'W: 
 

CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 CHIEFLY IN RELATION TO SCOTLAND 
 
 THREE LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED IN ST. GEORGE’S FREE CHURCH, EDINBURGH 
 
 -♦- 
 
 November iS'j'j 
 
CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 CHIEFLY IN RELATION TO 
 
 SCOTLAND 
 
 ROBERT RAINY, D.D. 
 
 PRINCIPAL, NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD MONCREIFF 
 
 OF TULLIEBOLE, LORD JUSTICE-CLERK 
 
 A. TAYLOR INNES, Esq. 
 
 ADVOCATE 
 
 THOMAS NELSON AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH, LONDON, AND NEW YORK 
 
 1878 
 
Pnntcdhy Frank Murray, // Young Street, Edinhurgh. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LECTURE I. —Church and State from Constantine 
 
 TO THE Reformation. By Principal Rainy, - - 9 
 
 Note to Lecture I., .50 
 
 LECTURE IE- 
 
 Prefatory Note,.53 
 
 Church and State from the Reformation to 1843. 
 
 By Lord Moncreiff, '. 59 
 
 LECTURE III.— Church and State in the Present 
 
 Day, By A. Taylor Innes, Esq., Advocate, - - 141 
 
 Notes to Lecture III.— 
 
 Note A —Ultramontanism and the Church of 
 
 Scotland,.211 
 
 Note B —The Italian Answer to the Euro¬ 
 pean Question,.216 
 
 Note C—The Constitutional Law of 1843, - 219 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/churchstatechiefOOrain 
 
 - 
 
CHURCH AND STATE FROM CONSTANTINE 
 TO THE REFORMATION, 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT RAINY, D.D. 
 

 
CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 1 WISH to explain at the outset that the subject 
 of to-night’s lecture was not selected by me, but 
 assigned to me. I should hardly have proposed, of 
 my own motion, to treat so great a subject in a 
 single lecture ; and now that I am face to face with 
 it, it is certainly a comfort, in its way, that in palliation 
 of the disproportion of my essay to my theme, I can 
 plead the necessities of the course to which I had 
 to conform myself. 
 
 I do not wish to detain you with preliminary 
 reflections. But it may be as well to remind you, that 
 wherever the Church exists, there must be some rela¬ 
 tion between Church and State; and where Christi¬ 
 anity is generally received, those relations will 
 naturally be friendly, at least in their general concep¬ 
 tion and intention. Questions arise as to the way in 
 which these relations are to be regulated ; how close 
 
 they may or should be drawn ; and how the true 
 
 A 
 
2 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Relations be¬ 
 tween Church 
 and State al¬ 
 ways. Theory 
 not discussed 
 in early times. 
 
 Strength of 
 each form of 
 social life. 
 
 interests of the Church, and also the various duties 
 of the State, when completely conceived, bear upon 
 the plans that have been followed or suggested. 
 However important these questions may be, they were 
 not discussed at the outset of our history. Things 
 settled themselves, not by theory, but according to 
 what seemed, at the time, a natural and useful 
 practical arrangement, advantageous for the Church, 
 and politic for the State. Questions arose later, 
 when practical difficulties led thoughtful men to re¬ 
 cognise a problem which required to be settled, and 
 stirred them up to propound principles which, they 
 supposed, might afford the requisite guidance. 
 
 Another remark, which it may be as well to submit 
 at the outset, is this. Although mal-arrangements of 
 affairs may occur, as between Church and State, yet 
 as long as the two continue in any tolerable degree 
 of vigour, or indeed as long as there is life in them 
 at all, neither Church nor State can wholly fail to 
 occupy a large part, at least, of its own ground, and 
 to exert a large part, at least, of its proper influence. 
 Each is in its own nature too strong, and too strongly 
 grounded, to be ever wholly obliterated—ever to have 
 its proper genius wholly repressed. The State, rooted 
 in the nature of man and of society,—the Church rising 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 3 
 
 into existence out of the call of Christ and the re¬ 
 cognition of His authority, conscious of supernatural 
 sanctions and supernatural aims,—never can, either of 
 them, wholly give way to the other. No doubt, on 
 the other hand, wrong relations between Church and 
 State are pregnant with practical mischief, so much 
 the more, as the life of each is intense and durable. 
 Still, the remark is important in order to avoid ex¬ 
 aggerations. And it has this bearing on our present 
 theme, namely, that when the Church, in point 
 of fact, entered on friendly relations with the empire, 
 her consciousness of vigorous internal life, did no 
 doubt tend to avert anxiety on her part as to what 
 might be before her. No Christian mind, perhaps, 
 was visited at that time by the fear that the State’s 
 friendly embrace might some day involve, or resolve 
 itself into, a wrestle. But if the idea had presented 
 itself, it would not have frightened the Church very 
 much. Her’s was the mood which would count on 
 being enabled to hold her own, in all contingencies. 
 
 There is just another preliminary which I wish to 
 note in a word in passing. One of the evils which 
 infest churches is clerical or sacerdotal domination. 
 And one of the benefits which has occasionally arisen 
 from a strenuous assertion of the power of the State 
 
4 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Clerical domi¬ 
 nation not 
 considered. 
 
 Distribution of 
 Subject. 
 
 over the Church, has been the restraint of that evil— 
 i.e., an evil, which it is well to have restrained in some 
 way, has occasionally been restrained in that way. I 
 take no notice of this matter in the remainder of my 
 lecture; for this reason, that any efforts of the State 
 on which I have particularly to dwell exerted no 
 considerable influence on this aspect of Church life, 
 —none that deserves to be dwelt on in a sketch like 
 this. 
 
 Passing from remarks like these to my special 
 subject, let me ask you to observe that the long 
 history it presents may be roughly divided into 
 three principal periods—first, the relation of the 
 Church to the Romish imperial system ; secondly, 
 its relations to the monarchies, which formed them¬ 
 selves after the barbarian invasion—a very con¬ 
 fused and fluctuating state of things, in which, 
 however, a fixed point is supplied, for a time, by 
 the remarkable system of Charlemagne ;—and then, 
 thirdly, the relations of the Church to the European 
 States from the nth century, inclusive, until the 
 Reformation. I will try to say something about the 
 first and the third, which will certainly be as much as 
 I can reasonably attempt. In each of the three great 
 periods specified, considerable changes occurred. No 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 general account can be given of any of them, that 
 may not be challenged as inaccurate, if applied to 
 some part or aspect of it. All that can be done is to 
 select features which are fairly characteristic on the 
 whole. 
 
 Up to the days of Constantine, Christianity Legal position 
 had remained an unlawful religion, classed with Chnstiamt} 
 
 those worships which the Roman law prohibited 
 as dangerous to the State. It had experienced 
 various local persecutions, and some general ones, 
 strong popular antipathies frequently coming in to 
 animate the action of the law. In spite of this, 
 
 Christianity continually gained stronger hold in 
 men and on Society. It was disliked, suspected, 
 despised, and irresistible. Influences were thus ever 
 working quietly on its side, which, combined with 
 the known inoffensiveness of the Christians, brought 
 about a large amount of practical connivance on the 
 part of the authorities; so that the execution of the 
 law, sometimes spasmodically violent, seemed some¬ 
 times to slumber altogether. Otherwise, the perse¬ 
 cutions would have been far more bloody and 
 continuous than they were. Periods occurred, one or 
 two of them of considerable duration, during which 
 the Christians had little to awaken their anxieties, 
 
6 
 
 CHURCH AND ST A TE 
 
 Attraction 
 exercised by 
 it. 
 
 and found it scarcely necessary to conceal their 
 worship, or their actions. One such period preceded 
 the Decian persecution, and another preceded that of 
 Diocletian. In both cases the administration of 
 the law was suddenly reawakened, and relentless 
 persecution replaced for a time the passive attitude 
 of toleration and indulgence. 
 
 Especially during those periods of respite, Chris¬ 
 tianity had made striking proof of its power to attract 
 and attach numbers of men of all classes, in addition 
 to those whom it transformed into thorough and 
 devoted Christians. It drew to itself masses of 
 men whom it did not thoroughly master, and yet 
 whom it strongly influenced. The persecutions, 
 especially the Decian persecution, brought to light 
 the unsound quality of a great number of Christians. 
 But those who failed were not—they never had been 
 —hypocrites, in the sense of that word in which it 
 denotes one who consciously professes a religion 
 which he does not believe. There was no motive to 
 induce most of these persons to make a profession 
 of that dishonest kind. Christianity had influenced, 
 had attracted them. They really preferred to be 
 Christians, though they were not prepared to 
 continue such at the cost of much suffering. 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 7 
 
 What we find, then, is, that throughout the 
 Roman world Christianity was felt to be the com¬ 
 ing religion. Men who detested it, and wished to 
 stop it, felt it coming. They not only knew that it 
 was making progress as a matter of fact, but 
 they perceived and felt the elements of force 
 about it, in the conceptions it proposed, the 
 manner of life it propagated, the hopes it cher¬ 
 ished, the judgment it proclaimed; by reason of 
 which it was making, and would make progress. 
 A higher influence such men might not own, but so 
 much they clearly enough perceived. Into the space 
 in men’s minds, and in society, occupied by mythical 
 beliefs which were dying, and by philosophical specu¬ 
 lations which had never been alive, this new comer 
 kept pressing in. It was this which alarmed and 
 exasperated those, who believed it to be essential 
 to the welfare of the State, that the spirit of old 
 Rome should be kept alive. For it seemed plain 
 that what Christianity gained, Rome must lose. 
 
 It is no small proof of the political genius of 
 Constantine, that he undertook to place the State on 
 friendly terms with the growing religion, treating it 
 henceforth—not as an influence that undermined the 
 State—but as a trustworthy ally. It was a great step 
 
 Felt to be the 
 Coming Re¬ 
 ligion. 
 
 Policy of 
 Constantine. 
 
8 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 to take. And one might expect the expediency of it 
 to be the less obvious to Constantine, because he 
 was a soldier, and must maintain himself by the 
 sword; whereas Christianity, up to this time at 
 any rate, had worn no friendly aspect towards 
 soldiering, and was known as the nurse rather of 
 the passive than of the military virtues. But Con¬ 
 stantine had seen Christianity pretty near at hand, 
 and probably had formed his own impressions of 
 what could be made of it. At all events, the time 
 was come, and the man. The State was no longer 
 to be committed to a fruitless struggle with one great 
 tendency of the time, but was to countenance it, 
 and take advantage of it. That opened the likeliest 
 future for the State. And Constantine, as a 
 candidate for supreme power, was to take his place 
 as the public and known friend of the same tendency. 
 That opened the likeliest future for him. The 
 decision was made; and for Constantine it was a 
 prosperous one. It remained to see how the genius 
 of the empire could accommodate itself to this new 
 companion. By cautious steps, not precipitating a 
 collision with the old worship, but gradually breaking 
 with it, Constantine sanctioned Christianity, and 
 set it in a place of honour. His sons carried out the 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 9 
 
 policy with less reserve, perhaps with less insight and 
 dexterity. 
 
 The State then took this new attitude to Chris¬ 
 tianity. When we say so, we must remember that 
 we are not speaking of a State organised so as to be 
 represented by a constitutional government. For the 
 period we speak of, the State is first of all the Emperor, 
 subject only to the check of a possible military revolu¬ 
 tion. It is true, indeed, the Emperor’s discretion was 
 not quite so arbitrary in the State as might at first 
 appear; for the majestic and wonderful form of 
 the Roman law confronted the Emperor himself 
 Although he could modify particular laws, the 
 spirit of that jurisprudence was too vigorous, and 
 its roots too deep, to admit of its being despised 
 or neglected. However, in this matter of religion, 
 in which the course taken was so wholly new, the 
 Emperor of course re-arranged matters at his discre¬ 
 tion. It is the mind of the Emperor, not primarily 
 or visibly the mind of the empire, that meets us 
 in the new arrangements adopted on behalf of the 
 State. Still, since, on the whole, these arrangements 
 did not fall, but stood, we must take it that either at 
 first, or at least in the end of the day, they fairly 
 enough represented public sentiment and opinion. 
 
 State repre¬ 
 sented by 
 Emperor. 
 
10 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Christian 
 religion e 
 bodied in 
 Church. 
 
 On the other hand, the Christian religion was 
 embodied in the Christian Church, which, for all 
 practical purposes, represented and stood for it. We 
 are not here to concern ourselves with theological 
 questions about the nature of the Church, and its 
 relation to Christian religion and doctrine; nor are 
 we to discuss distinctions which subsequent ex¬ 
 perience, and the long discipline of providence, com¬ 
 bined with fresh examination of God’s Word, have 
 brought into light, or have elevated into enhanced 
 significance and importance. But it is necessary to 
 remind you that, right or wrong, the Christianity of 
 Constantine’s days, was very decidedly Church 
 Christianity. It conceived itself no otherwise than 
 as it existed in the great authentic organised society, 
 conscious of its unity, of its separateness, and of the 
 supernatural energy which sustained its life. The 
 exceptions to this statement were quite insignificant; 
 for, though there were sects, yet even of the sects, 
 each in its own way, the same statement may be 
 made. Of this institution, too, we, as Presbyterians, 
 may think, that its organisation had become too 
 hierarchic, and was becoming still more objectionably 
 so. Its government was too autocratic—too little 
 representative. Yet for our present purpose it would 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 11 
 
 be a mistake to make much of this, however 
 important it may be in other relations. The Church 
 was full of glowing and sympathetic life; and the 
 popularly elected Bishops were, or at least, if reason¬ 
 ably deserving of respect, could always be the leaders 
 of their people. 
 
 Practically, then, it was the Church—the question, 
 what to do about Christianity, was, practically, what to 
 do about the Church. 
 
 And, just on this account, it is well for us to Two forms of 
 mark, not only the formal and detailed arrangements, 
 but the two separate forms of life that came into alli- 
 
 Roman State. 
 
 ance, and the elements of strength and influence which 
 each possessed, and could bring to bear on the 
 situation. First, then, as regards the State ; it was 
 the decaying age of the empire—the period we 
 associate with Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall.” Some 
 consciousness of the downward tendency of things 
 we must suppose was present to thoughtful minds— 
 
 Christian minds as well as others. There were 
 tokens enough of it, though tokens of that kind 
 are appreciated afterwards as they seldom are by 
 contemporaries. Still, however that might be, to 
 the Christians as well as to others, the Roman empire 
 was, in a very emphatic sense, the world—it was the 
 
12 
 
 CHURCH AND STA TE 
 
 scene on which, it seemed, the main interests of the race 
 must be transacted. And the system of the Roman 
 government—which sheltered and upheld, as it had 
 done so long, the various interests of civilised life— 
 had a place in their minds, which it is difficult to 
 represent to ours. That great system was not 
 only the house they lived in : it was so, with this 
 besides, that any other house to live in was incon¬ 
 ceivable. The system of Rome might be annihilated 
 of course: it was an earthly thing: so also the 
 world might come to an end ; but it was about as 
 easy to see beyond the one as beyond the other. 
 Through all the confusions and disgraces of successive 
 reigns and revolutions, there remained a continuity 
 of system, ever emerging unchanged, which impressed 
 the mind with the idea of venerable, durable, self- 
 centred power. On this system were entailed all 
 the traditions of the strength and the triumphs 
 of Rome. The Church was trained, indeed, not 
 to tremble in the presence of Roman power ; 
 again and again she had calmly awaited the worst 
 that it could do, secure of the help, in time of 
 need, of Him that sitteth in the Heavens. But 
 she was just as far from either seeking or con¬ 
 templating its overthrow. Submission in matters 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 13 
 
 that did not touch conscience was the Christians’ 
 watchword. 
 
 The whole administration of the empire had been 
 associated in Christian minds with Paganism, and 
 it was long regarded as retaining a taint, prevailing 
 and pervading, of the old spirit. For a long time the 
 administration of the State, even after it was in 
 Christian hands, continued to have attaching to 
 it, in the minds of earnest Christians, an impression 
 of something mixed up with the unbelief and 
 ungodliness of the world. It was looked upon 
 with distrust, Christians who were engaged in 
 that work, were felt to require peculiar sympathy 
 and help. 
 
 But though some such feeling continued to exist 
 with reference to the general hierarchy of the 
 State, a different type of feeling was set, from 
 Constantine’s days, with respect to the Christian 
 Emperor. The Emperor, in whom the whole 
 power and dignity of the State was summed up 
 and embodied, had himself come over to the 
 Church. He had brought the whole power of the 
 State, against its own genius and bent as it were, 
 to be on the Christian side. The thing was 
 astounding; its effects were incalculable, not for 
 
 Impressions 
 about the Civil 
 Hierarchy of 
 the Empire. 
 
 Feeling as to 
 the Emperor. 
 
14 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 the present only, but for all the future. No wonder 
 that men thought of Constantine almost as an 
 angel of God. In the Emperor, one saw the 
 incarnation of God’s favouring providence, moving 
 towards the Church and cause of Christ, in the 
 most remarkable and decisive manner. The interest 
 which he showed in the Church’s affairs, Christians 
 were disposed to meet with the warmest welcome. 
 They rejoiced that he was willing to make these 
 affairs his own concern, and they were prepared to 
 put the best construction on all his proceedings in 
 that line. 
 
 The Church. Oil the Other side, the Church came with no 
 
 physical force, and was precluded by her own principles 
 from desiring or seeking to wield that weapon. She 
 came, however, with the moral strength derived from 
 Christian faith—with that also derived from proved 
 fidelity under persecution—and with that which 
 accrued from the mere fact that the State, which 
 had vainly fought against her, now gave up the con¬ 
 test and sought her as an ally. But in order to 
 estimate the relative strength which the Church 
 brought into the new relation, yet another considera¬ 
 tion must be added, namely, the strength of political 
 life, of which the Church was the seat. By political 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 15 
 
 life, I mean the life which inhabits a body politic, 
 which unites and moulds the members of it, and 
 makes the whole energetic. No one knew, at the time, 
 how important this factor was to prove; but the 
 generations which followed bore ample witness 
 to it. 
 
 There was not then in the world, nor for many a Her political 
 
 • 1 • • 1 1 vitality. 
 
 long day after, any social organisation which possessed 
 anything like the political vitality of the Church. 
 
 The State, the Commonwealth, was somehow decay¬ 
 ing ; it was fading. Individual men might be brave, 
 resolute, able, as in other times ; but the common life 
 was low and weary, and the individual man sank to 
 the level of the life he shared. Politics, thought, litera¬ 
 ture, poetry, art, all were flat and unprofitable. Some¬ 
 how, to use a common expression, men were beaten 
 when they tried them. Nothing could be made of 
 them. Only in the Church it was otherwise. The 
 Church mind, being part of the common mind, did cer¬ 
 tainly share the prevailing defects of the time. But 
 yet in the Church there was a fresh life pulsating, and 
 it had in it the promise of ages to come. Christianity 
 had a future, and had work to do, close at hand and all 
 around, which lay in the way to that future. Christian 
 convictions propagated, through many minds, a stream 
 
16 
 
 CHURCH AND STA TE 
 
 Effect on re¬ 
 presentative 
 men. 
 
 of energetic thought upon the problems of life— 
 thought, which had a common basis, in the Church’s 
 faith, and yet had still individual variety and freshness. 
 Christian congregations felt that they organised and 
 embodied a common life, in which each member took a 
 part, and into which each threw his share of influence. 
 Leading men felt themselves sympathetically watched, 
 in the use of their responsibilities and powers, by an 
 eager body politic; and they felt that, in moulding and 
 guiding the Church, they were exerting real influence 
 on the affairs of men. How few of the statesmen or 
 philosophers of those days deserve to be remembered 
 for any striking contribution to the history of the 
 world! And how certain that the great ecclesi¬ 
 astics, had they been anything but ecclesiastics, 
 would have left for us, at most, some dubious and 
 obscure record of official employment, or of namby- 
 pamby literary effort! Passing to the service of the 
 Church, these men were vitalised at once. The 
 palsy of a decaying century vanished, and they 
 became men of power. Take Ambrose, for instance, 
 always a man of exceptionally noble character, a 
 member of one of the first Italian families, one 
 who had every advantage of his time. Had he con¬ 
 tinued in the line of his first career, he might have 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 17 
 
 been all his days an excellent Praetorian prefect, 
 doing the best he could with a falling empire, with 
 imbecile rulers, with selfish and treacherous associates. 
 
 He became Bishop of Milan, and he expanded at 
 once into a great power, and made his distinct and 
 memorable contribution to the history of the world. 
 
 Now this element in the relative strength of Church 
 and State, was not a passing one : it was durable for 
 all the period of the empire. The alliance with 
 Christianity may have prolonged the duration of the 
 Roman State, but it can hardly be said to have 
 recruited or restored its vigour. The Church, again, 
 whatever the effects of her alliance with the State 
 might be in other respects, continued long to nurse, 
 even in an increasing degree, the intense peculiar 
 life of a body politic. The State grew bleached 
 and pale at her side. 
 
 These were the two forms of life which drew Absence of 
 
 together. The arrangements that ensued may be 
 
 regarded in the light of a first experiment on untried design. 
 
 ground; and the experiment was made simply by 
 
 each party doing what seemed natural and reasonable 
 
 in the circumstances, in connection with the general 
 
 course resolved upon. There is no reason to think 
 
 that either party aimed at anything but what they 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Steps taken. 
 
 expressed. The State, which had persecuted the 
 Church, was now to countenance it as a divine 
 institution, and was to get the good of the Church’s 
 moral influence and succour. Again, the Church, 
 which had hitherto done its work under the ban of 
 the law, was now to do it with the law’s approbation. 
 
 Accordingly, the work was begun with a general 
 toleration of all religions. That toleration gave place, 
 before very long, to a practical proscription of heathen 
 worship in most places. But in the meantime it relieved 
 Christians from the penal laws; and that effect of it was 
 farther confirmed by specific edicts applicable to them¬ 
 selves. Again, the churches were authorised to hold 
 lands and take legacies; and they had restored to them 
 any properties of which they had recently been 
 deprived. The observance of the Lord’s day was 
 sanctioned. The clergy were relieved from troublesome 
 municipal obligations, and to some extent they were re¬ 
 lieved from taxes. The Emperor, personally professing 
 the Christian religion, tried to strengthen the cause he 
 had adopted by using his influence with others to do 
 the same. No general and systematic endowment 
 was thought of; but in various places the Emperor 
 built churches, and in various instances he made 
 grants of money, either as donations or by way of 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 19 
 
 annual revenue, to support the cause. By-and-by, 
 heathen temples began to be given over to the 
 Christians, and also, in some cases, the lands attached 
 to them. But it may be said, with a good deal of 
 confidence, that for a long time the legal recognition 
 of the right of the Churches to hold property was 
 more valuable, in a pecuniary point of view, than any 
 gifts directly bestowed by the State. Property came, 
 fast enough, from private gifts and legacies, and the 
 law authorised the Church’s tenure of it. Still, the 
 effect was that eveiy^where the bishops became public 
 official persons, with a great position, and often with 
 great revenues. The complete right of the Church 
 to perform her ordinary internal functions was in all 
 this pre-supposed, as evident of itself. 
 
 All this was concurrent with the gradual withdrawal 
 of official recognition and aid from heathen worship. 
 The Christian religion remained, adopted and favoured 
 by the Emperor, the only religion which had any kind 
 of recognition. This, under a system of government 
 like that which then obtained, was a fact of enormous 
 influence, even before the State undertook, as it soon 
 did, to discourage heathenism, or to suppress it. 
 
 So far, then, the main and most important things 
 were the emancipation of the Church from all hin- 
 
 New position 
 of Christian¬ 
 ity. 
 
20 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 drance on the part of the State, and the express 
 adherence and encouragement of the head of the 
 State. In addition, certain useful facilities were ac¬ 
 corded, and some grants of material aid were given. 
 These were not of first-rate importance in themselves. 
 But they gave additional expression to the idea that 
 the religion and Church of the Christians had be¬ 
 come, or were becoming, also, the religion and Church 
 of the State. And the same idea was carried out in 
 other arrangements, by which the confidence of the 
 State in the Church, and its disposition to entrust the 
 Church with powers and duties, were signified. Such 
 were the confirmation of the old Christian custom by 
 which bishops might arbitrate disputes between the 
 members of their flocks ; the right of sanctuary in 
 churches ; the right of intercession with civil tribunals 
 on the part of bishops ; the general inspection of 
 morals conceded to them; and by-and-by a jurisdic¬ 
 tion over the persons of ecclesiastics in other than 
 ecclesiastical causes. These are specimens of arrange¬ 
 ments, often arising out of old Christian customs, or 
 suggested by Christian ideas, which took place sooner 
 or later, as suitable, or convenient. There was no end 
 in view, probably, in making such arrangements, 
 except to increase the influence and usefulness of 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 21 
 
 ecclesiastics, with a view to the advantage and con¬ 
 venience of State and Church both. No special theory 
 of ideal proprieties dictated the arrangements; nor 
 would it be fair to imagine plots or intrigues, for 
 private or party ends, as driving on the development. 
 
 At the same time, all this silently carried with it What implied, 
 the idea—or suggested it—or laid a foundation for it— 
 that the organisation of the Church was part of the 
 machinery of the State. Now, whatever forms part of 
 the machinery of the State, the State will tend or will 
 try to inspire with its own spirit, and to direct as with 
 plenary authority. It was more and more fixed, as it 
 were, that the official position of the bishops, of every 
 bishop, and always, included the exercise of powers 
 derived from the State, and the discharge of responsi¬ 
 bilities, with respect to which the State may and 
 ought to exact an account, as the proper authority 
 in that behalf. The Church, however, for the most part, 
 had no fears, but gladly welcomed the advantages 
 accorded to her ; she desired to have all the influence 
 she could, for she meant to use it well. She meant, as 
 far as she could, to Christianise the State : she meant, 
 as far as she could, to Christianise the people. 
 
 It was no part of the idea of this settlement, to 
 subject ecclesiastical causes to the decision or review 
 
99 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Relation of 
 Church to 
 Emperor. 
 
 of the Emperor’s courts, I have already hinted that 
 the administration of the empire had come to be 
 regarded with a certain repugnance or repulsion by 
 Christians. The idea of subjecting pure ecclesiastical 
 causes to such tribunals was far enough from all men’s 
 thoughts. On the contrary, questions connected with 
 civil aspects of ecclesiastical matters, that might well 
 enough have been disposed of by the civil courts, were, 
 not unfrequently, carried straight up to the Emperor 
 himself. With regard to the Emperor, as I have 
 already said, the mode of feeling was different. Putting 
 together the kind of superhuman dignity which the 
 Emperor had acquired in the heathen times, and the 
 impressive change by which he, with all his pomp 
 and power, had moved over to Christ’s despised 
 Church, the Emperor stood before the Christian 
 minds almost as the visible providence of God. 
 When he mingled as a domestic element in the 
 affairs of the Church, he did so with a quite peculiar 
 and a very authoritative influence. This influence 
 and authority, when occasionally exerted, wrought in 
 a manner that could be reduced to no clear rule, even 
 as it proceeded on no clear ideas. And the upshot 
 could only be, in these circumstances, a confused Eras- 
 tianism (to use the term of later days) ; confused,. 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 23 
 
 because neither the authority it wielded, nor the 
 limits it deferred to, were consistent or intelligible. 
 
 Now, what interests me in all this process, is the 
 extremely natural, and, so to say, innocent way in 
 which it all came about. Of course, after men on 
 either side had got hold of power, and experienced 
 the pleasure of exercising it, they wished to keep it, 
 and extend it; and at that stage design comes in. But, 
 really, at the outset, the evolution appears, at least, to 
 have been singularly free from an element of design 
 —to have worked itself out in a very natural way. 
 
 Observe how many ways the Emperor might 
 fairly utter some kind of voice in ecclesiastical affairs. 
 First of all he was the Church’s great and recent 
 benefactor—a benefactor on a quite incomparable 
 and astounding scale, transforming utterly the 
 Church’s outward condition. On that ground alone 
 it was only fit that representations coming from him 
 should have great consideration; just as, if I may be 
 allowed the comparison, our Established Church might 
 very becomingly have given a respectful and cordial 
 consideration to any Christian representations, coming 
 to them from the late Mr. Baird. Again, he was 
 the head of the State—a great divine institution, 
 charged with caring for the social welfare of the 
 
 Natural 
 character of 
 the process. 
 
 Various forms 
 of influence 
 falling to the 
 Emperor. 
 
24 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 community. Those who have held the highest doc¬ 
 trine as to the independence of the Church, have 
 recognised a duty in the Church to entertain re¬ 
 spectfully representations or admonitions about their 
 own proceedings, coming to them from this high 
 quarter. And this right and duty is quite inde¬ 
 pendent of what we call Establishment. If—which 
 I do not think likely, and hope will not ever be 
 necessary—but if the State, or the community through 
 the State, were to remonstrate with the Churches, 
 with my own for example, about their proceedings 
 in some matter bearing on the welfare of the com¬ 
 munity—drink, for instance, or anything else—I hold 
 a non-Established Church under precisely the same 
 obligation as an Established one, to give such remon¬ 
 strance the most anxious, and the most respectful con¬ 
 sideration. Next, the Emperor had bestowed on the 
 Church, and was continuing to bestow, substantial gifts, 
 and some useful personal immunities. Surely he had 
 some right and interest in connection with these. Eor, if 
 they did not ground for him a right to dictate, yet he had 
 not lost his right to modify or withdraw them. Still fur¬ 
 ther, there were matters, not perhaps of the first impor¬ 
 tance, but still of some, in which the Emperor had 
 awarded to the Church the exercise of jurisdictions 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 25 
 
 that were essentially his own; bringing Churchmen into 
 the place, for certain purposes, of himself, and of his 
 proper officers. This carried with it a relation of proper 
 and direct authority in the Emperor, of proper and 
 direct subjection in the churchman, which, however, 
 was obscurely felt rather than clearly discerned. 
 Yet more, there was this consideration, that the 
 religion and Church of the Christians had become 
 
 the religion and Church of the Emperor, of the State, 
 of the great Roman community—a vague idea, 
 yet suggesting a right or interest in the head of 
 the State to deal with the matter as somehow his. 
 
 All these things were combined with the fact that 
 every ecclesiastical person was personally the Em¬ 
 peror’s subject, disposed to treat him with the utmost 
 deference, bound to obey him in all things that did 
 not touch conscience, and forward to shew how 
 willingly he discharged the obligation. 
 
 Now, we, as the result of hundreds of years of Not dis- 
 
 ^ . criminated in 
 
 discussion, are accustomed to analyse cases of this kind 
 and to apply principles to them. I, for example, as 
 a Eree Churchman, or any Free Churchman, could 
 tell, readily enough, how we should dispose of each 
 of the elements of the case just described ; what 
 rights we should ascribe to the Emperor on each 
 
2G 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Unity of the 
 Church and 
 effects of it. 
 
 separate ground, and how we should consider that 
 he ought to extricate and exert them. We could 
 do that, and we might be right or wrong; but we 
 should know the ground we took up, and the 
 responsibilities it was likely to entail. It was wholly 
 different in those days, when the elements of a 
 complex situation were felt rather than discerned, 
 and the various processes and influences were 
 working into shape in an experimental way. 
 
 But when I have said all this I have not yet 
 said enough to exhibit the situation, and the tenden¬ 
 cies which lay concealed in it. 
 
 I said a while ago, that the Christianity of 
 those days was emphatically a Church Christianity. 
 Now, one great element in that type of things was, 
 that the unity of the Church, as a single and peculiar 
 organised society, was strongly conceived and in¬ 
 tensely valued. It was entirely in the line of what 
 was then generally approved, when Constantine 
 showed his appreciation of this great idea, by con¬ 
 fining the enfranchisement and recognition which 
 he granted, strictly to “ the unity.” It was 
 the Catholic Church, not the sects, that were to 
 benefit. And it was still quite in the line of the 
 prevalent sentiment, when Imperial edicts made 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 27 
 
 it clear, that everything but the Catholic Church 
 was to be discouraged and repressed. All that was 
 a tribute, by the Emperor, to a great Christian senti¬ 
 ment, embodied in the great Christian institution. 
 
 And, indeed, from that day to this, for it stands in 
 our own confession, the duty of the magistrate to care 
 for the unity of the Church has been professed, though 
 there have been some considerable difficulties as to how 
 the duty was to be explained and applied. It appears to 
 me that some great Church and State men in our time 
 have wholly turned their backs on this idea ; but 
 it was in full force in Constantine’s days. And not 
 at all as encroachment on the Church, but as service 
 and aid to the Church, the power of the State was 
 applied, not merely to encourage the Church, but 
 also to discourage the sects, as well as to discourage 
 the heathen. 
 
