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lion of 1745, when the Scottish Secession began also to plant its congregations on English soil. To these Scottish congregations there resorted, from time to time, not a few English Presbyterians who loved sound Gospel doctrine, and who were driven away from the frigid services of the Arian and heterodox ministers. By supplying pulpits of English Presbyterian congregations also, Scottish ministers protected from the inroads of heterodoxy quite a number of these venerable charges. And thus was formed the nucleus of revived and re-organized Presbyterianism in England-the impulse derived originally from Scotland, but not unaffected by the Methodist movement and the general religious stirrings in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and ministered to and maintained by the growing life and efficiency of Scottish Presbyterian influences, too long hampered and embarrassed by the disunion produced through political entanglements and legislative mistakes.

In some cases the reduced remnant of an English Presbyterian congregation acceded to its Scottish neighbour, as at Swallow Street, Piccadilly.-Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. iv. p. 45.

2 This was, of course, a process greatly disliked by all the Arianizing and Socinian party from first to last. It was denounced by Dr. Priestley in his Free Address to Protestant Dissenters, 1769, and by others after him, like Dr. Toulmin. He allows the alliance had been such that “Dissenters in England are often confounded with the Presbyterians of the Kirk of Scotland." And in speaking of "vacancies among us supplied from Scotland," he testily adds, "How they are supplied from this quarter, let the state of the Dissenting Interest in the North of England testify" (p. 281). By thus accentuating national distinctions, Dr. Priestley and his party showed how far they had fallen from the Westminster Assembly's conception of a common Presbyterian Church for the Three Kingdoms, not less than they had departed from the doctrine and discipline of the Westminster standards.

I.

EARLY SCOTTISH CHURCHES, AND THEIR INFLUENCE.

THE first of the early-planted and still surviving Scottish Presbyterian Churches which had a considerable influence in the preservation of Westminster doctrine and discipline in London, is the Church now at Canonbury, previously at London Wall, and, before that, at Founders' Hall. Its relations to old English Dissent will appear as we proceed. It had English ordained Presbyterian ministers among its pastors, just as Scotch ordained ministers were pastors over old English Presbyterian charges.

THE EARLIEST SCOTCH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN LONDON, 1672.

Only ten years after the Ejectment, in 1672, when Charles II. issued his Indulgence for reasons best known to himself, this Scottish Presbyterian interest was begun in London, with its "Congregational Presbytery" according to the plan of the Westminster Assembly. Singular to say, a Scottish exiled minister, ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL by name, was banished that very year to London, and was invited on arrival to be pastor to the little handful of faithful fellow-countrymen who seized the opportunity of the Indulgence to rent the HALL of the COMPANY OF FOUNDERS for their Presbyterian worship.

Alexander Carmichael, when parochial incumbent of Pittenweem, had yielded to the pressure of law for a time, but being soon dissatisfied with the new episcopal innovations, had joined the ejected ministers of the Covenant; and being arrested at Kirkcaldy for illegal preaching, and tried 22 Feb., 1672, he was banished "furth the Kingdom" in a vessel bound for the Thames. After an earnest, faithful ministry in London for four years, he died in 1676, and was succeeded by a somewhat remarkable ENGLISH Presbyterian minister, trained in Manchester Grammar School and Cambridge University, JEREMIAH

MARSDEN, one of the ejected from Ardesley, near Wakefield, of whom Calamy gives an interesting account; a much persecuted and much imprisoned man, driven from place to place, "his whole life a perfect peregrination"; who, having been in confinement in York Castle, at Oxford, and elsewhere, was committed to Newgate for his nonconformity, where he died four years before the Revolution, in his fifty-eighth year.

After a brief ministry on the part of Nicholas Blakie, whose health speedily began to fail, there came over from Holland as an assistant and successor to him, the distinguished ROBERT FLEMING, SO well known in connection with one of his writings, The Rise and Fall of the Papacy, in whose early pastorate the Church at Founders' Hall was rebuilt on the same site. He had the honour of declining the Principalship of Glasgow University when offered him. When he died, in 1716, JOHN CUMMING, from Cambridge, who was of Irish extraction and Scotch training, and whose name is favourably associated with the Salters' Hall Synod, became minister. Dr. Cumming was followed by DR. WILLIAM WISHART, who after seven years succeeded his distinguished father in the Principalship of Edinburgh University-a notable and learned family.

