HENRY, Matthew, the author of the celebrated Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, was born in 1662 at Broad Oak, a farm-house near Iscoyd, in Flintshire. He was the son of Philip Henry, one of the 2000 ministers who were ejected from their livings in 1662 for refusing to conform to the Act of Uniformity. Unlike the majority of his fellow-sufferers, Philip Henry was spared all personal privation or hardship as the consequence of his non-conformity by the accident of private means which he had received with his wife. He was thus enabled to give a good education to his son Matthew, who, after making considerable progress in the study of law at Gray's Inn, abandoned that profession, and took orders as a dissenting minister. In 1687 he was appointed to a charge at Chester, where he remained till 1712, in which year he was translated to Hackney. Two years later (June 22, 1714), he died suddenly of apoplexy at Nantwich while on a journey from Chester to London.
Matthew Henry's Exposition, the work by which he is now remembered, is a commentary of a practical and devotional rather than of a critical kind, ranging over the whole of the Old Testament, and extending into the New as far as Romans. At this point it was broken off by the author's death, but the work was finished by a number of clergymen, whose names are recorded in most editions of the book. In a critical point of view, the Exposition is quite valueless; yet its freshness, variety of thought, its high moral tone, and its well-sustained flow of good writing, have secured it the foremost place among the works of its class. There are few better things in English literature than the comments on the parable of the prodigal son. That, however, must be acknowledged the finest passage in the whole work. Besides the Exposition, Matthew Henry wrote a Life of Mr Philip Henry; Directions for Daily Communion with God; A Method for Prayer; A Scriptural Catechism, and several other works.
There are two Lives of Matthew Henry; the first by W. Tong, 8vo, 1716, and the second (a much better one) by Mr. Williams, prefixed to his edition of the Exposition, 3 vols., Lond. 1828.