John Hulse

John Hulse (1708 - 1790) was an English theologian. He is now known mainly as the founder of the series of "Hulsean Lectures" at the University of Cambridge.

He was born at Middlewich, in Cheshire, as the eldest of a family of nineteen. Entering St John's College, Cambridge, in 1724, he graduated in 1728; and on taking orders (in 1732) was presented to a small country curacy. His father having died in 1753, Hulse succeeded to his estates in Cheshire, where, owing to feeble health, he lived in retirement till his death in December 1790.

Hulse bequeathed his estates to Cambridge University for the purpose of maintaining two divinity scholars (£30 a year each) at St John's College, of founding a prize for a dissertation, and of instituting the offices of Christian advocate and of Christian preacher or Hulsean lecturer.

By a statute in 1860 the Hulsean professorship of divinity was substituted for the office of Christian-advocate, and the lectureship was considerably modified. The first course of lectures under the benefaction was delivered in 1820. In 1830 the number of annual lectures or sermons was reduced from twenty to eight; after 1861 they were further reduced to a minimum of four. The annual value of the Hulse endowment is between £800 and £900, of which eight-tenths go to the professor of divinity and one-tenth to the prize and lectureship respectively.

Hulsean Lectures (incomplete list)

Among the lecturers have been:

*Temple Chevallier (1826)
*John James Blunt (1831)
*Henry Alford (1841)
*Richard Chenevix Trench (1845)
*Christopher Wordsworth (1847)
*Charles John Ellicott (1859) "Historical lectures on the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ"
*Charles Merivale (1861)
*James Moorhouse (1865)
*Pritchard, "The Analogy of Grace and Science"
*John James Stewart Perowne (1868)
*Frederic William Farrar (1870) "The Witness of History to Christ"
*Fenton John Anthony Hort (1871) "The Way The Truth The Life"
*Stanley Leathes (1873)
*Edwin Abbott Abbott (1876)
*William Boyd Carpenter (1878)
*William Cunningham (1885)
*Mandell Creighton (1893)
*Alfred Barry (1894)
*William Moore Ede (1895)
*S. Cheetham (1896)
*James Edward Cowell Welldon (1897)
*James Maurice Wilson (1898)
*Arthur James Mason (1899)
*Fredrick Henry Chase (1900)
*Frederick Robert Tennant (1901) "The origin and propagation of sin"
*F. J. F. Jackson (1902)
*William Allen Whitworth (1903)
*Charles William Stubbs (1904)
*Henry Joseph Corbett Knight (1905)
*John Howard Bertram Masterman (1906)
*John Neville Figgis (1907) "Religion and English Society"
*Ernest Arthur Edghill
*Leonard Elliott Elliot-Binns (1921)
*Stewart Andrew McDowall (1923) "Evolution, Knowledge and Revelation"
*William Ralph Inge (1925) "The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought"
* Charles Archibald Anderson Scott (1928)
* Allan John Smith Macdonald (1931) "Authority And Reason In The Early Middle Ages"
* Herbert George Wood (1933) "Christianity and the nature of history"
* John Martin Creed (1935)
* John Burnaby (1937)
* Stephen Charles Neill (1939)
* Election suspended (1941)
* Stephen Charles Neill (1946)
* Edward Chisholm Dewick (1947)
* Sir William Owen Chadwick (1949)
* Robert Henry Thouless (1950)
* Laurence Edward Browne (1952)
* Henry Chadwick (1954)
* Hendrik Kraemer (1956)
* Clifford William Dugmore (1958)
* Peter Runham Ackroyd (1960) "Exile and Restoration: a study of Hebrew thought of the sixth century BC"
* George Frederick Woods (1962) "Theological Ethics"
* Peter Richard Baelz (1964) "Prayer and Providence"
* David Lawrence Edwards (1966)
* John Arthur Thomas Robinson (1968)
* Kathleen Louise Wood-Legh (1970)
* Maurice Frank Wiles (1973) "The remaking of Christian doctrine"
* Peter Bingham Hinchcliff (1975)
* Arthur Peacocke (1976)
* Charles Davis (1977)
* Alan Malcolm George Stephenson (1979) "The Rise and Decline of English Modernism"
* Gordon McGregor Kendal (1981)
* David Michael Thompson (1983) "Baptism, Church and Society in Britain since 1800"
* David Gwyn Nicholls (1985) "Deity and Domination: Images of God and the State in the 19th and 20rh Centuries"
* Ingolf Ulrich Dalferth (1987)
* Rev. Dr John Barton (1989)
* Colin Gunton (1995)
* Philip Sheldrake (1999) "Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, Identity"
* E. Davis (2006) "Remembering the land: reading the Bible through agrarian eyes"
* Hugh McLeod (2008) "Religion and the Rise of Sport"

References

*An account of the Hulsean lectures from 1820 to 1894 is given in J. Hunt's "Religious Thought in the 19th Century", 332-338.
* [http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc05/htm/v.xi.htm] (1893-1908)
*List from 1928 to 1989 is taken from "Lectureships: Special Foundations - Hulsean Lectureship in Christian Theology" [http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~jld1/lists/LSF.html] .

*1911