Early Baptist Founding Fathers

Rev. John Spilsbury

Early British Baptist Pastor

               Rev. John Spilsbury was born in London in 1593. He first worked as a cobbler in London and was a member of a London Separatist church. He undertook the indepth study of scripture, especially on the subjects of believers' baptism and eternal security, and came to the conclusion that baptizing infants was wrong, only adult believers' baptism was valid and only those who believe in eternal salvation have true salvation. Around 1633 he left the Separatist church (on the grounds that many in the Separatist church believed in partial atonement - that one could lose salvation by sinning too much), he was baptized, and went on to establish and serve as pastor of what is regarded as the first Particular Baptist congregation, emphasizing believer's baptism, salvation by grace and the security of the believer. The Particular Baptist Church was most like the present day Southern Baptist Convention Church in belief and practice. 

                    Spilsbury and other Particular Baptists emphasized that immersion (that is, completely submersing the person in water) was the only proper mode of baptism and faith in complete atonement (eternal security) is the only true saving faith. Around 1638 William Kiffin, Thomas Wilson and others became convinced that infant baptism and partial atonement were unbiblical, false teachings and thus joined Spilsbury in his new Particular Baptist congregation.  

                      Spilsbury's Particular Baptist Church met in Broad-street, Wapping, London. The congregation, along with the input of other Particular Baptist pastors and leaders, agreed to name the church, and other Particular Baptist churches in the London area, "The Churches of Christ in London, Baptized.". Spilsbury's signature is affixed to The Confession of Faith published in 1646, and to many other public documents, the last being "The Humble Apology of Some Commonly Called Anabaptists,” presented to Charles II in 1660, as a disclaimer of sympathy with Venner’s insurrection. Although he joined William Kiffin in a letter to the Baptists in Dublin, persuading them to submit quietly to the Protectorate, he afterwards united with a number of others in an address to Cromwell, earnestly protesting against his assumption of the kingly title. Spilsbury was a man of great influence. 

              Spilsbury wrote many doctrinal papers and distributed them to his fellow citizens to read. From Spilsbury's pastoral doctrine, two issues, expansively developed, received forceful treatment: The Constitution of a Christian Congregation and The Invincible Efficacy of Christ's Work For His People. In 1643, Spilsbury published A Treatise Concerning the Lawfull Subject of Baptisme, which he reissued in a second edition in 1652. In 1646 he issued God's Ordinance, The Saints Privilege, with a discussion of what he perceived as the two scripturally based sacraments of the Christian church. Benjamin Coxe transcribed and enlarged the second part of this work.

                   Spilsbury's presentation of believer's baptism by emersion engaged covenantal theology. He approved covenant theology and built his doctrine of the church on the "infallible certainty" of the eternal covenant of grace. He argued that the spirituality of the New Covenant in Christ eliminated the possibility of an infant's participation in it. Spilsbury said that all participation in the positive provisions of the old covenant was only a shadow of the spiritual reality of the new. An infant's exclusion from the ordinance of baptism forbids to him, or her, no spiritual blessing. The new covenant assumes the effectual working of the Spirit to create a believing community justified by faith in Christ and employs new positive ordinances as the symbols of its character. He firmly believed that believer's baptism, not infant baptism, corresponds to the nature of the new covenant, stands alone as enjoined by the Lord's authority, and alone is practiced by the apostles. Spilsbury insisted that "any other baptism is not baptism at all but a faulty cornerstone that would bring down the church." 

                  Spilsbury's first work, The Lawfull Subject of Baptism, also dealt at length with the particular task of "fitting and preparing the matter, that is how sinners are made fit for constituting a church." In the final analysis, Spilsbury saw four elements that merged together in the constituting of a "New Testament church."

                  First, he argued, must come the Word of God "which is to fit and prepare the matter for the form." The preaching of the Word "assaults the pride of man, smooths his hard and rough turbulent spirit, aligns his crooked and Serpent-like nature, and brings him humbly to embrace the low and mean condition of Christ upon His cross."

