The Pope: Antichrist or Friend?

By Ryan Patrick Hoselton

About four years ago, I traveled with my former pastor to a conference where he was one of the speakers. During a break, one of the other speakers was asking me about my church’s confession (a classic “ice-breaker” at Reformed Baptist conferences). I told him that we hold to the London Baptist Confession of 1689 but with one exception. He responded, “Oh, the article about the Pope being the antichrist?” Perplexed, I said, “No, I was referring to the one about Sabbatarianism.”

My church really did not think that the Pope was the antichrist, I just did not know that the LBC of 1689 mentioned it. Chapter 26.4, says this:

The Pope of Rome cannot in any sense be the head of the Church, but he is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, who exalts himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God, who the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

The Philadelphia Confession of Faith of 1742 reiterates this statement. However, most of the popular Baptist confessions of the past few centuries, such as the New Hampshire Baptist Confession, 1833, and the Baptist Faith and Message, 1925, 1963, and 2000, drop any mention of the Pope. I’m sure that multiple variables factor into this shift, but charting them is not the purpose of this post. My concern is that modern Baptists do not have a consensus about how we should view the election of a new Pope last Wednesday.

I do not agree with the seventeenth century Baptists that the Pope was the antichrist. But I think that Baptists must still affirm that the “Pope of Rome cannot in any sense be the head of the Church.” It may not be wise to restore a mention of the Papacy in our confessions, but believers should be aware of the important differences. Baptists through the centuries have maintained that the classic doctrines and practices of Catholicism are harmful to the world because it offers a misleading gospel and leadership. The election of an Argentine, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as Pope obviously indicates the strength Catholicism has gained in the Global South. Thus, Baptists today (and evangelicals generally) must not dismiss the countries saturated by Catholicism as sufficiently “Christianized.” Mission agencies need to continue extending gospel work in catholicized areas, obeying the Great Commission issued by the first, truly non-European head of the Church—an Israelite. And no, it wasn’t Peter.

________________________

Ryan Patrick Hoselton is pursuing a ThM at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY with his wife Jaclyn, and they are expecting their first child in August.

Fuller’s Three Classes of Religious Dissenters

By Dustin Bruce

Often when considering the English Reformation, we distinguish only between those who remained within the newly formed Church of England and those who dissented from it. In “A Brief Statement of the Principles of Dissent,” Andrew Fuller reminds us that “as all dissent is expressive rather of what is disapproved than of what is embraced, it is natural to suppose that the objects of disapprobation will be different in different persons.”[1]

Fuller goes on to distinguish three classes of dissenters:

  1. Those who disagree with the theology of the Church of England.
  2. Those who approve of the theology, but desire further Reformation within the English Church.
  3. Those who approve of the theology, but reject the establishment of a nation church in principle.

Concerning the first class of dissenters, Fuller speaks of those who abandoned the Church of England due to some unorthodox beliefs or practice. For Fuller, disagreement with the doctrine of these dissenters provides no justification for persecuting them. None who hold respect for private judgment and the authority of Christ “can forbear to regret that the Reformation should at so early a period have been stained with blood.”

The majority of Puritans and Nonconformists form the second class of dissenters. These men did not take issue with the establishment of a national church, but desired a national church with a Presbyterian form of government, which they found “more agreeable with the Scriptures.”

For the third class of dissenters, the primary objection to the Church of England was not one of theology, but of the very existence of a national church. Fuller states,

“The temporal power of bishops, the imposition of ministers, to the exclusion of the free election of the people, the mixture of godly and manifestly ungodly characters at the Lord’s table, the corruption of worship, the total want of discipline, and all other deviations from primitive Christianity, appeared to them to be no more than might be expected, if circumstances admitted it, to grow out of a national establishment. They, therefore, peaceably withdrew from its communion, with the view of forming churches on the plan of the New Testament.”

To this third class of dissenters belongs the Independents and the Baptists. Both holding to a form of congregational church government, the Baptists further dissented from the Independents by rejecting the practice of infant baptism.

Interestingly, Fuller makes two points of application for the third class of dissenters.

