Particular Pilgrims

One of the more unusual Particular Baptist women of the 1700s in England was Anne Dutton. Today, she is not well known, but in her time she was widely admired as a prolific theological writer and as friend and occasional foe of prominent evangelical preachers.

Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary is a Confessional Reformed Baptist Seminary Providing affordable online theological education to help the Church in its calling to train faithful men. To learn more about CBTS, visit https://CBTSeminary.org.

Knowledge of his early life, education, marriage, children, travel, health, appearance, outside interests, politics, and a myriad of other things remind us that he was like us. Often at least a few of these things profoundly affected his ministry. And the trials, weaknesses, disappointments, sins, and failures of his life, help us to look to Jesus as the only perfect Shepherd. We should honor and learn from men like John Fawcett much more than we do. But we should also rank them where they would want us to rank them – as vessels of sovereign grace, as the chief of sinners, and the least of the saints. Reformed Baptist hagiography doesn’t revere God nor spiritually help us. So here are a few generally unrelated and personal tidbits about John Fawcett.

Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary is a Confessional Reformed Baptist Seminary Providing affordable online theological education to help the Church in its calling to train faithful men. To learn more about CBTS, visit https://CBTSeminary.org.

"We know that Fawcett had been asked to preach for Gill when he fell ill. Then after he died, Fawcett was asked to become Carter Lane’s pastor. He seriously considered the request, sought counsel from others, and the next year finally agreed. We also know that Fawcett got ready to move but when the time came to leave his flock, he couldn’t break his ties with them. He decided to stay and apparently never seriously considered leaving again."

Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary is a Confessional Reformed Baptist Seminary Providing affordable online theological education to help the Church in its calling to train faithful men. To learn more about CBTS, visit https://CBTSeminary.org.

In our last episode we learned of the early religious influences on John Fawcett and then of his conversion. Under God, it came through the word of truth preached by an Anglican priest named George Whitfield. One of the great emphases in his preaching was the need to be born again. In the state-supported religion of the day, Christianity was often equated with morality. The law was given out but the gospel often came with little clarity. So the doctrine of regeneration was a thunderbolt that startled its hearers. Some ran to Christ for protection and others railed against the enthusiasm of such preaching. To be an enthusiast was to be mentally unbalanced or to use Jonathan Edward’s phrase from the same time period, to be “crack-brained”. But of course, it was no such thing. It was simply Jesus’ teaching about the new birth being presented to rationalistic and moralistic people, dead in their sins with minds darkened to how to be truly right with God.

It’s time to sketch a short biography of John Fawcett, the pastor-poet we’ve been learning about. Despite the fact that he hasn’t been studied with the kind of depth as other Baptist leaders from the 18th century, we know quite a bit about him because upon his death, one of his sons wrote a memoir.

I have introduced you to several of John Fawcett’s writings – especially his sermons and devotional works. But he was also a fine hymn writer. Several of his better productions are still sung today. He believed in singing psalms and hymns in public worship, not merely for private edification. The Baptist churches in his day, that is in the latter 1700’s, would have predominantly sung the psalms and hymns of Isaac Watts. His song books were very popular. But as Baptists and others began to also pen hymns for worship, new collections were desired. And of course, a section of hymns for the ordinance of believer’s baptism was needed for their churches.

I want to introduce you to more works from the pen of John Fawcett, the Baptist pastor from the north of England in the later 1700s. In almost 100 episodes of Particular Pilgrims, we have found only a few authors producing what could be called “many” publications. Benjamin Keach was one but the list is short. In the 1600s it could be difficult for non-conformists to publish. This began to ease in the 1700s and by the latter half of the century, some like Fawcett took advantage of the situation and produced dozens of volumes.

I want to introduce you to John Fawcett, another one of the many excellent evangelical pastors from Particular Baptist life in 1700s England. I plan to give you his biography soon, but first, I’d like to review one of his many writings, this one entitled “The Constitution and Order of a Gospel Church Considered”. What a typical 18th-century title! This was first published in 1797 when Fawcett was in his late 50s and living near the church he pastored at Hebden Bridge in northern England.

At roughly the same time that Particular Baptists began to appear out of the Puritan and Congregational movements in Old England they show up in New England. Several men I have already introduced to you spent time in both places.

For example, Thomas Patient pastored not only in London, Ireland, and Bristol but was also in New England. He migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s along with thousands of others seeking relief from religious conformity. While there, he concluded that infant baptist was unbiblical. This may have been as the result of hearing a series of sermons in favor of infant sprinkling. He claims in a later writing to not have known anyone to oppose it. But these sermons seem to have put doubts in his mind and he began to study the question. In any case by 1642 he was being accused in the Salem court records “of holding but also fomenting the error that baptism of infants is no ordinance of God and hindering his child from baptism. Gone away.” This makes it clear that he and his wife had at least one child and they refused to have him baptized. And it shows that he once again fled to a freer place from persecution. He eventually returned to Old England where his major work was to be sent to plant churches in Ireland.

If anyone today has heard of Benjamin Beddome, it is probably as a hymn writer. A few of his compositions are still in hymnals today. For example, in the Trinity Hymnal, Baptist Edition, there are three of his selections. There are two in the new Trinity Psalter Hymnal.

One thing this writing of hymns for worship proves is that he believed congregational singing to be a part of God’s public worship. His father, John, had also been of this school of thought. And so Benjamin wrote hundreds of songs, primarily for the purpose of reinforcing the sermon. They were meant to be sung after the preaching of the Word of God so the congregation could respond in faith to God for the truth they had just heard. The church in Bourton also used Isaac Watts’ psalms and hymns and others as well. But when a specific theme was needed for a sermon, Beddome wrote his own. This was a common practice by many at this time but few did it with such variety and skill.