LESLIE (Charles), was a man so eminent for his learning, his talents, and his piety, that a fuller account of him than that which is given in the Encyclopædia must be acceptable to our Christian readers. He was the second son of Dr John Leslie bishop of Clogher in Ireland, who was descended from an ancient family in the north of Scotland, and being an admirable scholar, rose to the dignity of bishop of Orkney in his own country, whence he was translated, in 1633, to Raphoe in Ireland, and afterwards, in 1661, to the see of Clogher.
Our author was born in Ireland, but in what year we have not learned. A ludicrous story goes indeed of his having been begotten in prison, and of his father having said that he hoped he would in consequence become the greatest scourge of the covenanters that Great Britain or Ireland had ever seen. This story, with all its circumstances as told to us, can hardly be true; but we think it could not have been fabricated, had not Charles Leslie been born within a year of Cromwell's conquest of Ireland, when the good bishop, having sustained a siege in his castle of Raphoe against that arch-rebel, was some time kept in close confinement.
We are equally ignorant of the school where he was educated as of the year of his birth; but we know that he had his academical education in Trinity College, Dublin, where he took the degree of master of arts. In the year 1671, he lost his father, when he came over to England, and, entering himself in the temple, studied law for some years, but afterwards relinquished it for the study of divinity. In 1680, he was admitted into holy orders; and, in 1687, was made chancellor of Connor.
About this period he rendered himself particularly obnoxious to the Popish party in Ireland, by his zealous opposition to them, which was thus called forth. Roger Boyle, bishop of Clogher, dying in 1687, Patrick Tyrrel was made titular Popish bishop, and had the revenues of the see assigned him by king James. He set
Leslie. up a convent of friars in Monaghan: and, fixing his habitation there, held a public visitation of his clergy with great solemnity; when, some subtle logicians attending him, he was so insolent as to challenge the Protestant clergy to a public disputation. Leslie undertook the task, and performed it to the satisfaction of the Protestants; though it happened, as it generally does at such contests, that both sides claimed the victory. He afterwards held another public disputation with two celebrated Popish divines, in the church of Tynan, in the diocese of Armagh, before a very numerous assembly of persons of both religions; the issue of which was, that Mr John Stewart, a Popish gentleman, solemnly renounced the errors of the church of Rome.
As the Papists had got possession of an Episcopal see, they engrossed other offices too; and a Popish high-sheriff was appointed for the county of Monaghan. This proceeding alarmed the gentlemen in that county; who, depending much on Leslie's knowledge as a justice of peace, repaired to him, then confined, by the gout, to his house. He told them, that it would be as illegal in them to permit the sheriff to act as it would be in him to attempt it. But they insisting that he should appear himself on the bench at the next quarter sessions, and all promising to stand by him, he was carried thither with much difficulty and in great pain. When the sheriff appeared, and was taking his place, he was asked whether he was legally qualified; to which he answered pertly, "That he was of the king's own religion, and it was his majesty's will that he should be sheriff." Leslie replied, "That they were not inquiring into his majesty's religion, but whether he (the pretended sheriff) had qualified himself according to law, for acting as a proper officer; that the law was the king's will, and nothing else to be deemed such; that his subjects had no other way of knowing his will, but as it is revealed to them in his laws: and it must always be thought to continue so, till the contrary is notified to them in the same authentic manner." Upon this, the bench unanimously agreed to commit the pretended sheriff, for his intrusion and arrogant contempt of the court. Leslie also committed some officers of that tumultuous army which the Lord Tyrconnel raised for robbing the country.
