New Festschrift including essays on Beddome

“A deep spiritual well”: eighteenth-century Evangelicals & their legacy has just appeared. It is a collection of essays celebrating the academic achievements of historian Grant Gordon, whose research on key eighteenth-century Evangelicals such as John Newton, John Ryland Jr, David George, George Whitefield and John Wesley has opened up fresh avenues for understanding these men and their times. The essays especially focus on Ryland and his family and the English Particular Baptist community to which he belonged. A number of essays deal with slavery, the impact of the American Revolution on British North America, pastoral vision and race and touch on key issues of concern to the Rylands and to Newton. I noted in oparticular two essays on Beddome, one by Dr Haykin and one by Dr Yuta Seki. Both appear elsewhere in different forms but it is good to see our friend's name out there.

Three Diary References by John Newton

Two of these have probably been covered but to be complete

Sunday 25 June [1775 incorrectly 18 in diary]

Unworthy as I am, still supported. My own mind seemed dull and unaffected, but I was not straitened in any part of the daily services. A call in the evening from Mr [Caleb] Evans of Bristol, and Mr Dunscomb[e] of [left blank] and went myself with them to call on Mr Beedom [Beddome]. They are to dine with me on Tuesday.

Tuesday 27 June 1775

Mr [Thomas] Robinson attended the morning meeting with us and prayed; soon after he proceeded for Cambridge. ... The three Baptist Ministers came to dinner and Mr Symonds with them; stayed till half past four. The time was spent very agreeably. I drank tea with them at Mrs Andrews’. When returned, found Mr and Mrs Barham, contracted the service at the Great House. Spoke from Revelation 3:10 [Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.]. At seven went to the Baptist Meeting. Mr Beddome preached first from 2 Corinthians 1:24. Then Mr Evans from John 3:3. The latter was a good sermon, but the former gave me a pleasure I seldom find in hearing. It was an excellent discourse indeed, and the Lord was pleased to give me some softenings and relentings of heart. It is long since I had such an opportunity. O Lord soften me yet more and enable me to rejoice in thy peace.

Wednesday 7 August 1776

Attended at the Baptist Meeting… In the evening attended again, heard Mr Beddome from Zechariah 11:12 [And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.] He is an admirable preacher – simple, savoury, weighty. His text he used chiefly as a motto. Lord, thou requirest all and nothing. Help me treat and keep with thee upon thine own terms. Admitting no rival to thee. Mingling no righteousness with thine.

Deacon William Palmer 03

We have mentioned deacon William Palmer (1727-1807) previously. It is clear from this link here that he was a draper. What has also not been made clear is that Palmer was married to Mary Boswell (1729-1810) and so was brother-in-law to Beddome's wife, Elizabeth. A third sister, Hannah Palmer (c 1735-1765) was married to William's brother, Thomas Palmer (c 1715-1769) a draper based in Buckinghamshire and the owner of Stayesmore Manor in Carlton near Olney. (William moved from Olney in 1745.) Hannah Palmer unexpectedly died under 12 months after marrying Thomas. John Newton (1725-1807) mentions it in a diary entry for Thursday, October 17, 1765. Newton notes not only that the death was sudden but also remarks on the fact that a messenger was present in the house who had come the day before to say that Thomas Palmer's brother-in-law, John Andrews, the husband of Thomas's (and William's) sister Mary (b 1733) had died in Lutterworth. John and Mary had married in Olney in 1757. In Snooke's diary for 1769 he notes the death of Thomas Palmer in Olney. Newton later reveals that the death of the man in Lutterworth was, disturbingly, suicide by drowning.

Fawcett, Sutcliff and Beddome

In the biography of Baptist minister John Fawcett (1739-1817), we read that at the ordination of his protégé John Sutcliff (1752-1814),* Fawcett was assigned the task of delivering the charge to the minister. It then says "He often mentioned, in the subsequent periods of his life, the high gratification he enjoyed, by becoming personally acquainted with many eminent ministers who were assembled there on the occasion. Among the rest, the Rev. Benjamin Beddome particularly attracted his attention. He was strongly solicited to take part in the public services of the day; but through that timidity which is often an attendant on genius and talent, he declined it; he was, however, by entreaties, and almost compulsion, induced to deliver a sermon in the evening, with which the audience was greatly delighted."

*This would have been on Wednesday 7 August 1776. John Newton (1725-1807) was present. He wrote in his diary of the evening

"In the evening attended again, heard Mr Beddome from Zechariah 11:12 [And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.] He is an admirable preacher – simple, savoury, weighty. His text he used chiefly as a motto. Lord, thou requirest all and nothing. Help me treat and keep with thee upon thine own terms. Admitting no rival to thee. Mingling no righteousness with thine."

