Learned English divine, born at Pinhoe, near Exeter, on the 31st of January 1692. At the age of sixteen he entered Exeter College, Oxford, of which he was elected in 1710 probationary fellow. He graduated B.A. in 1713, and M.A. in 1716, and in the latter year was ordained priest. After holding a country curacy for about a year he returned to Oxford, and became tutor in his college. Ere long he made himself favourably known by the publication of two well-reasoned sermons, on “Miracles,” and on the “Mysteries of the Christian Religion,” and was appointed one of the preachers to the king at Whitehall. He took his degree of D.D. in January 1729, and in 1730 he was chosen rector of Exeter College. By this time he had increased his reputation by several additional sermons, and in 1732 he published his great work, A Defence of Revealed Religion. This was written in reply to Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation, which had appeared two years before. It became very popular, and reached a third edition in 1733. It was characterized by Bishop Warburton as one of the best reasoned books in the world. Soon after its publication Conybeare was appointed dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and this post he held till 1750, when he succeeded Dr. Butler in the see of Bristol. He died at Bath, on the 13th of July 1755. A selection of his sermons, in two volumes, was published after his death. See also Literary Criticism.
