WOLLASTON (William), descended of an ancient family in Staffordshire, was born in 1659. He was in 1674 admitted a pensioner in Sidney college, Cambridge, where, notwithstanding several disadvantages, he acquired a great degree of reputation. In 1682, seeing no prospect of preferment, he became assistant to the head master of Birmingham school. Some time after, he got a small lecture about two miles distant, but did the duty the whole Sunday; which, together with the business of a great free-school for about four years, began to break his constitution. During this space he likewise underwent a great deal of trouble and uneasiness, in order to extricate two of his brothers from some inconveniences, to which their own imprudence had subjected them. In 1688 affairs took a new turn. He found himself by a cousin's will intitled to a very ample estate; and came to London that same year, where he settled; choosing a private, retired, and studious life. Not long before his death, he published his treatise, intitled The Religion of Nature Delineated; a work for which so great a demand was
made, that more than 10,000 were sold in a very few years. He had scarcely completed the publication of it, when he unfortunately broke an arm; and this adding strength to distempers that had been growing upon him for some time, accelerated his death: which happened upon the 29th of October 1724. He was a tender, humane, and in all respects worthy man; but is represented to have had something of the irascible in his constitution and temperament. His Religion of Nature Delineated exposed him to some censure, as if he had put a slight upon Christianity by laying so much stress, as he does in this work, upon the obligations of truth, reason, and virtue; and by making no mention of revealed religion. But the censure, upon such ground, seems unjust; since it was not essential to the plan of the work to meddle with revealed religion.