Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies Occasional Papers Volume 13 and Whitley Publications The Whitley Lecture 2017 The Pioneering Evangelicalism of Dan Taylor (1738-1816) Richard Pollard Whitley Publications Regent’s Park College, Oxford Regent’s Park College is a Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford Copyright © Richard Pollard 2017 First published 2017 Whitley Publications c/o Regent’s Park College, Oxford Ox1 2LB Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Regent’s Park College, Pusey Street, Oxford. OX1 2LB (Regent’s Park College is a Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford.) www.rpc.ox.ac.uk The right of Richard Pollard to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a license permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licenses are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-9565006-6-3 Front Cover Illustration: Frontispiece and Title Page of Adam Taylor’s Memoirs of the Rev. Dan Taylor (1820) from The Angus Library and Archives, Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Back cover illustration by Chris Lewis. Used with permission. Typeset by Larry J. Kreitzer Printed and bound in Great Britain by AlphaGraphics, Nottingham www.alphagraphics.co.uk/centres/nottingham-uk007 The Whitley Lectures Nigel G. Wright, Power and Discipleship: Towards a Baptist Theology of the State (1996-97) Ruth M.B. Gouldbourne, Reinventing the Wheel: Women and Ministry in English Baptist Life (1997-98) Keith G. Jones, A Shared Meal and a Common Table: Some Reflections on the Lord’s Supper and Baptists (1999) Anne Dunkley, Seen and Heard: Reflections on Children and Baptist Tradition (1999-2000) Stephen Finamore, Violence, the Bible and the End of the World (2001) Nicholas J. Wood, Confessing Christ in a Plural World (2002) Stephen R. Holmes, Tradition and Renewal in Baptist Life (2003) Andrew Rollinson, Liberating Ecclesiology: Setting the Church Free to Live Out its Missionary Nature (2004) Kate Coleman, Being Human: A Black British Christian Woman’s Perspective (2006) Sean Winter, More Light and Truth?: Biblical Interpretation in Covenantal Perspective (2007) Craig Gardiner, How can we sing the Lord’s Song?: Worship in and out of the Church (2008) Sally Nelson, A Thousand Crucifixions: The Materialist Subversion of the Church? (2009) David Southall, The Poetic Paul: On Creating New Realities for Righteousness in Romans (2010) E. Anne Clements, Wrestling with the Word: A Woman reads Scripture (2011) Ian M. Randall, Religious Liberty in Continental Europe: Campaigning by British Baptists, 1840s to 1930s (2012) Michael J. Peat, Answering Mendel’s Dwarf: Thinking Theologically about Genetic Selection (2013) Helen J. Dare, Always on the way and in the fray: Reading the Bible as Baptists (2014) Ed Kaneen, What is Biblical ‘Ministry’?: Revisiting diakonia in the New Testament (2015) Joshua T. Searle, Church Without Walls: Post-Soviet Baptists After the Ukrainian Revolution, 2013–14 (2016) Richard Pollard, The Pioneering Evangelicalism of Dan Taylor (1738-1816) (2017) The Whitley Lecture The Whitley Lecture was first established in 1949 in honour of W.T. Whitley (1861–1947), the Baptist minister and historian. Following a pastorate in Bridlington, during which he also taught at Rawdon College in Yorkshire, Whitley became the first Principal of the Baptist College of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, in 1891. This institution was later renamed Whitley College in his honour. Whitley was a key figure in the formation of the Baptist Historical Society in 1908. He edited its journal, which soon gained an international reputation for the quality of its contents – a reputation it still enjoys nearly a century later as the Baptist Quarterly. His A History of British Baptists (London: Charles Griffin, 1923) remains an important source of information and comment for contemporary historians. Altogether he made an important contribution to Baptist life and self-understanding in Britain and Australia, providing a model of how a pastor-scholar might enrich the life and faith of others. The establishment of the annual lecture in his name is designed as an encouragement to research and writing by Baptist scholars, and to enable the results of this work to be published. The giving of grants, advice and other forms of support by the Lectureship Committee serves the same purpose. The committee consists of representatives of the British Baptist Colleges, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, BMS World Mission, the Baptist Ministers’ Fellowship and the Baptist Historical Society. These organizations also provide financial support for its work. Sally Nelson, Secretary to the Whitley Committee INTRODUCTION This study makes a detailed examination of the evangelicalism of Dan Taylor (1738-1816), a leading eighteenth-century General Baptist minister and