The Second Book of Discipline

How the book was made

MacPherson writes: “The Book of Policy, or as it is commonly called, The Second Book of Discipline, had been for some time in preparation. In the Assembly of April, 1576, a commission was appointed to deliberate and draw up a scheme of polity [church order] and church government.” Its members sat in separate companies “in Glasgow, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Montrose, and Aberdeen”, and were to meet together at Stirling “and then to report to the next Assembly”. At the Assembly’s October meeting “the heads of the policy were read over and discussed, and a committee was appointed to revise and arrange and put it in good form.”¹

M’Crie writes that Andrew Melville, who had come home after ten years on the Continent and became principal first of the University of Glasgow and then of the New College, St Andrews, “had a chief hand in the composition of the Second Book of Discipline”.²

Agreed by the Assembly

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh, in the Laigh Tolbooth, on 25 October 1577, with David Lindsay, minister of Leith, as Moderator. In its thirteenth session the Assembly recorded that the heads of the Policy had been “wholly read in the audience of the whole Assembly, and thought good” [spelling modernised] to be presented to the Regent, “saving the head de Diaconatu [on the office of deacon], which is ordained to be given in with a note, that the same is agreed by the most part of the Assembly” [spelling modernised].³

At the next Assembly, in the Magdalene Chapel, Edinburgh, from 24 April 1578, with Andrew Melville as Moderator, the record notes that the heads had been “concluded and agreed in the last Assembly of the Kirk, by the most part of the brethren” [spelling modernised]. All who had any doubt were asked to give their reasons, “and none offered any [reason or] argument in the contrary” [spelling modernised]. The Assembly then gave commission to present the heads of the Policy to the King and Council, and in June 1578 the brethren reported that the King had given “a very comfortable and good answer” [spelling modernised].⁴

The histories date the agreement differently. MacPherson, like the record, has the book approved at the October Assembly of 1577. M’Crie writes that it was “approved and adopted by the General Assembly in 1578”, and elsewhere that it was “finally agreed to in 1578”, which fits the April Assembly’s conclusion of the work.⁵

What it set out

M’Crie writes that the book “defines the government of the Church still more exactly than the First Book of Discipline, which was drawn up hastily, to meet the emergency of a sudden conversion from Popery. It traces the essential line of distinction between civil and ecclesiastical power; declaring, that Jesus Christ has appointed a government in his Church distinct from civil government, which is to be exercised in his name by such officers as he hath authorized, and not by civil magistrates, or under their direction.”⁶

He goes on: “They claim the right of church courts, as courts of Christ, to convene and settle business independent of the civil power. These courts were divided into sessions, presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies. They admit of no superiority of office in the church above a teaching presbyter [elder], or minister of the gospel—no pastor of pastors. None are to be intruded into the ministry contrary to the will of the congregation.”⁷

Among the abuses the book asked the state to reform was lay patronage [a patron’s right to present the minister], which it held to be incompatible with “lawful election, and the assent of the people over whom the person is placed, as the practice of the apostolical and primitive kirk [church] and good order craves.”⁸

MacPherson describes the book as consisting “of thirteen chapters”, “considerably less than one half of the length of The First Book of Discipline”. Its chapters run from “Of the Kirk and Policy thereof in general, and wherein it is different from the civil policy” to “The Utility that shall flow from this Reformation in all estates”, and include chapters on pastors or ministers, on doctors and the schools, on elders, on “the Elderships, and Assemblies, and Discipline”, on deacons, and on “the Office of the Christian Magistrate in the Kirk”.⁹

Never ratified by Parliament

Parliament “would do no more than promise to consider the heads of the book.” MacPherson continues: “Parliamentary sanction being thus withheld, it was ordained at the April meeting of Assembly, 1581, that, though the book had not such good success as good men wished, it should be inserted in the register of the Acts of the Assembly.”¹⁰

M’Crie adds that the book, “though not ratified by parliament, still forms a standard work in the Church of Scotland”.¹¹