Clarke, ADAM

Clarke, ADAM, Wesleyan divine, was born about 1762, at Moybeg in County Londonderry. Under John Wesley's influence he studied at Kingswood, near Bristol, and began to preach in 1782. Like his brethren, he moved from place to place, from the Channel Islands to Shetland, but after 1805 lived mostly in London. Although peripatetic preaching is scarcely conducive to scholarship, Clarke contrived to find time for extensive study of the classics, the Fathers, oriental languages, and natural science. Aberdeen gave him the degree of LL.D. in 1808, and many learned societies admitted him to membership. His first work was a Bibliographical Dictionary (8 vols. 1802–6). The Board of Commissioners on the Public Records selected him to edit Rymer's Fædera, but his health obliged him to abandon the work before he had finished the second volume. He also edited and abridged several other works, but the great work of his life was his edition of the Holy Scriptures (8 vols. 1810–26) with a commentary, into which were compressed all the results of his varied reading. While orthodox in essentials, Clarke had some unusual notions. Thus, he denied the eternal sonship of Christ while maintaining his divinity; held that Judas repented unto salvation, and that the tempter of Eve was a baboon, not a serpent. He died August 26, 1832. See his Life (3 vols. 1833).