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Past & Present 191.1 (2006) 45-76



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Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism*

University of Birmingham

I

During the autumn of 1559, as Scotland's religious civil war entered a period of bewildering switchback, John Knox found the time to begin writing an account of the rebellion and of the events which had led up to it. This narrative was eventually to form the core of a full-scale history of the Scottish Reformation, but at this earliest stage Knox's aims were both more modest and more immediate. He wished to defend the partisans of evangelical reform — the self-styled 'Congregation' — against the potent charge of 'seditioun and rebellioun', emphasizing instead that their aim was merely the 'reformatioun of maners and abuses in Religioun'.1 However, even this earliest account (most of which survives as Book II of Knox's full History) was placed within a broader narrative. Its opening pages set the scene with a few paragraphs describing the rise of Protestantism in Scotland. This was a story which Knox was to tell in much more detail a few years later, but this earliest narrative has its own importance, for in it we see Knox's view of the process stripped down to the pith, almost wholly uncluttered by fact or evidence.2

Knox's story is a theological one, and it tells of a staged progress away from idolatry and towards the true gospel. The first stage was conversion. God opened the eyes of 'na small parte of the Baronis of this Realme' through the work of preachers and the reading of the Bible. After conversion came separation. As [End Page 45] the converts became aware of the extent to which Scotland was mired in idolatry, their scruples grew. They 'almost universallie begane to doubt' whether they might legitimately attend Mass or have their children baptized according to popish rites. They were assured by 'the most godlie and the most learned in Europe' that these doubts were well founded, and as a result they withdrew from participation in the life of the old Church. Next came political dissent. The nobility and others in authority began to doubt whether they might 'with salf conscience' participate in upholding the old Church. At this point, Knox wrote, 'we began everie man to look more diligentlie to his salvatioun'; and so the next stage was the formation of simple congregations. To begin with this meant 'that the Brethren in everie toune at certain tymes should assemble togidder, to Commoun Prayeris, to Exercise and Reading of the Scripturis'. Yet these conventicles, Knox insisted, understood themselves to be provisional, consciously waiting 'till it should please God to give the sermone of Exhortatioun to some, for conforte and instructioun of the rest'. However, even when 'the sermone of Exhortatioun' had been given, this was not enough. The Holy Spirit brought Scotland's Protestants to the final stage. 'Within few monethis, the hartes of many war so strenthned, that we sought to have the face of a Church amanges us'. And Knox is quite explicit as to what he means by 'the face of a Church': a congregation in which 'open crymes' were 'punished without respect of persone' by elected elders, 'to whome the hole brethren promissed obedience'. A marginal note in his manuscript adds: 'This was called the prevye kirk'.3

The privy kirk which Knox describes can therefore be defined quite tightly. It is more than a prayer group or a study group — more than an assembly to hear a preacher. It is a congregation with all the attributes of a self-regulating Reformed church, but which happens to operate in secret. For Knox's mentor Calvin the distinguishing marks of a true church were, famously, that within it the Word was truly preached and the sacraments truly ministered. The Scottish reformers, equally famously, elevated another of Calvin's priorities to be a third 'mark'. In a true church, they argued, one would find 'ecclesiasticall discipline uprychtlie ministred . . . whairby vice is repressed, and vertew nurished'.4 [End Page 46...

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