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BAILLIE, ROBERT, one of the most eminent,
and perhaps the most moderate, of all the Scottish presbyterian clergy
during the time of the civil war, was born at Glasgow, in 1599. His
father, Thomas Baillie, citizen, was descended from the Baillies of
Lamington; his mother, Helen Gibson, was of the family of Gibson of
Durie; both of which stocks are distinguished in presbyterian history.
Having studied divinity in his native university, Mr Baillie, in 1622,
received episcopal orders from Archbishop Law, of Glasgow, and became
tutor to the son of the Earl of Eglintoune, by whom he was presented to
the parish church of Kilwinning. In 1626 he was admitted a regent at the
college of Glasgow, and, on taking his chair, delivered an inaugural
oration, De Mente Agente. About this period he appears to have
prosecuted the study of the oriental languages, in which he is allowed
to have attained no mean proficiency.
For some years he lived in terms of the
strictest intimacy with the noble and pious family of Eglintoune, as
also with his ordinary, Archbishop Law, with whom he kept up an
epistolary correspondence. Baillie was not only educated and ordained as
an episcopalian, but he had imbibed from principal Cameron of Glasgow,
the doctrine of passive resistance. He appears, however, to have been
brought over to opposite views during the interval between 1630 and
1636, which he employed in discussing with his fellow-clergymen the
doctrines of Arminianism, and the new ecclesiastical regulations
introduced into the Scottish church by Archbishop Laud. Hence, in the
year 1636, being desired by Archbishop Law to preach at Edinburgh in
favour of the Canon and Service-books, he positively refused; writing,
however, a respectful apology to his lordship. Endeared to the resisting
party by this conduct, he was chosen to represent the presbytery of
Irvine in the General Assembly of 1638, by which the royal power was
braved in the name of the whole nation, and episcopacy formally
dissolved. In this meeting, Baillie is said to have behaved with great
moderation; a term, however, which must be understood as only
comparative, for the expressions used in his letter regarding the
matters condemned, are not what would now be considered moderate.
In the ensuing year, when it was found
necessary to vindicate the proceedings of the Glasgow Assembly with the
sword, Baillie entered heartily into the views of his countrymen. He
accompanied the army to Dunse Law, in the capacity of preacher to the
Earl of Eglintoune’s regiment; and he it was, who has handed down the
well known description of that extraordinary camp.—"It would have
done you good," he remarks in one of his letters, "to have
cast your eyes athort our brave and rich hills, as oft as I did, with
great contentment and joy; for I was there among the rest, being chosen
preacher by the gentlemen of our shire, who came late with Lord
Eglintoune. I furnished to half a dozen of good fellows, muskets and
pikes, and to my boy a broad sword. I carried myself. as the fashion
was, a sword, and a couple of Dutch pistols at my saddle; but I promise,
for the offence of no man, except a robber in the way; for it was our
part alone to pray and preach for the encouragement of our countrymen,
which I did to my power most chearfully." (Letters, vol. i.
p. 174.) He afterwards states, "Our soldiers grew in experience of
arms, in courage, and favour, daily. Every one encouraged another. The
sight of their nobles, and their beloved pastors, daily raised their
hearts. The good sermons and prayers, morning and evening, under the
roof of heaven, to which their drums did call them for bells; the
remonstrance very frequent of the goodness of their cause; of their
conduct hitherto, by a hand clearly divine; also Leslie’s skill, and
prudence, and fortune, made them as resolute for battle as could be
wished. We were feared that emulation among our nobles might have done
harm, when they should be met in the field; but such was the wisdom and
authority of that old, little, crooked soldier, that all, with an
incredible submission, from the beginning to the end, gave over
themselves to be guided by him, as if he had been great Solyman.— Had
you lent your ear in the morning, or especially at even, and heard in
the tents the sound of some singing psalms, some praying, and some
reading Scripture, ye would have been refreshed. True, there was
swearing, and cursing, and brawling, in some quarters, whereat we were
grieved; but we hoped, if our camp had been a little settled, to have
gotten some way for these misorders; for all of any fashion did regret,
and all promised to do their best endeavours for helping all abuses. For
myself, I never found my mind in better temper than it was all that time
since I came from home, till my head was again homeward; for I was as a
man who had taken my leave from the world, and was resolved to die in
that service without return." This expedition ended in a treaty
between the Scottish leaders and their sovereign, in terms of which
hostilities ceased for a few months.
