08.02 - The Discipline of the Church

II. The Discipline of the Church. The opinions of our reformer and his associates regarding the discipline and practical organisation of the church have hardly ever been made a subject of serious controversy, even by those who have so long called in question the generally received ideas regarding his opinions on the government of the church. That which marked out the early Reformed Church of Scotland most distinctively among the churches of the Reformation was the fact that she advocated, and resolutely carried into practical operation, that "godly discipline" which they all admitted had been used in the primitive church in her best and purest days, and the restoration of which, they perhaps ventured to hint, was much to be desired, but which yet they had not the courage to demand from the civil power as of essential concern to the wellbeing of their churches. Even Luther, who began so well, hesitated and quailed before the claims of the civil powers, and left it to Calvin to carry out his own earlier conceptions, and those of the Hessian Synod of 1528.[203] Our reformers, however, boldly laid down the absolute necessity of it in their Book of Common Order, and named in their Confession as one of the three distinctive marks of a true church of Christ, "ecclesiastical discipline uprightlie ministred as Goddis Worde prescribes, whereby vice is repressed and vertew nurished."[204] Not content to exercise such a discipline merely under this clause of their State-ratified Confession, they sought and obtained an explicit acknowledgment of the church’s privileges in special Acts of Parliament, which continue in force at the present day, and have enabled the Church of Scotland to maintain a stricter and more efficient discipline than any other established church has ventured to aim at.

[Sidenote: Nature and Ends of Discipline.] The nature and ends of this discipline are pretty fully explained in the introductory chapters of the Book of Common Order, in the Book of Discipline, and the Order of Excommunication and Public Repentance. "As no citie, towne, house, or family," it is affirmed in the first of these treatises, "can maintaine their estate and prosper without policy and governance, even so the Church of God, which requireth more purely to be governed than any citie or family, cannot without spirituall policy and ecclesiastical discipline continue, increase, and flourish;[205] and as the Word of God is the life and soule of this church, so this godly order and discipline is, as it were, sinews in the body, which knit and joine the members together with decent order and comelinesse; it is a bridle to stay the wicked from their mischiefs, it is a spurre to pricke forward such as be slow and negligent; yea, and for all men it is the father’s rod, ever in a readiness to chastise gently the faults committed, and to cause them afterward to live in more godly feare and reverence."[206] Three causes are assigned why such discipline should be retained and practised in the church—viz., that evil men may not be numbered among God’s children, that the good may not be infected by association with the ungodly, and that the individual taken under discipline may be made ashamed of his fault, and so may be induced to repent and amend. This is said to be the object even of excommunication—the highest censure the church can inflict on an offending brother—that he, being brought to a due sense of his sin and misery, may be saved in the day of the Lord. It is expressly provided that, in regard to this last and highest censure, nothing is to be attempted without the determination of the whole church—i.e., of the ordinary members of the church—and they are affectionately reminded that it is their duty to take good heed "that they seeme not more ready to expell from the congregation than to receave againe those, in whom they perceave worthy fruits of repentance to appeare," and "that all punishments, corrections, censures, and admonitions stretch no farther than God’s Word with mercy may lawfully beare."[207] [Sidenote: Order of Excommunication.] The Order of Excommunication and Public Repentance, sanctioned by the General Assembly in 1569, long continued to be used as a directory in the administration of discipline. It was compiled by Knox, or rather abridged by him from Alasco’s ’Modus ac Ritus Excommunicationis’ and his ’Forma ac Ratio Publicae Penitentiae,’ used with the approbation of Edward VI. in the Church of the Foreigners in London. It breathes throughout a spirit of tender regard for erring brethren and earnest longing for their recovery, quite as strongly as it manifests a spirit of holy zeal for the glory of God and the purity of His church. In all save the most notorious and urgent cases, the offender was to be dealt with repeatedly both in private and in public to confess his aggravated offence before the extreme penalty was inflicted on him. If these dealings and admonitions proved ineffectual, the minister was once more to explain the nature of his offence, and the frequency of the public and private admonitions addressed to him, was then to appeal to the elders and deacons to confirm the truth of what he said, and finally was to ask of the whole church if they thought such a contempt should be suffered amongst them, and only in the event of no man making further intercession for the erring and obstinate was the minister to proceed to pronounce the fearful sentence.[208] [Sidenote: Discipline under Prelacy.] In the times of declension which arose after James VI. took the government into his own hands, the strict exercise of such discipline became specially odious to the king and his gay courtiers, and incessant efforts were made to relax its rigour. These, however, were in general directed to effect this object rather by means of than in spite of the church, by securing that cases involving the sentence of excommunication should be reserved for the determination of the higher courts of the church, on which the king and his friends could bring their influence to bear with most effect. Even during the domination of the Second Episcopacy it is well known, from records still extant, that kirk-sessions and presbyteries were continued, and were allowed, with the sanction of the bishop, to maintain a discipline which in the present day would not be generally accounted lax. The grotesque penances so often resorted to in the times immediately succeeding the Reformation, and for the use of which our forefathers have been subjected to so much abuse and ridicule, were by no means confined to them, and probably had been suggested by similar grotesque ones in use before, and were employed by the Court of High Commission, by the Church of England, and by other churches too, in so far as they ever ventured to exercise discipline on notorious offenders. Even those melancholy trials of witches, for which they have been so severely blamed, were not originated by them, and were countenanced quite as much by their opponents, and by no one more than by the pope and his entourage, as well as by James VI., the great patron of the bishops, and for long were clamoured for by the people.

[Sidenote: The People remoulded.] To us, living in the light and glorying in the toleration of the nineteenth century, some of these disciplinary provisions may seem harsh, several of the details frivolous, others inquisitorial; and the very principle of such a close identification of the ecclesiastical and civil, as that all offences against morality and church discipline were to be also dealt with and punished by the state, more than questionable. But to men living in the sixteenth century and just emerging out of the ignorance and licence which the old church had tolerated, and longing to be moulded into a community really holy and self-denying and quickened to a higher life—enthused with a longing to reach loftier heights in it—the iron discipline of Calvin and Knox was welcome as requiring only what they felt to be their duty and their true interest. We may extend to the disciple what the historian of French Protestantism has said of the master, and so far varying the words of Haag affirm: "The institutions of Calvin [and Knox] accomplished what was proposed. In less than three generations the Genevese [and Lowland Scots] were entirely remoulded. To frivolity and licentiousness succeeded that somewhat austere strictness of morals which in earlier days distinguished the disciples of the reformer[s]. History tells of only two [three] men who have been able permanently to impress their stamp on an entire people—Lycurgus and Calvin [and Knox], whose characters in fact have much in common."[209] The Athenians made merry over the black broth of the Spartans; but Sparta conquered Athens. How many accusations and witticisms have been launched against the Calvinistic spirit, and yet Calvinistic countries led the way in Christian activity and civil freedom, and to them even those who abuse them are largely indebted for their blessings.