Westcott was educated at King Edward VI School, Birmingham, under James Prince Lee, where he became friends with Joseph Barber Lightfoot, later Bishop of Durham.

He worked at Harrow for nearly twenty years under Charles Vaughan and Henry Montagu Butler, but he was never good at maintaining discipline among large numbers.

[6] In 1855, he published the first edition of his History of the New Testament Canon,[10] which, frequently revised and expanded, became the standard English work on the subject.

[6] For a time he was enthusiastic about a cathedral life, devoted to the pursuit of learning and to the development of opportunities for the religious and intellectual benefit of the diocese.

Supported by his friends Lightfoot and Hort, he reformed the regulations for degrees in divinity and was responsible for the formation and first revision of the new theology tripos.

One of his most valuable works, The Gospel of Life (1892), a study of Christian doctrine, incorporated the materials upon which he delivered a series of more private and esoteric lectures on weekday evenings.

The years in which Westcott, Lightfoot and Hort could thus meet frequently and naturally for the discussion of the work in which they were all three so deeply engrossed formed a happy and privileged period in their lives.

[6] The reforms in the regulations for degrees in divinity, the formation and first revision of the new theological tripos, the inauguration of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi and the subsequent founding of St. Stephen's College, Delhi, the institution of the Church Society (for the discussion of theological and ecclesiastical questions by the younger men), the meetings for the divinity faculty, the organisation of the new Divinity School and Library and, later, the institution of the Cambridge Clergy Training School (renamed Westcott House in 1901 in his honour), were all, in a very real degree, the result of Westcott's energy and influence as Regius professor.

His little edition of the Paragraph Psalter (1879), arranged for the use of choirs, and his lectures on the Apostles' Creed, entitled Historic Faith (1883), are reminiscences of his vacations spent at Peterborough.

The strain of the joint work was very heavy, and the intensity of the interest and study which he brought to bear upon his share in the labours of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, of which he had been appointed a member, added to his burden.

His sermons were generally portions of a series; and to this period belong the volumes Christus Consummator (1886) and Social Aspects of Christianity (1887).

[6] Westcott's presidency of the Christian Social Union from 1889 did much to draw mainstream, respectable churchgoers into calling for justice for the poor and unemployed in the face of the predominant laissez-faire economic policies.

Contrary to his reputation as a recluse and a mystic, he took a practical interest in the mining population of Durham[11] and in the shipping and artisan industries of Sunderland and Gateshead.

On occasion, in 1892 he succeeded in bringing to a peaceful solution a long and bitter strike which had divided the masters and men in the Durham collieries.

He studied assiduously The Sacred Books of the East, and earnestly contended that no systematic view of Christianity could afford to ignore the philosophy of other religions.

He describes himself when he says: The student of Christian doctrine, because he strives after exactness of phrase, because he is conscious of the inadequacy of any one human formula to exhaust the truth, will be filled with sympathy for every genuine endeavour towards the embodiment of right opinion.

Partial views attract and exist in virtue of the fragment of truth—be it great or small—which they include; and it is the work of the theologian to seize this no less than to detect the first spring of error.

It is easier and, in one sense, it is more impressive to make a peremptory and exclusive statement, and to refuse to allow any place beside it to divergent expositions; but this show of clearness and power is dearly purchased at the cost of the ennobling conviction that the whole truth is far greater than our individual minds.

He who believes that every judgement on the highest matters different from his own is simply a heresy must have a mean idea of the faith; and while the qualifications, the reserve, the lingering sympathies of the real student make him in many cases a poor controversialist, it may be said that a mere controversialist cannot be a real theologian[20]His theological work assigned great importance to Divine Revelation in Holy Scripture and in the teaching of history.

His work in conjunction with Hort upon the Greek text of the New Testament will endure as what is thought to be one of the greatest achievements of English Biblical criticism.

The principles which are explained in Hort's introduction to the text had been arrived at after years of elaborate investigation and continual correspondence and discussion between the two friends.

The place which it almost at once took among scientific scholars in Britain and throughout Europe was a recognition of the great advance which it represented in the use and classification of ancient authorities.

However, Westcott himself wrote, Many years ago I had occasion to investigate "spiritualistic" phenomena with some care, and I came to a clear conclusion, which I feel bound to express in answer to your circular.