Recently, I was asked to write an introduction for a book by a little-known Baptist minister named Zenas Trivett (1753–1831). Entitled Plain Christian Duties Recommended, it is an address that Trivett gave at the establishment of a new Baptist congregation in 1791 – we are not told where, though it was probably in Essex, where Trivett’s pastorate was located at Langham.
This small pamphlet lays out the various responsibilities of a faithful member of a local church. Not surprisingly, Trivett emphasised that congregational polity was ‘the alone [i.e. only] plan of the New Testament’, though he urged his hearers never to dream that ‘all true religion [is] confined to your own denomination’. He particularly urged the congregation to often ‘meet together … for prayer and conversation’. For often believers who had come together ‘destitute of the spirit of devotion’, Trivett noted, have ‘had their cold affections warmed’.
But who was Zenas Trivett? In an anonymous obituary that was written after his death, the author of the obituary indicated his desire for any of his readers who could write ‘a more prolonged memoir’ than he had done, to do so. Sadly, none was forthcoming. The materials we have then for even a small biographical sketch like this are spare at best.
