POTTER AND KENNETT. DR POTTER (1674-1747), archbishop of Canterbury, is known as author of a valuable work on the antiquities of Greece, in two volumes octavo. The researches of modern philologists, especially among the Germans, have greatly enriched this department of literature; but Potter led the way, and supplied a groundwork for future scholars. He also edited the writings of Lycophron, and wrote several theological treatises and discourses on church-government, which were collected and printed at Oxford in 1753, in three volumes. With the learning of the English hierarchy, Dr Potter is said to have united too much of the pomp and pride which occasionally mark its dignitaries; and it is related that he disinherited his son for marrying below his rank in life. BASIL KENNETT (1674-1714) performed for Roman antiquities what Archbishop Potter did for Grecian. His Roma Antiquae Notitia, or the Antiquities of Rome, in one volume octavo, was a respectable contribution to historical literature, and for nearly a century held its place as the standard work upon the subject. It was then partly superseded by the Roman Antiquities of Dr Adam; but recent times have seen both thrown into the background, in consequence of the vast additions which have been made to our knowledge of ancient Rome, its people, and their institutions, chiefly by German scholars, and partly by the investigations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Kennett was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became chaplain to the English factory at Leghorn, where he was in danger from the Inquisition. He was greatly esteemed by his contemporaries for his learning, piety, and modesty. Besides his Roman Antiquities, he wrote Lives of the Grecian Poets, an Exposition of the Creed, and a collection of sermons. RICHARD BENTLEY. his emendations destroy the happiest and choicest No light, but rather darkness visible, No light, but rather a transpicuous gloom. Our torments also may in length of time reduced into prose as follows: Then, as 'twas well observed, our torments may DR RICHARD BENTLEY (1662-1742) was perhaps the greatest classical scholar that England has produced. He was educated at Cambridge, and became chaplain to Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester. He was afterwards appointed preacher of the lecture instituted by Boyle for the defence of Christianity, and delivered a series of discourses against atheism. In these Bentley introduced the discoveries of Newton as illustrations of his argument, and the is lectures were highly popular. His next public appearance was in the famous controversy with the Honourable Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery, relative to the genuineness of the Greek epistles of Phalaris. This controversy we have already spoken of in our Such a critic could never have possessed poetical notice of Sir William Temple. Most of the wits sensibility, however extensive and minute might be and scholars of that period joined with Boyle his verbal knowledge of the classics. Bentley died against Bentley; but he triumphantly established at Cambridge in 1742. He seems to have been the his position that the epistles are spurious, while the impersonation of a combative spirit. His collegepoignancy of his wit and sarcasm, and the saga- life was spent in continual war with all who were city evinced in his conjectural emendations, were officially connected with him. He is said one day, on unequalled among his Oxford opponents. Bentley finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked: was afterwards made Master of Trinity College,Why read a book that you cannot quote?'-a Cambridge; and in 1716 he was also appointed saying which affords an amusing illustration of the regius professor of divinity. His next literary per- nature and object of his literary studies. formances were an edition of Horace, and editions of Terence and Phædrus. The talent 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, while it is 674 [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 cannot 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 still 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 the 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 shewn 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 cannot pass on, nor travel those regions; cannot 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. DR FRANCIS ATTERBURY. DR FRANCIS ATTERBURY (1662-1732), an Oxford divine and zealous high-churchman, was one of the combatants in the critical warfare with Bentley about the epistles of Phalaris. Originally tutor to Lord Orrery, he was, in 1713, rewarded for his Tory zeal by being named Bishop of Rochester. Under the new dynasty and Whig government, his zeal carried him into treasonable practices, and in 1722 he was apprehended on suspicion of being concerned in a plot to restore the Pretender, and was committed to the Tower. A bill of pains and penalties was preferred against him; he made an eloquent defence, but was deposed and outlawed. Atterbury now went into exile, and resided first at Brussels, and afterwards at Paris, continuing to correspond with Pope, Bolingbroke, and his other Jacobite friends, till his death. The works of this accomplished, but restless and aspiring prelate, consist of four volumes of sermons, some visitation charges, and his epistolary correspondence, which was extensive. His style is easy and elegant, and he was a very impressive preacher. The good taste of Atterbury is seen in his admiration of Milton, before fashion had sanctioned the applause of the great poet. His letters to Pope breathe the utmost affection and tenderness. The following