To return to Rollock personally:—We have spoken of him hitherto as only the first regent or Arts professor of Edinburgh University. In reality, however, since February 1586, when he was in his third session and had Nairne as his single fellow-regent, he had borne, along with his regency, the higher dignity of the Principalship,—the Town Council having concluded that the time had come for the institution of such an office in the University, and for Rollock’s promotion to it. Accordingly, when Rollock had the satisfaction of seeing the forty-seven students who had gone through their full four years’ curriculum with him made Masters of Arts, he was not only senior Regent, but also Principal of the University, with a right of superintendence over Colt and Scrimgeour, the other two regents. But no sooner had this first Edinburgh graduation taken place than there was a further change. Rollock, satisfied with having taken one class of students through the full course of four years, resigned his regency or Arts professorship, in order to become Professor of Divinity. As it was desirable that those of the new graduates and others who might be going forward to the Church should have the means of a theological education within Edinburgh, this was a natural arrangement. It amounted to the institution, though on a small scale, of a Theological Faculty in the University, in addition to the general Faculty of Arts or Philosophy. The Theological Faculty was represented solely by Rollock, who was also Principal of the University; while the Arts or Philosophical Faculty was represented for the time in Colt, Scrimgeour, and a third regent, Mr. Philip Hislop, one of Rollock’s recent graduates, appointed to the place which Rollock had just left vacant. In 1589, however, Mr. Charles Ferme, also one of Rollock’s graduates, was added to the staff of regents, so as to complete the number of four, necessary for the full conduct of the Arts classes.
No need to narrate here the rest of Rollock’s life in detail. Enough if we imagine him going on for ten years more in the exercise of the double duties of his Professorship of Theology and his Principalship in the infant University. As Professor of Theology, he may be said to have founded the Divinity School of Edinburgh. He trained up assiduously, not only by his lectures on Dogmatic and Polemical Theology, but also by his personal influence, the first ecclesiastics whom the University of Edinburgh gave to the Kirk of Scotland. Some of these attained subsequent distinction, and, remembering Rollock with reverence, carried his name into the next generation. Nor was his Principalship a sinecure. He visited the Philosophy classes, gave special lectures to them on Theology, and kept them and the regents to their work. Add to this much exertion beyond the bounds of the University. For a time he delivered Sunday evening sermons to crowded congregations in the East Kirk of St. Giles, by way of volunteer assistance to the four city ministers; and, latterly, when these four were increased to eight, and a division of the city-pastorate was made into eight districts or parishes, the full ministerial care of one of these city-charges was entrusted to Rollock. It was an anxious time, too, in the politics of the Kirk. King James had begun those efforts of his for the subversion of the Presbyterian constitution of the Kirk, as it had been established by statute in 1592, in which he was to persevere so unflinchingly through the remainder of his resident reign in Scotland, though it was not till he removed to England, and could act upon his native kingdom from the vantage-ground of his acquired English sovereignty, that the results were fully seen in the abolition of the Presbyterian constitution of the Kirk altogether and the substitution of Episcopacy. Already in Rollock’s time all Scotland was in anxious agitation in consequence of this anti-presbyterian policy of the King and the vehement resistance to it offered by the majority of the Scottish clergy and of the Scottish people. Rollock himself, as a public man and leading Edinburgh minister, had to take his part in the controversy. It was a mild part, it would seem, and not entirely satisfactory to the more resolute Presbyterian spirits, but truthful and characteristic. Without following him, however, over this dangerous ground, farther than to say that he was Moderator of the General Assembly held at Dundee in 1597, at which the King was present in person and there were some not unimportant attempts at a compromise, let us pass on to the year 1599, the last year but one of the sixteenth century.
