Benjamin Beddome (1717-1795)

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Benjamin Beddome(1717-1795)

• Portrait of a Faithful Particular Baptist Pastor

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• On Thursday the 3rd instant died, at Bourton in
  Gloucestershire, in the 79th year of his age, the
  Rev. Benjamin Beddome, B.D. He had been Pastor of
  a respectable congregation of Baptists of that
  place for fifty-five years, during which period
  he had many solicitations to remove, but which
  his attachment to his congregation induced him to
  decline.
• (Obituary. The Cambridge Intelligencer, 12
  September 1795, 2.)

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The Shaping of a Shepherd

• Youth
• Born January 23, 1717
• Parents Rev. and Mrs. John and Rachel Beddome
• Father pastor of Particular Baptist church at
  Alcester, Warwickshire
• Previously member of church at Horsleydown,
  Southwark
• John Beddome assisted by Bernard Foskett
• 1720 Foskett takes church and seminary at
  Broadmead, Bristol
• 1723 John Beddome follows, takes Pithay church
  in Bristol

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The Shaping of a Shepherd
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The Shaping of a Shepherd

• Conversion
• Visiting preacher Mr. Ware preached
• Luke 157 I say to you that likewise there will
  be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
  than over ninety-nine just persons who need no
  repentance.
• Tis done and with transporting joy,
• I read the heaven-inspired lines
• There mercy spreads its brightest beams,
• And truth, with dazzling luster shines.
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• Heres heavenly food for hungry souls,
• And mines of gold to enrich the poor,
• Heres healing balm for every wound,
• A salve for every festering sore.

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The Shaping of a Shepherd

• Theological Education
• Seminary at Broadmead under Foskett
• Completed training at Independent Academy, London
• Joined church at Prescot Street (Samuel Wilson)
• NOT Gills church
• Beddome embraced an evangelistic Calvinism

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Introduction to the Sheep

• Bourton-on-the-Water (first invited July, 1740)
• Located in The Cotswolds
• Known as Little Venice of the Cotswolds

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Introduction to the Sheep

• Early preaching
• His father John Beddome
• I wish from my heart I could prevail with you
  not to strain your voice so much in the delivery
  of your sermons and if you would make them
  shorter, and less crowded with matter, it would
  be more acceptable and edifying to your hearers,
  and more safe and easy for yourself...If you
  deliver the great truths of the gospel with
  calmness, and with a soft, mellow voice, they
  will drop as the gentle rain or dew.
• I cannot but advise, and earnestly press you,
  to strive with all your might to soften your
  voice, and shorten your sermons for it would be
  better both for you and your hearersyou would be
  more popular and useful than ever you are likely
  to be if you retain your harsh mode of
  speakingif you would strain yourself less, and
  shorten your sermons, it would be better for all
• Let two hours be the longest time you spend in
  any pulpit.

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Introduction to the Sheep

• Revival
• 1741 40 converted and added to church
• Come from the 4 winds O Breath breathe upon
  these slain that they may live. Awake O Northwind
  come thou South, blow upon our Garden that the
  Spices may flow out.
• Formal call and ordination (September 1743)
• His father John Beddome
• I should have been glad to have attended your
  ordination, but cannotI hope what you are about
  to take upon you will be a stimulus to you to
  walk closer with God than ever, and make you more
  sincerely and simply concerned for the good of
  the souls of men. I desire, with my whole heart,
  that an unction of the Holy Spirit may be poured
  out upon you at the laying on of the hands of the
  Presbytery and that your faith therein may be
  strong.

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The Relationship Sealed

• First solicitation, 1748
• John Beddome
• I wish from my heart the Lord would incline you
  to come to this city. Here you would have a
  comfortable income, and a better people than you
  take them to be. They very much desire you, and
  are willing to make extraordinary efforts for
  your comfortable support.
• The Manse

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The Relationship Sealed

• First solicitation, 1748
• Next solicitation, Prescot Street London
• Beddomes reply
• If my people would have consented to my
  removal, though I should have had to sacrifice
  through the affection I bear them, yet I should
  have made no scruple in accepting your call but
  as they refuse it, the will of the Lord be
  done. I am determined not to tear myself
  violently from them but would rather glorify God
  in a station much inferior to that I am in, than
  obtrude myself into a higher without his
  direction.

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The Relationship Sealed

• December 1749 marriage to Miss Elizabeth Boswell
  (daughter of deacon in church)
• Life-threatening illness

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A Well Rounded Ministry

• Preaching ministry and gift
• Robert Hall
• He was eminent for his colloquial powers, in
  which he displayed the urbanity of the gentleman
  and the erudition of the scholarAs a preacher he
  was universally admired for the piety and unction
  of his sentiments, the felicity of his
  arrangement, and the purity, force and simplicity
  of his language, all of which were recommended by
  a delivery perfectly natural and graceful.
• Catechism
• 1752, A Scriptural Exposition of the Baptist
  Catechism
• Preface
• When we consider the melancholy state of those
  churches and families, where catechizing is
  entirely thrown aside, how much many of them have
  degenerated from the faith, and others from the
  practice of the gospel little need to be said in
  vindication of this exercise to those, in whom
  zeal for both still remains, and I hope will ever
  be increasing.

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A Well Rounded Ministry

• Preaching ministry and gift
• Catechism
• Hymn-writing
• Over 800 hymns
• Volume of 830 hymns published in 1818
• Robert Hall
• The man of taste will be gratified with the
  beauty and original turns of thought which many
  of Beddomes hymns exhibit, while the
  experimental Christian will often perceive the
  most secret movements of his soul strikingly
  delineated, and sentiments portrayed which will
  find their echo in every heart.
• Midland Baptist Association

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Faithful to the End

• Trials
• 1757 death of father
• 1765 death of 15 year old son John
• 1778 death of 25 year old son Benjamin to fever
• 1784 death of wife (of 34 years)
• 1784 death of another son, Foskett, who drowned
  in the Thames at age 26
• Physical afflictions
• Relatively modest spiritual fruit

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Faithful to the End

• From hymn on Psalm 3115, My times are in Thy
  hand
• My times of sorrow, and of joy,
• Great God, are in thy hand
• My choicest comforts come from thee,
• And go at thy command.
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• If thou shouldst take them all away,
• Yet would I not repine
• Before they were possessd by me,
• They were entirely thine.

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Faithful to the End

• From letter to Midland Baptist Association
  (1765)
• Look well then to the foundation upon which you
  are built, and seriously and frequently examine
  your State God-ward See that you lay Christ at
  the bottom of your Religion, as the Support of
  it that you place him at the top of it, as its
  Glory and that you make him the Center of it, to
  unite all its Parts, and add Beauty and Vigour to
  the whole Remember that growth in Christianity
  is growth in the knowledge of Christ Seek that
  sorrow, that peace, that holiness, that
  establishment, which flow from Christ Let all
  your duties begin and end in Christ. For (as the
  great Dr. Owen observes), To take up mercy,
  pardon, and forgiveness absolutely on the account
  of Christ, and then to yield all obedience in the
  strength of Christ, and for the love of Christ,
  is the life of a true believer.

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Faithful to the End

• God of my life, and of my choice,
• Shall I no longer hear thy voice?
• O let that source of joy divine,
• With rapture fill this heart of mine!
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• Thou openedst Jonahs prison doors,
• Be pleasd, O Lord, to open ours
• Then will we to the world proclaim
• The various honors of thy name.
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