The Breach: Burghers and Anti-Burghers

The burgess oath

A burgess [a freeman of a town] in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth swore an oath with this clause: “Here I protest before God and your Lordships that I profess and allow with my heart, the true religion presently professed within this realm, and authorised by the laws thereof: I shall abide thereat, and defend the same to my life’s end, renouncing the Roman religion called papistry.”¹

The question was raised at the first meeting of the Associate Synod, at Stirling in March 1745, by an overture from the Presbytery of Dunfermline. M’Kerrow writes that one party held that swearing the clause “was equivalent to giving a solemn approbation of those corruptions that prevailed in the Established Church, and against which the Secession had publicly testified”; the other, that it bound the swearer “to approve of the true religion itself … but did not bind him to approve of the manner in which it might be settled and professed”.²

Adam Gib, as M’Kerrow quotes him, held that the clause “doth materially and plainly amount unto a solemn abjuration of the whole Secession Testimony”. Archibald Hall answered that “The original design of that clause is manifest from the tenor of the clause itself, viz. to exclude papists from becoming burgesses.”³

The decision of April 1746

After delays through 1745, the Synod decided in April 1746, M’Kerrow writes, that “those of the Secession cannot further, with safety of conscience, and without sin, swear any burgess-oath with the said religious clause”. The motion “was carried by a majority of thirteen to nine”. Ralph Erskine, James Fisher, William Hutton, Henry Erskine and John M’Cara, ministers, with two elders, protested. Cunningham writes that “Nearly a half of the synod protested against it.”⁴

In September 1746 the Synod debated whether that decision should be “a term of ministerial and christian communion” [a condition of membership] and delayed; Ebenezer Erskine, who had been absent in April, now joined the protest against it.⁵

The Synod of April 1747

M’Kerrow writes that the Synod “assembled at Edinburgh, on the 7th of April 1747”. “Out of thirty-two ministers belonging to the Synod, twenty-nine were present”, with twenty-seven elders; James Mair presided as moderator. He prints the names from the Synod’s records, among them Alexander Moncrieff of Abernethy, Ebenezer Erskine of Stirling, James Fisher of Glasgow, Ralph Erskine of Dunfermline, Adam Gib of Edinburgh and Thomas Mair of Orwell.⁶

The motion was that the decision of April 1746 should not be made a term of communion until it had been referred “by way of overture unto presbyteries and kirk-sessions [boards of elders]”. On 9 April Adam Gib and then Alexander Moncrieff protested against putting it to the vote; Moncrieff protested “That this meeting is not, nor ought to be held and reputed a due and lawfully constituted meeting of the Associate Synod in this step”.⁷

The question was put and carried. M’Kerrow counts: “Of fifty-five members who were present, only twenty (nine ministers and eleven elders) voted on this question, and all of them gave their vote in favour of the decision that was carried; twenty-three (thirteen ministers and ten elders) having previously protested against putting the question, did not consider themselves at liberty to give any vote”. MacPherson gives the same twenty-three and twenty.⁸

Thomas Mair then read a protest declaring “That the lawful authority and power of the Associate Synod is devolved upon, and must lie in a constitute meeting of the foresaid members”, and calling them to meet “to-morrow at ten of the clock forenoon, in Mr Gib’s house”. M’Kerrow writes that “Mr Mair and the twenty-two protesters who adhered to him left the house.” Those who remained appointed a day of fasting, because the Lord “had divided them in his anger”.⁹

On 10 April the protesters met in Gib’s house, constituted by Thomas Mair, and passed an Act finding “That they are the only lawful and rightly constitute Associate Synod”. M’Kerrow dates “the division … on the 9th of April, 1747”.¹⁰

Two Synods

From then on, M’Kerrow writes, there were two Secession Synods: “the General Associate, or, as it was ordinarily termed, Antiburgher Synod”, and “the Associate, or, as it was ordinarily termed … Burgher Synod.” MacPherson names Adam Gib as leader of the Anti-Burghers, with Alexander Moncrieff, and the Erskines and James Fisher on the side of the Burghers. Cunningham writes that “each party claimed to be the true Associate Synod.”¹¹

The Anti-Burgher Synod libelled [formally charged] the Burgher ministers and deposed them. M’Kerrow writes that in August 1749 it passed “the sentence of the greater excommunication” on Ralph Erskine, James Fisher and William Hutton, and on the others in February 1750; MacPherson writes that in August 1749 it was passed “upon all the ministerial members of the Burgher Synod”.¹²

The two Synods were reunited on 8 September 1820, in Bristo Street Church, where, M’Kerrow notes, “the separation had taken place seventy-three years before”.¹³