Abraham Booth – A Forgotten Baptist, part 5

In 1797, The Baptist Itinerant Society was established in London. This Society’s aim was to send “such Calvinistic ministers of the Baptist persuasion as appear to them properly qualified for itinerant preaching.” This aim was further explained in an address to the churches drawn up by Booth, “While we rejoice in the spiritual and laudable exertions of our Christian Brethren under different denominations to preach the gospel among the heathen in foreign climes, we should not forget the many myriads at home, who have scarcely anything pertaining to Christianity besides the name – who are profoundly ignorant, if not notoriously profligate and profane.”

In August 1804, Booth and two of his deacons, Joseph Gutteridge and William Taylor, were instrumental in the establishment of the London Baptist Educational Society. The purpose of the Society was to promote the training of ministerial candidates by supporting them for two years under the supervision of an experienced pastor. A few years after Booth’s death, the Society promoted the establishment of the Stepney Academy, now Regent’s Park College, Oxford.

During the last years of the eighteenth century, Abraham Booth and Andrew Fuller were outstanding Particular Baptist theologians. Both men were self-taught and had reached their doctrinal convictions and theological stands after much inward spiritual struggle. Booth came to his convictions from Arminianism, whereas Fuller had come to his from Hyper-Calvinism. Booth was a student of the writings of John Owen, while Fuller owed a great debt to Jonathan Edwards. Fuller and Booth seldom met; differences, and even misunderstandings, existed between these two men.

Abraham Booth enjoyed good health for much of his life. He was well built and seldom was he ill in such a way that he could not attend to his pastoral responsibilities. In his last years of his life he was increasingly subject to attacks of asthma during the winter months. His wife preceded his own death by four years. The loss had a great impact on Booth, however, his friends noted his calm resignation. There was reason for this, as Booth explained:

About three-and-twenty years ago my wife had a severe lying-in which so weakened her that we feared that she would never recover her strength. Her indisposition continued about two years, which was the occasion of our removing so near the meeting house. Shortly after the Lord was pleased to permit the family to be visited with the scarlet fever. My wife, and all except myself, were attacked with it. Her faculties were deranged, and the doctor said, ‘I fear, Sir, your wife will never recover.’ I attended all of them as well as I could. The Bible was then sweeter to me than ever it had been, even when I could only snatch from it a few verses at a time; and I well remember one solemn transaction. One evening I retired for the purpose of private prayer, and besought the Lord that I might find an entire resignation to his will. When I arose from my knees, I felt peculiar satisfaction in the perfection of God; and had such full persuasion of his righteousness, his justice, his mercy, and his love, that I lifted up my eyes to heaven, and said, ‘O God, I give my wife, my children, my all to thee’; and if ever I prayed in my life, I prayed at that time. Seeing then, that he has given her to me for three-and-twenty years in answer to my prayer, dare I now to murmur? God forbid. All recovered but the nurse; she went away, had the fever, and died.

 Booth was taken ill suddenly in September 1805. From then most of the services in Prescot Street were taken by his assistant, William Gray. Booth administered the Lord’s Supper for the last time in January 1806, just a few days before his death on the 27th of that month. In the Church Book, the devoted and grieving members of the church paid their tribute to their beloved pastor of almost thirty-seven years:

He possessed a noble disinterestedness of spirit; he sought not ours but us; he was truly the servant of this church, for Jesus’ sake. A pastor in the language of Jeremiah, according to God’s heart; who fed his people with knowledge and understanding. There are, perhaps, but few instances in the church of Christ, of one who was better exemplified the character of a Christian bishop, as drawn by the apostle Paul, Titus 1:7-9.

He was buried in the burial ground of the Maze Pond Chapel in Southward. John Rippon of Carter Lane was the preacher during his funeral services. James Dore of Maze Pond preached at a memorial service held later at Prescot Street Church. The death of Abraham Booth took from the Particular Baptists one of their outstanding theologians and from the London churches one of their leading figures. Humble and unassuming, he stood steadfast in the classical Calvinistic theology the Particular Baptists had inherited from their Puritan forebears. A man of spiritual wisdom, his counsel was regularly sought and freely given, and although he disliked titles, he was well known before his death as “the venerable Mr. Booth.”

