The court had to determine the nature and constitution of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland from the provisions of a Deed of Separation, together with certain documents specified in that deed.
Held: The court was constrained to that document for its interpretation. ‘Seceders secede at their peril’. Lord President Cooper: ‘The pleadings and the arguments of counsel in this case have ranged over a very wide and highly contentious field, and it was represented to us, at least from one side of the Bar, that the purpose of this litigation was to secure a decision on a matter of principle of grave concern to the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. In these circumstances, I deem it necessary to re-affirm at the outset the limited jurisdiction which alone a civil court can be required to exercise in a case of this kind. . . . In form and in substance the single controversy which we are invited to resolve relates to a matter of patrimonial right. It arises in a competition between two parties, each claiming to be the beneficiaries entitled to certain trust property. The trust is so expressed as to make the beneficial right dependent upon adherence by the beneficiary to the constitution and whole standards of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland as set forth in specified documents. In such a case it is the duty of the court to take cognisance of relevant matters of belief, doctrine and church government for the purpose, but only for the purpose, of informing themselves as to the essential and distinguishing tenets of the church in question, and of discovering the differences, if any, which can be detected in the principles to which the competing claimants respectively profess adherence. For us all such matters are matters of pure fact, which we investigate with the limited object of enabling us to apply the provisions of the trust; and it is not our province to form, still less to express, any view of our own upon the truth, reasonableness, propriety or relative importance of the various doctrines, standards, or matters of ecclesiastical polity to which our attention may be directed, nor to decide any question of ecclesiastical principle which is not inseparable from the question of patrimonial right. I refer to the series of authoritative decisions beginning with Craigdallie 1 Dow 1 and ending with The Free Church case 7 F. (H.L.) 1, in all of which the courts have stressed their reluctance to embark upon an investigation of this kind except to that limited extent and with that limited purpose …’
Judges:
Lord Guthrie, Lord President Cooper
Citations:
Unreported, 10 January 1952
Jurisdiction:
Scotland
Cited by:
Cited – The Free Church of Scotland v The General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland SCS 24-Mar-2005
Each group claimed to by the true Free Church of Scotland. The dispute had a very long history. One claimed that the other had abandoned a fundamental principle of the faith, the right of ‘continued protest’.
Held: It was necessary to examine . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Trusts
Updated: 26 November 2022; Ref: scu.223942