Robert Robinson (Dissenting minister)

Robert Robinson D.D. (c. 1726 – 1791), was an eccentric Dissenting Minister, and has been accused of being controversial and belligerent.

Born about 1726, Robinson was educated at the dissenting academy at Plasterers' Hall, Addle Street, London. His tutors here were Zephaniah Marryat, D. D. (c. 1684 – 1754), theological tutor, "considered to be the best Greek scholar among the Dissenters"; and John Walker, LL. D., Classical and Hebrew tutor, who was "celebrated for his profound knowledge of the oriental languages". Plasterers' Hall was unashamedly Independent or Congregationalist and it evolved into Independent College, Homerton. It was the academy Joseph Priestley's Calvinistic relatives would have sent him, had he not, "being at that time an Arminian, ... resolutely opposed it, especially upon finding that if [he] went thither, besides giving a [conversion] experience, [he] must subscribe [his] assent to ten printed articles of the strictest Calvinist faith, and repeat it every six months". Marryat and Walker were devoted to Calvinism, and it was they who determined this rule that all students should biannually subscribe to the Calvinistic creed of ten articles.

Robinson abandoned Calvinism while at the academy, though for the time he maintained his Trinitarianism. His first pastorate appears to have been at Congleton, Cheshire, in 1748, where he succeeded Joseph Bourn (1713–?1765), who had moved on to Hindley in Lancashire. The Congleton congregation already had Socinian or Unitarian leanings; Robinson's successors, William Turner and Benjamin Dawson, were certainly of that persuasion. While at Congleton, and in response to the final thwarting of the Jacobite cause, Robinson preached and published a sermon: The Mischievous intentions of popish projectors frustrated.

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