Short History of the 1646 London Baptist Confession

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Good evening everyone.
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We are beginning tonight a series on the 1646 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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Hopefully you all have a copy.
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If you don't have a copy we have extra copies for you, but everyone should have received a copy the other night when we had our meeting.
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And I want to sort of just give you a quick heads up how we're going to do this.
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Andy and I are going to divide our time every week, and I asked him if tonight I could go first because I wanted to give a history of the confession, and I felt like that would be the thing to do first.
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And we're both going to try to take 30 minutes each, and the goal is to try to one of us get our 30 minutes, the other get his 30 minutes, and then spend a few minutes at the end to pray.
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So I know we normally try to keep this to an hour, but for the next few weeks we're going to let it go a little bit beyond an hour.
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But if you need to leave right at 730, nobody's going to be angry with you.
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Just just go ahead and leave.
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It's no big deal.
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But we're going to, now that it's lighter outside later, we felt like it would be okay to hold for an additional 10 minutes or so for prayer.
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So we're going to hold our prayer, our longer prayer to the end, have a short prayer to begin, and we're going to do this over the next several weeks.
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So let us begin still, though, with a short prayer.
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Our Father and our God, we so thank you for the opportunity to spend time looking at the history of this confession and what it means for godly men to have taken up the pen and written down what they believe and how those beliefs have stood the test of time.
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And Lord, we are so thankful to align ourselves with holy men of old who were standing for truth in their day as we continue to try to stand for truth in our own day.
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Lord, we pray that through the adoption of this confession and the moving forward with it that we would better be equipped to understand what your word teaches, and most of all, Lord, to serve you as faithful followers of that word.
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We pray it in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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All right.
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Well, my lesson tonight is going to be broken down into three parts.
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We are going to look first at the battles of the early Baptists.
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We are then going to look at the structure of the First London Confession.
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And then finally, we are going to discuss the differences between the First and Second Baptist Confessions.
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Because there are two confessions that are often cited when you refer to Baptist history.
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The First London Confession, which was first penned in 1644, it was edited in 1646.
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We are going to talk about why that was in just a moment.
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And then the Second London Baptist Confession, which was published, it was actually written in this in 77, published in 1689.
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And so we are going to talk about that in a little while.
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So as we begin, let us begin by talking about the battles of the early Baptists.
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You will notice if you open up your confession to the very first page, not the first page of the book, but the first page of the confession, it tells a little bit of the history of why the confession was written.
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It tells us immediately that this confession was made in response to certain untrue assertions.
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Notice this with me on the first page.
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It says, this is a confession of faith of seven congregations or churches of Christ in London.
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This is before the denomination Church of Christ, so understand when they say churches of Christ, that is a general term, not lining themselves with the denomination.
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A confession of faith of seven congregations or churches of Christ in London, which are commonly but unjustly called Anabaptists, published for the vindication of the truth and information of the ignorant, likewise for the taking off those aspersions which are frequently both in pulpit and print unjustly cast upon them.
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Strong words.
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And ultimately it shows us that this document was written with a twofold mindset.
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It was written first as an apologetic, which means a defense for what one believes, but it was also written as a polemic.
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A polemic is an argument.
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It was written not only to defend, but to offend.
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And when I say offend, I don't mean to be intentionally offensive, but they weren't just on the defense, they were on offense.
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They wanted to come out strong and make a statement about what they believed.
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It was important to the English Baptists that they be properly distinguished from those who are known as the Anabaptists.
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The Anabaptists, which that phrase means re-baptizer, for those who are unfamiliar with the history of the Anabaptists, they were named by their enemies because of their commitment to the baptism of believers only.
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This was not the only position which set them apart, but it certainly was the first and foremost.
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They had begun as an offshoot of the Reformation, which began under Ulrich Zwingli.
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Now you'll remember when we talk about the Reformation, we talk about the three great reformers, the magisterial reformers, which were Martin Luther in Germany, John Calvin in Geneva, and then you had Ulrich Zwingli, and he was also in Switzerland.
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Well, some of the followers of Ulrich Zwingli began the Anabaptist movement, and the Anabaptist movement was known as the Radical Reformation because indeed their teachings seemed so far removed from what the reformers were teaching.
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One of the most significant moments of history happened when a group of Anabaptists took control of the German city of Münster.
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They kicked out the city council, and they attempted to set up a new kingdom of God on earth.
