These remarks on Micah Thomas are found in an article on Thomas Thomas, his successor. They are from an article in the Baptist Quarterly, by D Mervyn Himbury, which you can find here
In 1836, to his great astonishment, he received an invitation from the officers and committee of the Abergavenny Academy to become the successor of Micah Thomas and the first President of the College which it was now proposed to establish at Pontypool. He must have realised the difficulties he was called upon to face. Micah Thomas had discovered how hard the path of the pioneer could be, for throughout his years at the Academy he had faced considerable opposition from many of the leading Baptist ministers of South Wales, chief of whom was Dr. John Jenkins of Hengoed, whose writings and publications were considered as a standard of hyper-Calvinist orthodoxy at that time. He, in 1827, had written a letter to the Welsh Baptist periodical, Cyfrinach y Bedyddwyr, in which he accused Micah Thomas of charging the students exorbitant fees, and of failing to supply them with the reasonable luxuries of life, particularly tea, of which Jenkins seems to have been extremely fond, sugar, candles and soap. This attack, which hid a theological antagonism, created much feeling in South Wales and though the committee vindicated its President, it is clear that the charges were not forgotten for in 1837, after retiring, Micah Thomas finds it necessary to write to The Baptist Magazine a letter in which he sets out his income during his last years as tutor and contrasts this with what the committee promised to pay his successor. In 1834 the uneasy relationship between the Academy and the leading ministers became obvious over a dispute occasioned by a letter sent by five students, W. Gravel, E. Price, J. Davies, T. Jones and J. Williams to the Greal, in which they accused their tutor of partiality, tyranny and heterodoxy. This letter is dated November 11th. These students withdrew from the Academy and on December 10th a special meeting of the committee passed a resolution regretting that so much money had been already spent on training men so unworthy of the Christian ministry. The matter, however, was not at an end, and on January 1st, 1835 a number of Baptist ministers, led by Jenkins, Hengoed and Hiley, Llanwenarth, met and agreed upon a statement which deplored the action of the College committee in attacking the moral character of these students and seeking help so that they could complete their education under the supervision of William Jones, Bethany, Cardiff. The whole affair caused an uproar in Baptist circles in South Wales and letter after letter appeared in the Greal during subsequent months. The controversy came to an end only with the resignation of Micah Thomas. Undoubtedly, some of this antipathy towards the founder of the Academy was due to the deep-rooted suspicion felt by many in regard to ministerial education itself.
John Jenkins' sons, in their life of their father, felt it necessary to insist that, though without college training himself, Jenkins was never opposed to the Academy at Abergavenny, but only to the inefficiency of its administration. Yet their dislike of the College was, in the main, due to their opposition to the more liberal Calvinism which Micah Thomas professed. The charge of the five students which received greatest prominence in the controversy that followed was that of heterodoxy, for they claimed that their tutor always advised them to read Wesley's Notes rather than Gill's Commentary. The seriousness of the controversy is seen in that the Glamorgan Association, meeting at Ystrad-dafodwg in June decided to discontinue their support of the Abergavenny institution and to make collections in aid of the "new academy" in Cardiff. These troubles were the background to the resignation of Micah Thomas and it is remarkable that his successor was able to command such wide support for the College from the very beginning of his Presidency. It was to secure this support that Thomas Thomas left London in May, 1836 and spent the Summer visiting ,the Welsh Association meetings. The impression he created was extremely favourable. He was never made the subject of attack for his heterodoxy in regard to Calvinistic dogma. Micah Thomas had, in fact, won his battle, and the difficulties he overcame made the contribution of his successor possible.
When he resigned from the Presidency of the Academy Micah Thomas did not relinquish the pastorate of the church he had been instrumental in founding. The committee, therefore, were forced to consider changing 'the location of the College, for its funds were insufficient to meet the salary of a full-time tutor. I t was for this reason that Pontypool was chosen as the future home of the institution for it had been felt, for some time, that an English church should be set up here.