  1. “If the government should even offer to make theirs the established religion, however they might be obliged to them for their kindness, they could not accept it without relinquishing their first principles relative to church government.”
  2. “Neither can they, without relinquishing the first principles of the system by which they are distinguished from other Christians, persecute any man for his religion, whatever that religion be. They may think and speak of men according to their true character; they may refuse all religious connexion with them; they may expose their principles to just abhorrence; but their hand must not be upon them.”

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 459.

___________________________

Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

On Puritan Preaching

By Nathan Finn

In his wonderful book A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Crossway, 1990), J.I. Packer includes a chapter titled “Puritan Preaching.” It’s a gem of a chapter in a book that is filled with many jewels. Packer argues that Puritan preaching was characterized by eight priorities:

  1. It was expository in its method. This in contrast to the topical pabulum that is served up too regularly in modern pulpits.
  2. It was doctrinal in is content. This in contrast to the overly pragmatic, self-help homilies that confuse law and gospel and, in turn, confuse God’s people.
  3. It was orderly in its arrangement. This in contrast to the meandering musings of many modern preachers. (Since I’m writing about preaching, I thought I’d include some free alliteration.)
  4. Though profound, it was popular in its style. This in contrast to the two extremes of shallow erudition or esoteric theological treatises, both of which are quite common in evangelical pulpits.
  5. It was Christ-centered in its orientation. This in contrast to moralistic preaching, especially of the Old Testament, and the tendency among many preachers to concentrate upon word studies and background information more than they do the life, death, resurrection, ascension, session, and return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
  6. It was experimental in its interest. This in contrast to preaching that is divorced from vital spirituality and has little concern for redirecting affections God-ward.
  7. It was piercing in its applications. This in contrast to preaching that artificially severs thinking rightly about God from living rightly before God.
  8. It was powerful in its manner. This in contrast to weak preaching that seeks to “inspire” or “educate” rather than transform as the Spirit works through the Word.

I appreciate what modern pastors can learn from the Puritans about the art of preaching. This is not to say that modern pastors should preach ninety-minute sermons or divide their sermons in exactly the same manner as the Puritans did. We don’t need to slavishly copy the Puritans (or anyone else). Nevertheless, as we seek out historical role models for faithful preaching, we could hardly do better than the Puritans. If you want to read a Puritan textbook on biblical preaching, see William Perkins’s The Art of Prophesying, which has been reprinted by Banner of Truth.

_______________________________

Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

The Intellectual Origins of the 1644 London Baptist Confession

By Dustin Bruce

During a recent reading of David Bebbington’s Baptists Through the Centuries, his mention of a scholarly dispute regarding the intellectual origins of the 1644 London Baptist Confession peaked my interest.[1]

The difficulty in view focuses on Article XL (on baptism), which states:

The way and manner of the (Mat. 3:16; John 3:23; Acts 8:38) dispensing of this ordinance the Scripture holds out to be dipping or plunging the whole body under water: it being a sign, must answer the thing signified, which are these: first, the (Rev. 1:5; 7:14; Heb. 10:22) washing the whole soul in the blood of Christ; secondly, that interest the saints have in (Rom. 6:3-5) death, burial, and resurrection (of Christ); thirdly, together with a (1 Cor. 15:28, 29) confirmation of out faith, that as certainly as the body is buried under water, and rises again, so certainly shall the bodies of the saints by raised by the power of Christ, in the day of the resurrection, to reign with Christ.[2]

According to Glen Stassen, the Particular Baptist framers of the 1644 Confession are indebted to Anabaptist theologian Menno Simons, especially his Foundation of Christian Doctrine, for the motif of “death, burial, and resurrection” in relation to baptism.[3] Stassen’s claim is significant. If the authors of the early Baptist Confession were drawing heavily from Simons’s work, then an intellectual kinship could be established between the Mennonite Anabaptists and the fountainhead of the Particular Baptist stream. Stanley Nelson, however, counters Stassen’s assertion by proposing a different influence, that of William Ames.[4] Ames’s The Marrow of Theology was a popular work during the first half of the seventeenth-century and the Particular Baptist framers of the Confession were almost assuredly familiar with it.