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This is what one statement from history says, quote, half-clothed and with religious zeal, the re-baptizers ran around the streets singing about the honor that awaited God's chosen ones, promising peace and prosperity.
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They became known as the monsters of Münster because they were so radical and willing to overthrow even the government seeking to set up a new kingdom of God.
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Now what's interesting is Anabaptists were typically known for being pacifistic and unwilling to lift up the sword, but within the movement there was a lot of differentiation, and there were certain ones who were willing to go in and take control of the government and to set up their own government.
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Well, that happened in the 1530s.
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By the 1640s, which was only a century later, when the Baptists of England were making themselves known, they were beginning to be connected with these radicals from Münster.
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Oh, look at what happened there.
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Look at the danger there.
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So one of the reasons for the writing of the 1646 or the 1644 Confession was to identify themselves as, we are not that.
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What you may have heard about the Anabaptists, what you may have heard about the radicals, what you may have heard about their desire to take over the government and set up a kingdom on earth and those things, that is not who we are.
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In fact, as we will see as we get to the end of the Confession, and you probably know this because most of you I hope have read it, the last few articles of the Confession make the point that God has set up the magistrate, which is the government, for the purpose of serving him and therefore the church is to be obedient as it is lawful to be obedient to the government.
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You know, as long as they're serving and not requiring us not to disserve God, then we are to serve and to do what they command us to do.
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So that's why, if you didn't notice when you were reading, that's why the last few articles make such a big deal.
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They want to make the argument we are not political revolutionaries.
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We're not here to try to set up our own kingdom.
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We want to serve God in peace.
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And interestingly enough, I've been reading a book on Baptist history in America as part of my preparation for this lesson, and it's so interesting to see that the Baptists in America were really foundational in helping America establish the concept of the freedom of religion, the idea that people should be able to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience, and even the First Amendment was influenced by early Baptist sentiment to have freedom of speech, the ability to believe and worship how one chooses.
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It's an interesting history book.
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It's called Baptists in America, and it's been helpful for me.
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And they were actually persecuted by the Puritans.
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As much as we respect the Puritans for all they did, they didn't like the Baptists because they considered them to be wrong, especially in regard to their view of Baptism.
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So the Baptists were in a position where they were trying to separate themselves from the radical Anabaptists.
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They were also charged with immorality in their meetings, which they had to respond to.
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One of the charges was that when they baptized, they baptized naked, and that became a major point of attack, that these Baptists are really, not only are they wrong on Baptism, but they misuse the sacrament.
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They use it as an opportunity for the lust of the flesh.
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In fact, if you open your book, turn back a ways, back into the appendix, not the appendix, but the preface of the book, and go to page 11, and you may not be, it's XI in the book, and you'll notice that it quotes, referring to Daniel Featley.
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Daniel Featley was an influential and outspoken minister devoted to the Church of England and critical of Puritanism, and he penned a scurrilous attack on the Baptists entitled, The Dippers Dipped.
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That was the title of his attack.
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Or, it had two titles, and often books had multiple titles back then.
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Interestingly enough, if you go back in history, you'll notice that.
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They'll have, it'll be this or this, and the secondary title was, The Anabaptists Ducked and Plunged Overhead and Ears, and it was written in 1645.
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In it, he maintained that the Baptists were in the habit of stripping stark naked, not only when they flock in general, in great multitudes, men and women together to their Jordans to be dipped, that would be their, yeah, well not their shoes, I believe that's dealing with their undergarments, but they would strip to their undergarments to be dipped, but also upon other occasions when the season permits.
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So, Featley basically said the Baptists are a bunch of scoundrels.
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When they get together to baptize, they strip down to their underwear, and there's no sense of propriety among them.
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So, that was one of the accusation, and by the way, again, if you've read it, you've noticed there is a point under the baptism section of the Confession where it says that they will wear modest apparel.
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That's why that's in there.
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In fact, the 1646 Confession, the reason why it was edited in 1646 is because the 1644, when it was first published, when they noticed that when Daniel Featley wrote, he wrote in 1645.
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So, he's writing in 1645, he's writing after, so they respond to his arguments, and they edit some of what's in here to respond to what he's saying.
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They're arguing, you guys are naked.
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No, no, no, we're modest, you know.
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So, it's an interesting historical note to see that some of the responses in here actually responses to accusations which were being made by the enemies of the early Baptists.
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But this was not their only battle, as there was also the concern within the Baptist churches of two dissenting opinions which needed to be distinguished.
