DEL PASAJE DEL ORGULLO PROMETEICO A LA VERGÜENZA

this — this great man who had been everything for

these people was re-ordained by those whom he had aroused and made. Thus the Oatholic and Apostolic Church, which historically owed its origin to Bdwerd Irving, made hira

• . 1

one of its less important members*’, In thia new

congregation daily service was held and there were frequent services of Holy Communion. But Irving did not long

minister in Newman Street. His laborious life had greatly impaired his health, and he died in Glasgow in

1854, aged 42.

In addition to his association with the Catholic Apostolic Church, Irving is also noteworthy in being a pioneer of the general revival of the Catholic ideal of Ohurchmanship, and in anticipating many of the most

important features of the Oxford Movement in his London ministry. A perusal of his writings, particularly his Ordination Charge delivered to the Reverend Hugh BaiHie

at the Scotch Church, London in 1827, and reprinted in His Miscellanies (1866), shows that Irving was conscious, as

few in hia day were, of the apostolic heritage of the

Presbyterian ministry. He exhibited a profound reverence for the Sacraments, and insisted on regular ordination as an essential feature of the Holy Ministry.

1.

J,

Blacks Catholic Apostolic Church" in Hew Forms

Of Irving’s Ohurohmanship Principal Story remarks

that "he believed., with a faith above that of bishop or patriarch, in his own apostleship and Mvine commission. There was always in him a more than Presbyterian

A

doggedness of devotion to the Kirk of Scotland, combined with a higher than most High Churchman* s belief in the divine origin, chax*aoter, and significance of the Kirk, its priesthood, and its sanr&ments • And, in his own opinion, no bishop inherited, a more undoubted episcopate

1

then he" •» It would, however, be -a--mistake to imagine that Irving was in any way responsible for the ornate worship which grew up in the Catholic Apostolic Church.

"His simple Presbyterian soul", says Dr. Black, "would have had no part or parcel in this diverse and elaborate symbolism and ritual. The people whom he attracted to him, eclectics fro® evex-y strange church, were the

originators of this diverse ceremonial".2 A

■ IV.

gohn-Bacleod Campbell (1800-1872).

The name of John Macleod Campbell evokes an unhappy chapter in Scottish Church history, for "the miseries to which the Church submitted him were deplorable and

1. R.H,Storys op.eit., p.235. 2.

J.

Blacks op.eit,, p.176.

indefensible. Ho was one of the most spiritual of its clergy, a man of unusual purity of heart and beauty of

i character”.

As th© young minister of the parish of Rhu in Dumbartonshire, Campbell was greatly influenced by the mystical teaching of the saintly Thornes Erskine of

Linlathen, who lived for several summers in nearby Helens­ burgh. During the early years of his ministry Campbell’s intensive study of Scripture led hi© to formulate a

doctrinal outlook drastically at variance with the rigid Calvinistic orthodoxy of the day, especially with the austere doctrine of Election which, as set forth in the Westminster Confession, declared the Divine choice of the

few

to eternal life, and the predestined fate of the remainder - the non-elect - to everlasting perdition.

Christ’s sacrifice upon the Cross, this theology emphasised, was efficacious for the salvation of the elect only.

Campbell came to believe that Scripture taught a sweeter doctrine - that of universal atonement. This was the key that, for him, unlocked the v/hole mystery of Christ's

sacrifice. Christ died for all menj without exception or distinction.

When these opinions of the young minister became 1. C.L.Warrs Principal -Oalrd, p.59.

known, both Moderate and Evangelical parties in the Ohuroh showed increasing hostility, Campbell found the pulpits of the neighbouring clergy closed to hira, yet amongst thoughtful people his teaching came to

command growing interest ana acceptance. His village church become, in the words of his friend, Robert Story, ”a centre of light to which many came - often from a great distance - to learn the way of the Lord more

1 perfectly'11.

