Benjamin Wills Newton (1807-1899) has been the focus of many years research by us. We have been the means of recovering a number of primary materials relating to him.

He seceded from the Church of England, as did J.C. Philpott and William Tiptaft, and was for a time the leader of the nascent Brethren assembly in Plymouth. However, after his separation from the Brethren in 1847 he had fifty years of independent ministry opposing the chief tenets of the Brethren, including their dispensationalism. He enjoyed friendships with Professor Smeaton and the Bonar brothers of the Free Church of Scotland. He wrote clearly on Christ’s substitutionary life and death in books which Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones later commended. He wrote extensively on Biblical prophecy and took a simple futurist (or historical premillennialist) position, as did the Bonar brothers, J.C. Ryle, and C.H. Spurgeon in his later years. A publications trust was set up after his death. However, the Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony was founded by Strict and Particular baptists in 1918 and over the last hundred years the S.G.A.T has been committed to keeping his works in print.

In 1997 we published Ministry and Order in the Church of Christ, which was an anthology on Church issues, selected and assembled from B.W. Newton’s published and unpublished writings. It was produced by a local printer and unfortunately there were a number of typographical and other errors. It has been virtually unavailable for a long time, although there are a few copies remaining. It was recently offered on Amazon at over £70 second-hand! Since its publication, further manuscript materials of Newton’s statements on this subject have been recovered, and it is hoped to produce a second edition with some further material and analysis in 2024.

The Guide to the Works and Remains of B.W. Newton has now been published.

Several more books concerning B.W. Newton are to follow. One will relate to his influence in Worthing and surrounding villages in England where several chapels sympathetic to his ministry were maintained. We also intend to publish a definitive account of the strange journeys of Dr Dalzell, his physician, where again we have had access to unique primary sources.