Well, today, we are gonna kinda do two things. We're gonna pray a little bit. You know, Ryan is out, keep praying for him. I haven't talked to him this morning, but maybe he's online with us, I'm not sure. But he's getting better, but he's still struggling. And so do pray for him. We have been moving through chapter one in the confession. He's done several studies on the light of nature, natural theology, and things such as that. And I think he's going to be getting into more of the paragraphs and stuff in chapter one in the coming weeks. You know, several months ago we were looking through a study of creeds and confessions, and my intention was at that time to kind of, right before we started studying our confession, to give us a little bit of a historical background on the confession. So that's kind of what we're going to back up and do today. We're doing that for a couple of reasons. We started last Sunday the new members class. And so we got off to a good start. And then we were going to have to cancel it for a week. And I thought, oh, that sounds terrible. No, we just got started. So for those that are in here that are part of the new members class, this is going to dovetail well, I think, with what we're doing in there, looking at the confession But I hope it will help you all as well who are going to be in the main class when Ryan comes back and begins to take us through chapter one. So today what I want to do is we're going to we're going to be in the 17th century and we're going to we're going to kind of give an overview of what happened in the 17th century, in particular Baptist life specifically, that led to the publication of our Confession of Faith. This is going to take us back into the early years of the 17th century, probably somewhere in the 1730s or so. Well, we'll start back in the 17-teens, but you see the slide here, the first Baptist churches, Baptistic separatists and Baptistic Congregationalists. These are two kind of emerging groups of Baptists, that we call them Baptists, in the early part of the 17th century. One of a more general or Arminian persuasion and one of a more specific, particular, or Calvinistic persuasion. Sometimes they're described as the general Baptists and the particular Baptists. And that's probably too specific of a designation. And it kind of caricatures them and stereotypes them and, in a sense, pigeonholes them into particular thoughts that we might have about what a general Baptist is. So, just for example, general Baptists we typically think of as being Arminian, or they're holding to a general atonement that Christ dies for every specific person in the history of the world as opposed to a more Calvinistic or particular persuasion that Jesus dies in particular for the elect. Well, to call these Baptistic separatists in this early period of the 17th century General Baptist would be a misnomer because some of these people that fall into this Baptistic separatist category, they would have been more Calvinistic in regard to the atonement. What distinguished them was their relationship to the Church of England. And the Baptistic separatists saw the Church of England as a false church. It was not a true church. And the only rightful response from a believer would be to come out of that church. Versus another group of Baptistic-like folk known as the Baptistic Congregationalists. They did not hold that the Church of England was a fully false church and that everybody in her would have been a false believer. They held to a congregational form of government and they were more Calvinistic in their doctrinal persuasions, all right? Now, we're gonna focus not on the Baptistic Separatists because that'd take us way off track, we're gonna focus on the Baptistic Congregationalists, the Baptistic Congregationalists. So we're gonna skip through some slides here and we're gonna come to a group of people known as the JLJ Church. Now you have a handout today. You ought to have two handouts, one that's kind of stapled together and one that's just a little piece of folded paper. Hold onto the piece of folded paper and hold onto both of them. We're not really gonna talk about them. We'll do that here in a few minutes. So for a few moments, it's just gonna be stuff that's on the screen. The JLJ Church is a church that is referred to by this acronym. that refers to the first three pastors of the church. It's located just south of the Thames River in London. If you've been to London, you can think of where like the Tower Bridge is and things like that, kind of just south of the downtown area or whatever. There's a little area known as Southwark, Southwark, S-O-U-T-H-W-A-R-K, Southwark. And in this area of Southwark that is still there today, you can still walk the streets of Southwark, and you can see where these brethren met during this particular period, was located the JLJ Church. Let's talk about the church just a little bit. The JLJ Church started in 1616 by a man named Henry Jacob. Henry Jacob is the first pastor of the church. There are three pastors I mentioned a moment ago. The JLJ stands for Jacob, Lathrop, and Jesse. Henry Jacob, John Lathrop, and then another Henry. They were a semi-separatist congregation. Now, I mentioned a moment ago the Baptistic separatists, and those were the ones who believed that the Church of England was a false church. The semi-separatists wanted to separate from the Church of England, but still saw it as a true