By Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale, Skye
(Continued from page 19)
The Present Free Church and the Declaratory Act.
The Moderator of the Free Church Assembly takes it as a belated admission by Free Presbyterians, tardily made, that the Free Church has rescinded the Declaratory Act. Surely he is very much behind the times in his knowledge of Church affairs and especially in matters which concern his own Church. It is acknowledged, and has been acknowledged all along, by all intelligent Free Presbyterians that the Free Church rescinded the Declaratory Act in 1906, and in connection with every overture for Union sent by the Free Church to the Free Presbyterian Church the preamble to the rescinding Act has been pointed out by the Free Presbyterian Synod as an obstacle to Union as it casts a serious and baseless reflection on the position of the Free Presbyterian Church. In the very year in which the Declaratory Act was rescinded the Editor of the Free Presbyterian Magazine took notice of that event, and quoted the whole of the rescinding Act as approved by the Free Church law agents and sent down to the Presbyteries under the Barrier Act. Why, however, was the Act not rescinded much earlier? We are told by the Free Church that it was on legal advice that they kept it so long, and that they were advised to delay till after the House of Lords decision. This would seem to show that the Free Church legal advisers could not get away from the fact that the Declaratory Act became part and parcel of the Free Church as constituted in 1892 and was binding on the minority who only dissented from it as well as the majority who were in favour of it. To have rescinded it immediately after the Union of 1900 would, in all probability, set them up as a body who received the Declaratory Act and was under it for seven years, and then threw it off. There would, no doubt, be awkward questions as to why they retained it so long. To retain it till after the House of Lords decision was quite consistent with the policy pursued by the minority before the Law Lords. They maintained that the Union of 1900 was the overt act which caused them to take up a separate stand, and that the passing of the Declaratory Act of 1892 was only a step leading up to it, yet, at the same time, they made so much of their opposition to the Declaratory Act, before the House of Lords, that they, in every sense of the term, put themselves in the position of the Free Presbyterian Church, without a candid acknowledgment that they were doing so. The Free Presbyterian position, on the other hand, is, that the passing of the Declaratory Act, which they acknowledge was a step to union, was the overt reason for separation, as, by the passing of that Act through the only machinery by which new laws could become binding, it was grafted on to the Constitution, and was something that could not be accepted by those who were determined, in the strength of grace, to adhere to their ordination vows.
Effects of the Declaratory Act on the Minority.
Although the Free Church rescinded the Declaratory Act in 1906 who can calculate the harm it did during the seven years they were under it, and even to this day. While those ministers who separated in 1900 may, generally speaking, be credited with preaching the Calvinistic doctrines of the Confession of Faith, yet it must be remembered that there were many others who rejoiced in the liberty which the Declaratory Act gave them, and who went into the Union while a considerable section of their congregations did not follow them. Many in these sections were for much longer than seven years accustomed to the Arminian doctrines of the Declaratory Act, and those of them who were in their most formative years would naturally imbibe its pernicious teaching, and would be like those of whom we read in the days of Nehemiah: “In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab; and their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people” (Neh. xiii: 23, 24). In course of time some of these young men who were nurtured under the Declaratory Act would become ministers in the Free Church but it takes more than a course of lectures in a Divinity Hall, however Scriptural these lectures might be, to purge the minds of men of the poison which they imbibe in their youth. The tendency rather is for the poison to spread and to contaminate others.
Another matter which has ruined the present Free Church is the number of ministers which she gathered into her fold, from various denominations and settled in vacant congregations after the House of Lords’ decision, and others she had on her supply list who could not be fitted into a pastoral charge. Some of them, on account of their previous church connections could not be expected to have much sympathy with the Calvinism which the Free Church professed, and a great number of these and of such as were in settled charges, hived off to other denominations for reasons best known to themselves. Could these be preaching for years to Free Church congregations without leaving their influence on their congregations, among whom were some of the future ministers of the Church? We think not, and the fruit of it is apparently seen among the younger ministers of that Church, according to the testimony of the late Rev. Kenneth A. MacRae, M.A., Stornoway, when he writes as follows:—”The barren period of indifference and spiritual lethargy has again set in and with it the old Arminian tendency reappears. True, it may not bear that label, but that there has been a definite drift in the direction of Arminianism is unquestioned. So far as some of the Free Church pulpits are concerned, a robust Calvinism has given place to a colourless presentation of the doctrines of grace, which will neither satisfy a Calvinist nor offend an Arminian. The associations of Keswick and certain other conventions are prized and treasured by many Free Church people and the theology of these gatherings is regarded as above suspicion. To suggest that this theology is largely Arminian and alien to the standards of the Church is the way to arouse their ire, and their attitude seems to be that, if this indeed be so, so much the worse is it for the Free Church.”—The Resurgence of Arminianism, p.17.
