Browne, Simon

Browne, Simon a Dissenting minister of England, was born about 1680 at Shepton Mallet, Somersetshire. He served Dissenting congregations of Portsmouth and, afterward, of London until 1723, when grief for the loss of his wife and his son made him deranged on the subject of Christ's humanity, concerning which he maintained that the Supreme Being, though retaining the human shape and the faculty of speaking, "had all the while no more notion of what he said than a parrot." He gave up his charge, and refused to join in any act of worship. Yet while under this delusion he wrote very able works against Woolston (Remarks on the Miracles of our Saviour, 1732), and against Tindal (Defence of the Religion of Nature, 1732), besides a Greek and a Latin Dictionary, and a vol. of Hymns. He died in 1732. See Wilson, Dissenting Churches, ii, 338.