The ENGLISH BAPTISTS
and their
CONFESSIONS OF FAITH
Baptists have never been fond of creeds, declarations of synods, and confessions of faith. They have always believed, “The Bible is the Word of God and the only rule of faith and practice.” Our articles of faith say that.
We read passages such as Rev. 22:18, “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.” We understand that to mean the Bible is all we need. We do not need man-made creeds and confessions of faith to supplement it, or back it up. The Bible can stand on its own.
And yet, in the 1600’s, the Baptists in England issued a spate of confessions of faith. How are we to look at those confessions? That is the question we will consider in this little study.
We are often told, “The London Confession represents what Baptists have always believed. Any departure from that standard is a departure from Baptist doctrine.” But is that true? Did that document represent what all Baptists in England believed at that time, or did it represent what some of them believed? Was it precisely what they believed, or was it a close approximation of their doctrine? Did those men intend for that document to be a standard for all time, or was it simply an explanation put forth to answer the slanderous charges that were being made against them?
Generally, when people talk about the London Confession, they mean the Second London Confession of 1689. But why the second confession; why not the First London Confession of 1644? They are not the same. If it is a departure from the faith not to venerate the Second London Confession, why was it not a departure for them to discard the First London Confession?
Or why either London Confession; why not the confession of 1611? You say that was a General Baptist confession. You are right; it was, but what about the Midland Confession of 1655, or the Somerset Confession of 1656? Those were Particular Baptist Confessions, and they were different from the London Confession of 1689.
There were two kinds of Baptists putting out confessions at that time. They were the Arminian General Baptists and the Calvinistic Particular Baptists. The Generals began in 1608, and the Particulars began in 1633. They had both grown out of the Protestant Independents, and they insisted they were good Protestants. The Independents had earlier broken with the Church of England, who had themselves broken from the Roman Catholic Church. In the preface to the Second London Confession the Particular Baptists stated their purpose to be (1) to demonstrate their devotion to that wholesome Protestant doctrine, and (2) to demonstrate that they were as good Protestants as the Presbyterians, the Independents, or the Church of England.
And there were the old-order Anabaptists, who had been in England since apostolic times. They had never been connected with Rome, nor with her Protestant daughters. They were still present in substantial numbers, when the Generals and Particulars began. The last old-order Anabaptist to be burned at the stake in England was Edward Wightman in 1611. It is through these old-order Anabaptists the Primitive Baptists trace our lineage.
The Protestants made the most scurrilous charges against the Anabaptists. Without first investigating the matter, the Generals and Particulars accepted those charges at face value, and repeated them. They bristled at being called Anabaptists.
On the other hand, the old-order Anabaptists were always suspicious of the new reformed Baptists, who had so recently broken with the Protestants. They thought they had not been sufficiently reformed—they brought too many Protestant corruptions with them. When they talked about the new reformed Baptists, they sound, for all the world, like Primitive Baptists of this day talking about New-School Baptists. Persecution forced all three kinds of Baptists into the same camp, and to the best of their ability they worked together, but they were never entirely agreed. It was not possible the Generals and Particulars would ever agree with each other, or with the old-order Anabaptists.
The Particulars put out the two London confessions. Suppose we were to put together a confession of what Baptists believe in our day. Who would we call on to put it together? How would it read? Who could put together a confession of faith which Southern (Missionary) Baptists and Primitives could agree to? If the Freewill Baptists could accept it, do you imagine the Landmark Baptists would be satisfied?
But I am told the English Baptists were more in agreement in the 1600’s than we are today. Where did anybody get that idea? When was the entire Baptist family ever in agreement? They were not entirely in agreement in the apostle’s day. Why do you think Paul wrote all those epistles? Sometimes he dealt with false doctrine; sometimes he dealt with false practice. In most of them, he called on them to change their ways. If the Baptists were not fully in agreement in the apostles’ day, and we are not entirely in agreement in this day, why should we believe they were in agreement in the 1600’s?
