Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/602

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BEU
566
BEV

Schnepfenthal, and afterwards rector and principal professor of the college of Waltershausen in Gotha. He was a man of extensive learning, and published a great many works in German, which enjoyed a high reputation. Died in 1835.—J. F. W.

BEUVALLET, P. N., a sculptor, born at Paris; died in 1816; pupil of Pajou, was administrator of public works under the convention; his portrait busts have preserved traits of many of the extraordinary men, good and bad, of that age of earthquakes and tempests of blood. Marat and Barnave sat to him, and he left an unfinished bust of Moreau. He also attempted several classical subjects, Narcissus for example.—W. T.

BEVER, Thomas, an erudite priest, born at Stratfield Mortimer, in Berkshire, in 1725. He was fellow, and afterwards LL.D. of All Soul's college, Oxford, where, during an illness of the regius professor, he gave a course of lectures on civil law, the introduction to which was published in 1766, with the title "A Discourse on the Study of Jurisprudence and the Civil Law." In 1781 he produced a work on "The History of the Legal Polity of the Roman State," much commended for depth of research, but slovenly in style, and in consequence of the death of its author in 1781, unfinished.—J. S., G.

BEVERIDGE, William, bishop of St. Asaph's, was born at Barrow in Leicestershire in 1636-37. During his education at St. John's college, Cambridge, he applied himself with such ardour to the study of the oriental tongues, that ere he was little more than twenty years of age, he published a treatise in Latin, "On the Excellency and Use of the Oriental Languages"—(De Linguarum Orient. Præstantia et Usu, London, 1658). A very short time afterwards he published a Syriac grammar in three books. These publications do not display any original or profound philological acuteness or research, but they prove the diligence, earnestness, general talent, and predilections of their author. It was his desire to master these languages himself, and to induce others to obtain such proficiency in them as to be able to read with profit and delight the original Jewish scriptures. He was ordained deacon in the church of St. Botolph, Aldersgate, by the bishop of Lincoln, January 3, 1660-61, and priest in the same place on the 30th of the same month. Soon after his ordination, Sheldon, bishop of London, collated him to the vicarage of Ealing in Middlesex, and on the 22d of November, 1672, the corporation of London presented him to the rectory of St. Peter's, Cornhill. His labours in this populous district of the metropolis were devoted and untiring. His preaching was earnest, simple, and evangelical; his various plans of usefulness were in keeping with his gentle and benignant nature; his more private ministrations were cordial, homely, faithful, and free; and all the functions of his pastoral office were performed with such zeal and uniformity, such fervour and success, that he was greeted as "the great restorer and reviver of primitive piety." In 1674 he became a prebend of St. Paul's, in 1681 archdeacon of Colchester, and in 1684 he was installed a prebend of Canterbury, becoming at the same time royal chaplain to William and Mary. The duties which these wider spheres of labour devolved upon him were gone through with as exemplary devotedness as had been his parochial labours. He visited the parishes of his archdeaconry, and from personal inspection learned many things that churchwardens and other office-bearers had not thought fit to lay before him. Dr. Thomas Kenn having been deprived as a nonjuror in 1691, his vacant see of Bath and Wells was offered to Beveridge, who conscientiously and decidedly refused it. In 1704, however, he was consecrated bishop of St. Asaph's. In this elevated situation he at once exhibited all his former assiduity and affectionate vigilance, exhorted his clergy to greater diligence and usefulness, and published for parochial instruction his excellent "Exposition upon the Church Catechism." Bishop Beveridge enjoyed his episcopal honours only about three years and a half; he died March 5, 1707-08, in the seventy-first year of his age, and was buried in St. Paul's, As might have been anticipated from one of his benevolent temperament, he left the greater portion of his fortune for the promotion of christian enterprises—not forgetting the poor families of Barrow, his native place.

