Introduction

The Particular Baptists of the seventeenth century edited the Second London Confession of Faith to defend and substantiate the faith that they had embraced from the beginning. As they had been accused and prejudiced against by some in the past, as clearly stated in the epistle “To the Judicious and Impartial Reader,” they judged it necessary “to join together in giving a testimony to the world”[1] of their firm adhering to those same principles they had confessed in the past.

But, in 1677 they also wanted to manifest their consent, not only with the fundamental articles of the Christian religion, but also with many other orthodox Confessions that had been published in the past, especially with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy Declaration. The Particular Baptists wanted to manifest their consent with their Presbyterian and Congregational brothers. That was the reason why they concluded it best to retain the very same words of those confessions in many of the articles of the 1677 Baptist Confession.

However, “some things,” as they wrote in the epistle, “are in some places added, some terms omitted, and some few changed.” And such is the case in paragraph 2 of chapter 8, as will be discussed below.

Historical Background

The second paragraph of chapter 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” in the Second London Confession of Faith states the following,

The Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the brightness of the Father’s glory, of one substance and equal with Him, who made the world, who upholds and governs all things He has made, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin, being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowing her, and so was made of a woman, of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David, according to the Scriptures; so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion; which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man.

Both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy Declaration say, regarding Christ’s conception, that He was conceived “by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance.” The Second London Confession of Faith, as is evident, adds many more words to that statement. In fact, the Particular Baptists removed the phrase “of her substance” and replaced it with,

the Holy Spirit coming down upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowing her, and so was made of a woman, of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David, according to the Scriptures.

As they stated in the epistle, these alterations “are of the nature as that we need not doubt any charge or suspicion of unsoundness in the faith from any of our brethren.” When the Particular Baptists removed that phrase “of her substance,” they weren’t trying to be innovative, nor differ from the orthodox Confessions. What they wanted to do, as shall be demonstrated, was to be more precise in their Christology.

The phrase that was added by the Particular Baptists in paragraph 2, and which expanded the words of the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, came from Article IX of the First London Confession of Faith of 1644. But the question is, why would they think it was necessary for them to substitute and add to what the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration had said before them? The reason was, most probably, to the presence among the General Baptists of what is now known as the Hoffmanite Christology.

Melchior Hoffman was a very influential sixteenth century Anabaptist. And among the many heretical doctrines that he taught was the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Christ. Having been a student of Kaspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig, Hoffman “argued that Christ had brought His heavenly flesh from heaven, so that at the incarnation he took nothing from Mary.”[2] For Hoffman, Mary was just an incubator, a channel through which Christ brought His flesh from heaven. For him, Jesus was not born of Mary’s substance, but out of her substance. For him, “if it should be established that Christ’s flesh was Mary’s natural flesh and blood, we would all have to wait for another redeemer.” [3]

Calvin, understanding this doctrine, traced it back to the Manichees. He said that the Manichees’ view of the incarnation of Christ was Him “having been invested with celestial flesh.”[4] For Calvin, then, Hoffman and the Anabaptists were just reviving an ancient heresy. A heresy that influenced, not only other Anabaptists such as Menno Simons, but also some General Baptists in the seventeenth century.

Such was the case of Mathew Caffyn (1628-1714). Caffyn was “one of the most polarizing and enigmatic General Baptists of the seventeenth century.”[5] While a student at Oxford in the 1640s, he became a Baptist, which was the reason why the university authorities expelled him in 1645. He returned to his home at Horsham and began visiting local churches where he earned a good reputation for his preaching. He also held, due to his university training, “substantial property, and had a keen native wit.” [6] As he began evangelizing he planted churches in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.

And as he “began to puzzle himself with endeavouring to explain inexplicables,” as MacBeth put it,[7] Caffyn seems to have been teaching the Hoffmanite Christology as early as 1656 and to have fully embraced it by the early 1670s.[8] Caffyn argued,

that Christ’s human nature was not derived in any part from his mother, but was created ex-nihilo in heaven, united to the divine Logos and then entered the world by passing through the body of the Blessed Virgin.[9]

Caffyn had embraced the Hoffmanite Christology of the celestial flesh. This is why he was opposed, not only by some General Baptists in England, but also by some Particular Baptist churches related to Benjamin Keach, who also warned their congregations against this error. Thomas Monck, a General Baptist, was one of Caffyn’s earliest opponents. He wrote “A Cure for the Cankering Error of the New Eutychians” in 1673 where he denounced all those who believed “that our blessed Mediator did not take his Flesh of the Virgin Mary, neither was he made the Seed of David according to the Flesh.”[10] Caffyn was denounced at the 1673 General Assembly for his heretical Christology, but the Assembly did nothing to condemn him. In 1678 a group of General Baptists and twelve or thirteen members from Benjamin Keach’s old church at Winslow signed “The Orthodox Creed,” a General Baptist Confession of Faith against, among other things, the “Marcionites, Valentinians, Apelles, Apollinarians, Eunomians, Ebionites, Nestorians, Eutychians.”[11] And in Article V of that confession of faith, “Of the Second Person in the Holy Trinity, taking our Flesh,” they confessed,

