God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [10]
Rather than a prescriptive view of how churches should be organized, Calvinists looked for signs that particular churches had the marks of a ‘true church’. Even those who held very strict predestinarian views agreed that it was not possible to be certain about who was a member of the elect and who was damned. This gave rise to a distinction between the visible church of all practising Christians and the invisible church of the elect. Protestants tended to assess visible churches according to the agreed marks of a true church – the signs that members of the invisible church might be present. Naturally enough, there was room for disagreement about what the marks of a true church were, but they always included the preaching of the Word and administration of the sacraments (rightly understood).
Beza and others added discipline to the list – a collective effort to combat sin and teach the true religion. For the very reason that it was not possible to know who was saved and who was damned, it was incumbent on everyone to secure the purification of the visible church, and also of the society around them. Avoiding sin, and abhorring the sins of others, did not secure a place in heaven, but they might be evidence of membership of the invisible church. In alliance with the secular power, the ecclesiastical authorities should put down sin wherever possible: an alliance of magistrate and minister aimed at the eradication of sin transformed a church reformation into a societal one. The discipline of the flock – both in worship and in their everyday lives – was therefore of central concern to the reformers.
It was these fundamentals – Word, sacrament and (for some) discipline – which marked out a true church. If these things were present there was ample room for accommodation to apparently uncongenial forms of ceremony, and no significant school of thought identified a particular form of church government as one of the marks of a true church. It also became common among Calvinists to distinguish between churches which were under the Cross – that is, those which did not enjoy the protection of a godly civil authority – and those which did.21
When Charles proposed changes in Scottish practice emphasizing formality and ceremony in worship he was not necessarily betraying the Reformation message, even if he was denounced by his opponents as popish; and using his authority as monarch to achieve this was not necessarily a betrayal either. Many Protestants might have viewed these ceremonies as harmless and remained confident that the kirk remained a true church under a godly civil authority. But that is clearly not how it seemed in Scotland. That fact owes as much to the history of the Scottish Reformation as to the nature of the changes actually being proposed.
Reformation had come to Scotland by means of a coup against royal authority in 1560. The ‘Lords of the Congregation’, a group of Protestant nobles, led an armed rising against the unpopular French regent, Mary of Guise. Following their success French interest was excluded from Scotland by the Treaty of Edinburgh and a parliament was called which, among other things, legislated for a reformation. John Knox, recently returned from religious exile in Calvin’s Geneva, gave spiritual leadership to the movement and in doing so imported the Calvinist vision of reformation. But the coming of reformation nonetheless involved compromises. The parliament of 1560 had legislated in the light of a confession of faith and a Book of Discipline. According to later legend this was the result of the irresistible pressure for Protestant reformation, but in fact it owed much to opportunism and political chance