Thomas M'Crie the Elder
Thomas M'Crie (sometimes known as Thomas McCree or Maccrae) (November 17725 August 1835) was a Scottish biographer and ecclesiastical historian, writer, and preacher born in the town of Duns, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. He became the leading minister of the United Secession Church. His Life of Knox (1813) ranks high among biographies for the ability and learning which it displays, and was the means of vindicating the great Reformer from a cloud of prejudice and misunderstanding in which he had been enveloped. It was followed by a Life of Andrew Melville (1819), Knox 's successor as the leader of the Reformers in Scotland, also a work of great merit. M'Crie also published histories of the Reformation in Italy and Spain. He received an honorary degree of D.D. in 1813, the first Secession minister, to receive such an award. Early life and education. Thomas M'Crie (called the Elder to avoid confusion with his son "the Younger") was a Scottish seceding divine and ecclesiastical historian. He, (the Elder) was himself the eldest son of Thomas McCrie, a substantial linen-weaver, by his first wife Mary (Hood), was born at Duns, Berwickshire, in November 1772. After  passing through the parish school, he became an elementary teacher in neighbouring schools. In 1788 he entered at the Edinburgh University, but did not graduate which was not uncommon at the time. He became, in May 1791, teacher of an Anti-burgher school at Brechin, Forfarshire. To qualify himself for the ministry, he studied divinity under Archibald Bruce of Whitburn, Linlithgowshire, professor of theology to the General Associate Synod (anti-burgher). He was licensed in September 1795 by the Associate Presbytery of Kelso, and ordained on 26 May 1796 as minister of the second associate congregation in Potterrow, Edinburgh. He  early showed both literary and controversial ability. New testimony controversy. Since 1747, when the General Associate Synod seceded from the Associate Synod on the ground of the unlawfulness of the civic oath [see literature about Ebenezer Erskine and Adam Gib], changes had come over the minds of the Anti-burghers on the question of the mutual relations of civil and ecclesiastical authority. From the position that the civil power is to exercise itself in church matters under the guidance of ecclesiastical criticism, they had advanced to a view of the complete independence of church and state, and consequent denial of  any place for civil authority in church affairs. This change of front was signalized by a 'new testimony,' adopted by the synod in May 1804. Bruce, McCrie, and two other ministers made repeated protests against this 'new testimony' as at variance with the older standards. At length, on 28 August 1806, they formed themselves into a "Constitutonal Associate Presbytery". The synod deposed them (McCrie on 2 September) from the ministry. A lawsuit resulted (24 February 1809) in McCrie's ejection from the Potterrow meeting-house, when his congregation built a new one in Davie Street, out of West Richmond Street  in Edinburgh. In 1827 the "Constitutional" body, joined by protesting members of the Burgher Synod, took the name of Original Seceders. Church historian. McCrie was drawn by this conflict about the first principles of ecclesiastical theory to a thorough and searching study of Scottish church history, in its organic connection with the national life, and with the general development of protestant civilisation. The first fruit of his labour was the life of Knox, finished in November 1811, which made its mark at once as a work of genius as well as of erudition, and has permanently placed its author in  the front rank of British writers on church history. Its breadth of treatment was something new in ecclesiastical biography. It effected a revolution in the public estimate of its subject, akin to that achieved by Carlyle's 'Cromwell,' though by different means. McCrie is not a showman with a hero on view, but an historian of principles and policy. His biography of Melville (November 1819) pursues the theme of the Scottish national career under the influence of the Reformation. The post-Reformation church history of Scotland he did not treat with the same fulness: his life of Alexander Henderson, in  the 'Christian Instructor,' vol. x., is little more than a personal sketch. Later he broke new ground in his histories of the Italian (1827) and Spanish (1829) movements of evangelical and free opinion at the era of the Reformation; which nothing is more admirable than the fairness of his dealing with schools of thought very different from his own. It is to be lamented that he did not live to execute a projected life of Calvin. 'His literary genius,' says Professor Lorimer, 'was neither wholly historical nor wholly biographical, but found congenial employment in biographical history or historical biography, buying  equal delight in the personal traits and minute facts appropriate to the one, and in the broad views and profound principles characteristic of the other. It is not often that biographers make good historians, or that historians are equally great in biography, but be was equally great in both' (Imperial Dict. of Biog. pt. xiii. p. 265). Divinity professor. On 3 February 1813 the Edinburgh University made him D.D., a degree often conferred on English nonconformists, but never before on a Scottish dissenter. After the death of Bruce, in 1816, McCrie acted till 1818 as his successor in the chair  of divinity. Coincidently with his entrance on this office he published in the 'Christian Instructor' (January-March 1817) a powerful critique on Sir Walter Scott's representations of the covenanters (in Old Mortality), in which he proved himself a better antiquary than the great novelist (Scott, Journal, ii. 404 n.) Subsequently he published, either separately in magazines, a number of biographies and reviews of biographies, chiefly Scottish. Death and burial. McCrie died at Edinburgh on 5 Aug. 1835, and was buried on 12 Aug. in Greyfriars' churchyard; a deputation from the general assembly of the church of Scotland attended funeral . Family. He married, Works. The chief of them was an "Account of the concluding part of the Life and the Death of that illustrious man, John Knox, the most faithful Restorer of the Church of Scotland", being a translation from the work of Principal Smeton. It also included a "Memoir of Mr. John Murray", minister of Leith and Dunfermline, in the beginning of the 17th century; a "Sketch of the Progress of the Reformation in Spain, with an account of the Spanish Protestant Martyrs; The Suppression of the Reformation in Spain"; the "Life of Dr. Andrew Rivet", the French Protestant  minister; the "Life of Patrick Hamilton"; the "Life of Francis Lambert, of Avignon"; and the "Life of Alexander Henderson". The journal in which they appeared was of limited circulation, and its literary merits were little appreciated so that these admirable articles were scarcely known beyond the small circle of subscribers to the "Christian Magazine", most of whom were Seceders.