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BROWN, JOHN, author of the
"Self-Interpreting Bible," and many popular religious works, was
born in the year 1722 at Carpow, a village in the parish of
Abernethy and county of Perth. His father, for the greatest part of his
life, followed the humble occupation of a weaver, and was entirely
destitute of the advantages of regular education, but, nevertheless, seems
to have been a man of superior intelligence and worth, and even to have
possessed some portion of that zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, and that
facility in acquiring it without the ordinary helps, which his son so
largely inherited. In consequence of the circumstances of his parents,
John Brown was able to spend but a very limited time at school in
acquiring the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. "One
month," he has himself told us, "without his parent’s
allowance, he bestowed upon Latin." His thirst for knowledge was
intense, and excited him even at this early period to extraordinary
diligence in all departments of study, but particularly to religious
culture. The strong direction of his mind from the beginning to
scholarship in general, and to that kind of it more closely connected with
divinity in particular, seems to have early suggested to his mother the
possibility of his one day finding scope for the indulgence of his taste
in the service of the church, and made her often picture, in the visions
of maternal fondness, the day when she should, to use her own homely
expression, "see the crows flying over her bairn’s kirk."
About the eleventh year of
his age he was deprived by death of his father, and soon after of his
mother, and was himself reduced, by four successive attacks of fever, to a
state which made it probable that he was about speedily to join his
parents in the grave. But having recovered from this illness, he had the
good fortune to find a friend and protector in John Ogilvie, a shepherd
venerable for age, and eminent for piety, who fed his flock among the
neighbouring mountains. This worthy individual was an elder of the parish
of Abernethy, yet, though a person of intelligence and religion, was so
destitute of education as to be unable even to read—a circumstance which
may appear strange to those accustomed to hear of the universal diffusion
of elementary education among the Scottish peasantry, but which is to be
accounted for in this case, as in that of the elder Brown, by the
disordered state of all the social institutions in Scotland previous to
the close of the seventeenth century. To supply his own deficiency,
Ogilvie was glad to engage young Brown to assist him in tending his flock,
and read to him during the intervals of comparative inaction and repose
which his occupation afforded. To screen themselves from the storm and the
heat, they built a little lodge among the hills, and to this their
mountain tabernacle (long after pointed out under this name by the
peasants) they frequently repaired to celebrate their pastoral devotions.
Often "the wilderness and the solitary place were glad for them, and
the desert rejoiced even with joy and singing."
Ere long it happened that
Ogilvie retired from his occupation as a shepherd, and settled in the town
of Abernethy. In consequence of this change, young Brown entered the
service of a neighbouring farmer, who maintained a more numerous
establishment than his former friend. This step he laments as having been
followed by much practical apostasy from God, and showed itself in a
sensible decline of religious attainments, and a general lukewarmness in
religious duty. Still, however, during the season of backsliding which he
himself saw reason thus to deplore, his external character was remarkably
distinguished by many virtues, and especially by the rare and truly
Christian grace of meekness. In the year 1733, four ministers of the
Church of Scotland, among whomi was Mr Moncrieff of Abernethy, declared a
secession from its judicatures, alleging as their reasons for taking this
step the following list of grievances; "The sufferance of error
without adequate censure; the infringement of the rights of the Christian
people in the choice and settlement of ministers under the law of
patronage; the neglect or relaxation of discipline; the restraint of
ministerial freedom in opposing mal-administration, and the refusal of the
prevailing party to be reclaimed." To this body our young shepherd
early attached himself; and ventured to conceive the idea of one day
becoming a shepherd of souls in that connection. He accordingly prosecuted
his studies with increasing ardour and diligence, and began to attain
considerable knowledge of Latin and Greek. These acquisitions he made
entirely without aid from others, except that he was able occasionally to
snatch an hour when the flocks were folded at noon, in order to seek the
solution of such difficulties as his unaided efforts could not master,
from two neighbouring clergymen—the one Mr Moncrieff of Abernethy, who
has just been mentioned as one of the founders of the Secession, and the
other Mr Johnston of Arngask, father of the late venerable Dr Johnston of
North-Leith; both of whom were very obliging and communicative, and took
