/ ,/ ■ 7 / BX 9084 .R34 B34 1873 Balfour, William, 1821-1895 The establishment principle defended THE ESTABLISHMENT PRINCIPLE DEPENDED. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY EDINBURGH AND LONDON THE ESTABLISHMENT PRINCIPLE DEFENDED A REPLY TO THE STATEMENT BY THE COMMITTEE OF THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ON DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT BY THE REV. WILLIAM BALFOUR HOLYROOD FREK CHURCH, EDIXBUROH WITH A PREFATORY NOTE BY JAMES BEGG, D.D. EDINBURGH JOHNSTONE, HUNTER, k CO. 1873 ^ PREFATORY NOTI^r^^^^"''' By James Begg, D.D. In common with manj^, I rejoice that the admirable and eloquent articles in defence of the principle of Church Establishments, by the Rev. William Balfour, which appeared in the Edinburgh Courant newspaper, are now collected together, and given to the world in a volume. The principle of Church Establishments, properly understood, and apart from adventitious circumstances, is just the principle of national religion. It has many ramifications all springing from an acknowledgment of the universal supremacy of Christ, and bearing upon the duty of nations and their rulers to promote the advance- ment of true religion, and the prosperitj^ of Christ's cause and kingdom. It is connected with the pro- tection of the Sabbath, the promotion of scriptural education in the public schools, the conservation of the purity of the Scriptures, and the sacredness of the law of marriage. It assumes that nations are moral and responsible creatures, accountable to God in their corporate capacity, and the proper subjects of rewards and punishments. It implies that wherever God's Word exists, its existence and VI PREFATORY NOTE. influence onglit to be nationally acknowledged as the only supreme authority and the fountain of law. ^^ There is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God." The civil magistrate is "a minister of God," and therefore bound to honour and serve Him, whilst '^ he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." All this is very powerfully expounded and enforced in the present volume, by one who, whilst not personally connected with any actual Establish- ment, feels, as a Christian and a patriot, the duty of contending earnestly for such important prin- ciples. Our ancestors regarded the expression, " the present truth," to mean the truth presently called in question ; and the publication of the recent Manifesto, by a committee of the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church, in which national religion, pro- perly understood, is derided, all Establishments of religion are emphatically condemned as unscriptural and injurious, and in which also it is affirmed that " civil legislation ought not to extend beyond the outward and secular affairs of communities," was a virtual challenge to all the friends of national religion. The doctrine of the Manifesto, indeed, is not new. It is just the old and atheistic type of Voluntaryism, its true and con- sistent type, against which a successful battle was maintained in Scotland thirty-five years ago PREFATORY NOTE. vil — against which a noble struggle is being main- tained at the present moment in Great Britain and America. The American struggle is peculiarly interesting, because the question of national religion is there stripped of all peculiarities. As there is no actual Church Establishment, Voluntaryism — which is a very different thing from voluntary benevolence — has been fully tried, and found wanting, and threatens yet more serious consequences to the great Commonwealth ; nay, it is demonstrated that the State needs the help of religion much more than religion needs the help of the State. The interest in the question, however, is enhanced in Scotland at present by the twofold consideration, first, that a combined efibrt is being made to give practical effect to Voluntaryism by the overthrow of the existing Establishments, coupled with a demand for '^religious equality," or, in other words, that the Government shall stand entirely aloof from all concern about truth, and treat truth and falsehood as if they were alike ; and secondly, by the effort made to force a union of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches on the footing of virtually sanctioning the obnoxious principles of the latter Church, or at least of making the principle of national religion as a practical acknowledgment of the universal supremacy of Christ — held by the Church of Scotland since the Keformation — an open Vlll PREFATORY NOTE. question ; in other words, erasing it from the creed and testimony of the Free Church. The subject discussed in the following treatise, therefore, is of urgent and paramount importance, and it is comparatively little understood. No doubt one leading design of God in permitting, in His adorable Providence, the present struggle, is to bring this question into prominence. Few men understand it so well as our excellent author, and the general study of his powerful exposition and exposure cannot fail to be of much advantage to statesmen and theologians, as well as to Chris- tians at large. We have here set before us in lucid development at once the paramount authority over men in all combinations and in every relation of life, the conflict of ages, the last battle of the Church of Christ, and of the kingdoms of the world. Blessed be God, we know infallibly how this struggle shall terminate. '^ The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee (the Church) shall perish ; those nations shall be utterly wasted." *' All ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He is the Governor among the nations." ^^ Arise, God, judge the earth ; for thou shalt inherit all nations." Edinburgh, 50 Gkorgk Square, Mmj 1873. CONTENTS, HEADINGS OF THE STATEMENT, TO \YHICH THE FOLLOWING IS A REPLY. PAOR I. POSITION OF THE STATE CHURCH SYSTEM, .... 6 II. FEATURES OF THE SYSTEM, 16 1, THE RECOGNITION AND SUPPORT OF SOME RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION OF THE COMMUNITY, . . . .19 2, ITS CONTROL AND GUIDANCE BY THE STATE, . . .23 III. THE SYSTEM IS UNSCRIPTURAL, 33 1. TESTED BY THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF SCRIPTURE REGARDING THE NATURE OF RELIGION AND THE CHURCH, THE SYSTEM IS CONDEMNED, . . .33 IT INVADES THE DIVINE PREROGATIVE, . . .34 IV. IT VIOLATES THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE, . . . .55 V. THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE — (continued), . . .71 VI. IT IS OPPOSED TO THE SPECIAL RULES AND EXAMPLES OF SCRIPTURE, 90 IT IS CONTRARY TO OLD TESTAMENT INSTITUTIONS, . 91 VII. SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED, 105 VIII. IT IS OPPOSED TO THE TEACHING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, . 135 b X CONTENTS. PAGE IX. EXAMPLE AND TEACHING OF CHRIST AND APOSTLES, . . 154 X. THE SUPREME LAW OF CHRIST, 172 XI. THE SYSTEM IS INJURIOUS TO THE INTERESTS OF RELIGION, , 182 XII. THE SYSTEM IS OPPOSED TO POLITICAL EQUITY, . . .191 XIIL UNCOMPROMISING EFFORTS AT DISESTABLISHMENT TO BE PUT FORTH, 198 APPOINTMENT OF UNITED PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE AND THE STATEMENT ITSELF, . . . .216 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION DEFENDED. The document which is commented on in these pages is entitled, '^ Statement by the Committee of the Sjmod of the United Presbyterian Church, of the grounds which justify and demand prosecution of this object" — the '' Disestablishment and Dis- endowment of the Established Churches of Eno:land and Scotland." It is alleged by some that it cannot be considered as an authoritative document until it receives the formal sanction of the United Presbyterian Church. This may be technically correct, but, circulated as it has been to the extent of 52,000 copies, under cover of the Missionary Record — claiming as it does to be a statement of the principles with the assertion and illustration of which the United Presbyterian Church has been conspicuously identified — being, as Dr Cairns has declared, " a strong and clear statement of our voluntary views,"* an opinion which has been vir- * Letter to Mr Nixon in Daily Revieio of January 21, 1873. ^ ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. tuallj concurred in by almost all who have spoken in their Church courts, we are warranted in hold- ing it, to all intents and purposes, as an authorita- tive document, or, at all events, as emhodj'ing the principles generally maintained throughout the body on this subject of Voluntaryism. This Manifesto, which was published in the January number of the United Presbyterian Mis- sionary Record, is in many respects the most extraordinary document which ever emanated from a committee of any Christian Church.* It affords a favourable and desirable opportunity for expos- ing the unscriptural, illogical, and revolutionary character of those principles which are in vogue with so many in our day. It is the very thing that has been asked for again and again during the course of the negotiations for union with the Free Church, but it has been studiously withheld; and its appearance now, after having allowed the leaders of that Church to educate her ministers down to Voluntaryism, is not without its meaning and its lessons. We now know exactly, on their own authority, what the so-called Christian Voluntaryism of the United Pres- byterian Church really is. It is just what we always believed and declared it to be — national atheism, or the old Voluntaryism of the very * The Manifesto will be fouuJ at the eud of the volume. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 3 worst type — the Yoluntaryism of the time of the French Revolution — the Voluntaryism of the time of the controversy, only attempting to disguise itself under the appellation of Christian. It is not now possible for any man, with this document in his hand, to maintain, with any show of truth or consistency, that the Voluntaryism of the United Presbyterian Church is changed. "We find ourselves confronted with the old foe of true civil and religious liberty, whose appearance forty years ago called into the field a host of able combatants, who wielded the weapons of their warfare with signal skill and success, driving him from every position he attempted to occup}^, whether of reason, conscience, or Scripture. His deadly wound, how- ever, appears to have been healed, and all the world is wondering after him as he anew appears on the field to do battle against the Lord's right, as King of nations, to have His laws enforced and the interests of His kingdom promoted by the nations of this world. It threatens to be a desperate, but, let us trust, a final, struggle with this dangerous enemy of the rights of God and man. And however some who stood forward as noble champions of truth in days past may have cast aside the armour in which they were then clad, and lost faith in the weapons with which they then did such execution, the armoury A 4 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. whence they were taken remains unchanged, and, clothing ourselves in the old armour, and laying hold of the old weapons, we shall find that they have lost nothing of their wonted power to shield us from the attacks of the enemy, and to work havoc in the ranks of the false friends and open foes of truth. A league with United Presbyterians in this war against national religion on the part of Dr Can- dlish and his friends will be a humiliating and melancholy termination of all their vaunted principle at the Disruption, and a triumphant fulfilment of the prediction, as we may call it, of the Dissenters in 1841, when, in reply to a friendly address by ministers of the Establishment, drawn up by Dr Candlish, they say — " You remark that, suppose you were compelled to separate from the State, you would not on that account change your principles, but would hold then, as now, that the magistrate ought to endow the Church. [Dr Candlish's words are, '' We could defend the doctrine of Establishments."] The separation might not affect your convictions, but it would materially afi'ect your relations with your neigh- bours. By placing you on the common level of the other Churches, you would feel towards them fraternal sympathies, which are considerably repressed in your present position. And your ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 5 brethren around you, feeling the harmlessness of your theory when it ceased to be acted upon, would more readily and heartily co-operate with you, and would indulge a hope, warranted by their own history, that a reconsideration of the question, in new and more favourable circumstances, might produce such changes in opinion, which, however carefully and conscientiously formed, cannot be considered immutable, as would lead to as inti- mate union in sentiment, affection, profession, and effort as can reasonably be expected in the present state." * Is it so that a generation is not to pass away before the author of the address to which these words were a reply, and many of those who joined him in it, are to justify the hope which the dissenting brethren express, and to belie their own solemn declaration — " Even were we obliged reluctantly to abandon the Established Church of Scotland as indefensible, we would defend the doctrine of Establishments notwith- standing ; and we would continue in the persuasion that a time is coming when that doctrine will be found to lie near the foundation of the real welfare of nations, and the ultimate prosperity of Christ's Church." t But we shall proceed with the examina- tion of the paper. * ** Friendly Reply to Friendly Address," &c., p. 5. •)• *' Friendly Address to the Dissenters of Scotland," p. 3. I. '^ POSITION OF THE STATE CHURCH SYSTEM." This is the title of the first section, in which we have the programme of the work which this Christian Church sets before itself, and the ground and warrant for its proposed action. It had been well had they begun by defining terms, for it must be somewhat confusing and perplexing to ordinary readers to find such expressions as " State Church system," ^^ civil establishment of religion," "endow- ment of religion," " legal creed," " the magistrate's authority in religion," and the like, turning up asrain and a^fain in all varieties of connections, as if they all meant the same thing, though it is well known to every one who knows anything of the controversy that this is very far from being the case. We shall content ourselves with entering our pro- test against the supposition that these terms are synonymous, and that in contending for the Esta- blishment principle we are contending for all that Voluntaries are pleased to assert to be included in it. It is an old device of theirs to confound what is accidental with what is essential, in the hope of thereby securing a verdict against the truth. The authors of this statement are avowedly opposed to what they term " the State Church system " — root ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 7 and branch — in its principle and its practical mani- festation; it shall be our endeavour to vindicate the principle and its legitimate practical issues, and to make it apparent that it is only in so far as these are recognised and enforced that the true welfare of the community will, with God's blessing, be promoted, through the cordial, harmonious, and scriptural co-operation of Church and State. What, then, do United Presbyterians understand by the State Church system ? This is subsequently explained to be all statutory enactments in favour of religion, which is neither more nor less than the national recognition of God or national subjection to Christ ; for, as Dr Buchanan says in his lecture in 1835, " How can a kingdom or nation, as such, serve the Lord Jesus, but by professing its allegiance to Him through the medium of its legislature and its laws, the only channels through which the mind of a people, in their collective capa- city, can be expressed?"* It is then against this that the United Presbyterian Church, as the champions of what they term '' Christian Voluntaryism, " are enlisted. This, as they say, is '^the well-known position " of their body. We concede to them, and are prepared to prove it, that they have never said or done anything inconsistent with this position. And they are determined, as they are entitled, to * •' Lectures on Church Establishments ;" Glasgow, Lect. i., p. 7. B ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. take the van in the war that is now to be waged against this principle. It would appear that there is another class of Voluntaries, who may be termed political, who have arrived at the same conclusion with the United Presbyterian or Christian Volun- taries, in regard to the State Church system, or the national recognition of Christ and His Church ; and although the latter are very glad, apparently, to know of their existence, and that they will not be indifferent or inactive spectators in the conflict, they are not disposed to identify themselves with them, or to take them into their counsels, because, we presume, they have rather a bad odour in the community, and their principles are understood to be pretty closely allied with those which most people regard as infidel. Political Voluntaryism sustains somewhat of the same relation, in our opinion, to Christian Voluntaryism which Jesuitism does to Pomanism. Besides the political Voluntaries who go, and have always gone, the whole length with them in opposing the national recognition of the Church of Christ, the Christian Voluntaries are encouraged to go forward in thoir present attack on existing Establishments, because of a movement in that direction by " other bodies," who do not as yet entirely sympathise with them in their an ti- State Church principle. Among these the Free Church holds a prominent place, and ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. 9 it is well for them to know to what they are com- mitting themselves, in this onslaught on existing Establishments. They have their objections to them, as everybody knows ; but they never took np the position in regard to the Establishment in Scotland, that the vitiating flaw which, in their judgment, had been admitted into its relations with the State, was of a kind which might not be removed, and that, being removed, they would not be glad to be connected with a State Church. On the contrary, Dr Chalmers said, from the Moderator's chair of the first General Assembly of the Free Church — '' Though we quit the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment principle ; we quit a vitiated Establishment, but would rejoice to return to a pure one. To express it otherwise — we are the advocates for a national recognition and national support of religion — and we are not Voluntaries." * Further, their Claim of Right and Protest proceeds upon the same ground, for it concludes with the prayer, ^^ that God in His own good time would restore to them these benefits (the benefits of an Establishment) — the fruits of the struggles and sufi'erings of their fathers in times past in the same cause.^' If, then, the Free Church is to stand true to her own position and historical relation, it is by maintaining and pressing upon the attention of our rulers her prin- * " Proceedings of Free Church Assembly, 1843," p. 12. 10 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. ciples in regard to national religion, and thus en- deavouring to influence them in undoing what was done by them at the time of the Disruption. It must be the aim and endeavour of all who maintain the scriptural doctrine of National Esta- blishments of religion, to obtain, if possible, with God's blessing, the removal of all evils and abuses connected with existing Establishments ; and should they fail, or should it appear to them hope- less to make the attempt, they can, eveii then, only take part in a movement for their overthrow, which shall be based on securing the maintenance in its integrity of our Protestant constitution, and a national recognition and promotion of the interests of true religion and the Church of Christ. To take part in a movement against existing Establishments, without having duly considered how these all- important results are to be secured in the event of the movement being successful, is to betray the truth into the hands of the enemy, and to surrender the nation to the worst of evils. It were well in the present crisis did men ponder the weighty words of the late Dr M^Crie — " The system which would equalise all kinds of religion in the eye of the law, which proclaims a universal right and liberty in such matters, and deprives religion and its institu- tions of the countenance and support of human laws, though it has a specious and inviting appearance, ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 11 contains in its bowels, like the Trojan horse, a host of evils, which, issuing forth, would spread devasta- tion around, and soon lay the bulwarks and palaces of Christianity in the dust." * It is to lead on a movement which cannot fail to be attended with such disastrous results that this manifesto has been issued. We could understand and sympathise with a movement grounded on the alleged evils of existing Establishments, even though we might call in question the justice and truth of some of the allegations. But in the pre- sent instance there is not a word to that effect. It is not the efficiency or inefficiency with which they may be subserving the ends for which they have been established that is referred to as influenc- ing this Christian Church in endeavouring to rally the forces against them. The more efficiently they may be performing their work, the more desirable it must be in the estimation of those holding the principles of Christian Voluntaries to have them overthrown, though it might not be so easy of ac- complishment. And hence we find, as a matter of fact, that it was when evangelical religion was re- viving in the Established Church, and threatened to extinguish Dissent, that the Voluntary contro- versy began forty years ago; and it is somewhat strange that this new movement should have * " Statement of Diflference," &c., p. 29. New edition. Chas. F. Lyon, Edinburgh. 12 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. commenced when the existing Establishment in this country is gaining strength, and beginning to take measures for the removal of an old grieva.nce. It is a rooted hatred to everything like a national recognition of Christ and His Church that lies at the foundation of this movement ; and hence the ground and warrant of it, as prominently put for- ward in this manifesto, is 'Hhat civil legislation ought not to extend beyond the outward and secular affairs of communities." This is the domi- nating idea of the statement. It is the distin- guishing characteristic of Voluntaryism — the Vo- luntaryism which has prevailed in the Secession Church from the time when it ejected the late Dr M'Crie. It is expressed in the new ^'Narrative and Testimony," which was issued at the time of their apostasy, in the following words : — ^* The power competent to worldly kingdoms is wholly temporal , respecting only the secular interests of society." * It is therefore no new nor undefined doctrine ; and it is utterly vain for any man to attempt to modify or explain away its meaning. It has and can have but one meaning, which is clearly brought out in the subsequent part of the manifesto. It is a most mischievous and God-dishonouring principle, which lays the axe at the root of all national morality and religion, and is, in short, the disown- * " Narrative and Testimony," p. 135. Reprint in 1817. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 13 ing of Christ's prerogative as " the Governor among the nations." It draws a distinct line of demar- cation between the United Presbyterian Church, and all the Protestant and Reformed Churches, which with one consent declare " that civil authority is not limited to the secular affairs of men, and that the public care and advancement of religion is a principal part of the official duty of magistrates." Professor M^Ilwaine, of America, at the recent Convention in New York, in connec- tion with the interesting movement in that country in behalf of national religion, expressed himself in the following manner : — " In this country, thougli there is far greater Christian light here than anywhere else, religion and politics have been un- lawfully divorced, and this divorcement is favoured by the Constitution of the United States. The tendency seems to be all the time for men to drift further and further away from religious influences the more they are connected with politics. The roots of morality are in religion. It is not possible there can be any deep-seated morality in an irreligious people. There must be connection and communication between re- ligion and politics ... In avoiding mention of the Churchy our fathers avoided all mention of religion, and this failure has exerted a corrupting influence on our political morality. It has given birth to the common remark, ' We must not bring religion into politics. The only way to keep religion pure, is to keep it separate from politics/ But it does not seem to have entered into the minds of men that this is a two-edged sword, which cuts both ways. When we withdraw religion from politics to keep religion pure, what is to Jceep politics pure, thus separated from religion. When we have taken religion out of your political life, the salt is taken away, and it 14 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. is left to irretrievable corruption. . . . There is an im- mense difference between the morality of our people and the morality of our politics ; the difference is lamentable, and it cannot continue long in the direction it is now going. The whole nation is affected by such public morality. . . . If our political life becomes demoralised, as it threatens to become, how long will the common life of the people continue pure 1 " These words are deserving of serious con- sideration. The authors of tlie Manifesto tell us that " they (United Presbyterians) owe it to the cause of truth, identified with their history, to hold forth, as well as to hold fast, a distinctive testimony against civil Establishments of religion, as radi- cally injurious to the interests of religion, opposed to the genius of its institutions, and fraught with political and social injustice; " and they are encouraged to prosecute their indiscriminate and unhallowed raid against Establishments by the fact that one Church — that of Ireland — has been dis- established and disendowed ; and by the imagina- tion that there is a loud cry for the like treatment of those in England and Scotland, and that, in- deed, the existence of Establishments is ^^ known (?), both in the ecclesiastical and political world, to be only a question of time." Raze them ! raze them ! as essentially opposed to civil and religious liberty, is the war cry of Christian Voluntaries. They have many enemies and few friends. — The ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 15 current of public opinion is with us. — Alreadj^ all the Papists, infidels, and renegade Free Church- men are with us in this matter. — The Government will do anything to obtain our aid. — The tide is rising, and we maintain that " neither in the Old Testament nor in the New has the State Church system the slightest countenance." How is it pos- sible for the power of assertion to go further ? The Establishment principle has not '' the slightest countenance in Scripture, not even in the Old Testament!^'' What says Dr Charles J. Brown to that? What will the community not swallow, if they can swallow that ? The men who hazard such a statement must have great confidence in the im- plicit faith of their credulous readers. We shall hear what they have to say in their defence under another head ; meanwhile, we would only ask the question. Where did all the Reformers find the principle, if not in the Word of God? If there was one thing that characterised these men more than another, it was their patient and prayerful study of the Scriptures, their continued appeal to them in support of all the doctrines they main- tained, and their profound deference to their dictates. They, with one consent, found the Esta- blishment principle in the Scriptures, where Christian Voluntaries do not see a trace of it ! II. ^* FEATURES OF THE SYSTEM." In this section we are presented with the features of the State Church system as they appear to Christian Voluntaries, or as Christian Voluntaries are pleased to represent them. If they had deliberately made the attempt, they could not have palmed upon the credulous and ignorant a more complete caricature of the Establishment principle than we find under this section. Instead of any- thing like a true portrait, they have so sadly distorted and disguised its features, that we are not astonished that they should be horrified at the creation of their own fancy. To defend such a system as they delineate is what few will undertake, and what we, at least, have no intention of attempt- ing. The very first thing the United Presbyterians were bound to do was to establish the personal identity of this system which they describe with the vital and scriptural doctrine of Church Establishments. It were worse than useless to pronounce sentence of death upon a man whose personal identity with the accused had not been satisfactorily made out. And yet this is the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 17 very thing which these Christian Voluntaries do ; for it must never be lost sight of that it is the State Church system (as they term it) as suck, or the national recognition and support of the Church of Christ, not existing Establishments merely, whose features they profess to sketch. Indeed, in so far as they allude to existing Estab- lishments at all, it is not as being corrupt, or as, in their estimation, being other than Establishments might and should be, but as of necessity embody- inor the essential features of the Establishment principle, as they are pleased to describe it. Their verdict, therefore, is pronounced against this principle, rather than existing institutions ; and it will be a most suicidal act on the part of those who maintain the Scriptural principle of Establish- ments, should their objections against existing Establishments dispose them to join with such allies in seeking their overthrow. Dr Chalmers said, " I cannot imagine that the existence of the Free Church can have anything like a hostile in- fluence upon the established institutions of the country. . . . They, the Free Church, are not Voluntaries ; and I confess to you that I should look with a sigh to the demolition of the framework either of the Scotch or of the English Establish- ment." * We must distinguish things that differ, * " Evidence before the Sites Committee of the House of Commons, 1847." Third report, p. 129. 18 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. if we are not to destroy what is good, when seeking to rectify what is evil. Now, the question is, Have the authors of this manifesto faithfully portrayed the Establishment principle as contended for by all the Reformers, and embodied in the original constitution of the Church of Scotland ? If so, then we join with them in their verdict against it. But if it is a mere phantom generated amid the strangely con- flicting elements that are at work in the minds of Christian Voluntaries, as we can easily demon- strate, it will not be expected that we should contend against it ; it will be enough that we expose its true character. Indeed, this document confirms us in the opinion which we have long en- tertained, that Voluntaryism somehow has a strange power of warping the consciences and pervert- ing the intellects of its votaries, so that they view everything bearing upon national religion through a distorting medium. We cannot otherwise account for the gross, and we should say palpable, misre- presentation of the Establishment system which is given in this document. But however we may thus charitably account for it, we cannot justify it ; and we are all the more disposed to condemn a system which exerts such an injurious influence over the minds of men. Let us hear what they have to say. They maintain that the two essential elements ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 19 of the State Churcli system, are — 1. Tlie recogni- tion and support of some religious expression of the community; and 2. Its control and guidance by the State, is'ow, it will not do to allege that this is a fair description of the State Church system because it has been maintained by some advocates of it. They know, or they ought to know, that it is the very reverse of a fair representation of the system as held by its true advocates. 1. The first element, or the recognition and sujjjjort of some religious prof ession. "While all Protestant Reformers maintained that the care of religion is a principal part of the magistrate's duty, as the guar- dian of the first as well as the second table of the law, they no less strenuously contended, as against this first of the so-called elements of the State Church system, that it is not some or any religious expres- sion of the community which the magistrate is to recognise and support, but the profession of the true religion as recorded in the Word of God. This attempt to charge it upon the Establishment prin- ciple as confounding the distinction between truth and error is not new ; and its reassertion in this Voluntary manifesto is one among the many things that go to confute the statement of those who attempt to cover their own change by alleging that the Voluntaryism of the United Presbyterians has changed. Foremost among these is Dr Buchanan of B 20 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. Glasgow, and we feel that we cannot more effectively, or in more polished language, rebut this charge of the present Voluntaries, than by quoting his words in disposing of the charge as preferred by the old Voluntaries. " Another method," he says, *' by which it has been not un- usual with our opponents to hide from the public eye the real nature of the question at issue, has been by striving to make it appear as if the Church Establishment principle must go un- avoidably to the confounding of the great distinctions between truth and error ; and as if the advocates of that principle were bound by it to justify the civil authorities of a nation in sup- jtorting and propagating any religion, however false or foul, which had gained the ascendency over their own minds, or which happened to prevail among the peoj)le at large. In a word, that as Churchmen we are laid under an absolute necessity of maintaining it as a righteous thing in the King of Spain, for example, to establish Popery — in the Grand Turk to establish the Koran of the impostor Mahomet, or in any of the sovereigns of the Pagan world to establish the abominations of idolatrous superstitions. Now this were all very well, if what we, as Churchmen, are contending for amounted to this — that it is the duty of rulers to lend the sanction of the civil power, and the aid of the national funds, in support of whatever they may choose to regard as religion. But all that we contend for is, that it is their duty to do these things for the true religion. . . . We hold that every man is responsible for the opinions which he entertains — that the mind of God is recorded in His Word, in point of fact — and that it is at our peril that we take any other meaning out of it tlian what He designed to convey. This principle every sound Cliristian must hold, whether he l)e Churchman or Voluntary, And if we apply it to the ques- tion as to the duty which we contend to be binding upon civil magistrates— the duty of countenancing and supporting the true religion — it scatters at once to the winds the charge, tliat ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 21 vre are laid, by our own principle, under the necessity of justi- fying the establishment of a false religion, if it only chance to be the religion of the rulers of any given State. It is theii- business to find out the truth.'^* The language in wliich this charge against the Establishment principle is reproduced in this mani- festo, is such as almost to suggest the thought that its authors had a design to provoke Dr Buchanan to reiterate his old arguments if he dare, or else to be silent for ever. They say, " this principle (of Establishment) carried through, extends to any (religious) expression — Pagan, Moslem, or Christian." Instead of countenancing the adoption of such a sinful course, the Establish- ment principle rests on the declaration of Christ, " He that is not for me is against me." Inasmuch as this is no less applicable to nations than to individuals, it is manifestly the so-called Voluntary neutrality, and not the Establishment principle, that is chargeable with the fearful guilt of arming the nation against Christ. That we do find, as matter of history, that all kinds of religions — Pagan, Popish, Moslem, Christian — have been established throughout the earth, is no more a valid argument against the Establishment principle than it is an argument against Voluntaryism, for we find as matter of fact that all varieties of * " Lectures on Church Establishments," Lect, i., pp. 5, 6. Glasgow, 1835. 22 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. religious beliefs and practices have been adopted and promoted under the influence of Voluntary societies of a professedly religious character. The real question is, If the Word of God contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testament is an infallible rule of faith and manners for men in all stations and relations, why should the magis- trate, with this Word in his hand, be unable, amid the great variety of beliefs that prevail in the nation, to distinguish between what is true or false in religion, any more than the individual ? How should the existence of a variety of religious beliefs within the region of his jurisdiction shut the magistrate up to the necessity of countenancing all, if he is to countenance any, when no such necessity lies upon a man in any other relation in life ? And if truth is discoverable by the magis- trate, as the person responsible for national laws and national action, then surely he is bound to embrace it, and to forward it, and nothing else^ among the people under his jurisdiction. This is the Establishment principle for which we contend as lying at the very foundation of all true national greatness and prosperity. It has certainly a very different aspect from that deformed thing it is represented to be, when it has passed through the alembic of Christian Voluntaryism. It is the doctrine which is embodied, as we trust to show. