James Ferguson

1621-1667. Scottish minister and writer. Of aristocratic lineage, he graduated at Glasgow University in 1638 and five years later became minister of Kilwinning in Ayrshire. There he was to stay for the twenty-four years of life left to him, declining invitations to richer parishes and the divinity chair of his own university. A man of notable piety, he was reckoned by his biographer to have been one of the wisest men in the land. Living in troubled times, he maintained the moderate (Resolutioner) side against the more fervent Covenanters* (Protesters), but admitted later that he had been wrong. He wrote various excellent commentaries on Paul's epistles (1656-75), commended by C.H. Spurgeon as being those of “a grand, gracious, savory divine.” Ferguson produced also a Refutation of the Errors of Toleration, Erastianism, Independency, and Separation.