West Port Experiment

The following two quotes are taken from George Gillespie’s An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland (1641). They seem to me to have a bearing on the question of the ‘indigenous principle’ that our denomination, the Presbyterian Reformed Church, has advocated since its inception in 1965. That is, presbyterian churches ought ideally to develop their own nationally autonomous bodies distinct from others outside their borders; or, trans-national denominations, especially when ‘centered’ in one particular nation, should be avoided or superseded as impractical, and liable to hierarchicalism or a kind of church-imperialism. These quotes in particular demonstrate that historic presbyterianism, while holding out a gradation of church courts, nevertheless accepts as valid smaller and even the smallest church units when circumstances on the ground prevent more.

“Add unto these a distinction betwixt a congregation lying alone in an island, province or nation, and a congregation bordering with sister churches. If either there be but one congregation in a kingdom or province, or if there be many far distant one from another, so that their pastors and elders cannot ordinarily meet together, then may a particular congregation do many things by itself alone, which it ought not to do where there are adjacent neighbouring congregations, together with which it may and should have a common presbytery” (43).

“But what can be the reason, may some man say, why the Scripture hath not itself determined these kinds of assemblies particularly? I answer, three reasons may begiven for it: 1. Because it was not necessary, the general rules of the word, together with nature’s light, which directeth commonwealths in things of the same kind, being sufficient to direct the church therein. 2. As seasons and times for the meeting of assemblies , so the just bounds thereof in so many different places of the world are things of that kind which were not determinable in Scripture, unless the world had been filled with volumes thereof; for, individua sunt infinita. 3. Because this constitution of synods, provincial and national, is not universal for all times and places; for example, there may bein a remote island ten or twelve Christian congregations, which, beside their particular elderships, have a common presbytery, but are not capable of synods, either provincial or national. Again, let there be an island containing forty or fifty Christian congregations, there shall be therein, beside presbyteries, one kind of a synod, but not two kinds. Besides, the reformed congregations within a great nation may happily be either so few, or so dispersed and distant, or so persecuted, that they can neither have provincial nor national assemblies” (53).

For convenience, access the whole work here: