So, yeah, this is pretty obscure. There are really only two reasons for making a blog post like this. 1) It helps me compile my thoughts for use in a larger article or book some day. 2) Some seminary student may stumble across this and be able to use it as a starting point for a paper. That's about it. I'm not making any audacious claims; I'm just presenting some data that changes the way we look at a few of the early English Particular Baptist relationships. If anything, I might be integrating Henry Jessey more closely with the PB crowd (in full disclosure, I really like Henry Jessey; two of my favorite people from this era are Jessey and Tombes, and they aren't even considered "true" Baptists). Reminder of what we have so far: John Tombes was pummeled by Westminster for asking them to debate infant baptism, and he turned to the early Baptists for advice. He received a written response signed by Benjamin Cox, Henry Jessey, and Hanserd Knollys with a postscript by Knollys confirming that a different congregation which included William Kiffin, Thomas Patient, and John Spilsbury also agreed with their position. We'll talk about the position itself in the next post (and its implications are fascinating); right now we're just concerned with the relationships. The best I can do with the date of their response is to limit it to either 1647 or 1648. Tombes connected with the who's who of early English Particular Baptists. In 1644, as the political winds were changing in England, a group of churches sharing convictions about believers' baptism and a Calvinistic soteriology decided to release a confession of faith as a way of demonstrating their reasonability (and to separate themselves from other baptistic groups that may have been a bit rowdier). They revised that confession in 1646 in response to some questions, particularly by Westminster divines. They re-re-released their confession in 1651 after further political developments, but we're mainly worried about the 1644 and 1646 versions. Here are the representatives that signed the confessions:
The authoritative resource for this era and these churches is The Early English Baptists by Stephen Wright. But I really don't want to go into any more detail than necessary. The starred names are those associated with Tombes's answer, and it is not a coincidence that they are the only people on these lists who also left publications. (I take that back; Kilcop wrote a short, undated treatise on baptism.) So here's a short bio of those men in alphabetical order.
Benjamin Cox (1595-1664?) Benjamin Cox graduated from Oxford in 1617 and was in Anglican leadership until he began to doubt infant baptism. He joined a Baptist church led by Thomas Lambe (that church would later be known as a General Baptist church) and had a dispute with Richard Baxter over baptism that led to his imprisonment in 1644. He arrived in London in 1645, assumed leadership with Thomas Kilcop, and wrote the appendix to the 1646 confession of faith. Stephen Wright connected Cox with Spilsbury and Kiffin, so it might be noteworthy that Cox signed this little note with Jessey and Knollys. Henry Jessey (1601-1663) Henry Jessey earned his MA from Cambridge in 1621, but renounced his Anglican position in 1633, eventually becoming the pastor of a very important non-conformist church in London in 1637. However, Jessey believed that baptism should be a personal decision, so he was unwilling to fully separate from the Church of England. Defections from his church by those unhappy with Jessey's in-between stance led to most of the Baptist churches in London that signed this confession (this is why Jessey himself never signed a Baptist confession). Hanserd Knollys baptized Jessey in 1645. We'll look at this in the next post, but I think it is very interesting that Jessey was able to sign this position on baptism while still leading a non-Baptist church. William Kiffin (1616-1701) With Knollys, William Kiffin is considered a father of the Particular Baptist tradition. He was a very successful merchant, not a clergyman. He joined Jessey's nonconformist church in the mid 1630s (while it was still led by John Lathrop), and led one of the defections. Thomas Patient was Kiffin's co-pastor of their church on Devonshire Square (where Kiffin stayed until his death), so it is no surprise that Knollys mentioned the two of them together. What is surprising is the addition of John Spilsbury, who as late at 1646 was leading a separate church. Hanserd Knollys (1599-1691) Hanserd Knollys graduated from Cambridge before leaving the Church of England in 1636 due to questions about infant baptism. He eventually found his way to London in 1641 where he joined Jessey's congregation. Sometime between 1643 and 1645, he left Jessey's church and formed a fully separate Baptist church (the tipping point was his refusal to baptize his own infant). He was a very vocal apologist for Baptist beliefs, even convincing Jessey. Thomas Patient (?-1666) We don't know much about Thomas Patient except that he adopted the Baptist position while in New England and was immediately appointed Kiffin's co-pastor upon his return to London in 1644. He eventually left to pastor a church in Dublin in 1649. He actually returned to London in 1666 and rejoined Kiffin at Devonshire Square but died very soon after of the plague. John Spilsbury (?) John Spilsbury was the first of the London Baptists to adopt the position of believers' baptism by immersion, and his church of defectors from the Lathrop/Jessey church was the first such church in London. Obviously, he signed both the 1644 and 1646 editions of the confession, but Tombes's answer seems to have him as a member of the Kiffin/Patient church sometime in 1647 or 1648. It is possible that Spilsbury's church dissolved in that year; even Stephen Wright (who thought very highly of Spilsbury) doesn't have anything about the end of Spilsbury's church. So there you go. Two little tidbits of note that come out of this note. 1) Sometime in 1647 or 1648, John Spilsbury was a member of Kiffin's church. 2) By 1647 or 1648, Henry Jessey was willing and able to place his church in the same camp as two hard-line Baptist churches (those led by Cox and Knollys). Next entry: what exactly did they say about baptism?
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