If the Baptists were going to put out a confession of faith, how did it happen that they adopted a Presbyterian confession? The London Confession of 1689 is simply the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of 1646 with a few critical changes to make it acceptable to Baptists. The preface to the confession states that they concluded to “retain the same order,” “without any variation in the terms,” and to use “the very same words,” as the Westminster Confession. Why would they do that? Why did they not come up with a distinctly Baptist confession?
Someone has ventured to say they had been persecuted for so long they compromised their principles in order to gain relief. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
You may differ with the wording of the London Confession. You may insist that on some points it does not square with the plain teaching of the Bible. You may insist that it is more Protestant than Baptist, but no person who has spent any amount of time studying the conditions that gave rise to the London Confession could, even for a moment, imagine those men compromised their principles.
A careful study of the lives and experience of the men who adopted that confession proves beyond all question that no more noble, no more godly, no more faithful, group of men ever lived.
The Roman Catholic Church in England lost its power to persecute with the death of Queen Mary in 1558. The Church of England gave up on burning Baptists in 1611, with the burning of Edward Wightman. They realized they were doing the Baptists’ work for them. Submitting to be burned alive, rather than deny what they believed, was the most eloquent sermon anyone could possibly preach. The authorities finally realized that the public spectacle of burning Baptists for their faith only gained converts for the Baptists. But putting an end to burning them did not end, or really diminish, their persecution.
The General Baptists came along in 1608, and the first Particular Baptist church was formed in 1633. From that time until William of Orange came to the throne in 1689, the Baptists suffered as brutal treatment in England as any body of people who ever lived.
They no longer burned them at the stake, but they would arrest preachers, take them through a farce of a trial, and lock them up to starve and freeze in filthy jails, while their families starved and froze at home. Often, in order to have a roof over their heads, their wives and children would join them in jail, and they would freeze and starve together. The principle was out of sight, out of mind. The spectacle of a public burning, and the sympathy it provoked, were avoided. The preacher was prevented from doing his work, and those who were connected with him were sufficiently warned.
Thomas Delaune and his wife, and both their children, starved and finally died in prison. He was one of literally thousands who suffered in just that way. These were men who could have gained their freedom— if they would only agree to compromise their principles. They refused, and, by the thousands, they died for it.
John Bunyon spent twelve years in Bedford jail. His suffering was made more unbearable, because he was separated from his little blind daughter, who was especially dear to him. He was still in prison when she died. I cannot help but feel a lump in my throat when I think of how he must have felt to know he could not be with her, especially at that moment. John Bunyan could have gained his freedom at any time, if he would only agree to quit preaching. His answer was always that if they released him today, he would preach again tomorrow. Those were not the kind of men who compromise their most fundamental beliefs.
Sometimes, with the approval of the authorities, the mob would storm into churches, drag the preacher out of the pulpit, and with swords and clubs waving, they would beat the congregation mercilessly, even women “great with child.” They would lead the preacher off to the judge, who would threaten to see to it the preacher was hanged, and impose a large fine. But, if they let him go, he would often be found preaching in the same pulpit that night, only to have the same thing happen all over again.
Parliament imposed a scale of fines and penalties on dissenting preachers and their hearers, with a lesser fine for the first penalty, a greater fine for the second, and an even greater fine for the third offense. There were different fines for the preacher, and the hearers, and the owners of the property where they met.
One third of the fine went to the informer who turned them in. An entire industry of informers resulted, with some of the most depraved and unprincipled individuals becoming wealthy on the proceeds of auctions held to raise money to pay the fines. The bishops and Establishment preachers would often attend the auctions to pick up bargains from the misery of their victims.
With informers constantly on the prowl, they would often meet in the woods, sometimes before daylight, or late in the night. They would make a point of waiting till near the time of service before they announced the place, and they would assemble and disperse from different directions. They would have guards posted to sound the alarm, if they heard somebody coming. One poor boy tried to sound the alarm, but his leather britches were frozen to the ground. By the time he broke loose, it was too late.
