by Rev. Donald MacLean, Glasgow
Most, if not all, of the readers of the Magazine will have been present at the ordination and/or induction of a minister of the gospel. While the occasion has its pleasant aspect in a congregation having a minister set over them, it also has a most solemn aspect. A minister is being set over souls and his conduct of his ministry among them will have its effects on the eternal condition of his people. He will have to account for the discharge of his vows to the great Head of the Church, in Whose name he enters the work, and Whose glory he professes to seek.
In view of this, the ordination vows taken by the minister forms one of the most solemn features of this service and dead indeed must be the conscience of any minister who does not feel the binding obligation of these vows. It is very necessary that the minister keeps vividly before his mind these most solemn vows as he continues the ministry thus begun, and that their solemn nature should have a weighty effect upon him as he goes about the duties of his holy calling. Just as it is the duty of men and women to recall their baptismal vows when present at a baptism, so every exercised minister of the gospel feels anew the vows, which he took freely upon himself, when at the service at which these vows are put on a fellow labourer.
In view of the wide-spread attacks made on the principles of government and discipline in the Free Presbyterian Church, it will be to the benefit of all to indicate how these principles are embodied in the ordination vows, cast in the form of questions, which lie upon the conscience of every minister in the Church.
“4. Are you persuaded that the Presbyterian government and discipline of this Church are founded upon the Word of God and agreeable thereto; and do you promise to submit to the said government and discipline, and to concur with the same, and not to endeavour, directly or indirectly, the prejudice or subversion thereof, but to the utmost of your power, in your station, to maintain, support, and defend the said discipline and Presbyterian government by Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Provincial Synods, and General Assemblies?
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Do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of the Church, has therein appointed a government in the hands of Church Officers, distinct from, and not subordinate in its own province to, civil government, and that the Civil Magistrate does not possess jurisdiction or authoritative control over the regulation of the affairs of Christ’s Church: and do you approve of the general principles embodied in the Claim, Declaration and Protest, adopted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1842, and in the Protest of Ministers and elders, Commissioners from Presbyteries to the General Assembly, read in the presence of the Royal Commissioner on 18th May, 1843, as declaring the views which are sanctioned by the Word of God and the standards of this Church, with respect to the spirituality and freedom of the Church of Christ, and her subjection to Him as her only Head and to His Word as her only standard?
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Do you promise to submit yourself willingly and humbly in the spirit of meekness, unto the admonitions of the brethren of this Presbytery, and to be subject to them, and all other Presbyteries and superior judicatories of this Church, where God in His providence shall cast your lot; and that, according to your power, you shall maintain the unity and peace of this Church against error and schism, notwithstanding of whatsoever trouble or persecution may arise, and that you shall follow no divisive courses from the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of this Church?
Men, deceived by their own evil hearts and Satan, may find many excuses for evading these most solemn obligations, undertaken in the presence of God and their fellow-men, but these excuses are but vanity before the eyes of the Divine Head of the Church. To go to eternity with broken ordination vows of the conscience should make even the most careless tremble.
In the Church, be careful to serve God;
for thou art in His eyes, and not in man’s
John Bunyan