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WITHERSPOON was minister of
the parish of Beith for twelve years, devoting himself diligently to the
duties of his office. From the be-ginning of his ministerial career he
conceived a high idea of it. He was fond of study. His sermons were
carefully prepared, being fully written, committed to memory and
delivered without notes. He was not a pleasing speaker, his voice being
somewhat harsh, but he was a good preacher. When he exchanged pulpits
with neighbouring clergymen he was - always heard with acceptance, and
his own parishioners were devoted to him. It does not appear that he
ever made any attempt to be transferred to another parish. His work at
Beith was done in the spirit of one who expected and would be glad to
spend his life there. Although a studious man with a well-trained mind,
he wrote little for publication in the earlier years of his ministry at
Beith. The children of the parish were duly well catechized, their
parents teaching them first the Shorter Catechism, and later the longer,
of the Westminster Assembly, the
minister visiting their homes statedly and testing the knowledge of the
boys and girls. Those visits for catechizing were ordeals not relished
by the youngsters, but Witherspoon was fond of children and got along
well with them.
His theology was the
strict Calvinism of the Westminster Confession of Faith from which he
never departed. That he was sincere in his adhesion to its doctrines is
beyond doubt. But he was not unacquainted with other teachings. His
correspondence and literary productions, as well as his sermons, show
that, for the times in which he lived he was a wide reader. History was
one of his favourite fields. Of course he was thoroughly acquainted with
the Greek and Latin classics, quoting them with easy familiarity. He was
as easily at home in the realm of French literature and philosophy.
Montesquieu was his favourite French author. He also knew the works of
German writers. But for the most part he was happiest in 'preaching to
his people the familiar doctrines of his church.
Shortly after going to
Beith he was married to Elizabeth Montgomery, of Craighouse, Ayrshire,
whose father, Robert Montgomery, was a distant kinsman of the Earl of
Eglinton, by whom Witherspoon was appointed to the parish.
A story has come down to us which makes him a side hero of the battle of
Falkirk. Be-cause of his remote descent from the royal house of Stuart
the incident has been used as evidence of his sympathy with the
Pretender, while others have gone so far as to say that he led a company
of volunteers against him. The truth seems to be that, prompted by
curiosity, he went upon a hill in the neighbourhood of the battle-ground
or, more probably, along the line of retreat followed by the Pretender's
army. Lest he should give information to the English forces he was made
prisoner by the rebels and confined for some days in the neighbouring
castle of Donne. Some of the thinner men among the prisoners escaped by
creeping along the coping of a wall but Witherspoon was too large for
the narrow and perilous space and was obliged to remain behind until his
release by the collapse of the rebellion.
With this exception his
ministerial life at Beith was uninterrupted by any unusual event. But
his activities were not confined to his profession as a clergyman. For a
short time he was one of the overseers of the highway in the parish. In
the discharge of the duties of this office he showed the same zeal and
the same independent spirit which he manifested in every situation of
his life. In 1754 the commissioners of the county proposed a new scheme
for repairing the roads, assessing the tax and requiring the labour of
the people. This made necessary a list of every farmer together with the
number of horses owned and the number of servants employed by each. The
commissioners also announced, as the first step in their plan to build
good roads, that the most public roads would be repaired first.
Witherspoon and his associates proceeded to comply with the demand to
send in the lists asked for. But upon undertaking to make these, many
difficulties were encountered. And when they carefully examined the new
plan they found many objections to it. It was not possible for a man
like Witherspoon, nor any other high-spirited Scotchman, for that
matter, to submit without protest to what he regarded as an injustice.
He called his fellow overseers together and prepared a paper to be sent
by them to the approaching meeting of the justices of the peace and
commissioners of the highway, these officers being entrusted by Scotch
law with the management of the shire. In this paper he objects to the
scheme as proposed. It is difficult to send lists of owners of horses
because many men buy horses for their necessary work and sell them again
in a short time, not finding it profitable to feed them through the
winter. Servants also are hired for short periods, so that it is
impossible to give an accurate list of those who, being employers, would
be required to pay a larger tax or do more work upon the roads than
others. He will, however, endeavour to make as careful a list as
possible and await the action of the meeting. A more serious objection
lies against the scheme. The failure of former schemes for making good
roads is not due to the common people but to the gentry who absent
themselves from meetings and fail to fulfill their obligations. Further,
what assurance have we, he asks, that the officers under the new scheme
will be any more zealous and diligent than they have been under others?
