John Abernethy

1680-1740. Irish Presbyterian minister. Trained at Glasgow and Edinburgh, he became minister of the Presbyterian congregation at Antrim in 1703. In 1718 he refused the general synod's appointment to a Dublin congregation-an unprecedented exercise of independent judgment which led to a division between “Subscribers” and “Non- Subscribers.” The latter, led by Abernethy, were excommunicated in 1726. From 1730 he ministered in Wood Street, Dublin. Abernethy asserted that terms of Communion, fixed in the NT, do not include subscription to humanly devised confessions of faith, and he opposed the exclusion of men from the service of the state on religious grounds. His published works include Discourses concerning the Being and Natural Perfections of God.