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has been already observed, carried further than they did, his notions of religious discipline. In short, religion was to him the most important of all concerns, and that which chiefly excited the ardour of his mind. The essentials of the system in which he finally settled were, the proper humanity of Christ, including the rejection of his miraculous conception, and of the doctrine of atonement; and a future state, in which punishment is to be only emendatory, and all rational beings are to be finally happy: this was an inference from the doctrine of necessity combined with that of the beuevo lence of the Deity. He rejected an intermediate state of existence, and founded all his expectations of a future life upon revelation alone. Of the very numerous publications in which he proposed and defended his theological opinions, a great part were temporary and occasional. Those which may be deemed most durable and important are, his "Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion," his "Letters to a philosophical Unbeliever," his explanations of Scripture, and his inquiries into the faith of the early Christians, which he endeavoured to prove to have been couformable to the Unitarian system. To the study of scripture he was extremely attached, and he paid a reverent respect to its historical and prophetic authority. He published several works in practical divinity, of which, two sermons, on Habitual Devotion, and on the Duty of not living to ourselves, are of singular excellence.11

did justice to their opinions or their characters in their faint and tardy declarations against generally received and established errors. It is painful to those who revere the memory of the latter, to find them praised as enlightened believers, by a Wilberforce or a More, in the same work where they censure Unitarians as, according to Baxter, scarce Christians.

31 These Discourses have been largely circulated among the tracts of the Unitarian Society. For a complete enumeration of Priestley's works we must refer to a catalogue annexed to his Mem. Vol. ii. Their number (108) and their variety serve to shew how constantly the author bore in mind the sentiment which he adopted from Hippocrates, as a motto to his seal, Ars

Of his other writings, the most important have been mentioned in the narrative of his life. Among these, his Histories of Electricity, and of Vision, are perhaps the only ones by which his name would have been perpetuated, had it been devoid of so many other passports to immortality.32

A Short Memoir of the Rev. Robert
Edward Garnham.

M

[Printed but not published.]

R. GARNHAM was born at Bury St. Edmunds, May 1st, 1753, and was the only surviving child of the Rev. Robert Garnham, many years master of the Free Grammar School at Bury, and rector of Nowton and Hargrave, in Suffolk. His mother was Mary, daughter of Mr. Benton, and sister of the late Edward Benton, Esq. secondary in the Court of King's Bench. Mr. Garnham received his school-education under the tuition of his father. who justly supported a considerable reputation for classical learning. He was removed from Bury school, and admitted of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1770, and the following

longa, vita brevis. We trust that a plan now in contemplation, for publishing by subscription, the whole of Priestley's works, except the scientific, will very soon be communicated to the public.

3 Besides various particulars respecting the character and opinions of Priestley, interspersed through successive volumes of the M. Repos., we may refer especially to his "Historical Eulogy," by Cuvier, Secretary to the National Institute of France, i. 216, 328, to an account of him in his residence at Northumberland, America, by Mr. Wm. Bakewell, of Melbourn, i. 393, 505, 564, 622, to his eulogium by the venerable Christian Patriot, and Philan thropist, Wyvill, ii. 464, to the character of Priestley by his successor at Leeds, the late Mr. Wood, iii. 401, and to V. F's. interesting sketch of that part of his life, in which he was connected with the Warrington Academy, viii. 226–231.

R.

He was formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and took the degroe of B. A. 1737, and M. A. 1747. After having retired some years from his school. he died at Bury, Nov. 8th, 1798, aged 82. His widow survived him little more than twelve months, dying at Bury, Dec. 6th, 1799, aged 79. They were buried in the chancel of the parish church of Nowton.

DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER.

The Portrait of Dr. Priestley to face the Title-page. The Portrait of Servetus to face the Number for July.

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Memoir of the late Rev. Joseph Priestley, LL. D. F. R. S. &c. [With the Portrait, we think it may be useful and agreeable to many of our readers to give a Memoir, of Dr. Priestley. We have taken the liberty, to copy the life published in the Eighth Volume of the General Biography, 4to., and drawn up, as appears from the signature, by the able and elegant pen of. Dr. Äikin, and to adapt it more particularly to this work by the addition of notes, for which we are indebted to a friend, to whom the commencement and the continuance of the Monthly Repository are chiefly owing, whose communications form a rich portion of the past volumes, and to whom the readers may still, it is hoped, look for entertainment and instruction. The whole of the notes are original and by the same friendly hand.

JOSE

EDITOR.]

