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LIVE COALS SEPARATED, SOON DIE: THE EARLY BAPTIST VISION OF THE CHURCH

by
Michael A.G. Haykin
Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary & Adjunct Professor of Church History & Spirituality At The Toronto Baptist Seminary & Bible College

When you become a Christian and decide to follow the Lord Jesus, you are, whether you are conscious of it or not, also committing yourself to a communitythe Christian community. There is no such thing as solitary Christianity. Hebrews 10:2425 makes this point powerfully by admonishing believers never to give up gathering together. The same point is made by the so-called one another passagesfor example, Romans 12:10 (love one another with brotherly affection), or Romans 12:16 (live in harmony with one another), or James 5:16 (confess your sins to one another and pray for one another). If Christianity does not entail community how can you obey these verses? So, we must join a Christian community to be a true disciple. Now, the question is: which Christian community should I join? Is there one that is truest to the Scriptures? To answer these questions would take some research, for we must first determine what Christian community looks like from the New Testament and then compare to this the available Christian communities known to us. But let me ask, and then seek to answer, a somewhat more-focused question: why belong to a Baptist church? Why be a Baptist? I have to belong to a Christian community, but why choose a Baptist one? Let me seek to answer these questions by looking at a number of texts that reveal the early Baptist vision of the Church. The Baptist vision of the church Right from the very beginning of Baptist witness in seventeenth-century England and New England, Baptists gave a lot of thought to the nature of the Church. In some ways, what is distinctive about being a Baptist is having a particular way of doing church.

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Numerous Christians in the British Isles during the seventeenth century were deeply concerned to discover from the Scriptures what constituted the true form of church life and government. Some, members of the state church in England and Wales, argued for episcopacy. Others, belonging to the state church in Scotland and also found in the ranks of the Puritans in England and Wales, argued for Presbyterianism. Yet others were convinced that the New Testament supported congregationalism, or what John Owen (161683), an important advocate of this perspective, once called the old, glorious, beautiful face of Christianity.1 Today, different controversies energize Christians and this passionate concern about what is the true form of church government seems a mere relic from the pact, interesting possibly from an antiquarian viewpoint but of no relevance for the present day. Yet, this early modern discussion should be of importance to us, for at its heart lies a distinct desire to recover what made early Christian churches alive and vital.2 Over against the Anglican and Presbyterian understandings of the church as being comprised of all who live within a certain geographical boundarywhat is called the parish church Baptists maintained in the words of a Baptist statement of faith, The First London Confession of Faith (1644), that a local church is a company of visible Saints, called & separated from the world, by the word and the Spirit of God, to the visible profession of the faith of the Gospel, being baptized into that faith, and joined to the Lord, and each other, by mutual agreement.3 In other words, the local church should consist only of those who have experienced conversion and who have borne visible witness to that experience by being baptized. This vision of the church as a body of converted individuals who have been baptized after their conversion clearly ran counter to a major aspect of the thinking of seventeenthcentury Anglicans and Presbyterians. These two Christian communities conceived of church as an established state entity, where religious uniformity was maintained by the arm of the state and infant baptism all but required for citizenship.
1 A Vindication of The Animadversions On Fiat Lux (The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold [18501853 ed.; repr. Edinburgh/Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965], 14:311). 2 Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Visible Saints: The Congregational Way 1640-1660 (1957 ed.; repr. Weston Rhyn, Oswestry, Shropshire: Quinta Press, 2002), 13. 3 The First London Confession of Faith 23 (William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith [Rev. ed.; Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1969], 165).

