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of the fenior and moft confiderable prefbyters then prefent, was defired to lay his hands upon the perfons to be ordained priests, he refufed fo to do; unless he had examined them himself, and found them fit for that holy function, which is an example, I think, worthy the imitation of other bishops and prefbyters, alfo in like cafes.

But upon occafion of this introduction of bishop Lloyd, it may not be amifs to fay fomething relating to him, which I myself know to be true. I remember to have heard him once fay, that after the affaffination-plot A. D. 1696, the odium of it was fo great, that not a Jacobite would have remained in the nation, had not the extream rigour of the following act of parliament against those that would not fign an affociation, kept up that fpirit of oppofition to the government ever afterward; which puts me in mind of the like cafe of two of the nonjurors of St. John's College Cambridge; Mr. Billers and Mr. Baker, who loved their religion and their country as well as any jurors whomfoever But having once taken an oath to king James, could not fatisfy their confciences in breaking it, while he lived, for any confideration whatfoever. These two were long my particular acquaintance: And I well remember, that when king James died, which was 1701, they began to deliberate about taking the oath, and coming into the government, till the unhappy abjuration oath, which was made the fame year, had fuch clauses as ftopp'd all their farther deliberations. I wish, hearti ly wish that almoft all our oaths were abrogated, excepting that of allegiance, and thofe in courts of juftice; as the principal, if not the only oaths of any publick neceffity or advantage; in order to clear our very wicked nation from thofe horrid crimes of falfe or needlefs oaths; for which the few, very few throughly good men in our land,

have

have long mourned: As did the land of Ifrael for merly mourn because of fwearing. Jer. xxiii. 10. Nor can I avoid taking notice of the foolish and trifling manner of giving oaths, even in our supreme courts of justice; which I have often feen myfelf with great wonder and diffatisfaction. A thorough correction of fuch grofs inftances of profanenefs would afford me more hope of fuccefs as to our arms, from the only giver of all victory; and of a peaceable fettlement of our publick affairs, when we pray to the Almighty, to give peace in our time, O Lord, than all the political measures we take for those purposes without it. And now I am fpeaking of this truly great and good bishop, who took me into his bofom, and loved me, as I did him moft fincerely; he understood the facred chronology, the holy fcriptures, and particularly the prophecies therein contain'd, far better, I believe than any Few or Chriftian in the world before him ; and whom I have heard thank God for being able to read the prophecies as he read hiftory. However, I fhall now fay fomewhat to that common objection which unthinking people too unjustly make to the accomplishment of fome of the bifhop's predictions; made, not from any impulfe of his own; for I have alfo heard him fay, that he was neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but from his judicious interpretation of fcripture prophecies only. 'Tis true, that both he and I at first miftook fome places in the Apocalypfe: Of which fee my Literal Accomplishment of Prophecies, p. 90. 113. But that ei ther of us properly miftook our grand period, of the end, or ends of the 1260 years of the perfecution under Antichrift, as is commonly faid, I utterly deny. See my Effay on the Revelation of St. John, 2d. Edit. p. 319, 320, 322, 323, 324. And fince it is made out undeniably in that. Effay, p. 198-221, and p. 238-242, that bishop

bishop Lloyd truly foretold the restoration of the Vaudois 1690, and the end of the Turkish war 1698; both which he lived to fee accomplished: It is ve ry unjust to blame him for any other leffer miftakes in fuch matters. We all gain light by degrees; and if I, or any one elfe, fince his days, have gained more light either in the prophecies or doctrines of the gofpel, and in part alfo by his means, we ought not to infult over him; but to thank God Almighty for fuch farther illumination : Remembring that excellent faying of the great Mr. Mede himself, which I make the motto of my own Effay on the Revelation; Illud pro certo habens, nifi in hifce talibus liberius paulo fentiendi, imo et errandi venia concedatur, ad profunda illa et latentia veritatis adyta viam nunquam patefactam iri.

