Series 1 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (First volume)

SACRAMENT AT ROTTERDAM
313
July 19, Ditto.—I went up to the university of Utrecht,
and there I studyed divinity under ye oversight of the professors
Hermannus Witsius1 and Melchior Leidelter.2
I went doun to Roterdam, and received the sacrament there
in the Scots church,3 Jan. 13, 1684. Mr. Fleming4 and Mr.
Hogg,5 ministers.
ness and Rotterdam. Her son, Archibald, who was born at Utrecht shortly
after (20th July 1683), was sent to Scotland in the same vessel in 1687, when his
parents left Holland for London.—Coltness Collections, published by the Maitland
Club, pp. 77, 90.
1 Hermannus Witsius, the famous Dutch theologian, born 12th February 1636,
at Enckhuysen, in West Friesland ; became Professor of Divinity in the university
of Franeker in 1675 > removed to the same office in the university of Utrecht in
1680, and to Leyden in 1698 ; retired on account of advancing years in February
1707; died 22d October 1708. ‘There was no branch of learning necessary
to adorn a divine in which he did not greatly excel.’—Life of Witsius, prefixed
to Crookshank’s edition of his great work, Oeconomia Fo&derum, Lond. 1822.
2 Melchior Leydecker, born at Middleburg in 1642 ; settled as pastor in the
province of Zealand in 1662 ; appointed Professor of Divinity in the university of
Utrecht in 1678; died 6th January 1722. He was the author of numerous
theological works.
3 Originally established by the States of Holland and the municipal authorities
of Rotterdam, in 1642, for the numerous Scottish residents in that commercial
centre. The first minister was Mr. Alexander Petrie, minister of the parish of
Rhynd, in the Presbytery of Perth, who was translated to Rotterdam 29th March
1643, and died there 6th September 1662.—See Steven’s Hist, of the Scottish
Church, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, 1833.
4 Robert Fleming, born in 1630, at Yester, in East Lothian, where his father,
James Fleming, the son-in-law of John Knox, was minister. His mother, how¬
ever, was his father’s second wife, and not the daughter of the Reformer. After
distinguishing himself at the university of Edinburgh, he studied under Samuel
Rutherfurd at St. Andrews, and was ordained minister of Cambuslang, near
Glasgow, in 1653. Ejected for nonconformity in 1662, he lived for some time
in Edinburgh and London, and in 1677 accepted a call to succeed Mr. Robert
Macward as second minister of the Scots’ Church, Rotterdam, and colleague to
Mr. John Hog or Hoog, the senior minister of that charge. Returning to Scot¬
land for his family in 1678, he was arrested and imprisoned for several months in
the Tolbooth, Edinburgh, but was released, and returned to Rotterdam in
October 1679. He continued to labour there with great zeal for fifteen years,
establishing for himself a high reputation, and repeatedly visiting England,
remaining sometimes four or five months at a time. During a visit to London
in the summer of 1694, he was seized with fever, and after a short illness of
eight days, died there on the 25th of July. He is chiefly known as the author of
The Fulfilling of the Scripture, a work originally published at Rotterdam in 1674,
and which became very popular, being repeatedly republished.—Scott’s. ;
Steven’s Scottish Church, Rotterdam’, Johnston’s 'Treasury of Scottish Covenant.
8 John Hog or Hoog, M.A., studied and obtained his degree at the university
1683
1684