HUTCHINSONIANS.

NAME AND HISTORY OF THE FOUNDER.The denomination of Christians, or religious party that bears this name, are the followers of John Hutchinson, Esq., a learned and respectable layman, who was born at Spennythorn, in Yorkshire, in 1674. Mr. H. received a private education; which, however, was liberal and excellent : and at the age of 19, he became steward to a gentleman; in which capacity he afterwards served the Duke of Somerset.

Having a great turn for natural history, and mineralogy, he improved the opportunities which his station in life, of having the superintendency of several coal and tin mines, gave him, and made a large collection of fossils, which he put into the hands of Dr. Woodward the physician, with observations for him to digest and publish.* The Doctor, however, is said to have deceived Mr. H. with fair promises, and never to have begun the work,

* This large and noble collection was afterwards bequeathed by Dr. Woodward to the university of Cambridge.

which induced him to rely on his own pèn. He therefore quitted the Duke's service, who, being at that time Master of the Horse to King George I. made him his riding surveyor, a sinecure place, worth 2001. a year, with a good house in the Meuse. The Duke also gave him the next presentation to the living of Sutton, in Sussex, which Mr. H. bestowed on his friend Mr. Julius Bate, a zealous defender of his doctrines.

In 1724, he published the first part of that curious work, his "Moses's Principia," in which he ridiculed Dr. Woodward's Natural History of the Earth, and exploded the doctrine of gravitation established in Sir Isaac Newton's Principia.-In the second part of this work, published in 1727, he maintained, in opposition to the Newtonian system, that a plenum was the principle of Scripture philosophy. In this work he also intimated, that the idea of the Trinity was to be taken from the grand agents in the natural system, fire, light, and spirit; which, it is said, so forcibly struck Dr. Clarke, that he requested to have an interview with Mr. H. on the subject, but the proposal was declined. -It appears that Mr. H. had a considerable knowledge of Mechanics; for, in 1712, he invented a time-keeper for the discovery of the longitude, which was approved by Sir I. Newton; and Mr. Whiston, in one of his tracts, has borne respectable testimony to his abilities.

From the time that he published the second part of his Principia, he continued to publish a

volume every year or two, till his death; and a correct and elegant edition of his works, including the MSS. which he left unpublished, were published in 1748, in 12 vol. 8vo., entitled, " The Philosophical and Theological Works of the late truly learned John Hutchinson, Esq.," by Julius Bate, Rector of Sutton, in Sussex, and Robert Spearman, late of Corpus Christi college, Oxford.

On the Monday before his death, Dr. Mead urged Mr. H. to be bled; saying pleasantly, "I will soon send you to Moses," meaning his studies; but Mr. H. taking it in the literal sense, answered in a muttering tone, "I believe, Doctor, you will;" and was so displeased, that he dismissed him for another physician; but he died in a few days after, August 28th, 1737.

DISTINGUISHING TENETS.-Mr. H. thought that the Hebrew Scriptures comprise a perfect system of natural philosophy, theology, and religion. So high an opinion did he entertain of the Hebrew language, that he thought the Almighty must have employed it to communicate every species of knowledge, human and divine, and that accordingly, every species of knowledge is to be found in the Old Testament; and both he and his followers laid a great stress on the evidence of Hebrew etymology. After Origen, and other eminent commentators, he asserted that the Scriptures were not to be understood and interpreted in a literal, but in a typical sense, and according to the radical import of the Hebrew

expressions; that even the historical parts, and particularly those relating to the Jewish ceremonies, and levitical law, were to be considered in this light; and he asserted further, that, agreeably to this mode of interpretation, the Hebrew Scriptures would be found to testify amply concerning the nature and offices of Jesus Christ.

His plan was no doubt new, and out of the common line; no less indeed, than to find Natural Philosophy in the Bible, where hitherto it had been thought no such thing was to be met with, or ever intended. And upon that popular hypothesis, contrived to account for and excuse the palpable contradictions between the current language of Scripture, and the now received and applauded system of philosophy, it had been objected by the numerous tribes of free-thinkers, "that if the pen-men of the Bible were mistaken in natural things, they might be so in spiritual; or, if the God of nature had inspired them in the one, he would have also done so in the other."

This triumphant attack upon the infallibility of the Scriptures, put our bold undertaker upon searching them in a manner different from what had hitherto been attempted, and induced him to try, whether the true and genuine sense of the original Hebrew, when fairly construed, without regard to any hypothesis ancient or modern, would not also be the true philosophy, and stand the test of every experiment and observation truly made.

His editors tell us, that the event answered his expectations; for, say they, he found upon examination, "That the Hebrew Scriptures no where ascribe motion to the body of the Sun, nor fixedness to the earth; that they describe the created system to be a plenum without any vacuum at all, and reject the assistance of gravitation, attraction, or any such occult qualities, for performing the stated operations of nature, which are carried on by the mechanism of the heavens, in their threefold condition of fire, light, and spirit, or air, the material agents set to work at the beginning:that the heavens, thus framed by Almighty wisdom, are an instituted emblem and visible substitute of Jehovah Aleim, the eternal three, the coequal and co-adorable Trinity in unity:-that the unity of substance in the heavens points out the unity of essence, and the distinction of conditions, the personality in Deity, without confounding the persons or dividing the substance. And that, from their being made emblems, they are called in Hebrew, Shemim, the names, representatives, or substitutes; expressing by their names, that they are emblems, and by their conditions or offices, what it is they are emblems of."

He likewise found that the Hebrew Scriptures had some capital words, which, he thought had not been duly considered and understood, and which he has proved, or endeavoured to prove, contain. in their radical meaning, the greatest and most comfortable truths. Thus, the word Elohim, which we call God, he reads Aleim, and refers it to the oath or conditional execration, by which the eternal cove