March - the Free Presbyterian church of Scotland

Notes and Comments 91earth. The Church’s God-centred and God-glorifying task is not fulfilled byphilosophical deductions from the “unity in diversity” of the Triune God butby obedience to His revealed will. The article errs in putting the singing ofpsalms or hymns, with or without instrumental music, in worship in the samecategory as “trifling difference in ceremony”.Uniformity is rightly required in all matters concerning which the Wordof God has spoken. The Questions and Formula were in force long beforethe Scottish Church practically abandoned the Calvinistic principle thatScriptural authority is required for anything introduced into the substance ofworship. There can be no doubt about what “purity of worship” meant to thosewho used the term prior to the movement away from Scriptural authority andprinciple and Confessional commitment which culminated in the Free ChurchDeclaratory Act of 1892 and the unions of 1900 and 1929.The article’s misrepresentation of the contention for uniformity in worshipreaches its climax in the assertion that “uniformity is ungodly. Its logicaldrive is to strip the cosmos and the Church of their God-glorifying diversity,which must be reduced to the point of extinction.” Amazingly it tries to findjustification in the distinction George Gillespie and his seventeenth-centurycolleagues made between “prelatical conformity” and “presbyterian uniformity”and puts uniformity in worship, with psalms only and without instrumentalmusic, in the category of “regulations imposed by a hierarchy”.George Gillespie could be writing today: “The word uniformity is becomeas odious to divers who plead for liberty and toleration, as the word conformitywas in the prelates’ times. . . . I confess my love of uniformity hath not mademe any whit to depart from my former principles against the prelatical conformity,or the astricting of men’s consciences (at least in point of practiceand observation) to certain rites, whether unlawful or indifferent in their ownnature, under pain of censure. Yet I must needs justify (as not only lawful,but laudable) what the Solemn League and Covenant of the three kingdomsobligeth us unto, namely, to endeavour to bring the churches of God in thethree kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in one confessionof faith, one directory of worship, one form of church government andcatechism.” He goes on to say: “Much of the prelatical conformity consistedin such things as were in themselves, and in their own nature, unlawful andcontrary to the Word. Show us the like in any part of our uniformity, then letthat thing never more be heard of. Uniformity in anything which is unlawfulis a great aggravation of the sin.”The departure from the uniformity which results from requiring divineauthority for whatever is believed or practised has brought nothing but declineand division into the Scottish Church. The “unity in diversity” produced by