gious life, and on sublime prayer, than a minute account of the life and actions of the nun." Mr Butler was chosen president of the English college at St Omer's some time after the publication of his Lives, and continued in this office till his decease. He was also appointed vicar-general to the bishops of Arras, St Omer's, Ipres, and Boulogne. These different appointments involved him in a thousand incessant labours; but his intense application enabled him to acquit himself in the whole of them with the highest credit. "Every instant," says the Abbe de la Sepouze, "that Mr Butler did not dedicate to the government of his college he employed in study; and when obliged to go abroad, he would read as he walked along the streets." Among the works which he had projected but did not live to execute, was a treatise on the Moveable Feasts, which was published, however, after his decease, under the direction of Mr Challoner. He had also meditated writing the lives of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More; and had begun a treatise on the evidences of natural and revealed religion, from which, and his discourses, three volumes were published after his death. Mr Charles Butler admits that, as a preacher, his relative almost wholly failed. "His sermons," he says, "were sometimes interesting and pathetic, but they were always desultory, and almost always immeasurably long." Mr Butler numbered among his correspondents the learned Lambertini, afterwards Pope Benedict XIV., the celebrated Dr Lowth, and Dr Kennicott. Brotier, in his preface to his edition of Tacitus, calls him "sacrâ eruditione perceleber;" and in the life of the bishop of Amiens he is mentioned as "the most learned man in Europe." He died on the 15th of May, 1773, in the 63d year of his age. His Lives of the Saints' were first published in 1745, in 5 vols. 4to. In 1779 an edition was published at Dublin in 12 vols. 8vo. And in 1799-1800 another edition, in the same form, appeared at Edinburgh. A selection and abridgment from it was published at Newcastle in 1799, in 2 vols. 8vo Thomas Broughton. BORN A. D. 1704.-DIED A. D. 1774. THIS learned divine was born at London, on the 5th of July, 1704, in the parish of St Andrew, Holborn; of which parish his father was minister. At an early age he was sent to Eton school, where he soon distinguished himself by the acuteness of his genius, and the studiousness of his disposition. Being superannuated on this foundation, he removed, about the year 1722, to the university of Cambridge; and, with the view to a scholarship, entered himself of Gonville and Caius college. Here two of the principal objects of his attention were the acquisition of a knowledge of the modern languages, and the study of the mathematics under the famous Professor Sanderson. On the 28th of May, 1727, Mr Broughton, after taking the degree. of bachelor of arts, was admitted to deacon's orders, by Dr Richard Reynolds, bishop of Lincoln. In the succeeding year, on the 22d of September, he was ordained priest, by Dr Edmund Gibson, bishop of London, and proceeded to the degree of master of arts. At this time he removed from the university to the curacy of Offley, in Hertfordshire. In the year 1739 he was instituted to the rectory of Stepington, in the county of Huntingdon, on the presentation of John, duke of Bedford, and was appointed one of that nobleman's chaplains. Soon after he was chosen reader to the Temple, by which means he became known to Bishop Sherlock, who was then master of it, and who conceived so high an opinion of our author's merit, that, in 1744, this eminent prelate presented Mr Broughton to the valuable vicarage of Bedminster, near Bristol, together with the chapels of St Mary Redcliff, St Thomas, and Abbot's Leigh, annexed. Some short time after, he was collated, by the same patron, to the prebend of Bedminster and Redcliff, in the cathedral of Salisbury. Upon receiving this preferment he removed from London to Bristol, where he married. He resided on his living till his death, which happened on the 21st of December, 1774, in the seventy-first year of his age. He was interred in the church of St Mary Redcliff. From the time of Mr Broughton's quitting the university till he was considerably advanced in life, he was engaged in a variety of publications, of which the following is a list, taken, in a great measure, from a paper in his own hand-writing: Christianity distinct from the Religion of Nature, in three Parts; in answer to Christianity as old as the Creation. Translation of Voltaire's Temple of Taste.'-' Preface to his Father's Letter to a Roman Catholic.'-' Alteration of Dorrel on the Epistles and Gospels from a Popish to a Protestant Book.' Two vols. 8vo. Part of the new Edition of Bayle's Dictionary in English, corrected; with a Translation of the Latin and other Quotations.''Jarvis's Don Quixote; the Language thoroughly altered and corrected, and the poetical Parts new translated.'- Translation of the Mottoes of the Spectator, Guardian, and Freeholder.'-' Original Poems and Translations, by John Dryden, Esq. now first collected and published together.' Two vols. Translation of the Quotations in Addison's Travels, by him left untranslated.'