformed confessions implicitly
steered a discernible path between the perceived two poles of Reformed theology:
Zurich and Geneva, personalized as Zwingli/Bullinger and (Bucer)/Calvin
(Stewart 2017). Any dissensus was mitigated by the Zurich Consensus (1549)
between Bullinger and Calvin—chiefly in relation to sacramental theology (Jacobs
1959: 36–9; Campi and Kirby 2016; Nimmo 2016: 88). Henceforth a tacit
Reformed concord prevailed on that. Unity and solidarity in the face of both
Catholic and Lutheran repudiation was a major factor. And as Calvin wrote to
Berne that year: unity of faith, sharing the same Gospel and mutual fellowship
transcended any ‘diversity of Church authority’ (Campi and Kirby 2016: 31–2).
This did not require a common theological position on all matters, but it consoli-
dated a common lexicon. It facilitated reconciled difference on sacramental
understanding as well as latitude on Church–State relations, ecclesiology, predes-
tination, covenant, worship, etc. Semantically the modus vivendi enabled the later
term, ‘Reformed’, to supersede the restrictive ‘Zwinglian’ and ‘Calvinist’ (Muller
2016: 169). Hence, while the Scots Confession has a predominantly Genevan
flavour on dogmatic matters, elements in it also echo the Zurich Consensus
198  

(sacraments as signs and ‘seals’ of the Covenant exercising faith). In short,

acceptance of Reformed theology in Scotland (and England) did not exclude a
degree of internal preferences (MacCulloch 2007: 914–17).
(d): Definition of the nucleus of distinctively Reformed teaching is elusive due
to its evolving and mutating nature; identification can be distorted by chronology,
screenshots, retrospective imaging, and teleological assumptions. Various inter-
pretative models are on offer. One is the fivefold-alone badge: Scripture alone,
faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, God alone—all of which exclude human
merit in salvation. But since these are common Reformation principles and
obvious in the Scottish documents, such an identity card is insufficiently desig-
nated as ‘Reformed’.
Another fivefold formula, TULIP, was narrowly schematic and devised by later
Reformed high orthodoxy: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atone-
ment (selective or particularist salvation), irresistible grace, and perseverance of
the saints—concepts underlying the Canons of the Synod of Dort. Some have seen
the formula as more stringently ‘Calvinist’ than inclusively Reformed; others have
wondered how far ‘Calvin’ would recognize it. Current research suggests the
following: far from being innovative, the Dort theology with its refined, infralap-
sarian, technically single predestinarian thrust (positive election of some with
reprobation of the rest understood as implicit and passive rejection, and so by
‘preterition’ rather than explicit divine damnation in a prior, double decree) was
perfectly compatible with covenant theology (Muller 1985: 119–22, 243; van
Asselt 2016: 225; cf. Weber 1966: 376). It was accepted and defended by Zurich
theologians at Dort. It corresponded to the predestination notions adumbrated or
expressed in Reformed confessions (Muller 1985: 234–5, 292). Rather than licens-
ing the sharply scholastic Calvinism of supralapsarian double predestination—an
alternative Reformed doctrine (Franciscus Gomarus)—the Synod of Dort dis-
tanced itself from it (Selderhuis 2015: 88, 90).
A third model is also available. This construct is a ninefold, scholastic and
linear ‘order of salvation’ orchestrated by God. It refers to the hypothetical
sequence in time of causes and effects culminating in salvation: calling, regen-
eration, adoption, conversion, faith, justification, renewal, sanctification, and
perseverance (Weber 1966: 355–406; Muller 1985: 215–16; Muller 2012; Allen
2016: 37–9). Reformed theologians devised this ultimately out of two beliefs.
First: the eternal decree of election to salvation executed in time, and second:
the promises, sacrificial signs, and seals of a Covenant of Grace synthesizing
Law and Gospel in the lives of unmarked elect believers gratefully practising the
‘third use of the Law’ as the expected ethical norm (Muller 2012: 161–243). No
confession articulated the order of salvation systematically. But it can be traced
within them, including the Scottish confessions—especially the accentuation
of sanctification and Spirit-powered automatic ‘good works’ flowing from
justification (Weber 1966: 362–4). This was evident in the Scots Confession
     . 199

(chaps. 13 and 14), the Aberdeen Confession art. [27], and Canons of Dort,
First Head, nos. 12 and 13.
Lastly, Reformed thinking is marked by its focus on the ecclesial dimension in
the process of salvation (Eßer 1997: 411–16; Allen 2016: 40–3). Both the creedal
‘Catholic Church’ and the ‘communion of saints’ are the partly secular, partly
celestial cradle and socio-spiritual community enabling the divine will for human
salvation to be accomplished through the entire mystical body of Christ. Accord-
ingly, ‘ecclesiology’ in Reformed theology looks far beyond the monodimensional
visible Church, which is indivisibly linked to the invisible one. Following the
typically Reformed affirmation of the intrinsic unity of the Old and New Testa-
ments, and so Law and Gospel, the Church is woven into election and Christology;
the covenanted ecclesia originates with Adam/Eve and Abraham in anticipation of
its revealed head—Christ crucified. The transcendent Church also extends back to
creation and has an eschatological destiny. True doctrine as the Word of God is
inseparable from the Spirit, who alone illuminates the Church’s understanding.
The marks of a visible Church, an imperfect image of the true invisible Church,
need to be defined to demarcate it from a false Church, even if the number of
marks has varied in Reformed traditions. Church order and discipline were seen
by some as a requisite third mark of the Church’s essence, since the true Church is
not wholly beyond, and the holiness of the visible Church is insecure. Scottish
theological voices assented to this third mark—but not unanimously, as the
Aberdeen Confession silently revealed.

Highlights of Scottish Confessional, Catechetical,

and Teaching Material

Scottish productions exhibit the thought-world just delineated. The essential

doctrines of the 1560 Scots Confession reflect early Church Catholic (Nicene-
Chalcedonian and Augustinian) orientation on the one hand, and Reformation
concerns on the other (Barth 1938; Hazlett 1987, 2009). Although performative
(‘we believe, we confess’), proclamatory, evangelical and eschatological rather than
expository or analytic, the chief recognizable guide is Calvin. This reflects at least
Knox as co-author. The immediate giveaway of Genevan roots is that chapter 1 is
on God, whereas confessions of Zurich and English provenance begin with
Scripture. Another genetic similarity to Calvin is the Gospel–Law sequence rather
than Law–Gospel as in Luther and Bullinger. Yet the confession does not simply
mimic Genevan theology or constitute ‘Calvinism’ as later understood. It is more
of an obvious family resemblance. More reminiscent of the Zurich theology,
election (in Christ) is a theme (chap. 8). In addition, there are passing references
to the ‘eternal and immutable decree’ (chap. 7) and the ‘reprobate’ (chaps. 8, 17, 25),
but there is no thematic predestinarian theology. This has prompted speculation
200  

about Knox’s alleged reticence (MacLean 2015). However, no contemporary

confession or catechism addressed the topic. Instead, three chapters (9–11)
emphasize the Christocentric ground of redemption as the crucified, risen, and
ascended body of Jesus Christ.
There are non-Calvin features, such as discipline defined as a third mark of the
(visible) Church’s essence (chap. 18). There is a stress on the exercise (suppres-
sion) rather than the spiritual end of discipline. Predominantly, unqualified
notions of obedience to the civil rulers are expressed, so that overall coherence
on the topic is absent. Other aspects slightly distort Calvin presentationally, such
as highlighting ‘regeneration and sanctification’ to the neglect of justification in a
manner that might encourage moralism. Hence the uninhibited affirmation not of
expected, but inevitable ‘good works’ (chaps. 13–15). Yet these are not meritori-
ous, since righteousness is only imputed; rather they are necessary godly fruits
of the Spirit in serving others and combating social and economic injustice in
society—a major theme in the Zurich Reformation. Moreover, the expressed total
depravity notion (chap. 3) does not quite correspond to Calvin’s more nuanced
anthropology.
The confession’s inclusion of a proto-covenant theology of salvation history,
also derived from Zurich theology, is an innovation in Reformed confessions
anticipating future developments. Extraordinary is the attention (chaps. 21–23)
devoted to the Eucharist. Compatible with the Zurich Consensus (1549) between
Calvin and Bullinger, the sacrament as sign is an added-value seal of the Covenant
and does strengthen faith. However, the benefit is not just corporately spiritual.
For an ultimate corporal benefit is also affirmed. Following Calvin, the sacrament
is a ‘mystical action . . . wrought by the Holy Ghost’ of union with Christ by eating
and drinking his flesh and blood in a spiritual way that will also ultimately
transfigure human physical bodies in Christ. In line with Calvin and Luther, it is
‘Christ Jesus who alone makes the sacrament effective’ (chap. 21) in faith, but not
because of it.
That the Scottish Reformation was largely a preached-Word affair is thereby
not corroborated. The sacrament was seen as the visible Word in the Augustinian
sense and corporately acted out—hence the frequent designation of Communion
in Scotland as ‘the Action’ (Shaw 2001). Next-generation theologians like Robert
Bruce (c.1534–1631) strongly promoted an extra dimension in the Eucharist, since
‘you may get the same thing better than you had it in the Word’ (quoted in Wright
2004: 188), namely the ‘whole Christ’ in his humanity (Torrance 1996: 57). And if
subsequently, both covenant and decretal predestination theology seemed to make
the sacraments redundant or rites of passage, a corrective is in Robert Rollock’s
neglected excursus ‘On the Sacrament’ in his Romans Commentary (Denlinger
2013: 206–11): the Lord’s Supper is a necessary confirmation of the promises
of the Covenant of Grace (Elliott 2014: 115–16). And echoing Bruce, Rollock
remarks tellingly that the sacrament exposes participants to heavenly realities
‘better than the Word alone’ (208), for it ‘represents and applies certain heavenly
     . 201

realities more than the Word by itself can do . . . and produce greater faith in that
Word’ (210). The received ‘realities’ specified are the application of ‘Christ’s
substance, his cross, his benefits’.
Additionally, Rollock’s recovery of the concept of ‘sacramental union’ in
discussing the Augustinian notion of the union of the sacramental sign and the
reality signified is striking. ‘Unio sacramentalis’ (as against natural, local, carnal, or
physical union of Christ’s body with the signs) had originated in Luther as a
formula to apprehend the proper real presence of Christ’s true body, and then
developed by Martin Bucer as a mediating formula between Lutherans and
Zwinglians. The mature Reformed understanding relates not so much to any
elements-focused real presence of substances, as to union with Christ within the
entire sacramental framework—the larger ‘sign’ or ritual experience which fuses
the parallel heavenly and earthly realities.
On covenant theology, Rollock’s ‘catechism’ (for university students) succinctly
expounded two covenants shaping salvation history, one of pre-Fall works, the
other of grace (Denlinger 2009); the latter, dramatized in the Lord’s Supper, is the
overarching one, grounded in ‘the virtue and merit of Christ’s cross and satisfac-
tion’. Rollock’s treatment of the Covenant of Grace dialectically vis-à-vis the
Covenant of Works became exemplary. However, his promotion of covenant
theology should not be regarded as militating against predestinarianism, since in
his Romans commentary he affirms (in contrast to the future Dort canons) what
seems to be a supralapsarian double decree (Rollock 1594: 142).
While the King’s Confession (1581) is of historical interest and had significant
long-term impact through the future National Covenant, it is not a normal
confession (Hazlett 2012). Composed by John Craig, its form resembles a gov-
ernment communiqué reaffirming briefly the 1560 confession, but now adding a
long list of banned Catholic beliefs and practices. Modern editions do not publish
Craig’s appendix contrasting Scripture-friendly patristic testimonies with extracts
from allegedly Scripture-hostile, contemporary Catholic writers. The context of
the Confession was a perceived national crisis arising from anxiety about Catholic
infiltration and revival as well as fears about a general Catholic crusade in
the European geo-religious sphere. The text gained fame (or notoriety) around
1603 on King James’ accession to the English throne. For the Confession in his
name was republished by Protestant activists outside Scotland in English, Latin,
French, Dutch, and German. This was to project a militantly anti-Catholic James
internationally—against phoney news of his drift to Rome. The truth was that by
then he was envisaging a third way, a via media and ultimate church reunion, while
still committed to Reformed doctrines. That aside, the resonance of the King’s
Confession over several generations helped generate an uncompromising image of
Scottish Protestantism, so that it earned the name of the ‘Negative Confession’.
This was not completely fair, because in its early life it had always been
published as an appendix to ‘Craig’s Catechism’ (Torrance 1959: 99) designed to
elucidate core Reformation beliefs (Torrance 1996: 50–3). Craig’s dedication and
202  

preface reveal his thinking (Bonar 1866: 181–6). The catechism is a ‘spiritual
exercise’ for ‘the common people and children’ both to dispel ‘gross ignorance’
and to equip them to resist Catholic proselytizing. It is experimental, and not
meant to replace the (Genevan) catechism of the Kirk, but to supplement it and
assist the understanding of sermons. This reaffirms a paramount Reformation
concern reiterated by Craig—cognitive grasp of the faith rather than just rote
learning (Kayayan 2009: 630–1). He points out that his pedagogical model is
mostly the fourfold structure of the Genevan catechism, but in ‘fewer words’. The
result is a Christocentric ‘brief summe’ in the format of about 900 short questions
and answers—a masterpiece of condensation, ‘a hard thing’, he stated. Craig also
reaffirmed Calvin’s prestige in Scotland by recommending the Institutes.
Craig mentioned two innovations in his catechism. First, the initial sections are
on anthropology. This is borrowed from the Heidelberg Catechism’s point of
departure: the dysfunctional human condition. Second, the last section avails of
the order of salvation. In doing this he departed from Reformed catechetical
practice by also introducing both election and eschatological judgement including
damnation of the wicked—due to their sins, however, rather than prior eternal
decrees. This is tacit single predestination, but not even the word ‘predestination’
is mentioned.
Lastly: there is the proposed ‘New Confession’ (Aberdeen Confession) of 1616,
neither definitively authorized nor published at the time, yet a weather vane of
fresh developments. It emanated from a largely episcopalian General Assembly at
Aberdeen in 1616 (Foster 1975: 126–32; Hazlett 2020: Introduction). This ushered
in the king’s vision of reforming the Scottish Reformation along Church
of England lines, combining updated Reformed theology and repudiation of
Roman Catholic doctrine with irenicism, liturgical ritual, more systematic and
succinct theological formulation, enhanced episcopacy, and Aristotelian revival
(Gordon 2002; Thompson 2010).
The king urged a new confession of faith, a new catechism, a new liturgy, higher
ecclesiastical courts, and the restructuring of university theology faculties. Little
got off the drawing board. What did materialize was a draft confession, arising out
of preliminary work. The assembly remitted it to a subcommittee for revision
prior to publication that included Robert Howie, principal of St Mary’s College,
St Andrews, who had been involved in earlier confessional initiatives. The con-
fession then vanished for reasons not yet fully appreciated, only to re-emerge,
unrevised, in 1678 in radical presbyterian David Calderwood’s posthumous True
History. He had been present at Aberdeen in 1616 and identified the principal
drafters of the text as two Edinburgh ministers, John Hall and John Adamson
(Hazlett 2020: Introduction; Reid 2014: 134).⁸

⁸ Adamson later became principal of the Edinburgh College. Hall was constant moderator, that is,
quasi-bishop of Edinburgh Presbytery.
     . 203

The goal seems to have been an updated, more succinct, less obviously
polemical version than the Scots Confession—minus cluttering biblical references.
The apparent stylistic model was the English Thirty-Nine Articles, according to
Archbishop John Spottiswoode (Hazlett 2020: Introduction), but contemporary
Protestant scholastic trends were also a factor. The content echoed Reformed
developments designed to fortify fundamental doctrines and confessional bound-
aries (Foresta 2015: 195–6). These were already evident in the Churches of
England (Lambeth Articles, 1595) and Ireland (Irish Articles of Religion, 1615)
as well as the imminent Synod of Dort.
Five examples follow: First: full-blown double predestination is briefly affirmed,
abandoning traditional reticence in Reformed confessional contexts. As in the
English and Irish texts, predestination appears in the context of the very first
article in the Aberdeen Confession, on God, and follows both medieval tradition
and Reformers like Luther, Zwingli, and Beza (Weber 1966: 466–9; Muller 2011:
13). This is not, therefore, a feature solely attributable to ‘Calvinist orthodoxy’. Yet
in the Reformed context it did reflect a drift to supra- or prelapsarian predestin-
ation notions which were not endorsed by the infralapsarian Synod of Dort.
Second: Reformed sacramental consensus in the framework of a basic covenant
theology is evident in articles [30–43]. There, the sacraments are subordinate to
predestination and to ‘God’s eternal covenant’ as ‘seals of it’ [32], but also
strengthen faith uniquely and necessarily (Hazlett 2016: 254)—and in the sense
compatible with Rollock’s teaching.
Third: as in the ‘order of salvation’, there are emphases on expected sanctifica-
tion following justification [27] by the righteousness of Christ rather than by faith
which is the instrument only; also cited is the certainty of salvation [29] in the elect
who, belonging to the true Catholic Church, are or will be (effectually) called to
eternal life in Christ [6 and 45] (Hazlett 2016: 244)
Fourth: there is, arguably, implicit repudiation of a soteriological God–human
synergism emerging in some international Reformed circles: Arminianism
[24–26], seen by some as the new semi-Pelagianism. This had just a whispering
presence at this time in some Scottish circles only allegedly attracted to the more
optimistic anthropology of Catholic tradition, the real cause of anxiety among
orthodox Kirk custodians (Mullan 2000: 211–18).
Lastly: the absence of discipline as a mark of the Church is in line with broader
Reformation thinking. Instead, like Calvin, the Lutheran Augsburg Confession,
the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Irish Articles, nurturing ecclesial faith is
uniquely the work of preaching and the sacraments [30]. However, advanced
presbyterian thinking required Church discipline, in the sense of a conciliar
system of governance based on ministerial and presbyterial parity, as a defining
mark to safeguard autonomy and corporate authority in the visible Church.
The draft Aberdeen Confession became a dead letter for reasons not immedi-
ately obvious, although its still-birth was sealed by the future reconfirmation of the
204  

1560 Confession at the strongly presbyterian Glasgow General Assembly in 1638.

Yet the 1616 Confession not only mirrored contemporary developments and
issues, but also anticipated future conflicts. Certainly, on soteriology it was part
of trajectory of developing doctrinal definition (influenced by Ramist and rational
exposition); it led from the Lambeth Articles and the Irish Articles to the Synod of
Dort and ultimately the Westminster Confession. The process did not require
absolute uniformity in either formulation or content: like the Irish Articles, the
Aberdeen Confession presented full double predestination, whereas Dort and
Westminster expressed more of a single and still unconditional predestination
of the elect with the non-elect passed over—reprobation by preterition or omis-
sion. This variation, including contrasting understandings of the extent of the
atonement, reflected a degree of latitude within Reformed orthodox parameters,
and thus within Scotland as well, where advocates of various positions were found
(Mullan 2000: 223–5).

Afterword

There is the question of the authority of the Dort canons in Scotland. There was
no Scottish General Assembly for nearly twenty years after the Dordrecht synod
to endorse them; but the 1638 Glasgow Assembly minute was to refer to
the ‘venerable Assembly of Dort’, suggesting approval of its decisions. Theolo-
gians like several of the episcopalian ‘Aberdeen Doctors’ including Robert Baron
(1596–1639), wrongly suspected of Arminian sympathies, addressed the Dort
canons very positively (Denlinger 2015: 97). He found them compatible with his
thinking, categorized now as ‘hypothetical universalism’—whereby Christ’s death
was for everyone, but only particularly effective for the unconditionally predes-
tined elect, so that the outcome of the atonement remained limited by divine
choice.
That apart, the matter of seeming Scottish non-representation at Dort has been
reopened. The traditional view was that ‘Scotland was not represented at Dort’
(Mullan 2000: 216). The argument was that while there was indeed a Scot present
at the Synod, Walter Balcanquahall (c.1586–1645) from Cambridge University, he
was there as part of the English delegation. However, recent study affirms that
Balcanquahall’s role was to represent the Church of Scotland (albeit as a stand-in
for a delegation that was impeded by adverse weather) and as part of a joint
‘British’ delegation. The Kirk’s specific representation is confirmed by new evi-
dence from Balcanquahall himself, the Synod organizers, King James, and the
archbishop of Canterbury (Milton 2005).⁹

⁹ Pp. xxvii n. 43, 52, 148–50, 152 n. 18, 182.

     . 205

While in seventeenth-century Scotland the shibboleth, ‘Arminian’, was viral

and bandied about as a smear word for anyone with whom some people disagreed
on a range of issues, three points need finally to be made. First: any pretended
manifestation of Arminianism in Scotland needs to be assessed by taking into
account the differences between (a) the authentic Arminius conceiving of a synergy
between divine and autonomous human wills with an implied positive anthropol-
ogy, (b) the subsequent and more advanced Dutch Remonstrant theology including
resistible grace especially damned at Dort (Stanglin 2016: 387–94), (c) so-called
‘native English’ (or ‘Anglican’), vague, open-minded Arminianism or plain ‘anti-
Calvinism’ reflected among some in Scotland under the influence of Archbishop
William Laud and others claiming that the Thirty-Nine Articles were ambiguous
and thus permissive, and (d) later radical Arminianism of a definite semi-Pelagian
kind alien to Arminius, and also often associated with the Christological heterodoxy
of Socinianism. Second: in accord with the Reformed understanding of confessions,
they are not infallible, so that any ‘definition’ remained provisional and mutable.
Third: in the early decades of the seventeenth century, there were no openly
Arminian theologians in Scotland (Mullan 2000: 216–26). But it was talked about,
especially by Scots who had also studied abroad. Such conversations were for the
purposes of refutation, it would seem. Contemporary rumours and accusations
about perceived Arminian, and so ‘un-Reformed’, sympathies in some (nearly
always episcopalians)’ have not yet been substantiated. There was no obvious divide
in Scotland over grace and election at the time. The virtual Lydian stone of
orthodoxy became church polity—a topic absent from Scottish confessions and
catechisms before the National Covenant of 1638. Passions and polemics meant that
for many strictly orthodox Reformed in Scotland with a priori presbyterian con-
victions, episcopacy was a magnet that attracted Arminianism, Erastianism and
‘arbitrary’ civil power over the Church, ritualistic liturgy, popery, moral slackness,
alien English aesthetics, irenicism and notions of religious toleration, etc. Accord-
ingly, issues became most definitely very confused in a combative, chaotic world of
increasingly fake news. The Reformed consensus of shared soteriological param-
eters, common confessions, and catechisms did little to dispel that.

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 15
Spiritual Theology in Bruce, Howie,
Johnston, Boyd, and Leighton
Mark W. Elliott

Distinct from the objectivism of Biblicist and confessional majority and those
who would appeal to patristic tradition, there was a thread of theological writing
that moved from Christian experience as a starting point or touchstone of their
practice-focused theology. In these writers the element of the subjective is as much
a legacy of the Renaissance as of Reformation piety and Puritan anxious con-
sciences, but it was ecclesial, not individualistic. What is important is that while
confessional debates framed their discourse, the genre of theology was not
stamped by consideration of these—in fact it attempted to provide a theology
on topics of practical use for believers.

Robert Bruce (1554–1631)

Bruce came from a family of gentry at Airth and was educated in Civil Law at
Louvain after an MA at St Andrews; but he resolved to enter the ministry after a
nocturnal vision in which he saw himself move from the category of accused
before the Court of Justice to that of one acquitted by the Court of Mercy. Already
when training under Andrew Melville at St Mary’s College from 1583 he was
reputed as an exegete and preacher. He was in demand at the General Assembly
from 1586 onwards, and this specialist activity might have delayed his full
ordination to parish ministry, which Robert Rollock would hold against him on
there being a vacuum in the Kirk’s leadership in the years just before 1600. The
Sermons given at St Giles in 1589 predate the flourishing of federal theology in
Scotland. The irony is that these were given by one who was not yet ordained to be
Minister of Word and Sacrament. At first a favourite of King James, within twelve
months he would have to flee to England after protesting about the royal friend-
ship with the Catholic Huntly (whom Bruce called ‘Barabbas’), then be reconciled
at court and ‘re-ordained’ in 1598, playing the role of royal confessor, only to fall
out of favour and be exiled, first to his own house at Kinnaird in 1600, and then to
Inverness in 1605. With Charles I’s accession he was allowed to remain and preach
at Larbert (Wodrow 1754: 316). With a debt to Amos 3:8 he proclaimed: ‘When

Mark W. Elliott, Spiritual Theology in Bruce, Howie, Johnston, Boyd, and Leighton. In: The History
of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson
and Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0015
   , , , ,   211

the lion roareth, all the beasts of the field are at ease; the Lion of Judah is now
roaring, in the voice of his Gospel, and it becomes all the petty kings of the earth to
be silent.’ He is said to have converted Alexander Henderson through a sermon on
John 10:4 and was present at Shotts in 1630 during the ‘down-pouring of spirit’
(Wodrow 1754: 198).
The Eucharistic sacrament is interpreted in terms of spiritual nutrition, since
it affords strength, consolation, and sovereign medicine for all spiritual diseases,
while allowing hearty thanks to be rendered. Baptism signifies Christ’s blood that
washed away filth, while the Supper signifies the body and blood’s nourishing of
the soul. Compared with baptism it communicates more of Christ and is more
forward looking, anticipating increase in faith and sanctification. ‘The thing
signified is the substance, that is, the Body and Blood of Christ is the substance,
out of which this growth in faith and holiness proceeds’ (Bruce 1958: 75). Christ
and his institution provide power, and one should always in all ceremonial
actions think of what effect Christ is having on one’s soul. The conjunction
between Christ’s body and the bread happens in the mind’s faith. As soon as one
sees the bread taken into the hand of the minister, immediately the Body of
Christ must come into one’s mind. ‘You get a better grip of the same thing in the
sacrament than you get by the hearing of the Word. So where I had but a little
grip of Christ before, as it were, between my finger and my thumb, now I get
him in my whole hand, and indeed the more my faith grows the better grip
I get of Christ Jesus’ (84). Frequent communion is profitable. Unbelievers do not
receive him but they do drink the bread and wine unworthily and are guilty for
that (86).
There is an intensity of physical expression that reinforces the application of
Christ to the soul. The Spirit gives the believer access to Christ who is in heaven at
a distance. The Supper which comes down from above to earth is attached to the
covenant, just as a seal gives us title. ‘If any of you has a piece of land lying in the
farthest part of Orkney, if you have a good title to it, the distance of place cannot
hurt it. I may truly say He is my property’ (93). One receives title to him in the
Word, and in the Sacrament one gets confirmation of one’s title. The Body sits at
the Father’s right hand: ‘yet he is mine and is delivered to me because I have the
right to His Body wherever it may be’ (93). It is just like how the distant Sun can
reach us with its rays.
It seems that Bruce believed some sort of accommodation to weak human
senses was necessary, and that is why there is a visible and tangible aspect to the
Eucharist. That was one reason why fraction was all important (Spinks 2002: 52).
For the benefit of the soul, the believer’s body and Christ’s body are ‘conjoined by
the virtue and power that flow from his body. By all means try to get faith, so that
as Peter says (Acts15:9) your hearts and consciences may be sanctified by faith.’
Bruce worries that spiritual experience remains at the level of cognition. But he
quickly follows this with an equal emphasis that ‘faith, is the gift of God, sent
212  . 

down into the hearts and minds of men and wrought in their souls by the mighty
working and operation of the Holy Spirit’ (96).
Again, even before one gets to the sermons of application, in the third sermon
(also called ‘The Lord’s Supper in Particular’), Bruce reminds his reader to do two
things at communion: to call to remembrance the bitter death and passion and
just as importantly, to believe ‘this was for me’. There is to be a ‘firm belief and
true applying of the merits of the death and passion of Christ to my own
conscience in particular’ (98). Bruce paraphrases Luke 8:46 (‘for I know that
power has gone out from Me’) as ‘who has drawn a virtue and power out of me.
The multitude does not take virtue from me like that.’ Or, where John 6:44 speaks
of the requirement that the Spirit draw believers, the term ‘draw’ means some-
thing like the ‘quickening’ of something dead.
His rejection of ‘ubiquity’ is of the Catholic form of the doctrine, where Christ is
believed to be sacrificed on many altars simultaneously. To reinforce the doctrine
that Christ qua human is truly above, not ‘everywhere’ he quotes Augustine, To
Dardanus and the 146th Epistle (120). Moreover, God will not abolish the laws of
physics or bodies or of logical contradiction: something cannot be both bread and
body; Christ’s body cannot be both visible and invisible, or local and not local.
Logical contradiction strains much more than miracle, for it is contradictory
to laws of nature with which Scripture agrees. For Christ’s body to be glorified
(1 Corinthians 15:42) means that it lacks corruption, not that it will undergo
further change. If one is to celebrate the Supper after the pattern of the Last
Supper, how can Christ have been literally immolating himself (130)? Bruce’s
point is that the Catholics are literalists who rely on natural reason, which cannot
bear the weight of the matter.
Bruce’s contribution was constructively to emphasize the spiritual effects of
communion rather than the forms proper to a right Eucharistic theology. Bruce
emphasized: the Lord’s Supper as communicating the full Christ (with a link to his
‘active obedience’); the requirement of faith for spiritual connection to Christ in
the Supper and for understanding it; bodily means of grace and accommodation
to humans; frequent reception of the sacrament builds up faith in order to receive
the Word, and application was of more interest than the establishment of any
liturgical features.

Robert Howie (1565–1641) and John Johnston (1565–1611)

Howie was trained at King’s College in his home city of Aberdeen, and after a year
in Rostock with his boyhood friend John Johnston moved to the Herborn of
Olevianus and Piscator, where he remained from 1585 to 1588. By May 1588, he
had matriculated at Basel and was mature enough to defend theses by local
theologian Simon Grynaeus. He then produced his own theses, and in 1591
   , , , ,   213

published De reconciliatione hominis cum Deo, which runs to 150 quarto pages.
Back in Scotland his publishing would go into abeyance, first through his involve-
ment in establishing Marischal College and being its first Principal, and then by
accepting a pastoral charge in Dundee; although, by 1605 his criticisms of synod
and Privy Council resulted in him being banned from that city. He came to rely on
King James’ patronage, who in turn called on him to replace the exiled Andrew
Melville as Principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews, over the head of Johnston.
Howie fully took over the reins at St Mary’s in 1611, by which time Johnston had
died, their relationship latterly strained by Howie’s Episcopalianism and his
preferment. The last entry (1612: 283) in the Records of the university, which
looks to be in Howie’s hand, is ‘The manner of taking degrees’, a reproduction of
Melanchthon’s Statuta Collegii facultatis Theologicae in Academis Wittenbergensi.
In 1617 on the occasion of the king’s only return visit to Scotland, Howie wrote
some theses to specify the royal prerogative regarding the Church. For all Howie’s
Episcopalian sympathies, his theology remained sufficiently Reformed, so much
that his student Patrick Copland was regarded as staunchly orthodox by King’s
College, Aberdeen. When Charles I’s attempt to control the Church overreached
itself, Howie easily made common cause with the Covenanters in the late 1630s.
Johnston had written (in Letter X to Piscator, 8 September 1589; Cameron
1979: 35) that the Eucharistic bread and wine are signs of the real body and blood
toward which they point, and that this is true symbolism, whereas Piscator and
Howie, by association, negated the existence of Christ’s body by teaching that his
body only existed metonymically in the Eucharist. In the same letter to Piscator,
Johnston commented that Howie had become ‘very narrow’, as though there
could be no theology without a covenantal scheme. Surely there is more to
theology than however many covenants, quipped Johnston.
Howie was indeed exercised by that pre-eminent sign of the covenant, the
Lord’s Supper, but also by the prevalent belief in the imputation of Christ’s active
obedience to believers, in line with the Palatinate ‘Covenant of Works’ theology.
(See Letter III from Basel, 17 November 1588; Cameron 1979: 273–6.) In disput-
ing this, J. Piscator had Pareus and the Heidelberg theologians—bar Daniel
Tossanus—on his side. Piscator was ‘Lutheran’ on this matter; Grynaeus was
resolutely Reformed and opposed, as was possibly Beza, although the latter did
not want to take sides and also spoke of his disinclination to have Christ’s
obedience split by speaking in terms of active and passive. Yet to be a passive
sacrifice Christ had to be holy in action. While the up-and-coming Reformed
leader Polanus saw this as part of Christ’s being the second Adam, for Piscator,
Christ as mediator was simply obligated to obey the law during his lifetime; only
his suffering unto death was supererogatory, hence meritorious (Bos 1932: 7–8).
As of 17 November 1588 (Letter III; Cameron 1979: 273–6), Howie declared his
support for Piscator, that in John 17 Christ says he sanctifies himself only for us,
not on behalf of us, as Olevianus had put it. This leaves room for the Spirit
214  . 

working with believers towards sanctification. Christ’s voluntary obedience shone

out most in his ‘passive’ death. Tossanus had passed on Piscator’s unpublished
Theses XII de Justificationis Hominis coram Deo to Grynaeus. In Howie’s
De iustificatione hominis coram Deo (Basel, 1590) he asserts that there is no
doubt that sanctification has a sequence: those effectively called are sanctified
from out of the world and by faith those imputed for righteousness are justified.
This is all from Christ who is justification, sanctification, redemption (1 Cor. 1:30;
Heb. 2:11). The conclusion is (VII) that believers are obliged to complete sancti-
fication out of the fear of God with help from divine commands, since sanctifica-
tion is ‘ours’ by the imputation of the utmost purity of the flesh of Christ. The
analogy is that of breathing: the exercise of sanctification comes naturally yet at
the same time is voluntary, and ought to be continued whether in adverse or
favourable conditions (headwind or following wind). The theologian is called to
remind believers to work out and perfect their inherent and inchoate righteous-
ness. Mortification of the flesh is not an essential cause of light but is like a
condition without which God the Spirit cannot vivify someone. There is an
unlikeness between breathing and sanctification, because the former is snuffed
out at death, whereas the latter is never extinguished. It is unclear how he thinks
sanctification happens post-mortem.
By 1591 it seems that Howie’s interest had turned to the Lord’s Supper viewed
within a covenantal framework. He prefaced this with a letter to Johnston (Letter
XI, 20 January 1591; Cameron 1979: 293–8) summing up his work:

The first part concerns Christ’s merit and efficacy, i.e. his priesthood and
kingdom, which I call the substance of the covenant. The second is about the
word of God and the sacraments which are testimonies and seals of the covenant.
In dealing with the person of Christ the dogma of the ubiquity of the body of
Christ is noted and refuted. They thought up the monstrous ubiquity, as
though it ought not to seem a wonder that the body of Christ was in the
bread when he is everywhere in every creature of the world. They strengthened
the ubiquity further with prosyllogisms, namely the real communication of
idioms as they call it and some fictive majesty by which they avoid the truth of
the human nature in Christ, which nevertheless impudently they take also to be
sitting at the right hand.

Howie calls the merits and effects of Christ, i.e. of his priesthood and kingdom,
‘the substance of the covenant’; second, Jesus was clearly speaking figuratively. Do
they (Lutherans) not recognize that ‘the body is in the bread’ is metonymy, a figure
of speech?
Although not as expressly a pactum salutis, it could be that Howie’s idea of a
Trinitarian covenant of salvation went back behind Arminius. Reconciliation with
God is given in the external form of a covenant, so as to assure people that God
creates us anew into the image of himself through Christ. The gracious covenant is
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eternal and one. It involves the Trinity making promises for the benefit of human
confederates. The hope of grace and good things is proposed and confirmed by the
strength of this pact (Isa. 54:9; Ps. 89:29). Although God will not abandon this
covenant, he will also punish according to it. It is the same covenant as made with
the patriarchs and with David. It is not a new and different covenant that is set up
for the salvation of the human race. The covenant of creation and that of works
are the same thing, and the covenant with the patriarchs and the NT covenant are
indeed the same. Yet the New Covenant is not as hard as the old moral law (citra
Legis moralis duram exactionem: 27). There is also a difference in quantity
between dispensations: the amount of the Spirit (summa copia Spiritus) as the
prophets predicted (Joel 2:24), is larger. But there is to be no spirit/letter distinc-
tion that might make one think that the Lord gathered no fruit from the law since
none were turned towards him. The surfeit of grace in the New is not in the words
but in that the same Legislator honoured the preaching of the gospel by putting on
a new person (incarnation) (38).
Moving to the second part of the treatise, first, Howie positions himself between
the extremes of Stancaro (that Christ’s humanity only was the mediator) and
Osiander (that the deity alone was the mediator). He balks at the assertion of the
‘transfusion’ of the divine nature’s properties into the human nature (44). His
opponents wrongly take idiomata to belong to natures rather than to those of the
whole person. The deity which purifies from all sin is everywhere, but is infinite
while the human nature by its properties is not. Such natural properties cannot be
transfused, even as both cooperate to the same purpose (ἀποστέλεσμα). If Christ
can be present as a person, then he can do it in (only) one of his natures (46).
Deified flesh would simply not be human. Both natures must retain their
properties; Christ’s humanity simply received excellent gifts (50). When Paul
says that the fullness of deity dwelled in Christ, it does not mean an effusion of
some or many things (55). It is argued (by Lutherans) that Christ had an infinite
body while on earth so that he could have an infinite soul, and was all-wise and did
not have to wait until he was glorified. But the Cross was not glorious, so that
cannot be the case (56).
The metaphysical answer Howie gives is that the office of mediator belongs to
the person, not a nature: both natures or indeed ‘the whole person’ are to be
understood as humbled and exalted. How else could one understand 1 Peter 1:19
(the Lord has redeemed the Church by his own blood and was crucified)? It is
significant that Peter adds: Christ [person] suffered in the flesh (88). It is rather
hard to explain the benefits, thus Scripture is happy to use metaphors: light,
flower, store, patrimony, bread of life, water of life, foundation, our life (90).
Out of Christ’s satisfaction there follows a total liberty not only from the
ceremonial law but even from the moral law (98). For it has been fulfilled for all
elect and cannot be further resolved. Anyone who believes has what the law
requires, i.e. perfect obedience. The law exists for non-Christians to fulfil what
216  . 

they can of the covenant of creation and then works as a curse for those who
refuse.
Third, in his De predestinatione of later 1591 Howie writes that predestination
is the providence of God as concerns the determined fate of individuals. It relies
on God’s will for the sake of God’s glory in his creatures, and human salvation is
combined with this as the other end. There is no election of the saints outwith
Christ and his obedience (18). Reprobation really refers to the state of humanity as
it is, and is applied metonymically to the decree, implying an infralapsarian
perspective and Howie defends the moral character of God against the accusation
of cruelty, for God has the absolute right over all creatures just like a plectrum on a
lute. It would be more unjust if he did not punish sin (34).
The new confession of faith of the Aberdeen General Assembly of 1616 (see
Hazlett’s chapter in this volume) is claimed by J. Cameron (2004) at least in its
Eucharistic doctrine to be ‘in line with Howie’s manuscript work’, ‘Accuratus de
coenae domini tractatus’ (St Andrews University Library, MSS BV 8 24 H7). There
is a real presence communicated by the Spirit’s presence, which includes that
of Christ’s humanity in keeping with the priority of ‘imputed sanctification’. The
emphasis may have shifted a little away from the earlier sacramental realism.
Johnston’s Consolatio Christiana sub cruce (Leiden, 1609) and his Iambi sacri
(1611) (a series of meditations in hexameters on his illness, his wife’s decease,
and a deliverance from shipwreck) are worth a brief mention. The former is an
extended commentary on 2 Cor. 1:3–11, in which Johnston identifies with
the apostle in his sickness. More broadly this work concerns the Christian
life, wherein the divine attributes are to minister to us ‘sweetest consolations’
(Zanchius). If God’s goodness is the efficient cause of new life, then the consola-
tion and salvation of others in the body of Christ is the final cause. Cicero and
Seneca sought it—yet the apostle takes us from this universal condition through
to communion with the afflicted Christ. God will bring sunshine through clouds
even while they remain, or coolness in temptation’s heat wave. Trial under the
Cross brings faith to expression in prayer; knowing our weakness and God’s
power indwelling brings patience that confirms virtue. This is all based on the
objective consolation of Christ’s resurrection and in anticipation of resurrected
blessedness. Giving thanks in sadness is the right sacrifice.

Robert Boyd (1578–1627)

Boyd was taught by Ferme and Rollock at Edinburgh, but soon found himself
in the Bruce–Melville party to the extent that he chose exile, arriving in 1597 at
Tours where he associated with A. Rivet. Regent at Montauban, then ordained at
Verteuil in 1604, he was lured home in January 1615 to be Principal at Glasgow
and minister at Govan. He would not conform with the Five Articles of Perth
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(1618), which required a higher liturgical and Episcopalian confession. The matter
came to a head when at Easter Communion he opposed Archbishop Law because
Law had denied communion to three students who refused to kneel. He had a year
off between demitting in July 1621 and taking the job of Principal at Edinburgh
1622, for which the Town Council had appointed him without securing royal
approval. The royal word soon came: conform or resign, and in March 1523 after
four months in post he stepped down. He was offered his old job in Glasgow after
John Cameron’s sudden departure. Now he was prepared to conform in a docu-
ment of 25 October 1624, although he later apologized to Bruce about his futile
tergiversation after he was vetoed. Robert Baillie saw Boyd as practical divine, and
skilled in casuistry (Reid 1917: 138). His sacred poetry, such as the Hecatombe,
shows him turning towards the sweet Christ away from the horrors of chaos and
hell, promoting an ‘incarnational’ view of redemption (cf. Torrance 1996: 70).
Highlighting his pastoral bent is the fact that the commentary on Ephesians 4
starts on p. 423, with the whole commentary only finishing on p. 1236. In other
words, the more ‘practical’ second half receives twice the amount of attention as
Chapters 1–3. There are twenty folio pages devoted to discussing Ephesians 4:11
(pp. 490–510) on the fourfold office of ministry. The treatment of Chapter 6 is
disproportionate, beginning on p. 850 with Lecture 160. There is much said about
the nature of filial obedience on 6:1, which seems to have resonated with his
anxieties about discipline.
On Ephesians 3:6 (348) Boyd is clear that the plain sense of the mystery being
now revealed is the calling of the Gentiles and revelation of God’s mystery to
them. This came through apostolic preaching as well as the witness of the New
Testament prophets who had an ‘immediate’ revelation as well as a privileged
interpretation of the OT. One need not restrict the meaning of the verse to that
original sense however. And what matters now is seeing there is one mystical body
to enter into, a present reality situated between past promise or covenant and
future inheritance (350). God has given natural gifts to Gentiles so that they might
be drawn on by the Church in turn (351). At the end of the sermon, just before a
Trinitarian doxology, comes what looks very much like a call to mission. The
mystery has been proclaimed to the whole earth not only once by the apostles but
also has been established anew with the same knowledge into new lands, as if
recalled from exile after the horrid dark days of the Antichrist. The Father who has
called us with that holy calling has made us suited to participate in the destiny of
the saints in light.
The second example is on Eph. 5:22: the mysterium is the hidden reality which
has been revealed and may be symbolized by marriage, that of Christ and the
Church. One should not be confused by being told that the Greek Fathers called
the sacraments ‘mysteries’: Boyd (848) sets this quickly to one side. It means that
the word sacramentum does not really do justice to this arcane mystery. Augustine
is clear that marriage can be called a sacrament only in that it is that mystical
218  . 

signification of the sacred thing (mysticam illam rei sacrae significationem: Aug.,
De fide et operibus, 7).
Then, in that most significant Chapter 6 of Ephesians, Eph. 6:11 introduces the
Devil who, with his angels only comes into play once the Fall has happened
through human sin: only then did God grant him the reins of evil power, since
people are powerless to resist him in their own strength. In fact (935) they (the
devils) are able to translate human bodies from one place to another quickly and
easily or change their shape or afflict with diseases or delude human senses with
various objects, or stir up various emotions and passions through natural causes
and to inflame and propel into action, to incline them to this or that side—and
people can do nothing about this, if God has so permitted it. ‘About the darkness(es)
of this age, that is of sin and those in whom sin reigns who are included metonym-
ically in the term “darkness”, see the previous chapter, in which those who have
turned to faith in Christ have “light in the Lord”.’ In this somewhat apocalyptic
or slightly Manichean theology, the diabolical power serves the same function as
Augustinian ‘sin as punishment’. Boyd goes on to discuss angels and especially
the fallen ones with considerable help from John of Damascus. Their main
activity is to oppose the truth, as John 8 suggests. Just as the devil was once full
of the truth, he is now completely empty of it and is fully untruth and deceit.
They are located, imprisoned in the air between heaven and earth like birds; he
is the Prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2), although their eventual doom is
the underworld (938). Boyd’s theology hones in on matters of spirituality,
special knowledge of mysteries and spiritual warfare and is often expressed in
an intense form.

Robert Leighton (1611–84)

Born in London, Leighton’s Scottish father was a well-known covenanter who

suffered for his convictions when Robert was a student at Edinburgh University
in the late 1620s. Leighton’s teacher was Principal John Adamson, a moderate
covenanter. John Sharp, a former associate of Andrew Melville and a former exile
for his pains had been his other teacher. The diet began with the philosophy of
Ramus but later focused mostly on Aristotle (cf. Bouwsma 2000), and included
introductory Hebrew and catechism followed by theological Common Places. He
was appointed to Newbattle parish in 1641 through the patronage of the earl of
Lothian, with whom he would embrace the National Covenant while hoping the
king could be persuaded to agree; hence Leighton’s siding with the Engagers in
1647 to restore a covenanted monarchy. Selected by synod commission to go to
London to plead for prisoners after the Battle of Worcester in September 1650,
Leighton’s next position would be as Principal of Edinburgh University. He
underwent re-ordination to become bishop of Dunblane at the Restoration in
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September 1661, and was elevated in 1670 to become archbishop of Glasgow.

Leighton fought for indulgences to be granted in 1669 and for forty-two ministers
to continue in parishes without having to affirm episcopacy, but his mediation
pleased nobody. In 1674, he retired from Glasgow to the university once more and
then to Broadhurst at Horsted Keynes in Sussex—the home of his widowed
sister—for a studious retirement.
His largest extant work came from weekday sermons on 1 Peter at Newbattle
parish church at some point in the middle period of his ministry there (1641–52),
on either side of 1645. While it is right to discern therein a call to unity in the
Church (Hamilton 2012), this presupposes personal piety and orthodox doctrine.
‘The heads of doctrine contained in it are many, but the main that are most
insisted on are these three: Faith, Obedience, and Patience; to establish them in
believing, to direct them in doing, and to comfort them in suffering’ (2). ‘Leighton
seems to have been especially attracted to St. Peter’s Epistle because it is
“addressed to the people of God in exile and affliction, and designed ‘to establish
them in believing, to direct them in doing, and to comfort them in suffering” ’
(Mullan 2016: 49).
One can get a flavour of his learned style, and ‘light scholasticism’ in his
comments on 1 Peter 1:2:

Their condition, sanctified and justified; the former expressed by obedience, the
latter, by sprinkling of the blood of Christ. The causes: 1. Eternal election. 2. The
execution of that decree, viz., their effectual calling, which (I conceive) is meant by
election here, the selecting them out of the world, and joining them to the
fellowship of the children of God. So John xv. 19. The former, election, is
particularly ascribed to God, the Father, the latter to the Holy Spirit; and the
blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God is here assigned as the cause of their
justification; and so the whole Trinity concurring, dignify them with this their
spiritual and happy state. (9) . . . Beza observes that γινώσκειν is by the Greeks
sometimes taken for decernere, judicare; thus some speak, to cognosce upon a
business. So then this foreknowledge is no other than that eternal love of God, or
decree of election, by which some are appointed unto life, and being foreknown
or elected to that end, they are predestinate to the way to it. Rom 8,29; So God
predestinated, not because he foresaw men would be conformed to Christ, but
that they might be so.

This seems Reformed enough but not wholly in step with ‘Westminster’. For he adds:

(1.) of their justification: ‘The SPIRIT by faith sprinkleth the soul, as with
hyssop . . . Here it is said, Elect to obedience; but because that obedience is not
perfect, there must be sprinkling of the blood too’ (11). Then secondly (2.) Of
their sanctification. Elect unto obedience. ‘This obedience, then, of the only-
begotten Jesus Christ may well be understood not as His actively, as Beza
interprets it, but objectively, as 2 Cor x.5.’
220  . 

Here Leighton takes common cause with the likes of Piscator and Goodwin (at the
contemporaneous Westminster Assembly) on the matter of Christ’s obedience
not taking the place of ours. Now there is a subtle shift of theological colour, not
one that would put him in the opposite camp to Reformed Orthodoxy, but his
approach to justification in mentioning the Spirit’s sprinkling and sanctification in
terms of obedience of faith in receiving the doctrine of Christ and so Christ
himself, seems distinctive.
Lastly on verse 2 (p. 14) there comes the call to experience the reality before one
has a claim to understand it. In other words, Leighton suggests that a believer can
come to share in the divine foreknowledge by somehow (with discernment)
knowing things in their causes. In Sermon XXXI, there is something that looks
like an eternal pact in heaven, but it is very much about the decree rather than a
pactum salutis. Take for example:

‘Not only is the agreement between the Father and the Son in the general, that the
Son should take on Him human nature, and offer up Himself for us, but the very
persons are agreed upon, and their names set down; and these that the Father
hath thus given unto the Son, unto them He also in due season giveth faith to
believeth on him’. (258)

Now once Leighton got to Edinburgh in 1653 and became Principal, he insisted on
Sunday preaching but also on giving weekly Praelectiones, reviving Principal
Robert Rollock’s practice of Wednesday lectures. Now, as late as 1656 according
to the author of the radical covenanting tract Napthali, Leighton was insisting on
subscription to the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant for
graduation. Yet this does not mention the Westminster Confession; in contrast
with his colleague David Dickson’s ‘Praelectiones in confessionem fidei’ Leighton’s
style and content were humanist. ‘His knowledge of the ancients, Christian and
pagan alike was clear to see’ (Gribben 2013: 178). ‘The titles of his initial theo-
logical lectures—De felicitatis (sic) (“Of happiness”), De felicitate humana (“Of the
happiness of man”), De vitae futurae felicitate (“Of the happiness of the life to
come”)—are sharply dissimilar to the thorough-going theocentrism of the West-
minster documents’ (Gribben 2013: 178).
To take the briefest of examples from Leighton’s university lectures: in Lecture
8, of the divine attributes, Leighton adduces St Augustine’s Confessions XI. 28; then
Boethius’ Consolation 3, metr. 9; and then adds in Psalm 18.11 before reporting:
‘Well may Dionysius exclaim, O divine darkness!’ (Mystical theology 1) and well
may Nazianzen ask: ‘If you will pierce this darkness, who will flash forth?’ For man
is like the blind discoursing of light (Greg. Gt. Moralia: 27; West 1869–75: VI,
128). His peroration is that God’s attributes should lead us to praise God—like
Synesius in his fourth hymn. ‘But instead of dwelling upon scholastic distinctions
and theological systems, let us, while we daily walk in the pleasant fields of sacred
meditation, pluck the fresh and ever blooming flowers of devotion.’ One might
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contrast this with Samuel Rutherford in his St Andrews Inaugural lecture of 1651,
which began Delirat Plato, mentitur Aristoteles. Leighton is quite happy to mix
Epictetus with Psalm 139:6: all things work by divine counsel, and this was later
picked up by Paul. He notes that even Aeschylus and Euripides admitted that
human affairs were guided by a peculiar intelligence (88). Seneca, Plutarch, and 2
Peter 3:8 were all agreed that God treats his own sons more roughly for the
purpose of training. Yet the Stoics are to be rebuked for subjecting even God to
Fate. He quotes Augustine on the Psalms to argue how it is the duty of humans to
bend their will to that of God’s. (94). Yet in Praelectio 14, De Christo Salvatore, he
proclaims with evangelical clarity: ‘Since the most benign Jesus repel not only
nobody who comes to him, but offers himself further to those who do not repel
and standing before those outside resolutely seeks entrance.’ The note of subject-
ivity is struck even in his De Christo lecture. But instead of dwelling upon
scholastic distinctions and theological systems, let us, while we daily walk in the
pleasant fields of sacred meditation, pluck the fresh and ever blooming flowers
of devotion. The focus became increasingly on practical divinity for the Christian
life. ‘But to whom is the good of these immeasurable riches of our Jesus most
appropriately and fully to be heard everywhere, or even to speak, where although it
is discourses about an alien and extraneous good, nevertheless with not yet opened
heart for him to insert himself?’¹
The political covenant belonged to the past with Israel; the Covenant of Grace
was written on the hearts of individuals who could commune together, with the
Lord doing both parts. Gribben (2013) gives an account of this drifting away from
federal Calvinism as something that took place during his visits to France and
the Low Countries in the 1650s and a concomitant eschewing of collective (and
Presbyterian) categories in favour of the individualism of Pietism, and a form
of ‘French’ spirituality (e.g. La vie devoté of F. de Sales tempered by Arnauld’s
Frequente Communion). As to how much Leighton was influenced by French
spiritual theology, Hamilton demurs that it is more likely that the Augustinian
flavour of John Adamson’s 1627 Catechism is responsible for giving an impression
of continental influence. Allan claims: ‘ . . . the Dunblane copy of De Sales’ La vie
devoté is covered in Leighton’s handwritten notes’ (contra Knox 1930: 227). Just as
significant is the observation that the 1363 volumes to be found in Leighton’s
original library included the works of Sibbes, Goodwin, and William Gouge, with
their penchant for practical divinity. The turn to piety is what one does when

¹ Haec certe perquam grata et laeta esse auditu, neminem puto adeo ficulnea mente et asinis auribus
esse, ut neget . . . At, O miseri! Quo vobis immensas hasce divitias (non dicendum quidem, si non
conceditur uti, sed hoc potius) si qui non noverit uti? Joh 1:10–2. In illo (117) reconditae sunt omnes
sapientiae thesauri: extra illum certe nil nisi vacuum; in illo siquidem habitat omnis plenitudo. At cui
tamen bono de immensis hisce Jesu nostri divitiis aptissime et amplissime dicta audire passim, imo vel
etiam dicere, ubi tanquam de alieno et extraneo disseritur bono, corde nondum ad illum intromitten-
dum adaperto? . . .
222  . 

theology stands at a loss before God’s mystery, but also when external
circumstances are bewildering; the case for an affinity with Stoicism (Allan
1999: 260) is manifest in his library’s ownership of no less than three
seventeenth-century editions of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and in his
citations of Epictetus, for example, in Lecture IX: of the worship of God, provi-
dence, and the law (West 1869–75: VI, 136), and in Lecture X of providence (West
1869–75: VI, 144; Allan 1999: 274).
From his Edinburgh lectures a strong Augustinianism can be discerned, as on
Matt. 3:27:
All the world is as nothing in his eye, and all men are hateful and abominable by
sin. Thou, with all thy good-nature, and good-breeding, and good-carriage, art
vile and detestable out of Christ. But if thou get under the robe of Jesus, thou, and
all thy guiltiness and vileness, then art thou lovely in the Father’s eye. Oh! That
we could absolutely take up in him, whatsoever we are, yet shrouded under him.
Constant, fixed believing is all. Let not the Father then see us but in the Son, and
all is well. (West 1869–75: VI, 420)

Further on, in his commentary on Matthew 5–7 there is nothing about ‘the Law
and the Prophets’, and in dealing with the Sermon on the Mount he is more
concerned with spiritual authenticity through prayer.
Still more fundamental was his position on the nature of theological truth.
According to the Diary of Alexander Broadie, 24 May 1653:
I spoke with Mr Leighton: he did show me that the composing of our differences
was not a harder task than the finding out the Lord’s mind by them, both the
procuring and final cause. He thought holiness, the love of God and of our
brethren was the chief duty God was calling us unto, and sobriety and forbear-
ance to one another . . . Much persecution was there in our imposing upon one
another, as if we were infallible, allowing none that differed from ourselves in the
last measure. (Knox 1930: 150)

It was not so much Presbyterianism but the imposition of the Gospel, that tyranny
over conscience in matters of faith that seems to have offended him: ‘I know not
what can be said to clear them of a very great sin who not only framed such an
engine (the Covenant) but violently imposed it upon all ranks of men . . . Can there
be instanced a greater oppression and tyranny over conscience than this?’ (quoted
in Knox 1930: 140).
Holy Life rather than Mystical Union was the watchword for Leighton; as he
wrote in 1669: ‘we are like to lose the sacred bond of love and seal of our Christian
religion in this country, the holy eucharist: which hath lain forgotten these seven
years bygone [since the re-establishment of episcopacy] and is like to go out of
head. The parishes where the ministers are episcopal are totally deserted:
many withdrawing out of scruple and many out of example, or perhaps atheism’
(Butler 1903: 423). Desperate times required deeply rooted spirituality, not
   , , , ,   223

doctrinal distinctions or political force majeure. This ‘holy passivity’ bolstered by

biblical-philosophical wisdom can be spotted in the careers and theologies of all
the protagonists in this chapter.