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 23 in these words of the apostle — " He is the minister of God to thee for good; " and in our Confession, chap, xxiii. 1 — " God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates to be under Him, over the people, for His own glorj and the public good.'' 2. The other element which is declared to be a distinguishing feature of the State Church system is, control on tJiepart of the State over the Churchy or public religious profession, to which it gives its sanction and support. According to the notion of Christian Voluntaries, the creed, constitution, and jurisdiction of the Church become what they call '^ legal," and, necessarily , subject to the supervision and control of the State, the moment that an alliance is formed between them, no matter how carefully the Church may have guarded all these against the unscriptural interference of the State, or how dis- tinctly the State may have bound itself to respect and defend them. One would naturally think that, if there were two proprietors whose lands marched with each other, and who were rather disposed to make mutual inroads on each other's grounds, it would rather have the tendency to prevent than to encourage or sanction such violations, should they come to some amicable understanding, and bind themselves by solemn contract to adhere to the arrangement. But what every one would under- 24 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. stand as the most likely way of preventing disputes between parties in regard to their respective rights — to have them distinctly defined, and each party taken bound to adhere to them — is the very thing, in the judgment of Christian Voluntaries, to bring an Established Church under State control ; and that, too, notwithstanding that their respective jurisdictions have been defined and limited by the Word of God. This, like the other element of which we have spoken, is no new doctrine with the Voluntaries ; and it is very instructive that, when professing to bring out the features of the State Church system, they bring out most clearly the personal identity of the Voluntaryism of the United Presbyterian Church of the present day with that of the Voluntary con- troversy. As the former misrepresentation was con- clusively disposed of by Dr Buchanan in 1835, this latter was no less conclusively answered by Dr C. J. Brown in the same j^ear of grace. The Voluntaries maintain now, as they did then, that Establish- ments, are necessarilyinconsistent with the Church's spiritual independence. This is so preposterous, that, to use their own language in former days, it is rather deserving of a smile than an argument. In their reply to Dr Candlish's second address to Dissenters in 1841, they say — " Where there is State jpay^ there must he State dependence. ... It will not ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 25 do to reply to all this by telling us that you and the State have ' co-ordinate powers ' — that you form two independent powers negotiating with one another; a plea often advanced, and which has seldom been gravely answered, solely, we apprehend, because a smile is thought better in such a case than an argument. You co-ordinate with tJie State ! Any three deacons, met in the ves- try of an Independent chapel, might advance the same claim."* We presume, Dr Candlish, in ally- ing himself with them now, has been influenced by the concluding wish of the Dissenters in that paper : — " We wish you to afford as good evidence of your attachment to Christians who will befriend, as to the State that thus afflicts you; that you would prefer union with them to connection with it ; and that, boldly and nobly bidding endowments and bondage a simultaneous adieu, you would re- fresh your own spirits, and those of brethren who love you by becoming free indeed, "f We do most sincerely wish him all the refreshment in his new position which the recollections of his friendly correspondence with Dissenters, and other acts in defence of the national recognition of the Church of Christ, can afford ; as for ourselves, we must say, '' my soul ! come not thou into their secret ; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united." * "Friendly Reply," &c., p. 4. + Ibid, p. 8. 26 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. The authors of this manifesto know quite well, or they ought to know, that it has always been contended that the spiritual independence of the Church is an inalienable right derived from her Divine Head which she cannot surrender, and which she does not surrender by the simple fact of entering into an alliance with the State. As her connection with the State did not confer it, neither does this connection of itself deprive her of it, any more than separation from the State of itself necessarily secures it. It is a doctrine which is as much opposed to ecclesiastical as to civil despotism. The doctrine has always been asserted and defended on the ground that Christ in His Word has bestowed a distinct and well-defined jurisdiction upon His Church, with which the State has no right to interfere. This is what every Church of Christ must possess, which is neither more nor less than " co-ordinate jurisdiction " with the State. The Church's decisions, within its own sphere, are as final and conclusive to all spiritual efi'ects as are the decisions of the State within its sphere to all temporal effects. And that this should be such a laughable claim on the part of an Established Church, in the judgment of Christian Voluntaries, can only be accounted for on the ground that, in allying itself with the State, the Church, by tJiis simple act, divests itself, in their judgment, of all ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 27 claim to be regarded as a Churcli of Christ. And although they do not in so many words assert this, it is qnite manifest, from the language of the Dissenters in reply to Dr Candlish, that they are not altogether without their doubts as to the Christian character of an Established Church. They say, " You refer to your character as a Church of Christ — a character which, you justly remark, you cannot suppose we altogether deny you. We believe that very many members of your churches are genuine followers of the Kedeemer — that many [not very many] of your pastors are men of God — and that your society forms part of the professed visible kinfrdom of our Lord."* This is Dissenterism ! Whatever Christian Voluntaryism may say to the contrary, it has been conclusively demonstrated, both historically and dogmatically, that the Church does not necessarily require to unchurch herself in becoming allied with the State. On the contrary, it is the same Word which gives laws to the Church that lays the obligations upon the nation to coun- tenance and support her ; and that Word clearly defines the limits of the jurisdiction of both Church and State, so that neither can intrude itself into the province of the other without sin. The intrusion on the part of the State into the province of the Church, so as to control and direct her affairs, is * <« Friendly Reply," &c., p. 5. 28 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. Erastianlsm. And anything like Ecclesiastical domination on the part of the Church is Popish. Both are to be condemned. As matter of history, the Church of Scotland, in entering into alliance with the State at the first Reformation, did not compromise nor surrender her spiritual jurisdiction. In ratifying the creed, constitution, and jurisdiction of the Church, the State did not confer these upon her ; on the con- trary, the State acknowledged her as a free, independent, and spiritual kingdom, already in possession of them, and entitled to retain them ; and hence the Act 1592 is entitled ''' Ratification of the Liberty of the True Kirk." The contrariety of the Establishment principle to the spiritual in- dependence of the Church was not known in those days, neither had it been discovered at the time of the second Reformation. In regard to the Act 1649, to which allusion is made in the manifesto as being Erastian in its character, Dr C. J. Brown says, in his lecture in 1835 — '^ How finely does the very existence of this statute demonstrate the practicability of an alliance of Church and State on terms honourable to both, and further demonstrate how nobly and successfully the Church had strug- gled during previous years to maintain her spiritual independence ! . . . Voluntary Churchmen, out of an Establishment, talk of the independence of the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 29 Church— our forefathers, within one, bled and died for it."* In the 3rd section of the 23rd chapter of the Westminster Confession, in which the duty of the civil magistrate to countenance and support the Church, or the lawfulness of a civil Establishment of religion, is clearly laid down, the spiritual in- dependence of the Church is no less explicitly declared as that which the magistrate ought to recognise and respect. It is said, "The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the admini- stration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; yet he hath authority," &c. And however the judgments of the Westminster divines may be treated with contempt by men who look down from the lofty heights of Christian Voluntaryism, the Christian public will know how to estimate their opinions. That the views maintained by the Westminster divines were those contended for during the struggle which issued in the Disruption it were useless to prove. In short, none but Christian Voluntaries maintain anything else ; they stand alone in Christendom in proclaiming a union between Church and State to be an unholy and unscriptural alliance, degrading to the character and subversive of the liberties of both! Whatever may be said against the existing * " Lectures on Church Establishments," Lect. iv., p. 15. Glasgow. 30 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. Establishment in this country, the Christian Voluntaries, had they any sense of shame, would be the last men in the world to say a word about it, as it was through their influence, in no small degree, that the Disruption was brought about ; and it will not do for them, at least after having assisted in defeating the Church in her struggle, to turn round and say that State con- nection implies State control. It were well for these Christian Voluntaries to recall the appeal of Dr Candlish — '' Are jonjlrst to lend your aid and influence to defeat us in our contest for principles which are yours as much as they are ours, and t/ien to turn our defeat into an argument against the principle which is at stake between us? Would this be fair in you? Would it really convince us ? "* This is the very thing they have done and are doing. And is Dr Candlish, by allying himself with these men, to declare to an intelligent public that his defeat has convinced him that in order to the Church's being free it must be disestablished. We concede to the Christian Voluntaries that the Establishment principle does allow to the State a certain control, but it is a control over its o?vn acts and gifts. Should the Church outrage its own constitution, or subvert any article of its own creed which was ratified by the State, the State would be * " Friendly Address to Dissenters,'' p. 6. 1840. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 31 entitled to withdraw from her its countenance and support. But it has no right of control over the creed, constitution, or jurisdiction which it did not confer. They are not the gifts of the State, except where an Erastian supremacy is conceded; and they are not necessarily or legitimately under the control of the civil magistrate. It is important, however, when Christian Vo- luntaries record such a foul slander against the Establishment principle as opposed to the Church's spiritual independence, that the public should know what they understand by the independence of the Church. It is neither more nor less, as we gather from their reply to Dr Candlish's second address in 1841, than inde}oendence of all control human and divine. They say, " Be assured of this, in seeking independence, and retaining your position as a State-paid Church, you have common sense against you. What ! Can it be thought that you may revolutionise the government of your Church, and render it Independent or Episcopalian if you will — that you may change the creed, and teach any doctrine or no doctrine; . , . and yet that the State shall have no right to sit in judgment on your doctrines and your doings ? "* To all this we answer, certainly not. That would be lawlessness with a purpose. Such conduct on the part of the * '•' Friendly Reply to Second Address," p, 4. 32 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. Cliurcli would involve its disestablishment by a faitlifal State. But as the Establishment principle does not confer upon the State the right to interfere with the Church's spiritual jurisdiction, no more does it confer upon the Church the right to revolu- tionise her constitution, and preach no doctrine or any doctrine at her pleasure. This more than questionable privilege is not granted to the Church by the Word of God ; and if this be what Christian Voluntaries wish to enjoy, they must put themselves beyond the pale of Christendom and human society; and if they do flatter themselves that they have ob- tained it in a state of separation from the State, only let them outrage the constitution of their Church against the remonstrances of a faithful minority, and we rather think that they shall find to their consternation and dismay that they are not beyond State control. Is this the liberty and independence of non-Established Churches ? III. ^^THE SYSTEM IS UNSCRIPTURAL." The Divine Prerogative. This is the heading of the third section of the manifesto. And the attempt is made to establish this, — 1st, By appljdng to it the test of the general princijyles of SciHpture regarding the nature of reli- gion and the Church ; and, 2ndl7, the special rules and examples of Scripture. Instead of the Esta- blishment principle, or the Established Church system, being condemned by the test which is here aj)plied, the strongest possible confirmation is given to it as most scriptural in its character and most important in its bearings, as it is evidently only in its right practical manifestation, that we can hope to be saved from the desolating influence of the Communistic principles of Christian Volun- taryism, as advocated in this manifesto. For whether the authors of this document know it or not, the principles laid down in it go to overthrow the very foundations of 2^ family as well as national religion, indeed of all definite and established belief of divine truth together. They are the 34 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. natural outcome of the philosophy of Hume, and the principles which gave birth to the French Revolution. It is well that we are so distinctly informed what is the real basis of operation against existing Establishments, and what we have to look for as the consequence of their overthrow. But we shall hear what they have to say for themselves. The State Church system, it seems, violates the general principles of Scripture regarding the nature of religion and the Church. (1.) The State Church system invades the Divine prerogative. — If so, it ought to be condemned; but if, in attempting to fix this charge upon the Establishment principle, they unwittingly bring it home to Voluntaryism, then it must fall nnder the condemnation which they have pronounced against its opposite. This will not be the first time since the days of Haman, that a man has been hanged upon the gallows which he had prepared for another. We have disposed of the caricature of the system as given in the manifesto, by show- ing that the principle which maintains that civil authority ought to be employed, and may in difi'erent waj^s be employed, in the advancement of religion, and for the good of the Church, does not justify the magistrate in failing to discriminate between truth and error, — invest him with eccle- ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELTGION. 35 siastical power and supremacy over the Churcli, — or ascribe to liim a lordship over the faith and consciences of men. Having done this, we have left nothing for the Christian Voluntaries to contend against. They may fight with the phan- tom of their own imagination as it pleases them, ■ and hold it up before the eyes of the people that they may be roused to join them in their politico- religious crusade; but no one is attempting to defend what they characterise as the State Church system ; and if there is no one who is intelligently acquainted with the principle of Establishments, who will not denounce the description given of it in the manifesto as a gross misrepresentation, assuredly there is no one who has any intelligent regard for the welfare of society, who will not denounce the opinions advocated in that document as flagrantly opposed to national religion. It is not possible for any man, who has a character for intelligence or integrity to maintain, to assert, with this document in his hand, that the United Presbyterians hold the great fundamental principles of national religion, and that their only opposition is to State Establishments of religion, the fact being, that these are the very principles which they repudiate and deny. What do they lay down as the essential principle of their system ? It is contained in these words — c 36 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. ^^ Nothing is more plainly tauglit tlirougliont Scripture than that the obligations of religion lie exclusively between man and God, who claims an undivided and sovereign control over its institu- tions and acts." God claims an undivided and sovereign control over the institutions and acts of religion. This, all will allow. But what has it to do with the question in hand? It is a protest against a Popish claim on the part of the Church as much as against an Erastian claim on the part of the State ; and instead of condemning an alliance between Church and State, it rather seems to require and demflnd that both, being divine ordinances, should co-operate in subordination to God, each in its own way, in promoting the interests of true religion. . But that the undivided and sovereign control of God over the institutions and acts of religion excludes nations or men in their corporate capacity from taking anything to do with their maintenance, is not only 7iot plainly taught through- out Scripture, but Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, plainly teaches the very opposite. The obligations of religion did not lie between God and Abraham, merely as an individual^ but also as the father of a family and the head of a household. ^^ The Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do ? seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 37 nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." The personal religion of Abraham did not relieve him from all obligation to use his means and influence, as the head of a great household, for its advance- ment among them. On the contrary, the way in which he acknowledged God's sovereign control over the acts and institutions of religion, was in seeking to bring the means of religious instruction within the reach of all under his jurisdiction ; with the prayer, that, through God's blessing, they might be all brought under the power of the truth, and so, in their respective families and spheres of influence, exert themselves in furthering those institutions and acts of religion over which God has sovereign control. In like manner, as we learn from the second Psalm, the fact that Christ is seated as King in Zion, and controlling all its acts and institutions, instead of relieving kings and rulers, in their capacity as such, from using their autho- rity in seeking the advancement of His king- dom among those over whom they are placed, is the very thing that lays upon them the strongest obligations to do it. " Be wise now^ therefore, ye kings; and be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear. . . . Kiss 38 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. ye the Son, lest He be angry." In Job it is said, *^When He hideth His face, who then can behold Him? whether it be done against a nation or against a man only" (chap, xxxiv. 29). In Isaiah, ^' The nation and kingdom that will not serve the Church shall perish." Again, in Rev. xi. 15, we have one of the visions of John in Patmos : — " There were great voices in heaven, saying. The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ ; and He. shall reign for ever and ever." It is as kingdoms they are promised to Christ ; and it is as kingdoms they are to become His. If so, then it is not the mere private and personal allegiance to Christ of the individuals comprising these kingdoms that is spoken of, but the publicly declared and national recognition of His authority, and countenancing of His Church and cause. " Their kings," says the late Dr M'Crie, " had formerly given their power to the beast ; but now they should withdraw it, and employ it on the side of the Lamb." The undivided and sovereign control of Christ over the institutions and acts of religion, so far from being disowned or infringed, will never be more faithfully and truly recognised and honoured than in the days " when all kings (in their public and official capacity) shall fall down before Him, and all nations (as such) shall serve Him." ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 39 How any man, with the Word of God in his hand, not to say a professedly Christian Church, can deliberately record that the Holy Scriptures plainly teach, ^^ throughout," that the obligations of religion do not lie upon nations^ as suchj is past comprehen- sion. And yet this is what the United Presbyterian Church, through its committee, informs Christen- dom that it believes, when it declares that these '^ obligations lie exclusively between man (the individual man) and God." For they explain their meaning in the next sentence, in w^hich they say — " All religion is voluntary, the free act of the individual dealing with God; and collective exercises are genuine only when the individuals uniting in them render to God their personal offerings and services." If this is the teaching of the Scripture, then certainly neither Churches, nor nations, nor families, can by any act of theirs violate any religious obligations, or incur any guilt, so as to expose themselves to divine judgments. The guilt, if incurred, must be incurred by the individual members of these bodies who are exclu- sively^ according to this doctrine, the subjects of religious obligation ; so that upon them indivi- dually, and not on the communities to which they respectively belong, must the punishment descend. But notwithstanding this dictum of Christian Voluntaryism, the Scriptures record God's dealings 40 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. with the seven Churches of Asia as such ; and we find it recorded in the same Book — ^' Pour out Thy fury on t/te nations that know Thee not, and upon the families that call not on Thy name." " Erroneous conceptions on this point," they tell us, ^^ lie at the root of the State Church system." This matter may be perfectly true as they state the matter, but according to what they call erroneous conceptions of religious obligation, so understand we the Holy Scriptures, ^^ believing all that is written in the law and the prophets " re- garding the obligations resting upon individuals, families. Churches, and nations respectively, and as such, to know and serve God. Christian Volun- taryism must certainly have a fearfully blinding effect upon the minds of its votaries, when they can see nothing in Scripture from beginning to end but individualism. This is to lay the axe at the root of all society with a purpose, and to enlist Scripture against reason, and histor}^, and itself. There is assuredly a radical error somewhere ; but whether it be in the Establishment system, which is based upon the belief that the obligations of religion lie upon men in their relative and social capacity, as well as individually and personally ; or in the Voluntary principle, which limits them to the latter, it may be safely left to an intelligent Christian public to decide. There can be very little ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 41 difficulty, with the Word of God in our hands, in determining whether the accuser or the accused in this manifesto invades the divine prerogative. All that we can say is, that we think the authors of the manifesto were right to confine themselves to the general statement — " plainly taught throughout Scripture " — without venturing to condescend upon particular portions of that authoritative record in support of their doctrine. In their blind zeal against the State Church system, they have recorded a sentiment of the real nature and bearings of which they do not seem to be fully aware. "We grant, indeed, that it cuts up the Establish- ment principle by the roots ; but it cuts up a great deal more, — it cuts up all social worship, and all combined efforts for the advancement of the king- dom of Christ; and thus, in aiming a fatal blow at the Establishment system, they unwittingly present us with a powerful argument in its defence. Their position is this, that the religious exercises and beliefs of a collective body are not genuine, and therefore not acceptable to God, except in so far as they are the personal services of the indivi- duals composing it ; and hence they conclude that Governments and Parliaments cannot vote any money for religion because it is not their personal property, nor adopt any confession except as the expression of the faith of the individuals composing 42 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. tliem. Now, if this proposition which they lay down is true, we must accept the conclusion deduced from it, and so surrender the Establish- ment principle. But we think it right to inform the authors of this document, that while there may be those who have implicit faith in their utterances, there are a good many more who will require some- thing else than their assertion before they will give credit to such a revolutionary statement. Mark what it involves — *' Collective exercises are genuine . ONLY rchen the individuals uniting in them render to God their personal offerings and services ! " If so, then, excepting the Day of Pentecost, we question if there has ever been an acceptable service rendered to God by any collective body of professing Chris- tians. According to this dictum, no Church, as such^ or in its corporate capacity, any more than a nation, as sicch^ ever has rendered, or ever can render, acceptable service to God ; for no Church ever has been, or ever will be, known in this world, all the individual members of which are truly and personally united to Christ. This is the natural and necessary consequence of the doctrine which limits the obligation to promote the cause and kingdom of Christ to the individual as contrasted with the State. This is just the old Voluntaryism, as Dr Cunningham used to explain it ; but while we never could see what ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 43 warrant Voluntaries had, eitlier from reason or ScripturCj for making this limitation, we confess it did not appear to us such a vile and mischievous thing as it does when seen in the light of this manifesto. Christian Voluntaryism reduces all society to individual units, with whom alone responsibility rests ; the Establishment principle, on the other hand, while clearly acknowledging, duly recog- nising, and carefully providing against any violation of the personal responsibility to God of the individual members of society, considers that society, as such, is responsible for its publicly- declared belief and public action, as much as individuals for theirs. It is referred to by Dr C. J. Brown in his work on Establishments, which is deserving of careful study by himself and others in these perilous times. He says, " The union of men in society does not set them free from the moral law — a society being in fact a moral person^ whose will is the result of the united wills of the indivi- duals, and so remains subject to the same moral law which binds the individuals. Hence arise those great duties which independent nations owe to each other," and, we may add, which the State owes to the Church. " The simple fact," says Dr Brown, ^' that the Church, like the State, is a society constituted for certain important ends, upon prin- ciples legitimate and approved of God, lays the 44 ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. State under obligations to give to the Church whatever she stands in need of, and which the State can give without sacrificing its own welfare. In this case, just as in that of independent nations, there is a reciprocal obligation of the same nature as exists among individual persons."* How does this comport with the individualism of the United Presbyterian manifesto ? ' - But this United Presbyterian dictum goes further still, even to the disallowing of all creeds and public religious worship. This doctrine of theirs, they tell us, necessarily implies that national endowment and legal creeds are valueless, except as expressions of the piety of their authors — they are wanting in '' the vital element of voluntary adhesion " (?) as regards any subsequent period in the nation's history. This, as coming from those who are the professed descendants of the men who held by the perpetual obligation of the covenants, reads a solemn and impressive lesson to all churches that begin to step aside from the right path. Once enter on a course of defection, and there is no depth too low into which a Church may not plunge : a course of defection is like the first step in a precipitous incline. According to the doctrine here propounded, a nation is not bound by its promises to the Church, or by its religious beliefs. The individual mem- * " Clmrch Establishments Defended," pp. 7C, 77. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 45 bers of the Legislature that sanctioned them may be bound, but not the nation ; for, according to this manifesto, the nation, as such^ never did, and never could, come under any obligations of the kind. This is strange doctrine! We presume that even Christian Voluntaries will allow that the nation would be honourably bound to settle the Alabama Claims, though the present Government, who agreed to the settlement, should cease to exist to-morrow, and that, too, notwithstanding that the nation, as such, was never consulted, aud three- fourths of the people consider them unjust. And whj^, in such circumstances, should this be accepted as a national debt which we are honourably bound to discharge ? Why should it not be devolved upon the individual members of the Government that acknowledged the claims ? Surely, if this Voluntary principle is right, the nation, as such, can no more be bound by the action of its rulers to make pay- ment to America than to the Church. Would it be a just ground for refusing to implement the en- gagement to allege that the nation did not, and could not, come under it, and that America must look to the individual members of the Cabinet for payment ? On what principle, then, except that of hostility to national religion, can such ground be assumed with regard to endowments to the Church? There is nothing in the nature of things to account 46 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. for the transaction being national in the one case more than in the other. And Christendom demands, at the instance of these Christian Voluntaries, that they show on what ground of reason or Scriptm'e they maintain that a nation in its national capacity can act through its repre- sentatives in dealing with the kingdoms of this world so as to feel the burden of national responsi- bility, while it cannot so act toward the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. How is it that all obliga- . tions come under to the Church on the part of the rulers in their official capacity are valueless, except as the expression of their own piety; while obligations of like kind come under to any indivi- dual, or corporation, or nation, are of value as the expression of the national mind ? This is what we wish to know; and until we have got a satisfac- tory answer, we must hold this United Presby- terian principle as sapping the foundations of all national responsibility. Here let us say, in passing, that it is a misnomer for a United Presby- terian to speak of " national endowments." Ac- cording to them they are the mere gifts of the individuals, which the nation, as such, repudiates ; and it will remain, therefore, according to them, with the Church to find out as best it can the heirs and singular successors of the original donors, and institute a process against them for the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 47 continued payment of their ancestors' pious gifts, when the nation shall have resolved that the endowments which, as a nation, tliey 7icver gave shall cease and determine, and be appropriated^ nevertheless, by the nation to its own purposes ! Having disposed of their principle in its bearings on national endowments and national honour, we shall see what it involves when applied to what they call ^^ legal creeds " — that is, the creed of the Church to which the nation has given its solemn sanction, as in its judgment in accordance with the mind of God as revealed in His Word. For the civil magistrate to do such a thing is, of course, in the opinion of Christian Voluntaries, incom- petent and sinful, as it implies his right and power to distinguish between truth and error. But, right or wrong, it is an undoubted fact that he has done this thing, and the creed to which he has given his sanction is a so-called " legal creed." This creed, though adopted by Act of Parliament, and, as the manifesto says, " fixed by statute," expresses, according to them, no more, at the outside, than the faith of the enacting Parliament. This happy thought notwithstanding, it is some- what awkward for the United Presbyterians that the Act ratifying the creed should have a place upon the statute-book, so that its claim to be regarded as a national Act is as valid as that of the Act for 48 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. abolishing the Annuity-tax. In these circum- stances, we presume, the authors of this manifesto, while resolved to do all in their power to have this, and every similar Act, blotted out of the statute-book, will meanwhile comfort themselves with their distinctly recorded protest against it as *^ religion by proxy." According to this theory, however, it must equally be denounced as worship hy 2^'^oxy for one man to lead the devotions of a congregation, all the members of which are not themselves true and devout worshippers of Him who will be worshipped in spirit and truth. Further, they maintain that this, and all legal creeds fixed by statute centuries ago, cease to be of any value '' as continued testimonies.'' This, of course, must apply to all creeds, whether fixed by the Church or by statute ; they must ceas3 after centuries, according to the authors of the mani- festo, yea, after years or months (you cannot fix the time), to be of any value as testimonies. They are monuments for the dead, but not embodiments of truth for the living. All this manifestly points in the direction of the necessity of periodic (annual, it may be) revisions of our Confession ; as, what was the very truth of God to our fathers may have ceased to be so to their children in a progressive age. But it points far further, even to the discard- ing of all creeds and confessions together, and, in ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 49 course of time, of the Bible itself, as a certain rule of faith. Such is the progress of the age — such the tendency of events in our days! And the State Church system, as the counteraction of all this, instead of invading the rights of God, upholds and vindicates them. Having dwelt at length on the essential nature and true bearing of the manifesto as brought out in the attempt to defend the divine rights against the State Church system, we shall do little more than allude to what they say about its invading the divine province. " Authority in matters of religion," they tell us, ^^ includes authority both over conscience and over the Church," and this is only competent to God. Now, in the first place, the Establishment principle does not invest the magistrate with authority in matters of religion ; it limits his authority to matters about religion. We are quite aware of the fact that Voluntaries either cannot or will not distinguish between a power in sacris, which the Scripture denies, and a power circa sacra, which the Scripture allows to the magistrate. However they may confound these things, the distinction is all-important. It has been shown, times without number, that there are many ways in which civil authority may be lawfully and beneficially employed about religion and the kingdom of Christ. After enumerating a number 50 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. of waySj the late Dr M'Crie says — " These, with other things of a similar kind, . . . civil rulers may do, in the exercise of their authority, without encroaching upon the office or business of the Church and its office-bearers, without compelling their subjects to believe or practise what they do not believe or judge sinful, and without punishing persons who may conscientiously dissent from the authorised and established religion, or depriving them of their natural rights merely on this ground ; while, at the same time, by using their authority in this way, magistrates do act for the honour of Him by whom they rule, for the promotion of religion, the advancement of the kingdom of Christ, and the public good of their subjects."* To talk of the State Church system as thrusting liuman government into the place of the divine, fixing for a man the creed he is to believe, or the worship he is to render, authorising obedience to the divine law and such like, as is done in this manifesto, is obstinate and wilful perversity. It is easy to launch against a system reckless and unfounded charges, which not only cannot be esta- blished, but which have been conclusively refuted again and again. But though it may be easy to do so, it may be far from honourable. We do not mean here to reproduce the answers to those * " Statement," &c., p. 83. New Edition. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 51 charges which will be found in almost every work that treats on the subject, and in none more fully or conclusively than in the " Statement " by Dr M^Crie; we content ourselves at present with a smile at their ignorance and a flat denial of their charges, only asking, in reference to one clause — in which they say, " God cannot confer on magis- trates the power of interference between Him and His worshippers," — Has God conferred such a power upon the Church? and if not, then their reasoning applies equally to ecclesiastical as to magistratical authority. But though this specific power has not been conferred either on the nation or the Church, they may have, and they actually have had, powers conferred on them, which they are required mutually and respectively to put forth for the good of the people, under a due sense of responsibility to God, who conferred them. The Establishment principle, by maintaining that magistrates ought to give their sanction to the laws of Christ, and to enact laws in favour of His cause and kingdom, instead of being charge- able with encouraging any encroachment on the divine prerogative, upholds and vindicates it, by requiring of them to acknowledge and pay homage to that authority. It was surely no invasion of the divine prerogative for Cyrus to issue a command enforcing the commandment of the God of Israel D 52 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. to build liim a house at Jerusalem. This was just an illustration of the Establishment principle ; and the man who acted upon it, instead of being blameworthy, as an invader of the divine preroga- tive, as — according to the principle laid down in this manifesto — he must have been, is deserving of commendation and imitation, as manifesting becom- ing submission to the divine command, and paying due honour to the God of Israel and His institutions. It must, in the eyes of Christian Voluntaries, have been an awful act of treachery on the part of Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and the rest of the chiefs of the fathers of Israel, to build unto the Lord God of Israel, as King Cyrus ^ the King of Persia, commanded them (Ezra iv. 3). And it was nothing short of giving the divine sanction to what Christian Volun- taries would term an unlawful blending of the civil and sacred, and so to an invasion of the divine prerogative^ for the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to strengthen the hands of the elders of Israel in building, in obedience to a magistratical command, sanctioning a divine command, or to the divine com- mand sanctioned by magistratical authority, as we ■find they did from Ezra vi. 14, — " They prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the i:)rophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo ; and they builded and finished it according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 53 of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia." This, according to Christian Voluntary- ism, was an unscriptural and unholy alliance and conspiracy against God and His kingdom ; while, according to the Church State system, it is a scrip- tural illustration of that harmonious action between Church and State, in promoting the kingdom of Christ, which ought ever to prevail for the glory of God and the true wellbeing of man. As to the bearing of the system on toleration, all depends on what is to be understood by toleration. There is such a thing as toleration which amounts to unlimited licence — such as pre- vailed in Israel when there was no king, and every man did what was right in his own eyes. This is the kind of toleration that seems to be demanded in the present day, and which our rulers seem disposed to concede ; but instead of being sanctioned or approved, it is condemned in the Word of God, and will be refused in any nation that has a concern for its self-preservation. How far this is the kind of toleration the authors of the mani- festo demand, it is not for us to say ; but we emphatically deny that the State Church system does of necessity deprive any sect of the liberty or toleration to which it can rightfully lay claim, according to the Word of God and the laws which ought to regulate every well-constituted State. 54 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. In connection with this matter, we cannot help expressing astonishment at the Christian Volun- taries quoting Andrew Melville's famous words to King James, ahout two kings and two kingdoms, in support of their views of toleration. The name of Andrew Melville mixed up with a Voluntary manifesto ! What will men not do ? Had Andrew Melville any one thing in common with the authors of this manifesto, if we except his humanity? And why the authors of this mani- festo, when condemning the State Church system as opposed in their judgment to scriptural tolera- tion, should introduce one of the noblest and ablest champions of that system, as though he was at one with them in their views concerning its nature and tendency, we are at a loss to under- stand, unless they mean to insult the memory of this great man. IV. THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE. (2.) The State Church system violates the rights of conscience, — This is the second general principle of Scripture regarding the nature of religion and the Church which is applied as a test to the system to prove it unscriptural. Here, as throughout the manifesto, there is no lack of assertion and con- founding of things that differ ; but there is such a lamentable want of reason and proof, that it is extremely difficult to deal with it. We haye disposed of the charge brought against the system as necessarily invading the divine prerogative ; and we found that the principle laid down in the mani- festo, on which the attempt is made to substantiate the charge, is naturally and necessarily subversive of all religion, and therefore itself the most daring invasion of the prerogative and province of God, Conscience has always been the citadel in which Yoluntaryism has sought to entrench itself. It is truly a sacred — we should say, an impregnable — fortress. And on this very account it attracts the attention of men. It has been resorted to by all kinds of men, from the days of Adam till now. 56 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. The prophets of Baal could plead conscience as well as the holy apostles and martyrs of Jesus Christ. It was at the professed dictate of conscience that the High Priest pronounced sentence of death against the Lord of conscience. There have been as many dark deeds of villany perpetrated under the guise of conscience, as there have been noble sacrifices to the cause of truth laid upon its altar. All men, not excluding Christian Voluntaries, have got consciences of some kind ; and it is not at all wonderful that conscience should occupy a pro- minent place in the Voluntary manifesto. But it is a little too much for the defenders of a system which robs the nation of its conscience to think to get the credit of having enriched themselves by the spoil. They do not hold the monopoly of conscience, whatever their language may seem to indicate. "Weakness of argument requires might of assertion. It is an old advice, '' No case, abuse the attorney." This may deceive the ignorant and unwary, but it cannot carry conviction. And the authors of the manifesto must support their plea of conscience in a very different way from what is done in this docu- ment, if they would expect an intelligent public to have any respect for it. Conscience was a sufficient rule for man before sin entered the world. Since the entrance of sin, however, the old rule of conscience is no certain or infallible rule of direc- ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 57 tion for man. Another rule has been given by the Lord of conscience, and it is only as a man can prove that he is following the dictates of a con- science which is enlightened by the Word of God, that he has ground to expect that his convictions will be respected. Many a good man has urged a plea of conscience which could only be accepted, if it was to be accepted at all, at the expense of his understanding. In regard to the rights of conscience. — In anew lifting up this cry for toleration and liberty of conscience, the authors of this manifesto must be reminded of the weighty utterances of a man whose memory is held in deserved esteem by every lover of truth and his country, and in expelling whom from their bodv, their forefathers covered themselves and their principles with merited sus- picion and disgrace. We speak of the late Dr M'Crie, who says in the '•' Statement," p. 211 — "If the grand enemy of the Church cannot carry the citadel by force, he will attempt it by negotiation ; will commence as the herald of toleration and liberty of conscience, and persuade Christians to demolish those outworks by which their privileges were guarded ; to remove all external barriers and restraints, and grant the same free scope and countenance to his kingdom in its various forms of infidelity, idolatry superstition, damnable errors, and delusions, that are granted to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus. It is the masterpiece of his art to prevail upon the friends of religion, with whatever views, to promote the same design with the emissaries of anti- Christ and the apostles of infidelity." 00 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. The position taken up in this manifesto with regard to toleration and the rights of conscience is the very same with that of the Voluntaries in the end of last century and during the Voluntary controversy. The Christian Voluntaries of the present day have not departed a hair's-breadth from the old position of their degenerate ancestors. Toleration and liberty of conscience is a very con- venient and eifective rallying cry. But the attempt to show that they are violated by the State Church system is utterly visionary and baseless, proceeding as it does on ignorance of the just rights of conscience, and on an extraordinary confusion of ideas as to what constitutes a real violation of these rights. It has been the same from the beginning, and will continue, we fear, to the end. In this question of national religion, Voluntaries do not seem to be capable of distinguish- ing things that differ ; and until they can be got to do this, it is vain to think of reasoning with them. What really lies at the root of all their mystification regarding toleration and liberty of conscience is a thorough and unaccountable mis- understanding of the terms persecution^ intolerance^ and compulsion^ as if they were all equally applicable to every exercise of magistratical power about religion, and were all equally objectionable and unscriptural. Compulsory principles in religion ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 59 are, according to the authors of this manifesto, just the more recent form of persecution — a form of persecution better adapted to the enlightenment of this age of progress than the stake and the scaffold of a less refined period. The light of the nineteenth century has so far dissipated the old views of toleration, that the State Church system has been compelled to let go its hold of the throats of Dissenters, and to confine itself to ranging their pockets ; so we understand from the manifesto, when it tells us, that in now at- tempting to secure conformity, the milder form of the fine has been substituted for the coarser, and on the whole, we presume, less agreeable form of the scaffold. The system, they say, '•' remains true, as far as it dares, to what lies at the root of all, com- pidsory principles in religion^ It is in not distinguishing between what is here said to lie at the root of the State Church system from the intolerant and persecuting principles which lie at the root of Voluntaryism, that the advocates of the latter are led to talk as they do about the former violating the rights of conscience. We allow that the power of the magistrate is compulsive. '' There is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God." But he has been armed with this power by God for the ad- vancement of His glory in the highest good of the 60 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. people. His power is not absolute, uncontrolled, and irresponsible. On the contrary, "he is the minister of God to thee," says the apostle, " for good." These words point to an end at which the magistrate must always aim in the exercise of his power, even the good of his people ; and they also indicate the manner in which, and the rule according to which, he is to put forth his power — viz., under a sense of responsibility to, and in accordance with the revealed will of Him, whose servant he is. These things are either not known or lost sight of by those who speak of the magis- trate's power about religion as involving persecution. " It is," says Burroughs, " the dictate of nature, that the magistrate should have some power in matters of religion. . . . The heathens would never suffer their gods to be blasphemed, but punished such as were guilty thereof by the power of the magistrate. . . . That magistrates have nothing to do with religion is abhorrent to nature. Is it not an abhorrent thing to any man's heart in the world, that men suffer that God to be blasphemed whom they honour ; and that nothing should be done for the restraining any, hut to ask them why they do so, and to persuade them to do otherwise ? We were in a most miserable condition if we had no external civil power to restrain from any kind of blasphemies and seduce- merts. ... If there* were .a company of madmen running up and down the streets with knives and swords in their hands, endeavouring to work mischief and kill all they met with, and we must do nothing to restrain them ; if we could persuade them to do otherwise, well and good, but if that were all we could do for help, what a dangerous thing were this ? The case is the same when those who are mad with ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 61 damnable heresies run from place to place seeking to draw all they can from the truth. If we have no means of helping but argument (church discipline does not reach them), it is ill with us. Surely God has not put His people into such a sad condi- tion as this is. He has provided better for them than this."* We should rather think so. It is this which the Establishment principle or the State Church system asserts and maintains, when it declares that the magistrate is the keeper of the ^rst as well as the second table of the law; in other words, that he is bound to put forth his com- pulsive power to promote '' godliness " as well as *^ honesty," and to punish as crimes those actions which openly profane God and His worship. Do the Christian Voluntaries agree with this ? If so, then their charge of intolerance and persecution, and their plea from conscience against the State Church system, fall to the ground. It cannot in such a case be against the system itself, or the compulsory power of the magistrate about matters of religion, that they take exception, but against some abuse of that system real or imaginary, in the removal of which, if real, the controversy would take end. But if they do not agree with the principle just laid down, they manifestly place themselves in an attitude of hostility to a principle that lies at the * " Irenicum," p. 23, 62 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. foundation of all right government, whether viewed in the light of natural or revealed religion. . That the authors of the manifesto do assume this responsibility, by denying that religious matters fall within the province of the civil magis- trate, is undoubted, when they state that *^ the first duty owed to God by rulers is to leave the religious life, individual and collective, a free course, and its entire sphere inviolate to the Divine Sovereign." This is the ground on which they assert their claim to toleration and liberty of conscience, as against the State Church system. It is the very ground taken up by the Seceders in the end of last century, when they adopted new light or Voluntary prin- ciples, as it is thus expressed in their new testi- mony : — ^^ A liberty of worshipping God in the way which they judge agreeable to His will is a right common to all men. They may, and often do, err and offend the most High God, by substituting a false worship in the place of that which He requires ; hut no power on earth may take their right from them^ For the magistrate, therefore, accord- ing to Voluntary principles, as thus laid down, to interpose his authority and power about religion, in any other way, or to any other effect, than to secure for all men individually and collectively the undis- turbed possession of *Hhe right to judge for them- selves," and '^ to give effect to convictions," is to ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 63 violate the rights of conscience ! The liberty of conscience to which the manifesto lays claims " includes the liberty of worship, and of acting by persuasion on other minds — the whole liberty required for the free exercise of religious life, whether in its individual or associated acts." This, according to United Presbyterians, '^ lies at the foundation of national liberty and wellbeing." We should rather be disposed to say that it aims " at the foundation of national liberty and wellbeing," neither of which can possibly consist with the triumph of such principles. Unlimited licence^ not true and rightly regulated liberty, is what is con- tended/or in this claim. For, however the insertion of the clause, '' subject to the Lord of conscience and the just order of society," may be intended, or may appear to the authors of the manifesto, to guard their doctrine against this charge, they do not in reality avail for such a purpose. For, if ^' the just order of society" falls under the care of the civil magistrate, it must be his right and duty to ascertain how far the principles and practices of individuals and societies are consistent with that order, and to punish and restrain '' all departures from order in the name of religion," notwithstand- ing that the advocates of them may judge them most agreeable to the will of God, and such as they are bound in conscience to publish and main- 64 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. tain. Would this be no yiolation of the rights of conscience according to the manifesto ? The authors of this manifesto, therefore, must either give up their principle that the magistrate is ^Ho leave the religious life, individual and collective, a free course," and adopt the Establishment principle, which maintains that the religious life of the subject does fall under the care of the magistrate, and is not absolutely beyond his control ; or else be held chargeable with propagating principles of Socialism, which are the bane of society ; and so rendering themselves amenable to the power of the civil magistrate as the guardian of the right order of society. If it is admitted that the magistrate is the proper judge of what may be necessary for the welfare of society, and what may violate its ^^just order," this is just what we contend for when we maintain that matters affecting the religious life of indivi- duals and societies must in the very nature of things fall under the care of the civil magistrate. This we consider not only consistent with the rights of conscience, but to be absolutely necessary to the maintenance of these rights in any community. If this is not what the authors of the manifesto mean to concede to the magistrate when they speak of his limiting his restraint to departures from the just order of society in the name of religion, their ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 65 allusion to the "just order of society" is a deception ; and thej actually deny to him all magistratical authority, and so snap asunder the very bonds of society. But if they do mean to concede the magistrate's right to judge as to what accords with the just order of society, then tkey give up the whole case as regards their doctrine of toleration and liberty of conscience. Of course, we hold that the magistrate, in judging of what is for the good order of the community, must do so as a " minister of God," and under a sense of responsibility to Him ; and, in doing this, he must exert his authority on behalf of those religious opin- ions and practices which he judges for the good of society, while he refuses to countenance those which he judges to be injurious to its best interests, however conscientiously they may be held by their advocates. By Voluntaries the exercise of this power would be deemed persecution for conscience' sake, no matter how judiciously it might be put forth, nor how much in accordance with {Scripture or even the general belief of the community. The magistrate, in the exercise of the right, professedly conceded to him by the authors of the manifesto, of judging what is for the " just order of society," would, in the case supposed, violate, according to them, the right which these individuals have to think and give effect to con- victions in religious matters. • So much for the 66 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. logical consistency of a document wliich has been issued by a committee of which the Rev. Dr Cairns is a member ! We believe the doctrine contained in the Con- fession of Faith, chap. xx. 2, " God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith and worship." But how this gives any countenance to the opinion of Christian Volun- taries, that the magistrate has no power in matters affecting the religious life of men, individually or collectively, it is very difficult for any but them- selves to discover. That the section has no special and immediate reference to the power of the magistrate must be apparent to all who read it to the end. And that this was not the doctrine maintained by the compilers appears from the 4th section of this chapter. The doctrine that " God is the Lord of the conscience " leaves it as free from the commands of parents and the Church in the matters stated, as from those of the civil magistrate. And the question therefore is, if it be '^-ompetent for parents and the Church in their way to exercise authority in matters of religion without violating the rights of conscience, may this not be equally competent to the civil magistrate in his way and manner ? Is there no duty devolved ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 67 on him in regard to those all-important matters of religion, which engage the attention of parents and Churches ? Are parents, and masters, and Churches the only parties that are charged with responsibility in matters affecting the consciences of men ? And is the magistrate, under whose jurisdiction these parties and those subject to them are, excluded from taking to do with such matters, because of the sacredness of the rights of conscience ? Is he to be the only man that is to have no authority in matters that so inevitably mould the destiny of the empire over which he holds sway ? Is he to be the mere blind and irresponsible recorder and enforcer of what is called public opinion? Is there such a thing as civil authority? It would seem as if this were called in question ; and as if because the people determine the form of the government, God were not the fountain of civil government itself; as if the rulers were the repre- sentatives of the people in such sense as that they are rather to be ruled by the people than to rule them, under a sense of responsibility to God J And hence the demagogue cry — The people are the nation! which with some settles all questions, when it is meant to unsettle all existing insti- tutions. All the power, and the right, and the conscience are with the people; so that it will not do for the ruler to put forth his power E 68 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. and authority, under a sense of responsibility to God, in the way of enforcing His commands — as, for example, the law of the Sabbath — however manifestly, in his judgment, their violation may endanger the welfare of society, should an infidel section of the people judge otherwise ! According to this doctrine, the only man in the community who is to have no conscience is the magistrate. Now it so happens, as a matter of fact, that God, the Lord of conscience, has given a conscience to the magistrate as well as to the people, which is of exactly the same nature as the consciences of those over whom he is placed, and therefore it is no more subject to the command- ments of the people in matters of faith and worship than are theirs to his. And it is no more com- petent to him to lay his conscience aside when he assumes the office of a magistrate, than for any of his subjects when they become parents or ecclesi- astical rulers. He is under as heavy a responsi- bility as any of them, to use his authority and power so as neither to violate his own conscience nor the consciences of those who are subject to him. The magistrate, says the Apostle Peter, is "" sent by God for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well-doing he may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. As free, and not ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGTON. 69 usino: liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servant of God,'''' He is no less solemnly bound under a sense of responsibility to Him by whom kings reign and princes decree justice, to use his liberty as a servant of God for the good of his subjects, than are parents, or masters, or the rulers of the Church to use theirs for the good of those committed to their care. It will not do to thrust in the rights of conscience between him and the discharge of his duty, as is done by the authors of the manifesto when they say, " Society was made for man, and not man for society ; and the right to obey God precedes the obligation to obey man." If society was made for man, it was made for him as a rel igious being ; and it is only as the interests of religion are promoted that its real stability can be maintained. It must therefore be the duty of rulers, who are the guardians of these interests, to look to its religious welfare, and to see to it that the people do not pretend their right to obey God as a reason for their neglect- ing to obey him, when faithfully endeavouring to advance the highest good of the community. The claim on which we are commenting reaches a great deal further than the authors of the manifesto seem to be aware. '^ We ought to obey God rather than man," for example, points to an obligation equally resting upon us, and equally 70 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. pertinent as a reply to the magistrate, should he command anything that is contrary to sound morals or the duties of the second table of the law, as it would be, should he act thus in regard to religion or the duties of the first table of the law. If there- fore the lordship of God over the conscience sets aside all compulsive power of the magistrate about matters of religion, it must do so equally as regards matters of morality — which were to leave him without a sphere of action at all. This would prove, not indeed the inconsistency of the Con- fession with itself merely, but the inconsistency of the divine ordinance of the magistracy with the constitution which God has given us. Such is the necessary, dangerous, and revolutionary con- sequence of the Voluntary principle as laid down in the manifesto. V. THE RIGHTS OF coNsciEisrcE — {continued.) In adducing conscience, the authors of this mani- festo were bound to produce conclusive evidence of its enlightenment from the Word of God before they could expect its claims to be acknowledged. Instead of this, they lay down principles which we have shown to be not only not educed from Scripture, but to be utterly subversive of all govern- ment — civil, ecclesiastical, and domestic. The only allusion to Scripture is to the case of Peter and James (Acts xii.), which proves that the power of the magistrate may be grossly abused for purposes of intolerance and persecution. Everybody knows that ; and we all know that ecclesiastical and all power, not excluding that of church managers, is liable to abuse in the hands of erring mortals. This incident in apostolic history proves that the conscience of Herod was unenlightened, else he never would have acted toward the apostles as he did ; and the reference to it in this manifesto proves that the consciences of Christian Voluntaries are 72 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. also unenlightened, else they never would have produced it as evidence that all magistratical power about religion involves persecution and a violation of the rights of conscience. The thing is monstrous — condemned alike by the light of nature and revelation. The magistrate cannot but take to do with matters of conscience, as we have seen, if he is to rule over men, who have consciences. The magistrate cannot possibly confine himself to the '' secular affairs of communities," to the exclusion of religion. If so, then there must be a way in which he can put forth his influence and power in behalf of religion without necessarily interfering with the rights of enlightened con- sciences. '^ ' Let us begin with God,' is a maxim," says Dr M^Crie, ^^ applicable to the formation of civil society and laws, as well as to other important undertakings. Men are not to herd together like a number of cattle, making provision merely for their external protection, accommodation, and order, forgetting the God that is above. A constitution which did not recognise religion, nor make any pro- vision for its maintenance and defence, would be, in so far, an atheistical constitution."* And yet this is the very thing which Christian Voluntaries would bring about, when they maintain that the rights of conscience demand that ^' civil legislation * '• statement," &c., p. 114. ESTABLISHMENTS OE KELIGION. 73 ought not to extend beyond the outward and secular affairs of communities." Thus, strange to say, the rights of that very faculty which constitutes man a responsible being, and exalts him infinitely above the beasts that perish, demand of him that the social constitution should be so framed as to make no further provision for him than if he had no higher nature or destiny than the brutes ! This may be Voluntaryism ; it is certainly not Scripture. If there is one thing more clearly revealed in Scripture than another, it is that God deals with nations as such, holding them responsible for national action. As Dr M'Crie expresses it — ^^ Nations and kingdoms, in their corporate and public capacity, are under the moral government of Godj capable of the obligations of the moral law, and bound to do homage to Him, and promote His worship." This was the view held by all the Reformers, and it is embodied in all the Reformed Confessions. This is the Establishment principle^ the faithful maintenance and right application and administration of which afford the only secu- rity, under God, for the possession and enjoyment by any nation of its civil and religious rights and liberties, and the only true and Scriptural ac- knowledgment of Christ as King of Nations. This was the principle held by Andrew Melville, whose name and famous utterance the authors of 74 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. the manifesto so shamelessly introduce, as tliougb he had any sympathy with, or gave any counten- ance to them in their views of toleration and liberty of conscience. He thus expresses himself on this subject, in the Second Book of Discipline, chap. X. : — " It pertains to the office of a Christian magistrate to assist and fortify the godly proceedings of theKirk in all behalfs ; and, namely, to see that the public estate and ministry there- of be maintained and sustained, as it appertains, according to God's Word. ... To assist and maintain the discipline of the Kirk, and punish them civilly that will not obey the censure of the same, without confounding always the one jurisdiction with the other. . . . Notto suffer the patrimony of the Kirk to be applied to profane and unlawful uses. . . . To make laws and constitutions, agreeable to the Word of God, for advancement of the Kirk, and policy thereof, without usurping anything that pertains not to the civil sword, but belongs to the offices that are merely ecclesiastical, as is the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, using ecclesiastical discipline, and the sjpiritual execution thereof, or any part of the power of the spiritual keys, which our Master gave to the Apostles, and to their true successors." What could this man, who thus expressed him- self, mean when he spoke of two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland ? There is only one answer can possibly be given to such a question. And to quote his words as if they gave the sanction of Andrew Melville to the opinion of the authors of the manifesto, that ''civil legislation ought not to extend beyond the outward and secular affairs of com- munities," and that the magistrate ought to do no ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 75 more for the true Church than a false one, is some- thing worse than an act of flagrant injustice. The Westminster Confession of Faith embodies the very same principle, in chap, xxiii., sec. 3 : — " The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and Sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; yet he hath authority^ and it is his duty^ to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church; that the truth of God be kept pure and entire ; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all cor- ruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled^ administered, and observed." Dr Cunningham says — " The true, real, and intended import of the passage is just to declare the great fundamental principle of national establishments of religion, viz., that the civil magistrate is bound to exercise his lawful authority in civil things, with a view to the promotion of the interests of religion and the welfare of the Church of Christ, and for the purpose of securing these great results."* This doctrine was also faithfully held by the fathers of the Secession, as it is still by their genuine descendants, however it may be treated by their degenerate offspring. And the men who charge this doctrine, and the Confession of Faith which embodies it, with favouring persecution for * " Discussions on Church Principles," p. 222, 76 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. conscience' sake, take upon themselves a very grave responsibility. They do nothing less than pro- nounce a sentence of condemnation against the creed of every Reformed Church, against their own progenitors, and against all the most godly, intelligent, and strenuous defenders of the rights of conscience and the true liberties of men, both civil and religious, that this world ever saw. One would.have thought that men would have trembled before adopting principles which necessitate the assumption of such an attitude toward the very men to whom, under God, we owe all those civil and religious rights and privileges which so honourably distinguish us among the nations. It is possible they did tremble, before propagating principles which go to overthow the con- stitution under whose shelter it is that they enjoy the liberty of thought and action which they so recklessly and sinfully abuse. The con- sequences, at least, were fully present to the minds of those who first introduced them into the Secession Church. For we find Dr Lawson, of Selkirk, in his ^' Considerations on the Overture " respecting the adoption of Voluntary principles by the Synod, at p. 47, saying, among other strange things, '^ The truth of the matter seems to be this : the greater part of us detest compulsion in matters of religion, and have been extremely unwilling to ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 77 believe that there is anything in our venerable Standards which gives the least countenance to it. Perhaps we have too obstinately shut our eyes to the light from an excess of veneration for our fathers [no one will charge the Christian "Volun- taries with that!] or an unwillingness to cut ourselves off from every body of Presbyterians in the kingdom.'^'' In adopting the principles of Christian Voluntary- ism they deliberately and of purpose separated themselves from every Presbyterian Church. As to their separating themselves from the fathers of the Secession, in the law papers in the Perth case, presented to the House of Lords after the adoption of Voluntary principles, they say, ^' Mr Erskine and his adherents were Presbyterians of the six- teenth century, rigid smd intolerant; " and we find it stated thus, in the Reply of the Dissenters to Dr Candlish's Friendly Address in 1841, p. 8 : — ^^As to our fathers of the Secession," they say, ^'whom you as well as we hold in honour, it is true they did not leave the Church because it was established and endowed; they did not become Seceders that they might be Voluntaries. . . . We dare not now return to the views of 1732." It is well to know the exact position which the defenders of the rights of conscience as against the Establishment principle occupy. It is one of isolation^ we may say, from Christendom. This of 78 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. itself does not condemn them, "by any means, but it demands that their principles be not hastily andwith- out most deliberate consideration adopted by any. The authors of the manifesto maintain that the Confession of Faith is inconsistent with itself, because it declares in chapter xxiii. that the magis- trate '^ hath authority, and it is his duty to take order . . . that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed," &c., while in chapter xx. it asserts that " God alone is Lord of the conscience." If so, we can only say it is very unaccountable. It has often been said, by way of apology for the com- pilers of the Confession — as if they required it ! — that the principles of toleration were not so well understood in those days as now. But we never before heard it alleged that that Assembly of great and good men were wanting in logical power and discrimination. This certainly was not a prevailing defect among theologians of that period. This discovery, however, has been made by a Committee of the United Presbyterian Church in this nineteenth century! And they judge it for the interests of truth, and for the good of Scot- land, that it should be made known that the Confession of Faith asserts in the 20th chapter what it contradicts in the 23rd ! Before launching forth this charge of inconsistency against the Con- fession, it might have been more prudent for the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 79 Kew Lights of this century to have suspected their own judgments, and so avoided exposing them- selves to the reproach of being incapable of distin- guishing things that differ, or of fathering their misconceptions upon others. It never seems to have occurred to the authors of the manifesto that the alleged inconsistency is not in the Confession with itself, but in their own views of the rights of conscience with those of the Westminster divines. For whereas these men maintained that God, as Lord of the conscience, requires of magistrates, in seeking the good of the community, to use their authority in advancing the welfare of the Church, and in suppressing all blasphemy and heresy that in any way endanger the just order of society; they (the authors of this document) hold that the exercise of such authority on the part of the magistrate is a violation of the rights of conscience. It will not do for them to father their ideas of the rights of conscience upon the compilers of the Con- fession, and then charge the Confession with incon- sistency, because they cannot reconcile their own ideas with what is stated about the power of the civil magistrate in said Confession. They were bound in all honesty, if they were to subject one portion of the Confession to the test of another portion, to have done it fairly ; and to have shown, if they could, that the views expressed in the 4th section of the 80 ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. 