(Continued from page 235.)
THE Commission of General Assembly had, as we have seen, published Causes of Humiliation after the defeat at Dunbar, but the Protesters did not consider these exhaustive enough. A meeting of Protesters was held at Glasgow in September, 1651, which was adjourned to meet at Edinburgh in October. The ten “General Heads of the Causes why the Lord contends with the Land,” as agreed upon by the Commission, were accepted, but it was further decided that these should be amplified after the meeting. This document, as given to the public, appeared with the title, Causes of the Lord’s wrath against Scotland manifested in his sad late Dispensation. Whereunto is added a Paper, particularly holding forth the Sins of the Ministry. This document was used later on as evidence against James Guthrie and Lord Wariston. The pamphlet, on the assumption that Charles was a Covenanter, which the compilers were entitled to hold in view of the solemn oaths he had taken, was legal and justifiable. The Causes had extraordinary influence, and Parliament enacted that Protesters and those who were accessory to it should remove ten miles from Edinburgh. It also met with the fate of many a famous document in being burned by the common hangman. On 2nd January, 1652, the Protesters addressed a long Letter to Cromwell, in which, with refreshing frankness, they say to him:—”Put your soul in our soul’s stead, and suppose this nation had invaded England when you invaded Scotland, upon fears and presumptions of dangers from them, and had prevailed in battle. Would you [have] thought it justice to found thereupon a conquest or incorporation, to model England as to religious and civil interests, after the arbitrament of the victors by the power of the sword? What you would not have other men do unto you, do you not the same unto them, for this is the law and the prophets” (Consultations of the Ministers of Edinburgh, i. 7). They also remind Cromwell that “it is not usual for officers and soldiers to step into pulpits and speak there what they like,” as was the custom of the Commonwealth soldiers. Such practices were subversive of discipline and becoming order in the administration of the affairs of God’s house, hence the Protesters say—”there is little regard had to the worship of God, and the observance of the Lord’s Day, yea, in several places pulpit worship is much disturbed and interrupted, the Covenants much spoken against, and the obligation thereof disclaimed and slighted. By many, several pamphlets are printed and vended full of scorn and reproaches, not only against the whole ministry, but against sundry of the ordinances of God” (Ibid. i. 3). Finally they make a pointed appeal to Cromwell’s principle of religious liberty. “Your Lordship and others with you,” they say, “have contended to the utmost for a liberty to yourselves in things religious and civil, which being attained, shall it be improved to the wronging of others in their religion and liberty? This would speak more self love or self fear than becomes Christians. We would hope that those who have so much pleaded for tenderness to be used to the saints, even when they are overtaken in an error, will, if they esteem us such, allow somewhat of it unto us when we plead, not our own cause, but the cause of truth and righteousness” (Ibid. i. 10). In 1652 the Protesters met in an “extra-judicial meeting,” as they termed it, in Edinburgh, with John Livingstone as Moderator, and after disclaiming the validity of the Assemblies of their opponents, resolved to carry on the work of the Church (Autobiography and Life of Robert Blair, p. 286). The Resolutioners met the same year in Edinburgh under the Moderatorsip of David Dickson. The Protesters compared to lodge a protest subscribed by sixty-three ministers and eighty laymen, declaring the Assembly to be “unlawful, unfree, and unjust.” For this the Resolutioners threatened them with discipline. The following year both Protesters and Resolutioners convened in General Assembly in St. Giles, Edinburgh, only a thin partition separating them in the historic building. Colonel Lilburn, the Commander-in-Chief of the Commonwealth forces, was suspicious of these gatherings, and asked permission from Cromwell to suppress them. Cromwell did not reply, and so Lilburn determined to act on his own authority. David Dickson, in opening the Assembly, devoted his sermon to the differences between Paul and Peter, exhorting the Church to unity and peace. He was followed by Robert Douglas, his successor, who dwelt much on the sin of schism. Then followed the prayer constituting the Assembly, when the clatter of horsemen and the noise of infantry were heard, and Lieutenant-Colonel Cotterel, accompanied by some officers, entered the church. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am commanded to ask you by what authority you sit here; if you have none from the Parliament, Commander-in-Chief, or Judges, you are to go with me.” The Moderator answered him by saying:—”We sit here by the authority of Jesus Christ and by the law of this land, whereby we are authorised to keep General Assemblies from year to year, according to the several Acts of Parliament, and every Assembly meets by appointment of the former.” Cotterel threatened to use force if the ministers would not disperse. Dickson asked leave to constitute the meeting and appoint the date of next meeting. Cotterel then led the ministers out between the lines of his men to a mile without Edinburgh. He then addressed the ministers, as Baillie tells us:—”When he had led us a mile without the town,” he says, “he then declared what further he had in commission. That we should not dare to meet any more above three in number; and that against eight o’clock to-morrow, we should depart the town, under pain of being guilty of breaking the public peace. And the day following, by sound of trumpet, we were commanded off town under pain of present imprisonment. Thus our General Assembly, the glory and strength of our Church upon earth, is by your soldiery, crushed, and trod under feet, without the least provocation from us, at this time, either in word or deed” (Letters, iii. 225). The Protesters were left for a time unmolested, but at length they, too, had to cease their deliberations. They, also, notwithstanding Baillie’s denial, drew up a protestation against the high-handed action of the military, and sent it to the Commander-in-Chief, Colonel Lilburn.
