Baptistines

BAPTISTINES (BATTISTINI, BATTISTINE): A religious order for both sexes, named after its patron saint, John the Baptist. The male branch (Congregatio sacerdotum sœcularium missionariorum de S. Johanne Baptista) was founded at Genoa by the pious priest Dominico Francesco Olivieri (d. 1766) and received papal approval from Benedict XIV in 1755. Its special purpose was to perform missionary work, which was carried on in Bulgaria, Rumelia, and China. The female order was instituted by Giovanna Maria Battista Solimani (d.1758), who established a community at Moneglia (33 m. e.s.e. of Genoa) as early as 1730. Olivieri became their spiritual director. In 1736 they removed to Genoa and in 1744 were confirmed by Benedict XIV under the official name of Hermitesses of St. John the Baptist. Each member took the name Battista, whence arose the popular designation of Battistine. They followed a rigidly ascetic life, marked in particular by strict fasting, and devoted themselves to works of charity. The male Baptistines ceased toward the end of the eighteenth century, but the female branch continued in Genoa, Rome (where a convent was founded in 1755), and elsewhere in Italy till the middle of the nineteenth century.

O. Zöckler†.

Bibliography: G. Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storicoecclesiastica, s.v. Battistæ, Rome, 1831-32; Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, ii, 307-308, 375.

456

BAPTISTS.

Origin of the Name (§ 1). Precursors of the Baptists (§ 2). I. The English Baptists. 1. Rise of the General Baptists. John Smyth and his Congregation (§ 1). They Organise a New Church (§ 2). Smyth Excommunicated by his Church (§ 3). Attempts to Join the Mennonites(§ 4). Smyth’s Declaration of Faith (§ 5). His Last Utterances (§ 6). Helwys Returns to London (§ 7). His Doctrines (§ 8). Baptist Publications (§ 9). Further Traces of Baptists in England (§ 10). 2. Rise of the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists. Congregations in London (§ 1). Confession of 1644 (§ 2). 3. General Baptists from 1641 Onward. Organization and Polity (§ 1). Revival at Barton (§ 2). The New Connection (§ 3). In the Nineteenth Century (§ 4). 4. Particular Baptists from 1644 Onward. To the Restoration (§ 1). Cooperation and Union (§ 2). To 17175 (§ 3). To 1775 (§ 4). Andrew Fuller. Missionary Enterprise (§ 5). Baptist Union (§ 6).

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (§ 7). The Welsh Baptists (§ 18). Alexander Carson and the Irish Baptists (§ 19). Scotch Baptists. The Haldanes (§ 10). II. Baptists in the United States. 1. To 1740. Roger William (§ 1). The Providence Church (§ 2). The Newport Church (§ 3). Baptists in Massachusetts (§ 4). In South Carolina (§ 5). In Virginia, North Carolina, and Connecticut (§ 6). In New York (§ 7). In the Quaker Colonies (§ 8). 2. From 1740 to 1812. The Great Awakening (§ 1). The Philadelphia Association (§ 2). Rhode Island College (Brown University) (§ 3). Southern Associations (§ 4). Evangelistic Work of Stearns and Marshall (§ 5). Separate Baptists in Virginia (§ 6). Baptists and Religious Liberty (§ 7). 3. From 1812 to the Present Time. Lack of an Educated Ministry (§ 1). Missionary and Educational Work (§ 2). Opposition and Difficulties (§ 3). Theological Seminaries (§ 4). Universities, Colleges, and Schools (§ 5). The Home Mission Society (§ 6). The Publication Society (§

7). The Southern Baptists (§ 8). The Baptist Congress and Young People’s Union (§ 9). Colored Baptists (§ 10). German Baptists (§ 11). Scandinavian Baptists (§ 12). 4. Minor Baptist Parties in the United States. (a) Six-Principles Baptists. (b) Seventh-Day Baptists. (c) Free-Will Baptists. (d) Original Free-Will Baptists. (e) General Baptists. (f) Separate Baptists. (g) United Baptists. (h) Primitive ("Hardshell") Baptists. (i) The Old Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists. (k) The Baptist Church of Christ. III. Baptists in the British Possessions. 1. The Dominion of Canada. The Maritime Provinces (§ 1). Ontario and Quebec (§ 2). The Northwest and British Columbia (§ 3). 2. Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. 3. The British West Indies, Central America, and Africa. 4. India, Ceylon, Burma, and Assam. IV. Baptists in Mission Lands. V. Baptists on the Continent of Europe. 1. Germany and German Missions. 2. Scandinavia. 3. France and Italy.

§ 1. Origin of the Name.

The use of the term “Baptist" as a denominational designation is of comparatively recent origin, first appearing about the year 1644. Its German equivalent (Täufer) was applied by Zwingli and others to the antipedobaptists of their time, expressing their opinion that the latter laid undue stress on believers’ baptism; and the terms “Anabaptist" and “Katabaptist" (Wiedertäufer and Widertäufer) were used implying repetition and perversion or destruction of the infant baptism that for many centuries had been practised (see Anabaptists). These designations were of course repudiated as opprobrious by antipedobaptists, who were content to call themselves “Christians,” “Apostolic Christians,” “Brethren,” “Disciples of Christ,” “Believing Baptized Children of God,” etc. Early English antipedobaptists were stigmatized as “Anabaptists,” with the worst continental implications, by their opponents, and were much concerned to disown this designation. In the earliest Particular (Calvinistic) Baptist confession of faith (1644) the churches concerned designate themselves as “those churches which are commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists,” and in the appendix to the confession (1646) they call themselves “Baptized Believers.” In the confession of 1688 Baptist churches are designated “congregations of Christians baptized upon profession of their faith" and “baptized congregations.” Other common designations (1654, etc.) are “Baptized Churches,” “Baptized Christians,” and “Churches of Christ in England, Scotland, and Wales.” “Churches of Christ in London,” “Churches of Christ in Ireland,” etc., are expressions that occur in documents of 1853-57. As a sort of compromise between “Anabaptists" and “baptised believers,” “baptised people,” etc., the term “Baptists" was gradually adopted (1670 or earlier). In 1672 it is used in a royal license.

§ 2. Precursors of the Baptists.

Baptists have always professed to base their doctrine and practise exclusively upon New Testament precept and example. If they have failed to realize their aim, it has been due to imperfect understanding of the New Testament Scriptures or to the imperfection inherent in human nature. Baptists find their spiritual ancestry in all individuals and parties that during the early Christian centuries, the Middle Ages, and the Reformation time, in the spirit of obedience and loyalty to Christ, sought to stay the tide of incoming pagan and Judaizing error, or in times of general apostasy endeavored to restore Christianity to its primitive purity and simplicity. They find rejection of infant baptism and insistence on believers’ baptism among the ancient, medieval, and modern Paulicians (Thondraki; see Paulicians), with the common (if not exclusive) practise of immersion and the most strenuous effort to realise regenerate membership, which so far identifies them with Baptists; but with their adoptionist Christology and sectarian exclusiveness modern Baptists have little sympathy. In the Petrobrusians of the twelfth century (see Peter of Bruys) Baptists find their principles almost completely embodied, but there is no indication that the former insisted upon immersion as the exclusively valid act of baptism. 457 Many of the Waldenses and the Bohemian Brethren rejected infant baptism and practised believers’ baptism, but they seem not to have disfellowshiped their pedobaptist brethren and laid no stress upon immersion; while in the rejection of judicial oaths, magistracy as allowable for a Christian, capital punishment, and warfare, they put an interpretation on the Scriptures that modern Baptists do not approve. The historical relations of modern Baptists to the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century are close and direct. English Puritanism and Brownism (see Browne, Robert), from which English Baptists sprang, were themselves products in part at least of the Anabaptist movement. A still more direct influence was exerted by the Mennonites of the Netherlands upon the English refugees that there became antipedobaptist (1609 onward). Anabaptists were the forerunners of modern Baptists in rejection of infant baptism and insistence on believers’ baptism, in insisting on the sole authority of the Scriptures, in their efforts to secure and maintain regenerate church membership, in pleading for liberty of conscience and the separation of Church and State; but nearly all Anabaptists rejected oaths, magistracy, warfare, and capital punishment, all were anti-Augustinian in their anthropology, many were chiliastic, many were antitrinitarian, some were pantheistic and antinomian, many were communistic, and none (so far as is known) insisted on immersion as the exclusively valid act of baptism (see Anabaptists).

I. The English Baptists.

1. Rise of the General Baptists:

§ 1. John Smyth and His Congregation.

John Smyth became a Puritan as early as 1590 but continued in the Established Church until 1606, when he led in the organization of a separate congregation at Gainsborough, the members of which covenanted together “to walk in all his [God’s] ways, made known or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it might cost them, the Lord assisting them.” In 1606 or 1607 they fled from persecution and settled in Amsterdam. They did not unite with the older Puritan church in Amsterdam, of which Francis Johnson and Henry Ainsworth were pastor and teacher, but were on terms of fellowship with this body. In his reply to Richard Bernard’s Separatists’ Schism, published some months after his arrival, Smyth expressed the profoundest aversion to “Anabaptists,” whom he classed with Papists, Arians, and other heretics and anti-Christians,” whose “prayers and religious exercises" could not be acceptable to God. By this time he had reached convictions in favor of pure congregationalism as against the presbyterial practise of Johnson. He soon took issue with “the Ancient Brethren of the Separation" as regards the use of the book [Bible] in reading, prophesying, and singing in church meetings, declaring it to be “no part of spiritual worship" and hence “unlawful"; he objected to the “triformed presbytery “(pastors, teachers, and rulers) as “none of God’s ordinance but man’s device"; and insisted that “in contributing to the church treasury, there ought to be both a separation from them that are without, and a sanctification of the whole action by prayer and thanksgiving.” He is reported by some of his contemporaries to have objected to the use of translations of the Bible and to have insisted “that teachers should bring the originals, the Hebrew and Greek, and out of them translate by voice.” He had evidently become hypersensitive regarding anything that savored of human additions to divine prescriptions.

§ 2. They Organize a New Church.

Prejudice against the Anabaptists seems for some time to have hindered the application of Smyth’s principle to infant baptism, but late in 1608 or early in 1609 it was borne in upon him that if the Church of England was apostate (as his Separatist brethren agreed), then its ordinances were invalid, and that infant baptism was wholly without Scripture warrant and so in any case to be rejected. Accordingly he and his followers dissolved their church, disowned their baptism (Smyth repudiating also his ordination), resolved to introduce anew believers’ baptism and to effect a completely new church organization with the New Testament as their only guide. Smyth seems to have first administered the ordinance to himself and then to the rest of the company. Then as baptized believers they effected a new organization with Smyth as pastor. They now felt impelled to protest against the church of Johnson and Ainsworth as “a false church, falsely constituted in the baptizing of infants, and their own unbaptized estate.” When charged with inconsistency and changeableness, Smyth insisted that a change for the better is always in order, and that not to change so long as complete conformity to Scripture has not been attained “is evil simply; and therefore that we should proceed from the profession of Puritanism to Brownism, and from Brownism to true Christian baptism, is not simply evil and reprovable in itself, except it be proved that we have fallen from true religion.” In answer to the charge of “Se-baptism" he claims that there is as much warrant for believers baptizing themselves as there is for setting up a true church (which his Separatist opponents professed to have done), inasmuch as a “true church can not be erected without baptism,” and that “any man raised up after the apostasy of Antichrist" may “in the recovering of the church by baptism, administer it upon himself in communion with others.” He further justifies self-administered baptism on the ground, among others, that “in the Old Testament every man that was unclean washed himself; every priest going to sacrifice washed himself. . . . Every master of a family ministered the Passover to himself and all of his family.” He adds: “A man can not baptize others into the church, himself being out of the church. Therefore it is lawful for a man to baptize himself together with others in communion, and this warrant is a plerophory for the practise of that which is done by us.”

As Puritans, Separatists, and Mennonites practised affusion at this time and as no issue was raised in the controversial literature called out by this new movement among English Separatists or in the later negotiations between these English antipedobaptists 458 and the Mennonites respecting the act of baptism, it seems highly probable that Smyth practised effusion. Deep-seated prejudice against Anabaptists, unfamiliarity with the Dutch language, and the attitude of aloofness assumed by the Mennonites, furnish a sufficient explanation of the failure of these English antipedobaptists to secure baptism at the hands of the Dutch brethren with whom they had so much in common.

§ 3. Smyth Excommunicated by his Church.

Shortly before or shortly after the introduction of believers’ baptism, in sympathy with the Arminian movement then current and with the Socinianized Mennonism of the time, Smyth adopted Socinian (Pelagian) views, denying original or hereditary sin and the redemption of infants by Christ. He also adopted the Mennonite view that Christ did not derive “the first matter of his flesh" from Mary, that “an elder of one church is an elder of all the churches in the world,” and that “magistrates may not be members of Christ’s church and retain their magistracy.” Smyth’s church, led by Thomas Helwys and John Murton, then excommunicated him and his followers because of their departure from the principles on which the church had been constituted. These (thirty-three in number) now sought admission into the fellowship of the Mennonite church in Amsterdam of which Lubbert Gerrits was pastor. In their application they “confess this their error, and repent of the same, viz.: that they undertook to baptize themselves contrary to the order laid down by Christ,” and express the desire “to get back into the true church of Christ as speedily as may be.” Helwys and his associates besought the Mennonites to take “wise counsel, and that from God’s word,” how they should deal “in this cause betwixt us and those who are justly, for their sins, cast out from us. And the whole cause in question being succession, . . . consider, we beseech you, how it is Antichrist’s chief hold, and that it is Jewish and ceremonial, an ordinance of the Old Testament, but not of the New.” They cite the case of John the Baptist to prove that an unbaptized person may inaugurate baptism. They claim that “whosoever shall now be stirred up by the same Spirit to preach the same word, and men thereby being converted, may, according to John’s example, wash them with water, and who can forbid? And we pray that we may speak freely herein, how dare any man or men challenge unto themselves a preeminence herein, as though the Spirit of God was only in their hearts, and the word of God now only to be fetched at their mouths, and the ordinance of God only to be had from their hands, except they were apostles? Hath the Lord thus restrained his Spirit, his word, and ordinances, as to make particular men lordly over them, or keepers of them? God forbid. This is contrary to the liberty of the gospel, which is free for all men, at all times and in all places. . . . And now for the other question, that elders must ordain elders; or if this be a perpetual rule, then from whom is your eldership come? And if one church might once ordain, then why not all churches always?"

§ 4. Attempts to Join the Mennonites.