20tli chapter, regarding the limits which God, as the Lord of conscieuce, has set to its rights and liberty, are inconsistent with the power ascribed to the civil magistrate in the 23rd chapter. Certainly, whatever men may think of the doctrine announced in the chapter on " Liberty of Con- science," regarding the right of the magistrate to proceed against those who, on pretence of Christian liberty, publish opinions contrary to the light of nature, &c., there is no man, or body of men, who can lay any claim to reason or conscience, entitled to say that the doctrine that '' God alone is Lord of the conscience," as maintained in the Confession, is inconsistent with the power assigned to the civil magistrate in the 23rd chapter. The authors of the manifesto cannot possibly urge the plea of ignorance in extenuation of the charge of gross unfairness to which they have laid themselves open. In dealing with the rights of conscience, as affected by the Establishment principle, it is with the power of the civil magistrate in matters of religion, as set forth in chap, xx., sec. 4, of the Confession, that we have chiefly to do. It is commonly alleged that the Confession in this section teaches persecution, by declaring that parties " may be called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the Church, and by the power of the civil magistrate," '^for publishing ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 81 siicli opinions as are contrary to tlie liglit of nature, or to the known principles of Christianity." " It is not the design of this paragraph," says Dr M'Crie, " to state the objects of Church censure or civil prosecution : its proper and professed object is to interpose a check on the abuse of liberty of conscience^ as operating to the prejudice of just and lawful authority." The Rev. Dr Goold, however, came two years ago to be so clearly convinced that the position laid down in these words is " obviously at variance with the rights of conscience and the law of Christ," that, in the paroxysm of his grief, he falls down as a Reformed Presbyterian, and cries, " Am I asking too much if I humble myself at the bar of Scottish Presbyterianism, and implore protec- tion against the outrage on conscience which would require an unqualified subscription" * to these clauses ? Who asks him to subscribe these clauses, or any other clauses, unless he believes them ? He suggests, as what would meet his conscience, that the last words, " by the power of the civil magis- trate," be omitted. We presume he has amended his subscription in some way since the date referred to, and saved his conscience. But we can only say that, however his conscience might be relieved by the proposed omission, it would be at the expense - ♦ Letter in Daily Review, 1st Nov. 1870. 82 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. of the Confession, of the truth, and of the con- sciences of all sound and intelligent Calvinistic theologians. Dr Goold seems to think of no one's conscience but his own ; and even as regards it, his concern seems to be to accommodate the truth to it, rather than to have it enlightened by the truth. Such and such a change would meet his conscience. This is very good, but the question is, can truth be brought down to that level, and still remain truth? It must be obvious to every intelligent reader of the section, that there are some of the opinions and practices spoken of, which can only be effectually dealt with by the power of the civil magistrate, as the parties maintaining them are not likely to be amenable to Church censure; and there are others which fall to be dealt with specially by the Church. And further, that it is only as any or all of the offences fall under the jurisdiction of Church or State jointly or separately that the}^ can be taken cognisance of by both or either. What may be a proper object of Church censure may not be a proper object of civil pains, and vice versa, or it may be a proper object for both. " To render an action," says Dr M^Crie, '^ the proper object of magistratical pun- ishment, it is not enough that it be contrary to the law of God, whether natural or revealed ; it must in some way or another strike against the public ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 83 good of society y It is not with, sinful actions as such, but as criminal^ that the magistrate takes to do with them. On the other hand, it is not with actions as violations of the law of the land, but as scandalous^ that the Church takes to do with them. According, therefore, as an action is a scandal or a crime, or both, so does it fall under the special cognisance of Church or State, or both. This doctrine is expressed in the ^^ Act and Testi- mony of the Reformed Presbyterian Church," p. 160, in the following language : — "All who vent or main- tain tenets or opinions contrary to the established principles of Christianity, whether in the matter of doctrine, divine worship, or practice of life, . . . upon proper conviction, ought to be proceeded against by inflicting ecclesiastical censures, or civil pains, in a way agreeable to the divine determina- tion in the "Word concerning such offences." So far as we are aware, this is still the received doctrine and testimony of the Reformed Presbyterian Church ; and how that should be a persecuting doctrine in the Confession of Faith, which is perfectly con- sistent with the rights of conscience in the Testi- mony of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, it is for Dr Goold and not for us to show. We receive this testimony as an additional one in favour of the doctrine of the Confession that the magistrate has a compulsive power about matters of religion, F 84 ESTABLISHSIENTS OF RELIGION. which may and ought to be put forth in vindicating the just order of society, and restraining the abuse of liberty of conscience. In other words, the Establishment principle, as suck, does not violate the rights of conscience, or lead to persecution, since there are various actions of men about religion which ought to be restrained and punished by the power of the civil magistrate. ^^ There is a wide and essential distinction," says Dr M^Crie, '' between t/ie exercise of a compulsive power about religion and compulsion in religion. Yet there are masters in Israel who can magisterially decide this controversy without having learned its first principles, or attending to the most necessary dis- tinctions on the subject ! " * Let us listen to the grand outrage which, accord- ing to the authors of this manifesto, is committed on the rights of conscience by the State Church system. It is the old cry, ^'Legalised robbery!" ^' Theft for religious purposes!" It compels ^^ a citizen to part with his money, time, or labour, for alleged sacred purposes." It would appear to be doubtful whether the purposes are sacred! They do not say anything about men being compelled to be religious by Act of Parliament. We presume, therefore, that our modern Voluntaries have given this up as indefensible nonsense, and it is not our purpose to deal with the ravings of the past. * "Statemeut," &c„ p. 150. ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. " 85 The gravamen of the charge against the State Church system is still as formerly — it violates the conscience through the pocket. This, of course, is a charge of spoliation and robbery ! The State Church system sanctions and requires oppression and robbery for burnt-offering ! There never was any ground for this charge as regards the Esta- blished Church of Scotland (and therefore it does not necessarily attach to the system), for, instead of being supported at the expense of the nation, the nation has enriched itself at her expense. Had she got her own, things would have been very different this day. And certainly it is a little too much to attempt to support a charge of persecution against a system, when the only shadow of a shade of ground there ever was on which to rest it vanished with the abolition of the Annuity-tax. Since then at least the religious impost has been so mixed up with civil charges as to become disguised, though, as the manifesto would say, ^' ill disguised com- pulsion and circuitous theft for religious purposes." And we can only now, at all events, account for the complaint against the State Church system, as wounding the consciences of Dissenters through their pockets^ on the understanding that they have pocketed their conscience by meekly submitting to the ^'circuitous theft for religious purposes." This might suffice as a reply to this groundless 86 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. allegation. And as they bring forward no other in support of the charge against the system as violating the rights of conscience, it must fall to the ground. But we shall, in a sentence, indicate how entirely fallacious and destructive of society this style of so-called argument is. We quite agree with the authors of the manifesto that '^ there is no differ- ence between compelling a man to part with his money and compelling him to part with his time and labour for . . . sacred purposes." And, therefore, out of their own mouths they are con- demned. For the magistrate either has or he has not the right, as the minister of ^Hhe Lord of the Sabbath," consulting for the good of the people, to make laws for preventing the profanation, and promoting the observance and sanctification of the Sabbath. If he has not, then the words in the famous " Articles of Agreement " between the United Presbyterian and Free Churches — in which it is said, the magistrate, " in his administration, is to respect its (the Sabbath's) sacred character," and to " legislate in the matter of its outward observance" — are, in so far as the former are concerned, a mere juggle and wicked deception, which remind one of the important omission which Satan made when he quoted Scripture, and pro- fessed to stand by it. If he has, then, the authors ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 87 of tlie manifesto being witnesses, the magistrate has an equal right to compel a man to part with his money and labour as with a seventh part of his time for religious purposes. There is no pos- sibility of evading this conclusion by the discredit- able device of attempting to separate between the secular and religious ends of the Sabbath. This has been unanswerably disposed of by Dr Brown in his work on Establishments. The Sabbath is a part of the moral law ; and if the magistrate is not entitled to enforce the outward observance of the moral law, he has as good as no moral duty to dis- charge ; and if he has, then, as we have seen, he has the right to enforce things which must more or less affect the consciences of his subject, and, in this matter of the Sabbath affect them in the way of compelling men to part with their time, which is the same as their money. Is this no violation of the rights of conscience, according to the authors of the manifesto ? The fact is, as has been said, that '' the Sabbath cannot be consistently pleaded for as contributing to promote the secular interests of society, except on the principle that the observance of religious ordinances does so." And hence, in admitting that the magis- trate may lawfully enforce the Sabbath law for the secular good of society, it is admitted that a divine institution, which is specially designed for the 88 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. religious and spiritual good of men, may, neverthe- less, be lawfully enforced by the civil magistrate, because of its important iiijiucnce on the outward good of society, even though it does involve the surrender of time and money on the part of the subject. And in conceding this, there is no deny- ing the right and duty of the magistrate to give of the national resources, which are just the money and labour of the people, for promoting the cause of religion, this being the most effectual means of promoting the public good of society. As Dr M^Crie says, " By taking religion under the pro- tection of law, giving public and decided coun- tenance to its institutions, and by a National Establishment, which provides for the religious instruction of her subjects, magistrates employ means the best adapted for promoting and reform- ing national evils, and which conduce to lessen the necessity for the execution of penal and sanguinary laws.'"^ Dr C. J. Brown says — "The endowment of the Church, instead of being preju- dicial to the State, is so necessary to its welfare that the State is bound to endow her for the sake of its oivn interests. . . . So far are States from being bound to give them- selves no concern about the religion of their people, they are on the contrary bound, as they would avoid the commission of national suicide, to use every means within their reach for promoting that religion, which is virtue's only solid basis. . . . I cannot help adding that if, as we formerly saw, *" Statement," &c., p. 117. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 89 the State would commit a violation of duty in not endowing the Church, for the sake of the Church herself, . , , that violation of duty must rise to an absolute contem'pt of the Church and of her God, since we have seen that, instead of being pre- judicial to the interests of the State, the endowment is a matter of positive duty with a view to these very interests." * Again — " The subject of the magistrate's obli- gation to endow the Church with a view to the temporal good of his people affords an illustration, which I cannot help noticing, of the impossibility of separating the Church from the State, without setting their respective claims in hostility to each other. ^^'\ No one will deny the truth and justice of the position laid down in these extracts as to the im- portance of religion to the nation. No one but Voluji- taries will deny the justice of the general conclusion ; and in their denying it, they isolate themselves, not only from the Presbyterian Churches in the country, but from all reasonable men. However, therefore the power of the State may be imprudently exerted in behalf of the truth, or flagrantly abused in countenancing and supporting error, there is no- thing in the Establishment principle or the State Church system of itself involving persecution, or any violation of the rights of conscience. * " Lectures on Church Establishments," Lect. iv., pp. 12, 13, 17, Edinburgh, 1835. t" Church Establishments Defended," p. 62." VI. SCRIPTURE RULES AND EXAMPLES. Secondly^ The State Churcli system is opj^osed to the special rules and examples of Scripture. This is the second method by which it is attempted to prove that the system is nnscriptural. It was attempted "by applying to it the test of the general principles of Scripture — first, it invades the divine prerogative ; and secondly, it violates the rights of conscience. In disposing of these we have shown that it is not the Establishment principle, but the Christian Volun- taryism of the authors of the manifesto that is proved to be nnscriptural when brought to these tests. And after what we have done in the way of demonstrating that the advancement of religion in a country does fall within the proper sphere of the magistrate, as an acknowledgment of the divine prerogative, and as the most effectual means of promoting the public good of society, and that the system which denies this saps the founda- tions of all national and family religion, and of all public religious worship, we feel as if to proceed with the Scripture argument were almost a virtual acknowledgment that we had failed in doing this. ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. 91 The very idea of such a system — a system which Dr Kobert Buchanan, of Glasgow, declares to be a device of the great enemy — being sanctioned by the Word of God is repugnant to the mind. But it may be said, on the other hand, that the testimony of Scripture is so clearly against the State Church system and in favour of Christian Voluntaryism, that the representations of Dr Buchanan cannot possibly be true. Let us then consider their Scripture proof. They begin with the Old Testament, which is a portion of the Word in which Voluntaryism has always found difficulty in breathing. The whole atmosphere of the Old Testament, so to speak, is so impregnated with the element of national responsibility or national obligation to serve God and advance His Kingdom, that we should not have been at all surprised, had the authors of the manifesto allowed the old attempts, to evade the force of the argument drawn from it in favour of the Establishment principle, to stand for what they were worth, and passed on at once to the New Testament. However, they have judged otherwise, and we shall see how far they have pro- fited by the light which was shed upon the subject more than thirty years ago. The State Church system is contrary to Old Testament institutions. This is the thing which the authors of the manifesto profess to prove. And in 92 ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. order, we presume, to prepare men the Letter to see and comprehend their remarkable reasoning, they begin by throwing dust in their eyes, and insulting their understandings, by asserting — " In Old Testament institutions we look in vain for the features of civil enactment, support, or control of religion," of course, as contended for by the advocates of the Establishment principle. The power of assertion here is so great that we ac- knowledge being fairly staggered by it. There is nothing like putting on a bold front when about to meet a formidable difficulty ; and certainly this bold assertion almost disarms opposition. Do the men who hazard it really believe it? Not a trace of the Establishment principle in Old Testament institutions ! The assertion is simply and supremely ridiculous, or, we should rather say, absolutely and notoriously without foundation. As an offset to this extraordinary assertion, we give the following quotation from a writer before whose trenchant arguments and scorching replies the Voluntaries of former days quailed. "We refer to the late Dr Andrew Thomson. "The Government," he says, "of the nation of Israel, the only nation for which Jehovah condescends immediately to legislate, recognised and established that particular form of supernatural religion which, at that time, God was pleased to reveal. When God at first set up His ordinances among Israel as a nation, He not only employed Aaron the priest, but Moses the king of Jeshurun ; and during the subsequent ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 93 history of that people, we find the civil and ecclesiastical authorities co-operating in the maintenance and reformation of religion. David and Abiather — Solomon and Zadok — Hezekiah and Azariah — Zerubbabel and Joshua — king and priest go hand in hand. And when they were come under the dominion of a foreign power, the Lord stirred up the Persian monarchs to favour the cause of His people, and not merely to allow them a negative toleration, but to give them legal countenance by public edicts, and also to grant them pecuniary assistance for the erection of the house of God, and for the maintenance of His worship " {Christian Instructor^ 1830, p. 595). '^Primitive and patriarchal times yield no trace of ity Whether the fact of Abraham presenting tithes to Melchisedec, to which allusion is made, affords a solid and conclusive argument in favour of Establishments or not, we are not careful to answer. It certainly points in that direction, and it gives no countenance whatever to the principle which declares it to be a sin for the nation to give of its resources for the kingdom of Christ. The argu- ment from patriarchal times, which would have had relevancy in this case, could it have been furnished, would have been one drawn from the conduct of Abraham towards those under him. But this the authors of the manifesto knew to be wholly against them, and therefore they conveniently omit all allusion to it. For, if there is one thing more clearly revealed than another, it is that Abraham, as king and head of his household, felt and acknowledged the obligation lying upon him 94 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. authoritatively to aim at the promotion of the good both temporal and spiritual of those under his government and control. So that patriarchal times are in favour of the State Church system and against Voluntaryism. '^ Heathen monarchs proclaiming fasts, and decreeing religion under penalties [as the mani- festo terms it], are not approved ... as models of zeal with knowledge." There is just as good ground for making such an assertion as there is for maintaining that no such things ever took place. Was the preservation of Nineveh not an indication of the divine approval of the conduct of the King in proclaiming a fast ? To speak of the mercy of God having been extended to the king and his people '^ on their personal repentance j'^'' as is done in the manifesto, would, in the lips of any other than a Voluntary, have been nothing short of scoffing at the truth. Was the conduct of Artaxerxes not approved of God, when he gave commandment about building the house of the Lord, or in the choice language of the manifesto, " decreed religion under penalties," saying, '' What- soever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be diligently done for the house of the God of heaven ; for why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons ? . . . And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGIOISr. 95 law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment?" Was this conduct not approved ? Let the words of Ezra decide, '^Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, rchich hath put such a thing as this in the king's hearty to beautify the house of the Lord which is at Jerusalem" (Ezra vii. 23, 26, 27) In preaching before the House of Commons from Ezra vii. 23, in Dec. 1643, Alex. Henderson says, ^' This King commandeth not that his will be done, but what God hath commanded. Neither King nor Parliament can command otherwise. Civil powers have great authority^ not only in things civil, but in matters of religion^ and they sin against God if they use not the authority which God has put into their hands for the good of religion. . . . . Eeligion expecteth from them the civil sanction that the worship of God, and the whole- some constitutions of the Church, about religion, be confirmed and settled by their laws" (pp. 20, 21). We can confidently appeal to every candid reader whether these instances of the conduct of heathen monarchs about religion and the Church were not approved of God, and whether they do not afford divine warrant and sanction for the Establishment principle — viz., that magistrates ought, for the honour of God, and the good of their realm, to 96 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. care about tlie moral and religious interests of their people, by legislating on tlieir behalf. No wonder, then, the authors of the manifesto so summarily pass them over. But it says little for Christian Voluntaryism that a company of Chris- tian ministers should feel themselves required, in its suj^port, to speak so contemptuously of these rulers, '^ as not approved for their threats and their injunctions as models of zeal with knowledge." The next example mentioned is the Jewish Church. The Church under the Jewish dispensation was, by divine direction, rendered a chief object of the magistrate's care. It was as truly a Church of Christ as the Church under the gospel — as truly an independent spiritual kingdom, distinct from, though in the most friendly alliance with, the State. Then, as now. Church and State had each its distinct rulers, courts, laws, subjects, and penalties. There was then, as matter of fact which no one can deny, a relation subsisting between the Jewish Church and State, involving co-ordinate jurisdiction and mutual obligations, and this was constituted by God. And this fact, that an Establishment of the true religion had, once, for fifteen hundred years, the sanc- tion of divine approbation, proves, if it proves anything, that, in its own nature, such an Esta- blishment is neither sinful nor unjust. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 97 " In it," the Israelitish commonwealth (says Dr M'Crie), " we have the example of a system of legislation adcqjted to the state of a people iclio were favoured icith the true religion. Everythiog in it was subordinated to this important concern. Tlie laws expressly recognised religion, 'provided for the main- tenance of its ordinances, and the rulers were taken solemnly bound to support them in their station. Thus, those principles which are founded in the light of nature, and by which all nations are obligated to regulate themselves in framing their constitution and conducting their administrations so as to promote the honour of God, and to accord with, secure, and advance religion, the highest of all their interests, were recognised and sanctioned by Jehovah himself, and applied to the true religion revealed from heaven. In this respect the Jeioish constitution is exemplary to Christian nations.^'* Jewish rulers were expressly commanded by the Lord to afford countenance and support to His Church and cause. It is required of Voluntaries, if they would free themselves from the charge of resisting the will of God, to demonstrate what there was, if anything J about the Jewish constitution to prevent its being an example to Christian nations ; or when and where and how rulers under the gos- pel dispensation have been relieved from all obli- gation to promote the cause and kingdom of Jesus Christ ? We shall hear what the authors of this manifesto have to say in answer to these questions. They begin by saying, '' The Jewish Church was . . .a pure theocracy or Church State, in which God was all." Well, it may be so called; and we take for granted that they will agree with *" Statement," &c., p. 128. 98 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. US in maintaining that the gospel Church may no less truly be characterised as a theocracy, in the sense of having a Divine King and Head, who has given her a constitution, laws, government, and discipline, over which He exercises a peculiar pro- vidence. Christ says, ^^ My kingdom is not of this world." "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Anything beyond these, which pertained to the Jewish Church — as, for example, the minute and specific manner in which its whole constitution, laws, and ordinances were prescribed by God — will not warrant us to designate it a theocracy in contradistinction from the Church under the New Testament dispensation. Of course, the substantial identity between the Jewish and the Christian Church is not the question in dispute, though it is the one really raised in the sentence quoted. It is possible that the authors of the manifesto meant to say, that the Jews lived under a theocracy^ as it seems to be their design to prove that the pecu- liarity of the constitution under which the Jews lived renders it impossible for us to found upon it an argument in favour of Establishments. We shall refer to this immediately. Meanwhile, this is not what they do state in the opening clause ; and all they can expect reasonable men, when dealing with the question of Church and State connection, to deduce from their opening state- ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 99 ment, is, that if there was nothing in the fact of its being a theocracy to prevent the Jewish Church from being allied with the State, there can be nothing in the character of the New Testament Church, in itself considered, to prevent its forming a similar alliance. The analogy is all against Voluntaryism, and in favour of the Establishment principle. We have, however, more to say upon this first clause, especially when taken in connection with that which immediately follows, which is to the following effect — ^^ So far from being a civil Establishment of religion, it (the Jewish Church) was wholly a divine establishment of religion and civil life, set up by infallible Deity, who guided its administration," &c. This is just that blending of the civil and sacred in the Jewish Church and commonwealth for which Erastians pleaded. Cole- man, their great champion, says — '' I am sure the best reformed Church that ever was — I mean the Church of Israel — went this way, wliich had no distinction of Church government and civil govern- ment." Thus do Voluntaries — modern, Christian Voluntaries — find it necessary to entrench them- selves in the stronghold of Erastianism, in order to destroy the argument for Establishments of religion, which is founded on the Old Testament Scriptures. And yet these men, who thus blend the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions among the 6 100 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. Jews, and so lay a foundation for an Erastian claim, are the very men who talk about the inde- pendence of the New Testament Church, and the great sin involved in State-Churchism, because of its blending the civil with the sacred. They . would so blend the jurisdictions of Church and State under the Jewish economy as to destroy utterly the distinguishing characteristics of each, in order that they may shut us out from a power- ful and unanswerable argument in favour of what they term the sinful blending of the civil and sacred, which is involved in that independent union between Church and State, in which their distinc- tive jurisdictions are preserved, for which we contend. This famous Erastian dictum of the United Presbyterian Church, that ^^ the Jewish Church was wholly a divine establishment of religion and civil Ufe^'' does not affect our argu- ment in behalf of Establishments, in so far as it rests on the state of things among the Jews, as it can easily be demonstrated to be utterly baseless and grossly unscriptural; but it is well for them to know that, in adopting this dictum, they at least cannot appeal to the Jewish Church in support of their position against Establishments, as blending the civil and the sacred. Having exposed and disarmed the authors of the manifesto, and turned their famous weapon ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION*. 101 against themselves, it remains for us to show how far the argument in favour of Establishments of religion, based on the state of things among the Jews, is affected by the fact that they lived under a theocracy. A theocracy implies two things — a system of laws immediately given to a people from heaven, and the exercise of a peculiar providence in supporting and sanctioning that system by con- ferring national mercies, and inflicting national judgments, often in an immediate and extra- ordinary way. The Jews lived under such a system, and this must, of course, be taken into account when referring to them as examples for our imitation, but it by no means prevents us from appealing to them as such. ''Although," says Dr Owen, "the institutions and examples of the Old Testament of the duty of the magistrate in the things and about the worship of God, are not in their whole latitude and extent to be drawn into rules that should be obligatory on all magistrates now, under the dispensation of the gospel, yet, doubtless there is something in those institutions which, being unclothed of their judicial form, is still binding, to all in the like kind, as to some analogy and proportion. Subtract from these administrations what was proper to, and lies upon the account of the nation and Church of the Jews, and what remains upon the general notion of a church and nation must he everlastingly binding. And this amounts thus far at least, that judges, magistrates, and rulers . . . are to take care that the gosjpel Church may, in all its concernments as such, be supported and promoted, and the truth propagated wherewith they are entrusted." * * " Sermon on Dan. vii. 15, 16," pp. 52, 53. 102 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. If we are to reirard tlie Jewish Church and nation as exemplary to us at all, their example manifestly goes thus far, that it is the duty of civil rulers, into whose dominions the true religion has been introduced, legally to recognise and further the Church. Being shrewd enough to perceive this, the authors of the manifesto take up the old ground, that being a theocracy, they cannot in any respect be exemplary to rulers under the Christian dispensation. They, of course, design to limit their remark to the relation which the rulers of the Jews sustained towards religion and the Church. But if their principle of interpretation is worth anything, they must go through with it. They must fairly face the consequences of this theory of theirs. The Jewish rulers lived under a theocracy, and there- fore they cannot be held up as examples to rulers in Christian nations. Such is their position ! But the Jewish people lived under the same theo- cracy, and therefore they cannot be examples to us as individuals, or in any relationship in life. Such is the consequence of that position. We are thus precluded from referring to the penitence of David, as an example for us individually, as much as to his acts for the advancement of the kingdom of God, as an example for Christian princes. If the fact that God spake to David, so that he could preface all his royal mandates with, ^'Thus ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 103 saith the Lord," takes them out of the category of examples for Christian princes, then the fact that, when he became truly penitent, he had a prophet at his ear (which was the distinguishing features of the reigns of Hezekiah, Josiah, and other kings, according to the manifesto), saying, ''Thou art the man," equally takes his penitence out of the cate- gory of examples for us. In short, if this principle is admitted, it virtually sets aside the whole Old Testament, and a great part of the New, as a rule of faith and practice for man. How, for instance, on such a principle as this, can Christ the God-man be set forth as an example for His people? or how can the apostles, who were immediately taught by Him and inspired, be ensamples to Christian ministers ? or how can any of those who, were instructed, either by Christ himself, or His inspired messengers, be examples for us ? But whatever may be the opinion of Christian Voluntaries, the fact that God legislated for the Jewish nation by His own mouth, and carried His laws into execution in the way both of rewarding and punishing with His own hand, did not prevent the apostle improving the dealings of God toward Israel for the encourage- ment and warning of Christians, saying, " ISTow all these things happened unto them for ensamples," &c. (1 Cor. X. 6-11). Let us, however, suppose a Christian minister, ] 04 ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. after the example of Paul, in warning this nation of her sin and danger, and calling her to repent- ance, were to enforce his exhortations by referring to the providence of God in bestowing national prosperity on Israel when they observed His judg- ments and walked in His ways, and in visitiug them with national calamities when they turned aside from Him and followed their own sinful de- vices — the authors of this manifesto, or some minister of the United Presbyterian Church, would in such a case withstand him to the face, and remind him that the providential dealings of God toward Israel belonged to the theocracy, and there- fore ought not to be referred to as encouragements to righteousness or dissuasives from sin, when we are dealing with another nation about such thiugs. VII. " OLD TESTAMENT rNSTITUTIONS.'* We have further to remark on this subject, that, as presented in the manifesto, it necessarily involves the setting aside of the Old Testament as a rule of faith and practice for us. This, indeed, is the very- position taken up by Mr Lawson, when, in inaugu- rating Voluntaryism in the end of last century, he says, "No terms of communion in the Christian Church ought to depend on any other authority but that of the New Testament." * The principle now advocated by Christian Voluntaries goes even further, for it virtually involves the rejection of all written revelation, on the ground that no one can certainly expound or declare its principles and precepts, so that the}^ shall be authoritatively binding on the conscience as the Word of God. ^* God," they say, " spake by Moses and David and others, but we look in vain for proof that He spake by Constantine," &c. It will surely be allowed by the authors of the manifesto that if * "Considerations on the Overture, &c.," by Rev. George Lawson, Selkirk, 1797, p. C9. 