Filed under: Abraham Booth, Baptist

Abraham Booth – A Forgotten Baptist, part 4

The pastorate at Prescot Street saw steady growth in the work. There were one hundred and twenty-two baptisms in the first decade and a total of four hundred and fifty-two during the whole of his pastorate. In 1775, Booth, having a desire for the Christian disciplines, began to express his intention to catechize the children, and by 1801 Prescot Street Church began its own Sunday School. The school may have existed before that date, since a wealthy member, William Fox, was active in the establishment of a Sunday School Society in 1785. The Society aimed to promote the establishment of Sunday Schools among churches of all denominations.

Booth soon offered a position of leadership among the ministers of the Baptist Board, which was the influential minister’ fraternal in London. However, his wider influence was exercised through his various writings, the best known being The Reign of Grace, which passed through nine English, one Scottish, and three American editions before 1800. In 1770, a small work was published entitled, The Death of Legal Hope, the Life of Evangelical Obedience. This work was Booth’s challenge to the rising doctrinal issue of Antinomianism, which was beginning to appear in London. According to Robert Oliver a group of ministers, the most notable of who was Theophilus Lindsey, left the church of England because they could no longer subscribe to its Trinitarian formularies. The response of Booth was to edit and republish a work by the French Huguenot scholar Jacques Abbadie, A Treatise on the Deity of Christ, in 1777. In 1784, Booth published Paedobaptism Examined, which was an attempt to challenge the practice of infant baptism. This work remains one of the most detailed treatments of baptismal controversy from the Baptist perspective. Edward Williams quickly published a reply to Booth’s work entitled, Antipaedobaptism Examined. According to Booth, Williams’ response had failed to deal with his own arguments and so he initially felt he had no need to write a reply. However, he was forced into doing so when Williams had been heard of saying that Booth was incapable to a reply. Booth’s A Defense of Paedobaptism Examined appeared in 1792, and with this publication the debate was closed. During this time Booth also wrote An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, which was published in 1788, in which he expounded the spiritual nature of the church of God, and demonstrated the inconsistency of a state church with the New Testament model.

The year 1792 saw the formation of the Particular Baptist Missionary Society at Kittering, under the leadership of William Carey, Andrew Fuller, John Ryland, Jr., and John Sutcliff. The churches in London proved to be slow in their support of this new venture, but it was Abraham Booth who introduced John Thomas to the Society. Thomas was to become Carey’s first colleague in India. Although Thomas was to cause Carey many problems on the mission field, Booth remained a valued friend of the Society. On November 23, 1796, William Carey wrote to Booth, “Your very affectionate letters have been as cordials to my soul. Your counsels, your prayers, and good wishes excite my gratitude; may they be long continued.

Filed under: Abraham Booth, Baptist

Abraham Booth – A Forgotten Baptist, part 3

The publication of The Reign of Grace brought Abraham Booth to London. The pastor of the Prescot Street Church in Whitechapel in London, Samuel Burford, died unexpectedly in April 1768. Many of the members of this church read The Reign of Grace and were so impressed with what they read they formed a group of three men to make the long journey to Nottinghamshire to hear Booth preach. They were not disappointed with what they had heard. An invitation to preach quickly came from the Prescot Street Church, and during June and July 1768, Abraham preached for three Sundays. The church members were overwhelmingly drawn to him and extended an invitation to preach for four more Sundays, beginning in August. In September of the same year, Booth received a unanimous call to the pastorate, which he accepted within two weeks. The church in which Abraham Booth was called as the new minister met in an elegant eighteenth-century meeting house built in 1730. Prescot Street was in an area of Whitechapel known as Goodman’s Fields, a fashionable area which was favored by high-ranking naval officers and city merchants. Kenneth Dix has given the following description of this area, lying to the east of the historic ‘Square Mile’ of the city of London, “Although Prescot Street meeting house was only a few hundred yards from the tower, it was less than half a mile from open fields.”