Bibliography

Primary Literature
Boyd, Robert (1652). In epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Ephesios praelectiones. London.
Bruce, Robert (1958). The mystery of the Lord’s Supper: sermons on the sacrament
preached in the Kirk of Edinburgh in A.D. 1589, trans. and ed. Thomas F. Torrance.
Cambridge: J. Clarke.
Howie, Robert (1590). De iustificatione hominis coram Deo. Basel.
Howie, Robert (1591a). De reconciliatione hominis cum Deo. Basel.
Howie, Robert (1591b). De aeternam Dei praedestinatione. Basel.
Johnston, John (1609/1611). Consolatio Christiana sub cruce. Leiden 1609 and Iambi
sacri 1611.
Leighton, Robert (1869–75). The whole works (as yet recovered) of the most reverend
father in God Robert Leighton, D.D., Bishop of Dunblane and Archbishop (Commen-
dator) of Glasgow . . . to which is prefixed a life of the author and of his father, by
William West. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
Wodrow, R. (1754). Life of Bruce. Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis.

Secondary Literature
Allan, David (1999). ‘Reconciliation and Retirement in the Restoration Scottish
Church: The Neo-Stoicism of Robert Leighton’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
50: 251–78.
Bos, F. L. (1932). Johann Piscator. Kampen: Kok.
Bouwsma, William (2000). The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550–1640. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Butler, D. (1903). The Life & Letters of Robert Leighton. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Cameron, James K. (1979). The Correspondence of John Johnston and Robert Howie.
München: Fink.
Cameron, James K. (2004). ‘Robert Howie’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
online edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chadwick, Owen (1984). ‘Robert Leighton after Three Hundred Years’, Journal of
Society of Friends of Dunblane Cathedral 14: 116–26.
Gribben, Crawford (2013). ‘Robert Leighton, Edinburgh Theology and the Collapse of
the Presbyterian Consensus’, in E. Boran and C. Gribben (eds.), Enforcing Refor-
mation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 159–83.
224  . 

Hamilton, Allan (2012). ‘In mitiorem partem: Robert Leighton’s Journey towards
Episcopacy’. PhD thesis, Glasgow University.
Knox, A. (1930). Robert Leighton, Archbishop of Glasgow. London: J. Clarke.
Macleod, Donald (2000). ‘Dr T. F. Torrance and Scottish Theology: A Review Article’,
Evangelical Quarterly 72/1: 57–72.
Mullan, David (2016). Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland.
London: Routledge.
Reid, H. M. B. (1917). The Divinity Principals in the University of Glasgow. Glasgow:
MacLehose.
Spinks, Bryan (2002). Sacraments, Ceremonies and the Stuart Divines: Sacramental
Theology and Liturgy in England and Scotland 1603–1662. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Torrance, T. F. (1996). Scottish Theology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Willis, Gordon (1981). ‘The Leighton Library, Dunblane: Its History and Contents’,
The Bibliotheck 10: 139–57.
 16
Federal Theology from the Reformation
to c.1677
David G. Mullan

This chapter introduces federal theology in Scotland from the late sixteenth
century to the later decades of the seventeenth century. The term ‘federal’
comes from the Latin foedus, which may be translated variously as covenant,
testament, compact, bargain, league, agreement, or contract. Covenants figure
significantly in the Jewish and Christian scriptures and Christian theologians
have always been interested in the concept, never more so than in the era of the
Protestant Reformation and the succeeding generations. At the Reformation it was
primarily a manifestation of the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of theology, and
while others wrote about covenants, including Luther and Melanchthon, it was in
those religious cultures most influenced by the Swiss Reformation that its full
blossoming may be observed. In Scotland the concept would evoke a response in
the hearts and minds of those who believed themselves to be effectually called, and
so it became part of pastoral care.
There are numerous historiographical issues—e.g. the role of Calvin—that
might be addressed in a discussion of federal theology, and I shall discuss briefly
one aspect in particular which stands aside from federal theology proper but
found a niche for itself in Scotland and serves to shed a light upon the main
theme. Scottish covenanting, as a religious bond or band designed to foster
Protestant religion, can be traced to either 1556 or 1557 when small groups of
Protestant nobles promised to uphold the new religion. This practice of formally
associating with others, rooted in Scottish medieval culture, grew in significance as
the decades passed, and would eventually produce the religio-political National
Covenant of February 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of August 1643,
the former internal to Scotland and the latter an alliance between Scotland and the
English Parliament. Identification of the country with ancient Israel as the elect
people of God—which happened across Europe—became a part of Scottish
identity and supporters of those covenants would bear the name through the
seventeenth century. To John Knox may be attributed a major role in this
development, and in his Appellation of 1558 he appealed to the Scottish nobility
to reform religion and abolish idolatry as godly kings amongst the Hebrews had
done. He looked to England under King Edward VI and its dedication of itself to

David G. Mullan, Federal Theology from the Reformation to c.1677. In: The History of Scottish
Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0016
226  . 

God, presumably a reference to the Acts of Uniformity of 1549 and 1552, and he
longed to see Scotland do the same. The Scots Confession of 1560 and especially
the King’s or Negative Confession of 1581 would be seen as Scotland’s original
covenanting as a nation with God. Thus might God’s wrath be averted. National
covenanting and federal theology have had different foci, the first the nation and
the second the individual elected to salvation or consigned to reprobation (see
article 25 in the Scots Confession of 1560). The former covenant did not imply the
latter, though it ensured the preaching of the Gospel and administration of the
sacraments which might well foreshadow effectual calling and the Covenant of
Grace between God and the individual.
David A. Weir identifies the origins of a fully-fledged federal theology with the
Heidelberg theologian Zacharias Ursinus in 1562, though not widely publicized
until 1584. Weir particularizes it more narrowly by stating that its ‘distinguishing
characteristic’ was a prelapsarian or Edenic Covenant of Works embracing all
humankind federally in Adam. This notion was combined with a Covenant of
Grace which succeeded the Covenant of Works and was ultimately fulfilled by Jesus
Christ in his perfect life and sacrificial death. The two covenants cohered well with
the popular Ramist¹ dichotomizing, and the scheme was taken up by English
theologians such as Dudley Fenner and William Perkins, and Thomas Cartwright
notices it somewhat obscurely in his catechism (Peel and Carlson 1951: 159).
This version of federal theology found a clear articulation in Scotland with the
theologian Robert Rollock.² Rollock, who lived from 1555 to 1599, was the son of a
laird and studied at St Andrews University where he was introduced to Ramist
logic and Hebrew by Andrew and James Melville, ardent Presbyterian uncle and
nephew. In 1583 he was appointed the founding Principal of the College of
Edinburgh. He wrote a work of theology and a number of commentaries on
books of the Bible. The former, Treatise of Effectual Calling, was first published
in Latin in 1597 and then in English in 1603; another edition appeared in 1849.
Steven J. Reid addresses Rollock’s theological achievement and observes that
the Ramist influence is most easily seen in the Tractatus or Treatise which begins
with a Summary of Theology (Reid 2011: 204–10). The Summary opens with a
dichotomy of God and his works, then becomes more specific with discussions of
God and his attributes on the one hand, and the Trinity on the other. In the third
section, the works of God are split between those in eternity and those in time; the
decrees of God, i.e. election, are found under the heading of eternity. In section
seven, Rollock deals with the restoration of fallen humanity which is attributed to

¹ Pierre de La Ramée, better known as Ramus, was a French philosopher (1515–72) who converted
to the Reformed faith (Huguenot, or French Protestant). He was a controversial figure and taught a
simplified Aristotelianism through a process of dialectic.
² On the ‘embryonic’ covenant theology of the Scots Confession of 1560, see W. Ian P. Hazlett,
‘The Scots Confession 1560: Context, Complexion and Critique’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte
78 (1987), 314.
       . 227

Christ the Mediator, and this anticipates a further development in covenant

theology, as we shall see.
Rollock very quickly moves into a discussion of the covenants and writes ‘that
all the word of God appertains to some covenant; for God speaks nothing to man
without the covenant’ (Rollock 1849: vol. I, 33). The covenant is divided between
the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace. The former of these is legal or
natural and is engraved on man’s heart. Here the nature of a covenant is revealed:
promise and condition. In the Covenant of Works eternal life was promised
‘under the condition of holy and good works’. This primordial covenant was
repeated at Sinai, where God said, ‘Do these things, and ye shall live.’ Christ had
nothing to do with the Adamic Covenant of Works—it had no mediator. In Eden
there was no promise of righteousness, as newly created man was perfect, able to
fulfil the condition of good works.
However, in the New Testament there is no promise of eternal life based upon
good works. There, works pertain to grace and regeneration, and the Covenant
of Works is abolished to those under the Covenant of Grace. Good works are no
longer performed by free will or nature, these having been totally corrupted at
the time of the Fall. But the Covenant of Works has not completely fallen out of
relevance for those under grace. Its moral demands continue to serve as a guide
to the regenerate.
A new figure is introduced under the Covenant of Grace, and that is the
Mediator who sacrificed himself on the Cross and achieved two things. First, his
death satisfied ‘the justice and wrath of God for our sins’ in breaching the
Covenant of Works, and second he purchased and merited ‘a new grace and
mercy of God for us’ (38). Here Rollock continues his assault on Catholic theology
and its doctrine of a weakened free will, but yet able to turn to the good, for the
Fall impaired nature but did not completely efface it. Rollock denies inherent
righteousness achieved through works of the law, but in its place comes imputed
righteousness from the Mediator. Once regenerated by free grace, human beings
begin the task of restoring inherent righteousness, but this will only be completed
in eternal life. The Covenant of Grace is free, but there is a condition, that of faith
which apprehends Christ. Thus the covenants are bilateral, but covenant theolo-
gians attempted to avoid making man the author of his own salvation by affirming
that both the promise (eternal life) and the condition (faith in Christ) are fulfilled
by the work of God through the Mediator, thus by-passing the freedom of the will.
So, if the Covenant of Grace has no room for inherent righteousness, earned
through good works, the Mosaic Covenant of Works reminds people of their sin
and misery, and prepares the way for grace. Even it has foreshadowings of the
Covenant of Grace, though because Christ was not yet incarnate, ‘the Covenant of
Grace is more sparingly and darkly set forth in it’.
In the years and decades following Rollock, it was not uncommon for divines
to make reference to covenants, and behind their brief notices may lie federal
228  . 

theology as we have described it. Bishop William Cowper, a puritan in theology,

refers to the covenants in his commentary on Romans, and specifically in the
context of the Spirit of Adoption in Romans 8:15 (Cowper 1623: 87–8). Both those
under the Mosaic law and the Covenant of Grace were partakers of the Spirit of
Adoption, though with the former, grace was observed in types and figures. He is
aware of an Edenic covenant, but it was dissolved at the time of the Fall, and was
immediately replaced by a new covenant, the Covenant of Grace, which includes
the Mosaic law. Zachary Boyd, preacher in Glasgow, included similar teaching in
his Cleare forme of catechising (Boyd 1639: 62–5). However, not every Scottish
divine was overwhelmed by the radiance of federal theology. John Johnston, in
Heidelberg, wrote to Johannes Piscator at Herborn in 1589 that to make covenants
the whole of theology was at variance with the ‘true and right method’
(Cameron 1963: 36).
In the 1630s covenant theology was brought into prominence by two Presby-
terian activists in the west and south-west of Scotland. In order of age, the first of
these was David Dickson. He was born c.1583 to a mercantile father, and attended
the University of Glasgow where he taught until taking on the pastoral charge of
Irvine in Ayrshire in 1618. He was hauled before the High Commission in 1622 on
account of his opposition to episcopacy and ceremonies and was sent to the North
Country until allowed to return in 1623; he remained undisturbed until near the
end of the episcopal regime. In the wake of the National Covenant he held
professorships at Glasgow and then Edinburgh. He was a diligent pastor, and
helped to promote an emotional Augustinian piety, performing an instrumental
role in the appearance of the Stewarton sickness, a revival which included physical
manifestations. He died in 1663.
In 1845 the Free Church of Scotland published a collection of sermons by
Dickson, under the heading of Select Practical Writings, from a manuscript that
bears the date 1635. These homilies were preached around the time of commu-
nion services, which became significant events in the life of Scotland’s Presbyter-
ians. In one preparation sermon, while he does not mention covenant, he does
address the matter of election and reprobation, which he says ‘may be safely
taught and propounded unto people, without fear of any inconvenience that
men would pretend . . . ’ (Dickson 1845: 93). He calls this ‘a profitable and useful
doctrine’, and states that without it, ‘men would be atheists’. He softens the
teaching by speaking of chaff and corn and declares that chaff may become
corn—rather a risky statement for a predestinarian, but Dickson makes clear
his commitment to at least single predestination in the same sermon: ‘What the
Lord doth in the matter of election and reprobation, he doth it justly: for he says
to man, Leave thy sins, and come to me, and thou shalt get heaven. Man answers,
I will not leave sin. Then says the Lord, Thou shalt go to hell. Is not this justice?
From these words, no particular person can gather a mark of reprobation, or
conclude that he is a reprobate; but contrarily, there is here a mark of election’
       . 229

(106). The response of faith to the preaching of the Gospel was a rich source of
assurance for those who were worried about their election. It must be noted here
that the Reformed tradition was not monolithic in speaking about predestination
and election, as may be seen in a comparison of the teachings of Calvin and
Bullinger.³ Bullinger was even cited by the Dutch Remonstrants at the Synod of
Dort, a kind of Reformed ecumenical council which condemned the Arminian-
ism of the Remonstrants.
In the same year as the manuscript was written, Dickson published A short
explanation of the epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. It appeared in Aberdeen, then
was published again in Dublin two years later with minor changes in orthography.
Here he gives more attention to the word covenant, though he does not appear to
refer to the Edenic covenant, but rather to the Mosaic covenant which he calls the
old covenant and the Covenant of Works. He does, however, state that people
were saved under it, just as they are under the new covenant or the Gospel. The
former was temporary, awaiting replacement, and the new covenant is more sure
because Christ gives us assurance. It is ‘more cleare, more free, more full, more
largelie extended, and more firme’ (Dickson 1635: 133). He also makes a state-
ment about the new covenant and the Church. He insists that the human party to
the covenant is not all humanity ‘but the Church of the Newe Testament; the
spirituall Israell, and Judah’, thereby indicating that these covenants of salvation
are directed to individuals, a select group, not all of humanity or even all of a
nation. In this he followed Calvin (Institutes, III.22.6).
It is in Dickson’s Therapeutica Sacra that we find his fullest teaching about the
covenants. This work first appeared in Latin in 1656 in Edinburgh. His own
English translation was published in 1664 through the efforts of his son Alexan-
der. G. D. Henderson claimed, without documentation, that it was written in 1637
(Henderson 1955: 10), but this seems unlikely as it was composed for ‘young
students in theology’, and at that time Dickson was not yet a professor. Likewise,
internal evidence suggests a later date. His references to ‘licentious toleration’ and
‘sectaries’ fit better in the context of the 1640s and 1650s than of the 1630s.
Alexander also refers to it as ‘the child of his age . . . being sent forth in his seventy-
second year’, which would bring us to the mid-1650s.
In Therapeutica Sacra, Dickson describes three covenants, though the central
concern of the book is to supply a puritan psychology of religion (Dickson 1664:
Book I). The first covenant is the Covenant of Redemption, which is between the
Father and the Son. ‘It is agreed between God and Christ, that the Elect shall be

³ See Cornelis P. Venema, Heinrich Bullinger and the Doctrine of Predestination (2002). See also the
controversial work by Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of
Covenant Theology (2001). For a negative and highly partisan review, see David J. Engelsma, ‘The
Binding of God’, The Trinity Review (January–February 2002): 1–8. Another contrasting perspective is
in James B. Torrance, ‘The Concept of Federal Theology: Was Calvin a Federal Theologian?’ in
Wilhelm H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor (1994), 15–40.
230  . 

Converted invincibly and infallibly’, and they shall persevere unto the end. The
second covenant is the Covenant of Works or the covenant of nature, which is
between God and Adam, and federally with all humankind. This is distinct from
the covenant of the law, which is a dispensation of the third covenant. Though
broken, the Covenant of Works is ‘the Rule of Man’s walking’, and the attempt to
live up to its demands tends to the felicity of the individual. And not just the
individual, as God will bless the nation in time that pursues good works which are
pleasing in his sight. The third covenant is the Covenant of Grace, first published
in Eden, subsequent to the Fall. It is a limited covenant, given only to the elect,
though in time it is preached to all people who are welcomed into the Church
based on baptism, ‘without enquiring into their Election or Reprobation’.
The second of the covenant theologians in the 1630s was a younger contem-
porary of Dickson and also a minister in the south-west of Scotland, Samuel
Rutherford, perhaps the outstanding Scottish theologian of the seventeenth cen-
tury (Coffey 1997). He was born c.1600 in the parish of Crailing in Roxburghshire,
where his parish minister was the Presbyterian pamphleteer and historian
David Calderwood. He attended the College of Edinburgh and became a regent.
He was forced to resign due to accusations of a moral fault, and spent the next
couple of years studying theology. In 1627 he was called to the parish of
Anwoth. Rutherford is best known for his letters, most of them originating in
Aberdeen during his exile there in 1637, in which his florid mysticism comes to
the fore. He was a preacher of note, using commonplace figures to appeal to his
auditory experiences on land and sea, and also became a famous neo-scholastic
theologian, publishing a number of lengthy works in the 1640s and 1650s. He
was in trouble in the 1630s for his stand against Arminianism and continued
his assault later in his career. He was one of the Scottish commissioners to the
Westminster Assembly, and wrote extensively about the theological innovations
he met with in London.
Some of Rutherford’s communion sermons in the 1630s were written down,
and in them he shows both the practical use which may be made of teaching the
covenants, and he unwittingly lays bare the tension at the heart of federal theology
(Mullan 1997: 176–7). On the one hand Rutherford is a predestinarian. He is
adamant in repudiating free will—‘that weather-cock’—and states that grace is
irresistible. The elect form but a tenth of the mass of humanity, and they have
God’s promises that they will not be lost. But after making this statement
Rutherford declares: ‘great need have we to labour to be of God’s tenth’. Clearly
Christ did not die for all, and one cannot will to be espoused to Christ, but his
hearers may have heard only that they should fall in love with Christ, while on the
other hand he warns his hearers about protecting their consciences against the
stroke of the Gospel. He also advises that people ‘covenant yourself away to Him,
that so ye may be able to say, the Lord is your God; and that He may acknowledge
you to be His people’.
       . 231

In his homiletical treatment of the covenants, Rutherford, like Dickson,

employs a tripartite model. In between the universal Covenant of Works and
the Covenant of Grace through Christ there is a Covenant of Redemption, drawn
up in the Trinity, whereby Christ protests against the outcome of the breach of the
Covenant of Works: ‘Christ, as Mediator (to speak so) said, God forbid, My
Father! I would rather give my heart’s blood ere it were so’ (Rutherford 1877:
30). Thus Christ bargained with the Father for the sake of the elect, and made sure
of his grace to them. In a sermon on the parable of the great supper Rutherford
adumbrates three reasons why Christ will not lack any of his own. One is that he
has purchased them with his blood, and he will not repent of the bargain. Second,
he has made them his own and has law on his side, so he will not lack anyone he
bargained for with the Father. Third, ‘The Father has given the elect to the Son,
and He must render an account of them to the Father, man by man’ (Rutherford
1877: 87).
How do we account for the appearance of this third covenant? I would argue
that it should be seen as a counterweight to Arminianism, and I will address this
point again below. There is a hint of this in the sermon on that same parable,
where Rutherford tells of the corruption of the time (1634) in that people are
easily led into false religion, ‘Arminianism or Popery’. This set of related theo-
logical pariahs formed a mantra during the reign of Charles I. It represented the
darkness as the Kirk fell under the sway of popish ceremonies and, ostensibly,
Arminian theology with its emphasis upon the ability of fallen humanity to choose
its own destiny. How much was there of this Dutch variant in Scotland?
There were some advanced advocates of Arminianism in Scotland. John Crich-
ton of Paisley engaged in an exchange of letters with Robert Baillie of Kilwinning,
and later a strenuous proponent of the Presbyterian interest at the University of
Glasgow. There were about twenty ministers accused of Arminianism in 1638
and 1639, but many of the complaints are less than compelling. Some bishops,
including James Wedderburn of Dunblane and Thomas Sydserff of Galloway,
were in the Arminian camp, and it is quite clear that St Andrews—and not
Aberdeen—was the Arminian seminary, if such existed, in Scotland (Mullan
1996). But rumour was abroad, and Rutherford was sensitive to new theological
currents and warned his people about them. In 1636 he published, in Amsterdam,
Exercitationes Apologeticae pro Divina Gratia . . . adversus Jacobum Arminium,
thus entering the lists both in sermons and in academic theology. This book and
his general disposition towards episcopacy and ceremonies earned him an internal
exile in Aberdeen for two years, ended only by the coming of revolution.
This third covenant, placed in the middle by Rutherford, between the Father
and the Son, limits the effectiveness of the atonement. Christ bargained with the
Father for the salvation, through his sacrificial death, of a precise number of fallen
humanity, and these he knew by name and would never forsake. Others might
show evidences of election for a time but would ultimately fall away. Thus the
232  . 

third covenant served as a bulwark against the erroneous teaching of Arminianism

and its offer of false hope, though covenant theology was preached in such a way
as to make a universal appeal, perhaps thereby softening somewhat the psycho-
logical burden of the double decree.
There is one other aspect of federal theology to be considered, and it was known
only in England, New England, and especially Scotland. This is the practice of
personal covenanting. As noted earlier, federal theology maintained that a divine
covenant elicited a human response, even if that response originated in God, who
granted what he demanded (Rutherford 1877: 71). The earliest surviving reference
comes from the pen of the English and New English puritan John Winthrop in
1606. In Scotland, c.1616, the minister of Falkirk James Caldwell wrote out a
prayer that has the form of a covenant: ‘and never forget this covenant, I have now
bound up with thee’. Significantly, Caldwell ties his covenant to the celebration of
the Lord’s Supper, a linkage which would only become inseparable and more
widespread. In the 1630s Rutherford began to write about covenanting. He
implored Marion McNaught in 1632 to show his letter to her children that they
might ‘covenant with Jesus Christ to be His’ (Rutherford 1891: 82), and in 1637 he
acknowledged his own broken covenants. From the same period William Row
wrote about ‘his personal covenant with God’. After the National Covenant the
lawyer Sir Thomas Hope renewed his vows and promised that by God’s grace he
would ‘hold fast the Covenant off his blissit treuth’ and conduct his life in accord
with the Christian virtues. In the era of the National Covenant it was not
uncommon to link personal and national covenanting. The latter implied the
former. To ask God to reform the Kirk without a parallel reformation of the self
was ‘abomination and hypocrisy’. Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, the legal
genius behind the National Covenant, praised God for accepting the nation and
his family into covenant.
The 1650s were of pivotal importance in the practice of personal covenant-
ing. Wariston heard sermons which inspired him to covenant himself and his
family, and subscribed what he had written out, though that covenant is not
recorded. Three years later, on 29 May 1653 Alexander Brodie of Brodie, a laird
in Morayshire, read Wariston’s ‘paper about soul-covenanting’ in his company
and later that day renewed his engagements. His son followed suit on 1 July and
on 30 October his daughter, and Brodie records this covenant. Wariston was
also present in the vicinity of a young intending minister David Hume and the
laird Walter Pringle of Greenknowe when they both covenanted. Covenant renewal
for these people was common. Maxwell of Pollock covenanted on 21 July 1656,
and again on his deathbed on 13 April 1677. Sir John Clerk of Penicuik
renewed his covenant 108 times, while James Nasmyth renewed his 256 times
(Mullan 2010: 317–43).
Rutherford published his Covenant of Life Opened in 1655. This is a lengthy and
difficult work littered with biblical references and quotations. The chapters are
       . 233

typically broken down into numbered points of which there are legion, and it is
not easy to determine the intended audience of this scholastic but vernacular
work. Despite the presentation, Rutherford has a clear focus on the heart. In Part I,
Chapter 18 he deals with ‘the new heart of Covenanters’, and writes: ‘As Physic-
ally, so also Morally, the heart is the man, the good heart, the good man, the evill
heart, the evill man, and God weights men by the weight, not of the tongue, of the
hands; of the outward man, but by the weight of the heart.’
In Part II, Chapter 11, Rutherford proceeds to advocate personal covenanting,
and once again refers to engaging the heart to ‘Christ as Lord and King’. He also
makes explicit something which had been lurking since Wariston’s first coven-
anting, and that is the marriage metaphor. ‘It’s true, parties are but once married,
once Covenanting by oath is as good as twenty: but frequent and multiplied acts of
marriage-love adde a great deal of firmnesse and of strength to the Marriage band,
they are confirmations of our first subscription.’ This metaphor would wax
stronger and stronger until the end of the century, when it began to disappear
from written covenants in favour of Christ as prophet, priest, and king.
One of Rutherford’s students and like him a Protester, one of the more radical
party of Presbyterians, William Guthrie, wrote a much-cited work, The Christian’s
Great Interest (1659), of which Wariston enthusiastically approved. The treatise is
divided into two parts. The first of these is ‘The tryal of a saving interest in Christ’,
and the second is ‘How to attain unto a saving interest in Christ’. Both parts are
suffused with the notion of covenants, especially the Covenant of Grace, and it is
only at the outset of Part II that Guthrie briefly describes the Adamic covenant. In
Part I, Guthrie urges his hearers and readers to make sure of their saving interest
in Christ. The condition to be met is that of faith, but this faith is not a matter of
believing certain doctrinal tenets however true they may be. Justifying faith is not
an act of the understanding, but ‘is chiefly and principally an act or work of the
heart and will’ (33). Here is the core of Scottish covenant theology—a bilateral
covenant with justifying faith appealing to the heart in response to God’s offer of
the Gospel. But later in the treatise Guthrie insists ‘that a man be in calmness of
spirit, and as it were, in his cold blood in closing with Christ Jesus, not in a simple
fit of affection which soon vanisheth’ (89).
In the second part, Guthrie addresses more practical concerns. Like Rutherford,
he believes that ‘there be but very few, who do really and cordially close with God
in Christ Jesus, as he is offered in the Gospel’ (76), though like his predecessors he
calls on all his audience to take the Gospel to heart. So all who hear the Gospel
have a duty to close with Christ, even though only the elect will actually receive
justifying faith. Others will die in their sins.
Throughout the treatise Guthrie raises potential objections to his assertions,
and one of these arises from the person who sometimes thinks that he or she has
faith, but remains in a doubtful state. Guthrie wants to bring this individual to a
place of assurance, and to help ‘to fix the soul’ by encouraging a formal act of
234  . 

closing with Christ and making an explicit covenant with God. While personal
covenanting is not a requirement for salvation, the practice is ‘very expedient, for
the better being of a man’s state, and his more comfortable maintaining of an
interest in Christ Jesus’ (112). He declares that God has commanded it in the
Bible, and as in marriage a woman declares her relationship with her man, so in
the personal covenant one makes explicit what has already transpired in the heart.
‘Therefore, I am here this day to put this matter out of question, by express words
before thee, according to thy will’ (121).
Patrick Gillespie, from a family of ministers, published his Ark of the Testament
Opened in 1661. This is a treatise based upon twice-weekly sermons he preached
presumably at Glasgow where he became minister in 1648 and principal in 1653.
Like the foregoing he was another Protester. He asserts that God does not
communicate with humanity apart from covenants and then offers a treatment
of the idea of knowledge, which generally affects the brain. But in the context of the
Covenant of Grace, knowledge affects the heart and is experimental. A covenant
is bilateral, and places conditions on both sides. The Covenant of Grace, ‘the very
sum and substance, and marrow of the knowledge of the Scriptures’ (Part I, p. 36
[secundus]), is a work of ‘wonderful condescension’ on the part of God and was
proposed by him to fallen humanity, and it is he who moves human beings to
enter into covenant with him: ‘God promiseth to us and worketh in us what he
requireth of us’ (Part I, p. 312). In Part II, Gillespie identifies eight properties
of the Covenant of Grace. The covenant is free, everlasting, well-ordered, sure
and firm, perfect, satisfying, holy, and finally, ‘Particular and Personal’ (Part II,
p. 149). It is in this latter chapter that he devotes fifty pages to personal
covenanting.
Gillespie had already invoked ‘a conjugal Covenant betwixt God and his People’
in Part I (p. 123). Also it is a covenant ‘into which individual souls enter, each one
personally for himself ’. This is subsequent to the Covenant of Grace, and it is
different from ‘external visible Covenanting with God, which may be general and
National and as such, is not saving’. He insists that personal soul covenanting with
God is a duty laid upon believers, both to receive God’s gifts and to give the self
away, and writes with conviction that it is commanded in both the Old and New
Testaments. He attacks Arminians for teaching that when God drew up the
Covenant of Grace he left it blank, rather than filling in the particular names of
the elect. The Antinomians are criticized for their teaching that the elect are so
from eternity ever before they believe. By covenanting the person comes ‘to have
the reality of a spiritual and mysticall union’ with Christ (Part II, p. 180). It gives
a new orientation to life, so that one now knows how to construe the various
providences which meet one along the way. The tension, even contradiction, at the
core of covenant theology is manifested when Gillespie speaks of the closing of the
market of free grace: ‘thou knowest not when the Covenant that is now within thy
reach, so as thou mayest catch hold of it, shall be drawn up without thy reach’
       . 235

(Part II, p. 192). Thus the preaching of the Covenant of Grace was universal,
practically Arminian, and depended heavily upon the free agency of the individ-
ual. And surely this is what impressed his readers.
On 25 July 1677 John Baird, indulged⁴ minister of Paisley, dated a manuscript
on personal covenanting (Mullan 2008: 47–70). He had studied under Rutherford,
and material in the treatise may be older than the date indicates. He reiterates the
complaints of Alexander Henderson and Zachary Boyd from 1638 that people
were taking the National Covenant without a corresponding renewal of heart
(Mullan 2000: 295). Baird, who might have written this opening section around
the time of the Restoration, states that ‘the consideration of much nationall
covenanting without any fruit in men’s conversatione’ is among the motivating
factors for preaching about ‘personall and formall covenanting with God’. He
introduces the idea of assurance, a major concernment of Scottish Puritans and
evangelical Presbyterians (post-Restoration). Augustinian theology could create
fear in the hearts of people wanting to know whether they were among the chosen
few. Baird reassures them that personal covenanting, giving oneself back to God
and thereby fulfilling the Covenant of Grace, ‘puts the matter out off controversie’
(50). In fact, notions of election and reprobation are pushed far into the back-
ground here, and Baird even states that God has drawn up writs for the covenant
into which anyone may insert his or her name, putting him even more in the camp
of unlimited atonement than Gillespie.
Federal theology had an early introduction into Scotland, and would have a
long history, at least into the eighteenth century. Its persistence may be a feature
of the Westminster Confession, drafted and first sent to the English Parliament
in 1646 by the Westminster Assembly, in which religious synod Scottish com-
missioners, including Samuel Rutherford, played a significant role. Parliament
would make some changes, but on 27 August 1647 the Edinburgh general
assembly ratified the extant confession, followed by the Scottish Parliament on
7 February 1649 (Bremer and Webster 2006: vol. 2, 580–2). It would be approved
again in 1690 in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, and has remained the
symbol of the Kirk down through the centuries, though not without controversy
(Torrance 1996). Wherever the confession appears, there is also federal theology,
as Chapter 7 is entitled ‘Of God’s Covenant with Man’ (Schaff 1998: vol. 3,
616–18). There are two covenants with man, the prelapsarian Covenant of
Works and the Covenant of Grace in two dispensations, under the law and
under the Gospel. Thus what began either with Calvin or his Reformed brethren
in the Rhineland found a nourishing home in Scotland and is still represented in
the Kirk today.

⁴ An outed Presbyterian minister who agreed to certain stipulations imposed by Charles II’s regime
and allowed to resume his ministry without acknowledging government of the Kirk by bishops.
236  . 

Bibliography

Primary Literature
Boyd, Zachary (1639). A cleare forme of catechising. Glasgow.
Cameron, James K. (ed.) (1963). Letters of John Johnston c.1565–1611 and Robert
Howie c.1565–c.1645. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.
Cowper, William (1623). The Workes. London.
Dickson, David (1635). A short Explanation, of the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrewes.
Aberdeen.
Dickson, David (1664). Therapeutica Sacra: Shewing briefly, The Method of Healing the
Diseases of the Conscience, concerning Regeneration. Edinburgh.
Dickson, David (1845). Select Practical Writings. Edinburgh.
[Gillespie, Patrick] (1661). The Ark of the Testament opened, or, the Secret of the Lord’s
Covenant unsealed, in a Treatise of the Covenant of Grace. London.
Peel, Albert and Leland H. Carlson (eds.) (1951). Cartwrightiana. London: George
Allen & Unwin.
Rollock, Robert (1849). Select Works, ed. Wm. M. Gunn, vol. 1. Edinburgh.
Rutherford, Samuel (1655). The Covenant of Life opened: or, a Treatise of the Covenant
of Grace. Edinburgh.
Rutherford, Samuel (1877). Fourteen Communion Sermons, 2nd edition enlarged.
Glasgow [repr. 1986].
Rutherford, Samuel (1891). Letters, ed. A. A. Bonar. Edinburgh (repr. 1984).
Schaff, Philip (ed.) (1998). The Creeds of Christendom, rev. David S. Schaff, 6th edition,
3 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books (repr. 1931 edn.).

Secondary Literature
Bremer, Francis J. and Tom Webster (eds.) (2006). Puritans and Puritanism in Europe
and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia, 2 vols. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio.
Coffey, John (1997). Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel
Rutherford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Henderson, G. D. (1955). ‘The Idea of the Covenant in Scotland’, Evangelical Quarterly
27: 2–14.
Jeon, Jeong Koo (1999). Covenant Theology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Lee, Brian J. (2009). Johannes Cocceius and the Exegetical Roots of Federal Theology:
Reformation Developments in the Interpretation of Hebrews 7–10. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Lillback, Peter A. (2001). The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of
Covenant Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
       . 237

Mullan, David George (1996). ‘Arminianism in the Lord’s Assembly: Glasgow, 1638’,
RSCHS 26: 1–30.
Mullan, David George (1997). ‘Masked Popery and Pyrrhonian Uncertainty: The Early
Scottish Covenanters on Arminianism’, Journal of Religious History 21: 159–77.
Mullan, David George (2000). Scottish Puritanism, 1590–1638. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Mullan, David George (ed.) (2008). Protestant Piety in Early-Modern Scotland: Letters,
Lives and Covenants, 1650–1712. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society.
Mullan, David George (2010). Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland.
Farnham: Ashgate.
Neuser, Wilhelm (ed.) (1994). Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans.
Reid, Steven J. (2011). Humanism and Calvinism: Andrew Melville and the Universities
of Scotland, 1560–1625. Farnham: Ashgate.
Torrance, Thomas F. (1996). Scottish Theology from John Knox to John McLeod
Campbell. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Venema, Cornelis P. (2002). Heinrich Bullinger and the Doctrine of Predestination.
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Weir, D. A. (1990). The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Refor-
mation Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Woolsey, Andrew Alexander (1988). ‘Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought:
A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly’. PhD thesis,
University of Glasgow.
 17
The Covenant Idea in Mid-Seventeenth-
Century Scotland
Guy M. Richard

There is little question about whether or not the idea of the covenant was of
central importance in Scotland during the middle of the seventeenth century.
More than any other Protestant nation in Europe at the time, Scotland embraced
the covenant idea and employed it as a means of structuring the religious and
political lives of both the people and the nation as a whole. More questions arise,
however, when we begin to explore the reasons why this was so. Why did the
covenant concept assume such a prominent place in post-Reformation Scotland?
In an attempt to answer this question, this chapter will argue that the unique
historical context of Scotland at the time gave the Scottish Puritans an opportunity
to use the covenant concept in the most powerful way possible to call the nation as
a whole back to the Lord and, thus, to complete the work of the Reformation in
Scotland. In order to show this, the chapter will explore, first, the history of the
covenant idea within the Scottish nation and, most especially, the rise of federal
theology and, second, the role that experiential religion—a distinctive of Puritan-
ism in general—may have played in the development of the covenant concept at
this time.

History of the Covenant Concept

Long before the seventeenth century, the Scottish people had been engaging in the
practice of ‘banding’ or ‘bonding’ together. Just how many of these early ‘bands’
were religious in nature is uncertain. Many of them at least were enacted in order
to ensure the safety of lives and property. With a weak central government and a
rural countryside, Scotland served as something of an incubator for the formation
of such alliances (Burrell 1958: 339). It is quite possible that all of these bands were
at least nominally religious, in that the biblical idea of the covenant may well have
provided the inspiration for them (Hewison 1908: 166). But even if that is not the
case, we know that there were at least some early bands that were explicitly
religious in nature. In 1306, for instance, several knights ‘at the abbey of Londors’

Guy M. Richard, The Covenant Idea in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Scotland. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0017
     --  239

apparently entered into an alliance to support Robert the Bruce and to defend his
crown. And after signing the agreement, it is said that they ‘solemnly toke the
Sacrament at St Maries altar, in the said abbey-churche’ (Hewison 1908: 166) as
the sign and seal of their pledge to one another and before the Lord.
As the Reformation was beginning and gaining strength in Scotland, early
Reformers relied upon the use of such bands in order to secure support for the
Protestant cause. John Knox in particular seems to have been the first to combine
the ancient tradition of banding together with the biblical idea of the covenant,
and he did so in order to garner support for the work of the Reformation. Knox
believed that if a nation, or a large portion of the leadership of that nation,
professed to be in covenant with God individually, then the nation as a whole
could be considered to be in league with God. And that meant that it was
‘necessarie’ that both the king and the people of such a covenanted nation
should live according to God’s law and do all in their power to ‘avoyd ydolatrie’
(Knox 1895: 191–3).
The fact that the Scots Confession was approved by Parliament meant, in
Knox’s opinion, that Scotland was therefore a ‘covenanted nation’—one body
united around the cause of the Reformation. Queen Mary I was thus obligated to
rule in light of this ‘covenant’ by obeying the law of God herself and by doing
everything in her power to maintain the work of Protestantism in her realm (Reid
1988: 537). First and foremost this meant, for Knox, abolishing the idolatry of
the Roman Catholic Mass and enacting laws that would promote the preaching
of the true Gospel.
The Scottish Puritans who followed after Knox not only embraced his language
and his thinking about the covenant, but they built upon it and developed it with a
more robust covenant theology guiding and informing their practice. The devel-
opment of federal theology was really an international enterprise in which Scot-
land was just one of many players collaborating together over the course of the
Reformation and post-Reformation periods. Protestant theologians from the
Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, England, and Scotland were all involved in
this process. These theologians shared the overarching characteristic of seeing the
idea of the covenant as the primary systematizing principle around which all the
Bible was to be organized. And although the practice of using the covenant concept
in this way was not new in the seventeenth century—as several of the early Church
Fathers clearly embraced the covenant idea and used it as a key structural concept
in their organizing and presenting of redemptive history (Ferguson 1980: 144)—it
is, nonetheless, true that this practice took on a special significance and momentum
in the seventeenth century. Patrick Gillespie—sounding very much like Robert
Rollock before him—summarized well the general thinking of the period at this
point: ‘God dealeth not with his people, nor doth them any good but [by] that
which cometh by Covenant’ (Gillespie 1661: 28).
240  . 

As federal theology developed in Scotland, every aspect of Christian theology

was seen to be organized around three main covenants. These were the Covenant
of Grace, the Covenant of Works, and the Covenant of Redemption. These three
covenants were almost universally understood in the middle of the seventeenth
century in Scotland to contain the essence of the theology of the Reformation.

Covenant of Grace

The existence of a gracious covenant between God and his people, which can be
traced through both Old and New Testaments, can be seen as far back as the early
Church Fathers. But it was not until the period of the Reformation that this idea
began to take its fullest shape. The first treatise devoted entirely to the covenant
concept was Heinrich Bullinger’s De testamento seu foedere Dei unico et aeterno,
which was published in 1534. As its title suggests, this work argued that God’s
covenant was substantially the same through all the various stages of redemptive
history. While Bullinger and Zwingli championed this position in an effort to
defend their practice of baptism against the Anabaptists, it quickly took hold
within the nascent Reformation and found widespread acceptance. Thus we see
John Calvin, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Wolfgang Musculus, Zacharias Ursinus,
Caspar Olevianus, and Robert Rollock all openly embracing this same idea.
In the seventeenth century, the same thing held true in Scotland. Patrick
Gillespie, for instance, understood the Covenant of Grace to be one overarching
covenant that unified the Old and New Testaments and united the people of God
across the ages by their faith in a Christ who either has already come or will do so
in the future (Gillespie 1661: 6). Samuel Rutherford also believed the same and
appealed to Genesis 3:15, which he referred to as the gospel ‘proclaimed to Adam’
(Rutherford 1668: 430), and to a whole host of Old Testament Scripture passages
that prophesied about the coming Christ and that demonstrated that Old Testa-
ment saints were actually looking ahead to Christ by faith for their salvation
(Rutherford 1668: 430–2). He acknowledged, however, that while these passages
revealed Christ and the forgiveness of sins in and through him, they did so ‘darkly’
and ‘sparingly’ and in a way that Christ was ‘vailed’ (Rutherford 1655: 63).
David Dickson, too, emphasized the unity of the Covenant of Grace and
indicated that it is the same covenant in substance as the one that God made
with Abraham, ‘to whom God promised to be his God, and the God of his
children’ (Dickson 1664: 88). Dickson, together with James Durham, put it this
way in The Sum of Saving Knowledge:
The Covenant of Grace set down in the Old Testament before Christ came, and
in the New since he came, is one and the same in substance, albeit different in
outward administration: for the Covenant in the Old Testament, being sealed
     --  241

with the Sacraments of Circumcision and the Paschal Lamb did set forth Christs
death to come, and the benefits purchased thereby under the shadow of bloody
sacrifices and sundry ceremonies: but since Christ came, the Covenant, being
sealed by the Sacraments of Baptism, and the Lords Supper, do clearly hold forth
Christ already crucified before our eyes, victorious over death, and the grave, and
gloriously ruling Heaven, and Earth for the good of his own people.
(Durham and Dickson 1671: 3.2)

In this one Covenant of Grace, according to David Dickson, God has ‘contract
[ed]’ with ‘men’ to bestow forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who ‘in the
sense of their own sinfulnesse shall receive Christ Jesus offered in the Gospel, for
righteousnesse and life’ (Dickson 1664: 87). One of the things that this quote from
Dickson demonstrates is the flexibility with which the Scottish Puritans expressed
themselves when discussing the parties in the Covenant of Grace. Dickson had
no trouble saying that the covenant was a ‘contract between God and men’
or between God and the ‘visible Church’, on the one hand, and saying that it
was between God and ‘the redeemed’ or between God and ‘Gods own people’, on
the other (Dickson 1664: 87, 134–5, 139). Patrick Gillespie followed suit and
interchangeably spoke of the covenant being between God and ‘sinners’ and
between God and ‘Christ as a publick person, representing many with Christ, as
the second Adam, who stood and covenanted for all his seed’ (Gillespie 1677: 119).
And Rutherford spoke in almost identical terms, saying both that the ‘parties of
the Covenant are, God and Man’ and that ‘the parties here, on the one part, is God;
on the other, The Mediator Christ, and the children that the Lord gave him’
(Rutherford 1645: 46).
This flexibility in delineating the parties of the covenant was due to a difference
that these men saw between external and internal covenanting. Gillespie thus
distinguished between ‘externall visible Covenanting with God, which may be
general and National and, as such, is not saving’ and ‘internall and saving
Covenanting with God, which is personall’ (Gillespie 1661 part II: 153). Dickson
believed that the former category consisted of all those who were ‘covenanting
outwardly’ or ‘in the letter’ and not really and truly (Dickson 1664: 94). The visible
church—for Dickson, Durham, Rutherford, and Gillespie—was comprised of
both external and internal covenanters. This was all part of God’s plan to do
one or more of the following four things: first, to build the visible church; second,
to hide ‘the election of the elect from others, and from themselves till they repent
their sins and flee to Christ’; third, to serve as a means of drawing external
covenanters to genuine faith in Christ and, thus, to internal covenanting; and
fourth, to comfort parents when their children die in infancy by giving them ‘good
hope of those childrens blessed resurrection’ (Dickson 1664: 94–5).
When these men spoke of the covenant as being between God and ‘men’ or
between God and ‘sinners’, they were referring to external covenanting. They were
242  . 

accentuating the fact that God had chosen the Covenant of Grace as a vehicle to
call all people to embrace the covenant for themselves. The covenant, therefore,
had a universal aspect that corresponded to the free offer of the Gospel. But when
they spoke of the covenant as being between God and the elect or between God
and Christ, and the elect as they are in Christ, they were referring to internal
covenanting. They were emphasizing the fact that God actually fulfils the condi-
tions of the covenant on behalf of the elect. As Dickson and Durham said, the Lord
‘gives’ the elect ‘saving Faith by making them . . . to give their consent heartily to
the Covenant of Grace, and to imbrace Christ Jesus unfained’; he gives them
‘Repentance, by making them . . . turn from all iniquity to the service of God’; and
he ‘Sanctifies them, by making them go on and persevere in faith . . . and obedi-
ence’ (Durham and Dickson 1671: 4.1.2–4).
The Covenant of Grace was, thus, both bilateral and unilateral in the thinking
of the Scottish Puritans. It was bilateral in that it required the condition of faith in
Christ to be met before the covenant could be ratified with an individual. On this
point Gillespie said: ‘It is the very nature and essence of all covenants, that they
must be agreements’. And if they are agreements, they must necessarily include
‘mutual conditions’ and obligations (Gillespie 1661: 49–50). They must, therefore,
be bilateral. But the beautiful thing about the Covenant of Grace, in Scottish
Puritan thinking, was that God himself ensured that all the requisite conditions
would be met by and on behalf of the elect. And on this point Gillespie said:
‘Christ performeth all his undertakings for . . . his peoples . . . [and] bringeth all safe
to shore for which he undertaketh, so that neither he nor his people can be losers’
(Gillespie 1661: 116–17). The Covenant of Grace was, therefore, both bilateral and
unilateral; it was bilateral in its presentation to humankind but unilateral in its
administration on behalf of the elect.

Covenant of Works

The phrase foedus operum or ‘covenant of works’ was first used in print by the
English Puritan Dudley Fenner in 1585. Although he did not explicitly apply the
phrase to Adam’s pre-Fall condition in the Garden of Eden, he did use Genesis
2:17 as a proof text for it, which would suggest that this was what he was thinking
(Fenner 1585: 88). Within a decade or so, however, the terminology ‘covenant of
works’ and the explicit application of it to Adam’s prelapsarian situation, became
almost universal practice, especially in Scotland. Beginning with Robert Rollock in
the late sixteenth century (Rollock 1596: A3–A5c), the Covenant of Works
became a staple within Scottish theology that was accepted with very little
difference of opinion.
For Rollock, the Covenant of Works was made between God and Adam and all
his posterity in and through him. It was a conditional covenant in which God
     --  243

promised life to humankind upon condition of obedience and death upon condi-
tion of disobedience. It was a permanent covenant in which all people were to
remain until and unless they were admitted to the Covenant of Grace through
their believing in Christ (Rollock 1603: 6–11). All people were, therefore, in some
kind of covenant relationship with God, which is why Rollock could say that ‘God
speaks nothing to man without the covenant’.
It is this same understanding that carried over into the work of men like
Durham, Dickson, Rutherford, and Gillespie. Thus Rutherford said that the
Covenant of Works was such that ‘God promiseth to us lif everlasting, and wee
ar oblished to keep the law by the strength of our nature’ (Rutherford 1886: 175).
Gillespie put it this way: ‘Adam for his part was to be obedient to God, according
to all that was revealed to him of his will, and particularly in forbearing to eat of
the fruit of the tree of knowledge’ (Gillespie 1661: 185). Dickson stated that ‘mans
continuing in a happy life, is promised, upon condition of perfect personall
obedience, to be done by him out of his own naturall strength bestowed upon
him’ (Dickson 1664: 71). And Dickson and Durham together said that the ‘sum of
the Covenant of Works . . . is this, If thou do all that is commanded, and not fail in
any point, thou shalt be saved: but if thou fail, thou shalt die’ (Durham and
Dickson 1671: I5f ).
In saying that God promised, ‘upon condition of perfect personall obedience’,
to give life to Adam, these men did not mean to suggest that God intended to save
Adam by his obedience: ‘Adam in his first state was not predestinate to a law glory’
(Rutherford 1655: 2). In fact, as Gillespie declared, ‘no man was predestinated to
righteousnesse and life’ by way of the Covenant of Works (Gillespie 1661: 177).
God never envisioned the prelapsarian dispensation to be an end in itself. Rather,
as Dickson pointed out, it was to serve as a means ‘to light the mercy and grace of
God in Christ’ (Dickson 1664: 77). Rutherford understood that ‘the Lord had . . . a
love designe’ in mind in establishing the Covenant of Works: he wanted to use it
‘to set up a Theatre and stage of free grace’ that would convict the world of sin and
point it to forgiveness in Christ (Rutherford 1655: 3). By functioning in this way,
the Covenant of Works would display God’s love and grace in Christ for all the
world to see. In The Sum of Saving Knowledge, Dickson and Durham together
drew attention to this same gracious purpose in the Covenant of Works when they
said that it functions together with the Covenant of Grace ‘to convince a man of
sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judgment . . . that he may become an unfained
believer in Jesus Christ . . . and so be saved’ (Durham and Dickson 1671: I5f ).
But not only was the Covenant of Works intended by God for a gracious end, it
was also gracious in and of itself. Thus Gillespie could say that the ‘Covenant of
Works had its rise from Grace in God, or as others call it . . . from favour and meer
goodnesse in God’ (Gillespie 1661: 197). And Dickson listed five ways in which
this covenant might be considered gracious: first, it gave humankind the great
honour of being in a close alliance of friendship with God; second, it put God in
244  . 

a situation where he made promises to humankind and bound himself to keep

them; third, God bound himself to sustain the lives of his creatures as long as they
kept covenant with him; fourth, it gave human beings a ‘door’ to a ‘higher degree
of felicity’ than they would have had otherwise; and fifth, it gave encouragements
and warnings to help motivate those who were in covenant with the Lord ‘to be
constant in . . . obedience’ (Dickson 1664: 73–4). Interestingly, it is this feature of
Scottish federal theology that just might show how at least these Puritans were
much closer to Calvin’s thinking than has perhaps been imagined by scholars who
have looked upon the Covenant of Works as a locus of discontinuity. While the
Covenant of Works does seem to have been an instrument of reprobation within
Scottish federal theology, it was not only or chiefly so. It was a gracious condes-
cension on God’s part, binding himself to humankind for their ‘felicity’.
Men like Dickson, Durham, Rutherford, and Gillespie embraced the idea of a
Covenant of Works principally because they saw it in the Bible. To be sure, they
did not see it as clearly as they saw the Covenant of Grace, and they readily
acknowledged that, in the words of Gillespie, the Covenant of Works was ‘more
sparingly and obscurely laid down in the Scriptures’ (Gillespie 1661: 177). But they
did see it, and they saw it chiefly in two ways. First, they saw it as a necessary
consequence of the teaching of Scripture. Such things as the Adam–Christ parallel,
the transmission of Adam’s sin to his posterity, and the presence of the tree of life
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, both of which carried a ‘sacra-
mental’ significance, all pointed to the necessity of there being a Covenant of
Works. And, second, these men saw it in the fact that the ‘nature, promises,
threatnings and conditions of this Covenant’ were ‘expressly’ set forth in the Bible
(Gillespie 1661: 177–85). Where these things were present in Scripture, a covenant
must also necessarily be present.
Before moving on to explore the third covenant within Scottish federal the-
ology, it needs to be pointed out that the Scottish Puritans did not see themselves
as introducing something novel into the Church when they advocated for the
Covenant of Works. Rather they saw themselves as standing in the mainstream of
Reformation thinking and defending its claims. The development of the Covenant
of Works was, after all, an international enterprise that can trace its roots back to
Athanasius and Augustine at least—both of whom seem to have articulated the
existence of a prelapsarian covenant between God and Adam and to have pointed
to the Adam–Christ parallel in Scripture as significant in structuring redemptive
history (Augustine 1878: 142–3; Trinterud 1951: 42, 56 n. 17). The development
accelerated during the Reformation period, so much so, that by 1590 the idea of a
prelapsarian covenant between God and Adam existing alongside a postlapsarian
covenant had gained widespread acceptance among the post-Reformation ortho-
dox. Ursinus and Olevianus in Germany and Franciscus Gomarus in the Nether-
lands all explicitly embraced this idea, although they used different terminology in
describing it (Letham 1983: 459; Olevianus 1585: 9; Gomarus 1664: 2). Before
     --  245

long, however, consensus was reached in regard to terminology as well—which

can be seen from the fact that Amandus Polanus, Robert Rollock, William Perkins,
Franciscus Junius, William Ames, Samuel Crooke, and James Ussher all used the
phrase foedus operum in the years following 1590 to describe Adam’s pre-Fall
relationship with God and distinguish it from his post-Fall relationship (Polanus
1591: 53; Rollock 1596: A3–A5c; Perkins 1616: 70; Junius 1882: 184; Ames 1642:
55; Crooke 1613: 30; Ussher 1645: 124–5). The point I am trying to make here
is that in articulating the Covenant of Works, Scottish Puritans would have
seen themselves as following the general trend of the Reformation and con-
tinuing its work.

Covenant of Redemption

The precise origin of the Covenant of Redemption is difficult to determine with

certainty. There were hints of the doctrine in the early sixteenth century in
Oecolampadius and maybe even in Luther (Muller 2007: 12). These hints con-
tinued to be visible throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
across the theological spectrum. Jacob Arminius, interestingly enough, spoke of
a covenant between God the Father and God the Son as early as 1603, in which
there was a voluntary arrangement made to accomplish the redemption of
humankind (Arminius 1991, 1: 415–17). But it was not until later in the seven-
teenth century that more concrete expressions of the Covenant of Redemption
began to surface. And it was not long after they began to surface that the Covenant
of Redemption found its place as a standard in contemporary expressions of
federal theology. What is surprising is how quickly this happened and how little
opposition there was to the idea of a foedus redemptionis or pactum salutis. The
lack of opposition may suggest that the hints that have recently been recognized in
the sixteenth century were in fact more than hints at the time (Muller 2007: 14).
But whatever the case may be, we know that Scotland played a large role in the
development of the Covenant of Redemption in the seventeenth century.
David Dickson was among the first to speak explicitly of a ‘Covenant of
redemption betwixt God and Christ’ in his speech before the General Assembly
in 1638 (Peterkin 1838: 158). Durham and Dickson explicitly wrote about it in The
Sum of Saving Knowledge, which was first published in 1648. They defined it as
follows:

The sum of the Covenant of Redemption is this, God having freely chosen unto
life, a certain number of lost mankind, for the glory of his rich Grace did give
them before the world began, unto God the Son appointed Redeemer, that upon
condition he would humble himself so far as to assume the human nature of a
soul and a body, unto personal union with his Divine Nature, and submit himself
246  . 

to the Law as surety for them, and satisfie Justice for them, by giving obedience in
their name, even unto the suffering of the cursed death of the Cross, he should
ransom and redeem them all from sin and death, and purchase unto them
righteousness and eternal life, with all saving graces leading thereunto, to be
effectually, by means of his own appointment, applyed in due time to every one
of them. (Durham and Dickson 1671: 2.2)

Samuel Rutherford and Patrick Gillespie followed suit and explicitly embraced
this doctrine in writing in 1655 and 1677, respectively. And Durham later
mentions it extensively in his Christ Crucified: Or, The Marrow of the Gospel,
which was published in 1683.
After Dickson’s speech to the 1638 Assembly, reference to the Covenant of
Redemption became much more widespread outside of Scotland than inside. Men
like Thomas Goodwin, Edward Fisher, Peter Bulkeley, Johannes Cocceius, John Owen,
Thomas Black, Anthony Burgess, John Bunyan, and Herman Witsius, just by way
of example, all embraced this doctrine and mentioned it explicitly in their writings.
The Covenant of Redemption thus quickly became the accepted norm within the
tradition of the Reformation by the middle of the seventeenth century or so.
In embracing this doctrine, Gillespie, Rutherford, Dickson, and Durham all
sought to defend it from Scripture. Gillespie pointed to Isaiah 59:20–1 and Psalm
8:3 as the two passages that he saw as explicitly referring to this covenant. He also
cited a whole host of other passages that he thought implied it but without
mentioning it explicitly (Gillespie 1677: 2–6). Dickson sought to prove the cov-
enant by appealing primarily to those Bible passages that used language alluding
to an ‘agreement’, ‘contract’, ‘bargain’, or ‘transaction’ that took place between
God the Father and God the Son in the working out of salvation (Dickson 1664:
23–6). Rutherford’s justification for embracing the Covenant of Redemption was
found in passages like Isaiah 49:6–12 and Psalm 89:28–34, the latter of which he
saw as supporting the covenant only by implication. Thus he could say that the
reason why ‘David and his seed stand sure in an everlasting Covenant of recon-
ciliation [i.e. of grace]’ is because the Covenant of Redemption stands behind it:
‘the Covenant of Suretyship [i.e. of redemption] is the cause of the stability and
firmnesse of the Covenant of Grace’ (Rutherford 1655: 309). Durham appealed to
language in the Bible that was suggestive of an agreement between the Father and
the Son, language like that which is found in places like Psalm 40:8, John 6:38,
John 17:14, and Acts 2:23. These kinds of passages, according to Durham, ‘hath
the nature of a Covenant, to wit, two Parties agreeing, and terms whereupon they
agree; and is well ordered in all things for prosecuting and carrying on the design
of saving lost sinners’ (Durham 1702: 121).
Despite the widespread acceptance that the Covenant of Redemption achieved
in the seventeenth century, many people today struggle with its existence—even
when it is viewed through the lens of the Scottish Puritans’ own theological
framework. If, as these men readily acknowledged, God is one God who possesses
     --  247

one divine will, then it is not altogether clear why something like the Covenant of
Redemption would be necessary. All three persons of the Trinity would already
share the same mind and the same will and, thus, would be in perfect agreement
with one another (Barth 1956: 65). Why would any kind of covenant or contract
be necessary? Part of the answer to this question is to say—as I have elsewhere—
that men like Rutherford, Durham, Dickson, and Gillespie may well have been
‘more influenced by the socio-political and economic climates of their day than
they were by the teaching of Scripture in their formulation of this doctrine’
(Richard 2008: 144). Without a doubt, ‘the people of the seventeenth century
understood the language of bands, pacts, covenants, [and] contracts’ (Torrance
1981: 227). But we should also point out that the divine decrees do presuppose
that decisions are being made by the three persons of the Godhead that will then
be carried out in time and space. And part of the answer to our question is also
that these men believed the Covenant of Redemption was the vehicle in and
through which the three persons of the Godhead made these decisions and
reached agreement to carry them out in time and space.

