VINCENT (Nathaniel), an eminent dissenting minister, received his education at Christ Church in Oxford. He became a member of that university at 11 years of age, and when he was about 18 he took the degree of master of arts. He soon became a very famous preacher and writer; but refusing to comply with the act of uniformity, was not only one of the most assiduous, but one of the most unfortunate, of his non-conforming brethren. He was several times imprisoned, and heavily fined, for holding conventicles; and was once sentenced to suffer three years imprisonment, and then banishment, in pursuance of an act made in the 25th of Elizabeth; but his counsel finding a flaw in the indictment, the sentence was never carried into execution. He distinguished himself by preaching amidst the ruins after the fire of London, where multitudes assembled to hear him, many of whose consciences were awakened by that dreadful calamity. He was the author of many sermons, and other practical pieces of divinity; and died in 1679.
Thomas Vincent, his brother, a man of a similar character, exerted himself on the same occasion, as he did also in the time of the pestilence, when he constantly preached in London, and visited the sick, but escaped the distemper himself. He was the author of "God's terrible Voice to the City by Fire and Plague, 8vo;" and published another of the like kind, occasioned by an eruption of Mount Aetna, intitled Fire and Brimstone, 1. From heaven, in the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah formerly; 2. From earth, in the burning of Mount Aetna lately; 3. From hell, in the burning of the wicked eternally. He wrote several other works.