It might have been expected that the Mennonites of Amsterdam would receive with open arms these English brethren who were seemingly so thoroughly at one with them in doctrine and practise. Several considerations led them to hesitate. The connectional church order of the Mennonites made it necessary for the Amsterdam church to secure the approval of other churches in fellowship. An unwise act might easily rend the entire brotherhood, as unhappy experiences in the past had abundantly demonstrated. The Amsterdam Mennonite congregation found Smyth’s party so thoroughly in accord with themselves that they were prompted to express to their brethren at Leeuwarden the opinion that “these English, without being baptized again, must be accepted.” Yet, if the Leeuwarden brethren thought otherwise, Smyth and his associates were willing to accept and the Amsterdam brethren to administer a new baptism, if it could be proved from Scripture and reason to be necessary. The Leeuwarden brethren could not be induced to commit themselves as to the validity of Smyth’s baptism or to assume any responsibility for what their Amsterdam brethren might do in the premises. One of the Mennonite brethren furnished Smyth’s party with a meeting-place in the Great Cake House; but they were not received into full fellowship until 1615, three years after Smyth’s death.

§ 5. Smyth’s Declaration of Faith.

In 1611 Smyth and his followers put forth a declaration of their faith in one hundred articles. The confession sets forth just views as to the nature of saving knowledge of God as involving conformity in character to God’s attributes. Arminian views are clearly and moderately set forth with respect to God’s relation to the fall and to human sin. “Adam being fallen did not lose any natural power or faculty, . . . and therefore . . . still retained freedom of will" (17). “Original sin" is declared to be “an idle term,” there being “no such thing as men intend by the term, . . . because God threatened death only to Adam, not to his posterity, and because God created the soul" (18). It is accordingly maintained that “infants are conceived and born in innocency without sin" (20). It is asserted that “Adam being fallen, God did not hate him, but loved him still and sought his good" (22). “The new creature which is begotten of God needeth not the outward Scriptures, matures; or ordinances of the church, . . . yet he can do nothing against the Law or Scriptures, but rather all his doings shall serve to the confirming and establishing of the Law" (61-63). The outward church visible “is declared to consist" of penitent persons only, and of such as believing in Christ bring forth fruits worthy of amendment of life" (65). “All penitent and faithful Christians are brethren in the communion of the outward church, . . . though compassed with never so many ignorances and infirmities; and we salute them all with a holy kiss, being heartily grieved that we which follow after one faith, and one spirit, one Lord, and one God, one body, and one baptism, should be rent into so many seats and schisms: and that only for matters of less moment" (69). It is taught “that the outward baptism of water is to be administered only upon such penitent and faithful persons as are [aforesaid], and not upon innocent infants, or wicked persons (70); that in the outward supper which only baptized pennons must partake, there is presented and figured before the eyes of the penitent and faithful that spiritual supper which Christ maketh of his flesh and blood: which is crucified and shed for the remission of sins . . . and which is eaten and drunken . . . only by those which are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, is the communion of the same spirit" (72); that “there is no succession in the outward church, but that all the succession is from heaven, and that the new creature only hath the thing signified and substance, whereof the outward church and ordinances are shadows, and therefore he alone hath power 459 and knoweth aright how to administer in the outward church, for the benefit of others: yet God is not the author of confusion but of order and therefore we are in the outward church to draw as near the first institution as may be in all things; . . . therefore it is not lawful for every brother to administer the word and sacraments" (81). The following declaration on liberty of conscience is especially noteworthy: “That the magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine, but to leave Christian religion free to every man’s conscience. . . . That if the magistrate will follow Christ and be his disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Christ: he must love his enemies and not kill them, he must pray for them and not punish them, he must feed them and give them drink, not imprison them, banish them, dismember them, and spoil their goods . . .” (84-85). Going to law before civil magistrates, marriage with unbelievers, and the taking of oaths are forbidden to Christians. Community of goods in times of need is recommended.

§ 6. His Last Utterances.

Smyth died in Aug., 1612, after a long period of decline during which he manifested a wonderful degree of charity toward all true believers. He expressed the profoundest regret for his bitterly censorious writings against the Church of England, the Separation, and Helwys, and showed the utmost aversion to everything controversial. In his Retractation of his Errors and the Confirmation of the Truth, published a year or two after his death, along with the confession of faith from which extracts have been given, and a brief account of his life and death, he restates the points at issue in the controversies in which he had been engaged, and in a thoroughly judicial and irenic spirit indicates what he is still constrained, without controversy, to maintain, as well as what he feels inclined to surrender. Helwys had been so intemperate as to charge him with sinning against the Holy Ghost in receding from the position he had reached regarding the independent inauguration of baptism and church organization. The point at issue was not the necessity of succession in the administration of baptism and the organization of churches, but whether “although there be churches already established, ministers ordained, and sacraments administered orderly, yet men are not bound to join these former churches established, but may, being as yet unbaptized, baptize themselves (as we did) and proceed to build churches of themselves; disorderly (as I take it).” Smyth points out that Helwys’s contention would involve a recognition of the right of any two or three private persons (even women), in a community where rightly constituted churches abound, to disregard these churches and baptize and organize themselves. “Concerning succession, briefly thus much: I deny all succession except in the truth; and I hold we are not to violate the order of the primitive church, except necessity urge a dispensation; and therefore it is not lawful for every one that seeth the truth to baptize, for then there might be as many churches as couples in the world, and none have anything to do with other, which breaketh the bond of love and brotherhood in church; but, in these outward matters, I dare not any more contend with any man, but desire that we may follow the truth of repentance, faith, and regeneration, and lay aside dissension for mint, comin, and annis seed.” Helwys understood Smyth to deny with the Mennonites that Christ received his flesh from Mary. He now points out that while once inclined to distinguish between the first and second flesh of the infant in the womb and to hold that the former was not derived while the latter, the product of nourishment, was derived from Mary, he has now reached the conviction that it is better to attribute his flesh to Mary without going beyond the Scriptures in curious inquiry “whereof Christ’s natural flesh was made.” He thinks it far more important that “we should search into Christ’s spiritual flesh, to be made flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, in the communion and fellowship of the same spirit.”

§ 7. Helwys Returns to London.

By 1611 Helwys and his associates reached the conviction that flight in persecution and voluntary exile were absolutely unjustifiable. Late in 1611 or early in 1612 they returned to England and settled in London. Helwys was not content to carry out, with his company, his own convictions; he published (1612) A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, in which “in great confidence and passion" (Robinson) he held up to reproach all the English dissenting refugees in the Netherlands, charging that in seeking to avoid being “sheep in the midst of wolves" the false-hearted leaders had fled into strange countries to save their lives and had drawn other people after them, leaving the true believers who could not thus save their lives without leadership and leaving their native land without gospel testimony.

§ 8. His Doctrines.

In A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland (1611), set forth by Helwys and his associates, while Christ’s righteousness is said to be imputed to all (general redemption), men are declared to be “by nature the children of wrath, born in iniquity, and in sin conceived . . . even so now being fallen, and having all disposition unto evil, and no disposition or will unto any good, yet God giving grace, man may receive grace, or may reject grace . . . .” It is further taught, “That God before the foundation of the world hath predestinated that all that believe in him shall be saved, and all that believe not shall be damned; all which he knew before. And this is the election and reprobation spoken of in the Scriptures, concerning salvation and condemnation; and not that God hath predestinated men to be wicked, and so to be damned, but that men being wicked shall be damned.” It is taught “That man may fall away from the grace of God, and from the truth . . . . That a righteous man may forsake his righteousness, and perish.” Civil magistracy is recognized as “a holy ordinance of God" and magistrates “may be members of the church of Christ, retaining their magistracy.” From this confession, as well as from Helwys’s Proof that God’s Decree is not the Cause of any Man’s Sin or Condemnation, published the same year, it appears that Helwys held to a moderate type of Arminianism, while Smyth had become almost Socinian in his doctrine.

§ 9. Baptist Publications.

Little is known of the careers of Helwys, Murton, 460 and their associates after their repatriation. In 1614 a zealous, clear-headed antipedobaptist, Leonard Busher by name, addressed to King James and the High Court of Parliament a treatise entitled Religious Peace: or A Plea for Liberty of Conscience, the first work on the subject published in English. Among the more striking sentences are the following: “It is not only unmerciful, but unnatural and abominable; yea, monstrous for one Christian to vex and destroy another for difference and questions of religion.” “I do affirm, that through the unlawful weed-hook of persecution, which your predecessors have used, and by your majesty and parliament is still continued, there is such a quantity of wheat plucked up, and such a multitude of tares left behind, that the wheat which remains can not yet appear in any right visible congregation.” “With . . . Scripture, and not with fire and sword, your majesty’s bishops and ministers ought to be armed and weaponed.” Having shown that even in the Old Testament time “the Lord would not have his offerings by constraint,” he proceeds: “So now in the time of the gospel, he will not have the people constrained, but as many as receive the word gladly, they are to be added to the church by baptism. And therefore Christ commanded his disciples to teach all nations and baptize them; that is, to preach the word of salvation to every creature of all sorts of nations, that are worthy and willing to receive it. And such as willingly and gladly receive it, he hath commanded to be baptized in the water, that is, dipped for dead in the water.” The last sentence would seem clearly to identify Busher with the Baptists as regards his conception of the subjects and mode of baptism; but whether he was a member of the little Helwys company or a disconnected antipedobaptist we are not informed. The following year (1615) there was published Objections answered by way of Dialogue, wherein is proved . . . that no man ought to be persecuted for his religion, so he testifie his allegiance by the Oath, appointed by Law, By Christ’s unworthy Witnesses, His Majesty’s faithful Subjects: Commonly (but most falsely) called Anabaptists. This somewhat elaborate and thoroughgoing plea for liberty of conscience proceeded from the Helwys company and has been attributed to John Murton, as has also A Most Humble Supplication of many of the King’s Majesty’s Most Loyal Subjects . . . who are persecuted (only for differing in religion), contrary to divine and human testimonies (1620). According to an early tradition recorded by Roger Williams, the latter treatise was written with milk brought daily in a bottle with a fresh sheet of paper each day rolled up for a stopper and the written sheet returned as stopper of the empty bottle to be deciphered by a friend.

§ 10. Further Traces of Baptists in England.

Helwys seems to have died a few years after returning to England. Murton was thenceforth leader of the party. By 1624 or 1626, as is learned from correspondence of members of Murton’s connection with the Mennonites of Amsterdam preserved in the archives of the latter (B. Evans, Early English Baptists, ii, London, 1862, pp. 21-22), there were, besides the congregation at Newgate, London, small congregations at Lincoln, Tiverton, Salisbury, and Coventry, aggregating about 150 members. Differences had by this time arisen among the brethren and a minority, led by Elias Tookey, had been excommunicated. Both sides sought the moral support and the fellowship of the Amsterdam Mennonite church. As usual, the Mennonite brethren were extremely cautious, and required to be accurately informed on many points before committing themselves to either party. Tookey failed to satisfy the Mennonites on a number of points: he and his party thought it right to celebrate the Supper in the absence of an ordained minister; were not willing to refuse oaths or military service; while none of them denied the deity of Christ, there was difference of opinion as to what was involved in his deity. They wished the Mennonites to write to Murton and his friends on their behalf “in order to augment peace and welfare.” In 1626 two commissioners from the five churches of Murton’s connection visited the Mennonites of Amsterdam with a view to fellowship. These also were disposed to defend oaths as almost necessary at the time in England and to insist that Christ had his flesh from Mary. Against the practise of the Mennonites they were strongly inclined to perpetuate the weekly celebration of the Supper. They acknowledge that the ministering of the sacraments is inseparably united with the ministering of the word, but insist that without ordination servants of the church may “preach, convert, baptize, and perform other public actions with the consent of the church, when the bishops are not present.” They crave the indulgence of their Dutch brethren in a difference of opinion regarding the right of a Christian to exercise magistracy. They insist upon the right of Christians to bear arms for national and local defense. The Mennonites treated both parties kindly but refused to enter into organic union with either. Two letters addressed to the Mennonites in 1630-31, the one by the church at Lincoln, the other by that at Tiverton, in answer to letters of reproof occasioned by their overreadiness to exercise severe discipline even to the wasting and scattering of their constituencies, turn the tables upon their somewhat patronizing counselors, justify their efforts to purge themselves of evil by abundant citation of Scripture, rebuke the Mennonites for their laxity, which if they had known before they applied for union (1626) they would first have sought to reform, and blame them for refusing union on grounds that can not be shown to be scriptural. One of the matters of complaint was that the English antipedobaptists disciplined members for attending the services of the Established Church. There is no indication of difference of opinion respecting the act of baptism.

John Murton seems to have died about 1630, when his widow returned to Amsterdam and united with the Mennonite church.

Somewhat vague traditions of the existence of Baptist churches about this time (in some cases considerably earlier) at Stony Stratford, Ashford, Biddenden, Eyethorne, Hill Cliffe, Booking, 461 Canterbury, and Amersham are still current in England. Attempts to confirm these traditions by antiquarian research have so far failed. Some of the Baptist churches that claim early foundation may have grown out of Anabaptist, Lollard, or Separatist congregations of the earlier time. Little further is known of English antipedobaptist life until about 1640-42, when in common with the Calvinistic antipedobaptists, they became convinced that immersion alone is baptism.

2. Rise of the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists:

§ 1. Congregations in London.

In 1616 Henry Jacob, a learned Puritan minister, who for some years had been pastor of an English congregation at Middelburg, Zealand, and who had published a number of works against the English establishment, after much conference with his Separatist brethren in the Netherlands and in England and much fasting and prayer with his associates, reached the conviction that duty required him to return to England and to “venture himself for the kingdom of Christ’s sake.” Such of his members as chose to return with him he organized anew at Southwark, London, all covenanting together “to walk in all God’s ways as he had revealed or should make known to them.” The congregation proceeded to choose and ordain Jacob pastor and “many saints were joined to them.” After about eight years of heroic service and suffering, Jacob emigrated to America. After an interval, John Lathrop became pastor and with many of the members spent much of the time in prison. Finding it impossible to labor in England Lathrop also sailed for America (1634). In 1633, differences of opinion having arisen as to recognition of the parish churches, a number of the brethren were peaceably dismissed to form an independent congregation, “Mr. Eaton with some others receiving a further baptism.” John Spilsbury’s name does not appear among the seceders of 1633, but some time in between this date and the second secession of 1638 he had become the pastor of an antipedobaptist congregation; whether this was distinct from Eaton’s congregation does not clearly appear. The record reads “These also being of the same judgment with Sam Eaton and desiring to depart and not be censured, our interest in them was remitted with prayer made in their behalf, June 8, 1638, they having just forsaken us and joined with Mr. Spilsbury.” Shortly before or shortly after this secession William Kiffin, then a young man of twenty-two, afterward till 1701 one of the most influential leaders of the Particular Baptists, united with Eaton. The learned and zealous Henry Jessey had become pastor of the Jacob-Lathrop church in 1637. In 1640 the conviction that “dipping the body into the water" is the only valid baptism forced itself upon a number of the members and the matter was much agitated in antipedobantist circles. As a result of conferences on this matter Richard Blount, who understood Dutch, was sent to Holland where the Collegiants of Rhynsburg (see Collegiants) were practising immersion, and received baptism at the hands of J. Batte, a teacher among them. This party had arisen about 1619, but its immersion may have been derived from the Polish (Socinian) antipedobaptists. On his return Blount immersed Blacklock, and they two baptized large numbers (1641). The immersionist antipedobaptists had by this time formed themselves into two companies. Spilsbury insisted that “baptizedness is not essential to the administrator" of baptism and, with a number of adherents, discountenanced Blount’s method of restoring baptism. As the agitation had been going on for some months before Blount’s journey to Holland, it is not unlikely that Spilsbury and his adherents, including Kiffin, had some time before introduced immersion independently. Spilsbury’s argument against the necessity of succession in baptism prevailed. In 1643 friendly discussion of the question of infant baptism was renewed in the congregation of which Jessey was pastor. Hanserd Knollys, a university graduate and Puritan preacher who had spent some time in New England and had found himself out of harmony with the theocracy, was at this time a member of Jessey’s church. According to the ancient records “H. K., our brother, not being satisfied for baptizing his child, after it had been endeavored by the elder and by one or two more, himself referred to the church then that they might satisfy him or he rectify them, if amiss therein, which was well accepted. Hence meetings were appointed for conference about it . . . and each was performed with prayer and much love.” An interesting outline of the arguments pro and con by Jessey and Knollys, in which other brethren (Kiffin among them) joined is given in the record. A considerable number were convinced with Knollys against the baptism of infants, and the church after taking the advice of the elders and brethren of other churches (including Praisegod Barebone, Dr. Parker, Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Simpson, and Burrows), several of whom had recently returned from exile in the Netherlands and were to become prominent members of the Westminster Assembly, it was decided that inasmuch as the antipedobaptist brethren had absented themselves, not from obstinacy, but from tender conscience and holiness, and in order to avoid disturbing the proceedings of the church, that the church would not “excommunicate, no, nor admonish, which is only to obstinate, to count them still of our church and pray (for) and love them,” and to “desire conversing together so far as their principles permit them.” By this time Kiffin had become pastor of a church and some of those who left Jessey’s church on this occasion joined with him, while others organized themselves into a new church with Knollys as pastor (1644).

