Autobiography of Thomas Guthrie D D Author:Thomas Guthrie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: courts, the suspended ministers applied to the Court of Session for an order to cancel the sentence of suspension which their ecclesiastical superiors had pronou... more »nced on them. They asked, not merely that the Civil Court should continue them in the possession of the temporal emoluments of their office, but in the exercise of their office itself. Nay, more; they demanded that no other ministers of the Church of Scotland should be permitted to preach or dispense ordinances anywhere within their parishes. This application the Court granted, but to the extent, at first, only of interdicting the delegated ministers from using the churches or schools. Mr. Guthrie went down to Strathbogie in February, 1840. He was in the district when matters proceeded to a previously unheard-of extremity. On a renewed application by the seven ministers, the Court of Session—by a majority—granted an " extended interdict" forbidding Mr. Guthrie, or any other of the Church's delegates, to preach or dispense ordinances in any building whatever within that district, nay, even on the high road or open moor. Here, beyond all question, was a clear issue. As Lord Fullerton put it, when opposing the demand which the other judges granted, " Disguise the matter as their lordships might, they could not come to a decision upon the Note of Suspension without taking into consideration matters which were purely ecclesiastical, and beyond the jurisdiction of a civil court. . . . Unless the whole distinctionSTRATHBOGIE INTERDICT. i7 between the civil and the ecclesiastical law was at once overthrown, their lordships could not pass a Note of Suspension of this kind." Nevertheless, their lordships did pass it; and Lord Cockburn, noting the circumstance in his Journal (I. 286), remarked, "Those who rail at the audacity o...« less