History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church 1733-1900: Volume II – Rev Robert Small, D.D. (1904)
pp428-430
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Transcript: [Last Paragraph of p429] There is a blank in the records now, but we know from other sources that Mr John Brown was called to Stow when a preacher, and that the Presbytery of Edinburgh appointed him to Haddington. His preferences are said to have lain in the other direction, but he was too loyal to the Church Courts, and too lowly in his own esteem, to utter a murmur. This congregation then called Mr David Forrest, but he was a young man of a very different stamp unruly, crotchety, and impracticable. Midholm came in shortly after, but the Presbytery of Edinburgh gave the preference to Stow, saving them from a second disappointment, and the Synod confirmed this determination in opposition to Mr Forrest’s declared wishes. From “Memoirs of his Life and Contendings”; we get insight into his mental exercise at this time, and the ingenuity with which he conjured up reasons for refusing compliance. For one thing, he fell back on an Act of Assembly more than a century old, which ordained that no preacher was to be eligible for a call until he had been at least half-a-year in public service. He also told the Synod, he said, that he could see no difference between intruding a congregation upon a minister and intruding a minister upon a congregation. Then further: “The people of Stow, seeing no appearance of my submitting to that settlement, gave up with their call in harvest 1754, and the Synod admonished and rebuked me, and put down in their Minutes that I submitted, which was not fact.”; He was ordained at Inverkeithing, and, so far as Mr Forrest was concerned, the Synod had rest for some time. |
