An open letter to Gordon Brown

To the Right Honourable Gordon Brown Prime Minister MP.

Dear Prime Minister,

I was most encouraged to learn that you had a "presbyterian conscience", one indeed which is capable of being offended. It is indeed a solemn matter to have a properly informed conscience, when we consider the danger of having what the Bible calls a "defiled" or even a "seared conscience". As the Scottish presbyterian Samuel Rutherford said, "We take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience". He also warned that if you "break your conscience in twain...who then can mend it, and cast a knot on it?" If our conscience is properly informed by what God requires we will realise that we can never hope in ourselves to fulfil his righteous requirements. The Bible instructs us that nothing we can do but only the application of the atonement of Christ can "purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:14). The reforming presbyterian Robert Bruce said "There is no man nor woman that is able to purge their conscience, to take away the guiltiness of sin off their conscience; it is only God who, by virtue of the blood of his Son, doth purge the conscience; therefore, they address them to God only."

In order to best inform your presbyterian conscience we would commend to you the close study of the Bible, together with the Sum of Saving Knowledge, the Westminster Larger Catechism (especially on the Ten Commandments) and the Westminster Confession of Faith.

As you study these matters your presbyterian conscience ought to smite you when you think of the evil of abortion as legalised murder that is carried out in the nation that you govern. It ought also to make you reconsider the legislation on embryological research and creating animal-human hybrid embryos that you have sponsored as you recover the Bible's teaching on the sanctity of all human life. Your voting record on moral matters is very alarming. It will be a solemn matter to have this record brought into view on the day of judgement with the condemning voice of a conscience now fully informed as well as the condemnation of the judge.

The Bible will also speak loudly to your presbyterian conscience about the fact that homosexuality is clearly against the law of God. This will make you look again at the Equality Bill with its ideological coercion and other legislation. As you look at the breadth and length of the law of God in the Ten Commandments it must be clear to a rightly informed conscience that your government and that of your predecessor have gone much further than all previous governments in passing legislation that positively undermines each one of the 10 commandments. It is a fearful thing to be using God-given power to encourage sin and restrain those who seek to do right.

Your presbyterian conscience rightly informed by Scripture and the Westminster Confession would make you reconsider the place that you have given to Roman Catholicism in visiting the Pope and seeking to amend the Act of Settlement.

There are many other matters that we could mention right down to the long-overdue required repeal of the Acts Recissory. The essence of it all is this the prayer that the Biblical and presbyterian principle that Christ alone is King in State and Church would sound loudly in your conscience and that you would follow it and implement it faithfully and sincerely. This would be by far the best for you, best for us and best for this nation and its future.

Yours sincerely,

MAV