Scottish Church Society

Transcription

Since the Reformation in 1560, Scotland's national church had been Presbyterian. John Knox and his associates had completed the work of changing Scotland from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism. The Scots felt that their pure religion of Biblical worship and doctrine along with their liberty, which had cost so much, was worth fighting for. In this presentation, Reverend Sinclair Horne will tell the story, on location at the historic sites in the city of Edinburgh, of the bravery, suffering and martyrdom of the Covenanters of Scotland. My name is Rev. Sinclair Horne. For 44 years I was secretary lecturer of the Scottish Reformation Society. Over the past three years I've been known as the curator of the Magdalene chapel which is owned by the Scottish Reformation Society. We seek to make known the principles of the Reformation through visitors coming to the Chapel here and we enjoy meeting and sharing the knowledge of that truth with them. We're here in St. Giles Cathedral in the heart of the old city of Edinburgh. St. Giles has been a notable church down through the centuries there is part of her history that is very important we want to take up in this film. This is the church where John Knox was minister and there are very many things in the course of the reformation took place here in St. Giles Cathedral. We want to focus on John Knox today because his part in the work of the reformation in Scotland is very noteworthy. John Knox was a man who was trained as a priest and he came to this situation through his friendship with one of the pre-reformation heroes, George Wishart . George Wishart had come from the northeast of Scotland to Edinburgh and he began a preaching tour down near the area of the docks in Edinburgh and John Knox saw him and listened to him and became his friend. And from that point onwards throughout remainder of George Wishart's ministry, John Knox was instructed and helped to understand what reformation was all about, and he joined the reformation band as it was known and became the helper and coworker with George Wishart. After the death of George Wishart, John Knox had to leave Edinburgh and go to St. Andrews and he went to St. Andrews with what was known as his boys, who he was teaching and he stayed in St. Andrews for a number of months and it was there that he began his actual ministry. He began teaching in St. Andrews. But something happened in St. Andrews that was very significant and important. John Knox attended a parish church in St. Andrews and one of the services that the ministers at the close of his message aimed a direct desire that John Knox should become a minister of the Gospel. And it was there in St. Andrews that John Knox became a minister of the Gospel. He toyed with the idea for a whole week and agonizing concern that he was doing the right thing. But he came to the church in St. Andrews on the following Sunday and he preached a sermon and when he preached that sermon, people knew just exactly where John Knox stood. It's the only thing in the publications on John Knox that we have any idea of what his situation was. There is a lot of his biography and other things but this was a very important sermon that he preached and it was to mark him down as one of the great reformers. Up to this point three men that were involved in this Scottish reformation was Patrick Hamilton, and Patrick Hamilton was what we would call more of an evangelist in his day then there was George Wishart and he was a teacher. But in John Knox we had all three things, teacher, preacher and also organizer, and for there on John Knox labored faithfully for Jesus Christ. You will notice in these pictures that in the pictures of John Knox there is one notable feature and that is that he is holding the Bible. That is one of the wonderful things John Knox that everything that he did was in accordance with God's Word. Here we've got a picture which illustrates something of the form of that John Knox had in preaching. He had a very small pulpit but he was able to make his voice heard and make his emphasis clear, and people responded to it. John Knox left Scotland for a time and he was in England and then he went over to the continent and to Geneva and it was there that some of the greatest things happened to John Knox. He became a very close friend and associate of John Calvin. And that formulated in his mind a formal doctrine that was similar to what his own was from Calvin. He came back to Scotland and began to preach the message that was to be the herald of the reformation. He came home to Scotland in the late 1550's and he saw that the groundwork here in Scotland had been done and that there were preparations for a work of reformation and John Knox brought in his organizing aspect of his life and the work that he did. He was one of the men who formulated and printed the Scotch Confession, which was to be one of the great books at the time of the Scottish Reformation. He also did a number of things that were to be aids when the reformation came eventually. The reformation came in 1560. December the twentieth 1560 and John Knox had called a general assembly. Forty-two men attended that assembly. They were in tune with John Knox's views and his desires to see reformation in Scotland, and they sat for two weeks in the Magdalene chapel and then the work progressed and went out into the country. The banner of the reformation was held aloft through the main part of Scotland and there was a great response to the work that was being done by those men who had been appointed as ministers. John Knox became minister here in St. Giles and it was a different church than what it is here today but John Knox ministered here from 1560 to 1572 and he had a wonderful ministry here in Edinburgh. This picture that you see is very interesting indeed because it gives an indication of the way that people gathered around John Knox when he was preaching and it's said that the people could occupy themselves. One man says that he wrote down the notes for the first twenty minutes or thirty minutes of his message but he couldn't do anymore after that because of the earnestness of John Knox's preaching. So here was a very interesting aspect of