But the most serious objection is that there is no agreement as to what
are the most public roads. Some of the so-called public roads ran
through great tracts of land from which the noblemen had removed the
tenants and which were little used by the common people as they
travelled to market, or they were roads which ran from one county to
another, and these should be kept up by those who travel greater
distances than the small farmer who seldom goes farther from home than
to his neighbour's or to church.
This paper shows where
Witherspoon's sympathies were. On broad grounds he contended that not
only popular rights, but also the nation's strength, demanded that the
gentry should not compel the tenant to bear the greater part of the
expense, but that this should be distributed equably. Holding his
position by the grace of a noble patron, he knew his rights under the
law of Scotland, and feared not to protest against injustice whether it
bore upon himself in the church or upon the people in their business and
on their farms. This fine spirit, so far from bringing him the enmity of
the nobility, won for him respect. His opinions were always expressed
with courtesy. He found no fault with the social order of his day. But
he plead for justice to all alike. He believed and taught that religion
will enable a man, whatever be his station, to conduct him-self, both
towards superiors and inferiors, so that their relations shall be
harmonious and mutually satisfactory.
The church, however, was
Witherspoon's most congenial field. Nor was it merely as a parish
minister that he regarded himself. He belonged to the church of
Scotland; its honour was partly in his keeping; for its ministers a high
standard of character must be maintained. Such events as have already
been described were recurring in the church. They were unusually
numerous during his residence at Beith and his indignation rose higher
with each fresh case of injustice. People were compelled to accept as
ministers men whom they did not like, or could not respect. It goes
without saying that a clergyman who would accept a charge under such
circumstances was hardly fitted to assume its duties. His ministrations
would accomplish little good, his presence tended to excite enmity and
to alienate people from religion. Witherspoon and men of his stamp found
graver fault. Many of the ministers who were thus installed were
unorthodox. They were obliged to declare upon oath that they believed
and accepted doctrines which they privately repudiated and publicly
ignored or criticised. Whatever one may think of the doctrines
themselves such conduct was nothing else than dishonest.
Besides this many of the
ministers were otherwise morally unfit for their duties. Total
abstinence was rare among any class in those days. Everybody used wine
and Witherspoon himself liked the best he could get. But many of the
ministers, courting the favour of the patrons of vacant churches,
acquired habits of intemperance. When there was a meeting of Presbytery
or Assembly to act upon cases of disputed settlements, the patrons
interested in 'the litigation often opened public houses to entertain
the ministers and elders. Everybody drank freely and one can readily
imagine the effect. The ministers were a jovial set, fond of drinking,
seeking the loose society of the wild young bloods. It is related of one
of them that "he could pass at once from the most un-bounded jollity to
the most fervid devotion; yet I believe," says the writer of this
account, "that his hypocrisy was no more than habit grounded merely on
temper and that his apt-ness to pray was as easy and natural to him as
to drink a convivial glass." This itself is the judgment of a clergyman
and indicates the mildness with which the practice was regarded by many
of the clergy. Not such was the temper of Witherspoon whose sense of
decency was outraged by the vulgarity and coarseness of these scenes. To
an orthodox clergyman who had a high conception of the ministerial
office hypocrisy and drunkenness were shocking. It grew out of the evil
system of patron-age. On every possible occasion Witherspoon combated
the practice of forcing objectionable ministers upon unwilling people.
In all the meetings of the church, where protest was proper, he
championed the cause of popular rights against those who, because of
their loose and easy theology, were called Moderates, and who were
almost always in a majority in the General Assembly.
It must not be inferred
that all the Moderates were men of low character or inferior abilities.
They numbered among them such a man as William Robertson, principal of
St. Andrew's University, a polished and courtly gentleman, an historian
of note, with a character above reproach. The fault lay in the system by
which it was possible for a man of gross habits and inferior ability to
be placed in charge of a Christian church through the influence of a
patron who had no further interest in religion. That there were
incompetent men who shirked their duties, neglected their parishes, and
disgraced their office, is evident not only from Witherspoon's writings
but from the newspaper press of the day, from the pictures of the times
in Scott's novels, and from the minutes of the General Assembly. In 1751
it was necessary for the Assembly to order the Presbyteries to inquire
whether the Lord's supper was administered at least once a year and if
not what excuse could be given for the omission. Parishes complained to
Presbytery of the inattention of their ministers.