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Baptists, on the other hand, were convinced that the church is ultimately a fellowship of those who have personally embraced the salvation freely offered in Christ, not an army of conscripted men and women who have no choice in the matter. This conviction is underscored by the phrase being baptized into that faith in the passage cited above from First London Confession of Faith being placed after the words profession of the faith of the Gospel. It is those who have knowingly professed faith, and those alone, who should be baptized. Again, Benjamin Keach (16401704), the most important theologian of the English Calvinistic Baptist movement at the end of the seventeenth century, could define the church in very similar terms in his book on Baptist polity, The Glory of a True Church, and its Discipline displayd (1697). There he wrote: A Church of Christ, according to the Gospel-institution, is a congregation of godly Christians, who as a stated assembly (being first baptized upon the profession of faith) do by mutual agreement and consent give themselves up to the Lord, and one to another, according to the will of God4 Especially noteworthy in this passage and the text from the First London Confession is the mutualism in the description of the church.5 In the words of the First London Confession, believers are joined to the Lord, and each other, by mutual agreement. Keach puts the very same idea this way: Christians do by mutual agreement and consent give themselves up to the Lord, and one to another. These texts are both emphasizing that a church is not simply a group of individuals who have put their faith in Christ. It is a community of beliefmen and women who have owned Christ, been baptized as believers, and in so doing committed themselves to one another.6 Covenanting togetheror being serious about being a disciple of Jesus An excellent window into early Baptist thinking about being in Christian community is found in what are called church covenants. These used to be common in Baptist churches,
The Glory of a True Church, and its Discipline displayd (London, 1697), 56. The spelling and capitalization have been modernized in this and subsequent citations from this text. For the life of Keach, see Austin Walker, The Excellent Benjamin Keach (Dundas, Ontario: Joshua Press, 2004). 5 For this term, see Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, A Company of Professed Believers Ecclesiastically Confederate: the message of the Cambridge Platform (www.ucc.org/theology/hambrick.htm; accessed February 7, 2005). This paper was given as part of a conference marking the 350 th anniversary of the Cambridge Platform (1649). 6 Hambrick-Stowe, The message of the Cambridge Platform.
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but have fallen into disuse in recent days. But a good number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Baptist churches sought to promote and safeguard their experience as communities of Christian disciples by the adoption of a written covenant.7 Champlin Burrage, writing on this subject in 1904, suggested that the idea of a church covenanting together may well have originated among German Anabaptist communities in the 1520s. 8 Be this as it may, by the seventeenth century, written covenants were common to both Scottish Presbyterianswhere they eventually took the form of a national covenant rather than one agreed to by an individual local congregationand those Puritans, among whom were the Baptists, who had separated from the Church of England.9 The heart and substance of these church covenants was usually a series of carefully formulated commitments that were biblically based and that church members voluntarily made to God and to one another. Whereas confessions of faith are centred mainly on vital doctrinal issues, these covenants deal primarily with Christian conduct.10 In the words of Charles Deweese, a Southern Baptist historian, they were designed to deepen the quality of a churchs fellowship, sharpen a churchs awareness of vital moral and spiritual commitments, clarify biblical standards for Christian growth, and create and maintain a disciplined church membership.11 Church covenants were of great significance in attempts to form Christian disciples. First of all, they served as filters by which a local church could determine to some degree who or who was not a disciple of Christ. 12 The covenant was also a means of reclaiming

For the views of those Baptist leaders who felt that a church need not have a written covenant, see Champlin Burrage, The Church Covenant Idea: Its Origin and Its Development (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1904), 113121, 124125; Charles W. Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990), 2627; Gwyn Davies, Covenanting with God. The story of personal and church covenants and their lessons for today (Bryntirion, Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan: Evangelical Library of Wales, 1994), 5152. 8 Church Covenant Idea, 1325. See also Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants, 2021. 9 Davies, Covenanting with God, 39; Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants, 2223. 10 Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants, viiiix; David Fountain, Can the old Church Covenants help us today?, Sword & Trowel, (December 4, 1985), 8. 11 Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants, x. 12 Thus, William Carey (17611834), plagued by drunken deacons and bitter strife among a number of unruly members in his pastorate at Leicester, proceeded to recommend the dissolution of the church in September, 1790. This was agreed to by a majority of the members. Then, with the support of this majority the church was then reconstituted on the basis of a covenant, so as to bind them to a strict and faithful New Testament discipline, let it affect whom it might. The result, according to Careys grandson, was that they filled the fellowship with faithful love and the nettles gave place to the Spirits flowers and fruits [S. Pearce Carey, William Carey (London: Hodder and Stoughton, [1923]), 5760].

