Joshua Symonds

Joshua Symonds (1739-88) served as minister of the Old Meeting (Independent/Baptist) at Bedford from 1766 to his death in 1788. He was born at Kidderminster and by eighteen was living in Bromsgrove, in Worcestershire, under the ministry of Joseph Jenkins.  He attended John Conder’s academy at Mile-End in London in 1760 and joined the Independent church at Stepney, under Samuel Brewer.  He first came to the Bedford church in March 1766, and a year later was installed as pastor.  He was originally paedobaptist, but switched to believer’s baptism in 1772 (the Old Meeting had a long tradition of being a “mixed” congregation).  Some members, however, withdrew to form a new society in Bedford (which later became Howard Congregational Church) under Thomas Smith, Joshua Nicholls, Baptist minister at Kimbolten, was called out of the Bedford church under Symonds’s ministry in 1780. John Ryland preached his funeral sermon in 1788, Christ, the great source of the Believer’s Consolation; and the grand Subject of the Gospel Ministry.  A sermon occasioned by the death of the Rev. Joshua Symonds, pastor of the Congregational Church which assembles at the Old Meeting in Bedford. . .With an Address and an Appendix containing a brief History of the church by John Sutcliff (London, 1788).