§ 2. Confession of 1644.

By October 1644, the Calvinistic antipedobaptists of London who had adopted immersion as the exclusively valid form of baptism “had become seven churches.” At this time, in order to defend themselves against charges of Arminianism, opposition to civil government, etc., usually associated with the name “Anabaptist" and slanderously urged against themselves, representatives of these churches united in a confession of faith in fifty-two articles, wherein along with Calvinistic teachings on theology, Christology, and anthropology, are 462 set forth Baptist views of baptism and the Supper (the “dipping or plunging of the body" of the believer “under water,” the Supper to be partaken of after baptism), magistracy, oaths, etc., and a vigorous statement of the doctrine of liberty of conscience.” But if any man shall impose upon us anything that we see not to be commanded by our Lord Jesus Christ, we should in his strength rather embrace all reproaches and tortures of men, to be stripped of all outward comforts, and, if it were possible, to die a thousand deaths, rather than do anything against the least tittle of the truth of God, or against the light of our own consciences.” This confession was signed by fifteen brethren representing the seven churches. The name of Kiffin stands first, those of Spilsbury, Skippard, Gunne, Webb, Hobson, and Phelps, are first in the other groups. In the second edition (1646) a French church represented by Le Barbier and Le Durst is added, and the names of Hanserd Knollys, Benjamin Cox, and Thomas Holms appear for the first time.

The following record, written apparently by Jessey, dates from 1644: “After that H. Jessey was convinced also, the next morning early after that which had been a day of solemn seeking the Lord in fasting and prayer (That if infant baptism were unlawful and if we should be further baptized, etc., the Lord would not hide it from us, but cause us to know it). First H. Jessey was convinced against pedobaptism and then that himself should be baptized (notwithstanding many conferences with his honored and beloved brethren Mr. Nye, Mr. Th. Goodwin, Mr. Burroughs, Mr. Greenhill, Mr. Cradock, Mr. Carter, etc., etc. . . .), and was baptized by Mr. Knollys, and then by degrees he baptized many of the church, when convinced they desired it.” Several who had left the church to become Baptists now returned. Jessey long continued to minister to a mixed congregation, Baptists and pedobaptists mutually tolerating each other. In the general religious ferment which set in with the opening of the Long Parliament (Nov. 3, 1640) and the greater freedom which was then allowed, many who had doubted the propriety of infant baptism felt free to avow and propagate their principles.

3. General Baptists from 1841 Onward:

§ 1 Organization and Polity.

It is probable that most or all of the antipedobaptist churches of the Helwys-Murton connection survived the Laudian persecutions and others may have arisen after 1632. Thomas Lamb was arrested at Colchester for disseminating heresy some time before 1640. After his release he resumed his ministry in London and is said to have become familiar with nearly every prison in London and its vicinity. At the beginning of this period he was pastor of a congregation in Bell-alley, which became a fruitful mother of churches. In 1643 he was reenforced by Henry Denne, who had been educated at Cambridge and was instrumental, with Lamb and several other zealous evangelists, in the conversion of multitudes in Huntingtonshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Kent, and elsewhere. Lamb’s church became a missionary society which sent forth evangelists into various parts of England and into Wales. Between 1641 and 1649 about ten associations are supposed to have been established, with quarterly, half-yearly, or annual meetings, for edificatory, disciplinary, and missionary purposes. Possibly from early connection with the Mennonites, the General Baptists emphasized correctional church government rather than church independency. Several years before 1671 a General Assembly of the churches of the entire connection had been formed, which usually met in London. The General Baptist churches exercised a rigorous discipline over their membership in matters of doctrine and life. Persistence in Calvinistic teaching (as in denial of the universality of the atonement) was a ground of excommunication. Divisive controversies on church singing and on the imposition of hands occupied a large share of attention. Quakers and Ranters invaded the congregations and in some cases were responsible for decimating their membership. Divided congregations, churches at variance with neighboring churches, and even aggrieved individuals could appeal to the associations. The General Assembly became virtually a court of appeal from churches and associations. An aggrieved member of a church might appeal to two or more neighboring churches, which were under obligation to hear and judge the case. From such a judgment, appeal might be made to the association and from this to the General Assembly. Thus every local difficulty was likely to pervade the entire connection. Thus equipped with a system of graduated courts of appeal, the connection came to feel the need of general executive officers, and found the New Testament prototype of what they wanted in the apostolate. These officials were called “messengers" or “bishops.” According to the Orthodox Creed (1678), “The bishops have the government of those churches that had suffrage in their election, ordinarily, as also to preach the word to the world.” Thomas Grantham (in Christianismus Primitivus, London, 1678), a chief defender of Baptist episcopacy, thus defined the office: “1. To plant churches where there are none; 2. To set in order such churches as want officers to order their affairs; and 3. To assist faithful pastors or churches against usurpers and those that trouble the peace of particular churches by false doctrines.” Grantham expressed the wish that representatives of all the baptized churches in the world might meet occasionally in a great consistory to consider matters of difference among them. The Lincolnshire Association in 1775 gave still more ample powers to the “messenger,” who is said to have “full liberty and authority, according to the Gospel, to freely inquire into the state of the churches respecting both the pastor and people, to see that the pastors do their duty in their places, and the people theirs; he is to exhort, admonish, and reprove both the one and the other, as occasion calls for. In virtue of his office, he is to watch over the several flocks committed to his care and charge, . . . to labor to keep out innovations in 463 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.

§ 2. Revival at Barton.

In 1743 a religious revival occurred in the vicinity of Barton. After a time the converts became impressed with the importance of immersion and brought a large tub into the 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.

§ 3. The New Connection.

In 1762 Dan Taylor, 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 infant baptism, left the Wesleyans, and associated himself 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 miles distant, Taylor journeyed in the midst of winter and was baptized by Jeffries, pastor of the Gamston church. Taylor proved himself a master workman and by 1770 he had founded or rescued from decay fifteen churches, which united in forming a “New Connection of General Baptist churches, with a design to revive experimental religion or primitive Christianity in 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.

§ 4. In the Nineteenth Century.

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 1891 a union of General and Particular Baptists was effected. Until recent times the 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:

§ 1. To the Restoration.

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 work. Baptists of both types were 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 464 church. Among Cromwell’s “Tryers,” appointed to pass upon the qualifications of candidates for the pulpits of endowed churches were Henry Jessey, Daniel Dyke, and John Tombes, a highly educated collegian who wrote and disputed against infant baptism. These and about twenty-two other Baptist ministers thought it right to accept appointments as pastors of endowed churches, a majority of the parishioners in each case petitioning for their services. Hanserd Knollys and many other Baptist ministers protested against the Court of Tryers as too much like the High Commission Court of Laud’s time. Besides being one of the most influential and devoted pastors of his time, William Kiffin was a successful man of affairs and by the liberal use of his wealth promoted the Baptist cause.

It has been noticed that the first Particular Baptist congregations were formed by peaceable withdrawal from a pedobaptist church and that Jessey remained pastor of a mixed church. Open communion was from the first practised by most of the churches. Controversy between Kiffin and Bunyan, in which the latter denied that differences of opinion and practise respecting an external rite should be allowed to hinder the manifestation of Christian love and brotherhood in the Supper, left the question an open one.

§ 2. Cooperation and Union.

In 1653 several churches in Ireland that had been formed through the labors of London ministers addressed a letter to their brethren in London suggesting the desirability of “brotherly correspondence" with them and through them “with all the rest of the churches of Christ in England, Scotland, and Wales.” They requested that two or more suitable brethren “visit, comfort, and confirm all the flock of our Lord Jesus that are, or have given up their names to be, under his rule and government, in England, Scotland, and Wales.” The London brethren accepted the suggestion and messengers were sent out to visit the churches. Jessey “was sent by divers churches to visit about thirty-six congregations in Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, Middlesex.” In the same year a circular letter was addressed by many churches in London, Wales, etc., to other churches, suggesting the sending of messengers to a meeting with a view to harmonizing doctrine and practise among the churches and arranging for the approval and sending out of teachers. The Western Association was formed the same year, the Midland Association in 1655. The Western Association in 1655 appointed and ordained Thomas Collier, its most influential leader, “General Superintendent and Messenger to all the Associated Churches.” In 1656 this association adopted a confession of faith (the “Somerset") in which the duty of the churches individually and collectively to “preach the gospel to the world" is asserted, and special recognition is made of obligation to labor for the conversion of the Jews. It may be worthy of note that Henry Jessey, who was an enthusiastic Hebraist, was deeply interested in the Jews of his time and raised a considerable amount of money for the relief of the persecuted and distressed.

Particular Baptists as well as General, though probably not to so large an extent, suffered much from the intrusion of Familists, Seekers, Ranters, and Fifth Monarchy Men.

§ 3. To 1717.

Baptists promoted the restoration of Charles II and accepted in good faith his assurances of toleration. The uprising of the Fifth Monarchy Men led by Henry Venner (1661), was the occasion of an outbreak of persecution. Twenty-six Baptist ministers who had held benefices under the Cromwellian régime were deposed through the execution of the Act of Uniformity (1662), the least regrettable of the results of the Restoration. These ministers, it will be remembered, had been educated in the Established Church and no doubt justified themselves in abetting a union of Church and State by the practical consideration that the funds were available for the support of a ministry and that it was bettter for them to do the service to which they were invited rather than to leave the people destitute or with inferior pastors. The Bill of Indulgence (1675) opened the way for efforts to strengthen the ministry of dissenting churches. In the same year the Particular Baptist ministers of London requested the churches in England and Wales to send representatives to meet in London the following May, with a view to taking measures for “providing an orderly standing ministry in the church, who might give themselves to reading and study, and so become able ministers of the New Testament.” The meeting seems not to have occurred till 1677, when a confession of faith, that of the Westminster Assembly with necessary modifications, was adopted and formally promulgated. In 1689 (just after the Revolution and the promulgation of the Act of Toleration) representatives of about a hundred churches assembled for the expression of fellowship and the reaffirming of the confession of 1677. The meeting was most harmonious, scarcely a note of dissent being heard. A dearth of properly qualified pastors is lamented. During the Civil War and Commonwealth times many highly educated ministers from the Established Church had joined the Baptist ranks. This source of supply had failed. Failure “to make gospel-provision for their maintenance" is thought to be one of the reasons why so few competent men devote themselves wholly to the work. For remedying this defect it was decided to raise “a public stock or fund of money,” “first by a free-will offering to the Lord; and secondly, by a subscription, every one declaring what he is willing to give weekly, monthly, or quarterly to it.” “A general fast in all the congregations" was arranged for, a list of “evils to be bewailed and mourned over" is given, and special prayer is to be offered for the conversion of “the poor Jews.” The assembly was careful to disclaim “superiority and superintendency over the churches" and determined that in future assemblies no differences between churches and persons should be debated. Nine London brethren were entrusted with the collection and the administration of the fund for the assistance of weak churches, the sending forth of missionaries, and the assistance of gifted and sound men “in attaining to the knowledge and understanding of 465 the languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.” The question of open or restricted communion was left to the churches, each to act in the matter “as they have received from the Lord.” The assembly of 1691 was made up of representatives of a hundred churches belonging to twelve associations. In 1692 it was decided to divide the assembly, one portion to meet in London and the other in Bristol, at different seasons of the year, these assemblies not to be accountable to each other and each to send messengers to the other. At this time a grievous controversy was raging on the question “whether the praises of God should be sung in public assemblies,” Kiffin, Keach, Cox, Steed, and other leading brethren being involved. It was decided to refer the matter to seven brethren appointed by the assembly, who administered a scathing rebuke to the offenders, which was taken in good part. The Bristol meeting prospered, but the London meeting declined. The Broadmead church, Bristol, was one of the earliest and strongest of the Particular Baptist Churches outside of London and the importance of Bristol as a Baptist center was greatly enhanced by the endowment left by Edward Terrill (d. 1686) with the Broadmead church for ministerial education, which became available in 1717. Out of this foundation grew the theological college that from its inception has been one of the chief factors in the progress of the denomination.

§ 4. To 1775.

In 1717 the London ministers inaugurated another missionary fund. The great leaders of the past century had all passed away, and there had been a marked decline in the Baptist cause. The older assembly with its fund seems to have become extinct. Benjamin Stinton, pastor of one of the wealthier churches, and the Hollis brothers, wealthy business men, who while contributing liberally for the support of Baptist work regularly attended Presbyterian services, urged that General Baptists be invited to cooperate in the raising and administration of the fund and to participate in its use. This cooperation was refused, but there was in London at this time a strong sentiment in favor of Baptist union. The fund was to be administered by representatives of the contributing churches, to be appointed in numbers proportioned to their contributions, and individual contributors not members of contributing churches participated in the management. John Hollis was for years treasurer of the fund and left it a large legacy. It may be observed that to the Hollis family Harvard University was indebted for endowment and equipment. In opposition to this unionistic movement, a “Society of Ministers of the Particular Baptist Persuasion" was formed 1723-24, which for many years exerted a powerful and wide-spread influence. By way of reaction against the Socinian teachings that were pervading the Established Church and all the dissenting bodies, Particular Baptist theologians like John Gill and John Brine promulgated a high type of Calvinistic teaching that in the minds of the uncultured easily degenerated into fatalism and antinomianism. Many Particular Baptist ministers went to the extreme of considering it an impertinence to preach to the unregenerate or to pray for them, and many churches excluded from fellowship any who dissented from their fatalistic views. By 1753 there had been such a decline that John Ryland, who made a careful inquiry, could find only 4,930 Particular Baptists in England and Wales. They opposed the evangelical revival with almost fanatical zeal. In the London and Bristol centers there remained a number of more moderate pastors and churches. In general it may be said that pastors educated at Bristol rarely carried their doctrine and practise to the fatalistic and antinomian extreme.

