(An abridgment of an address delivered by
PROFESSOR G. SMEATON, D.D., in 1875.)
THE propriety of Ecclesiastical Establishments may be advocated briefly as follows:—The State, considered in its corporate capacity, is a MORAL PERSON, with a moral standing and responsibility. It is not the creation of the so-called social compact or of the popular will, but a divine institution based on natural religion. It coheres by a moral and religious bond; and its rulers are the lieutenants of God. If the State is a moral person, capable of performing duty, of committing sin, and suffering punishment, which everyone must own who traces the fate of nations according to the divine word, it follows that a nation, acting by its rulers, can accept Christianity and make a public profession of it as the national rule and guide. It had been held together previous to the recognition of Christianity by some form of religion however impure, without which it could not have existed. And the first duty of the civil ruler when brought in contact with Christianity and persuaded of its divine origin is to RECEIVE THE BIBLE AS A REVELATION in a national way. The immediate effect of this is that it constitutes the State a Christian State, and pledges it to purge out its previous religion in the same way as Pagan and Mahommedan nations constituted themselves, according to their false religions, or as the atheistic state was constituted, or rather attempted to be constituted, by the French Convention. A nation must have a religion, and the only question is, which it will adopt. And when Christianity comes to the nation, or to the family, it does not frown on either of these institutions, which also are divine in origin, but enters into them with an elevating purifying power, and sweetly coalesces with all that is purely human in both. These ordinances of God now become vessels by which Christianity is diffused.
The national recognition of the Bible as a revelation subjecting the nation to its authority, though a great step gained, does not exhaust the nation’s duty, as widely diverging views prevail upon the right interpretation of the Bible. The State must by the necessity of the case ADOPT A CREED which will commonly be prepared by the Church. The same duty that devolves upon an individual Christian confronts a Christian State, and it naturally appends the civil sanction to the Church’s creed. It must distinguish between Scripture truth and its perversion. The State, by the adoption of a creed, gives utterance to the self-consciousness of a Christian community. It confesses the Christianity it has adopted. The nation, acting by its rulers, must needs adopt a creed, and so distinguish between truth and error in the confession which it makes. It must be Trinitarian or Unitarian, Protestant or Popish, Calvinistic or Arminian, by the necessity of the position. These diverging lines of profession cannot be ignored. More than that; the responsible rulers must proclaim a Christian constitution and adopt a legislation all through the nation’s history upon the principles of revelation. A Christian State is competent to make the same confession of its faith that an individual makes. This is amply confirmed by Church history; for whether we turn our thoughts to nations recently converted from heathenism to Christianity, such as Tahiti and Madagascar, or to our own country emerging from the darkness of Popery, we find that nations have uniformly acted in this way, under the prompting of a Christian instinct. Thus at the commencement of the Scottish Reformation in 1560, the ministers were requested to draw up and lay before Parliament a summary of the doctrine which they were prepared to maintain as agreeable to Scripture. The preparation of that outline was committed to six ministers including John Knox and the prominent preachers of the Reformation, and in the course of four days the Scottish Confession of Faith was completed and immediately presented. It was publicly read before the whole Parliament, and full permission afforded to object to it if valid objections could be offered. The ministers were present, if need be, to defend the summary which they had prepared, but no exception even in appearance was taken by any party. Knox accordingly declares, “The true religion according to the Word of God, was almost unanimously ratified by the three Estates of the realm at Edinburgh, the 17th day of July, the year of God 1560 years.” That was the nation by its rulers confessing the truth—the national Confession of Faith. That was as it ought to be. The nations and kings that had long given their power to the beast, were, in the conscious or unconscious fulfilment of prophecy, transferring that power to the service of Him Who is King of kings and Lord of lords. The State, as an organised community, occupying a moral standing before God, confessed its faith by the adoption of a creed. And in reply to those who hint a doubt or hesitate dislike of all State-action in this form, I reply by demanding—Can we suppose a moral person without a religion or the adequate profession of its faith, more especially in decisive times like those of the Reformation, when such a course is imperatively required by a sense of duty both to God and men? The rulers were required in their official capacity to avow the truth, and the neglect of this would have been a flagrant abandonment of duty.
Many are taught to look askance or with pious horror upon any alliance between Church and State, such as is involved in the idea of Establishment. They talk as if the support of the State was dear bought. They imagine that the Gospel is strong enough without human aid; and they set forth that the Church becomes the creature of the State if she forms any connection with it. There not only may be, but there ought to be, an alliance between Church and State. The authority as well as model, for that connection between Church and State will be found in the provisions of the Jewish Establishment the existence of which, by divine appointment, is conclusive as to the lawfulness of this arrangement. Christian rulers holding office in a State confessing Christianity, may warrantably imitate, in the Spirit of the Gospel, what the Supreme Ruler was pleased to institute for His ancient Church. It was profane to call that sinful. Some call it a presumption, and others adduce it as an argument against a civil Establishment, that during the apostolic age and for two full centuries afterwards, no trace occurs of anything of this nature. The sentiment derived from this—and it is but a sentiment—is, that this silence may be accepted as a directory for the guidance of the Church in all subsequent times in her relations with nations. Had a nation existed which came over from the profession of heathenism to the Christian faith, the apostles would have found it necessary to adjust the relations between Church and State. But every one acquainted with Scripture is aware that the application of great principles is developed in connection with historical occasions; and that throughout the Scriptures we are furnished with principles, not points. It is obvious that the Church was to be erected amid the world’s opposition, and the world was thereby furnished with a proof that human wisdom had not conceived it, and that human power could not subvert it. But to any reflecting mind, a memorable analogy presents itself on comparing the fortunes of the Jewish and Christian Churches. They were both erected amid a continuous train of miracles to accredit the supernatural economy which gave them birth. But when miraculous aids were suspended, the ordinary aids of civil power in both cases were providentially substituted. Thus the miraculous intervention which had delivered Israel from Egypt might again have been employed to rescue them from their Babylonian exile. But it was not so; the interposition of the Persian monarchs was used for this effect. And in like manner at the Reformation when the aid of Christian rulers was enlisted, we see the same principle applied in the emancipation of the Christian Church in every country that embraced the Protestant Faith.
