Lady Rebecca Moyer

Lady Rebecca Moyer

is noted as the foundress of a course of lectures in defence of the orthodox view of the Trinity. (See Moyers Lectures). She was the wife of Sir Samuel Moyer, of the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, in the County of Middlesex, England, who died in 1716. Lady Moyer herself died about 1720, and the foundation of the lectures she thus provided for in her will:

"My now dwelling-house in Bedford Row, or Jockey Field, I give to my dear child Eliza Moyer, that out of it may be paid twenty guineas a year to an able minister of Goul's Word, to preach eight sermons every year on the Trinity and divinity of our ever blessed Saviour, beginning with the first Thursday in November, and to the first Thursday in the seven equal months, in St. Paul's, if permitted there, or, if not, elsewhere, according to the discretion of my executrix, who will not think it any incumbrance to her house. I am sure it will bring a blessing on it, if that work be well and carefully carried on which in this profligate age is so neglected. If my said daughter should leave no children alive at her death, or they should die before they come to age, then I give my said house to my niece, Lydia Moyer, now wife to Peter Ralrtop, Esq., and to her heirs after her, she always providing for that sermon, as I have begun, twenty guineas every year."

There is a list of the preachers of this lecture, down to the year 1740-1, at the end of Mr. John Berriman's Critical Dissertation on  1 Timothy 3:16 (which is the substance of the lectures he preached), and it is regarded as the ablest in the course. There is also in a copy of that book in Sion College Library a continuation of the list in MS., by Mr. John Berriman, to the year 1748. In the year 1757 they were preached by Mr. William Clements, librarian of Sion College, but he did not publish them till 1797. In the year 1764, or thereabouts, the preacher was Benjamin Dawson, LL.D., who printed them under the title of An Illustration of several Texts of Scripture, particularly wherein the Logos occurs (1765). Dr. Thomas Morell, author of the Thesaurus Graece Poeseos, is supposed to have been the last. One of these lectures Dr. Morell published without his name in April 1774. It was written against Lindsay, and entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity Justified. Mr. Watts, recently librarian of Sion College (to whom the reader is indebted for the information here given), says Hook (Ch. Dict. s.v.), heard him preach one of them in January, 1772. As we have already stated under LECTURES (See Lectures), the Moyer foundation was only supported for about half a century. (J.H.W.)