Sibbes

Sibbes, RICHARD, Puritan divine, was born the son of an honest wheelwright at Tostock (not Sudbury), Suffolk, in 1577. He was put to Bury school, and afterwards, by the exertions of some friends who saw his promise, was sent to St John's College, Cambridge, as sub-sizar. He graduated B.A. in 1599, was elected Fellow two years after, and was Trinity Lecturer from 1610 till 1615, when he was deprived, as also of his fellowship. But he was at once appointed preacher of Gray's Inn, where he laboured till 1626, when, after declining Usher's offer of the provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, he was made Master of Catharine Hall, Cambridge. He was under the suspicion of Laud, but contrived to escape the penalties inflicted by his courts, and in 1633 was appointed by the king Vicar of Trinity Church. He died 5th July 1635. Fuller tells us Sibbes was most eminent for that grace which is most worth, yet costs the least to keep it, Christian humility, and further, that as a preacher the truth he pressed most urgently on his hearers was the Incarnation. For his heavenly-mindedness he has been called, and not inappropriately, the English Leighton. Among his many books may be named the Bruised Reed, which converted Baxter at fifteen; the Soul's Conflict, which Izaak Walton bequeathed to his son, as he did the former to his daughter; Bowels Opened; The Returning Backslider, &c. There is a complete edition in Nichol's Puritan Divines, with a Life by the Rev. A. B. Grosart (7 vols. 1862-64).