XX.—The Constitution of the Church of Scotland.
As can be gathered from what has been noted already, in these Articles, concerning the Church of Scotland, its Constitution from the Reformation was to be found in its Supreme Standard, the Bible, and in its Subordinate Standards, that is, Scots Confession of 1560, the First Book of Discipline of 1560, the Second Book of Discipline of 1578, the Book of Common Order of 1564, and, after 1647, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the Form of Presbyterian Church Government and of Ordination of Ministers, and the Directory for the Public Worship of God. Although the Westminster Standards took the place of the older standards it was not because of any new doctrines or practices in the former which were not to be found in the latter. The older standards gave briefly what was given in a more enlarged form in the newer, and the newer standards were drawn up in order to bring uniformity in doctrine, worship and discipline into England, Scotland, and Ireland. With a view to bring about this uniformity the Scottish Church accepted these Standards as Standards that were in perfect conformity to her own position. Thus the Church of Scotland from its very origin had a Constitution, based on the Word of God, ensuring the Scripturalness of its government, doctrine, and mode of worship. The Westminster Confession of Faith was adopted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on the 29th August 1647, and found to be “most agreeable to the Word of God, and in nothing contrary to the received doctrines, worship, discipline, and government of this Kirk.” It was further ratified by the Scottish Parliament on 7th February 1649.
In this Confession of Faith there is clearly stated the duty of the civil magistrate to maintain and defend religion. “The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and Sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.” Confession of Faith, chap. xxiii. sect. 3. This section clearly shows the sphere of the Church and the sphere of the State, and does so from the Word of God. It has as its background the fact that both the Church and the State are ordinances of God, and that He set them both up for His own glory and the good of His creatures. This proves that both are to render obedience to Him, and that each in its own province, is to seek the furtherance of His design. Having the same end in view, infers that there should be mutual co-operation between them, which involves the duty of the State to render temporal help and the duty of the Church to accept that help as God’s provision for her maintenance in the world, yet the Lord having given to the Church the power of the keys and to the State the power of the sword the one has no authority from God to invade the province of the other. The temporal help which the State should render to the Church is to be looked upon under a two-fold aspect, that is, to protect the Church from her enemies, and, to make temporal provision for the supply of ordinances. Principal Cunningham gives a very clear statement on this point:—”All the objects which ecclesiastical office-bearers are bound to aim at, the civil magistrate is also bound to aim at, just as every private individual is bound to aim at them. The magistrate is prohibited from exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction in seeking to effect these objects; no specific statement is given of the means he is to employ for this end; and, therefore, the conclusion is inevitable, that the civil magistrate is, just like men in general, to use the authority and power competent to him as such—and what that is must be ascertained from other sources—for promoting the interests of religion, and the purity and prosperity of the church. He has no jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters, and, therefore, in whatever he may do in regard to these things, and for the promotion of these objects, he must act,—freely and independently indeed, upon his own responsibility,—but still simply as judge of his own act, for the application of his own influence, and the regulation of his own conduct; and more especially, he must not assume jurisdiction over those who alone have lawful jurisdiction in these matters, and in whose hands the right not only of aiming, in some way or other, at the promotion of these objects, but of actually administering the government of the Church, has been vested by Christ Himself.”—Discussions on Church Principles. p. 225-226.
The Act of the Scottish Parliament in 1567 makes it very clear that the Church did not receive temporal benefits from the State at the expense of surrendering her spiritual independence. With reference to the admission of ministers it says; “It is statute and ordained that the examination and admission of ministers shall be only in the power of the Kirk. . . . It shall be lawful to the patron to appeal to the superintendent and ministers of that province where the benefice lies, and desire the person presented to be admitted, which, if they refuse,—to appeal to the General Assembly of the whole realm, by whom the cause being decided, shall take end as they decern and declare.” Time and again, in the history of the Church of Scotland, this distinction between the province of the Church and the province of the State has been affirmed, and when the State ignored this distinction and encroached upon the spiritual independence of the Church that encroachment became the signal for a renewed conflict to retain that independence. Such encroachments did not prove that the Establishment Principle was, in itself, evil, but, on the other hand, the contentions of the Church elicited in the clearest possible manner that it was as firmly rooted in Scripture as the principle of spiritual independence itself.
From the foregoing it can be clearly seen that the National recognition of religion, or the Establishment Principle, and the spiritual independence of the Church were to be found side by side in the Constitution of the Church of Scotland as principles which were based four-square upon the Word of God, and were emphasised during the contentions of the First and Second Reforms, and at a later date, in the Revolution Settlement. This raises the important question, Is the Constitution of the present Church of Scotland identical with the Constitution of the Church of Scotland from the Reformation to the Disruption of 1843? The Westminster Confession of Faith is a statement of doctrine and matter of faith, and it expressly affirms that it is the duty of the civil magistrate “to take order . . . that all the ordinances of God be duly settled, administered, and observed.” One can never mistake that language when viewed in the light of the Act of the Scottish Parliament of 1690 entitled, An Act ratifying the Confession of Faith and settling Presbyterian Church Government. When we come to examine the Basis of Union on which the Established Church and the United Free Church united in 1929 we find under the Head of Doctrine the following documents, that is, The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647); The United Presbyterian Church Declaratory Act (1879); The Free Church Declaratory Act (1892) with Act (1894) relative thereto; and the Church of Scotland Act on the Formula (1910) For a denomination that professes to be such an ardent upholder of the spiritual independence of the Church one is struck with a very notable omission in this list of documents, that is, the Claim, Declaration and Protest of 1842. This is a most important document as it sets forth the true Constitution of the Church of Scotland, and no Assembly must be regarded as a true Assembly of that Church which is not held on the footing of it. It is a historical document of the highest importance, as it sets forth the last pronouncement of the Established Church on spiritual independence and the first pronouncement of the Free Church on the same subject, and, as the Protest of 1843 states, should be “holden as setting forth the true Constitution of the Church.”
