Edward Sharman

Edward Sharman, along with William and Andrew Pell, formed a new Baptist church at Guilsborough, northwest of Northampton, in September 1781. Later, Sharman ministered at the Moulton church in the 1790s after Carey’s removal to Leicester. He signed the minutes of the Northamptonshire Association for 31 May 1792, the meeting at which Carey preached his famous sermon on missions. Carey and Sharman had also worked together on the Leicestershire Committee of Protestant Ministers for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1789-1790. Sharman was preaching at Moulton in 1794 but by 1798 he had been replaced by John Barker and was no longer a Particular Baptist. Andrew Fuller, writing to William Carey in Bengal on 2 May 1796, notes that Sharman, now at Cottesbrooke, had become a Unitarian and recently published a pamphlet against the divinity of Christ; he had also influenced several other Baptists friends known to Fuller and Carey.  Fuller writes, “I reckon, though, it be a blundering performance, it must be answered, and if it be we will send you the book & its answer together, He has lately lost his wife. Some think him touched with insanity.” Sharman eventually emigrated to New England, and continued to engage in ecclesiastical and religious controversy, publishing one more text before his death c. 1820. Sharman’s publications were A Letter on the Doctrine of the Trinity; Addressed to the Baptist Society at Guilsborough, Northamptonshire (London: printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1795); A Second Letter on the Doctrine of the Trinity; Addressed to the Baptist Society, at Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, Worship the Father (Market Harborough: Printed for the author by W. Harrod, and sold by Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard, London; Collis and Dash, Kettering; Flower, Cambridge; Swinney, Birmingham; Phillips, Leicester; Abel, Northampton, 1796); A Caution against Trinitarianism (Market Harborough: printed for the author by W. Harrod; and sold by Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard, London, 1799); A Second Caution against Trinitarianism; or, An Inquiry whether that System has not some tendency to lead people unto Deism and Atheism. In a letter addressed to the Rev. Mr. Fuller, Kettering. By a Northamptonshire farmer (Market Harborough: printed for the author by W. Harrod; and sold by Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard, London, 1800); and The Christian World Unmasked, or, An Enquiry into the Foundation of Methodist Camp-Meetings (Watertown, NY: Printed for the author, 1819). See John Rippon, ed., Baptist Annual Register, vol. 2 (1794-97), p. 10; vol. 3 (1798-1801), p. 28; Fuller Correspondence, 1793-1815, MSS. BMS, Vol. 1, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford.