Selected from: Charles J. Brown, The Disruption Question Stated. Reprinted (with some additions) from the Free Church Record, at the request of the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: T. Nelson and Sons, 1863), 7-8.
[I]f any party whatever, but especially if the State, or civil power, shall claim the right of controlling the government which Christ has appointed in the hands of Church office-bearers, they must refuse obedience to that claim, must make up their minds to suffer, if need be, the loss of all things, rather than yield to it. And this because they are only servants, ministers, stewards, entrusted by the alone Master and King with a certain authority and duty.
Were they princes — as Rome’s ecclesiastics claim to be — then might they be free to consider the question, at least, whether it were not expedient, in certain circumstances, to resign the government of the Church into other hands. But they are stewards only, mere administrators, and have no discretion in any such matter. They hear the voice of the Master, “The flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers” — “put away from among yourselves that wicked person” — “whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven.”
And the government which they have thus received, they must discharge on their responsibility to Christ alone. But especially, to yield it up into the hands of the State, were to yield it, as we have seen, into the hands of another king, another master, and so were nothing less than treason against the only King and Head of the Church.
