Daniel Cawdrey
1588–1664
The Assembly’s most persistent anti-Independent polemicist; long controversy with John Owen.
Biography
Of Peterhouse Cambridge, then St Martin in the Fields (London) and finally Great Billing in Northamptonshire from 1644. Cawdrey was the Assembly's most persistent polemicist against the Independents, writing against Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, and (from 1657) John Owen through the 1650s. His most consequential exchange was with Owen over the nature of schism — Cawdrey's Independencie Further Proved to be a Schism (1657-58) drew Owen's famous Review of the True Nature of Schism (1657). With Herbert Palmer he co-authored Sabbatum Redivivum (1645), one of the major Reformed treatments of the Sabbath in the seventeenth century. Ejected at Great Billing in 1662, he died two years later.
Principal works
- Sabbatum Redivivum (1645, with Herbert Palmer)
- A Review of Mr Hookers Survey (1651)
- Independencie Further Proved to be a Schism (1658)
English Presbyterian divine
The great majority of the sitting members were English parish ministers of Presbyterian conviction. They formed the drafting core of the Assembly, manning its three standing committees and supplying most of the text of the Confession, the two Catechisms, and the Directory for Public Worship.