Robert Fleming

Rev Robert Fleming (the younger) (1660–1716) was a Scottish presbyterian minister, of liberal views, known as an early supporter of the principle of non-subscription to the Westminster Confession, and as an apocalyptic writer.

Life The son of Rev Robert Fleming, he was born in the manse at Cambuslang in Lanarkshire in 1660. His early education was at the school of his uncle Rev John Sinclair, minister of Ormiston, Haddingtonshire. In 1679 his father took him to Holland, where he studied at the universities of Leyden and Utrecht. On 9 February 1688 he was privately ordained by Scottish ministers in Holland, without special charge.

Fleming moved to England, and was domestic chaplain in a private family for about four years. In 1692 he accepted a call to the pastorate of the English presbyterian congregation at Leyden. On his father's death he was invited to succeed him in the Scots Church at Rotterdam, to which he was inducted in 1695. Fleming follows Joseph Mede, but set the beginning of Antichrist at 768 AD.

Fleming published: An Epistolary Discourse … with a Second Part, &c., 1692. A Discourse on Earthquakes, &c., 1693; reprinted 1793. The Rod and the Sword, &c., 1694; reprinted 1701 and 1793. Apocalyptical Key. An extraordinary Discourse on the Rise and Fall of Papacy, &c., 1701 (dedicated to Lord Carmichael); reprinted 1793, and Edinburgh 1849, with memoir by Thomas Napier Thomson. Discourses on Several Subjects, 1701. A Brief Account of Religion, &c., 1701. Christology, &c., vol. i. 1705 (dedicated to Queen Anne); vols. ii. and iii., 1708; an abridgment was published in one vol., Edinburgh 1795. The History of Hereditary Right,(anon).

Also eight sermons at funerals and special occasions between 1688 and 1716.