William Huntington

William Huntington (1745-1813) was a controversial High Calvinist preacher in London, first at the Providence Chapel (1782-1810) and later at the New Providence Chapel (1811-1813).  A former coalheaver with little formal education, Huntington (his original name was “Hunt,” and he later added “S.S.” [“Sinner Saved”] to his new name) and his network of chapels would prove extremely problematic for London’s moderate Calvinists. A “self-called” minister, Huntington came to London from Kingston in 1782 and soon commenced construction of the Providence Chapel in Tichfield Street. He preached to upwards of 3000 hearers, earning an exorbitant annual income that approached £2000. He would later build other chapels in the London area, ministering to all simultaneously. He attracted large numbers of Baptists to his meetings, as well as Independents and followers of the Countess of Huntingdon, despite the fact that his hearers had to purchase a ticket in order to enter his chapels. His early life was full of scandals, and his ministry was plagued with controversy, primarily over his Antinomian tendencies. He was despised by the Particular Baptists and entered into pamphlet wars with Rowland Hill, Caleb Evans, John Ryland, Jr., and the Baptist poet and polemicist, Maria de Fleury. Despite his fervent denials, Huntington’s opponents accused the controversial preacher of being a High Calvinist antinomian. Though conversion by grace alone was a fundamental belief of all Calvinists, including antinomians, Huntington also contended that believers under the dispensation of grace were free from the requirements of the law. To de Fleury and other evangelical Calvinists, Huntington preached a gospel of “easy” grace which absolved the Christian of any obligation to obey God’s moral law, thereby granting the believer unlimited liberty in his or her behavior, a liberty evangelical Calvinists were convinced would inevitably lead to licentiousness. Nevertheless, Huntington’s antinomianism enticed large numbers of hearers away from London’s morally strict Baptist and Independent congregations and into his Providence Chapel, as well as his other chapels in Monkwell Street and Horsleydown. Though moderate Calvinists consistently attacked Huntington as a heretic and proselytizer, his influence remained strong as large numbers attended his services. See T. Wright, The Life of William Huntington, SS. (London: Farncombe, 1909); John Mee, “Is There an Antinomian in the House? William Blake and the After-Life of a Heresy,” Historicizing Blake, ed. Steve Clark and David Warrall (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), 43-58; Kenneth Dix, Strict and Particular: English Strict and Particular Baptists in the Nineteenth Century (Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK: Baptist Historical Society, 2001), 6-29; Timothy Whelan, “‘For the Hand of a Woman, has Levell'd the Blow”: Maria de Fleury's Pamphlet War with William Huntington, 1787-1791,’” Women’s Studies 36 (2007), 431-454.