a. Appeals in Cases not Judicial
[Book of Discipline, chap. vii., sec. ii., par. 1, Digest of 1873, p. 548.]
A. D. Metcalf and others complained against the Synod of Virginia, for deciding that appeals may lie in cases not judicial. The decision complained of, the reasons of complaint assigned by the complainants, and the whole record of the synod in the case were read. The two parties, the complainants and the synod, having been heard, the roll was called that each member of the Assembly might have an opportunity of expressing his opinion. After which the vote was taken and the complaint was sustained. That is, the General Assembly decided that appeals cannot lie except in judicial cases.
We regret that it is not in our power to present such a view of this case, as we have been accustomed to give on similar occasions. We have no statement, in the Minutes, of the nature of the question decided by the Synod of Virginia; nor any report of the arguments for and against sustaining the complaint. We are obliged, therefore, to content ourselves with the following remarks on the principle involved in the above decision of the Assembly.
As this subject has already been discussed at some length in our pages,* it may seem unnecessary to say any more on the subject. As, however, the recent decision has again brought it before the churches, it may not be improper to devote a few pages to its consideration. It is really a matter of importance. It would be a hard case if a party, suffering under a grievous wrong, should be turned away from the bar of our highest judicatory, merely on the ground that he had mistaken the nature of his remedy. The history of this question is a little curious. We have had a superior judicatory in our Church for more than a hundred and twenty years. During about seventy years of this period, our discipline was conducted according to the Westminster Directory. In 1789 our present constitution went into operation; which was submitted to an extensive revision and alteration, as to matters of detail, in 1821. Under these several systems, appeals and complaints were allowed without hindrance or contradiction, from any kind of decision in an inferior judicatory by a person who felt himself aggrieved, until 1834. Then, for the first time in our history, as far as we know, the idea was started that appeals and complaints could be made only in cases strictly judicial.
The occasion on which this doctrine was advanced was the following: The Synod of Philadelphia had passed an act by which they first received the Second Presbytery as organized by the Assembly; secondly, united that presbytery with the Presbytery of Philadelphia; and, thirdly, divided this united presbytery by a geographical line. From this act the Assembly’s presbytery appealed and complained. When the case came before the Assembly the Rev. Samuel G. Winchester, in an ingenious and eloquent speech, which was afterwards published in various forms, took the ground that “it is only from the decisions of a judicatory sitting as a court, for judicial business, that appeals and complaints can be entertained?” That this novel doctrine was not at that time the doctrine of the synod, which the Rev. gentleman defended, is plain, from the fact, that they had referred for adjudication to that very Assembly “An appeal and complaint of the Fifth Church, Philadelphia, relative to the call of Dr. Beman.” That venerable body therefore, could hardly be surprised that the Assembly overruled Mr. Winchester’s plea, and proceeded to exercise a jurisdiction which had been thus explicitly recognised by the very body in whose behalf the plea was urged. Though the synod was thus free from this new doctrine in May 1834, it grew in such sudden favour, that when that body met the following autumn, they decided not merely that appeals and complaints could not lie except in judicial cases, but even that protests were in the same predicament. This is an instructive illustration of the fact that the wisest and best men sometimes allow themselves to be run away with by a plausible idea, though contrary to all their own previous professions and practice. This, however, was a mere temporary delusion. The members of that synod who had signed or allowed protests in all kinds of cases before, still continued to sign or allow them, with equal freedom, their own decision to the contrary notwithstanding. We had fondly hoped that the whole doctrine was quietly forgotten. We had good reason for this hope. We found its very authors and advocates disregarding it the very next year; acting as though no such doctrine had ever been broached. If they practically abandoned it as untenable, we may be excused for feeling some surprise at its resurrection in a new and distant quarter. It is, however, shorn of its just proportions. The Synod of Philadelphia extended the doctrine to appeals, complaints and protests. Thus putting minorities completely under the feet of majorities, not allowing them even the right of recording their dissent with the reasons for it. Mr. Winchester confined the doctrine to appeals and complaints; these Virginia gentlemen to appeals alone. In this last form it is certainly less objectionable than in either of the others.