the social affections rest upon their appropriate objects, and as naturally as the appetite of hunger is satisfied with food.

The ethical system of Bishop Butler has been adopted by Professors Reid, Stewart, and Brown, and his moral system forms the basis of President Wayland's popular work on Moral Science. Butler's style, though not elegant, is remarkably terse, and well adapted as a channel for his thoughts.

JOHN LELAND, an eminent dissenter from the established church, was born at Wigan, Lancashire, in 1691. In childhood he was deprived of his understanding and memory by the small-pox, and for more than a year remained in that deplorable condition; but he afterwards gradually recovered his powers, and applied himself, with unusual diligence and success, to his studies. Meantime his parents removed to Dublin, and having there completed his education, he entered into the ministry in connection with a dissenting congregation, and was soon after chosen assistant to Rev. Nathaniel Weld, the pastor. In this relation Leland remained till his death, which occurred on the sixteenth of January, 1766.

Of Leland's literary performances, the most important are A View of the Deistical Writers in England, and an elaborate work on the Advantages and Necessity of the Christian Revelation. The former is a solid and valuable treatise, and is still regarded as one of the best confutations of infidelity in the language.

FRANCIS HUTCHESON, a writer of more than ordinary genius, though of some erroneous idea, was born in Ireland, on the eighth of August, 1694. After an excellent preparatory education at home, he entered the university of Glasgow, where he devoted six years to the study of divinity, philosophy, and the learned languages, and then returned to his native country and opened an academy in Dublin. Here he published, in 1726, his Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue, which so extended his reputation that, in 1729, he was called to the professorship of moral philosophy in the university of Glasgow. In this position he remained, highly respected for his private virtues and his ability as a public teacher, till his death, which occurred in 1747, at the comparatively early age of fifty-three.

Dr. Hutcheson's great work, a System of Moral Philosophy, did not appear till after his death, when it was published, in two quarto volumes, by his son. The rudiments of his philosophy were borrowed from Shaftesbury; but he introduced a new term, the moral sense, into the metaphysical vocabulary, and assigned to it a sphere of considerable importance. With him the moral sense was a capacity of perceiving moral qualities in action, which excite what he called ideas of those qualities, in the same manner as external things give us not merely pain or pleasure, but notions or ideas of hardness, form, and color. Dr. Brown considers this a very great error, remarking that "a moral sense considered as strictly and truly a sense, is as much so as any of those that are the source of our direct external percep

tions, and not a state or act of the understanding, seems a purely fanciful hypothesis.' The ancient doctrine, that virtue consists in benevolence, was supported by Hutcheson with much acuteness; but when he asserts that even the approbation of our own conscience diminishes the merit of a benevolent action, we instinctively reject his theory as unnatural and visionary. These paradoxes induced Sir James Mackintosh to charge Hutcheson with confounding the theory of moral sentiments with the criterion of inoral actions, but he, at the same time, bears testimony to the ingenuity of his views, and the elegant simplicity of his language.

JAMES FOSTER was a dissenting minister, and born at Exeter, on the sixteenth of September, 1697. He was educated at the academy of his native place, and early evinced such unusual abilities and soundness of judgment, united with a ready elocution, that, in 1718, he was called to the ministry by the congregation of Independents to which he belonged. But the warm disputes which at this time prevailed in the west of England, and especially in Exeter, about the Trinity, rendered his situation unpleasant, and he removed, first to Melborn, in Somersetshire, and afterwards to Ashwick, where he remained for a number of years. Having renounced the sentiments of the Independents and embraced those of the Baptists, he removed to London, and became the pastor of a church, meeting in the Old Jewry, where his eloquence as a preacher soon rendered him highly popular with men of every rank and condition in life, though they might dissent from his doctrines. He attended Lord Kilmarnock after his trial, in 1746, and died of a paralytic stroke, on the fifth of November, 1753.

Dr. Foster's character for humanity and benevolence of heart, and liberality of religious sentiments, was equal to his learning and eloquence. Pope, in the preface to his satires, mentions him in terms of exalted commendation. The chief productions of this eminent divine are Tracts on Heresy, a Defence of the Usefulness and Truth of Christian Revelation, and Discourses on Natural Religion and Social Virtue, all of which are written with great force and power, and are still popular.

