Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/203

Rh cayed state of the church might have been expected. In fact it passed through the court at the expense of its very constitution. By the barrier act, it has been wisely provided, that no law shall be enacted by the assembly, till in the shape of an overture, it has been transmitted to every presbytery in the church, a majority of whose views in its favour must be obtained before it be made the subject of deliberation. In this case it had been transmitted; but eighteen presbyteries had not made the required return, eighteen approved of it with material alterations, and thirty-one were absolutely against it; so that the conduct of the party who pushed this act into law, was barefaced in the extreme Nor was the attempt to persuade the people, that it contained the true meaning and spirit of the standards of the church less so. The first book of discipline compiled in the year 1560, and ratified by act of parliament in the year 1567, says expressly, " No man should enter in the ministry, without a lawful vocation: the lawful vocation standeth in the election of the people, examination of the ministry, and admission by both." And as if the above were not plain enough, it is added, " No minister should be intruded upon any particular kirk, without their consent." The second book of discipline agreed upon in the general assembly, 1578, inserted in their registers, 1581, sworn to in the national covenant the same year revived, and ratified by the famous assembly at Glasgow, in the year 1638, and according to which the government of the church, was established first in the year 1592, and again in the year 1640, is equally explicit on this head. "Vocation or calling is common to all that should bear office within the kirk, which is a lawful way by the which qualified persons are promoted to spiritual office within the kirk of God. Without this lawful, calling, it was never leisome to any to meddle with any function ecclesiastical." After speaking of vocation as extraordinary and ordinary, the compilers state "this ordinary and outward calling." to consist of "two parts, election, and ordination." Election they state to be "the choosing out of a person or persons most able to the office that vakes, by the judgment of the eldership, [the presbytery], and consent of the congregation to which the person or persons shall be appointed. In the order of election is to be eschewed, that any person be intruded in any office of the kirk, contrary to the will of the congregation to which they are appointed, or without the voice of the eldership," not the eldership or session of the congregation to which the person is to be appointed, as has been often ignorantly assumed; but the eldership or presbytery in whose bounds the vacant congregation lies, and under whose charge it is necessarily placed in a peculiar manner, by its being vacant, or without a public teacher. In perfect unison with the above, when the articles to be reformed are enumerated in a following chapter, patronage is one of the most prominent, is declared to have" flowed from the pope and corruption of the canon law, in so far as thereby any person was intruded or placed over kirks having curam animarum; and forasmuch as that manner of proceeding hath no ground in the word of God, but is contrary to the same, and to the said liberty of election, they ought not now to have place in this light of reformation; and, therefore, whosoever will embrace God's word, and desire the kingdom of his son Christ Jesus to be advanced, they will also embrace and receive that policy and order, which the word of God and upright state of this kirk crave; otherwise it is in vain that they have professed the same." Though the church had thus clearly delivered her opinion with regard to patronages, she had never been able to shake herself perfectly free from them, excepting for a few years previous to the restoration of Charles II., when they were restored in all their mischievous power and tendencies; and the revolution church being set down, not upon the attainments of the second, but upon the less clear and determinate