667 



WHITBREAD, SAMUEL. 



WHITBY, DANIEL, D.D. 



WHITBREAD, SAMUEL, for many years a leading member in the 

 House of Commons, the son of a wealthy brewer of the same name, 

 by his wife Mary, third daughter of the first Earl of Cornwallis, was 

 born in London in 1758. He inherited the brewery, and, by a clause 

 in his father's will, ho was compelled to retain a mnjority of the shares 

 in his own hands. At his death he held five-eighths, which would of 

 themselves have been a princely fortune ; but in addition to this he 

 possessed landed estates to the value of 20,0002. per annum (upon the 

 plaatations of one of which alone ho had expended 120,000/.) and 

 large property in the funds. Independent of his personal talents, 

 Mr. \Vhitbread must in this country have occupied a position among 

 the un titled aristocracy, both on account of his wealth and his 

 connections. 



Great pains were taken with his education. He was sent for the 

 usual time to Eton, and removed thence to St. John's College, Cam- 

 bridge. On leaving the university he made the tour of Europe under 

 the care of Mr (afterwards Archdeacon) Coxe. In 1789 Mr. Whitbread 

 married Lady Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the first Earl Grey ; and 

 six years later the lady's brother, Sir Charles, married Mr. Whitbread's 

 sister. Mr. Whitbread entered parliament in 1790, as representative 

 of the borough of Steyning ; he continued a member of the House of 

 Commons till his death in 1815, but during the greater part of the 

 time he represented the town of Bedford, in which he possessed large 

 property. As might have been anticipated from his education under 

 Mr. Coxe, and from his family connections, Mr. Whitbread attached 

 himself to the Whig party. During the life of Fox he continued a 

 zealous and personally-attached adherent of that statesman. After 

 Fox's death, Mr. Wbitbread, though he could scarcely be called the 

 leader, was one of the men of most influence in the ranks of the dis- 

 organised opposition. Though he had received a liberal education, 

 Mr. Whitbread owed his political power rather to natural shrewdness, 

 unquestioned sincerity, and vehement energy, than to extensive know- 

 ledge or polished oratory or argument. The unimaginative and even 

 common-place character of his mind kept him secure from vacillation 

 or inconsistency ; his strong passion, made him an active and assiduous 

 member of the legislature ; and his benevolence and integrity of pur- 

 pose lent a moral dignity to his oratorical displays. Like most mem- 

 bers of parliament of his character, he could not elevate himself above 

 mere personal conflict, and his vehemence of disposition gave his 

 attacks an appearance of asperity alien to his native kindness of dispo- 

 sition. The most prominent event in Mr. Whitbread's parliamentary 

 career was the impeachment of Lord Melville, which bo conducted. 



He was a warm advocate of popular education, and a man of deep 

 religious impressions. There was however nothing ascetic in his 

 religion, as may be inferred from the active part he took in the affairs 

 of the Drury Lane Theatre. In private life he was amiable and irre- 

 proachable. Mr. Whitbread terminated his own life during a tempo- 

 rary aberration of intellect, July 6, 1815. He had some time previously 

 been liable to attacks of a morbid despondency, under which he 

 imagined himself the victim of conspiracies and the object of public 

 ridicule or condemnation. A local pressure on the brain, discovered 

 on dissection, seems to account sufficiently for this malady. 



WHITBY, DANIEL, D.D., an English divine of great celebrity in 

 his own day, and some of whose works are still in considerable repute, 

 was born in 1638, at Rushden, or Rusden, in Northamptonshire. In 

 1653 he was admitted of Trinity College, Oxford, of which he was 

 elected a scholar in June 1655; he took his degree of B.A. in 1657, 

 and that of M.A. in 1660, and was elected Fellow of his college in 

 1664. Having taken holy orders, he found a zealous patron in Dr. 

 Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, who made him his chaplain, and col- 

 lated him in October 1668 to a prebend in his cathedral, and in 

 November following to another. In September 1672, he was admitted 

 chantor or precentor of the same church, and immediately after 

 accumulated the degrees of B.D. and D.D. About the same time he 

 was presented to the rectory of St. Edmund's church, in the city of 

 Salisbury ; but, although his life lasted for more than half a century 

 longer, this was the last of his preferments. He died at Salisbury, at 

 the age of eighty-eight, on the 24th of March 1726. 



