Born at Norwich, England, Oct. 11, 1675; died at London, May 17, 1729. A celebrated English divine and metaphysical writer, son of an alderman of Norwich. He was a graduate of Cambridge (Caius College), and was successively rector of Drayton, near Norwich; of St. Bennet’s, London, in 1706; and of St. James’s, Westminster, in 1709. He was also one of the chaplains of Queen Anne. His most celebrated work is his “Boyle Lectures” (1704–05), published as “A Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, in answer to Mr. Hobbes, Spinoza, etc.” His metaphysical argument for the existence of God is especially famous, and he also holds a high place in the history of the science of ethics.
Personal
Innocence is playful: Dr. Clarke not only loved to show his agility, by jumping over chairs and tables, but he would often unbend himself with his own or other children, in a way that would disgust austerity; but he would instantly stop if he saw a weak person approaching them, giving himself, the watchword, “Be grave, here comes a fool.”
Almost the only personal anecdotes to be found were printed in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1783 from notes by the Rev. Mr. Jones of Welwyn. They seem to show that Clarke was generally courtier-like and cautious in his conversation, but that he became playful in the intimacy of a few friends. He remonstrated impressively with his children for killing flies. Thomas Bott once found him “swimming on a table,” and on the approach of a solemn coxcomb on some such occasion heard him say, “Boys, be wise, here comes a fool!” Warton, in his “Essay on Pope,” says that Clarke would amuse himself by jumping over tables and chairs, and he appears to have been fond of cards. He was remarkable for his careful economy of time. He always had a book in his pocket, and is said never to have forgotten anything that he once learned. At Norwich he preached extempore, but afterwards took great pains in the composition of his sermons.
General
One of the most accurate, learned, and judicious writers this age has produced.
Now I perceive that in these Sermons he had dealt a great deal in abstract and metaphysical reasonings. I therefore asked him how he ventured into such subtilties, which I never durst meddle with? And shewing him a nettle, or the like contemptible weed, in my garden, I told him, that weed contained better arguments for the Being and Attributes of God, than all his metaphysicks. He confessed it to be so; but alleged for himself, that, since such philosophers as Hobbes and Spinoza had made use of those kind of subtilties against, he thought proper to shew, that the like way of reasoning might be better made use on the side of, religion. Which reason, or excuse, I allowed not to be inconsiderable.
Dr. Clarke was as bright a light and masterly a teacher of truth and virtue as ever yet appeared among us…. His sentiments and expressions were so masterly, his way of explaining the phraseology of Scripture by collecting and comparing together the parallel places, so extraordinary and convincing, as to make his method of preaching so universally acceptable, that there was not a parishioner who was not always pleased at his coming into their Pulpit, or who was ever weary of his instruction. His works must last as long as any language remains to convey them to future times.
Even our better models are very defective. I have lately turned over Dr. Clarke’s large collection, for the use of my parish; and yet, with much altering, and many additions, I have been able to pick out no more than eight or ten that I could think passable for that purpose. He is clear and happy enough in the explication of Scripture; but miserably cold and lifeless; no invention, no dignity, no force; utterly incapable of enlarging on a plain thought, or of striking out new ones: in short, much less of a genius than I had supposed him.
Everywhere abounds in good sense, and the most clear and accurate reasoning; his applications of scripture are pertinent; his style is always perspicuous, and often elegant; he instructs and he convinces; in what then is he deficient? In nothing except in the power of interesting and seizing the heart. He shows you what you ought to do; but he excites not the desire of doing it; he treats man as if he were a being of pure intellect without imagination or passions.
After Locke and Newton, the most distinguished of the English philosophers.
The chief glory of Clarke, as a metaphysical author, is due to the boldness and ability with which he placed himself in the breach against the Necessitarians and Fatalists of his times. With a mind far inferior to that of Locke, in comprehensiveness, in originality, and in fertility of invention, he was nevertheless the more wary and skillful disputant of the two; possessing, in a singular degree, that reach of thought in grasping remote consequences, which effectually saved him from those rash concessions into which Locke was frequently betrayed by the greater warmth of his temperament and vivacity of his fancy. This logical foresight (the natural result of his habits of mathematical study) rendered him peculiarly fit to contend with adversaries eager and qualified to take advantage of every vulnerable point in his doctrine; but it gave, at the same time, to his style a tameness and monotony, and want of colouring, which never appear in the easy and spirited, though often unfinished and unequal, sketches of Locke. Voltaire has somewhere said of him, that he was a mere reasoning machine, (un moulin à raisonnement), and the expression (though doubtless much too unqualified) possesses merit, in point of just discrimination, of which Voltaire was probably not fully aware.
Dr. Clarke was a superior scholar, and a man who studied the Bible with attention, though some of its grand doctrines were not correctly understood by him…. Those who are partial to paraphrases of the Bible, which the author of this work is not, will find Clarke and Pyle not inferior to the generality of paraphrasts.
