of their goods as they please. Now if, in flagrant cases, the natural and essential difference between good and evil, right and wrong, cannot but be confessed to be plainly and undeniably evident, the difference between them must be also essential and unalterable in all, even the smallest, and nicest and most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right and wrong in many perplexed cases, it could truly be concluded that just and unjust were not essentially different by nature, but only by positive constitution and custom, it would follow equally, that they were not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even in the most flagrant cases that can be supposed; which is an assertion so very absurd, that Mr Hobbes himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and discovering plainly, by his shifting expressions, his secret self-condemnation. There are therefore certain necessary and eternal differences of things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of different things, or different relations one to another, or depending on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the difference of the things themselves.

St James's, on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ. The latter excited a long and vehement dispute, known by the name of the Bangorian Controversy, in which forty or fifty Convocation took up Hoadly's works with warmth, tracts were published. The Lower House of and passed a censure upon them, as calculated to subvert the government and discipline of the church, and to impugn and impeach the regal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. The controversy was conducted with unbecoming violence, and several bishops and other grave divines—the excellent Sherlock among the number-forgot the dignity of their station and the spirit of Christian charity in the heat of party warfare. Pope alludes sarcastically to Hoadly's sermon in the Dunciad: Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer, Yet silent bowed to Christ's no kingdom here. The truth, however, is, that there was 'nothing whatever in Hoadly's sermon injurious to the established endowments and privileges, nor to the discipline and government of the English Church, even in theory. If this had been the case, he might have been reproached with some inconsistency in becoming so large a partaker of her DR WILLIAM LOWTH (1661-1732) was distin- honours and emoluments. He even admitted the guished for his classical and theological attain- usefulness of censures for open immoralities, ments, and the liberality with which he communi- though denying all church authority to oblige cated his stores to others. He published a any one to external communion, or to pass any Vindication of the Divine Authority and Inspira- sentence which should determine the condition of tion of the Old and New Testaments (1692), men with respect to the favour or displeasure of Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Holy God. Another great question in this controScriptures, Commentaries on the Prophets, &c. versy was that of religious liberty as a civil right, He furnished notes on Clemens Alexandrinus for which the convocation explicitly denied. And Potter's edition of that ancient author, remarks on another related to the much-debated exercise of Josephus for Hudson's edition, and annotations on private judgment in religion, which, as one party the ecclesiastical historians for Reading's Cam- meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps bridge edition of those authors. He also assisted unreasonably exaggerated. The style of Hoadly's Dr Chandler in his Defence of Christianity from controversial treatises is strong and logical, but the Prophecies. His learning is said to have been without any of the graces of composition, and equally extensive and profound, and he accom- hence they have fallen into oblivion. He was panied all his reading with critical and philological author of several other works, as Terms of Acceptremarks. Born in London, Dr Lowth took his ance, Reasonableness of Conformity, Treatise on the degrees at Oxford, and experiencing the counten-Sacrament, &c. A complete edition of his works ance and support of the bishop of Winchester, became the chaplain of that prelate, a prebend of the cathedral of Winchester, and rector of Buriton.

DR WILLIAM LOWTH.

DR BENJAMIN HOADLY.

DR BENJAMIN HOADLY, successively bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, was a prelate of great controversial ability, who threw the weight of his talents and learning into the scale of Whig politics, at that time fiercely attacked by the Tory and Jacobite parties. Hoadly was born at Westerham, in Kent, in 1676. In 1706, while rector of St Peter's-le-Poor, London, he attacked a sermon by Atterbury, and thus incurred the enmity and ridicule of Swift and Pope. He defended the revolution of 1688, and attacked the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience with such vigour and perseverance, that, in 1709, the House of Commons recommended him to the favour of the queen. Her majesty does not appear to have complied with this request; but her successor, George I. elevated him to the see of Bangor. Shortly after his elevation to the bench, Hoadly published a work against the nonjurors, and a sermon preached before the king at

was published by his son in three folio volumes (1773). There can be no doubt that the independent and liberal mind of Hoadly, aided by his station in the church, tended materially to stem the torrent of slavish submission which then prevailed in the church of England. He died in 1761.

The Kingdom of Christ not of this World.