JOHN GILL, an other eminent divine of the Baptist persuasion, was of a respectable parentage, and was born at Kettering, in Northamptonshire, on the twenty-third of November, 1697. He was early placed at a neighboring grammar-school, where his advances in classical learning were so remarkable as to attract public attention. Meantime he resorted so constantly to a bookseller's, in search of general knowledge, that it became proverbial in his native town to say, a thing was as certain as that John Gill was at the bookseller's shop.'

After passing some years at the grammar-school, young Gill was driven thence by the bigotry of the clergyman who presided over it; upon which his friends endeavored to procure for him admission into a dissenting theological seminary, to effect which they sent testimonials of his proficiency in

different branches of literature. These, however, defeated the object they were intended to promote; and to the application the following answer was returned:-' He is too young; and should he continue, as it might be expect ed he would, to make such rapid advances, he would go through the common circle before he would be capable of taking care of himself, or of being employed in any public service.' It is to be hoped that this reply was accompanied with some explanation, which made it appear more justifiable than it does in its present detached state; or it would seem that the guardians of this seminary felt little solicitude to see the finest talents consecrated to the noblest of causes.

Not discouraged by this cold repulse, Gill continued to pursue his studies with such ardor, that before he reached the nineteenth year of his age, he had read the principal Greek and Latin classics, had gone through a course of logic, rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy, and acquired a considerable knowledge of the Hebrew tongue. But it is highly gratifying to find that religion was still dearer to him than learning; for, instead of resembling those sciolists who suppose it a proof of genius to disdain the study of their Maker's will, he imitated Him, who, in early youth, resorted to the temple, or his Father's house, and there employed, in sacred researches, that understanding at which all were astonished. The Baptist church in Kettering first received this extraordinary youth into its fellowship, and soon after called him to the ministry. To prepare for this important work, he went to study under Mr. Davis, at Higham Ferries; but was soon invited to preach to the Baptist church in Horselydown, near London, over which he was ordained, in 1719, when he was in his twenty-second year.

Gill now applied, with intense ardor, to the study of oriental literature; and having formed an acquaintance with one of the most learned of the Jewish rabbis, he read with him the Targums, the Talmud, and every other book of rabbinical lore that he could procure. In this department of learning he was never excelled by any whose names are recorded in the annals of literature. Having published, in 1748, A Commentary on the New Testament, in three folio volumes, the immense reading and learning which it displayed, induced the university of Aberdeen to send him the diploma of doctor of divinity, with the following compliment:-On account of his knowledge of the Scriptures, of the oriental languages, and of the Jewish antiquities; of his learned defence of the Scriptures against deists and infidels, and the reputation gained by his other works, the university had, without his privity, unanimously agreed to confer on him the degree of doctor of divinity.'

Dr. Gill also published A Commentary on the Old Testament, which, together with that of the New, forms a work of nine folio volumes. At the close of this Herculean labor, he was so far from resting satisfied, that he said, 'I considered with myself what would be next best to engage in, for the farther instruction of the people under my care, and my thoughts led me to enter upon a scheme of doctrinal and practical divinity.' This work he executed in three folio volumes. Amidst the labors of the study

and the pulpit, he lived to reach the seventy-third year of his age, and

died in 1771.

Besides the works already mentioned, Dr. Gill wrote The Cause of God and Truth, in which, with much temper and learning, he maintains the five points of Calvinism. He also published A Dissertation on the Hebrew Language; Discourses on the Canticles; numerous sermons, and many smaller controversial pieces. So pure and elevated was his private character, that it has been said, 'his learning and labors were exceeded only by the invariable sanctity of his life and conversation.' As a divine, he was a strict Calvinist; but in his Body of Divinity, he attempts to reconcile the Calvinistic with the Arminian doctrines. While his works impress us with a sense

of the magnitude of his labors, and the purity of his intentions, they excite regret that they had not been prepared with greater delicacy of taste, and revised with more accurate judgment. His style is lumbering and heavy, and we have, therefore, looked through his works in vain, to find a single passage suited to our purpose.