The move from a small town in the country to the historic Prescot Street Church must have been, at times, overwhelming for Booth. Following a great succession of able men, men that had made a wide impact on the larger denomination, Booth must have felt a bit inadequate to stand in such a position. He had arrived in London during a time when the pulpits of the city were filled with many prominent men. There was Samuel Stennett at Little Wild Street, Jon MacGowan at Devonshire Square, and the scholarly but isolated Andrew Gifford at Eagle Street, and Dr. John Gill was in the closing stages of his pastorate at Southwark. Booth desired to meet the standard of excellence by which he was surrounded; therefore, he continued to study many subjects. He hired a tutor who versed him in the classic languages of Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He did not become a Hebrew scholar but continued to read from his Greek New Testament the rest of his life. Latin opened up a world of church history, in which he became very fluent in. Probably the greatest single theological influence upon him was John Owen, the great Puritan divine of the previous century.

In 1800 Booth published a sermon entitled, The Amen of Social Prayer, Illustrated and Improved. This was a sermon which had previously been delivered at one of the monthly meetings of ministers belonging to the Particular Baptist denomination. The London Particular Baptist ministers had decided to arrange a series of studies in the Lord’s Prayer, Booth was asked to expound on the “Amen” at the end of the prayer. John Rippon opens a little window on how Booth responded to the prayers of others, and sheds some light on the practice of the churches at that time.

When others concluded public prayer, where he was present, he was accustomed at the conclusion, softly, yet audibly to subjoin Amen – this practice he wished might prevail in all our congregations, and at our prayer meetings; but his example and influence, considerable as they were, have not rendered it general.

Filed under: Abraham Booth, Baptist

Abraham Booth – A Forgotten Baptist, part 2

Abraham Booth first heard the gospel and came to faith in Jesus Christ from these itinerant preachers during this move the Spirit. These Christians were paedobaptists at first, but soon adopted Baptist convictions. In 1755, between sixty and seventy of their members were baptized, including Booth, who was twenty-one years old by this time. Soon after his baptism, Booth began to preach at Melbourne, Longborough, Diseworth, and a number of other villages within a radius of about forty miles of his home. These preaching venues were all a part of the outreach of one centrally located church. The group retaining Arminian convictions formed a General Baptist Church. However, this church had no connections with the old General Baptist denomination, which was fast sinking into the heresy of Arianism.The church, with its branches in at least three counties of England, proved to be so unwieldy that its organization had to be reviewed. It was Booth who urged the establishment of independent local churches. He was then asked to pastor Kirkby Woodhouse, one of the resulting local churches.

Abraham married Elizabeth Bowman at the age of twenty-four. Elizabeth was the daughter of a neighboring farmer. She seems to have received a basic education, but he continued to work hard to extend the reaches of his mind. The young couple established a school at Sutton in Ashfield and Abraham continued to pastor his church in Kirkby Woodhouse. It was at this time that Booth had to face one of the greatest crises of his life. About a year before his baptism he had written a poem entitled, ‘Absolute Predestination’, in which he attacked the doctrines of predestination and particular redemption. This poem, he later admitted, was written “in the language as replete with contumely and reproach as is to be found in the writings of Wesley or Fletcher.” As he continued to study these early Arminian convictions were shaken. He described his experience:

The doctrine of sovereign, distinguishing grace, as commonly and justly stated by Calvinists, it must be acknowledged, is too generally exploded. This the writer of these pages knows by experience to his grief and shame. Through the ignorance of his mind, the pride of his heart, and the prejudice of his education, in his younger years, often opposed it with much warmth, through with no small weakness; but after an impartial enquiry, and may prayers, he found reason to alter his judgment; he found it to be the doctrine of the bible, and a dictate of the unerring Spirit. Thus patronized, he received the once obnoxious sentiment, under full conviction of its being a divine truth.

