PEARSON, JOHN (1612-1686), a learned English bishop, was born at Great Snoring in the county of Norfolk, on the 28th of February 1612. After attending Eton, he entered Queens’ College, Cambridge, 10th June 1631, and was elected a scholar of King’s in April following and a fellow in 1634. Entering holy orders in 1639, he was collated to the prebend of Nether-A von, in the church of Sarum. In 1640 he was appointed chaplain to the lord-keeper Finch, by whom he was presented to the living of Thorington in Suffolk during the same year. In 1650 he was made preacher of St Clement’s, Eastcheap, in London. Seven years later he and Peter Gunning had a dispute with two Roman Catholics upon the subject of schism, a one-sided account of which was printed at Paris by one of the Roman Catholic disputants, under the title Schism Unmasked, 1658. In 1659 Pearson published at London his celebrated Exposition of the Creed, dedicated to his parishioners of St Clement’s, Eastcheap, to whom the substance of that now standard work had been preached several years before, and by whom he had been desired to make it public. The same year he likewise published the Golden Remains of the ever-memorable Mr John Hales of Eton, to which he prefixed a preface containing a character of that eminent man, with whom he had been acquainted for many years, drawn up with great elegance and force. Pearson had also a principal share in the editing of the Critici Sacri, first published in 1660. Soon after the Restoration he was presented by Juxon, then bishop of London, to the rectory of St Christopher’s in that city; and he was also in 1660 created doctor of divinity at Cambridge, in pursuance of the king’s letters mandatory, installed prebendary of Ely, archdeacon of Surrey, and made master of Jesus ...