The Reformed Presbytery

Thomas Nairn

Hutchison and Reid both write that Thomas Nairn was ordained minister of Abbotshall in 1710 and joined the Associate Presbytery (the Secession) in 1737; he was then minister at Linktown. When the Associate Presbytery prepared to renew the Covenants, it proposed to confess “the dangerous extreme that some have gone into, of impugning the present civil authority over these nations, and subjection thereto in lawful commands”. Nairn dissented, and in December 1742 gave in his “Reasons of Dissent”.¹

Hutchison writes that in February 1743 the Presbytery required him to withdraw them. He answered with a “Protest and Appeal”: “I do further appeal from them … to the first free and faithful judicatory of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I hereby secede from the Presbytery”, and left the court. MacPherson writes that Nairn left the Secession “in 1743, having adopted the views of the Old Dissenters or Cameronians”.²

The General Meeting of 4 April 1743

The last of the Conclusions in the regular series, dated 4 April 1743, records that the Meeting read Nairn’s paper, “An account of his secession from the Associate Presbytery and grounds thereof,” and, “finding that our Testimony is followed therein and boldly asserted”, “resolved to give the said Rev. Mr Nairn a call as our pastor, which they did.”³

The minute goes on: “it being moved by several of the Correspondents, if, now when we have two ministers of the Gospel … they might, with elders, constitute themselves into a Presbytery for ordination and other acts of Church government and discipline, it was carried unanimously; but on account of the greatness of the work … was taken into further consideration till the next General Meeting”. All the elders were to attend, and “secrecy in the matter is strictly recommended to the whole community.”⁴

Braehead, 1 August 1743

No minute of the next meeting survives. The date comes from Nairn himself, in the preface to the sermon he preached at the ordination of Alexander Marshall on 15 November 1744: “The Rev. Mr John M’Millan and I, in conjunction with certain elders, upon the 1st of August, 1743, did erect ourselves into a Presbytery under the name of ‘The Reformed Presbytery.’”⁵

All four accounts place it at Braehead; Hutchison and Reid say it was where Macmillan lived. They put Braehead in different parishes: Dalserf (Hutchison; Reid, who calls the house “Braehead of Dalserf”) or Carnwath (Naismith; Keddie, “near Carnwath”). Hutchison adds that the Presbytery afterwards often met there.⁶

The year is also given by Cunningham, who writes that Nairn, “joined to M’Millan and some ruling elders, enabled a presbytery to be formed in 1743, under the name of the Reformed Presbytery”, and by Couper: “In 1743 they had set up the Reformed Presbytery.”⁷

Hutchison explains the name: they were “thorough Presbyterians in principle”, and the word “Reformed” was prefixed “to indicate that they claimed to stand in a specially close connection with the Presbyterianism of the Second Reformation, holding fast to all its attainments both in Church and State.” He writes that since the Restoration there had been no presbytery “which the Societies could own as a free and faithful judicatory”, and that the step went beyond anything “contemplated at the organization of the United Societies in 1681”, whose first purpose had been to stand apart for a time and wait.⁸

The first years

Alexander Marshall was the Presbytery’s first licentiate (the first man it licensed to preach) and was ordained in 1744. Couper and Reid give the later ordinations: John Cuthbertson in 1747, James Hall and Macmillan’s son John in 1750, and Hugh Innes in 1751. Hutchison writes that Cuthbertson “went to America”, and that the ministers were not yet settled in congregations but were “ministers at large”, preaching in the open air, in barns and in farm kitchens.⁹

In 1745 the Covenants were renewed again, and the Lord’s Supper observed; the Testimony of 1761 names the place, Crawfordjohn. The Presbytery’s minutes for its first years are lost; the General Meetings went on for some time beside it, the latest known minute being of August 1759.¹⁰

The Presbytery’s own Testimony says that, “soon after their erection, being convinced of the expediency and necessity of emitting a judicial testimony, to discover to the world the principles upon which, as a judicatory of the Lord Jesus Christ, they stood”, they appointed one of their number to draft it, until he cut off their hopes “by laying himself obnoxious [liable] to the censures of the church”. Hutchison names him as Nairn. The Testimony was not finished until 1761.¹¹

The Associate Synod did not let Nairn go quietly. Hutchison writes that he was deposed in January 1748 and, in February 1750, sentenced with others to the greater excommunication, which, Hutchison explains, declared them “cast out of the communion of the Church of Christ”.¹²