106 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. God was to make useof liumau agency in repealing His will to men, He must have communicated it, in the first instance, in a supernatural way, to those whom He was to employ for that purpose. Unless therefore it is maintained that what God spake by Moses and David was designed exclusively for themselves and those immediately addressed by them, the whole argument is impertinent and beside the question. If the utterances of Moses and David were only for themselves and their people, then they cannot be authoritatively binding upon us. And in that case the law of the ten commandments and the greater portion of the book of Psalms cease to be of divine revelation to us. But if they were designed for others than them- selves and their people, they must manifestly be intended for all who may be similarly circum- stanced. So that, should Constantine or any other ruler, having heard the word of the Lord by Moses and David, take steps to have it made known among his people, as he would be bound to do, this certainly w^ould not make it lose any of its divine and binding authority. It did not require that the Lord should actually speak anew by Con- stantine to render the words which He spoke by Moses and David binding upon the conscience. It was not the mere circumstance of their having been spoken by Moses and David that gave their ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 107 words authoritative power over the conscience, and neither could the circumstances of these same words being spoken by Constantine or any other, of itself, weaken that authority and power. If God has so spoken by Moses and David and others that we in the use of ordinary means may, through His blessing, attain to a knowledge of His will through their writings, then it will not do to draw the distinction between what God actually spoke by His servants, and what He has recorded through their instrumentality for our instruction in the written word, as though the one had a binding authority entirely different from the other. This is what the authors of the manifesto do, and do in such a way as virtually to set aside the Scriptures as an infallible rule of faith and practice. They say — '^ Hezekiah, Josiah, and other kings /iad prophets at their ears ; but this will not be alleged of the Jameses, . . . or of the Parlia- ments, . . . that ratified the Confession and Catechisms. Men, in whatever station, are now referred for rules and principles to a completed Scripture, without power to enforce on others the interpretations they adopt.'' This is quite the United Presbyterian free-and-easy creed, which leaves every man at perfect liberty to adopt what- ever principles, and follow whatever rules and practices he may judge accordant with Scripture, 108 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. without control or restraint, as no man, according to them, *' in whatever station," has any power to enforce his interpretation of Scripture as of divine and binding authority. Every man's principles and rules of action, according to this doctrine, are as good as those of his neighbours, and have as good a claim to be regarded as scrip- tural. No man has any right now, according to this Voluntary doctrine, to insist upon any principle or rule of action as of divine authority, seeing he has not a living prophet at his ear. We are referred, they tell us, ^Ho a completed Scripture " — in other words, we have all the prophets and apostles speaking in our ears ; but somehow or other they have expressed themselves, in the opinion of Voluntaries, very unintelligibly in writing, or there must be some extraordinary defect about us, seeing that one prophet, speaking in the ear of Hezekiah, made him quite certain as to what was the mind of God, so that he could enforce it as of divine authority ; whereas, with the writings of all the prophets in our hands, we, according to the Christian Voluntaries, are not able to pronounce decisively regarding any prin- ciple or rule of action that it is part of the revealed will of God, which we would be entitled and called upon to enforce, as such, in a suitable way upon our fellowmen. Hezekiah, in consulting for the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 109 glory of God and the good of his people, according to the doctrine of the manifesto, had power to enforce the law of the Sabbath, for example, because he had the prophet Isaiah sounding in his ears these words, " If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, ... I will cause thee to ride on the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father." But no modern sovereign who may read these words in the book of the prophet would, according to the new doctrine, be warranted in enforcing this law, because it would only at the best be a human interpretation of it, and he could not be certain that it was the very mind of God. For any man now, with nothing but the written word, or ^^a completed Scripture," in his hands, to say regard- ing any doctrine or rule of action, '-^ Thus saith the Lord," were an act of daring presumption and impiety, as it were to give forth his own inter- pretation as the word of God ! So say Christian Voluntaries. If, then, " there is nothing more truly impious " than for rulers now, who have no prophet at their ear (i,e.^ no infallible interpreter or interpretation of the Scriptures), to give the civil sanction to any creed, as in accordance with the revealed will of God, or to enforce any commandment as of divine autho- 110 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. rity, it must be equally impious for the Church or for parents to do this, who have no other avail- able means for discovering what is the very truth of God than those which are within the reach of the magistrate. For the Church that holds the doctrine contained in this manifesto to think to exercise discipline upon a man who denies the divinity of Jesus Christ or the personality of the Holy Ghost, were to be guilty of the impiety, ac- cording to it, of attempting to enforce her inter- pretation of the Scriptures as the truth of God, when she lays claim to no right of infallible interpretation. It must be equally impious for parents to press upon the consciences and hearts of their children, as the truth of God, the interpre- tation of Scripture Avhich they have adopted. This most mischievous doctrine overthrows the very foundation on which Protestantism rests — the Scripture as the only and all-sufficient rule of faith and practice ; while it shuts up to the Popish doctrine, — the necessity for an infallible interpreter. Voluntaryism is thus more cruel than Popery ; for when the latter denies the right of private inter- pretation, it professes to provide its votaries with an infallible interpreter ; whereas Voluntaryism leaves its followers to wander in a record which is, according to them, of doubtful and uncertain ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. Ill interpretation, and declares itself unable to lielp them. The following passage, from the sermon of Dr M^Farlane at the opening of the Assembly in 1835, is deserving of serious consideration : — " Many in the present day ask, with strong semblance of liberaHty, Who dare affirm that he has certainly discovered the truth in things spiritual, and that his fellow-men, who entertain different and opposite opinions from him, are cer- tainly in error ? The religious opinions of men professing to believe in Christianity are innumerable : and how can any man venture to affirm, amidst this infinite variety of human opinion, that he has undoubtedly discovered the true wisdom ? Every sect professes to appeal to the Scriptures as its autho- rity, but each one has its own interpretation; who shall decide which is false and which is true 1 To decide on such a sub- ject, and in such circumstances, is presumption — to act upon that decision is bigotry. " Call this by what name you please — it is infidelity : it amounts to this, that we have no revelation of the will of God — no sure word of prophecy — no light shining in a dark place — no divine teacher — no unerring instructor to guide our feet into the paths of peace. It is virtually to declare that since inspiration ceased, in other words, since the days of Christ and His apostles, the use and end of inspiration has ceased also, and that no man can know with any degree of assurance the character of the God whom it is his duty to worship, or the foundations of his hope, or even the precepts and principles of pure morality. The sentiments which I have described have the garb of liberality ; but they are nothing else than scepticism. If followed to their legitimate consequences, they must issue, not in infidelity merely, but iu atheism." — Pp. 14, 15. 112 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. The allusion to the part which the Jameses and Charleses, who had no "prophets at their ears," took in forwarding the work of Eeformation is considered by the authors of the manifesto as peculiarly happy and telling. It is singularly telling, but unhappily it tells against the intel- lects of the men who introduce it. It certainly says little for the reasoning power of the members of the Committee which issued this document, that they should attempt to found anything upon such an allusion, as though it were not palpable to the intellect of every man who is entitled to enjoy freedom from restraint, that in so far as these men did what was in itself for the advance- ment of religion, whatever might be their per- sonal character or aims, it cannot be condemned as not approved of God, because they had not prophets at their ears, any more than the conduct of Ahab and other kings of Israel must be approved, because they had prophets at their ears. "It is ridiculous," says Dr C. J. Brown, " to allege that the mere fact of God's eyijoining an action upon a ruler of Israel destroys its obligation as an example. On uhe contrary, the command rather aifords a presumption in favour of the obligation, although in each case the nature of the action must be con- sidered in order to determine the matter with accuracy." * ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 113 Strong and startling as were the statements made by Yoluntaries during the heat of the controversy, we question if anything ever fell from their lips which looks liker profanity and scornful contempt for the whole work of national reformation in this country than the following : — '^ It was certainly not enjoined by God," say the authors of the manifesto, " that the Confession of Faith or the Thirty-nine Articles should be made the law of the land, or that Henry VIII. should constitute himself head of the Church of England in room of the Pope ; or that James should establish Presbytery ; or [mark it] Charles II. swear the Solemn League and Cove- nant." These statements are not deserving of a serious reply ; they bear their own refutation in their face, while the spirit in which they are con- ceived will draw upon their authors the merited rebuke of every true Christian in the kingdom. The penning of such sentences is, in our judgment, discreditable alike to the head and heart of their authors, and there can be no reasonable doubt who enjoined them to put them on record. It is, then, in the fact that the care of the true religion was devolved by God upon the rulers of the Jews, that we find the example which all rulers favoured with divine revelation are required to * " Church Establishments Defended," p. 102. 114 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. follow. Nor is the force and obligation of this example set aside or destro3^ed by the circumstance that Jewish rulers were instructed directly by inspired prophets, any more than the words of these same prophets, in revealing God's mind and will to the people, have ceased to have a binding obligation upon us. '' Whatsoever things were written aforetime," says the apostle, " were written for our learning;" and again, '^ They are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." The revelation which we now have in our hands in the Holy Scriptures was no less directly and immediately given by God to the Jews as a people, than were the injunctions to their rulers to care for and further the interests of that religion thus miraculously revealed. And if the revelation which we now have in the Holy Scriptures is to be regarded as no less truly the voice of God to us, and therefore binding upon our consciences, than it was to those to whom it was immediately made known ; then surely the injunc- tions which God immediately laid upon Jewish rulers, to care for and promote that truth which He was at the very time, directly hy His prophets^ unfolding to the people, cannot be regarded as less truly the voice of God to all rulers who have the written Word in their hands. Well may we ask, with Dr C. J. Brown, '^ With what show of ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 115 reason can it be maintained that the care in general exercised by the rulers of Israel about religion belonged to the peculiarities of the theo- cracy?''^* But while we have thus exposed this theory of the authors of the manifesto regarding a theocracy, and shown its real nature and bearings, we must not be understood as conceding to them that there is any foundation for their argument, such as it is. The theocracy, strictly speaking, came to an end in the time of Samuel, when the people would have a king like other nations. Then they rejected God as their king ; and though He continued to deal with them as His chosen people, the seed of Abraham His friend, so that many things still remained in their government which were peculiar to them as such, and cannot therefore be considered as prece- dents for other nations ; yet God administered His government towards them after that, and on to the end of the dispensation, much in the same manner as He still does towards nations favoured with the light of divine revelation. In his commentary on 1 Sam. viii., where this event is referred to, Matthew Henry says— ^^ The government of Israel had hitherto been in a more peculiar manner than ever any government was a theocracy, a divine government; their judges had their call * " Church Establishments Defended," p. 100. H 116 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. and commission immediately from God ; the affixirs of their nation were under His peculiar con- duct. As the constitution, so the administration of the government was by, Thus saitk the Lord, lliis method they were weary of, though it was their honour and safety, above anything, so long as they kept in with God." After the time of Samuel, this special theocratic character of the Jewish Government came to an end. And the authors of the manifesto ought to have known this, if they did not, before issuing their famous document with its allusions to the Jewish theocracy, as though it continued to exist in the time of David, and the other kings and rulers after him, who were so eminently serviceable in promoting the cause of truth, just as it did in the time of Moses and the Judges. Their ignorance, if not wilful, is amazing. If they wish to found an argument ao'ainst Establishments upon the history of the kingly government of Israel, we would suggest, whether — as " God gave them a king in His ano"er" — they might not find it more to their purpose, as it would assuredly better define and illustrate the real tendency of their opinions, were they to adopt the Anabaptist notion, that all civil government is sinful, than continue to argue thus about a defunct theocracy. " Appointment of its 7ni7usters.''' The attempt ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 117 under tliis heading to set aside tlie scriptural argument for Establishment, derived from the Old Testament, is truly ridiculous, and is, to use the language of the old Dissenters, better answered by ^' a smile, than an argument." The following is their statement: — '^ In contrast with the system of appointment in State Churches, it is undoubted that the appointment of the ministers of religion lay exclusively with Grod.'^ Granting, '^ that the appointment of the ministers of religion " in the Jewish Church ^^ lay exclusively with God," this would only prove that neither the Establishment, nor any Church on earth now, can appeal to the Jewish Church as an example, in that particular. But as regards the appointment of ministers in an Established Church, it may be as truly popular as in any dissenting body. Patronage was not always the law of the land (any more than Church managers have ever been recognised in Scripture), and we trust the day is not far distant when this law, of which Voluntaries have made such a handle, and which has been fraught with so much injury to the Church, shall be abolished. "" Support of religion '^ is their next heading. This is a favourite topic with Voluntaries. The idea of State-money going for the instruction of the people, old or young, in the truths of God's holy Word, is what Voluntaries cannot tolerate ; though 118 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. they do not object to it going for instructing them in any other subject, not excepting the heathen mythology of Greece and Rome. And in setting themselves to dispose of the argument in favour of the national support of religion derived from the state of things v^hich prevailed among the Jews, they begin as usual with the bold assertion, " In regard to the support of religion, the contrast was no less striking." We have always been inclined to think (in our ignorance, no doubt) that, instead of a contrast, there was a very strong and marked resemblance between the national pro- vision for the support of religion among the Jews, and that which we advocate when contending for a National Establishment of religion. But we shall hear what Christian Voluntaries have to say. Of course their theory about the theocracy should cover this question of the national support, as well as that of the national recognition of the Church. According to this theory, the Jewish system of support of reli- gion can no more be exemplary to us than the Jewish system of State sanction. But, like all theories adopted to serve a purpose, it becomes conveniently pliable in the hands of the theorists. Because it was a theocracy^ the advocates of Establishments, ac- cording to the authors of the manifesto, can find no argument in favour of the scriptural warrant for a connection between Church and State from the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 119 example of the Jews ; but tJiough it is a theocracy, this does not prevent Voluntaries from founding, or attempting to found, an argument in favour of the Voluntary support of religion upon it. This theory of United Presbyterians is a very serviceable one, as it only operates in one direction. In other words, it is a purely Christian Voluntary theory. When it is found impossible to deny that the Establishment principle was sanctioned under the Jewish dispensation, in comes the Voluntary theory of a theocracy, and sweeps away the whole as an example for Christian rulers, and indeed the whole Old Testament as a rule of faith for us. And having done this, to its own satisfaction, it strangely enough endeavours to lay hold of the institutions — whose theocratical character silenced them as witnesses for religious Establishments — as faithful witnesses for Voluntaryism. Now, however Voluntaryism may have blinded the eyes, and strangely transformed the whole mental constitution of the authors of this mani- festo, they should have remembered that they are living amongst reasonable men, who have not yet been brought under the fascinating power of their system. A little legerdemain is all very well, time and place convenient, but when dealing with a matter of Scripture evidence, to think to carry conviction by such strange freaks of fancy, is an 120 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. outrage upon the reason and conscience of those whom they address. For what is it the authors of the manifesto really do ? They do not cast Esta- blishments out of the Old Testament, that they may occupy the position themselves, but they cause the whole Jewish economy and its institutions to pass away, as an example for Christian nations, under the wand of the Voluntary theory of a theocracy ; and ere we have got time to reflect on the extraordinary effect produced, anon, under the influence of the same magic power, this very same Jewish theocracy reappears as an example against State, and in favour of Voluntary support of religion. This power of conjuring seems peculiar to the Voluntary principle; and it certainly does require to be explained by what process it is brought about, that the Jewish rulers who, under the theocracj^ as represented in the manifesto, had power to enact and enforce laws in favour of religion, should, after having vanished as examples for Christian princes in this respect, re-appear without power to enforce the laws in favour of payment for religious purposes, so as to become examples oi purely Voluntary rulers. This surely demands explanation. It was bad enough in days of old, when an individual professed to have the power of bewitching his neighbour ; but for a whole Church, through its committee, actually to put forth this power over civil rulers, must raise ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 121 the question whether the old laws regarding such practices should not again be put in force. But, seriously, the authors of the manifesto must either hold hy their theory of a theocracy, or let it go. It will not do to attempt both at the same time. We might therefore meet what the authors of the manifesto say about the ^^ support of religion," by an appeal to their own representation of the state of things among the Jews, as " wholly a divine Esta- blishment of religion and civil life." Is it to be imagined that the power conferred upon such rulers about religion under such an Establishment, would not extend to its support ? But, having disposed of the attempt to set aside the argument in favour of Establishments derived from the Old Testa- ment constitution, we shall now deal with the attempt here made to enlist the mode of support- ing religion among the Jews in favour of Volun- taryism. The Church among the Jews was not only esta- blished but endowed; whatever, therefore, may be urged in defence of the proposal contained in the manifesto, its title, — " Disestablishment and Dis- endowment," — is at least, in itself^ very far from being scriptural. We have to say at the outset that the principle of an Establishment is, in itself, no more at variance with the free-will offerings of the people now, than the bountiful provision made 122 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. by law for tlie Levites, superseded them among the Jews. It is the duty of the State to make for the true Church of Christ that provision which its circumstances may require, and which those of the State may admit ; as it is incumbent on nations as well as individuals to honour the Lord with their substance. This, however, does not necessarily imply that the State must make comiylete provision for the Church, so as to leave no place for the free- will offerings of the Lord's people ; and as matter of fact, we know that, apart altogether from the condition of Jew and Gentile abroad, which opens up such a wide field for Christian liberality and en- terprise, there has been, and will always be, abun- dant scope, in the increasing wants of the people at home, for the exercise of Christian liberalit}'. And we question if, with all their talk about the ten- dency of State support to repress, and of Volun- taryism to foster and encourage, the free-will offerings of the people, the Establishment is not contributing more liberally towards the advance- ment of the kingdom of Christ than the United Presbyterian Church. It is, therefore, nothing to the purpose to allege that the tabernacle was erected by free-will offerings, and not by taxation ; that is just what we would have expected in the circumstances. It is, moreover, substantially what is being done every day by the Established ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 123 Church, both at home and abroad ; and it would not help the cause of Yoluntaryisnij or damage the argument for State support of religion, were they able to produce many more instances of a similar kind among the Jews. They would not affect, in the smallest degree, the fact that national provision was made for the support of the ministers of religion under the Jew^ish polity, to which we shall im- mediately refer ; and, while this fact remains, all instances of free-will offerings, w^hether for erect- ing buildings, or ministerial support, only prove that the two modes do not conflict, but that they may be, and ought to be, called forth in every rightly constituted relation between Church and State. The harmonious working of these was expressly contemplated and provided for in the Jewish economy in the law of free-will offerings, and it was also strikingly illustrated in the building of the second temple. The authors of the manifesto very coolly assert that "the first and second temple were built on the same principle " as the tabernacle — i,e.^ by free-will offerings. It is easy to make the asser- tion, but it is far from being so easy to produce the proof. Where is the evidence that the hire which Solomon gave to the servants of Hiram was given out of his own pocket ? Is it not expressly written that '• King Solomon raised a levy out of 124 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. all Israel, and the levy was thirty thousand men ? " Was that a private or a national contribution to- wards the work of building the temple ? The fact is, that there is no evidence that free-will offerings from the people were presented for the building of the first temple. We learn from 1 Chron. xxix. that David and the princes laid past a large amount of gold and silver to be devoted to the building of the temple. This was David's legacy to the work of the Lord, as many of the churches and the greater proportion of the revenue of the Esta- blishment were the legacy of generous friends of religion. What was required for the erection of the temple, over and above the princely legacy of David, appears to have been borne by the nation, 60 as to be a signal act of national homage to God, and His truth and kingdom. Strictly speaking, therefore, there were no free-will offerings, in the Voluntary sense, at the building of the first temple, as Voluntary principle, whatever may be said of its practice, is as much opposed to private legacies as to national gifts for religion. As regards the second temple, there were free-will offerings by the people; but what was needed for the house of God, over and above these free-will offerings, was ordered to be given, freely indeed, but magis- terially, out of the national treasury ; ^^And whatso- ever more sluill he needful for the house of thy God, ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 125 which thou shalt have occasion to bestow, bestow it out of the king's treasure-house. I, even I, Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers which are beyond the river, that whatsoever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you it be done speedih^, unto an hundred talents of silver," &c. (Ezra vii. 20-23). We shall not be so bold as to hazard the assertion, that a bill on the subject was actually introduced into the Parliament of Persia, and passed through both houses of their Legislature, so as to meet the demands of modern British legislation, and be adapted to the progress of the age ! But we have no doubt that if the United Presbyterian Church, or its Disestablishment Committee, would adjourn to the kingdom of Persia, and make a search, like Darius, '' in the house of the rolls," they would find some record which would enable them to amend this part of their manifesto in the next edition, should it ever be permitted to see the light. As to the synagogues being the fruit ^^ of the cheerful liberality of men like the pious centurion," this is so supremely ridiculous, that we have diffi- culty in considering it as anything else than a joke. So very little is known about the synagogues, that we should like to know where they got their in- formation. The liberality of the centurion, like that of men in our day, who at their own expense 126 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. erect places of worsliip, was higlil.y commendable, but we are rather disposed to tliink, from the allusion to it, that such an instance of liberality, then as now, was the exception rather than the rule. '^Titkes.^^ On this we do not require to dwell. It is notorious, as Dr C. J. Brown expresses it, that, '^ in the only civil polity ever established immediately by God, the support of the ministers of religion was not left dependent on the good-will of the people, but was made the subject of express enactment, setting apart certain fixed revenues as their property. . . . Since the grounds on which the rule proceeded can be shown not to have been ceremonial, or in any way peculiarly Jewish, but to have been moral and universal — applicable alike to the ministers of religion in every age — the case must, on that account, be held as indicating the divine will respecting this matter, not indeed in its details, but in its great leading principles." * It is deserving of the care- ful attention of the authors of this manifesto, that the expense of maintaining the worship of God in the wilderness was defrayed by a regular legal assessment or poll-tax. Moses, as the ruler of Israel, was expressly enjoined by God on the mount to levy a tax of half a shekel for this purpose * "Lectures on Church Establishments," Lect. iv., p. 17. Edin- burgh, 1835. ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 127 (Exod. XXX. 11-16). *^ The original building and furnishing the sanctuary," says Bush, '' was provided for by the voluntary contributions of the people ; but the necessary charges for sustaining the wor- ship now to be established were to be defrayed from other sources. . . . The Most High . . . now orders that an assessment or poll-tax of half a shekel each should be engrafted on this custom (of taking a census), and that this should be the ordinary revenue for the support of the ritual. '' To attempt to set all this aside, and to enlist the mode of ministerial support among the Jews into an argument in favour of the system countenanced by Voluntaryism, is only an instance of the length to which men will go when they begin by making unfounded assertions. There are no limits to the possible in such a case. Instead of this Jewish system ^^ bearing no resemblance to civil endowments," as the authors of the manifesto assert, we are not sure if it is possible to find any system of ministerial support to which it bears a more strikino^ resemblance than that which prevails in the Established Church of Scotland. " The Levites," we are told, " being destined to special duties, obtained no share in the division of the land." Their support was '^ derived from the soil of the Great Proprietor," as '^ His wages to His servants, who were also the servants 128 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. of all, . . . paid by the human tenants." Is not this the Yerj case of ministers of an Establishment ? Are not they devoted to special duties which de- prive them of the opportunity of earning a liveli- hood in the way that would otherwise be open to them in common with other citizens ? Are they not the Lord's servants for the good of all ? And is it not, therefore, most just that they should obtain needed support from the soil of the Great Proprietor, as an act of national homage to Him for the unspeakably precious benefits conferred by the ministrations of the gospel? This, at least, is the principle of Establishments. The assertion that ^'neither priests nor rulers had power to collect them (the tithes) by legal pains," is purely gratuitous. The power referred to is necessarily involved in the very fact of a legal enactment. No one knows this better than do the authors of the manifesto, as Dr Cairns, in his joint- letter to Dr James Buchanan, says of the Act ratifying the Confession, that inasmuch as it was an Act of Parliament, it armed the magistrate with power to enforce it. ^' Consequently/ ^^^ they say, " the Act of Ratification, 1649, was ^\^ enforcement of creed and catechisms by the civil power." But they must have read the Scriptures to very little purpose before they could make the assertion that rulers had no legal power to enforce payment of the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 129 tithes; for we find that Hezekiah, with the ap- proval of God, " commanded the people that dwell in Jerusalem to give the portion of the priests and the Levites, that they might be encouraged in the law of the Lord.'' It is quite true that we have no recorded instance of civil pains and penalties hav- ing been actually inflicted in any case for refusal to pay, and that for the very good and obvious reason that there were no refractory Voluntaries among the people, who were disposed to put their con- sciences between them and the payment of a lawful assessment. On the contrary, it is written, ^^ And as soon as the commandment came abroad, the chil- dren of Israel brought in abundance the first-fruits of corn," &c. (2 Chron. xxxi. 4—6). The prophecies. "The prophecies," the authors of the manifesto say, " in which kings and rulers are represented as doing homage to Christ, are to be interpreted of an homage consistent in its matter and form with the interests and law of His king- dom." Precisely; and if that homage is repre- sented as involving the promotion of the welfare of the Church of Christ, and the giving of the national resources for that end, then these things cannot be inconsistent with the interests and law of Christ's kingdom. To show this, which it will not be difficult to do, is to prove that the prophecies^ as well as the institutions of the Old Testament, 130 ESTABLISHMElsTS OF RELIGION. are in favour of the Establishment principle and against Voluntaryism. The authors of the manifesto do not quote any of the prophecieSj but content themselves with asserting what in their judgment ^^ they plainly indicate." It would have been more satisfactory had they just quoted one or two of the more prominent prophecies, and left the intelligent reader to judge for himself what they mean, or how far they can be considered as plainly indicating what they allege. What they have omitted we shall supply. In Psalm IxxiL, which contains a prophecy regarding the extent and glory of the kingdom of Christ, we meet with the following announcement : " The kings of Tarshish and the isles shall bring presents : the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him " (vers. 10, 11.) That these words speak of the subjection of nations and their rulers, as such, to Christ, and the consecra- tion of their resources to the advancement of His kingdom, it is worse than useless to deny. Yolun- taries, by attempting to maintain, in opposition to every commentator of name, that the reference in this place is to the private benefactions of kings, and not to their offerings as possessors of kingly authority, only expose their own ignorance, and afford a fresh illustration of the desperate ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 131 efforts to which the advocates of an nnscriptural dogma will resort in its behalf. This prophecy, as every intelligent reader will observe, plainly in- dicates that the consecration of the resources of a nation toward the promotion of the kingdom or Church of Christ is not inconsistent with its '^ in- terests and law," as it is predicted that it shall one day be done in a way that is honouring to Christ, and for the highest good of the nations. Another prophecy referring to gospel times is found in Isa. xlix. 23 — " And kings shall be thy nursing-fathers, and their queens thy nursing- mothers : they shall bow down to thee," &c. The attempt made in former days by Mr Marshall and other Voluntaries (and it is the only one ever made), to evade the force of this passage as an argument in favour of the scriptural nature of the Establishment principle, was so childish, that, unless the Voluntaries of the present day shall choose to reproduce it, we should consider it an insult to their understandings to make the smallest allusion to it. If these words have any intelligible meaning, they plainly declare that kings, as such, are specially to care for and interest themselves about the prosperity and advancement of the kingdom or Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the view taken of the passage by every com- mentator of note. Eivetus, in speaking of it, says, I 132 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGIOK " Tlie Cliurcli is compared to orplians and pupils, whose tutelage and guardianship it is the magis- trate's duty to undertake, which certainly he cannot do, if, in Ms administration, he is excluded from all care of religion." Thomas Scott, on the place, says, '' Kings would become foster-fathers, and queens nursing-mothers to the children of Zion, account- ing it their honour and privilege to use their in- fluence and authority to promote the success of the gospel ; rendering the most profound respect for the Church ; not attempting to have dominion over her faith, but subserving her comfort and pro- sperity, and showing her honour, for the Lord's sake, proportioned to the contempt and indignity with which she had been treated." This passage plainly indicates that the care, countenance, and support of the Church of Christ by kings, as such, is not only consistent with its " interests and law,'' but is what will yet be realised in gospel times, to the glory of God and the true good of the nation. And what it is thus declared that God shall bring about for the good of the Church and the nations of the earth, is what He would have nations and their rulers do now. Certainly it strangely con- trasts with all our ideas of a "nursing-father," and a " nursing-mother," for the rulers of the nations to act upon the Voluntary principle, and let the Church alone — to take nothing to do with what concerns ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 1 33 its welfare — to make no provision for its advance- ment—to do no more for it than for any other society —and to be as indifferent to its prosperity, in so far as any public measures for its behalf are con- cerned, as if it had no existence ! There is also the remarkable prophecy in Isa. Ix. 9-13, 16, 17 ; but without dwelling upon it, we shall conclude with the words of the late Dr M^Crie, who says, '' We might have urged here that the whole tenor of the declarations, promises, and predictions of the Old Testament lead to the conclusion that Christianity shall be owned, countenanced, and supported in a national way. God addresses the nations in a collective capacity, reproves them for their idolatry, and calls them to His worship (Isa. xxxiv. 1 ; xli. 1, 21-29). He proposes Christ as His anointed servant to them (Isa. xlii. 1) ; declares that He has given Him the nations for His inheri- tance, and that He shall inherit them all (Ps. ii. 8 ; Ixxxii. 8; Isa. lii. 15 ; Iv. 5). Christ addresses Him- self not only to individuals, but to whole islands (Isa. xlix. 1) ; nations join themselves to Him, own and worship Him (Isa. ii. 2 ; Mic. iv. 1, 2 ; Zech. ii. 1 1 ; viii. 20-22) ; bless themselves, and glory in Him ( Jer. iv. 2) ; all nations and dominions serve him (Dan. vii. 14, 27) ; they consecrate all things in them, and employ them in His service (Isa. Ix. 6-12; Zech. xiv. 20, 21) ; He owns those nations as His, and 134 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. blesses them, while He breaks in pieces and wastes others (Ps. xxxiii. 