JOHN JORTIN, a prebendary of St. Paul's and archdeacon of London, was an eminent scholar, and an independent theologian. He was of French descent, and born in London, whither his father had fled from persecution, on the twenty-third of October, 1698. Young Jortin was first instructed at the Charter-house school, London, and in 1715, entered Jesus College, Cambridge. From the university he entered into orders, and being fellow of his society, he was presented to the college living of Swavesey, near Cambridge, which he resigned in 1728, and removed to London, where he passed the remainder of his life, in the course of which he attained to the exalted dignities already mentioned. He died, after a short illness, on the fifth of September, 1770.

Dr. Jortin's publications are numerous, and many of them highly valuable. The most important of his works are Discourses on the Truth of the Christian Religion, Miscellaneous Observations upon Authors, Ancient and Modern, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, and a Life of Erasmus, with dissertations on his works. The freedom of some of his strictures gave offence to the high church clergy, and probably prevented him from obtaining a bishopric.

WILLIAM WARBURTON, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, engrossed, perhaps, in his own time, a larger share of the attention of the learned world than any other literary man of that period. Prodigious powers of study and of expression, a bold and original way of thinking, and indomitable self-will and arrogance, were the leading characteristics of this extraordinary man; and unfortunately he was too eager to arrest the attention of mankind and astonish them, to care for any more beneficial result from his literary exertions. His writings have, accordingly, after passing like a

splendid meteor across the horizon of his own age, sunk into all but oblivion.

Warburton was the son of an attorney at Newark, in Nottinghamshire, and was born on the twenty-fourth of December, 1698. Though for some years he followed, in his native town, the profession of his father, he seems to have had little business, and consequently he applied those high endowments of classical knowledge which he had made by his industry at school, to pursuits more congenial to his taste and inclination. In the twenty-fifth year of his age he abandoned the law and adopted the clerical profession; and by a dedication to a small and obscure volume of translations from Roman literature, published in 1723, obtained a presentation to a small vicarage. He now threw himself amidst the inferior literary society of London, and sought for subsistence and advancement by his pen. On obtaining the rectory of Brand Broughton, in Lincolnshire, he retired thither, and devoted himself, for years, to a long and severe course of reading.

The first work of any importance that Warburton published, appeared in 1736, under the title of Alliance between Church and State, which, though scarcely calculated to please either party in the church, was extensively read, and brought the author into notice. In his next production, the Divine Legation of Moses, of which the first volume appeared in 1738, and the remaining four in the course of several years thereafter, the gigantic scholarship of Warburton shone out in all its vastness. It had often been objected to the pretensions of the Jewish religion, that it presented nowhere any acknowledgment of the principle of a future state of rewards and punishments. Warburton, who delighted in paradox, instead of attempting to deny this or explain it away, at once acknowledged it, but asserted that therein lay the strongest argument for the divine mission of Moses. To establish this point, he ransacked the whole domain of pagan antiquity, and reared such a mass of curious and confounding argument, that mankind might be said to be awed by it into a partial concession to the author's views. He never completed the work; he becaine, indeed, weary of it; and perhaps the fallacy of the hypothesis was first secretly acknowledged by himself. If it had been consecrated to truth, instead of paradox, it would have been by far the most illustrious book of the age. As it is, we only look upon it to wonder at its endless learning and misspent ingenuity. Ten years after the author's death, this great work is spoken of by Gibbon as already a brilliant ruin. It is now rarely referred to, its learning being felt as no attraction where the solid qualities of truth are wanting.

The merits of Warburton, or his worldly wisdom, brought him preferment in the church: he rose through the grades of prebend of Gloucester, prebend of Durham, and dean of Bristol, to the bishopric of Gloucester, to which he attained, in 1759. It would be tedious, however, to detail the other literary adventures of this arrogant prelate. The only one that falls particularly in our way is his edition of the works of Pope, for the publication of which he had obtained a patent right in consequence of the poet's