John Wiche (Baptist)
Encyclopedia

Life

He was born at Taunton
Taunton
Taunton is the county town of Somerset, England. The town, including its suburbs, had an estimated population of 61,400 in 2001. It is the largest town in the shire county of Somerset....

, Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, on 24 April 1718. His parents were Baptists; his elder brother, George Wiche (d. 2 Nov. 1794, aged 78), originally a mechanic, became steward of the assembly rooms in Taunton, where his portrait, by Thorn, was placed by the subscribers. John Wiche was baptised on 25 June 1734 by Joseph Jefferies, baptist minister of Taunton, from whom, and from Thomas Lucas, baptist minister (1721–43) of Trowbridge
Trowbridge
Trowbridge is the county town of Wiltshire, England, situated on the River Biss in the west of the county, approximately 12 miles southeast of Bath, Somerset....

, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

, he received his early education. By help of the general Baptist fund he studied successively at Taunton, Kendal
Kendal
Kendal, anciently known as Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish within the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England...

, and Findern
Findern
Findern is a village in south Derbyshire. Although a railway runs through it, there is no station, the nearest stations are Willington, Pear Tree and Derby...

 dissenting academies
Dissenting academies
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and nonconformist seminaries run by dissenters. They formed a significant part of England’s educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries....

.

At Salisbury
Salisbury
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England and the only city in the county. It is the second largest settlement in the county...

, where he was assistant and then minister to a declining Baptist congregation (1743–6), he became acquainted and corresponded with Thomas Chubb
Thomas Chubb
Thomas Chubb was an English lay Deist writer, born near Salisbury.Chubb regarded Christ as a divine teacher, but held reason to be sovereign in matters of religion, questioned religions' morality, yet was on rational grounds a defender of Christianity...

. In 1746 he went to London to consult Joseph Burroughs
Joseph Burroughs
-Biography:He was born in London, on 1 January 1685, of wealthy parents, his father being Humphreys Burroughs. He was educated under Rev. John Kerr, M.D. , at Highgate, where he was class-fellow with John Ward; and at the university of Leyden. In 1714 he received a call to be co-pastor with Richard...

 and James Foster
James Foster (baptist minister)
James Foster was an English Baptist minister.-Early life:Foster was born and baptized at Exeter, 6 September 1697. Most of our biographical knowledge of him comes from memoirs attached to a sermon preached at his funeral by his friend and colleague, Caleb Fleming...

 about leaving the ministry. On their advice he became in December 1746 minister of a small General Baptist
General Baptist
General Baptists is a generic term for Baptists who hold the view of a general atonement, as well as a specific name of groups of Baptists within the broader category.General Baptists are distinguished from Particular or Reformed Baptists.-History:...

 congregation at Maidstone
Maidstone
Maidstone is the county town of Kent, England, south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town linking Maidstone to Rochester and the Thames Estuary. Historically, the river was a source and route for much of the town's trade. Maidstone was the centre of the agricultural...

, and held this charge till death. His views at this time were Arian
Arian
Arian may refer to:* Arius, a Christian presbyter in the 3rd and 4th century* a given name in different cultures: Aria, Aryan or Arian...

, but in 1760 he became a Socinian, after reading the anonymous ‘Letter on the Logos,’ published in 1759, by Nathaniel Lardner. With Lardner he corresponded from 1762, if not earlier. Lardner fenced with him about the authorship of the ‘Letter,’ but on 9 June 1768 (six weeks before his death) wrote to inform him that the ‘Papinian’ to whom it had been addressed was John Shute Barrington, 1st Viscount Barrington
John Shute Barrington, 1st Viscount Barrington
John Shute Barrington, 1st Viscount Barrington was an English lawyer and theologian-Background and education:Born at Theobalds House, near Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, he was the son of the merchant, Benjamin Shute...

.

Among his intimate friends was William Hazlitt, father of William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...

 the essayist, who had been presbyterian minister (1770–80) at Earl Street, Maidstone. After the Birmingham riots of 1791 he went to Henry Dundas (afterwards first Viscount Melville), then Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...

, with a deputation from Maidstone in Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

's interest. Though his resources were scanty, he collected a considerable library. Wiche died at Maidstone on 7 April 1794. His portrait (no engraver's name) is given in the ‘Protestant Dissenter's Magazine,’ 1797.

Works

He published, besides single sermons and tracts:
  • ‘A Defence of … Foster's Sermon of Catholic Communion. By Philocatholicus,’ 1752, (anon., answered by Grantham Killingworth); and
  • ‘Observations on the Debate … concerning the Divine Unity … addressed to the Rev. E. W. Whittaker of Canterbury,’ 1787.


To Priestley's Theological Repository
Theological Repository
The Theological Repository was a periodical founded and edited from 1769 to 1771 by the eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley...

,’ 1786, v. 83, he contributed ‘Observations favouring the Miraculous Conception,’ signed Nazaraeus (attributed by Thomas Belsham
Thomas Belsham
Thomas Belsham was an English Unitarian minister- Life :Belsham was born in Bedford, England, and was the elder brother of William Belsham, the English political writer and historian. He was educated at the dissenting academy at Daventry, where for seven years he acted as assistant tutor...

 to Newcome Cappe
Newcome Cappe
Newcome Cappe , was an English unitarian divine.-Life:Cappe was the eldest son of the Rev. Joseph Cappe, minister of the nonconformist congregation at Millhill Chapel, Leeds, who married the daughter and coheiress of Mr. Newcome of Waddington, Lincolnshire, and was born at Leeds 21 February 1733....

).

Some time after Lardner's death Wiche obtained access to four of his manuscript sermons (preached 1747), and transcribed and published them as ‘Two Schemes of a Trinity … and the Divine Unity’.

Family

He married, in 1755, Elizabeth Pine (d. 1767), by whom he had six children; his eldest son, Thomas (d. 11 July 1821, aged 63), became a London bookseller; his daughter Mary married in August 1795 John Evans (1767–1827), author of the ‘Sketch’ of Christian denominations. George Wiche or Wyche (1767–1799), dissenting minister at Monton, Lancashire, from 1788 to 1795, when he left the ministry and emigrated to America, was John Wiche's nephew.
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