By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale, Skye.
MUCH ink has been spilt in discussing the difference between the origin of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and that of the present Free Church, and both Churches are aware that, in their origins, there is a fundamental difference between them. The Free Presbyterian Church took up its separate position on the question of the Declaratory Act, whereas the present Free Church took up its separate position on the question of Union with the United Presbyterian Church, maintaining that, as the Questions and Formula had not been altered in 1892, the Declaratory Act was inoperative. This argument about the Questions and Formula has been made use of by Free Church writers on various occasions for the past 60 years, and has recently been revived in the Free Church Monthly Record for August, 1954 (p. 158), in connection with commemorating the House of Lords decision, and by the Rev. K. A. MacRae, M.A., Stornoway, in his pamphlet, The Resurgence of Arminianism (p. 14). In these and other publications it is stoutly maintained that as the Questions and Formula had not been changed there was no change in the Constitution of the Free Church, and, therefore, that its office-bearers could act as they formerly did, and with as little respect to the Declaratory Act as if it had never been passed. Further, it is maintained that as the Constitution of the Free Church makes no provision for a change, it was ultra vires of the majority to have passed the Act, and, therefore, though it was passed through the Barrier Act, it was not binding on any one.
It is a truth that the Constitution of the Free Church makes no provision for a change, and all intelligent Free Presbyterians will agree on that point, yet it is also true, as has often been pointed out in the Free Presbyterian Magazine, that a Church can change its relationship to its Constitution, and cease to be the Church which had been governed by that Constitution, by introducing legislation in the light of which the Constitution is to be understood. This is exactly what was done by the Free Church in 1892. It passed the Declaratory Act, and from then onwards the Constitution of the Free Church of 1843 was to be understood in the light of that Act. As already stated the Declaratory Act was ultra vires of the Assembly to have passed it, and it was so from the point of view that there was no provision in the Constitution for a change, but though it was ultra vires, in the light of the Constitution, for the Church Courts to make the change which the Declaratory Act contemplated, it was quite in accordance with the legal machinery at their disposal, for the Assembly to pass the Overture seeking this change, to the Presbyteries within its jurisdiction, under the Barrier Act. The majority of these Presbyteries, having voted in favour of it, it followed, as a matter of course, that an Assembly, ignoring the unchangeableness of the Constitution, should pass it into a binding law and Constitution of the Church. This was perfectly in accordance with Barrier Act legislation.
When this change took place the Free Church was no longer the Free Church of 1843 but a Church which had severed its connection with the old moorings, and was drifting away on the sea of Modernism, Arminianism, and Voluntaryism. It required no alteration or adjustment of the Questions and Formula to effect this work, for according to the law of the Church as it then stood, no discipline could be exercised against those who preached the most glaring heresies. The doctrines to which these Questions and the Formula referred, and the conspicuous place which these doctrines found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, were to be understood and viewed, not in the light in which they were previously understood, but in the light of the modifying statements of the Declaratory Act. This was the view of the Constitutionalists, and was expressed by some of them on the floor of the Assembly in 1893. From the Assembly Blue Book for 1893 (page 61) we see that the Rev. Angus Galbraith, Lochalsh, in supporting the action of the Synod of Glenelg, when it allowed Protests against the Declaratory Act on the Records of the Presbyteries of Abertarff, Lochcarron, and Skye, said that the people of the Free Church could very well see the distinction between the Free Church of 1843 and the Declaratory Act Church of 1893. On page 63 of the same Book, Principal Rainy is reported as quoting from a document handed in by Rev. William Fraser, Sleat, in which the latter says that he would not “in any capacity acknowledge any terms of office in the Free Church but those upon which I have been admitted, viz., adherence to the Confession of Faith, simpliciter, and my determination to adopt all lawful steps for the repeal of said Act,” and further on, Mr. Fraser is quoted as having expressed on behalf of himself and others, “their firm resolution to continue, in humble dependence on Divine grace, to discharge their solemn duties in accordance with the doctrines, principles, constitution, and standards of the Free Church, as heretofore understood from the Disruption until the passing of the Declaratory Act by last Assembly.” In supporting the Overture from the Synod of Glenelg, asking that the Declaratory Act be rescinded, Mr. Galbraith put the matter very clearly when he said, “The Confession is plain—perhaps too plain for some. They wanted a qualification that would envelop it in uncertainty. It just came to this, that it was the signing of the Confession of Faith with a qualification, and that qualification was to be as wide as the Act, and that was wide enough.” These men knew very well that the Questions and Formula had not been altered, but they knew equally as well that now the answers to the Questions, and the Formula itself, could be understood, and were understood, in a manner that was to afford relief to the tender consciences of men who had “difficulties and scruples” in connection with the Confession of Faith.
