Posted by jsmitheasley on January 20, 2009
In the late 1730’s, in connection with the ministries of men like George Whitefield, John Wesley, Howell Harris, Daniel Rowland and others, Great Britain became the scene of one of the greatest spiritual awakenings that has ever occurred in the history of the church. The same thing happened in America. Thousands gathered sometimes in the open air to hear men like George Whitefield and others preach the gospel. Multitudes were converted and brought to Christ and the whole fabric of English society was transformed.
What effect did this great awakening have upon the Particular Baptists? It basically passed by many of them. According to Mark Reid, “The Baptists seem to have largely passed the first Evangelical Revival by with very few records of positive responses to it in the peak years”.[1] Naylor describes the attitude of Particular Baptists as stubbornly negative towards the evangelical revival.[2] In the words of Haykin, “up till the death of Whitefield in 1770 the majority of Calvinistic Baptists in England stood aloof from this great work of God, the Holy Spirit, and were largely untouched by it.”[3] There were exceptions but this is the general picture that we are given. The awakening did begin to have a more substantial effect upon them by the last quarter of the century but when George Whitefield died in 1770, over thirty years after the awakening began, Particular Baptists were still basically untouched on a large scale. Why is that? What accounts for their negative attitude toward the revival?
First of all, they were suspicious of the revival because many of its leaders were members of the Church of England. They had a hard time accepting that anything good could come out of a denomination they refused to consider as a true church. This was partly related to what was a commendable and faithful commitment of the Baptists to the importance of biblical church order. In some instances, however, this commitment went wrong by swinging over to the extreme of failing to have a proper spirit of catholicity toward all true Christians. Many of the Baptists were aware that their churches were in a state of decline and some of the leaders, like John Gill and Benjamin Wallin, had strong opinions as to how this decline was to be remedied. Haykin writes, “For them the pathway to church renewal lay first and foremost in an earnest commitment to upholding the distinctives of Calvinistic Baptist church order and discipline.”[4] For example, Benjamin Wallin, pastor of the Maze Pond congregation, argued that “as long as there was a neglect of believer’s baptism and the principles of congregational church government, any attempt to revive the churches of Christ was ‘essentially deficient.’”[5]
Well it’s not surprising that men like Wallin criticized the revival. The emphasis of the preaching was not upon biblical church order and the proper subjects of baptism. It was upon those great central and essential gospel doctrines of salvation by grace alone, justification by faith and the necessity of the new birth. In addition, most of the great preachers who were leaders of this revival were members of the Church of England. For example, George Whitefield, Daniel Rowland, Howell Harris, William Grimshaw and William Romaine were all members of the Church of England. So were John and Charles Wesley. Worse than that the Wesley’s were also Arminian. Harris was too at the beginning, though he early on became a Calvinist.
These realities caused the Particular Baptists in general to view the whole revival with suspicion and to stay aloof from it. William Herbert, a Welsh Baptist pastor, was a friend of Howell Harris. He protested to Harris about his staying in the Church of England, which we can perhaps sympathize with. But one may question the attitude that seems to be revealed in the manner in which he did so. “In a letter he wrote to Harris in January of 1737, he compared the Church of England to a pub, ‘which is open to all comers’, and to a ‘common field where every noisome beast may come.’”[6] Then he appealed to one of the favorite texts of Particular Baptist’s at that time, Song of Solomon 4:12. Don’t you realize, he asked Harris, that the scripture describes the church as “a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Separate from ye profane world.” Arnesby Baptist Church in Leicestershire excommunicated members in the first half of the 18th century “for going to Babylon to be joined together according to the wicked way of the Church of England.”[7]
Their dislike for the Wesley’s is more understandable in light of the Arminianism of the Wesley’s. But most of the great leaders of the revival were Calvinists like George Whitefield and Howell Harris and many others. These were men who were willing to establish friendships with the Baptists. Some Calvinistic Baptists (particularly those influenced by Hyper-Calvinism), however, complained of what they called the “Arminian dialect” and “semi-Pelagian addresses” of men like Whitefield because they preached for conversions and exhorted the lost to flee to Christ for salvation.[8]
