He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree as fifteenth wrangler in 1816 and obtained a fellowship.
[1] He was appointed a Worts travelling bachelor 1818, and spent some time in Italy and Sicily, afterwards publishing an account of his journey.
[2] In 1834, he became rector of Great Oakley in Essex, and in 1839 was appointed Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
Some of his writings, among them the History of the Christian Church during the First Three Centuries and the lectures On the Right Use of the Early Fathers, were published posthumously.
[3] A short memoir of him appeared in 1856 from the hand of William Selwyn, his successor in the divinity professorship.