We nobly take the high priori road, And reason downward till we donbt of God." Other writers and thinkers of perhaps equal ability assent to his argument. The 'Evidences' also met with strong opposition. The foundation of morality, according to Clarke, consists in the immutable differences, relations, and eternal fitness of things. The last expression being of frequent occurrence in this discourse, acquired a fashionable usage in the ethical vocabularies of the day. Regardlesa of moral sentiment, so fully developed since by Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Adam Smitb,'Clarke insists solely upon the principle that the criterion of moral rectitude is in the conformity to, or deviation from, the natural and eternal fitness of things : in other words, that an immoral act is an irrational act, that is, an act in violation of the actual ratios of existent things. The endeavour to reduce moral philosophy to mathematical certainty was characteristic of that age, and led to the formation of theories remarkable perhaps more for their ingenuity than utility. Dr. Price is an apologist for the moral theory of Clarke, and among its oppugners we may instance Sir James Mackintosh. (Dissertat. Encyc. Brit.') In 1706 Clarke obtained, through Bishop More, the rectory of St. Bennett's in London. He published in the same year an answer to the treatise of Dr. Dodwell On the Soul,' in which that divine contends that it is not immortal until made so by baptism. Several rejoinders followed on each side. [Corzms, ANTHONY.] Clarke at this time published a Latin translation of the treatise 'On Optics,' by his friend Sir Isaac Newton, who in acknowledgment presented him with 500/, for his five children. His patron, Dr. More, next procured for him the rectorship of St. James's, and a chaplaincy to Queen Anne, which ioduced him to take his degree of D.D. In 1712 he published his edition of Cremes Commentaries,' in folio, with notes, and some flue engravings. The same year appeared his treatise on The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity; a work which involved him for the remainder of his life in a controversy, in which his principal adversary was Dr. Waterlaud. The Lower House of Convocation, in 1714, com plained to the bishops of the heterodox and dangerous tendency of its Arian tenets, and Clarke was prevailed upon to declare that he was sorry for his offence. A circumstantial account of this proceeding is
given in the 'Apology for Dr. Clarke,' 1714. His favourite subject was the doctrine of philosophical liberty and necessity ; on which he began, in 1715, to carry on an amicable controversy with Leibnitz. In advocating the doctrine of free will, Dr. Clarke had constantly in view the subversion of the writings of Spinoza. The death of Leibnitz left the controversy undecided, and Clarke soon afterwards resumed his argument in reply to the Philosophical Inquiry concerning Liberty,' by the friend of Locke, Anthony Collins.
In 1718 Dr. Robinson, bishop of London, pat forth a pastoral letter, in which be strictly prohibited his clergy from adopting the Arian modifications of the primitive doxologies which had been supported by Dr. Clarke, a prohibition which called forth many pamphlets. In 1724 Clarke obtained the mastership of Wigston Hospital, and pub-, Haired a volume of seventeen sermons. On the death of Newton be declined the offer of the mastership of the Mint. At this time he published in the Philosophical Transactions' (401) a paper on the velocity and force of bodies in motion. In 1729 appeared his edition of Homer, with Latin version and notes, which is still used in schools. The last nine books were not prepared by Dr. Clarke. He died rather suddenly in May, 1729. His 'Exposition of the Church Catechism,' and ten volumes of sermons, were published after his death. The moral character of Clarke is praised by all his biographers : his temper was remarkably mild, end his manners modest and unassuming. As a writer he is plain and unaffected ; very accurate, but monotonous, tame, and jejune. Voltaire, not inaptly calls him a 'moulin It raiaonne ment: He was a wary and very skilful disputant, well disciplined in the scholastic logic. Inferior to Locke in comprehensiveness and origi nality, ho was greatly superior to him in acquirements, being eminent as a divine, a mathematician, a metaphysician, and a philologist.
(Life by Bishop lioadley ; Whiston, Historical Memoirs ; D. Stewart and Mackintosh, Dissertations in Eney. Brit.)