these views, has no exclusive whatever. CHAP. VIII. civil court. The idea of a distinct province as belonging to 1839. According to the church, and of a jurisdiction intrinsic and exclusive the Church within that province, is entirely set aside. With Lord intrinsic and Brougham the question of church jurisdiction is not one of jurisdiction less or more. He denies the existence of an independent jurisdiction as belonging to the church at all. He treats it as an "indecency," even to suppose, that the courts of the church of Scotland would ever dream of refusing to obey any sentence which the supreme civil court might think fit to pronounce; as indecent as to suppose that the court of session would refuse to bow to the judgment of the house of lords. Lord Brougham, at the same time that he is so unhesitating in his view of the civil court's supereminent jurisdiction, is obliged to admit it to be true, of all there are no preceding decisions upon cases carried before the courts of precedents. law, from the judicatories of the church, that they were Obliged to confess that ham is "not fruitful of instruction for the present question;" that "no one of them is to be found which disposes of it and governs it;" and that in "no one to which they relate, has the present question ever been raised.”* Lord Cottenham recites all the leading cases which had occurred in the course of last century, one after another, but is not able to adduce a single case in which the civil court had ever Lord Cotten- meddled with the ordination or induction of a minister, or equally at a had ever gone one step farther than to determine the exprecedent, clusively civil questions,-Whose was the right of patronage? or whose was the right to the stipend? And yet Lord Cottenham comes to the same conclusion with Lord terference. Brougham, stated, no doubt, in more guarded and respectful language, but still in language which bears the same meaning, that the civil court's jurisdiction, even in a matter which involves the spiritual act of ordination, is supreme loss for a but nevertheless asserts the civil court's right of in -- Robertson's Report, p. 19. 1839. and must be obeyed. "If your lordships," said the chan- CHAP. VIII. cellor, "shall concur in the opinions I have expressed, and by your decision, inform the clergy of Scotland what the law really is, I cannot doubt but they will, by their conduct and example, inculcate the sacred principle of obedience to the law, of respect for the rights and interests of others, and of the sacrifice of private feelings to the performance of public duty."* The decision of the Court of Session affirined. What this decision set Guided by the views and principles now explained, their lordships, without any hesitation, affirmed the judgment of the court of session. This was a grave event for the church. In itself, it is true, the decision went, and could go, no further than the decision of the court below. It settled the point that the rejection of a patron's presentee, solely on the ground of the dissent of the congregation, was illegal; and hence, that though the patron should refuse to present another, the presbytery could not claim, jure devoluto, the right to present in the patron's room, nor could any individual whom they might, in these circumstances, and upon their own authority, induct into the charge of the vacant parish, be entitled to the civil fruits of the benefice. It did not settle whether any, or what, compulsitor could be brought by the civil court to bear on the presbytery, for the purpose of controlling their ecclesiastical proceedings. Taking the decision, however, in connection with the grounds on which it was avowedly based, it could not fail to increase that anxiety and alarm to which the judicial opinions uttered the year before in the court of session, had The judicial already given rise. No one could read the speeches of Lord Brougham and the chancellor, without being fully satisfied that it was not by any means the mere veto-law that was now at stake, but the non-intrusion principle itself, in every Robertson's Report, p. 64. tled, and what it did not settle. opinions of the Chancel Brougham further than lor and Lord went much their sen tence. CHAP. VIII. shape and form of it,-and in addition to this, the church's 1839. whole right of self-government in matters spiritual. If those views of the law, regarding the rights of patrons, on which, in the court of last resort, the judgment in the Auchterarder case was expressly founded, were to be maintained, the congregation, as such, must be pronounced to have no legal standing whatever in the settlement of their minister. Their voice, whether for or against the settlement, must henceforth become a thing of nought. Their solemn and deliberate judgment, as to the presentee's unfitness to edify their souls, must be treated as a mere impertinence. Bestrode by the all-powerful patron, and with his spur in their helpless side, they must submit to be forced out of their own parish church, in order that his According to useless presentee may be forced in. Their opposition, even if made with all the