Rollock was then in his forty-fourth year. He could look back on his services in connection with Edinburgh University as the most important work of his life. He had seen fifteen sessions of that University begun and ended, during four of which he had been senior regent or Arts professor, and during the remaining eleven Principal and Professor of Theology. He had seen eleven graduations and a total of 284 Edinburgh Masters of Arts sent forth by these graduations into the world. The University, it is true, remained still but a fragment of what a complete university ought to have been. It contained as yet no Faculty of Law and no Faculty of Medicine. For education in these professions Scottish students had still to resort to foreign universities, as indeed they had to do for more than a century yet to come. But it was something to have established a Theological Faculty and a Faculty of Arts. The Theological Faculty was still represented entire in Rollock’s own person; but in the Arts Faculty, on which the University depended most, he had seen thirteen regents after himself appointed. The tenure of office of most of these had been vexatiously short, drawn off as they had been by the more tempting emoluments of parish-charges and the like; but the four who were now in office as regents,—Mr. Henry Charteris, Mr. Charles Ferme, Mr. John Adamson, and Mr. William Craig,—were all graduates of the University itself, and therefore all Rollock’s own men. Moreover, the Arts Faculty had just been increased by the institution of a separate Professorship of Humanity, distinct from the four rotating regencies. To this professorship, the first holder of which was a certain excellent Mr. John Ray, fell a part of the work that had formerly been assigned to the regents of the first and second classes: viz. instruction mainly in Latin, but also in elementary Greek and the rudiments of rhetoric. Such was the staff of Edinburgh University as Rollock left it. Though yet but in the prime of manhood, he had been long in ill-health, and was now suffering from a painful and incurable disease. There are affectionate details of his death-bed doings and sayings: how he sent messages to the King, how the ministers and leading citizens of Edinburgh visited him, what advices he gave them, what pious ejaculations he uttered, and how, in especial, he spoke of the University of his love, and recommended it to the care of those who had the power to promote its interests. On the 9th of February 1599, the sixteenth session of the University being then in progress, he breathed his last. There was a great concourse of citizens of all ranks at his funeral, and all over Scotland the rumour ran that the nation was poorer by the loss of the eminent Rollock. Verses in Latin, Greek, and English, by old pupils and others, were showered upon his grave. He left a widow, whom the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh pensioned; and a daughter, posthumously born, was also provided for. In deference to his dying injunctions, the Town Council appointed Mr. Henry Charteris, his favourite pupil, and then one of the regents, to be his successor in the principalship and in the professorship of Divinity.
Looked back upon now through the dense radiance of the subsequent history of the University of Edinburgh, expanded as that University has been in the course of centuries into its present four-facultied completeness, each faculty of larger dimensions than Rollock could ever have dreamt of, and each with its memories of scores or hundreds of more or less shining celebrities that have belonged to it in past generations, Rollock himself, it must be admitted, dwindles into a mere telescopic star. That he is remembered at all now is due mainly to the fact that he was the first president of one of the most important institutions of the Scottish nation, and charged with the affairs of that institution in its struggling commencement, its “day of small things.” This in itself would be something. Many men have merited well of society simply because they have performed diligently the routine duties of the office they chanced to hold, and so have woven something of their own personality, though it may be hardly distinguishable afterwards, into the context of passing affairs and exigencies. Is this all, however, that we can say of Rollock? Not quite. Though the best of him is probably imbedded in the beginnings of the University of Edinburgh, and much of that even in the unrecorded beginnings, he has left some memorials of himself besides. His writings, all or nearly all of a theological nature, some published during his life, and others edited after his death by admiring friends, are so considerable in bulk that even the selection of them reprinted by the Wodrow Society fills two thick volumes. The more important and formal of them were dogmatic treatises or analytical Latin commentaries on portions of Scripture, some of which were of sufficient ability, after their kind, to have won recognition from Beza and other foreign theologians. More interesting, however, now are the specimens that remain of Rollock’s popular sermons in the vernacular English, or rather the vernacular Scots, of his day. Two extracts from one of these sermons will enable us to know Rollock somewhat more intimately, and will give an idea at the same time of the tastes of the Edinburgh folks of those days in the matter of pulpit oratory.