They no longer burnt preachers at the stake, but they did hang, draw and quarter them. Drawing and quartering meant that after they hanged him, they would cut his body in four parts (quarters), drag it through the town, and put the body parts on display. They would often chop off his head, mount it on a pike, and display it in front of his church.
John James was one of the preachers hanged, drawn, and quartered.” After he was hanged, his body was butchered like an animal, and dragged through town on a sled, to be displayed on the city gates, and his head was placed on a pole across from his church. It is impossible to imagine the feelings of his little church to see their pastor’s head so abused. Ivimy gives the account. “His quarters were taken back to Newgate, on the sledge which carried him to the gallows and were afterwards placed on the city gates, and his head was set upon a pole opposite the meeting-house.” (Ivimy’s History, vol. 1, ppg. 227).
They would often strip a family of everything they had in the world, and leave them penniless and homeless. They were just as vicious with those who assisted them in their distress. One man was fined, because he shed a tear, when he saw a Baptist preacher beaten almost to death with a whip.
On numerous occasions, when an entire community had become Baptists, they would devastate the entire community. The authorities would strip them of their personal property, their little cash, and the very tools of their trade. They were often left destitute without the means to earn a livelihood.
No one who has studied the available material could imagine those men compromised under pressure.
We are treading on sacred ground, and however much we may differ with some expressions in the London Confession, it behooves us to be very careful about criticizing those who adopted it. Those Particular Baptists who adopted the London Confession were as honest, as determined, and as faithful as anyone who ever graced the earth. If they signed their names to it, you can be sure they believed what they signed.
In spite of their resistance to confessions of faith, early in the 1600’s, the Baptists did begin to draw up confessions. They intended for those confessions to act as a defense mechanism against the heinous accusations that were being leveled against them. They were put forth to deal with a serious present need, and for that reason, if for no other, we should not be overly harsh with them for doing so. We must keep it always in mind that those confessions were never meant to be official standards or supplements to the Bible. The Protestants make that claim for their confessions; the Baptists do not.
The General Baptist John Smyth put out his confession in 1611. It set the tone for the Baptist confessions that were to follow. The preface states that “they are forced against their whole minds to publish it, for the clearing of their innocency in such things.” (Crosby’s History, vol. 2, pg. a2 preface). Notice that he says they were forced to do it; the danger of the times demanded it.
No one living today has suffered the way they did. None of us have known the anguish of freezing and starving in a filthy jail, knowing that our wives and tiny children are freezing and starving at home—if they even have a home. We cannot imagine how it must have torn the heart out of a poor Baptist preacher to know it was his preaching that was bringing misery on those who were so dear to him. So if those good brethren sometimes used poor judgment, it still behooves us that we be very careful how we talk about them.
The Particular Baptists put out their first confession in 1644. They were never entirely satisfied with it, but they kept fine tuning it, and they issued new editions in 1645, 1646, 1651, 1652, and 1653. Their confessions were a benefit in that they helped to clear up many of the slanderous charges being made against them. Those outside the Baptist ranks were surprised they did not contain the wild notions that had been charged against them. Some were so surprised, they denied that they was a true representation of what Baptists believed, but acting on the confession, on March 4, 1647, Parliament gave a favorable response, and granted legal toleration to the Baptists.
That confessions would continue to be in use for awhile, but by the time the Second London Confession was first adopted in 1677, copies of that first London Confession were almost impossible to find, and very few Baptists knew anything about it. By his own admission, Benjamin Keach, who signed the Second London Confession, had never heard of it. It seems that if they had intended for the confession to be a standard of orthodoxy, their leaders would, at least, have been aware of its existence.
