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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MIC-MOL |
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MIDDLETON, CONYERS (16831750) , English divine, was born at Richmond in Yorkshire on the 27th of December 1683. He graduated at Cambridge , took orders, and in 1706 obtained a fellowship, which he soon resigned upon contracting an advantageous marriage
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pagan
Letter from Rome (1729). This cogent tract probably contributed to prepare the storm which broke out against him on his next publication (1731). In his remonstrance with Daniel Waterland on occasion of the latter's reply to Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation, Middleton takes a line which in his day could hardly fail to expose him to the reproach of infidelity. He gives up the literal truth of the primeval Mosaic narratives; and, in professing to indicate a short and easy method of confuting Tindal, lays principal stress on the indispensableness of Christianity as a mainstay of social order. This was to resign nearly every-thing that divines of the Waterland stamp thought worth defending. Middleton was warmly assailed from many quarters, and retreated with some difficulty under cover of a sheaf of apologetic pamphlets and a more regular attendance at church. His next important publication was a Life of Cicero (1741), largely told in that statesman's own words. Though Middleton's reputation was much enhanced by this piece of work, there is no doubt that he drew largely from the scarce book of William Bellenden, De tribes luminibus Romanorum. The work was undertaken at the instance of Lord Hervey, in correspondence with whom also originated his disquisition on The Roman Senate, published in 1747. The same year and the following produced the most important of all his writings, the Introductory Discourse and the Free Inquiry " concerning the miraculous powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the church from the earliest ages." In combating this belief Middleton indirectly established two propositions of capital importance. He showed that ecclesiastical miracles must be accepted or rejected in the mass; and he distinguished between the authority due to the early fathers' testimony to the beliefs and practices of their times, and their very slender credibility as witnesses to matters of fact. Some individual grudge seems to have prompted him to expose, in 1750, Bishop Sherlock's eccentric notions of antediluvian prophecy, which had been published 25 years before. On the 28th of July 1750 he died at Hildersham, near Cambridge .Middleton's most ambitious work is obsolete from no fault of his, but his controversial writings retain a permanent place in the history of opinion . In his more restricted sphere he may not inappropriately be compared with Lessing. Like Lessing's, the character of his intellect was captious and iconoclastic, but redeemed from mere negation by a passion for abstract truth, too apt to slumber until called into activity by some merely personal stimulus. His diction is generally masculine andharmonious. Pope thought him and Nathaniel Hooke the younger the only prose
The best general view of his intellectual character and influence is to be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ch. vi. A handsome edition of his works, containing several posthumous tracts, but not including the Life of Cicero, appeared in 4 vols. in 1952 and in 5 vols. in 1755. End of Article: MIDDLETON, CONYERS (16831750) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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