Leicester Chronicler - Faith Foundations

JOHN WYCLIFFE came to Lutterworth under the protection of John of Gaunt after preaching his Lollard theology, and was rector of the town from 1374 until his death in 1384. By 1356 he had been appointed Fellow of Merton College, Oxford and became a master at Balliol four years later, and warden of Canterbury Hall (now part of Christchurch) in 1365.

His theological position gradually developed at Oxford towards a stance that was critical of what he saw as clerical abuses in the form of indulgences, pilgrimages, the intervention of saints and the general greed of the church.

Wycliffe faced a charge of heresy in 1377, and his rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation lost him the backing of the Lancastrians. In 1382 he was condemned by an ecclesiastical court but allowed to retire to Lutterworth. He published many works, and is most famous for his translation of the Bible, which was probably as much the work of two of his supporters, Nicholas of Hereford and John Purvey.

He suffered a stroke whilst conducting mass in December 1384 and he died on New Year's Eve of that year. He was buried in the church at Lutterworth.

In the Spring of 1428, Wycliffe's remains were exhumed from the chancel of his church, and under the auspices of Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln following an edict from Pope Martin V, his body was burned at the stake, and his ashes deposited in the nearby River Swift.

HUGH LATIMER was born in Thurcaston, the son of a farmer. He went to Clare College, Cambridge where he was elected a Fellow in 1511, and after gaining his MA he entered the priesthood.

Latimer was unable to accept the tenets of Catholicism and because he refused to reject the doctrines of Martin Luther was dismissed from office though he was allowed to continue preaching. However, after preaching before Henry VIII in 1532, he was accused of heresy. Three years later as Bishop of Worcester, he preached at Jane Seymour's funeral, but later resigned from that position. His disputes with the established church continued and finally he was committed to the Tower of London. With Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer, Latimer was subjected to extensive interrogation and examination and in September 1555, all three men were tried and condemned to death as heretics.

Latimer and Ridley were burnt at the stake outside Balliol College on 16 October 1555. As the flames took hold Latimer cried out to Ridley, `Be of good comfort ...We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.'

There is a memorial cross in Broad Street, Oxford near the site of Latimer's martyrdom. In Thurcaston Church is a marble tablet of commemoration which was designed and created by the Leicester mason, Benjamin Broadbent.

GEORGE FOX, the founder of the Society of Friends or Quakers, was born in Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire, the son of Puritan parents. All we know of his early years is gained from his own journal in which he wrote:

" In my very young years I had a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit not usual in young children: insomuch that when I saw old men behave lightly and wantonly toward each other, I had a dislike thereof raise in my heart, and I said within myself, "If ever I come to be a man, surely I shall not do so, nor be so wanton."

He was raised in the Anglican Church but being too poor to study theology, he was employed looking after sheep and when he was nineteen, decided to take to the road in search of personal spiritual truth.

Fox seems to have been guided by the works of Jakob Bohme, and in 1646 a sudden `Damascus experience' turned him into an impassioned preacher. He accused both Puritans and Anglicans of holding back Christianity and consequently he was arrested no less than 36 times in the 40 years of his mission, spending a total of six years in prison.

The birth of the Quakers began in about 1652. For some years Fox had been travelling the country, spreading his message. He was understood and welcomed by some, but also met with considerable opposition. He was imprisoned for blasphemy and suffered considerable ill-treatment. He had been working on his own and he had certainly not initiated any sort of religious movement. Then in May 1652 in Lancashire, he climbed Pendle Hill, near Clitheroe. The view from the top inspired him and shortly afterwards he had a vision of "a great people to be gathered". This was to become the area where he would meet others who would follow him.

Persecution and imprisonment never prevented Fox from travelling throughout England, Ireland, North America and Holland to make converts. These formed the Society of Friends or the `Quakers' after the way in which they behaved at their meetings where each individual showed his inner feelings by shudders and cries of enthusiasm.

From 1650 to 1689 more than 3000 followers were imprisoned. Nevertheless, by the time of his death, there were some 50,000 'Friends'. Many of them emigrated to North America where the Quaker William Penn (1644-1718) founded Pennsylvania in 1682. Today there are nearly 300,000 Quakers worldwide of which 250,000 are in America and 18,000 in the United Kingdom.

The Society of Friends relies upon spiritual searching by members at meetings. Some Quaker meetings at the liberal and evangelical ends of the spectrum differ significantly. The Quakers reject all creed and hierarchy. Authority in administrative and religious matters is associated with the 'meetings' where the spirit is present, and decisions must be unanimous. The Quakers questioned the existing social and religious order which in part explains the persecution they suffered, but they have always distinguished themselves through their humanitarian work. They fought against slavery, supported the victims of the two world wars and campaign for third world countries, human rights and the position of women in society.

Quaker peace work continued after the end of the wars, taking on different forms as different needs developed. Simplicity, pacifism, and inner revelation are longstanding Quaker beliefs. Their religion does not consist of accepting specific beliefs or of engaging in certain practices but involves each person's direct experience of God. There is a strong mystical component to Quaker belief. One visitor to a meeting wrote, "In Meeting for Worship, God is there.. .God is probably always there, but in Meeting, I am able to slow down enough to see God. The Light becomes tangible for me, a blanket of love, a hope made living."

PHILIP DODDRIDGE was orphaned in 1715, but came under the guidance of Samuel Clark who helped him come to some assurance of his faith before he reached sixteen years of age. Philip's guardian (his father's former business partner) declared himself bankrupt and young Philip had to sell the last of his family heirlooms, with the exception of his grandfather's German Bible, to save him from the debtor's prison.

