Issued by the Religious and Morals Committee on behalf of the Synod.
WE, the ministers and elders of the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, taking into serious consideration, the low spiritual and moral condition which obtains throughout the Realm, and the sufferings and sore bereavements which war has brought on our nation; and realising in a measure our duty to search and try our ways and return to the Lord, do in the midst of our various troubles, in obedience to the Word of God, and the example of our Godly predecessors in somewhat similar circumstances, resolve to give public expression to our pressing need and desire to confess and forsake our sins, perceiving that when this duty is performed out of conscience and in sincerity, it has always been attended with a blessing from heaven.
The Lord has often spoken to us as a nation by His Word and Spirit and through His faithful messengers. Jesus Christ has been set forth as the One and Only Redeemer Who is able to save us from our sins, but we have not hearkened to Him and when He has afflicted us we have revolted more and more so that “the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint.”
We should be deeply exercised by the many evidencies of spiritual and moral declension that appear throughout the world and especially in the professing Church of Christ. Systems of truth which have stood the test of centuries are being generally replaced by creedless statements and expositions as the basis of nominal Christianity. Added to this is the neglect of the Word and worship of God publicly and in families with the consequent sins of uncleanness, intemperance, Sabbath breaking, thieving, fraud, countenancing of Romanism, and various caricatures of true religion which are advocated by nominal teachers of religion and morals. Moreover we cannot but view with deep-felt sorrow the want of Scriptural discipline in the professing Church.
As a Synod and as individual members, we do not isolate ourselves from the sins and errors of the times. We know and feel that the best of us have not been so steadfast nor so zealous for God’s glory, longsuffering and mercy as we ought to have been.
And further, because we believe that those who find mercy must not only confess but forsake their sins, we now solemnly resolve by the grace of God to avoid all things contrary to His glory. We also resolve to maintain inviolably the great Protestant doctrines of the Word of God, having specially in view the glorious principles contested for by the Disruption Church and the Deed of Separation of 1893, and to encourage and support all who do the same in strict consistency with our ordination vows and the subordinate standards of the branch of Christ’s Church to which we are privileged to belong and whose principles we have vowed to maintain and to transmit to posterity, resolving by the help of the Lord to act according to our responsibilities and duties.
Two of these Protestant doctrines we desire to emphasise in our present national circumstances:—(1) The outstanding need of being regrounded in the Truth that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Divinely-Inspired Word of God, and so form the only supreme rule of faith and conduct; and (2) That men require Spiritual illumination, bestowed on them by the Holy Spirit of God, to understand them aright, and to practice them in heart and in all the relations of life. Were this so, a vast Spiritual and Moral Change would take place in religious views, in our system of education, and in all spheres of our national life.
In all this we solemnly profess in the sight of the Searcher of hearts that this, our Declaration and Confession, is not made for any ecclesiastical advantage, private interest, or to please men, but out of conscience and in sincerity, seeking the glory of God, the well-being of His Cause and the conversion of sinful men, and recognising our utter weakness, we earnestly pray to God, the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ, to be merciful to us and to enable us by His Holy Spirit to do our duty to the praise of the glory of His grace.
D. M. Macdonald, Convener.