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must be a law to us, so wish I heartely that your Majestie understood particularly the distresse of that poor House through the abominable dilapidatioun of the meanes mortified thereto, by miserable men who, in bad times, not being controulled, have so securely sacked all that estait, as if nather a God hade bene in heaven to count with, nor men on earth to examin their wayes!"1 These censures may point at the alleged dilapidations of the last Roman Catholic Principal; but they may also have been called for by the misconduct, fortunately not irremediable, of the Principal then in office, Mr. David Raitt.

Leaving the records of his visitations to tell of his reformation of the College economy and his zealous care of the fabric, we may throw some light from other sources upon the exertions he made for literature. Immediately upon his promotion, he began to fill the pulpits and the academic chairs with that remarkable band of scholars who remained to meet the storm which he escaped. Their names are now little known except to the local antiquary; but no one who has even slightly studied the history of that disturbed time is unacquainted with the collective designation of "the Aberdeen Doctors" bestowed upon the learned 'querists' of the ultra-Presbyterian Assembly of 1638, and the most formidable opponents of the solemn League and Covenant.

Of these learned divines, Dr. Robert Barron had succeeded Bishop Forbes in his parish of Keith, and from thence was brought on the first opportunity to be made Minister of Aberdeen, and afterwards Professor of Divinity in Marischal College. He is best judged by the estimation of his own time which placed him foremost in philosophy and theology. Bishop Sydserf characterises

Letters relating to ecclesiastical affairs" p. 634. Mr. Shand has observed the offensive servility in the letters of that period, to the King. But Forbes is worse than any.

A favourite phrase of his, in writing to James VI. is" your Majesty is an angel of God !"

him as "vir in omni scholastica theologia et omni literatura versatissimus:" "A person of incomparable worth and learning," says Middleton, "he had a clear apprehension of things, and a rare facultie of making the hardest things to be easily understood." Gordon of Rothiemay says "he was one of those who maintained the unanswerable dispute (in 1638) against the Covenante, which drew upon him both ther envye, hate, and calumneyes; yet so innocently lived and dyed hee, that such as then hated him, doe now reverence his memorye, and admire his works." Principal Baillie, of the opposite party, speaks of him as "a meek and learned person," and always with great respect; and Bishop Jeremy Taylor, writing in 1659 to a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, recommending the choice of books for "the beginning of a theologicall library," named two treatises of Barron's especially, and recommended generally, "everything of his." That a man so honoured for his learning and his life, should receive the indignities inflicted on Barron after his death, is rather to be held as a mark of the general coarseness of the time, than attributed to the persecuting spirit of any one sect.3

2

Another of the Aberdeen doctors, William Leslie, was successively Sub-principal and Principal of King's College. The visitors of 1638 found him worthie of censure, as defective and negligent in his office, but recorded their knowledge that

1

Appendix to Spottiswood, p. 29.

Dr. J. H. Todd, who first published this letter, (English Churchman, Jan. 11, 1849.) supposed Bishop Taylor to be speaking of Dr. Peter Barron of Cambridge, but afterwards on the evidence being communicated to him, was entirely satisfied, and corrected his mistake. "The author referred to, (writes Dr. Todd) is certainly Dr. Robert Barron of Aberdeen, a divine of whom the Church of Scotland may be justly proud."(Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, March, 1849.)

Upon an allegation of unsoundness of doctrine in some of his works, the General Assembly of 1640, dragged his widow in custody of a "rote of musketiers," from her retreat in Strathislay, to enable them to search his house for his manuscripts and letters, a year after his death. The proceedings add some circumstances of inhumanity to the old revolting cases not unknown in Scotland, where a dead man was dug out of his grave to be placed at the bar for trial and sentence.

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he was "ane man of gude literature, lyff, and conversatioun." "He was a man," says James Gordon, "grave, and austere, and exemplar. The University was happy in having such a light as he, who was eminent in all the sciences above the most of his age."

