1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Madan, Martin

MADAN, MARTIN (1726–1790), English writer, was educated at Westminster School, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1746. In 1748 he was called to the bar, and for some time lived a very gay life, until he was persuaded to change his ways on hearing a sermon by John Wesley. He took holy orders, and was appointed chaplain to the Lock Hospital, London. He was closely connected with the Calvinistic Methodist movement supported by the countess of Huntingdon, and from time to time acted as an itinerant preacher. He was a first cousin of William Cowper, with whom he had some correspondence on religious matters. In 1767 much adverse comment was aroused by his support of his friend Thomas Haweis in a controversy arising out of the latter’s possession of the living of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire (see Monthly Review, xxxvii. 382, 390, 465). In 1780 Madan raised more serious storm of opposition by the publication of his Thelyphthora, or A Treatise on Female Ruin, in which he advocated polygamy as the remedy for the evils he deplored. The author was no doubt sincere in his arguments, which he based chiefly on scriptural authority; but his book called forth many angry replies. Nineteen attacks on it are catalogued by Falconer Madan in Dict. Nat. Biog. Madan resigned his chaplainship and retired to Epsom, where he produced, among other works, A New and Literal Translation of Juvenal and Persius (1789). He died on the 2nd of May 1790.