things. So John Knox had to leave for certain periods of time because of illness and so on but he did continue until 1572. He left a legacy of great worth. In his last days, at his house John Knox met with the elders and deacons from the churches in Edinburgh and he began to talk to them of his work and his ministry. He left one very wonderful saying and it was this; "I know that many do blame me and do blame my two great rigor and severity but God knows that in my heart I never hated the passions of those against whom I thundered God's judgments. I hated only their sin and labored according to my power to bring them to Christ, who placed me in the function of this ministry and will call me to an account. This were among the last words that John Knox spoke to the general public and I think they are very wonderful reminder of the caliber of the man and the sincerity of his ministry. The struggle for religious and civil liberties during the 1600's was not with Romanism, but with the Episcopalians of England. The British monarchy, which held both religious and civil authority tried to force its prayer book and church government of archbishops, bishops, deans and church laws upon the people of Scotland. St. Giles has also been in the news as they would say, of the church in Scotland for many many years and one of the most amazing incidents in the church history that is enshrined here in St. Giles took place in 1637. At that time the king was trying to take over the aspect of the government of the church and he produced a document that was to be a source of conflict as far as the people of Scotland were concerned. They saw that there was going to be a conflict between Presbyterianism where Jesus Christ was counted as head of the church and Episcopacy where the King is head of the church. It came to a head one time when the Dean was to read from this document that had been prepared and there was a woman in the congregation by the name of Janet Geddes or Jenny Geddes as she became known and she took the three legged stool and she threw it towards the Dean as he was reading. She uttered words in this Scottish brogue "Villain ye want to say Mass in my lug, Ye won't say Mass in my ear. And that was a starting point for the work of the Covenanting situation in Scotland where the accession of the Crown rights of Jesus Christ was made by the Covenanters. When King Charles I and his successors endeavored to force the Scots to conform, is when the conflict became severe and even bloody. For over fifty years the Scots fought a long and bitter fight until 1688 when they succeeded in reestablishing Presbyterianism in Scotland. After the episode of Jenny Geddes in St. Giles, things moved very quickly. Some six months after the episode, men were drawn from different parts of the country and there was drawn up what has become known as the National Covenant of Scotland. This document was a document outlining the desires of the Presbyterians in Scotland at that time, to preserve their rights and also to extol their right to recognize the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the church. And that lasted for another sixty years. The struggle was intense and many difficulties had to be overcome. The Grassmarket was originally a place where local farmers brought their produce for sale. It also functioned as place of public executions where many martyrs and covenanters died. This led to the local tavern located next to the scene of the public hangings being named "The Last Drop". The exact spot where the gallows once stood is marked by Saint Andrews cross in the cobblestones bearing the inscription, "For the Protestant faith, on this spot many martyrs and covenanters died." There is also a memorial plaque that recalls many of the men and women who sacrificed their lives. Many of the men who were executed at the Grassmarket not far from here and this is where they were buried. It is very interesting to tell the story of a lady who was so anxious about those men of the covenant being identified with the rogues and rascals that had been executed at the Grassmarket and were just thrown into the open grave here, she wanted them to be recognized as Christians and to have a Christian funeral, and she took in hand to dress the bodies of the covenanters in the Magdalene Chapel and they were given a Christian burial here at Grey Friar's. But this stone gives us a very clear message of what the Covenanting struggle was all about. The stone shows to us something of the dedication and devotion of those men and women also who laid down their lives for the crown rights of Jesus Christ. Their lives were sacrificed unto the lust of Prelatists abjur'd though here their dust lies mixed with murderers and the other crew whom justice did justly to death pursue. But as for them no cause was to be found worthy of death, but only they were found constant and steadfast zealous witnessing for the prerogatives of Christ their king. Which truths were held by famous Guthries's head and all along Renwick's blood they did endure the wrath of enemies reproaches torments deaths and injuries but yet there are those who from such troubles came, and now triumphant glory with the Lamb. From May27, 1661 that the most noble Marquis of Argyle was beheaded to the 17 February, 1688 that Mr. James Renwick suffered while one way or the other murdered and destroyed for the same cause about 18,000 of whom were executed at Edinburgh about a hundred noblemen, gentlemen, ministers and others noble martyrs for Jesus Christ, the most of them lie here. We are now standing at the gates marking the spot known as the Covenanter's prison. That takes us back to 1679 when over 1,000 prisoners were taken at the battle of Bothwell Bridge and brought here and given accommodation in this open field. It was an open field in those days. And they were here for four months. Many of them suffered greatly, many of them died. But they were here and they gave indication of their loyalty to the Covenanting cause. There is a very sad part about the imprisonment that ended after these four months was that they lost two hundred prisoners were taken from here and taken down to the seaport of Edinburgh Leith and put on a ship intending to take them to America and going