This morning, I want to pick up where I left the story yesterday at the end of our first session. We looked yesterday at the roots of our heritage. I tried to point out that they were rooted in the English Reformation, which even preceded the European Reformation, there was an appetite for the word of God there before even Lutheran influences began to enter Britain. And then we looked at the progress of the state-promoted reformation, and we saw how it was an alternation of liberty, persecution, liberty again. But during the persecution, there were men, able men, who had drunk deeply from the wells of Geneva, Zurich, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, centers of vibrant Protestantism on the continent. And they brought a new element into the story, an element of strongly defined theology, which was important. And these things together gave momentum to what we would call English Puritanism. And that English Puritanism was initially an attempt to raise the standards of a ministry in the English church, the Church of England. It met with frustration until eventually we get separatism. And it's out of separatism that our story really develops now. I showed how there was one development from separatism towards believers' baptism, but it was sad that it was entangled in the Armenian controversy which was pervading the Netherlands at the time of the birth of this recovery. But now we want to move on this morning to a consideration of a distinctly Calvinistic group of believers, of men who practiced and believed believers' baptism, credo-baptism as we tend to call it today. And I want to begin my story with the events that took place in a London church in the district of Wapping, one of the Thames side districts of London, rather actually just to the east of the main centre of London itself, the main old city of London. Now I'm really only giving you an illustration because from, oh this was a very important movement and a great deal eventually crystallised around it, but what I was saying to you about Christopher Blackwood yesterday, I think probably that was happening in other places as well. So what we're really getting is a coalescing of a movement which was taking place through the country in those years just before and in the early years of the English Civil War. It wasn't a man-made movement. It wasn't that they suddenly decided we're all going to be particular Baptists. And I think we can see the hand of God moving in different places. yesterday evening we looked at something that was happening in Kent and I can find no real direct connection immediately with what was happening in London. Things were happening. It's a bit like a heath fire which breaks out on a very hot summer's day. You can't really say exactly where it all begins, but the fire seems to break out in the scrubland in various places at the same time. But anyway, we want to look at Wapping and what was happening because there was there an independent separatist church and it met. actually initially in Southwark, which is a district of London. It's now incorporated into the London area. It was a suburb outside the recognized bounds of London at the beginning of our story. Now this independent church was a Pied-a-Baptist church, but in the 1630s When a great deal of persecution was taking place, here in Southwark, in a group of hidden Christian people, a debate began over the legitimacy of baptism in the Church of England. Now that's a debate which Pied a Baptist have had to confront and deal with on several occasions. One of the reformers had to, Since they took over the concept of paedo-baptism, they had to deal with the fact that they'd been baptized as babies in the Roman Catholic Church. How did they deal with that one? I remember talking to a man quite recently who's, he is a paedo-baptist. He'd been baptized as an infant. And he said to me, well, my parents weren't Christians. So I said, well, how do you? relate that to the fact that baptism is for believers and, as you teach, and to their children. Well, he said, I think I must have had godly parents or godly ancestors several generations back, but there'd been a lapse between. I think that's the way in which the theory has to work itself out. Anyway, these people in Southwark, they were debating this. And there was a sharp division amongst the people, not initially about believers' baptism, but the division was the legitimacy of the children who had been baptized by corrupt ministers in a corrupt system where there were hardly any believers at all. It wasn't true for all parishes, but it was certainly for some. And the upshot of it was the church divided on the 12th of September. This is one of the dates we can be sure of. 12th of September, 1633, the Southwark Church allowed a minority to leave. The minority doubted the legitimacy of the baptism of, by corrupt ministers in a corrupt system. The majority were prepared to go along with it. So the minority leave, they cross the river, and they establish themselves in Wapping, which is, as I say, a district east of the main city area of London. It's a docklands area, and nowadays it's become quite fashionable. But in the days I'm talking about, it was a rough, tough area that people didn't go to admire the sights. Anyway, this group of people left. They formed themselves into a new company. But the debate went on. And eventually, one of their members, a man by the name of Samuel Eaton, E-A-T-O-N, advanced the position that baptism is only to be administered to people who are able to make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. The big leap had taken place. In his mind, from the baptism of unconscious