As to bishop Lloyd's interlined bible, and his notes in fhort-hand, that vaft treasure of facred learning, I took great pains many years ago to have it decyphered, by that eminent chronologer Mr. Marfbal of Naunton in Gloucestershire, who married a relation of the bishop's, and knew his characters well, and was willing to undertake it upon proper encouragement, which I almoft undertook to procure him, from my old friend the lord King, when he was firft made lord chancellor, and had fo many prebends in his gift. But upon my application to him, I found fo prodigious a change in him, fuch strange coldnefs in the matters that concerned religion, and fuch an earnest inclination to money and power, that I gave up my hopes quickly. Nay, indeed, I foon perceived, that he difpofed of his preferments almoft wholly at the request of fuch great men as could beft fupport him in his high ftation, without regard to christianity; and I foon caft off all my former acquaintance with him. Now, by the way, if fuch a perfon as the lord King, who began with fo much facred learning,

and

and zeal for primitive chriftianity, as his first work, The Enquiry into the Conftitution, Difcipline, Unity, and Worship of the Primitive Church, fhewed, was fo foon thoroughly perverted by the love of power and money at court, what good chriftians will not be horribly affrighted at the defperate hazard they muft run, if they venture into the temptations of a court hereafter? Such examples make me often think how wifely our bleffed Saviour put in that petition into the Lord's Prayer, Lead us not into Temptation.

I proceed now in my own history.

After I had taken holy orders, I returned to the college, and went on with my own ftudies there, particularly the mathematicks, and the Cartefian philofophy; which was alone in vogue with us at that time. But it was not long before I, with immenfe pains, but no affistance, fet myself, with the utmoft zeal, to the study of Sir Ifaac Newton's wonderful discoveries in his Philofophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica, one or two of which lectures I had heard him read in the publick fchools, though I understood them not at all at that time. Being indeed greatly excited thereto by a paper of Dr. Gregory's when he was profeffor in Scotland; wherein he had given the most prodigious commendations to that work, as not only right in all things, but in a manner the effect of a plainly divine genius, and had already caused several of his fcholars to keep Acts, as we call them, upon several branches of the Newtonian philofophy; while we at Cambridge, poor wretches, were ignominiously ftudying the fictitious hypothefes of the Cartefian, which Sir Ifaac Newton had alfo himself done formerly, as I have heard him fay. What the occafion of Sir Ifaac Newton's leaving the Cartefian philosophy, and of discovering his amazing theory of gravity was, I have heard him long ago, foon

after

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after my firft acquaintance with him, which was 1694, thus relate, and of which Dr. Pemberton gives the like account, and fomewhat more fully, in the preface to his explication of his philofophy: It was this. An inclination came into Sir Ifaac's. mind to try, whether the fame power did not keep the moon in her orbit, notwithstanding her projectile velocity, which he knew always tended to go along a trait line, the tangent of that orbit, which makes ftones and all heavy bodies with us fall downward, and which we call Gravity? Taking this poftulatum, which had been thought of before, that fuch power might decrease in a duplicate proportion of the distances from the earth's centre. Upon Sir Ifaac's first trial, when he took a degree of a great circle on the earth's furface, whence a degree at the distance of the moon was to be determined also, to be 60 measured miles only, ac cording to the grofs measures then in ufe. He was, in fome degree, disappointed, and the power that restrained the moon in her orbit, measured by the verfed fines of that orbit, appeared not to be quite the fame that was to be expected, had it been the power of gravity alone, by which the moon was there influenced. Upon this disappointment, which made Sir Ifaac fufpect that this power was partly that of gravity, and partly that of Cartefius's vortices, he threw afide the paper of his calculation, and went to other ftudies. However, fome time afterward, when Monfieur Picart had much more exactly measured the earth, and found that a degree of a great circle was 69 fuch miles, Sir Ifaac, in turning over fome of his former papers, light upon this old imperfect calculation, and correcting his former error, difcover'd that this power, at the true correct diftance of the moon from the earth, not only tended to the earth's center, as did the common power us, but was ex. gravity with

of

actly

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