John Cosin
1594–1672
Master of Peterhouse; later Bishop of Durham; the great high-church liturgist.
Departs from the Confession on Polity: Reformed-Episcopal not Presbyterian-Jure-Divino
Biography
Of Caius College Cambridge, then chaplain to Bishop Overall and (from 1635) Master of Peterhouse Cambridge — where his Laudian liturgical innovations (the marble altar, the candles, the eastward position) made Peterhouse a Puritan target. He was the most pronouncedly high-church of the figures named to the Westminster Assembly and refused to sit. A Collection of Private Devotions (1627) — compiled at the Queen's request and adapted from the older Book of Hours — had been one of the most contested Laudian devotional books. The Long Parliament deprived him of all his offices in 1641 and 1644; he went into exile in Paris as Anglican chaplain to the royalist exiles at the Louvre (1644-60). At the Restoration he returned to Durham as bishop (1660) and rebuilt its liturgical life with new altars, vestments, and choir music — the model for Restoration high-church practice. Died in 1672.
Principal works
- A Collection of Private Devotions (1627)
- Historia Transubstantiationis Papalis (1675)
Named in the ordinance
The 1643 ordinance that summoned the Assembly named some 121 divines. A number — chiefly episcopalians and royalists who heeded the King's proclamation forbidding the Assembly — never took their seats or sat only briefly; a few were later expelled. They are listed here for completeness as part of the originally-summoned roster.
Ontology placement
· 1 override of 35
Cite this divine
Study Reformed, “John Cosin” (Divine), Westminster Standards Atlas, version 79a5f9880ac1, https://studyreformed.com/atlas/cite/persona/john-cosin/.
Ontology version 79a5f9880ac1 — the state of the Atlas you are reading, so a citation stays checkable when the ontology is revised.