portant concession in
renouncing its right of using the pulpit to attack the crown.
Henceforward no one was to venture to impugn the measures of the King,
until an officer of the Church had made a remonstrance to him on the
subject. And the same ideas prevailed also in the subsequent
assemblies at Dundee and Perth. The former of these conceded to the
King a share in all the business which the Church took in hand; it
allowed him to stay the proceedings of the Presbyteries when they ran
counter to the royal jurisdiction or to recognised rights. In Dundee
the excommunicated lords were admitted to a reconciliation and
acknowledged as true vassals of the King, after making a declaration
by which they acknowledged the Scottish to be the true Church;
although the stricter party would not even then forgive them. But the
point of chief importance was that the King succeeded in getting a
Commission formed to co-operate with him in maintaining peace and
obedience in the kingdom. Invested with full powers by the Church but
dependent on the King, this Commission procured him a preponderating
influence in all ecclesiastical affairs. For the most part it
consisted of men of moderate views.

There is a contemporary narrative of the decay of the Church in
Scotland which begins from this date. For here, it was thought, ended
the period during which the word revealed from Sinai and Zion to the
apostles and prophets was the only rule of doctrine and Church
discipline without any mixture of Babylon or the City of the Seven
Hills, or of policy of man's devising; when the Church was 'Beautiful
as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an
army with banners.'

James, who regarded all this as due merely to the opposition of
enemies, went on his way without bestowing further consideration on
the depth, strength, and inward significance of this spirit which was
destined once more to agitate the world. He again took up in serious
earnest the design of erecting a Protestant episcopacy which had been
entertained by Mar and Morton. Not only was this necessary for the
constitution but for the sake of the clergy also: as George Gladstaine
explained before a large assembly at Dundee, it was desirable that
they should take part in the exercise of the legislative power. A
small majority, but still a majority, in this assembly decided in
favour of the proposal. The King assured them that he wished neither
for a Papistical nor for an