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recalcitrant members, who had left the pathway of discipleship. It could be used to remind them of what they had once promised to do and to observe.13 Finally, covenants gave expression to a distinct view of the Christian life as one of a voluntary, wholehearted commitment to God and to his church. Christian discipleship is first of all a dedication of the entirety of ones being to God. And the indisputable evidence of this dedication is found in living wholeheartedly for him in the context of the life of the local church.14 An example of a Baptist church covenant While some of these church covenants were somewhat general, many of them were fairly detailed. A good example of the latter is that of the Baptist cause at Bourton-on-theWater, Gloucestershire, dated January 30, 1720,15 where the famous Baptist hymn-writer and preacher, Benjamin Beddome (17171795) would one day be the pastor. At the time when this covenant was drawn up, the church had been in existence for approximately seventy years. Extant minutes of the Midlands Calvinistic Baptist Association reveal that representatives of the Bourton Baptists were present at this associations second general meeting on June 26, 1655. How long the church had existed prior to this date, however, is not exactly known. According to one account, it was founded in 1650.16 After the death of their pastor Joshua Head in 1719, who had served in this capacity for the previous nineteen years, the church was divided over the choice of a
Davies, Covenanting with God, 52. In the concluding words of the church covenant drawn up by Benjamin Keach for his London congregation: Can anything lay a greater obligation up the Conscience, than this Covenant, what then is the sin of such who violate it? (cited Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants, 121). When Christmas Evans (17661838), who for more than forty years was the most celebrated Baptist preacher in Wales, arrived in the island of Anglesey, off the northern coast of Wales, he found the life of the Baptist churches there at a very low ebb. His response was to hold a day of prayer so that the members of these churches might be brought to repentance and a recommitment to the promises they had made when they signed their church covenants. See Davies, Covenanting with God, 53. 14 Fountain, Church Covenants, 810. 15 For a copy of this covenant, see either The Bourton Church-Covenant, Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, 1 (1901-1904), 270274, or Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants, 122 124. In the citations from it that follow, the spelling and capitalization have been modernized. 16 Association Records of the Particular Baptists of England, Wales and Ireland to 1660. Part 1. South Wales and the Midlands, ed. B. R. White (London: The Baptist Historical Society, 1971), 20 and 40, n.9; C. R. Elrington and Helen ONeil, Bourton-on-the-Water in C. R. Elrington, ed., A History of the County of Gloucester (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), VI, 47. For an older history of the church, see Thomas Brooks, Pictures of the Past: The History of the Baptist Church, Bourton-on-the-Water (London: Judd & Glass, 1861).
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successor to Head. So deep was the division that the church actually dissolved for a brief period of time. In January 1720, though, a majority of the members formally recommitted themselves to one another as a body of believers and Christian disciples: Wefreely & heartily give up our selves afresh, they declared, to God the Father & his only Son our Lord and Lawgiver; & to one another according to his will. Documenting this act of recommitment was a covenant composed of thirteen articles. A number of the articles specify a commitment to preserving their unity in Christ. Their recent experience of fractious disagreement over the choice of a new pastor may well have led them to devote nearly a quarter of the specific articles of the covenant to this matter. We will, to the utmost of our power, they affirm in the first article, walk together in one Body, & as near as may be with one mind, in all sweetness of Spirit, and saint-like love to each other, as highly becomes the disciples of Christ. Article 3 draws on the language of Ephesians 4:3, a classic text with regard to church unity, to make essentially the same point: we will with all care, diligence, & conscience labour & study, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, both in the Church in general, & in particular between one another. This concern for church unity, however, was not an indiscriminate embrace of everyone who affirmed that they were Christian disciples. Those who signed this covenant declared their readiness to shun those that are seducers & false preachers of errors and heresies (article 4). And in the second article the signators state their determination to jointly contend, & strive together for the Faith & purity of the Gospel, which they further define as the truths of Jesus Christ, & the order, ordinances, honour, liberty, & privileges of this his Church. The fifth and sixth articles are a promise to bear one anothers burdens and weaknesses. Bearing the burdens of a brother or sister, it is explicitly stated, fulfills the end of our near relation. In other words, being there for one another is part of their raison dtre as a community of believers. Informing these two articles is the realization that Christian discipleship and the Christian pilgrimage cannot exist in isolationthey require community. Article 7 is a pledge of how they would act if persecution came upon them. We will, as our God shall enable us, cleave fast to each other to the utmost of our power; & that if

