Erskine, Ralph, a Scotch divine, brother of Ebenezer (q.v.), with whom he co-operated in founding the Secession Church; his sermons and religious poems, called “Gospel Sonnets,” were widely read; one of the first of the Scotch seceders, strange to contemplate, “a long, soft, poke-shaped face, with busy anxious black eyes, looking as if he could not help it; and then such a character and form of human existence, conscience living to the finger ends of him, in a strange, venerable, though highly questionable manner ... his formulas casing him all round like the shell of a beetle”; his fame rests chiefly on his “Gospel Sonnets,” much appreciated at one time (1685‒1752).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Erskine, John, of Dun * Erskine, Thomas, Lord