by Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale
(Continued from page 78)
II. We come in the second place to notice, more especially, the breaking down of the carved work. The Westminster Standards, being adopted by the Church of Scotland, continued for many years to be accepted by that Church in their entirety, and the following question was required to be answered in the affirmative by all her office-bearers on being inducted to office:—”Do you sincerely own and believe the whole doctrine contained in the Confession of Faith, approved by former General Assemblies of this Church, to be founded on the Word of God; and do you acknowledge the same as the confession of your faith; and will you firmly and constantly adhere thereto; and to the utmost of your power assert, maintain, and defend the same, and the purity of worship as presently practised in this Church? That Confession of Faith is in the Constitution of the Church which is today known as the Church of Scotland, yet, it is qualified by Declaratory Acts, passed at various times in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland, and, strictly speaking, does not mean anything of what it formerly meant, and in order to find a church where there is an unqualified adherence to the Westminster Standards, one has to go outside the pale of the Church of Scotland.
In the verse under consideration the inspired penman represents the breaking down of the carved work as being done by “axes and hammers.” Axes and hammers are very clumsy implements, and do a great deal of havoc when wielded by those who use them, but, literally, any untutored savage can wield them, and the less knowledge they have of what is beautiful and in accordance with a plan, the less respect they will have for carved work. The Westminster Standards were put together by men of knowledge and understanding, for in no other Assembly in history could one find such a galaxy of talent and learning, and that talent and learning sanctified by the grace of God. Their other writings show them to have been men who had a deep insight into the Word of God, and who had the glory of God and the good of souls in view. This is very evident in the Standards which they were instrumental in drawing up. The great Dr Charles Hodge, writing on What is Meant by Adopting the Westminster Confession? says, “It is the system which, as the granite formation of the Earth, underlies and sustains the whole scheme of truth as revealed in the Scriptures, and without which all the rest is as drifting sand. It has been from the beginning the life and soul of the Church, taught explicitly by our Lord Himself, and more fully by His inspired servants, and always professed by a cloud of witnesses in the Church. It has, moreover, ever been the esoteric faith of true believers, adopted in their prayers and hymns, even when rejected from their creeds. It is this system which the Presbyterian Church is pledged to profess, to defend, and to teach; and it is a breach of faith to God and man if she fails to require a profession of this system by all those whom she receives or ordains as teachers and guides of her people. It is for the adoption of the Confession of Faith in this sense that the Old School have always contended as a matter of conscience.”
In the past history of the Church in Scotland many efforts were put forth to break down the carved work of the First and Second Reformations, forcing upon the Protestant Church in our land those struggles which called forth such doughty champions for the truth as Knox, Melville, Henderson, Gillespie, Rutherford, Chalmers, and a host of others too numerous to be mentioned. In the early days of the First Reformation we have an instance of these efforts in the setting up of the “tulchan bishops” who were the creatures of these landed proprietors who cast covetous eyes and laid unholy hands on the church revenues which ought to be used for advancing true religion. These were the forerunners of diocesan bishops who lived in affluence and immorality, and who earned the execration of all right-minded people to the present day. They stand out on the page of Scottish Church history as indelible blots on human history, and clear commentaries on the inspired statement that “the memory of the wicked shall rot.” The Glasgow Assembly of 1638 cast them out as “rotten limbs of antichrist,” and the Assembly closed with the memorable words of its Moderator, Alexander Henderson, “We have now cast down the walls of Jericho, let him that rebuildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite.”
This, however, is but the ending of a chapter in the efforts of kings and bishops and traitors to break down the carved work of the Reformation in Scotland. That chapter tells of the banishment and death in a foreign land of Andrew Melville, the most erudite scholar which Scotland ever produced, the banishment to Inverness and consequent privations of Robert Bruce, the man to whom King James VI was indebted more than to any other of his subjects in Scotland for the peace and order which prevailed in his realm during his absence in Denmark. It tells also of the perfidy of the King and the sycophancy of many who at one time made a great profession of religion, and who would like to be regarded in some quarters as great upholders of Presbyterianism, while only waiting for a favourable opportunity to cast off their masks and step on to the platform of vanishing glory which, all along, they had been coveting, and for which they sold their souls. It is a chapter which amply verifies the words of one of the Lord’s true witnesses, Mr Hugh McKail, that the Church of God was never without a Pharaoh on the Throne, a Haman in the State, and a Judas in the Church.
