By Rev. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
XV.—Early Union Movements in Scotland.
In a previous article we considered the Union-mongers in England as they manifested themselves in the Tractarian or Oxford Movement, and showed that their goal was Rome. We have seen that their successors in the Anglo-Catholic section of the Church of England are prepared to sacrifice everything in order to reach this goal. In like manner we find that in connection with union movements which began in the Church in Scotland, the promoters of these unions were quite prepared to relinquish what their forefathers held dear, and desired to hand down to generations to come. An outward ecclesiastical union is so dear to them that no price is too much for its accomplishment. A brief survey of the history of the Church in Scotland will clearly demonstrate this to have been the case.
When the Union took place in 1820 between the Burgher and Anti-Burgher sections of the Secession Church, forming the United Secession Church, there were clauses inserted in the Uniting Act qualifying the sections in the Confession of Faith dealing with the place belonging to the civil magistrate in matters of religion. As these clauses only stated their conception of the place ascribed in the Confession to the civil magistrate, and might not be construed as contrary to the Word of God, one might not view them with suspicion were it not for another matter which came out in the discussions connected with the Union. Two of the ministers of the Burgher Synod, that is, Mr. Brown of Biggar, afterwards Dr. Brown of Edinburgh, and Mr. Balmer of Berwick, objected to the Westminster Standards being retained entire, even with qualifying statements, and also expressed regret that Presbyterianism should be held to be the only form of Church government sanctioned in the Scriptures. Thus we find at this early stage of the history of Church unions an attempt made to undermine the Scriptural foundation of the Scottish Church and make it appear that other forms of Church government have, at least, an equal claim to being
regarded as based on Scripture. It is rather significant that these two men became professors in the united church, thus getting ample opportunity for instilling their views into the minds of the future ministry of the Church. To this may be traced future happenings in the Church in Scotland to the present day. There was, however, a minority in the Anti-Burgher Synod which did not enter this Union, and these formed themselves into the Associate Synod which afterwards united with the Constitutional Associate Presbytery under the name of the Associate Synod of Original Seceders.
The United Secession in 1847 united with the Relief Church, becoming the United Presbyterian Church, and their union brings to the forefront what is known as the Voluntary Controversy. The Voluntary Movement, as far as it made any appreciable impression on the Church life of Scotland, may be said to have originated with a sermon preached in 1829 by Dr. Marshall, a minister of the United Original Secession Church in Kirkintilloch, in which he characterised the termination of all church establishments as the only safeguard against the endowment of Romanism. In view of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act this view of establishments gave Voluntaryism all the impetus it needed. Voluntary Church Societies were formed in many of the larger cities of Scotland, and thorough-going disestablishment crusade was set on foot. Dr. Brown, whose name we have met with already when he maintained that Presbyterianism was not the only form of Church government functioned in the Word of God, was the chief leader of the Voluntary Movement, characterising the principle of Church Establishment as “that one great system of misrule, originating the unnatural, unscriptural, revolutionary, and every way schievous connection between Church and State.” This principle Voluntaryism, however, was not unknown at a much earlier date. Dr. Owen, in his own day, and many other Independent Ministers, denounced it as being the opposite extreme from the Presbyterianism with which they were called to contend. In 1733, when Erskines and others separated from the State Church, they did adopt Voluntary Principles, but were, out and out, the proponents of an Establishment principle purer than that held at that time in the established Church of Scotland. The adoption of Voluntary principles was a gradual process in the Secession Church, going to a head in 1804 with the making a term of communion “Narrative and Testimony” in which the lawfulness of Church Establishments was abandoned, and those who held it were alien, “either from the pulpit or the press, to impugn or oppose principles stated by the Synod.” This led, in 1806, to the action of Dr. McCrie, the eminent writer of The Life of John Bruce, Professor Bruce of Whitburn, and Mr. Aitken of Kirriemuir. On the part of the General Associate Synod, brought to pen of Dr. McCrie his well-known Statement, of
which Dr. Bannerman says that it is “a work which may be regarded as on the whole, the most masterly discussion of the question of civil establishments in existence.”
The Union of the Secession and Relief Churches, as their Basis of Union shows, brought about many departures from, and modifications of, the Constitution of the Church of Scotland. In 1820, Dr. Brown and his associates objected to Presbyterianism being designated as “the only form of Church government founded upon and agreeable to the Word of God,” and in 1847 this statement is cancelled by the declaration that the Presbyterian system is “founded on and agreeable to Scripture.” In Article IX of the Basis of Union positive Voluntaryism finds a place. Significantly enough there is no reference in this Basis of Union to Covenaning and the work of the Second Reformation in Scotland, when the whole fabric of Episcopacy was abolished. The union-mongers anticipated those of the present day when they declared that Presbyterianism was merely “founded on and agreeable to Scripture,” for this declaration implies that other systems of Church government can put forward an identical claim. Evidently they were as ready to accept Episcopacy as they were to accept Presbyterianism. Thus it can be clearly proved that they made Presbyterianism an open question, and that to hold it was, for the time being, a matter of expediency and not a matter of conscience. All the struggles which took place in order to preserve Presbyterianism in Scotland were apparently forgotten together with the fact that enlightened scholarship can find no other form of church government grounded upon the Word of God.
