Smith left Glasgow at the early age of seventeen. His mother, acting on the advice of her relatives, had destined the boy for the Church of England, which then opened the door to so many lucrative positions. Perhaps they hoped from his talents for a career like that of his famous countryman, Bishop Burnet, who indeed had himself been a Professor of Divinity at Glasgow. The intention went so far that in his third year Smith sought and obtained one of those exhibitions which have taken so many distinguished Scots from the University of Glasgow to Balliol College, Oxford. The Snell Exhibitions, as they are called, were founded by an old Glasgow student of that name in 1679, with a view to educating Scots for the service of the Episcopalian Church. It chanced, however, that during his residence at Oxford, an application made by the Oxford authorities to compel the Snell Exhibitioners “to submit and conform to the doctrines of the Church of England and to enter into holy orders” was refused by the Court of Chancery; so that when the time came Smith was able to choose his own career and to strike off from the easier road which took his Fifeshire friend Douglas in due time to a bishopric. The change from Glasgow to Oxford was immense. It was more than exile; it was transmigration from a living to a dead society, from the thrill of a rising and thriving community, where men lived and moved and thought, to a city of dreaming spires and droning dons. In June 1740 he rode on horseback to Oxford and matriculated on the 17th of July, entering himself in a round schoolboy hand as “Adamus Smith, e Coll. Ball. Gen. Fil. Jul. 7mo. 1740.”