‘I deny entirely and in toto,’ said the conjurer, ‘that the present controversy involves the doctrine of the Headship.’––See 2d Dialogue.
‘Admit,’ said the true Mr. Clark, ‘but the right of secular courts to review, and thus to confirm or annul, the proceedings of the Scottish Church in one of the most important spiritual functions, and the same power may soon be, under various pretexts, used to control all the inferior departments of its ecclesiastical procedure. Will any man say that a society thus acknowledging the supremacy of a different power from that of Christ is any longer to be regarded as a branch of the Church whose unity chiefly exists in adherence to Him as its Head?’––Sermon, p. 45.
‘The claim,’ said the conjurer, ‘is essentially Papal.’––Dialogue 2d, p. 6.
‘No,’ replied the true Mr. Clark, ‘not Papal, but Protestant: our confessors and martyrs chose to suffer for it the loss of all their worldly goods, and to incur the pains of death in its most appalling forms.’––Sermon, p. 45.
‘Papal notwithstanding,’ reiterated the conjurer. ‘But it is not to be wondered at, that in the earliest stages of the Reformation, men newly come out of the Church of Rome should have been led to assert for the office-bearers of their Church the prerogatives which Romanism claimed for her own.’––Dialogue 2d, p. 7.
‘What!’ exclaimed the true Mr. Clark, ‘is not the present contest clearly for the rights of the members of Christ,––rights manifestly recognised in His word, and involving His Headship?’––Sermon, p. 37. See also p. 31. 350
‘Not at all,’ replied the conjurer. ‘The question is one of faction, and of faction only. Struggles for the victory of mere parties have been as injurious to vital godliness in the Church as the same cause has been to the true prosperity of the State.’––Dialogue 1st, p. 15.
‘Faction!’ exclaimed the true Mr. Clark; ‘the Church of Scotland is now engaged in asserting principles which the allegiance it owes to Christ will never permit it to desert. And let it be rung in the ears of the people of Scotland, that the great reason why the asserting of the Church’s spiritual jurisdiction is so clamorously condemned in certain quarters, is because it is employed to maintain the rights of the people.’––Sermon, pp. 37-39.
‘To be above the authority of the law, no Church in this country can be,’ said the conjurer. ‘The Church courts would be able, were their principles fully recognised, to tread under foot the rights of the people as effectually as ever they resisted those of patrons.’––Dialogue 1st, pp. 14 and 16.
‘Nothing can be more absurd than such insinuations,’ exclaimed the true Mr. Clark. ‘The Church disclaims every kind of civil authority, and simply requires that there be no interference on the part of civil rulers with its spiritual functions. How that which declines a jurisdiction in civil matters, can in any sense of the word, or in any conceivable circumstances, be injurious to civil liberty, it is impossible to conceive.’––Sermon, p. 32.