Born at London, 1630: died at London, April, 1677. A noted English theologian, classical scholar, and mathematician. He was educated at Cambridge (scholar of Trinity 1647, and fellow 1649), traveled on the Continent (1655–59), was appointed professor of geometry at Gresham College, and in 1663 first Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge (resigned 1669 in favor of Newton); was chaplain to Charles II.; and became master of Trinity College in 1672. Among his works are “Lectiones Opticæ et Geometricæ” (1669–1670–74), “Treatise on the Pope’s Supremacy” (1680). The best edition of his theological works is that of Rev. A. Napier (1859).
Personal
His humour when a boy and after:—merry and cheerfull and beloved where ever he came. His grandfather kept him till he was 7 years old: his father was faine to force him away, for there he would have been good for nothing there. A good poet, English and Latin. He spake 8 severall languages…. He was a strong and a stowt man and feared not any man. He would fight with the butchers’ boyes in St. Nicholas’ shambles, and be hard enough for any of them…. At Constantinople, being in company with the English merchants, there was a Rhadamontade that would fight with any man and bragged of his valour, and dared any man there to try him. So no man accepting his challenge, said Isaac (not then a divine), “Why, if none els will try you I will:” and fell upon him and chastised him handsomely that he vaunted no more mongst them…. I have heard Mr. Wilson say that when he was at study, was so intent at it that when the bed was made, or so, he heeded it not nor perceived it, was so totus in hoc; and would sometimes be goeing out without his hatt on. He was by no meanes a spruce man, but most negligent in his dresse. As he was walking one day in St. James’s parke, looking … his hatt up, his cloake halfe on and halfe off, a gent. came behind him and clapt him on the shoulder and sayd “Well, goe thy wayes for the veriest scholar that ever I mett with.” He was a strong man but pale as the candle he studyed by.
All I have said, or can say, is far short of the idea which Dr. Barrow’s friends have formed of him, and that character which he ought to appear to them who knew him not. Besides all the defects on my part, he had in himself this disadvantage, of wanting foils to augment his lustre, and low places to give eminence to his heights, such virtues as his, contentment in all conditions, candour in doubtful cases, moderation among differing parties, knowledge without ostentation, are subjects fitter for praise than narrative.
When it is remembered that Barrow was only forty-seven years of age when he died, it seems almost incredible that in so short a life he could have gained so vast and multifarious a store of knowledge. Scholar, mathematician, man of science, preacher, controversialist, he gained enough credit in every one of these departments to make the reputation of an ordinary man; while his blameless, unselfish, christian life would be worth studying if he had gained no intellectual reputation at all…. As a mathematician he was considered by his contemporaries as second only to Newton, whose towering genius a little overshadowed that of his master; but on the other hand, his credit as a mathematician is enhanced by the fact that he was the first to recognise and develop the extraordinary talents of Newton, one of whose most famous discoveries he was on the verge of making.
Sermons
In Dr. Barrow, one admires more the prodigious fecundity of his invention, and the uncommon strength and force of his conceptions, than the felicity of his execution, or his talent in composition. We see a genius far surpassing the common, peculiar indeed almost to himself; but that genius often shooting wild, and unchastised by any discipline or study of eloquence.
Barrow’s sermons cannot but strike every one as being the works of a great thinker: they are, in truth, less properly orations, than trains of argumentative thought. His reasoning is prosecuted with an admirable union of comprehensiveness, sagacity, and clearness: and it is expressed in a style which, at once strong and regular, combines many of the virtues of the older writers with not a few of those that were appearing in the new.
He had a geometrical method and clearness, an inexhaustible fertility, extraordinary impetuosity and tenacity of logic, writing the same sermon three or four times over, insatiable in his craving to explain and prove, obstinately confined to his already overflowing thoughts, with a minuteness of division, an exactness of connection, a superfluity of explanation, so astonishing that the bearer at last gives in; and yet the mind turns with the vast machine, carried away and doubled up as by the rolling weight of a flattening machine.
The most celebrated sermons are instruments of edification rather than models of elegance. Barrow is geometrical, revises and re-revises, then revises again, dividing and subdividing, having only one desire—to explain and fully prove what he has to say.
