Edward Stennett - Thought - Continued

It has been said that "Edward Stennett ... was a Calvinistic Baptist." 116 Immediately, we face the datum that John Calvin held church services on Sunday and rejected the very concept of the Sabbath. 117 Yet in one place Stennett writes of Christ as King, Prophet and Mediator, much like Calvin's Prophet, King and Priest. 118 On the other hand, Stennett writes, "God's gracious acceptance is held forth to every one of the sons of the strangers that takes hold of his Covenant, Isaiah 56:6." 119 This is far different than Calvin's doctrine of election.

Stennett believed

The matter of the ten commandments was written in the heart of Adam before the fall ... the ten commandments are a law which belongs to men as they are men, though they have no part of Christ's house it being, as before proved, the law written in their very hearts. 120

Calvin would have the law written in the heart only by Christ himself. Calvin speaks of:

the New Covenant, in which the Lord engages to engrave his law in the minds of believers, and to inscribe it on their hearts. The letter therefore is dead, and the law of the Lord slays its the readers of it, where it is separated from the grace of Christ, and only sounds in the ears, without affecting the heart. 121

I conclude, Stennett is not a complete follower of Calvin as might be supposed from the preceding generalization. Stennett is not relying on Calvin or any other interpreter, but going to the Bible and trying to secure his own interpretations.

Thus he avoids, in part, an error of Protestant scholasticism.

In all scholasticism the importance of a particular doctrine came to depend upon its place in the system rather than upon its practical relation to life. Truth was gained, not from the religious and moral experience of individual or church, but by logical deduction from the accepted system, and it was tested by its consistency with the larger whole. 122

Stennett is not following Calvin's system, but is interpreting the Scriptures afresh.

As to his method for dealing with the Scripture, Stennett is usually liberalistic. Twice he uses types: the ark of the covenant was a type of Christ. 123 and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. is a type of the great trouble before the second coming of Christ. 124

As always, he puts Gold first. He would love peace, but insists on truth with it; 125 truth he believes is stronger than error. 126 Literalism is modified for "we must compare Scripture with Scripture, adopt such a sense as may bring them into harmony, and sometimes explain general terms by restrictive Scriptures." 127 Probably by this attitude he rejected Tillam's teaching that polygamy was lawful by pleading the example of the "Saints of old." Stennett replied: "God made but one woman for one man, when there was but one man in all the world"! 128

Yet Stennett's friendships with the clergyman of Wallingford and the Presbyterian Comyns show that his literalism did not go as far as exclusiveness.

It is not easy to get right conclusions from Scripture study. There must be a rigid attempt to exclude worldly interests.

search the Scriptures with all readiness of mind, and with hearts longing after Truth; get as remote from Earth and earthly things as you can, and into the secret Chamber of your Beloved; and when you are the most transported from Earth to Heaven, in near and close communion with him, then try and judge by his Word and Spirit, weighing Scripture with Scripture in equal Balance; and be ... cautious .... 129

This religious "exercise" and the Holy Spirit make Stennett lean toward his contemporary, the mystic George Fox, the founder of the Quaker's. This spiritual experience was certainly the protestant ideal of the "priesthood of all believers."

On at least two occasions in his writings, Stennett uses the phrase, "Scripture and reason." 130 Use of reasoning religion is in harmony with the times. Use of reason in an extreme form will flower into eighteenth century Deism which denied validity to anything above reason. 131 Edward's son Joseph, in serving his generation, is willing to think in terms of natural religion and revealed religion.

We have spoken of Stennett's desire to follow the lord as a controlling motive in his life. A second universal motive is that of humility or consideration. For the Church in Newport , Rhode Island he urges what seems to be closed communion, but tells them to remain humble, 132 The Sabbath truth is carried to the brethren who "differ from us" "with all meekness and tenderness." 133

He has to defend the Sabbath against the Sunday Morning saving up the money mentioned in I Corinthians 16:2. Stennett explains this was done, not at the corporate Sabbath worship, but privately on Sunday in order not to be like the showy Pharisee's! 134

Perhaps his classic statement of humility is this:

If any think I am deluded, let them pray, preach, discourse, or write me out of it: for the Lord whom I serve knoweth, that although I am a poor weak sinful creature, yet my soul is bent to follow the Lord, and would gladly accept of light in any thing wherein I may be in the .... 135

Stennett's primary function in Wallingford, I suppose, was pastoral rather than theological polemics. The only direct reference to his ministry is that he was "faithful and laborious." Certainly his qualities of thoughtful study of Scripture and humility were excellent. The lives of Edward and Mary were said to be filled with genuine piety. Their son Joseph gave thanks for the splendid "religious education" he received while he was young. 136 The personal virtues of Stennett were certainly up to the quality we expect in a minister.

Truly here is a great Seventh Day Baptist pioneer. Although he is away from London, the Capital he plays his part in the Dissenter movement and in the Seventh Day Baptist cause in England and America. To our twentieth century view, his greatest contribution to the stream of life is within his own family, which is to be represented by Dissenting ministers in London during most of the eighteenth century. "The home has always been the sanctum sanctorum of truth, the inspiration of deep convictions." 137 His life and thought, though lived three centuries ago, have many admirable qualities even for today.

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Edward Stennett - Footnotes - Thought 2

094      The Royal Law , DP. 7, 9, 22, 24; The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord , p. 7.
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116     James McGeachy, Tales from the West (London: Evangelical Sabbatarian Mission Press , 1936), pp. 59f.
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117      Institutes , II, VIII, XXXII.
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118      The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord , pp. 29f.; Institutes, II, XV, L
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119      The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord , pp. 5f.
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120      The Royal Law , pp. 7, 22.
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121      Institutes , I, X, III.
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122     A. C. McGiffert, Protestant Thought Before Kant (New York: Scribners, 1911), p. 145
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123     The Royal Law, p. 8.
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124      The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord , p. 42.
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125      The Royal Law , title
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126     Letter of Feb. 2, 1668.
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127      The Seventh Day is the Sabbath , p. 43.
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128      A Faithful Testimony ... sect. IV. Stennett also objects to the separation of believing husbands from their believing wives because of a pretended call to Germany."
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129      The Royal Law , p1658 preface; cf. The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord , preface. Note that Calvin found the study of the scripture much easier: "the knowledge of God, which is otherwise exhibited without obscurity in the structure of the world, and in all the creatures, is yet more familiarly and clean unfolded in the ord,... in the Scripture ..." ( Institutes I, X, I.);
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130      The Royal Law , p. 24 The Seventh Day is the Sabbath , p. 44;
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131     John Orr, English Deism (Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdsmans, 1934), pp. 22f., John Hunt, Religious Thought in England (London: Strahan, 1870, I, 392. The latter reference is to "natural reason" and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1696).
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132      The Seventh Day is the Sabbath , pp. 11f.
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133     Letter to R. I., Feb. 2, 1668.
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134      The Seventh Day is the Sabbath , pp. 39f.
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135      The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord , preface; cf. The Sabbath Recorder , May 5, 1952, p. 214.
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136     Joseph Stennett, op. cit. , I, B4, B7f.
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137     Wayne R. Rood, Two Hundred Years of My Life: An Autobiography of the Sabbath (unpublished manuscript, 1940), p. 56. This sentence was written concerning the Stennett family.
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