IN Thomas Campbell's time sectarianism and religious bigotry had gone to seed in the Seceder church. It was conceived in pride and bitterness, born in narrowness, and grew up in exclusiveness. Its sources lie far back in the history of the Scottish church.

      When the Reformation suddenly invaded Scotland in the year 1560, it found the Scottish people and the ruling nobility ready for it. "The Estates convened in August, the Calvinistic confession of faith was approved, the Roman Catholic religion was abolished, and the administering of the mass, or attendance upon it, was forbidden--the penalty for the third offense being death." "On the morning of the 25th of [17] August, 1560, the Romish hierarchy was supreme; in the evening of the same day, Calvinistic Protestantism was established in its stead." The nobility and the common people joined in their desire to see the overthrow of Roman Catholicism, and made common cause against the king and church. The nobility feared the power and craved the vast wealth of the Roman church, while the people longed for a purer ministry, a worship in their own language and a voice in the affairs of their parish churches. It was an expression of the democratic spirit in religion.

      No form of Protestantism so completely satisfied this spirit as the Presbyterian. John Knox had gone to Geneva and sat at the feet of John Calvin. He brought back to his native Scotland and recommended to his people both the doctrine and the order of Calvinistic Presbyterianism. They found these to their liking. Presbyterianism was essentially democratic, and gave to the [18] people the right to choose their own pastors and a representation in the government of the church. It was impossible that the old order could be completely wiped out and destroyed in root and branch. Some roots remained. One of the strongest to remain was the institution of patronage which the nobility was interested to maintain. When the property and revenues of the old church fell at one stroke into the hands of the reforming party, the nobles laid claim to it as a part of their estates which had been alienated by pious ancestors through donation and bequest to the church. It properly escheated to the owners of the estates from which it was originally set aside to maintain parish churches. The nobles had their way in spite of the protest of the religious leaders. Parish livings for the support of the pastors now fell into the hands of nobles and landowners who exercised the right of patronage or presentation to living. It was impossible that a pure Presbytery [19] could be grafted upon this old stump of patronage. The people might choose a man to be their pastor, but if he did not suit the patron, the holder of living, who might be a Romanist, an Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian, the chosen pastor could not settle with his parish.

      After more than a century of struggle on the part of the Scottish people to keep their Presbyterianism against the encroachments of English Episcopacy, they were finally victorious at the time of the Revolution Settlement of 1690. By this settlement Presbyterianism was constituted by act of Parliament the established religion of Scotland, and with the overthrow of Episcopacy went patronage. But only for a time. It came back by act of the English Parliament, which now included the Scottish Parliament, in the year 1712, and was destined to remain, the principal cause of all the troubles of the Scottish church, until finally abolished in 1874. [20]

      It was incident to the troubles growing out of restored patronage that the Seceder church arose in Scotland. The system of patronage completely nullified the free choice of the pastor by the people. The patron took the initiative and presented as a pastor for the church a man to his own liking, and was not necessarily governed by the desires of the people or the needs of the place. Private and pecuniary considerations very often operated in the presentation. The people were obliged to acquiesce in the appointment or go without a pastor.

      It was the conflicting interests and wishes of patrons and people that often came before the presbyteries or assemblies for settlement. An attempt on the part of the Assembly to remedy the evil of vacant parishes by obliging presbyteries to induct pastors on call of heritors, if Protestant, and elders, (in cases where patrons refused to make a presentation within six months after a vacancy that they might obtain the [21] income for themselves,) called forth a bitter protest against the action of the Assembly by Ebenezer Erskine, in a sermon delivered as retiring moderator of the Synod of Perth and Stirling. He was rebuked by the Synod for offensive utterances in the sermon. He appealed to the Assembly of 1733 against the rebuke of the Synod and was joined by three other ministers. The Assembly approved the action of the Synod and ordered that Erskine be rebuked before the bar of the Assembly. He refused to submit in silence to the action, and was called on to retract, failing which in a year he was suspended from the ministry of the church. The protesters seceded from the established church and constituted themselves into a Presbytery. When the Assembly relented a year later and opened the door for their return by removing all censure and restoring their names to the ministerial roll, they stubbornly refused to return. They went on organizing churches and constituting [22] presbyteries, and by 1742 constituted the first synod out of three presbyteries and thirty congregations. The ranks of the Seceders were from time to time increased by withdrawals from the establishment of churches and members who had been outraged by the violent intrusion of obnoxious pastors upon them. Rather than submit, they seceded. The secession profited for a long time by the workings of the law of patronage.

      These Seceders, as they were called, began to regard themselves as the true church of God in Scotland and identified themselves with the church of the first and second reformations. When George Whitfield came to Scotland they demanded that he confine his ministrations to their churches; and when asked "why," they said, "because we are the Lord's people." "Are there no other Lord's people but you?" he inquired. "And supposing all others are the devil's people; certainly, they have the more [23] need to be preached to." August 4, 1741, was proclaimed throughout their body as a day of fasting and humiliation for the countenance given to Whitfield.

      It was not long before strife broke out in their own ranks over the lawfulness of the oath administered to burgesses of towns. Some held that a Seceder who happened to be a burgess could not consistently swear "to profess and allow with his heart the true religion presently professed within the realm and authorized by the laws thereof," without promising to support the church from which they had seceded, and now regarded as "a household of Satan." Consequently they divided in 1747 into Burghers and Anti-Burghers. Each proclaimed itself to be the true church and anathematized the other.

