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measures marking even more unequivocally the object of that general resolution, viz. instructions to Presbyteries to continue to enforce the Veto. That this is a most extraordinary and alarming position for an Established Church to assume, is manifest to every one. That wrong should be openly done by a Church in the knowledge of the law,-that the statutes of the land should be deliberately and avowedly disregarded, and that a judgment of the most authoritative tribunal in the Kingdom should be immediately followed by a public resolution of the Church to persevere in the assumption and exercise of power so declared to be incompetent, is a scandal hitherto unexampled in any Protestant country.

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Dr. Chalmers proposes,* with the aid of the Committee which was appointed in last Assembly to communicate with your Lordship's colleagues, to demonstrate of this sentence, that altogether it is ́ founded in error'—that is a misinterpretation' of the law; and he is encouraged in the hope of success, by the ignorance,' the rashness, and reckless disregard of the dearest principles of the Church' which can be pointed out in the opinions of your Lordship and Lord Brougham.

A defence of the judgment of the House of Lords I do not propose to undertake. If it required confirmation, I should think that it had received it in the acknowledgment made by Dr. Chalmers, in the same speech, that the act of the Church in 1834, in passing the Veto, was A BLUNDER' which he had attempted to prevent.

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In reference to the objects I have in view in addressing this Letter to your Lordship, it is more important that I should in the outset state, that in a note to the revised report of his speech, Dr. Chalmers acknowledges that the Veto law, after all, ought to receive several most important practical alterations-alterations which appear to be wholly opposed to the principle of the scheme. But the propriety of any limitations of the Veto the Committee of Assembly have not recognised; and the Assembly itself resolved, on the motion of Dr. Chalmers, to adhere to the principle that the people must have a right to reject a presentee, simply because they do not choose to have him. I shall, in the sequel, notice the remarkable acknowledgment now made by the author of the measure. It seems to import that the principle of the Veto is vicious-one which the Church ought not to admit. The admission I refer to is well calculated to make one receive with caution and distrust the proposal, either that Parliament shall at once sanction the Veto, or shall commit to the General Assembly the power to regulate the appointment of ministers in any way which that body may choose.

Hitherto public attention has been directed chiefly-(in England, I believe, exclusively)—to the points more immediately put in issue by the Church in the Auchterarder Case. These points, however important, form a very small part of the subjects which arise for consideration out

* Published Speech.

of the principles and measures at present adopted by the General Assembly and its leading members. Proceedings have been in progress for several years, which call for serious and grave consideration.

I propose in this Letter,—

1. To exhibit a view of the principles which are maintained on the part of the Church, in support of the position which they have chosen to assume, and of the measures which they have adopted; and of the consequences of these principles to the peace and well-being of the community, and to civil and religious Liberty.

2. To give a narrative of these measures to point out the pretensions and claims on which they are founded, and the extent of the usurpation of power and of opposition to civil authority which they exhibit.

3. To show the real character and effects of the last proceedings of the General Assembly, which its supporters are at present studiously attempting to disguise, lest the alarm which might otherwise be entertained should frustrate the objects which the Committee have in view, -and the nature of the plan which the Committee have suggested.

4. To point out some causes, which have produced this sudden and extraordinary change in the claims and pretensions of the Church of Scotland, viz., in particular one great practical alteration which the Church has (incompetently) made in the constituent members of the Church Courts.

5. To exhibit some of the more important objections to the proposed changes, which the Church mean to press on the attention of the Government, and some of the probable results of these changes, both on national character-on the usefulness of the Established Church—and on the general interests of religion.

That many who have joined in the recent proceedings of the Church, really do not understand the position in which they have placed themselves I believe to be true:-and I have no doubt that the delusions incident to a popular body, (meeting rarely, and composed in a great part of ministers, few of whom are constantly elected to it), and the vague notions of importance and consequence which the assertion of Spiritual Independence seems to bestow, misled others into the approval of measures, the instant adoption of which (within a few days after the judgment of the House of Lords) was pressed upon them, with the greatest vehemence, as necessary to preserve the independence and rights of the Church.

The Assembly, while it resolved to enforce the veto, further appointed a Committee to endeavour to obtain an alteration of the law, which they first resolved to disregard, and to require the sanction of the legislature to this power of congregations to reject at pleasure the persons, whom patrons present to livings, before they have even been taken on trials by the Church-or even to the grant of some more direct and exclusive power to the people in the election and nomination of ministers.

These objects the Committee are directed to urge, and they are now

engaged, as your Lordship is probably aware, in the attempt to effect their objects.

The importance of these proposed changes on the state of society under any Established Church cannot be denied. When the legislature, in the reign of Queen Anne, after the experience of twenty years, found that it was necessary for the peace and quiet of Scotland to restore the rights of patronage, which had been, by the Scotch statute 1690, transferred generally to the proprietors and elders (and to these only) in parishes, the statute (10 Anne, c. 12) declares, that that way of calling ministers has proved inconvenient, and has occasioned great heats and divisions among those who, by the aforesaid act, were ' entitled and authorised to call ministers.'

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Of the truth of this declaration ample proof, if necessary, could be given, in addition to the recorded opinion of the legislature. That a more popular system in the nomination and choice of ministers of parishes, or a regular and organized appeal to the people for approval or rejection, will lead in the present day to greater divisions, more dissensions and heats, and to effects more permanently injurious, both to the peace and unity of the Church, and to the interests of religion, no dispassionate man can doubt. And the anxiety is natural, that the serious attention of your Lordship should be called to the subject, before any progress is made in the negotiations which the Committee of the General Assembly are to open with the government of the country for such important constitutional changes.