expression of the church, but they disagreed so with its polity, not so much with its doctrine, although they did have differences with its doctrine. They differed with its polity, and they separated to be their own independent congregations. There were various splits off of the JLJ Church and eventually Henry Jesse himself became convinced of believers baptism and was baptized by a man named Hansard Knowles in 1645. Now Hansard Knowles becomes a very important particular Baptist Throughout the 17th century, if you happen to have a copy of the Confession that looks something like this, it'll even have a document somewhere toward the back. I think for this one in particular, it's on page 69. And if you have this copy, you open up page 69, the first name that signs the confession is that of Henry Knowles, pastor of the Broken Wharf Church. And you're thinking, Broken Wharf, that sounds really familiar. It's because we have a Broken Wharf book table, commercial moment, in the lobby. You can get different editions of that they're publishing there at Broken Wharf. is actually a wharf that was on the northern edge of the Thames, also in that downtown area. And last summer, when I was over there, it was really cool to walk around a corner and see the sign, Broken Wharf. There it is, and I thought, I'm here. It's like, you know, the closest thing Baptists get to relics. You know, we don't really hold relics, but you couldn't tell sometimes by the excitement Historians have when they find little spots like that, they get all giddy inside, get this warm feeling. I'm close to where Hansard Knowles preached. Well, they had a little church right there on the wharf, and that's where Hansard Knowles was the pastor. He continues, that is Jesse continues to pastor the church for years and they consider themselves an open membership church. An open membership church would be a church that would receive people into their membership that were baptized as infants or baptized as believers. sprinkling, pouring, immersion wouldn't be an issue for them at all. There was timing. It could be prior to faith or after an expression of a profession of faith. So this JLJ Church continues as an open membership church for many years, though Jesse himself had become convinced of a believer's baptism. Well, let's look a little bit at some of the changes. This is a busy slide, okay? I know that. It's kind of small. But I gave you a little piece of paper known as a Kiffin Manuscript. The Kiffin Manuscript is believed to have been written by a man named William Kiffin. And let me just mention I've mentioned William Kiffin, or I've mentioned Hansard Knowles, and now I've mentioned William Kiffin, and later we may mention Benjamin Keech. If you happen to be one of these history buffs, or you want to do some reading on this period, this is a great little introductory book called Kiffin, Knowles, and Keech by Michael Haken. It's a biography of these three leading Baptist brothers in the 17th century. Very helpful introduction to the period. The Kiffin manuscript that I gave you is a busy piece of paper, and I don't necessarily want you to read the whole thing right now. But I want to highlight a few things that we can kind of draw from the Kiffin Manuscript. Being written by William Kiffin, as we believe it was, it chronicles some of the history of the JLJ Church and its movement, or the movement of some within it, to come to fully Baptist convictions regarding the doctrine of baptism. So for example, the JLJ Church is a It's a baptistic congregational church, eventually with Jesse when he becomes a believer's, hosts a believer's baptism. But first, it's just a semi-separatist church. Remember, semi-separatists, they separate from the Church of England, they believe the Church of England's a true church, but they don't wanna be part of its polity. They wanna be independent and congregational, all right? But they continue to practice paedo-baptism, or infant baptism, and Over time, there are groups within the JLJ Church that become convinced of believers' baptism, which will eventually move them to be designated as like baptistic congregationalists, congregationalist independents that hold to a more baptistic position, which will eventually grow into what we are today, what we call ourselves as Baptists or particular Baptists. So just a couple things to highlight here on the rise of Baptistic Congregationalists, the move to believers baptism drawn from the Kiffin Manuscript. A group separates from the JLJ Church due to disagreement over, quote, the owning of English parishes. the owning of English parishes. In other words, the semi-separatists still held to the Church of England churches or the parishes being true churches, but there was a growing disconnect in the lives of some, and they began to see those English parishes as things that we shouldn't own. We shouldn't connect with them. They're not really true churches after all, and they began to want to pull away. In 1638, a group separates, quote, being convinced that baptism was not for infants. Now, this does not mean that they're now convinced that it's for believers. They're just convinced it's not for infants. So then the next question is, well, then who's it for? All right, well, they're gonna begin to move in a believer's baptism mode. In 1640, the church splits with a second group, being convinced of baptism, yet also it ought to be by dipping the body in the water, resembling burial and rising again. Now, today, that's like almost second nature for us. Someone's baptized in a Baptist church, and you may hear the preacher say something like, crucified with Christ, buried in the likeness of his death, raised to walk in newness of life, that Romans 6 imagery, all right? wasn't common for them, but here they begin to connect Romans 6 baptismal imagery with the actual physical representation of being buried and being raised again. In 1642, baptism, there's a baptism of 53 members of this second group under the direction of two men, Blunt and Blacklock. Blunt and Blacklock, and you can read about them in the Kiffin Manuscript which I'm sure you'll want to do later on. You're just chomping at the bit just to get away today so you can read the whole thing. All right. 