Pharaoh, Haman, Judas and Herod

His life was like a shooting star, that burned brilliantly but briefly. Hugh McKail, a young minister for only about five years, the reason he died a martyr's death can largely be traced to certain comments in his inaugural sermon on September 1, 1662, in Edinburgh, and the revenge that was exacted for those remarks.

John Howie, The Scots Worthies, p. 453:

From the last sermon which [Hugh McKail] delivered at that time, in the High Church of Edinburgh, from Song i.7., may be dated the commencement of his sufferings. In this sermon he fearlessly showed that it was no new thing for the church to be involved in persecution; and, amplifying the subject, he said, -- a Pharaoh on the throne, a Haman in the state, and a Judas in the church, had done the work in former times; and although in his allusion to Haman and Judas he made no application, yet [Archbishop James] Sharp and [John Maitland, Duke of] Lauderdale thought their portraits had been very accurately drawn; and therefore M'Kail was singled out as a very proper person to be put to silence.

The Coltness Collections, p. 47, add that he said:

Let Pharoah, let Haman, let Judas, let Herod, let each of them speak their expeience of God's faithfulness! Let all that have ears to hear, and hearing acknowledge, that these that made themselves remarkable for persecution God stigmatized by his judgments.

Following this sermon, McKail became a hunted man, and was forced to flee to Holland for 2-3 years. After his return, though he had little involvement in the Pentland Rising, upon his capture, he was made an example, and suffered excruciatingly under the Boot, before uttering his famous dying words on the scaffold on December 22, 1666:

Farewell father and mother, friends and relations; -- Farewell the world and all delights; -- Farewell meat and drink; -- Farewell sun, moon, and stars; -- Welcome God and Father; -- Welcome sweet Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant; -- Welcome blessed Spirit of grace, and God of all consolation; -- Welcome glory; -- Welcome eternal life; -- and, Welcome death!

Although not all applications are precise, the following are the leading candidates corresponding to the references made, and it is well known that Archbishop Sharp never forgave nor forgot that 1662 sermon and personally ensured that McKail paid the price.

Pharoah -- King Charles II (subscribed the National Covenant of Scotland and the Solemn League and Covenant at Spey on June 23, 1650, and at Scone on January 1, 1651, and after the Restoration had copies of the latter burned by the hangman all over England on May 22, 1661). He was the king during the Killing Time.

Haman -- Commissioner John Middleton, Earl of Middleton (served the king's interests in Scotland, appointed commander-in-chief of the troops in Scotland and Lord High Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament); John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale (Maitland was a former Covenanter and served as a member of the Westminster Assembly, but switched loyalties and ingratiated himself with King Charles, becoming his close confidant, a member of the Cabal Ministry, and a persecutor of the Covenanters).

Judas -- Archbishop James Sharp (once a leader of the Scottish Resolutioners, during his negotiations with King Charles, he secretly switched sides, forsaking the Covenanters for preferment by the king, he adopted a policy of persecution towards his former friends). He survived one assassination attempt in 1668, but was killed by a group of Covenanters in 1679.

Herod -- James, Duke of York (brother of King Charles II, he later became King James II during the final phase of the Killing Time until he was deposed by the Glorious Revolution).

Puritan-Knaves and Knave-Puritans

In 1619, James Ussher traveled to England for the first time and met with King James I. The king's reception for the scholar was cool, based on reports from his enemies which painted him as a Puritan, because of his relationship to the 1615 Irish Articles, but after their first conference, the king is reported to have said, "Usher was a bishop of his own making; and that, although indeed the knave puritan was a bad man, the knave's puritan was an honest man." In other words, according to the king, reports of Ussher's Puritanism, which would be bad if true, were exaggerated; that is, "Puritans are knaves, and therefore bad. Ussher is only a Puritan according to some knaves, in actual fact he is honest" (Jack Cunningham, James Ussher and John Bramhall: The Theology and Politics of Two Irish Ecclesiastics of the Seventeenth Century, p. 12). The king soon afterwards nominated him as Bishop of Meath, and he would go on to serve as Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland. Puritan or not, regardless of the king's assessment, Ussher is remembered today as a godly bishop from an age of corrupt and ungodly prelacy.