If, therefore, the church of Christ be the kingdom of Christ, it is essential to it that Christ himself be the sole lawgiver and sole judge of his subjects, in all points relating to the favour or displeasure of Almighty God; and that all his subjects, in what station soever they may be, are equally subjects to him; and that no one of them, any more than another, hath authority either to make new laws for Christ's subjects, or to impose a sense upon the old ones, which is the same thing; master, in matters relating purely to conscience or or to judge, censure, or punish the servants of another salvation. If any person hath any other notion, either through a long use of words with inconsistent meanings, or through a negligence of thought, let him but ask himself whether the church of Christ be the kingdom of Christ or not; and if it be, whether this notion

* Hallam's Constitutional History of England.

1699. He was a controversial theologian of great ability and acuteness, and successfully vindicated the doctrines of the Church of England from Arian and Deistic assailants. His several publications on the Trinity constitute a valuable series of treatises. He published also two volumes of Sermons. Waterland died archdeacon of Middlesex. A complete edition of his works, with a life of the author by Bishop Van Mildert, was published at Oxford, in eleven volumes, in 1823.

WILLIAM WHISTON.

WILLIAM WHISTON (1667-1752) was an able but eccentric scholar, and so distinguished as a mathematician, that he was made deputy-professor of mathematics in the university of Cambridge, and afterwards successor to Sir Isaac Newton, of whose principles he was one of the most successful expounders. Entering into holy orders, he became chaplain to the bishop of Norwich, rector of Lowestoft, &c. He was also appointed Boyle lecturer in the university, but was at length expelled for promulgating Arian opinions. He then went to London, where a subscription was made for him, and he delivered a series of lectures on astronomy. Towards the close of his life, Whiston became a Baptist, and believed that the millennium was approaching, when the Jews would all be restored. Had he confined himself to mathematical studies, he would have earned a high name in science; but his time and attention were dissipated by his theological pursuits, in which he evinced more zeal than judgment. His works are numerous. Besides a Theory of the Earth, in defence of the Mosaic account of the creation, published in 1696, and some tracts on the Newtonian system, he wrote an Essay on the Revelation of St John (1706), Sermons on the Scripture Prophecies (1708), Primitive Christianity Revived, five volumes (1712), Memoirs of his Own Life (1749-50), &c. An extract from the last-mentioned work is subjoined:

Whistonian Controversy.-Anecdote of the Discovery of the Newtonian Philosophy.

account, and somewhat more fully, in the preface to his explication of his philosophy. It was this: an inclination came into Sir Isaac's mind to try whether the same power did not keep the moon in her orbit, notwithstanding her projectile velocity, which he knew always tended to go along a straight line the tangent of with us fall downward, and which we call gravity; that orbit, which makes stones and all heavy bodies taking this postulatum, which had been thought of before, that such power might decrease in a duplicate proportion of the distances from the earth's centre. Upon Sir Isaac's first trial, when he took a degree of a great circle on the earth's surface, whence a degree at the distance of the moon was to be determined also, to be sixty measured miles only, according to the gross measures then in use, he was in some degree disher orbit, measured by the versed sines of that orbit, appointed; and the power that restrained the moon in appeared not to be quite the same that was to be expected had it been the power of gravity alone by which the moon was there influenced. Upon this disappointment, which made Sir Isaac suspect that this power was partly that of gravity and partly that of Cartesius's vortices, he threw aside the paper of his calculation, and went to other studies. However, some time afterward, when Monsieur Picart had much more exactly measured the earth, and found that a degree of a great circle was sixty-nine and a half such miles, Sir Isaac, in turning imperfect calculation, and, correcting his former error, over some of his former papers, lighted upon this old discovered that this power, at the true correct distance of the moon from the earth, not only tended to the earth's centre, as did the common power of gravity with us, but was exactly of the right quantity; and that if a stone was carried up to the moon, or to sixty semidiameters of the earth, and let fall downward by its gravity, and the moon's own menstrual motion was stopped, and she was let fall by that power which before retained her in her orbit, they would exactly fall towards the same point, and with the same velocity; which was since that power appeared to extend as far as the moon, therefore no other power than that of gravity. And at the distance of 240,000 miles, it was but natural or rather necessary, to suppose it might reach twice, thrice, four times, &c. the same distance, with the same diminution, according to the squares of such distances perpetually which noble discovery proved the happy occasion of the invention of the wonderful Newtonian philosophy.

-NICHOLAS TINDAL-DR HUMPHREY

PRIDEAUX.

