Benjamin Woodbridge

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Benjamin Woodbridge (1622–1684) was an English clergyman, a controversialist, Harvard College’s first graduate, and a participant in the Savoy Conference.

He was the son of John Woodbridge V and Sarah Parker. He studied at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and in 1639 went to New England, where his elder brother John Woodbridge had settled. Benjamin became Harvard College’s first graduate, taking a B.A. in 1642. He returned to England, earned his M.A. at Magdalen Hall in 1648, and by then was already serving as a minister in Salisbury. In 1648 he was appointed rector of Newbury, Berkshire, where he found success with Presbyterians.

In 1652 he delivered a sermon on Justification by Faith in which he attacked two Salisbury ministers, Thomas Warren and William Eyre. The sermon was published and praised by Richard Baxter; Eyre replied, Baxter supported both sides, and Woodbridge issued a further reply. He helped eject scandalous ministers in 1654 and, in 1657, received an approved assistant for his work at Newbury.

After the Restoration, he was made a king’s chaplain and was offered the canonry of Windsor, which he hesitated to accept. He attended the Savoy Conference in 1661, but the Act of Uniformity in 1662 silenced him. He preached privately in Newbury, sometimes facing imprisonment. In 1665 he conformed and was ordained by John Earle, bishop of Salisbury, at Oxford. He later returned to private preaching in Newbury until the indulgence of March 1675 allowed him more public activity. During the Popish Plot scare of 1678 he was encouraged to intensify his efforts and preached weekly at Highclere, Hampshire. In 1683 he retired to Englefield in Berkshire and died on 1 November 1684; he was buried in Newbury on 4 November.

Woodbridge published in 1648 a work under the pseudonym Filodexter Transilvanus: Church Members Set in Joynt, or a Discovery of the Unwarrantable and Disorderly Practice of Private Christians in usurping the office of true pastors, namely public preaching. It was a reply to Edmund Chillenden’s Preaching without Ordination and was republished in 1656 and 1657. He also published in London a work by James Noyes, Moses and Aaron; or the Rights of the Church and State. He wrote verses on the tomb of John Cotton of Boston (d. 1652), which some say influenced later epitaphs.