Church CHAPTER IX. THE ecclesiastical disturbances, whose beginnings have been noticed, were by this time becoming of the gravest patronage in import. Scotland was affording as complete an exemScotland. plification as the world has seen of the perplexities not earnest attendant on an alliance between the Church and the State. At the date before us, events were occurring which tested the merits of a scheme concocted by Harley, Bolingbroke, and Swift, in the palace of Queen Anne. By an Act of 1711, the power of free choice, the liberum arbitrium, as to the appointment of pastors in the Scotch Church, was taken from the Church courts, by subjecting the power of the presbytery to the interpretation, and even control, of the civil courts. The minority of the General Assembly of that time approved of the Act, which fulfilled their idea of the connection of Church and State. The majority protested against it, from year to year; but the protest, being of no avail, at length became little more than a form. The leading men of the time, the philosophers and men of letters, who represented Scotland to English eyes, were not earnest Churchmen, about religion at all; and the arrangement of 1711 suited their views very well, as being moderate, decorous, and tending to peace. They did not see what was going on, wherever a pastor whom the flock did not like was forced upon them. In a multitude of parishes, the patron nominated the minister; if the presbytery found him unexceptionable in "life, literature, and doctrine," they were then obliged to appoint him, however unacceptable he might be to the flock. There were many ways in which a minister, with whose "life, literature, and doctrine" no fault could be found, might be unfit for the care of a particular parish. He might have a weak voice, or too much scholarship for a rustic congregation, or he might have town ways and ideas, or he might not speak Gaelic where the people understood little English. In such cases, the people would turn to the Voluntaries, and become Dissenters. We have before seen how dissent abounded in Scotland at the period of the Melbourne Ministry, and how virulently the High-churchmen of the Kirk regarded the Voluntaries, who claimed to be, and were, considerably more than half the nation. In 1834, an effort had been made to recover the power which had been taken from the Church by the Act of 1711; and apparently it succeeded. But the power of the State was not to be cast out from the Church so easily as at first appeared; and the Church found itself compelled to advance, or assert new claims. In the quarrel about these, the Establishment was rent in twain, and the Church of Scotland became a warning and a sign of the fate of all churches which have made the effort to maintain at once an alliance with the State and the principles of the Reformation. Patronage the cause of dissent. The veto The progress of dissent was so rapid after 1820, that the earnest members of the Kirk took it much to heart. Wherever they turned, in hope of bringing back the Voluntaries to the Church, they were met by the objection, that the people preferred choosing their own pastors to having them nominated, in a compulsory way, by a lay-patron, who might or might not, according to his temper, listen to any objections on the part of his flock to his nominee. The earnest Churchmen saw that this lay-patronage must be got rid of; and petitions for its abolition so poured in upon Parliament, that a select committee of the Commons was appointed in 1834 to consider the subject. The same agitation wrought in another direction, giving a large majority of non-intrusion members to the General Assembly, in which they had hitherto been the minority. While the committee of the Commons was sitting, the General Assembly passed an enactment, containing a declaration and a rule. The declaration was, that it was a law. “fundamental law" of the Church, that no pastor should be intruded on any congregation, contrary to the will of the people; and a rule was prescribed, by which the will of the people might be ascertained and manifested. A veto on the nomination was afforded to them. This is the celebrated Veto Act. Those who passed it professed to believe it to be perfectly compatible with the Act of 1711: it was also declared to be so by the law-officers of the Crown, and emphatically praised by the Lord Chancellor, who pronounced it to be "in every respect more desirable than any other course that could have been taken." 3 For five years, the Veto Act worked so well, that it is no wonder if those who devised and passed it supposed that the matter was settled, and that the Church had indeed recovered her powers. When the minority in the Assembly saw how acceptable a body of ministers-250 in the five years was settled under this Act, they first learned to approve it, and then to avow their approbation. The tendency to dissent was supposed to be subsiding, and the 1 Gordon's Memorial, &c., 1841, p. 4. 2 Memorial, &c., p. 5. Scotch clergy instituted the movement for Church extension, which was described in a former chapter of our history. There were secular persons, however, who were not satisfied to see the power of appointment to parishes dependent on the pleasure of the majority of the communicants. This dependence lessened the value of patronage, and, as these persons thought, its dignity; and they were by no means clear, that the power given to the communicants by the Veto Act was compatible with the Act of Queen Anne. They were disposed to try the fact; and occasions for such an inquisition soon offered. The They refused Lord Kinnoull presented a Mr. Young to the parish of AuchThe Auchter- terarder. The heads of families in the congregation arder case. did not like the appointment, and vetoed it. presbytery were ordered to take him on trial. to do so, on the plea that he could not be ordained because the ecclesiastical conditions relating to his call by the people had not been fulfilled. Mr. Young applied to the Court of Session and the House of Lords to grant him both the civil benefice and the cure of souls. The decision of the civil courts was, that the presbytery must take him on trial, as he was competent in the three prescribed conditions, — of life, literature, and doctrine; and the acts of the Kirk were not binding upon them. The Assembly did not contest this decision, as far as its civil relations went. They surrendered the stipend, house, and external privileges, to the patron and his nominee. This was in May, 1839. The Church thus found that there really was an incompatibility between the Act of 1711 and their veto law of 1834. The thing to be done now was to maintain the principle of non-intrusion, and