Stephen Lobb

Stephen Lobb (c. 1647 – 1699) was an English nonconformist minister and controversialist. He was prominent in the 1680s as a court representative of the Independents to James II, and in the 1690s in polemics between the Presbyterian and Independent groups of nonconformists. His church in Fetter Lane is supposed to be the successor to the congregation of Thomas Goodwin; he was the successor to Thankful Owen as pastor, and preached in tandem with Thomas Goodwin the younger.

He was the son of Richard Lobb, M.P., of Liskeard, Mill Park, Warleggan, and Tremethick, St. Neots, Cornwall. In 1681 he settled in London as pastor of an independent congregation, first in Swallow Lane, and moving in 1685 to Fetter Lane. He was accused of being concerned in the Rye House plot, and with another minister named Casteers was arrested in Essex and committed to prison in August 1683.

After James II had issued his declaration for liberty of conscience (4 April 1687), Lobb was one of the ministers selected by the independents to present an address of thanks to him. He became somewhat isolated because of his stance towards James; his frequent attendance at court, for which he was sometimes called the 'Jacobite Independent,' led the church party to accuse him of promoting a repeal of the Test Act.

When on 23 September 1688 Grocers' Hall was opened by the lord major, Lobb preached the sermon. After serving as a "preacher to a congregation of dissenting protestants at his house in Hampstead", the precursor to what later became Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, in 1694 he was chosen to fill one of the vacancies, occasioned by the exclusion of Daniel Williams, among the lecturers at the Pinners' Hall. He died on 3 June 1699.

In conjunction with John Humfrey, Lobb wrote in 1680 an Answer ... by some Nonconformists to a sermon preached by Edward Stillingfleet on the ”mischief of separation”. Stillingfleet replied the same year in The Charge of Schism Renewed. Lobb and Humfrey thereupon retorted with a Reply to the Defence of Dr. Stillingfleet.

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