Born at Wasely, Lincolnshire, England, Feb. 14, 1683; died in London, Dec. 23, 1740. He became a fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, 1704, and its master, 1713; Chaplain to George I, 1714; rector of Ellingham, 1713, and of St. Austin and St. Faith, London, 1720; Chancellor of York, 1723; canon of Windsor, 1727; vicar of Twickenham and archdeacon of Middlesex, 1730. He is eminent as a patristic scholar, a champion of orthodoxy, and a fair-minded and unembittered controversialist. Besides much against Dr. Samuel Clarke, Whitby, Middleton, Tindal, and others, he wrote a “Critical History of the Athanasian Creed,” Cambridge, 1724, n. e. Oxford, 1870, and a “Review of the Doctrine of Eucharist,” 1737, n. e. Oxford, 1868. His works, with a memoir by Bishop Van Mildert, were collected in 11 vols., Oxford, 1823–28, and in 6 vols., 1843 and 1856.
General
The Stile is simple and unadorned, but clear and nervous; and such an unusual plainness runs through the whole, that perhaps it is a kind of Stile which never yet appeared; but which wants only to appear, in order to be admired and imitated.
This great man is the Archimedes of the Christian Church. His Demonstrations, like engines and battering-rams, drive all before them. Neither Dr. Clarke, nor Jackson, nor even Emlyn, could stand before him.
Few names, recorded in the annals of the Church of England, stand so high in the estimation of its most sound and intelligent members, as that of Dr. Waterland. During a period remarkable for literary and theological research, and fruitful in controversies upon subjects of primary importance, this distinguished writer acquired, by his labours in the cause of religious truth, an extensive and solid reputation. Nor did the reputation thus acquired die away with those controversies in which he bore so large a share. It has survived the occasions which gave them birth, and still preserves its lustre unimpaired. His writings continue to be referred to by divines of the highest character, and carry with them a weight of authority never attached but to names of acknowledged preëminence in the learned world.
A learned and able defender of some important points; but little, as far as the author has seen, of evangelical and devout divinity, or the main principle of the gospel,—salvation by grace.
Waterland, the most learned of contemporary divines.
Then arose a Christian champion who annihilated those anti-Trinitarians who held a middle ground between the Catholic faith and Humanitarianism pure and simple, as completely as Butler and others annihilated Deism. This was Dr. Waterland, who first appeared in the arena in 1719, and routed Dr. Clarke and his friends from one position after another until he left them no ground to stand upon, except that of admitting the full Divinity of Christ, or regarding Him as a mere man…. Dr. Waterland took a comprehensive view of the whole question, and left to posterity not only an effective answer to Dr. Clarke, but a masterly and luminous exposition of a fundamental doctrine of the faith, the equal to which it would be difficult to find in any other author, ancient or modern.
Waterland did more than any other divine of his generation to check the advance of latitudinarian ideas within the church of England. His deep and accurate learning and his command of nervous and perspicuous English rendered him unusually formidable as a controversialist. Of mysticism and philosophy he was suspicious, and was therefore reduced to rest the defence of Christianity entirely on external evidence.