§ 5. Andrew Fuller. Missionary Enterprise.

The conversion of Andrew Fuller to evangelical views, chiefly through the reading of a pamphlet by Jonathan Edwards on the importance of a general union of Christians in prayer for a revival of religion, and through the influence of the evangelical revival in England, marks an epoch in the history of the Particular Baptists. For a few years before 1792 ministers of the Northamptonshire Association, under Fuller’s leadership, held monthly prayer-meetings for the extension of the gospel. In May, 1792, William Carey having become deeply impressed with the destitution of the heathen and the duty of Christians to carry out the great commission, preached a sermon on the topic: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God,” which made a profound impression and led to the organization, a few months later (Oct. 2), at Kettering (Fuller’s church) of the Baptist Missionary Society. From this time onward Fuller devoted much of his time and effort to the diffusion of the missionary spirit throughout his denomination and among dissenters and churchmen. He visited from time to time all parts of Britain in the interest of Carey’s mission. His popular but profound publications disseminated moderate Calvinistic views suffused with missionary enthusiasm. Not since the Cromwellian age were Baptist principles brought to the attention of the religious public in so acceptable a manner. Closely associated with Fuller was John Ryland, who in 1783 became pastor of the Broadmead church, Bristol, and Principal of the Baptist College. For thirty years he exerted a wide-spread influence as pastor and teacher. Among the students that went forth from the college were John Foster and Robert Hall. Fuller’s chief Baptist opponents were Abraham Booth, who from being a General Baptist became a Particular Baptist of the more rigorous type and wrote largely in defense of believers’ baptism, restricted communion, and high Calvinism ("Reign of Grace"), and Alexander Maclean, leader of the Scotch Baptists. The successful inauguration of missionary work in India and Carey’s achievements in the acquisition of Oriental languages and in Bible translation gave the denomination a prestige and popular acceptance that it had not before enjoyed. By 1801 the Particular Baptists had increased to 29,000.

The work of the denomination in Foreign Missions was greatly prospered, and commanded enthusiastic support. India, Ceylon, China, Palestine 466 Africa, the Bahamas, Trinidad, San Domingo, Turk’s Island, and Italy are the present beneficiaries. At an earlier date Jamaica was evangelized by this body. The present annual income of the Foreign Missionary Society is about £100,000. It supports about three hundred missionaries and evangelists and has about 20,000 members in its mission churches.

§ 6. Baptist Union.

About 1812 a conviction was expressed by a writer in the Baptist Magazine that, while numerically strong, the Baptists of England and Wales exerted little influence because of their lack of union. “Union of the most extensive, firm, and durable nature" was earnestly advocated by him. A number of brethren met in London the same year to plan for a union. Particular Baptists contended much more strenuously than General Baptists for church independency, and the recognition of the fullest independence of the local churches was indispensable. Among the principal promoters of the enterprise were Joseph Ivimey, the historian, Drs. Ryland and Rippon, of London, and James Hinton, of Oxford. The union did not at once take firm hold on the denominational life or become a marked success. But the great religious and political upheaval of the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century (Reform bills, Catholic Emancipation, abolition of Corporation and Test Acts, Hampden Controversy, Tractarian Controversy, etc.) aroused Baptists anew to the importance of making their influence felt and the Union grew in importance. The determined and successful Romanizing propaganda of the Oxford school and the disruption (1843) of the Scottish Church encouraged English dissenters to believe that disestablishment was possible in England and led to concerted efforts for religious equality. At the formation of the Anti-State-Church Association (1844) Baptists were the only religious body represented. In the recent agitation against the education act, Dr. John Clifford was the recognized leader and to him and his free church coadjutors was largely due the victory of the Liberal party in 1906.

Through the enthusiastic advocacy of Robert Robinson and Robert Hall, and other favoring influences, open communion became widely prevalent in England early in the nineteenth century. In Wales, however, restricted communion has always prevailed. In 1845 a number of “Strict Baptist" churches formed the Baptist Evangelical Society under the leadership of Dr. John Stock. This society undertook missionary work in Germany and founded a theological college at Manchester. The most eminent English Baptist leaders of the present day carry their liberality so far as to practise open or mixed membership. Alexander Maclaren, the famous Manchester preacher was for many years pastor of a mixed church. The same is true of Dr. Clifford. F. B. Meyer, president of the Baptist Union, 1905-06, was for some years pastor of a pedobaptist congregation in London.

§ 7. Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

The coming of Charles Haddon Spurgeon to the pulpit of New Park Street Church, London, in 1854, marks an epoch in the history of British Baptists. Within a few years he became recognized as one of the greatest of preachers. That he built up a church of six thousand members, preached regularly in the Metropolitan Tabernacle to 7,000 people with a large overflow, that he reached through his published sermons millions of people throughout the world, represent only a small part of his beneficent activity. From his Pastor’s College hundreds of young men went forth as pastors into all parts of Britain and throughout the world, and it is estimated that considerably over a hundred thousand have been added to churches pastored by Spurgeon’s students. The Stockwell Orphanage founded by Spurgeon has set an example to Baptists and others in practical philanthropy. His Book Fund supplied the needs of multitudes of pastors. His magazine and his popular writings multiplied his influence. The last years of Mr. Spurgeon (1884-92) were somewhat embittered by a controversy in which he became engaged with the Baptist Union because of its toleration of liberal views on the Scriptures, the person of Christ, the atonement, future punishment, etc. His own Puritan convictions made him incapable of seeing anything but the abomination of desolation in less rigorous modes of thought that had become widely prevalent. When the Union refused to exclude from its fellowship those whose teachings he regarded as unsound he severed his connection with this body and was followed by many of his former students and the churches to which they ministered.

§ 8. The Welsh Baptists.

The Baptists of Wales suffered much during the first half of the eighteenth century from hyper-Calvinism, but the religious fervor of the race was too great to be completely quenched. More promptly than the English Baptists, they responded to the quickening influences of the evangelical revival, especially to the Calvinistic phase of it represented by Whitefield. During the latter part of the century Sandemanianism and Socinianism made some headway among them. The teachings of Andrew Fuller finally prevailed, and the spirit of evangelism attained to a fervor among Welsh Baptist preachers Baptists rarely surpassed. Christmas Evans was from 1791 onward by far the greatest evangelizing force. Anglesea was the chief scene of his labors, but he is said to have traversed Wales forty times on preaching tours and to have preached one hundred and sixty-three associational sermons. Many other men of power carried forward throughout Wales the work in which Evans was the chief prophet. Pontypool College (1836) grew out of earlier efforts at ministerial education. Haverfordwest College was founded in 1839 and Llabollen College in 1862. Like the English denominational colleges these are small institutions in which two or three teachers instruct twenty or thirty students for the ministry. The Welsh churches, while retaining for home work a liberal share of scholarly ministers have sent to England and America many of their brightest and best. The Philadelphia Association has profited largely by Welsh talent and consecration. The Welsh Baptists at present number 467 nearly 150,000, nearly 30,000 having been added within the past year and a half as a result of the great revival of 1904-05.

§ 9. Alexander Carson and the Irish Baptists.

The Baptist churches planted in Ireland in the Cromwellian time by Thomas Patient and other London Baptists either became entirely extinct or survived in a very feeble way. About 1803 Alexander Carson, who had been graduated a few years before from the University of Glasgow and was pastor of a Presbyterian church at Tubbermore with ample state support, reached convictions in favor of congregational church government and believers’ baptism so strong that he gave up his living and the prospect of a Glasgow professorship. With a few like-minded believers he organized a Baptist church which during his forty years of service grew to a membership of 500. His best-known work is his treatise on baptism, but his doctrinal and controversial writings are numerous. He is said to have contributed the scholarship to Haldane’s commentary on Romans. He was closely associated with the Haldanes. Like the Scottish Baptists, Carson practised weekly communion. He also followed the Scriptural injunction “salute one another with a holy kiss,” himself kissing one of the deacons, and others following his example. After the sermon the brethren were encouraged to exhort. He was frequently called to Scotland and England for sermons and addresses. Since Carson’s time English Baptists have devoted much effort to the propagation of Baptist principles in Ireland with small numerical results.

§ 10. Scotch Baptists. The Haldanes.

In Scotland also the Baptist movement that flourished in Cromwell’s time failed of maintenance. In the eighteenth century Sir William Sinclair of Keiss, Caithness, who had been baptized while visiting England, gained a number of adherents in his own neighborhood, whom he baptized and organized into a church (about 1750). This is the oldest Baptist church in Scotland. In 1765 Robert Carmichael, a Sandemanian minister of Glasgow, was baptized in London by John Gill. He baptized several members of his former church and organized them into a Baptist church. Archibald McLean, who had been a member of Carmichael’s church in Glasgow, joined his former pastor in Edinburgh, was baptized by him, became his co-laborer, and succeeded him (1769) with Dr. Robert Walker as coelder. McLean was a vigorous and somewhat voluminous writer, and his works (published in seven volumes, 1805) have exerted a profound influence on Scottish Baptist life and thought. By far the most important factor in the history of Scottish Bap tists was the conversion to evangelical principles, and then to Baptist views, of Robert and James Alexander Haldane. The former was deeply interested in religious and philanthropical matters from 1793 onward, and in fifteen years spent $350 000 in educating and supporting evangelists, building chapels, circulating religious literature, etc. In 1799 James became pastor of an In dependent church in Edinburgh and in 1801 his brother built for the church a large tabernacle in which he ministered for fifty years. In 1808 both became avowed Baptists, and from this time onward, while conducting their work on somewhat broad lines, were highly influential in the propagation of Baptist principles. Christopher Anderson was converted under the ministry of James Haldane (1799). Through the influence of English Baptist students at the University of Edinburgh he became a Baptist, and was excluded therefor from Haldane’s church. He was persuaded by Andrew Fuller to enter the ministry and in 1806 led in the founding of a regular Baptist church in Edinburgh, where he soon preached to overflowing congregations. His ministry of thirty years greatly strengthened the Baptist cause in Scotland. Anderson’s church practised restricted communion and did not, like most Scottish Baptist churches, have plurality of elders or weekly communion. Among the most noted preachers of the Scottish Baptist churches, some of whom labored exclusively in Scotland while others did so in England, may be named Drs. Patterson, Landels, Culross, and Alexander Maclaren. Scottish Baptists have never gained great numerical strength, their present membership being less than 21,000. The Baptists of Great Britain number at present about 500,000, which, in view of the constant drain upon the membership by emigration, is a very creditable showing. This estimate takes account of about 400 unassociated churches. One of their greatest achievements was the raising of the £250,000 twentieth Century Fund for home and foreign work.

II. Baptists in the United States.

1. To 1740

§ 1. Roger Williams.

About March, 1638, Roger Williams, having been banished from Massachusetts two years before because of agitation against the charter, advocacy of extreme Separatist views, insubordination on conscientious grounds to the theocratic authorities, etc., and having settled on Narragansett Bay, felt it his duty, in cooperation with a dozen likeminded men and women who had followed him from Massachusetts, to introduce believers’ baptism anew and to organize independently a new church on the apostolic model. Ezekiel Holliman first baptized Williams, who in turn baptized Holliman and the rest of the party. Winthrop attributes Williams’s antipedobaptiat views to the influence of the wife of Richard Scott, a sister of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, the antinomian agitator (see Antinomianism and Antinomian Controversies, II, 2)). He was already familiar with the opinions of the Mennonites and probably also with those of the followers of Smyth and Helwys and the contemporary Calvinistic antipedobaptists of London. He had reached the conviction that the ordinances and church order of the apostolic time had been lost by apostasy and, for the time, he was persuaded that a company of true believers had the right to restore them; but he did not long rest in this conviction. To the end of his life he maintained that true churches could only be constituted of regenerate members baptized upon a profession of their faith, and on many occasions expressed the conviction that in doctrine and practise the 468 Baptists were nearer than others to the apostolic norm; yet after a few months of experience he became so doubtful as to the warrantableness of what he had done, that he felt constrained to withdraw from the fellowship of the church he had founded and to spend the rest of his life as a “Seeker". Nothing short of a miraculously given commission to restore the ordinances would thenceforth meet his requirement. It wasafter he had assumed this position that he gained immortality of fame as an advocate of liberty of conscience and as, in cooperation with John Clarke, the founder of a state in which this doctrine was embodied to an extent never before known.

§ 2. The Providence Church.

For some years little is known of the career of the little church. The principle of individualism was so emphasized in the Providence community that complete harmony among the members of the church could hardly have been expected. Within a few years several who had been members of antipedobaptist churches in England (probably of the Arminian type) seem to have reenforced the constituent members and to have introduced elements of discord. Among the Arminian members, afterward to become somewhat prominent, were William Wickenden, Gregory Dexter, and Chad Brown, who, like many of the English General Baptists insisted upon the laying-on of hands after baptism as a Christian ordinance and an indispensable qualification for church-fellowship. William himself regarded the laying on of hands as an ordinance of Christ. Thomas Olney, one of the constituent members, probably succeeded William in leadership, and by 1652 was coelder along with the brethren named. By this time diversities of opinion as to the extent of Christ’s redemptive work and the laying-on of hands had become so pronounced as to occasion a schism. Olney led the faction that opposed the laying-on of hands as an ordinance and probably insisted on limited redemption, while Brown, Wickenden, and Dexter, on the basis of Heb. vi, 1-2, led the party, probably a majority, that insisted on the laying-on of hands as one of the “Six Principles.” The fact that Olney’s party did not survive as a church has led to the claim on behalf of the Newport church, organized some years later than the original Providence church, of priority among surviving churches. But the party led by Brown and the others seem equally entitled to be regarded as the original church. Wickenden extended his labors to New York State, where he was imprisoned (1656) for baptizing and administering the Lord’s Supper. By 1669 his Arminianism had developed into Socinianism greatly to the alarm of William. He died in 1670. Gregory Dexter, who had printed Williams’s Key to the Indian Language (1643) in London, removed to Providence about 1644. He was probably a General Baptist before his emigration. He became one of the most prominent men in the colony (President, 1653). Brown was for about twenty-five years a pillar among the Providence Baptists. He is of special interest as the ancestor of the Browns who gave their name to the first Baptist College in America and have done so much for its endowment and equipment (see below, II, 2, § 3).

§ 3. The Newport Church.

