Nesse, Christopher

, a non-conformist divine of considerable learning, was born at North Cowes, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Dec. 26, 1621. He was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he resided seven years, and appears to have taken orders, as he preached soon after in various parts of his native county, and in 1650 succeeded Dr. Winter in the valuable living of Cottingham, near Hull. He appears also to have been for some years a lecturer at Leeds. In 1662 he was ejected for non-conformity, and after preaching occasionally in Yorkshire, for which he incurred the penalties of the law, he removed to London in 1675, and there preached privately for thirty years, to a congregation in Salisbury-court, Fleet-street. He died on his birth-day, Dec. 26, 1705, aged eighty-four, and was interred in the dissenters’ burying-ground, Bunhill Fields. He published a considerable variety of small treatises, mostly of the practical, and some of the controversial kind, the latter against popery and Arminianism; but the work for which he is best known, is his “History and Mystery of the Old and New Testament, logically discussed, and theologically improved,” 1690,4 vols. fol. To this Matthew Henry, in compiling his “Exposition,” is thought to owe considerable obligations. The style is indifferent, but, as Granger allows, “the reader will find some things well worth his notice.” ²