James Frederick Ferrier

“ It cannot decline being the supreme legislative power. It cannot waive its own supremacy: it can do anything but that. It cannot make a complete surrender of any authority which it possesses. It cannot, however much it might wish it, set up, as separate from itself, any supreme and irresponsible court, either for civil or ecclesiastical legislation. ”

“ If the Protestant theory of church and state be correct—that is to say, if there be no distinction at all between church and state—it is obviously impossible for a part of any Christian community to hold from God any authority which the rest of the Christian community does not equally possess. The Protestant theory is, that all believers are equally intrusted by God with powers of spiritual jurisdiction. ”

“ What a perfidious violation of the established constitution of the two kingdoms! In 1690 the Scottish Parliament makes over patronages to the heritors and kirk-sessions. In 1707 it secures unalterably the government of the church of Scotland. By the Treaty of Union, England binds itself to preserve inviolate this arrangement. Patronages are to remain for ever in statu quo. But, lo! in 1711, the Parliament of the United Kingdom divests the heritors of their right of patronage, and restores it to its original holders. ”

“ What, then, may we gather, from these observations, to be the theory of the Reformation in reference to the church? (We shall afterwards consider the Protestant theory of the state; meanwhile we confine ourselves to the church.) We may gather this: that the whole believing community is “the church”—a congregation of priests; that the whole Christian nation is a spiritual or ecclesiastical commonwealth. ”

“ The human title every man had who was a believer. To become a clergyman, it was necessary that the aspirant should be a Christian. No process of ordination (effective as that ceremony was considered) could have made a Jew or a Mahommedan an office-bearer in the Roman Catholic church. This, then, was the preliminary title to the ministry. But it was merely a human qualification. It required to be supplemented by a divine commission—by ordination from God, received at the hands of the successors of the apostles,—and then the clergyman's title was complete. ”

“ The clergyman who can admit that his property becomes forfeit when he obeys his conscience rather than the laws of the land, must be bound, by the same logic, to acknowledge that his life also would become forfeit, should the state demand it, and should he persist in obeying his conscience rather than the law. ”

“ The ministers of a church have a particular interest in its legislation—are to be presumed to have an especial knowledge of the best way in which that should be conducted. But they are not to be presumed to have an exclusive interest in ecclesiastical legislation—an exclusive knowledge of what is best for the church. Many people have these things at heart, and are endowed with this knowledge, equally with the clergy. The Christian community at large must be allowed an extensive share in the legislature of the council which deals with ecclesiastical concerns. ”

“ We would have the ministers of the gospel loved and revered, and the ties between them and their people drawn as close as possible, over the whole length and breadth of the land. But there is one thing which we do most strenuously object to—and it is this; that any amount of reverence and esteem should be allowed to obliterate a sound constitutional truth—should overbear the profoundest maxim, the most vital principle of the Reformation. ”

“ It seems rather hard, however, that a man should be both stripped of his privileges by Act of parliament, and compelled to run the gauntlet of the Court of Session before he can obtain the compensation (such as it is) which the Act allows him as a partial indemnification for his losses. No; in the circumstances, the equitable, the suitable remedy—the remedy commensurate with the entire mischief—was that which was actually applied,—namely, a wholesale legislative enactment rescinding the previous statute, and not a retail system of judicial interlocutors. ”

“ It is worse than vain and contradictory—it is a flagrant act of usurpation—when a Reformed ministry pretend that they in particular hold a spiritual jurisdiction by Divine right, when the main principle of the great Reformation, to which they owe their position, is, that the whole believing community, to which they belong, holds a spiritual jurisdiction by Divine right. ”

“ There are two points of view under which ecclesiastical affairs fall to be regarded in the theory of the Reformation—their administration and their legislation. Spiritual administration is the proper and peculiar province of the ministry: and its most important departments are preaching, and the dispensation of the sacraments. There can be no doubt that these, and analogous duties, are the special business of the clerical profession. It is precisely to perform these duties that ministers are appointed to their vocation. ”