It now remains for us to notice what were the effects of the Declaratory Act in the Church which accepted it, and how it fared with those who knew its pernicious effect, who spoke so loudly against it, and yet remained under it. Dr. Rainy, if he was anything, was a very clever ecclesiastic, who could handle men, who were opposed to him, in an extraordinary way. He heard the speeches which were made in support of the ten Overtures which were sent up to the Assembly for rescinding the Declaratory Act, and was quick enough to realise that if nothing was done, the effect would be that a large number of people would take up a separate position. In fact he had a clear and unsettling demonstration of it in the Protest of the Rev. Donald Macfarlane and the subsequent happenings. He suddenly realised that all his craft could not avert a breakaway, and in order to make the breach as small as possible something would require to be done. The result was the Relieving Act of 1894, which enacted that the Statements of Doctrine contained in the Declaratory Act of 1892 “are not thereby imposed upon any of the Church’s office-bearers as part of the Standards of the Church; but that those who are licensed or ordained to office in this Church, in answering the Questions and subscribing the Formula, are entitled to do so in view of the said Declaratory Act.” Though this is a strange piece of ecclesiastical legislation, it is stranger still that men who opposed the Declaratory Act so vehemently, should be so blinded as not to see its consequences, and the confusion which it would bring about. This Relieving Act merely confirmed what the Declaratory Act of 1892 made possible, that is, that there could be two parties in the Declaratory Act Free Church, who answered the Questions and signed the Formula from two different standpoints, leading to the almost unbelievable spectacle of a Presbytery met on a certain day to ordain and induct a minister over a congregation, and that minister, in subscribing the Formula, declaring that he was doing so under the relief afforded by the Declaratory Act. The Presbytery, being made up of Constitutionalists and Voluntaries, both parties would, after the signing of the Formula, give him the right hand of fellowship. In this we fail to see where the Relieving Act of 1894 would give any relief to the Constitutionalists members of the Presbytery. At the next meeting of the same Presbytery, having the same personnel, they might have to ordain and induct a minister of the opposite view. He would declare that he was refusing to accept the relief afforded by the Declaratory Act, and again, both parties would give him the right hand of fellowship. This glaring piece of hypocrisy on the part of each party in turn is, we believe, without parallel in the annals of the Church in Scotland.
In the light of the place given to the Declaratory Act of 1892 one must look upon the body which adopted it, and which still bore the name The Free Church of Scotland, as a new creation. It was not the Free Church of Scotland of 1843. It had the Questions and Formula of the Church of the Disruption but these Questions and Formula were now to be answered and subscribed in the light of the Declaratory Act. Thus we see that this new creation was no place for any who understood these Questions and the Formula as they were understood in 1843. This was the view of the Rev. Donald Macfarlane when he tabled his Protest and left the Assembly in 1893, and, with others, formed the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Those who remained in the body which he left, and who spoke so strongly against the Declaratory Act, must surely have been hard-pressed for reasons for their conduct when they gave as one of their reasons, that the Questions and Formula had not been altered. Some of themselves, in supporting the Overtures against that Act, condemned the signing of the Formula with a reservation, and yet remained in a body where the Roman Catholic dogmas of mental reservation and equivocation were not only tolerated, but supported by the law of the Church in which they were. Did they ever, under these conditions, consider the truth which says, “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” (Psalm xciv. 20). This is a most serious state of affairs to all who view ordination vows as they ought to be viewed, and it leads one to the inevitable conclusion that the Questions and Formula of the Free Church of Scotland were respected only in the resuscitated Free Church, known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, for it, alone, had not, and has not, changed its relationship to the time-honoured Constitution.