WE observe, with deep grief and alarm, the encouragement given by our legislators to Popery, by removing one after another, from the Statute Book of this Protestant realm, the safeguards set up by our forefathers against that intolerant and persecuting system, and the rapid growth of the idolatrous and superstitious tenets of the Papacy in the Churches of England and Scotland. We appeal to our fellow-Protestants and countrymen not to sell their blood-bought birthright for mere sentimentalism and false charity. We offer the following reasons why we should uncompromisingly retain our protests against the Papacy:—
(1) The Papacy boasts of being always the same. All the laws of that diabolical system against such as dare to differ from her idolatrous worship and blasphemous doctrines are still in full force, taught daily in her schools and colleges, and form the very essence of that system, without which it would cease to exist. They make no secret of the fact that heretics (that is, Protestants) should be put to death, had they the power to do so. In the last Parliament an extraordinary effort has been made to remove the Protestant Declaration required of the Sovereign of this realm on coming to the throne. This was done at the instigation of the Pope and his hierarchy. The Protestants of England, Ireland, and Scotland flooded the House of Commons with protests and petitions against its removal. Instead of listening to the voice of this Protestant country, the leaders of the House of Commons took advantage of the differences of Protestants by shaping their Bill at the last hour so as to give a sop to this and that party, and then forced it through the House in three hours’ time. Does not this traitorous conduct prove that our Protestantism is unsafe in the hands of these men? Both Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour have lost for ever the confidence of the intelligent Protestants of this country, and so have their weak-kneed followers. They now
* This is the closing part of historical paper read by Rev. Neil Cameron at last Synod, partly re-written and extended.
offer the further insult of telling us that we are as safe without that Declaration as having it on our Statute Book. We freely grant them that we would be as safe without the new Declaration; but we know full well why the Declaration abrogated was drawn up by our forefathers, and we are confident that there has not been, for the last two hundred years, more need of it than at the present hour. But the Papists know what their own aim is. This was done on very purpose to open the way to our throne for a Papist, so as to have the temporal power of the Pope restored. This would cause more immediate danger to Protestants than the most are aware of, or are willing to believe. For our Army, Navy, Police, Civil Courts, Post Office Officials, and the most of the Press of our country are already very much under the thumb of Rome. In the event of a Roman Catholic king coming to our throne, the whole power of this kingdom could easily be made use of by him to crush Protestants. This would be nothing new in this land; for both Charles II. and James II. have committed terrible atrocities by using the armies of England, Scotland, and Ireland to compel our forefathers, at the point of the sword, to become Roman Catholics. This was the root-cause why the King’s Protestant Declaration had been framed—so as to make sure that no such calamity could ever again befall our country. It was made on very purpose, and in the very terms used in it, so as to make it impossible for a Roman Catholic in disguise to have made it. Any Jesuit can make the new Declaration.
