By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale, Skye.
IN a previous article we dealt with the Declaratory Act and the Questions and Formula, showing that the Declaratory Act was operative in the Church which adopted it in spite of the fact that the Questions and Formula had not been altered, and notwithstanding the dissents of some who remained in that Church, thus showing that in face of all their assertions to the contrary, those who became anti-Unionists in 1900 were under the Declaratory Act from the time when the Assembly refused to rescind it in 1893 until after the House of Lords decision when the present Free Church saw fit to repeal the obnoxious Act after that decision had secured for them the property. Time and again this minority, probably by way of making a counter-charge against the Free Presbyterian Church, or possibly in order to make the best of their untenable position, have asserted that the Free Presbyterians were under the Declaratory Act for a year, and that the Rev. Donald Macfarlane, personally, was under it and was inducted to the pastoral charge of Raasay under the Declaratory Act. In 1923 Rev. Professor Kennedy Cameron, Free Church College, in his book, The Scottish Church Union of 1900, published this charge about Mr. Macfarlane, and the latter replied in the columns of the Northern Chronicle that he was not even for one day under the Act. Not content with this, Professor Kennedy Cameron, in 1930, repeated the charge in his pamphlet, A Proposal for a Further Ecclesiastical Union in Scotland, as if it had never been denied. Others since then have repeated the fabrication, possibly believing that when a matter is often repeated it will be taken as a fact, and there is danger of matters of this nature, when often repeated, being taken as facts unless they are contradicted.
It is amazing that anyone having a regard to historical facts should assert that those who formed the Free Presbyterian Church were for one year, or even for one day, under the Declaratory Act. As already noticed in the pages of the Magazine, it is a well-known fact that as soon as possible after the passing of the Declaratory Act the Presbyteries of Abertarff, Lochearron, and Skye inserted in their respective Records protests against the Declaratory Act, and by these protests made it very clear that they were not to be ruled by that Act. These protests were sustained by the Synod of Glenelg, within whose bounds these Presbyteries were situated. At the Assembly, when the protests came to be dealt with, it was clearly stated by more than one of the spokesmen of the protesters that they regretted the Declaratory Act as a bad law, and they did not intend to submit to it; they meant to go on until it was deleted from the Records of the Church (Free Church Blue Book of 1893, p. 61). Thus we find that those who were against the Declaratory Act and those who were in favour of it were in complete harmony as to the meaning of the protests which were on the Records of these Presbyteries, for Dr. Rainy, whose motion to delete the protests was accepted by the Assembly, declared that to protest against this Act, which was an Act of the Supreme Court of the Church, was a protest that denied it all force and validity in every sense whatever. It was a claim to suspend the operation of the Act in all respects (Ibid., p. 63).
The men who agreed to these protests, in the various Presbyteries, were in out-and-out rebellion against the Declaratory Act, and showed clearly that they would have nothing whatsoever to do with any student seeking licence, any probationer who was to be ordained, or any minister who was to be inducted over a congregation, who sought the relief which the Declaratory Act afforded. Rev. D. Macfarlane was a member of the Presbytery of Abertarff, and in the early part of 1893, by his induction at Raasay, became a member of the Presbytery of Skye, while the Rev. Donald Macdonald, Shieldaig, was a member of the Presbytery of Lochearron, and these three Presbyteries, with the Synod which had jurisdiction over them, had, to all intents and purposes, separated themselves from the Declaratory Church, and their only purpose in nominating Commissioners to the Assembly, and sending up from the Synod of Glenelg one of the ten overtures for the repeal of the Act, was the hope, which proved vain, that a cleavage would be averted by the deleting of the Act. The burden of these ten overtures was an appeal to the Declaratory Act Church, through their General Assembly, to return to the status quo, and the only logical sequence to a refusal on the part of the Assembly to grant the prayer of these overtures would be immediate separation. If the actions of these Presbyteries in sending Commissioners, and the actions of those who sent up the overtures would be called in question because the Assembly which passed the Declaratory Act and those who acknowledged its jurisdiction, had already ceased to represent the Free Church
of 1843, these actions can be defended by the Scripture exhortation, “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” (Hosea ii. 2).
