Vines, Richard

VINES, RICHARD: Westminster divine; b. at Blaston, in Leicester County, England, about 1600; d. Feb. 4, 1655-56. He was educated in Magdalen College, Cambridge; became teacher of a school at Hinckly in Warwickshire after finishing his course at the university, and afterward rector of Wedding ton. He was appointed a member of the Westmin ster Assembly of Divines in 1643 from Warwick shire, and was very influential in matters of church government and the sacraments. He was chair man of the committee of accommodation with the Independents. He often preached before Parlia-

ment. During the session of the Westminster Assembly he was, in 1643, made minister of the parish of Clements Danes, near Essexhouse; but, this proving too large for him, he removed to the rectory of Walton in Hertfordshire, and soon after became pastor of Lawrence Jewry, London. In 1644 he was also appointed master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and held the position until 1649, when he was turned out for refusing the "engagement" [of allegiance to the existing government]. In 1653 he was appointed by parliament one of the committee of divines to draw up the fundamentals as a basis of toleration. He died on Sabbath evening, from bleeding at the nose, which was brought on by excessive labor in preaching and administering the Lord's Supper. During his life a number of sermons were published, e.g., Impostures of Seducing Teachers Discovered, Commons Sermons, Nov. 30, 1642; Author, Nature, and Danger of Heresy, Commons Sermon, Apr. 23, 1644. After his death a number of posthumous works were published by his friends, e.g., Treatise of the Right Institution, Administration, and Receiving of the ,Sacrament of the Lord's Supper (4to, pp. 376, London, 1657); God's Drawing and Man's Coming to Christ (4to, pp. 335, 1662). His funeral sermon was preached by Thomas Jacombe, entitled Enoch's Walk and Change, and published 1656, with introductory remarks by Simeon Ashe and Edmund Calamy, followed by poetic epitaphs from William Spurstone, Matthew Newcommen, Matthew Poole, and others, all speaking of him in the warmest terms. He is represented as "a man of extraordinary ability, a smart disputant, well studied, a perfect master of the Greek, a real orator; his ministry solid, pithy, quick, and searching, having a clear head. He could dive deep into a knotty controversy, and was not afraid of men. He was a man of gracious, tender spirit." Fuller says of him, " He was most charitably moderate to such as dissented from him, though most constant to his own principles."

C. A. Briggs.

Bibliography: -Thomas Fuller, Church. Hist. of Great Britain, xi. 215, London, 1658; idem, Hist. of the Worthies of England, p. 134, ib. 1662; Samuel Clarke, Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, i. 48-49, 2 parts, ib. 1633; J. Reid, Memoirs of the Westminster Divines, pp. 191 sqq., Paisley, 1811-15; DNB, lviii. 369-370, where reference to scattering notices is given.