Thousands of Jesuits have been banished from France on account of their abominable plots against the Republican civil government of that country, and all these have been received with open arms into England and Scotland. The baneful effects of their presence in our midst are noticeable already in riots and bloodshed. Freedom of speech is being lost. If any one dares to expose the soul-ruining errors of the Papacy, his mouth is shut by the violence of Roman Catholic ignorance and intolerance instigated by priests, and by the decision of the judge on the bench. The riots last year in Liverpool and Motherwell, and the judge’s decision in each case, prove partiality toward the Papacy. Roman Catholic priests lecture in our towns and country, and write unblushingly lying accusations against the Reformers and the Reformation in our public Press, without suffering any violence at the hands of Protestants. This reveals the difference between an intolerant and persecuting anti-Christian system and the principles of Christian toleration set forth in the Bible. The civil government of our country ignores the laws that are on our Statute Book against these intriguing Jesuits. On the contrary, a Jesuit university has been endowed in Ireland, to the amount of fifty thousand pounds annually, out of the revenue of this Protestant nation, to keep the youth of that wretched country under the traitorous control and teaching of these men. Our Government has pledged itself to grant Home Rule to Irish
Papists, led by the hierarchy of Rome, to bind that country in fetters under the Pope’s blighting power; while they see before their eyes the sad spectacle of poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, and crime in the parts of Ireland which crouches under priest-rule, and the prosperity and moral and religious habits of the rest of the people, and their intelligence which they owe to their Protestant education. The same spectacle of woe and misery prevails in every country in the world which has not thrown off his galling yoke. The groans of the people of Spain may be heard in the British Parliament, and is heard throughout this nation, except by those who are in authority. Surely blindness and deafness has happened in our Houses of Parliament! Besides, our fellow-Protestants in Ireland will be placed in dire danger (if Home Rule be granted) of having civil war forced upon them; for as soon as Home Rule becomes law, there will be no toleration for Protestants in Ireland, and they will have either to leave that country or to fight for their civil and religious liberties. Ought not the Protestants of Great Britain and Ireland combine and with one voice say to our infatuated legislators: “Hands off the few remaining safeguards of our Protestantism”? Roman Catholics should be compelled to obey our laws, or suffer the consequences of breaking them. We do not advocate persecution in any form, but we do think that the constitutional good laws of this realm should be enforced without partiality against all that break them, and that none of them should be changed or abrogated for pleasing men who are bent on our ruin as a nation. If these men will gain the end they have set before themselves, our civil, social, and religious liberties will be gone, and we shall have to become slaves, physically and spiritually, or fight again, through blood, groans, and tears, the battle of a Third Reformation, in order to regain our valuable freedom. Protestants should make sure that their representatives sent to Parliament are men of sound Protestant principles, and that they will not follow any leader—either Liberal or Unionist—in destroying our Constitution.
(2) The alarming number of Ritualists in the Church of England (formed into secret societies), who deliberately endeavour to overthrow the Reformation and to set up the Papacy on its ruins, show that the enemy is already within the fort. It is computed that nine thousand of the ministers in that Church, assisted by a large number of the laity, are busily engaged in undermining the Protestantism, doctrines, and worship of the Church of England. If this movement be connived at by both the ecclesiastical and civil governments of that Church, as has been the case for the last seventy years, and all efforts put forth by the people to bring these Papists in disguise to an account for their perjury, the Protestantism of England will soon be at an end, and it will fall an easy prey to the Papacy. Both Unionists and Liberals are alike guilty, when in power, of encouraging these law-breakers by promoting them to the highest positions in that Church, so that now the
most of her bishops are in favour of union with Rome. The Nonconformists in England are so bent on Disestablishment and Disendowment and religious equality, that they stand aloof from rendering any helping hand to the Church of England in this struggle; so that the prospect before the eyes of those who see in England is very dark.
In the Established Church of Scotland there are many ministers and some laymen who look upon the Reformation as a great mistake, and who endeavour to bring that Church back to the bosom of Rome. There are secret societies in it, plotting to bring about union with the Papacy. The image of the Virgin Mary, crosses, and other images are set up in several churches, and the doctrines taught from many of her pulpits savour not a little of the superstitious and blasphemous doctrines of the Church of Rome. Many of her ministers, for some time past, made no secret of their dissatisfaction with the doctrines and principles set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith, but they were bound to it by an Act of Parliament, and by another Act they were bound to assert, maintain, and defend the whole doctrine contained in it. How to get rid of this last Act, which bound them on oath to teach it to the people, was their dilemma. At last an opportunity appeared. When the Bill to allot the property and money of the Free Church came before the House of Commons, Balfour of Burleigh took advantage of slipping in a clause at the end of that Bill to repeal that part of the Act of 1693 which bound the office-bearers of the Established Church to assert, maintain, and defend the doctrines of the Confession. This relieved them from any danger which might come from the Statute Book or the law of the land. The next step was to agree about a Formula which would suit orthodox and heterodox alike. Since they got relief from Parliament, in 1904, they have been trying to construct words which would leave those who desired no change formally bound to the Confession, and which would give others the widest latitude they could desire. After five years’ hard labour they have managed to draw up and to approve of this Formula: “I hereby subscribe the Confession of Faith, declaring that I accept it as the Confession of Faith of this Church, and that I believe the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith contained therein.” Be it observed that there is not a word about asserting, maintaining, or defending its doctrines, and that each one is only bound to what he considers “the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith contained therein. One may believe all its doctrines fundamental, while another may not consider the doctrine of the fall in Adam of all his posterity, or the doctrine of election, or the doctrine of the divinity of our Lord, or the doctrine of a limited atonement, or the doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, etc., etc., fundamental, and consequently he is not bound by his oath to assert that he believes any or all of these doctrines. The Revolution Settlement
would not suffer them to go further. Are these men the successors of the Reformers of the Church of Scotland? What would John Knox, Andrew Melville, Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, Richard Cameron, and James Renwick say about this tinkering with the faith once delivered to the saints in Scotland, were they to rise from their graves? Would they not declare that these men are traitors in the Church of the Reformation in Scotland? “Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in Askelon.”