Whatever factors lead to this change in theological conviction, friends of Booth soon noted his changed views. Meetings were held between Booth and the leaders of his group of churches, many of whom held his ministry in high esteem. No agreement was possible and so Booth had to resign his pastorate. It is interesting to note that Abraham continued to hold his former associates in high esteem even to the end of his life.

For a short time his preaching stopped. As he soon found out, he was no alone in his doctrinal convictions. Some of his friends wanted to continue under his ministry, and so a hall was rented and licensed in Sutton in Ashfield. There a Particular Baptist Church was established. Booth expounded his doctrine to this congregation in a series of sermons, which later became the basis of his book, The Reign of Grace. This series of sermons was soon repeated in pulpits in the towns of Nottingham and Chesterfield as Booth began to be invited to preach. A number of friends urged him to publish the sermons. Booth had an extreme workload during the week. He kept his school to support his growing family during the days of the week and on the Lord’s Day, he usually preached as many as three times. Continuing to be urged by many friends to publish his sermons on his reformed doctrine, he eventually wrote out a manuscript but only used, at first, for private circulation. The publication of such seemed very obscure for a country pastor, a pastor who was relatively unknown, even among the Particular Baptist Churches. Henry Venn, the Evangelical vicar of Huddersfield soon heard about the manuscript and became so enthusiastic about it that he rode over to Booth’s home to meet the author. Venn soon insisted that the book be published, and it was.

Filed under: Abraham Booth, Baptist

Abraham Booth – A Forgotten Baptist, part 1

“He was an English Baptist minister or rare abilities. But for this unbelieving age his writings are far too sound in doctrine to be sufficiently popular for re-publication”; so wrote the author of the abridgement of Abraham Booth’s Reign of Grace in 1924. In fact, today Abraham Booth is almost forgotten, a sad indication of the change in thought and doctrine which has swept through the Baptist Churches of Great Britain since the early nineteenth century.Abraham Booth was born in the small Derbyshire village of Blackwell on May 20, 1734. In the first year of his life, his parents moved from Blackwell to Annesley Woodhouse, a small parcel in the parish of Annesley, Nottinghamshire, where they occupied a farm belonging to the Duke of Portland. Abraham was the firstborn of what turned out to be a large family. For the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life he assisted his father as soon as he was able in the agricultural concerns of the farm. Since there was not much money for education, he spent less than six months at school. His father taught him to read, making it a general practice to hear his lesson every day after dinner. This well-intentioned education, however, was necessarily limited, because Abraham had to spend the daylight hours helping his father work the farm. Abraham left the farm when he was sixteen in order to learn the trade of stocking weaving. This proved to be his greatest opportunity for self-improvement.

The workings of Booth’s mind began at a very early age. He became proficient in the art of writing, and in the science of math and numbers. As he grew up, so devoted did he become to his studies, that he cheerfully sacrificed the hours usually allotted to repose and recreation, for the pleasure he found in prosecuting them. Thirsting for knowledge, he read whatever books he could find, often late into the night when the rest of the family was in bed.

Abraham Booth’s parents were members of the Church of England, and no doubt trained up their son in a customary reverence for the national establishment of religion. There is no evidence that Booth had any contact with Evangelical Christianity in his early childhood. However, in the middle decades of the century, the area in which the Booth family lived was the scene of a powerful movement of the Holy Spirit in a work of true revival. Some miles to the south of Annesley Woodhouse, was the residence of the Countess of Huntingdon at Donington Park. One of her servants, David Taylor was converted and embarked on a vigorous program of village evangelism. One of the earliest converts in this evangelistic event was Samuel Deacon. Deacon soon joined Taylor in his evangelistic efforts and the results of their endeavors were greatly beyond their highest expectations. Most of converts were from the working classes, some of whom were prepared to walk twenty or thirty miles to the meetings. Groups of believers were established in the villages of North Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire. The early leaders of this movement may have been influenced by the Wesleys, since from the beginning they were Arminian in doctrine, although never actually a part of the Wesleyan Methodist organization.

Filed under: Abraham Booth, Baptist