Among the poetic works of John Taylor (1578/1580-1653) -- who called himself the "the king's water-poet and the queen's water-man," on account of his labors as a waterman on the River Thames, and was evangelically-minded though a Royalist devoted to the Established Church -- is a clever poem which takes up this expression of King James and distinguishes more properly between Puritan-Knaves ("the pious man or woman mocked by the profane") and Knave-Puritans (the "hypocritical rogue," B.S. Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 1578-1653, p. 138), A Swarm of Sectaries and Schismatics (1641), in Works of John Taylor, The Water Poet, Vol. 4, p. 33:

The ods or difference betwixt the Knaves Puritan, and the Knave

And first of the Knaves Puritan.

HE that resists the world, the flesh, and Fiend,
And makes a conscience how his days he spend
Who hates excessive drinking, Drabs and Dice,
And (in his heart) hath God in highest price;
That lives conformable to Law, and State,
Nor from the Truth will fly or separate:
That will not swear, or couzen, cogge, or lie,
But strives (in Gods fear) how to live and die :
He that seeks thus to do the best he can,
He is the Knaves abused Puritan.

The Knave Puritan.

HE whose best good, is only good to seem,
And seeming holy, gets some false esteem:
Who makes Religion hide Hypocrisy,
And zeal to cover cheating villany;
Whose purity (much like the devils Ape)
Can shift himself into an Angels shape,
And play the Rascal most devoutly trim,
Not caring who sinks, so himself may swim:
He's the Knave Puritan, and only He,
Makes the Knaves Puritan abus'd to be.

For (in this life) each man his lot must take,
Good men must suffer wrong for bad mens' sake.

Silly Vassal

Andrew Melville to King James VI of Scotland (in 1596 at Cupar, Scotland) in reply to the king who reminded Melville that he was the king's vassal, particularly in matters ecclesiastical:

Sirrah! ye are God's silly vassal; there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland: there is King James, the head of this commonwealth, and there is Christ Jesus, the King of the Church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member.

Erastianism is the doctrine of the supremacy of the state in matters ecclesiastical (in sacris as opposed to circa sacra). As articulated by the man from whose name the doctrine is taken, the doctrine did not extend quite so far; Thomas Erastus (1524-1583) originally argued, in a treatise written in 1568, but only published posthumously in 1589,* that it was not in power of the church to excommunicate church members (the pastoral office could persuade but not censure by withholding the sacraments), but it was left to the civil magistrate to punish sinners. It was Richard Hooker, who began to publish Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie in 1594, and Hugo Grotius, writing on behalf of the Remonstrants in 1617 when he published De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra (On the Power of Sovereigns Concerning Religious Affairs), who contributed most notably towards promulgating what we now know as 'Erastianism'. Erastus himself was a notable physician, perhaps the best in Germany in his day, and a lay member of the Heidelberg consistory at the very same time that the Heidelberg Catechism was written. In that capacity, he resisted efforts to introduce Presbyterian church polity.

The Erastian cause was represented at the Westminster Assembly by such men as Thomas Coleman and John Selden. They failed to win the Assembly to their point of view, however. George Gillespie, one of the Scottish commissioners to the Assembly, wrote a masterful refutation of Erastianism entitled Aaron's Rod Blossoming: Or, The Divine Ordinance of Church Government Vindicated (1646). The Westminster Confession of Faith is decidedly anti-Erastian (although a fundamental misapprehension of the doctrine of church-state relations as stated in WCF 23.3b and elsewhere has ironically often led to the misdirected charge of 'Erastianism' against the original Confession, which would have surprised the Erastian party at the Assembly). The Assembly took great pains in a petition to Parliament to try to persuade it to steer clear of Erastianism, even noting that Erastus himself was a better physician than a theologian.

Journal of the House of Lords 7:524 (August 4, 1645) (see also A.F. Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly: Its History and Standards, p. 294):

Nor do we find that there hath been any great Doubt or Question made thereof in the Church, until Erastus, a Physician, who by his Profession may be supposed to have had better Skill in curing of the Diseases of the Natural, than the Scandals of the Ecclesiastical Body, did move the Controversy.

