Browne, Peter

BROWNE, PETER: Protestant Irish bishop; b. in County Dublin soon after 1660; d. Aug. 25, 1735. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin; was consecrated bishop of Cork and Ross 1710. He opposed the custom of drinking healths in a series of pamphlets (1713 sqq.) which won him much notoriety, but has more enduring fame as an antideistical writer; in reply to John Toland he published A Letter in Answer to a Book Entitled Christianity not Mysterious (Dublin, 1697), and afterward elaborated his argument in The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (London; 1728), a critique of Locke's Essay; in Things Divine and Supernatural Conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human (1733) he asserts that knowledge of God's essence and attributes can be only "analogical" and not direct.