BR i^'ih'^i.m ,# .mmMm In compliance with current cop\Tight law. LBS Archival Products produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1984 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1993 SCO- WiEVc Ft. [K]= ST©KYp B„[a'=.F=S=ii. PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW from a FccK. "bv T. a^ R_Atiii21i S. Sons THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, PAST AND present: ITS HISTORY, ITS RELATION TO THE LAW AND THE STATE, ITS DOCTRINE, RITUAL, DISCIPLINE, AND PATRIMONY. EDITED EY ROBERT HERBERT STORY, D.D. [Edin.] F.S.A., PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, AND ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S CHAPLAINS. m^ MAR 27 1994 A/ ^OGfCAl S£1»k^^ LONDON: WILLIAM MACKENZIE, 69 LUDGATE HILL, E.C.; EDINBURGH, GLASGOW, & DUBLIN. [REVo A.K. Miu E©Y[Q), B.B, MODERATOR OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1890 troin a i'iiotof,raiih 'cy KlliDtt ScRv Round Tcwer of Abep„k^ethy. ^ Ruixs OF \Veithorn Cathedra! < <: o o CO < l-J THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND: FROM ITS FOUNDATION TO THE REIGN OF MALCOLM CANMORE. EY Rev. JAMES CAMPBELL, D.D., F.S.A. FROM THE REIGN OF MALCOLM CANMORE TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. BY Rev. JAMES RANKIN, D.D. FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY Rev. T. B. ^Y. NIVEK THE CHURCH IN ITS RELATION TO THE LAW AND THE STATE. r. V ANDREV.' MACGEORGE. THE CHURCH\S DOCTRINE BY Rev. ADAjM MILROY, D.D. THE CHURCH'S RITUAL. BT Rev. THOMAS LEISHMA^', D.D. THE CHURCH'S DISCIPLINE, BT Rev. ANDREW EDGAR, D.D. TEINDS OR TITHES AND CHURCH PROPERTY IN SCOTLAND. BT NENIOX ELLIOT, S.S.C. PREFACE. The history of the Church of Scotland has been so often written, that a new book on the same subject may perhaps be thought unnecessary. The histories of Dr. George Cook, of Mr. Grub, of Principal Cunningham, and the lectures of Principal Lee, leave little, indeed, to be desired in the way of careful and impartial narrative of events, and exhibition of principles, from the writers' respective points of view. But a glance at our title-page will show that these volumes are constructed on a plan more com- prehensive than that of any existing history of the National Church. That plan embraces not only a narrative of events, drawn from the most authentic sources, and tracing the develop- ment of the Church from its first planting by Saint Ninian on- wards to the present day ; but, in addition to, and distinct from this, a full exposition of the Church's relation to the Law and the State, of its Doctrine, Eitual, and Discipline, and of the nature of the property it holds in its Teinds, or tithes. Each of these subjects is separately treated, in a section of the work devoted to itself. The obvious advantage of this method is that the information upon each of them, which, otherwise, the reader would have to search for and disentangle from other topics at various points of the general history, is presented to him in one continuous sequence, uninterrupted by the intrusion of matters with which it has no necessary connection. Its incidental disadvantage is that each treatise, upon these individual subjects, runs some risk of overlapping. — viii rr.EFACE. at this point or at that, one or another of the rest. It has been impossible to avoid this wholly : indeed it could not have been absolutely prevented without impairing the completeness of the several treatises. To see that these should be full and exhaustive in themselves has been the editor's desire, rather than to secure that none should trespass, by a page's length, on ground traversed by another. Although each division of the book is the work of a different author, invited to contribute a share because of his known competence for the task, it will be found that, throughout the whole, there is a harmony of design and of treatment. Each of the separate dissertations exhibits its subject, in relation to the historical development of the Church ; while that development is traced, in the preceding narratives, so as to exhibit the natural progress and essential continuity which are its characteristics. The questions treated in these dissertations are all questions round which have gathered, from time to time, the keenest in- terest and the sharpest controversy. The relation of the Church to the Law and the State is, to this day, the centre of eager polemic. The principles involved in the Secession of 1843 have still their zealous defenders and vigorous assailants, who respectively affirm, and deny, that the " spiritual independence " of the Church was sacrificed to the maintenance of that relation, when to maintain it was no longer compatible with loyalty to the ecclesiastical