by Rev. M. MacSween, M.A.
(Continued from page 79)
But we notice further that the Establishment Principle is clearly affirmed in the Documents of the Scottish Reformed Presbyterian Church from the First Reformation in 1560 onwards. These documents include the old Scots Confession, (1560); the First Book of Discipline, (1560); the Second Book of Discipline, (1578); the National Covenant of 1581; the National Covenant of 1638; the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643; the Westminster Confession of Faith (adopted in 1647); the Revolution Settlement of 1690; the Act of Union of 1707, and the Act of Security of 1707; the Claim, Declaration and Protest of 1842 and 1843 of the Disruption Free Church and the Deed of Separation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1893.
The Disruption did not arise from any doubt in regard to the lawfulness of Church Establishments. On the contrary, during the whole Ten Years’ Conflict prior to the Disruption, the contention was that, consistently with the duty of the State to endow the Church, the State was bound to recognise her liberty and the will of the people in the calling of ministers. An opinion quite contrary to the latter part of this statement prevailed in the Civil Courts, and this was decided as law in the Auchterarder Case, 1839, and in other similar cases. Here we may quote from a Pastoral Address issued by a Special Commission of the General Assembly on 25th April, 1843, a month before the Disruption took place. The following is an extract:— “The authority which Christ claims as King of Zion in His own spiritual Kingdom, He demands as Prince of the Kings of the earth that they shall sacredly respect and recognise (Psalm 2: 10-12). In this character He acknowledges them as Kings, and confirms their secular dominion. The very fact of his being their Prince gives new stability and a new sanction to their thrones. Civil government, by whomsoever wielded, is ratified by Him as the ordinance of God, which the Son of God as King controls and overrules, and which, in the very act of overruling, He establishes anew. (Proverbs 8: 15; Romans 13: 1-7; Titus 3: 1; 1 Peter 2: 13-17). On the other hand, as Prince of the Kings of the earth, He requires them to acknowledge Him, and to own His spiritual supremacy. He lays the Civil Magistrate under a solemn obligation, as well in the regulation of the ordinary civil affairs of his Magistracy, as in his dealing with matters spiritual and such as affect religion and the Church of the living God. In his ordinary civil administration, the Civil Magistrate owning Christ as the King of Kings, and the Prince of the Kings of the earth, is bound to have respect to His laws and to aim at the advancement of His glory. The spirit of Christianity ought to pervade all the political institutions and all the public transactions of his Kingdom, and whatever is done should be sanctioned by the Word of God and by prayer. (Psalm 82: 3; Psalm 85: 2 2 Samuel 23: 3.)
But in addition, the Christian Magistrate, as one of the Kings of the earth of whom Christ is Prince, is to interest himself directly in the affairs of Christ’s Kingdom, and to act as the guardian of religion in the land. In that capacity he has many important functions to discharge in reference to the Church, and he has authority as the minister of God for good, to take measures for preserving peace and order in the Church, for reforming abuses and remedying grievances, for guarding purity of doctrine and discipline, and for supplying the means of grace in efficiency and abundance through the ministrations of the Church to the people under his dominion. (Isaiah 49: 23; 2 Kings 18: 4; 2 Chronicles 19: 8; John 18: 37; John 19: 2.)”
That extract from this document shows very clearly that those who afterwards formed the Disruption Church held the Establishment Principle and were entirely opposed to Voluntaryism. Thus we find the first Free Church Assembly issuing a Pastoral Address in 1843, containing the following passage:— “Long was it the peculiar distinction and high glory of the Established Church of Scotland, to maintain the sole Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ — His exclusive sovereignty in the Church, which is His Kingdom and house. It was ever held by her, indeed, that the Church and the State being equally ordinances of God, and having certain common objects connected with His glory and the social welfare, might and ought to unite in a joint acknowledgment of Christ, and in the employment of the means and resources belonging to them respectively for the advancement of His Cause.”
The Disruption Free Church therefore held that there was no incompatibility between the principle of the spiritual independence or liberty of the Church and the Establishment Principle. Voluntaryism, — along with Popery and Erastianism — it repudiated. So spoke Dr Thomas Chalmers as Moderator of that first Free Church Assembly:— “To be more plain, let me be more particular. The Voluntaries mistake us, if they conceive us to be Voluntaries. We hold by the duty of Government to give of their resources and their means for the maintenance of a Gospel ministry in the land; and we pray that their eyes may be opened, so that they may learn how to acquit themselves as the protectors of the Church, and not as its corrupters or its tyrants. We pray that the sin of Uzziah, into which they have fallen, may be forgiven them and that those days of light and blessedness may speedily arrive, when Kings shall be the nursing fathers, and Queens shall be the nursing mothers of our Zion. In a word, we hold that every part and every function of a Commonwealth should be leavened with Christianity; and that every functionary from the highest to the lowest, should in their respective spheres, do all that in them lies to countenance and uphold it. That is to say, though we quit the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment principle — we quit a vitiated Establishment, but would rejoice in returning to a pure one. To express it otherwise, we are the advocates for a National recognition and National support of religion, and we are not Voluntaries.” What forced the Disruption was the Erastian encroachment of the Court of Session, springing from the illegal Patronage Act (1712) of Queen Anne.
