was sometimes hinted at, as no unfit model for the state; at least, the kirkmen laboured to impress, upon their followers and hearers, the fundamental principle, that the church should be solely governed by those, unto whom God had given the spiritual sceptre.  The elder Melvine, in a conference with James VI., seized the monarch by the sleeve, and, addressing him as God’s sillie vassal, told him, “There are two kings, and two kingdomes.  There is Christ, and his kingdome, the kirke; whose subject King James the sixth is, and of whose kingdome he is not a king, nor a head, nor a lord, but a member; and they, whom Christ hath called and commanded to watch ower his kirke, and govern his spiritual kingdome, have sufficient authorise and power from him so to do; which no christian king, no prince, should controul or discharge, but fortifie and assist:  otherwise they are not faithful subjects to Christ.”—­Calderwood, p. 329.  The delegated theocracy, thus sternly claimed, was exercised with equal rigour.  The offences in the king’s household fell under their unceremonious jurisdiction, and he was formally reminded of his occasional neglect to say grace before and after meat—­his repairing to hear the word more rarely than was fitting—­his profane banning and swearing, and keeping of evil company—­and finally, of his queen’s carding, dancing, night-walking, and such like profane pastimes.—­Calderwood, p. 313.  A curse, direct or implied, was formally denounced against every man, horse, and spear, who should assist the king in his quarrel with the Earl of Gowrie; and from the pulpit, the favourites of the listening sovereign were likened to Haman, his wife to Herodias, and he himself to Ahab, to Herod, and to Jeroboam.  These effusions of zeal could not be very agreeable to the temper of James:  and accordingly, by a course of slow, and often crooked and cunning policy, he laboured to arrange the church-government upon a less turbulent and menacing footing.  His eyes were naturally turned towards the English hierarchy, which had been modelled, by the despotic Henry VIII., into such a form, as to connect indissolubly the interest of the church with that of the regal power.[A] The Reformation, in England, had originated in the arbitrary will of the prince; in Scotland, and in all other countries of Europe, it had commenced among insurgents of the lower ranks.  Hence, the deep and essential difference which separated the Huguenots, the Lutherans, the Scottish presbyterians, and, in fine, all the other reformed churches, from that of England.  But James, with a timidity which sometimes supplies the place of prudence, contented himself with gradually imposing upon the Scottish nation a limited and moderate system of episcopacy, which, while it gave to a proportion of the churchmen a seat in the council of the nation, induced them to look up to the sovereign, as the power to whose influence they owed their elevation.  But, in other respects, James spared the prejudices