' The State 'rules
the roast' in all matters of religion and may do what Laud and Charles
I. perished in attempting, may alter forms of worship--always provided
that the State absolutely agrees with the Kirk.
Thus, under Edward VI., Knox would have desired the secular power in
England, the civil magistrate, to forbid people to kneel at the
celebration of the Sacrament. _That_ was entirely within the
competence of the State, simply and solely because Knox desired that
people should _not_ kneel. But when, long after Knox's death, the
civil magistrate insisted, in Scotland, that people should kneel, the
upholders of Knox's ideas denied that the magistrate (James VI.) had
any right to issue such an order, and they refused to obey while
remaining within the Established Church. They did not 'disrupt,' like
the Free Church; they simply acted as they pleased, and denounced
their obedient brethren as no 'lawful ministers.' The end of it all
was that they stirred up the Civil War, in which the first shot was
fired by the legendary Jenny Geddes, throwing her stool at the reader
in St. Giles's. Thus we see that the State was to be obeyed in matters
of religion, when the State did the bidding of the Kirk, and not
otherwise.
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