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ABSTRACT
Matthew C. Bingham’s recent scholarship represents an essential revision of traditional Baptist historiography. Bingham’s account of early Baptists challenges the existence of any coherent General Baptists movement until late into the seventeenth century. He claims no interaction between Particular and General Baptists and no continuity between one generation of General Baptists to the next. After a survey of the relevant recent scholarship, this essay explores Bingham’s assertions about seventeenth-century General Baptists. Upon further evaluation, it is demonstrated that these claims are overstated. Bingham is appreciated for his willingness to challenge anachronistic denominational history, but his conclusions regarding General Baptists fall short.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Stephen R. Holmes, “Baptist Identity, Once More,” Journal of Baptist Theology in Context 3 (2021): 5–27.
2 See the vivid contrasts between Bill J. Leonard, Baptist Ways: A History (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2003) which focuses on Baptists’ diversity, unique congregation polity, and advocacy for religious freedom and R. Stanton Norman, Baptist Way: Distinctives of a Baptist Church (Nashville: TN: B&H Academic, 2005) which highlights the authority of Scripture as the primary Baptist distinctive.
3 Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and for His Glory: A Historical, Theological, and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1986), 57; Haykin sees Particular Baptists and not General Baptists as ‘heirs of the sixteenth-century Reformed community.’ Michael A. G. Haykin, Kiffen, Knollys, and Keach: Rediscovering our English Baptist Heritage of the Seventeenth Century 2nd ed. (Peterborough, Canada: H&E Publishing, 2019), 20.
4 Bill J. Leonard, The Challenge of Being Baptist: Owning a Scandalous Past and an Uncertain Future (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010), 127; Curtis W. Freeman ed., A Company of Women Preachers (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2011), x.
5 J. Matthew Pinson, “Confessional, Baptist, and Arminian: The General-Free Will Baptist Tradition and the Nicene Faith,” in Evangelicals and Nicene Faith: Reclaiming the Apostolic Witness, ed. Timothy George (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 109.
6 Matthew C. Bingham, Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). See pages 38–44 for a discussion of the term ‘baptistic congregationalists.’
7 Bingham, Orthodox Radicals, 10.
8 Matthew C. Bingham, “English Radical Religion and the Invention of the General Baptists, 1609–1660,” The Seventeenth Century 34 (2019): 483.
9 Bingham, “English Radical Religion,” 482.
10 Michael A. G. Haykin, Review excerpt on the back book cover in Bingham, Orthodox Radicals.
11 Ian Birch, review of Orthodox Radicals: Baptist identity in the English Revolution Review by Matthew Bingham, Baptist Quarterly 52 (2021): 96.
12 Tom J. Nettles, review of Orthodox Radicals: Baptist identity in the English Revolution Review by Matthew Bingham, Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies 2 (2021): 98–100.
13 For examples of a traditional approach that upholds the distinct identity of two types of Baptists see Thomas Crosby, The History of the English Baptists, vol. 1 (London: 1738); W. T. Whitley, History of the British Baptists (London: Charles Griffin and Company, 1923); Murry Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of London 1616–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); B. R. White, The English Baptists of the 17th Century (London: Baptist Historical Society, 1983); H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1987).
14 Christopher Hill, “History and Denomination History,” Baptist Quarterly 22 (1967): 65–71.
15 Stephen Wright, The Early English Baptists, 1603–1649 (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2006), 11.
16 Wright, The Early English Baptists, 83.
17 Ibid., 99–100.
18 Ibid., 85, 87. Wright persuasively shows that the document known as ‘Sinton no. 2’ links the restoration of baptism by immersion in Henry Jessy’s congregation to Richard Blunt’s visit to Mennonites in the Netherlands.
19 David W. Bebbington, Baptist Through the Centuries: A History of a Global People 2nd ed. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), 43–63.
20 William H. Brackney, “Perticular or Particular? In Search of When English Calvinist Baptists Became Particular Baptists,” Baptist Quarterly 53 (2022): 114.
21 Stephen R. Holmes, “The Church of Helwys, Murton, and Lambe: An Argument for Continuity,” Baptist Quarterly 54 (2023): 134–54.
22 Holmes, “The Church of Helwys,” 152.
23 Bingham, Orthodox Radicals, 24.
24 Ibid., 27.
25 Ibid., 18.
26 Ibid., 43, 48.
27 Ibid., 37.
28 Ibid., 52.
29 Stephen Wright claims that the Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey church from which Kiffen and the Particular Baptists emerged was influenced by Timothy Batte, an associate of the General Baptists Thomas Lambe. If this is true, Bingham’s interpretation of the General Baptists is in serious doubt. The argument, however, is much too complex and speculative to address in this essay. I have chosen to address other evidence in response to Bingham. See Wright, Early English Baptists, 95–9.
30 Kiffen, et al., The Humble Apology of Some Commonly Called Anabaptists (London: 1660). The published date of 1660 reflects the old-style calendar.
31 Kreitzer, William Kiffen and His World (Part 4), 24.
32 Ibid., 25.
33 Larry J. Kreitzer, William Kiffen and His World (Part 5) (Re-Sourcing Baptists History: Seventeenth Century Series Volume 5; Oxford: Regent’s Park College, Oxford, 2019, corrected edition), 221, 232.
