Forbes, John (2)
Forbes, John
Capuchin, b. 1570; d. 1606. His father, John, eighth Lord Forbes, being a Protestant, and his mother, Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of the fourth Earl of Huntly, a Catholic, John followed the religion of his father, while his elder brother was educated a Catholic. To preserve his Faith the latter went to Brussels and there entered the Capuchin order. His letters and the influence of a maternal uncle, James Gordon S.J. led John into the Catholic Church, 1587. To recover his son to Protestantism Lord Forbes affianced him to a noble Protestant lady. On the eve of the marriage John, disguised as a shepherd, fled and, having eluded his father’s spies, landed in Lille. Pressed into the English army, he escaped, was arrested by Spanish militia, imprisoned at Antwerp, but finally released. After some delay he was admitted to the Capuchin Order, August, 1593, at Tournai and took the name of his deceased brother, Archangel. Persevering in spite of persuasion, force, and the strategems of friends to the contrary, he completed his studies, was ordained a priest and after refusing an appointment as guardian, was sent as chaplain to the Spanish garrison at Dendermond. Mindful of his own countrymen he wrote to his kinsman and companion in youth, James VI of Scotland, setting forth the claims of the Catholic religion. Learning of his whereabouts, many countrymen visited him, eighteen of whom he converted to Catholicity, also three hundred soldiers. To his great delight he was appointed missionary Apostolic to Scotland, but succumbed to an epidemic at Dendermond. He is said to have written an account of his conversion, though it was never published. His mother spent her declining years near her son; his betrothed became a nun in Rome.
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JOHN M. LENHART Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VICopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Forbes, John
(of Corse), son of Patrick Forbes, was born May 2, 1593. After studying at Heidelberg and Sedan, he was appointed professor of divinity in King’s College, Aberdeen, in 1619. In the great struggle in Scotland between Presbyterianism and prelacy, he favored Episcopacy, but sought to be a peacemaker, publishing Irenicum Amatoribus Veritatis et Pacts in Ecclesia Scotiana (Aberdeen, 1629). In 1638 he published, A peaceable Warning to the Subjects in Scotland. Refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, he was, deprived of his benefice in 1640. His case was one of peculiar hardship, for he had made over part of his own private property to be attached to the professorship which he held, and he lost this property on being dismissed from his office. In 1642 he went to Holland, married there and remained three years. Returning to Scotland, he spent the remainder of his life on his estate at Corse, and died April 20, 1648. His reputation chiefly rests upon his great work Instructiones Historico-Theologicae de doctrina Christiana et vario rerum statu, ortisque erroribus et controversiis (Amnst. 1645, fol.; Geneva, 1680, fol.; abridged by Arnold Montanus (Amst. 1663, 8vo). His collected works were published under the title Joannis Forbesii a Corse Opera Omnia, inter quae plurima posthuma, with Vita by Dr. Garden (Amst. 1702-3, 2 volumes, fol.). His Instructiones is still a valuable work; its design was to show, in opposition to Bellarmine, the doctrinal agreement between the Reformers and the earlier fathers, sand it formed a precursor of the modern works on the History of Doctrines. Bishop Burnet (Preface to Life of Bedell) says that Forbes of Corse was a man of much more extensive learning than his father (Patrick Forbes), in which, perhaps, he was excelled by none of that age. Those who shall read his book of Historical and Theological Institutions will not dispute this title with him; for it is so excellent a work, that, if he had been left in quiet, in the retirement he had chosen, to apply himself to his studies, and could have finished it by a second volume, it would, perhaps, have been the most valuable treatise of divinity that has yet appeared in the world. Baur names Forbes and Petavius ,as the two great writers of the 17th century on History of Doctrines. Encycl. Britannica, 9:776; Niceron, Memoires pour servir, etc. t. xlii; Donaldson, History of Christian Literature, 1:66.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Forbes, John (2)
a Scotch clergyman, third son of William Forbes of Corse, was born about 1566; studied at San Salvator’s College, and took his degree from the University of St. Andrews in 1583; was admitted to the living at Alford in 1593. He was commissioned in 1605 to wait upon the king to inform his majesty what the assembly of Aberdeen had done in opposition to the royal pleasure, he having been the moderator. The privy council condemned him to be imprisoned, first in Edinburgh castle, then in the castle at Blackness. In 1606, he, with five others, was tried at Linlithgow on the charge of treason, declining to acknowledge the authority of the privy council, and banished, October 23, 1606, for life. He went to Sedan in 1607, became the minister to the British merchants at Middleburgh, laid the foundation of a Scottish church there in 1611, removed to the church at Delft in 1621, was displaced by orAer of the British government, and died about 1634. He published, The Saint’s Hope, and its Infalibleness (1608): Two Sermons (eod.): A Treatise Tending to the Clearing of Justification (1616, 4to): A Treatise how God’s Spirit may be Discerned fiom Man’s Spirit (Lond. 1617): Four Sermons on 1 Timothy 6 (1635, 4to): Certain Records Touching the Estate of the Kirk in 1605, 1606: Three Letters to James VI (1851). See Fasti Eccles. Scoticanae, 3:545.