In the Free Church of Scotland the doctrine of the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible was attacked both by her ministers and professors in her divinity chairs, and when libels were brought before some of her Presbyteries and General Assemblies against these men, Dr. Rainy and his followers shielded, repeatedly, these heretics from the discipline of the Church. The same thing was done when the divinity of Christ was brought in question. The doctrines of the Confession of Faith were vehemently attacked in some of her Courts during several years. Ultimately a Committee was appointed by the General Assembly to consider how the Church understood some of the phraseology of the Confession, and it produced the Declaratory Act in 1891, which, being by the Assembly of that year sent down to Presbyteries under the Barrier Act, with the result that a majority of the Presbyteries were found in its favour, was passed in 1892. Protests were lodged against it, and appeals were sent up to the Assembly of 1893 to have it repealed. To these remonstrances the Assembly would not listen. In that Act, interpretations of the Confession are set forth which are as contrary to its plain meaning as light is to darkness. The doctrines of election and of a limited atonement are replaced by the doctrines of universal love and atonement; the doctrine of the fall of all mankind in Adam is replaced by the doctrine that man retains still the image of God, that he has knowledge of God and his duty, and is capable of doing good works. The doctrine of man’s need of regeneration by the Holy Spirit is replaced by the doctrine that man can turn to God by the aid of the Holy Spirit; and the doctrine of man’s right of private judgment, in accordance with God’s Word, is replaced by the Popish doctrine that the individual has to believe what the Church teaches in her Assembly from year to year. This was an extraordinary change made on the public creed of the Church all at once. The meaning of it all is that Arminianism, Pelagianism, and a limb of Popery were set up for her future creed. The most fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith were thrown away, and old heresies, against which the Church of Christ contended unto blood, put in their place. It was on account of the fact that these heretical doctrines were to be in future the declared creed of that Church that we left her communion in 1893, in order that we might hold before the world the Confession of Faith in all its articles. The aim of the Rainy party in framing and enacting this new creed
was two-fold:—(1) They purposed to put an effective stop to processes against Rationalists (i.e., Higher Critics) in the Church’s Courts; (2) They wished to bring the creed of the Free Church as near as possible to that of the U.P. Church with a view to union. The union took place in 1900, and, so far as we know, the above-stated doctrines compose the creed held now by the United Free Church of Scotland. There is a movement now on foot for union between the Established and U.F. Churches. In a document published by this “Union Association,” we find very ominous statements. One of these is from no less an authority than Dr. Whyte, now Principal of the New College, Edinburgh. It reads as follows:—”Just try enough love on the re-union of Christendom and see . . . Let all those men who would put out a hand to bind up the long-standing wounds of the Church be lowly-minded men . . . When we look not so much at our own short history, however brilliant to our own eyes that history may be, nor so much to our own peculiar attainments and possessions as Protestants and as evangelical believers, however precious and inalienable those attainments and possessions may be, but when we look more at the antiquity, and the nobility, and the grandeur, and the stateliness of those other Churches (i.e., Greek and Latin), as over against the too great provincialism and rusticity and indecorum of speech and action that have often far too much characterised ourselves; when we have humbled ourselves to admit that some other Churches have things of no small moment to teach us and to share with us, and things it will greatly enrich us to receive and to assimilate; when we are of a Christian mind enough to admit, and even to welcome, thoughts and views and feelings like these, then the day of a reconstructed Christendom will have begun to dawn, at least for ourselves.” Be it noted that these anti-Protestant sentiments have been homologated by the “Church Union Association,” and that, therefore, the real aim of this movement is union with Rome. What would Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Cunningham, or the Erskines think of their successors? “How are the mighty fallen”!
