the Christian Church. These tracts were followed by his Sacred Tropology, the first of a series of works which he designed for the purpose of giving a clear, comprehensive, and regular view of the figures, types, and predictions of Scripture. The second and third parts were published in 1781.
In the year 1768, in consequence of the death of the Rev. John Swanston of Kinross, Professor of Divinity under the Associate Synod, Mr Brown was elected to the vacant chair. The duties of this important office he discharged with great ability and exemplary diligence and success. His public prelections were directed to the two main objects, first, of instructing his pupils in the science of Christianity, and secondly, of impressing their hearts with its power. The system of Divinity which he was led, in the course of his professional duty, to compile, and which was afterwards published, is perhaps the one of all his works which exhibits most striking proofs of precision, discrimination, and enlargement of thought; and is altogether one of the most dense, and at the same time perspicuous views which has yet been given of the theology of the Westminster Confession. The charge which he took of those committed to his care, was not entirely of the 'ex cathedra' description. The situation of the Hall in a small provincial town, and the manners of the age, combined with his just sense of the importance of the students' private exertions and personal habits, enabled him to exercise a much more minute and household superintendance over the young men under his direction. Frequently in the morning he was accustomed to go his rounds among their lodgings, to assure himself that they were usefully employing "the golden hours of prime." The personal contact between professor and pupils was thus remarkably close and unbroken, and hence we find that among those who can recollect their attendance on the Divinity Hall at Haddington, the interest with which every mind looks back to the scenes and seasons of early study has a greater character of individuality, and is associated with minuter recollections than we generally meet with after so long a lapse of years.
The same year in which he was elected to the theological chair he preached and published a very powerful sermon on Religious Steadfastness, in which ha dwells at considerable length on the religious state of the nation, and expresses violent apprehensions at the visible diffusion and advance of what he called latitudinarianism, and what we of this tolerant age would term liberality of religious sentiment. He likewise this year gave to the world one of the most elaborate, and certainly one of the most valuable of all his writings, the Dictionary of the Holy Bible. For popular use, it is unquestionably the most suitable work of the kind which yet exists, containing the results of most extensive and various reading both in the science and in the literature of Christianity, given without pretension or parade, and with a uniform reference to practical utility. In 1771, the Honourable and Reverend Mr Shirley, by command of the Countess of Huntingdon, applied to Mr Brown for his opinions on the grand subject of justification, in view of a conference to be held on this question with Mr Wesley and his preachers. This application gave occasion to a long and animated correspondence with that noble lady, (a correspondence which, in consequence of our author's modesty, remained a secret till after his death,) and to a series of articles from his pen on the doctrine of justification, which appeared, from time to time, in the Gospel Magazine and Theological Miscellany, between the years 1770 and 1776. In the same year he was led, by a desire to contribute to the yet better instruction of his students, to form the design of composing a manual of church history on a general and comprehensive plan. It was to consist of three parts, "the first comprehending a general view of transactions relating to the church from the birth of our Saviour to the present time; the second containing more fully the histories of the Reformed British Churches in England,
