Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
It was a time of confusion: Knox was dead, and the Church needed a leader to shape its discipline and policy in order to conserve the fruits of the Reformer's work. Two years before Melville's return, viz. in 1572, the electroplate Episcopacy the Tulchan Bishops had been imposed on the Church by the Regent Morton. Up to this time the constitution of the Church had been purely Presbyterian.
In these years of violence, of "the Douglas wars" as they were called, two new tendencies may be observed. In January 1572, Morton induced an assembly of preachers at Leith to accept one of his clan, John Douglas, as Archbishop of St Andrews: other bishops were appointed, called Tulchan bishops, from the tulchan or effigy of a calf employed to induce cows to yield their milk.
Two years later, at the Dundee Assembly of 1580, the Church took the final step against the Tulchan system by abolishing the Episcopate and requiring all bishops to demit their office and give in their submission to the provincial synods.
The Church had gradually withdrawn from the Tulchan compromise, and had at the same time elaborated a constitution for itself on the basis of pure Presbytery.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking