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Home » Publications » Free Presbyterian Magazine » 1943 » March 1943 » Downward Drift of the Church of Scotland

Downward Drift of the Church of Scotland

REV. Jacob Primmer was a thorn in the flesh of the Modernists of the old Church of Scotland. The present Church of Scotland is more like the Samaritan Church, a mixture of all kinds of ideas, notions, and languages! It is neither Protestant, Episcopalian, Popish, nor Presbyterian. It resembles more a “lawless mob” which cannot appeal to higher authority than “what saith the majority” in her Supreme Court. It was against this declension Mr. Primmer was so often “protesting.” If he (Primmer) had lived to our day he could not protest on the basis of the old and honourable Constitution of the Established Church of Scotland. For by the Union of 1929 with the United Free Church all that was changed. No man outside or inside can say what is the “Constitution” of the present Church of Scotland. In this respect she resembles the chameleon. She can change her creed, formula, doctrines, practice, and mode of worship to suit the occasion without any appeal to the Word of God! Mr. Primmer declared in the Assembly of the Church of Scotland in June, 1889 as follows*:—”He regretted to observe that the (Popish) practice was on the increase of “reading prayers from a book, either in manuscript or printed;” of keeping and retaining images,” which the Church of Scotland declared to be idolatry; of erecting chancels, chancel-screens, and chancel-rails apses, etc.; marble, stone, and wooden altars ascended by steps, vases with flowers, crosses, and crucifixes, etc; which rested on altars; of mass vessels—such as chalices, patens, corporals, veils, cruets, etc; of the Popish superstitious consecration of the same; of mass investments—such as stoles with crosses, cassocks, girdles, imitation copes, etc.; of unveiling the elements and elevating the same, using wafers and communicating at the altar-rails; of choirs wearing scarlet cassocks and short white surplices; of turning to the east, bowing and genuflecting; of teaching the real objective presence in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; of proclaiming baptismal regeneration, sacredotalism and sacramentarianism, of openly praying for the dead, of pronouncing absolution of sin, of musical entertainments and sensuous displays of further Popish and Rationalistic teaching, such as Mariolatry, stations of the cross, holy water, sign of the cross, and that the Scriptures are not inspired; of the annual observance of Christmas (Popish blasphemy), Good Friday, Easter, and other superstitious days condemned by the Word of God and the Church Standards; tampering with the young in the Sabbath School by using service books and the like. “That was in 1889!” “The Jacob Primmers” are not to be heard in the Courts of the present Church of Scotland. The people of this land do not realise how far down the stream of popery the present Church of Scotland has gone for the last forty years. The young should be warned to keep away from it. It is a most dangerous Church. Full of error, superstition, and idolatry. It is of the utmost importance how we worship God. The Word of God must be our guide, and only authority. “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book (Rev. xxii. 19).” The comparisons the Holy Spirit makes in the Bible of a degenerate Church are of the lowest types, and figures of speech known among rational, moral human beings:—”Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her, therefore, put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts: lest I strip her naked and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and make her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms (Hos. ii. 2-4). Read the 16th chapter of Ezekiel and see the comparison drawn, and the exhibition which is unfolded before your eyes of a Church which has departed from the Word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the practice of true godliness, piety, and humility! Has the Church of Scotland reformed any since 1898? No! “Perhaps the Union of 1929 with the United Free Church made a radical change towards sanity, evangelical doctrines, and practice?” No! The Arminian United Free Church of Scotland only fanned the flames of Ritualism. Indeed, some of their office-bearers told us on more than on one occasion that in the near future the present Church of Scotland would be as Romanistic as Papal Rome! Are the ministers, and laymen of the present Church of Scotland united? No! They are divided into many groups, cliques, and parties. The Scot Catholics, the old Moderates, Arminians, Socinians, Darwinians, Pelagians, Arians, Freethinkers (one who discards revelation), with small groups of Evangelicals, confined chiefly to the Western borders of the Highlands and Islands. We warn the youth of our Church to shun the Church of Scotland. Do not pretend to worship with them at any time, and any where. The present Church of Scotland is ruined from top to bottom. Some may argue;—”But they read the Bible, sing a few Psalms, and very nice hymns, although they have instrumental music, surely on rare occasions it would be better than staying at home on Sabbath?” If you were told before hand that the small-pox was in your neighbour’s house, and you never took that dreaded disease, would you venture in, even once, to see how your friend was getting along? No! And you would venture with your most precious soul to listen for eternity to what might prove your everlasting ruin! If you are so situated that you cannot go or reach a place of worship where God is worshipped according to His Word, stay at home, read your Bible, and pray for the divine blessing on what you read: “And Samuel said, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams (Sam. xv. 22).”—James Macleod.

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