infants to those who are able to make a conscious profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. And so, of course, that raised the question, well, what about the members of the church themselves? They constituted themselves into a church. Many of them had been baptized as infants. What was to happen? And so they had to face the need for baptism. But the debate hadn't really ended because it then began to emerge that they were reaching the conclusion that quite independently Christopher Blackwood reached in Kent when he studied the etymology of the Greek verb baptizo and Richard Blunt came to the conclusion that baptism should only be by dipping in water resembling burial and rising again as implied by Romans 6 for and Colossians 2 verse 12. Now as I pointed out yesterday, the Arminian General Baptists were baptizing believers but they were doing so by effusion. Now one or two people came up and asked me what I meant by that. Effusion simply means pouring, pouring. In Church of England it's usually done by sprinkling but others do baptize by pouring from a jug or a spoon sometimes a small quantity of water over the people they're baptizing. If fusion means pouring. Anyway, these people who were debating the issue came to the conclusion that the baptism should be by total immersion. That's historic, taking place really around 1640. So dates are a little bit confusing, but we know that in January 1642 Blunt baptized Samuel Blacklock, who may in turn have baptized him, and together they baptized some 53 people who had come to the conviction that baptism should be by total immersion. Almost certainly, this baptism took place in the River Thames. Remember, Wapping is a Thames-side district of London, and probably the baptism took place at night. It would have been the object of possibly a variety if it had happened fairly openly. However, the news got around that that's what these people were doing. And the England was by now in a very unsettled state. I pointed out yesterday that in 1642, civil war broke out. One of the things, the parliament was already passing a great deal of legislation before the war broke out. a number of quite revolutionary laws were accepted by the King before he left London. However, one of the crunch points of these events, one that really the King wasn't prepared to take, was the Parliament wanted to abolish the office of Bishop in the Church of England. It did proceed to discuss this, and that was at about the time that the King moved away up to Nottingham. But it's one thing, of course, to decide to abolish something. It's another thing to decide how you're going to work things afterwards. It's something that in England, Britain today, we're discussing following Brexit. It's one thing to cut ties. It's another thing to put something in its place. Now, it was a complicated thing because the Church of England depended on bishops for ordinations. The only valid ordination was one that was actually conferred by a bishop. And only a bishop could admit a person to full membership of the Church of England by confirmation. By now, many of the Puritans had come to reject all of that thinking. But it required careful thought to see how to reorganize things because so much of the Church of England was actually controlled by bishops who had a whole system of ecclesiastical courts and ecclesiastical law that was administered. So, it was decided, Parliament decided to call an Assembly of Divines. ministers who would consider the state of religion in the country, what was to replace the bishops. The doctrine of the Church of England was to be reviewed, the 39 articles were to be considered, and the whole structure of organisation and administration. Eventually the Scots, representative of the Church of Scotland, were brought in. Generally speaking, it's been considered that the assembly which came together, the Westminster Assembly of Divines, it's considered that it was a Presbyterian assembly. It wasn't really. It was an Anglican assembly. There's some interesting research done actually by an American, R.S. Paul, on the composition of the assembly. And he's of the opinion that although the members of the assembly were Calvinistic, they really were, many of them were moderate Anglicans. They wanted the pressures of Anglican hierarchy swept away, but they weren't necessarily Presbyterian. Some were, but many of them didn't really know what Presbyterianism is. They didn't really understand the structure until the Scots came in and they'd been practicing it for a long period by this time. There were a few men who convinced independence. Minority, but there was a big fluid majority. But there were men like Thomas Goodwin and other men, Philip Nye, who got quite strong independent views. Local church was sufficient in and of itself to administer itself, to appoint officers, to impose discipline, and to control its life subject to scripture and their understanding of the Word of God. No Baptists, however. But then we must, they weren't invited. But I don't think we should be surprised at that. had come into existence in Wapping and one or two others that were now coming into existence, they really were, people weren't aware of them and they weren't aware of their thinking and they probably would tend to regard them as inadequate theologians in any case. However, there was one Anglican minister, John Toomes, who was ministering in Worcestershire and he had challenged the whole thinking, or was in process of challenging the whole thinking of the, of paedobaptism, infant baptism. And he knew a number of members of the Westminster Assembly and challenged their thinking impersonally. So, um, There