“ But man's appointment can never make a substantial difference between man and man. Doubtless the minister's vocation differs from the lawyer's; but he does not differ from the lawyer by any constitutional peculiarity. The distinction between the ordained and the unordained members of a thoroughly Reformed community has no principle on which to ground itself—and therefore it is altogether null. If there be a principle, what is it? ”

“ Here is the broadest and the deepest distinction which man's intellect can make—a distinction broader and deeper than he can comprehend. Here, if anywhere, is a distinction which may justify the setting up of two separate legislative councils ”

“ The one Scottish Parliament became, under the agitation of the Reformers, two Scottish Parliaments. And our General Assembly of the present day, however much it may have altered its character, is the second and junior of these Scottish Houses of Parliament. Surely our ministers will not complain that we have assigned to the body in which they rejoice an ignoble parentage!
This additional House of Parliament—which the General Assembly originally was, and which it still is in a constitutional point of view—was established on principles quite as liberal as those of its elder sister. ”

“ What confuses people here is, that their ministers have received a divine ordination—but then, so have we all, according to the Protestant theory; and therefore this title gives them no pre- eminence. What the minister holds, in addition to this, is a human appointment; and this, it is clear, can never give him a title superior to that of his fellow-men—to any species of legislation, either spiritual or temporal. The ministers of religion must be content with their share of spiritual legislation, and it may be proper and expedient that this share should be large ”

“ No inferior tribunal, we hold, is in any degree competent to interfere with its proceedings, or to overrule its resolutions. It is amenable to no earthly power, any more than the other Parliament, which now-a-days holds its sittings in England, is amenable. It stands by birthright on a level with the highest court in the realm. Therefore we applaud most cordially the Free Church ministers for having stood out manfully in defence of their constitutional privileges. ”

“ They took the whole believing community along with them, and, giving it a large representation in the legislature of ecclesiastical affairs, they actually succeeded in establishing the state in a capacity in which it had never before existed. Like an actor who plays two parts in the same piece, the state, under the management of the Reformers, and without ceasing to be the state, became the church—and its high court of Parliament, when it assumed this character, was the General Assembly. ”

“ It cannot in any respect cease to be absolute. In Roman Catholic countries the state never possessed supreme authority in spiritual matters; therefore, in such countries, a supreme ecclesiastical tribunal may exist, co-ordinate with the civil authority. Independent spiritual is there compatible with independent civil jurisdiction. But, in Protestant countries, the Reformation placed spiritual jurisdiction in the hands of the nation, i.e., state; and, therefore, it has been impossible for the state, since that time, to part with spiritual jurisdiction. ”

“ If it is not, then the Act of Queen Anne was a constitutional and an equitable decree. Does the British constitution countenance bad faith between man and man, and encourage people to set at defiance the provisions of its own enactments? ”

“ That was not what he required, He wanted nothing but his human title; and this he obtained by the election of the people and the approbation of the learned. Is the man now a clergyman as contradistinguished from a layman? We may call him so for convenience' sake; but it is a distinction without a difference. In the Romish church the clergy were separated from the laymen by the whole diameter which lies between the human and the divine. In their ordination the priests received a divine commission which the laity did not possess. ”

“ Hence they were invested (or were supposed to be so) with a spiritual attribute peculiar to themselves, and which stamped them as a class apart; but the Reformed clergy, in their election and admission to the ministry, obtained nothing but a human commission. The divine title (Christian belief) was also theirs; but this, being equally the property of the whole Christian commonwealth, of course conferred no peculiar distinction upon them. ”

“ But, in justice to these men, let us add, that whatever their errors may have been, constitutionally or otherwise, however little they may have established in regard to the real question of independent spiritual power, let us add this, that one thing they did establish—they established a fact which will secure to them for ever the respect of the Scottish nation ”

“ Indeed, we do not pay the volume too high a compliment, when we say that it is an eminently original work—much more so than is apparent from a superficial perusal of its contents. It supplies good materials for thinking ”