A TESTIMONY AGAINST PREVAILING ERRORS AND DISORDER.

The Presbytery, impressed with the evil and danger of [a]bounding error, which issuing from the mouth of the dragon (Rev. 12.15), threatens to deluge all Christian denominations, and lamenting the almost total disregard of the discipline which Christ appointed for the ‘edification and not the destruction’ of his disciples, would give expression at this time to their sentiments in the following declarations:—

1. The visible Church is one by her Divine constitution. (Song 6.9; Matt. 16.18; 1 Tim. 3.15.)  The strenuous efforts now made to effect a union of the different denominations of our day, manifest a deep conviction in the public mind, that the Christian Church ought to be one throughout the earth.  Partial unions having been often effected by a sacrifice of truth, and such unions having proved utterly abortive and failed in permanence, some modern divines in the ‘Reformed Churches,’ in avowed imitation of earth’s party politicians, have called in question the possibility, and consequently the desirableness of doctrinal and organic unity in the visible Church.  Assuming that each denomination holds a parcel of Divine truth not contained in any other, the bold and heretical assertion has been made before the public, that all are necessary to a full exhibition of the Gospel!  In particular, that the system of doctrine called Calvinistic, requires that of Arminius to render it complete.  As error is contrary to the Scriptures, so it is inconsistent with itself.  Doctrinal union is first asserted to be impossible, contrary to the word of God (1 Cor. 1.10), and then Calvinism and Arminianism are represented as constituting one perfect doctrinal system.  This is the Baxterian error revived, against which our fathers testified more than two hundred years ago.  We hereby revive their faithful testimony.  And as we still maintain the divine unity of the Church of Christ, so we will continue to labour for its attainment by holding fast and endeavouring to propagate all Scriptural and covenanted doctrines and order.

2. The recent and continued popular excitements, taking their rise from the Union Convention of last November in the city of Philadelphia, we view as unusually ominous.  The original movement in that city furnished a striking illustration of that conflict of animal emotions called enthusiasm.  The proceedings were wanting in the elements of social order.  To an intelligent spectator they did not present the gravity and deliberation which {451} should characterize a convention of ‘divines and other fit persons’ assembled to frame a bond of union for the Church of God.  From the manifest irreverence, tumultuous applause, partiality and tyranny displayed, the presumption is strong that the whole was managed by intrigue.  And indeed such is the impression and deep conviction in the minds of many—both members and spectators.  We therefore condemn the conclusions of that Convention, not merely because of the many positive and palpable errors uttered by prominent members, but chiefly for equivocal language used in the basis.

We cannot ascertain which copy or edition of the Westminster Confession of Faith was adopted.  Some spurious or mutilated copy only could be contemplated as remodelled by bold divines of the last century; for we are morally certain the venerable document in its original integrity was not, nor could be adopted by that Convention.  On psalmody the sound is more distinct, though still equivocal.  The inspiration and adaptation of the Book of Psalms is recognised.  This is well.  We suppose the Convention was not prepared to deny before the Christian world the inspiration and adaptation of any other part of the Bible.  But why give utterance to a truism which few if any professing Christian would deny?  ‘But inasmuch as’ uninspired hymns have been placed on an equality with this part of God’s word as matter of praise, ‘a change in this respect shall not be required!’  We charitably believe that had any member, on similar grounds and from exactly parallel assumptions, advanced the position—That the Koran of Mahomet and the Book of Mormon shall be received as part of the bond of fellowship in the United Church, many of the delegates would have been alarmed; even Dr. Musgrave, who on this question of psalmody—‘did not wish to be a Jew!’

And here the Presbytery, identifying with, and following in the footsteps of the Reformed Covenanted Presbyterian Church of Scotland, take occasion to declare their unalterable adherence to the Book of Psalms in the best metrical version as the manual of praise to God for the whole Church of Christ, to the exclusion of all impious ‘Imitations,’ ‘Paraphrases,’ and ‘hymns merely of human composure.’ The grounds on which the Presbytery predicate this declaration, are twofold.  First, Divine authority and appointment, together with iterated and reiterated commands to obey. (Psam 81.2, 105.2, 137.3; Luke 24.42; Acts 1.20; Eph. 5.19 ; Col. 3.16; Rev. 14.3, 15.3.)  Second, ecclesiastical authority.  We receive the subordinate standards ‘as they were received by the Church of Scotland.’  And in these days of declension from scriptural purity, and of growing superstition in the worship of God, it is deemed conducive to edification and stability to adduce a few out of many declarations and acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, by which the position of this Presbytery on psalmody is sustained.