We believe that the only Begotten Son of God, the Second Person in the Sacred Trinity, took to Himself a true, real, and fleshly Body, and reasonable soul, being Conceived in the fullness of Time, by the Holy Ghost, and Born of the Virgin Mary, and become very and true Man, like unto us in all things, even in our Infirmities, Sin only excepted; as appeareth by His Conception, Birth, Life, and Death. He was of a Woman, and by the Power of the Holy Ghost, in a Supernatural and Miraculous manner, was Formed of the only Seed, or Substance of the Virgin Mary, in which respect he hath the Name of the Son of Man, and is the true Son of David, the Fruit of the Virgin’s womb, to that end he might die for Adam.[12]

The Creed was presented at the General Assembly in January 30, 1679, to be adopted as their confession of Faith, but Caffyn convinced the majority of the Assembly to reject it, arguing “that the New Testament should be the only standard for the Baptist Faith.”[13] In 1686, Joseph Wright, another General Baptist pastor, and a friend of Caffyn, brought charges of heresy against him before the General Assembly. But again, Caffyn defended himself and the Assembly exonerated him of the charges.

In 1696 a group of General Baptist churches broke away from the General Assembly vowing to have nothing to do with the Association until the Assembly repented and purged the heresy among them, which never took place.[14] By the first half of the eighteenth century most of the General Baptist churches were unitarians. And as McBeth wrote, “It was not a good time for General Baptists. They fell victim to extreme liberalism. They had no gospel to preach, and they preached no gospel.”[15]

So, it is quite probable that this conflict among the General Baptists was known to the Particular Baptists of seventeenth century England. Some of the churches that fought against Caffyn’s Christology knew prominent Particular Baptists such as Benjamin Keach. And being Baptists it would have been quite possible that the Particular Baptists wanted their 1677 Confession of Faith to be more precise in its Christology, especially regarding their understanding and biblical conviction of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is why they added to the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy Declaration.

Using the words of the First London Confession of Faith the Particular Baptists wanted to explain more clearly and strengthen the idea of “substance” in the Westminster and Savoy confessions. They wanted to emphasize that they were in accord with the orthodox confessions of the past regarding the humanity of Jesus Christ.  The General Baptists had to be de-Caffynated[16] and the 1677 Baptist Confession wanted to make sure that what happened to them didn’t happen in Particular Baptist churches.

Biblical Basis

But, what was the biblical basis for the words in paragraph 2 of chapter 8 in the Second London Confession of Faith? Well, the Particular Baptists used 3 verses in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke to affirm the full humanity of Jesus Christ;

to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. Lk. 1:27

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. Lk. 1:31

The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. Lk. 1:35

What the Gospel tells us is that Mary was just a young woman who, at the time of Christ’s conception, was only engaged to Joseph. Even Mathew’s Gospel affirms that Mary was found to be with child before she and Joseph “came together” (Matt. 1:18). And what the Gospels explain is that what happened in Mary was a supernatural working of the Holy Spirit. “He,” said the angel, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Lk. 1:35).

When the universe came into existence, it did because of God’s will. He didn’t ask anyone else for counsel, for only He is God. The world, then, came into existence because God willed it. And it did so when the Holy Spirit hovered over the surface of the waters (Gen. 1:2). As the Spirit moved, He created. In the same way, “the conception of Christ is a divine intrusion-the last great culminating eruption of the power of God into the plight of humanity.” [17] Christ’s conception didn’t occur because of man’s will, but of God’s. The Holy Spirit, then, was the active principle and Mary the passive. And this,

not because she did nothing unto the bringing forth of Christ, but because she did nothing of her self, but that she did administer that matter of which the flesh of Christ was formed. Neither yet could she administer it immediately fir (for she had no pure matter) but it was made fit by a certain supernatural preparation, and sanctification, Luke 1.35. [18]

Because Christ was the first man of the new humanity He had to be conceived in that way, by the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit, preventing sin from affecting the Mediator. But, Mary did contribute with the matter for His flesh. “The Holy Spirit is instrumental in the fashioning of the Messiah’s humanity, as is Mary.” [19] Christ didn’t bring His flesh from heaven; instead it was formed for Him by the power of the Holy Spirit from Mary. “Christ’s humanness,” wrote Macleod,

was created not ex-nihilo but ex-Maria: of her substance. She contributed to him exactly what any human mother contributes to her child: ovum, genes, ordinary foetal development and ordinary parturition. He was, in an entirely proper sense, ‘the fruit of her womb.’ [20]

He, that is, the Holy Spirit, was the efficient cause; excluding, as Berkhof puts it, the activity of man. But He was also the sanctifying cause of Christ’s incarnation, preserving Him from the corruption of sin.[21] “Only by the work of the Spirit,” said Sinclair Ferguson, “could the divine person of the Logos assume genuine human nature, come ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh,’ and yet remain ‘holy, harmless, undefiled,’ ‘the holy one.’” [22]

