Nicholas Bownde


Nicholas Bownde, Bownd or Bound was an English clergyman, known for his Christian Sabbatarian writings.

Life

He was son of Robert Bownde, M.D., physician to the Duke of Norfolk. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1572, was elected a fellow later that year, and graduated M.A. in 1575. On 3 September 1585 he was instituted to the rectory of Norton, Suffolk, a living in the gift of his college. He was created D.D. at Cambridge in 1594.
In 1611 Bownde became minister of the church of St. Andrew the Apostle at Norwich, and he was buried there on 26 December 1613. He married the widow of John More, the 'apostle of Norwich.' His sister Anne married John Dod and his widowed mother married as her second husband Richard Greenham.

Works

In 1595 Bownde published the first edition of his treatise on Sabbath. In it he maintained that the seventh part of our time ought to be devoted to the service of God; that Christians are bound to rest on the first day of the week as much as the Jews were on Mosaical Sabbath. He contended that Sabbath was profaned by interludes, May-games, morris dances, shooting, bowling, and similar sports; and he would not allow any feasting on that day, though an exception was made in favour of 'noblemen and great personages'.
The observance of the Lord's Day became a question between the high-church party and the puritans, an early disagreement on doctrine. The Sabbatarian question was noticed by the bishops, and they cited several ministers before the ecclesiastical courts for preaching it. But the strict Sabbatarian doctrine spread.
His works are:
Bownde has a Latin ode before Peter Baro's Prælectiones in Ionam, 1579; and he edited John More's Table from the Beginning of the World to this Day. Wherein is declared in what yeere of the World everything was done, Cambridge, 1593.