What is the lesson for us as Reformed Baptists as we enter into the 21st century? Well here we are reminded of how important it is to have a catholic spirit toward all true Christians, though they may not be part of our circle of churches. Though some may have difficulty accepting this, God in his sovereignty sometimes greatly blesses and uses men who are not Reformed Baptists; men who don’t have everything right in their ecclesiology, or even men who are wrong in other areas of their theology. They have the gospel and they preach the gospel, but they are lacking in some areas. May I dare to say it, they may even be confused Arminians. Yet God uses them, and He may even use them in ways He’s not using any of us. We need to be able to rejoice in that. We need to ask ourselves, if God raised up some men in our day full of the Holy Spirit; men who are preaching the gospel and whose preaching God is mightily blessing with every biblical evidence of true conversions (not merely decisions, but real conversions), and those men are Methodists or Episcopalians, or Assembly of God or some other denomination, or some other kind of Baptist, other than Reformed Baptist, could we rejoice in that and be thankful for it? Could we even consider those men as our friends and brothers and even work together with them insofar far as we can? Or is our almost immediate knee jerk reaction to be critical and to pick at any and every fault we can find to try to discredit any one God is using who is not one of us?
Let us not be guilty of the sectarian spirit John manifested when he said to Jesus, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name and we forbade him, because he does not follow with us.” Jesus rebuked John for that spirit. (Mk. 9:39). Rather let us have the spirit of Aquilla and Priscilla. Near the end of Acts 18 we are introduced to a fervent preacher by the name of Apollos. He was an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures. However we’re told that there were certain deficiencies in his understanding of the truth; “That he knew only the baptism of John.” When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, what did they do? They didn’t write him off and have nothing to do with him and tell people to stay away from him. No, they sought to befriend him, took him aside and explained to him the way of God more perfectly. So let us not have the spirit of John in Mk. 9, but the spirit of Aquila and Priscilla in Acts 18. And even when deficiencies remain, if the gospel is being preached, let us rejoice. Let us have the spirit of Paul writing from a Roman prison in Pp. 1:15-16 when he said, “Some preach Christ of envy and strife, and some also from good will…what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.”
Related to this, there’s a common mistake we need to be aware of. It’s the error of thinking that there can be no revival without thorough reformation first. It’s true that reformation sometimes precedes revival. Likewise it’s true that we must always be pursuing more and more thorough reformation. If we are not seeking to reform our lives and our churches by the scriptures, it is presumption to expect revival. But in God’s sovereignty it is simply a fact of history that sometimes revival precedes reformation. Some of the Particular Baptists thought there could be no church renewal if there was a neglect of believer’s baptism and the principles of Baptist church government. They were wrong, and because they felt that way, they renounced the revival when it came. But consider, for example, what happened in the reformation of the 16th century; both in Europe and in England? It was first a spiritual awakening before it became a reformation. Men like Luther and others first came to understand the gospel and were converted and they started preaching the gospel. In England there were men like Hugh Latimer who got converted and began preaching the gospel. At first they were still in the Roman church but reformation followed after, not before. What about the revival in England that we’ve been considering? Listen to Lloyd-Jones making this same point that I’m making,
There are people who say, ‘You have no right to talk about revival, you have no right to expect revival until people become Reformed in their doctrine’. The simple answer to that is that George Whitefield received his baptism of power in 1737, but did not become a Calvinist in his theology until about 1739. Revival had come to him and through him to many others, before his doctrine became right. Exactly the same thing happened to Howell Harris.[9]
Many Particular Baptists missed it because they weren’t willing to even allow for that possibility in their ecclesiology. Perhaps they could have been the Priscilla’s and Aquila’s of that generation; from a posture of support, friendship and participation helping these men to understand the way of God more perfectly, instead of renouncing what God was doing through them. Perhaps they could have learned a few things from Whitefield, Harris and Rowland as well and maybe even from John Wesley.[10]
Jeffery Smith
Covenant Reformed Baptist Church
Easley SC
[1] Mark Reid, “Religious Revival and English Baptists in Eighteenth Century England,” 2001. Internet article at www.webministries.co.uk/papers/c18baps.html (accessed January 2009).
