Life

He was educated at a dissenting college at Stepney

Stepney

Stepney is a district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in London's East End that grew out of a medieval village around St Dunstan's church and the 15th century ribbon development of Mile End Road...

, where he studied Hebrew as well as the classics. After ministering to a nonconformist congregation, he was ordained deacon in 1850 and priest in 1851 by Prince Lee, bishop of Manchester

Bishop of Manchester

The Bishop of Manchester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Manchester in the Province of York.The current bishop is the Right Reverend Nigel McCulloch, the 11th Lord Bishop of Manchester, who signs Nigel Manchester. The bishop's official residence is Bishopscourt, Bury New Road,...

. He took the degree of LL.D. at Glasgow University in 1851 and a Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen in the following year.

He held the perpetual curacy of Clifton Reynes

Clifton Reynes

Clifton Reynes is a village in the Borough of Milton Keynes, in the ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire, England. It is about a mile east of Olney...

, Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....

, from 1854 to 1861, when he was appointed by the Lord Chancellor

Lord Chancellor

The Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, or Lord Chancellor, is a senior and important functionary in the government of the United Kingdom. He is the second highest ranking of the Great Officers of State, ranking only after the Lord High Steward. The Lord Chancellor is appointed by the Sovereign...

 to the vicarage of St. Andrew, Whittlesea

Whittlesea

Whittlesea may mean:* Whittlesea, Victoria, a town some 40 km north of Melbourne.* City of Whittlesea, the local government area that contains it* Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, England used to be known as Whittlesea...

, Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...

, in recognition of his services to theological learning. He held it until his death on 10 February 1886.

Works

His major works are:

• A translation from the Syriac language of the ‘Metrical Hymns and Homilies of St. Ephrem Syrus, with Philological Notes and Dissertations on the Syrian Metrical Church Literature,’ 2 vols. 1835.
• ‘The Country Miscellany,’ 2 vols. 1836–7.
• ‘Poems,’ 1850, dedicated to the Marchioness of Bute.
• Translation of the ‘Festal Letters of St. Athanasius,’ 1852, a work which, after being long lost in the original Greek, was recovered in an ancient Syriac version, and edited for the Oxford Library of the Fathers
  Library of the Fathers
  The Library of the Fathers, more properly A library of fathers of the holy Catholic church: anterior to the division of the East and West, was a series of around 50 volumes of the Church Fathers, annotated in English translation, published 1838 to 1881 by John Henry Parker...
  
  by the Rev. H. G. Williams.
• ‘The Reformed Church of England in its Principles and their legitimate Development,’ 1869.
• ‘Essays, Biblical and Ecclesiastical, relating chiefly to the Authority and Interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.’
• ‘The Art of Preaching and the Composition of Sermons,’ 1881.

He prepared the second edition of Kitto's ‘Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature,’ and he was for some years editor of the Clerical Journal (1854–68) and the Journal of Sacred Literature.