Robert Recorde.
—Can any of your readers inform me whether Robert Recorde, who in 1549, or possibly some years later, was Comptroller of the Mint at Bristol, was the same person as the author of The Whetstone of Wit, and other mathematical works? Also, whether there is any fuller account of his life to be met with than that given by Hutton?
J. E.
[It does not appear that Robert Recorde, the celebrated mathematician, was ever connected with the Bristol mint. The best account we have met with of the author of The Whetstone of Wit, is in Mr. Halliwell's pamphlet on The Connexion of Wales with the Early Science of England, 8vo., 1840. Consult also a very able and learned article in the Companion to the British Almanack for 1837, pp. 30-37., by Professor De Morgan.]
Strange Opinions of great Divines.
—I shall be obliged to any of your correspondents who can give me references to the following quotations from the works of two great divines:
(1.) "I would that we were well rid of this [the Athanasian] Creed."
(2.) "The Apocalypse either finds a man mad, or leaves him so."
C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.
[1. The first quotation will be found in a letter of Archbishop Tillotson's to Bishop Burnet, dated Oct. 23, 1694. The archbishop says, "The account given of Athanasius' Creed (i.e. in Burnet's Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles) seems to me no-wise satisfactory. I wish we were well rid of it." Dr. Birch adds, "The archbishop did not long survive the writing of this letter."—See Birch's Life of Tillotson, edit. 1752, p. 343.; ed. 1753, p. 315. Consult also Remarks upon Dr. Birch's Life of Tillotson, 8vo., 1753, p. 53., anonymous, but attributed to George Smith, a Nonjuror.