‘Historians’ Category

By Nathan A. Finn

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be reading a paper at the annual meeting of the Baptist History and Heritage Society titled “Debating Domestic Slavery: The Wayland-Fuller Correspondence in Context.” My paper will focus on the story behind the book Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution (1845). I’ve long been interested in this important book; my colleague Keith Harper and I co-edited a new edition of Domestic Slavery for Mercer University Press in 2008. It was my first book.

Domestic Slavery is a collection of letters between southerner Richard Fuller and northerner Francis Wayland. Both of these men were devout Christians, Baptist leaders, and moderates within their respective camps in the slavery debate. According to Mark Noll, “This exchange was one of the United States’ last serious one-on-one debates where advocates for and against slavery engaged each other directly, with reasonable restraint, and with evident intent to hear out the opponent to the extent possible.”[1]

In the book, Fuller argues that slavery was not inherently sinful, but concedes that there were many sinful practices associated with chattel slavery in the South. For his part, Wayland argues that slavery was inherently sinful, but concedes that in many instances owning slaves was a moral blind spot among otherwise godly men in the South. Wayland also criticizes the abolition movement for being too radical in its call for immediate emancipation.

Fuller and Wayland make their respective cases in different ways. Fuller, who was an eloquent and widely respected preacher, wrote letters that are saturated with Scripture references defending slavery. That said, most modern readers would agree that many of these citations are taken out of context or otherwise misinterpreted. Fuller’s exegesis is a textbook example of the so-called southern theological defense of slavery.

Wayland’s letters are rhetorically brilliant, but largely absent of Scripture besides references to the golden rule and Paul’s epistle to Philemon. His arguments are based more on common sense and natural law arguments. He had made these sorts of arguments in his earlier books The Elements of Moral Science (1835) and The Limitations of Human Responsibility (1838). The former was the most popular ethics textbook in America in the nineteenth century, though it was banned at most southern schools because of Wayland’s anti-slavery views.

Their respective arguments notwithstanding, Domestic Slavery is a model of Christian civility. Wayland and Fuller continually refer to each other as “my dear friend,” and in this case, they really meant it. Neither engages in ad hominem attacks of the other. Both men are quick to affirm anything they see as right and truthful in the other’s argument. Though Wayland really does believe Fuller is misreading Scripture, and though Fuller really is convinced Wayland is ignoring Scripture, the two men are always cordial and dignified; they never paint the other as sub-Christian or impugn each other’s motives. These two esteemed antebellum Baptists remind us that it is possible to debate even the most controversial issues in a Christ-like manner.

By Ian Hugh Clary

Zwinglianism is the view that the elements of the Lord’s Supper are only a memorial and that Christ is in no sense present—what some have called the “real absence” view, or the memorialist view. The Eucharist was a hotly debated topic during the Reformation that resulted in deep lines drawn between the Reformed, particularly the Swiss, and the Lutherans. Luther could barely bring himself to say that Zwingli was a brother in the Lord because the Zurich theologian refused to believe in consubstantiation. It is often noted that Calvin sought to steer a middle course between the Lutheran and Zwinglian forms by offering a “spiritual presence” view, where the Spirit draws the believer by faith into true communion with Christ in the elements. The so-called memorial view had a continuing influence in subsequent Reformed theology, and even more so in broader evangelicalism. But was Zwingli a Zwinglian?

W. P. Stephens, in his Zwingli: An Introduction to His Thought (Oxford, 2001) puts Zwingli in perspective. The heat of Zwingli’s debate with Luther centred on the words of Christ who said of the bread, “This is my body.” For Zwingli, the word “is” should be understood as “signifies.” For Luther this was anathema. At the Marburg Colloquy (1529), though some headway towards agreement was made, the two Reformers could not agree on this point. However, this did not entail that Zwingli denied any presence of Christ in the supper. After the colloquy, Zwingli expressed his belief in the “real presence” of Christ. Stephens, pointing to Zwingli’s works like An Account of the Faith (1530) and The Letter to the Princes of Germany (1530), says, “Zwingli made it clear that the bread was not mere bread, and he began to affirm terms such as presence, true, and sacramental” (105). In the appendix to his An Exposition of the Faith (1531) Zwingli said, “We believe Christ to be truly present in the Supper, indeed we do not believe that it is the Lord’s Supper unless Christ is present” (Stephens, 105). This change in emphasis came with a greater stress on the bread and the wine, both of which were “divine and sacred” (Stephens, 107).

