The division of 1753 and Macmillan’s death

Fraser of Brea’s Treatise

In 1749 a book was published at Edinburgh that James Fraser of Brea had written while a prisoner on the Bass Rock: A Treatise on Justifying Faith. It carried an Appendix “concerning the Extent of Christ’s Death”. Couper writes that its doctrine, “especially its treatment of the extent of the Atonement as set forth in the Appendix, found a ready reception from some.”¹

In the year the book appeared the Presbytery agreed four propositions against its errors. One of them, as Hutchison and Reid give it, was “That the Lord Jesus Christ represented and died upon the cross only in the room and stead of a select number of mankind.” James Hall, licensed in 1750, took up Fraser’s views. Macmillan, past eighty and often unable to attend, pressed the matter on his brethren by letter.²

The meeting of 7 April 1753

The Presbytery met on 7 April 1753. Couper places the meeting at Brownhill, in the parish of Bothwell, and Reid, following Umpherston, at Brounhill; Hutchison places it in Edinburgh. Four ministers and five elders were present. Nairn had left the Church under scandal, Marshall was ill, and Cuthbertson had gone to America. Hugh Innes was moderator.³

After long debate, Couper writes, the question was framed: “Whether Mr Fraser’s maintaining, That the Lord Jesus Christ satisfied for the sins of all mankind so that this satisfaction might be competent to be proposed to them in the Gospel, and pleaded by them for their justification; and that this satisfaction is the ground and formal reason upon which faith is founded, be a dangerous doctrine.” The two Macmillans, father and son, and three elders voted that it was; Hall and two elders voted against. Couper and Hutchison write that Innes, as moderator, did not vote, though he sided with the minority; Reid counts Innes among those who voted.⁴

When the court met again the minority tried to reopen the vote. Failing, they declared it null, and that “the reverend Messrs Hugh Innes, moderator, James Hall, minister, Adam Reid, ruling elder, Mr John Cameron, ruling elder and clerk, pro tempore [for the time being],” were “the essential part of this Presbytery.” Hutchison and Reid write that they then closed the meeting and left, carrying the Presbytery’s records with them, which were never recovered. Couper writes that the majority “resumed their places and continued the sederunt [sitting] as the Presbytery.”⁵

Two presbyteries

Couper: “The breach was complete, and from that time the two parties each went its own way, each claiming to be the true Reformed Presbytery.” The minority, Hutchison writes, took the name of the Reformed Presbytery of Edinburgh. Both sides published their case: the minority The True State of the Difference (1753), and the majority A Serious Examination and Impartial Survey (1754), which Hutchison and Couper think was written by the younger Macmillan.⁶

The Presbytery’s Testimony of 1761 recalls the division in its Introduction: “the lamentable fire of division, that had long been smothered, unhappily broke forth into a violent flame, whereby the presbytery was rent asunder, and that brother, on whom the appointment [to draft the Testimony] was formerly laid, happening to be of the separating party, a second stop was … put to the publication of this testimony”. In the Testimony itself the Presbytery declared its adherence to “the Act formerly emitted by this presbytery, in condemnation of the universal scheme.”⁷

Macmillan’s last days

The account of his death was written by Charles Umpherston, a surgeon and one of the signatories of the Call of 1706, and printed as an appendix to his Observations on a Wolf in a Sheepskin (1753). Reid quotes it at length. Near the end Macmillan said that “he was fully persuaded of the Equity of the Covenanted Cause, and the Work of Reformation carried on from 1638 to 1649”, and that “were he to begin his Life again, he durst not counteract what he had done, in bearing testimony for these Truths that had been sealed by the Blood of a noble cloud of Witnesses”. Umpherston writes that “he heartily and freely forgave Mess. J. H-l, H. In-s, and A. W-t … what they had done against him” (Hall, Innes and A. Wright, Reid explains).⁸

On his last evening he asked for the first five verses of Psalm 103 to be sung, for John 10 and 1 Peter 1 to be read, and for the last verse of the metrical Psalm 42. Hutchison and Umpherston both record his last words: “My Lord, my God, my Redeemer, yea, mine own God is He.”⁹

Umpherston gives the date: “Thus comfortably … and joyfully, he resigned his Soul to God, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, on Saturday the 20th Day of November, O.S. [Old Style: the older calendar, eleven days behind the New Style], 1753.” Hutchison gives the same day, “on the 20th of November, 1753, O.S., at the age of eighty-four”. By the New Style, Reid notes, it was past midnight on the first day of December, and Couper dates his death “December 1”.¹⁰

Couper writes that he died “at Broomhill, which was apparently his place of residence”, and the memorial brass at Balmaghie, printed by Reid, says “Died at Broomhill, Bothwell, 1753”. Hutchison has him die “at his residence at Braehead, in the parish of Dalserf”. He was buried in Dalserf churchyard.¹¹

Hutchison sums up: “For the long period of forty-seven years he had consecrated all his time and energy to the ministry of the Word, and to the maintenance of a public testimony in behalf of the principles of the covenanted Reformation, in connection with the United Societies; and reckoning from his ordination at Balmaghie, his ministry extended over fifty-two years.” The brass reads: “Accepted the Pastorate of the United Societies 1706: Which office he laboriously discharged for 47 years”. The register of his marriages and baptisms runs from 1706 to 1751.¹²