THE following lecture was delivered by the late Rev. JAMES BEGG, D.D., to the Free Church Students’ Constitutional Society, in the Albert Hall, Bath Street, Glasgow, on the 25th February, 1875. It has a message to many who are at present supporting union between the Free and U.P. bodies. Dr. Begg was sanguine that the tide was about to turn in the Free Church at the time he delivered this address, but his hopes were not realised. The address was as follows:—
Dr. Begg, who was received with loud applause, said:—We meet to-night in circumstances peculiarly interesting, not only to ourselves and to the members of the Free Church, but to many beyond her pale. It seems the beginning of better days. When the important questions which have recently divided our Church are taken up, not in hackneyed ecclesiastical debate, and by men whose minds are already made up, but by the generous youth of our colleges—the future ministers of our Church—there is some decided hope of a good and permanent result. A foolish and wicked anticipation has sometimes been expressed of late, that if a few men would only die out, the distinctive principles of the Disruption might be expected to be buried in their graves; but truth never dies any more than the God of truth, and when we see so many able and determined students adopting the true principles of the Disruption, and ready to seize and to bear aloft the old blue banner of Scotland’s Church when we are removed, we may “thank God and take courage,” rejoicing in the certainty that a better day is about to dawn. Thus it has often been before in Scotland. Times of backsliding and defection have been succeeded—often unexpectedly—by times of true revival and renewed firmness of principle. I am old enough to remember the decline of the old and long-established domination of Moderatism in the Established Church, and the substitution of an Evangelical majority. The change was small at first, and spread chiefly amongst the younger ministers, although fostered by the noble efforts of Dr. Thomson in Edinburgh, and of Dr. Chalmers and Dr. MacGill in Glasgow. Gradually it became decided and paramount. Great changes have taken place since. It is but yesterday since a man would have been scouted in the Free Church who attempted to pander to an unscriptural and revolutionary Voluntaryism. Now our distinctive principles are depreciated in high places, but I cordially believe that we are again to see the turn of the tide. Most assuredly, if the Free Church is to continue at all, except as a degenerate and worthless thing, it will be in connection with the maintenance of the time-honoured principles of Knox, Melville, Henderson, Gillespie, Carstairs, and Chalmers.
I. In reference to the PRINCIPLES of the Free Church, it is scarcely possible to imagine how any serious difference of opinion can exist.
She has retained the burning bush as her emblem, and she professes to maintain all the principles of the historic Church of Scotland. She maintains these, emphatically in regard to the headship of Christ over the Church, and His headship over the nations. On this subject her doctrine may be said to be comprised in a single text of scripture, which declares that Christ is “head over all things to the Church, which is his body.” The Church is “the body” of Christ, over which He rules, and for which He plans and provides, as the head does in regard to the natural body. But Christ is also “head over ALL THINGS to the Church,” as He elsewhere says, “All power is given to me in heaven and upon earth.” This also has been the doctrine of the Church of Scotland ever since the Reformation. All parties profess to hold still the first part of this doctrine, but many seem disposed to make light of the second, and some even to exchange it for one of the atheistic figments of the French Revolution—viz., that civil legislation ought not to extend beyond the outward and secular affairs of communities, and that States, as such, should be entirely separated from religion and the Church. That we have thus given a correct view of the true principles of the Free Church may be proved in a variety of ways. It may be proved from the whole Disruption struggle—from the declaration of Dr. Chalmers from the chair of the first General Assembly—from all our Disruption documents, and from our absolute refusal originally to join the United Presbyterians on the ground of their Voluntaryism.
Take other illustrations.
In the Protest of 1843, which formed the basis of the Disruption, and, “together with the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission,” was ordered to be inserted at the beginning of all the Presbytery Records “as the ground and warrant of their proceedings,” it is said :—
“Firmly asserting the right and duty of the civil magistrate to maintain and support an establishment of religion, in accordance with God’s Word, and reserving to ourselves and our successors to strive by all lawful means, as opportunity shall in God’s good providence be offered, to secure the performance of this duty agreeably to the Scriptures, and in implement of the Statutes of the kingdom of Scotland, and the obligations of the Treaty of Union, as understood by us and our ancestors.”—Authoritative Free Church Documents.
