William Leechman

[close] William Leechman (1706 - 1785) was a Scottish minister, theologian and academic. He was Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University.

The son of William Leechman, a farmer of Dolphinton, Lanarkshire, he was educated at the parish school; the father had taken down the quarters of Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, which had been exposed after his execution (24 December 1684) on the tolbooth of Lanark. In gratitude for this service the Baillie family helped young Leechman to go to the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated 16 April 1724. He studied divinity there under William Hamilton (1669 – 1732).

He was tutor to James Geddes, and then, in about 1727, he became tutor to William Mure of Caldwell, a friend of David Hume. The family passed the winters at Glasgow, where he attended the lectures of Francis Hutcheson. In October 1731 he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Paisley, where Scottish bookseller Andrew Millar's father, Robert Millar, had also been licensed. By 1745, Andrew Millar was selling Leechman's sermons in London.

In 1736 Leechman was ordained minister of Beith in the neighbourhood of Caldwell. He was moderator of a synod at Irvine in 1740, and on 7 April 1741 preached a sermon at Glasgow "on the ... character of a minister of the gospel", which was published, and passed through several editions.

In July 1743 he married Bridget Balfour of the Pilrig family. At the end of the year he was elected professor of divinity at the University of Glasgow by the casting vote of the lord rector, in a closely contested election with William Craig and John MacLaurin also candidates. The presbytery of Glasgow refused to enrol him, alleging that he had made heretical statements in a sermon published in 1743 On the Nature, Reasonableness, and Advantages of Prayer. He was accused of laying too little stress upon the merits of the intercession of the Saviour. The synod of Glasgow and Ayr rejected the accusation of the presbytery, and their acquittal was confirmed by the General Assembly.

Leechman's lectures were popular, and he followed the example first set by Hutcheson of using English instead of Latin. In 1761 he was appointed Principal of the University at Glasgow, but for a time continued to lecture.