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There were the general Baptists and the particular Baptists.
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Very quickly, just to help you understand the difference, the general Baptists held to the doctrines of Arminianism, and the particular Baptists held to the doctrines of Calvinism.
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The general Baptists were actually a little earlier, but the particular Baptists were much stronger in their theology and thus won the day.
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And therefore, this particular document, the First Confession, has a very strong Calvinistic tone because it is actually expressing the views of the Calvinistic, or the particular Baptists, not the general Baptists.
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One thing that we need to understand with that is that when we think of Calvinism, oftentimes we think of five points.
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T-U-L-I-P.
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Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints.
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They would not have known of such a thing.
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They would not have understood five points of Calvinism, neither would they have understood a tulip.
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That particular way of expressing Calvinism would come centuries later.
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In the 1600s, Calvinism was more in regard to how they would understand God and His nature, and His work, and His purpose, particularly in regard to His saving of souls in their sin.
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It was a much more broad concept.
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I think today when people think of Calvinism, they think it's just five doctrines.
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It's not.
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It's a whole entire view of how you see God working.
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In fact, one of the things that was attacked against the particular Baptists was that they were, quote, this is actually in your confession on page 10 of that preface, that they were holding free will, falling away from grace, and denying original sin.
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Well, those are all Arminian positions.
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Free will, as it is typically understood, is an Arminian position.
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Falling away from grace is an Arminian position.
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And original sin, denying original sin, is an Arminian position.
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So the Baptists were being accused of believing that.
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And so this document clearly says, no, we affirm perseverance of the Saints.
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We affirm what we would call total depravity.
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We affirm these things.
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And so again, this is something we need to understand about this document.
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It's making an argument for who they are.
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It's not intended, it really is not intended, to be a full-orbed expression of all theological thought.
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In fact, if you read it, you might even notice there's a few things that it doesn't address.
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It doesn't address things like the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
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Now, it mentions the Holy Spirit, but there's not a section that addresses the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
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And you say, well, why are those things, they are dealing with what the battle is.
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What is the battle? In fact, I would argue this, some of the same battles they were facing in 1646 are some of the same battles we're facing today.
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How far have churches fallen away from the doctrines of grace? How far have churches fallen away from the doctrines of justification by faith alone in Christ alone? These things, which are clearly stated here.
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And so nothing ever truly goes away, it just goes in cycles.
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And here we find ourselves again needing to affirm the things that are herein.
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On page 12 of the preface it says this, in 1644 the London Calvinistic Baptist leadership decided to issue a confession of faith which would demonstrate once and for all their fundamental solidarity with the international Calvinist community.
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This confession seems to have accomplished its goal in diffusing the criticism of many fellow Puritans and it soon became the doctrinal standard for the first period of Calvinistic Baptist advance.
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This document became the standard.
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So that's the battles that they fought.
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Now, very quickly I want to talk about the structure of the document.
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As is true of many confessions of faith, the first London Baptist confession did not arise without influence from previous writings.
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This particular document had influence from the 1596 separatist confession, the English separatist confession of 1596.
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Twenty-six of the 53 articles are actually drawn almost directly from that.
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So nothing ever arises out of a vacuum, right? Even when we were producing our new Constitution, a lot of it was just taken from the old, you know, reworded, maybe moved around a little bit, but some of it is just copied over because there's no reason to reinvent the wheel always.
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When things have been said properly, there's not always a reason to say them again.
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And so we can say that they weren't the first to have these thoughts.
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That's another, that's a positive to say that the Baptists who wrote the 1644-46 confession weren't the first to think these things.
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And when we talk about separatists, what we, sounds like a, well, I don't know, if you're a, if you're a Star Wars fan, has nothing to do with the separatists in the Rebel Alliance.
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No, the separatists referred to the Church of England.
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If you were not, if you were in England and you were not part of the Anglican Church, you were considered a non-conformist.
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And the primary non-conformists were the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Baptists.
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In fact, later we're going to see that's, those three groups come together later, and that's why the second confession is so important.
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Because the second confession, the second London Baptist confession, was the Baptists uniting with the Presbyterians in their non-conformity to be able to have more solidarity within their group.
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Which is not, there's nothing wrong with that.
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Historically speaking, they had a need to have, you know, unity.
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And they wanted unity.
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So we'll talk about that in a moment.
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But ultimately, this confession was part and parcel taken from the English Separatist Confession of 1596.
