Of Mr Dickson's works the indefatigable Wodrow lias given a minute account. By these he is best known, and it is perhaps the best eulogium that could be pronounced upon them, that they have stood the test of nearly two hundred years, and are still highly valued.
His Commentaries on the Psalms, on the Gospel of St Matthew, on the Epistles, and on that to the Hebrews, which was printed separately, were the results of a plan formed among some of the most eminent ministers of the Scottish church for publishing "short, plain, and practical expositions of the whole Bible." To the same source we are indebted for some of the works of Durham, Ferguson, Hutchison, &c., but the plan was never fully carried into effect, and several of the expositions in Wodrow's time still remained in manuscript. Mr Dickson's Treatise on the Promises, published at Dublin in 1630, 12mo, is the only other work printed during his life, with the exception of some ephemeral productions, arising out of the controversy with the doctors of Aberdeen, and the disputes between the resolutioners and protesters. A few-poems on religious subjects are mentioned by Wodrow, but they are long since quite forgotten.
Mr Dickson's "Therapeutica Sacra, or cases of conscience resolved," has been printed both in Latin and English. On the 25th of July, 1661, he applied to the privy council for liberty to publish the English version, and Fairfoul, afterwards archbishop of Glasgow, was appointed to examine and report upon it. "Now, indeed," says Wodrow, sarcastically, " the world was changed in Scotland, when Mr Fairfoul is pitched upon to revise Mr David Dickson, professor of divinity, his books." What was the result of this application is not known; it is only certain that no farther progress was made in the attainment of this object till 1663, after the author's death. On the 23d of March that year, his son, Mr Alexander Dickson, professor of Hebrew in the university of Edinburgh, again applied to the lords of the council, who in October granted license to print it without restriction.[1] It was accordingly published in 1664.
The last work which we have to notice is "Truth's victory over Error," which was translated by the eccentric George Sinclair, and published as his own in 1684. What his object in doing so was, Wodrow does not determine, but only remarks that if (and we think there is no doubt in the matter) it was "with the poor view of a little glory to himself, it happened to him as it generally does to self-seeking and private spirited persons even in this present state." In accordance with the prevailing custom of the times, many of Mr Dickson's students had copied his Dictates, and Sinclair's trick was soon and easily detected. One of them inserted in the running title the lines,
"No errors in this book I see,
But G.S. where D.D. should be."
The first edition, with the author's name, was printed at Glasgow, in 1725, and has prefixed to it a memoir of the author, by Wodrow, to which we have already alluded, and to which we are indebted for many of the facts mentioned in this article.[2]
DOIG, Dr David, the son of a small farmer in the county of Angus, was born in the year 1719. His father dying while he was still an infant, he was in-
- ↑ History of the suff. of the church of Scotland, ed. 1828.
- ↑ Wodrow, in his Analecta, MS. Advocates' Library, sets down the following characteristic anecdote of Mr Dickson: "I heard that when Mr David Dickson came in to see the lady Eglintoune, who at the time had with her the lady Wigton, Culross, &c., and they all caressed him very much, he said, Ladies, if all this kindness be to me as Mr David Dickson, I eun [render] you noe thanks, but if it be to me as a servant of my master, and for his sake. I take it all weel."'
