The Life And Ministry Of John Jones

Dictionary Of National Biography, 1885-1900:

John Andrews Jones (1779–1868), baptist minister and author, born on 10 Oct. 1779 at Bristol, was the son of a manufacturing tobacconist. He was educated in Colston’s Charity School, Bristol (3 Sept. 1789–31 Dec. 1794), and was apprenticed to a Bristol merchant, but from 1801 to 1813 was employed as a bookbinder at Guildford, Surrey. In early life he was, according to his own confession, ‘of the baneful deistical school,’ but was converted to baptist principles in 1807 by John Gill, pastor of the baptist church at St. Albans, Hertfordshire. He was baptised (3 July 1808) in the old meeting-house at Guildford, and six months later began to preach in the surrounding district, and to write for the ‘Gospel Magazine’ in May 1811. After preaching informally at the church at Hartley Row, Hampshire, for nearly three years, he was ordained minister there on 13 March 1816. In 1818 he was minister for a short time of Ebenezer Chapel, Stonehouse, Devonshire, and for six months subsequently at Beccles, Suffolk. He ‘settled’ at Ringstead, Northamptonshire (1821–5), and was pastor of the Particular Baptist Church, North Road, Brentford, from 1825 till June 1831, when he became pastor of the chapel in Mitchell Street, Old Street, London. In 1831 his congregation removed to ‘Jireh’ Chapel in Brick Lane, Old Street, and in 1861 to East Street, City Road; Jones remained there till his death in August 1868. He was buried at Abney Park cemetery on 28 Aug. 1868. He married at Guildford, on 10 Oct. 1805, Ann (1774–1849), daughter of Elisha Turner of Bentley, Hampshire, by whom he left issue.

Jones’s chief work is ‘Bunhill Memorials,’ London, 1849; to which a series of detached reprints of religious works by John Gill, John Owen, John Brine, and others, published by Jones between 1849 and 1854, and bearing the title ‘Sacred Remains,’ was intended to serve as an appendix. Amongst his other works were ‘The History of the Iniquitous Schism Bill of 1714,’ 1843, and ‘A Confession of Faith delivered at Hartley Row, March 13, 1816,’ London, 1853. Jones also published many pamphlets, devotional tracts, and single sermons; edited many religious treatises, notably Gill’s ‘Body of Divinity’ in 1839, and engaged in 1833–4 in a printed controversy with Joseph Irons, independent minister of Grove Chapel, Camberwell.

[Jones’s Works; Baptist Messenger for 1868; Baptist Manual and Baptist Handbook; private information from the Rev. John W. Ewing, the Rev. R. A. Selby, the Rev. William Footman, and Mr. James J. Fromore.]