POWER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY IN REGARD TO WORSHIP.
James Dodson
It is important that the extent of the General Assembly’s power, in accordance with the Revolution Settlement, to legislate upon the question of worship should be well understood, as a right of extensive change has not only been asserted to dwell in kirk-sessions, but a power of unlimited legislation has been claimed for the Assembly under the Act of 1693, William and Mary, chap. 22, for settling “the peace and quiet of the Church.” Founding upon the phrase in this Act “or shall be hereafter declared by the authority of the same,” it is asserted that power is reserved to the Assembly to decree alterations upon the worship of the Church in all time coming, and still retain the benefits of the Establishment.
It would have been strange, indeed, if the State had left a power to the Church to make sweeping changes in worship in all time coming which
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might result in the overthrow of the whole Revolution Settlement. It would have been still more unprecedented if an Act of Parliament, expressly intended to bind down the Church to “uniformity” of worship as then practised, should contain a clause allowing in all future time the very party thus being bound to subvert the whole arrangement. This view is entirely novel and extravagant. In the Report of a Committee anent Innovations in Public Worship, of which Dr Alexander Hill was convener, adopted by the General Assembly of the Established Church in 1864, the following somewhat modified account is given of the matter. Modern extravagances had as yet no place, and the idea of a permanent right of change is discarded:—
“Perhaps the true explanation of the language employed in this latter case is that given by some recent ecclesiastical historians, and apparently countenanced by the terms of Act IX., Assembly 1694, that there were in the Directory regulations even in regard to the ordinary public worship which during the times of persecution had fallen into disuse, and in regard to which the Assembly, however favourably it might regard them, could not at that time venture to do more than hint that they might ‘by degrees be recovered.’ Accordingly it was not till eleven years after, that they proceeded (Act X., Assembly 1705) ‘seriously to recommend to all ministers and others within this National Church the due observance of the Directory for the public worship of God approven by the General Assembly held in the year 1645, session 10.’ The terms of this Act being in so marked accordance with the tolerant regulations of the Directory itself, and with the Act of Assembly in 1643 already quoted, seem clearly to show that the place which the Directory occupies in the Church is not that of a rigid rule to which every one, even in minutest details, is bound to conform, but that of a general guide or model by which the ‘substance and right ordering of all the parts’ of divine worship are to be directed. . . . The General Assembly, your committee feel sure, will ever be slow to interfere with ministers and congregations peaceably adopting a closer observance of the Directory than
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custom demands or sanctions, but there can be no doubt that by its own Acts and the Acts of the Scottish Parliament, it may claim the power to do even this. . . . The Act of Parliament of 1707, passed as a fundamental condition of the union of the two kingdoms, ratifies the true Protestant religion, and the subsisting worship, discipline, and government of the Church, and expressly provides and declares, that ‘the aforesaid true Protestant religion contained in the above-mentioned Confession of Faith, with the FORM AND PURITY OF WORSHIP PRESENTLY IN USE WITHIN THIS CHURCH, and its Presbyterian Church government and discipline . . . SHALL REMAIN AND CONTINUE UNALTERABLE.’ This Act of Parliament, which seems to proceed on the supposition that the power conceded to the Church by the Act 1693 to determine the form of her worship HAD BEEN EXERCISED AND EXHAUSTED, was immediately followed by an Act of Assembly of very similar import, known as the ‘Act against Innovations in the Public Worship of God’ . . . ‘assent is still required on the part of ministers and licentiates to the provisions of this Act.’”
This, so far as appears, was the decided judgment of the Assembly 1864 in regard to the disputed clause in the Act 1693. Even on the supposition that any power of altering the established worship was ever conceded by Parliament, which is very doubtful, it could not be imagined to be either permanent and unlimited.