THE ROMAN AND REFORMED CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND.*
FOR a Presbyterian clergyman, the author of this volume is remarkably bold in a peculiar way. No doubt there is what is termed a Broad Church party in the Church of Scotland to which he belongs ; but even its members are not in the habit of saying such things as that Cardinal Beaton, "with all his faults, was the greatest statesman of the age in Scotland> and his removal—while it cleared the way for the subversion of the Church—was an irreparable loss from a civil and. patriotic point of view." Even more startling is : " The garri- son of the Castle of St. Andrews held out for fourteen months, till August, 1547. It is only fair to confess that they were a crew of desperadoes and blackguards, and it is not easy to regard John Knox with honest Christian sympathy for casting in his lot, even temporarily, with such men ; and his having to keep them company in the French galleys till February, 1549, was a punishment not altogether unmerited." Again : " Knox's treatment of her [Mary] is utterly indefensible in its rudeness, being based on an assumption of a Divine mission on his part, and a daringly presumptuous misrepresentation of the mass as idolatry." Finally, Dr. Rankin says of the celebrated Samuel Ruther- ford, who was one of the leaders of the pre-Restoration Covenanting Church of Scotland : " While he is lauded to- adoration by one set of writers, in deference to whom Stanley calls him the true saint of the Covenant,' it is a fact that his letters on religious subjects are in many places barely decent in their figurative language, that his Lex Rex ' is steeped in- sedition, and that his red-hot furnace style of prayer was an importation from the anti-Church Brownists of Ireland while his whole relation to Church Courts and Church business was that of a firebrand." Frankly, it must be allowed that writing of this kind is not so much courageous and independent, as brusque, harsh, and almost rude. No doubt neither Knox nor Rutherford was perfect. Both lived in revolutionary times, and had to do rough work; and if their manners and literary style were not perfect, this circumstance should be pleaded in extenuation. It savours of petulance and of juvenility to speak of Knox's period at the galleys in a " serve him right " spirit ; and although Norman Leslie and Kirkaldy of Grange were readier with blows than words, they cannot be dismissed as " desperadoes."
Happily, the bulk of Dr. Rankin's work is not devoted to a statement of his opinions upon certain disputed questions in the history of the Church—or Churches—of Scotland. His
• The Church of Scotland, Past and Present : its History, its Relation to the Law and the State. its Doctrine, Ritual, Disc pline, and Patrimony. Edited by Herbert Story, D.D., F.S.A. Books II. and III.:—The Church from the Reign of Malcolm Canniore to the Reformation : and from the Reforma- tion to the Resolution of 1688. By the Rev. James Rankin, D.D. London: William Mackenzie. 1890. strength lies in the lucid statement of well-digested informa- tion, and itInds ample scope for assertion in his history of the pre-Reformation Church. The story of the rise of Scotch -monasteries, most of which seem to date from the prosperous reign of David I., and of the establishment and subdivision of
parishes, is very well narrated. Here is the history of a well- known Scotch pariah, Ednam, near Kelso, and also the elucida- tion of the mystery of typical Scotch names, in a nutshell :—
" King Edgar, c. 1100, granted the wild lands of Ednaham to an Englishman named Thor. Thor reclaimed the district and erected a church, which was dedicated to St. Cuthbert. Edgar endowed it, first with a plonghgate of land, and then with the tithes of Thor's manor. Next, Thor granted the superiority of the whole to the monks of Durham for the ' weal ' of certain souls. In the diocese of Glasgow is a group of at least six parishes of special rank for recog- nised antiquity—viz., Hoddam, Renfrew, Govan, Cadzow, Borth- wick, and Glasgow itself. Each of these has its root in the Celtic period. Another group of four parishes may be named in illustra- tion of the method by which the parishes of Scotland were made up to about 1,000 in number, by subdividing some of the largest of the more ancient parochial districts. Out of Kynef were formed Bervie, Catterline, and Barras. Out of St. Cuthbert's were formed -Corstorphine, Liberton, Duddingstone, Canongate, and North Leith, besides half-a-dozen old chapelries. Stobo was a piebania, with Lyne, Broughton, Kingledoors, Dawie, and Drummelzier under it. Kinkell, in Garioch, was an abthane which included Kintore, Kenmay, Dyce, Skene, Drumblade, Kinnellar, and Monkegie. Another group of large old outstanding parishes is seen in the cases of Kinghorne magna and parva, Eccles in the Morse, Roseneath, Inveravon in Strathspey, Tain in Ross, Farr in Caithness, and Wick, which had a covey og eight chapels. It is worthy of note that previous to the currency of the word parochia, there existed an older native word, shire, stir, or skeir, which -denoted the district attached to old Celtic churches, but which afterwards got widened and secularised to denote a county or district under a sheriff =scir-gerefa or shire-graf."
