To the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty.
May it please your Majesty. We, the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, convened at Glasgow this 19th day of May, nineteen hundred and fifty-three years, humbly desire to convey to your Majesty this unfeigned expression of our most sincere loyalty to your Majesty’s Person and Throne.
We counted it no small part of the Divine favour towards your Majesty in the flower of your youth, and towards the people of Great Britain, that in this the year of your Majesty’s Coronation, these vast numbers of people over whom the Lord has called your Majesty to rule, are united in loyalty and good will as the heart of one man.
Recognising in some measure the heavy and exacting burdens which the Coronation must place upon your Majesty, we pray that the Lord Jesus Christ by whom Kings reign and Princes decree justice, may graciously grant to your Majesty all necessary grace and strength to meet every demand.
We rejoice to think that as an integral part of the Coronation Ceremony your Majesty shall receive a copy of the Bible. This Book we firmly believe to be the Word of God, eternal truth, inspired and infallible: able by the blessing of the Lord to make wise unto salvation. We pray that this act on the part of the Sovereign Ruler of Great Britain may be truly symbolic, both of the Nation’s subjection to the Word of God and its determination to preserve it inviolate. May the future reign of your Majesty be a continual realisation of these words, written by an illustrious Ruler of other days: “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and His Word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me. He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning. When the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds: as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain” (II Sam. xxiii. 2, 3, 4).
Having true regard to the Glory of God, to the purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the highest good of your Majesty and of all these peoples committed to your Majesty’s rule, we greatly rejoice that the blood-bought heritage of our Protestant faith and liberties is preserved and safeguarded in the Coronation Declaration and Oath. In this, our joy is all the greater because recent attempts to alter the distinctive Protestantism of the Declaration have met with the failure they deserve. May your Majesty be strengthened in your honoured and exalted position to call the nation to give that homage which is due to the divine command: “Ye shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord” (Lev. xxvi. 3).
May it please God to bestow of His choicest gifts upon your Majesty: Your Majesty’s Royal Consort Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Your Majesty’s Royal Mother, Queen Elizabeth, and all the Royal House of Great Britain, and after your Majesty has served God faithfully here upon earth, may it be the portion of your Majesty to reign in life everlasting with Him in heaven through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, and Saviour.
In the name and by the authority of the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
DONALD CAMPBELL,
Moderator.