Definition. Presbyterianism is that form of ecclesiastical polity according to which the chief power is vested in a court of presbyters. A church recognizing its government as a body of presbyters, whose office includes the twofold function of teaching and ruling, is commonly designated Presbyterian, although the system which bears this name has been variously modified in its development according to events in the history of the nation, or of the religious community adopting it. But under every form which it has assumed, Presbyterian has its points of vital difference from every other kind of ecclesiastical rule with which it competes. These by a common analysis have been reduced to three, if we exclude the Erastian theory on the one hand, according to which the state, identifying itself with the church, may avail itself of any species of government over it; and the Romish system on the other, according to which, as prelates take the place of the apostles, so the Roman pontiff, succeeding to Peter in his alleged primacy, becomes the vicar of our Lord upon the earth. The latter, indeed, if we except the claim to universal supremacy and infallibility, and if we view it simply as the subjection of bishops to the jurisdiction of a superior, is a species of Episcopacy, not without its analogies beyond the pale of the Romish Church both in ancient and modern times. But if we regard Episcopacy and Independency as the two other main forms of ecclesiastical government, Presbytery differs from the former in refusing to acknowledge any such succession to the apostleship on the part of bishops as would constitute them an office separate from and superior to presbyters; and from Independency, in claiming for presbyters the official authority which it lodges in the common membership of the church, and in asserting such a connection between the different congregations of a church as renders them amenable to a common jurisdiction.
Theory of Presbyterianism.
Three elements exist in the Presbyterian system—the authority of the presbyters, more especially as subordinate to no office-bearer of higher rank in the church; the representation of the laity in its government; and the provision made for its external unity in courts of review.
1. In regard to the authority claimed for the presbyter:
1. It is of divine appointment, not merely in so far as the office itself, from the official titles bestowed upon those exercising it, from the official qualifications demanded of them, and from the recognition of their official dignity enjoined in Scripture, is a divine institute, but inasmuch as they derive their power, not from the people, but from Christ as the Head of the church. Proceeding upon such facts as, that the people have received no commission to exercise ecclesiastical power, but a command to obey it, and accordingly cannot convey what they themselves have not received; and that the rulers of the church are described as the gift of Christ, and occupy a special relation to him as his messengers and ambassadors, Presbyterians generally maintain that the official authority of the presbyter directly emanates from Christ, though the call to exercise it comes through the channel of the people. In this respect, obedience to ecclesiastical rule is enforced upon the conscience by the highest spiritual sanctions,—as an arrangement not springing from mere expediency, but expressly appointed by God.
2. The office of the presbyter is distinct and peculiar. It is not competent for every member of the church to assume at his pleasure the functions either of teaching or of ruling in the church. From the peculiar gifts requisite; from the special forms by which in the primitive church men were set apart to the office; from the distinction so often traced between those who bore rule in it and those who owned subjection to them; from the importance of the work, as comprehending the preaching of the gospel, the administration of sacraments, and the maintenance of discipline; and from the names which the rulers of the church receive in Scripture,—it is argued that the presbyterate is not a work merely which any man may take upon him to perform as he deems himself competent for it, but an office to be exercised only by men specially called and ordained to it. Presbyterians accordingly agree with Episcopalians in denying that the private members of the church have a right to share directly in the government of it. Some of the arguments employed to this effect are to be found in the article Episcopacy.
3. The authority of the presbyter is entirely ministerial. His office, whatever sacredness it may possess as the direct institute of God, and however clearly discriminated from the ordinary privileges enjoyed by every member of the church, is at the same time under restrictions which, fairly observed, would effectually preclude spiritual despotism. The administration of elders is only binding so far as it accords with the rules prescribed in Scripture, which, by defining, limits their authority, while by the same principle it secures the rights of the individual conscience, as subject to Christ, its only Lord. The considerations by which this view of the office is sustained are founded on those statements of Scripture which expound the duties connected with it. The apostles, the highest office-bearers ever known in the Christian church, represent themselves as the servants of Christ, entitled to obedience only as they acted under his instructions, and without any claim to "dominion" over the faith of the church. (2 Cor. i. 24.) More especially in regard to Presbyters, the injunction is given, that they should act not as "lords over God's heritage, but examples to the flock." The power to regulate ecclesiastical proceedings and religious worship, so as to prevent confusion on points where no express rule is prescribed, may be regarded as vouchsafed to them under the general precept, that all things should be done "decently and in order." Presbyterians, however, protest against the notion, that the church has any authority to institute new rites and ceremonies for which no warrant from Scripture can be adduced. Even in the highest exercise of their authority, when assembled as a judiciary, and called to issue decisions on matters of faith, the rulers of the church can exercise only a ministerial function: "It belongeth to synods and councils ministerially to determine controversies of faith and cases of conscience." (Westminster Confession of Faith, xxxi. 3.)
4. The duration of the office must correspond with the existence of the church that needs its services; in other words, it is perpetual. It is not, like the apostleship of the new, or the prophetic order under the old dispensation,
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1 Under this article are comprehended notices of the various Presbyterian churches formerly dispersed throughout this work under the initial letters of their designations. The notice of the United Presbyterian Church is the article Seceders of the last, remodelled and abridged for the present edition by the author, the Rev. James Taylor, D.D., Glasgow.
2 See Divine Right of Church Government, by London Ministers, chap. x. instituted in provision for a special emergency or condition of the church. The instructions bequeathed in inspired epistles for the guidance of presbyters imply the permanence of their office to the end of time. No intimation occurs that the presbyterate is ever to cease; whereas the requirement by which it was essential to the office of an apostle that he should have "seen the Lord," involved obviously its discontinuance when the generation of his contemporaries should have passed away. The very ends for which the Christian church exists require a commissioned agency for the due accomplishment of them. The government and spiritual edification of its members, together with the obligation resting upon it to seek the conversion of all beyond its pale, involve labours too important to be left merely to the waywardness of private zeal. A special agency destined to continue so long as the necessity for it exists, is required for the work. Directions, moreover, are expressly given respecting the qualifications which the presbyter must possess, and the method by which he must be ordained, in such terms as imply the permanence of his office in the church.
5. Finally, according to the Presbyterian system, the presbyterate is the highest standing office in the church. This position, of course, is in collision with the distinctive principle of Episcopacy, which asserts that the bishop is an ecclesiastical functionary not merely of a different order, but of a higher grade as compared with the presbyter, and that it is exclusively the prerogative of the former to govern and to ordain. On the contrary, Presbyterians hold that the distinction between bishop and presbyter is invalid; that by their commission all ministers are equal in official rank and authority, and that the ultimate appeal in cases of dispute and discipline must be made, not to the single president of a diocese, but to a court of presbyters. In support of this view, they have been accustomed to show that the grounds on which the claim of the bishop to a separate and superior office is maintained are without weight, that the identity of the bishop and presbyter is clearly recognised in Scripture, and that the rise of diocesan Episcopacy can be historically traced on patristic testimony to no divine and apostolical appointment, but to usages which were grafted on the primitive simplicity of the church.
There are five leading arguments urged in support of Episcopacy, the cogency of which the Presbyterian feels that he cannot acknowledge. The appeal made to the analogy of the Jewish hierarchy in support of a threefold order in the ministry, may be met by the reply, that the alleged analogy has no foundation in Scripture; that the New Testament never speaks of the rulers of the church as a priesthood, but as a ministry; and that such predictions as are contained in Ps. xxxixii. 16, Is. lxvi. 21, and Jer. xxxiii. 18, even though proved to intimate the blessings which the church would enjoy under the Christian dispensation, come far short of announcing that a threefold hierarchy would exist in it. The typical language employed in such predictions no more proves that priests, in the proper sense of the term, are to officiate in the new economy, than that burnt-offerings are to be presented in it; while all the passages usually quoted from prophecy in support of the parallel between the temple priesthood and the Christian ministry may refer to no office higher than the ordinary priesthood, the antitype of which may be found in the presbyter. Moreover, not merely is it destitute of a scriptural warrant; the analogy fails either by excess or defect. It proves too much if we assume as true the premises of the syllogism, as it would involve the supremacy of a single head in correspondence with the high priest over the whole church, not a body of prelates enjoying an independent jurisdiction. But it is in truth extremely defective; for of the three alleged grades in official dignity, the high priest did not belong to an order distinct from the priests, while the Levites, in no sense, were invested with sacred orders.
Not more conclusive is the argument founded on the distinction between the twelve apostles and seventy disciples, for the latter discharged only a temporary service; and at the best two orders only would thus be established, unless, in despair of otherwise vindicating the analogy, the Episcopalian is prepared to maintain that the Lord himself represented the episcopal order,—a hypothesis the reverse of advantage to those who urge it; for if we overcome our repugnance to the presumption which it seems to breathe, and concede for the moment its validity, it follows that, as our Lord has never abdicated his office, the Episcopal order must be confined to his own person still. Nor are the functions exercised by Timothy and Titus as evangelists any foundation for the belief that a permanent office superior to presbyters should now be recognised. Timothy is expressly declared to have been an evangelist, while Titus, from the analogous work he performed, held the same status. They are never described as bishops respectively of Ephesus and Crete; their continual journeyings from place to place are inconsistent with the idea of a resident bishopric; they did nothing for which a presbyter, especially on the high authorization of an apostle, was incompetent; the injunction given to ordain elders does not absolutely imply that they were to do it alone without other presbyters, while, if they did it alone, because no presbyters previously existed in the place, it was an extraordinary conjuncture, yielding no precedent in ordinary circumstances, and but a specimen of the prerogative which a presbyter in every similar conjuncture may exercise; the reference that the apostle makes to the gift which Timothy had received through "the laying on of the hands of the presbyter," is inconsistent with the belief that he had received ordination to a higher dignity,—episcopal consecration to the episcopal order, for in this case the appeal would surely have been made, not to the lower, but to the higher ordination; and lastly, if it be inferred that he must have been superior to presbyters in virtue of a permanent office and not of a special commission, because he was to instruct presbyters, it would follow that Paul held a higher office than Timothy, who took instructions from him, and that Timothy as a bishop was no successor of the apostles, although the succession of the bishops to the apostleship, in respect of jurisdiction, is a main plea in favour of Episcopacy. Great stress cannot be laid on the argument from the apocalyptic angel. The precise functionary referred to cannot be easily determined, opinions varying on the point, from that of De Wette, who understands by the term "the guardian angel of the community," down to that of Ewald, who understands by it an official no higher than a clerk or sexton; the most plausible method of fixing the nature of the office intended is the analogy drawn by Vitringa, Bengel, and Delitzsch, in virtue of the name "angel," from the presiding officer in the Jewish synagogue, whose chief duty was to conduct public devotion, and whose office, therefore, corresponded more with that of a presbyter than of a diocesan bishop. When it is argued that, since the term is singular, and many churches must have existed in these cities, each church having its separate presbyter, it must therefore denote an officer enjoying a common relation to all those churches and superintendence over all those presbyters; it is urged in reply, that, even considering an individual to be meant, we may regard him as the moderator in the court of presbyters; that the word "angel" may refer to a collective body,—"the consessus, or order of presbyters," as even Stillingfleet supposes,—for since they are declared to be the "stars" giving light to these churches, surely the presbyters, as well as any diocesan bishop, subserved this purpose, and the same term "angel" is obviously employed under a similar collective signification in Rev. xiv. 6, where it must denote the whole body of officers commissioned to preach the gospel; and that nothing occurs in all that is said of these angels attributing to them a rank and power above the presbyter. But the defense of Episcopacy is sometimes chiefly based on an alleged succession from the apostles. To state the argument fairly, it is not contended that, in respect of miraculous gifts, bishops could represent the apostles after the age of miracles had closed, but in four different respects,—the power of ordination, the exercise of rule, the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments,—the official functions and dignity of the apostleship might be transmitted to bishops. Now, in disposing of this crowning plea for Episcopacy, Presbyterians submit various considerations which may in substance be included under four positions,—First, in the apostleship viewed as a whole, qualifications are discovered so peculiar as to forbid any reference to it as the prototype of the episcopal order in the primitive church, for it was required of an apostle that he should have seen the Lord, possess the gift of inspiration, and have power to work miracles. These qualifications did not constitute him an apostle, for they might have been predicated respectively of several private members of the church; as, for instance, "of the five hundred brethren at once" who saw Christ, of Philip the evangelist, who wrought miracles, and of his daughters, who were inspired to prophesy. But without such qualifications he could not be an apostle; and accordingly an office to which they were essential is absolutely intransmissible. Secondly, Even in the functions common to an apostle with any successor, there was a peculiarity which bars appeal to the former as a precedent for Episcopacy; in preaching, the apostles spoke with the authority of inspiration, in ruling and ordaining they acted by commandment from the Lord, and more especially in all they did they sustained a relation, not to a diocese, but to the world. Thirdly, Separate the ordinary functions of their office from this peculiar element attaching to it, and there is nothing in them which a presbyter, according to Scripture, may not perform. Presbyters preached, governed, dispensed the sacraments, and, as in the case of Timothy, ordained. Lastly, If bishops are the substitutes for infallible apostles, submission to their authority must be essential to salvation. One apostle tell us, "He is not of God who heareth not us." If there be no salvation beyond the pale of Episcopal jurisdiction, neither can there be any faith, any holiness, any true religion.
A theory must be erroneous which, by logical necessity, involves a conclusion at variance with the facts of history and observation as well as the dictates of Christian charity.
On such grounds, Presbyterians contend that no office corresponding to a diocesan bishopric has the sanction of Scripture. They go further, and maintain that there is the clearest evidence of the identity of the bishop with the presbyter in the apostolic church. For, in the first place, the titles of presbyter and bishop are used indiscriminately and convertible in reference to the same persons. Thus, in Acts xx. 17-28, the "elders" whom Paul sent for to Mile-tus, are addressed by him as "bishops;" and among the qualities required of "the presbyters" whom Titus, under the instructions of the same apostle, was to ordain, it is said "a bishop must be blameless." (Tit. i. 5-7.) This convertibility of the two terms continued, according to Neander, till far on in the second century. Reference also is made (Phil. i. 1) to "bishops and deacons." Unless in this salutation to the bishops presbyters are addressed, how are we to explain the omission of the intermediate office, while a plurality of "bishops" in one church is incompatible with the idea that any diocesan jurisdiction belonged to each? In the epistles of Clemens Romanus, the same enumeration of but two offices in the church occurs. To the same effect is another argument, that the office-bearer who receives the name επισκοπος in Scripture is uniformly represented as superintending, not presbyters, but the congregation; "take heed to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops (επισκοπος)." (Acts xx. 28; 1 Pet. v. 2, 3.) Moreover, the same qualifications are exacted both of bishops and presbyters. It is only needful to compare 1 Tim. iii. 2-7 with Tit. i. 6-10, in order to feel persuaded that the apostle speaks of the same office under the title bishop in the former case, and presbyter in the latter; and hence the reasoning of Jerome (Ep. 53, ad Oceanum); "in both epistles, whether bishops or presbyters (although among the ancients bishops and presbyters must have been the same, for the one name is expressive of rank, and the other of age), the husbands of one wife are required to be chosen to the sacred office." In the apostolic church bishops and presbyters had a common ordination (Acts xx. 17-28; Tit. i. 5-7). Their duties, too, are identical; the terms expressive of the highest rule being applied to the presbyters (Heb. xiii. 7, 17; 1 Thess. v. 12; Acts xx. 28); while not only did they administer the ordinances of the church, but they occupied a place in its highest councils (Acts xv. 23). Nor is it difficult to prove that presbyters in the church of the apostles had full power to ordain. Nowhere in the manifold directions given to presbyters does a single inhibition occur against the exercise of this right. There is nothing in the nature of it on account of which presbyters should be deprived of it. The employment of six different terms in the New Testament to express ordination is inconsistent with the supposition that it denotes anything more than simply setting apart to official duty, or that it is an act so very peculiar as to require a particular and superior office in order to its performance. To adduce instances in which apostles and evangelists ordained, is not to prove that presbyters were prohibited from doing so; while in the case of Apollos (Acts xviii. 27), and even of Paul himself, whether at Damascus or at Antioch, no trace whatever of a diocesan bishop appears as the source of the official commissions which on these occasions they received. But the ordination of Timothy is directly traced to the court of the presbyters. (1 Tim. iv. 14.) Calvin, at first doubtful as to the import of the term "presbyter," and disposed in his Institutions to leave it uncertain whether it denoted an office or a court, comes ultimately, in his commentary on the passage, to a decided conclusion in favour of the latter meaning. Should it signify an office, and if we are to read in connection "the gift of the presbyterial office," it destroys the argument for Episcopacy from the functions of Timothy. He was after all a presbyter and no bishop. But it is an admitted canon in exegesis that we must interpret any term according to the analogy of the other instances in which it occurs. "Presbyter" never signifies an office; twice elsewhere it signifies a council. Its application to presbyters in their associated capacity is therefore perfectly natural and legitimate. It might be added that, by several incidental allusions, yielding inferences not less strong because indirect, the character and authority of the presbyterial office as supreme and permanent are strikingly confirmed: no bishops are mentioned in connection with the council at Jerusalem; collections for the poor in that city are transmitted not to bishops, but to "presbyters;" and apostles, when they indicate their status in regard to the common standing offices of the church, deem it an honour to be enrolled in the rank of presbyters. (1 Pet. v. 2.)
