Works
His style is often bombastic, but he displays a rare appreciation of natural beauty, and his simple piety made him many friends. His earliest work, Meditations and Contemplations, said to have been modelled on Robert Boyle's Occasional Reflexions on various Subjects, within fourteen years passed through as many editions.
Theron and Aspasio, or a series of Letters upon the most important and interesting Subjects, which appeared in 1755, and was equally well received, called forth some adverse criticism even from Calvinists, on account of tendencies which were considered to lead to antinomianism, and was strongly objected to by Wesley in his Preservative against unsettled Notions in Religion. Besides carrying into England the theological disputes to which the Marrow of Modern Divinity had given rise in Scotland (the Marrow Controversy), it also led to what is known as the Sandemanian controversy as to the nature of saving faith.
A new and complete edition of his Works, with a memoir, appeared in 1797. See also Collection of the Letters of James Hervey, to which is prefixed an account of his Life and Death, by Thomas Birch (1760).
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)