Great as he was in learning of every kind, he was greatest as a preacher. The extraordinary length of his discourses, at which even his own generation protested, gives them the character of treatises rather than sermons, and it is clear that he was nothing if not complete in his treatment of the subjects he took up. But they cannot be considered dull. The style is strong, nervous, and impressive, and there is a force and directness about the argument which compels attention and sustains interest to the end. It is impossible to read his works without the feeling of being in the presence of a commanding personality.
General
The name of Dr. Barrow will ever be illustrious for a strength of mind and a compass of knowledge that did honour to his country. He was unrivalled in mathematical learning, and especially in the sublime geometry; in which he has been excelled only by one man, and that man was his pupil. The same genius that seemed to be born only to bring hidden truths to light, to rise to the heights, or descend to the depths of science, could sometimes amuse itself in the flowery paths of poetry. He at length gave himself up entirely to divinity; and particularly to the most useful part of it, that which has a tendency to make men wiser and better. He has, in his excellent sermons on the Creed, solved every difficulty, and removed every obstacle that opposed itself to our faith, and made divine revelation as clear as the demonstrations in his own “Euclid.”
Justification by Faith. On this subject I know of nothing so precise and accurate (though numberless and vast volumes have been written upon it from the Reformation downwards), as what is contained in Dr. Barrow’s “Discourses on Faith.” His notion on the whole is that Justification, as used by the sacred writers, and St. Paul in particular, means remission of sins, and admission into a state of favour with God, as if we were righteous, and not the infusion of inherent holiness by the Spirit; that this justification was primarily made on our entrance into the Christian covenant by baptism, and is afterwards renewed and regranted, as it were, on our repentance and return from such transgressions as we may have fallen into after baptism.
I mentioned that Mr. Fox always spoke of Barrow with enthusiasm, and that, upon the strength of this opinion, I bought his sermons, but found him insufferably dry; at least as far as I read, which was not very far. It is certain however, I believe, that besides containing the amplest stores of theological learning, he has also bursts of eloquence, which though not so poetical as Jeremy Taylor’s, are, from their variety and force, far more striking.
The school of Chillingworth, Mede, and Barrow—is the school of acute perception and close reasoning. Yet Barrow was perhaps the most able of the three: not in power of conception or of language—but in the systematic division, and masterly elucidation, of the various subjects of which he treats. He pushes his enquiries to the very verge, or confines, of which they are capable of being pushed; and his works afford a sort of logical Encyclopædia. He had the clearest head with which mathematics ever endowed an individual, and one of the purest and most unsophisticated hearts that ever beat in the human breast. He is to be studied with profit, rather than read with delight.
The sermons of Barrow display a strength of mind, a comprehensiveness and fertility, which have rarely been equalled…. In his style, notwithstanding its richness and occasional vivacity, we may censure a redundancy, and excess of apposition…. The Latin verse of Barrow is forcible and full of mind, but not sufficiently redolent of antiquity.
He once uttered a most memorable observation, which characterizes both the intellectual and moral constitution of his mind,—would that it could be engraven on the mind of every youth, as his guide through life,—“A straight line is the shortest in Morals as well as in geometry.”
In point of genius, was probably superior to Taylor.
The most striking things in his sermons are the extraordinary copiousness and vigour of the language, and the exhaustiveness and subtlety of the thought. He is a perfect mine of varied and vigorous expression. His sentences are thrown up with a rough careless vigour; and extreme antithesis to the polished flow of language and ideas in Addison. In his love of scrupulous definitions and qualifications we discover the mathematician; he divides and subdivides with Baconian minuteness, and in drawing parallels adjusts the compared particulars with acute exactness.
By the side of Tillotson, Isaac Barrow appears ponderous and even long-winded. He belongs to the new school more by what he avoids than by what he attains. He was a man of great intellectual force, who, born into an age which was beginning to stigmatise certain faults in its predecessor, was able to escape those particular errors of false ornament and studied quaintness, but could not train his somewhat elephantine feet to dance on the tight-rope of delicate ease. The matter of Barrow is always solid and virile, and he has phrases of a delightful potency.
