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It is an opinion too common, that if we believe the essentials of religion, there is no occasion for so much preciseness about the forms of church government, which are only circumstantials, as there will be no inquiry made about these at the tribunal of Christ.
Will mere prudence, without a divine right, be a sufficient basis to erect the whole frame of church government upon, as some conceive? Prudentials, according to general rules of Scripture, may be of use in circumstantials, but will bare prudentials in substantials also satisfy either our God, our covenant, our consciences, or our end in this great work of reformation?
In the language of one of his most ardent but not undiscriminating admirers, 'he was a Church of England man even in circumstantials; there was not a service or a ceremony, a gesture or a habit, for which he had not an unfeigned predilection. He was, in fact, a distinctly High Churchman, but a High Churchman in a far nobler sense than that in which the term was generally used in the eighteenth century.
Security is contrasted with Improvement; what relates to Security is declared to be Right; what relates to Improvement is said to be Expedient; both are forms of Utility, but the one is pressing and indispensable, the other is optional. The same difference is expressed by the contrasts Being and Well-being; Existence and Prosperous Existence; Fundamentals or Essentials and Circumstantials.
What infirmities? Those that are natural are incident to all, they are infirmities then that are sinful, that cause a man, for want of light, to err in circumstantials; And the reason upon which he grounds this admonition is, that 'Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee, fell on me. You say, to have communion with such weak brethren, reproacheth your opinions, and practice.
Some accidental, occasional, incidental, or circumstantial, as in the case of his celebrating his supper, that it was at night, not in the morning; after supper, not before; with none but men, none but ministers; with unleavened, not with leavened bread, &c.; these circumstantials were accidentally occasioned by the passover, nature of his family, &c.
I come next to the opinionist; I mean, to him whose religion lieth in some circumstantials of religion. With this sort this kingdom swarms at this day. These think all out of the way that are not of their mode, when themselves may be out of the way in the midst of their zeal for their opinions.
The project is this: that by an Act of Parliament an office or court be erected, within the jurisdiction of the Court of Admiralty, and subject to the Lord High Admiral, or otherwise independent, and subject only to a parliamentary authority, as the commission for taking and stating the public accounts. The circumstantials of this office: 1.
For he that is of sound faith, and of conversation honest in the world; no man, however he may fail in circumstantials, may lightly reproach or vilify him. And indeed such persons are the honour of Christian congregations.
Soon after Queen Mary's return from France, my grandfather, with his wife and Agnes Kilspinnie, came from Edinburgh and took up their residence on his own free mailing of Quharist, where the Lady Eglinton was as good as her word in presenting to them divers articles of fine napery, and sundry things of plenishing both for ornament and use; and there he would have spent his days in blameless tranquillity, serving the Lord, but for the new storm that began to gather over the church, whereof it is needful that I should now proceed to tell some of the circumstantials.
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