HALYBURTON, Thomas (1674-1712), a distinguished Scottish divine, was born at Dupplin, near Perth, on the 25th of December 1674. His father, one of the ejected ministers, having died in 1682, he w as taken by his mother in 1685 to Rotterdam, where he for some time attended with advantage the school founded by Erasmus. On his return to his native country in 1687 he completed his elementary education at Perth and Edinburgh, and in 1692 entered the university of St Andrews. In 1700 he was ordained minister of the parish of Ceres, and in 1710 he was recommended by the synod of Fife for the chair of theology in St Leonard’s College, St Andrews, to which accordingly he was appointed by Queen Anne. After a brief term of active professorial life he died in 1712. The works by which he continues to be known, especially in Scotland, were all of them published after his death.

The treatise entitled Natural Religion Insufficient, and Revealed Necessary, to Man's Happiness in his present State (1714) is an able reply to some of the arguments of Lord Herbert and of Blount; the Great Concern of Salvation (1721), still read, handles questions of practical and experimental religion with great earnestness and in a manner that exhibits favourably one of the best types of piety current in his time; the Memoirs written by himself, which have been frequently reprinted, are similarly interesting and valuable.