BROWNE, SIMON, a dissenting minister in England, was born in Somersetshire about the year 1680. En dowed with superior powers of mind, which he had cul tivated by early and assiduous study, he was found qualified for the ministry before he liad attained the twentieth year of his age ; and was elected minister of a numerous and respectable body of dissenters in Ports mouth, among whom he discharged the duties of his office with fidelity and diligence for several years. Hav ing been called to the pastoral charge of a congregation of dissenters in London, lie left Portsmouth in 1716, with the universal regret of his hearers. There he of ficiated for about seven years, with much credit to him self, and satisfaction to his people; till, in 1723, his mind sustained a severe shock by the death of his wife and an only son, and his grief at last settled in a deep and incurable melancholy. His mental disorder was of a very uncommon kind. In the beginning of it, he was com pletely miserable, and felt frequent and strong desires to deprive himself of life; but afterwards, his mind be came more serene and composed, and, on some occa sions, he would even assume a degree of cheerfulness and pleasantry ; but he could never afterwards be pre vailed upon to resume the duties of his pastoral office, nor even to join in any act of worship, either public or private. His own idea of his unhappy state is thus ex pressed in the ?dventurer, No. lxxxviii. " He believed that the Almighty by a singular instance of divine power, had, in a gradual manner, annihilated in him the think ing substance; and utterly divested him of conscious ness; that though he retained the human form, and the faculty of speaking in a manner that appeared to others rational, he had all the while no more notion of what he said than a parrot, and consequently no longer looked upon himself as a moral agent, or as a subject of reward or punishment." In that unhappy conviction he conti nued till the day of his death. Nothing gave him greater uneasiness than to find, that he could not persuade his friends that his state was really such as lie believed it to be. This he accounted a charge against his veracity, which he endeavoured to repel by the strongest and most confident assertions. At other times, he viewed their incredulity as a part of that divine judgment by which he himself had been deprived of his mental ex istence ; and believed that, by the all wise hut unsearch able decree of heaven, he was placed beyond the reach of divine mercy. For that reason, he, for a long time, objected to any prayers being offered up by his friends in his behalf; but when his mind became more serene, he requested that they would pray for him, and was consoled by being recommended to the divine compas sion.
But the most remarkable circumstance in his case, and which may be termed peculiar to it, was, that while he asserted that lie had nothing more than a material existence, he gave undoubted proofs, both by his con versation and his writings, that his mental faculties ex isted in their hill vigour. Having quitted the ministry,
he retired to the place of his nativity in Somersetshire, where lie translated several passages of the Greek and Latin poets into`English verse ; composed various small works for the use of children ; and, with great labour, compiled a Dictionary of the Greek and Latin tongues, a compendious list of the themes in both languages. None of these works, however, nor some others written at the same time, were ever published ; but, during the last two years of his life, having devoted his time to re ligious study, he produced some excellent treatises in defence of Christianity : 1. " A Sober and Charitable Disquisition concerning the Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity, particularly with regard to Worship, and the Doctrine of Satisfaction." 2. " A fit Rebuke to a ludicrous Infidel, in some Remarks on Woolston's Fifth Discourse on the Miracles of our Saviour, with a Preface, shewing the impropriety of prosecuting such Writers by the Civil Powers ;"—a treatise, says Dr Leland, in his View of the Deistical Writers, written with great smartness and spirit. And, 3, "A Defence of the Religion of Nature, and of the Christian Religion, against the defective Account of the one, and the ex ceptions against the other, in a Book entitled Christi anity as old as the Creation ;"—which Leland styles "a good and solid answer to Tindal." These treatises were all published in 1732; and although, in composing them, it is said he availed himself but little of assistance from books, or from literary conversation, yet they dis cover a great extent of knowledge, and a mind in its full vigour. To the last of these works he had prefixed a dedication to Queen Caroline, which his friends, from a belief that it would injure the publication, very pru dently suppressed, but which, on account of its singu larity, is worthy of being preserved.' During his retirement in the country, he could not be prevailed upon to enjoy the benefit of free air and exercise; and his sedentary life, joined to his intense application to study, brought on a complication of dis orders, which put a period to his existence at the close of the same year, 1732, while he was in the 52d year of his age.
Ills writings prove him to have been a good scholar, and an able divine ; and, while he showed himself supe rior to the opposers of Christianity in argument, he was also a zealous advocate for civil and religious liberty. In private life, he appears to have been a man whose heart was highly susceptible of warm and steady friend ship, and whose mind was filled with an ardent zeal for the interests of pure and practical religion. See Biogr. Diet, and Biogr. Brit. (A. F.)