Joseph Priestley was born near Leeds, 13th March, 1733, and being towards the latter part of his life driven out of England, by the persecuting spirit evinced towards him, and which had been specially excited by his republican tendencies, he died at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, on the 6th Feb., 1804. Originally a Church of England clergyman, his first notable inclination to heterodoxy manifested itself in hesitation as to the doctrine of the atonement. He ultimately rejected the immortality and immateriality of the soul, argued for necessitarianism, and earned considerable unpopularity by the boldness of some of his sentiments on political as well as theological matters. Priestley was one of the rapidly multiplying instances of heresy alike in religion and politics, but he provoked the most bitter antagonism. His works were burned by the common hangman, his house, library, and scientific instruments were destroyed by an infuriate and pious mob. Despite all this, his heresy, according to his own view of it, was not of a very outrageous character, for he believed in Deity, in revealed religion, and in Christianity, rather putting the blame on misconduct of alleged Christians. He said: "The wretched forms under which Christianity has long been generally exhibited, and its degrading alliance with, or rather its subjection to a power wholly heterogeneous to it, and which has employed it for the most unworthy purposes, has made it contemptible and odious in the eyes of all sensible men, who are now everywhere casting off the very profession and every badge of it. Enlightened Christians must themselves, in some measure, join with unbelievers in exposing whatever will not bear examination in or about religion." His writings on scientific topics were most voluminous; his most heretical volumes are those on "Matter and Spirit."