Samuel Medley

Samuel Medley was an English Particular Baptist minister and hymn writer. Born at Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, in 1738, he entered the Royal Navy and was severely wounded during an engagement off Portugal in 1759. During his recovery he encountered an Isaac Watts sermon that became important in his conversion. After leaving naval service, Medley joined the Baptist congregation in Eagle Street, London, taught school, and prepared for pastoral ministry.

He served a Baptist congregation at Watford from 1767 before accepting the pastorate of the Byrom Street church in Liverpool in 1772. He remained there until his death in 1799. Contemporary and later biographical accounts remember him as an energetic preacher whose Liverpool congregation expanded during his ministry; a larger chapel opened in 1789. Medley also issued hymns on separate sheets for congregational use before gathering them into books.

His surviving work numbers more than two hundred hymns and reflects evangelical Baptist emphases on conversion, grace, assurance, and the person of Christ. Representative texts include I Know That My Redeemer Lives, Awake My Soul in Joyful Lays, and O What Amazing Words of Grace. His writing helped give eighteenth-century dissenting congregations a warm, testimony-shaped language for worship.