As for patronage, Macleod was probably willing that it should be abolished altogether, but he could not support the veto in defiance of the declared law of the Church. ‘I’m desperate keen for gude reform,’ says _Saunders_ again, ‘and would like the folk to hae mair poo’er, but I would like to get it in a legal way.’ Macleod believed that the Establishment was necessary for the religious welfare of the country, and saw nothing that was worth the risk of its existence. Not till it became evident that the non-intrusionists were bent on destroying the Church did he join in the conflict. ‘It will be our bounden duty,’ one of the leaders had said, ‘to use every effort that if we be driven out, they shall be driven out too; it is our bounden duty to bear this testimony that the Church ought to be established on the principles which we are contending for, or that there should be no establishment in the land at all.’ When things like that were being said, Macleod, in alarm, plunged into the whole literature of the controversy. The position he reached was this, that when there was a dispute as to the privileges granted by the State to the Church, it was for the civil court to interpret the terms of the contract. He became one of the Forty, a set of Independents, whose chief distinction is that they promoted parliamentary legislation for the reform of patronage. While opposed to the revolutionary policy, they were not Moderates, for they countenanced some of the acts of the majority. They were as little for Erastus as for Hildebrand.
A non-intrusionist deputation came to Newmilns. Macleod allowed them to harangue in the church, but he took care to be present, and when they invited the auditors to sign certain resolutions, springing up, he asked the people to wait till they heard from their minister the other side of the question. ‘The evening came, and the church was crammed with all sects and parties. I do believe I never had a greater pressure on my soul than I had before this meeting. I did not so much possess the subject as the subject possessed me. Between anxiety to do right and a feeling of degradation that I should be looked upon by even one Christian brother as inimical to the Church of Scotland, not to speak of the Church of Christ, I was so overcome that during the singing of the psalm--