A Letter to the Prime Minister re Envoy to the Vatican

IT may be remembered that at last meeting of the Free Presbyterian Synod the Revs. Neil Cameron, Glasgow, and J. R. Mackay, M.A., Inverness, were appointed as a deputation from the Synod to wait upon the Prime Minister, the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., on the subject of the recall of the Envoy to the Vatican. In reply to a letter of enquiry as to when he could conveniently receive the deputation, the Prime Minister said that he was sorry that, owing to the pressure of other business, he could not find time to receive the deputation. In view of this answer, the Revs. Neil Cameron and J. R. Mackay decided that they should send a letter to the Prime Minister, embodying the substance of what they intended to say by word of mouth, if the opportunity had been given them. The letter is as follows:—

To the Right Honourable D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P., LL.D.,
Prime Minister of Great Britain,
House of Commons, London.

Sir,—The Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, at its Annual Meeting last May, appointed your humble servants, a deputation, to lay before you, the Prime Minister of the British Nation, the grief caused to the Protestant subjects of His Majesty George V. by the appointment in 1914 of an Envoy to the Pope, and by the persistence with which the British Government has, in spite of numerous appeals for his withdrawal, hitherto continued an Envoy’s services at the Vatican. As you declined to receive in private the deputation composed of your humble servants, so that they might explain to you their sense of the injustice done, and the grief and alarm caused by the conduct of the Government relative to this important matter, they now take the liberty of submitting to you in writing a brief statement of the grounds of their complaint, and beg of you to take this their statement into account:—

1. The appointment of such an Envoy to the Vatican is a direct violation of the Bill of Rights of this Protestant Nation. Our forefathers learned, by painful experience, that it was absolutely necessary, for the peace and prosperity of the nation, that prohibitive and restrictive laws should be enacted to restrain the Papacy from its infamous plots—plots which had in view the undermining and overthrowing of the precious civil and religious liberties which the Reformation brought to the people of this country. Hence the emergence of the Bill of Rights and of other salutary laws against a system which would, if it could, undo the Reformation. For the Papacy is the most despotic and tyrannical system known to human history. It will not rest satisfied, if it can have its way, with anything less than the

absolute control of both the civil and religious liberties which God bestows upon mankind, and so far is it from being penitent on account of its past that it proudly boasts its semper eadem. From our knowledge of its past conduct, and of its present avowed teaching, should the Papacy again get the upper hand in this country, we could not expect anything better at its hands than a repetition of forms of persecution with which our forefathers were familiar, if one dared to oppose its idolatry and its despotism. If our Government, then, will persist in ignoring and removing the wise and non-persecuting laws set up for restraining the Papacy, we are afraid, if things go on as they are doing, the issue may be another bloody struggle for civil and religious liberty within this country—which may the Lord prevent. We therefore humbly appeal to you to put an end to the infatuated policy of bartering away the precious fruits which the Reformation brought to the people of this country.

1. The Creed of the Church of Scotland—a Creed in harmony with all the best thinking of the Reformed Divines of Europe—affirms that the Papacy is the great apostacy predicted in the Word of God. This belief is solidly based upon the distinctive marks by which God’s word delineates that apostacy. Now, the case being so, it is nothing short of infatuation for this Protestant Nation to go on pandering to the ambitions of such an idolatrous and anti-Christian system.

2. The Nations of France and Italy, our allies in the terrible war now being waged, withdrew their Envoys to the Vatican some time ago. We may rest assured that those Roman Catholic Nations did so upon solid and reasonable grounds. The lame plea that their Envoys should be continued, because their peoples were Papists, did not weigh much with the Governments of France and Italy—a plea for retaining the Envoy at the Vatican put forward by our Government, notwithstanding the fact that Roman Catholics are only one to ten of the Protestants of this Nation. The idea is preposterous. Further, the presence of the British Envoy at the Vatican must be a source of harassment to Italy and to France, as it is surely a cause of alarm and grief to very many of the Protestants of Great Britain and Ireland. Such an anomaly ought to be brought to a speedy end.

3. It is a well-established fact that the Pope is on friendly terms with the Central Powers now at war with us and with our allies. The Pope has done his best to hamper us ever since the War began. It was through the active co-operation of the Roman Catholic political party in Germany that the Kaiser and his war-lords were able to prepare so effectively for the world-war. In Italy, a nefarious plot, hatched in the Vatican, to betray Italy to her enemies had almost succeeded. The Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland caused many of the subjects of his Majesty in Ireland to give their oath that they would not be obedient to the law of conscription passed by the British Parliament. We do not

believe that the Protestant subjects of King George V. in Great Britain would be suffered to act as did those traitors, neither is it our wish that they should be. But we do ask, Why should there be any partiality in the enforcement of the law of the nation at any time, and especially at such a critical period of our history as this is? Like opposition to Great Britain’s weal through Roman Catholic priestly agency has shown itself in Quebec, and in Australia and in other places. Are we to believe that all these efforts to weaken and harass us were unknown to the Pope? No; we cannot believe it. Why, then, should we have an Envoy at the Vatican? Would it not be as wise for us to have one at the Courts of Berlin and Vienna? Who knows how much information may have been given to our enemies through this channel, since the war started?

We therefore appeal to you in our own name, and in the name of millions of our fellow-Protestants, to terminate speedily an unwise, unjust and unpatriotic policy, by your taking steps to have the British Envoy to the Vatican recalled.—We are, Right Honourable Sir, your humble and obedient servants,

(Signed) NEIL CAMERON,
Minister of St. Jude’s F.P. Congregation, Glasgow.

( ) JOHN R. MACKAY,
Minister of the F.P. Congregation, Inverness.

The Prime Minister has acknowledged receipt of above letter.