After various Conferences between representatives of the Presbyterian Church and those of the Episcopal Communion a Report was issued which (1) Re-affirmed the considerable doctrinal agreement between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland as expressed in the Report of 1934; (2) made a number of recommendations concerning admission to Holy Communion in certain circumstances, the exchange of preachers, and other practical matters; (3) expressed the hope for the continuance of Conversations between the two Churches with a view to a long-term consideration of those changes in the Churches which would be requisite for the goal of the reintegration of the whole Church of Christ. It is the long-term task that our enlarged Conference has tried to serve. “Relations Between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches.” p. 9. One can see from this that a universal Church is visualised which will embrace the Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic Churches. With this in view all reference to past history must be excluded, and those who have framed the Report express their belief that separated Churches “should renounce the method of selecting and measuring the faults and errors in the past history of the Churches now conferring as might be judged to be responsible for our present divisions . . . It is acknowledged that mistakes have been made on both sides, and that over the generations attitudes tending to bitterness and strife have been not infrequent, but the time has come when the voice of recrimination should be silent.” Ibid. p. 15. Taking into consideration that this language refers to the long-term policy which aims at one united Church for the whole world one has the right to ask how such a Union, as is proposed, can be effected without looking to the past, studying the origin of those things which cause a difference, and casting out what has no authority in the Word of God. The alternative to this can best be illustrated by a festering sore which has not been properly cleansed, but which is covered by a new skin, causing the poison to go through the whole body until mortification reigns supreme.
In order to effect such a world-wide Union not only must the voice of mutual recrimination be silent but the salient features of the various Churches must be toned down so that they will not be offensive to one another. This toning down, it may be pointed out, has been in vogue for a considerable time so that the Church of Rome has ceased to be referred to as mystical Babylon, and the Pope as antichrist or the man of sin, or the Episcopal Church as “a corrupt limb of anti-Christ,” as our Covenanting fathers often denominated it. The once-glorious Church of the Reformation in Scotland must go back to the fold of the Church of Rome, and the descendants of the martyrs of the Second Reformation must come to the same
goal, after tasting of the great blessings of Apostolic Succession under the wings of that “black prelacy” which shed the blood of thousands who died for “Christ’s Crown and Covenant.”
In an endeavour to bring about this unity much sophistry is used by the union-mongers, especially in their insistence that an outward union is essential. Neither the Word of God nor the experience of the Christian Church support this view. It is boldly affirmed on page 12 of the Report that “in their visible separatedness the Churches cannot but obscure and disfigure the face and form of the body of Christ.” The inference from this is that outward unity is absolutely necessary in order to show in its fullness the “face and form of the body of Christ.” In order to show the fallacy of this we have only to look at the Church of Rome at the time, before the Reformation, when it held practically undisputed sway on what went under the name of Christendom. The published lives of its Popes, published by its own historians, are too horrible to read; its priests, with few exceptions, were lecherous, and treacherous scoundrels, its sacraments were multiplied to seven, its teaching the very reverse of what we have in the Scriptures, and its poor dupes, harassed with many nameless fears, and strangers to the love of God in Christ, went, in their thousands every hour, for want of the Bread of Life, into the blackness of a lost eternity. Yet, according to the logic of the Union-mongers, this was a time unrivalled in the history of the Church, because of its outward unity, for showing forth the “face and form of the body of Christ.” All who have even a modicum of knowledge of the history of religion in the world can testify that it was by separation from this corrupt system that the face of Christ could be seen in the visible Church, and that with every separation that had as its aim the casting off of excrescences of the flesh which had crept into the Church, the face of Christ began to be discerned anew with a consequent revival of religion.
