Baptist History and Denominational Development — Unit 4: The Particular Baptists and the London Confessions (1644, 1689)

Key Verse

"Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 1:13, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain how the Particular Baptists arose in London in the 1630s and 1640s, and how they differed from the General Baptists.

2. Describe why the First London Confession was written in 1644 and name three things it taught.

3. Explain how persecution after 1660 shaped Baptist life, and name two Baptists who suffered for their faith.

4. Describe the Second London Confession (published 1677, reissued 1689): the documents it followed, and where it differed from them.

5. State the Calvinism question fairly, and explain the Baptist answer about the value and the limits of a confession of faith.

The Voice of This Unit

This unit is written from inside the Baptist tradition, for Baptist students. It is conservative. We hold that the Bible is the inspired and fully trustworthy Word of God and our final authority. Where historians disagree, or where other Christians object to what Baptists believe, we state their view fairly and then give the Baptist answer. Scripture says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Two Streams, Two Beginnings

In Unit 3 we met the General Baptists. They began around John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, and Helwys brought the first Baptist church back to England in 1612. They taught that Christ died for all people, and that anyone who believes may be saved.

In the same century a second Baptist stream appeared in London. These Baptists taught that Christ died to save His chosen people in particular. For this reason they were called Particular Baptists. The two names are about the extent of the atonement: did Christ die for every person, or for those whom God chose? On the church, on baptism and on Scripture, the two streams agreed. They differed on this question and on the doctrines connected with it.

The Particular Baptists did not come from the Dutch Mennonites, as the General Baptists did. They came out of English Separatism. Their mother church was a Separatist congregation in London, started in 1616 by Henry Jacob. It is often called the Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey church after three of its early pastors. Some members began to doubt infant baptism. Several left this church in the 1630s, and a group led by John Spilsbury formed a church of baptized believers. Other churches followed. By the early 1640s there were several Particular Baptist churches in London.

The question of immersion

At first these churches baptized believers, but many historians think they did not at once practice immersion. By about 1641 they had come to baptize by immersion. How did this happen? One old account says that a man named Richard Blunt went to the Netherlands to learn from a group there who immersed, and brought the practice back. Other historians doubt it, because the source was written later. The Baptist answer is simple. Whatever human help they had, the Particular Baptists defended immersion from the Bible. The Greek word baptizo means to dip or plunge. The New Testament pictures baptism as a burial and a rising: "Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). They saw Philip and the Ethiopian go "down into the water" (Acts 8:38). They did not build their practice on a church tradition. They built it on the Word.

The First London Confession (1644)

In 1644 seven Particular Baptist churches in London published a statement of faith. It is called the First London Confession. Historians count fifty-two articles in it.

Why they wrote it

The Baptists were slandered. Their enemies called them "Anabaptists," a word that reminded people of the radical rebels at Münster in Germany in the 1530s, who had seized a city, practiced violence and taught strange doctrines. The English Baptists had nothing to do with Münster. They did not take up the sword, and they were orthodox about God. But England was in turmoil in the 1640s, and any strange group could be accused of disorder. So the churches wrote a confession to show who they were. They wanted to say plainly: we believe in the Trinity, we honor Scripture, we obey the lawful magistrate, and we are not rebels.

What it taught

The First London Confession did three main things.

First, it showed agreement with the wider Protestant faith. It taught the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the authority of Scripture, salvation through Christ alone, and the resurrection of the dead. In these matters the Baptists stood with other Protestants.

Second, it stated the Particular Baptist teaching on salvation. It taught that Christ died for the elect, that God calls sinners by His Word and Spirit, and that those whom He saves will be kept.

Third, it stated what was distinctive about Baptists. It described the church as a company of visible believers, gathered by the Word and joined together by covenant, with Christ as its only Head. It said that baptism belongs to those who profess faith, and it described baptism as an immersion in water. It also taught that Christ alone is Lord of the conscience. Even so, it did not deny the authority of the civil government in civil matters. The churches asked that the magistrate not force the conscience, and they promised to obey in all lawful things.

