Leighton (Robert), D.D., son of Alexander, b. in Edinburgh in 1611; grad. at the univ. of that city (1631), of which he became prin. in 1653; appointed bp. of Dunblane in 1661, in pursuit of the plan of Charles II. to Anglicize the Ch. of Scot.; appealed twice to the king to adopt milder measures in the attempted reform (1665 and 1669); accepted the archbishopric of Glasgow in 1670 upon conditions which were not fulfilled, and he resigned in 1673. Wrote “Sermons,” “Prelectiones Theologicæ,” “Commentary on the First Epistle of Peter,” and “Posthumous Tracts,” etc. D. June 26, 1684.
Personal
He had great quickness of parts, a lively apprehension, with a charming vivacity of thought and expression. He had the greatest command of the purest Latin that ever I knew in any man. He was a master both of Greek and Hebrew, and of the whole compass of theological learning, chiefly in the study of the Scriptures. But that which excelled all the rest was, he was possessed with the highest and noblest sense of divine things that I ever saw in any man…. He had so subdued the natural heat of his temper, that in a great variety of accidents, and in the course of twenty-two years’ intimate conversation with him, I never observed the least sign of passion but upon one single occasion…. There was a visible tendency in all he said to raise his own mind, and those he conversed with, to serious reflections. He seemed to be in a perpetual meditation…. His preaching had a sublimity both of thought and expression in it. The grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such, that few heard him without a very sensible emotion: I am sure I never did.
This excellent person is represented by Bishop Burnet as one of the most perfect characters of his own, or any other age. He was learned, eloquent, and devout; but his piety was the most unaffected in the world. His charity was comprehensive with respect to speculative opinions; but he could never overlook flagrant vices and corruptions in the professors of any religion. He was, for his singular merit, preferred to the bishopric of Dumblain, and afterward to the archbishopric of Glasgow. He had many enemies among the rigid Episcopalians, as he was strongly inclined to make some concessions to the Presbyterians, in order to an accommodation.
He was, indeed, a man whom either church might be glad to claim. But the peculiarity of his position was, that he combined a sanctity equal to that of the strictest Covenanter or the strictest Episcopalian, with a liberality in his innermost thoughts equal to that of the widest Latitudinarian of the school of Jeremy Taylor or of Hoadley. Let us look at both these points more minutely. They both appear far more strongly in the records of his life and conversation than could be inferred from his published writings. There are few men whose character gives the impression of a more complete elevation both above the cares and the prejudice of the world—of a more entire detachment from earth.
As saint, author, and peacemaker, Leighton presents a combination of qualities which has called forth almost unrivalled tributes of admiration. Thomas à Kempis was one of his favourite books, and the “imitation of Christ,” whose darling virtues he said were humility, meekness, and charity, was the business of his life. He shrank from every approach to ostentation, and so far from courting the riches and honours of the world he looked upon them with something of holy contempt. On accepting the bishopric he said, “One benefit at least will rise from it. I shall break that little idol of estimation my friends have for me, and which I have been so long sick of.” Burnet never saw his temper ruffled but once during twenty-two years of close intimacy, and could not recollect having heard him say one idle word. When reminded of his former zeal for the national covenant, he replied, “When I was a child I spoke as a child,” and when charged with apostatising from his father’s principles, he meekly answered that a man was not bound to be of his father’s opinions. He was habitually abstemious, kept frequent fasts, and often shut himself up in his room for prolonged periods of private devotion. Everything that he could spare was given to pious purposes, and he employed others as the agents of his charity that he might not get the credit of it.
General
All his works are admirable,… full of holy simplicity, humility, and benevolent zeal.
Next to the inspired Scriptures,—yea, and as the vibration of that once struck hour remaining on the air, stands Leighton’s Commentary on the first Epistle of Peter.
Perhaps there is no expository work in the English language equal altogether to the exposition of Peter. It is rich in evangelical sentiment and exalted devotion. The meaning is seldom missed, and often admirably illustrated. There is learning without its parade, theology divested of systematic stiffness, and eloquence in a beautiful flow of unaffected language and appropriate imagery. To say more would be unbecoming, and less could not be said with justice.
Leighton’s praise is in all the churches…. He is one of the very first divines of the British Church; and his writings breathe throughout the spirit of devotion: they are distinguished by a noble strain of deep piety, a most humble, heavenly, and loving spirit, an elegant mind, and a scriptural standard of evangelical doctrine.
That very remarkable work [on First Peter] teaches a singularly pure and complete theology—a theology thoroughly evangelical, in the true sense of that often abused epithet, being equally free from Legalism on the one hand and Antinomianism on the other; in a spirit of enlightened and affectionate devotion, love to the brotherhood, and charity to all men, and in a style which, though very unequal, indicates in its general structure a familiarity with the classic models of antiquity; and in occasional expressions is in the highest degree felicitous and beautiful. As a Biblical expositor, Leighton was above his own age, and as a theologian and practical writer few have equalled, still fewer surpassed him, either before or since his time…. Laboring under more than the ordinary disadvantages of posthumous publications, through the extreme slovenliness with which they, with few exceptions, were in the first instance edited, his works are eminently fitted to form the student of theology to sound views and a right spirit, and to minister to the instruction and delight of the private Christian—possessing in large measure and rare union those qualities which must endear them to every Christian mind, however uncultured, and those which are fitted to afford high gratification to them in whom the knowledge and love of evangelical truth are connected with literary attainment and polished taste.
A man whose apostolic gentleness of conduct endeared him deeply to his contemporaries, and whose devoutly meditative eloquence made him, in our own day, the bosom-oracle of Coleridge.
It would not be good, perhaps, to read nothing but Leighton, for he lacks manliness, and would not fit us for the sterner side of Christian duty; but in an age like ours, when all is stir and bustle and push, his books furnish a first-rate alterative, and help to restore the devotional to its true place in the life of the soul.
Robert Leighton is as a March swallow among Protestant theologians…. Above all things a spiritual divine, he has yet the gift of tongues to put his wisdom before the world in decent and profitable shape. It is but a lax prose, not ordered into periods and paragraphs, but ebbing and flowing comment-wise, as the exigencies of a text require it. The phrase is strong and sweet, a little careless perhaps, as of one disregarding the conventions of deliberate art. But at its best it rises into passages of extraordinary height, glowing with the rich fire of jewels, ringing with the harmonies of restrained music. Nor do such passages affect one as conscious rhetoric; they are not merely purple patches; every elevation of style corresponds directly to some moment of intensity or ecstasy in the course of the preacher’s thought. Only Leighton lived in an age when sermons might still be literature; before the eighteenth century had ruled that colour and imagination were out of place in the pulpit. In him, as in Jeremy Taylor or in Donne, dignity of speech is not the first consideration; they are not so far removed, Latinised though they be, from the nervous homespun of Latimer.