Story tells of Campbell’s arraignment before the Presbytery of Dumbarton in 1850. "A memorial was

presented, entreating the Presbytery to investigate and deliverthe parish from the oppreaaion of such pernicious errors as were taught by the minister. Into the compet­ ency of the memorialists there was no inquiry, although

one of them was a notorious smuggler, and another a drunken tailor”.

A

member rose to move "in a furious

speech that they should proceed at once to root out £>

the pestilential heresy". '

Another document was submitted to the Presbytery from eighty householders in Campbell’s parish expressing their great respect and affection for their minister. This, however, was ignored. At a later meeting Campbell

55.

1.

was ordered to preach before the Presbytery, and having done so, the members by a large majority ’’recorded their detestation and abhorrence” of the doctrine contained in the sentence which declared that ”God loves every child of Adam with a love the measure of which is the agony of Sis own Son”,^

When the case was brought before the General Assembly of 1831 the verdict was highly unfavourable, Xt was

reached after midnight, when many of the members had left the Hall, not imagining that a final verdict v/ould be

reached that night, nAll through th<* process the

impression is left that the judges came to the consider­ ation of the case with their minds made up, Macleod Campbell*e teaching was unsettling, and ecclesiastics, helpless

as

usual in the presence of an idea, were well content to be rid of him”.

Cast out of the Church of his fathers and from his quiet parish on the shores of the Garolooh, Campbell

rented a hell in Glasgow and gathered round him a

sympathetic congregation, Xn 1837 a chapel was built in Blackfriars Street. During these year’s he set him­ self to the compilation of his momentous hook ghe JIature of the Atonement which, says Professor Storr, ”is

1. RUi,Storys op.eit,, p.lgg,

55*

cOTtainly the most important English oontx*ibntion to dogmatic theology made in the fix-st sixty years of the

century”.^ Worn, Maoleocl Campbell*s brave witness Scottish theology at last broke the fetters which had

so long bound hex? to the grim doctrine of election, and has brought the Church into the knowledge of the kindlier Gospel of the love and mercy of God extended to ©13, hia creatures*

V, The, Disruption.

tCftt'..n mXHKWP^'W^'H ill *W

During the second quarter of the century, how evens the Church had little leisure to be concerned with matters of adraini strati on, liturgy, or doctrine* All such

questions wre pushed into the background by the urgent issues of the patronage controversy and the resultant Ten Sears5 Conflict which finally ended in the Disruption of May, 184-5* But the witness and ideals of such men as

era9 Irving and Maoleod Campbell were not allowed to be forgotten.

In 184-5 the Kree Church of Scotland was inaugurated on a high spiritual. note, a dramatic assertion of the sole Headship of Christ in Bis Church, a repudiation of 1. ¥.I?.Storrs The Development of Engligh Theology in

any encroachment by law court? or Parliament on the spiritual liberties of the Ohuroh. The Disruption controversy was much more than a spectacular protest against the system of patronage then existing in the llstablislxed Church# It was the bursting into flame, after long smouldering of an exalted conception of the Church as the household of God whose ultimate

authority was not the State, hut Christ, the King and Bead of the Ohuroh? whose existence waa rooted, not

in any act of Parliament but in the Word of God and the faith of believers# nJt is impossible even to dip into the Mon-Intrusion Controversy1 11, declared an Edinburgh advocate in 18954 ’’without being struck with admiration fox? many of the mental and moral qualities which it

called forth# We find in the ephemeral pamphlets on both sides a conception of the Church, a confident belief

»♦

alike in the necessity and validity of Presbyterian Ordination, a view of the Presbyterian form of Ohuroh Government, a steady attempt to reason from primary

principles, that would vastly surprise a generation which

is all but ignorant of such matters,

ana

all but unaware

that such things as first principles - or principles of 1

any sort - exist at all".

