صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature. No magistrate could ever be informed or discover, which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptized. Many murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread, or some kind of provision, to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together. These are such outrageous disorders, that it were better for the nation they were sold to the galleys or West Indies, than that they should continue any longer to be a burden and curse upon us!

WILLIAM NICOLSON was born at Orton, Cumberland, in 1655. He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, after which he travelled for some time on the continent, and soon after his return home received a prebend from the bishop of Carlisle. He, about this time, distinguished himself in the literary world by publishing an account of what he saw abroad. In 1702 he was raised to the see of Carlisle, immediately after which the degree of doctor of divinity was conferred upon him by the university of Oxford. In 1718 Nicolson was transferred to the bishopric of Londonderry, in Ireland; and being a very great favorite at court, he was raised, in January, 1727, to the archbishopric of Cashel, and made primate of Munster. This last dignity, however, he did not long live to enjoy, as his death occurred on the thirteenth of the following February.

Dr. Nicolson may be ranked as one of the most learned of those antiquarians who distinguished themselves by their investigations into early English records. He published Historical Libraries of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 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.

MATTHEW TINDAL, the son of a clergyman, was born in Devonshire, in 1657. He became a commoner of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1672, removed thence to Exeter College, and finally took his degrees at All-Souls, of which he was soon after chosen fellow. In 1685 he was made a doctor of laws, and soon after became a zealous controversialist, controversy then being pursued with much keenness, by men fitted for higher duties. His first attacks were directed against priestly power, but he ended, as is usual in such cases, by opposing Christianity itself; and Paine and other later writers against revelation, have drawn some of their weapons from the armory of

Tindal. Like Dryden, and many others, Tindal embraced the Roman Catholic religion when it became fashionable in the court of James the Second; but he abjured it in 1687, and afterwards became an advocate, under William the Third, from whom he received a pension of two hundred pounds per annum. He died in London, in August, 1733.

Tindal was the author of 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. The tendency of this treatise is to discredit revealed religion. It was answered by Waterland; and Tindal replied by reiterating his former statements and arguments. He wrote a second volume to this work a short time before his death, but Gibson, the bishop of London, interfered, and prevented its publication. Tindal left a legacy of two thousand pounds to Eustace Budgell, and it was reported that Budgell had assisted his friend in writing his work against Christianity.

William Lowth, Richard Bentley, Francis Atterbury, and William Whiston were also divines of the period which we are now considering, eminent in the department of literature to which they respectively devoted themselves.

WILLIAM LOWTH, the son of an apothecary of London, was born in that city on the eleventh of September, 1661. His grandfather, who was rector of Tylehurst, in Berkshire, devoted great attention to his early education, and when he was sufficiently advanced in his studies he was sent to Merchant Taylor's school, whence, for his unusual proficiency in learning, he was elected into St. John's College, Oxford, before he was fourteen years of age. Here he regularly advanced to the degree of master of arts, and that of bachelor of divinity; and such was now his eminence in both worth and learning, that the bishop of Winchester made him his chaplain, conferred upon him a prebend in the cathedral church of Winchester, and the rectory of Buriton, with the chapel of Petersfield. In the rectory of Buriton, he remained until his death, which occurred on the seventeenth of May, 1732, exhibiting throughout his long career, in an eminent degree, the characteristics of a devoted Christian, and a useful servant of his divine Master. His piety, his diligence, his hospitality, and his beneficence, rendered his life highly exemplary, and greatly enforced his public ministrations.

Dr. Lowth was not only distinguished for his classical and theological attainments, but for the liberality also with which he communicated his stores to others. He furnished notes on Clemens Alexandrinus, for Potter's edition of that ancient author; remarks on Josephus, for Hudson's edition; and annotations on the ecclesiastical historians, for Reading's Cambridge edition of those authors. He also assisted Dr. Chandler in his Defence of Christianity from the Prophecies. His learning is said to have been equally extensive and profound, and he accompanied all his reading with critical and philological remarks. Besides the extensive aid he afforded to others, he pub

lished, in 1692, a Vindication of the Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Old and New Testaments, Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Holy Scriptures, and Commentaries on the Prophets.

RICHARD BENTLEY, perhaps the most thoroughly accomplished classical scholar that England ever produced, was the son of a mechanic, and was born at Wakefield, Yorkshire, in 1662. After having completed his preparatory studies at the free-school of his native place, he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, and there soon distinguished himself by his critical learning. Attracting the attention of Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, that prelate appointed him private tutor to his son, and made him his domestic chaplain. He was afterwards selected to open the lectures instituted by Boyle for the defence of Christianity, and delivered a series of discourses against atheism. In these discourses Bentley introduced the discoveries of Newton, and Locke's recently advanced theory of innate ideas concerning a God, as illustrations of his arguments; and the lectures were highly popular. His next public appearance was in the famous controversy with the Honourable Charles Boyle, son of the Earl of Orrery, relative to the genuineness of the Greek epistles of Phalaris. Most of the wits and scholars of that period joined with Boyle against Bentley; but he triumphantly established his position that the epistles are spurious, while the poignancy of his wit and sarcasm, and the sagacity evinced in his conjectural emendations, were unequalled among his Oxford opponents.

In 1700, Bentley was made master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the same time took the degree of doctor of divinity; and in 1716, was appointed regius divinity professor. His next literary performances were an edition of Horace, and editions of Terence and Phædrus. The talent and learning he had displayed in making emendations on the classics, tempted him, in an evil hour,' to edit Milton's Paradise Lost in the same spirit. The critic was then advanced in years, and had lost some portion of his critical sagacity and discernment; but it is very doubtful whether he could ever have entered into the loftier conceptions and sublimer flights of the greatest of English poets. Some of his emendations destroy the happiest and choicest expressions of the poet. The sublime line,

[blocks in formation]

is reduced into prose as follows:

'Then, as 'twas well observed, our torments may
Become our elements.'

