new friends it will be just and proper to give some short account. The chief of them was Mr. Watson, whom I have already mentioned. Another of them was Dr. Hodges, the Provost of Oriel College; who composed a work to which he gave the title of Elihu; the chief subject of it being the character of Elihu in the Book of Job. The style of it has great dignity and stateliness, without being formal; and is at the same time clear, and easy to be understood. Dr. Hodges was undoubtedly a very great master of his pen; but, having declared himself without reserve in favour of Mr. Hutchinson's doctrines, his work was virulently assaulted and grossly misrepresented. Of this he complained; as he might well do: and what did he get by it? He was told in return, that a writer upon the Book of Job should take every thing with patience! His book, however, went into a second edition. He was a man of a venerable appearance, with an address and delivery which made him very popular as a preacher in the University.

The learned Provost of Oriel, so far as it occurs to me, was the first who with a strong hand sounded the alarm-bell against those speculations and their consequences, which have now prevailed

VOL. XII.

D

prevailed to the everthrow of the church and kingdom of France. A piece intitled Les Maurs (Manners) was published there in the year 1748; the tendency of which was to establish natural religion on the ruins of all external worship, and so to free the world from all laws human and divine; that man might be guided by nothing but the light of his own mind. This was burned by the hangman at Paris the soil, as Dr. Hodges observed, being not quite, though nearly, prepared for the reception of these tares. The country and the climate chosen by the writer were certainly promising, on this consideration, that superstition and irreligion are generally observed to be the reciprocal causes and effects of each other. Against the principles and spirit of this undertaking, the author of Elihu was so much in earnest, that he gave an abridgment of the work from a French copy, which he procured for that purpose. I could here stop with great pleasure, if it were proper, to extract some of the evidence so powerfully urged against all such attempts by this learned gentleman: but I must refer the reader to his Preliminary Discourse. It is, however, a fact never to be neglected, which he and others have ascertained

by

by abundant authority, that "all the religion "of the heathen world was traditional revela"tion corrupted:" which if it can be made good, overthrows at once all the modern theories of infidelity.

The Rev. Mr. Holloway, Rector of Middleton-Stoney in Oxfordshire, had been a private tutor to Lord Spencer, in the house of the Hon. John Spencer his father; who, with all his extravagances, never failed to preserve due respect to Mr. Holloway, and listened to him with attention, when he conversed freely with the company at his table. This gentleman had been personally acquainted with Mr. Hutchinson, and had published an elementary piece in favour of his philosophical principles. But he was better known in the University of Oxford by three excellent discourses on the Doctrine of Repentance, with a Supplement in answer to the

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*A military gentleman, who was sometimes of the party, remarked to a friend, that the strictest decorum was always observed, whenever Mr. Holloway, who supported the dignity of his profession, was present; while another clergyman, who thought to recommend himself by laying aside the clerical character, was treated with little ceremony and held in sovereign contempt; from which he naturally inferred, that the clergy would not fail to meet with proper respect, if it was not their own fault,

the perverse Glosses of Tindal the Freethinker. The Vice-chancellor of that time took a pique against him for dropping a hint, in his Supplement against Tindal, that the person of Melchizedec was an exhibition of Christ before his Incarnation. This was no novel opinion; it had been advanced by others, before and after the Reformation and in them the doctrine had given no offence. But Mr. Holloway, being a man suspected and proscribed on some other accounts, met with some hard and unworthy treatment upon the occasion: yet to avoid a misunderstanding with the whole University, when only some individuals were concerned, he suppressed what he had written in his own defence. His scheme for an Analysis of the Hebrew Language, though it comprehends a vast compass of learning, is partly fanciful, and would bear a long dispute, into which I shall not enter: but this must be said in respect to Mr. Horne, that when he first commenced his theological studies, he derived many real advantages from his acquaintance with this gentleman; and I could name one of his most shining and useful discourses, which, in the main argument of it, was taken from some loose papers of Remarks on Warburton's Divine

Legation;

Legation; to the principles of which this learned gentleman, for many good reasons, which he spared not to give, was a zealous adTo say the truth, there was little cordiality on either side between the renowned writer of the Divine Legation and the readers of Mr. Hutchinson. On most subjects of re

versary.

ligion and learning, their opinions were irrecon cileable. He despised their doctrines and interpretations, and railed at them as Cabbaliștical; and they despised his Empirical Divinity; while, at the same time, they dreaded the ill effect of it, from the boldness of the man, and the popularity of his books; which have a great flash of learning, but with little solidity, and less piety. To the purity of Christian Literature they have certainly done, and are still doing, much hurt. When the first volume of the Divine Legation was shewn to Dr. Bentley, (as his son-in-law the late Bishop Cumberland told me) he looked it over, and then observed of the author to his friend-This man has a monstrous appetite, with a very bad digestion*.

This was written before I had a sight of the learned Bishop Hurd's Life of Dr. Warburton, lately published, in which such sublime praises are bestowed on the Alliance, the