John, a philosophical and theological writer of the last century, was born in 1674 at Spennithorne, in Yorkshire. He received an excellent education from a gentleman who lodged with his father, and after leaving the paternal roof served as steward in several families of rank and wealth. His best friend, however, was the Duke of Somerset, who, when he was himself made Master of the Horse, appointed Hutchinson his riding purveyor. This office afforded him great facilities for his favourite study of natural history, and enabled him to make a large and valuable collection of fossils. These, along with his M.S. notes on them, he made over to Dr Woodward, the duke's physician, to arrange and publish. Woodward, however, bequeathed both the fossils and their collector's injunctions to the university of Cambridge. Hutchinson construed this act into an attempt to deprive him of his fame as a geologist, and did his best to expose Woodward's conduct in his Moses' Principia, of which the first part saw the light in 1724. In this strange work the author, after giving his version of the Woodward affair, gravely set Hutchinson about disproving the Newtonian doctrine of gravitation. Three years later he published the second part, in which he followed up his attack on Newton, and quoted Scripture in proof of the existence of a plenum in opposition to the doctrine of a vacuum, on which the Newtonian philosophy is based. From this time till his death he continued to publish at intervals volume after volume in defence of his views. He died August 28, 1737. Eleven years after his death his collective works were published in 12 vols. 8vo, under the title of The Philosophical and Theological Works of the late truly learned John Hutchinson, Esq. In the preface to this edition there is an elaborate defence of Hutchinson, and an exposition of his views by Spearman and Bate, the literary executors of the author. A good summary of these views will also be found in a little book called Thoughts Concerning Religion, published at Edinburgh in 1743. The gist of these is that in the Bible is contained a complete and infallible system of natural history and philosophy as well as of religion and theology. This, however, is to be gathered not from the ordinary translations of the Bible, but from the Hebrew original. That language, according to Hutchinson, is the only complete and perfect form of human speech, and was on that account chosen by the Almighty as his instrument of communication with man. But it is not to be interpreted according to the literal meaning of the words. The true is the typical sense, which can only be reached by a deep acquaintance with the etymology of Hebrew. Every root of that tongue, on the Hutchinsonian theory, contains hidden meanings, and symbolizes some intellectual object. This elastic machinery put into his hands the means of wringing from the Hebrew text interpretations that harmonized perfectly with his system. An illustration will show more clearly what is meant. "The hanek," says Hutchinson, "is eminent for seeing; so hanek and seeing are the same word; and the same idea may be in two things in other respects quite different—e.g., the atoms of light move in a line, like marbles in a groove; so do the storkened masses of air which are darkness, they are continuous in a line; the first impels the second, and so on that the motion of the first mass or grain puts the whole line into motion; and this motion gives the same idea when you consider the congealed grains of air thus following each other, as when the atoms of light follow and drive forward each other; and so a word may be translated, as is often the case, to signify direct contraries, as irrodiate is made to do in Hebrew." On this principle Hutchinson evolves his system, in which, rejecting the received doctrines of gravitation, attraction, magnetism, and electricity, and denying the existence of a vacuum, he maintains that the operations of nature are carried on by the three agents of fire, light, and spirit. Now these three agents, which are in themselves only a modification of one and the same substance—the air—Hutchinson holds to typify the three persons of one and the same essence—to wit, the Trinity. Carrying out this principle of symbolism, he maintained that all the ceremonies enjoined on the Old Testament Jews were admonitions of the life and sufferings of the Saviour, and that the Jews, in knowledge of this, observed these rites in the same manner and spirit as the followers of Christ afterwards obeyed the commands and precepts that fell from the lips of their Lord. Though Hutchinson can scarcely be regarded as having founded a distinct sect, yet many able men since his days have been found to accept and maintain these doctrines. Even now, though their numbers are small, they are not extinct. In the list of those who openly defended them are found the names of Robert Spearman and Julius Bate, who superintended the third edition of Hutchinson's works; Dr Horne, bishop of Norwich, who afterwards, however, became a convert to the received views; William Jones, the biographer of the bishop; Lee, the author of Nature's Characteristics of Truth; Hodges, at one time provost of Oriel College, Oxford; Parkhurst, the lexicographer; and several distinguished divines of the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches of England and Scotland.