Jean Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian religion,
wrote that ‘there is
a twofold government of man; one aspect is spiritual…the second
is
political…. There are in man, so to speak, two worlds, over which
different kings and different laws have authority’. He emphasised
this further by stating that ‘we must keep in mind that distinction
which
we previously laid down so that we do not (as commonly happens)
unwisely mingle these two, which have a completely different nature’.
The idea of the separation of spiritual and temporal jurisdictions was,
of
course, no post-Reformation innovation but had been a theme over
centuries of conflict between popes and secular princes throughout
Europe. With the fragmentation of western Christendom in the sixteenth
century, the issue came to prominence within individual states, not least
Scotland. As early as 1559, during the civil war which led to the
Reformation, a letter to the regent, Mary of Guise, from ‘the professouris
of Christis ewangell’ mentioned two ‘kingdomes’. It asserted
that there
was ‘ane kingdome temporall’ and ‘Christis kingdome’,
the Kirk, and
that the former ought to be ruled by ‘mortell men’ and the
latter by
Christ alone. The regent was described as ‘ane servand and na quein
havand na preheminence nor authoritie above the kyrk’.
