ROMAINE, Rev. 'WILLIAM, an English divine of the last century, noted for the ardor with which he preached " evangelical" and Calvinistic doctrines in an age of apathy, was the son of a co•n-dealer in Hartlepool, and was b. there, Sept. 25, 1714. His father was a French. Protestant refugee. Young Romaine was educated at the grammar-school of Houghton. He was ordained a priest iu 1738, and immediately obtained is curacy near Epsom. In 1739 he published a sermon preached before the uni versity of Oxford, in which he attempted to show, in opposition to the view maintained by Warburton in his Divine Legation of Moses, that the doctrine of a future state is " expressly mentioned," and even "insisted on," in the Pentateuch. This led to a con troversy with Warburton. In 1747 he published the first volume of a new edition of Calasio's Ilebroc Concordance and Lexicon, the fruit of seven years' labor. The only thing in connection with Romaine's edition that now calls for notice is the fact that he took extraordinary liberties with the original, omitting, for example, the author's account of the word which is usually rendered " God," and substituting his own in the body of the work! In 1748 lie was chosen lecturer of St. Botolph's, in London, and, in the fol lowing year, lecturer of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West. Two years later he was appointed assistant morning-preacher at St. George's; but was afterward deprived of the situation by the rector, Dr. Trebeck, who was jealous of his popularity, and averse to the "plain ness" of his preaching. His "evangelicalism" grew with his years; and at length, in i
1757, in a sermon on the Lord Our Righteousness, became so offensive to the torpid dons of Oxford that the university pulpit was in future closed against him. Some years before this Romaine had been appointed to the professorship of astronomy in Gresham college, for which he was not fit, and which lie did not retain. His intellect was any thing but scientific in its character, as will readily be understood when we state that he allowed his "zeal" for Hutchinsonian speculations to -sad him into opposition to the Newtonian philosophy. In 1756 he became curate and morning-preacher at St. Olave's, Southwark, a situation which he exchanged in the course e`, a year for a preachership at St. Bartholomew the Great, near West Smithfield. In 1766 he was chosen by the parishioners rector of St. Andrew, Wardrobe, and St. Anne, Blackfriars, an office which he held till his death, July 26, 1795. Besides what has been already mentioned, Romaine published Twice Sermons upon Solomon's Song (1759): Twelve Discourses upon the Law and the Gospel (1760); The Life of Faith (1763); The Scripture Doctrine of Ike Sac rament of the Lord's Supper (1765); The Rita of with (1771); An Essay on Psalmody (1775); The Triumph of Faith (1795). His works were republished in a collected form, iu 8 vols., in 1796, by the hon. and rev. W. B. Cadog,an, who prefaced them with a life of their author.