through the Pentland Firth in a storm the ship foundered and most of the prisoners because they were bolted down in the hold were drowned in that place. And today there is a monument in the Orkney Islands to the memory of those men who died at that time. Before the fight was finished, about 18,000 of all classes, rich and poor, men, women and children had been martyred or banished from the land for their faith. In 1638, the National Covenant was signed by scores of Scottish believers affirming their determination to fight and even to die for religious and civil liberties in Scotland, both for themselves and for generations yet unborn. This document on the wall has one of the things that happened after the episode with Jenny Gaddis. Several men of outstanding quality came together and decided to draft what has become known as the National Covenant of Scotland and this is a facsimile of that covenant. In that covenant they set out the principles that they stood for as fathers of their reform position was concerned. Also they highlighted their Presbyterian position. They also gave a place to the king and acknowledged that they gave him his rightful place as the ruler of the country but not as the head of the church. That document was taken to Greyfriar's Church and churchyard and first of all the nobles of the country signed it in the church. Then it was taken out into the churchyard and ordinary people were able to sign this national Covenant. Some were so desperate to sign it that they didn't wait for the writing materials but they signed it by just cutting a vein in their hands and signed it with their own blood. So this was a moving episode and the situation of the church in Scotland in the 1600's. And this is what brought about the story of the Scottish Covenanters. We are in the old Magdalene Chapel the very last church to be built before the Reformation here in Edinburgh and the church that has stood since 1541. It began as a Roman Catholic Church, a private Roman Catholic Church. It became the church where the Reformers held the first general assembly. And since then it has had a checkered career in the way it has served so many different branches. It was a non-denominational building but eventually it became an interdenominational building by the way it that it gave service to different groups that wish to use it for their services. But the important part that we are thinking about links itself to John Knox once again because it was here that John Knox brought the 42 men to form the first general assembly. They met here from the twentieth of December 1560 til the eighteenth of January 1561. Now the program that they had was an extensive program and they managed to get through all the things that they had planned. John Knox had laid the foundation for it indeed he had made all the plans and brought what was known as the first book of discipline to be the order for the general assembly. And it was here that they set out very clearly and very positively their reform position in Scotland at that time. There was a lot that they had to learn. The Reformation in Europe had been going on for quite some time before this and they had made their mark and John Knox was determined that this would happen here in Scotland as well. The one thing that they were very concerned about was the means of communication. John Knox took great pains to show that education came very largely into the forefront of the plan. He said at one point that education was not the privilege of the few but was the right of all. And that meant that not just the young people but it extended to adults as well because he was anxious that all would be able to read the Scriptures for themselves and so he established a reform society in Scotland. That assembly finished and the Magdalene chapel became a center then for preaching and other things until into the 1578 when a second general assembly took place and it was at this general assembly that Presbyterianism was inaugurated and Andrew Melville brought the assembly here to the Magdalene chapel and he had the second book of discipline and he worked on this and established Presbyterianism as the form of church government for the church, the reform church in Scotland. And today Presbyterianism stretches right across the whole of the world and it's in so many different places that you can see something of the value that came from both the first general assembly and the second General Assembly. At the present the chapel is used as a meeting place for a small fellowship and we also have Bible study meetings here and we invite visitors to come and to share with us something of the wonderful story of the Magdalene Chapel. There are many things that interest historians and those who are interested in the aspects of the development of the different systems in Scotland and we enjoy meeting folks here and sharing the story of the Magdalene Chapel. It is a wonderful place. It's a place that we believe our God is blessing and using for His glory at this present time. In the chapel here we still have part of the old mortuary table that was used at the time of the Covenanters. A lady by the name of Helen Alexander, a lady who had herself been imprisoned for adhering to the views of the Covenanters, she when she was released wanted to do something that would identify the Covenanters much more readily and she was the one who devised the plan that the bodies of the Covenanters when they came from the place of execution were to be dressed for burial and this is the old table in which they were dressed for burial in the chapel here. She arranged for the burial services to be held in the Grey Friars Churchyard and they were given a Christian burial. The world in which we live today would be very different, had there not been men, women and even children willing to die for the purity of the Christian Faith and the crown rights of Jesus Christ. The Covenanters of 17th century Scotland believed that the true church had but one King, Jesus Christ and they were willing to suffer and die for their belief. This has been a production of Truth in History in cooperation with Reverend Sinclair Horne of Edinburgh, Scotland who was secretary lecturer of the Scottish Reformation Society for forty-four years.