tranquillity of pastoral life. I believe it [the Scottish music] took its rise among men who were real shepherds, and who actually felt the sentiments and affections whereof it is so very expressive.

DR RICHARD PRICE-ABRAHAM TUCKER-DR JOSEPH

PRIESTLEY.

DR RICHARD PRICE (1723-1791), a nonconformist divine, published, in 1758, A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, which attracted attention as an attempt to revive the intellectual theory of moral obligation, which seemed to have fallen under the attacks of Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume, even before Smith.' Price, after Cudworth, supports the doctrine that moral distinctions being perceived by reason, or the understanding, are equally immutable with all other kinds of truth. On the other side, it is argued that reason is but a principle of our mental frame, like the principle which is the source of moral emotion, and has no peculiar claim to remain unaltered in the supposed general alteration of our mental constitution. Price was an able writer on finance and political economy, and took an active part in the political questions of the day at the time of the French Revolution: he was a republican in principle, and is attacked by Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution.

ABRAHAM TUCKER (1705-1774) was an English squire, who, instead of pursuing the pleasures of the chase, studied metaphysics at his country-seat, and published, under the fictitious name of Edward Search, a work, entitled The Light of Nature Pursued, which Paley said contained more original thinking and observation than any other work of the kind. Tucker, like Adam Smith, excelled in illustration, and he did not disdain the most homely subjects for examples. Mackintosh says he excels in mixed, not in pure philosophy, and that his intellectual views are of the Hartleian school. How truly, and at the same time how beautifully, has Tucker characterised in one short sentence his own favourite metaphysical studies! The science of abstruse learning,' he says, when completely attained, is like Achilles's spear, that healed the wounds it had made before. It casts no additional light upon the paths of life, but disperses the clouds with which it had overspread them; it advances not the traveller one step on his journey, but conducts him back again to the spot from whence he had wandered.'

In 1775 DR JOSEPH PRIESTLEY published an examination of the principles of Dr Reid and others, designed as a refutation of the doctrine of common sense, said to be employed as the test of truth by the Scottish metaphysicians. The doctrines of Priestley are of the school of Hartley. In 1777 he published a series of disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, in which he openly supported the material system. He also wrote in support of another unpopular doctrine-that of necessity. He settled in Birmingham in 1780, and officiated as minister of a dissenting congregation. His religious opinions were originally Calvinistic, but afterwards became decidedly anti-Trinitarian. His works excited so much opposition, that he ever after found it necessary, as he states, to write a pamphlet annually in their defence! Priestley was also an active and distinguished chemist, and wrote a history of discoveries relative to light and colours, a history of electricity, &c. At the period of the French Revolution in 1791, a mob of outrageous and brutal loyalists set fire to his house in Birmingham, and destroyed his library, apparatus, and specimens. Three years afterwards he emigrated to America, where he continued his studies in science and theology, and died

at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, in 1804. As an experimental philosopher, Priestley was of a superior class; but as a metaphysical or ethical writer, he can only be considered subordinate. He was a man of intrepid spirit and of unceasing industry. One of his critics (in the Edinburgh Review) draws from his writings a lively picture of that indefatigable activity, that bigotted vanity, that precipitation, cheerfulness, and sincerity, which made up the character of this restless philosopher.'

Robert Hall, whose feelings as a dissenter, and an enemy to all religious intolerance and persecution, were enlisted on the side of Priestley, has thus eulogised him in one of his most eloquent sentences :-The religious tenets of Dr Priestley appear to me erroneous in the extreme; but I should be sorry to suffer any difference of sentiment to diminish my sensibility to virtue, or my admiration of genius. His enlightened and active mind, his unwearied assiduity, the extent of his researches, the light he has poured into almost every department of science, will be the admiration of that period, when the greater part of those who have favoured, or those who have opposed him, will be alike forgotten. Distinguished merit will ever rise superior to oppression, and will draw lustre from reproach. The vapours which gather round the rising sun, and follow in its course, seldom fail at the close of it to form a magnificent theatre for its reception, and to invest with variegated tints, and with a softened effulgence, the luminary which they cannot hide.

WRITERS IN DIVINITY.