farewell letter to the poet was sent from the Tower, April 10, 1723: 'DEAR SIR-I thank you for all the instances of your friendship, both before and since my misfortunes. A little time will complete them, and separate you and me for ever. But in what part of the world soever I am, I will live mindful of your sincere kindness to me; and will please myself with the thought that I still live in your esteem and affection as much as ever I did; and that no accident of life, no distance of time or place, will alter you in that respect. It never can me, who have loved and valued you ever since I knew you, and shall not fail to do it when I am not allowed to tell you so, as the case will soon be. Give my faithful services to Dr Arbuthnot, and thanks for what he sent me, which was much to the purpose, if anything can be said to be to the purpose in a case that is already determined. Let him know my defence will be such, that neither my friends need blush for me, nor will my enemies have great_occasion to triumph, though sure of the victory. I shall want his advice before I go abroad in many things. him or anybody, but such as are absolutely necesBut I question whether I shall be permitted to see sary towards the dispatch of my private affairs. If so, God bless you both! and may no part of the illfortune that attends me ever pursue either of you. I know not but I may call upon you at my hearing, to say somewhat about my way of spending my time at the deanery, which did not seem calculated towards managing plots and conspiracies. But of You and I have spent many that I shall consider. hours together upon much pleasanter subjects; and, that I may preserve the old custom, I shall not part with you now till I have closed this letter with three lines of Milton, which you will, I know, readily, and not without some degree of concern, apply to your ever-affectionate, &c. Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon; Atterbury, however, was clearly guilty. He afterwards became, like Bolingbroke, the chief counsellor and director of the exiled court, and strove in vain to infuse some of his own turbulent energy into the feeble mind of the Chevalier. He organised a plan for raising the Highland clans, and a special envoy was despatched from Rome, but the scheme miscarried. Though ready to plunge his country into civil war, Atterbury regarded it with tenderness Thus on the banks of Seine, [Usefulness of Church-Music.] The use of vocal and instrumental harmony in divine worship I shall recommend and justify from this consideration: that they do, when wisely employed and managed, contribute extremely to awaken the attention and enliven the devotion of all serious and sincere Christians; and their usefulness to this end will appear on a double account, as they remove the ordinary hinderances of devotion, and as they supply us further with special helps and advantages towards quickening and improving it. By the melodious harmony of the church, the ordinary hinderances of devotion are removed, particularly these three; that engagement of thought which we often bring with us into the church from what we last converse with; those accidental distractions that may happen to us during the course of divine service; and that weariness and flatness of mind which some weak tempers may labour under, by reason even of the length of it. When we come into the sanctuary immediately from any worldly affair, as our very condition of life does, alas! force many of us to do, we come usually with divided and alienated minds. The business, the pleasure, or the amusement we left, sticks fast to us, and perhaps engrosses that heart for a time, which should then be taken up altogether in spiritual addresses. But as soon as the sound of the sacred hymns strikes us, all that busy swarm of thoughts presently disperses: by a grateful violence we are forced into the duty that is going forward, and, as indevout and backward as we were before, find ourselves on the sudden seized with a sacred warmth, ready to cry out, with holy David: 'My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise.' Our misapplication of mind at such times is often so great, and we so deeply immersed in it, that there needs some very strong and powerful charm to rouse us from it; and perhaps nothing is of greater force to this purpose than the solemn and awakening airs of church-music. For the same reason, those accidental distractions that may happen to us are also best cured by it. The strongest minds, and best practised in holy duties, may sometimes be surprised into a forgetfulness of what they are about by some violent outward impressions; and every slight occasion will serve to call off the thoughts of no less willing though much weaker worshippers. Those that come to see and to be seen here, will often gain their point; will draw and detain for a while the eyes of the curious and unwary. A passage in the sacred story read, an expression used in the common forms of devotion, shall raise a foreign reflection, perhaps, in musing and speculative minds, and lead them on from thought to thought, and point to point, till they are bewildered in their own imaginations. These, and a hundred other avocations, will arise and prevail; but when the instruments of praise begin to sound, our scattered thoughts presently take the alarm, return to their post and to their duty, preparing and arming themselves against their spiritual assailants. Lastly, even the length of the service itself becomes a hinderance sometimes to the devotion which it was meant to feed and raise; for, alas! we quickly tire in the performance of holy duties; and as eager and unwearied as we are in attending