When our fathers were emerging from the idolatries, superstitions, {452} and will-worship of Popery in Scotland about the middle of the sixteenth century, they did for a time retain some of the dregs of mystical Babylon.  These consisted of ‘Doxologies—Godlie Ballates, [songs of] the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments, the Creed,’ &c., all or some of them added to the Psalms, and printed in Latin.  In process of time, however, ‘The mummery of the unknown tongue was swept off, root and branch, from the service of the Scottish Church;’ and ‘in the first issue of the complete Psalter for Scotland in 1564-5, these additions are all left out, and nothing is found but the Psalms themselves. . . . . Amongst all the examples of congregational singing mentioned by the historian Calderwood, and others, no case of hymn-singing appears to occur. . . . The official existence of the Psalter comprehends a period of eighty-six years, dating from the year 1564, when the first complete edition, so far as known, was issued; and closing in 1650, when the metrical version of the Psalms, which is still in use, was adopted in its room.’

Thus it appears that our pious ancestors took special care that the scriptural purity of this part of Divine worship, in which only all the congregation can actively join, should be recovered from Popish superstition, preserved and transmitted to posterity.  And when any person during those eighty-six years which elapsed between the two authorized versions, ventured to introduce innovation, he was subjected to judicial cognizance.  For example,—‘In 1568 an edition of the Psalm Book was issued in Edinburgh by Thomas Bassandyne, to which the General Assembly took exception on account of a song called ‘Welcum Fortun’ appended to it; therefore the whole Assembly ordained the said Thomas to call in again all the said books that he has sold, and keep the rest unsold until he delete the said song out of the end of the Psalm Book; and further, that he abstain in all time coming from further printing anything without revising of such things as pertain to religion by some of the Church appointed for that purpose.’

As uninspired hymns, and other human inventions, usurped the place of divine institutions, obscuring the spiritual glory of the apostolic age of the Church, culminating in all the Antichristian abominations of Popery, so the reformers of Scotland were careful to purge out all corruptions in worship as well as errors in doctrine.  In both respects the Scottish Church has been honourably distinguished from those of England and Continental Europe, where uninspired psalmody still prevails.

But, in order to secure unity and promote uniformity, the Covenanted Church of Scotland sedulously guarded the music as well as the psalmody in the worship of God.  Organs, anthems, and chanting, were discarded, along with the rest of the relics of the “dark ages of Papal corruption.”  It is notorious that the Reformed Church of Scotland rejected the use of instrumental music in its worship. . . . ‘The service of God is grievously abused by piping with organs, singing, and trowling {453} of psalms from one side of the choir to another, imitating the fashion and manner of Antichrist the Pope, that man of sin . . . the playing at the organs is a foolish vanity.’  Again, speaking of ‘Proper and Common tunes, and tunes in Repeat,’ (in modern phrase, repeating tunes), she says, ‘The music should be simple, as level to the capacity of the general population, that the people as a whole should take part in the service, it necessarily follows that easy music should bo provided. . . . . If young and old, the more and the less skilful, are to unite in the exercise, scientific niceties, and all difficulties of execution, must be excluded.’

Such are some of the lessons taught by our reforming ancestors—lessons which nature itself teaches—which many who glory in being their descendants, would do well to learn over again.  They are a few out of many similar authorities, with a change only in the orthography, extracted from a valuable work entitled, ‘The Scottish Metrical Psalter, by Rev. Neil Livingston, Glasgow, 1864.’

3. The Presbytery testify against the superstitious and often idolatrous ceremonies of late years renewed among Protestant Presbyterians, and especially Reformed Presbyterians, in connection with the burying of the dead.  These ceremonies had been abolished by the Church of Scotland at an early period of the first Reformation as part of the relics of Popery . . . . as being ‘unprofitable to the dead, and many ways hurtful to the living.’ . . . . So early as 1560 we find the following:—‘For avoiding all inconveniences, we judge it best that neither singing nor reading be at the burial; for although things sung and read may admonish some of the living to prepare themselves for death, yet shall some superstitious and ignorant persons think that the works, singing and reading of the living, do or may profit the dead.  And, therefore, we think it most expedient that the dead be conveyed to the place of burial with some honest company of the Church, without either singing or reading.’  It is to be feared that impenitence in the living is often fostered by the customary eulogies pronounced on the character of the dead, who gave little or no evidence of repentance in their lives.  The evil is intensified in those cases where, at the instance of a base and mercenary ministry, the corpse is brought into the place of public worship, after the manner of the Papists—a custom borrowed from the heathen.

