THE First Division of the Court of Session, consisting of the Lord President (Lord Cooper), Lord Carmont, Lord Keith and Lord Russel, on the 10th January, 1952, gave judgment in the action by our Inverness congregation against Rev. A. D. MacLeod and others, for possession of the Manse at 30 Broadstone Park, Inverness, which was occupied by the late Rev. E. MacQueen, until he died; and thereafter taken possession of by Rev. A. D. MacLeod and supporters of the late Rev. E. MacQueen. A very full report of the judgment appeared in The Scotsman, the Edinburgh daily paper, of the 11th January. We would advise our interested Church people and readers to endeavour to obtain a copy of this issue of The Scotsman, if they have not seen it, as other daily papers carrying reports of the judgment, give much briefer summaries, which are not satisfactory. We are writing this just as our February issue of the Magazine goes to print, because an official Church record of this case may be some time before it is authorised and published in the Magazine for the benefit of the people of the Church. We would expect, that in due course, the Church will publish a statement with the full text of the judgment.
Let us point out to begin with that part of the judgment which deals with the dismissal of the action is based, by the Lord President, upon the terms of the trust. This we understand to mean, the Trust Deed, in the Titles of the Manse property. His Lordship held that the pursuers (our Inverness congregation) had failed to show that they had a right and title to the Manse exclusive of the defenders (Rev. A. D. MacLeod and others), according to the constitution as defined in the trust. (The italics are ours.) Lord Cooper stated that he regretted this result. But let our readers note that this part of the judgment does not give the Manse, in law, wholly over to the defenders, nor does it deprive the pursuers of their claim and right
and title to the Manse. A sub-headline of one paper report is as follows: “Their Lordships did not, in fact, determine who were the owners of the Manse.”
Yet, we are exceedingly satisfied and heartened by the remaining terms and declarations of the judgment, which comprise at least two-thirds of the whole. We give the following extracts from The Scotsman:—
Rev. E. MacQueen’s Protest.—”The initial protest of 1938 was plainly a deliberate act, firmly insisted upon in face of warning. It was immediately followed up by various steps of unambiguous import, and the use of more and more unequivocal language; and in the course of the succeeding years the cleavage had been deepened and widened until it was possible for the pursuers to allege that the defenders’ congregation was an improvised hall meeting or ‘Cave of Addullam,’ wholly unconnected with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland . . .”
The Question of Protest.—”His Lordship had no doubt that, with the memory of famous events in Church history, the word ‘protest’ had acquired an ominous significance in the minds of Scottish churchmen, and the illustrations of later practice indicated that a ‘protest’ in the strict sense of the term fell to be distinguished from a ‘dissent,’ and that a ‘protest’ could not be received by the Court to which it was addressed.”
The Defenders.—”The defenders stood revealed 13 years after the event as still the avowed champions of an open rebellion against their parent church, with which they had manifestly resolved to have no further dealings or association . . . They had since chosen as elders two men who in the language of bitter opprobrium had openly disclaimed the authority of the ‘present subsisting Church calling herself the Free Presbyterian Church,’ and they had given their authority to the appointment as their pastor of another whose attitude to the controversy had been openly expressed in equally extravagant terms.”
Synod upheld anent the Constitution.—”Whatever the rights or wrongs of what was done in 1938, one thing was clear—that the pursuers and the organised Free Presbyterian Church, to which they belonged, and whose actings they had defended, had not ceased to adhere to the constitution and standards of that Church as defined in the constituent formularies.”
Lord Russel’s Dissent against Dismissal of the Action.—”Lord Russel, who dissented from their Lordships, said he confessed he was unable to understand how one who had been a Church member and who intimated, as Mr. MacLeod (Rev. A. D. MacLeod) did, that he renounced the jurisdiction of the presently subsisting Church and repudiated the authority of its existing ecclesiastical judicatories, could
claim that he adhered to the constitution of that Church. It appeared to his Lordship, that in such a situation the declarant (Rev. A. D. MacLeod) was doing much more than making a formal protest, and that his professed intention could not reasonably be interpreted as other than an avowal of out and out separation from the Church. It seemed that the defenders had terminated their own adherence to the constitution of the Church, and had become a section of the original congregation, which failed to qualify for the beneficial right to the property of the Manse in terms of the trust purpose. In the result His Lordship was of opinion that the pursuers had succeeded in showing that they had a good title and interest, that the only challenge of their adherence was unfounded, and that the defenders were a section of the original congregation which did not adhere . . .”
The headings to each quotation are ours; and we have hastened to give these extracts of this judgment as much for our people abroad as at home, who may receive inaccurate reports of the real substance of the judgment. One thing is clear, that all the defenders’ averments for many years now, that the Church (the Synod, etc.) acted unconstitutionally in the case of the late Rev. E. MacQueen and matters relevant thereto, have been repelled and rejected by the First Division of the Court of Session. No doubt the Church will examine afresh the terms of the trust and the manner in which these terms define the constitution of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland; when the defenders, so critically dealt with by the Court, had not been made to appear that they had ceased to adhere to the constitution and standards of the Church as defined in the trust, embodied in the title deeds of the Manse. And finally, we would state that the Editor is solely responsible for this article upon a subject of vital concern to the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and of great interest to the public in general.