A Company of Women Preachers: Baptist Prophetesses in Seventeenth-Century England

4. Jane Turner: Choice Experiences of the Kind Dealings of God (1653)

305 Jane Turner (fl. 1653) 4 Sixmembersweredismissedin1638fromthegatheredchurchinSouthwark led by Henry Jessey. It was the third congregation to form out of the Jessey church, the other two being led by John Duppa (1630) and Samuel Eaton (1633).The newly formed congregation united under the ministryof JohnSpilsburyandwasof thesamejudgmentwiththeEaton congregation that“baptism was not for infants but professed believers.” In 1642 the Spilsbury congregation adopted the practice of“dipping” as the proper mode of baptism, though members who had been baptized as believers by affusion were not required to be baptized a third time by immersion. Spilsbury’s A Treatise Concerning the Lawfull Subject of Baptisme , published in 1643, became one of the most widely read early antipedobaptist books of the day.It argued that baptism is“an Ordinance,to confirm faith in the subject baptized, and so to be presupposed, or else not to be administered.” For Spilsbury, baptism confirmed (rather than conferred) grace,since“God approves of none as Subjects of his gracious Covenant, but only such as he hath elected and chosen in Christ.” Spilsbury prepared a new edition of his Treatise on baptism in 1652, and the following year he wrote a letter To the Christian Reader for a book by Jane Turner, titled Choice Experiences of the Kind Dealings of God before, in, and after Conversion.Both volumes were published by the 306 A Company of Women Preachers radical printer and Baptist preacher Henry Hills, who was a member of William Kiffin’s congregation in London. Turner was apparently familiar with popular published materials of radical dissenters.She attributed an important turn in her conversion to a book lent to her by a man who “was much opposed,”presumably by Anglican critics, as someone“holding grosse errors in his Judgement.” Not unlike Spilsbury, the unnamed maninherstoryconversedwithherchieflyabout“FreeGrace,thenature of the Gospel, and the New Covenant.” In turn Spilsbury commended Turner as “a gracious soul, with the largest experience of the riches of Gods great dispensations of grace.” He recognized that her Kind Dealings exemplified experientially what his Treatise argued theologically and would be “a glorious example for all Christians to follow, in a serious observing the passages of Gods providence and grace, that they may be rich in experience of his free mercies and goodness towards them.” Radical Puritans required anyone seeking church membership to testify to“the experience of grace.” In Puritan theology,“experience” was a technical term that denoted a constellation of convictions and affections between the awakening to sin and the conversion of the sinner through effective grace. Though all agreed that conversion was a process of selfexamination in search of signs of saving grace,there was no standard morphology of conversion. But among Particular Baptists, it was understood that the “lawful subjects” of baptism were “experienced Christians,” who could witness to their salvation by testifying to work of grace in their lives. Churches asked to hear the experiences of candidates,which were offered in the form of a conversion narrative. Turner’s conversion narrative provides six “notes of experience” with brief theological observations as she passed through stages of (1) ignorance before conversion, (2) awakening to and conviction of sin, (3) believing the free grace of God and receiving assurance of God’s love,(4) submitting to baptism and church fellowship, (5) understandingpretendedspiritualities,and(6)beingformedbyhabits of grace and bearing fruits of the Spirit. Though the Particular Baptists with which Turner was associated affirmed the doctrines of predestination and election, she apparently maintained a more evangelical approach that offered grace freely to all with“invitations so general that whosoever would come might come and take of the water of life freely.” It suggested that in practice free grace was free for all. Choice Experiences of the Kind Dealings of God (1653) Choice EXPERIENCES Of The kind dealings of God before, in, and after Conversion; Laid down in six general Heads. Together with Some brief Observations upon the same. Whereunto is added a description of true Experience. By J. TURNER wife to Cap. John Turner. PSALM 66.16. Come and hear all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul. LONDON, Printed by H. Hils, and are to be sold at the Black Spread-Eagle, and the Three Bibles at the West end of Pauls 1653. 310 Turner w Choice Experiences of the Kind Dealings [i] To the Churches of Christ who worship God in Spirit...