John Taylor (dissenting preacher)

John Taylor (1694–1761) was an English dissenting preacher, Hebrew scholar, and theologian.

The son of a timber merchant at Lancaster, he was born at Scotforth, Lancashire. His father, John was an Anglican, his mother, Susannah a dissenter. Taylor began his education for the dissenting ministry in 1709 under Thomas Dixon at Whitehaven, where he drew up for himself a Hebrew grammar (1712). From Whitehaven he went to study under the tutor Thomas Hill, son of the ejected minister Thomas Hill, near Derby. Leaving Hill on 25 March 1715, he took charge on 7 April of an extra-parochial chapel at Kirkstead, Lincolnshire, then used for nonconformist worship by the Disney family. He was ordained (11 April 1716) by dissenting ministers in Derbyshire. In 1726 he declined a call to Pudsey, Yorkshire.

In 1733 he moved to Norwich, as colleague to Peter Finch, son of Henry Finch.

So far Taylor had not deviated from dissenting orthodoxy, though hesitating about subscription. According to a family tradition, given by William Turner, on settling at Norwich he went through Samuel Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) with his congregation, adopted its view, and came forward (1737) in defence of a dissenting layman excommunicated for heterodoxy on this topic by James Sloss (1698–1772) of Nottingham, a pupil of John Simson. On 25 February 1754 Taylor laid the first stone of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, opened 12 May 1756, and described by John Wesley (23 December 1757) as 'perhaps the most elegant one in all Europe,' and too fine for 'the old coarse gospel.' In his opening sermon, Taylor, who had received (6 April) the diploma (dated 20 January) of D.D. from the University of Glasgow, disowned all names such as Presbyterian and the like, claiming that of Christian only; a claim attacked by a local critic, probably Grantham Killingworth, writing as a Quaker, under the name of 'M. Adamson.’

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