Stoughton on Beddome

In his History of Religion in England John Stoughton says of 18th century Baptists

It is very remarkable that at this very time the denomination, whether cognizant of it or not, really caught the bracing breeze which had come sweeping down from the hills of Methodism over Baptist meadows, as well as Independent fields. There was Benjamin Beddome, in the middle of the century, at Bourton-on-the-Water, in the county of Gloucester, a man whose life and ministry resembled the streams which refresh the broad street of that pleasant little village. 

"Favoured with the advantage of a learned education, he continued to the last to cultivate an acquaintance with the best writers of antiquity, to which he was much indebted for the chaste, terse, and nervous diction which distinguished his compositions both in prose and verse."

"As a preacher he was universally admired for the piety and unction of his sentiments, the felicity of his arrangement, and the purity, force, and simplicity of his language, all of which were recommended by a delivery perfectly natural and graceful."

"As a religious poet his excellence has long been known and acknowledged in Dissenting congregations, in consequence of several admirable compositions inserted in some popular compilations." (quoting Robert Hall).