Stephens does an excellent job tracing out Zwingli’s overall Eucharistic theology. After establishing that Zwingli was not really a “Zwinglian,” as the term has become known, he also makes the important point that Zwingli was consistent in his theology from his early to his later years. While his earlier views were nascent, his later views did not contradict them. In 1523 Zwingli spoke of the soul being fed in the supper. Admittedly he emphasised the “symbolic” understanding of the elements after 1524, yet he held this view when he spoke of feeding on Christ. Stephens summarizes Zwingli’s overall thought saying, “The more positive notes in the later Zwingli do not indicate a real shift in his position, rather a difference of emphasis” (Stephens, 109). The concern for Zwingli, as for other Reformers at this time, was the place of faith in the communicant—he guarded against any gracious effect for the unbeliever who partakes. In this, he appealed to the early Luther who emphasized the need for faith. While issues of Christology and philosophy play into their differences, Zwingli was not as far from Luther as the German Reformer thought. Though he they did not share full agreement, Zwingli was much closer to Calvin, whose view Luther was not so scathingly against.

So, in a sense, Zwingli was against the Zwinglians.

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Ian Hugh Clary is finishing doctoral studies under Adriaan Neele at Universiteit van die Vrystaat (Blomfontein), where he is writing a dissertation on the evangelical historiography of Arnold Dallimore. He has co-authored two local church histories with Michael Haykin and contributed articles to numerous scholarly journals. Ian serves as a pastor of BridgeWay Covenant Church in Toronto where he lives with his wife and two children.

By Nathan A. Finn

I need to begin this post with a caveat: I have never written a historical monograph. There are many reasons for this, chief among them my propensity toward distraction and boredom. Simply put, at this season in my life I can’t think of a single historical topic to which I want to devote 200 or more pages. I can, however, think of dozens of historical topics to which I want to devote 15–50 pages as well as numerous historic primary sources that I wish to see reprinted in critical editions. For that reason, my own scholarly publications tend to fall into three broad categories: 1) journal articles or contributed essays; 2) critical book reviews; 3) editing primary sources. Perhaps I’ll write a monograph or two at some point, but don’t hold your breath. For the time being, that’s not really my style.

Because I have never written a monograph, I’m obviously not an authority on this topic. However, I know lots of authorities on this topic. I also know that many readers of this blog are graduate students and younger church historians who probably do want to write monographs. So my desire in this post is not to position myself as an authority, but rather to point readers to a helpful resource I have found for those interested in publishing historical monographs.

Religion in American History is a consortium blog of mostly college and university historians who study American religious history. Some of the contributors are evangelicals, while others are not. Many have written on topics that at least intersect with Baptist Studies, which is a particular emphasis of the contributors to Historia Ecclesiastica. Religion in American History is a particularly helpful resource if you want to read substantive reviews of recent monographs (and sometimes important journal articles) in the field of American religious history.

Randall Stephens, who serves as one of the three “blogmeisters” for Religion in American History, has written a helpful post titled “Turning it into a Book.” In that post, Stephens collates suggestions from various publishers, along with his own insights on the topic. While Stephens focuses primarily on publishing for university presses, his suggestions also apply to church historians who wish to publish monographs with other types of scholarly presses such as Eerdmans, Baker Academic, IVP Academic, Pickwick, or T&T Clark (to name a few options). I think they also generally apply to historians who wish to publish textbooks or semi-scholarly books with evangelical presses such as Crossway, B&H, Moody, Zondervan, and Kregel. (For the record, the latter presses have scholarly divisions and regularly publish monographs in other disciplines such as theology, biblical studies, ethics, and apologetics. My not including them in the first list is not a “knock” on these fine publishing houses, but simply a recognition of the reality that they rarely publish scholarly monographs in my field.)