The Lord’s people, who had their eye on the actions of these Presbyteries, and whose prayers went up to the Head of the Church on behalf of those whom they thought valiant for the truth, saw with dismay, all the ministerial members of these Presbyteries, with two exceptions, like the sons of Ephraim, who, though well armed, turned back in the day of battle, going in under the Declaratory Act concerning which they previously made such strong statements. It is regrettable that these ministers, in their fall, brought down many Godly men and women who at heart hated the soul-ruining heresies of the Declaratory Act. Others, however, saw the truth upheld when the Rev. D. Macfarlane tabled his protest at the Assembly, and with the Rev. D. Macdonald, Shieldaig, adhered to the protests of their respective Presbyteries, refusing, by these protests, to submit to the Declaratory Act or to any body of men who adopted it, however loud their claims were of being the original Free Church of Scotland, and the sole heirs of the Disruption. All these Presbyteries, having gone out of existence as Presbyteries of the Free Church of 1843, it was necessary that those who renounced the Declaratory Act should form themselves into a Church Court in order to carry forward the affairs of Christ’s Cause in a Constitutional manner. Thus we find the Free Church resuscitated with the original Constitution in which the Declaratory Act had no place.
In thus refusing to be under the Declaratory Act they gave a practical expression to their views of it years previous to the Free Church Counsel, Mr. H. Johnston, K.C., before the Law Lords, making the memorable statement, “That Declaratory Act of 1892, with a sequel of 1894, we maintain were Acts which really abolish the authority of the Westminster Confession” (Free Church of Scotland Appeals, edited by R. L. Orr, Third Edition, p. 180). That he made that statement after mature deliberation is corroborated by the following further statement by him, when speaking of the clause in the Declaratory Act reserving to the Church the right to decide what enters into the substance of the Reformed Faith. “Now we unquestionably object to that provision because it practically sets loose the Confession of Faith and leaves it for the Church of the time to determine what parts of the Confession may be written out of it” (Ibid. p. 257). Of the same view was Mr. Salvesen, the other Counsel of the minority. “… the old Formula made the whole doctrine of the Confession, the substance of the Reformed faith, and in this Declaratory Act, we contend, and it was the view of those who left the Church at that time, that the Free Church had substituted an absolutely elastic creed for the rigid creed that formerly they made their office-bearers subscribe to” (italics mine) (Ibid. p. 325). Whatever Mr. Johnston and Mr. Salvesen
were, they were not fools. They appear to have realised that the Free Presbyterian position was the much stronger position; they fought their case on that ground and won. The opinion of the Lord Chancellor also is very interesting to those who would have nothing to do with the Declaratory Act: “Assuming, as I do, that there are differences of belief between them, these differences are not got rid of by their agreeing to say nothing about them, nor are these essentially diverse views avoided by selecting so elastic a formulary as can be accepted by people who differ, and say that they claim their liberty to retain their differences while purporting to join in one Christian Church. It becomes but a colourable union and no trust fund devoted to one form of faith can be shared by another communion simply because they say in effect, ‘there are some parts in this or that Confession which we will agree not to discuss, and we will make our formularies such that either of us can accept it.’ Such an agreement would not, in my view, constitute a Church at all, or, to use Sir William Smith’s phrase ‘It would be a Church without a religion. Its formularies would be designed not to be a Confession of Faith, but a concealment of such parts of the faith as constituted an impediment to union.’
The Lord Chancellor’s judgment was given against the party who formed the United Free Church, but let us suppose that he had been giving his judgment after 1893 and not after 1900, that the parties were the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Declaratory Act Church instead of the minority who remained out of the Union of 1900 and the United Free Church, we have every reason to conclude, in the light of the statements already quoted from Mr. Johnston and Mr. Salvesen, and which were made in his presence, that his judgment would have been favourable to the Free Presbyterian Church. He would have found the “colourable union” to which he refers, between the two parties who were under the Declaratory Act; the elastic formulary was the old formula in the light of the Declaratory Act, and in the light of the Relieving Act of 1894 which kept the minority quiet, while it entitled the others to answer the Questions and sign the Formula in the light of the Declaratory Act, and he would, no doubt, have pronounced his judgment in favour of the Free Presbyterian Church, as the Church which adhered wholly to the position of the Free Church of 1843, and which never had anything to do with the Declaratory Act except to show how utterly un-Scriptural it was.
This is not a far-fetched conclusion, but one based on solid facts which cannot be gainsayed. From the passing of the Declaratory Act it was opposed, not only by individuals but by Church Courts, and when these Church Courts failed, as they undoubtedly did when the Assembly finally, and by an overwhelming majority, refused to rescind the Declaratory Act, it was left to the individual to act according to the Word of God and his conscience. The action of the Rev. D. Macfarlane at this crucial moment showed where he stood all along, and that he was prepared to go forth without the camp, wholly
dependent upon God’s grace, bearing the reproach of Christ, though, at the time, he knew not what the Lord had in store for him. After events showed how the Lord acknowledged the action of His servant, whom He honoured that day by making him the means of raising a testimony on behalf of the Word of God and the Subordinate Standards of the Church which has been a blessing to many, while those who were loudest in their denunciations of the Declaratory Act were passed over, and some of them left to end their days in the United Free Church. “He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way.”