endeavor to induce the Legislature to modify the statute so as to bring the civil law into accordance with the conscience of the Church. While requesting this reform from the Legislature, the Church acted mildly in regard to the veto law, suspending operations under it till the difficulty should have been accommodated. For two or three years, no progress whatever was made; and, through this delay, circumstances arose which induced a more serious claim on behalf of the Church, and converted the whole affair into one of vital opposition. When the judgment in the Auchterarder case went against the Church, and in favor of the lay-patron, no demand was made on the presbytery and the people to receive Mr. Young. When the The Strathbogie case. fruits of the benefice were given up to him, they were left unmolested, and not required to surrender the spiritual freedom they held of declining the services of an unacceptable pastor. But, as there had been parties who had instituted a trial of the question thus far, so there were other parties who 2 Memorial, &c., p. 13. 1 Westminster Review, 1840, p. 475. now resolved to push the experiment further, and ascertain what the connection between the Church and the State really was. The presbytery of Strathbogie had of old been celebrated for its zeal for the civil power, its loyalty to the Sovereign, and its leaning towards Episcopacy; and now it was the scene of the decisive struggle between the powers of the Church and the State. In the parish of Marnoch, a Mr. Edwards had been assistant to the minister for three years, and was then nominated for minister, on the pulpit becoming vacant. He was so unacceptable, that the call the forms of which were preserved all this time-was signed by only one parishioner, while 261 out of 300 heads of families on the roll of communicants dissented. The one parishioner who signed the call was a publican; and he lost his business immediately. The court next above the presbytery—the Synod of Moray-directed the presbytery to reject Mr. Edwards; but they did not do so till ordered by the highest authority of all, -the General Assembly. When they had done it, an acceptable minister was presented. But Mr. Edwards obtained an interdict from the Court of Session against the settlement of the second nominee, and a declaration that the presbytery were bound to take Mr. Edwards himself on trials. The members of the presbytery were now in the painful position of being under contradictory orders from the General Assembly and the Court of Session, - from the Church and the State. The General Assembly and its adherents took for granted that the members of the presbytery ought to consult their spiritual superiors how to proceed; but such a consultation would have been of itself a surrender of the question. The seven members of the presbytery determined for themselves to obey the civil power; and they admitted Edwards to trials. They were brought to the bar of the General Assembly, where Dr. Chalmers moved for their deposition from the holy ministry. Dr. Cook, the leader of the State party in the Church,-"the Moderates," as they were called,-moved that the seven ministers at the bar should be dismissed, and confirmed in their present rank in the Church. Dr. Chalmers obtained a majority of 97 in an Assembly of 347; and the Strathbogie ministers were sentenced to deposition. Their parishes were declared vacant, and Mr. Edwards was to be deprived of his license as a minister of the Church. The seven deposed ministers appealed to Parliament; and their case was brought forward by Lord Aberdeen on the 15th of June, 1841. Lord Melbourne let everybody see that he did not understand the matter: he had promised, certainly, to maintain the law, and he had no doubt the Lord Advocate would see that it was done; these were very difficult questions, but they 1 Westminster Review, 1840, p. 477. 2 Annual Register, 1841, p. 73. 1 seemed to him to lie within the Church entirely and then he spoke so of the arrogance of the Church of Scotland, as to set the Lords laughing. Lord Haddington rebuked the vacillation and indifference of the Premier, declaring that it was owing to the weakness of the government-its carelessness or hesitation that the divisions in the Scotch Church had become what they were. The concluding statement of the Premier was, that the government really meant to execute the law; and that the best way of doing that was to leave the law to execute itself. For want of a few words of earnest declaration of the intentions of government, however, the impression was very general, that the Ministry were somewhat daunted by the imposing attitude of the ecclesiastical chiefs in Scotland, and disposed to leave the affair as much as possible to be managed in the Scotch courts. Public The deposed ministers obtained an interdict forbidding all preachers of the Kirk from entering their pulpits. The Assembly forthwith deputed one of their chief members to go and preach there, and encouraged various ministers to officiate in those parishes regularly and perseveringly, thus compelling their licentiates to break the civil law, because their predecessors had broken their ecclesiastical law. Penalties hung over the heads of the preaching substitutes; and penalties had been imposed on those whom they superseded. This state of things could not last or be endured. The number of public excitement. meetings which took place all over Scotland, and the vehemence of the speakers on both sides, began to be a significant warning to Parliament, that talking and laughing, and even wrangling, were no longer serious enough for the occasion. In truth, the reader of the newspapers of that time feels little inclination to smile, even in the midst of the extreme wonder which he feels at the point which party-spirit can reach. The evidences of wrath and hatred are too strong, and the mutual imputations too shocking, to leave room for any amusement. To an impartial reader, it appears that there never was a case in which men might more reasonably hold opposite opinions. The case was one of difficult decision to the wisest; for the perplexity lay deep in an abyss of compromise, and by no means within the grasp of passion and partisanship. The language used in regard to the Church leaders on the one hand, and Mr. Edwards and the seven Strathbogie ministers on the other, was, however, as violent as can ever have been used about monsters of vice. Such language led, as was natural, to violence of another kind. The pious attendants at church, on critical occasions and at public meetings, pelted one another with snow and with stones; and, here and there, there was fighting enough to call for the interfe 1 Hansard, lviii. p. 1507. |