THE LIFE

OF THE

REV. JOSEPH BINGHAM,

BY THE EDITOR.

THE learned Author of the ANTIQUITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, and of the other Theological Tracts, which are now offered to the Public in an uniform and complete edition, was born in September, 1668, at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, of which place his father, Mr. Francis Bingham, was a respectable inhabitant. He was taught the first rudiments of grammar at a school in that town, under Mr. Edward Clarke, and on the 26th of May, 1684, he was admitted a member of University-College, in Oxford. During his academical residence he applied with persevering industry to those studies, which are generally considered as most laborious, Though he by no means neglected the writers of Greece and Rome, yet he

employed the greater portion of his time in studying the writings of the Fathers, making himself intimately acquainted with their opinions and doctrines, and fully able both to explain, and to defend, their interpretation of the difficult or disputed passages of Scripture. With what earnestness he devoted his mind to these abstruse inquiries, he had an early opportunity of giving an honourable testimony, which will presently be mentioned more at large. He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1688; and on the first of July, 1689, was elected a fellow of the before-mentioned College, and his election to that fellowship was attended with some flattering marks of distinction. On the 23d of June, 1691, he took the degree of Master of Arts, and was appointed one of the tutors of the College.* In that situation he paid particular attention to the instruction of a young man, whom he had brought from Wakefield and introduced at the University, and who, soon after Mr. Bingham's election to a fellowship, was by his means chosen scholar of the same foundation, to which he himself belonged. This was Mr. John Potter, who afterwards became Archbishop of

*For these particulars and many others in this relation I was some years ago indebted to the condescending attention of Dr. Wetherell, the late Master of University-College, Oxford, who in the most obliging manner took the trouble of examining the Records of his College, and other documents in the University, and from thence gave me much assistance and information.

Canterbury. Mr. Potter's first tutor happening to
die, when he was no more than two years stand-
ing in the University, Mr. Bingham took his young
friend and townsman under his own wing; and to
his having given some general directions to his
studies, which it is probable therefore would have
a similarity to those he pursued himself, it is rea-.
sonable to suppose we owe that excellent book,
"Potter on Church Government," and perhaps
also "Potter's Antiquities of Greece." About
four years
after Mr. Bingham had taken his
Master's degree a circumstance occurred, which
eventually occasioned him to leave the University.
At that time controversies ran high among learned
men concerning the true explanation of what is term-
ed, the Trinity; the manner in which that doctrine
had been understood or maintained by the primitive
Fathers; and what they meant by 'Ovota and Sub-
stantia. Mr. Bingham being called on in his turn,
as a Master of Arts, to preach before the learned
body, of which he was a member; and having
heard, what he conceived to be a very erroneous
statement on that subject, delivered by a leading
man from the pulpit at St. Mary's, thought it
his duty not to let the occasion, which then offered,
escape him of evincing publicly his intimate
acquaintance with the opinions and doctrines of
the Fathers, and of displaying at the same time
the zeal and perseverance, with which he was re-
solved to defend their tenets, concerning the

Trinity, in opposition to the unjust attacks of men, who, though inferior to him in learning, were in much more elevated stations than that which he filled. In pursuance of this determination he delivered a long and learned discourse in the University-Church on the 28th of October, 1695, - taking for his text those famous words of the Apostle; "There are three that bear record in "Heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy "Ghost, and these three are one." This sermon, though containing nothing more than an elaborate exposition and defence of what the Fathers had asserted to be the true, ancient, and ecclesiastical notion of the term Person, in opposition to what he deemed the novel and heterodox explanation of it, which he had lately heard given, drew on the learned preacher a very heavy censure from the ruling members of the University, charging him with having asserted doctrines false, impious, and heretical, contrary and dissonant to those of the Catholic Church.* This censure was followed by other charges in the public prints; wherein he was accused of Arianism, Tritheism, and the heresy of Valentinus Gentilis. These matters

* That such a censure was passed, by means of the commanding influence in the University of the preceding preacher, is most certain, no less from domestic tradition of the circumstance, than from the mention, which is repeatedly made of it in the manuscript papers of our Author. But I am assured that no traces thereof are now to be found in the books of the University.

ran so high, and the party against him was so powerful, that he found himself under the necessity of resigning his fellowship on the 23d of November, 1695, and of withdrawing from the University. How wholly unmerited these accusations were, not only appears from the sermon itself, now in my possession, and which it is my intention to publish in the last volume of this edition, but also from the whole tenor of his life and writings, in both and all of which he constantly proved himself to be a zealous and devout defender of what is called the orthodox notion of the Trinity. Immediately on the resignation of his fellowship Mr. Bingham was presented, without any solicitation on his part, by the famous Dr. Radcliffe, one of the most liberal benefactors to the University of Oxford, to the Rectory of Headbourn-Worthy, a living valued at that time at about one hundred pounds a year, and situated at a little more than a mile from Winchester. Within a few months after his settling in the country, being called on to preach at a visitation, held on the 12th of May, 1696, in Winchester Cathedral, he seized that opportunity of pursuing the subject, which he had begun at Oxford, and of exculpating himself from those heavy charges, which had been so unjustly brought against him; and which, according to his own words, " if true, were enough "to give all wise and sober men a just abhorrence "of any one, who had merited them." That my