Barclay, ROBERT

Barclay, ROBERT, the celebrated apologist of the Quakers, was born at Gordonstown in Morayshire, December 23, 1648. His father belonged to an old Scottish family, had served under Gustavus Adolphus, and was in some trouble after the Restoration for his conformity with Cromwell. Robert was educated at the Scots College at Paris, of which his uncle was rector; and here he withstood every temptation to embrace the Roman Catholic religion, and returned to Scotland in 1664, in compliance with the wish his mother had expressed on her death-bed. In 1667 he followed the example of his father—a convert in 1666—and joined the Society of Friends, for reasons more highly respected in our day than in his own. He states in his Treatise on Universal Love, that his 'first education fell among the strictest sort of Calvinists,' those of his country 'surpassing in the heat of zeal not only Geneva, from whence they derive their pedigree, but all the other so-called reformed churches;' that shortly afterwards, his crossing to France had thrown him among the opposite 'sect of papists,' whom, after a time, he found to be no less deficient in charity than the other; and that, consequently, he had refrained from joining any, though he had listened to several. The ultimate effect of this was to liberalise his mind, by convincing him of the folly and wickedness of religious strife. In both Calvinists and Catholics he found an absence of 'the principles of love,' 'a straitness of doctrine,' and a 'practice of persecution,' which offended his idea of Christianity, as well as the gentleness and generosity of his nature. He therefore allied himself gladly to this new sect, whose distinguishing feature was its charity and pure simplicity of Christian life, and soon became one of its most devoted adherents and its ablest advocate. He continued to prosecute his studies ardently, married Christian Mollison in 1670, and became involved in controversies in which he showed his superiority in logic and learning, no less than in tolerance. In 1672 he startled the self-complacent city of Aberdeen by walking through its streets in sackcloth and ashes. He suffered much persecution, and was frequently imprisoned, but at last found protection in the favour of the Duke of York, afterwards James II. He made several journeys into Holland and Germany, the last in company with William Penn and George Fox. He was one of the Quakers—originally twelve in number—who acquired the proprietorship of East New Jersey (in which toleration was to be established) in 1682 and was appointed its nominal governor. He was a frequent visitor to London, but continued to live at Urie, where he died, leaving three sons and four daughters, October 3, 1690. His estate remained in his family till the death of Captain Barclay, the famous pedestrian, in 1354. Barclay's works were collected in 1692 in a folio volume, entitled Truth Triumphant, republished in 3 vols. in 1717-18. Of these the greatest is An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth and preached by the People called in scorn Quakers (1678). It contains a statement and defence of fifteen religious propositions peculiar to the Friends. The leading doctrine which runs through the whole book is, that divine truth is made known to us not by logical investigation, but by intuition or immediate divine revelation to the heart of the individual; and that the faculty by which such intuition is rendered possible is the 'internal light,' the source of which is God, or, more properly, Christ, 'who is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' This light is given to every man, but is obscured by human corruption. The authority of the Scriptures gives only a 'secondary rule,' subordinate to that of the inward light, and the ordinary Augustinian notions of justification, perfection, and perseverance, imply rather a change in the outward relations than a transformation of the soul that accepts the divine light. The identity of this in the main with the teaching of a large school within the English church of the present day, is obvious. The fourteenth proposition deals with the question of toleration and the right of freedom for the conscience, his assertion of which fits well with his theory of divine light within all men of whatever creed or country. The author distinguishes carefully between the divine light and natural reason; but others who identify the two, find in Barclay's great work a series of excellent arguments for deism. Indeed, he was accused of deism even in his own time, and he is mentioned with favour by Voltaire. Brown of Wamphray, in his Quakerism the Pathway to Paganism (1678), denounces the 'hellish neo-paganism' of this 'devil in Samuel's mantle,' and speaks of his 'serpentine venom' as 'sugared over with fair speeches.' Barclay's famous work has often been reprinted, and has been translated into most of the European languages. His Treatise on Universal Love (1677) was the first of that long series of noble and gentle remonstrances against the criminality of war that has so honourably distinguished the Society of Friends.