William Twisse (1578 near Newbury, England – 20 July 1646) was a prominent English clergyman and theologian. He was named Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly in an Ordinance dated 12 June 1643,^[1] putting him at the head of the churchmen of the Commonwealth. He was described by a Scottish member, Robert Baillie, as "very good, beloved of all, and highlie esteemed; but merelie bookish".^[2]

Twisse's parents were German.^[3] He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford.^[4]

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.^[5] He was involved with Henry Savile in the 1618 edition of the works of Thomas Bradwardine.^[6] He was vicar of Newbury from 1620.^[7] There he was known as an opponent of William Laud.^[8]

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.

Twisse was a strong defender of a Calvinist, supralapsarian position.^[9] In his Vindiciae gratiae of 1632 he attacked Jacobus Arminius, and in Dissertatio de scientia media of 1639 adopted certain Dominican arguments,^[6] on predestination. His views were in a minority at the Westminster Assembly.^[10]

A premillennialist,^[11] 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.^[12]

• A Discovery of D. Jackson's Vanity (1631) against Thomas Jackson
• Vindiciae Gratiae (Amsterdam, 1632)
• Dissertatio de scientia media tribus libris absoluta (Arnhem 1639)
• The Riches of Gods Love (1653),^[13] with Henry Jeanes and John Goodwin
• An Examination of Mr. Cotton's Analysis of The Ninth Chapter of Romans^[14]
• The Five Points of Grace and of Predestination^[15]
• Of the Morality of the Fourth Commandment
• A Treatise of Mr. Cotton's Clearing Certaine Doubts Concerning Predestination
• The Doctrine of the Synod of Dort and Arles, Reduced to the Practice (1650)
• Of the morality of the Fourth Commandment, as still in force to binde Christians : delivered by way of answer to the translator of Doctor Prideaux his lecture, concerning the doctrine of the Sabbath (1641) OL 14032019M
  • https://archive.org/details/ofmoralityoffour00twis

• scientia media