The Stennetts of England - Epilogue

After having worked on this thesis for well over a year, a number of thoughts about the Stennett family keep recurring in my mind. These are in the nature of a summary and a Section on the Stennetts and Seventh Day Baptists.

Although Seventh Day Baptists recognize no human standard for polity and theology, they should be aware of the spirit of their great leaders throughout the years. As H. A. Payne has said, "Tradition, whether in doctrine or practice, is a valuable guide but a poor master." 001

Edward Stennett is the first member of this family who rises out of obscurity of the passing years. After the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, Edward took up the study of medicine and became a respected and successful physician. His very busy avocation was that of being a pioneer Seventh Day Baptist. As a "lay preacher" or perhaps as an ordained minister, he was a Seventh Day Baptist leader, among others, who repudiated the extreme literalism of a group of Seventh Day Baptists who moved to Germany in a millenial enterprise. The oldest of his sons, Jehudah, also became a physician and probably made much contribution to the medical profession as did his brother Joseph to the ministry. However, as most of the material on the family comes by way of church channels, little is known about Jehudah.

Joseph moved to London when a young man and showed great interest in the political turmoil during the short reign of the Catholic, James II. just over a year after the accession to the throne of the Protestants, William and Mary, Joseph was ordained as the minister over the Pinners' Hall Seventh Day Particular Baptist Church in London. He was a well educated man and a hard working minister. In his time, a large number of Protestants opposed the singing of set hymns in church. Joseph , however, was one of the leaders who was instrumental in bringing about the acceptance of hymns written by contemporary poets. He himself published fifty communion hymns and twelve baptismal. Besides these, he published several sermons and translations from French and Hebrew. His scope of activity included preaching in Baptist churches on Sundays, being active in Baptist inter-church meetings and writing Baptist addresses to the Crown. he recognized the validity of both revelation and reason in Christianity; in this, his thought resembled that of John Locke, an early deist.

Joseph Stennett, Jr. began his ministry in a small town church; then he moved to a small city and eventually he was called to a church to a church in Metropolitan London. (London, of course, was the most important city in England.) He started at the bottom and worked up to the top. Theologically, he was at times reactionary toward the use of reason in religion.

In turn, Samuel was able to pick up his ministry in London and was a leading London Baptist minister for some thirty-five years. Samuel's sermons were mostly concerned with the personal lives of people and the necessity of inner religion; yet he had a theology and protested against wild mysticism. As a corollary of personal religion, he was a staunch exponent of the necessity of freedom in religious thinking. He stood for an educated ministry and protested against wild allegorical preaching. He was active in the Baptist denomination, in the Dissenter cause, and he loved all Christians even though they might not have been baptized by immersion in the Jordan itself. He wrote several books and had a multitude of individual sermons published, in his last publications, the sermons on the use of the Scriptures and his affable defense of Dissenters, one can almost see Samuel as the "grand old man" of the London Baptists. I would agree with that statement that once appeared in The Sabbath Recorder , that Samuel Stennett was the most famous English Seventh Day Baptist minister.

Each of these men had a character of his own. Edward was probably a self-educated physician and a Seventh Day Baptist lay minister who wrote primarily on the Sabbath. His son Joseph became a leading London minister in his day and was active in Baptist circles. Joseph II worked his way from the country, and he, with his older son, Joseph III, protested against Deism when that movement was at its height. About 1760, Joseph III and his older brother Samuel were living in a time when Deism had few adherents and they emphasized religious living, personal freedom of thought, and the brotherhood of all Christians. These men did not rely on the fame of their fathers, but each became an outstanding man in his own generation, Each man creatively met the problems of the day.

Among the instances when the Stennetts are creative are the following. The family is called a Calvinistic family and they preferred Particular Baptist churches, but they often had beliefs which did not agree with Calvin. Secondly, Joseph I and Samuel both say that in studying the Bible, a person should read the Bible first and consult commentaries later. In addition, the Stennetts do not worship theological structure but say that men should experience Christianity for themselves. Another example is that the Stennetts call baptism an ordinance, not a sacrament, for the latter designation would imply formal transmission of Divine Grace; as Samuel said, salvation depends not on baptism but on personal faith. Thus the Stennetts tended to be creative and to avoid formalism and Scholasticism. 002 As H. W. Clark has said, "The Nonconformist spirit is, in succinct summary, the spirit which exalts life above organization." 003  