Dr. Whitby's first publications were a series of attacks upon popery, 

 in the course of the active controversy upon that subject which was 

 kept up almost without intermission in England from the Restoration 

 to tin) Revolution : ' Romish Doctrines not from the beginning,' 4to, 

 London, 1664, an answer to Serenus Cressy; ' Abs TTOV ffria, or an 

 answer to Sure Footing ' (an anonymous work by a Popish missionary 

 called John Sergeant, alias Smith), 8vo, Oxford, 1666; 'A Discourse 

 concerning the Idolatry of the Church of Rome,' 8vo, London, 1674, 

 in defence of Stillingfleet, and against his popish assailant Dr. Thomas 

 Godden, alias Browne; 'The Absurdity and Idolatry of Host-worship 

 proven,' 8vo, London, 1679 ; 'A Discourse concerning the Laws, eccle- 

 siatical and civil, made against Heretics by Popes, Emperors, &c.,' 4to, 

 London, 1682, reprinted at London in Svoin 1723, with an Introduc- 

 tion by Bishop Kennet, in which it is erroneously ascribed to Dr. 

 Maurice. In 1671 he also published at Oxford, in 8vo, ' \6yos TT;S 

 nlffrews, or the Certainty of the Christian Faith and of the Resur- 

 rection of Christ.' 



In 1683, unfortunately for hia peace and his reputation, he turned 

 aside from attaching the Papists to defending the Dissenters, pub- 

 lishing in that year, at London, an 8vo volume entitled ' The Pro- 



testant Reconciler, humbly pleading for condescension to Dissenting 

 Brethren in things indifferent and unnecessary, for the sake of peace, 

 and showing how unreasonable it is to make such things the necessary 

 conditions of communion." The book (which was anonymous, but 

 the authorship of which appears to have been soon discovered) was 

 immediately attacked with great fury from various quarters : the 

 University of Oxford, in a congregation held on the 21st of July, 

 condemned it to be burnt by ths hand of the marshal in the Schools 

 Quadrangle ; and at length Whitby, on the requisition of his diocesan 

 and patron, Bishop Ward, signed on the 9th of October a strong 

 expression of his sorrow and repentance for having " through want of 

 prudence and deference to authority " caused it to be printed and 

 published, and his distinct retractation of its two main principles 

 that it is not lawful for superiors to impose anything in the worship 

 of God not antecedently necessary, and that the duty of not oflendiug 

 a weak brother is inconsistent with all human rights of making laws 

 concerning indifferent things both of which he now professed to 

 have discovered to be false, erroneous, and schismaticaL The same 

 year he also published a second part of the ' Protestant Reconciler, 

 earnestly persuading the Dissenting laity to join in full communion 

 with the Church of England, and answering all the objections of non- 

 conformists against the lawfulness of their submission unto the rites 

 and constitution of that church.' 



He now, after publishing a Latin compendium of ethics, ' Ethices 

 Compendium in usum academicaj juventutis,' 8vo, Oxon., 1684, returned 

 to his old subject, the errors of popery, and published 'A Treatise in 

 confutation of the Latin Service in the Church of Rome,' 4to, London, 

 1687; 'The Fallibility of the Roman Church demonstrated,' 4to, 

 London, 1687, a treatise against the worship of images; 'A Demon- 

 stration that the Church of Rome and her Councils have erred,' 4to, 

 London, 1688, on communion in one kind; and 'Treatise of Tradi- 

 tions,' part i., 4to, London, 1688 ; part ii., 4to, London, 1689. 



