George Horne (bishop) - Works

Works

George Horne's publications included a satirical pamphlet entitled The Theology and Philosophy of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (1751), a defense of the Hutchinsonians (1753), and critiques on William Law (1758) and Benjamin Kennicott (1760).

His main works are:

• ‘A Fair, Candid, and Impartial Statement of the Case between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Hutchinson’ (anon.), 1753.
• ‘An Apology for certain Gentlemen in the University of Oxford, aspersed in a late anonymous pamphlet,’ 1756. The anonymous pamphlet was called ‘A Word to the Hutchinsonians.’
• ‘Cautions to the Readers of Mr. Law, and, with very few varieties, to the Readers of Baron Swedenborg,’ 1758, to which was added ‘A Letter to a Lady on the subject of Jacob Behmen's Writings.’ Horne had been impressed by the earlier writings of William Law, but complained that he saw him ‘falling from the heaven of Christianity into the sink and complication of Paganism, Quakerism, and Socinianism, mixed up with chemistry and astrology by a possessed cobbler.’
• ‘A View of Mr. Kennicott's Method of Correcting the Hebrew Text,’ 1760, criticising the plan of Benjamin Kennicott and some of his friends to collate the text of the Hebrew Bible from manuscripts, to prepare for a new translation to be made into English language. In spite of their differences Horne and Kennicott became friends
• ‘A Letter to Dr. Adam Smith’ (anon.), 1777, on Smith's account of David Hume.
• ‘Letters on Infidelity,’ 1784, addressed to ‘W. S., Esqr.,’ presumed to be William Smith, his cousin and lifelong friend.
• (With William Jones of Nayland) ‘Answer to Dr. Clayton's Essay on Spirit.’ Against Robert Clayton.

He intended writing a ‘Defence of the Divinity of Christ’ against Joseph Priestley, but did not live to do that.

The best known work by Horne is his Commentary on the Psalms, 1771. The ‘Commentary’ is partly exegetical and partly devotional; it proceeds on the principle that most of the Psalms are more or less Messianic, and cannot be properly understood except in those terms. Richard Mant transferred Horne's preface almost verbatim to his annotated Book of Common Prayer. Hannah More, another of Horne's friends, admired it. Of a similar character was his ‘Considerations on the Life and Death of St. John the Baptist,’ 1769, which was an expansion of a sermon preached by him on St. John the Baptist's day 1755, from the open-air pulpit in the quadrangle of Magdalen College. Horne had a reputation as a preacher, and his sermons were frequently reprinted.

Horne's collected Works were published with a Memoir by William Jones in 1799.