Ezekiel, bishop of Londonderry, and one of the standard theologians of England, was born in 1663 at Stamford, in Devonshire, of which his father was curate. His early education was conducted under Presbyterian and Independent influences,—a fact which threatened at first to mar his prospects of church preferment. On leaving Oxford, where he had been one of the choristers, and finally chaplain of Magdalen College, he was presented to the living of St Mary Woolnoth, in London. When the great plague broke out in the capital, Hopkins withdrew to Exeter, where he obtained the living of St Mary's. Here he married Araminta, a daughter of Lord Robartes; and when that nobleman was made lord-lieutenant of Ireland, Hopkins went with him to Dublin, and through his influence obtained the deanery of Raphoe. In 1671 he was made bishop of that diocese, and ten years later was translated to the see of Londonderry. In the famous siege of that town by the Irish adherents of James II. in 1689, Hopkins showed how completely he had rid himself of the influences of his early training by preaching with the most earnest zeal the doctrines of non-resistance. In the words of Macaulay, "he exhorted his flock to go patiently to the slaughter rather than incur the guilt of disobeying the Lord's anointed." In the course of the siege he withdrew from the town, and retired first to Raphoe and afterwards to London, where he was made rector of St Mary Aldermanbury. This charge he held till his death in June 1690. Hopkins' works, which have been frequently republished, comprise Sermons, Expositions of the Decalogue and the Lord's Prayer, and elaborate discourses on Regeneration and The Vanity of the World. The purely literary merits of these treatises are very great. In that sententious brevity which compresses whole chapters and volumes of meaning into a single line, Charmock was in that day without a rival, yet many of Hopkins' thoughts are expressed with a proverbial force and conciseness not unworthy of his great contemporary. His works are a mine of jewels. Their solid worth, apart from all ornament, their sound theology, their deep spiritual fervour, their practical good sense, and the acquaintance which they display with the nature and heart of man, commend them to our high esteem. But beside all this, the purity of their style, the clearness and vigour of their thought, and the abounding beauty of their illustrations, place them in some respects far above the average of the pulpit productions of the best known contemporary authors. Regarded by the Puritans, or at least by some of them, as a deserter from their ranks, buried in the obscurity of an Irish bishopric, Hopkins has never had due justice paid to his memory and worth. A candid perusal of his works will suffice to prove his title to rank with the best and ablest divines that England had to boast of in the seventeenth century.