Original Draught of the Primitive Church, 8vo. Lond. 1717, written in reply to An Inquiry into the Constitution and Discipline of the Primitive Church, by Mr. Peter King, afterwards Lord Chancellor [from 1725 to 1733], and Baron King of Ockham, is usually attributed to Mr. William Sclater. Respecting this writer, whose work attained and has preserved considerable celebrity, and respecting others of his name, I forward some Notes which I have met with, and beg anxiously to solicit others from your correspondents.

In Lathbury's History of the Nonjurors, cap. vii. p. 303., he is thus mentioned:

"Sclater at length stepped forth [to reply to King's Inquiry], and it is said that King was not only convinced by his arguments, but that he made him an offer of a living in the Church of England. Sclater was a nonjuring clergyman; consequently he could not accept preferment in the Anglican Church, which involved the taking the oath of allegiance. All the arguments in King's book were considered with the greatest candour and ability. The author was a man of singular modesty, of unaffected piety, and of uncommon learning, of which this work affords abundant evidence."

Dr. Hinds, the present Bishop of Norwich, in his History of the Rise and early Progress of Christianity, Preface, page xv., 1st edit., thus speaks:

"Lord King wrote his once celebrated Inquiry in an honest and candid spirit, as the result testifies; but his research was partial, and led him to adopt the congregational principle of the Independents. In Mr. Sclater's reply, principles scarcely less erroneous may be pointed out; yet, as far as the controversy went, he was right, and his opponent, by an act of candour perhaps unexampled, acknowledged himself convinced, and gave Sclater preferment for his victory."

Lord Campbell, however, in his Lives of the Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 369., discredits the idea of this conversion. He says:

"This work [the Inquiry] made a great sensation, passed through several editions, and called forth many learned and able answers, particularly one by a nonjuring clergyman of the name of Sclater, which is said (I believe without authority) even to have made a convert of King himself."

These are the only notices of Sclater which have fallen in my way.[1] I should remark, that his Original Draught is anonymous. He merely styles himself "a Presbyter of the Church of England."

[1] [We have met with two other accounts of the Chancellor's conversion, both varying in a few particulars with the extracts given by our correspondent. Archdeacon Daubeny, in his work on Schism, p. 235., says, "Lord Chancellor King was at one time of his life so determined an advocate for Presbyterianism, and considered himself so perfectly acquainted with the merits of that subject, that he published a book upon it. To this book an answer was written by one Sclater, a clergyman, under the title of A Draught of the Primitive Church, which brought the point at issue within a short compass, and decided it in the most satisfactory manner. This book the author did not live to publish. It happened, however, that the author's manuscript after his death, came into the hands of the Lord Chancellor, who was so perfectly satisfied with its contents, that he published Sclater's manuscript at his own expense, as the strongest proof that could be given to the world of the alteration of his own views on the subject in question." The other version occurs in the Gentleman's Mag. for Oct. 1792, p. 910.:—"There is a circumstance relating to Lord King's book, and Mr. Sclater's answer to it, very little known, but which to me comes vouched with unquestionable authenticity. Before Mr. Sclater's book was published, it was read in manuscript by Lord King himself, it having been seized, among other papers, in the house of Mr. Nathanael Spinkes, a Nonjuring bishop, and carried to Lord King, then Chancellor, who very politely returned it, confessing that it was a very sufficient confutation of those parts of his book which it undertook to answer; that it was written with equal Christian temper and moderation, and unanswerable strength of argument; and desiring or consenting that it might be published."—ED.]

Of another William Sclater I find two notices in Miscellanies of Divinitie divided into three Books, by Edvvard Kellet, Doctour of Divinitie, and one of the Canons of the Cathedrall Church of Exon, fol. Cambridge, 1635:

"Melchisedec was a figure of Christ, and tithes by an everlasting law were due to the priesthood of Melchisedec, as is unanswerably proved by my reverend friend (now a blessed saint, Doctor Sclater), against all sacrilegious church-robbers."

B. i. c. v. p. 83.

Again:

"When that man of happy memory, the late right Reverend, now most blessed Saint, Arthur Lake, Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells [from 1616 to 1626], appointed Doctour Sclater (now also a saint in Heaven, then my most loving friend, and sometime fellow-collegian in the two royall colledges at Eaton and Cambridge) with myself to confer with an Anabaptisticall woman, we heard her determine great Depths of Divinitie as confidently as ever St. Paul did, though he was taught by Christ himself, and as nimbly as ever an ape crackt nuts," &c.

Ibid. c. viii. p. 151.

This Dr. William Sclater, then, was of Eton, and Fellow of King's College; was the author of a work on Tithes; and probably beneficed in the diocese of Bath and Wells during the episcopate of Lake, who preceded Laud in that see. To him also we may probably ascribe The Exposition on the first three Chapters of Romans, published by a person of this name in 1611. As in 1635 he is spoken of as dead, he could, if connected at all with the author of The Original Draught, hardly have been his father. He may have been his grandfather.

There is another Sclater, who may have been father of Lord King's opponent,—Dr. Edward Sclater, who in 1686 published Consensus Veterum; or the Reasons for his Conversion to the Catholic Faith. He was incumbent of Esher and of Putney, and, as such, obtained a curious dispensation from all pains, penalties, and forfeitures of non-residence on his benefices, accompanied by a license to keep a school, and to take "boarders, tablers, or sojourners," direct from the king, James II. This document may be found in Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, No. 36., vol. i. p. 290.; and the concurrence of its date (May 3, 1686) with that of the Reasons for his Conversion is of ominous significancy. In 1687 he published another work, entitled The Primitive Fathers no Protestants; to which Edward Gee replied in his Primitive Fathers no Papists, in 1688. Several other tracts, addressed by Gee to this convert to the religion of the sovereign, show that there must have been a smart and long-continued controversy between them.[2]