[2] Quoted by Reid.
[3] Haykin, One Heart and One Soul: John Sutcliffe of Olney, his Friends and his Times (Durham, U.K.: Evangelical Press, 1994), 27.
[4] Ibid. 26.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid. 27
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 28.
[9] D.M. Lloyd-Jones, “Revival: An Historical and Theological Survey”, in The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors (Carlisle PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 14-15.
[10] On this point see Ian Murray, The Old Evangelicalism: Old Truths For A New Awakening (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2005). Chapter five is entitled, “What Can We Learn From John Wesley?”
Posted by jsmitheasley on January 17, 2009
Let me begin with a definition. What is Hyper-Calvinism. The hallmark of Hyper-Calvinism is the rejection of the free offer of the gospel to all men. It is the belief that preachers should not give indiscriminate invitations and exhortations to sinners to believe the gospel and come to Christ and to come to Christ immediately. The Hyper-Calvinist sees the doctrines of sovereign grace (unconditional election, particular redemption and human inability) in the scriptures and on the basis of that he rejects, or minimizes, human responsibility and the free offer of Christ to all. On the other hand, Biblical Calvinism, or what is sometimes called Evangelical Calvinism, embraces both of those truths because it believes they are both taught in the Bible. The Evangelical Calvinist recognizes that there is a tension in the bible that our puny minds are not able to fully reconcile. There is mystery here because we are dealing with God. As you can imagine, Hyper-Calvinism tends to squelch evangelistic and missionary zeal in the church.
The early 18th century Particular Baptists began to be heavily influenced by Hyper-Calvinism. In 1707, Joseph Hussey, a congregational pastor, published the book, God’s Operations of Grace but No Offers of Grace, in which he advocated Hyper-Calvinist views. These views were embraced by a member of his church, John Skepp. Skepp later became a Baptist and then a pastor of a Particular Baptist church. Skepp, together with another Particular Baptist who came to Hyper-Calvinistic views, John Brine, had a major influence in bringing those views into Particular Baptist churches. Also they became close friends with perhaps the most influential Particular Baptist pastor of that time, John Gill.[1] Gill was a very gifted scholar and preacher who pastored in London. There is considerable debate among scholars as to whether Gill himself should be classified as a Hyper-Calvinist. However there is little doubt that he was at least tinged with Hyper-Calvinism and many of those who identified with Gill were Hyper-Calvinists. Spurgeon later said, “The system of theology with which many identify his name has chilled many churches to their very soul, for it has led them to omit the free invitations of the gospel, and to deny the duty of sinners to believe in Jesus”[2]
Andrew Fuller gives a typical description when he describes the preaching of a Particular Baptist pastor named John Eve. In 1752 Eve was ordained pastor of the Baptist church in Soham, a small village north-east of Cambridge. He ministered there until 1771. Fuller grew up under his ministry. Later Fuller had this to say about that ministry. “Eve”, he says, was “tinged with a false Calvinism” and “had little or nothing to say to the unconverted.”[3] Generally there was no pleading and no exhortations to sinners come to Christ. The most the average Hyper-Calvinist might say to the unconverted was something like this, “Attend to the means of grace, and may the Lord call you in due time.” It shouldn’t surprise us that churches coming under this influence tended to be marked by a lack a passion for evangelism and missions that brought an appalling deadness to the churches.[4]
What should we learn from this as Reformed Baptists at the beginning of the 21st century? You might say, obviously the lesson is that we need to stay away from Hyper-Calvinism. True, and I don’t think any of us want to be a Hyper-Calvinist. We need to be careful, however, because a man may reject Hyper-Calvinism in name and still be tinged with Hyper-Calvinism in his practice or in his preaching. John Murray gave this warning shortly before his death,
The passion for missions is quenched when we lose sight of the grandeur of the gospel…. It is a fact that many, persuaded as they rightly are of the particularism of the plan of salvation and of it’s various corollaries, have found it difficult to proclaim the full, free, and unreserved overture of gospel grace. They have labored under inhibitions arising from fear that in doing so they would impinge upon the sovereignty of God in his saving purposes and operations. The result is that, though formally assenting to the free offer, they lack freedom in the presentation of its appeal and demand.[5]
So here is the question for us: Are we really preaching the free offer of the gospel? This raises the question, what is the free offer of the gospel? It has been well defined as,
that gracious and authoritative offer of salvation, in which God freely and indiscriminately commands and entreats lost men to come to Christ in repentance and faith; because He sincerely desires and delights in their salvation; so that any who are willing to have Christ on his terms may have him.[6]
This definition highlights three very important elements of the free offer of the gospel.[7] There is the essence of the free offer. “It is that gracious and authoritative offer of salvation, in which God freely and indiscriminately commands and entreats lost men to come to Christ in repentance and faith.” There is the motive of the free offer, “because He sincerely desires and delights in their salvation.” And there is the consequence or result of the free offer, “so that any who are willing to have Christ on his terms may have him.”
