Bygone Church Life in Scotland

by Unknown

One of the articles objected to was that which pronounced “that baptism might be administered at home when the infant could not conveniently be brought to church.” This was objected to as papistical, and denounced as introducing a new and false doctrine of baptism, calculated to create a superstitious belief that there was some spiritual efficacy in the act of sprinkling a few drops of water on an infant’s face, in the name of the Trinity, thereby giving ground for the belief that baptism is essential to salvation. This doctrine, though taught by the Church of England, has not been accepted by the Church of Scotland since the Reformation.

Moreover, as non-attendance at the services of the Church was regarded as contrary to good order, it was objected that the administration of baptism in private houses would allow Christian privileges to be enjoyed without compliance with Christian duty. If a child was to be accepted and declared a member of the Church, the act should be performed by the whole congregation, and not by the minister alone. For at least a hundred years this was strongly and firmly insisted upon. Some doubt seems to have been felt in 1643, as to whether the Westminster Assembly would adopt the Scottish view of the question, as baptisms were very commonly performed in private houses by ministers of the English Presbyterian Church. It was with much satisfaction, therefore, that the news was received in Scotland that the Assembly had affirmed the necessity of public baptism.

The Directory for Public Worship in the Presbyterian Church states, accordingly, that baptism “is not to be administered in private places, or privately, but in the place of public worship, and in the face of the congregation, where the people may most conveniently see and hear; and not in the places where fonts, in the time of Popery, were unfitly and superstitiously placed,” that is, near the church door, and behind the backs of the congregation. The view held by Presbyterians since the Reformation thus became the law of the Church; and the General Assembly, in 1690, strictly enjoined that baptism should not be administered elsewhere than in church, and before the congregation. But in this matter, as in some others, there appears to have been a laxity in enforcing the rule of the church, which has gone on increasing. Wodrow stated, in 1718, that private baptisms were unknown in the Church of Scotland, except in Edinburgh and Glasgow; and only two years later the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr had to repeat the injunction of 1690. What the state of things in this respect is at the present day we are told by Dr Edgar, who, as minister of Mauchline, must be considered to speak from experience. He says that, “in some parishes there are ten private baptisms for every one public baptism; and these private baptisms are never challenged as irregular, unlawful, or deserving of censure.”

Registers of baptisms have been kept, with more or less regularity, from the time of the Reformation; and these show that, in some parishes at least, private baptisms had become very frequent about the middle of the eighteenth century. In referring to the evidence of the parish register of Mauchline on this matter, the writer just quoted says: “Although such baptisms were a violation of Church order, I cannot help remarking that Church order was not, in this instance, clearly founded on the evangelical principle professed by our forefathers, that all procedure in Church ritual should be conform to the precept or example of Scripture. It seems quite certain that, in the days of the Apostles, baptism was not always, if ever, administered in the place of public worship and in the face of the congregation. The eunuch of Ethiopia, Cornelius the centurion, St. Paul himself, and the gaoler at Philippi were each baptised privately.”

The Church of Scotland has been more strict in upholding the rule of the Westminster Directory, that baptism “is not to be administered, in any case, by any private person.” This also, it may be remarked, is not in strict accordance with the principle of the Christian Church in its early ages, as set forth by some of the Fathers; and down even to the present day the Church of England, while discountenancing lay baptism as a rule, has recognised its validity in cases of necessity. The recorded instances of refusal to admit evidence of lay baptism in the Church of Scotland are, however, chiefly cases in which the rite had been performed by deposed ministers. In 1708, a Kilmarnock man was cited to appear before the Kirk Session for having had a child irregularly baptised by a deposed minister, namely, Macmillan, the founder of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. No further proceedings appear, however, to have been taken. Similar cases occurred in 1715 and 1721, the General Assembly in the former case, and the Presbytery of Ayr in the latter, merely pronouncing the baptisms null and void.

Some differences have to be noted between the Churches of Scotland and England with regard to the forms and customs connected with baptisms. The former is the more strict with regard to the sponsors of the children to be baptised. The Westminster Directory states that the child is to be presented at the font by its father, or in the case of his unavoidable absence, by some Christian friend in his place; and in 1712 the General Assembly enacted that no other sponsor than a parent should be received at a baptism, “unless the parents be dead, or absent, or grossly ignorant, or under scandal, or contumacious to discipline; in which cases, some fit person (and if it can be, one related to the child,) should be sponsor.”

Not only was the Church more strict in this matter in Scotland than in England, but the nature of the sponsion was different. In Knox’s Liturgy, the sponsors are not regarded as proxies for the child, but are required to make a declaration of their own faith, in which they engage to instruct the child. As the matter is well put by Dr Hill, “the parents do not make any promise for the child, but they promise for themselves that nothing shall be wanting, on their part, to engage the child to undertake, at some future time, that obligation which he cannot then understand.”

In the latter half of the seventeenth and the first of the eighteenth century, the Kirk Sessions had as much to do in repressing undue gatherings at the font as on the occasion of wedding festivities. In 1622 the Kirk Session of Aberdeen, considering “that it is come in custom that every base servile man in the town, when he has a bairn to be baptised, invites twelve or sixteen persons to be his gossips and god-fathers to his bairn,” whereas the old custom was not to invite more than two, ordered that in future only two or at most four persons should be allowed to appear in that capacity. In 1681 an Act of Parliament prohibited the attendance at baptisms of more than four witnesses, in addition to parents and children, brothers and sisters; and in 1720 the Kirk Session of Kilmarnock made an ordinance that “only so many women as are necessary attend infants that are carried to the church to be baptised, and the Session think three sufficient.”

Down to the time of the Westminster Assembly, it seems to have been the custom in Scotland for parents, at the baptism of a child, to repeat the Creed. But in the Westminster Directory the father is merely required to promise that he will bring up the child “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Nevertheless, many Kirk Sessions overlaid this requirement with regulations of their own devising. In 1615, the Kirk Session of Lasswade ordained that “no children of ignorant persons be baptised, except the father first lay one poynd of ten shillings, and a month shall be granted to learn the Lord’s Prayer, Belief, and Ten Commandments, with some competent knowledge of the sacraments and catechism, which he performing, his poynd shall be returned, otherwise forfeited.” In 1700 an application to the Kirk Session of Galston for the baptism of a child was refused, on the ground that the father “did not attend diets of catechising.” On his promising to attend in future, and submitting to rebuke for his previous non-attendance, the child was allowed to be baptised. More than three-quarters of a century later, that is, in 1779, a man who had applied to the Kirk Session of Mauchline for the baptism of a child was subjected to a theological examination much too stiff for him; but on promising to study the knotty points propounded to him, and signing an undertaking to that effect in the minute-book, he was allowed to present the child for baptism, though the permission seems to have been regarded as a great favour.

As in England, so also in Scotland, the registration of baptisms was required at a period long antecedent to the statutary obligation to register births. Old sessional records show that fees were paid, but it is a disputed question whether these were for baptism or for registration. Dunlop, in his “Parochial Law,” quotes a legal opinion to the effect that “as to baptisms, what is paid on that account is for obtaining the Kirk Session’s order for baptism, and recording that order.” But an entry in the records of the Kirk Session of Galston, in 1640, after prescribing the fee to be paid for baptism, adds—“and there shall be no more exacted of any that come to this kirk for all time coming, except they desire the baptism registered, and in that case to satisfy the reader therefore, which is hereby declared to be other four shillings Scottish.”