Inasmuch as each of the Stennetts dealt with his times creatively, this should be a caution to Seventh Day Baptists not to pick out any one of these or any other man as a human authority. It would violate the spirit of these men if twentieth century Seventh Day Baptists copied the faith, beliefs, or Biblical data of their eighteenth century without careful reexamination. However, we can and should be guided by spirit of these three men, as B. E. Meland has said, clinging, "tenaciously to the spirit of the past" is not the cause of a tow "religious vitality." Christianity fails today only when "we cling to old doctrines" instead of the "spirit of the past." 004  

Increasingly through the years, the Stennetts were preaching to their times, the sermons of Joseph usually had a main body which was a mixture of theology and some meanings for life; the sermons closed with a short "improvement" or application to the people. Two generations later, Samuel preaches sermons which are almost completely applicable to life, the Stennetts lived in a time which emphasized natural religion. These men, with the possible exception of Joseph II, all recognized the validity of both "revealed religion" and "natural religion" although they recognized some shortcomings of the latter. In doing so, they were preaching to their times. Joseph I and specially Samuel met eighteenth century rationalism creatively by insisting on the necessity of using "reason" in arriving at a sound personal Christian faith. Among the Stennetts making use of reason are Edward, who insists on the comparing of Scripture with Scripture, Joseph I, who objected to Jeremiah's cursing a man, and Samuel

The insistence by Samuel that there should be religious freedom of thought carried with it the corollary that is a reemphasis on doctrinal correctness. That corollary is not just theoretical on my part, but is actually what happened. Samuel, instead of doctrinal purity, was greatly interested in "real religion" or "practical religion," which is Christianity applied in personal living. Samuel despaired of theological speculation which existed apart from Christian living. He also lamented the waste of time which was used in religious controversy. This is not to say, however, that Samuel did not have firm theological beliefs. Instead, he rose above theological problems and denominational lines to a Christianity that could be applied in every day living, if I evaluate my preministerial days correctly, the majority of laymen are more interested in Christian living than in theological tests.

The Stennetts were truly a great family. They were well educated and had large intellectual capacities. 005 They had a Keen appreciation of Christianity and of personal religious experience. As leaders, they utilized their abilities for the good of the whole Baptist denomination and for Dissenters in general. Samuel, for instance, is an example of a man whose theological education did not lead to exclusiveness, but to Christian tolerance and the demand for freedom of thought for all people. These men were vitally concerned for the expression of Christianity in living. The Stennetts are a splendid example of the ministers of the Dissenter or Free Churches in England. Their story . . . needs retelling in each generation, and not only are there many to-day who have forgotten it, there are also many, even within the Free Churches, who have never heard it. 006  

Edward and Joseph I served Seventh Day Baptist churches. Joseph II and Samuel declined to become full pastors of Seventh Day Baptist churches. The remnant of the Bampfield -Joseph Stennett Seventh Day Particular Baptist Church, which was meeting in Curriers' Hall, Cripplegate in the time of Joseph II and Samuel, was the one church in London that was both "Sabbatarian" and Particular Baptist, as were the Stennetts. People assumer and rightly so that a man usually serves the church which most closely agrees with his personal belief and practices. When he does not do so, there must be some reason for his decimal. When Joseph II was in Exeter, in 1720, he turned down a call to become the minister of the Mill Yard Seventh Day General Baptist Church in London. Two obvious reasons might explain his decline: (1) He had been at Exeter only about a year, a very short pastorate, and (2) he was a Particular Baptist and Mill Yard was a General Baptist Church. As far as I know, he never was called to be the pastor of the Curriers' Hall Church. During his lifetime after 1727, there was never a pastoral vacancy in London, and most of the Seventh Day Baptist churches elsewhere in England were drying out, Samuel, however, preached twenty-two years for the Seventh Day Particular Baptist Church. (Nevertheless, the tone of the Pinners' Hall Record Book and his guidance of Burnside make me say that he did more for the Cripplegate Church than just preach on Saturday mornings.) Perhaps Joseph did not have a real opportunity to become the minister of a Seventh Day Church, but Samuel certainly had the opportunity and he utilized it partially but probably not completely.

After the death of Joseph I, there were at least four ministers in the Stennett family: Joseph II, Joseph III, Samuel, Joseph IV. Joseph II and Samuel observed the seventh day Sabbath and I don't know positively about the other two as to the Sabbath. Circumstances would sometimes make it inadvisable for a man to suddenly shift from a Baptist church to a Seventh Day Baptist church as a full pastor. I cannot avoid thinking that the later Stennetts' attitude toward Seventh Day Baptist was a judgment on that denomination. A solution, I think, must be something more basic than the fact that the Curriers' Hall congregation was very small.