DR WILLIAM NICOLSON (1655-1727), successively bishop of Carlisle and Londonderry, and, lastly, archbishop of Cashel, was a learned antiquary and investigator of our early records. He published Historical Libraries of England, Scotland, and Ireland-collected into one volume, in 1776-being a detailed catalogue or list of books and manuscripts referring to the history of each nation. He also wrote An Essay on the Border Laws, A Treatise on the Laws of the Anglo-Saxons, and A Description of Poland and Denmark. The only professional works of Dr Nicolson are a preface to Chamberlayne's Polyglott of the Lord's Prayer, and some able pamphlets on the Bangorian Controversy.

After I had taken holy orders, I returned to the DR WILLIAM NICOLSON-DR MATTHEW TINDAL college, and went on with my own studies there, particularly the mathematics and the Cartesian philosophy, which was alone in vogue with us at that time. But it was not long before I, with immense pains, but no assistance, set myself with the utmost zeal to the study of Sir Isaac Newton's wonderful discoveries in his Philosophie Naturalis Principia Mathematica, one or two of which lectures I had heard him read in the public schools, though I understood them not at all at that time-being indeed greatly excited thereto by a paper of Dr. Gregory's when he was professor in Scotland, wherein he had given the most prodigious commendations to that work, as not only right in all things, but in a manner the effect of a plainly divine genius, and had already caused several of his scholars to keep acts, as we call them, upon several branches of the Newtonian philosophy; while we at Cambridge, poor wretches, were ignominiously studying the fictitious hypotheses of the Cartesian, which Sir Isaac Newton had also himself done formerly, as I have heard him say. What the occasion of Sir Isaac Newton's leaving the Cartesian philosophy, and of discovering his amazing theory of gravity was, I have heard him long ago, soon after my first acquaintance with him, which was 1694, thus relate, and of which Dr Pemberton gives the like

DR MATTHEW TINDAL (1657-1733) was a zealous controversialist, in times when controversy was pursued with much keenness by men fitted for higher duties. His first attacks were directed against priestly power, but he ended in opposing Christianity itself; and Paine and other later

writers against revelation have drawn some of their weapons from the armoury of Tindal. Like Dryden and many others, Tindal embraced the Roman Catholic religion when it became fashionable in the court of James II.; but he abjured it in 1687, and afterwards became an advocate under William III. from whom he received a pension of £200 per annum. He wrote several political and theological tracts, but the work by which he is chiefly known is entitled Christianity as Old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730). The tendency of this treatise is to discredit revealed religion: it was answered by Dr Waterland; and Tindal replied by reiterating his former statements and arguments. He wrote a second volume to this work shortly before his death, but Dr Gibson, the bishop of London, interfered, and prevented its publication. After the death of Tindal, it appeared from his will that he had left a sum of £2000 to Budgell-already noticed as one of the writers of the Spectator-but this sum was so disproportioned to the testator's means, that Budgell was accused of forging the will, and Tindal's nephew got it set aside. The disgrace consequent on this transaction is supposed to have been the primary cause of Budgell's committing suicide. The nephew, NICHOLAS TINDAL (1687-1774), was a Fellow of Trinity College, and chaplain of Greenwich Hospital. He translated some works and was author of a continuation of Rapin's History of England.

cultivated the society of Bayle and Le Clerc. On his return, he succeeded to the earldom, and spoke frequently in the House of Lords. All his parliamentary appearances were creditable to his talents, and honourable to his taste and feelings. His first publication was in 1708, A Letter on Enthusiasm, prompted by the extravagance of the French prophets, whose zeal had degenerated into intolerance. In 1709, appeared his Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, and Sensus Communis, an essay upon the freedom of wit and humour. In this latter production he vindicates the use of ridicule as a test of truth. In 1710, he published another slight work, a Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author. Soon afterwards, ill health compelled Lord Shaftesbury to seek a warmer climate. He fixed on Naples, where he died in February 1713, at the early age of forty-two. A complete collection of his works was published in 1716, in three volumes, under the general title of Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times.

The style of Shaftesbury is lofty and musical. He bestowed great pains on the construction of his sentences, and the labour is too apparent. Desirous also of blending the nobleman and man of the world with the author, a tone of assumption and familiarity deforms some of his arguments and illustrations. He was an ardent admirer of the ancients, and, in his dialogue entitled The Moralists, has adopted in a great measure the elevated style of his favourite Plato. With those Another of the sceptical writers of this period who hold in like estimation the works of that was JOHN TOLAND (1669–1722), author of Chris-divine philosopher,' and who are willing to tianity not Mysterious (1696), a work which occasioned much controversy. He wrote various treatises on theological and historical subjects, and was a learned but pedantic student, always in trouble and difficulties. His works were never collected, and are now forgotten.

