DUNLOP, WILLIAM, a pious, learned, and eloquent divine, younger son of Principal Dunlop, was born at Glasgow in 1692, and received his education at the university of that city. In 1712 he took the degree of master of arts, and subsequently removed to Edinburgh, where he prosecuted his studies under the roof and superintendence of his uncle, Principal Carstairs. He afterwards spent two years at the university of Utrecht, studying the civil law, as was customary in those days, and on his return to Scotland, he applied himself with greater diligence than ever to the study of divinity. In 1714, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the presbytery of Edinburgh, and his learning and pulpit eloquence soon placed him in the foremost rank of the ministers of his time. Although not appointed to any parochial charge, he was, by the influence of Mr. William Wishart, who had succeeded his uncle as principal of the university of Edinburgh, nominated, on a vacancy, regius professor of divinity and ecclesiastical history in that university. His name, however, does not appear in the list of professors of the university from 1700 to 1759, in the register of the Town Council of Edinburgh. Bower says, “the patrons ‘recommended to the committee for the affairs of the college to receive Mr. William Dunlop second professor of divinity in the said college.’ No farther notice appears to be taken of it in the records, nor how long he retained that situation, nor anything respecting his future history, but there can be no doubt of his having been inducted to the office of professor of ecclesiastical history.” [Bower’s Hist. of the University of Edinburgh, vol. ii. p. 137.]

      About that period there had begun to appear both in England and Scotland a keen hostility to all creeds and confessions of faith, and it was deemed expedient for the Church of Scotland to lift up a testimony in their defence. In 1719, therefore, a number of gentlemen of Edinburgh resolved to publish an authorised collection of all the public standards of the church, and Professor Dunlop was requested to preface it with a vindication of the uses and ends of confessions. This he did with a candour and ability that proved his admirable fitness for the task. It was also, as appears from a paragraph at the end of the preface to his Sermons, intended to publish his lectures on ecclesiastical history, but this was never done. His career of usefulness was very short. He died October 29, 1720, at the early age of twenty-eight. His works are:

      Collections of Confessions of Faith, Catechisms, Directories, Books of Discipline, &c., of public authority in the Church of Scotland, with a preface, explaining and vindicating the uses and ends of Confessions, 2 vols. 12mo. Edin. 1719-22.

      Full Vindication of the Overtures transmitted to Presbyteries by the Commission, November 1719. Edin. 1720, 8vo.

      Sermons and Lectures, 2 vols. 12mo. Glasgow, 1746.

Father: William Dunlap
Mother: Sarah Carstairs