No man, moreover, can be an office-bearer of our Church who does not make and subscribe a solemn declaration in the sight of God to the following effect:—
“I do sincerely own and believe THE WHOLE DOCTRINE contained in the Confession of Faith, approved by former General Assemblies of this Church, to be THE TRUTHS OF GOD; and I do own the same as the Confession of MY FAITH.” (Formula.)
Now, it is as clear as anything can be that the Westminster Confession of Faith embodies the doctrine of national religion in express opposition to Voluntaryism. This Confession, indeed, was got up under the authority of Parliament, the delegates who made it had their expenses paid by Parliament, and it is itself now an Act of Parliament and part of the constitution of the country. It has been proved by Mr. Moody Stuart, in a treatise to which no answer has been made, that when it is said in the 23rd chapter of the Confession, section 3, that the civil magistrate “hath authority, and it is his duty” to “take order” that . . . “all the ordinances of God be duly settled, administered, and observed,” the meaning simply is, that in proper circumstances he should set up and keep up a Church Establishment. With reference to this portion of the Confession of Faith, Mr. Dunlop also stated expressly that it maintained the doctrine of a Church Establishment. Here are his words:—
“The question as enjoined by the Assembly requires, of course, an unqualified recognition of the Confession of Faith, in which the doctrine of a national establishment of religion, and of the power and duty of the civil magistrate to support the same as a doctrine of Scripture, is explicitly declared.”—Campbeltown Revised Case, p. 11.
Dr. Cunningham also declared, in regard to the meaning of the words in the 23rd chapter:—
“That the true, real, and intended import of the passage is just to declare the great fundamental principle of national establishments of religion.”—Remarks on the 23rd Chapter of the Confession, p. 22.
If any office-bearers of the Free Church, therefore, hold the abstract theory of Voluntaryism, or even make light of it, they ought at once to retire from our communion. Their present position cannot fail to be injurious to religion and offensive to all honourable minds.
Take another proof of what the true principles of the Free Church are.
In 1853, ten years after the Disruption, John Joseph Griffin & Company, of London, published a “Cyclopedia of Religious Denominations, . . . written by members of the respective bodies.” The portion in reference to the Free Church was written by Dr. Wilson, of Dundee, now one of the clerks of our General Assembly.
He says, amongst other things:—
“The Free Church originated nothing; it adopted no new article of faith; it organised no new ecclesiastical constitution; it prescribed no new forms of worship. The ecclesiastical laws—the Confession of Faith and Catechisms, the form of Church government, the ritual of worship—which had been received and observed in the National Church, were all retained as they were, not by any specific appointment to that effect, but in virtue of the position the Free Church had been forced to assume. In fact, though disestablished, they held themselves to be the true National Church of the Reformation—the Church which had hitherto been protected and supported by the State, and to which the great bulk of the population of Scotland belonged. The Free Church abandoned nothing but the endowments which the State had conferred; and its ministers abandoned these not because they had changed their views of the relation which ought to subsist between Church and State, or adopted the opinion that it was unlawful to receive the pay of the State, but solely because the State through its Parliament, and the decrees of its civil courts, had essentially changed the conditions under which the Establishment had hitherto acted.”—Pp. 14, 15.
These principles, till very recently, have been asserted in declarations and resolutions of our General Assembly, in annual sermons from our pulpits, and in lectures to our theological students. As this latter is a department which has not been much adverted to, it may be well to give an illustration of it.
The lectures of Dr. Bannerman bearing on this subject were afterwards published, and they treat largely of the question of Church and State.
One of the sections relates to Church and State, “the duty of their connection,” wherein he lays down and illustrates a series of positions or principles, clearly proving what he understood the doctrine of the Free Church to be. He says, amongst other things:—
“I. The first principle, then, which I lay down is, that both the State and the Church are to be accounted moral parties responsible to God. . . .