The element in this definition that we especially need to be careful about and clear about is that of the motive of the free offer. Is it true that God commands and entreats lost sinners freely and indiscriminately to come to Christ, because he sincerely desires and delights in their salvation? John Calvin himself certainly believed that. Commenting on John 3:16, he said, “Although there is nothing in the world deserving of God’s favor, he nevertheless shows he is favorable to the whole lost world when he calls all without exception to faith in Christ.”[8] As mysterious and difficult as it might be for our finite minds to comprehend and to reconcile with the doctrines of particular grace, the Bible does teach that in the general call of the gospel to all God is sincere and that the invitations of the gospel are an expression of His compassion and common love for men. In Ezekiel 33:11 God swears by his own self-existence that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but sincerely desires that they would repent. It is God who says, “O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me and keep all my commandments, which it might be well with them, and with their children forever” (Deut. 5:29). See Him in the person of His Son weeping over Jerusalem, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to you; how often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not” (Lk. 13:34). I was willing, but you were not willing. Remember the story of the Rich Young Ruler. This young man was beginning to feel something of the emptiness of his possessions. He came to Jesus but sadly he rejected our Lord’s message to him. Yet the text says, “And Jesus looking upon him loved him.” We shouldn’t get twisted up with the question as to whether that was the eternal love of divine election or what it was. We can take the scriptures at their face value, and leave the unsolvable mysteries to God. The Bible says that Christ looked upon that man with a heart of genuine love for him. In Luke 19 we read that, “When He was come nigh unto Jerusalem, Jesus beheld the city and He wept over it,” and He said, “If you had known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which belong unto your peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.” He wept, and He wailed over the city and I John 2:6 tells us that, “He that says he abides in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked”
It is a distortion of historical Calvinism that cannot tell sinners that the offer of Christ to them in the gospel is an expression of God’s sincere and common love for their souls. John Owen said, “Love towards all mankind in general is enforced upon us by the example of Christ’s own love and goodness which are extended unto all.”[9] At one point He encourages his hearers, to dwell on “the love of Christ in his invitations of sinners to come unto him that they may be saved.”[10] We must warn them of God’s wrath to awaken them but we must also tell them of God’s love in Christ to woo them. As Bunyan said, “It is not the over-heavy load of sin but the discovery of mercy…that makes a man come to Jesus Christ.”[11] Owen says that this love is to be proclaimed as ‘good news’ not to men as elect but to men as sinners.[12] The great reformer John Knox once said this, “By what means Satan first drew mankind from the obedience of God, the Scripture doth witness: To wit, by pouring into their hearts that poison, that God did not love them.”[13] Part of the business of gospel preaching is to extract that “poison” from the hearts of men and we will never do that with passion and urgency unless we really believe that God is sincere in his offers of mercy to sinners.
We will consider in blogs to follow the reaction of early 18th century Particular Baptists to the early stages of the Evangelical Awakening; how some reacted, why they reacted as they did, and what we can learn from it.
Jeffery Smith
Covenant Reformed Baptist Church
Easley, South Carolina
[1] Merck, 263.