If I ever do get around to publishing a monograph (my lonely and heretofore unpublished dissertation is screaming at me from the shelf as I type), then I’ll consult Stephens’s helpful post on the front-end of that project. Perhaps many of this blog’s readers will “beat me to the punch” and publish one or more historical monographs. If so, I hope you folks also find Stephens’s post useful.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

By Ian Hugh Clary

Canadian Baptists have a history too, eh? Though some of you may have heard of T. T. Shields, you are probably not as familiar with names like Alexander Stewart, R. A. Fyfe, Henry Alline, or C. J. Holman (and his powerful wife Caroline!). These are just a selection from a group of men and women who helped establish the Baptist denomination in Canada. Our history is colourful, theologically rich, and is deeply significant not only to Canadian Baptist identity, but to Canadian history as a whole—for instance, did you know that the man who discovered that the Germans were using chlorine gas in the Great War was Col. George Nasmith who attended Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto?

Last month the Canadian Baptist Historical Society met at Heritage College in Cambridge, ON. We were delighted to see our numbers doubled and two members join the executive—including yours truly. Papers were given by our president, Michael Haykin, and one of his students, Michael Plato, who is also a professor at Seneca College in Toronto. Dr. Haykin presented on Andrew Fuller and trinitarianism, while Plato gave a stimulating paper on E. Y. Mullins. You might find it odd that neither address dealt with a Canadian; we’re okay with that, we have confidence in our identity!

The Society is based out of McMaster Divinity College and is connected to the work at the Canadian Baptist Archive. We were thankful to hear a report that the Archive is making progress in terms of preserving old and deteriorating manuscripts, and that they have made changes so that scholars have an easier and more comfortable time doing their work. I, for one, have benefited greatly from the Archive this past year. The Society is also hoping to have a social media presence, so keep your eyes peeled for us on Facebook and Twitter in the coming weeks. Our most important work, however, is the publication of various works related to Baptist history. McMaster’s series in Baptist history published with Wipf & Stock is a vehicle towards that end. Our first book dealt with Baptists in Canadian public life, and our upcoming book is on Baptists and War; many of the papers from a recent Fuller Center conference will be included.

As a Canadian and a Baptist, I am thankful that there are a growing number of men and women committed to keeping the memory of our forebears alive. If you are a Chronicling Canuck with a Baptist flavour, or you if are merely interested in coming to the next event or becoming a member of the Society, please go to our website to find out how.

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Ian Hugh Clary is finishing doctoral studies under Adriaan Neele at Universiteit van die Vrystaat (Blomfontein), where he is writing a dissertation on the evangelical historiography of Arnold Dallimore. He has co-authored two local church histories with Michael Haykin and contributed articles to numerous scholarly journals. Ian serves as a pastor of BridgeWay Covenant Church in Toronto where he lives with his wife and two children.

By Nathan A. Finn

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of reading Gordon Wood’s fine book The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008). The book is a collection of Wood’s published review essays of significant historical books written by others, most of which deal with American history during the Colonial Era and the Early Republic. It is a gem of a book.

In his introduction, Wood warns against the temptation toward presentism that is so common among so many historians.

But the present should not be the criterion for what we find in the past. Our perceptions and explanations of the past should not be directly shaped by the issues and problems of our own time. The best and most serious historians have come to know that, even when their original impulse to write history came from a pressing present problem. The best and most sophisticated histories of slavery and the best and most sophisticated histories of women soon broke loose from the immediate demands of the present and have sought to portray the past in its own context with all its complexity.

The more we study the events and situations in the past, the more complicated and complex we find them to be. The impulse of the best historians is always to penetrate ever more deeply into the circumstances of the past and to explain the complicated context of past events. The past in the hands of expert historians becomes a different world, a complicated world that requires considerable historical imagination to recover with any degree of accuracy. The complexity that we find in that different world comes with the realization that the participants were limited by forces that they did not understand or were even aware of—forces such as demographic movements, economic developments, or large-scale cultural patterns. The drama, indeed the tragedy, of history comes from our understanding the tension that existed between the conscious wills and intentions of the participants in the past and the underlying conditions that constrained their actions and shaped their future.