The establishment, it may
be remarked, worked harm in another way. It imposed upon the clergyman a
creed from which he could not conscientiously depart so long as he held
his office, within the limits of which all his thinking must be done,
beyond which his mind might not range. This fettered the mind. It made
originality impossible and was in itself a form of intellectual tyranny
which the Moderates combatted. Commenting on this phase of the
situation, Cunningham remarks that few Scotch ministers have dared to
think for themselves. The two conditions of compulsory orthodoxy on the
one hand and loose living on the other makes applicable to a certain
type of Scotch minister Milton's famous line,
" New Presbyter is but
old Priest writ large."
Whatever lack of
originality might be found in Witherspoon there was no lack of
sincerity, conscientiousness or high principle. One wonders, after all,
not merely at the necessity but at the possibility of originality in one
who devotes his life to proclaiming the principles of the Ten
Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. As the evil continued from
year to year and seemed to be increasing, Witherspoon fought it with all
his power. Loyal to the doctrinal standards of his church he was not
content to rest under an execution of the ecclesiastical law which
manifestly worked a wrong, and while he did not attempt to change the
law, he strove hard to combat the evils of its working. In the
Presbytery he was usually successful, but on appeal, the General
Assembly, as has been already stated, almost invariably decided in
favour of the patron against the congregation. That it was not
altogether the system itself but its abuse, of which Witherspoon and his
friends complained, seems evident from the fact that he himself had
accepted, and later accepted again, an appointment by a patron; but in
his case the appointment was confirmed each time by the congregation.
The positions of the two parties have been so admirably stated by
Cunningham that I can do no better than to quote his words.
"When men are considered
as individuals," said the Moderates, "we acknowledge that they have no
guide but their own understanding and no judge but their own conscience;
but when joined in society the right of private judgment is superseded
the conscience of the individual is merged in that of the community and
the minority must yield to the dictates of the majority." Think of the
spiritual descendants of John Knox using an argument which is one of the
strongholds of Roman Catholic logic "These maxims," they continued,
"form the basis of Presbyterian church government. The two capital
articles, by which Presbytery is distinguished from every other
ecclesiastical polity, are the parity of its ministers and the
subordination of its courts. By the one, individual ministers are
prevented from exercising lordship over their brethren; by the other,
confusion and anarchy are prevented. Wherever there is a subordination
of courts, one must be supreme; and though it be not infallible, yet its
sentences must be absolute and final. No inferior court may disobey its
mandates with impunity, or all government is at an end; no individual
may set up his own scruples against the decisions of the whole church or
authority sinks into contempt. Accordingly every minister is required at
his ordination to vow that he will submit himself to the discipline and
government of the church. Submit himself, therefore he must, or if he
cannot there is but one remedy, he must withdraw himself from its
communion."
"The popular party argued
that this was to introduce despotism into the church—to subject the
servants of God to the rigours of a military law. They did not deny the
necessary subordination of the ecclesiastical courts; but so long as the
General Assembly was fallible, they demurred to its sentences being
absolutely binding. The Church of Scotland, said they, is but a branch
of the Church of Christ, and within it the law of Christ must be
paramount. God alone is Lord of the conscience. He who sins against his
conscience sins against God; and no order of a superior court can make
good evil or evil good. No man, no Christian, can resign the right of
judging for himself. Is the General Assembly, they continued, resolved
to compel Presbyteries to execute its sentences at all hazards? is
conscience to be stifled? is the strong conviction of duty to be
disregarded? is everything that is sacred to be sacrificed to the single
principle of submission to authority? What will be the result of such
compulsory measures ? The honest and the brave will be compelled to seek
for liberty of conscience without the pale of the Establishment; the
unprincipled and the cowardly may remain, but they will remain with
consciences debauched by the high stretch of church authority, by being
compelled to do what their hearts tell them they ought not to do. We
plead not for license to every man to do as he pleases, but we plead
that we may not be bound hand and foot by a crushing despotism; that the
law may relax something of its sternness in cases where con-science is
concerned."