In this spirited conduct Leslie acted like a found divine and an upright magistrate; but though he thought himself authorised to resist the illegal mandates of his sovereign, like many other great and good men, he distinguished between active and passive obedience, and felt not himself at liberty to transfer his allegiance from that sovereign to another. Refusing therefore to take the oaths to king William and queen Mary, he was deprived of all his preferments; and in 1689 he removed with his family to England, where he published the following works, besides those already noticed in the Encyclopaedia: 1. Answer to Archbishop King's State of the Protestants in Ireland. 2. Cassandra, concerning the new Associations, &c. 1703, 4to. 3. Rehearsals; at first a weekly paper, published afterwards twice a week in a half-sheet, by way of dialogue on the affairs of the times; begun in 1704, and continued for six or seven years. 4. The Wolf stripped of his Shepherd's Clothing, in Answer to Moderation a Virtue, 1704, 4to. The pamphlet it answers was written by James Owen. 5. The Bishop of Sarum's [Burnet's] proper
Defence, from a Speech said to be spoken by him against occasional conformity, 1704, 4to. 6. The new Association of those called Moderate Churchmen, &c. occasioned by a pamphlet, intitled, The Danger of Priestcraft, 1705, 4to. 7. The new Association, part 2d, 1705, 4to. 8. The Principles of Dissenters concerning Toleration and occasional Conformity, 1705, 4to. 9. A Warning for the Church of England, 1706, 4to. Some have doubted whether these two pieces were his. 10. The good old Cause, or Lying in Truth; being a second Defence of the Bishop of Sarum from a second Speech, &c. 1710. For this a warrant was issued out against Leslie. 11. A Letter to the Bishop of Sarum, in Answer to his Sermon after the Queen's Death, in Defence of the Revolution, 1715. 12. Salt for the Leech. 13. The Anatomy of a Jacobite. 14. Galienus redivivus. 15. Delenda Carthago. 16. A Letter to Mr William Molyneux, on his Case of Ireland's being bound by the English Acts of Parliament. 17. A Letter to Julian Johnson. 18. Several Tracts against Dr Higden and Mr Hoadly. 19. A Discourse, shewing who they are that are now qualified to administer Baptism. 20. The History of Sin and Herefy, &c. 1698, 8vo. 21. The Truth of Christianity demonstrated, in a Dialogue between a Christian and a Deist, 1711, 8vo.—Against the Papists: 22. Of private Judgment and Authority in Matters of Faith. 23. The Case stated between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, &c. 1713. 24. The true notion of the Catholic Church, in Answer to the Bishop of Meaux's Letter to Mr Nelson, &c.
Besides these, he published the four following tracts: 25. A Sermon preached in Chester, against Marriages in different Communions, 1702, 8vo. This sermon occasioned Mr Dodwell's discourse upon the same subject. 26. A Dissertation concerning the Use and Authority of Ecclesiastical History. 27. The Case of the Regal and the Pontificate. 28. A Supplement, in Answer to a Book, intitled, The regal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical Affairs asserted, &c. These two last pieces were occasioned by the dispute about the rights of convocation, between Wake, &c. on one side, and Atterbury and his friends, among whom was Leslie, on the other.
It is said by the authors of the Biographical Dictionary, that, in consequence of a publication of his, intitled, "The hereditary right of the crown of England asserted," he was under the necessity of leaving the kingdom; and that he repaired to the Pretender at Bar le duc, where he was allowed to officiate, in a private chapel, after the rites of the church of England; and where he endeavoured, though in vain, to convert the Pretender to the Protestant religion.
That he repaired to Bar le duc, and endeavoured to convert to the church of England him whom he considered as the rightful sovereign of England, is indeed true; but we have reason to believe that this was not in consequence of his being obliged to leave the kingdom. There is, in the first place, some grounds to believe, that "The hereditary right of the crown of England asserted" was not written by him; and there is still in existence undoubted evidence, that, in consequence of his great fame as a polemic, he was sent to Bar le duc for the express purpose of endeavouring to convert the son of James II. by some gentlemen of fortune in England, who wished to see that prince on the throne of
of his ancestors. The writer of this article had the honour, 16 or 17 years ago, to be known to the granddaughter of one of those gentlemen—a lady of the strictest veracity; and from her he received many anecdotes of Leslie and his associates, which, as he did not then foresee that he should have the present occasion for them, he has suffered to slip from his memory. That lady is still alive, and we have reason to believe is in possession of many letters by Leslie, written in confidence to her grandfather, both from Bar le due and from St Germans; and by the account which she gave of these letters, Leslie appears to have considered his prince as a weak and incorrigible bigot, though, in every thing but religion, an amiable and accomplished man. This may have been his genuine character; for we all know that it was the character of his father; but it is not of him that we are writing.
Mr Leslie having remained abroad from the year 1709 till 1721, returned that year to England, resolving, whatever the consequences might be, to die in his own country. Some of his friends acquainting lord Sunderland with his purposes, implored his protection for the good old man, which his lordship readily and generously promised. Mr Leslie had no sooner arrived in London, than a member of the house of commons officiously waited on lord Sunderland with the news, but met with such a reception from his lordship as the malice of his errand deserved. Our author then went over to Ireland, where he died April 11. 1722. at his own house at Glaslough in the county of Monaghan.
His character may be summed up in a few words. Consummate learning, attended by the lowest humility, the strictest piety without the least tincture of moroseness, a conversation to the last degree lively and spirited, yet to the last degree innocent, made him the delight of mankind, and leaves what Dr Hickey says of him unquestionable, that he made more converts to a sound faith and holy life than any other man of our times.
A charge, however, has been lately brought against him of such a nature, as, if well founded, must detract not only from his literary fame, but also from his integrity. "The short and easy Method with the Deists" is unquestionably his most valuable, and apparently his most original work; yet this tract is published in French among the works of the Abbé St Real, who died in 1692; and therefore it has been said, that unless it was published in English prior to that period, Charles Leslie must be considered as a shameless plagiarist.
