Continued from part 2 HERE
English Persecution
For a period of thirty years General and Particular Baptists experienced “intermittent, state persecution and mob-harassment” along with Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Quakers.1 This was a period of extreme anxiety and constitutional crisis precipitated by the beheading of Charles I on January 30, 1649, during the British Civil Wars. Charles II provided the legal justification for the persecution of dissenters with the Clarendon Code (1662), which required Anglican ordination.
This led to the Great Ejection of nearly two thousand ministers. It was during this period that John Bunyan was imprisoned with Quakers for preaching without a license. Francis Bampfield was among the earliest to establish a separate congregation but when he was ejected from his pulpit, he adopted Baptist views while in prison. Upon his release he organized a Seventh Day Baptist church.2
When at last William came to the throne, the Act of Toleration (1689) permitted the free expression of ministers if they operated inside a meetinghouse with their doors open. During the heavy days of persecution, many Baptists sought simply to exist; however, others like Thomas Grantham, Benjamin Keach, and Thomas Delaune wrote apologetic works on the freedom of religion. Delaune published A Plea for the Non-Conformists in 1683 which so greatly impressed Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, that he republished it with a preface condemning coerced religion. Benjamin Keach is best remembered for his children’s catechisms and the introduction of hymn singing as part of worship. Beginning as a General Baptist in 1655 he switched to become a Particular Baptist in 1672.3
The Particular Baptist expressions found in the London Baptist Confession of 1689, is often thought to have been the cause of a dour, non-evangelistic Calvinism; however, according to Michael Haykin, the Act of Toleration itself ushered in a period of cold, legal preaching in Baptist churches. Those churches which were willing to obey “the legal restrictions regarding evangelism produced a profound spiritual ‘settledness.’ [… Many Calvinistic Baptists] were content to live on their past experience of conversion and displayed little hunger for the presence and power of God in their lives.” This becomes more apparent in contrast to the Methodist movement, which was given freedom to evangelize outside of meeting houses as members of the Church of England.4
Streams Flowing into Non-Denominationalism
The Reformation created a crisis in societal order. The Baptist tradition, while varied, contains within it several themes which continue into our era. The free church emphasis brought awareness of the need for separation of church and state. Interpretation of Scripture was a congregational project which led to a reassertion of the ordinance of baptism to its rightful place as a sign of a regenerated heart. Mark Dever’s remarks on congregationalism and the right use of baptism may have provoked some legitimate concern; however, in our own history of leaving denominationalism for a purer congregational form of church government, we would do well to remember these Baptist fights.
Furthermore, lessons may be learned from the extreme and moderate voices. On the one hand, mere legal accommodation to secular society proved to stimy the spread of the gospel. Yet, the divisiveness in Amsterdam over non-essentials like succession distracted from more important doctrines like original sin. Dever’s willingness to moderate his tone, while contending for the Baptist heritage, is commendable in this instance. May we learn how to fight like this kind of Baptist. As non-denominationalists, we don’t want to be known for fighting all Christians anywhere, or “owning the libs”; however, we do want to hold high Biblical authority as we move our own inherited traditions closer to the Scriptural ideals with each successive generation.