The Role of Experiential Religion

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Puritan preaching was its desire to

make an impression upon its hearers. It was not enough for seventeenth-century
preachers to convey information. They wanted to make an impression upon the
hearts and minds of their congregation members. John Preston perhaps made this
point most vividly when he said that this was the ‘maine businesse’ of all preach-
ing: ‘the word that we [preachers] deliver to you, should be like nailes, driven
home to the head . . . that they may sticke and abide in the soule, as forked arrowes
doe in the bodie, that they may not easily fall out againe. Therefore the maine
businesse that wee have to do in preaching the word, is to fasten these words thus
upon your hearts’ (Preston 1630: 111–12). Jonathan Edwards even went so far as
to say that this impression is more important than anything the members of the
congregation might remember from the content of the sermon:
The main benefit obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind at
the time, and not by an effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what
was delivered. And though an after-remembrance of what was heard in a sermon
is oftentimes very profitable; yet, for the most part, that remembrance is from an
impression the words made on the heart at the time; and the memory profits, as it
renews and increases that impression. (Edwards 1974, 1: 394)

The Puritans employed many different approaches in order to try to make this
kind of an impression with their preaching. For one thing, they adopted a
colloquial manner of speaking (Richard 2011: lvii–lxi). Samuel Rutherford, for
instance, adopted such a colloquial approach to preaching that the Oxford English
248  . 

Dictionary actually quotes from his sermons and writings nearly 700 times in
order to illustrate what this kind of a contextualized approach would look like
(Coffey 1997: 102). For another thing, the Puritans also tended to focus a large
part of their sermons on application and to present their sermons a bit more
theatrically in the pulpit. One of Rutherford’s friends once remarked that when-
ever Rutherford came to speak about Jesus in his sermons, he became so animated
that it looked as if he would fly out of the pulpit altogether (Bonar 1891: 5). This
kind of animated display was typical in Puritan preaching (Bremer and Rydell
1995: 53), and it was all part of trying to make an impression upon the members of
the congregation.
In light of the distinctive and long-standing tradition of ‘banding’ or ‘bonding’
together in Scotland, and in light of the distinction the Scottish Puritans made
between internal and external covenanting, it would also appear that the Scottish
Puritans saw the idea of the covenant as another way of making an impression
upon their hearers. Between the middle of the sixteenth century and the latter part
of the seventeenth century, for example, there were more than thirty public
covenants or ‘bands’ made in Scotland (Torrance 1981: 226). Among the most
well-known of these were the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League
and Covenant of 1643, both of which were written in the middle of the seven-
teenth century and show clear continuity with the ancient tradition of covenant-
ing or banding together. For Rutherford, national covenants like these were not
political but wholly religious covenants. Those who signed them were in effect
making a public profession of their faith in Jesus Christ and of their desire to
support the work of the Reformation in Scotland. Following John Knox, Ruther-
ford believed that when a majority of the leadership of the nation entered into this
kind of a covenant, the result was that the nation as a whole became an ecclesi-
astical body, the members of which were effectively subject to church discipline:

From this place it is cleere, when a Kingdome, or two Kingdomes are united
together, and confederate by the Oath of God in one Religious Covenant, they
become an Ecclesiastick body, so as the whole may challenge any part that
maketh defection, and labour to gaine them, and if they contumaciously resist,
they are with the sword to decide the matter, lest wrath from the Lord breake out
on the whole confederate body; as for the sinne of one Achan, wrath came upon
all Israel. (Rutherford 1649: 304)

For all of these reasons, Rutherford considered the nation of Scotland and the
visible church to be coterminous. And as a result, he believed—rather unusually—
that baptism was to be rightly administered to all infants who were born within
the nation of Scotland, regardless of the ‘wickednesse of their nearest Parents’
(Rutherford 1642: 164).
Gillespie, similarly, believed that ‘the great end of [national] Covenanting’ was
to call each individual into a ‘special occasion of making or renewing a personall
     --  249

covenant with God’. In other words, all forms of external covenanting were
designed to call people to internal covenanting. For someone to enter into a
national covenant and not enter into a personal covenant with God for salvation
was ‘deep dissimulation and hypocrisie’ (Gillespie 1661 part II: 174). It was to
reject the external call of the Gospel in one’s life.
National covenants were thus seen in the seventeenth century as means of calling
the visible church—i.e. the nation of Scotland—to faith in Jesus Christ. They were
means of preaching the truths of the Reformation to the nation. James Torrance has
argued that the language of covenants, bands, and contracts was the common
language of the Scottish people in the seventeenth century. It was a colloquial or
contextualized way of speaking (Torrance 1981: 227). With these things in mind, it is
no surprise that the idea of the covenant took on such significance at this time. It was
seen as a means of making a powerful impression upon the hearts and minds of the
people of Scotland with the truth of the Protestant faith. It is no wonder that men like
Gillespie, Rutherford, Dickson, and Durham so frequently embraced the language of
‘paction’, ‘bargain’, ‘confederation’, and ‘contract’. They were driving their theology
home like ‘nailes . . . to the head’ (Dickson 1664: 98, 104; Gillespie 1677: 6, 148, 151;
Durham and Dickson 1671: 1.2, 2.2).

Conclusion

Three main influences on Scottish federal theology in the middle of the seventeenth
century have been discussed in this chapter: the ancient Scottish practice of ‘banding’
or ‘bonding’ together; John Knox’s understanding of national covenants and their
connection to the biblical covenants; and the widespread development of federal
theology within Scotland and the mainstream of Reformation thinking. All three of
these converged in the lifetimes of men like Rutherford, Dickson, Durham, and
Gillespie to produce what was a distinctive Scottish emphasis on the covenant
concept. By adopting the idea of the covenant, Scottish Puritans could continue
the work of the Reformation that Knox had started almost 100 years before. They
could do this by standing with Knox in applying the covenant idea on a national
basis; by aligning themselves within the mainstream of the Reformation and formu-
lating their theology along the lines of the covenant; by using the covenant idea to
fight against false doctrine, most especially, against Arminianism; and by capitalizing
upon the ancient practice of ‘banding’ or ‘bonding’ together to drive home the truths
of the Reformation like nails into the hearts and minds of the people of Scotland. The
covenant idea helped the Scottish Puritans to create the most powerful impression
they could make so that they might have the best possible opportunity of completing
the work of the Reformation, which they were so desperate to do.
For all of these reasons, the idea of the covenant reached its zenith in Scotland
in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. But it would not be long before
250  . 

this idea began to wane in the hearts and minds of the Scottish people. The rise of
toleration in Scotland beginning in the mid-to-late seventeenth century and the
gradual decline of federal theology as a universally accepted system both contrib-
uted to the covenant idea becoming less prominent in Scottish culture in the
succeeding generations.
The Toleration Act of 1689 was just one part of a greater movement towards
toleration in England and Scotland that was fuelled by the convergence of several
political and religious trends. The lingering influence of Renaissance humanism
and the impact of the early Enlightenment coalesced with developments including
the encounter with the New World, the ongoing development of the printing
press, unprecedented and diverse population growth, greater economic prosperity
and quality of life, and utter exhaustion among the people brought about by the
devastating effects of many years of religious war (Coffey 2000: 208–17). All this
helped to produce a new attitude among the general population that was much
less patient towards religious persecution or coercion of any kind and so contrib-
uted to a new historical context in which the practice of national covenanting
struggled to gain the widespread acceptance it had once enjoyed.
Federal theology as a system also saw a gradual decline in its popularity over the
course of the generations following the seventeenth century. This was a relatively
slow process in Scotland as federal theology held sway, according to at least one
historian, well into the nineteenth century (Macleod 1943: 219). But it did even-
tually lose something of its original lustre. There are a variety of reasons for this. In
some cases, it was seen as speculative, unnecessary, and contrived—especially in
regard to the covenants of redemption and of works. In other cases, it was seen as
tending towards legalism—especially in regard to the perceived overemphasis on
conditions in the covenants. And while in each of these cases there are counter-
points to be made, it, nonetheless, remains true that the covenant idea declined in
prominence after the life and ministries of men like Durham, Dickson, Rutherford,
and Gillespie. But for a few years in the middle of the seventeenth century, it was
widely embraced and seized upon as the best expression of Reformation theology
and as the most powerful way to communicate that theology and drive it home to
the hearts and minds of the people of Scotland.

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Rutherford, Samuel (1668). Examen Arminianismi. Utrecht.
Rutherford, Samuel (1886). Ane Catachisme conteining the Soume of Christian Religion
in Catechisms of the Second Reformation, ed. A. F. Mitchell. London.
Ussher, James (1645). A Body of Divinity, or the Summe and Substance of Christian
Religion. London.
252  . 

Secondary Literature
Barth, Karl (1956). Church Dogmatics IV/1. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Bremer, Francis and Ellen Rydell (1995). ‘Performance Art? Puritans in the Pulpit’,
History Today 45/9: 50–4.
Burrell, S. A. (1958). ‘The Covenant Idea as a Revolutionary Symbol: Scotland,
1596–1637’, Church History 27: 338–50.
Coffey, John (1997). Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel
Rutherford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coffey, John (2000). Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689.
Harlow: Longman.
Ferguson, Everett (1980). ‘The Covenant Idea in the Second Century’, in W. Eugene
March (ed.), Texts and Testaments: Critical Essays on the Bible and Early Church
Fathers. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 135–62.
Hewison, James K. (1908). ‘ “Bands” or Covenants in Scotland, with a List of Extant
Copies of the Scottish Covenants’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland (10 February): 166–82.
Letham, Robert (1983). ‘The Foedus Operum: Some Factors Accounting for its Devel-
opment’, Sixteenth Century Journal 14: 457–67.
Macleod, John (1943). Scottish Theology in Relation to Church History since the
Reformation. Edinburgh: Publications Committee of the Free Church of Scotland.
Muller, Richard (2007). ‘Toward the Pactum Salutis: Locating the Origins of a Concept’,
Mid-America Journal of Theology 18: 11–65.
Reid, W. Stanford (1988). ‘John Knox’s Theology of Political Government’, Sixteenth
Century Journal 19: 529–40.
Richard, Guy M. (2008). The Supremacy of God in the Theology of Samuel Rutherford.
Milton Keynes: Paternoster.
Richard, Guy M. (2011). ‘Introduction’, in Chris Coldwell (ed.), Sermons Preached
Before the English Houses of Parliament by the Scottish Commissioners to the
Westminster Assembly of Divines 1643–1645. Dallas, TX: Naphtali Press, xxxvii–lxx.
Torrance, J. B. (1981). ‘The Covenant Concept in Scottish Theology and Politics and its
Legacy’, Scottish Journal of Theology 34: 225–43.
Trinterud, Leonard J. (1951). ‘The Origins of Puritanism’, Church History 20: 37–57.
 18
The Reformed Scholasticism
of James Dundas
Alexander Broadie

Introduction

The philosophy that for centuries has been called ‘scholastic’ is that of the
medieval schoolmen, almost all of them Catholic clerics, who taught in the
universities of medieval Europe. What could their philosophy possibly be if not
Catholic? Nevertheless I shall here accept the view, which has growing support,
that the term ‘scholastic philosophy’ is just as appropriately predicable of recog-
nizably Reformed orthodox writings as it is of Catholic works (Muller 2000,
2003–6). I shall offer elucidation of the nature of scholasticism and shall seek to
show that scholasticism, contracted from the universal down to the individual,
exists in the sole philosophical work that we know to have come from the pen
of the Covenanter, Kirk elder, and judge James Dundas (c.1620–79), the first
Lord Arniston. The work, entitled Idea philosophiae moralis (The idea of moral
philosophy), is a Latin manuscript 313 pages long. This chapter is focused on
Dundas’ book. I shall begin by providing a brief biography of Dundas, whose life
I believe to be deeply informed by the philosophy of his Idea philosophiae
moralis. I then sketch a concept of scholasticism, and in the final section, shall
indicate my reasons for regarding the Idea philosophiae moralis as a scholastic
work despite its being from the pen of one who subscribed to, and also lived, his
Reformed orthodoxy. First the life of James Dundas (see Omond 1887; Broadie
2016a, 2016b).

James Dundas: His Life

James Dundas was a member of a family of great distinction, the Dundases of

Arniston, near Gorebridge some twelve or so miles south of Edinburgh and within
the scope of the Presbytery of Dalkeith. James Dundas’ father, also named James
Dundas, was owner of the large estate at Arniston. He was also both a Member of
Scotland’s Parliament and a member of the College of Justice. He died when James
Dundas fils was aged about eight. In 1635, aged about fifteen, James went up to

Alexander Broadie, The Reformed Scholasticism of James Dundas. In: The History of Scottish
Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0018
254  

St Leonard’s College, St Andrews, his father’s old college, matriculating in February

of 1636. Having matriculated he does not thereafter appear in the College records,
unsurprisingly given that the Bursar’s Book for 1637–8 is missing and the Bursar’s
Book for 1638–9 is seriously incomplete. However, the Arniston Accounts Book
informs us that during the four years from 1635–6 to 1638–9 the Arniston Estate
paid St Leonard’s £100 and also paid maintenance bills to St Leonard’s covering
that period. Dundas must have joined the cohort of students guided through the
four-year cycle of Arts subjects by the regent James Guthrie, who was later to die, a
martyr to the Presbyterian cause, after calling out to the crowd, gathered for his
hanging, to adhere firmly to the Covenant. That such a person was Dundas’
teacher for four years may usefully be borne in mind so far as we are interested
in identifying the formative influences on Dundas’ own spiritual and moral
journey. Two further facts concerning St Andrews during Dundas’ period as a
student there should also be noted. First, though there had been hostility to the
National Covenant among the St Andrews regents in 1638, the principals of the
University’s three colleges, Robert Howie, Andrew Bruce, and George Martine,
all signed the National Covenant in that same year; and secondly, in that same
year Samuel Rutherford, as profoundly informed and persuaded by covenantal
thought as anyone could be, became Professor of Divinity at St Mary’s College,
St Andrews.
James Dundas’ family was already strongly Presbyterian, and these develop-
ments at St Andrews could only have reinforced the religious values previously
inculcated into him at Arniston. The Records of the Presbytery of Dalkeith include
a copy of the National Covenant signed by Dundas and dated 12 December 1639.
In July 1640 he became an elder of the Kirk, and thereafter is recorded as playing
an active role in the work of the Presbytery. A year later he wed Marion Boyd,
daughter of Robert, seventh Lord Boyd of Kilmarnock, and thereby became linked
to two important Presbyterian theologians, Robert Boyd of Trochrig and Zachary
Boyd, both of whom had been professors at the Huguenot Academy of Saumur
and had also held high positions at Glasgow University.
In June 1662 Dundas became a member of the College of Justice, but his career
as judge hardly had time to get started before it was brought to a halt. In August
1663 at the instigation of Charles II, Parliament enacted a law affirming that
signatories to the Covenant could not ‘exercise any public trust or office within the
kingdom’ without first renouncing their signature. James Dundas affirmed that he
was willing to make a public renunciation of his signature so long as he was
permitted to add the proviso, declared publicly, that he renounced it ‘in so far
as it [the Covenant] led to deeds of actual rebellion’. This compromise was
rejected by King Charles. Dundas duly presented his notice of demission as
judge, and retired to his Arniston estate, where, as was later recalled, he lived in
domestic bliss and cultivated his taste for polite learning, a taste that could only
have been sharpened by the company of close neighbours such as his judicial
       255

friends Sir James Dalrymple, later Lord Stair, whose younger son married
Dundas’ daughter Katherine, and the Lord Advocate Sir George Mackenzie,
who was a witness to the young couple’s marriage contract.
So far as we know, the chief (and perhaps only) intellectual product of the
years of polite learning spent after his demission from the College of Justice is
his Latin manuscript Idea philosophiae moralis. He began it on 7 April 1679 and
died in October of that year. The manuscript, some 68,000 words in length, was
left uncompleted. At the end of the text he wrote his signature followed by a
row of four etceteras, and there are thereafter thirty blank sheets stitched into
the book. At the very end he wrote repeatedly a line from Virgil’s Aeneid:
O mihi praeteritos referat si Iupiter annos (If only Jupiter would return to me
my past years). It is probable that he is thereby telling us that he had a good
deal more to say and that he did not believe he would be spared to say it. It is
only in the past very few years that attention has been paid to this manuscript.
One aspect well worth our noting is the Idea’s expression of a philosophy
constrained by Reformed orthodox commitment, a constraint that prompts
the thought that perhaps a philosopher who is committed to Reformed ortho-
doxy cannot philosophize as if he does not have that commitment. I shall
consider an aspect of this thesis.

Scholasticism and Reformed Orthodoxy

At the heart of medieval Catholic scholasticism lie the philosophical writings of

Aristotle, and a good deal of the philosophy composed during the medieval period
was commentary on those writings. In the commentaries Aristotle’s technical
terms are deployed, as also are his principles and arguments concerning the
categories, the forms of proposition, and of course the Aristotelian syllogistic
that propels us all from premises to conclusion and that permits the subsequent
deployment of those new conclusions as premises leading to further conclusions.
Beyond the logic of Aristotle, his physics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and
practical philosophy are treated in the same way. The philosophy and theology of
the medieval Catholic schoolmen is stamped at every move by this appropriation
of Aristotle.
Thus far I have not mentioned any individual doctrines to which the medieval
scholastics subscribed qua scholastics. But it might be said that a list is present
implicitly, for Aristotle’s philosophy is treated as an authoritative philosophy for
everyone, authoritative in the sense that, because it is by Aristotle, we must
critique what we doubt in what he says, because our doubt may be due to our
failure to understand him, not to his failure to articulate the truth.
The extent of his appropriation by the schoolmen is well represented by the late
scholastic Scottish philosopher-theologian John Mair, whose liminary letter in
256  

his commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics contains the following

summation:
For in almost all his judgments Aristotle agrees with the Catholic and truly
Christian faith in its very purest integrity. He constantly affirms the free will of
human beings. He declares with the greatest gravity that suicide, killing oneself,
committed in order to avoid sad things, is the mark not of a truly strong but of a
frightened spirit. He separates honest pleasures which good men may seek after
from the low enticements that the Turks propose for themselves. He places in the
exercise of the heroic virtues the happiness which human beings may attain. And
he pursues with admirable judgment the examination of the two kinds of life,
each of them praiseworthy. I mean the active and the contemplative kinds, once
represented for the Jews by the sisters Rachel and Leah, and now represented for
us also by the sisters Martha and Magdalena. For he ascribes the latter kind of life
to higher beings and the former kind to mortals. In short, in so great and
manifold a work if it be read as we explain it, you meet hardly a single opinion
unworthy of a Christian man. (Mair 1530)

This passage both exemplifies the scholastic appropriation of Aristotle and also
implicitly provides a justification for the otherwise questionable step of placing a
pagan philosophy at the heart of Catholic Christendom’s theological discourse.
Since that appropriation is the most prominent feature of medieval scholasticism,
its perceived permissibility by the Church requires explanation. In a word, Aris-
totle was shown, by the combined genius of several generations of philosophers
and theologians, and perhaps especially by Thomas Aquinas, to have composed a
philosophy that was not merely compatible with Christian doctrine but was in
addition able to provide a sound intellectual underpinning for much of its
teaching; and where, on the face of it, there was an incompatibility, this could
be resolved by due interpretation. It is, I think, in the light of this consideration
that we should understand the parallel that Mair draws between, on the one hand,
the Aristotelian concepts of the active life and the contemplative and, on the other
hand, the two pairs of sisters, Rachel and Leah, and Martha and Mary;¹ a parallel
that is singular in its immediate reference, but universal through signifying
the principle under which a pagan philosophy can be accommodated within a
specifically Christian discourse.
While foregrounding some characteristic features of scholastic philosophy,
I have not at the same time focused on specifically Catholic teaching within that
philosophy, such as the Church’s doctrines on the Eucharist and the Fall. Never-
theless, the characteristic features of scholastic philosophy are well-nigh ubiquitous
in explorations of such doctrines by the medieval philosophers and theologians.
Regarding the Eucharist the explorations were carried out by means of the

¹ Mair says ‘Magdalena’ but he appears unaware of Lefèvre d’Étaples’ detective work: Magdalena
and Mary sister of Martha were not one and the same.
       257

conceptual apparatus of substance and accidents developed by Aristotle, and in

addition by means of the concept of a real accident, a concept that is arguably
incompatible with Aristotle’s teaching but that is nonetheless constructed out of
various materials found within that same teaching. Regarding the Fall, the explor-
ations paid close attention to the nature of mind, the faculties of intellect and
will and the relation between them, all of this based on concepts and principles
taken from Aristotle’s De Anima and the Nicomachean Ethics, as well as other
works by him. But all these pre-Reform elements in philosophy duly appear, in
great detail, in the writings of the Reformers themselves, and this despite the fact
that the Reformers were motivated to articulate and defend theological positions
incompatible with the doctrines developed by the medieval schoolmen.
There is an institutional dimension to this grand claim about the trajectory of
scholasticism. The Reformers had their own schools. By the end of the sixteenth
century there were five in Scotland—its five universities. During the seventeenth
century a dozen arose in France—the Protestant academies, set up and maintained
primarily to provide for the formation of Huguenot pastors. Likewise, in the Low
Countries and elsewhere in northern Europe, universities were constituted or
re-constituted to serve the needs of Reformed communities, and especially to provide
for the formation of pastors and ministers. These schools taught philosophy and
theology and, as regards the character of this teaching, there was little attempt to
reinvent the wheel. There was really only one show in town. The Reformers
produced Reformed schoolmen in Reformed schools who taught Reformed scholas-
tic philosophy and theology. Aristotle remained ubiquitous. His technical termin-
ology, his logical categories, his syllogistic, his metaphysics, his philosophy of
mind and moral philosophy, have as strong a presence among the Reformers as
they had in the works of medieval Catholic scholastics. In this sense the two sets of
schoolmen were singing from the same hymn sheet, a hymn sheet whose words were
in Latin, the language of the schools of the New Order as of the Old. This meant that
they could all participate in the same academic conversation, agree with each other
and disagree with each other, and understand each other very well. What is clear
from a glance at the Reformed texts is how familiar the Reformers were with Catholic
philosophy and theology, both contemporary works and also works from earlier
centuries. I shall turn now from the scholasticism of the Reformed thinkers to ways
in which their Reformed orthodox adherence enters into the substance of their
philosophy. James Dundas will be centre stage.

The Reformed Scholasticism of James Dundas’

Idea philosophiae moralis

Dundas opens his Idea with the declaration that moral philosophy is a given
(Datur philosophia moralis), for, as he puts the matter: ‘there is a doctrine and
258  

disposition in people which directs us, according to the dictates of practical right
reason, regarding what should be done with respect to things that are good by the
light of nature.’ No doctrine could be more useful than this, for, declares Dundas:
‘The moral philosopher, having this admirable skill, teaches us the sounder ways
by which the quick-sands of [the corrupt affections] can be avoided and teaches us
also the means by which the brute passions can be tamed.’² This account of moral
philosophy is developed by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics and developed
further in the Prima secundae of the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas.
Dundas does not abandon these sources in adding that the subject of moral
philosophy, that is, the agent who does the moral philosophizing, is the practical
intellect; that the material object of moral philosophy is human action, and that its
formal object is rightness with respect to virtue.³
Nor does Dundas abandon those same sources when he begins his search for
a definition of moral philosophy by listing as contenders for the role of genus:
intelligence (intelligentia), wisdom (sapientia), scientific knowledge (scientia), art
(ars), prudence (prudentia), and practical disposition (habitus practicus), a list
of technical terms central to Aristotle’s programme in the Nicomachean Ethics
(see III, 6).
My purpose here is to indicate Dundas’ route to the definition of moral
philosophy, as an indication itself of the extent to which he operated within the
scholastic philosophical frame of reference. I shall now add a point of clarification
to this picture and shall then give an indication of the way in which Dundas’
Reformed orthodoxy informs his scholasticism. The clarification concerns the fact
that moral philosophy is treated by Dundas exactly as if it were a disposition on
the side of practice, not a purely theoretical or intellectual exercise. To be a moral
philosopher, on Dundas’ account, it is not enough to be a philosopher with an
interest in morality; it is also necessary to be virtuous. On this account, being
virtuous is part of being a moral philosopher in the following sense: the practical
principles, and the perceptions that the agent has of his circumstances, and the
other elements also that have a role as the premises of a practical syllogism—all
these things inform, or are embodied in, the agent’s act, where the act itself, as
Aristotle affirms, constitutes the conclusion of the syllogism (De motu animalium
701a18 et seq.). Moral philosophers live virtuous lives because their way of life is
informed by their philosophy.
Dundas’ moral philosophy is in substantial measure expressed, as we have
seen, in an Aristotelian vocabulary and is developed with the aid of Aristotelian
principles. There is, however, a whole dimension of Dundas’ moral philosophy

² Moralis philosophus tanquam peritus palmaris docet quibus sanioribus viis ef<f>ugiendae sint
istius modi syrtes quibus etiam mediis domandae sint Bruti passiones. Idea, 3.
³ rectitudo quoad honestatem. Idea, 3. Honestas, which I have translated ‘virtue’, could also be
rendered ‘integrity’ (as a moral quality) and ‘honourableness’.
       259

that derives from a very different source, namely theology. It is to this that
I now turn.
Dundas accepted a stadial theory of human history that could hardly have been
more distant from the stadial theories produced in Scotland during the following
century by Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, and others. The theory
that Dundas relies on is tripartite. The first stage is life in the Garden of Eden up to
the first disobedience; the second stage is the period of fallen and depraved
humankind; and the third is the period of recovery, a restoration of the happy
state enjoyed in the Garden. These three stages, characterized respectively as status
institutus, status destitutus, and status restitutus, are invoked by Dundas in the
course of his criticism of Hobbes’ characterization of the state of nature, the
Hobbesian original state of humankind, as a state of war; the point being of course
that, in Dundas’ Heilsgeschichte, the status institutus was not a state of war, for it
was a peaceful garden, and neither will the status restitutus be a state of war, for
the status restitutus is one in which swords are beaten into ploughshares and
spears into pruning hooks. In Dundas’ schema, therefore, war could occur only in
the second stage, the status destitutus—though Dundas argues elsewhere that in
some respects the status destitutus does not correspond to the Hobbesian state of
nature (Idea, 209–10). What prevented war arising during the status institutus was
that the emotions that actually arose in humankind were rational in the sense of
being informed or regulated by reason. To be clear, it is not being said or suggested
that the premises of the practical syllogism determine the act that, according to
Aristotle, is the conclusion of the syllogism. In short, intellectual determinism is
not part of Dundas’ account. He is heir to the doctrine, strongly associated with
Duns Scotus, that the will is always open to contraries, by saying yes or by saying
no to reason’s prescription and by then acting on the will’s response to reason. The
will’s openness to contraries is, on this account, the will’s freedom. To which I add
that during the status institutus human acts were not only free but were also
embodiments of reason’s prescriptions. Though the will, being free, is always able
to will an act that is not sanctioned by reason, prior to the Fall such acts were not
in fact willed.
This situation is transformed with the Fall. Human depravity lies in the
disorderliness of reason and will. We continue to reason and continue to will,
but our reason no longer provides the strong and stable government of our
faculties characteristic of the relationship between reason and will during the
status institutus. After the Fall our reason provides inadequate defence against
intellectual error (assenting to falsehoods) and against practical error (performing
sinful acts), and this topic of theological discourse is a familiar topic of moral
discourse in the Scottish universities during the seventeenth century.
As preface to brief commentary on a historically important aspect of this
deterioration of government in the move from the status institutus to the status
destitutus I must emphasize that the theological doctrine of the Fall was an
260  

important player in academic moral philosophy in the Scottish universities during

the seventeenth century. I offer two examples.
In the Theses philosophicae delivered at King’s College, Aberdeen, in 1624 the
Aberdeen doctor John Forbes of Corse declares: ‘After the Fall, as the theologians
teach, the will acts freely, yet it is necessarily determined to evil and cannot but sin.
We cannot divest ourselves of the blindness of the mind, the turning aside of the
will and the heart from God, unless our abandoned spiritual life is renewed in us,
whom Scripture declared to be dead in sin, by virtue of the Holy Spirit which acts
in us by willing and perfecting’ (sect. IX). Half a century later the King’s College
regent Robert Forbes also invokes the Fall in order to make a point in his Theses
philosophicae (1680). Between the Theses of John Forbes and those of Robert
Forbes the philosophy of Descartes had arrived in Scotland and was thereafter a
major focus of attention in the universities until the end of the seventeenth
century. The first-known Scottish discussion of Descartes is by Andrew Cant,
regent at Marischal College, in his Theses philosophicae of 1654, and by the time of
Robert Forbes’ Theses the philosophy of Descartes had become a familiar set of
ideas in Scotland. Forbes reports that Descartes holds, ‘equally against faith and
experience’, that people ‘who are rather feeble-minded’ (qui imbecilliores animas
habent) can nevertheless acquire an absolute command over all their passions if
they work sufficiently hard to govern them. Forbes then adds: ‘The claim that after
the Fall we have a residual power to guard from ever being in error, ought not to
be made by any orthodox Christian philosopher, contrary to the teaching of
Descartes, Wittich, Burman and Welthusius, etc.⁴ For this assertion [sc. concern-
ing our residual power after the Fall] seems to be one of the principles of the
Pelagians, who deny the corruption of nature through the Fall of Adam. For the
same arguments which support the claim that we have a faculty for avoiding all
errors support the claim that we have a power to be on our guard against all sins’
(Forbes, Theses, 1680, sects. IX–X). The doctrines that Forbes ascribes to Des-
cartes, namely that from within our own resources we can avoid committing
errors and also can avoid committing those practical errors that are called sins—
these doctrines are indeed readily extrapolable from, or are at least readable into,
Descartes’ writings; and it is plain that John Forbes of Corse would likewise have
objected to Descartes on this very count had he been able to read Descartes.
Having noted this area within which Descartes impacted significantly on
philosophical discourse in Scotland, I shall now attend to James Dundas’ response
to Descartes. As we shall see, on this matter he and both John Forbes and Robert
Forbes were of the same mind. We are dealing here with a characteristic piece of
moral philosophy from Scotland’s seventeenth century.

⁴ The latter three, Christopher Wittich (1625–87), Franz Burman (1628–79), and Lambert Velthuysen
(1623–85), were Dutch theologians.
       261

In James Dundas’ discussion of Descartes the question that looms largest

concerns the power of the human will, and in particular the question whether
our happiness is in our power. The earliest philosopher Dundas speaks of as
holding that happiness is indeed in our power is Aristotle: ‘And thus formal
happiness is rightly said by Aristotle to be an action of the rational mind according
to the most perfect virtue in a perfect life, especially if this be understood to be
an action brought to the highest perfection in the future life’ (Idea, 35).⁵ Dundas
explores the later development of this concept by Seneca, who seeks to demon-
strate that such happiness is in our power, and Dundas also considers Descartes’
support of Seneca on this same matter. In his response to the philosophical
doctrine that our formal happiness is in our power, Dundas’ Reformed orthodoxy
is in the driving seat:
Even if formal happiness is a vital action⁶ and thus comes from us—this perhaps
being the reason why Seneca says: ‘Make yourself happy’—nevertheless since
humankind, especially after the Fall, is ill-equipped to do any good deed, for we
do not have the special assistance [auxilium speciale] of divine grace (without
which we can do nothing well, though with grace we could both will well and do
well), it follows that, as regards Aristotle’s doctrine that our formal happiness is
in our power, the doctrine should be taken with this grain of salt: that our formal
happiness is in our power if we have the concurrent and anticipatory assistance
of infinite goodness or of divine grace. (Idea, 36)⁷

This grain of salt is not a negligible matter. In an obvious sense no good deed is in
our power after the Fall if we are powerless after the Fall to perform any good deed
without the special assistance of divine grace. I am at present uncertain what
Dundas would say concerning whether before the Fall it was in the power of
human beings to perform good deeds without the special assistance of divine
grace. Perhaps he thought that that was indeed the situation, and that, in order to
perform a good deed before the Fall, though humans required the general assist-
ance of divine grace they did not require divine special assistance.
Finally, I should like to attend to Dundas’ discussion of a kind of act which is,
from his perspective, as clear an example as you could find of a consequence of the
Fall, and an example also, of his disposition to place a philosophical discussion
within a theological framework that enables him to resolve a question that is set

⁵ et sic faelicitas formalis recte statuitur ab Aristotele, actio animae rationalis secundum virtutem
perfectissimam in vita perfecta, praesertim si intelligatur, consummata in vita futura.
⁶ Vital act: an act of a living being qua living.
⁷ etiamsi faelicitas formalis sit actio vitalis, et sic εφ ημιν, a nobis (quo forsitan nomine dixit Seneca,
fac te faelicem), tamen, quia homo praesertim a lapsu ineptus est ad omne bonum opus, cum absque
specialibus auxiliis divinae gratiae (sine qua nihil possumus bene, quippe quae dat velle et agere,)
idcirco Aristoteles doctrina qua docet faelicitatem nostram formalem esse εφ ημιν, in nostra potestate,
oportet intelligatur cum grano salis concurrentibus et praecurrentibus infinitae bonitatis vel divinae
gratiae auxiliis.
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initially in philosophical and not in theological terms. I have in mind suicide and
Dundas’ philosophical and theological treatment of it.
Suicide is a topic that was on the agenda of the Scottish regents by the time that
Dundas arrived as a student in St Leonard’s College, St Andrews. I note the
comment by the St Andrews regent Alexander Henderson: ‘He who kills himself,
does terrible harm (damnum) to himself and at the same time an injustice
(injuriam) not merely to himself but to the State’ (Henderson 1611: xi).⁸ Hender-
son holds therefore that suicide has a moral significance that is not only personal
but also social, perhaps even political, insofar as it is an unpatriotic act, and he
seems to leave little room for the concept of a suicide that is morally justified.
In this respect his position is rather less nuanced than that of James Mercer,
regent at Dundas’ college, St Leonard’s, whose comments on suicide appear in his
Theses philosophicae in 1630, that is, five years before Dundas registered there as a
student. Mercer speaks of heroic virtue as a kind of pre-eminent brightness of the
moral virtues, and adds that those who have committed suicide because they could
no longer bear their suffering ought not to be called ‘heroically virtuous’, all the
more so because their self-slaying arises from weakness of mind (ab animi
mollitie) (Theses philosophicae, Theses ethicae IX, 2). It may be noted that Mercer
does not say that suicide is wrong unconditionally, nor even that it cannot be
heroically virtuous, but only that it is not heroically virtuous when it is done as an
act of weakness in the sense that the agent can no longer bear his suffering. This
does seem to leave open the possibility that Mercer thought that some kinds of
suicide may indeed be justified.
To a certain degree this last possibility is embraced by Alexander Alexander,
regent at Marischal College, who writes: ‘In certain cases indirect suicide is not
only permissible but praiseworthy’ (Alexander 1669). Alexander says no more
than this on the matter, but the concept of indirect suicide is duly invoked by
James Dundas (Idea, 301) in the name of the Dutch Reformed theologians
Andreas Rivetus and Adriaan Heereboord. The example given is of a sailor in a
naval battle who dies as a result of setting fire to his boat, thereby both avoiding
capture and perhaps also killing some of the enemy. Such death by one’s own
hand is defined as a kind of suicide where, as Heereboord puts the point, the
primary intention (prima intentio) is not to kill oneself but to act for the honour
and glory of one’s country. In a sense the sailor commits suicide but does so
without incurring the blameworthiness of suicide—hence Alexander’s judgement
that indirect suicide can be not just permissible but praiseworthy.
Dundas is aware that philosophers have argued that in certain circumstances
suicide is justified, and indeed is sometime morally virtuous tout court. He also
reminds us that major figures from the classical world, including Zeno, Cato the

⁸ Qui sibi manus infert simul immane infert sibi damnum, injuriam sibi nequaquam, sed
Reipublicae.
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Younger, and Seneca, committed suicide, which can be seen as a practical argu-
ment from authority for the claim that suicide tout court is not morally imper-
missible. Yet, on the other hand, he does accept that God is Lord of life in that he
alone, as the giver of life, can take life or can authorize the taking of it. And in his
discussion of this matter he mentions several biblical figures who committed
suicide, including Pontius Pilate, who is said by Eusebius, if not by the Bible, to
have killed himself on account of his role in the crucifixion. Dundas also mentions
in this context Judas Iscariot. The Dominican friar Jacopo di Viraggio (Jacobus de
Voragine) wrote a work Legenda Aurea (1265) which became one of the most
widely read books of the middle ages. In it di Viraggio reports a legend, one
lacking biblical warrant, according to which Judas Iscariot committed parricide,
matricide, and incestuous rape. And di Viraggio adds, this time of course with due
biblical warrant, that Iscariot hanged himself.
Dundas reports di Virragio’s tale and comments that the theologians conclude
that the worst of Iscariot’s sins was his act of suicide (Idea, 296).⁹ And he adds
that Chrysostom judges these wicked people who commit suicide to be worse
than murderers (peiores homicidis) (Idea, 301). Some might think that parricide,
matricide, and incestuous rape do indeed merit death, and that therefore Iscariot
did the only decent thing left to him by killing himself. But Dundas accepts the
conclusion of the theologians. The explanation for this is partly that he believes
that no human being is master of his own life and death, and that the only
master of our life and our death is God, whether he is acting directly or is acting
indirectly through his earthly representatives, namely the civil authorities (Idea,
295). Suicide is therefore a sin tout court. But why judge it to be the worst sin
(peccatum gravissimum)? Dundas’ reply acknowledges the force of the Church’s
theology of repentance. Every sin is an act against God, but suicide is special in
that it is an act by which the agent forecloses on the possibility of repentance.
Iscariot could with full sincerity have sought divine forgiveness for his sins of
parricide, matricide, and incestuous rape, and could with full sincerity have
resolved not to commit any such act again. These are the conditions of a true
repentance. But of course, he could not, so to say, pre-emptively or in anticipa-
tion, seek divine forgiveness for his forthcoming act of suicide. The concept of
such pre-emption is incoherent. He could surely not sincerely hold the belief that
suicide is a sinful act, one therefore requiring divine forgiveness, while at the
same time he is planning to kill himself.
In this argument Dundas provides a Christian theological framework within
which to place a philosophical doctrine concerning the moral status of suicide. The
justification for certain of the propositions contained within that framework is
provided not by the light of nature but by a faith that should be seen as a space

⁹ . . . concludunt tamen suicidium fuisse omnium [peccatorum] gravissimum.

264  

within which philosophy can flourish. This is a space which in some measure defines
the role of the scholastic philosopher, whether Catholic or Reformed orthodox.
In summation, the belief that scholasticism is essentially Catholic and medieval
is incorrect, demonstrably so, for an investigation into the criteria that justify the
predication of the term ‘scholastic’ of a doctrine or text permits the conclusion
that seventeenth-century philosophers and theologians writing within the frame-
work of Reformed orthodoxy were contributing to the scholastic tradition. This
chapter illustrates the concept of Reformed orthodox scholasticism by means of a
scrutiny of a recently discovered Scottish monograph, the Idea philosophiae
moralis (1679) by James Dundas, the first Lord Arniston. This chapter examines
important areas of philosophy and moral theology, such as the nature of moral
action, the Fall, free will, and the moral assessment of suicide, and demonstrates
that, while Dundas attends closely to philosophers, such as Hobbes and Descartes,
not generally regarded as scholastic thinkers, he operates within a scholastic
framework of thought.

Bibliography

Alexander, Alexander (1669). Philosophemata libera. Aberdeen.

Broadie, Alexander (2013). ‘James Dundas on the Hobbesian State of Nature’, Journal
of Scottish Philosophy 11: 1–13.
Broadie, Alexander (2016a). ‘James Dundas (c.1620–1679) on the Sixth Command-
ment’, History of Universities 29/2: 143–65.
Broadie, Alexander (2016b). ‘James Dundas on Seneca, Descartes and the Fall’, in
S. J. Reid and D. McOmish (eds.), Neo-Latin Literature and Literary Culture in Early
Modern Scotland. Leiden: Brill, 247–63.
Cant, Andrew (1654). Theses philosophicae. Aberdeen.
Forbes, John, of Corse (1624). Theses philosophicae. Aberdeen.
Forbes, Robert (1680). Theses philosophicae. Aberdeen.
Henderson, Alexander (1611). Gymnasium philosophicum de rebus logicis. Edinburgh.
Mair, John (1530). Ethica Aristotelis peripateticorum principis. Cum Johannis Majoris
Theologi Parisiensis commentariis. Paris.
Mercer, James (1630). Theses philosophicae. Edinburgh.
Muller, Richard A. (2000). After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological
Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Muller, Richard A. (2003–6). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and
Development of Reformed Orthodoxy ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 2nd edition. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Omond, George W. T. (1887). The Arniston Memoirs: Three Centuries of a Scottish
House, 1571–1838. Edinburgh: D. Douglas.
 19
The Theology of the Westminster
Confession of Faith in its Context
Whitney G. Gamble

Historical and Theological Context

In 1642, the Church of England was ‘suffering a crisis of identity’ (Van Dixhoorn
2004: 6). A majority of leadership in the Church consisted of theologians sympa-
thetic to Arminianism and yet a strong and outspoken faction within the Church
pushed for a biblical reformation away from Arminian theology. These tensions
erupted into a series of civil wars, arguably the last wars of religion fought on
English soil.
The history of the relationship between the rise of Arminianism in England
and the counter-balancing push for biblical reformation is nearly as tumultuous
as the civil war to which it would eventually lead. As early as 1595, Oxford and
Cambridge lecture halls were pervaded with questions related to the basis for
God’s electing some to damnation and some to glory (Milton 2005: xxx). When
William Barrett, a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, preached his
BD sermon arguing that God based his decrees of election and reprobation on
foreseen actions of faith or sin, Reformed theologians were outraged. Following
Richard Muller, this chapter uses the term ‘Reformed’ rather than ‘Calvinist’, to
describe anti-Arminians (Muller 2003: 30). Barrett further argued that no one
could be so strongly sustained by his or her faith that it could not fail, and that it
was proud and wicked to be certain of salvation. Cambridge dons noted prophet-
ically that Barrett’s sermon had ‘kindled a fire like to grow to the disturbance of
the whole church’ (Allen 2004).
The fire of controversy did not quiet in subsequent years: James I sent a
delegation of British divines to the definitive Protestant response to Arminian
theology—the Synod of Dort (1618–19). James I praised the delegation’s work, yet
in 1622 he passed six directions to regulate preaching, one of which forbade
preaching on issues relating to predestination (Milton 2005: lii). In 1624, Bishop
George Carleton, the former head of the British delegation to Dort, sought to
persuade Archbishop of Canterbury George Abbot to have the Canons of Dort
adopted by convocation (Milton 2005: 1). James I was not willing, however, and

Whitney G. Gamble, The Theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith in its Context. In: The
History of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by
David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0019
266  . 

the king died without ever ratifying the canons as the official teaching of the
Church of England (Moore 2007: 145).
James’ son, Charles I, not only did not approve the Synod of Dort’s Canons, but
issued a proclamation in 1626 that officially silenced debate on matters of pre-
destination (CJ: vol. 1, 870). He also limited the nation’s doctrinal statement to the
Thirty-Nine Articles, which were sufficiently vague on controversial issues to
satisfy Arminian-leaning theologians in the Church. When Charles I appointed
Laud to the see of Canterbury, Laud did what he could to undermine the authority
and reputation of the Synod of Dort (Tyacke 1987: 155). Perhaps one of the best
examples showcasing Laud’s antagonism towards Reformed theology is found in a
1633 edition of the standard Latin–English dictionary, dedicated to Laud. The
dictionary contained for the first time the term ‘praedestinatiani’. This group was
defined as ‘a kinde of heretique that held fatall predestination of every particular
matter, person or action’. Within two years of the dictionary’s publication,
theologians were using this definition of heresy to describe Reformed theologians
within the Church (Tyacke 1987: 183).
Charles I’s determination to enforce his religious policies in Scotland and the
potential expense of war forced him to call a parliament in the spring of 1640.
Parliament was immediately flooded with repeated petitions from Reformed
leaders to address what they perceived as the abuses and corruption in the Church.
Future Westminster Assembly member Edmund Calamy urged Parliament to
settle the Church’s doctrine so that ‘there may be no shadow in it for an Arminian’
(Kendall 1979: 184). Not only did the Laudian church require reform, Calamy
called for Parliament to ‘reform the Reformation it selfe’ (Calamy 1642: 23).
Parliament’s renewal of demands for reform caused the king to dismiss Parlia-
ment only a few weeks later (Van Dixhoorn 2012: 4), however, the Scottish
occupation of north-east England forced him yet again to call the houses in
November 1640. Now Parliament was in a position of strength, and sent a petition
to the king on 1 December to summon ‘a general synod of the most grave, pious,
learned and judicious divines of this island . . . assisted with some from foreign
parts, professing the same religion as us’ (Van Dixhoorn 2012: 4). Although the
synod would be answerable to the English Parliament, the reference ‘to this island’
included England and Scotland, and implied that the desired reform would suit
both countries.
Time dragged in London with no religious assembly called as members of both
houses sought Charles’ assent. The onset of civil war in 1642 provided further
ammunition for those arguing for reformation—an English synod would show
Scottish theologians in Edinburgh that Westminster was serious about biblical
reform, and serve as an inducement for the Scots to send an army southward to
aid the parliamentary cause. The Scots were eager for the assembly to meet and
work for reformation and they attempted to encourage the process by publishing
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pamphlets advertising the names of the theologians it would send to the assembly
(Derby 1642).
Finally, Parliament summoned the assembly without the approval of the king,
and at least sixty-nine of the 121 men called appeared for the first meeting on
1 July 1643 (Van Dixhoorn 2004: 1). In what would have been a direct affront to
Charles I as the head of the Church, Parliament tasked the theologians with
revising the Thirty-Nine Articles, to ‘free and vindicate the doctrine of them
from all aspersions and false interpretations’ (LJ: vol. 6, 121). Even more revolu-
tionary was Parliament’s call to overhaul the Church’s liturgy and forms of church
government and discipline.
Not surprisingly, Charles I’s perspective on the assembly, as well as on his
parliament’s desire to revise his Church’s doctrine and government, was less than
favourable. He deemed the assembly at Westminster to be illegal and declared its
acts not binding, threatening that if anyone disobeyed his command not to
assemble, he could face imprisonment at the least and the loss of his ecclesiastical
living at the worst (Mercurius aulicus 1615: 333).

That ‘Damnable Doctrine’: Antinomianism

and Revising the Thirty-Nine Articles

As the theologians gathered in Westminster Abbey began their work of reforma-

tion, they quickly recognized that the Thirty-Nine Articles did not sufficiently
address what assembly members perceived to be the greatest theological threat
looming over London: antinomianism, a relatively young but powerfully growing
sect. Within a matter of weeks, the assembly sent its first petition to Parliament asking
it to suppress the ‘damnable’ doctrine, as antinomian ministers had caused ‘many
well affected but ignorant’ people to embrace their ‘pernitious’ doctrines (CJ: vol. 3,
200). The label of antinomianism certainly was a pejorative one and the assembly
applied it with a broad brush, supplying Parliament with a list of culpable ministers
in its petition, although assembly members admitted that the preachers deviated
from acceptable theology ‘in different degree’ (Minutes and Papers 2012: vol. 5, 22).
Much ink has been spilled on antinomians, those who denied in some way the
ongoing relevance of some part or even the whole of the moral law. David Como
has ably traced the ‘antinomian underground’ present in pre-Civil War London
(Como 2004). The antinomianism of concern at the assembly was not a Münster-
like lawlessness, but, in the face of the prevalence of Arminianism, a type of hyper-
Calvinism (Toon 2011). English antinomianism’s slogan was ‘free grace’, and the
movement so emphasized Christ’s completed work of obedience and redemption,
imputed to the believer, that little room was left for the law to function as a rule
and guide for sanctification. Antinomians opposed any Arminian understanding
268  . 

of faith that could construe it to be a new ‘work’ in the Covenant of Grace. Faith was
thus not genuinely instrumental in justification—justification occurred in eternity
and merely needed to be remembered by the believer. By 1642, with the lift of press
censorship, antinomian writings flooded London’s publishers, and hundreds of men
and women regularly flocked to hear the famous antinomian preachers, eschewing
their local vicars’ ‘dry’ and ‘graceless’ sermons (Gamble 2015).
Seventy-five years later, one book connected to the English antinomian under-
ground would be unwittingly picked up by a Scottish minister long tortured with
questions relating to the law and gospel. In 1700, Thomas Boston became enam-
oured with E. Fisher’s Marrow of Modern Divinity, published in London in two
parts in 1645 and 1648, with members of the Westminster Assembly contributing
to the foreword. The ‘Marrow Controversy’ unfolded in Scotland as the General
Assembly of Scotland forbade all ministers to read or recommend it for fear of
them falling into antinomianism (Ferguson 2016). As Westminster Assembly
divines sought, in the 1640s, to revise the Thirty-Nine Articles and their Confes-
sion of Faith to function as a response to antinomianism, so in the debates in
Scotland decades later, fidelity to the Westminster Standards would prove to be
the litmus test for those accused of antinomianism.

The Solemn League and Covenant

and the Scottish Commissioners

Concern over tenets of antinomian theology drove the Westminster divines into
lengthy theological struggles on the floor of the assembly, revealing a picture of an
assembly more divided on basic issues, such as justification and the nature of
Christ’s work, than one might expect (Gamble 2018). As the assembly battled
within the walls of Westminster Abbey, Parliament’s army lost several important
skirmishes of its own, leading Parliament to approach the Scottish Parliament and
the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk for an alliance. Scotland agreed to send
an army to help the Parliamentary cause, but on the condition that the Solemn
League and Covenant be signed. The Covenant would have a lasting impact on the
theologians gathered at Westminster as its terms included the drafting of a
confession of faith intended to unite the churches of England, Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales. Covenant signers swore to preserve the already-established form of
‘Doctrine, Worship, Discipline, and Government’ in Scotland and work to reform
England’s and Wales’ doctrine, worship, discipline, and government ‘according
to the Word of God, and the example of the best Reformed Churches’
(A Solemne League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religion 1643:
4). The assembly’s attention thus turned from debating antinomianism and
revising the Thirty-Nine Articles and towards church government—a subject
on which the assembly would ultimately expend a quarter of its plenary sessions,
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a fifth of its ad hoc committees, and a quarter of its texts (Van Dixhoorn 2012: 27).
Some historians dismiss the divines’ early weeks of theological debate over the
Thirty-Nine Articles as treading water until an object worth pursuing appeared on
the horizon, namely the approval of the Solemn League and Covenant with its
concomitant mandate to compose a confession of faith (e.g. Warfield 1931: 34–5).
In fact, however, the divines’ debates eventually led to revised versions of the
Thirty-Nine Articles, which were then foundational for the assembly’s Confession
of Faith.
To supervise the execution of the Covenant, the Scottish General Assembly
sent commissioners to serve as consultative members of the assembly: John
Elphinstone, John Maitland, and Sir Archibald Johnstone served as laymen and
Alexander Henderson, George Gillespie, Samuel Rutherford, and Robert Baillie
as theologians (Acts of the General Assembly: 94). The commissioners became
integrally involved in the assembly’s major projects. Henderson was the acknow-
ledged leader of the Scottish delegation, though he spoke less frequently than
either Gillespie or Rutherford. Henderson was elected moderator of the General
Assembly at Glasgow in November 1638, in which Charles I’s authority to dismiss
the assembly was successfully challenged, the Scottish bishops deposed and
censured, and Presbyterianism firmly established as the government of the
Church. Henderson took a leading role in all these proceedings and was elected
moderator again in both 1641 and 1643 (Spear 2013). He wrote part of the first
draft of the Solemn League and Covenant that same year. Henderson remained
in his parish at Leuchars until 1639, when he became minister of St Giles in
Edinburgh, a position he held until his death.
At thirty, Gillespie was the second youngest member of the Scottish commis-
sion. He refused to accept ordination at the hands of a bishop, differing in that
regard from the other commissioners, and chose instead to serve as tutor until
1638. He accompanied the Scottish army to England in 1641 and was one of the
ministers who went to London for peace negotiations. He was called to be the
minister at Greyfriars in Edinburgh in 1642 and elected moderator of the General
Assembly in 1648. The wit and clarity of his speeches rival the leading members of
the synod at Westminster and he was well-received by the London public and his
fellow divines.
Baillie spoke only once at the Westminster Assembly—his energy was spent in
private negotiations and in writing books and candid letters, his prolific letters
providing a lively glimpse into the daily proceedings of the assembly (Baillie
1841–2). Rutherford was exiled to Aberdeen in the late 1630s for his nonconform-
ity, and from there he issued letters calling for courage in the fight against Laudian
church reforms. He was present at the Westminster Assembly from November
1643 until October 1647 and thus represented Scotland longer than any other
commissioner. He also ranked in the top ten of the assembly’s frequent speakers,
providing theological insight in multiple debates (Van Dixhoorn 2012: 23).
270  . 

The Scots commissioners participated in plenary sessions and committees to

help draft directories for worship, ordination, and church government, and later
the Confession of Faith and two catechisms. They were concerned to preserve
what had already been accomplished in the reformation of their own Church.
However, as demonstrated by Spear, the commissioners argued for fourteen
positions on church government while at the assembly and only obtained clear
victories on two (Spear 2013: 331–43). When the commissioners presented the
Form of Church Government and the Directory for Worship to the Scottish
General Assembly in 1645, they gave a candid account of their intentions in the
debates at Westminster:
For our part, we may confidently avouch in the sight of God, and before you,
whom next unto God we do respect and reverence, and to whom, as your
servants, we are accomptable, that in all our proceedings we had first of all the
Word of God before our eyes as the rule – and for our patern the Church of
Scotland, so much as was possible . . . Where we were not able to get everything
framed to our minde, we have endeavoured, as much as we could, to preserve our
own reformation and practice. (Acts of the General Assembly: 112)

The Theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith

The assembly finally presented its completed Confession of Faith to Parliament on

7 December 1646. Parliament officially adopted it as a replacement of the Thirty-
Nine Articles, although it requested that the divines add Scripture proofs and sent
back chapters 20, 30, and 31 relating to church government and practice to be
revised. Consistent with its original mandate from Parliament to reform the
Church’s doctrine ‘according to the Word of God’, the Confession began with
chapters on the Holy Scripture and the Trinity (chapters 1–2). It then addressed
the twin ‘errors’ of antinomianism and Arminianism; the Confession’s extended
chapters on God’s decrees (chapters 3–5), sin and Christ’s work (chapters 6–8),
and salvation (chapters 9–18), explained the contentious issues surrounding
justification, faith, repentance, and good works in a more full way than had
previously been done in a Reformed confession. The Confession concluded with
explaining the law and liberty (chapters 19–20), worship (chapters 21–22), the
civil government and family (chapters 23–24), the Church (chapters 25–31), and
the last things (chapters 32–33).

