II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. CHAPTER laymen. Every court is bound to lay the record of all its proceedings from time to time before the tribunal which is its immediate superior; any part of its proceedings may be brought by appeal or complaint under the review of a higher jurisdiction; and every minister, when he receives orders, comes under a solemn engagement to maintain and defend the doctrine, discipline, and government of the church; and never to attempt anything, directly or indirectly, which may tend to its subversion or prejudice. Thus the general assembly, as the court of last resort, revises every litigated decision; and has the power of enforcing, without control, obedience to its decrees: it is a supreme tribunal; and, with the concurrence of a majority of the presbyteries, it may enact laws for the government of the whole church. In England it was In England it was designed to establish a similar church government. There were to be four courts, the parochial, classical, provincial, and national, corresponding to those in Scotland. But there was one point on which the house of commons was inexorable, and its firmness was fatal to the rigid presbyterian party. From the inferior courts there must be a last appeal, and the question was whether it should lie to a secular or a purely spiritual court. The presbyterians maintained that in spiritual things it was a dishonour to Christ himself, the churches' sole head and king, to permit a secular body to sit in final judgment on its own previous decisions. The parliament was of another * From a paper drawn up by the rev. George Hill, principal of St. Mary's college in the university of St. Andrews, inserted in Dugald Stewart's life of Robertson the historian. II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. mind: it contemplated with little satisfaction the CHAPTER setting up of a spiritual tribunal independent of itself. No arguments could move it here. If presbyterianism meant a supreme spiritual court, over which it could exercise no control, a pure presbyterian church in England it would tolerate no more than prelacy itself. An accommodation, a modified presbyterianism, was the consequence; and the mortification of the extreme presbyterians was undisguised. Waving the question of the divine authority of particular forms of government, presbyterianism is not without its advantages. The regular gradation of its course produces order; the equality of its ministers, a general contentment; and the admission of the laity is at once a check upon ecclesiastical intolerance and on that professional bias to which even the strongest minds are subject; and at the same time it affords to laymen a field within which, without irregularity, the high ambition of being useful to the great cause of religion may be fairly exercised; the tyranny of ecclesiastics seems to be prevented; and the affairs of the church cannot, in the most drowsy periods, devolve exclusively upon the clergy, as in England during the last century. Thus two prolific sources of mischief are cut off. The system is well framed for giving considerable energy to its own decisions, and for maintaining a due subordination amongst its component parts. Its principal defects are its somewhat democratic character and its power of crushing individuals. It has been said, that had it been introduced without restraint in England, the people would soon have CHAPTER learnt that the episcopal jurisdiction they had cast II. off was nothing in comparison with the tyranny they CHAS. I had established. And this is supported by the A.D. 1643. argument, that while under an episcopal government the bishop is the judge, in presbyterian churches it is the minister and elders who decide. The parish consistory has the power of excommunication. If the delinquent appeals to a higher court, to the presbytery, or higher still, to the provincial synod, in each case it may so happen that his own minister who inflicted the censure, and the elders who concurred in it, are members, influential members, of the higher court; and at all events the appellant who feels himself wronged suffers, for the present, beneath the odium of disgrace; and yet upon him it lies to prove himself aggrieved.* But a presbyterian would probably reply, that our objections are rather fanciful than real. The Scotch, though presbyterian, are not republican. King James's oracular aphorism, "nobishop no king," still waits for its accomplishment. A presbyterian nation is found, after centuries of trial, to retain its love of regal and its dislike of episcopal government with the same tenacity; and with regard to church censures, it must in justice be allowed that in Scotland cases of oppression do not frequently occur. Church censures are not uncommon: with us they are scarcely known; for our preposterous affection for the antient canon law makes excommunication a civil sentence; that is, it makes it in most cases impossible, in others, contemptible or worse. And as to milder censures, the penance of standing in a winding-sheet at the *Short Hist. of the Church of England, sect. 591. II. A.D. 1643. church door is at variance with the habits, and the CHAPTER common sense, of modern times; and therefore equally useless as an example or a punishment. It CHAS.I. only serves to give fools an occasion to make a mock of sin. On the question of discipline, it would scarcely be wise to challenge a comparison with some presbyterian churches. Between prelacy and presbyterianism there was a middle path. And if the fact, that it was advocated by one of the wisest, of the meekest, and of the best men that any church possessed, could in these frenzied times have had weight, it would certainly have received attention. Archbishop Ussher proposed a system which he termed reduced episcopacy. He would have retained the episcopal office, he would have abandoned its superfluous splendours. In each rural deanery (generally including twenty or thirty parishes) he would have placed a suffragan bishop. Once a month the bishop was to assemble a synod of the incumbent pastors within his jurisdiction, and by their votes decide the questions that might come before him. Once or twice a year there was to be a diocesan synod, in which the suffragans and their clergy, or a certain number of them, should meet in the presence of a superintendent or archbishop of the diocese; and here the transactions of the monthly synods were to be revised. And, lastly, he proposed a provincial synod, consisting of all the bishops, diocesan and suffragan, and such of the clergy as should be elected out of every diocese. The primate of either province might be the moderator, or, in his room, one of the bishops appointed by him. This synod might be held every third II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. CHAPTER year, in each of the two ecclesiastical provinces into which England is divided; or, if the parliament were sitting, one national synod might be formed, in which all appeals from inferior courts should be received, and all ecclesiastical affairs determined.* The fate of this intermediate scheme was singular. Perhaps it was not without force that moderate men remarked that its rejection seemed a token of the divine displeasure against the spirit of these unhappy times. When it was first presented, it satisfied the puritans, but neither the bishops nor the king. Afterwards, the king offered this very scheme at the treaty of the Isle of Wight; but now neither the parliament nor the puritans would listen to it. At the restoration of Charles II., the presbyterian clergy once more presented it as a scheme with which they were at last contented; but now both the king and the bishops again rejected it with scorn. But in revolutions compromise is treason, and he who urges, with whatever wisdom, the counsels of moderation, sits with Canute on the sounding beach and rebukes the lashing tide. The independents formed another party, small indeed at present, says a quaint writer, but like the cloud seen by the prophet's servant already portending danger and destined ere long to overspread the whole hemisphere of presbytery. They had five leaders, whom the majority styled the dissenting brethren. These were Nye, Simpson, Bridge, Burroughs, and Thomas Goodwin. Laud's severities had once driven them to Holland; and here, at * Neal ii. p. 374. Neal, ii. p. 376, and Baxter, Life, i. p. 62, and ii. P. 238. |