The Act of 1592, which is known as “the great charter of the Church of Scotland,” ratified the government of the Church by Kirk-sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and General Assemblies. It also ratified the leading propositions in the Second Book of Discipline, and enacted that General Assemblies meet once a year or oftener as the need arose, that the Assembly had the right to appoint the time and place of its next meeting, and that the exercise of discipline and the ruling of the Church belonged to the various courts of the Church. King James VI had no intention of observing this Act. In 1618 he convened the infamous Assembly of Perth at which the following Articles were passed in the face of the protests of those ministers who remained true to their ordination vows:—that is, Kneeling at Communion, the observance of holy days, episcopal confirmation, private baptisms, and the private dispensation of the Lord’s Supper. After the passing of these Articles the Court of High Commission set about enforcing the observance of them by means of civil penalties. After three years of the tyranny of the Court of High Commission Parliament was called in 1621 for the purpose of ratifying the Perth Articles. This ratification was carried out by a very small majority on 4th August 1621. Dr Hetherington has given a very solemn description of the transaction. “This day, sadly memorable in the annals of the Church of Scotland, was marked also by a singular coincident event, recorded by the historians of that time. The morning had been lowering and gloomy, and as the day advanced the gloom waxed deeper and deeper, as the gathering clouds seemed to concentrate their huge voluminous masses around and over the city. At the very moment when the Marquis of Hamilton and the Lord High Commissioner rose to give the formal ratification to the acts, by touching them with the sceptre, a keen blue flash of forked lightning blazed through the mirky gloom, followed instantaneously by another and another, so dazzlingly bright as to blind the startled and terrified parliament, in the act of consummating its guilty deed. Three terrific peals of thunder followed in quick succession, appalling the trembling conclave, as if the thunder-voice of heaven were uttering denunciations of vengeance against the insulters of the dread majesty on high. Then descended hailstones of prodigious magnitude, and sheeted rains so heavy and continuous, as to imprison for an hour and a half the parliament which had perpetrated this act of treason against the King of kings, by subjecting His Church to an earthly monarch. This dark and disastrous day was long known in Scotland by the designation of ‘BLACK SATURDAY’ — black with man’s guilt and with the frowns of heaven.” — History of the Church of Scotland, 6th ed. p. 73. Thus we have the carved work of the First Reformation broken down by men as destitute of spiritual life as the heathen, and proving the truth of what is written, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The state of affairs created by the passing of the notorious Act of 1618 went from bad to worse during the remaining part of the reign of King James, which terminated with his death in 1625, and was left as a legacy to his son and successor, Charles I.
Charles, with blind infatuation and bigotry, carried on the work of breaking down the carved work of the Church of Scotland. The most eminent of her ministers were oppressed, and their congregations were deprived of those pastors who were bound to them by ties of the most sacred nature. Not content with this, King Charles gave unlimited powers to the Bishops to act as they pleased, not only over the ministers, but over the nobility of the land. In accordance with this license Archbishop Laud introduced forms of worship and other matters which were not only Prelatic, but Popish. A Book of Canons was published in Aberdeen and circulated by the Bishops, decreeing excommunication against all who should deny the king’s supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. They were also excommunicated who should dare to say that the worship contained in the Book of Common Prayer was superstitious or contrary to the Scriptures, or who should assert that the prelatic form of church government had no authority in the Word of God. Every minister who did not make sole use of the Liturgy was to be deposed, no General Assembly was to be called but by the King, and no ecclesiastical business was even to be discussed except in the prelatic courts. There is something significant in the reference to the Book of Common Prayer and the Liturgy for neither had been published at the time, and seem to point to the intention that no remnant of Presbyterianism was to be left in Scotland. These matters, along with much more, made an an impression on the people of Scotland, vastly different from that which the innovating party intended. The tumult in St. Giles, Edinburgh, in July 1637, was but an indication of what the Bishops had reason to expect, unless they were strangely blinded to the signs of the times. The men who were most active in the Church of Scotland, both among the ministers and the laity, chose to act in an orderly and constitutional manner. The result was the framing and subscribing of the National Covenant of 1638. Their determination to go about the signing of the Covenant in a solemn and serious manner with a consciousness of being under the all-seeing eye of God is manifested in the words of Alexander Henderson to the Aberdeen Doctors, that “some men of no small note offered their subscription, and were refused, till time should prove that they joined from love to the Cause and not from the fear of man.”
At last, an important epoch of our national history arrived, that is, the constituting of the great General Assembly of 1638 in Glasgow. Despite the withdrawal of His Majesty’s Royal Commissioner the Assembly continued sitting and passed an Act annulling all the corrupt Assemblies by which Prelacy had been introduced, those, namely, of the years 1606, 1608, 1610, 1616, 1617, and 1618. The Five Articles of Perth, the Book of Canons, the Liturgy, the Book of Ordination, and the Court of High Commission were condemned. Eight Bishops were deposed and excommunicated, four merely deposed, and two deposed from the prelatic station but allowed to officiate as pastors of single congregations. Prelacy was abolished and Presbyterianism set up amidst the thankful acknowledgments of the best of Scotland’s nobility and peasantry, and one would have reason to expect that the representative of the Stuart dynasty who then occupied the Throne would have learned his lesson, for here was a direct challenge to his usurpation of authority in ecclesiastical matters which none but an infatuated despot could try to ignore.
The Word of God says, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” The Church of Scotland found that out by a very costly experience. After the great deliverance wrought by God through the instrumentality of the General Assembly of 1638 there was a time of revival of religion on a nation-wide scale. The National Covenant, first signed in Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh, was carried throughout the whole land, and largely signed by high and low, and there were many prospects that peace was to reign within our borders. Many factors contributed to the dashing of the hopes entertained in this connection. After the decapitation of King Charles I many fretted under the rigid rule of Oliver Cromwell and hankered after the restoration of the Stuart dynasty. The Scots never took kindly to Cromwell, and were foremost in bringing Charles II back from exile. Alas! they did not realise the perfidy of that monarch until it was too late.
(To be continued)