History of the Carr's Lane Church
The facts contained in the following chapter from the autobiography are given with much greater fulness and vigour in Mr James’s “Protestant Nonconformity.” But as it seemed necessary to prefix to the narrative of his settlement in Bii’mingham some account of the church over which he became minister, I have concluded that it will be best to let the chapter stand just as he wrote it, without abridgment or addition.
How true it is that God bringeth the blind in a way they know Autoijjonot! Little did it enter my mind in the most sanguine moments of my collegelife that I should ever occupy so important a sphere as that to which Providence conducted me in this town. I had received a deputation from Alton, in Hampshii-e, to invite me to settle there. I had preached several times in that place; Mr Spicer, who was deacon of the Independent church there, (father of the Messrs Spicer of London,) was sent to request me to become its pastor. This I declined, no doubt under the direction of God. It may not be amiss here to give a short history of the church over which God has called me to take the oversight. There is little doubt that Nonconformity existed in Birmingham from the time of the ejectment of the two thousand ministers in 1G62, for a Mr Wills, who was illegally dispossessed of the living, and who
LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.
Autobio- afterwards preached at St John’s Chapel, Deritend, was an
giaphical.,.. it-.,
evangelical minister, and was persecuted for not reading the Book of Common Prayer; and by his preaching prepared a goodly number of his hearers to seek that truth out of the Church which they could no longer have within it. We find from Palmer’s “Nonconformist Memorial,” that a Mr Turton, who was ejected from Eowley Eegis, was minister of one of the Dissenting congregations in Birmingham, and died there in 1716. So that before the close of the seventeenth century there were more Dissenting congregations in this town than one. There is a place in Digbeth called Meeting-House Yard, now filled with low houses and occupied by very poor peoyle, which was, I think, the local habitation of Dissent in its infancy in this town, and I am not quite sure that the remains of the primitive meeting-house do not exist there still. If so, it soon removed to a more public and respectable situation.
I have endeavoured in my work on the “History of Nonconformity in Birmingham” to trace the origin of the two Unitarian places, and it is clear they were at one time both occupied by orthodox ministers and congregations. It is matter of notoriety, and not disputed by any one, that the old meeting-house certainly was, and I believe the new meeting-house was also. And among other ministers who there preached the evangelical system, was Mr Broadhurst, whom Dr Watts has celebrated by a Latin epitaph to his memory, inserted in his “Miscellaneous Thoughts,” in prose and verse. In process of time, however, through a relaxation of discipline in the admission of members to the Church, vital piety declined, and lukewarmness in religious affections prepared the way for errors of the judgment, and Mr HoweU, an Arian minister, was invited by a majority of the people to occupy the pulpit. Those, and they formed a very respectable minority, who still loved the truth, resisted and protested, but in vain, and they then quietly withdrew to found a new church upon the basis of Trinitarian views of the Word of God. They purchased land in a little, narrow street, called Carr’s Lane. This name is an alteration from Cart Lane, or, as it was once called, God’s Cart Lane, from the circumstance of its having contained a small building which
HISTORY OF THE CAER’S LATE CHURCH. Co
was an appurtenance to St Martin’s Chui’ch, and in which the car- AutoWoriage or cart was kept that was employed in Popish times fQ^sraP^”^- carrying the sacred vessels employed in religious processions of the Host.
This fact I had from the Rev. J. Garbett, who gathered it from some of the muniments connected with King Edward’s School The separation from the old meeting took place in the year 1746. A small chapel, or, as it was then called, meeting-house, was immediately erected, to which the entrance was imder a gate-way, with houses in front, and doors one side of the place.