The characteristic excellence of Dr. Clarke as a writer, consists in the vigour and clearness of his understanding. As a metaphysician, he has, we think, been greatly overrated. His abstruser speculations remind us rather of the intricate and unmeaning subtilities of the schoolmen, than of the depth and comprehensiveness of Bacon, Leibnitz, Locke, or Edwards. But when a sound and manly sense is all that is required to elucidate a question, there Dr. Clarke appears almost without a rival. He appears, as a writer, entirely destitute of imagination and sensibility. His theological system was, in one point, as we have already seen, very erroneous. In other respects he appears, though an Arminian, to have held the leading principles of the gospel. His sermons are clear and well-arranged: but, on the whole, much inferior to the best of his other works. In life and warmth of evangelical sentiment they are especially defective.
Whatever may be thought of the à priori argument, as it is called, for the being of God, it is certain that Clarke has based his ethical system on a just foundation: morality is in his view acting and feeling in harmony with the relations of things. Right reason is on its side, though probably most men will reach moral duties more easily in the method adopted by Butler. It is also to his honour that he defended the doctrine of moral liberty against the Fatalist school which Hobbes had fostered.
The most illustrious of all, the learned Clarke, a mathematician, philosopher, scholar, theologian.
Sir Isaac Newton’s chief contribution to metaphysics was in the form of a scholium to the second edition of the “Principia,” 1713, respecting Space and Duration, which was subsequently expanded into an à priori argument by Dr. S. Clarke and the philosophers of his school. It is singular, yet true, that the subsequent deviation from Locke’s principles and method, or more properly, the recognition of an appropriate sphere for à priori truth, for which Locke’s analysis had failed to provide, should have been largely owing to the influence of these two eminent physicists. The fact cannot be questioned that speculative philosophy asserted a wider range of inquiry for itself under the impulse given to it by Dr. Samuel Clarke and the theologians and philosophers of his school.
As regards style, Clarke’s sermons may almost be said to have been the models of the Scotch “moderate” school of preachers—heavy, prolix, argumentative, full of practical good sense, and possessing more of the ardour familiar to us under the name “Evangelical.”
Homer has never had a more judicious or acute commentator…. As a metaphysician, he was inferior to Locke in comprehensiveness and originality, but possessed more skill and logical foresight, the natural result of his habits of mathematical study; and he has been justly celebrated for the boldness of ability with which he placed himself in the breach against the Necessitarians and Fatalists of his times.
Samuel Clarke was a man of sufficient intellectual vigour to justify a very high reputation, and his faults were those which are less obvious to the eyes of contemporaries than of posterity. He was deficient in originality and acuteness. He had perspicuity enough to avoid some of the extravagances of the school to which he belonged, but not enough to detect its fundamental fallacies. His contemporaries might therefore regard him as a bold, yet wary, logician; to us he appears to be a second-rate advocate of opinions interesting only in the mouths of the greater men who were their first and ablest advocates. He somewhat resembles a more recent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. Whewell, and stands to Leibnitz in the same sort of relation which Whewell occupied to modern German philosophers. In softening the foreign doctrines to suit English tastes, he succeeds in enervating them without making them substantially more reasonable. Clarke was the great English representative of the à priori method of constructing a system of theology. He was sufficiently tainted by rationalism to fall into certain errors in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity; and his incipient heterodoxy has caused later theologians to look upon him with suspicion, and has helped to reduce his name to a humble position in the list of eminent defenders of the faith. A more special characteristic resulted from his being regarded by himself and others as a theological lieutenant of Newton. In defence of that great name he plunged into a remarkable controversy with Leibnitz, from which he was held to have emerged with honour. The whole tone of his writings is coloured by the same influence. His ambition apparently was to compose a work which should be to Christianity what the “Principia” was to astronomy. More than any English writer he clothes his arguments with that apparatus of quasi-mathematical phraseology which was common to most of the followers of Descartes.
If these editions [of Homer] had appeared before the age of Bentley, they might have had some prospect of more durable reputation; but the rapid advance of modern scholarship has left them far behind; and they now remain chiefly as witnesses of the large and liberal culture of mind more scientific than critical.
The clear and solid reasonings of Samuel Clarke.
With much convincing force, but in a cold, mathematical style.
Clarke’s style is not particularly attractive. It is usually intelligible and fairly clear, but it inclines to be ponderous, and is marred by too plentiful sprinklings of Scripture texts. He has no humour, no imagination, and no great depth or originality of thought. In his philosophical writings he sought to introduce the truths of other men in plain and simple language and succeeded fairly well. His sermons are clear, forcible and well sustained. They exhibit great commonsense and moderation, and though far from beautiful, are dignified and in good taste. His Paraphrases of the Gospels are very able. The language is vigorous and fairly natural. They are colloquial, without irreverence or undue familiarity.
