William King
William King [1]
archbishop of Dublin, a learned divine and metaphysician, was born at Antrim, province of Ulster, Ireland, May 1, 1650. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, entered the Church in 1674, and became chaplain to Parker, archbishop of Tuam. The latter being translated to the archbishopric of Dublin in 1679, King became chancellor of St. Patrick and St. Marburgh, Dublin. Ireland was then a prey to violent religious controversies, which served also as a cloak for political dissensions. King wrote several pamphlets against Peter Manby, dean of Londonderry, who had embraced Roman Catholicism. In 1688 he was made dean of St. Patrick. The Revolution breaking out soon after, and James II having taken refuge in Ireland, King was twice sent to the 'Tower of Dublin as a partisan of the insurgents. He defended his opinions in a work entitled The State of the Protestants of Ireland under the late King James's Government (3d and best ed. Lond. 1692, 8vo), which gave rise to a controversy between him and Charles Leslie, a partisan of the fallen monarch. In 1691 King was made bishop of Derry, and applied himself with much zeal to the task of bringing back into the Church the dissenters of his diocese. He finally became archbishop of Dublin in 1702, was appointed one of the lords justices of Ireland in 1717, and again in 1721 and 1723, and died at Dublin May 8,1729. He was through life held in high esteem as a man, as well as in his character of a prelate and writer on theology. His principal work in that line is the De Origine Mali (Dublin, 1702, 4to; Lond. 1702, 8vo). " The object of this work is to show how all the several kinds of evil with which the world abounds are consistent with the goodness of God, and may be accounted for without the supposition of an evil principle."
It was attacked by Bayle and also by Leibnitz: by the former for the charges of Manichaism made against him, and by the latter because King had taken him to task for his optimism. King, however, during his life made no reply, but he left among his papers notes of answers to their arguments, and these were given to the world after his death by Dr. Edmund Law, bishop of Carlisle, together with a translation of the treatise itself (Camb. 1758, 8vo). 'In 1709 he published a sermon on Divine Predestination and Foreknowledge consistent with the Freedom of Alan's Will, preached before the House of Peers. In this work he advanced a doctrine concerning the moral attributes of God as being different from the moral qualities of the same name in man. This valuable and most important work was often reprinted (Exeter, 1815, 8vo; London, 1821, 8vo; and in the Tracts of Angl. Fathers, ii, 225). He wrote also A Discourse concerning the Inventions of Men in the Worship of God (Lond. 1697, sm. 8vo): — An Admonition to the Dissenters (London, 1706, sm. 8vo) :An Account of King James II's Behavior to his Protestant Subjects of Ireland, etc. (Lond. 1746, 8vo): — A Vindication of the Rev. Dr. Henry Sacheverell, etc. [Anon.] (Lond. 1710, 8vo); etc. See Bibliographica Britannica; Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary; Cyclopcedia Bibliographica, ii, 1730; Hook, Ecclesiastical Biography, 6:456; English Cyclopcedia, s.v.; and especially Allibone, Dict. Enyl. and Am. Auth. ii, 1032. (J. N. P.)