                Second, Spilsbury said that "this same Word so convinces the sinner of its truth that its leaven seasons and sweetens the whole man." The Word operates like a "fire that breaks forth and discovers itself" with such clarity in "such as have it, that they delineate specific truths from that Word." A confession of faith consisting of particular doctrines naturally develops. Others "so prepared come to one and the same mind and judgment in it."

               Spilsbury said that this leads to the third "constituting cause" of a church. The believers "so fitted by the Word now covenant to be a body of believers joined by free and mutual consent and agreement upon the practice of that truth so by God revealed, and by faith received." This voluntary covenant precedes the ordinances.

                 He said that the fourth cause follows, "the Spirit's work in knitting and uniting their hearts together in truth." A "corporate witness to propositional truths provides the only clear evidence that such a work of the Spirit has, in fact, occurred."

                     Spilsbury believed that once such agreement in conversion and truth was ascertained and the "matter converted and convinced persons so constituted has covenanted with fully informed consciences to be the people of God, the covenant is sealed with baptism." Thus being "in Covenant with God by faith in Jesus Christ, in which their state consists, and so the agreement made, and the covenant passed between them, now the seal is set to," which is the outward ordinance of baptism, to confirm the same." 

                     The earliest Particular Baptists established their churches by agreement to a confession of faith. Spilsbury considered this "necessary for the well-being of the church." Spilsbury declared that "saving faith must be manifest in the hearty approval and assertion of a body of propositional truths." No church, and thus no baptism, could exist apart from "submission to orthodox evangelicalism embodied in a confession of faith." Spilsbury said that "submission to such constituted the covenantal agreement was necessary before baptism into his doctrine of the church." He further argued that "this union must first exist before communion in any other privileges may be enjoyed for the comfort and well being of the body." He summarized the content of a "true confession of Christ" in part one of Gods Ordinance, the Saints Privilege. He insisted that "the confession of Christ, including all the biblical truths about him, must be culminated in baptism."

                    Spilsbury passed away into heaven in 1668. Thousands attended his funeral.

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Rev. Henry Denne

Early British Baptist Pastor

       Rev. Henry Denne was born around 1605. He is the son of David Denne of Kent. He was educated in his youth by his uncle Thomas Denne in Latton, Essex. He matriculated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1621, graduating with a B.A. in 1625 and an M.A. in 1628. In 1630 he was ordained a minister by Theophilus Feild, Bishop of St. David's and soon afterwards became curate of Pirton, Hertfordshire, a preaching position he held for more than ten years.

       In 1641 he was one of the ministers selected by the committee of the House of Commons for preferment; in the same year he preached at Baldock, "giving offence by attacking the vices of the clergy." His sermon was published as The Doctrine and Conversation of John Baptist (1642). Soon after the outbreak of the First English Civil War, Denne became convinced of the unscriptural nature of the baptism of infants, and publicly professing himself a baptist, was received by immersion in 1643, when he joined the Particular Baptist congregation at the meeting-house in Bell Alley, London. He frequently preached both there and in the country.

       Denne was "one of the finest minds, most highly educated and most eloquent speakers in all of England." It did not take long for the civil authorities of the Church of England to arrest Denne and place him in prison. His voice and reputation were far too influencial to allow him the freedom to preach. Yet even in prison he proclaimed his faith to anyone who may listen. Every time he was released from prison, he preached even more fervently so that most of his life he repeatedly went to prison for preaching the gospel, preached the gospel in prison, was released to preach the gospel and was imprisoned again to preach in prison.

       On one occasion he was prevented from preaching in a Particular Baptist Church and he therefore moved to the shade of a tree in the churchyard and "to the mortification of his opposers, a great number of people followed him." Throughout his life, Denne remained one of the great Baptist preachers and continues to be respected as one of the greatest preachers of all time. He was highly respected as an evangelical scholar, one who could courageously defend their right to exist as a Baptist church and explain their theological positions with precision. 