The First Baptist Church of Newport owes its origin to John Clarke, an educated Englishman who arrived at Boston in Nov., 1637, and cast in his lot with a company of Antinomians (Anne Hutchinson, Wheelwright, Coddington, and others), who were leaving Massachusetts for conscience’ sake and who through William’s good offices secured from the Indians the island of Aquidneck (Rhode Island), where they organized a colony (Mar., 1638) with recognition of Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The first agreement was theocratic, but in 1641 a distinctly democratic constitution with full provision for liberty of conscience was adopted. Clarke was equally prominent with Williams in the later political history of the united colonies that became Rhode Island, and, like Williams, spent much time in England in the public interest. As early as the year 1638 Governor John Winthrop designated Clarke as “a physician and preacher to those of the island.” By 1640-41 strife had arisen between Clarke, Lenthall, Harding, and others, and Easton, Coddington, Coggeshall, and others, the latter maintaining the antinomian views of Anne Hutchinson, the former repudiating these views and probably at this time objecting to the baptism of infants. Winthrop wrote of the presence of “professed Anabaptists" on the island in 1641. There is no direct proof of the organization of Clarke’s followers on a Baptist basis until 1644 or a little later. Mark Lukar, who was among those baptized by Blount and Blacklock in London in 1641-42, was for many years one of the most influential members of the Newport church. The date of his arrival has not been ascertained. If he arrived in 1644, as seems probable, he may have been a constituent member and have led in the introduction of believers’ baptism. Samuel Hubbard, a friend of Roger Williams and a man of intelligence and force of character, removed from Connecticut in 1648, where he had adopted antipedobaptist views and was baptized into the fellowship of the church. In 1665 Stephen Mumford, an English Seventh-Day Baptist; became a member of this church and won to his views Hubbard, Hiscox, and others. Failing to carry the majority of the church for Sabbatarianism, they withdrew in 1671 and formed a separate congregation. In 1649 Obadiah Holmes of Seekonk, Mass., near the Rhode Island border, was baptized into the fellowship of the church and with a number of other persons attempted to carry on Baptist work in the Seekonk neighborhood. Civil interference with their meetings led them to remove to Newport. In 1651 Clarke, Holmes, and Crandall visited Lynn, Mass., to minister to some antipedobaptists there. They were imprisoned, heavily fined, and Holmes, for refusing on principle to pay the fine, was cruelly whipped. In 1652 Clarke published in England Ill News from New England, a full account of this act of persecution with a somewhat elaborate argument for liberty of conscience. The division of sentiment among the Providence Baptists on the laying-on 469 of hands extended to the Newport church, which had been strictly Calvinistic. William Vaughan, a member of the church, went to Providence in 1652 and submitted to the rite. Wickenden and Dexter accompanied him to Newport and a number were convinced in favor of the “Six Principles.” In 1656 a division occurred. From this time onward until the Great Awakening Baptist progress in New England was almost confined to the General (Six Principles) type. Several churches were formed in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southern Massachusetts, and associational meetings were held among them early in the eighteenth century.

§ 4. Baptists in Massachusetts.

In Massachusetts a rigorous law was enacted (1644) against “Anabaptists,” whose presence was supposed to imperil civil and religious order, banishment being the penalty for openly condemning or opposing the baptism of infants or secretly propagating Anabaptist principles. The law was put into execution in a number of cases before the persecutions at Seekonk and Lynn mentioned above. In 1646 Winslow stated that in one of the churches of the Plymouth settlement (presumably that of Chauncy at Scituate) the pastor “waiveth the administration of baptism to infants.” Remonstrance on the part of the synod seems to have led to the resumption of infant baptism, though this future president of the college at Cambridge continued to insist upon immersion. About 1652 or 1653 Henry Dunster, the highly efficient first president of the college at Cambridge (1640 onward), became so profoundly impressed against infant baptism that he did not feel at liberty longer to keep his views in abeyance, and after many conferences with the overseers and ample warning he was obliged at great sacrifice of sentiment and material good to relinquish his position. The patience of the authorities and their willingness for him to continue in the office provided he would cease to agitate against infant baptism speak well for their tolerant spirit. The influence of Dunster is clearly manifest in the movement for the founding of the First Baptist church of Boston under the leadership of Thomas Gould (1655). In 1663 John Myles, a Welsh Baptist minister who had acted as one of Cromwell’s Tryers for Wales, driven from his post by the Act of Uniformity (1662), came with his congregation to Massachusetts and secured a tract of land in Rehoboth, near the Rhode Island border. Partly because of their remoteness from churches of the standing order and partly perhaps because they were less aggressive than most Baptists in their condemnation of the union of Church and State, they suffered little molestation until 1667 and even then they were permitted to continue their worship on condition of holding their meetings at a greater distance from the Rehoboth congregational meeting-house. Myles proved himself a man of power and built up at Swansea in Rehoboth a vigorous church of the Calvinistic type. He also gave valuable assistance to the Boston brethren after they had secured a measure of toleration. Organization was not effected by the Boston antipedobaptists until 1665, when Thomas Gould and three others were baptized and joined with Richard Goodall and four others who had been baptized in England. In spite of persecution this faithful body grew to considerable size. Even after the Act of Toleration (1689) had come into force in England, intolerance held sway in Boston. In 1680 John Russel, an officer of the church, published in London, with an “Address to the Christian Reader" by Kiffin, Dyke, Collins, Knollys, Harris, and Cox, A Brief Narrative of some considerable passages concerning the first gathering and further progress of a Church of Christ, in Gospel Order, in Boston in New England, commonly (though falsely) called by the name of Anabaptists, for clearing their innocency from the scandalous things laid to their charge (reprinted in Wood’s History of the First Baptist Church in Boston). English Congregationalists, and English Baptists, protested in vain against the intolerance of the Massachusetts authorities in dealing with the Boston Baptists, partly because of the justification that it would seem to furnish to the home government for the persecution of non-conformists. A Six Principle church was formed at Swansea in 1693, and in 1732 a Baptist church was formed in Rehoboth by John Comer, the able pastor of the original Newport church, who had left his charge because of his adoption of the doctrine and practise of laying-on of hands, but had remained a Calvinist. Indian Baptist churches were formed by 1694 on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island through the labors of Peter Foulger, of the First Baptist church of Newport, and others. In 1735 through the influence of Comer a church was organized at Sutton, Mass., from which, by friendly division, the Leicester church was formed in 1738. The Brimfield, Mass., church was gathered and organized through Ebenezer Moulton in 1736.

§ 5. In South Carolina.

In 1682 some members of the Boston church who had settled at Kittery, Me., sought and obtained the cooperation of the church in the organization of a new church at that place. The leaders were Humphrey Churchwood and William Screven. The latter was approved as a minister by the parent church and became pastor of the new body. Persecution soon broke up the Kittery church. In 1683 or 1684 Screven made his way to South Carolina, accompanied or followed by several of the members, and settled on the Ashley river, a short distance from the place where Charleston was about to be founded. About 1683 a colony of Britons, among whom were several Baptists, had settled on Port Royal island. At about the same time a large company from Somersetshire, England. including several Baptists of intelligence and social rank (Lady Blake and Lady Axtell), settled in the Charleston neighborhood and became members of the church at Somerton with Screven as pastor. In 1693 the church was removed to Charleston, which was assuming commercial importance. Screven died in 1713 leaving the church with a membership of nearly a hundred. Through his zeal, preaching stations had been established at a number of points and something practical had been done for the evangelization of the negro slaves. In 1733 a schism occurred that resulted in the 470 organization of a General Baptist church, and in 1736 members residing in the Ashley river community withdrew to form a church of their own. This greatly weakened the Charleston church and by the close of the present period it had become almost extinct. In 1737 a company of Welsh Baptists from Welsh Tract, Pa. (now Delaware), settled on the Peedee river, S. C., and formed the Welsh Neck church.

§ 6. In Virginia, North Carolina, and Connecticut.

In 1714, in response to an appeal from some Baptists in Isle of Wight County, Va., Robert Nordin was sent out by the General Baptists of London. He succeeded in organizing a church at Burleigh and another in Surrey county. In 1727 a Baptist church was formed in northern North Carolina under the leadership of Paul Palmer, who had been a member of the Welsh Tract church and who was presumably Calvinistic. In Connecticut, through the labors of Valentine Wightman, Stephen Gorton, and others, General (Six Principles) Baptist churches were constituted at Groton (1705), New London (1726), Wallingford (1735), and Farmington (now Southington) a little later. These were closely associated with the General Baptist churches of Providence, Newport, South Kingston, and Dartmouth, R. I.

§ 7. In New York.

In 1643 Lady Moody, who had become a zealous antipedobaptist, left Massachusetts and settled at Gravesend, N. Y. On her way she spent some time in New Haven, where she won to her views the wife of Theophilus Eaton, first governor of the colony and daughter of an English bishop. For many years religious services were held by Lady Moody without regular church organization. Francis Doughty, driven from Massachusetts on account of antipedobaptist views, labored for a while at Flushing and left for Virginia in 1656 without effecting a church organization. In 1656 William Wickenden, of Providence, preached, baptized, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper at Flushing, but was driven away after imprisonment and an attempt to collect from him a heavy fine. From 1711 onward Valentine Wightman, of Connecticut (General Baptist), frequently visited New York on the invitation of Nicholas Eyres, a prosperous brewer, who with others was baptized by Wightman in 1714. Eyres became pastor of the congregation. He was ordained and the church recognized by brethren from Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1724. This church became involved in debt and controversy (Arminianism vs. Calvinism) and was extinct before the close of this period. At Oyster Bay, L. I., there were Baptists from 1700 onward. A Baptist church (probably General) was constituted a little later.

§ 8. In the Quaker Colonies.

The Quaker colonies furnished an attractive field for Baptist effort. The first Baptist church founded in this section was that at Cold Spring (1684) through the labors of Thomas Dungan, an Irish minister who had been a member of the First Church, Newport. This church became extinct by 1702. The Lower Dublin, or Pennepek, church followed in 1688. Several families of Welsh Baptists, with one Irish and one English Baptist, had settled in the neighborhood two years earlier. Elias Keach, the prodigal son of the famous Benjamin Keach, of London, was converted while practising imposture upon the brethren and became a preacher of power. Under his leadership the Pennepek church was organized in 1688, and in a few years through his evangelistic efforts baptized believers were to be found at the Falls, Cold Spring, Burlington, Cohansey, Salem, Penn’s Neck, Chester, Philadelphia, and other places, who continued to be members of the Pennepek church enjoying occasional preaching services and gathering quarterly at different places for evangelistic services and communion. Keach returned to England in 1692. Here also controversy arose respecting the laying-on of hands and occasioned Keach’s withdrawal in 1689 from the pastorate of the church. The laying-on of hands became the common practise of the churches of the Philadelphia Association, but was never a term of communion. Churches were formed in the following places: Piscataqua, N. J. (1689), Middletown, N. J. (1688), Cohansey, N. J. (1691), Philadelphia (1698), Welsh Tract, Del. (1703), Great Valley, Pa. (1711). The Welsh element prevailed, but many of the members of the churches were English and not a few had had New England experience. Many Mennonites settled in this region and reenforced the antipedobaptist life; so also the Dunkers. Baptists in Philadelphia were considerably strengthened (1692-1700) by the conversion to their views of a number of Keithian Quakers. Some of these were constituent members of the church and in 1707 the Keithians invited the Baptists to share the use of their meeting-house. Seventh-Day Baptists early appeared in this region and churches were organized by them at Piscataqua (1705), Newtown (1700), and Shiloh (1737). In 1707 churches which from the beginning had held general meetings together joined in organizing the Philadelphia Association, than which no agency has been so potent in the unification and extension of the denominational life. The adoption, with modifications, by the Association of the English Particular Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 tended to fix the doctrinal type of what was long the most aggressive aggregation of Baptists in America. Before the Great Awakening the Baptists of the Philadelphia Association were carrying on successful missionary work.

2. From 1740 to 1821:

§ 1. The Great Awakening.

A Socinianized Arminianism long before the beginning of this period had wrecked a number of the older Calvinistic Baptist churches. As in England, so in America, evangelical religion was at a low ebb during the first third of the eighteenth century. The Great Awakening (see Revivals of Religion) found the Baptists wholly unprepared to cooperate. The Arminian Baptists were repelled by the Calvinistic teachings of the great evangelists, while Baptists of all parties had suffered so much at the hands of pedobaptists that they would have been disinclined to join heartily in any general Christian movement. Yet no denomination profited more largely by 471 the revival of religion. A considerable number of “New Light" churches which had been formed by way of separation from churches of the standing order that opposed the revival, or in new communities from the products of the new evangelism, came to feel that the practise of infant baptism was inconsistent with their demand for regenerate membership. In many cases “New Great Light" churches were divided in opinion respecting infant baptism and mutual toleration of each others’ opinions was agreed upon. Convictions proved too strong to allow mixed churches long to persist and separation proved inevitable. Among the most valuable accessions to the Baptist ranks from this source was Isaac Backus (d. 1806), who was for many years the champion of the denomination in the cause of religious equality and wrote a meritorious history of the New England Baptists. Hezekiah Smith (d. 1805) after his graduation at Princeton (1762) wrought as an evangelist in South Carolina and more largely in New England. While pastor of the Haverhill (Mass.) church he devoted a large share of his time to evangelistic effort and to the collection of funds for the support of Rhode Island College. The First Church of Boston, under the influence of Jeremy Condy (pastor 1739-65), had become Arminian (Socinian) in sentiment and strongly opposed the revival. Under the well educated and eloquent Samuel Stillman (pastor after 1765) the. church regained its evangelical zeal and its high standing among the churches. In 1769 the membership of the church was more than doubled. Under the influence of the Great Awakening a number of brethren led by Ephraim Bound formed a second Baptist church (1743). Valentine Wightman, one of the very few Baptists of the older sort who had entered heartily into the revival movement, assisted in the ordination of Bound. The Swansea and Rehoboth churches held resolutely aloof from the revival movement and would have no fellowship with the New Light brethren until 1771 when several hundred were added to their membership through evangelistic effort. Some of the converts formed a new church at Rehoboth which practised open communion. At about the same time the “New Light" Congregational church of Rehoboth suffered schism, Elhanan Winchester, a baptized evangelist, becoming pastor of the antipedobaptist party which organized on an open communion basis. Winchester refused to administer the Supper to any but baptized believers and was excommunicated. He afterward became a Universalist leader. A third open communion church was formed in this region in 1777.

§ 2. The Philadelphia Association.

The churches of the Philadelphia Association had reached a position of assured strength that enabled them to assert their principles with the utmost decision while maintaining the most friendly relations with their brethren of other denominations. The growth of the churches of Pennsylvania and New Jersey during this period was only normal. The Philadelphia Association, being long the only body of the sort among the Calvinistic Baptists, had by 1762 extended its influence so as to embrace churches in New England, New York, Virginia, and Maryland. At this time the association comprised only twenty-nine churches with a membership of 1,318. The territory of the association was covered by the evangelizing activity of the Tennents and the Presbyterian discipline was so effective that few of the converts became Baptists. In 1756 measures were taken by the association for the establishment of a grammar-school under the care of Isaac Eaton, at Hopewell, N..J.

