John Erskine

John Erskine (1721-1803) was an evangelical minister and writer, serving a congregation at Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, from 1767 until his death in 1803. He spent most of his career as a defender of religious orthodoxy (from a Calvinist perspective), promoting the work and writings of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards from the 1740s through the end of the eighteenth century and thereby establishing the latter as one of the leading influences upon Ryland, Fuller, and Sutcliff and their shift toward moderate, evangelical Calvinism in the late 1770s and early 1780s. Much of his theology can be gleaned from one of his last publications, Discourses Preached on Several Occasions (1798) as well as his two-volume set, Sketches and Hints of Church History, and Theological Controversy (1790-97), the latter a part of Fuller’s library by August 1798, more than a year before he left for his tour of Scotland.