Excerpt from The Statements in the Claim of Right: Are They True?

When a Free Churchman is asked the 'reason of his separation from the Church of Scotland, he points for answer to the Claim of Right, and he asks in return, whether any conscientious man could have remained in the Church under the state of matters disclosed in that document. I have always had a certain sympathy with that answer. The man believes in the Claim of Right. He believes that the Court of Session did all the things detailed in it. Why should he not believe in it? He never himself, of course, examined into the facts on which its conclusions are founded. It would be unreasonable to suppose that he had done so. It would take an astute lawyer weeks of labour to examine in detail all the facts and circumstances with which it deals; and few ministers, and fewer laymen, could be expected to enter on such an investigation. But that is no reason why the Free Churchman, who read the Claim of Right after it was laid on the table of the General Assembly in 1842, should have hesitated to assume its accuracy. It was prepared by a Non-intrusionist - one of his own party - a man in whom he had implicit confidence - a lawyer, of long standing - one who had for many years made church matters and church law hisspecial study. I confess that if I had myself been one of that party, and had possessed no other source of information, the chances are, that whatever doubts I may have previously had, would have been determined by a perusal of the Claim of Right, and that I would probably have left the Church with the rest. Just look at it. Any thing more unjust, more overbearing, more tyrannical than the conduct of the Scotch judges, if we accept the state ments in this remarkable document, it would be impossible to conceive. Justice had been denied, Acts of Parliament trampled upon, the rights of the Church overborne, and every principle of law and equity set at defiance.

Is it surprising that after reading such a statement, so prepared, and solemnly adopted by the majority in the General Assembly, so many Scotchmen - ministers and laymen - should have left a Church which they believed had been subjected to such treatment, and for which, when as a last resource complaint was made to the State, redress was refused? I do not think it surprising.

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