Stephen Wright
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 278
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This book challenges the orthodoxy that seventeenth-century Baptists were divided from the first into two separate denominations, 'Particular' and 'General', defined by their differing attitudes to predestination and the atonement, showing how the position was in fact much more complicated. It describes how from the foundation of the 'Generals' in 1609 there were always two tendencies, one clericalist and pacifist, influenced by the Dutch Mennonites, and one reflecting the English traditions of erastianism and local lay predominance in religion. It discusses developments in the 1630s and 1640s, examining how, although the 'Particular' Baptists were socially and politically conservative in 1647-9, some of their members influenced, and were influenced by, the Levellers. It also shows how many Baptists rejected formal ordinances from 1647, when millenarian and ecstatic tendencies flourished, with General Baptists moving towards proto-Quaker 'seeking' and even 'ranting', and how as a result denominational lines hardened. STEPHEN WRIGHT received his Ph.D. from the University of London. He has been visiting lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and the University of North London.