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The
First Secession
For
long we have heard little of the Kirk, which between 1720 and
1740 passed through a cycle of internal storms. She had been
little vexed, either during her years of triumph or defeat,
by heresy or schism. But now the doctrines of Antoinette Bourignon,
a French lady mystic, reached Scotland, and won the sympathies
of some students of divinity, including the Rev. John Simson,
of an old clerical family which had been notorious since the
Reformation for the turbulence of its members. In 1714, and
again in 1717, Mr Simson was acquitted by the Assembly on the
charges of being a Jesuit, a Socinian, and an Arminian, but
was warned against “a tendency to attribute too much to
natural reason.” In 1726-29 he was accused of minimising
the doctrines of the creed of St Athanasius, and tending to
the Arian heresy, “lately raked out of hell,” said
the Kirk-session of Portmoak (1725), addressing the sympathetic
Presbytery of Kirkcaldy. At the Assembly of 1726 that Presbytery,
with others, assailed Mr Simson, who was in bad health, and
“could talk of nothing but the Council of Nice.”
A committee, including Mar’s brother, Lord Grange (who
took such strong measures with his wife, Lady Grange, forcibly
translating her to the isle of St Kilda), inquired into the
views of Mr Simson’s own Presbytery—that of Glasgow.
This Presbytery cross-examined Mr Simson’s pupils, and
Mr Simson observed that the proceedings were “an unfruitful
work of darkness.” Moreover, Mr Simson was of the party
of the Squadrone, while his assailants were Argathelians. A
large majority of the Assembly gave the verdict that Mr Simson
was a heretic. Finally, though in 1728 his answers to questions
would have satisfied good St Athanasius, Mr Simson found himself
in the ideal position of being released from his academic duties
but confirmed in his salary. The lenient good-nature of this
decision, with some other grievances, set fire to a mine which
blew the Kirk in twain.
The Presbytery
of Auchterarder had set up a kind of “standard”
of their own “The Auchterarder Creed” which included
this formula: “It is not sound or orthodox to teach that
we must forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, and instating
us in Covenant with God.” The General Assembly condemned
this part of the Creed of Auchterarder. The Rev. Mr Hog, looking
for weapons in defence of Auchterarder, republished part of
a forgotten book of 1646, ‘The Marrow of Modern Divinity.’
The work appears to have been written by a speculative hairdresser,
an Independent. A copy of the Marrow was found by the famous
Mr Boston of Ettrick in the cottage of a parishioner. From the
Marrow he sucked much advantage: its doctrines were grateful
to the sympathisers with Auchterarder, and the republication
of the book rent the Kirk.
In 1720
a Committee of the General Assembly condemned a set of propositions
in the Marrow as tending to Antinomianism (the doctrine that
the saints cannot sin, professed by Trusty Tompkins in ‘Woodstock’).
But, as in the case of the five condemned propositions of Jansenius,
the Auchterarder party denied that the heresies could be found
in the Marrow.
It was the
old quarrel between Faith and Works. The clerical petitioners
in favour of the Marrow were rebuked by the Assembly (May 21,
1722); they protested: against a merely human majority in the
Assembly they appealed to “The Word of God,” to
which the majority also appealed; and there was a period of
passion, but schism had not yet arrived.
The five
or six friends of the Marrow really disliked moral preaching,
as opposed to weekly discourses on the legal technicalities
of justification, sanctification, and adoption. They were also
opposed to the working of the Act which, in 1712, restored lay
patronage. If the Assembly enforced the law of the land in this
matter (and it did), the Assembly sinned against the divine
right of congregations to elect their own preachers. Men of
this way of thinking were led by the Rev. Mr Ebenezer Erskine,
a poet who, in 1714, addressed an Ode to George I. He therein
denounced “subverting patronage” and
“the
woful dubious Abjuration
Which gave the clergy ground for speculation.”
But
a Jacobite song struck the same note—
“Let
not the Abjuration
Impose upon the nation!”
and
George was deaf to the muse of Mr Erskine.
In
1732, 1733, Mr Erskine, in sermons concerning patronage, offended
the Assembly; would not apologise, appeared, to a lay reader,
to claim direct inspiration, and with three other brethren constituted
himself and them into a Presbytery. Among their causes of separation
(or rather of deciding that the Kirk had separated from them)
was the salary of Emeritus Professor Simson. The new Presbytery
declared that the Covenants were still and were eternally binding
on Scotland; in fact, these preachers were “platonically”
for going back to the old ecclesiastical claims, with the old
war of Church and State. They naturally denounced the Act of
1736, which abolished the burning of witches. After a period
of long-suffering patience and conciliatory efforts, in 1740
the Assembly deposed the Seceders.
In
1747 a party among the Seceders excommunicated Mr Erskine and
his brother; one of those who handed Mr Erskine over to Satan
(if the old formula were retained) was his son-in-law.
The
feuds of Burghers and Antiburghers (persons who were ready to
take or refused to take the Burgess oath), New Lights and Old
Lights, lasted very long and had evil consequences. As the populace
love the headiest doctrines, they preferred preachers in proportion
as they leaned towards the Marrow, while lay patrons preferred
candidates of the opposite views. The Assembly must either keep
the law and back the patrons, or break the law and cease to
be a State Church. The corruption of patronage was often notorious
on one side; on the other the desirability of burning witches
and the belief in the eternity of the Covenants were articles
of faith; and such articles were not to the taste of the “Moderates,”
educated clergymen of the new school. Thus arose the war of
“High Flyers” and “Moderates” within
the Kirk, a war conducing to the great Disruption of 1843, in
which gallant little Auchterarder was again in the foremost
line.
Return
To A Short History Of Scotland
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