Presbyterians do not shrink from the admission, that dioecesan Episcopacy began early, spread rapidly, and seems to have obtained general prevalence before the civil establishment of Christianity in the Roman empire. Before the expiration of the apostolic period, a much more serious departure from the simple order and purity of the primitive church was noticed and denounced both by Paul and John (2 Thess. ii. 7; 1 John iv. 3). It is not so very wonderful, therefore, that, as regards this part of ecclesiastical polity, the craving for pre-eminence, so natural to the hu- man bosom, should have speedily suggested and introduced innovations upon the original parity of the eldership. Meeting occasionally for deliberation on the interests of the several churches within a city or province, the presbyters would adopt the mode common to all assemblies of securing order by appointing a president. Talent, weight of character, and mature experience, would be the gifts likely to determine their choice. Successful presidency in one meeting might establish a claim to re-election in subsequent meetings, till elevation to the chair on such occasions became a dignity for a lifetime. Other elements came into play as the church pursued its course of degeneracy; ambition tempted the clergy to swell by adventitious pomp the importance of their office; the claim to priesthood was preferred; and ecclesiastical arrangements took shape from the gradation of offices which the Jewish Church seemed to exhibit, and from the difference of rank in the cities where a pastorate was exercised, till the whole system, beginning with parochial episcopacy as the first step, was completely developed in the spiritual monarchy of Rome.
Nor is this explanation of the rise of Episcopacy reckoned a mere theory by the friends of Presbyterianity. It rests, in their judgment, upon authenticated facts and the testimony of the early fathers. Passages could be cited from several fathers, and from the decrees of councils, from which it is undeniable that the episcopate could not have originally extended beyond one church. In a single territory of small extent, so many bishops are represented as labouring and teaching, that their jurisdiction could not have exceeded the limits of a parish; for in Africa alone, according to Du Pin, 690 bishoprics are specified in ancient documents; and some bishops had nothing more as their diocese than a small village, a single fortress, or a solitary monastery, or cities even where no Christians at all permanently resided. Upon this humble rudiment of ecclesiastical authority, the higher pretensions and wider rule of prelatic supremacy were established. Presbyterians appeal to Augustine and Hilary in support of their views, but more especially to Jerome in his commentaries on Titus i. 5. The following is an analytic review of the contents of the important statement which that learned father makes:—1. Jerome expressly denies the superiority of bishops to presbyters by divine right. To prove his assertion on this head, he goes directly to the Scriptures, and argues, as the advocates of parity do, from the interchangeable titles of bishop and presbyter; from the directions given to them, without the least intimation of difference in their authority; and from the powers of presbyters, undisputed in his day. 2. Jerome states it as an historical fact, that this government, by presbyters alone, continued until, for the avoiding of scandalous quarrels and divisions, it was thought expedient to alter it. 3. Jerome states it as a historical fact, that this change in the government of the church, this creation of a superior order of ministers, took place not at once, but by degrees—'paedatim,' says he, 'little by little.' 4. Jerome states as historical facts, that the elevation of one presbyter over the others was a human contrivance; was not imposed by authority, but crept in by custom; and that the presbyters of his day knew this very well. 5. Jerome states it as a historical fact, that the first bishops were made by the presbyters themselves, and consequently they could neither have nor communicate any authority above that of presbyters." (See Dr Mason's Works, vol. iii.) The words of Jerome are very pointed when he urges the antithesis between the origin of the episcopate and those ordinances, the divine authority of which was not questioned; he opposes the "consuetudo ecclesiae" to "dispositionis dominicæ veritas"—the custom of the church to a real enactment of our Lord. It is a weighty circumstance, moreover, not to be overlooked, that in his reasoning he does not found upon any individual opinion of his own, but upon facts of which he speaks as universally admitted and beyond denial.
To meet this remarkable corroboration of the Presbyterian theory respecting the origin of Episcopal jurisdiction, three arguments have been commonly advanced by the defenders of Episcopacy,—1. That the gradual process of which Jerome speaks was coincident with apostolic times, and the change, therefore, had apostolic sanction; 2. That Jerome elsewhere, in a letter to Evagrius, reserves for bishops in ancient times the right of ordination, and so concedes the essential distinction between their office and that of the presbyter; and 3. That, at the close of the latter passage, he seems to allude to some parallel between the threefold order in the Jewish hierarchy and the different offices of the ministry under the new dispensation. Presbyterians have felt no difficulty in obviating the force of all these pleas. The premis of the first has been peremptorily denied. Jerome could not mean a process transpiring under the eye and authority of the apostles. To prove the original identity of bishops and presbyters, he quotes from three epistles of the New Testament. The fact of such identity must have existed in the age when the apostles wrote them; but the force of his reasoning would have been thoroughly neutralized if the change by which the bishop was advanced above the presbyter took place in the same age, and claimed as high a sanction as the previous condition of parity. One of the epistles cited bears a very late date in the history of Paul. As to the alleged reservation by Jerome of the Episcopal prerogative in respect to ordination, the clause upon which the allegation is founded occurs in his letter to Evagrius, where he argues the duty of the deacon to be subject to the presbyter on the high ground that, by express apostolical arrangement and commission, the presbyter originally had as much power as the bishop. Even as to the existing usage of the church in his own day, he affirms that there is no difference between the offices, except as to the prerogative of ordination. "Quid facit, excepta ordinatione, episcopus quod non faciat presbyter?" To suppose that the affirmation implied in this query relates to the primitive church, and not exclusively to the church of his own day, is inconsistent with the mere grammar of the words, as well as with the basis of his whole argument—the complete identity of the two offices in primitive times. And, lastly, as to the clause in the same letter,—"Seeing we know that the apostolical traditions were taken from the Old Testament: what Aaron and his sons and the Levites were in the temple, that let bishops and presbyters and deacons claim to be in the church,"—it is clear that, since the whole drift of the letter is to prove that bishop and presbyter were the same originally, and that the distinction arose not as an apostolical tradition, but from the customs of the church,—the two offices of presbyter or bishop, and deacon, as a divine institute, are here represented as corresponding with the offices of the priesthood and the Levites under the old dispensation. In any other sense, the statements of the learned father would embrace an unaccountable contradiction.
II. If, in the office of presbyter, the Head of the church has made provision for its due government, in the representative element, there is a sure guarantee for its liberty. As the church is not a democratic mob, so it is remote from being a despotic autocracy. It is the remark of Bunten, that in all congregational and ecclesiastical constitutions, Christian freedom, within limits conformable to Scripture, constitutes the first requisite for a vital restoration. How far the Presbyterian system embodies the needful securities for freedom as well as order, must be briefly indicated.
1. Presbyterians deny that all church power vests exclusively in the clergy. The clergy exist for the church; the church does not exist for the clergy: "unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry." (West. Conf. of Faith, xxv. 3.) While they believe that the proper and primary subject of church power is the eldership, and that it comes to them in immediate donation from the Head of the church, still the power is to be exercised for the good of the church; government is a blessing conferred upon it as a whole; and in all that relates to the formation of symbols, liturgical service, the enactment of canons for the ends of order and harmony, and the administration of discipline the people are entitled to a share in the government, real and substantive, although indirect, and under the two formal limitations, that it be in consistency with Scripture, and exercised through regular office-bearers duly qualified and appointed.
2. Such a recognition of the people is sanctioned by the spirit of numerous references to them in Scripture, according to which they, not the clergy, are the church; the Spirit dwells in them, as in the clergy, for light and guidance; "the whole church," as well as the "apostles and elders," is represented as giving certain commissions, and transmitting certain decrees (Acts xv. 22, 23; 2 Cor. viii. 19); they are held responsible for the teaching to which they listen (Gal. i. 8), and for the character of the members admitted to the privileges of the church (1 Cor. v. 4).
3. Provision for the expression of this influence, and the fulfilment of this responsibility, is made,—first, in the terms on which the pastoral tie is formed; and, secondly, in the existence of a ruling, as distinguished from the teaching eldership. In regard to the former, the degree of popular control over the appointment of ministers varies. In all churches, where the state does not interfere, the privilege of choosing the minister is left with the people. Even when election by suffrage has not been the rule, the intrusion of an unacceptable minister has been condemned, as, for instance, in the Second Book of Discipline, prepared for the Scottish Church in 1581. Such a right in behalf of the people has been argued from the essential genius of presbytery, from the general tenor of Scripture in all the passages which narrate the appointment of ecclesiastical office-bearers (Acts i. 15-26; vi. 1-6; xiv. 23), as well as those in which the nature of the bond between the rulers and the ruled is described; and from the historical fact that, however rapidly corruption spread in the church, the right of the people to an effective share in the appointment of their ministers withstood for ages the swelling tide of clerical encroachment. On this last point the best authorities on ecclesiastical history are quite at one. "Cyprian," Neander tells us, "conceded to the community the right of choosing worthy bishops, or of rejecting unworthy ones. This conceded right of approving or rejecting was not a mere formality." Secondly, The existence of the ruling eldership serves also to elicit the mind of the people in the practical administration of ecclesiastical affairs. That a ruling is distinguished from a teaching eldership in Scripture, though the distinction involves nothing more than two functions in the same office, appears from the emphasis with which the duty of the ruler is particularized (Rom. xii. 6-8); from the separate place it holds in the inspired enumeration of gifts and offices in the church (1 Cor. xii. 28); from the express discrimination instituted in 1 Tim. v. 17; and from the plurality of elders admitted to have existed in the primitive churches. Neander states that, as the faculty of teaching and the talent for administration are distinct gifts, "the function of teaching, and that of church-government, were originally distinguished and held separate from each other." It is added, "in the first epistle to Timothy (v. 17), those of the presbyters who, to the talent for government could unite also that of teaching, are accounted worthy of double honour, and the prominence given here to each may be regarded as another proof that the two were not necessarily and always united." An historical argument for the Theory, ruling eldership is also urged from various statements in the fathers. Such a class of functionaries, chosen by the people, and identified with them in all the affairs of common life, are an absolute prevention against the rise of a clerical oligarchy, with supreme and unchecked power over the church.
III. There are certain rights, in the possession of which each congregation must not be disturbed. It has the power for the of discipline and the right of jurisdiction within itself; so unity of that, in the case of a congregation standing alone, where circumstances do not admit of connection with other congregations in the form of subjection to a common and superior jurisdiction, it has the free use of all its powers for the purposes of education and extension. When united, too, with other congregations, the authority to which it becomes amenable is not privative in the sense of curtailing its privileges, but cumulative in the way of increasing them. In virtue of the spiritual life animating the members of the church, and just in proportion to the intensity with which it operates, there will be the instinctive desire of association in common bonds and duties. It is believed that the general theory of the church to be gathered from all in Scripture relating to it, leads to the conclusion, that it is not to be a congeries of separate and detached communities, but one body, and that certain general principles are indicated through which the formal exhibition of this unity may be rendered obvious to the world. As the ethics of Scripture supply us only with leading principles for our guidance, and waive minute questions of casuistry; so, in the polity of the church, the arrangements for the manifestation of its external unity are indicated by some fundamental considerations which may require skill and caution in the proper evolution of them; but, in their generality, leave us some measure of freedom in the adjustment of ecclesiastical polity to local wants and temporary exigencies.
Among the arguments adduced in proof of the obligation to promote and secure this outward manifestation of unity, it is common to insist upon the nature of the church. It is not merely represented as one,—one in creed and privilege, and hope,—but the oneness attributed to it springs from the workings of the same Spirit into which all its members are baptized. As the vital principle seeks at once embodiment and development in an organism appropriate to its special ends and instincts; so the saints, as the instinctive dictate of their spiritual nature, entwine their affections around each other in a common brotherhood; and the same principle which induces them to coalesce in one locality for public acts of faith, binds them to seek union on the basis of a more extended confederacy. The principle is of importance, as tending both to check the pride of sectarian isolation and to discriminate the true church from the false. Wherever there is an indisposition to acknowledge true membership,—real connection with the body of Christ,—in a character rich in the best fruits of faith, because, in deference to the higher principles of unity, such a Christian repudiates some nominal badge of it, imposed merely by human authority, the first law of Christian order is violated which enjoins us to establish Christian fellowship upon one basis—"the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace." In other words, the denial of the reality of Christian character, however clearly attested, beyond our own pale, is schism and something worse. Surely, therefore, some constitutional provision must exist in the church by which an isolation, practically tantamount to so great an error, is avoided, and Christians in other congregations besides our own may be recognized as such. Secondly, The duties enjoined upon the members of the church imply reciprocal obligations and common action beyond the limits of a single congregation. In witnessing for the truth, History, in the endeavour to secure a well-qualified ministry, in the jealous vigilance that must be exercised to secure purity of communion, and in the diffusion of the gospel, especially among the heathen, the same law which obliges us, for the sake of combined action, to defer to the judgment of brethren in one congregation, binds us to the same exercise of self-control in regard to all the congregations which may be willing to associate with us. It is impossible to see how some of these ends can be promoted, except by subordination to a common jurisdiction, either permanent and authoritative, or special and by agreement; but to meet an abiding necessity, it holds to reason that the constitution of the church should embody a standing provision. Thirdly, All the views given us of the primitive church proceeded upon the supposition of a unity pervading it, and linking its members, not to one congregation in Jerusalem, but to all congregations on the earth. The apostles exercised a common authority over them all, and so constituted them from the first that they were not separate and independent, but so united as to be capable of being denominated one church. This, in the judgment of Presbyterians, is obvious, from the single fact that, though in Jerusalem, Ephesus, and Corinth, there were several congregations, all believers in these cities are sometimes spoken of as one church (1 Cor. i. 2; xiv. 34). Fourthly, The precise form in which this unity was practically realized was through courts of review (Acts xx). The main features of the transaction there recorded are,—a reference from a particular church to a council assembled elsewhere, a decree passed as the result of consultation, and the obligation asserted of that decree upon all churches. The inquiry, as indicated by the narrative and the decision, related not to a matter of fact on which information was sought, but to a question of principle on which the council assumed its own authority to pronounce. Nor is the decree to be explained merely as the utterance of inspiration; for on this ground the dispute could have been settled at once by Paul at Antioch. The transaction is best understood as the warrant by which a new privilege was conferred on the church, and a new development of its organic power was sanctioned in accordance with the obvious necessities of its growth,—namely, unity, in the form of several congregations ranged under a common jurisdiction.
History of Presbyterianism.
In the belief of Presbyterians, it was only after the lapse of two centuries that diocesan Episcopacy became the prevailing form of government in the Christian church. The instances of the Presbyterian government in succeeding centuries belong rather to the department of the historical argument in its favour, and involve details, the full review of which is beyond our limits. On the authority of Philostorgius, it is alleged that the Gothic churches, till the time of Ulphilas, were under Presbyterian government. The case of Bavaria has sometimes been adduced as a decided instance in which this form of government obtained from the year 540 till the pontificate of Zachary in 740. In his letter, still extant, to Boniface Moyant, Zachary seems to affirm that, before he had imposed Vivilo upon that province as its bishop, the presbyters in it had not received Episcopal ordination. The expressions of Zachary, however, may be interpreted as signifying little more than that it was uncertain by whom the Bavarian presbyters were ordained. Lechler holds that the Presbyterian system was not borrowed by the Reformers from the Waldenses, inasmuch as no trace of the eldership can be proved to have existed amongst them in ancient times. This position is scarcely tenable; for the essential character of Presbyterianism is not absolutely dependent upon the existence of this class of functionaries, even on the supposition, which has been denied, that, as it exists amongst the Waldenses now, it is an innovation upon their ancient polity; while, on the testimony of their own historians, as well as according to the earliest Romish authorities, Reinerus, Seyssel, Aeneas Sylvius, and Bellarmine, it is clear that they distinctly repudiated a hierarchy—any grade of office superior to the presbyter. Seyssel, the first archbishop of Turin, describes their system in a treatise which he published in 1520, after he had visited that part of his diocese, and his testimony clearly excludes all higher authority than the presbyter:—"Those whom they judge to be the best amongst them, they appoint to be their priests (that is, presbyters), to whom upon all occasions they have recourse, as to the vicars and successors of the apostles." "They deny," says Aeneas Sylvius, "the hierarchy; maintaining that there is no difference among the priests by reason of dignity of office." The letter of Morel, a Waldensian minister, to Oecolampadius, in 1530, mentions a general council of these presbyters, by which the ecclesiastical affairs of the community were regulated.
