Bennett, James

BENNET, JAMES: Congregationalist; b. in London May 22, 1774; d. there Dec. 4, 1862. He studied for the ministry at Gosport under the Rev. David Bogue; was ordained at Romsey, Hamshire, 1797, and was minister there till 1813, when he became theological tutor of the Rotherham Independent College, and minister of the church there; pastor of the church in Silver Street (afterward removed to Falcon Square), London, 1828–60. He was an associate of the Haldanes in some of their tours, was a secretary of the London Missionary 54Society, was chairman of the Congregational Union 1840, and attracted much attention by his defense of Christianity against the unbelief of his time. His publications include The History of Dissenters from the Revolution to 1808, in collaboration with Dr. Bogue (4 vols., London, 1808–12; 2d ed., 2 vols., 1833), continued in The History of Dissenters during the Last Thirty Years (1839); The Star of the West, being memoirs of R. Darracott (1813); Lectures on the History of Jesus Christ (3 vols., 1825; 2d ed., 2 vols., 1828), supplemented by Lectures on the Preaching of Christ (1836); Memoirs of the Life of David Bogue (1827); An Antidote to Infidelity, lectures delivered in 1831, and A Second Antidote to Infidelity (1831); Justification as Revealed in Scripture in Opposition to the Council of Trent and Mr. Newman's Lectures (1840); The Theology of the Early Christian Church Exhibited in Quotations from the Writers of the First Three Centuries, Congregational lecture, 1841; Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles (1846).

Bibliography: Memorials of the Late James Bennett, D.D., including Sermons Preached on the Occasion of his Death, London, 1883; DNB, iv, 242–243.