These principles of the
Popular party Witherspoon afterwards expressed in the preliminary
principles drawn up by him and prefixed to the constitution of the
American Presbyterian Church, which has not always acted in their spirit
nor in conformity to his ideas of the best manner of mingling authority
and liberty. The question in the Scotch Church was more than an academic
one. The Moderate majority in the Assembly continued to drive their
measures through by the sheer force of numbers. Two men were deposed
from the sacred office for nothing worse than refusing to serve upon
committees appointed to install unacceptable ministers over protesting
congregations. Protests were answered by censures and threats of
removal. It became unsafe for men to oppose the will of the majority,
and all this, it will be remembered, was in Protestant Scotland.
Failing to make any
impression by appeals to reason and justice Witherspoon determined to
try the power of ridicule. In 1753 he issued, anonymously and so safely,
a little book which he entitled "Ecclesiastical Characteristics, or the
Arcana of Church Policy," in which he pretended to give " a plain and
easy way of attaining to the character of a moderate man as at present
in repute in the Church of Scotland." After a short introduction wherein
he declares his purpose "to enumerate distinctly and in their proper
order and connection all the several maxims upon which moderate men
conduct themselves," he propounds twelve of these, following each maxim
with an explanation and illustration of its meaning. The maxims profess
to show that all ecclesiastical persons of whatever rank that are
suspected of heresy are to be esteemed men of great genius; when any man
is charged with loose practices or tendencies to immorality he is to be
screened and protected as much as possible, his faults being regarded as
good humoured vices; it is a necessary part of a moderate man's
character that he always speak of the confession of faith with a sneer;
a good preacher must take such subjects as "social duties," quote as
little Scripture as possible and be very unacceptable to the common
people; he must cultivate the air and manner of a fine gentleman; he
must have no learning but the works of Leibnitz, Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson. Here is inserted what he called "The Athenian Creed," to be
believed by every moderate man. I quote it in its entirety.
"I believe in the beauty
and comely proportions of Dame Nature and in Almighty Fate, her only
parent and guardian; for it hath been most graciously obliged (blessed
be its name) to make us all very good.
"I believe that the
universe is a huge ma-chine, wound up from everlasting by necessity, and
consisting of an infinite number of links and chains, each in a
progressive motion towards the zenith of its perfection and meridian of
glory; that I myself am a little glorious piece of clockwork, a wheel
within a wheel, or rather a pendulum in this grand machine swinging
hither and thither by the different impulses of fate and destiny; that
my soul (if I have any) is an imperceptible bundle of exceedingly minute
corpuscles, much smaller than the finest Holland sand; and that certain
persons in a very eminent station are nothing else but a huge collection
of necessary agents, who can do nothing at all.
"I believe that there is
no ill in the universe, nor any such thing as virtue absolutely
considereci; that those things vulgarly called sins are only errors in
judgment, and foils to set off the beauty of Nature, or patches to adorn
her face; that the whole race of intelligent beings, even the devils
themselves (if there are any) shall finally be happy; so that Judas
Iscariot is by this time a glorified saint and it is good for him that
he hath been born.
"In fine I believe in the
divinity of L. S. (Lord Shaftesbury) the saintship of Marcus Antoninus,
the perspicuity and sublimity of Aristotle, and the perpetual duration
of Mr. Hutcheson's works, notwithstanding their present tendency to
oblivion."
The remaining maxims show
that the moderate man must endeavour, as much as he handsomely can, to
put off any appearance of devotion; in church settlements, which are the
principal causes that come before ministers for judgment, the only thing
to be regarded is who the patron and the great and noble heritors are
for; the inclinations of the common people must be utterly despised; the
unpopular candidate must be praised for remarkable abilities; but if,
after being settled, he shall succeed in gaining the people's affections
he must be despised; orthodox opposers must be compelled to assist in
installing the unpopular minister, especially if they have scruples of
conscience against it; moderate men must always speak of their opponents
as knaves and fools; they must have great charity for atheists and
deists and for persons of loose and vicious practices, but none at all
for the pious and strictly moral; all moderate men must never fail to
support and defend one another to the utmost.