was a great deal of ignorance as to what the Baptists did believe. But the interesting thing is that now there was a group of churches, perhaps half a dozen in the London area, and maybe a few more coming into existence outside London. But they certainly were subject to a great deal of misrepresentation. Therefore, the London men decided to take the lead in producing a confession of faith which would explain to people who would take the trouble to read it what the Baptists believed. And they gave some indication as to why they were doing this. It was to answer the breadth of criticism that they were facing. And in the introduction to this First London Confession, they spoke of the criticism both from pulpits and in print, charging us with holding free will, falling away from grace, denying original sin. Now, they obviously were aware of the general Baptists, but these people weren't general Baptists. They were particular Baptists. They wanted to make that abundantly clear, but they were being accused of these things. And then it goes on, disclaiming all magistracy, the right of magistrates. denying to assist them either in persons or in purse in all of their lawful commands, doing acts unseemly in the dispensing of the ordinance of baptism. Now, that latter accusation clearly reflected what people thought was happening on the continent of Europe or had happened. The Anabaptist movement on the continent Again, it denied the free grace of God. It tended to emphasize human free will. And going back into the previous century, there had been one group associated with the German town of Münster who'd overthrown the magistrates, seized power, and suggested that those who were professed believers were subject only to the direct and immediate rule of God through his servants. So they were anarchists, and these Baptists wanted to make it clear to everybody that they were not anarchists, and they were not people who would refuse to obey the magistrates, and they were not people who would refuse to cooperate with them. And so the confession was issued, a small pamphlet, confession of faith of those churches which are commonly, though falsely, called Anabaptist. And it was issued in the name of seven London churches. Now when you think of that, it's only 1633 that the seeds of the first Baptist church were sown in Wapping. And now, and that wasn't fully Baptist, But now we have actually seven churches in 1644 who are prepared to issue a confession of faith. And Dr. Barry White, who has written on English separatism, spoke of the church's doctrine as agreeing in agreement with the prevailing forms of Calvinistic orthodoxy. It was Calvinistic. In that respect, it was irreproachable as far as the main body of Puritans were concerned. But it was unashamedly Baptist. It was irenic. It was peaceable. It wasn't aggressive. The writers were ready to be convinced from scripture if they were wrong. And it wasn't absolutely new. I mentioned yesterday the separatist confession of 1596. And again, it seems about 26 of the 53 articles in this confession were reflecting the separatist confession. Together with developments, an understanding of developments since then, the writings of William Ames, the aftermath of the Armenian controversy, and the Synod of Dort. Now, one of the fiercest criticisms of the Baptists, critics of the Baptists, was a man called Dr. Daniel Featley, who was a member of the Westminster Assembly, although he got into trouble himself with the Assembly members. But he'd been involved in a direct debate in Southwark with some of the early Baptists. And he had accused them of all sorts of things. also suggesting that their practice of believers' baptism was immoral. And he had to admit that the confession of faith was overall orthodox, although somewhat grudgingly, he added, it might be a cover for more extreme notions. Well, he made his criticisms of the Baptists who said that they were prepared to listen, did make some modifications in the next edition that came out a couple of years later. But it's important to see that there were churches and those churches were cooperating. They were working together. There's no indication that they had a formal assembly in the London area, but there was cooperation. Remember the men would have known each other quite well and ought to have got to know each other as time went on. Well, it was signed by representatives of all seven churches in order to indicate this wasn't just one man's production. All right. Well, that's really the emergence, the story of the emergence of particular Baptists. I want now to think of the expansion. And that's going to be my second point this morning. The third one will be persecution. and the last one, toleration. So, expansion. The publication of the confession meant the particular Baptists were now a self-conscious, identifiable group. Not popular, and there are certainly reports of Baptists being stoned when they were in their meetings, their buildings were attacked, covered with graffiti, leaders were stoned, going about their duties. But the situation was changing, and it was changing because of the Civil War which was raging in the country. London, remember, was a parliamentary center, but there were other areas which were under the control of parliamentary armies. And while the royalist armies tended to be strongly Anglican, and the king actually presented himself as the champion of the Church of England. And for that reason, he's now honored by Anglo-Catholics as one of their big figures. Some even go as far as to describe him as King Charles the Martyr, and they give him sainthood status. But Parliament was also negotiating with