See Gordon S. Wood, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008), pp. 10–11.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

By Michael A.G. Haykin

Today I picked up a copy of T.M. Devine’s Scotland’s Empire: The Origins of the Global Diaspora (Penguin, 2004): it is an excellent work. Noticed an interesting oversight near the beginning of the book, though. Devine is noting the way that Scottish emigration and “engagement with empire [the British Empire] impacted “almost every nook and cranny of Scottish life.” And then gives his reader a list of these nooks and crannies: “industrialization, intellectual activity, politics, identity, education, popular culture, consumerism, labour markets, demographic trends, Highland social development and much else” (p.xxvii).

Now what is missing from that list? Any Scot living in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century world that Devine is interested in would see it right away: why it is the lack of the word “religion.” Now why do contemporary historians assume that their subjects of study are as secular as themselves? Of course, Devine knows about the presence of religious groups in the period he is writing about: for example, he mentions Presbyterians and Baptists (though his use of the term “Baptistry” to describe the set of Baptist beliefs, on  a parallel with Presbyterianism or Congregationalism reveals a certain lack of familiarity with church history—see p.157). But this list from the beginning of the book may well be a give-away: religion is not important for us, ipso facto, it has never been important. But nothing could be further from the case.

Devine’s main thesis, of course, stands: the British Empire was built by expatriate Scots and were “at the very cutting edge of British global expansion” (p.360). Anyone familiar, for example, with Ontario Baptist life in the nineteenth century will know that nearly all of the key figures in the nineteenth century were Scots or of Scottish descent. Now, there is a thesis or book!

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

By Ryan Patrick Hoselton

Ellen Charry’s work, By The Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (1997), is among those rare gems that challenge you to consider a serious paradigm shift in the way you do theology. Even more, I think her arguments have implications for historiography.

Charry contends for the restoration of theology that is sapiential (which she understands as knowledge that emotionally engages the knower to the known), aretegenic, and salutary. She attempts to show that the best Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation theologians thought, wrote, and spoke about God in this way. Theologians such as Basil of Caesarea, Anselm of Canterbury, and John Calvin insisted on correct doctrine—on knowing God accurately—because it was conducive to moral transformation and flourishing in the Christian life. Knowing and loving God rightly enables authentic imitation of him, and this is the key to human virtue, excellence, and happiness. Thus, pastoral concern drove their theological reflection and engagement in doctrinal controversy.

The modernism of Locke, Hume, and Kant severed faith and sapience from reason, eliminating both from the category of knowledge. Charry suggests that these epistemic shifts facilitated the waning of sapience from theology. Modern academic theology, preoccupied with pursuing knowledge of God on the terms of this modern epistemology, reduced theological reflection to factual knowledge, scientias. However, for classical theologians like Augustine, the goal of scientias was to move the knower to sapientia, wisdom.Knowing factual things about God must be paired with knowing God in wisdom and love. The verity of a doctrine rests largely in its result. For example, Basil of Caesarea argued that the Holy Spirit must be God on the basis that he makes us more like God and unites us to him—only God can do that. Basil contended for this doctrine because he believed that if his congregants denied it they would not grow in godliness. These classical theologians did not separate scientias and sapientia in the way that the modern Academy often does. For them, theology and pastoral theology were synonymous. Their doctrinal battles and treatises functioned primarily to protect and promote their congregants’ holiness.

Charry’s thesis applies to church historians as well. Treatments in historical theology that are limited to broad sweeps of ideologies could fall into the modern trap of severing scientias from sapientia. Historians must avoid imposing this modernist separation on past theological thought. Church historians are responsible for uncovering the pastoral concerns that lie behind the subject’s theological reflection. As Robert Darnton says, the point is “to show not merely what people thought but how they thought—how they construed the world, invested it with meaning, and infused it with emotion” (Darnton, 1985, 3). The historian must investigate the relationship between a theologian’s ideas and his behavior, shepherding, and spirituality. This kind of historiography will assist theologians and pastors in understanding why historic Christian doctrines mattered and still matter to the lives of believers.

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Ryan Patrick Hoselton is pursuing a ThM at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY with his wife Jaclyn, and they are expecting their first child in August.

