1

His Sermon on the 19th Psalm, which he preached before the University, and afterwards left the printing of to my care, so delighted Mr. Horne (as it appears from these letters to his father) that it probably raised in his mind the first desire of undertaking that Commentary on the whole book of Psalms, which he afterwards brought to such perfection. Mr. Watson published another Sermon on the Divine Appearance in Gen. xviii.; which was furiously shot at by the bush-fighters of that time, in the Monthly Review; insomuch that the author thought it might be of some service to take up his pen and write them a letter; in which their insolence is reproved with such superior dignity of mind and serenity of temper, and their ignorance and error so learnedly exposed, that, if I were desirous of showing to any reader what Mr. Watson was, and what they were, I would by all means put that letter into his hand; of which I suppose no copies are now to be found, but in the possession of some of his surviving friends. It is however made mention of with due honour by Mr. Delany, the celebrated Dean of Down in Ireland, who was once the intimate friend of Swift, and has given us the best account of his life and character in his Observations in answer to Lord Orrery. In a Preface to the third volume of his Revelation examined with Candour, which he printed at London very late in life, he speaks of a malignant style of criticism, in practice at that time with the obscure and unknown authors of a Monthly Review; and observes upon the case, that "he must seem at

This is the gentleman who is spoken of in a note on the Comment, on Psalm xix.

VOL. I.

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first sight a rash as well as a bold man, who would venture to wage war at once with Billingsgate and banditti. And yet in truth," adds he, "such a war, (defensive only) hath been waged with them to great advantage, by a gentleman, whose mind and manners are as remote from illiberal scurrility and abuse, as his adversaries appear to be from learning, from candour, and from every character of true criticism. Mr. Watson, the defendant here mentioned, hath, in return to their scurrility, answered and exposed them with strong, clear, and irresistible reasoning, and such a meek, calm and Christian spirit, as hath done honour to his own character, and uncommon justice to the Christian cause; such as were sufficient to silence any thing but effrontery, hardened in ignorance, to the end of the world." Mr. Watson also printed a Sermon, preached before the University on the 29th of May, which he calls an Admonition to the Church of England. In a long Preface to this Sermon, he has thrown out such valuable observations, that an excellent manual might be formed out of them, for preserving the members of the Church of England steady in their profession; by showing to them, so plainly as is here done, the principal dangers to which they are now exposed. Having said thus much of his teacher (and I could with pleasure have said much more) I must now show what he learned under him.

From the general account he gives of his studies, he appears, in consequence of his intercourse with Mr. Watson, to have been persuaded, that the system of divinity in the holy Scriptures is explained and attested by the scriptural account of created nature; and that this account, including

a

the Mosaic cosmogony, is true so far as it goes: and that the Bible, in virtue of its originality, is fitter to explain all the books in the world than they are to explain it that much of the learning of the age was either unprofitable in itself, or dangerous in its effect; and that literature, so far as it was a fashion, was in general unfavourable to Christianity, and to a right understanding of the Scripture: that the Jews had done much hurt in the Hebrew; not to the text by corrupting it, but by leading us into their false way of interpreting and understanding it; and that their rabbinical writers were therefore not to be taken as teachers by Christian students: that a notion lately conceived of the Mosaic law, as an institution merely civil or secular, without the doctrines of life and immortality in it, was of pernicious tendency; contrary to the sense of all the primitive writers, and the avowed doctrine of the Church of England: that the sciences of metaphysics and ethics had a near alliance to deism; and that, in consequence of the authority they had obtained, the doctrine of our pulpits was in general fallen below the Christian standard; and that the Saviour and the redemption, without which our religion is nothing, were in a manner forgotten; which had given too much occasion to the irregular teaching of the Tabernacle: that the sin of modern deism is the same in kind with the sin of paradise, which brought death into the world; because it aspires to divine wisdom, that is, to the knowledge of divine things, and the distinction between good and evil, independently of God.

He had learned further, that the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew antiquities, lead to a su

perior way of understanding the mythology and writings of the heathen classical authors: and that the Hebrew is a language of ideas, whose terms for invisible and spiritual things are taken with great advantage from the objects of nature; and that there can be no other way of conceiving such things, because all our ideas enter by the senses: whereas in all other languages, there are arbitrary sounds without ideas.

It appeared to him further, that unbelief and blasphemy were gaining ground upon us, in virtue of some popular mistakes in natural philosophy, and threatened to banish all religion out of the world. Voltaire began very early to make his use of philosophy, and corrupt the world with it. He never was fit to mount it; but he walked by the side of it, and used it as a stalking-horse. It is therefore of great consequence to the learned to know, that, as the heavens and the elements of the world had been set up by the heathens, as having power in themselves; and that as the heathens, building on this false foundation, had lost the knowledge of God; the modern doctrine, which gives innate powers to matter, as the followers of Democritus and Epicurus did, would probably end in atheism that the forces, which the modern philosophy uses, are not the forces of nature; but that the world is carried on by the action of the elements on one another, and all under God: that it is no better than raving, to give active powers to matter, supposing it capable of acting where it is not; and to affirm, at the same time, that all matter is inert, that is, inactive, and that even the

1 This hath now actually come to pass.

Deity cannot act but where he is present, because his power cannot be but where his substance is.

He was also convinced, that infinite mischief had been done, not only by the tribe of deists and philosophers, but by some of our most celebrated divines, in extolling the dignity of human nature and the wisdom of human reason; both of which the Scripture delivers to us under a very different character; which the experience of the world is daily confirming. That infidels and profligates should wish to establish their own opinions upon the ruins of revelation was not to be wondered at; but that they, whose office it was to dress and defend the sacred vineyard, should fall in with them, and join with the wild boar out of the wood to root it up, was a matter of grief and surprise. A distemper must indeed be epidemical, when the physicians themselves are seized with it. This malady, when traced to its fountain-head, appears to have arisen from a general neglect in schools and seminaries of the study of the Scriptures in their original languages; where they attend so much to the works of heathens, and so little to the book of light, life and immortality. While the heads of boys are filled with tales of Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Bacchus, and Venus, the Bible is little heard of; and so the heathen creed becomes not only the first but the whole study. Jews, mistaken as they are, are still diligent in teaching the Scripture to their children in their own way; while we are teaching what even Jews are wise enough to abominate. Possessed by this opinion, that all polite knowledge is in heathen authors, and the Bible but a dull heavy book, which, instead of promoting, rather stands in the way of