The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-23 00:00:00

THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

THE VETO ACT.
At several of the synods held lately the question
of repealing the Veto Act (an Act of the General
Assembly in the year 1835, for vesting church pa-
tronage in the heads of families), has been discussed
with great ardour and ability. In the Synod of
Aberdeen a motion was carried by a majority of 19
to overture or move the next General Assembly for
its repeal, and in the Synod of Dumfries, on the 15th
instant, a similar motion was carried by a majority
of 24 to 8. The following extracts from speeches
made on the occasion will give our readers a fair

specimen of the way in which this important ques-
tion is discussed in the Church Courts in the north.
The Rev. GEORGE GREIG, on introducing the mo-
tion, said, that after the decision of the Court of Ses-
sion in the Auchterarder case, an overture, somewhat
similar to the one he had now the honour of proposing,
had been moved in the Synod in April last, and that one
of the principal objections then lodged against its adop-
tion, though ineffectually, was that the matter had been
carried before the Supreme Court of Appeal, where it
would be fully and finally settled. The decision of the
House of Lords had been given, but the Church
persisted in setting it at defiance. They
had heard a great deal more about the power
and independence and Intrinsic authority of the
Church since than before. lt was no interest of his,

he was sure, nor of any of the profession, to detract
even in the slightest degree, from the honour and ex-
altation of the Church ; but somehow or other it had
always struck him as not a little unfortunate that the
great radical duty of proclaiming their own consequence
had invariably devolved upon some of themselves.
Their consequence and independence lay within the
limits of the Confession of Faith ; its length and breadth
were there. This was their standard both in sacred and
in civil things ; and they had not the power of altering or
amending a single syllable of its contents, either in re-
gard to doctrine or to duty, and remain the Established
Church- It was by Acts of Parliament, and not by Acts
of the Church, that their Establishment held its ex-
istence ; and it was to those, and not to Acts of the
Church, they must appeal for the adjustment of their
powers, and the settlement of their differences. By
the State, he presumed, they were to understand the
laws of the State ; and it required but very little depth
of research to enable them to know that the Lords were
the legal interpreters of these laws—an office which de-
volved upon them by an original and fundamental
arrangement of the British Constitution. To talk
about the General Assembly being co-ordinate with the
House of Lords in the interpretation of the Acts of
Parliament is surely, to say the least of it, to trifle with
the Queen's English. The Church, it had been said,
had alone the power to decide what things are sacred
and what civil. This was precisely the doctrine of the
Church of Rome, and the very foundation of all her
intolerant usurpation. They knew to what purposes she
had applied it ; and were it not for the superior intelli
Bence of the age in which they lived, and that the
Popish tenet was confined to the mere office-
bearers of the Church, they might well be alarmed
for their liberties. Devotion to the cause of reli-
gion was, no doubt, the alleged vindication. But
had the interests of religion been invaded ; had
an attempt been made to oppose them in the teaching
of the people righteousness ; had they been interfered
with in their endeavours to acquaint them with the
great and saving truths of the New Testament ; had
they been interrupted by the civil authorities in their
progress from house to house, in administering in.
struction to the ignorant, reproof to the wayward, con-
solation to the afflicted, and comfort and encourage-
ment to the dying? Nay, in all these things, they had
not only not been opposed, but fully and expressly sup-
ported. But because they had taken it into their heads to
contend for something they were pleased to call spiritual
independence, they were to despise all the distinguished
benefits and blessings they were permitted uninterrupt-
edly to enjoy—they were to set at nought the oaths of
allegiance, and to peril the very existence of the
Church ? This spiritual independence, in so far as they
had been favoured with its illustration, consisted in a
power of rejection by the people without cause assigned.
It was not enough that a Presentee was found by the
Church grave, sober, pious, sound in the faith, apt to
teach, and in every respect the fittest person possible to
be entrusted with the spiritual charge of a parish—he
must be subjected to a more fiery ordeal still—the
causeless rejection of the people should they choose
to exercise it. This might be all very fair and just
in a Voluntary Church, where the people pay for
their ministers, and where, by the laws of this free
and happy country of ours, they have a right to
dispose of their money upon the clergy as upon
any other commodity in the market, according to the
prevailing bias of their taste, however much or how-
ever little to their profit. But an Established Church
is a very different thing. That a minister should be
acceptable to the people is a matter 'of very great im-
portance ; but it is a matter of yet greater importance,
that the people should be provided with a minister who
can fearlessly attack their irreligious prejudices, ex-
pose their prevailing vices, and faithfully inculcate
upon them the humbling truths of the Gospel, however
disagreeable to their taste, or offensive to the natural

