Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/245

Rh the discourse could not be quoted as a correct specimen of pulpit eloquence, yet Mannering had seldom heard so much learning, metaphysical acuteness, and energy of argument brought into the service of Christianity. 'Such,' he said, going out of the church, 'must have been the preachers, to whose unfearing minds, and acute though sometimes rudely exercised talents, we owe the reformation.'

"'And yet that reverend gentleman,' said Pleydell, 'whom I love for his f.ither's sake and his own, has nothing of the sour or pharisaical pride which has been imputed to some of the early fathers of the Calvinistic kirk of Scotland. His colleague and he differ, and head different parties in the kirk, about particular points of church discipline; but without for a moment losing personal regard or respect for eat:h other, or suffering malignity to interfere in an opposition, steady, constant, and apparently conscientious on both sides.' "

Dr Erskine was married to Christian Mackay, third daughter of George, third lord Ray, by whom he had a family of fourteen children, but of whom only four survived him, David Erskine, Esq. of Carnock, and three daughters.

ERSKINE,, the well known author of Gospel Sonnets, and other highly esteemed writings, was a young son of Henry Erskine, some time minister of Cornhill, in Northumberland, and, after the revolution, at Chirnside, Berwickshire, and was born at Monilaws, in Northumberland, on the eighteenth day of March, 1685. Of his childhood, 'little has been recorded, but that he was thoughtful and pious, and was most probably by his parents devoted to the work of the ministry from his earliest years. Of his earlier studies, we know nothing. Like his brother Ebenezer, he probably learned his letters under the immediate eye of his father, and like his brother, he went through a regular course of study in the University of Edinburgh. During the latter years of his studentship, he resided as tutor and chaplain in the house of Colonel Erskine, near Culross, where he was gratified with the evangelical preaching, and very often the edifying conversation of the Rev. Mr Cuthbert, then minister of Culross. He had here also frequent opportunities of visiting his brother Ebenezer, but, though younger in years and less liberally endowed with the gifts of nature, he was a more advanced scholar in the school of Christ, and his brother, if we may believe his own report, was more benefited by him than he was by his brother. Residing within its bounds, he was, by the presbytery of Dunfermline, licensed as a preacher, on the eighth day of June, 1709. He continued to be a probationer nearly two years, a somewhat lengthened period in the then desolate state of the church, when the field, at least, was large, whatever might be the harvest, and the labourers literally few. At length, however, he received a unanimous call from the parish of Dunfermline, to serve as colleague and successor to the Rev. Mr Buchanan, which he accepted, and to which he was ordained in the month of August, 1711, his friend Mr Cuthbert of Culross, presiding on the occasion. In common with all the churches of the reformation, the church of Scotland was from her earliest dawn of returning light, distinguished for her attachment to the doctrines of grace. There, as elsewhere, it was the doctrine of grace in giving thorough righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord, preached in its purity, freedom, and fulness, by Hamilton ,Wishart, and Knox, which shook from his firm base the dagon of idolatry, and levelled the iron towers of papal superstition with the dust, and it was in the faith of the same doctrines that the illustrious list of martyrs and confessors under the two Charleses, and the Jameses sixth and seventh, endured such a great fight of affliction and resisted unto blood, striving against sin. At the happy deliverance from the iron yoke of persecution through the instrumentality of William, prince of Orange, in the year 1688, the ecclesiastical constitution of the country was happily restored with the whole