Henry Venn (1725 in Barnes, Surrey, England - 1797), was an English evangelical minister and one
of the founders of the Clapham Sect, a small but highly influential evangelical group within
the Anglican Church.
Life.
Venn was educated at Cambridge University, where he found time to play cricket for England as
well as studying at St John's and Jesus colleges.
He took orders in 1747, and was elected fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1749.[1] After holding a curacy at Barton, Cambridgeshire, he became curate of both St Matthew, Friday Street, in the City of London, and of West Horsley,
Surrey, in 1750. Local clergy already considered him a Methodist (in later terms, an evangelical),
since he taught Scripture in his home and the number of communicants at West
Horsley increased from twelve to sixty. However, it was only at this time that
his beliefs moved from the High
Church views of The Whole Duty of
Man to the more evangelical
position of A
Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. In 1754 he became curate of Clapham and was also elected lecturer of St Swithin's, London Stone and St Alban's Wood Street. He was vicar of Huddersfield from 1759 to 1771, when he exchanged to the
living of Yelling, Huntingdonshire where he died in the
rectory - he is commemorated by a plaque over the pulpit of the parish
church.
Besides being a leader of the evangelical revival, he was well
known as the author of The Compleat
Duty of Man (London, 1763), a work
in which he intended to supplement the teaching embodied in the anonymous Whole Duty of Man from an evangelical perspective. A portrait
of him, by John Russell, is
in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Wiki.
.jpeg)