The foundation: God’s Word

The Confession’s first chapter ranks as one of the most thorough statements of
Reformed Protestantism on the subject of Scripture, and the divines put it first in
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the Confession in a move that was not common among confessions of the day.
Only the First Helvetic Confession (1536), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566),
the Irish Articles of Religion (1615), and the Formula of Concord (1576) begin
with an article on Scripture. The centrality of the Word of God cannot be
overstated for the Westminster theologians: the Bible was to be the sole arbiter
in matters of theology and piety. The assembly held that the nation, whether due
to ignorance, as was the case for the common people, or direct rebellion, as was
the case of Charles I and his reissuing of the Book of Sports which violated the
Sabbath, was swiftly bringing God’s judgement upon itself for the neglect of
Scripture’s teachings.
Chapter 1 explained that the Word of God not only was determinative for
worship and Christian living, it also provided the epistemological basis of the
Christian faith. Scripture itself was the permanent embodiment and sole divinely
safeguarded form in which the revelation of God and his will existed. It was thus to
be translated out of the original languages because all the people of God, had a
‘right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God,
to read and search them’. Not all of Scripture was ‘alike plain’ in itself, but all
things ‘necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly
propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the
learned, but the unlearned . . . may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them’
(1:7). When there was a question about the true sense of any part of Scripture,
which, the divines noted was a unified sense, not a manifold sense, as Rome
taught, it must be explained by other places which spoke more clearly. The only
infallible rule of interpreting the Bible was the Bible itself.
In fact, in ‘all controversies of religion’, the Church was to appeal to the
Scriptures as the supreme judge: all ‘decrees of councils, opinions of ancient
writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits’ (1:10) were to be examined by the
Holy Spirit ‘speaking through the Scripture’. This stance on the paramount
importance of Scripture came against any claim to new revelation on par with
Scripture, as well as against Rome’s insistence on the necessity of the Church’s
living voice in addition to Scripture. The divines’ stance on Scripture echoed the
hermeneutic of earlier Reformed theologians and would become the basis for
subsequent Reformed exegesis. Following this foundation, the Confession pro-
ceeded to matters of contemporary theological controversy: election, covenant
theology, sin, and Christ’s work of salvation.

God’s eternal decree

Chapter 3 was unambiguous in its statement of God’s sovereign and immutable

decrees. God, ‘by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will’ did ‘freely, and
unchangeably ordain’ some men and angels to life, and others were foreordained
272  . 

to death (3:7). The divines rejected predestination based upon middle knowledge
or foreseen faith and insisted upon the absolute nature of the decree (3:5). The
number in each category, those ordained to life and those foreordained to death
was ‘so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished’ (3:4).
There was debate on the floor of the assembly regarding the extent of atonement,
specifically whether it was limited to the elect or whether it was universal in
intention. Prominent members, such as Edmund Calamy, propounded a ‘hypo-
thetical universalist’ position, which can be summarized as Christ’s death saved
his elect and granted a conditional possibility of salvation to the rest (Moore
2007). George Gillespie and Samuel Rutherford took the lead against Calamy’s
position, which they believed held dangerous traces of Moses Amyraut (Troxel
1996). In the end, the hypothetical universalists failed to gain the approval of the
assembly. Robert Letham notes that the inclusion of God’s decree of reprobation
in 3:7 was deliberate and reflected the belief of the whole assembly, although those
who disagreed, such as Calamy, Lazarus Seaman, Stephen Marshall, and Richard
Vines were not shunned for their minority opinion (Letham 2009: 182). Further
chapters in the Confession explained that those who were justified were ‘those
whom God effectually called’ (11:1) and those who were ‘effectually called’ were
those only who were ‘predestinated unto life’ (10:1). Christ accomplished redemp-
tion only ‘for all those whom the Father hath given unto him’ (8:5).
God ordained whatsoever comes to pass, but he did so in such a way that he was
not the author of sin, nor was violence offered to the will of the creature, and
contingency and freedom were established (3:1). The divines held that if human
actions were not contingent, that is, freely chosen, then God could in no way hold
sinners accountable for their sin and there would be no need for the response of
faith to the preaching of the Gospel (Rehnman 2012). The human will was bound
to sin, but choices were free and not forced upon the creature (Fesko 2014: 111).

Assurance of salvation

The divines were largely unified on their doctrine of assurance—no significant

debate accompanied the writing of the Confession’s chapter 18, most likely
because it was an oft studied subject, with at least twenty-five members of the
assembly writing treatises relating to assurance (Beeke 2011). The doctrine of
God’s decree of election was meant to function as a powerful tool of assurance to
the believer, as election secured perseverance (17:1). However, a believer may,
‘through the temptations of Satan and the world, the prevalency of corruption
remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into
grievous sins’ and be temporarily ‘deprived of some measure of their graces and
comforts’. Thus, he or she was to ‘give all diligence to make his calling and
election sure’ as ‘negligence in preserving of it’ could cause assurance to diminish.
         273

The divines argued that the key to growing in assurance was by believers ‘attending
the will of God revealed in His Word, and yielding obedience thereunto’ and thus
‘from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election’
(3:4). True believers were never destitute ‘of the seed of God, and life of faith’ out of
which assurance may again be revived (18:4).

Sin, creation, and covenant

The divines’ concept of salvation was conditioned by their understanding of the

grave implications of Adam’s fall. Adam and Eve, from the moment of their
creation, were placed in a covenantal relationship to God (4:2). The first parents
were created ‘having the law of God written in their hearts, and [the] power to
fulfil it’. The divines termed the law written on Adam’s heart a ‘covenant of works’,
where life was promised to Adam and to his posterity, upon the condition of
perfect and personal obedience to God’s commands (7:2). This original covenant
also promised death if Adam and Eve disobeyed. Unfortunately for humanity,
Adam disobeyed. Adam’s fall and subsequent punishment was outlined in
chapter 6 in a thorough description of sin’s introduction into the world.
For the divines, ‘sin’ was understood as both guilt and depravity and sin’s
corruption was entire, reaching to the whole extent of creation: the will, mind,
heart, and reasoning were forever corrupted and unable to please God. Following
Romans 5, the divines stated that the guilt of Adam’s sin was imputed to all of his
descendants because Adam was the head of all humanity. All subsequent humans
fell and became incapable of eternal life when he sinned because the covenant
established between Adam and God was made with Adam as ‘a public person’.
Humans were now subject to ‘the loss of communion with God and fell under his
displeasure and curse’. By nature, humans were now children of wrath, bond slaves
to Satan, and justly liable to ‘all punishments both in this world and in the one to
come’. However, God was pleased to make a second covenant, called the Covenant
of Grace. In this new covenant, God freely offered life and salvation to sinners by
Christ, requiring of them faith in him. God promised to give his Holy Spirit to all
who were ordained to eternal life, to make them willing and able to believe.
The Confession leaned in the direction of infralapsarianism, the belief that in
God’s decree, the object of predestination was created and fallen man. Supralap-
sarians, on the other hand, argued that in the decree, the object of predestination
was man as creatable and liable to fall. There was a strong supralapsarian repre-
sentation at the assembly, led by Prolocutor William Twisse as well as Samuel
Rutherford. But in the end, the supralapsarian interpretation was not inserted into
the Confession, as evidenced by 6:1, which stated that ‘God was pleased, according
to His wise and holy counsel, to permit [the fall]’, and 3:6, which referred to those
‘who are elected, being fallen in Adam’ (Letham 2009: 183).
274  . 

Justification and the law

The doctrine of justification was the most hotly-debated and contested doctrine at
the assembly. During the assembly’s debates over antinomianism that took place
as the divines revised the Thirty-Nine Articles in September 1643, the Articles’
chapter on justification proved to be divisive enough to split the assembly into
multiple camps regarding the nature and application of Christ’s work of redemp-
tion. The debate was variously termed by members as the assembly’s ‘hot debate’,
‘great question’, and ‘great scruple’. In the end, chapter 11 of the Confession is
arguably the clearest of all Reformed statements on justification. It claimed that
the basis for the believer’s justification was Christ’s twofold work of redemption.
Christ as mediator came under the law and perfectly fulfilled it through his
obedient life (11:3), thus answering Adam’s disobedience in the Garden. Jesus’
perfect obedience was joined with his bloodshed and death on the cross, which
was necessary to fully satisfy God’s divine wrath and discharge the debt owed to
God by Adam’s sin.
Justification was a gracious act of God, in which he accounted Christ’s work of
blood shed for the pardon of sins and obedience to the law as righteousness to the
sinner’s account. Sinners thus received Christ’s perfect righteousness and satis-
faction for sin freely, not for ‘any thing in them; their justification is only of free
grace’ (11:3). The divines were careful to state the work of salvation in Trinitarian
terms: God accepted Christ’s satisfaction as a surety for sinners, imputing Christ’s
righteousness to them, so that his rich grace ‘might be glorified in the justification
of sinners’. He sent his Spirit to apply Christ’s work of redemption to them and to
work faith in them so that men and women received and rested upon Christ and
Christ’s righteousness by their faith. Saving faith was thus not merely a remem-
brance of a justification already taken place, as the antinomians claimed, but an
active work of the Spirit illuminating the mind and heart of a sinner. This clear
statement of the work of the Trinity does not show the debates that occurred on
the floor of the assembly over the traditional creeds; particularly the phrases
concerning Christ’s ‘descent into hell’ from the Apostles’ Creed, and Christ
being ‘God of God’ from the Nicene. As Van Dixhoorn points out, the Creeds
did not play a major part in the assembly’s final documents, most likely due to the
influence of the Scottish commissioners, whose tradition made little use of them,
in comparison with the English (Van Dixhoorn 2004: 265).

The role of the civil magistrate

Chapter 23 covered the role of the civil magistrate. Magistrates were appointed
by God and called to serve in his name. They were the custodian of both tables of
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the law and were in some measure involved in determining the orthodoxy or
heterodoxy of doctrine. The magistrate was responsible for maintaining the purity
of worship by calling synods to decide doctrinal disputes and enforcing synodical
decisions by the power of the sword. However, the magistrates were not to do the
work of the minister of the Gospel: they were not to preach or administer the
sacraments. Nor were they to do the work of an elder, for it was not their place to
administer church discipline. The government of the Church manifest in its
synods and councils had the limited power ‘ministerially to determine Controver-
sies of Faith, and cases of Conscience’ and to ensure that worship and government
of the Church are properly performed. Such determinations must be consonant
with the Word of God (31:3). By ‘ministerially’, the divines mean that synods and
councils were not themselves invested with authority and therefore do not legis-
late, as only Christ as the supreme lawgiver could do this. Rather, the authority
of synods and councils was derivative of Christ’s authority, and synodical or
conciliar decisions could only exercise authority insofar as they concurred with
the Word of God.

Conclusion

It was the assembly’s hope that its Confession would be the tool to bring
further reformation to England. Upon completion of the divines’ catechism
with Scripture proofs, the London Provincial Assembly, the governing body of
the city’s Presbyterian system, petitioned both houses of Parliament with a
series of requests: to ‘establish’ the new catechisms, to give ‘civill sanction’ to
the Confession of Faith, to establish the directory for Church government and
ensure that it would be ‘universally observed’, and ‘more effectually’ to execute
legislation about the Lord’s day, fast days, and godliness (Van Dixhoorn 2012:
37). However, once the war was won and the most visible reforms were
completed to the satisfaction of the two houses, the assembly itself and theo-
logical reformation for the nation became of considerably less interest to
Parliament.
Despite losing much of its leverage with Parliament and as a new civil war
engulfed England, the assembly continued to meet, albeit as a shadow of its
former self. It functioned primarily as a centre for examining clergy. The
assembly had seen its most important works published, but few of the accom-
panying directives were implemented, and only the catechisms were printed
without changes. As evidenced by the biographies of its members, the experience
of the civil wars and of the assembly itself left some divines ready for a return to
episcopacy, and others committed to Presbyterianism, congregationalism, or
new directions in theology.
276  . 

In one sense, the assembly’s work was a failure: Oliver Cromwell’s ascent to
power, and ultimately the Restoration in 1660 brought a rejection of the assem-
bly’s documents and a return to pre-Civil War religious habits, at least within the
Church of England. The assembly’s texts became the property of a dissenting
minority (Van Dixhoorn 2012: 86). However, the Church of Scotland’s acceptance
of and immediate implementation of the Confession allowed it to leave a tangible
legacy. The Confession was described by the Scottish General Assembly in 1647 as
‘the chiefest part of that uniformity in religion which, by the Solemn League
and Covenant, we are bound to endeavor’ (Acts of the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland: 27). The General Assembly found it to be ‘most agreeable to
the Word of God, and in nothing contrary to the received doctrine, worship,
discipline, and government of this Kirk’. The Confession, along with the direc-
tories and catechisms were officially adopted by the Scottish Kirk as well as the
Presbyterian Church in Ireland. As Presbyterianism travelled to the New World,
the Confession became a widespread statement of faith and even today, many
consider the Westminster Standards to be the finest and most enduring statement
of early modern Reformed theology.

Works Cited

Primary Literature
A Solemne League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religion, the Honor
and happinesse of the King, and the Peace and Safety of the three Kingdomes of
England, Scotland and Ireland (1643). London.
Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638–1842. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh Printing and Publishing Co.
Baillie, Robert (1841–2). The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie. Edinburgh: Alexander
Lawrie & Co.
Calamy, Edmund (1642). Englands Looking-glasse. London.
Derby, James (1642). The Lord Strange his demands . . . Also the names of the Scots
elders and minsters chosen by the commissioners of Scotland to be sent to the assembly
of divines. London.
Journal of the House of Commons [CJ] vols. 3–5. British History Online.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/search/series/commons-jrnl
Journal of the House of Lords [LJ], vols. 3–6. British History Online. https://www.
british-history.ac.uk/search/series/lords-jrnl
Mercurius aulicus (1615). E 59 No. 24. Edited by Peter Heylyn. London.
Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1652 (2012). Edited by Chad
Van Dixhoorn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
         277

Secondary Literature
Allen, Elizabeth (2004). ‘Barrett, William (b. c.1561, d. in or after 1630)’,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Beeke, Joel R. (2011). ‘The Assurance Debate: Six Key Questions’, in Michael
A. G. Haykin and Mark Jones (eds.), Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological
Diversity and Debates within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 263–83.
Como, David (2004). Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of
an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Ferguson, Sinclair (2016). The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, & Gospel
Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
Fesko, J. V. (2014). The Theology of the Westminster Standards: Historical Context and
Theological Insights. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
Gamble, Whitney G. (2015). ‘The Significance of English Antinomianism for Anna
Trapnel’, Reformation & Renaissance Review 17/2: 155–66.
Gamble, Whitney G. (2018). Christ and the Law: Antinomianism at the Westminster
Assembly. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Press.
Kendall, R. T. (1979). Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Letham, Robert (2009). The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical
Context. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing.
Milton, Anthony (ed.) (2005). The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort
(1618–1619). Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
Moore, Jonathan (2007). English Hypothetical Universalism. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans.
Morrill, John (ed.) (1991). The Scottish National Covenant in Its British Context.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Muller, Richard (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegom-
ena to Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Rehnman, Sebastian (2012). ‘A Particular Defence of Particularism’, Journal of
Reformed Theology 6: 24–34.
Spear, Wayne R. (2013). Covenanted Uniformity in Religion: The Influence of the
Scottish Commissioners on the Ecclesiology of the Westminster Assembly. Grand
Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Press.
Stewart, Laura A. M. (2006). Urban Politics and British Civil Wars: Edinburgh,
1617–1653. Leiden: Brill.
Toon, Peter (2011). The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity.
Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
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Troxel, A. Craig (1996). ‘Amyraut “At” the Assembly: The Westminster Confession of
Faith and the Extent of the Atonement’, Presbyterion 22/1: 43–55.
Tyacke, Nicholas (1987). Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Warfield, Benjamin B. (1931). The Westminster Assembly and Its Work. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Van Dixhoorn, Chad (2004). ‘Reforming the Reformation: Theological Debate at the
Westminster Assembly, Volume 1’. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge.
Van Dixhoorn, Chad (2012). ‘Introduction’, in Chad Van Dixhoorn (ed.), Minutes
and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1652, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
 20
The Aberdeen Doctors and Henry Scougal
Aaron Clay Denlinger

Donald MacMillan may have exaggerated slightly when he claimed that Aberdeen
and its historical colleges, at least ‘in proportion to their size’, produced ‘more
distinguished [divines] than any other part of Scotland’ in the seventeenth
century (MacMillan 1909: 39). Such an assessment likely reflects some measure
of personal distaste for Scotland’s own ‘hotter sort’ of early modern Protestants—
namely, Presbyterians—who were generally in short supply in seventeenth-
century Aberdeen. But the curricula vitae of the Aberdeen Doctors and Henry
Scougal, theologians of the first and second episcopal periods respectively,
lend some legitimacy to MacMillan’s claim. The six divines collectively known as
the Aberdeen Doctors—John Forbes, Robert Baron, William Leslie, James Sibbald,
Alexander Scroggie, and Alexander Ross—occupied a variety of ministerial and
academic posts in Aberdeen from 1620 until 1641, when Forbes, the last Doctor
standing, was finally deposed by the covenanters.¹ Henry Scougal’s more abbrevi-
ated tenure in Aberdeen extended from his appointment as professor of divinity
at King’s in 1674 to his death in 1678. Both the Doctors and Scougal have
been celebrated by scholars, the latter’s influence upon English Methodism regu-
larly receiving note (Kidd 2014: 28–9) and Forbes, ‘the intellectual leader of the
Doctors’ (Stevenson 1990: 108), receiving accolades as ‘Scotland’s greatest theolo-
gian’ (Sefton 1974: 348), ‘the greatest theologian that our country has produced’
(MacMillan 1909: 37), and, somewhat more modestly, ‘one of the ablest and most
learned theologians whom Scotland produced between the Reformation and the
Disruption’ (Torrance 1996: 79). Yet, curiously in light of such commendation,

¹ William Forbes (1585–1634), who served as principal of Marischal College until his consecration
as bishop of the newly established see of Edinburgh several months before his death, is occasionally
named as one of the Aberdeen Doctors. Like the six men that I have identified as the Doctors above,
Forbes defended episcopacy and the propriety of the Perth Articles (1618). However, having died in
1634, he did not contribute to those jointly published pamphlets decrying the National Covenant
(1638) that engendered derogatory references to the six men in question as ‘the Aberdeen Doctors’.
More significantly, Forbes’ enthusiasm for Protestant rapprochement with moderate Roman Catholic
thought, as discovered in his posthumously published Considerationes modestae et pacificae contro-
versiarum, stands at odds with the Doctors’ own pronounced anti-Romanism (as outlined below in
connection with the Doctors’ approach to ecclesiastical concord). For more on William Forbes’s
thought, see Thompson (2004).

Aaron Clay Denlinger, The Aberdeen Doctors and Henry Scougal. In: The History of Scottish
Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0020
280   

neither the Doctors nor Scougal have received much scholarly attention over the
years. Indeed, praise proffered specifically to the Doctors, almost invariably
coupled with superficial knowledge of their writings, has proven problematic in
modern scholarship, providing licence to numerous authors to project their own
theological convictions and ecclesiastical programmes onto the Doctors in order to
give the same greater historical pedigree. The present essay cannot suffice to
redress these deficiencies in scholarship. It will, however, attempt to provide in
very broad strokes a summary of both the Doctors’ and Scougal’s theologies, and
will try, en route, to rectify several misunderstandings regarding specifically the
Doctors in existing literature.

The Aberdeen Doctors

Doctoral degrees in divinity had become passé in early seventeenth-century

Scotland, due partially at least to suspicion that such marks of distinction smacked
of popery. In 1620, Patrick Forbes, bishop of Aberdeen, revived the practice of
conferring doctorates in divinity at King’s College in compliance with James VI/I’s
desire to see divinity studies in Scotland’s universities conform to those in
England’s universities and to see Scotland’s ecclesiastical shelves well stocked
with qualified candidates for church offices, especially the recently revived bish-
oprics (Reid 2011: 243–9). Patrick’s son John, newly returned from studies in
Heidelberg and Sedan, was awarded his DD the same year, shortly before assum-
ing the professorship in divinity at King’s. The other men comprising the circle of
Aberdeen Doctors likewise received doctorates in divinity from King’s in the
1620s—hence the moniker collectively applied to them, a term of some oppro-
brium (implying obsequiousness if not something worse) when used by the
Doctors’ antagonists.
And antagonists the Doctors did have. They engendered opposition by urging
compliance with the Perth Articles (1618) and again by their refusal to subscribe
to the National Covenant (1638). Both episodes, according to conventional
perspective, reflected their Episcopalian sentiments. In truth, the Doctors were
rather poor Episcopalians on the particular matter of episkopoi, at least if the
sentiments of, say, contemporary English Episcopalians on church polity be taken
as normative. In his 1629 Irenicum, Forbes relegated bishops to the status of
constant moderators, presiding by the consent and subject to the discipline of
collegia presbyterorum. He ascribed to elders indiscriminately ‘the power, by
divine law, to ordain others to ministry’, adding that elders should exercise that
power ‘under the rule and oversight of the bishop, in places where there is a
bishop’, but conceding ordination to be valid and effective regardless, for example
‘in places where the Church is governed only by a common council of elders’
(Forbes 1629: 2.164). In sum, Forbes judged bishops constitutive of the melius esse
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rather than the esse of the Kirk, and the absence of the same an ‘economic’ rather
than ‘essential’ defect.²
The Doctors were better Episcopalians on the matter of royal authority vis-à-vis
the Kirk. In 1638, they cried foul on the covenanters for unlawfully abjuring the
Stewart kings’ reforms of church polity and liturgy. Both the status of bishops
and the liturgical rites embodied in the Perth Articles, they noted, had been
established by general assemblies bearing the stamp of parliamentary and royal
approval. Resistance on either front, then, constituted a violation of scriptural
injunctions to submit to lawful authorities. The Doctors judged the issue of
further liturgical reforms momentarily redundant—Charles had by then reneged
on efforts to impose a new service book on the Kirk—but remained open in
principle to subsequent liturgical change at royal initiative, arguing that some
matters, for instance one’s posture when receiving the Eucharistic elements, were
morally indifferent in kind, and therefore subject to determination by rightful
human authorities. In defence of that claim they cited the diversity of liturgical
customs existing within ‘other Reformed churches’—a diversity Forbes had
experienced first-hand during his time in Germany and the Netherlands—and
the explicit allowance made in the Scots Confession (1560) for liturgical niceties
to vary according to time and place. In short, the Doctors judged compliance
with the king—conscience permitting—in matters of polity and liturgy much
to be preferred to that ‘playne disobedience’ championed by the covenanters
(Forbes et al. 1638).
The covenanters blamed the Doctors for the Covenant’s lacklustre reception
in north-east Scotland and took measures at the 1640 General Assembly
to tarnish their reputations and remove them from their ministerial and aca-
demic posts. Establishing legitimate grounds for this required some ingenuity.
Scroggie, minister of St Machar’s Cathedral, was charged with preaching ‘long
upon one texte’ and lacking fervency in pastoral care. Leslie, principal of King’s,
was accused of laziness and drunkenness. Sibbald, sometime regent at Marischal
and minister of St Nicholas Kirk, was charged with Arminianism—despite
adamantly disavowing the same—based on testimony provided by Samuel
Rutherford, who had frequented Sibbald’s sermons during his period of exile
in Aberdeen. Baron, professor of divinity at Marischal College, and Ross, rector
at King’s and minister of St Nicholas Kirk, were tried in absentia, having died
prior to the 1640 Assembly. The former was charged with unspecified hetero-
doxy following a review of unpublished papers recovered from his private study,
but the case against both men ultimately rested on guilt by association—each of
the deceased possessed correspondence from John Maxwell, bishop of Ross,

² See more fully Selwyn (1923: 18–20). Forbes himself, it should be noted, was ordained by
presbytery in the Netherlands in 1619.
282   

making favourable mention of the much-hated service book of 1637. The most
difficult case proved to be John Forbes—‘the bone of any that troubled the
covenanters to digest’, as one contemporary put it. Upon careful scrutiny of
his life and doctrine, the Assembly was forced to admit ‘they founde him
piouse, learnd, and fully orthodoxe, and to disagree with them in nothing but
in point of churche governement’. The Assembly begged Forbes to reconsider
his stance on the Covenant and granted him time to do so. Forbes was finally
deposed in 1641 when his grace period ran out, but even then no charge was
levelled against him beyond refusal to subscribe to the Covenant (Gordon
1841: 2.226–33).
Despite the general scarcity of modern studies devoted to the Doctors’ theology
per se, modern scholars have proven abler than their early modern counterparts
at pinpointing heterodoxy—usually of the sort to be celebrated rather than
censured—in the Doctors’ doctrine. The Doctors’ ideas frequently make an
appearance in surveys of Scottish theology in toto (Torrance 1996), surveys of
specific doctrines/practices within particular ecclesial settings (Kornahrens
2008, 2011), and/or efforts to gauge the presence of Arminianism in early
modern Scotland (Kitshoff 1967; Mullan 2000). Regardless, when they do take
the stage, the Doctors are almost invariably recognized as being somehow out
of sync with their seventeenth-century Presbyterian peers and the broader
Reformed orthodoxy represented by those peers. The precise point of their
divergence from that orthodoxy differs among studies, often in accordance
with the convictions or platforms of respective reviewers. Some discover the
Doctors’ point of departure from Reformed orthodoxy in their irenicism, or in a
supposed doctrinal minimalism—a disinterest in defending anything beyond
the bare essentials of the faith—lying at the root of that irenicism; others in
soteriological and/or sacramental distinctives, or in subtle convictions about
divine sovereignty vis-à-vis human freedom informing soteriological distinc-
tives; others in the Doctors’ methodological commitment to the authority of
tradition—especially the tradition of the Church Fathers—and a corresponding
rejection of the precise notion of scriptural authority embraced by Presbyterian
contemporaries. Regardless, the scholarly consensus on the Doctors is aptly
summarized by Douglas Kornahrens’ comment that, during the tenure of the
Doctors, Aberdeen ‘was swimming against the tide of Reformed thought’—
against the tide, that is, of the ‘Bezan-Calvinist orthodoxy’ that achieved con-
solidated form at the Synod of Dort (1618–19) and prevailed ‘south of the Tay’
(Kornahrens 2011: 48–9).
In what follows, I will summarize the Doctors’ theology under three headings
corresponding to those points at which previous scholars have discerned hetero-
doxy in it. I will consider in turn the Doctors’ theology of Christian concord, their
soteriology and sacramentology, and their views on the authority of Scripture and
tradition.
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The Doctors on ecclesiastical concord

Efforts to enlist the Doctors as forerunners of ‘the ecumenical spirit of modern

times’ (Torrance 1996: 90) have typically rested on recognition of their labours to
achieve concord between ecclesiastical factions in Scotland, and so, to the extent
such efforts have relied on textual evidence, on consideration of Forbes’ 1629
Irenicum, Forbes’ 1638 Peaceable warning, and the Doctors’ jointly authored
pamphlets decrying sedition and schism in the wake of the National Covenant.
The Doctors’ efforts to achieve ecclesiastical peace on a broader scale have
received less attention, but provide a better basis for understanding the Doctors’
theology of Christian concord per se as well as the relationship of that theology to
international Reformed thought on ecclesiastical concord. Indeed, they provide a
better basis for understanding the Doctors’ arguments for compliance with eccle-
siastical reforms at home.
In 1635, John Durie solicited support for his project of unifying Europe’s
Lutheran and Reformed churches into a single Protestant body from John Spot-
tiswoode, the archbishop of St Andrews, who forwarded the matter to the Doctors
for appraisal. The Doctors, in response, penned a proposal for Protestant unity—
not, strictly speaking, Protestant unification—which was coupled, somewhat
ironically, with a similar endorsement of Protestant peace by conformist-turned-
covenanter Andrew Ramsey and published at Durie’s initiative in Bremen under
the title De pace inter Evangelicos procuranda, eminentiorum in Ecclesia Scoticana
theologorum sententiae (1639).³
The Doctors’ proposal for ‘peace and fraternal association’ among Europe’s
Lutheran and Reformed churches rested on two basic distinctions: the first
between consensus and concord; the second between fundamental and second-
ary doctrines/practices. They argued that concord might prevail ‘even where
there is dissension’ between churches, provided that such dissension pertains to
secondary matters and consensus exists concerning fundamental matters. They
judged disagreement on secondary matters a corollary of the church’s militant
status and identified confusion of secondary matters for fundamental as the root
cause of schism. Rather than naming fundamental doctrines or practices upon
which proper consensus was in fact required for concord, the Doctors provided
criteria for discerning the same. Fundamental doctrines pertain to ‘the founda-
tion of the faith’ (cf. 1 Cor. 3:11), are ‘necessary to be known for salvation’
(albeit they ‘need not be understood perfectly’ nor ‘in equal measure by all’), and
must, since ‘the way of salvation is not narrower’ in one age than another, find
expression in some measure at least in every age of the church (Forbes 1645:
14.7.1–14).

³ Republished in Forbes (1645: 14.7).

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The balance of the Doctors’ proposal sought to apply these distinctions to those
theological issues then dividing Reformed and Lutheran churches, most notably
the issue of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. The Doctors argued that funda-
mental agreement between Reformed and Lutheran churches was discernible in
their mutual rejection of both Tridentine Roman Catholic and memorialist
perspectives on the Supper and in their mutual insistence that Christ and his
saving benefits are genuinely communicated to believers in the celebration of
the Supper by means of a ‘sacramental union’—a ‘true and mystical union’—
between Christ’s body/blood and the Eucharistic elements. The Doctors refused
to countenance the notion of a ‘corporeal’ presence of Christ in the Eucharistic
elements—a notion they credited to ‘more recent Lutherans’ and distinguished
from the doctrine of a real (albeit mystical) presence jointly affirmed by Protestant
parties—but they relegated that notion and its implications (manducatio oralis
and manducatio indignorum) to the status of secondary doctrine. They concluded
that Lutheran and Reformed churches disagreed solely on secondary matters, and
that ‘peace and fraternal association’ between the same was both possible and
morally requisite given their apparent consensus on fundamental doctrines
(Forbes 1645: 14.7.15–37).
The Doctors’ works addressing Scotland’s own ecclesiastical situation similarly
urged concord in a context where theological consensus was elusive but,
according to their argument, ultimately unnecessary. In the context of their
native country, the distinction between fundamental and secondary doctrines/
practices informed an apology for Scottish bishops. Forbes relegated differences
on polity to secondary status by his admission that the absence of bishops
constituted an ‘economic’, not ‘essential’, defect (a gesture calculated to elicit
admission from Presbyterians that the presence of bishops might likewise
constitute failure on a non-fundamental front). But the Doctors’ efforts to
assuage Presbyterian angst over liturgical reforms typically traded on a slightly
different—albeit standard—Reformed distinction: that between elements and
circumstances in worship. Thus Forbes, in his 1629 Irenicum, acknowledged the
Kirk’s moral obligation to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (as an element of
worship), but identified the particular posture assumed by communicants
receiving the Eucharistic elements—like the particular time or location of a
Eucharistic service—a circumstance of worship. Since, Forbes argued, the Kirk,
in keeping with her prerogative to regulate such circumstantial matters in the
interest of piety, decency, and order, had stipulated a particular posture
(namely, kneeling) for communicants through ‘regular and lawful’ judicial
process, persistent non-conformity constituted blatant ‘schism and rebellion’,
which could only serve to ‘scandalize reformed churches’ abroad and ‘provoke
papists to ridicule’ (Forbes 1629: 38).
Similar arguments were advanced to defend other liturgical reforms pursued
through proper legal process. The tone of such arguments was generally irenical,
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though Forbes’ suggestion that Presbyterians and ‘papists’ were peas in a pod by
virtue of their shared insistence on imputing divine authority to human customs
(whether penance or some particular posture—namely, sitting—to receive the
Supper) was certain to raise the hackles of Forbes’ Presbyterian peers (Forbes
1629: 63).⁴ One of the more significant contributions the Doctors made to the case
for compliance with ecclesiastical norms as of Charles’ reign in Scotland was the
second book of Forbes’ Irenicum, which was essentially an early modern florile-
gium, calculated to establish the thoroughly Reformed provenance of the Kirk’s
Episcopalian polity and recent liturgical customs through an impressive array of
quotes from Reformed confessions and magisterial reformers demonstrating
everything from continental Reformed indifference towards particular Eucharistic
practices to positive enthusiasm for the celebration of ‘holy days’.
Three aspects of the Doctors’ irenicism are worth noting in summary. Firstly,
there were limits to the concord between Christians they deemed possible—limits
prescribed by their own distinction between fundamental and secondary doc-
trines. The Doctors pursued peace among Protestants both nationally and inter-
nationally, but unequivocally rejected the prospect of peace with Rome or with
radical (Anabaptist) sects, a decided obstacle to portraits of them as proleptic
present-day ecumenists. Secondly, the Doctors, though proponents of peace, were
not doctrinal minimalists. The claim that they wished ‘to eliminate . . . articles of
belief on which men differed’ and/or reconstruct a ‘primitive Christianity’ defined
doctrinally by the Apostles’ Creed alone (MacMillan 1909: 172–3) is thoroughly
ungrounded. The Doctors fully endorsed their own national confession and drew
heavily upon it and other Reformed confessions in their efforts to achieve peace
both at home and abroad. Their distinction between fundamental and secondary
doctrines should not be construed as lack of conviction regarding the finer points
of Scotland’s own confessional theology. Thirdly, the Doctors were entirely in step
with orthodox Reformed sentiments abroad in their proposals for peace both
nationally and internationally. Efforts to discern Arminius’ influence in the
Doctors’ distinction between fundamental and secondary doctrines or in their
overall peaceable posture are, again, ungrounded (MacMillan 1909: 160–1).
A more plausible candidate for influence upon the Doctors’ irenicism is David
Pareus (d. 1622), Reformed professor at the Collegium Sapientiae in Heidelberg,
under whom John Forbes studied from 1612 to 1615. The Doctors’ proposal for
pan-European Protestant concord in particular closely followed the argument of
Pareus’ own 1614 Irenicum, and, for that matter, traded on standard Reformed
distinctions that can be traced to the magisterial reformers. At least on the matter
of Christian concord, then, the Doctors were not men of ‘naughty faith’ (as their
contemporary Samuel Rutherford branded them); they were just good Calvinists.⁵

⁴ On Forbes’ primary antagonists, see Selwyn (1923: 35–46).

⁵ See more fully Denlinger (2012).
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The Doctors on salvation and sacraments

Few issues concerning the Doctors have engendered so much disagreement

as their views on grace and salvation. Some scholars claim one or all of them
as proponents of ‘mild’ Arminianism (MacMillan 1909: 113–15; Kitshoff 1967:
111–43; Stevenson 1990: 110). Others attribute ‘mild Calvinism’ to the Doctors—
that is, a Calvinism with softer edges than that represented by the canons
propagated by the Synod of Dort (Torrance 1996: 80; Henderson 1937; 50, 81,
90). One scholar, at least, attributes Calvinism with fewer qualifications to the
Doctors, in the interest ultimately of demonstrating the presence of a ‘Calvinist
consensus’ in Scotland prior to 1640 (Mullan 2000: 223–6). If any general con-
sensus on the Doctors’ views on grace and salvation exists, it is that—however
their views should be labelled—the Doctors rejected certain aspects of orthodox
Reformed teaching, aspects that, as a result of intramural Protestant and
Reformed conflict, had come into sharper focus in the seventeenth century; for
example, the doctrines of reprobation and limited atonement.
A careful reading of the Doctors’ writings, however, problematizes efforts to
discover them at odds with the orthodoxy represented by their Reformed peers at
home or abroad. Forbes’ enthusiasm for Reformed doctrine à la Dort becomes
readily apparent from a survey of his Liber de haeresi Pelagiana in the Instruc-
tiones historico-theologicae de doctrina Christiana (Amsterdam, 1645), in which
Forbes targeted the perceived semi-Pelagianism of the Remonstrants. In fact,
Forbes structured this work according to the Remonstrants’ Articles of 1610;
thus, Forbes’ own rebuttal of semi-Pelagianism became a point-for-point defence
of the doctrinal heads affirmed at Dort in 1619. Forbes occasionally strayed
onto biblical-exegetical turf, but his primary goal—reflecting the purpose of the
Instructiones more broadly—was to demonstrate the catholicity of Reformed
theology; the bulk, therefore, of his argument consisted in quotes from the Church
Fathers and select medieval divines compared favourably, whether explicitly or
implicitly, with the Reformed confessions. In the course of demonstrating the
catholicity of Dort’s theological affirmations, Forbes unambiguously endorsed the
doctrine of double predestination: ‘some are predestined to eternal life and others
to eternal death’ (Forbes 1645: 8.13.17). With respect to Christ’s atonement,
Forbes defended the particularist point of view (i.e. limited atonement) that was
the majority perspective among the divines at Dort: ‘Christ died for the elect alone’
(Forbes 1645: 8.16.10).⁶
So too Baron, more frequently claimed as a proponent of Arminianism than
Forbes, expressed views on grace and salvation in line with Dort. In his unpub-
lished Septenarius sacer de principiis et causis fidei catholicae, Baron labelled

⁶ See more fully Denlinger (2015b).

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Remonstrant doctrine ‘Pelagian’ and defended a doctrine of double predestination

(albeit one of decidedly infralapsarian cast): ‘Just as God from eternity wills to
grant men salvation on condition of faith and repentance, so also from eternity,
and without any foresight of human volitional consent, he resolves to grant certain
men the effectual means to fulfil that condition, and denies the same to other men’
(Septenarius sacer, 54). Baron proved equally concerned, however, to demon-
strate, over against certain Reformed theologians, a genuine desire on God’s part
for the salvation of all men—a desire ultimately trumped not, as in Remonstrant
teaching, by free human choice, but by God’s own effectual decree to withhold
saving grace from some individuals.
Baron’s views on the atonement evolved over time. In his 1621 Philosophia
theologiae ancillans, Baron rehearsed the arguments for a universal atonement put
forward by the Remonstrants at the Hague Colloquy (1611) and endorsed the
counter-arguments of Dutch divines in favour of a doctrine of limited atonement
(Baron 1621: 3.15). Baron subsequently acquired a copy of the Acta Synodi
Dordrechti and became acquainted with the hypothetical universalist position
on the extent of Christ’s atonement advanced by the British delegates and
Bremen’s delegate Matthias Martinius at Dort. By the 1630s he began endorsing
the position that Christ’s death had a twofold effect, procuring, through a sacrifice
sufficient for all, the genuine possibility of salvation for all on condition of faith
and repentance, and procuring, through a sacrifice efficient for the elect alone,
actual salvation—complete satisfaction for sin and the means necessary to appro-
priate that satisfaction—for the elect (Septenarius sacer, 55–72). In other words,
Baron moved from the majority Reformed view on Christ’s atonement at Dort to
the minority Reformed view, with credit apparently due to Dort’s own published
proceedings for his change in perspective. Nevertheless, he remained firmly within
the pale of orthodoxy on the issue of Christ’s atonement as defined by Dort’s
canons. Efforts to set Baron at odds with Reformed orthodoxy on this issue trade
less on ignorance of Baron’s doctrine than they do on failure to perceive that
orthodoxy’s inclusive nature on matters that divided Reformed divines.⁷
A recent essay by Simon Burton raises one further issue regarding the Doctors’
views on grace requiring comment (Burton 2017). Burton claims that the
Doctors, particularly Forbes and Baron, entertained the notion of divine middle
knowledge most famously associated with the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina—a
notion that sought to reconcile divine sovereignty with human freedom by
positing a divine, determinate knowledge of human, contingent acts prior to
God’s decree of such acts. In truth, Forbes was the only Doctor to explicitly
mention middle knowledge in his writings, and his comments on divine know-
ledge are far less congratulatory than has been suggested. Having referenced

⁷ See more fully Denlinger (2015a).

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‘certain theologians’ who posit ‘a middle knowledge of conditionals . . . antecedent

to God’s decree’, Forbes noted: ‘We would ungrudgingly concede this knowledge
with regard to future sins, if it were not for certain arguments that stand in the
way’ (Forbes 1645: 1.34.16).⁸ Forbes subsequently advanced traditional Reformed
arguments against middle knowledge, affirming the adequacy of free and natural
knowledge as categories of divina scientia and situating God’s decree prior to
determinate knowledge of contingent human acts—including sins—in the process.
Burton’s thesis is considerably stronger with regard to Baron’s thought. Expli-
citly pursuing a line of theological argument laid down by Molina’s teacher Pedro
da Fonseca (d. 1599), Baron did—both in his posthumously published Metaphy-
sica generalis and in his unpublished Isagoge ad saniorem doctrinam de praedes-
tinatione—admit a divine ‘conditional knowledge’ of contingent human acts that
preceded God’s decree (Baron 1658: 12.70). But in both works Baron applied the
concept solely to consideration of Adam’s sin—and perhaps very tentatively to sin
more generally—arguing that God’s permissive decree of such necessarily fol-
lowed knowledge of such (since permission presupposes knowledge), and thereby
arguing that Adam’s sin must ultimately be traced back to Adam’s own volition
rather than God’s decree per se. The claim that Baron implied ‘every divine decree,
including presumably that of election’, to be ‘posterior to God’s middle know-
ledge’ seems unwarranted (Burton 2017: 134). In truth, Baron appears to have
restricted application of ‘middle knowledge’—or something akin to it—to the
specific relationship of God’s permissive decree to human sin, and to have firmly
maintained the precedence of God’s effectual decree to God’s knowledge of
human volitional acts (for instance, faith) leading to salvation. Baron’s flirtation
with Jesuit teaching on divine knowledge, in other words, was geared towards
upholding the standard Reformed affirmation that God is not the author of sin.
Whether he transgressed orthodox boundaries in his appropriation of Fonseca’s
thought in order to do so is open to argument.
The Doctors articulated views on the sacraments consistent with their
Reformed views on grace and salvation. Their proposal for Protestant concord,
given its lengthy engagement with Lutheran Eucharistic teaching, contains the
clearest expression of their collective sacramentology, and it reflects the sacra-
mental views expressed in Forbes’s Irenicum and Instructiones. Forbes’ thought, in
turn, reflects the influence of Calvin, especially so with regard to Eucharistic
doctrine. The Doctors identify the Supper as a means by which God both
represents and, on the basis of a ‘sacramental union’ between Christ’s body/
blood and the Eucharistic elements, communicates Christ and his saving benefits
to believing recipients (Forbes 1645: 14.7.23). They devote considerable energy to
criticizing the Roman Catholic notion of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice,

⁸ I believe Burton misses the force of the subjunctive mood (concederemus) in his translation of
Forbes at this point.
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identifying that notion as derogatory of the full sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice

upon the Cross. They admit—like Calvin—the Supper to be a commemoration of
Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice, and its observance, like every act of worship, to be a
sacrifice of thanksgiving, but the emphasis of their doctrine falls decidedly on
divine rather than human agency in the Supper (Forbes 1629: 2.11.13; Forbes
1645: 14.7.21; cf. Calvin, Institutes: 4.18.12–13).⁹

The Doctors on Scripture and tradition

Neither the Doctors’ doctrine nor their use of Scripture garnered criticism from
Reformed contemporaries. Indeed, Baron’s published works on Scripture—largely
intended to refute Tridentine Roman Catholic teaching—were celebrated even by
the Doctors’ eventual detractors in Scotland. Baron’s 1627 Disputatio theologica de
formali objecto fidei identified Scripture as the formal object of faith (in distinction
from Scripture’s teaching, which constitutes faith’s material object) and argued
that confidence in Scripture follows from the Holy Spirit’s witness and work as
opposed to any ecclesiastical body’s supposedly infallible testimony to Scripture’s
veracity. In 1631 Baron published a further, lengthier work on Scripture—in
response to an attack on his first book by the Scottish Jesuit George Turnbull—
in which he reiterated his criticism of Rome’s claims regarding her own authority
vis-à-vis Scripture and sought to establish the catholicity of the Reformed position
on Scripture’s authority.¹⁰
Forbes’ thoughts on the authority of ‘the infallible Word of God’ vis-à-vis
human authorities crystallized in the controversies of 1638, when the interpret-
ation and the authority of the so-called King’s Confession of 1581 became a
sticking point between covenanters and non-covenanters. In his Peaceable Warn-
ing of 1638, Forbes distinguished ‘absolute’ authority, which he ascribed ‘onlie to
the Canonicke Scriptures’, from ‘conditional’ authority, which he ascribed to
uninspired, human voices, but ‘so farre onlie as [they] hath the same true Doctrine
which is contayned in the holie Scriptures’. Forbes further distinguished ‘condi-
tional’ (i.e. human) authority into ‘private’ and ‘publicke’, citing ‘the wrytinges of
Ambrose, or Augustine, or Luther, or Calvine, or Beza’ as examples of the former,
and ‘the Nationall Synodes of . . . the Kirke’, ‘the National Synode of anie forraygne
Reformed Kirke’, and/or ‘the Ancient Councels of Orthodoxe Fathers’ as examples
of the latter. Forbes privileged public over private authority, but insisted that all

⁹ Efforts to discern in the Doctors’ writings an embryonic, modern Episcopalian emphasis on the
Eucharist as a ‘supplicatory commemorative sacrifice’ offered by communicants to God—a sacrifice
that ‘is propitiatory’ insofar as it applies Christ’s propitiation to communicants—and so to set the
Doctors’ sacramentology at odds with, say, Presbyterian contemporaries like Robert Bruce, arguably
result in some distortion of the Doctors’ views (Kornahrens 2008: 51, 55).
¹⁰ See further Thompson (2015: 75–7).
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authoritative human voices ultimately remain subject to ‘lawful examination by

the Word of God’. In sum, Forbes identified Scripture as the highest court of
appeal, and, at least for him and his Scottish contemporaries, ‘the Articles of the
Nationall Confession of Scotland, registrated in Parliament’—i.e. the Scots Con-
fession (1560)—as the second highest court for vindication of the Kirk’s doctrine
and practices (Forbes 1638: 1–20).
These distinctions, of course, had particular purchase in the controversies of the
time, serving to marginalize the King’s Confession with its supposed prescription
of political and liturgical practices at odds with the Stewart kings’ reforms.
Nevertheless, such unequivocal statements about the superior authority of ‘divine’
to ‘human’ voices, the further privileging of ‘public’ over ‘private’ ecclesiastical
authorities, and the clear ascription of ultimate conditional authority to the Scots
Confession problematize some of the more extravagant claims made by modern
scholars about the Doctors’ deference to pre-Reformation tradition vis-à-vis, say,
the Reformed confessions of their age and/or Scripture itself. There is, for
instance, no discernible ground for the claim that Forbes ‘ “[made] his constant
appeal to the Fathers of the undivided Church” as the authoritative basis for
determining Christian doctrine’ (Kornahrens 2008: 33; partially quoting Selwyn
1923: 212). In truth, Forbes regularly deferred to the Reformed confessions as
authoritative summaries of the authoritative (i.e. infallible) basis for determining
Christian doctrine; namely, Scripture. His ‘appeal to the Fathers’—hardly ‘con-
stant’ in works beyond the Instructiones—was largely in the interest of establishing
the catholicity of confessional Reformed theology. Similarly problematic is Mac-
Millan’s effort to distinguish the Doctors’ methodology from that of their Scottish
peers who apparently ‘rejected all antiquity’, though more so for its misrepresen-
tation of Presbyterian sentiments than anything else (MacMillan 1909: 101).
In sum, the Doctors’ doctrine of Scripture, their acknowledgement of the
subordinate authority of human documents (principally their own national con-
fession), and their desire to establish the catholicity of Reformed doctrine and
practice by reference to patristic and medieval tradition reflect the posture of
seventeenth-century Reformed orthodoxy more broadly. Reformed divines of the
Doctors’ historical moment wholeheartedly subscribed to the principle of sola
Scriptura articulated by the magisterial reformers, but equally and increasingly
‘claimed for themselves and their churches the best of the Christian tradition, and
appropriated it critically for the clarification and for the defense of [their own]
faith’ (Muller 2003: 53).

Henry Scougal

Although the Doctors’ influence in north-east Scotland and beyond was undoubt-
edly mitigated by the events of the 1640s and 1650s, scholars have named
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Henry Scougal, professor of divinity at King’s College from 1674 until his
untimely death (aged 28) in 1678, as one who imbibed ‘the spirit and teaching
of the Aberdeen Doctors’ and transmitted the same to others (Snow 1952: 168). In
truth, however, the notes existing from Scougal’s lectures in philosophy and his
published theological works—The Life of God in the Soul of Man and a smattering
of sermons—provide insufficient material to establish such a claim. Moreover, the
evidence they do supply indicates that Scougal represented a different theological
breed than the Doctors.
There were, of course, points of affinity between the Doctors and Scougal.
Scougal’s clear rejection of Tridentine Roman Catholic and memorialist views
on the Supper in favour of Eucharistic teaching reminiscent of the Scots Confes-
sion’s own high-Calvinist sacramentology reflects the Doctors’ perspective.
According to Scougal, the Eucharistic elements ‘are not bare and empty signs, to
put us in mind of the death and sufferings of Christ. Our Saviour calls them
his body and blood: and such, without question, they are, to all spiritual purposes
and advantages.’ Though ‘not changed in their nature’, he continued, the Euchar-
istic elements constitute ‘an instrument to convey unto us all those blessings that
the body and blood of our Saviour can afford us’ (Scougal 1830: 196–7).
Scougal’s identification of faith as foundational to love, humility, and purity,
likewise reflects generic Protestant teaching that one might easily discern in the
Doctors (Scougal 1830: 22). Similarly, his insistence that true religion has ‘God for
its author’ insofar as God has ‘wrought it in the souls of men by the power of his
Holy Spirit’ would seem to reflect the fundamentally Augustinian posture of
Reformed Protestantism in toto, though such a statement could certainly be
reconciled to diverse views on grace and election (Scougal 1830: 18). On that
score, it is intriguing, at least, that Scougal, in a sermon outlining the reasons that
‘so few’ are saved, neglected to trace the salvation/condemnation of individuals to
God’s decree of election/reprobation and focused exclusively on practical factors
that dissuade persons from perseverance in faith, though this could, of course,
merely reflect pastoral sensitivity to the needs of a particular congregation
(Scougal 1830: 131–47).
Regardless, a fundamental difference between Scougal and the Doctors/
Reformed orthodoxy emerges in Scougal’s definition of ‘true religion’ as the
‘union of the soul with God’, ‘a real participation of the divine nature’, and ‘a
divine life’. According to Sarah Hutton, Scougal’s definition of religion reflects the
influence of the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists, particularly John
Smith (d. 1652) and Henry More (d. 1687). Scougal was, in fact, one of several
Scottish Episcopalians in his day who were receptive to the religious ideas of the
Cambridge Platonists; another was Gilbert Burnet, who edited Scougal’s Life of
God for publication (Hutton 2012: 14–15). Although Scougal also defined religion,
echoing Scripture, as ‘Christ formed within us’, his more frequent description of
religion as the soul’s union with God fails to reflect the Doctors’ own (generic)
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Reformed emphasis upon union with Christ as the basis for the imputation of
Christ’s righteousness to believers in the context of justification (see Forbes 1645:
8.23). Indeed, Scougal’s comments on ‘true religion’ often seem more akin to
medieval mysticism than they do to the orthodox Reformed ideas represented by
the Doctors.
Regardless, however, of the sources of his thought, the practical orientation and
warm piety of Scougal’s writings bore rich fruit. George Whitefield, having been
directed to Scougal’s Life of God by Charles Wesley, claimed he ‘never knew what
true religion was’ until he read Scougal’s book. ‘A ray of divine light was instant-
aneously darted in upon my soul’, Whitefield recalled, ‘and from that moment, but
not until then, did I know that I must be a new creature’. Whitefield subsequently
distributed copies of Scougal’s work to both friends and disciples. Largely via
Whitefield, Scougal left his mark upon English Methodism and the pietistic
movement more broadly (Kidd 2014: 28–9).

Conclusion

Recent scholarly studies on Reformed orthodoxy—i.e. Reformed theology as it

was refined and propagated through various media from c.1560 to c.1775 on the
continent, in the British Isles, and in American colonies—arguably provide the
best resources for making provisional assessments of the Aberdeen Doctors’
thought. The emphasis in such studies upon the need for careful, contextualized
reading and dispassionate critique of primary sources might serve to correct
existing, simplistic, and/or anachronistic interpretations of these divines rooted
in a desire to make them advocate some modern theological, political, or ecclesi-
astical agenda. Similarly, attention to the variegated nature of Reformed
orthodoxy—attention, that is, to the significant diversity of theological positions
that existed in early modern Reformed settings within boundaries established by
national confessions of faith—might serve to subvert not only the tendency to
situate the Doctors specifically at odds with their Reformed peers at home and
abroad, but also the tendency to place these (and other) Scottish divines some-
where on a supposedly fixed line of theological persuasion moving from ‘rigid
Calvinism’ to Arminianism via ‘mild’/‘moderate Calvinism’. From the vantage
point of recent studies on post-Reformation international Reformed thought,
the Aberdeen Doctors, notwithstanding their differences with certain Scottish
peers on specific political and liturgical matters, seem rather ordinary specimens
of the Reformed orthodoxy that so many scholars have sought to set them at
odds with. Scougal’s theology, if judged by the same criteria, remains more elusive.
His doctrine perhaps fits within the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy, albeit
at a point when that orthodoxy was increasingly subjected to forces that
rendered it less stable. But Scougal arguably fits more naturally into a narrative
       293

of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Pietism than he does one of Reformed

orthodoxy. Enthusiasm for the Cambridge Platonists infused Scougal’s doctrine
with a mystical strain. His legacy in Scotland itself was a spirituality that to
orthodox Presbyterians of the subsequent century smacked of Bourignonism
(Ahnert 2015: 17–33). His legacy more broadly was a practical piety that, when
married to orthodox Protestant distinctives, resulted in distinct forms of spiritu-
ality inhabiting various offshoots of Pietism.