founder of the New Connexion of General Baptists – a revival movement. Through extensive use of primary material, the chief facets and underpinning tenets of Taylor’s evangelicalism are delineated. Particular consideration will be given to Taylor’s spiritual formation; soteriology; understanding of the atonement; beliefs regarding the means and process of conversion; ecclesiology; approach to baptism, the Lord’s Supper and worship; and his missiology. Many new insights will be provided on the theological thinking of this important evangelical figure. This examination of Taylor’s evangelicalism also makes a contribution to the recent debates regarding the origins of evangelicalism. The extent of the continuity between evangelicalism and its Protestant past has been a particular point of disagreement. It is here that the nature of Taylor’s evangelicalism is especially relevant. It will be seen that it reflects that which was distinct about evangelicalism as a movement that emerged from within the eighteenth-century Evangelical Revival. Taylor’s propensity for innovation serves as a unifying theme throughout this study, with many of its accompanying patterns of thinking and practical expressions, demonstrating that which was distinct about evangelicalism as a primarily eighteenth-century phenomenon. EMERGENT EVANGELICAL On 11 June 1800 Taylor represented the General Body of Protestant Dissenting Ministers in a direct address to King George III.1 While his selection for this role reflected the respect he commanded as a leading evangelical figure, the nature of his background meant he would not have envisaged ever being presented with such an opportunity.2 Taylor was born into a poor 1 Adam Taylor, Memoirs Of The Rev. Dan Taylor, Late Pastor Of The General Baptist Church, Whitechapel, London; With Extracts From His Diary, Correspondence, And Unpublished Manuscripts (London: Baynes and Son, 1820), p. 220. As with this reference, it should be noted that in my use of all primary sources, I have endeavoured to follow the capitalisation, grammar, spelling and formatting of the original titles. A further point to note is that Dan Taylor did not use inclusive language. While I have quoted Taylor accurately, I have sought to use inclusive language in my own writing in this study. 2 For a description of the material constraints that were apparent in Taylor’s upbringing, see Taylor, Memoirs, pp. 2-3. household near Halifax, West Riding in 1738.3 He was the second son of Azor and Mary who had eight children. Family life was marked by material austerity, hard work and a regard for moral living. From the age of four to twenty-four, Taylor worked with his father in a local coal mine. This was arduous and dangerous, and on at least one occasion he nearly lost his life.4 He received no formal education other than that taught by his mother. The Bible was read to him from an early age and the family regularly attended Halifax Parish Church.5 Taylor’s introduction to the Evangelical Revival began during the mid-1750s when he travelled many miles with his brother John (1743-1818)6 to hear evangelical preachers. In particular, they made frequent visits to Haworth Parish Church to listen to the preaching of William Grimshaw (1708-63).7 While the origins of the evangelical movement in Yorkshire began with the evangelistic endeavours of others such as Benjamin Ingham (1712-72), stonemason John Nelson (1707-74), and shoemaker William Darney ([1684/5?]-1774), Grimshaw’s ministry was significant. As John Walsh notes, he was ‘the dominating figure of the period’.8 After Grimshaw embraced evangelicalism in 1738, the twelve regular communicants at Haworth in 1742 soon grew to a gathering of regularly over a thousand people.9 Grimshaw became one of the most renowned evangelists in the North of England.10 The Taylors’ visits to Haworth involved them standing among crowds of many thousands as they attended the preaching of other leading evangelicals. These included the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield (1714-70) whose ministries further contributed to how ‘the revival 3 Taylor, Memoirs, p. 2. 4 Taylor, Memoirs, pp. 2-4. Adam Taylor describes how Dan Taylor narrowly escaped with his life when the mine flooded in 1753. 5 Taylor, Memoirs, pp. 2-5. While Adam Taylor did not provide the name of the parish church that the family attended, my examination of records at the West Yorkshire Archives Office indicate that it was Halifax Parish Church. See, Richard T. Pollard, ‘To Revive Experimental Religion or Primitive Christianity in Faith and Practice’: The Pioneering Evangelicalism of Dan Taylor (1738- 1816)’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wales, 2014), p. 29. 6 John Taylor also became a General Baptist minister. 7 Taylor, Memoirs, p. 5. Haworth was twelve miles from the family home in Northowram. 