[2] Iain Murray, Spurgeon and Hyper-Calvinism, 127, as quoted by Merck, 264.
[3] Haykin, Sutcliff, 19.
[4] I’m aware that there were some Hyper-Calvinist ministries that were well attended. See Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists: 1771-1892.
[5] John Murray, “The Atonement and the Free Offer of the Gospel,” in Collected Writings (Carlisle PA: Banner of Truth Trust,1989), 1:59,81
[6] Adapted from Greg Nichols, “The Doctrine of Christ” (manuscript for course taught for Trinity Ministerial Academy and Reformed Baptist Seminary: Lecture 32)
[7] Ibid.
[8] John Calvin, The Gospel According to John, 1-10, trans. T.H.L. Parker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 74, quoted by Iain Murray, The Old Evangelicalism: Old Truths For A New Awakening (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2005), 1112.
[9] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, Vol.15 (1850-53 reprint, Carlisle PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 70.
[10] Owen, Works, Vol.1, 422.
[11] John Bunyan, The Works of John Bunyan, vol. 1 (1850 reprint, Carlisle PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 286.
[12] Murray, Old Evangelicalism, 121. Owen, Works, Vol. 6, 523.
[13] John Knox, Works of John Knox, ed. David Lang, Vol. 5 (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1895), 24, quoted by Murray, Old Evangelicalism, 157.
Posted by jsmitheasley on January 13, 2009
In the interests of survival, theological debate was relatively rare among Particular Baptists during the time of persecution.[1] But once the Act of Toleration was in place and major persecution ceased, theological and personal differences came to the forefront. The problem was not so much that there were disagreements among Baptists on some issues. It was the divisive, mean-spirited attitude in which these disputes were sometimes engaged.
The first issue was the matter of singing in worship services. This debate actually began before the Act of Toleration, but it heated up in the decade immediately after it. There may have been exceptions, but the singing of “uninspired” hymns was not practiced in any of the English churches in general in the 17th century.[2] However beyond that, among Baptists, there were many who did not practice congregational singing at all. There is evidence that some churches did, but many were against it and didn’t sing at all.[3] In some cases, the omission of singing may have originated from fear that their secret meetings would be discovered by the authorities during the days of persecution.[4] But this expedient seems to have become a cherished tradition among some Baptists.[5] So even after religious liberty came many did not sing in worship.
In 1673, the Particular Baptist Benjamin Keach persuaded his church to sing a hymn at the close of the Lord’s Supper. He allowed those who objected to leave before the hymn. Fourteen years later, “At a church meeting on March 1, 1691, a large majority of the members” of Keach’s church “voted to have a hymn sung following the service every Sunday.”[6] Twenty-two of Keach’s members left. They felt this practice was an unscriptural innovation. For a number of years they attended the church pastored by Hanserd Knollys. Then they formed themselves into a new church that met at a place called Maze Pond. In the articles of faith that they drew up in 1694, they explicitly state their opposition to congregational singing. They stated that it was “a gross error equall with common nationall Sett forme Prayer.”[7] In other words, they put it in the same category as using the Church of England prayer book. Michael Haykin notes, “The convictions of these people were shared by a number of leading London Baptists, including William Kiffin, Robert Steed and Isaac Marlow.”[8] Steed preached against congregational singing and encouraged Marlow to publish a book against it. Others wrote against it as well, but Marlowe was the main antagonist writing eleven books that dealt with the issue.[9] Haykin further remarks,
The heat generated by this controversy may be discerned by the terms the two sides tossed at each other. Marlow tells us that he was labeled a ‘Ridiculous Scribbler’, ‘Brasen-Forehead’, ‘Enthusiast’, and “Quaker’. But Marlowe could give as good as he got. He viewed his opponents as ‘a coterie of book burning papists’ who were seeking to undermine the Reformation, for, as far as he was concerned, they were endorsing a practice that had no scriptural warrant at all”[10]
This division over hymn singing became quite a controversy. It split the Particular Baptist churches and was marked by a lot of grievous unchristian behavior and attitudes.
