Hampden, RENN DICKSON

Hampden, RENN DICKSON, theologian and bishop, was born in Barbadoes in 1793, studied at Oriel College, Oxford, taking a double first in 1813, and becoming in due course Fellow and tutor of his college. In 1832 his famous Bampton lectures on the Scholastic Philosophy considered in its Relation to Christian Theology were by great part of the church considered grievously heretical, and raised a controversy that threatened to break up the Church of England. His successive appointments to the principalship of St Mary's Hall (1833), the chairs of Moral Philosophy (1834) and of Divinity (1836), were denounced alike by the Evangelical and High Church parties, and his elevation to the see of Hereford in 1847 was by them regarded as a death-blow to Trinitarian religion. Yet Bishop Hampden's works may now be regarded as innocent and edifying. After an episcopate of studious quiet, he died at London, 23d April 1868. Of his books may be named his Work of Christ and the Spirit (1847), Lectures on Moral Philosophy (1856), and Fathers of Greek Philosophy (1862). See H. Hampden's Some Memorials (1871), and, for the Hampden controversy, Stanley's Life of Arnold. t