Robert Hall (1764-1831), Fawcett and Thomas Flude had breakfast with Newton the next morning. Flude was a General Baptist but Newton had called him the year before “an excellent man, a Baptist”.

Newton and Beddome, Beddome Cleared

The memoir already quoted cryptically suggests that Beddome had occasioned Newton's conformity. Further explanation can be found (according to D Bruce Hindmarsh in his 1996 John Newton and the Evangelical Tradition) in a sermon by Samuel Palmer (1741-1813). He provides more detail,

 

"explaining that while at Warwick Newton had desired that he and his congregation would shut up their meeting-house temporarily to go and hear Beddome, who was the visiting preacher at the Baptist Chapel. Some of the congregation were so offended at this that they made bitter comments about Newton and those who wished to go."

 

"The background," Hindmarsh adds "which Palmer did not explain, was that the Independent meeting had only recently been formed through a paedobaptist secession from the open communion Baptist church. Palmer claimed that, because of this whole episode, Newton had developed an opinion of Dissenters as a 'litigious people' and had turned his thoughts toward the Established Church where he might enjoy more peace and quietness."

So Beddome, as we might have guessed, was not to blame for Newton becoming an Anglican!

More again on Newton and Beddome

In the memoir of Newton published in 1843 it says of him:

His earliest religious connections, Captain Clunie, Mr Brewer and Mr Hayward, it must be borne in mind, were among the choicest characters in the dissenting churches. The influence of this circumstance, in inclining his mind towards the Independents, could not be slight. An unhappy dissension, however, wherein he was rather a witness than a party, and which arose out of a sermon preached by Mr Beddome, at Warwick, during his residence at that place, appears to have raised many doubts in his mind touching the Independent scheme, and, more than all, the judgment of Mrs Newton strongly opposed itself to any hasty decision.

Newton and Beddome Again

In The Evangelical Magazine Volume 16 (1808) there is a memoir of the then recently deceased John Newton. On page 98 we read that

His first public attempts to preach the word were made at Warwick. After the removal of the late Mr Ryland from a dissenting church in that town, a separation took place; and several pious persons, who were Paedobaptists, assembled together for worship in a dwelling-house, previously-to the erection of that chapel in which Mr Rowley preached for some time, and after him Mr Moody, for about 20 years. Mr Vennor, a leading person among those who formed this new interest, having received a very strong recommendation of Mr Newton from Mr Brewer, of Stepney, invited him to preach to them for six weeks on probation. He accordingly came (we believe, in the year 1759) with Mrs Newton. During his stay here, he used to retire on Saturdays, and sometimes on other days, to the Grove, in Lord Dormer's park, about two miles from Warwick, and to other sequestered spots, where he composed his sermons. Though he did not fix among this people, yet he always retained a peculiar affection for them; and he has been heard to say long after he settled in Olney that the very name of Warwick would at any time make his heart leap for joy. It was not the smallness of the congregation at that time, nor the narrow salary proposed to be raised, that prevented his settlement at Warwick; but he was undecided in his mind, whether to go into the Established Church, or to join the Dissenters. Among the latter were his first religious connections, which gave his mind a bias towards them; but he apprehended that disputes in dissenting congregations were common; and an occasional sermon by Mr Beddome, which he heard at, the Baptist Meeting at Warwick had a considerable effect on his mind to increase his disinclination to become a Dissenting Minister. Indeed, at that period, his ministerial talents were not very popular and it does not seem that he was much pressed to settle with any dissenting church.

Newton and Beddome

We have had this piece of research before. It is Michael Haykin's and is found in his pieces on Beddome in the BPBs volume (167) his biography of Sutcliff, One heart and one soul, John Sutcliff of Olney, his friends and his times, 118-120, etc. The actual source is the diary of John Newton (1725-1807) kept at Princeton University. The entries are for June 27, 1775 and August 7, 1776.

In 1775 Newton heard Beddome on 2 Corinthians 1:24. The sermon "gave me a pleasure I seldom find in hearing. It was an excellent discourse indeed, and the Lord was pleased to give me some softenings and relentings of heart." Presumably Beddome was preaching in Olney.

The 1776 occasion was when John Sutcliff (1752-1814) was ordained to the Baptist church at Olney, Buckinghamshire. Beddome did not take part but was present and was prevailed upon to preach in the evening. He preached on Zechariah 11:12. John Newton, then vicar of Olney, wrote ‘He is an admirable preacher, simple, savoury, weighty’.