The Protesters, though more favoured by the English, and at times helped by them, did not lightly overlook the latter’s shortcomings, nor were they backward in telling them what they thought of some of their actions. In their Declaration or Testimonie in Reference to the English Actings amongst us, 17 March, 1653, the Protesters say:—”If there were no more but these things, we should happily have holden our peace; but that which afflicts us most and foreth us to cry out of violence (and would to God, we could cry aloud and lift up our voice like a trumpet to shew the English their sin in it) is that they have in a great measure kept waste and laid waste the House of the Lord. And being now to speak of this sad subject, we desire not to be mistaken, as though we did lay the weight of all religion upon the matter of Presbyterian Government. We do acknowledge and assert it to be a divine ordinance, the overturning of which or encroaching thereupon, cannot but provoke the Lord and be prejudicial to religion. But we look upon it as a more excellent thing to have all the people of God in love, with the reality and power of godliness, in a practical and experimental nearness and intimate communion with God in the Mediator, Jesus Christ, in feeling the sweet emanations and quickening and comfortable influences of His Spirit, and desire highly to esteem, and, with our souls, to love all the Lord’s excellent ones in both nations, who bear His image in any measure, and are acquainted with the ways of God upon the heart, and made partakers of righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; which to us is the Kingdom of God and His Tabernacle with men, and is and ought to be most in our soul’s estimation and desires that it may be promoted and preserved, and (we fear exceedingly) cannot but be borne down and stifled by a flood of atheism and errors, vain speculations, neglect, and contempt of ordinances, and loose walking which hath overflowed these lands, and is, by toleration, like to be continued therein. We shall not speak of what hath been done, and hath been obstructed and hindered to be done in England and Ireland. But as to this nation, whether we speak in regard of obstructing what was done in it, when the English invaded the land, or of their legal establishments and practises, as to things religious since their prevailing, as they have sorely wounded our hearts, so we are afraid that they have grievously provoked God against themselves. This Church was upon a fair way of purging out ignorant, corrupt, and scandalous ministers and elders, and in a way of more tenderness and circumspection and care in admitting of persons to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper” (Consultation of the Ministers of Edinburgh, i. 21, 22).
With the help of the English sectaries the Protesters appointed ministers to vacant charges who were favourable to both. A spirit of division now showed itself in the Church courts, for though the General Assembly was prohibited from meeting, the inferior Church courts were not interfered with. Sometimes the people showed themselves strongly opposed to the Protester nominees; this was particularly the case at Douglas and Bothkennar.
The Resolutioners showed more and more as time went on that they lacked the moral courage to attack and condemn the prevailing sins in Church and State. The Protesters, on the other hand, waxed stronger and stronger. Though few in numbers, the Protester ministers had the ear of the more serious-minded among the people, and their ministrations were attended by great concourses of people. This was especially the case on sacramental occasions, and it is to this period the Scottish custom of great crowds gathering together on sacramental occasions is to be traced. The Protesters were neither Laodicean in their zeal nor in their preaching, and it is worthy of note that Dr. King Hewison has to say that “By their zeal this remnant held itself together as the nucleus of the Church whose rehabilitation at the Revolution Settlement preserved Presbyterianism for Scotland” (The Covenanters, ii. 47).