 This was not at first meant, I repeat, as assump- Opening for 
 tion of power over or about the Church, but simply ^nteiposi 
 
 and truly as service and aid to the Church. 
 
 But then, when, in the course of the formation of 
 the Church’s creed and the development of her 
 practice, divisions arose, inconsistent with, or des¬ 
 tructive of the unity, the Emperor might or ought, 
 on the same principle, to come to the aid of the 
 
28 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Result. 
 
 ecclesiastical action, with a view to suppress what was 
 schismatic and wrong. Here came the opening for the 
 effective interposition of Civil power. For what I 
 have now said, is as much as to say, that the 
 Emperor took a side, and applied his power accord¬ 
 ing to the side he took. Certainly, if he was to act 
 so decisively, he had a right to consult his own 
 conscience as to the side for which he was to act ; he 
 was very certain also to consult his own inclinations; 
 and if any one shall say that it was his duty to guide 
 himself by the voice of the Church, it is enough to 
 reply that his conscience and inclinations would go 
 far to settle in any disputed case, which side was 
 the Church for the present purpose. And thus a 
 habit of authoritative interposition was formed and 
 sanctioned, which clearly implied some ill-defined 
 right on the Emperor’s part to control by authority, 
 and affect by power, very important and vital Church 
 affairs. This afforded a decisive corroboration to all 
 the other influences that were at work, tending to 
 bring the Church in general, and ecclesiastical men 
 individually, into an injurious subservience to the 
 Imperial court. It is possible perhaps for a theorist to 
 find distinctions, by which a right in the Prince to aid 
 the Church by persecuting heretics and schismatics 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 29 
 
 shall be kept clear of the inference that he has a 
 right to dictate in sacris. But, in the circumstances 
 of the Empire and the Early Church, such distinctions 
 are nugatory ; and though some Imperial proceedings 
 in this line may be explained away, as a matter of fact, 
 the one thing led to the other; the duty to persecute 
 became a right to dictate. It is a cause of thankfulness 
 that, in God’s merciful providence, some of the early 
 Christian Emperors went wholly wrong in their theo¬ 
 logy, and conscientiously persecuted and worried the 
 men who were the strength and life blood of the Church 
 —who represented its real and deepest convictions. 
 That wholesome experience did something to form, in 
 the Church, an impression of the necessity of guarding 
 her highest interests against danger from this quarter ; 
 but by no means in a degree sufficient to cure the evil, 
 or to prevent its injurious development. The worst 
 effects of it were averted simply by the fact that in 
 those days, as I have explained, the Church had so 
 vigorous a life in it, as compared with the State. 
 Clear and sound principles were not applied. The 
 Emperors often assumed power, and had power 
 conceded to them, improperly. But the Church could 
 always make her strength felt when thoroughly 
 roused. The more pernicious results were developed 
 
30 
 
 CHUR CH A ND S TA TE 
 
 Lines by which 
 State power 
 worked. 
 
 in the East. In the West, causes were at work which 
 powerfully limited the encroachments of the State— 
 the same causes, or some of them, which ultimately 
 favoured and promoted the encroachments of the 
 Papacy. 
 
 I have dwelt so long on this aspect of the case, 
 because it has interesting relations to modern dis¬ 
 cussions. It is, of course, only one factor of a 
 complex case. But it is an important one ; and it 
 did much to fix the kind of element in which the 
 Church was to live, and the kind of influences she 
 was to undergo, during her connection with the 
 Empire. I may say that, especially in the East, 
 the power of the State to influence the Church 
 wrought by two lines of opportunity. First, it wrought 
 in connection with divisions which arose about the 
 Church’s creed and action ; and secondly, in con¬ 
 nection with the power to affect men’s income 
 and outward comfort, which so many influences had 
 lodged in the hands of the State. I think any 
 unpredjudiced student will own that, on the whole, 
 in both these lines, the results were thoroughly 
 injurious. They were so even when the Emperors 
 were disinterested and conscientious. The direct 
 entanglement of the imperial court in the theological 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 31 
 
 contentions of the age was the source of unspeakable 
 confusion and disadvantage both to Church and 
 State. And the fawning dependence on emperors 
 and great men, which the other line of action 
 encouraged, powerfully developed whatever was base 
 in the Church. No doubt it also gave occasion to 
 the more brilliant display of the higher qualities of 
 righteous and high-minded men. 
 
 As to the more general results of the great change 
 of relations effected in Constantine’s days, two ques¬ 
 tions arise. One has regard to the effect upon the State. 
 First, the influence in favour of idolatry, which the 
 State had heretofore exercised, came to an end. 
 Secondly, legislation and public action were improved 
 in several very important departments ; for example, 
 as regards the slaves, as regards the poor, as regards 
 the sick, as regards various immoral and discreditable 
 practices and institutions. Thirdly, we may set down 
 an influence for good, not unmixed perhaps, but surely 
 considerable, from the mere contact with Christian 
 minds—especially with energetic and devoted Christian 
 minds—which naturally arose, under the new system, 
 for magistrates and judges; not to speak of the cases in 
 which magistrates and judges were sincere Christian 
 men themselves. These were very considerable benefits. 
 
 Effect on 
 State. 
 
CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 32 
 
 Effect on 
 Church. 
 
 The Roman State was decaying, doubtless, and was 
 by-and-by to fall; yet benefit was reaped in the 
 meantime, and a turn was given to the Roman law, 
 in its latest stages, which propagated an influence 
 down to later times. These things are undeniable. 
 It must be added, however, that there appears no 
 reason to think they need have been realised in a less 
 degree, had the connection of Church and State been 
 somewhat less close; had, for instance, the Christian 
 Church herself been set free to do its work with 
 honour; had the Emperor himself, and those whom 
 he could persuade to do so, adopted the Christian 
 religion, submitting to its influence, regulating legis¬ 
 lation by its teaching, and using their private influ¬ 
 ence on its behalf—and had the process stopped there. 
 With reference to the effect upon the Church, the 
 outward prosperity which now took place was a 
 welcome relief after the oppressions of the past. The 
 public position conceded to the Church gave her an 
 added weight and influence in the community, which 
 settled the question as to the religion henceforth 
 generally to be professed within the empire. And a 
 great accession of disciples to the Church’s fold 
 ensued. But,on the other hand, a deplorable secularisa¬ 
 tion and corruption of the Church took place. The 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 33 
 
 world—a very pagan world—rushed into the Church ; 
 and all existing tendencies towards superstition on the 
 one hand, and towards a relaxed moral condition on 
 the other, experienced a fresh and powerful impulse. 
 
 Strenuous desires and endeavours to deal aright with 
 this state of things were not wanting, and some of the 
 Church’s sons gave token of unsurpassed devoted¬ 
 ness in their efforts. But even these, though they 
 escaped the taint, did not escape the bewildering 
 influence of the position. 
 
 It is, I think, an over-hasty logic which ascribes Not all to be 
 
 set down to 
 
 all these evils to what we may call the Estab- 
 lishment of the Church in Constantine’s days. For, ment.” 
 let us make the supposition that anything like this 
 had been as much as possible avoided ; let us 
 suppose that the Church had received full tolera¬ 
 tion and approval; that the Emperor, with all the 
 prestige attached to his great position, joined the 
 Church; that he ceased to countenance and sup¬ 
 port any other worship, used his private influence in 
 favour of Christianity, and was known to cherish more 
 confidence and regard towards Christians than towards 
 others; suppose that in this way only it had become 
 a recommendation and advantage to a man to be a 
 
 Christian, then that alone would have been enough to 
 
 C 
 
34 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 produce very great effects. The flow of the world 
 into the Church was real enough before, and had 
 been fruitful of visible bad effect in Origen’s days ; 
 and no doubt it would, on any supposition, have set 
 in with tremendous power in the days of Constan¬ 
 tine. For the old religions were dying; Christianity 
 was the only alternative; the future was felt to 
 be with it; it only needed that the counter pressure 
 of State persecution should be taken off, and that 
 an appreciable prospect of advantage should appear 
 on the side of Christian profession, to dispose great 
 crowds of men to join the Christian Church, and great 
 crowds more to let their children join it. When that 
 stream began to run, it was sure enough to bring with 
 it great risks and dangers for the Church; in dealing 
 with these, and passing through them, human in¬ 
 firmity was only too certain to be abundantly ex¬ 
 hibited. This, I believe, was sure enough to be the 
 case, on any arrangement of it. Unquestionably, 
 however, the arrangements that were adopted, as they 
 were arranged and developed, had the effect of greatly 
 aggravating the inevitable evils ; they accelerated and 
 intensified the secularisation of the Church and its 
 general corruption ; and they had the effect, in par¬ 
 ticular, of causing the principles and practices of 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 35 
 
 secular politics, in their then existing form, to take 
 force throughout the province of Church affairs. 
 
 It is well of course to remember that the main what else 
 evils which have afflicted the world and the Church 
 have deeper roots than any of those mistaken 
 arrangements into which men may have been 
 occasionally led in their management of affairs. Still, 
 looking back, one may be tempted to ask—What 
 arrangement of affairs in Constantine’s day would have 
 been most likely to avoid the evils which we see 
 coming in the train of the arrangements adopted ? 
 
 It is, indeed, in some respects, an idle question. For, 
 in the first place, we do not know what evils, unima¬ 
 gined by us, would have ensued from any scheme 
 we are pleased to suggest ; and, in the second place, 
 we may be quite sure that it was perfectly out of the 
 question for any one in Constantine’s days—for 
 ourselves, had we been there—to have imagined our 
 modern way of it, or to have imagined the reasons 
 which may be urged in its defence. It is vain to 
 canvass what might have been had God’s provi¬ 
 dence not been what it was. But the question may 
 afford a way of bringing out one’s impressions; and, 
 if so put, I see no answer but one. I can only 
 suggest that (whatever friendly co-operation for 
 
3G 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 common objects might take place) neither Church 
 nor State should, in the meantime, have contracted 
 definite and permanent responsibilities to one another: 
 the Church—that is, the Christian community—should 
 have been left to work out the solution of her pro¬ 
 blems on her own ground, and, in the main, by her own 
 resources. I see no answer but that. For if any one 
 suggests what I may call, for brevity, the Free Church 
 theory of Establishment, as an idea which might have 
 been realised, I reply by reminding you that the Church 
 was in process of forming her creed and shaping her 
 practice: she had some of the most important steps in 
 that process still before her. On the Free Church 
 theory, the duty of the Emperors would have been, 
 not, indeed, to interfere precisely as they did, but yet 
 to formulate a judgment of their own on each step of 
 this momentous process ; and, at each step, to give 
 effect to their judgment in a very influential way— 
 a way affecting, or that might affect, the whole out¬ 
 ward state of the Church. I do not believe that such a 
 plan could have led to anything but injurious embar¬ 
 rassments and complications, or could have failed to 
 be a source of great danger. I don’t think it could 
 have ended in anything very different from the pro¬ 
 cess actually adopted—which, you must remember. 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 37 
 
 beginning without the least planned or designed 
 Erastianism, ended in that by a natural drift. 
 
 And I think it possible (which, perhaps, is as 
 much as one ought to say) that—thrown on her own 
 convictions and resources, embarrassed in a somewhat 
 less degree with hosts of unsound converts, less sub¬ 
 jected to the temptations arising from contact with 
 the seat of power, and from a great worldly position, 
 less petted and less persecuted—the Church might, 
 perhaps, have not less efficiently worked out her 
 mission, in its various departments of theology, and 
 worship, and discipline, and pastoral care ; been not 
 less useful to the State, maintained a relation to the 
 authorities not less friendly and becoming, and been 
 as frank and courageous, as high-hearted and success¬ 
 ful, in bearing trouble when that came, and in con¬ 
 fronting rulers of all degrees, and men of all ranks, 
 with her testimonies and her rebukes. In short, 
 subject to the qualifications already given, I see no 
 reason to believe that Constantine might not have as 
 wisely consulted for the peace, unity, welfare, and 
 settlement of the Church, and for the Christianisation 
 of the people and the State, if he had declined to take 
 burden on the State for anything but friendship, 
 protection, and the maintenance of justice and mercy. 
 
38 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Third period. 
 
 Opening of 
 nth Century. 
 
 As I intimated at the outset, I pass over what I 
 have described as the second division of my subject,, 
 and proceed at once to the third. I must pay it so 
 much respect as to touch upon it, however briefly. I 
 come then to the nth century, when a remarkable 
 period of European history was opening, and when 
 the Popes, already great, and yet still hardly more 
 than great subjects, were on the eve of that remark¬ 
 able series of efforts which carried them to the highest 
 pinnacle of their greatness. 
 
 In most European countries the concussions of the 
 preceding period had left a state of things in which evil 
 abounded. On the one hand, the clergy—many of them 
 secularised and demoralised—held in the name of the 
 Church much power, territorial and political ; and, on 
 the other hand, princes and great lords redressed the 
 balance by methods of interference sufiflciently coarse 
 and unscrupulous. In particular, they took into their 
 hand, as far as they could, ecclesiastical appoint¬ 
 ments, and the management of ecclesiastical property; 
 and they strove to turn all ecclesiastical things and 
 doings to their own profit. It was an evil time ; and 
 the evils called loudly for reform ; and reform was 
 to be attempted. 
 
 A little while ago, I pointed out the importance of 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 39 
 
 the great conception of the unity of the Church, as it 
 was understood, and came into operation in the days 
 of Constantine. The same great conception acted 
 forcibly on the situation with which we are dealing 
 now; and it operated, in some respects, in a new 
 manner. Europe had broken up into different 
 monarchies, and in each of them the relations of 
 Church and State might have been taken in hand, as 
 a domestic question, to be settled within the realm. 
 But then the unity of the Church—one through all 
 these kingdoms—came into consideration ; common 
 principle ought to be recognised in all cases ; the 
 Church everywhere is interested in the right disposal 
 of the case of the Church here. The Pope took 
 ground as the representative of the unity, and as the 
 supreme authority for the whole Church. Hence, 
 the leading questions rising out of the situation be¬ 
 came questions in which the Pope, outside of each 
 particular kingdom, and drawing to him the support 
 and influence of the whole Church, had to be reckoned 
 with by each kingdom, and be either contented or 
 defied. 
 
 It is to be observed that the very same in¬ 
 fluences which inspired the European mind, at the 
 era we speak of, with a disposition to seek a better 
 
 Unity of 
 Church—bear¬ 
 ing on New 
 Situation. 
 
40 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Impulse in 
 
 European 
 
 mind. 
 
 Movement 
 which fol¬ 
 lowed. 
 
 state of things, were also those which rendered it pos¬ 
 sible for the Popes so successfully to assert their 
 greatness. The general conscience awoke to the im¬ 
 pression of a backward, ungodly, disgraced condition. 
 Then went forth one of those strange tides of in¬ 
 fluence, leading to aspiration, hopefulness, and eflbrt, 
 which, from time to time, mark the history of men. 
 You may call it an enthusiasm for, or aspiration after, 
 a divine order in the world. This arose and wrought 
 everywhere, and in a hundred forms ; but everywhere, 
 almost, it was associated with confidence in the Church, 
 and with lofty conceptions as to what could be made 
 of the Church. “ Liberate, purify, energise the Church : 
 give full effect to the ideas which the Church has con¬ 
 secrated, but which, alas, have sunk out of sight 
 in recent practice!” That was not the whole of 
 the movement, but that was near the heart of it. 
 The Popes, then, set themselves forth as the ac¬ 
 credited representatives of the very thing that was 
 wanted—Church liberty. Church power. 
 
 Undoubtedly many of the Popes shared the impulse 
 and believed in the idea: they did not believe in it 
 the less, that it pointed clearly enough to a posi¬ 
 tion and an authority that would make them as gods 
 in the earth. Thus led, the movement went on with 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 41 
 
 power. The time that followed was undoubtedly a 
 great time in its childlike and bewildered way. As 
 Protestants, we see in it so much of the misleading and 
 the injurious, we see mixed up with it so much of the 
 self-seeking and fraudulent, that we are apt to regard 
 it only with a cold and a condemning eye. For 
 my part, I can never think of it without interest 
 and sympathy. It was a movement which nursed 
 many grand efforts and bred many noble men. And 
 for a time all the noblest men were on the side 
 of the Popes. That is why those remarkable 
 Scottish kings of ours, the sons of Margaret, 
 articulated their kingdom to the system of Rome, 
 and brought in so plentifully the then new mon¬ 
 astic orders. It was a great reform, so men thought, 
 and was to lead on to a kind of promised land 
 of truth and good. 
 
 Well, a great part of the work which lay to Work imder- 
 
 the Popes in this line of things, was to remedy 
 
 ^ ° Popes. 
 
 the evils of the ecclesiastical State all over Europe; 
 and, among other things, to bring the Church and 
 the clergy out from that undue entanglement in 
 the secular, and that undue subjection to the State, 
 which had demoralised and paralysed them. To 
 purify the Church and free it, that was the 
 
42 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Papal claims. 
 
 object. It was true enough: there was evil 
 enough of these precise kinds in most European 
 countries, which “ craved amends.” Whether any 
 redress of those particular evils could be of much 
 value, as long as those enormous misconceptions 
 of Christianity continued to prevail, which lay then 
 about equally on all minds, is a question I must 
 not stir here. But the efforts at redress, in which 
 the Popes took the lead, were fore-doomed to breed 
 only new confusion in the end ; and that from two 
 causes at any rate. First, all Papal efforts and inter¬ 
 positions for the liberty of the Church, were designed 
 to bring the Church into a dependence on the Pope 
 himself, still more injurious and slavish than any 
 they had been subjected to by the secular power. 
 And, secondly, the Pope was as resolute to confound 
 things secular and sacred as ever any Caesar in 
 the world could be ; only, he worked the confusion 
 to a different effect. 
 
 This deserves a word or two of explanation. I had 
 occasion to notice, in an earlier part of this lecture, that 
 the State’s regard for Christianity had early been ex¬ 
 pressed in the way of conferring on the Church pro¬ 
 perty, immunities, and functions of various kinds not 
 inherently pertaining to her, but believed to be 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 43 
 
 fitted to increase her influence and usefulness. The 
 sound doctrine was, that the State could control or 
 resume all these things as she thought fit. The danger 
 was, that the State might make them the occasion or 
 pretext of controlling the Church in matters in which 
 she should be free; and that danger had partly been 
 experienced. Now, the Papal doctrine was to apply to 
 matters of this kind the same principles of Church 
 independence which might reasonably enough be 
 maintained with respect to the functions which 
 Christ has committed to the Church, and which 
 she is bound to exercise on her responsibility to 
 Him. The Church had been in Egyptian captivity; 
 and now, escaping out of Egypt, she was to carry all 
 those spoils with her as her own. The history of such 
 questions as lay investiture, taxation of the clergy, 
 benefit of clergy, and many more, is just the history of 
 attempts by the Church, as represented by the Popes, 
 to oust the State from rights of control which belonged 
 to its proper province, and to do so on the plea 
 that these rights had passed, or been transferred, 
 into the sacred domain of the Church. Those 
 attempts were not always successful ; but they 
 were sufficiently successful to maintain, in every 
 country in Europe, a large usurped dominion, from 
 
44 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Slackening of 
 the movement. 
 
 which the just authority of the State was excluded, 
 and in which a foreign jurisdiction, that of the 
 Papacy, was supreme. And the effect, by way 
 of natural and deserved reaction, was this, that 
 the civil governments upheld their own side of 
 the question, by taking as much power in the 
 Church as each could get, with as little disposition 
 to be barred by mere principles, or intrinsic dis¬ 
 tinctions between civil and ecclesiastical, as the Popes 
 themselves. 
 
 The great European movement which gave the 
 Popes so much advantage in their enterprise, and con¬ 
 tributed so much to the elevation of the Ec¬ 
 clesiastical State, slackened after some generations. 
 Men’s confidence cooled. The Church had become 
 enormously rich and powerful, but certainly the 
 Kingdom of God was not come. The turn of the 
 tide is marked very well by the outburst of the 
 mediaeval heresies in the I2th and 13th centuries. 
 They were the manifestation of disappointed hopes, 
 which turned from the Church to look elsewhere. 
 The power of the Papacy is usually said to have 
 culminated with Innocent III. (about the year 
 1200) ; and, at all events, from the time of Boniface 
 VIII, (a hundred years after) the Popes found it 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 45 
 
 convenient to arrange things with the monarchs, for Compromise, 
 the most part, on a principle of compromise or con¬ 
 cession. In this way the State, or the prince, acquired 
 some increased influence, but not on any clear or well- 
 grounded principle, and not with any good effects, 
 for the most part, on the condition of the Church. 
 
 Meanwhile, in one department, the Church reigned, 
 and continued to reign, absolutely supreme. Her 
 sentence of heresy was conclusive, and the obligation 
 on the civil power to follow it up with fire and sword 
 was undisputed. On this point the State claimed no 
 discretion. And when the Reformation came, while Reformation, 
 the Reformers, generally speaking, cannot be said 
 to have adopted the principle of toleration, one thing 
 which they did understand, and press with the utmost 
 force, was the right and duty of princes and states¬ 
 men to judge for themselves what God called them 
 to countenance; and, in particular, to judge whether 
 it was any part of their duty to follow up, in the 
 ancient way, the judgments of heresy which Rome 
 might pronounce. 
 
 But it is time for me to break off, however 
 abruptly, and to draw this lecture to a close. These 
 later features of the relation between Church and 
 State interest us chiefly as belonging to the system 
 
46 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 I’oints to be 
 watched in 
 judging of 
 relations. 
 
 of things from which our fathers revolted at the 
 Reformation ; and they are not so fitted, perhaps, to 
 yield us any direct or obvious instruction. The earlier 
 experiment, probably, has for us more material of 
 sympathetic interest. I will wind up with one or 
 two remarks which this survey has suggested. 
 
 The first remark I make is that, in considering 
 instances of relations between Church and State, we 
 should accustom ourselves to examine distinctly the 
 alleged benefit to the State on the one hand, and to 
 the Church on the other, which is expected to proceed, 
 or which has proceeded from them. Such arrange¬ 
 ments are commonly looked upon in the light of 
 benefactions to the Church, or to Christianity as repre¬ 
 sented by the Church. Now, the truth is, that the 
 influence which Christianity and the Church may exert 
 on the State is, at the least, as important as any that 
 the State can exert in behalf of the Church. The 
 question, how each can communicate to the other the 
 greatest benefit, resolves itself really into this—How 
 can each best contribute to promote the efficiency of 
 the other for its proper objects, without violation of 
 principles, and without injuring its own efficiency? 
 That may be, to a large extent, a question of circum¬ 
 stances. It may also involve questions of principle. 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 47 
 
 For instance, on each side the question rises—What 
 power do you concede to the other party, in accepting 
 a given form of aid, or of co-operation ? 
 
 Again, it surely follows, from a careful considera¬ 
 tion of instances like those before us, and, indeed, 
 from the nature of the case, that, in acceding to a 
 relation between Church and State, in which she 
 becomes the State’s appointed representative in the 
 religious department, and the recipient of a standing 
 provision on that ground, the Church concedes to the 
 State a right, at least, of inspection and remonstrance 
 —a right to be reckoned with at any step of which the 
 State disapproves. Now, except in so far as the Church 
 is prepared, on any occasion when it is needful, to drop 
 the benefits conferred, and all that depends on them, 
 for the purpose of following out her own views of 
 duty, this right of remonstrance in the State will 
 become a right of effectual objection and veto. The 
 Church, I think, is bound to consider well on what 
 terms she will concede so great and grave a position, 
 with reference to the movements of her organic life, to 
 any party, the State, or any other; and she is bound 
 to consider well, to what sort of State she concedes it, 
 and what sort of use of it the State is likely to make. 
 
 Lastly, whatever may be said of some particular 
 
 What the 
 Church con¬ 
 cedes in agree¬ 
 ing to Estab¬ 
 lishment. 
 
48 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Great place 
 filled by this 
 alliance. 
 
 What worth of 
 it depends on. 
 
 effects of this alliance, as it has been exemplified in 
 time past, no one should be insensible to the great 
 place it has filled, and the great influence it has 
 exerted. By this, especially as exemplified of old, 
 the conception of the absolute claims of Christianity 
 to be received stood out embodied to the minds of 
 men, in a great institution, in which the consent of 
 the Commonwealth bore testimony to the mission of 
 the Church. If the time has come, or is coming, for 
 dismissing what now remains of strict State-Church- 
 ism in any country, I, for one, do not underrate 
 the magnitude of the change from that which was 
 once, to that which will be then. A great place will 
 be empty; and it must be the care of Christian men 
 to provide for its being adequately supplied by other 
 forms of influence and impression. 
 
 But I hold that the worth of an established Church 
 always depended on its being a real embodiment in 
 this form, and the main embodiment, of the value and 
 respect for Christianity cherished by the community. 
 When that sentiment takes other embodiments, when 
 the institution maintained can no longer be, even 
 roughly, identified with the Christianity of the country, 
 and when the relation in which it stands to the senti¬ 
 ment I refer to, as well as to political interests and 
 
FROM CONSTANTINE. 
 
 49 
 
 parties, has become a matter of debate; then, in my 
 opinion, it is deceptive any longer to impute to its 
 continuance the influence and importance which, in 
 other circumstances, it might legitimately claim. 
 
 More I will not say, for it has not been my object Conclusion, 
 in this lecture to strain history for the sake of any 
 special conclusion, or to make it advocate a special 
 party project; and, perhaps, I can close with no 
 remark better justified by the survey we have taken 
 than this—viz., that while theories, principles received, 
 count for much in the history of the Church, the 
 main impelling forces lie deeper. It is very needful 
 to have light to guide the Church as to the forms 
 in which her forces shall embody themselves in any 
 age. But surely, also, it is most needful that the 
 Church shall first actually be instinct with forces 
 that crave embodiment and break out into action. 
 
 Questions about Church and State become interesting 
 and noble, in proportion as the Christian society 
 burns with the faith of its proper character, its 
 mission, its resources, its obligations, and is resolute 
 to be true to its Lord and faithful to its work. Then 
 it becomes interesting and important that so great 
 a force should take the right and the best channels. 
 
 D 
 
NOTE. 
 
 I HAVE purposely abstained wholly from adverting to any 
 form of the theory which identifies Church and State. 
 I have done so— First, Because that theory has no kind of 
 pertinency to the periods I had to speak of; and to have 
 alluded to it would merely have embarrassed the treatment, 
 with no good effect to compensate for the disadvantage. 
 I have done so— Secondly, Because the inapplicability of the 
 theory in question to the problems of our own time is 
 becoming so conspicuous, that it seems misleading to 
 represent it as a serious alternative, or as having any great 
 claim to be kept in view, except in instances where history 
 presents it as embodied to some extent in actual arrange¬ 
 ments. It would have been easy to shew that an applica¬ 
 tion of it to the circumstances of the 4th century would 
 amount, as nearly as possible, to a reductio ad absurdum. 
 But this theory, although it has had highly respectable 
 advocates—always, indeed, rather on speculative than on 
 theological grounds—is probably now rapidly losing hold 
 of the minds of all earnest Christians. 
 
CHURCH AND STATE FROM THE 
 REFORMATION, 
 
 BY 
 
 LORD MONCREIFF. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 —♦— 
 
 When I agreed to take part in this Series of Con¬ 
 gregational Lectures, I had no intention of promoting 
 in any way an agitation against the Established 
 Church; nor had I supposed that my undertaking 
 that duty could possibly be so construed. But, find¬ 
 ing misconceptions afloat on that subject, I thought it 
 right to make the disclaimer which is expressed in 
 my opening sentences. Now, however, that the 
 request has been made to me (and I very readily 
 accede to it) that these Essays should assume a col¬ 
 lective form, I feel that something more than a merely 
 negative statement of opinion is necessary. I make 
 my explanation reluctantly, for I had hoped to avoid 
 contemporaneous controversy. 
 
 I do not draw from the history of the times which 
 were the subject of my remarks the moral that the 
 State Church should cease to exist in Scotland. As 
 an adherent of the Free Church (I say nothing of the 
 
54 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 political aspect of the question) I see no more reason 
 for taking any part in an agitation against the 
 Established Church now, than the leaders of the 
 great body of the Free Church did in 1843. Pro¬ 
 vocatives to a different line of conduct were not 
 wanting then, even if they are supposed to be present 
 now; but the Free Church occupied a position at 
 once dignified and influential, in standing firm by the 
 principles of the lawfulness and expediency of a 
 rightly constituted State Church, which our fore¬ 
 fathers always maintained, and in resting the vindica¬ 
 tion of their position on their Claim of Right. They 
 remained quite free, and are quite free now, to hold 
 such opinions, and follow such course on the relations 
 of the Established Church to the State, as may seem 
 most likely to promote the general welfare; but I 
 have found no cause to depart from the original 
 ground, and I shall state shortly the impressions on 
 which that opinion rests. 
 
 I have endeavoured to shew in my remarks that 
 the theory or ideal of the Church polity founded 
 in Scotland at the Reformation was not a visionary 
 scheme, but was capable of vigorous practical 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 55 
 
 application, with perfect safety, both to the 
 spiritual functions of the Church and the civil and 
 ecclesiastical liberties of the people ; and that, in 
 fact, it had been so applied for a century and a-half 
 before the Disruption in 1843. I have also shewn 
 that the occasion of the obstacles it met with then 
 and previously, did not arise from any defects in its 
 own principles, but from the inroad of collateral influ¬ 
 ences, sometimes the merest trivialities, from without. 
 Such was the import of the testimony which was 
 taken in 1843. was a protest for redress, and in 
 no respect for destruction—a demand that the Legis¬ 
 lature should repair the shaken foundations of the 
 Church of Scotland. I do not think the prospect 
 of redress is near in the present day; neither, on 
 the other hand, do I think the result unattainable; 
 but it is far too soon, in my opinion, for us with 
 our own hands to render it impossible, and undo 
 the work of 300 years. The public guarantees given 
 by the Civil Government for the Protestant Faith, 
 Presbyterian Church Government, and Evangelical 
 Doctrine, whatever such securities may be worth, 
 for the most part centre in the institution of the 
 
56 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 Church established by law. I have no nervous 
 apprehension in regard to any of these, but none 
 of them are so far beyond peril that I would 
 willingly renounce any of our safeguards, and 
 liberate the Imperial Parliament from its obliga¬ 
 tions, unless better assured of what would come 
 in their place. The adjustment of the new order 
 of things would not be wholly or mainly in Pres¬ 
 byterian hands ; and it were difficult to predict what 
 kind of fabric might or might not arise on the 
 ruins of our Revolution Settlement and the Treaty 
 of Union. For it must not be forgotten that changes 
 of this nature are seldom confined in their operation 
 to the object for which they were effected, but fre¬ 
 quently find their main development in results the 
 most unexpected, and sometimes in those which are 
 least desired. It is impossible to root out an old 
 tree without disturbing the soil round it; and the 
 abolition of the Established Church would bring with 
 it many results, religious, public, and social, extending 
 far beyond our subjects of controversy. 
 
 I only state my own impressions, and have no 
 mind to dogmatise on these important matters, on 
 
PREFATORY NOTE, 
 
 57 
 
 which I am aware that the opinions which I entertain 
 are not shared by many for whom I have great 
 respect. But, for myself, I prefer to remain on the 
 old neutral vantage ground—to cherish the traditions 
 of our fathers and the lessons of history, and leave 
 it to time to unravel problems which we cannot and 
 need not solve. 
 
 15 Great Stuart Street, 
 
 December 24th, iS’j'j. 
 
CHURCH AND STATE IN SCOTLAND 
 
 FROM 1560 TO 1843. 
 
 - ^ - 
 
 ~|^EFORE commencing the discharge of the duty I 
 have to-night to fulfil, I have one explanation to 
 make with reference to the nature of the task imposed 
 upon me. I understand this meeting to be a congre¬ 
 gational one ; and that, in compliance with the request 
 which was made to me, I am to address the young men 
 connected with it. I have no intention of entering on 
 any subject of present controversy, or the field of modern 
 politics, whether civil or ecclesiastical. On the question 
 of Disestablishment I have nothing to say ; and when I 
 finish my remarks, I shall be as free as I was when I 
 began, to hold what opinions, to follow what course, 
 to express what views, I may think fit; and to agree 
 with any man, or differ with every man on that 
 subject; or rather (which is more likely to be the 
 result) to claim to myself the right, on such a topic. 
 