Understand that the text of the discourse is 2 Cor. v. 1, 2, running thus in the old version then in use: “For we knaw that, gif our earthly hous of this tabernacle be destroyit, we have a buylding given of God; that is, a house nocht made with hands, bot eternall in the heavens. For therefore we sigh, desiring to be clothed with our hous whilk is from heaven.” The thoughts suggested by this text being those of the evanescence of the present life and the aspiration after another life of higher expansion, Rollock’s handling of them takes this form:—
“The Apostle having spoken this, that his eye was set on that hevinly glory, it micht have been said, ‘Thou settis thine eye upon ane life above; bot tak heid, Paul! Thou sall die in the mean time; is not life and deith twa contrares? thou mon die, and that body of thine mon be dissolvit. Luikis thou ever to rise again? thinkis thou any other thing bot to be disappointed of life? Luikis thou that that body of thine, being dissolvit in dust, sall rise again to glory?’ This is are fair tentatioun, and sundry thinkis efter this maner.... Leirne ane lesson here. Ye see, while ane man is luiking to hevin, he will not be without tentatioun,—nay, not Paul himself, nor nae other man nor woman that hes their conversatioun in hevin. And the special tentatioun of him wha wald fain have life is deith, and the dreidful sicht of deith; and deith is ever in his eye. He was never born bot deith will tempt him, deith will be terrible to flesh and blude; and, when he is luiking up to that licht and glory in hevin, it will come in betwixt his eye and the sicht of hevin, as it were ane terrible black cloud, and some time will twin [sunder] him and that licht of hevin. As, when ane man is luiking up to the sun, ane cloud will come in on ane suddenty and tak the sicht of the sun frae him, sae when ane man is luiking up to the Sun of Richteousness, Christ Jesus, that cloud of deith will come in and cleik [catch] the sicht of Christ frae him. This is our estate here, and there is nane acquainted with hevinly things bot he will find this in experience as Paul did. But what is the remedy? In the first word of the text that we have read he says ‘we knaw,’ that is, ‘we are assured’; for the word imparts ane full assurance, and faith, and are full persuasion. Then the remedy aganis this tentatioun of deith is only faith, ane full persuasion and licht in the mind of the knawledge of God in the face of Christ, with ane gripping and apprehension thereof. This is the only remedy.”
“Thou mon have ane warrand of thy salvation in this life, or ellis I assure thee in the name of God thou sall never get to hevin. It is ane strait way to come to hevin, and it is wonder hard to get the assurance of it: it is nae small matter to get ane assurance of life everlasting efter death. Then luik what warrandis this man Paul had, that thou may preis to have the like. The first ground of his assurance is in this second verse. ‘For,’ says he, ‘this cause we sigh, desiring to be clothed’ (to put on as it were ane garment). Wherewith? ‘With our house whilk is frae hevin.’ Thir [these] are his wordis. Then his first warrand and ground of his assurance is ane desire of that samin glory. What sort of desire? Ane earnest desire, with siching and sobbing; not ane cauld desire, but day and nicht crying and sobbing for life. Trowis thou sae easily to get hevin that can never say earnestly in thy heart, ‘God give me that hevinly life!’ Na, thou will be disappointed; it is the violent that enters in hevin (Matt. xi. 12), as ye will see ane man violently thring [squeeze] in at are yett [gate]. Thou that wald gang to hevin, make thee for thringing through while [until] all thy guttis be almaist thrustit out. Paul, in the viii. chapter to the Romans, the 22 and 23 verses, usis thir argumentis againis those wickit men that cannot sich for hevin. First he takis his argument frae the elementis, the senseless and dumb creaturis, wha sobbis and groanis for the revelation of the sonnis of God. O miserable man, the eirth sall condemn thee; the flure thou sittis on is siching, and wald fain heave that carcase of thine to hevin. The waters, the air, the hevinis, all siching for that last deliverance, the glory apperteinis to thee; and yet thou is lauchand. What sall betide thee?”
