precincts of St. John the Baptist, Dowgate Hill. Cooper preached his funeral sermon.
He published: 1. ‘Dæmonium Meridianum,’ &c., 1655, 4to (an account of the proceedings against Pordage, who had already published his own account, 1654, 4to; with appendix in reply to Pordage's ‘Innocency Appearing,’ 1655, fol.). 2. ‘Dæmonium Meridianum. The Second Part,’ &c., 1656, 4to (in reply to Pordage's ‘Truth Appearing,’ 1655, 4to, and a tract entitled ‘The Case of Reading,’ 1656, 4to; appendices on infant baptism in answer to John Pendarves, and on the Reading case addressed to the municipal authorities). 3. ‘A Sober Answer to an angry Epistle … by Thomas Speed,’ &c., 1656, 4to (by Fowler and Ford; Speed replied to these and another adversary in ‘The Guilty-Covered Clergyman,’ &c., 1657, 4to). 4. ‘A True Charge in Ten Particulars against the people called Quakers’ [1659] (does not seem to have been separately printed; it is handled in ‘A Discovery,’ &c., 1659, 4to, by Edward Burrough, and is reprinted in Burrough's ‘Works,’ 1672, fol. 5. ‘Sermon on John xix. 42,’ 1666, 4to (this is mentioned by Wood, but not seen by him; the date seems to show that Fowler was one of those nonconformists who resumed their ministry after the great fire in defiance of the law, and it may give some colour to the conjecture that he founded the presbyterian congregation which met in a wooden structure at Unicorn Yard, Tooley Street). Also a sermon in the ‘Morning Exercise at Cripplegate,’ 1674–6, 4to, and another in the ‘Morning Exercise against Popery preached in Southwark,’ 1675, 4to.
[Funeral Sermon by Cooper, 1677 (i.e. 1678); Wood's Athenæ Oxon. 1691 i. 870, 1692 ii. 449 sq., 728; Calamy's Account, 1713, p. 97 sq.; Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial, 1802, i. 294 sq. (misprints the date of death, 1676, an error which has been followed by later writers); Chalmers's Gen. Biog. Dict. 1814, xv. 14 sq.; Wilson's Diss. Churches, 1814, iv. 228; Smith's Biblioth. Anti-Quak., 1873, p. 189 sq.; Fowler's Dæmonium.]
FOWLER, EDWARD, D.D. (1632–1714), bishop of Gloucester, was born in 1632 at Westerleigh, Gloucestershire. His father, Richard Fowler, whom Calamy describes as a man of great ability, was ejected as a nonconformist in 1662 from the perpetual curacy of Westerleigh. At the same time the bishop's elder brother, Stephen Fowler, B.A., was ejected from a fellowship at St. John's, Cambridge, and from the rectory of Crick, Northamptonshire. He became presbyterian minister at Newbury, Berkshire, in 1684, and died soon after. Edward Fowler was educated at the college school in Gloucester under William Russell, who had married his sister. At the beginning of 1650 he was admitted a clerk of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a chaplain on 14 Dec. 1653, having a gift of extemporary prayer. He graduated B.A. on 23 Dec. 1653. After this he became a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated M.A. about 1655. Returning to Oxford, he was incorporated M.A. on 5 July 1656.
Fowler's first post on leaving the university was that of presbyterian chaplain to Amabella, dowager countess of Kent. Through the influence of his patroness he obtained in 1656 the rectory of Norhill, Bedfordshire, a donative in the gift of the Grocers' Company. On the passing of the Uniformity Act (1662), he was inclined to cast in his lot with his father and brother; he appears to have been non-resident till after 1664, though this was contrary to the terms of the donative; subsequently he conformed, and retained his rectory. He did not forfeit the respect of nonconformists; Calamy speaks of him as ‘a very worthy man.’ His theology was of the Baxterian type, a mean between Calvinism and Arminianism. He accepted the articles in Ussher's sense, as ‘instruments of peace,’ and deplored the combative zeal alike of the high churchman and the puritan. In 1670 he presented his views, without giving his name, in a ‘Free Discourse,’ an animated, if somewhat rambling dialogue between Philalethes and Theophilus. This piece is avowedly a defence of the latitudinarian divines, though Fowler never belonged to the inner circle of the Cambridge men of that school. It was followed next year by his ‘Design of Christianity,’ dedicated to Sheldon, in which the authorship of the ‘Free Discourse’ is admitted, and stress is laid on the moral purpose of revelation. Baxter criticised the argument (‘How far Holiness is the Design of Christianity,’ 1671, 4to); while Bunyan vehemently assailed the author from Bedford gaol (‘Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith,’ 1672, 4to). An undignified retort (‘Dirt Wip'd Off’) is with too much reason connected with Fowler, nor is the matter mended by the suggestion that for some of his vocabulary of abuse he may have been indebted to his curate. Bunyan described the ‘Design’ as a mixture of ‘popery, socinianism, and quakerism;’ on the other hand Joseph Smith includes the book in his ‘Bibliotheca Anti-Quakeriana,’ though he admits that the reference to Friends is ‘very slight.’
Fowler's ‘Discourse’ and ‘Design’ commended him to Sheldon, who brought him to London as rector of Allhallows, Bread Street.
