John Kentish (minister)

[1] After passing through the school of John Worsley at Hertford, he was entered in 1784 as a divinity student at Daventry Academy, under Thomas Belsham, William Broadbent, and Eliezer Cogan.

In the autumn of 1790 he left Hackney to become the first minister of a newly formed Unitarian congregation at Plymouth Dock (now Devonport), Devonshire.

A chapel was built in George Street (opened 27 April 1791 by Theophilus Lindsey, and a prayer-book drawn up by Kentish and Thomas Porter of Plymouth.

[2] It was reprinted in 1800 with the name of the recipient and meetinghouse left out as a "Vindication of the Principles upon which Several Unitarians have Formed themselves into Societies," and gained wide distribution.

William Sturch, who had attended one of the services, wrote a tract condemning Kentish's Preterist views, in which he was said to have "overstated" the fulfilment of Christ's prediction of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, and under-stated the natural evidences of the immortality of man.