Free Church Presbyterianism, by Rev. James Begg, D.D.
Closing Address: SPECIAL DUTIES AND DANGERS OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.
Part 8: (Duties)
OTHER MATTERS OF PUBLIC TESTIMONY.
OUR
ministers must act upon the principle of being ever zealous witnesses
for Christ. But, besides openly and faithfully expounding to our people
the grounds of the Disruption struggle, without which a succession of
intelligent Free Churchmen is to be expected, there are many other
questions upon which a bold testimony for truth may justly be expected
at our hands in the present day.
We must defend the whole principles of
the glorious reformation against the bold attacks and unscrupulous
policy of the emissaries of Rome. The whole doctrines of Grace are also
openly called in question in the present day, and upon this subject our
ministers should give no uncertain sound. There are just, after all,
when the matter is thoroughly investigated, two classes of opinions on
this subject. On the one hand, there are those which resolve the whole
plan of salvation into the sovereign grace of God, making Him alone to
plan, execute, apply, and finish the work of salvation in accordance
with the covenant of grace, and thus, whilst affirming man's entire
guilt and responsibility, giving the whole glory to God alone. On the
other hand, there are all other systems, more or less human which, in
forms more or less open or disguised, make salvation turn upon a human
hinge, making man virtually his own Salvation, although in some cases
men have little logic, and seem better than their creed. [A laugh.] Our
ministers should boldly preach the doctrines of our Confession of Faith
upon this subject, as "the very truth of God most pure."
Here let me
very strongly urge the careful perusal of those noble works of the old
Puritans published by my friend Mr. Nichol, and so ably edited by my
friend the Rev. Thomas Smith. I know nothing more fitted to elevate the
tone of our pulpit, next to a complete mastery of the Word of God, than
an earnest study of the works of men so honoured of God, so mighty in
the Scriptures, and in the spiritual anatomy of the human soul, as the
Goodwins, Clarksons, Adamses, and Sibbses of ancient times. [Applause.]
Much doubt is also raised in the present day in regard to the Divine
authority of Presbyterian Church government. "Let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind." But if he cannot maintain from Scripture,
as I think we triumphantly can, the great outlines of our Presbyterian
system, our position is incapable of defence; the whole struggles of
the past in Scotland — our ancestors dying on the scaffold and our
Highlanders worshipping on the cold sea-beach — have been foolish and
unjustifiable; our Disruption ministers were fighting for a shadow, and
were truly, as they have been called, "martyrs by mistake," — nay, they
were the merest schismatics; our Cardross case ought never to have been
maintained; our ecclesiastical meeting here and elsewhere are entirely
unwarranted, and entitled to no respect from our people, and to no more
respect from the civil magistrate, whose office is undoubtedly more divine
than the meetings of some political club.
Some, no doubt, put the
alternative that all systems of Church government are equally of Divine
authority; but, while the Presbyterian Church has never unchurched
other Christian denominations, a theory so burlesque and dishonouring
to God's word can scarcely be seriously put forth or maintained.
The
Word of God cannot be self contradictory, — cannot at once maintain the
parity and imparity of ministers, congregational nothingness,
congregational subordination, congregational supremacy, and all the
contradictory varieties that exist, and have existed, in the visible
Church. Were it otherwise, God would not be the God of order, but the
author of all the confusion and disorder in the Church, — a conclusion
which itself destroys the theory. [Applause.]