Ultimately, the British Parliament ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith as the doctrine of the Church England, with the following exceptions: WCF 20.4 (concerning the magistrate's authority to censure in connection with Christian liberty), chapter 30 (on church censures), and chapter 31 (on synods and councils). The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland too added a caveat when ratifying the Confession in 1647 to avoid even the appearance of Erastianism by explaining that it understood the magistrate's authority described in 31.2 as confined only to "kirks not settled or constituted in point of government" and affirming that that the power to convene church synods is directly given by Christ to the church and not dependent on the magistrate for its exercise (meaning that magistrates who are enemies of Christ and the church cannot legitimately prevent the church from convening such an assembly). Yet the Church of Scotland, known for its adherence to the crown rights of King Jesus, that is, the principle that Christ alone is head of the church and not the sovereign magistrate, whose encroachments must be resisted, did not actually amend the Confession at any point and found nothing in WCF 23 to be Erastian.

For a helpful guide to Erastian views contrasted with Biblical and Presbyterian principles, see William Cunningham, Discussions on Church Principles: Popish, Erastian, and Presbyterian (1863) -- see chapter 8 in particular here.

* The original title was Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis utrum excommunicatio, quatenus religionem intelligentes et amplexantes, a sacramentorum usu, propter admissum facinus arcet, mandato nitatur divino, an excogitata sit ab hominibus. "It consists of seventy-five Theses, followed by a Confirmatio in six books, and an appendix of letters to Erastus by Heinrich Bullinger and Rudolph Gaulther, showing that his Theses, written in 1568, had been circulated in manuscript. An English translation of the Theses, with brief life of Erastus (based on Melchior Adam's account), was issued in 1659, entitled The Nullity of Church Censures; it was reprinted as A Treatise of Excommunication (1682), and, as revised by Robert Lee, D.D., in 1844." (Wikipedia) Theodore Beza responded to Erastus' treatise directly in 1590 with Tractatus de vera excommunicatione.

Tribute to the KJV

The following is smattering of quotes from notable examples of piety and/or scholarship as to the merits of the Authorized, or King James Version of the Bible.

Ashbel Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, Vol. 1, pp. 52-53:

The author is not willing to close this extended note, in which he has attempted to correct what he conscientiously believes to be an error in the common English version of the New Testament, without remarking, that he is not among those who believe that version to be very faulty, and of course to need very frequent corrections. On the contrary, he considers it as one of the very best translations that ever was, or ever can be made; and he has never seen any other English version, even of a single book of this part of the sacred volume, which, taken as a whole, he thought equal to the vulgar version. Yet to suppose that this version, the work of fallible men, is absolutely perfect, is an extreme on the other side. Nothing but the original is perfect. If it can be shown that, in a few instances, the eminently learned, and upright, and pious men, who formed the vulgar version, have, through that imperfection which cleaves to every thing human, not given the best rendering of a particular phrase or passage, let this be candidly shown; and if it be satisfactorily shown, a service is certainly rendered to the cause of truth. Whether this has been done, in the present instance, let competent judges decide.

William S. Plumer, Commentary on Romans, p. 20:

Some of the older English versions from quaintness, if not from elegance, do often give the sense in a striking way. But none have, as a whole, been comparable to the authorized English version. Its amazing mastery of our mother tongue, its pure Anglo-Saxon diction and its very careful rendering of the true idea of the author still place it far above all competition.

George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, pp. 62-67:

In all these instances the Bible means the translation authorized by King James the First of the best examples in ancient Jewish literature of natural and political history, of poetry, morality, theology, and rhapsody. The translation was extraordinarily well done because to the translators what they were translating was not merely a curious collection of ancient books written by different authors in different stages of culture, but the Word of God divinely revealed through his chosen and expressly inspired scribes. ... In this state of exaltation they made a translation so magnificent that to this day the common human Britisher or citizen of the United States of North America accepts and worships it as a single book by a single author, the book being the Book of Books and the author being God. Its charm, its promise of salvation, its pathos, and its majesty have been raised to transcendence by Handel, who can still make atheists cry and give materialists the thrill of the sublime with his Messiah. Even the ignorant, to whom religion is crude fetishism and magic, prize it as a paper talisman that will exorcize ghosts, prevent witnesses from lying, and, if carried devoutly in a soldier’s pocket, stop bullets. ... As to Bible science, it has over the nineteenth-century materialistic fashion in biology the advantage of being a science of life and not an attempt to substitute physics and chemistry for it; but it is hopelessly pre-evolutionary; its descriptions of the origin of life and morals are obviously fairy tales; its astronomy is terra centric; its notions of the starry universe are childish; its history is epical and legendary: in short, people whose education in these departments is derived from the Bible are so absurdly misinformed as to be unfit for public employment, parental responsibility, or the franchise. As an encyclopedia, therefore, the bible must be shelved with the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as a record of what men once believed, and a measure of how far they have left their obsolete beliefs behind.