<30 
 
 CHURCH AND STA TE 
 
 to shelter myself under my judicial robe, and abstain 
 entirely from the controversies that may be raging 
 outside. My duty is purely historical, and embraces 
 the period from 1560 down to another era, nearer 
 our own time, but still growing more remote every 
 day—that of the Disruption of the Church of Scot¬ 
 land in 1843. I propose to deal with the topic of 
 the connection between Church and State during this 
 period historically; but, at the same time, the review I 
 propose shortly to lay before you is not without its 
 moral, and that a very serious and earnest one. I shall 
 deal with these questions boldly, and whether they 
 have, or have not, a bearing on the position in which 
 we stand at the present day; and whatever that 
 bearing may be, there is no reason why I should not, 
 with all freedom, express my impressions with 
 reference to the teachings of history. 
 
 There is a tendency, in our day, to think that 
 our present age is far in advance of all which 
 have gone before it, and to depreciate the intel¬ 
 lects, learning, and acquirements of former times. 
 I wish, at the outset, to warn my audience against 
 that prevalent but shallow cast of thought. It is 
 quite true that, as regards former times, we pos¬ 
 sess some advantages over them, as they did over 
 
FROM THE REFORMA TION. 
 
 61 
 
 those which went before them. We have all the 
 knowledge which they obtained, or, at least, the 
 means of acquiring it are within our reach ; while,, 
 in addition, we have all which we have learned 
 on our own account; and, what is more important, 
 the means of knowing, through the medium of 
 history, the effect of the learning and the exertions 
 of former times. Those who are so complacent 
 about the advance which we have made in this 
 19th century may with profit ask themselves. How 
 comes it that such is our fortunate lot?—so much 
 more fortunate, as we think, than that of those who 
 went before us ;—and they may also add to their 
 meditations this question. How should we have 
 fared if our lot had been cast in former times, 
 surrounded by perils and controversies, the conflict 
 of arms and the conflict of opinion—perils and 
 dangers on every side—dynasties rising and falling, 
 and even social life and the domestic hearth not 
 safe? How should we have done our part as 
 they of old did, in laying foundations for posterity 
 to build upon ? I think, if people only compared 
 themselves with the great heroes of former times,, 
 they would moderate to a considerable extent the 
 complacency of which I have spoken. It may be 
 
62 
 
 CHURCH AND ST A TE 
 
 quite true, and is true, that the i6th and 17th 
 centuries, which w^ere periods of turmoil and dis¬ 
 turbance, were behind in many of the arts of peace, 
 in a great many of the acquirements of science and 
 the refinements of modern society, of which we 
 are possessed now. But to one study they were 
 devoted, and that was .the study of theology—the 
 study of the relations in which the Church of Christ 
 should stand—the relations of the members of that 
 Church to each other, and of the Church itself to the 
 State. These were the politics of those days, and 
 on them the authorities of the i6th and 17th centuries 
 are far beyond, in weight and importance, any that 
 could be adduced at the present day. There was 
 a maturity, a depth, an intensity, a thoroughness 
 about their learning on such subjects, to which, with¬ 
 out disparagement to any one, it would be difficult 
 indeed to furnish a parallel in present times. The 
 enormous erudition of Buchanan, the cultivation of 
 Melville, the learning of Rutherford, Gillespie, Baillie, 
 and their English comrade Selden, and of a great 
 many more names not so well known, who devoted 
 their lifetime to the study of the subjects of which I 
 speak, it would be very hard indeed to equal; and it 
 stirs my indignation and contempt to hear individuals 
 
FROM THE REFORMA TION. 
 
 63 
 
 —with but comparatively a smattering of learning, 
 who, if they had devoted their lifetime to the subjects 
 in question, could never have come near the mark of 
 these great men—speaking and writing as if these 
 were not objects of admiration and reverence, to be 
 treated with respect and gratitude. 
 
 I am to go back to the year 1560—a very suitable 1560. 
 topic for a Scottish audience—for in the year 1560 
 Scotland in one sense was born. Public opinion, the 
 opinion of the commonalty, the existence of a free 
 state, began for Scotland in 1560. Before that, the 
 people were brave, warlike, wild, intractable ; an in¬ 
 telligent race of men, respected, as they have always 
 been, abroad as well as at home ; possessing a strong, 
 steady sense of independence, a pride which would 
 not stoop, and a desire for the acquisition of know¬ 
 ledge, which they pursued throughout all Europe and 
 under all discouragement. But, as regarded the 
 nation, it was, on the one hand, a race of nobles, 
 proud, it might be, but poor; and, on the other, a 
 common people, who had neither education, nor 
 position, nor power, nor influence. The Church— 
 the Church of Rome—had degenerated into a most 
 corrupt, inefflcient, and scandalous body. The nation 
 roused up in 1560; the Reformation acted as a spell ; 
 
64 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 and, from that day forward, they have become one of 
 the most thoughtful, stedfast, thinking, intellectual 
 communities in Europe. 
 
 Constitutional liberty was an unmeaning word 
 prior to 1560. The spirit of constitutional and per¬ 
 sonal freedom has never departed from the nation 
 from that day to this ; and we may trace that 
 feeling, one of the most elevating of which mankind 
 is susceptible, with very clear and obvious footsteps, 
 to the Reformation of 1560, 
 
 The Reformation in Scotland was a far more 
 thorough operation than the Reformation as it was 
 established in the sister country. It is distinguished 
 by some clear and broad lines from that which 
 took place in England. The Reformation in Scot¬ 
 land was the work of the people: the Reformation 
 in England was the work of the monarch. My 
 present object is to shew that, whatever may have 
 been the vicissitudes through which it has passed, and 
 whatever may have been the excrescences and defects 
 in detail which have had a place within it, the consti¬ 
 tution of the Reformed Church of Scotland was, as 
 nearly as it could be, a perfect constitution for a 
 Church in connection with the State. Of course, I 
 am far from saying that the theory, however perfect. 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 65 
 
 has ever been fully carried out in practice. It has 
 laboured under the dead weight of political influences; 
 and, even when those lay lightest upon it, I cannot 
 say that the discretion, or the wisdom, or moderation 
 of those by whom the affairs of the Church were 
 conducted, were always free from criticism. But 
 of all the Churches which were established in Europe 
 at the Reformation, the theoretical principle of the 
 Church in Scotland comes nearer the ideal than any 
 other with which I am acquainted. 
 
 The Scottish Reformation had two great advan¬ 
 tages. The first was that it came later than that in 
 England, and therefore the defects and weaknesses of 
 that great movement had already shewn themselves 
 in experience, and we were enabled to avoid them. 
 In the second place, the Scottish Reformation had the 
 great advantage of being substantially moulded by 
 the strong hand of one great man—a man who, more 
 than any other of his time, had an opportunity of 
 watching the current of events, and seeing how, when 
 moulded into the position and framework of a Church, 
 the general principles of the Reformation might be 
 most successfully and efficiently carried out: I refer, 
 of course, to John Knox. I am not disposed, in 
 
 any degree, to detract from the importance of the 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Reformation in the sister country. I have the 
 greatest veneration and respect for the men who 
 carried out that great movement—many of whom, 
 alas ! sealed their consistency and their courage with 
 their blood—and we are not to forget, because we do 
 not in all respects agree theoretically or practically in 
 the Episcopalianism of the south, that they did a 
 great, noble, and notable work in the English Refor¬ 
 mation. That many blots were left in that great 
 work—that its general framework may be such that 
 we prefer the Church polity to which we ourselves 
 belong may be true ;—but that is no reason why the 
 men who, in evil and dangerous times, had the 
 courage and the power to accomplish so great and 
 good a result, should not have due honour from us. 
 Still I think that it cannot be doubted that the 
 Church of Scotland, as it emerged from the Refor¬ 
 mation, was a far more symmetrical institution than 
 the Church of England. The Church of England, as 
 I have said, was reformed by the monarch ; and the 
 principle on which the organization proceeded, and 
 the object at that time of those by whom it was re¬ 
 gulated, was rather to leave things, as much as they 
 could be left, as they were, rather than make innova¬ 
 tions which were not absolutely necessary in the cause 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 67 
 
 of truth, sincerity, and consistency. Thus, although 
 the Articles of the Church of England differ very little 
 from our own Confession, the early English reformers 
 were induced to retain, in their formularies and ritual, 
 many things which might be supposed to be indif¬ 
 ferent, expressed in words and phrases which were 
 ambiguous, and which have borne in our own day 
 unfortunate fruit. Their object, no doubt, was to 
 reconcile the people who had been brought up in the 
 Roman Catholic faith to the change which the Refor¬ 
 mation introduced, and to make it easier for those with¬ 
 out to come within the pale of the reformed institution. 
 The Scottish Reformation avoided this error, and pro¬ 
 ceeded on exactly the opposite principle; and, I think, 
 experience has proved that our forefathers shewed 
 their wisdom in doing so. The leaders of our Refor¬ 
 mation thought that where anything admitted of an 
 interpretation inconsistent with the standards of the 
 reformed religion, it should be, even though indifferent 
 in itself, avoided. Had that course been followed in 
 the sister country, we should have been spared a great 
 many of the controversies of modern times ; and there 
 would have been much less ambiguity in expression 
 and much less diversity in action, on very vital matters, 
 than there has been. 
 
68 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 This is not the place to trace in any detail the 
 career of Knox. He was a man who would have been 
 remarkable in any times, or under any circumstances. 
 He was an educated and accomplished man—accus¬ 
 tomed to life in all aspects, at home in all places, from 
 palaces to huts—a man well qualified to lead man¬ 
 kind and for the task which he ultimately under¬ 
 took. The Scottish Reformation was but a portion,, 
 perhaps not even the largest portion, of his work. 
 Having been taken prisoner by the French at 
 St. Andrews, he was for two years in the French 
 galleys a prisoner. After that, he went to the 
 Court of King Edward the Sixth, by whom he 
 was made one of his chaplains, in which capacity he 
 had no inconsiderable hand in the preparation 
 of the Church of England Order Book and Liturgy. 
 During those five years he preached in all parts 
 of England. He was offered a living in London, 
 he was offered the bishopric of Rochester; and, 
 at the death of Edward VL, he was preaching 
 to crowded congregations in Buckinghamshire, 
 which he continued to do during the first half 
 year of the reign of Queen Mary of England. 
 Forced at last to follow many of his fellow-Pro- 
 testants into exile, he became the clergyman of 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 69 
 
 the congregation of English refugees at Frankfort, 
 and there he remained for two years, and was at 
 last obliged to leave it by some controversies in 
 regard to matters connected with the Church of 
 England Service Book, which have a singular 
 resemblance to some disputes at the present day. 
 Political influence was exerted to compel his re¬ 
 moval. Thence he went to Geneva, and spent four 
 years in that place, where he made the personal 
 acquaintance of Calvin, with whom he remained 
 on terms of friendship to the end; and it was 
 not till 1560, more than ten years after he had 
 been released from his servitude in the galleys, 
 that he came to Scotland and headed the Reforma¬ 
 tion. No man could have gone through these 
 vicissitudes and alternations of prosperity and 
 adversity, and seen the varied elements of society 
 with which he must have been conversant, without 
 becoming acquainted with all ranks of society, and 
 with all public questions, whether ecclesiastical or 
 political. 
 
 When he arrived in Scotland he found the Re¬ 
 formation already established. In 1560 the people 
 threw off the yoke of the Church of Rome. It 
 was a movement, not of ecclesiastics, but of the 
 
70 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 whole people, from the highest to the lowest. 
 In that year the Protestants of Scotland approached 
 the Parliament and laid before them, for their 
 approval, the Confession of their P'aith, which re¬ 
 ceived the ratification of Parliament The next 
 duty of Knox and his associates was to frame a 
 platform of church order, and to establish the new 
 institution of the Reformed Church on those prin¬ 
 ciples which, indeed, he had learned to some extent 
 both in his English experience and still more in 
 his sojourn at Geneva; and to provide for the good 
 order and management of the ecclesiastical fabric 
 which it was proposed to rear upon the ruins of 
 the discarded hierarchy. These were embodied in 
 the work which is called the First Book of Dis¬ 
 cipline. The general principle on which the Pres¬ 
 byterian polity was established was that the 
 Church should not be a mere corporation of eccle¬ 
 siastics, but should be a thoroughly representative 
 body, containing, within its judicatories, delegates 
 from all ranks of the people. The First Book of 
 Discipline is well worthy of attentive study. It 
 was modelled upon the Geneva Order Book and 
 the ecclesiastical institutions with which Knox had 
 become familiar during his residence in Switzer- 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 71 
 
 land. It does not entirely shadow out what 
 the Church of Scotland ultimately became, but it 
 contains the broad lines of a true ecclesiastical 
 polity, comprehending the elements of the influence 
 and control of the community, combined with the 
 powers, discipline, and authority, which are necessary 
 to such institutions. Pastoral superintendence, evan¬ 
 gelical teaching, thorough discipline; the popular 
 clement in all the Church Courts, from the local 
 session up to the General Assembly; secular as 
 well as religious education ; schools, elementary and 
 secondary, terminating with the universities; a 
 thorough representation of the lay element in the 
 General Assembly—are the general features of this 
 great symmetrical and statesmanlike work. Knox 
 was a man of large and liberal views; and, it 
 may be, contrasts in that respect not unfavourably, 
 when we look back, with some of his successors. 
 He had seen Episcopacy in all its relations to the 
 work of the Church ; and although, notwithstanding 
 his experience in the sister country, he preferred 
 Presbyterian polity, yet he did not hesitate to re¬ 
 commend the appointment of district superintendents, 
 who, without any lordly power over their brethren, 
 should yet be responsible for the state and order 
 
72 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 of church affairs within their territory. These were 
 not bishops in the true Episcopal sense; but Knox 
 was not afraid to use this machinery from the appre¬ 
 hension that his loyalty to the Presbyterian cause 
 should be doubted. 
 
 My main object, in the remarks which are to 
 follow, is to illustrate the fact that this constitution 
 was one under which it was quite possible to maintain 
 a Church in connection with the State which, on the 
 one hand, should not be subordinated to the State 
 in any matters spiritual properly belonging to its 
 function ; and which, on the other hand, should not 
 give to the Church any lordly power of oppression 
 which could interfere with the civil rights of the 
 people. How far that great ideal has been realised 
 it is my province to consider in the sequel. Mean¬ 
 time, I simply point out that there was a symmetry 
 about the constitution of the Church, as Knox de¬ 
 signed it, which was sufficient to demonstrate that 
 the problem could be solved, provided other in¬ 
 fluences, which had no ecclesiastical features or ele¬ 
 ments within them, would only allow those broad 
 general principles to have their fair and natural 
 operation, and not hamper them by obstacles in 
 themselves entirely foreign to their essential sphere. 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 73 
 
 The Reformation in Scotland began in turmoil, 
 and continued through very troublous times. We 
 now know Queen Mary better than she was known 
 then. It is now quite certain that that interesting 
 but unfortunate Princess had come to Scotland en¬ 
 tirely under the control of the Roman Catholic leaders 
 abroad ; and that, from the day on which she landed 
 in this country to that on which she died in England, 
 she had but one object, which she pursued with an 
 amount of intellectual power, of tenacity, and of know¬ 
 ledge and learning, which would have been admirable 
 in a worthy cause. Her main design was not merely 
 to quell the Reformation in Scotland, which was but 
 a minor object, but to dethrone Elizabeth, and mount 
 the throne of England herself, to restore the old 
 religion, and to root out the Huguenot heresy. Her 
 letters to the different Roman Catholic leaders abroad 
 have now been published with the intention of shew¬ 
 ing to the world how staunch and loyal an adherent of 
 the Catholic cause she was; and we can now judge, 
 much better than her contemporaries could, of the 
 nature of that struggle which Knox had to maintain 
 almost single-handed. The extent of his know¬ 
 ledge of continental politics, his communications with 
 those in authority abroad, and his natural sagacity. 
 
74 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 had taught him many things that even the great 
 ruler of our country^, the Regent Murray, and those at 
 the head of affairs, were not altogether in a position 
 to appreciate. At one time he was left almost 
 solitary. The Regent had deserted him, believing 
 that he was unreasonable; while in reality he 
 had information which he could not disclose, but 
 the truth of which he well knew, which impelled him 
 to lift up a warning voice to his countrymen. 
 This was the real source of those feelings of dis¬ 
 appointment and mortification which are popularly 
 supposed to have arisen in the mind of the Queen 
 from the roughness and acerbity of the Scottish 
 Reformer. But he was accustomed to courts as well 
 as to the people; and, I incline to think, not 
 only that his demeanour was consistent with his 
 position, but that the Queen—herself a woman of 
 great acquirements, highly cultivated, and learned 
 even in the learning of antiquity—took pleasure 
 in his society, and did all she could to win him to her 
 cause. 
 
 The first General Assembly met in 1560. It was 
 attended by thirty-eight members, of whom only six 
 were ministers,—a very small beginning ; but the day 
 soon came when the best and highest and most power- 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 75 
 
 ful blood in Scotland were members of the General 
 Assembly. I am not to follow the calamitous political 
 events of the years between 1560 and the succession of 
 James the First. That monarch was a very remarkable James VI, 
 man, lived in remarkable times, and left a strong im¬ 
 press on the institutions of both countries. I have 
 found, appended to a volume of Calderwood’s History, 
 some verses written by the king at a very early age, 
 which seem to me to be a very remarkable index of 
 his mind. They are written to illustrate one frame of 
 thought, and then the moral is reversed in some 
 counter stanzas by way of bringing the tone into a true 
 and orthodox model; but I think the king’s real 
 character is very graphically expressed in the first 
 series. They are as follows ;— 
 
 The hhmg's Verses, when he was fyfteene years old. 
 
 “ Since thought is free, think what you will, 
 
 O troubled heart, to ease thy pain ! 
 
 Thought unrevealed can doe no ill. 
 
 But words past out turne not again. 
 
 Be careful, ay, for to invent 
 The way to get thine own intent. 
 
 “ To play thyself with thy conceit, 
 
 And let none know what thou doth mean ; 
 Hope ay at last, though it be lait, 
 
 To thy intent for to attain. 
 
 Whiles let it break forth in effect, 
 
 But ay let witt thy will correct. 
 
76 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 “ Since fool-haste is not greatest speed, 
 
 I would thou shouldest learn to knaw 
 How to make virtue of a need, 
 
 Since that necessitie hath no law. 
 With patience, then, see thou attend. 
 And hope to vanquishe in the end.” 
 
 That is exactly the man. He has never been truly 
 drawn by English historians. Succeeding to the Crown 
 of England in 1603, he came with all the peculiarities, 
 some of the virtues, and many of the defects of the 
 northern portion of the kingdom ; but he was not the 
 ungainly, silly, vain-glorious pedant which he has been 
 represented to be by English pencils, and even by the 
 great master of fiction in our own land. He was a 
 strong-minded, strong-willed man—a man of great 
 sagacity, far-reaching, far-seeing view, who knew men 
 well, who knew how to make tools, and how to use 
 them ;—a man of low type morally, but of a high type 
 intellectually, although crooked and perfidious in all 
 his doings : and during his day, in the middle of the 
 most tumultuous and tempestuous times which Europe 
 ever saw, he contrived to keep peace at home and 
 peace abroad, and pursued his own objects with unre¬ 
 lenting and persistent energy. He had the talent to 
 know that fortune comes to those who can wait for 
 her; and had he lived, the history of our country might 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 77 
 
 have been very different from what it turned out to 
 be. Trained by Buchanan, he revolted in his maturer 
 years from the principles of free government which 
 that great man had endeavoured to instil into his 
 royal pupil. What he longed and wished for was 
 arbitrary power—such power as the rulers of the 
 continent exercised—and he fain would have modelled 
 himself on the kings of France and the Emperor of 
 Germany, whose will their subjects never ventured to 
 call in question. He hated the democratic element 
 which Knox had welded into the Church of Scotland ; 
 and hence the troubles which succeeded his reign, and 
 the difficulties with which our forefathers had so long 
 to contend. 
 
 It was not long before those elements shewed their i 57 
 first indications. Knox died in 1572, twelve years 
 after the Reformation had begun ; but he had seen 
 the constitution of the Reformed Church placed on a 
 firm basis of Parliamentary authority by the thorough 
 legislation of 1567. From the date of his death 
 till 1592 was a period of alternate depression and 
 ascendancy on the part of the Presbyterian principles 
 of church government. Knox was succeeded by 
 Melville,—a man of great intellectual power, of 
 wonderful cultivation and acquirement,—a man who 
 
78 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 1592. 
 
 had been a professor on the continent, and whose 
 reputation there as a scholar was hardly second to that 
 of Buchanan. He was a man powerful in action, of 
 great eloquence, great influence with men ; but pro¬ 
 bably not of the same statesman-like sagacity and 
 knowledge of affairs as the great Reformer whose 
 mantle descended upon him. Between 1580 and 1590, 
 the Second Book of Discipline was composed, which 
 contains within it the completed platform of Presby¬ 
 terian polity,—a more perfect and thorough work than 
 the First Book of Discipline had been, and that on 
 which to this day ecclesiastical government has been 
 founded among us. 
 
 In 1584 the legislation of 1567 was reversed. Episco¬ 
 pacy was established, and much of the ground which 
 had been gained had been lost. But in 1592 the aspect 
 of affairs was again brighter. 
 
 The memorable Act of the Scottish Parliament 
 passed in that year is truly the keystone of the 
 arch upon which the whole superstructure was built. 
 A just appreciation of the true nature and principle 
 of that adjustment of the relations of Church and 
 State in Scotland is necessary, as affording a solution 
 of some of the more perplexing incidents in the sub¬ 
 sequent history. 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 79 
 
 This Statute, the Charter of the Church of Scotland, 
 is well worthy of study. It was passed at a time 
 when the King had incurred much popular discontent, 
 and the Presbyterian party were strongly in the 
 ascendant. It is intituled “ An Act for abolishing 
 the Acts contrary to the true Religion and con¬ 
 tains, in the first part of it, a re-enactment of all 
 the previous statutes made in favour of the Church, 
 and especially those of 1589, which ratify all 
 the previous legislation of 1567. It then proceeds 
 to ratify Presbyterian Church Government by 
 Kirk-sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and General 
 Assemblies ; and “ declares the said Assemblies, 
 Presbyteries, and Sessions, jurisdiction and discipline 
 thereof foresaid, to be in all time coming most 
 just, good, and godlie in the self, notwith¬ 
 standing whatsomever of Statutes, Acts, Canons, 
 Civil or Municipal Laws maid on the contrair.” 
 The Act then proceeds to repeal various Acts 
 of Parliament, and then proceeds thus:—“ Item, 
 the King’s Majesty and Estates, foresaid, declares 
 that the second Act of the Parliament, holden at 
 Edinburgh, the 22d of May 1584, shall no ways 
 be prejudicial, nor disrogate anything to tJieprivilege 
 which God has given to the spiritual office-bearers 
 
80 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 in tJie Kirk, concerjiing heads of religion, matters 
 of heresy, excommunication, collation or deprivation 
 of ministers, or any sic esse 7 itial censures, specially 
 grounded, and having warraiit of the Word of Cod'd 
 It then proceeds to repeal an Act passed in 1584, 
 providing that presentations shall be addressed to 
 the Bishops, and, in lieu thereof, directs them to 
 be addressed to Presbyteries, with full power to 
 them to give collation thereupon, and “ put in 
 order all matters and causes ecclesiastical, within 
 their bounds,” The Act then concludes with these 
 words, which have since become famous :— ^H^'oviding 
 the foresaid Presbyteries shall he bound aiid astrictit 
 to receive and admit zvhatsomever qualified minister 
 presented by his Majesty, or other laic paU'onsd 
 
 Even without the light of contemporaneous 
 history, it is not difficult to detect in this Statute 
 a marked dissimulation. It acknowledges these 
 matters of spiritual jurisdiction to be given by 
 God to his Church. But it does not say so in 
 direct terms. It says that a certain Statute shall 
 not derogate from them. The censures which it 
 professes that the Church have jurisdiction to 
 inflict are those “ specially grounded, and having 
 warrant of the Word of God,” And then, when 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 81 
 
 the subject of jurisdiction would seem to be con¬ 
 cluded, it terminates with the ambiguous, but 
 suggestive sentence I have quoted above. Never¬ 
 theless, especially when taken in connection with 
 the Acts of Parliament of 1567 and 1589, the 
 Act was understood, and reasonably understood, 
 by the Church, to be a recognition by the 
 Parliament of the privileges which God has 
 given to the spiritual office-bearers of the Kirk 
 “ concerning heads of religion, matters of heresy, 
 excommunication, collation, or deprivation of mini¬ 
 sters, or any sic-like essential censures especially 
 grounded and having warrant in the Word of 
 God.” The legislation of the year 1567, which was 
 ratified by the Act of 1592, puts the understanding 
 of the Church beyond all question. The Statutes of 
 that year, as I have said, were passed in concert be¬ 
 tween Knox and the Regent Murray—a man to 
 whom the Church probably owed as much as to 
 any of the great men of the period ; and, whatever 
 may be the ambiguity of the expressions of the 
 Act of 1592, the meaning which they did, in point 
 of fact, convey to the rulers of the Church and 
 the country is sufficiently clear. As regards the Act 
 itself, it will be observed that the terms employed 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 negatived the doctrine of the supremacy of the Civil 
 Magistrate in the matters therein specified, and 
 recognised those powers as divinely inherent in the 
 office-bearers of the Church as such. The catalogue 
 is a wide and comprehensive one, and extends to the 
 whole range of the spiritual discipline of the Church, 
 including all matters of doctrine, and the formation as 
 well as the dissolution of the pastoral and ministerial 
 relation. These things, the Act says, are not given 
 by the State or the Civil Magistrate, but are given by 
 God to the office-bearers of the Church ; from which 
 it follows that no civil power can either command 
 or prevent the exercise of them. 
 
 I do not say anything of the legal interpretation 
 of the words of the Statute. That has been finally 
 determined. But it certainly was understood by the 
 Church at the time to embody the views of the 
 spiritual independence of the office-bearers of the 
 Church, for which they had long contended, and 
 which had been clearly expressed both in the First 
 and Second Books of Discipline, and had been rati¬ 
 fied previously in 1567; and to negative the claim 
 to Royal supremacy in matters and causes eccle¬ 
 siastical and spiritual which was maintained in 
 England. 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 83 
 
 Such was the foundation on which the Church 
 of Scotland was built. But, it may be asked, was 
 it safe to entrust powers so large and comprehen¬ 
 sive to such a body of men ? 
 
 I should answer—Certainly not, unless those 
 ofhce-bearers were, not nominally only, but really, 
 representatives of the whole body of the faithful 
 people. To an assembly of clerics, a corporation 
 formed of the clergy alone, no such power could 
 with any safety be entrusted ; I say so, not from any 
 undue jealousy of their high and influential functions, 
 but because no such power should be entrusted 
 in a free state to irresponsible hands ; and the 
 aggregate of the clergy do not constitute the 
 Church, but form only one, although an impor¬ 
 tant and essential element in its constitution. The 
 Church, as designed by Knox and established 
 by Melville, was no close corporation, but was 
 a vast democratic institute, with a constituency 
 as wide as the nation, and responsibility, from the 
 highest to the lowest of its office-bearers, to a 
 broad and vigilant constituency. The lay ele¬ 
 ment in all the Church Courts—Kirk-Session, 
 Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly—out¬ 
 numbered the clerical. Not the presbyteries only. 
 
84 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 but the royal burghs also sent representative 
 elders to the General Assembly; and we shall 
 see in the sequel how powerful this represen¬ 
 tation was. As far, therefore, as the tribunals 
 were concerned, I know of none the wit of man 
 has ever devised to which such power might 
 be more safely confided. 
 
 But then, it is said, if this jurisdiction is to be 
 acknowledged in the office-bearers of the Church, 
 as derived from a source other and higher than a 
 civil power, how are the confines of each to be 
 determined ? Is the Church to be permitted to 
 decide for itself its own limits, and to claim for 
 itself exclusive power in all matters which it 
 thinks fit to consider within its range? This, no 
 doubt, as a practical question, is one of difficulty. 
 In 1569 the Church made an application to the 
 Regent Murray to have the boundaries of the civil 
 and spiritual jurisdictions defined, and his response 
 is recorded in the minutes of the General Assembly, 
 to the effect that a commission would be appointed 
 to that effect; and the commission was appointed 
 by an Act of Parliament. As matter of theory, 
 however, the solution is plain enough. Granted 
 that the division between spiritual and civil is 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 85 
 
 theoretically accurate — that is to say, that the 
 spiritual powers of the Church are not derived 
 from the State but from a higher authority— 
 then as the State, while it cannot take back 
 or control that which it cannot give, can always 
 resume or control that which it has given, the 
 result of any such a conflict or collision would 
 be, that the action of the spiritual jurisdiction would 
 have no temporal or secular effect. As the spiritual 
 sentence or action takes effect on the conscience, 
 the civil sentence will operate on personal rela¬ 
 tions, freedom, and property; and, if reconcile¬ 
 ment cannot be obtained, the separation of the two 
 jurisdictions is inevitable. But the solution never 
 can consist in the civil jurisdiction usurping powers 
 which, upon this hypothesis, it has never received 
 and never possibly can exercise. 
 
 Such then, theoretically, was the ecclesiastical 
 fabric as it was received and construed by our 
 early reformers. It seems to me to be more 
 consonant with civil liberty, and to provide more 
 thoroughly for efficient and judicious discipline within 
 the Church, than any other system of polity of which 
 I have read. It remains to be seen how it fared in 
 the momentous times which were to follow. 
 
86 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Union of the 
 Crowns. 1603. 
 
 Historians agree that James VI. conceded this con¬ 
 stitution very reluctantly. While the succession to the 
 throne of England hung in suspense, he was unwilling 
 to encounter any serious agitation at home ; and for 
 four years the Church had peace both without and 
 within, and was able to strengthen its position so 
 thoroughly that the people have never swerved from 
 that time to this in their devotion to its charac¬ 
 teristic principles. 
 
 Impartially speaking, I will not say that the 
 discretion of those who directed the affairs of the 
 Church at that time was equal to their earnest zeal 
 and their undoubted ability. They allowed them¬ 
 selves to get into personal collision with the king 
 on matters affecting his court and household, which 
 prudence might probably have avoided. But Melville, 
 although a brilliant scholar and debater and an 
 energetic leader, had not Knox’s sagacity of char¬ 
 acter or experience of men. It was not politic, nor 
 was it necessary, to irritate an unfriendly monarch 
 by interposing, so early at least, in matters which 
 might well have been left for a more convenient 
 time. The result was probably inevitable under 
 any administration of the affairs of the Church; 
 but those annoyances doubtless hastened and em- 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 87 
 
 bittered it Before the end of the century James was 
 again at war with the Church. He re-appointed the 
 bishops ; he made them and their nominees perpetual 
 moderators of the Church Courts ; he pursued with 
 relentless animosity the individual leaders who gave 
 him umbrage ; he transferred the right of collation to 
 a Court composed of bishops, called the Court of 
 High Commission, in defiance of the Statute of 1592 ; 
 and at last, after his accession to the English throne 
 in 1603, when his English crown was secured 
 and he thought he might safely defy Scottish 
 discontent, he reinstated in 1606 the Episcopal 
 order by Act of Parliament, asserting at the same 
 time his own right as sovereign to be the sole and 
 only judge in all spiritual and ecclesiastical 
 causes. 
 
 That these proceedings were directly at variance, not 
 only with the recent Statute, but with his own most 
 earnest and solemn professions, was a matter which 
 weighed nothing with the king. He had banished 
 the ablest men in the Church. He had successfully 
 intimidated or gained over a large proportion of the 
 clergy, and, above all, he had escaped from the 
 vicinity of those troublesome ecclesiastics ; and, at a 
 distance of 400 miles, could safely venture on 
 
88 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 measures which it would have been dangerous to have 
 promulgated at Holyrood. 
 
 1603-1625. One element, however, he had not subdued, and of 
 
 that he was quite aware. He had not made the 
 slightest impression on the people. The Reformation, 
 and the free preaching and reading of the Gospel, had 
 lighted up in the minds of the population of this land 
 a flame which burned the fiercer for the oppression of 
 tyranny. So James went to work with his usual 
 caution. In 1612 an Act was passed directing all 
 presentations to be addressed to the bishops, repealing 
 the Act 1592, and containing some important words 
 which I shall refer to afterwards. Although the 
 bishops were restored, the Church Courts still met, 
 and no' material outward change could have been 
 noted in the frame-work of the ecclesiastical polity. 
 The administration of ordinances and the forms of 
 worship still remained the same. The clergy, to a 
 large extent, acquiesced in what they could not 
 prevent, and the people waited their time, which was 
 coming, but had not yet come. 
 
