A REVOLUTIONARY MEASURE.
[To rue Fesrroa or rue " Peacreroz."]
eta,—In order to understand the effect of the Bill referred to by the Rev. John Middleton in the Spectator for July 30th, it is necessary to know that-there is no Act of the Scottish Parlia- ment which, tantisdem verbis, confers State establishment upon the Scottish Church. Perhaps the nearest approach to it is in the statute of 1587, in which " The King's grace declares that there is no other face of kirk, nor other face of religion than is at present, by the favour of God, established within this realm." But here it will be noticed that (4) the establish- ment is declared not created; (2) the establishment is ascribed to " the favour of God." The great establishing statutes of Scotland are those of 1560, which establishes the Confession of Faith; of 1592, which establishes the polity of the Church; and the statute of 1690, which establishes the Westminster Con- fession, and restores Presbytery as the form of Church govern- ment in Scotland.
At the time of the Reformation it was needless to establish
the Church. Parliament might as well have established the nation, for the Church and nation were virtually but the temporal and spiritual aspects of one and the same thing. Hence what is popularly talked of as the establishment of the Church in Scotland really means (1) the State ratification of a certain corpus of Christian doctrine; (2) the State ratification of a certain form of Church government. It is obvious from this that to sever Church and State in Scotland it is not necessary, to speak strictly, to disestablish the Church. How can you disestablish an institution whose establishment was never matter of enactment, but was ascribed by statutory declaration to "the favour of God "? All that is necessary is to strike at (1) the State ratification of the Church's creed; (2) the State ratification of the Church's polity. This is precisely what is effectually, though circuitously, done by this most Jesuitical and disingenuous measure, a measure which, whilst couched in such a form as to suggest it is conferring a benefit upon the Church, cuts sheer through the two vital nerves that organi- cally connect it to the State. The Bill provides that the Church's creed is no longer the national creed, but simply the creed, and even so merely the provisional creed, of a certain body of religionists within the realm. Ratification of the Church's polity goes by the board, and the sect founded on the articles scheduled in the Bill can become, e.g., Methodist or Independent, or perhaps Unitarian, if and when it pleases. 'Article IV. is a farrago of absurdity, making claims of spiritual independence which the historic Church of Scotland never made, and meeting on the untenable assumption that things civil and things spiritual are respectively bottled up in water-tight compartments. Article V. assumes a liberty in creed-making which is simply another name for licence, and which is simply Congregationalism on a group system. Article VI. advances views on Church and State which un- church the State and sectarianize the Church. Article VIII. professes to safeguard the unconscionable constitution set forth in the other Articles, if constitution it can be called; but in effect makes the bounds, not of freedom, but of licence, wider Yet. It puts the most tremendous doctrines of Christianity at the mercy of the votes of clerics and elders in that part of the United Kingdom called Scotland. The only check it embodies is that any new Articles must be " consistent with the pro- yisions [sic] of the first Article hereof." Turn we, therefore, to the first Article, and to our amazement we find no " pro- visions" there at all, simply a rhetorical flourish of doctrine, expressed in terms of studied vagueness, in which the Holy Trinity is referred to in expressions which admit of a Sabellian construction, and in which the statement is courageously made that the Church " adheres to the Scottish Reformation," in spite of 'the fact that these Articles are enough to make the Scottish reformers tarn in 'their graves.
' In short, the Articles are simply a covert attempt to invest a sect, holding brand-new nostrums, and having licence to manufacture an indefinite number of newer ones in time to come, with the dignity and emoluments of the Church of Scotland. They seek for privilege without nationality, juris- diction without security taken by the State for the rights and liberty of the subject, and endowment without responsibility. The propositions of the Articles should be turned down by every good Churchman and citizen as fatal to the Church, unjust to the non-established communions, and dangerous to
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