Upon examining the sources, it is quite evident that Simons uses the motif of “death, burial, and resurrection” in his section on baptism. In his section entitled “Concerning Baptism,” Simons writes:

Behold, this is the word and will of the Lord, that all who hear and believe the word of God, shall be baptized (as above stated), thereby to profess their faith, and declare that they will henceforth not live according to their own will, but according to the will of God. That for the testimony of Jesus they are prepared to forsake their homes, chattels, lands and lives, and to suffer hunger, affliction, oppression, persecution, the cross and death; yea, they desire to bury the flesh with its lusts, and arise with Christ to newness of life, even as Paul says, "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life;" Col. 2:11, 12; Rom. 6:3, 4.[5]

However, it is also apparent that such a motif was available in Ames’s Marrow of Theology as well. In his section on “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper,” Ames writes:

Although it seals the whole covenant of grace to all believers, when it is specially made our own, it represents and confirms our very ingrafting into Christ. Rom. 6:3, 5, We have been baptized into Jesus Christ…being planted together with him; 1 Cor. 12:13, We have been baptized into one body.[6]

While Simons clearly makes use of the “death, burial, and resurrection” motif in his section on baptism, this of itself does not suggest an intellectual influence upon the Particular Baptist framers of the 1644 document. The connection between Romans 6:3-5 and baptism was clearly made by Ames in his The Marrow of Theology, which even Stassen recognizes as influential upon the 1644 Confession.

Upon examination of the texts, there is no reason to conclude the authors of the 1644 London Baptist Confession were necessarily drawing from the Anabaptist Simons. The association of the “death, burial, and resurrection” of Christ with baptism was available in Ames’s work. Then again, it could be that the originators of the first Particular Baptist confession were not relying on either work, but thoughtfully reading their Greek New Testament.

[1] David W. Bebbington, Baptists Through the Centuries: A History of a Global People, Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010, pp. 30-31.

[2] The First London Confession of Faith, 1644 Edition, available at http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/1st-london-1644-ed.pdf.

[3] Glen H. Stassen, “Anabaptist Influence in the Origin of Particular Baptists,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 36 (1962): 322-48.

[4] Stanley A. Nelson, “Reflecting on Baptist Origins: The London Confession of Faith of 1644,” Baptist History and Heritage 29 (1994): 34-35.

[5] Menno Simons, A Foundation Plain Instruction of the Saving Doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 1554, available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/simon/works1.iv.vii.html.

[6] William Ames, A Marrow of Theology, trans. John Dykstra Esuden,Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997, p. 210.

___________________________

Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

Thomas Doolittle on eyeing Eternity

By Dustin Bruce

Gospel preachers are prone to developing a lazy eye when it comes to viewing the present in light of eternity. In a sermon entitled, “How We Should Eye Eternity, That It May Influence Us In All We Do,” the Puritan pastor, Thomas Doolittle (1630­–1707) offers a special word to ministers:

When we are to preach to people that must live forever in heaven or hell, with God or devils; and our very preaching is the means appointed by God to fit men for an everlasting state: when we stand and view some hundreds of persons before us, and think, “All these are going to eternity: now we see them, and they see us; but after a little while they shall see us no more in our pulpits, nor we them in their pews… It may be, some of these are hearing their last sermon, making their last public prayers, keeping their last Sabbath; and before we come to preach again, might be gone into another world:” if we had but a firm belief of eternity ourselves, and a real lively sense of the mortality of their bodies and our own…how pathetically should we plead with them, plentifully weep over them, fervently pray for them; that our words, or rather the word of the eternal God, might have effectual operation on their hearts!

Doolittle mentions several ways maintaining an eye on eternity impacts a gospel minister:

First, eyeing eternity leads preachers to be “painful and diligent” in sermon preparation. He elaborates, “Idleness in a shop-keeper is a sin, but much more in a minister; in a trader, much more in a preacher.”

