Andrew Melville: Lion
of Scotland
by Robert Anderson
Exactly four hundred years ago, when Andrew Melville
caught hold of the sleeve of King James VI of Scotland and called him "God's
sillie vassal" and (according to Melville's biographer Thomas McCrie) proceeded
to address the king in a "strain, perhaps the most singular, in point of
freedom, that ever saluted royal ears, or that ever proceeded from the mouth of
a loyal subject?," we have a still shot of both the personality and principles
of one of Scotland's lesser-known reformers.
Issues
Andrew Melville
(1545-1622) was the successor of the Scots? most notable reformer, John Knox:
their lives overlapped by twenty-seven years. It fell to Melville, in God?s
sovereign ordering of things, to preserve, promote, defend, and, in certain
particulars, to refine the work of Knox. From our vantage point in history,
Andrew Melville?s greatest contribution was his role in Scotland's struggle for
libertycivil, ecclesiastical and spiritual.
In the civil sphere, the
question at issue in Melville?s day was "shall the king govern by his own
arbitrary irresponsible will or shall the powers of the throne be limited by
the chartered rights of the people?" The common doctrine of his age was that
"kings reigned by Divine right and that the understandings and consciences of
their subjects were in their keeping." Melville was to clash with King James VI
on this issue, just as Knox, his predecessor, had collided with Mary Queen of
Scots some years before. Wylie, in his History of Protestantism says, "Mary
held by the principle, to sovereigns a convenient one, of the right divine of
kings to govern wrong." The civil liberty Knox had laboured for was on this
principle: "all power is founded on a compact expressed or understood between
the rulers and the ruled, and that no one has either divine or human right to
govern, save in accordance with the will of the people and the law of God." It
was this same concept of liberty for which Melville later so valiantly
contended.
Melville's philosophy was also at one with Knox respecting
ecclesiastical liberty. Both men had to fight against the church's enslavement
from two quarters: from Rome and from the heads of state. Before Knox began his
reforming work in Scotland, the nation was in bondage to Rome?s corrupt
doctrine, wor-ship, government and morals. Even when Scotland was able to throw
off that yoke, the church's liberty was not to be then and forever safe. Rome
sought by various agencies to reimpose the yoke; also Mary Queen of Scots would
have subjected the church of Scotland to her own rule in behalf of the Roman
church. Whether the pope of Rome or civil ruler, each would have bowed the
church to its own laws for the sake of glory, power and wealth.
In
contrast, Knox maintained
...the church was governed solely by her own laws
[agreeable to the Scriptures] or administered by her own officers, whose
decisions and acts in all things falling within the spiritual and
ecclesiastical sphere were final.
According to Wylie, "An independent
government in things spiritual, but rigidly restricted to things spiritual, was
the root idea of Knox's church organization." When Melville returned home to
Scotland two years after the death of Knox, his struggle against the same basic
enemies would parallel those of his predecessor.
The labors which Knox and
his successor Melville bestowed on behalf of civil and ecclesiastical liberty
was rooted in their understanding of spiritual liberty as revealed in the
Bible. The Scotland to which Knox preached was generally sunk in sin and
superstition. The great burden of Knox, and thereafter of Melville, was that
men should have the advantages of the pure gospel. Those two men were the
instruments by whom Christ brought "deliverance to the captives and set at
liberty them that are bruised." We refer again to Wylie's History of
Protestantism in which he says, "The Reformation was the cry of the human
conscience for pardon...The gospel which showed the way of forgiveness
delivered men from bondage and imparting a new life, brought them into a world
of liberty."
As these liberties, civil, ecclesiastitical and spiritual are
intimately connected in Scriptures, so they proved to be in the thinking of
Knox and Melville. He who has been freed from the dominion of sin and Satan
lives to serve God and enjoy his blessings. Being the Lord's free man, the
pardoned sinner is bound to serve his divine Lord according to his will and for
His glory. His loyalty to Christ will therefore arm him to oppose and resist
any thing which will corrupt or deny the liberty of the church or which will
deprive him of his God-given liberties as a citizen of the state. Knox was the
first great champion in Scotland of these three aspects of liberty; when he had
passed, Melville took up his mantle.
A Life Lived Unto God
Born August
1, 1545, at Baldovy, Scotland, and orphaned at age four, Andrew Melville was
raised by an older brother. Because Andrew showed a proficiency for learning,
his brother gave him the advantages of education. In his fourteenth year he
entered St. Andrews University and, having finished his course, he left the
school with the reputation of being "the best philosopher, poet, and Grecian of
any young master in the land."
In 1564 Andrew left Scotland to study in
France, studying Hebrew and other oriental languages in Paris and afterward
studying law in the University of Poictiers. From France he went to Geneva
where he gave himself to further studies in the languages, taught in the
Academy and was associated with Theodore Beza, who was the successor of John
Calvin. Two years after the death of Knox (1574), Melville, at the urging of
his own countrymen, returned to his homeland where he became principal of the
University of Glasgow. There he introduced a new method of education. It was
the established practice in all universities at that time for the regent who
began a class to continue with it and conduct his students through the whole
course of studies for four years. Melville abolished this practice; instead,
each regent became a teacher in one or two subjects, thus specializing in their
fields of expertise.
Six years later he left the University of Glasgow to
become the Principal of the University of St. Andrews at Edinburgh. His fame in
both institutions spread and brought students flocking to them. Even in his
years of study on the continent, Melville had taken an interest in the fortunes
of his homeland. So when he was back in Scotland he added to his teaching
labors his endeavors for the welfare of the church and nation. From the
multitude of his labors, we select a few in which he was involved, which show
the heart and mind of the man.