-'The first and third Olynthiacs, and the four Philippics of Demosthenes (by several Hands), revised and corrected; with a new Translation of the second Olynthiac, the Oration de Pace, and that de Chersoneso: to which are added, all the Arguments of Libanius, and select Notes from Ulpian.' Svo.-'Lives in the Biographia Britannica.'' The Bishops of London and Winchester on the Sacrament, compared.' Hercules, a Musical Drama.'-' Bibliotheca Historico-Sacra, an Historical Dictionary of all Religions, from the Creation of the World to the present Times.' In two vols. folio, 1756.— 'A Defence of the commonly received Doctrine of the human Soul.''A Prospect of Futurity, in four Dissertations; with a preliminary Discourse on the natural and moral Evidence of a future State.'-In 1778, a posthumous volume of Sermons on select subjects was published by his son, the Rev. Thomas Broughton, M.A. of Wadham college, Oxford, and vicar of Tiverton near Bath.' 1 Biographia Britannica. William Powell, D.D. BORN A. D. 1717.-DIED A. D. 1775. WILLIAM SAMUEL POWELL was born at Colchester, on the 27th of September, 1717. We have no account of his juvenile years. In 1734 he was admitted of St John's college, Cambridge; in 1739, took his degree of A.B.; in 1740, was elected to a fellowship; and in 1741, entered the family of Lord Viscount Townshend, as private tutor to his lordship's second son Charles. In the same year he was ordained deacon and priest, and instituted to the rectory of Colkirk in Norfolk, on the presentation of Lord Townshend. In 1744 he became principal tutor in his own college, and drew up an able series of lectures on natural philosophy, which continued to be the text-book at St John's until superseded by the more elaborate publications of Dr Wood and Professor Vince. In 1749 Mr Powell proceeded B.D.; at the commencement in 1757 he was created D.D. In the controversy which soon after this last date arose about subscription, Dr Powell took an active share. His commencement sermon was directed principally to the support of subscription and all established forms and usages in the university. He asserted that "young people may give a general assent to the articles, on the authority of others!" In 1760 he entered into a controversy with Edward Waring, then a candidate for the Lucasian professorship. Waring had published the first chapter of his Miscellanea Analytica,' as a specimen of his qualifications for the chair to which he aspired. Powell commented upon this publication in some anonymous Observations,' which drew forth a vindication from Waring, who completely demolished his antagonist. On the death of Dr Newcombe, master of St John's, no less than seven candidates, one of whom was Powell, started to succeed him. Powell was the successful candidate, having been unanimously elected master on the 25th of January, 1765. In the first year of his mastership he established college-examinations, and applied himself sedulously to the improvement of the whole routine of college-business. Mr Jebb's proposals, however, with the same view, were sturdily opposed by the master of St John's, who contended that the business of education, both of government and instruction, is conducted with more success under the domestic discipline of each college than it could be under the direction of the senate; and that whatever reformation was really needed could be easily introduced in the separate colleges by the master and fellows. Dr Powell died on the 19th of January, 1775. His works, chiefly consisting of pulpit discourses, were edited by his friend Dr Balguy. They are acute and close-reasoned performances, written in a style of great perspicuity and purity. "He was," says Cole, "rather a little, thin man; florid and red; with staring eyes, as if almost choked, or as if the collar of his shirt was too high about his neck. He was a man of a rugged and severe discipline; but virtuous, learned, and by no means beloved: his manners were too rigid and unbending for the age he lived in. As he was a strict disciplinarian, so he was by nature positive and obstinate, and never to be beat out of what he had once got into his head; yet he was generous in his temper, and when it was proposed improving the college and walks, at an expense of £800, he called the fellows together, recommended a subscription among its former members of note, and set it a-going by putting down £500.” Samuel Ogden, D.D. BORN A. D. 1716.