William John Townsend (20 January 1835 – 7 March 1915) was a British minister of the Methodist New Connexion.
[1] He wrote on theology and the history of Methodism, writing biographies of Robert Morrison and Alexander Kilham.
He was educated at Percy Street Academy in Newcastle.
[1] He worked in business for several years,[2] before studying at Ranmoor College in Sheffield and becoming a minister of the Methodist New Connexion in 1860.
[1][3] The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages (1881) tried to provide "a fairer and higher estimate of the great Schoolmen" than as "solemn triflers [...] or as mere metaphysical gymnasts", and sketch a "rationale of Scholasticism": receiving the mass of Church dogma as an act of faith, it was the earnest, persevering laborious effort of the Schoolmen to justify the particulars of that mass of dogma to their reason and understanding [...] They failed, but their failure was really their greatest victory [...] Out of the patient faith, the consecrated lives, the high reasonings, [...] there have come victories of faith, experiences of freedom, attainments of truth, possibilities of facile expression of the noblest subjects, the unrestrained exercise of reason and conscience.