When the Church was fully organised, it was divided into thirteen dioceses, containing in all 1,042 churches and 546
chapels. The paramountcy of the dioceses of St. Andrews and Glasgow is sufficiently indicated by the fact that the one con- tained 251 churches and 81 chapels, and the other 231 churches and 110 chapels. If the number of churches seems inordinately large, it should also be borne in mind that the majority of the -edifices were small, being from twenty to thirty feet long by fifteen or sixteen feet wide. It is one of the most remarkable features of these lists of old churches, that the names of some of the most populous and prosperous of the minor Scotch towns—such as Port Glasgow, Gourock, Coat- bridge, Campbeltown, Oban, and Wishaw—are either entirely absent from them, or appear only as chapels. It is also note- worthy that of the thirteen dioceses, only four have their ohartula.ries extant and printed,—Glasgow, Aberdeen, Moray, and Brechin.
Dr. Rankin has no very novel views to offer regarding the -circumstances which led to the overthrow of so well-organised an institution as the Catholic Church in Scotland, although he tabulates them under fourteen heads. He agrees in many respects with the sentiments expressed by the Catholic historian
of Catholic Scotland, Bellesheim, in his elaborate work which was recently reviewed in the 'Spectator. He also does justice to what he terms the better features of the old Church ; in par-
ticular, he dwells upon the foundation of eighty-three hospitals, provided and endowed for wayfarers, and for the aged and sick. Speaking of the Catholic monasteries, he says that, "at their first settlement, and perhaps for two centuries onwards, they were primary and precious agents of culture, both material and moral,—as true schools of Christian knowledge and virtue as the Celtic monasteries had been in a still ruder age." That portion of Dr. Rankin's work which deals with the fall of the Roman Church in Scotland, and with the history of the Reformed Church from that period down to the Revolution Settlement, is virtually and unavoidably a summary of what has been written by previous writers who are recognised authorities. As already seen, Dr. Rankin has his fling at Knox and Rutherford, and yet he is obviously at heart a good patriot and Presbyterian. Thus, speaking of the famous Jenny Geddes incident, he says : " In ridding themselves of the unscrupulous acts and unconstitutional violence of Kings like Charles, honest men are entitled to some of the freedoms associated with war." Then, while he is severe on the excesses of the Covenanters, be cannot vindicate James Sharpe, who, from being a Protestant, became an Episcopalian and an Archbishop, and whose assassination by a party of fanatical Covenanters has made him a quasi-martyr. Similarly Dr. Rankin does not follow the lead of Grub and other clerical
historians in assaulting Wodrow, whose History of the Sufferings ("the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution, used to be regarded as the one book of value upon this period. On the contrary, he declares that " the real scandalum magnet- tura of Wodrow is his herculean industry in copying so many documents, collecting so many facts, and presenting the history from 1660 to 1688 so touchingly that his sturdy book forms an insuperable barrier to the Anglicizers of Scotland by showing why Prelacy has been so marvellously suspected and hated by our nation." Dr. Rankin's own book is a " sturdy " one, an honest performance in every sense of the word. Still, from the literary point of view, we prefer his " interiors " of the Roman Church to his history of that which took its place.
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