As this last sentence is rather obscure, I extract the following Editorial passage from Mr James’s “Protestant Nonconformity,” which will explain its meaning: — “In the front of the land purchased for the site of the intended meeting-house, and for many years in front of the place of worship itself, was a row of small tenements, through a gate- way in the middle of which the house of God was approached, whUe another row of tenements ran along the whole west side of the building; so that the congregation were put to much inconvenience by various noises and other annoyances. A member of the Society of Friends once remarked in reference to the poor people who inhabited these tenements, ‘That if the Carr’s Lane congregation were addicted to works of mercy, they need not go far to find objects for their boimty; ’ while Hutton, in his own style of levity and low wit, remarks, ‘The residence of Divine light was totally eclipsed by being surrounded with about forty families of paupers crowded almost within the compass of a giant’s span, which amply furnished the congregation with noise, smoke, dirt, and dispute. If the place itself is the road to heaven, the stranger would imagine that the road to the place led to something worse.’”*
It is a curious illustration of the contrast between the position of Dissenters in those times and the present, that in the original trust-deed for the Carr’s Lane meeting provision is made for the appropriation of the property, should it ever
Protestant Nonconformitj-, p. 109.
LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.
become illegal for the Independents to use it for the purpose of their worship.
Autobio- The meeting-house was opened in 1747, when Mr Sloss of icd. yQ^^jygiyjjy g author of a book on the “Trinity,” preached. Soon afterwards Mr Gervas Wilde, who had been assistant to Mr Sloss, was chosen to be the first pastor. His ordination took place in the new meeting-house, which was lent for the occasion, being more commodious than the one recently built in Carr’s Lane, for and by the congregation. Mr WUde was a very lively preacher, and was very successful in his ministry. He died after about sixteen years’ labour, and was interred on the premises; a neat and respectable marble monument was erected to his memory in the meeting-house. He was succeeded by Mr Punfield, a dull, heavy preacher, who, during the three-and-twenty years of his ministry, reduced the congregation to a very low ebb. Next to him came Mr (afterwards, and while in Birmingham, made Dr) William.s, a profound divine, and the author of some able works on theological subjects, which however are now almost forgotten. After three years and a-half he removed to preside as divinity tutor over the Divinity College at Kotherham, in Yorkshire. Dr Williams was a most lovely character, much esteemed by his flock, and held in deserved affection by all who knew him. When I say his works are forgotten, I mean that they are not much read; though the effects of them remain in a clearer, sounder view of the theological system, than prevailed when he began his ministry. To Dr Williams, among the Independents, and Andrew Fuller, among the Baptists, we owe the prevalence of the moderate Calvinism of modern times, and the present generally received opinion of the universal aspect of the atonement. Dr Williams was succeeded by the Rev. Jehoiada Brewer, who came from Sheffield, to take charge of the church in Carr’s Lane. Mr Brewer was a man of popular pulpit talents, commanding in his person, with an eye and face that gave him great power over his audience; a good voice, much self-possession, dogmatic in manner, terse in style, and resolute in tone; he was formed to be an orator; and was both at Sheffield and in Birmingham, but especially in the former place, Autobiovery useful, particularly in the conversion of young men who afterwards entered into the ministry, among whom was Dr Pye Smith of Homerton, one of the brightest ornaments of our body. Mr Brewer’s usefulness in his best days was lessened by a most imperious temper, and a proud, lofty spirit, wh’le at the same time his political tendencies, which were of a republican tenor, lowered the spirituality of his mind, and damped the ardour of his piety. After about seven )’ears he fell into temptation, and resigning his charge at Carr’s Lane, went off with nearly half the church and a large proportion of the congregation to occupy a building in Livery Street, which had been formerly used as a riding- school. There he attracted, by his talents, and by the popular sympathy excited by his friends towards him as a persecuted man, a considerable congregation.
For a few months the pulpit was then occupied by Mr Joseph Berry, the grandson of one of the deacons of the church. It is a little remarkable that I entered upon my studies at Gosport, almost to a day, at the very time that Mr Brewer retired from CaiTs Lane. Little did the afflicted church imagine, when they found themselves as sheep without a shepherd, that they would have to wait for a pastor, till a youth who had just then gone to college should finish what few studies he would engage in, and which he had then scarcely commenced. And how much would they have wondered, and revolted at the idea, could they have seen that boy who had just left the counter of a linendraper’s shop, and have been told. There is the individual who within two years will be invited to be your minister, to whom you will offer to commit the care of your souls.