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Rh an intimacy with several considerable Popish families, and became a catholic for many years. But, about the year 1707, quitted that communion. In 1708, she was married to Mr. Cockburn, son of Dr. Cockburn, an eminent and learned divine of Scotland; and entirely diverted from her studies for many years, by attending to the duties of a wife and mother. However, her zeal for Mr. Locke's character and writings drew her again into public light, when she vindicated his principles concerning the resurrection of the same body, against the injurious imputations of Dr. Holdsworth. She wrote two pieces on this occasion, the latter of which was not published till after her death.

Her remarks upon some writers of the controversy concerning the foundation of moral Duty and moral Obligation, were begun in 1739, finished the year following, and published in 1743, in The Works of the Learned, inscribed to Alexander Pope, esquire, by an admirer of his moral character. Dr. Rutherford'sRutherforth's [sic] Essays on the Nature and Obligation of Virtue, published in 1744, soon engaged Mrs. Cockburn's attention, and she drew up a confutation of it with perspicuity, and transmitted her manuscript to Mr. Warburton, who published it with a preface of his own, in 1747. The title of it runs thus; Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr. Rutherford's Essay on the Nature and Obligation of Virtue, in Vindication of the contrary Principles and Reasonings enforced in the Writings of the late Dr. Samuel Clarke.

Mrs. Cockburn died in 1749, in her seventy-first year, and was interred at Long Horsley, near her husband, who died a year before her, with this short sentence on their tomb, "Let their works praise them in their graves." Prov. xxx. 31. She was indeed an rable