(W. A. B. C.)
GLAS, GEORGE (1725-1765); Scottish seaman and merchant adventurer in West Africa, son of John Glas the divine, was born at Dundee in 1725, and is said to have been brought up as a surgeon. He obtained command of a ship which traded between Brazil, the N.W. coasts of Africa and the Canary Islands. During his voyages he discovered on the Saharan seaboard a river navigable for some distance inland, and here he proposed to found a trading station. The exact spot is not known with certainty, but it is plausibly identified with Gueder, a place in about 29° 10’ N., possibly the haven where the Spaniards had in the 15th and 16th centuries a fort called Santa Cruz de Mar Pequeña. Glas made an arrangement with the Lords of Trade whereby he was granted £15,000 if he obtained free cession of the port he had discovered to the British crown; the proposal was to be laid before parliament in the session of 1765. Having chartered a vessel, Glas, with his wife and daughter, sailed for Africa in 1764, reached his destination and made a treaty with the Moors of the district. He named his settlement Port Hillsborough, after Wills Hill, earl of Hillsborough (afterwards marquis of Downshire), president of the Board of Trade and Plantations, 1763-1765. In November 1764 Glas and some companions, leaving his ship behind, went in the longboat to Lanzarote, intending to buy a small barque suitable for the navigation of the river on which was his settlement. From Lanzarote he forwarded to London the treaty he had concluded for the acquisition of Port Hillsborough. A few days later he was seized by the Spaniards, taken to Teneriffe and imprisoned at Santa Cruz. In a letter to the Lords of Trade from Teneriffe, dated the 15th of December 1764, Glas said he believed the reason for his detention was the jealousy of the Spaniards at the settlement at Port Hillsborough “because from thence in time of war the English might ruin their fishery and effectually stop the whole commerce of the Canary Islands.” The Spaniards further looked upon the settlement as a step towards the conquest of the islands. “They are therefore contriving how to make out a claim to the port and will forge old manuscripts to prove their assertion” (Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1760-1765). In March 1765 the ship’s company at Port Hillsborough was attacked by the natives and several members of it killed. The survivors, including Mrs and Miss Glas, escaped to Teneriffe. In October following, through the representations of the British government, Glas was released from prison. With his wife and child he set sail for England on board the barque “Earl of Sandwich.” On the 30th of November Spanish and Portuguese members of the crew, who had learned that the ship contained much treasure, mutinied, killing the captain and passengers. Glas was stabbed to death, and his wife and daughter thrown overboard. (The murderers were afterwards captured and hanged at Dublin.) After the death of Glas the British government appears to have taken no steps to carry out his project.
In 1764 Glas published in London The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, which he had translated from the MS. of an Andalusian monk named Juan Abreu de Galindo, then recently discovered at Palma. To this Glas added a description of the islands, a continuation of the history and an account of the manners, customs, trade, &c., of the inhabitants, displaying considerable knowledge of the archipelago.
GLAS, JOHN (1695-1773), Scottish divine, was born at Auchtermuchty, Fife, where his father was parish minister, on the 5th of October 1695. He was educated at Kinclaven and the grammar school, Perth, graduated A.M. at the university of St Andrews in 1713, and completed his education for the ministry at Edinburgh. He was licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Dunkeld, and soon afterwards ordained by that of Dundee as minister of the parish of Tealing (1719), where his effective preaching soon secured a large congregation. Early in his ministry he was “brought to a stand” while lecturing on the “Shorter Catechism” by the question “How doth Christ execute the office of a king?” This led to an examination of the New Testament foundation of the Christian Church, and in 1725, in a letter to Francis Archibald, minister of Guthrie, Forfarshire, he repudiated the obligation of national covenants. In the same year his views found expression in the formation of a society “separate from the multitude” numbering nearly a hundred, and drawn from his own and neighbouring parishes. The members of this ecclesiola in ecclesia pledged themselves “to join together in the Christian profession, to follow Christ the Lord as the righteousness of his people, to walk together in brotherly love, and in the duties of it, in subjection to Mr Glas as their overseer in the Lord, to observe the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper once every month, to submit themselves to the Lord’s law for removing offences,” &c. (Matt. xviii. 15-20). From the scriptural doctrine of the essentially spiritual nature of the kingdom of Christ, Glas in his public teaching drew the conclusions: (1) that there is no warrant in the New Testament for a national church; (2) that the magistrate as such has no function in the church; (3) that national covenants are without scriptural grounds; (4) that the true Reformation cannot be carried out by political and secular weapons but by the word and spirit of Christ only.
This argument is most fully exhibited in a treatise entitled The Testimony of the King of Martyrs (1729). For the promulgation of these views, which were confessedly at variance with the doctrines of the standards of the national church of Scotland, he was summoned (1726) before his presbytery, where in the course of the investigations which followed he affirmed still more explicitly his belief that “every national church established by the laws of earthly kingdoms is antichristian in its constitution and persecuting in its spirit,” and further declared opinions upon the subject of church government which amounted to a repudiation of Presbyterianism and an acceptance of the puritan type of Independency. For these opinions he was in 1728 suspended from the discharge of ministerial functions, and finally deposed in 1730. The members of the society already referred to, however, for the most part continued to adhere to him, thus constituting the first “Glassite” or “Glasite” church. The seat of this congregation was shortly afterwards transferred to Dundee (whence Glas subsequently removed to Edinburgh), where he officiated for some time as an “elder.” He next laboured in Perth for a few years, where he was joined by Robert Sandeman (see [Glasites]), who became his son-in-law, and eventually was recognized as the leader and principal exponent of Glas’s views; these he developed in a direction which laid them open to the charge of antinomianism. Ultimately in 1730 Glas returned to Dundee, where the remainder of his life was spent. He introduced in his church the primitive custom of the “osculum pacis” and the “agape” celebrated as a common meal with broth. From this custom his congregation was known as the “kail kirk.” In 1739 the General Assembly, without any application from him, removed the sentence of deposition which had been passed against him, and restored him to the character and function of a minister of the gospel of Christ, but not that of a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, declaring that he was not eligible for a charge until he should have renounced principles inconsistent with the constitution of the church.
A collected edition of his works was published at Edinburgh in 1761 (4 vols., 8vo), and again at Perth in 1782 (5 vols., 8vo). He died in 1773.
Glas’s published works bear witness to his vigorous mind and scholarly attainments. His reconstruction of the True Discourse of Celsus (1753), from Origen’s reply to it, is a competent and learned piece of work. The Testimony of the King of Martyrs concerning His Kingdom (1729) is a classic repudiation of erastianism and defence of the spiritual autonomy of the church under Jesus Christ. His common sense appears in his rejection of Hutchinson’s attempt to prove that the Bible supplies a complete system of physical science, and his shrewdness in his Notes on Scripture Texts (1747). He published a volume of Christian Songs (Perth, 1784).
(D. Mn.)