the Scots, and the Scots were pressing for a uniformity of religion in the three kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland. There were different practices throughout this area. But increasingly, in the parliamentary army, although Parliament tended to be very careful and cautious and inclined to particularly because of the Scottish influence in the assembly. In the army, independency was spreading, and the regiments themselves sometimes formed themselves into gathered churches, or they formed gathered churches within the different parliamentary regiments. And they had chaplains who served them who were independent ministers. And there's some evidence that Baptists were serving as chaplains in the army. Evangelists could travel. William Kiffin, great London leader, was able to travel into Kent and preach there and again into East Anglia. And Thomas Collier was preaching in the southern counties. At this point, he was an orthodox particular Baptist. He later on developed erratic views. But at the moment, he was a particular Baptist evangelist. There were other men as well who were traveling. So that although the country was convulsed with civil war, nevertheless, there were large areas of the country which were now open to a consideration of the position of the Baptists. And there were Baptist preachers preaching the gospel and calling upon people who profess faith to be baptized. And the particular Baptist seized this opportunity so much so that by 1660, they were stronger numerically than the general Baptists. Their Calvinistic teaching reflected the theological consensus of the nation as a whole. Baptist historian Dr. W.T. Whitley estimated that by 1660, the year of the return of the king, there were at least 131 particular Baptist churches in England. I think that's probably a conservative estimate. We can find evidence of particular Baptists in other areas. But not only had churches come into existence, associations had come into existence, local associations for mutual support and edification. And the minutes of some of them have survived. and have been edited and republished in the last 50 years. The Abingdon Association represented a group of counties to the north and the west of London. Abingdon is a small town in the Thames Valley. which gave its name to the association. You can think of a semicircle of counties as Berkshire, Middlesex, and to the north of London you've got Buckinghamshire and possibly Oxfordshire as well. they were all in this association, the Abingdon Association. And then there was another association in the Midlands and that was often linked with the South Wales Association. And yet another one which was really centred on Bristol And it included counties like Gloucestershire or southern Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Devonshire, and Dorset. And that was the Western Association. Now, the recently edited records of the particular Baptist Association reflect a theologically alert community concerned to apply the doctrine practically to church life and to individual problems. The life of these churches was certainly vibrant at this time. Wales had been, to a great extent, neglected at the time of the English Reformation. One of the big problems with Wales is the language difference. Now, of course, Welsh people, almost entirely bilingual. But that certainly wasn't so at this time. And the Welsh language has no real apparent similarity with English at all. However, in, and it's not just the way they say it, in 1649, two Welsh Christians, John Miles and Thomas Proud, traveled to London to meet believers who are Baptist believers. They were concerned about baptism themselves. And on arrival in London, they found one church, which was meeting in one of the London city guild halls. There were a number of these halls in the city of London, which could be used for, or could be hired for various purposes. And this church was known as the Glaziers Hall Church. They met in the hall. of the glass makers in London. And they found that Glaciers Hall had just finished a day of fasting and prayer for laborers to go into the darker parts of the land. Well, two people arrived from Wales at that point. And this was taken as an answer to their prayer. These men associated with the London churches and stayed with them, eventually both were baptized and they were commissioned to establish a church in Wales. And they formed a church in South Wales at a place called Ilston. Now possibly there had been some other open communion churches which had been formed, but this was certainly a strict communion church at Ilston. In Wales also there was an evangelist, Vavasor Powell, who'd adopted Baptist principles in London. And for a while, he'd ministered in Kent, south of London. And we're told that at Dartford, his ministry was blessed with great success in his labors, being instrumental in bringing many souls to Christ and gathering a church in that town, so wrote Thomas Crosby. Back in Wales, he frequently preached in two or three places in a day and was seldom two days in a week throughout the year out of a pulpit. Nay, he would sometimes ride a hundred miles in a week and preach in every place where he might have admittance, either night or day, so that there was scarcely a church, chapel, or town hall in all Wales where he had not preached, besides his frequent preaching in fairs, markets, or upon meeting people and in small villages. And a number of churches were established by Powell and his friend Walter Craddock on mixed communion principles. But certainly things were changing. All of this is taking place in this period between 1650 and 1660. Ireland had been