Second, eyeing eternity provokes preachers “into declaring the whole counsel of God.” Doolittle means that preachers should not hesitate to tell men of their sin and evils for fear of offense. Preachers with an eye upon eternity provoke the consciences of men for the gospel so as to say with Paul, “I am pure from the blood of all men.”

Third, eyeing eternity leads preachers to “be plain in speech.” A minister of the gospel must avoid starving those he pretends to feed by the use of lofty expressions. What a tragedy to have some condemned for eternity “because the learned preacher would not stoop to speak…of eternal matters in language that they might have understood.”

Finally, eyeing eternity leads pastors to raise up a new generation of gospel ministers. Doolittle emphasizes, “Those that are now engaged in the work, will shortly be all silenced by death and dust; and how desirable is it that your children and posterity should see and hear others preaching in their room!”

Eyeing eternity carries “influence in all we do.” While this is true for all believers, perhaps it is doubly so for the minister. Preacher, “do ye, while ye are in time, eye eternity in all you do?”

Note: Thomas Doolittle was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire and experienced conversion under the preaching of Richard Baxter. The actual sermon series used for Doolittle’s conversion would later be published as The Saints Everlasting (1653). Doolittle graduated from Pembroke Hall, Camdridge with a B.A. (1653) and Master’s (1656) and became a noted pastor to St. Alfege, London Wall, until his ejection from the Church of England in 1662. Doolittle then founded the Pioneer Noncomformist Academy, which operated for 35 years and influenced hundreds of students, including Matthew Henry and Edmund Calamy. The resilient nonconformist faced a lifetime of persecution and became the final ejected minister to enter into glory (Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans [Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006], 180–183).

____________________________________

Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

Remembering Baptist pioneers

In Russell Re Manning, ed., 30-Second Religion (New York: Metro Books, 2011)—one of those mass-produced books to be sold at a discount—Manning cites John Smyth, Thomas Helwys, and Roger Williams as the key representatives of “Baptist Christianity” (p.110). It is curious that I came across this today as this past week in our Church History colloquium we discussed John Smyth’s The Character of the Beast, and I noted that it is strange that we as Baptists remember two men—Smyth and Williams—who were Baptists for less than a year. To be sure, they understood certain key principles of Baptist theology, and for that we rejoice. But: we also must prize consistency and perseverance. It strikes me that if we want to remember two pioneers, Thomas Helwys and John Clarke in Rhode Island are much better models.

The seminary and piety: a surrejoinder

If we define a faithful minister of the Word along the lines of Acts 6, a man devoted to the Word and prayer, it seems to me that in the twentieth century faithful orthodox seminaries have done fairly well in training men in one half of this equation: the Word. But what of the other? Well, I think many leaders in former generations expected these things to be caught by osmosis even though Jesus responded positively to the disciples’ request that he teach them how to pray. Spirituality needs to be “taught” and handed on. And while all professors in a seminary need to approach their specific subjects with an answerable spiritual frame, it is not wrong for some to focus on spirituality. Given the fact that spirituality and spiritual formation are increasingly huge engagements for both our larger cultural “moment” and within the boundaries of the Church, it is not unrealistic to ask certain men to specialize in the praxis of spirituality and the history of biblical spirituality.

As an historian, I feel the latter is very important: during the course of the twentieth century for a variety of reasons many of those who loved the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God and faithfully upheld biblical orthodoxy failed to pass on the rich piety of their forebears in the Reformation, Puritan, Pietist and early Evangelical traditions. And surely this is one of the reasons why certain communities within the broad stream of twentieth-century English-speaking Evangelicalism became enamoured of the Spirit and talked as if they were the first to discover him since the Pentecost: they looked around and saw a tradition that seemed to have little place for piety, experience, and dare I say it, rapture (no I am not talking about an eschatological item!). Incidentally, here is where a man whom Carl has been writing about in recent days, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, is so helpful: his balance of Word and Spirit is admirable (re other matters Carl has raised about the Doctor, this is not the place to go into those, though I agree with Carl that the recent collection of essays on the Doctor is by and large a welcome addition to the books on that remarkable servant of God).

