Skinner, John (2)

primus of the Scotch Episcopal Church, son of the foregoing, was born May 17, 1744. He was educated at Echt, by his grandfather, and at Marischal College, University of Aberdeen. In 1761 he became private tutor, and in 1763 was ordained by bishop Gerard. He was settled at Ellon, and in 1775 was preacher in a chapel at Aberdeen. In 1782 he was consecrated coadjutor to bishop Kilgour, of that see, and in 1784, on the elevation of Kilgour to the primacy of Scotland, Dr. Skinner was invested with the full honors of the episcopate. In 1788 he succeeded as primus praeses of the Episcopal College. He died at Aberdeen, July 13, 1816.. Under the fostering hand of this benevolent and untiring bishop, the Scotch Episcopal Church, from obscurity and depression, arose to respectability and distinction. It was bishop John Skinner who, with two other Scottish bishops, in an upper chamber of a mean dwelling-house in a lane in Aberdeen, consecrated the first bishop of the United States, in 1784. He wrote, A Course of Lectures for the Young (Aberdeen, 1786): — An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland (Lond. 1788, 2 volumes, 8vo; a vindication of the Episcopal party): — A Layman's Account of his Faith and Practice (Edinburgh, 1801, 12mo): — Primitive Truth and Order Vindicated (Aberdeen, 1803, 8vo).

Bishop Skinner's elder son, JOHN, ordained in 1790, was a minister at Forfar, and the author of Annals of Scottish Episcopacy from 1788 to 1816, with a Brief Memoir of Bishop Skinner (Edinburgh, 1818, 8vo). See the (N.Y.) Christian Journal, February and March 1820, volume 4; Darling, Cyclop. Bibl. s.v.