The Lady Moyer Lectures

The Moyer Lectures were a series of eighteenth-century London lectures on the doctrine of the Trinity. The lectures were endowed by Lady Rebecca Moyer (d. 1727, widow of Sir Samuel Moyer, a merchant). Daniel Waterland (1683-1740) was both the first lecturer and an influential adviser to Lady Moyer in the selection of lecturers.

I would like to do some work on the kind of trinitarian theology propagated by the Moyer lectures. In addition to reading the published sermons, it would be good to discern the visionary philanthropy of Rebecca Moyer. What moved her to fund a fifty-year lecture series on the Trinity?

1719 to 1774. (Some sources claim they started later, but a Waterland biography argues that they were already in place by 1719. See William van Mildert’s Works of Waterland, w/a life of Waterland in vol. 1. There are some good footnotes on p. 51ff about the lectures.)

Annotated entry in Cyclopedia Bibliographica.

Annotated list in Cambridge catalog.

Another annotated list.

Dame Rebecca Moyer died 28 January, 1727, aged 77. Buried at St. Stephens, Walbrook. Cannot find a painting of her!

Some other sources can be located by searching key words from her will (“sequal months”)

Several texts easily locatable via this search: https://www.prdl.org/search.php?q=moyer

There’s some initial work to be done just gathering the biographies of the lecturers, their topics, and tracking down the publication or non-publication of each year.

List of the Moyer Lectures

1719-1720  Daniel Waterland () 

Eight Sermons, reprinted in The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, Volume 2. Google books.

1720-1721 James Knight

Divinity of Christ Proved from OT

1721 William Lupton

1722 Edmund Chishull

1723-1724 William Berriman

Historical account of the Controversies that have been in the Church Concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity; London, 1725

A Defense of Some Passages in the previous, 1731

1724-1725 Thomas Bishop

On the Errors and Absurdities of the Arian Scheme, London 1726

1725 Andrew Trebeck

1726 Alexander Innis

1727 Philip Gretton

1728-1729 Henry Felton

The Christian Faith Asserted Against Deists, Arians, and Socinians, London, 1730

1729-1730 Joseph Trapp

The Doctrine of the Trinity Briefly Stated and Proved, London, 1730

1730 John Brown, Eight Sermons, London, 1732. Or John Browne

1731 John Hay

1732 Jeremiah Seed

1733 Charles Wheatly

1734 Theodore Waterland

1735 Edward Underhill

1736 Valentine Haywood

1737 John Berriman

1738 Leonard Twells

1739 Arthur Bedford

From the Testimony of the most ancient Jews, London, 1741

1740 Gloster Ridley

Divinity and Operations of the Holy Ghost, by Gloucester Ridley, London, 1740; Oxford, 1802. Bishop Horne called them “incomparable discourses.”

Link at internet archive. Downloaded

1754 William Dodd

1757 William Clements^[5]

Eight Sermons and a Latin Discourse, London, 1799

1764 Benjamin Dawson

Several texts in which the Logos occurs, London 1765

Peter Newcome, at the end of the series.

1773 Thomas Morell

Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, Sermon on Matt 18:7 London, 1774