Thomas Bennet

Thomas Bennet (1673–1728) was an English clergyman, known for controversial and polemical writings, and as a Hebraist.

Life Bennet was born at Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 7 May 1673, and was educated at a free school there, He entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1688, before he was fifteen, going on to take the degrees of B.A. and M.A. by 1694, and was elected a Fellow of his college.

In 1700, by chance, Bennet went to Colchester on the death of a clergyman friend there, John Rayne, and was called on to preach the funeral sermon. He was appointed to succeed Rayne and was instituted on 15 January 1701.

He left Colchester at the end of the decade, and became deputy chaplain to Chelsea Hospital. He preached a funeral sermon at St Olave's Church, Southwark, and was chosen lecturer there. He was appointed morning preacher at St Lawrence Jewry under John Mapletoft, and was also presented by the dean and chapter of St Paul's Cathedral to St Giles Cripplegate. The presentation, however, involved him in disputes over a tithe on peas and beans. Timothy Shepherd of Braintree answered this work, and Bennet replied in 1703. Bennet found another antagonist in a fellow clergyman in A Justification of the Dissenters against Mr. Bennet's charge of damnable Schism, &c. … By a Divine of the Church of England by Law established, 1705. B. Lindley answered this in 1710.

In 1714, Bennet published Directions for Studying. In 1715 appeared his Essay on the XXXIX Articles. In 1716, he assailed the extruded churchmen of the nonjuring schism in The Nonjurors Separation from the Public Assemblies of the Church of England examined and proved to be schismatical upon their own Principles. In 1718, he published A Discourse of the ever-blessed Trinity in Unity, with an Examination of Dr Clarke's Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity. Like all his books, these were answered. His idea of the Trinity was Sabellian. In 1726, he gave to the world a small Hebrew Grammar.