Baptist Confessions of Faith (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: jpart tlbtee THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS English Baptists, from the beginning of their history, have been divided on the basis of the two great types of theology into two parties, Calvinistic and Arminian. With the exception of the Anabaptists, the theology of all parties of reformers was Augustinian, emphasizing predestination and personal election, a limited atonement, the final perseverance of the saints, and related doctrines. But in the beginning of the seventeenth century there was rising in the Netherlands a new theology, emphasiz- 1 ing the freedom of the will, the universality of the atonement, conditional election, possible apostasy, and related doctrines. This theology began as a criticism of Calvinism as it then existed in the Netherlands, and produced a tremendous sensation, little short of a national revolution. The English Baptists arose in the Netherlands, and possibly because of their contact with this new theology and their affinity with the Anabaptists or Mennonites, who held this type of doctrine, they adopted a theology which, from its leading representative, James Arminius, soon came to be known as Arminianism. Because they believed in a universal or general atonement they came to be known as General Baptists. Of the two parties or wings of English Baptists priority of origin belongs, therefore, to the Arminians, and these we shall study first. The other party, or wing, will be considered later. Of course, it will be understood that the whole matter is viewed historically. I. Arminian Or General Baptist Confessions I. FIRST GROUP No Baptist Confession before 1644, and none of the General Baptist Confessions till that of 1660, specifies immersion or dipping as the mode of baptism, and it is doubtful if the confessions prior to these dates ought to be ...