The next State-action on behalf of the Church is her ENDOWMENT. We have always maintained that the State, viewed as a moral person, is not less competent than an individual Christian, to offer freewill offerings to Him Who is Prince of the kings of the earth. We are prepared to maintain that national funds, given from the national treasury would, if necessary, be competently applied to the purpose of religiously instructing the community. That position may be maintained on various grounds—on the ground of Christ’s supremacy and the national subjection to Him; on the ground that religion is necessary for the ends of government as well as for right morality; and on the ground of the necessity of preventing the nation from sinking into ignorance and irreligion through the lack of schools and Churches.
The Distinctively Scottish Theory of Church Establishments.
Many of the topics above delineated are common to all establishments of the Christian Church in various lands. What we have now to notice is peculiar to the Scottish theory. It is commonly assumed by those who have reasoned themselves into an attitude of hostility to every form of connection between Church and State, that we must needs accept along with Establishment all those State-Church principles and theories which go associated with the most ill-sorted alliances that can be named, such as those of the English and Continental Churches. But it is not so: nor is the Church a mere appendage of the State, existing by its favour and passing into dissolution by its frown. The existence of the Church is one thing, and her civil Establishment another. The Church is no more the appendage or creature of the State when she consents, on right terms, to receive the invaluable boon of a free establishment and an adequate endowment, then the bride in uniting herself freely and with consent to a consort for life, deserves to be so regarded.
Of the Protestant Churches the last formed, with one exception, was that of Scotland. And the Reformers, when they took the necessary steps to digest the doctrines and consolidate the government of the national Church, had before them the defects and advantages of the other Churches of the Reformation. They knew that the princes had been employed in the overthrow of Popery and in giving the national ratification to the Reformed faith, had, in most countries, introduced a sort of ecclesiastical supremacy for which Scripture gave no warrant; that the German princes bore the title of Chief Bishop; that several Swiss cantons gave magistrates undue authority in what pertained to the external matters of religion and the government of the Church; that the English king, Henry the Eighth, had gone so far as to assume the title of Head of the Church; and that the common doctrine in England among statesmen and ecclesiastics was that the monarch was under Christ, sole head of the Church and supreme in ecclesiastical affairs. Our Reformers were put upon their guard. That the Church should be Established and yet free was the theory for which the Scottish Church was distinguished to her advantage among all the Churches of the Reformation; and from the days of Knox she has been summoned, by a succession of peculiar providences, to raise and to reiterate a noble testimony to that effect.
There is the objection that spiritual independence in the abstract is not conceded to the Church. This I answer by demanding, Does not the Confession of Faith, to which our theologians have deferred from the days of Henderson, Gillespie and Rutherford, set forth the rounded outline of the doctrine of the Church’s independence? Does it say nothing when it asserts the sole Headship of Christ (ch. xxv. 6); when it declares the distinct Government instituted by Him in the hand of Church officers (ch. xxx. 1); when it postulates the existence of ecclesiastical as well as civil powers (ch. xx. 4); when it marks out an ample sphere for the action and determinations of synods and councils (ch. xxxi. 3)? It must be allowed that all this doctrine of the Confession is ratified by the civil sanction because the Confession is itself so ratified; and consequently that independence is secured to the Church, by the Revolution Settlement, by the ratification of the Confession, and by the Treaty of Union, without the hazard of any intervening and obstructing influence. The true doctrine of independence is that of the Confession of Faith, in other words, the doctrine of Co-ordinate Jurisdiction, or of the distinct government of the Church; and we will not permit a new interpretation to be given to it on the part of those whose obvious aim is to render an Establishment impossible. The crusade against Establishments, whether we think of its renewal in present circumstances or weigh the merits of the agitation at any time, deserves the sternest reprobation.
It (Voluntaryism) proposes to substitute a non-religious State—that is, a State purely secular, without a religion and without a creed—for the Christian State which, as all historians allow, is the fountain of modern culture and refinement. The Confession of Faith would be expunged in Scotland, and the Thirty-Nine Articles in England as the national creed—a creed which has brought a blessing to the Empire. No man can be permitted to deny this issue on the allegation that he means it not. He may not intend that in its corporate character the State shall be infidel, but it is not a question of intentions. He subjects himself to the inexorable logic of a class of principles which are wild and irreligious, and he will be swept before them like chaff before the wind. From their very nature they are a universal act rescisory as to the laws which regulate religious education, the observance of the Sabbath, the purity of marriage, and the religious character of all our institutions; and what is this but the official infidelity of an atheistic State? Never till the dawn of the French Revolution did this theory gain much attention or influence. For though we find it among the Anabaptists, the Quakers, and the untaught fanatical sects of the Commonwealth time—men who regarded the State as belonging to the empire of an evil power—it never menaced the institutions of the Christian State till the fury and impiety of the French Revolution insinuated themselves into other nations. The heathen philosophers, Plato and Cicero, speak with a deeper view of the religious character of States than Voluntary divines commonly evince. We are naturally led to enquire, what description of person must be the ideal ruler of the Voluntary theory, if that theory should ever be reduced to practice in any unhappy country? The answer can only be, that in order to be a MODEL RULER he must needs be a BAD MAN—a man denuded of the fear of God, to whom all religions are alike, and none worthy of encouragement.