8 John D. Walsh, ‘The Yorkshire Evangelicals in the Eighteenth Century: With Especial Reference to Methodism’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1956), p. 330. For the significance of Grimshaw’s ministry in Yorkshire, see Walsh, pp. 96-113. See also, Frank Baker, William Grimshaw 1708-63 (London: Epworth Press, 1963). 9 John Newton, Memoirs of the Life of the Late Rev. William Grimshaw, with Occasional Reflections by John Newton, in Six Letters to the Rev. Henry Foster (London: Bensley, 1799), p. 70. 10 John W. Laycock, Methodist Heroes in the Great Haworth Round, 1734-84 (Keighley: Wadsworth, 1909), p. 32. 2 was expanding and consolidating in Yorkshire’.11 Taylor was both a witness of this revival and willing participant. Taylor’s nephew, Adam Taylor (1768-1832), recorded how Dan Taylor’s trips to Haworth frequently ‘melted him to tears’.12 The preached message of the need to place faith in Christ as the Son of God, who died for the sins of the world and for each person individually, was ‘instrumental’ in helping Taylor gain ‘clearer views of the plan of mercy through a redeemer’.13 Taylor soon considered his inherited understanding of the gospel as deficient and stated that ‘if the gospel had been preached as it ought to have been, he should have obtained liberty much sooner’.14 He perceived the evangelical depiction of the gospel as something new and with which he felt compelled to engage. As Taylor participated in the revival he encountered what David Bebbington in his 1989 publication of his landmark Evangelicalism in Modern Britain refers to as evangelicalism’s ‘special marks’ of ‘conversionism’ – the belief that human beings need to be converted; ‘activism’ – that the gospel needs to be expressed in effort; ‘biblicism’ – a special regard for the Bible as the source of spiritual truth; and ‘crucicentrism’ – a particular focus on the atoning work of Christ on the cross.15 While Bebbington does not present the movement as entirely uniform but as comprising numerous strands, he is clear that this ‘quadrilateral of priorities’ forms ‘the basis of Evangelicalism’ and provides it with a ‘self-conscious unity’.16 The way Bebbington roots his examination of evangelicalism within a close consideration of the surrounding context of the English Enlightenment provides a further reason for the attention I have placed on his understanding of evangelicalism. While Reginald Ward, for example, provides insights into the origins and nature of evangelicalism, the thrust of his focus is the influence of Continental Pietism.17 However, there is no evidence of direct 11 Walsh, ‘The Yorkshire Evangelicals in the Eighteenth Century’, p. 144. 12 Taylor, Memoirs, p. 6. 13 Taylor, Memoirs, p. 6. 14 Taylor, Memoirs, p. 9. Adam Taylor’s account of Taylor’s entrance into evangelicalism is particularly important as neither Taylor’s diary entries, surviving letters, nor published works cover this period. It was not until 1764 that Taylor began writing his diary and he was then occupied with more immediate concerns rather than recording his experience of faith during his earlier years. 15 David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman 1989), pp. 2-17. 16 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, pp. 3, 3, 27. 17 See, e.g., W. Reginald Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), and Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670- 1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 3 continental influences on Taylor or on his formation of the New Connexion which was a thoroughly English movement. A further core dimension of Bebbington’s approach is that he views evangelicalism as inseparable from the beginnings of the Evangelical Revival in the 1730s.18 This aspect of Bebbington’s understanding of evangelicalism has proved most contentious. An example is the 2008 publication The Emergence of Evangelicalism, edited by Michael Haykin and Kenneth Stewart.19 In the main the contributors seek to demonstrate that eighteenth-century evangelicalism was no more than a continuum of theological thinking and practices, particularly those associated with the Reformation and Puritanism. The extent to which Taylor’s pioneering evangelicalism serves to support Bebbington’s argument is a central theme of this study. When Taylor listened to evangelical preachers he heard a uniformity of message. This comprised what Grimshaw referred to as the ‘main doctrines of all discourse’ and included ‘Man’s fall and degeneracy, his redemption through Jesus Christ alone, the nature & necessity of the new birth, justification by faith alone, sanctification by the indwelling spirit of our redeemer’.20 These elements formed the essential content of the evangelical message Taylor heard. Grimshaw also contended that it was not beneficial for his listeners to insist on subjects of controversy in his preaching.21 Taylor also came to embrace this conviction. He later urged ministers to ‘be little concerned in the pulpit about niceties of dispute, especially in nonessentials’.22 A consequence of Taylor having been introduced to this style of preaching at Haworth was that he was unlikely to have then been aware of the differing theological standpoints surrounding the scope of the atonement. While these differences had elsewhere caused contention between the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield and some discord between their partisans,23 Walsh notes that ‘here on the moors individual quiddities, Election 18 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, p. 20. 