The second issue was the matter of closed versus open membership and open communion. This was a debate that also began early before the Act of Toleration. However the compilers of the 1677 confession (which is also the 1689 confession) charitably decided not to insist on either side of the issue. They explained, “We…are not in full accord among ourselves.”[11] So they were content not to insist on one position or the other in the confession. But again this debate was reopened in the 18th century and became quite heated.
So these two issues, congregational singing, including the singing of “uninspired” hymns, and open versus closed communion became matters of serious division among the churches. Lots of energy and time was taken up debating and fussing over these issues, all of which tended to distract from more important things. Also, no doubt, the spirit in which these debates were sometimes carried on did much to grieve the Holy Spirit. Mention was made in an earlier post of Howell Harris and the impression that he had of the Nonconformist churches. Apparently he knew many nonconformist pastors well, including Particular Baptists. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones commenting on this says that Harris even felt that the Nonconformists had the truth. In fact, he agonized for a long time over whether or not he should stay in the Church of England. Finally he chose to stay and one of several reasons he did was his impression that the nonconformists were constantly entangled in doctrinal disputes. Quoting Lloyd-Jones, “They were learned men, they were able men, and they were well versed in doctrine; but they spent most of their time in arguments and disputations with one another.”[12] It’s also interesting to read John Newton’s explanation of why he never became a Baptist. He considered doing so but one of the things that put him off was that while they were so strongly against other groups who agreed with them on every point but one, baptism, they were so divided among themselves.[13]
The lesson for us is clear as Reformed Baptists. In our relationships with one another as pastors and sister churches, we must guard against becoming embroiled in heated controversies over relatively minor issues. We must not allow such things to distract us from the higher priorities of the kingdom. Furthermore, when we do have disagreements we must be careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit by a mean-spirited attitude. Of course, there is the opposite danger of neglecting and minimizing the importance of sound doctrine. This too must be avoided. We must uphold our confessional standard when it comes to our closest inter-church relationships and ties. However, there are relatively minor issues that we can legitimately disagree about as Reformed Baptists that are not confessional issues. If we agree on the doctrines set forth in 32 detailed chapters of a confession of faith that’s a lot of agreement!! There’s no need to fight or divide over matters our confession never takes a dogmatic position about. There are, indeed, some differences among us of this nature. There are differences related to music and singing in our churches; whether we sing out of a hymn book all the time, or sometimes sing more modern songs, or even use power point, or whether and how we use musical accompaniment. There are differences regarding the best ways to engage in ministerial training and interchurch association. There are even differences regarding the nature of plurality, parity and diversity in an eldership. There are other things that could be mentioned. But if we can agree on all 32 chapters of our confession of faith, differences in other areas ought not to divide us. There’s a proper place for debating finer points, but it shouldn’t consume our best energies. Surely we should strive to maintain a strong bond of unity between churches that can agree on so much. Even with brethren who don’t agree with everything in our confession, there’s a unity of the Spirit that we ought to pursue and seek to express with all who hold to the essential fundamental doctrines of evangelical Christianity. According to Paul in Ephesians four there is a unity of the Spirit to be maintained with all who know and love Christ and hold to gospel essentials (4:3). While there is also a unity of the faith to be attained (4:13) through faithful, patient, ongoing instruction of the churches by their pastors and teachers. The implication is that our duty to keep the unity of the Spirit is not negated by the present lack of a perfect unity of the faith in every particular. If that is true in our relationships to all true gospel believing churches of Christ, how much more in our relationships to one another as Reformed Baptists who hold to the same confession of faith. In the next entry we’ll consider a third major factor in the decline among Particular Baptists in the early 18th century.
Jeffery Smith
Covenant Reformed Baptist Church
Easley, SC
[1] David Merck, “Modern Church History”; manuscript of lectures given for Reformed Baptist Seminary, 261.
[2] Thomas Ross, “English Particular Baptist Singing and Congregational Worship Practices,” accessed on Internet January 2009 here.
[3] Merck, 261.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Michael Haykin, Kiffin, Knollys and Keach (Leeds, England: Reformation Today Trust, 1996), 92.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 93.
[9] Ibid.
