HORSLEY, SAMUEL, a distinguished prelate of the English Church, successively Bishop of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Ample, was born in 1733. He was the son of John Horsley (whose father was originally a Nonconformist), who was for many years the clerk in orders at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and who held two rectories, Thorley in Herte fordahiro, and Newington Butts in Surrey. The bishop was educated at Westminster School, whence he passed to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and had the rectory of Newington, which his father resigned to him soon after he had taken orders in 1759.
His more public career he may be said to have commenced in 1707, when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, to which body he became the secretary in 1773. His earliest publications were certain small tracts on scientific subjects, but in 1776 he projected a complete and uniform edition of the philosophical works of Sir Isaac Newton. This design was not accomplished till 1784, when the fifth and last of the five quarto volumes made its appearance.
In the earlier years of his public life he found patrons in the Earl of Aylesford, and in Lowth, bishop of London ; but we pass over, as uninteresting and unimportant, the presentations to his various livings, and the dispensations which the number of his minor preferments rendered necessary. In 1781 he was appointed Archdeacon of St. Albans. It was a little before the date last named that he first appeared in the field of theological controversy, in which he soon showed himself a very powerful combatant—powerful from the great extent of his knowledge and from the vigour of his intellect. The person against whom he chiefly directed his attack was Dr. Joseph Priestley, who in a series of publications defended with great subtilty and skill the doctrines of philosophical necessity, materialism, and Unitarianiam. Dr. Horsley began his attack in 1778 on the question
of 'Man's Free Agency; it was continued in a Charge' delivered in 1783 to the clergy of his archdeaconry, in which he animadverts on many parts of Dr. Priestley's History of the Corruptions of Chris tianity.' This charge produced a reply from Dr. Priestley, which lad to a rejoinder from Dr. Horsley in Seventeen Letters to Dr. Priestley,' a work which was regarded by the friends of the Church as a masterly defence of the orthodox faith, and as the secure foundation of a high and lasting theological reputation.
The tide of preferment now began to flow in upon him. Thurlow, who was then chancellor, presented him with a prebendal stall in the church of Gloucester, observing, as it is said, that " those who defended the Church ought to be supported by the Church ;" and in 1788 he was made bishop of St. David's. In parliament he distinguished himself by the hearty support which he gave to the measures of Pitt's administration, and some of his declarations of political sentiment were thought by many persons to be as little in accordance with the true apirit of the English constitution as with the spirit of Christianity itself. But in judging on such a point as this the circumstances of the times are to be considered, opinions as strong in another direction being by many persons promulgated, and a disposition manifested by some to act according to them. His political conduct however gained him the favour of the court : in 1793 he was translated to Rochester, and in 1802 to St. Asaph. He died in IS06.
We have mentioned but a few of hia published writings, which are very numerous ; but a complete list may be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century.'