The Mirage of Authenticity: Scottish Independents and the Reconstruction of a New Testament Order of Worship, 1799-1808

Abstract

The snuffy cobler now you mildly kiss,And Cowgate damsels chuckle at the bliss.By frequent salivations render’d fair,They press your knees that envied bliss to share;And, liquorish fish, wives piously beginTo think it sweeter than their morning gin.In three satirical couplets the author of an anonymous pamphlet printed in 1812 suggests a possible reason for the popularity of the Haldane Tabernacle Connexion among the female population of Edinburgh at the turn of the nineteenth century. In doing so he touches upon an important feature of the wave of evangelical Independency which swept across Scotland from the late 1790s: the appearance of new forms of worship that consciously sought to follow New Testament models. Reinforcing the verse this fiercely polemical work, which almost certainly comes from an establishment source, takes the innovators to task for discarding reasoned biblical interpretation, flouting decency, and ignoring health dangers in their desire to resurrect long extinct practices from ancient Christianity.