CAVE, Dr William (1637-1713), a learned English divine, educated in St John's College, Cambridge, and successively minister of Hasely in Oxfordshire, of All-Hallows the Great of Islington in London, and of Isleworth in Middlesex. He became chaplain to Charles II., and in 1684 was installed as a canon of Windsor. The two works on which his reputation principally rests are, the Apostolici, or History of the Apostles and Fathers in the three first centuries of the Church,
and Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Historia Literaria; in regard to both of which he was drawn into controversy with Le Clerc, who was then writing his Bibliothèque Universelle, and who accused him of partiality. Besides these, he wrote Primitive Christianity, or Religion of the Ancient Christians, &c.; Tabulae Ecclesiasticae, Antiquitates Apostolicae, A Dissertation concerning the Government of the Ancient Church, &c.; Ecclesiastici, or History of the Fathers of the fourth century; and a work entitled Chartophylax Ecclesiasticus, which is an abridgment of the Historia Literaria.