The English work was certainly not published prior to the death of Abbé St Real; for the first edition bears date July 17th 1697; and yet many reasons conspire to convince us, that our countryman was no plagiarist. There is indeed a striking similarity between the English and the French works; but this is no complete proof that the one was copied from the other. The article PHILOLOGY in the Encyclopædia Britannica, of which Dr Doig is the author, was published the very same week with Dr Vincent's dissertation on the Greek verb. It was therefore impossible that either of these learned men, who were till then strangers to each others names, could have stolen aught from the other; and yet Dr Vincent's derivation of the Greek verb bears as striking a resemblance to Dr Doig's as the Abbé St Real's work does to Charles Leslie's. In the article MIRACLES
(Encyc.), the credibility of the gospel miracles is established by an argument, which the author certainly borrowed from no man, and which the late principal Campbell considered as original; yet within half a year of the publication of that article, the credibility of the gospel miracles was treated in the very same manner by F. SAYERS, M. D. though there is in his dissertation complete internal evidence that he had not seen the article in the Encyclopædia. Not many months ago, the author of this sketch reviewed, in one of the journals, the work of a friend, which was at the same time reviewed in another journal, that at this moment he has never seen. Yet he has been told by a friend, who is much versant in that kind of reading, and knows nothing of his concern with either review, that the book in question must, in both journals, have been reviewed by the same hand; because in both the same character is given of it in almost the very same words!
After these instances of apparent plagiarism, which we know to be only apparent, has any man a right to say that Charles Leslie and the Abbé St Real might not have treated their subject in the way that they have done, without either borrowing from the other? The coincidence of arrangement and reasoning in the two works is indeed very surprising; but it is by no means so surprising as the coincidence of etymological deductions which appears in the works of the Doctors Doig and Vincent. The divine reason from the acknowledged laws of human thought; the reasonings of the grammarians, with all due deference to their superior learning, we cannot help considering as sometimes fanciful.
But this is not all that we have to urge on the subject. If there be plagiarism in the case, and the identity of titles looks very like it, it is infinitely more probable that the editor of St Real's works stole from Leslie, than that Leslie stole from St Real, unless it can be proved that the works of the Abbé, and this work in particular, were published before the year 1697. At that period, the English language was very little read or understood on the continent; whilst in Britain the French language was, by seculars, as generally understood as at present. Hence it is, that so many Frenchmen, and indeed foreigners of different nations, thought themselves safe in pilfering science from the British philosophers; whilst there is not, that we know, one well authenticated instance of a British philosopher appropriating to himself the discoveries of a foreigner. If, then, such men as LEIBNITZ, JOHN BERNOULLI, and DES CARTES, trusting to the improbability of detection, condescended to pilfer the discoveries of HOOKE, NEWTON, and HARRIOT, is it improbable that the editor of the works of St Real would claim to his friend a celebrated tract, of which he knew the real author to be obnoxious to the government of his own country, and therefore not likely to have powerful friends to maintain his right?
But farther, Burnet, bishop of Sarum, was an excellent scholar, and well read, as every one knows, in the works of foreign divines. Is it conceivable, that this prelate, when smarting under the lash of Leslie, would have let slip so good an opportunity of covering with disgrace his most formidable antagonist, had he known that antagonist to be guilty of plagiarism from the writings of the Abbé St Real? Let it be granted, however,
however, that Burnet was a stranger to these writings and to this plagiarism; it can hardly be supposed that Le Clare was a stranger to them likewise. Yet this author, when, for reasons best known to himself, he chose (1706) to depreciate the argument of the short method, and to traduce its author as ignorant of ancient history, and as having brought forward his four marks for no other purpose than to put the deceitful traditions of Popery on the same footing with the most authentic doctrines of the gospel, does not so much as insinuate that he borrowed these marks from a Popish abbe, though such a charge, could he have established it, would have served his purpose more than all his rude railings and invective. But there was no room for such a charge. In the second volume of the works of St. Real, published in 1757, there is indeed a tract entitled Méthode Courte et Aisé pour combattre les Deistes; and there can be little doubt but that the publisher wished it to be considered as the work of his countryman. Unfortunately, however, for his design, a catalogue of the Abbe's works is given in the first volume; and in that catalogue the Méthode Courte et Aisé is not mentioned.
We have dwelt thus long on The Short and Easy Method with the Deists, because it is one of the ablest works that ever was written in proof of the Divine origin of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; a work of which the merit is acknowledged by Lord Bolingbroke, and which, as has been observed elsewhere (see THEOLOGY, n° 16. Encycl.) Dr. Conyers Middleton confesses to be unanswerable. If by men of science we be thought to have spent our time well in vindicating the rights of our illustrious philosophers Hooke and Newton, to discoveries which have been unjustly claimed by the philosophers of Germany and France; we will not surely be the friends of Christianity be thought to have employed our time ill in vindicating Leslie's claim to this decisive argument in support of our holy religion.