1. J.H.Millers "The Sevival of Ohurchmanship in Scotland" in S.O.S. Conferences, Second Series, Vol.II, p.68.

But this noble conception of the Church was soon

submerged in a decade of almost incredible acrimony and sectarian bitterness• The venom accumulated during the Ten Years1 Conflict now assumed a form that can

only be described as malignant. By 18§0 there were to be found in every part of Scotland the steeples of three denominations soliciting the allegiance of the Presbyter­ ian population - the Wfeabliahads Free, and United Pres­ byterian Churches. Denominational strife poisoned the

ecclesiastical and social life of the land. The Estab­ lished Ohurch was confronted with determined, active, and sometimes not too scrupulous opposition from those whose new-found principles demanded the complete

annihilation of the National Ohurch*

The seceders were encouraged, at the beginning, with

hearty popular enthusiasm and support. .Financial help

poured in to achieve the work of church and manse building and for the stipends of the ministers and professors of

the Free Church. In many communities , both urban and

rural* the secession of the minister was followed by that of the majority of his congregation.

Much has been written since Disruption days of the self—forgetting sacrifice shown by the outgoing ministers in forfeiting the security of their manses* glebes and

stipends# But the very real suffering of those who elected to remain within the Establishment ought not to he overlooked. They were regarded by their Free Church parishioners as mere **stipen&~Iifbers% their ministrations unwelcome and unsought. The ^minister- moderate”? especially in the Highland areas? found his flock so diminished that in order to occupy his time and justify his existence he had, to take to farming his glebe? or engage -in !toow*-doctoringu .... he could look after their animals? but not the souls of his parishioners« The parish minister found himself disregardedalmostf in

some extreme cases? to the point of ostracism# In 1845 Dr. Oendllsh? the recognised leader of the Free Church?

toured the Western Isles? and wherever he preached

included in his animadversions against the Establishment

1 the sin of worshipping in a parish church.

Moreover? at the Disruption the Established Church found itself bereft of most of its leading and most

brilliant clergy. ^Surrounded by every influence that could dishearten? sustained only by the sense of a good conscience and a worthy cause? the ministers of the

Established Church had to set themselves to the task of rehabilitating the venerable institution left in their

1. B.Macleant

59 • 9, l

care”.

With so many vacant pulpits to fill, men were

ordained to the ministry who in normal times would not

have been considered for charges - ^schoolmasters, worn** out probationers, men of dubious morals and inadequate

training, and frequently without any distinct call to preach the Gospel to their fellows, found themselves accepted because of the urgent need. These emergency men were in many instances a heavy drag.on the progress

of vital religion, and it is significant that between the

years 1848 and 1855 no fewer than nineteen ministers were deposed for immorality, a grievous record which caused

much, searching of heart among the friends of the Estab­ lishment”

Such was the state of local animosity end national rivalry created by the presence of two stx'oog denomina­ tions, indistinguishable in doctrine or worship, each

competing with each other, and with the vigorous United Presbyterian Church, for a position of superiority in the

land. In such .a situation, where even families were

divided on sectarian loyalties and friend would not apeak to friend, it was impossible for a lofty ideal of the

Church to survive. The conception of the Church Catholic 1. J.A.McOlymonts eeU The Glmrch of Scotland. p»135

2. J.R.Flemings 'The ,Ohux*qh,^q^and^.;lS4y-192g.

was submerged in a sea of narrow prejudices end parochial feuds. Worship in i efforts to i VI. f ij^it ha If of 4 * it. 5 centuryend some

But not only was the Church, of Scotland harried by

sectarian strife. It had become the home of a dreary and unlovely form of worship, ’’probably”, as Px\lncipal Story scathingly remarked, ’’the baldest and bleakest in Christendom” J" for this dismal wox'shi'p the English

Independency which, in the seventeenth century , had cast its blight over Scotland must be recognised as chiefly to blame ♦ for in the Ohurch , more than in any other aspect of Scottish life, the grim legacy of Puritanism survived

longest ♦ ”$o a great degree Puritanism drove from life

its colour and its charm, and nowhere did this hit

Scotland with greater severity than in the public worship

2

ie Ohurch”.”It is only fair that English people

should be asked to remember that in two ways they have unwittingly exercised an evil influence on the Ohurch of Scotland. It was owing to the attempt of an English

<

Primate (Archbishop Laud) to force upon the Scottish

people a ritual that would .not have been endured in England 1. E.R.Storys ffhe Reformed Ritual in Scotland, p.56.

