Mr.Howard was destitute of those enlarged conceptions which the cultivation of letters, and a liberal profession of religion are calculated to produce. You might admire him at a distance, but he wanted those accomplishments which command affection. Thus the astronomer regards our earth, in his general calculations, as an even sphæroid; but a near inspection shews it's surface to be depressed in vallies, protuberant in hills, and exasperated by a thousand inequalities. CHAP. XIII. Mr. Wakefield removes to Bramcote-Publishes "Directions for Students in Theology"-Removes to Richmond-Anecdotes of Bennett and Lewis. 1783, 1784. THE Warrington Academy being now dissolved, I, of course, having, as the apostle has expressed it, "no more place in these parts, removed with my family, and fixt myself in the autumn of 1783 at Bramcote, a most pleasant village within four miles of Nottingham on the Derby road. My wish was to have procured a few pupils for my maintenance; and, in prosecution of this purpose, I wrote to all my friends, real or pretended,' and among the last description "Dî tibi sint faciles, et opis nullius egentem Fortunam præstent, dissimilemque meæ.- OVID. Trist. I. 5. 33. found Dr. Porteus, my Lord of Chester, as he then was, to claim his station." Still, however, I made excuses to myself for that great incivility of a total neglect to answer my letter, which indeed nothing can justify one human creature in exercising to, wards another; and in the fullness of my good opinion, dedicated to him in the beginning of 1784, my anonymous tract, "on the Study of Divinity," without any interested view whatever; for I dare say he never knew the author, till I annext it, several years afterwards, to the list of my publications. I do not repent of that dedication, because a conscientious and respectful action needs no m We cannot but apprehend that Mr. Wakefield, whose own practice, in similar cases, was so uniformly cautious, was on this account more liable to construe too literally the intention of those customary expressions of respect and goodwill which are so current in society, especially among persons of the higher orders; this we think influenced him in the present instance, and in a former part of his memoirs, to conclude somewhat too hastily against the sincerity of Bishop Porteus, upon whose patronage his claims appear to have been but slender, and very different from those which he might reasonably make on Bishop Pretyman, and other exalted churchmen, "The title of this little work (which has been quoted before in these notes) is "Directions for the Student in Theology," 1784. repentance: but plentiful proof has convinced me, since the inauspicious hour of it's production, that the encomium was undeserved. All my applications were answered only by a single pupil, who had been a student under me at Warrington. In this rural retreat of Bramcote I carried on my theological studies with incessant vigour, and produced the first volume of an " Enquiry into the Opinions of the Christian Writers of the three first Centuries concerning the Person of Jesus Christ," which I carried down no further than to the conclusion of the apostolic age; and meeting with no encouragement to continue my plan, I have long since dropped it for ever. This production has been very pointedly commended by men, whose judgment would do honour to any work. The Rev. Mr. Parkhurst, formerly of Clare Hall, Cambridge, bestowed part of a book, written more particularly against Dr. Priestley, in attempting to confute some of the positions in this publication. If I recollect rightly, • This work was dedicated to Dr. Watson, Bishop of Landaff, as a tribute of respect for his great learning, and, then, highly liberal principles. In the Appendix, [A], will be found the bishop's letter of acknowledgment to Mr. Wakefield on this occasion. his arguments were nothing more than some of the stale futilities on the plural termination of the Hebrew word ELOHIMP in defence of the P Mr. Frend, in his Letters to Bishop Pretyman, has the following ingenious observations on an argument which is so great a favourite with Orthodox Christians. "Your lordship finds the Trinity in the first verse of Genesis, because forsooth a noun plural in the Hebrew language is joined to a verb singular; and the English reader is to rest his faith upon your lordship's critical studying of languages and phrases.' pe "I used formerly, and your lordship probably continues to be much in company with Norfolk men, who from culiarity of dialect, when they speak in the third person, join in the present tense a noun in the singular to a verb in the plural. Thus they say, George do love Susan, not George loves Susan; Nelson fight well, not Nelson fights well; but they mean exactly the same as other Englishmen, who use singular nouns with singular verbs.-The expression of the Norfolk men, and the expression in the first verse of Genesis, are idioms of speech, and both may probably be accounted for in a similar manner. I was one day carelessly turning over a folio, in which was, I think, Ingulph's relation of the incursions of the Danes into this country, of whom a great number by his account were by compact settled in Norfolk. This circumstance led me to reconsider the peculiarity of the Norfolk dialect; and on examining the Danish grammar, I found that it was no solecism in Denmark, but the regular structure of the Danish language. A similar circumstance, at this distance of time not so easily ascertained, may have occasioned the peculiarity of the Hebrew language; and a greater insight into the languages of Africa, where Alam is still in many |