LARDNER, NATHANIEL, D.D., was born in 1684, and devoted a long life to the prosecution of theological inquiry, to the exclusion of attention to almost any other subject. The results which he com municated to the world from time to time show at once the assiduity with which ho laboured in this department, and the ability which he possessed to conduct his learned researches to a successful issue.
Dr. Lardner was an English dissenting minister, belonging to the denomination called Presbyterian, but which had adopted the opinions known as Unitarian. In early life be was a pupil of Dr. Joshua Oldficld, a minister of eminence in that denomination, but he took a course which many of the Dissenters of his time took—going abroad to prosecute his studies. He spent more than three years at Utrecht, where he studied under Grceviva and Burmann, and was then some time at Leyden. He returned to England in 1703, and continued prosecuting his theological studies with a view to the ministry; but it was not till he was twenty-five that he began to preach. The course of his after-life is soon described. He became private chaplain in the family of Lady Treby, who died in 1729; and was a lecturer at the chapel in the Old Jewry. He was not acceptable as a preacher owing to the want of power to modulate his voice, arising from the imper fection of his sense of hearing. He died in 1768.
The religious sect to which he belonged have no means of placing their scholars in any situations which can leave them at liberty to prosecute those studies, the results of which are of the most essential benefit to the great interests which they hold peculiarly dear ; ao that Dr. Lardner was thrown for the most part upon his own resources while engaged in those profound inquiries which have gained for him a name among the first theological scholars of his age and country. His Credibility of the Gospel History,' the Supplement' to it, and his Jewish and Heathen Testimonies,' have received the testimony of tho most distinguished persons, as constituting the most unanswerable defence of Christianity that has yet been prepared. These are his great works, but there are beside them many other treatises in which he has brought his store of learning to bear on questions which are important in Christian theology. The most remarkable of these his minor publications is his Letter on the Logos,' in which it distinctly appears that he was of the Unitarian or Soeiniao school The best edition of Lardner's works is that by Dr. Andrew Kipple; but it is no mean proof of the estimation in which they are held, that large as they are when collected together, the booksellers but a few years ego ventured on a republication of them.