1644, there's the formation of a new baptized group of believers into seven churches. These 53 members plus some others, and you'll see their names that are listed there on the piece of paper that you have. And some of those names are gonna pop up again in Baptist history as very significant leaders These individuals formed themselves into seven churches in London who committed to one another that, quote, by all means convenient to have the counsel and help one of another in all needful affairs of the church as members of one body in the common faith under Christ their only head. What are they saying? We're gonna form ourselves, our seven churches, into what? An association of churches. This is one of the earliest pictures we have of Baptist associationalism. Let me pause for just a moment and see what questions you might have, and we're going to have to move quickly, but I don't think Ryan's going to give me another week, and he's not going to keep being sick, so we're going to have to move on. Questions? Okay, let's move on. Oh, we have one. Ben, yes. What's that? Man, that's Kiffin. Striking looking young man, isn't he? Those long, long locks. There he is. That's William Kiffin. All right. Yes. Yes, and so they began to split, yes. So you have some that want to hold to, and this really, originally, this is, the distinctions are gonna be in how much we're gonna view the Church of England churches as true churches, all right? Because the original Baptistic separatists in like 1609 with men like John Smith and Thomas Ellis, and we didn't talk about them, those are the guys that kind of move in the general Baptist circles, all right? or what we're gonna call, what I would call, baptistic separatists, they viewed the Church of England churches as false churches. You gotta come out. Baptisms, like, actually referred to, I think, by Smith as the Mark of the Beast. So, you know, you can't be in there, all right? You can't get infant baptism in the Church of England. That's to be damned, all right? So, but these semi-separatists, they did not see the Church of England as false churches. That's the JLJ Church. but as time progressed, they did. Now, we're gonna talk a little bit about some political background, what's going on, but you got, you know, their Protestant friends are being killed by, you know, the Charles or James, and there's all kinds of persecution that goes on with this, too, so it's understandable why they would come to see the Church of England. It's like the daughter of Rome in that regard. All right, so let's move on and look at the rise of Baptistic Congregationalists. Formation of a Baptist confessional identity, all right? This is what we call the First London Confession of Faith. Several things to quickly mention here. They're gonna go public in writing a confession. There is what they call the main wheel that sets them to work. They answer various charges, they want to be heard by all who fear God, and they are a communion of churches that speak one. So very quickly, let's see what we can do with this. Going and writing a confession of faith. In 1644, the date was October the 16th, And there was found a man just outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London by the name of George Thomason who was selling a little bitty document that we know as the First London Confession of Faith. This picture here on the left is St. Paul's Cathedral there in London. And at the bottom is an actual little picture of a reprinting of the First London from 1658. I can't find one from 1644, but I know it exists. It's got to be in some library. And just down the street from St. Paul's is a graveyard where George Thomason is buried. You can still go there today. And he was a bookseller, and he was peddling the 1644 confession of faith. And when they did this, the phrase in quotes, going public, it's their phrase, right? Because it's like, no longer are we gonna hide the shadows. And they knew going public would bring a lot of backlash, if you will, right? Well, the main wheel that set them to work was the persecution that the churches were facing They were being pummeled from one side or another. They were being called antinomians, libertines, legalists some would call. They had all kinds of things that were said about them. I hesitate to show this, but I will. You see right there the Anabaptists, the description of several sects of Anabaptists with their manner of rebaptizing. And you can see there in the middle, this is a woodcut. This is a woodcut that was on the front of a book that was like a book written by a man who was a discernment ministries guy. in the 1640s, part of the