John Macmillan joins the Societies

Without a minister

At the Revolution the Societies’ three ministers, Linning, Boyd and Shields, went over to the Established Church. The Reformed Presbytery’s Testimony of 1761 continues: “Thus, the poor people were again left destitute of ministers, and public gospel ordinances, until the Rev. Mr. John MacMillan acceded to them, from the public judicatories of the revolution church, in the year 1706.”¹

Kerr writes that the minority who kept apart “continued to meet in ‘Societies’ for sixteen years, when they were joined by a minister — Rev. John M’Millan — who was driven out of the Revolution Church because of his testimony for the whole Covenanted Reformation”. Hutchison: the Society people “had been destitute of the Gospel ministry for full sixteen years”.²

The minister of Balmaghie

Hutchison writes that Macmillan was born in 1669, studied at Edinburgh, “was licensed as a Probationer [a licensed preacher not yet ordained] by the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright in 1700, and in the following year he was ordained minister of the parish of Balmaghie”. The memorial brass in Balmaghie Church, printed by Reid, gives the same years: “Ordained minister of the Parish of Balmaghie 1701”.³

In 1702 the Synod of Galloway told its ministers to explain the National Covenant to their people. Macmillan, “with the consent of the Kirk Session, explained both Covenants, and at a congregational fast, he and his people renewed them by way of adherence.” In 1703, with Tod of Buittle and Reid of Carsphairn, he gave in to the Presbytery a paper of Grievances against the Church of the Revolution Settlement: its constitution on the Act of 1592, “passing by all the attainments of the Second Reformation”, the neglect of the Solemn League and Covenant, and the political oaths laid on ministers. The other two were persuaded to drop the matter; Macmillan was not.⁴

The Presbytery served a libel [formal charge] on him, and in December 1703, at Crossmichael, he “was unanimously deposed from the office of the ministry”. The Testimony puts it in its own words: the Church “framed and prosecuted a libel, most unjustly (some even of themselves being judges), against Mr. John McMillan, minister in Balmaghie, for presenting in a regular manner, a paper of real and acknowledged grievances; and, because he would not resile [draw back] from it, but continued to plead for a redress, was at last deposed.”⁵

Before the Commission of Assembly in 1704 he signed a submission, dated at Edinburgh “this eleventh day of July, 1704”, hoping to be restored to Balmaghie. He was not restored. In December 1704 he sent the Commission a “Protest and Appeal” that retracted it. In Reid’s words, it “renewed his former appeal to the first ‘free, faithful, and right constitute [rightly constituted]’ General Assembly”. His people kept him in the church, manse and glebe (the minister’s house and land) of Balmaghie.⁶

Talks with the General Meeting

The Societies’ minutes, which they called the “Conclusions”, first name him on 5 April 1704, when the General Meeting read a letter from him “desiring a conference”. On 31 January 1705 he came to a General Meeting at Crawfordjohn. His submission to the Commission was judged “very grievous and lamentable”, and, the minute says, “He was questioned if he had a desire to join this party. After a little waiving [holding back] of us … he showed his willingness to join with us.”⁷

The talks took more than a year. In April 1706 the Meeting was still not satisfied and resolved, “we adhere to our Testimony as stated; therefore, we remain as we were.” In June Macmillan said he was now clear on disowning the existing Government, and brought a paper, “Steps of Defection”, listing thirty-six evils in Church and State. At last, as Hutchison gives the minute, the Meeting answered him: “The Meeting, as one man, is satisfied as to what is past betwixt him and them.”⁸

At Crawfordjohn he signed two papers, which Hutchison prints from the Societies’ minute-book. In the first, dated 14 August 1706, he owned that he had “displeased the Godly Remnant and greatly offended them”, and bound himself to stand to the judgment of “any faithful, lawfully constituted Church Judicatory of Christ within this land when it shall happen to be”. The second, dated the next day, was his “Approbation of our Testimony”: “I, John M’Millan, minister at Balmaghie, heartily approve of, assent to and comply with all the Testimonies that have been carried on with respect to the Covenanted Reformation, and that in the by-past and present times by the honest godly and faithful Remnant against both Church and State, as they were and are agreeable to the Word of God and the Covenanted work of Reformation.”⁹

The Call

In October 1706 the Societies gave him a joint Call, signed by thirty-two men “of the United Societies and General Correspondences [the district groups of the Societies] of the Suffering Remnant of the true Presbyterian Church of Christ in Scotland, England, and Ireland”. As Reid prints it, they wrote: “Do hereby, in our name, and in the name of all our United Societies and Correspondences, give you our hearty and unanimous call to come forth and dispense the Gospel ordinances faithfully and freely to us; And we promise to hear and subject ourselves unto you as our faithful leader and pastor”.¹⁰

Among the signatories in Reid’s copy are John Currie and William Stewart, elders; Charles Umpherston, a surgeon at Pentland; Robert Smith, “preses” [chairman]; and Robert Hamilton, clerk.¹¹

The first preaching

Macmillan took time over the Call. A note in one copy of the Conclusions, which Hutchison quotes, says that “till about the end of December that year we had no preaching”. Then the Correspondences (district groups) of Nithsdale and Galloway passed word to the rest, and “we had a numerous congregation from all airths [directions], and a pleasant day of the Gospel; and on the Monday also, preaching, with baptizing of sundry children; after which, upon the clamant [urgent] call of the people, both east, west, north and south, he went through, preached and baptized”.¹²

Reid gives the day and place: “On December 2, 1706, the people assembled at Crawfordjohn.”¹³

Macmillan kept a register of the marriages and baptisms of his ministry. It opens with the decision that, there being no record of the ministers of the persecution, “the minister and elders have thought fit to set down the method in which they proceed with reference to their debarring and admitting to church privileges” [spelling modernised]. Its editor describes it as “the record of the marriages and baptisms of the Covenanter men and women and their children during the period of the ministrations of the Rev. John Macmillan … between the years 1706 and 1751.”¹⁴

The Protestation of 1708

John Macneil (also spelled Mackneil and M’Neil), a licentiate (a man licensed to preach, but not ordained) of the Established Church, joined Macmillan in the work. In 1708 the Commission of Assembly served libels on both. They answered with a joint “Protestation, Declinature [refusal of the court’s authority], and Appeal”, dated “Balmaghie Manse, Sept. 24th, 1708”. In it they said of the church courts: “we must, so long decline them, and hereby do decline them, as unfaithful judges in such matters”. Yet they would not be called separatists: “we appeal to the first free, faithful and rightly constitute [constituted] Assembly in this Church, to whose decision and sentence in the things lybelled [libelled: charged] against us we willingly refer ourselves”.¹⁵

On 1 October 1708, Hutchison writes, the Commission declared Macneil’s licence “null and void”, and he and Macmillan “are cast out of the Communion of the Church”. The Testimony says both were censured “not for scandal, insufficiency or negligence, error in doctrine, &c., but only on account of their pleading for the covenanted reformation of the Church of Scotland”, as appeared “from their paper of grievances and joint declinature, printed 1708”.¹⁶

Forty-seven years

Hutchison writes that “for the long period of forty-seven years he traversed the whole South of Scotland”, preaching in houses, barns and the open fields, so that his adherents “were as well known as M’Millanites, as Cameronians or Old Dissenters”. As ordained minister “he stood alone for nearly thirty-seven years”, helped in preaching for about thirty years by Macneil. Reid writes that he left Balmaghie between May and December 1727, and that the Societies built him a house at Braehead, in Dalserf, which he entered in 1734.¹⁷