The Rt. Hon. R. A. Butler,
Home Secretary,
Home Office, London.
The Western Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, convened at Kyle of Lochalsh, Ross-shire, on the 25th day of November, 1958, view with grave concern the conduct of Her Majesty the Queen and her Ministers, together with the conduct of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, representing their respective Churches, in sending their condolences to the Roman See on the death of the late Pope and their felicitations on the election and Coronation of the present Pope, together with the extraordinary publicity given to both events by the Press and the British Broadcasting Company. In registering our solemn protest against these matters we would draw the attention of all concerned to the following facts:—
(1) That the Act of Rights and Settlement, passed in the first year of William and Mary, 1689, lays it down that “every person that shall hold communion with the See or Church of Rome shall be excluded and forever incapable to possess the Crown and Government of this Realm and the Dominions thereunto belonging, and in every such case the people of these Realms shall be and are absolved of their allegiance.”
(2) The Pope claims the right to absolve subjects from allegiance to their Sovereign, and, therefore, if he had the power, he would exercise that right in Protestant Britain.
(3) Article xxxi. of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England says of one of the most distinguishing features of the Roman Catholic Church, “The sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priests did offer Christ for the quick and dead to have remission of pain or guilt were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.”
(4) The Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland says; “There is no head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God. Westminster Confession of Faith. Chap. xxv. sect. 6.
In view of these evidences of the solid foundation of our liberties in Church and State in this Realm, we solemnly protest against any fraternisation with the Church of Rome which has as its tendencies the forgetting of past struggles to obtain these liberties, and the casting down of those ramparts which, in their Heaven-given wisdom, our martyred forefathers were instrumental in building.
On behalf of the Presbytery,
John Colquhoun, (Clerk).