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c « as € d in 1767 , when he settled at Leeds , as minister to a large and respectable congregation of dissenters . The liberality of the persons composing it , and his own predilection for the ministerial office , rendered this a
very agreeable situation to him ; and in conformity with the duties of his function , lie resumed , with his characteristic ardour , his theological studies . One of the first results of these renewed inquiries was his conversion
to the system called Socinian , which he hasattribufed to a perusal of Dr . Lardners Letter on the Logos . A number of publications on different topics connected with religion announced the zeal by which he was inspired . Nor was he one who confined his labours
to the closet ; on the contrary , he was extremely assiduous in his pastoral instructions to the younger part of his flock . 16 Some of his writings displayed an attachment to
church-discipline , which he had probably imbibed from his early connexions with Calvinistic dissenters , since they had become obsolete among those with whoai he was now associated . He
likewise began to enter into controversy respecting the right and ground of dissenting in general , and to take his station as one of the most decided opposers of the authority of the establishment . It was at Leeds that
his attention was first excited , in consequence of his vicinity to a public brewery , to the properties of that gaseous fluid then termed fixed air , and his experiments led him so far
as to contrive a simple apparatus for impregnating water with it , which he afterwards made public . At this time , he says , he had very little knowledge of chemistry ; and to this circumstance he attributes in some measure the originality of those
ex-On this occasion he published , in 1772 , his " Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion . " His instructions to the joung he resumed with ardour on every change of situation , and had the merit of giving a new direction , among- the dissenting ministers , called Presbyterian , to
their theological labours , which , since they had outgrown a belief in the Assembly ' s Catechism , had been almost entirely confined to /> M / p ^ -instrnction . The pupils of Priestley revere his memory , and through not a few of them , though himself dead , he yot spoaks the word * of trutl * and so-• ernes * .
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periinents which produced the subsequent discoveries , that have rendered him so celebrated , since otherwise he might probably have followed some beaten track . The success of his History of Electricity induced him to
adopt the design of treating on other sciences , in the same historical manner ; and at Leeds he dilig-ently occupied himself in preparing his second work on this plan , " The History and present State of Discoveries relating to Vision , Light , and Colours . " The
expences necessary in composing such a work obliged him to issue proposals for publishing it by subscription , and it appeared in 1772 , in one volume 4 to . Though a performance of much
merit , its reception was not such as to encourage him to proceed in his design > and , fortunately for science , he afterwards confined himself to original researches of the experimental kind .
After a happy residence of six years in this situation , Dr . Priestley quitted it for one as different as could easily be imagined . The Earl of She ! burne ( afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne ) was one of the few English noblemen to whom it was an object of
gratification to enjoy at leisure hours the domestic society of a man of science and literature ; and he made a proposal to Dr . Priestley to reside with him in the nominal capacity of his librarian , but rather as his literary companion , upon terms which regard to the future provision of an increasing family
wouldnot permit him to decline . He therefore fixed his family in a house at Calne , in Wiltshire , near his lordship ' s seat ; and during seven years attended upon the Earl in his winter ' s residences at London , and occasionally in his excursions , one of which , in 1774 , was a tour to the continent . 17 This situation had doubt *
After visiting " Flanders , Holland , and Germany as far as Strasburg * , " he spent u a month at Paris . " Of the state « of religion among- the French literati , he gives the following- account : — As I wa « sufficiently apprized of the fact , I did not wonder as I should otherwise have done ,
to find all the philosophical persons to whom I was introduced at Paris unbelievers in Christianity , and even professed Atheists . —I was told by some of them that I was the only person they had ever met with , of whose understanding * they had any opinion , who professed to believe Christianity . But on interrogating- them
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Memoir of the late Rev . Joseph Priestley , LL . D . F . R . S < See . 5
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1815, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1756/page/5/
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