Thomas M'Crie: IV. The Rebel and the Writer.

Thomas M’Crie and three of his fellows had objected to the Anti-burgher Secession Church changing its Testimony so as to remove a commitment to the Establishment Principle. They were told in no uncertain terms that their silence on this theological point which was dear to them was the price of remaining in the denomination. It was a price they were not willing to pay, and they viwed themselves as already ejected de facto and in 1806 formed themselves into a Presbytery of their own, ‘The Constitutional Associate Presbytery’.M’Crie was seen as the ringleader and deposed from the ministry and put under a sentence of excommunication. Many in his congregation were outraged at such action, and some of them went to express their sympathy.
“I certainly looked for being suspended; I hardly expected they would proceed to this length: but what am I that I should be counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name?” was his reply.
Worse was to come. The Potter-row congregation were divided nearly equally over their pastor's stand, and both parties claimed the meeting-house. Sadly there was a lawsuit, and finally M’Crie’s supporters agreed to give up their claim in exchange for a sum of money in compensation. So they left their chapel to an obscure little place at the foot of Carruber’s Close, where in an ugly old chapel they worshipped as they had been accustomed to do.

Thomas M’Crie had studied the history of the Scottish Church dilligently, and it was now that he was the pastor of an obscure congregation, a secession from a secession, that his studies bore fruit. In the late eighteenth and early 19th century John Knox and the other Scottish Reformers were popularly seen as a band of narrow-minded bigots. M’Crie longed to change that perception and began to research the life of Knox. In 1811 the first edition of his ‘Life of John Knox’ was issued. It was a best-seller. The reviews praised its historical accuracy and attention to detail, and when the University of Edinburgh discovered that the author was one of its graduates it awarded him the honourary degree of Doctor of Divinity.
But the greatest honour M’Crie recived was from his favourite professor, Dugald Stewart. One Lord’s Day Stewart was confined to bed with sickness and his old servant John had stayed home from church to look after him. Needing help Stewart rang the bell, but there was no answer. He rang several more times, but still with no response. Rising from his bed the professor descended the stairs to find John absorbed in a book. Stewart shook his servant’s shoulder and asked what the book that had so captivated him was. “Why, sir, it is a book that my minister has written, and it really is a grand one,” the servant said. It was M’Crie’s life of Knox. Stewart borrowed it and found that it was every bit as rivetting as John had found it. Stewart wrote a letter to the author praising it.
So Thomas M’Crie, excommunicated pastor of a rebel congregation, became a household name. Of which more, God willing, next time.