In the various countries to which the influence of the Reformation extended, the constitution of the Protestant churches was modified by the degree of freedom which they enjoyed. In proportion as they were left free from the control of the state in establishing their polity and order, the tendency in the first instance was to the Presbyterian model. The Lutheran churches mostly in the end adopted the consistorial system; the Reformed churches the Presbyterian system; but the statement must be qualified by the admission of some exceptions. At Zurich, the church, though one of the Reformed, was scarcely Presbyterian; while in Saxony the Reformers yielded only to the pressure of circumstances in accepting the consistorial system. There is accordingly a difference between the theoretic views of Luther, and their practical development. Proceeding upon the principle of the universal priesthood of believers, he held that ecclesiastical rights and functions pertained primarily to the church; in the exercise of discipline, he procured the co-operation of lay members as advisers; and in 1523 he counselled the Bohemians to elect their own pastors and bishops. Such, however, was the general ignorance of the times, that his chief object was to institute meanwhile a system for instruction in sound doctrine. He derived greater assistance from the princes and the magistrates in settling and governing the church than from the people, who as yet were scarcely so enlightened as to be entrusted with the responsibilities of government. Nothing can be more emphatic than Luther's condemnation of magistratal interference with spiritual affairs; but the arrangement to which he submitted, as all that was practicable at first, became the rule for the organization of the church. The civil authorities were slow to surrender the control they had thus acquired over it. The consistories, moreover, though originally church-courts for ecclesiastical affairs, gradually lost their strictly ecclesiastical character. At Leipzig, in 1547, it was decreed by an assembly of the estates that the consistories should administer secular as well as spiritual matters. The fundamental idea of the consistorial system is the transference from the Romish bishops to the civil ruler of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, so far as consistent with liberty of conscience, and with the jura ordinis peculiar to the clerical office. On this principle, the members of consistories are appointed by the state. The consistorial system, therefore, has simply these two points of affinity with presbytery; it embodies indirectly a representation of the laity, and it is based upon Luther's rejection of any office superior to the presbyter; for, though to the present day, the Lutheran Church employs the services of superintendents, their office is based on mere expediency,
1 Geschichte der Presbyterial, und Synodalverfassung seit der Reformation, Leiden, 1854. not on the authority of Scripture or the precedents of antiquity; they confer only Presbyterian ordination; they do not necessarily continue in their position for life; and their reports as to the spiritual condition of their districts must be rendered to the consistories, from whom also they receive directions on all affairs of higher moment.
The consistorial system was modified according to provincial exigencies, but we need only glance at those cases in which a greater approximation was made to the cardinal principles of Presbytery. Brenz, in 1526, erected in the free imperial city of Halle in Saxony a form of church-government, in which an eldership of pious men was conjoined with the pastorate in the superintendence of the congregations, but the right of appointing them to their office was left with the magistracy, if evangelical, in the German sense of that term,—in other words, if belonging to the Protestant church. At the synod of Homberg, in the same year, Francis Lambert proposed a scheme of provincial synods, consisting of the pastors and a deputy from each congregation. The system was synodal rather than presbyterial in character, and was never established, as Luther, on being consulted respecting it, deemed the people as yet incapable of self-government. In 1539, however, the office of elder was introduced into the Hessian church, but the circumstance did not lead to any representation of the popular mind and will in the higher ecclesiastical courts. After a lengthened struggle with the civil authorities, John à Lasco, in 1544, succeeded in erecting Presbyterian church-government at Emden, and the flourishing Reformed church of East Friesland was the result of his labours. The substance of his system may be gathered from the form of government drawn up for the German congregation in London, with which he was afterwards connected. He recognised only two offices, the eldership and the deacons; but the former comprehended two classes, the teaching and the ruling elders. From a list nominated by the congregation the consistory elected those whom they regarded as fittest for office. The advance which à Lasco made upon Calvin's system, as established at Geneva three years before the erection of Presbyterian government at Emden, consists in the identification of the clerical office with that of the eldership, in the recognition of the consistory as the organ of the whole congregation, and in the power secured for the people in elections. The same accomplished Pole was afterwards called to Frankfort, and under his influence Presbyterianism gained a footing in that city. In the palatinate the accession of the elector Frederick III. to the Reformed confession, led to the introduction of a new ecclesiastical polity about the close of the sixteenth century. It was a combination of the consistorial and Presbyterian systems; each congregation had over it a presbytery, consisting of the pastor, and under his presidency, of censors, elected by the ecclesiastical authorities for the maintenance of order and discipline; over the whole national church a council, appointed by the elector, presided, composed of three divines and three civil councillors, and holding its meetings at Heidelberg; subordinate to this council were superintendents in each of the dioceses, and the clergy, along with the superintendents, met in conventions. The persecution of Alva drove from the Netherlands several refugees, who carried with them into the regions of the Lower Rhine their attachment to Presbyterianism. In 1566 a conference held at Wesel issued in the affirmation of the divine right of the eldership—a principle which was more formally enunciated anew by a great synod at Emden in 1571. Arrangements were also made for quarterly meetings of the presbytery, provincial synods annually, and general synods biennially. The system thus established continues in a great measure to the present day. To some extent Presbyterianism was introduced into Westphalia in 1588; and ten years earlier, the province of Nassau enjoyed the full benefit of Presbyterian government and discipline. The subsequent history of Presbyterianism in the German churches is too complicated and various to admit of concise explanation and detail. It is marked by the growing predominance of the consistorial element rather than by any changes in its territorial influence, and the system thus developed has proportionally less claim to be noticed in any historical review of genuine Presbytery. Although in 1835 Presbytery was restored to the churches in Westphalia and the Rhenish provinces, the consistory was engrafted upon the ancient constitution. As monarchy consolidated and extended its influence in Prussia, supreme power became more and more vested in the crown, while pure ecclesiastical authority sank into abeyance. To the extent in which it loses its authority, a church ceases to be representative in government, and by consequence ceases to be Presbyterian. From time to time voices have been raised in vigorous advocacy of the rights and claims of Presbyterianism; and amongst these defenders of the system Lechler specifies Spener, Schleiermacher, and Neander. Excluded from all share in the government of the church, the laity manifest indifference to its external interests. Any desire for the revival of the Presbyterian elements in its constitution has been ascribed more to political motives than to the conviction which chiefly enlisted the early Reformers in its favour,—namely, that when it was properly wrought, no system so effectually secured the church against the admission of the irreligious and unworthy into her communion.
Traces of Presbyterianism are to be found in the history of the churches which arose in consequence of the Reformation beyond Germany. The Slavic race indicated generally a preference for the doctrine and government of the Reformed rather than of the Lutheran Church. The first Polish evangelical synod met at Plockow in October 1550. According to the annotations of Comenius on the Book of Order, adopted by the Bohemian brethren in 1616, presbyter is a word applied by the apostles "not only to pastors, but to their assistants in watching the flock, who do not labour in word and doctrine;" while the Book of Order itself affirms that, according to the apostles, "presbyter and bishop are one and the same thing." On the same model the Moravian churches were constituted, with a slight admixture of Episcopacy, to the extent of preferring ordination by bishops, though ordination in the Reformed Church was deemed equally valid; and the bishops, far from enjoying the supreme direction of ecclesiastical affairs, were subordinate to a court of elders. In Hungary every congregation originally had a pastor and lay inspector, chosen by the suffrages of the members. There was a gradation of courts, senatorial meetings, provincial conventions, and a general assembly. Synodical action of this kind has been in operation since 1564. But recently, since the abortive effort at emancipation from Austrian despotism, the liberties of the Hungarian Church have been suppressed. Its affairs are administered consistorially; in other words, by men whom the government nominates to the office.
In Switzerland the system of government, devised by Zwinglie for Zurich, according to which ecclesiastical affairs were entrusted to the care of the magistrate, provided he was a Christian, so that practically the Council of Two Hundred, in the name of the church, administered its affairs, was extended to Berne, St Gall, and Schaffhausen. Ecclampsius proposed a scheme for Basle, in which elders, some of whom were elected by the people, were conjoined with the ministers for the purposes of discipline. After certain essential modifications by the state, so as to restrict still further the independent action of the church, it passed into a law. But in connection with Switzerland, it is of chief importance that we attend to the Presbyterian model as instituted by Calvin at Geneva. And here, too, as in the case of Luther, the difference must be noted between his theory of church-government as he expounded it theoretically, and as it was actually carried into effect or developed in practice. Two leading principles gave shape to the system of polity instituted by this great Reformer. He founded it upon a scriptural basis; and he saw clearly how indispensable a sound species of government was to the maintenance of order and purity in the church. Presbytery commended itself to him as the best form of rule for the preservation of discipline. His system is sketched in two paragraphs of his Institutes. Nothing can be more lucid and concise than his statement (Institut., lib. iv., cap. xi., sect. 11), in which he unfolds the primary object of ecclesiastical rule, "ut scandalibus obviam eatur,"—in other words, the purity of the church; the precise character of it as wholly spiritual, "ut a jure gladii proscripta lase spiritualis potentias;" and the scriptural mode of it by Presbytery, "ne unius arbitrio sed per legemim consensum administretur." In reference to the second principle, he states expressly, "severissima ecclesiae vindicta et quasi ultimum fulmen est excommunicatio,"—weighty and pregnant words indeed, as not only claiming independence for the church, but establishing on a solid ground all that is precious in religious liberty! All he asks is the right which must be conceded to every association established for a religious or benevolent purpose, that it should be left free to prescribe its terms of admission, and to enforce compliance with them in the case of flagrant and persistent contumacy by expulsion. He prohibits the church from resorting to "mulctis, vel carcerebus, vel aliis civilibus poenis." Still further, to guard religious liberty, he vests the jurisdiction of the church not in the clergy alone, but in a presbytery ("senatus presbyterorum") composed of two classes, the teaching and the ruling elders: "Alii ad docendum erant ordinati, aliique morum censores duxerant." These quotations are enough to fix beyond question what Calvin's theory of church-government really was, while they show the spirit in which he viewed the whole subject,—as involving the only system on which the seal of divine authority is impressed for preserving, in consistency with freedom and the rights of conscience, the interests of true religion and pure morality.
It is of no consequence to affirm that Calvin made no provision for synodal action. He states the essence of his theory, which by no means excludes a grade of ecclesiastical courts superior to the presbyteries or sessions; and he admits that much in the development of his theory must be left to circumstances. The scheme which he drew up for the French Church includes courts of review. Geneva was too small to require more than a presbytery. Nor is there the least ground for the allegation, that because he used the language of friendly compliment to the church of England, he ever departed from his own principles as early recorded in the Institutes. In his commentary upon Acts xx., one of his latest works, written not long before his death, he states that, "according to Scripture, presbyters differed in no respect from bishops, but that it arose from corruption and a departure from primitive purity, that those who held the first seats in particular cities began to be called bishops."
Calvin was sorely thwarted and trammelled in the endeavour to establish his system in Geneva. The civil authorities were jealous of any rival sway, however carefully discriminated from their own; while the spawn of error and corruption, which the disorders of preceding times had produced, had given rise to the party of the Libertines, who were determined to oppose any system which had for its main object the establishment of better morals. It is difficult to say what might have been the result had Calvin's theory been fully carried out, and had his great principle—the spiritual nature of church power—enjoyed full honour and free scope. The community, under the influence of this truth, would have been trained to feel that civil penalties are not the weapons by which error is to be met; and Servetus, in spite of Calvin, if we assume his direct complicity in the sad transaction, might have been saved from the flames. As a condition of his return to Geneva, Calvin stipulated for the institution of the eldership. The "ecclesiastical ordinances" which ultimately, in 1541, received the sanction of the council, recognised the office of the elders, the nomination of whom lay with the little council and the pastors, while their appointment to the actual exercise of the office, if the persons nominated were found worthy, was vested in the Council of Two Hundred. In two respects the arrangement deviated from the theoretical convictions of Calvin. There was a confusion of the civil with spiritual power in the control which the council thus retained over the election of the presbyters; and another restriction, according to which the members of the council only were eligible to the sacred office, still further violated the autonomy with which Scripture has invested the church. No claim can be urged for Calvin as first broaching the theory of Presbyterian rule; but the twofold merit which Lechler ascribes to him cannot well be denied. He first unfolded the idea of it as a lucid theory, or rather a practical system; and secondly, at the cost of a severe struggle, established it in actual operation in Geneva. The sphere of its influence in that small community might not be great; but the reformation of manners, which, by the verdict of all candid history, is wrought, is the best tribute to its praise; while, as the model upon which the Reformed Church in France and other countries was formed, its nature should be clearly understood.
The Reformed Church spread rapidly in France, and France, from the first it was Presbyterian. So early as 1561 no fewer than 2150 congregations belonged to it; and according to L'Hospital, one-fourth of the nation had seceded from the communion of the Church of Rome. In the year 1555 a meeting of the Protestants in Paris took place; they agreed to elect a minister, elders, and deacons. The example was followed in other towns of importance. In spite of extreme danger, under the very shadow of the gibbets reared for their destruction, deputies belonging to eleven churches of the Reformed faith met in a general synod at Paris. They agreed on a Confession of Faith, and a form of government; the authorship of the latter is ascribed to Calvin. According to this constitution, each congregation had its consistory of elders, the members of which were in the first instance elected by the congregation. Vacancies, however, were filled up by the consistory itself, though the approval of the congregation was essential in every appointment. The election of the pastors was entrusted to the colloquy or provincial synod, subject to a similar check on the part of the people. "If any objection is made," says De Felice, "it must be laid before the bodies who are charged with the choice of the pastors. In no case can an appointment be made in opposition to the vote of the majority." Colloquies met twice a year, embracing one pastor and one elder from each church represented. Provincial synods, comprehending the churches of a wider district, but similarly constituted, assembled once a year. The national synod was composed of two pastors and two elders from each of the inferior synods. The first national synod was held at Paris in 1559; the twenty-ninth, or last, at Loudun in 1669. Permission to assemble has never been granted since. By the law of the 18th Germinal, 1802, five or six churches were placed in subordination to a consistory, nominated in the first instance by the five-and-twenty Protestants of the district who contributed most to the public taxes. No right of election or of veto was reserved for the people. Instead of provincial synods, synods "d'arrondissement" were established, consisting of deputies from five of these consistories. One only—at La Drome, in 1850
History. —has ever met. Considerable changes were made by the decree of March 10, 1832. Instead of the consistory presiding over five or six churches, there is appointed by the decree a presbyteral council for each parish, consisting of a pastor as president, and not less than four or more than seven elders, elected by the people. In the principal towns of a district, general consistories are held, composed of all the pastors and a certain number of delegates chosen by the parishes. Both in regard to the presbyteral councils and the general consistories, half the members comprising them are subject to re-election every three years. There is above all these courts a central Protestant council, composed of the two senior pastors in Paris, and fifteen members nominated by the state in the first instance. The property qualification previously required is abolished. In the year 1838 there were 617 pastors of the Reformed Church in France; the number adhering to the Confession of Augsburg was 273. The funds assigned for the support of the Protestant churches by government amounted to 1,375,936 francs. Besides the churches supported by the state, there are about 120 pastors of other congregations, 27 of whom are connected with "the Union of Evangelical Churches," which are Presbyterian in their forms of government and discipline.
The first Dutch provincial synod was held in 1574 at Dort. It adopted the Emblem Articles, which conjoined elders with pastors in the government of the church. The state, however, withheld its sanction, and for a long period there was a struggle between the two; the state seeking Erastian control, the church intent on acquiring freedom of action for spiritual ends. The result was, that in despair of establishing a comprehensive national system, each province erected an ecclesiastical constitution for itself, according to the influences that chiefly preponderated in it. Presbyterianism universally prevailed, but it was Presbyterianism in express subjection to civil magistracy. The co-ordinate jurisdiction of the Calvinistic theory was never realized.
The synod of Dort in 1618, among the other questions which it had been convened to discuss and settle, took up the point of church government, and emitted a strong declaration in favour of Presbytery. Down to 1795 there were seven distinct ecclesiastical republics more or less under the power of the state, with no organic bond of connection but correspondence by deputations in the provincial synods. In 1816, under royal sanction, a constitution for the whole church was established, embracing provision for a national synod. Some changes ensued in 1852; but the general result has been, that the national church is now divided into forty-three classes, under ten provincial circuits, comprehending in all, according to the census of 1850, 1273 churches, 1508 ministers, and 1,651,661 souls.
