Samuel Bourn the Younger

Samuel Bourn the Younger (1689 –22 March 1754) was an English dissenting minister. Bourn was an English presbyterian preaching on protestant values learnt from the New Testament. He entered via the mode of his published sermons the theological debate that flourished around Arian controversy, and the doctrinal question as to Man's essential nature. He combatted Deism of the Norwich rationalists in the early enlightenment, and challenged the Trinitarian conventional wisdoms about the seat of humanity and its origins.

Life

He was the second son of Samuel Bourn the elder, born at Calne, Wiltshire. He was taught classics at Bolton, and trained for the ministry in the Manchester dissenting academy of John Chorlton and James Coningham. His first settlement was at Crook, near Kendal, in 1711. He carried with him his father's theology, but at his ordination he declined subscription, not from particular scruples, but on general principles; as a result many of the neighbouring ministers refused to concur in ordaining him. Joshua Toulmin says 'the received standard of orthodoxy' which was proffered to him was the assembly's catechism.

In 1719, when the Salters' Hall conference had made the Trinitarian controversy a burning question among dissenters, Bourn, hitherto Athanasian, addressed himself to reading Samuel Clarke and Daniel Waterland, and accepted the Clarkean scheme. While at Crook, Bourn dedicated a child (probably of Baptist parentage) without baptism, according to a form given by Toulmin.

In 1720 Bourn succeeded Henry Winder at Tunley, near Wigan. He declined in 1725 a call to the neighbouring congregation of Park Lane, but accepted a call (dated 29 December 1727) to the new chapel at Chorley. On 7 May 1731 Bourn was chosen one of the Monday lecturers at Bolton, a post which he held along with his Chorley pastorate. On 19 April 1732 Bourn preached the opening sermon at the New Meeting, which replaced the Lower Meeting, Birmingham, and on 21 and 23 April he was called to be colleague with Thomas Pickard in the joint charge of this congregation and a larger one at Coseley, where he was to settle. He began this ministry on 25 June.

He was harassed by John Ward, J.P., of Sedgley Park, who sought to compel him to take and maintain a parish apprentice. Bourn twice appealed to the quarter sessions, and pleaded his own cause successfully. Subsequently, on 15 December 1738, Ward and another justice tried to remove him from Sedgley parish to his last legal settlement, on the pretext that he was likely to become chargeable. Toulmin prints his reply. After Pickard's death, his colleague was Samuel Blyth, M.D.

In 1751 Bourn declined a call to succeed John Buck (d. 8 July 1750) in his father's congregation at Bolton. He died at Coseley of paralysis on 22 March 1754.

Controversy

Bourn had a hot temper, and was not averse to controversy, repelling a field-preacher, or attacking quakers in their own meeting-house; and with difficulty was held back by his friend Job Orton from replying on the spot to the doctrinal confession of a young independent minister, who was being ordained at the New Meeting, lent for the occasion. He engaged in correspondence on the 'Logos' (1740-2) with Philip Doddridge (printed in Theological Repository vol. i.); on subscription (1743) with the Kidderminster dissenters; on dissent (1746) with Groome, vicar of Sedgley. In his catechetical instructions, founded on the assembly's catechism, he used that manual rather as a point of departure than as a model of doctrine. Although he had a great name for heterodoxy, his preaching was seldom polemical, but full of unction, as were his prayers.

Works

Bourn's publications were:

Family

He married while at Crook (about 1712) Hannah Harrison (d. 1768), of a good family near Kendal. She bore him nine children:

  1. Joseph, born 1713; educated at Glasgow; minister first at Congleton, then at Hindley (1746); married (1748) Miss Farnworth (d. 1785); died 17 Feb. 1765; his eldest daughter Margaret married Samuel Jones (d. 17 March 1819), the Manchester banker, uncle of Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone.
  2. Samuel.
  3. Abraham, surgeon at Market Harborough, Leicester, and Liverpool; author of pamphlets ('Free and Candid Considerations,' &c., 1755, and 'A Review of the Argument,' &c., 1756) in reply to Peter Whitfield, a learned Liverpool printer and sugar-refiner, who left the dissenters and vigorously attacked their orthodoxy.
  4. Benjamin, a London bookseller, author of 'A Sure Guide to Hell' (anon.), 1750, and supplement; he published some of his father's pieces.
  5. Daniel, who built at Leominster what is said to have been the first cotton mill erected in England, an enterprise wrecked by a fire.
  6. Miles, a mercer at Dudley.
  7. John; died under age.

Two others died young.

References

  1. ↑  "Flexman, Roger". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Bibliography

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Bourn, Samuel (1689-1754)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 

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