truction, adapted to their wants and
capacities, from the dawn of reason through its gradations of advance in
the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of
human action will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time
combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their
fourth year. A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps
the hardest lesson that humility can teach.

As his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry
continual, his writings are very numerous and his subjects various. With
his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness
of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not only in his book,
but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity.

Of his philosophical pieces, his "Logic" has been received into the
Universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation; if he owes
part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered that no man who undertakes
merely to methodise or illustrate a system pretends to be its author.

In his metaphysical disquisitions it was observed by the late learned
Mr. Dyer, that he confounded the idea of SPACE with that of EMPTY SPACE,
and did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet
matter being extended could not be without space.

Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his
"Improvement of the Mind," of which the radical principle may indeed
be found in Locke's "Conduct of the Understanding;" but they are so
expanded and ramified by Watts, as to confer upon him the merit of a
work in the highest degree useful and pleasing. Whoever has the care of
instructing others may be charged with deficiency in his duty if this
book is not recommended.

I have mentioned his treatises of theology as distinct from his other
productions; but the truth is that whatever he took in hand was, by
his incessant solicitude for souls, converted to theology. As piety
predominated in his mind, it is diffused over his works. Under his
direction it may be truly said, Theologiae philosophia ancillatur
(Philosophy is subservient to evangelical instruction). It is difficult
to read a page without learning, or at least wishing, to be better. The
attention is caught by indirect instruction; and he that sat down only
to reason is on a sudden compelled to pray. It was therefore with great
propriety that, in 1728, he received from Edinburgh and Ab