toleration

Edward Synge, friend and father

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The Episcopal Throne in the ruined Cathedral of Elphin (c) Vox Hiberionacum, with permission
The Episcopal Throne in the ruined Cathedral of Elphin
(c) Vox Hiberionacum, with permission

Edward Synge was born around 1690 and died in Dublin on the 27th January, 1762. He was the son of the elder Edward Synge, who was himself involved in the philosophical debates of the time.

He was educated in Trinity College Dublin (M.A. in 1712 and D.D. in 1728) and after being chancellor of St. Patrick’s (1726), was successively bishop of Clonfert (1730), Cloyne (1731), Ferns (1733), and finally Elphin (1740 until his death).

Synge was close to Francis Hutcheson and appears to have been a member of the Molesworth Circle. He assisted Hutcheson in developing revising his work and Hutcheson himself acknowledged that Synge had devised the general scheme of “Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue” before Hutcheson. The connection seems to have continued after Hutcheson’s departure for Glasgow and until his death, since his son dedicated the posthumous collection of his father’s works to Synge 1. Letters from the 1760s from Edward Synge giving advice to the younger Hutcheson still exist.

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The Middle Edward Synge, Archbishop of Tuam

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St Mary's Cathedral, Tuam (c) Valeria Luongo/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
St Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam
(c) Valeria Luongo/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Writing about Bishop Edward Synge requires some care. There were three of them, all related. The Edward Synge who is the subject of this post was the son of Edward Synge, bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross. He was also the nephew of George Synge (1594–1653), bishop of Cloyne; and the father of Bishops Edward Synge (1691–1762) and Nicholas Synge (1693–1771).

Edward Synge the Elder, as we will distinguish him from his father and son, was born in Inishannon, Cork on 6 April 1659. After his education in Cork, Oxford and Dublin he was rector in Laracor, Co. Meath (1682–6) and then vicar of Holy Trinity and prebendary of Christ Church, Cork (1686-1706). In that period he wrote his first major work A Gentleman’s Religion (1693), originally published anonymously.

After the challenge of John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), Edward Synge added an appendix to later editions of Gentleman’s Religion (David Berman suggests as a direct response.) Toland had argued that religious mysterious such as the Holy Trinity could not be properly part of Christianity since they could not be believed, since they were contrary to or above reason.

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