1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Patrick, Simon

PATRICK, SIMON (1626–1707), English divine, was born at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on the 8th of September 1626. He entered Queen’s College, Cambridge, in 1644, and after taking orders in 1651 became successively chaplain to Sir Walter St John and vicar of Battersea, Surrey. He was afterwards (1662) preferred to the rectory of St Paul’s, Covent Garden, London, where he continued to labour during the plague. He was appointed dean of Peterborough in 1679, and bishop of Chichester in 1689, in which year he was employed, along with others of the new bishops, to settle the affairs of the Church in Ireland. In 1691 he was translated to the see of Ely, which he held until his death on the 31st of May 1707. His sermons and devotional writings, which are very numerous, were long held in high estimation, and his Commentary on the Historical and Poetical Books of the Old Testament, in 10 vols., brought down as far as the Song of Solomon, was reprinted as recently as 1853. His Friendly Debate between a Conformist and a Nonconformist was a controversial tract which excited considerable feeling at the time of its publication in 1668, but he lived long enough to soothe by his moderation and candour the exasperation it had caused. He also contributed to a volume of Poems upon Divine and Moral Subjects (1719).

The first collected edition of his works appeared at Oxford in 1859 (9 vols., 8vo); a small Autobiography was published also at Oxford in 1839.