Without much originality (excepting in one memorable instance), there was great acuteness, controversial ability, and learning displayed in the department of theology. The higher dignitaries of the church of England are generally well fitted, by education, talents, and the leisure they enjoy, for vindicating revealed religion from the attacks of all assailants; and even when the standard of duty was low among the inferior clergy, there has seldom been any want of sound polemical divines. It seems to be admitted that there was a decay of piety and zeal in the church at the time of which we are now treating. To animate this drooping spirit, and to place revelation upon the imperishable foundations of true philosophy, DR JOSEPH BUTLER published his great work on the Analogy of Religion to the Course of Nature, which appeared in 1736. Without entering on the question of the miracles and prophecies, Dr Butler rested his evidence on the analogies of nature: he reasons from that part of the divine proceedings which comes under our view in the daily business of life, to that larger and more comprehensive part of these proceedings which is beyond our view, and which religion reveals.' His argument for a future life, from the changes which the human body undergoes at birth, and in its different stages of maturity; and from the instances of the same law of nature, in the change of worms into butterflies, and birds and insects bursting the shell, and entering into a new world, furnished with new powers, is one of the most conclusive pieces of reasoning in the language. The same train of argument, in support of the immortality of the soul, has been followed up in two admirable lectures in Dr T. Brown's Philosophy. The work of Butler, however, extends over a wide field-over the whole of the leading points, both in natural and revealed religion. The germ of his treatise is contained in a passage in Origen (one of the most eminent of the fathers, who died at Tyre in the year 254), which Butler quotes in his introduction. It is to the effect that he who believes

the Scripture to have proceeded from the author of nature, may well believe that the same difficulties exist in it as in the constitution of nature. Hence, Butler infers that he who denies the Scripture to have come from God, on account of difficulties found in it, may, for the same reason, deny the world to have been formed by Him. Inexplicable difficulties are found in the course of nature; no sound theist can therefore be surprised to find similar difficulties in the Christian religion. If both proceed from the same author, the wonder would rather be, that, even on this inferior ground of difficulty and adaptation to the comprehension of man, there should not be found the impress of the same hand, whose works we can trace but a very little way, and whose word equally transcends on some points the feeble efforts of unassisted reason. All Butler's arguments on natural and revealed religion are marked by profound thought and sagacity. In a volume of sermons published by him, he shines equally as an ethical philosopher. In the three first, on human nature, he has laid the science of morals on a surer foundation than any previous writer. After showing that our social affections are disinterested, he proceeds to vindicate the supremacy of the moral sentiments. Man is, in his view, a law to himself; but the intimations of this law are not to be deduced from the strength or temporary predominance of any single appetite or passion. They are to be deduced from the dictates of one principle, which is evidently intended to rule over the other parts of our nature, and which issues its mandates with authority. This master principle is conscience, which rests upon rectitude as its object, as disinterestedly as the social affections rest upon their appropriate objects, and as naturally as the appetite of hunger is satisfied with food. The ethical system of Butler has been adopted by Reid, Stewart, and Brown. Sir James Mackintosh (who acknowledged that Bishop Butler was his father in philosophy) made an addition to it: he took the principle of utility as a test or criterion of the rectitude or virtue which, with Butler, he maintained to be the proper object of our moral affections. The life of this eminent prelate affords a pleasing instance of talent winning its way to distinction in the midst of difficulties. He was born in 1692, the son of a shopkeeper at Wantage, in Berkshire. His father was a Presbyterian, and intended his son to be a minister of the same persuasion, but the latter conformed to the establishment, took orders, and was successively preacher at the Rolls chapel, prebendary of Rochester, clerk of the closet to the queen, bishop of Bristol, and bishop of Durham. He owed much to Queen Caroline, who had a philosophical taste, and valued his talents and virtues. Butler died on the 16th of June 1752.

BISHOP WARBURTON.