61.

itself, that the Scottish people have in the past broken so completely with liturgical worship. Not only so, but it was owing to another English interference that

this antagonism became deep-rooted and intensified. This was the influence of the English Independents, In the

endeavour to conciliate the English Independents, a

partially liturgical worship, kneeling at prayer, the

response of the audible ’’Amen" which were common in

Scotland from the time of the Reformation to the time of the Westminster Assembly, and in some quarters even later, were discontinued. When, therefore, English people jeer

at the bald worship of Presbytery, they should remember the part their own countrymen played in bygone days in bringing about the present condition of things’*.1

One of the Scottish High Churchmen, whose name will recur often in later pages, put the matter succintly when he declaredt "Prom Puritanism the Church of Scotland may have received some valuable principles, though I do not know what they are? hut Its influence upon worship, rites and ceremonies has been injurious and is the cause of the dissatisfaction which has sprung up in Scotland in the present day. It has made the Church less churchly than it was for a greater pert of a century after the Reforma- 1, W.W.Tulloch: The Ecclesiastical Position in

tion, or than the other Reformed Churches are now". During the first half of the nineteenth century

Scottish worship reached its nadir in chaotic and dreary formlessness. A.

K.

H. Boyd speaks of the "graceless irreverence" he had so often seen in country churches, "the barn-like building, the horrible singing, the

general rudeness and squalor that characterise the entire service". Strangers to Scottish ways of worship found the public prayers intolerably long, each lasting not

infrequently for no less than forty minutes, and generally quite devoid of sequence of subject or seemliness of

language. After hearing prayers of this nature delivered by a Highland minister, Coleridge remarked that he had never valued the English liturgy more."’ The strictures of the Rev. John Sage, a Bishop in the Episcopal Church, in his Presbytery Examined (1695) were still applicable 150 years later. "Our present Presbyterians",he remarks, "observe no forms in their public prayers either before or after sermon. Ear the most part they observe no rules; they pray by no standard; nay, they do not stick by their own Directory. All must be extemporary work and the

odder the better ... Nqy, so much are they against set 1. G.W.Bprottj The Worship. Rites and Ceremonies of the

Church of Scotland, pp.3/4. ’

2. A.K.H.Boyds "The Place of Ritual" in Present-Day

»

hts. p.46. ... ”

„ 6yds "The Mew Liturgies of the Scottish Kirk" in St. Andrews and. Elsewhere, p.203.

63.

forms that it is Popery, for anything i know, to nay

the Xiord’s Prayer’. Our Reformers never met for public worship but they used it once ox? oftenex’ ... Our

present Presbyterians xvill not only not use it, but they

' 3 ‘

condemn, and write against the using of it. *

The postures adopted by worshippers were often

criticised by strangers to Scottish ways of worship. nXf we go into one of our Scottish parish churches”, writes the minister of the Scotch Church, Crown Court, London in 1840, ’’the indolent and indifferent attitude of sitting during the praise of God, and the wandering eyes and diversified positions of those who are standing

at prayer make an impression on the mind of a stranger

o

by no means in our favour”.Professor Jarnos Beattie, of the Chair of Moral Philosophy and IiOgic in Aberdeen University, had, os early as 1??8, criticised the practice

of sitting at praise as inconvenient to the singer and an

indecorous attitude in a worshipper, and the prevalent custom of reading the lines of the psalms before they were sung.^

The music, too, was generally mean and unedifying

I# lhe Works of the Bight, Reverend John Sage, a Bishop

~ gLithe^Wurch. -in -WQ. Pt>. obTT Printed for

the Spottiewbode Society, Edinburgh, 1844.

2.

J .Gumming,: The Liturgy of the Church of Scotland , pr John Knox11 ■Book of Oommon^fder^

3. J .Beattie:..

On the

Scotland

Printed but iiot polished 17781 Published

In document Vida y Ética Año 18, Nº 2, 2017 (número completo) (página 39-41)