If the later Stennetts differed with the rest of the English Seventh Day Baptists, on what points might they have differed? First I point out that in 1780, the Seventh Day Particular Baptists, primarily on the advice of Samuel Stennett, decided to let the Mill Yard Seventh Day General Baptists use Curriers' Hall with them while the Mill Yard building was undergoing repairs! This quite definitely shows that the Curriers' Hall congregation tended to be exclusive : they apparently did not try to have cordial relations with Mill Yard as Joseph Stennett (I) had attempted to do. On the other hand, the Stennetts were always friendly to other Christians; Joseph I wrote a poem praising a poem by Samuel Wesley, a Church of England minister, and Samuel (Stennett) said he loved all Christians and his life proved it. 007  

A second possible difference between the Stennetts and most of the Seventh Day Baptists of their time is in regard to religious controversy . Joseph Stennett thought Christianity could do better without controversy. 008   If one may judge by the number of books written by English Seventh Day Baptists on the Sabbath, I would say that the defense of the seventh day Sabbath was a prime consideration of the most Seventh Day Baptists of that time. The Stennetts definitely thought Christian living was more important than religious controversy. Serving a Seventh Day Baptist church in that time would doubtless have involved a man in the use of a considerable portion of his time in defending the seventh day Sabbath; the later Stennetts preferred to use that time in the teaching of "real religion" (Christian living).

The third point is a corollary of the second. In Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America , there is a catalogue of the publications of English Seventh Day Baptists. These publications are divided into two groups. The first is books on the Sabbath, the listing of which takes six pages and includes several of Edward Stennett's small books and books by many other authors. 009   The other group is "miscellaneous" which is composed entirely of publications by Joseph Stennett I and Samuel Stennett. 010   Clearly there is a difference between the Stennetts and the other Seventh Day Baptists as to what in Christianity is most worthy of publication! The Stennetts as a whole insisted on publications being exclusively the pursuance of one aspect of denominational belief.

(Seventh Day Baptists today should be guided by the example of the Stennetts whose publications were mainly in the interests of Christian living and the relation of Christianity to the events of the times. Some Seventh Day Baptists would rest in the "fame" of the Stennett's hymns, but that "glory" has now vanished! The Stennetts are a challenge to the initiative and creativity of modern Seventh Day Baptists.)

Thus, as a whole, the Stennetts stood for the brotherhood of all Christians, the dislike of religious controversy, and for the publication of materials covering all phases of Christianity. On doing so, I think the Stennetts were, in reality, a judgment on most of the Seventh Day Baptists of their time.

One Seventh Day Baptist writer has blamed Samuel Stennett, in part, for the decline of Seventh Day Baptists in England. In this particular instance, it was well proven by the history of Samuel Stennett's connection with the Sabbath-keeping church in London, that no man can successfully serve two masters. A minister of the Gospel, who is at the same time pastor of one church worshiping on the seventh day of the week, and another church worshiping on the first day of the week, can never be faithful to them both. 011  The first thing to be said is that the Curriers' Hall Church "held its own" during the ministry of Samuel Stennett; it declined to almost nothing under Robert Burnside, who I Suppose was its full-time pastor! There is, however, a strong element of truth in the quotation. By not serving as full pastors of Seventh Day Baptist churches, the later Stennetts did contribute to the decline of Seventh Day Baptists in England.

The standard reasons for the decline of Seventh Day Baptists in England are these: 1. A lack of organized fellowship among the churches;
2. Dependence upon charitable bequests develops weakness in individuals and churches as well;
3. Employment of First-day pastors must necessarily block all aggressive Sabbath work. 012   (1) It is true that organized interchurch fellowship may strengthen individual churches but that is not necessarily so. To plead the need of formal organization to further the "Kingdom of God" may be a denial of the Holy Spirit and the responsibility of every Christian to live in Christian brotherhood! As far as the Stennetts are concerned, Joseph I and Samuel both believed in cooperation between Seventh Day Baptist churches. (2) The reliance on income from bequests is not necessarily a basic cause of the decline of a denomination. (3) The lack of a "seventh day" minister may have contributed to the downfall of a church like Natton in Gloucestershire, 013   but the churches in London declined in spite of their Seventh Day Baptist pastors! Thus, these causes of English Seventh Day Baptist decline are partially relevant and partially irrelevant.