A second edition appeared in 1646. William Kiffin, a London merchant, was one well-known leader of these churches in those years.

Persecution and Faithfulness

For a short time during the Commonwealth period the Baptists enjoyed some freedom. In 1660 the monarchy returned under Charles II, and with it came the established Church of England in full power. A series of laws, often called the Clarendon Code, was passed against Christians who would not conform. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 required clergy to use the Book of Common Prayer. The Conventicle Acts forbade meetings for worship outside the established church. Baptists who met anyway risked fines, prison and the loss of their goods.

Two Baptists show us what this cost.

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a tinker, a mender of pots and pans, who became a preacher in Bedfordshire. He was arrested in 1660 for preaching without a license. He refused to promise that he would stop, and he spent about twelve years in prison. He made laces to support his family, and he wrote. His best-known book, The Pilgrim's Progress, was published in 1678. Bunyan was a Baptist, though his church in Bedford welcomed believers of other views and he did not make baptism a test of fellowship. Baptists have long loved him for his faith and for his courage.

Benjamin Keach (1640-1704) was a Baptist preacher in London. In 1664 he was tried for writing a small book for children that taught Baptist beliefs. He was punished in public. Keach later pastored a church in Southwark and introduced the singing of hymns in worship, which brought a hot controversy among Baptists. We shall come back to Keach in Course 4.

The Baptist answer to persecution was not violence. They suffered and they kept their testimony. They used their sufferings to argue for a principle we shall follow through this course: God alone is Lord of the conscience, and no government has the right to force a person's faith (see Acts 5:29). Their suffering also shaped their churches. Congregations met quietly, kept covenant with each other, and learned to depend on the Lord.

The Second London Confession (1677, 1689)

By the 1670s the Particular Baptists wanted a fuller statement of faith. They had two reasons.

The first reason was that other English Christians had produced larger confessions. The Presbyterians had the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646). The Congregationalists adapted it in the Savoy Declaration (1658). These were careful, detailed documents. They did not wish to appear as a strange sect.

The second reason was to teach their own people, because a church that knows what it believes can better resist error.

So the Baptists took the Savoy Declaration and the Westminster Confession as a model, and in many places followed their words. But they changed what they could not accept. They changed the chapters on baptism and the church. They taught believer's baptism by immersion, and not the baptism of infants. They taught that each local church is governed by its own members under Christ, not by synods or presbyteries. They taught that the Lord's Supper is an ordinance of the church, and that believers feed upon Christ by faith, spiritually and not physically. In this way the Baptists said: we agree with you in the great doctrines of grace, but Scripture teaches us otherwise about baptism and church order.

The confession was published in 1677. In 1689, after the Toleration Act of that year gave Dissenters the freedom to worship, Baptist churches from England and Wales sent leaders to a General Assembly in London. They approved it again and published it openly. For this reason it is usually called the Second London Confession, or the Baptist Confession of 1689. It has thirty-two chapters. They cover Scripture, God and the Trinity, the fall of man, Christ the mediator, free grace, repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, saving faith, the perseverance of the saints, the law of God, the gospel and its reach, Christian liberty, worship, the Lord's Day, the church, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the civil magistrate, marriage, and the resurrection and last judgment.

Why 1689 mattered

For a long time this was the most widely used confession among Particular Baptists. In 1707 the Baptist churches near Philadelphia in America formed the Philadelphia Association, and in 1742 the Association adopted the 1689 Confession, with two small additions. The result is called the Philadelphia Confession. It carried the 1689 teaching into American Baptist life. The New Hampshire Confession (1833), which you will meet in later units, was shorter and milder, but it too came from this tradition.

The Calvinism Question, Stated Fairly

Many Baptists today are Calvinistic. Others are not. We must describe the disagreement honestly.

The Particular Baptist (Reformed) view. The 1689 Confession teaches that God chose some people to be saved before the world began, that Christ died to secure the salvation of those people, and that God effectively calls them so that they believe. Its defenders point to texts such as Ephesians 1:4-5 and John 10:11, where Christ lays down His life for His sheep. They teach that the saved will persevere to the end, since God finishes what He begins (Philippians 1:6).

