tion of the Assembly to fiament, and go to Parthe reasons why. 1833. solely by the oppressive acts of the courts of the church. CHAP. V. What the church had done contrary to her own law and constitution, it was surely competent to undo, by returning to the course which her constitution and law had all along prescribed. To effect the removal of patronage altogether, the interposition of parliament would have been indispensable. And, apart from the question whether or not it was desirable to have patronage done away, many, and these not the least influential members of the evangelical party, shrank from the responsibility of placing the church, for Disinclinaany purposes affecting her own internal interests, in the hands of parliament. With a legislature as intelligent in the history and laws of the presbyterian church, and as much in harmony with its principles as the Scottish parliament of 1649, or even of 1690, there could have been little hazard or difficulty in dealing about ecclesiastical affairs. The case was thought to be materially different, as regarded any such intromission with Scottish ecclesiastical affairs, by the British parliament of 1834. Whether the more cautious policy, advocated on such grounds as these, was, after all, the best and wisest, is not here the point to be considered. It was the policy which prevailed, though not, perhaps, altogether by its own unaided strength. The indisposition of the leading parties in the state, and of the political friends of the whig ministry in the church, to abandon the law of patronage, was, undoubtedly, a powerful weight on the same side of the scale. The resolution was accordingly taken, by those who chiefly guided the movements of the evangelical party in the church, to attempt that work of ecclesiastical reform which both the times and their own principles so urgently demanded, by calling into exercise the legislative powers of the church herself. Not, indeed, that all who belonged to the evangelical and reforming party concurred in the deter taken to at Resolution tempt the form by the power of the desired re inherent Church. CHAP. V. mination, that no steps should be taken to procure from 1833. The antipatronage in the purpose of seeking the entire abolition of patronage. parliament the repeal of the law of patronage. To that determination a section of the party gave, on the contrary, and from the very first, the most strenuous opposition. They acquiesced, it is true, and without difficulty or hesitation, in the measures now about to be proposed in reference to the call of the congregation. To rescue the call from party concur the state of inefficiency to which it had been reduced, was an measures for obvious and immediate duty, whatever might become of the reviving the call,law of patronage; and a duty to the discharge of which the while they retain their church was all the more bound to address herself honestly and without delay, that she had the regulation of the call in her own hands. Without abandoning, therefore, for a moment, their views or intentions in regard to the propriety and necessity of labouring to effect the total overthrow of what the church's own standards and laws had so often and so righteously stigmatized as the "grievance of patronage," they made common cause with all those who were now agreed about putting fresh life into the call. But how was this to be done? In the private conferences that were held upon the subject, as well as in the public discussions which took place in the presbyteries and synods of the church, various plans were proposed. It was the sugreform be gestion of some, that the best course for the church to adopt brought about by the was to have recourse to her judicial rather than to her passing of a general legislative power; in other words, by a series of sound decienactment, or by a sions, refusing to sustain any call that did not exhibit a bona fide concurrence on the part of the congregation, to make once more a reality out of that which had been too long treated as an empty name. To this method, however, there were many obvious and formidable objections. It implied that, as each case arose, the question would still be open-What is a sufficient call? The endless and harassing litigations to which that state of matters must expose Should the desired series of judicial decisions? the mode of by a series of decisions. and not 1833. both the congregations and the courts of the church, for at CHAP. V. least a long period of years, and till precedents had so Objection to accumulated as to create a common law upon the point, proceeding would be of itself an intolerable evil. It was precisely by the vexatious delays, disappointments and expense, which a similar course of procedure during the preceding century involved, that the people had been tempted, in so many cases, to seek redress by the shorter and more summary process of abandoning the national church altogether. The now greatly diminished strength of moderatism might, no doubt, have been reasonably enough expected to diminish the risk of any recurrence to the tyranny of former times, and to afford to congregations a much greater assurance of justice being done to their cause in the general assembly. But such a mode of redressing the evil complained of was too remote and uncertain in its operation, at all to meet the exigencies either of the case or of the times. It was not Performance promise but