Charles Buck (minister)

Charles Buck (1771–1815) was an English Independent minister and theological writer, known for his Theological Dictionary.

Most information about Buck's life comes from extracts from his diaries and letters found in Memoirs and remains of the late Rev. Charles Buck edited by John Styles and published in 1817.

Buck was born in 1771 in the village of Hillsley near Wotton Underedge, Glouchestershire. He began his formal education in a boarding school in Hillsley run by the Rev William Hitchman, a Baptist minister. He left school at age 13 "to give himself up," as he wrote, "to amusement and folly."

The next year (1785) Buck went to London where he was "admitted into the office of an attorney" for the study and practiced law. In London, Buck says he was "just about launching into all the dissipations and licentiousness of the profligate" and was on the "very brink of destruction". More specifically, he wrote that "almost every evening found me at the theatre".

Buck does not describe what he saw or did at the theatre that he considered immoral, but the history of the London theater gives clues. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Rev. Jeremy Collier's pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (S. Keble, 1698) was in print. Collier denounced the theater's "immoral characters and situations" and attacks on clergy.

During the 18th century "huge crowds" attended theaters and some engaged in immoral behavior. "In front of the stage, young men would drink together, eat nuts and mingle with prostitutes down below in the notorious ‘pit’." The Beggar's Opera filled with immorality retained its theatrical hold in England throughout the 18th century.

Immoral or not, Buck said that he attended the theater almost daily. However, a Mr. Thomas Atkins introduced Buck to a "a sincere and zealous Christian" young man who encouraged Buck to read the Bible. Buck said that this opened him to "a new world" and began to change his life. Regarding this experience, Buck asked, "does conversion make a man an angel?" and answered, "surely not." He goes on to say that after his conversion, "the old temptation" was still there. In a letter of 19 April 1794, Buck suggested that the old temptation was still present because he said that he had been reading Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices (E. Baines, 1799).

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