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
Episcopal 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 (published as "The Church's Danger"). 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 (see
United Presbyterian Church of Scotland for
Seceders history). In 1737 he wrote one of his most famous and most reprinted works ''The Afflicted Man's Companion
, and also an explanation of the Shorter Catechism called An Example of Plain Catechising
. Other catechetical pieces published by Willison at different times were The Mother's Catechism'' (a famous and much used young children's catechism) and ''The Young Communicant's Catechism''. In 1742 he published another much printed work,
The Balm of Gilead which includes twenty-four discourses, twelve of them relating to
The Lord's Supper. In 1744 there followed his
Fair and Impartial Testimony on the state of the Church of Scotland. During the
Jacobite rebellion of 1745, having published in the same year
Popery Another Gospel, he was threatened by soldiers of the
Highland army while conducting service in the church building and for a few weeks had to preach in private houses. His last publication was
Sacramental Meditations and Advices (1747). ==Selected writings==