LIGHTFOOT, John, a learned English divine, was the son of a divine, and born in March 1602, at Stoke-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire. After having finished his studies at a school on Morton Green, near Congleton in Cheshire, he was removed in 1617 to Cambridge, where he applied himself to the study of eloquence, and succeeded so well as to be thought the best orator among the under graduates in the university. He also made extraordinary proficiency in the Latin and Greek, but neglected the Hebrew, and even lost that knowledge of it which he brought from school. His taste for the oriental languages was not yet excited; and as for logic, the study of it, as conducted at that time among the academics, was too disputatious and fierce for his meek disposition. As soon as he had taken the degree of bachelor of arts, he left the university, and became assistant in a school at Repton in Derbyshire. Having held this situation a year or two, he entered into orders, and became curate of Norton-under-Hales, in Shropshire. This curacy occasioned an awakening of his genius for the Hebrew tongue. Norton lies near Bellaport, then the seat of Sir Rowland Cotton, who being his constant hearer, made him his chaplain, and took him into his house. This gentleman, being a perfect master of the Hebrew language, engaged Lightfoot in that study; and, by conversing with his patron, he soon became sensible, that without that knowledge it would be impossible to attain to an accurate understanding of the Scriptures. Having, therefore, applied himself to it with extraordinary vigour, he in a little time made great progress; and his patron removing with his family to reside in London, he followed his preceptor to that city. But he did not stay long there; for, having a mind to improve himself by foreign travel, he went down into Staffordshire, in order to take leave of his father and mother. But passing through Stone in that county, and finding the place destitute of a minister, he was prevailed on by the pressing entreaties of the parishioners to undertake that cure; and having laid aside his design of travelling, he began to turn his thoughts to settling at home. During his residence at Bellaport, he had made the acquaintance of a gentlewoman, the daughter of Mr William Crompton of Stonepark, and being now in possession of that living, he married her in 1628. But notwithstanding this settlement, his unquenchable thirst after rabbinical learning would not suffer him to continue there; and Sion College library at London being well stocked with books of that kind, he quitted his charge at Stone, and removed with his family to Hornsey, near the city, where he gave the public a specimen of his advancement in those studies, by his Erubbim, or Miscellanies Christian and Judaical, in 1629. He was at this time only twenty-seven years of age, and appears to have been well acquainted with the Latin and the Greek fathers, as well as the ancient heathen writers. These first fruits of his studies were dedicated to Sir Rowland Cotton, who, in 1631, presented him to the rectory of Ashley, in Staffordshire.

Considering himself as now fixed for life, he built a study in the garden, to be out of the noise of the house, and applied himself with indefatigable diligence in searching the Scriptures. Thus employed, the days passed agreeably; and he continued quiet and unmolested, till the great change which happened in public affairs brought him into a share of the administration relating to the church; for he was nominated a member of the memorable assembly of divines for settling a new form of ecclesiastical polity. This appointment was the effect of his distinguished merit; and he accepted it solely with a view to serve his country, as far as lay in his power. The non-residence which this would necessarily occasion, apparently induced him to resign his rectory; and having obtained the presentation for a younger brother of his own, he set out for London in 1642. Having now satisfied himself in clearing up many of the most abstruse passages in the Bible, and provided the chief materials, as well as formed the plan, of his Harmony, an opportunity of inspecting it at the press was no doubt an additional motive for his going to the capital, where he had not been long before he was chosen minister of St Bartholomew’s, behind the Royal [7:13:344]Exchange. The assembly of divines having met in 1643, our author attended diligently there, and made a distinguished figure in their debates, where he used great freedom, and gave signal proofs of his courage as well as learning, in opposing many of those tenets which the divines were endeavouring to establish. His learning recommended him to the parliament, whose visitors, having ejected Dr William Spurstow from the mastership of Catharine Hall in Cambridge, put Lightfoot in his room, in the year 1653; and he was also presented to the living of Much-Munden in FIertfordshire, void by the death of Dr Samuel Ward, Margaret-professor of divinity in that university, before the expiration of this year. Meanwhile he had his turn with other favourites in preaching before the House of Commons, most of which sermons were printed; and in them we see him warmly pressing the speedy settlement of the church in the Presbyterian form, which he cordially believed to be according to the pattern in the Gospel. He was all the while employed in preparing and publishing the several branches of his Harmony, which were so many excellent specimens of the usefulness of human learning to true religion; but he met with great difficulties and discouragements in that work, chiefly from that spirit of hostility to erudition which then prevailed, and even threatened the destruction of the universities. In 1655 he entered upon the office of vice-chancellor of Cambridge, to which he was chosen that year, having taken the degree of doctor of divinity in 1652. He performed all the regular exercises for his degree with great applause, and executed the vice-chancellor’s office with exemplary diligence and fidelity; and, particularly at the commencement, supplied the place of professor of divinity, then undisposed of, as an act which was kept for a doctor’s degree in that profession. At the same time he was engaged with others in perfecting the Polyglott Bible, then in the press. At the Restoration he offered to resign the mastership of Catharine Hall. But, as what he had done had been rather in compliance with the necessity of the times than from any zeal or spirit of opposition to the king and government, a confirmation was granted to him by the crown, both of the place and of his living. Soon after this he was appointed one of the assistants at the conference upon the liturgy, which was held in the beginning of 1661, but attended only once or twice; being probably disgusted at the heat with which that conference was managed. However, he stuck close to his design of perfecting his Harmony ; and being of a strong and healthy constitution, which was assisted by a strict temperance, he prosecuted his studies with unabated vigour to the last, and continued to publish, notwithstanding the many difficulties he met with from the expense of the work. However, not long before he died, some booksellers got a promise from him to collect and methodise his works, in order to print them; but the execution was prevented by his death, which happened on the 6th of December 1675. Dr Lightfoot was twice married; and his first wife brought him four sons and two daughters. His second wife was likewise a widow, relict of Mr Austin Brograve, uncle of Sir Thomas Brograve, of Hertfordshire, a gentleman well versed in rabbinical learning, and a particular acquaintance of our author; but he had no issue by her. She died before him, and was buried in Munden church, where he was himself likewise interred near both his wives. Dr Lightfoot’s works were first collected and published in 1684, in two volumes folio. The second edition was printed at Amsterdam, 1686, in two volumes folio, containing all his Latin writings, with a Latin translation of those which he wrote in English. At the end of both these editions there is a list of such pieces as he left unfinished. It is the chief of these, in Latin, which make up the third volume, added to the former two, in a third edition of his works, published by

John Leusden, at Utrecht, in 1699, folio. They were communicated by Mr Strype, who, in 1700, published another collection of these papers, under the title of Some Genuine Remains of the late pious and learned Dr John Lightfoot.