The first major contention in which Melville
earned recognition as a leader in the reformation cause was over the tulchan
bishops. The year 1560 had seen the Scottish parliament, sympathetic at that
point with Knox's reforms, "rescind the laws in favor of the Romish church and
against the Protestant faith." As of that date, however, the Reformation was
not to go unchallenged. The head of the nation changed from one who was
favorable to the Reformation, to one who was unfavorable. Dissentions broke out
between the Scottish court and the church. A new Regent, Earl of Morton,
arranged a meeting between a few ministers and his court. The design and fruit
of this meeting was an arrangement whereby benefices (church offices endowed
with assets that provided a living) would be occupied by Protestant ministers
(often the least worthy of men), only they would have the title of bishop.
Under this arrangement, the ministers would have a small part of the revenue
attached to the benefices and the vast portion of it would go to the nobility.
The ministers who were to occupy this position were called tulchan bishops?the
word "tulchan" being the name given a cowhide stuffed with straw which, serving
the place of a calf, was placed before the cow to induce them to give their
milk. "The bishop," said one, "had the title, but my lord got the milk or
commoditie." To some, that arrangement might have seemed harmless enough. To
Melville and the church as a whole it was not. As Knox had opposed the
arrangement as "an invasion of Presbyterian equality" so did Melville,
beginning with the church's General Assembly in 1575.
Melville's activities
with reference to the introduction of the episcopacy via the tulchan bishop
arrangement was not simply negative. Constructively, he led in the church's
preparation of a Second Book of Discipline, which was adopted by the General
Assembly in 1581 and which would be ratified by the Parliament in 1592. The
First Book of Discipline had been rather hastily prepared; more deliberation
was given to the preparations of the Second Book. W.M. Hetherington, commenting
on the Second Book in his History of the Church of Scotland says:
It begins
by stating the essential line of distinction between civil and ecclesiastical
power. This it does by declaring that Jesus Christ has appointed a government
in his Church, distinct from civil government, which is to be exercised by such
office-bearers as He has authorized, and not by civil magistrates, or under
their direction.
In the Second Book of Discipline, as again noted by
Hetherington, "The name bishop is of the same meaning as that of pastor or
minister; it is not expressive of superiority or lordship; and the Scriptures
do not allow of a pastor of pastors, or a pastor of many flocks." In his Life
of Andrew Melville, McCrie says with respect to Melville's part in the
preparation of the Second Book of Discipline, "he regarded his exertions in
this cause as the greatest service which he could perform for his country...."
Another insight we have into the principles for which Melville stood comes
in that meeting with King James the VI in which he called him "God's sillie
vassal." What he said on that occasion was in part as follows:
Sir...there
are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland: there is Christ Jesus the King of
the Church, whose subject King James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is
not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member...We will yield to you your
place, and give you all due obedience; but again I say, you are not the head of
the Church; you cannot give us that eternal life which even in this world we
seek for, and you cannot deprive us of it. Permit us then freely to meet in the
name of Christ, and to attend the interests of that Church....
Melville's
leadership in the cause of civil and ecclesiastical liberty was eventually to
see him unjustly imprisoned in the Tower of London. After four years of
confinement, he was banished to France, where he lived out the last days of his
seventy-seven years.
A Heritage of Courage
We have managed only a
glimpse of Andrew Melville. He was ardent of spirit. Wylie says of him and
others of his nation and era:
These men may have been rough in speech; they
may have permitted their temper to be ruffled, and their indignation to be set
on fire, in exposing craft and withstanding tyranny; but that man's
under-standing must be as narrow as his heart is cold, who would think for a
moment of weighing such things in the balance against the priceless blessing of
a nation's liberties.
If there was fire in the person of Andrew Melville,
there was also that kindness which is the fruit of the Spirit. McCrie tells us
that, when one of the men of rank who had been one of Melville's most violent
enemies was reduced to poverty, Andrew forgave him for the wrongs he had
suffered from him and "supported him for some months out of his own purse." In
the nearly thirty years of his unceasing activity in behalf of his nation and
the Church of Scotland, Melville served with never failing courage.
Illustrative of that courage is a scene involving one of Scotland's regents. A
few years after his return to Scotland, the Regent Morton said to Melville,
"There will never be quietness in this country till half-a-dozen of you be
hanged or banished." Melville replied, "Tush, Sir, to threaten your courtiers
after that manner. It is the same to me whether I rot in the air or in the
ground. The earth is the Lord's. My country is wherever goodness is."
Wylie
pays the highest tribute to Melville when he says, "...the public liberties as
well as the Protestantism of Scotland would have perished but for the vigilance
and intrepidity of the Presbyterian ministers, and, above all, the
incorruptible, the dauntless and unflinching courage and patriotism of Andrew
Melville."
American's owe men of the faith and courage of Melville an
immense debt. Nineteenth century American Presbyterian David Breed in his
little book, Presbyterians and the Revolution, documents that it was the
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who were in the forefront of the struggles which
freed colonial America from the tyranny of King George and gave the legacy of
civil and ecclesiastical liberty which are asserted in the "Declaration of
Independence" and guaranteed in the American Constitution's "Bill of Rights."
One such contributor was Scotland's own John Witherspoon, who came to America
to be the president of the College of New Jersey and was a signer of the
Declaration of Independence. Reading of the life of Andrew Melville, his
incessant labours, his sacrifices, his sufferings, one thinks of the line from
the epistle to the Hebrews, "of whom the world was not worthy."