John Rogers, Jr.

Rev. John Rogers, Jr., was a fellow student of John Ryland at the Northampton academy run by John Collett Ryland and the son of the Rev. John Rogers of London (see entry above). He too became an Independent minister. In 1791, the year his father died, he was ministering to the Indpendent Church at Ross, in Hertfordshire. Surprisingly, the Midland Association of Particular Baptist churches held their annual meeting at Rogers’ church in Ross on 28 and 29 June 1791.  In his letter granting permission to the Association to use his church building, Rogers demonstrates the ecumenical spirit that he learned at Ryland’s academy:  “While it is the duty of all who love the Lord Jesus, ‘to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints,’ it is equally their duty to receive, with christian affection, all who appear stedfast in their adherence to the peculiar doctrines of the gospel, though differing in their ideas of some less important points of their religious creed; remembering, for their mutual instruction, that in the present state, even ‘the watchmen on Mount Sion do not see eye to eye.’” See John Rippon, ed., Baptist Annual Register, vol. 1 [1790-93], pp. 164, 206-08.