performance, that alone could now convince the great body of the members of the church, that the assembly was in earnest. Moreover, there were difficulties of another kind connected with the plan in question not less fatal to its adoption. The long-continued contempt with which the call had been treated, had deprived it, to a large extent, of respect or confidence in the eyes of the people. Having seen, in cases innumerable, a single name or twoand these, perhaps, not belonging to any member of the congregation, but to some non-resident landlord or factor on his estate-accepted and founded on as "the call of the people!" and this too in the face of the known and manifested opposition of the congregation to the settlement,-it is no wonder that they had become, in a great degree, indifferent to what they were thus taught to regard as an idle and often offensive ceremony. This state of mind, induced and confirmed by a long course of bad ecclesiastical deci promise was what the case de manded. The past proceedings of the Church ed the people's confidence in the had destroy call. might cause, either the rejection of tionable pre sentee, or oblige the CHAP. V. sions, it was not to be supposed, would disappear in deference 1833. to a mere announcement by some leading person in the general assembly, that the church intended in future to deal more respectfully towards the call, and towards those congregational rights and privileges which it was designed Their apathy to secure. What then was to be done if, under the influence of a popular apathy, for which the church was itself responan unexcep- sible, an unexceptionable presentee should turn out to have hardly a signature to his call? Was the call, as matter of presbytery course, to be rejected as insufficient, and the presentee to be thus made the victim of the past misconduct of the church; or was the call to be sustained, notwithstanding of its having the concurrence of only a tithe, or a twentieth, or a hundredth of the people, on the ground that silence must be taken for consent? No one at all acquainted with the subject could fail to foresee, in such contingencies, the materials for endless embarrassment and confusion in the church courts, and for the gravest misunderstandings among the people. to sustain a call signed by a mere fraction of the parishioners. preferring a law. For these and similar reasons, it came to be felt and acknowledged by all who were interested in the success of the proposed reform, that the remedy sought for must be found, not in the judicial, but in the legislative functions of Reasons for the church. By laying down once for all in the form of a declaratory declaratory law what should be held to constitute a violation of the non-intrusion principle, the inferior courts of the church would be relieved from numberless perplexities, uniformity would pervade their decisions, and the rights and duties of all the parties concerned would be distinctly known and understood; and while so many evident and important practical benefits might be expected to result from the adoption of such a course, it was not easy to see any objection to its competency. If it was not a mere delusion that the non-intrusion principle had an actual footing in the Everything in her past his tory seemed to justify the assumption Church was that the competent to pass such a law. into one or other of which the law might be thrown. 1833. constitution and law of the church; if the evidence adduced CHAP. V. in an earlier part of this work, from the standards, the acts, the decisions, and whole history of the church, to illustrate the standing which that principle possessed from the reformation downwards, had any foundation in truth; it seemed to follow of necessity that the church must have the power of defining that principle and taking measures to see it enforced. There were obviously two different ways in which this Two forms, might be done. It might be ruled by a declaratory enactment, either that a certain amount of positive concurrence on the part of the congregation should be necessary in order to warrant a presbytery in proceeding with the settlement of a minister, or that a certain amount of positive dissent should be conclusive to hinder the settlement. The former of these methods appeared to many to be the more simple and natural of the two, and to be most in harmony with existing forms; others, however, and these men of great weight and influence, conceived it to involve difficulties that would prove insuperable. Less than a majority of those entitled to have a voice in the calling and settlement of their minister, could not well be taken as the amount concurrence necessary to indicate the positive consent of a congregation, and yet it might be often found altogether impossible, even when no objection to the proposed minister existed, to induce a majority of the congregation to come forward and place themselves in the responsible attitude of positively calling him. In this way the patron's nomination might come to be rendered nugatory from no fault either on his part or on that of his presentee. Ignorance or apathy, or a scrupulous conscience which shrunk from countersigning the patron's selection, from the want of sufficient information concerning the man of his choice,-these and various other causes of a similar kind might arise to obstruct the of Objections to the plan of the express. of the con gregation. |