Concept

John Leland (Presbyterian)

Overview

John Leland (18 October 1691 – 1766) was an English Presbyterian minister and author of theological works.

Leland was born in Wigan, Lancashire, on 18 October 1691. He was educated in Dublin, Ireland and went into the ministry there. He was ordained co-pastor to Nathanael Weld (1660–1730) at New Row Presbyterian Church, Dublin, on 16 December 1716. The church moved to Eustace Street, Dublin in 1728. Nathanael Weld's son Isaac (1710–1778), who was named after Nathanael's friend Sir Isaac Newton, was ordained in Eustace Street in 1732 as Leland's colleague. Isaac and Charles Weld, the writers, were the grandsons of the minister Isaac and thus the great-grandsons of Nathanael. Leland received his Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1739. His main interest was in opposing deism. He critiqued proponents of deist ideas, such as Matthew Tindal.

He is remembered as the author of A view of the principal deistical writers that have appeared in England in the last and present century: with observations upon them, and some account of the answers that have been published against them: in several letters to a friend. (1754–1755) 2 vols. (London: Printed for B. Dod) which went through many editions well into the 19th century.

A View of the Principal Deistical Writers was first published in 1754 and subsequently expanded twice. It is the fullest contemporary treatment of the literature of the deist controversy. Leland gives very detailed reviews of the works of the leading deists, and of the responses that these works provoked. At least one chapter is devoted to each of the following: Peter Annet, Charles Blount, Thomas Chubb, Anthony Collins, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Thomas Morgan, Shaftesbury, Matthew Tindal, John Toland and Thomas Woolston. Six chapters are about David Hume's views on religion, and approximately half of the work deals with Bolingbroke.

It was said of him that, "whatever his early opinions may have been, [he] became an Arian before his death".

The Eustace Street Meeting House where he ministered for 50 years, was a Presbyterian/Unitarian Congregation, eventually merging with other Unitarian groups in Dublin.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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The minds of men were already well prepared for this innovation. The praises of an inviolable chastity had been carried to the highest extravagance by some of the first preachers of Christianity among the Saxons: the pleasures of love had been represented as incompatible with…
David Hume, The History of England, Volume I
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If we consider the first rise of parties in England, during the great rebellion, we shall observe that it was conformable to this general theory, and that the species of government gave birth to them by a regular and infallible operation. The English constitution, before that period, had lain in a kind of confusion, yet so as that the subjects possessed many noble privileges, which, though not exactly bounded and…
David Hume, Essays
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The person who believes in a transcendental theology alone, is termed a deist; he who acknowledges the possibility of a natural theology also, a theist. The former admits that we can cognize by pure reason alone the existence of a Supreme Being, but at the same time maintains that our conception of this being is purely transcendental, and that all we can say of it is…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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Philosophers who discussed John Leland (Presbyterian)

Matthew Tindal

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Deism.

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