General · EdgepediaOctober 10, 20268 min read

Nathaniel Lardner

Nathaniel Lardner (6 June 1684 – 24 July 1768) was an English nonconformist minister and writer whose multi-volume Credibility of the Gospel History assembled the testimony of ancient authors to the facts and books of the New Testament, and who is regarded by the Dictionary of National Biography as the founder of the modern school of critical research in early Christian literature¹². A dissenting divine who was never ordained, he spent his working life as an assistant preacher in London while producing, over three decades, the apologetic work that a specialist library of historical apologetics calls the masterpiece of the eighteenth century in that field¹²^•¹.

Key fact	Detail
Born / died	6 June 1684 at Hawkhurst, Kent; 24 July 1768 at the Hall House, Hawkhurst, aged 84¹²^•²^•³
Major work	The Credibility of the Gospel History, issued in parts from 1727 to 1757¹²
Method	New Testament facts confirmed by passages of ancient authors contemporary with, or near to, Christ and the apostles⁴
Salters' Hall 1719	A non-subscriber who had agreed to a statement disowning Arian doctrine and affirming belief in the Trinity¹²
Christology	Inclined to the modified Arianism of Samuel Clarke and James Peirce; later adopted what he called the Nazarene doctrine¹²
Ministry	Assistant morning preacher to William Harris, Poor Jewry Lane presbyterian meeting, from 14 September 1729; never ordained¹²
Posthumous Works	Collected 1788 in eleven volumes, with a Life by Andrew Kippis¹²^•⁵

Early life and education

Lardner was born at Hawkhurst in Kent on 6 June 1684¹². One early twentieth-century biographical account specifies the Hall House in Hawkhurst as his birthplace and records that he died there on Sunday, 24 July 1768². He was educated for a time at a dissenter's academy in London under the Rev. Dr. Oldfield, and then went to Utrecht, where he studied under Graevius and Burman³. A later anthology of literary criticism adds Leyden, giving his continental study as Utrecht and Leyden from 1699 to 1703².

He preached his first sermon on 2 August 1709, and in 1713 became domestic chaplain to Lady Treby¹².

Ministry and preaching career

A preacher without ordination. Lardner assisted his father at the Hoxton Square meeting-house until 1729¹². He then became assistant morning preacher to William Harris at the presbyterian meeting-house in Poor Jewry Lane, Crutched Friars, entering on his duties on 14 September 1729, and served there until 1751; he was never ordained¹²^•².

Deafness shaped his later years. Early in 1724 he wrote that at public worship he could neither hear the preacher's voice nor the congregation singing, having become very deaf¹². The early twentieth-century anthology dates the onset differently, saying he became partially deaf in 1723 and that after 1753 he could hear nothing²; the two accounts agree on the progression but not on the year it began.

The Credibility of the Gospel History

In February 1727 Lardner published the first two volumes of The Credibility of the Gospel History, which at once placed him in the front rank of Christian apologists¹². The full title states the method: the work sets out "the principal facts of the New Testament confirmed by passages of ancient authors, who were contemporary with our Saviour, or his apostles, or lived near their time"⁴.

Design for the ordinary reader. Lardner regarded the average reader as capable of judging the internal evidence for the New Testament, and aimed to let readers form their own judgment of the external evidence rather than rely on learned authority¹². A specialist reference on apologetics quotes his own statement of this "peculiar design": to enable persons of ordinary capacities, who lack a learned education or sufficient leisure to read the ancient writings, to judge for themselves concerning the external evidence of the facts related in the New Testament¹.

The work appeared in parts over thirty years: part i in 1727 (two volumes; a second edition in 1730 and a third in 1741), part ii in twelve volumes from 1733 to 1755, a two-volume supplement in 1753, and a further volume in 1757¹². Part II contained the history of the most early Christian writers and their testimony to the books of the New Testament⁶. Its thoroughness is measured by a single case: the question of the census in Luke 2:1-2 fills 86 pages of volume 1 (pp. 260-345)¹.

Answering the deists

Lardner's reply to Thomas Woolston, published towards the end of 1729, was written in the period's controversy over the Christian evidences¹². His guides to scriptural interpretation were the commentaries of Hugo Grotius and his own patristic studies, not Socinian (denying the Trinity and Christ's pre-existence) writers¹². Late in life he returned to external testimony with the Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion, in four volumes, 1764-67².

