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Updated: June 8, 2025
I shall say 'Peace to presbyteries! Let the day come when bishops, holding in their hands the wooden crook, shall make themselves similar to the poorest servant of the poorest parish! It was the bishops who crucified Jesus Christ. Their names were Anne and Caiph. And they still retain these names before the Son of God.
The obstinacy of the defence betrayed the real animus of the attempt. What the law had distributed amongst three powers, patron, parish, and presbytery, would have been concentred in themselves. The quoad sacra parishes would have riveted their majorities in the presbyteries; and the presbyteries, under the real action of the Veto, would have appointed nearly every incumbent in Scotland.
"Heresy-hunting doesn't flourish in the West," said the Superintendent. "There's no time for it. Some of the Eastern Presbyteries have too many men with more time on their hands than sense in their heads." "Certainly there was no time lost in this case," replied the Convener. "We knew Boyle's scholarship was right. We knew his heart was sound.
He much preferred a few bishops appointed by himself to hundreds of presbyteries over whose sharp eyes and sharper tongues he could have little control. So bishops were reappointed in Scotland in the early years of his reign and got back some of their powers. The Presbyterians, however, were still in the majority, and they continued to regard the bishops as the tools of the king.
They allowed of no appeal from the ecclesiastical tribunals to the civil magistrate; the parliament empowered all who thought themselves aggrieved to apply for redress to either of the two houses. This profane mutilation of the divine right of the presbyteries excited the alarm and execration of every orthodox believer.
Such were the methods by which the new-born ambition of the clergy moved; and that ambition had become active, simply because it had suddenly seemed to become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the effectual electoral bodies, are really the main springs of the ecclesiastical administration. To govern them, was in effect to govern the church.
VIII. Now, there being one general visible Church, having a government set in it of divine right, and that government belonging primarily to the whole body of Christ; secondarily, to the parts or members thereof; must it not necessarily follow, that the more generally and extensively Christ's ordinance of church government is managed in greater and more general assemblies, the more fully the perfection and end of the government, viz. the edification of the whole body of Christ, is attained; and on the contrary, the more particularly and singly church government is exercised, as in presbyteries, or single congregational elderships, the more imperfect it is, and the less it attains to the principal end: consequently, if there be a divine warrant for church government by single congregational elderships, is it not much more for church government by presbyteries, and synods, or councils, wherein more complete provision is made for the edification of the general Church or body of Jesus Christ?
I shall say 'Peace to presbyteries! Let the day come when bishops, holding in their hands the wooden crook, shall make themselves similar to the poorest servant of the poorest parish! It was the bishops who crucified Jesus Christ. Their names were Anne and Caiph. And they still retain these names before the Son of God.
Subordinate Synods have been dissolved by the action of the general Synod after they had ceased to be; and without consulting the Presbyteries, who alone were competent to decree or dissolve the delegation form of the general Synod, that court dissolved itself, after having many years trampled upon the law of Presbyteries fixing the ratio of delegation.
They must be moved on by committees, and pelted with resolutions, stuck through with the needles of the ladies' sewing society, and advised by neighboring ministers, and hauled up before presbyteries and consociations; and after they have killed the church and killed themselves, the pastoral relation is dissolved. We knew of a man who got a unanimous call.
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