great interest in promoting the progress of the studious shepherd-boy. An
anecdote has been preserved of this part of his life and studies which
deserves to be mentioned. He had now acquired so much knowledge of Greek
as encouraged him to hope that he might at length be prepared to reap the
richest of all rewards which classical learning could confer on him, the
capacity of reading, in the original tongue, the blessed New Testament of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Full of this hope, he became anxious to
possess a copy of the invaluable volume. One night, accordingly, having
folded his flocks in safety, and his fellow-shepherd, whose sentiments
towards him were now those of friendship and veneration, having undertaken
to discharge his pastoral duties for the succeeding day, he set out on a
midnight-journey to St Andrews, a distance of twenty-four miles. Having
reached his destination in the morning, he repaired straightway to the
nearest bookseller, and asked for a copy of the Greek New Testament. The
master of the shop, though, situated as he was in a provincial Scottish
University, he must have been accustomed to hear such books inquired for
by youths whose appearance and habiliments were none of the most
civilized, was nevertheless somewhat astonished by such an application
from so unlikely a person, and was rather disposed to taunt him with its
presumption. Meanwhile a party of gentlemen, said to have been professors
in the university, entered the shop, and having understood the matter,
questioned the lad about his employment and studies. After hearing his
tale, one of them desired the bookseller to bring the volume, who
accordingly produced it, and throwing it down upon time table,
"Boy," said he, "read that book, and you shall have it for
nothing." The offer was too good to be rejected, and young Brown,
having acquitted himself to the admiration of his judges, carried off his
cheaply-purchased Testament in triumph, and, ere the evening arrived, was
studying it in the midst of his flock upon the hills of Abernethy.
His extraordinary
acquisitions about this time subjected him to a suspicion, which was more
generally entertained, than would now appear credible, that he received a
secret aid from the enemy of man, upon the pledge of his own soul. It was
probably in consequence of the annoyance he experienced on this
account, that he abandoned the occupation of a shepherd, and undertook
that of pedlar or travelling-merchant. This mode of life was once of much
greater importance and higher esteem in Scotland than at present, when the
facilities of communication between all parts of the country and the
greater seats of commerce have been multiplied to such a degree, and was
often pursued by persons of great intelligence and respectability. Its
peculiar tendency to imbue the mind with a love of nature, and form it to
a knowledge of the world, have been finely illustrated by a great poet of
our day: nor is the Scottish pedlar of the Excursion, though certainly
somewhat too metaphysical and liberal, in every respect the unnatural
character which it has been represented. It will not, however, be
considered very surprising when we say, that young Brown did not shine in
his new profession. During his mercantile peregrinations, which lay
chiefly in the interior parts of Fife and Kinrosshire, he made it a rule
to call at no house of which the family had not the character of being
religious and given to reading. When he was received into any such
dwelling, his first care was to have all the books it could furnish
collected together, among which, if he did but light upon a new one, with
avidity he fell to the literary feast, losing in the appetite of the soul,
the hunger of the body, and in the traffic of knowledge forgetting the
merchandise of pedlar’s wares. It is related, and may well be believed,
that the contents of his pack, on his return to head quarters from one of
his expeditions, used to present a lively image of chaos, and that he was
very glad to express his obligations to any neat-handed housewife who
would take the arrangement of them upon herself. Many a time and oft was
he prudently reminded of the propriety of attending more to his business,
and not wasting his time on what did not concern him—till his monitors
at last gave up the case in despair, and wisely shaking their beads,
pronounced him "good for nothing but to be a scholar."
Soon after the close of the
Rebellion of 1745, during which period he served as a volunteer in the
regiment of militia raised by the county of Fife, in behalf of the
government, he resolved to undertake the more dignified duties of
schoolmaster. He established himself in the year 1747 at Gairney Bridge, a
village in the neighbourhood of Kinross, and there laid the foundation of
a school which subsisted for a considerable time, and, fifteen years
after, was taught by another individual whose name has also become
favourably known to the world—whose lot, however, was not like his
predecessor’s, to come to the grave "like a shock of corn fully
ripe," but to wither prematurely "in the morn and liquid dew of
youth,"—the tender and interesting young poet, Michael Bruce.
