LINDSEY, Theophilus (1723-1808), an English theological writer, was born in Middlewich, Cheshire, on June 20, 1723, was educated at the Leeds Free School, and in 1741 entered St John’s College, Cambridge, of which, after graduating with distinction, he became a fellow in 1747. For some time he held a curacy in Spitalfields, London, and from 1754 to 1756 he travelled on the Continent in the capacity of tutor to the young duke of Northumberland. On his return he was presented to the living of Kirkby-Wiske in Yorkshire, and after exchanging it for that of Piddletown in Dorsetshire he in 1763 removed to Catterick in Yorkshire. Meanwhile he had begun to entertain anti-Trinitarian views, and to be troubled in conscience about their inconsistency with the creed he had repeatedly subscribed; since 1769 the intimate friendship of Priestley had served to foster his scruples, and in 1771 he united with Archdeacon Blackburne (his father-in-law), Jebb, Wyvell, and Law in preparing a petition to parliament with the prayer that clergymen of the church, and graduates of the universities, might be relieved from the burden of subscribing to the thirty-nine articles, and “restored to their undoubted rights as Protestants of interpreting Scripture for themselves.” After two hundred and fifty signatures to the document had, with six months of vast effort on Lindsey’s part, been obtained, it was, in February 1772, rejected in the House of Commons by a majority of two hundred and seventeen to seventy-one; the adverse vote was repeated in the following year, and in the end of 1773, seeing no prospect of obtaining within the church the relief which his conscience demanded, Lindsey resigned his vicarage and took leave of a warmly attached congregation. In April 1774 he began to conduct a ...