 The period from the union of the Crowns to the 
 death of James is one of the most dark and barren 
 of Scottish history. There are but two great names 
 which distinguish it—Drummond of Hawthornden, 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 89 
 
 and Napier of Merchiston. Some of the leading 
 lawyers of that day, although little known to 
 historical fame, were great and accomplished states¬ 
 men ; but I do not know of any name among the 
 clergy, of any distinction or note, between that 
 period and long into the century. How the affairs 
 of the Church were conducted in that interval 
 is left in considerable obscurity. My own impression 
 is that, rightly estimating the real feeling of the 
 community and dreading of all things any national 
 turmoil or uprising, James was content to allow the 
 minds of the people to be gradually familiarized to 
 the terms of Episcopalian rule, without too rudely 
 offending prejudices or stirring up the embers of the 
 old Presbyterian zeal. And, accordingly, it was not 
 until twelve years after the restoration of the bishops 
 that he made his next move in the direction of the 
 policy which he intended to pursue. The bishops, 
 meanwhile content with the emoluments of their 
 sees, were not specially anxious to engage them¬ 
 selves with much activity in the work of the Church ; 
 and, excepting in the more important incidents 
 of the period, allowed the clergy to go on much 
 as they had done before. And so matters stood 
 when, fourteen years after his accession to the 
 
90 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 English crown, the monarch revisited his ancient 
 kingdom in 1617. 
 
 1617. He was received, as is well known in history, with 
 
 an exuberant outburst or affectation of loyalty, flatter¬ 
 ing on its surface to the monarch to whom it was 
 addressed, but considerably belying the real senti¬ 
 ments of the people ; and, while it flattered the vanity, 
 misleading to a large extent the sagacity of the king 
 himself Pageants and addresses from all quarters 
 greeted the return of the sovereign. Drummond 
 indited in honour of the occasion one of his most 
 powerful poems. Disputations were held in order 
 to exhibit the matchless eloquence and learning 
 of the king, and the nation presented for the 
 time the appearance of a loyal and devoted people. 
 In the course of the next year, in 1618, a General 
 Assembly was convened at Perth for the purpose of 
 taking into consideration five Articles propounded by 
 the king in regard to matters of Church order. The 
 more considerable of these were one relating to 
 kneeling at the sacrament, and another relative to 
 the observance of the festivals of the Church. But 
 the Assembly met them with great resistance. They 
 were carried, but by no overwhelming majority ; and, 
 while many of the clergy declined to vote, forty-five 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 91 
 
 ministers had the courage to record their dissent, 
 notwithstanding the immense pressure which was 
 brought to bear on the Assembly, and the certain 
 indignation and retribution which were likely to 
 descend upon them. 
 
 By that time two elements had begun to operate 
 in Scotland in favour of the Presbyterian polity 
 and worship, which, though not arising directly 
 out of the original principles of the Scottish Refor¬ 
 mation, were yet incidentally agencies of the most 
 powerful description. The first was the jealousy 
 created by the union of the Crowns. The removal 
 of the court from Holyrood, the absence of all the 
 pomp and state attending the presence of sove¬ 
 reignty, the impoverishment which necessarily grew 
 out of the absence of the fountain of honour and 
 reward, were very seriously and sensibly felt in the 
 first twenty years after the Crowns had been united. 
 An intense jealousy sprang up—a social jealousy— 
 between the two nations. The English could not 
 endure that the poor and proud Scottish nobility 
 should share with them the favour of royalty. The 
 Scots thought that all their best blood and treasure was 
 drained by their southern rival; and, above all, they 
 began to look upon the Episcopal forms of worship. 
 
92 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 and its representatives within their own country, as a 
 foreign invasion, alien to their feelings, and imposed 
 upon them by the pride and power of their larger, 
 richer, and more influential neighbour. Thus Prelacy, 
 which had before been distasteful to the minds both 
 of the higher ranks and of the populace, came to 
 be looked on as a badge of their own national 
 inferiority. In addition to all this, the public of both 
 countries had come to see that the real object of the 
 wily and treacherous monarch was to govern, if he 
 could, without control from Parliament in civil 
 matters, or from the Church in matters spiritual,—in 
 short, that what they had to fear and guard against 
 was a general invasion of the rights of the people, 
 in regard to their civil liberty and their ecclesiastical 
 privileges. 
 
 Whether James had sufflcient discernment of 
 the signs of the times to read something of this 
 kind in the minds of his northern subjects, it is 
 not easy to say; but certain it is that, from i6i8 
 until his death in 1625, he made no further attempts 
 to control the action of the anomalous and hybrid 
 constitution which he had bestowed on his Scottish 
 subjects in Church matters, or to make any further 
 inroad on the principles and practices which the 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 93 
 
 Reformers had handed down to them. He left to 
 his successor a legacy of a policy deep, dissimulating, 
 and treacherous, but not the less sedulously and 
 carefully prepared; and fitted, in hands able to 
 carry it on, to have produced results very dangerous 
 to the liberties and security of the whole empire. 
 
 He died in 1625, certainly not regretted by 
 his subjects in either end of the island, and not 
 without suspicion of his death having been hastened 
 by poison. The sceptre descended to his son, 
 whose far feebler hands and more irritable brain 
 were wholly unable to sustain the weight of the 
 policy of his predecessor. I cannot stop here to 
 draw, in any detail, the character of Charles I.; but 
 he seemed to combine all the qualities likely 
 to throw a disaffected nation into turmoil and 
 revolt. His counsellors and friends were those who 
 had risen to power in the former reign, and he 
 started with the design of carrying out, to their 
 fullest extremities, those inroads on the liberty of 
 the subject and of the Church, which his father 
 had spent a lifetime in undermining. But the 
 strong hand of James had contrived, in a period 
 of great excitement and great difficulty, to effect 
 such results as followed in his reign without even 
 
 1625. 
 
 Charles 
 
94 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 1637- 
 
 a threatening of popular commotion. Before 
 Charles had well assumed the reins, his utter 
 inability to control the dangerous elements with 
 which he had to work became quite manifest. Up 
 to the death of James no change had been operated 
 in the ordinary forms of Presbyterian worship in 
 Scotland. The Five Articles of Perth had no 
 doubt laid a foundation on which something, he 
 expected, might be built; but he had never had 
 the rashness to propose to introduce the English 
 Church Service into that country. Meantime, no 
 General Assemblies were convened, and the country 
 went on in a state of hidden ferment, with very 
 combustible materials ready to take fire whenever 
 a spark was applied to them ; while the king, intent 
 only on the object which he wished to accomplish, 
 pursued it with an open and headlong candour, 
 which very soon produced its natural fruits. 
 
 At last, in 1637, believing that everything was ripe, 
 he directed that a Church Service, prepared for 
 the purpose, should be read in all the churches. 
 The result was the beginning of a memorable conflict, 
 which did not end for fifty years. On the first 
 attempt to impose this Liturgy on the congregation 
 of St. Giles, in Edinburgh, where the memory of 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 95 
 
 Knox still remained green, such a tumult arose as 
 rendered the repetition of the experiment entirely 
 hopeless, and brought out at once, as if by a spell, the 
 long-cherished and pent-up feelings, not of the 
 populace only, but of all ranks and classes of the 
 country, I do not resume in any detail the narrative 
 of those great and stirring events; but the attempt 
 which was thus made to impose upon the people 
 forms and ceremonies which they had finally repu¬ 
 diated and rejected, led to the signature of the Solemn 
 League an^Covenant in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, 
 to which stand appended the signatures of the most 
 powerful nobles and landowners of the nation. 
 They took their position manfully and gallantly; 
 and the king, after a very short period, appeared 
 to yield all that they demanded. An Assembly 
 was convened in 1638, which was attended by the 
 commissioner of the king, and which immediately 
 addressed itself to the task of reforming and re¬ 
 constituting the old Presbyterian polity. Archbishop 
 Spottiswoode said, when he heard of this disturbance, 
 “ There go at one blow the efforts of thirty years.” 
 
 There is much instruction to be gathered from 
 these events. They never could have happened had 
 it not been that, under all the specious disguise of 
 
96 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 a quasi-Episcopal Establishment, the mind of the 
 people remained firmly rooted in the principles, forms, 
 and worship which they had been taught at the 
 Reformation. And it might be well that the lesson 
 were learned even in our day. The forms on the 
 surface are but little, compared to the intelligent 
 belief and associations of the community. The 
 former may be long submitted to, in apparent quies¬ 
 cence, while the fire burns strong and hot below. 
 Want of leaders, want of cohesion, want of oppor¬ 
 tunity, may long repress the impending outbreak; 
 but rulers would do well to consider, not merely 
 what those in ostensible authority at the head of 
 affairs think fit to recognise or sanction, but how 
 far their views and principles and tendency are in 
 accordance with those whom they undertake to rule, 
 and in whose hands ultimately the true elements 
 of power must necessarily reside. Thus was over¬ 
 thrown, and substantially in one day, that fabric of 
 long-continued hypocrisy and deceit, which com¬ 
 menced in 1596. 
 
 The Assembly of 1638 was attended by all the 
 most powerful of the nobility and gentry of Scotland. 
 Among those who attended it for counsel and advice 
 were such names as those of Argyle and Lauderdale, 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 97 
 
 and, among the representative elders, the names of 
 Montrose, Eglinton, Cassilis, and many others of the 
 nobility, were found.* Lord Rothes was the commis¬ 
 sioner, and between him and the Assembly were various 
 impetuous passages, and he ultimately withdrew ; but 
 the Assembly proceeded, in their work of reformation, 
 to repeal all the Acts of the six last General 
 Assemblies, and to bring back the polity of the 
 Church to the platform of 1592, They abolished and 
 deposed the bishops, and summoned them to answer 
 to the Assembly, which several of them did. There 
 was some demur, as we learn from Baillie’s Letters, 
 in regard to the absolute abjuration of Episcopacy,— 
 such Episcopacy, namely, as was supposed by some 
 to be found in the Superintendents under the Eirst 
 Book of Discipline,—but in the end the knot was 
 
 * “When, with great difficulty, we were set down, the Commissioner’s 
 Grace in his Chair of State ; at his feet, before, and on both sides, the 
 Chief of the Council, the Theasurer, Privie-Seall Argyll, Marre, 
 Morray, Angus, Lauderdail, Wigton, Glencairne, Perth, Tullibardine, 
 Galloway, Haddington, Kinghorn, Kinghorne, Register, Theasurer, 
 Depute, Justice-General, Amont, Justice-Clerk, Southesk, Linlithgow, 
 Dalzell, Dumfries, Queensberrie, Belhaven, and moe. At a long table 
 in the floor our Noblemen and Barons, Elders of parishes, and Com¬ 
 missioners from Presbyteries; Rothes, Montrose, Eglintoun, Cassilis, 
 Lothian, Weemes, Loudon, Sinclair, Balmerinock, Burghly, Lindsay, 
 I-ester, Hume, Johnstone, Keir, Auldbar, and few Barons in Scotland of 
 note, but were either voters or assessors.”—Baillie’s Letters, i. 123. 
 
98 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 cut by simply abrogating and repealing all that had 
 been done during what they deemed the corrupt 
 period of the Church, and restoring it, in all its 
 integrity, to the fabric as reared by Knox. This 
 was followed in 1640 by an Act of Parliament 
 rescinding and repealing all the Statutes passed since 
 1592, and ratifying in the fullest terms the constitution 
 of the Church as fixed by that Act. I forbear to 
 dwell on the details of this measure, because the 
 events which followed in rapid succession have thrown 
 the mere legislation of the time into the shade. These 
 events kindled a flame much stronger and wider than 
 the king ever reckoned for. The civil war broke out 
 after a slight interval, and ended by the ill-fated 
 monarch losing both his crown and his life. No one 
 can read the story of those times without unfeigned 
 commiseration for the career and the fate of 
 Charles I., who, as crooked as his father in his 
 political paths, had probably more honest devotion 
 to his ends, with far less power of attaining them ; 
 and who, if his tortuous and shifty action brought 
 down upon him his ultimate fate, bore his reverses 
 with a dignity which his predecessor would never 
 have commanded. Nevertheless, it was in that 
 crucible that the fortunes and future of this country 
 
FROA^ THE REFORMATION. 
 
 99 
 
 were distilled ; and, had the issue of the conflict been 
 otherwise, this island would never have been the 
 haven and refuge of the free. 
 
 One event, however, occurred in the course of the Westminster 
 ? twelve years between the Assembly of 1638 and the 
 Restoration of" Charles 11 , which has borne very large 
 and important fruit,—I mean the Westminster As¬ 
 sembly of Divines,— a conference of men whose 
 persons and work have been the subject of probably 
 more cavil and contempt by unintelligent and 
 unthinking people than any which has met within 
 the last three centuries, but which in truth was 
 composed of some of the most learned, the most 
 accomplished, the most distinguished men which 
 perhaps this island ever produced, and which has 
 left, as a legacy to us, very precious results of 
 their long and most important labours. It will 
 be long before England produces a scholar with 
 the versatility and European renown of Selden; 
 and I do not think I disparage my countrymen 
 much when I say that it would be difficult, at 
 any subsequent period of our history, to single out 
 three names equal in theological learning and power 
 to those of Henderson, Rutherford, and Gillespie. It 
 has pleased historians, whether writing from the 
 
100 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Liberal or the Tory side, to set light by their labours ; 
 but the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the 
 Westminster Catechisms, will remain as a mar¬ 
 vellous result of biblical learning, dialectic power, and 
 statesman-like sagacity and prudence. 
 
 It is no part of my present object to enter 
 upon the question which is so largely mooted in 
 our day in regard to Creeds and Confessions. At 
 the same time, a Church without standards is a 
 rope of sand. In the Church, as in all other 
 confederations, there must be some tangible bond 
 of union ; and a Church which should ride entirely 
 loose of all moorings, and admit of all inconsistent, 
 and therefore unintelligible doctrines, would very 
 soon be reduced to the condition of disintegration 
 and incoherence which my metaphor implies. Many, 
 now-a-days, seem to think that the Westminster 
 Confession of Faith claimed for itself some Divine 
 right, some occult and mystical power, in addition to 
 the authority of Scripture. There can be no greater 
 delusion. The Confession is composed of propositions 
 distilled by great care and marvellous learning, as the 
 results of the only standard of truth which the 
 Reformed Churches have ever acknowledged. Like 
 all other human productions, it is liable to error and 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 101 
 
 open to correction. Its authors only profess to 
 represent with faithfulness that which the inspired 
 record teaches; and though they deal with subjects 
 most solemn and most profound, they do not do so 
 without stating step by step the authority on which 
 their results are based. The shallow sciolistic 
 spirit of the present day thinks that a great triumph 
 is achieved, and a strong rent made in the fabric of 
 the Church, if, in these elaborate and logical deduc¬ 
 tions, some flaw can be found or imagined. That 
 such may be, the authors of those works fully con¬ 
 templated. That such are, I am not sure that even 
 the most acute of the cavillers I refer to have ever 
 demonstrated. But of this I am quite sure, that they 
 embody in a succinct, lucid, and practical shape, the 
 great truths of Protestant belief in a way which not 
 only evinces the profound erudition and sagacity of 
 their authors, but which, in its substance, has stood, 
 and will long stand, the test of practical experience. 
 
 The three men I have mentioned — Henderson, 
 Rutherford, and Gillespie—were the great represen¬ 
 tatives of Scotland in that Assembly. They took a 
 large and weighty share of the work. They were in 
 no respect fanatics, or uncultured enthusiasts. No 
 doubt they were men of strong and vehement 
 
102 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Common¬ 
 wealth, 1650. 
 
 views, and wrote as they thought. But I am quite 
 sure they addressed themselves to their task with a 
 learning which has never been surpassed ; and, on the 
 field of the dialectics of theology, they left very little 
 indeed for their successors to add to or to learn. 
 
 I pass over without remark the attempt which 
 was made in England to institute Presbyterian 
 Church government in that country, and the entire 
 failure of the scheme by the rise and usurpation 
 of Cromwell. The Church and the State, for the 
 greater part of that period, had no real relations of 
 any permanent kind. Cromwell, on his usurpation, 
 abolished all the Church Courts, in accordance with 
 his own principles of independency; and, although the 
 leaders of the Presbyterian party in Scotland in 1640, 
 whether lay or clerical, were unquestionably men of 
 great mark, I cannot say that the ten years between 
 1650 and 1660 were by any means distinguished by 
 practical sagacity or the presence of a master-hand. 
 Henderson, the greatest of the three, had died long 
 before, Gillespie also died early; and Rutherford, 
 whose work I have alluded to, only escaped martyr¬ 
 dom by his death a short while before his book, entitled 
 Lex Rex, was directed to be burned by the hands of 
 the common hangman after the Restoration. 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 103 
 
 Time went on, and Charles II. rode back to the Restoration, 
 capital of his kingdom as gay, as thoughtless, 
 and as bigoted as if he had never learned in the 
 school of misfortune, or bound himself by the most 
 solemn oaths to the Solemn League and Covenant, 
 and the purity of Presbyterian polity in Scotland. I 
 need not recal to your minds just now—it tells little 
 for my immediate object, except to point a very obvi¬ 
 ous moral—the persecutions of that time, the fact that 
 between 300 and 400 ministers of the Church were 
 compelled to abandon their livings ; the bitter, sense¬ 
 less, stolid persecution which the people suffered for 
 their adherence to the principles of the Reformation, 
 and the not less stolid adulation which has been 
 lavished upon the authors of those cruelties in these 
 happier days. It lasted for nearly twenty years, but 
 all the world might see that the fabric of the Restora¬ 
 tion was built over ground which was mined at every 
 step, till at last the infatuation of the dynasty arrived 
 at a climax, and it was terminated by the Revolution 
 of 1688. 
 
 The relations thus of Church and State in Scot- The Revoiu- 
 land from 1596 to 1688, although reaching over 
 nearly a century, are, in point of fact, only an episode 
 —a perpetual struggle on the part of the monarch for 
 
104 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 supremacy, and a perpetual struggle on the part of 
 the people for freedom. Civil supremacy in England, 
 ecclesiastical supremacy in Scotland, were the 
 objects for which James I., Charles L, Charles IL, 
 and James IL, Laud, Hamilton, and Strafford, 
 had spent their energies. The game had failed 
 —it was irrevocably lost—and in 1688, or rather 
 in 1690, the Church of Scotland again placed its 
 foot firmly down on the Act of 1592, and again 
 rested upon the broad lines marked out by Knox 
 and Melville. 
 
 I have passed over with little remark what was 
 a very interesting and romantic portion of the 
 history over which I have travelled — I mean the 
 struggles of the Covenanters, both under the Protec¬ 
 torate and the Restoration. Dr. Lee, in his interest¬ 
 ing two volumes on the History of the Church, 
 expresses a sentiment, in which I entirely participate, 
 that the history of the Covenanters has never been 
 written as the importance of the body itself, and its 
 achievements, deserve. They have generally been 
 looked upon as a somewhat uneducated, rude, fana¬ 
 tical body of the lower orders, and people seem to 
 contrast them with the better birth and better manners 
 of the Royalists. I believe there is in all this a very 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 105 
 
 great delusion. It is true that, in the latter part 
 of this period of twenty years, most of the higher 
 families had ostensibly, if not sincerely, conformed to 
 the tyrannical government, which they could not 
 resist. But the inception of the Covenanters embraced 
 the largest portion of the upper ranks, and the whole 
 body of the people. Whatever of birth, of culture, 
 of manners, and of learning or intellectual power, 
 Scotland could boast, was at that time unquestionably 
 to be found in the ranks of the Covenanters.* Some, 
 indeed, fell away from them. Montrose, who was 
 found in their front rank in 1640, drifted by the 
 course of events into a keen opponent; and Lauder¬ 
 dale, one of the most powerful of their body at its 
 beginning, had the infamy of playing the oppressor 
 and the tyrant in the ranks of the very men against 
 whom he had been one of the foremost in the con- 
 
 * The following list of the Scottish Peers who were, as ruling elders, 
 included among the members of the Commission of the General 
 Assembly in 1647 corroborates my "statement:—“Archibald, Marquis of 
 Argile; John, Earl of Crawford; Alexander, Earl of Eglinton; 
 William, Earl of Glencairne; John, Earl of Casilis ; James, Earl of 
 Home; James, Earl of Tullibardine; Francis, Earl of Buccleuch; John, 
 Earl of Lauderdaill; William, Earl of Lothian; James, Earl of Finla- 
 tour ; William, E. of Lanark; James, Earl of CallendarJ;^ Archibald, 
 Lord Angus; George, Lord Birchen; John, Lord Yester; John, Lord 
 Balmerino; James, Lord Cowper; John, Lord Bargany.” 
 
106 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 test. The subservient spirit which the Restoration 
 produced—the reaction against Puritanism, and, 
 indeed, against any earnest profession of personal 
 or evangelical religion—has not been without its 
 effect in leading historians of all parties to under-rate 
 and under-value these men. Of course, I cannot 
 stop to fill up even in outline a blank in our Scottish 
 history ; but I believe the materials for it are ample, 
 and he would deseiwe well of his country by whom 
 the task of writing a history of the Covenanters 
 should be successfully performed. 
 
 One other remark must be made on the men of 
 those times, and it is an observation which applies to 
 the whole of the period with which I have to deal. 
 There were no such things in those days as un¬ 
 established and dis-established churches. Questions of 
 that kind are the fruit of toleration, and toleration 
 was a virtue unknown to any of the contending 
 parties. Conformity was enforced by law, and dissent 
 was suppressed by persecution. One can see in the 
 nature of the times how difficult it was for those on 
 either side to adopt our more modern view of the prin¬ 
 ciples of toleration. When conformity meant politics, 
 and politics meant personal safety, toleration came to 
 mean arming your enemy with weapons to be used 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 107 
 
 against yourself, and he who received it at your 
 hand this year, might, when his turn came, refuse it 
 to you in the f'lext. One of the great causes of 
 complaint during the ascendancy of the usurper 
 Cromwell and the Independents, was his allowance of 
 toleration ; and Rutherford, to whom I have already 
 referred, wrote a book for the purpose of denouncing 
 and condemning the doctrine. It was not until far 
 into the next century that the true principles of 
 toleration were reached ; but, we shall see how they 
 grew, and how in the end they were the true and 
 legitimate offspring of the strong soil of Presbyterian 
 Church Government. 
 
 Of the Statutes passed during the Restoration I 
 shall name only one, although there were some others 
 not without their interest in the question we are now 
 considering. That to which I refer is the Statute 
 of 1662, rescinding all the previous Acts of Parliament 
 favourable to Presbyterian Church Government, 
 which denied the prerogative and supremacy of the 
 king in matters ecclesiastical. This Statute singles 
 out the Act 1592, describing it, in terms not to be 
 mistaken, as a Statute which denied the prerogative of 
 the king, and asserted the right of the office-bearers of 
 the Church to be the sole judges in matters ecclesi- 
 
108 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 1690. 
 
 astical and spiritual, as a right derived from the Divine 
 Author of our religion, and one with which the civil 
 magistrate could not interfere. This fact is quite con¬ 
 clusive as to the meaning which the Act 1592 was 
 understood to convey. 
 
 We have now arrived at the period of the Revolu¬ 
 tion Settlement; and, from that time forward, we 
 breathe a freer and more peaceful atmosphere, and 
 find the whole tendency of public, political, and eccle¬ 
 siastical thought softened and mellowed, after the 
 distractions and divisions which had prevailed during 
 the greater part of the century. There is little more 
 dignified in history than the attitude of the Scottish 
 people on the accession of William and Mary. The 
 Declaration of Right is a document worthy of that 
 great occasion. Free from enthusiasm, fanaticism, or 
 violence of any kind, it states with gravity and force 
 the rights of the nation which had been so long 
 denied and so recklessly violated. The answer of 
 the king was calm, temperate, and firm ; and 
 the history of the year 1689 affords many 
 materials for interesting narrative. William of 
 Orange was by no means resolved as to the 
 course which he would follow in Scotland. He had 
 been pressed by some of the more important of 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 109 
 
 his councillors not to abolish Episcopacy in this 
 country, and had been warned against the Presby¬ 
 terian polity as inconsistent with the loyalty and 
 good order which he desired to establish. Fortunately, 
 however, he took the aid of better advisers; and to 
 Principal Carstairs, one of the ablest men who ever 
 took part in the ecclesiastical affairs of the Church of 
 Scotland, we owe it that the question of Church 
 government and doctrine in this country was so 
 peaceably and satisfactorily settled. 
 
 The king’s message to Parliament stated that he 
 would establish such form of Church government in 
 Scotland as might be most suitable and welcome to the 
 feelings of the people of Scotland. The Declaration of 
 Right had already stated that Prelacy, or the superiority 
 of any ecclesiastic above presbyters was a grievance 
 which ought to be abolished ; and, accordingly, in the 
 Parliament of 1689, several bills were introduced for 
 the purpose of arranging the order of Presbyterian 
 Church government, and settling some of the most 
 important and prominent questions of the day. A 
 reference to the minutes of the Parliament of 1689, 
 which are given at length in the Appendix to the folio 
 edition of the Scottish Statutes, shews with what 
 care and deliberation the Scottish Parliament ad- 
 
110 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 1690. 
 
 Patronage. 
 
 dressed itself to this great and important work. 
 There will be found there the course which the bills 
 ran in committee, the various amendments which were 
 proposed, and the reasons for their adoption or re¬ 
 jection. It is clear that all the questions which have 
 arisen in our later times, in regard to matters of 
 church order, were fully present to the minds of the 
 Parliament. In the end, the Act of 1690 was com¬ 
 pleted and passed. It embodied within it the West¬ 
 minster Confession of Faith ad longiim. It restored 
 all the Statutes in favour of Presbyterian Church 
 government. It repealed all the Statutes from 1597 
 downwards, which were inimical or repugnant to the 
 principles of that polity ; and it terminated with 
 a reservation of the question of patronage, which was 
 to be the subject of another Statute. And so once 
 again was the Presbyterian system renewed in all its 
 integrity, and drawn back to the model which a 
 century ago Andrew Melville and his coadjutors had 
 been successful in establishing. 
 
 The question of patronage alone remained, and 
 by another Statute passed in that year lay patronage 
 was abolished. The right of appointment of ministers 
 devolved on the heritors and kirk-session of each 
 individual parish, who were to propose to the people 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 Ill 
 
 a candidate to be approved or disapproved, their 
 reasons to be judged of by the presbytery, whose 
 decision was to be final. Compensation was made 
 to lay patrons out of the tithes ; and thus was excised, 
 from the body corporate of the Church of Scotland, 
 that which had previously been a long and grievous 
 source of altercation and dispute. The last clause of 
 the Act 1592, which I have already referred to and 
 shall have to refer to again, was thus entirely removed 
 from it, and the constitution of the Church stood on 
 the declaration contained in that Statute,—that all 
 the functions and powers therein enumerated had 
 been bestowed by God on the ofifice-bearers of the 
 Church, and that these included not only the preach¬ 
 ing of the Word and the administration of ordin¬ 
 ances, but both the collation and the deprivation of 
 ministers. 
 
 The subsequent history, within the limits which 
 have been assigned to me, was certainly not with¬ 
 out its share of turmoil and discord. The Presby¬ 
 terian polity had its own times of difficulty and 
 popularity, lethargy and energy ; but I venture to 
 say that there never was a period in the history of 
 any Church in which the two co-ordinated powers of 
 the civil and spiritual tribunals worked on the whole 
 
112 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 in greater harmony, or gave rise to so little friction. 
 Those who imagine that the permission or the recog¬ 
 nition of an entirely independent spiritual jurisdiction 
 in a Church is dangerous to civil liberty, or that 
 it is impossible for a Church to be so constituted in 
 connection with the State as to enjoy and exercise 
 its spiritual freedom, would do well to study the 
 history of the Church of Scotland during the 150 
 years that elapsed before 1843. I very far from 
 saying that its relations with the civil magistrate were 
 always of the most satisfactory or the most salutary 
 description. Politics, personal ambition, the intrigues 
 of party, the disaffection of some and the disappoint¬ 
 ment of others, all contributed from time to time to 
 weaken its action ; but these were mere incidents. 
 They were not the necessary results, or indeed the 
 results in any way, of the Church’s independence. 
 They arose from other causes, and had other ends in 
 view. But what I think the student of the history of 
 this period of a century and a half will find is, that 
 the independence of the Church, which it did exercise 
 in all causes spiritual and ecclesiastical during the 
 whole of that period without interference, was in the 
 main exercised with prudence, moderation, and dis¬ 
 cretion; while, on the other hand, on no single occasion 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 113 
 
 of which I am aware, did the civil power interpose to 
 prevent the full and free discharge of their spiritual 
 duties on the part of the officials of the Church. 
 Individual instances of high-handed administration 
 within the Church of course there were, but these do 
 not weaken the observation. 
 
 The General Assembly, which now met year by 1690-1711. 
 year, was at first in danger of being influenced by a 
 variety of motives and passions which the troubles 
 of the preceding reign rendered inevitable. Smart¬ 
 ing under the persecutions of that time, and the 
 terrible amount of injustice and oppression which had 
 roused the fury of the nation, a considerable pro¬ 
 portion of the clergy of Scotland, and indeed of the 
 people, were for strong and harsh measures in regard 
 to their opponents. Nor was it without great difficulty 
 that the prudent and moderate councils of the king 
 contrived to settle the new order of things without 
 any attempt at reprisals. In this he was sup¬ 
 ported by the prevalent majority of the Assembly. 
 
 But the course of its proceedings did not run altogether 
 smooth ; and we find in 1694 the commissioner of the 
 king and the Assembly came into direct collision on 
 the question whether the king or the Assembly should 
 
 direct and indite the period for the next General 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 'J'he Legisla¬ 
 tive Union. 
 1707 - 
 
 Assembly to meet. There is an interesting account of 
 this given in a note appended by Principal Lee to the 
 reprint of the Acts of the Assembly of 1694. But the 
 real topic on which the king and the Assembly were 
 not quite at one was the proposal to receive the 
 clergy who had conformed to Episcopacy in the 
 late reign, on condition of their acknowledging the 
 Confession of Faith and the Revolution Settlement. 
 This was the subject of a royal message, and ulti¬ 
 mately the Assembly agreed substantially to comply 
 with the wishes of the king ; and Acts of Assembly 
 were passed from time to time, not for the pur¬ 
 pose of retaliating on their ancient opponents, but 
 of endeavouring, if they could, to absorb them 
 within the Church. And so matters went on smoothly 
 and pleasantly enough until the death of King Wil¬ 
 liam and the accession of Queen Anne. 
 
 By that time the Jacobite spirit had begun to 
 
 * 
 
 cause uneasiness in the northern part of her do¬ 
 minions. Public attention was engrossed by a 
 matter of the greatest national importance and 
 interest, which had more than once occupied the 
 attention of the rulers of this country since the 
 union of the Crowns. It was the incorporating Union 
 of the two kingdoms. James I. had planned it in 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 115 
 
 1604, and Cromwell partially carried it into effect; 
 but now the work was begun in earnest, and this 
 matter of the Union occupied the minds of statesmen 
 in Scotland for a long period of agitation and sus¬ 
 pense. But, before the terms of union were sub¬ 
 scribed, the Scotch commissioners insisted upon 
 the passing by the Legislatures of both countries of 
 the Act of Security, which provided for the security 
 of the Presbyterian Church government and worship 
 in Scotland, and contained a provision that it shall “ in 
 no way and in no respect be in the power of the united 
 Parliament to alter or infringe” upon its constitution. 
 
 A more solemn pledge was never given than that 
 which was given by the Parliament of England when 
 it passed the Act for the security of the Church of 
 Scotland. It was a wise measure for our forefathers 
 to take, because the inferiority of numbers on the 
 part of the representatives of Scotland would neces¬ 
 sarily leave them entirely at the mercy of the English 
 majority; and the one thing which they stipulated 
 the English majority should not do was to alter the 
 constitution of their Church in any of its particulars. 
 