The changes contemplated cannot be confined to Scotland. The consideration of these cannot be regarded merely as a Scotch question, even if their importance to society in Scotland did not demand the most anxious consideration.

If it is necessary and expedient for the Christian good of the people,** and in order that the ministrations of a clergyman may be edifying and useful to his parishioners, and may contribute to their eternal salvation, that they shall previously be satisfied, upon a trial given to them, with his style of preaching, and with his ministerial gifts ;-if there is no security that he can be useful, unless he is previously acceptable to the people of the parish in which he is to be placed,-if their welfare requires that he shall be submitted to their approval, otherwise the great work in which he is to be engaged will probably miscarry, so far as his agency is concerned ;-if, on the principles of a reformed Christian church, it is essentially necessary that no minister shall be placed in a parish against whom the majority of the congregation or communicants are prepared to give a veto, (though without reasons assigned), and if their unwillingness to be placed under his scriptural superintendence as their pastor is, on religious principles, a paramount ground for rejecting him, and for giving them the right to reject him, whatever

* Dr. Chalmers.

opinion the Church authorities might form, if permitted, of the individual, or may actually entertain on the best knowledge,—if all these matters are admitted and recognised,-These considerations are not applicable to Scotland alone. They apply equally to England: Nay, they apply more forcibly to England than they can do to a country in which the Church is of more popular constitution, and in which the checks on the nomination of ministers are vested in Church Courts, having themselves, in the first instance, no Church patronage, and exercising a far greater power in the trial of qualifications than the bishops in England can do.

The law of patronage and the rights of patronage do not stand on a stronger footing in England. I doubt if they have as stringent and as express statutory protections as in Scotland. If an act of Parliament can alter the state of things in Scotland, a similar statute can as easily alter the state of things in England. The ground for doing so is equally paramount in both countries. The measure is as easy in one country as in the other. There can be no difficulty in England in keeping a Roll of the names of communicants: There can be no difficulty in the communicants, after the presentee has preached before them, declaring their dissent to have that person. No-is a word easily said by a body of people, learned or illiterate. Dissent is easily ascertained. Your machinery in England makes the operation simple and easy. The Archdeacon of the district has merely to take the roll and the people to come forward and say—we are not pleased. You have officebearers enough in your Church for that simple procedure. No decision or judgment of any court is necessary. The regularity of the Roll it is easy to provide for, and you may either exclude questions as to the names once entered on it; or you have regular Church courts and Bishops, either of which may surely decide such simple matters. A statute with three clauses will at once establish the system in England. There is not one single difficulty in the government of your church to exclude the change. Your establishment affords, indeed, better means of doing so than ours. The vote of Cromwell's celebrated Convention on the 17th November 1653, that the right of presentation to benefices should be taken away, and the people in the several parishes be authorised at once to choose their own instructors, was neither a more difficult nor a more sweeping change to adopt,-although originating in the very same views,-than that which should give, under the existing economy, a right to reject the presentee if not acceptable.

If a statute is at once to subject the rights and law of patronage in Scotland, by a short and sweeping enactment, to this condition, a statute may as easily do it in England. The reasons for it are the same. The salvation of men in Scotland cannot require a statute which is unnecessary for their fellow-subjects in England. The latter are not likely long, in the present day, to think, that what was given on such grounds to their fellow-subjects in Scotland, would be unsuitable or improper for them, under a richer hierarchy-with a clergy, many of whom are even more removed above them in point of station and rank,—and with the same interest to secure ministers acceptable to themselves.

If, again, patronage, without at least this right of rejection by the people, is inconsistent with the rights of a Christian people in the Church of God;'*-if it is an infringement on the privileges which, though trampled upon by the Church of Rome, had ever been possessed by the Christian Church in earlier and purer times, privileges flowing from and forming part of the liberty' which the Author of our religion. bestowed on His people as members of the Church on earth;-if patronage, or patronage without an absolute veto by the people, is on these grounds indefensible, and a statute must be passed to secure to Scotchmen, as members of the visible Church, the Christian priviliges' which law has denied to them, in opposition to the principles of Christian faith, and to the first doctrine of any reformed Church-such law must rest on a foundation as unstable and unsound in England. The rights of Englishmen in the Christian Church must be the same as those of ScotchThe infringement on their Christian privileges by patronage, or by patronage unrestricted by the exercise of a veto or dissent of the congregation, must be the same. The evil is as clamant-the remedy equally called for

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Whether the demand for the remedy now exists in England, makes in principle no difference, and in fact such difference will soon cease. If the people in England do not know what is necessary for their spiritual welfare, or to what extent their Christian privileges, as members of the Church on earth, have been infringed, their spiritual interests do not the less require the remedy which is to der the ministration of the ministers of the Gospel blessed to their edification:-Nor is the violation of their Christian rights the more defensible, that its unscriptural character has been concealed from the people. The vice in the constitution of the Church is only the greater, if the people have been so blinded, as in the time of popery. Whether the people in England now demand the restoration of their Christian privileges or not, the duty of restoring them rests on the same basis in England as in Scotland.

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Rely upon it, however, the demand will soon be made on the same practical grounds, if recognised as applicable to Scotland. And it will be difficult to maintain, that the simple principles claimed by poorer and more popular Church of Scotland, as part of the system of a gospel ministry instituted by its Divine author, should not be introduced in order to give efficacy and grace to the ministrations of a Church in which the institutions themselves, and the system of patronage, seem only the more to require that the people shall be allowed to reject the ministers from whom they think that edification cannot be derived. That much of the patronage in England belongs to the Church itself, would only tend to strengthen the arguments for the change.

The questions which the Committee of the General Assembly intend

* Mr. Candlish.

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