As professor he at once delivered an important series of lectures ‘On the Being and Attributes of God,’ forming the first portion of a scholastic treatise on the chief heads of Christian theology. A later course of lectures was on the Acts of the Apostles.
On the appointment of Henry Ferne [q. v.] to the bishopric of Chester, Pearson was chosen to succeed him as master of Trinity College, 14 April 1662. This position, which he probably owed to the discernment of Clarendon, he held for nearly eleven years. He proved a popular ruler, and during his reign the college was free from all intestine divisions and disorders, but he probably deferred too much to the seniors (Jebb, Bentley, p. 93). He firmly resisted, however, an attempt of the crown to encroach upon the rights of the master and fellows in the exercise of their patronage.
In 1667 Pearson was elected a fellow of the newly founded Royal Society, though he seems to have shared little in its proceedings. In the same year he pronounced a noble oration at the funeral of his friend and patron Bishop Wren.
During his stay at Trinity, Pearson made several important contributions to learning. In 1664 he wrote a preface to Ménage's edition of ‘Diogenes Laertius,’ and in the following year he prefixed a critical essay to a Cambridge edition of the ‘Septuagint.’ But the great work which employed his learned leisure was his ‘Vindiciæ Epistolarum S. Ignatii,’ on which, with his ‘Exposition of the Creed,’ his reputation mainly rests. This profoundly learned work appeared in 1672, the last year of his residence at Cambridge.
Early in the following year (9 Feb. 1673) Pearson was consecrated bishop of Chester, in the place of John Wilkins [q. v.] His elevation to the episcopate had been long delayed by the influence of the Cabal ministry; but Archbishop Sheldon at length succeeded in bringing about the well-earned promotion. Pearson took little or no part in state affairs, and seems to have resided seldom in London, spending most of his time in his diocese, either at Chester or Wigan, the rectory of which town he held in commendam. He occasionally preached at Whitehall, but there is only one of his sermons extant preached after he became a bishop. Burnet asserts that ‘he was not active in his diocese, but too remiss and easy in his episcopal functions; and was a much better divine than bishop.’ This charge is not borne out by facts. The act-books of the diocese prove his painstaking care, and he was certainly wise in the choice of those he preferred. The testimony of Laurence Echard, that ‘he filled the bishopric of Chester with great honour and reputation,’ is probably entirely true. During his episcopate he continued to employ the hours spared from public duties in the service of sacred learning. The fruit of those labours was displayed in the ‘Annales Cyprianici,’ prefixed to Bishop Fell's edition of St. Cyprian, which appeared in 1682, and in two dissertations on the ‘Succession and Times of the first Bishops of Rome,’ which were not published till after his death.
Pearson died at Chester on 16 July 1686. The common report that he was disqualified from all public service by his infirmities, and especially by a total loss of memory, for some years before his death is groundless. He held an ordination service so late as 21 Dec. 1684, and six months later he added to his will a codicil which showed him in full possession of his mental faculties. In the last year of his life he certainly suffered from decay of mind as well as body; and Henry Dodwell has left an affecting account of the great scholar, led by his nurse, stretching his hands to his books, and crying ‘O sad, whose books are all these!’ (Brydges, Restituta, i. 53).
The bishop's body was laid in his cathedral at the east end of the choir, but no monument was raised to his memory till 1860, when a stately tomb, designed by Sir A. Blomfield, was placed in the north transept, at the expense of admirers of Pearson both in Great Britain and America (Howson, Handbook to Chester Cathedral).
It seems all but certain that Pearson died unmarried. The only reference to a wife occurs in a reported conversation with a nonagenarian fellow of Trinity, in which either the old man's memory or the reporter's statement appears to have been at fault.
Pearson was a man of spotless life and of an excellent temper. His equanimity perplexed his nonconformist opponents. This absence of passion, while it proved a most valuable quality in controversy, rendered him ‘more instructive than affective’ as a preacher. Pearson strongly supported the Restoration settlement of the church, and would give no support to any schemes of comprehension which did not insist on uniformity.
Among Englishmen of the seventeenth century, Pearson was probably the ablest scholar and systematic theologian. Burnet pronounces him ‘in all respects the greatest divine of the age,’ Ménage ‘le plus savant des Anglais,’ and Bentley writes of ‘the