Presbyterian writers mention a considerable variety of facts in evidence that their ecclesiastical polity is coeval with the primitive Christianity of Britain, and they exhibit a succession of testimonies in its favour, among others that of Wickliffe, down to the times of the Reformation. No doubt can be entertained that many of the founders of the Anglican Church had leanings to it. Cranmer held the identity of bishop and presbyter, and proposed at one time the erection of courts corresponding to the kirk-sessions and provincial synods afterwards established in Scotland. The martyr Lambert, in 1538, testified for ministerial parity. The Institution of a Christian Man, a book published in 1536, and not only recommended but subscribed by two archbishops and nineteen bishops, declares that there are "but two orders of clergy, and no one bishop has authority over another, according to the Word of God." The testimony of à Lasco is occasionally cited, in which he affirms that it was the intention of Edward VI. to alter and remodel the English Church according to apostolical purity; while the context clearly shows that, in the judgment of à Lasco, apostolical purity was substantially Presbyterian. Presbyterian ordination was freely acknowledged by the English divines of the period. Archbishop Grindal, in 1582, appointed Morison, ordained by the Church of Scotland, to pastoral duties within the diocese of Canterbury. When Bancroft, in 1588, first urged the plea of divine right for the superiority of bishops to presbyters, the learned Rainolds, in a letter to Sir P. Knollys, declared that the contrary doctrine of their equality was "the common judgment of the Reformed churches" and after naming them, he adds, "and our own." The early Puritans of England for the most part held Presbyterian views, though their dispute with the Established Church turned more upon certain rites and ceremonies in its worship. On the accession of Elizabeth, so early as 1566, several excellent divines, disappointed in their hope of a more thorough reformation, agreed "to break off from the public churches, and to assemble as they had opportunity in private houses and elsewhere, to worship God in a manner that might not offend against the light of their consciences." In the preamble to this conclusion, they allude, in evident concurrence with its principles, to "the book and order of preaching, administration of the sacrament, and discipline, that the great Mr Calvin had approved of." At length, in 1572, resolved on a more complete organization of their party, fifteen divines, with several influential laymen, met at Wandsworth, a village on the Thames, about four miles from London. Eleven elders were chosen, and their offices described in a register which is commonly known as "the orders of Wandsworth." In spite of the secrecy observed, the meeting of this presbytery came to be known. The members of it, however, could not be discovered. Associations on the same model were formed elsewhere. The clergy also, who were inclined to Presbyterian sentiments within the church, held voluntary meetings for mutual advice in associations perfectly akin to presbyteries and synods. The number pursuing this course amounted in 1586 to 300. There is less difficulty in determining the form of Presbyterian sentiment which at this time prevailed than its relative strength in the British community. A book, high in esteem among the Puritans, drawn up by Travers, printed at Geneva in 1574, and entitled Disciplina Ecclesiae sacra ex Dei verbo descripta, affords a clear and full exposition of their views. It suggests the erection of sessions composed of ministers and elders chosen by the people, and upon this inferior court is based a provision for provincial and national synods. By a singular feature in such documents, it proposes an ecumenical council comprehending representatives from every national synod. In proof of the extent to which an inclination for the Presbyterian polity prevailed, appeal has been made to a dialogue published in the reign of Elizabeth, according to which 100,000 are said to have been favourable to it. Of the three parties, Roman Catholic, Church of England, and Puritan, Hallam reckons that the Church of England was "the least numerous of the three." On the other hand, Fuller, in his graphic description of the state of parties, would lead us to a conclusion in favour of the Church of England as stronger than the Puritans. "Now, if Rebecca found herself strangely affected when twins struggled in her womb, the condition of the English Church must be conceived as that at the same time had two disciplines, both of them pleading Scripture and primitive practice, each striving to support itself and to suppress its rival,—the hierarchy commanded by authority, established by law, confirmed by general practice, and continued so long by custom in this land, that had one at this time lived to the age of Methuselah, he could not remember the beginning thereof in Britain; the presbytery, though wanting the stamp of authority, claiming to be the purer metal, founded by some clergy..." men, favoured by many of the gentry, and followed by more of the common sort, who, being prompted with that natural principle that the weakest side must be most watchful, what they wanted in strength they supplied in activity. But what won them most repose was their ministers' painful preaching in populous places; it being observed in England that those who hold the helm of the pulpit always steer people's hearts as they please." It is admitted that the strength of the Presbyterian interest was greatly increased through the reaction excited by the policy of Laud. Arminianism, distasteful to the mass of the clergy, obtained favour under his administration. The Calvinistic clergy, feeling that they could put no reliance on the bishops or the state, in order to check its spread, were the more eager to secure the erection of a Presbyterian polity, according to which the general mind of the church might obtain free expression and due influence. At length Presbyterianism was in the ascendant. In 1642 Episcopacy was abolished. The Westminster Assembly, convened by the Parliament in 1643, declared in favour of Presbytery after long and patient discussions. A struggle was made to procure from Parliament the recognition of it as of divine origin and authority; the Parliament contested itself with the acknowledgment of it as "lawful and agreeable to the Word of God." By a parliamentary order of March 1646, ruling elders were to be chosen in all the English congregations, while ecclesiastical judicatories were also to be created. The system was next year carried into effect in London and Lancashire. In 1648, with the exception of chapels for the king and peers, "all parishes and places whatsoever" were declared to be under Presbyterian government. On the accession of Cromwell to supreme power, the strength of Presbyterianism declined. It had a brief revival in 1660, when it was established anew by Parliament. On the Restoration, it gave place to Episcopacy, and more than 2000 ministers, nearly all Presbyterians, refusing to comply with the Act of Uniformity, were in 1662 expelled from the Established Church. Ever since this date Presbyterianism has been a distinct communion in England.
In common with other Dissenters, Presbyterians sustained no small persecution till the Revolution, when the Toleration Act in 1689 secured them considerable freedom. Their cause sprang elastic from the previous depression, and in less than thirty years they had more than 800 congregations in England, Yorkshire alone containing no fewer than 59. They represented fully two-thirds of the Dissenting interest. Various causes have been assigned for the rapid declension which, in the course of the next century, took place in their numerical strength. Arianism, ripening fast into Socinianism, spread amongst them, partly because subscription to the standards of the church was not enforced, and partly because Presbyterian government was not brought into complete and efficient operation. Such are the reasons at least commonly assigned for this lapse into heterodox tenets, but it must have had connection with some wider causes then at work by which all evangelical churches in Europe were similarly and at the same time affected. In London, at a meeting in Salters Hall, out of 110 present, 53 only voted in favour of requiring from ministers subscription to the doctrine of the Trinity. A division ensued,—one party exacting adherence by subscription to the first article of the Church of England, together with the fifth and sixth questions in the Shorter Catechism; the other resisting the imposition of any such term of communion, although they would commit themselves to no denial of the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. In Northumberland alone, where Presbytery continued to be most efficiently wrought, Socinianism was completely excluded from its congregations. The influence of such men as Lardner and Priestley naturally led their brethren in the ministry to make an avowal of Arian or Socinian views with the same boldness which marked the opposition of these distinguished men to orthodox doctrine. In proportion as Socinianism came to be freely published and declared from the pulpit, and the forms of Presbytery sunk into desuetude, multitudes in the Presbyterian congregations found, in the evangelical preaching to which they listened elsewhere, an attraction before which any regard for another polity was felt to be of subordinate importance. The spiritual activity of other churches, Methodists and Independents, absorbing into its own channel the life and zeal which found no scope elsewhere, contributed still further to reduce the strength of the Presbyterians. The number of their congregations, both orthodox and Unitarian, was estimated in 1812 as amounting to 270. In 1850 there were 217 Unitarian congregations; but as they have neither sessions over particular congregations, nor courts uniting them under a common jurisdiction, they cannot properly be designated Presbyterian. In the national census, they rank under the title "Unitarians." Still there are many congregations, especially in Northumberland, who trace their origin up to 1662, when they were formed under the labours of ministers ejected by the Act of Uniformity. But the chief form under which Presbyterianism now appears in England is in connection with Scotch churches of the same doctrine and polity. About 15 are in connection with the Established Church of Scotland, and 60 with the United Presbyterian Church, to the extent of being represented in its annual synod. A still larger body, numbering about 90 congregations, though it maintains friendly relations with the Free Church, made a declaration in 1844 claiming to be a separate and independent church, with its own theological seminary and supreme court. Never ecclesiastically incorporated with any other church, and abiding by the Westminster Standards, it represents the old Presbyterianism of England, however much its membership may be sustained by immigration from the north. Proposals have been sometimes made for a union between the two last-mentioned bodies, but hitherto without success. In Wales, the large body of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, with upwards of 800 chapels and nearly 60,000 communicants, are substantially Presbyterian.
The first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was held in 1560. Of the 40 members, 6 only were ministers. The same ministers who drew up the Confession of Faith, which the Parliament had already ratified, were appointed to prepare a scheme of government and discipline for the church. It was presented to the Assembly, which met early in 1561, and cordially adopted; but on being submitted to the Privy Council, though several nobles and burgesses in Parliament subscribed it, it was never ratified by the authority of the state. The church, however, continued to be guided by it, and a simple review of its provisions will show that the subsequent Presbyterianism of Scotland has always in substance embodied the leading elements of the system described in it. The ordinary offices established by it are four in number,—pastor, doctor, elder, and deacon. The duties of the pastor only differed from those of the doctor in the difference of the sphere in which they were exercised; the former relating chiefly to the interests of a particular congregation, while the latter office was rather exercised in schools and universities. The elder was the assistant of the pastor in government and discipline. Upon the deacon devolved the care of the poor and of the revenues of the church. Two extraordinary offices were also appointed:
1 Fuller's Church History, xvii., cent. A.D. 1588. readers, who, on the strength of a common education, could read the Scriptures to their ignorant neighbours, and who received the higher appellation of exhorters, if they were found qualified to follow up the reading of Scriptures with a plain and pious address. The other office was that of the superintendent, whose duty was to itinerate over a province, preaching the gospel, planting churches, and watching over the conduct of the pastors and readers. The election of the minister is distinctly entrusted to the people. Provision is made for the erection of four ecclesiastical courts: the kirk-session, consisting of pastor, elder, and deacon; a meeting called a presbytery, which afterwards merged into a presbytery, and which took under its charge several congregations of a district; provincial synods; and the General Assembly, in which ministers and elders, representing all the presbyteries throughout the kingdom, met for the administration of ecclesiastical affairs.
It will be observed that, though so far as it was Presbyterian, there could be no essential difference in this system from what had been instituted twenty years before in Geneva, there is really ground for the assertion of Row, that the Scotch Reformers "took not their example from any kirk in the world,—no, not from Geneva!" It was national rather than municipal in its scope and design. The device of superintendents, too, as "expedient for the time," to use the words of the Book of Discipline, indicated that the founders of this polity were not so tramelled by implicit deference to Genevan arrangements as to overlook the necessity of special adaptation to the wants and circumstances of their own country. Nor is there any ground for regarding these superintendents as in any sense bishops. Elected by the people, ordained by presbyters, acting only in concert with provincial synods, responsible for all their proceedings to the General Assembly, and ceasing when presbyterian organization throughout the land was sufficiently complete to supersede the necessity for such temporary office-bearers, they really bore no character and exercised no functions analogous to Episcopal authority.
It is only due to the sagacity of the early founders of the Scottish Church to mention another distinctive feature of their system. They saw that the people might be the worst enemies to their own privileges if they were not trained to the proper use of them; and hence, besides a scheme for the administration of the church, it embraced, as essential to its proper working, an elaborate plan of national education. With the exception of the superintendents and the readers, the Presbyterian churches of Scotland to the present day exhibit substantial conformity to the scheme of Knox, so far as relates to the different offices and to the courts of review. The single question, however, raised by the appointment of ministers has given rise, with but one exception, to all the Presbyterian churches existing in a state of separation from the Establishment. In the latter the people have only the right of stating objections to a presbyter, whereas in the former the full liberty of election is conceded to them.
This accordance of Scottish Presbytery with the original scheme devised by Knox and his associates renders it necessary only to mention the steps by which its establishment was secured. The various branches into which it came to be subdivided belong to another department of this article. Meanwhile, attention is called to the history of the system, rather than of the churches adopting it. The First Book of Discipline did not receive formal ratification from the state. The true motive on account of which this was refused transpired in the endeavour on the part of the nobles to secure the property of the church. The courts of presbytery proved so strong an exposition of public feeling as to hold in check aristocratic rapacity. A natural leaning to Episcopacy was thus produced in the higher circles of society, under an impression that bishops, owing their titular dignity to civil patronage, would evince reader subserviency to the designs of the court. A convention of superintendents and ministers, under the influence of Regent Morton, met at Leith in 1572, and passed a decision by which Episcopal titles were retained in the church. So soon as this point was gained, the titles were bestowed on such as consented to receive benevolences on the condition of restoring to the patron the best portion of their annual revenues. This simoniacal arrangement was stigmatized in popular wit as tulehan Episcopacy, from the practice in the country of placing before a cow, that it might yield its milk freely, an image with the skin and in the shape of a calf. Even according to the scheme sanctioned at Leith, these nominal dignitaries were declared to be subordinate to the Assembly, a feature of vital difference from common Episcopacy. In 1580 the Assembly declared the office of bishop to be without scriptural authority, and charged such persons as held it to demit it immediately. In the light of these facts, the Second Book of Discipline will be properly understood; which, adopted by the Assembly in 1581, and, partially at least, recognised by the state in 1592, best illustrates the type of Scottish Presbyterianism in this age. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is formally based on dogmatic grounds, the headship of Christ; so that, blending with the highest articles of the Christian faith, it could not cease to be an obligation on the conscience so long as Christianity itself was embraced. In proportion to the weight and sacredness of such a claim, it needed the more careful discrimination from civil authority at once to prevent abuse and to appease the jealousies of the state; and hence the Second Book of Discipline insists upon the distinction between civil and ecclesiastical power. Warned by the recent struggle of the church against a pseudo-Episcopacy, the framers of this book omitted all reference to the extraordinary offices, the superintendents and exhorters, mentioned in the system of discipline adopted in 1560. Not content with this, they inserted a special protest against the notion of any superiority on the part of a bishop as above the presbyter. They desire the abolition of patronage, as it "cannot stand with the order which God's word craves." The spirit of the whole book may be described as evincing the utmost anxiety to establish, in the first place, an efficient discipline in each congregation for the purity of the church; secondly, a firm bond of unity in courts rising in succession to one that sustained a relation to the whole church, and of last resort in all cases of discipline and points of controversy; and lastly, harmonious co-operation with the civil authorities, under no compromise of the rights or interference with the functions respectively belonging to church and state. Hence, in the language of the German historian Lechler, the Church of Scotland, "by its earnest and persevering struggle for the complete independence of the church in contradistinction to the state, and by the prominence assigned to the most important and practical truth, that Christ is the only Head of the church, shows itself beyond question in advance of all the Reformed national churches."
Although the Second Book of Discipline was not formally and in express terms ratified by the act of Parliament in 1592, there can be no doubt that it was the system of government observed at the time by the Scottish Church; and the act incidentally recognises, and so far by recognition sanctions, "the jurisdiction and discipline of the church as the same is used and exercised within this realm." The state, however, speedily resolved upon another policy than that to which it seemed committed by the provisions of this enactment. It strove to re-establish Prelacy; and the plan taken to accomplish this object was the control, with a view to the ultimate suppression, of the church's prerogative of meeting in free assemblies. Gradually the power of the crown made way in spite of the heroic resistance of the History, clergy, and the moment seemed close at hand when, by a single stroke, the state might venture to consummate a long course of policy, and abolish the last vestige of Presbyterianism. It is only the more educated class that can be expected to appreciate the value of a sound theory of government in a church. Worship appeals directly to the individual conscience. The zeal of Laud, more impetuous than discreet, insisted on the introduction of the Liturgy. It was the spark on the dry grass of the prairie. The nation was at once inflamed with indignation. The issue of the various struggles and conflicts which ensued was Presbyterianism—not merely restored to Scotland, but established in England; not by an act of Parliament only, but by the oath of the three kingdoms,—the Solemn League and Covenant.
