JOHN, an English nonconformist divine of great learning and ability, was born at Broomsgrove in Worcestershire in 1627. He was the eldest son of Mr Richard Flavel, described in contemporary records as "a painful and eminent minister." By this parent he was educated with the utmost care, first at home and afterwards at the grammar-schools of Broomsgrove and Haslar. Finally, he was entered at University College, Oxford, where he greatly distinguished himself in all the academical pursuits of the place. Soon after taking orders in 1650, he obtained a curacy at Deptford, and ingratiated himself so completely with the people by the earnest fervour of his eloquence in the pulpit, and the faithful discharge of his other ministerial duties, that on the death of the vicar he was unanimously appointed to succeed him. From Deptford he removed to Dartmouth, to which he had been tempted as affording a wider sphere of usefulness, though in a pecuniary point of view he suffered considerably by the change. In 1662 the Act of Uniformity was passed, and Flavel, refusing to comply with its requirements, was ejected from his living. He still continued, however, to preach and administer the sacraments privately till the Oxford Act of 1665 compelled him to retire to Slapton, five miles from the scene of his official labours, and for the next twenty years he underwent every kind of hardship and persecution in common with his nonconforming brethren till a presentiment of danger compelled James II. to abate somewhat the severity of his brother's enactments against them. After the expulsion of the Stuart dynasty, Flavel was urgently pressed to accept various calls that were offered him by metropolitan congregations; but he refused to accept any of them, and continued to labour among his parishioners of Dartmouth till his death in 1691, shortly after the union of the Independent and Presbyterian churches, an event which gave him very great joy on his death-bed. Flavel was four times married, but does not appear to have left any family behind him. His principal works are his Treatise on the Soul of Man; The Fountain of Life, in forty-two Sermons; The Method of Grace; A Token for Mourners; Husbandry Spiritualized; Navigation Spiritualized. It cannot be denied that these works are in their totality heavy and cumbrous in their structure; but they have received a very scant measure of justice at the hands of most English writers who have thought it worth while to notice them. They contain many isolated passages of striking merit, even in a literary point of view, and many detached thoughts of rare and daring originality. If it be true, as Johnson says, that it is the lot of Milton to be more admired than read, it is equally true that Flavel, less fortunate than his contemporary, has the misfortune to be slightingly dismissed by many persons who prove by the very character of their criticism that they have never read a line of his works. This misfortune, however, he shares with the majority of those divines who are generally classed together as the "Puritan."