Benjamin Flower at Cambridge to Eliza Flower at Richard Flower’s, Hertford near Ware, Wednesday, 8 February 1804.

Cambridge Feb. 8. 1804

My Dear Love

   If the experience of last December had not convinced me that you can bear travelling in severe weather, I should have felt uneasy yesterday; as the cold was extreme; but I hope you have suffered no inconvenience or rather that your health has been benefitted by the air and exercise.

   Eliza had a good long walk yesterday; I had her after dinner with me; and I sat by her cradle the whole evening; in your absence I seem to want no other company.  I indeed prefer sitting in the room where she is, altho asleep, to any other.  She awoke me this morning soon after seven, and after rolling about with me for half an hour in high spirits, (staring at me unusually when I asked “Where’s Mamma,” and looking about her) Sally came for her.  She had a long walk this morning; is just settled in her crad[l]e, very tired and sleepy, but quite merry to the last.  She keeps perfectly free from cold, and appears as well as ever she was in her life.   Nothing of consequence has occurred since you left us. Dr Davey called to day and enquired after you; he took one of Aspland’s Sermons; they go off 2 or 3 every day in the Town, which is as well as I could expect.  I had a letter this morning from Fox the Dentist. He says he read thro’ the Sermon & notes almost as soon as he received it, and with great pleasure.  He is much pleased that I have “so well corrected the Revd Exciters to War.” As he has had an esteem for Rippon from his youth, he is much shocked and grieved at this late conduct, which he says but too well justifies the reflections I have made on his Sermon.  He adds that he had looked at several of the late Fast Sermons, but that they were of such a servile nature, he had not patience to go thro’ one of them.  That Dr Rippon did not change his Sentiments till very lately when happening to be on a visit to Mr Cobb one of the officers of Pitt’s volunteers, Mr Pitt came to visit him at the same time; and this it was, Fox believes, turned the Dr’s Brain. Fox says he will recommend Aspland’s Sermon to all his acquaintance.

   Curtis sent me a note to day, to express “his high approbation of the Sermon, and still higher approbation of the notes.” The M. Chronicle is so full of the Gazette news of the St. Domingo, and the Ceylon Business that it has very few Ads; to morrow I suppose there will be nothing but Debates about the Volunteer Bill, so the sermon will not be advertised before Friday.  Hall’s 2d Edn was advertised yesterday, but none are yet come down to Cambridge. I have ordered Aspland’s Sermon to be advertised in the M. Post—the Bury, Leeds, Northampton and Norwich papers.

   I hope and expect to hear from you to morrow, and am not at all sorry that it will be such a short time before you come home again.  Mrs Clarke has brought me 5£ more—I have paid Ann her bills.  If my Brother goes to Bath as he proposes, I wish he would advertise Asplands serm[on] once, either in the Bath or Bristol papers (one of them) as Hall’s Sermon is read there a good deal.  Mention to him likewise the new Edition of Towgood. The papers talk that our gracious Sovereign is to have 100,000£ added to his Income!  I was going to add a reflection or two on such a business, but I recollect the admonition, that we “must not single out those for attack whom we are commanded to obey”!  and so I leave you to take Hall’s maxim for a Text, and to comment on it accordingly.

   I hope to hear a good account of my sister, give my love to all the family; take care of yourself, and bring home a renewed stock of health & spirits, and if you while you are out hear of any house likely to suit us, so much the better.  I have just been and given Eliza 2 or 3 kisses for her Dear Mamma before I finish my letter, which have not at all disturbed her.  Farewell my Dear Love, God bless and preserve you, and return you again to the home and the heart of your ever affectionate

                                                                     B Flower

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008), pp. 284-88. Martin Davy, M.D. (1763-1839) became Master of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1803.

