“Years of Freedome, by God’s Blessing Restored”

Chapter 5 explores how “Particular Baptists” during the 1650s evolved along two rather divergent, mutually exclusive paths. One group embraced the Cromwellian regime, encouraged fellowship among otherwise like-minded congregationalists who disagreed on the question of baptism, and understood themselves as a godly variant on the mainstream puritan divinity then in the ascendant. The other group, by contrast, eschewed all of these impulses and instead resisted the state ecclesiastical apparatus, repudiated all who disagreed with their stance on baptism, and understood themselves as strangers and exiles in a new Babylon. To make this case, chapter 5 draws upon both published polemic as well as congregational and associational records. Such reflections both complicate our understanding of Interregnum religion and further undermine the too-hasty application of denominational labels during the period.

“Between Us and the Compleat Anabaptists”

Chapter 3 explains and analyzes why the first Baptists rejected infant or paedobaptism, rooting the rejection of paedobaptism in the prior embrace of a congregational ecclesiology, thus serving to both explain the emergence of baptistic congregationalists while also reinforcing the historical connection drawn in chapter 2 between “Baptists” and more mainstream congregationalists. Drawing on close readings of theological treatises published during the 1640s, chapter 3 demonstrates that baptistic congregationalists understood their embrace of believer’s baptism to be the logical outworking of their congregational principles. The chapter also demonstrates that episcopalian and presbyterian critics of both “Baptists” and congregationalists understood the two groups to be closely allied to one another, an insight that further buttresses the chapter’s overarching contention that it was congregational ecclesiology which made the rejection of paedobaptism a viable, mainstream, intellectual possibility for the first time in England’s history.

Introduction

Ushering the reader into both the world of early modern radical religion and the considerable body of scholarly literature devoted to its study, the introduction offers a précis of what is to come and a backward glance to explain how the proposed journey contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations. After orienting readers to the basic methodological boundaries within which the book will operate and briefly situating the book within the wider historiography, the introduction adumbrates the shape of the work as a whole and encapsulates its central argument. The introduction contends that the mid-seventeenth-century men and women often described as “Particular Baptists” would not have readily understood themselves as such. This tension between the self-identity of the early modern actors and the identity imposed upon them by future scholars has significant implications for how we understand both radical religion during the English Revolution and the period more broadly.

Conclusion

The conclusion considers how the book’s central argument might impinge more broadly upon the widespread historiographical assumption that one can appropriately and coherently describe a distinctive “Baptist” identity during the English Revolution and Interregnum. The labels with which we describe the past inevitably presuppose and project an interpretation of that past. But these embedded interpretations are almost always implicit rather than explicit and often inherited from historiographical predecessors rather than chosen with intention and care. Religious labels often confuse rather than clarify, and it is not at all obvious that the labels affixed to mid-seventeenth-century “Baptists” have helped to clarify the self-identity of the men and women they purport to describe.

The Jessey Circle and the Invention of Baptist Identity

Chapter 1 introduces the individuals described in standard histories as “Particular Baptists.” Drawing upon the manuscript collection of the early eighteenth-century Baptist historian Benjamin Stinton, the chapter surveys their origins, formation, and early attempts at ecclesiastical organization. But, more importantly, the chapter examines the development of Baptist historiography and the ways in which the deliberate distortions of early Baptist historians continue to influence present scholarship. As the chapter contends, the basic interpretive framework within which early English Baptists have been understood is seriously flawed. Rather than growing organically out of the evidence, many of the fundamental conventions which govern scholarly discussion of early modern English Baptists have been bequeathed to modern historians by eighteenth-century Baptist churchmen. These early denominational historians wrote the story of their collective past with an eye firmly fixed upon the needs of their own collective present, and their decisions continue to negatively affect modern scholarship.

“Opposite to the Honour of God” No Longer

Chapter 4 examines the position of “Baptists” in relation to the Cromwellian regime. Historians often note that Cromwell extended religious liberty to “Baptists,” but, this chapter argues that the significance of this fact has been obscured by an unacknowledged sense of denominational teleology. By recognizing this and viewing Baptists within the more nuanced framework developed in chapters 1 through 3, we are able to better understand both the extent of religious liberty under Cromwell and why it took the particular shape that it did. In pursuing this, chapter 4 explores the surprising rehabilitation of “Anabaptism” during the Interregnum. Although previously a much maligned and thoroughly unacceptable deviation from Reformed orthodoxy, the rejection of paedobaptism became, under Cromwell, an acceptable theological position and those who held it were not precluded from participating in the new ecclesiastical structures implemented during the Commonwealth and Protectorate.

Baptists Along the Congregational Way

After deconstructing Baptist historiography in chapter 1, chapter 2 builds upon this foundation by advancing a more helpful way of viewing the subject. It suggests that so-called Particular Baptists during the mid-seventeenth century can be more helpfully regarded as a baptistic variation on the more mainstream congregational movement then developing on both sides of the Atlantic. To this end, the chapter introduces the term “baptistic congregationalists,” a neologism that serves both to avoid anachronistic projection and to more closely connect “Baptists” during the English revolution with the congregational religious culture out of which they emerged. The chapter substantiates this link by demonstrating the relational ties that bound baptistic congregationalists to their mainstream paedobaptistic counterparts. Baptistic ministers like Henry Jessey, Hanserd Knollys, and William Kiffen were connected by bonds of friendship and theological affinity to contemporary congregational ministers, a group that included Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Jeremiah Burroughes, and Sidrach Simpson.