Maybe, I need to take up Carl’s offer and we can do a book together on this subject of the seminary and piety—and maybe Dr Lucas, if he is so inclined, could also be involved!

Audio interview with Dr. Haykin on The Reformers and Puritans as Spiritual Mentors

Dr. Haykin was recently interviewed on the podcast of the "New Books in Christian Studies" website. The subject of the interview is Dr. Haykin's recent book, The Reformers and Puritans as Spiritual Mentors (Joshua Press, 2012). The interview has been posted here and is available on iTunes as well.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Baptists and knowing the times

For Baptists, faithfulness to the Gospel in England during the period from 1660 to 1688 meant outright conflict with the Anglican Church and inevitably persecution and imprisonment for Baptist leaders. Not surprisingly, this produced a legacy of animosity between the two bodies of churches: to the Baptists, the Church of England was a false church; to the Anglicans, Baptist congregations were guilty of the sin of schism. Fifty years after the Act of Toleration, when revival began to come to the Church of England, Baptists understandably viewed things through the prism of their history of dealings with the Anglicans and either acted as if the revival was a “flash in the pan,” as we say, or rejected it out of hand. Far too many Baptists sought to hold the line against the revival, and one of the results was hyper-Calvinism, and Andrew Fuller’s famous quip that the Calvinistic Baptist denomination would have become “a very dunghill in society” (Works [1845], III, 478) if God had not brought renewal into their ranks. Nota bene: this revival of the Baptists did not take place till the 1780s, a full fifty years after the revival began in Anglican ranks.

There is a tremendous lesson in all of this: the form that our loyalty to the Gospel takes can never be divorced from the historical circumstances in which we find ourselves and thus we need to be astute as possible in “knowing the times.”

Conference Audio Posted for "Religious Liberty and the Cross"

Audio of our most recent mini-conference, "Religious Liberty and the Cross: 1662 and the Persecution of the Puritans," is now online on the conference page. I have posted the links to the audio files below.
Audio from previous conferences can be accessed on the respective conference pages found here. Registration will be opening soon for our sixth annual two-day conference. See the Schedule and Call for Parallel Session Papers.
Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Free Mini-Conference on the 350th Anniversary of the Puritan Ejection of 1662

Religious Liberty and the Cross: 1662 and the Persecution of the Puritans

 Date: Wednesday, April 18th

Time: 9:30 am - 12:00 pm

Location: Legacy Hotel, 3rd Floor (SBTS Campus)

Lectures:

  • Dr. Michael Haykin - "Puritanism Under the Cross"
  • Steve Weaver - "Baptists and 1662: The Persecution of John Norcott and Hercules Collins"
  • Dr. Tom Nettles - A Brief Summation and Concluding Word

This conference is free and open to the seminary community.

Christmas 1677 & 1679

While working through the Wapping Church minute book, I discovered this festive account from 1677. The church had voted to withdraw fellowship from Okey in June of the year. Apparently that was not okay with Okey. Okey had responded by praying for God to kill the pastor, Hercules Collins. The church took the following further action on Christmas Day 1677.

At the Church Meeting in ole Gravell Lane the 25th of December 1677 was John Okey Cut off and Excommunicated from all the priviledges of the gospel for the sin of lying and Revilling and for Refusing to hear the Church: together with his Invocating the God of Heaven to cut off and destroy Bro: Collings and saying also that he would be Revenged.

On a bit more pleasant note than the Christmas 1677 meeting, the Wapping Church took up a special collection for London pastor Benjamin Keach on December 25, 1679 in response to his recently having been robbed.

December 25th 1679 The Congregation in old Gravell Lane Did then Raise and give to Bro. Benj. Keach when he was Robed the Sum of Three pound five shillings

The church ultimately gave 3 pounds and eight shillings to Keach. On December 30th 1679, it was recorded in the minute book that: “Bro. Collings gave to Bro. Keach the Sum of three pound Eight Shillings which was gathered for him of the Church.”

