work, Christianity as old as the Creation,' the design of which was to destroy revelation and to establish natural religion in its stead. Among others who met and satisfactorily refuted Tindal's reasonings was Dr Waterland. But Middleton, finding fault with his method of vindicating scripture, addressed a letter of remarks to him, in which he indulged in very unseemly language towards so popular a character as Waterland. Pearce, bishop of Rochester, took up the contest for Waterland, which drew from Middleton A Defence of the Letter to Dr Waterland.' Pearce replied, and treated his antagonist as an infidel or a disguised enemy to revelation; and Middleton was called upon either to vindicate himself from the imputations of the bishop of Rochester or resign his connexions with the university. He did so in 'Some Remarks on Dr Pearce's Second Reply,' and effected at least so much in the way of explanation and apology that he was allowed to retain his appointments. In 1733, however, Dr Williams, the public orator of the university, addressed some 'Observations' to Middleton, in which he attempted to prove that the librarian was certainly an infidel, and ought to be banished from the precincts of a Christian university. Middleton, in his answer to this attack, says: "I have nothing to recant on the occasion, nothing to confess, but the same four articles that I have already confessed: 1. That the Jews borrowed some of their customs from Egypt. 2. That the Egyptians were possessed of arts and learning in Moses's time. 3. That the primitive writers, in vindicating Scripture, found it necessary sometimes to recur to allegory. 4. That the Scriptures are not of absolute and universal inspiration. These are the only crimes that I have been guilty of against religion; and by reducing the controversy to these four heads, and declaring my whole meaning to be comprised in them, I did in reality recant every thing else that, through heat and inadvertency, had dropped from me,-every thing that could be construed to a sense hurtful to Christianity." In 1735 he published a 'Dissertation concerning the Origin of Printing in England,' in which he argues that Caxton introduced the art of printing into England, and first practised it here, an hypothesis controverted in Bowyer and Nichols' Origin of Printing.'

In 1741 appeared his great work, 'The History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero,' in two volumes quarto. It was published by subscription, and met with great support. The duke of Newcastle and Lord Hervey exerted themselves strenuously in procuring subscribers; although the former nobleman opposed Middleton's election to the mastership of the charter-house, and procured that office for Mr Mann. Wolfius, in his edition of the four controverted orations of Cicero, says that Middleton's life of that orator has three great faults: first, that the hero is frequently exalted beyond the bounds of truth into a character of ideal virtue; secondly, that the biographer has paid undue attention to his political as contrasted with his literary character; and thirdly, that too little critical acumen has been exercised in distinguishing the true from the false in the alleged historical facts interwoven in the memoir. There is some reason for all these grounds of censure. Middleton was an enthusiast in Roman literature, and had all a biographer's partialities for his subject. In the same year in which this work appeared, Tunstall addressed a Latin epistle to Middleton, in which he points out many erroneous conclusions in Middleton's Life of Cicero,' found

ed upon corruptions or erroneous interpretations of Cicero's letters to Atticus, and his brother Quintus, and proposes a new edition of these epistles. Middleton soon afterwards published an English translation of the whole correspondence between Brutus and Cicero, with notes, and a preliminary dissertation in which he treats Tunstall with much severity. His adversary replied; and Markland engaged in the contest also by publishing Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to Cicero.'

6

After the publication of some other dissertations on subjects connected with literary antiquities, Middleton got again involved in polemics by publishing An Introductory Discourse to a larger work, designed hereafter to be published, concerning the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Church from the earliest ages through several successive centuries.' This discourse, though, as announced in its title, preliminary only to a more extensive inquiry, excited much alarm, and was immediately attacked by Dr Stebbing and Dr Chapman: the former endeavoured to show that Middleton's reasonings struck at the evidences of Christianity, while the latter endeavoured to vindicate the impeached authority of the fathers. This attack Middleton parried by the publication of Remarks,' which were instantly followed by the appearance of the threatened Free Enquiry' itself. On the subject of the miraculous powers exercised in the early Christian church, Middleton's opinion is, in his own words :-"That in those first efforts of planting the gospel, after our Lord's ascension, the extraordinary gifts which he had promised were poured out in the fullest measure on the apostles, and those other disciples whom he had ordained to be the primary instruments of that great work; in order to enable them more easily to overrule the inveterate prejudices both of the Jews and Gentiles, and to bear up against the discouraging shocks of popular rage and persecution, which they were taught to expect in this noviciate of their ministry. But in process of time, when they had laid a foundation sufficient to sustain the great fabric designed to be erected upon it, and by an invincible courage had conquered the first and principal difficulties, and planted churches in all the chief cities of the Roman empire, and settled a regular ministry to succeed them in the government of the same, it may reasonably be presumed that, as the benefit of miraculous powers began to be less and less wanted in proportion to the increase of these churches, so the use and exercise of them began gradually to decline; and, as soon as Christianity had gained an establishment in every quarter of the known world, that they were finally withdrawn, and the gospel left to make the rest of its way by its own genuine strength, and the natural force of those divine graces with which it was so richly stored-Faith, Hope, and Charity,-graces which never fail to inspire all who truly possess them with a zeal and courage which no terrors can daunt nor worldly power subdue. And all this," he continues, " as far as I am able to judge from the nature of the gifts themselves, and from the instances or effects of them which I have any where observed, may probably be thought to have happened while some of the apostles were still living: who, in the times even of the gospel, appear on several occasions to have been destitute of any extraordinary gifts, and of whose miracles, when we go beyond the limits of the gospel, we meet with nothing in the later histories on which we

