William Twisse (1578 near Newbury, England – 20 July 1646) was a prominent English clergyman and theologian. He was named Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly in an Ordinance dated 12 June 1643,[1] putting him at the head of the churchmen of the Commonwealth. He was described by a Scottish member, Robert Baillie, as "very good, beloved of all, and highlie esteemed; but merelie bookish".[2]
Twisse's parents were German.[3] He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford.[4]
He was appointed chaplain to Elizabeth of Bohemia, by her father James I of England, in 1612. This position was short-lived, and he returned to England from Heidelberg around 1613.
He was then given a living at Newton Longueville.[5] He was involved with Henry Savile in the 1618 edition of the works of Thomas Bradwardine.[6] He was vicar of Newbury from 1620.[7] There he was known as an opponent of William Laud.[8]
He died on 20 July 1646 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, but exhumed in 1661 and his remains deposited with those of dozens of other Parliamentarians in a pit in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Westminster.
Twisse was a strong defender of a Calvinist, supralapsarian position.[9] In his Vindiciae gratiae of 1632 he attacked Jacobus Arminius, and in Dissertatio de scientia media of 1639 adopted certain Dominican arguments,[6] on predestination. His views were in a minority at the Westminster Assembly.[10]
A premillennialist,[11] he wrote a preface to the 1643 English translation, Key of the Revelation, of Joseph Mede's influential Clavis Apocalyptica. Mede was a friend and correspondent.[12]
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). Ligonier Ministries. ligonier.org