Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Colin (1644-1726)
CAMPBELL, COLIN (1644–1726), Scottish divine, was the younger son of Patrick Campbell of Innergeldies (called Patrick Dubh Beg, i.e. ‘Little Black’), ancestor of the Barcaldine family, and descended from Sir Duncan Campbell, first baronet of Glenorchy, of the noble house of Breadalbane. He was born in 1644, studied at St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, and afterwards accompanied his relative, John, first earl of Breadalbane [q. v.], to one of the English universities. In June 1667 he was admitted minister of the parish of Ardchattan and Muchairn. On 12 Jan. 1676 he was suspended from the ministry, on the charge of ante-nuptial intercourse; but on 8 March following a letter from the Bishop of Ross gave permission for his readmission. At the Revolution he conformed, and he continued in the active discharge of his parochial duties till his death on 13 March 1726, in the fifty-ninth year of his ministry, after he had been for some time the father of the church. Campbell had the reputation of being one of the most profound mathematicians and astronomers of his day, and was a correspondent of Sir Isaac Newton, who said of him, in a letter to Professor Gregory, ‘I see that were he among us he would make children of us all.’ Several letters to Campbell from Professor Gregory, written in 1672 and 1673, annotated by Professor Wallace, have been published in vol. iii. of the ‘Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland.’ He wrote some Latin verses prefixed to the Rev. Daniel Campbell's ‘Frequent and Devout Communicant,’ 1703; and to another work by the same author, published in 1719, he contributed ‘A Brief Demonstration of the Existence of God against the Atheists, and of the Immortality of Man's Soul.’ This treatise, with another entitled the ‘Trinity of Persons in the Unity of Essence,’ was printed for private circulation at Edinburgh in 1876. In the former three chief heads and several subordinate ones are made to converge in demonstrating the necessity in the rational nature of a Being without beginning, boundless and uncompounded; the second seeks to prove the natural necessity for a Trinity in the unity of the already demonstrated Divine Being. Campbell's manuscripts and correspondence, formerly in the possession of his descendant, John Gregorson of Ardtornish, are now deposited in the library of the university of Edinburgh.
[Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. iii. 62–5; Good Words for 1877, pp. 33–8.]