Samuel Bourn the younger

Samuel Bourn the Younger (1689 –22 March 1754) was an English dissenting minister. Bourn was an English presbyterian preaching on protestant values learnt from the New Testament. He entered via the mode of his published sermons the theological debate that flourished around Arian controversy, and the doctrinal question as to Man's essential nature. He combatted Deism of the Norwich rationalists in the early enlightenment, and challenged the Trinitarian conventional wisdoms about the seat of humanity and its origins.

He was the second son of Samuel Bourn the elder, born at Calne, Wiltshire. He was taught classics at Bolton, and trained for the ministry in the Manchester dissenting academy of John Chorlton and James Coningham. His first settlement was at Crook, near Kendal, in 1711. He carried with him his father's theology, but at his ordination he declined subscription, not from particular scruples, but on general principles; as a result many of the neighbouring ministers refused to concur in ordaining him. Joshua Toulmin says 'the received standard of orthodoxy' which was proffered to him was the assembly's catechism.

In 1719, when the Salters' Hall conference had made the Trinitarian controversy a burning question among dissenters, Bourn, hitherto Athanasian, addressed himself to reading Samuel Clarke and Daniel Waterland, and accepted the Clarkean scheme. While at Crook, Bourn dedicated a child (probably of Baptist parentage) without baptism, according to a form given by Toulmin.

In 1720 Bourn succeeded Henry Winder at Tunley, near Wigan. He declined in 1725 a call to the neighbouring congregation of Park Lane, but accepted a call (dated 29 December 1727) to the new chapel at Chorley. On 7 May 1731 Bourn was chosen one of the Monday lecturers at Bolton, a post which he held along with his Chorley pastorate. On 19 April 1732 Bourn preached the opening sermon at the New Meeting, which replaced the Lower Meeting, Birmingham, and on 21 and 23 April he was called to be colleague with Thomas Pickard in the joint charge of this congregation and a larger one at Coseley, where he was to settle. He began this ministry on 25 June.

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