4. Musical instruments in the Scottish Church. At the Reformation from Romanism in Scotland, our fathers endeavoured to remove from the worship of God all those superstitions and idolatrous practices by which it was polluted and degraded, and to restore it to the purity and simplicity of the gospel of Christ. In the confusions of that eventful period, the organs were mostly destroyed, with the images and other monuments of Roman idolatry. After many struggles and sufferings, the corruptions of the Church of Rome were condemned, and the leading doctrines of the gospel publicly acknowledged by the Estates of Parliament in 1560. A plan for the worship and government of the Church was afterwards formed and observed by our pious ancestors, such as appeared to them most agreeable to the Word of God and the practice of the primitive Church.2
In this order, there was nothing calculated to please the sensual mind, or to gratify avarice or worldly ambition. The grand simplicity of the gospel pervaded the whole. At length, in 1592, this form of worship and government was established by civil authority. None of the Reformed Churches of Europe ever proceeded as far as that of Scotland in removing the will-worship and idolatry of the Roman Church, and in restoring the worship of God to the purity and simplicity of the apostolic age. This beautiful simplicity of worship
1This piece is understood to be the work of Rev Malcolm MacSween, Oban. It has been edited. The original title was, Should Musical Instruments Be Used in the Public Worship of God Under the New Testament Dispensation? The second section, last month, consisted of an “inquiry whether instrumental music is authorised by God in the worship of the New Testament Church” and an “inquiry into the period of the Christian Church when organs began to be used in the worship of God”.
2See The Second Book of Discipline, agreed upon in the General Assembly of 1578, and inserted in the registers of Assembly for 1581.
and government was, however, soon defaced by that kind of mixed Episcopacy which was afterwards introduced and continued in Scotland until the Civil Wars broke out.
By an Act of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1643 it was appointed that a Directory for Worship be prepared and reported to the next Assembly, so “that unity and uniformity might be observed throughout the kingdom, in all the parts of the public worship of God”. The reason why nothing was done in that business was that the Assembly of Divines at Westminster met on the first day of July in the same year, 1643, and agreeably to engagements between the Convention of Estates in Scotland and both Houses of Parliament in England, and upon invitation from the Assembly at Westminster, commissioners were sent from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, to co-operate with them “in all such things as might conduce to the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, heresy, schism, superstition and idolatry, and in uniting this whole island in one form of Church government, one Confession of Faith, one Catechism, and one Directory for the Worship of God”.
The Scottish commissioners proceeded to Westminster and joined with the Assembly in their labours there. On 20 May 1644, the Scottish members wrote from London to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, giving an account of their labours and progress, in which they give the following statement: “We cannot but admire the good hand of God in the great things done here already, particularly that the [National] Covenant, the foundation of the whole work, is taken; Prelacy and the whole train thereof extirpated, the service-book in many places forsaken, plain and powerful preaching set up, many colleges in Cambridge provided with such ministers as are most zealous of the best reformation, altars removed, the communion in some places given at the table with sitting, the great organs at Paul’s and Peter’s, in Westminster, taken down, images and many other monuments of idolatry defaced and abolished, the Chapel Royal at Whitehall purged and reformed; and all by authority, in a quiet manner, at noonday, without tumult”.
From this statement it appears that these commissioners, with the Assembly at Westminster, considered organs a part of the pollutions of Popery and Prelacy which it was needful to have removed by authority in that work of reformation. Organs were then so completely removed from the churches in England, and so generally reprobated, that at the Restoration (1660) there could scarcely be found either organists or organ builders.
In The Westminster Confession of Faith no provision is made for restoring those organs which were then removed. But it is declared in section 21:5 that “the reading of the Scriptures with godly fear . . . singing of psalms with
grace in the heart . . . are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God”. There is no mention of organs or musical instruments. This Confession of Faith was approved and adopted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 27 August 1647 and ratified by Act of Parliament on 7 February 1649, and again by Act of Parliament in 1690.
In the Directory for the worship of God then composed, no provision is made for restoring the abolished organs or any other form of instrumental music whatever. It is there declared to be the duty of Christians to praise God publicly by singing of Psalms in the congregation, and also privately in the family; that in singing of Psalms the voice is to be tunably and gravely ordered, but the chief care must be to sing with understanding, and with grace in the heart, making melody unto the Lord. This Directory was examined and approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 3 February 1645 and ratified by Act of Parliament on 6 February 1645, and still continues to be the only authorised Directory for the worship of God in the Scottish Reformed Church. The Act of 1645 was approved and revived by the General Assembly of 1705.
The Westminster Confession of Faith and Directory of worship of the Scottish Presbyterian Church were ratified by Acts of Parliament in 1690 and 1693 and by the Act of Security in 1707. They form an essential article of the union with England, and are secured by the coronation oath of the sovereign. So that this worship, modelled and established upon the abolition of organs, altars, images and all the train of Popery and Prelacy is as well secured as any laws, ecclesiastical or civil, can make it. This worship, authorised in the Directory was practised in the Presbyterian Church until the introduction of instrumental music was made permissive by the Scottish Established Church in 1866, by the United Presbyterian Church in 1872, and by the Disruption Free Church in 1883.