Smith, JOHN

Smith, JOHN, one of the Cambridge Platonists, was born early in 1616, the son of a small farmer at Achurch, near Oundle, in Northamptonshire. At eighteen he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a sizar, had Whicheote for his tutor, graduated B.A. in 1640, but missed a fellowship in his own college, as another Northamptonshire man already held one. However, the Earl of Manchester's clearances at Queen's College opened up for him a fellowship there in June 1644. Here he laboured with diligence as Hebrew lecturer, Censor Philosophicus, Greek Prælector, and became in 1650 Dean of the college and Catechist. But his feeble health gave way, and he died, after a long illness borne with saintly patience, 7th August 1652, and was buried in the college chapel. His funeral sermon was preached by Simon Patrick, who wrote long after in his Autobiography, 'Blessed be God for the good I got by him while he lived.' His Select Discourses was published in 1660, again in 1673, in 1821, and at the Cambridge press in 1859. A selection was edited by Lord Hailes in 1756. The subjects of these Discourses are the True Way of attaining to Divine Knowledge, Superstition, the Immortality of the Soul, the Existence and Nature of God, Prophecy, Legal and Evangelical Righteousness, the Shortness of a Pharisaical Righteousness, the Christian's Conflicts with, and Conquests over, Satan, and the Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion—the last an especially admirable treatise, marked at once by strong thought and spiritual inwardness.