constitution. On this alleged infringement of the rights and liberties of the Church, is based a plea for the theory that the true welfare of a Church must always be hindered, and never can be promoted, by an alliance with the State. Keproach is cast, by one party, on the Established Churches because they are in a state of alleged ; serfage to " Caesar " while, by another, the boasted liberty of the unestablished Churches is derided as an altogether illusory pos- session, powerless either to evade, or to survive, the rude shock of contact with the civil courts. While opinion is thus divided, and prejudices are strong, the formation of a reasonable because intelligent—judgment on the points at issue, is vastly PEEFACE. IX facilitated by such a lucid exposition, as is given in our first dissertation, of the relation of the Church to the Law and the State, from the days of her earliest organization, onwards to those in which wilful impatience of a statutory constitutional control threatened a rupture of the time-honoured association, of the civil and ecclesiastical powers. There has been no considerable doctrinal agitation in the Church for more than fifty years. When the arm of dogmatic intolerance was last raised, it was to expel from the Church's ministry her saintliest and profoundest divine. The deposition of John Macleod Campbell, followed, a few years later, by that of Thomas Wright of Borthwick, would seem to have appeased the jealous spirit of Calvinistic dogmatism. It has demanded no later sacrifice. But though its voice has not been heard, and no doctrinal controversy has been stirring for these many years, Scottish theology has not been dormant. In no church, we make bold to say, has theological thought advanced with better regulated steps, towards light and liberty, than in the Church of Scotland. The quietude in which controversy has been hushed has not been the silence of sleep or of death, but of peaceful progress, making its way without laborious and noisy conflict with opposing forces. The relation of that pro- gress to movements, whether of advance or of reaction, in former periods, and its essential harmony with the best elements of the theology of the Church in its earlier stages of development, cannot be justly understood, without some such review of her dogmatic history as M^e present in the dissertation on Doctrine. The Eitual of the Church, unlike her doctrine, has been the subject of recent variance and dispute in the Church courts. Even yet, among certain classes, and in some districts of the country, both little affected by the diffusion of modern culture, the idea prevails that an ugly building, and a service to which art has lent no attractiveness, are more appropriate to the worship of God than a seemly house of prayer, and a reverently adjusted ritual. It is of importance, both for the PREFACE. correction of such ignorance and prejudice, aud for the justifica- tion of those who, in spite of some obloquy, have done their best to redeem the Church from the reproach of resting content in slovenly rites, that we should possess, as we do, in the dissertation on Eitual, a comprehensive view of the history of the public worship and sacred ofhces of the Church, from their earliest forms in the Celtic missions aud monasteries, through their conformity to Eoman usage, and their various vicissitudes after the Eeformation, onward to the recent period, when a more devout feeling and refined taste began to displace what Avas uncouth, and to restore what was lacking. The Discipline of the Church had, before the Eeformation, become so closely entangled with the superstitions and abuses of the Eomish polity, and has, since that critical era, been administered, at first with such unreasonable stringency, and latterly with such varieties of method and of strictness, that the student of the disciplinary principles and system of the Scottish branch of the Church Catholic, will be thankful for the flood of light thrown on these by Dr. Edgar's dissertation. The patrimony of the Kirk is a wide subject ; but the large " portion of it included under the familiar term " Teind is that which is of most immediate interest to the parochial incumbent, and which has been made the object of most frequent mis- representation, on the part of those who seek to maintain the thesis that the Teind was bestowed on the Kirk by the State, and may be resumed at its pleasure. That this thesis is incon- sistent with the facts and the law of the case, we venture to think, will be apparent to the impartial reader, on a perusal of the last of our dissertations—contributed by a writer, whose official position is at once a guarantee of his mastery of his subject, and of his accuracy of statement.