GEORGE, a learned dissenting minister, born at Great Salkeld, in Cumberland, in 1699. His progress in learning was so precocious, that at eleven years of age he was able to read the Greek Testament. He afterwards studied at Dr Dixon's academy at Whitehaven, from which he removed to the university of Glasgow. In 1721 he was chosen pastor of a congregation of dissenters at Abingdon, in Berkshire; in 1729 he received a call from a society of dissenters in Southwark, with whom he continued eleven years; and in 1740 he was chosen by the congregation of Crutched Friars, colleague to the learned and judicious Dr Lardner. From the time of his engaging in the ministry, he proposed to himself the critical study of the Scriptures, particularly of the New Testament, as a principal part of his business. The first fruits of these studies which he presented to the public was "A Defence of the reasonableness of Prayer, with a Translation of a Discourse of Maximus Tyrius, containing some popular Objections against Prayer, and an Answer to these." The light which Mr Locke had thrown on the obscurest parts of St Paul's Epistles, by making him his own expositor, encouraged and determined Mr Benson to attempt to illustrate the remaining epistles in the same manner. Accordingly, in 1731, he published, as a specimen, a Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle to Philemon. This was well received, and the author, encouraged to proceed in his design, proceeded with great diligence to publish paraphrases and notes on the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, the first and second to Timothy, and the Epistle to Titus; adding dissertations on several important subjects, particularly on inspiration. In the year 1735 he published his History of the First Planting of Christianity, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, and their Epistles, in 2 vols. 4to. In this work, besides illustrating throughout the history of the Acts and most of the epistles, by a view of the history of the times, the occasion of the several epistles, and the state of the churches to which they were addressed, he established the truth of the Christian religion on a number of facts, the most public, important, and incontestible. He also wrote, the Reasonableness of the Christian Religion, the History of the Life of Jesus Christ, a Paraphrase and Notes on the Bentham seven Catholic Epistles, and several other works, which procured him great reputation. One of the universities Bentinck in Scotland sent him a diploma conferring a doctor's degree; and many of high rank in the church of England, as Herring, Headley, Butler, Benson, and Conybeare, showed him great marks of favour and regard. He died in the year 1763, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.