John Willison

Who was John Willison?

John Willison was an evangelical minister of the Church of Scotland and a writer of Christian literature.

His father was laird of a small property near Stirling, where John Willison was born. He was inducted to the parish of Brechin as minister in 1703. In 1718 he moved to a charge in Dundee.

His treatise on the sanctification of the Lord's day was in response to the policies of James VI and the Episcopalian clergy. It provoked a reply from James Small, an Episcopalian, which was answered by Willison in his Letter from a Parochial Bishop to a Prelatical Gentleman. After this, he wrote a devotional work: A Sacramental Directory. Small replied to his earlier Letter, upon which Willison published An Apology for the Church of Scotland. He then moved on to political topics with A Letter to an English Member of Parliament.

After the ejection of Ebenezer Erskine and his fellow-ministers for opposition to patronage, Willison attacked their exclusion in a sermon to the Synod of Angus and Mearns in 1733. He tried to win them back and a majority was gained in the General Assembly of 1734 as a healing measure. As a result Willison was sent to London as part of a deputation to labour for the repeal of patronage, but they were only successful insofar as they gained some important concessions. Erskine and his colleagues were not satisfied and formed a separate presbytery in 1739.