Cylchgronau Cymru

he himself had been educated and which had been transferred thither from Abergavenny at his request (and even on his insistence). In 1795 he moved from Oswestry to take charge of a new academy at Rotherham and to be pastor at Masbro' Independent church. Dr. Owen tells this story in a straightforward way, though chapter 3 ('Controversy over Baptism') savours too much of an interpolation and might have come better among the later chapters dealing with Williams' theological writings and influence. There are, unfortunately, far too many misprints, and here and there the style could have been better; 'in his answering letter' for instance, which appears thrice on as many pages (25-7) is hardly an improvement on the more traditional 'in his reply'. Few will cavil at the author's facts, but not everyone will so readily accept his interpretation of them. The gist of his argument runs along these lines: Edward Williams was a deeply pious man, a scholar, a pioneer of the Sunday School in Wales, a successful tutor at two, if not three, Dissenting Academies, a founder member of the London Missionary Society, and an early advocate of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. Above all, he was an outstanding theologian, a 'Modern (i.e. moderate) Calvinist' who was very largely responsible for tempering the hyper-Calvinism of his day, and, ipso facto, for promoting the growth of radicalism. 'No one', we are told at the outset, 'did more than Edward Williams to lessen the grip of hyper-Calvinism on Nonconformity at the beginning of the last century. In so doing-unknown to himself- he rendered a great service to radicalism and democracy'. (Introduction, p. xi.) Let it be admitted forthwith that Edward Williams was a man of deep piety, that he held strong convictions on the value of Christian missions, and that he holds (and deservedly so) a high place among the founders of the L.M.S. and of its 'main mouthpiece', The Evangelical Magazine. Nor can it be denied that he was among the first in his denomination to appreciate the need for a union, however loose, of the growing number of Independent churches. The Congregational Union of England and Wales dates from 1832, some twenty years after his death, but he undoubtedly paved the way and many of his ideas were eventually incorporated in its constitution. Dr. Owen does well to remind us of all this. It is Williams' theology that one finds rather perplexing, and even more so the large claims made by his biographer for its influence. He would be a remarkable man, indeed, who could find much consistency in it-a point which Dr. Owen, to his credit, admits quite freely and which is worth bearing in mind when estimating its influence. That Williams was not a hyper-Calvinist is at least transparently clear. How could he have been when, on the one hand, he believed so passionately in universal redemp- tion and, on the other, denounced with equal fervour the doctrine of reprobation? Any of his Welsh contemporaries (assuming they could