John Balguy, the English theologian and moral philosopher, was born in Sheffield and educated at the Sheffield grammar school and at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was admitted to the B.A. in 1706, ordained in the established church in 1710, and granted the living of Lamesley and Tanfield in Durham in 1711. Later he was made a prebendary of Salisbury (1727) and finally vicar of Northallerton, York (1729). He was an associate of Bishop Benjamin Hoadley and was the bishop's defender in the Bangorian controversy. Hoadley was the close friend of Samuel Clarke.

Balguy's first piece of moral philosophy was an attack on the philosophy of Shaftesbury, titled A Letter to a Deist concerning the Beauty and Excellency of Moral Virtue, and the Support Which It Receives from the Christian Religion (London, 1726). His most important work was The Foundation of Moral Goodness (Part I first published in London...