Westminster Assembly, trying to get these re-baptizers, these Anabaptists, marked and separated and imprisoned, silenced, whatever. All kinds of rumors going on about them. These Baptists, they're baptizing people without clothes on. They are horrible kinds of people. If you know anything about early church history, in the early church Romans would come out with all kinds of rumors about the Christians. They're cannibals, right? They eat the Lord's Supper. One of the rumors about the early church was they stuffed babies in bread and ate them. That's like you're like really? but if you're on the outside and we're talking about eating the body and blood of our Lord and Then we talk about things like you know coming like it's a child or like an infant or whatever and rumors begin to spread and if you You're not even trying to represent them properly, you're just trying to get them silenced. You take what they're doing and you manufacture a picture about it. Well, they wanted to answer the charges, and so they did. The charges were these. Just held to free will, that they held to falling away from grace, that they denied original sin, that they disclaimed the magistracy they denied to assist them either in persons or purse. In other words, they were saying that these early Baptistic nationalists would not tithe their taxes, they wouldn't pay their taxes, because that would go to the Church of England, and that they taught that it was wrong for a Christian to serve in politics. Now these are things back to 16th century continental Anabaptism. The continental Anabaptists would say things like this. And the 17th century critics of the Baptistic Congregationalists constantly wanted to associate our forbearers with the Anabaptists in the 16th century. because the Anabaptists were seen as radically Arminian. They were just radical Biblicists, did not hold the confessions of faith. So, in going public, they write their confession, and they desire to be heard, though, by all who fear God. Now, this may be too small for you. Let me just read it for you. This is from the preface of the First London Confession. For the clearing of the truth we profess that it may be at liberty, though we be in bonds, briefly publish a confession of our faith as desiring all that fear God seriously to consider whether if they compare what we here say and confess in the presence of the Lord Jesus and his saints, men have not with their tongues and pulpit and pens and print both spoken and written things that are contrary to truth. But we know our God in his own time will clear our cause and lift up his son to make him the chief cornerstone, though he has been or now should be rejected, of master builders." And what they're saying here is that we're putting our cards on the table, we're This is what we believe, and we hope that you'll examine what we preach and what we've printed here, and we hope that you'll see that in fact we are like you. We also fear God, and we hold to sound doctrine. One thing that was interesting about some of the heresy hunters in the Presbyterian group, part of the Westminster Assembly, they would come out and say things like, you know, if we just examine what they've written, we conclude that they're sound and orthodox. But then they would say, we know they're lying. So we can't trust them. And so thanks. That helps a lot. Well, not only do they go public with a confession of faith, I think what's really striking to me about this first confession is they named their names or subscribed the confession of faith. William Kiffin, Thomas Patience, pastors of the first church. John Spilsbury, George Tipping, Samuel Richardson, pastors of a second church. Thomas Skippard and Thomas Mundy, Thomas Gunn and John Mabbitt, John Webb, Thomas Kilcop, Paul Hobson, Thomas Gore, Thomas is a very important name, we'll say for the Thomases, Paul's all for that, and Joseph Phelps and Edward Heath, I think that's seven. These are the pastors of the seven who signed the first London Confession of Faith. A couple of books to kind of mention for you if you want to do some extra digging on these kinds of things. One, there was a biography several years ago, about 10 years ago maybe, written by Jason Dusing. Jason Dusing is the provost, I believe, at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City, an SBC seminary up there, and he wrote a biography on Henry Jesse that's very good. There are a couple other texts. I'll just mention this one here. This is written by a brother. His name is Matthew Bingham. The book is called Orthodox Radicals. Matthew is a pastor and professor in London. He's a particular Baptist brother, and he has written this book called Orthodox Radicals, which is an incredibly helpful text to help us understand the distinctions between what I'm calling here Baptistic Separatists, the kind of bend toward a more Arminian, general, Baptist bent, and the Baptistic Congregationalists that are more our particular forebearers coming out of the JLJ Church. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Matthew back a few years ago, and he's a fine brother and a good historian and a good scholar. Comments, questions, thoughts? We're gonna move on to something different. Yeah, so in the 16th century, the Anabaptists, some of whom were probably our brothers and sisters in Christ, many of whom were not, there was a particular group within the Anabaptists. The term escapes me for kind of how to categorize them, but there was a town in Germany known as Munster, the Munster Rebellion, right? And in that city, they locked the city down. They began to kill people who were Catholics or Protestants, both on the inside of the city. They declared that the leader of the group was the reincarnation of Christ. They were anti-Trinitarian. They tortured people until they confessed. The guy took like 14 wives or something like that, because he kept killing them all, and then he'd have to get some more. It was a crazy rebellion in this city, and eventually the Protestants and Catholics both had to kind of unite to retake the city and stop the spread of this. Not only were they engaged in political rebellion, There was also a lot of doctrinal heresy that went on amongst many of the Anabaptists as well. And they received the moniker Anabaptist, because Ana meaning re-baptist, re-baptizers, that they rejected the infant baptism and they baptized again. Now many of the Anabaptists didn't baptize by dipping or immersion, they baptized by sprinkling or pouring, right? But the fact that the Baptists in the 17th century are these people that we know as Baptists, They also are rejecting their infant baptism and they're re-baptizing. Now we would just say they're baptizing because that first infant baptism wasn't a baptism at all. It's not a re-baptism, it's just a baptism. They made that connection between those two. There's not an organic connection. There's no kind of ancestral connection. There's no physical connection between the two groups. Many have tried to make a real physical connection between the two, but there's really not one. It's just the fact that if you wanted to scare everybody, just call this person an Anabaptist, because that means they're going to lead to rebellion, sedition, and they're going to be trouble causers in that regard. Tom? Yeah, yeah. It was not a good thing to be. Now, sometimes you will read in Baptist documents from this period and even the 18th century, sometimes the Baptists in describing themselves will actually call themselves Anabaptists because they just don't want to argue the point. They're just like, okay, I'm tired of arguing the point, just give, you know, the Anabaptists, all right. But, whenever they're challenged on that, say, do you mean, no, we're not that kind of Anabaptists. And they'll actually put in the cover of their documents, I'll look here and see if it's, I don't think it was this one, I think it's the cover of the First London, I don't know that we have it here. Often it will say in the covers of some of their documents that they are falsely called Anabaptists. And I don't have an image of that today, but sometimes they'll just, to cut to the chase, to get to what they really want to talk about, they'll just kind of get past the objection of, well, you're just saying Anabaptists, okay, I'm an Anabaptist, but let's talk about what I really want to talk about over here. But yeah, it was usually a pejorative label that was put upon them. Very quickly, pull out that stapled document that you have in your possession there. And let's look at the rise of the Baptistic Congregationalists, the second generation. The second generation. This is going to get us to our confession of faith. So here, a study of the Baptistic Congregationalists or the particular Baptists of the second generation by way of looking at our confession of faith. Several things to do here in this particular part, we're going to look at the stimuli of the confession. What historically stimulated our Baptist brothers and sisters to write this confession of faith? The scribes, who wrote it? Thirdly, the sources, where did they get it from? Did they just like invent it out of the air? Did they just sit down one day with a blank piece of paper and write a big old confession? No. The solidarity of the confession. How does this confession help them align with other reform types in the signing and signers? And finally, the structure. All right. The ecclesiastical stimuli, there are several different things that promote or stir up, if you will, this this this this confession and one is an ecclesiastical stimulus. Two points are mentioned in the opening letter. Now this copy this little black copy we have have that you can look in it and you'll find to the judicious and impartial reader. Now if you have the paperback edition that we have out in the lobby it does not have this opening letter. the original document would have had to the judicious and impartial reader, which is a very important letter for setting the confession in its historical context, understanding why they did it. Two points to mention here. One, the neglect of the present ministry. To the present ministry, they make the comment in the letter, there is a great neglect of the present ministry. And number two, a lack of concern for the present ministry, general unconcernedness of giving fit and proper encouragement for the raising up of able and able and honorable ministry for the time to come. So number one, there's a neglect, meaning that the ministers that we have cared for. They're not being financially cared for. And one of the reasons the churches see, or that the writers of the Confession see, that the churches are neglecting to care financially for their pastors is that the churches don't understand doctrinally why they need to do such a thing. And so they want to stress this in their Confession of