upon secular business and trifling concerns, yet in divine offices, I fear, the expostulation of our Saviour is applicable to most of us: 'What can ye not watch with me one hour?' This infirmity is relieved, this hinderance prevented or removed, by the sweet harmony that accompanies several parts of the service, and returning upon us at fit intervals, keeps our attention up to the duties when we begin to flag, and makes us insensible of the length of it. Happily, therefore, and wisely is it so ordered, that the morning devotions of the church, which are much the longest, should share also a greater proportion of the harmony which is useful to enliven them. But its use stops not here, at a bare removal of the ordinary impediments to devotion; it supplies us also with special helps and advantages towards furthering and improving it. For it adds dignity and solemnity to public worship; it sweetly influences and raises our passions whilst we assist at it, and makes us do our duty with the greatest pleasure and cheerfulness; all which are very proper and powerful means towards creating in us that holy attention and erection of mind, the most reasonable part of this our reasonable service. Such is our nature, that even the best things, and most worthy of our esteem, do not always employ and detain our thoughts in proportion to their real value, unless they be set off and greatened by some outward circumstances, which are fitted to raise admiration and surprise in the breasts of those who hear or behold them. And this good effect is wrought in us by the power of sacred music. To it we, in good measure, owe the dignity and solemnity of our public worship; which else, I fear, in its natural simplicity and plainness, would not so strongly strike, or so deeply affect the minds, as it ought to do, of the sluggish and inattentive, that is, of the far greatest part of mankind. But when voice and instruments are skilfully adapted to it, it appears to us in a majestic air and shape, and gives us very awful and reverent impressions, which, while they are upon us, it is impossible for us not to be fixed and composed to the utmost. We are then in the same state of mind that the devout patriarch was when he awoke from his holy dream, and ready with him to say to ourselves: 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' Further, the availableness of harmony to promote a pious disposition of mind will appear from the great influence it naturally has on the passions, which, when well directed, are the wings and sails of the mind, that speed its passage to perfection, and are of particular and remarkable use in the offices of devotion; for devotion consists in an ascent of the mind towards God, attended with holy breathings of soul, and a divine exercise of all the passions and powers of the mind. These passions the melody of sounds serves only to guide and elevate towards their proper object; these it first calls forth and encourages, and then gradually raises and inflames. This it does to all of them, as the matter of the hymns sung gives an occasion for the employment of them; but the power of it is chiefly seen in advancing that most heavenly passion of love, which reigns always in pious breasts, and is the surest and most inseparable mark of true devotion; which recommends what we do in virtue of it to God, and makes it relishing to ourselves; and without which all our spiritual offerings, our prayers, and our praises, are both insipid and unacceptable. At this our religion begins, and at this it ends; it is the sweetest companion and improvement of it here upon earth, and the very earnest and foretaste of heaven; of the pleasures of which nothing further is revealed to us, than that they consist in the practice of holy music and holy love, the joint enjoyment of which, we are told, is to be the happy lot of all pious souls to endless ages. Now, it naturally follows from hence, which was the last advantage from whence I proposed to recommend church-music, that it makes our duty a pleasure, and enables us, by that means, to perform it with the utmost vigour and cheerfulness. It is certain, that the more pleasing an action is to us, the more keenly and eagerly are we used to employ ourselves in it; the less liable are we, while it is going forward, to tire, and droop, and be dispirited. So that whatever contributes to make our devotion taking, within such a degree as not at the same time to dissipate and distract it, does, for that very reason, contribute to our attention and holy warmth of mind in performing it. What we take delight in, we no longer look upon as a task, but return to always with desire, dwell upon with satisfaction, and quit with uneasiness. And this it was which made holy David express himself in so pathetical a manner concerning the service of the sanctuary: 'As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. When, oh when, shall I come to appear before the presence of God?' The ancients do sometimes use the metaphor of an army when they are speaking of the joint devotions put up to God in the assembly of his saints. They say we there meet together in troops to do violence to heaven; we encompass, we DR SAMUEL CLARKE, a distinguished divine, scholar, and metaphysician, was born at Norwichwhich his father represented in parliament-on the 11th of October 1675. His powers of reflection and abstraction are said to have been developed when a mere boy. His biographer, Whiston, relates that 'one of his parents asked him, when he was very young, whether God could do everything. He answered, Yes. He was asked again, whether God could tell a lie. He answered, No. And he understood the question to suppose