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Primary Literature
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University Library, MS 136.
Baron, Robert (n.d.). Septenarius sacer de principiis et causis fidei catholicae. Aberdeen
University Library, MS 136.
Baron, Robert (1621). Philosophia theologiae ancillans. St Andrews: Raban.
Baron, Robert (1627). Disputatio theologica de formali objecto fidei. Aberdeen: Raban.
Baron, Robert (1631). Ad Georgii Turnebulli tetragonismum pseudographum apodixis
catholica. Aberdeen: Raban.
Baron, Robert (1658). Metaphysica generalis. London: Daniel.
Forbes, John (1629). Irenicum amatoribus veritatis et pacis in Ecclesia Scoticana.
Aberdeen: Raban.
Forbes, John (1638). A peaceable warning, to the subjects in Scotland. Aberdeen: Raban.
Forbes, John (1645). Instructiones historico-theologicae. Amsterdam: Elzevirium.
Forbes, John, et al. (1638). The answers of some brethren of the ministerie to the replies
of the ministers and professours of divinitie in Aberdene concerning the late covenant.
Also, duplies of the ministers and professors of Aberdene, to the second answers of
some reverend brethren, concerning the late covenant. London: Young.
Scougal, Henry (1830). The Works of Rev. Henry Scougal. Pittsburgh: Kay & Co.
Selwyn, E. G. (1923). The First Book of the Irenicum of John Forbes of Corse. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

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Ahnert, Thomas (2015). The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1690–1805.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Burton, Simon (2017). ‘Disputing Providence in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Uni-
versities: The Conflict between Samuel Rutherford and the Aberdeen Doctors and
its Repercussions’, History of Universities 29/2: 121–42.
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Denlinger, Aaron (2012). ‘“Men of Gallio’s Naughty Faith”? The Aberdeen Doctors on
Reformed and Lutheran Concord’, Church History and Religious Culture 92/1: 57–83.
Denlinger, Aaron (2015a). ‘Scottish Hypothetical Universalism: Robert Baron
(c.1596–1639) on God’s Love and Christ’s Death for All’, in Aaron Clay Denlinger
(ed.), Reformed Orthodoxy in Scotland: Essays on Scottish Theology, 1560–1775.
London: Bloomsbury, 83–102.
Denlinger, Aaron (2015b). ‘Swimming with the Reformed Tide: John Forbes of Corse
(1593–1648) on Double Predestination and Limited Atonement’, Journal of Eccle-
siastical History 66/1: 67–89.
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Club.
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Cambridge University Press.
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Scottish Enlightenment’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42/suppl. 1: 8–26.
Kidd, Thomas (2014). George Whitefield. London: Yale University Press.
Kitshoff, Michiel (1967). ‘Aspects of Arminianism in Scotland’. MA thesis, University
of St Andrews.
Kornahrens, Wallace Douglas (2008). ‘Eucharistic Doctrine in Scottish Episcopacy,
1620–1875’. PhD thesis, University of St Andrews.
Kornahrens, Wallace Douglas (2011). ‘Praying for the Christian Departed: A Brief
View of the Doctrine and Practice in Scottish Episcopacy’, Theology in Scotland
18/2: 47–79.
MacMillan, Donald (1909). The Aberdeen Doctors. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Mullan, David George (2000). Scottish Puritanism, 1590–1638. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Muller, Richard (2003). After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological
Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reid, Steven (2011). Humanism and Calvinism: Andrew Melville and the Universities of
Scotland, 1560–1625. Farnham: Ashgate.
Reid, Steven (2016). ‘Reformed Scholasticism, Proto-Empiricism and the Intellectual
“Long Reformation” in Scotland: The Philosophy of the “Aberdeen Doctors”,
c.1619–c.1641’, in John McCallum (ed.), Scotland’s Long Reformation: New Perspec-
tives on Scottish Religion, c.1500–c.1660. Leiden: Brill, 149–78.
Sefton, Henry (1974). ‘Scotland’s Greatest Theologian’, Aberdeen University Review
45: 348–52.
Snow, W. G. S. (1952). The Times, Life and Thought of Patrick Forbes, Bishop of
Aberdeen, 1618–1635. London: SPCK.
Stevenson, David (1990). King’s College, Aberdeen, 1560–1641: From Protestant Refor-
mation to Covenanting Revolution. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
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Thompson, Nicholas (2004). ‘The Long Reach of Reformation Irenicism: The

Considerationes Modestae et Pacificae of William Forbes (1585–1634)’, in Ian
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of Principal Peter Matheson. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly.
Thompson, Nicholas (2015). ‘Where Was Your Church Before Luther? History and
Catholicity in Early Seventeenth-Century Aberdonian Theology’, in Aaron Clay
Denlinger (ed.), Reformed Orthodoxy in Scotland: Essays on Scottish Theology,
1560–1775. London: Bloomsbury, 67–82.
Torrance, T. F. (1996). Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell.
Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
 21
Episcopalian Spirituality
The Garden Brothers and Henry Scougal
Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner

In his ‘Funeral Sermon’ from 1678 George Garden mourned for the loss of his
close friend Henry Scougal (Henderson 1934: 32), the son of Bishop Patrick
Scougal,¹ successful academic (Henderson 1957: 94–104; Rivers 2012: 29–40)
and, in Garden’s view, the embodiment of the true imitation of Jesus Christ:
[W]e have here before us the remains of our departed friend, who hath so lately
left this world; whose presence and conversation was so comfortable to us; whose
innocence and goodness were so exemplary; whose good-will, affection, and
beneficence were so sincere and universal; whose remembrance is so dear to
us; who was so much the stay and honour of our church, and so universally
beloved and esteemed by all. (Garden 1759: 371)

Henry Scougal, George Garden and his brother James, the subjects of this essay, all
had their intellectual and spiritual centre in the north-east of Scotland but they
were part of an academic network that extended all over western Europe. Both
Garden brothers were deeply influenced by Henry Scougal but their intellectual
and spiritual quests were greatly shaped by the political circumstances of their
times and the ecclesiastical situation after the Glorious Revolution as this essay
will show.
At the time of his death Scougal was only twenty-eight years old; born in 1650,
he was trained for the ministry from an early age. The early training and the total
immersion in the intellectual climate of his domestic environment proved very
successful: in 1664, he entered King’s College in Aberdeen; after his graduation in
1668 he became regent in his college, and in 1673 he was ordained to be the
minister of the country parish of Auchterless (Aberdeenshire). A year later, in
August 1674, the Synod appointed him Professor of Divinity at King’s College.
The funeral sermon describes his learnedness, his proficiency in the biblical lan-
guages and in Latin, his memory, his intellectual prowess in a wide variety of subjects,
including ‘geometry and other parts of the mathematicks’ (Garden 1759: 391–2).
In particular, his friend stresses his piety which was very much focused on the

¹ On Henry Scougal, see also Aaron Denlinger’s chapter in this volume.

Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner, Episcopalian Spirituality: The Garden Brothers and Henry Scougal.
In: The History of Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by
David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0021
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Bible, with a daily routine of biblical readings and linking his own experiences to
its text: ‘and though he was always averse to the making a lottery of the holy
scriptures yet he could not but take notice of the first words which occasionally
he cast his eyes upon, and which made no small impression on his spirit’
(Garden 1759: 390). So he made his ‘human learning serviceable to the ends of
piety and religion’ (Garden 1759: 398), centring his life on the imitation of Jesus
Christ aiming ‘never [to] rest till Christ be formed in us’ (Garden 1759: 378).
In his sermon, Garden addresses the issue of their friendship twice and affec-
tionately describes the deceased’s capability for true friendship (Garden 1759: 371,
424–5):
But O! how eminent an example was he of sincere and hearty friendship? This was
the darling of his soul, and the delight of his spirit. He did not act it to serve little
designs, and private interests; . . . How freely would he open his heart and unbosom
his thoughts, and give faithful counsel to his friend. (Garden 1759: 424)

Undoubtedly, Garden is following here classical and traditional patterns of

friendship (Lochman et al. 2011: 1–9) but his reminiscences of Henry Scougal
betray true sentiment, and that the two were perceived as close friends can be
surmised from a remark which was made by John Cockburn, the Gardens’
brother-in-law: when Gilbert Burnet, later bishop of Salisbury and at that time
already in England (Greig 2004), heard about Scougal’s death ‘he wrote a condol-
ing Leter to Dr G. Garden’ (Cockburn 1724[?]: 60). Burnet, originally from
Scotland and well acquainted with the Scougal family and also Henry Scougal’s
mentor Robert Leighton, bishop of Dunblane (Butler 1903: 276, 281–2; Knox
1930: 159), was well aware of the close connection of the two men, and that he sent
a condolence letter to George Garden is a clear indication of the pair’s intimate
friendship. That friendship was not restricted to academic matters; a letter to a
member of the Royal Society mentions an excursion of Garden and ‘Master
Scougall’ into the Scottish countryside (Garden 1676/77: 842).
However, George Garden’s sermon not only paints an empathetic image of
Scougal which betrays his deep friendship, his intimate familiarity with Garden
and his sense of loss. It also mirrors Scougal’s thoughts about their vocation as
ministers and his aims as an academic teacher. Consequently, Garden highlights
in his funeral sermon that Scougal’s professorial efforts were directed towards
the education of future clergymen whose intellects and spirituality he equally
tried to shape: being a minister ‘would not be so much the managing of
controversies and debates of religion, as the guiding mens [sic] souls to eternity’
(Garden 1759: 409). He did not only teach, however, he lived what he preached
(Garden 1759: 428–34)—he lived an ascetic life in purity, in ‘continence and
celibacy’ (Garden 1759: 430) and humility, always closely following biblical role
models. Scougal himself addressed the issue of continence in his The Life of God
in the Soul of Man: ‘In his small but sophisticated treatise Scougal deepened the
298 - 

classical understanding of asceticism by unpacking how life in God naturally

entails self-denial’ (Radcliff 2013: 51; Raffe 2010: 590–1).

The Mystics of the North-East and Their Roots

George Garden, as we will see, shared Scougal’s ideals, and therefore, it is not
surprising that they were close in many respects: both men studied at King’s
College in Aberdeen, but despite George Garden (1649–1733) being slightly
older they became what Henderson calls ‘soul-friend[s]’ (Henderson 1934: 32).
Scougal was the decisive influence on George and also on his brother, James
Garden (1645–1726).² This is not only reflected in the Gardens’ spiritual practice
and writings; the convergence of interests is also mirrored by the Scougals’
collection of books, in 1684 bequeathed to King’s College (Sir Duncan Rice
Library, Special Collections, MS K115): it did not only—among a wide range of
other material—contain contemporary theological and spiritual writings but also
Thomas à Kempis’ Imitatio Christi, the Theologia Germanica, and St Teresa’s Life
(Rivers 2012: 31; Henderson 1957: 97–101; Henderson 1937: 136–7).³ Likewise
we have in George (and James) Garden’s writings references to ideas derived
from ‘S. Augustine and S. Bernard, Tauler and S. Teresa, Monsieur de Renty and
Pascal, de Molinos and John of the Cross, [and] Francis de Sales’ and John of
Ruysbroeck (Henderson 1934: 35).⁴ These influences can clearly be perceived, in
particular, in the writings of George Garden who—as later his Presbyterian oppon-
ent Andrew Honyman will admit in the controversy over his Bourignonism—
‘is supposed to be a known Pattern of Piety and Temperance, and deserves so
well of the Learn’d World’ (Honyman 1710: xxi). From his convictions and
writings, however, Honyman draws the conclusion: ‘The Dr. can no longer put on
a Protestant Face’ (Honyman 1710: xvi), and Robert Wodrow saw Bourignonists
and Jacobites, in cahoots with Quakers and Jesuits, as threats to the Kirk (McCrie
1842: 169–70).
The Gardens referred to medieval mystic traditions as well as contemporary
Roman Catholic literature and mysticism; they were deeply influenced by asceti-
cism and monastic spirituality. As G. D. Henderson and more recently Michael
Riordan have demonstrated, the Garden brothers were part of a much larger
network than the label ‘mystics of the North-East’ (coined by Henderson)

² For details about the brothers’ biographies, relationships, and careers, see Bertie (2000: 48);
Handley (2004).
³ The copy of Teresa of Avila’s The life of the holy mother S. Teresa, foundress of the reformation of
the Discalced Carmelites, according to the primitive rule. Divided into two parts, London 1671,
nowadays in Aberdeen University Library, bears the inscription of Scougal, though his few annotations
are not very conclusive.
⁴ George Garden quotes John Tauler, Ruysbroeck, Francis of Sales, et al. abundantly in his letters to
James Cunningham of Barns (Henderson 1934: 191–262).
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suggests. They had connections to like-minded individuals in other parts of

Scotland, England, and all over the continent (Henderson 1934: 14–20; Riordan
2015: 17–18, 84–7; Shuttleton 2011: 41).⁵ Riordan characterizes these individuals’
self-professed mysticism as ‘defined as a way of life, rooted in Christ’s exhortations
to spiritual poverty (Matt. 5:3), which they took to imply that people had a duty to
abandon the things of this world and be guided by the Spirit of God alone in all
that they do’ (Riordan 2015: 78).
For strict Calvinists this reflected ‘popery’, an unforgivable sin (Henderson
1957: 101). The origins of the Gardens’ interests can be traced back to Scougal and
related influences, and all three would have rejected these polemics. Isabel Rivers
states ‘that the Restoration Episcopalian Church of Scotland was at least nomin-
ally Calvinistic, and that Scougal, Leighton, and their associates “at no time
thought of deserting this general position”, though much of their work would
have horrified extreme Calvinists’ (Rivers 2012: 34). Scougal’s successfully
defended theses on Positiones aliquot theologicae de objecto cultus religiosi
(1674) are explicitly directed against Roman Catholic practices of worship. How-
ever, neither Scougal nor the Garden brothers were interested in conventional
academic theology and dogmatics. In the book which finally ended his career as a
minister in the Church of Scotland, An Apology for M. Antonia Bourignon,
anonymously published in London 1699, George Garden makes the following
statement which explains how he perceived contemporary Presbyterianism:
‘There’s a certain Driness and Deadness in most of Writings and Sermons now
adays about Divine Things, that they do not at all touch the Heart’ (Garden 1699:
31). He complains about theologians and ministers who are ‘more zealous for
their particular Forms and Confessions, than for the Gospel and Laws of Jesus
Christ’ (Garden 1699: 16)—and it is obvious that remarks like this one target his
Presbyterian opponents. The ‘essence of Christianity’ (Garden 1699: 23) is not
at all touched by the discussion of speculative subtleties; quite the opposite: ‘there
is no way to salvation but by Mortification of our corrupt Nature and Self-love,
and by the Imitation of Jesus Christ, dying with him to all the Eases, Honours,
Riches, and Pleasures of this World’ (Garden 1699: 25), or, in short, following the
‘Gospel-Law’ (Garden 1699: 17).⁶ This sentiment is also mirrored in George
Garden’s dedication letters of his Latin edition of the works of John Forbes of
Corse (Garden 1703a):⁷ he complains about the spiritual deficiencies of the
contemporary Kirk, its lack of traditional liturgical elements, its focus on argu-
ments about doctrine, and the replacement of primeval Christianity’s symbols

⁵ Riordan follows up the use of the term ‘mystical theology’ by the Garden brothers and other
Scottish theologians (2015: 93–5).
⁶ I have addressed these issues in an article on ‘Devoted Episcopalians, Reluctant Jacobites? George
and James Garden and Their Spiritual Environment’ which will be published in a volume of collected
essays, edited by Allan MacInnes and Kieran German.
⁷ See Riordan (2015: 98–100), on this edition.
300 - 

with the Westminster Confession.⁸ Proper Christian worship is no longer possible

under these circumstances: ‘Atheismus, impietas, omnisque Religionis contemp-
tus, cum summo omnium vere Christianorum dolore, in immensum aucta sunt’
(Garden 1703a: **2r).⁹

James Garden’s Quest for a ‘Pure and Peaceable Theology’

Despite their distinctive spiritual inclinations and rejection of the post-1689

Scottish ecclesiastical environment, the Garden brothers had descended—as had
Henry Scougal—from a decidedly Protestant background. James Garden and his
younger brother George both grew up in Forgue, Aberdeenshire, where their father
was the minister (Tayler and Tayler 1934: 226–7; Bertie 2000: 48). The family was
well connected, ‘[o]ne uncle was Principal of King’s College, and another was the
first Earl of Middleton, prominent in Scottish politics in the reign of Charles II’
(Henderson 1957: 117). The Gardens were also part of the network of Scottish
theologians ‘bound by numerous ties of blood, doctrine and emotion’ (Mullan
2000: 13),¹⁰ interrelated to or closely affiliated with other families of the same
background. Both brothers were educated at King’s College, Aberdeen. James
graduated in 1662 and was a minister in several parishes in eastern Scotland. In
1680 he was appointed Professor of Divinity at his old university, King’s College.
He was the successor of the by then deceased Henry Scougal, whose father, Bishop
Patrick Scougal, admitted him into office ‘by delivering unto him the Book of Holy
Scriptures and giving him the right hand of fellowship, as use is in such caises’
(Stuart 1846: 337; Emerson 1992: 19).¹¹ Like his brother, James had contacts to
members of the Royal Society (Riordan 2015: 107–9); he corresponded with John
Aubrey about Scottish antiquities and Highland beliefs, namely concerning stone
circles, druids, and the ‘second sight’ (Hunter 2001: 22; Williams 2015).
The first piece of theological writing we have from James Garden are his Theses
theologicae de gratiae efficacia, defended in the context of his appointment to the

⁸ Garden (1703a, vol. 1): Dedicatio serenissimae principi Annae dei gratia Scotiae, Angliae, Franciae
& Hiberniae reginae fidei defensori (no pagination): ‘In Scotia vidimus Ecclesiam denuo eversam;
Ministros ab officiis & beneficiis vi pulsos; . . . Orationem dominicam e Sacra Synaxi excommunicatam;
Hymnum glorificationis ab antiquis temporibus in Ecclesia receptum, invito ac renitente Populo
suppressum; Sacrae etiam Scripturae lectionem publicam, nisi in quantum tunc temporis Conciona-
toris glossis oblinenda est abdicatam; primitiva Fidei Christianae symbola explosa, ac novitiam Fidei
Confessionem ex mille septuaginta & uno articulis conflatam, Laicis & Clericis implicite credendam, in
eorum locum obtrusam’. The same complaint is repeated in the dedication to the Anglican archbishops
of Canterbury and York, in the same volume, **2r.
⁹ ‘Atheism, impiety, contempt of every aspect of religion, together with the greatest grief for all truly
Christian [people], have been increased to a vast extent’.
¹⁰ Mullan (2000) observes this for early seventeenth-century Presbyterian theologians in Scotland
but it is also true for their Episcopalian counterparts during the Restoration period.
¹¹ Unfortunately, Emerson confuses the brothers: not James, but George was condemned by the
General Assembly because of his theological and spiritual ideas.
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professorship and printed in 1691, presumably to prove his orthodox credentials

when he was in danger of losing his post (Stuart 1846: 336–7).¹² They reflect
Garden’s moderate interpretation of John Calvin’s views on grace and free will
without explicitly referring to him; Garden instead argues along the lines of
Augustine—as does John Calvin, e.g. in the Institutes of the Christian Religion,
II.3.14—and comes to the conclusion that God’s effective grace does neither
destroy the human will nor take away human liberty but perfects and corroborates
both. Without divine grace humans would not be able to do anything good at all:
‘Gratia efficax non destruit voluntatem, nec libertatem tollit, . . . sed utramque
perficit at corroborat’ (Garden 1691: 10). In this he does not deviate from Calvin’s
interpretation of Augustine, or as A. N. S. Lane puts it: ‘Calvin . . . did not deny that
man, moved by grace, willingly obeys righteousness, does good and is rewarded.
In this sense he did believe in cooperation with grace’ (Lane 1981: 85). James
Garden obviously is in favour of this cooperation, and his omissions are perhaps
as significant as his actual statements: whereas Calvin argues with regard to the
elect, James Garden does not address the issue of predestination in his theses at all.
Already at this early stage he foreshadows ideas which will later be more fully
developed in his anonymously published Discursus academicus de Theologia
Comparativa (1699) or, in English translation, Comparative Theology; or The
true and solid grounds of pure and peaceable Theology (1700) (Henderson 1957:
112). This work rejects denominational and theological differences and conflicts
because ‘among all sects and parties of Christians true piety is neglected, and
divine charity and brotherly love are waxed cold . . . because the generality of
Christians either do not know, or will not consider how much repentance, self-
denial, mortifying of the flesh, charity, humility, etc. are of more weight than
orthodoxy and sound belief ’ (Garden 1735: 5–7). In the centre of his theology is
the idea of God’s love; human depravity led to the Fall because man transferred his
love from God to his creatures (Garden 1735: 17)—God’s plan with his creatures
aims at healing the rift: ‘[I]n the state of nature depraved, and considered as it is to
be repair’d and renewed, the same love of God still makes the first, the chief and
capital part of religion’ (Garden 1735: 19). In order to achieve this end God sent
his Son as mediator who took upon himself our failures; now we need to respond
to him with love, gratitude and faith since ‘the pardon which Christ produced for
fallen man is only conditional’ (Garden 1735: 25–6). In order to gain salvation
‘God requires that the heart of man be offered unto him whole and entire . . . as
soon as man admits new and strange loves into his heart, God forsakes it as
polluted and defiled’ (Garden 1735: 29). Man’s return to God’s love is a process,
and we need to follow what God has ‘prescribed in his scriptures’ so that ‘we may
gradually ascend to the perfect love of God’ (Garden 1735: 27). So man needs to

¹² The disputation of James Garden’s thesis was held in King’s College Chapel on 2 February 1681.
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concentrate wholly on this aim; continual prayer, repentance, and devotion need
to be accompanied by detachment from earthly pursuits:
And this fault is but too common among Christians, who imagine they can attain
to internal vertues of contrition, humility, contempt of the world, self-denial, the
love of God etc. by meditation, and thinking only, without practising the external
good works that dispose and lead thereunto, and without avoiding the allurements
and temptations to the contrary vices, such as be riches, honours, pleasures, and
the familiarity and friendship of worldly-minded men. (Garden 1735: 98)

Thus we can see here a continuity in the Aberdeen Divinity professors’ approach
to spirituality. As in the case of Henry Scougal, James Garden’s main focus was not
on denominational ‘theology’ or ‘Dogmatics’. It was on what he called ‘religion’ or
‘Comparative Theology’ which ‘ponders the weight or importance, and observes
the order, respect and relation of things belonging to religion; whether they be
points of doctrine, or precepts, or scared rites; and teaches to distinguish und put a
difference between the accessories of religion and the principals, the circumstan-
tials and substantials, the means and their ends’ (Garden 1735: 4). Like Scougal, he
also promotes ‘repentance, self-denial, mortifying of the flesh, charity, humility, etc.’
which are ‘of more weight than orthodoxy or a sound belief ’ (Garden 1735: 7). In
order for man to fulfil his spiritual destination God ‘endowed him with a free
power of determining the acts and exercises of his faculties to these or the other
objects; of adhering to God by love or departing from him’ (Garden 1735: 14).
While in his earlier theses he explicitly rejected all proponents of human free will
(Garden 1691: 9–10),¹³ he now suggests that God expects man to answer freely to
the divine love, ‘and that his [sc. man’s] love might be noble and free, generous
and unlimited, not necessitated, forced or restricted’ (Garden 1735: 14).
James Garden shared with his brother George his views of the Christian religion
as being above their contemporaries’ squabbling about non-essentials, as well as his
aversion against their predilection for theological argument and controversy.
Both—George more fervently than his brother—were influenced by the Flemish
mystic Antoinette Bourignon (1660–80), and it was ultimately George’s promoting
of her theology that led to his notoriety in the Kirk (Henderson 1934: 14; de Baar
2004: 526–8). Bourignon rejected Church doctrine, scriptural and ecclesiastical
authority in favour of direct divine illumination and saw herself as ‘The Mother’
chosen by God to restore true Christianity (Irwin 1991: 312); therefore, it does not
surprise that the 1701 Acts of the General Assembly contain a list of her ‘heresies’
summarized as ‘Impious, Pernicious and Damnable Doctrines’ (Acts 1843: 307–8).

¹³ ‘Periculose igitur errant . . . Molinistae inter pontificios, & Remonstrantes belgici inter reformatos,
omnesque alii . . . qui docent gratiam & conversionem ita concurrere ut voluntatem non determinet, sed
in ejus arbitrio relinquat, cum ipsa cooperari vel non cooperari ei repugnare vel non repugnare’.
       303

Politics versus Devotion?

George Garden, having started his studies in 1662 (Innes 1854: 478), graduated
as MA in 1666. We have no records where he spent the following years;
G. D. Henderson supposes that he studied Divinity, perhaps in Aberdeen, as his
brother did, or abroad; he may have travelled to the continent and pursued his
studies in Holland (Mullan 2000: 4). In his later years, George Garden had close
connections with the continent, he was well acquainted with the continental book
production, knew the Amsterdam printer Wetstein, and was fluent in French
(Henderson 1934: 33–4; Riordan 2015: 113–16).
When Henry Scougal became Professor of Divinity, George returned to his
college and succeeded him as regent, 1673–4 (Innes 1854: 493; Henderson 1934:
33; Riordan 2015: 106–7). On 22 November 1683 George Garden, by now Doctor
of Divinity, was installed as a minister of St Nicholas Church. Both brothers were
married, had children, and belonged to the city’s ecclesiastical and academic
establishment (Bertie 2000: 48). George Garden was interested in medical topics;
he actually was approved as fellow of the Royal Society in 1695 but never formally
elected (Handley 2004).
The Garden brothers’ situation changed after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in 1688
when Mary II and William III ascended to the throne and the religious landscape
of Scotland was transformed considerably with the disestablishment of Episcopacy
(Goldie 1976: 29). In due course the brothers lost office, status, and security: the
Gardens were hit especially hard because their theological convictions were not
acceptable to the Presbyterian Church establishment. They were also close to
circles of passionate followers of the deposed Stuart dynasty. Because of their
grounding in the Aberdonian Episcopalian milieu and their association with
Alexander Forbes, fourth Lord Forbes of Pitsligo (1678–1762), it can be assumed
that they shared these sympathies even if they supported the governments of the
day (Pittock 1996, 2004; Riordan 2015: 80–1).¹⁴
Until after the death of Queen Anne, however, their possible political inclin-
ations did not translate into outspoken preference for the Jacobite cause (German
2010: 12). James Garden, together with the members of the Synod of Aberdeen, at
least outwardly conformed to the new situation. By petitioning William and Mary,
the ministers tried to remain in their parishes and churches: they ‘implore yor Mats
Protection for themselves and others their Brethren of the Episcopall Clergy in the
Church of Scotland’ (NRS, GD 26/10/33; German 2010: 19). Similar conformity
was exhibited by George Garden: he was chosen as one of the city’s representatives

¹⁴ German summarizes this evaluation: Pittock’s ‘essay on Lord Forbes of Pitsligo showed Forbes’
inability to suppress dormant Jacobitism despite having achieved a thoughtfully considered and
painstakingly justified acceptance of Hanoverian government which Forbes had managed to sustain
for the best part of twenty-five years’ (German 2010: 9).
304 - 

to address ‘the Prince of Orange’ in 1689. However, his enemies accused him of
not praying for the monarch and not keeping the prescribed fasts, but this was
disputed by his supporters (Stuart 1872: 310–11). Be that as it may, George lost his
charge at St Nicholas Kirk in March 1693 when he was deprived of his ministry ‘by
ane act of the majies. privie counsell’ (Aberdeen City Archive CH 2/448/21: 196
[13 March 1693]); the City Council’s records testify to ‘depryving Doctor George
Garden on of the ministers of the brugh of his benefice at the kirk of Aberdeen and
declareing the same kirk vacant and dischargeing him from preacheing and
exercising any part of the ministeriall functione within this kingdom untill sich
he qualifie himself according to the law’ (Aberdeen City Archive CA/1/1/57: 404).
The minutes do not divulge why he did not qualify himself according to the law—
we can assume that he refused to take the required oaths of allegiance and
assurance, but was his motivation political or religious or both? From what we
have heard so far about the brothers’ religious convictions we may safely assume
that they would not easily have accepted the Westminster Confession, together
with subscribing to Presbyterian forms of worship (German 2010: 27). Therefore
it is not surprising that, when James Garden was called to subscribe the West-
minster Confession of Faith during the 1696 visitation of King’s College, he
declined to do so: ‘he answered he had not nor was not willing to signe the said
confession in the terms of the act of parliament, but that at his entry to his
employment he had given testimony, and ever since, of his soundnes in princi-
palls’ (Innes 1854: 379)—in his last letter to John Aubrey he himself mentions his
refusal ‘to take the oaths of alleagaunce & assurance, to subscribe the Westminster
Confession of Faith, & to declare . . . submission to the present church govern-
ment’, a decision which left him and his family destitute (Williams 2015: 24–5). In
January 1697 he was deposed by an Act of Parliament, despite his protestations of
loyalty and orthodoxy (Innes 1854: 379–80; Stuart 1872: 310, 312).
It is difficult to assess the Gardens’ political loyalties at that time. Despite often
being labelled as diehard Jacobites,¹⁵ the controversies they got involved in before
1715 were based on their religious ideas and affiliations. During the reign of
Queen Anne they certainly appeared to be loyal subjects: George Garden dedi-
cated his edition of the works of John Forbes of Corse to the monarch (Garden
1703a: vol. 1, *3 [no further pagination]).¹⁶ After the passing of the Toleration Act
of 1712 both brothers seem to have been optimistic as to their prospects, and
in April 1714 they addressed the queen as representatives of the Episcopal clergy
of the Diocese of Aberdeen, stressing their faithfulness and pointing out the

¹⁵ Henderson (1934: 24–5, 28–30) reproduces accusations of G. Garden’s enemies without critical
evaluation. Lenman calls George Garden ‘unashamedly Jacobite’ (Lenman 1982: 44–6); see also,
Lenman (1980: 284); Riordan (2015: 103). German presents a more balanced position (2010: 8–10).
¹⁶ Dedicatio serenissimae principi Annae dei gratia Scotiae, Angliae, Franciae & Hiberniae reginae
fidei defensori: it may be indicative of his sympathies for her family that he calls Charles I, her
grandfather, Carolus martyr.
       305

sufferings of the Episcopal Church in Scotland (The London Gazette 1714; Goldie
1976: 41; Bertie 2000: 48). The defence of his Church and of episcopacy against the
Presbyterian establishment was generally part of George’s literary output at the
time; in a pamphlet of 1703, The Case of the Episcopal Clergy, he claims that Christ
instituted manifold offices in the Church and that ‘Christ directs to one, that had
the chief Care of every Church’ (Garden 1703b: 6–7).
George’s fall from grace in the Kirk was certainly caused not by his political
views but by his book Apology for M. Antonia Bourignon. In 1701, the book was
condemned by the General Assembly and its author deposed ‘from the office of
the ministry, prohibiting and discharging him from exercising the same, or any
part thereof in all time coming, under pain of the highest censures of the Church’
(Acts 1843: 306–8). This did not, however, stop him from promoting Bourignon’s
ideas and in 1710, the Synod of Aberdeen stated ‘the great increase of Bourignon-
ism in this province, especially by means of Dr Garden’ who ‘keeps up a settled
society of unmarried men and women living together into the house of Rosehearty
for propagating the principles of A[ntoinette] B[ourignon]’ (Synod of Aberdeen
Minutes, April 1710; Henderson 1934: 35; Shuttleton 1996: 19). Here the by now
widowed George Garden (Bertie 2000: 48) pursued his ascetic inclinations with
like-minded followers. The same year the General Assembly released the ‘Act for
suppressing Bourignonism’ detailing that ‘societies of Bourignonists’ and their
ideas should be suppressed (Acts 1843: 443–4); in an act of 1711 they took this
issue so seriously that future ministers had to ‘disown all . . . Bourignon . . .
doctrines, tenets, and opinions whatsoever’ (Acts 1843: 455).

George Garden’s ‘Dangerous and Blasphemous Opinions’

How George Garden became acquainted with the writings of the Roman Catholic
mystic Antoinette Bourignon is difficult to assess.¹⁷ M. Riordan assumes that he
came to know her spirituality through his contacts with Fellows of the Royal
Society who in turn were familiar with her books and her promoter Pierre Poiret.
Riordan sees him as the ‘mastermind’ behind the Scots’ efforts to defend and
publicize her spirituality, since he acted as a link between them and continental
mysticism (Riordan 2015: 109–10; Krop 2010). In later years Poiret sang the praises
of Madame Guyon; she also became an inspiration for Garden and his fellow
mystics—George Garden was present at her deathbed (Henderson 1934: 38–9).
The most important feature of his enthusiastic response to Bourignon’s ideas,
with which he only became familiar in the 1690s (sometime after her death), is
that they seem to have been the answer to his own spiritual situation after 1689.
The way he interpreted them indicates that he saw Bourignon’s theology as a

¹⁷ Acts 1843: 307.

306 - 

continuation of Henry Scougal’s understanding of ‘true religion’, defined as ‘an

union of the soul with God, a real participation of the divine nature, the very
image of God drawn upon the soul’ (Scougal 1735: 3). Garden identifies the same
sentiment in Bourignon’s writings which leads the faithful ‘to a solid living,
practical and fruitful Knowledge of them[selves]’ (Garden 1699: 26); the latter is
described as ‘God communicat[ing] himself to the soul, and bring[ing] along with
him his Love, and Light, and Joy, and Peace’ (Garden 1699: 27). Whereas man
because of the Fall is ‘all Darkness’, ‘God is Love, and God is Light and Purity’
(Garden 1707: v). His love is communicated to us by the activity of the Holy Spirit,
and in order to respond to God’s love, man must be endowed with and be able to
exercise his free will (Garden 1707: viii–x). Divine providence requires ‘that the
Free-Will of Man turn away his Desire from all that is not God . . . [t]his is
the Kernel and Quintessence of true Religion, and of the true Worship that
God requires from Men’ (Garden 1707: xiii). As in Henry Scougal’s and James
Garden’s theologies, Jesus and the imitatio Christi form the centre of a truly
Christian life which ultimately leads to God ‘not by much Reading, nor great
Learning, nor high Speculations, but by becoming like little Children, by Simpli-
city and Singleness of Heart, by Humility and Prayers, by . . . turning our Souls to
God’ (Garden 1699: 27). Unlike academic theology with its speculations and
controversial subtleties, Bourignon represents the ‘simplicity of Jesus Christ’.
Here Garden sees parallels with ‘that Divine Book of Thomas à Kempis, of the
Imitation of Christ’ (Garden 1699: 29),¹⁸ a work so favoured by the Scottish
mystics (Henderson 1933). However, despite his obvious admiration of Bour-
ignon he is aware that some of her views were rejected outright by her contem-
poraries; it was because of these that the General Assembly’s condemnation had
been so rigorous. Accordingly, he differentiates between ‘the Essentials and the
Accessories of Religion’ (Garden 1699: 39) and highlights that her life and work
were representing life in the Gospel spirit, regardless of some extravagant views
(Garden 1699: 42–3). Despite the importance of religious experience for Garden’s
spirituality, however, he is averse to exaggerated enthusiasm, as displayed by the
French Prophets who were active in Edinburgh at the time and had links to some of
the ‘mystics of the North-East’ (Riordan 2015: 137–94; Schwartz 1980). In this
context he warns a follower of the Prophets against self-delusion and false prophets:
God is a Spirit, and communicates himself to the soul in a spiritual manner;
and if the notices he gives the soul be when it is still and free from all
imaginations, . . . one would be apt to think that this would be manifested in
the still and small voice, and not by such agitations of the body, as appear in the
prophets of the present age . . . This was not the way that our Lord spoke, who had
the Spirit without measure. (Henderson 1934: 214–15)

¹⁸ To prove his point Garden includes a lengthy quotation from Thomas à Kempis’ work (Garden
1699: 29–30).
       307

George Garden explicitly rejects the quest for special revelations and extraordin-
ary experiences and provides his own rule of life: ‘And therefore instead of
aspiring after inward Divine infallible light in my present corrupt estate, I am
moved to live by faith and not by sight, and to make the life and doctrine of Jesus
my rule, my meditation and my practice’ (Henderson 1934: 241).

The Aftermath

Queen Anne died in 1714, and her death dramatically changed the political
landscape for the Scottish Episcopalians. In 1715, the Garden brothers, together
with many of their fellow Episcopalians in Aberdeen, sided with the Jacobites;
they were present during an address to James VIII by the Episcopal clergy of
Aberdeen at Fetteresso Castle in late December 1715 (Tayler and Tayler 1936:
128–31). When the rising was suppressed, George was imprisoned but managed
to escape and went into exile, where he matriculated as a medical student in
Leyden (Henderson 1932: 130–1); he did not return until 1720 and ministered
at a non-juring meeting house in Aberdeen. He was briefly considered for
the office of Episcopal bishop of Aberdeen but was not acceptable to the
College of Bishops because of his promotion of Antoinette Bourignon’s spir-
ituality (Goldie 1976: 47). James Garden was not prosecuted and continued
to live in Old Aberdeen; he was involved in the Episcopal Church’s affairs but
was never appointed to another academic position (Henderson 1932–3;
German 2010: 81).
The three theologians left long-lasting influences, however: their combination
of the mystic tradition of the past with contemporary spirituality proved to be
very attractive to their readers. Henry Scougal’s Life in the Soul of Man, originally
not meant for wider dissemination, enjoyed a revival in the early eighteenth
century and influenced the theology of early Methodism. James Garden’s work
Theologia comparativa was widely distributed on the continent and ‘is rightly
credited with marking the birth of an academic discipline’ (Rivers 2012: 45);
it was included in Pierre Poiret’s collection Bibliotheca mysticorum selecta
(Amsterdam: Wetstein, 1708)—here Garden enjoyed the company of the great
mystics of the past, e.g. John Tauler, Theresa of Avila, and John of the Cross.
George Garden did not share their long-lasting appeal, though: his Apology was
published in Latin for a continental readership, he had many personal contacts to
Quietists on the continent, and was acquainted with Pierre Poiret, Madame
Guyon, and other members of their circle. In Scotland, though, he was tainted
by the connection with Madame Bourignon; until the nineteenth century all
ordinands in the Kirk had to answer the following question: ‘Do you disown all
Popish, Arian, Socinian, Arminian, Bourignion and other doctrines, tenets, and
opinions whatsoever, contrary to and inconsistent with the foresaid Confession
of Faith?’ (Acts 1843: 455).
308 - 

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Aberdeen City Archive, Council Register, vol. 57, CA/1/1/57.
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nensis, nec non ejusdam Filius D. Henricus Scougal Anno Domini 1684, Sir Duncan
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Shuttleton, David E. (1996). ‘Jacobitism and Millennial Enlightenment: Alexander, Lord

Forbes of Pitsligo’s “Remarks” on the Mystics’, Enlightenment and Dissent 15: 33–56.
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47: 102–30.
 22
Early Modern French and
Dutch Connections
James Eglinton

Introduction

From the outset, the story of the Reformed tradition in early modern Europe is
one of theologies and theologians situated in diverse cultural locations. Recent
historiographies of the Reformation and its aftermath have developed a keen
appreciation of this diversity. Indeed, the likes of Lindberg (1996) and Holder
(2009) have advanced the claim that the Reformation itself would be more
accurately characterized as the ‘Reformations’. The diverse nature of early modern
Reformed thought owed much to the exchange of ideas and the migration of
people across the cultures found in Europe at that time. Such is certainly true of
the development of early modern Scottish Reformed theology. This chapter will
explore a series of links between Scottish Reformed theologians and their most
significant continental European counterparts—the Dutch and the French—in
that period.
The essay’s focus on Reformed theology is not intended to ignore the import-
ance of historic Scottish links with the continental Roman Catholic and Lutheran
traditions. The relationship between early modern Scottish Catholics and contin-
ental Europe has already been dealt with by Murdoch and Mijers (2012: 329–31),
McInally (2012), Michel (1862), and others. Although sixteenth-century Scotland
was receptive to Lutheran theology, its impact in Scotland was short-lived and was
soon supplanted by a localized Reformed theology. Furthermore, Scottish Luther-
anism’s European connections were predominantly with Germany, rather than
France or the Low Countries (Müller 1985). Over the course of the early modern
period, the bulk of Scotland’s European theological exchange would be Reformed
in character, and would occur via the North Sea and the English Channel.
That Protestant Scotland would quickly develop close connections to the
Reformed in France and the Low Countries is hardly surprising. Medieval France
and Scotland were linked via the ‘Auld Alliance’—a long-standing military and
political contract between the Scots and the French that anchored Scotland’s place
in European cultural life (Macleod 2007). Historical evidence of cultural exchange—
both religious and commercial—between Scotland and the Low Countries can be

James Eglinton, Early Modern French and Dutch Connections. In: The History of Scottish Theology
Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0022
       313

traced back to the beginnings of medieval civic record keeping (Mackie 1972: 59),
when the Gaelic King Máel Coluim mac Eanric (Malcolm IV, 1141–65) was
recorded as seeking rents from settled Scottish, English, French, and Flemish
communities in Saint Andrews (Toorians 1996: 3).
Sixteenth-century Scotland’s newly Reformed theologians wasted little time in
establishing substantial theological relationships with their cousins in France and
the Low Countries. The speed with which this occurred depended, in large part,
on these newly Protestant communities’ shared pre-Reformation history. An
important aspect of their motivation in the rapid cultivation of these relationships
is also suggested by the works of Todd (2002) and Mullan (2010): the early
modern period saw the birth of a new kind of Scot, one distanced from the visual,
ceremonial, and hierarchical spirituality of his medieval forebears, and progress-
ing into a modern logocentric spirituality and democratic sense of Christian
discipline. ‘This was a genuinely radical shift, by any measure a cultural revolu-
tion’ (Todd 2002: 1). It is hardly surprising that Scotland’s transformed (and
newly Reformed) early modern theologians would pursue fellowship with their
familiar continental kinsmen.
Early modern Reformed theology has been charted by Muller (2016) as having
passed through three distinct developmental phases: (i) early orthodoxy (c.1565 to
c.1640), within which the Reformed faith—having already distinguished itself
from Lutheran Protestantism—came to articulate its own confessional identity,
culminating in the Synod of Dort; (ii) high orthodoxy (c.1640 to 1725), which saw
wide-ranging debate on issues concerning covenantal theology and the relation-
ship of philosophy to theology, alongside a strong reliance on medieval scholastic
method, and (iii) late orthodoxy (1725 to c.1780), which saw the fracturing of
much seventeenth-century Reformed consensus, alongside socio-political changes
regarding the relationship of Church and State. In contrast to the seventeenth-
century drive to unite Reformed orthodoxy, the eighteenth century would see the
emergence of multiple orthodoxies across Reformed Europe.
In charting the relationship of Scottish Reformed theologians to France and the
Low Countries in the early modern period, this chapter sets out to consider early
modern Franco-Scottish and Dutch–Scottish Reformed connections in view of
Muller’s basic historical schema. It does so noting that the boundaries between the
periods in question were subtle rather than stark, and that Muller’s own definition
of ‘orthodoxy’ is broad in scope. Nonetheless, his schematization provides an
instructive backdrop with which to account for the differences between Franco-
Scottish and Dutch–Scottish Reformed connections across the early modern
period. Viewed thusly, it will be seen that the Franco-Scottish relationship was
most fruitful during the period of early orthodoxy, whereas the Dutch–Scottish
exchange carried on throughout all three aforementioned stages. By locating both
relationships in this schema, their significantly different natures become evident.
This comparison is useful in accounting for the considerably stronger historical
314  

influence of Dutch theology on its Scottish counterpart, and the limits of Franco-
Scottish exchanges to theological issues that failed to gain long-term currency
beyond the early seventeenth century.

Franco-Scottish Reformed Theological Links

The sixteenth century had seen many French Reformed Christians—John Calvin
included—face exile in the face of royal opposition to their faith. At the end of that
century, however, the Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted a strained degree of
toleration to a Calvinist minority (the Huguenots) in French society (Sutherland
1988: 28). This tolerance would last for less than ninety years. The Edict was
revoked in 1685, just as the period of high orthodoxy was coming into maturity
elsewhere in Reformed Europe, and marked the mass emigration of French
Huguenots.
This short-lived window of toleration offered French Reformed theology a new
set of possibilities. The Edict encouraged the exiled French Reformed community
to return to France in a move that marked the lessening importance of Geneva as a
centre of Reformed thought. In its place, the likes of Basel (Switzerland), Leiden
(Netherlands), and Sedan and Saumur (France) would emerge as significant
locations in the development of early modern Reformed theology. Although
other Reformed schools were established in France at this time—together,
Nîmes, Montpellier, Die, Orthez, Montauban, Sedan, and Saumur were known
as ‘le croissant de lune Huguenot’—the Académie de Sedan (established in 1579)
and the Académie de Saumur (established in 1593) were the pre-eminent French
theological centres in this period. Both would be closed shortly before the revo-
cation of the Edict of Nantes: Sedan in 1681 and Saumur in 1683. As they came
into existence at a time when diverse early modern Reformed voices tried to firm
up their tradition’s theological identity, Saumur in particular was noted as a
generative school of thought. However, as it closed long before the conclusion
of the period of high orthodoxy, its central doctrinal thrust (a view of Christ’s
atonement as universal in scope, but limited in effect) would remain a minority
position in the subsequent Reformed tradition.
The short history of Sedan and Saumur, and their eventual failure to gain
dominance in debates on Reformed orthodoxy, should be understood against a
particular historical backdrop: in the first place, the Huguenots had only recently
returned from exile. If their Reformed faith were to take root in French society,
their community would have to work quickly to train indigenous pastors. In that
regard, the French Reformed were helped by their comparatively secure Scottish
cousins, whose contribution to the early growth of French Reformed theology
carried on the spirit of the ‘Auld Alliance’. Although most theologians at the
Académies in Sedan and Saumur were French, some of their most important
       315

theological voices and accents were Scottish in origin. This chapter will focus on
John Cameron (1579–1625), the most noteworthy constructive Scottish theolo-
gian in early modern France.
At that time, the French Reformed regarded the Scottish universities as reliable
producers of teachers who were strong in theology, philosophy, and languages. In
general, these Scots seemed to have little difficulty assimilating into French
culture, and often married local women (Tucker 2017: 41). For each of the schools
comprising the aforementioned croissant de lune Huguenot, the list of (now
obscure) Scottish theologians to have gained employment there is striking. In
Orthez, Alexander Blair taught philosophy and theology from 1590 to 1620.
Another Scot, Gilbert Burnett, also taught there between 1599 and 1610. The
principal of the Reformed school in Die was John Sharp of St Andrews, who
worked there alongside the Edinburgh native John McCollo. Thomas Dempster,
Andrew Currie, and Adam Abernethy taught at Nîmes. Another Scot, Robert Hill,
taught philosophy at Montpellier from 1579 to 1600. The Reformed faculty at
Montauban contained no less than seven Scots. Mark Duncan was professor of
Greek at Sedan. There was also a sizeable Scottish presence at Saumur: in addition
to Cameron, the likes of William Craig, Zachary Boyd, and William Geddes made
significant contributions as teachers. Robert Boyd, a Scotsman with a French wife,
moved from a professorship in Saumur to the Principalship of the University of
Glasgow in 1615, following which he was appointed Principal of the University in
Edinburgh in 1625. For a theologian like Boyd, the early modern French Reformed
scene represented an important training ground en route to a senior academic
career in Scotland (Kirk 1993: 92). All this is to say nothing of the numerous
Scottish students who enrolled at French Reformed schools in this period.

John Cameron

In a setting replete with émigré Francophile Scots, John Cameron—a Glaswegian

theologian and philosopher who had learned French in Scotland, and taught in
Bordeaux, Saumur, and Montauban—was the most important constructive Scot-
tish theologian in early modern France. Cameron had left Scotland at the age of
twenty to teach Latin and Greek in Bordeaux (where his compatriot, Gilbert
Primrose, was the minister of the local French Reformed Church), before being
appointed professor of philosophy in Saumur. Although he spent a number of
short stints in other locations (Paris, Geneva, Heidelberg, Glasgow, and Montau-
ban), his most intellectually fruitful years were spent in Saumur. In 1624, Cam-
eron moved from there to Montauban, where he would die of wounds inflicted
during an anti-Protestant riot in the following year.
Cameron’s most important publications—a collection of academic lectures and
disputations—were printed shortly after his untimely death (Cameron 1626–8),
316  

and two decades later, in an Opera released in Geneva (Cameron 1642). (The
Opera includes his most significant early publication, De triplici Dei cum homine
foedere theses, which had been argued at the University of Heidelberg in 1608.)
Cameron’s two most distinctive contributions to the period of early Reformed
orthodoxy are widely regarded as having comprised (i) his role in the development
of a view of the atonement later known as Amyraldianism, and (ii) his threefold
covenant model: the foedus naturae, the foedus gratiae subserviens, and the foedus
gratiae. To this, Gootjes has argued for a third (and potentially more significant
contribution), namely (iii) Cameron’s view of the psychology of the act of faith
(Gootjes 2015: 177; cf. van de Schoor 1995: 62–3).
Cameron’s covenantalism recognized a basic distinction between a foedus
absolutum and a foedus hypotheticum, the former being an unconditional promise
from God to humanity, and the latter, a promise from God to humanity that
requires a particular exercise of human agency: faith in Christ (Cameron 1642:
544). In that scheme, the divine offer of eternal life is itself the most rudimentary
foedus hypotheticum. This ‘conditional covenant’ then forms the bedrock for
Cameron’s distinctive tri-covenantal model. According to Cameron, our first
parents were justified by their obedience under the foedus naturae. Following
their first disobedience, God employed the foedus gratiae subserviens to convince
humans of their sin and prepare them for Christ, whose atoning death and
resurrection ushered in the foedus gratiae. Under this third covenant, humans
are justified by divine grace.
Cameron tried to marry this covenantalism—hypothetically universal in
scope—to a non-universalist view of predestination: although God’s will was to
save all humans subject to their faith in Christ, sin had left humanity unable to
meet this condition, with the only humans capable of exercising faith in Christ
being predestined to do so. As such, Cameron’s accent was heard in his simul-
taneous assertion of God’s love for humanity as (conditionally) universal and
(concretely) particular.
Cameron’s covenantalism emerged against a non-static theological backdrop:
numerous other Reformed theologians in that period had attempted to reconfigure
this constellation of ideas. It appears most likely that the sixteenth-century Reformed
theologians Caspar Olevian and Robert Rollock—who developed accounts of cov-
enant along absolute and conditional lines—exerted a significant influence upon
Cameron (Olevian 1585; Rollock 1596; cf. Bierma 1996: 66–9; Muller 2006: 20).
In the subsequent development of French Reformed theology, Cameron’s
influence is most commonly associated with his student Moïse Amyraut, whose
work occasioned an ill-defined, eponymous tradition: Amyraldianism. This view
is associated with the rejection of supra- and infralapsarian distinctions, and the
location of the decree of atonement before the decree of election: while Christ’s
death is sufficient for all, it is only efficient for the elect. In the aftermath of the
Synod of Dort (1618–19), the Amyraldian view seems to have become a minority
       317

position—a puzzling development, given that the views of election and atonement
advanced by Cameron and Amyraut were not grossly out-of-step with those
approved by the Synod: alongside its (non-universalist) affirmations on the
doctrine of election, the Synod affirmed that, ‘[t]he death of the Son of God is
the only and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sin, and is of infinite worth
and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world’ (Canons of
Dort, Second Head, Article 3). For the most part, Cameron’s critics—whose
overarching goal was the opposition of Arminianism—assessed his 1608 theses
(which were propositions, rather than a summa) by locating them in a larger, anti-
Arminian set of theological concerns. Caught in this particular crossfire, he was
commonly viewed by high Calvinist critics as non-heretical (unlike Arminians
and Socinians), but nonetheless wrong in his ordering of the divine decrees (e.g.
Turretin 1997: 4.18.13–20). John Davenant’s ‘On the controversy among the
French Divines’ (c.1650)—which simultaneously affirms and critiques Cameron’s
theses by orbing them in a more fully developed set of theological concerns—is
perhaps an instructive text in this regard.
Religious troubles in France led to Cameron returning to Scotland in 1622, when
he was appointed Principal of the University of Glasgow. However, his innovative
theological efforts also faced opposition there, and he returned to Saumur in the
following year. The Helvetic Consensus, written in 1675, was produced to coun-
teract the influence of the Saumur school. In high orthodox Scotland, Samuel
Rutherford’s opposition to Amyraldianism (1655), would see the ‘Amyraldian’
label eventually become equated with an error less grave than Arminianism and
Socinianism (Trueman 2007: 30), but—like the exceptionally wide-ranging Scottish
‘Arminianism’ label—that was somewhat ill-defined (Macleod 2010: 18–19).
Despite these challenges, Cameron’s views of covenant would go on to influ-
ence a number of British and European Reformed federal theologians (Muller
2006: 49–53), as well as shaping the thought of Théophile Brachet de La Milletière,
a French Reformed student who later converted to Catholicism (van de Schoor
1995: 59–65). Although Cameron’s influence outside of France would be as a
minority figure, Gootjes has demonstrated that his psychological view of the act of
faith, which set intellect before volition, would be definitive for the rationalistic
character of much subsequent French Reformed theology (2015: 177).

Understanding the nature of early modern Franco-Scottish

theological exchange

Viewed against the backdrop of Muller’s historical schema, the nature of early
modern Franco-Scottish Reformed exchange conforms to that era’s general pro-
gression. In France, the period of early orthodoxy coincided with the Edict of
Nantes, and the willingness of Reformed Scots to support the Huguenots, which
318  

together enabled the emergence of a vibrant and creative network of French

Reformed academies. The likes of John Cameron made considerable strides in
that period’s efforts to explore the conceptual space created by their sixteenth-
century forebears. However, the most innovative Franco-Scottish early modern
theology struggled to gain widespread acceptance even during the period of early
orthodoxy. When the Edict of Nantes was revoked, and the French Reformed
schools closed just as the period of high orthodoxy was coming into maturity, thus
confirming these Franco-Reformed distinctives in their marginalized status.

Huguenots and covenanters

The mid-seventeenth century was also the scene of religious turmoil and perse-
cution in Scotland. The Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 and subsequent
promotion of episcopacy in Scotland led to conflict between pro-episcopal Scots
and the Presbyterian covenanters. In that setting, intellectual exchange between
the covenanters and Huguenots led to shared reflection on the State and the limits
of its powers, and the question of the Christian’s duty to submit to the State. In
1689, an expanded English version of a pseudonymous sixteenth-century Hugue-
not work Vindiciae contra tyranos (1579) would gain influence in covenanter
circles. Huguenot opposition to Scottish episcopacy, however, was not universal.
Peter Du Moulin (1601–84) was the most noted example of a Huguenot who
publicly sided with the Scottish Episcopalians.
Scottish–French Reformed connections can be traced in the late orthodox
period—albeit quite differently in each land. Despite Cameron’s minority status
outside of France, he left a substantial legacy in Saumur. His views on the intellect
preceding the will thoroughly stamped his influence on subsequent generations of
French Reformed theologians (Gootjes 2015: 188–90). In Scotland, the substantive
content of his doctrine made relatively little impact in the periods of high and late
orthodoxy. Rather, the word ‘Amyraldianism’ came to function as a vague Scottish
byword for moderate heterodoxy.

Dutch–Scottish Reformed Theological Links

The scale and nature of Reformed theological connections between Scotland and
the Netherlands differ starkly from the aforementioned Franco-Scottish history.
The Scottish–French exchange was most fruitful during the initial period of early
orthodoxy, and saw the Scottish Reformed community relate to their vulnerable
French counterparts from a position of relative strength and security. In contrast
to this, the Dutch–Scottish relationship would span the early modern period in its
entirety, and would reflect a different set of international power dynamics.
       319

Social context in the early modern Netherlands

The seventeenth century is commonly referred to in Dutch history as the

‘Golden Age’ (Gouden Eeuw). In that century, the close of the Eighty Years
War with Spain (1568–1648) had served to consolidate a new Dutch national
consciousness centred on political and religious freedom, and economic inde-
pendence. The seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was also the locus of major
religious and theological developments. Between 1572 and 1620, Reformed
Christianity assumed the predominant position of influence within the society.
Although only one fifth of the Dutch population was Reformed, the Reformed
faith nonetheless became the state religion. The Synod of Dort in 1618–19, itself
a highly significant event for the shape of Scottish Protestantism, played a key
role in this development. From 1620 to 1700, the Dutch Republic developed a
sophisticated system of religious pluriconfessionalism which mediated the
relationship of the numerically minority but culturally dominant Reformed
church and Roman Catholics, Jews, and Mennonites (whilst denying a cultural
space for anti-Trinitarians, agnostics, deists, and atheists). During the Golden
Age, the Netherlands also benefited from the arrival of highly educated, skilled
Huguenot and covenanter immigrants. As such, the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries provided the Dutch Reformed community with a much higher degree
of social stability than that of their French and Scottish cousins. For the
Huguenots and covenanters, the prosperous Dutch Reformed were powerful
and useful allies.

Dutch–Scottish links in early orthodoxy

When King James VI and I first moved to introduce Episcopalian church

government in Scotland, David Calderwood (1575–1650), the Presbyterian
minister in Crailing, publicly protested. The eventual conclusion of his protest
was banishment, leading Calderwood to set sail for the Netherlands in 1619,
where he would remain until 1625. The pattern of Calderwood’s activities in the
Netherlands would be repeated in the lives of many subsequent Scottish
Reformed exiles: banishment to the Netherlands—a wealthier country support-
ive of the Reformed faith, and with outstanding universities, libraries, and
printing presses—enabled these Scots to develop in both intellectual sophistica-
tion, and volume of literary output.
Calderwood was unpublished before his banishment. In 1621, he published
his first book, The Altar of Damascus—a critique of the imposition of episcopacy
on unwilling Presbyterians. Coffey’s remark on the opportunities afforded to
Calderwood in the Netherlands could be applied to many of the figures dis-
cussed in this essay: his ‘banishment to Holland . . . did not stop his protests.
320  

Indeed, Calderwood was more of a threat in exile than at home’ (Coffey 1997:
191). Upon his eventual return to Scotland, Calderwood would emerge as his
generation’s most important Scottish church historian.
The diversity of Reformed voices in this period can also be heard in the
presence of another Dutch-based Scot, John Forbes of Corse (1593–1648), who
lived in Middelburg during the Synod of Dort, and was married to a Dutch
woman. His father was Patrick Forbes, the Episcopalian bishop of Aberdeen,
and his uncle was John Forbes of Alford (c.1565–1634), a noted anti-Arminian
who pastored in the Dutch cities of Middelburg and Delft. A mediating figure who
had been taught by Andrew Melville at Sedan, John Forbes of Corse strove for
unity between the Episcopalianism of his father and the anti-Arminianism of his
Netherlands-based uncle. Such mediation, however, sat awkwardly in the polar-
ized context of Scottish theological debate in the period of early orthodoxy. The
Presbyterian covenanters, as closer to Forbes’ Calvinistic soteriology, and the
Laudians, as closer to his ecclesiology and political concerns, were locked in
conflict. The drafting of the National Covenant (1638), followed by the Solemn
League and Covenant (1643), put the pro-royalist and anti-theocratic Forbes of
Corse in a difficult position. Following his refusal to sign the Solemn League and
Covenant, he returned to the Netherlands in 1644.
In this period, Forbes of Corse kept close contact with various prominent Dutch
theologians and wrote his most significant theological work, the Instructiones
Historico-Theologicae de Doctrina Christiana, which was published in Amsterdam
in 1645. Forbes of Corse returned to Scotland in 1646, settling in a Presbyterian
church on his family estate. He died in 1648. Forbes of Corse benefited from
the generous degree of cultural tolerance afforded to Scottish Calvinists in the
Netherlands. There, he was able to interact with a diverse group of acquaintances
and had a greater degree of intellectual freedom than could be found in the
partisan environment of seventeenth-century Scotland. Drummond has offered
the astute remark that, ‘Few exiles have been happier than John Forbes’ (1956: 89).
His latter-day situation in Scotland was more difficult: Forbes of Corse was one
of the ‘Aberdeen Doctors’, a group of ministers and academics who tried—
unsuccessfully—to sway public opinion against the covenanters’ National Covenant.
A set of complicated political-ecclesiastical circumstances led to him being denied a
burial at St Machar’s Cathedral, where his Scottish father and his Dutch wife had
already been laid to rest.

