Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Church, Thomas
CHURCH, THOMAS (1707–1756), divine and controversial writer, born at Marlborough 20 Oct. 1707, graduated at Brasenose, Oxford, B.A. 1726, M.A. 1731. He was vicar of Battersea from 1740 till his death, 23 Dec. 1756. He also held a prebendal stall at St. Paul’s Cathedral (3 Jan. 1743–4), and was lecturer at St. Anne’s, Soho. He was a diligent writer in defence of christianity. For his vindication, against Conyers Middleton, of the miraculous powers of the early church, the university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.D. (1749). He criticised with equal zeal the philosophy of deism and the doctrines and practices of the methodists. His analysis of the works of Bolingbroke (who is stated to have been his patron) is marked by considerable terseness and ingenuity of argument. In a letter to Whitefield he reproaches him for his frequent absences from his cure of souls in Georgia, ‘though he often preached and expounded four times a day when he was on the spot.’ While treating Wesley with more respect, he pronounces unreservedly against his system as having ‘introduced many disorders, enthusiasm, antinomianism, Calvinism, a neglect and contempt of God's ordinances, and almost all other duties.’ Besides occasional sermons, he published: 1. ‘An Essay towards vindicating the literal sense of the Demoniacks in the New Testament,’ 1737 (anonymous). 2. ‘A short State of the Controversy about the meaning of the Demoniacks in the New Testament,’ 1739 (anonymous). 8. ‘A Serious and Expostulatory Letter to the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, on the occasion of his late Letter to the Bishop of London and other Bishops,' 1744. 4. ‘Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's Last Journal,’ 1745. 5. 'A Vindication of the Miraculous Powers which subsisted in the three first Centuries of the Christian Church, in answer to Dr. Middleton's Free Enquiry,’ 1750. 6. ‘An Analysis of the Philosophical Works of the late Lord Viscount Bolingbroke,’ London, 1755 Dublin; 1756 (both these editions, separately printed, were published anonymously).
[Brit. Mus. Cat.; Lysons's Environs, i. 39; Gent. Mag., December 1756; Rawlinson MSS. in Bodleian.]