Life

The son of William Leechman, a farmer of Dolphinton

Dolphinton

Dolphinton is a village in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is located northeast of Biggar, 11 miles northest of Carstairs and 10 miles southwest of Leadburn and 27 miles southwest of Edinburgh, on the A702 road....

, Lanarkshire

Lanarkshire

Lanarkshire or the County of Lanark ) is a Lieutenancy area, registration county and former local government county in the central Lowlands of Scotland...

, he was educated at the parish school; theT father had taken down the quarters of Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, which had been exposed after his execution (24 December 1684) on the tolbooth of Lanark. In gratitude for this service the Baillie family helped young Leechman to go to the University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

, where he graduated 16 April 1724. He studied divinity there under Professor William Hamilton (1669–1732).

He was tutor to James Geddes, and then about 1727 he became tutor to William Mure of Caldwell

William Mure (1718–1776)

William Mure , known as others of his family as William Mure of Caldwell, was a Scottish lawyer and politician. He became a baron of the Scots exchequer, and was a friend of Prime Minister Lord Bute and David Hume.-Life:...

, a friend of David Hume

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

. The family passed the winters at Glasgow, where he attended the lectures of Francis Hutcheson

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)

Francis Hutcheson was a philosopher born in Ireland to a family of Scottish Presbyterians who became one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment....

. In October 1731 he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Paisley

Paisley

Paisley is the largest town in the historic county of Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland and serves as the administrative centre for the Renfrewshire council area...

, and in 1736 was ordained minister of Beith

Beith

Beith is a small town situated in the Garnock Valley in North Ayrshire, Scotland approximately 20-miles south-west of Glasgow. The town is situated on the crest of a hill and was known originally as the "Hill o' Beith" after its Court Hill.-History:-Name:Beith's name is thought to emanate from...

 in the neighbourhood of Caldwell. He was moderator of a synod at Irvine in 1740, and on 7 April 1741 preached a sermon at Glasgow ‘on the … character of a minister of the gospel,’ which was published, and passed through several editions.

In July 1743 he married Bridget Balfour of the Pilrig

Pilrig

Pilrig is a suburb of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. The name derives from a tower at the end of a field .Pilrig lies midway between Leith and Edinburgh, west of Leith Walk. It is split by Pilrig Street, which marks the division between the EH6 and EH7 postcode districts...

 family, connecting him to her brothers James Balfour

James Balfour (philosopher)

-Life:He was born at Pilrig, near Edinburgh. After studying at Edinburgh and at Leyden, he was called to the Scottish bar. He held the offices of treasurer to the faculty of Advocates and sheriff-substitute of the county of Edinburgh...

 and the bookseller John Balfour, and also Robert Whytt

Robert Whytt

Robert Whytt was a Scottish physician. His work, on unconscious reflexes, tubercular meningitis, urinary bladder stones, and hysteria, is remembered now most for his book on diseases of the nervous system...

 and Gavin Hamilton who had married Bridget's sisters. At the end of the year was elected professor of divinity at the University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...

 by the casting vote of the lord rector, in a closely contested election with William Craig and John MacLaurin also candidates. He resigned Beith on 3 January 1744 upon his election. The presbytery of Glasgow refused to enrol him, alleging that he had made heretical statements in a sermon published in 1743 ‘On the Nature, Reasonableness, and Advantages of Prayer.’ He was accused of laying too little stress upon the merits of the intercession of the Saviour. Hume criticised the sermon in a letter to Leechman's pupil, William Mure, suggesting minute corrections of style, and urging that Leechman really made prayer a mere ‘rhetorical figure.’ The synod of Glasgow and Ayr rejected the accusation of the presbytery, and their acquittal was confirmed by the general assembly.

Leechman's lectures were popular, and he followed the example first set by Hutcheson of using English instead of Latin. Wodrow gives a long account of them. They dealt with polemical divinity, the evidences of Christianity, and the composition of sermons. He refused to publish them.

He visited England with his old pupil Geddes in 1744, and made the acquaintance of Richard Price

Richard Price

Richard Price was a British moral philosopher and preacher in the tradition of English Dissenters, and a political pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the American Revolution. He fostered connections between a large number of people, including writers of the...

. In 1757 he served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

The Moderator of the General Assembly of Church of Scotland is a Minister, Elder or Deacon of the Church of Scotland chosen to "moderate" the annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which is held for a week in Edinburgh every May....

. In 1759 he went to Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 in ill-health and drank the waters at Clifton

Clifton, Bristol

Clifton is a suburb of the City of Bristol in England, and the name of both one of the city's thirty-five council wards. The Clifton ward also includes the areas of Cliftonwood and Hotwells...

. In 1761 he was appointed Principal of the university at Glasgow, but for a time continued to lecture.

He had two paralytic strokes in 1785, and died 3 December in that year.

Works

He published in 1748 a posthumous essay, ‘The Composition of the Ancients,’ by James Geddes. He prefixed a life of the author to Hutcheson's ‘System of Moral Philosophy’ (1755), and published a few sermons. These with others were collected in two volumes in 1789, with a life by James Wodrow.