“II. The second position that I lay down is, that both the Church and State, in consequence of this responsibility to God, are bound to own and recognise His revealed Word. . . .
“III. The third position that I lay down is, that the State, by a regard to itself, and to the very objects for which it exists as a State, is bound to recognise the true religion, and, so far as it is in its power, to promote its interests.”
Under this head he says:—
“To promote the well-being, or rather to insure the existence of the State, it is necessary to call in the aid of powers and influences which the State has not in itself. It finds that what is awanting in civil society for accomplishing the very end of its own existence, the gospel alone can supply, and that for the State to dismiss as a matter foreign to it the religious instruction and spiritual well-being of the people at large, is to forego the main instrumentality which God has put into its hands for securing the authority of law, for promoting the ends of civil government, for protecting the rights and furthering the peace of society. All this is too plain to need illustration. . . . To assert that it is no duty of the civil magistrate to care for the religion of the people, is nothing less than to assert that he is at liberty to forego the chief and the only certain stay of his own authority, and to disregard what is essential to his own existence or well-being.”—Pp. 130, 131.
Dr. Bannerman proceeds:—
“IV. The fourth position that I lay down is, that the State is bound, by a regard to the Church, as God’s ordinance for good, to countenance it, and, so far as it is in its power, to advance its interests.”
In illustrating this statement, he says, amongst other things:—
“The State may furnish out of the national resources pecuniary aid for upholding gospel ordinances, and providing such an endowment for gospel ministers as may secure that they be set apart wholly to their office of ministering in sacred things. This last service the State can discharge, in so far as the resources of the nation may permit, and the true welfare of the Church itself allow. And in doing all this, the State would not overstep the limits of its office, but rather be acquitting itself of its duty to God, whose ordinances the Church is, and whose will it is that the interests of His Church should be furthered by every competent and available means.”—Pp. 132, 133.
Dr. Bannerman still farther says:—
“V. The fifth position that I lay down is, that the duty of the State thus to recognise, and, so far as circumstances permit, to endow the Church, is undeniably countenanced by the whole tenor of Scripture.”
All this is perfectly clear and intelligible. These are the true principles of the Free Church of Scotland. They are thoroughly opposed to Voluntaryism. They are embodied in all her authorised standards and Disruption documents. They should be taught from all her pulpits and professorial chairs; and in connection with the maintenance of them alone has she any title to her present position or property, or to be regarded as a true representative of the historic Church of our native land.
II. In regard to her POSITION.
Strictly speaking, her position remains unchanged, or rather has been confirmed by the legislation of 1873, under the Barrier Act, which declares the binding nature, not only of the Act 1846, “Anent Questions and Formula,” but of the preamble to the Act—viz., that we “firmly maintain the same scriptural principles as to the duties of nations and their rulers in reference to true religion and the Church of Christ, for which she [this Church] has hitherto contended.” All men, therefore, who take this ground, stand on the true constitution of the Free Church of Scotland, whether they be many or few, and this will be demonstrated if ever the question is forced to an issue. What we complain of, however, is that, without bringing the question to an issue, the Church is convulsed by stealthy and revolutionary proposals and insidious attempts at change. As we seem on the eve of new devices of a revolutionary kind, it may be well here to glance at our past painful experience in this direction. The general body of the Free Church remained steadfast to her constitutional principles for about twenty years after the Disruption. Suddenly a spirit of change seems to have seized on some of our leading men. The Church at large was not consulted or informed in regard to this, although this would only have been fair, as all were bound together by the most solemn mutual engagements. The people by whom the Church was upheld were not consulted. The representatives of those who had left large bequests to the Church were not consulted. No change was made in the solemn engagements undertaken in the sight of God by all our ministers and other office-bearers—viz., to abide by the original constitution. But in defiance of solemn vows and the brotherly covenant, Free Church principles were quietly being given up, and a determination was formed to carry the Church and her property, if possible, over to the United Presbyterians. This attempt was carried on to the verge of danger, but has hitherto, by firm resistance, been defeated in so far as the constitution of the Free Church is concerned.
(To be Continued.)