[bourinot] 



BUILDERS OF NOVA SCOTIA 



S7 



of Cunard, Morrow, Henry, Eitchie and Sangster, are connected with 

 him through his daughters/ 



The most prominent clergymen long identified with the early develop- 

 ment of Presbyterianism, were the Eeverend Drs. MacGregor and 

 MacCulloch of Pictou. The Secession Church arose in 1733 out of the 

 hostility of a few conscientious ministers of the established Church of 

 Scotland to the corrupting influences of a system of patronage which 

 facilitated the growth of a time-serving and ignorant ministry, and also 

 in the course of time divided into what were known as Burghers and 

 Antiburghers. These difterences of opinion actually anticipated that 

 momentous controversy which agitated the Church of Scotland many 

 years later with regard to the freedom of the church from all dependence 

 on the civil power. The origin of these names is explained by Dr. Patter- 



REVEREND DR. MACCULLOCH. 



son in his life of Dr. MacGregor, of whom he was a grandson. It 

 appears that the burgesses of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth were 

 required by the law to take an oath, in which there was this reli- 

 gious clause : " Here I protest before God and your Lordships, that 

 I profess and allow with my heart the true religion presently pro- 

 fessed within this realm, and authorized by the laws thereof ; I shall 

 abide thereat and defend the same to my life's end, renouncing the Eoman 

 religion called Papistry." Dr. Patterson explains that this clause was 

 held by some ministers and elders " as implying an approval of the cor- 

 ruptions of the Church of Scotland against which the Secession was 

 testifying, and they therefore refused to take the oath ; but others held 

 that it only meant the true religion itself in opposition to that of the 



1 See a short paper oa Reverend James Murdoch in the Collections of the N. S. 

 Hist. Soc, vol. II. 



