Francis Okely

Francis Okely (1719-1794) was born at Bedford and educated for the Anglican ministry at Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge, he founded a religious society in Bedford, initially associating with the Baptists, but by 1743, through the influence of John Cennick, he had joined the Moravians and removed to Germany. He returned to England and preached in Bristol for a while, and later in Manchester, Ashton, and Stockport. In 1757 he returned to Bedford and became affiliated with the Methodists again, but by 1767 he was preaching once again in a Moravian church in Northampton. During his years there (at which time John Ryland, Jr., became acquainted with him), Okely translated numerous works by German writers, including Boehme, Engelbrecht and Hiel. He eventually rejected trinitarianism and the atonement, and came to believe in continued prophetic revelation. See Protestant Dissenters Magazine 1 (1794), 336; DEB.