that this was the only thing that God could not do; nor durst he say, so young was he then, that he thought there was anything else which God could not do-while yet he well remembered that he had even then a clear conviction in his own mind that there was one thing which God could not do-that he could not annihilate that space which was in the room where they were.' This opinion concerning the necessary existence of space became a leading feature in the mind of the future philosopher. At Caius' College, Cambridge, Clarke cultivated natural philosophy with such success, that in his twenty-second year he published an excellent translation of Rohault's Physics, with notes, in which he advocated the Newtonian system, although that of Descartes was taught by Rohault, whose work was at that time the text-book in the university. Four editions of Clarke's translation were required before it ceased to be used in the university; but at length it was superseded by treatises in which the Newtonian philosophy was avowedly adopted. Having entered the church, Clarke found a patron and friend in Dr Moore, bishop of Norwich, and was appointed his chaplain. Between the years 1699 and 1702, he published several theological essays on baptism, repentance, &c., and executed paraphrases of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These tracts were afterwards published in two volumes. The bishop next gave him a living at Norwich; and his reputation stood so high, that in 1704 he was appointed to preach the Boyle lecture. His boyish musings on eternity and space were now revived. He selected as the subject of his first course of lectures, the Being and Attributes of God; and the second year he chose the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. The lectures were published in two volumes, and attracted notice and controversy from their containing Clarke's celebrated argument a priori for the existence of God, the germ of which is comprised in a Scholium annexed to Newton's Principia. According to Sir Isaac and his scholar, as immensity and eternity are not substances, but attributes, the immense and eternal Being, whose attributes they are, must exist of necessity also. The existence of God, therefore, is a truth that follows with demonstrative evidence from those conceptions of space and time which are inseparable from the human mind. Professor Dugald Stewart, though considering that Clarke, in pursuing this lofty argument, soared into regions where he was lost in the clouds, admits the grandness of the conception, and its connection with the principles It is of natural religion. 'For when once we have All are but parts of one stupendous whole, The followers of Spinoza built their pernicious theory The next subject that engaged the studies of Clarke was a Defence of the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul, in reply to Mr Henry Dodwell and Collins. He also translated Newton's Optics into Latin, and was rewarded by his guide, philosopher, In 1709 he and friend with a present of £500. obtained the rectory of St James's, Westminster, took his degree of D.D., and was made chaplain in ordinary to the queen. In 1712 he edited a splendid edition of Cæsar's Commentaries, with corrections and emendations, and also gave to the world an elaborate treatise on the Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. The latter involved him in considerable trouble with the church authorities; for Clarke espoused the Arian doctrine, which he also advoHe next appeared cated in a series of sermons. as a controversialist with Leibnitz, the German philosopher, who had represented to the Princess of Wales, afterwards the queen-consort of George II., that the Newtonian philosophy was not only Sir physically false, but injurious to religion. Isaac Newton, at the request of the princess, entered the lists on the mathematical part of the controversy, and left the philosophical part of it to Dr Clarke. The result was triumphant for the English system; and Clarke, in 1717, collected and published the papers which had passed between him and Leibnitz. In 1724, he put to press a series of sermons, seventeen in number. Many of them [Natural and Essential Difference between Right and Wrong.] are excellent, but others are tinctured with his been coloured by his fondness for mathematical metaphysical predilections. He aimed at rendering studies. scriptural principle a precept conformable to what he calls eternal reason and the fitness of things, and hence his sermons have failed in becoming popular or useful. He who aspires,' says Robert Hall, 'to a reputation that shall survive the vicissitudes of opinion and of time, must aim at some other character than that of a metaphysician.' In his practical sermons, however, there is much sound and admirable precept. In 1727, Dr Clarke was offered, but declined, the appointment of Master of the Mint, vacant by the death of his illustrious friend, Newton. The situation was worth £1500 a year, and the disinterestedness and integrity of Clarke were strikingly evinced by his declining to accept an office of such honour and emoluments, because he could not reconcile himself to a secular employment. His conduct and character must have excited the admiration of the queen, for we learn from a satirical allusion in Pope's Moral Epistle on the Use of Riches-first published in 1731-that her majesty had placed a bust of Dr Clarke in her hermitage in the royal grounds. The doctor duly frequented the court,' says Pope in a note; 'but he should have added,' rejoins Warburton, with the innocence and disinterestedness of a hermit.' In 1729, Clarke published the first twelve books of the Iliad, with a