During Mr Brown’s incumbency, which lasted, for two years, this school
was remarkably successful, and attracted scholars from a considerable
distance. He afterwards taught for a year and a half another school at
Spittal, in the congregation of Linton, under Mr James Mair. The practical
character of his talents, the accuracy of his learning, the intimate
experience which, as a self-taught scholar, he must have had of elementary
difficulties, and the best mode of solving them, and the
conscientiousness, and assiduity which, always formed distinguishing
features of his character—must have peculiarly qualified him for the
discharge of his present duties. While active in superintending the
studies of others, he did not relax in the prosecution of his own. On the
contrary, his ardour seems to have led him into imprudent extremes of
exertion. He would commit to memory fifteen chapters of the Bible as an
evening exercise after the labours of the day, and after such killing
efforts, allow himself but four hours of repose. To this excess of
exertion he was probably stimulated by the near approach of the period to
which he had long looked forward with trembling hope—the day which was
to reward the toils and trials of his various youth, by investing him with
the solemn function of an ambassador of Christ. During the vacations of
his school, he was now engaged in the regular study of philosophy and
divinity under the inspection of the Associate Synod, and the
superintendence of the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, and James Fisher, two of the
original founders, and principal lights of the Secession church. At
length, in the year 1751, having completed his preparatory course of
study, and approved himself on trial before the Associate Presbytery of
Edinburgh, he was licensed by that reverend body, at Dalkeith, to preach
the gospel in their society. He entered upon the sacred work with deep
impressions of its solemn responsibilities. He has himself mentioned that
his mind, immediately previous to his receiving authority to preach, was
very vividly affected by that awful text in Isaiah vi. 9, 10, "He
said, Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; see ye
indeed, but perceive not; make the heart of this people fat, and make
their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and
hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert and be
healed." He had not been long a probationer, when he received two
nearly simultaneous calls to the settled discharge of ministerial duty;
one from the congregation of Stow, a village in the shire of Edinburgh,
and the other from that of Haddington, the principal town in the county of
that name. The Presbytery of Edinburgh, within whose bounds both
congregations were included, and which had therefore, according to the
Presbyterian constitution, the right of deciding between their competing
claims, submitted the matter to his own discretion. His choice was
determined to Haddington, partly by his feelings of sympathy with that
congregation for disappointments it had already experienced, and partly by
his modest estimate of his own qualifications, to which he felt the
smaller of the two charges more suitable. Over this congregation therefore
he was finally ordained pastor in the month of June, 1751. It deserves to
be mentioned, however, that he continued regularly to visit and examine
the congregation of Stow until it was supplied with a regular minister.
To the duties of the sacred
office he devoted himself with the most zealous and laborious industry.
The smallness of his congregation enabled him at once to undertake the
widest range of ministerial duty, and to execute it with the greatest
minuteness and accuracy. Besides regularly preaching four discourses every
Sunday during the summer, and three during winter in his own place of
worship, and occasionally in the country during the week, he visited all
his people annually in his pastoral capacity, and carried them twice in
the same period through a course of public catechetical examinations. He
was very assiduous in his visits to the sick and the afflicted, and that
not merely to those of his own congregation, but to all, of every
denomination, who desired his services. The peculiar characteristic of his
manner of address on all these occasions, public and private, was an
intense solemnity and earnestness, which extorted attention even from the
scorner, and was obviously the genuine expression of his own overwhelming
sense of the reality and importance of the message. "His grave
appearance," says a late English divine, who had attended his
ministry for some time, "his solemn, weighty, and energetic manner of
speaking, used to affect me very much. Certainly his preaching was close,
and his address to the conscience pungent. Like his Lord and Master, he
spoke with authority and hallowed pathos, having tasted the sweetness and
felt the power of what he delivered." To the same effect, the
celebrated David Hume, having been led to hear him preach on one occasion
at North Berwick, remarked, "That old man preaches as if Christ were
at his elbow." Except for his overawing seriousness, and occasionally
a melting sweetness in his voice, it does not appear that his delivery was
by any means attractive. "It was my mercy," he says, with
characteristic modesty, that "the Lord, who had given me some other
talents, withheld from me a popular delivery, so that though my discourses
were not disrelished by the serious, so far as I heard, yet they were not
so agreeable to many hearts as those of my brethren, which it was a
pleasure to me to see possessed of that talent which the Lord, to restrain
my pride, had denied to me." His labours were not in vain in the
Lord. The members of his congregation, the smallness of which he often
spoke of as a mercy, seem to have been enabled to walk, in a great
measure, suitably to their profession and their privileges; and he had
less experience than most ministers of that bitterest of all trials
attached to a conscientious pastor’s situation—scandalous
irregularities of practice among those in regard to whom he can have no
greater joy than to see them walking in the truth. In ecclesiastical
policy, he was a staunch Presbyterian and Seceder in the original sense of
the term, as denoting an individual separated, not from the constitution
of the established church, either as a church or as an establishment, but
from the policy and control of the predominant party in her judicatures.