But while we are to stress the Headship of Christ over the Nations as well as His Headship over the Church, we are to vindicate the honour due to this doctrine as very closely connected with the Establishment Principle. Ezekiel 21: 26, 27. “Thus saith the Lord God, Remove the diadem, and take off the crown . . . I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: and it shall be no more until He come, whose right it is, and I will give it Him.” It is when we make the evidence of these doctrines from the Holy Scripture in its fulness and glorious certainty and grandeur pass before our minds that we are best prepared to vindicate the place which it ought to hold in the faith of the Church, and in the Church’s Confession of Faith, and her testimony to Nations and their Kings. The Reformed Church of Scotland has testified equally for Christ’s Headship over the Church and His Headship over the Nations, and so for the Establishment Principle. Therefore there is no nation at this moment however hostile to the truth and Cause of Christ, but the Church of God is entitled to enter within its gates with the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is an indefeasible right of the Church, but it rests on the truth that Christ is Head of that Nation and that its gates may not be closed against “the righteous nation that keepeth the truth”, since they may not be closed against its King, who is the Truth, and who has said, “All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” Matthew 28: 18-20.
The reformed Church of Scotland has always held the doctrine of Christ’s Headship over the Nations under the form of the duty of the Christian Magistrate to establish the Christian religion. In the Westminster Confession of Faith we find the doctrine of Christ’s Headship over the Nations put down very thoroughly under the doctrine of the Civil Magistrate and his duty to the Church of Christ, in Chapter 23.
It is imperative for the welfare of both Church and State that legitimate appeal may be taken to the Authority of the Head of the Church, who is also Head of the Nations. It is of primary importance, therefore, that by His written Word, the Head of the Church claims to be Head of the Nations also, and lays His commandment on Nations and their Rulers. The prophecies indicate not only what God will do in His Providence with the Kings and rulers of the earth in relation to His Church, but what duties they shall discharge towards the Church. The prediction that Kings will one day do these things in a way of duty, is the intimation of the will of God that it is their duty to do these things now.
It is very important to notice that in Chapter 23 of the Westminster Confession of Faith — that on the Civil Magistrate — is the one and only form under which the Church confesses the doctrine of Christ’s Headship over the Nations. If the relationship of the Church to the Confession is altered, then allowance is given to deny any of the doctrines of the Confession. In 1846 the Free Church Assembly passed an Act explaining the Formula, which, by reason of her change of circumstances, the Free Church required to construct after her enforced Disruption from the State Church because of Erastianism. In passing this Act anent the Formula, the General Assembly, because the portion of the Confession referred to — Chapter 23 — had been stigmatised as teaching persecuting principles, thought it proper to clear her Confession of this unworthy stigma, and declared:— “The General Assembly, in passing this Act think it right to declare that while the Church firmly maintains the same spiritual principles as to the duty of nations and their rulers, in reference to true religion and the Church of Christ, for which she has hitherto contended, yet she disclaims intolerant and persecuting principles” (not, be it observed, disclaims any principles she had hitherto held, but disclaims the idea that they involve intolerance and persecution) “and does not regard her Confession of Faith, or any portion thereof, when fairly interpreted, as favouring intolerance or persecution, or consider that her office-bearers by subscribing it, profess any principles inconsistent with liberty of conscience or the right of private judgment.” This declaration is not to be wondered at, for the Confession contains this great article of Faith, even “that God alone is Lord of the conscience”. The Confession of Faith is a supremely self-consistent document, and is to be interpreted as in harmony with itself. At that time the Free Church gave an unqualified adherence to the doctrine of the Confession, in the form in which it is contained in the Confession.
Let us consider for a little the part of the Confession which this Act anent the Formula (1846) specifically declares to be free from intolerance and persecuting principles. First, we see that it is the Westminster Confession’s form of setting forth the great doctrine of Christ’s Headship over the Nations, which is a great leading principle of the Reformed Church of Scotland. Secondly, we see that the Westminster Confession sets forth this doctrine in the form of stating the magistrate’s duty towards religion and the Church. That was the form in which the great leading Reformers were accustomed to affirm the doctrine. The Scottish divines Gillespie, Rutherford, Durham and others keenly opposed every form of Erastianism and especially with respect to Anglican divines, such as Hooker who made Christ’s kingdom altogether spiritual, mystical and invisible, so that Christ is not a King to bind the external man or to care for the external government of His own house, which, like all other external things, they understand to belong to the Civil Magistrate. This theory those Anglicans had derived from Constantine, who said to the Bishops in his day: “God has made you bishops of the internal affairs of the Church, but He has appointed me the bishop of its external affairs.” George Gillespie puts the relation of the Magistrate to the Church thus:— “He is the Keeper, defender, and guardian of both tables, but neither judge nor interpreter of Scripture. The power of the Christian Magistrate is cumulative and not privative in relation to the Church. The external administration of the magistrate in relation to the Church and religion is two-fold: First, corrective, by external laws, and, secondly, auxiliary by external benefits. The Church’s part is directive — she directs the magistrate. The magistrate says to the Church as Moses said to Hobab: “Thou mayest be to us instead of eyes.” (“Aaron’s Rod Blossoming”, p. 116.)
While there were differences in the views held with respect to the practical working out of the doctrine by Scottish Reformed Theologians, yet all were unanimous in maintaining that there is only one Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that He is Head over all that pertains to the Church. As Lord over all men, Christ has expressed His will toward all, and upon them He may enforce His will by the external operations of His providences and laws. But Christ is Head over all things only to His Church, which is His Body. Directions go forth from the Head to the several members of the Body but also inclinations and enablings through grace for the doing of that which is required. Writing in his “Institutes” on the general subject of the Establishment Principle John Calvin declares that, “Christian princes and magistrates are rebuked who neglect the care of Divine things — such as Divine worship — and devote themselves merely to the administration of justice among men: as if God had appointed rulers in His own house to decide earthly controversies and had omitted what was of far greater moment, His own pure worship, as prescribed by His law. Such views are adopted by turbulent men, who, in their eagerness to make all kinds of innovations with impunity, would fain get rid of all the vindications of violated piety.” Yet we find some historians declaring that the Establishment Principle was quite unknown to the Reformers!
(To be continued)