For

cond place, that it must be historically untrue that the liberty of election in the people was "observit without interruption swa lang as the Kirk was not corruptit be Antichrist." this seems to imply that the introduction of patronage and the corruption by Antichrist were contemporaneous; that the one did not exist before the other. Now, in what church is it as serted that patronage did not exist, and that the liberty of election in the people was observed without interruption? Is it in the Church universal during the first ages, or at least before Constantine? The history of those days, one would think, can be of little value in this question. The absence of patronage, where its exercise was impossible, in a Church not recognised by law and not possessed of benefices or endowments of any kind, is a fact of no force or relevancy in a question of ecclesiastical history or policy in a Church established and endowed. But if it be in the Church of Scotland that the liberty of election in the people is said to have been observed without interruption, we challenge the supporters of this doctrine in the present day to point out any period, previous to the compilation of The Second Book of Discipline, in which patronage did not exist, and was not acknowledged in this Church. There is a distinct statement made that it did not exist till the age of corruption; and, to justify this statement, there must be some record, there must be some authority, to which we can be referred for proof of the fact.

But if the challenge be declined, and no attempt made to produce authority in support of the statement contained in The Second Book of Discipline, we think there is abundant means to show that that statement is historically false. It is contradicted by the language of the Act 1567, which reserves the ancient right of patronage. It is contradicted by the admission of the General Assembly in 1565, already quoted, that "the presentation of benefices pertaines to the patrone." But the proofs on this subject are both numerous and direct. The oldest and most The oldest and most

venerable authority in Scottish law or Scottish history, the Regiam Majestatem, speaks of patronage as an undoubted, ancient, and well-recognised part of the ecclesiastical constitution:-" Sed caveat sibi Patronus laicus, quod vacante Ecclesiâ vel vicariâ, presentet personam idoneam, in literaturâ sufficientem, vitâ laudabili et sane morigeratum, et quod presentet illum infra quatuor menses, ne dilatio ulterior suæ præsentationis præjudicare sibi valeat."* And the same book, in another place, states the necessity of qualification (idoneitas) in the presentee as the sole check on the patron's absolute right. It is sufficient for our purpose thus to advert to the antiquity of patronage and its recognition in the law. Its origin is ascribed to a very remote period by the learned Selden. So early as the sixth century, we have traces of its existence in the Roman law.§ Before there was a church in Scotland, the canon law had received the maxim "Patronum faciunt dos, ædificatio, fundus," and till the Reformation the canon law was the only law of the Church of Scotland. But in the days of Melville, it is impossible that such ignorance as he exhibits, whether pretended or real, on the subject of Church History, could have been at all common among the educated class. es; for Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich, an eminent contemporary of Melville's, devotes a chapter of his "Practicks of the more ancient law of Scotland," to the subject of " Advocatioun and Patronage of Kirkis," every sentence of which goes to satisfy the reader that he is treating of a right which must have existed and been recognised from the earliest period in the law of Scotland. Sir Thomas Craig, too, who was alive in 1578, though his celebrated treatise had not yet been published, gives the most direct testimony to the same effect. P

The result, then, of our examination of the two Books of Discipline, seems but little conducive to the support of the principle of the Veto Act. John Knox treats the unreasonable or unexplained objections of the people with

Selden on Tithes, chap. 6. Balfour's Practicks, p. 501.

wonderfully little respect, in recommending their removal by the compulsitor of Church censures; and the inconsistency of this rule with the profession of a desire to place the election of pastors absolutely in the hands of the whole congregation, naturally excites a suspicion, either that the First Book is, in this matter at least, a compilation as crude and ill-considered as might be supposed from the haste with whch it was prepared; or, on the other hand, that the true purpose of the early Reformers was to procure the transference of patronage into their own hands-a purpose which they veiled, in the mean time, under the pretext of giving a voice to the people, and thus apparently liberalizing the constitution of the Church. The Second Book of Discipline, no doubt, maintains the propriety of popular election in unqualified terms. But

this is accompanied by an admission of its incompatibility with patronage, which nullifies the authority of The Book in the present argument; while the historical inaccuracy of the statement respecting the previous existence of patronage in the Church, whether arising from ignorance or design, obviously renders it an unfit source from which to extract evidence of the antiquity or fundamental character of any law, and tends, in no small degree, to bring both the work itself and its authors into disrepute.

Fourteen years elapsed between the publication of the Second Book of Discipline and the final settlement of the Reformed Ecclesiastical Constitution in 1592. In this interval, many attempts were made to enhance the influence both of the Church Courts and of Congregations in the settlement of ministers; and the uniform want of success which attended these attempts, shows the determined purpose of the Sovereign and the Parliament to resist the introduction of any element which should interfere with the exercise of the right of patronage. The Act 1592, c. 116, had specially in view

the numerous recent discussions on this subject; and the Legislature doubtless saw the necessity of fixing, by some unambiguous enactment, the limits of the Church's power in the matter of collation. The Statute, accordingly, in exact conformity with the tenor of the communications between the Queen and the General Assembly in 1565, “ ordainis all presentations to benefices to be direct to the particular presbyteries in all time cumming, with full power to give colation thereupon; and to put ordour to all maters and causes ecclesiasticall within their boundes, according to the discipline of the Kirk: providing the foresaid presbyteries be bound and astricted to receive and admit quhatsumever qualified minister presented be his Majesty or laick patrones."

By this Act, therefore, the qualification of the presentee is the sole restriction on patronage-the single particular in which the Church is privileged to interfere. There is no concession to the demand for popular election, and still less is there any recognition of a right in the people to dissent, without cause shown, from the nomination of the patron.

Our conclusion then is, that in the Reformed Church of Scotland, in the sixteenth century, there existed no fundamental law which authorized the rejection of a presentee on the ground of the dissent of a majority, or any part of the people, without objections stated and verified. We have already, we hope, sufficiently demonstrated the absence of any such law or principle in the polity of the Church before the Reformation; and the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may, in the present question, be dismissed with a very few remarks. For the present, however, we must pause, and reserve for another occasion our observations on the later periods of the history of the Church, as well as the discussion of the more practical and important part of this great subject.