FARMER, Hugh, an English clergyman and a man of letters, belonging to the protestant nonconformists, was descended from people of respectability in North Wales, and first drew breath at Shrewsbury, in the year 1714. Dr Charles Owen was for some time his tutor; but previously to the period when he was under that master, he had been at a school in Llanegryn. His parents from the first having designed him for the ministry, he was in 1730 sent to prosecute his studies under Dr Doddridge at Northampton. Here, by the rectitude of his conduct and wonderful proficiency, he gained the esteem of that excellent person, who always spoke of him in the most respectful terms. Having completed his academical studies, Mr Farmer became the chaplain of William Coward, Esq. of Walthamstow, in the county of Essex, and was at the same time chosen minister of a dissenting congregation in that village. But notwithstanding the gratitude with which Mr Coward deserves to be remembered by many for his charitable institutions, he had certain peculiarities of temper which rendered him a very disagreeable compa-
nion. His doors were shut at an uncommonly early hour of the night, and neither visitor nor resident could afterwards obtain admission. Mr Farmer having one evening been detained a little beyond that hour, found the doors shut against him, and was under the necessity of applying to a Mr William Snell, solicitor, a man of eminence, and possessed of many excellent qualifications. In the family of this gentleman he remained for about thirty years, living in the greatest friendship and intimacy. Here also he gradually prepared those valuable treatises and dissertations which were afterwards given to the public, and which acquired him so much celebrity as a man of letters. He likewise continued to discharge the duties of his ministerial function to the people of Walthamstow.
When a day of thanksgiving was appointed for the suppression of the rebellion in 1745, Mr Farmer preached a sermon on that occasion, which was published the following year. His next work was of much greater importance, being entitled, An Inquiry into the Nature and Design of our Lord's Temptation in the Wilderness. In this production it was the design of Mr Farmer to prove that the whole was transacted in vision, the different stages of which were intended to point out to him the difficulties and duties of his subsequent ministry. The originality of thought and profound erudition which this work displayed, soon obtained for it a very extensive circulation, and called forth the exertions of those who were of an opposite opinion. It received one reply under the title of Christ's Temptations real Facts, which possessed considerable merit, but was much inferior to Mr Farmer's in energy of expression, depth of thinking, and force of argument. But the most masterly, perhaps, of all Mr Farmer's literary productions was his Dissertation on Miracles, designed to show that they are arguments of a divine interposition, and absolute proofs of the mission and doctrine of a prophet; a work which was first published in the year 1771. But as great talents are frequently envied, so this work of Mr Farmer was declared by some to have been chiefly borrowed from Lemoine's treatise on the same subject; slander which he refuted in a very able and satisfactory manner. In the year 1775 he published his celebrated Essay on the Demoniacs of the New Testament, which may be considered as the completion of the design he had in view by his dissertation on miracles. The hypothesis which he adopted had formerly been defended with great ability by Mede, Sykes, Lardner, and others; but it was reserved for the critical acuteness of Mr Farmer to free it from those difficulties with which it was surrounded, and to place the subject in a much clearer light. His essay on demoniacs was successively attacked by Dr Worthington and Mr Fell, both of them men of considerable erudition, but much inferior in ability to their antagonist.
Mr Farmer having continued for several years the sole pastor of the congregation at Walthamstow, an able colleague was appointed him in 1761, in consequence of which he became the afternoon preacher to the congregation of Salter's Hall, in the city of London, and soon afterwards the Tuesday lecturer at the same place. But he resigned his ministerial employments as he advanced in years, a circumstance which the people committed to his charge very much regretted. In the year 1785 an affection in his eyes nearly deprived him of sight, but by means of a surgical operation he was for some time enabled to resume his studies. Mortality is, however, the inevitable lot of all men, and in 1787 the growing infirmities of Mr Farmer brought him to the grave, in the seventy-third year of his age.