On the renewal of the insurrectionary war
next year, Baillie accompanied the Scottish army on its march into
England, and became the chronicler of its transactions. Towards the end
of the year 1640, he was selected by the Scottish leaders as a proper
person to go to London, along with other commissioners, to prepare
charges against Archbishop Laud, for his innovations upon the Scottish
church, which were alleged to have been the origin of the war. He had,
in April, before the expedition, published a pamphlet, entitled, "Ladensium
---: the Canterburian’s Self-conviction; or an Evident Demonstration
of the avowed Arminianisme, Poperie, and Tyrannie of that Faction, by
their own confessions," which perhaps pointed him out as fit to
take a lead in the prosecution of the great Antichrist of Scottish
presbytery. Of this and almost all the other proceedings of his public
life, he has left a minute account in his letters and journals, which
are preserved entire in the archives of the church of Scotland, and in
the university of Glasgow, and of which excerpts were published in 2
vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1775. These reliques of Mr Baillie form valuable
materials of history.
Not long after his return to his native
country, in 1642, he was appointed joint professor of divinity at
Glasgow, along with Mr David Dickson, an equally distinguished, but less
moderate divine. It affords some proof of the estimation in which he was
now held, that he had the choice of this appointment in all the four
universities of Scotland. He performed his duties from this period till
the restoration, and at the same time attended all the General
Assemblies as a member, except during an interval in 1643-6, when he was
absent as a delegate to the Westminster assembly of divines. In this
latter capacity, he conducted himself in an unobtrusive manner, but
fully concurred in the principles and views of the more prominent men.
It is observable from his letters, that, with the pardonable earnestness
of his age and party, he looked upon toleration as a thing fatal to
religion, and strenuously asserted the divine right of the presbyterian
church to be established in complete ascendancy and power as a
substitute for the church of England.
From 1646 to 1649, he discharged his
ordinary duties as a theological teacher, without taking a leading part
in public affairs. But in the latter year, he was chosen by the church,
as the fittest person to carry its homage to king Charles II. at the
Hague, and to invite that youthful monarch to assume the government in
Scotland, under the limitations and stipulations of the covenant. This
duty he executed with a degree of dignity and propriety, which could
have been expected from no member of his church, but one, who, like him
had spent several years in conducting high diplomatic affairs in
England. Indeed, Mr Baillie appears in every transaction of his life, to
have been an accomplished man of the world; and yet retaining, along
with habits of expediency, the most perfect sincerity in his religious
views. When the necessary introduction of the malignants into the king’s
service, caused a strong division in the church, in 1651, Baillie, as
might have been expected from his character and former history, sided
with the yielding or Resolutionist party, and soon became its principal
leader. On this account he, and many other sincere men, were charged by
the Protesting and less worldly party, with a declension from the high
principles of the covenant; a charge to which he, at least, certainly
was not liable.
After the Restoration, though made
Principal of his college through court patronage, he scrupulously
refused to accept a bishopric and did not hesitate to express his
dissatisfaction with the re-introducion of episcopacy. His health now
declining, he was visited by the new-made archbishop, to whom he thus
freely expressed himself: "Mr Andrew," said he, "I will
not now call you my lord. King Charles would have made me one of his lords;
but I do not find in the New Testament that Christ has any lords in his
house." He considered this form of religion and ecclesiastical
government as "inconsistent with Scripture, contrary to pure and
primitive antiquity, and diametrically opposed to the true interest of
the country." He died, July, 1662, in the 63d year of his age.
Mr Baillie, besides his
Letters and Journals, and a variety of controversis pamphlets, suitable
to the spirit of the times, was the author of a respectable and learned
work, entitled, "Opus Historicum et Chronologicum," which
was published in folio at Amsterdam. He was a man of extensive learning—understood
no fewer than thirteen languages, among which were Hebrew, Chaldee,
Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, and Ethiopic,—and wrote Latin with almost
Augustinian elegance. He left a large family: one of his daughters,
becoming the wife of Walkinshaw of Barrowfield, was, by a strange
chance, the ancestress of Miss Clementina Walkinshaw, well known from
her connexion with the history of Prince Charles Stuart—and also
grandmother to the celebrated Henry Home, better known under the
judicial designation of Lord Kames.
The Letters and Journals of Robert
Baillie, A.M.
Principle of the University of Glasgow in three volumes
Volume 1 |
Volume 2 |
Volume 3 |
