William Greenhill
1591–1671
Stepney; expositor of Ezekiel; co-pastor with Jeremiah Burroughs.
Biography
Of Magdalen College Oxford, then a vicarage at New Shoreham (Sussex) before moving to Stepney in 1641, where he was lecturer and (from 1644) co-pastor with Jeremiah Burroughs of one of the most important London Independent congregations. After Burroughs's death in 1646 he continued as pastor at Stepney. Greenhill attended the Assembly but was less prominent than the Five Dissenting Brethren in print; his five-volume Exposition of the Prophet Ezekiel (1645-1662) was the major Puritan commentary on Ezekiel, more than 2,000 pages in its final extent. He was tutor to King Charles I's younger children Henry and Elizabeth in the late 1640s after Northumberland was given their guardianship. Ejected at the Restoration in 1660 from his St Dunstan's Stepney lectureship, he continued at the gathered church until his death in 1671.
Principal works
- An Exposition of the Prophet Ezekiel (5 vols, 1645–1662)
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.