John Asty
Encyclopedia
John Asty was an English dissenting clergyman.

Life

Asty was the son of Robert Asty of Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...

 and grandson to the ejected minister of Stratford, whose Christian name was John, not Robert. He was born at Norwich about 1672. Of his early education, and of his education altogether, little or nothing has been transmitted; but in his funeral sermon by John Guyse
John Guyse
John Guyse was an English independent minister.-Life:Guyse was born at Hertford in 1680. He was educated for the ministry at the academy of the Rev. John Payne at Saffron Walden, and began to preach in his twentieth year. He sometimes assisted William Haworth, then minister of a congregation of...

 (1730) he is shown to have made 'thankful acknowledgments for his privilege in descending from godly parents' and for 'the advantages received from a religious education.' He spent several years during the earlier part of his ministry in the historic family of the Fleetwoods of Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...

, then outside London. It does not appear that he undertook any pastoral charge proper until 1713. In that year he was ordained as pastor to a congregation at Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields. Here he remained until his death.

He was involved in a controversy with a fellow dissenting minister named Martin Tomkins, also settled in Stoke Newington. Tomkins was among the earliest of the originally evangelical Protestant dissenters who came to hold Arian-Socinian conceptions of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Asty asserted the Biblical-Athanasian doctrine. Later Asty signed the declaration 'on the doctrine of the blessed Trinity,' as promulgated in the first article of the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 and in the answer to the fifth and sixth questions of the Assembly's catechism, agreed upon at the Salters' Hall synod, 7 April 1719.

He was an admirer of the practical writings of John Owen
John Owen (theologian)
John Owen was an English Nonconformist church leader, theologian, and academic administrator at the University of Oxford.-Early life:...

. He died on 20 January 1730. He was buried in Bunhill Fields
Bunhill Fields
Bunhill Fields is a cemetery in the London Borough of Islington, north of the City of London, and managed by the City of London Corporation. It is about 4 hectares in extent, although historically was much larger....

.

Works

He published only a single sermon, on the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Fleetwood, preached at Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...

on 23 June 1728 from Job ix. 12. He also prefixed a memoir to the collective folio volume of the Sermons and Tracts of Dr. John Owen (1721). Among the 1662 farewell sermons is one by John Asty, the ejected clergyman of Stratford, and Robert Asty of Norwich published a book called 'Treatise of Rejoicing in the Lord Jesus in all Cases and Conditions' (1683).
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