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

‘ [175] and modesty, nor injure his Christianity. He used no delusive arts to bribe the passions, to play with the imagination, and so impose on the understanding. He had no ambiguities, no disguises; but whatever he thought an important truth, he delivered with freedom, and without reserve.’

Mr. Foster's modesty, and uncommon talents as a preacher, it is well known, have been immortalized by Pope in one of those striking epigrammatic couplets which exhibit the poet's remarkable and somewhat formidable power over the character and reputation of men, by which, as the humour seized him, he knew how to ‘damn to everlasting fame,’ or ‘pay a life of hardship by a line.’

Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
Ten metropolitans in preaching well.

In the year 1731, our author appeared in the field as an advocate for revelation, in the controversy which was at that time actively agitated with Morgan, Tindal, Woolston, and other well-known deistical writers, and which produced or suggested some of the most valuable contributions to our collection of works on the evidences of religion, both natural and revealed. In this respect it certainly afforded a remarkable practical illustration of the great principle openly maintained and defended by several of the most distinguished champions of revelation, especially among the dissenters; and not only maintained, but perhaps more fully acted upon in practice than it had ever been on any former occasion;— the advantage which truth must ever gain from a