Isaiah Birt

Isaiah Birt (1758-1837) studied for the ministry at Bristol Academy, where he became a lifelong friend of Robert Hall. Birt became co-pastor of the Baptist congregation at Plymouth in 1781, preaching in the meeting house at Liberty Fields, now Pembroke Street, Dock. Samuel Pearce was converted in 1783 through the preaching of Birt. In 1789 the meeting at Dock organized as an autonomous church, with Birt as pastor. He remained there until 1813, first at Liberty Fields and then in the new chapel at Morice Square, Dock.  Birt also preached in Saltash, where a separate church would eventually be formed. In 1798 William Steadman became his assistant pastor. Steadman would later become pastor of the congregation at Liberty Fields, with Birt remaining at Morice Square. During the early 1790s, Birt, like many Baptists, was an active supporter of the French Revolution and an opponent of the war with France, especially Pitt’s policies that seemed to infringe on the constitutional rights of Britons. Birt’s aggressive church planting in neighboring villages created enough clerical hostility that he was forced to defend himself in his Vindication of the Baptists, in Three Letters, Addressed to a Friend in Saltash (Bristol, 1793).  In 1813 he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist congregation at Cannon Street in Birmingham, where he served until 1827, at which time he retired to Hackney. See Henry M. Nicholson, A History of the Baptist Church Now Meeting in George Street Chapel, Plymouth, from 1620 (London: Baptist Union Publications, 1904), 83-85; Roger Hayden, Continuity and Change: Evangelical Calvinism among Eighteenth-Century Baptist Ministers trained at Bristol Academy, 1690–1791 (London: Baptist Historical Society, 2006), 225; DEB.