Rt. Hon. George Thomas, M.P.
The Speaker,
The House of Commons,
Westminster, London.
14th July 1978.
Dear Mr Speaker,
On behalf of the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, I wish to lodge a most emphatic Protest against the Mass conducted by Cardinal Hume in the Crypt Chapel of the Palace of Westminster on Thursday, 6th July, 1978. This was the first time that such a deplorable event took place since the Reformation when the people of this Country were delivered and set free from the superstitions and errors of the Church of Rome.
The Mass is a direct insult to the glory of Christ as well as to the well-informed intelligence of our Christian people. Both the creeds of the Church of England and the Church of Scotland join in expressing this fact. Article XXXI of the Articles of Religion of the Church of England states: “Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.” In Chapter XXIX of the Westminster Confession of the Church of Scotland, Section II clearly concurs when it states: “In this sacrament (ie of the Lord’s Supper) Christ is not offered up to his Father, nor any real sacrifice made at all for remission of sins of the quick or dead: but only a commemoration of that one offering up of himself by himself, upon the cross, once for all, and a spiritual oblation of all possible praise unto God for the same: so that the Popish sacrifice of the mass, as they call it, is most abominably injurious to Christ’s one only sacrifice, the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect.”
It is to be hoped that immediate steps will be taken to secure that such a sad episode will not be repeated in the Palace of Westminster.
Yours sincerely,
Donald MacLean
Clerk of Synod.