David Jones

David Jones (1741-1792) was converted through the ministry of Howel Harris, a leading Welsh Calvinistic Methodist. Jones, however, soon joined the Particular Baptists at Pen-y-garn and in 1773 was ordained as assistant to Miles Harry. Jones would generally be associated with Pontypool. He published his first work in 1758, and in 1777 produced an elegy on Harris. Jones’s second wife owned property at Dol-goch, Newcastle Emlyn, and in 1785 he removed there, joining the Baptist meeting at Graig, Newcastle, and becoming co-pastor. He continued to maintain close ties, however, with the Calvinistic Methodists, especially Peter Williams and David Morris. In 1786 Jones began working with Williams on a Welsh edition of John Canne’s “pocket bible,” which had been widely used in its English form by Howel Harris and Miles Harry in the 1730s and ’40s. The efforts of Jones and Williams were widely supported by the Baptist Association in 1787 (not so by the Methodists, who expelled Williams in 1791). The work was finally published by the two Welshmen as Y Bibl Sanctaidd: Sef Yr Hen Destament a’r Newydd (1790), complete with glosses along each column. This is the work by Jones that John Ryland refers to in letter 34 as “Good News from Wales.” See Dictionary of Welsh Biography.