King, Edward

King, Edward a noteworthy English antiquary and lawyer, was born in 1.735 in Norfolk, and was a graduate of Cambridge University. He was elected F.R.S. in 1767 and F.S.A. in 1770. He died in 1807. King wrote a number of works connected with theology, politics, political economy, and antiquities. We have room here only to note his Morsels of Criticisms, tending to Illustrate some few Passages in Holy Scripture upon philosophical Principles and an enlarged View of Things (Lond. 1788, 4to, and since). The contents of this work are: On the word "Heaven" in the Lord's Prayer; Septuagint Translation of Genesis; John the Baptist being Elias; Future coming of Christ; Day of Judgment; Series of Events in Revelation; Daniel's Prophecy; Deaths of Ananias and Sapphira; Dissertations on Light; The Heavens; Stars; Fluid of Heat; Miracles; Jacob and Esau; Soul, Body, Spirit, etc. King's learning was profound and extensive, but he was so inclined to the speculative and hypothetical that he perpetually fell into difficulty by advancing statements which he was unqualified to establish. The want of discrimination between theory and fact, supposition and reality, together with the tenacity with which he clung to his premature conclusions when assailed, proved quite detrimental. In a work of his treating on the signs of the times, he was very desirous of tracing the history of the French Revolution to the records of sacred anticuity; he also ventured to assert the genuineness of the second book of Esdras in the Apocrypha. He was replied to by Gough and bishop Horsley. See Chalmers's Biog. Dict. vol. xix (Lond. 1815); Watkins's Biog. Dict. (Lond. 1820); Blake's Biog. Dict. (3d edit. Phila. 1840); Allibone, Dict. of Engl. and American Authors, ii, s.v.