neglected by the English Church to a great extent, and it had been untouched by the Reformation as a whole. There were certainly believers there. And the Glazius Hall Church kept up contacts there. Now, I mentioned Christopher Blackwood going there yesterday. In England, Conrail was tolerant of various groups of believers. He wasn't prepared to enforce any particular pattern of faith. So there was a measure of freedom and he set up a system whereby independent ministers, approved independent ministers, were able to minister in parish churches which had been left vacant by the civil wars. Baptists weren't very happy about this, but some certainly took the opportunity to preach in the state churches. And so events moved on. And the period between 1649, the execution of the king, and the return of Charles II in 1660 was certainly a time of blessing and expansion for Baptist churches. After a time of ease came a time of persecution, a little bit like the pattern of the English Reformation. Edward VI, there was gospel preaching. The Protestant Reformed faith was strengthened in the country, and then you get reaction under Mary. And in a slightly different form, that was what happened to people outside the Church of England after 1660. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658. His successors were divided and the government was weak. There was fear that the war would break out again and eventually, in a very uncertain situation, one of the generals, General Monk, intervened and called Parliament or recalled a parliament which had been dissolved previously, which took the decision that England was naturally monarchical, and the way to sort out the problem was to reestablish the monarchy with some limitations. The bills which had been passed by parliament prior to the Civil War and accepted by the king, even though with a bad grace, those laws would stand as part of the law of the land. He was, is generally regarded as a Presbyterian parliament, which obviously hoped that Presbyterians would receive a recognized place in whatever religious establishment there came. However, the king's chief advisor, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, was very close to the remnants of the old Lordian party. Archbishop Lord, remember, had been arrested, executed eventually because of the way in which he undermined the Protestant character of the Church of England, but he had friends. And a number of the bishops who were deposed were very closely associated with him, including the man who accompanied Charles I to the scaffold when he was executed, a man by the name of William Jackson. Now, these men and Edward Hyde, they were high churchmen. They were influenced by Arminian thinking, probably intensified by the developments of recent years. And sadly, the Puritan groups were divided and they were outwitted. The king himself made a promise that he would be admitted back, or if he were admitted back to the country, he would respect tender consciences. But what that meant was never really spelled out. So he comes back to this country. and a whole series of laws were passed to re-establish the Church of England and to strengthen it in the face of Puritan opposition. And these acts are often referred to as the Clarendon Code. And the purpose of the Clarendon Code was to force Puritans out of the Church of England, those who were unhappy with the prayer book and to declare non-conformist meetings illegal. And non-conformists, therefore, were subject to fines or imprisonment in spite of Charles II's promise of liberty to tender consciences. Now, the Baptists were actually the first to experience persecution. Before these laws were passed by Parliament, John Bunyan had been arrested in November 1660 for conducting a cottage meeting in Bedfordshire. And he'd been arrested under an ancient law dating back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. And, but the, the persecution now began to affect others as well. There was a real attempt to force nonconformists out of all positions of government as well as out of the Church of England. Well, it's a complicated story and it was, persecution was never constant and it, the king himself really didn't have an appetite for this. He was driven by people around him and there were times when he tried to relax the pressure on the non-conformists. But how did the particular Baptist weather the storm? This is one of the big questions. It's difficult to assess the total picture because of the lack of records. If you're liable to be seized by the authorities and charged with illegal meeting, you won't keep detailed records of what you're up to. And so it's not surprising that there are churches who undoubtedly survived through this period, and yet we're in a really hard portrait to know how they did and what they were doing. That would have been true for many of the London churches. A few did, and one notable example of a church which suffered persecution is the church at Bristol, Broadmead Baptist Church. Now Broadmead Baptist Church is a little bit unusual because it only progressively became Baptist during this persecution period. It started off as an independent church open to Baptist views, but as the years rolled by, more and more Baptists were in membership in Broadmead. However, the experiences of Broadmead give us some idea of what was happening. There was another Baptist church in Bristol, a place called Pit Hay. That had been completely Baptist from its inception in the 1640s. But during the persecution period and later, those two churches were both strong upholders of the Baptist position. The Apostle of the West in the words of Joseph Ivermey, was a Bristol