 By Nathan A. Finn

Historians are often asked to be prophets. In my classes at Southeastern Seminary, hardly a week goes by that one or more students don’t ask me to speculate about how the past might influence the future. This phenomenon is even more pronounced when I teach on church history in local churches. It is most common, both in class and in the church, when I teach on Baptist history. Many folks suppose that being relatively learned in Baptist history means that one is able to discern what will happen in the future. That might be true of Michael Haykin or Lloyd Harsch or Jason Duesing or Jim Patterson, but not this historian.

Recently, I was reading George Nash’s fine book Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism (ISI Books, 2009). Nash has spent his career studying the conservative intellectual movement in modern America (see his landmark monograph on this topic). Apparently, historians of conservative intellectual history are similar to historians of Christian thought when it comes to requests for one don the prophetic mantle. I like what Nash writes in the introduction to Reappraising the Right.

“Historians are not necessarily good prognosticators, but by deliberately taking a longer view we can try to liberate our readers from the provincialism of the present” (p. xviii).

Now we’re talking. I have no idea if the Cooperative Program will go the way of the buffalo, if the SBC will divide on account of soteriological debates, if the Convention will become less southern and southwestern in its cultural ethos over the next generation, or who will be the next president of such-and-such theological seminary or mission board or other denominational agency (to mention but a few of the questions about which I’m regularly asked to prophesy). I’m a historian, not a prophet.

However, I do know that history reminds us to take the long view on each of these issues. The Cooperative Program has only been around for about half of Southern Baptist history and took a generation to catch on after its inception. Though critically important and worthy of our generous support, the CP is not intrinsic to our identity. The relative center of Southern Baptist soteriology has shifted over time because of a variety of factors, some of them non-theological in nature. Besides, its rather difficult to tell to what degree grassroots Southern Baptists have been in step with the relatively small handful of SBC leaders writing on soteriology at any given point in SBC history. The contemporary SBC is far less southern and southwestern (and Caucasian) than it was two generations ago, even if this isn’t entirely clear at the SBC Annual Meeting. But then the Convention is also more age diverse than is evident at the SBC Annual Meeting. As for denominational ministry presidents and other leaders, you simply never know when someone might retire (or not) and who will arise as a good candidate in such kairos moments. Nobody would have guessed in 1975 that Paige Patterson would become the president of not one but two SBC seminaries, to give but one example.

Historians aren’t prophets, and they shouldn’t pretend to be. But historians have something to offer our students and ministry colleagues as we ponder the great questions of our day. That something isn’t some infallible or even possible future, but rather historical perspective. And maybe, just maybe, if we inject a bit more historical perspective into our discussions of said great questions, such conversations might prove to be more profitable (though not prophet-able) than they so often are.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

By Dustin Bruce

Often when considering the English Reformation, we distinguish only between those who remained within the newly formed Church of England and those who dissented from it. In “A Brief Statement of the Principles of Dissent,” Andrew Fuller reminds us that “as all dissent is expressive rather of what is disapproved than of what is embraced, it is natural to suppose that the objects of disapprobation will be different in different persons.”^[1]

Fuller goes on to distinguish three classes of dissenters:

1. Those who disagree with the theology of the Church of England.
2. Those who approve of the theology, but desire further Reformation within the English Church.
3. Those who approve of the theology, but reject the establishment of a nation church in principle.

Concerning the first class of dissenters, Fuller speaks of those who abandoned the Church of England due to some unorthodox beliefs or practice. For Fuller, disagreement with the doctrine of these dissenters provides no justification for persecuting them. None who hold respect for private judgment and the authority of Christ “can forbear to regret that the Reformation should at so early a period have been stained with blood.”

The majority of Puritans and Nonconformists form the second class of dissenters. These men did not take issue with the establishment of a national church, but desired a national church with a Presbyterian form of government, which they found “more agreeable with the Scriptures.”

For the third class of dissenters, the primary objection to the Church of England was not one of theology, but of the very existence of a national church. Fuller states,

“The temporal power of bishops, the imposition of ministers, to the exclusion of the free election of the people, the mixture of godly and manifestly ungodly characters at the Lord’s table, the corruption of worship, the total want of discipline, and all other deviations from primitive Christianity, appeared to them to be no more than might be expected, if circumstances admitted it, to grow out of a national establishment. They, therefore, peaceably withdrew from its communion, with the view of forming churches on the plan of the New Testament.^”

To this third class of dissenters belongs the Independents and the Baptists. Both holding to a form of congregational church government, the Baptists further dissented from the Independents by rejecting the practice of infant baptism.

