wicked idolatry
saying Mass and baptising.' And it ordained, against not only them but
all dissenters and outsiders for all time, 'that no manner of person in
any time coming administer _any_ of the Sacraments foresaid, secretly or
any other manner of way, but they that are admitted, or have power to
that effect.' And lastly, with regard to the large minority (if, indeed,
it was not a clear majority) of the nation who still clung to their
ordinary worship, it provided that no one 'shall say Mass, nor yet hear
Mass, nor be present thereat,' under the pains, for the first fault, of
confiscation of goods and bodily punishment, for the second, of
banishment, and for the third, of _death_.

This has always remained the fundamental positive ordinance among the
statutes of the Reformation; though it may be fair to take along with it
the first of these three Acts, and especially a positive clause in it
which forbids bishops to exercise jurisdiction by Papal authority. No
farther establishment of the Church was at the time attempted; and there
was indeed no farther legislation till Mary's downfall in 1567. In that
year the three Acts of 1560 were anew passed; and they were followed by
the formal statement (more or less implied even in the legislation of
1560) that the ministers and people professing Christ according to the
Evangel and the Reformed Sacraments and Confession are 'the only true
and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm.' An Act followed by
which each king at his coronation was to take an oath to maintain this
religion, and also, explicitly, to root out all heretics and enemies 'to
the true worship of God that shall be convict by the true Kirk of God.'
It seems difficult for statutory religion to go farther: but the solid
system and block of intolerance was completed by a group of statutes in
1572, the year of Knox's death. They ordain that Papists and others not
joining in the Reformed worship shall after warning be excommunicated by
the Church (of which a previous Act, somewhat inconsistently, had
declared them not to be at all members); and that 'none shall be reputed
as loyal and faithful subjects to our sovereign Lord or his authority,
but be punishable as rebels and gain-standers of the same, who shall not
give their confession, and make their profession of the said true
religion.'

Scotland had taken the wrong legislative turning. The only defence of
these statutes, and it is a very inadequate one, is