Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

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RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY IN SCOTLAND
us, that the power of an assemblie consists in the bishops alone, that no [26r]
presbyter hath any place there except so many as they please to bring for their
convoy and taking of the advyce before my lords give out their decisive voices.
Having cleared the subject, consider the first question, if bishops be necessar.
If this be evinced, the posteriour questions are needlesse—prove their necessitie,
we have sail no doubt of their conveniencie and tolerablenesse. Prove their di¬
vine institution, we must not plead for their removall, no, not for their limitation
with any caveat; wer their burthen never so greevous, we must submitt the necks
of our verie conscience to it as to a part of Christ’s yoake which in no case may
be cast off. But praise to God that this necessitie cannot be proven. It is our
comfort, that as the conclusion is from the councell of Trent, so all their argu¬
ments, when the learnedst of their partie have done their extreme difigence, are
but the weapons of the Jesuits, wherewith they fight against the Reformed
Church.Yea, this is one of the controversies wherupon depends not the honour
and wellfare alone of our church but the verie subsistence and being itselfe of
the whole Reformed churches. By this conclusion of the necessitie of bishops,
of their divine or apostolick institution, the papists ingeminats the simple nullitie
of all our churches, for they alleadge that since Christ hath given the power of
ordination to bishops alone, that these who have not their ordination from bishops
wants a lawful! calling to preach. Now, none of the pastours of all the Reformed,
save the English alone, have their ordination of bishops, so the pastours who have
bin there were not called of God, their baptisme was null,10 their power to preach
was not from God, the faith of their hearers is not grounded—all this will inevitablie
follow if the first ground hold, that bishops have power of ordination annexed by
God to their place. These of our neighbours who latelie hes taken up that conclu¬
sion from the commoun adversar may be censured jusdy either of a dangerous
errour or of a wicked mind towards the Reformation, so much the more as when
they are put to answer the popish argument they evidendy betray our cause. All they
say to count of is that the ordination of the pastours in the Reformed churches by
presbyters only, without bishops, came through necessitie, all the bishops in these
countries being obstinat hereticks. This answer is not onlie weak and poore but
clearlie false—no such necessitie in any of the Reformed churches as they speak of.
In them all sundrie bishops received the faith: Cardinall Chatillon11 in France,
10 This was not Catholic teaching.
11 Odet de Chatillon (1517-71) was the son ofGaspard de Colignymarechal of France, and Louise
de Montmorency, who died a Calvinist. He quickly moved up the ladder of preferment and became
a cardinal in 1533. In 1561 he publicly communicated in both kinds and was excommunicated in
1563. He died in England. See the article by R. d’Amat in Dictionnaire de Biographic Fratifaise (Paris,
1933-),viii, 816-17.