      The Burgher branch of the Seceders was for a long time stirred with dissension as to the power of the civil magistrate in religious matters. They divided on the question [24] in 1796 into Old Lights and New Lights. A similar division took place in the Anti-Burgher branch in 1806. There were now four distinct parties of Seceders. The divisions of the parent body in Scotland were transferred to its new home in Ireland. Thomas Campbell became a member of the Old Light, Anti-Burgher branch of the Seceders.

      All branches grew in narrowness and bitterness of spirit, as their ranks diminished in numbers through division. "In 1798 the Anti-Burgher Synod forbade the people to attend or give countenance to public preaching by any who were not of their communion; and a year afterwards actually deposed and excommunicated one of its ministers for having heard Rowland Hill and James Haldane preach." A case is on record where the Burgher Synod cited one of its members before it, for working as a mason on an Episcopal chapel in Glasgow, and decreed that he was highly censurable and [25] "ought not to be admitted to any of the seals of the covenant till he profess his sorrow for the offense and scandal that he had given and been guilty of."

      The spirit of bigotry and sectarian animosity was not confined to the Seceders. The established church herself and all dissenting bodies, including the Presbytery of Relief, finally narrowed the grace of God and his covenanted mercies to their own bodies. To the genial Christian spirit of such a man as Thomas Campbell, the spectacle of these divisions and animosities between Christians seemed more than childish; they were sinful. As he reflected upon them he must have inquired the reason for them and sought a remedy. His own church was rent asunder before his eyes and he was forced to take sides on a question which had no meaning in Ireland where the burgess oath never had been in use. So needless seemed the perpetuation of the division between Burghers and [26] Anti-Burghers on Irish soil, that he led in an effort to unite the two bodies in 1805, but failed through the unwillingness of the Scottish General Synod to free the Irish Synod from its jurisdiction. The union was finally accomplished in 1818.

      Other influences were at work upon both of the Campbells beside the hard and bitter sectarianism of the times. The church of Independents at Rich Hill, which they frequently attended, held to doctrines and practices which subsequently became characteristic of the churches founded by them in America. Independency in Scotland originated with John Glas, a minister of the established church, who was deposed in 1730 for teaching that "there is no warrant in the New Testament for a national church; that the magistrate, as such, has no place in the church, and has no right to punish for heresy; that both the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant are without scriptural grounds; and that the [27] true reformation is one that can be carried out, not by political and secular weapons but by the word and spirit of Christ only." He gathered around him a group of people who shared his views, and adopted in all his teaching the principle that the Scripture is the only standard of both doctrine and practice. He accordingly adopted the observance of the Lord's supper every Sunday, the practice of feet washing, the holy kiss, mutual exhortation in public worship, plurality of elders, community of goods, and other customs which he derived from the primitive church. His son-in-law, Robert Sandeman, took up his views and established churches. They were called Glassites or Sandemanians. They developed into a narrow, exclusive sect, and divided into no less than three parties, each disavowing all fellowship with the others.

      The last decade of the eighteenth century was characterized by unusual ferment in religious circles in Scotland and Ireland. The [28] older Presbyterian bodies threw off, by reason of the tyrannical power of the church courts, a variety of persons and groups of persons, all of whom took the direction of independency. In 1768 arose the "Old Scotch Independents"; in 1769, the "Old Scotch Baptists"; in 1780, the "Bereans"; in 1798, the "Modern Congregationalists"; and between 1790-1800, the evangelistic activity of Rowland Hill, the Haldanes and their associates, gave rise to many "Tabernacle Churches" throughout the British Isles, notably in Scotland and Ireland, which swelled the ranks of independency. Many of these new sects on acquaintance found themselves in agreement with each other and came together. The features which they shared in common were, independency in church government and a more strict adherence to the Scriptures in faith and practice. This appeal to the precedent of the primitive churches in its application to their doctrines and [29] practices occasioned many internal controversies. The question of baptism inevitably came up for discussion, and finally determined the arrangement of independent bodies into two groups: those who adhered strictly to immersion, and those who treated the form of baptism as a matter of indifference. This question of baptism divided the Haldanean societies, both of the Haldanes adopting Baptist views. "The new notions spread over most of the churches of the connection, and contention, strife of words, jealousies, and divisions followed, of which none but such as passed through the painful scenes of those days can have any adequate idea." "The occurrences in question, while they embarrassed and weakened the churches, exposed them also to the triumph and sneers of adversaries, while at the same time much odium was brought on every attempt to follow out scriptural fellowship." Through the influence of Greville Ewing, one of the [30] associates of the Haldanes, their societies quite generally adopted the weekly communion of the Lord's supper.

      The congregation of Independents frequently attended by the Campbells at Rich Hill seems to have been of the Haldanean order, for the Haldanes were occasionally heard in the church. It was in this church that the Campbells heard such men as J. A. Haldane, Rowland Hill, Alexander Carson, and John Walker, concerning the latter of whom Alexander Campbell wrote in 1815: "I am now an Independent in church government; of that faith and view of the gospel exhibited in John Walker's Seven Letters to Alexander Knox, and a Baptist so far as regards baptism."

      Such were the religious conditions and influences surrounding the Campbells in Scotland and Ireland during the closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth. They were both negative and positive: negative, [31] in disgusting them with the petty differences and bitter animosities of sectarianism; and positive, in acquainting them with and disposing them towards the teachings of the Independents. This is shown in one matter--the weekly observance of the Lord's supper. "From the first all the Congregational churches, with the exception of a few in Aberdeen and the north, observed the Lord's supper every first day of the week, as a part of the usual morning service." Thomas Campbell introduced the weekly observance of the Lord's supper into the first church he established in America. [32]

[TDOC 17-32]