of the The petition ministers civil courts the power of to exercise the keys. power of the keys." The petition of the suspended CHAP. IX. ministers was obviously and undeniably in direct contradiction to these principles. It proceeded on the assumption that the sphere of church power was not distinct from that of the civil power; and that the civil magistrate, by his civil functionaries, the judges of the courts of law, was competent to exercise the power of the keys. The petition accordingly, and that in direct terms, called on those civil judges to put the power of the keys, the power, that is, of spiritual government, in force, by annulling the spiritual sentences of the supreme ecclesiastical court, by issuing decrees for the regulation of spiritual affairs, by giving authority to some and withholding it from others, to exercise the functions of the christian ministry. The plenary jurisdiction of the pope himself could hardly reach farther than the court of session were asked to go by the seven ministers of Strathbogie. Nor is it saying too much to affirm, that had such a demand been made upon the court of session, at any period from the Revolution downwards, until the doctrines, broached for the first time in the Auchterarder case, had gained a footing on the bench, it would have been cast back over the bar as an extravagance too monstrous to obtain a hearing. Nor was it all at once the court gave in to it even in 1839. In their decision they fell a great way short of the full range of the Strathbogie petition. They went no farther, on that occasion, bogie interthan to interdict the minority of the presbytery, and all others, from using the church, church-yard, and school-house, in executing the sentence which the commission had pronounced. First Strath dict. obeyed, be within the civil juris diction. CHAP. IX. To this extent the church had no hesitation in The interdict deferring to this decree. It undoubtedly belonged to cause limited the civil tribunals to determine to whom the property of the church, church-yard and school-house, should belong; and since they had thought fit to decide that the right of setting foot within any of these places was permitted to no ministers of the church excepting to those seven whom the church had declared disqualified for exercising the ministry altogether, it was the clear duty of the church, however much wronged by that decision, to acquiesce in it at once. Accordingly, dead of winter though it was, the ministers appointed to execute the sentence of the commission betook The ministers themselves to the market-place, and to the open fields; Church to and surrounded, in almost all the parishes, by crowds of the people, they did their duty,-not only publishing the sentence of suspension, but preaching everywhere with great power and acceptance the glorious gospel of the grace of God. It was a great day for Strathbogie: the word, at length, had free course, and ran, and was glorified. And thus it ever is, that He who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working maketh even the wrath of men to praise Him! sent by the Strathbogie preach in the fields. Feeling, perhaps, that as yet they had gained only a barren victory, the Strathbogie ministers, acting, no doubt, under the same legal advice which had hitherto directed their movements, returned, in the course of a few weeks, to the court of session once more. It was a dict applied small matter to have succeeded in shutting the evangelical and non-intrusion ministers out of the parish churches, unless they could exclude them from all access to the people; and unless, at the same time, Second inter for. the Lord Or interdict, Gillies in it be grant they could obtain from their new masters, the civil CHAP. IX. judges, a formal warrant for continuing in the exercise of the ministry themselves. By the former judgment, the court had granted only a small per-centage of their demand, and now therefore they came back claiming the whole. The Lord Ordinary Murray, to Refused by whom they first applied, continued the limited interdict dinary. already in force, but refused to go farther. Having carried their case, by a reclaiming note against his lordship's interlocutor, into the first division of the court, they obtained a decision in terms of their prayer! In moving this memorable sentence, not unworthy of the high-commission court of the Stewarts, Lord Gillies took occasion to say, "that it The second appeared to him that the position which the non- and speech intrusion party of the church of Scotland had taken moving that up in opposition to the established law of the country, was the most arrogant that any established church had ever attempted." Perhaps it was, and that, simply, because no other established church in the world had either so contended for or so secured, as the church of Scotland had done, the constitutional right to an independent jurisdiction in matters spiritual. His lordship, however, ought not to have spoken of the attitude of which he complained as being that of a party, but as being the attitude of the church. A resolution passed by 121 to 14 was surely the judgment of the body which, by so overwhelming a majority, had spoken its mind. His lordship" then read an extract from Bacon, showing that the temporal courts had the right of expounding the law in relation to the spiritual courts." It would have been more to his purpose had ed. Lord Fuller granting it. * * the CHAP. IX. he been able to adduce in support of that opinion either the dicta or the decisions of the legal authoSpeech of rities of Scotland. "Certainly," said Lord Fullerton, ton against taking a totally different view of the grave question before them," the difficulty he had always felt in this case, and it was not yet obviated, was how their lordships could, by passing the interdict, review the decision of a court which, by the law of the land, had exclusive jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters within. those limits which excluded the jurisdiction of the civil courts. For, disguise the matter as their lordships might, they could not come to a decision upon vote of suspension without taking into consideration matters which were purely ecclesiastical and beyond the jurisdiction of a civil court. What were their lordships called upon to do but determine, if not in express terms yet by necessary implication, that these reverend gentlemen were entitled to exercise the functions of the holy ministry, and were entitled to administer baptism and dispense the holy communion, and that in defiance of their ecclesiastical superiors, from whom alone their spiritual privileges were derived. Unless the whole distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical law were at once overthrown, their lordships could not pass a note of suspension of The interdict this kind." Their lordships did pass it notwithstanding; and unquestionably, in so doing, they obliterated entirely, in so far as that decision and their power could accomplish such a result, "the whole distinction between civil and ecclesiastical law." granted. This extraordinary decision was regarded with all but universal astonishment. It overshot the mark. It was erastian "overmuch." It brought the arm of CHAP. IX. the civil power too grossly and palpably into the domain of the church. Even moderatism itself could hardly stand so wholesale a surrender to Cæsar of the things of God. "Has your lordship heard of the extended interdict?" said a minister of the church of Scotland, addressing, two days after the interdict was pronounced, a distinguished conservative statesman, upon the streets of London. "I have," was the reply. "What may be your lordship's opinion of it?" said the clergyman. "I am not a lawyer," answered the sagacious senator, speaking with an air of reluctance, but yet with unusual emphasis, "I am not a lawyer, but I confess I don't understand it. Why, I suppose that, according to the law of this country, any man that pleases may preach in Strathbogie,-I suppose any minister of any sect whatever might go and preach there,-I suppose any chartist or infidel might go and preach there. And how it can be lawful to hinder the ministers of the national church, the very ministers who have been expressly intrusted by the nation itself with the religious instruction of the people, from going to preach there,-how, in this free country, it can be lawful to prevent them from doing what may be done by all other men besides, is what I don't profess to be able to comprehend. In fact," added his lordship, after a little pause, " I have written to to tell him that, in my opinion, he has brought the court of session into a great scrape.' 99 Whether it was this significant hint, aided by the state of feeling on the subject which had been awakened over the whole country, that had " changed the hand and Remarks on this extended interdict by a distinguished statesman. |