Volume II Part 1 (1/2)

Theological Essays and Other Papers.

VOL 2.

by Thomas de Quincey.

SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

[1844.]

A great revolution has taken place in Scotland. A greater has been threatened. Nor is that danger even yet certainly gone by. Upon the accidents of such events as may arise for the next five years, whether fitted or not fitted to revive discussions in which many of the Non-seceders went in various degrees along with the Seceders, depends the final (and, in a strict sense, the very awful) question, What is to be the fate of the Scottish church? Lord Aberdeen's Act is well qualified to tranquillize the agitations of that body; and at an earlier stage, if not intercepted by Lord Melbourne, might have prevented them in part. But Lord Aberdeen has no power to stifle a conflagration once thoroughly kindled. That must depend in a great degree upon the favorable aspect of events yet in the rear.

Meantime these great disturbances are not understood in England; and chiefly from the differences between the two nations as to the language of their several churches and law courts. The process of ordination and induction is totally different under the different ecclesiastical administrations of the two kingdoms. And the church courts of Scotland do not exist in England. We write, therefore, with an express view to the better information of England proper. And, with this purpose, we shall lead the discussion through four capital questions:--

I. _What_ is it that has been done by the moving party?

II. _How_ was it done? By what agencies and influence?

III. What were the _immediate results_ of these acts?

IV. What are the _remote results_ yet to be apprehended?

I. First, then, WHAT _is it that has been done?_ Up to the month of May in 1834, the fathers and brothers of the 'Kirk' were in harmony as great as humanity can hope to see. Since May, 1834, the church has been a fierce crater of volcanic agencies, throwing out of her bosom one-third of her children; and these children are no sooner born into their earthly atmosphere, than they turn, with unnatural pa.s.sions, to the destruction of their brethren. What can be the grounds upon which an _acharnement_ so deadly has arisen?

It will read to the ears of a stranger almost as an experiment upon his credulity, if we tell the simple truth. Being incredible, however, it is not the less true; and, being monstrous, it will yet be recorded in history, that the Scottish church has split into mortal feuds upon two points absolutely without interest to the nation; first, upon a demand for creating clergymen by a new process; secondly, upon a demand for Papal lat.i.tude of jurisdiction. Even the order of succession in these things is not without meaning. Had the second demand stood first, it would have seemed possible that the two demands might have grown up independently, and so far conscientiously. But, according to the realities of the case, this is _not_ possible; the second demand grew _out_ of the first. The interest of the Seceders, as locked up in their earliest requisition, was that which prompted their second. Almost everybody was contented with the existing mode of creating the pastoral relation. Search through Christendom, lengthways and breadthways, there was not a public usage, an inst.i.tution, an economy, which more profoundly slept in the suns.h.i.+ne of divine favor or of civil prosperity, than the peculiar mode authorized and practised in Scotland of appointing to every parish its several pastor. Here and there an ultra-Presbyterian spirit might prompt a murmur against it. But the wise and intelligent approved; and those who had the appropriate--that is, the religious interest--confessed that it was practically successful.

From whom, then, came the attempt to change? Why, from those only who had an alien interest, an indirect interest, an interest of ambition in its subversion. As matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron of each benefice, acting under the severest restraints--restraints which (if the church courts did their duty) left no room or possibility for an unfit man to creep in--nominated the inc.u.mbent. In a spiritual sense, the church had all power: by refusing, first of all, to '_license_'

unqualified persons; secondly, by refusing to '_admit_' out of these licensed persons such as might have become warped from the proper standard of pastoral fitness, the church had a negative voice, all-potential in the creation of clergymen; the church could exclude whom she pleased.

But this contented her not. Simply to shut out was an ungracious office, though mighty for the interests of orthodoxy through the land. The children of this world, who became the agitators of the church, clamored for something more. They desired for the church that she should become a lady patroness; that she should give as well as take away; that she should wield a sceptre, courted for its bounties, and not merely feared for its austerities. Yet how should this be accomplished? Openly to translate upon the church the present power of patrons--_that_ were too revolutionary, that would have exposed its own object. For the present, therefore, let this device prevail--let the power nominally be transferred to congregations: let this be done upon the plea that each congregation understands best what mode of ministrations tends to its own edification. There lies the semblance of a Christian plea; the congregation, it is said, has become anxious for itself; the church has become anxious for the congregation. And then, if the translation should be effected, the church has already devised a means for appropriating the power which she has unsettled; for she limits this power to the communicants at the sacramental table. Now, in Scotland, though not in England, the character of communicant is notoriously created or suspended by the clergyman of each parish; so that, by the briefest of circuits, the church causes the power to revolve into her own hands.

