The Baptists resembled the Independents in Church polity, except as it regards baptism. They were specially singled out for attack by the High Church party, and their extraordinary sufferings have never been forgotten by their successors. They could not but be winnowed by the winds of persecution. Forty-six Baptist Churches are said to have been in existence in London in the year 1646. The number of them represented at an assembly held in 1689 is but eleven.[243] Supposing the first of these statements to be exaggerated, and the second to be inadequate, allowing that in the former estimate some small groups of worshippers were counted as Churches, although not organized as such, and that there might be more Baptist Churches in London than were represented in the assembly held after the Restoration; further, taking into account the fact that the erection of larger places of worship, after liberty had been conceded, would absorb the fragmentary assemblies common when oppression was rife; still, the comparison even of these loose returns would indicate that the fact of the case is in accordance with the probability, and that Baptists, like Independents, declined somewhat in numerical power.
Baptist Churches sprung out of Independent ones, as before, so after the days of Cromwell. For instance, in the year 1633, a number of Baptists in London, who had been members of an Independent Church, swarmed, and settled down into a distinct Baptist community,[244] and in 1667 a Baptist member of the Independent Church in Norwich withdrew from that society, and entered upon the task “of building another house for God.”[245]
In the records of early Independency we meet with allusions to messengers appointed to take part in conferences between those Churches and others of the same denomination. A like practice existed among the Baptists, who seem to have gone beyond their brethren in the number and importance of such conferences.
The Baptists were divided into Particular and General. The Particular Baptists were those who held the doctrine of particular redemption.
Upon comparing the doctrinal part of the confession of the Particular Baptists, published in the years 1677 and 1689, with the doctrinal part of the confession of the Westminster Divines, it will be found to resemble it—differing in this respect from an earlier confession of faith, published by seven Baptist Churches in 1644 and 1646. That earlier confession presents a statement of doctrinal belief much shorter, couched in different terms, and arranged in a different order.[246] The Predestinarianism expressed by the Baptists in 1677 and 1689, is not less decided than the Predestinarianism of the Confession of 1644 and 1646, but in neither of these confessions can I find the doctrine of reprobation. The omission in the last confession, of the Westminster Article on that subject, is very significant.
DEVELOPMENT OF NONCONFORMITY.
The Article on the nature of baptism in the Baptist Confession of 1677 differs but slightly from the Articles on the same subject in the Westminster Confession, and in the Savoy Declaration; but, of course, there is a great difference from these, in the Article touching the subjects of baptism, and the mode of its administration. The Baptist Confession says, “Those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ are the only proper subjects of this ordinance. The outward element to be used in this ordinance is water, wherein the party is to be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Immersion or dipping of the person in water is necessary to the due administration of the ordinance.”
The General Baptists, whose early history can be reviewed more conveniently when we have passed the Revolution, were those who, resembling their brethren in other respects, held Anti-Calvinistic sentiments, and preached the doctrine of general redemption. Some of the Churches of this denomination kept Saturday as a day of rest and worship, and were on that account called Seventh Day Baptists. They seem to have been very strict in their ecclesiastical discipline, and to have drawn around them very closely the bonds of fellowship. Not only were formal letters of dismissal from one Church to another given when members removed to a new residence—as was a common practice amongst all Congregationalists—but an instance is at hand of “an epistle of commendation,” written in a very primitive style, being given to a person on the point of travelling to some distant part of the country.
The document is signed by Francis Bampfield, a well-known ejected minister,[247]—who died in Newgate,—and also by his deacons. They thus jointly express their fraternal affection: “To any Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom our brother may come, who are one with us in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the order of the Gospel of God keeping the holy Sabbath. Our brother, having occasion to visit your parts, and being unacquainted with the faces of the saints in your parts, was desirous of a testimony from us, which we are desirous to give unto you, that he may be watched over, and made a partaker of the privileges of Christ’s house. For he is a brother, and faithful, who also hath been as a living member amongst us, in varieties of cases in which he hath been tried. Therefore receive him as you would receive any of us, and as we would receive you in the Lord, who commend him and you to the grace of God, and subscribe ourselves in behalf of the rest, &c.”[248]
Baptists were not only divided into Particular and General, as it respects doctrine; they were distinguished as Strict and Open with respect to communion. In the Confession of 1677 the distinction as to discipline is thus represented—“The known principles and the state of the consciences of us that have agreed in this confession is such, that we cannot hold Church communion with any other than baptized believers, and Churches constituted of such; yet some other of us have a greater liberty, and freedom in our spirits that way.”