From 1638 to 1649 the Church of Scotland enjoyed perfect exemption from the control of the state. Not only so, but the Scottish Parliament ratified willingly all the Westminster standards of faith, the Confession, and the form of church government,—in this respect outstripping the English Parliament, which, while it ratified and approved of the doctrinal part of the Confession of Faith, "recommitted" the chapters described as "the particulars in discipline." In 1653 the Assembly was interrupted and dissolved at the instance of Cromwell; nor had it ever liberty to meet again during his life. The type of Presbyterianism which the Scottish Church thus received from the English divines contained no point of essential difference from that exhibited in the Second Book of Discipline. There are the same three essential offices—minister, elder, and deacon; for though, as in the Scottish scheme, we read of pastors and doctors, the account given of them indicates a division of labour, and not a distinction of office. There is the same gradation of courts. The only point of difference is the apparently lower degree of privilege conceded to the people in the settlement of ministers. The presbytery is to proceed to ordain, if there be no just exceptions against the presentee. Still there is no absolute denial to the people of the right of election; for, at the outset of the regulations on this head, it is supposed that he may be "nominated by the people." In Scotland, by the act of 1649, he was to be nominated by the session. At the Restoration the system of government thus established was overthrown, and Episcopacy for twenty-eight years again enjoyed the favour and support of the state. Finally, when the Revolution occurred, all legislation in favour of Presbyterianism was found to be buried under rescissory acts. The government of William did not cancel the acts rescissory, but simply, in the Act of Settlement, made a statutory recognition of the Confession of Faith, "voted and approved by them as the public and avowed confession of this church;" they further revived and confirmed the act of 1592, and having reserved the question of the appointment of ministers for further consideration, they gave the privilege to the heritors, but latterly, in 1711, it was given to the ancient patrons. It is this question which has since produced the greatest changes in the external aspect and position of Scottish Presbytery. No essential divergence in respect either of doctrine, government, worship, or discipline, has taken place from the Westminster decrees to the extent of a formal and avowed renunciation of them, except that in one denomination adherence to the articles on the power of the civil magistrate has been somewhat qualified. For three hundred years the avowed faith of the Scottish people, both in regard to the doctrine and the polity of the church, has been, amid all the countless vicissitudes of speculation, unchanged. The key-note struck by Knox has never ceased to find an echo in the ear and heart of his nation.
Escaping from Scotland and England, many Presbyterians sought in Ireland some relief from the persecution which they experienced in the former countries. The ministers amongst them were permitted to exercise their office and share emolument in the Established Church, till they were ejected and silenced in 1634, when Laud insisted on the Book of Canons, and substituted for the Irish articles of 1615 the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Direct persecution was put in force against them; but the freedom they enjoyed after the rebellion enabled them to establish the Presbyterian system, not in Ulster only, but in other parts of Ireland. In 1642 the first regular meeting of presbytery was constituted at Carrickfergus. At the Restoration, 61 ministers were not only expelled from their benefices, but deposed from the ministry. Heavy penalties were threatened if they dared to preach or baptize; harsh and angry proceedings, in which Jeremy Taylor tarnished the lustre of a brilliant name, and all the more ungenerous that the Presbyterians of Ulster had stood so fast by the royal cause at the lowest ebb of its fortunes, that afterwards, in 1672, the crown, in recognition of their services against Cromwell, was constrained to honour them with an annual grant of money. However discountenanced, Presbyterianism held its own in Ulster. The Revolution found it with nearly a hundred congregations, under the care of five presbyteries and a general synod. It partook in Ireland of the same changes which mark its history in England. A large proportion of its ministers became imbued with Arian and Socinian views. In 1727 the presbytery of Antrim seceded on this ground from the general body; and more recently, in 1829, a similar rupture took place, in consequence of which the Remonstrant Presbytery was formed. Together with the presbytery of Munster, which dates from 1660, these two bodies form "the General Nonsubscribing Presbyterian Association of Ireland." From the times of the persecution some Presbyterians had protested against the acceptance of any indulgence. Their principles were transmitted from generation to generation, till they appear embodied in "the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland." The Secession in Scotland had also its representatives in Ulster, who latterly, in 1840, effected a junction with the synod of Ulster, and both parties became merged under the common name of "the Presbyterian Church of Ireland." The present condition of the Presbyterian interest may be gathered from the statistics of the various bodies composing it. The Presbyterian Church of Ireland has 559 ministers and 514 congregations. In connection with the Reformed Presbyterian Synods there are about 30 ministers and 40 congregations. The Secession is represented by 15 ministers, and as many congregations.
American Presbyterianism has a manifold but honourable origin. The main stream of immigration by which it has been fed from the beginning of last century has been from Ireland and Scotland. Before the close of the seventeenth century the greater number was from the latter country. The Presbyterians of Ireland, however, long after the Revolution, continued to labour under disabilities, from the operation of the Sacramental Test Act, and from the peculiar tenure of land, which induced emigration to a greater extent from Ireland than from Scotland. Before the middle of last century 12,000 annually left Ireland for the New World. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North and South Carolina, were the parts of America to which Presbyterian emigrants directed their course. Four other sources may be specified whence important accessions have been derived to the general body of American Presbyterianism.—The Puritans of England, the Reformed Church of Holland, the Protestants of Germany, and the Huguenots of France. Philadelphia was the seat of the first presbytery, which was organized in 1705, and consisted of seven ministers. In 1716 a synod was formed; and at length, as the church increased, the body was divided in 1787 into four synods, under a general assembly. In 1729, by a formal act, the Confession of Faith and Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly were adopted. For more than a hundred years the harmony of the church was not disturbed by any controversy on the subject of doctrine. Three causes have been assigned for the disruption of 1838, through which it divided into Old School and New School Presbyterians,—first, an admixture of Congregationalists from the New England States, who naturally leaned to their old ecclesiastical usages; secondly, the spread of erroneous sentiments on such points as original sin, election, and efficacious grace, or at least attempts to obviate the objections to them philosophically on principles that seemed to conceal the doctrines themselves; and lastly, a preference by some for voluntary societies, rather than ecclesiastical action, as the proper method for the advancement of religious objects. The Old School were attached to the previous views and system of the church on all these points. The New School has experienced since 1857 a similar division,—the southern portion espousing a position of entire neutrality on the question of slavery, and practically abetting it; while the northern congregations are disposed to countenance an opposite line of policy. According to an official statement in 1858, at the end of May the Old School had 33 synods, 159 presbyteries, 2468 ministers, 3357 churches, and 259,335 communicants; while its contributions of various kinds for the year had amounted to 2,632,717 dols. The New School, on the other hand, has 26 synods, 120 presbyteries, 1613 ministers, 1686 churches, 143,410 communicants; its contributions for religious purposes last year amounted to 273,952 dols. The body seceding from the New School in 1857 have taken the name of "The United Synod of the Presbyterian Church," and numbers 113 ministers.
There is also a Free Presbyterian Church, which refuses communion with slaveholders, and has 43 ministers.
There are other bodies which from the first have held a separate standing in America. The Dutch Reformed, almost from the middle of the seventeenth century, had a footing in the States. They were under the government, however, of the classis of Amsterdam till 1772, when they obtained regular and independent organization under five classes, subordinate to a general synod. In doctrine this church is purely Calvinistic. It has about 330 ministers.
The German Reformed, moreover, has enjoyed an independent constitution since 1732, and has 350 ministers.
Since 1752 the Reformed Presbyterians had assumed organization as a distinct body in the States; but their first presbytery was constituted in 1774. In 1833 they divided upon the question of their relations to the civil government of the United States,—one party holding that, in consequence of the constitution supporting slavery and not recognizing Christianity, it could not receive their conscientious support; the other contending that it was not formally opposed, but rather favourable on the whole to true religion, and that slavery was an unconstitutional abuse, which they did not despair of seeing rectified. There are now synods belonging respectively to each of these parties,—the former, styling itself the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, has 53 ministers; the latter, called the General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, has the same number.
About the year 1754 the Associate Synod of North America had its commencement, representing the Secession Churches of Scotland; and on a junction between some of its members and some members of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod, the Associate Reformed Church was in 1782 originated—the attempt to unite two churches having issued in the formation of three. In the course of 1858, however, the Associate Synod and the Associate Reformed effected a union, under the designation of The United Presbyterian Church, which is distinguished from the main body of American Presbyterians by three points,—opposition to slavery, attachment to an inspired psalmody, and dislike of secret societies, connection with which excludes from their communion. Its ministers are 429 in number.
A large body, the Cumberland Presbyterians, dates its existence from 1803. It arose from a proposal to license and ordain laymen who had the gift of public utterance, in order to meet a want of regularly-trained ministers. It professes a modified Calvinism, embracing the doctrine of universal atonement, but rejecting that of eternal reprobation, and qualifying that of election. It engraves upon its extreme Presbyterianism the itinerating system of the Methodists. It is represented by 588 ministers.
The Lutheran Church, now containing upwards of 400 ministers, had for its first minister Jacob Fabricius, who reached America in 1669. It received more effective organization about the middle of last century. It is essentially Presbyterian, but differs from Lutheranism in Europe by no longer insisting on the bodily presence of the Saviour in the eucharist.
In Canada, under three different synods, respectively connected with the Established, the Free, and the United Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, there are 290 ministers. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick there are fully 120 more, under different synods; while in other British dependencies in America, such as Jamaica and Guiana, about 50 more fall to be reckoned.
Presbyterianism has obtained an extensive footing in Australia and Asia, and is represented by nearly 100 ministers in connection with the three largest denominations in Scotland. In New Zealand there are about 20.
Presbyterian Churches in Scotland.
I. Established Church.—The legal position of this church, as fixed at the period of the Revolution, depends upon three acts,—a statute, 1689, c. 2, by which Episcopacy was abolished, and the Presbyterian church restored to its privileges and emoluments; another, 1690, c. 1, by which the act in favour of the royal supremacy was repealed; and a third, the most important of all, 1690, c. 5, ratifying the Confession of Faith, and establishing Presbyterian church government in Scotland. By a separate act, the right of patronage was cancelled, a pecuniary compensation awarded to the patrons, and the presentation to vacant churches assigned to the Protestant heirs and to the elders of the parish, subject to the approval or rejection of the whole congregation. The Act of Security, passed and adopted in 1707, as the basis of the treaty of union, declared the Presbyterian church government "unalterable," and "the only government of the church within the kingdom of Scotland." In 1712 the Patronage Act became law, by which the rights of lay patrons were restored. The application of this enactment in a way which, in the judgment of the Seceders, wholly neutralized the rights of the people in the appointment of ministers, gave rise to the Secession. The enforcement of it, to the extent not merely of interfering with the rights of the people, but with the spiritual jurisdiction of the church, was the reason assigned for the Disruption of 1843, by those who constituted themselves as a separate communion into the Free Church.
Two parties gradually arose after the Revolution within the pale of the church,—the one distinguished by their attachment to popular interests and liberties, and by a predilection for those doctrines which stand opposed to the theory of Arminianism; the other avowing, as the essence of their policy, "the steady and uniform support of lay patronage," and suspicious of the doctrinal views of their opponents, as tending, in their judgment, to Antinomian excess. The Marrow controversy, which turned upon the merits of a book, evangelical in the opinion of the former, Antinomian in the opinion of the latter, elicited a discordance of view amount- Churches in Scotland
The party intent upon enforcing the law of patronage acquired the mastery. When Mr Stark had been settled at Kinross against the wishes of the parishioners, several ministers made a representation against this course of policy. The Assembly refused to hear the petition, and dismissed the complaint against the settlement at Kinross. Feeling specially aggrieved because he had not been allowed to enter his dissent, the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, in a sermon before the Synod of Eife, denounced the corruption of the church. His brethren sentenced him to a rebuke for his conduct; and on appeal to the Assembly, that supreme court confirmed the sentence. Mr Erskine accordingly, along with three other brethren, protested, and left the church. In spite of an attempt at conciliation by the Assembly of the following year (1734), the four brethren adhered to their position, and exerted themselves in the formation of the Secession church. In 1752 the Rev. Thomas Gillespie was deposed for contumacy, in refusing to assist at the ordination of an unacceptable presbyter at Inverkeithing. The Relief church arose in consequence. Minuter details of these proceedings will be given under the account of the United Presbyterian Church.
Principal Robertson, by whose resolute leadership the Assembly had been guided in them, retired from the management of the church about 1780; but the party he represented was so powerful that for a long period after his retirement they had the chief sway in the councils of the church.
The next event of importance in the history of the Established Church was a movement in favour of its extension by the erection of chapels of ease in 1795. It gave occasion to a controversy, in which the popular party conceived it sufficient to leave with the presbytery the power of deciding whether such erections should be sanctioned; while their opponents insisted on retaining for the General Assembly the final decision in every case. Another discussion arose which in successive Assemblies elicited singular powers of eloquent debate on the part of their members, till it was terminated in 1824 by an enactment against plurality of offices, inhibiting any minister from combining with a parochial charge the duties of a professorship in a university. The same year is memorable in the annals of the Assembly by the proposal of Dr Inglis to institute a mission to the heathen. The result was the important and successful mission to India, conducted ever since by the Established Church. After a brief controversy in reference to a heresy which took its name from the parish of its origin (Row), and which embraced as its chief tenet the doctrine of universal pardon, the church was agitated in 1832 by the renewal of the old struggle against patronage, through means of an overture introduced into the Assembly craving the restoration of the call, or the right of the people to a share in the appointment of their pastors, by a real and effective instead of a formal and nugatory expression of their concurrence in their settlement over them. The overture, however, was rejected. In 1833, at the instance of Dr Cook, certain churches, built and partially endowed by Parliament, were elevated to the full standing of parishes so far as ecclesiastical privileges were concerned, and their ministers admitted to the complete exercise of their official rights in the courts of the church.
In the Assembly of 1834 Dr Chalmers became convener of the committee for the extension of the church. He devoted to the scheme all the energy and resources of his character; so that, by the next Assembly he could report new places of worship, completed or in course of erection, to the number of sixty-four, while the liberality of the church had responded to his appeals by a sum of £66,000. Within a period of seven years about 205 churches were erected. In 1836 a scheme for providing ministers and churches to the colonies was instituted. Two years later, a mission to the Jews was undertaken. The circumstances under which the Free Church arose fail to be detailed in connection with the notice of that body which follows. The church, after a prolonged and severe controversy with those who separated from it at the Disruption in 1843, justified its adherence to the position which it had assumed principally on three grounds,—the constitution of the church as regulated by the law of patronage, the decisions of the civil courts as confirming the interpretation which it put on the bearings of that enactment, and the act of the legislature, denominated Lord Aberdeen's Act, according to which, it was supposed, sufficient scope was given to the ecclesiastical courts to reject a presbyter if the reasons urged against him were in their judgment valid. Within the last two years some dissatisfaction has sprung up at the working of this act, and changes have been proposed,—by one party on the act itself, by others upon the ecclesiastical regulations for carrying it into effect.
It is singular that all the Scotch Presbyterian churches owe their symbolic books to a convention mainly composed of English divines—the Westminster Assembly. The doctrinal standards of the Church of Scotland, as recognised by act of Parliament (1690), are simply the Westminster Confession of Faith. In some acts of Assembly the Catechisms, Larger and Shorter, receive ecclesiastical sanction, and so far as the church connects itself with the church of the first and second Reformation, it can make use of the Form of government and Directory for worship, together with the First and Second Books of Discipline, though the exact amount of authority due to these latter documents has been sometimes matter of dispute. In 1707 the Form of Process for the regulation of discipline became the law of the church.
The constitution of the Established Church embraces a fourfold gradation of courts. The kirk-session, under the superintendence of the minister, takes charge of the spiritual interests of the parish, nominating new elders to supply vacancies in its number; but these nominees are ordained only after opportunity has been afforded to the congregation to intimate any objections to them. The presbyteries, 82 in number, consist equally of ministers and elders. Theological professors, when resident within the bounds, have a seat in these courts. The duties of the presbytery are, to watch over the conduct of the ministers, to examine students, to ordain to vacant parishes, and to try the qualifications of schoolmasters. In regard to secular interests—questions regarding church property,—the presbytery, according to law, is viewed as a different court, and acting in a civil capacity. The synods, sixteen in number, include several presbyteries. They are chiefly occupied in the duty of reviewing, in the case of appeals, any decisions of the inferior court. The General Assembly is the supreme court, possessed of the highest executive authority, and the source of legislation. It is representative in its constitution, consisting not of all the ministers of the church, with a corresponding elder, but of persons nominated chiefly by the various presbyteries. The presbyteries elect to serve in it 200 ministers and 89 elders, the royal burghs 67 elders, the universities 5 ministers or elders, and the churches in India 1 minister and 1 elder. There are thus in every Assembly 363 members. In every Assembly, too, a Lord High Commissioner appears as the representative of the sovereign. By an act of Assembly in 1697, an important restriction is laid upon its powers, known as the Barrier Act, by which every measure seriously affecting the forms of government and discipline must descend as an overture to the presbyteries, and can only become law when it has been approved of by a majority of them. The object of the act is to secure the church against the dangers of precipitate legislation.