man. And, for example, he was the son of a cooper, a barrel maker in Bristol. He joined, was converted when he was 16 years old and joined the Pitt Hay Church in 1659 and began to preach in 1661 at the age of 19. Thomas Crosby said, would have known people who knew Andrew Gifford. He set out in the master's work in the year 1661, a threatening time, and for 28 years was zealous and a patient sufferer for the sake of it. Four times he was imprisoned for preaching, three times in the Bristol Newgate and once in Gloucester Castle. Intrepid in his master's service, he used disguises and was very good at them. And we are told that he even swam the swollen river to keep preaching engagements. Now, we have records of him preaching at Devizes in Wiltshire, at Southwick. Devizes is an interesting church. It still survives today. particular Baptist church, and it was formed as a result of a prayer meeting held by a group of parliamentary soldiers stationed in the town during the Civil War. And out of that prayer meeting came the Devizes Church, founded in 1645, which still meets week by week in that town. It's faithful testimony still. It's maintained a testimony to the doctrines of grace right the way through. Southwick is a village just south of Trowbridge where Baptists met in a wood. And they were able to do that largely because the landlord, the local landlord was tolerant of them. It a lot depended on the local magistrates. If a local magistrate was not bitterly anti-nonconformist, he didn't want to know if his tenants, who were usually the good tenants, they were the people that didn't get drunk every week. They were the people who did pay their rent. Well, if they got this odd quirk of wanting to meet in secret assemblies and they were decent, sort of people to employ, he didn't want to interfere with them. So the Southwick Church seems to have survived meeting secretly in this wood, you can still see the site today if you go there, and there's a special dell in the wood, the wood is known as Witchpit Wood, and there they met. We know that Andrew Gifford went and preached to them there. And there are other struggling groups we know that he preached at. And then, having itinerated as an evangelist through Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire, again and again, eventually in June 1677, he was ordained assistant pastor of his church in Bristol. Two years later, on the death of Henry Hynum, the first pastor, he was appointed to succeed him. And he said that in the 10 years, 1679 to 1889, which were some of the worst years for persecution, he only lost two members through fear of persecution, and he gained 30 members at the same time. Of the two, one became a persecutor, and both made a miserable end. But let's look at Broadmead. Broadmead Church, as I said, had the most detailed records. On the 27th of July, 1661, the Broadmead Church was meeting under its pastor, Thomas Ewins, who was arrested in the act of preaching. Now, this was before all the full weight of the legislation had been passed. He was released in September and immediately began to preach again. In 1662, he was arrested and imprisoned for a while. In 1663, he was rearrested and fined 50 pounds and condemned to be held in prison until the amount was paid. The church continued to meet, adopting various expedients in order to avoid detection. There were times when they met in a large upstairs warehouse where the whole congregation assembled. Some of the ladies, members of the church, sat on the stairs leading to the meeting place and spread out voluminous skirts on the stairs in order to prevent hasty entrance by any unwanted people or to hinder delay. And at that particular time, the preacher was preaching through a hole in the wall which enabled him to escape. if informers actually got into the building itself. The hope was that he would get away before the informers got in. The informers actually got a portion of the fines if they reported on people. So there was an incentive to do this. We're told then that sometimes by the time informers got into the building they would be singing psalms which was technically no offence. It was preaching that was the offence. But during the 1680s persecution got more severe and we know that a number of the Broadmean members were ruined financially. By that time, the church was meeting secretly outside the city. Early inside the city, but by now it was outside. I'd like to give you just a few quotes from the Broadmead records to give you some feel of what it was like. On the 12th of March, 1682, we met in the fields by Barton Hundred and Mr. Samuel Buttle of Plymouth preached in the fore part of the day and brother Winnell in the evening. It is thought that there were near a thousand persons in the morning, persecuting, high persecution, probably at a remote early hour, very early hour, they were meeting in these fields for a service. During the 11th, 1682, Brother Founds, who was the pastor, being come from London, but not daring to enter the city because of the Corporation Act, met with us and preached in Kingswood, near Screws Hole, under a tree, and endured the rain. Kingswood is interesting, because Kingswood is, again, outside the city. It's a mining area, or was at that time. There were shallow coal mines there. It was forested. And a hundred years later, it's there that George Whitfield began his historic open air ministry and preached to the miners of Kingswood. But back in the 1680s, or less than a hundred years later, back in the 1680s, the Baptists were meeting there secretly. So if you go to Kingswood, you'll see a a monument to Whitfield, or a pulpit actually, a wooden