ERSKINE, EBENEZER, a celebrated divine, and founder of the Secession Church in Scotland, was born June 22, 1680, according to one account at the village of Dryburgh, but according to another, at the Bass, where his father, who had been ejected in 1662 from his charge in Northumberland, was for some time a prisoner. He received his education at Edinburgh, and was settled in 1703 in the parish of Portmoak. There he remained for twenty-eight years, after which, in the autumn of 1731, he was translated to Stirling. Previously to this period, however, his extraordinary popularity had made him an object of jealousy to the clergy generally, who entertained a peculiar fondness for the abjuration oath, lay patronage, and legal theology. For his vigorous defence of the evangelical doctrines contained in the Marrow of Modern Divinity, Erskine received the rebuke of the Assembly, and was exposed to the most vehement abuse both in the church courts and from the public press. A sermon which he preached on lay-patronage before the Synod of Perth in 1733 furnished new grounds of accusation, and he was compelled to shield himself from rebuke by appealing to the General Assembly. Here, however, the sentence of the synod was confirmed; and after many fruitless attempts to obtain a fair hearing, he, with Wilson, Moncrief, and Fisher, were suspended from the office of the ministry by the commission in November of that year. Against this sentence the four brethren protested, and constituted themselves into a separate church court, under the name of the Associate Presbytery. It was not, however, till 1739 that they were again summoned before the assembly, when appearing in their corporate capacity they declined the authority of the church, and were deposed in the following year. They received numerous accessions to their communion, and remained in harmony with each other till 1747, when a division took place in regard to the nature of the oath administered to burgesses. Erskine continued to preach to a numerous congregation in Stirling till his death, which took place in 1756. His published works consist chiefly of sermons.