Keach actually began his ministry as an Arminian General Baptist, and was well received by them. Few men had more impact on the English Baptists of his day than he did. He was still a General Baptist when he was put in the pillory, and pelted with rotten fruit and bad eggs, while his books were burned before his face. He was converted to Calvinism by Hansard Knollys and William Kiffin after persecution forced him to move to London in 1668. So, regardless of how sincere and devout he was, he was still a new convert when he signed the first draft of the Second London Confession put forth in 1677.
Even after he converted, he never ceased to be in sympathy with the Arminian General Baptists, and believed the two groups should be able to minimize their Arminian/Calvinist differences and come together as one people.
The General Baptists followed with their Orthodox Creed in 1678. The influence of Keach is obvious. The title they adopted for the confession was: An Orthodox Creed or a protestant confession of faith; being an essay to unite and confirm all true protestants. Notice that their intention was to unite and confirm all true Protestants. Both the Generals and the Particulars thought of the Baptists as another kind of Protestants, and they wanted to unite the Baptists under the Protestant banner.
In spite of the denying Arminianism expression in the preface to the Second London Confession, with so many Arminians among the Particulars, and so many Calvinists among the Generals, it is obvious that many of their leaders did not consider the Arminian/Calvinist difference as a great obstacle to union.
The Generals and Particulars put out a steady stream of confessions for well over a hundred years. They could never come up with a confession they could agree on.
No sooner would one confession be advanced, than another group of churches would adopt a different confession. They would generally avow their agreement with the former confession, but they did not agree enough to allow it to stand without putting forth their own alternative.
There was John Smyth’s General Baptist Confession in 1609, and Thomas Helwysse’s General Baptist Confession in 1611, and the Particular Baptists’ First London Confession first put out 1644, and revised in 1645, 1646, 1651, 1652, and 1653, and the Midland Confession in 1655, and the Somerset Confession of 1656, and the Standard Confession in 1660, and the Orthodox Confession in 1678, and the Second London Confession put out by the Particular Baptists in 1677, 1678, 1688, and 1689, and Keach’s Goat Yard Confession in 1697, and John Gill’s Goat Yard Confession in 1729. None of them were entirely right, and none of them were entirely wrong, and none of them entirely agreed with any of the others.
With so many confessions being tried and rejected, it is hard to imagine that any of them were divinely inspired. With so many efforts made, if God was the author of any of them, you would think they would have found one confession they could live with.
What the Particular Baptists finally did was to adopt the Presbyterian Westminster Confession, make such strategic changes as were necessary to make it acceptable to Baptists, and adopt it as their own. They were more successful with that modified Presbyterian confession than they had been with any of their Baptist confessions. There were any number of reasons for that.
For one thing, the Westminster Confession had a distinct air of authority about it. It had been drafted by the Westminster Assembly which was, without question, the most august assembly of Protestant Bible scholars ever assembled at any one time and place. With both the Generals and the Particulars protesting so loudly that they were simply another kind of Protestants, they could not help but be impressed by the Westminster Confession.
It was hard for the Presbyterians to object to the new Baptist confession, seeing that, except for a few subjects such as baptism, church government, and submission to the secular authorities, it was an almost verbatim copy of their own.
The Baptists were very explicit in pointing out that they had simply copied the Westminster Confession. In their preface they point out that they “retained the same order,” that they used “words concurrent with the former,” “Without any variation in the terms,” that they used “the very same words,” and that their “faith and doctrine is the same with theirs.”
Even that might have been a benefit, if they had changed somewhat more than they did. As it happened, they retained far more than they rejected, and most of the problems that have afflicted the Baptists from that day til this are traceable to notions the Baptists copied from the Presbyterian Westminster Confession.
Even though the Second London Confession was more widely accepted than others had been, it fell far short of universal acceptance. The people in that day had less confidence in it than many in later generations have had.
