By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
In a previous article we considered the question—Can there be a true Union between the Episcopal Church of England and the Presbyterian of Scotland? In that article an endeavour was made to show the incompatibility of the two systems of Church government, together with the difference between the forms of worship in each denomination, and showed that, on the part of the Church of Scotland, to forsake either, as observed in the Church of Scotland in its best days, was a forsaking of the witness of the fathers. Many so-called leaders in the Church of Scotland, today, apparently think little of that witness, judging by their zeal for the proposed Union. It is very much to be feared that the possibility of grasping a bishop’s crozier, or even the Papal tiara, has blinded them to the incalculable value of their blood-bought privileges, but, before being inveigled into such a Union, the people of Scotland should make a study of the history and principles of their Church, and then they would see that the Protestant Church in Scotland is there as the result of “blood, tears, and sweat” and that if it was true in any land it was true in Scotland that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. To have a right view of the government, worship, and discipline of the true Church of Scotland, and how it is founded on the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture, which is not the case with the Church of England, one must go back to its beginning, and that beginning was certainly not under Royal patronage but the very reverse. It was opposed by Royalty, persecuted by Court parasites, defrauded of its legal patrimony by the nobility, and often deserted by some who took solemn vows to assert, maintain, and defend it. Thus we find it to have been true, in its case, what one of its faithful witnesses said: “That the Church of God was never without a Pharaoh on the Throne, a Haman in the State, and a Judas in the Church.” Yet it thrived so that it sometimes appeared “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.”
The Protestant Church in Scotland has often been referred to as the most thoroughly reformed Church in Christendom, and, viewing it in the light of its attainments, and by comparison with other Protestant Churches, no unbiased person has any difficulty in agreeing with the description of it. To get a proper view of the work of reformation in this land one has to take notice of the fearful conditions which prevailed, spiritually, in our beloved land at the time when the Gospel light began to penetrate with its life-giving rays the worse than Egyptian darkness by which our nation was enveloped. Bishoprics and abbacies and inferior benefices were conferred on the most unsuitable persons, such as those who were openly profane, immoral, and often illiterate, with the inevitable result that, among both clergy and people, vice and ignorance were the order of the day. To quote but one instance, from among many, of the immorality of the clergy of higher rank we see that Cardinal Beaton lived publicly with a favourite mistress, and the Register of the Great Seal and other Records show that he had seven illegitimate sons and three daughters. When this was the case with a man in his position, we may be prepared to meet with similar conditions among the lower ranks of clergy. In a recent publication of the Scottish History Society, entitled, Scottish Supplications to Rome 1423-1428, a lurid light is cast upon conditions under Romanism in this country during that period by the number of supplications presented for vacant benefices by men who urge that these benefices be given them, notwithstanding “defect of birth, being the son of a priest and an unmarried woman.” This was the Church from which the Reformation saved Scotland, and which was replaced by the Reformed Church of Scotland.
It may be true that Scotland, even during its darkest period, was not without witnesses on the side of Jesus Christ, even though they were within the communion of the Church of Rome, and if we knew more of the history of the Lollards of Kyle and Cunningham we might be in a better position to assess the extent of their witness. However, in process of time, the light of the Gospel began to manifest itself in a clearer manner, and, with that manifestation, the opposition of Rome began to stir. Witnesses were led to the stake, and every effort was made to silence the preachers of the Gospel and to keep the people in gross darkness. Yet, as the movement was not of men but of God, the powers of Hell could not hold it in check. Without worldly influence, carnal strength, or royal patronage, the Reformers found themselves in 1560 sufficiently strong in numbers to move Parliament to abolish Popery. As Dr. McCrie in his Life of John Knox puts it: “The Parliament, when it entered upon the consideration of the state of religion, as one of the points undecided by the commissioners, which had been left to them, had little to do but to sanction what the nation had previously done, by legally abolishing the Popish, and establishing the Protestant religion.” The result of this was the framing of the Old Scottish Confession of 1560 and the First Book of Discipline.
In setting up the Church of Scotland our Reformers called no man “master,” but went straight to the fountain-head for instruction as to how it was to be set up. In this they were obeying the injunction given to Moses when he set up the tabernacle: “See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.” Moses was not allowed to add a pin or lengthen a cord except as he found in the pattern, neither did these men take any such liberty to themselves. They set up the Church having as their pattern what is revealed of the Church as it was in the days of the Apostles, and as set down in the New Testament. Professor Witherow, in his Apostolic Church sums up that pattern under the following heads: (1) The officer-bearers were chosen by the people. (2) The office of bishop and elder were identical. (3) There was a plurality of elders in each Church. (4) Ordination was the act of a Presbytery—that is, of a plurality of elders. (5) There was the privilege of appeal to the assembly of elders; and the power of government was exercised by them in their associate capacity. (6) The only Head of the Church was the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scottish Reformers clearly followed this pattern as far as Church government was concerned, as they did also with every other matter which pertained to the setting up of the Church of Christ in the land. The thoroughness of the work of reformation is brought out in their requiring the utter abolishing of idolatry. “(1) As we require Jesus Christ to be truly preached, and His holy sacraments rightly ministered; so we cannot cease to require idolatry, with all monuments and places of the same, as abbeys, monasteries, friaries, nunneries, chapels, chanteries, cathedral churches, canonries, colleges others than presently are parish churches or schools, to be utterly suppressed in all bounds and places of this realm, except only palaces, mansions, and dwelling places adjacent thereto, with orchards and yards of the same. As also we desire that idolatry may be removed from the presence of all persons of what estate or condition that ever they be, within this realm. (2) For let your honours assuredly be persuaded, that where idolatry is maintained or permitted, where it may be suppressed, that there shall God’s wrath reign, not only upon the blind and obstinate idolaters, but also the negligent sufferers of the same; especially if God has armed their hands with power to suppress such adomination. (3) By idolatry we understand, the mass, invocation of saints, adoration of images, and the keeping and retaining of the same: And finally, all honouring of God not contained in His holy Word.” First Book of Discipline, chap. iii. Thus they were the instruments in the hand of the Lord in doing what He tells us He has done to His vineyard; “And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine.”
