FARMER, HUGH, the well-known author of the Essay on Demonic, was an English Dissenting minister. He was born in 1714, in the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury, and after receiving a good elementary education, became finally the pupil of the celebrated Dr Doddridge at Northampton. On completing his studies, he was appointed to a charge at Walthamstow in Essex, officiating at the same time as chaplain to a wealthy gentleman in the neighbourhood, in whose house he lived. This residence he afterwards exchanged for the more hospitable dwelling of a less aristocratic parsonage, under whose roof he remained for thirty years, thinking out and composing those valuable treatises which afterwards gained him so much distinction. His first work of importance was published in 1761, under the title of An Inquiry into the Nature and Design of our Lord's Temptation in the Wilderness; and was designed to prove that the whole of that memorable transaction took place only in vision, and was intended to prefigure the labours and offices of our Lord's future ministry. The originality of the idea, and the great learning with which it was maintained, secured for it a wide and speedy circulation. In 1765 a second edition of it appeared considerably enlarged, in which the objections started against the first edition were answered; and the several subsequent editions were all calculated to strengthen the author's position. In 1771 appeared 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." This is the author's most valuable contribution to theological science. The clamour raised against the author, of having borrowed from a treatise on the same subject by Lemoine, was silenced by himself in his Examination of the essay of that divine. Farmer's next publication, and the one by which he is best known, though it can hardly claim to be his ablest work, was his Essay on the Demonic of the New Testament, which may be regarded as a sort of sequel to his treatise on Miracles. The propositions maintained in this volume were attacked with considerable ability but very moderate success by Dr Worthington, a learned clergyman of the English Church, and afterwards by Mr Fell, a Dissenter. Farmer's
last work of importance was published in 1783, under the title of "The General Prevalence of the Worship of Human Spirits in the Ancient Heathen Nations, asserted and proved." In 1761, Farmer removed to London, where he continued to officiate to the congregation of Salter's Hall till his death in 1787.