406 PRIESTLEY. 



he was thrown by feeling that he was unable to ex- 

 perience due contrition and repentance for Adam's 

 fault ; and the rigid divine who tested the state of his 

 mind on this point, withheld the sacred ordinances in 

 consequence. At Needham his salary did not exceed 

 thirty pounds, indeed it seldom amounted to so much, 

 and he could only subsist by the aid which certain dis- 

 senting charities afforded to augment this poor stipend. 

 His predecessor, Dr. Doddridge, had never received 

 above thirty-five pounds a-year, and his board then 

 (1723) only cost him ten pounds. Priestley's opinions 

 proved distasteful to the congregation, who probably 

 regarded the eternity of hell-torments as a peculiar pri- 

 vilege rudely invaded by him ; and he removed in 1758 

 to Nantwich, in Cheshire, where he obtained some thirty 

 pupils, beside a few young ladies and a private tutorship 

 in an attorney's family. This increased his income, 

 and enabled him, by means of the strictest frugality, to 

 purchase a scanty apparatus ; for he had now added a 

 little natural philosophy to his favourite theological 

 studies, the fruit of which had been already two works, 

 one of them against the atonement. I say a little natural 

 philosophy ; for he confesses that when nine years later 

 he began to write his ' History of Electricity,' he was 

 but imperfectly acquainted with the subject. It is a 

 careless and superficial work, hastily written, as is 

 his ' History of Vision ;' and the original experiments 

 afforded no new information of any value. In 1761 

 he removed to Warrington Academy, in which he 

 succeeded Dr Aikin as tutor in the belles lettres. 

 On settling at Warrington he married the daughter of 

 Mr. Wilkinson, a respectable iron master in Wales. 