That was the first change--a change full of Jacobinism; and for which to be published was to be denounced. It was necessary, therefore, to place this Jacobin change upon a basis privileged from attack. How should _that_ be done? The object was to create a new clerical power; to s.h.i.+ft the election of clergymen from the lay hands in which law and usage had lodged it; and, under a plausible mask of making the election popular, circuitously to make it ecclesiastical. Yet, if the existing patrons of church benefices should see themselves suddenly denuded of their rights, and within a year or two should see these rights settling determinately into the hands of the clergy, the fraud, the fraudulent purpose, and the fraudulent machinery, would have stood out in gross proportions too palpably revealed. In this dilemma the reverend agitators devised a second scheme. It was a scheme bearing triple harvests; for, at one and the same time, it furnished the motive which gave a constructive coherency and meaning to the original purpose, it threw a solemn shadow over the rank worldliness of that purpose, and it opened a diffusive tendency towards other purposes of the same nature, as yet undeveloped. The device was this: in Scotland, as in England, the total process by which a parish clergyman is created, subdivides itself into several successive acts. The initial act belongs to the patron of the benefice: he must '_present_;' that is, he notifies the fact of his having conferred the benefice upon A B, to a public body which officially takes cognizance of this act; and that body is, not the particular parish concerned, but the presbytery of the district in which the parish is seated. Thus far the steps, merely legal, of the proceedings, were too definite to be easily disturbed. These steps are sustained by Lord Aberdeen as realities, and even by the Non-intrusionists were tolerated as formalities.

But at this point commence other steps not so rigorously defined by law or usage, nor so absolutely within one uniform interpretation of their value. In practice they had long sunk into forms. But ancient forms easily lend themselves to a revivification by meanings and applications, new or old, under the galvanism of democratic forces.

The disturbers of the church, pa.s.sing by the act of 'presentation' as an obstacle too formidable to be separately attacked on its own account, made their stand upon one of the two acts which lie next in succession.

It is the regular routine, that the presbytery, having been warned of the patron's appointment, and having 'received' (in technical language) the presentee--that is, having formally recognised him in that character--next appoint a day on which he is to preach before the congregation. This sermon, together with the prayers by which it is accompanied, const.i.tute the probationary act according to some views; but, according to the general theory, simply the inaugural act by which the new pastor places himself officially before his future paris.h.i.+oners.

Decorum, and the sense of proportion, seem to require that to every commencement of a very weighty relation, imposing new duties, there should be a corresponding and ceremonial entrance. The new pastor, until this public introduction, could not be legitimately a.s.sumed for known to the paris.h.i.+oners. And accordingly at this point it was--viz.

subsequently to his authentic publication, as we may call it--that, in the case of any grievous scandal known to the parish as outstanding against him, arose the proper opportunity furnished by the church for lodging the accusation, and for investigating it before the church court. In default, however, of any grave objection to the presentee, he was next summoned by the presbytery to what really _was_ a probationary act at their bar; viz. an examination of his theological sufficiency. But in this it could not be expected that he should fail, because he must previously have satisfied the requisitions of the church in his original examination for a license to preach. Once dismissed with credit from this bar, he was now beyond all further probation whatsoever; in technical phrase, he was ent.i.tled to 'admission.' Such were the steps, according to their orderly succession, by which a man consummated the pastoral tie with any particular parish.

And all of these steps, subsequent to the '_reception_' and inaugural preaching, were now summarily characterized by the revolutionists as 'spiritual;' for the sake of sequestering them into their own hands.

As to the initiatory act of presentation, _that_ might be secular, and to be dealt with by a secular law. But the rest were acts which belonged not to a kingdom of this world. 'These,' with a newborn scrupulosity never heard of until the revolution of 1834, clamored for new casuistries; 'these,' said the agitators, 'we cannot consent any longer to leave in their state of collapse as mere inert or ceremonial forms.

They must be revivified. By all means, let the patron present as heretofore. But the acts of ”examination” and ”admission,” _together with the power of altogether refusing to enter upon either,_ under a protest against the candidate from a clear majority of the paris.h.i.+oners--these are acts falling within the spiritual jurisdiction of the church. And these powers we must, for the future, see exercised according to spiritual views.'