Latin version and copious annotations; and Homer has never had a more judicious or acute commentator. The last literary efforts of this indefatigable scholar were devoted to drawing up an Exposition of the Church Catechism, and preparing several volumes of sermons for the press. These were not published till after his death, which took place on the 17th of May 1729. The various talents and learning of Dr Clarke, and his easy cheerful disposition, earned for him the highest admiration and esteem of his contemporaries. As a metaphysician, he was inferior to Locke in comprehensiveness and originality, but possessed more skill and logical foresight, the natural result of his habits of mathematical study; and he has been justly celebrated for the boldness and ability with which he placed himself in the breach against the Necessitarians and Fatalists of his times. His moral doctrine-which supposes virtue to consist in the regulation of our conduct according to certain fitnesses which we perceive in things, or a peculiar congruity of certain relations to each other-being inconsequential unless we have previously distinguished the ends which are morally good from those that are evil, and limited the conformity to one of these classes, has been condemned by Dr Thomas Brown and Sir James Mackintosh. His speculations were over-refined, and seem to have The principal thing that can, with any colour of reason, seem to countenance the opinion of those who deny the natural and eternal difference of good and evil, is the difficulty there may sometimes be to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong; the variety of opinions that have obtained even among understanding and learned men, concerning certain questions of just and unjust, especially in political matters; and the many contrary laws that have been made in divers ages and in different countries concerning these matters. But as, in painting, two very different colours, by diluting each other very slowly and gradually, may, from the highest intenseness in either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and so run one into the other, that it shall not be possible even for a skilful eye to determine exactly where the one ends and the other begins; and yet the colours may really differ as much as can be, not in degree only, but entirely in kind, as red and blue, difficult in some nice and perplexed casesor white and black: so, though it may perhaps be very -which yet are very far from occurring frequently-to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong, just and unjust-and there may be some latitude in the judgment of different men, and the laws of divers nations-yet right and wrong are nevertheless in themselves totally and essentially different; even altogether as much as white and black, light and darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which permitted their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no; because every man, having an absolute right in his own goods, it may seem that the members of any society may agree to transfer or alter their own properties upon what conditions they shall think fit. But if it could be supposed that a law had been made at Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part of the world, whereby it had been commanded or allowed that every man might rob by violence, and murder whomsoever he met with, or that no faith should be kept with any man, nor any equitable compacts performed, no man, with any tolerable use of his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be among them in other matters, would have thought that such a law could have authorised or excused, much less have justified such actions, and have made them become good: because 'tis plainly not in men's power to make falsehood be truth, though they may alter the property 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 distin* See Brown's Philosophy and the Dissertations of Stewart guished. For if, from the difficulty of determining and Mackintosh. Warburton, in his notes on Pope, thus sums exactly the bounds of right and wrong in many perup the moral doctrine: Dr Clarke and Wollaston considered plexed cases, it could truly be concluded that just and moral obligation as arising from the essential differences and unjust were not essentially different by nature, but relations of things; Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, as arising only by positive constitution and custom, it would from the moral sense; and the generality of divines, as arising follow equally, that they were not really, essentially, solely from the will of God. On these three principles, practi- and unalterably different, even in the most flagrant cal morality has been built by these different writers.' Thus cases that can be supposed; which is an assertion so has God been pleased,' adds Warburton, 'to give three differ- very absurd, that Mr Hobbes himself could hardly vent ent excitements to the practice of virtue; that men of all ranks, 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, not depending on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the differences of the things themselves. constitutions, and educations, might find their account in one or other of them; something that would hit their palate, satisfy their reason, or subdue their will. But this admirable provision for the support of virtue hath been in some measure defeated by its pretended advocates, who have sacrilegiously untwisted this threefold cord, and each running away with the part he esteemed the strongest, hath affixed that to the throne of God, as the golden chain that is to unite and draw all to it.'-Divine Legation, Book i. |