Faith. Secondly, this lack of concern for the present ministry, they look at their church You see the pastors they do have, and the pastors they do have are, I guess we could say, often weak. They're not theologically trained. They're not adept for their particular task. It's like, you know, you call the plumber to your house. He comes to work on your house. And every couple minutes he comes to you and says, do you have a wrench I can borrow? And then he comes and says, do you have any glue? And you're like, do you know how to do your job? Or he comes to you and says, what do you think I ought to do about this? I'm paying you to know what needs to be done about this. And so they wanted an able and honorable ministry. Well, that's a couple of ecclesiastical stimuli. Secondly, there are theological reasons that they saw the need for a confession of faith. One, the challenge of a man by the name of Thomas Collier. I went out in the hallway looking. There's a new book that Broken Wharf has published called Vindicii Veritatis, or for the of the truth, it deals with the error, Collier written by Nehemiah Cox. I couldn't find any out there, so I'm hoping maybe they've all been sold. Anybody heard of that? Anybody get a copy of that book here recently, maybe off the table, a couple of you? They went somewhere, so somebody's got them. Maybe they're hiding in the office somewhere. Thomas Collier was a particular Baptist, planting churches, about 100 churches in the 1640s, 1650s. Thomas Collier plants about 100 churches in the west of England. Thomas Collier goes rogue. Thomas Collier affects. Just a couple of his errors. Collier objects to the doctrine of particular redemption. He objects to the doctrine of effectual calling. He objects to the doctrine of justification by works. He objects to the impossibility of falling from grace. He objects to the immutability of the decrees of God. He objects to the idea that divine providence extends to all things. And eventually, he objects to the doctrine of the Trinity itself. Thomas Collier has defected, departed from the faith. He is an apostate. Second, again, keep in mind, he's planted a hundred churches. He's planted a hundred particular Baptist churches. Now, I don't know who the founding pastor of, you know, Sovereign Joy was, I don't know who the founding pastor of Faith Community was, all right, but if you have a founding pastor and he sticks with that church for years and years and years and then defects, the impact he could have on that church that he planted would be huge, even if he wasn't there anymore. There's just this sense, a natural sense, it's not a bad thing, just a natural sense of indebtedness gone before us who have poured their spiritual lives into us and you find out that they've defected. That will shake your faith, that will make you struggle. Secondly, the doctrines of Calvinism, the idea that we shouldn't share the gospel with the non-elect, right? Our 17th century forebearers, what we call the free offer of the gospel. that the gospel should go to every person, and Christ should be offered to every person, and all should be called to repent and believe, and the doctrine of election is one of the secret decrees of God, and we don't know who's elected and who's not. But in this period, the doctrines of high Calvinism were on the rise. This in particular affects the Baptists in the 18th century, which is a little beyond our purview today. A third challenge, not oatmeal, but the Quakers, the Quakers, a very experiential-based religion of Quakerism. Wish we had time to talk about the Quakers, all right? Challenge number four, Seventh-day Sabbatarianism. The and historic church have held that the Sabbath with the resurrection of Christ has transitioned, if you will, from the seventh day of the week to the fourth, to the fourth day, fourth commandment, to the first day of the week. And that's the day that we celebrate and we participate in as a Christian Sabbath. But there were many who were teaching, no, the Sabbath is still the seventh day. There's actually a few miles from my house on the west side of town, a seventh day Baptist church. And Seventh-day Sabbatarianism is growing in this period. Number five, paedo-baptist teaching is very strong, and the church is needed to strengthen their position for believers' baptism. There are political stimuli that are causing a rise of concern as well. The restoration of the monarchy, Charles II has come back to power in 1660 timeframe or so. and he is back on the throne, and acts of persecution. I wish we had time to walk through all these things. Let me just give you an example of these acts that are passed by the, let's see. Well, I have page 18, page 18, and no page 17. Where is it? They passed all kinds of acts. The Corporation Act. Oh, I've lost my notes for that. But let me just give you an example of one. One of the acts that they passed was the idea that you could not, a five mile act, you couldn't attend a church more than five miles away from your house. Well, that's fine if you're in the Church of England. and you have a little parish church in all these villages that are within five miles of your house. There are parish churches all over the place. But there aren't that many Baptist churches, all right? And you might have to travel 20, 30 miles or more to get to a Baptist church. You start early in the morning on Sunday and ride your horse and buggy to get to a place to have