In mid-October, 1644, an English bookseller by the name of George Thomason, whose shop was located next to St. Paul’s Churchyard in London, began to sell a small tract entitled The Confession of Faith of those churches which are commonly (though falsly) called Anabaptists. The authors of this booklet were not named on the title-page, though at the foot of the introductory preface there did appear fifteen names—the pastoral leadership of the seven Particular, or Calvinistic, Baptist churches then in existence, all of them located in the capital.[1] As to which of these leaders were the actual authors of this Confession, later known as The First London Confession of Faith, it appears that John Spilsbury (1593–c.1668), William Kiffen (1616–1701), and Samuel Richardson (fl. 1640s−1660s) played the most prominent role in drawing it up.[2]
1. The 2nd edition of 1646 lists fourteen names as well as two elders of a French Huguenot congregation.
2. Joseph Ivimey, The Life of Mr. William Kiffin (London, 1833), 99; B. R. White, “The Doctrine of the Church in the Particular Baptist Confession of 1644,” The Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 19 (1968): 570; William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (2nd ed.; Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1969), 145–146.
Over the next forty years, these English Baptists produced a number of confessional statements, the most influential of which was The Second London Confession, popularly known as The 1689 Confession. It was signed by the leading Baptist figures of the day, including a couple of the great pioneers of Baptist life, namely, Kiffen and Hanserd Knollys (1599−1691), as well as the most important Baptist theologian of the seventeenth century, Benjamin Keach (1640−1704), and three remarkable Baptist preachers⎯Andrew Gifford, Sr. (1641−1721), Hercules Collins (c.1647−1702), and Henry Forty (c.1620s?−1693).
This text was not only the confession of faith adopted by the majority of Baptists in the British Isles and Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, but it was also the major confessional document on the American Baptist scene, where it was known as the Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742). This iteration added an article on the laying on of hands and also one on the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Among Baptists in the South, this confession played an influential role as The Charleston Confession (1767),[3] which became the basis of The Abstract of Principles, the statement of faith of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.[4]
3. The sole area of difference between the Philadelphia Confession and the Charleston Confession was the latter’s omission of the article on the laying on of hands. The 1767 Charleston Confession was reprinted in 1813, 1831, and 1850.
4. For details of the links between the Charleston Confession and the Abstract of Principles, see Michael A.G. Haykin, Roger D. Duke and A. James Fuller, Soldiers of Christ: Selections from the Writings of Basil Manly, Sr., & Basil Manly, Jr. (Cape Coral, Florida: Founders Press, 2009), 36–40.
In other words, there is no gainsaying the fact that historically Baptists have been, and thankfully many still are, a confessional people. Yes, they are supremely a people of the Book, the Holy Scriptures. But confessions have been central to their experience of the Christian life. The twentieth-century attempt to explain Baptist life and thought primarily in terms of soul-liberty seriously skews the evidence. Of course, freedom from external coercion has always been a major concern of Baptist apologetics. But up until the twentieth century, this emphasis has generally never been at the expense of a clear and explicit confessionalism. What then have been the reasons as to why Baptists have created their confessions?
The First London Confession of Faith
The reasons behind the issuing of these confessional documents vary. Go back again to that earliest Baptist confession, The First London Confession of 1644. The churches that issued it did so to defend themselves against various false charges that were being circulated in London. As they explained in the preface, they had been depicted as men and women “lying under that calumny and black brand of Heretickes, and sowers of division.” From the pulpits and in the writings of fellow Puritans, they had been accused of “holding Free-will, Falling away from grace, denying Originall sinne, disclaiming of Magistracy, denying to assist them either in persons or purse in any of their lawfull Commands, doing acts unseemly in the dispensing the Ordinance of Baptism, not to be named amongst Christians.”[5]
5. The First London Confession of Faith, Preface (Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions), 154–155.
From the first three of these charges it would appear that the Calvinistic Baptists were being confused with the General Baptists, a much smaller body of churches, who were explicitly Arminian in their theology. The next two charges were ones relating to political subversion and rebellion. Such accusations were probably leveled on the misunderstanding that the Calvinistic Baptists were akin to the revolutionary, continental Anabaptists of the previous century. It is noteworthy that in the title of their Confession, the Calvinistic Baptists emphasized that they were “commonly (though falsly) called Anabaptists.” The final charge—that of sexual immorality in the administration of baptism—was pure slander, but one that was frequently made against the early Baptists. For example, Daniel Featley (1582–1645), an influential, outspoken minister devoted to the Church of England and critical of Puritanism, penned a scurrilous attack on the Baptists entitled The Dippers dipt. Or, The Anabaptists duck’d and plunged Over Head and Eares (1645). In it he maintained that the Baptists were in the habit of stripping “stark naked, not onely when they flocke in great multitudes, men and women together, to their Jordans to be dipt; but also upon other occasions, when the season permits”![6]
6. Cited Gordon Kingsley, “Opposition to Early Baptists (1638–1645),” Baptist History and Heritage, 4, no.1 (January, 1969): 29. On Daniel Featley, see further W. J. McGlothlin, “Dr. Daniel Featley and the First Calvinistic Baptist Confession,” The Review and Expositor, 6 (1909): 579–589. For the charge of sexual immorality, see also J. F. McGregor, “The Baptists: Fount of All Heresy” in his and B. Reay, ed., Radical Religion in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 41–42; James Barry Vaughn, “Public Worship and Practical Theology in the Work of Benjamin Keach (1640–1704)” (PhD Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 1989), 60.