No literary man of this period engrossed in his own time a larger share of the attention of the learned world, not to speak of the public at large, than did WILLIAM WARBURTON, bishop of Gloucester (1698-1779). Prodigious powers of study and of expression, a bold and original way of thinking, and indomitable self-will and arrogance, were the leading characteristics of this extraordinary man, who unfortunately was too eager to astonish and arrest the attention of mankind, to care for any more beneficial result from his literary exertions; and whose writings have, accordingly, after passing like a splendid meteor across the horizon of his own age, sunk into all but oblivion. He was the son of an attorney at Newark, and entered life in the same

profession, and at the same town, but soon saw fit to abandon a pursuit in which it was evident he could have no success. A passion for reading led Warburton in his twenty-fifth year to adopt the

Bishop Warburton.

clerical profession. He took deacon's orders, and by a dedication to a small and obscure volume of translations published in 1723, obtained a presentation to a small vicarage. He now threw himself amidst the inferior literary society of the metropolis, and sought for subsistence and advancement by his pen. On obtaining from a patron the rectory of Brand Broughton, in Lincolnshire, he retired thither, and devoted himself for a long series of years to reading. His first work of any note was published in 1736, under the title of Alliance between Church and State, which, though scarcely calculated to please either party in the church, was extensively read, and brought the author into notice. In the next, The Divine Legation of Moses, of which the first volume appeared in 1738, and the remaining four in the course of several years thereafter, the gigantic scholarship of Warburton shone out in all its vastness. It had often been objected to the pretensions of the Jewish religion, that it presented nowhere any acknowledgment of the principle of a future state of rewards and punishments. Warburton, who delighted in paradox, instead of attempting to deny this or explain it away, at once acknowledged it, but asserted that therein lay the strongest argument for the divine mission of Moses. To establish this point, he ransacked the whole domains of pagan antiquity, and reared such a mass of curious and confounding argument, that mankind might be said to be awed by it into a partial concession to the author's views. He never completed the work; he became, indeed, weary of it; and perhaps the fallacy of the hypothesis was first secretly acknowledged by himself. If it had been consecrated to truth, instead of paradox, it would have been by far the most illustrious book of its age. As it is, we only look into it to wonder at its endless learning and misspent ingenuity.

The merits of the author, or his worldly wisdom, brought him preferment in the church: he rose through the grades of prebend of Gloucester, prebend of Durham, and dean of Bristol, to be (1759)

bishop of Gloucester-a remarkable transition for the Newark attorney.

It would be tedious to detail the other literary adventures of this arrogant prelate. The only one which falls particularly in our way is his edition of Pope's works, for the publication of which he had obtained a patent right in consequence of the poet's bequest. The annotations of Warburton upon Pope, perverting the author's meaning in numberless instances, and full of malignity against half the learned men of the age, were a disgrace to contemporary literature. Yet for many years the works of Pope could not be possessed without this monstrous incumbrance. The latter years of Warburton were spent in a melancholy state of mental weakness, partly occasioned by grief for the loss of a son; for, like the butcher animals, this man, ruthless to all others, had kind feelings towards his own kindred. Ten years after his death, his great work is spoken of by Gibbon as already a brilliant ruin. It is now rarely referred to, its learning being felt as no attraction where the solid qualities of truth are wanting. Warburton is indeed as perfect a proof of the futility of talent without moral direction, as could be produced from the meanest walks of literature. He gave all to a bad ambition, in which the chief object seems to have been to make his fellow creatures wonder at and stand in awe of him. Such feelings as he excited are doomed to be transient. They have passed away; and Warburton, having never conferred any solid benefit on his kind, is already little else than a name.

gods were dead men deified, preserved in their sacred writings, and confirmed by monumental records inscribed to the gods themselves, who were there said to be interred.' So far was not amiss; but then, in the genuine spirit of his class, who never cultivate a truth but in order to graft a lie upon it, he pretended that dead mortals were the first gods, and that an imaginary divinity in these early heroes and conquerors created the idea of a superior power, and introduced the practice of religious worship amongst men.' The learned reader sees below [note in Greek omitted] that our freethinker is true to his cause, and endeavours to verify the fundamental principle of his sect, that fear first made gods, even in that very instance where the contrary passion seems to have been at its height, the time when men made gods of their deceased benefactors. A little matter of address hides the shame of so perverse a piece of malice. He represents those founders of society and fathers of their country under the idea of destructive conquerors, who by mere force and fear had brought men into subjection and slavery. On this account it was that indignant antiquity concurred in giving Euhemerus the proper name of atheist, which, however, he would hardly have escaped, though he had done no more than divulge the secret of the mysteries, and had not poisoned his discovery with this impious and foreign addition, so contrary to the true spirit of that secret.