Duty of Free Presbyterians.
As things are at present the clear duty of the Free Presbyterian Church is to allow the Free Church to go its own chosen way, and to adhere steadfastly to the testimony raised in 1893. Though the present writer does not claim any place but what lawfully belongs to him as a minister of the gospel, he deems it his duty to exhort the young men and women of the Free Presbyterian Church to consider their privileges. When efforts were put forth to banish a Scriptural testimony, on behalf of Christ, out of Scotland, a few were raised up to adhere to that testimony, and their efforts along with the fact that they are not now in the world speak loudly to us, saying, “Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours” (John iv: 38). The present Free Church is not the Church of your fathers and mothers. It is only a new creation which came into existence with the Union of 1900, after those who formed it were for seven years under the Constitution which had been vitiated by the Declaratory Act of 1892. It is loudly proclaimed by the protagonists of the present Free Church that the highest tribunal in the land proclaimed them to be the Free Church and the sole heirs of the Disruption Church. The fact of the matter is that the House of Lords did nothing of the kind. They certainly judged the matter rightly as far as the evidence before them was concerned, but, judging by the pleadings of the minority before the Law Lords, if the case of the Free Presbyterian Church had been before them, it is very much within the range of probability that a very different verdict had been arrived at.
The minority put forward their case on grounds that were very damaging to the majority, and so won their case, but these grounds had very little to do with their actual position. It was the position of the Free Presbyterian Church which they mainly took up. Had the Free Presbyterian Church put in a claim for the property they could easily have shown that they had a better claim to it than the minority who fought the case in the House of Lords. They did not remain under the Declaratory Act, neither were they under the control of the majority. Once all hope of rescinding the Act was gone, they took up a separate position as the Free Church of 1843, whereas both the majority and the minority were under a Constitution which was different from that recognised before 1892. After the Assembly of 1893, and more so after the Assembly of 1894, very little was said about the two ways in which the Constitution was understood, and the minority were quite satisfied seeing that the questions and formula were not changed. In other words both parties agreed to say nothing about the matter, and each party could accept the Constitution and the questions and formula in the way which suited them best. Such an attitude would hardly get the approval of the Lord Chancellor if the Free Presbyterian Church had put in a claim, for he clearly condemns such an association as existed between the minority and the majority between 1893 and 1900 when he says:—
“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 of 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 part of the Faith as constituted an impediment to the union. I am disposed to quote one passage from what was said by Dr. William Wilson from the Moderator’s Chair in 1866. Speaking of the freedom of the Church as to Confessions of Faith, he says: ‘We are not at liberty to hold forth a Confession in which we do not believe. For in such a case the Church is absolutely without a Confession. . . . It ceases to be either a bond of union or a public testimony. It is lawful for the Church to revise her Confession and adjust it to her present attainments and exigencies; it is lawful for her altogether to dispense with a Confession, if, indeed, without one any organisation were possible, but to retain a Confession which has ceased to be believed can never be lawful.’”—Free Church Appeals, p.571.
That the questions and formula were not changed did not alter the fact that the Church of which the minority formed a part had changed its relation to the Constitution, or in other words the Confession was no longer believed in. There were no verbal changes made in the Confession of Faith, but it was now to be understood in the light of the Declaratory Act, and the dissent of the minority did not save them from being forced to exercise ecclesiastical functions which were carried out where relief was sought under that Act. The questions and formula were not altered; they bound those who accepted office to the Confession of Faith, but, again, it was the Confession of Faith as understood in the light of the Declaratory Act. If, therefore, Free Church protagonists, past and present, believe that the Declaratory Act was not binding upon them, they have less intelligence than ever we gave them credit for.
However, the Free Presbyterian Church did not hanker after property and funds which Caesar gave with the one hand, and with the other took the most of it away. It may not be generally known that they had the offer of the services of a reputable firm of lawyers to present their case, but that offer was not accepted. They had the satisfaction of knowing that Christ had still a witnessing Church in Scotland, and that He was quite satisfied with dwelling in it, and in a measure countenancing its witness and its labours. Therefore they could say with respect to property and funds and the dividing of them between the two rival claimants what Mephibosheth said of Ziba, “Yea, let him take all, for as much as my lord the king is come again in peace unto his own house” (II. Sam. xix: 30).