The upshot of such charges—charges that the authors of this preface vehemently asserted were “notoriously untrue”—was that many godly believers wanted nothing at all to do with the Calvinistic Baptists and many unbelievers were encouraged, “if they can finde the place of our meeting, to get together in Clusters to stone us, as looking upon us as a people… not worthy to live.”[7] John Spilsbury, for example, mentioned in 1643 that his convictions regarding believer’s baptism had made his opponents “so incensed against me, as to seeke my life.”[8]
Consequently, in 1644 the London Calvinistic Baptist leadership decided to issue a confession of faith which would demonstrate once and for all their fundamental solidarity with the Christian orthodoxy. The First London Confession of Faith went through at least two printings that year, and on November 30, 1646, it was reissued in a second edition. This Confession seems to have accomplished its goal in defusing the criticism of many fellow Puritans and it soon became the doctrinal standard for a halcyon period of Baptist advance, which saw the Baptists grow from seven churches in London to 130 or so throughout the British Isles and Ireland by 1660.[9]
7. The First London Confession of Faith, Preface (Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions), 155.
8. White, “Doctrine of the Church,” 571, n.1.
9. Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints. The Separate Churches of London 1616–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 61–65; White, “Doctrine of the Church”, 570; idem, “The Origins and Convictions of the First Calvinistic Baptists,” Baptist History and Heritage, 25, no.4 (October, 1990): 45.
The New Hampshire Confession of Faith
Or consider The New Hampshire Confession of Faith. During the previous century, Baptist growth in the Northern United States was solidly built on the confessional basis of the Philadelphia Confession of Faith. In 1833, though, The New Hampshire Confession of Faith was drafted to offset the growth of Arminianism in New England under the leadership of Benjamin Randall (1749−1808), a leader among the Free Will Baptists.
In line with previous Baptist statements of faith, this confession clearly retained an emphasis on the authority of Scripture. Thus, in Article I it is affirmed:
We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried.
It also maintains such Baptist convictions as that “a visible Church of Christ is a congregation of baptized believers” (Article 13) and that the “Lord Jesus Christ . . . is the only Lord of the conscience” (Article 16). There is no mention of the universal church, though, which every Baptist confession prior to this one had affirmed.
This text also affirms that “Repentance and Faith are sacred duties, and also inseparable graces, wrought in our souls by the regenerating Spirit of God” (Article 8), a theological emphasis that had been controverted during the eighteenth century by hyper-Calvinism. It also affirms perseverance of the saints (Article 11) and human depravity. With regard to the latter it states in Article 3:
We believe that man was created in holiness, under the law of his Maker; but by voluntary transgression fell from that holy and happy state; in consequence of which all mankind are now sinners, not by constraint, but choice; being by nature utterly void of that holiness required by the law of God, positively inclined to evil . . .[10]
10. See also Article 6 that speaks of man’s “inherent depravity.”
But there is some ambiguity with regard to election. In Article 9, it is declared:
We believe that Election is the eternal purpose of God, according to which he graciously regenerates, sanctifies, and saves sinners; that being perfectly consistent with the free agency of man…
And there is no mention at all of particular redemption, a major stumbling block for Arminians. This omission seems to have been intentional so as to stop the defection of Northern Baptists to the Free Will Baptists.
With the addition of a pre-millennial interpretation of the final article, The New Hampshire Confession would be the confessional basis of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, which was formed in 1932 after a bitter theological struggle in the Northern Baptist Convention over liberalism (then called “modernism”). The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) also used it in 1925 as the basis of The Baptist Faith and Message. The Sunday School Board of the SBC even produced a book entitled What Baptists Believe, an exposition of the New Hampshire Confession written by the Canadian Baptist O.C.S. Wallace (1856−1947) that initially sold close to 200,000 copies.[11]
11. James E. Carter, “American Baptist Confessions of Faith: A Review of Confessions of Faith Adopted by Major Baptist Bodies in the United States” in William R. Estep, ed., The Lord’s Free People in a Free Land: Essays in Baptist History in Honor of Robert A. Baker (Fort Worth, TX: Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1976), 62.
A Concluding Word
Baptists have never been in doubt that, as the opening line of the Second London Confession of Faith puts it, the “Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, Faith, and Obedience.”[12] Above all else, Baptists are “a people of the Book.” But they have also been a confessional people, as the preceding essay has argued. The two are not mutually exclusive, as is made plain by some comments of C.H. Spurgeon (1834−1892) with regard to the usefulness of the Second London Confession when he republished it for his church in 1855:
12. Second London Confession 1.1 (Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions), 248.
This little volume is not issued as an authoritative rule, or code of faith, whereby you are to be fettered, but as an assistance to you in controversy, a confirmation in faith, and a means of edification in righteousness. . . . Cleave fast to the Word of God which is here mapped out for you.[13]
13. Cited in the “Foreword” to The Baptist Confession of Faith with Scripture Proofs (Choteau, MT: Gospel Mission, n.d.), 6.
Our calling today as Baptists then is the same as it has been for much of our rich history: to express our commitment to the theology of God’s Word in statements of faith that are at once concise and yet robust.