Those who today place such great value on the London Confession seem not to realize how vigorously it was resisted, and how little it was appreciated in its own day. Until John Gill appeared on the scene, Benjamin Keach towered above the Baptists of that entire century. He was one of the most prolific Baptist writers of any age. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress has endured in a way which no other human production ever has; but in their own day, Keach’s War With the Devil was fully as successful as Pilgrim’s Progress. His contemporaries predicted that War With the Devil would still be reprinted until the end of time. It did continue to be republished for over one hundred years.
Keach was one of the main forces behind the Second London Confession, but after only eight years even he rejected the confession. Benjamin Keach became pastor of the Goat Yard Church, later served by John Gill. It is not entirely clear whether he was not able to hold his church to the confession, and they demanded a better confession, or whether Keach was himself dissatisfied, and wanted to produce a confession more to his liking. George Ella relates that in 1697 they replaced it with “a shortened, less specific, though still highly evangelical version.” (George Ella’s, John Gill, pg. 35). So within eight years of its adoption, not even this great signatory of the London Confession subscribed to his own work.
John Gill was called as the pastor of the same Goat Yard Church in 1719. He rejected the London Confession out of hand. He wanted nothing to do with either the London Confession of 1689, or the substitute confession issued by his own church in 1697. He drew up his own confession of faith, and the Goat Yard Church entered that confession in their church book in 1729. The church continued to use Gill’s confession until well into the 1800’s. (George Ella, pg. 69)
There are those, today, who are so totally unaware of the confusing array of confessions produced at that time, that they seem to imagine the Baptists received the Second London Confession as some kind of oracular pronouncement. But even though many of the greatest leaders of that day rejected the London Confession, it persisted, and today, it is the only Baptist confession most people know anything about.
That Second London Confession owes most of its success to its similarity to the Westminster Confession. Pedobaptists though they were, those who made up the Westminster Assembly were some of the most brilliant scholars ever gathered in one place. They were master wordsmiths, and they knew how to present their points of view. There was more sophistry than sagacity in many of their arguments; but they were fully in command of the language, and they always had a proof text they could apply, rightly or wrongly, to their arguments.
More than that, the Generals and Particulars of that day are not alone in arguing that Baptists are just another kind of Protestants. There have always been those like Israel in the old days, who wanted a king, so they could be like other nations. Other nations had a king; so Israel wanted a king. God was their king, but they wanted a king they could see, one who would lead them into battle, and fight for them.
God has given us the Bible as our one rule of faith and practice. We do not need any supplements to the Bible, any secondary authorities. But for some, the Bible has never been enough. Other people have their creeds, and confessions of faith, and there will always be those who want whatever others have. It is ironic that those whose favorite motto is sola scriptura (scripture only) are the most determined not to settle for the Bible as their only rule of faith and practice.
Not only did the London Confession not succeed in uniting the Baptists of that day. The next thirty years (1689 til 1719) saw some of the fiercest infighting the Baptists have ever known.
Keach’s Goat Yard Confession of 1697 denied that baptism and the Lord’s Supper were the only ordinances of the Lord’s church. Keach was sure hymn singing, and laying on of hands after baptism were also church ordinances. If a person was not willing to have hands laid on him after baptism, he could not be a member of Keach’s church. That was a hobby of his during his entire ministry.
History has been kind to Keach, but his own people were not so gentle. With his domineering personality and fiery temper, he saw to it those principles were included in his new confession. The aged Hansard Knollys sided with Keach against William Kiffin and Isaac Marlow. Keach, Kiffin, and Knollys all signed the Confession, but the ink was hardly dry on the confession before those three giants were engaged in an unholy war. No doubt, personalities became involved, and neither side would budge. The battle became so hot it tore Keach’s Goat Yard Church and the other London churches to pieces.
