Cameron and the Society People, afterward known as the Cameronians, have been severely criticised for their exclusiveness.  They refused to hold fellowship with the Indulged ministers who had assented to the king’s supremacy over the Church, and likewise with the Field-ministers, who had become mute on the Covenanted testimony.  They are often represented as having been stern, censorious, and uncharitable in the extreme.  A glance at Cameron’s commission will show how baseless is the charge.

Richard Cameron received ordination in Holland, four months after the battle of Bothwell Bridge.  The ordination service was very solemn and touching.  The presbytery felt that they were commissioning a servant of God to do a work that would cost his life.  While the ministers rented their hands on Cameron’s head in the act of ordination, he was told by one of them, that the head whereon their hands were laid would one day be severed from his body and set up before the sun and moon for public view.  Such was the vision of blood that moved before his eyes during the eight months of his ministry.  At that same time he received also the exhortation:  “Go, Richard; the public Standard of the Gospel is fallen in Scotland; go home and lift the fallen Standard, and display it publicly before the world.  But before you put your hand to it, go to as many of the Field-ministers as you can find, and give them your hearty invitation to go with you.”

True to his commission Cameron went.  He sought out the Field-ministers.  They now numbered about sixty.  These were keeping close to their hiding-places; their voices scarcely went beyond the mouth of their caves; they counted their blood more valuable than their testimony for Christ and His Covenant.  Twenty years of unabating hardships had unnerved them; the late avalanche of the king’s wrath had overwhelmed them; they were mostly mute in witnessing for Christ, as the rocks behind which they were hiding.

Of the sixty ministers Cameron found only two who were willing to stand with him and hold up the Banner of the Covenant before the eyes of the nation.  One of these, Thomas Douglas, quickly disappeared leaving Cameron and Cargill alone to lead the Covenanted people of God in the fight that was growing harder every day.  These two dauntless ministers of Christ accepted the responsibility, knowing too well the price to be paid was their own blood.  And they have been censured for their exclusiveness.

Twenty years previous, the Covenanted ministers numbered one thousand.  More than half of these had violated the Covenant by a resolution in 1650, to open the offices of public trust to men without moral qualification.  Will the minority be censured for not following them?  In 1662, the ministerial brotherhood was again rent in twain by the king’s decree requiring them to submit, or quit the manse.  Four hundred refused to comply.  Will they be censured for withdrawing from their brethren who remained?  In later years the Indulgences followed, one after another, capturing all except sixty.  Will the sixty be censured for not following the others in submitting to the king’s supremacy over the Church?  And now all but two suspend the public testimony for Christ’s crown.  Will the two be censured for separating from the sixty, and holding forth the Banner of Christ?