Bishop Beveridge was a somewhat voluminous author. Besides the works already mentioned, he published a treatise on chronology—"Institutionum Chronologicarum, libri duo," 1669—a work on the canon law of the Greek church; "Συνόδικον, sive Pandectæ Canonum St. Apostolorum," &c., two volumes folio, Oxford, 1672; "Codex Canonum Ecclesiæ Primitivæ," London, 1679. His posthumous works, published by his executors, are also numerous, but not of the same laborious and antiquarian character as those published during his life. His "Thesaurus Theologicus" was edited in four vols. 8vo, London, 1711. It is a system of divinity of a somewhat peculiar structure, consisting of brief notes upon arranged and selected places of scripture,—sometimes ingenious and occasionally far-fetched, but usually lucid and instructive. "The great advantage and necessity of public Prayer and frequent Communion" appeared, London, 1710; and his "Private Thoughts," often reprinted, breathe his own devotional spirit. A hundred and fifty sermons were also given to the world in 1708, and two years afterwards, an "Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles," and a "Defence of the Book of Psalms," that is, of the older version of Sternhold and Hopkins.

Bishop Beveridge was a man of great and varied attainment, "mighty in the scriptures," noble in spirit, upright in heart, set upon doing good,—a successor of the apostles by a higher claim than the imposition of hands, and a truer token of lineage than the wearing of a mitre, for he inherited their spirit and walked in their steps. His Calvinism exposed him to obloquy, both during his life, and particularly after his death. His form of belief was, however, admitted to be in alliance with a loving heart, whose integrity and devotedness never were questioned. The system of truth which he held amidst growing latitudinarianism,—a system infinitely superior, even as a compact and logical whole, to the hazy and incongruous opinions abroad in our time, which flit from analysis and dissolve under inspection, was commended by his fervent and vigorous piety,—another and magnificent proof that the lamp of the spiritual life has seldom so intense a brilliance as when the features of Augustine and Calvin are among its outer emblems and ornaments.—J. E.

BEVERINI, Bartolomeo, born at Lucca in 1629. He is the author of a Latin work, entitled "De Ponderibus et Mensuris." He also translated, in ottava rima, the Æneid; and dedicated to the queen of Sweden, Maria Christina, various odes and sonnets. He died in 1686.—A. C. M.

BEVERLAND, Adrien, born at Middleburg in 1653, and died in 1712; educated for the bar, which he soon abandoned. He published some indecent poems, which led to a prosecution in the court of the university of Leyden. He submitted and apologized, then repented of his apology, and wrote a pamphlet, which he printed at Utrecht, where he now took up his residence. From Utrecht he was banished by the magistrates, as the indecency and profaneness of his writings were regarded as injurious to public morals. He was a man of some classical learning, and Isaac Vossius contrived to get him a pension in England, charged upon some ecclesiastical fund. He now affected decorum of conduct, and published a tract against libertinism. He soon fell again into dissolute habits; bodily and mental disease followed, and death did not long linger. The names of his works are not worth recording. The very titles of most of them are offensive to ordinary feelings of modesty.—J. A., D.

BEVERLY, John of, a famous English prelate of the eighth century, canonized in the fourteenth by decree of a synod holden in London, was born of noble parentage at Harpham, a village in Northumbria. He was educated under the celebrated Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury, and became in his turn the instructor of the more celebrated Bede. In the monastery of Whitby, and later in his hermitage on the Tyne, he enjoyed a saintly reputation, which was afterwards exaggerated by Bede, and others of his disciples, into that of a worker of miracles. In 685 he was raised to the see of Hagulstad, the modern Hexham, and in 687 removed to that of York, which he filled with great credit for thirty years, imitating the patronage of letters for which his master Theodore was renowned, and still extending his fame as a zealous and upright churchman. Four years before his death, which occurred in 721, he retired from the episcopate to a monastery of secular priests, which he had founded in 704 at Beverley in Yorkshire. In the twelfth century his body was exhumed by one of his successors in the see of York, and placed in a costly shrine.—J. S., G.

BEVERLY, Robert B., clerk of the council of Virginia and author of a history of that province, still interesting from its notices of natural productions. Died in 1716.

BEVERNINGK, Jerom, an able diplomatist of the seventeenth century, of a Prussian family, born at Gouda in Holland, April 25, 1614, was burgomaster of that city in 1668. There were few state negotiations in which Holland was concerned during his long lifetime that he did not personally super-