Rev A W MacColl
James Durham was born near Monifieth in Angus in 1622 into a family of minor gentry, his father being the Laird of Easter Powrie. Durham senior was also Director of the Rolls of Exchequer and a decided royalist in politics. The young Durham grew up to the life of a country gentleman. After studying at St Andrews, Durham returned to his native county but it was not until after his marriage that he was brought to a saving knowledge of Christ. His wife and her mother were pious individuals and the effect this had on the young gentleman eventually issued in his conversion. As a captain in the Covenanting army during the civil war he was famously overheard by the eminent David Dickson praying with his company, and so impressed was Dickson that he urged the captain to enter the ministry when the war was over.
Dickson’s influence was to continue, since it was at his feet that Durham sat while he studied for the ministry of the gospel at Glasgow University. He was a colleague of Dickson in Glasgow when he was ordained minister of Blackfriars, from 1647. And from 1650, after a period as chaplain to King Charles II, Durham was minister of St Mungo’s, the “Inner Kirk” of the city. The Dickson connection was also seen in the composition of The Sum of Saving Knowledge, usually attributed to Durham’s and Dickson’s joint-authorship. Durham continued in Glasgow until his early death at the age of 36 in 1658.
The “Judicious Durham” is one Scottish divine whose thought is beginning to receive a greater measure of recognition in Reformed circles through the republication in recent years of nearly all of his extant works. Durham was primarily an exegete and a theologian-pastor, in the sense that a great deal of his output originated in his preaching, for example his series of 72 sermons on Isaiah 53, Christ Crucified, or the Marrow of the Gospel; and again in his Exposition of the Whole Book of Job and Practical Exposition of the Ten Commandments. He is justly admired for his commentary on the Song of Solomon and his massive commentary on Revelation, which demonstrate
1This is the first section of a paper delivered at the 2011 Theological Conference. It dealt with James Durham’s volume, A Dying Man’s Testament to the Church of Scotland, or, A Treatise Concerning Scandal.
how able an expositor Durham was, especially in dealing with some of the most difficult parts of Scripture. All his writings exhibit much wisdom and care in interpretation, with a great deal of searching and spiritual application. It is not difficult to see why Robert Baillie judged Durham to be “excellent” when it came to handling cases of conscience.
A Dying Man’s Testament to the Church of Scotland, or, A Treatise Concerning Scandal was Durham’s last work, written shortly before he passed from the realm of grace to that of glory, in 1658. It was composed as a result of the division in the ranks of the Covenanters between the Protesters and Resolutioners, in which Durham, along with Robert Blair, attempted to play a conciliating role. To give a brief summary of the dispute: the Resolutioners were the party that sought Charles II’s full compliance with the Covenant and were persuaded that the restrictions on “malignants” – that is to say, enemies of the Covenant – who were serving in the army, had been too strict. They thus agreed with the “Public Resolutions” of the Scots Parliament which repealed laws prohibiting army service for malignants, in the name of national defence. Robert Baillie was the most prominent of the Resolutioners, along with David Dickson, George Hutcheson, Robert Douglas, James Wood and James Sharp.
The Protesters, on the other hand, were those who remonstrated with the 1650 General Assembly for hastily admitting Charles to the Covenants, believing that it was sinful to persuade him to take them without any realistic expectation that the King actually believed in what he was swearing to uphold. They also held it to be sinful to allow malignants into public office. They protested against the Assembly’s actions the following year and declined its legitimacy since those who opposed the Public Resolutions were forbidden to be chosen as commissioners. The Protesters were censured by the Assembly and some of their number deposed, including Patrick Gillespie, James Guthrie and James Simson.
Although smaller in number as a party, the Protesters included some of the most eminent ministers of the day, such as Samuel Rutherford, William Guthrie, Hugh Binning and John Livingston. The Covenanters remained divided throughout Cromwell’s ascendancy in the 1650s, and the Presbyterian Church in Scotland has never fully recovered visible unity since that time. The Restoration saw the end of the Resolutioner’s schemes to engage the Stuart monarchy to support Presbyterianism. Baillie, on seeing that his political and ecclesiastical goals had vanished forever, is said to have died a broken man in 1662.
Durham was anxious from the start to mediate between the parties and drew up plans for reconciliation in 1652. In 1655 his aim was nearly achieved but
his endeavour was scuppered by the more zealous partisans on both sides. The Resolutioners and Protesters both chose him as Moderator of their rival Presbyteries in Glasgow during this period, which demonstrates how well respected Durham was by all shades of opinion. It was as a result of this sad and far-reaching dispute that the Treatise on Scandal was written.
The Treatise is in four parts. The first part deals with the nature of offence and scandal itself; the second deals with ecclesiastical offences and how the Church should respond to them; the third part concerns doctrinal error and how to detect it and deal with it; the fourth section is devoted to the subject of schism or, as Durham puts it, “scandalous Church divisions”. The Treatise is not an easy work to read. Whilst not excessively long – less than 400 pages in the modern edition – it is very closely argued and dense, with multitudes of distinctions and caveats. It often appears as if every conceivable case is covered exhaustively.
The volume and breadth of reading which are evidenced in the treatise clearly demonstrate how laborious Durham must have been in a ministry of less than 12 years. The practical and ecclesiologial writings of the Puritans and the Reformers – from the Continent, Britain and New England – have been thoroughly digested, Greek and Romanist authors taken notice of, and, most outstandingly, the works of the Church fathers are extensively quoted. Athanasius, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Basil and, especially, Augustine are frequently referred to, and the lessons to be learnt from them obviously carried great weight with Durham. This familiarity with the history of the patristic era is of substantial importance when we come to look at Durham’s views on the unity of the visible Church. It may suffice to say that he tends to lean more to the history of the Donatist and Novatian controversies, in the early Christian centuries, than he does, for example, to the history of the Reformation and the divisions between Protestants much nearer his own day.
Principal John Macleod in Scottish Theology said concerning Durham’s treatise: “His book on Church divisions has long been looked upon as the Scottish classic on its topic”. James Walker stated that, whilst “it has a forbidding, or at all events not an attractive name . . . yet I am not sure that anywhere a better idea is to be obtained of our old ecclesiasticism, and of its freedom to a large extent from the severity and rancorousness which have been so often attributed to it”. Walker went on to describe Durham as “this judicious man, who, with his thorough, searching, cumbrous intellect, reminds you not seldom of John Owen”.2
2J. Durham, The Dying Man’s Testament to the Church of Scotland, or, A Treatise Concerning Scandal, (Naphtali Press, Dallas, 1990 reprint). The quotes from J Macleod and J Walker appear on the dust-jacket of this volume.
In his own preface, Durham draws attention to the rise of the Treatise out of his commentary on Revelation, particularly from his treatment of the Church of Pergamos in chapter 2. In that work, Durham has excursions, or short doctrinal essays, interspersed throughout the Commentary and it was his intention to include one on the nature of scandal and offence. However, rather than being included in the Commentary, Durham’s writing on the subject grew into the present work. With singular modesty he states that the subject of Church divisions was one to which his “mind and inclination was exceedingly averse at first, as knowing it not only to be difficult in itself to be meddled in, but also exceedingly above me, who am altogether unsuitable to hazard on such a subject”.3