JOHN

See also:

• JOHN EACHARD (1636 ?-1697)

EACHARD (1636 ?-1697)  , English divine, was born in Suffolk, and was educated at Catharine Hall, Cambridge, of which he became master in 1675 in succession to John Lightfoot . He was created D.D. in 1676 by royal mandate, and was twice (in 1679 and 1695) vice-chancellor of the university . He died on the 7th of July 1697 . In 167o he had published anonymously a humorous satire entitled The Ground and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy enquired into in a letter to R . L., which excited much attention and provoked several replies, one of them being from John Owen . These were met by Some Observations, &°c., in a second letter to R . L . (1671), written in the same bantering tone as the original work . Eachard attributed the contempt into which the clergy had fallen to their imperfect education, their insufficient incomes, and the want of a true vocation . His descriptions, which were somewhat exaggerated, were largely used by Macaulay in his History of England . He gave amusing illustrations of the absurdity and poverty of the current pulpit oratory of his day, some of them being taken from the sermons of his own father . He attacked the philosophy of Hobbes in his Mr Hobb's State of Nature considered; in a dialogue between Philautus and Timothy (1672), and in his Some Opinions of Mr Hobbs considered in a second dialogue (1673) .

These were written in their author's chosen vein of

light satire, and Dryden praised them as highly effective within their own range . Eachard's own sermons, however, were not superior to those he satirized . Swift (Works, xii . 279) alludes to him as a signal instance of a successful humorist who entirely failed as a serious writer . A collected edition of his works in three volumes. with a notice of his life, was published in 1774 . The Contempt of the Clergy was reprinted in E . Arber's English Garner . A Free Enquiry into the Causes of the very great Esteem that the Nonconforming Preachers are generally in with their Followers (1673) has been attributed to Eachard on insufficient grounds .