Dutch–Scottish links in high orthodoxy

Walker’s account of seventeenth-century Scottish church history notes the oppor-

tunities afforded to Scottish Reformed theologians who faced Dutch exile in the
second half of the seventeenth century.
       321

The [Scottish] Church of 1638, rent and enfeebled by internal divisions, becomes
the easy prey of its enemies . . . During the thirty years of suffering that follow, the
Presbyterian ministers were to all intents and purposes outlaws, and they had no
opportunity for the cultivation of theological literature. But even this period
withal is not barren . . . The exiles found a home and a welcome in Holland. The
little circle of refugees included such men as Brown [of Wamphray], Livingstone,
M‘Ward. How do they occupy themselves in their banishment? Well, they do
not forget their friends in Scotland. They are kept well informed of all that is
taking place in their native land, and they are ever ready with their counsels
and encouragements. (1888: 22)

The likes of Robert MacWard (covenanter minister of the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam,
who had previously served as Samuel Rutherford’s private secretary during the
Westminster Assembly), John Livingstone (a popular covenanter preacher exiled
to Rotterdam), and John Brown of Wamphray would all emerge as significant early
modern theological voices because of their banishment to the Netherlands.
While in the Netherlands, MacWard published a stream of Scottish-directed
pamphlets (The Banders Disbanded, The Poor Man’s Cup of Cold Water minis-
tered to the saints and sufferers for Christ in Scotland, and The Testimony against
Paying the Cess) in addition to the more intellectually substantial ecclesiological
work The True Nonconformist. He also collaborated with other Scottish and Dutch
theologians in order to publish Samuel Rutherford’s work. In addition to pub-
lishing Rutherford’s work against Arminianism, MacWard was also responsible
for collecting and publishing Rutherford’s Letters (which were first published in
Rotterdam in 1664). Livingstone, the covenanters’ leading Hebraist, invested his
time in Rotterdam in the preparation of an interlinear Hebrew–Latin version of
the Old Testament. Livingstone’s desire to produce this new Latin translation
grew out of his belief that the Dutch Bible translation was more accurate than
anything he had previously read (Howie 1853: 376). Brown of Wamphray,
another of these industrious exiled Scots, was a significant contributor to theo-
logical and philosophical discussion in both the Netherlands and Scotland
throughout the seventeenth century: his popular theological works were published
in both English and Dutch, and his academic philosophical writings in Latin.
Bearing in mind the social context in their own country, it seems hard to imagine
that these theologians would have sustained the same literary output in war-torn,
economically poor Scotland. As such, it appears that the Golden Age Netherlands
was perhaps the central locus in the development of early modern Scottish
Reformed theology.
Brown of Wamphray in particular provides a helpful illustration of the
exchange of ideas between seventeenth-century Scottish and Dutch Reformed
theological communities. Although he had published one book while living in
Scotland, he was not a prominent figure there. Following the restoration of
Charles II, Brown of Wamphray became a staunch public opponent of prelacy
322  

and was imprisoned for his stance in November 1662. The condition of his release
was accepting a lifelong banishment in the Netherlands.
During his exile he wrote prolifically, releasing numerous theological and
philosophical works. The book Libri duo, contra Woltzogenium et Velthusium
(1670) represents his philosophical engagement with Cartesian thought. This
shared concern for theological and philosophical matters was typical of the period
of high orthodoxy. Brown of Wamphray’s books were able to impact Scotland
from the Netherlands. In 1666, a young Scottish covenanter named Robert Traill
(1642–1716) was caught in possession of several copies of Brown of Wamphray’s
An Apologetical Relation. As a direct consequence, Traill was forced to go into
hiding, following which he fled to the Netherlands. The impact of Brown’s
writings in Scotland was such that the British government tried unsuccessfully
to have him arrested in the Netherlands.
Brown of Wamphray is particularly interesting as an example of the dynamic
that existed between Scottish and Dutch Calvinists in the period of high ortho-
doxy: at one level, the Dutch and Scottish Reformed communities kept distinct
identities. He was the minister of the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam, and he maintained
close links with his home country. Indeed, despite his exiled location, he remained
one of the most influential Reformed theologians within Scotland in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries.
When the literary output of exiled Scottish theologians is considered within the
broader social context of both Scotland and the Netherlands in the seventeenth
century, it seems that the Netherlands provided Scottish Reformed intellectuals—
from the Calvinist Erastian John Forbes of Corse, to the many Presbyterian
covenanters—with the necessary social conditions within which to advance their
own burgeoning theological traditions. This is to say that had Brown of Wam-
phray, for example, chosen to remain in Scotland, it would likely have meant
imprisonment with no certain date of release: hardly ideal circumstances within
which to write and research at length.
Samuel Rutherford (c.1600–61) was probably more theologically significant in
the early modern Netherlands than the likes of Brown of Wamphray or Forbes of
Corse. Unlike them, however, Rutherford was never exiled to the Netherlands—
nor did he visit it or countenance emigration. In fact, Rutherford denounced any
such idea, stating instead, ‘I would rather be in Scotland beside angry Jesus Christ,
knowing that He mindeth no evil to us, than in Eden or any garden in the earth’
(1867: 452). Despite this, Rutherford’s writings exerted considerable influence
across the North Sea. Rutherford’s first publication (Exercitationes pro Divina
Gratia, 1636) was printed there, as were his Letters (1664) and his anti-Arminian
work Examen Arminianismi (1668). As has already been noted, the early recep-
tion of Rutherford in the Netherlands was considerably aided by the presence of
Scottish covenanters in the Netherlands, many of whom were closely involved in
the production of these early releases (Robert MacWard, Robert Traill, et al.).
       323

Rutherford generated controversy over his views on divine sovereignty,

his polemical writings and ecclesiological treatises, and his deeply passionate
preaching and letters. His fame in the Netherlands was such that he was called
in 1649 to be the Professor of Divinity at the newly established University of
Harderwijk. The opportunities to publish enjoyed by Rutherford in the Netherlands
also played a role in his often dramatic life in Scotland. His banishment to Aberdeen
in 1636, for example, was a reaction against his Exercitationes Apologeticae Pro
Divina Gratia, an anti-Arminian work published in Amsterdam. Despite his
own aversion towards Dutch emigration, the Netherlands proved a source of
intellectual inspiration for Rutherford. As a political theorist, he questioned the
worth of monarchical rule, and instead argued (with reference to the system
used in the seventeenth-century Netherlands) for a ruling aristocratic class
(Coffey 1997: 173–4).

Dutch–Scottish links in late orthodoxy

From the late seventeenth century onwards, Reformed theology was challenged
and transformed by the increasing importance of Enlightenment thought. The
influence of Reformed orthodoxy declined in Scottish theological faculties, and
was increasingly replaced by that of an ascendant Moderate Party within the
Church of Scotland. However, Dutch–Scottish Reformed links in the period of
high orthodoxy would continue through the likes of the Scot Alexander Comrie
(1706–74), and the Dutchman Johannes à Marck (1656–1731).
In 1726, Alexander Comrie, a native of Perthshire, moved to the Netherlands.
In his teenage years, Comrie had been influenced by the Scottish Reformed
theologians Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, and Thomas Boston. Having initially
found work in a business in Rotterdam, Comrie eventually became a theological
student at Groningen (1729) and Leiden (1733), before completing his doctorate
in philosophy (1734). He would then serve as the Reformed minister in Woubrugge
from 1735–73. Like many of the émigré Scots mentioned in this essay, Comrie
married locally. In Comrie’s case, he was widowed twice, and took three Dutch
wives over the course of his lifetime (Flinterman 1998: 76).
Comrie rose to prominence as a major figure in the Dutch Further Reformation
(Nadere Reformatie), a movement influenced by English Puritanism that empha-
sized piety and orthodoxy in doctrine and life. In that regard, Comrie represents
the Dutch–Scottish Reformed exchange in its move towards the period of late
orthodoxy (Muller 2003: 7) insofar as the Further Reformation emerged as the
dominant sense of high Reformed orthodoxy gave way to multiple new claims of
Reformed orthodoxy. Comrie’s influence on the development of early modern
Dutch Reformed theology was significant: his Brief over de Rechtvaerdigmakinge
des Zondaars (1761, reprinted in 1832) reasserted Luther’s view of justification
324  

sola fide in the Dutch Reformed tradition. His Het A.B.C. des geloofs (1739), a
popular work promoting experimental Reformed piety, saw three re-editions
across the eighteenth century (1746, 1751, 1777).
Comrie’s work would continue to influence Dutch Reformed theology beyond
the early modern era. The early twentieth-century neo-Calvinist Abraham Kuyper
would write three articles for a Scottish Presbyterian magazine in 1882, in which
he described how Comrie’s struggle for orthodoxy had continued into his own
day, and how Comrie had inspired his own views of a revival of Calvinist
orthodoxy in the nineteenth century. (Kuyper would also go on to supervise a
doctoral dissertation on Comrie at the Free University of Amsterdam.) Despite his
profound influence in the Netherlands, which carries on in the present day,
Comrie has remained an almost entirely unknown figure in Scotland.
Alongside Comrie, a similarly important figure for the Dutch–Scottish
relationship during high orthodoxy was Johannes à Marck (Johannes Marckii),
an intellectual disciple of the earlier federal theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589–
1676). A prolific writer, à Marck’s most enduring work was the 1690 publication
Christ. Theol. medulla Didactico-Elenchtica ex majori opere secundum ejus capita
et paragraphos expressa. In his years as a professor at the University of Leiden
(1689–1731) à Marck taught numerous Scottish students, including the New
Licht leader John Simson (1667–1740), who became Professor of Divinity at the
University of Glasgow (where he used à Marck’s Medulla as the central text-
book). Indeed, the Medulla exerted considerable influence throughout Scottish
Reformed theology during high orthodoxy (Henderson 1933: 39).

Conclusion

The introduction to this chapter alluded to the view of Todd and Mullan that the
early modern period produced a new kind of Scot. In what sense did those new
(and newly Reformed) Scots cultivate theological relationships with continental
Europeans of shared religious sympathies? This effort was focused on the Franco-
Scottish and Dutch–Scottish relationships, which had considerable pre-modern
history. Particularly when viewed against the backdrop of Muller’s tripartite early
modern historical schema, comparison of these relationships sheds useful light on
their different natures. Why was the Franco-Scottish relationship largely confined
to the first few decades of the seventeenth century? Why did the central ideas
propounded by Franco-Scottish theologians fail to gain widespread traction? This
chapter has demonstrated that the Franco-Scottish relationship was most fruitful
in the brief moment of toleration granted by the Edict of Nantes. However, this
period was also that of early orthodoxy: not all ideas promulgated in that period
would go on to find widespread acceptance as early modern Reformed theology
progressed. Turning to the Dutch–Scottish relationship, why did Scottish Reformed
       325

theologians travel to the Netherlands throughout the early modern period? Why
did the form of Reformed orthodoxy that crystallized in the Netherlands become
so influential in Scotland? When viewed via Muller’s schema, it becomes clear
that while the period of early orthodoxy was centred upon various national contexts,
the subsequent periods of high and late orthodoxy were often Dutch-dominated
(and that often by virtue of the Netherlands’ superior educational institutions
and willingness to receive Reformed refugees). When the seventeenth-century
Netherlands is seen as the place within which high Reformed orthodoxy took
shape, it becomes less surprising that, for example, the Canons of Dort would
quickly become the benchmark of orthodoxy for many Reformed Scots—whereas
the chief Franco-Scottish contribution, the ‘Amyraldian’ label, would become little
more than a general Scottish byword for soft heterodoxy.

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 23
Early Modern
Jurisprudence and Theology
Thomas M. Green

Introduction

The interactions of jurisprudence and theology in early modern Scotland concern

two distinct histories. One concerns the Canon law of the pre-Tridentine Catholic
Church and the spiritual jurisdiction of the native Scottish episcopate both before
and after the Scottish Reformation. The other concerns the ‘law of God’ as
received by Scottish Protestants and the disciplinary jurisdiction of the courts of
the Church of Scotland. These histories in a sense ran in parallel to one another,
with Canon law continuing to be directly enforced in Scotland following the
Reformation by the new commissary courts, which in constitutional, and from
time to time ecclesiological, terms administered the spiritual jurisdiction of the
native Scottish episcopate, Catholic or Reformed; and with Canon law continuing
to form an authoritative body of law upon which the judgments of the Court of
Session might continue to be grounded. Yet notwithstanding the paradoxical
survival of medieval Canon law, both as to constitutional theory and substantive
law, during the Protestant ascendancy in early modern Scotland, the parallel
development of the jurisdiction and laws of the Church of Scotland in respect of
the discipline of the moral lives of the congregations of Scotland brought with it
direct consequences not only within the context of the new Reformed ecclesias-
tical jurisdiction, but by extension for criminal law. The Scottish Protestant
insistence that discipline rightly administered was a hallmark of the true Church,
together with an insistence that Scotland had entered into a covenant with God by
which the obligations of the law of God as found in the Pentateuch fell to be
observed and upheld, occasioned a fundamental reconsideration of the old dis-
tinction of divine, natural, and positive law, and an attendant and far ranging
criminalization of faults previously categorized as sins. Yet despite the often
parallel nature of these developments, both Canon law and the ‘law of God’
coalesced and interacted in respect both of matrimonial law and litigation and
of the law of incest. As to the early legal authorities of early modern Scotland, they
tended to state only what the law of Scotland was, without an explanation of the
principles and concepts by which it was underpinned, while Scottish ministers,

Thomas M. Green, Early Modern Jurisprudence and Theology. In: The History of Scottish Theology
Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0023
      329

prohibited from holding judicial office, do not appear to have treated of the
subject of theology and jurisprudence in their writings. Nevertheless, within
the writings of Scotland’s earliest institutional writers of the seventeenth century,
the influence of theology can be more clearly discerned. Among the writings of
Sir George Mackenzie on criminal law the influence of Calvinism is to be found,
while among the writings of James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair, the first and
greatest Scottish jurist to have treated of Scots private law as a body of law
rendered comprehensible by coherent underlying principles, the influence of
theology, Catholic and Protestant, can be clearly detected.

Pre-Tridentine Canon Law in Scotland

Prior to the Reformation the Canon law of marriage was the marriage law of
Scotland and was directly enforced in Scotland by part of the Scottish legal
system created and administered by the Scottish episcopate, namely the Courts
of the Commissaries, Officials, and Officials Principal of the bishops and arch-
bishops of Scotland. These native Scottish courts formed a major constituent
part of the Scottish legal system, and administered jurisdictions emanating from
the ordinary jurisdiction of the Scottish episcopate. While final appeal lay from
the archiepiscopal Officials Principal at Glasgow and St Andrews to Rome, papal
jurisdiction was also extended directly into Scotland by Scots petitioning Rome
to hear first instance spiritual actions, such actions usually being heard within
the Scottish kingdom by churchmen appointed as papal judges delegate, either
directly by Rome, or by virtue of delegated legatine powers variously held by the
archbishops of St Andrews, again with a final right of appeal to Rome. While
episcopal and papal jurisdiction remained two distinct aspects of the spiritual
jurisdiction in constitutional theory, the two could appear indistinguishable to
laymen (Ollivant 1982: 40). All matters concerning the contracting and dissol-
ution of marriage and the legitimacy of children fell within the jurisdiction of
the Catholic Church on the ground that marriage was one of the seven sacra-
ments of the Church. The doctrine of the sacrament of marriage was not only
the basis of the inclusion of all aspects of marriage within the spiritual jurisdic-
tion, but also the principal system of thought by which the Canon law of
marriage was shaped.
Beyond the Catholic constitutional framework within which law was created
and administered in Scotland via the administration of the spiritual jurisdiction of
Scottish prelates and the bishops of Rome, Canon law also exerted a major
influence over the jurisprudence of the Court of Session, Scotland’s supreme
civil court. The constitution of the Court of Session ensured that seven of its
judges were prelates of the Catholic Church, seven of the temporal estate, while a
fifteenth, the Lord President, was also a prelate of the Church. The judges of the
330  . 

Court of Session were remunerated through the device of admitting them as

senators of the College of Justice, a collegiate body founded by papal bull and
endowed out of the patrimony of the Catholic Church in Scotland. During the late
medieval period, native Scottish civil law was for the most part limited to Scottish
statute law or unwritten customary law acknowledged in case law, with the
remainder of the civil law of Scotland being drawn directly from European
common law, that is to say Canon, Roman and its allied feudal law. It was
therefore a commonplace among Scottish jurists that where the native civil law
of Scotland could not be brought to bear upon a point of law, the European ius
commune was drawn upon.

The Scottish Reformation and the Spiritual Jurisdiction

The overthrow of the Catholic ascendancy in Scotland contained several funda-

mental challenges to the interplay of medieval theology and jurisprudence. The
central role of papal government and jurisdiction over the Scottish Church was
rejected outright, and while this brought with it a rejection of the primary basis of
the authority of Canon law and its reception in Scotland, the constitutional
principle of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Scottish episcopate survived the
Reformation. While the pre-Reformation episcopal courts by which this jurisdic-
tion had been administered in Scotland were de facto suppressed during the Wars
of the Congregation, the judges of the Court of Session, together with the members
of a commission appointed in 1563 by Mary, Queen of Scots, held the spiritual
jurisdiction of the native Scottish episcopate to still exist within the Scottish
constitution. On the basis of this constitutional understanding a new system of
commissary courts was created throughout Scotland from February 1563/4, by
which courts the old spiritual jurisdiction was to be administered until such time
as ‘further order’ could be taken. Such a ‘further ordering’ occurred, albeit it
abortively, in 1566 with the ‘restoration’ of spiritual jurisdiction to the Catholic
archbishop of St Andrews. Though the restoration was soon revoked, the same
constitutional principle was applied again in 1609, when the spiritual jurisdiction
was ‘restored’ to the Jacobean episcopate of the Church of Scotland, who thereby
obtained a full supervision of the commissary system (Green 2019). The overthrow
of episcopacy within the Scottish Church from 1638 occasioned a further restor-
ation in 1660, only finally to be revoked and overthrown by the final triumph of
Presbyterianism within the Scottish Church.
Through the commissary courts Canon law continued to be directly enforced in
Scotland. The matrimonial jurisdiction of the commissary courts in particular
provided an ongoing context throughout much of the Protestant ascendancy in
Scotland wherein lawyers and judges could read and cite the papal decrees of Pope
      331

Gregory IX and the writings of Italian, French, and Spanish canonists such as the
Jesuit Thomas Sanchez or the bishop of Segovia, Didacus Covarruvias, alongside
the works of Lutheran jurists such as Benedictus Carpzovius or of Calvin’s
successor at Geneva, Theodore Beza (Walton 1940: xvi–xxi). As to civil law, the
pattern of the reception of ius commune in Scots law was so little interrupted by
the Reformation that the Scottish lawyer and jurist Thomas Craig of Riccarton
(c.1538–1608) could write, around 1590, that ‘although we have shaken off the
papal yoke, the canon law’s great authority still survives in our country, to the
extent to where it deviates from the civil [i.e. Roman] law, we prefer the canon law’
(Craig 2017: 82–5). The history of Canon law in its Scottish civil law context
following the Reformation has received some scholarly attention (Cairns 2004).
The unpublished source materials available in Scotland upon which further
research in this field can be based have been made the subject of a comprehensive
census (Dolezalek 2010).

The Spiritual Jurisdiction of the Courts

of the Church of Scotland

The spiritual jurisdiction of the Scottish episcopate as a constitutional concept

was nevertheless rejected—at least initially—in respect of the new system of
Reformed church courts developed within the context of the growth of the
government of the early Church of Scotland. This new system was for the most
part fundamentally grounded upon kirk sessions, superintendents and chief
ministers sitting with kirk sessions, and the ‘General Assembly of the kirks of
Scotland’. As to law, Canon law was ostensibly rejected within the legal system
of the Church of Scotland in favour of the law of God as contained in the Word
of God, which the Scottish Reformers regarded as having been enacted by ‘the
eternal God in His parliament’ (Shaw 2004: vol. 1, 27). As to jurisdiction, the
first phase of the Reformation witnessed the earliest courts of the Church of
Scotland developing not only a Genevan disciplinary jurisdiction, but also a
matrimonial jurisdiction. By virtue of the latter the new church courts heard all
manner of matrimonial causes by way of litigation between parties. Such
litigation was decided according to the law of God, rather than Canon law.
Matrimonial jurisdiction went on to fall within the exclusive competence of the
Commissaries of Edinburgh between 1563/4 and 1609, who for the most part
enforced the old Canon law. The definition and differentiation of the matrimo-
nial jurisdiction of the Commissaries of Edinburgh and the disciplinary juris-
diction of the courts of the Church of Scotland was determined by judgments
pronounced by the Commissaries of Edinburgh and the judges of the Court of
Session (Green 2019).
332  . 

The Reform of Marriage Law

The direct interaction of theology and law was a pronounced feature of the Canon
law of marriage. Yet even within that context, some aspects of Canon law were the
result more of policy, than of theology, such as the wide latitude tolerated in
respect of contracting irregular marriages, or the extensive prohibited degrees of
consanguinity and affinity within which couples were impeded from contracting
marriage. For example, in respect of the impediments of consanguinity and
affinity, the immediate prohibited degrees were considered to be founded upon
the law of nature, and divine law as expressed in Leviticus 18. Yet since one of the
purposes of marriage was held to be the intermarriage of disparate kindreds with
an attendant increase in supra-familial associations, the forbidden degrees were
extended by positive law. Impediments founded upon natural or divine law fell
beyond the power of the bishops of Rome to dispense, while impediments created
through positive law were capable of dispensation.
Nevertheless, the doctrine of the sacrament of marriage dictated central aspects
of the Canon law of marriage, both in respect of the indissoluble nature of a
sacramental bond once validly formed, and in respect of the equality of husband
and wife in respect of litigation. Once a valid marriage had been formed between a
couple, the grace of the sacrament was available to the couple in respect of the
duties of marriage, namely lifelong cohabitation and coexistence, the procreation
and nurture of children, and the formation of familial bonds between disparate
kindred groups. It therefore followed that marital failure within the context of
sacramental grace was a failure on the part of the couple to cooperate with the
grace of the sacrament. From this it followed that no party to the sacrament of
marriage might avail themselves of the grace of the sacrament within another
marital union so long as the first union existed. Thus while a marriage might be
judged by competent authority to have been invalid on the ground of some
impediment, and thus never actually to have constituted a sacramental union,
and thus annulled, marriage was otherwise for life.¹
Since a man and a woman created the sacramental bond between them through
a mutual exchange of consent, wives and husbands enjoyed equality in law in
respect of litigation. The authority of the Church whereby matrimonial disputes
might competently be heard also brought with it the basic principle that matri-
monial disputes were to be decided by judicial decree. These Canon law principles
survived in Scotland, so that sentences of divorce for adultery were obtained solely
by judicial decree, and so that a wife was as likely as a husband to bring such
proceedings before a competent court (Green 2014: lxxi–lxxii, n. 303). This is in
marked contrast to English practice from the time of the Reformation, where

¹ For the best introduction to the Canon law of marriage see Penyafort (2005); and within the
Scottish context see Barry (1967).
      333

divorce for adultery could only be obtained by Act of Parliament, and was,
moreover, a remedy only available to husbands. In Scotland, adultery was initially
the sole ground for the type of divorce first introduced by the courts of the Church
of Scotland, a law reform that was subsequently accepted by the Commissaries of
Edinburgh. Malicious desertion was declared to be a ground for such divorce
proceedings by statute in 1573. These two faults remained the only grounds for
divorce in Scotland until the Divorce (Scotland) Act 1938.
The Scottish Reformed revision of the number of the sacraments from seven to
two in the Scots Confession of Faith, on the narrative that only baptism and
communion had been instituted by Christ (Brown et al. 2007: A1560/8/3, ‘Of
the sacraments’), denuded marriage of its sacramental status, thereby creating the
potential for law reform. During the period 1559–64 the Scottish Reformers, many
of whom sat as judges in matrimonial causes within the context of new church
courts (Green 2019: ch. 4), fundamentally altered the marriage law of Scotland
(Fleming 1889–90: vol. 1, xxxvi ff.). The thought processes by which the marriage
law of Scotland was altered during this period do not appear to have been driven
by the systematic formulation of a new theology of marriage and corresponding
marriage law, but by an apparently more ad hoc approach driven by scriptural
texts concerning marriage. The most obvious alteration in marriage law con-
cerned the granting of divorces on the ground of adultery which allowed the
party innocent of adultery to remarry at once. The earliest Scottish Reformers
desired that those guilty of adultery be put to death by the civil magistrate in
conformity with Levitical prescription. Yet since the civil magistrate was reluctant
to impose such a prescription, even after the criminalization of ‘notour’ adultery
(being obstinate adultery commissioned in direct defiance of ecclesiastical cen-
sure) by statute in 1563, the courts of the Church of Scotland appear to have
extended their disciplinary jurisdiction into the sphere of matrimonial actions
involving adultery. Within this context the judges of the new church courts
decided that a spouse found guilty of adultery should be treated as though dead,
since Levitical law declared adultery to be a capital offence. This idea of
imputed, rather than actual, death in respect of those found to have committed
adultery allowed the new Reformed church courts to declare a marriage to
which an adulterous spouse was a party to be at an end on the ground of
imputed death, and to declare the spouse innocent of adultery accordingly free
of their marriage, and thus free to remarry. This reform occurred against a
backdrop of the old Canon law remedy for adultery, which was legal separation,
whereby the parties to a marriage polluted by adultery were freed from the
obligation of cohabitation, but remained bound to the marriage until one of the
contracting parties died. The Scottish Reformers held this to place the party
innocent of adultery in an unfair position, and as such they permitted a new
kind of divorce which freed the innocent party from such a marriage with
immediate effect, yet which bound the guilty party to the failed marriage until
334  . 

freed to remarry in the event of the predecease of their innocent spouse. In this
way, the new law remedied a perceived wrong in respect of innocent spouses,
while avoiding actually incentivizing adultery. In procedural terms, this was
achieved by the new church courts through the granting of sentences of divorce
on the ground of adultery, and the granting of express licences to remarry to
innocent parties (Green 2014: lv–lxii).
The complicating factor in the history of marriage law in Reformation Scotland
is that jurisdiction in matrimonial litigation passed from both the courts of the
Catholic Church and the courts of the Church of Scotland to the new Court of
the Commissaries of Edinburgh in February 1563/4. Although the judges of the
new court were for the most part Protestants, they were primarily lawyers with
continental legal training who continued to enforce pre-Tridentine Canon law
and its principal adjunct, Roman law, as the marriage law of Scotland. The first
Commissaries of Edinburgh accepted Protestant divorce on the ground of adul-
tery as first applied by the courts of the Church of Scotland as the law of Scotland
from the time of their appointment in February 1563/4, apparently on the
narrative that this law reform had been introduced into Scotland by virtue of
competent jurisdiction. However, no other alteration to the pre-Tridentine Canon
law of marriage as enforced by the Commissaries was accepted by them until
further reforms of marriage law were introduced by declaratory and prescriptive
statutes from December 1567 (Green 2016).
In December 1567 the forbidden degrees within which marriage might be
contracted were reformed by statute (Brown et al. 2007: A1567/12/15). In effect,
these reforms did not contradict the older structure of Canon law, in that the non-
dispensable natural and divine law aspects of the forbidden degrees remained in
force, while the forbidden degrees created through positive papal law were simply
abolished. A further reform was introduction into divorce law in Scotland by
statute in 1573, in that malicious desertion was added to adultery as a ground of
Protestant divorce. It is well known that the reform was introduced specifically to
allow the fifth earl of Argyll to divorce his first countess in such a way as to permit
him to remarry and produce legitimate offspring with a second countess. In 1571/2
Argyll pursued his first countess before the Commissaries of Edinburgh for
divorce on the ground of malicious desertion, but the earl’s procurator, Thomas
Craig of Riccarton, could not persuade the Commissaries that malicious desertion
was a ground for divorce. This is particularly striking because one of the Com-
missaries of Edinburgh, Clement Litill, was then in possession of a copy of Beza’s
Tractatio repudiis et divortiis (Geneva, 1569), which argued in favour of divorce
for malicious desertion. In the lead up to the Divorce for Malicious Desertion Act
of 1573, it is clear that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland did not
know whether malicious desertion was a ground for divorce in Scotland or not,
and proposed to consult the Genevan church on the matter. Whether or not such
consultation occurred, the Act, which contained no reference to the ‘law of God’
      335

or any other recourse to authority, was passed without further known reference to
the General Assembly. From a detailed analysis of all the extant evidence, it is clear
that the personal circumstances of the earl of Argyll, rather than theological
considerations, were the primary driver of this aspect of law reform in Scotland
(Green 2014: lxii–lxiv).

Scottish Lawyers and the Early Protestant Ascendancy

In respect of the general considerations which attached to law during the early
modern period, two main perspectives need to be considered, namely that of the
legal profession and that of the Church. In terms of the outlook of the Scottish legal
profession, the Reformation was not especially significant in terms of legal educa-
tion and subsequent practice in the courts. Most Scots lawyers continued to
undertake courses of study in Roman and Canon law on the continent, and even
when Scots passed to Protestant universities such as Wittenberg, medieval Canon
law was still studied (Witte 2002). The reliance of European ius commune upon the
Canon law of the medieval Church and upon the Roman law of the Eastern Empire
regardless of religious divisions within Europe ensured that the legal training of
Scots continued much as it had done before the Scottish Reformation. Within the
Scottish kingdom, pre-Tridentine Canon law continued to be the dominant source
of law applied in the older ecclesiastical matters, and remained a major source of
law within the Court of Session. Thus in wide tracts of ecclesiastical, civil, and
feudal law, much continued as it had during the Catholic ascendancy, although the
major exception of criminal law falls to be considered below.
The old, basic distinctions between divine, natural, and positive law continued
to be the dominant distinctions made as to the underlying structure of law. Such
ideas were commonplace in pre-Reformation Scotland, and even found their way
into Hamilton’s Catechism, an elementary statement of the Catholic faith com-
mission by the Scottish Provincial Council of 1551/2 to be read aloud to parish-
ioners by their parish priests. In respect of the ‘commands of God’ the Catechism
taught that:
God hais gevin thame to us, first in the law of nature quhilk is prentit in our
hartis, secund in the law of Moses written with his awne fingar (that is to say be
the vertew of the haly spirit) in twa tables of stayne, & last of all by our sauiour
Christ baith God and man hes ratifiet and exponit thame in the new law or
Evangil. (Hamilton 1882: folio v)

In the post-Reformation context, however, while the same distinctions were

maintained, the status of divine law may be seen to have been subtly altered. James
Balfour (c.1525–83) began his famous Practicks with the statement that the law is
divided into three parts, the law of nature, the law of God, and positive law: natural
336  . 

law being that which has been written by the finger of God on the heart of man;
the law of God being that which is revealed and declared in God’s most holy will
and word; the law positive being that which is made by man alone (McNeill
1962–3: vol. 1, 1). This divinely ordained law of God was not the ‘law of Moses
as ratified and expounded by Christ’ but rather simply the ‘law of Moses’, an
alteration of emphasis suggested in ‘Balfour’s taxonomy of law’ and found to
accord with Calvin’s conception of the law of God (Kennedy 2012: 181). This
was a vital distinction within the context of the Calvinist conception of divine
law. It was this understanding which underpinned the marriage law of the early
Church of Scotland and, as considered below, also opened the way for the wide-
ranging criminalization of sin in Protestant Scotland through the reception into
Scots law of various capital offences prescribed in the Pentateuch.
Of those Scottish jurists who lived through the era of the Reformation, only the
practicks of James Balfour and the treatise on feudal law written by Thomas Craig
have come down to us, and neither contained a correlation of juristic principles
and concepts to the stated law of Scotland. This is particularly regrettable in
respect of the fact that Balfour was the first ‘chief ’ Commissary of Edinburgh,
while Craig was a distinguished procurator before the earliest Commissaries of
Edinburgh. Yet nevertheless, within Balfour’s work may be detected the idea that
the spiritual jurisdiction of the prelates of the Catholic Church had not been
abolished in law by the legislation of the Parliaments of 1560 and 1567 (McNeill
1962–3: vol. 1, xliv), and that the same jurisdiction had been committed to the
Commissaries of Edinburgh during the first phase of the Reformation. Such a
conception was confirmed by Parliament in 1592, when the appointment of the
Commissaries of Edinburgh was confirmed, it being narrated that the ‘jurisdiction
ecclesiastical belonging to the officials of old is, and was, devolved in the com-
missaries chosen and nominated by [Mary Stewart], our sovereign lord’s dearest
mother’ (Brown et al. 2007: 1592/4/86). As to Thomas Craig, while he devoted an
entire title to the subject of the origin and development of Canon law, it is to be
regretted that twenty-three of that title’s twenty-four chapters are concerned with
a standard Protestant polemic against the papal claims of feudal superiority over
temporal rulers, and a basic explanation of the books of the Canon law, with the
twenty-fourth chapter stating, without detailed explanation, that Canon law had
survived the Reformation, and had been retained chiefly in matters relating to the
governance of the church in respect of the cure of souls and appointment to
benefices, together with matrimonial litigation, which questions fell to be decided
by the ‘judges of Christianity’, that is the judges of the commissary courts. That the
commissary courts administered, in constitutional terms, a spiritual or ecclesias-
tical jurisdiction, is confirmed by Sir Thomas Hope. Hope’s Major Practicks were
compiled subsequent to the restoration of the jurisdiction of the commissary
courts to the Jacobean episcopate in Scotland, on account of which Hope could
state without reservation, that the ‘former auctority and jurisdictions’ of the
      337

Scottish episcopate had been restored in 1609, principally in respect of ‘the

jurisdictioune of commisseriots . . . in all spirituall and ecclesiasticall causes’
(Clyde 1937–8: vol. 2, 49).

Protestantism and Law in Scotland

While Calvinists accepted the basic divisions of law into divine, natural, and
positive, the covenantal theology of the Scottish Reformers, combined in part
with the doctrine of total depravity, in effect resulted in a new source of law being
added to the sources of Roman, Canon, and feudal law to which Scots lawyers had
habitual recourse within the broader European context, namely the ‘law of God’.
Within the context of Scottish covenantal theology, Scots were held to be directly
subject to the old divine law by virtue of the belief that the Scots had entered into a
covenant with God at the time of the Reformation, as had the Hebrews of old at
the foot of Mount Sinai. This Reformed understanding of the purpose of law,
namely the upholding of covenantal obligations, found most obvious expression
in the wide-ranging criminalization of faults previously categorized as sins, and
thus previously falling within the purview of the sacrament of penance.
During the earliest phase of the Scottish Reformation, there appears to have
been a direct extension of the disciplinary jurisdiction of the Church of Scotland in
respect of faults held to be crimes. The First Book of Discipline, the earliest
statement as to the polity and jurisdiction of the Reformed Church in Scotland,
held that ecclesiastical discipline could be extended into criminal matters properly
falling to the civil magistrate, until such time as such faults be criminalized
(Cameron 1972: 165ff.). The need for this temporary expedient appears soon to
have been elided, through the reception of the ‘law of God’ into Scots criminal law.
Thus the Levitical prescription that those who had committed adultery fell liable
to capital punishment was in part acknowledged by statute in 1563, although the
framers of the statute were careful to limit the type of adultery by which the death
penalty would be incurred (Green 2014: lv, n. 214). Witchcraft, sorcery, and
necromancy were also made capital offences by statute in 1563, in conformity
with the ‘law of God’ (Brown et al. 2007: A1563/6/9). The limited criminalization
of adultery during the personal reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, gave way to a more
wide-ranging, and stricter, criminalization of sin in the wake of the overthrow of
her personal reign. In December 1567 incest and fornication were criminalized by
statute, the former being made a capital offence in conformity with Leviticus 18,
the latter falling short of a capital offence, with fornicators being subject to a series
of incremental punishments only. Through the trial and punishment of Scots who
committed such offences, obligations in respect of the covenant were discharged.
The interpolation of Levitical law into Scots law, while driven by theological
considerations, did not however contain within it a dynamic interplay of theology
338  . 

and jurisprudence in respect of the actual formulation or reform of law. Laws

found within the Pentateuch might be simply accepted as law enacted directly
by God, and enforced as such without any sort of critical reflection upon the
principles underlying such laws: and on occasion criminal law was actually
flawed as a result. Thus in respect of the criminalization of incest, the Levitical
injunction that those who committed incest must be punished with death was
construed within the context of Canon law definitions of incest. Within the
Canon law of marriage a technical impediment designated as incest had been
formulated so as to create an impediment to marriage founded upon relations
created through sexual intercourse. Thus a man who slept with a woman,
whether within or without the state of marriage, was held to have created a
bond of affinity between his own and that woman’s family. This technical form
of incest was not incest in the literal sense, but rather an impediment to
marriage created by positive papal law capable of being dispensed. The distinc-
tion between actual and technical incest appears to have been lost on the
Scottish Reformers, who insisted that both literal incest, and the old Canon
law impediment of incest, be punished by death, with the result that, for
example, a man who slept with a woman to whom he was unrelated, and then
slept with that woman’s sister, became guilty of incest, punishable by death
(Sellar 1995: 77–82).
Beyond the obvious process of the criminalization of sin, it may also be noted that
at a conceptual level, the moralistic underpinnings of the Church of Scotland’s
disciplinary jurisdiction appear to have found a correspondence in the works of
both James Balfour and Sir George Mackenzie (1636/38–91), with ‘both authors’
conceptions of the principles of criminal law and their discussions of particular
crimes bear[ing] the mark of Protestant theology and Calvinist doctrine’ (Kennedy
2012: 181). While Balfour is limited as to value for the purpose of the observation
of the interplay of theology and law, Mackenzie’s Matters Criminal, regarded as
the earliest institutional treatment of a branch of Scots law, has been shown by
Kennedy to be capable of analysis in this respect. In general terms, Mackenzie
held that God not only imprinted some common principles upon the soul of
man, ‘but did likewise fence the economy and government he had placed in the
world with rewards and punishments’ lest man, ‘having ruined himself . . . ruin
everything besides’. Such punishments were the subject of criminal law, and thus
Mackenzie held ‘that the law of God is the first fountain of our criminal law’
(Mackenzie 2012: 5, 7). Various aspects of the law of God enjoyed direct force in
Scotland following the Reformation, and though often incorporated into statu-
tory law, the law of God often possessed an authority in and of itself whereby it
was enforced directly. For example, while neither sodomy nor bestiality were
statutory offences in Scotland, they were nevertheless punishable as capital
crimes in conformity with the ‘law of the omnipotent God, as it is declared in
the 20 c. of Leviticus’ (Mackenzie 2012: 123).
      339

Viscount Stair’s Institutions of the Law of Scotland

While the earliest writers and authorities on Scots law have been touched upon
as to Balfour, Craig, Hope, and Mackenzie, it remains to consider, albeit briefly,
the work of that greatest of Scottish jurists, James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair
(1619–95), by whose Institutions Scots private law was first treated as a rational
body of law underpinned by cogent principles. The influence of Aristotle and
Aquinas on Stair has long been recognized, and a recent analysis of Stair on
restitution and recompense has demonstrated that Stair’s underlying conceptual
framework was at times explicitly Aristotelian, at times congruent with Thomist
moral theology, and at times directly accorded with Aquinas’ categories (Reid
2008: 207–9). The analysis has also considered at length the striking contexts by
which this was rendered possible in Scotland during the Protestant ascendancy in
relation to the dominance of the Thomist Spanish scholastic moral theologians
and the ‘Protestant scholastics’ within the University of Glasgow.
Stair’s intention of expounding the law of Scotland according to the principles
of moral theology is stated expressly in the Institutions:
God doth expostulate and argue with men, even for moral duties, from these
common principles of righteousness, which their conscience cannot reject, as is
evident everywhere in his Word. And therefore, seeing the law hath such
principles, it may and ought to be held forth, as it is deduced from them.
(Dalrymple 1981: 1.1.17)

The value of a comprehensive analysis of the influence of theology on Stair is

widely recognized. John Ford’s Law and Opinion in Scotland during the Seven-
teenth Century has, among its various achievements, opened the way for such an
attempt to be made in print. It is much to be desired that Ford’s earlier work will
be followed in the fullness of time by a full-scale analysis of Stair’s understanding
of natural law within the contexts of Stair’s own moderate Presbyterianism and
the theological literature of seventeenth-century Scotland (Ford 2007).²

Conclusion

Historical knowledge of the subject of theology and jurisprudence in early modern

Scotland is still at an early stage in its development, although significant progress
has been made by legal historians in recent years in respect of opening up the
subject for further exploration. The richness of the insights which may be gained

² The author is most grateful to Professor Ford for discussing the present state of scholarly
knowledge in respect of theology and Stair, and for providing various insights and quotations: it will
be noted that the subject is vast, and has been touched upon here only in the briefest of terms.
340  . 

by a fuller treatment of the Scottish sources by those in possession of the requisite

skills in legal history and historical theology, whether individually or collectively,
has the potential to bring a developed knowledge of the Scottish context to the
attention of scholars working on other European jurisdictions, the state of histor-
ical knowledge for which is often found already to be in a more advanced state.³
Although the level of institutional commitment in Scotland to the furtherance of
this field of endeavour appears to be in doubt, the potential of the subject of
theology and jurisprudence in early modern Scotland is becoming increasingly
pronounced. Of particular value would be: a new assessment of the marriage law
of the early Church of Scotland, as well as the laws and constitution of the early
Church of Scotland; research concerning Canon law in Scottish civil law; a full
constitutional history of Scotland from the eve of the Reformation to the Union;
a full assessment of Calvinism and criminal law; and a full assessment of Stair’s
theology.

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Barry, John C. (trans. and ed.) (1967). William Hay’s Lectures on Marriage. Edinburgh:
The Stair Society.
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³ For example see Stephen Bogle’s review of Law and Religion: The Legal Teachings of the Protestant
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in The Edinburgh Law Review 19/2 (2015), 285–7.
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 24
The Marrow Controversy
Boston, Erskine, and Hadow
Stephen G. Myers

From its occurrence in 1718–22 until the present day, the Marrow controversy has
both elicited and retained the attention of the wider Reformed tradition in a way
that few other events in the history of Scottish theology have done. In spite of this
attention, however, several questions remain troublingly unanswered—and most
often, unasked—about the controversy and the theological divisions it ostensibly
unearthed within the eighteenth-century Kirk.

The Controversy

In 1715, John Simson, Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University, was brought

before the General Assembly on a libel for heresy. While the errors alleged against
Simson were rather eclectic, the allegations were pervaded by a concern that the
professor too nearly reflected the ascendant rationalism of the early eighteenth
century by both minimizing the inter-generational effects of Adam’s first trans-
gression and equating regenerating faith with an intellectualized moralism (Libel
n.d.: 1–11). While a committee for preserving purity of doctrine began a two-year-
long investigation of the charges, the spectre of such opinions being taught within
one of Scotland’s divinity schools caused immediate concern throughout the Kirk
and, in 1716, when William Craig, a candidate for licensure, appeared before the
Presbytery of Auchterarder, he was asked ‘many questions anent Mr Simson’s
opinions’ (Wodrow 1843: 2.269; Boston 1853: 12.291). In the course of that
questioning, the presbytery asked Craig to affirm that ‘it is not sound and
orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ,
and instating us in covenant with God’. When the presbytery was not satisfied
with his response to this proposition—which came to be known, pejoratively, as
the ‘Auchterarder Creed’—Craig appealed their actions all the way to the General
Assembly. As a result, in 1717, both the propriety of Auchterarder’s requirement
and the Simson affair that had precipitated it came before the General Assembly.
The Assembly first concluded the Simson affair by rebuking the Glasgow profes-
sor while permitting him to retain his position and teaching duties, and in the

Stephen G. Myers, The Marrow Controversy: Boston, Erskine, and Hadow. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0024
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immediately following session, they condemned Auchterarder’s formula as

‘unsound and most detestable’ (Acts 1843: 519). For many ministers, the juxta-
position of these two actions was deeply concerning. The Assembly had taken two
years over the Simson affair only to deliver what many considered a mild rebuke,
yet had quickly and strongly condemned a proposition that, while awkwardly
worded, appeared to speak of free, unmerited grace. This combination seemed to
validate precisely the Presbytery of Auchterarder’s concern—there was an insipid
legalism within the Assembly (Boston 1853: 12.291; Erskine 1871: 1.76).
Present at the 1717 Assembly was Thomas Boston, minister of Ettrick.
Although it would not be published for another three years, Boston already had
completed work on Human Nature in its Fourfold State, his work that would
shape Scottish popular piety for centuries, and in Ettrick, Boston was in the midst
of a lengthy sermon series on repentance. Against Boston’s correspondingly well-
formed opinions on grace and repentance, the Assembly’s condemnation of the
Auchterarder Creed was troubling (Boston 1853: 12.285, 291). Earlier in his
ministry, while serving in Simprin, Boston had struggled with his own under-
standing of ‘the grace of God in Christ’, yet had found relief when, visiting in the
home of a member, he stumbled upon a copy of a book entitled The Marrow of
Modern Divinity. Written by Englishman Edward Fisher, the Marrow, as it came to
be called, had first appeared in London in 1645. In those days, as the Westminster
Assembly met, the English Church was combating an ascendant antinomian
movement and Fisher sought to address those concerns by tracing, in the Marrow,
an understanding of law and grace that rejected antinomianism without running
into legalism. By the eighteenth century, the Marrow had fallen into broad
obscurity, but in reading it, Boston found ‘a light which the Lord had seasonably
struck up to me in my darkness’ (Boston 1853: 12.154–5). Hoping that the
Marrow would bring similar clarity in the midst of Assembly-wide confusion
over issues related to God’s saving grace, Boston commended the volume to John
Drummond, minister of Crief, who then passed the recommendation to others.
For ministers such as Ebenezer Erskine of Portmoak (later, Stirling), who had
struggled to understand grace as a young Christian, Boston’s recommendation
was apt, for the Marrow seemed to address the issues of the day, and thus the
Marrow’s fame spread (Erskine 1694). Copies of the Marrow were rare, however,
so an Edinburgh edition, including a recommendatory preface by James Hog,
minister of Carnock, was published in 1718. This new edition attracted the
attention of James Hadow, Principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews. In 1719,
Hadow denounced the Marrow before the Synod of Fife and, following Hadow’s
line of critique precisely, the General Assembly 1720 condemned the Marrow as
teaching antinomianism, a universal atonement, and the assertion that assurance
is of the essence of faith. Alarmed at that condemnation, twelve ministers within
the Kirk—Boston and Erskine among them—submitted to the 1721 Assembly a
Representation and Petition arguing that the charges of theological error brought
344  . 

against the Marrow were groundless and calling upon the Assembly to repeal the
condemnatory Act of 1720. While these ministers recognized that the Marrow was
an imperfect book, they judged that the Assembly’s actions against it leaned
towards both legalism and a dangerous restriction of the Gospel offer. The 1721
Assembly left the matter with the Commission of the Assembly, which posed
twelve theological queries to which ‘the Marrow brethren’ responded at length. At
the conclusion of this exchange, the 1722 Assembly upheld the ban on the Marrow
and officially censured the ‘Representers’ for ‘the injurious reflections contained in
their Representation’ (Acts 1843: 556). With this action, the Assembly sought to
show ‘great lenity’ to the Representers and, in fact, followed the same course with
them as it had charted with Professor Simson in 1717—rebuking certain views and
expressions, yet not judicially hindering the ministries of those who had expressed
them (Acts 1843: 556).
While the 1722 Assembly thus concluded the official process of the Marrow
controversy, theological suspicion and personal animus lingered as individual
Representers experienced harassment from church judicatories and had transla-
tions to more prominent charges blocked. Perhaps most importantly, the
estrangement created between the church judicatories and Erskine helped prepare
the way for the formation of the Associate Presbytery in 1733. Erskine’s secession
was not a direct result of his involvement in the Marrow controversy and Erskine
was the sole Marrow Representer among the initial seceders, yet his commitment
to ‘Marrow doctrine’ became ensconced in the Secession. Because of these com-
mitments, the Secession Church became renowned for evangelical fervour by the
1740s and produced the most systematic and important exposition of Marrow
doctrine—the Act Concerning the Doctrine of Grace (Associate Presbytery 1744).

Interpreting the Controversy

For centuries, interpreters have argued that this Marrow controversy resulted
from the intrusion of a foreign doctrinal element into eighteenth-century Scottish
theology. In older and more self-consciously evangelical scholarship, the contro-
versy is blamed on a burgeoning legalism dissonant with the traditional evangel-
ical warmth of Scottish thought (Macleod 1973: 139–66). In this analysis, the
Marrow brethren maintained traditional Scottish theology against a party within
the Assembly that espoused a novel Neonomianism in which human obedience
to a new ‘Gospel Law’ merited salvation. In later and more self-consciously
academic scholarship, the disruptive intrusion is identified differently. In this
analysis, the Marrow brethren had been influenced by older theological language
and commitments and were using that idiom in the midst of an Assembly that
had been influenced by, and that was espousing, a later, post-Reformation set of
more legalizing doctrinal formulations (Lachman 1988). Here, the Marrow
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brethren sought to retrieve a warmer theology that had been forgotten by the
early eighteenth century. While there are obvious differences between the older
and newer analyses, both share the same core assumption—the Marrow controversy
was an evangelical/legalist dispute which resulted from the interruption of Scottish
theology’s continuous development in the early eighteenth century, whether that
interruption came from a novel legalism or an antiquated evangelicalism.
All of these theories of disjuncture, however, leave unanswered several nagging
questions. In the first instance, if the Marrow controversy represented evangelic-
alism battling against legalism, why did men renowned as champions of the
evangel find themselves on the side of the latter? For example, how could the
evangelical leader John Willison, writing as late as 1744, maintain his opposition
to the Marrow while simultaneously lamenting what he perceived as a growing
legalism in Scottish preaching (Willison 1744: 44)? Were there really only twelve
evangelicals in the Kirk in 1718–22, or was there something more nuanced at
work? Furthermore, the newer interpretation of the Marrow controversy seems to
be founded upon largely discredited assumptions. This newer interpretation sug-
gests that the Marrow controversy resulted from the terminological and doctrinal
discontinuity between earlier Reformed thought and later, scholastic developments
of the same, but much of recent historical theology has punctured the notion of
such a radical shift from ‘Reformation’ to ‘post-Reformation’ theology (Muller 2003).
Were the theological influences shaping the Marrow brethren really so untrans-
latably different from the influences shaping other Kirk ministers, even though
men on both sides of the dispute attended the same relatively small set of
theological institutions and cited largely the same theological authorities?
These questions and their lack of resolution point to an intriguing possibil-
ity. Perhaps the Marrow controversy did not result from an intrusion into
Scottish theology that pitted either evangelicals against legalists or Reformation
theology against post-Reformation theology. Perhaps the Marrow controversy
resulted from divergent developments within Scottish theology itself; develop-
ments that split men of overwhelmingly shared theological exposure into
camps which subsequent history would show eschewed stark evangelical/legal-
ist division. In fact, precisely such a situation emerges when one examines the
two theological systems whose collision resulted in the Marrow controversy. In
the first instance, consideration must be given to the theology of James Hadow.
Hadow produced two of the most influential anti-Marrow works of the con-
troversy, first in 1719 and then in 1721; the Assembly followed the theological
critiques of those works in their censures of Marrow doctrine in both 1720 and
1722; and contemporaries recognized Hadow as the chief architect of the Marrow’s
condemnation (Boston 1853: 12.327). Secondly, consideration must be given to the
doctrinal systems of Thomas Boston and Ebenezer Erskine, the two theological
leaders of the Marrow brethren. While other Representers wrote individually in
defence of the Marrow, Boston and Erskine were the two brethren who did so
346  . 

officially, with Boston drafting the initial Representation and Petition of 1721
and Erskine preparing the brethren’s answers to the Commission’s queries in
1722. By analysing these official documents alongside other relevant writings by
both Boston and Erskine, a picture emerges of the doctrinal commitments that
precipitated the brethren’s opposition to the Assembly’s actions.
When Hadow’s theology is compared with that of Boston and Erskine, there
appears no evidence of either a foreign legalism or a re-appropriated evangelical-
ism. Rather, both doctrinal systems appear as legitimate, continuous develop-
ments of a shared body of Scottish federal theology. The Marrow controversy did
not occur because some outside emphasis differed from the status quo of con-
temporary Scottish theology. Rather, embedded within that theology itself were
unresolved tensions that, when cobbled together in different systems, produced
disparate readings of one provocatively written book.

The Federal Foundations of the Marrow Controversy

The state of Scottish federalism in 1718 was intimately tied to the history of the
Kirk. In 1647, the Kirk had adopted the Westminster Standards—documents
structured along clear covenantal lines, yet at points vague enough to permit
some latitude on certain secondary points of doctrine. Shortly after this adoption,
a litany of issues consumed the attention of the Kirk—from the Public Resolutions
controversy, to the persecution of the Restoration regimes, to the Presbyterian
battle against entrenched episcopacy following the Revolution. Throughout all of
these eras, Scottish ministers and theologians continued to write and develop
federal theology, yet the prominence of more pressing concerns seems to have
meant that tensions developing within the areas of confessional federal latitude
went unnoticed and unresolved. The result was that, by the 1710s, a shared
Scottish federal theology contained divergent emphases and structures.
This variegated federal theology began to strain when heresy charges were
brought against John Simson. In 1715, when the charges were brought, the
Assembly already was in the midst of a decade-long effort to bring greater
precision to her confessional understanding and subscription (Acts 1843: 453–6;
Dunlop 1719). In the 1710s, the Kirk was solidifying her doctrine. In considering
Simson, it was her doctrine of the covenants that rose to the fore. Foundational to
Simson’s rationalist errors were a rejection of Adam’s federal headship and an
expansion of the inclusivity of the Covenant of Grace, both of which struck at the
substructure of federal theology (e.g. Wodrow 1843: 2.260–1). The result of these
federal concerns being introduced to a Kirk already seeking more careful doctrinal
formulations was evidenced in the Synod of Fife, home to both Hadow and
Erskine, where an extended Synod-wide debate over the nature of the Covenant
of Grace simmered in the years between Simson’s libel and the Marrow’s
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republication in 1718 (Boston 1853: 12.317; Fraser 1831: 234–5). Both in Fife and
beyond, a Kirk seeking theological precision was turning her attention to federal
theology in reaction to Simson’s errors.
For Hadow, Boston, and Erskine, this project of federal refinement produced a
discernible hardening of federal structures. In 1711, Hadow had interacted per-
sonally with Alexander Hamilton of Airth regarding Hamilton’s Short Catechism,
wherein Hamilton delineated a theological system almost exactly like that of the
Marrow brethren. While Hadow disagreed with Hamilton, that disagreement
lacked aggressive condemnation (‘A Copie’ 1717). Two years later, in 1713,
Hadow began a multi-year campaign opposing the appointment of Alexander
Scrimgeour, a lay Episcopalian suspected of Arminianism and evasive of Confes-
sional adherence, to the Chair of Divinity at St Mary’s. Another two years later, in
1715, Hadow was made a member of the committee investigating the charges
against Simson. Thus led to revisit his federal theology in the shadows of the
Scrimgeour controversy, Hadow refused the latitude that he had allowed in
1711. In 1715, when the process against Simson began, Boston and Erskine were
both serving as parish ministers whose respective experiences, both personal
and vocational, had left them deeply suspicious of legalistic glosses on the
Gospel. The effect that this had on Boston and Erskine’s revisiting of federal
theology was evidenced in their preaching. For example, in 1714, Erskine was
willing to speak of covenantal structures that by 1721, he had explicitly rejected
(Erskine 1871: 1.3; 1.98–9, 101). For the Marrow brethren, as well, Simson-
inspired reflection had tightened previously flexible covenantal categories. From
a shared body of Scottish federal theology, Hadow had developed a covenantal
system markedly different from the one developed by Boston and Erskine and
those different covenantal understandings produced very different readings of
the Marrow.
The causal connections indicated here—from the Simson affair to the Marrow
controversy via federal theology—suggested themselves in an inchoate manner to
Boston himself. On 27 August 1721, whilst embroiled in the ecclesiastical pro-
ceedings surrounding the Marrow, Boston began ‘to treat of the two covenants’ in
his preaching because ‘in these our declining days, the nature of both these
covenants is so much perverted by some, and still like to be more so’ (Boston
1853: 12.331–2, 334; 11.178). For Boston, the doctrinal confusion of the Marrow
controversy was best remedied by gaining clarity on federal theology. As Boston
began seeking that clarity by first examining the Covenant of Works, he imme-
diately named John Simson as one within the Kirk who erred in this important
doctrine (Boston 1853: 11.180). In Boston’s theological and pastoral estimation,
the confusion in federal theology that was underlying the Marrow controversy
bore a connection to Simson’s errors. Along with others of his contemporaries,
Boston sensed that the Marrow controversy grew in the soil of federal theology in
the wake of the Simson affair (e.g. Videte 1722: 16).
348  . 

