The Sunday Library; Or, the Thomas Frognall Dibdin Sir Joshua Reynolds pincit THOMAS SECKER, D.D., ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. BORN 1693; DIED 1768. THE name of SECKER is imperishable in the annals of the Church of England. The élève of Butler, Bishop of Durham, and the patron of Porteus, Bishop of London, could be a personage of no mean acquirements or ordinary judgment. Such a personage was Dr. Secker. His earlier taste led him to the study of medicine, and he took the degree of M. D. at Leyden ; but Bishop Butler, then preacher at the Rolls, called him home to the cultivation of theological studies; and in his twenty-ninth year he was ordained. His patron, by his elevation to the See of Durham, rewarded him, in his thirty-fourth year, with a stall in his Cathedral; and his talents continuing to justify the strong opinions which both the public and his patron had entertained of his ability, as well as moral worth and soundness of doctrine, in 1732 he was appointed Chaplain to the King, and made Rector of St. James's. In 1735 he was made Bishop of Bristol; in 1737 he was translated to Oxford; to which, in 1750, the Deanery of St. Paul's was annexed; in 1758 he was raised to the See of Canterbury. He died in 1768, and was buried at Lambeth. He gave his books to the Lambeth library. His Life was written, and his Works were edited and published, VOL. VI. B |