In the August 1969 number of The Instructor, the Youth Magazine of the Free Church of Scotland, there appears an article entitled “This is My Church”, with the sub-title — ‘An Apologia’. The article purports to be a brief, factual history of The Free Church of Scotland from the Disruption of 1843 onwards. Albeit the controversy over the infamous Declaratory Act of 1892, which Act was confirmed as an Act of the Free Church of Scotland in May, 1893, and which aroused many to separate from the said Declaratory Act Free Church, is almost completely (but not quite) ignored. If we remember rightly, a somewhat similar article on the history of the Free Church of Scotland appeared in The Instructor, a year or two ago. In it, the writer just completely ignored the extraordinary period of history embracing the 1892 Declaratory Act and the Separation of the late Rev. Donald Macfarlane — and all who followed him — from the said Declaratory Act Free Church, at its General Assembly in May 1893.
In this latest article the writer avoids, in an unfortunate and blameworthy manner, ignoring altogether the separation from the Free Church of the late Rev. Donald Macfarlane and many others. In leaving his resume of the Disruption, he takes one leap to the events of 1900 affecting the Declaratory Act Free Church and her Union with the United Presbyterian Church.
In dealing with the action adopted by some ministers and elders of the then so-called Free Church, in refusing to enter into the Union with the United Presbyterian Church, the writer pens the following: ” . . . Was the refusal of the Constitutionalists of 1900 to go in with the Union between the Free Church and United Presbyterians wise, charitable and necessary? Were they adopting an obscurantist, sectarian attitude? Had they been they might have seceded with some of their brethren in 1893. But instead they elected to stay in the house of their fathers and to defend it in 1900 . . .”
Here quite clearly the fathers of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, in separating from the Declaratory Act Free Church of 1892-93, are charged with an obscurantist, sectarian attitude in what they did. Now, an obscurantist attitude is a form of opposition to enquiry or reform, which reform may be desirable. But the fathers of the Free Presbyterian Church at that time opposed faithfully and in the light of the Word of God, statements in sections of the Declaratory Act which were clearly contrary to the teaching and doctrine of the Word of God and the professed subordinate standard of the then Free Church, viz., the Westminster Confession of Faith. To indicate briefly but one part of the Act which called for opposition, we quote from the pen of the late Rev. James S. Sinclair, as follows:— “The closing sentence of this paragraph (of the Act) asserts that the Confession is not to be held as teaching, ‘That God may not extend His mercy for Christ’s sake, and by His Holy Spirit to those who are beyond the reach of these means’, that is, the Gospel, described above (in the Act) as ‘the ordinary means of salvation’. For this statement there is no warrant in Scripture. The persons spoken of as ‘beyond the reach of these means’ are evidently the heathen . . . This clause affirms the very dangerous and pernicious error, that ‘God may extend His mercy’ to those who are without the Gospel.” The late Rev. James S. Sinclair, in a further comment on this section of the Declaratory Act, records that Professor Marcus Dods, a then Professor in the Free Church, declared that there would be many on the right hand at the great day who had had “no knowledge of the historical Christ”.
In the light of the above references to the then Free Church’s attitude to the Word of God and the Confession of Faith, the fathers of the Free Presbyterian Church opposed “reform” anent how the Confession of Faith was to be understood under the Declaratory Act of 1892-3. The Act contained unsound doctrine. Were the opponents of the Act obscurantists?
Again, that the fathers of the Free Presbyterian Church were “sectarian” in 1893 in denouncing the aforesaid Act and separating from the Free Church which had departed from her Constitution, is a rash and foolish charge. The term “sectarian” has an undesirable meaning attached to it. To be a sectarian means to be bigotedly devoted to the interests of a sect and to be narrow and exclusive. It was all otherwise with the fathers of the Free Presbyterian Church. They were graciously devoted to the Word of God, the Confession of Faith and the whole Constitution of the Free Church of Scotland and to the defence and the conserving of the same for themselves and those who would come after them in Scotland. And they were so devoted to the above, that by the late Rev. Donald Macfarlane’s Protest in the Free Church Assembly of May, 1893, and the action of those who followed him, the whole Constitution and principles of the Free Church of 1843 were conserved. And these have been conserved, not by the men who carried on to 1900 and then refused to enter the Union with the United Presbyterian Church, but by the men and women who formed, under the good hand of God, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, seven years prior to 1900, and to the Most High is all the praise! Was this sectarian in the undesirable sense?
The article in which there appeared those ‘references’ to which we are objecting is said to be “An Apologia”, in other words, “an apologetic writing”. And an apologist is “a defender by argument”. Has the writer of the article in question felt the need to defend his Church in these days? He has much to say regarding the Free Church and her witness for the Word of God and to the faith today. Whatever Church we belong to, as Christians, we need to concern ourselves not only with doctrine which is of course fundamental, but with practice within the church also according to that doctrine.