 The Act of Union was passed; and, before four 1711. 
 years were over, the councillors of Queen Anne, who 
 were much in the Jacobite interest, and not .indis- 
 
116 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 posed to pave the way for a return of the exiled 
 family, brought into Parliament, in March 1711, a 
 bill for the purpose of restoring patronage. This 
 was directly in violation of that solemn engage¬ 
 ment, on the faith of which alone the union of the 
 kingdoms was ever passed; and, conscious that 
 it was so, it was thought by the Government 
 necessary to hurry it through as rapidly as the forms 
 of Parliament would permit, at a time when communi¬ 
 cation with this country was difficult enough, and 
 when it was impossible to summon the General 
 Assembly to take counsel on the matter. What the 
 Church could do it did. The Commission of the 
 General Assembly met and resolved upon the 
 strongest remonstrances to the Queen and to the 
 Lords and Commons, stating, in language which, had 
 I time, it would be interesting to read, the peace and 
 prosperity which the Church had enjoyed since 
 patronage was abolished twenty years before, and 
 pointing out in prophetic language what heats and 
 dissensions would necessarily arise if this insidious 
 measure were allowed to pass. Pass, however, it did, 
 and that without the Church having had any oppor¬ 
 tunity of representing their views or their indignation. 
 And so the first blow was dealt at the constitution 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION, 
 
 117 
 
 thus solemnly guaranteed ; not, I believe, at all from 
 any want of determination on the part of the English 
 to act up to the rights which they had thus war¬ 
 ranted, but because they were absolutely ignorant of 
 the nature of the measure which thus crept into the 
 Statute-book. 
 
 In one view the passing of this measure was of 
 very great moment, at least in the light of subse¬ 
 quent transactions ; for the Act of 1690 had entirely 
 abolished patronage, and with patronage had entirely 
 abolished the last clause of the Act 1592. No one 
 could by possibility from that time forward have drawn 
 the inference from the words of that Statute, that the 
 spiritual jurisdiction of the Church was not, and was 
 not meant to be, in all respects absolute within its 
 own range; and if the effect of the Act of 1711, 
 restoring Church patronage, was in point of fact to 
 restore that provision at the end of the Act 1592, and 
 if that provision had any effect whatever in limiting 
 the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, there can be 
 no doubt that the passing of the Act was a very base 
 and flagrant breach of faith, and one entirely incon¬ 
 sistent with the ver}^ fundamental principles upon 
 which the union of the kingdoms rested. 
 
 I must carry on my sketch, however, without much 1711-1830. 
 
118 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 further detail. The history of the i8th century in 
 reeard to the religious condition of Scotland, as 
 indeed in regard to everything else, was one of 
 lethargy and mediocrity. Languor had replaced 
 the stirring times of the century before; and, in 
 this country as in France, there succeeded an age 
 in which earnestness and enthusiasm were ridiculed, 
 and a flat and tame and listless spirit supervened on 
 the vigorous intellects of 1640. The Church, as I 
 have said, was not free from the general depression. 
 In regard to patronage, it seems pretty clear that, 
 notwithstanding the passing of the Act of 1711, it 
 hardly assumed the nature of a grievance for the first 
 half of the century. Most of the patrons belonged 
 to the dominant Church, and were willing enough to 
 leave the settlement of the parishes of which they 
 had the patronage to the jurisdiction of the Church ; 
 and those who were Nonconformists probably were 
 not desirous of encountering the keen susceptibilities 
 which, always in Scotland jealous on this subject, 
 had been rendered infinitely more sensitive by the 
 perfidious manner in which this Statute had been 
 passed. So it was that we find that at the next 
 important stage, in 1736, at the period of the Original 
 Secession, one of the grievances of which the Seceders 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 119 
 
 at that time complained was not patronage, but the 
 fact that the Church was in the habit of settling- 
 parishes at the call of the heritors and elders, and 
 had allowed the voice or choice or assent of the 
 people to fall into desuetude. There is no doubt 
 that ease and comfort and ascendancy had, to a 
 considerable extent, modified the vigour and energy 
 of the Presbyterian party. Corruptions crept in 
 without being checked. Insensibly, Jacobite prin¬ 
 ciples and feelings began to have a certain operation 
 on the habits and manners of the clergy. Lax 
 discipline began to prevail, and evangelical preach¬ 
 ing to become cold and formal as it graduated 
 into mere moral maxims. Even heresy was not 
 rebuked. These things I fancy the student of those 
 times can hardly fail to discover by the traces 
 which they left. 
 
 In 1736 an event of great importance took 1736- The 
 
 Secession. 
 
 place : the Secession of the five ministers in 1736. 
 
 Its causes were rather general dissatisfaction with 
 the prevalent habits and spirit of the Church, than 
 any specific cause of quarrel. I cannot say that 
 in looking over the “Testimony” of the Seces¬ 
 sion, while there is a great deal which commends 
 itself to our modern notions, there are not some 
 
120 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 things which would hardly be the subject of pro¬ 
 test or even of discussion now. I do not propose 
 to trace the ultimate results of that remarkable event 
 any further at present; but it is enough to say that, 
 during the rest of the century, while the Church of 
 Scotland grew colder and colder, less earnest, less 
 vigorous, and more latitudinarian, the young blood of 
 the Secession kept alive the evangelical spirit in Scot¬ 
 land in the hearts of the people; and, in many a parish 
 where the negligence of the times had starved the 
 flock, they kept burning brightly the true evangelical 
 spirit of Gospel preaching. 
 
 While this unquestionably was the dominant spirit 
 of the majority of the ruling leaders in the Church, I 
 should not presume to say that, notwithstanding the 
 defections and frigidity of much that we find in the 
 actions and words of the Church during the last half 
 of the last century, the old vital spirit was not strong 
 within her borders. There were men in those days well 
 worthy to succeed to the heroes of the century before. 
 But gradually patronage, instead of remaining, as it 
 had been during the first half of the century, little more 
 than a name, began to be a very oppressive and 
 intolerable reality. The element of the assent of the 
 people in the formation of the pastoral tie, which, so 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 121 
 
 far as my reading extends, I think never had been 
 absent in the settlement of a minister under Presby¬ 
 terian Church government, began to be wholly dis¬ 
 regarded ; and the consequence was that the Church 
 was filled with many unacceptable and inefficient 
 ministers, and that gradually the people found their 
 way out of the Established Church into the arms of 
 evangelical dissent. But the elements of revival were 
 all there, and they only required some potent wand, 
 some strong word of command, to bring them once 
 more into operation. 
 
 Gradually the patrons themselves brought about 
 the desired result; and some of the more eminent 
 members of the evangelical party in the Church, 
 despairing of accomplishing their object by mere 
 contention in the Church Courts, set themselves to 
 exert their influence with those who had the pre¬ 
 sentations to livings in their hands. Year by year 
 by slow degrees, by almost imperceptible advances, the 
 evangelical party began to grow ; until, in the beginning 
 of the century, it was plain there was a freshening of 
 the brepze, and a renewed interest in all subjects re¬ 
 lative to vital religion. The French Revolution had 
 dispersed and blown to the winds much of the easy¬ 
 going scepticism which had so benumbed the energies 
 
122 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 1S17. Andrew 
 Thomson. 
 
 Thomas 
 
 Chalmers. 
 
 and the intellect.s of men in the preceding generation. 
 New life was inspired into all philanthropic, mission¬ 
 ary, and educational efforts ; and at last an event 
 occurred, singularly interesting to the audience which 
 I now address, when a man whose name was once 
 and is still like the sound of a trumpet in all our 
 churches—I mean Dr, Andrew Thomson—was in 
 1817 installed minister of St. George’s Church. I 
 have reason to know that it was not without a 
 long and laborious preparation that his appointment 
 to his first charge in Edinburgh was accomplished ; 
 but, from the day he first opened his lips to our 
 predecessors in this congregation, a new light seemed 
 to have broken over the religious horizon. Strong, 
 keen, energetic, a great orator, with a voice full of 
 wondrous musical power, and an earnest, intrepid, 
 resolute spirit, he, single-handed, did a service for the 
 cause of evangelical religion in this country which 
 will never be forgotten. He made religion fashion¬ 
 able, and infused an entirely new tone and spirit into 
 the society of the metropolis of this country. Along¬ 
 side him there was another great man—who was 
 fortunately spared to us longer, and whose labours 
 extended to the wants, cares, and demands of an 
 emergency which, happily for himself, but sadly for 
 
FROM THE RE FORM A TION. 
 
 123 
 
 his country, Andrew Thomson never saw—I mean 
 the brilliant, devoted, and masterly champion of the 
 Presbyterian cause, Thomas Chalmers. To those two 
 men, together, we owe the uplifting of the evangelical 
 standard some fifty years ago, around which the 
 nation has rallied with enthusiasm, and which we 
 trust to do our part to keep flying for many a genera¬ 
 tion to come. 
 
 I now near the end of my progress. Public and 1834. 
 
 The 
 
 political events had advanced with the advance of 
 earnest and evangelical feeling throughout the 
 country. Gradually the principles of liberty and 
 toleration began to find their place in our Statute- 
 book ; and at last, in 1832, after the Reform Bill 
 had been passed, the evangelical party thought 
 themselves strong enough to try conclusions in 
 the Courts of the Church ; and the first use which 
 they made of their newly-acquired strength was 
 to put an end to, or at least to put a curb on, 
 the exercise of that right of patronage which had 
 entailed so many evils on the Church, and which, if 
 unrestricted, was inconsistent, as they thought, with 
 its efficiency and usefulness. So was proposed and 
 passed the Veto Act of 1834—an Act which was 
 productive of very momentous issues, and which from 
 
124 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 both sides has sometimes met with unfavourable 
 criticism. But I should be well prepared to say and 
 to prove that the principle on which that Act 
 proceeded was one in thorough accordance with the 
 whole practice and mind of the Church from the date 
 of the Reformation, The assent of the people to the 
 placing of a clergyman had always in one shape or 
 other been held to be of the essence of the pastoral 
 relation. Sometimes it had been taken by election, 
 sometimes by the call—that is, by the express assent 
 and desire, but sometimes also by the dissent of the 
 major part of the congregation. I am not aware 
 that, until the latter part of the last century, the 
 Church ever thought of settling a minister without 
 the form, and generally the reality, of a call from the 
 people. But, at all events, their assent in one shape 
 or other had always been considered as a necessary 
 element in the formation of the bond. A large party 
 in the Church were no doubt in favour of the 
 abolition of patronage altogether, but the reasons 
 which probably led to the adoption of the milder 
 remedy were twofold. First, the unwillingness 
 which the more experienced leaders of the Church 
 had to subject the time-honoured constitution of the 
 Church of Scotland to the criticism, alteration, and 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 125 
 
 modification of a political assembly, like the Houses 
 of Commons and Lords, which could not possibly 
 sympathise with its principles, and might be to a 
 large extent ignorant of its history; and without the 
 assent of Parliament, of course, patronage could not 
 be abolished. The other view undoubtedly was, 
 some difficulty and demur as to where the appoint¬ 
 ment of the minister should be placed—difficulties 
 entertained by many men of experience in those days, 
 but which probably the example of more modern 
 times must have gone far to dissipate. Be that 
 as it may, the Veto Act was passed, which simply put 
 upon the exercise of the patron’s right this most 
 moderate and reasonable limitation, that if a major 
 part of the heads of families, being communicants, 
 objected to a presentee, he should not be settled, and 
 the patron should present another. 
 
 Nothing could be more successful than the first 
 operation of this Act. The patrons were only desirous 
 of finding presentees who should not bring them into 
 collision with the people, and should be of benefit to 
 the parish. The old evangelical spirit revived. Church 
 extension took shape. The energies of the clergy 
 were again roused. The people began to drop back 
 to their old accustomed haunts, and by the time 1837 
 
126 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 had been reached, I believe the Church of Scotland 
 was the most thoroughly national, most popular, 
 most vigorous ecclesiastical institution in Europe. 
 Then came the end—at least the end of my subject— 
 and the end of all that I have been appointed to de¬ 
 scribe. The minority of the General Assembly, acting 
 in concert with a patron whose presentee had been 
 rejected, doubtless believing that unrestricted patron¬ 
 age was a benefit to be preserved, came to what I 
 cannot but think the unfortunate resolution to have 
 the question tried in the Civil Court, as to whether 
 the General Assembly had the power to pass the 
 Act of 1834. The ground on which they objected 
 was the simple ground which had stared all states¬ 
 men in the face since 1592, as to whether, when 
 that Statute said that the Presbytery should be 
 astricted to admit a qualified presentee, . it con¬ 
 tained within itself the right of a Civil Court to 
 enforce and compel the conferring of the spiritual 
 functions of a minister. “ You can only try 
 qualifications, but the assent of the people is no 
 qualification; you are bound and astricted to 
 receive and admit, and if you do not a Civil Court 
 can compel you.” Of course it is no part of my 
 province to discuss questions of law which Courts 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 127 
 
 of Law have settled. I am only speaking histori¬ 
 cally, not as an exponent of Acts of Parliament. 
 But I think, without any digression into the field 
 of law, I can in a few sentences explain, in a popular 
 manner, the points on which the controversy turned. 
 
 I have already shewn you, in my analysis of 
 the Act 1592, that among the powers asserted by 
 that Act to have been conferred by God upon His 
 Church, were those of collation and deprivation of 
 ministers. Now, in Presbyterian Church order, 
 ordination is included in collation ; and ordination 
 is never conferred excepting in connection with a 
 cure of souls. Therefore it was maintained by 
 the Church, that the words at the conclusion of 
 that Statute, to the effect that the Presbytery should 
 be “ bound and astricted ” to receive and admit 
 any qualified presentee, only imported a direction 
 to an inferior church judicatory, in a matter in 
 which they were only subject to their ecclesiastical 
 superiors, and could not possibly imply that a Civil 
 Court could compel or prevent the exercise of 
 functions which the same Statute declares to have 
 been the gift of God to His Church. On the other 
 hand, it was said that the words were quite precise, and 
 that when a Statute enacted that the Presbytery should 
 
128 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 be bound or astricted to admit a qualified presentee, 
 admit him they must, and that a Civil Court could 
 enforce the obligation. 
 
 It is impossible to say that the words are not 
 susceptible of the second meaning ; and such has now 
 been conclusively fixed to be their legal effect. They 
 were, as I have said, left purposely ambiguous. But 
 there can be no doubt how they were understood 
 by the Church in 1592. I cannot indicate this 
 more clearly than by referring to the terms of two 
 Statutes—one passed during Presbytery in 1567, and 
 the other during Episcopacy in 1612. 
 
 The Act of the Scottish Parliament passed in 1567, 
 c. 7, dealt with this matter of the rights of presentees. 
 It provided that presentations of qualified presentees 
 should be directed to the superintendent of the district, 
 with an appeal to the Presbvterv . if he refused to 
 receive and admit; and from the judgment of the 
 ^ Presbytery an appeal lay to the “ General Assembly of 
 this haill realm, by whom the cause being decided, shall 
 take end as they shall decern and declair.” 
 
 Now, this Statute was not only not repealed or 
 altered by the Act 1592, but it was ratified and con¬ 
 firmed by it; and therefore, at the passing of the Act 
 1592, it was understood and believed that the obligation 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 129 
 
 laid upon Presbyteries to receive or admit qualified 
 presentees, was precisely the same, with the same 
 remedies and no other, as that laid upon the superin¬ 
 tendents in 1567, The law remained unaltered. 
 
 On the other hand, after the bishops were re¬ 
 stored, and the Royal Supremacy asserted in 1606, 
 and Parliament had to provide for the new order of 
 things, presentations were enjoined by the Statute 
 1612, c. I, to be directed to the bishop; and, if the 
 presentee was already in holy orders, a complaint 
 lay to the Privy Council, who were empowered to 
 compel admission.* The contrast is very marked. 
 
 * The text of these two remarkable Statutes is as follows :— 
 
 “Under Presbytery, 1567, c. 7. 
 
 “ Item, it is statute and ordained by our Sovereign Lord, with 
 advice of his dearest Regent, and three Estates of this present Parlia¬ 
 ment, that the examination and admission of ministers within this Realm 
 
 be onlie in the power of the kirk, now openly and publicly professed ,0 , , /) < 
 
 within the same. The presentation of l awful p atronap-es. always reserved 
 to the just and ancient patrons, and the patron presenting one qualified 
 
 person within six months, &c.-to the Superintendent of those parts 
 
 where the benefice lies, or others having commission of the kirk to that 
 effect ; otherwise, the kirk to have power to dispone the same to a 
 qualified person for a time. Providing that in that case the patron 
 present a person qualified to his understanding; and, failing of one, 
 another, within the said six months ; and if the said Superintendent or 
 Commissar of the king refuses to receive and admit the person presented 
 by the patron, as said is, it shall be lawful to the patron to appeal to the 
 Superintendent and ministers of that province where the benefice lies 
 and desire the person presented to be admitted, which, if they refuse, 
 
 I 
 
130 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 In times when the Royal Supremacy was denied, and 
 the divine origin of the spiritual jurisdiction of the 
 Church admitted, the appeal lay to the General 
 Assembly. When the Royal Supremacy was asserted, 
 as it was by James in 1606, the appeal lay to the 
 temporal Court of the Privy Council. But under 
 Episcopacy, orders are conferred without a cure ; and, 
 accordingly, only presentees already ordained could in¬ 
 voke the Privy Council. Even James refrained from 
 giving power to a Civil Court to compel a bishop to 
 ordain. But when the Act of 1612 was repealed, and 
 
 to appeal to the General Assembly of this haill Realm, by ivhom the cause 
 being decided, shall take end, as they shall decerne and declare. 
 
 “Under Episcopacy, 1612, c. I. 
 
 “That all presentations to benefices be directed hereafter to the 
 Archbishop or Bishop of the diocese within which the benefice vacant 
 lies; providing always that in case any Archbishop or Bishop should 
 refuse to admit any qualified minister {accepting the prese 7 itation grattted 
 to him, and who has been 07 ice received and admitted to the f miction of the 
 ministry, being then still undeprived) presented to them by the patron, 
 in case of such refusal it shall be lawful to the patron to retain the whole 
 fruits of the said benefice in his own hands, and either he or the parish 
 wanting a pastor by reason of the not planting of the Kirk (in case the re¬ 
 fusal thereof come by the Bishop) may complain thereof to the Archbishop; 
 and if either the Archbishop be the refuser, or else give not due redress, 
 being complained unto, in that case the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy 
 Council, upon the parties complaining of the refusal; and, no sufficient 
 reason had been given for the same, shall direct letters of horning, 
 charging the Ordinary to do his duty in the receiving and admitting of 
 such a person as the said patron hath pi'esented." 
 
FROM THE REFORMA TION. 
 
 131 
 
 that of 1592 ratified, after the Revolution, it was 
 thought that all ground for the interference of any 
 Civil* Court was at an end. Such was the nature of 
 the controversy which in the famous Auchterarder 
 case came up for trial. 
 
 The resolution to submit the jurisdiction of the The Auchter- 
 
 ^I'clcr CfciS0 
 
 Church to the cognisance of a Civil Court of Law, was 
 very ill-advised. Every one who saw below the sur¬ 
 face knew quite well that success in this endeavour, if 
 the majority of the Assembly stood firm, as they 
 were certain to do, could only be reached through 
 a course that would shake to its foundation the 
 great charter of the spiritual independence of the 
 Church. Although it was the question of the 
 admission of a presentee which raised this large 
 and mighty dispute, the Act of 1592 was so bound 
 together, and the origin of the Church’s jurisdic¬ 
 tion as well as the extent of it, so vital to its 
 constitution, that any one not blinded by the dust 
 and turmoil of contending sides must have fore¬ 
 seen that the Civil Court had not the power 
 to arrive at the desired end, without risking 
 consequences far more important than the direct 
 and main matter in dispute. So it proved : 
 the Courts decided that the General Assembly 
 
132 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 had no power to pass the Act of 1834, and that 
 the presentee in the case of Auchterarder was 
 entitled to be inducted. If that had rested 
 merely with the presentee being entitled to the 
 fruits of the benefice for that term, it would not 
 have been inconsistent with several instances which 
 had occurred before, and would have been entirely 
 consistent with the rationale of the divided 
 jurisdiction. But the Courts went further, and 
 proceeded to carry out this, and consequent 
 judgments in other cases, into practical effect by 
 process of law. They directed the Presbytery to 
 take the presentee on trial, and, if found qualified, 
 to admit him. But admission means collation and 
 ordination, and collation and ordination were the 
 matters which the Act of 1592 had declared 
 to be among the spiritual functions which God 
 had given the Church. The Presbytery declined. 
 A minority of the Presbytery who belonged to 
 the opposite party were authorised by the Court to 
 give induction, and they did so. In another case 
 the Presbytery did induct in spite of the orders of 
 the Church, and were suspended, and ultimately 
 deposed, for disobedience, by their ecclesiastical supe¬ 
 riors ; and the sentence was set aside by the Civil 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 133 
 
 Court, although deprivation was one of those matters 
 expressly declared by the Act of 1592 to fall 
 
 within the spiritual jurisdiction. Ministers of the 
 Church were sent to the parishes where the 
 ministers had been suspended, and they were in¬ 
 terdicted from preaching the Word. It is need¬ 
 less to go over the different cases in which one 
 after another those questions arose. It was plain 
 that the crisis was at hand — plain at least to 
 those who chose to look, although some were so 
 far deluded as to imagine that this was but a 
 
 movement of a few ambitious churchmen, and 
 
 were wholly ignorant of the spirit either of the 
 clergy or of the people. It seemed to the 
 
 evangelical majority of the Church that no 
 course was left for them but to throw off the 
 trammels, as they then felt them, of their connec¬ 
 tion with the State, and to seek the freer air of 
 a voluntary church. I must own that in those 
 days, while thoroughly sympathising with the 
 views which they maintained, and having had a 
 very humble share in some part of the controversy, 
 it did seem to me that the prospect of maintain¬ 
 ing a voluntary Church, in an efficient and vigorous 
 condition in this poor country, was almost 
 
134 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 The Disrup¬ 
 tion, 1843. 
 
 Quixotic. And I also mourned with a mourning' 
 which I cannot express over the wrenching 
 asunder of so many hallowed traditions, and the 
 destruction of an institution around which so many 
 historic memories were woven. But I very soon 
 became convinced that in both I had been wrong. 
 The nobility and spirit of the people went far 
 beyond what could have been expected ; and 
 after reflection satisfied me not only that it was 
 impossible for the leaders or the ministers who 
 followed them, in justice to their people, to 
 have continued the struggle longer, either with 
 propriety or with dignity, but that their only 
 chance of placing the Church government on 
 its true and scriptural footing was to adopt 
 the course which, under their great leaders, they 
 followed. 
 
 Then came the exodus, that most romantic and 
 heroic episode in this struggle for the truth. It is 
 five-and-thirty years ago, and many, too many, of 
 those devoted men rest from their labours ; yet I 
 cannot cast my recollections back to that impressive 
 event without a swell and a glow at my heart ; a 
 vivid and over-mastering sense of admiration and 
 sympathy at a spectacle which raised humanity 
 
FROM THE RE FORM A TION. 
 
 135 
 
 above the sordid level of common life, and shewed 
 to the country and to Europe that, even in those 
 days of indolent prosperity and peace, there were men 
 ready to do and suffer all things for what they 
 believed to be the cause of Christ. The clouds have 
 passed, the rain is over and gone, and we gather, year 
 by year, the fruits of the seed that was sown in tears ; 
 but never, while a true Gospel is preached in this 
 Protestant and Presbyterian land, will the tale cease 
 to be told, with weeping and with laughter, with 
 reverence and with homage, of the grand and soul¬ 
 stirring testimony which was rendered on that 
 memorable day. 
 
 Were they mere enthusiasts ? Were they “Martyrs 
 by Mistake,” as a great philosopher was fain to call 
 them ? I trow not. They only walked in the 
 footsteps of those who went before them. The 
 onlookers said, “ Why all this exaggerated zeal 
 on the question of patronage. Our fathers sub¬ 
 mitted to it; why should not you ? The spiritual 
 jurisdiction of the Church is not touched, and the 
 Civil Courts cannot repeal the Act of 1592, or the 
 Revolution Settlement.” But the question was neither 
 about patronage, nor about ’the extent of the juris¬ 
 diction of the Church. Patronage in the struggle had 
 
136 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 disappeared from sight, and it may quite well be that 
 the Civil Courts may decline to judge in matters 
 ecclesiastical in the future as in the past. It was not 
 the extent, but the source of the jurisdiction of the 
 Church which was the point of vital controversy. 
 It was the apparent denial in these proceedings 
 of the Civil Court of the principle that the Church’s 
 jurisdiction in matters spiritual was given by God, 
 and was not in the hands of any civil power to 
 give, or withhold, or control, which led to the 
 exodus of 1843. Is that principle true or false? 
 It was asserted at the Reformation ; it was embodied 
 in both the Books of Discipline, and in all the Con¬ 
 fessions of Faith; it was solemnly asserted in the 
 Act of 1592 ; it was repeated in the Statute of 1640; 
 it was embraced in the Revolution Settlement, and 
 lies embedded in the Union of the Kingdoms. Any 
 jurisdiction which the State ever recognised in the 
 Church of Scotland was founded on the direct asser¬ 
 tion of that essential doctrine. On that foundation 
 all her liberties were built. What remains of it ? 
 Because they could not answer that question our 
 leaders in the olden day preferred to abandon hearth 
 and home, station and 'competency. I do not stop 
 to answer it now. Whether in the light of recent 
 
FROM THE REFORMATION. 
 
 137 
 
 ■events it was wise of others to draw the cords to 
 tension till they broke, it is beyond my limits to 
 inquire. I have accomplished my task, and shewn 
 what a State Church was and might still have been. 
 But it is easier to destroy than to restore. 
 
CHURCH AND STATE IN THE 
 
 PRESENT DAY, 
 
 BY 
 
 A. TAYLOR INNES, Esq., Advocate. 
 

CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 IN THE PRESENT DAY. 
 
 HERE is no more magnificent drama than that A great 
 
 Drama. 
 
 presented by the question of Church and State 
 throughout the world in the present day. Yet in this, 
 as in all matters, the eye sees what it is capable of 
 seeing. There are those who look out on the great age 
 in which we live, and from Dan to Beersheba find it 
 barren. But how can the world be other than barren 
 to men who under great results seek petty causes, and, 
 seeking, find them ? To such enquirers nothing great 
 in human life reveals itself. Even in the past the 
 noisiest events—the drums and tramplings of history 
 —fill their unbelieving ears. But the surest punish¬ 
 ment of this ungenerous temperament is the incapacity 
 to understand the age in which its own lot is cast. Con¬ 
 temporary history becomes to such men inevitably a 
 game of shifting expedients and personal intrigue ; 
 and mankind, wrestling with the deepest problems of 
 existence, but an ignoble and insect crowd, struggling 
 
142 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 along the narrower ways of life, “ with too much envy 
 in their hearts, and too much striving in their hands.” 
 Now, there may have been ages of the world when 
 there was much excuse for even such views. There have 
 been times when the public relations of human life 
 were cast in so poor a mould, and when that mould 
 had become so fixed and hardened around whole 
 generations, that the only deliverance for individual 
 thinkers and Christians was in casting their eyes 
 backward into some earlier and golden age, or in 
 abandoning history altogether, and looking away from 
 outward facts to inward principles. God be praised, 
 the lot of men in our day is not so hard. To those of 
 you who do not love logic, and have no passion for 
 abstractions (and there are such men, even among 
 Scotsmen, and even upon this subject of Church and 
 State), to all such I would say. You need not drift 
 back into the historical past, or float onward into an 
 ideal future. Lift your eyes and simply look around 
 you. Only, remember, when you look around, look all 
 around. It is he who takes in the whole signs of 
 heaven, who may hope to spell the secret of the sky. 
 
 What is the first of those signs—the flush that attracts 
 us along the horizon } I call as witness an observer 
 without much prejudice on my own side. There is a 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA F. 
 
 143 
 
 little knot of thinkers in England so negative, that 
 they have to call themselves Positive; and of this party, 
 the ablest writer and representative is Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison. Three years ago, Mr. Harrison found 
 himself called to speak of the present age in the 
 following terms :— 
 
 “ Abroad and at home, on all sides, may be seen 
 
 0 
 
 a new power in politics. We are living in a revival 
 of religious passion, affecting all public concerns. As 
 a religious phenomenon, this has long been recog¬ 
 nised. It is the peculiarity of the religious revival 
 of our day, that it is no one phase of religion that 
 revives. What we see is a breaking forth of the reli¬ 
 gious temper in ways the most diverse—Catholic, 
 Anglo-Catholic, Old Catholic, Neo-Catholic, Old 
 Christian, Neo-Christian, and Anti-Christian.” 
 
 Yes, this is the first thing that we have to recognise This a leli 
 in approaching the present time with a view to its 
 relations of Church and State—that it is a religious 
 time. And by this, I mean, not a time in which religion 
 rules, but a time in which religion lives and works. 
 
 There have been times when religion ruled a great 
 deal more than it does now, and when it was a 
 great deal less living. The peculiarity of the present 
 time seems to me to be, that religion is now only 
 
144 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 a powerful thing in so far as it is a living thing. 
 But, to a very great extent, it is a living thing; 
 and, accordingly, it is everywhere a power. Out¬ 
 side Christianity, the hardest of all religions, is 
 that of Islam; but it has within this generation 
 experienced a revival of feeling in its original Arabia^ 
 which reminds us of the old days when men 
 listened to Mohammed himself; and, as he preached 
 his new found doctrine of God’s greatness, “ his 
 eye grew red, and his voice rose loud and shrill, 
 as if he were warning the people of an enemy 
 to fall next morning upon the camp. ” Inside 
 Christendom, the coldest of all Churches is that 
 of Russia. But again and again in this century, 
 through that snowy expanse, hot springs of evangelical 
 feeling have gushed up ; and strange cracks and 
 mysterious moanings heard under the vast ice¬ 
 field suggest that, instead of slowly bearing down 
 upon Europe, as Europe fears, that glacier-con¬ 
 tinent may some day be itself broken up by 
 internal influences, and thrown into convulsion 
 and transformation. And if these things are so in 
 the impassive East, why need I speak of the 
 seething West on both sides of the Atlantic } 
 Open our most influential periodicals : you will 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 145 
 
 find them almost one-half theological. Open our 
 
 most popular books of science: you will find 
 
 them groping outwards into an unseen universe, 
 
 or back into that blue haze from which the visible 
 
 universe has sprung. I shall refer later on to the 
 
 great Roman Catholic revival, extending to the 
 
 utmost circumference of the Latin Church, and 
 
 beyond that circumference into other communions. 
 
 But, at this point, I shall only say, let no one 
 
 suppose that such a movement has taken place 
 
 without earnest and individual religious conviction. 
 
 If you doubt that, take up only one centre of 
 
 the movement—the small knot of men represented 
 
 by La Mennais, Montalembert, and Lacordaire, who, 
 
 about the year 1830, before the advent of Ultra- 
 
 montanism, strove to reconcile religion and liberty. 
 
 The last named of these was a barrister before he 
 
 was a priest; and, even after taking orders, he 
 
 appeared again and again at the bar to plead his 
 
 own cause and that of his ardent associates. 
 
 “ You priests,” cried the public prosecutor to him, 
 
 “ are the ministers of a foreign power.” “ We are 
 
 the ministers,” flashed back Lacordaire, “ of God, 
 
 who is a foreigner in no land of earth ! ” Such 
 
 was the spirit of that confident morning of 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 brave hearts in France ; and vve cannot doubt that 
 all over Europe a like spirit, less bold perhaps, but 
 on that very account more true and pure, has swelled 
 the fountain of what is now so dangerous a flood. 
 And, if revivals of religious feeling are one great 
 source of strength, even in the external system of 
 Catholicism ; in our Churches, which profess to be 
 built on the revelation to the individual of an 
 invisible world of truth, they may almost be said 
 to be the ordinary channels of imparted power. Men 
 go about mumbling old and orthodox truths, which 
 they believe themselves to believe, when suddenly 
 or gradually, the eyes of some one are opened to 
 see the least of those truths, and it transfixes and 
 transforms him. And from one the fire of illumina¬ 
 tion and quickening runs to another; and so, year 
 by year, and generation after generation, the Church 
 abides—imperishable, even on the lowest theory, 
 as is the nature of man, and on the higher theory, 
 as is the grace of God. 
 
 Now I need not remind my younger audience 
 how much this fact—that our time has to deal with 
 true religious feeling as well as with Churchism— 
 imposes on us a duty to come to the topic with 
 clean hands and hearts. It is more in the line of our 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 147 
 
 present remarks to observe that this is an eminently 
 hopeful fact for the solution of the problem of Church 
 and State. Wherever you have ecclesiasticism 
 without religion, you want some of the essential 
 elements of the problem, and your result will be neces¬ 
 sarily fallacious. But our age, whatever it wants, has 
 at least the materials for the solution of the problem 
 of Church and State. 
 
