Boyle Lectures

Boyle Lectures, so called from the founder, the Hon. Robert Boyle (q.v.), who, by his will dated July 28, 1691, settled £50 a year for 'some preaching minister,' who shall preach eight sermons in the year for proving the Christian religion against Atheists, Theists (i.e. Deists), Pagans, Jews, and Mohammedans, not descending to any controversies among Christians themselves. The office is tenable for three years. They are now preached in the Chapel-royal, Whitehall, in the afternoon of some of the Sundays following Easter-day. The first series of eight lectures, A Confutation of Atheism, was preached in 1692 by Richard Bentley. In 1704 Dr Samuel Clarke preached on the Being and Attributes of God, in answer to the arguments of Hobbes, Spinoza, and their followers. All the lectures preached up to 1732 were collected into a fine folio edition, in 3 vols. (1739); from that period down to 1802 few of the lectures were published. In 1846 the course by the Rev. F. D. Maurice was published under the title, The Religions of the World. The most eminent lecturers of recent years whose courses have been published are Merivale, the historian (1864-65), on The Conversion of the Roman Empire and Northern Nations; Professor Plumptre (1866); Professor Stanley Leathes (1868-70); Dr Hessey (1871-73); Henry Wace (1874-75); Alfred Barry (1876-78); Dr Maclear (1879-80); and G. H. Curteis (1884).