While there were many differences between Hadow’s federal theology and that
of Boston and Erskine, constraints demand that attention be focused on three
issues of critical divergence. After exploring these differences, an examination of
one issue central to the Marrow controversy will suggest that it was this federal
variety which underlay the dispute.¹

Differing Federal Structures

A distinct Covenant of Redemption
Boston, Erskine, and Hadow all agreed that in the eternal, intra-Trinitarian
pactum salutis, the elect were distinguished from the rest of humanity and their
redemption was secured (Boston 1853: 8.396–8; Erskine 1871: 3.325–6; Hadow
1721: 131). There was sharp disagreement, however, on whether to understand
that pactum as part of the Covenant of Grace or as a Covenant of Redemption
distinct from the Covenant of Grace.
Drawing exegetical warrant from Zechariah 9:11, 1 Corinthians 11:25, Gal-
atians 4:24, and Hebrews 13:20, Boston and Erskine asserted that Scripture
identified only two covenants pertaining to man’s ‘life and happiness’—the Cov-
enant of Works and the Covenant of Grace—and thus to understand the pactum
as a distinct Covenant of Redemption was to imagine a third covenant foreign to
the Scriptures (Associate Synod 1753: 144; Boston 1853: 8.397–8).² For Boston
and Erskine, the pactum had to be understood as part of the Covenant of Grace.
Using language redolent of Francis Turretin, Erskine spoke of the resulting,
expansive Covenant of Grace as containing both a ‘federal disposition’—wherein
blessings are procured through the satisfaction of a condition—and a ‘testament-
ary disposition’—wherein blessings are freely and unconditionally bestowed
(Associate Synod 1753: 152–3).³ For Boston and Erskine, the pactum salutis was
the federal disposition of the Covenant of Grace, for therein the Son had con-
sented to fulfil the covenant’s ‘proper condition’ of righteousness on behalf of the
elect who were given to him. The testamentary disposition of the covenant was
Christ’s giving of himself to his people through faith beginning in Genesis 3:15
and persisting throughout redemptive history (Associate Synod 1753: 153–4). For
Boston and Erskine, then, the elect were both differentiated and actually redeemed
in one, expansive Covenant of Grace that included both the pactum salutis and the
historical outworking thereof.

¹ For a more comprehensive account of this thesis, including its application to the charges of
antinomianism and the nature of faith, see Myers (2015).
² Manuscript evidence attests that Ebenezer Erskine authored the questions and answers for
catechism questions 8–28. See Fraser (1831: 494).
³ See Turrettino (1682: 2.186 (12.1.3)).
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In Hadow’s federal theology, the pactum salutis was understood explicitly as a

distinct Covenant of Redemption (Hadow 1721: 131–2). In that covenant, ‘all the
ways & means were fixed & determined for bringing about the elects salvation,
unto the praise of glorious free grace’, but the effectual execution of those ways
and means awaited the Covenant of Grace (‘A Copie’ 1717: 62). The Covenant
of Grace, then, in all of its redemptive work, presupposed a prior and distinct
Covenant of Redemption that had both established what that Covenant of Grace
would do and differentiated the elect for whom it would be done.
In the Scottish federal theology of the 1710s, there was room both for Boston
and Erskine’s bi-covenantalism and for Hadow’s tri-covenantalism. The West-
minster Confession does not clearly and exclusively support either view and even
the more detailed work of both Patrick Gillespie and Herman Witsius—two men
who were enormously influential in early eighteenth-century Scottish federalism
and the latter of whom served as Professor of Divinity at the University of Utrecht
when both Hadow and James Hog were students there in the late seventeenth
century—evidences a nuanced development. While both men recognize a distinct
Covenant of Redemption, their primary intention is not to distinguish sharply
between the two covenants per se, but rather to assert the eternal, intra-Trinitarian
foundation of redemption (Gillespie 1661: 2.150; Gillespie 1677: 1–50, 113–28;
Witsius 1822: 1.165–6, 189–90, 284, 291). This guiding theological concern of
Scottish federalism was addressed by Boston and Erskine’s pactum-inclusive
Covenant of Grace and thus, given the Confession’s latitude on covenantal struc-
ture, such a bi-covenantalism still fit within that developing federal tradition even
if it was becoming a minority position.

Immediate versus mediate graciousness

The difference between Boston and Erskine’s bi-covenantalism and Hadow’s tri-
covenantalism had critical implications for how these men understood the way
that God bestowed grace in the Covenant of Grace. While all agreed that God’s
redemption of his people was entirely gracious, Boston and Erskine insisted that
the grace of the Covenant of Grace was bestowed immediately, whereas Hadow
envisioned a mediate graciousness.
The bi-covenantal structure of Boston and Erskine’s theology demanded that
the grace of the Covenant of Grace be dispensed immediately from Christ to his
people. In harmony with most federal theologians, Boston and Erskine under-
stood a covenant to be a mutual agreement between two parties that included
certain terms and conditions. In the pactum salutis, the Son had covenanted to
meet all covenantal terms and conditions and since that pactum was part of
Boston and Erskine’s expansive Covenant of Grace, there was no room to imagine
further terms and conditions residing upon the elect. Indeed, if such terms and
350  . 

conditions did exist for the elect, it would constitute a separate covenant distinct
from the pactum—with additional, distinct terms and conditions—which was a
structure that Boston and Erskine explicitly rejected. For Boston and Erskine, the
terms and conditions of the Covenant of Grace had been satisfied by Christ in the
pactum salutis and none remained for the elect. Instead, in the testamentary
disposition of the covenant, Christ freely bestowed the redemptive benefits that
he already had obtained by meeting the terms and conditions on behalf of his
people. Most certainly, faith played a role in that economy, but faith was one of the
blessings of the covenant which God used to unite his people to Christ rather than
a condition that God called them to fulfil (Boston 1853: 8.425, 474, 558–9; Erskine
1871: 1.245–6, 346, 359; Associate Synod 1753: 148, 154). As Erskine expressed
the matter, the Covenant of Grace was a wholly promissory covenant towards
man, containing only promises and no precepts (Erskine 1871: 1.358). The
precepts had been met by Christ in the pactum salutis.
Hadow agreed that the Covenant of Grace was entirely gracious, but he
envisioned the bestowal of that grace being mediated through divinely-enabled
obedience to ‘gospel commands’; specifically, the commands to repent and to
believe. Critically, for Hadow, the existence of these gospel commands was
required by the existence of a distinct and prior Covenant of Redemption. In
that Covenant of Redemption, the elect had been differentiated and then it was as
the representative and surety of the elect that Christ entered into the Covenant of
Grace. However, Christ thus served as the representative of the elect ‘without any
previous commission or consent given by the Elect unto Jesus Christ to be their
representative & Surety’ (‘A Copie’ 1717: 64). In order to render a legal consent to
Christ as their representative, the elect were summoned to perform the ‘require-
ments’ of repentance and faith. As Hadow clearly argued, these ‘gospel com-
mands’ or ‘gospel precepts’ thus were ‘founded upon the Covenant of
Redemption’ (Hadow 1721: 131). Since the Covenant of Grace began with a
group created by the prior Covenant of Redemption (‘elect sinners’), the gospel
commands were necessary to establish an individual’s interest in that already-
defined group.
While Hadow was clear on the necessity of these gospel commands, he was just
as insistent that since obedience to them was required of the elect, that same
obedience was freely and sovereignly provided by God (Hadow 1721: x–xi, 41, 44,
75; ‘A Copie’ 1717: 62–6; Hadow 1719: 11, 13). God required repentance and faith,
but he freely gave repentance and faith to the elect. Indeed, Hadow classed as
‘legalism’ any system in which man’s justification was based on anything done in
his own strength (Hadow 1721: 66). Rather than providing a way for man to
obtain his own merit, God intended the gospel commands to humble the elect by
showing them their need of divine provision (Hadow 1721: xi, 55).
Although the immediate graciousness of Boston and Erskine’s theology and the
mediate graciousness of Hadow’s doctrine are quite different from each other,
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they both have precedent in the Scottish federalism of the early eighteenth
century. The doctrinal balance of that system is evidenced in Westminster Confes-
sion 7.3, which sees no contradiction in asserting both that grace is offered freely
and that grace is given through the divinely-enabled means of faith. The balance
of that confessional statement later received different emphases, with Gillespie
frequently referring to ‘gospel commands’ and Witsius insisting that the Covenant
of Grace was entirely promissory and had no place for any commands or condi-
tions (Gillespie 1661: 1.351, 367–8; 2.45, 58, 61–2; Gillespie 1677: 43, 123; Witsius
1822: 1.49–50, 165, 283–4, 286, 288, 2.187). If Gillespie provided precedent for
Hadow’s system, Witsius provided equally clear precedent for the system of Boston
and Erskine. Neither a mediate graciousness nor an immediate graciousness was
foreign to the Scottish federal theology of the early eighteenth century.

Definite versus indefinite Covenant of Grace

The third difference to emerge between Boston and Erskine’s federal theology and
that of Hadow is that Boston and Erskine viewed the Covenant of Grace as an
indefinite covenant while Hadow viewed it as a definite covenant, although not in
the sense normally envisioned by such terminology. In both covenantal systems,
the elect were chosen out of the mass of sinful humanity in the pactum salutis;
therefore, it was in that eternal pact that the definite group of the elect was
differentiated out of humanity considered indefinitely. In Erskine’s language, the
pactum began, logically, with the Triune God seeking ‘a way how sinners might be
saved’ and it resulted, finally, in the Holy Spirit covenanting to apply redemption
‘to an elect world’ (Erskine 1871: 1.333, emphasis added). Through the divine
covenanting in the pactum, the indefinite group of mankind as ‘sinners’ was
distinguished into the definite group of ‘the elect’ (and, by consequence, ‘the
reprobate’, as well). For Boston, Erskine, and Hadow, the pactum began in an
indefinite milieu and created a definite one. Since Boston and Erskine included the
pactum in the Covenant of Grace, that resulting Covenant of Grace was an
indefinite covenant. In its inception, it viewed men indefinitely as sinners and,
through the pactum included within it, it moved towards precise and eternal
definiteness, creating categories of ‘elect sinners’ and ‘reprobate sinners’. Within
Hadow’s federalism, the situation was much different. Since a distinct Covenant of
Redemption already had differentiated the elect, when the Covenant of Grace was
undertaken, the indefinite category of ‘sinner’ already had given way, logically, to the
categories of ‘elect sinners’ and ‘reprobate sinners’. From its very inception, then,
the Covenant of Grace was a definite covenant because it always viewed humanity
in terms of definite categories that the Covenant of Redemption had created.
The distinction between an indefinite and a definite covenant thus defined had
not been explored in Scottish federalism prior to the early eighteenth century.
352  . 

Often, even in the most thorough and influential works on federal theology, the
Covenant of Grace would be treated as both indefinite and definite (Gillespie
1677: 127; Witsius 1822: 1.282). Quite simply, the particular refinements of
Boston and Erskine on the one hand, and Hadow, on the other, had introduced
tension where previous generations had found none.

The Collision of Federal Systems

On most issues, the differences between Boston and Erskine’s federal theology and
Hadow’s federal theology would not cause significant problems. The Marrow of
Modern Divinity was a different matter. The Marrow approached issues of law and
grace from an explicitly covenantal perspective and, from within that paradigm, it
used provocative language to discuss issues requiring considerable theological
nuance. As a result, many statements in the Marrow had radically different
meanings when read from within Hadow’s federal construction than they did
when read from within Boston and Erskine’s system. A representative example
of such divergent understandings arose surrounding the Marrow’s description
of the Gospel offer as ‘a deed of gift and grant unto all mankind’ (Boston 1853:
7.262). In all of the extensive discussion that focused upon this language, debate
did not centre upon the orthodoxy of certain doctrines; rather, the debate
centred upon what the Marrow meant by the language that it used. In Boston
and Erskine’s opinion, the ‘deed of gift and grant’ language referred to the minis-
terial authority to offer the Gospel to all humanity (Representation 1721: 13–14).
Significantly, the 1722 Assembly stated that if that is what the Marrow meant, they
had no objection to it. The problem was that, in the Assembly’s opinion, that was
not what the Marrow actually meant. Rather, the Marrow was teaching ‘an
universal redemption as to purchase’ and the brethren were distorting the Marrow’s
language to blunt the force of its error, a charge the brethren passionately denied
(Acts 1843: 535, 552–3).
In this representative exchange, many of the caricatures of the Marrow con-
troversy are dispelled. The Assembly was not arguing that the Gospel could not be
offered to all men. The Marrow brethren were not arguing for a universal
redemption. Instead, the two sides were disputing what the Marrow intended by
referring to the Gospel offer as a deed of gift and grant to all mankind. Within
Scottish thought, this was a question intimately connected to federal theology.
Since the late sixteenth century, Scottish theologians had understood the Gospel
offer to be simply the ‘exhibition’, or description, of the Covenant of Grace and
thus one’s federal theology was centrally important to how one conceptualized
the Gospel offer (Rollock 1844: 1.29–30; Dickson and Durham 1773: 438–40;
Rutherford 1655: 282, 340; ‘A Copie’ 1717: 67–8; Erskine 1871: 1.358–9). The
exhibition of Boston and Erskine’s Covenant of Grace in the Gospel offer would
   : , ,   353

be starkly different than the exhibition of Hadow’s Covenant of Grace in that

offer. Against this covenantal backdrop for the Gospel offer, the confusion over
the Marrow’s ‘deed of gift and grant’ language focused on two key assertions—
that the Gospel offer is a gift and that that offer is to be framed indefinitely to all
mankind.
For Boston and Erskine, the Marrow’s language of ‘deed of gift and grant’
referred simply to the ‘authentic gospel-offer’ (Boston 1853: 7.263; Queries 1722:
74–5). In Boston and Erskine’s federal theology, God bestowed grace immediately
in the Covenant of Grace and that unilateral giving of a good secured by someone
else epitomized a ‘gift’. A man drawn to Christ had procured nothing; he only had
received something procured by another. Furthermore, Boston and Erskine
insisted that this Gospel offer as gift was to be extended to all mankind because,
through preaching, Christ was administering the Covenant of Grace and that
covenant was to be as indefinite in its proclamation as it was in its first founding
(Boston 1853: 8.555; Associate Synod 1753: 151). God’s purpose in the expansive
Covenant of Grace, beginning in the pactum salutis, was to save ‘sinners’ and thus
the Gospel offer was to be addressed to ‘sinners’ and to all ‘sinners’. That offer, of
course, would not save everyone who heard it. In the Covenant of Grace, God
created distinctions between the elect and the reprobate and only to the former
would he give the faith that would unite them savingly to Christ. But those
categories of election were the result of the Covenant of Grace, not preconditions
for it, and thus they had no place in the exhibition of the covenant in the Gospel
offer. Instead, they would reveal themselves as the Gospel was proclaimed and that
gift was either accepted by those to whom God gave faith or rejected by those to
whom he did not. In this, Christ’s administration of the Covenant of Grace in
preaching would display the very movement of the covenant itself, moving from
humanity-wide indefiniteness to eternal definiteness as the promises of the cov-
enant were ‘indorsed to sinners of mankind indefinitely, to be fulfilled unto all and
every one who shall by faith embrace them’ (Boston 1853: 8.555). From within
Boston and Erskine’s federal theology, the Gospel offer was a gift and it was to be
offered indefinitely.
For Hadow, the Gospel offer was markedly different. In the first instance, the
Gospel offer could not be spoken of as a gift. In Hadow’s understanding of the
Covenant of Grace, God bestowed grace through the means of divinely-enabled
obedience to the gospel commands. Salvation in Christ, then, was not offered as a
‘gift’; rather, its reception required something of the one who would claim it.
Certainly, the repentance and faith that obtained salvation were, themselves,
gracious gifts of God, but nonetheless, they remained necessary to receive salva-
tion. If the Gospel were offered as a gift, that would mean that nothing was needed
to receive it and thus repentance and faith would become superfluous. At times,
Hadow would speak of God giving salvation and eternal life to sinners as a ‘gift’,
but such language always was in reference to God’s eternal purpose in the
354  . 

Covenant of Redemption (Hadow 1719: 8–10). In that Covenant of Redemption,

God gave a gift immediately to the elect. In the Covenant of Grace, he worked
through means. Since, in the Gospel offer, the minister was to exhibit the
Covenant of Grace, not the Covenant of Redemption, the language of ‘gift’ in
that offer was misplaced.
Furthermore, for Hadow, the offer of the Gospel could not be framed indefin-
itely. From its first making, the Covenant of Grace had considered all of humanity
in the definite categories of either ‘elect sinners’ or ‘reprobate sinners’, and
therefore the Gospel was to be offered not to sinners indefinitely, but to sinners
who, by their divinely-enabled obedience to the gospel commands to repent and
believe, had manifested their identity among the definite group of the elect
(‘A Copie’ 1717: 67–8, 75–6). The Covenant of Grace, definite in its founding,
had to be definite in its exhibition. Occasionally, Hadow did speak of Christ
being the ‘Saviour of Sinners’ in an indefinite sense, but he used such language
exclusively in reference to Christ’s appointment in the pactum salutis (Hadow
1721: 131). That pactum was covenantally distinct from the Covenant of Grace,
however, and thus such indefinite language could not be used to exhibit the
Covenant of Grace in the Gospel offer. In the Covenant of Redemption, Christ
was the Saviour of sinners; in the Covenant of Grace, he had become the Saviour
of elect sinners, and it was that Covenant of Grace that was exhibited in the
Gospel offer. While Hadow’s Gospel offer is decidedly definite, it is not legalism,
for at every point it leans on God’s orderly, sovereign bestowal of grace through
means and not on anything done meritoriously in mankind’s own strength.
Nonetheless, such a view of the Gospel offer does make the Marrow’s indefinite
offer deeply problematic. In order for the Gospel offer to be indefinite, as the
Marrow calls for it to be, the Covenant of Grace exhibited therein would have to
ignore the categories of election and reprobation and the group which Christ
received in the pactum salutis and represented in the Covenant of Grace would
have to be all sinners equally and without distinction.
When the Gospel offer is understood from within both Boston and Erskine’s
federal theology and Hadow’s federal theology, it becomes evident how differently
these men would have viewed the Marrow’s assertion that that Gospel offer is a
deed of gift and grant to all mankind. For Boston and Erskine, such an assertion
faithfully represented the exhibition of an indefinite Covenant of Grace that
sinners had to accept as a gift, not admitting of any meritorious obedience as
procuring payment. To condemn such a description, as the Assembly had done,
was to assail the gospel of grace. For Hadow, the Marrow’s ‘deed of gift and grant’
language spoke of a universal atonement that rejected both God’s necessary
distinction between elect sinners and reprobate sinners and his mediate bestowal
of grace through divinely-given repentance and faith. What was, within Boston
and Erskine’s federal theology, a description of the Gospel offer was, within
Hadow’s federal theology, a universal atonement.
   : , ,   355

In this disparity resides the key to the Marrow controversy. Boston and Erskine’s
federalism and Hadow’s federalism both were continuous developments of Scottish
federal theology. Boston and Erskine’s did not require a universal atonement.
Hadow’s was not blatantly Neonomian. But viewed from within either system,
the other’s reaction to the Marrow’s language raised precisely those suspicions. The
Representers were censured because, from within the Assembly’s federal theology,
they were guilty of the errors alleged against them. The Representers resisted
because, from within their federal theology, the Assembly was stifling the Gospel.

The Marrow Controversy as a Federal Dispute

When one considers the contours of both Boston and Erskine’s federal theology
and Hadow’s federal theology, as well as how those structures interacted with the
Marrow’s specific articulation of nuanced doctrinal issues, two important ques-
tions are addressed. First, it becomes evident that the Marrow controversy was
rooted in the variegated development of Scottish federalism. Boston and Erskine
were not retrieving an evangelicalism absent in immediately preceding gener-
ations. Hadow was not representative of an imported Neonomianism. Rather,
both federal systems were particular refinements of the common inheritance of
Scottish federalism. Boston and Erskine, revisiting their federal theology amidst
personal and pastoral concerns over a perceived legalism in some corners of the
Kirk, had articulated a federal structure which heavily emphasized the immediacy
of grace and the openness of the Gospel offer. Hadow, revisiting his federal
theology amidst an anti-Arminian polemic at St Mary’s that emphasized the
orderly precision of the ordo salutis and that was deeply suspicious about any
indications of an unlimited atonement, had tightened down on a federal structure
that emphasized both God’s sovereign election and the orderly way in which God
brought his elect to glory. These two systems, both continuous with the Scottish
federalism of the early eighteenth century, were explosively dissonant when
pressed with the provocative language and formulations of the Marrow.
Secondly, the Marrow controversy’s foundation in differing, yet equally con-
tinuous, developments of Scottish federal theology addresses the oft-ignored
conundrum of John Willison and others like him who were ardent defenders of
the free offer of the Gospel, yet who appeared to oppose that free offer in siding
with the General Assembly against the Marrow brethren. Nestled within Willison’s
federal theology were all the strictures of Hadow’s—a distinct Covenant of
Redemption that yields a definite Covenant of Grace in which God bestows
grace in sequential orderliness (Willison 1794: 22–7). Simply stated, from within
Willison’s federal theology, the language of the Marrow would have sounded
suspicious, particularly under the glare of Hadow’s withering critique. In this,
Willison serves as a contemporary litmus test for the Marrow controversy. Had
356  . 

that controversy concerned simply the question of whether the Gospel should be
offered freely to all mankind, Willison would have sided with Boston and Erskine.
But that was not the root of the Marrow controversy. The Marrow controversy
sprang from the implications of different federal systems and in that federal
dispute, Willison was with Hadow.

Implications of the Analysis

The Marrow controversy’s foundation in the development of Scottish federal

theology has manifold implications, of which two must be addressed. First, a
prominent school of interpretation suggests that the federalism of the Westminster
Confession necessarily muted the Scottish evangelistic spirit. In the evangelical
federalism of Boston and Erskine, however, such an analysis is perilously under-
mined. In that evangelical federalism, with its insistence on the indefinite nature of
the Covenant of Grace and the immediacy of the grace bestowed therein, Boston
and Erskine propose, from within a robustly Westminsterian system, a federal
theology structurally resistant to the legalizing tendencies so often alleged against
federal thought. Boston and Erskine’s evangelical federalism is warmly evangelis-
tic not in spite of, but because of, its adherence to a thoroughly Westminsterian
federalism. It would appear that Westminster federalism within Scotland was not
as necessarily cold as some have suggested and that it even could serve as an
engine for, rather than an obstacle to, evangelical zeal.
This potential warmth of federal theology points to a second implication of
the Marrow controversy. As federal theology continues to be a distinctive of the
Reformed tradition, the implications of different components of that theology
must be appreciated by those who would forward federal doctrine. A bi-covenantal
view does not guarantee a sound evangelicalism and a tri-covenantal view does
not ensure a lurking legalism, but the doctrine behind the Marrow controversy does
expose the potential implications of both views. An overall federal theology is
more than just the amassing of composite doctrinal parts; there are dynamics
within larger systems that can have profound effects on one’s overall under-
standing of the Gospel and one’s posture in the Gospel offer. As federal theology
continues its prominence within certain branches of the Reformed tradition,
consideration must be given to such dynamics, lest ‘acceptable’ components
yield ‘unacceptable’ systems.

Conclusion

In the Marrow controversy, over six decades of unresolved tensions within

Scottish federalism ignited. The result was not a clash between evangelicalism
   : , ,   357

and legalism, but rather a collision between two differing federal systems and
those systems’ understanding and expression of the Gospel offer. In this, the
Marrow controversy confirms that between federal theology and the evangelistic
mission of the Church, there is the tightest of connections. Thomas Boston and
Ebenezer Erskine suggest that perhaps that connection does not have to be what
generations of interpreters have thought it to be.

Bibliography

Primary Literature
Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638–1842 (1843). Edinburgh:
Edinburgh Printing and Publishing Company.
Associate Presbytery (1744). Act of the Associate Presbytery Concerning the Doctrine of
Grace. Edinburgh: David Duncan.
Associate Synod (Burgher) (1753). The Assembly’s Shorter Catechism Explained, by
Way of Question and Answer. Glasgow: Robert Urie.
Boston, Thomas (1853). The Complete Works of the Late Rev. Thomas Boston,
Ettrick: Including His Memoirs, Written by Himself. London: William Tegg
and Co.
‘A Copie of the letters that passed between Mr James Hadow principal of the Colledge
of St. Andrews & Mr Alexr Hamilton Minister of the Gospel at Airth. Transcribed
from the Authenticke copies April 27th 1717’. n.p.
Dickson, David and James Durham (1773). The Sum of Saving Knowledge in The
Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, with the Scripture Proofs at
Large: Together With the Sum of Saving Knowledge and Practical Use Thereof.
Edinburgh: Alex Kincaid.
Dunlop, William (1719). A Collection of Confessions of Faith, Catechisms, Directories,
Books of Discipline, & Of Public Authority in the Church of Scotland. Edinburgh:
James Watson.
Erskine, Ebenezer (1694). Notebook, dated on cover 1694–6&7. n.p.
Erskine, Ebenezer (1871). The Whole Works of the Late Rev. Ebenezer Erskine Minister
of the Gospel at Stirling Consisting of Sermons and Discourses on the Most Important
and Interesting Subjects. Edinburgh: Ogle & Murray.
Fraser, Donald (1831). The Life and Diary of the Reverend Ebenezer Erskine, A.M. of
Stirling, Father of the Secession Church. Edinburgh: William Oliphant.
Gillespie, Patrick (1661). The Ark of the Testament Opened, Or, The Secret of the Lord’s
Covenant unsealed, in a Treatise of the Covenant of Grace. London: R.C.
Gillespie, Patrick (1677). The Ark of the Covenant Opened: Or, a Treatise of the
Covenant of Redemption Between God and Christ, as the Foundation of the Covenant
of Grace. London: Tho. Parkhurst.
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Hadow, James (1719). The Record of God and Duty of Faith Therein Required.
Edinburgh: John Mosman and Company.
Hadow, James (1721). The Antinomianism of the Marrow of Modern Divinity Detected.
Edinburgh: John Mosman and Company.
Libel Mr James Webster, against Mr John Simson Professor of Divinity in the University
of Glasgow, given in to the very Reverend the Presbytery of Glasgow (n.d.).
Queries, Agreed unto by the Commission of the General Assembly; and put to these
Ministers, who gave in a Representation and Petition against the 5th and 8th Acts of
Assembly 1720. Together with the Answers given by these Ministers to the said
Queries (1722). n.p.
The Representation and Petition of Several Ministers of the Gospel, to the General
Assembly, Met at Edinburgh May 1721 (1721). Edinburgh.
Rollock, Robert (1844). Select Works of Robert Rollock. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society.
Rutherford, Samuel (1655). The Covenant of Life Opened: Or, a Treatise of the
Covenant of Grace. Edinburgh: A.A. for Robert Broun.
Turrettino, Francisco (1682). Institutio Theologiae Elencticae. Geneva: Samuel de
Tournes.
Videte Apologiam nostrum Contra Websterum & c. (1722). n.p.
Willison, John (1744). A Fair and Impartial Testimony, Essayed in Name of a Number
of Ministers, Elders, and Christian People of the Church of Scotland, unto the
Laudable Principles, Wrestlings and Attainments of that Church; and Against the
Backslidings, Corruptions, Divisions, and Prevailing Evils, both of former and present
times. Edinburgh: T. Lumisden and J. Robertson.
Willison, John (1794). A Sacramental Catechism: Or, a Familiar Instructor for Young
Communicants. Glasgow: David Niven.
Witsius, Herman (1822). The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man.
London: Baynes, Maitland, Lochhead, and Nelson.
Wodrow, Robert (1843). The Correspondence of the Rev. Robert Wodrow. Edinburgh:
Wodrow Society.

Secondary Literature
Lachman, David (1988). The Marrow Controversy 1718–1723: An Historical and
Theological Analysis. Edinburgh: Rutherford House.
Macleod, John (1973). Scottish Theology. Edinburgh: John Knox.
Muller, Richard (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic.
Myers, Stephen (2015). Scottish Federalism and Covenantalism in Transition: The
Theology of Ebenezer Erskine. Cambridge: James Clarke.
 25
Boundaries of Scottish Reformed
Orthodoxy, 1560–1700
R. Scott Spurlock

Introduction

This chapter proposes that key Reformed theological principles set in place at the
outset of Scotland’s Reformation fundamentally shaped the broad trajectory of
Scottish Protestantism and set the parameters of orthodoxy, while at the same
time establishing sometimes contradictory impulses that became increasingly
fragmentary by the middle of the seventeenth century and required recasting by
the eighteenth.

Parameters of Scottish Reformed Religion

In 1560 the Scottish Parliament established Protestantism as the state religion and
explicitly framed it with a theologically Reformed confession of faith. The docu-
ment set out key aspects that would typify Scottish Reformed theology. At the
outset, the preamble of the confession declared the new religion to be established
by the Estates of Scotland—the three historical constituencies in the Scottish
Parliament: the nobility, burghs, and clergy—‘with the Inhabitants of the same’,
meaning the whole nation of Scotland was being committed to upholding Prot-
estantism. The declaration further asserted the new religious paradigm was being
established for ‘the glory of God and maintenance of the commonwealth’
(Calderwood 1842–9: II, 16). Hence Protestantism became a hallmark for the
unification of the Scottish political state.
The roots of this ideology had been mooted by John Knox two years before the
Reformation when he wrote to the nobility declaring that any group, city, prov-
ince, or nation that professed the true Protestant religion had entered into the
‘same leag[u]e and covenant’ that God had made with Israel (Knox 1846–64: IV,
505). Thus, Scotland was, through the proclamation of the three Estates in
Parliament, committed by proxy to Protestantism at the national level, with the
whole population—like the Jews before them—falling under established coven-
anted obligations. As a result, from the outset of the Scottish Reformation the

R. Scott Spurlock, Boundaries of Scottish Reformed Orthodoxy, 1560–1700. In: The History of
Scottish Theology Volume I: Celtic Origins to Reformed Orthodoxy. Edited by David Fergusson and
Mark W. Elliott, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198759331.003.0025
360 .  

ecclesiology and application of baptism was highly inclusive, with the order of
baptism invoking Christ’s command to ‘preache and baptise all without excep-
tion’—seemingly a conflation of Mark 16:15 and Matthew 28:19 (Church of
Scotland 1565: 64). The corporate (and national) nature was also emphasized,
stressing that baptism within the community of faith is mark of the ‘league &
couenant made betwene God & vs, yt he wilbe our God. & we his people’
(Calderwood 1842–9: II, 101–2). This was framed in line with the advice of Calvin
to Knox that baptism should not be limited only to the children of the godly,
because ‘wherever the profession of Christianity has not wholly perished or
become extinct . . . no one is received to baptism in respect or favour of his father
alone, but on account of the perpetual covenant of God’ (Knox 1846–64: IV, 96).
Calvin explicitly referenced the thousand generation covenant (Exodus 20:6;
Deuteronomy 7:9) invoked in the 1556 Genevan service book (Maxwell 1965:
105) and his Institutes (VI.16.9), and it persisted in the Scottish liturgy from the
first version of 1562 (Church of Scotland 1565: 63).
While ecclesiology was inclusive, this mixed multitude created a strong need for
discipline to be ‘ministered . . . whereby vice is repressed and virtue nourished’
(Calderwood 1842–9: II, 28). In fact, this was understood to be so important that
from this foundational document of Scottish Protestantism discipline is identified
as one of the three marks of the true church along with the Word rightly preached
and the sacraments rightly administered (Calderwood 1842–9: II, 28). The First
Book of Discipline (1560) went on to assert ‘To Discipline must all Estates within
this Realm be subject if they offend’, that is the constituent components of
Scottish society, a view reiterated in the Second Book of Discipline (1578) (Kirk
1980: 169). Thus the early Reformed declarations on the nature of the Church,
while consistently emphasizing that it comprised confessing believers, implicitly
saddled the obligation to believe and be obedient upon all Scots. This should not
be surprizing for Knox, like other Reformed theologians where magisterial reform
represented a real possibility, tended to ‘confound church and nation’ and drew
heavily on the Old Testament for framing expectations of God’s engagement with
corporate peoples (Kyle 1984: 486). As such, comprehensive church attendance
was pressed, at least theoretically, so that ‘the reprobat may be joined in the society
of the elect, and may externallie use them the benefytes of the Word and
Sacraments’ (Calderwood 1842–9: II, 36). The challenge of governing a mixed
multitude fuelled the presbyterian imperative felt by men like Andrew Melville,
who played a prominent role in writing the Second Book of Discipline. In order to
define its breadth, while at the same time protecting its integrity, the Second Book
provided a threefold definition of the Church, comprising: (1) the visible church of
all confessors including hypocrites; (2) the invisible church made up of the elect
only; (3) the office bearers to whom the power to govern is given directly from
Christ. By providing a distinction between multiple forms of membership distinct
from those entrusted to rule, the definition sought to protect the integrity of
     , – 361

church governance and give it divinely sanctioned authority (Kirk 1980: 163).
Hence the role of discipline was not exclusionary, but rather sought to bring about
correction, reconciliation, and ultimately inclusion.
Church membership represented the expected norm, and the use of church
discipline, even excommunication, served to correct behaviour through social mar-
ginalization in order to restore membership and community (Knox 1846–64:
II, 230). Therefore, drawing directly from Calvin, while excommunication pre-
vented participation in the sacraments it did not ‘forbid . . . the hearing of
sermons’, because these may ‘occasion to repent’ (Church of Scotland 1565:
117). But more significant evidence for the treatment of the whole population as
part of a corporate body responsible for godly obedience and observation of
religious duties came in the practice of General Fasts. These nationally or locally
implemented periods of fasting and repentance were intended to avert God’s
judgement against the community and were compulsory for the whole popula-
tion. In this Scotland went beyond the Huguenots or even the Dutch in assuming
the Kirk’s discipline ‘was assumed to embrace the entire population of the
kingdom, irrespective of rank’ (Dawson 2009: 124).
The question of how this conceptual development took shape remains
unanswered. Within this tradition, the Reformed Church emphasized the distinc-
tion between civil and spiritual government, the former residing in the godly
monarch and magistrates, the latter being the preserve of the Church. Both realms
were of course equally subject to God; therefore they could work together for the
maintenance of a godly commonwealth, though the obedience to one could be
conditional on its obedience to the other. While scholars have addressed the
Scottish version of the two kingdoms theory, what has not received much analysis
is the fact that while the theory sets out two distinct but interrelated jurisdictions,
it implies a unitary constituency. Moreover, although theoretically voluntary and
conditional on profession of faith, membership was in fact coercively enforced
(Graham 1996: 74). By 1562 the General Assembly denounced the continued
pervasiveness of sin in the country and lamented the risk of God’s wrath being
poured out on the whole nation, not just members of the Church, and called for
Parliament to pronounce the death penalty for blasphemy, idolatry, and adultery
(Church of Scotland 1839–45: I, 21). In Reformed Scotland the concepts of the
church and the godly commonwealth inhabited the same space. From the church’s
perspective the role of the state was to facilitate and support the church, while
from the state’s perspective the discipline of the church upheld the morality and
integrity of the godly commonwealth. This was to a large degree set out in the
1567 General Assembly declaration that the coronation of the monarch would be
dependent on first making a ‘faithfull league and promise to the true kirk of God’
and its Reformed profession, a demand reiterated in the 1581 King’s Confession
that required the monarch and all those holding office to profess the Protestant
religion (Church of Scotland 1839–45: I, 108–10). By 1598, Parliament even
362 .  

declared that all subjects of the Scottish crown ‘should embrace the religion
presently professed’ and ordered all subjects to hear the word preached and
partake in the sacraments (Scotland, Parliament 2007–19: 1598/10/2). Therefore,
to be fully Scottish was to be Protestant.

Covenant and the Unity of Early Modern Scottish Theology

It has recently been claimed that Scotland’s long Reformation should be under-
stood as the formation of a confessional state, albeit this assertion under-
appreciates the role a distinctive theological tradition played in the development
of Protestant Scotland (Stewart 2016: 12). Arguably the most prudent study of
early modern Scottish Reformed theology, and its broad coherence across pres-
byterian and episcopal predilections, is David Mullan’s Scottish Puritanism,
1590–1638. However, this too identifies a purported paradox in Scottish Reformed
theology originating in Knox, who introduced, ‘even if unwittingly . . . two distinct
covenanting ideas: one, a national, corporate, sociological construct absent from
Calvin, the other very much focused on the individual salvation of those elected to
grace from eternity’ (Mullan 2000: 179). T. F. Torrance also claimed an innate,
albeit only nascent, tension in Knox that later Scottish theologians developed into
a ‘bifurcation’ between an evangelical tradition that remained true to Knox and
Calvin and the federal theology of the covenanters which resulted, in his view, in
two distinct traditions of Scottish Reformed theology (Torrance 1996: 64). Within
this milieu determining what is orthodox and what held a distinctive Scottish
theological tradition together has become obfuscated.
However, a close reading of Calvin demonstrates the foundations from which
Knox could derive both the principles of a broad inclusive external covenant
(general election) and the soteriologically specific covenant of election (special
election) directly from Geneva. The 1585 Edinburgh edition of William Lawne’s
abridged version of Calvin’s Institutes, presented in a dialectic, quasi-catechetical
form, applies a particularly nationalistic focus where the chapter on ‘Eternal
Election’ discusses Abraham (III.21.7).¹ It asks the question ‘Why is not the
general election[n] of one people alwayes sure and certain?’ before explaining
that since ‘God doeth not straight way geve those the Spirit of regeneration . . .
vntill the end in the same couenant’ the elect will experience justification while the

¹ USTC claims this Thomas Vautrollier first edition of An Abridgement of the Institution of
Christian Religion was published in London, despite an Edinburgh imprint and an approbation ‘cum
privilegio Regali’—representing permission by the Scottish authorities. However, the publication of
James VI’s The essayes of a prentise in the divne art of Poesie (1584) and a royal proclamation in 1585
both with Vautrollier’s imprint and the same ‘Anchora Spei’ device suggest all three works were
produced in Edinburgh, as he did not remove to London until 1586.
     , – 363

reprobate will not. This is not surprising, but it is framed in an overarching

discussion of the general election of the ‘whole issue of Abraham’ including
Ishmael, Esau, and the tribes of Israel. Yet, the text reminds the reader,
referencing ‘generall election’, ‘it lieth in [God’s] will, what shall be the estate of
euery nation’ (Lawne 1585: 238–9). He further emphasized the promise of God’s
mercy down to a thousand generations (Lawne 1585: 96, 349). This provided a
powerful model for understanding a visible and inclusive church, particularly
when the covenant promises were understood as generational, and demanded
active pastoral working among a mixed multitude of the specially elect and
reprobates. What will follow is a reassessment of the role that covenant played
in framing both a (compulsorily) inclusive ecclesiology and a near comprehen-
sively held emphasis on limited atonement (even in cases where men like Fraser of
Brea proposed the theoretical possibility of universal atonement) which together
demanded a priority of emphasis on practical, pastoral theology and comprehen-
sive social discipline. This inclusivist and pastoral approach to Reformed theology
provided—arguably—the most schismatically resistant national Protestant church
in the first century of the Reformation (Donaldson 1972).
The underpinning schema of early Reformed theology in Scotland was God’s
covenantal engagement with the world and it was this framework that enabled
the expectation of inclusive outward membership, the preaching of salvation for
the elect, and comprehensive discipline of the whole community to be upheld.
As Robert Rollock famously declared, ‘all the worde of God appertaines to some
couenant: for God speaks nothing to man without the couenant’ (Rollock 1849:
I, 6). While Rollock played a pivotal role in the formulation of covenant
theology, the soteriological emphasis upon the effectual calling of the elect has
overshadowed his emphasis on the ongoing need for the Covenant of Works.
One covenant is not displaced by the other in his thought. Instead, like Zachar-
ius Ursinus, he viewed them as a singular promise in twofold expression
(Rollock 1849: I, 34). While the Covenant of Grace brings salvation to the
individual through their election in Christ, the Covenant of Works ‘provides a
means for conversion’ and constraining the confessing community to godliness.
Hence Rollock emphasizes that God ‘hath manifested the whole doctrine of both
covenants to his Church’ (Rollock 1849: I, 274). Rollock understood the church
to be broad and inclusive and not simply comprising those who find assurance in
their sense of election. Speaking of both church and commonwealth, he declared
it ‘is a minister of Sathan, that seeing a man faithfull in any calling, goeth about to
seuer them . . . whom God hath ioyned together’ (Rollock 1603: 15) But whom has
God so joined together?
For Rollock, it is a Christ-professing community, expressed in both church and
commonwealth. He, like Knox before him and the majority of early modern
Reformed Scottish theologians after him, relied primarily on the Old Testament
for interpreting God’s engagement with corporate bodies. He argued that both the
364 .  

covenants of works and grace had also been struck with the ‘old church and
people’ from ‘Adam to the Apostles’, though the Covenant of Grace was not fully
clear (Woolsey 2012: 519). ‘O how loath was he to cast away that nation that
he had chosen of old from among all nations!’, Rollock declared. ‘A people that he
hath once begun with, O how loath will he be to cast away that people! Scotland
hath a proof of this, I dare say it!’ (Rollock 1849: II, 525). In fact, elsewhere,
Rollock described ‘the whole kingdom of Christ’ to relate to both church and
commonwealth (1849: II, 12). While scholarly attention has rightly emphasized
the significance of Rollock’s contribution to the development of federal theology,
particularly in relation to soteriological formulations, he also needs to be recog-
nized for his continuity with the ecclesiology and sacralizing of the Christian
commonwealth that typified Scotland’s Reformation (Letham 1983). Rollock
understood covenant to be the binding agent of a Christian commonwealth,
when it recognized the headship of Christ (Rollock 1603: 176). For Rollock the
visible church and the Christian society, or commonwealth as he termed it, were
inextricably linked and although they possessed distinct jurisdictions, they repre-
sented a shared constituency. His views were spread widely through his writings,
preaching, and the pulpits of the many ministers whom he trained.
Robert Bruce shared these impulses. Like Rollock, Bruce preached the Coven-
ant of Grace to knowingly mixed congregations, emphasizing that God only
dwelled in the hearts of the elect—and they were a ‘chosen few’ (Bruce 1617:
300). Therefore, just as there had been among the Israelites, Bruce emphasized the
continued need for preaching the Covenant of Works and the rule of the law
because they ‘maketh them keepe an externall society’ (Bruce 1617: 341–2). This
thought follows directly in line with Calvin’s threefold use of the law, but the
application of it to a nation was a significant move beyond its implementation in a
city state. While Bruce may continue to be known principally for the intimacy of
his pastoral and sacramental theology, he equally upheld the national nature of the
Kirk and the imperative for discipline. In deeply pastoral sermons on Isaiah 38,
published posthumously, he reminded his audience of the blessings and obliga-
tions resting upon Scotland, declaring that God had once chosen the Jews but had
translated his tabernacle to Scotland (Bruce 1617: 300).
These priorities should not be thought the sole preserve of Reformed theolo-
gians of a presbyterian outlook. The 1616 General Assembly, which had a heavily
episcopalian disposition comprising all Scotland’s bishops and a large number of
representatives from the north-east, including Patrick Forbes of Corse, produced a
proposed new confession of faith that emphatically declared the doctrine of
double predestination as well as profession of the Protestant faith and member-
ship in the Kirk as requirements of being ‘true subjects’ of the Scottish crown
(Church of Scotland 1839–45: I, 1132–39). In the locality, men like William
Cowper, minister of Perth (1595–1613) and then bishop of Galloway (1613–19),
expressed Reformed, election-based soteriology and upheld a covenant-based
     , – 365

inclusivity in his ecclesiology that demanded rigorous discipline, while at the same
time remaining deeply committed to defending episcopal government (Todd
2004). A similar approach might be understood in John Forbes of Corse’s
emphasis on the corporate nature of election in what he termed ‘compredestina-
tion’, which served as the foundation for his high doctrine of the sacraments
(Torrance 1996: 88). These principles were largely uncontested by supporters of
presbyterianism or episcopacy, and despite periods of vehement disagreement
over liturgical innovations there is little evidence of any sectarian impetus in
Scotland over matters relating to the locus of salvation or the comprehensive
scope of the national church. Even critics of the Five Articles of Perth, whom the
bishops accused of being nonconformists and meeting in ‘conventicles’ during times
of public worship, denied schismatic or separatist intentions (Coffey 1997: 192).
Scottish nonconformists of the 1620s remained thoroughly committed to the
principle of a national church and Rutherford, who had participated in conventicles,
later declared attendance at private worship during the time of public worship to be
‘Brownism . . . the act of separation’ (Rutherford 1984: 578–9). Therefore an undiv-
ided national church remained a shared principle rooted in covenantal assumptions.

From the Covenant of Works to a Twofold

Covenant of Grace

Fusion of commonwealth and church was not necessarily explicit in the 1581
King’s Confession, although David Calderwood would indeed look back on this
event as formal recognition of Scotland’s covenanted status (Calderwood 1620:
26–7). Yet this was not uniformly recognized in the intervening period, because in
1600 James Melville called Scotland to follow the Judean kings Asa and Josiah in
making ‘solemne Covenants and Bands . . . betwix God and the King, God and the
peiple, and betwix the King and the peiple, beginning in this present Assemblie,
and sa going to Provincialles, Presbyteries, and throw everie Congregatioun of
this land’ (Melville 1842: 490–1; Calderwood 1842–9: VI, 107). This formalizing
of the corporate expectations in trilateral commitments between God, the king,
and the people of Scotland made what had been implicit now explicit. Eleven
years previously, a band had been subscribed on the order of the privy council by
‘all noblemen, barons, gentlemen and others’ promising to uphold the true
religion, the monarchy, and the nation in the face of feared international plots
(Calderwood 1842–9: V, 49). In 1596, the General Assembly renewed the King’s
Confession, explicitly calling it a covenant, after which ‘particular synods and
presbyteries’ followed suit under the direction of it being a ‘covenant between God
and his ministrie’ (Calderwood 1842–9: V, 388, 433). In response to Melville’s call
for national covenanting, the General Assembly duly ordered in 1601 that a fast
366 .  

and ‘renewing of the covenant with God . . . to be keeped universallie in one weeke’
(Calderwood 1842–9: VI, 112). This was replicated in 1606 when the king ‘with all
his subjects standing fast bound to God by a most solemne covenant, sworne and
subscribed throughout the land’ (Calderwood 1842–9: VI, 394). John Forbes of
Alford, soon to be exiled in Middleburg, warned the General Assembly of the
gravity of the covenant ‘all the whole land’ had made with God and urged that it
must not be broken (Calderwood 1842–9: VI, 474). The importance in asserting
this here is that even before the signing of the National Covenant in 1638, the
whole of Scotland was understood to be explicitly in covenant with God.
Therefore the National Covenant did not represent an innovation, but rather
confirmation of a perceived reality. The full significance of this, however, only
came to be unequivocally expressed in the years that followed. One of the key
expressions of covenanting theology in the 1640s and 1650s came in the form of a
biblical commentaries series orchestrated by David Dickson (Gribben and Mullan
2009: 14–15). This intentional collaboration drew on both university-based aca-
demics and parish ministers, spanning the Protester/Resolutioner divide. Noted
for their similarity in approach and style, the commentaries upheld in the clearest
of terms the dual emphases on the covenanted obligation of a people elected by
God and the soul-nurturing required for ministering to tender consciences. The
themes, which reflected Scotland’s own covenanted status, naturally came to the
fore as the majority of the commentaries addressed Old Testament books. In his
commentary on the minor prophets, George Hutcheson declared in unequivocal
terms ‘it doth contribute to set out the glory of Christs Kingdome under the
Gospel . . . he brings whole Nations in visible Covenant with him, and maketh a
whole Nation to become a National visible Church’ (Hutcheson 1654: 61–2).
While discussing God’s dealing with Israel and Judah, Hutcheson clearly had
his eye on Scotland. However, even in a commentary on Matthew, the national
nature of the church came to the fore in David Dickson’s analysis: ‘Whosoever are
born within the compasse of a Nationall covenant with God, are children of the
Kingdome, that is, have an external title to be heirs of the Kingdome’ (Dickson
1651: 86). Rutherford and other covenanters shared this view that the nation
was indeed a church. In fact, Rutherford went as far as to declare that no child
born in Scotland, even if their parents were reprobates, should be denied
baptism on the grounds of being born in a covenanted nation (Rutherford
1655: 76). David Dickson rejected the need to enquire into an individual’s
election or reprobation as a precondition to membership in the external coven-
ant of church membership, because God ‘excludeth no man from embraceing
the covenant; but, on the contrair, he opens the door to all that are called, to
enter into (as it were) the outer court of his dwelling house’ (Dickson 1664:
94–5). This was possible in the covenanting mind because of a recasting of the
imposition of law and the obligation of church membership as integral parts of
the Covenant of Grace (expressed as a general election of the nation), rather
     , – 367

than the Covenant of Works. Rutherford identified the events at Sinai as a

‘darker dispensation’ of the Covenant of Grace (Rutherford 1655: 58–65). He
understood this by recasting Rollock’s view of a single covenant with a twofold
expression (works and grace) into a singular Covenant of Grace with ‘external’
and ‘internal’ dispensations. While only the elect were subject to the internal
Covenant of Grace, all of Scotland, like Israel before them, were partakers of an
external Covenant of Grace which bound them to godly obedience. It should be
noted Rutherford recognized the problem with forcing individuals to express
faith if they had none, but emphasized the failure of an individual to fulfil
religious obligations as undermining a Christian society (Rutherford 1649:
51ff.). This general principle seems to have become implicitly accepted in
covenanter thinking, even if expressed diversely, but it should not be viewed
as a wholesale shift from ideas derived from Calvin and Knox and applied (if not
fully articulated) in the early years of the Scottish Reformation. The bitter
divisions of the Protester/Resolution dispute during the Interregnum did not
represent a conflict over the accepted soteriological and ecclesiological prin-
ciples set out above, but rather a vehement disagreement about how to deal with
the loss of control by the godly over the reprobate majority. As Hugh Binning
put it ‘What is now the great blot of our visible church? Here it is, the most part
are not God’s children, but called so; and it is the greater blot that they are called
so, and are not’ (Binning 1839–40: II, 409).
Both Resolutioners and Protesters thus agreed the church should be an inclu-
sive mixed multitude, but disagreed about how to wrestle back control from the
ungodly. The abject failure of the covenanting movement caused a great existen-
tial crisis within the Kirk. One of these expressions came in the form of the first
substantive challenges to the nationally constituted Church. In the wake of
Dunbar, a number of queries about the very nature of a covenanted nation
appeared. The most significant and sustained of these from a Reformed theo-
logical perspective led to the formation of an Independent congregation in
Aberdeen in November 1652 under the leadership of Alexander Jaffray, former
provost of Aberdeen, and a number of academic staff from Marischal College.
Their primary concerns were focused on the lack of real discipline that could be
applied in a comprehensive national church, resulting in mixed local congrega-
tions and the inevitable inclusion of ungodly communicants in the Lord’s Supper
which they claimed ‘profaned’ the Lord’s table. The congregation disbanded
before the end of the Interregnum, but it is significant for being the first explicit
claim for an ecclesiology that prioritized limited church membership (Spurlock
2007: 100–40). Similar claims during Robert Browne’s visit to Scotland in the
1580s found no traction (Calderwood 1842–9: IV, 2, 3). Ultimately, the Interreg-
num government shattered the vision of a comprehensive national Kirk by
suspending the General Assembly from 1653 and explicitly making attendance,
membership, and submission to presbyterian discipline voluntary.
368 .  

Restoration Recasting

The Restoration settlement, which systematically deconstructed presbyterian

hegemony and eventually banned subscription to the covenants, raised serious
challenges for a nation committed to these principles for nearly a century. For
men like James Stewart, the situation was clear, ‘almost as to the number of
persons, the Church of Scotland was of equal extent with the Nation, and in
that respect of all other National Churches, did most resemble the old Church of
the Iewes’ and as such ‘this whole Nation is perpetually joyned unto the Lord’
(Stewart 1667: A2r–A3, 183–4). As a result of Scotland ‘being a nation so solemnly
and expresly engaged by Covenant unto God, & one with another . . . there lyeth
upon all and every one of us an indispensible duty’, which explicitly included
upholding the presbyterian government of the church (Stewart 1667: 150). Simi-
larly, men like John Guthrie, James Renwick, and Alexander Shields claimed the
Scotland persisted in being a covenanted land and the obligations of the people to
be members of a single visible church could not be abandoned (Guthrie 1663: 2, 8;
Renwick and Sheills 1744: 23, 39). The crux of the matter for them was not
ecclesiological; they upheld the ideal of a nearly all-inclusive church just as the
Restoration Church did—a commitment they demonstrated by criminalizing the
Quakers and Baptists in particular, and all dissenting in general. What the hardline
covenanters identified above could not abide was the usurpation of presbyterian
church governance. However, this was a contested point because the denunciation
of episcopacy in the 1638 National Covenant, known as the Glasgow Declaration—
added at the General Assembly held in Glasgow in December 1638—was viewed by
many as a post-subscription addendum applied retrospectively ten months after
signing began. As a result, Andrew Honyman, a covenanter who accepted the
bishopric of Orkney in 1664, argued Scotland continued to be a nation in covenant
with God in the tradition established in 1581, but free from the ‘contrived [ambi-
tions to] extirpate Episcopacy’ (Honyman 1662: 24). He therefore turned the tables
on the author of Naphtali and the post-Restoration covenanters accusing them of
schism ‘Under pretence of keeping one Article of the Covenant, and that not rightly
sensed, they are most guilty of the breach of many of them’ (Honyman 1669: 142).
Robert Leighton, who also accepted a Restoration bishopric, shared this view. For
Leighton the covenants’ faults—both National Covenant and Solemn League and
Covenant—lay with their focus on external things: ‘Religion did not consist of
external things, whether of gouernment or ceremonies, but “in righteousness,
peac, and joy of,” &c.’. He argued Scotland entered into the National Covenant
too rashly and needed ‘to be repented for’, because ‘we placd mor religion in
opposing ther [episcopal] ceremonies then in the weightiest matters of the law of
God’ (Brodie 1863: 221). Leighton too persisted in understanding the people of
Scotland as being a covenanted people, but stressed God’s unilateral covenant
faithfulness rather than the covenant’s bilateral nature (Leighton 1693: 333).
     , – 369

As early as 1661 Leighton told Alexander Brodie, with reference Psalm 99, that
in ‘Gods dealing with his people, he was favourable to them though he took
vengeance on their Inventions. A good Cause and a Covenant with God, will not
shelter an Impenitent people from sharper Correction’ (Leighton 1692: 220). Thus
the judgement against Scotland had been a corrective for his people. Leighton did
not deny the external covenant, or the national nature of the church, instead he
emphasized God’s commitment to fulfilling covenant promises in the lives of the
elect. However, for the vast majority of Scots, interpreting the correct path in the
wake of the Restoration’s condemnation of the covenants was not easy. Alexander
Brodie might be described as a partial conformist, as he attended church, but
refused to participate in episcopal communion. He continued to believe that the
Scots, like the people of Israel, could covenant and swear for themselves and their
progeny to maintain the worship of God and renounce idolatry (Brodie 1863:
367). Though he wrestled with his conscience to make sense of the best course of
action he could not ‘unchurch’ the national Kirk by separating into conventicle
worship, although he did occasionally attend communion in conventicles, and
‘held it lawful to tak baptism from thes that conformed’ (Brodie 1863: 378). The
views of hardliners like Stewart, Renwick, and Sheills as well as conformists of
different kinds such as Honyman, Leighton, and Brodie all upheld the obligation
to a broad, inclusive church. They also shared views of Reformed soteriology
(limited election) that would fall within the bounds of orthodoxy. What they
disagreed on was whether there was a jure divino form of church government, but
this arguably did not drive any of them beyond the hallmarks of the early
Reformed principles, which remained intact.

