'A Profession of Divinity': the Aberdeen Doctors, Bishop Forbes, and a counter-factual

There is scarce, perhaps, to be found anywhere in Europe, a more learned, decent, independent, and respectable set of men, than the greater part of the presbyterian clergy of Holland, Geneva, Switzerland, and Scotland.

Adam Smith's comment in The Wealth of Nations (1776) would, of course, have somewhat offended those who knew the clergy of the Church of England in 1776, whose education, decency, and respectability was often commented upon. My point today, however, is not to address this. Rather, Smith's comment came to mind when reading the sermon preached by one of the Aberdeen Doctors, Robert Baron, at the funeral of Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen 1618-35.

The learning of the Aberdeen Doctors, and their eirenic vision during a time of conflict in Europe and growing instability in the Three Kingdoms, reflected Forbes' ambition for the Church of Scotland: episcopally-ordered, eirenic, and deeply learned, centred around Scotland's five universities. In his sermon, Baron pointed to how Forbes sought "the establishing of a setled Ministerie in these partes":

or, which is all one, of a setled course, whereby the Gospell may be propagated in this countrey, vnto subsequent ages, by able and well qualified men.

Three means, Baron stated, were pursued to Forbes to ensure that and "increase of knowledge, lest good Places should want able and good men to occupie, and fill them":

First, by establishing a Profession of Divinitie, which was a matter of great charges, both to his Presbyters, and also to himselfe. Secondlie, by procuring a foundation of a good number of Bursses, for sustentation of Studentes in Divinitie: and thirdlie, by appoynting most exact and strict tryalls of exspectantes, before their admission to the Ministeriall charge.

In other words, in Bishop Forbes and the Aberdeen Doctors we see that an episcopally-ordered Church of Scotland, if it had emerged intact from the Revolution of 1688 (rather than having destroyed its standing as the national church through ridiculous and self-destructive loyalty to the Stuarts), could have had those characteristics which Adam Smith - that good friend of the Moderates - praised in the late 18th century Scottish Church (then, of course, governed by presbytery). In such circumstances, Forbes' example could have been followed - and Robert Leighton provides a wonderful example of this post-1660 - with Scotland's bishops promoting an eirenic, learned clergy, of which commentators may have said that the equal of which was "scarce, perhaps, to be found anywhere in Europe".

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laudable Practice

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