Flower had just recently published Robert Aspland's Divine Judgments on Guilty Nations, their Causes and Effects Considered, in a Discourse delivered at Newport in the Isle of Wight, before a Congregation of Protestant Dissenters. Flower included his own  lengthy “Preface and Notes containing Remarks on our National Sins, and an Inquiry into the justice of the present war, in reply to the observations of Messrs. Hall, Fuller, Rippon &c. in their late Sermons on Public Affairs” dated 2 February 1804, less than a week before the above letter. Flower’s “Preface” was mostly concerned with attacking Robert Hall’s Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis.  That same month, Thomas Robinson of Bury St. Edmunds, Crabb Robinson’s brother, on hearing that Flower had composed a response to Hall’s sermon, wrote to Crabb concerning the controversy:  “I must not omit to mention among the literary productions which I have just seen, another violent Phillipic of Hall’s-against Modern Philosophy, in a sermon which he preached on the Fast Day.  This appears to me, by far the most striking and eloquent of all the sermons he has published.  You perhaps would discover in it too close a resemblance to the style of Burke.  He is as usual very acrimonious, and would formerly have been very offensively so to you-particularly pointed against utility being the foundation of virtue.  Indeed he perfectly raves at the sight of the frightful picture that his imagination has drawn of the consequences of this principle.  If I had the book, or knew where I could procure it in a short time, I would send an extract for your amusements … And Ben. Flower I perceive by an advertisement meditates an attack.  Hall is however much too high an object for him to aim at” (Crabb Robinson Correspond­ence, vol. 3, fol.11).  Flower obviously disagreed, attacking Hall’s sermon for its “inconsistency and obscurity” (“Preface” v), just as Hall had similarly criticized John Clayton’s 1791 sermon on submission to civil authorities.  In some passages, Flower feels Hall has come close to advocating Clayton’s  “doctrine of passive obedience, and non-resistance.” Hall’s adulation of military glory and national pride, writes Flower, is “more becoming a heathen than a christian orator” (“Preface” vi).  Flower recommends that Hall read Robert Robinson’s sermon, Christian Submission to Civil Government.  Hall’s notion that individuals should refrain from criticizing government ministers and sowing discontent at a time when unanimity was needed angered Flower, who considered such sentiments belonging more to “a ministerial hireling” acting out of “expediency” than a minister of the gospel advocating public humiliation (xi).  Instead of meriting our “gratitude” for their preparations for war, as Hall asserts, Flower sees the government’s ministers as unnecessarily plunging the country into another war (xi).  Though Hall chastised the government for allowing the profanation of the Sabbath and the continuance of the slave trade, he believed they should be censured, not in a “wanton and indiscriminate” manner, but with “moderation and decency” (“Preface” xiii).  Flower saw this as more evidence of Hall’s hypocrisy (Hall had been his pastor and friend from Flower's arrival in Cambridge in 1793 until late in 1799). Flower believed that in his earlier writings, Hall exhibited little “moderation and decency” in his attacks on John Clayton, Bishop Horsley, Charles Simeon, and others.

Joseph Fox (1776-1816) was a prominent dentist in Lombard Street, a lecturer at Guy’s Hospital, a political reformer and educational pioneer, and a prominent member of the Baptist church at Carter Lane, Southwark, during the ministry of John Rippon (1751-1836). After completing his studies at Bristol Baptist Academy in 1772, Rippon succeeded the legendary John Gill as pastor of the Baptist church at Carter Lane, Southwark. Rippon’s influential Baptist Annual Register (1790-1802) was the first periodical produced solely to promote the work of the Particular Baptists, both in England and America.  He was an important hymnodist as well, publishing A selection of hymns (1787) that went through twenty-seven editions in his lifetime.  A leading advocate of Baptist unity throughout his life, he became the first chairman of the Baptist Union in 1812.  The reference in the above letter is to Rippon’s A Discourse Delivered at the Drum Head, on the Fort, Margate, Oct. 19, 1803, the Day of the General Fast, before the Volunteers, commanded by the Right Hon. William Pitt (1803), in which Rippon, much to the chagrin of Flower and Joseph Fox, dedicated the discourse to Pitt.  Rippon hoped that the leaders of the war and of the Volunteer Corps would be “as celebrated for their urbanity, their valour, and every martial and christian virtue, as they are for their illustrious [Colonel Pitt], a man renowned by his friends for talents and influence which have made half a globe tremble, and of whom there is but one expectation-that having been great in the cabin­et, great in the senate, always great; he will, if necessity shall require, be also great in the field; and, under the blessing of God, without which talents are trifles, be rendered, with all the staff, not an honour to his own country, and to half the nations only, but a distinguished ornament and long continued blessing to the whole globe! (Discourse 34-35). He closed by praising George III, again to Flower’s dismay, for having “several times” “indulged” the Protestant Dissenters with “an enlargement of their religious liberties.”  He thanked God that England had  “the best of earthly monarchs” (35).   Flower attacked Rippon in his notes to Aspland’s sermon, regarding Rippon’s use of Samuel Stennett’s hymn, “The Christian Warfare,” and Philip Doddridge’s hymn, “The Christian Warrior Animated and Crowned,” as “scandalous profanation” and perversion (“Preface” 47). To Flower, Rippon’s sentiments in the sermon were nothing short of “execrable, “contemptible,” and hypocritical.  Using the kind of rhetoric that earned Flower his reputation as an outspoken radical, he writes of Rippon, “What will the christian world, yea, what will the world in general say, when they are informed that the Rev. gentleman has, for many years past, notoriously been in the habit of severely reprobating the measures of the very statesman, whom he now so disgustingly flatters!  Were the Almighty, in his judgments, to permit the Corsican Usurper successfully to invade this country, what is there to prevent the suspicion being entertained, that there are men who would follow the example of the French priests, change their colours, and congratulate the tyrant as the chosen instrument of God, raised up to ‘beautify’ the world!  Does the preacher suppose, that the drum-head, and the pulpit, are pecul­iarly privileged places, from whence, truth, common sense, consistency, integrity, and decency, may be banished at pleasure!” (Discourse 47).

