RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Baptists
doctrine, worship, and discipline, and to stand up in defense of the Gospel."
The General Baptists were greatly prospered during the Civil War, in Which they heartily participated, and during the Cromwellian period. Along with other dissenters they suffered severely under Charles II. After the Revolution (1688-89), owing in part to the disciplinary system already described and still more to the pervasive influence 'of Socinianism, disintegration set in. The process was accelerated by their resistance to the evangelical revival led by the Wesleys and Whitefield. By 1770 they had dwindled to small proportions and most of those that remained had become unitarian.
In 1743 a religious revival occurred in the vicinity of Barton. After a time the converts became impressed with the importance of immer- 2. Revival sion and brought a large tub into the at Barton, meeting-house for the dipping of infants. Without any knowledge of Baptists they became convinced (1755) that believers only should be baptized and they proceeded to introduce baptism anew, Donithrope baptizing Kendrick, who in turn baptized his baptizer, and the two baptized between sixty and seventy others. Those who did not feel the need of a further baptism were allowed to remain in communion. Their numbers multiplied until by 1770 six Baptist churches with near a thousand members and ten ordained pastors had resulted from the movement.
I In 1762 Dan Taylor (q.v.), a young man of twenty-four, who had recently been converted in the Wesleyan meetings and had been engaging successfully in evangelistic work in Yorkshire, became convinced independently of the unscripturalness of nfant baptism, left the Wesleyans, and associated limself with four others who had had a similar experience at Heptonstall. Having reached Baptist convictions and having learned of some General Baptists in Lincolnshire, one hundred and twenty niles distant, Taylor journeyed in the midst of win- ;er and was baptized by Jeffries, pastor of the Gamston church. Taylor proved himself a master worknan and by 1770 he had founded or rescued from iecay fifteen churches, which united in forming v " New Connection of General Baptist churches, with a design to revive experimental New Con re^gi°n or primitive Christianity in nection. faith and practise." The brief articles of faith combine evangelical Arminianism with insistence on believers' baptism (immersion) as indispensable. Socinian views of the person of Christ and hyper-Calvinistic antinomianism are explicitly condemned. The New Connection rigorously excluded from membership General Baptists of the older type who would not sign their confession and whose ministers failed to come up to their standard of personal religious experience. By the close of the eighteenth century the New Connection had an academy for the training of ministers, had engaged in Sunday-school work, and had started a magazine. Their membership had grown to about four thousand. It is probable that the General Baptist churches of
the older type had about the same number of members at the same time.
During the nineteenth century the denomination grew in numbers, educational and literary enterprise, and in missionary activity. In 1816 they formed a missionary society and entered upon foreign work. Their most influential leader at this time was J. G. Pike. For many years the General Baptists had joined with the Particular Baptists in the Baptist Union and there had been a free interchange of pulpits and members. In
Nine 1891 a Union °f General and Particular
teenth BaPtists was effected. Until recent
Century. times tne General Baptists had almost uniformly practised restricted communion and rigorously excluded Calvinistic Baptists from the Supper. During the nineteenth century their views on this matter became assimilated to those of the great majority of the Particular Baptists.
4. Particular Baptists from 1644 Onward: From the date of the signing of the confession of 1644-46, Baptists of the Calvinistic type went forward by leaps and bounds. Through the evangelistic efforts of John Myles and Vavasour Powell Baptists early gained a firm footing in Wales. In 1651 four churches met at Carmarthen to consider the questions of singing of psalms and the laying-on of hands, and a year earlier three of the churches had gathered for consultation on missionary business. The meeting of 1650 had voted that each church should raise ten pounds for the dissemination of the gospel. From this time onward the Welsh Baptists made much of associations and these were the prototypes of the Philadelphia Association in America (see below, II, 1, § 8). The London churches were active in evangelizing the provinces, leading ministers spending much time in this kind of
J ? work. Baptists of both types were
tion. soon numerous in the Parliamentary army, many of whose officers were of this persuasion (Fleetwood, Cromwell's son-in-law and Lord Deputy of Ireland, Major General Harrison, Col. Hutchinson, Major Paul Hobson, and others). Baptist officers were in several cases effective preachers and most of them gave every encouragement to Baptist preaching and the establishment of Baptist churches in the neighborhood of the camps. The efforts of the Westminster Assembly and of the Presbyterian Parliament to check the spread of Baptist principles proved ineffective, and Baptists and Independents became so powerful in the army that they were able to dissolve the Assembly and to cast out the Presbyterian members of Parliament. Baptists encouraged Cromwell to assume the headship of the state; but they soon grew weary of his military government. It seems well established that their determined opposition prevented Cromwell from accepting the royal title when it was pressed upon him by others.,, Harrison, who had been active in the trial and execution of Charles I, became Cromwell's bitter opponent. He embraced socialistic and millenarian ideas. John Milton advocated Baptist principles and was a stanch antipedobaptist, but there is no evidence that he was ever a member of a Baptist
Baptists