Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

advance in the Protestant theory of Church power,
which differs from the Popish theory, inasmuch as
it is co-ordinate with, not superior to, the civil
power, its claims to supremacy being strictly
limited to things spiritual, and subject to the State
in things temporal. Luther had grasped the idea of
the essential distinction between the two powers,
but he shrank from the difficulty of embodying his
views in a Church organization. Calvin, after a
great battle, had succeeded in vesting the Church of
Geneva with a certain measure of spiritual
independence; but the State there was a theocracy
with two branch -- the spiritual administration of
the consistory, and the moral administration of the
senate -- and hence the impossibility of instituting
definite boundaries between the two. But in
Scotland there was more than a city; there were a
kingdom, a Parliament, a monarch; and this not
only permitted, but necessitated, a fuller
development of the autonomy of the Church than
was possible in Geneva. Hence the Scottish
arrangement more nearly resembles that which
obtained in France than that which was set up in
Geneva; besides, Mary Stuart was Romish, and
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