Alleine, Joseph

Alleine, Joseph an eminently pious non-conformist divine, was born at Devizes in 1633. His piety and love of learning displayed themselves very early, and at sixteen he was sent to Lincoln College, Oxford, but in 1651 he removed to Corpus Christi College, a Wiltshire scholarship being then vacant. In 1653 he was admitted bachelor of arts, and in 1655 he became co-pastor with the Rev. George Newton, at Taunton, where he labored with great diligence and success until 1662, when he was deprived of his office for non-conformity, and on the 26th of May, 1663, was committed to Ilchester jail, where, after being treated with great indignity, together with seven ministers and fifty Quakers, he was indicted at the assizes for preaching on the 17th of May, of which he was found guilty, and fined one hundred marks. He declared in court that, "whatsoever he was charged with, he was guilty of nothing but doing his duty." He continued in prison a year, and, after his release, he was even more zealous in propagating the Gospel, till his exertions brought on illness. In 1665 he was again apprehended, and, with some of his friends. was committed to prison for sixty days. The confinement increased his disorder, and be rapidly became worse, and died Nov. 16, 1668. His Alarm to the Unconverted is one of the most useful and most widely circulated books of practical religion ever published. — Life of Alleine, with Letters (N. Y. 1840, 12mo); Stanford, Life of Alleine (Lond. 1864).