The Antinomian

William Huntington was born in 1745 near Cranbrook in Kent, and was given the name William Hunt at his baptism there five years later. It is said that his father was Barnabus Russel-his mother's husband's employer-despite his mother's marriage to William Hunt. He was the tenth child of Elizabeth Hunt and the only male to achieve maturity. He had an unsuccessful romance with Susannah Fever, from which a child was born. He left the Kent area and changed his name. Now William Huntington he was free from his financial obligation, but not his conscience as he tells in this account. He changed his surname to Huntington in 1769; his rationale was that the "ing" represented the present participle in words representing sinful activities, such as "stealing" and "swearing"; and "ton" referred to his being "a vessel of the Lord". Later that year, he married Mary Short, a servant; they moved to Mortlake in Surrey and Huntington resumed his gardening work. Nevertheless, he was still very poor. He did attend a number of schools, but it was always as a result of charity. He said himself that he was frequently hungry. He was the son of a farm worker and he undertook work that was unskilled or semi-skilled, such as driving hearses and coaches, gardening and heaving coal. He also spent some time as a tramp. In 1773, Huntington and his wife moved to Sunbury-on-Thames in Middlesex. Soon afterwards he reported that he had been contacted by Christ. The vision, which appeared as a bright light from which Christ's bloodied body emerged, told him that he was brought under the covenant love of God's elect. He became dissatisfied with his existing religious beliefs, and began to associate with Baptists, Methodists and Calvinists in various Surrey and Middlesex towns. He became known locally for his Biblical knowledge and preaching, and he established his first congregation at Thames Ditton in Surrey, where he was a Baptist. He then had an independent group in Woking, also in Surrey. By the 1780s, Huntington preached at a large circuit of chapels across Surrey, Sussex and London; for example, he was involved in the early days of Bugby Chapel, a Calvinistic chapel founded in 1779 in Epsom. His ongoing poverty, exacerbated by the loss of his coalheaving job, forced him to walk long distances every week. He controversially claimed that Divine Providence alleviated his poverty at this time by occasionally supplying money, food and a horse. Moral Law the Ministration of Death In 1782, he received another message-prophesy upon the thick boughs-and moved to London, where he established a chapel on Titchfield Street. Providence Chapel was consecrated in 1783, and became very popular: hundreds or sometimes thousands of people attended his ministry, including Princess Amelia and members of the nobility-although Huntington himself preferred preaching to poorer people. His preaching style was evangelising, and he was known for preaching that the so-called moral law was the "ministration of condemnation" (2 Corinthians 3:9) rather than the rule of life for believers, for which he was accused of (Antinomianism). Huntington has been identified as the "most egregious" proponent of Antinomianism. Huntington died in 1813, after which various preachers tried to take on St Bartholomew's. (The church was finally destroyed during the bombing of London in the Second World War.) Huntington was buried at the Jireh chapel in Lewes beside Jenkin Jenkins who had died in 1810. The inscription, which he composed only a few days before he died, reads "Here lies the coalheaver who departed his life July 1st 1813 in the 69th year of his age, beloved of his God but abhorred of men. The omniscient Judge at the grand assize shall ratify and confirm this to the confusion of many thousands, for England and its metropolis will know that there has been a prophet amongst them."