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Barclay, Robert (b. Dec. 23, 1648, Gordonstoun, Moray, Scot.--d.
Oct. 3, 1690, Ury, Aberdeen), Quaker leader whose Apology
for the True Christian Divinity (1678) became a standard
statement of Quaker doctrines. His friendship with James II, then duke of York,
helped obtain the patent to settle the province of East Jersey, in the New
World.
After returning to Scotland from his education
at the Scots College in Paris, opposed to the doctrines of both Calvinism and
Roman Catholicism, Barclay joined the Society
of Friends (Quakers) in 1666. In 1672 he
startled the city of Aberdeen by walking through its streets in sackcloth and
ashes. He suffered much persecution and was frequently imprisoned. For
a public debate at Aberdeen in 1675, he published Theses Theologicae, a
set of 15 propositions of the Quaker faith. His Treatise on Universal Love (1677) deals
with the criminality of war.
To amplify them further, he published the Apology
three years later. The best known of his works is An Apology for
the True Christian Divinity, as the Same Is Held Forth and Preached by the
People Called in Scorn Quakers (1678). Barclay's collected works were
published in a volume entitled Truth Triumphant (1692). This
early and enduring exposition of Quaker beliefs defined Quakerism as a religion
of the "inner light." Arguing against both Roman Catholicism and
traditional Protestantism, including Anglicanism, Barclay asserted that neither
the church nor the Scriptures could claim completeness or ultimate authority and
that both were secondary to the work of the Holy Spirit--the Inner Light--in the
believer.
In 1677 Barclay and other Quaker leaders, including William
Penn (1644-1718), visited Holland and northern Germany to promote
the Quaker movement. Repeatedly imprisoned and persecuted at home, Barclay and
Penn found a friend in the Duke of York. Their influence with him helped secure
a patent for themselves and 10 other society members to settle in that area of
present-day New Jersey then called East Jersey (not to be confused with the area
in present Pennsylvania where Penn founded Philadelphia). The group emigrated to
America in 1682. After serving from 1682 to 1688 as nominal governor of East
Jersey, Barclay returned to Scotland and died at his estate at Ury.
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