Dr. Wishart was succeeded at Lothbury by MR. JOHN PARTINGTON, of Hampstead; and after he had filled the pastorate for ten years, there came in his place, in 1751, Mr. William Steele, who, however, after a few months of much promise, was cut off by death; and thereafter, for twenty years, ROBERT LAWSON ably and efficiently carried forward the work. In his day, the Founders' Hall Church, Lothbury, gave place to the new one at LONDON WALL, 1764. And it is interesting to note that of these nine ministers who preached at Founders' Hall, two were English Presbyterian, and a third of Irish lineagea fit illustration of the intermingling of national relations that should afterwards be a characteristic of the future ministry of the Presbyterian Church of England. Seven years after the building of London Wall Church, the earnest and faithful

1 Palmer's Calamy, or Nonconformists' Memorial, vol. ii. pp. 553, 554.
2 For life of Robert Fleming, see Steven's Scottish Church at Rotterdam.

Robert Lawson died in his fiftieth year, 24 April, 1771; and in August of the same year, there was inducted a Scottish parish minister, who became one of the most notably popular preachers and writers in London, the distinguished DR. HENRY HUNTER, who maintained the dignity and extended the Evangelic influences of the Presbyterian name in the metropolis throughout his long and valuable career. After Dr. Henry Hunter's death, in 1802, when DR. ROBERT YOUNG was chosen to succeed him, a section of the congregation seceded to Artillery Street, under Dr. Brichan, a rival candidate; but in 1809, this section was happily re-united, and a time of much prosperity set in, with a flourishing Sabbath school and the vigorous prosecution of other good work. After Dr. Young's death, in 1813, an effort was made to get Thomas Chalmers, of Kilmany, to supply the pulpit; but he "declined to leave his present charge." Then came Dr. Manuel, in whose days metropolitan Presbyterianism was growing in its westward movement under EDWARD IRVING, and his successors in Regent Square Church, 1827; but London Wall Church held on its way under McLean, Jardine, Tweedie, Burns, Dr. Nicholson, and Rev. William Ballantyne, M.A., under whom the removal was made in 1857, to Canonbury, where it is now located.1

OTHER EARLY SCOTTISH CHURCHES IN LONDON, AND THEIR CONNECTIONS.

While the above is the oldest Scottish Presbyterian Church in London, with the longest record, others of the same order were springing up from time to time: that in Glass-house Street being formed immediately after the Revolution, and migrating in 1710 to the vacated French Protestant Church in Swallow Street, Piccadilly, it was joined by most of the members of the English Presbyterian Church (in the same street) which had been founded by Baxter in 16762; that in Crown Court, Drury Lane, 17183; and that of Peter Street, Soho, 1734, under the

1 For fuller details, see Memorials of the Old Ministers, Founders' Hall, London Wall, and Canonbury, by Rev. George Wilson, M.A., F.L.S., Minister at Canonbury, 1882; and Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. ii. pp. 460–514.

2 Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. iv. p. 45.

3 Ibid. pp. 1-10.

▲ Ibid. pp. 32-37.

Act of Union was passed in 1707. According to the Articles of Treaty, the preservation of the Presbyterian form of Church government and worship was made an essential and fundamental condition; and for greater assurance, a special "Act of Security" became part of the Treaty, requiring of every Sovereign, on ascending the British throne, an oath to support intact the privileges and discipline of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland.

In five years, however, this part of the solemn compact was violated. For in 1712, an Act restoring patronage was passed, the Bill being hurried through both Houses of Parliament in a single month.

"The British legislature violated the Articles of Union, and made a change in the constitution of the Church of Scotland. . Year after year the General Assembly protested against the violation, but in vain; and from the Act of 1712 undoubtedly flowed every secession and schism that has taken place in the Church of Scotland."1

For a number of years the Act was almost a dead letter, the popular feeling being strongly averse to the settlement of any minister by lay patronage without the direct "call" of the Church over which he was to preside. Up to 1728, there had been no intrusions of ministers on reclaiming congregations; but in 1729, forced settlements commenced, the call of the people being set at nought, and the patron's nomination of a presentee reckoned sufficient by the majority of the Assembly, who disregarded all cases of appeal or protest. Against this and other forms of faithlessness there were those who strongly testified; and out of this agitation the FIRST SECESSION sprang in 1733, under the leadership of Ebenezer Erskine, who, having been formally censured by the General Assembly for denouncing the corruptions of the Church in a Synod sermon, protested with three others against the sentence. These four protesting brethren were declared no longer ministers of the Church; but they constituted themselves into a Presbytery, 5 Dec., 1733, and in the following May gave full reasons for their procedure in their first document, entitled, "A Testimony to the Doctrine, Worship, Government, and Discipline of the

1 Lord Macaulay's Speeches, vol. ii. p. 180.

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