The present Free Church is the minority who refused to enter into union with the United Presbyterian Church in 1900. It was not on account of these drastic changes, made in 1892, on the Creed and Constitution of the Church that they separated from the majority; for it is well known that, had the other party listened to their pleas against union, they had no thought of separating from them. They remained seven years under the altered Constitution, although they had declared on the floor of the Assembly that the Declaratory Act regulated all the procedure of the Free Church, and that it was useless to tell them that they were not under it. Immediately the separation became a fact they began to declare that they had always adhered to the Confession of Faith as adopted in 1846. In our Deed of Separation we charge the then Free Church, of which this
minority formed an integral part, with having abandoned “the whole doctrine of the Confession of Faith,” by substituting in its place “the substance of the Reformed Faith therein set forth,” “whereby,” we say in that document, “they have ceased to represent the Church of Scotland as settled in 1843.” That is the ground on which we took our stand in 1893, and upon which we justified our separation from the Free Church in that year. To abandon it now is to give away the real cause of our separation, and to make apostates of ourselves. We don’t hold to this position on account of pride or stubbornness, but because we cannot perceive how we can, with intelligence and a clean conscience, grant to these men that they have done right in remaining in that Church when we were constrained to separate from it by the Word of God, and with the approbation of our own consciences guided by that Word. That the civil court decided in their favour is one thing; but that they had in fact adhered to the Confession of Faith right through, in accordance with truth and conscience, is quite another thing. The civil court dealt with property only, and that in accordance with two doctrines of the Free Church of Scotland, viz., predestination and national establishment of religion; but were these men tried before a spiritual court of conscientious men as regards the duty of men towards a Church which ceases to hold the fundamentals of the Christian faith, I am convinced the verdict would be against them on the point of their having always adhered to the Confession as adopted in 1846. At the same time let no one think that we regret that they gained their case in the civil court, for we are fully convinced that the other party had no right to money and property that had been contributed and built to uphold doctrines and principles upon which they had turned their backs.
The first Professor of Divinity appointed by this Church turned out to be a Higher Critic. This was amply proved by a book which he published a few months before he was appointed, called Demonic Possession. When this fact became known throughout the Church, several of her Courts appealed to the General Assembly craving that the man should be brought up for trial, and dealt with according to the law of the Church. The Assembly declared that there was nothing unsound in the book, and the man was eulogised as being quite orthodox. The fact that others had read the book never seems to have dawned on the Assembly. This procedure brought the whole Assembly under the stigma of conniving (like the Rainy party in the old Free Church) at unsound views on the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible. This man holds still his Divinity chair, and so far as we have seen, he has not confessed yet that the views propagated by him in that book are heretical, or that he has seen his error and repented of it. We are fully aware that the book has been withdrawn from publication; not because it was condemned, which it was not, but because the people of the Free Church would not tolerate its continuance in
circulation. He has made a statement since, which satisfied some; but in it there was not one word uttered by him about this unsound book. This is as it ought not to be.
This Church opened the door of admission so wide that the majority of the ministers now within her pale came from Presbyterian Churches with which, as they are now constituted, the Free Church in 1843, and for many years after that date would have had no such alliance; others have been admitted from Congregational and Baptist Churches, who repudiate Presbyterianism. What doctrines these now hold and teach, Free Church hearers can judge. Divine power alone could transform these men into orthodox Free Church ministers; but, as yet, it is evident that some of them bewray their origin. The last Assembly has done more to bring them in line than has been done hitherto; for this we are not displeased. Is this Church in reality the true representative of the Free Church of 1843?
