2°^ S. YII. April 30. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



363 



doctrine of the Christian fixith is opposed or con- 

 cealed, disgraced or darkened, then " this Essay 

 may be withheld or banished from the light of 

 the world, may be buried in deep silence, and, 

 together with the author's name, lie for ever in 

 darkness." •• _ 



Some further extracts are given by Milner, to 

 whose work G. N, does not appear to have re- 

 ferred. The pamphlet was not against the Doc- 

 tor's published opinions ; this, therefore, could not 

 be the ground on which it was regarded as " un- 

 worthy of publication," A sufficient reason was, 

 th?it It had been suppressed by its author in his 

 liffetime. 



The question remained, whether the " correc- 

 tions and additions," made by Watts's own hand, 

 in the copy of his Faithful Enquiry which was 

 sold with JNIr. Parker's library (and of the exist- 

 ence of which copy Milner was evidently uncon- 

 scious), gave any countenance to the notion that 

 Dr. AVatts had altered his opinions, so as to raise 

 a suspicion that he may have " died a Unitarian." 

 I can state positively that tho;;e corrections and 

 additions furnish no such evidence. They are for 

 the most part quite unimportant ; in a few in- 

 stances additional texts of Scripture are cited, 

 but their bearing is against Unitarianlsm. Thus, 

 where he had stated (p. 24.) that " Christ is often 

 called God in Scripture, John i. 1. &c.," he adds, 

 as a MS. correction, " even the true God, 1 John, 

 V. 20." 



My great-grandfather, Joseph Parker, was in 

 almost constant attendance upon Dr. Watts, as 

 his amanuensis, during the last twenty years of 

 his life, watched his death-bed, and deeply re- 

 vered his memory. Family traditions and literary 

 evidence alike tend to disprove the loose state- 

 ment which Mr. Merivale " had from Dr. Lard- 

 ner." S. W. Rix. 



Beccles. 



Having been absent from home when the number 

 of " N. & Q." containing the above question ar- 

 rived here, I did not see It till nearly a week after 

 that date. 



Your correspondent G. N. beads his Inquiry 

 with the following emphatic title, " Dr. Watts's 

 last Thoughts on the Trinity" and then puts the 

 question, " Was Dr. Watts a Unitarian ? " The 

 affirmative of this question, he informs us, " has 

 been recently (by implication) denied. A cor- 

 respondent (" N. & Q." 2"'* S. v. 523.) contrives, 

 as he thinks, very adroitly, to avoid telling us 

 what were Dr. Watts's real sentiments. "Now," 

 continues the inquirer, " if we may believe Dr. 

 Credibility (the italics are G. N.'s) Lardner (Let- 

 ters to the Rev. Mr. Merivale, and Merivale's 

 Letters to Dr. Priestley), Dr. Watts died a Uni- 

 tarian." Why G. N. should condescend to give 

 a nickname to Nathaniel Lardner, is less intel- 



ligible than the one applied to Lancelot Brown, 

 the father of the English or natural style of land- 

 scape gardening, who obtained the name of Capu' 

 hility Broicn, from his frequent use of that word 

 in reference to the sites submitted to him for im- 

 provement. The epithet " Credibility Lardner" 

 as here applied, is " to call virtue vice;" but it 

 has no sting for the learned, pious, consistent, 

 evangelical author of The Credibility (hence the 

 Intended sarcasm) of the Oospel History ; or. The 

 Facts occasionally mentioned in the New Testa- 

 ment confirmed by Passages of ancient Authors, 

 who were contemporary with our Saviour, or his 

 Apostles, or lived near their Time, which was sub- 

 sequently followed by three supplementary vo- 

 lumes, comprising A History of the Apostles and 

 Evangelists, with Observations on the Books of the 

 Neio Testament. He also published A large Col- 

 lection of Jewish and Heathen Testimonies of the 

 Truth of the Christian Beligion, 4 vols. 4to. ; The 

 History of the Heretics of the first tivo Centuries 

 after Christ; and posthumously after his death 

 in 1780, A Vindication of three of our Saviour's 

 Miracles, against Woolston, and A Letter written 

 in the year 1730, concerning the Question whether 

 the Logos * supplied the place of a human Soid in 

 the person of Jesus Christ. I am not about to 

 defend Dr. Credibility Lardner s evangelism from 

 an impotent sneer, telum imbelle sine ictu, but to 

 rescue Isaac Watts from the charge of being a 

 Unitarian. 



To go back to Dr. Nathaniel Lardner's letters 

 to the Rev. Mr. Merivale and his to Dr. Priestley, 

 G. N. asks, " Why was the pamphlet suppressed ? 

 Why did the executors ' think It un6t for pub- 

 lication?' Surely it was unfit in no other sense 

 than being against all his former opinions." This 

 is begging the question. " Will some of your 

 correspondents tell us what this pamphlet con- 

 tains ? Let us have the truth." And so we all 

 say. 



Without waiting for these contents, I will en- 

 deavour to solve the question. Was Dr. Watts a 

 Unitarian? and mark how a plain tale can put 

 the affirmers down. 



To do this I must have recourse to a few dates. 

 Isaac Watts was born at Southampton in 1674, 

 where he was educated by a clergyman of the 

 Established Church till he attained his sixteenth 

 year ; and we all know the strength of early 

 impressions. After this he was removed to a 

 dissenting academy near London. He then re- 

 turned with a high character for learning, as- 

 siduity, and piety, to his native town, pursuing 

 his studies there for about two years. In 1696 



* Plato, who, as well as Pythagoras, by residence in 

 Chaldea, and intimacy with the learned Jewish captives, 

 was well acquainted with the writings of Moses, has the 

 striking remark on the Logos, which he defines, Adyos 

 fiiocoias kv (fxav^ uxrei elSiaKov, the express image of God. 