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The first 20 articles deal with the nature and attributes of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, divine election, the fall and sinfulness of all humanity, and the person and work of Christ in his office of prophet, priest, and king.
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I really look forward to teaching those.
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It's going to be great.
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The first part of teaching this is going to be awesome, because we're going to get to talk so much about the attributes of God.
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The next section, which is Articles 21 to 32, deal with the work of salvation and unequivocally reveal the Confession's Calvinism, expressing faith as a gift from God, Article 22, and particular atonement.
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Articles 33 to 47 deal with ecclesiology.
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Ecclesiology is the doctrine of the church.
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This section outlines clearly the doctrine of baptism, even indicating that it be done by dipping or plunging the body underwater.
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The earliest Baptists did not do that.
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The first Baptists poured, but the issue was baptizing believers, not babies.
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That was how the argument began.
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But then later, as more and more study was done, it became the conviction of the Baptists not only that they should baptize believers, but also that they should not pour, but immerse.
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Again, to dip is what the word baptize means.
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Articles 48 to 51 are intended to rebut any accusations regarding the Baptists being connected with the Anabaptist revolutionaries.
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Notable among these is the ability of a Christian to serve as a civil magistrate.
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The Anabaptists, for the most part, would not allow their congregation members to serve in any government position.
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It's still that way.
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If you look among, such as the Amish and the Mennonites and stuff, a lot of them forbid their people from serving in the military or serving in any government office.
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So that continues.
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While the Baptists said, no, this is something that we see no problem with a Christian serving as a magistrate.
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So when we get to that part of the confession, we'll talk about why that was an argument.
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I know I seem to be going fast.
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Are you guys with me? Everybody good? Am I not going too fast? I want to give Andy his time, so I'm trying to move, move, move.
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I want to make sure I get all this in.
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The last article is Article 52, which is simply a statement regarding the final resurrection and coming judgment.
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It is a reminder that every person will have to give an account of himself to God.
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52 articles in total.
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And again, the vast majority of them dealing with the nature of God, the nature of salvation, and the nature of the church.
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So that is the focus of this document.
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Now, for our final portion of my lesson tonight, the differences between the First Confession of 1644-46 and the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689.
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In fact, I want to tell you a quick story.
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We had a visitor Sunday.
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He was a sweet man, came in, asked me some questions about the church.
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It was his first time here.
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Hopefully, he'll visit with us again next week.
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But his very first question, I see you're affirming the 1646.
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Why are you not affirming the 1689? Good question.
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And it will not be the last time we hear that.
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So I think we should know why.
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And what I'm doing, what I have written tonight is actually going to become an article.
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I wrote it as an article, which is maybe why it sounds weird the way I'm teaching.
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This isn't how I normally teach.
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I'm sort of reading the article to you.
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This is going to go on our website so that as people, the elders have already read it and looked it over, and it's going to hopefully, as people come to the church, if they have that question, an article that they can read, something that they understand more about us and why we adopted the 1646 Confession.
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All right.
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Among Reformed Baptists, the Second London Confession is certainly more popular.
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It is definitely longer.
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And in some places, I will admit, it is even clearer than the First Confession.
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But we believe, and by we I mean our elders, that there are some things in the Second London Confession which we would not be able to affirm, and therefore we have chosen to go with the first rather than second.
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Among the most difficult for us as a congregation is our position on the Sabbath.
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We do not believe that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, but rather we believe Sunday is the Lord's Day, that it is distinct from the Jewish Sabbath, and the Second London Confession clearly teaches that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath.
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Some would argue, as does Dr.
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James Renahan, a man who I truly respect and admire, that the First and Second Confessions are fundamentally the same in regard to their theology.
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He says this, he says, quote, there is no substantial difference, excuse me, there is no substantial theological difference between the First and Second London Confessions.
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I get very much bothered when I read statements asserting or inferring that there is some kind of theological difference between these two great confessions, end quote.
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So he says there is no difference between the First Confession and the Second Confession.
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Well, this is my response to that.
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While it may be the case that the framers of the 1644-46 Confession held the same Sabbatarian teachings as those in 1689, it is not contained in the document itself.
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Often those who adopt the Second Confession but who do not hold to a Sabbatarian position are forced to omit sections of the 1689 Confession or add an asterisk to it or a note beside the section explaining why they disagree with that position.
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We chose, rather than doing that, to adopt a confession that we could affirm without having to qualify.
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I know of churches that have the 1689 Confession with an asterisk beside certain points.
