Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/83

Rh degree of doctor of laws, and after the promotion of Burnet to the bishopric of Salisbury, was made by him chancellor of his church. During his residence at Lisbon, he had amassed a great quantity of documents respecting Spanish and Portuguese history, which enabled him, in 1694, to publish a volume, styled "The Church History of Malabar." Of this work, archbishop Tillotson says in a letter to bishop Burnet, dated June 28th, 1694, "Mr Geddes's book finds a general acceptation and approbation. I doubt not but he hath more of the same kind, with which I hope he will favour the world in due time." He was accordingly encouraged in 1696 to publish the "Church History of Æthiopia," and in 1697, a pamphlet entitled "The Council of Trent plainly discovered not to have been a free assembly." His great work, however, was his "Tracts on Divers Subjects," which appeared in 1714, in three volumes, being a translation of the most interesting pieces which he had collected at Lisbon, and of which a list is given in Moreri's Grand Dictionnaire Historique, art. Geddes. The learned doctor must have died previous to the succeeding year, as in 1715 appeared a posthumous volume of tracts against the Roman Catholic church, which completes the list of his publications.

GERARD,, D. D., an eminent divine and writer, was the eldest son of the reverend Gilbert Gerard, minister of the chapel of Garioch, a parish in Aberdeenshire, where he was born on the 22nd of February, 1728. He was removed at the period destined for the commencement of his education, to the parish of Foreran, in the same county, the humble schoolmaster of which appears to have possessed such superior classical attainments, that the reverend gentleman felt justified in delivering his son up to his care, a preference which the future fame of that son, founded on his correctness of acquisition and observation, must have given his friends no cause to regret. At the age of ten, on the death of his father, he was removed to the grammar school of Aberdeen, whence he emerged in two years, qualified to enter as a student of Monachal college. Having there performed his four years of academical attendance in the elementary branches, he finished his career with the usual ceremony of "the graduation," and appeared before the world in the capacity of master of arts at the age of sixteen, not by any means the earliest age at which that degree is frequently granted, but certainly at a period sufficiently early to entitle him to the character of precocious genius. Immediately after finishing these branches of education, he commenced in the divinity hall of Aberdeen his theological studies, which he afterwards finished in Edinburgh.

In 1748, he was a licensed preacher of the church of Scotland, and about two years thereafter, Mr D. Fordyce, professor of natural philosophy in Marischal college, having gone abroad, he lectured in his stead; and on the regretted death of that gentleman, by shipwreck on the coast of Holland, just as he was returning to his friends, Mr Gerard was appointed to the vacant professorship. At the period when Mr Gerard was appointed to a chair in Marischal college, the philosophical curriculum, commencing with logic, proceeded immediately to the abstract subjects of ontology and pneumatics, the course gradually decreasing in abstruseness with the consideration of morals and politics, and terminating with the more definite and practical doctrines of natural philosophy. Through the whole of this varied course it was the duty of each individual to lead his pupils; mathematics and Greek being alone taught by separate professors. The evils of this system suggested to the professors of Marischal college, the formation of a plan for the radical alteration of the routine, which has since been most beneficially conducive to the progress of Scottish literature. A very curious and now rare pamphlet, from the pen of Dr Gerard, exists on this subject;