Many of these maxims have
little point for us. The moderate men, however, were stung to madness by
them. They stirred up as much clamour among the clergy as Erasmus' New
Testament did among the monks. Dire were the threats made against the
author, should he be discovered. Witherspoon was not the only man
suspected of having written it. A certain Mr. Johnson was accused but he
easily disproved the charge. The publisher kept the secret well. The
book took at once. It was eagerly read and thoroughly enjoyed by the
popular party. The great cry raised by the moderate men was regarded as
evidence of the truthfulness of the satire. Following each maxim were
the promised elucidations and illustrations, but as there was not a
single personal allusion no suit for slander or libel could be brought
against the publisher. Five editions of the book were issued, each
edition increasing the rage and fury of the pilloried men. As
Witherspoon said, "A satire that does not bite is good for nothing."
This one bit and stung. As suspicion pointed more and more to the real
author, his enemies tried to fasten it upon him, but without success.
Nor could they discover any way to revenge themselves upon him, until,
in 1757, when he was called to Paisley, they attempted to prevent his
transfer.
The method of
transferring a minister from one church to another required that the
church desiring to call him should present the call to the Presbytery in
which it was located; the Presbytery presented the call to the minister,
if he were one of its own members, or to the Presbytery to which he
belonged, and that body presented it to him. If all the legal
proceedings were regular and the church of which he was the pastor
consented, the transfer would be made. No Presbytery had the right to
refuse to call a minister if he were in good standing, no charges
pending against him. The Laigh (or Low) Street Church of Paisley,
Presbytery of Paisley, issued a call to Witherspoon who was a member of
Irvine Presbytery. When the call came before the Paisley Presbytery,
that body, a majority of whom were moderates, refused to send it over to
Irvine, charging that Witherspoon was the author of a book which damaged
the reputation of ministers before the people. The Paisley congregation
and their pastor- elect appealed to the Synod of Glasgow, which had
jurisdiction over both Presbyteries.
He had no standing in the
Presbytery of Paisley and could not plead his cause there. It would have
been futile to do so in the face of the prejudice against him. His only
course was to appeal to the Synod. There he presented a masterly
statement of his case. He declares that it is painful for him to stand
before the Synod's bar in some sense an accused person, for he had been
represented as "a firebrand, as violent and contentious, unfit to be a
member of any quiet society." He demands evidence of this, appealing to
his acquaintances, even among the moderates in his neighbourhood, with
whom he lived on friendly terms. Protesting against their associating
his name with any book when they have no proof of his authorship he
says, "It looks as if they themselves were struck at in the performance
and acted as interested persons," and asks if it is fair that they his
accusers shall be likewise his judges, a thing contrary to law. That
there is nothing criminal in the book may be inferred from the
commendation it has received from so eminent a personage as the Bishop
of London. The charge made in the book must have been just or it would
have been treated with contempt. Professing himself amazed at the
boldness of his accusers, considering the land in which they lived, he
asks, " Is it not, and do we not glory in its being, a land of liberty?
Is it then a land of liberty and yet a land of ecclesiastical tyranny?
Must not a man have equity and justice in the church as well as in the
state?" He defends satire as a proper mode of writing in that it serves
to bring objectionable men and practices into deserved contempt.
Moreover, "if in any case erroneous doctrine, or degeneracy of life, is
plain and visible, to render them odious must be a duty." His enemies
had "acted in a most unjust and illegal manner in passing the sentence
they have done in my absence, and without any examination; . . .
whatever were their particular intentions, by their violent and illegal
stretches of power in falling upon it, they were plainly of the worst
kind; and it always put me in mind of a Fryer of the Inquisition, with
an unhappy person before you, whom they want to convict that they may
burn him, stroking him, and saying to him in the spirit of meekness,
'Confess, my son, confess.' " In conclusion he appeals to the laws of
the church which they had not proved him to have violated, but which, by
proceeding in this inquisitorial way, without giving him an opportunity
to be heard in his own defense, they had violently and arbitrarily set
aside.
The Synod overruled the
action of the Presbytery and ordered that Witherspoon be transferred and
installed over the church which had called him.
Literary work of a more
serious kind than the satire had occupied him while he was still at
Beith. The year before his removal to Paisley he had published an essay
on Justification; a little book which had a wide sale not only in Great
Britain; but also among the English speaking churches of the continent,
at Rotterdam, Geneva and elsewhere, as well as in America. The year of
his transfer to Paisley another and more pretentious work on
Regeneration came from his pen. This book met with even a better
reception than the first. The two gave him high rank as a theological
writer. He was the foremost man of his party in the Church of Scotland. |