I am not able to prove it completely, but I think James Gilfillan has made an accurate observation about eighteenth and nineteenth century Seventh Day Baptists. In those centuries, he says the relevant Sabbath literature was that which defended the basic idea of a weekly Sabbath against those who thought there should be no Sabbath. 014   I am inclined to think that most early English Seventh Day Baptists conceived of the Sabbath almost exclusively as a ritualistic act to please God. 015   Edward Stennett believed literally in a Sabbath to please God, but he sensed the problem, and pointed out the worship value of the Sabbath by telling from personal experience that God delights to meet with worshipers on the seventh day Sabbath. 016   Joseph I believed in the seventh day Sabbath, that it is required of Christians, but his Sabbath hymns show a keen appreciation of the Sabbath for its worship value. Samuel, in turn, said the day of worship should be the most pleasant day of the week. Thus, the Stennetts were beginning to give the Sabbath a functional value besides viewing it as a ritualistic set. (I point out that the functional values of the Sabbath are essential to Seventh Day Baptists as literalism continues to break down over the years.) I think that the emphasis on a ritualistic Sabbath which had little practical relevance to life may well have been a major cause of the decline of English Seventh Day Baptists. 017   I think Samuel Stennett with his emphasis on "real religion" or "practical religion" must have been aware in this shortcoming of Seventh Day Baptists.

The later Stennetts may have contributed to the decline of Seventh Day Baptists in England since none of them were full Seventh Day Baptist pastors. On the other hand, from what we know of the circumstances and beliefs of the various Stennetts, we can not specifically blame any one of them for intentionally harming Seventh Day Baptists. In any case, as a whole, the later Stennetts' "apartness" from other Seventh Day Baptists was a judgment on that denomination's Christianity.

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The Stennetts of England epilogue Footnotes

1      Payne, The Free Church Tradition in the Life of England , p. 151.
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2     Scholasticism is the defending of a doctrine for the doctrine's sake.
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3     Clark, op. cit. , I, 3; cf. Payne, The Free Church Tradition in the Life of England, p. 143.
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4     B. E. Meland, Modern Man's Worship (New York: Harper, 1934), p. 136.
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5     Cf. The Sabbath Recorder , Feb. 10, 1853, p. 138: "The time has not been, for nearly a century past, when we have not been blessed with some educated men, who would compare with those of other denominations. I hope the time will never come when we shall be so ungrateful as to forget those noted and worthy servants of God, the STENNETTS, whose works a re so universally esteemed among Protestants, and are to be found occupying a place in the libraries of the principal; institutions of learning in America and Europe."
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6     Payne, The Free Church Tradition in the Life of England , pp. 20f.
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7     For instance, he fought for the release of Dissenter ministers from having to subscribe to the doctrinal articles of the Church of England; he did this, not for his own sake, but to procure religious freedom for all men.
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8      An Answer to the Christian Minister's . . . p. 285.
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9     II, 1350-55.
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10     II, 1355f.
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11      The Sabbath Recorder , June 26, 1845, p.209; cf. the same ideas, but no personal attack on Samuel Stennett, in The Sabbath Recorder , March 11, 1868, p. 42.
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12      SD Bs in EA , I, 63; on point one, cf. Jubilee Papers (Alfred Centre, N.Y.: American Sabbath Tract Society, 1892), p. 18.
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13      SDBs in EA , I, 47.
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14     James Gilfillan, The Sabbath (New York: American Tract Society, probably 1862), p. 142.
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15     For example, see George Carlow, A Defense of the Sabbath (a 1724 book reprinted in New York: American Sabbath Tract Society, 1347).
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16      We recall that one of Edward's small books on the Sabbath was the primary motivation that led one minister, Edward Cowell, to leave the seventh day Sabbath.
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17     Besides the above four reasons for the decline of English Seventh Day Baptists, there are several other possible causes. William Jones, a late nineteenth century English Seventh Day Baptist minister, suggests that at the rise of Seventh Day Baptists, "stringent laws of persecution and the influence of Dissenters in union with Churchmen" prevented their becoming an important denomination ( Jubilee Papers , p. 11). Walter Cockerill, Milton Junction, Wis., in conversation in Dec. 1951, said that even when he visited England early in this century, there were practically no employment opportunities for those who might wish to observe Saturday as the Sabbath.
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