Thomas Kipling
Thomas Kipling [1]
an English divine, born in Yorkshire about the middle of the 18th century, was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated as B.A. in 1768, and became D.D. in 1784. His first prominent position was that of deputy regius professor of divinity under bishop Watson, and later he was promoted to the deanery of Peterborough. In 1792 Kipling preached the Boyle Lectures, which were not published. In 1793 he brought out at the university press a very handsome edition of the famous " Codex Bezae" of the N.T., with facsimile types (Codex Bezce, Quadratis literis, Graeco-Latinis, 2 vols. folio), which was immediately assailed with a virulence amounting to personal hostility by the party which had espoused the cause of the once notorious Frend, who was banished the university for Unitarianism, and in whose case Kipling had come forward as promoter, or public prosecutor. Dr. Edwards, the leader of the party, charged him with ignorance and want of fidelity. But, though his prolegomena do not manifest much accurate scholarship, and he commits the serious error of printing the corrections instead of the original reading of the text, which he relegated to the notes at the end, Tregelles (Introd. to Text. Crit. of N. Test.) allows that he "appears to have used scrupulous exactitude in performing his task efficiently according to the plan which he had proposed to himself." Kipling also published The Articles of the Church of England proved not to be Calvinistical (1802, 8vo), written in answer to Overton's True Churchman ascertained. He died in 1822. See Kitto, Cyclop. Bib. Lit s.v.; Allibone, Diet. Engl. and Amer. Authors, vol. ii, s.v.; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Genesis 27:766,