 For, in the second place, this is not only a religious 
 time, it is a Church time. Churches, as I have 
 just said, inevitably result from religion; at least 
 from Christian religion. Yet there are times when 
 religion takes the ecclesiastical form more than 
 at others, and when the Church, as an external 
 institute, is specially active and prominent. There 
 can be no doubt, if you take the world as a whole, 
 that this is so now. Only, in the present day, 
 you find the Church energetic and active in all 
 its forms and developments—not, as in former ages, 
 in one or two alone. Take, for example, one 
 extreme, the Roman Catholic Church. The pre¬ 
 sent age has witnessed a wonderful revival and 
 persistent growth in power of the Church which 
 best represents the principle of authority. Starting 
 with the reaction from the crash of revolution 
 
 A Church 
 time. 
 
148 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 throughout Europe, it has everywhere made its way 
 in our more religious century—never abandoning 
 its ancient claim of supremacy, but in liberal and 
 democratic countries holding it in reserve—demand¬ 
 ing, where it cannot look for more, the mere liberty 
 which is due to every Church, but arrogating, where 
 it has the opportunity, the subjection of States and 
 Princes to that divinely appointed and infallible 
 power which has authority to fix the limits of all 
 other powers. Directed, from a short time after 
 the accession of the present Pope, by the trained 
 and traditional skill of the Society of Jesus, it has 
 shewn itself as well able to make alliance with 
 democracy as with despotism. And, while using 
 both of these, it has found in Imperialism — i.e., in 
 a universal suffrage which hands over its whole 
 powers to one irresponsible ruler—both its truest 
 friend, and its real analogue in civil affairs. Ap¬ 
 plying the same principle of centralisation to its 
 own internal matters, it has crushed out Gallicanism, 
 it has reduced Old Catholicism to a shadow, and it has 
 effaced the representative Church rights of its own 
 laity, clergy, and episcopate; and that with such 
 completeness, that when, in 1870, a General Council 
 was held in order to declare an Italian priest the 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 149 
 
 absolute lord of the conscience of mankind (and 
 it did so, not even by its authority but expressly by 
 his own), not a single bishop of that communion 
 throughout the world has been found to persist 
 in his protest. What a complicated difficulty 
 is presented to the State by a body which is in 
 many respects a huge civil or anti-State institute, 
 and which yet is ever ready to fall back upon 
 its mere rights of conscience and of Church free¬ 
 dom, I need not here say. I have had an op¬ 
 portunity of doing so elsewhere; and it must 
 never be forgotten that it raises a separate and 
 additional problem, not to be solved by the prin¬ 
 ciples which ordinarily pull us through. In Pro¬ 
 testantism the rights of the Church come up more 
 purely, and the complications there are due to its 
 internal variations, or to the well-meant efforts of the 
 State to control and use it. Take for illustration 
 what is in every sense an intermediate case. The 
 Church of England seems to have manifested an 
 extraordinary amount of power and vitality—of 
 organic power and of Church vitality—during the 
 last few years. Whether the institute called by 
 that name may not find that it really consists of 
 two or three churches—of two or three incompatible 
 
150 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 forms of Church life—is another question ; but, 
 as a whole, it seems to me to have got thoroughly 
 into it the idea of Church unity and association. 
 If you doubt this, read the proceedings of the last 
 Church Congress. Ten years ago the idea of a 
 Church of England not established would have 
 been regarded in such an assembly as monstrous. 
 Its leaders then always talked, as the clerical 
 leaders of the Church of Scotland sometimes still 
 allow themselves to talk, as if disestablishing a 
 Church would be the same thing as destroying 
 it. The reports of these Church meetings—at 
 present fully more the equivalents of our General 
 Assemblies than the meetings of Convocation— 
 seem to me to indicate that the leading men in 
 the English Church have escaped permanently 
 from this degradation of thought ; and the increased 
 self-respect thus indicated on the part of the Church 
 has produced a visible increase of respect on the part of 
 the statesmen who deal with it. Take again the foreign 
 Protestant Churches. In Germany the universities 
 are centres of intellectual and spiritual life, but 
 it stagnates in its attempt to pass through the 
 masses of the people; and the recent institution, 
 in the great Prussian communions, of kirk-sessions 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA V. 
 
 151 
 
 and the forms of presbytery, no doubt supplies 
 machinery, but does not supply driving power to 
 propel it. How far this is due to the fact that 
 by Prussian law every “ adherent ” has the full 
 rights of a member of the Church, no matter what 
 his faith is, or whether he professes any faith, is 
 an important enquiry; for the same scheme has 
 been proposed for us in Scotland, and will be 
 proposed again. In the smaller continental Pro¬ 
 testant bodies we have exceedingly interesting 
 questions of polity and creed—the most celebrated 
 of these last being, no doubt, the case of the Churoh 
 of France. There an orthodox majority has adopted 
 a new creed, consisting of three sentences ; a creed 
 which is resolutely refused by a rationalist minority, 
 many of whom deny the resurrection and the 
 supernatural in all its forms. They object to the 
 change on the perfectly intelligible ground, that 
 a new and short creed must be supposed to be 
 believed by those who accept it; whereas their 
 ancient creed, which came down from Beza and the 
 Reformation, they do not even pretend to believe. 
 The law courts of France have sustained the power 
 of the Church to enact its creed as against a 
 minority, but, being an Established Church, the enact- 
 
152 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 A State time. 
 
 ment requires to have the sanction of the State, and 
 this having been refused or delayed by the changing 
 administrations, the matter remains a dead-lock. 
 Now these are mere illustrations of the great variety 
 of Church vigour in Europe. And these and many 
 more Churches have learned to look away—past 
 us, I am sorry to say—to America, where the freest 
 development of Church-life, in all its forms, exists 
 in the greatest vigour. There Presbyterianism has 
 found its Western home; there the Baptists and 
 Methodists have been still more active pioneers of 
 Christianity ; there Mr. Gladstone found his model 
 for the reconstruction of an Irish Episcopal Church ; 
 and there the Roman Catholic communion exhausts 
 its most popular methods of aggrandisement. And 
 in these and all its forms the Church, unfettered by 
 the administrative interferences of the continent, 
 is there held in the highest honour by the law. 
 
 But, thirdly, this is not only a Church time but a 
 State time. There have been times when the State 
 had almost no powers. It was so young, or so broken, 
 or so much under the influence of superstition, as 
 almost to efface itself in the presence of the Church. 
 That is out of the question now. The State is no¬ 
 where a nullity, and it is not in the least likely to 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 153 
 
 become so in the future. Unless I am much 
 mistaken, we and the next generation in Great 
 Britain are likely to see a considerable advance in the 
 grasp of the central power upon individual and 
 corporate interests. The Laissez alter policy of the 
 earlier part of the century has gone as far as it will 
 be allowed to go; and we shall probably find in the 
 future the hand of the State laid, not only upon all 
 public and charitable endowments, but even upon 
 what we call private property, to an extent that we 
 have not yet realised. And if the State is independent, 
 and will remain so here, it is equally likely to do so 
 elsewhere. The continent of Europe has everywhere 
 carried centralisation and administration to an extent 
 which we should at all times have held intolerable ; 
 and the advance and energy of Church-life there, 
 which we have already considered, has not brought 
 with it any diminution of the powers of the conti¬ 
 nental State. Very much the contrary. There have 
 no doubt been fluctuations in this matter ; but the 
 absolute pre-eminence of the Roman Catholic Church, 
 which had been acknowledged previous to the Revolu¬ 
 tion, has never been restored. The system of con¬ 
 cordats, which the great Napoleon favoured, was to a 
 large extent continued after the Restoration of 1815, 
 
154 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 and afforded scope for concession and bargaining on 
 both sides, which postponed the whole question of the 
 essential rights of Church and State as such. In this 
 commerce the Romish Church had much the advan¬ 
 tage during one period—that succeeding 1848—when 
 the governments unwisely sought its alliance against 
 democracy. But the pretensions of the Vatican 
 Council, and the beating down of Austria and France 
 on the field of battle, have inaugurated a new era, and 
 at present the position of the great States is one of 
 careful and jealous independence. Of Germany, 
 Austria, France, and Italy, the only country where 
 there is any danger of clerical preponderance is France. 
 But then that is due not to the abnegation of its 
 powers by the State, but to the direct and partly 
 legitimate influence of the Roman Catholic Church upon 
 society. It has grown there, as it has grown in Belgium, 
 in England, and in America; and any attack upon it by 
 the law would probably increase its popularity. In 
 Italy it is protected by the law, but not fostered ; 
 indeed, in the head-quarters of Catholicism, Church 
 and State may be said to be now in separation. In 
 Germany, the Ultramontane Church is, as we all 
 know, repressed and restrained by the State; while in 
 Austria, its old and faithful ally, it is still established. 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 155 
 
 but established under recently enacted rules which 
 have quite stripped it of its former supremacy, while 
 allowing large internal liberty to manage its own 
 affairs. In Spain it has suffered similar dethrone¬ 
 ment ; and in Switzerland, it, and all other Churches 
 for its sake, are almost under the ban of the civil 
 power. 
 
 The remarkable and paradoxical result is that, 
 in this century, both Church and State have been 
 getting more powerful, while neither has been 
 gaining from the other. Each has, on the whole, 
 been getting more influence in its own region ; 
 while each has, on the whole, been interfering 
 less with the region of its neighbour. Of course 
 the end is not yet. The question between the 
 two powers is not answered. But the question is 
 put—put as a world-wide question—more ‘explicitly, 
 more fairly, and, in my judgment, more hopefully, than 
 in any previous age. I say more hopefully, because, 
 in the first place, the extreme answers which have at 
 other times been given are now practically out of 
 court. No doubt there are very able men in Europe 
 —in every country of Europe—who hold that the 
 true solution of the problem of Church and State 
 is practically to obliterate the State; just as there are 
 
 A drawn 
 game. 
 
156 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 men—and men so eminent as Garibaldi, and, I am 
 afraid, Gambetta—who would say that the true 
 answer is to obliterate the Church. But these 
 are the theorists or the fanatics: and there is no 
 practical possibility of doing either the one or the 
 other. The things are there, and will remain there, 
 and you may make up your mind to them. Then 
 there is a second proposal which has often been 
 made, which the present state of matters seems 
 equally to discountenance— i.e., to identify the two 
 things. You may merge the State in the Church, as 
 was done in the Pope’s temporal dominion, and as 
 the Jesuit theory demands in what they call the 
 “Perfect Society” throughout Europe: but even if 
 that were now a possible experiment, it always 
 ends in the Church itself turning into a peculiarly 
 corrupt and worldly State. Or you may merge 
 the Church in the State ; and that is being 
 attempted in Switzerland at this moment. In 
 French Switzerland, and in particular in Geneva, 
 the State regulates Catholic worship and the elec¬ 
 tion of the parish priests, who are of course in 
 consequence deserted by the faithful; while the 
 Protestant State clergy “ are elected by universal 
 suffrage, every one being entitled to vote who is 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 157 
 
 born a Protestant, even though he should be 
 avowedly an atheist.” * In German Switzerland 
 the Government of Berne commanded the Roman 
 Catholic clergy to break off all connection with 
 a bishop whom it held to be deposed ; and on the 
 refusal of 69 of their number, it expelled them all 
 from their cures. In both places the State has 
 refused to permit the separation from itself of 
 either the Catholic or Protestant Church, preferring 
 the hopeless attempt to mould and manipulate 
 their workings and constitution. But attempts like 
 these, on both sides, have created a revulsion of 
 feeling in Europe, which seems to me conclusive 
 as to the future. The attempt to obliterate either 
 the Church or the State, and the attempt to merge 
 either of them in the other, are both practically 
 hopeless. Serious and responsible statesmen on 
 the continent, men of the stature of Bismarck and 
 Cavour, know and acknowledge this. But more 
 interesting to us than the effect of these transactions 
 on public opinion abroad has been their influence on 
 thinkers and workers in our own country. 
 
 * From by far the best recent authority in English on this European 
 subject, Geffcken on Church and State, translated in 2 volumes. 
 (Longmans. 1877.) 
 
158 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Effect on Eng 
 lish opinion. 
 
 For all these things are our examples, and the 
 effect which they have produced, on the higher 
 minds of England especially, has been extra¬ 
 ordinary. Nor has it been without its importance 
 for Scotland too. Ten years ago, after completing 
 a legal study on the relations of Church and State in 
 Scotland, I came to the conclusion that, so far as 
 regarded the question of 1843, there was not much 
 to be done controversially by me or any other. It 
 had all been done, and done conclusively, long ago. 
 There never was a controversy so thoroughly thrashed 
 out as that was at the time; and any recent objections 
 to your position which you may have heard, are the 
 mere chopped straw of old fallacies—attempts to prove 
 that two and two make five—which, when brought 
 forward originally by men like Dr. Robertson of Ellon, 
 were torn into pieces by Dr. Cunningham and others, 
 and trodden under foot in a very rage of logic. But 
 logic cannot do everything. There are people who 
 cannot afford to admit that two and two make four. 
 And our English neighbours in particular, while equal 
 and indeed superior to us in wholesome reason and fair¬ 
 ness of mind, are far more dependent upon concrete 
 illustration and the teaching of contemporary history. 
 It was on all accounts, therefore, well worth while to 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 159 
 
 stand upon our island watchtower, and wait to see 
 what the history of those ten years might bring to our 
 doors. What, and how much, have they brought ^ 
 Events, amid which the disestablishment of a Church 
 of Ireland was a mere bagatelle—the fields of Sadowa 
 and Sedan, the Vatican Council and the enthrone¬ 
 ment of an absolute monarch over the Latin Church, 
 the loss at the same date of his temporal sovereignty, 
 and the subsequent struggle of his policy with half 
 the Powers of Europe, and in particular with 
 victorious Germany. No wonder that men’s minds 
 were driven through a rapid education ; no wonder 
 that we, who in our insular position were privileged to 
 stand apart from the continental conflict, felt disin¬ 
 clined to take sides in it, even when appealed to by 
 parties in the fray. In the spring of 1874, when that 
 conflict was at its keenest. Archbishop Manning, 
 writing in the Contemporary Reviezu, rather rashly 
 appealed to the Church of Scotland as having 
 throughout its history claimed essentially the same 
 powers as the Church of Rome claims at present.* It 
 was perhaps necessary to point out the mistake ; yet 
 even now I cannot but sympathise with the hesitation 
 
 ¥e 
 
 .See Note A in Appendix. 
 
160 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 with which the attempt to do so was made, lest a 
 premature enunciation of the principle of the struggle 
 should hinder any one observer from receiving for 
 himself the full force of its lessons. Will you permit 
 me to quote only a sentence or two written at that 
 date ? 
 
 “On the shores of Scotland and America we see a 
 company of men who stand and look out with much 
 interest, but at the same time with scarcely concealed 
 complacency, over the troubled sea of Europe. The 
 shock of those mighty opposites, Ultramontanism and 
 Caesarism, which perplexes and saddens so many, has 
 filled them with satisfaction. That hopeless but most 
 instructive conflict is exactly what they had antici¬ 
 pated ; nay, what in some milder form they had 
 desired. . . Apart from other questions, the pro¬ 
 
 gress of Prince Bismarck’s contest with Pius IX. is 
 producing, week by week, such an effect upon English 
 opinion, that multitudes are at this moment groping 
 outside the theory of mutual independence, unwilling 
 to enter by that door, and yet unable to move away. 
 In such circumstances, its advocates may well run a 
 waiting race. Time is on their side. Every develop¬ 
 ment in the great German story will bring out more 
 and more the impossibility of submerging or subordi- 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 161 
 
 nating either the secular power or the spiritual, and so 
 will suggest the expediency of frankly recognising 
 both. And while history is unrolling so great a 
 picture under so intense an illumination, may we not 
 wisely keep silence?” 
 
 It is not four years since these words were written, 
 but the effect of those later years upon observers 
 and thinkers in Great Britain has been much more 
 remarkable than that of the six that preceded them. 
 I am exceedingly desirous, for reasons I shall after¬ 
 wards suggest, to avoid anything like flattering you, 
 the younger men of the Free Church; but I cannot 
 honestly put the fact at less than this, that the world 
 is slowly coming round to your principles. Take one 
 illustration. The London Spectator, with a good many 
 faults, has probably been during these ten years the 
 ablest and highest toned of the weekly journals in 
 Great Britain. Only a few years ago, in enumerating 
 its principles at the head of its own advertisement 
 sheet, it gave prominence to one of them as “Erastian- 
 ism in Church Politics.” But for the last few years 
 the Spectator seems to me to treat all Church and 
 State questions throughout the world exactly on the 
 principles which the Free Church leaders formulated 
 
 in 1843—principles which, whatever their demerits, 
 
 » L 
 
 Advance in 
 
 public 
 
 opinion. 
 
162 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 can hardly be described as Erastian. Now, whence 
 came the wind that blew these seeds of conviction 
 into the Spectators page? It came to all appearance 
 from across the German Sea. It was that on that 
 other side a great nation had established and 
 endowed within its bounds a portion of a powerful 
 Church ; that on quarrelling with that Church the 
 State declined to restrict itself to withdrawing the 
 endowments within its territory—a thing which it is 
 always in the power of a State to do—but insisted 
 also on governing the Church, and making laws for it, 
 and regulating, not the civil and pecuniary results of 
 its actions only, but its ecclesiastical acts themselves 
 and its internal Church relations—until in one month 
 alone there were eighty or ninety convictions for 
 refusal to obey those laws, and five of them bishops 
 sentenced to fine or imprisonment. Now, the quarrel 
 of the German empire with Ultramontanism was a 
 most righteous quarrel, and the things which the new 
 German ecclesiastical regulations enforced on the 
 Church were in themselves things good for the Church 
 and for mankind. Yet the spectacle of a wise and 
 powerful nation, desiring to secure wise and good 
 results by intruding into the internal affairs of even an 
 Ultramontane Church, has been such as to set men’s 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA V. 
 
 163 
 
 minds, as I believe and hope, in permanent opposition 
 to such a claim of authority by any State over any 
 Church in all time to come. The same effect was 
 observable when a year or two ago the Guibord case 
 was brought over here from Canada on appeal to the 
 Privy Council. The English lawyers, I must acknow¬ 
 ledge, did not distinguish themselves in handling that 
 matter; but the English organs of opinion took up, 
 with great honesty of purpose, the curious compli¬ 
 cation of civil and sacred rights which is always 
 produced, by the theory of consecrated ground, in a 
 country where the State is independent but has 
 established a particular Church. And here again the 
 line of justice which the ablest London journals drew, 
 including not only the Spectator but the Times, was 
 no other than that which the Free Churchmen of 
 1843 had drawn with far more precision—the leading 
 journal adding honestly that England was probably 
 on the threshold of a reconsideration of the whole 
 subject in the light derived from so many quarters 
 around. But a third and a still more striking illustra¬ 
 tion of the same state of matters was given when 
 attention was called to the relation of the kingdom 
 of Italy to the Church whose infallible head resides 
 within its territory. Since 1870 the relations of 
 
164 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Church and State in Italy have been founded 
 generally on the theory expressed in the maxim 
 borrowed by Cavour, of a “ free Church in a free 
 State,” as that maxim is more particularly ex¬ 
 pounded in the Guarantee Laws of 1873. But 
 the working out of those relations in legal practice 
 was regulated by the precise formula, so familiar 
 to the leaders of the Scottish Church before its 
 old constitution was beaten down in 1843, that 
 where a difference between the State and the Church 
 emerged on any matter, neither should be judge 
 for the other—that until both parties agreed, the 
 State should absolutely regulate its own matters, 
 including all questions of property and so-called 
 Church revenues, while the Church should still 
 regulate its own internal matters and sacred func¬ 
 tions.* This striking analogy, observed by the states¬ 
 man-eye of Dr. Robert Buchanan on his closing 
 visit to Rome, was brought by circumstances under 
 the notice of our press. The result—on the part 
 of its best representatives, I instance again the 
 Times and the Spectator —was a prompt appreciation 
 of the merits of the only feasible attempt to cut 
 
 * 
 
 See Note B. 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 165 
 
 the knot that is strangling Europe; while other 
 journals, seeing too clearly that if a principle so 
 well defined as this is good anywhere it is good 
 everywhere, hung back and refused to accept the 
 solution—refused to accept it, observe, as being too 
 favourable to the Church. But time—in this case 
 not a few years but a few months—brought about 
 its revenges. The Italian people themselves held 
 the view—a view in which I strongly sympathise 
 with them—that this fair and equal common principle, 
 however good for Churches in general, was not 
 sufficient to repel the positive aggressions and attacks 
 made by the Ultramontane clergy high and low— 
 attacks in some cases upon the very existence and 
 whole authority of the Civil Government. Accord¬ 
 ingly, they turned out the Government of Mancini, 
 and having put Depretis in power, with a very large 
 majority, the new cabinet brought in a bill to 
 “ repress clerical abuses,” which caused great ques¬ 
 tion and commotion, and, after passing the Chamber 
 of Deputies, was finally negatived in the Senate. 
 It was not a well-considered measure, but it was 
 one which I suspect our Houses of Parliament would 
 instantly have passed had our throne been exposed to 
 the kind of attacks which were directed against that 
 
166 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Caveat. 
 
 of Victor Emmanuel. Yet our press, influenced 
 very manifestly by the long education of the German 
 struggle, was now unanimous, and, I think, rashly 
 unanimous, in reprobating the attempt to go beyond 
 the previous line, which left even that Church in 
 Italy free within the free State. 
 
 I give these as most instructive illustrations of 
 the advance of public opinion upon this subject. 
 And I have now to make a deduction from these 
 remarks, to which you will give such force on the 
 other side as you think right. You will not find 
 that those organs of public opinion, while approving 
 and warmly admiring the principle in cases thus 
 brought before them from abroad, are prepared as 
 yet to apply it to cases at home with which they 
 have specially to do. The Spectator is no longer 
 Erastian with regard to Churches throughout the 
 world, but I will not venture to say what its view 
 may be as to the Church of England. The Times 
 holds the balance fairly between foreign States, and 
 the Churches, Protestant or Ultramontane, with 
 which they have to do ; but if it were proposed to 
 it to-morrow to relieve our own Established Church 
 from its present obligation to obey in Church matters 
 the Statutes of an English Parliament, I am afraid 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 167 
 
 the Times might be apt to take a hasty view. And 
 I have found it so with many other excellent organs 
 of opinion. You must give such weight to this as 
 you think just; but to assist you in doing so, I 
 will recall to you the old story of Themistocles. 
 Athens had a dozen generals, one of whom fell 
 to be chosen by the suffrages of the rest as the 
 man most fit to command. The urn was brought, 
 and the ballot was taken. Men at that time did 
 not perhaps think more highly of themselves than 
 we do, but they were franker and simpler in ex¬ 
 pressing their estimate. Accordingly, when the 
 vote was read out, it was found that every one of 
 the generals had written his own name first, but 
 every one of them had written second that of 
 Themistocles. The Athenian people held that such 
 a vote was equivalent to a declaration that the son 
 of Neocles was the man to save the state; and, I 
 think, they were not far wrong. But I think also, 
 that the same rule of interpretation may apply to 
 the choice of principles, as well as to that of persons. 
 When men vote for a principle of justice all round 
 and in every case, except where they have 
 already got themselves entangled in particular 
 interests, it is not hard to tell the meaning of their 
 
168 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 verdict, it is not hard to name the victor of 
 to-morrow ! 
 
 Establish¬ 
 ment ; extreme 
 theories on 
 both sides. 
 
 But this victorious advance of opinion on the 
 great question of the freedom of both Church and 
 State docs not solve all other questions in the same 
 region. 'In particular, it does not absolutely, and 
 in all circumstances, solve the questions of estab¬ 
 lishment or non-establishment, endowment or non¬ 
 endowment, which we must next consider. In truth, 
 I know of no formula which does solve those 
 questions universally. It is said that there are 
 people who believe that there ought to be an es¬ 
 tablishment and endowment of religion in every 
 country—say, where ninety-nine hundredths of the 
 people are opposed to it. There are others who 
 certainly believe that in no country is it lawful 
 to have either establishment or endowment, not 
 even in one where the same proportion of the people 
 desires it. I consider these as the views of amiable 
 enthusiasts on both sides. I cannot accept them 
 myself, even in theory; and I hold them to be 
 unpractical and unstatesmanlike. And, of course, 
 when there is no universal formula, when the question 
 of duty throughout the world depends upon facts 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 169 
 
 and circumstances, there will in some parts of 
 the world be difficult and narrow cases. But there 
 will, in other parts of the world, be easy cases, 
 cases which only require a little honesty to deal 
 with them—a little honesty and a very little in¬ 
 telligence. 
 
 Now, looking out upon our world-map with a The Civil 
 
 Magistrate 
 
 view to these matters, we are confronted at the outset powers 
 by a rather difficult question, as to the nature of 
 the modern State—what functions a State as such 
 ought to assume. Of old, the Civil Magistrate 
 was a stout gentleman in an iron cap, or an em¬ 
 broidered waistcoat. Under that cap, within that 
 embroidery, was a heart and a soul, and a con¬ 
 science for himself and others. And as he was 
 never chosen or delegated by the people, but ruled 
 by right, hereditary or divine, it was natural that 
 appeals should be made to the conscience of the 
 ruler to regulate religion, as well as other matters 
 important for his subjects. In modern times there 
 is a considerable change on all this—a change which 
 would, no doubt, be reflected in our Confessions 
 of Faith, if such things existed. The Civil Magistrate 
 is now the constitutional State, and the constitutional 
 State is—not wholly, but chiefly—the assembled 
 
170 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 National 
 Religion is not 
 Establish¬ 
 ment; and is 
 opposed to 
 the establish¬ 
 ment of one 
 sect. 
 
 representation of the people. And when we ask 
 what rights the representatives of the people have 
 as to religion (or any other thing), the first answer 
 is, that they have exactly so much as the people 
 choose to give them. No doubt the question re¬ 
 mains, How much ought the people to give them } 
 And on this very famous question, on which so 
 many thinkers have differed, I rather lean to the 
 view of those who hold that the sphere of the 
 State, as against the individual, ought to be a 
 very restricted one. I profess myself a disciple 
 of Kant and Humboldt, rather than of Hegel and 
 .Hobbes. But, notwithstanding that this is my 
 own opinion, or rather because it is my opinion, I 
 shall ask you to be good enough in this discussion 
 to take the opposite view. 
 
 Let us assume that the State has high functions 
 generally, and, in particular, that there ought to 
 be such a thing as national religion (in the sense 
 of religion, not of the people merely, but of the 
 State). Then the first question which the map of the 
 world suggests to me is. Is national religion the 
 same thing with establishment of the Church ? 
 And the answer is, Certainly not. Whether national 
 religion leads to the establishment of the Church 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 171 
 
 is another question, on which we shall have some¬ 
 thing to say presently. But they are different things; 
 and a State might be intensely and even ostentatiously 
 religious, with more chaplains for its acts of devotion 
 than ever Louis XL or Cromwell maintained, and 
 yet refuse to establish or endow any Church. It 
 might not only be pious without establishment, but 
 even orthodox. Scotland, you know, held the creed 
 drafted by John Knox in 1560 for seven years before 
 there was an establishment, far less endowment, 
 of the Church. The two ideas of National Religion 
 and Church Establishment are quite distinct; and 
 when during the next few years you hear a con¬ 
 troversialist mix the two together, remember that it is 
 due to slovenliness of thought or some less creditable 
 reason. But I confess that I do not think myself 
 entitled to ride off upon this mere distinction. You 
 have a right to say to any one who comes to report 
 to you upon the relations of Church and State in the 
 present day, “Your distinction between the two ideas 
 may be very well, but is it not the fact that national 
 religion—meaning by that Christian national religion 
 —does invariably lead to Church establishment, and 
 must do so as a matter of conscience?” To this 
 important question I shall answer by an illustration, 
 
172 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 which will enable everyone in this house to be judge 
 in his own cause. There is, let me suppose, a Southern 
 State of America where the population is about 
 equally divided between Baptists and Wesleyans, with 
 a sprinkling of Roman Catholics. Now, does national 
 religion demand that in such a case you select either 
 the Baptist Church or the Wesleyan Church, and estab¬ 
 lish it ? I answer, without hesitation, that it neither 
 demands it, nor implies it, nor leads to it —nor suffers 
 it. Every man, whose opinion on these subjects is 
 worthy of being even considered, knows and confesses 
 that establishing either of these two Churches, 
 exclusively of the other, would be, in the circumstances 
 supposed, a wound to national religion, and a sin 
 against both God and man. And I need not say 
 how much greater the differences are, in doctrine 
 and in practice, between these two Churches than 
 between the leading Churches in some lands we 
 know. Yet no man in his senses would propose to 
 endow one of these two over against its neighbour. 
 Other courses you may possibly take. You may, for 
 example, have a concurrent endowment of the two 
 Churches and a concurrent establishment of them 
 —of the two Churches or of the three. That is 
 always a thing to be considered. But the establish- 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA V. 
 
 173 
 
 ment of a Church—of one Church—of either of the 
 Churches—in the very common and typical case which 
 I have put, would be an outrage on national religion 
 in any sense of the term, and a scandal to Christianity. 
 
 And now take your illustration back with you Origin of 
 across the Atlantic, to the homes of a more ancient 
 
 lisnments. 
 
 civilisation, and ask the question. How comes it that 
 nearly all our European States possess Established 
 Churches ? How did they get over the difficulty 
 which the Christian conscience in our day so instan¬ 
 taneously perceives and so fiercely resents ? The 
 answer is easy, but it is twofold. Many of those 
 establishments date back to the time when one visible 
 Church in Western Europe unchurched all others, 
 when dissentients from its jurisdiction were held to 
 be heretics or heathens, and when the State, therefore, 
 looking abroad, had no discretion, and indeed no 
 possibility of doubt. Or, if not so, then, as in our own 
 country, they date from a time when the State pro¬ 
 posed to itself a similar unity of faith within its own 
 limited bounds, and when, the religion of a majority 
 being once set up, it was made penal to dissent from 
 that. Why, it was only the other day that we got 
 rid of the Test Act, which refused the franchise and 
 the rights of citizenship to those who were without 
 
174 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 The one uni¬ 
 versal Church: 
 the Presby¬ 
 terian Council. 
 
 the State religion ; and even in our own generation, 
 while the constitutional law of the country in many 
 ways recognises more Churches than the one, it is 
 hard enough to say on what that recognition is 
 founded. Now, in former times, when present things 
 were taking shape, the idea always was that the State, 
 whether it looked abroad or at home, could only 
 recognise the Church of Christ—either the Church 
 as a whole, one and indivisible throughout the world 
 —or the Church of Christ in a particular land. And 
 that was not a false or baseless idea; let no man 
 think so. I believe that we are coming back to it in 
 very important relations, and that it will have much 
 to do with the solution of this question, as of many 
 others. Take the wider matter first. You call 
 yourselves Presbyterians, and your standards of 
 Westminster recognise one visible Church throughout 
 the world—one catholic or universal visible Church, 
 whose are the promises, and of which we are all bound 
 to be members, bound by a far stronger obligation 
 than can be claimed by any geographical sub-division 
 of it. And this year we have had in Edinburgh our 
 first representative meeting of that world-wide Pres¬ 
 byterian Church, with its twenty creeds and its one 
 common creed, its thirty modifications of the same 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 175 
 
 great polity, its elastic and sinewy strength already 
 girdling the globe, its essential unity of constitution, 
 and its essential unity of faith. How important this 
 late fulfilment of a great duty is, both in itself and as 
 a counterpoise to the external unity of Rome and the 
 borrowed unity of High Churchism, I need not say. 
 Were there nothing else worth living for in our age, 
 it is something to have seen the beginning of what 
 will never have an end ! But, adhering strictly to our 
 subject of to-day, I believe also that this universal 
 Church, with its primitive diversity and primitive 
 unity, will have a very important bearing on all 
 questions of recognition of the Church by the State. 
 And when we turn from the question of cosmopolitan 
 recognition to that of Churches within a particular 
 nation, the change which strikes us in our modern 
 time is not less but more important. The truth is, 
 we have got into a new zone of fact a 7 id of conscience 
 on this matter. The recognition of “ the Churches ” 
 —the “ various religious bodies,” as we call them— 
 “the Church of Christ in all its branches”—the 
 “ clergy of all denominations,” and so forth—is a 
 notorious fact, perhaps the notorious fact of this 
 region in our modern time. It is that from which 
 we all naturally start. But observe how that recogni- 
 
 The Church 
 in a nation; 
 the change in 
 conscience. 
 