Philip was destitute but his sister Elizabeth offered him a home. He felt called to the ministry but all opportunity of finishing his education had gone. The Duchess of Bedford decided to finance his entire education providing he would promise to become an Anglican clergyman, but Doddridge was set on becoming a Dissenting minister. Samuel Clark came to the rescue and offered to finance Doddridge's studies, obtaining for him a place at a Dissenting college at Kibworth Harcourt run by John Jennings. Shortly after Doddridge graduated, John Jennings died and his church called Doddridge to the pastorate.

Dissenters such as Isaac Watts criticized Doddridge for supporting George Whitefield and exchanging pulpits with him. He was also criticized for his close friendship with Anglican James Hervey and for his practice of open communion with Baptists. Whatever Doddridge did or said was interpreted by the orthodox as liberal and by the liberal as conservative. Doddridge simply held that revival of religion was the task of the Holy Spirit within the work of the universal church, in which true Christians, whatever their denominations, should work together. This is perhaps why Doddridge's works are still popular throughout the denominations and have been translated into so many different languages, including Tamil and Syriac. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries no works were translated as often as Doddridge's. They had a worldwide, inter-church appeal.

Doddridge was never in good health and was always so thin that he could best be described as "a bag of bones." Yet he was often compared to a hare, always running about at great speed, committed to his work. By the time he was forty-eight years of age, he was a worn-out man.

WILLIAM CAREY was born in Paulerspury in the county of Northamptonshire in 1761, the son of a shoemaker. He became a Baptist in 1783 and from 1785 to 1789 was pastor at nearby Moulton before moving to Leicester in 1789, as minister of the Harvey Lane Chapel. He stayed for four years, living in the cottage opposite, supplementing his income by shoemaking and running a small school.

He was largely self-taught, but became fluent in Greek, Latin and Hebrew as well as knowledgeable in science and history. While in Leicester he wrote his impressive treatise The Enquirer, which has been described as the finest missionary treatise ever written. The Baptist Missionary Society was founded in 1792, largely as a result of Carey’s influence, and in 1793 he travelled with his family to India. He worked as a foreman in an indigo factory in Calcutta, and later was able to establish a church there before moving to Serampore in 1799. He was made Professor of Sanskrit and Bengali at Fort William Cottage in Calcutta in 1801 and in 1805 opened a mission chapel there. He was a prodigious translator, responsible with others of translating the Bible into six Indian languages, and the New Testament into twenty three more. He died at Serampore in 1834.

The Harvey Lane Cottage was destroyed in a fire in 1921 and his cottage was demolished in 1963 to make way for the Southgates Underpass and Holiday Inn development. The various relics that had constituted a small museum in Carey’s Cottage are now at the Central Baptist Church in Charles Street.

The Baptists date their origins to the Anabaptists in Holland and the preaching of their leader, Menno Simons. Two Englishmen, John Smyth, a clergyman from Lincoln and Thomas Helwys, a country landowner from Nottingham studied in Holland and adopted the concept of `Believer’s Baptism’ as distinct from the christening of infants shortly after birth. Smyth consequently drafted the first Baptist statement of faith shortly before 1608. Smyth and Helwys returned to England and established the first Baptist church at Spitalfields in London near the site of Guy’s Hospital today. Helwys was later arrested and died in prison, and the leadership of the Baptists was taken over by John Murton.

Murton’s followers described themselves as `General’ Baptists who believed that Christ’s teachings were open and available to all. Another group of Baptists which became established in about 1636 taught that Christianity was available only to an elite, and hence became known as the `Particular’ Baptists. Baptists were able to worship openly during the Cromwellian period but following the restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II, the Act of Uniformity was passed, resulting in harsh persecution of those who did not conform to the theology of the established church.

The Toleration Act of 1689 restored the freedom of the Baptists and other dissenters to follow their own theological beliefs, and in 1679, the Baptist college in Bristol was founded to provide ministers for the increasing number of churches. Largely due to the preaching of Methodists John and Charles Wesley, a new vitality spread through the churches of England. Leading this revival for the Baptists were John Collett Ryland, who had been ordained in Warwick in 1750, and Dan Taylor, formerly a stone mason who had been converted by John Wesley. It was Taylor who later formed the Baptist `New Connexion’.

Ryland established a strong Baptist presence in Northamptonshire and opened a Baptist school in the town of Northampton. The East of England produced a significant number of Baptist leaders and preachers including John Bunyan, the author of A Pilgrim’s Progress (Bedfordshire), Benjamin Keach (Buckinghamshire), and later, William Carey (Northamptonshire).

ROBERT HALL was another significant leader of the Baptist denomination who followed in the footsteps of William Carey. He was active during a period of great expansion in the Baptist movement. A fine preacher, fearless leader and speaker, he fought for the freedom of the Press, and for the rights of workers to unite in trades unions to defend their interests. Hall was born at Arnesby in the south of the county, and went to school at Wigston. His thirst for knowledge was such that his teacher asked his father to removal him from the school as he could not keep pace with his pupil.

In 1785, after studying at Aberdeen University, Robert Hall moved to Bristol and, in 1790, to Cambridge. He returned to his native county in 1808 to become pastor of Carey's Harvey Lane chapel. He was an evangelical preacher who rebelled against the Calvinist doctrine that held that only the predetermined elect could achieve salvation. Such was his great power and intellect that people would come from as far away as London to hear him.

In 1826 he returned to Bristol and the famous Broadmead Baptist Church where he died five years later.