True faith: ‘A matter of both head and heart...’

Benjamin Beddome, whose life and ministry we began to look at last month, first visited Bourton-on-the-Water in the spring of 1740.

Over the next three years he laboured with great success in the Bourton church. Significant for the shape of his future ministry was a local revival that took place under his ministry in the early months of 1741. Around 40 individuals were converted, including John Collett Ryland, a leading Baptist minister in the latter half of the 18th century, now chiefly remembered for a stinging rebuke he gave to young William Carey.

It may well have been this taste of revival that made Beddome a cordial friend to those who were involved in the evangelical revivals of the mid-18th century, men like George Whitefield and the Mohegan Indian preacher Samson Occom, who preached from the Bourton pulpit.