The Established Church embraces 963 parish churches, including collegiate churches as one parish, 42 parlia- Churches
mentary churches, and 147 chapels of ease and quoad sacra in Scotland churches. According to Sir James Graham's Act, when the concurrence of a majority of heritors has been obtained, and a competent endowment has been secured, any quoad sacra church may be raised to all the privileges of a regular parish. Under the operation of this act, parochial churches have been increased from 963 to 1006. Since 1843 the work of extending the church has been prosecuted with great zeal and energy; and several new churches have been erected. The large sum of £326,406 has been raised for the purpose of endowing them; the subscriptions in order to accomplish this object amounting, in 1857 alone, to £61,188.
The provision for the support of the ministry in the Established Church embraces a manse, a glebe, and stipend. Ministers in rural parishes and royal burghs have generally manse, but in cities it is otherwise. The glebe consists of arable land, generally exceeding four acres. The stipend is raised on the basis of the old system of teinds or tithes, which, when seized by the crown at the Reformation, were burdened, and continue burdened, to this day, with the support of the parochial minister. The court of teinds determines the amount of land-produce to be allotted for the purpose; and under a subsequent process, or decree of modification, landholders are proportionally assessed, in order to raise the whole amount thus declared to be due to the minister. Every twenty years, by an application to the Court of Session, if he can prove that the resources of the parish have increased, he may secure an augmentation of his stipend. Since 1810, by an act of Parliament, all stipends are made up out of the Exchequer to L150. In parishes recently constituted the stipend depends upon an endowment through a fund raised by voluntary contributions.
The last regulations on the subject of the education required for the privilege of license and admission to the ministry are contained in an act of Assembly (1856). All the classes necessary for the degree of Master of Arts must be attended in four successive sessions—Greek and Latin in the first session, logic and moral and natural philosophy, separately, in the three following sessions. Mathematics must be studied in a university at least for one session before the student enters the class of natural philosophy. The theological course is completed in four sessions; attendance is required for two sessions in the classes of church history, Hebrew, and biblical criticism, if such classes exist in the university to which the student belongs; while, in regard to systematic theology, he may attend three regular sessions and a partial one, or two regular, with three partial sessions.
Schools
The care of the parochial schools has been entrusted to the Church of Scotland, as from the first the church devised and promoted the system of national education pursued in them. The right of electing the schoolmaster is vested in the minister of the parish, and all heritors in possession of land to the amount of one hundred pounds Scots. The schoolmaster is responsible for his moral conduct and professional diligence to the presbytery. According to a report submitted by the inspector to the Privy Council in 1854, the five classes of schools which follow, with the numbers of each respectively, are in connection with, and more or less under the care of the Established Church—Parish schools, 1049; sessional, 119; General Assembly, 179; Christian Knowledge Society, 232; and Gaelic School Society, 52.
Missions
The Church of Scotland has a mission in India, with separate stations in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The missionaries, foreign and native, are about 10 in number. It maintains also missionary operations, through means of 12 labourers, among the Jews in Karlsruhe, Salonica, Cassandra, Smyrna, Voorla, Constantinople, and Alexandria.
Colonial churches
In connection with this church there are synods in England, Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New South Wales, and Victoria, together with presbyteries in Tasmania and Guiana, and separate congregations in different parts of the world.
II. Free Church.—This denomination—the next in size among the Presbyterian churches of Scotland—assumed distinct organization in May 1843, though it claims to represent the Church of Scotland as recognised by the state in the acts of 1592 and 1690. The causes which led to the disruption of the Established Church in 1843 are somewhat various. The movement of which it was the consummation was characterized by two stages,—the former being simply a struggle for popular rights, and the latter an assertion of the intrinsic spiritual jurisdiction of the church against what was deemed an invasion by the civil courts of its independence. It is not difficult to trace the origin of the movement. The theory of Presbyterianism implies a certain amount of deference to the popular mind: historically, the policy of the great leaders of the church, Knox, Melville, and Henderson, had been to base it upon the affections of the people, as the best safeguard against royal encroachment or aristocratic domination; and the traditional conviction of its members for generations, confirmed by the explicit doctrine of the First Book of Discipline, had been, that it was the privilege of the people to elect their ministers. Conspiring with the influence of these facts to awaken a demand for the restoration of the privilege, were the revival of evangelical feeling within the pale of the church and the rapid growth of dissent beyond it. So soon as the former spread so far as to influence the majority of the church, concession to popular right could not but follow if the evangelical party were true to their own principles, while the danger arising from the latter became more obvious when the question was distinctly raised and keenly debated as to the lawfulness of any alliance between church and state. In the controversy which arose on this point it was pleaded by the advocates of Established churches that alliance with the state was a cumulative, not a privative arrangement,—one which, without the least abatement of its liberties, simply added to all the privileges enjoyed by the church the express and formal sanction of the state; so that an Established church possessed a security for its freedom beyond any Dissenting community. It was in vain to urge this theory, however, when the yoke of patronage all too plainly indicated the thraldom under which the church was labouring. The zeal of its champions was naturally in these circumstances led to devise, as indispensable for the safety of the church, some scheme of relief from the yoke. The practical measure to accomplish this end bore the name of the Veto, and was first proposed in the Assembly of 1833 by Dr Chalmers. Since the call, or invitation from the people to the presbyte that he should accept and fulfil the office of pastor over them, had all along been recognised as among the established forms and usages of the church even under the law of patronage, it was believed that it was still more within the power of the church to ascertain how far the people concurred in the proposed settlement, not by a positive call, but by a simple dissent. It was only, however, in the ensuing Assembly of 1834 that the motion in favour of the Veto was carried. The principle embodied in the motion is thus expressed—"If, in moderating in a call to a vacant pastoral charge, the major part of the male heads of families, members of the vacant congregation and in full communion with the church, shall disapprove of the person in whose favour the call is proposed to be moderated in, such disapproval shall be deemed sufficient ground for the presbytery rejecting such person, and he shall be rejected accordingly." The competency of the Assembly to pass such an enactment was speedily tried before the civil courts. When a presentation to Auchterarder was issued, the call to the presbyte... Churches was signed only by 3, while a protest against his settlement in Scotland was signed by 287 out of 330 persons on the roll of communion. In obedience to the regulations of the Assembly, he was rejected by the presbytery. The patron ultimately took the case into the Court of Session. The discussion turned on the points, whether it was competent for the Assembly to pass such an enactment as the Veto; and if this point fell to be decided in the negative, whether any other result could follow than the forfeiture by the church, during the lifetime of the presentee, of all the civil emoluments of the benefice. By a majority of seven against five judges, it was ruled, on March 8, 1838, that the Veto Act was illegal.
The struggle at this stage took a new form; it now became resistance to civil encroachment on the spiritual jurisdiction of the church, as well as the maintenance of popular rights. Resolutions in support of the independence of the church were passed in the Assembly of 1838, and it was agreed to prosecute the appeal against the decision of the Court of Session to the House of Lords. The supreme court confirmed the decision of the inferior. The course taken by the Assembly, when it met in the following May of 1839, was to enjoin "implicit obedience to the decisions of the civil courts in regard to civil rights and emoluments," while it adhered to the principle of non-intrusion as "an integral part of the constitution of the church." Several cases—Letheendy, Marnoch, and others—speedily occurred in which the collision between the civil and ecclesiastical courts was renewed. In the judgment of those who formed the majority of the Assembly at this time, and who afterwards organized themselves into the Free Church, according to their protest at the disruption, the effect of the decisions in the courts of law was—1. That the courts of the church, in their spiritual functions, were coerced by the civil courts to the extent of being compelled to intrude ministers on reclaiming congregations; 2. That civil interdicts could arrest the preaching of the gospel and the administration of ordinances by the church; 3. That spiritual censures could be suspended by civil courts; 4. That deposed ministers and probationers deprived of their license could be restored to their status by a civil mandate; 5. That the right of membership in ecclesiastical courts could be determined by the civil courts; 6. That a minority of the former, in defiance of a majority, could be authorized by the civil courts to exercise spiritual functions; 7. That processes of discipline could be arrested by the civil courts; and lastly, That without the sanction of the civil courts no provision could be made for the spiritual cure of a parish, although such provision left all civil rights and patrimonial interests untouched. Smarting under such grievances, the church composed a claim of rights, which, when presented to both houses of legislature, was rejected. Various ineffectual attempts to adjust the difference had been made, and bills proposed by Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Argyle. Prolonged and intricate negotiations to secure relief had also failed. The Assembly of 1843 arrived; and, since the government still declined to interfere, Dr Welsh, as moderator of last Assembly, proceeded, immediately after prayer, to read the protest to which we have just alluded, signed by 203 members of the court, against the lawfulness of a court met under liabilities to civil coercion in its spiritual procedure, and announcing their intention to withdraw from the Establishment. Having read the protest, he bowed to the commissioner and retired, followed by all who adhered to it, amid the deep emotion of the spectators, who could not but reverence, whatever view they took of the questions at issue, the magnanimity of men thus laying on the altar of principle the costly sacrifice of their endowments.
The number of ministers who signed the deed of dismission by which they renounced all claim to their stipends, was 474. A few more were subsequently added to the list. The increase of the church has been such, that in Scotland it now has upwards of 800 ministers, under 71 presbyteries and 16 synods. The congregations amount to 867.
The support procured for these ministers, and for the support of other objects of the Free Church, is one of the marvels of Christian liberality in modern times. Before the Disruption, the members of the church had undergone but a partial training for the maintenance of Christian schemes. All at once they took rank as among the foremost of Christian churches in contributions for the support and extension of the gospel. The ministry is supported from two sources—a common sustentation fund, from which each minister draws an equal dividend, varying according to the amount of the fund annually; and the supplementary contributions which a congregation may feel it needful to give its pastor. By the former, provision is made against the caprice of a congregation, if disposed to interfere unduly with the faithfulness of a pastor in the exercise of his office; by the latter, a stipend may be adjusted to local necessities and peculiar claims. At the close of the financial year in March 1858, the former rose to L110,254, yielding a dividend of L138 to each minister on the fund; the congregational fund, from which the supplements are drawn, but which at the same time covers other expenses, amounted to L52,556. The building fund, for the erection of new churches and manses, was L46,895; and the fund for missions and education L56,776; besides a fund for miscellaneous objects, amounting to L25,386. Besides their stipends, a large proportion of the ministers—about 570—occupy manses provided for them by the church.
The standards of the Free Church are "the several forms of Standards, formularies as ratified, with certain explanations, by divers acts of Assembly in the years 1645, 1646, and particularly in 1647." These formularies are—the Confession of Faith, to which subscription is exacted from every office-bearer; the Catechisms, Larger and Shorter, which are enjoined as useful for catechising; the Directory for Public Worship; the Form of Church-government and the Directory for Family Worship; which are to be used as regulations rather than tests. The Sum of Saving Knowledge is also recognised. All office-bearers, on admission to office, must subscribe a formula binding them to the Claim of Right and the Protest.
The constitution of the Free Church is not materially different from that of the Establishment. There is the same gradation of courts, the ministers are chosen by the members of the church, and the General Assembly is composed exclusively of representatives in a certain proportion from each presbytery,—240 ministers and 240 elders, with two professors from each of the three theological faculties.
There are now 614 schools under the care of the Free Schools Church, along with two normal schools. The sum raised in support of them last year was L16,673.
The Free Church, in regard to the education of candidates for the ministry, adopts the same course in science, literature, and philosophy with the Established Church. It has, however, three theological halls,—one in Edinburgh, another in Glasgow, and a third in Aberdeen. In session 1857-8, 127 students attended the hall in Edinburgh, 36 in Glasgow, and 24 in Aberdeen. The general course of education in theology embraces the various departments of apologetic, systematic, and exegetical theology, together with Hebrew and church history. Four sessions of attendance at the hall are required. In regard to two of them, liberty of partial attendance is granted, though seldom, only on special application, and on the understanding that two years of enrolment are given in compensation.
There are in connection with the foreign missions of the Missions, Free Church 35 ordained missionaries: 20 at various stations in India—Calcutta, Chinsurah, Bombay, Madras, Puna, Churches in Scotland
Sattara, and Nagpore, assisted by 10 ordained native missionaries; and 5 at four different stations in Africa. There are 9 missionaries labouring among the Jews in Constantinople, Amsterdam, Breslau, Pesth, Frankfort, and Galatz. Besides these schemes, the Free Church has instituted evangelical operations for the benefit of the large towns, the Highlands, and various localities in the rural districts of Scotland.
Affiliated churches.
There are several synods—in Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Eastern Australia, Victoria, and New Zealand, together with presbyteries in South Australia and Tasmania, and separate congregations in Africa, the East and West Indies, and some important cities in Europe—all of which are in close and direct connection with the Free Church of Scotland.
United Presbyterian Church.
III. The United Presbyterian Church.—The causes which led to the first secession from the Church of Scotland had existed from the memorable era of the Revolution. The first Parliament which met after that event abolished Episcopacy, and the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith, together with the Presbyterian form of church government and discipline, abolished patronage, and vested the election of ministers in the heritors and elders, with the consent of the congregation. But this ecclesiastical settlement was in various respects incomplete, and disappointed the hopes of the most zealous Presbyterians. King William, who had no strong predilection in favour of any one form of church government, was anxious to conciliate both Episcopalians and Presbyterians; while, therefore, he approved of the law which restored to their parishes the ministers who had been ejected at the Restoration, he was at the same time desirous that as many as possible of the present incumbents should be allowed to retain their position in connection with the new ecclesiastical establishment. The leaders of the Presbyterian party were easily induced to acquiesce in this policy; and accordingly the General Assembly, in 1694, opened to the Episcopal ministers a wide door of admission into the national church. Great multitudes of the "curates," as they were termed, were induced, for the sake of their benefice, to transfer their respect and obedience from the bishop to the presbytery, and were received "into ministerial communion" on merely acknowledging that "the church government, as now settled by law, is the only government of this church." The better class of the Episcopalian clergy refused thus to barter their principles for a mess of pottage; and the greater part of those who conformed, amounting to several hundreds, belonged to the class described by Bishop Burnet "as generally very mean and despicable in all respects, and the worst preachers he had ever heard." The admission of these time-servers into the new establishment exercised a very injurious influence both on its preaching and its polity, and laid the foundation of those measures which ultimately led to the Secession.
At the union of Scotland and England in 1707 the Protestant religion, as by law established, was ratified, together with the Presbyterian form of church government and discipline, and the unalterable continuance of both was declared to be an essential condition of the union of the two kingdoms in all time coming. In spite of this solemn pledge, that the constitution of the national church should not be tampered with by the British legislature, the right of the people to choose their pastors was wrested from them in 1712 by the Tory government, in resentment, it has been said, of the warm attachment which the Church of Scotland had shown to the Hanoverian dynasty. It is probable, however, that the real ground of the measure was a desire to secure a more complete control over the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts, and to render the church subservient to the designs of the government. The oath of abjuration, which was imposed about the same time, proved a fertile source of discord both among ministers and in Scotland people. This oath was regarded with great jealousy, and was peculiarly obnoxious to the Presbyterian clergy, both because its avowed design was the security of the Church of England, and because it seemed to imply an approbation of diocesan Episcopacy with the ceremonies of that church, and a recognition of the Queen's supremacy in matters of religion. About a third part of the clergy, including the founders of the Secession, positively refused to swear this offensive oath, though they were enjoined to do so on pain of ejectment from their churches, and of paying an exorbitant fine.