There is evidence here that Rollock cannot have been merely a stiff scholastic and pedagogue, but was a man of some real, if coarsish, fervour of heart, of whom it might be expected that he would have the power on occasion of putting his hand on the shoulders of any promising youth among his pupils, and doing him good by some earnest words of moral and spiritual stimulus. On the whole, however, the impression from the sermons and the other writings is that he was by no means a man of such extraordinary calibre intellectually as it was desirable, and perhaps possible, that the University of Edinburgh should have had for its first regent and principal, the shaper of its methods and its tendencies from the outset. High forms of study and speculation were then asserting themselves in the intellectual world of the British Islands, the influence of which had never reached Rollock, or to which, in his place and circumstances, he remained necessarily impervious. His administration of the University could only be according to the lights in which he had himself been educated, and which he brought with him from St. Andrews. What if the Town Council of Edinburgh, instead of sending to St. Andrews for Rollock to be the first head of the new University, had invited their neighbour, Napier of Merchiston, to the post? He was Rollock’s senior by five years, the one man in all Scotland supremely fitted for the post; and, as he was to outlive Rollock eighteen years, how different might have been the infancy of the University had he been in Rollock’s place! But Napier was a layman and a laird; and the heavens would have fallen on the Edinburgh Town Council of 1583, as indeed they would have fallen on any subsequent Edinburgh Town Council till 1858, if they had thought of choosing any one but an ecclesiastic for the University Principalship. Besides, it is possible that the Laird of Merchiston, a man of many acres, and the owner and inhabitant of one of the finest turreted mansions near Edinburgh, would have regarded the offer as a joke.
It is in accordance with our estimate of Rollock all in all that, though, among the students sent forth from the University of Edinburgh during his Principalship, there were some who distinguished themselves subsequently by their force and hard-headedness in the routine affairs of the Scottish Kirk and State, we do not find any among them whom the historian of the higher thought and literature of Britain cares to remember now. Among the 284 Masters of Arts who left the University before Rollock died, the most memorable are perhaps these: Henry Charteris and Patrick Sands, pupils of Rollock’s own regency, and his successors in the principalship; Alexander Gibson of Durie, afterwards a judge of the Court of Session; James Sandilands, afterwards commissary of Aberdeen; Thomas Hope, afterwards Sir Thomas Hope, and of celebrity as a lawyer and as King’s Advocate; David Calderwood, the Presbyterian historian of the Kirk; and Robert Boyd of Trochrig, sometime minister in France, and afterwards Principal successively of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. To these may be added, as memorable on another ground, John Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, and his brother Alexander Ruthven, the two young chiefs or victims of the mysterious Gowrie conspiracy of 1600. The elder brother, a favourite of Rollock’s, was a graduate of 1593, and the younger graduated in 1598. Other names of some interest to the Scottish literary antiquarian may be found in the list of the Edinburgh graduates of Rollock’s time, but hardly one now interesting to the general British muses. But, indeed, Scotland had then entered on a period of her history during which the higher and more meditative muses found themselves dismissed from her territory for a while. Precisely at the time when the University of Edinburgh was founded, the age of Scotland’s richest outburst in all forms of a thoroughly native literature had come to an end,—closed, we may say, by the deaths of Knox and Buchanan, save that in Napier of Merchiston there was one peculiar survivor. From that date onwards through the whole of the seventeenth century the energies of Scotland were to be locked up all but continually and exclusively in one protracted business of political and ecclesiastical controversy. From that date, accordingly, the successive batches of graduates sent forth from the four Scottish Universities,—or rather, we should now say, from the five Scottish Universities, for the University of Marischal College, Aberdeen, was added as a fifth in 1593,—were absorbed, as clerics, lawyers, soldiers, and what not, into the service of a troubled social element requiring labours that left little sap in them for literary delights or for purely speculative exertions. Exceptions, of course, there are; and the two most notable of these belong to the University of Edinburgh. Drummond of Hawthornden was a graduate of that University in 1605, six years after Rollock’s death. Robert Leighton, so dear to Coleridge as one of the finest Platonic spirits among the British theologians of the seventeenth century, was an Edinburgh graduate of 1631, and was Rollock’s sixth successor in the Principalship of the University, and known for ten years in that capacity before they induced him to become Bishop and Archbishop.