The objection. Other Baptists, including the General Baptists of that day and many "Traditional" Baptists today, reply that the Bible says Christ died for all. They point to John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 John 2:2. They say that God's offer of salvation is real for everyone, and that people are responsible to answer it. They fear that particular redemption makes the offer unreal and weakens evangelism.

The Baptist answer. The Particular Baptists did not believe that the gospel should be preached only to a few. The 1689 Confession itself teaches that the gospel is to be preached to all, with the command to repent and believe. Baptists on both sides teach that Christ receives everyone who comes to Him (John 6:37). Most conservative Baptists today agree on these points: salvation is by grace through faith alone, the gospel is freely offered to all, and the true believer is kept by God's power (1 Peter 1:5). On the deeper question of how God's choosing and our response fit together, Baptists have disagreed with each other in love for nearly four hundred years, and Course 2 will take it up fully. We hold the common core firmly. We do not break fellowship over the rest.

Confessions and the Bible

Some Christians object to confessions of faith. They say, "We have no creed but the Bible." The Baptists reply that this love for Scripture is right, but it needs care.

The objection says that written confessions add to the Bible and may replace it. The answer is that the Baptists never gave their confessions the authority of Scripture. The 1689 Confession itself puts Scripture first, as the only sufficient and infallible rule of faith and life. A confession is a summary of what a church understands the Bible to teach. It is subordinate to the Bible, and it can be corrected by the Bible. The Bereans "searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11), and a Baptist is invited to do the same with any confession.

Why then do Baptists use them? There are three reasons. A confession tells other people honestly what we believe; the Baptists of 1644 needed this. It teaches our own people and guards them from error; Paul told Timothy to "hold fast the pattern of sound words" (2 Timothy 1:13). And it helps churches work together, because those who agree on the main matters can cooperate. Everyone who says "we have no creed but the Bible" still has an understanding of what the Bible says. Writing it down makes it open to test.

Pastoral Application

You are a pastor in a Baptist church in a town in Mexico. A visitor from another church leaves a printed copy of the 1689 Confession at your church. A deacon reads it and comes to you troubled. "Pastor, it says Christ died only for the elect. Our evangelists tell people that Jesus died for them. Are we wrong? Do we have to choose between Calvinists and the rest?"

A wise pastor will do several things. First, he thanks the deacon for reading and for asking. Second, he sits down with him and opens the Bible, reading John 3:16, Ephesians 1:3-6 and John 10:11 together, and asks what each text says. Third, he explains that Particular and General Baptists both loved Christ, baptized believers, and held to Scripture. Fourth, he reminds the deacon that the 1689 Confession is a treasure but not the Bible. Fifth, he shows that the church can keep telling every person that Christ calls them to repent and believe, because the call to the gospel is for all. The pastor keeps the unity of the church and does not turn a question for study into a quarrel.

Summary

The Particular Baptists arose in London in the 1630s and 1640s out of English Separatism, teaching that Christ died for His elect, and by about 1641 they baptized believers by immersion. In 1644 seven London churches published the First London Confession, with fifty-two articles, to answer slander and to show that they were orthodox and law-abiding. After 1660 the Baptists suffered under laws against nonconformists, and Bunyan and Keach are two who endured prison or punishment. The Second London Confession, published in 1677 and reissued in 1689 after the Toleration Act, followed the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration, but it changed the teaching on baptism and church order. The Philadelphia Association adopted it in 1742 in America. Baptists have disagreed about the extent of the atonement, but the common core is firm: grace through faith, the gospel for all, and the believer kept by God. A confession is a servant of Scripture, not its master.

Further Reading

• The First London Confession of Faith (1644; second edition 1646), public domain.

• The Second London Confession of Faith (1677; 1689), public domain.

• John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), public domain.

• H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (1987).

• David W. Bebbington, Baptists Through the Centuries (2010).

• Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn and Michael A. G. Haykin, The Baptist Story (2015).

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