the Crown, but by its own authority. At its second meeting, Maitland of Lethington could craftily raise the question as to the legality of such conventions without the consent of the Queen. It was retorted that, if they were dependent merely upon the Queen for their liberty of meeting, they would be deprived of the public preaching of the gospel. 'Take from us,' said Knox, 'the freedom of assemblies, and take from us the Gospel'; but it was left to her to send a commissioner. So early was the doctrine of the Headship maintained by the Church of Scotland. In 1560, no less than 1843, the question was clear. In 1557 they had resolved that the election of ministers, according to the custom of the primitive church, should be made by the people; and in the First Book of Discipline of 1560, re-enacted in 1578, it was laid down that 'it appertaineth to the people and to every several congregation to elect their minister, and it is altogether to be avoided that any man be violently intruded or thrust in upon any congregation.' The fabric was laid: three hundred years have not started a plank. The difference of the Reformation in England and in Scotland at once emerges. Knox had the nation at his back; and, besides being, as Milton said, 'the Reformer of a nation,' he had found the people by mental temperament, or by concurrent historical reasons, anchored to a doctrinal system with a political side which has coloured ever since the stream of its existence. Calvinism, in every one of its forms, exaggerated or diluted, has this double side. It is felt in this way. To a nation believing that the divine decree of election has singled out the individual, the claims of a church with the greatest of histories and the most unbroken of descents are of slight value. To the individual believing it is God's own immutable decree that has made his calling and election sure, the whole retinue of priests and priestly paraphernalia appears but an idle pageant. To the nation, and to the individual alike, regarding itself or himself as fellow-workers with God in the furtherance of His immutable decrees, thrones, dominions, principalities and powers have for ever lost their awe or a power to coerce. Wherever the belief has been carried these results have been seen. There has been, what Buckle failed completely to see, a rooted aversion to ecclesiasticism, and a no less rooted aversion to tyranny. And in no better words could the doctrinal and political principles be laid down than in the famous words of Andrew Melville which we have set at the head of this chapter.