John Conybeare, D.D., 1692–1755, admitted a battler of Exeter College, 1708; Fellow, 1710; Rector of St. Clemet’s, Oxford, 1724; Rector of Exeter College, 1730; Dean of Christ Church, 1732; Bishop of Bristol, 1750. “Sermon on Miracles,” 1722. Highly esteemed. “Sermon,” 1724. “Subscription to Articles of Religion,” a Sermon, 1726. Very celebrated. “Defence of Revealed Religion,” in answer to Tindal’s “Christianity as Old as the Creation,” 1732. An admirable confutation. Three editions in a year. Other sermons. After the bishop’s death a collection of his sermons was published for the benefit of his family, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1757, on a subscription list of 4600 copies.

—Allibone, S. Austin, 1854–58, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, vol. I, p. 420.    

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Personal

  On Friday last (Jan. 26) about noon came very privately into Oxford, in a coach and four, Dr. John Conybeare, rector of Exeter coll., being not met by so much as one soul, and yesterday, at 10 o’clock in the morning, he was installed dean of Christ Church, but very little or no rejoycing was shewed on the occasion. He owes this piece of preferment to Mr. [he is not a university Dr.] Edmund Gibson, bp. of London, who hath some private by-ends in view, to whom he dedicated his “Reply to Christianity as old as the Creation,” which book (I am told, for I have not read it) is spun out to a great length, whereas all that is material might have been brought into about a sheet of paper.

—Hearne, Thomas, 1732–33, Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, ed. Bliss, vol. III, p. 92.    

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  As a bishop he was unfortunately disabled, through almost all his episcopate, by severe illness. Otherwise he would have been a valuable accession to his bench. “I rejoice,” said Berkeley, “in his promotion. His writings and character raise him high in my esteem.” He lived on terms of intimate friendship with James Foster and some other leading Nonconformists.

—Abbey, Charles J., 1887, The English Church and Its Bishops, 1700–1800, vol. II, p. 68.    

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General

  Conybeare is a temperate and able writer, but there is little in his book [“Defence of Religion”] to distinguish it from expositions of the same argument by other contemporary divines of the average type.

—Stephen, Leslie, 1887, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XII, p. 61.    

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  Conybeare avoids all the scurrility and personality which mar too many of the works written on both sides, and discusses, in calm and dignified, but at the same time luminous and impressive, language, the important question which Tindal had raised.

—Overton, John Henry, 1897, The Church in England, vol. II, p. 222.    

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