John Ryland, Jr.

John Ryland,  Jr. (1753-1825) was trained at the academy in Northampton by his father, John Collett Ryland, the younger Ryland became one of the leading figures among the Particular Baptists of his generation, helping to move most of the denomination into the kind of evangelical Calvinism promoted by his own preaching as well as that of Robert Hall, Sr., Andrew Fuller, and John Sutcliffe  Ryland was a precocious student as a child and maintained a keen interest in theological scholarship throughout his life.  He succeeded his father as pastor of the church in Northampton in 1785, and in December 1793 moved to Bristol to assume the pastorate of the two congregations at Broadmead, as well as the presidency of the Baptist Academy there. He was one of the founders of the BMS and, after Fuller’s death in 1815, became a joint secretary. Through his role as pastor and teacher at Bristol, Ryland became one of the most influential figures in the lives of scores of ministers and missionaries who trained at the Academy. He was also a close friend of two leading evangelical Anglicans of his day who ministered at different times in Olney during his years at Northampton, John Newton and Thomas Scott. Besides his important memoir of Andrew Fuller, Ryland authored numerous short works, sermons, and books, such as The Duty of Ministers to be Nursing Fathers to the Church (1796); The Partiality and Unscriptural Direction of Socinian Zeal (1801). See J. E. Ryland, Pastoral Memorials: Selected from the Manuscripts of the late Revd John Ryland, D.D. of Bristol: with a Memoir of the Author, 2 vols. (London: B. J. Holdsworth, 1826); Grant Gordon, “John Ryland (1753-1825),” ed. Haykin, in The British Particular Baptists, 2:77-95.