Such a critic could never have possessed poetical sensibility, however extensive and minute might be his verbal knowledge of the classics. Bentley's edition of Milton's Paradise Lost appeared in 1732, and though he existed, yet he can scarcely be said to have lived during the following ten years, at the expiration of which death put an end to his eventful life, at Cambridge, on the fourteenth of July, 1742.

Dr. Bentley seems to have been the impersonation of a combative spirit. His college life was spent in continual contests with all who were officially connected with him. To become prepared for such conflicts he seemed to regard as one of the great objects of study; and hence he is represented to have said to his son on one occasion, when he found him engaged reading a novel-'Why read a book that you can not quote?'-a saying which affords an amusing illustration of the nature and object of his own literary studies. From his various performances we select the following passage:

AUTHORITY OF REASON IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS.

We profess ourselves as much concerned, and as truly as [the deists] themselves are, for the use and authority of reason in controversies of faith. We look upon right reason as the native lamp of the soul, placed and kindled there by our Creator, to conduct us in the whole course of our judgments and actions. True reason, like its divine Author, never is itself deceived, nor ever deceives any man. Even revelation itself is not shy nor unwilling to ascribe its own first credit and fundamental authority to the test and testimony of reason. Sound reason is the touchstone to distinguish that pure and genuine gold from baser metals; revelation truly divine, from imposture and enthusiasm: so that the Christian religion is so far from declining or fearing the strictest trials of reason that it everywhere appeals to it; is defended and supported by it; and indeed can not continue, in the Apostle's description (James i. 27), 'pure and undefiled' without it. It is the benefit of reason alone, under the Providence and spirit of God that we ourselves are at this day a reformed orthodox church: that we departed from the errors of Popery, and that we knew, too, where to stop; neither running into the extravagances of fanaticism, nor sliding into the indifferency of libertinism. Whatsoever, therefore, is inconsistent with natural reason, can never be justly imposed as an article of faith. That the same body is in many places at once, that plain bread is not bread; such things, though they be said with never so much pomp and claim to infallibility, we have greater authority to reject them, as being contrary to common sense and our natural faculties; as subverting the foundations of all faith, even the grounds of their own credit, and all the principles of civil life.

So far are we from contending with our adversaries about dignity and authority of reason; but then we differ with them about the exercise of it, and the extent of its province. For the deists there stop, and set bounds to their faith, where reason, their only guide, does not lead the way further, and walk along, before them. We, on the contrary, as (Deut. xxxiv.) Moses was shown by divine power a true sight of the promised land, though himself could not pass over to it, so we think reason may receive from revelation some further discoveries and new prospects of things, and be fully convinced of the reality of them; though itself can not pass on nor travel those regions, can not penetrate the fund of those truths, nor advance to the utmost bounds of them. For there is certainly a wide difference between what is contrary to reason, and what is superior to it, and out of its reach.

FRANCIS ATTERBURY was born at Milton, on the sixth of March, 1662. He was educated for the university at Westminster school, and in 1680 was elected a student of Christ Church College, Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself by his fine genius and extensive knowledge of polite literature. He gave early proofs of his poetical talents in a Latin version of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, an Epigram on a Lady's Fan, and a translation of two Odes of Horace; and as a defender of the Protestant religion, he also, at this time, acquired considerable celebrity. Soon after he left Oxford, in 1691, he was elected lecturer of St. Bride's, London, and made chaplain to William and Mary. With the eloquence of a popular preacher, he possessed the obstinacy of a controversialist, and, therefore, his sermons and other works, when published, drew upon him the animadversions of Hoadly, of Bentley, of Wake, and many others. His zeal, however, in the service of the church, and in support of the rights of convocation, was rewarded by the thanks of the Lower House of Convocation, and by a diploma of the degree of doctor of divinity, from the university of Oxford. Preferment and distinction now followed each other in quick succession; and in 1713 he attained the height of his ecclesiastical dignity, by being made bishop of Rochester, and dean of Westminster.

When George the First, however, succeeded to the throne, the bishop was treated with coldness and indifference; and he imprudently resented the affront, and displayed his attachment to the House of Stuart, by refusing to sign the declaration of the bishops, and by opposing in parliament, with vigor and eloquence, the measures of the government. This decided and hostile conduct proved the beginning of his misfortunes; for, being suspected of favoring the Pretender, he was arrested on the twenty-fourth of August, 1722, as a traitor, and confined in the Tower. On the twenty-third of March following, a bill was brought into the House of Commons to inflict penalties on Francis, Bishop of Rochester, and he was ordered to prepare his defence. He declined using his influence among the commons, but, as he wrote to the speaker, he reserved the vindication of his conduct in that house, of which he had the honor of being a member, to himself. The trial lasted more than a week; and though the bishop was supported by all the learning and eloquence of the bar, and spoke in his own cause with all the energy of the persuasive powers which he was known to possess, still he was condemned by a majority of eighty-three to forty-three votes; and the king, on the twenty-seventh of May, confirmed the decision.

Atterbury met the disgrace of banishment with unusual firmness and dignity. He took an affectionate leave of his friends, and on the eighteenth of June, 1723, from the Aldborough man-of-war, was landed at Calais, where he met Lord Bolingbroke, whom the royal pardon had just recalled to England, upon which he observed, with his usual facetiousness, 'then his lordship and I am exchanged.' Persecution did not, however, cease with the bishop's fall; for in his exile he was pursued with more vindictiveness than had followed hiin even in England. He resided, first in Brussels, and afterVOL. II.-Q

« السابقةمتابعة »