At the unhappy division of the Secession church in 1745, commonly known by
the name of the Breach, on the question of snaking refusal of the burgess
oath a term of communion, though personally doubtful of the propriety of a
Seceder’s swearing the oath in question, he attached himself to that
party, who, from declining peremptorily to pronounce it unlawful, obtained
the popular appellation of Burghers,—justly considering that a
difference of opinion on this point was by no means of sufficient
importance to break the sacred bond of Christian fellowship. His public
prayers were liberal and catholic, and he always showed the strongest
affection for gospel ministers and true Christians of every name. In an
unpublished letter to a noble lady of the episcopal communion, he
expresses his hope "that it will afford her a delightful satisfaction
to observe how extensive and important the agreement, and how small the
difference of religious sentiments, between a professedly staunch
Presbyterian and a truly conscientious Episcopalian, if they both
cordially believe the doctrine of God’s free grace reigning to men’s
eternal life, through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ our
Lord." He made a point of regularly attending and acting in the
church courts, though he avoided taking any leading part in the management
of ecclesiastical business. The uniformity and universality of his habits
of personal devotion were remarkable. Of him it might well be said, that
he walked with God, and that in God he, as it were to his own
consciousness, lived, and moved, and had his being. He had acquired a holy
skill in deriving, from every scene of nature, and every incident of life,
occasions of Christian thought, impulses of Christian feeling, motives to
Christian duty. His "Christian Journal" seems to have been
literally the picture of his daily course and association of ideas, and
the beautiful motto he has prefixed to it, to have been the expression of
his own experience: "The ear that is ever attentive to God never
hears a voice that speaks not of Him; the soul, whose eye is intent on
him, never sees an atom in which she doth not discern her Best
Beloved." He could hold sweet communion with his heavenly Father in
the most terrible displays of His majesty, not less than in the softer
manifestations of His benignity. One day, hearing a tremendous crash of
thunder, he smilingly exclaimed to those around,-"That is the low
whisper of my God." His seasons of prayer, stated and special, secret
and domestic, were frequent beyond the rules of any prescribed routine.
Often was he overheard, in the nightly and the morning watches, conversing
with his God in prayer and praise, remembering his Maker upon his bed, and
having his song with him in the night. Amidst the ordinary details of
life, the devout aspirations of the heart were continually breaking forth
in ejaculations of thanksgiving and holy desire: his conversation
habitually dwelt on heavenly things; or, if secular objects were
introduced, he would turn them with sanctifying ingenuity into divine
emblems and spiritual analogies. His whole mind and life seemed
impregnated with devotion, and all his days formed, as it were, one
Sabbath. The extent of his pecuniary liberality was surprising. He
considered it a binding duty on every individual to devote at least the
tenth part of his revenue to pious uses; and out of an income which,
during the greater part of his life, amounted to only forty pounds a year,
and never exceeded fifty, and from which he had a numerous family to
support, he generally exceeded that proportion. He distributed his
benevolence with strict attention to the Saviour’s command, "Let
not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."
He was aware of the
importance of conversation among the various means of doing good, and,
though he laments his own "sinful weakness and unskilfulness in
pushing religious discourse," he was too conscientious to neglect the
opportunities which presented themselves of promoting, in this way, the
glory of God and the best interests of men. He made it a distinct
principle never to leave any company in which he might be placed, without
saying something which, by the blessing of God, might promote their
spiritual good. It is related, that, having accidentally met Ferguson the
poet walking in Haddington church-yard, and being struck with his pensive
appearance, he modestly addressed him, and offered him certain serious
advices, which deeply affected him at the time, and doubtless had their
share in exciting and promoting those terrible convictions which latterly
overwhelmed the poet’s mind, and in which it may perhaps be hoped there
was something better than "the sorrow that worketh death." He
knew, however, that there was a certain discretion to be used in such
cases, and a selection to be made of the "mollia tempora fandi,"
the seasons when words are "fitly spoken." Of this, the
following anecdote is an example:—Having occasion to cross the ferry
between Leith and Kinghorn, with a Highland gentleman as his
fellow-passenger, he was much grieved to hear his companion frequently
take the name of God in vain, but restrained himself from taking any
notice of it in the presence of the rest of the company. On reaching land,
however, observing the same gentleman walking alone upon the beach, he
stepped up, and calmly reminded him of the offence he had been guilty of,
and the law of God which forbids and condemns it. The gentleman received
the reproof with expressions of thanks, and declared his resolution to
attend to it in future. "But," added the choleric Celt,
"had you spoken to me so in the boat, I believe I should have run you
through."
