1844 THOMAS McCRIE. Fascinating Letter on Scottish Free Church & Original Secession Church Merger!

Alas, lacking the first, sheet, but still with substantive content and apparently unresearched and unpublished.  The substantial 1.5pp ALS dates to February of 1844 and is from Thomas McCrie [1797-1885] to Robert Shaw. Both were leaders in the Original Secession Church, an earlier iteration of Scottish Presbyterianism opposed to the formal ties between land, political office, and the church that was common in Scotland.  This was in essence the same cause that led to the Great Disruption of 1843, creating the Free Church of Scotland. This included people like Horatius Bonar, Thomas Chalmers, etc.,  Naturally, a new wave of dissenters, largely Presbyterian in nature, begged the question of union between the Original Secession Church [generally very rigid Calvinists] and the new Free Church, which had a greater diversity of views. The beginning of our letter seems to me to be alluding to the teachings of John McLeod Campbell. While Bonar did not share Mcleod Campbell's views, they had man