William Twisse
English clergyman and theologian (1578 – 1646)
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Life
Twisse was born near Newbury, England; his parents were German. He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He was appointed chaplain to Elizabeth of Bohemia, by her father James I of England, in 1612. This position was short-lived, and he returned to England from Heidelberg around 1613. He was then given a living at Newton Longueville. He was involved with Henry Savile in the 1618 edition of the works of Thomas Bradwardine. He was vicar of Newbury from 1620. There he was known as an opponent of William Laud.
He died on 20 July 1646 and was buried in Westminster Abbey but exhumed in 1661 and his remains deposited with those of dozens of other Parliamentarians in a pit in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Westminster.
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Views
Twisse was a strong defender of a Calvinist supralapsarian position. In his Vindiciae gratiae of 1632 he attacks Jacobus Arminius, and in Dissertatio de scientia media of 1639 he adopts certain Dominican arguments on predestination. His views were in a minority at the Westminster Assembly.
A premillennialist, he wrote a preface to the 1643 English translation, Key of the Revelation, of Joseph Mede's influential Clavis Apocalyptica. Mede was a friend and correspondent.