176 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 tion bears upon the ancient and true theory on this 
 subject. Men speak of Church Establishment. What 
 do they mean ? Do they mean the establishment of 
 tJie Church—the Church of Christ—or the establish¬ 
 ment of a Church ? It makes the whole difference. 
 There has always been a good deal to say for the 
 establishment of the Church. There has never been 
 anything to say for the establishment of a Church. 
 The establishment of the Church in some sense is a 
 thing congruous to national religion. The establish¬ 
 ment of a Church, in the exclusive sense, is a thing 
 presumably opposed to national religion. And it is 
 not merely presumably opposed as a matter of theory; 
 ordinarily, it is opposed in point of fact and of con¬ 
 science. A State, it is well said, should have a 
 conscience, at least in matters of religion. But at 
 one time the conscience of the State was able to 
 accept a particular Church—one ecclesiastical organi¬ 
 sation—as being the Church of Christ in the land ; 
 and it deliberately unchurched or ignored those out¬ 
 side of it. It was able to do so; and although its 
 conscience was narrow and dark, and so led it into 
 cruelty and intolerance, still, because it could do it 
 conscientiously, there remained an element of much 
 good in the transaction. But when a State is no 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 177 
 
 longer able to do so—when its conscience forbids it 
 to consider the one body as now equivalent to the 
 Church of Christ—in such circumstances, to originate 
 or to maintain the establishment of a fragment of 
 that Church, is a deliberate wrong to the nation’s 
 conscience and a blot on its national religion. 
 
 But these considerations relate rather to the 
 duties of the State. What as to the duties of the 
 Church ?—what as to the duties of a Church, in the 
 same matter? We might treat this also in the 
 abstract ; and it is not probable that any right 
 v'iew of the functions of a Church would lead us 
 to what we have found, even when we looked from 
 the side of the State, to be a scandal to Christianity. 
 
 But instead of delaying longer amid abstractions, let 
 us come into the region of present history and 
 present duty. 
 
 We have been speaking of the relations of Church and 
 
 , 1 r- 1 1 -rw State in Scot 
 
 Church and State throughout the world. But ^ord 
 
 there is one country of the world, of which we Hartmgton’s 
 
 pledge. 
 
 have not begun to be ashamed, which has had 
 
 a significant and, indeed, an illustrious history in 
 
 this respect. The relations of Church and State 
 
 in Scotland remain to be looked at. These have 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 always been exceptionally valuable for the study 
 of the world-wide question, and it so happens that 
 we have fallen upon a crisis in their development. 
 Year after year, by nearly unanimous votes, your 
 General Assembly has expressed its conviction (and 
 I know that the great majority of the population of 
 my native Highlands shares the conviction) that the 
 existing connection between the presently Established 
 Church and the State should be brought to a close, and 
 that this is demanded both by the interests of religion 
 and the Church principles of 1843. But that is not all. 
 It is only a few weeks since the cautious and con¬ 
 servative leader of one of the great parties of the 
 State, coming down to Scotland to speak on certain 
 selected matters “ of the highest importance,” in¬ 
 vited us all to form our views on this question of 
 establishment or disestablishment, and pledged that 
 great historical English party, to the extent of its 
 power, to give effect to our views when formed, 
 and to do justice to our Presbyterian Church as 
 a whole. Ever since that day I seem to hear the 
 tread of hurrying feet behind the sounding stage, 
 and I desire that the next act of the drama should 
 not take unprepared the inheritors of so glorious 
 a part. Gentlemen, while in these circumstances 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA V. 
 
 179 
 
 I shall speak only for myself, and shall commit 
 none who hear me, I do not think it would be 
 right to shrink from the subject you have put 
 into my hands, merely because it has become unex¬ 
 pectedly important. On the contrary, I claim the 
 liberty, which every man with Scottish blood in 
 him must at such an hour desire, to adopt words 
 which have been memorable in our history, and 
 to say that now, beyond all other times, and here, 
 if anywhere, “ I am in the place where I am demanded 
 of conscience to speak the truth ; and therefore 
 the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list” 
 
 But, addressing myself, as I henceforth do, to 
 the young men of a Free Church congregation, 
 I find myself at once relieved of what outside 
 the Free Church of Scotland might be a consider¬ 
 able difficulty. Disestablishment has two meanings 
 (which, by the way, word-swindlers trade upon a good 
 deal). It may, improperly, be used to mean per¬ 
 manent separation of Church and State. But its 
 only proper sense is, disestablishment of the Church 
 presently established. And in that sense there is 
 no question with you as Free Churchmen. Dis¬ 
 establishment was settled for you thirty-five years 
 ago, a little while before you were born. You came 
 
 Disestablish¬ 
 ment included 
 in the original 
 Free Church 
 Claim. 
 
180 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 out as “the Church of Scotland, Free,” to use the 
 phrase you have so often heard from an illustrious 
 occupant of this pulpit; and, as the Free Protest¬ 
 ing Church, you protested that you ought to be 
 in the place where another had illegitimately got. 
 Accordingly, the matter of disestablishment seemed 
 to be settled almost by an axiom of physical 
 science—that two bodies cannot be in the same 
 place at the same time. Since then we have got 
 what we are pleased to call larger views, and I 
 am to present some of them to you this evening. 
 But we shall do well to remember what manner 
 of men they were who held those supposed narrower 
 views, and what deeds they did in the strength 
 of them. You know that it was Thomas Chalmers 
 —and Thomas Chalmers in the last year of his life, 
 and Thomas Chalmers speaking to the House of 
 Commons—who, when asked as to the chances of 
 ecclesiastical reunion, replied that it was impossible 
 even in the future. The thing to be demanded, 
 however distant, was, he held, not a union, but the 
 “ substitution ” of the Free Church for the other 
 Church, “ by the Legislature adopting the Free 
 Church as the Establishment, and then leaving 
 us to deal with the ministers of the Established 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA V. 
 
 181 
 
 Church as so many ecclesiastical delinquents”—to 
 be dealt with, no doubt, very indulgently by the 
 new Church, which would even consent, as regards 
 the temporalities, that the life-interests should be 
 given them, but always proceeding on the prin¬ 
 ciple of a substitution or displacement of the one 
 body by the other. Now, you have changed all 
 that. No one proposes in any case to take pro¬ 
 ceedings, however indulgent, against any one, in 
 the event of your rights being recognised. As 
 Principal Rainy said a few years ago, your con¬ 
 flict is not with the members of the Church, but 
 with its establishment, and the conditions of its 
 establishment,—a matter over which it has no more 
 control than I have. And even on that matter, 
 with regard to your rights to establishment and 
 endowment, no man now seriously contemplates 
 that simple substitution, which to the last was to 
 the mind of Chalmers the one thing to be 
 demanded. And yet nothing is more certain than 
 that your claim for simple substitution is now 
 far stronger, in your own eyes and in those of 
 the world, than when in 1847 that noble heart was 
 laid to rest. In 1869 the Prime Minister of Great 
 Britain—a man whose own character reflects lustre 
 
182 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 The Free 
 Church Claim 
 of Right must 
 not exclude 
 the other 
 independent 
 Presbyterian 
 bodies. 
 
 even on that great office—described your moral 
 attitude of 1843 as one to which “scarcely any 
 word weaker or lower than that of majesty is, 
 according to the spirit of historical criticism, justly 
 applicable.” In 1873 the rival Prime Minister, 
 desirous apparently to outdo even that great word of 
 acknowledgment, secured for ever his pre-eminence 
 of homage—by passing the Patronage Act. And 
 now, year by year, as I read foreign and con¬ 
 temporary history, your hereditary claim of right 
 is more and more acknowledged as conclusive— 
 acknowledged by scholars and thinkers abroad 
 as well as at home—by historians and statesmen 
 so various in their sympathies as Mr. Tytler and 
 Lord Macaulay, the Duke of Argyll and Mr. 
 Gladstone. 
 
 And yet, while your right to be simply replaced in 
 your position is more and more admitted by others, 
 it is in that form less and less pressed by yourselves. 
 The change implies a generous paradox, and a self- 
 abnegation wholly worthy of you ; but it has hitherto 
 been founded very much upon mere instinct. I desire 
 to-night to probe the foundations of principle upon 
 which I believe it to rest, and to suggest that we are 
 now called to still higher developments. And, in 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA V. 
 
 183 
 
 order to this, I take your Claim of Right of 1842. 
 Like those high authorities whom I have named, I 
 bow before it. I admit that it is valid and con¬ 
 clusive against the present Established Church. But 
 I put the question. Is it equally valid to the ex¬ 
 clusion of the rest of Scotland, to the exclusion of 
 the other Presbyterians outside of you ? I do not ask 
 you whether you will use it to exclude them, or 
 whether you will ever use it at all in your own interests 
 apart from theirs. I know your intentions on this 
 subject—your declared intentions—are wholly gene¬ 
 rous, and absolutely unsectarian and national. But 
 I leave the matter of generosity, and I raise the prior 
 question of right. What are your rights, and what 
 are theirs, in the matter ? Now, from the first day on 
 which I was able to form an opinion on this great 
 subject, I have always held that you have no right 
 whatever, either in law or in justice, against your 
 brethren in Scotland who maintain with you the 
 independence of the Church. Take the Cameronians 
 in 1690. They held that the Revolution Settlement 
 in its bearing on previous legislation was ambiguous, 
 and might be construed in an Erastian sense against 
 the Church, and so they thought it not safe to go into 
 it. You thought it safe to go into it; and, in 1843, 
 
184 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 the Courts and the Parliament construed that Settle¬ 
 ment and all the older Acts, elaborately, solemnly, and 
 repeatedly—on their own merits, too, and apart from 
 the question of patronage—in precisely the sense 
 which was dreaded so long ago. The Cameronians 
 were right, and you were wrong: whose claim is a 
 Claim of Right } Take Gillespie in 1752. He seceded 
 and formed the Relief Church, because the Assembly 
 ordered him to take a part in intruding a minister 
 upon a reclaiming congregation-—precisely what 
 you refused to do in 1843 when ordered, not 
 now by the Church, but by the State. You are both 
 in the same boat; but whose is the stronger right ? 
 whose is the prior claim } The truth is, there 
 is a complete solidarity in this matter among all 
 the branches of the Old Kirk of Scotland; and I 
 am far from excluding any members of the Church 
 established who claim their share in our common 
 heritage. There is a constitutional and vital unity 
 already existing among our Scottish Free Churches, 
 deeper than any blending of organisations ; a unity 
 which we all feel as a moral fact, and which some of 
 us have been long prepared to base upon historical 
 principles. Never once have I been present when 
 your Assembly stood up to “pray that Jerusalem may 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 185 
 
 have peace and felicity,” without seeming to behold 
 the walls fall asunder, and the roofs expand, and a 
 greater house silently rise, to receive the invisible 
 multitude of our Scottish faith and blood. And that 
 vision was no baseless fabric : it rested, I believe, on 
 a logical foundation, and it leads to a practical result. 
 I hold that your Claim of Right, if put so as to ex¬ 
 clude the others—if founded solely on what is histo¬ 
 rically peculiar to yourselves—is not worth the paper 
 on which it is written. But if your claims are founded 
 on what is common and essential to the ancient Kirk 
 —if they are put by you, not for yourselves alone, but, 
 as you are well entitled to put them, vicariously or 
 representatively for the rest—then I believe that such a 
 claim contains in it at this hour the destinies of Scot¬ 
 land, and will yet receive the homage of the world. 
 
 For myself, I shall never cease to maintain that 
 what rights you of the Free Church have, the United 
 Presbyterians and Reformed Presbyterians have also, 
 on essentially the same grounds. And I am not in 
 the least moved by the consideration that many of 
 the former are theoretical Voluntaries, and that they 
 hold the opinion that there should be no connection 
 of the Scottish Church and State. The question is 
 not of their opinions, but of their rights ; and not how 
 
 Claim of Right 
 must include 
 the rights of 
 Scotch Volun¬ 
 taries. 
 
186 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 they will use their rights, but whether they as well as 
 you possess them. I have never been able to see any 
 difficulty on this point, and I think any puzzle as to it 
 springs from confusion of ideas. It may or may not 
 have been right for Scotland to give privileges to the 
 Presbyterian Church at all, but in point of fact it has 
 given them ; and that historical fact raises the histo¬ 
 rical question—if you like, it creates the question— 
 Who has a right to those privileges, and who has dis¬ 
 possessed the owners of the right ? It may be a 
 question whether a Faculty of Advocates ought to 
 exist in Scotland ; but, so long as it exists, I have no 
 right to usurp my learned friend’s wig in order to 
 appear with it even in the Court of Teinds, far less in 
 order to sell it in an English pawnshop. It may be a 
 question whether John Knox should have accepted 
 any State Endowment instead of sticking to his ori¬ 
 ginal idea of a Sustentation Fund by the people ; but 
 that can never interfere with the other question, 
 whether he accepted those endowments for Dr. 
 Cook and Dr. Blair to the exclusion of Ralph 
 Erskine and Thomas Chalmers—or whether the dust 
 stirred in his grave, when an English majority in 1843 
 wrenched his endowments from the protesting hands 
 of our representatives in Parliament. Yes, the ques- 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 187 
 
 tion of right is wholly independent of the theoretical 
 inquiry whether there ought to have been a State 
 Church at all, and still more of the inquiry whether 
 there should be one in the future. Men say, “ Oh, 
 the Scottish Voluntaries may be thrown out of account, 
 for whatever rights they may have, they will never 
 claim them.” It is a poor and mean-spirited fallacy. 
 They will claim no rights as against the nation and 
 people of Scotland—no, nor will you. I believe 
 neither of you have any such rights against the 
 nation. Yet you have rights under the nation, and 
 so have they; and both you and they will claim them 
 for the nation and for yourselves as against any mino¬ 
 rity of the nation which withstands its rights and 
 yours. And no man need attempt to deceive or to 
 confuse you on such a subject as this. What! you, 
 the sons of the men of 1843, find a difficulty in recon¬ 
 ciling the ideas of right and relinquishment, claim and 
 self-sacrifice! Why, what are rights given us for in 
 this world except to relinquish them for the good of 
 others ? Why were the strong made, if not to serve 
 the weak ? And why do we draw breath on Scottish 
 soil, if not, for poor old Scotland’s sake, first, to assert 
 our rights, and then to surrender them to her? 
 
 For, Gentlemen, with all this talk of the rights 
 
188 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Claim to 
 Endowments 
 by Protestant 
 Churches: 
 Secularisation 
 of Church 
 funds. 
 
 of Churches to endowments, let us remember that, 
 in the most important sense, these belong to Scotland 
 alone. And here again I am not using metaphor or 
 rhetoric. In the great war which raged between 
 the jurists as well as the theologians of Europe after 
 the Reformation, three points, I think, came to be 
 thoroughly established, as to the sense in which 
 Protestant Churches claim such things as State endow¬ 
 ments—three points in which their views differ from 
 the Romish views. In the first place, none of our 
 Churches claims temporalities as its own in the 
 absolute sense in which the Church of Rome has for 
 centuries done. And your Church in particular has 
 acknowledged this most frankly—acknowledged it in 
 the very front of the Claim by its General Assembly 
 in 1842. Some things it there claims absolutely and 
 inalienably, as against the State and everyone else, 
 but these are its spiritual liberties. All Church 
 temporalities, on the other hand, it acknowledges, 
 appertain to the State, to do with them what it thinks 
 just. No doubt at that point your just claim comes 
 in, but still it is a claim the justice of which you 
 will present to the State, and then leave it to its 
 disposal, as being of right the party to deal with 
 it. I acknowledge, indeed, that you are, even in 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 189 
 
 this matter, in a very different position from that 
 of the Established Church. You sometimes hear 
 members of that Church speaking as if it had an 
 independent right to temporalities which the State 
 is bound to acknowledge. Now, that is using Free 
 Church language by mistake. It is only a Church 
 that is independent that can make a claim as being 
 independent; and the decisions of 1843 have, I am 
 afraid, a conclusive bearing on that matter. But even 
 you, who preserved your independence at such a 
 price, and protested that you should therefore at all 
 times have right to come back to the Legislature, 
 even you will come to the State on this matter, as 
 being the party which is the judge and the authority 
 —which in that capacity may, no doubt, do right 
 or do wrong, but which in any case is the party to 
 deal with it. And, secondly, when you ask the 
 State to do justice, it does not follow that it is to 
 do justice in the old form by simply restoring the 
 endowments to you. I have already said enough 
 on one branch of this, as to the equality of the rights 
 of the other independent branches of the Church. 
 I add now, that the State, on your principles, which 
 are the common principles of Protestantism, if it 
 deprives the Established Church of its present ex- 
 
190 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 elusive and odiously unjust possession of the endow¬ 
 ments, is bound, in distributing and using them, to 
 keep in view the whole Church of Christ in the land, 
 and, in particular, to consider its constituency equally 
 with yours. You do not unchurch other Churches 
 whose relations with the State you consider un¬ 
 fortunate. And, while I cannot recall what I have, 
 in a separate form, upheld, that the “ Scotch Law of 
 Establishment”* is, since 1843, ^ law of subjection 
 in Church matters to Parliament, I repeat now, what 
 I have taken every opportunity of maintaining, that, 
 whatever its leaders may do, the members of that 
 Church for themselves reject and refuse that existing 
 law, and would join you to-morrow if it were put 
 seriously into practice. There is absolutely nothing, 
 except separation from the State, that is needed to 
 put the Established Church of Scotland on the same 
 footing of freedom and independence which you 
 possess ; and there is nothing in your principles, or 
 in any others, to suggest that the State, in dealing 
 with the liberated endowments, should not, as a 
 matter of course, deal with that Church, as, on a 
 narrower proposal, one of the branches of the 
 
 * See Note C. 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 191 
 
 Presbyterian Church, or as, on a larger, one of the 
 branches of the Church of Christ in Scotland, But, 
 thirdly, there is another point in your Protestantism 
 which has, perhaps, still more important bearings on 
 the matter of endowment. When these funds come 
 back for the disposal of the State, as the party 
 having proper right to deal with them, neither it nor 
 you are bound to apply them—Church funds though 
 they have been—to Church purposes. In a Presby¬ 
 terian Church there is no such thing as sacrilege in 
 the wise disposal of funds and property. If you 
 think that a secular disposal of funds to which you 
 have a right, or in which you have an interest, is 
 better—better for the Church and better for the 
 State—than devoting it to its prior religious purpose, 
 then you are not merely entitled, you are bound in 
 conscience, to secularise them; and any Presby¬ 
 terian who thinks otherwise is not only a little 
 of a heretic, but a good deal of a fool. You do 
 not think so. You belong to the Church of him 
 who melted the silver apostles and sent them 
 about doing good; or rather—I say it reverently 
 —you belong to the Church of Him who said, 
 “ I have called you not servants but friends,” and 
 who retains the power to make intelligible to each 
 
192 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 P'ree Church 
 and United 
 Presbyterian 
 Claims sup¬ 
 port each 
 other. 
 
 generation of His servants His will for their 
 work and their day. 
 
 Now, I hold that these three considerations, 
 taken together, amount to this—that you and Scot¬ 
 land stand in this matter in the same line; that 
 there is no inconsistency either between your in¬ 
 terests and that of your Presbyterian brethren, 
 or between your interests and that of your nation ; 
 and that the more promptly and the more strenu¬ 
 ously you press your own rights, and press them 
 together, the better it is for our common country, 
 and for all parts and sections of it I need not 
 say that in pressing the joint rights of the dis¬ 
 established Presbyterians, there is a fitness in par¬ 
 titioning the different aspects of what I hold to 
 be essentially one claim. To the United Presby¬ 
 terians it belongs rather to press your claim along 
 with their own, as those of citizens and members 
 of the State. To you there falls appropriately 
 the honour and the duty of urging their rights 
 along with your own, as together representing the 
 ancient Kirk of Scotland, disinherited but free. 
 You will more fittingly press the common Presby¬ 
 terian right to the endowments—they, the duty 
 of surrendering them to Scotland ; but your prin- 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y, 
 
 193 
 
 ciples bind you to surrender them to Scotland 
 as certainly as theirs, and their historical rights 
 to every penny of the endowments are as certain 
 and as sacred as yours. 
 
 And do not think, Gentlemen, that I am making 
 either too much or too little of this matter of 
 demanding the endowments for Scotland. I know 
 that your Claim of Right is fundamentally a claim 
 for far other things—things which do not depend 
 on the will of any nation or any civil power. 
 And I know, too, that you have learned to look 
 with devotion and loyalty on a Church apart from 
 all idea of garniture and endowments. You learned 
 that on the day when you had to make your 
 choice, and when, as the dear disinherited Church 
 of Scotland passed into the wilderness, you ex¬ 
 claimed in words as loyal and as passionate as 
 those of our native poet— 
 
 They support 
 one Claim for 
 Scotland. 
 
 “ I wadna gie her in her sark 
 For thee wi’ a’ thy hunder mark ! ” 
 
 But you hold that the hundred marks also belong 
 of right to her—the penniless lass with the long 
 ecclesiastical pedigree: and I agree with you, pro¬ 
 vided that you include all her features, and trace 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 her genealogy aright, and that you remember that 
 those who now seem to be opposed to you are in 
 blood and faith your friends. Only remember also that 
 the strength of your claim even to those civil rights 
 grows and accumulates with the breadth of the basis 
 on which you place them. As the Free Church of 
 Scotland alone you have a claim conclusive against 
 the present Church established, even if no other 
 element came into account. As the same Church, 
 forming part of, and, along with your ecclesiastical 
 allies, representing the ancient and Free Kirk of 
 Scotland, you have an impregnable historical claim 
 to present even to the State. But when you blend 
 these claims together and merge them in the rights 
 —I do not say of the State, but of the people, of 
 Scotland as a whole—you seem to me to occupy 
 the surest and the strongest position, which includes 
 all the others, and is mightier than them all. 
 
 And yet, last and most important, this is the 
 position which is presently assailed and put in 
 question. We are considering to-night the relations 
 of Church and State in Scotland in the present 
 time—not in the future nor in the past. Now, the 
 precise point at which at this moment we stand 
 with regard to those relations seems to me to be 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 195 
 
 this: Scotland has had a call from the accepted 
 representative of one party in the State, whose 
 position as such entitles him to be heard, even by 
 Scotland, to make up its own mind and express 
 its own will on what is to be done about the ques¬ 
 tion of establishment. And in answer, it is not 
 obscurely intimated by a section, I hope it may be 
 a small section, of men, chiefly across the border, 
 that Scotland shall not be free to consider that 
 question, and that there are other elements to be 
 taken into consideration than Scotland’s own view 
 of what is best in her own Church matters. Now, 
 I say nothing as to the rashness of attempting to 
 deal so with a proud and high-spirited nation. I 
 say nothing as to the folly of not perceiving, and 
 the shortsightedness of not acknowledging, the 
 extreme peculiarity of the Scottish question. I 
 say, broadly, that the suggestion from any quarter 
 that on such a matter Scotland is not to make 
 up its own mind—ay, and to have its own way 
 too—is intolerable. Twice already has England 
 interposed and done its best to ruin our eccle¬ 
 siastical affairs. Woe be to the man or to the 
 party which shall serve itself heir now to those 
 ill-omened deeds! But if the freedom of Scotland 
 
19G 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 to deal freely with this matter is the question of 
 the hour,* need I say that the hour has struck 
 for you ! 
 
 * A few days after this lecture, the Right Hon. Gathorne Hardy, 
 Secretary at War, came to Edinburgh, and, on I2th December 1877, 
 addressing an audience assumed to be composed of “Conservative 
 Working Men,” replied to Lord Hartington’s statements of the previous 
 November. The positions of the two politicians, each claiming to 
 speak for his party on our Church question, have been summed up as 
 follows, unfortunately in complete accord with the view stated in the 
 text:— 
 
 “Lord Hartington, speaking of disestablishment, laid down the 
 principle that the existence of an Established Church ought to depend 
 on its acceptance by the majority of a nation [Scotland]. , . Mr. 
 
 Hardy laid down the principle that Scotch establishment was to be 
 upheld as a bulwark of English establishment. It is to exist that some¬ 
 thing else may exist .”—Saturday Review, 15th December 1S77. 
 
 I am not aware that on either of the two previous occasions when 
 England interposed (in each case at the instance of a Conservative ad¬ 
 ministration) to subvert and disrupt our Church, such] an undisguised 
 purpose was disclosed to override the interests and desires of Scotland 
 as has been manifested at this crisis. It came out in Mr. Hardy’s 
 speech, not only in its general tone, but in a most curious scriptural 
 blunder into which the War Secretary pardonably fell, but which has 
 since been strangely echoed by some of his theological auditors. “ ^ Let 
 it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it,' is the language of jealousy and 
 not of patriotism,” he warned the branches of the old Church of Scot¬ 
 land. But what he thus urged them not to divide—what he urged one 
 branch of it to hold fast against the rest—was State patronage and en¬ 
 dowments ; forgetful that, in the Hebrew stoiy whose words haunted his 
 ear, the test which revealed the false mother was her willingness, not 
 to divide the wages of iniquity, but to divide the living child. And it is 
 this last proposal with which we have to deal. The English knife, 
 which carved our Church asunder in 1S43, has again been deliberately 
 unsheathed ; for, on this occasion, there is scarcely qhe pretence that 
 the good of Scotland is the thing consulted. The living child is to 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 197 
 
 Gentlemen, I have spoken so long of the pre¬ 
 sent, and I have said nothing of the future, and 
 my reason is this—I believe if we ‘do our duty in 
 the present, there is no difficulty whatever about 
 the future. I mean of course in this matter of 
 the relations of Church and State. In other things 
 we may have troubles and difficulties—God has 
 been too good to us in the past, and it is the 
 
 remain divided, the Church of Scotland is still to be split by the wedge 
 of establishment and endowment; but the price of the partition—the 
 poor sum to which Scotland as a whole is entitled—will be paid faith¬ 
 fully by an English Parliament to the party which consents to profit by 
 the transaction. Now this sort of suggestion cannot be made long 
 without lowering the ino 7 'ale of those to be influenced by it. And, ac¬ 
 cordingly, we have responsive protestations made by individuals that if 
 disestablishment comes, and with it the proposal that the divided Kirk 
 of Knox and Henderson and Chalmers should again become one, they 
 will leave it altogether and join the Church Episcopal; or, even if they 
 continue Presbyterians, will remain isolated from their brethren who 
 have at length attained equality with them. The great Presbyterian 
 family throughout the world listens with incredulity to these murmurs. 
 They are accepted as mere threats not believed in by their authors, or, 
 at most, as a hasty utterance of the strange tendency quem lacsens, odisse. 
 And to a great extent they are nothing worse. But the inevitable ten¬ 
 dency of the present system of things is to bring some of those mixed 
 up in it gradually down to such a plane both of thought and feeling; 
 and none of the many symptoms of the time seems to me to urge upon 
 us more significantly the duty of pressing frankly and pressing stedfastly 
 for immediate disestablishment. We speak of it chiefly as a cure for 
 religious injustice and inequality. But it will probably be found remedial 
 of many moral distempers in which we share like our neighbours, but 
 which are really, though indirectly, developed by the cherishing of what 
 we on our side discern so easily to be selfish and unjust. 
 
198 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 principle of your Church not to shelter itself from 
 coming trial under any shield of authority or tra¬ 
 dition—but in this matter of Church and State, 
 it is scarcely possible that we can go wrong, if 
 we move at all, and as I look forward I see only 
 the flush and promise of the dawn. And there 
 is another thing too. Even if there were more 
 reason for anxiety in the future than I think there 
 is, it is scarcely our business in the meantime to 
 make plans or offer proposals. Others have still 
 the opportunity for that, and we must see how 
 they will use it. It is our business to take our 
 stand on righteousness, and on the rights of all 
 Scotland,—to take our stand, not so much against 
 a fragment and a minority, as in favour of the 
 whole Church and people, including that fragment 
 and minority. Yes, I believe that this is a case 
 in which the bare disposition to do justice will 
 be found a sufficient solvent of difficulties. 
 
 But before we part, let us take one glance 
 at the future—first, at the future of endowment 
 or non-endowment, and then at the future of 
 establishment or non-establishment. As to the 
 former, a good deal of what I have said as to a 
 State endowing the Church of Christ—while it has 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 199 
 
 no right ordinarily to endow a Church of Christ, The future of 
 
 the Enclow- 
 
 a mere fragment or section of the former—may ments. 
 seem to you to point at concurrent endowment. 
 
 And, in some cases I admit, that may be the 
 result, though State endowment of the Church 
 at all is in every case inexpedient if it can be 
 avoided. But it is scarcely worth while to con¬ 
 sider this matter; for concurrent endowment has 
 no chance here in Scotland. You dislike it and 
 distrust it and detest it; and the plain truth is, 
 you won’t have it. I don’t agree with you alto¬ 
 gether ; at least, if the State is necessarily to 
 endow the Church (an absurd assumption, for 
 ordinarily it is the business of the people, not of 
 the State, to endow the Church), then I think 
 there is something to be said in theory for its 
 endowing all its branches. But I know that you 
 are quite certain not to take that plan in Scotland ; 
 and, practically, I have no doubt that you are right. 
 
 You of the Free Church especially cannot afford 
 to get into the complications to which that would 
 lead, and if you could afford it, the course is not 
 worthy of you. You came out in 1843, because 
 you were forced out, but because you could not 
 receive gifts from the civil power on a certain 
 
200 
 
 CHURCH AND S TA TE 
 
 understanding. If you receive gifts again, who 
 is to settle the new understanding for you ? Do 
 you wish to run in couples, as the dogs of the 
 State? Was that chain so light when last you 
 wore it, that you long to feel it on your necks 
 once more ? Would it be well to have the 
 anguish of 1843 again in advance of you, in¬ 
 stead of behind ?—to feel again that the peace 
 of your conscience and the safety of your Church 
 depended on the mood of an English and Irish 
 Legislature ? No; whatever else is done, that is 
 not the use that will be made of the endow¬ 
 ments as the long and comfortable life interests 
 gradually fall in—that use will not be chosen while 
 there are a score of other purposes, to any one of 
 which they may be admirably applied. What those 
 purposes will be we need not say. I am very much 
 afraid the lairds will not get any of that money. I 
 am very certain that England will never receive a 
 farthing of it: I trust to Lord Hartington for that. 
 I believe it will be preserved to Scotland, and to the 
 parishes of Scotland. If any one proposes to endow 
 with it any one of the Presbyterian Churches, it will 
 be rejected as extreme injustice. If any one proposes 
 to endow the whole Presbyterian Church, or the whole 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 201 
 
 Church of Christ in Scotland, I have no theoretical 
 objections; but I do not believe at all that it will 
 work. But there are many things that would work ; 
 and there is one suggestion present to the minds of ten 
 thousand Scotsmen at the present hour. If every 
 farthing of it were given to the people of Scotland 
 for education, the people of Scotland, relieved from a 
 burden in each parish, would easily and joyfully pro¬ 
 vide for the support of their Church, a Church which 
 would at last become national. 
 
 Yes, national; for, on the matter of establishment 
 or non-establishment, I see no more practical difficulty 
 than on that of endowment. There may be theo¬ 
 retical difficulties. What is establishment as distin¬ 
 guished from endowment ? I have heard answers, 
 but have got no help from them. You might as well 
 send me back to the 23d chapter of the Westminster 
 Confession. Not that I have any objection to the 
 23d chapter; there are parts of it, as of all our 
 confessions, which no man can read without admira¬ 
 tion. But as to establishment in it, there is a difficulty. 
 I have read defences of it by very able men against 
 the intolerance and other mistakes of the time which 
 it is admitted its authors held. These vindications 
 were very elaborate, and probably very successful; 
 
 The Future 
 of Establish¬ 
 ment. 
 
202 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Recognition 
 instead of 
 Establish¬ 
 ment. 
 
 but they reminded me too much of what sometimes 
 happens to you in a Highland village, where, in a 
 dark night, you ask for some man to guide you on 
 your way; but when the promised guide comes, he is 
 so weak with age that you have not only at every 
 point to tell him which is the way, but to support 
 him on his legs besides. Now, as I do not receive 
 enough of light from that 23d chapter, and am not 
 ambitious to add one to the numerous crowd which 
 is giving light to it, I turn elsewhere; and I do get 
 one idea from a modern theological document for 
 which I have a much higher respect. I do not mean 
 the chapter which the great American Presbyterian 
 Churches have substituted for the other, and which 
 is certainly a very great improvement. I mean some¬ 
 thing nearer—the Articles of Agreement of the four 
 chief Presbyterian Churches outside our Establish¬ 
 ment. And the idea which is to be got from them 
 in general (for I do not look at them in detail, as 
 men might differ about that) is the idea of Recognition 
 instead of Establishment—recognition of the Church 
 of Christ generally, instead of establishment of one 
 particular branch of it. 
 