Benjamin Keach was himself one source of the heterodoxy of the time. Not only was he willing divide churches over the question of whether hymn singing, and laying on of hands were church ordinances, his sacramental views regarding baptism and the Lord’s Supper were closer to the Presbyterian than they were to the Baptist view. In his Types and Metaphors, pg. 639, he says, “There is a mystical conveyance or communication of all Christ’s blessed merits to our souls through faith held forth thereby, and in glorious manner received, in the right participation of it.” Baptists have always believed the Lord’s Supper is a figure of what Christ did for us. The bread and wine are emblems. We do not believe they actually convey “Christ’s blessed merits to our souls.” They are symbols of God’s grace; they are not means of grace. Keach was a long way from Baptist doctrine on that point.
Another problem that vexed the Baptists during the thirty years after the adoption of the London Confession was the usurping of church authority by the coffee-house fraternals. In his zeal to unite the Arminian General Baptists and the Calvinistic Particular Baptists, Keach and his colleagues organized groups of preachers called fraternals which met at coffee-houses in London.
George Ella records, “The difficulties found in adopting a common creed prevented the Particular Baptist church and their General Baptist brethren from enjoying true fellowship with one another, but a number of pastors believed that if they could only persuade their fellow office-bearers from the various Baptist churches to meet in fellowship, eventually some form of church unity could be worked out. The venue chosen for these minister’s fraternals of clubs, sometimes meeting within the denomination, sometimes together, were not the Baptist chapels, but the many coffee-houses springing up at the time in London and other major towns. These coffee-house fraternals of special approved pastors (club members determined who could join them, not the churches) gradually became the true governing bodies of both the General and Particular Baptists in the years between 1697 and 1720 when Gill succeeded Benjamin Keach’s son-in-law Benjamin Stinton as pastor of Goat yard. Their unifying aim was made clear right from the start as, when the Hanover Coffee House club was founded by Keach and like-minded brethren, it was done so with the recorded determination to seek union with the General Baptists” (Ella, pg. 35).
So, the two goals of these fraternals were (1) to unite the Arminian General and the Calvinistic Particular Baptists, and (2) to regulate the churches. They were self-perpetuating; they determined who could belong to their number. They operated outside the churches, and exerted authority over the churches. They decided grievances within churches, and between churches. They decided who could be ordained, and they provided the presbytery. They provided the Baptists with a functioning hierarchy.
The Baptists had complained bitterly against the Anglican episcopacy, but there is no discernible difference between the Anglican episcopacy and these Baptist coffee-house fraternals. Unscriptural though they were, they exercised authority over the Baptist churches until John Gill brought them to their knees in 1720.
Not only were the next thirty years after 1689 a time of vicious infighting among the Baptists, it was a time of serious doctrinal departure. According to George Ella, “John Gale, the pastor at Paul’s Alley….was considered by many Baptists as the theologian of the movement, chiefly because of his writings on baptism.” (Ella. pg 67). Til this day, Gale is quoted as the Baptist authority from that age on the subject of baptism. But in spite of the fact that Gale is still thought of a Baptist authority, Ella goes on to point out that, “Gale, besides rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity, rejected almost all Reformed doctrines, including justification by faith. Soon Gale, like his co-pastor Burroughs and successor Foster, became an out and out Socinian who preached mere rational and humanistic moralism.” (Ella, pg 68). Such skepticism and unbelief were rampant among the upper echelon of the Particular and General Baptists of that age.
Matthew Caffyn was another leading Baptist preacher of that day who questioned the doctrine of the Trinity. Eventually, largely through his influence, almost the entire body of General Baptists went off into Unitarianism.
With such men as John Gale, and Matthew Caffyn exerting influence over them, it is questionable whether the English Baptists would have withstood the storm, if it had not been for John Gill, and his stalwart stand for the doctrine. Gill’s contemporary, John Ryland “was convinced that God had specially chosen Gill to lead the Particular Baptists out of oblivion and doctrinal disunity” “He goes on to say, ‘Much of the credit for this unswerving allegiance to the doctrine of scripture, under God, must be attributed to John Gill, known affectionately as Dr. Voluminous.” (Ella, pg. 20).
