Reading John H. Thomson’s Articles on M‘Millan with Proper Perspective
James Dodson
John H. Thomson’s articles on the Rev. John M‘Millan are valuable, but they must be read with discrimination. They are not hostile to the Covenanter cause in the crude sense. Indeed, Thomson preserves much that is useful: he vindicates M‘Millan against the injustice of the Kirkcudbright Presbytery, gives important documentary material, recognizes real defects in the Revolution Settlement, and shows that M‘Millan’s course was not the work of a restless schismatic, but of a minister burdened by conscience and by the public defections of Church and State. For these reasons, the articles should not be dismissed.
Yet they must not be read as if Thomson’s interpretive frame were identical with the older Covenanter testimony. Thomson writes from within a later nineteenth-century Reformed Presbyterian atmosphere, when many were trying to soften the sharper edges of the historic testimony and to prepare the mind of the Church for broader Presbyterian sympathy, if not union. This causes him to read earlier history through a lens of moderation. He often values the old witnesses, but he does not always judge their testimony by their own principles.
The reader must therefore distinguish between Thomson’s materials and Thomson’s conclusions. His quotations, documents, dates, and narrative details are often profitable. His judgments are more uneven. He is strongest when he shows that M‘Millan was unjustly deposed, that the charges against him failed, and that his real offence was his public adherence to the covenanted work of Reformation. He is weakest when he treats strict adherence to the Covenants, the Auchensaugh Renovation, and the older terms of communion as though they were relics of a bygone age rather than continuing public obligations.
The chief danger is that the reader may come away thinking that the Covenanter testimony was chiefly a temporary protest, useful for its time but properly softened by later progress. That is the wrong conclusion. The older testimony was not merely an historical grievance against certain abuses of the Revolution Church. It was a judicial witness for the continued obligation of the National Covenant and Solemn League, for Christ’s headship over Church and nation, and against the constitutional settlement which failed to own the covenanted Reformation.
This is especially evident in Thomson’s treatment of the Union of 1707 and the Auchensaugh Renovation. Where he speaks as though time had proved many old objections unnecessary or imaginary, the Covenanter reader must pause. The question is not whether the Union brought wealth, offices, peace, or civil advantage. The question is whether it preserved or betrayed Scotland’s covenanted obligations. Likewise, Auchensaugh may be historically difficult, and its documents require careful handling, but it cannot be reduced to a fossil if the Covenants bind posterity.
The profitable way to read Thomson, then, is to use him as a witness, not as a master. Receive his facts; weigh his documents; appreciate his defence of M‘Millan where he is just; but do not let his nineteenth-century moderation redefine the testimony of the earlier sufferers and contendings. Read him beside the original papers, the Acts of the Societies, the Auchensaugh Renovation, the terms of communion, and the martyr testimony. When Thomson confirms these, use him gratefully. When he explains them away, resist him.
This matters because historical reading is never neutral. If the reader adopts Thomson’s softening frame, the Covenanter cause becomes a noble but outdated protest movement. If the reader reads him by the principles of the covenanted Reformation itself, the same articles become useful evidence that M‘Millan and the Societies were contending for a continuing obligation, not merely preserving an antique memory. Properly read, Thomson helps us see both the providential preservation of the testimony and the later tendency to domesticate it.