Christmas Evans & Sandemanianism 6: The Bogs of Sandemanianism

The effect on Christmas Evans himself was just as bad, as he later confessed, after he had been saved from the bogs of Sandemanianism.

‘The Sandemanian heresy affected me so much as to drive away the spirit of prayer for the salvation of sinners. The lighter matters of the kingdom of God pressed heavier on my mind than the weightier. The power which gave me zeal and confidence and earnestness in the pulpit for the conversion of souls to Christ was lost. My heart sank within me, and I lost the witness of a good conscience. On Sunday night, when I had been fiercely and violently condemning errors, my conscience felt ill at ease, and rebuked me because I had lost communion and fellowship with God, and made me feel that something invaluable was now lost and wanting. I would reply that I acted according to the Word. Still it rebuked me, saying that there was something of inestimable value gone. To a very great degree I had lost the spirit of prayer and the spirit of preaching.’[1]

Jones, Ramoth, an able controversialist, fell out with all around him, deliberately alienating the majority in the belief that all majorities were wrong.[2] Evans followed him in controversy, treating all who disagreed with the Sandemanian view as apostate or at least guilty of serious heresy. He was quite unmerciful. A coldness crept over the heart of the one-eyed Baptist. And he mourned for the loss of his first love, little understanding why his ardour had cooled so. New believers found themselves confronted with ‘doubtful disputations,’ not instruction in following Christ. No doubt some theological controversy necessary, but is the precise manner of breaking the bread at the Lord’s Supper really a right reason for splitting a church?[3]

Under the influence of Sandemanianism, the Baptist churches of Wales had begun to major in minors, while treating the most vital thing of all, saving faith, as but a small thing.


[1] Quoted in Owen Jones, ‘Christmas Evans’, in some of the Great Preachers of Wales (London, 1885, republished Hanley, 1995), pp.159-60.
[2] Tim Shenton, Christmas Evans: The Life and Times of the one-eyed Preacher of Wales (Darlington, 2001), pp.157-160.
[3] Tim Shenton, Christmas Evans: The Life and Times of the one-eyed Preacher of Wales (Darlington, 2001), pp.171-4.