The compilers of the First Book of Discipline, in their explication of the Head of Doctrine show clearly that their guide was the unerring Word of God, to the exclusion of men’s inventions, as the following shows: ” . . . By preaching of the gospel, we understand not only the Scriptures of the New Testament, but also of the Old, to wit, the Law, Prophets, Histories, in which Christ Jesus is no less contained in figure, than we have Him now expressed in verity; And therefore, with the Apostle we affirm, that all Scriptures inspired of God is profitable to instruct, to reprove, and to exhort. In which books of Old and New Testaments we affirm, that all things necessary for the instruction of the Church, and to make the man of God perfect, is contained and sufficiently expressed. (2) By the contrary doctrine we understand whatsoever men of laws, councils, or constitutions, have imposed upon the consciences of men, without the express commandment of God’s Word, such as be the vows of chastity, forswearing of marriage, binding of men and women to several and disguised apparels, to the superstitious observation of fasting days, difference of meat for conscience sake, prayer for the dead; and keeping of holy days of certain saints commanded by man, such as be all those that the Papists have invented, as the Feasts (as they term them) of the Apostles, Martyrs, Virgins, of Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification, and other fond Feasts of our Lady; which things, because in God’s Scriptures they neither have commandment nor assurance, we judge them utterly to be abolished from this realm; affirming further, that the obstinate maintainers and teachers of such abominations ought not to escape the punishment of the civil magistrate.”
From the setting up of the Protestant Church in Scotland public worship was conducted according to the Book of Common Order used by the Church of the English exiles in Geneva, with a few variations adapted to the state of Scotland. On the Head of Public worship the people are directed at certain parts of the service as follows: “This done, the people sing a psalm altogether in a plain tune, which ended, the minister prayeth for the assistance of God’s Holy Spirit, as the same shall move his heart, and so proceedeth to the sermon.” The statement that “the people sing a psalm” shows that in the Church of the Reformation the praise was not left to a trained choir, as in the most of congregations in modern times. That they were well qualified to sing without the aid of a choir or a musical instrument, is amply testified to by the fact that when, in 1582, John Durie, a minister of Edinburgh, returned from banishment, “as he is coming from Leith to Edinburgh, upon Tuesday the 4th of September, there met him at the Gallow Green two hundred men of the inhabitants of Edinburgh. Their number still increased, till he came within the Nether Bow. There they began to sing the 124th psalm, ‘Now Israel may say, and that truly,’ etc., and sang in four parts, known to the most of the people. They came up the street till they came to the Great Kirk singing all the way, to the number of two thousand.” Calderwood’s History of the Kirk of Scotland, Vol. iii, p. 646. The expression “plain tune” was used in opposition to singing at cathedral services in pre-Reformation times, to the accompaniment of organs. This is clearly brought out in the confession of faith, written by two of the Puritan ministers, in the common gaol of Newgate where they were closely confined, as the following extract will show: “Concerning singing of psalms, we allow of the people’s joining with one voice in a plain tune, but not of tossing of psalms from one side to the other, with the intermingling of organs.” Neal’s History of the Puritans, Vol. i. p. 191, 1837 edition. Prior to 1560 the Scottish Church had only fifty-one psalms in metre, but that year another fourteen were added, and in the following year the number was increased to eighty-seven until in 1564, when the Book of Common Order was printed in Edinburgh, the whole of the one hundred and fifty psalms were printed in metre. Public Worship of Presbyterian Scotland, by C. G. McCrie, D.D., p. 119. From what has been noticed we see that the Scottish Reformers made a clean sweep of Popery, as far as its doctrines, church government, and mode of worship were concerned, and a great deal of history of the Scottish Church from then to the present in various forms, of what was then cast out. Instead of being sacerdotal, as was the case with the Roman Church, the Reformed Church became Presbyterian, with its Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Provincial Synods, and General Assemblies. It could not be otherwise, having followed the Word of God. Its worship was in accordance with the purity enjoined in God’s Word, and its discipline was exercised upon high and low, without fear or favour.
In the Scottish Confession of Faith, printed in 1561, our Reformers give the Notes of the True Church as follows: “The Notes, therefore, of the true kirk of God we believe, confess, and avow to be, First. The true preaching of the Word of God; into which God has revealed Himself to us, as the writings of the Prophets and Apostles declare. Secondly. The right administration of the Sacraments of Christ Jesus, which must be annexed to the word and promise of God, to seal and confirm the same in our hearts. Lastly. Ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered, as God’s Word prescribed, where vice is repressed, and virtue nourished. Wheresoever then these Notes are seen, and of anytime continue (be the number ever so few above two or three) there, without any doubt, is the true Kirk of Christ, who according to His promise is in the midst of them.”