It will not be supposed,
that, after having given himself with such ardour to study in
circumstances of comparative disadvantage, he neglected to avail himself
of the more favourable opportunities he now enjoyed of extending and
consolidating his knowledge. By a diligent improvement of the morning
hours, and a studious economy of time throughout the day, he rarely spent
fewer than twelve hours of the twenty-four in his study. He possessed
extraordinary patience of the physical labour connected with hard study.
No degree of toil in the way of reading, or even of writing, seemed to
daunt or to fatigue him. Though he never enjoyed the assistance of an
amanuensis, he transcribed most of his works several times with his own
hand: and even without a view to the press, he more than once undertook
the same fatigue for the convenience of private individuals. In this way,
at the request of the Countess of Huntingdon, he copied out his System of
Divinity, before its publication, for the use of her Ladyship’s
theological seminary in Wales. He had remarkable facility in the
acquisition of languages; and of this species of knowledge, the key to
every other, he possessed an extraordinary amount. Besides the three
commonly called the learned tongues, he was acquainted with Arabic, Syriac,
Persic, and Ethiopic; and of the modern languages, with the French,
Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and German. In the various departments of real
as distinguished from verbal knowledge, his reading was very
wide in range and various in subject. His favourite pursuits were history
and divinity; but every subject, which more nearly or more remotely bore
on the literature of his profession, he considered worthy of his
attention. He afterwards saw reason to repent of the wideness of his aims
in this respect, and to regret "the precious time and talents,"
to use his own words, "he had vainly squandered in the mad attempt to
become a universal scholar." His reading, though thus extensive, was
at the same time very exact and accurate. In order to render it so, he in
many cases adopted the tedious and laborious method of compiling regular
abridgments of important and voluminous books. Among the works he thus
epitomized, were Judge Blackstone’s Commentaries, and the Ancient
Universal History.
In the month of September
1753, about two years after his ordination, Mr. Brown married Miss Janet
Thomson, daughter of Mr. John Thomson, merchant at Musselburgh. For
eighteen years he enjoyed in her a "help meet" for him in his
Christian course, and at the end of that period he surrendered her, as he
himself expresses it, "to her first and better Husband." They
had several children, of whom only two survived their mother—John and
Ebenezer, both of whom their father had the satisfaction before his death
of introducing as ministers into the church of Christ, the former at
Whitburn, and the latter at Inverkeithing. Two years after the death of
his first wife, which took place in 1771, he was married a second time to
Miss Violet Crombie, daughter of Mr. William Crombie, merchant, Stenton,
East Lothian, who survived him for more than thirty years, and by whom he
left at his death four sons and two daughters, of whom only the half are
now alive. In his domestic economy and discipline, Mr. Brown laboured
after a strict fidelity to his ordination vow, by which he promised to
rule well in his own house. His notions in regard to the authority of a
husband and a father were very high, and all the power which as such he
thought himself to possess, was faithfully employed in maintaining both
the form and the power of godliness.
In the year 1758, Mr.
Brown, for the first time, appeared as an author. His first publication
was entitled "An Help for the Ignorant, being an Essay towards an
Easy Explication of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and Catechisms,
compiled for the use of the young ones of his own congregation." In
addition to this, he published, six years after, two short catechisms—one
introductory to, the other explanatory of, the Shorter Catechism. All
these publications have been very extensively useful. In 1765, he
published, what was at the time by far the most popular and successful of
his works, entitled "The Christian Journal, or Common Incidents
Spiritual Instructors." This work, though it has some of the literary
defects which, on such a subject, might have been expected from an author
so circumstanced, such as the occasional indulgence of unrefined images,
the excess of detail in tracing the analogies, and a certain monotonous
rhythm of style, in many cases scarcely distinguishable from blank verse—nevertheless
displays an extraordinary richness and ingenuity of fancy, and in many
instances rises into a most impressive and heart-warming eloquence. In
1766 he published a History of the Rise and Progress of the Secession,
and, the year following, a series of Letters on the Constitution,
Discipline, and Government of the Christian Church. These tracts were
followed by his Sacred Tropology, the first of a series of works which he
designed for the purpose of giving a clear, comprehensive, and regular
view of the figures, types, and predictions of Scripture. The second and
third parts were published in 1781.
