GIB, ADAM, b. Scotland; the leader of the Antiburgher section of the Scottish secession church; and licensed as a preacher in 1740. In the following year, he was ordained minister of the large secession congregation of Bristol, Edinburgh, being the first in the city inducted into such a charge; and there his powerful intellect and his intensity of character soon secured for him a position of considerable prominence. In 1742, he caused some stir by the publication of an invective entitled A Warning Against Countenancing the Ministrations of Mr. George Whitefteld; and in 1745, he was almost the only minister of Edinburgh who continued to preach, and to preach against rebellion, while the troops of Charles Edward were in occupation of the town. When in 1747 " the associate synod," by a narrow majority, decided not to give full immediate effect to a judgment which had been passed in the previous year against the lawfulness of the " Burgess oath," Gib led the protesting minority, who forthwith separated from their brethren and formed the Antiburgher synod. It was chiefly under his influence
that it was agreed by this ecclesiastical body, at subsequent meetings, to summon to the bar their "Burgher" brethren, and finally to depose and excommunicate them for con tumacy. In 1765, he made a vigorous and able reply to the general assembly of the church of Scotland, which had stigmatized the secession as "threatening the peace of the country ;" and this apology was further developed in his Display of the Secession Testimony, published in 1774. From 1753 (when after protracted litigation, he was com pelled to leave the Bristol church) till within a short period of his death, he preached regularly in Nicolson Street church, which is said to have been filled every Sunday with an audience of 2,000 persons. Besides other publications, he wrote a volume of sacred contemplations (1786), to which was appended an Essay on Liberty and Necessity, is reply to lord Karnes.