One day in 1664 a small band of Baptists—ten men and two women—gathered for worship in Aylesbury, England. Because the state considered the meeting a seditious act, they seized the twelve members and sentenced them to death. It’s easy to take the freedom to worship for granted today but three hundred and fifty years ago to reject the established church was tantamount to rejecting the king—treason! Thankfully, a prominent Baptist pastor, William Kiffin (1616–1701), interceded. He spoke to Lord Chancellor Hyde who promptly took their case before King Charles II. The king accepted Kiffin’s plea and ordered the Baptists released. Why would the Lord Chancellor listen to a Baptist pastor? Simple: Kiffin was one of London’s richest merchants. He regularly used his wealth—and the prestige it brought—for the good of the persecuted Church.

It’s a Job-like story. At the age of nine Kiffin lost his parents to the plague. In 1642 he was imprisoned for identifying himself with the Baptists. His eldest son died in 1669, a second son shortly afterward, a daughter in 1679, his wife in 1682, and two grandsons in 1685. Nonetheless, through all this he persevered in the gospel ministry as a committed servant of Jesus Christ. Christians like Kiffin accepted whatever the Lord brought. They “moderated their love of the world . . . they enjoyed with thankfulness the substantial comforts which a merciful Providence afforded them, or endured with patience the ills of poverty.”1

Today, Kiffin is known more for his wealth than for his trials. As a teenager he worked with his hands making barrels and gloves. However, his 1642 imprisonment2 left him in ill health, destitute, and without a vocation. A journey to Holland motivated him to become a merchant. Although he enjoyed immediate profit, he had no intention of amassing a fortune; he sought to prepare his mind and soul for pastoral ministry: “Even after his first successful trading venture he neglected ‘the opportunity of proceeding in that trade’ and devoted his time chiefly to ‘studying the word of God,’ until he had spent most of what he had earned and was obliged to return to commerce.”3 In Kiffin’s own words, his ultimate goal was to invest in his religious studies without being a burden to others: “By this means, I was enabled to improve the small talent God gave me without being burthensome to any. I was able to give without receiving, which, I bless the Lord, he hath in some measure given me a heart to do.”4

His commercial interests freed up Kiffin to pastor the Devonshire Square Particular Baptist Church without ever drawing a salary from the congregation. The church supported other pastoral staff, freeing Kiffin to exercise a wider ministry both in London and throughout England financed by his own business acumen.5 His generosity knew no bounds. When persecution drove a family of French Protestants to England for safety, Kiffin supplied far more than their needs and refused to accept a pound in return.6 He saw his wealth and reputation as gifts from God to be spent in the service of others: “Kiffin employed his political connections and offices to come to the aid of Baptists in trouble and to alleviate the suffering of the poor and disadvantaged.”7

In God’s economy there is no connection between the size of a person’s bank account and the power of his ministry—Christ, after all, had no place to lay His head (Matt. 8:20; Luke 9:58). Nonetheless we can be thankful that in Kiffin’s case fortune came to a man who knew how to use it well.
 
Footnotes:
 
1  William Kiffin, Remarkable Passages in the Life of William Kiffin, ed. William Orme (London: Burton and Smith, 1823), xii.
 
2  Kiffin was arrested for preaching to a Baptist or Independent congregation. He is circumspect about the actual conditions of his arrest, although he describes the imprisonment in detail. See Ibid., 15-18.
 
3  Michael Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 362.
 
4  Kiffin, 23.
 
5  Watts, 362.
 
6  Kiffin, 161.
 
7  Paul R. Wilson, “William Kiffin (1616-1701),” in The British Particular Baptists, 1638-1910, ed. Michael A.G. Haykin, vol. 1 (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 1998), 76.
from Kairos Journal

Cecil County, MD  First Baptist Church of Perryville, 4800 W. Pulaski Hwy., Perryville, MD