This meeting of the Estates has still another aspect. It was significant that an assembly of ecclesiastics drew up the acts by which the Parliament became famous, for we have here the first appearance in constitutional history of a greater than the Parliament. Into the General Assembly of the Church there soon drifted those principles and aspirations that might have given life to the Estates. We shall have occasion to notice the part taken by the Assembly in the coming struggles; but it may be well here to indicate its claims. These claims were not formulated in 1560. They were of gradual growth. We find them implicit in the writings of Knox; but they were first definitely advanced by a man of no less intellect than the rugged reformer--Andrew Melville, the antagonist of James VI. Melville, in his frequent interviews with the king, "talkit all his mynd in his awin manner, roundly, soundly, fully, freely, and fervently." But he never stated his view in more explicit terms than on the memorable day when, after calling King James "God's sillie vassal," he addressed him thus: And thairfor, Sir, as divers tymes befor, sa now again, I mon tell yow, thair is twa Kings and twa Kingdomes in Scotland. Thair is Chryst Jesus the King, and his Kingdom the Kirk, whase subject King James the Saxt is: and of whase Kingdom nocht a King, nor a lord, nor a heid, bot a member.[112] Knox, in his interviews with James's mother, had taken lower ground. But Melville was not using idle words. There was no power in the land that could cope with the Church. From 1567 the Assembly met some days before the opening of Parliament, and prepared Church business, which was generally the principal item on the parliamentary list of _agenda_.[113] As early as 1565 it sent Queen Mary an overture against "the papisticall and blasphemous masse ... not only in the subjects, but also in the Queen's Majestie's awin person," and Mary's reply was couched in sufficiently humble terms.[114] Two years later it issued instructions to the Parliament about the ratification of the Acts of 1560, the question of the Darnley murder, and the treatment of the young prince.[115] It claimed the old ecclesiastical jurisdiction in all questions of morality, religion, education, and marriage.[116] It imprisoned offenders, and it informed magistrates how they were to act and threatened them with the censure of the Kirk. Its sentence of the Greater Excommunication involved the cessation of human intercourse[117] and the forfeiture of legal rights. The presbyterian system of Church government, with its careful distribution of authority, was able to make such a sentence a terrible reality. Not only the General Assembly, but the Synod or the Presbytery or the Kirk Session, was a court of justice. The records which have been published show with what vigour their power was used. Men of position and influence quailed before those stern judges. The old Church had often been powerful, under a strong