4. The Presbytery testify against the practice of occasional communion in word or sacrament by ecclesiastical bodies, while organically separate, as being grossly irregular, and inconsistent with common sense and honesty.  And especially does this disorderly practice betray the base succumbing to a corrupt and corrupting public sentiment on the part of those whose prohibitory rule the leaders have neither the magnanimity nor manhood to rescind—a practice which even some among themselves, on safe occasions, do not hesitate to denounce as “treason with a vengeance.”  Unsophisticated reason would say, that communion is {454} based upon union, not union upou communion; but this reversal of natural order seems to be the popular sentiment of the day.  The question of the prophet still demands a rational answer, ‘Can two walk together except they be agreed?’ But the assertion is often made, ‘It is not to be expected that even true Christians will ever think precisely alike on every object of thought.’ Very true, and it is but a truism, having no bearing on the prophet’s question.  In all well regulated societies among men, however, there are more or less objects of thought ‘common to the members, in which each is supposed to have declared a voluntary acquiescence.’  After an explicit recognition of the moral obligation of the bond by each member, does it consist with reason or integrity that any member shall be free to disregard any one principle or object of common thought?  Apply the argument to any copartnership for the acquisition of gain.  Is any member of the firm at liberty to pursue a course calculated to defeat the very object of the Association?  No, but ‘the children of this world are, in their generation, wiser than the children of light.’

5. Again, the Presbytery testify against all who oppose the royal authority of the Anointed of the Father, as Prince of the kings of the earth.  And here the churches are to be reviewed as “chief in the trespass,” and more especially those in this land which glory in the name Presbyterian—a name, when rightly interpreted, synonymous with human liberty, guaranteeing his just rights to every human being.  But, as before the late war, waged in the interest of oppression, the Christian Churches, especially of the Presbyterian name, constituted the principal bulwark of slavery; so are they now, with few exceptions, the chief opposers of a national recognition of the rights of God.  And as the hands of civil officers are tied by ‘oath or affirmation to support, defend,’ &c., an atheistical Constitution, so the Churches identified with the national organization, are in the same predicament.  Thus, neither Church nor State ‘will have this man to reign over them.’ [Luke 19.14.]  Messiah, in the quaint but nervous language of the famous and faithful Samuel Rutherford, is thus ‘left to fend for himself.’  He will, doubtless, in due time assert his own claims, and ‘thoroughly plead the cause of his people.’ [Jer. 50.34.]  The danger is imminent that the decree may go forth, ‘Ephraim is joined to his idols; let him alone.’ [Hosea 4.17.]

6. Moreover, the Presbytery testify against former brethren in covenant, popularly styled Old and New Lights, for many ways corrupting the doctrines and violating the order recognised and solemnly sanctioned in the Reformed Covenanted Church.  Both parties have for more than half a century declared adherence to a mutilated Testimony and formula of Terms of Communion, obviously preparative to a subversion of the Church's position on the doctrine of the Divine ordinance of civil government.  The new position thus theoretically assumed, came to be openly reduced to practice by the latter of these parties in the year {455} 1833, when they avowedly identified with the National Society; by the former, more covertly in the late civil war.  In 1834 the O. Light Synod refused to replace the second proposition in the first Term of Communion, in these words, ‘and the alone infallible rule of faith and manners,’ and so continued for fifteen years.  They have all along persistently rejected historical testimony from the bonds of fellowship, although pressed upon their attention for some thirty years.  Disregarding the direction of Zion’s Lawgiver, to ‘go forth by the footsteps of the flock,’ they have greatly conformed to the unscriptural and anti-reformed customs of worldly sanctuaries around them.  In 1834 they refused to recognise their own published faith on ‘ocoasional hearing,’—followed in 1838, ‘continuous singing,’ then ‘operatic music,’ ‘clandestine marriages,’ &c.