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Dr. James Sibbald, Minister of St. Nicholas, and a Regent in the University, is recorded by the same contemporary :—“ It will not be affirmed by his very enemyes, but that Dr. James Sibbald was ane eloquent and painefull preacher, a man godly, and grave, and modest, not tainted with any vice unbeseeming a minister, to whom nothing could in reason be objected, if you call not his ante-covenanting a cryme."3 Principal Baillie while condemning his Arminian doctrines, says "the man was, there, of great fame." Dr. Alexander Scroggy, Minister in the Cathedral Church, first known to the world as thought worthy to contribute to the "Funerals" of his patron and friend Bishop Forbes,' is described in 1640 by Gordon as "a man sober, grave, and painefull in his calling," and by Baillie, as "ane old man, not verie corrupt, yet perverse in the Covenant and Service-book." His obstinacy yielded under the weight of old age and the need of rest, but he is not the more respected for the questionable recantation of all his early opinions."

Dr. William Forbes, who died, Bishop of Edinburgh, another of the Aberdeen Doctors, was more immediately connected with Marischal College, having received the beginning of his education there, and being afterwards its Principal. "He was," says the Parson of Rothiemay, "one of the learnedest men, and one of the most eloquent preachers of his age, or that ever Aberdeen, the nursery of so many great spirits, ever brought forthe."" Bishop

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Burnett tells us "he was a grave and eminent divine. My father that knew him long, and, being of counsel for him in his law matters, had occasion to know him well, has often told me that he never saw him but he thought his heart was in heaven." "Vir, vitæ sanctimonia, says Dr. Garden, humilitate cordis, gravitate, modestia, temperantia, orationis et jejunii frequentia, bonorum operum praxi, industria pauperum cura, clinicorum crebra visitatione et consolatione, et omnifaria virtute Christiana, inter optimos primitivæ ecclesiæ patres annumerandus." Bishop Cosin of Durham esteemed Dr. William Forbes's writings so highly that he transcribed with his own hand all his remains.3

Foremost, by common consent, among that body of divines and scholars, was John Forbes, the good Bishop's son. He had studied at King's College, and, after completing his education in the approved manner by a round of foreign Universities, returned to Scotland to take his Doctor's degree, and to be the first professor in the chair of theology, founded and endowed in our University by his father and the clergy of the diocese. Dr. John Forbes's theological works have been appreciated by all critics and students, and have gone some way to remove the reproach of want of learning from the divines of Scotland. His greatest undertaking, the "Instructiones historico-theologicæ," which he left unfinished, Bishop Burnett pronounces to be "a work, which, if he had finished it, and had been suffered to enjoy the privacies of his retirement and study to give us the second volume, had been the greatest treasure of theological learning, that, perhaps the world has yet received 4

These were the men whom the Bishop drew into the centre and heart of the sphere which he had set himself to illuminate; and, in

3

1

Life of Bedell. Preface.

2 Vita Johannis Forbesii, § xli.

Bishop Cosin's MS. is still preserved

at Durham. Catal. vet. libr. Dunelm. p. 181. Surtees Soc.

Preface to the Life of Bishop Bedell. Of most of these theological authors, I am obliged to speak in the language of others. I have not, in all cases, even read the works

on which their reputation is founded.

a short space of time, by their united endeavours, there grew up around their Cathedral and University a society more learned and accomplished than Scotland had hitherto known, which spread a taste for literature and art beyond the academic circle, and gave a tone of refinement to the great commercial city and its neighbourhood.

It must be confessed the cultivation was not without bias. It would seem, that in proportion as the presbyterian and puritan party receded from the learning of some of their first teachers, literature became here, as afterwards in England, the peculiar badge of Episcopacy. With episcopacy went, hand in hand, the high assertion of Royal authority; and influenced, as it had been by Bishop Patrick Forbes and his followers, Aberdeen became, and continued for a century to be, not only a centre of northern academic learning, but a little strong-hold of loyalty and episcopacy-the marked seat of high cavalier politics and anti-puritan sentiments of religion and church government.

That there was a dash of pedantry in the learning of that Augustan age of our University, was the misfortune of the age, rather than peculiar to Aberdeen. The literature of Britain and all Europe, except Italy, was still for the most part scholastic, and still to a great degree shrouded in the scholastic dress of a dead language; and we must not wonder that the Northern University exacted from her divines and philosophers, even from her historians and poets, that they should use the language of the learned. After all, we owe too much to classical learning to grudge that it should for a time have over-shadowed and kept down its legitimate offspring of native literature. "We never ought to forget," writes one worthy to record the life and learning of Andrew Melville, "that the refinement and the science, secular and sacred, with which modern Europe is enriched, must be traced to the revival of ancient literature, and that the hid treasures.

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