Here, then, suddenly emerged a perfect ratification for their own previous revolutionary doctrine upon the creation of parish clergymen.

This new scruple was, in relation to former scruples, a perfect linch-pin for locking their machinery into cohesion. For vainly would they have sought to defeat the patron's right of presenting, unless through this sudden pause and interdict imposed upon the _latter_ acts in the process of induction, under the pretext that these were acts competent only to a spiritual jurisdiction. This plea, by its tendency, rounded and secured all that they had yet advanced in the way of claim.

But, at the same time, though indispensable negatively, positively it stretched so much further than any necessity or interest inherent in their present innovations, that not improbably they faltered and shrank back at first from the immeasurable field of consequences upon which it opened. They would willingly have accepted less. But, unfortunately, it sometimes happens, that, to gain as much as is needful in one direction, you must take a great deal more than you wish for in another.

Any principle, which _could_ carry them over the immediate difficulty, would, by a mere necessity, carry them incalculably beyond it. For if every act bearing in any one direction a spiritual aspect, showing at any angle a relation to spiritual things, is therefore to be held spiritual in a sense excluding the interference of the civil power, there falls to the ground at once the whole fabric of civil authority in any independent form. Accordingly, we are satisfied that the claim to a spiritual jurisdiction, in collision with the claims of the state, would not probably have offered itself to the ambition of the agitators, otherwise than as a measure ancillary to their earlier pretension of appointing virtually all parish clergymen. The one claim was found to be the integration or _sine qua non_ complement of the other. In order to sustain the power of appointment in their own courts, it was necessary that they should defeat the patron's power; and, in order to defeat the patron's power, ranging itself (as sooner or later it would) under the law of the land, it was necessary that they should decline that struggle, by attempting to take the question out of all secular jurisdictions whatever.

In this way grew up that twofold revolution which has been convulsing the Scottish church since 1834; first, the audacious attempt to disturb the settled mode of appointing the parish clergy, through a silent robbery perpetrated on the crown and great landed aristocracy; secondly, and in prosecution of that primary purpose, the far more frantic attempt to renew in a practical shape the old disputes so often agitating the forum of Christendom, as to the bounds of civil and spiritual power.

In our rehearsal of the stages through which the process of induction ordinarily travels, we have purposely omitted one possible interlude or parenthesis in the series; not as wis.h.i.+ng to conceal it, but for the very opposite reason. It is right to withdraw from a _representative_ account of any transaction such varieties of the routine as occur but seldom: in this way they are more pointedly exposed. Now, having made that explanation, we go on to inform the Southern reader--that an old traditionary usage has prevailed in Scotland, but not systematically or uniformly, of sending to the presentee, through the presbytery, what is designated a '_call_,'

subscribed by members of the parish congregation. This call is simply an invitation to the office of their pastor. It arose in the disorders of the seventeenth century; but in practice it is generally admitted to have sunk into a mere formality throughout the eighteenth century; and the very position which it holds in the succession of steps, not usually coming forward until _after_ the presentation has been notified (supposing that it comes forward at all), compels us to regard it in that light. Apparently it bears the same relation to the patron's act as the Address of the two Houses to the Speech from the Throne: it is rather a courteous echo to the personal compliment involved in the presentation, than capable of being regarded as any _original_ act of invitation. And yet, in defiance of that notorious fact, some people go so far as to a.s.sert, that a call is not good unless where it is subscribed by a clear majority of the congregation. This is amusing.

We have already explained that, except as a liberal courtesy, the very idea of a call destined to be inoperative, is and must be moons.h.i.+ne.

Yet between two moons.h.i.+nes, some people, it seems, can tell which is the denser. We have all heard of Barmecide banquets, where, out of tureens filled to the brim with--nothings the fortunate guest was helped to vast messes of--air. For a hungry guest to take this tantalization in good part, was the sure way to win the esteem of the n.o.ble Barmecide. But the Barmecide himself would hardly approve of a duel turning upon a comparison between two of his tureens, question being--which had been the fuller, or of two nihilities which had been seasoned the more judiciously. Yet this in effect is the reasoning of those who say that a call, signed by fifty-one persons out of a hundred, is more valid than another signed only by twenty-six, or by n.o.body; it being in the mean time fully understood that neither is valid in the least possible degree. But if the '_call_,' was a Barmecide call, there was another act open to the congregation which was not so.