Oxenbridge, John

Oxenbridge, John a celebrated English Nonconformist, for some time minister in this country, was born at Daventry, England, Jan. 30, 1609. He was educated at Oxford, and also at Cambridge, and at: the last university, he took his degree in 1631. He was tutor of Magdalen Hall, Oxford; but was deprived of this position in 1634, because he refused to give up the, practice of persuading his pupils to subscribe to certain religious articles of his own framing. He spent the next few years as a missionary in the Bermuda Islands. Through the intervention, of the Long Parliament, he was ape pointed fellow of Eton College in 1642; and was ordained pastor of a church in Beverly in 1644. He afterwards settled at Berwick-on-Tweed, where he was silenced by the Bartholomew act in 1662. Having for some time urged the importance of the new settlements in Dutch Guiana, then under lord Willoughby, as a field of missionary labor, he now himself led the way to Surinam, where he labored for some time diligently and with success. In 1667 he visited Barbadoes, whence in 1669 he proceeded to Boston. He was ordained pastor of the First Church, Boston, in conjunction with the Rev. James Allen, April 10, 1670; and remained there until his death, Dec. 28, 1674. Though Oxenbridge was a very popular preacher, his whole life seems to have been passed in religious controversy. His publications are, A Double Watchword (1661): — A Seasonable Proposition for Propagating the Gospel by Christian Colonies in the Continent of New Guiana (London). The arguments employed by Oxenbridge in this pamphlet are well chosen and ably pursued; but their influence was much weakened by a spirit of intolerant strife: — Election Sermon (1671): — A Sermon on Seasonable Seeking of God. See Anderson, History of the Colonial Church, 2, 245-249; Brown, History of the Propagation of Christianity among the Heathen, 3, 490; Drake, Dictionary of American Biography, s.v.; Allibone, Dictionary of British and American Authors, s.v.