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL. D. F. R. S., &c. a very eminent philosopher and divine, was born in March, 1773, at Field-head, near Leeds. His father was engaged in the clothing manufacture, and was a dissenter of the Calvinistic persuasion.1

"Jonas Priestley, the youngest son of Joseph Priestley, a maker and dresser of woollen cloth." His son describes him as discovering "a strong sense of religion, praying with his family morning and evening, and carefully teaching his children and servants the Assembly's Catechism, which was all the system of which he had any knowledge," never "giving much attention to matters of speculation, and entertaining no bigoted aversion to those who differed from him," Dr. Priestley's mother, who died in 1740, when her son was in his seventh year, "was the only child of Joseph Swift, a farmer of Shafton, a village about six miles south-east of Wakefield." She was gratefully recollected by her son as "a woman of exemplary

- VOL. X.

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[Vol. X.

Joseph was in his youth adopted by ́an aunt, a woman of exemplary piety and benevolence, who sent him for education to several schools in the neighbourhood, where he acquired a respectable degree of knowledge of the learned languages, including Hebrew. He was originally destined for the ministry; but weak health causing his views to be turned towards trade, he learned some of the modern

piety, careful to teach" him religion according to her own convictions, and taking principle by impressing his mind "with a a particular occasion to inculcate moral

clear idea of the distinction of property, and the importance of attending to it." Priestley's Mem. pp. 2, 3, 5.

2 She was his father's sister, "married to a Mr. Keighley, a man who had distinguished himself for his zeal for religion, and for his public spirit." She died in 1764, having survived her husband many years. Her nephew, from whom she deserved and received the grateful remembrance of a son, characterizes this "truly pious and excellent woman" as one "who knew no other use of wealth, or of talents of any kind, than to do good, and who never spared herself for this purpose ;truly Calvinistic in principle, but far from confining salvation to those who thought as she did on religious subjects." He adds, that "being left in good circumstances, her home was the resort of all the dissenting ministers in the neighbourhood without distinction, and those who were the most obnoxious on account of their heresy were almost as welcome to her, if she thought them honest and good men (which she was not unwilling to do) as any other." Id. pp. 3 and 6.

3 In this language he made himself" a considerable proficient," during "the interval between leaving the grammar-school, and going to the academy," by instructing a minister in his neighbourhood" who had He also had no learned education." "learned Chaldee and Syriac, and just began to read Arabic." Id. p. 10,

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solemn and imposing lights, in which their nearness to the rising sun of Christianity places them; yet, that the time of their authority over conscience and opinion was gone by; that they were no longer to be regarded as guides either in faith or in morals; and that we should be quite within the pale of orthodoxy in say ing that, though admirable martyrs and saints, they were, after all, but indifferent Christians. In point of style, too, we had supposed that criticism was no longer dazzled by their sanctity; that few would now agree with the learned jèsuit, Garasse, that a chapter of St. Augustine on the Trinity is worth all the Odes of Pindar; that, in short, they had taken their due rank among those affected and rhetorical writers, who flourished in the decline of ancient literature, and were now, like many worthy authors we could mention, very much respected and never read.

We had supposed all this; but we find we were mistaken. An eminent dignitary of the Church of England has lately shewn that in his opinion at least, these veterans are by no means invalided in the warfare of theology; for he has brought more than seventy volumes of them into the field against the Calvinists. And here is Mr. Boyd, a gentleman of much Greek, who assures us that the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, the Orations of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and -proh pudor!—the Amours of Daphnis and Chloe are models of eloquence, atticism, and fine writing.

Mr. Boyd has certainly chosen the safer, as well as pleasanter path, through the neglected field of learning; for, tasteless as the metaphors of the fathers are in general, they are much more innocent and digestible than their arguments; as the learned bishop we have just alluded to may, perhaps, by this time acknowledge; having found, we suspect, that his seventy folios are, like elephants in battle, not only ponderous, but dan gerous auxiliaries, which, when once let loose, may be at least as formidable to friends as to foes. This, indeed, has always been a characteristic of the writings of the fathers. This ambidextrous faculty-this sort of Swiss versatility in fighting equally well on both sides of the question, has dis

tinguished them through the whole history of theological controversy: the same authors, the same passages have been quoted with equal confidence, by Arians and Athanasians, Jesuits and Jansenists, Transubstantiators and Typifiers. Nor is it only the dull and bigoted who have had recourse to these self-refuted authorities for their purpose; we often find the same anxiety for their support, the same disposition to account them, as Chillingworth says, Fathers when for, and children when against,' in quarters where a greater degree of good sense and fairness might be expected. Even Middleton himself, who makes so light of the opinions of the fathers, in his learned and manly inquiry into miracles, yet courts their sanction with much assiduity for his favourite system of allegorizing the Mosaic history of the creation; a point on which, of all others, their alliance is most dangerous, as there is no subject upon which their Pagan imaginations have rioted more ungovernably.