church, and then you ride home late that night. It takes you all day, or maybe you have to travel the day before. But if it's against the law to travel more than five miles, you've got a problem, right? All kinds of ways they were persecuting the Baptists at this particular period. The Catholic threat of James II. James II comes to power. He is a Roman Catholic, and he is gonna turn the nation back toward Catholicism. In 1688, there is what is called the Glorious Revolution. This is William and Mary. William, by the way, is Dutch Reformed. He's very sympathetic with the Reformed faith there in England. And finally, in 1689, they pass what's known as the Act of Toleration, which allows some form of religious liberty to Baptists. So political stimuli there. Practically speaking, practical stimuli The First London Confession of Faith is out of use. It's out of print, and they can't find very many copies of it. They want to promote the Reformed Baptist viewpoint more carefully and clearly. Now, when I use the phrase Reformed Baptist, it's a little anachronistic, because they would not have called themselves Reformed Baptist. They would have called themselves, by this point in time, they would have been calling themselves Particular Baptist, or sometimes that moniker, Baptistic Congregationalist, might even still fit for them. A third reason that gives rise, practically speaking, to the confession, they want to promote unity amongst their Reformed brethren overall. They want to give some picture of solidarity with other Reformed-minded churches. They make this comment in their opening letter to the reader, we have no itch to clog religion with new words, but do readily acquiesce in that form of sound words which have been and consent with the Holy Scripture used by others before us, hereby declaring before God, angels and men, our hearty agreement with them in that wholesome Protestant doctrine, which with so clear evidence of scriptures they have asserted." I love that phrase, we have no itch to clog religion with new words, all right? Well, So in 1675, there is a circular letter that is sent out to hold an assembly to talk about the idea of putting something together to help their standing ministry. In 1677, in a church book known as the Petit France Church, It says this, it was agreed that a confession of faith with the appendix thereunto having been read and considered by the brethren should be published. At the conclusion of a man by the name of Joseph Ivamy, who's an 18th century Baptist historian, is that our confession came out of the Petit France Church being written primarily by the pastors of that church, Nehemiah Cox and William Collins. What do they do? How do they write it? Well, they had to get some sources. They did not sit down with a blank piece of paper. They have several documents that help them in writing. In 1658, there were a group of Congregationalists. They wrote a document known as the Savoy Declaration of Faith, and this is what we would call the parent document of our confession. Our confession draws its most near relative in this Savoy Declaration. Another source is the Westminster Confession of Faith from 1646. We might call this the grandparent Also they have the 1644 London Confession of Faith, and the editorial work of Collins and Cox. I was gonna mention another book here. This is a really helpful document. I don't think you can buy a physical copy of it anymore, but you can get it as a PDF, and you can access this through, I think through the IRBS website. They have a resources page, and I don't know what it is, 25, 30 bucks, something like that. Jim Rinehan put this together, and what he's done, is he's taken different columns and he shows where statements in our confession come from. So like on on this page here, this is 18 on the assurance of grace and salvation and Here's the content of our confession. Then he shows the Savoy Declaration of Faith and shows where they're similar. And then he'll show over here the Westminster Confession of Faith. And he'll add some other source books in there as well to kind of help with knowing where things came from. Sometimes we come across Statements in our confession that have no relation to Savoy, no relation to Westminster, no relation to the First London, and no evidence that they came from Collins or Cox. We're not really sure where they came from, all right? There may be some other documents we could mention as well. The solidarity of the confession, they want to show solidarity with their Baptist forefathers. and they want to show solidarity with the Reformed tradition. Now, what we mean by that is that the men that wrote the Second London Confession of Faith wanted to stand in solidarity with those men who wrote the First London Confession of Faith. You will come across various quote-unquote Reformed Baptists that will say they hold to the First London, but not to the Second London. Usually you will find this among what are known to us today as New Covenant believers. They reject the perpetuity of the moral law, they reject the perpetuity of the Fourth Commandment, they are non-Sabbatarian in that regard, but they want to hold to a form of Calvinistic Baptist theology, but they will reject the idea of the Sabbath, and they prefer the First London Confession And what they'll say is that the theology of the First and Second London, the doctrine is different. The problem with that is many of the men who signed