Lectures on the establishment and extension of national Churches -- Thomas Chalmers

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Lectures on the establishment and extension of national Churches by Thomas Chalmers is available online here.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

"Though we quit the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment principle; we quit a vitiated Establishment but would rejoice in returning to a pure one. We are advocates for a national recognition of religion — and we are not voluntaries." -- Thomas Chalmers, during the Disruption of 1843

 

[MW]

"Though we quit the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment principle; we quit a vitiated Establishment but would rejoice in returning to a pure one. We are advocates for a national recognition of religion — and we are not voluntaries." -- Thomas Chalmers, during the Disruption of 1843

A fundamental Free Church distinctive.

 

[Dieter Schneider]

"Though we quit the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment principle; we quit a vitiated Establishment but would rejoice in returning to a pure one. We are advocates for a national recognition of religion — and we are not voluntaries." -- Thomas Chalmers, during the Disruption of 1843

A fundamental Free Church distinctive.

The Disruption, strictly speaking, was a secession! (cf. the Signing of the Act of Separation; the painting by David Octavius Hill is, of course, inaccurate) Of course, there is now official dialogue between the two Presbyterian bodies. What Chalmers would have made of this is any one's guess.

 

[MW]

The Disruption, strictly speaking, was a secession! (cf. the Signing of the Act of Separation; the painting by David Octavius Hill is, of course, inaccurate) Of course, there is now official dialogue between the two Presbyterian bodies. What Chalmers would have made of this is any one's guess.

The fact that a body assumes the name of "The Free Church of Scotland" does not automatically entitle it to be regarded as "The Church of Scotland Free."

 

[Rev. Todd Ruddell]

Very much agreed! We desire a magistrate who operates as God's minister, pressing us to our duty, according to his function as civil governor, under both Tables.

 

[Dieter Schneider]

Why is it the Church OF Scotland, or Church OF England? I'd prefer IN !

 

[MW]

Why is it the Church OF Scotland, or Church OF England? I'd prefer IN !

I have an inkling that OF is simply an abbreviated way of saying IN THE NATION OF. At least that is how it appears in the title page to the Westminster Confession. But we must also understand that national churches were the norm then.

 

[Dieter Schneider]

Why is it the Church OF Scotland, or Church OF England? I'd prefer IN !

I have an inkling that OF is simply an abbreviated way of saying IN THE NATION OF. At least that is how it appears in the title page to the Westminster Confession. But we must also understand that national churches were the norm then.

I am not quibbling over prepositions . . . causa finita est.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

One of Thomas Chalmers' students wrote concerning the Disruption of 1843:

Thus in one day the Free Church of Scotland, as she fitly called herself, started into vigorous existence. Her very name implied nationality and connexion with the historical Church of Scotland. She arose, not as a sectarian denomination, not as assuming any new ground or principle unknown to the confessors and martyrs of Scotland. She repudiated, and will repudiate, the attitude of a sect. She was conscious of being, what she called herself, the Church of Scotland, Free, and would not break her connexion with the past three centuries of Scottish church history. The principle of national establishment of religion as the fitting homage of the nation, and as the duty of the nation to Christ, the Prince of the Kings of the Earth, was her avowed principle, and could not be surrendered by her without becoming a new church and forfeiting her name. Her protest was not against the Establishment as such, but against the submission with which the Establishment succumbed to the ursurpations and encroachments of the civil power. And had a protesting minority continued within the pale of the Establishment, maintaining the church's independence and the people's rights, they would have had the warm sympathy of every Free Churchman. The footing on which they resolved to go out, and on which the practical steps were taken with a view to a new organization, was unmistakably put before the public to this effect. -- George Smeaton, Memoirs of Alexander Thomson of Banchory (Edinburgh, 1869), p. 289 (emphasis is Smeaton's), quoted by John W. Keddie, George Smeaton: Learned Theologian and Biblical Scholar, pp. 48-49, 191