William Curtis of Chesterton (1761-1829), son of the Rev. Thomas Curtis of Linton, was for some time Robert Robinson’s assistant and amanuensis and later the manager of Robinson’s Chesterton farm. He married Robinson’s daughter, Ellen, in 1786, and later assisted William Frend in preparing Robinson’s Ecclesiastical Researches (1792) for the press.  Apparently he withdrew from St. Andrew’s shortly after Robert Hall’s arrival in 1791, most likely because he had adopted Arian (even possibly Socinian) opinions by that date. From 1791 to 1801, he was the innkeeper at the Cardinal’s Cap, and later (1801-14) at The Hoop, in Bridge-street, Cambridge.  See Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, Cambridge 1720-1832 (London: Baptist Historical Society, 1991), xiv, 71, 73,75-76, 125, 137; Cambridge Intelligencer, 16 May 1801, 28 November 1801.

Near the end of the above letter, Flower quotes from Robert Hall’s Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis  which had just appeared in a second edition early in 1804. Hall added a new preface in which he responded to critics, like Flower, who disparaged him for softening his position on the legitimacy of ecclesiastical bodies, such as the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, as well as for reversing his earlier opinions on the French Revolution, the war with France, and the reasons for the rise in infidelity in England and Europe during the 1790s.  After Hall’s publication of Modern Infidelity in 1800, Flower relentlessly reminded his readers of Hall’s reversal of opinion, a change which, to Flower, amounted to a denial of one of the most fundamental tenets of Dissent:

It is, however, a plain, indisputable fact, confirmed by ecclesiastical history in all ages, that the only end hitherto answered by this alliance [of church and state], is the corruption of both, and the consequent prevalence of Atheism and Infidelity, both speculative and practical: to borrow the just and emphatic language of Mr. Hall, of this town, in his Apology for the Freedom of the Press:-“The rapid spread of infid­elity in various parts of Europe is a natural and never-failing consequence of the corrupt alliance between church and state.  Wherever we turn our eyes we shall perceive the depression of religion is in proportion to the elevation of the hierarchy.  In France, where the establishment had attained the utmost splendour, piety had utterly decayed!”  (Cambridge Intelligencer, 4 July 1801)

Micaiah Towgood (1700-92), an Arian, served Presbyterian congregations at Moreton Hampstead, Devon (1721-36), Crediton, Devon (1736-50), and the James’s Meeting (later the George’s Meeting), Exeter (1750-82). Flower is referring to Towgood’s A Dissent from the Church of England fully Justified (1753), which Flower republished in Cambridge in 1804.  He had published an earlier edition of this work in 1798.  He republished the work twice more (1807 and 1809) during his years at Harlow.