12; cxlv. 15; Isa. xix. 25; Ps. ii. 9, 12; Isa. Ix. 12)."* In short, the prophecies of the Word clearly indicate that as the Church was once established by God's command, it shall again be established by His authority, when ^^all kings shall fall down before Him (Messiah) ; all nations shall serve Him,'' and He shall be acknowledged and submitted to as ^'the Governor among the nations," — " the Desire of all nations." * "Statement," &c., pp. 140, 141. VIII. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING. The State Church system is opposed to the teach- ing of the New Testament, This is the next ground on which it is attempted to show that it is opposed to the rules and examples of Scripture. The system which, according to the manifesto, is " contrary to Old Testament institutions " is here declared to be "opposed to the teaching oi \hQ New Testament." Why it should be said to be opposed to the teaching of the one Testament, and only to the institutions of the other, we are not informed. The authors of the manifesto have, no doubt, a reason for drawing this distinction; but, in the absence of their own explanation, we may be allowed to say that it quadrates with the repre- sentation we have given of the natural and necessary tendency of their doctrine regarding the theocracy, which is to set aside the Old Testament as a rule of faith and practice for us. Therefore it is, as we understand the manifesto, only with the typical institutions and characters of the Old, as these are explained by the teaching of the New Testament that we have anything to do. The 136 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. authors of the manifesto cannot, with any show of reason or truth, deny that the whole tenor of the teaching of the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, goes to explain and to enforce the duty of men in their corporate capacity, no less than as indi- viduals, to honour and serve God and to advance His kingdom and glory in the world, — which is just the Establishment principle ; and therefore, as it would be rather awkward for a Christian Church to maintain that the Old Testament Scriptures have no binding obligation upon us, they conveniently omit all allusion to their teaching^ and confine attention to their institutions. With this passing allusion to a phraseology, which in this carefully pre- pared document must have been purposely adopted, we shall proceed with the consideration of the next point brought before us — the teaching of the New Testament — which it will be as easy to demonstrate to be in favour of the Establishment principle and against Voluntaryism, as it has been to prove this to be the case with the institutions of the Old Testament. " The law was a schoolmaster until Christ,^'* Granted. It was a schoolmaster appointed by Christ, and under its tuition principles and lessons were to be conveyed to the Church and the world, which were to have a world-wide and permanent bearing. Accordingly, when Christ Himself ap- ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 137 peared in our world, and began to unfold the grand characteristics of His kingdom, He specially guarded against the idea that His was a mission of destruction, such as the authors of the mani- festo seem to represent it. '' Think not," He says, '' that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulJiV He was to take up, as we may say, in Himself all the great principles and lessons of the law, that they might be more fully illustrated and developed in His kingdom. Now, if the law taught anything, we have found that it taught, on the one hand, the duty of the nation and its rulers to recognise and support the Church ; and, on the other, that such recognition and support were not destructive of the distinct and independent jurisdiction of either within its own proper sphere. And after this schoolmaster had faithfully^ in obedience to His command, inculcated and enforced this lesson, under different forms of administration, throughout a period of four thousand years, it would be passing strange should the Lord Jesus Christ himself set up a system which would have the effect not only of neutralising those lessons, but virtually of passing censure upon the schoolmaster for inculcating them. The authors of the manifesto are shrewd enough to perceive that the only way to get over 138 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. tliis is to confine the instruction of the law within the limits of the dispensation that is past, and to main- tain that its instructions were exclusively adapted to, and designed for, those who lived under it. Without referring to what we have already said in refutation of this opinion, the answer to it is fur- nished by the authors of the manifesto themselves, when they speak about ^' everything but moral prin- ciples and eternal lessons " having been abolished. They indeed confine these principles and lessons to one favouring Voluntaryism, as they imagine, and opposing Establishments ; but it is enough for our present argument that they allow that there are principles and lessons inculcated by the law which still remain under the gospel. Now the principle of a National Establishment of religion is so clearly and fully taught under the law, which no one can deny, that it is far from unreasonable to expect, to say the least, that Christ and His apostles would have expressly declared that this principle, which was so strikingly exhibited under the old dispensation, had been abolished under the new, so as to be no longer binding upon nations and their rulers, if they really meant us to understand this. Of this, however, we have not the smallest indication. Then, moreover, it is a moral principle, and therefore it must have sur- vived the general destruction, and will be found ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 139 hj tlie authors of this manifesto, if tliey institute a more careful and intelligent search, among " the moral principles and eternal lessons " which, according to them, have not perished. It is there that we find it. And we can only say that, with the Old Testament Scriptures in our hands — everywhere and in every possible way enforced in the New Testament as " given by inspiration of God, and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in right- eousness" — to imagine that a prominent and all- pervading moral element in their teaching has been set aside under the gospel as now fraught with consequences the most disastrous to both Church and State, and not even a hint to this effect given by Christ, though telling us that He had not come to destroy the law and prophets — nor by His apostles, when insisting on their divine inspiration — would involve a conclusion too mon- strous for even a Voluntary to entertain. The Jews, as a people, were in the habit of associating religion with an Establishment, and they regarded that Establishment as the greatest blessing to their land, which also they were plainly taught by many types and prophecies to believe would continue to exist, in its grand characteristics, under the reign of Messiah. If, fherefore, as Christian Voluntaries teach us, an Establishment 140 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. is such a bane to Christianity — an invasion of the rights of God and man — opposed to all Scripture — injurious to the interests of religion — degrading and demoralising to the ministers and professors of the gospel — and a gross injustice, surelj^ it is very extraordinary that the Lord should, when revealing His kingdom, have omitted most emphatically to warn them against an evil so great, and one into which, with their previous training, they would very naturally, and almost by necessity, fall. "But," as it has been said, "while many Jewish prejudices are guarded against, and that with the greatest possible care, the most fatal of them all — this unavoidable attachment to that which we are told in an endless variety of forms is inconsistent with the nature of religion, hostile to the spirit of the gospel, opposed to the authority of Christ, and, in short, worse than either tongue or pen can describe — is not guarded against at all; or, if there be a single verse of Scripture against Establishments, that warning is given so obscurely, that for many ages the ablest expounders of Scripture have never suspected its presence ; and now that the opponents of Establishments have been at much pains to elucidate the matter, the ablest expositors are unable to see it yet." This is still further unaccountable when we consider that the Church was not only established under the Jews by divine command, but that religion was established among all nations who had any institutions at all ; so that when men embraced the gospel in any considerable numbers, and its principles began to leaven the community, ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 141 they would very naturally, and almost of necessity, be led to entertain the idea of establishing it. Surely in such circumstances we might expect to find a distinct and emphatic warning given by Christ and His apostles against a system so fatal to the interests of conscience and religion — of both Church and nation — as Establishments are repre- sented by Voluntaries to be. But, instead of this, we find the principles of national religion, as set forth in the Old Testament, clearly recognised by Christ and His apostles. Such, then, is the teaching of the law of nature, and such the teaching of the law as revealed in the Old Testament regarding the duty of nations toward religion and the Church, that, on the sup- position that an Establishment under the gospel is a fatal evil which ought at all hazards to be opposed, the most express and unequivocal condemnation of such an institution was certainly demanded. While, on the opposite supposition, we should expect that Christ and His apostles should, as they do in other matters, proceed upon it as already conclusively settled, which is just what we find them actually doing. In other words, the new economy recognises and confirms the teachings of the law, which was a schoolmaster until Christ, The authors of the manifesto, however, take a very difi'erent view of the pedagogy of the law. Its 142 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. grand purpose, as they represent it, must have been to lodge in the minds of its pupils '' the principle of liberty of conscience and of free-will offerings," — as this is all that remains under the new economy, so far as we can gather, in the way of ^^ moral principles and eternal lessons," — as the fruit of its instruction. It does not seem to have occurred to the authors of the manifesto that this, which, according to them, is the great ineradicable principle, was communicated by the law in con- nection with an Establishment of religion, and not with its opposite. We may here ask them if the course thus pursued with such signal success, as they allow, was not the very opposite of that which would have suggested itself to them as likely to produce such a result ? Would they ever think of attempting to inculcate the principle of liberty of conscience and of free-will offerings in connection with an Establishment of religion ? And yet this is the very thing which the Lord did under the law, the Voluntary manifesto itself being witness. And if Christ did thus under the old economy, in connection with an Establishment, root the Church in che belief of "the principle of liberty of conscience and of free-will offerings," surely it cannot be absolutely necessary under the new economy to sweep away everything in the form of an Establishment of religion in order to the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 143 continued existence and further development of that principle. The authors of the manifesto will surely allow that it is not impossible for Christ to conserve the " principle of liberty of conscience and of free- will offerings " in connection with an Establishment under the new economy, any more than it was for Him to do this under the old, notwithstanding that it may appear to them very incongruous. It may serve their purpose to introduce the new economy under the character of a great system of disestablishment and disendowment ; but this, according to our ideas, is scarcely consistent with the representation given of the law as a school- master^ and we suggest whether, in such a case, a scaffolding^ though not the scriptural, might not have been the more appropriate metaphor for the authors of the manifesto to have adopted ; or, perhaps better still, that of a tree, under whose shadow the Church and nation sheltered them- selves, and of whose fruit they partook for many a long year, as they speak of ^* the whole old growth being cleared down to the roots." As it stands, there is certainly a strange confusion of metaphor when it is said that " the whole old growth " of the law as ^^ a schoolmaster" is " cleared down to the roots." Letting this pass, the authors of the manifesto seem to found upon the fact of the Church under the New Testament being catholic, 144 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. and not confined as of old to one nation, as justi- fying them in their opposition to !N'ational Esta- blishments of religion. But though the Jewish nationality and Church fell together, they forget that the very cause of the nation's ruin was their rejection of Him who was their King. And there- fore the doom of that highly-favoured nation is a warning to all nations to whom the gospel comes to take heed — as they would not that it should become a burdensome stone to them — that they submit themselves to Him whose gospel it is, and use all means competent to them for securing, with God's blessing, that its salutary influence have free course, and be diffused through all orders and departments of society ; and to remember that the interests of the Church and nation are so joined together that there is no surer way for a nation to hasten its own destruction than to reject Christ, or to refuse to countenance His Church. Further, in regard to what they find at the root. It is somewhat difficult to understand how they make the discovery. But it may not be without interest to look for a little at the Voluntary principle which the authors of the manifesto discover there when the old growth is cleared away. Liberty of conscience and free-will offerings in a Voluntary sense. This is what they find. '^Conscience" and '^ offerings." This is what is ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 145 ^' continued under the new economy." Tliere has certainly been a " clearing down to the root," when all that is left is bare humanity — soul and body — conscience and offerings. The apostle speaks of ^^ a worldly sanctuary," with its " gifts and sacrifices," and '' carnal ordinances, " which could not purge the conscience ; and modern Voluntaries, apparently laying hold of this idea, have come to the conclusion that the grand design of the law was to indoctrinate the Church in the carnal and spiritual elements which are united in the consti- tution of its members ; and having thoroughly accomplished the work which was committed to it as a schoolmaster, when the new economy comes and removes the scaffolding of the law, or clears away '' the old growth,'" it finds this twofold idea to have taken hold of the Church as the grand result of the law's teaching — liberty of conscience and free-will offerings. The new economy is, we presume, the development of this idea in accordance with Voluntary principles. This lesson, which, as we gather from the manifesto, is the grand result of the law's teaching, is only adapted, of course, to the Church militant — the Church triumphant leams the offerings behind to be looked after by those who, in their zeal against the State Church system, are always reminding us that '^ the kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; " and our only 146 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. regret is, tliat it has not been able to leave a like amount of conscience^ that men might distinguish between right and wrong — truth and error — liberty and licence — duty and interest. For, after all, it is the want of conscience fully as much as the want of offerings which we have to deplore in the Church of our day. But we have already disposed of the plea of conscience, and have also shown how free-will offerings perfectly consist with an Esta- blishment of religion ; and in doing these things we have proved that, in order to conserve them, the new economy had not to reject but to accept the teachings of the law as a schoolmaster regarding the relation which should subsist between a nation and its rulers and the Church of Christ. We shall next consider the gross and misleading statement by which the authors of the manifesto attempt to prejudice the minds of their readers against the State Church system. " It is not, in- deed, pretended," they say, ^^ that the New Testa- ment Church had any features of resemblance to State Churches." This statement is very, it may be, designedly, ambiguous. It may obviously mean that a Church, by becoming allied with the State, loses all the features of a Church of Christ, so as to become, in fact, a synagogue of Satan. Now, although this was implied, if not asserted, in what was said during the Voluntary controversy, and ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELTGION. 14? may possibly be what is meant to be understood by the statement on which we are commenting, it was certainly never allowed by the friends of Establish- ments that the Church unchurched herself by entering into friendly relations with the State, or that she lost any of the features of a true Church of Christ by so doing. On the contrary, it has always been maintained that a Church never has the features of the Church of Him by whom kino-s reign and princes decree justice more clearly delineated than when, as a kingdom having an independent spiritual jurisdiction, she is allied with the State. Or the statement may mean that the friends of Establishments do not venture to main- tain that the Church, during the time of Christ and His apostles, was actually established by law, and so formally set up as a Civil Establishment of religion. That, of course, is a matter of history. It either was, or it was not ; and there can be no room for dubiety in the mind of any one who has a well-authenticated record of the facts in his hands ; and that the Church of Christ was not an Esta- blished Church during the time of Christ and His apostles, or for long after, no one for a moment denies. But while that is perfectly true as a mat- ter of fact, and just what we might have expected in the circumstances, the question is, Was it right as a matter of duty ? Ought the nations to have 148 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. dealt thus with the Church of Christ ? Had they known Christ and His Church as they ought to have done, would they have treated Him or it as they did ? Had the kings of the earth and the rulers been truly wise, would they have consulted together, and set themselves against the Lord and His Anointed as they did? Or would they not rather have kissed the Son, and served Him with fear, and used their influence and authority in promoting the welfare of His kingdom, the Church? The fact that the Church was not established at the time referred to, does not certainly prove that it ought not to have been established; any more than the fact that the nations and their rulers generally at that time rejected the gospel, proves that they were right in so doing. All that can be proved from the fact stated is, that the Church of Christ is not so dependent on the countenance and aid of the State that it cannot exist and flourish without it, yea, notwithstanding its cruellest persecutions. But will the authors of the manifesto venture to maintain that the converse is true — that the na- tions of this world can realhj flourish without the Church of Christ ? Or will they maintain as matter of fact, that the prophecy has not been literally fulfilled in the history of all those nations that refused to acknowledge Christ and His Church — "The nations that will not serve thee shall perish ?'' ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. J 49 If tliese things are so, then, instead of being matter of congratulation that the Church was not countenanced by the State during the time of Christ and His apostles, it ought rather to be referred to with pain and sorrow by every true Christian. Moreover, will the authors of the manifesto pretend to say that the nations and their rulers who not only refused to acknowledge Christ and His Church, but persecuted them, were not, at that very time, actively supporting a religious system of their own ? And does not this very fact that they had an established religion of their own of a very different character from that of the gospel Church, to the maintenance of which they had consecrated their lives, sufficiently account for their not only refusing to establish that Church, but doing what they could to destroy it ? What, then, is the light which the history of the state of things during that period sheds upon the question under consideration? Is it that the Establishment principle is contrary to the teaching of the New Testament, and that nations and their rulers ought not to favour and support the true religion and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ ? Or is it not rather that it is manifestly impossible for nations and their rulers to occupy a state of neutrality in regard to such matters ? According to the word of Christ, which is applicable U) 150 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. nations as well as individuals, '^ He tliat is not for me is against me ; " and if so, then the only- course open to the rulers in the time of Christ, if they were not to continue in sin, and fight against God, was to have been done with their false religion, to embrace the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to foster and promote it in every way competent to them as rulers. The Church of Christ is diverse from all other king- doms and institutions ; and the only way of secur- ing, under God, that nations and their rulers will not actively and sinfully oppose and resist it, is to get them, through God's blessing, to embrace, defend, and promote it. Hence, in the Second Psalm, the nations and their rulers are not only called upon to desist from their cruel and vain hostility to the truth, but to kiss the Son, and serve Him. And hence, also, the ten horns in Eevelation, which " make war with the Lamb," when they are overcome, not only leave off to war against Him, but become active instruments in His hand in promoting His cause, by destrojing the mystic Babylon. The following words of Alexander Henderson, in his sermon before the House of Lords, in May 1645, on the famous text of Voluntaries, " My kingdom is not of this world," should be pondered by every thoughtful and intelligent Christian reader. *'I come/' he says, "to the fourth use for instruction in ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 151 such duties as-are required of us all at this time, and after a special manner of those that are in high jjlcices. First of all, seeing the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, hut is a spiritual kingdom, it is a necessary duty to study the nature, and search into the mysteries and secrets, of this kingdom. Secondly, When the Lord hath opened the eyes of our under- standings to behold somewhat of the secrets of this spiritual kingdom, we are to draw near, to join ourselves with it, and become the subjects of Jesus Christ. Thirdly, the third duty is, that when we are acquainted with the nature and secrets of the kingdom of Christ, and are now become His willing subjects, then to be zealous in using all good means, each one accordinc] to his 'place, for advancing and establishing the king- dom of Christ" (p. 21). The circumstance that Christ, when setting up His kingdom, did not, as matter of fact, dispose the hearts of rulers to embrace it, and formally establish it, as He might have done had He so pleased, no more proves that He never designed that nations and their rulers, as such, should embrace and legally sanction it, than the fact that those whom He chose as His apostles were in general illiterate and poor, proves that He designed that none but such as are poor and illiterate should be employed as ministers of the gospel. The disestablishment committee of the United Presbyterian Church have, in their wisdom, come to be decidedly of opinion that if Christ had meant that nations and their rulers should promote His truth and establish His Church, He would have set up an Established Church ; but inasmuch as 152 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. He did not adopt tliis course, they conclude that His design must have been to teach us that His Church was never to receive civil sanction and support, but that they should always continue in a state of separation from each other — that, in short, it was not designed by Christ that His Church should mould or influence the State, any more than in their judgment it was designed that the State should aid and support the Church ; for the Church, according to the authors of the manifesto, is a reli- gious society, which is " divinely adapted to exist and work out its ends freely everywhere, in har- mony with the just arrangements and order of civil life." Now, this notion of the relation which should subsist between Church and State is that they should absolutely leave each other alone. This, however, is an idea which cannot be realised ; for, granting that the Church is to work "in harmony with the just arrangements and order of civil life," then these arrangements must be such as to admit of the Church's working out its ends in harmony with them ; and this implies that the nature and limits of the jurisdiction of each be clearly defined and recognised. The State is entitled to know what are the ends which the Church proposes to work out, and the Church is entitled to obtain a guarantee from the State that it approves of these ends. In other words, there ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 153 must "be a definite creed on the part of the Cliurcli, and distinct statutory enactment on the part of the State, even for the safe enjoyment of toleration. But we deny that this affords a just representation of the work of the Church. It is not of the accom- modating character here indicated by Christian Voluntaries — keeping itself, so to speak, very much by itself, and working out its ends without affecting in any way the just arrangements of civil life. On the contrary, in working out its ends in any community, the Church pervades it with principles which so mould its institutions and arrangements as to bring them into harmony with the mind and will of Christ, and to make them subservient to the highest good of the people. And this cannot but result in a national recogni- tion and furthering of the truth, or in direct anta- gonism between Church and State. IX. *^ EXAMPLE AND TEACHING OF CHRIST AND APOSTLES." " We best know," say tlie authors of tlie mani- festo, ^^wliat Jesus meant by wbat He did and taught." They then quote one of their famous voluntary texts (John xviii. 36) — '' My kingdom is not of this world ; " a very precious text, which is most ignorantly or perversely wrested from its obvious meaning and design when employed by Voluntaries to support their unscriptural dogma. Before showing this, we would make a remark on the marginal index as given above. It might have better subserved the interests of truth, and saved the authors of the manifesto from exposing them- selves by entering on the ground of Scripture at all, had they only proposed the matter to themselves in the following way, when about to deal with the Old Testament — The example of those who were types of Christ, and the teaching of Christ and prophets. As the teaching of Christ and prophets and the typical examples of the Old Testament are virtually allowed by the authors of the manifesto to be in favour of Establishments j by their attempts ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. 155 to get rid of the one and their 2^'^^f their worldly things for its support. The text which speaks of the spirituality of the kingdom of Christ — " My kingdom is not of this world " — bars the carnal things of the State. The other text, which speaks of the spiritual things of the kingdom ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 171 — '' If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall reap your carnal things ? " — requires the bestowal of the carnal things of the individuah And both texts are therefore against the State Church system. Such is the amazing consistency and power of disesta- blishment reasoners and reasoning ! X. ^•THE SUPREME LAW OF CHRIST." Having quoted the texts wliicli, according to tliem, contain " the supreme law of the Lord Jesus Christ,'^ as expounded by the apostles, the authors of the manifesto go on to tell us how ^' this ordinance " is superseded by the State Church system. It is supremely ludicrous. ^^ It has been superseded," says the manifesto, '^ by all State Churches, and glaringly by those in our own land, where ministers are required to live of the rates more than of the gospel, and to partake of the Exchequer rather than of the altar, eating of the fruit of all vineyards and the milk of all flocks but their own." One is almost at a loss what to say upon this. It is certainly very telling, and we do trust it may produce its legitimate influence on the minds of all who read it ! Unfortunately for its authors, it is not based upon fact. In so far as the Establishment in Scotland is concerned, we are not aware of ani/ rates that are levied for the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 173 support of the ministers of tlie Establishment, unless it be the particles of the Annuity-tax still held in solution in the local taxation of the city, which even Voluntaries have been quietly swallow- ing for some years without any bad effects ; while, as regards the Exchequer, instead of giving to the Church her own, it is practising that most hateful of all things, in the estimation of the authors of the manifesto, a kind ^^ of circuitous theft,'^ in with- holding thousands a year which properly belong to the Church. Again, as to their eating the fruit of all vineyards and the milk of all flocks but their own, all that we can say is, that they are surely happy men who have the free run of all the vineyards and flocks in the country. We do not wonder should they be objects of envy to many whose Volun- tary principles confine them to the milk of their own flock, especially when the supply is either less than is required to meet the shepherd's wants, or when, as sometimes happens, it dries up altogether. It must certainly be a great comfort in such cir- cumstances when the man knows that he can share in the produce of a neighbour's flock which may be better conditioned than his own. Besides, as eat- ing bread with a man is generally understood to be a token of friendship, we cannot help thinking that to eat of the fruit of all vineyards and the milk of all flocks, seems to indicate a desire on the part of the 174 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. minister of the Establishment to keep on friendly terms with everybody, which should rather be to his credit, in this charitable age ; while his not eating of his own, may be owing to the great kind- ness of his neighbours in fully meeting all his wants. But seriously, suppose it were true that the minis- ters of the Establishment were maintained by a tax of which every member of the community had to pay his share, it could not on tliat account be said, with reason, that they did not live of the gospel or partake of the altar, seeing it was for them, as ministering at the altar, or preaching the gospel, that the tax was levied. It is, however, a mere flight of the imagination to talk about the ministers of the Establishment eating of the fruit of all vine- yards, inasmuch as the funds out of which they receive their stipends were originally, as has been shown, as freely and voluntarily bequeathed to the Church, and inalienably secured to her, as any legacy can be now. And their appropriation to other than the purposes for which they were originally bestowed, would be as much an act of injustice and spoliation, as would be the diverting from the United Presbyterian Church of the hand- some legacy of the late Mr Henderson of Park, to the purposes of the Improvement Trust. As to what the authors of the manifesto say about money being got by " any turning of the ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 175 screw," we have only to remark, it must undoubt- edly be a powerful and influential body that can by the turning of any screw extort money for any good object from the hands of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. But more than this, we do maintain that it comes with a very bad grace from men holding Voluntary principles to talk about ^^ turning the screw." Do they know nothing about turning the screw ? Is this instrument not frequently had recourse to by them when anxious to partake more abundantly of the fruit of their vineyard ? Was it not this very instrument which was made use of so freely and successfully by the early Church in the palmy days of Voluntaryism ? Were not the straits and necessities to which the ministers of the Church in the early centuries were often reduced, when rcliolly dependent on the support of their people^ one of the causes, at least, which led them to resort to those means for ex~ tracting from their flocks larger and less precarious incomes, which laid the foundation for that system of priestcraft which is wrought with such diabolical skill and power by the Man of Sin ? Neither will it do for the descendants of the Lawsons and Frasers of a past generation, to speak of the " intricate construction of musty documents." If ever there were men who wrested property from the hands of those to whom it justly belonged, by 176 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. " intricate constructions of musty documents," and false and misleading statements, it was the Secession Church, at the time of its adopting Voluntary principles. It is matter of history that by a most dexterous manoeuvre they entirely changed their plea, in order to retain their property. But indeed the whole paragraph on which we are commenting appears to ns to be nothing short of a foul and slanderous charge against the Establish- ment, as not over-scrupulous about the means it resorts to for getting money, if only it can get it out of the public purse. If this is what is intended, we have a right to expect the production of the evidence. This will not do. It raises the question whether one Church is at liberty to slander another Church with impunity, any more than an individual his neighbour. That the teaching of the New Testament shuts out the power of the magistrate circa sacra, as that is contended for by the advocates of the Establishment principle, is another of the groundless assertions in which the manifesto so abounds. There is no attempt made to prove this, and we might content ourselves with simply denying it. But it is instruc- tive to contemplate the kind of way in which Vo- luntaries leap to their illogical conclusions. *' The State Church system is opposed to the teaching of the New Testament regarding the magistrate's ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 177 power." This is the assertion which we emphatically deny. And when we look for something to indicate how the authors of the manifesto have arrived at this conclusion, we are met with the declaration, in which we cordially acquiesce, " The submission required to magistracy ... is only ' in the Lord ; ' and both civil authority and civil obedience have their limitations prescribed by the higher law." This, according to them, justifies their assertion ! It of course applies, as they sa}*, to the ^' natural relations ;" and if this higher law does not exclude, but only limits and directs the authority to be exercised, and the obedience to be rendered in matters of religion in these relations, it is certainly difficult for any man but a Voluntary to understand how this higher lam requires that the magistrate alone, of all men in authority, is not to be submitted to by those under him, when enjoining anything that tends to advance the interests of true religion and the Church of Christ. We are exhorted to pray ^^for kings, and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all god- liness and honesty." And as Dr M'Crie says, "What Christians are here to pray for, that magis- trates must be bound to promote as their end ; and this is not simply ' a quiet and peaceable life,' but ^ in all godliness and honesty.' Rulers, in their official capacity, are not to be indifferent to godliness 178 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. any more than to honesty ; both are to be counten- anced and promoted by them ; " * of course, in subjection to the higher law, and in subserviency to the glory of Him by whom kings reign. But inasmuch as the principles laid down in this manifesto limit the authority of the magistrate to matters of civil jurisdiction, they render it impossible for any one who adopts them to comply with this exhortation of the apostle in any intelligible sense. Moreover, the magistrate is declared in Romans xiii. to be ^Hhe minister of God for good." And is it conceivable that, in seeking the good of the people as God's minister, he shall find himself excluded by the higher law from aiming at the advancement of the highest good of the people, by exerting himself, in the way competent to him as a ^^ nursing-father," to remove all hindrances out of the way of the Church's progress, and otherwise to lend to it his countenance and support ? More- over, is it possible that the magistrate, placed as he is over rational, accountable, and immortal beings, as God's '^ minister to them for good," can dis- charge the duties of his office at all, not to say aright, if he is bound to confine himself in all his administrations to " the outward and secular affairs of the community " ? Is it not a thought * " Statement," p. 143. