IN last issue we expressed our deep satisfaction at the decision of the House of Lords in favour of the Free Church. We shall now notice for a little some of the bearings of this remarkable judgment on the Free Presbyterian testimony. The verdict may possibly have stirred considerable reflection and even unrest in some minds in view of two circumstances in particular; first, that the highest legal tribunal in the country has declared that the minority who refused to enter the union in 1900 are “the true and lawful Free Church of Scotland,” and, secondly, that since 1893 the Free Presbyterians have claimed to be the said Church. Viewing the whole subject from various sides, we see no reason for disquietude on the part of any of our people. Their claim to represent the Free Church of 1843 remains unaffected, while nothing has transpired that should make them have any doubt as to the rightness and wisdom of the step of separation taken after the passing of the Declaratory Act. It is admitted that the minority in the recent lawsuit have obtained a legal standing in the country as the Free Church of Scotland, but much will depend on their future line of action as to whether they will justify in the highest sense their possession of the title. We fear they are not all equally resolute to maintain the Free Church testimony unimpaired in every point—say, on purity of worship, a matter that did not come up in the law suit. We shall be glad to be disappointed in this fear. Certainly the House of Lords has shut them up to the constitution of the Free Church as settled in 1843, with the Confession of Faith as the chief subordinate standard; the Confession makes no provision for anything in public praise but “the singing of psalms,” and so, whatever may be done in future practice, uninspired hymns and instrumental music are constitutionally excluded. But, not to digress from our present purpose, let us take a glance at the bearings of the judgment of the Lords on the ecclesiastical position of our Church.
In one sense the judgment may be said to have no bearing on it at all. The Free Presbyterian Church was not a party of the lawsuit; its special claims to recognition were not before the Courts. No doubt references were made to it by both parties, but these were only partial, and did not call for special adjudication. If the Lords had found no ground in law or justice for a judgment in favour of either party before them, they might have felt compelled to look out for a third claimant, but they found an overwhelming body of evidence in favour of the minority as distinguished from the majority, and so they gave their verdict for the former, and upheld their claim to be “the true and lawful Free Church of Scotland.” The case as between the Free Church and the Free Presbyterians was not in court as a distinct issue; the Lords pronounced no judgment thereon; and so our position and claims stand where they were, and are in nowise shaken or condemned.
We are not left, however, with this merely negative and but scanty consolation from the case. One of the pleas put forward by the minority, and the general grounds on which the five Lords based their judgment, are favourable to the views of the Free Presbyterian Church. In fact the conclusion is forced upon us that, if our ministers had contested their civil rights in 1893, the likelihood is that they would have obtained a victory. It appears to be a grand distinguishing principle of the House of Lords that every case is decided absolutely on its merits, irrespective of numbers or social position on either side. It is all one if it were two, let alone twenty-five, against two thousand. May our chief legal tribunal ever possess this noble mark of distinction!
Now, one of the pleas of the minority was the following, as stated by Mr. Johnston:—”That Declaratory Act of 1892, with a sequel of 1894, we maintain were Acts which really abolish the authority of the Westminster Confession.” (Orr’s Report, page 180). This is exactly the view that was taken by the Free Presbyterians. The courts of the Church adopted these Acts, and so we declared that we could no longer recognise these courts as representing the Free Church of Scotland, nor suffer the constitution of the Free Church in this illegal manner to be set aside and rendered powerless and ineffective. It was in order to preserve intact the authority of the Westminster Confession, and the constitution of the Free Church in general, as settled in 1843, that we took up a separate position; and the Church’s integrity in these important respects we have maintained to the present hour. It appears to us that in the case before the Lords the minority took up the strong attitude against the Declaratory Act that has been maintained all along by the Free Presbyterians. Possibly the Frees have learnt something since 1893. Is it not, therefore, a decided confirmation of the testimony of our Church that the victorious party in the present lawsuit put forward as one of their chief pleas, and a plea that was practically maintained, a main position of the Free Presbyterian Church, that the Declaratory Act abolished the authority of the Westminster Confession? And surely there is here abundant justification for our separate testimony in 1893. Can Free Churchmen now assert without compunction that the Free Presbyterians were too early in leaving a body where the authority of the Westminster Confession was abolished?
Again, the general grounds on which the Lords based their judgment are favourable to our position and claims. They proceeded on the well known principle that the identity of a Church is the identity of its doctrine. The Lord Chancellor thus expressed himself during the course of the pleadings, and in similar terms in his formal judgment. In the latter he says—”The identity of a religious community described as a Church must consist in the unity of its doctrines.” Lord James of Hereford also affirms that the Church “is a body of men united only by the possession of common opinions, and if this community of opinion ceases to exist, the foundations of the Church give way.” Here we remark that the identity of doctrine ceased in the Free Church when the Declaratory Act of 1892 was passed. The community of opinion ceased to exist. A new standard of belief was set up that superseded and overthrew the Confession of Faith. (The Declaratory Act expressly professed to declare what the Church—not the majority merely—held and taught). The Church of the Declaratory Act was, therefore, not the Free Church of 1843. A dissenting minority no doubt continued in it, but that did not alter the real character of the Church of which they formed a part. If the identity of the Church ceased, as we have said, in 1892, then the new Declaratory Act Church forfeited its rights to the property, while the Free Presbyterians, who adhered to the original constitution unimpaired, retained their rights intact and unclouded. Further, we find that the Lords declare that there was no provision in the constitution of the Free Church for the alteration of any of its doctrines or principles. Lord Davey does not hesitate to say that there was no evidence to show that the Assembly had the “right to impose any innovation from established doctrine on a dissentient minority.” The Lord Chancellor expressly condemned the Arminianism of the Declaratory Act as inconsistent with the Confession of Faith on Predestination, and upheld the appeal on this plea. In view of these particulars, it is clear that the courts of the Free Church went entirely beyond their powers in adopting a Declaratory Act that set aside the Confession of Faith, and altered the doctrinal position of the Church. The Church in which this alteration was adopted immediately ceased to be the Free Church as settled in 1843; the Free Presbyterians were, therefore, fully justified in renouncing it; and the terms of this judgment by the House of Lords, instead of condemning the course they took, supply strong confirmation of its logical consistency, and uphold our well-grounded claim to be the Free Church of Scotland in direct historical continuity.
Much more might be added on the subject, but we forbear. The present is a time of great mental stir and tumult. May we be permitted to express the hope that Free Presbyterians will possess their souls in patience, and do nothing rashly in any direction? While looking with a friendly eye on any who really appear to seek the good of the Church of God in the land, let us remember the divine injunction, “Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”