Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/108

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104 DODWELL. assisted him in the prosecution of his studies. In 1655, he returned to Dublin, and, after remaining at school one year longer, was admitted at Trinity College, where he was chosen successively scholar and fellow. This last appointment he, however, resigned in 1666, scrupling to take holy orders according to the rules of the college, and declining the proffer of the learned Jeremy Taylor to use his interest to obtain a dispensation in his favour. Soon after this event he spent some time at Oxford; but, having returned to Ireland in 1672, he first appeared as an author in an Apologetical Preface to a posthumous work of his learned tutor, Dr. Stearn. He soon after published “Two Letters of Advice, 1, For the Susception of Holy Orders; 2, For Studies Theological, especially such as are Rational.” In 1674, he settled in London, where he contracted an intimacy with several learned men, particularly with Dr. William Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, whom he accompanied to Holland, where he was appointed chaplain to the Princess of Orange. In 1675, he commenced a controversial attack upon the Catholics, by the publication of a pamphlet, which he followed up in the next year by another of the same nature. As these, together with by f a r the greater number o f h i s publications, are a t present little known, w e shall abstain from transcribing their titles, which frequently extend t o a n inconvenient length. He next turned h i s Pen against the Dissenters, i n a work intended t o prove their separation from the episcopal government schisma tical, and t o display the sinfulness and mischief o f schism. This work was immediately answered b y the celebrated Richard Baxter, whose animadversions were replied t o b y Mr. Dodwell i n 1681. His next work, “Dissertations o n St. Cyprien,” drew down upon him the severe censure o f both Catholics and Protestants, i n consequence o f a n a t tempt, i n the eleventh dissertation, t o diminish the number o f the early martyrs. The interval between this and the Revolution, was occupied b y the publication o f several con troversial works on the Nature and Heinousness o f Schism,