34 Wright, The Early English Baptists, 133; Brackney, “Perticular Or Particular?,” 111.
35 Benjamin Cox, An Appendix to a Confession of Faith from Edward Bean Underhill, Confessions of Faith and Other Public Documents Illustrative of the History of the Baptist Churches of England in the 17th Century (London: Haddon Brothers and Co., 1854), 56; Lambe consistently argued that Christ’s death for all was the basis of gospel proclamation. See Thomas Lambe, The Fountaine of Free Grace Opened 2nd ed. (London: 1648), 26.
36 Thomas Lambe, Christ Crucified: A Propitiation for the Sinnes of all Men, clear and vindicated against Ben: Cox his answer to three questions formerly made (London: 1646).
37 Holmes argues that before Cox joined Kiffen’s movement he was sent from Lambe’s church to struggling Baptists churches that were remnants of the Helwys movement. Holmes, “The Church of Helwys,” 143.
38 William Walwyn, “Walwyns Just Defence,” in The Leveller Tracts, eds. William Haller and Godfrey Davis (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1994), 374.
39 Bingham is aware of Luke Howard’s account of the great contest betwixt’ those of Lambe’s group and Kiffen’s group. He only uses this account as evidence that denominational labels emerged after the Restoration and dismisses it as a record of a debate because of its late date. See Luke Howard, A Looking-Glass for Baptists (London: 1672); Bingham, Orthodox Radicals, 42; Bingham, “English Radical Religion,” 470.
40 Thomas Crosby, The History of the English Baptists, vol. 2 (London: 1738), 189–5.
41 Larry J. Kreitzer, William Kiffen and His World (Part 4) (Re-Sourcing Baptists History: Seventeenth Century Series Volume 4; Oxford: Regent’s Park College, Oxford, 2019, corrected edition), 237.
42 Haykin, Kiffen, Knollys, and Keach, 129, 131; Keach even appears in the Minutes of the General Baptist Assembly in 1697 as someone causing division in the churches W. T. Whitley, Minutes of the General Assembly of the General Baptists 1654–1728 (London: Kingsgate Press, 1908), 46.
43 Kreitzer, William Kiffen (Part 5), 23.
44 John Bunyan, The Complete Works of John Bunyan, edited by John Bulliver (Philadelphia: Bradley, Garretson, and Company, 1873), 886. For more these debates over communion see, Peter Naylor, Calvinism Communion and the Baptists: A Study of English Calvinistic Baptists from the Late 1600s to the Early 1800s (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2003).
45 Henry Denne, Answer to Two Paedobaptists. (London, 1645).
46 William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 2nd edition revised by Bill J. Leonard (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2011), 220.
47 William H. Brackney, The Early English General Baptists and their Theological Formation (London: Regent’s Park College, 2017), 5–18.
48 Bingham, “English Radical Religion,” 475.
49 Ibid., 475.
50 White, The English Baptists, 29.
51 Wright, The Early English Baptists, 94, 100.
52 Thomas Lambe, A Treatise of Particular Predestination (London: 1642), 5; Thomas Lambe, Absolute Freedom from Sin (London: 1656), 11.
53 Holmes, “The Church of Helwys,” 142–8.
54 Ibid., 145.
55 Ibid., 146.
56 Henry Denne, Seven Arguments to Prove that in Order of Working God Doth Justifie His Elect, Before They Doe Actually Beleeve (London: 1643); Thomas Lambe, Absolute Freedom from Sin (London: 1656).
57 Pinson made this argument before Wright and it was very influential to my own understanding. See J. Matthew Pinson, “General Baptists and Arminianism During the Interregnum a Reinterpretation” unpublished paper presented at the Southern Conference on British Studies, November, 1998. I am not claiming that Lambe and Denne consciously followed Moses Amyraut, only that their literal interpretation of Scripture led them to deny limited atonement while their Puritan disposition did not allow them to stray far from orthodox Calvinism.
58 Henry Denne, A Contention for Truth: In Two Several Public Disputations (London: 1658), ‘To the Reader.’
59 Denne, A Contention for Truth, 42.
60 Ibid., 42.
61 Thomas Edwards, Gangraena Part I (London: 1646), 93.
62 See Cecil M. Roper, “Henry Denne and the Fenstanton Baptists in England,” Baptist History and Heritage 16 (1981): 26–38; E. B. Underhill ed. Records of the Churches of Christ, Gathered at Fenstanton, Warboys, and Hexham. 1644–1720 (London: Hanserd Knollys Society, 1854).
63 Underhill, Records,153.
64 Ibid., 267–8.
65 Ibid., 55, 83
66 Ibid., 111–4, 134–5.
67 Ibid., 282; John Inscore Essick, Thomas Grantham: God’s Messenger from Lincolnshire (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2013), 106.
68 Underhill, Records, 60, 68, 143 and Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions, 215.
69 An example of their sectarian view of marriage can be found in Underhill, Records, 158 and the laying on of hands controversy can be found in Underhill, Records 69.
70 Historians have long seen Lambe and Denne’s rejection of laying on hands as major reason they were distant from the General Baptists of the 1660s. The Standard Confession codified this rite as a key marker of denominational unity. See Clint C. Bass, Thomas Grantham (1633–1692) and General Baptist Theology (Oxford: Regent’s Park College, 2013), 105, 112.
71 Bingham, Orthodox Radicals, 10.
72 White, The English Baptists, 44–51; William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 2nd edition revised by Bill J. Leonard (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2011), 160–2; Brackney, The Early English General Baptists, 332.
73 Holmes, The Church of Helwys, 153.