For some time after the revival of patronage in 1712, the severity of the law was greatly mitigated by the general disinclination, on the part both of ministers and patrons, to avail themselves of its provisions in opposition to the feelings of the people. But after the lapse of a few years, patrons no longer hesitated to take advantage of their legal rights, and ministers were no longer disinclined to accept of presentations although given contrary to the wishes of the congregation. On the part of the people acts of resistance to the nominees of the patrons became more frequent and more obstinate, though they were almost uniformly unsuccessful; for the ruling party among the clergy were firm in their resolution that the law of patronage should be carried into effect. They found themselves, however, placed in circumstances of peculiar difficulty; for not only were the people loud in their remonstrances against violent settlements, but a considerable party of the ministers themselves strenuously opposed the intrusion of presentees upon congregations, and obstinately refused to carry into effect the decisions of the church-courts. To obviate this difficulty, in 1729 the Assembly appointed a committee of its own number to meet and ordain the obnoxious presentee; and for a period of twenty years this expedient was resorted to in cases where the presbytery proved refractory. The excitement of the people, and their resistance to the yoke of patronage, continued to increase; violent settlements prevailed in every part of the country; and in some cases the popular feeling was so strong that it was deemed necessary to employ an armed force to carry into effect the decisions of the church-courts. At the meeting of the Assembly in 1730, there were no fewer than twelve cases of appeals on the part of congregations against the intrusion of obnoxious ministers; but the dominant party were so determined to crush all opposition to their enactments, that they not only dismissed these appeals, but solemnly enacted, at this meeting of the Assembly, that henceforward no reasons of dissent "against the determination of church judicatures" should be entered on the record; thus in the most unconstitutional manner taking away the power even of complaint. The Assembly of 1731 followed closely in the footsteps of its predecessor. By the law of patronage it was provided, that if the patron suffered six months to elapse without exercising his right of presentation, the presbytery to which the vacant parish belonged was empowered to take steps for its settlement. The presbyteries in these cases frequently gave the people the right of choosing their ministers; and with the view of destroying this last remnant of popular election, an overture was laid before the Assembly of 1731, proposing that when the right of appointment devolved upon presbyteries, the power of election in vacant parishes should belong only to the elders and Protestant heritors, and, in royal burghs to the elders, magistrates, and town-council. This overture was transmitted to the different presbyteries, that, according to the regulations of the Barrier Act, their opinion respecting it might be given at next meeting of the Assembly; and though a great majority of those presbyteries from whom reports were received expressed disapprobation of the mea- Churches sure, the supporters of the overture obtained a majority of the Assembly of 1732 in its favour.
Mr Ebenezer Erskine and some other ministers protested against this decision as being unconstitutional; but the Assembly refused either to receive or record their protest. Forty-two ministers then addressed a memorial to the Assembly respecting these arbitrary enactments; but the document was not even allowed to be read; and a similar remonstrance, signed by seventeen hundred elders and laymen, was treated with equal contempt.
These violent and unconstitutional proceedings excited great indignation and alarm throughout the community; and a series of events which occurred at the same time showed that the dominant party in the church were not only ready to sacrifice the rights and liberties of the people at the shrine of authority, but were indifferent, if not hostile to the fundamental doctrines of evangelical religion. The conduct of the Assembly towards the Presbytery of Auchterarder in the year 1717, with regard to what has since been denominated the Auchterarder Creed,—the vindictive proceedings against the twelve ministers, known by the name of "Marrow men," who endeavoured to check the progress of error by reprinting and circulating a celebrated treatise of the sixteenth century entitled the Marrow of Modern Divinity,—and the unqualified condemnation of the doctrines of that work by the Assembly in 1720, presented a chilling and melancholy contrast to the leniency shown to Professor Simpson of Glasgow, who, though found guilty of teaching from the chair of theology a system of combined Arianism and Pelagianism, was merely suspended from his ecclesiastical functions, and that with undisguised reluctance, while he was continued in the fellowship of the church, and in the enjoyment of all his official endowments.
The great body of the people, together with a section of the clergy, were indignant at this rapid declension of the national church both in doctrine and discipline. In the language of the times, "the carved work thereof was broken down, and the heritage was desolate." The breach between the dominant party and their opponents daily widened, and a crisis speedily came.
Among the opponents of the arbitrary measures of the Assembly in 1732, Ebenezer Erskine, minister of Stirling, held a prominent place. Though the son of an ejected clergyman in the days of the persecution, he was descended from the Erskines of Shielhill, a branch of the ancient and noble house of Mar. He thus, as Mr Burton remarks, united those two idols of the Scottish common people, which they regretted to see so seldom in conjunction, antiquity of blood and orthodoxy of creed. He was a scholar and a gentleman, as well as a popular preacher; and his talents and learning, his faithfulness in the discharge of his ministerial duties, and his intrepidity and zeal in the cause of truth and liberty, had secured him the respect and esteem of his brethren, as well as extensive influence among the people. In the various important questions which had been agitated after his entrance into the ministry,—the abjuration oath, the controversy respecting the Marrow of Divinity, and the process carried on against Professor Simpson,—he had shown himself an active and fearless opponent of the measures pursued by the ruling party in the church. He was not only one of those who signed the representation of grievances laid before the Assembly in 1732, but being a member of Assembly that year, he spoke and protested against its rejection. Being Churches at that time moderator of the synod of Perth and Stirling, in Scotland he opened the meeting at Perth, on the 10th of October following, with a sermon from Psalm cxviii. 22, in the course of which he remonstrated against the act of the preceding Assembly with regard to the settlement of ministers, alleging that it was contrary to the word of God and the established constitution of the church. These statements gave great offence to several members of synod, and after the court was constituted, and a new moderator chosen, a formal complaint was lodged against him, for uttering several offensive expressions in this sermon. This was done accordingly, and Mr Erskine having been heard in reply, after a hot and keen debate of three days, the synod, by a majority of six votes, found Mr Erskine censurable for some expressions in his sermon, "tending to disquiet the peace of the church, and impugning several acts of Assembly, and proceedings of church judicatories." Against this sentence Mr Erskine protested, and appealed to the General Assembly. That venerable court, which met in May 1733, affirmed the sentence of the synod. Mr Erskine, however, declared that he could not submit in silence to the rebuke and admonition, and presented a written protest, to the effect, that as the Assembly had found him censurable, and had rebuked him for doing what he conceived to be agreeable to the word of God and the standards of the church, he should be at liberty to teach the same truths, and to testify against the same or similar evils, on every proper occasion.
To this protest Messrs William Wilson, minister at Perth; Alexander Moncrieff, minister at Abernethy; and James Fisher, minister at Kinclaven, gave in a written adherence. The Assembly, in accordance with the arbitrary rule which had given so much offence, refused to permit the protest to be read, and the four protesters left the paper on the table and withdrew. Here the matter would in all probability have terminated, as at that period none of the four entertained any intention of separating from the national church. But an overruling Providence had ordered it otherwise. The court had proceeded to a different business, when the protest, which had fallen from the table, was accidentally picked up by a certain Mr James Nasmyth, minister of Dalmeny, designated by a contemporary "a fiery man in the corrupt measures of that time." Upon perusing the document, he rose with great indignation, and called the attention of the Assembly to the insult which he alleged had been offered to their authority. The protest being read, a great uproar ensued, and the Assembly ordered their officer to summon the four brethren to appear at the bar of the court next day. They obeyed the citation, and a committee was appointed to retire with them in order to persuade them to withdraw their paper. The committee having reported that their persuasions had produced no effect on the minds of the brethren, the Assembly ordered them to appear before the Commission in August following, and retract their protest; and if they should not comply, and testify their sorrow for their conduct, the Commission was empowered to suspend them from the exercise of their ministry, and even to proceed to a higher censure in case of their acting contrary to the sentence of suspension.
The Commission met in August accordingly, and the four ministers still adhering to their protest, were suspended from the exercise of their office. At the meeting of the Commission in November, they were severed from their respective charges, their churches declared vacant, and all
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1 Reports were received from forty-nine presbyteries; six approved of the overture without alteration, twelve on condition that certain important amendments were introduced, while thirty-one gave it their unqualified condemnation. Eighteen presbyteries gave in no report.
2 The author of this famous treatise was Edward Fisher of Brazenose College, Oxford.
3 The persons who took the lead in moving for investigation were, Messrs Adam Ferguson, minister at Logierait; James Mercer, minister at Aberdalgie; James Mackie, minister at Forres; afterwards at St Ninians; and the Laird of Glendoig, ruling elder. Churches ministers of the Church of Scotland were prohibited from employing them in any ministerial function. When this sentence was intimated to the four brethren, they protested that their ministerial office and pastoral relation should be held firm and valid, that they still adhered to the principles of the true Presbyterian Covenanting Church of Scotland, though they were now obliged to "make a secession from the prevailing party in the ecclesiastical courts, and that it should be lawful for them to preach the gospel and discharge all the duties of the pastoral office according to the word of God, the Confession of Faith, and the constitution of the Church;" and they concluded their dignified protest by an appeal to "the first free, faithful, and reforming General Assembly of the Church of Scotland."
The Secession properly commenced at this date. A few weeks after their expulsion from the national church, the four brethren met at Gairney Bridge, a small hamlet in the neighbourhood of Kinross (6th December 1732), and formally constituted themselves into a presbytery. In the new and trying circumstances in which they were placed they conducted themselves with great caution and prudence. Anxious to avoid everything like rashness or precipitancy, they resolved to hold their meetings chiefly for prayer and religious conference, and to defer proceeding to any judicial acts till they should see whether the ecclesiastical courts would retrace their steps.
Meanwhile the harsh and unjust treatment of the four heathen had excited great agitation throughout the country. The mass of the people regarded Mr Erskine and his associates as sufferers for the cause of truth and religious freedom. Many of the clergy themselves sympathized with the Seceders, and the sentence against them had been carried only by the casting-vote of the moderator or chairman of the Commission. The ruling party felt that in their eagerness to crush opposition, they had gone too fast and too far, and they now saw the necessity of making some concessions in order to allay the public agitation, and prevent the spread of dissatisfaction and schism. When therefore the Assembly met, in 1734, it was seen that a considerable re-action had taken place in that body. When the Commission-book was examined, there was some marked reservations made in the approval of its proceedings. The act of 1730 forbidding church-courts to record dissents and protests, and the act of 1732 respecting the settlement of vacant parishes, were repealed. The Commission was directed to petition his Majesty and the Parliament for the repeal of the Patronage Act; and the Assembly authorized the Synod of Perth and Stirling to restore the ejected ministers to their respective charges and ministerial position.
It was supposed that the dispute between the Seceders and the Assembly was now amicably settled, and to show that the reconciliation was sincere, the Presbytery of Stirling elected Mr Erskine their moderator, and sent a deputation to request him to accept the office. The four brethren, however, were not satisfied that it was their duty to return to the bosom of the church from which they had been ejected. Their strong attachment to the church of their fathers had kept them within its pale, although feeling deeply day by day that it was rapidly degenerating both in doctrine and discipline. But now that they had been expelled from its communion for their fidelity to the cause of truth and justice, they at once took their stand upon the original constitution of the Scottish Establishment, and thus put an impassable gulf between them and the men who swayed the counsels of its degenerate successor. They were of opinion that the reforms which had been made by the Assembly of 1734 were dictated merely by policy and by no real regard for the cause of truth. The sentence against them had indeed been rescinded, not, however, because it was unjust, but simply because it was inexpedient, in Scotland for the synod was expressly forbidden to "judge of its legality or formality." They were therefore treated merely as pardoned offenders, not as the vindicators of the principles and constitution of the church; and they had no security against a repetition of the unconstitutional and sinful acts against which they had testified. After long and careful deliberation, therefore, they were unanimously of opinion that it was their duty to remain in a state of separation till they should see unequivocal and decided evidence that the course of defection was in reality abandoned. "Some brethren call upon us to come in and help them against the current of defection," said Ebenezer Erskine, "but now that the hand of Providence has taken us out of the current against which we were swimming, and set us upon the reformation ground, by a solemn testimony and constitution, it would be vain for us to endanger ourselves by running into the current again, unless our reverend brethren who call for our help can persuade us that our doing so will turn the current and save both them and ourselves, and so preserve the Lord's work and testimony." On forming themselves into a presbytery in 1733, they drew up what was termed an extra-judicial Testimony to the doctrine, worship, and government of the Church of Scotland, together with a statement of the grounds of their secession. But now assuming a loftier tone, they prepared a document setting forth the reasons of their refusal to abandon their separate position, and stating the terms on which they were willing to return to the bosom of the Establishment.
The proceedings of the Assemblies of 1735 and 1736 seemed to the seceding ministers fully to justify the opinions which they had formed respecting the measures adopted by the Assembly of 1734, and to dispel, for the time at least, all hopes of a reunion with the Established Church. They therefore proceeded to exercise "judicial powers" as a church court, published "A Judicial Testimony," and organized churches in various parts of the country. In 1737 the celebrated Ralph Erskine of Dunfermline, brother of Ebenezer Erskine, and three other ministers, abandoned the Establishment, and joined the "Associate Presbytery," which now consisted of eight clerical members. Numerous and urgent applications for supply of sermon having been received from nearly all the lowland districts of Scotland; and the Seceders having now renounced all hopes of a reunion with the national Church, resolved to adopt measures for extending and perpetuating the benefits of the Secession. Accordingly, Mr Wilson of Perth, a person of great ability and learning, was chosen professor of divinity, and entrusted with the education of candidates for the ministry. These measures necessarily produced a complete separation between the Seceding ministers and the Establishment. They were cited to answer for their conduct at the bar of the Assembly in 1739, and obeyed the summons, appearing before the court as a constituted presbytery, and formally declined the Assembly's authority. The court was startled at this "unparalleled boldness;" and though it declared the refractory ministers worthy of deposition, did not venture to pronounce sentence against them till next year, when they were all deposed, and ordered to be ejected from their churches. But though deprived of the position and emoluments connected with the Establishment, they all continued to discharge the duties of their office in their respective congregations, who zealously adhered to their ministry, erected places of worship for them, and provided for their support. Meanwhile, cases of violent settlements of ministers increased throughout the country; and the opposition of the parishioners was frequently so formidable and popular, and the excitement so great, as to render the at-
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1 Letter from the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine to the Presbytery of Stirling. Churches tendance of a guard of soldiers necessary at ordinations. These contests had of course a powerful influence in swelling the ranks of the Seceders. Had they been men "after this world," skilful in devising and carrying out schemes for the organization of masses of men, there can be little doubt that, notwithstanding the hostility of the nobles and gentry, they might, by dexterous management, have induced the great majority of the middle and lower classes to abandon the Establishment and join the cause of the Secession. Even as it was, without any plan or organized system for the extension of their cause, it rapidly "grew and multiplied." New accessions were made to them from all quarters. Upwards of seventy applications for sermon were made to the Associate Presbytery during the years 1737-38. Young men were licensed to preach the gospel in connection with the Secession. Some even of the probationers of the Established Church joined the new body; and their theological hall was in such a flourishing condition, that in the year 1741 it was attended by a greater number of candidates for the ministry than any of the Scottish universities except Edinburgh. The presbytery speedily expanded into a synod, consisting of thirty settled congregations and sixteen vacancies, and held its first meeting at Stirling in 1745-46, the memorable year of the Rebellion.
The progress of the Secession, however, was greatly impeded by an unhappy controversy which arose at this time respecting the religious clause of the oath taken by burgesses in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Perth. One party insisted that no Seceder should be allowed to swear this oath, as it was utterly inconsistent with the Secession Testimony; while the other urged that it should be made a matter of forbearance. "So sharp was the contention between them," that at the meeting of synod in April 1747, after several long and stormy discussions, an entire separation took place between the contending parties. Seldom has the truth of Father Paul's remark been more strikingly verified,—"In verbal contentions, the smallness of the difference often nourishes the obstinacy of the parties." Those who condemned the swearing of the burgess oath as sinful were called "Antiburghers," and the other party who contended that it should be declared not to be a term of communion were designated "Burghers." The latter made various attempts to bring about a reconciliation with the opposing party, but without success. The "Antiburghers" not only refused to agree to a proposal that they should hold a general meeting for prayer and friendly conference, but ultimately went the length of passing sentence of deposition and excommunication, with all due formality, on Messrs Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, James Fisher, and the other ministers who had adopted the opposite views respecting the swearing of the burgess oath. A furious controversy raged between them for a number of years, both from the pulpit and the press. In the course of time, however, this hostility subsided; a feeling of cordiality gained ground; and after a separation of upwards of seventy years, the two bodies were again united into one.