Reframing the Bonds

The fruits of Scotland’s Protestant theology were not all born in the Reformed
tradition; in fact arguably Scotland’s most distinctive theological contribution
came as a reaction against it. Robert Barclay (1648–90) received his education in
the Scots College in Paris under the tutelage of his uncle, and was exposed to a
diversity of religious opinion through the household of his maternal grandfather,
Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun. His own convincement occurred in 1666,
after which he became the primary theological spokesperson for the Society of
Friends. In 1676 he published Theologiae Verè Christianae Apologia, with an
English version appearing two years later. By the end of the eighteenth century
it had gone through forty-eight English language editions, as well as multiple
Dutch, German, and French and singular publications in Spanish and Danish.
Norwegian and Arabic editions followed in the nineteenth century. In its
original Scottish context, Barclay’s voice resounded as a counterblast to a
century of Reformed theological dominance, disputing limited atonement and
370 .  

the imperative for a comprehensive visible church. Unlike previous Quaker

theologians, Barclay approached the subject systematically and referenced
patristic, medieval, Catholic, and Protestant thinkers with equal clarity. This
was the result of his own theological formation. His Apology followed a pattern
set out in his earlier A Catechism and Confession of Faith (1673), which loosely
framed its doctrinal points in response to the Westminster Confession of Faith,
but with some significant reordering that reflected four key theological distinc-
tives to the Reformed tradition of Scotland: the nature of Scripture, the scope of
salvation, the immediacy of Christ, and by correlation the nature of the church.
Whereas the Westminster Confession begins with Holy Scripture, Barclay begins
with ‘The Foundation of True Knowledge’ and ‘Immediate Revelation’, before
turning to Scripture (and completely ignoring God’s eternal decree). This is con-
sistent with the broader Quaker belief that the inner light is the same revelatory
source experienced by the biblical authors, and therefore is essential for appropri-
ately understanding and interpreting Scripture. In this respect, Quakers emphasized
the source of revelation being the Spirit of God as revealed in Scripture, rather than
Scripture being the revelation of God itself. Scripture thus becomes secondary as a
source of revelation and subordinate to the spirit (Barclay 1678: sig. B3v). Barclay’s
starting point of a highly Christocentric doctrine of revelation, with an emphasis on
the immediacy of God, rather than emphasizing the sovereignty prioritized by
Reformed theologians, led to a radically different theological system. He decried
the rigorous doctrine of predestination, declaring ‘The gospel invites all; and
certainly, by the gospel, Christ intended not to deceive and delude the greater part
of mankind, when he invites and crieth, saying: “Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”’ (Barclay 1678: 120). According to
Elton Trueblood, the innovation of Barclay is the prioritization of the ‘Logos
doctrine’, and its centrality and underpinning for his whole theological system
(Trueblood 1968: 155). Barclay did not deny the Fall, but argued that Christ’s
passion made possible the universal redemption of humankind because all people
are able to be ‘disjoyned from this evil Seed, and united to the Divine Light’ (Barclay
1678: 57). Barclay’s view that the free offer of the Gospel is available to all would be
foundational to subsequent Quaker theology (as it had been before), but it was
through his reading of Barclay that John Wesley came to embrace his concept of
prevenient grace that allowed his re-appropriation of ‘Arminianism’ (Crofford
2010: 78–83). In this respect alone, Barclay’s impact is near immeasurable. Quakers
would persist in Scotland as a remnant, but Barclay’s formalizing of Quaker
theology and his far-reaching networks affirmed their significance in a growing
transatlantic community. The Apology stood the test of time and served as the
intellectual justification and defence of Friends’ theology for more than a century
and anticipated later criticism of the Reformed tradition. Even Voltaire, who could
be scathing of religious incredulity, noted that Barclay’s apology was ‘a work as well
drawn up as the subject could possibly admit’ (Voltaire 1763: 50).
     , – 371

Softening Demands

Quakerism would be a minority response, but the presbyterian vision of Scotland

required recasting in light of the crisis brought by the Restoration. This took place
in two key ways. First, John Brown of Wamphray presented perhaps the most
significant reinterpretation of the Scottish tradition in post-Restoration Scotland,
and allowed for a de-escalation of the inflexible hardline Covenanter commitment
to national comprehension. Writing out of his Dutch experience, Brown empha-
sized the distinction of the coetus electorum (the elect) and the coetus vocatorum
(the called). While this was not an innovation in Scottish Reformed thinking,
he appropriated the distinction to reject the comprehensive claims of the
Roman Catholic Church and the sectarian impulses that the New England
Congregationalism and the Independents advocated (Macpherson 1903: 77).
He accepted that there is an outward covenant that holds the visible church
together, but whereas the formulations of the 1640s led Rutherford, Stewart,
and hardline Restoration covenanters to demand national obligation, Brown
re-emphasized the individual acceptance of the covenant through profession of
faith as being the hallmark of church external membership. Thus a church need
not be inclusive of an entire nation or people; neither should all professors be
automatically admitted to communion. Largely a result of the covenanting
revolution’s failure and his own exile in the Netherlands, Brown provided an
ecclesiological framework that removed the compulsory obligation of the non-
elect to profess a feigned faith in order to be admitted to a comprehensive
visible church. For Brown, the obligation of the Scots for godly obedience
remained the ideal, but the emphasis on the visible church was replaced by
the priority of the invisible church (Brown 1678: 360). In this regard, Brown of
Wamphray created space within Scotland’s Reformed tradition to reorder its
ecclesiology.
The second change came in a re-prioritizing of particular election and the
resultant personal faith. At the Restoration, Patrick Gillespie emphasized the chal-
lenges the covenants had wrought and the sense of frustration that must have been
felt by those drawn into the visible church, but who were ‘bastards’ to the Covenant
of Grace by being accounted members of the visible church but not recipients of the
promises made to their fathers (Gillespie 1661: 345). Gillespie represents a shift in
post-Restoration Reformed theology reflective of the growing discomfort with the
inclusive ecclesiology of the covenanters and what it was perceived to have wrought.
Although Gillespie did not fully articulate all the implications of his view, he did
emphasize primacy of the Covenant of Grace as the ‘gospel-covenant’ and its direct
import for the individual. More broadly, the suppression of presbyterianism and
corporate covenanting led to an emphasis on a kind of vital religious piety that
shaped an important sub-culture in the Church of Scotland from the 1660s through
to the early eighteenth century (Mullan 2010), which would set the stage for
372 .  

evangelicalism. In relation to ecclesiology, this also had an important part to play,

which is evident in the thinking of Thomas Boston. He explicitly rejected the
compulsory nature of Scottish baptismal practice, framed around a thousand gen-
eration covenant, and Rutherford’s view that all should be baptized where the Gospel
is preached. Instead, Boston reiterated the need for a heartfelt, personal profession of
faith by parents as a precondition for baptism and admission to church membership.
According to Macpherson, he drew his views directly from Rutherford, but radically
reinterpreted them (Macpherson 1903: 85–9). Boston rejected a sect-like under-
standing of the church, which excluded all apart from the consistently godly, but
demanded admission be voluntary rather than proscribed. While Boston’s ideas were
not new, his re-prioritization of the necessity for a vibrant profession of faith as a
prerequisite for church membership and his rejection of the obligatory nature of the
Kirk permitted a reconceptualizing of the role a presbyterian church might play in
Scotland and opened a pathway for Secessionism.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it was rare during the first century-and-a-half of Protestant Scot-

land for the imperatives of a broad ecclesiology and the personal nature of
salvation through particular election to be abandoned as fundamental principles
of the established church—whether presbyterian or episcopalian. They continued
to be held in—sometimes fragile—tension. As John Coffey has rightly argued,
what historians (and theologians) have failed to acknowledge is ‘that the orthodox
believed in both divine predetermination and human agency. As well as repudi-
ating Arminianism they wished to counteract the Antinomian claim that the elect
person simply had to “let go and let God”. Too many scholars have concentrated
on one of these at the expense of the other, so producing seriously distorted
accounts of theologians’ (Coffey 1997: 139). It is in fact the prioritization of these
impulses, framed in the light of Old Testament narratives of God dealing with a
chosen people that served as the foundation of Scottish Reformed theology. From
the late sixteenth through most of the seventeenth century the parameters of
Scottish Reformed ‘orthodoxy’ were set as an inclusive and uniform national
church (based on covenant obligations) and the soteriological surety of election
at the personal level. These two priorities provided a coherent framework under-
stood to be complementary and largely cohesive (even vehement debates over the
form of church government did not displace these). The failure of the covenanting
movement, however, began to show cracks in the integrity of this edifice which led
to an increasing emphasis on either an individually focused ‘evangelical federal-
ism’ or an externally and corporate prioritizing ‘covenantalism’ within Scottish
Reformed theology. Although no references to the National Covenant or Solemn
League and Covenant were made in the re-establishment of presbyterianism in
     , – 373

1690, these impulses persisted in the Kirk into the eighteenth century. It was
diverging emphases on the personal and corporate imperatives in Scotland’s
Reformed tradition, and attempts to address them, that drove the Secessionism
of the eighteenth century (Myers 2016).

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 Index of Names

Adam of Dryburgh 39–51 Balnaves, Henry 182–4

Adam of Eynsham 39 Barclay, Robert 369–70
Adam of Rewley 49, 50 Barclay, William 157
Adamson, John 92, 109, 202, 218, 221 Baron, Robert 120, 204, 279, 289
Adamson, Patrick 61, 64, 138, 195 Barratt, Alexandra 49
Adomnán of Iona 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20 Barry, John C. 148, 332n
Ahnert, Thomas 293 Barth, Karl 7, 199, 247
d’Ailly, Pierre 83, 92, 105 Bawcutt, Priscilla 144
Albert the Great 65 Beaton, Archbishop James 146–7, 174
Aleandro, Girolamo 146 Beaton, Cardinal David 58, 144, 182, 183
Alesius, Alexander 168, 180–1 Bede, The Venerable 14, 15, 16, 17, 131, 187
Alexander, Alexander 262 Beeke, Joel R. 272
Alighieri, Dante see Dante Bellarmin, Robert 120
Allan, David 222 St Benedict 16, 39n
Allane, Alexander see Alesius, Alexander Benedict, Philip 196
Allen, Elizabeth 265 Bernard of Clairvaux 25, 39n, 41, 50, 298
Allen, Michael 191, 195–6, 198, 199 Bertie, David, M. 298n, 300, 303, 305
Amalarius of Metz 55 Beza, Theodore 150, 161, 162, 163, 165, 192, 203,
Ames, William 245 213, 219, 289, 331, 334
Anderson, Alan Orr 13 Biel, Gabriel 55, 82, 145
Anderson, Duncan 170 Bierma, Lyle 316
Andrew of St Victor 43, 48, 50 Binning, Hugh 367
Anselm 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 70, 75, 76, 77, 84, Blackadder, Archbishop Robert 145
85–6, 100 Boece, Hector 92, 145, 148
Aquinas, Thomas 33, 34, 57, 69, 70–1, 72, 84, 85, Boethius 34, 73, 220
90, 91, 102, 110, 120, 256, 258, 339 den Bok, Nico 36
Arbuckle, Alexander 60 Bonar, Andrew A. 248
Arbuthnot, Alexander 168 Bonar, Horatius 193, 194, 201–2
Ardura, Bernard 45, 47n Bonaventure 33, 34, 80
Aristotle 33, 69, 70, 74, 84, 87, 109–10, 111–13, Borsje, Jacqueline 16
116–20, 144, 145, 218, 255–9, 261, 339 Bos, F. L. 213
Arminius, James or Jacob 205, 214, 245, 285 Boston, Thomas 268, 323, 342–57, 371–2
van Asselt, Willem J. 198 Bothwell, Earl of 135
Aubrey, James 134 Bourrilly, V. L. 174
Aubrey, John 141, 300, 304 Bouwsma, William 218
Augustine of Hippo 12, 17, 18, 20, 25, 29, 31, 32, Boyd, Robert 216–18, 254, 315
33, 34, 35, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, Boyd, Zachary or Zachariah 170, 228, 235, 315
54, 63, 65, 70, 74, 76, 84, 91, 101, 150, 212, Bradwardine, Thomas 83, 85, 87, 90, 91
217, 220, 221, 244, 289, 298, 301 Bremer, Francis 235, 248
Averroes 70 Broadie, Alexander 4, 81, 87, 88, 96, 109, 110,
Avicenna 70, 71 112, 253
Brodie of Brodie Alexander 232, 368–9
de Baar, Mirjam 302 Brown of Wamphray John 321–2, 371
Backus, Irena 196 Brown, Callum 8
Baillie, John 5, 6 Brown, Keith. M. 174, 182, 333, 334, 336, 337
Bak, Felix M. 69 Brown, Shirley Ann 13
378   

Browne, Robert 367 Constable, Giles 35

Bruce, Robert 64–5, 168, 170, 200, 210–12, 217, Coolman, Boyd Taylor 34
239, 289n, 364 Corrigan, Alex 171
Buchanan, George 145, 149–51, 156, 157, 158, Coulter, Dale M. 27
185, 191 Courcelle, Pierre 45
Bullinger, Heinrich 127, 155, 184, 185, 189, 191, Courtenay, William 86
193, 197, 199, 200, 229, 240 Cowper, William 228, 364
Bulloch, James 1 Cox, Richard 127–8
Burns, James H. 81, 82, 83, 87, 91, 146, 150, 157 Craig of Riccarton, Thomas 331, 334, 336, 339
Burrell, S. A. 238 Craig, John 64–6, 194, 197, 201–2
Burton, Simon 287–8 Craig, William 109, 315
Busch, Eberhard 193, 196 Cranmer, Thomas 128, 160
Butler, Dom Cuthbert 26 Cranston, David 98, 110
Butler, Dugald 222, 297 Craw, Paul 160
Büttgen, Philippe 110 Crofford, Jane E. A. 370
Crooke, Samuel 245
Caird, Edward 9 Cross, Richard 101, 102
Cairns, John W. 331 Cú Chuimne 15
Calamy, Edmund 266, 272 Cyprian 63, 152
Calderwood, David 137–8, 202, 230, 319–20,
359–60, 365–6, 367 Daiches, Salis 9
Calvin, John 60, 62, 63, 64, 66, 110, 117, 125, 127, Dalrymple, Sir James 255, 329, 339
128, 129–30, 138, 141, 150, 154, 162, 171, Dante 33, 167
189, 191, 192, 194, 195, 197, 200, 202, 203, Darnley, Henry 135
225, 229, 235, 236, 240, 244, 288, 289, 301 Davidson, John 2, 194
see also Calvinism Davidson, William L. 4
Cameron, Euan 128, 131, 134, 148 Davie, Grace 8
Cameron, James K. 125, 178, 179, 181, 213, 214, Dawson, Jane 5, 124, 130, 131, 135, 146, 170,
217, 228, 337 171, 185, 361
Cameron, John 217, 315–17, 318 Denlinger, Aaron Clay 189, 195, 200, 201, 204,
Campi, Emidio 189, 196, 197 285n, 286n, 287n, 296n
Cant, Andrew 260 Dennison Jr, James T. 193, 196
Ó Carragáin, Éamonn 13, 20 Descartes, René 121, 260, 261, 264
Ó Carragáin, Tomás 15 Devine, Tom 8
Carlson, Leland H. 236 Dickson, David 220, 228, 229, 230, 231, 240–1,
Cassiodorus 16, 17, 18 242, 243–4, 245–6, 247, 249, 250,
Chalmers, Thomas 5 352, 366
Charles-Edwards, Thomas 14 Dilworth, Mark 145
Chatillon, Jean 25 (Pseudo-) Dionysius 25, 30, 32, 33, 48
Chenu, Marie-Dominique 25 Van Dixhoorn, Chad 265, 266, 267, 269, 274,
Cicero 87, 112, 216 275, 276
Clark, Kenneth 19 Dolezalek, Gero 331
Clebsch, W. A. 175n Donaldson, Gordon 190, 193, 363
Clyde, James Avon 337 Dotterweich, Martin Holt 160, 183, 184
Cochlaeus, Johannes 180 Douglas, Gavin 98, 110, 144
Cochrane, Arthur C. 193 Douglas, John 62, 148
Cockburn, John 297 Drummond, Andrew L. 1, 320
Coffey, John 230, 248, 250, 319, 320, 323, Drummond, John 343
365, 372 Dumeige, Gervais 25
Colgrave, Betram 14, 15 Dunbar, William 144
St Columba 13, 16 Dundas, James 253–64
Comestor Peter 43, 50 Dunlop, William 346
Como, David 267 Duns Scotus, John 3, 6, 12, 13, 36, 50, 69–80, 81,
Comrie, Alexander 323–4 85, 86, 88, 89, 97, 100, 101, 259
    379

Durandus of Mende, William 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, Ganoczy, Alexandre 97
61, 65, 67 Garden, George 296–307
Durham, James 240–7, 249–50, 352 Garden, James 296–307
Durkan, John 111, 144, 147, 148, 180 Garrett, Aaron 3
Gau, John 176–80
Edward VI (King of England) 127, 160, 225 van Geest, P. J. J. 42
Edwards, Jonathan 247 Gellera, Giovanni 120, 121
Eire, Carlos 134 Germna, Kieran 299n, 303, 304, 307
Elliott, Mark W. 93n, 190, 200 Gerson, Jean 83, 105
Elphinstone, William 58, 66, 92, 145, 269 Gillespie, Patrick 234–5, 239, 240–2, 243, 244,
Emerson, Roger L. 300 246, 247, 248–9, 250, 351, 352, 371
Erasmus of Rotterdam 65, 145, 146, 150 Gilson, Étienne 32, 51
Eriugena, John Scotus or Scottus 12, 13, 30, Goldie, Frederick 303, 305, 307
32, 48 Gomarus, Franciscus 198, 244
Erskine, Ebenezer 323, 343–57 Gordon, Bruce 202
Erskine, Ralph 323 Gordon, James (historian) 282
Erskine, Thomas 2 Gordon, James (Jesuit apologist) 157
Eßer, Hans Helmut 199 Gordon, William 57
Eucherius of Lyons 16, 18 Graham, Gordon 3, 4
Graham, Michael 361
Farge, James K. 96, 97 Green, Ian 193
Faulenbach, Heiner 193 Green, Roger 150
Fenner, Dudley 226, 252 Green, Rosalind C. G. 48
Ferguson, Everett 239 Green, Thomas M. 330–5, 337
Ferguson, Sinclair 268 Gregory of Rimini 83, 87, 88, 90, 91, 99, 100
Fergusson, David (minister of Dunfermline) Greig, Martin 297
61, 168 Gregory VII, Pope 141, 166
Ferreri, Giovanni 145 Gregory IX, Pope 104, 166, 331
Fesko, J. V. 272 Grey, Lady Jane 160
Fleming, David Hay 333 Gribben, Crawford 220, 221, 366
Flinterman, R. 323 Gropper, Johann 60, 149
Florus of Lyons 65 Guigo I 48
Flynn, Jane 56 Guigo II 48, 49, 50
Foggie, Janet 94 Gunton, Colin 35
Forbes of Corse, John 2, 260, 280, 281, 282, 283, Guthrie, James 254
285, 299, 304, 320, 322 Guthrie, John 368
Forbes, Patrick 280, 320 Guthrie, William 233
Forbes, Robert 260
Forbes, William 279n Haas, Rainer 175–6
Ford, J. D. 339 Hackett, John 160
Foresta, Patrizio 189, 196, 203 Hadow, James 343, 345–6, 347–8, 349–56
Forret, Henry 146 Halverson, James 89
Forsyth, P. T. 3 Hamilton of Airth, Alexander 347
Foster, Walter Roland 202 Hamilton, Allan 221
Foxe, John 174, 175, 182 Hamilton, Archibald 157, 335
de Fraja, Valeria 39, 43 Hamilton, James (Earl of Arran) 182
Frank, William 88, 91 Hamilton, John (Archbishop of St Andrews)
Frankforter, A. Daniel 130 56, 60
Fraser of Brea, James 1, 2, 363 Hamilton, Patrick 147, 148, 160, 174–6, 177, 178,
Fraser, Donald 348n 179, 180, 181, 185
Hamilton, Robert 130
Galloway, Alexander 58–9 Handley, Stuart 298n, 303
Gallus, Thomas 34 Haren, Michael 26
Gamble, Whitney, G. 268 Harris, James 3
380   

Harrison, Peter 121n James VI (King of Scotland) and I (King of

Hay, Archibald 57, 58, 65, 66, 148 England) 59, 135, 136, 137, 140, 157, 168,
Hay, John 157 191, 193, 194, 265–6, 280, 319, 362
Hay, William 148 Jenkins, David 16
Hazlett, Ian 125, 185, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196n, Jerome 12, 18, 101
199, 201, 202, 203, 216, 226n Jessop, T. E. 4
Hegel, G. W. F. 7 John of Damascus 70, 74, 218
Henderson, Alexander 211, 235, 262, 269 John of Kelso 42
Henderson, George D. 229, 286, 296, 298–9, 300, John of Ruysbroeck 49
301, 302, 303, 304n, 305, 306, 307 John of Schoonhoven 49
Hennig, John 19 John of the Cross 35, 298, 307
Henrich, Rainer 185 John of Toulouse 25
Henry VIII (King of England) 60, 160, 180, 181 Johnson, Dale W. 129
Henryson, Robert 144 Johnsone, John 176–80
Herbert, A. S. 161 Johnston, John 212–16, 228
Herren, Michael W. 13 Johnston of Wariston, Sir Archibald 232
Hewison, James K. 238–9 Jones, David B. 41, 49, 50
Hick, John 9 Junius, Franciscus 165–7, 168, 169, 245
Hobbes, Thomas 157, 259, 264
Hobbins, Daniel 82 Kayayan, Eric 194, 202
Hoenen, Maarten 82 à Kempis, Thomas 49, 298, 306
Holcot, Robert 92, 100 Kendall, R. T. 266
Holder, R. Ward 312 Kennedy, Alexander 160
Holloway III, Ernest R. 111, 136, 137 Kennedy, Chloe 336, 338
Holmes, Stephen 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, Kennedy, Quintin 61, 151–3
67, 92 Kennedy, Walter 144
Honyman, Andrew 298, 368, 369 Kerr, Robert 179, 182
Hotchkiss, Valerie 193, 196, 197 Kess, Alexandra 131
Howie, John 321 Kidd, Thomas 279, 292
Howie, Robert 202, 212–16, 254 Kirby, Torrance 196, 197
Hugh of St Victor 25, 26, 33, 42, 43, 45, 47, 55 Kirk, James 112, 119, 138, 315, 360, 361
St Hugh (Bishop of Lincoln) 40 Kirkcaldy of Grange, William 133
Hume, David (covenanter) 232 Kitanov, Severin V. 97
Hume, David (philosopher) 3, 4 Kitshoff, Michiel 282, 286
Hunter, Fraser 14 Klingshirn, William E. 15
Hunter, Michael 300 Knox, A. 221, 222
Hutcheson, George 366 Knox, Edmund Arbuthnott 297
Hutton, Sarah 291 Knox, John 4, 5, 8, 12, 60–1, 65, 66, 109, 110,
124–36, 141, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154,
Inglis, John 69 157, 160, 168, 173, 174, 175, 182, 183, 184,
Innes, Cosmo 303, 304 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 199–200, 225, 239,
Innocent III, Pope 55 248, 249, 359–60, 361, 362, 363, 367
Ireland, John 81–93 Knuutila, Simo 87
Irving, Edward 2 Kolb, R. 128
Irwin, Joyce 302 Kornahrens, Wallace Douglas 282, 289n, 290
Isidore of Seville 16, 17 Krop, Henri Adrien 305
Ivo of Chartres 55 Kuipers, Cornelis Henricus 151
Kursawa, Wilhelm 19
Jacobs, Paul 191, 195, 196, 197 Kusukawa, Sachiko 110
James I (King of England) see James VI (King of Kuyper, Abraham 324
Scotland) Kyle, Richard G. 129, 360
James III (King of Scotland) 83, 90
James IV (King of Scotland) 83, 160, 180 Lachman, David 344
James V (King of Scotland) 160, 168, 180, 181 Laing, David 189
    381

Lane, A. N. S. 301 Macpherson, John 371, 372

Latimer, Hugh 127 Macquarrie, John 3
Law, Thomas 160 Mair or Major, John 4, 6, 57, 65, 66, 81, 91,
Lawne, William 362–3 96–106, 109–10, 112, 117, 120, 146–7, 255–6
Lawrence of Lindores 81 Maitland of Lethington, William 149
Learmonth of Balcomie, James 134 Maitland, John 269
Lee, John 169 Major, John see Mair, John
Lee, Nam Kyu 194 Mapstone, Sally 81
Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques 145, 146, 256n Marshall, Richard 148
Leighton, Robert 218–23, 297, 299, 368–9 Marshall, Stephen 272
Leinsle, Ulrich G. 40 Mary I (Queen of England) 60, 127, 160, 239
Lekprevik, Robert 168 Mary II (Queen of England) 303
Lenman, Bruce 304n Mary of Guise 132
Letham, Robert 244, 272, 273, 364 Mary, Queen of Scots 132, 134, 135, 139, 168,
Levy, Ian Christopher 92 182, 330, 336, 337
Lillback, Peter A. 229n Mary, Virgin see also Mariology 58–9, 77, 104,
Lindberg, Carter 312 144, 154, 156
Locher, Gottfried W. 189 Mason, Roger A. 81, 105, 136, 140, 146, 149, 150
Lochman, Daniel T. 297 Maxwell, William D. 64, 360
Lombard, Peter 33, 55, 57, 69, 82, 97, 98, 99, 101, Meehan, Denis 16
102, 106, 108, 145, 146 Meek, Donald, E. 21
Lorimer, Peter 175 Meeks, Wayne 15
O’Loughlin, Thomas 13, 15, 16, 17, 18–19, 20 Meister Eckhart 35
Louis XI (King of France) 82, 83, 85 Melanchthon, Philip 130, 131, 152, 155, 180,
Louis XII, (King of France) 146 181, 213, 225
Love, Nicolas 49 Melville, Andrew 4, 62, 65, 109–15, 116, 118,
de Lubac, Henri 54 119, 120, 124, 129, 134, 135–41, 190, 210,
Ludolphus of Saxony 144 213, 216, 218, 226, 320, 360
Lull, Raymond 86–7 Melville, James 133, 226, 365
Luther, Martin 62, 65, 109, 110, 114–15, 125, Mercer, James 262
146, 148, 152, 156, 160, 174, 175, 176, 177, Michel, Francisque Xavier 312
179, 183, 199, 200, 201, 203, 225, 245, Mijers, Esther 312
289, 323 Milton, Anthony 193, 194, 204, 265
Lyall, Roderick 144 Miner, Bonaventure 81, 86
Lyndsay, Sir David 168 Mitchell, A. F. 160
Molekamp, Femke 167
McAvoy, Liz Herbert 49 Moore, Jonathan 266, 272
McCosh, James 4, 5 Morton, Regent 137
McCrie, Thomas 298 Mullan, David G. 203, 204, 205, 219, 230, 231,
MacCulloch, Diarmid 198 232, 235, 282, 286, 300, 303, 313, 324, 362,
MacDonald, Aidan 16 366, 371
McFarlane, Ian D. 149–50 Müller, Gerhard 312
Macfarlane, Leslie 92, 145 Muller, Richard 2, 111, 112, 119, 189, 190, 195,
McInally, Tom 3, 312 196, 197, 198, 203, 245, 253, 265, 290, 313,
MacIntosh, H. R. 10 316, 317, 323, 324–5
MacIntyre, Alasdair 5 Munier, Charles 15
Mackie, John Duncan 313 Murdoch, Steve 312
MacLean, Donald John 200 Myers, Stephen G. 348n, 373
Macleod, Donald 317 Mynors, R. A. B. 14, 15, 17
Macleod, John 1, 250, 344
Macleod, Morag 312 Neuser, Wilhelm 229n
MacMillan, Donald 279, 285, 286, 290 Nimmo, Paul T. 196, 197
Macmurray, John 35 St Ninian 14
McNeill, Peter G. B. 336 Nisbet, Murdoch 160
382   

Ockham, William of 80, 82, 83, 87, 88, 91, 92, Richardson, Robert 145
98, 100, 101, 102 see also Ockhamism Riordan, Michael Benjamin 298, 299, 300, 303,
Oecolampadius 150, 151, 189, 245 304n, 305, 306
Olevian, Caspar see Olevianus, Kaspar Rivers, Isabel 296, 298, 299, 307
Olevianus, Kaspar 194, 212, 213, 240, 244, 316 Robertson Smith, William 4
Ollivant, Simon 329 Robertson, William 109, 116–17
Omond, George 253 Robinson, Hastings 128
Rohls, Jan 196
Paley, William 5 Rolle, Richard 50
Palleschi, Francesco 40, 46, 47, 49 Rollock, Robert 109, 113–15, 116, 168, 190, 194,
Pannikar, Raimon 9 195, 100, 200–1, 203, 210, 216, 220, 226–7,
Parker, Matthew 63 239, 240, 242, 243, 245, 316, 352,
St Patrick 13, 21 363–4, 367
Patterson, Paul J. 49 Rosemann, Philipp 82
Patterson, W. B. 157 Rouen 56
Peel, Albert 226 Rupert of Deutz 55
Pelikan, Jaroslav 193, 196, 197 Russell, Jerome 160
Penyafort, Raymond of 332n Rutherford, Samuel 2, 4, 221, 230–3, 235, 240–1,
Perkins, William 226, 245 243, 244, 246–7, 248, 249, 250, 254, 269, 272,
Peter of Blois 49 273, 281, 317, 321, 322–3, 352, 365, 366–7,
Peterkin, Alexander 245 371, 372
Petit, François 41 Rydell, Ellen 248
Petrie, John 109, 118–19 Ryrie, Alec 182
Piché, David 72
Pickstock, Catherine 35 Sabean, John W. 97
Pittock, Murray, G. H. 303 De Sabunde, Ramon 85, 86, 87, 92
Pliny 112 Saxer, Ernst 189
Pocock, Nicholas 161, 163 Schaff, Philip 235
Polanus, Amandus 213, 245 Scheves, William 83, 92
Pont, Robert 64, 195 van de Schoor, R. J. M. 316, 317
Preston, John 247 Schleiermacher, F. D. E. 7
Probst, Jean Henri 86 Schmitt, Charles 111
Pseudo-Dionysius see Dionysius Schumacher, Lydia 35
Schwartz, Hillel 306
Quintilian 87 Scougal, Henry 6, 279–80, 290–3, 296–300, 302,
303, 306, 307
Radcliff, Jason 298 Seaman, Lazarus 272
Raffe, Alasdair 298 Sefton, Henry 279
Rait, Robert S. 111 Selderhuis, Herman 195, 198
Ramus, Petrus or Peter or Pierre de la Sellar, W. D. H. 338
Ramée 113, 119, 137, 218, 226 Seneca 112, 216, 221, 261, 263
Reeves, William 13 Shaw, Duncan 193, 200, 331
de Régnon, Théodore 33 Sheills, Alexander 368, 369
Rehnman, Sebastian 272 Shuttleton, David E. 299, 305
Reid, Dot 339 Sicard, Patrice 43
Reid, H. M. B. 217 Siddiqui, Mona 9
Reid, Robert 148 Slotemaker, John T. 101, 103
Reid, Steven J. 111, 136, 140, 202, 226, 280 Smalley, Beryl 26
Reid, Thomas 3 Smith, Jeremy J. 136
Reid, W. Stanford 239 Snow, W. G. S. 291
Renwick, James 368, 369 Spade, Paul Vincent 71, 72
Ó Riain, Pádraig 20 Spear, Wayne R. 269, 270
Richard of St Victor 3, 6, 10–36, 43, 59, 70, 73, 75 Spinelli, Mario 30
Richard, Guy M. 247 Spinks, Bryan 211
    383

Spurlock, R. Scott 367 Urs von Balthasar, Hans 35

Stanglin, Keith D. 205 Ussher, James 245
Stanley, Brian 9
Stevenson, Andrew 120 Vaus, John 145
Stevenson, David 279, 286 Venema, Cornelis, P. 229n
Stevenson, Jane 20 Voltaire 370
Stewart, James 368, 369, 371
Stewart, Kenneth J. 197 Walker, G. S. M. 25
Stewart, Laura A. M. 362 Walker, James 1, 320
Stuart, John 300, 301, 304 Walls, Andrew 2
Sutherland, N. M. 314 Walton, F. P. 331
Warfield, Benjamin B. 269
Tayler, Alistair 300, 307 Warren, F. E. 20
Tayler, Henrietta 300, 307 Watson, Thomas 60
Taylor, Maurice 149 Weber, Otto 198, 203
Theresa of Avila 35, 207 Webster, Tom 235
Thompson, E. Margaret 39 Weir, D. A. 226
Thompson, Nicholas 202, 279n, 289n Wiedermann, Gotthelf 175, 180, 181
Thomson, George 157 Wild, Johann 57
Thomson, R. L. 193 William III (King of England) 303
Todd, Margo 130, 313, 324, 365 William of Auxerre 84, 101
Toon, Peter 267 William of Ockham 82, 98, 100
Toorians, Lauran 313 Williams, Kelsey Jackson 300, 304
Torrance, James 247, 248, 249 Williamson, Arthur 150
Torrance, T. F. 2, 4, 35, 146, 171, 190, 193, 194, Willison, John 345, 355–6
195, 200, 201, 217, 229n, 235, 279, 282, 283, Wilmart, André 39, 40, 45, 48, 50
286, 362, 365 Winram, John 60, 62, 148
Trinterud, Leonard, J. 244 Winzet, Ninian 61, 153, 155, 156–7
Troxel, A. Craig 272 Wishart, George 60, 160, 174, 184–5, 189
Trueblood, D. Elton 370 Witsius, Herman 246, 349, 351, 352
Trueman, Carl 317 Witte, John Jr. 335
Tucker, Marie-Claude 315 Wodrow, Robert 210–11, 298, 342, 346
Tunstall of Durham, Bishop 60 Wolsey, Cardinal 160
Turner, Sam 15 Woolsey, Andrew A. 364
Turretin or Turretino, Francis 317, 348 Worthen, Jeremy F. 45, 47n, 50
Tyacke, Nicholas 266 Wright, David F. 2, 110, 191, 200
Tyndale, William 160, 168, 178, Wright, N. T. 175n
183, 184
Tyrie, James 157, 168 Zumkeller, Adolar 90
 Index of Subjects

A Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God’s Bible versions:

Truth in England 135 Bishops’ 162, 163, 171
Aberdeen Breviary 58 Coverdale’s 160
Aberdeen Confession see confessions of faith Geneva 161–5, 167–9, 170–1
Aberdeen Doctors 120, 204, 279–90, 291, 292, 320 Great 160, 161, 162
Amyraldians 5, 316, 317, 318, 325 Junius’ text of the Apocalypse 165–7
Ane Breif Gathering 62, 63, 66 King James Version (Authorized Version) 170
Ane Compendious Reasoning or Ressonyng 151 Matthew’s 160
Ane Familiar Ressonyng 152 Tomson’s New Testament 162, 163, 165,
Ane Little Brief Tracteit 151 168, 169
Ane Oratioun 152 Tyndale’s 160, 168, 178
anti-Calvinism 157, 205 Vulgate 18, 77
anti-Catholicism 66, 112, 120, 164, 166, 181, Wycliffe’s 160, 161
191, 197, 201, 202, 227, 239, 284, 288, biblical commentaries 12, 17, 59, 97, 104–5, 106,
289, 291, 299 136, 146, 147, 157, 164–5, 181, 183, 195,
antinomianism 9, 176, 234, 267–8, 270, 274, 343, 200–1, 216, 217, 222, 226, 228, 366
348n, 372 biblical criticism 4
architecture 6, 8, 59 bishops 136–9, 146, 155, 162, 163, 168, 170, 177,
anthropology (theological) 119, 197, 200, 202, 203 180, 184, 231, 269, 280–1, 284, 307, 329, 332,
Arminians; Arminianism 203, 204, 205, 229, 364, 365 see also episcopacy
230, 231–2, 234, 235, 249, 265–7, 281, 282, Book of Common Order 60, 63, 64, 193, 194
286, 292, 307, 317, 320, 321, 322, 323, 347, Book of Common Prayer 5, 127–8, 162, 170,
355, 370, 372 see also Remonstrants 190, 194
art 4, 20 Book of Deer 19
atonement: Book of Durrow 19
extent of 2, 204, 231, 235, 272, 286–7, 314, Book of Kells 14
316–17, 343, 354, 355, 363, 369 The Buke of Four Scoir Thre Questions 61, 153
theories of 77
Augsburg Interim 128 Calvinism 7, 60, 112, 120, 136, 161, 163, 174,
Augustinianism (theology) 42, 44, 45, 46, 50, 51, 190, 192, 197, 198, 199, 203, 221, 225, 265,
62, 64, 65, 66, 73, 81, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 144, 282, 286, 291, 292, 314, 317, 322, 324, 329,
145, 199, 200, 201, 218, 221, 228, 235, 291 336, 338, 340 see also hyper-Calvinism;
see also Augustinians Calvin, John
Augustinians (monastic order) 35, 41, 83, 180 canon law 155, 328–40
see also Augustinianism Carthusians 40, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50
catechisms; catechetics 2, 54, 60, 64, 65, 66, 112,
baptism see sacraments 162, 176, 177, 193–7, 200, 201, 202, 205, 218,
Basilikon Doron 158 221, 226, 362
Belgic Confession see confessions of faith Archbishop Hamilton’s (1552) 56, 60, 63, 66,
Benjamin Major see The Mystical Ark 148, 149, 155, 335, 347
Bible: Heidelberg 60, 193, 194, 195, 196, 202
interpretation of 2, 26, 28, 33, 42, 43, 44, 51, Westminster Shorter 7, 270, 275, 276
65–6, 112, 119, 126, 163, 166, 197, 215, Catholics; Catholicism 2, 3, 7, 8, 65, 67, 69, 111,
217, 244 112, 113, 119, 120, 121, 124, 127, 132, 139,
translation of 4, 160, 161, 163, 165, 168, 170, 140, 148, 149, 153, 155, 157, 194, 203, 210,
182, 321 212, 253, 255, 256, 257, 264, 279, 298, 305,
    385

312, 317, 319, 328, 329, 330, 334, 335, 336, Continental influence 5–6, 7, 17, 19, 56, 66, 127,
370, 371 see also anti-Catholicism; Catholic 139, 189–90, 221, 292, 299, 303, 305,
reform 312–25, 334, 335
Catholic reform 55, 56, 60–2, 64, 65, 66, 67 French 7, 221, 226n, 314–18
Celtic Christianity see Christianity, Celtic Dutch 7, 205, 229, 260n, 262, 287, 318–24,
Christianity, Celtic 14, 16, 20, 21 361, 369, 371
Christocentrism 2, 200, 202, 370 Council of Trent 60, 66, 67, 151, 152, 181, 194,
Christology 101, 102, 197, 199 see also Jesus 196, 284, 289, 291
Christ Covenants:
church see also Church of Scotland: of Grace 195, 198, 200, 201, 221, 226–8, 230,
invisible 183, 199, 360, 371 231, 233, 234–5, 240, 241–2, 243, 244, 246,
visible 126, 183, 192, 199, 203, 241, 248, 268, 273, 316, 346, 348–55, 356, 363,
249, 360, 364, 366, 367, 368, 370, 371 365–7, 371
discipline in 126, 130, 141, 144, 192, 199, 200, of Redemption 214, 220, 229, 231, 240, 245–7,
203, 217, 248, 267, 268, 275, 276, 280, 328, 348–9, 350, 351, 353–4, 355
337, 360–1, 363, 364–5, 367 of Works 201, 213, 226, 227, 229, 230, 231,
membership of 360, 361, 363, 366, 367, 235, 240, 242–5, 273, 316, 347, 363, 364,
371, 372 365–7
Church of Scotland 9, 130, 131, 136, 169, 194, covenantal theology see theology
204, 270, 276, 299, 303, 308, 323, 328, 330, Covenanters 65, 220, 225–6, 232–5, 241, 248–9,
331, 333, 334, 336, 337, 338, 340, 368, 371 250, 362–3, 365, 366, 367, 371
see also Free Church of Scotland crusades 40
General Assemblies 60, 138, 150, 169, 170,
191, 193, 202, 210, 216, 235, 245, 268, 269, De Jure Regni apud Scotos 150
270, 276, 281, 300n, 302, 305, 306, 331, De locis sanctis 13, 20
334–5, 342, 343, 355, 361, 364, 365, 366, devotio moderna 49, 51, 92
367, 368 diaspora, Scottish 3
polity of 137, 138, 139, 192, 205, 280–1, 284, Didache 63
285, 337 discipline see church
clergy, Scottish 4, 7, 15, 17, 55–7, 83, 177, Dominicans 65, 69, 92, 100, 101, 148, 263
180, 181, 182, 275, 297, 303, 304, 305, Dort, Synod of 157, 195, 196, 198, 199, 201,
307, 359 203–4, 205, 229, 265–6, 282, 286, 287, 313,
commentaries see biblical commentaries 316, 317, 319, 320, 325
Common Sense philosophy 4 see also Dutch influence see continental influence
philosophy
communion see sacraments Easter, dating of 20, 147, 155
communion of saints see saints ecumenicalism 9, 65–7, 229, 283
conciliarism 81, 105 England (English influence) 5, 8, 14, 15, 39,
confessions of faith: 91–2, 127–8, 146, 148, 160, 162, 167, 170,
Aberdeen (or “New”) 193, 196, 199, 202, 203, 180, 182, 183, 184, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194,
204, 216, 364 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 210, 225,
Belgic 60, 195 226, 232, 235, 239, 242, 250, 265–8, 269,
First Helvetic 184–5, 189, 191, 197, 271 274–6, 280, 299, 313, 332–3, 343
Second Helvetic 155, 191, 193, 196, 271 Enlightenment 2, 3, 6, 8, 250, 323
King’s 201, 289, 290, 361, 365 Episcopalians; Episcopalianism 2, 3, 5, 8, 67, 136,
Scots 2, 60, 125, 192, 193, 195n, 197, 198, 199, 139, 140, 180, 190, 191, 192, 202, 204, 205,
203, 226, 239, 281, 290, 333 213, 217, 222, 228, 279, 280, 281, 285, 289n,
Westminster 3, 5, 7, 204, 220, 235, 265–76, 291, 296–308, 318, 319, 320, 329, 330, 347,
304, 356, 370 362, 364, 365, 368, 369, 372
Congregationalists; Congregationalism 3, 192, episcopate 328, 329, 330, 331, 336, 337
275, 371 episcopacy 138, 139, 202, 205, 219, 222, 228, 231,
Contemplation; contemplative life 25–6, 27, 275, 279, 305, 318, 319, 330, 346, 365, 368
28–9, 33, 34, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49–50, see also bishops
57, 64, 116, 145, 256 ethics 3, 83, 87, 103–4, 109, 198
386   

eucharist see sacraments Huguenots 165, 226n, 254, 257, 314–15, 317,
Europe, Scots Colleges in see Scots Colleges in 318, 319, 361
Europe humanism 58, 60, 65, 81, 87, 92, 96, 98, 106, 109,
European influence see continental influence 110, 111, 112, 113, 119, 144, 150, 180, 189,
evangelicals 2, 3, 8, 182–3, 184, 235, 344, 345–6, 194, 220, 250
355–6, 362, 371 hymnody 3, 6, 56, 151, 220
evangelical piety 177–9 hyper-Calvinism 267
evangelical theology 174, 175, 176, 181–2,
199, 372 Idea philosophiae moralis 253, 255, 257–64
experiential religion 46, 47, 50, 51, 195, 238, 247–9 idealism 4
idolatry 60, 61, 124, 127, 132, 134, 135, 149,
faith 2, 30, 62, 84, 99, 110, 117, 125, 126, 130, 150, 153, 155, 156, 185, 225, 239, 361,
141, 148, 154, 156, 164, 173, 175–6, 177, 178, 369 see also sin
179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 195, 198, 200, 201, incarnation, doctrine of see Jesus Christ
202, 203, 211, 212, 214, 218, 220, 227, 229, Independents; Independency 3, 367, 371
248, 249, 263, 265, 268, 272, 274, 287, 288, Institutes of the Christian Religion 62, 129, 130,
289, 291, 301, 307, 316, 317, 342, 343, 348n, 150, 189, 195, 202, 301, 360, 362
350, 351, 354, 367, 371, 372 Institutions of the Law of Scotland 339
federal theology see theology Iona 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 59
filioque 32, 33 Ireland; Irish influence 3, 7, 13, 15, 18, 59, 146,
First Blast of the Trumpet 128 194, 203, 268, 276
First Book of Discipline 60, 125, 126, 131, 136,
337, 360 Jesus Christ:
First Swiss Confession of Faith see confessions of his Person 101–2
faith, First Helvetic his incarnation 9, 71, 76, 77, 85, 86n,
Five Articles of Perth 158, 170, 216, 365 215, 217
foedus gratiae see Covenant of Grace as mediator 77, 213, 215, 227, 231, 274, 301
foedus naturae see Covenant of Works his death 63, 64, 152, 153, 185, 204, 212,
foedus operum see Covenant of Works 213–14, 226, 227, 231, 241, 246, 272, 274,
Franciscans 34, 35, 36, 51, 57, 59, 69, 70, 85, 287, 291, 316–17
100, 101 his resurrection 57, 154, 177, 216, 316
Free Church of Scotland 228 Jews; Judaism 9, 86, 105, 155, 192, 225, 256, 319,
French influence see continental influence 359, 364
Justification
Gàidhealtachd 55 and election 362
Geneva 8, 110, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 136, 137, and good works 149, 150, 198, 200, 203, 214
138, 139, 153, 192, 197, 199, 202, 314, 315, and habits of grace 79–80
316, 331, 334, 360, 362 see also Bible, Geneva and the law 274
Gifford lectures 4, 9 by faith alone 173–4, 175, 177, 178, 179, 183,
God: 184, 185, 186, 323, 350
as Trinity 28, 29, 31, 33–6, 45, 60, 71, 72, 75, by grace through faith 125, 130, 268
77, 85, 93, 100–1, 102, 215, 219, 226, 231,
247, 270, 274 King’s College, Aberdeen 55, 59, 148, 212, 213,
attributes of 30, 31, 73, 100–1, 216, 220, 226 260, 280, 291, 296, 298, 300, 301n, 304
doctrine of 34, 35, 100–1 see also universities
essence of 73–6 King’s Confession see confessions of faith
his decrees 126, 129, 198, 199, 201, 202, 216,
220, 226, 232, 247, 265, 270, 271–2, 273, 287, Latin language 15, 17–18, 20, 33, 34, 56, 60, 61,
288, 291, 316, 317, 370 63, 64, 65, 104, 105, 128, 136, 139, 149, 150,
his knowledge 88, 288 161, 162, 163, 165, 179, 189, 194, 195, 197,
his Personhood 31, 34, 35 201, 225, 226, 229, 253, 255, 257, 266, 296,
299, 307, 321
Helvetic Consensus 317 Liber antiquitatum sancti Victoris 25
History of the Reformation in Scotland 131, 135 Life of God in the Soul of Man 6, 291–2, 297–8
    387

liturgy 4, 6, 17, 19–20, 54–67, 92, 127–8, 170, preaching 3, 5, 6, 40–2, 60, 83, 89, 110, 126, 130,
191, 202, 205, 212, 217, 267, 281, 284, 285, 133, 136, 156, 177, 179, 180, 184, 185, 189,
290, 292, 299, 360, 365 see also worship 190, 200, 203, 210, 215, 217, 220, 226, 228,
Lollardy 83, 92, 160, 180 229, 230, 232, 234, 235, 239, 247–8, 249, 265,
Lord’s Supper see sacraments 267, 268, 272, 275, 281, 304, 321, 323, 345,
347, 353, 360, 362, 363, 364, 372 see also
Mariology 85 see also Mary, Virgin sermons
marriage see sacraments predestination 44, 50, 81, 87–91, 125, 129–30,
Marrow controversy 342–57 162, 163, 167, 194, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204,
Marrow of Modern Divinity 5, 268, 342–57 216, 228–9, 265, 266, 272, 273, 301, 316,
Mass see sacraments 364–5, 370 see also saints, election of
Meroure of Wyssdome 81–93 double 7, 198, 203, 204, 286–7, 364
Missions, missionaries 2, 3, 9, 14, 217 negative 46
Mithras, shrine for the worship of 14 Premonstratensianism 40, 41, 42, 46, 47, 49
moderate theology see theology Presbyterianism 2, 8, 111, 190, 192, 221, 222,
The Mystical Ark 28–9 254, 269, 275, 276, 299, 303, 305, 330, 339,
mysticism 33, 35, 50, 230, 292, 293, 298–9, 302, 365, 371, 372 see also Presbyterians; Church
305, 306, 307 of Scotland
churches 3, 7, 8, 67, 204, 276, 303, 372 see also
The National Covenant 170, 192, 201, 205, 218, Church of Scotland; Free Church of
220, 225, 228, 232, 235, 248, 249, 254, 279n, Scotland
280, 283, 320, 366, 368, 372 polity 136, 137, 139, 169, 190, 192, 203, 360,
natural law 104, 114, 157, 339 364, 367, 368 see also Church of Scotland,
natural theology 84, 86, 112, 113, 114, 115 polity; episcopacy
Neoplatonism 70, 151, 191 Presbyterians 65, 226, 230, 231, 235n, 254, 275,
neo-scholasticism 230 282, 284, 285, 289n, 290, 298, 299, 300n,
nominalism 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 98–9, 100, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324 see also
102, 148 Presbyterianism
Puritans 2, 8, 65, 162–3, 165, 191, 210, 228, 229,
Ockhamism 89, 90 see also Ockham, 232, 235, 238, 239, 241, 242, 244, 245, 246,
William of 247–8, 249, 323, 362
ontological argument 75, 85
ordo salutis see salvation, order of radical orthodoxy 74
orthodoxy see Reformed Orthodoxy Ramism 111, 137, 195, 204, 226 see also Ramus,
Petrus
pactum salutis see redemption, covenant of Rationale divinorum officiorum 54
Pelagianism 79, 87, 90, 91–2, 155, 260, 287 realism (philosophical) 82, 98, 99
Pelagianism, semi- 203, 205, 286 realism (sacramental) 216
penance see sacraments Redemption, Covenant of see Covenants
perfect-being theology 81, 84–7, 92 Reformation parliament 133
persecution 161, 166, 171, 173, 178, 183, 222, Reformation (in Scotland) 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 61, 66–7,
250, 346 110, 111, 124, 131–2, 135, 137, 138, 168, 173,
perseverance of the saints see saints 181, 189–90, 197, 198, 200, 201–3, 210, 225,
philosophy 1, 3, 4–5, 33, 50, 70, 81–2, 102, 232, 238, 239–40, 244, 245, 246, 249, 250,
109–21, 137, 177, 218, 253, 255–60, 264, 266, 270, 275, 312, 328, 330–1, 335–8, 359,
291, 313, 315, 323 see also Common Sense 362–3, 364, 367
philosophy Reformed Orthodoxy 111, 119, 120, 195, 220,
Platonism 5, 70, 291, 293 253, 255–7, 258, 261, 264, 282, 287, 290, 291,
poetry 3, 6, 61–3, 81, 136, 144, 148, 171, 217 292–3, 313, 314, 316, 323, 325
Prayer Book see Book of Common Prayer Reformed theology see theology
prayer 5, 17, 19, 28, 40, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, Remonstrants 205, 229, 286, 287, 302 see also
61, 131, 135, 145, 147, 154, 170, 173, 195, Arminians
216, 222, 232, 302, 304, 306 see also Renaissance 67, 84, 96, 106, 111, 144, 194, 210,
contemplation 250 see also humanism
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Restoration 218, 235, 276, 299, 300n, 318, 321, 203, 219, 220–1, 233, 253, 255–8, 264, 313,
346, 368–9, 371 339, 345 see also neo-scholasticism
Ruthwell Cross 12, 20 Scotism 77, 81–93, 146 see also Duns Scotus,
John
sacraments 4, 57, 59–60, 61, 62–4, 83, 86n, 89, Scots Colleges in Europe 7, 62, 369
90, 97, 102, 148, 151, 154, 155, 156, 158, Scots Confession see confessions of faith
162, 164, 166, 180, 182, 185, 189, 190, 195, scripture:
197–8, 200–1, 203, 211, 212, 214, 216, 217, authority of 180 see also scripture, in
226, 237, 240–1, 244, 275, 282, 284, 286–9, theological method
329, 360, 361, 362, 365 see also theology, in Quakerism 370
sacramental in the Westminster Confession of Faith 271
(holy) communion 128, 147, 152, 154, 185, in theological method 99, 113, 125, 148,
194, 195, 200, 211, 212, 217, 230, 333, 269, 155–6, 170, 173, 179, 181, 183, 191, 196–7,
371 see also sacraments, Lord’s Supper; 198, 246, 370
sacraments, eucharist; sacraments, Mass relationship to tradition 289–90
eucharist 19, 55, 56, 57, 59, 63, 66, 120, 147, sola Scriptura 119, 155, 198, 290
148, 150, 151, 152, 154, 158, 181, 185, 200, sufficiency of 151
211, 213, 222, 256, 284, 289n see also transparency of 171
sacraments, Lord’s Supper; sacraments, Second Book of Discipline 138, 192
(holy) communion; sacraments, Mass sermons 17, 41–2, 44, 49, 56, 58, 60, 61, 64–5, 66,
Lord’s Supper 61, 64, 153, 200, 201, 211, 212, 112, 115, 131, 133, 168, 171, 185, 202, 211,
213, 213, 232, 241, 284, 285, 288, 289, 291, 212, 217, 219, 220, 222, 228, 230, 231, 232,
367 see also sacraments, eucharist; 234, 247–8, 265, 268, 282, 291, 296, 297, 299,
sacraments, (holy) communion; 343, 361, 364 see also preaching
sacraments, Mass sin 1, 3, 27, 48, 56, 76, 77, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 118,
marriage 332–3 125, 126, 132, 151, 152, 154, 155, 215, 216,
Mass 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 124, 127, 218, 222, 227, 228, 243, 244, 246, 260, 263,
148, 151, 152–3, 154, 173, 185, 239, 288 265, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 287, 288, 289,
see also transubstantiation 316, 317, 336, 337, 338, 342, 361 see also
penance 337 idolatry
saints 12, 16, 20, 130, 154–5 sola Scriptura see scripture
communion of 199 The Solemn League and Covenant 220, 225, 248,
election of 216, 217 see also predestination 268–70, 276, 320, 368, 372
in the Old Testament 149, 240 Song Schools 55–6
perseverance of the 198 soteriology 87, 197, 204, 282, 320, 364, 369
salvation 9, 66, 79, 86, 102–3, 110, 113, 114, 126, see also salvation
156, 176, 183, 194, 196, 198–9, 215, 216, 226, spiritual practice 6, 50, 298
227, 229, 231, 234, 240, 246, 249, 265, 270, St Mary’s College, St Andrews 113, 144, 202, 210,
271, 272, 273, 274, 283, 286–8, 291, 299, 301, 213, 254, 343
344, 349, 353, 362, 363, 365, 370, 372 see also St Salvator’s College, St Andrews 96, 118
soteriology suicide 256, 262, 263, 264
assurance of 194, 229, 233, 235, 272–3, synchronic contingency 87–9
343, 363
history of 200, 201 theology:
order of 202, 203, 355 covenantal theology 86, 190, 198, 200, 201,
Sarum rite 128 203, 226n, 227, 225–35, 239, 271, 351, 362–3
Sauchieburn, battle of 83 see also theology, federal theology
Saumur 254, 314, 315, 317, 318 federal theology 210, 221, 225–35, 238, 239,
Schmalkaldic war 128 240, 244, 245, 249, 250, 317, 324, 346–9,
Scholastica Diatriba de Rebus Divinis 351–7, 362, 364, 372 see also theology,
113–14, 118 covenantal theology
scholasticism 13, 21, 50, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73, 80, moderate theology 3, 5, 318, 323, 339
81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 98, 100, 101, 102, moral theology 3, 264, 339
104, 106, 109, 110–13, 118–20, 146, 198, public theology 190–3
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Reformed theology 195–9 of Paris 82, 83, 96, 104

sacramental theology 54, 291, 364 see also of St Andrews 82, 96, 137, 226, 231, 254, 315
sacraments see also St Mary’s College, St Andrews;
spiritual theology 210–23 St Salvator’s College, St Andrews
Therapeutica Sacra 229
Thirty-Nine Articles 191, 196, 203, 205, 266, Velitatio 156
267–8, 269, 270, 274 via antiqua 82
toleration, religious 205, 250, 304, 314 via moderna 82
transubstantiation 55, 120, 121 see also Victorines 25, 33, 34, 35, 39, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 50
sacraments Vita (sancti) Columbae 13, 16
The Trew Law of Free Monarchies 157
Trinity see God, as Trinity Westminster Confession of Faith see confessions
Westminster Shorter Catechism see catechisms;
universities 1, 6, 9, 10, 30, 55–8, 62, 69, 82, catechetics
110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 120, 121, 145, women 3, 6, 147
253, 257, 259, 260, 280, 315, 319, 335, 359 World Missionary Conference (1910) 9
of Aberdeen 82, 92, 120, 231 see also King’s worship 8, 14, 19–20, 54, 60, 67, 125, 126, 127–8,
College, Aberdeen 132, 134, 135, 155, 170, 190, 191, 196, 197,
of Cambridge 96, 204, 265 222, 268, 270, 271, 275, 276, 284, 289,
of Edinburgh 117, 218, 220, 226, 315 299–300, 304, 306, 365, 369 see also
of Glasgow 96, 228, 254, 315 idolatry; liturgy
of Oxford 69, 265 Wycliffites 83, 92