Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/105

 Crisp command offered the commission of the peace, which he declined. In 1688 and the following year, though suffering from a painful disease, he was actively employed in efforts to get the penal laws suspended, and from this time till his death in 1692 he resided in London. He was buried in the quaker burial-ground at Bunhill Fields.

It is evident from his writings that Crisp was a man of considerable culture and wide views, and the ‘testimony of the Colchester Friends’ asserts that he was charitable and 'very serviceable to many widows and fatherless.’ During the later years of his life his sermons were taken down in shorthand. His style was easy, and he had a dislike both to religious polemics and speculative theology. He wrote very little, and only two or three of his works are more than tracts; that their popularity was very great is shown by the number of times they have been reprinted. The chief are: 1. ‘An Epistle to Friends concerning the Present and Succeeding Times,’ &c., 1666. 2. ‘A Plain Path-way opened to the Simple-hearted,’ &c., 1668. 3. ‘A Back-slider Reproved and His Folly made Manifest,’ &c., 1669 (against Robert Cobbet). 4. ‘A Short History of a Long Travel from Babylon to Bethel,’ 1711 (autobiographical), republished nineteen times. He also wrote a number of tracts in Dutch. His sermons were published in three volumes in 1693-4, and republished under the title of ‘Scripture Truths Demonstrated,’ in one volume in 1707, and his works were collected and published by John Field in 1694 under the title of ‘A Memorable Account. . . of. . . Stephen Crisp, in his Books and Writings herein collected.’ He was no relation of the Thomas Crisp, a quaker apostate, against whom about 1681 he wrote a tract called ‘A Babylonish Opposer of Truth,’ in reply to the other's ‘Babel's Builders Unmask't.’

 CRISP, TOBIAS, D.D. (1600–1643), antinomian, third son of Ellis Crisp, once sheriff of London, who died in 1625, was born in 1600 in Bread Street, London. His elder brother was Sir Nicholas Crisp [q. v.] After leaving Eton he matriculated at Cambridge, where he remained until he had taken his B.A., when he removed to Balliol College, Oxford, graduating M.A. in 1626. About this time he married Mary, daughter of Rowland Wilson, a London merchant, an M.P. and member of the council of state in 1648-9, by whom he had thirteen children. In 1627 he was presented to the rectory of Newington Butts, from which he was removed a few months later on account of having been a party to a simoniacal contract (see, Hist. of the Dissenters). Later in the same year he was presented to the rectory of Brinkworth in Wiltshire, where he became very popular, both on account of his preaching and the lavish hospitality which his ample fortune permitted him to exercise. It is said that 'an hundred persons, yea, and many more have been received and entertained at his house at one and the same time, and ample provision made for man and horse' (see R. Lancaster's preface to the 1643 edition of Crisp's Works). The same authority states that Crisp refused 'preferment or advancement.' When he obtained the degree of D.D. is not known, but certainly prior to 1642, in which year he was compelled to leave his rectory in consequence of the petty persecution he met with from the royalist soldiers on account of his inclination to puritanism, and retired to London in August 1642. While at Brinkworth he had been suspected of antinomianism, and as soon as his opinions became known from his preaching in London, his theories on the doctrine of free grace were bitterly attacked. Towards the close of this year he held a controversy on this subject with fifty-two opponents, a full account of which is given in Nelson's 'Life of Bishop Bull' (pp. 260, 270). He died of small-pox on 27 Feb. 1642-3, and was buried in St. Mildred's Church, Bread Street. Several authorities state that he contracted the disease from the eagerness with which he conducted his part in the debate. Although Crisp is regarded as one of the champions of antinomianism, he was during the earlier part of his ministry a rigid Arminian. He was extremely unguarded in his expressions, and his writings certainly do not show that he had any intention of defending licentiousness. After his death his discourses were published by R. Lancaster as: 1. 'Christ alone Exalted,' in fourteen sermons, 1643. 2. 'Christ alone Exalted,' in seventeen sermons on Phil. iii. 8, 9, 1644. 3. 'Christ alone Exalted in the Perfection and Encouragement of his Saints, notwithstanding Sins and Tryals,' in eleven sermons, 1646. 4. 'Christ alone Exalted,' in two sermons, 1683. When the first of these volumes appeared the Westminster Assembly proposed to have it burnt as heretical, which, however, does not appear to have been done. In 1690 his 'Works,' prefaced by a portrait, 