Extracts from six letters written by Benjamin Beddome 1717-1795 in 1759 and 1760

This article appeared in the first edition of  The Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies

Following his death, Particular Baptist minister Benjamin Beddome continued to have an impact through his writings. In his lifetime, he published only one book (A scriptural exposition of the Baptist catechism) but in 1817 a large collection of hymns appeared and between 1807 and 1820 a number of his sermons were printed in a series of eight slim volumes (Short discourses adapted to village worship or the devotion of the family). The sermons went through several editions and in 1835 were reissued in a larger combined format with a fresh volume of 67 more sermons.

A volume of letters has never appeared although some few examples are extant. In 1800 The Evangelical Magazine featured extracts from six letters written in 1759 and 1760. At this time Beddome would be in his early forties. The last two contain hymns. Interestingly, unlike the other letters, these were penned on a Saturday and probably contain the hymn Beddome had composed that week and that would be sung the next day. [A letter exists in the Angus Library written to Richard Hall on a Saturday afternoon containing a hymn. There Beddome explicitly states it has been written for the next day.]

A Calvinistic periodical The Evangelical magazine was aimed at nonconformists and members of the established church. It began in 1793, merging with The Missionary Chronicle in 1812. The founding editor was Anglican clergyman John Eyre (1754-1803).

The letters appear in the April to September editions of 1800. They were were provided by someone with the initials S C, who obtained them from a relative of Beddome's. The most likely S C would be Luton born Baptist preacher Samuel Chase but his dates are usually given as 1787-1863 making him rather young to be doing this sort of thing. However, he was baptised by John Ryland at the Broadmead Church in Bristol when only 13 and is said to have studied in Bristol around 1802, 1803. If these tentative dates are revised down a little, it is no surprise to find a student in Bristol, where Beddome also studied and grew up and still had relatives, as the conduit for these letters. An obituary for Chase's mother appeared in The Evangelical Magazine 1798. It is not possible to identify the recipient of the letters. In 1760 Beddome's two sisters, Mary and Martha, still lived in Bristol. One of the letters uses the term cousin so it is unlikely to be a sibling. Mary's daughter Mary Brain (1744-1819) would have been a teenager in 1760 and could possibly be the one who received and shared the letters. Beddome's cousins, the children of his mother and father's siblings may have been as many as five.

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Letter 1 (April)

The first letter is headed

The following original letter of that excellent and ingenious man, the late Rev. B. Beddome, pastor of the Baptist Church at Bourton on the water, having lately been put into my hands by one of his relations to whom it was addressed; I obtained leave to make an extract, which you are at liberty to insert in the Evangelical Magazine, if it pleases you as well as it has done your correspondent. S C.

Bourton, July 23, 1759

I lament that my conversation when you were at Bourton was not more instructive. Alas! I often think of the words of one of the first Reformers: “Old Adam is too cunning for Melanchthon”. [The quotation is from Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) himself. In his youthful zeal he had left the university lecture hall for the squares of Wittenberg to evangelise. On his return, his mentor Luther asked how he had got on, eliciting the rueful reply. “O, old Adam was too strong for young Philip.” Life of Philip Melancthon, the German Reformer Presbyterian Board of Publication 1841 p 2] If my preaching has been blessed to others, if it was so in the least measure to you, not the preacher, but God must have the glory. Whatever I hear from others, I see, I feel, enough in myself to keep me humble. May your good wishes in your letter be continually turned into fervent prayers to God, in my behalf: for I may say of the things wished, as David does of the well-ordered covenant, they contain all my salvation, and are all my desire; and I return them by wishing you all needful supplies of grace here, and a well-grounded soul-enlivening hope of glory hereafter - O may we be more and more prepared for that state where all the endearments of friendship will be felt, without those unhappy mixtures which embitter all its sweets upon earth.

Thus prays, yours, &tc. B B

Letter 2 (May)

October 18, 1759

Dear Cousin

Though the motions of the wheels of Providence are rough and intricate, nay, though they are retrograde, and sometimes seem to go back, yet there are eyes within and without, [An allusion to Revelation 4:8 and to Ezekiel 1 and 10] and I doubt not but all thing are ordered by an infinitely wise God for your good and advantage. I hope you have found the school of affliction to be the school of Christ, and that you can say with David, in very faithfulness thou hast afflicted me.

In your last you told me of a promise that had been sweet to you: by that God was by preparing you for the sorrowful scene that followed. He allured you, and brought you into the wilderness, and I trust he has there spoken comfortably to you. [An allusion to Hosea 2:14] The bitter cup is sometimes as necessary as the cordial draught; and when God teaches us, as Gideon did the men of Succoth, by the briars and thorns of the wilderness, [See Judges 8] his lessons often often make the deepest impression. I shall be heartily glad to hear of the perfect restoration of your health and above all, of your spiritual welfare,

I am, etc. BB

Letter 3 (June)

May 19, 1760

“________ When you lent Sister H_______ Mr Thomas’s diary, she promised not to let it go from her, and she scrupulously fulfilled her promise, so that I could not get a sight of it. Since that I borrowed it of Mr S [A single letter is not enough to make an identification. Was it the London based Seventh Day Baptist Samuel Stennett 1727-1795?] and read it with great delight, and indeed amazement, that a person about the age of twelve or thirteen should be able to write with such propriety.