§ 3. Rhode Island College (Brown University).

About 1762, members of the association under the leadership of Morgan Edwards began to agitate and plan for the establishment of a Baptist College. The graduation of James Manning and Hezekiah Smith at this time from Princeton and the availability of the former for educational work may have brought the matter to an issue. Rhode Island was selected as the most promising location for a college because of its men of eminence, its central position, its lack of a college, and its devotion to civil and religious liberty. In 1663 Manning was sent to Rhode Island to confer with leading brethren there. In 1764 a charter was secured, which, while giving control to the Baptists, provided for the participation in the government of the institution of Quakers, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians. The charter provides: “Into this liberal and catholic institution shall never be admitted any religious tests. But, on the contrary, all the members hereof shall forever enjoy full, free, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of conscience; and the places of professors, tutors, and all other officers, the president alone excepted, shall be free and open for all denominations of Protestants . . . and that sectarian differences shall not make any part of the public and classical instruction.” The trustees and fellows included the most prominent men of the various denominations. Morgan Edwards visited England on behalf of the college and Hezekiah Smith made a canvass of the South. It was arranged that pending the raising of funds Manning should minister to a few Baptist families at Warren and conduct there a grammar-school (1764). In 1765 Manning was appointed president and in 1769 seven young men received the bachelor’s degree—the first academic degrees ever conferred by a Baptist institution. In 1804 Rhode Island College became Brown University and under this name has steadily grown in equipment and influence. Among its presidents have been Francis Wayland, Barnas Sears, Alexis Caswell, E. G. Robinson, E. B. Andrews, and W. H. P. Faunce.

As a result of the influence of the Baptists of the Philadelphia Association, the Warren Association was formed in 1767. The moving spirits were James Manning and Hezekiah Smith. Only four churches participated in its organization, Isaac Backus and many of the “New Light" brethren as well as all of the older churches holding aloof from fear lest the body should “assume any jurisdiction over the churches.” The influence of the Warren Association was soon felt 472 and became mighty in favor of education, evangelization, and religious liberty.

§ 4. Southern Associations.

In 1749 Oliver Hart from the Philadelphia Association went to Charleston, S. C., where he was influential in reviving the Baptist cause and in forming the Charleston Association after the model of the Philadelphia. From 1742 onward members of the Philadelphia Association (Gano, Vanhorn, Miller, Thomas) visited the scattered and unorganized Baptists of Virginia and North Carolina, won some Arminians to Calvinism, introduced better church discipline, and secured the organization (1765) of the Kehukee Association, composed of churches in Virginia and North Carolina. Through the labors of David Thomas, also a gift of the Philadelphia Association, several churches were constituted in the Northern Neck of Virginia and in 1766 formed the Ketokton Association with the approval and cooperation of the Philadelphia. This association adopted the Philadelphia Confession, with its requirement of the laying-on of hands.

§ 5. Evangelism Work of Stearns and Marshall.

Of momentous importance for the diffusion of Baptist principles throughout the South was the enthusiastic evangelism of Shubael Stearns and Daniel Marshall, “New Light" Baptists from New England (1754 onward). Stearns had become a Baptist in New England (1751) and had felt an irresistible impulse to devote his life to missionary work in the South. Marshall was led to Baptist views after his arrival in Virginia from contact with Baptists of the Philadelphia Association type. Within the next thirty years multitudes were converted and accepted Baptist views through their ministry, and churches were organized in Virginia., North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The Sandy Creek (N. C.) church was organized by Stearns in 1755 and in a few years it had over 600 members. In 1758 the Sandy Creek Association was formed, which for years embraced all the churches of the Separate type in the South. In seventeen years the connection had grown to forty-two churches with 125 ministers. The evangelism of Steams and Marshall was characterized by an enthusiasm that verged upon fanaticism. Many new converts, without previous educational equipment or subsequent training, entered zealously upon the work of evangelization and the people heard with gladness their uncouth but earnest testimony to the power of the Gospel.

§ 6. Separate Baptists in Virginia.

Because of their fiery enthusiasm and their unwillingness to take out licenses and conform to the Colonial conditions of toleration the Separate Baptists of Virginia suffered much persecution in genuine martyr fashion and thereby won for themselves great, popular acceptance and made the episcopal establishment highly odious. Virginia Baptists of the older type conformed to the laws and suffered little persecution, and looked with disfavor upon the Separate Bapists as unduly enthusiastic and as allowing untrained and untried men (and even women) freely to evangelize. Stearns was disposed to lay more stress on the interdependence than the independence of the numerous and widely scattered churches of the Sandy Creek Association. Under his influence overtures from the Regular Baptists for the union of Regulars and Separates were rejected (1767) by a small majority. By 1770 many churches and ministers of the association had become dissatisfied with the rigorous ruling of Stearns and insisted upon the division of the body into three associations. The result was the formation of the General Association of Separate Baptists, for Virginia, and the Rapid-Ann Association, for South Carolina. From 1770 onward the Separate Baptists increased in Virginia from 1,335 in 1771 to 3,195 in 1773. In 1774 it was determined by the General Association to restore the office of apostle, and Samuel Harris, the most successful of the Virginia evangelists, was appointed apostle for the southern district, and a little later John Waller and Elijah Craig became apostles for the northern district. In 1775 the question of general and particular redemption was debated in the General Association, and by a small majority particular redemption prevailed. The three apostles withdrew by way of protest and disruption seemed inevitable. But better counsels prevailed and mutual toleration was agreed upon. Arminian tendencies gradually disappeared and in 1783 the Philadelphia Confession was adopted with provision against its too strict construction.

§ 7. Baptists and Religious Liberty.

Virginia Baptists were among the earliest and stanchest supporters of the Revolution and led in the struggle for religious equality. The General Association in 1776 appointed a committee on grievances, which zealously devoted itself to the abolition of dissenters’ disabilities until the establishment itself was abolished, the glebe lands confiscated, and absolute separation of Church and State secured. Not content with being chiefly instrumental in securing religious equality in Virginia, Virginia Baptists watched closely the forming of the Federal Constitution and were instrumental in procuring the insertion of art. i, which prohibits Congress from taking any cognizance of religion. From 1883 onward Regular Baptists of Virginia joined hands with the Separates in the struggle for religious equality and the separation of Church and State and in 1787 the two parties united, agreeing to bury in oblivion the names Regular and Separate, and adopting the name “United Baptist Churches of Christ in Virginia.” In New England the struggle for religious liberty on the part of the Baptists was no less heroic, but it was far less successful. In Virginia the Episcopal clergy were corrupt and oppressive and were bitterly opposed to the Revolution, and Baptists had the cooperation of leading statesmen, of the patriotic masses, and (in most measures) of the Presbyterians; while in New England the clergy and members of the standing order were leaders in the cause of Colonial independence and Baptists became unpopular by agitating their grievances and threatening to appeal to England for their redress at the very time when resistance to British authority was being determined upon. This difference of attitude of the Established Churches in the two sections accounts for the fact that the 473 Baptists of Virginia not only led in the struggle for religious liberty but multiplied in numbers during the Revolution and after, while Massachusetts and Connecticut Baptists failed to secure religious liberty and made little progress during the Revolution. In 1812 there were in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee 108,843 Baptist communicants, while those of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut numbered 32,372, and those of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, 26,852. In Virginia alone there were 35,655 Baptist church members.

3. From 1812 to the Present Time:

§ 1. Lack of an Educated Ministry.

While Baptists had by the beginning of this period attained to a numerical strength of nearly 200,000, they were deficient in culture and had made almost no provision for an educated ministry. Brown University was still the only institution for higher education, and this provided no theological course. In Boston, Providence, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, and in a number of other churches in the Philadelphia, Warren, and Charleston Associations there was considerable culture. The Charleston Association had established (1791) an Education Fund, and by 1813 had aided nineteen young ministers in securing an education, some under private tutorship, some at Brown University, and some in other institutions. In 1812 the Baptist Education Society of the Middle States was constituted and Dr. William Staughton, of Philadelphia, began to instruct students for the ministry on its behalf. The vast majority of American Baptists at this time regarded ministerial education as an impertinent human effort to exercise the divine prerogative of calling and equipping ministers, and looked with disfavor upon the paying and receiving of ministerial salaries as introducing a commercial element where the Holy Spirit should work unimpeded. A large proportion of Baptist preachers owned their farms and were self-supporting. Many of them without scholastic advantages acquired considerable education and were men of power. The tendency was to neglect the towns, where the self-supporting method was impracticable and where enthusiastic but illiterate ministers were less acceptable. Some able ministers who could have afforded to minister in towns and cities resolutely refused to leave their country homes and work. Churches like those of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia found the utmost difficulty in supplying their pulpits when vacancies occurred. The only periodical publication in circulation at the time was the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine, the first number of which was published in 1803 and the twelfth in 1808. Under the editorship of Dr. Thomas Baldwin, of Boston, it exerted a strong but not very wide-spread influence in favor of missions, education, and better methods of denominational work. The Lake Baptist Missionary Society (afterward called the Hamilton Missionary Society) was formed in Central New York (1807) for domestic evangelization. From the beginning of the century (or earlier) Baptists of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston joined with other denominations in contributing toward the support of the missionary work of Carey and his associates in India. In 1812 Philadelphia Baptists began to hold monthly union meetings and larger quarterly meetings “for the spread of the gospel.”

§ 2. Missionary and Educational Work.

The conversion to Baptist views of Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice, as they were about to open up missionary work in India under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, marks an era in the history of American Baptists. Judson announced his conversion to American Baptists through Thomas Baldwin, of Boston, and L. Bolles, of Salem, and threw himself and his missionary enterprise upon the liberality and enlightened zeal of the denomination. The more intelligent Baptist communities rejoiced that so glorious a responsibility had been providentially thrust upon the denomination and began at once to organize local missionary societies for the diffusion of the missionary spirit and the raising of funds. “The Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel in India and other Foreign Parts" was formed at Boston in 1813 with Baldwin as president and Daniel Sharp as secretary. Rice returned to America (summer of 1813) for the purpose of arousing American Baptists to a sense of their obligation and opportunity. Through his efforts local missionary societies were formed from Maine to Georgia and considerable money was raised. In May, 1814, thirty-three leading brethren from eleven States met in Philadelphia and organized the “General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the U. S. A. for Foreign Missions,” to meet triennially. Richard Furman, of Charleston, was chosen president and Thomas Baldwin secretary. The Convention appointed a Board of Commissioners as an executive with Baldwin as president and Philadelphia (from 1826 onward, Boston) as headquarters. William Staughton of Philadelphia was the first corresponding secretary. By 1817 Rice and other leaders had become convinced that provision for the education of ministers was absolutely essential to the progress of denominational work at home and abroad, and the Triennial Convention of 1817 approved of the raising of funds for this purpose. In 1818 a theological institution was opened in Philadelphia, with William Staughton and Irah Chase as instructors. As early as 1815 Rice had reached profound conviction regarding the necessity of missionary work in the newly settled regions of the West, and in 1817 the Triennial Convention decided to enter upon this work. Two zealous and well educated ministers, J. M. Peck and J. E. Welsh, were appointed home missionaries. The work of the former proved apostolic and was of momentous importance. From 1817 onward Rice labored with consuming zeal for the establishment in Washington of a National Baptist University. Columbian College was opened in 1822 and has done a noble work. The theological work inaugurated in Philadelphia was transferred to Washington in 1821. As a means of promoting 474 the missionary and educational work Rice began (1816) the publication of The Latter Day Luminary and (1822) The Columbian Star.

§ 3. Opposition and Difficulties.

By 1826 the college had become inextricably involved in debt. The situation became so desperate that the mission funds were drawn upon to meet pressing claims. From the beginning the great mass of the Baptists had shown themselves indifferent or hostile to the missionary and educational enterprises. It was easy for ignorant and illiberal pastors to persuade their still more ignorant and illiberal parishioners that the introduction of commercialism into religion was of the devil and that they were doing God service in resisting all efforts at exploitation on the part of the money gatherers. In many cases associations excluded churches, and churches members, for contributing to the funds of the enterprises fostered by the Triennial Convention. State Conventions were formed as bonds of union for those who were alive to the importance of united effort. Massachusetts Baptists had effected a State organization in 1802. South Carolina followed in the year 1821. In a few years nearly every State had organized a convention made up exclusively of cooperating churches, associations, and individuals. In the States of Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky, the missionary movement was well-nigh overwhelmed by the antieffort party. In Ohio, Baptists contributed for Foreign Missions in 1820, $547. From 1821 to 1828 nothing was given, while $10 constituted the contribution in 1829 and $5 that of the following year. In Tennessee, missionary societies were dissolved and associations rescinded all resolutions favorable to the schemes of the Triennial Convention. Not till after 1840 could the cause of missions get a hearing. The most influential leader of the movement was Daniel Parker, an illiterate enthusiast, who held to an extreme type of supralapsarianism and wrought up his followers to a fanatical hatred of all organized effort. It was in the regions occupied by this perverse type of Baptists that Alexander Campbell worked so successfully, combining, as he did, with his bitter denunciation of human institutions, vigorous antagonism to hyper-Calvinistic theology.

§ 4. Theological Seminaries.

In 1825, owing in part to the financial difficulties of Columbian College, and the willingness of New England Baptists to provide for its support, the theological work was transferred to Newton Theological Institution at Newton Center, Mass., with Irah Chase as president. In 1819 the Baptists of New York laid the foundations for Colgate University at Hamilton, N. Y., with its literary and theological departments. In 1826, for reasons above suggested, the Triennial Convention left Columbian College to its own resources, retaining only the right to nominate fifty brethren from whom its Board should be chosen. The Baptists in the various States have been too much occupied in founding and building up local colleges to give adequate support to Columbian, and recently its Board have thought it best to declare it undenominational and to change its name to George Washington University. Ample provision has been made by the denomination for ministerial education by the establishment, in addition to the institutions already mentioned, of Rochester Theological Seminary (1850), at Rochester, N. Y., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1859, Louisville, Ky.), Divinity School of the University of Chicago (Baptist Union Theological Seminary, Morgan Park, Ill., 1867), Crozer Theological Seminary (1868, Upland, Penn.), Pacific Coast Baptist Theological Seminary (1890, Berkeley, Cal.), Baylor Theological Seminary (1901, connected with Baylor University, Waco, Tex.), Kansas City Theological Seminary (1901), and the Theological Department of Union University (1867, Richmond, Va.). These institutions have property and endowments aggregating about $7,000,000, over 100 instructors, and over 1,200 students.

§ 5. Universities, Colleges and Schools.