He next came forward in defence of the Revolution, in two treatises : 

 the first entitled ' Considerations humbly offered for taking the Oath 

 of Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary,' 4to, London, 1689; 

 the second, 'An Historical Account of some things relating to the 

 Nature of the English Government, &c.,' 4to, London, 1690. These 

 were followed by ' A Discourse confirming the Truth and Certainty of 

 the Christian Faith, from the Extraordinary Gifts of the Holy Ghost 

 vouchsafed to the Apostles,' 4to, 1691; a treatise in Latin against 

 Arianism and Socinianism, ' Tractatus de Vera Christi Deitate,' 4to, 

 Oxford, 1691 ; and 'A Discourse of the Love of God,' Svo, London. 

 1697. 



In 1703 appeared, in two volumes folio, his principal work, 'A 

 Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament." This has been 

 often reprinted, and is still held in much esteem by the adherents of 

 the Arminian system of doctrine. The best edition is that of 1760, 

 in 2 vols. folio. In connection with jt he afterwards published ' A 

 Discourse of the Necessity and Usefulness of the Christian Revela- 

 tion, by reason of the Corruptions of the Principles of Natural 

 Religion among Jews and Heathens,' Svo, London, 1705 ; 'Reflections 

 on some Assertions and Opinions of Mr. Dodwell, &c.,' Svo, London, 

 1707 ; ' A Discourse concerning the True Import of the words 

 Election and Reprobation,' Svo, London, 1710 (commonly called 

 ' Whitby on the Five Points,' and often reprinted ; the best edition 

 is that of 1735); 'Four Discourses' (on Election and Reprobation), 

 Svo, London, 1710; a treatise against the doctrine of Original Sin in 

 Latin, ' Tractatus do Imputatione Divina Peccati Adami Posteris ejus, 

 &c./ Svo, London, 1711. Whitby had been bred a Calvinist, his 

 teachers at the university having been all of that persuasion ; and, as 

 he states himself in a preface to one of the above tracts, his own 

 investigations and reflections had gradually brought him round to the 

 opposite opinions. 



But his views afterwards underwent a still further change. Dr. 

 Clarke's 'Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity,' which appeared in 1712, 

 made him a convert to Arianism, and he afterwards published the 

 following tracts in defence of his new creed : ' Dissertatio de S. 

 Scripturarum Interpretatione ' (against the authority of the Fathers in 

 the controversies about the Trinity), Svo, 1714 ; ' A Discourse showing 

 that the Expositions which the Ante-Nicene Fathers have given are 

 more agreeable to the Interpretations of Dr. Clarke, &c.' Svo, London, 

 1714; 'A True Account and Confutation of the Doctrine of the 

 Sabellians,' Svo, London, 1616; and a disquisition, in Latin, on the 

 difficulties which attend the study of the doctrine of the Trinity, 

 under the title of ' Disquisition es Modestce in Bulli Defensionem Fidei 

 Nicensc,' 8vo, 1720. This last tract involved him in a controversy 

 with the great Trinitarian champion, Dr. Waterland. Whitby de- 

 fended himself iu two additional pamphlets, published this same year, 

 and retained his Arian principles to the end of his life, as appears 

 from his posthumous work entitled '"Torepcu &povrl8es, or the Last 

 Thoughts of Dr. Whitby : containing his Correction of several passages 

 in his Commentary of the New Testament ; to which are added Five 

 Discourses, published by his express order; ' Svo, London, 1728. 



Meanwhile he had published another tract on the Romish question, 

 entitled ' Irrisio Dei Panarii Romanensium ; the Derision of the 

 Broaden God, &c.,' 8vo, London, 1716; and he had also taken part iu 

 the Bangorian controversy, by two pamphlets in defence of Bishop 

 Hoadly; the first, 'An Answer to Dr. Snape's Second Letter to the 