These divisions among the Seceders afforded an excellent opportunity to the dominant party in the national church to have regained their lost influence with the people; but instead of availing themselves of it to check the progress of the Secession, they only became more hostile to the doctrines of evangelical religion, and more resolute in enforcing the law of patronage. "The language of the majority in Assemblies at this time," says the late Sir Henry Moncrieff, "universally was, that the secession from the church, instead of increasing, was on the decline, and that the superior character and talents of the Established clergy were gradually weakening its resources, and would ultimately exhaust them. Experience has not verified these sanguine expectations. At the distance of a few years after Dr Robertson retired, the people, disgusted with unsuccessful processes before the Assembly, relinquished the plan of their predecessors, and came seldom to the Assembly with appeals from the sentences of the inferior courts appointing the settlement of presentees whom they resisted. But they began to do more quietly, or with less observation than formerly, what was not less unfriendly to the Establishment. In ordinary cases they now leave the church courts to execute their sentences without opposition, and set themselves immediately to rear a meeting-house, which very frequently carries off a large portion of the inhabitants of the parish." This state of comparative quiescence, however, was not produced without long and severe struggles for many years; the disputes in the church courts respecting the settlements of ministers were incessant. In the year 1751, an unpopular minister having been presented to the church and parish of Inverkeithing, the great body of the parishioners protested against his settlement amongst them, the presbytery of Dunfermline refused to induct him, and the synod of Fife proved equally refractory. The case was brought before the Assembly of 1752, and, mainly through the influence of Dr Robertson, it peremptorily enjoined the Presbytery of Dunfermline to proceed with the settlement of the presence, and ordered all the members of presbytery to attend on that occasion. Six ministers who absented themselves, from conscientious scruples, were brought to the bar of the Assembly; and one of them, Mr Thomas Gillespie, minister of Carnock, near Dunfermline, was immediately deposed; three others were deprived of the power of sitting in all church courts except their own sessions. This tyrannical and most disgraceful proceeding led to another secession from the Established Church. Mr Gillespie, notwithstanding his deposition, continued his ministrations in the neighbouring town of Dunfermline; and a few years after, he and a son of the celebrated Thomas Boston of Etterick, and a Mr Collier, formed themselves into a presbytery, and became the founders of that numerous and respectable body of Dissenters entitled the Synod of Relief (now merged in the United Presbyterian Church), formed for the purpose of giving relief to oppressed Christians from the yoke of patronage and the tyranny of the church courts.
The downward progress of the Established Church, both in doctrine and in discipline, still continued. The fundamental doctrines laid down in its standards were denied by many of its ministers, and Pelagian and Socinian errors were openly taught by them, both in the pulpit and through the press. At length Principal Robertson himself became alarmed at the proceedings of his followers, and retired from the leadership of the Assembly in 1781, partly at least, if not mainly, because a section of the "moderate party" insisted on getting rid of the Confession of Faith altogether. In these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the spirit of dissatisfaction continued to spread among the members of the Establishment, and that the Seceders rapidly increased in numbers, in spite of the strife that prevailed among themselves at this period. Not only did the Associate Synods steadily extend their influence in Scotland by the accessions which they were constantly making to the ranks of their adherents, but they sent preachers to England, to Ireland, and even to America, and erected a considerable number of Secession congregations in these countries.
Towards the close of the eighteenth century the tranquillity of the Associate synods was again disturbed by a
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1 Appendix to Life of Dr Erskine, by Sir H. Wellwood Moncrieff, Bart., p. 464. controversy respecting the power of the civil magistrate in matters of religion, and the perpetual obligation of the national covenant. A great majority in both synods abandoned the old ground held by the early Covenanters; denied the right of the civil magistrate to interfere with the church, and of the church to accept the support of the state; declared that the power of the church is wholly spiritual, while the end of civil government is the public and temporal good of civil society; that neither of these kingdoms has power over the other; that the church has no civil authority, and the magistrate no spiritual jurisdiction.
These principles, thirty years later, led to what is called the "voluntary controversy," which raged fiercely for several years, and has exercised a most momentous influence upon the religious condition of Scotland. In consequence of these "New Light" views, as they were termed, a small party who held the opinions stated in the Confession of Faith respecting the right and duty of the civil magistrate, seceded from both synods. Dr M'Crie, the able and learned biographer of Knox and Melville, and several other ministers, quitted the Antiburgher Synod on this ground in 1804, and formed themselves into a distinct presbytery. A few years earlier the Burgher Synod agreed not to require from their ministers an approbation of those "parts of their standard-books which have been interpreted as favouring compulsory measures in religion," or of "the obligation of the national covenants upon posterity." Three ministers protested against this decision, constituted themselves into a distinct presbytery, and became the founders of the "Original Burgher Synod," which in 1839 returned into the bosom of the national church. An attempt was made by these separatists to obtain possession of the property of the synod, on the alleged ground, that the latter had abandoned the principles which their predecessors in the Secession had always maintained. An appeal to the courts of law was made on this point by one of the ministers and a portion of the Associate congregation of Perth, who had joined the "Old Light" party, and claimed the exclusive possession of the manse and place of worship. After a long and expensive litigation, in the course of which the process was carried from the inferior courts to the House of Lords, and thence remitted back to the Court of Session, it was ultimately decided that the pursuers had separated from the congregation to which they belonged without any sufficient cause, and that they had consequently no right to disturb the defenders in the possession of their property. The question was one of great importance, and the principle laid down in this instance by Lord Chancellor Eldon as the ground of judgment has ever since been regarded as the settled law of the country in all similar cases.
No other event of much importance occurred in the history of the Secession Church till the period when the two great branches of which it was composed were again happily united into one on the 8th of September 1820, in Bristo Street church, Edinburgh,—the spot where, seventy-three years before, the separation had taken place. Ten ministers of the General Associate, or Antiburgher Synod, refused to concur in this union, and soon after formed a junction with Dr M'Crie, Professor Bruce, and the other ministers who withdrew from the same synod in 1806. This highly respectable body assumed the name of "the Associate Synod of Original Seceders," and ultimately consisted of four presbyteries and thirty-six congregations.
The only other incident that remains to be noticed is the union between the Secession and Relief Churches. Negotiations for this purpose were commenced in 1835. A scheme of union was agreed on in 1840; but it was not consummated till the 13th of May 1847 in Tanfield Hall, Edinburgh,—the scene, four years previously, of the first Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. The designation of the combined bodies is the United Presbyterian Church. The United Presbyterian Church has the same standards, in Scotland the same Confession of Faith and Catechisms, the same form of government and ritual, as the Established Church. It has also lay elders, sessions, and presbyteries; but instead of a General Assembly, its supreme court is a general synod, composed of all the ministers having charges, with an elder from each session. The conditions of membership are a credible and intelligent profession of the faith of Christ, accompanied by a corresponding character and deportment. All the members of the church, without distinction of office or rank or sex, have a right to vote in the election of ministers and other office-bearers, and in the management of congregational affairs. Only members in full communion are permitted to observe the Lord's Supper, which is celebrated at least four times a year in nearly all the congregations. Baptism is administered in the church, unless in special cases, and only to the children of members in the full possession of their privileges. A formula, closely resembling that of the Established and Free churches, is employed at the licensing of the preachers, and the ordination of the ministers, of the United Presbyterian Church; but they "are not required to approve of anything in the standards of the church which teaches, or is supposed to teach, compulsory or persecuting and intolerant principles in religion."
The education of candidates for the ministry has always been reckoned a matter of the greatest importance by the United Presbyterian Church. The course of preliminary training is very nearly the same as that adopted by the Establishment. Students must attend at least four sessions at one of the national universities, and the course of preparatory study includes Latin, Greek, logic, moral philosophy, mathematics, natural philosophy, and Hebrew. The divinity hall meets annually in August, and continues for eight weeks. There are five chairs of theology,—viz., sacred languages and Biblical criticism, hermeneutics and evidences, exegesis, systematic and practical theology, and ecclesiastical history, comprehending the history of doctrine, ritual, and government. The term of study is five years. During the vacation, the students are under the superintendence of their respective presbyteries, who examine them as to their progress in their studies, and hear and criticise their trial discourses. The number of students attending the hall is nearly 200. The United Presbyterian Church consists at present (1859) of 32 presbyteries and 528 congregations; the membership amounts to 152,622, the attendance in the churches to 181,279, the annual baptisms to 8603. Including children, about a fifth part of the population of Scotland is connected with this church.
The annual congregational expenditure is L122,890, and the expenditure for missionary and benevolent purposes is L39,310; making together L162,200.
There are 1350 Sabbath-schools and Bible-classes, attended by 76,942 scholars.
The sum of L15,541 was raised last year, and L170,000 during the last twenty years, for the liquidation of debt, while nearly L120,000 has been contributed during the same period for the erection of new churches and manse. The stipends of the ministers vary from L100 to L350 a year. In nearly all the country congregations a manse is also provided.
There is a large and prosperous branch of the United Presbyterian Church in Canada, consisting of 7 presbyteries and upwards of 60 congregations, with a theological seminary of its own. In connection with the United Presbyterian Church there are also a considerable number of missionary congregations in Jamaica, Trinidad, Old Calabar, and Caffaria. Upwards of a dozen congregations have recently been established in Southern Australia; and four missionaries are about to be sent to India. The Irish IV. Reformed Presbyterian Church.—This church has sometimes been known by the designation "Cameronian," from Richard Cameron, which, however, it rejects, as he was in no sense the founder of the body. On the contrary, in virtue of its adherence to the principles of the covenants, it claims connection with the earliest Presbyterianism of Scotland. By an act of Parliament in 1649, and by a corresponding act of the General Assembly in the same year, allegiance to the king was conditioned on his faithful adherence to the principles on which he should receive the crown, and according to which he should engage to rule. It is declared in the latter deed that he could not be admitted to the exercise of his government until he had given satisfaction in regard to the religion and liberties of the kingdom. He agreed accordingly to take the covenant, and to establish Presbyterian. Afterwards, when he established Episcopacy, and put the covenants under the ban of the acts rescissory, a large body of the Presbyterians conceived that, having broken compact with the nation, he could no longer be regarded as a constitutional sovereign, and had forfeited all claim to their obedience. To this effect they issued a declaration at Sanquhar in 1680. It was with them, accordingly, a struggle for constitutional government, as clearly appears from a similar document subsequently issued at Lanark, in which, after declaring, "although we ought to take in good part whatever God in his infinite wisdom hath, for the punishment of our sins, carved out to us, and although we always ought to acknowledge government and governors as ordained by him, in so far as they govern according to the rules set down by him in his Word and the constitutive laws of the nation, and ought to cast the mantle of love on the lesser errors of governors, and give the best countenance to their administration, that the nature of their actions will bear; yet when all these laws, both of God and the kingdom, conditional and constitutive of the government, are ceased and annulled," they proceed, having enumerated their grievances, to affirm that, to yield "implicit submission" to the royal will, as "an absolute and sovereign rule," would be "to destroy themselves and betray posterity." In 1681 they were organized into various societies, maintaining close correspondence. When the ministers to whose preaching they listened were cut off by the sword of unrelenting oppression, James Renwick was sent to receive ordination from the Dutch clergy. On his return, he wielded considerable influence over the societies. Endowed with no common gifts of winning eloquence, together with fervent piety and amiable dispositions, he secured the attachment of his followers, and revived the enthusiasm of the nation in behalf of the principles of the Reformation. The only document of authority issued by the societies—the Informatory Vindication—was prepared chiefly by Renwick; and it is but fair that their opinions should be judged of from it, rather than from the hasty and unauthorized expressions of individuals,—the more especially as in this very document they complain that prejudices had been created against them in this way, by the "extravagances" into which some of their number had fallen through "overmuch rigidity and strictness." As to their relations to the government, they intimate their intention to take up arms only in self-defence; and as to the abettors of the prevailing tyranny, they affirm, "not that we would martially oppose and rise up against all such, but by our profession, practice, and testimony, we would contradict and oppose them; we positively disown, as horrid murder, the killing of any because of a different persuasion and opinion from us." They have been blamed, moreover, for narrow views and extreme bitterness of feeling towards brethren from Churches whom they separated, and towards the members of other in Scotland churches. On the contrary, they speak of men who had complied so far with the demands of the government as brethren "whom they love in the Lord, and acknowledge to be ministers of his church," and "with whom they would not refuse accidental or occasional communion, as brethren and Christians;" and on the subject of communion they express sentiments which would be accounted generous and catholic, even when tested by the light of modern opinion. Discriminating ecclesiastical from catholic union, they enunciate the broadest views in regard to the latter, expressing a willingness to associate in common religious enterprises, "with some as Christians, holding the same fundamentals;" with others, on stricter conditions, as Protestants;" and with others, on yet stricter conditions, as covenanted brethren." The statement applies to "saints, whether they be natives or foreigners." So far were these men from holding, as has been alleged, that Calvinistic and Lutheran churches abroad were little better than synagogues of Jesuits.
It was from the ranks of this body that, at the Revolution, the armed companies were derived to which the Convention of Estates owed its safety and undisturbed freedom in the prosecution of its deliberations. They held in check the violence and plots of Claverhouse, and when disbanded, they received for their intrepid services the public thanks of the convention. "As these people," says the historian Crookshanks, "however reproached by their enemies as the cold, antimonarchical, enthusiastic, lunatic Cameronians, were among the first in Scotland who took up arms for the Prince of Orange, so they were the first men in Scotland that petitioned the Convention of Estates to place the crown of Scotland on the head of their deliverer King William." At a later period, in a single day, "without beat of drum or expense of levied money," they raised a regiment of 800 men, who, marching under Cleland to Dunkeld, defeated General Cannon at the head of 5000 soldiers, and by their gallant defence of that village, retrieved the disgrace of Killiecrankie. On mature consideration, however, the societies did not feel themselves at liberty to accede to the church, as established by law at the Revolution. They went so far as to petition the General Assembly to take into consideration the difficulties under which they conscientiously laboured. The Assembly refused to allow their petition to be read. On several grounds, such as the continuance on the statute-book of the acts rescinding the second Reformation, the undue control exercised by the state in the settlement of the church, and the restrictions which, in their belief, were laid upon the liberties and the independence of the latter; they held aloof from the Established Church, while the re-establishment of Prelacy in England and Ireland, as an essential part of the civil constitution, together with the absence of such a formal guarantee as the covenants for the rights and liberties of Presbyterian Church, kept them from entertaining such confidence in the government that they could take oaths to it of unqualified approbation and support. To the present day, their descendants labour under similar difficulties. The Reformed Presbyterian Church, it will be seen, is not founded merely in antagonism to other churches on account of evils in their constitution or administration, because in date it precedes them. Its position is determined by a question of doctrine. Its adherents, while repudiating, even in documents so early as the Informatory Vindication, the error that dominion is founded in grace, attach importance to the headship of Christ over the nations, and believe that whatever civil constitution is not adjusted in harmony with this scriptural principle is to that extent without a claim upon their allegiance. They find that the British constitution, since the statute of Henry VIII., invests the monarch with perfect control in the government and discipline of the Anglican Church, and involves, in the language of the German historian Gervinus, the anomaly of "a royal Pope," with the single reservation of sacerdotal powers and functions. As it is upon the footing of adherence to the coronation oath, in which the monarch engages to uphold this system, that the oath of allegiance is sworn, Reformed Presbyterians can neither, as consistent Presbyterians, take it themselves, nor employ others as their representatives in taking it. Hence their distinctive and peculiar standing among the churches of the land.
The Rev. John McMillan, minister of the parish of Balmaghie, was deposed in 1707, with summary rigour, for holding principles akin to those of the societies. Repudiating the validity of his sentence, he joined them, and, after a long interval, a presbytery was formed in 1743. The church increased, till, in 1811, a synod was constituted, under which there are 6 presbyteries, with 36 ministers and 45 congregations. The membership may be estimated at 6000. The annual contributions for religious purposes reported at last synod, and exclusive of congregational funds not reported, amounted to £6000. The standards of the church are the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Catechisms, Larger and Shorter, and a Testimony authorized and issued by the synod in 1839. It has three missionaries to the heathen in the New Hebrides, and one to the Jews in London. In Ireland there are two synods, holding identical views with the Scotch synod; while in America there are two synods, and in Northern India a presbytery, bearing the same designation, and professing the same views. All these synods have separate theological halls. In Scotland, the general curriculum for the students is the same as in the other Presbyterian churches.
In theology, systematic and exegetical, they must attend five complete sessions, of two months each, in successive years, under two professors.
V. Original Secession.—In consequence of the rupture in the Secession Church of 1747, on the subject of the burgess oath, one division had assumed the name of "The General Associate or Antiburgher Synod," as opposed to "The Associate or Burgher Synod." In 1806 four ministers, among whom is the honoured name of the historian McCrie, left the former body, on the ground that, in a Narrative and Testimony recently emitted, they had somewhat compromised the duty of the magistrate in support of religion. On effecting a union with some brethren who could not accede to the union of the two main bodies of the secession in 1820, they assumed the name of "The Associate Synod of Original Seceders." By a narrow majority, this synod resolved to merge in the Free Church, and in the course of 1862 was received into its fellowship. The minority continues a distinct body, under the name of "The Synod of United Original Seceders." They adhere to the original principles of the Secession, and attach such importance to the covenants, as to decline all ecclesiastical fellowship with churches which do not recognise their descending obligation on posterity. The synod comprehends 4 presbyteries, with 22 ministers and 29 congregations. They hold by the Westminster standards, and the Testimony originally adopted by the synod in 1827. Their divinity hall is in Glasgow. Although circumstances have prevented them from instituting a mission to the heathen, it is from no lack of zeal in such a cause, and they are committed to resolutions in its favour, on which they are ready to act as soon as an opportunity for carrying them into effect transpires.
(W. H. G.)