Heylin (or Heylyn), Peter

Heylin (or Heylyn), Peter, was born Nov. 29, 1600, at Burford, Oxfordshire. At fourteen he entered Hart Hall, Oxford, and within two years was chosen demy of Magdalen College. Here he devoted himself to science, particularly to geography, on which he wrote a treatise entitled Microcosmus, which gained him great reputation. In 1623 he was ordained, and about 1625 undertook an academical exercise at Oxford, where he fell into a dispute with Prideaux, then regius professor of divinity. He maintained the visibility and infallibility of the catholic Church (not the Roman), and raised a storm which lasted for a long time in the University. His doctrines recommended him to the notice of Laud, then bishop of Bath and Wells. In 1628 he became chaplain to lord Danby, and, some time after, king's chaplain. He obtained various livings and clerical offices through the patronage of Laud, from which he was expelled by the Republicans; was the editor of the Mercurius Aulicus, the Royalist paper; recovered his preferments at the Restoration; and died May 8,1662. Heylin was a fierce controversialist, and a bitter opponent of the Puritans, and through these qualities he obtained his various rapid preferments.' He even went so far in his opposition to Puritanism as to write a History of the Sabbath, vindicating the employment of the leisure hours and evenings of the Lord's day in sports and recreations. In theology he was an Arminian of the latitudinarian sort (see his Historia Quinq-Articularis, 1659). His Examen Historicum contained an attack on Thomas Fuller which brought on a bitter controversy with that eminent writer. He wrote The History of St. George and of the Order of the Garter (2nd edit. Lond. 1633, 4to): Ecclesia Restaurata: the History of the English Reformation (1674, fol.; new edit. by Robertson, Lond. 1849, 2 vols. 8vo): — Sermons (London, 1659, 4to): — Life of Anp. Land (Lond. 1647, fol.; several editions): — irius Redivivus, a History of the Presbyterians (2nd edit. London, 1672, fol.): — Theologia Veterum., on the Apostles' Creed (Lond. 1673, fol.); with many controversial tracts, etc. His life is prefixed to the Ecclesia Restaurata (edit. of 1849). See Hook, Eccles. Biog. 6, 13 sq.; Allibone, Dictionary of Authors, 1, 838.