Nathaniel Lardner (6 June 1684 – 24 July 1768) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
theologian
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
.
Life
Lardner was born at
Hawkhurst
Hawkhurst is village and civil parish in the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England. The village is located close to the border with East Sussex, around south-east of Royal Tunbridge Wells and within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Na ...
,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
in 1684. He was the elder son of Richard Lardner (1653–1740), an independent minister, and of a daughter of Nathaniel Collyer or Collier, a Southwark tradesman. His sister Elizabeth married
Daniel Neal
Daniel Neal
Daniel Neal (14 December 16784 April 1743) was an English historian.
Biography
Born in London, he was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, and at the universities of Utrecht and Leiden. In 1704 he became assistant minister, and ...
, who studied with Lardner in
Utrecht
Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...
.
After studying for the
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their n ...
ministry in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, and also at Utrecht and
Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration w ...
, he took license as a preacher in 1709, but was not successful. In 1713 he entered the family of Lady Treby, widow of
Sir George Treby
Sir George Treby JP (1643–1700), of Plympton, Devon, and of Fleet Street in the City of London, was Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and six times Member of Parliament for the Rotten Borough of Plympton Erle, Devon, largely controlle ...
, as tutor and domestic chaplain, where he remained until 1721. In 1724 he was appointed to deliver the Tuesday evening lecture in the Presbyterian chapel, Old Jewry, London, and in 1729 he became assistant minister to the Presbyterian congregation in Crutched Friars. He was given the degree of D.D. by
Marischal College
Marischal College ( ) is a large granite building on Broad Street in the centre of Aberdeen in north-east Scotland, and since 2011 has acted as the headquarters of Aberdeen City Council. However, the building was constructed for and is on lon ...
, Aberdeen, in 1743. He died at Hawkhurst on 24 July 1768.
Works
An anonymous volume of ''Memoirs'' appeared in 1769; and a life by
Andrew Kippis
Andrew Kippis (28 March 17258 October 1795) was an English nonconformist clergyman and biographer.
Life
The son of Robert Kippis, a silk-hosier, he was born at Nottingham. Having gone to Carre's Grammar School in Sleaford, Lincolnshire he pa ...
is prefixed to the edition of the ''Works of Lardner'', first published in 1788. The full title of his principal work—a work which, although now out of date, entitles its author to be regarded as the founder of modern critical research in the field of early Christian literature—is ''The Credibility of the Gospel History; or the Principal Facts of the New Testament confirmed by Passages of Ancient Authors, who were contemporary with our Saviour or his Apostles, or lived near their time''. Part 1, in 2 octavo volumes, appeared in 1727; the publication of part 2, in 12 octavo volumes, began in 1733 and ended in 1755. In 1730 there was a second edition of part 1, and the Additions and Alterations were also published separately. A Supplement, otherwise entitled ''A History of the Apostles and Evangelists, Writers of the New Testament'', was added in 3 volumes (1756–1757), and reprinted in 1760.
Other works by Lardner are ''A Large Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Revelation, with Notes and Observations'' (4 volumes, quarto, 1764–1767); ''The History of the Heretics of the two first Centuries after Christ'', published posthumously in 1780; and a considerable number of occasional sermons.
Theology
Lardner made a case against the
subordinationism
Subordinationalism is a Trinitarian doctrine, where the Son (and sometimes the Holy Spirit included) are subordinate to the Father. Not only in submission and role, but with actual ontological subordination to varying degrees. Subordinationism is ...
of
Samuel Clarke
Samuel Clarke (11 October 1675 – 17 May 1729) was an English philosopher and Anglican cleric. He is considered the major British figure in philosophy between John Locke and George Berkeley.
Early life and studies
Clarke was born in Norwich, ...
in which the eternal
Logos
''Logos'' (, ; grc, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive reasoning. Aris ...
unites with a human body in the man Jesus, opposed to the
Trinitarian view. Lardner went further to argue that the New Testament does not teach that Jesus or any element within him pre-existed Mary's pregnancy. According to Lardner the Logos of
John 1:1, was to be understood as a divine attribute, which metaphorically “became flesh” in the man Jesus, and other traditional pre-existence proof texts are interpreted in ways consistent with Christ's not existing before his conception. Lardner analyzes the use of “spirit” in the Bible and concludes that it refers to God, or to various of God's properties, actions, or gifts.
[Tuggy, D. in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2009] This view was essentially
Socinian.
Networking
He was in close relations with
Thomas Secker, exchanged letters with
Edward Waddington
Edward Waddington (1670?–1731) was an English prelate, bishop of Chichester from 1724 to 1731.
Biography
Waddington was born in London in 1670 or 1671. He was educated at Eton College, and was admitted a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, ...
, and had a large literary correspondence with continental scholars, and with the ministers of
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
. Among his English dissenting correspondents were
John Brekell
John Brekell (1697–1769) was an English presbyterian minister and theological writer.
Life
Brekell was born at North Meols, Lancashire, in 1697, and was educated for the ministry at Nottingham, at the dissenting academy of John Hardy. His ...
,
Samuel Chandler
Samuel Chandler (1693 – 8 May 1766) was an English Nonconformist minister and pamphleteer. He has been called the "uncrowned patriarch of Dissent" in the latter part of George II's reign.
Early life
Samuel Chandler was born at Hungerford in ...
,
Philip Doddridge
Philip Doddridge D.D. (26 June 1702 – 26 October 1751) was an English Nonconformist (specifically, Congregationalist) minister, educator, and hymnwriter.
Early life
Philip Doddridge was born in London the last of the twenty children of ...
, and
Henry Miles
Henry Miles, FRS (2 Jun 1698 – 10 Feb 1763) was an English Dissenting minister and scientific writer; a Fellow of the Royal Society known for experiments on electricity.
Life
He was born at Stroud, Gloucestershire, on 2 June 1698. He was educat ...
. He corresponded also with
Thomas Morgan the Welsh
deist
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation ...
and moral philosopher, of very different views but who found Lardner impartial.
Notes
References
*
*
External links
*
Lardner, Nathaniel, 1684-1768 in
HathiTrust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locall ...
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lardner, Nathanial
1684 births
1768 deaths
English theologians
English Presbyterian ministers
People from Hawkhurst
English Unitarians
Burials at Bunhill Fields