pride of their corrupt and degenerate hearts.
A religious establishment was an entire piece o
civil machinery throughout ; necessarily so constructed,
according to the wisdom of the State, as an instru-
ment for carrying forth the glad tidings of salvation
among the people ; having all its powers and its privi-
leges, its doctrines and its duties, distinctly marked
out, limited and defined by the statute law of the
land ; and how the causeless rejection of the Patron's
presentee should be termed a spiritual act more
than any other disregard of the conditions of
the Establishment it may not be very easy to dis-
cover. It was for the rights of the people, it had
been alleged, that the Church had been induced to make
this unseemly opposition to the law. The most in-
tolerable tyrants had risen to the throne of their
despotism upon the shoulders of the people ; and
if they would examine the history of the world they
would find that the clergy had never been destitute of
plausible pretexts for usurpation. It was the clergy,
and not the people who were the actors in this outrage ;
and to allege that they were backed by the people was
to allege a scandalous and notorious untruth. Nine-
tenths of the people (he spoke of the districts with
which they were connected) most deeply deplored the
late proceedings of the Church ; they had had a speci-
men of the working of the Veto Act ; they had seen
with their own eyes its pernicious effects upon the in-
terests of morality and religion, and they had not the
slightest ambition to be blessed with any more of its fa-
vours. Was it not most lamentable that while the king-
dom was convulsed with internal disorder, and threatened
from without with external disorganization, the minis-
ters of religion, instead of soothing and enlightening
the troubled minds of the people, should be otherwise
engaged in fanning the flame of discontent, and in en-
couraging the reckless disregard of constituted autho-
rity ? Is it not lamentable, is it not most humiliating,
to see so many eminent men, nay, good men he sin-
cerely believed many of them to be, so actively engaged
in fostering a spirit of rebellion against the purest ad-
ministration of the best laws of the most enlightened,
liberal, and free nation upon the face of the earth ?
The Reverend ROBERT CRAWFURD, of Irongray,
thought that the question before them, in so far as dis-
cussion in the inferior Courts was concerned, had been
set for ever at rest ; but it would appear he was mis-
taken. He knew that the supporters of the overture
were really of opinion that the Veto Act was inconsis-
tent with the constitution of the Church—that our Ec-
clesiastical Establishment was in danger—and that
the procedings of the last Assembly had, to use the
words of a distinguished speaker on their side, rung the
knell of the Church of Scotland. The charge of rebel-
lion was once more advanced against those who sup-
ported the Church in her present position. They, he
hoped it would be borne in mind, had never spoken of
their civil superiors as those on the other side had done
of their ecclesiastical superiors. If the former were
rebels in a civil point of view, the latter were rebels
in an ecclesiastical point of view. But who were they
against whom this awful charge was preferred ?--Why,
the more influential among them were labouring
night and day for the good of the Church and the coun-
try—continuing to fight the battle against the Volun-
taries—warding off the attacks of the infidel--pleading
the cause of the prople—and using every effort to me-
liorate both their spiritual and temporal condition.
They had again and again stated that they had been
compelled to take up their present position—that they
had no alternative:left—and had shown the broad ground,
scriptural and ecclesiastical, on which they rested their
apparent resistance. To come forward, then, and with
such a charge, required a greater degree of hardihood
than he could have anticipated. He objected in lobo
to the overture before them. In the first place, it in-
volved the highest disrespect to the Supreme Ecclesias-
tical Court. They had come to two solemn resolutions
on the subject. In the last, they had declared that
they do not conceive that, in passing the Veto Act
into a law, they were guilty of an illegitimate exer-
cise of the intrinsic power vested in them by the
Great Head of the Church—that they deeply
regretted anything like collision with the State--and
that, in the disputed cases, they would guard against
all interference with the civil rights of the patron, and
surrender all claim to the temporalities connected with
the case ; but that they neither would nor could aban-
don the great principle of non-intrusion. In all this
the member who has brought forward the overture sees
nothing but priestly usurpation. Strange to say, the
Rev. Father (Dr. Wightman) who succeeded him sees
the very reverse. He thinks the Church has surren;
dered her powers into the hands of the people. He
mourns over the degradation to which she has volunta-
rily submitted. One thing is clear, her priestly influ-
ence is not increased • and, consequently, she is en-
titled to credit when she says, that her simple and sole
motive for acting as she has done is the spiritual good
of her people. And while the supporter of the overture
is alarmed with imaginary dangers, on the one hand

he overlooks all real dangers on the other. In the se-
cond place, the overture before them might be charac-
terised as a desperate and dangerous attempt to accom-
plish a favourite object. He would entreat them to
pause before proceeding farther. In fine, the overture
was peculiarly uncalled for, and calculated to be very
injudicious in present circumstances. The majority of
last Assembly had shown a most conciliatory spirit.
They had made every concession short of a dereliction
of principle. They were labouring, and with every
prospect of success, to heal the differences that unhap-
pily existed. The overture was calculated to widen
the breach, to perpetuate divisions, and to weaken the
hands of the Church, when union was most needed,
and all her efforts should be concentrated on objects
of great and eternal interest. He should, therefore,
move—" That the overture be rejected, as it involves
the highest disrespect to the Supreme Ecclesiastical
Court, and is calculated to mar the progress now being
made by the Church towards a satisfactory and final
settlement of the question."

The Rev. Mr. GILLIES said, two assertions had been
made, first, that this cause was advocated by all the
wise, the zealous, and the able of the Church ; and,
secondly, that it was the cause of the people. As to
the first of these, he readily admitted that the Veto
Act was supported by many zealous and able men ;
but he could not admit their prudence. And the
whole zeal and talent of the Church were by no means
embarked in the cause. As to►the second proposition,
he must meet it with a direct and unqualified denial.
The Veto Act had never been very popular ; and it was
less so now than ever. There was a most decided re-
action in the country. He said this from his own ac-
quaintance with the sentiments of the people, many of
whom had been satisfied with the law as it was ; and of
those who had approved of the Veto Act at first, the
majority were now, from its working, convinced of their
error, while the few who still thought a change desirable,
were decidedly of opinion that the Veto Act was not
the measure that would lead to the attainment of their
object.
On a division, 20 ministers and 4 elders voted for
the motion, and 7 ministers and 1 elder for the amend-
ment, giving a majority of 16 for the Repeal of the Act.