Moderator
Principal Campbell was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 1732. The King?s Commissioner brought a message of respect and admiration, along with encouragement to wise, sober debate, from King. In return the Assembly voted a loyal address in return, expressing gratitude, loyalty etc. It expressed particular gratitude for the King's gift of £1000, and it made the customary arrangements for using it to fight Roman Catholicism in the Highlands and Islands. The Assembly also voted to urge all congregations to contribute to the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), which had similar missionary aims in the Highlands. Both also contributed to the spread of the English language there, along with loyalty to the House of Hanover.
A less routine, and more eventful, decision was taken to regulate the procedures for filling vacant Ministers? posts in Parishes, where the Patron had failed to do so. The Church Patronage (Scotland) Act 1711 was a long-standing grievance to the Church of Scotland, and it annually protested against it. The decision that year was meant to bring some order into the few, but fraught, occasions when the Patron, through death, or illness, or oversight, had not presented a candidate to a vacancy within the six-months required. In these cases the right fell to the Presbytery in which the Parish lay, and each proceeded in its own way, some involving the whole congregation of the Parish concerned, most limiting it to a small group of Heritors and Elders. The Assembly enacted that this latter process should be the norm. Some of the Ministers attending objected, claiming that the majority of Presbyteries consulted preferred the involvement of the whole congregation of a Parish. They were further incensed when their objections were not recorded in the final minutes of the debate. (An Act of the 1730 Assembly has abolished the process of recording objections to decisions of all the Courts of the Church.). This decision was later repealed, but the leading protester, Ebenezer Erskine, though an Englishman, went on, three years later, to lead his supporters out of the Church of Scotland to form the Original Secession Church, the first of many splits in Scottish Presbyterianism.
Principal Campbell must have nonetheless been held in high esteem, for he was again elected Moderator for the 1737 Assembly, a less momentous one. The same courtesies were exchanged with the King - who this time urged them to work together for the increase of piety and virtue, the preventing of the growth of Popery, and the suppressing of profaneness and immorality, and earnestly urged them to avoid all disputes and contentions among yourselves, and to proceed upon the business proper for your consideration, with that unanimity and brotherly love, as may justly be expected from so venerable a body. The ??Secession?? mentioned above was meanwhile gathering pace.
The Assembly responded loyally, though it did express a hope that the King would relieve them of the Patronage grievance they had been protesting about annually. They promised to put the King's Bounty to good use in the more remote and less civilised parts of (his) British dominions ... to counteract the Popish emissaries trafficking in these parts.
Some Presbyteries had complained that a decision of the previous year meant the Assembly was approving some heretical opinions. It passed a special Act declaring this was not so. Some other Presbyteries had complained that some Elders attending the Assembly were not properly qualified (either not residing in their Parishes, or harbouring dubious opinions). A special Act was passed urging Presbyteries only to send properly qualified representatives in future. There seemed to have been an over-supply of divinity students, so the Assembly enacted that there was no longer any need for Presbyteries and Synods to provide Bursaries for new students.
