endured. Thwarted in their measures, at once religious and patriotic, they planned anew. Withstood in their most reasonable demands, they held fast by their claims, and persevered. "And while, on reviewing the glorious deliverance achieved from antichrist, from the monstrous evils of the mercenary and superstitious priesthood of Rome, of an interdicted reason, and a banished Bible,-while, on reviewing that struggle with 'the man of sin,' which broke the chain of the papacy in Scotland, we trace the might of the contest and the victory to the Lord of Hosts, and give him the honor and the praise, yet ought we not to remember the noble army of the martyrs?'-with grateful sentiments ought we not to think and speak of 'the cloud of witnesses' that endured and labored, and died, in the cause of truth; and to hold up their memories, embalmed in sacred gratitude, before ourselves and our children? There was Hamilton, distinguished by learning as well as high birth, devoted from his youth to God, and whose zeal for the pure faith, which he drank at the feet of Luther and Melancthon, was not quenched on earth but with his blood. There was Wishart, skilled almost equally in divine and human sciences, whose sermons penetrated the most hardened, and melted them into tears,-who braved the pestilence to carry the message of divine grace to his ignorant and perishing countrymen,-whose devout wrestlings for sinners had somewhat of angelic fervors in them, and whose martyr's crown shone amid the flame of persecution as gloriously as that of any of the early christians themselves. There was Knox, the apostolic messenger of the reformation, peculiarly fitted, by the spirit of wisdom and power, for his extraordinary work; and whose devotedness to the cause of Christ, and eloquence, and compassion for the souls of men, and warmth of affection, were not less memorable than the boldness of character which earned for him the well-known encomium at his grave: "There lies a man who never feared the face of man." Names these are, not often rehearsed from the pulpit; and, doubtless, having scripture names, examples of piety and zeal so numerous, how seldom need we go from the Bible record to seek the pattern and incentive to righteousness! But, on this day and valuing the privileges of our church, and desirous to see them perpetuated and extended, shall we not recall the memory of the great men who planted and watered the tree of our privileges with their very blood? and shall we not consider that those now named, were followed by a multitude of other religious patriots, in having whom any country might deem itself honored? And surely we cannot read of such men as the Melvilles, and Bruce, and Welch, and Henderson, and Gillespie, and Rutherford, and more of the like sainted character, without blessing God for his goodness, in having raised up those who were so fully qualified, both for establishing and adorning our Zion. They who thus wrought at the second reformation (as it is called) were indued, even as they needed, with qualities both of mind and heart, similar to what had been requisite at the first. The work of the first had been marred and shaken by the renewed attempts of popery to gain, under the disguise of improving and beautifying the services of the church, a lodgment once more in Scotland. Who shall doubt this who have traced the painful steps of our history, from the opening of the seventeenth century, onwards to its thirty-eighth year? "In Scotland, these persecutions were peculiarly severe* and aggravated. From the opening of the tragedy with the scarcely legalized murder of the Marquis of Argyle, to the closing of it in the death of the zealous Renwick, an innumerable host sealed with their blood, their testimony to the truth of presbyterian reformation principles. Their sufferings and privations were of the severest kind, and of every possible form which the cruelty of man could invent. Neither were the martyrs confined to the man of robust constitution and masculine mind; but delicate and helpless females were found fearlessly facing their blood-thirsty persecutors, preferring to die with their children in their arms, rather than sacrifice their religious liberty. 'God and our country' was the watchword,-the governing sentiment which filled the hearts of these patriotic sufferers. But, though driven from their homes, and forced to seek a hiding-place in the lone glen or rocky cavern, *Sketch of Hist. and Princ. of the Presb. Ch. in England. London, 1840, p. 17 and p. 26. the presence of the covenant sustained and cheered their souls; and it was then they found the vision of Moses in Mount Horeb, affectingly applicable to their circumstances, and adopted the burning bush in the wilderness, as a fit emblem of the state of the church-enveloped in the flames of a fiery persecution, yet not consumed, for the Lord was in the midst of her. "Yes-though the sceptic's tongue deride Yet long for them the poet's lyre Shall wake its notes of heavenly fire. "Their names shall nerve the patriot's hand, Upraised to save a sinking land; And piety shall learn to burn With holier transports o'er their urn." LECTURE II. THE TRIBUNAL, BY WHICH THIS PRELATICAL DOCTRINE OF APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION MUST BE ADJUDICATED. WHILE the nature of man is so constituted, as to dispose him to submit to that authority which is true and valid, it also compels him to resist that which is unlawful. Thus, when our Saviour had entered upon his public ministry, and had manifested his design to interfere with the established usages and opinions of the Jews, they came unto him, as he was teaching in the temple, and said, "by what authority doest thou these things?