circumstantiality of formal objections not obstruct to his fitness for the charge, could not avail, unless, indeed, ment of a it should take the form of a libel against the soundness of excepting by his faith or morals, and be followed out in due course of their opin ions, the people can the settle presentee, means of a libel. law; and even then, unless the presbytery, which might chance itself to be not very rigid in such matters, should come to be of their mind, all their efforts to exclude the obnoxious presentee must fall to the ground. Nay more, upon the principle so confidently laid down in the house of peers, of the civil court having a right to review and reverse any sentence of a church court which affected civil rights, the concurrence of the presbytery with the people in their libel, would still leave the whole question of the settlement Even a libel, where it was. The case might be carried from the ecclesibrought by astical to the civil court, and the sentence be there set aside, the people on the alleged ground that the charge libelled was not the Church within the statute, or any other of the thousand pleas which this right of review would open to legal ingenuity,—and thus, a presentee, libelled by the people, and convicted by though and supported by courts, might not avail. 1839. the presbytery, might after all be carried over the necks of CHAP. VIIL both, not merely into a benefice, but into the office of the ministry, and into a cure of souls!—that is, if any church court, even under the terrors of fine and imprisonment, the civil court's only weapons for enforcing its decree, could be found willing to degrade itself and to prostitute its sacred functions, by submitting to this erastian control. This decision brought on a crisis in the church. the affairs of It was manifestly, therefore, no ordinary crisis which this final decision in the first Auchterarder case had brought on, in the affairs of the church. The interval was but a brief one between the 2d of May, when that decision was pronounced, and the 16th of the same month, when the general assembly convened. Brief as it was, however, it found at its close the assembly perfectly prepared to meet the emergency. Not only had there been much earnest consultation among those distinguished men upon whom, since 1834, the responsible charge of guiding the counsels of the church had chiefly devolved,-but among the most godly members of the church there had been much earnest prayer. Special Prayerful meetings had almost everywhere been held, for the purpose for the of commending the assembly to the God of all grace and Assembly wisdom; and of supplicating, on behalf of its members, the spirit of love, and of power, and of a sound mind,-the spirit of faith and fidelity, and of the fear of the Lord. This memorable assembly was opened, as usual, with divine worship, and a sermon preached by the moderator of the year before. The sermon had a text singularly appropriate to the assembly in which the question was to be determined, are the rights of the Christian people, in the calling and settlement of their ministers, to be utterly abandoned by the church? The text was that exhortation of the apostle John contained in the 1st and 2d verses of the 4th chapter of his first epistle: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God, preparation meeting of 1839. CHAP. VIII. because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 1839. The text: Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that conmeant by the preacher fesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God.” to apply to In his discourse from these words, the preacher, the Rev. popery to patronage, Dr. William Muir, of Edinburgh, was at some pains to but equally good against prove that the right and duty of trying the spirits, belongs both. rather than Dr. Cook's haste to pro purpose of to the civil courts. not to the clergy or church rulers alone, but to the private On the first day of the assembly, distinct intimation of the coming contest was given. As if impatient to announce the prompt and cordial readiness of himself, and of those with whom he acted, to conduct the affairs of the church on the footing of entire submissiveness to the decrees of the civil courts, Dr. Cook took the unusual course of calling claim his the attention of the assembly, within an hour after it consubmitting vened, to the result of the Auchterarder appeal, and of intimating his purpose to submit to the house a motion upon the subject; suggesting, at the same time, a particular day of the following week for discussing it. The trumpet of the moderate leader, blown in such haste from one end of the lists, was answered on the instant from the other. Dr. Dr. Chalmers Chalmers, who was known to have girded his giant strength for this momentous conflict, rose as Dr. Cook sat down, and calmly observed that, "he would feel it to be his duty to submit some distinct proposition to the house, and that he would table his motion at the same time with that of the Rev. Doctor." The gage of battle being thus taken up, ≈ announces that he, too, will have a motion to propose. |