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 179 abhorrent to every Christian mind, that God should have appointed an ordinance for the good of men, in which one rational and accountable being is called to occupy a position of influence, trust, and authority over others, constituted like himself, who are with him hastening on to the judgment, and that He should require of him, in discharging the duties of his office, to legislate, as His minister, for the good of those over whom he is placed, just as if they had no higher destiny than the beasts that perish ? It is quite true, as Voluntaries were wont to maintain, that " the virtues which contribute most to the well-being of society, and the greatest happiness of the individuals comprising it, are virtues which the authority of Government cannot confer, such as gratitude, humanity, liberality, brotherly -kindness, — still more, the religious virtues of love to Christ, and love to one another for Christ's sake." But do not Voluntaries per- ceive that the very fact that these virtues have such an all-important bearing on the good of society, which, as God's minister, the magistrate is required to consult, brings them so under his notice that he not only is not justified in overlook- ing them, but is called upon to do all in his power to encourage their cultivation ? If so, then, though these are not the primary end of his office, it M 180 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. surely cannot be beyond his province, at least, to give countenance and support to those literary, moral, and religious institutions whose special object it is to promote these virtues, if this can be done without destroying their character or constitu- tion ? '' The kingdoms of this world," says the late Dr Thomson, "• must derive the greatest benefit from the Church of Christ erected among them ; . not as a passive tool in the hands of rulers, or as an engine contrived by State policy, and worked by its agents, but as an independent moral power which diffuses its influence all around ; and while it so generally forms many for the enjoyment of heaven, at the same time makes them, and multitudes besides, the peaceable and profitable members of earthly societies. This is not the ultimate tendency of systems of belief or ordinances of worship which are contrary to the revealed will of God." '' Contemplate, then," he says, " the spirit of false religion, of infidelity, error, and superstition, traversing the length and breadth of the land, and withering with its pestilential breath every public and patriotic, as well as every domestic and personal, virtue. And then look at the genius of true religion, entering not only every family, but our halls of justice, walking our market-places, accompanying our fleets and armies, making better husbands and fathers, judges and senators, statesmen and patriots, ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 181 captains and soldiers, sailors and mercliants ; and shall we indeed say that the Legislature must turn the same cold and blank countenance, the same look of total indifference and disregard to the one as to the other ; that not a nod of recogni- tion and encouragement must be tendered to the one that is not bestowed on the other — that not a smile arising from the perception of superior intrinsic excellences, and arising more- over from a consciousness of benefits, great and valuable, received, must illumine the face when directed to the one, but must beam with equal complacency on the other !"* Surely, then, if the magistrate is to be a minister of God for good to the community, he must officially interest himself about religion and the Church of Christ. We might enlarge on this subject, but we have said enough, we believe, in the way of setting aside all that the authors of the manifesto allege against Establishments from the New Testament, and in doing so, have shown that the New as well as the Old Testament is wholly on the side of the principle of Establishments. How, indeed, could it possibly be otherwise, than that Christ and His apostles should agree in their teaching with Christ and His prophets ? We pass on to the next section, which will not detain us long. * "Christian Instructor," 1830, pp. 718, 719. XI. ^'the system is injurious to the interests of religion." The authors of the manifesto begin by saying, ^' Of this we might be assured from its unscriptural- ness." This, of course, rests the whole question on scriptural grounds, where it ought to rest. And hence we have dwelt at considerable length on the evidence against Establishments which they profess to produce from Scripture. But having disposed of this, and proved that the examples and teaching of the whole Scripture from Genesis to Eevelation is in favour of the system which the authors of the manifesto condemn, and opposed to that which they support, we might pass from the assertions under the last two sections. The State Church system, being scriptural, cannot possibly be opposed to the interests of religion , nor fraught with political injustice ; and the men who talk otherwise would do well to take heed what they say, lest in profess- ing to speak for God they in reality find themselves talking wickedly against Him. We shall, however, hear what the authors of the manifesto have to say ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 183 in support of the position laid down. The State Church system, they say, '^ secularises, corrupts, debases.''^ If these things be so, they have certainly made out their case — it must be " injurious to the interests of religion." But is it so? Before this can be said to have been established, they would require to produce the clearest and most conclusive evidence ; for, in point of fact, God positively and directly sanctioned the system which they thus con- demn. In bringing this charge, therefore, against the State Church system, as such, it seems very like charging God foolishly. And if they are not to underlie this charge, the authors of the manifesto are bound to substantiate their charge against the system by the most cogent and convincing evidence. Instead of doing this, however, — with the exception of some abuses which specially attach to the exist- ing Establishment in England, — they do not even profess to produce the proof demanded. But what they cannot produce in support of their assertion, we can produce abundantly in falsifying it. We can appeal to the actual fruits of an Esta- blishment in this highly favoured land of ours, as affording the most conclusive refutation of all the calumnious charges brought against the State Church system by the authors of this manifesto. We question if any man, not to say a committee of professedly Christian men, is entitled, with the 184 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. truthful record of history before him, to assert, for example, that '' the State Church system makes religion geographical, without the power of affecting individual faith or practice; " that " it debases and secularises ecclesiastical life ; " that " it rears up a membership without self-reliance or intelligent i liter est in religion^ . . . and a clergy more careful of civil status than of popular privilege ; " that ^^ it builds up churches, not, as has been said, for the poor, but really for the rich and fashionable, with relaxed discipline, repressed spiritual growth, slight demands on private liberality and enterprise." Is this truth, or foul slander? We do not ask if any or all of those evils do prevail or have prevailed in connection with any existing Establishment ? Do they not prevail to a lamentable extent in con- nection with dissenting churches ? But we fear- lessly ask if the history of the Presbyterian Esta- blishment in this country, as compared with other non-established bodies, will, in the judgment of honest, truth-loving, and unprejudiced men, justify the assertion, that the fact of its having been estab- lished renders it speciallyand necessarily chargeable with the evils which the authors of the manifesto so freely hurl against the system ? The men who can make such unfounded and reckless assertions are deserving rather of being denounced than reasoned with. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 185 Have tlie authors of the manifesto not reason enough themselves to discern that if these reckless assertions of theirs are to have any force as argu- ments against the Establishment, they must be prepared to maintain that they are, have ever been, and must ever be true of an Establishment. Take, for example, the assertion that the State Church system ^^ debases and secularises ecclesiastical life ; " or, as it used to be put at the time of the Voluntary controversy, that it '^ has the direct tendency to pollute the Church with a worthless and indolent ministry." Are the authors of the manifesto pre- pared, in the face of Christendom, to declare that in their deliberate judgment the ministers of the Establishment are, have ever been, and must ever be, a secular and " debased set of men, who are a pollution to the Church" ? If they are not, they can found no argument against Establishments on what they assert ; and if they are prepared to assert that, then, whatever may be said about the Establishment principle, Voluntaryism, in such a case, would be clearly chargeable with debasing the moral character of its votaries. "We cannot refute these charges better than in the eloquent language of Dr Robert Buchanan, in a speech at the first annual meeting of the Glasgow Association for Promoting the Interests of the Church of Scotland in 1834. He says : — 186 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. " What thus becomes of the charge that the civil establish- ment of religion necessarily tends to perpetuate error ? I say, it tends to perpetuate truth ; for while the unestablished creeds of many dissenting churches have, in instances innumerable, sunk, in the course of a few generations, from orthodox Christi- anity, into the lowest and most undisguised Socianism [in such circumstances, has not Dr Buchanan, and the majority in the Free Church, good reason to lay to heart his solemn words*], the established creed of the Church of Scotland — the form of sacred words sanctioned by the Legislature in 1567 — has come down, amplified and extended, but not altered, through a period of 270 years. ... So much for the charge that the establishment of religion has a necessary tendency to perpetuate error. But it is said that, by being established, religion is virtually secularised, and altogether corrupted and deformed. . . . Our adversaries may have forgotten that dur- ing nearly the whole of the seventeenth century — from 1605, with one short exception, to 1689 — the whole energy of an arbitrary government was employed in one continued and powerful attempt to bring the ministers of our National Church under a secular influence ; and when anti-Establish- ment ministers shall have been found successfully to with- stand an attempt of equal duration and of equal power to secularise their religious character ; when they shall have been found to resist an ungodly people, insisting that smooth things shall be prophesied to please them, and shall come forth after a trial of nearly ninety years with the standard of divine truth as unsullied as that which was waved by the * " Though painful, it is highly instructive to trace the Church's downward career. In doing so, we cannot fail to mark how true it is that all error is on a slope. The first movement in this direction deports from the grand level of truth, and carries the unwary foot over the edge of an inclined plane, which, once entered on, has a constant tendency to hurry the victim on with accelerating rapidity, until, making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience, he plunges at last into the depth of a complete apostacy." — Dr Eobert Buchanan's Historical Introduction to the " Scots Worthies," p. 50. Blackie & Son. ESTABLISHMEi^TS OF RELIGION. 187 Camerons, the Cargills, and the Eenwicks over the heads of our persecuted forefathers, — then, I say, but not till then, shall we be prepared to admit that there is as little danger of religion being secularised in a Voluntary, as in our Established Church." (Tremendous applause.) Were the interests of religion iDJured or promoted at the time of the Keformation by the planting of churches, schools for the godly upbringing of the young, and universities for the training of youth in moral philosophy^ and the other branches of a liberal education, with the sanction of the nation and its rulers ? We ask any impartial observer to say if there is any reasonable ground for supposing that the blessings of the gospel would ever have been diffused throughout the length and breadth of this land, as they have been, had there been no national recognition and support of the Church ? When or where has Voluntaryism ever produced results such as those which have flowed to our land from the Church of the Eeformation ? It will cer- tainly be a long time before any historian will have to record of the Voluntary system what is recorded of the Established Church at the time of the second Reformation, that '' every parish had a minister, every village had a school, every family almost had a Bible. I have lived many years in a parish where I never heard an oath^ and you might have rode many a mile before you heard one. And the only persons who complained were the taverners, 188 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. who complained that their trade was broke, people had become so sober." Is it just, then, to bring a charge against a system which has been attended with such results, as being, in its very nature^ in- jurious to the interests of religion ? Are the men who are not afraid to bring forward such a charge in the face of facts such as these, and others which the Reformed Church of Scotland so plentifully supplies, entitled to be heard in any matter of history or truthful evidence ? We fearlessly assert, that whatever has been done for the advancement of the interests of true and undefiled religion in our land has been accom- plished, under God, most signally and efficiently, in connection with the Establishment principle, or the maintenance of the honour of Christ as King of nations and King in Zion. We have already referred to the good accomplished by the Reformed or Established Church. As to the Seceders^ who kept the lamp of truth burning in our land at a time when great spiritual darkness and deadness prevailed throughout the Establishment, they were all zealous defenders of the Establishment principle; and it is instructive to remark that at the time of, and in connection with, the rejection of that prin- ciple and adoption of Voluntaryism by the Seces- sion Church, unsound views on the Atonement sprang up among them, and the general tone of ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 189 evangelical life declined. And this has continued to characterise their Church, more or less, ever since; so that Dissenters have always been the grand obstructives and mar -plots of every movement, which every one but themselves saw would have been for the highest good of the nation had it been successfully carried through. Then, again, the good which the Free Church has been instrumental in effecting has been notoriously in connection with her maintenance of the Establishment principle both in theory — in her Claim of Rights ; and in practice — in her Sustenation Fund ; and it remains for the future historian to record the untold evil which will be the inevitable result of her surrender- ing this principle, and allying herself with the enemies of all national recognition of truth. The history, therefore, of the Churches in this country, as might have been expected from the nature of the doctrine, teaches that, instead of the principle of Establishments being inimical or in any way injurious to the interests of true religion, it has been ever in proportion to the faithfulness with which the Church has maintained and vin- dicated this doctrine of Christ's supreme Headship over the Church and nation that she has been owned of her Divine Head, in advancing His king- dom and glory. And as the Establishment prin- ciple, or the faithful acknowledgment on the part 190 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. of the Church of Christ as King of nations as well as King of Zion, has always been associated with its most remarkable usefulness and success, so we know, as matter of prediction, that it is when " the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ " and ^^ all nations," as such, " shall serve Him," that " the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord," and righteousness and peace shall everywhere prevail. It is for this blessed consummation that we labour when contending for the Establishment principle ; it is against this ever being realised that the Volun- tary principle is necessarily set. We may there- fore leave all men to judge which is for the injury and which for the advantage of the interests of religion. We come now to the last section, on which we shall not enlarge. XII. "the system is opposed to political equity." Although the authors of the manifesto in the very beginning, as we said, endeavour to distinguish between themselves and another class of Voluntaries who arrive at the same conclusion through " a due study of the civil constitution " — commonly known as political Voluntaries — the political aspect of the subject has always bulked very largely in the view of all kinds of Voluntaries ; and hence we find this manifesto of Christian Voluntaries winding up with an argument from political equity! "The rights of conscience," they tell us, " are not those of a class or sect. . . . The most perfect religious equality can alone meet their just de- mands;" but they conveniently forget that the rights of society are no less sacred than those of conscience; and then, by a strange process of reasoning, which is peculiar to the Voluntary mind, they lay the blame of the national support given to Popery for the last fifty years at the door of the State Church system. "It is/' they say, " the 192 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. necessity of meeting the sense of inequality pro- duced by that system," which has given rise to this countenance to the Man of Sin. The recognition and support of the true religion on the part of the State gives it an importance which the advocates of the false religion and Voluntaries do not think just, and therefore, according to them the State is necessitated to give to the false, in order to pacify its votaries. According to this reasoning, the man who specially recognises and favours an honest servant, might find it necessary, in order to meet the inequality thus produced among his servants, to bestow his favours on a dishonest one. But, in the case supposed, it must be perfectly evident, even to a Voluntary, that it is not the master that produces the inequality, if you choose so to term it ; he finds the inequality existing in the honesty of one servant and the dishonesty of another, and instead of ignoring this on the Volun- tary principle, and putting the honest servant on a level with the dishonest one, and therebij levelling down, or doing the same for the dishonest one as he does for the honest one, and thereby levelling up, he proceeds on the sound and scriptural Establish- ment principle, and marks his appreciation of honesty and his sense of its importance in all under his care, by giving to the honest servant tokens of his favour and regard, which he not only does not ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 193 feel himself justified in extending to the dishonest one, but which, on the contrary, the servant's dis- honesty positively prevents him, as a lover of truth and righteousness, from doing. His withholding, in sucli a case, from the dishonest servant what he bestowed upon the honest one would be an act of justice, and not of injustice. Is it otherwise, we ask, with the magistrate, as regards the true or a false religion ? By countenancing and supporting the true religion, in opposition to the false, as we have shown that the State is bound to do, it does not create the distinction between the one and the other, or place them on an inequality ; but finding from the Word of God that there is a marked and imperishable distinction between them, which gives the true religion a paramount claim on the attention and regard of all, the State, by taking it into its favour, and giving it the countenance and support which its divine character and vital importance demand, only acknowledges its claims, and pays becoming tribute to its divine Author. Instead of his doing this being an act of political wrong, to do otherwise — whether in the way of ignoring both, or taking both into his favour — were a sin and a crime, an act of disloyalty towards Him by whom kings reign, and a surrendering of the nation to lawlessness and irreligion. The position taken up by the authors of the 194 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. manifesto in regard to political rights is just that of Mr Marshall and the other advocates of Volun- taryism during the time of the controversy, from which they were so completely driven by the advocates of the Establishment principle at that time. And we cannot do better than produce the following triumphant answer", by the late Dr Andrew Thomson : — " Mr Marshall argues," he says, " that to charter and endow any particular profession of religion ' is at variance with justice — creates a distinction among the members of the community which no legislature has a right to create.' Now we maintain that it would be most unjust, and altogether impolitic, not to make a distinction. And we do 'presume to say' that we maintain most resolutely that there is ' either well-doing or evil-doing, politically/ speaking^ in adopting or not adopting a religious creed.' And we assert that such a circumstance does not merely ' make a difference in the eye of the Church and in the eye of God, but that it makes, or ought to make, the mightiest difference in the eye of the State.' And Mr Fuller has proved most triumphantly that the Calvinistic system is eminently fitted to promote public morals, while the Socinian system has a powerfully demoralising tendency. Will Mr Mar- shall ' presume to say ' that this circumstance should make no difference in the eye of the State ? and that the Government ought to give no greater countenance to the professors of the one creed than to those of the other ? " * It is not possible to put truth on an equality with error ; the very entertaining of such an idea is derogatory to the truth — it is to give encouragement to error at the expense of truth. If an indivichal * "Christian Instructor," 1830, p. 718. ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 195 ought to give the truth, when proposed to him, the paramount control it claims over him and all he has, and ought on no consideration to treat the truth of God and the lie of Satan as if both had like claims on his support, or as if he had nothing more to do with truth than with error ; a like duty devolves upon a nation which is favoured with the truth. The authors of the Manifesto will probably admit with Mr Marshall that the legislature of a country has a right ^^ to tax the inhabitants of all classes and descriptions for whatsoever object it decrees conducive to the common advantage," though with him they hold that, ^' properly speak- ing, religion is none of the concerns of Govern- ment." " In direct opposition to this," said Dr Thomson, " we maintain that rehgion, being not only of greater advantage to society, but the very bond by which society is held together, must, in its general principles at least, form an important object of earnest attention to nations and their rulers. . . . A pure profession of Christianity is 'deemed' by the legislature ' an object conducive to the common ad- vantage,' and therefore they support it from the common fund. Nor is the plea of conscience, to which Mr Marshall refers, sufficient to invalidate the application of these prin- ciples to rehgion any more than to other objects of civil government. Mr Marshall asks, * What if we are taxed to support a religion from which we conscientiously dissent ? Do you call this justice ? Does it never occur to you that it is a matter in which our conscience may be concerned as well as our property ?' Mr Marshall's great error lies in think- ing that religion is the only thing about which conscience N 196 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. is concerned, and in thinking tliat the nation has not a right to devote the pubHc funds to an object, because certain individuals, or certain classes of the community, may, from conscience, oppose that object."* The conscience is affected by other things besides religion, so that if the plea is admitted, '' that no tax can be rightly imposed against which in- dividuals or even classes of the community may have conscientious scruples, you sweep away at once the entire system of taxation." It is not the countenance and support which the nation gives to the true religion and the Church of Christ that gives rise to political inequalitj^, but the prevalence of a spirit of irreligion and ungodli- ness. The nation can no more occupy a position of neutrality toward religion than can the indi- vidual. If it is not for Christ, it will be against Him. And hence this dream of religious equality is just another name for the triumph of the false religion, under whose oppressive sway Voluntaries might find, when too late, that in agitating for a divorce between the nation and the true religion, in the hope of thereby securing political equity, they had brought themselves and the nation under an intolerable despotism. The doctrines ,and institu- tions which are divinely revealed are not only true and good in a theological sense, but they are also jiolitically good and profitable to men. And it is * "Christian Instructor/' 1830, pp. 718, 720. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 197 only as they are recognised and fostered by the nation as they ought to be, that true political equity will ever be realised. " Be wise now therefore, ye kings ; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him" (Ps. ii. 10-12). " By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth" (Pro v. viii. 15, 16). XIII. UNCOMPROMISING ATTACK. We have gone over the diiferent sections of the Manifesto, and have found that it embodies prin- ciples which are utterly subversive of all true civil and religious liberty. The authors talk of liberty of conscience, which, as contended for by them, is nothing short of revolution and lawlessness. Their voice is the voice of Jacob, but their hands are the hands of Esau. None but the blind and besotted will be deceived by them; but then the multitude in our day are so blinded by prejudice, and besotted by ignorance and indifference, that they are taken with the cry liberty of conscience and equality^ and will scarcely pause to listen to the words of truth and soberness. Voluntaryism is the great idol of the present day which has gathered round it a motley group of worshippers prepared to consecrate themselves to its service — influenced, indeed, by diverse motives, but all bent upon the great work of destruction, which is the acceptable offering to this Siva of Christian Voluntaries. The United Presbyterian Church, as the repre- sentative of so-called Christian Voluntaryism, leads ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 199 the van, crying, Down witli existing Establish- ments, as the practical development of a system which is unscriptural ! — The Secularists, as the representatives of modern infidelity, fall in with the cry, Down with existing Establishments, as opposed to liberty of thonght and the free spirit of the age I — Then come Liberal politicians, as the representatives of the mob, who join in the cry, Down with existing Establishments, as a sop to Cerberus, or a needful concession to the power of democracy, and as essential to the triumph of the principles of liberty, equalit}^, and fraternity which have done so much for unhappy France! — Then follow the Papists, as the representatives of spiritual despotism, and they cry, Down with existing Establishments, as standing in the way of the nation's subjection to their ghostly sway ! — And the rear is brought up by the Free Protesting Church of Scotland, as the representatives of Establishments in the abstract, and the Gibeonites of Christian Voluntaries, or the hewers of wood and drawers of water to the United Presbyterians, and they cry, Down with existing Establishments, because deformed with many abuses and inconsistent with the triumph of the principle which puts uncon- trolled power in the hands of ecclesiastical leaders ! The past history and avowed principles of the latter rather hamper them in their movement ; and 200 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. therefore they have contented themselves very much with calling the Establishment bad names, as the most effectual way, in their estimation, of getting their designs against her accomplished; and we would suggest to them, before they plunge deeper into the mire, that they should take a survey of their position and their ''^ compayiy ^'' and, in doing this, to remember the cruise of the Ante- lope^ and the reply of Dr Cook, in his discussion with Dr Ritchie, " Dr Ritchie tells us," he says, ^^he did not ask the captain, ^ Have you any infidels on board ? ' but he examined the soundness of the vessel, the skill of the captain, and the seamanship of the crew. Yes, the vessel, the captain, and the crew are, indeed, the proper concerns of a passen- ger. But — neither to speak of vessel nor captain — who are the crew with whom my rev. friend has chosen to navigate? It is the Popish and infidel crew that finally threaten the peace and the safety of the ship ! For a while, no doubt, the monstrous coalition may get on together, just as long as a sense of common danger keeps them subordinate to their common rules — just as long as objects oi piracy present for common plunder. But wait — and you will not have to wait long — for the mutiny of the crew, and then comes the fell struggle for ascendancy, which Popery and infidelity are yet doomed to hold " (p. 28). Is this what Free ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGIOX. 201 ChurclimerL are prepared to contemplate as the fearful consummation of their unholy alliance ae-ainst Establishments ? Is the historian of ^' The Ten Years' Conflict" for the Church's spiritual in- dependence in connection with the State, to live to put the copestone on the temple of spiritual despotism ? We hope not. But if he and those who co-operate with him in this present movement are not prepared to face such an issue of the conflict, they would do well to pause, and remember that evil communications corrupt good manners, and that the beginnings of evil are like the letting out of water. Christian Voluntaries have set their hearts upon the overthrow of the existing Establishments in England and Scotland, and to the accomplishment of this object they have resolved to devote their energies with unswerving diligence. No reform, however great ; no rectifying of abuses, however thorough and scriptural; can be entertained by them. Instead of diverting them from what they regard as their divine mission as Voluntaries, the very fact of such things being proposed would seem to have roused them, as of old^ to determined action. They are shrewd enough to see that the abolition of patronage and the renovation of the Establishment in Scotland would be a deathblow to them ; and therefore these modern Demetriuses, 202 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGIOX. with the craftsmen of like oecnpation belonging to other churches, are raising the cry in behalf of Voluntaryism — a deity which owes its origin, ac- cording to one who is now a devout worshipper at its shrine, to the ^^ old enemy " of the kingdom of Christ. *^ It is now more than time," say the authors of the Manifesto, " to meet all such proposals (of reformation) with the simple demand, ' Dis- establishment, Disendowment.' Then only shall we comiylete the work of reformationy It is cer- tainly a new and extraordinary way of completing a work, wholly to overthrow it ! And in proposing to furnish an illustration of this, it will require the skilful exercise of the power of conjuring which seems to be claimed by disestablished Churches in our day. This is what Christian Voluntaries gravely declare to be the work that lies to their hand to do — to complete the work of reformation by undoing all that the Eeformers and the Refor- mation did in the way of bringing about, through God's blessing, a harmonious and scriptural union between the Church and the nation, and ^^ to mould the institutions of the State in conformity with the principles of justice and liberty ! " Justice and liberty ! Say rather, tyranny and bondage ! What they demand is a divorce between the nation and the Church, because they consider such a relation to be in itself sinful and prejudicial to ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 203 the interests of truth. This is the motive which prompts them to action. The alliance is essentially wrong in itself, according to them : and " citizens/' they tell us, ^^have the right in equity to demand . . . that all civil Establishments of religion or exercise of civil authority in matters of religion^ and all appropriations of the public resources to ecclesiastical and sectarian purposes, shall cease and determine." Nothing short of this will satisfy them. They have no special complaint against the existing Establishments which does not, in their opinion, apply with equal force to the State Church system or Establishment principle. And hence this cry for the disestablishment and disendowment of existing Establishments now^ is the same that was heard during the Voluntary controversy. We find one of the speakers at a meeting in defence of Church Establishments, held at Arbroath in 1834, saying, '^ Their motto is ruin, mine is reform : theirs is the Edomite cry, Eaze it ; mine is, Eepair it. They have taken us, sir, at a disadvantage — they knew that we were repairing the breaches which patronage had made in our walls ; for never did they cry raze it, till we cried reform it. They flattered themselves, perhaps, that when our hands were already engaged in repairing our Jerusalem, we should fall an easy prey to their attack ; but they shall find, sir, that we can do, as 204 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. the Israelites were ready to do of old, while we build up the breach with the one hand, we can smite down the enemy with the other." Without alluding further to this quotation, it is somewhat striking that this new raid against Establishments should have originated in connection with an at- tempt on the part of the Establishment in this country to get rid of the yoke of patronage. The connection between the two, in so far as the Free Church is concerned, is painfully and pitifully close. It is not for us to pronounce upon the motives that may be influencing the leaders in the Free Church, after thirty years' silence — and at a time when, themselves being judges, the Establishment is, to say the least, far from being worse than it was — to join in the Edomite cry, raze it, instead of seeking its reform; or seeking, in accordance with their own protest, that our rulers may be brought to discharge aright the duty which they owe to the true religion and the Church of Christ. But whatever may be their motives, they are entering on a career which is to falsify their whole history, to stigmatise the memory of the illustrious dead, to give a practical denial to their own solemn declaration that they hold by the principles of the Eeformed Church of Scotland, to expose themselves to suspicion and dishonour among their allies, to make themselves a laughing- ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 205 stock in tlie community, and to do irreparable damage to the cause of truth. The time has now come, according to the authors of the Manifesto, when Voluntaries are called upon to address themselves hopefully and uncompromis- ingly to the work of securing a practical exemplifi- cation of their Voluntaryism in this covenanted land. The triumph of Voluntaryism in the over- throw of Establishments is what United Presby- terians propose to themselves as the object of their present agitation. And while we hear some in the United Presbyterian Church — little to their credit — for union purposes and to secure the co-operation of others in their work of disestablishment, endea- vouring to keep their principles in the background, we are indebted to the authors of the Manifesto for the clear and honest way in which they have expressed themselves, so that we are left in no doubt as to what it is we must contemplate as the issue of the present disestablishment movement, should it be crowned with success. This is worth something. '' A prudent man," says the proverb, *' foreseeth the evil and hideth himself; but the simple pass on and are punished." And the punishment in this case will be disastrous in the extreme. " In order," says Dr M'Crie, " to form a proper estimate of the nature, tendency, and pernicious effects of this scheme 206 ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. (Voluntaryism), we must suppose men to be impelled by its principles to action in civil society ; we must suppose rulers or subjects, either apart or in conjunction, making the attempt to change, or actually changing, the frame of their Government, and the system of their laws, so as to conform to these principles. What would be the consequence ? Every constitution in Christendom must be taken to pieces and altered, in as far as any particular religion (the best reformed not excepted) obtains a legal preference and support ; . . . settled provision for maintaining religious institutions, or any mode of Christian instruction by law, would be withdrawn ; . . . the social compact, in so far as religion is comprehended in it, with coronation oaths . . . must be swept away as rubbish. The great charter securing universal liberty, or licence of conscience, would come instead of them all. . . . However much such a scheme of Government and reformation may be now cried up as sound policy, essential to the liberties of mankind, and necessary to secure the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, for our part we do not see how it can be freed from impiety and rebellion against the Lord and His Anointed. ... It would be an irreligious, an ungodly, an unchristian reformation." * That this is no fancy picture on the part of Dr M^Grie is manifested from the demands put forth in the present day by ^^ the Liberal League," or Voluntaries of America — a nation which used to be pointed to as a fine example of the beneficial working of Voluntaryism. These demands are nine in number, and among them we find the following: — "4. We demand . . . especially that the use of the Bible in public schools, whether ostensibly as a text book, or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall cease. 