Charis DevelopmentRead it as satire
The narrator is an enthusiastic Moderate who praises what Witherspoon means to expose. The commendation is the indictment.
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A satire on the Kirk · first published 1753
Ecclesiastical Characteristics
or, the Arcana of Church Policy
1723–1794
Witherspoon’s anonymous satire of the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, written in the voice of an admiring Moderate who sets down, with a straight face, the thirteen maxims by which a minister may attain that character.
PDF free · 113 pages · 1.8 MB · Print copy from Berith Press
- Edition
- Modernised from the fifth edition (Edinburgh, 1763)
- Publisher
- Berith Press, 2026
- ISBN
- 978-1-963516-71-5
The Thirteen Maxims of Moderation
The whole tract is set out as a manual of rules for attaining the character of a moderate man, with The Athenian Creed set between the sixth and seventh.
- Maxim IOf Ecclesiastical Persons Suspected of Heresy
- Maxim IIOf Men Charged with Loose Practices
- Maxim IIIOf the Confession of Faith
- Maxim IVOf the Marks of a Good Preacher
- Maxim VOf Politeness in a Minister
- Maxim VIOf Learning
- Maxim VIIOf Public and Private Devotion
- Maxim VIIIOf Church-Settlements and the Heritors
- Maxim IXOf the Character of Candidates
- Maxim XOf Executing Forced Settlements
- Maxim XIOf the Characters of the Orthodox
- Maxim XIIOf Charity to Atheists, Deists, and the Vicious
- Maxim XIIIOf the Union of Moderate Men
About this edition
A light modernisation of the fifth edition: spelling and layout are updated and the long s replaced, but Witherspoon's words are not altered. Prepared under the supervision of Rev. Romesh Prakashpalan.
Footnoted for today
Archaic words, persons, and the affairs of the eighteenth-century Kirk are explained at the foot of the page, so the joke lands.
Ready for citation
Page numbers from the fifth edition run inline through the text, so the modernised reading can be checked against the original.
“and by it he being dead yet speaketh.”
Hebrews 11:4