the First London, who brought their names up there, also signed the Second London, all right? William Kiffin signed both. Hansard Knowles signed the 1646 edition of the First London and the Second London in 1689 when it was made public for everyone there. Several other men signed both as well or were connected with the churches that were connected to both confessions. And in the letter to the reader, in this edition here, it actually comes and says that they are standing in solidarity with their reformed Baptist, their Baptist forefathers. They also wanted to show a sense of continuity and solidarity with other reformed groups like the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists. Remember, they had no itch to clog religion with new words. They wanted to quote them as much as possible. So when you see that the Second London is very similar to the Savoy and the Westminster, it's not that the guys that wrote the Second London were lazy, it's they were doing that on purpose. They wanted to show, we agree with you in these things. Because remember earlier, they were saying, no, we don't think you really agree. No, we really, We really agree, all right? The signing and the signers, we mentioned them a little bit earlier. The Hansard Knolls at the top, William Kiffin at the middle. Benjamin Keech is at the bottom. If you want to read about Benjamin Keech, wonderful Baptist brother from the late part of the century. Austin Walker, who is a retired pastor in England, has written a wonderful book known as The Excellent Benjamin Keech. His son, Jeremy Walker, is now the pastor of Maiden Bower Baptist Church about an hour south of London. I had the privilege to meet Jeremy, his son, last year, and wonderful brother. One of the young men that's a student at IRBS UK, his name is Ashley Charles, he is a member of Maiden Bower, where Jeremy Walker is the pastor. Anyway, this is written by Austin Walker, a wonderful biography of Benjamin Peach. All right, very quickly, in the time we don't have, We wanted to cover the structure of the confession and I want to leave a minute or two for questions, comments that you may have. Yes, Andrew. Good question, yeah, from a lawyer, no less. For the most part in the 17th century, they are functioning as illegal churches, in danger of being fined, ridiculed, that was free, they passed that along all the time, fined, imprisoned, and some probably killed. So the, In 1677, they write this Confession of Faith, but they can't really kind of wholesale go public with this thing until we have the Act of Toleration in 1689. This is why we often call it the 1689, because this is the same year of the Act of Toleration. And at that point, they're no longer functioning as illegal assemblies. And so, Billy, I think we had one over here. Maybe. Yeah, now when we say it's an act of toleration, keep in mind it's not like 21st century toleration. It's not like, you know, they passed out the coexist bumper stickers all the time, you know. Not that we want that either, but you get the point, all right. There was a level of toleration that was given. It was not religious liberty, all right, like we might practice today. There were no mosques getting built, you know, for which we might be thankful. Within Protestantism, there was a religious toleration. In Catholicism, there were Catholics that were functioning there at that period. That was a little dicey, too. Yes. Right. Well, this is one of the early stimuli we mentioned, the ecclesiastical stimuli, if you remember that section that's in your handout there, that there's a neglect of the present ministry. And the principal neglect was, we're not paying our pastors. And the churches are like, we don't have any money left to pay our pastors, we're a bunch of poor farmers. And we've already had the money sucked out of us for the state church. And so it's very difficult to get enough money to support someone. Well, that act of toleration gives us that sense of now it's kind of going public, if you will. So we just often associate the date with the confession itself. But it really was written in 1677. That's when it's first printed, published. One last question. Tom, real quick. We need to, okay, yeah. Yeah, good. All right, well, I know that was really quick, and I hope it will help our new members coming in, and I hope it will help some of the older members as well, and just to kind of have maybe a refresher on that kind of a thing. I wish we could have got into the structure, but maybe we'll, I think here in about a month, month and a half, I'm supposed to come back and do Sunday school, and maybe we'll start with that, and we'll talk about that a little bit, but all right, let's pray, and we'll be dismissed. Father, we thank you for your grace and mercy We ask your blessing as we break now for just a few moments as we prepare to come back for worship. We ask God that you would indeed meet with us and encourage our hearts together. Thank you for this time that we've had. Thank you for the questions. I pray that you would encourage our own hearts and our own heritage. We are not the first. May we not be the last. God, may you keep us faithful, that others may indeed come after us. And may we lay a good ground for them to stand upon, and we pray that we would prove faithful. And Father, where we are faithless, we know that Christ himself is always faithful, and we are grateful for that. We pray your blessing as we depart.