The errors of the primitive doctors of the church; their Christian heathenism and heathen Christianity, which led them to look for the Trinity among those shadowy forms that peopled the twilight groves of the academy, and to array the meek, self-humbling Christian in the proud and iron armour of the Portico; their bigoted rejection of the most obvious truths in natural science; the bewildering vibration of their moral doctrines, never resting between the extremes of laxity and rigour; their credulity, their inconsistencies of conduct and opinion, and worst of all, their forgeries and falsehoods, have already been so often and so ably exposed by divines of all countries, religions and sects; the Dupins, Mosheims, Middletons, Clarkes, Jortins, &c. that it seems superfluous to add another line upon the subject: though we are not quite sure that, in the present state of Europe, a discussion of the merits of the fathers is not as seasonable and even fashionable a topic as we could select. At a time when the Inquisition is re-established by our beloved Ferdinand; when the Pope again brandishes the keys of St. Peter with an air worthy of a successor of the Hildebrands and

also introduced to an acquaintance with the writings of Dr. Hartley, which exerted a powerful and lasting influence over his whole train of thinking. On quitting the academy, he accepted an invitation to officiate as minister to a small congregation at Needham-market in Suffolk. Not having the talents of a popular preacher, and becoming suspected of heretical opinions, he passed his time at this place in discountenance and obscurity; but he was assiduously employed in theological and scriptural studies, of which the result was a farther departure from the received systems, and particularly a total re

ander, of Birmingham," about three years younger than himself, who died suddenly in 1765, before he had completed his 30th year. He is mentioned in the Memoir with great regard. Of Mr. Alexander there is an interesting account, by Dr. Kippis, in a note to the life of his uncle, Dr. Benson (B. Biog. ii. 206). He is also known by a posthumous publication, entitled, "A Paraphrase upon the 15th Chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians; with Critical Notes, &c. &c. to which is added a Sermon on Eccles. ix. 10, composed by the author the day preceding his death. By John Alexander." 4to. 1766.

9 Priestley (Mem. p. 15) ascribes his first acquaintance with "Hartley's Observations on Man," to a reference made by the lecturer to that work, "which," he adds, "immediately engaged my closest attention, and produced the greatest and, in my opinion, the most favourable effect on my general turn of thinking through life. Indeed I do not know whether the consideration of Dr. Hartley's Theory contributes more to enlighten the mind, or improve the heart; it effects both in so super-eminent a degree." The name of Hartley is in Priestley's Chart of Biography, first published in 1765, and there can be no doubt that he is designed in the following passage of the Description:

"I recollect only one instance (in the class of divines, moralists and metaphysicians) in which I have departed from my general rule of giving place to present fame in favour of extraordinary merit, and what I presume will be great future reputation. If I be mistaken in my presumption I hope I shall be indulged a little partiality for one favourite name." Description, 1785, p. 17. The subjects, on which reference is made to Hartley in the Lectures of Doddridge, are the intermediate state, the final restoration, and the renovation of the earth. See Leat, 4to. 1763. pp. 561, 2, 574, 5, 581.

jection of the doctrine of atonement.10 After a residence of three years at Needham, he undertook the charge of a congregation at Namptwich, in Cheshire, to which he joined a school. In the business of education he was indefatigable; and he added to the common objects of instruction, experiments in natural philosophy, which were the means of fostering in himself a taste for pursuits of that kind." His first publication was an English Grammar on a new plan, for the use of his scholars, printed in 1791. His reputation as a man of various knowledge and active inquiry now began to extend itself, and in 1761 he was invited by the trustees of the dissenting academy at Warrington to occupy the post of tutor in the languages,12 Not long after his acceptance of this office, he married the daughter of Mr. Wilkinson, an iron-master, near Wrexham, a lady of an excellent understanding, and great strength of mind, who proved his faithful partner in all the vicissitudes of life.

At Warrington Dr. Priestley began to distinguish himself as a writer in various branches of science and literature. Several of these had a relation to his department in the academy, which, besides philology, included

10 In M. Repos. Vol. ii. p. 638, &c. see an interesting communication respecting Dr. Priestley's explicit conduct at this period, occasioned by some misrepresentatious in a sermon preached by his brother on the occasion of his death.

11 Here he assiduously pursued his theological inquiries and adopted some of those opinions respecting the apostle Paul's reasonings, which he afterwards published, to the alarm of not a few serious Christians, who had hastily supposed that divine truth could be impaired by any logical inaccuracy of those who were appointed to declare it. Dr. Priestley (Mem. p. 34) relates how at this time he had committed to the press a book which contained his free thoughts on this subject. The work when partly printed he suppressed, at the instance of his friend, Dr. Kippis, till he "should be more known, and his character better established." The writer of these notes had the same account many years ago, from Dr. Kippis, who mentioned the readiness with which Priestley attended to his suggestion and that of Dr. Furneaux, from which they justly argued his future emi

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