D/URING the greater part of the seventeenth century there was a constant immigration into the north-east of Ireland of Scotch men, who carried with them their hardy mode of life and persevering habits; their love of education and their anxiety to have an educated ministry; their attachment to the Bible and the simple Presbyterian worship.
This movement commenced with the attempt of the first James of England to civilize Ireland by the Plantation of Ulster, and was continued during the period of the prelatic persecution in Scotland, whereby not a few sturdy adherents of the Solemn League and Covenant were driven for refuge to the sister isle.The Scottish Church kept a watchful guardianship over her scattered children, and sent after them a succession of ministers to preach the gospel, for a time in the Established Church, and, when churchmen from England (such as Jeremy Taylor) would not tolerate this any longer, to set up a Presbyterian organization.Among these was the Rev.Alexander Hutcheson, the second son of an old and respectable family at Monkwood, in Ayrshire, who became minister at Saintfield, in the heart of county Down, and purchased the townland of Drumalig.His second son ' 'John, was settled at Ballyrea, within two miles of Artnagh, and ministered to a Presbyterian congregation in the archiepis opal city, where he {50} was known by his church as a man of retiring habits and of superior abilities, and a firm supporter of Calvinistic doctrine.His second son, Francis, was born Aug.8, 1694, it is said in his grandfather's house in Drumalig. When about eight years of age, he (with his elder brother, Hans) was put under the care of the same grandfather, and attended a classical school kept by Mr.
Hamilton in the "meeting house" at Saintfield.He was afterwards sent to Killyleagh, in the same county, to an academy kept by the Rev.James Macalpin, said to be a man of virtue and ability, and who taught the future metaphysician the scholastic philosophy.We have it on record, that the Presbyterian Church of Ireland -- seeking now, after coming through a long period of harassment and trouble, to work out its full educational system --did about this time set up several such schools for philosophy and theology.However, the great body of the young men intending for the ministry did then, and for more than a century after, resort to the University of Glasgow for their higher education.Of this college Hutcheson became a student about 1710 (he does not seem to have matriculated till 1711).During his residence with his grandfather he became such a favorite with the old man, that when he died in 1711, it was found that he bad altered a prior settlement of his family affairs, and, passing by the older grandson, had left all his landed property to the second.Francis, though a cautious, was a generous youth: he had all along taken pains, even by means of innocent artifices, to uphold his brother in the old man's esteem; and now he refused to accept the bequest, while Hans, with equal liberality, declined to receive what had been destined for another; and the friendly dispute had at last to be settled by a partition of the lands, which again became united when Hans, dying without issue, left his share to the son of Francis.
Francis Hutcheson thus sprang, like Gershom Carmichael (and we shall afterwards see George Turnbull), from the old {51} orthodox Presbyterian Church and its educated pastors;and both were early nurtured in the scholastic logic, from which they received much benefit.But Hutcheson comes an age later than Carmichael, and falls more thoroughly under the new spirit which has gone abroad.
At Glasgow the youth followed the usual course of study in the classical languages and philosophy, and enjoyed the privilege of sitting under the prelections of Carmichael.In after years, when called back to be a professor in the college, he gives in his Introductory Lecture a glimpse of the books and branches in which he felt most interest in his student life.After referring to the pleasure which he experienced in seeing once more the buildings, gardens, fields, suburbs, and rivers' banks (more pleasant then than now), which had been so dear to him, he expresses the peculiar gratification which he felt in revisiting the place where he had drunk the first elements of the quest for truth; where Homer and Virgil, where Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Terence, where the philosophy of Cicero and the discussions of the Fathers, had been opened to him; and where be had first been taught to inquire into the nature and reasons (<rationes>) of virtue, the eternal relations of number and figures, and the character of God.Having taken the Master's degree in 1712, he entered, the following year, on the study of theology under Professor John Simson.This professor was at that time, and, indeed, for the greater part of the period from 1712 to 1729, under prosecution before the ecclesiastical courts for teaching doctrines inconsistent with the Confession of Faith.It appears from the charges brought against him, and from his shuffling and vacillating explanations (he was often in a shattered state of health), that he took a favorable view of the state of the heathen; that he was inclined to the doctrine of free-will; he maintained that punishment for original sin alone was not just; he held that rational creatures must necessarily seek their chief good, -- always under subserviency to the glory of God, who cannot impose a law contrary to his own nature and to theirs, and who cannot condemn any except those who seek their chief good in something else, and in a different way than God has prescribed: but the special charge against him was, that he denied that Jesus Christ is a necessarily existent being in the same sense as the Father is.The lengthened process {52}
