Baillie, Robert

, an eminent Presbyterian divine of the seventeenth century, was born at Glasgow in the year 1599. His father, Mr. Thomas Baillie, was a citizen of that place, and son to Baillie of Jerviston. Our Robert Baillie was educated in the university of his native city where, having taken his degrees in arts, he turned his thoughts to the study of divinity and, receiving orders from archbishop Law, he was chosen regent of philosophy at Glasgow. While he was in this station, he had, for some years, the care of the education of Lord Montgomery, who, at length, carried him with him to Kilwinning; to which church he was presented by the earl of Eglintoun. Here he lived in the strictest friendship with that noble family, and the people connected with it; as he did also with his ordinary the archbishop of Glasgow, with whom he kept up an epistolary correspondence. In 1633, he declined, from modesty, the offer of a church in Edinburgh. Being requested in 1637, by his friend the archbishop, to preach a sermon before the assembly at Edinburgh, in recommendation of the canon and service book, he refused to do it; and wrote a handsome letter to the archbishop, assigning the reasons of his refusal. In 1638 he was chosen by the presbytery of Irvine, a member of the famous assembly at Glasgow, which was a prelude to the civil war. Though Mr. Baillie is said to have behaved in | this assembly with great moderation, it is evident that he was by no means deficient in his zeal against prelacy and Arminianism. In 1640 he was sent by the covenanting lords to London, to draw up an accusation against archbishop Laud, for his obtrusions on the church of Scotland. While he was in England, he wrote the presbytery a regular account of public affairs, with a journal of the trial of the earl of Strafford. Not long after, on his return, he was appointed joint professor of divinity with Mr. David Dickson, in the university of Glasgow, and his reputation was become so great, that he had before this received invitations from the other three universities, all of which he refused. He continued in his professorship till the Restoration but his discharge of the duties of it was interrupted for a considerable time, by his residence in England for, in 1643, he was chosen one of the commissioners of the church of Scotland to the assembly of divines at Westminster. Though he never spoke in the debates of the assembly, he appears to have been an useful member, and entirely concurred in the principles and views of its leaders. Mr. Baillie returned again to his own country in the latter end of 1646. When, after the execution of Charles I. Charles II. was proclaimed in Scotland, our professor was one of the divines appointed by the general assembly to wait on the king at the Hague; upon which occasion, March 27, 1649, he made a speech in the royal presence, expressing in the strongest terms his abhorrence of the murder of the late king and, in his sentiments upon this event, it appears that the Presbyterian divines of that period, both at home and abroad, almost universally agreed. After the restoration of Charles II. Mr. Baillie, Jan. 23, 1661, by the interest of the earl of Lauderdale, with whom he was a great favourite, was made principal of the university of Glasgow, upon the removal of Mr. Patrick Gillespie, who had been patronised by Cromwell. It is said by several writers, that Mr. Baillie had the offer of a bishopric, which he absolutely refused. Though he was very loyal, and most sincerely rejoiced in his majesty’s restoration, he began, a little before his death, to be extremely anxious for the fate of Presbytery. His health failed him in the spring of 1662. During his illness he was visited by the new-made archbishop of Glasgow, to whom he is said to have addressed himself in the following words “Mr, Andrews (I will not call you my lord), king | Charles would have made me one of these lords but I do not find in the New Testament, that Christ has any lords in his house.” Notwithstanding this common-place objection to the hierarchy, he treated the archbishop very courteously. Mr. Baillie died in July 1662, being 63 years f age. By his first wife, who was Lilias Fleming, of the family of Cardarroch, in the parish of Cadder, near Glasgow, he had many children, five of whom survived him, viz. one son, and four daughters. The posterity of his son, Mr. Henry Baillie, who was a preacher, but never accepted of any charge, still inherit the estate of Carnbrae, in the county of Lanerk, an ancient seat of the Baillies. Mr. Baillie’s character ha% been drawn to great advantage, not only by Mr. Woodrow, but by an historian of the opposite party. His works, which were very learned, and acquired him reputation in his own time, are 1. “Opus Historicum et Chronologicum,” Amsterdam, 1668, fol. 2. “A Defence of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland, against Mr. Maxwell, bishop of Ross.” 3. “A Parallel betwixt the Scottish Service-Book and the Romish Missal, Breviary,” &c. 4. “The Canterburian Self-Conviction.” 5. “Queries anent the Service-Book.” 6. “Antidote against Arminianism.” 7. “A treatise on Scottish Episcopacy.” 8. “Laudensium.” 9. “Dissuasive against the Errors of the Times, with a Supplement.” 10. “A Reply to the Modest Enquirer,” with some other tracts, and several sermons upon public occasions but his “Opus Historicum et Chronologicum,” was his capital production. The rest of his writings, being chiefly on controversial and temporary subjects, can, at present, be of little or no value. But his memory is perhaps yet more preserved by a very recent publication, “Letters and Journals, carefully transcribed by Robert Aiken containing an impartial account of public transactions, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, both in England and Scotland, from 1637 to 1662 a period, perhaps, the most remarkable that is to be met with in the British History. With an Account of the Author’s life, prefixed and a Glossary annexed,” Edinburgh, 1775, 2 vols. 8vo. The chief correspondents of Mr. Baillie were, Mr. William Spang, minister first to the Scotch Staple at Campvere, and afterwards to the English Congregation in- Middleburgh in Zealand, who was his cousin -german Mr. David Dickson, professor of Divinity, first at Glasgow, then at Edinburgh and Messrs, Robert | Ramsay and George Young, who were ministers in Glasgow. There are, in this collection, letters to several other persons but Mr. Spang was the gentleman with whom Mr. Baillie principally corresponded. The journals contain a history of the general assembly at Glasgow, in 1638; an account of the earl of Stafford’s trial the transactions of the general assembly and parliament, in 1641 and the proceedings of thegeneral assembly, in 1643. ¹