THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT.
James Dodson
We now come to the Revolution Settlement, by which the Presbyterian Church was restored as the Establishment, and all its conditions, rights, and immunities fixed and secured by law. This settlement was avowedly Presbyterian, and everything peculiarly prelatical, including especially the use of liturgies and organs in worship, which had been specially bound up with prelatic innovations, and which were only heard of during the brief interval between 1617 and 1638, were without doubt discharged in the formal establishment of the Presbyterian order in 1690.
By an Act of the Scottish Parliament, held at Edinburgh on 25th April 1690, being the second session of the first Parliament of William and Mary, chap. 5, the Confession of Faith was formally ratified by the Estates of the realm and embodied in connection with the Act of Parliament, by which also the Presbyterian Church Government, worship, and discipline were settled as the public constitution of the Church.
By this Act, the title of which is—“Act ratifying the Confession of Faith, and settling Presbyterian Church Government,” “the foresaid purity
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and uniformity of worship are expressly provided for,” in these terms—
“Likeas by an Act of the last Session of this Parliament Prelacy is abolished, therefore their Majesties, with advice and consent of the said three Estates, do hereby revive, ratify, and perpetually confirm all laws, statutes, and acts of Parliament . . . for the maintenance and preservation of the true reformed Protestant religion, and for the true Church of Christ within this kingdom, in so far as they confirm the same, or are made in favours thereof. Likeas they, by these presents, ratifie and establish the Confession of Faith, now read in their presence, and voted and approven by them, as the public and avowed confession of this Church, containing the sum and substance of the doctrine of the Reformed Churches (which Confession of Faith is subjoined to this present Act). As also they do establish, ratifie, and confirm the Presbyterian Church government and discipline.”
By this Act it is also provided that the General Assembly and other courts of ministers and elders of the Church are “to try and purge out all insufficient, negligent, scandalous, and erroneous ministers, by due course of ecclesiastical process and censures; and likewise for redressing all other Church disorders.”
Another very important Act was passed 1693, William and Mary, Parl. 1, sess. 4, Act 23, entitled—“Act for Settling the Quiet and Peace of the Church:”—
“Our Sovereign Lord and Lady, the King and Queen’s Majesties, with advice and consent of the Estates of Parliament, ratifie, approve, and perpetually confirm the fifth Act of the second session of this current Parliament, entitled, Act ratifying the Confession of Faith and settling Presbyterian Church-government in the whole heads, articles, and clauses thereof.
“And do further statute and ordain, that no person be admitted, or continued for hereafter, to be a minister or preacher within this Church, unless that he subscribe the
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Confession of Faith ratified in the foresaid fifth Act of the second session of this Parliament, declaring the same to be the confession of his faith, and that he owns the doctrine therein-contained to be the true doctrine which he will constantly adhere to; and likewise that he owns and acknowledges Presbyterian Church government, as settled by the foresaid fifth Act of the second session of this Parliament, to be the only government of this Church, and that he will submit thereto, and concur therewith, and never endeavour, directly or indirectly, the prejudice or subversion of the same.
“And their Majesties with advice and consent foresaid, statute and ordain, That uniformity of worship, and of the administration of publick ordinances within this Church, be observed by all the said ministers and preachers, as the samen are at present performed, and allowed therein, or shall hereafter be declared by the authority of the same; and that no minister or preacher be admitted or continued for hereafter, unless he subscribe to observe and do actually observe the foresaid uniformity.”
As a question, to which we shall afterwards advert, has been raised in connection with the expression “by the authority of the same,” it may be important to observe that, “uniformity of worship” within the Church is here “statute and ordained” by their majesties, with advice and consent of the estates of Parliament. The words in question must then probably refer to the same authority, viz., the enacting power in this statute, “their majesties,” &c., and not to the Church, which has no authority to set aside Acts of Parliament. At all events, the Church has never, in any legitimate way under the Barrier Act, professed to exercise this power of altering the worship as established at the Revolution, and it will be time enough seriously to raise the question when this is attempted. Such power is never accorded anywhere else to the Church as legally and formally estab-
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lished. Certainly, on the other hand, the civil power, which here so jealously specified and guarded this “uniformity,” never meant to exclude itself from a voice in regard to its after maintenance; and this even although the Act of Security had not subsequently passed. It may also be noted, as a matter of course, that the words cannot apply to “ministers and preachers,” who have no legislative power personally, and never had. It would be contrary to all just views of an alliance between Church and State to imagine that all the obligations must be on one side. Such an arrangement could never have been contemplated, at least as permanent, and would be dangerous alike both to civil and religious liberty, as the Church might thus go back to Popery and yet continue established.