Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY IN SCOTLAND
puritanism, that phenomenon was, as noted above, British in scope.The Scottish
presbyterian assault against Laud and Cosin and their associates was not a na¬
tionalist protest against English imperialism. It grew out of a religious mentality
shared by English and Scottish puritans which abhorred the Roman Antichrist
and all his evil works, sought out evidence of a Roman conspiracy even in un¬
likely places, and refused steadfastly to beheve good about those whom they
identified as the pope’s co-conspirators. There was room for the expression of
anti-English sentiment here and there, but this was not the fundamental issue, as
the author of‘The Unreasonablenesse of the Service Book’ (pp. 100-20) made
clear. If it had been otherwise, Scottish puritans would have been hard-pressed
by the necessity of distinguishing themselves from English puritans whom they
embraced enthusiastically and whose enduring friendship and support they cur¬
ried in the Solemn League and Covenant. Although Scottish presbyterians were
vocal in their accusations, they were not alone, and both the author of the ‘Historic’
and numerous other Scottish divines demonstrated their admiration for the
Church of England where they might find numerous kindred spirits. The anti-
prelatical, anti-Hturgical movement was not the outward face of a nationalist
impulse.
If there is one point of theological overlap between Canterburians, other
episcopafians, and presbyterians in the period under scrutiny, it is found in the
wide-ranging corpus of theological writings produced by Augustine.This greatest
of the Latin Fathers was born in Thagaste, in the Roman province of Africa, in
354, just 17 years after the death of Constantine who had done so much to lay
the foundations of the medieval world, on which Augustine would erect an
edifice which would endure for rather more than a millennium. Augustine lived
until 430, having become bishop of Hippo in 396, and his death occurred just as
the Vandals swept down on his Mediterranean diocese. His literary and intellec¬
tual legacy includes his autobiographical Confessions, abundant letters, treatises
both philosophical and theological, and among these latter, a number of items
which defined positions on the church, predestination, and the sacraments. The
motivation for discussing the church lay to a considerable extent in his conflict
with Donatism, a North African schism which emerged from the Great Perse¬
cution under Diocletian.The Donatists claimed to possess the authentic episco¬
pal succession and thereby to be the one true church, despite its obviously pro¬
vincial limitation. Presbyterians in particular were interested in Augustine’s work
on predestination, arising from his energetic debate with the British monk
Pelagius who rejected teaching about original sin. In letters to his cousin John
Crichton of Paisley, Bailhe played the role of Augustine while Crichton appar¬
ently assumed Pelagius’s mande.18
18 NC, Baillie MS 1, ‘A Conference by Letters with a Canterburian Minister anent the Arminian