Moderate Party (Scotland)

The Moderate Party as a church term normally refers to an important group of

Evangelicals

, had a very warm and mutually respectful relationship.

They were characteristically very much part of the Scottish Enlightenment contributing to and deriving intellectual nourishment from an impressive range of scholarly activities of the time: literary, philosophical, historical and scientific.
They shared, far too easily in the view of critics, widespread
Puritanical enthusiasm evident in the many revival movements of the age. (Dr James Meek's cool appraisal of the "Cambuslang Wark"
is a good example.)

They distrusted
dogmatism and what they thought of as overly-intricate system building. In the eyes of some critics, that led them close to heresy or at least far from the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was then the acknowledged foundation of Reformed Christianity in Scotland
.

Their
Christian conduct, rather than the details of creed
. “It was of great importance”, said one, “to discriminate between the artificial virtues and vices, formed by ignorance and superstition, and those that are real".

Lastly, they had profound respect for the established
Lutheranism and indeed cited scriptural authority for it. It was also congenial to the Scottish ruling class, which appointed ministers by using the Patronage Acts
.

The right of the landowning

Evangelicals were significant indeed. For example, James Meek was a typical Moderate who had been nominated by the Duke of Hamilton and opposed by his Cambuslang

parishioners on aspects of his preaching.

On the other hand, the significant achievements and stature of many Moderate clerics – such as Principal

George Campbell, theologian; Adam Ferguson, philosopher and historian; John Home, dramatic poet; and Hugh Blair, literary scholar, makes it difficult to dismiss them as insincere placemen

.

As one later evangelical minister (WH Porter in References below) said, the Moderates "gave us our Paraphrases; Campbell, who replied to Hume, M'Knight the communicator, Hill the theologian, and Blair the preacher, were Moderates. Though in 1796, the Moderates were mainly, not entirely, responsible for the defeat of Foreign Missions proposals, yet in 1829, the Mission to India was founded by Dr Inglis, a Moderate. Principles Blair and M'Farlane were both moderates, yet to the one the Church of Scotland owes her Education Scheme, to the other her Colonial scheme".

References

I D L Clark From Protest to Reaction: The Moderate Regime in the Church of Scotland, 1752 - 1805 in Phillipson, N. T. &
ISBN 0-7486-0876-1
Press F: Age of improvement

Porter, Wm Henry Cambuslang and its Ministers (in Mitchell Library - Glasgow Collection, reference GC941.433 CAM 188520 Box 952
Richard B Sher Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Princeton: Princeton University Press and Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985; paperback edition, Edinburgh University Press, 1991
ISBN 0-691-05445-2
).