Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland

McGill, Martha

doi:10.2307/j.ctv1ntjbq

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“…She passed to heaven when the business was resolved. 135 In 1811 the author Anne MacVicar Grant reported a story about a sister who was devastated by the death of her brother. She sat up every night to cry his name 'in frantic agony'.…”

Section: Ghosts Had Largely Been Rejected By Protestants After the Rementioning

confidence: 99%

A Protestant Purgatory? Visions of an Intermediate State in Eighteenth-century Scotland

McGill¹

2018

The Scottish Historical Review

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The protestant afterlife is generally presented in binary terms, with departed souls going directly to either heaven or hell. However, the possible existence of an intermediate state for the dead was discussed by protestant theologians from the reformation onwards. This article traces the evolution of these debates in Scotland, with particular focus on the eighteenth century. The bishops Archibald Campbell, Thomas Rattray and George Innes produced tracts in support of the intermediate state. By the end of the century it had become a standard element of doctrine among the episcopalians, reflecting the formation of a more distinctive theological and liturgical identity, based on the teachings of the early church fathers. Presbyterians generally dismissed the idea as a papish conceit, but there were exceptions. Most notably, in the 1720s the minister William Ogilvie described a series of meetings with the ghost of Thomas Maxwell, Laird of Cool. His account framed the intermediate state as a sympathetic alternative to calvinist predestination, and spread to a wide audience when it was printed as a chapbook. As the episcopalian church declined and the Church of Scotland fragmented, there was greater scope for individuals to formulate their own theologies, potentially challenging traditional notions of what it meant to be a protestant.

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Section: Ghosts Had Largely Been Rejected By Protestants After the Rementioning

confidence: 99%