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John Humfrey

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John Humfrey (1621–1719) was an English clergyman, an ejected minister from 1662 and controversialist active in the Presbyterian cause.

Life

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He graduated B.A from Pembroke College, Oxford in 1641, and M.A. in 1647. He studied in Oxford during the royalist occupation there.[1]

He received presbyterian ordination in 1649, and became vicar of Frome Selwood, Somerset. He defended with Thomas Blake free admission to communion, in a controversy that opposed him to Roger Drake.[2] His views of the Interregnum period were Erastian.[1][3][4]

He was re-ordained by William Piers, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1661. Humfrey defended his action, in The Question of Re-Ordination(1661). He shortly changed his mind, however, and lost his living in 1662 for nonconformism. He set up a church in Duke's Place, London, and afterwards in Petticoat Lane, Whitechapel.[1][5]

With the congregationalist Stephen Lobb he wrote two works against Edward Stillingfleet's Mischief of Separation. He was a staunch advocate of a national church and the unity of Protestants within it, and supported ‘comprehension’, the adjustment of positions to bring nonconformists back within the Church of England. His A Case of Conscience (1669) argued that in matter of religion the magistrate should not constrain people against the requirements of their conscience.[1][6][7]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d "Humfrey, John" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  2. ^ "Drake, Roger" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  3. ^ Jere Cohen, Protestantism and Capitalism: The Mechanisms of Influence (2002), p. 229.
  4. ^ Graham Alan John Rogers, Tom Sorell (editors), Hobbes and History (2000), p. 165.
  5. ^ N. H. Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England (1987), p. 48.
  6. ^ Keeble, p. 88.
  7. ^ Andrew Pyle (editor), Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), article on Humfrey, pp. 455-6.