BARRINGTON, JOHN SHUTE

BARRINGTON, JOHN SHUTE, Lord Viscount Barrington, a nobleman distinguished for theological learning, was the youngest son of Benjamin Shute, merchant, and was born in 1678. He received part of his education at the university of Utrecht; and, after returning to England, studied law in the Inner Temple. In 1701 he commenced author by writing in favour of the civil rights of Protestant dissenters, to which body he belonged. On the recommendation of Lord Somers, he was employed to

engage the Presbyterians in Scotland to favour the union of the two kingdoms; and, in 1708, he was rewarded for this service, by being appointed to the office of commissioner of the customs. From this, however, he was removed by the Tory ministry of Queen Anne; but his fortune had, in the meantime, been improved by the bequest of two considerable estates, one of them left him by Francis Barrington of Tofts, Esq. whose name he assumed by act of parliament. Mr Barrington now stood at the head of the dissenters. On the accession of George I. he was returned member of parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed; and in 1720 the king raised him to the Irish peerage, by the style and title of Viscount Barrington of Ardglass. But having unfortunately engaged in one of the bubbles of the time, the Harburg lottery, he incurred the disgrace of expulsion from the House of Commons in 1723; a punishment which was thought greatly too severe, indeed altogether unmerited on his part. In 1725 he published his principal work, entitled Miscellanea Sacra, or a New Method of considering so much of the History of the Apostles as is contained in Scripture, in an Abstract of their History, an Abstract of that Abstract, and four Critical Essays, 2 vols. 8vo. This work, which traces the methods employed by the first preachers of the gospel in propagating Christianity, and explains the several gifts of the Spirit by which they were enabled to discharge their office, has always been reckoned a valuable and judicious defence of the Christian cause; and it was reprinted with additions and corrections, in 3 vols. 8vo, 1770, by his son, afterwards bishop of Durham. In the same year (1725) he published An Essay on the several Dispensations of God to Mankind, in the order in which these are unfolded in the Scriptures; and he was the author of various other tracts, chiefly on subjects relating to toleration in matters of religion. He died in 1734, in the 56th year of his age, leaving a number of children, of whom five sons had the singular good fortune to rise to high stations in the church, the law, the army, and the navy. Lord Barrington was a friend and disciple of Locke, whose sentiments he adopted as to the right and advantage of free inquiry, and the value of civil and religious liberty; and he contributed greatly to the rising spirit of liberal scriptural criticism amongst those who wished to render religion a subject of rational belief. He was a man of great moderation, and, though chiefly connected with the dissenters, he occasionally frequented and communicated with the established church.