Balguy, Thomas

, D. D. son of the above, was born at his father’s residence at Cox-close, near Ravensworth castle, Sept. 27, 1716, and was admitted of St. John’s college, Cambridge, about 1732. He proceeded B.A. 1737, M. A. 1741, and S.T.P. 1758, In 1746, he was presented by his father to the North mediety or rectory of North Stoke, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, which was probably the first preferment he had, and which he vacated in 1771, on being presented to the vicarage of Alton in Hampshire. By the interest of bishop Hoadly, he obtained a prebend at Winchester, 1757, became archdeacon of Salisbury in 1759, and afterwards archdeacon of Winchester. We have his own authority in his life of his father, as given in the Biog. Britannica, that he owed all his preferments to bishop Hoadly, from whose latitudinarian principles, however, he appears to have departed more widely than his father.

In 1769, he published “A Sermon preached in Lamv foeth chapel, Feb. 12, 1769, at the consecration of the right rev. Dr. Shute Barrington, bishop of Llandaff.” This was attempted to be answered by Dr. Priestley in a vague and unargumentative pamphlet, entitled “Observations on Church Authority.” In 1772, he published a very able defence of subscriptions to articles of religion, in “A charge delivered to the Clergy” of his archdeaconry, which produced a reply from the rev. John Palmer, a dissenting minister, dated Macclesfield. In 1775, Dr. Balguy published “A sermon on the respective Duties of Ministers and People, at the consecration of the right rev. Richard Hurd, D. D. bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and the right rev. John Moore, D.D. bishop of Bangor,” Feb. 12. 4to, which produced “Remarks on Dr. Balguy’s Sermon, in a letter to that gentleman, by one of the petitioning clergy.” In 1775, he edited the sermons of Dr. Powell, master of Jesus college, Cambridge, with a life of that divine prefixed. In 1781, the declining state of his health, and particularly the decay of his sight, which ended at last in total blindness, prevented his acceptance of the bishopric of Gloucester, to which his majesty, without any | solicitation, had nominated him, on the cteath of bishop Warburton. This he gratefully acknowledges in the dedication of his discourses to the king. In 178^, he published “Divine Benevolence asserted, and vindicated from the reflections of ancient and modern sceptics,” 8vo, which is thought by far the ablest of his performances, but was only part of a larger dissertation on natural religion, which he did not live to complete. In 1785, he republished his father’s “Essay on Redempton,” with a preface seemingly intended to bring his father’s sentiments nearer to the orthodox belief. A collection of his sermons and charges appeared the same year under the title of “Discourses on various subjects,” 8vo. He died Jan. 19, 1795, in his seventy-ninth year, at his prebendal house at Winchester, and was buried in the cathedral, with an inscription giving him the character of a sincere and exemplary Christian, a sound and accurate scholar, a strenuous and able defender of the Christian religion, and of the church of England. ¹