have laid it down very dogmatically that even although the
constitution of a national church were in all other respects scriptural,
yet if it did not reserve this power to alter and retract without let or
hindrance, it would still be at variance with the tenets of the
Covenanting times; but you see here that Gillespie affirms that that was
a principle of the Independents, not of the Presbyterians, and
claims[269] it as a special merit of the latter that they were willing
to explain their doctrine and discipline to the civil authorities, and,
getting these sanctioned, to abide by them till they were again altered
by consent of church and state. He denies that in claiming a distinct
government for the church the Presbyterians meant to deprive the
Christian magistrate of that power and authority in matters of religion
which the Word of God and the earlier Confessions of the Reformed
churches recognised as belonging to his office. On the contrary, he
maintains that not only in extraordinary cases when church government
doth degenerate into tyranny, or those who manage it make defection from
the truth, "the Christian magistrate may and ought to do diverse things
in and for religion, and interpose his authority diverse wayes so as
doth not properly belong to his cognisance, decision and administration
ordinarily, and in a reformed and well constituted church";[270] but
also that, in ordinary cases, he is free to act as his own conscience
directs in giving or refusing his sanction to the government and
discipline of the church; and that if he is offended with any sentence
of its courts, "they ought to be ready, in all humility and respect, to
give him an account and reason of such their proceedings, and by all
means to endeavour the satisfaction of the magistrate his conscience, or
otherwise to be warned and rectified if themselves have erred."[271]

[Sidenote: Its Influence not unmixed.]

Had the principles thus laid down been more clearly kept in view by
the framers of the Second Book of Discipline, its influence for good on
Scottish Christianity would have been more unmixed than it has been. Had
they been more consistently acted on by Rutherfurd and his associates,
who consented to their formal insertion in our later standards, many sad
troubles which then and afterwards befel the church, for which they
lived and laboured, would have been altogether avoided, or more easily
provided against; but as it is, great misunderstand