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BAYNE, (or BAINE) JAMES,
A.M. a divine of some note, was the son of the Rev. Mr Bayne, minister of
Bonhill in Dumbartonshire, and was born in 1710. His education commenced
at the parish school, was completed at the university of Glasgow, and in
due time he became a licensed preacher of the established church of
Scotland. In consequence of the respectability of his father, and his own
talents as a preacher, he was presented by the Duke of Montrose to the
church of Killearn, the parish adjoining that in which his father had long
ministered the gospel, and memorable as the birth-place of Buchanan. In
this sequestered and tranquil scene, he spent many years, which he often
referred to in after life as the happiest he had ever known. He here
married Miss Potter, daughter of Dr Michael Potter, professor of divinity
in the Glasgow university, by whom he had a large family. His son, the
Rev. James Bayne, was licensed in the Scottish establishment, but
afterwards received Episcopal ordination, and died in the exercise of that
profession of faith at Alloa.
The reputation of Mr Bayne
as a preacher soon traveled far beyond the rural scene to which his
ministrations were confined. His people, in allusion to the musical
sweetness of his voice, honoured him with the poetical epithet of
"the swan of the west." He was appointed to a collegiate charge
in the High Church of Paisley, where his partner in duty was the
celebrated Mr Wotherspoon, afterwards president of the Nassau Hall
College, Princetown, New Jersey. The two colleagues, however, did not
co-operate harmoniously, although both enjoyed a high degree of
popularity. Mr Bayne displayed great public spirit during his connection
with the Established church, defending her spiritual liberties and
independence in the church courts, and offering a determined opposition to
the policy of the moderate or ruling party. The deposition of Mr Thomas
Gillespie, of Carnock, the founder of the Relief church, made a powerful
impression on his mind, and undoubtedly had a strong influence in inducing
him to resign his pastoral charge in Paisley. But the immediate cause of
that resolution was a keen dispute which took place in the kirk-session of
his parish, respecting the appointment of a session-clerk. The session
contested the right of appointment with the town-council; the whole
community took an interest in the dispute; and the case came at last to be
litigated in the Court of Session, which decided in favour of the
town-council. Unhappily, Mr Bayne and his colleague took opposite sides in
this petty contest, and a painful misunderstanding was produced betwixt
them, followed by consequences probably affecting the future destinies of
both. Mr Bayne refers to these differences in his letter of resignation,
addressed to the Presbytery, dated 10th February, 1766:—" They (the
Presbytery) know not how far I am advanced in life, who see not that a
house of worship, so very large as the High Church, and commonly so
crowded too, must be very unequal to my strength; and this burden was made
more heavy by denying me a session to assist me in the common concerns of
the parish, which I certainly had a title to. But the load became quite
intolerable, when, by a late unhappy process, the just and natural right
of the common session was wrested from us, which drove away from acting in
it twelve men of excellent character." Mr Bayne joined the Relief
church, then in its infancy, having, even whilst in the Establishment,
held ministerial communion with Mr Simpson, minister of Bellshill
congregation, the first Relief church in the west of Scotland. In his
letter of resignation, already quoted, Mr Bayne assured his former
brethren that the change of his condition, and the charge he had accepted,
would make no change in his creed, nor in his principles of Christian and
ministerial communion—"Nay (he adds), none in my cordial regard to
the constitution and interests of the Church of Scotland, which I solemnly
engaged to support some more than thirty years ago, and hope to do so
while I live. At the same time I abhor persecution in every form, and that
abuse of church power of late, which to me appears inconsistent with
humanity, with the civil interests of the nation, and destructive of the
ends of our office as ministers of Christ." On the 24th December, Mr
Bayne accepted a call to become minister of the College Street Relief
Church, Edinburgh, and his induction took place on the 13th February,
1766, three days after his resignation of his charge in Paisley. As his
demission fell to be adjudicated upon by the General Assembly, in May of
that year, his name remained for the present upon the roll of the
Establishment, and so little did he yet consider himself separated from
the communion of that church, that when the half-yearly sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper came round in Edinburgh, soon after his settlement, after
preaching in his own church in the forenoon, he went over in the
afternoon, at the head of his congregation, to the New Greyfriars’
church, and joined in the ordinance with the congregation of the Rev. Dr
Erskine. At the Assembly in May, Mr Bayne, in obedience to a citation,
appeared at the bar, and was declared to be no longer a minister of the
Church of Scotland, and all clergymen of that body were prohibited from
holding ministerial communion with him. Mr Bayne defended the course he
had taken in a review of the proceedings of the Assembly, entitled,
"Memoirs of Modern Church Reformation, or the History of the General
Assembly, 1760, and occasional reflections upon the proceedings of said
Assembly; with a brief account and vindication of the Presbytery of
Relief, by James Bayne, A.M., minister of the gospel at Edinburgh."
He denounces, with indignant severity, the injustice of his having been
condemned by the Assembly without a libel, merely for having accepted a
charge in another church, "in which (says he), I presumed, they could
find nothing criminal; for often had ministers resigned their charge upon
different accounts, and justifiable; nay, some have given it up for the
more entertaining and elegant employ of the stage, who were not called in
question or found delinquents. This was a palpable hit at Home, the author
of "Douglas," who sat in the Assembly as a ruling elder, to aid
Dr Robertson in punishing Bayne. After a ministry of 60 years, Mr Bayne
died at Edinburgh, on the 17th January, 1790, in his eightieth
year. He was 24 years minister of the College Street Relief congregation,
Edinburgh. His popularity as a preacher, his talents for ecclesiastical
affairs, his acquirements as a scholar and a theologian, and his sound
judgment and weight of character, gave him great influence; and it was
mainly to his large and enlightened views that the Relief church was
indebted for the position to which it attained, even during his lifetime,
as well as for retaining, till it was finally merged in the United
Presbyterian church, the catholic constitution on which it had been
founded by Gillespie and Boston. Mr Bayne was an uncompromising opponent
of whatever he considered to be a violation of public morality. In 1770 he
published a discourse, entitled, "The Theatre Licentious and
Perverted," administering a stern rebuke to Mr Samuel Foote for his Minor;
a drama, in which the characters of Whitefield, and other zealous
ministers were held up to profane ridicule. The dramatist considered it
necessary to reply to Mr Bayne’s strictures, in an "Apology for
the Minor, in a letter to the Rev. Mr Bayne," resting his defence
upon the plea that he only satirized the vices and follies of religious
pretenders. A volume of Mr Bayne’s discourse was published in 1778.
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