19 The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities, ed. by Michael A.G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008). 20 William Grimshaw, ‘Letter to John Gillies’, 19 July 1754, in John Gillies, Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of the Success of the Gospel (Kelso: Rutherford, 1845), pp. 506-8 (p. 507). Historical Collections was first published in 1754, although Grimshaw’s letter was not included. 21 Newton, Memoirs…Rev. William Grimshaw, p. 99. 22 Dan Taylor, ‘Letter to George Birley’, 6 February 1778, Letters from the Revd Dan Taylor to the Revd George Birley, 1771-1808, Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, Hughes Collection (D/HUS 1/6/5) (page not numbered). 23 For example, in 1739 John Wesley published his 29 April 1739 sermon on Free Grace within which he challenged the doctrines of limited atonement and unconditional election. Annexed to this work was a poem on universal redemption by Charles Wesley, see John Wesley, Free Grace: A 4 or Perfection, seemed insignificant while the great harvest stretched before the little band of reapers’.24 This was reflected in how Taylor held the Wesleys and Whitefield in equal regard.25 While Taylor and many others in the West Riding considered the content of evangelical gospel preaching as new, what Grimshaw cited as its ‘main doctrines’ were found within the teaching of earlier movements such as the Protestant Reformers, Puritans and Separatists. It also shared certain commonalities with Latitudinarianism, which was dominant in the Church of England in the eighteenth century.26 Similar to the evangelicalism Taylor came to embrace, many Latitudinarians disliked theological controversy and instead promoted irenicism. A further commonality was the way in which their preaching and written works tended to be marked by plainness, absence of abstractionism and an emphasis on the practical duties of faith.27 Despite these similarities, a crucial difference was how Latitudinarians often understood salvation without reference to Christ’s atoning work and as guaranteed for those who lived a moral life.28 Taylor was likely influenced by Latitudinarianism as he worshipped at Halifax Parish Church under the ministry of George Legh (1693-1775). Despite Legh being a friend to evangelicals,29 wider evidence, such as his strong association with Bishop Benjamin Hoadly (1676-1761), upholds John Hargreaves’ designation of Legh as an ‘undogmatic Latitudinarian’.30 Legh’s Latitudinarian leanings would have contributed to what Taylor found to be new as he listened to evangelicals emphasise the sufficiency for salvation of the exercise of faith alone in Christ’s atoning work. Sermon Preach’d At Bristol (Bristol: S. and F. Farley, 1739). In response, Whitefield wrote a reply to John Wesley where he strongly defended the sovereignty of God in salvation, see George Whitefield, ‘A Letter to the Rev. Mr. John. Wesley’, 24 December 1740, in George Whitefield, George Whitefield’s Journals, new edn (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1960), pp. 571-88. This publication is a revision of William Wales’ 1905 edition of Whitefield’s Journals. 24 Walsh, ‘The Yorkshire Evangelicals in the Eighteenth Century’, p. 108. Walsh’s reference to ‘Perfection’ concerns John Wesley’s doctrine of perfection. 25 Taylor, Memoirs, p. 5. 26 Latitudinarianism emerged in the seventeenth century through individuals including the Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson who drew upon the ideas of Cambridge Platonists such as Ralph Cudworth. For an examination of Latitudinarianism and its central tenets see Martin I.J. Griffin Jr, Latitudinarianism in the Seventeenth-Century Church of England, ed. by Lila Freedman (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 27 Patrick Muller, Latitudinarianism and Didactism in Eighteenth Century Literature: Moral Theology in Fielding, Sterne and Goldsmith (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 79-82. 28 Griffin, Latitudinarianism, pp. 39-40, 106, 126-48. 29 John A. Hargreaves, ‘Religion and Society in the Parish of Halifax c. 1740-1914’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Huddersfield Polytechnic, 1991), pp. 71-72. 30 Hargreaves, ‘Religion and Society in the Parish of Halifax c. 1740-1914’, p. 71. 5