Thus, the Church of the Reformation in Scotland has been laid in heaps, like Jerusalem of old, and the fair stones, of which she was built, lie scattered on the ground. Rationalists, Ritualists, Arminians, and Voluntaries have destroyed the people’s faith in the Bible, in the worship and Sabbath of Scotland’s past, and in the faith of the Church of Christ as settled at the Reformation. “How long, Lord?”
(3) The greater number of the people are quite apathetic and unconcerned. They have become so dead to spiritual matters that very few search the Word of God in order to find out for themselves what the Scriptures teach concerning God, or the duty He requires of man. This causes them to follow blindfold men who teach the vain dreams of their own imaginations instead of God’s everlasting truth. The doctrines of man’s fall in Adam, of redemption by Christ, and of regeneration by the Holy Ghost are either ridiculed, or passed over in silence, and man’s merits and good works are held forth as the foundation of acceptance with God, and as a sure right to heaven and everlasting happiness. Is this the Gospel, or is it not another gospel upon which the curse of God rests? This is very deplorable. Family worship has become very rare. Families are reared who never saw their parents on their knees, and whose example on Sabbath and week days has a baneful effect on their children. This is a very dark picture of the religious conduct of the people, but it is quite true and without any exaggeration. The public press and vain literature (read so much by the people) sneer at serious godliness, and encourage them to profane God’s holy day by turning it into a day of pleasure. If the Lord will not, of His great mercy, pour the Holy Spirit upon us as a people to bring us to repentance, we will soon become a nation of atheists and infidels, or fall an easy prey to the idolatry and superstition of the Church of Rome. God forbid that either should become an accomplished fact!
(4) The Reformation is vilified as the blunder of bigoted and
uncharitable men by quasi-Protestants, while Jesuits endeavour to brand the Reformers as men of no character. But the many noble testimonies recorded, by friends and foes, of the Reformers and the Reformation in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are such that ignorance of history or something worse must be at the bottom of this tirade against them. That Roman Catholics should endeavour to brand these men and their work with infamy might be expected, but that Protestants should assist them is surprisingly sad. We record the following quotation from the Literary World: “They send their light across the darkness of the period which, but for their purity and fortitude, would hardly be redeemed from being numbered with the dark ages. It is not surprising that the countrymen of these heroes and heroines of the old Scottish faith should resent as a personal insult any slur which might be cast upon their fame. Indeed, if Scotland were to forget the worthies who stood by her Solemn League and Covenant, we should deserve the punishment which always falls upon a people who forget that they were ‘fathered in a mighty past.’ We feel it to be a sorry experience to meet with a Scotsman who exhibits any, even the slightest, indifference to the great story of the old Church of his country. A man who hardly cared that John Knox was a Scotsman, if he himself were proud of being one, must have been deaf to the proudest history of his nation, or dead to the noblest emotions of a patriot’s heart. The debt that Scotland owes to her Covenaning heroes it would be difficult to exaggerate. By their fidelity to conscience, they rolled back the tide of spiritual tyranny which entered with the Restoration, and made it for ever impossible that even Prelacy, still less Popery, should have the upper hand in the land of Knox.” With these noble sentiments we fully agree. The time may come, yea, we are afraid it will soon be upon us, when the same struggle for civil and religious liberty will have to be fought over again in Scotland. We trust that the Lord will raise up from our midst heroes and heroines to defend His truth and cause, who will prefer death rather than lose the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. “Even from the days of your fathers ye have gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts.” N. C.
Services in Winnipeg.—Rev. Donald Macleod expects (D.V.) to be in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on the first Sabbath of September, and to officiate also for some Sabbaths following. The Communion will be dispensed on the third Sabbath of September, and services in Gaelic and English will be held on the usual weekdays, beginning with the Thursday previous. The place of meeting is now the Scott Memorial Hall, Princess Street, corner of Rupert Avenue.