DR HUMPHREY PRIDEAUX (1648-1724) was author of a still popular and valuable work, the Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament, the first part of which was published in 1715, and the second in 1717. He wrote also a Life of Mahomet (1697), Directions to Churchwardens (1707), and A Treatise on Tithes (1710). Prideaux's Connection is a work of great research, connecting the Old with the New Testament by a luminous historical summary. Few books have had a greater circulation, and it is invaluable to all students of divinity. Its author was highly respected for his learning and piety. He was archdeacon of Suffolk, and at one time Hebrew lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. His extensive library of oriental books has been preserved in Clare Hall, Cambridge, to which college it was presented by himself."

EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

Two distinguished philosophical writers adorn this period, Shaftesbury and Berkeley. Both were accomplished and elegant authors, and both, in their opinions, influenced other minds. The moral sense of the former was adopted by Hutcheson, and the idealism of Berkeley was reproduced by Hume. ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, was born in London in 1671. After a careful private education, he travelled for some time, and in 1693 entered the House of Commons. Five years afterwards, he repaired to Holland, and

exchange continuity, precision, and simplicity, for melody and stateliness of diction, The Moralists cannot fail to be regarded, as it was by Leibnitz and Monboddo, with enthusiastic admiration.

The religious tendency of Shaftesbury's writings has been extensively discussed. That he is a powerful and decided champion against the atheists is universally admitted; but with respect to his opinion of Christianity, different views have been entertained. A perusal of the Characteristics will make it evident that much of the controversy which the work has occasioned has arisen from the inconsistent opinions expressed in its different parts. Pope informed Warburton, that to his knowledge the Characteristics had done much harm to revealed religion. The poet himself was a diligent reader of the work, as appears from his Essay on Man.

As a moralist, Lord Shaftesbury holds the conspicuous place of founder of that school of philosophers by whom virtue and vice are regarded as naturally and fundamentally distinct, and who consider man to be endowed with a 'moral sense' by which these are discriminated, and at once approved of or condemned, without reference to the self-interest of him who judges. In opposition to Hobbes, he maintains that the nature of man is such as to lead to the exercise of benevolent and disinterested affections in the social state; and he earnestly inculcates the doctrine, that virtue is more conducive than vice to the temporal happiness of those who practise it. He speaks of 'conscience, or a natural sense of the odiousness of crime and injustice;' and remarks, that as, in the case of objects of the external senses, 'the shapes, motions, colours, and proportions of these latter being presented to our eye, there necessarily results a beauty or deformity, according to the

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different measure, arrangement, and disposition and providential care, the distracted universe must be of their several parts; so, in behaviour and condemned to suffer infinite calamities, 'tis here the actions, when presented to our understanding, generous mind labours to discover that healing cause there must be found, of necessity, an apparent by which the interest of the whole is securely estabdifference, according to the regularity and irregu- lished, the beauty of things, and the universal order larity of the subjects.' 'The mind,' says he, 'feels happily sustained. the soft and harsh, the agreeable and disagreeable, in the affections; and finds a foul and fair, a harmonious and a dissonant, as really and truly here as in any musical numbers, or in the outward forms or representations of sensible things. Nor can it withhold its admiration and ecstasy, its aversion and scorn, any more in what relates to one than to the other of these subjects.' 'However false or corrupt it be within itself, it finds the difference, as to beauty and comeliness, between one heart and another; and accordingly, in all disinterested cases, must approve in some measure of what is natural and honest, and disapprove what is dishonest and corrupt.' This doctrine, which in the pages of Shaftesbury is left in a very imperfect state, has been successively followed out by Dr Hutcheson of Glasgow, and subsequently adopted and illustrated by Reid, Stewart, and Brown.

Platonic Representation of the Scale of Beauty and Love.

From The Moralists.

I have now a better idea of that melancholy you discovered; and notwithstanding the humorous turn you were pleased to give, I am persuaded it has a different foundation from any of those fantastical causes I then assigned to it. Love, doubtless, is at the bottom, but a nobler love than such as common beauties inspire. Here, in my turn, I began to raise my voice, and imitate the solemn way you had been teaching me. Knowing as you are (continued I), well knowing and experienced in all the degrees and orders of beauty, in all the mysterious charms of the particular forms, you rise to what is more general; and with a larger heart, and mind more comprehensive, you generously seek that which is highest in the kind. Not captivated by the lineaments of a fair face, or the well-drawn proportions of a human body, you view the life itself, and embrace rather the mind which adds the lustre, and renders chiefly amiable.