This detection had been long dreaded by the orthodox protectors of pagan worship; and they were provided of a temporary defence in their intricate and properly perplexed system of symbolic adoration. But this would do only to stop a breach for the present, till a better could be provided, and was too

it was regarded.]

[From the Divine Legation.']

Here matters rested: and the vulgar faith seems to have remained a long time undisturbed. But as the age grew refined, and the Greeks became inquisitive and learned, the common mythology began to give offence. The speculative and more delicate were shocked at the absurd and immoral stories of their gods, and scandalised to find such things make an authentic part of their story. It may, indeed, be thought matter of wonder how such tales, taken up in a barbarous age, came not to sink into oblivion as the age grew more knowing, from mere abhorrence of their indecencies and shame of their absurdities. Without doubt this had been their fortune, but for an unlucky circumstance. The great poets of Greece, who had most contributed to refine the public taste and manners, and were now grown into a kind of sacred authority, had sanctified these silly legends by their writings, which time had now consigned to immortality.

Vulgar paganism, therefore, in such an age as this, lying open to the attacks of curious and inquisitive men, would not, we may well think, be long at rest. It is true, freethinking then lay under great difficulties and discouragements. To insult the religion of one's country, which is now the mark of learned distinction, was branded in the ancient world with public infamy. Yet freethinkers there were, who, as is their wont, together with the public worship of their country, threw off all reverence for religion in general. Amongst these was Euhemerus, the Messenian, and, by what we can learn, the most distinguished of this tribe. This man, in mere wantonness of heart, began his attacks on religion by divulging the secret of the mysteries. But as it was capital to do this directly and professedly, he contrived to cover his perfidy and malice by the intervention of a kind of Utopian romance. He pretended, that in a certain city, which he came to in his travels, he found this grand secret, that the

The philosophers, therefore, now took up the defence of paganism where the priests had left it, and to the others' symbols added their own allegories, for a second cover to the absurdities of the ancient mythology; for all the genuine sects of philosophy, as we have observed, were steady patriots, legislation making one essential part of their philosophy; and to legislate without the foundation of a national religion, was, in their opinion, building castles in the air. So that we are not to wonder they took the alarm, and opposed these insulters of the public worship with all their vigour. But as they never lost sight of their proper character, they so contrived that the defence of the national religion should terminate in a recommendation of their philosophic speculations. Hence, their support of the public worship, and their evasion of Euhemerus's charge, turned upon this proposition, 'That the whole ancient mythology was no other than the vehicle of physical, moral, and divine knowledge.' And to this it is that the learned Eusebius refers, where he says, 'That a new race of men refined their old gross theology, and gave it an honester look, and brought it nearer to the truth of things.'

However, this proved a troublesome work, and, after all, ineffectual for the security of men's private morals, which the example of the licentious story according to the letter would not fail to influence, how well soever the allegoric interpretation was calculated to cover the public honour of religion; so that the more ethical of the philosophers grew peevish with what gave them so much trouble, and answered so little to the interior of religious practice. This made them break out, from time to time, into hasty resentments against their capital poets; unsuitable, one would think, to the dignity of the authors of such noble recondite truths as they would persuade us to believe were treasured up in their writings. Hence it was that Plato banished Homer from his republic, and that Pythagoras, in one of his extramundane adventures, saw both Homer and Hesiod doing penance in hell, and hung up there for examples, to be bleached

and purified from the grossness and pollution of their ideas.

The first of these allegorisers, as we learn from Laertius, was Anaxagoras, who, with his friend Metrodorus, turned Homer's mythology into a system of ethics. Next came Hereclides Ponticus, and of the same fables made as good a system of physics; which, to show us with what kind of spirit it was composed, he entitled Antirresis ton kat autou [Homerou] blasphemesanton. And last of all, when the necessity became more pressing, Proclus undertook to show that all Homer's fables were no other than physical, ethical, and moral allegories.

*

DR ROBERT LOWTH-DR C. MIDDLETON-REV. W. LAW -DR ISAAC WATTS-DR RICHARD HURD-DR G. HORNE-DR JOHN JORTIN.

