Barclay, Robert

Barclay, Robert, 1648–90, Scottish apologist for the Society of Friends (Quakers). He wrote many controversial works but is best known for his great treatise An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, which appeared in Latin in 1676 and in English two years later. The duke of York (later James II) granted a patent of the province of East Jersey to 12 members of the Society of Friends; Barclay was nominal governor (1682–88), but he never went to America. His collected works were published in 1692 as Truth Triumphant.

See biography by D. E. Trueblood (1967).

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