He was born about 1766 near Llandovery, in the parish of Llandingat, Carmarthenshire. His father was a farmer. In 1780, at age 14 or 15, he started study at the ‘college of the church of Christ,’ Brecon, under William Griffiths, and remained there till 1783, when his father's death called him home. Soon after the establishment in 1786 of the New College, Hackney near London, he was admitted as a divinity student on the recommendation of his relative, David Jones, who was already a student there. He was a favourite pupil of Gilbert Wakefield, classical tutor. In 1792, he succeeded David Peter as assistant-tutor in the Welsh presbyterian college, then in Swansea, Glamorganshire. With William Howell, the principal tutor, an old-fashioned Arian, Jones, who was of the Priestley and combative, had serious differences. In 1795 the presbyterian board removed both tutors, and transferred the college to Carmarthen. Jones then in 1795 succeeded John Kentish as minister of the presbyterian congregation at Plymouth, Devon, where he remained till 1798. He then established a school at Halifax, Yorkshire. From 29 March 1802 to 1804 he was minister of Northgate End Chapel, Halifax, carrying on a school at the same time. In 1804 he settled in London as a tutor in classics, where his pupils included the sons of Sir Samuel Romilly. He after a time abandoned preaching altogether. He was a member of the Philological Society of Manchester; received the degree of LL.D. from Aberdeen University; was elected a trustee of Dr. Daniel Williams's foundations, and a member of the Royal Society of Literature. He died at Great Coram Street on 10 January 1827, and was interred in the burying-ground of St. George's, Bloomsbury, where his gravestone bore a Latin inscription.
Works
As a Greek-English lexicographer Jones did work which earned the commendation of Samuel Parr. He discarded accents. Instances of alleged theological bias in his interpretations were sharply commented on in the second number of the Westminster Review by John Walker the separatist; Jones fiercely defended himself. He defended the integrity of the passages in Josephus referring to Christ, and maintained that both Josephus and Philo were Christians. The initial chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke he rejected as interpolations, but he held the Comma Johanneum to be authentic, and to have been excised at an early date because it taught Unitarian doctrine. He published:
A Development of … Events, calculated to restore the Christian Religion to its … Purity, &c., Leeds, 1800, 2 vols.
The Epistle … to the Romans analysed, &c., Halifax, 1801.
Posthumous was: The Book of the Prophet Isaiah translated, &c., 1830. He edited an edition of John Entick's Latin Dictionary, 1824, and contributed largely to periodicals, especially the Monthly Repository.
Family
He married first, soon after 1804, the only daughter of Abraham Rees, who had been his tutor at Hackney. His first wife died without issue in 1815, and Jones married secondly, in 1817, Anna, only daughter of George Dyer of Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, who, with two children, survived him. His literary executor was his nephew, James Chervet of Croydon.
