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The theology and theologians of Scotland (1872)
The theology and theologians of Scotland - 1872 Author:James Walker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: was printed in Amsterdam as late as 1700. Among the Dutch divines he was ever ' eminentissimus Calder- wood.' Calderwood lived to see the principles for which he... more » had suffered, and which he had so powerfully vindicated, in complete ascendency. He was present at the Glasgow Assembly in 1638, and saw Prelacy and the Ceremonies swept away. The clouds were gathering again before he died. He breathed his last at Jed- burgh, a fugitive from his parish of Pencaitland; and they laid him in the churchyard of Crailing, where the first, and very likely the happiest, years of his ministry were spent. And so we come down to the theologians of the so- called second Reformation. To this period belong Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie, Baillie, David Dickson, Blair, Durham, Gray, Binning, Hutchison, Ferguson, James Wood, William Guthrie, Patrick Gillespie, and many others. Samuel Rutherford I have put first on this list, and perhaps he is the greatest. To most of us it is likely he is best known by his letters,—letters which, I may say, stand all alone in religious literature,—to some as bright with unearthly glory, to others as offending against all sacred proprieties. Yet all will admit there is something about them sui generis. Condemn their taste if you will, you cannot but own that they contain flashes of real, if unregulated, genius. So far as I know, they are the only letters two centuries old which are still a practical reality in the religious life of Scotland, England, and America. And criticism cannot get rid of the fact that they continue to retain their hold of human hearts,—that they have won a place for themselves beside such books as Augustine's Confessions or Thomas a Kempis. Something great there must be about their author. First of all a Regent in the University of Edinb...« less