There are any number of points on which most Baptists of today would disagree with Gill. Not many pre-millenialists, would accept Gill’s views on the millenium. Early in his ministry he believed the gospel was a means in regeneration. He later changed his mind about that. He was as fallible as any other mortal, and he changed his mind from time to time, but he did what the London Confession was totally unable to do. He did more to stabilize the English Baptists than any other man of his day.
Persecution had driven the three kinds of Baptists into the same camp, but persecution largely ended with the coronation of William of Orange, and the Act of Toleration in 1689. By that time they were not so much divided up into General, Particular, and old-order Anabaptist churches, as there were three mindsets intertwined in the same churches. Beginning in 1689, the three kinds of Baptists were free to worship openly, and to openly make war on each other.
Gill was called as pastor of the Goat Yard Church in 1719, and for the next fifty years, his towering influence held the warring factions together. But the Generals, the Particulars, and the old-order Baptists were so fundamentally different, it was impossible they could stay together. Soon after Gill died in 1771, the skirmishes broke into open warfare, and the Baptists spent forty years, from 1792 til 1832, warring against each other, and coming to an ultimate division.
The Baptists have never been infallible. They were certainly not infallible in 1689. The most ironic thing about the entire conflict over the London Confession is that so many people look to one of the most confused, and unstable, periods in Baptist history for a standard of Baptist orthodoxy.
For all its faults, the London Confession is a grand old monument, and for those who do not examine it too closely it has an air of respectability. After all, it has been around for over three hundred years.
Any number of efforts have been made to rehabilitate it. In 1787, the Separate and Regular Baptists in America tried to do what Keach and his coffee-house friends tried to do for the Arminian General Baptists and the Calvinistic Particulars. They tried to find a basis on which to come together as one people, and they chose the London Confession as their platform. But they did it with the understanding that nobody was required to believe all of it. That was the result of their trying to compromise with the Arminians in their ranks. Again, any collection of Arminians and predestinarians, trying to work out a doctrinal compromise, is a poor place to look for Baptist infallibility.
Their effort did not work. In 1787, the Separates and Regulars did come together; but, beginning in 1792, they again separated, this time as New School and Old School, or Missionary and Primitive Baptists. In 1796, Benjamin Randall organized the most Arminian of them as Freewill Baptists. Two hundred years of conflict accomplished very little. Their new conflict lasted from 1792 until 1832, and after forty years of open warfare, they wound up essentially where the Generals, Particulars, and old-order Baptists had been two hundred years before. Only this time they were called Old-School, New School, and Freewill Baptists.
They had chosen the wrong foundation, and the merger would not hold. “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus,” 1 Cor. 3:11. Christ revealed in his word is the only sure foundation; no confession of faith is an acceptable substitute.
Again, in 1900, the Primitive Baptists were about to split three ways. A large and representative body of capable Primitive Baptist preachers came together at Fulton, Kentucky. The Primitive Baptists were in crisis, and they intended to fend off a division if they could.
Like the Regulars and Separates one hundred years before, they tried to use the London Confession as a rallying point. They reaffirmed what they could accept; they explained away what they could not accept; and they looked aside, and walked past what they could not explain away.
They did everything that could be done to rehabilitate a fundamentally flawed document—and they failed. They had hardly done their work before the Primitive Baptists split into Absoluters, Progressives, and Old-Liners.
The elders who assembled at Fulton, Kentucky in 1900, were some of the brightest and best Bible scholars the Lord’s church has ever known—in any age. For doctrinal insight, and spiritual understanding, some of those men could more than hold their own against anyone two thousand years of church history has to offer. If those men could not patch up the London Confession, and make it a rallying point for unity, it cannot be done.
In the light of all the efforts that have been made over the last three hundred years to establish, or rehabilitate, the London Confession, we need to acknowledge once and for all that, “The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, and the only rule of faith and practice.”
The Bible is enough; we need no other standard.
THE END