Samuel Horsley
Samuel Horsley | |
|---|---|
 Samuel Horseley | |
| Personal | |
| Religion | Church of England |
| Senior posting | |
| Based in | England |
| Period in office | 1793-1802 |
| Predecessor | John Thomas |
| Successor | William Vincent |
| Previous post | Bishop of St. David's, Bishop of Rochester |
Samuel Horsley (London, 15 September 1733 – 4 October 1806 in Brighton) was an English churchman, bishop of Rochester from 1792.
Life
Entering Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1751, he became LL.B. in 1758 without graduating in arts.[1] In the following year he succeeded his father in the living of Newington Butts in Surrey. Horsley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767; and secretary in 1773, but, in consequence of a difference with the president (Sir Joseph Banks) he withdrew in 1784. In 1768 he attended the son and heir of the 3rd Earl of Aylesford to Oxford as private tutor; and, after receiving through the earl and Bishop of London various minor preferments, which by dispensations he combined with his first living, he was installed in 1781 as archdeacon of St Albans.
Horsley now entered in earnest upon his famous controversy with Joseph Priestley, who denied that the early Christians held the doctrine of the Trinity. In this controversy, conducted on both sides in the fiercest polemical spirit, Horsley's aim was to lessen the influence which the prestige of Priestley's name gave to his views, by pointing to what he claimed were inaccuracies in his scholarship and undue haste in his conclusions. For the energy displayed in the contest Horsley was rewarded by Lord Chancellor Thurlow with a prebendal stall at Gloucester; and in 1788 the same patron procured his promotion to the see of St David's.
As a bishop, Horsley was energetic both in his diocese, where he strove to better the position of his clergy, and in parliament. The efficient support which he afforded the government was acknowledged by his successive translations to Rochester in 1793, and to St Asaph in 1802. With the see of Rochester he held the deanery of Westminster.
Works
Besides the controversial Tracts, which appeared in 1783-1785, 1786, and were republished in 1789 and 1812, Horsley's more important works are:
- Apollonii Pergaei inclinationum libri duo (1770)
- Remarks on the Observations ... for determining the acceleration of the Pendulum in Lat. 7o 51' (1774)
- Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae extant Omnia, with a commentary (5 vols 4to, 1779-1785)
- On the Prosodies of tke Greek and Latin Languages (1796)
- Disquisitions on Isaiah xviii. (1796)
- Hosea, translated ... with Notes (1801)
- Elementary Treatises on ... Mathematics (1801)
- Euclidis elernentorum libri priores XII. (1802)
- Euclidis datorum liber (1803)
- Virgil's Two Seasons of Honey, &c. (1805)
- papers in the Philosophical Transactions from 1767 to 1776
After his death there appeared:
- Sermons (1810-1812)
- Speeches in Parliament (1813)
- Book of Psalms, translated with Notes (1815)
- Biblical Criticism (1820)
- Collected Theological Works (6 vols 8vo, 1845).
References
- ^ "(HRSY751S)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge. missing
name.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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