 Establishment of any particular Church in our 
 day involves a great difficulty. Establishment of 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA ] 
 
 203 
 
 one of our Scottish Presbyterian Churches exclusively 
 is not a difficulty but an intolerable wrong. Recogni¬ 
 tion of the Christian Church as a whole, instead of 
 establishment of any of its parts, seems to me 
 the course in which thinkers and statesmen, rulers 
 and people, are moving all over the world. 
 And it is, in several respects, a very much better 
 course. The idea of establishment has always had 
 this disadvantage, that sooner or later people come to 
 think that the Church is founded upon it; or, at least, 
 that the Church cannot get on without it. One can¬ 
 not so easily fall into that mistake when there is mere 
 recognition by the State. Things do not exist in this 
 world because they are recognised : they are recog¬ 
 nised because they exist. It is because the Church 
 already exists, and exists independently, that it has a 
 claim to be recognised by the State. And, accordingly, 
 that recognition is not in the least necessary for the 
 Church. It may be necessary, or, at least, very desir¬ 
 able, for the State; e.g., when it has to adjudicate 
 upon any civil interests in which the Church happens 
 to be concerned. People cannot well do justice when 
 they ignore what exists. But even upon this matter 
 of a pre-existing Church jurisdiction, however interest¬ 
 ing it may be to lawyers, I cannot say that there 
 
 Recognition 
 in the Law 
 Courts. 
 
204 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 is any reason for solicitude by the Church—least of 
 all by the Scottish Churches. One fact makes that 
 unnecessary. Whether their jurisdiction is ultimately 
 founded on Divine institution or not, it is at least 
 notoriously matter of contract and good faith between 
 the members; and as such it cannot be ignored by any 
 Civil Court without conscious and deliberate injustice. 
 I don’t believe there is any danger of permanent 
 injustice on this point in any Protestant and consti¬ 
 tutional countries—certainly not in Great Britain. 
 Our own Court, which had some peculiar temptations 
 to be partial in this respect, went even out of its way, 
 as you may remember, in closing the Cardross case, 
 and at some risk to its dignity set this matter of justice 
 right; and the larger jurisprudences of England and 
 America have already laid down principles, while our 
 past history has established feelings, which will effectu¬ 
 ally prevent any retrogression. You must give us 
 some time. You cannot expect all Courts to attain 
 at once to the formulas of respect for the Christian 
 Church as such, which the Supreme Court of the 
 United States has sanctioned,* But I am satisfied 
 
 * See Watson v. Jones, 13 Wallace’s American Reports, pp. 679 
 and 729; Jind British Quarterly Revie^v, Oct. 1876. 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 205 
 
 that you are henceforth no more likely to be interfered 
 with in your Church jurisdiction by the law, than you 
 are to have renewed to you the offer of that other 
 jurisdiction, “ flowing from the supreme power of the 
 State,” which you indignantly refused in 1843, And 
 if the internal relations of the Church are safe, if in 
 God’s great goodness its work in human hearts and 
 households may henceforth go on in peace, then, 
 whatever statesmen and lawyers may do, it is not 
 desirable for the Church to concern itself too much 
 about the kind and amount of external recognition of 
 it which the English State may in the future yield. In 
 particular, I must express my conviction that it would 
 be a great mistake to delay for an hour on this account 
 the disestablishment of any mere fragment of Presby¬ 
 terianism. No one, I think, who candidly studies con¬ 
 temporary jurisprudences can doubt that the retention 
 of establishment, far from being a help, is almost every¬ 
 where a hindrance—sometimes the great hindrance 
 to the adoption of a universal and just legal theory 
 6n this subject, and to the recognition of the Church 
 of Christ as an existing fact. And in Scotland, in 
 particular, disestablishment is the chief thing we 
 need to make the legal course, which is already safe, 
 luminous and attractive. 
 
206 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Recognition of 
 the Scottish 
 Church, or of 
 Scottish Pres¬ 
 byterianism. 
 
 These considerations relate to the recognition of the 
 Christian Church as a whole, and of all its branches. 
 But is there no question to be raised with regard to 
 special recognition, even after disestablishment, of the 
 Scottish Church, or the Presbyterian Church as a 
 whole ? I have spoken in vain, unless you agree with 
 me that our Scottish Church question is a very diffe¬ 
 rent one from that of England; that it is one 
 which comes first, and comes separately, and comes 
 immediately. Now, that straightway raises the 
 consideration that the English Church is almost 
 certain to continue established and endowed after 
 the present Scottish Establishment has ceased to 
 be. Is there to be no recognition by the State 
 in these circumstances of historical Presbyterianism 
 in Scotland, as well as of the Church of Christ 
 generally? Endowment we don’t want, privilege 
 we don’t want; but is there to be no separate 
 recognition of it at all ? Well, I think that a fair 
 enough question; but I do not think it a matter of 
 any importance to us in Scotland. Provided all 
 establishment, and the unfair endowment of one 
 fragment of the Church, were done away with, I could 
 conceive a certain recognition within a recognition 
 —a historical recognition of the Scotch Presbyterian 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 207 
 
 Church, as well as of the Church of Christ in 
 general—which would be gratifying to your feelings, 
 and in accordance with your principles. But would 
 it be sufficiently fair to the smaller fragments of the 
 Church — say the Congregationalists — who dwell 
 so usefully within our borders ? And is it neces¬ 
 sary ? If the Legislature remove the wedge by 
 which it now holds us asunder, is the Presby¬ 
 terianism of Scotland not quite able to recognise 
 itself, to-make itself recognised by the world, and 
 to maintain itself without foreign help and against 
 foreign infiuence ? I believe it is; and that, as 
 establishment is confessedly that which divides 
 us most in Scotland, and is that also which weakens 
 us most, if it were withdrawn, the State could 
 neither do very much for us nor very much against 
 us. Still, when that happens, many Free Church¬ 
 men, who at present have not the remotest idea 
 how to remedy the dead-lock which they lament, 
 will become fertile in plans for the opening future. 
 And ideas may deserve attention on the morrow 
 of disestablishment which are premature now, be¬ 
 cause they have no bearing on that first step. 
 
 My present impression is, that in looking forward 
 to our Church Establishment being abolished while 
 
208 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Guarantees 
 against 
 Episcopacy: 
 Negative Es¬ 
 tablishment. 
 
 that of England survives, there is only one pre¬ 
 caution that is worth taking. But that one pre¬ 
 caution we must have; and I lay the more stress 
 upon it, because, so far as I know, this is the first 
 time it has been publicly referred to. Whenever 
 that change happens, under whatever circumstances, 
 under whatever Government, Scotland will insist 
 upon retaining the statutory and Parliamentary 
 guarantees which at present secure us on this side 
 of the Border against the establishment of the 
 Church Episcopal. It is possible some of my Volun¬ 
 tary friends may not like such an idea. I think 
 they are wrong, even on their own principles. That 
 is not establishment of a Church ; it is securing us, 
 the people of Scotland, against the establishment 
 of a Church, and doing it on the plain grounds on 
 which William III. put it, that it is contrary to 
 the inclination of the people, and that they have 
 a right to be secured against too powerful neigh¬ 
 bours. But whether it is liked or disliked by some 
 of us, I believe it will certainly happen, and that 
 Scotland will resolutely demand it. And it will 
 solve the remaining problem, in so far as there 
 is any problem which remains. You may call it 
 negative establishment if you like. Well, negative 
 
IN THE PRESENT DA Y. 
 
 209 
 
 establishment is pretty much all that we need; 
 and all that we shall accept from England. Leave 
 us alone. Scotland will establish her own Church, 
 and we humbly trust that “ the Most High shall 
 stablish her.” 
 
 For, Gentlemen, the oftener we recur to this 
 subject, and the more carefully we look into it, the 
 more it is plain that our fathers did a work for all 
 time, when they raised the question of the in¬ 
 dependence of the Church high above all matters 
 such as establishment and endowment. It may 
 not solve such questions for all other lands, and for 
 all conceivable circumstances ; but, practically, it 
 solves them for us. Even in other lands, and over 
 the world, things are looking more hopeful in this 
 matter as compared with the past. Everywhere I 
 see the reaper tread on the heels of the sower, and 
 labour prevented by reward. But for us the hardest 
 questions have really been solved by the faithfulness 
 which was given to men whom we knew, many of 
 whom we shall see no more on earth, and whose 
 eyes to-day look out upon me from the faces of 
 their- children. It is their hands that are now 
 stretched forth from the darkness to smooth our 
 way—our way, and that of our brethren, who are 
 
210 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 impeded, I believe, not by selfishness, but by cir¬ 
 cumstances. Yes, other men have laboured, and 
 vve have but entered gladly into their labours. For 
 them was the great trial of faith and hope: for 
 us the easy task; for us the rich reward; for us 
 the unearned praise—the sheaves of a land which 
 we have neither tilled nor sown, but over whose wild 
 Highland hills and desolate lowland moors they 
 went forth weeping, bearing that precious seed. God 
 grant that we in our day may receive somewhat of 
 that spirit of righteousness and love—and love and 
 righteousness are not two things but one—which we 
 also need for our duty and our call ! 
 
NOTES TO THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 - ^ - 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 ULTRAMONTANISM AND THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 With regard to the Church of Scotland, and ‘ still 
 more decisively’ the Free Church, I shall venture to state, 
 and hope to prove, that it would be just as reasonable to 
 accuse either of them of Caesarism as of Ultramontanism. 
 Caesarism, let us say, means, speaking generally, the supre¬ 
 macy of the State over the Church. Ultramontanism, 
 again speaking generally and provisionally, means the 
 supremacy of the Church over the State. Now, whatever 
 its actings may have been, the notorious theory of the 
 Church of Scotland has been always that there is no supre¬ 
 macy of the one power over the other, and no subordination 
 of the one under the other; that each has its own separate 
 sphere : that in that sphere each is independent and su¬ 
 preme ; and that each has thus its own jurisdiction, not 
 derived from the other, or held of the other, but, as the Free 
 Church came habitually to term it, a ‘ co-ordinate ’ jurisdic¬ 
 tion. That this theory was originally conceded to the 
 Church by the Scotch lawyers, or unequivocally recorded 
 in the Statute-Book of the realm, I have never been able to 
 see, though our Churchmen have weightily urged that it was 
 so. But, on the other hand, that it was claimed by the 
 Reformed Church itself, and that from the first, I have no 
 doubt at all.” 
 
212 
 
 ULTRAMONTANISM AND 
 
 After quoting the “ Book of Discipline” and the “ West¬ 
 minster Confession,” on behalf of the Church of Scotland, 
 the argument proceeds :— 
 
 “ But Archbishop Manning holds that the witness of 
 the Free Church of Scotland is ‘still more decisive’of his 
 assertion that every Christian Church claims both indepen¬ 
 dence and supremacy in the Ultramontane sense. And it is 
 quite true that this body, both when representing the Church 
 of Scotland for ten years before 1843, and after its disrup¬ 
 tion from the State, revived the old principles with a ‘ pre¬ 
 cision and intensity’ which make us look there, if anywhere, 
 for a critical utterance. We shall not be disappointed. 
 
 “ In his later papers, Dr. Manning generally speaks of 
 the Church as ‘ separate and supre?ne.’ But his use of the 
 last word is vague or ambiguous. Sometimes he says the 
 Church is ‘ supreme in its own sphere,’ which in one sense 
 every Christian Church should be, or is; and which in 
 another every king, every clerk, and every costermonger is. 
 But again he speaks of the Church being ‘ supreme in its 
 own sphere over the State,’ by being a ‘ superior authority’ 
 over it. And this again baffles us, and brings us back to 
 the question. What is meant by ‘supreme’ in the Ultra¬ 
 montane sense? Does it mean no more than ‘ independent’ 
 in the Scotch Church sense, at least as that Church’s claim 
 was made ‘precise and intense’ in the Free Church con¬ 
 troversy ? On p. 36 of the pamphlet. Dr. Manning answers 
 this question ;— 
 
 “ ‘ Let us then ascertain somewhat farther what is the 
 meaning of supreme. Any power which is independent, and 
 can alone fix the limits of its own jurisdiction, and can 
 thereby fix the limits of all other jurisdictions, is, ipso facto, 
 supreme.’ . . . . ‘ The Church is the Supreme Power among 
 men; that is to say .... it alone can fix the limits of the 
 
THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 213 
 
 faith and law entrusted to it, and, therefore, the sphere of its 
 own jurisdiction; it alone can decide in questions where its 
 power is in contact with the civil power—that is, in mixed 
 questions.’ 
 
 “ It is admirably well put. This is the test of supremacy, 
 as distinguised from independence—the test, therefore, of 
 Ultramontanism—that when a mixed question arises between 
 Church and State, the Church shall not claim simply to 
 regulate its own religious matters by its own laws, but shall 
 claim, as of right, that the State yield to its authority in the 
 disputed matter. The State, of course, may refuse, but 
 wrongfully; for the Church claims authority over its con¬ 
 science. And the question is. Has this ever been the claim 
 of the Church of Scotland, especially in its modern conflict 
 with the State? Now, it is unfortunate that an eminent 
 prelate, in a crisis of his Church’s fortunes, should make an 
 appeal to Scotland, which may be met by a crushingly con¬ 
 clusive answer. For the specialty—the notorious and cha¬ 
 racteristic thing—in the Scotch Church position from 1838 
 to 1843 was, that it took the form of rejecting this Ultra¬ 
 montane claim. It was not only by implication. It was 
 not merely by general statements of mutual independence, 
 as in the old standards, leaving the limitation of Church 
 powers to be inferred. It was by express statement of the 
 particular formula, carried out too in practice. The very 
 first step, when the ‘ mixed question,’ the Auchterarder case, 
 was decided against the Church by the supreme civil 
 tribunal, was that Dr. Chalmers, supported by young Mr. 
 Candlish, moved that ‘ the General Assembly, being satisfied 
 that, by the said judgment, all questions of civil right are 
 substantially decided, do now, in conformity with the uniform 
 practice of this Church ever to give and inculcate implicit 
 obedience to the decisions of civil courts in regard to the 
 
214 
 
 ULTRAMONTANISM AND 
 
 civil rights and emoluments secured by law to the Church, 
 instruct the Presbytery to offer no further resistance to the 
 claims of Mr. Young or of the patron to the emoluments,’ 
 while, at the same time, it formally declined to take any 
 ecclesiastical steps in their favour.” 
 
 The statement goes on to quote the “ Engagement” of 
 the Church party, the Protest of the Moderate minority, the 
 Free Church Catechism, statements of Principals Cunning¬ 
 ham and Rainy as to what “ we have uniformly not ad¬ 
 mitted merely, but contended,” and, lastly, the Claim of 
 Right of 1842, and the Protest of 1843 > sums up :— 
 
 “Throughout, the Church contention was, that neither 
 power had the right to fix /or the other the limits of its juris¬ 
 diction or the rule of its actings— i.e., that neither was 
 supreme in the Ultramontane sense, but both were inde¬ 
 pendent. 
 
 “ Now all this Scotch theory may be absurd. It may be 
 impracticable. It may be inconsistent with the principles of 
 Civil Government on the one hand, or of Church authority 
 on the other, or with both; all this it is quite open to Dr. 
 Manning at any time to argue. But that is not the question. 
 The question is. Whether at a moment when the European 
 powers of Ceesarism and Ultramontanism are proclaimed to 
 be locked once more in conflict, the venerable representative 
 of the latter system in Great Britain can be permitted, 
 publicly and repeatedly, to claim moral support from a 
 system which is not opposed merely, but is broadly and 
 notoriously opposed, to his own? For the Mutual Indepen¬ 
 dence theory of the Scotch Church was not a thing hidden 
 or capable of being misunderstood. It, and its corollary, 
 that neither was ‘ supreme’ (that is, as Dr. Manning most 
 accurately puts it, that neither could authoritatively prescribe 
 limits to the other), was made hard dogma. It was reduced 
 
THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 215 
 
 to formula. It became food for babes and catechumens. 
 It was brandished about by Free Church controversialists, 
 challenging and urging reply, till all Scotland grew weary of 
 it. And now, when attention is directed from without, by 
 the seeming impossibility of otherwise extricating the dead¬ 
 lock visible in Prussia, and impending all over the world, it 
 is a little unfortunate that so eminent a controversialist 
 should claim it as ‘ directly and explicitly’ in favour of the 
 Ultramontane theory. .... 
 
 “ I do not press the general view, which is substantially 
 and satisfactorily conclusive, that all Protestant Churches, 
 but most particularly the Scotch Church, are founded upon 
 a repudiation of the characteristic tenet of Roman Catholi¬ 
 cism, whether Ultramontane or not—the tenet, namely, that, 
 in the Archbishop’s words, the Church on earth ‘ holds in 
 custody the faith and the law of Jesus Christ, and is the 
 sole interpreter of that faith, and the sole expositor of that 
 law,’ and so has power ‘ to legislate with authority,’ and 
 to ‘ bind consciences.’ But I select the characteristic of 
 Ultramontanism given by Dr. Manning himself—supremacy; 
 and of that not very ambiguous term I take his own careful 
 definition ; and I admit that the history of the Kirk, especi¬ 
 ally in the modern conflict which he challenges as the critical 
 one, turned exactly upon the test which that definition sup¬ 
 plies. And I must be permitted to say, that the result of 
 this sifting process is, that it would be quite as reasonable 
 for Dr. Falck to claim that the documents and history of 
 the Kirk of Scotland and Free Kirk are ‘ directly and expli¬ 
 citly’ in favour of Csesarism, as for Dr. Manning to claim 
 them in favour of his own system.”— Conte 77 iporary Review, 
 July 1874. 
 
216 
 
 THE ITALIAN ANSWER TO 
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 THE ITALIAN ANSWER TO THE EUROPEAN QUESTION. 
 
 Our press feels that the German and Catholic question is 
 the only one of supreme interest in the politics of the 
 world ; but who will venture to say on which side England 
 as a whole has pronounced ? And, above all, who can sug¬ 
 gest any principle by which our views on the Continental 
 conflict are at present regulated ? There is just one advan¬ 
 tage in the present state of matters. Other nations may not 
 have solved the problem; we have at least gained this— 
 that we know we have no solution to offer. 
 
 “ Now, in these circumstances, a voice comes from Italy, 
 reminding us that the nation on which is laid the burden of 
 maintaining within it the personal head and ruler of 
 Catholicism, has deliberately adopted and is working out 
 a third theory, equally distinct from that of Germany and 
 that of Rome. In the spring of this year, Vigliani, the 
 present Minister of Grace and Justice of the Italian King¬ 
 dom, addressed to the Procureur-General of the Court of 
 Appeal at Rome, a communication intended for the Italian 
 magistrates generally. In it he reminds the judicial and 
 executive authorities that, in 1871, on the ‘entry of the 
 Italian Government into this great metropolis of the 
 Catholic world,’ laws on the relation of Church and State 
 were adopted which proceed upon a general principle. 
 That principle is the ‘ Free Church in the Free State,’ not in 
 any popular or declamatory sense of Cavour’s aphorism, but 
 as carried out into exact judicial application. So carried 
 out, it leaves the Church free in the Church region, even 
 when its proceedings are condemned and held invalid by 
 the State; but maintains also the freedom of the State in its 
 region to deny all civil effects and results to such ecclesiastical 
 
THE EUROPEAN QUESTION. 
 
 217 
 
 proceedings, as well as to enforce, in that civil region, all its 
 own laws, however these may be condemned by the Church 
 or its head. There are other countries, and there have been 
 other times, in which the same equipoise in principle has 
 been maintained and asserted, and the past of Europe is a 
 history of oscillation and variation around some such centre. 
 But the view has, probably, never been enshrined in legisla¬ 
 tion with the same emphasis and solemnity, and certainly 
 never at such an important national crisis, as when Victor 
 Emmanuel went to the Capitol. The theory was new, at 
 least in the States of the Church. And Vigliani is certainly 
 justified in pointing out that the new manner of procedure 
 under such a law demands careful attention on the part of 
 the magistracy. The practice of jurisprudence, he reminds 
 them, may occasionally require new forms or special care ; 
 for it, at all times and in all its details, ‘ ought to be in 
 conformity with the principles of reason and with the true 
 idea of the legislator.” And, with a view to regulate that 
 practice, he recalls the executive and judicial authorities of 
 his country to the principles and idea laid down in the laws 
 of May 1871. 
 
 “ The result, therefore, of the application of the Italian 
 principle to the German question would be—i. Abstinence 
 by the State from any interference with the internal govern¬ 
 ment or proper ecclesiastical action of the Roman Catholic 
 communion in Germany. 2. ‘ Surveillance’ retained over 
 the whole communion, even in its details, with a view to 
 settling any pecuniary or other civil questions which may 
 arise out of Church action. Under this head, as well as the 
 next, it would be competent for the State even to transfer 
 the endowments, in whole or in part, to the Old Catholics, 
 or any others whom it regarded as more entitled to them in 
 
218 
 
 THE ITALIAN ANSWER. 
 
 consequence of recent changes. 3. There might, and pro¬ 
 bably would, follow disestablishment and disendowment of 
 any communion which adheres to a system already disap¬ 
 proved and condemned by the State. 4. In so far as that 
 system is disapproved as aggressive in its relations to the 
 civil power, positive acts of aggression or intrusion (upon 
 German soil) would fall to be punished and repressed by the 
 public law from time to time. That such a system would 
 be absolutely simple, or without difficulty, no wise man will 
 assert. The working out of questions of conscience and 
 religion will be a difficult and delicate problem to the end 
 of time, on any system. But it would be just. And it would 
 be practicable; the State, being clearly on its own ground 
 and within its right, could no longer be frustrated by that 
 passive resistance on the ground of conscience which, in the 
 meantime, is successfully opposed to it. Not that the new 
 course, any more than the old, would free Germany from 
 Romish hostility. The Italian principle, scrupulously fair 
 and symmetrically just as it is, is still the object of ceaseless 
 attack and invective by Ultramontanism; and if transferred 
 to the German Empire (as it will, no doubt, soon be, at least 
 in practice), it will not find more favour with an Ultramon¬ 
 tanism, against which it would probably unite the nation. 
 But from what a burden of censure and misconstruction from 
 every part of Europe would this change deliver Germany ! 
 And how would its being set free from its self-imposed 
 ecclesiastical duties enable the empire, with fourfold power, 
 to assume that championship of the whole European conflict 
 to which it is clearly called!”— Co 7 iteviporary Revieiv, 
 October 1876. 
 
THE CONSTITUTIONAL LA IV OF 1 S 43 . 219 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF 1 843. 
 
 The reference is to a pamphlet published in 1875 
 (Edinburgh; Maclaren and Macniven). By the “Law of 
 Establishment” of the Church of Scotland, I mean the 
 original and fundamental law of its establishment, as the 
 history and Statutes embodying this were solemnly construed 
 by the Court in the critical cases before 1843—construed 
 apart from the matter of patronage, and sometimes in cases 
 which were not even occasioned by the Statute of Queen 
 Anne. The suggestion was made, at a time when (had it 
 been at all accepted) much confusion must have ensued, 
 that the abolition of that Act was all that was asked—all that 
 was needed—in 1843. By far the best answ^er is the lucid 
 and conclusive statement of Sir Henry Moncreiff, entitled 
 “The Identity of the Free Church Claim from 1838 to 
 1875 ; ^ Tetter to his Grace the Duke of Argyll” (Maclaren 
 and Macniven). It settles for ever the question on its 
 historical and ecclesiastical side. But on the legal side the 
 suggestion, embodied in a letter addressed to me by his 
 Grace the Duke of Argyll (Edinburgh : Edmonston and 
 Douglas), proceeded on two startling assertions in point of 
 forensic fact. These were—(i) “that all the decisions, the 
 worst and last as well as others, proceeded on that one 
 Statute of Queen Anne; whilst (2) all the great constitutional 
 Statutes of the Reformation remained behind unquoted and 
 undisturbed.” Every lawyer knows that those old Statutes 
 were incessantly quoted in the decisions referred to—(even 
 in the Auchterarder case, which had least to do with them, 
 the quotations of, and commentary upon, the constitutional 
 Statutes of the Reformation occupy hundreds of pages; 
 while in the later and much worse Stewarton case, which had 
 
220 THE CONSTITUTIONAL LA W OL 18 ^ 3 . 
 
 not the remotest connection with patronage, they occupy 
 far more). But if so, the other question. Whether the 
 decisions were founded exclusively on the later Act, or not 
 largely—and in some cases solely—on the supposed original 
 and fundamental law of establishment; whether in truth 
 “ Patronage had disappeared from sight, and not the extent 
 but the source .of the jurisdiction of the Church, was the 
 point of vital controversy 1”—-that other question comes to 
 be one which every man, lawj^er or not, can most easily 
 determine. He may do so almost without assistance. But 
 in those twenty-five pages I have endeavoured to furnish the 
 unlearned Scotsman with a guide by which he may move 
 through the law reports, distinguishing between the now 
 abrogated law as to patronage and the still binding law of 
 subjection of the Church. And the materials compressed 
 into that space seemed to me to warrant the following 
 summing up :— 
 
 “ That, my Lord Duke, is the present laiv of Scotland on 
 the subject of the constitutional relation of the Established 
 Church to the State. It is of enormous bulk—I have not 
 been able to quote one-tenth part even of the more important 
 reasoning to the like effect, especially in the later decisions 
 to which I have referred. So far from being put hastily or 
 occasionally, it was laid down with extreme solemnity and 
 after the greatest deliberation. And its authority is cumu¬ 
 lative to an unparalleled extent: any one of these decisions 
 would of itself have settled the law—all of them have put it 
 beyond a doubt. Critical as the question of that five years’ 
 debate was, and acknowledged on all hands to involve the 
 legal founding (or ‘ subversion ’) of a National Church 
 constitution, I claim for the Supreme Courts of Scotland 
 that the gravity of their treatment of it was equal to the 
 greatness of the crisis. 
 
THE CONSTITUTIONAL LA IV OF 1843. 221 
 
 “ And of this huge mass of constitutional law no fraction 
 is repealed, or weakened, or in the slightest degree affected, 
 by the passing of the Patronage Act of 1874, and the repeal 
 of the Act of Queen Anne. No one of those decisions, 
 however ‘ bad ’ or good they may have been, is dead. 
 They are all living; and they bind, with far more than the 
 ordinary authority of solemn judgments, first, the Established 
 Church; and second, the present judges and administrators 
 of the law. Since last year’s Act came into operation, the 
 principles so emphatically laid down at 1843 can no longer 
 be applied in favour of the rights of the patron, or to 
 frustrate any of the particular changes effected by the 
 Statute of 1874. But the principles themselves are as bind¬ 
 ing as ever, and every judge (whatever be his private view of 
 what ought to have been the law) is bound to apply them to 
 the whole circumference of Church rights and duties, except 
 in so far as a special subsequent Statute gives immunity for 
 the time as to a particular region. For while all acknowledge 
 that the principles of 1843 are central, and professed to settle 
 the constitution of the Church (in its relation to the State), 
 no one pretends that the Statute of 1874 has anything con¬ 
 stitutional in it; and your Grace has both ridiculed and 
 denounced the expectation of a remedy of that kind. But 
 if so, it is most certain that there is no hope in the older 
 Scottish Statutes. All those Statutes have been construed 
 by the Court, and construed together, deliberately, repeatedly, 
 solemnly, and in connection with the original establishment 
 of the Scotch Church. And these decisions, which absolutely 
 bind the Church (and have been accepted by it, if that were 
 of any consequence), are, I am afraid, quite fatal to your 
 Grace’s ingenious, and not undesirable, theory of ‘ access ’ 
 —(‘Access to those Statutes was barred, as it were, by an 
 intervening obstacle. Remove that obstacle, and the fire of 
 
222 THE CONSTITUTIONAL LA W OF 184.3. 
 
 those old Statutes would be uncovered—their light would 
 shine unimpeded—their provisions would recover conclusive 
 authority and force’). It is now the authoritative law of the 
 Courts of Scotland (and construing Statutes was always 
 admitted to be their legitimate work), that access to the 
 older Statutes was not ‘ barred by the intervening obstacle ’ 
 of the Act of Queen Anne ; that if you remove that obstacle, 
 no ‘fire’ will be found behind it in the Acts of 1567, 1592, 
 and 1690, except a more devouring flame than that of the 
 later enactment; and that the ‘ conclusive authority and 
 force ’ which these Statutes have—not ‘ recovered ’—but 
 always in the view of law possessed, is the authority of 
 supremacy on the part of the State, with subjection on the 
 part of the Church—-is, in short, what I have been driven to 
 set forth in quoted words on the preceding pages, but what 
 readers will find in the records of the law in far greater 
 fulness. 
 
 “ If, then, the Patronage Act repeals neither the decisions 
 of 1843, nor the old Statutes and general principles upon 
 which these decisions (in so far as they are constitutional) 
 bear to be founded, the only remaining suggestion is that 
 which an uneducated man, who had read no Parliamentary 
 debates in 1874, would be apt to make: ‘Might not the 
 Court now hold that though the Legislature in 1874 made 
 no change upon the constitutional law in the words of its 
 Statute, it yet perhaps intended to do so, or to give a hint to 
 the Court to do it?’ I need not say to your Grace, that 
 were this supposition true—had the Duke of Richmond and 
 the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Disraeli and Mr Gladstone, united 
 last year to declare that, in passing the Patronage Act, the 
 Legislature meant to undo some part at least of the general 
 law not referred to in it—that could make no change what¬ 
 ever on the law. It would have been a conscious evasion 
 
THE CONSTITUTIONAL LA W OF 1843. 223 
 
 of the whole difficulty; and no Scotch Judge could give the 
 slightest effect to it. But every one remembers the extreme 
 contrast to this supposition in the recent facts of the case. 
 In accordance with the earnestly expressed desire of the 
 Established Assembly,* the promoters of the measure care¬ 
 fully avoided, in the House of Lords, all the constitutional 
 questions which pressed upon those who could recall the 
 history of 1843; and when it came to the House of Com¬ 
 mons, the Government bent all its strength to prevent the 
 only course which could have allowed those questions to 
 come into legitimate consideration. Every one charged with 
 the measure in Parliament acted as if it had been his chief 
 desire (while abolishing Patronage) to maintain those con¬ 
 stitutional principles of 1843 which your Grace now ex post 
 facto suggests have been revolutionised—principles which 
 would equally remain the law had all merely individual 
 exertion at the proper time (namely, while the Bill was 
 before the Legislature) been in the opposite direction from 
 what was unfortunately the case. 
 
 “ Still less need I say, in so many words—any schoolboy 
 who should read the preceding pages of reported law must 
 recognise it—that it is of not the slightest consequence to 
 this question what attitude the Established Church of Scot¬ 
 land takes up in it either before or after the Patronage Act. 
 Free Churchmen profess to be indignant at the actings 
 of the other Assembly in the year 1843. But if human 
 language bears any meaning, the law incessantly laid 
 down before that date held it a matter of pure indiffer¬ 
 ence what that Assembly, remaining established, should or 
 should not do. If, instead of declaring the Veto and Quoad 
 
 * On the 29th May 1874; see newspapers of the following day, or 
 “Church of Scotland Crisis” (Edinburgh : 1874), pp. 38-42. 
 
224 THE CONSTITUTIONAL LA W OF 1843. 
 
 Sacra Acts null, and solemnly renouncing the Church’s 
 Claim of Rights, it had issued a new Declaration of Inde¬ 
 pendence, its doing so would have had no more significance 
 than—to use the classical illustration upon this subject—the 
 ‘ recalcitration of the champion’s horse ’ has upon the 
 question of the Succession. Its prompt and perhaps exces¬ 
 sive obedience at the great crisis, added, on the principles of 
 the law obeyed, not one grain to the mass and weight of 
 authority by which the constitutional position and duties of 
 the Establishment were already fixed. And had its resolu¬ 
 tion in 1874 been one solemnly affirming that the Church 
 had in and with the Patronage Act all that was asked in 
 1843—instead of one earnestly urging that Parliament should 
 not be allowed to slip into such a mistake—the result to our 
 constitutional law would be precisely the same. To that law, 
 according to the principles now part of it, the Church since 
 1843 can contribute nothing—scarcely even submission.”— 
 The Scotch Law of Establishment, pp. 51-55. 
 
 Printed by Frank Murray, // Yonng Street, Edinburgh. 
 

 
 
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