Arrowsmith, John
ARROWSMITH, JOHN: Puritan
and Presbyterian; b. near Newcastle-on-Tyne Mar. 29, 1602; d. at Cambridge and
was buried Feb. 24, 1659. He was educated at Cambridge, where he became fellow of
St. Catherine’s Hall (1623). He was successively incumbent of St. Nicholas’s Chapel,
King’s Lynn (1631); master of St. John’s College, Cambridge (1644); rector of St.
Martin’s, Ironmonger Lane, London (1645), and member of the sixth London classis;
vice-chancellor of Cambridge University (1647); regius professor of divinity there
(1651); master of Trinity College (1653). He sat in the Westminster Assembly of
Divines (1643). Robert Baillie describes him as “a man with a glass eye in place
of that which was put out by an arrow, a learned divine, on whom the Assembly put
the writing against the Antinomians.” He was on the committee to draw up a confession
of faith, and preached thrice before Parliament, the sermons being published: The
Covenant-Avenging Sword Brandished
[Lev. xxvi. 25]
(London, 1643,
4to, pp. 28); England’s Eben-ezer
[I Sam. vii. 12]
(1645, 4to, pp. 34);
A Great Wonder in Heaven; or, a lively Picture of the Militant
Church, drawn by a Divine Penman
[Rev. xii. 1, 2]
(1647, 4to, pp. 44).
While at Cambridge he published Tactica sacra, sive de milite spirituali
pugnante, vincente, et triumphante dissertatio (Cambridge, 1657, 4to,
pp. 363), containing also three Orationes anti-Weigelianæ. After
his death there were published: Armilla catechetica, A Chain of Principles; or, an orderly Concatenation of Theological
Aphorisms and Exercitations, wherein the chief Heads of Christian Religion
are asserted and improved (Cambridge, 1659, 4to, pp. 490), an unfinished work
designed to form a complete body of divinity in thirty aphorisms, only six of which
were completed, covering for the most part the ground of the first twenty questions
of the larger Westminster Catechism, in essentially the same order; also θεανθρωπος
or God-Man (London, 1660, 4to, pp. 311), an exposition of
the Gospel of
John i. 1–18,
discussing the divinity and humanity of Christ, and
maintaining the Catholic doctrine against all heresies.
C. A. Briggs.