Thomas M'Crie: III. Pastor of Potter-row.
As the name suggests, Thomas M’Crie did not minister in a fashionable part of Edinburgh. Nor was he ever to do so. Even when his biographies of the Scottish Reformers had made him a famous man he ministered in a nondescript chapel in a back street to the ordinary folk of the area. This was a great advantage to him as it required him to moderate his natural love of rhetorical display in the pulpit.
He was also a pastor in the best sense. Like Baxter’s ‘Reformed Pastor’ he visited his people in their crowded tenements and dark courtyards and wynds. He did not have any thought of the financial side except that he did not want to burden his people too much. When they proposed to increase his stipend in 1798 he thought they were already giving all they could afford and he begged them to delay until the increase would be possible without their denying themselves necessities. “Abound yet more and more in the fruits of righteousness,” he wrote to them. “Let me have joy in beholding your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ; and every other good thing shall, in due time, be added to me.”
But Thomas M’Crie was also forced to be for a time a man of strife. The matter of the Church’s ‘Testimony’ came before the synod for revision, amd M’Crie found himself in the minority.
The ‘Testimony’ of a Scottish Church is basically a statement of principles indicating where it differs from all the other Scottish Presbyterian Churches holding to the Westminster Confession of Faith. The Anti-burgher testimony included, among other points, a condemnation of ‘voluntaryism’, the idea that Church and State should be separate. The revisers wanted to omit that passage, among others. M’Crie thought it vital. In his opinion a healthy church-state relation was vital to the proper development of Christianity in a nation.
There were fierce debates in Synod, and finally the Revision was accepted. M’Crie and three other members of Synod protested against it. The Synod offered them the liberty to remain in the church holding their views so long as they did not speak against Voluntaryism. M’Crie refused, and he and his fellow protesters found themselves practically shut out of their own church.
What they did next we shall, God willing, see next time.
He was also a pastor in the best sense. Like Baxter’s ‘Reformed Pastor’ he visited his people in their crowded tenements and dark courtyards and wynds. He did not have any thought of the financial side except that he did not want to burden his people too much. When they proposed to increase his stipend in 1798 he thought they were already giving all they could afford and he begged them to delay until the increase would be possible without their denying themselves necessities. “Abound yet more and more in the fruits of righteousness,” he wrote to them. “Let me have joy in beholding your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ; and every other good thing shall, in due time, be added to me.”
But Thomas M’Crie was also forced to be for a time a man of strife. The matter of the Church’s ‘Testimony’ came before the synod for revision, amd M’Crie found himself in the minority.
The ‘Testimony’ of a Scottish Church is basically a statement of principles indicating where it differs from all the other Scottish Presbyterian Churches holding to the Westminster Confession of Faith. The Anti-burgher testimony included, among other points, a condemnation of ‘voluntaryism’, the idea that Church and State should be separate. The revisers wanted to omit that passage, among others. M’Crie thought it vital. In his opinion a healthy church-state relation was vital to the proper development of Christianity in a nation.
There were fierce debates in Synod, and finally the Revision was accepted. M’Crie and three other members of Synod protested against it. The Synod offered them the liberty to remain in the church holding their views so long as they did not speak against Voluntaryism. M’Crie refused, and he and his fellow protesters found themselves practically shut out of their own church.
What they did next we shall, God willing, see next time.
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