Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. From the Upsala-möte to the death of Charles XII. The Great Kings and the Great Bishops (1592—1718 A.D.)
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
9- CONCILIATION MOVEMENT AND JOHN DURIE. 291
the Scotsman, John Durie, who gave up the last fifty years
of a life of eighty-four years (1596 1680) to this work.
From the year 1628 he laboured unceasingly in the North
and West of Europe to promote the reconciliation, or at
least to secure, the inter-communion and co-operation of
the Evangelical Churches. He visited courts and states
men, bishops and clergy, he attended synods, he held dis
putations, he entered into personal correspondence, he
published elaborate treatises, in the interest of a confedera
tion in which England and Scotland, and the Netherlands,
and the reformed Churches of France and Germany,
especially in the Palatinate, and Switzerland, were to co
operate with the adherents of the Confession of Augsburg.
The likeness of his work to that in which many in Eng
land and Scotland are now engaged, and that in more than
one quarter of the globe, and its special bearing on the
object of these lectures, may be my excuse for devoting
several pages to an account of this remarkable man.41
John Durie was born at Edinburgh, but he was from his
boyhood familiar with the Continent, and learnt to speak
German like a native. He was brought up at Sedan, under
his cousin, Andrew Melville, and at Leyden, where his
father, formerly minister of Montrose, had settled. In
1624 he
"
sojourned
"
for a time at Oxford for the sake of
the library.
42
In 1626 he was chaplain, as an independent
minister, to a company of English merchants at Elbing in
East Prussia, than under the rule of the Swedish king.
Here he made the friendship of a Swedish privy councillor
and judge, Caspar Godeman, and entered warmly into his
41
Durie s life has never been fully written, though something
may be found about him in most histories and biographical dic
tionaries. The fullest account I have found in English is in the
Christian Remembrancer for January, 1855, Vol. 29, pp. 15-29,
and in Swedish in Th. Norlin s Sv. Kyrkans Historia, 2, pp.
172-195, which is based on Carl Jesper Benzelius Dissertatio
de Johanne Durceo pacificatore celeberrimo maximeque de
actis eius Suecanis delivered in the presence of Mosheim,
Helmstad, 1744.
42
Ant. A. Wood : Fasti Oxon. t i., p. 420.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