-who gave thee this authority?" (Math. 21, 23.) The propriety and reasonableness of such an inquiry, (while, in view of the captious manner in which it was, at this time, proposed, Christ gave only an indirect and parabolic answer,)— our Saviour has fully allowed, by the frequent appeals which he, at other times, makes to the evidences of his divine mission. When, therefore, any body of men assume to themselves the exclusive possession of the gifts and calling of God;-declare themselves to be the one and only true church of Christ, out of which there is no covenanted salvation; and pronounce a sentence of excommunication, and of withering anathema, upon all other denominations, who call themselves christian;-unchurching their churches; deposing their ministers; confounding their orders; protesting, as forgeries, their commissions; despoiling of all virtue their most solemn ordinances; and thus casting them out of the temple, as intruders; we seriously put to them the question, which was arrogantly addressed to Christ, and ask, "by what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority? And, since these claims are either founded on assured divine sanctions, and are, therefore, to be most humbly and implicity allowed; or are based upon the prescriptions of uninspired and fallible men, and are, in this case, mere assumptions, involving the deepest criminality; it will not do for their abetters, to draw themselves up in lordly dignity, and with the declaration that the ground of such authority is too notorious to be denied,' violate the spirit while adopting the language of our Saviour, when he said, "neither tell I you by what authority I do these things." To this question, therefore, which we propound in all sincerity and honesty of purpose, and with an unfeigned desire to know and obey the truth as it is in Jesus, that in all things by His grace given unto us, we may please God, and walk obediently in his statutes and ordinances,—we must demand a reply. And as we are not willing to abandon that position which we have taken, and as we believe, by the guidance of holy Scripture, we cannot bow down to these masters, or serve them, until they have duly authenticated the divine warrant of their supremacy. The first point, therefore, to be decided, and which is of vital importance to the determination of the whole scheme of church policy, is the rule by which the claims of prelacy, or of popery, or of presbytery, are to be measured.-What is the tribunal to which their claims are to be brought for adjudication? Who is the judge, by whom our appeal is to be finally issued? For until these preliminaries are decided, "we will but be led," as Alexander Henderson told King Charles, "into a labyrinth and want a thread to wind us out again." Now this inquiry is, we humbly think, most plainly decided for us in a celebrated passage in the book of Isaiah. The Jews were prone to seek counsel and direction in their perplexities from diviners, wizards, and enchantments. The prophet is, therefore, instructed to rebuke them for this heaven-daring course, which was as foolish as it was impious. "Should not a people," he asks, “seek unto their God?-to the law and to the testimony?" "The law of God is the standard of duty; his sure testimony the fountain of truth; his promise the firm ground of hope." All principles, practices and characters, are to be tried by this criterion. All doctrines, counsels, or claims, by whatever advisers or priestly instructers they are offered, must be brought to this unerring touchstone. All asserted privileges, and pretended endowments, must be submitted to the arbitrament of the law and the testimony; so that, if not found 1) See Oxford Tr. No. vii., p. 2, and Dr. Hook's Two Sermons, p. 7. 2) See Life of Alexander Henderson, p. 655. warranted and authorized by the word of God, then is there not even the shadow of a foundation upon which they can be made to rest. They are manifestly without authority. "Here," says the learned, and more pious, episcopal commentator, Mr. Scott, "here, in this passage, we have a solemn, decisive, and scriptural appeal, applicable in all ages and cases." This appeal we now make, and the answer to our inquiry"who gave thee this authority?"—we require shall be adduced from the law and the testimony, and not from antiquity, perpetual succession, universal consent of the fathers, or the universal practice of the primitive church. To these inferior sources of evidence we will freely allow weight and value, as historians of facts or of opinions, so far at least as they are borne out by the positive and authoritative warrant of the divine word; but when considered in themselves, and as measured by their own intrinsic importance, we at once reject them as of no authoritative value whatever. Apart from scripture, and from a reasonable support in scripture, we give place, by subjection, no, not far an hour, were it even to the whole church, in all its priests, prelates and councils, from the year of A. D. 100, when the last inspired apostle had died, to the present hour. We utterly repudiate all antiquarian servility, and spiritual prostration to the ghostly rule of church guides and church principles. Our first beginning in this discussion must be, the principle of the supreme authority of scripture, as arbiter and judge. And this first principle we regard as most reasonable, in a controversy between two parties, both of whom professedly receive the Bible as the only, or at least as an infallible, rule of faith and practice. Both parties mutually acknowledge the divine origin and authority of the Bible, while one party most peremptorily rejects any other rule, except as "unauthoritative tradition." We cannot, therefore, allow prelatists to found their argument for their exclusive claims upon the acknowledged existence of prelacy in an advanced age of the church; and thence to argue backward to the apostolic age; for we yield no submission whatever to the opinions of the church, as such, and this too, at a time, when she had corrupted the plain doctrines and ordinances of God, and had almost suffocated christianity by a superincumbent load of vain and foolish ceremonies. We protest against the judgment of the Nicene, or even of the earlier church, because they had both, in many and grievous respects, made the word of God of none effect, by their 1) See Hawkins Dissert. on Unauthoritative Tradition, Oxford, 1819. |