William Knight

William Angus Knight (wiki) was Minister of St Enoch’s Church, Dundee in the Free Church of Scotland though he was more an academic than a local minister. In 1872 he offended his presbytery by accepting an invitation from his friend, the Rev James Martineau (wiki), and preaching in his Unitarian Church. The invitation to preach did not come out of the blue: the men had known one another for some years and had long corresponded on their theological differences. (Newcastle Daily Chronicle - Friday 12 July 1872 p2 col 6-7)

Knight was not accused of heresy itself, but of causing offence by publicly associating with and, at least by implication, endorsing a renowned heretic. Knight is included in this blog mostly because I found his story interesting in itself and in particular because his case comes closer than any other I have so far found to drawing a border in the sands between who was and was not a heretic. (He wasn’t.)

The course of events

Knight preached in Martineau’s church on Sunday July 7th and by the 9th The Scotsman (and others) reported the prospect of “a completely new case of a heretical description” (Tuesday 09 July 1872 p4 col3). The Dundee Presbytery met the next day and the Dundee Courier had already turned the possibility into “A ‘Heresy’ Case” (Wednesday 10 July 1872 col 4). 

Knight was requested - summoned - to attend the Presbytery “in order that he might have an opportunity of making an explanation why he had preached in a Socinian pulpit”. 

The Presbytery met in private and the North British Daily Mail immediately printed a detailed, possibly verbatim, report. This was not merely the way of small towns but also an advantage for Knight’s accusers. No-one initiates heresy proceedings to find out whether the accused preached heresy but to convict them both formally and in the court of public opinion. Heresy proceedings are often at least as political as they are theological.

James Martineau aged 90 (Wiki)

Knight set out his defence. There was no law, he said, against a minister preaching anywhere. His action was “simply an act of friendship.”

Martineau, he said, stood “in a sympathetic relation to all the churches less or more” and was “the chief representative of a spiritual religious philosophy against materialistic science.” He was a deeply spiritual man with a saintly character, and “I cannot consider him as the member of a sect.” There was no church law which forbade him to preach wherever he chose. Indeed, the renowned Dr Chalmers (wiki) had accepted an invitation to preach in a Unitarian church, though he found no record of whether Chalmers had actually done so. He had said nothing “inconsistent with the faith or the standards of our Church.” (Quotations from North British Daily Mail Thur 11/7/1872 p5 col 2)

His personal commitment was to a largeness of vision:

I am l persuaded that there is nothing more contracting to, the heart, and withering to the Christian spirit, as well as opposed to the example of our Lord, than the limitation of our fellowship to those with whom we agree in opinion; that nothing especially is bad for the theologian or religious teacher as aloofness from men from whose modes of thought he utterly dissents, or with whose feelings he is out of sympathy. ibid.

In the view of The Scotsman, Knight was “... a person who, unfortunately for his own comfort, is burdened with an unecclesiastical breadth of sympathy, simplicity of motive, and straightforwardness of speech and action.” (Friday 12 July 1872 p4 col 2)

There was general agreement at this meeting of the Presbytery that Knight had been imprudent, and some, at least, judged that if he expressed regret the matter might go no further. But Knight had already sent a statement to the papers that would be published the following day so there was no tactful way to avoid further formal action, even had Knight’s critics been prepared to accept it.

On Monday July 15 a further meeting of the Presbytery was called specifically to address Knight’s case. His critics moved,

That the Presbytery deem the act of Mr Knight in preaching for Mr Martineau, of London, highly censurable; but that, in view of its being the first offence of the kind with which the Church has had to deal, the Presbytery is satisfied with admonishing Mr Knight for the act, but require him to repudiate the Unitarian body as forming no part of the Christian Church; enjoin Mr Knight not to repeat the act, under pain of exposing himself to the highest censures of the Church; and appoint the following committee to deal with Mr Knight in regard to agreeing to this motion, …” (Glasgow Herald Wednesday 17 July 1872 p4 col1)

Almost certainly (that is, I have no evidence for this:) Cranbrook’s critics had been advised that, if they continued to pursue the case, they would have no chance of success and, quite possibly, large legal bills.

The Glasgow Herald judged that this “was the weakest and worst deliverance at which the Reverend Court could have arrived.” (ibid.) The paper questioned how the Presbytery “should consider themselves at liberty to enter into a bargain of condonation.”(ibid. col.2) No local Presbytery could make law for the whole denomination nor add anything to the conditions which a minister accepted at his ordination:

They may make speeches at him - they may express their sorrow over his conduct - they may appoint conferences with him and then fail to attend them, as their habit seems to be - they may prove to him by argument that his conduct is inconsistent with the principles he professes and the formulas he has signed. But unless he has broken some law, or traversed his express and solemn promise, they have not a shadow of right to proceed further. (ibid.)

Furthermore,

All over Scotland and England Presbyterians and Episcopalians meet with Unitarians and Episcopalians meet with Catholics on many common platforms where they consent to say nothing about the serious differences which divide them. (ibid. col.3)

And neither church regarded their buildings as consecrated or sacred. 

Knight’s response boiled down to “I respectfully remind this Presbytery that I have broken no Church law.” (ibid. col.1) 

In The Scotsman an editorialist opined that 

… the accused is substantially in the right, and that the body which has accused, prosecuted, and condemned him is very much in the wrong.” (Wednesday 17 July 1872 p4 col1)

and

for contractedness of view, shabbiness of aim, and venomous vulgarity of tone, it would be difficult to imagine anything capable or surpassing the performances of the Free Presbytery of Dundee, … (ibid. col.2)

The paper judged that the real target may have been not so much Mr Knight but the newspapers themselves. One Dr Wilson described the coverage 

“as an ‘indecency,’ a ‘degradation,’ and the exhibition of ‘an extremely low type of morality;’ …” 

although, to me, this just sounds like transferring blame to the messenger in compensation for the failure to convict Cranbrook. But, to rub salt in the wound:

The press now addresses more pairs of eyes than the clergy can reach pairs of ears, and its influence is in many respects, unavoidably anticlerical, much less from anything it says for itself than from what It necessarily reports of what is being said and done by others in these inquiring and discussing days.Ibid.

Subsequently

Knight went on to have a long and distinguished career as a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He died on 4 March 1916. The Wiki biography is brief.

(A portrait of Knight at the end of his career by Elizabeth Hean Alexander is here.)