104: JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 



striking natural ability led to his being devoted to the 

 profession of a minister of religion; 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 influence the young man came 

 at Daventry, carried out to the letter the injunction to 

 " try all things : hold fast that which is good," and en- 

 couraged the discussion 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, di- 

 vines. 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 ma- 

 turity, 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 Unita- 

 rianism, by which his craving after a credible and con- 

 sistent 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 heterodox 

 opinions, or of the stuttering which impeded his expres- 

 sion 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 