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We did not want to do that.
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We either wanted a sort of an all or nothing and we can affirm all of this.
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Therefore, we chose this one.
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Additionally, the Sabbath is not the only place where we would differ with the 1689.
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We do not teach the same view of the Lord's table as does the 1689, nor do we hold the same perspective as to the identity of the Antichrist as the 1689.
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Again, while we would affirm the 1689 as a wonderful teaching tool, we just believe there would be too many places in it where we would have to qualify and the same is not true of the 1646.
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Therefore, we affirm the 1646 rather than the 1689.
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But something else needs to be stated from a historical perspective.
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The Second London Confession did not come in a vacuum.
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It came in a historical context.
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The same way this came in a historical context, the Second Confession came in a historical context as well and much of what is in the Second Confession is adopted straightway from the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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Those who try to argue that it's not, I think, are being somewhat dishonest.
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There are words and pages that are directly taken from the 1644 Westminster Confession.
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It's not bad, it just is.
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But I want to read to you, this is a paragraph, it's not in your book, so I do want to read it to you.
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This is from a pastor named Blake White.
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He wrote on the subject of covenants and confessions in his book and I just want to read this paragraph to you.
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It is important to understand why the Second London Baptist Confession was adopted.
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With King Charles II at the helm, there was persecution and harsh restrictions for dissenters due to the Clarendon Code of 1661 adopted by the pro-Anglican Parliament.
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The Confedical Act of 1664 prohibited anyone six years old and up from gathering for worship at any service other than those approved by the Church of England.
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In 1665, the Five Mile Act required the dissenters to swear that they would not rebel against the king or his government or they would be exiled.
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Charles approved the Act of Uniformity in 1662.
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The Church of England wanted uniformity of religion.
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The churches of that time period wanted toleration and Baptists needed people to know they were good, sound Protestants like the Presbyterians and Congregationalists and not crazy like the extreme wing of the Anabaptists and the Quakers.
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The so-called dissenters needed to show doctrinal unity so the Congregationalists followed the larger body of Presbyterians who had ruled under Cromwell and the particular Baptists followed the Congregationalists in order to show a unified front.
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The Congregationalists adopted an adapted version of the Westminster Confession of 1646 in 1658 in the Savoy Declaration and the Baptists met in London in 1677 to edit the Westminster Confession to fit their Credo Baptist theology changing it on church polity, sacraments, and religious liberty.
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I know that was a lot to hear but basically it's giving you the political motivations for what happened.
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I encourage you when this article goes out go back and read it again.
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I know that was a lot to absorb.
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I'm not questioning motivations here and I'm not assigning anything negative.
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I'm just saying it is what it is.
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The Second London Confession was highly influenced by the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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Westminster Confession of Faith is great, 1689 London Baptist Confession is great, but to say that the 1689 was produced for the practical purpose of showing unity between Baptists and other non-conforming churches, namely Presbyterians and Congregationalists, is not an unfair statement.
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In fact, I think it's a very true statement.
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It had motivations and were they good? Yeah, but it wasn't without that.
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The elders who serve in every church have the duty to study and decide what confession they will present to their people, if they choose to do one at all, and we have.
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There will always be a variety of opinions as to which one is better.
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Certainly all the great Reformed confessions have their high points.
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Some of the most beautifully articulated doctrinal writings are found in the Heidelberg Catechism and Confession, and we certainly can't adopt that because that's the Lutheran Confession, but it has some of the best and most well articulated doctrinal statements in all of confessional history.
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So by adopting one over the other, we're not saying the others are all bad or even mostly bad.
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We're simply saying there are certain things that we cannot affirm.
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In the end, whatever confession we do affirm and we have, it will always be subject to and underneath the Scripture, which is the ultimate and final authority for all faith and practice.
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So our reasoning for adopting the 1646 is simple.
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Among those confessions we examined, and we did examine more than one, we were most confident that it articulates what we believe the Bible teaches.
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By adopting it, we have placed ourselves in the long line of biblically faithful Calvinistic Baptists from the past.
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And Baptist historian W.
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J.
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McLaughlin writes this, and I'm going to end with his quote and turn it over to Andy.
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Of the 1646 confession, he says this, quote, it is perhaps the most independent of the Baptist confessions and is one of the noblest productions ever put forth by them.
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It probably still represents the views of the Baptists of the world more nearly than any other single confession.
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And that so ends my part of the lesson.