endeavours to introduce it into Scotland. Knox’s warm exhortations on this head were at first disregarded; he had the mortification to find his plan of {4} church‑polity derided as a “devout imagination,” by some of the professors of the reformed doctrine;[7]――and the parliament dissolved without coming to any decision on this important point. As the ministers, however, continued to urge the subject, and the reasonableness of their demands could not be denied, the privy council, soon after the dissolution of the parliament, gave a commission to Knox, and four other ministers, who had formerly been employed along with him in composing the Confession, to draw up a plan of ecclesiastical government.[8] They immediately set about this task, with a diligence and care proportioned to their convictions of its importance. They “took not their example,” says Row, “from any kirk in the world, no, not from Geneva;” but drew their plan from the sacred scriptures. Having arranged the subject under different heads, they divided these among them; and, after they had finished their several parts, they met together and examined them with great attention, spending much time in reading and meditation on the subject, and in earnest prayers for divine direction. When they had drawn up the whole in form, they laid it before the General Assembly, by whom it was approved, after they had caused some of its articles to be abridged.[9] It was also submitted to the privy {5} council; but, although many of the members highly approved of the plan, it was warmly opposed by others. This opposition did not arise from any difference of sentiment between them and the ministers respecting ecclesiastical government, but partly from aversion to the strict discipline which it appointed to be exercised against vice, and partly from reluctance to comply with its requisition for the appropriation of the revenues of the popish church to the support of the new religious and literary establishments. Though not formally ratified by the council, it was, however, subscribed by the greater part of the members;[10] and as the sources of prejudice against it were well known, it was submitted to by the nation, and carried into effect in most of its ecclesiastical {6} regulations.[11] It is known in history by the name of the Book of Policy, or First Book of Discipline. Considering the activity of Knox in constructing and recommending this platform, and the importance of the subject in itself, it cannot be foreign to our object to take a view of the form and order of the protestant church of Scotland, as delineated in the Book of Discipline, and in other authentic documents of that period.