humility disarmed his foes, but it did not soften much the hearts of the
Inquisitors, who permitted him to end his days in the cell. The causes of
the condemnation of the work are not very evident. One idea is that in his
work the author pretended to prove that Christ did not eat the passover
during the last year of His life; and another states that he did not
sufficiently honour the memory of Louis of Bavaria, and thus aroused the
anger of the strong supporters of that ancient house.

The first English author whose woes we record is Samuel Clarke, who was
born at Norwich in 1675, and was for some time chaplain to the bishop of
that see. He was very intimate with the scientific men of his time, and
especially with Newton. In 1704 he published his Boyle Lectures, _A
Treatise on the Being and Attributes of God, and on Natural and Revealed
Religion_, which found its way into other lands, a translation being
published in Amsterdam in 1721. Our author became chaplain to Queen Anne
and Rector of St. James's. He was a profoundly learned and devout student,
and obtained a European renown as a true Christian philosopher. In
controversy he encountered foemen worthy of his steel, such as Spinosa,
Hobbes, Dodwell, Collins, Leibnitz, and others. But in 1712 he published
_The Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity_, which was declared to be opposed
to the Christian belief and tainted with Arianism. The attention of
Parliament was called to the book; the arguments were disputed by Edward
Wells, John Edwards, and William Sommer; and Clarke was deprived of his
offices. The charge of heterodoxy was certainly never proved against him;
he did good service in trying to stem the flood of rationalism prevalent
in his time, and his work was carried on by Bishop Butler. His
correspondence with Leibnitz on Time, Space, Necessity, and Liberty was
published in 1717, and his editions of Caesar and Homer were no mean
contributions to the study of classical literature.