December - the Free Presbyterian church of Scotland

362The Free Presbyterian Magazinein God.” “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abideunder the shadow of the Almighty.” Come, my people, enter into these yourcelestial chambers; and when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, ye alsoshall appear with Him in glory.The Reformers on Church Government 12. The Presbyterian System Formed in the Scottish Church (1)Rev J R Tallachn the decades preceding 1560 the ground was being cleared for a completeI break with Rome. Under the influence of Reformed literature and thepreaching of those truths by brave Reformers, a spiritual movement resultedin “privy kirks” being set up in different areas in the years immediately precedingthe Reformation.James Kirk writes: “Such was the assurance of salvation which one individual,Elizabeth Adamson, experienced from participation in these secretProtestant assemblies for Scripture study and prayer, fostered in Edinburghby Knox and others, that on her deathbed this wife of a prominent merchantand magistrate (himself in touch with Knox from Genevan days) rejected alloffers of priestly ministration and intercession. ‘Depart from me, ye sergeantsof Satan’, she is reported to have uttered, ‘for I have refused, and in your ownpresence do refuse, all your abominations. That which ye call your sacramentand Christ’s body (as ye have deceived us to believe in times past) is nothingbut an idol, and has nothing to do with the right institution of Jesus Christ:and therefore, in God’s name, I command you not to trouble me”.Extreme unction and the services of a Church which hitherto was seen tohold the key to unlock the doors of the kingdom of heaven were despised byElizabeth Adamson in Edinburgh. Instead, with a simple evangelical piety,she asked those around her to sing Psalm 103 because, as she explained, “atthe teaching of this Psalm, began my troubled soul first effectually to tasteof the mercy of my God, which now to me is more sweet and precious than[if] all the kingdoms of the earth were given to me to possess them a thousandyears”. 2 It was this underground network of Protestant communities whichgrew in strength over the 30 years preceding the Reformation and which in1560 seized control of parish kirks from priests and patrons and handed overthat control to ministers and elders; in this way Kirk Sessions were set upbased on the privy kirks. The privy kirks therefore formed a bridge between1 Last month’s article provided an introduction to the subject.2 James Kirk, Patterns of Reform, T & T Clark, 1989, pp 1,2.