In the year 1768, in
consequence of the death of the Rev. John Swanston of Kinross, Professor
of Divinity under the Associate Synod, Mr Brown was elected to the vacant
chair. The duties of this important office he discharged with great
ability and exemplary diligence and success. His public prelections were
directed to the two main objects, first, of instructing his pupils in the
science of Christianity, and secondly, of impressing their hearts with its
power. The system of Divinity which he was led, in the course of his
professional duty, to compile, and which was afterwards published, is
perhaps the one of all his works which exhibits most striking proofs of
precision, discrimination, and enlargement of thought; and is altogether
one of the most dense, and at the same time perspicuous views which has
yet been given of the theology of the Westminster Confession. The charge
which he took of those committed to his care, was not entirely of the ‘ex
cathedra’ description. The situation of the Hall in a small provincial
town, and the manners of the age, combined with his just sense of the
importance of the students’ private exertions and personal habits,
enabled him to exercise a much more minute and household superintendance
over the young men under his direction. Frequently in the morning he was
accustomed to go his rounds among their lodgings, to assure himself that
they were usefully employing "the golden hours of prime." The
personal contact between professor and pupils was thus remarkably close
and unbroken, and hence we find that among those who can recollect their
attendance on the Divinity Hall at Haddington, the interest with which
every mind looks back to the scenes and seasons of early study has a
greater character of individuality, and is associated with minuter
recollections than we generally meet with after so long a lapse of years.
The same year in which he
was elected to the theological chair he preached and published a very
powerful sermon on Religious Steadfastness, in which he dwells at
considerable length on the religious state of the nation, and expresses
violent apprehensions at the visible diffusion and advance of what he
called latitudinarianism, and what we of this tolerant age would term
liberality of religions sentiment. He likewise this year gave to the world
one of the most elaborate, and certainly one of the most valuable of all
his writings, the Dictionary of the Holy Bible. For popular use, it is
unquestionably the most suitable work of the kind which yet exists,
containing the results of most extensive and various reading both in the
science and in the literature of Christianity, given without pretension or
parade, and with a uniform reference to practical utility. In 1771, the
Honourable and Reverend Mr Shirley, by command of the Countess of
Huntingdon, applied to Mr Brown for his opinions on the grand subject of
justification, in view of a conference to be held on this question with Mr
Wesley and his preachers. This application gave occasion to a long and
animated correspondence with that noble lady, (a correspondence which, in
consequence of our author’s modesty, remained a secret till after his
death,) and to a series of articles from his pen on the doctrine of
justification, which appeared, from time to time, in the Gospel Magazine
and Theological Miscellany, between the years 1770 and 1776. In the same
year he was led, by a desire to contribute to the yet better instruction
of his students, to form the design of composing a manual of church
history on a general and comprehensive plan. It was to consist of three
parts, "the first comprehending a general view of transactions
relating to the church from the birth of our Saviour to the present time;
the second containing more fully the histories of the Reformed British
Churches in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America; the third to
comprehend the histories of the Waldenses and the Protestant churches of
Switzerland, France, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and
Hungary." Of these he completed the two former, his General History
having been published in 1771, and his History of the British Churches in
the beginning of 1784. These form very useful popular compends, though
destitute of high historical authority. The history of the British
Churches, as a work of original research, is much superior to the more
general compilation, which is little more than an abridgment of Mosheim,
written in a more fervid spirit than the latter is accustomed to display.