The Voluntaryism which the United Presbyterian Church officially adopted in its Basis of Union is something which was foreign not only to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland as set up at the Reformation, but it was also contrary to the views of the great Continental Reformers, for all the Reformed Churches took a very decided stand with respect to the duty of the civil magistrate to further the interests of true religion. Voluntaryism, as Dr. William Cunningham states it, “amounts in substance to this: that the only relation that ought to subsist between the State and the Church—between civil government and religion—is that of entire separation; or, in other words, its advocates maintain that nations, as such, and civil rulers in their official capacity, not only are not bound but are not at liberty, to interfere in any religious matters, or to seek to promote the welfare of the Church of Christ as such.” To this view Cunningham replies as follows: “Attempts have been made to show that, whatever duty or obligation may seem to lie upon civil rulers in this matter, the church is interdicted by the law of her Master from entering into an alliance with the State, or accepting assistance from the civil power. That the church is interdicted from sacrificing any of the rights or privileges which
Christ has conferred upon her—neglecting, or promising to neglect, any of the duties which He has imposed upon her—disregarding, or promising to disregard, any of the directions He has given her, in order to obtain, or as a condition of enjoying, the favour and assistance of the kingdoms of this world, is certain; and assuredly this guilt does at this moment attach to every Protestant ecclesiastical establishment in the world. But it has never been proved that, if the civil authorities rightly understood their duties, and were willing to discharge them aright, attaching no unwarrantable conditions to their offers of service, they could not render assistance to the church which she might be fully warranted to accept.”—Historical Theology, vol. 1, p. 393.
Not only ought the Church to hold that the State is duty bound to uphold religion but the State cannot ignore religion without undermining the very foundations of society. One of the clearest statements made on this point is by the late Professor James Bannerman, D.D., Edinburgh. “Now, how stands the fundamental principle of the Voluntary school in relation to the use of oaths in civil transactions? Is it true, or can it be true in any sense, that the state, as the state, has ‘nothing to do with religion,’ and is debarred from making use in any manner of the truths and obligations of religion? Does the civil magistrate overstep the limits of his office, and enter within a province forbidden to him, when he calls to himself the aid of religion, and makes an oath, sanctified and surrounded as it is by the solemnities of religion, to be the bond and the guard of civil society? Or is it the very duty of the magistrate to disown all connection with any form or profession of faith, and to discharge from every transaction of civil life with which he stands officially connected, the use and obligation of religious oaths? The very attempt to do so would itself be an act of national suicide—a return from organised society to a state of nature—the establishment of misrule and anarchy by law. Deny or disown the religious obligation of an oath, and you unloose the bond of civilised society, and resolve it once more into its original elements. The whole structure of human society, in so far as it differs from a state of nature, rests upon the foundation of an oath. In every relation, from the highest to the lowest, is sealed with the seal of a religious vow. In civilised life, and in all its offices and transactions, the last appeal that can be made is an appeal to God; and, short of the dissolution of human society and a resort once more to the law of brute force, ‘an oath for confirmation is, with men, an end of all strife.’ The covenant between the monarch and the subject, because it can appeal to no higher law, appeals to an oath, and is ratified by the solemnity of a religious vow; and the duty of the prince and the allegiance of the people are both confirmed by a reference to God. Those who administer and those who execute law, alike discharge the duties
of their office under the obligation, not merely of a civil but of a religious engagement: the judge and the magistrate equally sit in judgment under the responsibility of an appeal to God. The appeal to justice in matters of wrong done or injury sustained between man and man, is made ultimately to rest on the same solemn foundation; the evidence in witness-bearing is only evidence in so far as it is confirmed by an appeal to God as the Witness and the Judge; and the life and death of man, his property, and his dearest civil rights, are adjudged away or ratified to him in virtue of an oath. In short, the relation between the throne and the subject, the office of judge and magistrate, the award of law and justice, the right of life and property, the privilege of peace and order in human society, directly or indirectly rest upon the obligation of an oath, and an appeal to God, as sanctioning and sealing every other obligation. Confirmed and riveted by an oath, the relations of human society stand fast and sure; without an oath the bonds of life are unloosed, and the fabric of national existence is unsettled to its foundations.”
—The Church of Christ, vol. I, p. 138.
The adoption of the Voluntary principle has always, in Scotland, gone side by side with renouncing some of the fundamental doctrines of God’s Word, whereas adhering to the Establishment principle has always acted as a check on innovations in doctrine and practice, and it is very manifest that as the latter principle has been discarded in practice, though retained in profession, in that measure there is a moving towards heterodoxy, and towards those churches which are tainted with it.