Abernethy, John

Irish Presbyterian minister John Abernethy (1680–1740), an early leader of the New Light movement, which challenged the Presbyterian Church's traditional Calvinism and obligatory subscription of the Westminster formularies by ordinands, was born on 19 October 1680, the son of the Rev. John Abernethy of Brigh, Co. Tyrone. All of Abernethy's siblings died in the violence of 1689 in Ulster, but he escaped to his mother's family in Scotland.

After studies in Glasgow and Edinburgh universities Abernethy was ordained in Antrim in 1703. He was one of the founders of the Belfast Society, whose members exchanged books and discussed theological and philosophical questions. A sermon preached by him to the society in 1719 and published in 1720, Religious Obedience Founded on Personal Persuasion, began a controversy between conservatives and liberals, subscribers and nonsubscribers in Irish Presbyterianism, which continued until the 1820s.

The conservative John Malcolme of Dunmurry accused Abernethy and his associates of "pretending to give New Light to the world in the room of church government," and the name "New Light" stuck; the conservatives were known as "Old Lights." New Light was often unpopular in Ulster Presbyterian congregations, and Abernethy lost some members of his Antrim congregation before moving in 1730 to Dublin to succeed the eminent Joseph Boyse in his fashionable Wood Street congregation. There Abernethy had greater freedom to preach liberty of opinion in religion. He advocated the supreme authority of the enlightened individual conscience in defiance of the authority of church or state.

Abernethy died of gout in 1740. He was twice married, and the famous London surgeon John Abernethy was his grandson. His Discourses on the Being and Attributes of God were much admired and frequently reprinted, but his autobiographical diary has been lost.

SEE ALSO Presbyterianism

Bibliography

Barlow, S. "The Career of John Abernethy (1680–1740), Father of Non-Subscription in Ireland." Harvard Theological Review 78 (1985): 399–419.

Brown, A. W. G. "John Abernethy, 1680–1790, Scholar and Ecclesiast." In Nine Ulster Lives, edited by G. O'Brien and P. Roebuck. 1992.

Duchal, J. A Sermon on the Occasion of the Much Lamented Death of the Late Revd. John Abernethy. 1741.

Holmes, Finlay. "The Reverend John Abernethy: The Challenge of New Theology to Traditional Irish Presbyterian Calvinism." In The Religion of Irish Dissent, 1650–1800, edited by K. Herlihy. 1996.

Malcolme, John. Personal Persuasion No Foundation for Religious Obedience. 1720.

Witherow, T. Historical and Literary Memorials of Presbyterianism in Ireland. 1879.

Finlay Holmes