Mr Brown’s next publication appeared in 1775, and was an edition of the
metrical "Psalms, with notes exhibiting the connection, explaining
the sense, and for directing and animating the devotion." In 1778 he
gave to the world the great work on which his reputation is chiefly
founded, "The Self-Interpreting Bible," the object of which is
to condense, within a manageable compass, all the information which an
ordinary reader may find necessary for attaining an intelligent and
practical knowledge of the sacred oracles. The first publication of this
work was attended with considerable difficulties, in consequence of the
claim of the king’s printers to the exclusive right of printing the
authorized version of the Scriptures, whether accompanied or not with
illustrative matter. This claim, however, having been set aside, the work
was at length given to the world in 1778, and received with a high and
gradually increasing and still un-exhausted approbation. The same year he
published a small tract entitled "the Oracles of Christ Abominations
of Antichrist," and four years after, his "Letters on
Toleration:" strenuously maintaining the unlawfulness of tolerating
by authority a false religion in a professedly Christian country. These
publications originated in the universal sentiment of alarm entertained by
the evangelical presbyterians of Scotland, both within and without the
establishment, in consequence of the proposed abolition of the penal code
against the Roman Catholics.
In 1781, besides his works
on the types and prophecies formerly referred to, he published a sermon on
the "Duty of Raising up Spiritual Children unto Christ,"
preached partly at Whitburn, and partly after his son Ebenezer’s
ordination at Inverkeithing. He likewise, in the course of the same year,
wrote a pamphlet in defence of the re-exhibition of the testimony, and a
collection of the biographies of eminent divines, under the name of the
"Christian Student and Pastor." This was the first of a series
of similar compilations intended as illustrations and examples of
practical religion, and was followed in 1781 by the "Young
Christian," and in 1783 by the "Lives of thirteen Eminent
Private Christians." In 1783, he published a small "Concordance
to the Bible." The year following, he received an invitation from the
reformed Dutch church in America, to become their Professor of Divinity,
which he declined, and modestly kept secret. And, in 1785, he concluded
his career as an author, by a pamphlet against time travelling of the Mail
on the Lord’s-day—a day for the observance of which, in time strictest
degree of sanctity, he always showed himself peculiarly jealous, not only
abstaining himself, but prohibiting his family, from speaking on that day
on any worldly affair, even on such as related to what may be called the
secularities of religion and the church. The tracts published by him in
periodical works, along with his "Letters on Gospel Preaching and the
Behaviour of Ministers," were collected after his death, and
published under the title of "Remains."
Throughout his writings, Mr
Brown’s uniform aim was general utility; personal emolument formed no
part of his object, and certainly very little of his attainment, as the
whole profit accruing to himself from his voluminous, and in many cases,
successful works, amounted to only £40. Without possessing much original
genius, but on the other hand too ready, it may be, to submit the freedom
of his mind to system and authority, he was endowed with a strong aptitude
for acquisition, and great power of arrangement, a sound and generally
sober judgment, and a rich and vivid fancy, though united with a
defective, or rather, perhaps, an uncultivated taste. The selection of
subjects, and general conception of almost every one of them, are very
happy, and in many cases the execution proves his high endowments for the
task he undertook.
The time now drew near that
he should die. For some years previous, he had been greatly annoyed with a
gradual failure, at once in the bodily power of digestion and the mental
faculty of memory—the symptoms of a constitution fairly worn out by the
intense and incessant labours to which it had been subjected. In the
beginning of 1787, his complaints increased in such an alarming degree,
accompanied by a general and extreme debility, that he found it necessary
to abandon the pulpit. During the months of spring, he lived in a
continual state of earnest and active preparation for the great change he
was about to undergo. He expired on the 19th June, and on the 24th his
remains were followed to their place of repose in Haddington church-yard,
by nearly the whole inhabitants of the town, and a large concourse of his
friends and brethren from a distance. At the first meeting of the
Associate Synod after his decease, "the Synod," as their minute
bears, "unanimously agreed to take this opportunity of testifying
their respect to the memory of the Rev. John Brown, their late Professor,
whose eminent piety, fervent zeal, extensive charity, and unwearied
diligence in promoting the interests of religion, will be long remembered
by this court, especially by those members of it who had the happiness of
studying divinity under his inspection."
Memoir of Rev John
Brown taken from his Bible
Memoir of John
Brown D.D.
By John Cairns D.D. (1860) (pdf)
Supplementary Chapter to the Memoir of John Brown, D.D.
Letter to Rev. Dr. Cairns by John Brown M.D. (1860) (pdf)
John
Brown's Self Interpreting Bible Article |
