Some years before this time, Mr. Lardner had become a member of two literary societies, which met weekly at a coffee-house in the city. One consisted entirely of ministers, who devoted themselves to theological pursuits; the other was of a more miscellaneous character, for the reading of essays and debating of questions on various learned or entertaining subjects.
About the year 1723, he had been engaged, in conjunction with some other ministers, in a weekly evening lecture, at the Old Jewry, on subjects chiefly of a moral and practical nature; but also entering, in a somewhat more regular and systematic manner than is usual on such occasions, into the evidences of natural and revealed religion. The department of this course allotted to Mr. Lardner was the proof of the Credibility of the Gospel History, on which important subject he delivered three sermons which contained, as it were, the first outlines of the great work on which his fame chiefly rests, ,and may possibly have suggested it to the author's mind. The first part of this work was undertaken shortly afterwards, and was at length published, though after considerable hesitation and delay, in February, 1727, in two volumes, under the title of ‘The Credibility of the Gospel History; ’
