THOMAS, a noted polemical writer, born at East Harnham, a village near Salisbury, in 1679. He was put as apprentice to a glover at Salisbury, and afterwards entered into partnership with a tallow chandler. Being a man of strong natural parts, he employed all his leisure in reading; and, though a stranger to the learned languages, became tolerably conversant in geography, mathematics, and other branches of science. His favourite study was divinity; and he formed a little society for the purpose of debating upon religious subjects, about the time that the trinitarian controversy was so warmly agitated between Clarke and Waterland. This subject, therefore, falling under the cognizance of Chubb's theological assembly, he, at their request, drew up and arranged his sentiments upon it in a kind of dissertation, which was afterwards published under the title of The Supremacy of the Father asserted. He published afterwards a quarto volume of tracts, which, Mr Pope informs his friend Gay, he had "read through with admiration of the writer, though not always with approbation of his doctrine." He died a single man, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.