Joseph Caryl
1602–1673
Twenty-four-year Exposition of Job (12 vols); senior Independent.
Biography
Of Exeter College Oxford, then preacher at Lincoln's Inn (1631) and rector of St Magnus the Martyr at London Bridge from 1645. Caryl spent nearly twenty-four years preaching through the book of Job at St Magnus; the resulting An Exposition with Practicall Observations upon the Booke of Iob (12 quarto volumes, 1643-1666) is the longest sustained Puritan commentary on a single book of Scripture, perhaps 4 million words. He was a Westminster member with Independent sympathies and served as a parliamentary commissioner at the Uxbridge treaty (1645) and again at Newport (1648). Cromwell sent him with John Owen to Scotland as parliamentary chaplain in 1650-51. Ejected at the Restoration, he led a gathered Independent congregation in London which, after his death in 1673, was inherited by John Owen.
Principal works
- An Exposition with Practicall Observations upon the Booke of Iob (12 vols, 1643–1666)
Independent / Dissenting Brethren
A small but articulate minority of Congregationalist divines — the 'Dissenting Brethren' — who pressed for a gathered-church polity against the Presbyterian majority. Their Apologeticall Narration (1644) and their dissents in the Grand Debate over church government shaped the Confession's carefully worded chapters and anticipated the Savoy Declaration of 1658.