can depend, or nothing rather but what is apparently fabulous." The publication of the 'Free Enquiry' excited an extraordinary sensation, and its author was accused of not merely "endeavouring to demolish the outworks of the church," but of assaulting the fortress itself, or at least throwing discredit on the general evidences of revelation. The 'Free Enquiry' has ceased to be regarded with so much alarm; and it is now considered a reasonable opinion that, after the death of the apostles and their immediate successors, the possession of miraculous aids was no longer vouchsafed to the church as a community, or to any individuals as its ministers; and, moreover, that all miracles which are related to have taken place after that period, must be subjected to the usual tests, and must stand or fall on their own merits, according to the degrees of evidence and probability.3 Nor is this a question at all affecting the truth of Christianity, however much it may weaken the testimony of tradition on some points. So far then we regard the 'Enquiry' as a useful and acute rather than a hurtful publication. It is only to be regretted that its author should have occasionally indulged in remarks calculated to invalidate the proof from testimony for all facts involving effects exceeding the common operations of nature. Among Dr Middleton's opponents on this question, Dodwell and Church distinguished themselves by their zeal, and were complimented by the university of Oxford with the degree of D. D., for their exertions on behalf of the authority of the fathers. Middleton left unfinished a Vindication of the Free Enquiry,' against the objections of Church and Dodwell, which was published a few months after his decease.

While a host of assailants, excited by the publication of the Free Enquiry,' were gathering around him, Middleton found means to stir up a new controversy, and with a still more formidable opponent than any who had yet assailed the Enquiry.' In 1750 Sherlock published an edition of his Discourses on Prophecy,' with an additional dissertation on the Fall. This edition Middleton selected for the subject of an ' Examination,' which appeared in the same year. It has been alleged that the secret ground of Middleton's hostility towards Sherlock's theological opinions was personal pique and resentment, because he thought the bishop had opposed his election to the mastership of the Charter-house. There is no decisive evidence as to this, nor would the reader be much gratified, we presume, with any very elaborate inquiry into the fact. Middleton contends, in opposition to Sherlock, that there is no system of prophecy, but only particular, detached, unrelated prophecies. He supposes the Fall to be an allegory. 'I agree it is so," says Warburton, speaking of Middleton's publication in a letter to his friend Hurd. "In this we differ: he supposes it to be an allegory of a moral truth, namely, that man soon corrupted his ways; and seems to think, by his way of speaking, that an allegory can convey no other kind of information. I say it is an allegory of a moral fact, namely, that man had transgressed that positive command-whatever it was on the observance of which the free gift of immortality was conditionally given." Dr Rutherforth, divinity professor at Cambridge, answered this' Examination;' but Middleton pursued the argument no further, his attention being in the meantime turned upon the assailants of the Free Enquiry.'

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In the midst of all this activity and strife, the hand of death arrested his career on the 28th of July, 1750. His miscellaneous works were published in five volumes, octavo. Very different opinions have been formed of Middleton's religious character. Dr Parr, usually a liberal judge on such a point, considered him "a concealed infidel." Others have praised him for his liberality of sentiment and unaffected pursuit of truth. His literary character is a point of less uncertainty. Parr was a great admirer of his style, and used to repeat particular passages in his works with much animation. Bolingbroke, a still higher authority, says that Middleton is "the best writer in England;" he is indeed an admirable prose writer, superior perhaps to Addison, in what has been called the Middle-style of composition.

William Whiston.

BORN A. D. 1667.—died a. d. 1752.