We may now turn our attention to the documents under the Head of Doctrine in the Basis of Union. The first we meet with is the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647, which proved sufficient for the Church of Scotland in its best days, and proves sufficient for all who are the true representatives of that Church to the present day. It evidently does not prove sufficient to the present Church of Scotland for they have added three other documents to qualify it. As two of these have the same historical background we may as well take them together. The United Presbyterian Declaratory Act of 1879 was passed in order to allow their office-bearers to accept the Confession of Faith in the light of such qualifications and explanations as this Act provided, which involved serious modifications from the point of view of doctrine. The Free Church Declaratory Act of 1892 was passed in order to bring that Church into line with the views expressed in the United Presbyterian Church Declaratory Act of 1879, and in order to satisfy the tender consciences of those who had “difficulties and scruples” in connection with accepting office in the church under the terms of the Confession of Faith as it stood, and, finally, to make possible the Union of 1900. In both the Church of Scotland Act of 1910 and the Free Church Declaratory Act of 1892 it is left to the Church from time to time to declare “what enters into the substance of the Reformed Faith.” At the Reformation in Scotland the appeal was not made to the Church but to the Scriptures as to what entered into the substance of the Reformed Faith. The present Church of Scotland ought to look with suspicion at the Declaratory Act of 1892, even from a material point of view, as it and the Union which it had in view, and which was consummated in 1900, resulted in the judgment of the House of Lords “that the association or body of Christians calling themselves the United Free Church of Scotland has no right, title, or interest in any part of the whole lands, properties, sums of money, and others which stood vested as at the 30th day of October 1900, in the Right Hon. John Campbell, Baron Overton, and others, as General Trustees of the Free Church of Scotland.” By this judgment a vast amount of property and funds taken into the Church of Scotland in 1929 by the United Free Church was legally declared not to be theirs and would have been irretrievably lost to them were it not that the party in whose favour the judgment was made could only use a small proportion of the property involved with the result that a Royal Commission restored to the United Free Church the most of what they lost by the judgment of the House of Lords. Perhaps if the majority had, at an earlier date, realised the calamity expressed in this judgment, which was to have overtaken them they would have dealt in a more lenient manner in 1893 with those who would have nothing to do with the Declaratory Act. Is it too much to hope that had they been able to see into the future, better treatment would have been meted out to the Congregation of Shieldaig, Ross-shire with its minister, the Rev. Donald MacDonald, who had been spoken of by some who had no sympathy with his ecclesiastical position, as one of the saintliest men they ever met. Yet because they would not submit to the Declaratory Act, they and their minister were turned out of their church on to the hill-side or the sea-shore while the building where the Bread of Life had been broken to never-dying souls was left empty for years, except for its population of rats, and, even to this day, denuded of its furniture, it stands as an eloquent monument of the tender mercies of both the majority and the minority.
Others also, like the Shieldaig congregation and their minister, realised that there was something of infinitely greater value than funds and property, and because of this they took joyfully to the spoiling of their goods, knowing in themselves that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance.
In this Act and the corresponding Act of the United Presbyterian Church they saw that Arminianism against which the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in its best days was a standing witness. Election and Predestination are not accepted in either and the Establishment Principle is thrown overboard with other fundamental doctrines which had a place in the subordinate standards of the Established Church, which were also the subordinate standards of the Church of Scotland Free at the Disruption of 1843. This raises the question, How could the Established Church with its professedly Calvinistic Creed consider Union with a Church that had substituted an Arminian Creed for its Calvinistic Creed, and manifested a particular antagonism to the Establishment Principle? The answer is to be found in legislation passed by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and which received the sanction of Parliament. In 1919 the Assembly agreed to a series of “Articles Declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in Matters Spiritual” which in 1921 received the Royal Assent and became operative by an Order in Council in 1926. Article v. of these Articles, which is very significant, is as follows:—”This Church has the inherent right, free from interference by civil authority, but under the safeguards by deliberate action and legislation provided by the Church itself, to frame or adopt its subordinate standards, to declare the sense in which it understands the Confession of Faith, to modify the forms of expression therein, or to formulate other doctrinal statements, and to define the relation thereto of its office-bearers and members, but always in agreement with the Word of God and the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith contained in the said Confession, of which agreement the Church shall be sole judge, and with due regard to liberty of opinion in points which do not enter into the substance of the Faith.” (Italics mine) This Article is in substance the same as the last paragraph of the Free Church Declaratory Act of 1892, and thus we see that the present Church of Scotland has full liberty with Parliamentary sanction to accept rank Arminianism in place of the time-honoured Calvinism which was the glory of the Church of Scotland in its best days. Alas, how are the mighty fallen.
These Articles Declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in Matters Spiritual is a long step towards Union with the Episcopal Church of England, and is a greater advance than the Church of England has made in its efforts at Union with the Church of Rome, for if the Church south of the Border had taken the precaution to pass similar Articles Declaratory and got Parliamentary sanction for them, the rejected Romanised Prayer Book would have been the Prayer Book of the Church of England today, as it is indeed, illegally, in many places. One may not have to live very long to see the Church of Scotland going to Parliament to release it from its obligation to be Presbyterian, and then the barriers to Union with the Episcopal Church will be removed. If Parliament will not oblige the union-mongers in Scotland in this matter, they will adapt their plans to suit present circumstances and introduce Constant Moderators who will have all the authority of diocesan Bishops, thus retaining an emasculated Presbyterianism which is nothing better than Episcopacy.