The Continuators of Matthew Poole's English Annotations:

After this, King James coming to the crown, being a prince of great learning and judgment, and observing the different usage of some words in his age from the usage of then In King Henry VIII or in Queen Elizabeth's time, and also the several mistakes (though of a minute nature) in those more ancient versions, was pleased to employ divers learned men in making a new translation, which is that which at this day is generally used. With what reverence to former translators, what labor, and care, and pains they accomplished their work, the reader may see at large in their preface prefixed to those copies that are printed in folio, and in their epistle to King James in our Bibles of a lesser form; of which translation (though it may not be with its more minute error) yet I think it may be said that it is hardly exceeded by that of any other church.

King James Psalter

Besides the 1611 Authorized Version of the Bible, commonly known as the King James Bible, two Psalters bear the name of King James I of England, VI of Scotland, published in 1631 and 1636, respectively. These Psalters reflect the poetic interest of King James in versifying the Psalms, as many noblemen of his day also desired to do. The interest of the king in this project, however, forced others to laid aside their intended goals. One such poet was William Drummond of Hawthornden, whose attempt merited this frank response from Sir William Alexander of Menstrie, Earl of Stirling:

Brother, I received your last letter, with the Psalm you sent, which I think very well done. I had done the same long before it came; but He [King James] prefers his own to all else; tho' perchance when you see it, you will think it the worst of of the Three. No man must meddle with that Subject, and therefore I advise you to take no more Pains therein. (Millar Patrick, Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody, p. 83)

King James continued his efforts to 'improve' upon the metrical Psalms already in use; when he died this was alluded to in his 1625 funeral sermon:

The King our Master, was in hand (when God called him to sing Psalmes with the Angels) with the translation of our Church Psalmes, which he intended to have finished, and dedicated withall to the onely saint of his devotion, the Church of Great Britain, and that of Ireland. The worke was staied in the one and thirty Psalme. (Ibid, p. 84)

After the king's death, King Charles I charged Sir William Alexander to ensure that the metrical Psalms of King James saw the light of day. And so, in 1631, a version bearing his name was published (it was called The Psalmes of David translated by King James and the title page showed King David holding a harp on one side and King James on the other with a sceptre, while both men also held books). In fact, the work of this version is mostly that of Alexander himself, and while he was a distinguished poet, this Psalter, despite or because of the royal backing behind it, inspired a negative reaction, and the publication (probably by David Calderwood) of Reasons against the Reception of King James' Metaphrase of the Psalmes (cf., The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, Vol. 3, p. 530), and so was commonly referred to as the 'Menstrie Psalms'. Alexander was disappointed in his expectation of profits from the royal patent he received from King Charles. It is said that "[i]t seems clear that Charles must have winked hard in permitting the licence, as he must have known that the proportion of James to Alexander was as Falstaff's bread to his sack."

Another edition was published in 1636 after considerable revision (without notice of the same), and it too received the same widespread opposition. Two years later, Charles attempted to force the Anglican liturgy upon the church of Scotland, and the violent response that ensued, notably exemplified in the stool-throwing of Jenny Geddes, was in part the fruit of frustration over a long pattern of such attempts to force the royal will upon the church's singing of Psalms.

The King James Psalters, not to be confused with the 1650 Scottish metrical Psalter found in the back of King James Bibles published today by the Trinitarian Bible Society, for example, are footnotes of history now, but they played a part, before and after the king's death, in the rising tide that would eventually result in stalwart Puritan resistance to Stuart attempts to meddle with the church's beloved Psalms against the will of God's people.