Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jeffery, Thomas
JEFFERY, THOMAS (1700?–1728), nonconformist divine, born at Exeter about 1700, was a student at the nonconformist academy conducted by Joseph Hallett II (1656–1722) [q. v.], where James Foster [q. v.] and Peter King, first lord King [q. v.], afterwards lord chancellor, were fellow-students. Jeffery assisted the Halletts in their ministry for some years, and in 1726 he succeeded James Peirce [q. v.] as colleague to the younger Hallett at the Mint Meeting, but he was shortly afterwards called to Little Baddow, Essex, where he remained until his return to Exeter, immediately before his premature death in 1728.
Jeffery is best remembered by the learned support which he gave to Chandler, Whiston, Sherlock, and other opponents of Anthony Collins [q. v.], the deist, in a ‘Review of the Controversy between the Author of a Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion and his Adversaries,’ 1725, 8vo. Jeffery's ‘True Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, in opposition to the false ones set forth in a late book’ (i.e. Collins's ‘Grounds,’ &c.), which was written as early as 1725, is described by Leland (View of Deistical Writers, i. 119) as an ‘ingenious treatise,’ and by Collins himself as the work of an ‘ingenious author.’ Jeffery also wrote ‘Christianity the Perfection of all Religion, Natural and Revealed,’ 1728, 8vo. His works were praised by Dr. Kennicott, and Jeffery is described in Doddridge's ‘Family Expositor’ as having ‘handled the subject of prophecy and the application of it in the New Testament more studiously perhaps than any one since the time Eusebius wrote his “Demonstratio Evangelica.”’
[Biog. Brit. (Kippis), iv. art. ‘Collins;’ Watkins's Biog. Dict. (1807 edit.); Monthly Mag. xv. 146; Murch's Hist. of Presb. and Gen. Baptist Churches in West of England.]