| Description | John Sergeant (1621–1710) was an English Roman Catholic priest, theologian and controversialist. He was a prolific author, notable for his criticisms of several of the leading thinkers of his time, including John Locke.
Born the son of William Sergeant, a yeoman in Barrow-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire, he was admitted in 1639 as a sub-sizar to St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1643. On the recommendation of William Beale, he was appointed secretary to Thomas Morton, the Anglican Bishop of Durham, time he spent on transcriptions of the Church Fathers. A year or so later, he converted to Catholicism as result of his studies.
He studied theology at the English College, Lisbon, where in 1650 he was ordained as a Catholic priest. He subsequently taught at the college until 1652, when he became procurator and prefect of studies. From 1653 to 1654, he worked as a priest in England. However, his uncompromising attitude ruined his ambition to restore the toleration of Catholic worship and ecclesiastical authority in England. He returned to Lisbon where he resumed his earlier work and taught philosophy. In 1655 he was elected canon and appointed as secretary. He lived for a while in France in 1657.
For most of his life, Sergeant was actively engaged in theological and philosophical controversy, both with Anglicans, such as the bishops Edward Stillingfleet and John Tillotson, and Catholics who differed from Thomas White, the second President of the English College Lisbon. Among his adversaries were the English clergyman and writer Jeremy Taylor and Archbishop Peter Talbot of Dublin, who labelled certain of Sergeant’s writings heretical. Sergeant attacked Locke in his 'Solid Philosophy Asserted, Against the Fancies of the Ideists' (1697). He held that knowledge can be extended and explained by resorting to metaphysical and general principles of reason (or “maxims”) when empirical investigations yield no new knowledge. He therefore criticized Locke, who denied the importance of these principles in extending knowledge, though he did not rule them out entirely.
At the time of the Oates Plot, Sergeant entered into communication with the Privy Council, which greatly scandalized Catholics. This arose from his opposition to Jesuit influence in the English Catholic Church. He avoided arrest by passing as a physician under the names of Dodd, Holland, and Smith. There is an original painting of him at Ushaw College, in Durham, and in the English College, Lisobn. |