living of Limpsham in Somerset; but Sclater found his new abode unhealthy and returned to Pitminster, where he died in 1626.
Besides several volumes of sermons, Sclater was author of four exegetical and other works, which were published posthumously under the editorship of his son (see below): 1. 'A Key to the Key of Scripture: an Exposition, with Notes, upon the Epistle to the Romans ' (being an enlargement of his previous discourses on Romans i-iii.), dedicated to Sir Henry Hawley, knt., and other Somerset gentlemen of puritan leanings, London, 1629, 4to. 2. 'The Question of Tythes revised; Arguments for the Moralitie of Tything enlarged and cleared; Objections more fully and distinctly answered; Mr. Selden's Historie viewed,' London, 1623, 4to; an expansion of a previous essay, called 'The Minister's Portion' (Oxford, 1612); this was an attempt to refute Selden, but as such it was eclipsed by the more erudite treatise of Richard Montagu [q. v.] [see also Nettles, Stephen and Tillesley, Richard]; it was warmly commended by Dr. Edward Kellett [q. v.], who described the proofs of his friend, 'now a blessed saint, Dr. Sclater,' as unanswerable by 'sacrilegious church-robbers.' 3. 'Utriusque Epistolae ad Corinthios Explicatio Analytica,' Oxford, 1633, 4to. 4. 'Commentary, with Notes, on the whole of Malachi,' London, 1650, 4to.
William Sclater (1609-1661), divine, son of the above, born at Pitminster in 1661 'in festo Paschae,' was educated at Eton, admitted a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, on 26 June 1626, and was admitted fellow in June 1629. Having graduated M.A., he entered priest's orders about 1630, and became noted for his preaching; obtained the living of Cullompton in Devonshire, and on 18 Sept. 1641 was collated to the prebend of Wedmore in Exeter Cathedral, and the rectory of St. Stephen's in Exeter. Though not formally sequestrated, he was driven from his livings in Devonshire about 1644, and sought refuge for a time in Cambridge. He had resigned his fellowship in 1633, but proceeded D.D. in 1651, having in the previous year conformed and been preferred to the rectory of St. Peter-le-Poor in Broad Street, London. He died there in 1661. Fuller instances his piety and scholarship to refute the imputation that the sons of the clergy were 'generally unfortunate.' Besides editing his father's works, he published a funeral sermon on Abraham Wheelock (1654), 'Papisto Mastix, or Deborah's Prayer against God's Enemies, explicated and applyed' (1642); and 'Ἐν χαιρῷ λόγος, sive Concio ad clerum habita de natura, necessitate, et fine Haeresium' (1652); in addition to some minor tracts and sermons. One of the latter, 'Civil Magistracy by Divine Authority,' was printed for George Treagle at Taunton, 1653, 4to (Hazlitt, Bibl. Coll. 3rd ser. p. 221).
[Harwood's Alumni Eton. pp. 200, 227; Fuller's Worthies, ed. Nichols, i. 119; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, ii. 31; Darling's Cyclop. of Bibl. Literature; Weaver's Somersetshire Incumbents; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. v. 458. 518, 569; Reg. of St. James's, Clerkenwell (Harl. Soc.); Wood's Athenae, ed. Bliss, ii. 229, iii. 228; Kellett's Miscellanies of Divinitie, 1653; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Extracts from Ant. Allen's Manuscript Catalogue of the Fellows of King's College, Cambridge; and notes kindly supplied by Charles E. Grant, esq., bursar of King's College.]
SCLATER, WILLIAM (d. 1717?), nonjuring divine, the only son of William Sclater, rector of St. Peter-le-Poer, and grandson of William Sclater (1576–1626) [q. v.], the rector of Pitminster, was born at Exeter on 22 Nov. 1638. He was admitted at Merchant Taylors' School in 1650, matriculated from Pembroke College on 28 April 1659, and, taking holy orders, was appointed vicar of Bramford Speke in Devonshire in 1663. He refused to take the oath of allegiance after the revolution, and was ejected. When Peter King (afterwards first Lord King, baron of Ockham in Surrey) [q. v.], in his ‘Enquiry into the Constitution and Discipline … of the Primitive Church’ (revised edition, 1713), set forth the view that the primitive church was organised upon congregational principles, Sclater set to work upon an elaborate reply. According to a story recorded in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (1792, ii. 910), Sclater's reply was read in manuscript by King; it had been seized among other papers in the house of Nathaniel Spinckes [q. v.], the nonjuring bishop, and submitted to King, who politely returned it, confessing that it was a very sufficient confutation of those parts of his own work which it attempted to answer, and desiring that it might be published (cf. Charles Daubeny, On Schism, 1818, p. 236; Hind, Hist. of the Rise of Christianity, vol. xv.) Modesty, unaffected piety, and uncommon learning characterise Sclater's book, which appeared in 1717 (London, 8vo), as ‘The Original Draught of the Primitive Church, by a presbyter of the church of England.’ New editions were called for in 1723 (Dublin), 1727, and 1840, while an abridgment was appended by way of antidote to the 1839 and 1843 editions of King's ‘Enquiry.’ He probably died soon after 1717. In 1726 appeared, as by the author of the ‘Original Draught,’ ‘The Conditions of the Covenant of Grace … and the
