06 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. [LECT. 



being devoted to the profession of a minister of re- 

 ligion ; and, in 1752, he was sent to the Dissenting 

 Academy at Daventry an institution which authority 

 left undisturbed, though its existence contravened the 

 law. The teachers under whose instruction and in- 

 fluence the young man came at Daventry, carried out 

 to the letter the injunction to " try all things : hold 

 fast that which is good," and encouraged the discus- 

 sion of every imaginable proposition with complete 

 freedom, the leading professors taking opposite sides ; 

 a discipline which, admirable as it may be from a 

 purely scientific point of view, would seem to be 

 calculated to make acute, rather than sound, divines. 

 Priestley tells us, in his " Autobiography/' that he 

 generally found himself on the unorthodox side : and, 

 as he grew older, and his faculties attained their 

 maturity, this native tendency towards heterodoxy 

 grew with his growth and strengthened with his 

 strength. He passed from Calvinism to Arianism ; 

 and finally, in middle life, landed in that very 

 broad form of Unitarianism, by which his craving 

 after a credible and consistent theory of things was 

 satisfied. 



On leaving Daventry, Priestley became minister of 

 a congregation, first at Needham Market, and secondly 

 at Nantwich ; but whether on account of his hetero- 

 dox opinions, or of the stuttering which impeded his 

 expression of them in the pulpit, little success attended 

 his efforts in this capacity. In 1761, a career much 

 more suited to his abilities became open to him. He 

 was appointed " tutor in the languages" in the Dis- 



