Samuel  Clarke,  not  yet  suspect  of  Arianism,
in  criticism  of  the  a  priori  argument  contained
in  his  Boyle  Lectures  on  The  Being  and
Attributes  of  God.  The  acuteness  of  the
young  man's  reasoning  was  extraordinary,
and  Dr.  Clarke  printed  the  correspondence  in
later  editions  of  his  work.  Not  less  remark-
able is  the  complete  anticipation  of  the
qualities  most  characteristic  of  his  mature
writings.  '  I  design  the  search  after  truth,'
he  wrote,  '  as  the  business  of  my  life  ' ;  and
to  a  compliment  on  his  manner  he  replied :
'  I  have  aimed  at  nothing  in  my  style,  but
only  to  be  intelligible.'  His  unaffected
simplicity  redeems  the  remark  from  all
priggishness.
His  search  after  truth  led  him  to  abandon
Presbyterianisrn,  and  shortly  after  the  closing
of  this  correspondence,  in  1714,  he  entered
Oriel  College,  Oxford,  as  a  candidate  for
holy  orders.  There  he  became  acquainted
with  Edward  Talbot,  son  of  the  Bishop  of
Durham,  through  which  connection  came
most  of  his  subsequent  promotion.  In  1718
he  was  appointed  to  the  preachership  at  the
Rolls  Chapel,  which  he  retained  till  1726,
delivering  there  the  great  series  of  Sermons
which  made  his  reputation.  The  chief  of
them  upheld  the  contention,  not  so  familiar
then  as  now,  that  vice  is  '  a  violation  or
breaking  in  upon  our  own  nature.'  He
justified,  in  a  Christian  sense,  the  Stoic
doctrine  that  virtue  is  a  life  conformable  to
nature,  setting  himself  especially  to  correct
a  misapprehension  of  Wollaston's  remark  that
'  to  place  virtue  in  following  nature  is  at  best
a  loose  way  of  talk.'  Against  the  hedonism
of  Shaftesbury,  then  much  in  vogue,  he
maintained  the  supremacy  of  conscience,
regarded  as  an  endowment  of  man  no  less
natural  than  the  passions  and  appetites.