The above was posted last week on my personal blog and the Hercules Collins site.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Henry Coppinger

Lavenham parish church is reckoned to be one of the most beautiful Anglican church buildings in the entire county of Suffolk, something that I can attest from personal experience, having visited the church last September. For a hundred years, from 1578 to 1679, the church was served by a succession of Puritan pastors, the last of whom was the famous William Gurnall, the author of The Christian in Complete Armour (1661). Now, the first Puritan leader in the Suffolk town was Henry Coppinger, Lavenham church's longest-serving pastor, who was there from 1578 to 1622. When his father, also Henry Coppinger, was dying, he asked the younger Coppinger, one of eleven sons, what course of life he would follow. When the latter told him he intended to be a minister of gospel, the elder Coppinger was immensely pleased, for he said, "what shall I say to Martin Luther when I shall see him in heaven, and he knows that God gave me eleven sons, and I made not one of them a minister?"

PS One of the great joys at Southern, where I teach, is serving with Dr Mark Coppenger. Drafting this mini-post I was obviously struck by the similarity of his name with that of Henry Coppinger (a difference of an i/e, easily accounted for). Maybe I am serving with a descendant of this Puritan leader who helped prepare the way for the great Gurnall!

Getting along in the Church and being truly Catholic, with a p.s. on Oliver Cromwell and John Calvin

Getting along: of all places in the world where this should happen, it should be in the church, should it not? But what do we see: the lovely garment of the church rent in pieces. And why? The sinful pride of men; their willingness to indulge in bitter attacks on brothers who differ with them, tho’ not in primary issues; their being more conformed to the world than to the mind of Christ. And the Reformed in all of their manifestations, be they baptist or paedobaptist, do not have a great track record. Let’s face it: the divisions between Reformed brothers and sisters is scandalous. Why will no one call it what it is? What we hear is “standing for the gospel”—but the reality often ain’t so: it is all too frequently just plain old sin or simple cantakerousness! "We alone are the truly reformed." Give me a break, how often have I heard that line! Of course, I believe in standing for truth in primary and secondary issues, but so frequently our divisions involve tertiary matters. One of the most beautiful words in the Greek Christian vocabulary is katholikos. The Fathers, blessed be God for the witness of those men, were right when they said that the true church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” No, this is not the Roman Catholic Church—I was enrolled in that body when I was an infant, and I have no desire to belong to that communion again. But that group is hardly the true Catholic Church. No sir, the Church I love is that Body, fair as the moon and as brilliant as pure glass reflecting the rays of the sun, an awesome army to behold in all of her glory: rank upon serried rank of saints. That is the people among whom I wish to spend my days and spend eternity. And if I am going to live there with such saints, should I not begin here in this world preparing for eternity, and living in peace with my brethren? I do not expect to see eye to eye here with all of my brothers and sisters—that is for another Day—but surely, I can demonstrate the love that marks the truly born-again, the love of the saints.

A p.s.: Let me tell you something amazing: two Christian saints who demonstrated such love were the remarkable Oliver Cromwell and his theological mentor John Calvin. Do not scoff; read their letters and in Oliver's case, also his speeches to Parliament and see true Christianity in action.

Free PDF Lecture on the Making of the KJV

Dr. Michael Haykin recently gave the Staley Lectures at Charleston Southern University on the history of the King James Version of the Bible.  These lectures were given in commemoration of the 400 year anniversary of the publication of the King James Version in 1611.  Dr. Haykin's lecture notes are now being made available here for free download.  They will be available in the future on the Papers page of this website.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Thomas De Laune (d.1685), the Cork Baptist and his Irishness

Thomas De Laune (d.1685), was native to Cork, Ireland. His background was Roman Catholic, but in the early 1650s he was converted through the instrumentality of Major Edward Riggs, a wealthy Cromwellian soldier who had settled on a large estate about seven miles from the town of Cork in 1651, and who was a key figure in the founding of the Cork Baptist Church (where I was for about eight days earlier this month). Riggs provided for De Laune’s education till the Cork man was sixteen or so. De Laune eventually moved to London, probably in the 1660s, where he became linked  with the leadership of the London Particular Baptist community. In July 1675, for instance, De Laune co-authored a book with Hanserd Knollys and William Kiffin and three others that defended believer’s baptism. Six years later De Laune and Benjamin Keach co-authored the monumental Tropologia, in which the authors seek to give the interpreter of the Bible a kind of Bible handbook in which he or she can find the explanation of the various tropes, metaphors, and similes in the Scriptures.