The floodgates thus opened, error, disorder, and self-contradiction fearfully enter and prevail.  Of this state of things among these former brethren we have melancholy evidence.  For example: They publicly ‘testify against the evils which may exist in the corrupt constitutions of either Church or state.’  But they also assure us that ‘there are moral evils essential to the Constitution of the United States, which render it necessary to refuse allegiance to the whole system. . . . . This constitution is . . . . in many instances inconsistent, oppressive, and impious . . . . immoral system,’ &c., yet this same community solemnly ‘pledge their prayers, their money, and, if necessary, their lives’ to do what?—‘To defend the integrity of the country—to put down slavery,’ say these brethren.  But what says the highest executive officer, who represents the national sovereignty before the world, and before the ‘Governor among the nations?’ the President of the United States called out the national forces as ‘Commander-in-Chief . . . . to enforce the Constitution and execute the laws.  ‘And,’ in the language of another, ‘who being dead yet speaketh,’ ‘no reasoning that can be employed, however ingenious, can convince us of the lawfulness of Covenanters uniting in a war for the defence of a Constitution which themselves condemn as opposed to the Word of God!’

7. And finally, the Presbytery testify against all profaners of God’s holy name—not only those who habitually ‘blaspheme that worthy name’ in ordinary conversation, but especially those who enter into oath-bound secret societies.  Ministers of the Gospel are not ashamed or afraid to lend their countenance and active co-operation to ‘unhallowed clubs of Freemasons, Odd-fellows, Sons of Temperance,’ &c., to the horrid prostituting of the Sacred Scriptures, and the ruining of the souls of men!  So far are they ‘departed out of the way’ of ‘having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reproving them,’ [Eph. 5.11,] that many of these sons of Levi have literally sold themselves to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord!  All such combinations are evil—only evil, tending to destroy souls, subvert the Church of God, and procure his righteous judgments. {456}

Not less corrupting and pernicious are modern Sunday Schools, which bear upon their face an open insult to the ‘Lord of the Sabbath.’  The hymnology and music, vocal and instrumental, adapted to these, have become too gross and sensuous to meet the approbation, or even to escape the merited censure of some of their zealous patrons.  That our alarm is not without cause, nor our earnest testimony without object, the few citations following will make manifest to the reader: ‘What makes the great fat books, with their one or two thousand hymns so bulky, is the quantity of stuff which they contain. . . . . There is a vast multitude of hymns, which, if they could be carried away as with a flood . . . . their loss would be our very great and lasting gain. . . . . The Sunday School, so far as worship is concerned, is not the nursery of the Church, as we are fond of calling it, but a separate, and even sometimes an antagonistic establishment.  Modern society now consists of three estates—the Church, the world, and the Sunday School.’

Let us next advert to the quality of the songs adapted to this ‘institution’ called Sunday School.  This, as described by the same ardent patron consists in part, of ‘materialistic and sensuous songs about heaven—sentimental songs about death—self-sufficient songs about “good boys”—more or less comic, negro songs—the eulogistic songs that sing the praises of the Sunday School. . . . . Heaven is described without the slightest allusion to God . . . . a sort of eternal pic-nic.  We begin to wonder whether this is a Christian or a Mahommedan paradise.’  There is much to the same purpose in ‘Hours at Home,’ March, 1868.  No wonder if those hymn-singers, who are satisfied with a heaven without God ‘cannot find a Saviour in the Book of Psalms.’

As there are hymns, so there are music-books, ‘especially adapted to Sunday School concerts and exhibitions—hymns not only in praise of the Sunday School, but also of the concert—sensational artifices—lively, jig-like tunes—universal favourites for their liveliness and sensuous attractiveness—theatrical fashions of the solo and quartette performers, by which they may hold the half-heathen vagabonds for whom they labour,’ &c.  By just such ‘artifices and sensuous attractions’ popery arose in Christendom.  To arrest the torrent was the laborious, costly, and perilous work of our heroic ancestors—a work which many of their degenerate posterity ungratefully and wickedly attempt to undo, by copying the example of the ‘mother of harlots.’

The Presbytery would invite all who fear God to lend their aid in resisting the torrent of impiety and immorality which pervades general society, and which finds a sanctuary in the nominal Church of Christ.  ‘Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name; and deliver us, and purge away our sin, for thy name’s sake.’