pulpit. It's in the middle of a housing estate now, but it's the site of the place where Whitfield first preached in the open air. But you can also see a tablet which points out that persecuted Baptists were meeting secretly in the woods here in the 1680s. 1682, July the 2nd, our pastor preached in another place in the wood. Our friends took much pains in the rain because many informers were ordered out to search. But we were in peace, though there were nearly 20 men and boys in search. March 1683, the pastor, though very ill, went to the meeting in the wood. But after three quarters of an hour, we were surrounded by horse and foot. The result was the imprisonment of Mr. Farnes, the pastor. December the 30th, 1685, being a hard frost, we met in the wood. And though we stood in the snow, the sun shone upon us and we were in peace. And then the consequence found the pastor who'd been seized was by now in Gloucester jail. And you get this note in the records. On the 29th of November, 1685, Our pastor, Brother Founds, died in Gloucester Jail, having been kept there for two years and about nine months a prisoner, unjustly and maliciously for the testimony of Jesus and preaching the gospel." Well, those extracts show how one church survived these years of bitter persecutions. And we could go on. Eventually, this came to an end. And in 1685, King Charles II died. On his deathbed, he actually declared himself to be a Roman Catholic and was received into the Roman Catholic Church by a priest who'd been smuggled into the palace. He promised to do this to the King of France who'd been advancing him money for some time. But he waited until he was dying. He knew he was dying. His brother who succeeded him, Charles II, had no children. His brother was an open Roman Catholic. He had in fact been, he professed Roman Catholicism a number of years before. And he succeeded to the throne. And that, of course, created an entirely different situation. A Roman Catholic king, theoretically supreme governor of the Church of England, with the power of appointing bishops, the power of appointing heads of colleges in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and also of manipulating parliamentary elections. The Anglican Church suddenly found itself in big difficulties and became very, very nervous. There was an abortive rising in the very early months, an attempt to put an illegitimate son of Charles II on the throne. That collapsed and was put down savagely. But however, things got worse. James, in the later stages of his reign, he only lasted three years, in the later months of his reign began to court the non-conformists in the hope that they would back him in his attempt to change the situation in the country. He was already appointing Roman Catholics to high office in defiance of the law, claiming that he had a royal prerogative which enabled him to do so. The upshot of it was that eventually the non-conformists wouldn't cooperate. They were suspicious of the king's motives. And the natural supporters, the natural Anglican supporters, or many of them, turned against the king and asked his son-in-law, the William Duke of Orange, the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, the leader of the Netherlands, who was married to James's daughter by his first wife. They invited him to come and sort things out. And he landed, and he, in the West Country, began to march towards London. As he marched, his own army, James's army, melted away, and James fled. Parliament declared the throne to be vacant, and eventually, after some discussion, William and Mary were declared to be joint sovereigns, the only time the country's been governed by a joint sovereignty. And out of that arose the Toleration Act in 1689. Enough Anglicans have now come to the conclusion that the attempt to coerce nonconformists back into the Church of England was a failure. And it was agreed that by Parliament, not unanimously by any means, but nevertheless agreed that toleration should be extended to those nonconformists who accepted the doctrinal articles of the Church of England. and an exception was made for Baptists who couldn't accept the provisions for infant baptism. What they had to do though was to assign to say they accepted the doctrinal articles of the Church of England. They promised they wouldn't in any way try to subvert the constitution and they were now free to worship within their own registered buildings. It was a toleration act. It wasn't an act for the freedom of religion, because if you tolerate something, you're putting up with something you don't really like. And the Toleration Act displayed the attitude of the authorities to nonconformists. Well, the challenge was now with them. They had actually strengthened during the persecution period. They'd been sustained in times of bitter persecution, How would they face the future? That was the big question. But they now have the freedom to worship God in their own buildings. And it was in that first year of freedom that a general assembly of particular Baptist churches was called to London in September 1689. It discussed a number of important issues, but it also issued the 1677 Confession of Faith, which had been drawn up seemingly in the Petit France Church in London, a revision and an adaptation of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and then the Savoy Declaration. which was the Congregationalist version of Westminster. And it was evident to all that this particular Baptist stood within the bounds of recognized Calvinistic orthodoxy. And they were now free to live their church lives. And it remained to be seen what influence they would exert in the nation. Thank you.