The last two years of Robert Barclay's life seem to have been spent in social enjoyment and quiet usefulness at home. "There," we are told, "his mild and amiable virtues found their happiest sphere of exercise, and he enjoyed the esteem of his neighbours." But such serene happiness was not to last. In 1690, he travelled in the ministry in the north of Scotland, accompanied by another Quaker preacher named James Dickinson. Soon after his return home, he was seized with a violent fever, under which he soon sunk, and died on the 3rd of October, 1690. He was laid beside his father in the vault in the burial place in the beautiful grounds of Ury which his father had prepared. (Thither his descendants and namesakes were gathered one by one for 160 years, until in 1854, the last laird, Capt. Barclay-Allardice, after mortgaging his estates to their full value, and bringing sadness to the hearts of all who loved the name he bore, was brought there to his last rest.) There was great lamentation, especially in his own society, when the news got abroad. Fox, Penn, and others bore no grudging testimony to his gifts and services. The latter edited his works, with an ample preface, in which the subjects and merits of the different treatises are spoken of with judgment, yet with all the warmth of a personal friend.
Barclay's Apology has been spoken of as a system of Divinity. It is nothing of the kind, but simply an exhaustive treatise on the points in which Quakerism differs from the current evangelical Christianity of his day. The point is of importance, because otherwise the reader may be led astray both by the omissions from the work, and by the proportions allotted to different subjects. He must look elsewhere, for instance, for proofs that the early Friends were substantially orthodox in their views of the Trinity.
Much has been said about the Apology being framed on a plan similar to the Assembly's Catechism, and being indeed a reply to it. But that Catechism itself is on the plan of Calvin's Institutes, the trusted guide of Scotch orthodoxy. It would be an interesting point to trace the relation between the Institutes and the Apology. As to the Calvinistic controversy, a recent writer says, "No man ever gave Calvinism such mighty shakes as Barclay did. And he shook it from within. He understood it. As the religion of his country he had entered into it and made himself master of it. His controversy with Calvin was on fundamental principles." (Theological Review, 1874, p. 553). These assertions must be modified by remembering that, as we have seen, almost from childhood Barclay disliked Calvinism, so that whilst he might effectually combat some of its positions, he was little likely to do justice to its strong points, and can hardly be said to have shaken it from within. The Arminianism of the Catholic Church would strengthen his instinctive dislike, so that though he found the Quakers Arminians, he in nowise owed his convictions on this point to them.