The Trinity and the Logos controversy

Lardner's doctrinal position moved over his lifetime, and the stages matter because his works later fed heterodox movements. As a non-subscriber at Salters' Hall in 1719 he had agreed to a statement utterly disowning the Arian doctrine and expressing sincere belief in the doctrine of the Trinity¹². Probably under the influence of his friend Tomkins, who was dismissed from his congregation for Arianism in 1718, he was for some while much inclined to the modified Arianism adopted by Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) in the established church and by James Peirce among dissenters; in his reply to Woolston, published towards the end of 1729, he clearly accepts this view¹².

The Nazarene doctrine. In 1730, as his letter on the Logos shows, he had decided for what he called the Nazarene doctrine, distinct from the Ebionite doctrine, which rejected the miraculous conception¹². The letter, addressed to Viscount Barrington¹², concerned the question whether the Logos supplied the place of a human soul in the person of Jesus Christ, with two postscripts added: one explicating the words "the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God" as used in the Scriptures, and one with remarks on the third part of the late Bishop of Clogher's Vindication⁷. He taught this doctrine from the pulpit as early as 1747 but published it only anonymously, in 1759¹².

Contemporaries and later critics described the Letter on the Logos (1759) as distinctly Socinian, and as a work which converted Joseph Priestley². A specialist reference records that Lardner's christological views were not orthodox, though he stated publicly that he was not an Arian¹. These are the descriptions of the work's opponents and assessors; the doctrine itself Lardner presented as the Nazarene teaching, distinct from the Ebionite position¹².

After his death, two further works appeared: The History of the Heretics of the Two First Centuries (1780, edited by John Hogg) and Two Schemes of a Trinity considered, and the Divine Unity asserted (1784, anonymous), the latter consisting of four sermons on Philippians 2:5-11 preached in 1747 and edited by John Wiche¹².

Salters' Hall and nonconformist politics

The Salters' Hall debate of 1719 divided English dissenters over whether ministers should be required to subscribe to a doctrinal statement. Lardner stood among the non-subscribers, having agreed to the statement disowning Arian doctrine and affirming the Trinity¹². A peer-reviewed study of the non-subscription controversy among dissenters in 1719 notes how works published at the right moment were drawn into the controversy whether their authors intended it or not: one work published on 15 April "was naturally taken as such and came in for some rough handling"⁸.

By the numbers

Publication span: the Credibility ran from 1727 to 1757, in part i (1727, two volumes), part ii (twelve volumes, 1733-1755), a two-volume supplement (1753), and a final volume (1757)¹².
Translations: the first part was translated into Dutch in 1730 by Cornelius Westerbaen of Utrecht, into Latin in 1733 by John Christopher Wolff of Hamburg, and into German in 1750-51¹².
Bibliographic footprint: the Post-Reformation Digital Library lists 47 titles in 145 volumes for Lardner, including the 1727 volume printed for J. Chandler and Part II volume 3 (1730) sold by J. Noon⁹.
The collected Works: eleven volumes in 1788, with general chronological tables, copious indexes, and a Life of the author by Andrew Kippis prefixed to the first volume¹²^•⁵. In this arrangement, volumes 1-5 carry the Credibility (spanning the period to A.D. 1325, with appendix and recapitulation), volumes 5-6 the History of the Apostles, volumes 6-7 the Jewish and heathen testimonies, volume 8 later heathen testimonies, the state of gentilism and the history of heretics, volume 9 sermons, and volume 10 tracts, dissertations, and indexes¹⁰.
The copyright: in 1768 Lardner sold the copyright of the Credibility for £150, a sum far less than he had laid out, and the only work he disposed of in that fashion¹².

Two points of bibliography are reported differently by credible sources and cannot be silently reconciled. On the size of the Credibility, the DNB's part-by-part account (1727-1757) is followed here; the early twentieth-century anthology gives 14 volumes published 1727-55, first delivered as lectures at the Old Jewry, with a three-volume work on the apostles in 1756-57². On the post-1788 reprints, the DNB records reprints in 1815, 1829, and 1835, while the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica gives editions in 4 volumes 4to in 1817 and 10 volumes 8vo in 1827¹²^•¹¹.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Philosophy, religion, and mythology › Religion and spirituality › Religious biographies › Christian theologians and religious scholars › Reformation and early-modern theologians › Puritan, Dissenting, and Nonconformist theologians

Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026

Notice something wrong?