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perilous times should come, & a time of persecutionwe will not draw back from our holy profession, but will endeavour to strengthen one anothers hands, & encourage one another to perseverance. For any in the Bourton church who were roughly fifty years of age or older persecution for the faith would have been a vivid memory, since, apart from the brief period when England had been ruled by Oliver Cromwell (15991658) in the 1650s, genuine religious toleration had not existed until 1688. In fact, in 1714, only six years before this covenant was drawn up, there had been an unsuccessful attempt made by Anglican die-hards to close down all of the academies and seminaries run by anyone outside of the Church of England.17 This pledge takes seriously the fact that the ultimate loyalty of the Christian disciple is to Christ and that he or she must be prepared to give up all for his sake. But also noteworthy is the communal context in which this test of discipleship is placed. The persecution of a believer inevitably affects the entire community. And as God gives them grace, these believers promise to stand alongside one another in suffering for the gospel. Then comes a vow to be circumspect in what is said about the churchs inner life to those outside of the congregation. We do promise to keep the secrets of our Church entire without divulging them to any that are not members of this particular Body, though they may be otherwise near & dear to us. The reason given for this is drawn from the imagery of the Song of Solomon 4:12: for we believe the Church ought to be as a garden enclosed & a fountain sealed. This comparison of the local church to an enclosed garden was commonplace in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Baptist documents that talked about the nature of the church. The next vow, article 9, is based on 2 Corinthians 6:14 (where Paul urges Christians not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers) and 1 Corinthians 7:39 (Pauls command to marry only in the Lord). The members of the church promised not to marry an unbeliever, for, they stated, we believe it to be a sin to be unequally yoked, that it is contrary to the Rule of Christ, & the ready way to hinder our souls peace, growth, & eternal welfare. The tenth article is a pledge to help each other materially, while article 11 is focused on the spiritual help that believers must give one another. The latter is designed
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For details, see Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), I, 265266.

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especially to encourage a pastoral attitude on the part of the members towards each other. If they see a brother or sister harbouring a sinful lifestyle, they promised to remove it by using all possible means to bring the person to repentance & reformation of life. In article 12, the church members committed themselves to worshipping on the Lords days and on other occasions that the church deemed fit. The final commitment, article 13, was a promise to engage in private devotion, regularly engaging in prayer for one another, the growth of the church, and especially for their ministers & the success of their ministry. This covenant, and other Baptist church covenants of this era, give expression to a distinct view of the Christian life: it was a voluntary, wholehearted commitment to God and to his church. Christian discipleship is a dedication of the entirety of ones being to God. And the indisputable evidence of this dedication is found in living for him in the context of the life of the local community of believers.18 A concluding exhortation from Benjamin Keach A fitting summary to this study of early Calvinistic Baptist thought about the nature of the church can be found in some statements of Benjamin Keach. In his treatise specifically devoted to ecclesiastical polity, The Glory of a True Church, and its Doctrine displayd (1697), we get a marvellous perspective on the way that their concept of the local church gave the early Baptists an intensity in their corporate worship not found in the traditional Anglican parish church. Citing a variety of biblical passages as proof, the bulk of them drawn from the Psalms, Keach maintained that in the public worship of the church, the believer can experience the nearest resemblance of heaven and receive the clearest manifestations of Gods beauty. More of Gods effectual and intimate presence is known in this context of corporate worship than anywhere else. The London Baptist thus unequivocally declared that the public worship of God ought to be preferred before private, though, he emphasized, the latter must certainly not be neglected. As Keach observed: What signifies all you do in public, if you are not such that keep up the worship of God in your own families?19 Yet, on balance, Keach is convincedand he is representative of the
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Fountain, Church Covenants, 810. Glory of a True Church, 68.

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early Calvinistic Baptists as a whole in this regardthat the place where God is most glorified is in the midst of a worshipping congregation.20 Various reasons could be cited as to why Keach makes these assertions, which are undoubtedly startling to modern-day English-speaking Baptist ears that have imbibed much of the rampant individualism of contemporary western culture. One of the most important of them would have to be the fact that Keach and his fellow Baptists rightly discerned that in the New Testament the call to follow Jesus Christ, while intensely personal and directed at the heart, inescapably involves being part of a community of disciples and maintaining firm links with other like-minded churches. Otherwise, as Keach observes near the conclusion of The Glory of a True Church, Live coals separated, soon die.21

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Glory of a True Church, 63-68. Glory of a True Church, 67.

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