Reading through a work attributed to De Laune, namely, A Plea for the Non-Conformists (London, 1684) just now, I came across an interesting, albeit disturbing, statement. The author—indentified simply as “Philalethes” on the title page—is drawing his case for nonconformity to a close and he says that he hopes that he will be heard for he is appealing to “our own Country-men, Neighbours, Fellow-Citizens, Acquaintance, Relations, Gentlemen, Scholars, with men professing the same Protestant Religion with our selves.” He is not speaking, he emphasizes, to “brutish Irish Massacring-Cut-Throats, worse than Canibals [sic] (to whom all Reason, Right and Truth is unacceptable)” (p.78). The author is clearly De Laune, as can be seen by his Two Letters to Dr. Benjamin Calamy (London, 1683), and, in fact, A Plea for the Non-Conformists got De Laune committed to the infamous Newgate prison, where he perished in 1685, a genuine martyr for Dissent.

But what is shocking is that an Irishman could say such things about his fellow Irish! It could be that De Laune has one group of Irishmen in mind, but, at first glance the statement seems to reveal the racism that existed among the English regarding the Irish—and sadly, how an Irishman—who would have been betrayed by his accent like the ancient Galileans—could adopt English attitudes. Oh to move beyond such stereotyping, and see that at the door of the Church such perspectives must be shed wholly and utterly!

Why Baptist history is so vital for modern-day violations of freedom of conscience

One of our precious freedoms, won in part by Baptists, is freedom of conscience. Recently, the Hamilton Wentworth School Board here in southern Ontario has ruled that alternative lifestyles are to be taught in public schools and that parents will not be allowed to withdraw their children from classes when this issue is taught. The argument that I saw promoting this likened the issue to racism. Children are not exempt from classes dealing with the latter and therefore ipso facto should not be exempt from the former. This is all very interesting and confirms my own conviction formed over the past few years that one of the greatest challenges to the Church in the West is going to be obedience to state matters that violate our conscience as Christians. 

In brief: this is not like racism at all. That is like comparing apples and oranges. I have known racism firsthand becuase of my Kurdish background in the UK--was regularly called Arab in High School and even called by the N-word. I loathe racism. But I do not believe sexual preference is in the same category. Nor do I believe the state has the right to dictate ethical values to myself or my children. Everyone has an ethical position and the state is hardly neutral.

Being a Baptist and having a rich heritage to draw upon I now see as so vital for the modern-day. We need to revisit the lives and thinking of Baptists from the 17 and 18th centuries.

Praying with Jown Owen for Ireland

I love this quote from John Owen--may God make me faithful in prayer for that land:

"How is it that Jesus Christ is in Ireland only as a lion staining all his garments with the blood of his enemies; and none to hold him out as a lamb sprinkled with his own blood to his friends? Is it the sovereignty and interest of England that is alone to be there transacted? For my part, I see no farther into the mystery of these things but that I could heartily rejoice, that...the Irish might enjoy Ireland so long as the moon endureth, so that Jesus Christ might possess the Irish. …If they were in the dark, and loved to have it so, it might something close a door upon the bowels of our compassion; but they cry out of their darkness, and are ready to follow every one whosoever, to have a candle. If their being gospelless move not our hearts, it is hoped their importunate cries will disquiet our rest, and wrest help as a beggar doth an alms."

The Steadfastness of the Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (Works, 8:235-236).

Thomas Helwys and his congregation disavow being Anabaptists

In the midst of the discussion about Anabaptist origins of modern-day Baptists, it is very interesting that a document associated with Thomas Helwys (c.1575–c.1616), who is one of the key founders of Baptist witness in the first decade of the seventeenth century, can state quite plainly that it has been written—and I retain the spelling of the original—by “Christs unworthy witnesses,…comonly but most falsly called Annabaptists”—Obiections (1615), [p.vii].