the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[411] Exeter, on the Lord's day after receiving the account of the taking of Cape Breton. On this sermon, to which we may to a certain extent apply the remarks already made on our author's pamphlet in support of the Spanish war in 1741, there are some strictures in a judicious paper with the well-known signature N. L. T., in the Monthly Repository, IX. 548. The humour of making the church of Christ the scene of thanksgivings to the ‘God of Battles,’ and that not for protection from hostile invasion, or support in struggles against lawless oppression, for which some apology might be made, but for success in the pursuit of national aggrandizement and military glory, seems to have been common in those times with many of whom better things might have been expected.

In the year 1760, an academical institution was set on foot at Exeter for the education of young men destined for the Christian ministry, as well as for the other learned professions and the various departments of commercial and active life. It was placed under the care of respectable and learned tutors, particularly the excellent Mr. Merivale, the friend and correspondent of Lardner, who was at the head of the theological department, with the assistance of Mr. Towgood, who undertook to deliver a lecture once a week on the critical study of the Scriptures; a province in which he had scope for the exertion of all his abilities, and an opportunity of opening to his pupils his ample stores of scriptural knowledge. ‘Those gentlemen,’ says his biographer, ‘who had the happiness to attend his lectures, will remember ’