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on the subject of Scripture criticism; and how favourable an opinion that noble writer formed of our author's paraphrase and notes, appears from a letter of his to
Mr. Benson, written in November 1734:—‘I received the favour of your second Epistle to Timothy, and have looked it carefully over; and can now return you my thanks for the kind present you have made, and for the instruction I have received from it at the same time.
The “History of the state of things, &c.”
is very full and clear.
The Synopsis, short and comprehensive.
The full meaning of the Apostle seems every where to be pursued in the paraphrase and notes.
Many of them are what I have not met with in other critics and commentators, and are at the same time extremely well supported.
The two essays are very accurate, and of great importance towards letting us into the true state of things in those times, relating to the planting and settling of the churches, and the exercise of the spiritual gifts.
There is but little in which I can differ from you.’
Of this work, taken as a whole, it is not, perhaps, too much to say, and it is a high commendation, that it is not unworthy to be ranked as a sequel to the labours of Locke and Peirce.
It immediately placed the author's name at a high point in the catalogue of liberal, rational, and learned theologians—a station which he did not forfeit by his later writings.
In 1735, Mr. Benson published the History of the first planting of the Christian Religion, taken from the Acts of the Apostles and their Epistles, together with the remarkable facts of the Jewish and Roman history which affected the Christians
