The practical result of this claim on the part of the preachers to implicit obedience was more than a century of turmoil, civil war, revolution, and reaction.  The ministers constantly preached political sermons, and the State—­the King and his advisers—­was perpetually arraigned by them.  To “reject” them, “and despise their ministry and exhortation” (as when Catholics were not put to death on their instance), was to “reject and despise” our Lord!  If accused of libel, or treasonous libel, or “leasing making,” in their sermons, they demanded to be judged by their brethren.  Their brethren acquitting them, where was there any other judicature?  These pretensions, with the right to inflict excommunication (in later practice to be followed by actual outlawry), were made, we saw, when there were not a dozen “true ministers” in the nascent Kirk, and, of course, the claims became more exorbitant when “true ministers” were reckoned by hundreds.  No State could submit to such a clerical tyranny.

People who only know modern Presbyterianism have no idea of the despotism which the Fathers of the Kirk tried, for more than a century, to enforce.  The preachers sat in the seats of the Apostles; they had the gift of the Keys, the power to bind and loose.  Yet the Book of Discipline permits no other ceremony, at the induction of these mystically gifted men, than “the public approbation of the people, and declaration of the chief minister”—­later there was no “chief minister,” there was “parity” of ministers.  Any other ceremony “we cannot approve”; “for albeit the Apostles used the imposition of hands, yet seeing the miracle is ceased, the using of the ceremony we judge it not necessary.”  The miracle had not ceased, if it was true that “the commandments” issued in sermons—­political sermons often—­really deserved to be obeyed, as men “would obey God himself.”  C’est la le miracle!  There could be no more amazing miracle than the infallibility of preachers!  “The imposition of hands” was, twelve years later, restored; but as far as infallible sermons were concerned, the State agreed with Knox that “the miracle had ceased.”

The political sermons are sometimes justified by the analogy of modern discussion in the press.  But leading articles do not pretend to be infallible, and editors do not assert a right to be obeyed by men, “even as they would obey God himself.”  The preachers were often right, often wrong:  their sermons were good, or were silly; but what no State could endure was the claim of preachers to implicit obedience.

The difficulty in finding really qualified ministers must be met by fervent prayer, and by compulsion on the part of the Estates of Parliament.

Failing ministers, Readers, capable of reading the Common Prayers (presently it was Knox’s book of these) and the Bible must be found; they may later be promoted to the ministry.