DR ROBERT LOWTH, second son of Dr William Lowth, was born at Buriton, in Hampshire, in 1710. He entered the church, and became successively bishop of St David's, Oxford, and London; he died in 1787. The works of Lowth display both genius and learning. They consist of Prelections on Hebrew Poetry, a Life of William of Wykeham, a Short Introduction to English Grammar, and a Translation of Isaiah. The last is the greatest of his productions. The spirit of eastern poetry is rendered with fidelity, elegance, and sublimity; and the work is an inestimable contribution to biblical criticism and learning, as well as to the exalted strains of the divine

muse.

DR CONYERS MIDDLETON, distinguished for his admirable Life of Cice o, mixed freely and eagerly in the religious controversies of the times. One writer, Dr Matthew Tindal, served as a firebrand to the clergy. Tindal had embraced popery in the reign of James II., but afterwards renounced it. Being thus, as Drummond the poet said of Ben Johnson, 'of either religion, as versed in both,' he set himself to write on theology, and published The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, and Christianity as Old as the Creation. The latter had a decided deistical tendency, and was answered by several divines, as Dr Conybeare, Dr Foster, and Dr Waterland. Middleton now joined in the argument, and wrote remarks on Dr Waterland's manner of vindicating Scripture against Tindal, which only increased the confusion by adding to the elements of discord. He also published A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the Church, which was answered by several of the high church clergy. These treatises have now fallen into oblivion. They were perhaps useful in preventing religious truths from stagnating in that lukewarm age; but in adverting to them, we are reminded of the fine saying of Hall- While Protestants attended more to the points on which they differed than those on which they agreed, while more zeal was employed in settling ceremonies and defending subtleties than in enforcing plain revealed truths, the lovely fruits of peace and charity perished under the storms of controversy.'

to the former), were both designed to advance the interests of religion, and are well adapted to the purpose. Various theological treatises were also written by Watts.

DR RICHARD HURD (1720-1808), a friend and disciple of Warburton, was author of an Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies, being the substance of twelve discourses delivered at Cambridge. Hurd was a man of taste and learning, author of a commentary on Horace, and editor of Cowley's works. He rose to enjoy high church preferment, and died bishop of Worcester, after having declined the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury.

DR GEORGE HORNE (1730-1792) was another divine whose talents and learning raised him to the bench of bishops. He wrote various works, the most important of which is a Commentary on the Book of Psalms, which appeared in 1776 in two volumes quarto. It is still a text-book with theological students and divines, and unites extensive erudition with fervent piety.

DR JOHN JORTIN (1698-1770), a prebendary of St Paul's and archdeacon of London, was an eminent scholar, and an independent theologian. He wrote various dissertations, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, a Life of Erasmus, &c. The freedom of some of his strictures gave offence to the high church clergy. Of a similar character, but less orthodox in his tenets, was Dr John Jebb, who obtained considerable preferment in the church, which he resigned on imbibing Socinian opinions. On quitting the church, Jebb studied and practised as a physician: he died in 1786, aged fifty. His works on theology and other subjects form three volumes.

Of the other theological and devotional productions of the established clergy of this age, there is only room to notice a few of the best. The dissertations of Bishop Newton on various parts of the Bible; the Lectures on the English Church Catechism, by Archbishop Secker; Bishop Law's Considerations on the Theory of Religion, and his Reflections on the Life and Character of Christ, are all works of standard excellence. The labours of Dr Kennicot, in the collection of various manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, are also worthy of being here mentioned as an eminent service to sacred literature.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD JOHN WESLEY.

Connected with the English establishment, yet ultimately separating from it, were those two remarkable men, Whitefield and Wesley. Both were highly useful in their day and generation, and they enjoyed a popularity rarely attained by divines. GEORGE WHITEFIELD was born in Gloucester in 1714. He took orders, and preached in London with astonishing success. He made several voyages to America, where he was equally popular. Whitefield adopted the Calvinistic doctrines, and preached them with incessant activity, and an eloquence unparalleled in its effects. As a popular orator he was passionate and vehement, wielding his audiences almost at will, and so fascinating in his style and manner, that Hume the historian said he was worth travelling twenty miles to hear. He died in Newbury, New England, in 1770. His writings are tame and commonplace, and his admirers regretted that he should have injured his fame by resorting to publication.