WHILE some are usefully and commendably employed in celebrating the various merits and talents of a Priestley; in describing and discriminating with accuracy and skill the capacities and resources of his fertile and comprehensive mind, which, without perplexity or confusion, could embrace a variety of objects, and excel in experimental philosophy, metaphysics, philology, historical disquisitions, and speculations on civil government; be it my task (as far as my abilities can enable me to accomplish it) to trace and mark his progress as a Theologian, and to exhibit a brief, but faithful view, of those numerous productions that flowed from his pen, on subjects (as he justly thought) the most important and interesting of all others.

Intended and set apart, as he was, in the counsels of his nearest and best friends at an early period, for the Gospel Ministry, his own serious and devotional mind excited him to coincide with their views, and carried him forward with alacrity in the pursuit and attainment of his favourite employment, notwithstanding the embarrassments arising from a weak and delicate constitution, and the still greater difficulties that came in his way from the bigotry and hostility of those whose apprehensions of divine truth were different from his own.

Having thought It right to leave behind me some account of my friends and benefactors, it is in a manner necessary that I also give some account of myself; and as the like has been done by many persons, and for reasons which posterity has approved, I make no farther apology for following their example. If my writings in general have been useful to my cotemporaries, I hope that this account of myself will not be without its use to those who may come after me, and especially in promoting virtue and piety, which I hope I may say it has been my care to practice myself, as It has been my business to inculcate them upon others.

My father, Jonas Priestley, was the youngest son of Joseph Priestley, a maker and dresser of woollen cloth. His first wife, my mother, was the only child of Joseph Swift, a farmer at Shafton, a village about six miles south east of Wakefield. By this wife he had six children, four sons and two daughters. I, the oldest, was born on the thirteenth of March, old style 1733, at Fieldhead about six miles south west of Leeds in Yorkshire. My mother dying in in 1740, my father married again in 1745, and by his second wife had three daughters.

Dr. priestley has given a general though brief account of what had been done by his predecessors in this department of experimental Philosophy, and Sir John Pringle in his discourse before the Royal Society on occasion of presenting Dr. Priestley with the Copley Medal in 1772 has entered expressly, and more fully into the history of pneumatic discoveries. The same subject was taken up about three years after by Mr. Lavoisier still more at large, in the introduction to his first Vol. of Physical and Chemical Essays, of which a translation was published by Mr. Henry of Manchester in 1776. It is unnecessary to detail here what they have written on the history of these discoveries. It may be observed that no mention is made by any of these gentlemen of an experiment of Mr. John Maud, in July 1736, who procured (and confined) inflammable air from a solution of Iron in the vitriolic acid. Inflammable air had been procured from the White Haven coal mines, and exhibited to the Royal Society by Mr. James Lowther, but I do not recollect any notice of its having been collected from a solution of metals in acids, and its character ascertained before Mr. Maud's experiment; for Hales, though he procured both inflammable and nitrous air, did not examine their properties.

THESE consist principally of his Grammar and Lectures on the Theory of Language, his Lectures on Oratory and Criticism, and those on General History and Civil Policy.

The Grammar was first published in 1761. A month after the second edition of it, Dr. Lowth's Grammar came out. The third and last edition of Dr. Priestley's was in 1772. I do not observe any peculiarity in this work. It seems like all Dr. Priestley's writings and compilations, sensible, plain, and intelligible. Dr. Lowth had at that time more reputation in the world than Dr. Priestley; his lectures de sacrà poesi Hebrœorum, having deservedly procured him the respect of the literary part of the public. His grammar therefore seems to have interfered with the circulation of Dr. Priestley's.

The Lectures on the Theory of Language and Universal Grammar were printed at Warrington in 1762 in one volume duodecimo. I believe though printed and delivered to the students, it was never fully published; I shall therefore give an account of the subjects treated in this small work, more at length, than if the treatise itself had been generally known.

The first lecture after the introduction is on Articulation, or the power of modulating the voice. This is peculiar, as Dr. Priestley thinks, to the human species. Brute animals, emit sounds, and varieties of sound, the effect and expression of passions and sensations; they have also gestures to make known their wants and feelings: but the superior capability of the organs of speech is perhaps the most important characteristic of humanity.

It has already been mentioned that it was once the intention of Dr. Priestley to draw up a brief statement of his Theological opinions; not only to prevent misconception and misrepresentation, of which in his case there has been more than a common portion, but also to exhibit a system of Faith, plain, rational and consistent, such as common sense would not revolt at, and philosophy might adopt without disgrace.

This merit at least, (no common one) Dr. Priestley is fairly entitled to in relation to the tenets he ultimately adopted. The prejudices of his youth were to be surmounted in the first instance. He had to encounter, not these only, but the prejudices of his early and most valued connections. Every change of his opinion, was at the time, in manifest hostility with his interest; and every public avowal on his part of what he deemed genuine Christianity, put in jeopardy the attachment of his friends, the support of his family, and his public reputation; nor was this all: for it subjected him with fearful certainty, to the hue and cry which bigotry never fails to raise against those who in their search after truth, are hardy enough to set antient errors, and established absurdity at defiance.

The Writings of Dr. Priestley however enable his readers to do that, which it is much to be regretted he did not find opportunity to do for himself.

The Analysis of my father's Theological writings mentioned in the Preface to this work, is in the press and will be printed in the same manner as the Memoirs now presented to the public, and may be purchased with the Catalogue of his writings separately to bind with the present Volume, or may be had bound up with four Sermons which my father desired me to print, making therewith a second volume.

I had an expectation of presenting the public with an Engraving of a striking likeness of my father, to be prefixed to the present volume. In this expectation I have been disappointed. I hope however to be able to do it, by the time the second Volume will make its appearance.