April - the Free Presbyterian church of Scotland

Benefits of the Reformation to Scotland 109Scotland, the eye of God’s providence and blessing was upon the work ofthe kirk session.7. A Provided Nation. The First Book of Discipline commended the careand relief of the poor in the strongest of terms: “Fearful and horrible it is,that the poor, whom not only God the Father in His law, but Christ Jesus inHis evangel, and the Holy Spirit speaking by Saint Paul, has so earnestlycommended to our care, are universally so contemned and despised”. TheReformers noted the continual emphasis given to provision for the poor inScripture and sought to remedy the oppression that they had experienced atthe hands of the Romish clergy, under whom there had been no regularprovision for their support. The corpse-presents, or church dues, that thelocal priest exacted at the time of a death were not only a significant burdento the poorest (a cow and the uppermost clothing) but were exacted in theharshest way under threat of excommunication.The historian Richard L Greaves remarks that “increasing a sense ofresponsibility for the poor was perhaps more difficult for the Protestantreformers than procuring desired changes in theology and worship”. 14 TheFirst Book of Discipline remonstrated with the nobility, who were “now ascruel over their tenants as ever were the Papists, requiring of them the tiends[tithes] and whatsoever they afore payed to the kirk, so that the Papisticaltyranny shall only be changed into the tyranny of the lord and laird”.Warning them of “God’s heavy and fearful judgements”, they were exhortedto “be content to live upon their just rents” and oppress the poor no more.Alexander Mitchell asserted that “the history of the world, the history of theChristian church, has few passages more noble than this, where these poorministers, not yet assured of decent provision for their own maintenance,boldly undertake the patronage of the peasantry, and say they would rathersuffer themselves than ask that teinds should be exacted from those who hadbeen so long ground down”. 15Though they were thus charged “in the name of the eternal God, and ofHis Son Christ Jesus” to have compassion upon the poor, the nobles turneda deaf ear and were unwilling to assign to the Church the ecclesiasticalrevenues which they had seized. While adopted by the Church of Scotlandin 1561, The First Book of Discipline never therefore became the law of theland and the Church continued to speak out against the treatment of the poorin later times.14 “The Social Awareness of John Knox: The Problems of Poverty and Educational Reform”,in Renaissance and Reformation XII:1, 1976, pp 36-48; the quotation is on p 36.15 The Scottish Reformation: Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics,William Blackwood, 1900, p 181.