PRIESTLEY. 403 



age of twenty "to embrace what is generally called the 

 heterodox side of every question,"* just as he had a 

 disposition pertinaciously to keep by the received and 

 erroneous chemical theory ; but if he thought for him- 

 self, and followed the bent of his convictions, we have 

 no right to doubt his conscientious motives, the more 

 especially as his heterodox dogmas, always manfully 

 avowed, never brought him anything but vexation and 

 positive injury in his temporal concerns. The perti- 

 nacity with which he defended to the end of his days 

 the chemical doctrine of Phlogiston, and the equal 

 zeal with which he attacked the theological tenets of 

 original sin and the atonement, alike proceeded from 

 sincere conviction, and no one has a right to blame 

 him for either of these opinions, even if it be quite 

 clear that he was wrong in both. 



Joseph Priestley was the son of a cloth- dresser at 

 Birstal-Fieldhead, near Leeds, and was born there 

 loth of March (old style), 1733. His family appear to 

 have been in humble circumstances ; and he was taken 

 off their hands after the death of his mother by his 

 paternal aunt, with whom he went to live when nine 

 years old, ai)d who sent him to a free school at Batley, 

 in the neighbourhood. There he learnt something of 

 Greek and J^atin, and a dissenting minister taught 

 him a little Hebrew in the vacation of the grammar- 

 school. To this he adcled some knowledge of other East- 

 ern languages connected with Biblical literature ; he 

 made a considerable progress in Syriac and Chaldean, 

 and began to learn Arabic ; he also had a little instruc- 

 tion in the mathematics from a teacher who had been 



* Works. Memoirs, vol. i. part i. p. 25. 



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