Henry Ainsworth

1571-1622. Puritan divine. Educated at Caius College, Cambridge, he became a separatist* and fled to Holland, where he became first a porter to a bookseller and then teacher to a London congregation which had reassembled in Amsterdam under the pastorship of Francis Johnson. He drew up a confession of faith, and with Johnson wrote in 1604 a Defence of the Brownists. Ainsworth was a good scholar, learned particularly in Hebrew and rabbinism. Though a controversialist, he was gentle by the standards of the time in his replies to John Ainsworth who had joined the Roman Church, to Richard Bernard, and to John Smyth. Later he parted from Johnson over principles of church government (Ainsworth leaned to congregationalist principles). He established a considerable scholarly reputation for his Annotations on various OT books, the whole Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Song of Solomon, which first appeared separately and then in collected form in 1627, and was reprinted later.