Nor is the enjoyment of such a single beauty sufficient to satisfy such an aspiring soul. It seeks how to combine more beauties, and by what coalition of these to form a beautiful society. It views communities, friendships, relations, duties; and considers by what harmony of particular minds the general harmony is composed, and commonweal established. Nor satisfied even with public good in one community of men, it frames itself a nobler object, and with enlarged affection seeks the good of mankind. It dwells with pleasure amidst that reason and those orders on which this fair correspondence and goodly interest is established. Laws, constitutions, civil and religious rites; whatever civilises or polishes rude mankind; the sciences and arts, philosophy, morals, virtue; the flourishing state of human affairs, and the perfection of human nature; these are its delightful prospects, and this the charm of beauty which attracts it.

Still ardent in this pursuit-such is its love of order and perfection-it rests not here, nor satisfies itself with the beauty of a part, but extending further its communicative bounty, seeks the good of all, and affects the interest and prosperity of the whole. True to its native world and higher country, 'tis here it seeks order and perfection, wishing the best, and hoping still to find a just and wise administration. And since all hope of this were vain and idle, if no Universal Mind presided; since, without such a supreme intelligence

this its melancholy: when unsuccessfully pursuing the This, Palemon, is the labour of your soul; and supreme beauty, it meets with darkening clouds which intercept its sight. Monsters arise, not those from Libyan deserts, but from the heart of man more fertile, and with their horrid aspect cast an unseemly reflection upon nature. She, helpless as she is thought, and working thus absurdly, is contemned, the government of the world arraigned, and Deity made void. Much is alleged in answer, to shew why nature errs; and when she seems most ignorant or perverse in her productions, I assert her even then as wise and provident as in her goodliest works. For 'tis not then that men complain of the world's order, or abhor the face of things, when they see various interests mixed and interfering; natures subordinate, of different kinds, opposed one to another, and in their different operations submitted, the higher to the lower. 'Tis, on the contrary, from this order of inferior and superior things that we admire the world's beauty, founded thus on contrarieties; whilst from such various and disagreeing principles a universal concord is established.

Thus in the several orders of terrestrial forms, a resignation is required a sacrifice and mutual yielding of natures one to another. The vegetables by their death sustain the animals, and animal bodies dissolved enrich the earth, and raise again the vegetable world. The numerous insects are reduced by the superior kinds of birds and beasts; and these again are checked by man, who in his turn submits to other natures, and resigns his form, a sacrifice in common to the rest of things. And if in natures so little exalted or preeminent above each other, the sacrifice of interests can appear so just, how much more reasonably may all inferior natures be subjected to the superior nature of the world!-that world, Palemon, which even now transported you, when the sun's fainting light gave way to these bright constellations, and left you this wide system to contemplate.

Here are those laws which ought not, nor can submit to anything below. The central powers which hold the lasting orbs in their just poise and movement, must not be controlled to save a fleeting form, and rescue from the precipice a puny animal, whose brittle frame, however protected, must of itself so soon dissolve. The ambient air, the inward vapours, the impending meteors, or whatever else nutrimental or preservative of this earth, must operate in a natural course; and other good constitutions must submit to the good habit and constitutions of the all-sustaining globe. Let us not wonder, therefore, if by earthquakes, storms, pestilential blasts, nether or upper fires or floods, the animal kinds are oft afflicted, and whole species perhaps involved at once in common ruin. Nor need we wonder if the interior form, the soul and temper, partakes of this occasional deformity, and sympathises often with its close partner. Who is there that can wonder either at the sicknesses of sense or the depravity of minds enclosed in such frail bodies, and dependent on such pervertible organs?

Here, then, is that solution you require, and hence those seeming blemishes cast upon nature. Nor is there ought in this beside what is natural and good. 'Tis good which is predominant; and every corruptible and mortal nature, by its mortality and corruption, yields only to some better, and all in common to that best and highest nature which is incorruptible and immortal.*

This passage receives from Sir James Mackintosh the high praise,, that there is scarcely any composition in our language more lofty in its moral and religious sentiments, or more exquisitely elegant and musical in its diction."