Clergy -- England -- Biography; Stoughton, John, 1807-1897
III. Another large section of brethren were Baptists, distinguished by
certain _doctrinal_ and _disciplinary_ views;—the former as Particular or
Calvinistic, on the one hand, and General or Arminian on the other;—the
latter as Open communionists and Strict communionists. Open
communionists admit to the Lord’s table those who have not been baptised
by immersion; Strict communionists confine the Lord’s Supper to those who
have been immersed. Such distinctions are now fading away. Calvinists
and Arminians are comprehended in the same union, and Strict
communionists are comparatively few.
Robert Hall, the advocate of Open communion, I never saw: he died when I
was young. Joseph Kinghorn, his opponent, a distinguished Hebrew
scholar, I knew well, as he lived in Norwich during my boyhood. William
Brock, who succeeded him, and afterwards became minister of Bloomsbury
Chapel, London, entered the ministry about the same time as I did, and we
regarded each other with warm affection. Dr. Cox and Dr. Steane were
widely known in the religious world, and with both of them I entered into
a fellowship of work and worship at the opening of chapels and on other
public occasions. John Howard Hinton was another Baptist brother, of
whom I saw much when he was at Reading and I was at Windsor. He was more
original, more metaphysical, more scientific, and more excitable than
others whom I have mentioned, perhaps of a higher intellectual order, and
still greater depth of religious emotion. Mr. Spurgeon, who has so
recently left the world, and whose influence and fame extended further
than any other Nonconformist in modern times, I greatly respected and
admired; and though I did not share his intimacy, I saw something of him
in my own home, and a little more in his, where he had a magnificent
library, and received his numerous friends with cordiality. His
popularity amongst aristocratic people was, for a little time, much
greater than is generally supposed, for I was informed by a lady of
distinction that for some weeks in his early career he was a leading
topic of conversation in upper circles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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