Samuel Palmer, Walker’s Croft, Manchester, to John Rippon, 11 Grange Road, Southwark, 25 February 1803.

Walker Croft Manchester

Feby 25 1803 –

Dear Sir

         In arranging the Baptist Register[1] for binding I find a deficiency which I will thank you to make up if you can. From Page 864 to 871 – the intermediate pages are wanting – that is 6 pages – Volume for 1798 1799 1800 and part of 1801 – When you send me another number to Saint Martins Lane you will be good enough to make up that defect.[2] As I reside here if I can serve you in any way shall be happy to do it. The Church here (there is but one) is without a pastor & the members are divided in Sentiment – Fullerites & McLeanites[3] I believe but as yet know but little of their internal œconomy. Could you send an Orthodox preacher of some ability & much scriptural information, it would perhaps be a mean under God of much good.[4]

         I do not wonder that nice distinctions exist on subjects that are metaphysical but I deplore the decrease of friendship on this account. A furious Calvinist is not a rarity – may it please God to diminish their number – or at least to extinguish their fury. I live with a well informed Methodist (Wesleyan) an Arminian from conviction he says. I am reading by his recommendation Sellon against Calvinism.[5] The Methodists are very numerous here, and in the different denominations, here are Preachers of considerable ability. Dr Barnes[6] Mr Jack[son?] Mr Johnson[7] &c . . . Mr Hargraves of Ogden[8] preac^h^ed for us a few Lords days past, much to my gratification & I hope edification. His abilities (I think) are considerable. Be kind enough to remember me to Mrs R and your family – also to remember me at a throne of grace that I may be stedfast immoveable always abounding in the work of the Lord. Glory be to God – the Spirit enables me to delight more & more in the Sacred Scriptures – In great haste

                     Dear Sir

                                 Your humble Servant

                                             & sincere friend

                                                         S Palmer

Ps  I have indulged neither detraction nor slander against you (whatever any may have said) since I left your Church –

Address:  Doctor Rippon | 11 Grange Road | Bermondsey | paid

Postmark: Lombard Street 2 py P Paid

                    4 oclock Exchange 8 March 1803

Notes

[1] Rippon enhanced his duties as pastor of the congregation in Carter Lane with his work as editor of The Baptist Annual Register, 1790-1802, the first periodical solely produced and for the benefit of the Particular Baptists in Great Britain and America. It was supplanted in 1809 by the Baptist Magazine.

[2] This address, though not specified more clearly in the letter, may be the residence of T. and P. Palmer, glass cutters, at 118 St. Martin’s Lane, possibly relations of Samuel Palmer. See Holdens London Directory for 1805, under Businesses and Professions (unpaginated).

[3] References here are to two prominent Baptist ministers at that time, Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) of Kettering, the leading figure among the Particular Baptists at that time, and Archibald McLean (1733-1812) of Edinburgh, one of the leading figures among the Scotch Baptists. The primary issue between the two groups of Calvinistic Baptists concerned the definition of “faith”: to Fuller faith involved a conscious activity (what became known as “duty faith”) on the part of the believer, but to McLean it was primarily an intellectual assent to (ie., a belief in) the work of Christ, something closer to the Sandemanians. Thus, Palmer’s comment that “nice distinctions exist on subjects that are metaphysical” is apropos to his situation and to his attitude then and thereafter toward moderation concerning doctrinal disputes.

[4] Most likely Palmer was attending the remnant of the Baptist congregation that first met in Coldhouse Lane and Rochdale Road before moving to Back Lane, where they were meeting by 1803 when Palmer was in Manchester.  The chapel was formerly pastored by John Sharp, who came from Oakham in 1786 and left for the Pithay congregation in Bristol in 1797. He was followed for a brief time by John Hindle, formerly at Halifax, Blackley, and Hull, but he died less than a year into his ministry. He was succeeded by a Mr. Hassell, who left during a time of dissension in the church. Hassell was succeeded by a Mr. Wylie, who was dismissed by the church for preaching inappropriate sermons on the deacons. As a result, the congregation was without a pastor in 1803, as Palmer correctly notes, the same year the High Calvinist William Gadsby (1773-1844) first preached at the congregation. He would become pastor in 1805, with the chapel eventually becoming known as “Gadsby’s Chapel.” The followers of Fuller left to form a new chapel in York Street in 1807.  A Baptist congregation with leanings toward the McLeanites had split from John Sharp’s congregation in 1789 and formed a Scotch Baptist Chapel in Shudehill (as Palmer notes in his letter, the influence of McLean was also present in the congregation in Back Lane, having surfaced at the end of Sharp’s tenure). A third meeting had formed in Tib Lane in 1766, but whether that congregation was functioning in 1803 is unclear. Two meetings appear in Rippon’s Baptist Annual Register in 1798, with John Hindle ministering at the 1st Church and a Mr. Bruce at the 2nd Church, neither church being named by its location. Despite Palmer’s comments, the Baptists in Manchester were formidable enough to warrant hosting the 1801 meeting of the Yorkshire and Lancashire Baptist Association, most likely at Back Lane. For more on Manchester Baptists, see R. Ashton, “Manchester and the Early Baptists,” in The Christian Pathway, March 1915, 90-94; April 1915, 119-23; May 1915, 151-55; Ian Sellers, Our Heritage: The Baptists of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire 1647-1987 (Leeds: Yorkshire Baptist Association, 1987), p. 160; also Kenneth Dix, Strict and Particular: English Strict and Particular Baptists in the Nineteenth Century (Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK: Baptist Historical Society, 2001), pp. 33-34.

[5] Walter Sellon, Arguments against the Doctrine of General Redemption Considered. London: Printed in the Year MDCCLXIX [1769].

[6] Thomas Barnes (1747-1810), an Arian, served as minister of the Cross Street Presbyterian Chapel in Manchester, a prominent Unitarian congregation at that time.  Barnes, along with Dr. Thomas Percival, were among the founders of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.

[7] It is possible this is John Johnson, who had previously served as a minister for the Lady of Huntingdon’s Connexion at Wigan, Lancashire, before removing to Manchester where he served as minister at St. George’s Church until his death in 1804.

[8] James Hargreaves become the stated minister of the congregation at Ogden (a village close to Manchester) in 1797, having previously served the Baptist congregation at Bolton le Moor.  The Odgen congregation had been without a pastor for some time, for in Rippon’s Baptist Annual Register for 1790-93 and 1794-97, no minister was recorded for the congregation (p. 7). Hargreaves appears in the 1798 volume, along with a note by Rippon about him and the congregation, which Rippon describes as “increasing” (pp. 20-21).

Text: John Rippon Letters, British Library, vol. 3, Add. MS. 25388, fols 196-97. Palmer lived in Manchester c. 1803-04, returning to Southwark around the time of his wedding in the fall of 1804. He joined the Baptist congregation in East Street in late December 1801 / early January 1802 during the ministry of Joseph Jenkins.