Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/9



N a Paper such as this, it is not proposed to go back into the several and separate details of the history of the Church of Scotland from the time of the Reformation, and the various changes in respect of government, discipline, and worship which it has been made to undergo; that is the province of the historian, and has been amply fulfilled. The writer will confine himself to the task of exhibiting a few sketches of that history, wherein, as he believes,historical truth has been violated, either by direct misrepresentation, party bias, or a deliberate suppression of facts.

Whatever may have been the views of the Early Reformers in Scotland, when the Papal supremacy was renounced in 1560, it is clear to any impartial student of the history of those times, although it suits Presbyterians to deny it, that they were sincerely attached to Episcopacy as the divinely instituted government of the Church, which the Papal usurpation had corrupted, but which they did the best they could in purifying and continuing by the imperfect Superintendency, which was the best Episcopacy they could procure under the circumstances; seeing none of the Roman Bishops accepted the Reformation, and when, nationally, the succession ceased. In the first General Assembly of the Reformed, held at Perth in 1571, a nominal Episcopacy was adopted under the equivalent name and title of Superintendents; and these Superintendents speedily assumed the ancient titles of Archbishops and Bishops, according to the number and limits of the old Dioceses, but without that valid consecration by which the continuity of the Episcopal succession is secured.