The denomination maintains about 100 universities and colleges of various grades with property and endowments aggregating about $45,000,000, nearly 2,000 instructors, and 30,000 students. The most important of these are the University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. (founded 1891, with assets of $20,000,000); Brown University, Providence, R. I. (1764, $5,500.000); Colgate University, Hamilton, N. Y. (1819, $2,500,000); Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Penn. (1846, $1,700,000); Baylor University, Waco, Tex. (1845, $600,000); Colby College, Waterville, Me. (1818, $700,000); Denison University, Granville, O. (1831, $1,050,000); Stetson University, Deland, Fla. (1887, $600,000); Mercer University, Macon, Ga. (1838, $550,000); Richmond College, Richmond, Va. (1832, $1,065,000); Rochester University, Rochester, N. Y. (1850, $1,370,000); Wake Forest College, Wake Forest, N. C. (1834, $500,000); William Jewell College, Liberty, Mo. (1849, $550,000); Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Mich. (1833, $431,000); Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. (1861, $1,660,000). A score of other institutions with less ample resources are doing good work along chosen lines. There are more than 100 academic institutions under the auspices of the denomination, with nearly 20,000 students and nearly $5,000,000 worth of property.

§6. The Home Mission Society.

By 1832 the domestic missionary work of the Triennial Convention had reached such proportions that the need of a separate Board and a separate appeal for funds was apparent. At this time the American Baptist Home Mission Society was organized. The Society has always made New York City its headquarters. Its missionary work on the frontiers, among the Indians, negroes, and foreign populations, in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and Porto Rico, employs at present over 1,500 missionaries and teachers. There are twenty-five schools and colleges for colored people supported by it wholly or in part. It has nearly $1,500,000 of permanent funds for various purposes, and mission and school properties valued at $1,300,000. Since its organization nearly 200,000 persons have been baptized by its missionaries and nearly 6,000 churches organized.

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§ 7. The Publication Society.

The demand for an agency for the publication and circulation of denominational and other religious literature led to the organization of the Baptist General Tract Society in 1824. Its head quarters were at Washington and it was under the general direction of Luther Rice. The complications that arose in connection with Columbian College and the superior publishing and distributing facilities offered by Philadelphia led to a change of location in 1826. In 1840 a revised constitution with the name American Baptist Publication Society was adopted. The society has formed an important factor in the growth of the denomination and it has kept abreast of its needs. The annual receipts of the publishing department at present amount to nearly $900,000 and in its missionary and Bible departments to about $200,000. Its net assets amount to about $1,600,000. The refusal of the American Bible Society to appropriate funds for the publication of a Burmese version in which the words for “baptize" and “baptism" were translated by words equivalent to “immerse" and “immersion" (see Bible Societies, III, § 2) led to the organization of the American and Foreign Bible Society (1836). The refusal of this society to secure the publication of an English version in which “immersion" should supplant “baptism" led to the formation of the American Bible Union (1850), which employed Thomas J. Conant, H. B. Hackett, and others to prepare a new version of the Bible with critical apparatus and notes. The New Testament and portions of the Old were completed. Hostility between the American and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible Union was crippling to both and in 1883 both were compelled by a great denominational gathering to relinquish the field, the Missionary Union assuming responsibility for the publication and circulation of the Scriptures in foreign languages in its fields and the Publication Society undertaking to complete and circulate the Bible Union and the Anglo-American Revised versions, as well as the King James version.

§ 8. The Southern Baptists.

Before 1840 the slavery question was agitated in Baptist circles. Many Southern Baptists, including leading ministers, were slaveholders, and nearly all were very sensitive to Northern abolitionist utterances. In 1843 the neutrality of the Foreign Mission Board was reaffirmed. With a view to making continued cooperation practicable, Richard Fuller, an eminent Southern Baptist, offered a resolution in the Triennial Convention for 1844 for the elimination from the consideration of the body of all matters foreign to the object designated in the constitution and declaring cooperation in the proper work of the body not to involve or imply concert or sympathy as regards other matters. This resolution was withdrawn in favor of one whereby the body disclaimed all sanction of slavery or of antislavery and left each individual free in a Christian manner and spirit to express and promote his own views on these subjects. Notwithstanding the adoption of this resolution the Foreign Mission Board was thought to have procured the resignation of an Indian missionary who was a slaveholder. Southern Baptists were convinced that thenceforth slaveholders would be discriminated against and that future of the Convention would be rendered tumultuous by attacks on slavery and rejoinders. A literary controversy between Francis Wayland, President of Brown University, and Richard Fuller awakened much interest and demonstrated the impossibility of harmony between Northern and Southern Baptists. Conciliatory measures were attempted on both aides; but the conviction had become overmastering among Southern leaders that the Baptists of the South. could work more successfully with separate Convention and Boards. This policy was carried into effect in May, 1845, by 370 messengers from the various Southern States. Home and Foreign Mission Boards were at once constituted, and both these departments of work have been vigorously prosecuted. The Foreign Mission Board (Richmond) has for years conducted successful missionary work in Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Africa, China, and Japan, and has attained to an annual income of about $300,000. The total membership of native churches under the Board is reported (1905) as 11,423. The Home Mission Board (Atlanta) expends nearly $200,000 a year within the bounds of the Convention, in Cuba, and in the insular possessions of the United States. The Sunday-school Board (Nashville), besides furnishing Sunday-school papers and other requisites, publishes a number of books, and fosters Sunday-school work through a professorship in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and through district secretaries who labor throughout its constituency. Its annual receipts are about $125,000. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is cherished by the Convention, which nominates brethren from whom the members of its Board are chosen and receives its annual report.

After the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Foreign Mission Board of the Triennial Convention became the American Baptist Missionary Union, which has since had annual meetings in connection with the American Baptist Publication Society, the American Baptist Home Mission Society, etc. Women’s auxiliary societies cooperate with the Northern and Southern Boards.

§ 9. The Baptist Congress and Young People’s Union.

The Baptist Congress is not strictly a denominational organization; but is supported by subscribing members and holds an annual meeting for the free discussion of current questions of doctrine, polity, and life. Its annual reports furnish the public with the most advanced thought. The Baptist Young People’s Union of America (1891 onward) seeks to promote Christian activity, intelligence, and denominational spirit among the Baptist young people of the United States and Canada.

§ 10. Colored Baptists

Baptist owners of slaves were by no means indifferent to their spiritual welfare. It is estimated that there were 400,000 negro Baptists in the United States at the close of the Civil War. Most of these were members of the churches of their masters; but in the towns and cities many negro churches had 476 been constituted. The first of these on record is that in Savannah, Ga. (1788) of which Andrew Bryan was for many years pastor. The largest negro Baptist church before emancipation was that in Richmond, Va., of which for twenty-five years Robert Ryland, president of Richmond College, was pastor. In many churches controlled by the whites a majority were negroes. After emancipation they everywhere effected separate church organization. Associations were almost immediately formed, State Conventions soon followed, and in 1880 a National Convention was organized with its Home Mission, Foreign Mission, Education, Publishing, and Baptist Young People’s Union Boards. Besides the University, Theological Seminary, and Colleges founded and fostered by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, they have established, own, and control scores of institutions of higher and lower grades. Over 15,000 students are in attendance at these schools. While hundreds of their ministers have enjoyed educational advantages and are in a position to elevate those under their ministry, thousands are illiterate and incapable of wise leadership. Since emancipation they have increased in number fivefold, the present membership, according to the statistician of the National Baptist Convention (1905) being 2,189,000.

§ 11. German Baptists

The first to gather German Baptist churches in America was Conrad Fleischmann, a Swiss, who in 1841 organized three churches in Pennsylvania. By 1851 there were eight small churches with 405 members. The present membership is about 25,000. They have seven annual Conferences and a triennial General Conference. Their publishing house is located in Cleveland and their training-school for ministers is organically connected with the Rochester Theological Seminary. Educational and missionary work among the Germans of the United States and Canada has been from the first generously assisted by American Baptists.

§ 12. Scandinavian Baptists.

The first Scandinavian Baptist church in America was formed in Illinois in 1848. At present there are about 5,000 Dano-Norwegian Baptists with eighty-six churches, whose representatives meet annually in seven Conferences. Their ministers are educated in the Dano-Norwegian Department of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Swedish Baptists (first church organized 1853) are far more numerous, having at present over 300 churches and nearly 25,000 members. The education of their ministers is provided for in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Scandinavian Baptists are most numerous in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska.

4. Minor Baptist Parties in the United States:

(a) The Six-Principles Baptists are a survival of the General Baptists that prevailed in Rhode Island and Connecticut in the early time. They still contend for the laying-on of hands as an indispensable ordinance. They have at present less than a score of churches with less than a thousand members.

(b) The first Seventh-Day Baptist church was organized at Newport, R. I., in 1671. As the name indicates, they make the celebration of the Jewish Sabbath as the day of rest and worship rather than the Lord’s Day an essential, and devote much of their attention to showing the error of adopting another day and the evil consequences that flow from this perversion. They have institutions of learning at Milton, Wis., and Alfred Center, N. Y., and circulate considerable literature through their publishing house at the latter place. They have ninety-seven churches with a membership of less than 9,000, acattered over twenty-four States. For the so-called Seventh-Day Baptists, German, see Communism, II, 5.

(c) The Free-Will Baptists originated in New Hampshire in 1780 under the leadership of Benjamin Randall who left the Congregationalist body to become an anti-Calvinistic and open communion Baptist. The Arminian teaching was no doubt due to Methodist influence. Free-Will Baptists took an active part in the antislavery agitation (1835 onward) and thus closed the South against their influence. They were reenforced in 1841 by 2,500) free-Communion Baptists of New York State; but the Adventist movement a little later deprived them of a large number. From 1845 to 1857 their numbers declined from 60,000 to 49,000, but by 1870 they regained this loss. They have lost about 1,500 members since 1890; the present membership (1905) is 86,322. They have 1,543 churches distributed over thirty-three States. They early adopted quarterly and annual conferences, the former made up of delegates of churches, the latter of delegates from the former. The system is overtopped by the General Conference composed of delegates from the local annual conferences. The quarterly meeting may discipline churches, the annual meeting quarterly meetings, and the General Conference annual meetings. Ministers are first licensed by the quarterly meeting and after probation are ordained by the council appointed by the same body. Women are eligible for ordination to the ministry. Negotiations looking to the union of the Free-Will Baptists with the Regular Baptists of the North are pending with good prospects of success.

(d) It has been noted that the General Baptists from Virginia first introduced Baptist teaching into North Carolina. Some of the churches formed under this influence refused to amalgamate with the Separate and Regular Baptists. After a time they adopted the name Original Free-Will Baptists to distinguish themselves from the more numerous body mentioned above. They differ from the Free-Will Baptists in practising foot-washing, anointing the sick with oil, restricting the ministerial office to men, and having ruling elders for the settlement of controversies. Annual conferences may silence unworthy preachers, disown elders, and settle church difficulties. They have three Conferences, 167 churches, and less than 12,000 members, all in North Carolina and South Carolina.

(e) A number of General Baptist churches of the older English type failed to amalgamate with the more popular Baptist parties of the nineteenth century. The first association of this party was formed in Kentucky in 1824. This association 477 adopted open communion in 1830. A General Association was formed in 1870 to embrace all the churches of the connection. Unlike most of the smaller Baptist bodies, this had increased from 8,000 members in 1870 to 21,362 in 1890. More recent statistics are not available. Their confession of faith indicates closer agreement with Regular Baptists in doctrine and in practise than does that of the Free-Will Baptists. They have about 400 churches in Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Nebraska.

(f) A few churches in Indiana have retained the name Separate Baptists. They are in general agreement with Free-Will Baptists. They seem to be confined to Indiana, where they have an association with 24 churches and about 1,600 members.

(g) In the union of Regular and Separate Baptists in Kentucky in 1801 a doctrinal basis not strictly Calvinistic was adopted. About 200 churches in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, and Arkansas, with a membership of over 13,000, still call themselves United Baptists and hold aloof from the great Baptist body. They are moderately Calvinistic, practise restricted communion, and insist upon foot-washing as an ordinance to be practised by all baptized believers. They have several associations.

(h) Mention has already been made of the bitter opposition that arose in many Baptist communities to the missionary and educational enterprises that centered in the Triennial Convention (1814 onward). The Chemung Association (N. Y. and Penn.) seems to have been the first (1835) to disfellowship other associations that had departed from the simplicity of the doctrine and practise of the gospel by “uniting themselves with the world and what are falsely called benevolent societies founded upon a monied basis.” This example was speedily followed by many other associations, especially in the South and Southwest. Besides holding to extreme necessitarian (supralapsarian) doctrine in accordance with which human agency in the conversion of men is absolutely ineffective and the attempt to employ it impertinent, they practise foot-washing as an ordinance and utterly repudiate missionary, Bible, tract, Sunday-school, and temperance societies, State conventions, theological schools, and similar organizations. The United States census of 1890 brought to light 121,347 Baptist communicants of this type, with churches in twenty-eight States and the District of Columbia. They are most numerous in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia, but are found all the way from Maine to Texas and from Nebraska to Florida. They call themselves Primitive Baptists; they are commonly called “Hardshells" and Anti-Mission Baptists by their opponents.

(i) The followers of Daniel Parker, the most virulent opponent of the organized work of the denomination (b. in Georgia, ordained in Tennessee in 1806, active in Illinois 1817-36, and in Texas after 1836), are known as the Old Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists. They still persist in twenty-four States and had in 1890 nearly 500 churches with nearly 13,000 members. They derive their name from the peculiar doctrine of Parker set forth in certain pamphlets (1826-29) on the doctrine of Two Seeds. This was a fantastic dualistic account of the introduction and perpetuation of evil in mankind, reminding of Gnostic speculations. God created Adam and Eve and infused into them particles of himself so that they were wholly good. The devil corrupted them by infusing particles of himself. It was predetermined by God that Eve should bring forth a certain number of good offspring, the seed of God, and that her daughters should do likewise. The evil essence infused by the serpent led to an additional brood of offspring, the seed of Satan or the serpent. For the former the Atonement was absolute, they will all be saved. The Atonement did not apply to the seed of the serpent, who are hopelessly lost. The doctrine of Parker was absolutely fatalistic and was in the worst sense antinomian. His followers go beyond the other Primitive Baptists in their uncompromising hostility to “human institutions.”

(k) The Baptist Church of Christ came into separate existence by way of reaction against the antinomian hyper-Calvinism of the churches led by Daniel Parker. They teach general redemption along with perseverance of the saints. Like most of the minor Baptist parties they practise footwashing as an ordinance. This, more than anything else, prevents their union with the great Baptist body; but, like the Primitive Baptists, they seem to object to organized denominational missionary and educational work. The chief strength of the body is in Tennessee, but congregations are found in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. In 1890 the party had 152 churches with a total membership of 8,254.

The Dunkers have much in common with Primitive Baptists, and, with the Church of God founded in Pennsylvania in 1830 by John Winebrenner (see Church of God, 1), are more worthy to be classed with Baptists than some of the above parties. The River Brethren and the Mennonite body known as the Brüder-Gemeinde (see Mennonites) have much in common with Baptists. The Disciples of Christ, originally an offshoot from the Baptists, agree with the latter in insisting upon immersion as the only valid baptism and in their recognition of the sole authority of the Scriptures in matters of faith and practise. They differ from Baptists in a number of important matters, but there is more in common between progressive Disciples and the great Baptist body than there is between the latter and several of the minor parties that bear the Baptist name. The body who call themselves “Christians,” frequently known as the Christian Connection (see Christians) also regard immersion of believers as the only true baptism. They practise open communion and admit to membership those who do not agree with them respecting immersion. In England they would pass for satisfactory Baptists.

