He lived a quiet life as a country parson and thinker at Fugglestone St Peter with Bemerton, Wiltshire, from 1692 until his death early in 1712.
He became an early opponent of John Locke, whose An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) he attacked in Christian Blessedness or Discourses upon the Beatitudes in the same year; he also combatted Locke's theories in his Essay toward the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1701–4).
Others among his 23 works are An Idea of Happiness (1683), Miscellanies (1687), Theory and Regulation of Love (1688), and a Discourse concerning the Immortality of the Soul (1708).
His most popular work is A Collection of Miscellanies, consisting of Poems, Essays, Discourses and Letters (1687).
Samuel Richardson quoted it to Andrew Millar (a prominent London bookseller) on the death of Millar's son, possibly from the then most recent edition, A Collection of Miscellanies (London: E. Parker, 1740).