Christopher Ness

Christopher Ness (1621-1705) was an English Nonconformist preacher and author.
Ness entered St. John's College, Cambridge in 1638 where he graduated B.A. and M.A. At age 23 he moved to Yorkshire where he became a preacher of independent tenets successively at South Cliffe Chapel in his native parish, in Holderness, and at Beverley, where he taught a school. 
In 1656, he became a preacher at Leeds, and in 1660 he was a lecturer under the vicar, Dr. Lake, afterwards Bishop of Chichester; but his Calvinism clashed with the Arminianism of Dr. Lake, and on St. Bartholomew's day in 1662 he was ejected from his lectureship. After this he became a schoolmaster and private preacher at Clayton, Morley, and Hunslet, all in Yorkshire. At Hunslet he took an indulgence as a Congregationalist in 1672, and a new meeting-house was opened by him on June 3, 1672.
He was excommunicated no less than four times, and when in 1674 or 1675 a writ de excommunicato capiendo was issued against him, he moved to London, where he preached to a private congregation in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. In 1684 he had to conceal himself from the officers of the crown, who had a warrant for his arrest on the charge of publishing an elegy on the death of his friend John Partridge, another Nonconformist minister. He died on December 26, 1705, aged exactly 84 years, and was buried at Bunhill Fields Cemetery.
:The above content was extracted and edited from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, public domain.
==His chief published works==
* A History and Mystery of the Old and New Testaments, fol. 1696.
* A Protestant Antidote against the Poison of Popery.
* The Crown and Glory of a Christian.
* A Christian's Walk and Work on Earth until he attain to Heaven, 2nd edit. 1678-9.
* A Church History from Adam, and a Scripture Prophecy to the End of the World.
* An Antidote against Arminianism, a small work in high repute with Calvinists, first published in 1700, and which reached its sixth edition in 1838.
==External links==
*An Antidote against Arminianism
Ness