Entering holy orders about 1607, he became noted as a preacher and disputant, as well as for his knowledge of the Church Fathers and scholastics.
In 1616 he was admitted to the reading of the sentences, and the year after was made vicar of the church of Gilling in Yorkshire, and also of the chapel of Forcet, near Richmond in the same county.
The book is in the form of a dialogue between a papist and a Protestant, and was valued by John Selden.
A friend having forwarded to Birckbek a copy of his book covered with marginal glosses, which the annotator entitled An Antidote necessary for the reader thereof, an Answer to the Antidotist was appended to a second edition of the Evidence in 1657.
The 1657 edition, with this appendix, was published again in 1849 in the supplement to Edmund Gibson's Preservative from Popery’ by the Reformation Society, with John Cumming as editor.