In the quintessence of their charity the union-mongers are going to leave the Church of Scotland its Presbyteries, but they are going to confer on each Presbytery the great boon of having a Bishop. Such a Bishop might be chosen by a Presbytery from its own membership but he would need to be Episcopally ordained, thus making his previous ordination by the Presbytery null and void. This would be acknowledged by the Anglicans and is said to be what is needed by the Presbyterians, for his consecration would put him within the myth of Apostolic Succession. He would be the President of the Presbytery and would act as its principal minister in every ordination and in the consecration of other Bishops. He is to have lordship over the other ministers of the Presbytery and be the Presbytery’s spokesman to the community. This, of course, is not a new thing. During the time when Episcopacy was in the ascendancy in Scotland, and helped forward by the Sovereign, there were Bishops in each
Presbytery and they acted as “Constant Moderators.” Their appointment was first brought about by King James VI., and after the overture, craving the introduction of “Constant Moderators” was adopted, according to King-Hewison, “The Church realised that it was dealing with a trickster and the report soon ran that the minute of the Convention had been cooked, when it transpired that all the bishops had been appointed ‘Constant Moderators’ of those thirteen Presbyteries, which surrounded their cathedral seats. The meaning of the popular saying—’the little had passed through the window to open the door to the great thieves outside’—was apparent. A slight manipulation made the thirteen bishops into Constant Moderators of Synods, which were in reality dioceses. Refusal to accept the Moderators was made penal. At first some Presbyteries and Synods did refuse. The King could now convene assemblies and elect presidents paid out of the bishops teinds. His next step was to make the Church itself sanction the Episcopal order, rather than appear to be a creator of bishops.” The Covenanters, I p. 185. That these bishops were the creatures of the King and were always ready to do his bidding is proved by the language of Archbishop Spottiswood to the King when he confessed that “at your Majesty’s nod we either must stand or fall.” In this we see, as in a mirror, what the future bishops of the Church of Scotland will be if the projected Union will take place.
As we noticed already, the Bishop in Presbytery would require to be Episcopally ordained in order to be in the line of Apostolic Succession, which infers that the Church of Scotland at present is not in that line at all. Dr. Bannerman, in reasoning from the broad principles that (1) “It is not true, as is assumed in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, that the Church has received any deposit of grace from Christ, which it is empowered to communicate from one age to another, and from one succession to another of its ministers;” and (2) “It is not true, as is assumed in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, that the gift of the ministry has been conferred exclusively on the office-bearers of the Christian Church, or that the Church is dependent entirely on a particular order of men for the existence and continuance of the ministry,” says, “The general principles now laid down appear to be borne out by Scripture, and they overturn from its foundations the extravagant and intolerant doctrine by which the advocates of apostolic succession would unchurch every religious society except the Popish or the Episcopal Church, would restrict the Divine blessing to a ministry in their so-called ‘apostolic succession,’ and would declare that ministers without prelatic ordination have no right to preach the gospel or administer the sacraments of Christ. It is needless to take the trouble of testing the hardihood of such a doctrine by the standard of history, or to appeal to the records of the past to show that, on such a principle, no Church on earth can be secure that it possesses a rightly constituted and commissioned
ministry at the present day . . . But without reference to the argument that might easily be brought from history to confound the pretensions of the advocates of apostolic succession, the Scripture principles of a general kind now laid down are sufficient to evince their fallacy.” The Church of Christ, Vol. i. p. 448.
For all the benefit that prelacy will ever confer on Scotland we may adopt the words of the Rev. W. M. Hetherington, LL.D., of St. Andrews, after enumerating some considerations which reflected adversely on Episcopacy, says, “It is scarcely necessary to add to these mighty elements, the further consideration, although it had its influence, that the men who were the keenest sticklers for empty forms and ceremonies,—who did not hesitate to violate their own oaths, and strive to compel others to the perpetration of the same crime, throwing a whole nation into suffering and confusion for the attainment of what they themselves admitted to be not a matter of conscience, but merely a convenient and seemly order,—that these men were generally notorious for vice, profligacy, Sabbath-breaking, and every species of immorality. Had even the cause been good, the perfidious and tyrannical manner of its introduction, and the characters of the men by whom it was introduced, would have ruined it in the estimation of every man who had an eye to discern and an heart to feel. Some of the defenders of prelacy have said, that Scotland never saw it in its true aspect,—that if we had, we would have received it, and made it cordially our own. Certainly prelacy never appeared in Scotland but as a tyrannical and persecuting system; therefore we have little cause to love it. But we can see it in England, with all its blushing honours and unblushing abuses thick upon it,—with its clergy secularised, and its people uninstructed; and what we see of it there has no tendency to recommend it to our favourable regard, or to make us languish for its reintroduction to Scotland.” History of the Church of Scotland, 6 ed. p. 80.