       Among his fellow prisoners was Dr. Daniel Featley, the opponent of the Baptists, whose book, The Dippers Dipt, was brought to Denne's notice. As soon as he was released, he challenged Featley to a disputation. Featley, pleading the danger of publicly disputing without a license, declined to continue with it. Denne then wrote The Foundation of Children's Baptism Discovered and Raised; an answer to Dr. Featley, &c. (1645), which was for a time a standard authority among the Baptists.

       In June 1646 he was apprehended by the magistrates at Spalding for baptising in the river, but was released. He was, however, so fiercely persecuted by the neighbouring ministers that he finally resigned his pulpit and became a soldier in the parliamentary army. At the conclusion of the civil war he again became a Baptist preacher. Denne passed away into heaven in 1666.

Rev. Henry Jessey

Early British Baptist Pastor

          Rev. Henry Jessey was born on September 3, 1601 in West Rowton in Yorkshire London. He attended the University of Cambridge from 1618 until 1624. His father was an Anglican minister in West Rowton. He was "carefully educated in the ways of Christ by his faithful Christian parents until he was 17 years of age, when he went to Cambridge University." After four years of diligent study, "it pleased the Lord to work a renewing change upon his heart, by the ministry of the Word, whereby he was fitted for the ministry for which God had designed him, and to which he himself was greatly inclined." Upon the death of his father, who "had supplied him according to his ability, he was just able to survive as not to have above threepence a day, and yet so did he manage that small pittance, as to spare part of it for buying his class books." He continued 6 years in the university, and often used to recollect the benefit of his wellspent time there, with great thankfulness to God. He became well versed in the Hebrew language and in the writings of the Jewish Rabbis. He became so great a scripturist that when one began to quote a passage, he could quickly finish it, name the book, chapter and verse. 

    Rev. Jessey received his degree and then preached about the neighborhood as he was invited and he distributed a number of good books among the poor. He was ordained as an Anglican minister in 1927 by his church in West Rowton where his father was the minister.

        Rev. Jessey had several offers to pastor churches but refused them all until 1633 when he accepted the call to pastor Aughton to succced Mr. Alder, who was removed from there "for nonconformity." Rev. Jessey did not pastor there long, since he also refused to conform. He was removed as pastor for "not using the ceremonies, and for taking down a crucifix." But he was not useless in God’s vineyard, for Sir M. Boynton, of Barneston, in Yorkshire, invited him to preach there and at Rowsby, a place not far distant.

                 In 1635 he moved with Sir Matthew to London, and the next year to Hedgeley-House, near Uxbridge, where he had not been long before he was invited to become the pastor of that congregation, of which Mr. Henry Jacob and Mr. John Latborp had been pastors (the church was organized by Mr. Jacob in 1616). After much consideration and prayer, he accepted their call about midsummer, 1637. Many of his church members left his church to join the Particular Baptist Church (who were in harmony with Rev. Jessey and the doctrines of his church). Rev. Jessey began to be persuaded himself by Particular Baptist Rev. Hansend Knollys and in 1645 Rev. Jessey joined them and was also baptized by Rev. Hansend Knollys. Rev. Jessey once again became the pastor of the church and remained their pastor until his death. 

                 Rev. Jessey remained unmarried and was well known for his continual help to the poor. Thirty families were sustained by him and many Jewish families in Israel were sustained by him and won to Christ by him. He regularly preached in other area churches as well as his own. He and his church were often persecuted and imprisoned by the Church of England for teaching their doctrines on believer's baptism, salvation by grace and eternal security. He authored and distributed many of his articles of the faith and books.

                On November 27, 1661, Rev. Jessey was imprisoned for the last time. After his release he became very ill. He spent his last days exhorting all around him to remain close to Christ Jesus as first Love, persevere in the faith, continue to stand for their Biblical beliefs, share their faith with the lost, persuade Christians to believe and teach the Bible and oppose false teachings, and to prepare for future persecution. He encouraged all how Christ Jesus had been so very good to him at all times and in all conditions. He spent his last hours on earth blessing the Lord and singing hymns of praise and admiring the Love of God and his Christian family. He died on September 4, 1663 at the age of 62. Although he had no wife and children, several thousands attended his funeral, including his church family who "loved him more than a brother."