Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bate, Julius
BATE, JULIUS (1711–1771), divine, was born in 1711, being one of the ten children of the Rev. Richard Bate, by his wife, Elizabeth Stanhope. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, became B.A. 1730, and M.A. 1740. He became a disciple of Hutchinson, and was a prominent member of the Hutchinsonian school, of which Bishop Horne and Jones of Nayland are the best known representatives. Hutchinson was patronised by the Duke of Somerset, who allowed him to appoint Bate to the rectory of Sutton, near the duke's seat of Petworth. Bate attended Hutchinson in his last illness (1737), and was associated with Spearman in the publication of Hutchinson's works. Bate, in 1745, wrote a pamphlet called ‘Remarks upon Mr. Warburton's remarks, showing that the ancients knew there was a future state, and that the Jews were not under an equal providence.’ It provoked some expressions of contempt from Warburton, who calls him (Works, xii. 58) ‘Zany to a mountebank’ (that is, to Hutchinson), and classes him with Dr. Richard Grey as an ‘impotent railer.’ Bate published various other pamphlets in defence of Hutchinson's fanciful mysticism, and on the corresponding interpretation of the Hebrew text. His chief work is ‘Critica Hebræa, or a Hebrew-English Dictionary without points,’ 1767, an objection to the ‘hydra of pointing’ being one of the characteristics of the school. Sufficient specimens may be found in the ‘Monthly Review’ (xxxvi. 355–61). Bate died at Arundel 20 Jan. 1771.
[Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iii. 52; Spearman's Life of Hutchinson.]