PATRICK, Simon, a learned English bishop, was born at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire in 1626. In 1644 he was admitted into Queen's College, Cambridge, and entered into holy orders. After being for some time chaplain to Sir Walter St John, and vicar of the church at Battersea
in Surrey, he was preferred to the rectory of St Paul's, Covent Garden, London, where he continued all the time of the plague in 1665 amongst his parishioners. In 1668 he published his Friendly Debate between a Conformist and a Nonconformist. This was answered by the Dissenters, whom he had much exasperated; but by his moderation and candour towards them afterwards they were perfectly reconciled to him, and he brought over many of them to the communion of the Established Church. In 1678 he was made dean of Peterborough, where he was much beloved. In 1682, Dr Lewis de Moulin, who had been professor of history at Oxford, and had written many very bitter books against the Church of England, sent for Dr Patrick upon his sick bed, and made a solemn declaration of his regret on that account, which he signed, and it was published after his death. During the reign of King James, the dean's behaviour showed that he had nothing more at heart than the Protestant religion, for which indeed he ventured all that was dear to him, by preaching and writing against the errors of the Church of Rome. In 1687 he published a prayer composed for that difficult time, when persecution was expected by all who stood firm to their religion. The year after the Revolution, the dean was appointed Bishop of Chichester, and was employed with others of the new bishops to settle the affairs of the Church in Ireland. In 1691 he was translated to the see of Ely, in the room of the deprived Bishop Turner. He died in 1707, after having published various works, amongst which are his Paraphrases and Commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, in three vols. folio, which, with Lowth on the Proverbs, Arnold on the Apocrypha, and Whitby on the New Testament, form a regular and continued commentary in English on all the sacred books.