The Life And Ministry Of Benjamin Stinton

Joseph Ivimey, “A History Of The English Baptists”, Vol 2:

Mr. Keach died July 18, 1704, and was succeeded by Mr. Benjamin Stinton, who had married one of his daughters. His excellent father-in-law, knowing his abilities as a minister, and believing that the church would fix on him as his successor, charged him on his death bed, not to refuse their call if they should think fit to make choice of him; adding, with great earnestness, that if he did not accept it, he would reject the call of God, and could not expect the divine blessing to attend him. It was with great difficulty that the church prevailed upon him, but the dying words of Mr. Keach, and the pressing earnestness of the church, at length led him to consent.

Mr. Stinton was born February 2, 1676. He was about thirty years of age when he settled as pastor of this church. He proved a very judicious and laborious minister of the gospel. He had not the advantage of an academical education for the ministry, yet by vigorous application under the tuition of the famous Mr. Ainsworth, after he had commenced the ministerial employment, he acquired a good degree of knowledge in the languages, and other useful parts of literature, which added lustre to his natural endowments which were very perspicuous.

His usefulness in establishing the Maze-pond school has been already noticed. He was also very instrumental, if not the first mover, in establishing the Baptist Fund, though he strongly disapproved of one of its regulations: viz. “That it should be for the use and advantage of those churches only, who go under the denomination of Particular Baptists;” and he accordingly entered his protest against it.

Mr. Stinton appears to have enjoyed the esteem and confidence of the public in a high degree; and he was thus enabled to render many acts of kindness to persons in distressed circumstances. His prudent conduct and complaisant behaviour, procured for him the respect of many persons who had no good will towards Dissenters in general. It is said, he was of a truly catholic spirit, and much frequented the company of ministers of other denominations, though he adhered firmly to his peculiar principles, and was zealous in defending them.

He always endeavoured to cultivate harmony among Christians of different sentiments, being far from making those principles of religion which he disapproved, a reason for treating their persons with indifference or contempt. He was a consistent Calvinist; stearing clear of Arminianism on the one hand, and Antinomianism on the other. 

His death was very sudden and unexpected to his friends, having been with several of them in the city the day before. He was taken ill in the evening, and was in great pain during the night, but was somewhat relieved in the morning. But to the great surprise of Mrs. Stinton, he lay down upon his pillow and said, “I am going,” and died immediately, Feb. 11, 1718, in the forty-third year of his age.

He was buried in the Baptists’ burying ground, Deadmans’-place, in the park, Southwark. f134 The Rev. David Rees of Wapping, who was to have preached his funeral sermon, was prevented by illness. It was therefore preached by the Rev. Thomas Harrison of Little Wild-street, at Mr. Killinghall’s meeting-house in Deadmans’-place. After Mr. Rees was recovered he preached the sermon he had prepared, at the meeting-house in Horselydown; before a numerous assembly. The text was the concluding, sentence of a funeral sermon, which Mr. Stinton had preached on the Lord’s day preceding his death; “Be ye also ready.” Neither of the funeral sermons were published: but Mr. Thomas Harrison, in a volume of poems on divine subjects, added one, “To the memory of M. Stinton,” in which he speaks of him, and Mr. John Maisters lately deceased, as “the two chief pillars of the Baptist interest, laid on the ground.”

Mr. Stinton published “A Sermon preached at Little Wild-street, Nov. 27, 1713, in commemoration of the great and dreadful storm, in Nov. 1703.” This is said to have been published “at the desire of several gentlemen who annually observe that day. Third edition, 1714.” He published also a sermon entitled, “Of Divine providence; occasioned by the demise of her late Majesty Queen Anne, and the happy accession of our present Sovereign King George to the throne of Great Britain. Second edition, 1714.”

As a specimen of Mr. Stinton’s sentiments and manner of preaching, the following brief extract is made from this sermon. When speaking of the obligations Christians were under to praise God, he says,

“The principal mercy of all, (viz. our redemption,) is also from him; it is he who in infinite goodness hath pitied us in our lost and miserable condition, who hath provided a remedy for our malady, and seasonably applies it for our recovery. Our deliverance from the bondage of sin, from the tyranny of Satan, and from the jaws of eternal death, and our title to life everlasting, are all owing to his rich mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. If he had not graciously interposed between us and ruin, we had sunk irrevocably into endless misery, and perished in our iniquities, and had become the prey of the devil and the triumph of hell. But oh, goodness truly divine! He hath laid help upon one that is mighty and able to save in our forlorn state, when helpless and hopeless. He raised up for us an horn of salvation, in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of all his holy prophets, that by him we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of them that hate us, Luke 1:69. Now for a mercy so incomparably great, for a mercy so absolutely necessary, so universally desirable, and every way so suitable to perfect our happiness, and which we are utterly unworthy of, how great and how universal are our obligations!”

He left in manuscript a small piece, entitled, “A short Catechism, wherein the Principles of the Christian Religion are taught in the words of the Sacred Scriptures themselves.” This was repeatedly printed, but is now unknown. He had been for some years collecting materials to write a history of the English Baptists, from the beginning of Christianity to that time. He had, arranged the introduction, giving an account of the different opinions entertained of the origin of the Baptists. This was published after his death, by Crosby; in the preface to his first volume. He had designed to conclude his projected history with an abridgment of the controversy between the Baptists and Paedobaptists, and a catalogue of the books that had been published upon the subject since the Reformation in England. But his sudden and premature death prevented the accomplishment of this design.

The manuscript of Mr. Stinton was used by Mr. David Rees in his excellent piece on Baptism. Crosby gives this account of it: —“It is now many years since the materials, of which a great part of the treatise is formed, came into my hands, Had the ingenious collector of them lived to digest them in their proper order, according to his design, they would have appeared to much greater advantage.”

The only part of the work Mr. Stinton had completed, was what he had prepared for the introduction, containing the opinions of ancient writers on the subject of baptism. At the request of Mr. Edward Wallin, and Mr. William Arnold, Mr. Crosby sent Mr. Stinton’s materials to Mr. Neal, when he was preparing his celebrated history, thinking he would include the history of the Baptists under that of the general term of Puritans. After keeping the manuscripts several years, the whole of what he said of them was comprized in less than five pages of his third volume. It was this circumstance, and the unkind reflections upon the few Baptist ministers whose names he condescended to notice, that furnished the reasons why Mr. Crosby published his “History of the Baptists.” Some idea of Mr. Neal’s want of impartiality might be formed from the circumstance of his having found no room among the Puritans for such men as Cheare, Runyan, Gifford, Keach, Kiffin, and Stennett; men who suffered more for the principles of nonconformity in the reigns of Charles and James, than any others of the puritan ministers, whether Presbyterians or Independents.