THIS singular and extraordinary character was the son of the Rev. Josiah Whiston, rector of Norton, near Twycrosse, in the county of Leicester. His education, which had been chiefly conducted at home, was finished at Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship in 1693, and soon after became chaplain to Moore, bishop of Norwich. While filling this office, he published a work, entitled 'A New Theory of the Earth, from its original to the consummation of all things.' He says that the manuscript was examined and approved by Bentley, Sir Isaac Newton, and Sir Christopher Wren. Locke, writing to his friend Molyneaux, soon after the publication of this book, says, "I have not heard any one of my acquaintance speak of it, (the Theory,) but with great commendations, as I think it deserves; and truly, I think, he is more to be admired, that he has laid down an hypothesis whereby he has explained so many wonderful, and, before, inexplicable things in the great changes of this globe, than that some of them should not easily go down with some men, when the whole was entirely new to all."

In 1698 he was presented to the living of Lowestoft in Suffolk, and immediately applied himself most conscientiously to the discharge of his pastoral duties. In 1700 Sir Isaac Newton, who subsequently resigned in his favour, appointed him his deputy in the Lucasian professorship of mathematics, upon which he resigned his living, and removed to Cambridge. In 1702 he published A Short View of the Chronology of the Old Testament, and of the Harmony of the Four Evangelists.' In 1703 he edited an edition of 'Tacquet's Euclid, with select theorems of Archimedes.' In 1706 he published an Essay on the Revelation of St John;' and the next year, Prælectiones Astronomicæ,' and an edition of Sir Isaac Newton's Arithmetica Universalis.' In 1707 he preached the Boyle lectures. During the following year he drew up an Essay upon the Apostolical Constitutions;' but the vice-chancellor refused to license it for the Cambridge press, on discovering that it contained what were considered heterodox notions upon the article of the Trinity. Whiston, however, was not a

Butler's Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 249.

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man to be daunted by the opposition of others, and even the remonstrances of friends failed to persuade him to an ordinary measure of prudence in the promulgation of his peculiar sentiments. He insisted on openly avowing his Arian sentiments even from the pulpits of the university. His friend Dr Clarke besought him not to publish a piece which he had written on the family of Joseph and Mary, the reputed parents of our Saviour, arguing that its publication might do him much harm, and could be attended with little good, for the common opinion on the subject might go undisturbed. Whiston replied that "such sorts of motives were of no weight with him, compared with the discovery and propagation of truth." Dr Laughton and Mr Priest came to him "in a way of kindness," to use his own words, "to dissuade him from going on with his publication of the Apostolical Constitutions,' and of his argument for their authority;" but he told them, "You may as well persuade the sun to come down from the firmament as turn me from this my resolution." Even the redoubtable Bentley's powers of entreaty if he condescended to resort to entreaty-and threatening, were set at nought by the indomitable Whiston, who calmly says of the great master of Trinity: "he aimed prodigiously to terrify me with the irresistible authority of the convocation." The enthusiasm of the man, at this critical period of his fortunes, appears in the following passage from his autobiography :-" Continuing to act boldly, according to my duty and conscience, I enjoyed a great calm within, how roughly soever the waves and billows abroad seemed ready to overwhelm me. Nor do I remember, that during all the legal proceedings against me— which lasted in all four or five years at Cambridge and London—I lost my sleep more than two or three hours one night on that account. This affords a small specimen of what support the old confessors and martyrs might receive from their Saviour when they underwent such miseries and torments as we should generally think insupportable by human nature. But to proceed as to myself, when I saw that it was not unlikely that I might come into great trouble, by my open and resolute behaviour in these matters, and resolving to hazard all in endeavouring to restore the religion of Christ as he left it, which I well knew what it was in almost every single point, I took particular notice of the martyrdom of Polycarp, and learned that admirable prayer of his at his martyrdom by heart; and if it should be my lot to die a martyr, I designed to put up the same prayer in the same circumstances; being satisfied that no death is so eligible to a Christian as martyrdom, in case the preservation of his integrity and a good conscience make it necessary."

In the year of his banishment from the university, but before that transaction occurred, Whiston published his Prælectiones PhysicoMathematicæ,' in which the doctrines established by Sir Isaac Newton were first popularly expounded. These prelections were afterwards published in English. They contain abundant proofs of Whiston's powers and acquirements as a mathematician. Had he confined himself to the science of demonstration, he would have taken a very high rank among the mathematicians of his country; but his head was unfortunately full of crude notions about "the genuine, canonical, and apostolical" constitutions, and his scheme for the revival of " primitive Christianity;" and upon these subjects he went on writing and blunder