6. We demand * "Statement," &c., pp. 24, 25, 28. ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. 207 that judicial oaths in the courts and in other departments of Government shall be abolished. 7. We demand that all laws directlv or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed. 8. "We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of ' Christian ' morality shall be abrogated ; and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of national morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty. 9. We demand that not only in the constitutions of the United States and of its several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privilege or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity, or any other special religion ; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis." These demands, so appalling and abhorrent to every Christian mind, afford a practical illustration of the principles embodied in this Manifesto of the United Presbyterian Church, and which they seek to have carried into practical operation in this disestablishment movement. But while the pub- lication of these demands has created a reaction in the minds of American Christians, and is leading them to fall back upon the principles of our Scottish Keformation as the only safety for their nation, the publication of the United Presbyterian Manifesto in this country seems to be the standard 208 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. around which recreant Scotsmen, given up to strong delusion, are to muster and wage war against our Protestant constitution and all our civil rights and liberties, at the cry, " Disestablishment, disendow- ment." Surely no sane man who believes in the principles of our constitution would, because of some wrongs existing in it or its administration, set himself to seek the entire overthrow of civil government, and not the needed reformation. In like manner, no sane man who holds by the Establishment principle will lend himself, because of abuses and evils in existing Establishments, to help in bringing about the abolition of all national recognition of the truth, instead of endeavouring the reformation of the evils complained of. " The evils," says the pre- sent Dr M^Crie in the "Vindication," published in 1834, p. 17 — "the evils which attach to the Churches established by law in this country furnish no reason why Seceders should condemn the princij^le of Establishments, or wage war against their exist- ence. They satisfied themselves for a long time with bearing a public testimony against their abuses, and maintaining ecclesiastical fellowship among themselves under the banner of that testi- mony. If they thought that more was required of them in the present times, the way was open to ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 209 tliern as citizens, if not in their ecclesiastical capacity, to petition the Legislature for tlie repeal of the patronage law, the abjuration oath, and other acts of the State which oppose barriers to the work of reformation and to a reunion among its friends. Such a course would have been becoming their professions ; it might have secured the co-operation of other Presbyterians within and without the Establishment ; and, whether successful or not in their efforts, they might have consoled themselves with the reflection that they had improved the opportunity denied to their fathers of addressing a Parliament more disposed than formerly to listen to the public voice, and of seeking the redress of grievances and the correction of abuses deeply affecting the interests of religion and the peace of the country ; but instead of this they have embarked in a scheme which, if it should succeed, would bury the grand object aimed at by the Secession in the same grave with the corruptions of the Establish- ment." This may well be taken as a seasonable word of counsel and warning by some who have embarked in the Voluntary crusade. It is always easier to pull down than to construct. Brute force can overthrow what it took the genius of ages to rear up. It is easy to incite an ignorant and phrensied multitude to overturn existing 210 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. institutions, under the conviction that there is something bad about them. They go at such work with a purpose ; but when they once begin their work of demolition, they are not careful to dis- criminate between the good and the bad, and they usually do not cease till they have involved all in a common ruin. However such employment may suit the taste and inclination of the demao-oo^ue, it is surely the part of all who profess to be the guides of public opinion and to consult the highest good of the nation, to exert their influence in seek- ing to conserve whatever is good, and to rectify whatever is wrong in existing institutions, that they may the more efficiently promote the great ends for which they were set up. And even in the case where it might be alleged that the institution was so corrupt as to be incapable of reform, it would be the part of a wise man, when contemplating its removal, to bethink him how its place could be more beneficially supplied. There is a restlessness and desire for change pervading the minds of men in the present day, which discover themselves in their impatience of all restraint and their proposals to alter or abolish all old and well-established principles and prac- tices, that they may have free scope for the develop- ment of those which in their judgment are better ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELTGION. 211 adapted to tlie progressive tendency of the age. They are for removing all the safeguards for our civil and religious liberties — the fruit of the wisdom, prayers, and blood of our reforming forefathers, as unsuited to the liberal Siud enlightened spirit of their degenerate sons ! They would have us lift the anchor by which we have been moored to God and His truth for upwards of 300 years (during which we have attained to such signal greatness), and go to sea with men who have no definite beliefs of any kind — whose watchword is progress, and whose landing-place is anarchy and destruction. And it is surely the duty of every one who loves the truth and his country, in times such as these, when applying himself to deal with the relation which now subsists between the nation and relisrion and the Church of Christ, to beware, in his professed desire to remedy existing evils, that he does not give countenance and encouragement to principles and practices which will afford fall and uncontrolled play to those elements which will sweep away everything like a national recognition of the king- dom of the Lord Jesus Christ, and hand us over to the tender mercies of the Man of Sin. Disesta- blishment and disendowment may be a becoming cry in the mouth of Voluntaries, infidels, and Papists, whose aim is the nation's divorce from the true Church of Christ ; but it cannot point to the o 212 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. true solution of existing evils, in the judgment of those who hold that it is the duty of the nation and its rulers to favour the true religion and the Church of Christ, and that " the nation and king- dom which will not serve her shall perish." In so far as those outside existing Establishments are concerned, it is with the rightful discharge, on the part of the nation, of its duty toward the Church, that they have to do. And its sin in cast- ins; off and disownino' the Church of Christ and the Word of God will be no less certain to draw down judgments upon it, than its sin in intruding itself into the Church's peculiar province. It is therefore a strange and unaccountable thing for men to urge on the nation to reject Christ, as the best way of repairing the dishouour it has done to Christ — to atone for one sin by the commission of another ! No ; it is not by such Voluntary expedients that the cause of truth and righteousness is to be ad- vanced in our land. It is our duty, in these times, when the Lord is shaking the nations, if we would be instrumental in saving our land, to hold fast and hold forth the time-honoured and God-honour- ing principles of our Scottish Eeformation. It is only as they triumph that our nation will continue to occupy the first place among the nations of Christendom ; and present to the eyes of all king- ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 213 doms the spectacle of a nation truly honoured and blessed of God, because bringing its glory and honour into the kingdom of Christ. Surely it is not to be recorded in history that it was on the soil drenched by the blood of martyrs, who contended against such mighty odds for these Keformation j)rinciples, that they were basely surrendered and betrayed into the hands of the enemy, under the pretext of thereby maintaining the honour of Christ, and advancing the cause of civil and religious liberty ! Surely it is not to be recorded in history that the vision of a nation and its ruler serving the Lord Christ, which floated before the minds of our noble and godly ancestors, and for the realisation of which they prayed and laboured so earnestly, was discovered by the light of this nineteenth century to have been a fond delusion which had no foundation in the Word of God, and that the work of reformation was only completed when, in accord- ance with the principles of Voluntaryism, every trace of the true religion had been erased from the statute-book of the realm ! This would be to blot out our nation from among the nations of Chris- tendom, and ^Ho expose ourselves," as Dr M^Crie says, " to the merited reprobation addressed by God to His ancient people — ' Pass over the isles of Chittim and see ; and send unto Kedar, and con- sider diligently, and see if there be such a thing : 214 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods ? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit,' " He then adds words which it were well for our modern reformers (!) seriously to ponder : — " Bad as we are, it is hoped that we are not yet prepared for the adoption of this system, and that there are still a number, who, although they may have unwarily admitted some of its leading principles, may be persuaded to pause, re- consider, and contemplate the inevitable consequence to which it leads. Persons, by fixing their attention immovably upon evils and abuses which attach to, or result from, the Esta- blishments with which they are acquainted, are in danger of overlooking the more general and extensive good which they are calculated to produce, or may be rendered subservient unto ; and, instead of seeking the correction of abuses and the redress of grievances, they are ready to look forward with big expectations to a total revolution in such matters, without taking into view, or being aware of, the infinitely greater evils which would arise from the new mode of things.* " We cannot do better, in drawing these articles to a close, than adopt the following sentence from the manifesto (almost the only one with which we agree) : — " We may expect in this, as in every moral struggle, to see victory crown at last the arms of truth and justice rather than those of policy or numbers, and minorities animated by definite principle influence events more powerfully than larger bodies governed by elastic maxims." This testimony is true ; and committing the cause we have been advocating to the care of Him with * " Statement," p. 29. ESTABLISHMENTS OF KELIGION. 215 whose honour and glory it is so inseparably con- nected, we can look forward with confidence to the time when Voluntaryism shall cease and determine, and the cry shall be heard : '^ The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever." DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCHES OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. The following is an account of tlie Appointment of the United Presbyterian Committee on Disesta- blishment and Disendowment : — It was on the 21st day of May 1872, that the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church agreed to appoint the Com- mittee under whose authority the Statement, on which we have been commenting, was issued, and we herewith append the terms of the appointment and the names of the members of said Committee : — " The Synod adopt the overture of the Presbytery of Dunfermline, and agree to petition Parlia- ment in terms thereof; also agree, that a Committee be appointed on the disestablishment of the English and Scot- tish Churches, to watch over the attempts of the friends of State Churches of the kingdom to prop up the existing system, said Committee to adopt all suitable means to secure the end contemplated in the overture" — viz., the disestablishment and disendowment of the above-named Churches. The followinrisonment, while in less scrupulous times the stake and the scaffold were freely employed. Not Popery only, or Prelacy, but Presbytery has practised intolerance and coercion in its interests. The old policy, which made refusal to worship the golden image a political o£fence, and sacri- ficed the Lord of the conscience to its fears and jealousies, has constituted the simplest form of dissent an iniquity to be punished by the judge, as the history, not yet remote, of tithes, C hurch-rates, and Annuity-tax bears witness. It has been attempted to slight such questions as these last, as only questions of money, as if no sacred feelings and rights were aflfected by taxation. But there is plainly no differ- ence in principle between compelling a citizen to part with 22 G ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. his money, and compelling him to part ivith his time or labour, for alleged sacred purposes. The freedom implied in the rights of conscience applies to the whole field of private judgment, and of the action which it dictates, and includes the right of the citizen to act for himself in all matters of religion, not excepting the disposal of his means for its support, the duty of rendering property to God. It is a right for which he may earnestly contend, that he be left free from any commandments of men, to employ his resources, time or labour, for the promotion of such religious objects only as conscience approves. To exact by legal process his labour, time, or property, in order to furnish the m.eans of religious endowments and grants, is legalised robbery ; and to constitute his refusal to render them a legal offence, is an act of civil wrong and contempt ; while the method of mixing up the charges of the State Church with the ordi- nary civil charges, seems only ill-disguised compulsion, and circuitous theft for religious purposes. But this is the system under which the inhabitants of this country are placed. Dissenting subjects are still liable for the support of the Churches, the clergy, and the religious stipendiaries of Government. While the older forms of persecution and disability have ceased with a former age, State Churchism remains true, as far as it dares, to what lies at the root of all — compidsory principles in religion. 2. It is opposed to the special rides and examples of Scripture. It is contrary to Old Testament institutions: In these we look in vain for the features of civil enact- ment, support, or control of religion, except in the impieties and indiscretions of kings or rulers assuming to be a law to themselves. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 227 Primitive and patriarchal times yield no trace of it. Abraham voluntarily presenting tithes to Melchisedec of the spoils of war, is vainly likened to a modern heritor, and the priest-king of Salem to a parochial incumbent. Heathen monarchs proclaiming fasts, and decreeing relio-ion under penalties, are not approved for their threats or injunctions as models of zeal with knowledge, but they and their people are accepted on their personal repentance by Him who is rich in mercy. The Jewish Church ivas a polity unique and alone, a pure theocracy or Church-state in which God was all. So far from being a civil establishment of religion, it was wholly a divine establishment of religion and civil life, set up by infallible Deity, who guided its administrators by super- natural rules and counsel. Jehovah was at once God and King, political and spiritual Head; and human kings, when employed, were but royal vassals of the theocratic Sovereign. Its Divine Ruler was careful then, as now, to make it known that He alone was Lord of the conscience. " Thus saith the Lord," " This is the thing that the Lord commanded," was the preface of Moses and David to all regulations. But we have no such feature in our State Churches. God spake by Moses and David and others, but we look in vain for proof that He spake by Constan- tine, Henry VIII. , or William of Orange. We know that Hezekiah, Josiah, and other kings, had prophets at their ear ; but this will not be alleged of the Jameses, Charleses, Marys, the Tudors, Stuarts, or their successors, or of the Parliaments that passed the Acts of Supremacy and Uni- formity, or even that ratified the Confessions and Cate- chisms. ]\Ien, in whatever station, are now referred for rules and principles to a completed Scripture, without power to enforce on others the interpretation they may adopt. It was certainly not enjoined hy God that the Con- fession of Faith, or the Thirty-Nine Articles, should he made p 228 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. the laio of the land ; or that Henry VIII. should constitute himself head of the Church in England in room of the Pope; or that James shoidd establish Preshytenjj or Charles II. swear the Solemn League and Covenant. The deeds of these kings and Parliaments were of their own policy alone, inventions of men, — not ordinances of God. And they were unwarranted inventions ; for the divine law, and not the divine procedure, forms our rule of duty ; and that which is fitting in God does not therefore become His crea- tures. On the contrary, however pious it may superficially seem for rulers to enact religion, there is nothing more truly impious, because belonging solely to Himself. Jewish rulers had in no case a legislative but only a strictly defined ministerial power in religion, w^hich itself passed away with Judaism, when Christ appeared as the end of the law. In contrast with the system of appointment in State Churches, it is undoubted that the appointment of the mi?iisters of religion lay exclusively with God. In regard to the support of religion, the contrast was not less striking. The tabernacle in the wilderness was erected, not by the fruits of taxation, but by free-will ofFer- ino-s. The first and second temples were built on the same principle, — kings, like nu sing-fathers, contributing will- ingly, as did the people, of their own proper good. The repairs of the fabrics were provided from sources strictly sacred and voluntary. The history of the synagogues points the same lesson. They were the fruit not of the taxing power of rulers, but of the cheerful liberality of men like the pious centurion. The payment of tithes to the Levites shows a system of ministerial support bearing no resemblance to civil endow- ments or tithes, which are compulsory, purely of human origan, and without moral features. The Levitical tithes were expressly appointed by God, and, while obligatory, ivere voluntary. God's command was laid on the conscience, ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 229 and neither priests nor riders had power to collect them hy legal pains. Penalties were enforced for breaches of the judicial and ceremonial law, but only the penalties of providence attached to neglect of tithes and offerings. Besides, the tithes were founded in equity and wise adapta- tion to the system of which they were part. The Levites, being destined to special duties, obtained no share in the divi- sion of the land, except the cities and suburbs of their resid- ences, and the tithes were assigned them in lieu of this means of support, and, along with the things of the altar, as re- muneration for their services in the sanctuary and common- wealth. Derived from the soil of the great Proprietor, they tvere His wages to His serva^its, who were also the servants of all ; and as paid by the human tenants, represented at once the dues they owed to God and to His servants who served them, in spiritucd things. Thus were the claims of the lat- ter impressed on all worshippers, and the ministers of religion themselves taus-ht to labour with dilis^ence for God o o o and the people, and to look for support alone to the Divine King, and those who loved His altar. The prophecies in which kings and rulers are represented as doing homage to Christ, are to be interpreted of a homage consistent in its matter and form with the interests and law of His kingdom. They plainly indicate not the exercise by rulers of authority in the Church, or civil exactions for its support, but the enrolment of kings and rulers in its active membership, the existence and administration of just laws, the prosperity and final triumphs of the Church under its own institutions, the weapons which are not carnal, but mighty through God. It is opposed to the teaching of the JSfeio Testament. The law was a schoolmaster until Christ. Then the Church received its new and advanced form of a kingdom, catholic and spiritual, instead of local, typical, and 230 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. national. The temporal nationality of Israel was dissolved, and tlie temple itself laid in ruins, and everything but moral principles and eternal lessons abolished. And what do we find when the whole old growth has been cleared down to the roots, continued under the new economy ? The prin- ciple of liberty of conscience and of free-will offerings. It is not, indeed, pretended that the New Testament Church had any features of resemblance to State Churches. The Lord Jesus left behind Him only a model of a self- governing, self-supporting religious societ}'', guided by His Word, and animated by His Spirit, a " kingdom not of this world," yet divinely adapted to exist and work out its ends freely everywhere, in harmony with the just arrange- ments and order of civil life. It has, however, been said, that there was no opportunity at the inauguration of Christianity for obtaining the support of earthly rulers. But Jesus came in " the fulness of the time," at the most fitting moment, when the theatre of the world was best prepared for the display of the true form of the Church. He who then came could have come equally at the time of Constantine, or at a time when rulers would have been ready to take His cause by the hand ; or He could have inclined the hearts of kings to establish His Church by the civil arm; but He acted otherwise : His kingdom was to win, not force, its way in the world. But we best know what Jesus meant by what He did and taught (John xviii. 36). He repudiated the sword. He chose to be supported during His ministry by the free- will offerings and services of His friends. In sending forth the seventy and the twelve, He instructed them to depend on similar aids. And " for His name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles ; '' refusing the carnal things of those who rejected their spiritual things. ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 231 In reply to false teachers, Paul vindicates Ids right to ''^forbear working,^' and to he supported hy the Churches ; while declining for special reasons sicpport from Corinth^ he accepted it from Philippi, and other quarters. The right he shows to be founded in equity, acknowledged in Mosaic law, and permanently established by Christ. The soldier goes not to tvar at his own expense; the husbandman eats of the fruit of the vineyard; the shepherd of the milk of tliefloch. The ox is unmuzzled while treading the corn. The Levites lived of the temple ; the priests were partakers of the altar. The source of ministerial support is spiritual, the offerings of faith. It is not the promiscuous body of citizens on which the servant of the Church depends, but the Church itself, and primarily the flock or vineyard which he feeds or tends. "Even so hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel." "If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things'? " (1 Cor. ix. 1-14). "Let him that is taught in the Word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things ' ' (Gal. vi. 6). In these apostolic expositions we have the supreme law of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel is for all time ; and this is an ordinance for the support of its ministers in all time, — no more a preliminary arrangement of the new dis- pensation than the altar and the offerings were of the old, but permanent as the preaching of the word. This ordinance remains till it can be shown to be superseded by a new law of Christ. But it has been superseded by all State Churches, and glaringly by those of our own land, where ministers are required to live of the rates more than of the gospel, and to partake of the exchequer rather than of the altar, eating the fruit of cdl vineyards and the milk of all flocks hut their own. 232 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. From all this it is evident tliat giving for the cause of Christ has been denied its rank as an ordinance of Chris- tianity in State Churches. Praise and prayer are not more truly acts of religion than offerings of substance, and not more suitable to be performed or regulated by Act of Parliament. All aie duties to be spontaneously practised, and all are privileges to be freely chosen. Nothing has more degraded prevailing ideas and practices regarding the duty and privilege of giving than the State Church system, by which it has come to pass that if money is got by any Utming of the screw, hy intri- cate construction of musty documents, or shameless Jcnoching at the door of Parliament, the object is held as gained; for- getting the rule of the house of Christ : *' Every one as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver." It is opposed to the teaching of the New Testament regarding the magistrate's power. Magistracy is an ordinance of God, but it is also an *' ordinance of man," and the submission required to it when set up, like that of the natural relations, is only *'in the Lord;'' and both civil authority and civil obedience have their limitations prescribed by the higher law. Scruples existed among the Jews regarding allegiance to foreign rulers, as among early Christian converts regarding tribute to heathen kings ; and our Lord solved honest fears as well as silenced crafty questions by His maxim, " Render to Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's-' (Luke xx. 25). The impression on the coin showed the Jews to be subject to Ctesar. Civil government is necessary to the protection of society, and taxation to the support of civil government. It is therefore lawful to render tribute. As the exiles in Babylon were enjoined to seek the jjcace of the kingdom, the Jews were now to pay tribute to Cajsar ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 233 in things not contrary to the law of God. Thus Jesus baffled His enemies by distinguishing the sphere in which Caesar lawfully ruled — that of secular things — and the sphere which God reserves to Himself — all sacred things. In the spirit of his Master, Paul teaches that even heathen government had its claim as a crime-punishing and peace- protecting ordinance, and that as thus ministerial for the common good, it was to be suj)ported and obeyed (Kom. xiii. 1-7). "When it should enjoin or demand aught contrary to Heaven's law, the rule came instantly to apply, " We ought to obey God rather than men.^' Such passages, instead of favouring the loose notions of civil prerogative which the State Church system implies, rather shut the ruler within his proper domain. lY. — The System is Injurious to the Interests of Eeligion. Of this we might be assured from its unscripturalness. " The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weak- ness of God is stronger than men." The delicate plant of religion thrives under the nurture of Heaven, but withers in the mould of human artifice. It is confusedly thought that because civil order is promoted by the influence of religion, religion may therefore be employed as a State machinery. Even were it lawful to lay hold of such an in- strument simply as a tool of State, its benefits are not thus secured. The ark of God, carried down into the battle, will not insure the victory. The institutions of religion yield their peaceable fruits only when scripturally administered. The abuse of the best things gives rise to the worst ; and the perversion of divine ordinances by the State Church system has inflicted more injury on religion than the amount of Church life adhering to it has benefited law or order. Eeligion ought to be felt as a sunshine, a fragrance, a sacred force iu society. The State is society in its pro- 23-t ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. miscuous form, embracing all sects and classes, and ruling by physical sway, and is unfit to be the organ of the highest form of life. The Church is the divine organisation of Chris- tianity. Unlike the State, to which men belong of necessity, the Church is a purely voluntary society, to which men attach themselves freely, and in which they voluntarily worship and labour under law to Christ teaching by His Word and Spirit, and enjoy the highest sense of order and liberty. It is thus the only form of society that can pro- vide for the culture of religious willingness, and for per- fect freedom from coercive influence in its acts. In contrast with this divine method, the State Church system makes religion geographical, ivithout the poiver of affecting individual faith or practice. It makes religion official instead of being first personal, as when a pro- fligate must take the sacrament because he is a State func- tionary, or an atheist pay Church rates because he is a shopkeeper. It makes religion political, more a thing of the civil community than of the Church. It makes it con- ventional, a matter of custom and fashion, rather than of principle and conscience. It makes its collective deed that of promiscuous populations and Parliaments, instead of being the distinctive act of Christ's professing followers in their free capacity rendering personal homage ; leading to compromise of religious truth, quickening error and dead- ening orthodoxy by converting them into statute. Exerting a pressure foreign to the nature of religious impressions, which arise through persuasion of the truth alone, it awakens repugnance, contempt and fear, with the hypocrisies, evasions, resentments, and active hostility that follow ; and engenders by the surest process the worst forms and manifestations of irreligion and infidelity. Besides that it injuriously moulds by law ideas and habits which acquire their proper form only in the process of free growth, it debases and secularises ecclesiastical ESTABLISHMENTS OF EELIGION. 235 life. It destroys the mutual dependence, sympathy, and obligations of the ministry and their flocks. It rears up a membership without self-reliance or intelligent interest in religion, indifferent to their spiritual rights, and a clergy more careful of civil status than of popular privilege. It builds up Churches, not, as has been said, for the poor, but really for the rich and fashionable, with relaxed discipline, repressed spiritual growth, slight demands on private liberality and enterprise ; seats of servility to governments and obstruction to progress, with the other evils arising from the false authority, responsibility, and influence which it has imported into religion. V. — The System is Opposed to Political Equity. This last consideration appeals naturally to a large class of minds not influenced by other objections. Although secondary in its form, it is obviously of the utmost political weight, and none ought to be more earnest to give it due place than the friends of religion. It is not only true that, while religious institutions remain associated with the sense of social or political wrong, they cannot accomplish their beneficent ends ; but justice has from its nature inde- feasible claims, and is in truth a branch of practical Chris- tianity. If injustice can be fairly charged, as it can, against the State Church system, it forms of itself an adequate reason for seeking its overthrow. Now the rights of conscience are not those of a class or sect^ but of men, and must be equally recognised in all persons. As nothing more nearly or powerfully afiects personal feeling than religion, nothing more strongly affects the comforts of citizenship than the manner in which its rights are treated by the civil power. Other grievances may be borne, but contempt of these arouses the keenest sense of injustice. The most perfect religious equality can alone meet their just demands. If a final solution of 236 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. politico-religious difficulties is to be reached, the various bodies composing society, which is not accidentally but necessarily a mixed multitude, must cease to compete for the recognition and subsidy by the State of their religious distinctions ; and Government must impartially cease either to affix the stamp of its pat- ronage or the brand of its tolerance on religious parties, giving all the equal right of a fair field. Any other policy but complicates the evil. It is a striking fact, that the religious system laboriously disestablished at the Reforma- tion by Knox, has been for nearly fifty years eating again the bread of the State in its colleges and schools, and is still extending its demands. The political cause is obviotis. It is the necessity of meeting the sense of inequality produced by the State Church system. But let that system be termi- nated, an impregnable stand can then be made against the pressure of sects on the ground of equity and not of theological distinctions. Wedded, however, to this system, no policy is more in favour with leading politicians, than that which has been called " concurrent endowment," and against its subtle inroads and disguises, the greatest danger of the times, it is incumbent to watch. To postpone the hour of erasing from the statutes the laws establishing the Churches of England and Scotland, and recalling national property applied to their purposes, — to avert the evil day of the cessation of grants to reli- gious bodies, and of accompanying political influence, — no efforts will be spared by those interested. Church reform, schemes of comprehension, the alteration of the law of patronage, denominational advantages in education, all will be proposed, — anything to divide the ranks without, and divert attention from radical measures. But " surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." Long enough have the machinery and resources of the State been placed at the service of sects, and it is now more than time to meet ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGIOX. 237 all such proposals with the simple demand, " Disestablish- merit, Disendotvmeiit." To this course the Synod has in its wisdom timeously pointed. Then only shall ive Complete the work of Reformation, and remove the dead fly from the ointment of our Protestantism, The argument from political justice is in fact the immediate law of the statesman's policy, and a practical test, or short and easy method, by which he may determine its soundness. That can be no divine institution which requires for its maintenance the enforcement of injurious distinctions among citizens. It is not necessary, as it is not competent, for him to judge between the conflictino- tenets of ecclesiastical parties. Enough that he cannot equitably patronise one section of the religious .public at the expense of the feelings and resources of another ; and enough that the concurrent patronage of truth and error is only an aggravated form of provocation and scandal. While, therefore, citizens cannot in justice call on the State to establish or perpetuate any religious institution however agreeable to themselves, they have the ric^ht in equity to demand that no institution shall be either set up or maintained by public authority and public funds, which is oflfensive to their religious convictions, and that all civil establishments of religion, or exercise of civil authority in matters of religion, and all appropriation of the public resources to ecclesiastical and sectarian purposes, shall cease and determine. This being their right, it will be their duty to seek to mould the institutions of the State in conformity with the principles of justice and liberty. To all who believe the interests of religion and justice to suffer from this system of State patronage and control of religion, the motive to exertion will be supreme. It is neither denied nor forgotten that motives equally conscientious may impel others to struggle for its con- tinuance, and it is for each party to seek its object by 238 ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. honourable and Christian means. Both cannot prevail. The system of State Churches has long retarded, as we believe, the progress of religion and sound legislation. We cannot consent to its continuance because some good men approve of it. This would be to abdicate our rights and neglect our opportunities ; to play into the hands of the enemy of truth and justice, and give a new lease to error and wrong. Let us rather go the more resolutely to the work of Disestablishment and Disendowment, assured that we only liberate religious forces hitherto hopelessly shackled, and secure for all true Church life and enterprise a free career ; at the same time that we pluck up one of the most fertile roots of political and social bitterness which have infested the history of nations. To accomplish this object, the faithful exercise of our political rights, the legitimate use of the agencies of the press and the platform, — in particular, the proper exhibi- tion of the principles of Scripture in the teachings of the pulpit, — will be necessary. Employing all means in the spirit of prayer and charity, seeking supremely the interests of the kingdom " which is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," we shall, with the divine blessing, in due time reap if we faint not. We may then confidently hope that Christian opponents, now apprehensive of evil, shall learn, as not a few have already begun to do from the fruits of disestablishment in Ireland, to thank us for benefits which, in spite of their resistance, we have been the instrument of securing to the Church and the world. Signed in name and by authority of the Committee, GEORGE C. BUTTON, Convener. United Presbyterian Library, 5 Queen Street, Edinburgh, 2d December 1872.' •ir; I irf DATE DUE %Lm *1 '^^ 1 bgfpr:!: > •V J GAYLORD n PRINTED IN U.S.A.