Interestingly, Fuller makes two points of application for the third class of dissenters.

1. “If the government should even offer to make theirs the established religion, however they might be obliged to them for their kindness, they could not accept it without relinquishing their first principles relative to church government.^”
2. “Neither can they, without relinquishing the first principles of the system by which they are distinguished from other Christians, persecute any man for his religion, whatever that religion be. They may think and speak of men according to their true character; they may refuse all religious connexion with them; they may expose their principles to just abhorrence; but their hand must not be upon them.^”

By Dustin Bruce

During a recent reading of David Bebbington’s Baptists Through the Centuries, his mention of a scholarly dispute regarding the intellectual origins of the 1644 London Baptist Confession peaked my interest.[1]

The difficulty in view focuses on Article XL (on baptism), which states:

The way and manner of the (Mat. 3:16; John 3:23; Acts 8:38) dispensing of this ordinance the Scripture holds out to be dipping or plunging the whole body under water: it being a sign, must answer the thing signified, which are these: first, the (Rev. 1:5; 7:14; Heb. 10:22) washing the whole soul in the blood of Christ; secondly, that interest the saints have in (Rom. 6:3-5) death, burial, and resurrection (of Christ); thirdly, together with a (1 Cor. 15:28, 29) confirmation of out faith, that as certainly as the body is buried under water, and rises again, so certainly shall the bodies of the saints by raised by the power of Christ, in the day of the resurrection, to reign with Christ.[2]

Menno Simons (1496-1561)

According to Glen Stassen, the Particular Baptist framers of the 1644 Confession are indebted to Anabaptist theologian Menno Simons, especially his Foundation of Christian Doctrine, for the motif of “death, burial, and resurrection” in relation to baptism.[3] Stassen’s claim is significant. If the authors of the early Baptist Confession were drawing heavily from Simons’s work, then an intellectual kinship could be established between the Mennonite Anabaptists and the fountainhead of the Particular Baptist stream. Stanley Nelson, however, counters Stassen’s assertion by proposing a different influence, that of William Ames.[4] Ames’s The Marrow of Theology was a popular work during the first half of the seventeenth-century and the Particular Baptist framers of the Confession were almost assuredly familiar with it.

Upon examining the sources, it is quite evident that Simons uses the motif of “death, burial, and resurrection” in his section on baptism. In his section entitled “Concerning Baptism,” Simons writes:

Behold, this is the word and will of the Lord, that all who hear and believe the word of God, shall be baptized (as above stated), thereby to profess their faith, and declare that they will henceforth not live according to their own will, but according to the will of God. That for the testimony of Jesus they are prepared to forsake their homes, chattels, lands and lives, and to suffer hunger, affliction, oppression, persecution, the cross and death; yea, they desire to bury the flesh with its lusts, and arise with Christ to newness of life, even as Paul says, “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life;” Col. 2:11, 12; Rom. 6:3, 4.[5]

However, it is also apparent that such a motif was available in Ames’s Marrow of Theology as well. In his section on “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper,” Ames writes:

Although it seals the whole covenant of grace to all believers, when it is specially made our own, it represents and confirms our very ingrafting into Christ. Rom. 6:3, 5, We have been baptized into Jesus Christ…being planted together with him; 1 Cor. 12:13, We have been baptized into one body.[6]

While Simons clearly makes use of the “death, burial, and resurrection” motif in his section on baptism, this of itself does not suggest an intellectual influence upon the Particular Baptist framers of the 1644 document. The connection between Romans 6:3-5 and baptism was clearly made by Ames in his The Marrow of Theology, which even Stassen recognizes as influential upon the 1644 Confession.

Upon examination of the texts, there is no reason to conclude the authors of the 1644 London Baptist Confession were necessarily drawing from the Anabaptist Simons. The association of the “death, burial, and resurrection” of Christ with baptism was available in Ames’s work. Then again, it could be that the originators of the first Particular Baptist confession were not relying on either work, but thoughtfully reading their Greek New Testament.