Thomas Williams

Thomas Williams (1755-1839) was a London Calvinistic preacher (Independent), writer, and bookseller, operating from 10 Stationer’s Court, Ludgate Street, London, from 1800 to 1818. In 1793 he was one of the founding editors of the Evangelical Magazine. In 1794 he published a stinging attack on Thomas Paine entitled The Age of Infidelity: In Answer to Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason, Part 1.  The following year William Button published Williams’s The Age of Credulity, as well as his An Historic Defence of Experimental Religion; in which the Doctrine of Divine Influences is Supported by the Authority of Scripture, and the Experience of the Wisest and Best Men in all Ages and Countries (2 vols; (1795). Williams followed this in 1796 with The Age of Infidelity:  Part II. In Answer to the Second Part of The Age of Reason  (also printed by Button). He should not be confused with another London bookseller by the same name who, in 1797, was tried for sedition for printing Paine’s Age of Reason. In 1801 Williams was serving as the depositary for the Religious Tract Society. He consistently maintained close ties with Particular Baptists, especially Andrew Fuller, J. W. Morris, and William Newman. In 1804-1805 Williams was a subscriber to the Baptist Missionary Society. See John Rippon, ed., Baptist Annual Register, vol. 3 (1798-1801), p. 543; BMS Periodical Accounts, vol. 3, p. 137.