COMMENTARY :
F.P. Ramsay, Exposition of the Book of Church Order (1898, p. ), on Rules of Discipline, VI-1:
OF GENERAL PROVISIONS APPLICABLE TO ALL CASES OF PROCESS.
Twenty provisions are given. The first ten look rather to the protection of the accused. The first two guard the court against a wrong temper in conducting a trial or commencing a process ; the other eight require sufficient citations. Paragraph 3 prevents undue haste at the beginning ; the fourth gives the accused, as well as the other party, the right of official citation of all witnesses wanted ; the fifth requires the indictment to be definite ; the sixth gives the accused the benefit of a second citation ; the seventh defines more closely the provision of the sixth ; the eighth forbids the taking of evidence at a distance without reasonable notice to the accused ; the ninth protects any person from being put on trial for offences alleged to have been committed at a distance without due investigation and safeguards ; and the tenth requires that the citations be served as well as issued. The other ten paragraphs look to the impartiality and fairness of the trial after the issue is joined. Paragraph eleventh defines the functions of the judicial committee ; the twelfth requires that a solemn charge be made to the members of the court as judges ; the thirteenth lays down the rule for the examination of witnesses ; the fourteenth prescribes how issues arising in the course of the trial shall be settled ; the fifteenth prescribes the order of procedure in the trial of a cause in a court of original jurisdiction ; the sixteenth lays down the rule to govern challenges ; the seventeenth states some requirements that a member must observe or lose his qualification for continuing as a judge in the cause ; the eighteenth defines the record of the cause and its uses ; the nineteenth gives directions as to counsel ; and the twentieth states and limits the time within which process must begin. These general regulations are not easily mastered and remembered always, but the observance of them is of great importance.
172.--I. It is incumbent on every member of a court of Jesus Christ engaged in a trial of offenders, to bear in mind the inspired injunction: "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted."
The trial proper begins with the charge of the Moderator to the court (183), while the process begins with the determination of the court that there shall be a judicial prosecution, and judicial procedure begins with the determination of the court to investigate ; but this principle, while especially imperative during the trial proper, applies throughout the whole judicial procedure, as indeed in all dealing with offenders.