After graduating at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and taking holy orders,[1] he spent several years as curate at Mitcham in Surrey.
In 1768 he became vicar of South Mimms near Barnet; and in November 1769 he was presented to the rectory of Tewkesbury, with which he held also the vicarage of Longdon in Worcestershire.
[2] A crisis was brought on by his sermon on the resurrection, preached at Easter 1773; and in November 1773 a prosecution was instituted against him in the consistory court of Gloucester.
Shortly before his death at Colford, near Crediton, Devon, he completed his Second Thoughts on the Trinity, in reply to a work of the bishop of Gloucester.
In the same year appeared Evanson's work entitled The Dissonance of the four generally received Evangelists, to which replies were published by Priestley and David Simpson (1793).