to petition Parliament for relief from their legal disadvantages. In what became his final circular to his diocesan clergy, as the French Revolution challenged most of the values for which he stood, he remained adamant that 'true religion and true learning were never yet at variance'. Intellectual influences Through his preaching, journalism, correspondence and authorship of numerous works (some at the time anonymous), Horne actively defended the high church tendency in Anglicanism against Calvinism, the Church of England against other denominations, and Trinitarian Christianity against other beliefs. He had a reputation as a preacher, and his sermons were frequently reprinted. In his polemical pieces, some appearing in newspapers under the name of Nathaniel Freebody (a cousin who had died), he was influenced by the work of Charles Leslie Having early adopted some of the views of John Hutchinson, he wrote in his defence, though disagreeing with Hutchinson's fanciful interpretations of Hebrew etymology. He also fell under the imputation of Methodism, but protested from the university pulpit against those who took their theology from George Whitefield and John Wesley rather than major Anglican divines. Nevertheless, he disapproved of the expulsion of six Methodist students from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, a high-profile event of 1768 in Oxford; and later, when bishop, thought Wesley should not be forbidden to preach in his diocese. Though impressed by the earlier writings of William Law, he later 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.' In this 'sink', he included the views of Emanuel Swedenborg and Jacob Boehme. Despite criticising the plan of Benjamin Kennicott and some of his colleagues to collate a new text of the Hebrew Bible from manuscripts, in order to prepare for a new translation into English, the two became friends. He was also friendly with Samuel Johnson who with James Boswell came to tea at Magdalen, where they discussed producing a new edition of the Lives by Izaak Walton, and Boswell later wrote warmly of Horne's character and abilities. Though he enjoyed reading Edward Gibbon and admired his scholarship, he recorded his distaste for Gibbon's continual belittling of the Jewish and Christian tradition. His lifelong emphasis on revealed religion rather than natural religion and his acceptance of what would become high church beliefs formed an important link between