—died A. D. 1778. SAMUEL OGDEN was born at Manchester in 1716, and educated at the free-school of his native place. In 1733 he was admitted of King's college, Cambridge. He graduated as B. A. at St John's in 1737, and, eventually, proceeded to the degree of S. T. P. In 1739 he became a fellow of his college; in 1744, master of the free-school at Halifax; about 1753, vicar of Damerham in Wiltshire; in 1764, Woodwardian professor at Cambridge; and, in 1766, rector of Lawford in Essex, and of Stansfield in Suffolk. He also held the cure of St Sepulchre's, at Cambridge, where he obtained considerable notoriety as a preacher. He died on the 23d of March, 1778. "His person, manner, and character of composition," says Wakefield, "were exactly suited to each other. He exhibited a large, black, scowling, grisly figure,-a ponderous body, with a lowering visage, imbrowned by the horrors of a sable periwig; his voice was growling and morose, and his sentences desultory, tart, and snappish." His "uncivilized appearance and bluntness of demeanour were," Wakefield adds, "the grand obstacles to his elevation in the church." The duke of Newcastle would, it is said, have taken him to court, if he had been what his grace termed, ' a producible man.' Dr Halifax, the editor of his sermons, and author of a vindication of his writings against some objections which Mainwaring had preferred against them, says that, notwithstanding the sternness, and even ferocity, which he would sometimes throw into his countenance, Ogden was one of the most humane and tender-hearted men ever known. Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, states, that Dr Ogden was an epicure; that he loved a cheerful glass,-had a great turn for banter and ridicule, and used to sit in company in his night-gown and slippers. Augustus Toplady. BORN A. D. 1740.-died A. D. 1778. THIS strenuous champion for the Calvinism of the church of England, was born at Farnham, in Surrey, November 4, 1740. His father was a captain in the army, who died at the siege of Carthagena soon after his son's birth. He received the rudiments of his education at Westminster school; but, it becoming necessary for his mother to take a journey to Ireland to pursue some claims to an estate in that kingdom, he accompanied her thither, and was entered at Trinity college, Dublin, at which seminary he took his degree of bachelor of arts. On taking orders, he was inducted into the living of Broad Hembury in Devonshire. Here he pursued his labours with increasing assiduity, and composed most of his writings. He had for some years occasionally visited London; but in 1775, finding his constitution much impaired by the moist atmosphere of Devonshire, he removed to London entirely, after some unsuccessful attempts to exchange his living for another of equivalent value in some of the middle counties. In London, by the solicitation of his numerous friends, he engaged the chapel belonging to the French reformed, near Leicester-fields; where he preached twice in the week while his health permitted, and afterwards occasionally, as much as he was well able to do. He died August 11, 1778. His body was buried, agreeably to his own desire, in Tottenham-court chapel. It is supposed that his intense application to study, which he frequently pursued through the night to three or four o'clock in the morning, was the means of inducing his disorder and accelerating his end. He had no preferment in the church besides the vicarage of Broad Hembury, which, as his mind could never brook the idea of living in animosity with his parish upon the account of tithes, did not amount, communibus annis, to eighty pounds a-year. His publications were, 1. The Church of England vindicated from the charge of Arminianism; and the case of Arminian subscription particularly considered; in a Letter to the Rev. Dr Nowell,' 1769.-2. 'The Doctrine of absolute Predestination stated and asserted; with a preliminary Discourse on the Divine Attributes: translated in great measure from the Latin of Jerom Zanchius; with some account of his life prefixed,' 1769. -3. A Letter to the Rev. Mr John Wesley, relative to his pretended abridgment of Zanchius on Predestination,' 1770, 2d edition, 1771.— 4. A Caveat against unsound Doctrines: a Sermon preached at Blackfriars, April 29th, 1770.-5. Jesus seen of Angels; and God's Mindfulness of Man: three Sermons preached at Broad Hembury, Devon, December 25th, 1770.-6. Free thoughts on the projected Application to Parliament for the Abolition of Ecclesiastical subscriptions,' 1771.-7. 'More work for Mr John Wesley: or a vindication of the Decrees and Providence of God from the defamations of a late printed paper entitled "The Consequence proved," 1772.-8. 'Clerical subscription no grievance: a Sermon at the annual Visitation of the archdeaconry of Exeter, May 12th, 1772.'-9. Historical Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England,' 1774, 2 volumes 8vo. -10. 'Free-will and Merit fairly examined; or men not their own Saviours: a Sermon preached at Blackfriars, May 15th, 1774.—11. 'Good News from Heaven; or the Gospel's joyful sound: a Sermon preached at the Lock-chapel, June 19th, 1774.-12. The Scheme of Christian and Philosophical Necessity asserted, in answer to Mr John Wesley's tract on that subject,' 1775.-13. Joy in Heaven, and the Creed of Devils: two Sermons preached in London,' 1775.-14. 'Moral and Political Moderation recommended:' a Sermon preached on the general fast, December 13th, 1776.-15. Collection of Hymns for public and private worship,' 1776.-16. His dying avowal, dated Knightsbridge, July 22d, 1778. The chief object of his writings, as well as of his sermons, was the defence of Calvinism, and the proof that Calvinism was to be found in the articles, &c. of the Church of England. His creed, says one of his |