John Asty
John Asty (c. 1672 – 1730) was an English dissenting clergyman.
Life
Asty was the son of Robert Asty of Norwich and grandson to the ejected minister of Stratford, whose Christian name was John, not Robert.[1] He was born at Norwich about 1672. Of his early education, and of his education altogether, little or nothing has been transmitted; but in his funeral sermon by John Guyse (1730) he is shown to have made 'thankful acknowledgments for his privilege in descending from godly parents' and for 'the advantages received from a religious education.' He spent several years during the earlier part of his ministry in the historic family of the Fleetwoods of Stoke Newington, then outside London. It does not appear that he undertook any pastoral charge proper until 1713. In that year he was ordained as pastor to a congregation at Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields. Here he remained until his death.
He was involved in a controversy with a fellow dissenting minister named Martin Tomkins, also settled in Stoke Newington. Tomkins was among the earliest of the originally evangelical Protestant dissenters who came to hold Arian-Socinian conceptions of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Asty asserted the Biblical-Athanasian doctrine. Later Asty signed the declaration 'on the doctrine of the blessed Trinity,' as promulgated in the first article of the Church of England and in the answer to the fifth and sixth questions of the Assembly's catechism, agreed upon at the Salters' Hall synod, 7 April 1719.
He was an admirer of the practical writings of John Owen. He died on 20 January 1730. He was buried in Bunhill Fields.
Works
He published only a single sermon, on the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Fleetwood, preached at Stoke Newington on 23 June 1728 from Job ix. 12. He also prefixed a memoir to the collective folio volume of the Sermons and Tracts of Dr. John Owen (1721). Among the 1662 farewell sermons is one by John Asty, the ejected clergyman of Stratford, and Robert Asty of Norwich published a book called 'Treatise of Rejoicing in the Lord Jesus in all Cases and Conditions' (1683).
References
- ↑ Harmer, Ancient and Present State of Congregational Churches of Norfolk and Suffolk, p. 45
"Asty, John". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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