III. Baptists in the British Possessions.

1. The Dominion of Canada:

§ 1. The Maritime Provinces.

The Maritime Provinces were the first to receive Baptist influence. In 1752 a Dutch Baptist named Andres is said to have 478 settled in Lunenburg and to have disseminated his principles there. In 1763 Ebenezer Moulton of Massachusetts organized a church at Horton, N. S., of Baptists and Congregationalists, which soon became wholly Baptist. Just before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, a considerable number of New England Baptist loyalists found their way to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. In 1880 an association was formed which adopted the English Particular Baptist Confession of 1689. In 1846 the Baptist Convention of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island was formed with a constituency of 14,177. Acadia University (chartered 1840, successor to Horton Academy, 1828) at Wolfville, N. S., was adopted by the Convention and has educated a large number of leaders not only for the Maritime Provinces, but for Western Canada and the United States. It now has endowment and equipment worth about $500,000. The Convention has its domestic and foreign mission boards and has engaged zealously and successfully in every line of denominational work. About 17,000 Free-Will Baptists have united with the Regulars on the basis of a brief doctrinal statement that avoids strict Calvinistic phraseology and insistence on restricted communion. The Maritime Baptists number at present about 67,000.

§ 2. Ontario and Quebec.

Baptist loyalists in small numbers during the later years of the eighteenth century found their way into what is now Ontario and Quebec, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century about six small churches had been organized in three widely separated localities. These were fostered by missionary effort from the United States and reenforced by further immigration of their fellow countrymen. Later a considerable number of English Baptists of open communion antecedents came in and were the occasion of discord. In 1816 a company of Scotch Highlanders, who had become Baptists in connection with the Haldane movement, settled in the Ottawa region. Most of these became advocates of restricted communion; but several of the most eminent (notably John Gilmour) favored open communion. A society was formed in England (1836) for fostering Baptist work in Canada. The Upper Canada Missionary Society refused to cooperate fully with the educational and missionary work that centered in Montreal and was conducted under English open communion auspices. The Canada Baptist College established in Montreal in 1838 died of inanition in 1849, although it had at its head such scholars as Benjamin Davis and J. M. Cramp. Dissension prevented the success of further efforts to provide the denomination with educational facilities until 1860, when the Canadian Literary and Theological Institute was opened at Woodstock with R. A. Fyfe as Principal. Fyfe proved a leader of the first rank and exerted a strong unifying influence upon the denomination. By this time the denomination in Ontario and Quebec had a membership of about 13,000. After cooperating with the American Baptist Missionary Union in foreign mission work for a number of years, the Baptists of Ontario and Quebec organized an independent Foreign Mission Society, whose work has steadily grown until at present $40,000 are expended annually on its missions in India and Bolivia. In 1881 Toronto Baptist College was founded as a theological seminary by Senator William McMaster. This institution developed into McMaster University as a result of the bequest of nearly $1,000,000 by the founder. In 1888 the organization of the denomination was completed in a new constitution and charter, which commits to the Convention made up exclusively of delegates of churches the election of Home Mission, Foreign Mission, Publication, and Education Boards. Baptists in Ontario and Quebec now number about 47,000.

§ 3. The Northwest and British Columbia.

Baptist work in the Canadian Northwest began about 1873. It has grown to large proportions and has enjoyed the support of Baptists in the older Provinces, in Great Britain, and in the United States. A Convention was organized in 1881, and Brandon College, at Brandon, Man., was established in 1899. The college already has equipment and endowment worth about $150,000. The Baptist cause in British Columbia has not yet attained to very large dimensions. During the earlier years Baptist churches in this region worked in connection with the American Baptist Home Mission Society. In 1897 they formed a Convention of their own and since that time they have depended for help chiefly upon the Baptists of the older Provinces. Baptists in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories now number about 7,000; in British Columbia, 2,000.

2. Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand:

In these colonies Baptists were among the earliest British settlers, and Baptist churches were organized from 1834 onward. The several British types of Baptist life have been represented and some controversy has had place regarding communion, Calvinism and Arminianism, etc.; but the ordinary English open communion type has prevailed. There are still about a dozen churches of the old Particular Baptist antimissionary type. Most of the churches of the various provinces are grouped in seven Unions, which correspond with each other and support in common a religious journal. The Baptist College of Victoria in affiliation with the University of Melbourne was conducted from 1890 to 1900 and then abandoned. Some Foreign Mission work is being accomplished in India in connection with the English Baptist Society. There are at present in Australasia sixty-eight churches and about 21,000 members. Progress for the past few years has been very slow.

3. The British West Indies, Central America, and Africa:

English Baptists commenced missionary work among the negroes of Jamaica in the year 1814. The way had been prepared somewhat by Moses Baker, an American negro Baptist. In fifteen years there were 10,000 Baptists on the island. A negro insurrection in 1831 led to the destruction of much of their church property and to the persecution of the leaders; but sympathy was awakened in Britain and the losses were made 479 good. The work was extended to the Bahamas, Trinidad, Honduras, San Domingo, etc. The Jamaica Baptists have at present nearly 200 churches and nearly 34,000 members; in Haiti there are 12 churches with nearly 2,000 members; in Cuba (through American Baptist effort) there are 31 churches with nearly 4,000 members; in the Bahamas nearly 4,000 members; and in Central America 10 churches with nearly 700 members. In Africa, through American, English, and German missionary effort there are 81 Baptist churches with 11,388 members, mostly in British territory, the Kongo, and the Kamerun.

4. India, Ceylon, Burma, and Assam:

In these British possessions, through English, American, and Canadian missionary effort 1,244 churches have been organized with a membership of over 126,000. A very large proportion of the converts have been won by missionaries from the United States and Canada.

IV. Baptists in Mission Lands:

In China there are about 13,000 Baptist church members almost equally divided among the English, Northern, and Southern Baptist missions. In Japan there are about 2,500 Baptist church members of whom over 2,000 belong to the American Baptist Missionary Union and the rest to the missions of the Southern Baptist Convention. In Mexico missions of the Southern Baptist Convention have nearly 1,400 church members to their credit, while those of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, with twenty-six laborers, have a far smaller number. In Brazil the missions of the Southern Baptist Convention have established sixty-nine churches with a membership of over 4,000, and in Bolivia Canadian Baptist missionaries have organized three churches with 115 members.

V. Baptists on the Continent of Europe.

I. Germany and German Missions:

The first Baptist church of the modern type organized in Germany was formed in Hamburg in 1834 under the leadership of J. G. Oncken, who several years before had reached Baptist views from independent study of the New Testament. In his youth Oncken had spent some years in England and had been sent (1823) by an English evangelical society as a missionary to Germany. Oncken and six others availed themselves of the presence of Barnas Sears, of the United States, afterward famous as an educational leader, to receive baptism at his hands. Oncken proved a leader of heroic type and with the aid of American Baptists carried on for many years wide-spread and fruitful missionary labors and raised up like-minded ministers who are still carrying forward the work throughout German-speaking Europe and beyond. In 1880 a theological seminary was established near Hamburg that has given educational equipment to hundreds of earnest and self-sacrificing young men. The present membership in Germany is about 34,000. They sustain a mission in the Kamerun with over 2,000 converts. The German Baptist Union for the spread of the gospel in foreign parts include churches in Austria (648 members), Hungary (10,500 members), Switzerland (796 members), the Netherlands (1,396 members), Rumania (277 members), and Bulgaria (74 members). The Russian Baptist churches, which have resulted chiefly from the activity of German Baptists of the Oncken type, have now a membership of about 25,000 and a Union of their own; but they still cooperate with the German Union in the raising and use of missionary funds. Through the missionary labors of German Baptists a few Lithuanians were brought into the Baptist fold (1857 onward). A more successful work was done among the Letts, and about 7,000 of the Russian Baptists are Lettish. From the same source Baptist influence was brought to bear upon the Esthonians, of whom over 1,000 are now Baptist church members. The Finns received Baptist teaching from the Swedish Baptists (1868 onward) and now have over 2,000 Baptist church members.

2. Scandinavia:

From Germany Baptist influence also extended into Scandinavian lands. Julius Koebner, one of Oncken’s early converts and co-laborers, was a Dane and on a visit to his native land won to his faith a company of Christians that had become dissatisfied with Lutheranism. The first church was organized in Copenhagen in 1839. Persecution impeded the progress of the Baptist cause and religious freedom was not gained until 1850. A considerable number of ministers trained in the Scandinavian Department of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago have assisted in carrying forward the work in Denmark as well as in Sweden and Norway. In 1895 the Danish Baptists established a small theological school of their own. They have not made rapid progress and their present membership is only about 4,000. German Baptist influence entered Norway not later than 1840. The first church was organized two years later. At present Norwegian Baptists have over 30 churches with a membership of about 3,000. A Danish Baptist named Foerster labored in Sweden in 1848 and baptized five persons near Gothenburg. The Baptist cause has greatly prospered here, so that at present there are 40,000 members and nearly 600 churches. Since 1866 they have had a theological seminary at Stockholm. They are thoroughly organized for missionary and educational work and have reached a degree of influence and recognition enjoyed by Baptists nowhere else on the Continent of Europe.

3. France and Italy:

In France, Belgium, and French Switzerland there are about 40 churches with a membership of 2,272, due in large measure to English Baptist missionary enterprise. In Italy there are 55 churches and about 1,500 members, the result, in almost equal measure, of the missionary endeavors of the English Baptist Missionary Society and of the Southern Baptist Convention. The latter body sustains a theological college.

Two highly significant events, indicating the desire of Baptists everywhere to draw closer together and to cooperate in the world-wide dissemination of their principles, were the formation of the General Baptist Convention (St. Louis, may, 1905) to embrace the entire continent of North America and its islands and to hold triennial meetings, and the Baptist World Congress (London, July, 1905), in 480 which Baptists from all parts of the world gathered and organized a Baptist World Alliance, to meet every five years in different parts of the world. The union of the Free Baptists in the Maritime Provinces of Canada and the Regulars (1905) and the steps taken toward union between the Free Baptists of New England and the Regulars in the same year show that the tendency is in the direction of union rather than of further division.

Counting all nominally Baptist bodies through out the world, the present number of Baptists is about 6,000,000. If to these other bodies of antipedobaptist immersionists be added, the number is increased to about 7,500,000.

A. H. Newman.

Bibliography: (Only volumes derived from independent sources are here mentioned): I. English Baptist History: T. Crosby, Hist, of the English Baptists, 4 vols., London, 1738-40; J. Ivimey, A Hist. of the English Baptists, ib. 1811-30; A. Taylor, History of the English General Baptists, 2 vols., ib. 1818; B. Evans, The Early English Baptists, 2 vols., ib. 1862; R. Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, ib. 1879 (not on Baptists exclusively, but gives their genesis in England in an authoritative way; an excellent volume); D. Masson, Life of John Milton, and History of his Times, 6 vols., ib. 1859-80 (a work of great learning and authority. Milton was an antipedobaptist, but, so far as is known not a member of a Baptist Church); J. Clifford, The English Baptists, ib. 1881 (the work of different contributors, but edited by the chief English Baptist leader); J. C. Carlile, The Story of the English Baptists, ib. 1905.

II. English and American Baptist History: T. Armitage: A History of the Baptists, New York 1887 (contains a full history); H. C. Vedder, A Short History of the Baptists, Philadelphia, 1892 (authoritative); idem, The Baptists, New York, 1902.

III. American Baptist History: I. Backus, A History of New England. With Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists, 3 vols., Boston, 1777-96, new ed., with notes by David Weston, 2 vols., Newton, Mass., 1871; H. S. Burrage, A History of the Baptists in New England, Philadelphia, 1894; H. C. Vedder, A History of the Baptists in the Middle States, ib. 1898; B. F. Riley, A History of the Baptists in the Southern States East of the Mississippi, ib. 1898; J. A. Smith, A History of the Baptists in the Western States East of the Mississippi, ib 18–; L. Moss, A History of the Baptists in the Trans-Mississippi States, ib. 19–; A. H. Newman, A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States, New York, 1898; idem, A Century of Baptist Achievement, ib. 1901 (the work of different persons); C H. Mattoon, Baptist Annals of Oregon, 1844-1900, McMinnville, Oregon, 1905.

IV. Biographies of Baptists (all clergymen except two): M. B. Anderson, by A. C. Kendrick, Philadelphia, 1895; Isaac Backus, by A. Hovey, Boston, 1859; George Dana Boardman, by A. King, ib. 1834; Edmund Botsford, by C. D. Mallary, Charleston, 1832; James Pettigru Boyce, by J. A. Broadus, New York, 1893; J. A. Broadus, by A. T. Robertson, Philadelphia, 1901; R. C. Burleson, by H. Haynes, Waco, 1891; Alexander Campbell, by R. Richardson, 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1868-70; William Colgate (layman), by W. W. Everts, ib. 1881; Nathaniel Colver, by J. A. Smith, Boston, 1875; Spencer Houghton Cone, by Livermore, New York 1856; John Price Crozer (layman), by J. W. Smith, Philadelphia 1868; E. W. Dadson, by J. H. Farmer, Toronto, 1903; J. Denovan, by O. C. S. Wallace, ib. 1901; Henry Dunster, by J. Chaplin, Boston, 1872; The Dunster Family, by S. Dunster, ib. 1876; Richard Fuller, by J. H. Cuthbert, New York, 1879; R. A. Fyfe, by J. E. Wells, Toronto, 1882; H. B. Hackett, by G. H. Whittemore, Rochester, 1876; Adoniram Judson, by F. Wayland, 2 vols., Boston, 1853, and by E. Judson, New York 1883; Jacob Knapp (autobiography), ib. 1868; D. A. McGregor, by A. H. Newman, Toronto, 1891; P. H. Mell, by P. H. Mell, Jr., Louisville, 1895: Jesse Mercer, by C. D. Mallary, New York, 1844; John Mason Peck, by R. Babcock, Philadelphia, 1864; Luther Rice, by J. B. Taylor, Baltimore, 1840; Adiel Sherwood, by S. Boykin, Philadelphia, 1884; William Staughton, by S. W. Lynd, Boston, 1834; Baron Stow, by J. C. Stockbridge, ib. 1894; James Barnett Taylor, by G. B. Taylor, Philadelphia, 1872; Francis Wayland, by F. and H. L. Wayland, 2 vols., New York 1868; Roger Williams, by J. D. Knowles, Boston, 1834; also by W. Gammell, ib. 1844; and H. M. Dexter, ib. 1879; and O. S. Strauss, New York, 1894; Elhanan Winchester, by E. M. Stone, Boston, 1836; Daniel Witt, by I. B. Jeter, New Orleans, 1875; Carey, Marshman and Ward, by J. C. Marshman, London, 1859; Virginia Baptist Ministers, by J. B. Taylor, New York, 1860.