His father was a secondhand bookseller, and his elder brother, about ten years his senior, was Joseph Towers, later well known as a biographer.
John went to sea as a lad, and was afterwards apprenticed to a London packer.
A secession from Jewin Street independent congregation chose him as pastor, and leased the Presbyterian meeting-house in Bartholomew Close, where he was ordained in 1769.
Among those who frequented it was the Baptist polemicist, poet and hymnist Maria De Fleury.
He published Polygamy Unscriptural (1780) (in response to Martin Madan), and sermons.