‘Peace! - Praise! I have peace.’ That there is peace procured, though we should have no personal interest in it, is matter of praise. That we have peace, peace with God, peace within, that peace that passeth all understanding, and which the world cannot give nor take away, lays a foundation for loftier praises still; and peace in a dying hour should raise our notes to the highest pitch: then one dram of true peace is worth all the world; the one we leave behind us, the other we take with us. ‘The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and of assurance for ever.’ That we might often meet at the throne of grace in this world, remembering each other there, and finally meet before the throne of glory above, is the earnest desire and I would hope, fervent prayer of

“Yours affectionately BB”

[The minister referred to above is Timothy Thomas (c 1700-1720). Beddome quotes Thomas's dying words at the beginning of his final paragraph. Thomas was preceded in the Pershore pastorate by his father, also Timothy Thomas, pastor from 1696/7 until his death in 1716. Thomas senior and his wife Anne were Welsh. She tried to procure Philip Doddridge as pastor of the open communion church, following her son's death. By 1760 John Ash was pastor (he came in 1746). Thomas junior died prematurely, only three years into the pastorate and no more than 21 years of age. His personality continued to speak, in his diary and letters, which, a generation later were handed by his sister to Thomas Gibbons (1720-1785), minister of the Independent Church at Haberdashers Hall, London, who in 1752 published them anonymously as The Hidden Life of a Christian. It is interesting that the young man's eager, devout spirit evidently made an instant appeal to those caught up in the Evangelical Revival (a second edition was soon called for and it was translated into Welsh) even though he wrote in the years 1710-1720, when religion in England is often supposed to have been at a low ebb.]

Letter 4 (July)

July 17, 1760

I am obliged to you for your last kind letter and heartily wish I could answer it with the same humble, savoury and spiritual frame with which you seem to have written it but this what I want, and sometimes fear I never shall attain,to have my pen, my tongue, proclaim aloud the Lord Jesus Christ, the wonders of his dying love and riches of his sovereign grace.

I want more of that poverty of spirit whereby a Christian sees his own sin and misery, and yet hopes in God’s mercy; performs duties, and yet does not trust in them; assigns all his failings to himself, and all his excellencies to Jesus Christ: but why should I multiply particulars?

In all the lives that I have read and they are not a few, I never met with so wanting, and yet so undeserving a creature as myself. The Lord lead me to the fulness of Jesus Christ, not to make use of him as a man does of his deeds, bonds, and other securities for money, which he looks upon, perhaps, once in a long season, to see whether they are safe, and then takes no further thought about them; but I would live upon Jesus Christ as a man does upon his daily bread. I am satisfied that religion will never flourish in my soul till I am enabled so to do for all religion begins in the knowledge of him, thrives by communion with him and is compleated in the enjoyment of him. Christ is the Christian’s All. Sometimes I think I can say as the Church - Isa 26:18 "Yea in the way of thy judgments,etc" but I want to say as she does - Cantic 3:4 "It was but a little that I passed, etc." Yet will I wait God’s time, for that is best, and the longer the mercy is delayed the more welcome will it be when it comes. Besides, we are told the Lord is good to them who wait for him, to the soul which seeketh him. May you know but little of the distresses I sometimes feel and much of the comforts for which I long and wait."

BB

Letter 5 (August)

September 27, 1760

With respect to your spiritual concerns, what shall I say? Your soul is in the best hand; your most important interests are lodged with the great Redeemer; to him the Father hath committed them; to him you have been enabled, by divine grace, to commit them; and eh will be faithful to his trust. A sense of an interest is desirable, but there may be an interest where there is not a sense of it. I wish I had your evidences. This I can say, that I mourn - I look upwards. All that is dark and distressing in your letter, I feel; all that is other wise, I want.

O God all-holy and all-wise,
Open my heart, open my eyes;
Reveal thyself, reveal thy Son,
And make thy great salvation known.

As once of old, so now proclaim
Thy wond'rous love, thy gracious name;
To me thy pard’ning mercy show,
And spread the joys of heav'n below.

My tuneful voice I then will raise,
And all my powers shall tune thy praise;
I'll in thy church thy works declare,
And celebrate thy glories there.

It has been a consolitary thought to me, that God is more glorified in the salvation of one soul through Christ, than in the destruction of a whole world. O for a savory spirit, an evangelical temper of mind! Dear friend, pray for me, that while I want I may experience and then you shall meet with the same return from your unworthy, though affectionate friend,

BB

Letter 6 (September)

December 13, 1760

’Tis sin disorders all my frame,
Nor can this world afford me rest;
The law does nothing but condemn,
In Christ alone can I be blest.

’Tis his grace, ’tis in his blood,
I sweet refreshment hope to find;
His blood can cleanse my crimson guilt,
His grace can bow my stubborn mind.

Prostrate beneath his feet I wait,
For a kind look, or quick’nng word;
Shine in on my distressed soul
My King, my Saviour, and my Lord.

[This hymn appears at the close of a published sermon on Jeremiah 13:27 with the added title Necessity of holiness. See the eighth sermon in Short discourses adapted to village worship or the devotion of the family Vol 1 1807]

Here you have the language of my lips, the language of my pen, and I trust the language of my heart. Though I find it hard to pray to God, and harder still to wait for God. “I waited patiently for the Lord,” says David. [Psalm 40:1] O that is not as easy a thing as some may account it. We are apt to kick against the pricks, [See Acts 26:14 KJV] to rebel under the smarting rod, and accuse God of severity, when he does not immediately bestow the promised and expected blessings. I have much reason to complain of a stubborn and untractable heart, an unsubmissive temper of mind.

Yours, etc BB