Calvin, defending the true humanity of Christ, wrote,

The blessing is not promised in a heavenly seed, or the mask of a man, but the seed of Abraham and Jacob; nor is the everlasting throne promised to an aerial man, but to the Son of David, and the fruit of his loins. Hence, when manifested in the flesh, he is called the Son of David and Abraham, not because he was born of a virgin, and yet created in the air, but because, as Paul explains, he was “made of the seed of David, according to the flesh” (Rom 1:3)[23]

So, what the Particular Baptists were affirming from the beginning was what all the orthodox affirmed regarding Christ’s humanity. That is, that He was truly man, whose flesh He took from Mary, as He was promised to be the seed of Abraham and David. As many other Scriptures affirm,

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law (Gal. 4:4)

For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people (Heb. 2:16-17)

As the answer to Question 35 of the Heidelberg Catechism states,

That the eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to himself, through the working of the Holy Spirit, from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, a truly human nature so that he might also become David’s true descendant, like his brothers and sisters in every way except for sin.

The Particular Baptists didn’t want to be misunderstood. They wanted to be clear, not only in what they believed regarding Christ’s humanity, but also in rejecting heresies as those espoused by men like Caffyn.

Practical Application

But what was the real problem with Caffyn’s doctrine regarding Christ’s celestial flesh? Well, that it is contrary to what Scripture clearly teaches and to what the Church has confessed since the beginning; that is, “that Christ has been clothed with our flesh in order to become a Savior.” [24] Christ’s work can’t be separated from His person. And as Berkouwer said, “inseparable from the work of Christ is the significance of the true humanity of Christ.” [25] Christ, said the author to the Hebrews, “had to be made like His brethren in all things” (Heb. 2:17). That is, He had to have a human body, a human soul, a human mind, a human will, and human emotions, sin excluded, as sin didn’t belong to man originally. And this, “so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God” (Heb. 2:17).

Because He was appointed in eternity, according to the covenant of Redemption, to be the Mediator between God and man, Christ had to assume a true humanity, which the Scriptures teach He obtained from Mary, as the seed of Abraham and David. And this because as Gregory of Nazianzus said, “that which He has not assumed He has not healed.” “There can be no doubt,” said Torrance,

that the New Testament speaks of the flesh of Jesus as the concrete form of our human nature marked by Adam’s fall … if Jesus Christ did not assume our fallen flesh, our fallen humanity, then our fallen humanity is untouched by His work.[26]

And this is exactly what the author to the Hebrews declared. Jesus Christ “had to be made like His brethren in all things,” not only to be a merciful and faithful High Priest, but also to be able “to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17).  Because a man sinned, a man had to die. And because a man’s body, soul, mind, will, and emotions had to be redeemed, Jesus Christ assumed a true humanity, to be the Mediator between God and man.

If Christ, then, didn’t have a true human nature, and if His was brought down from heaven, as the Anabaptists and Caffyn argued, then there would be no possibility of redemption for sinful mankind. If Christ was not the true seed of Abraham and David, then there would be no hope for us.

That was the reason why the Particular Baptists joined with the orthodox and confessed what the reformed confessed before them,

Therefore we confess (in opposition to the heresy of the Anabaptists, who deny that Christ assumed human flesh of his mother) that Christ is become a partaker of the flesh and blood of the children; that he is a fruit of the loins of David after the flesh; made of the seed of David according to the flesh; a fruit of the womb of the Virgin Mary, made of a woman, a branch of David; a shoot of the root of Jesse; sprung from the tribe of Judah; descended from the Jews according to the flesh; of the seed of Abraham, since he took on him the seed of Abraham, and became like unto his brethren in all things, sin excepted, so that in truth he is our Immanuel, that is to say, God with us. [27]

The Particular Baptists understood that the biblical gospel was at stake. According to McBeth the General Baptists were left with no gospel to preach. And this in great measure because of the attacks on the doctrine of the person of Christ, and especially of His humanity among them. Well, the Particular Baptists wanted to retain and proclaim the true gospel of Jesus Christ. And this they did by confessing clearly the true humanity of Christ.

About the Author

Eduardo Flores is a surgeon by profession. Since 2011, he has been a member of the Pastors’ Council of the Los Lagos Reformed Baptist Church in Costa Rica, where he collaborates in the ministry of preaching and teaching the Word of God, as well as other pastoral duties. He is currently pursuing a Master of Theology degree at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, USA. He is married to his wife Adriana, with whom he has three children: Diego, Felipe, and Daniela.

[1] To the Judicious and Impartial Reader. 2LBCF (1677/1689)

[2] Steinmetz, David C. The Cambridge to Reformation Theology. Edited by David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 208.

[3] Sell, Allan P.F. Testimony and Tradition: Studies of Reformed and Dissenting Thought. (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2005), 53.

[4] Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. (Massachussetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2008), II.xiii.1

[5] Carver, Alex. “Mathew Caffyn Revisited: Cooperation, Christology, and Controversy in the Life of an Influential Seventeenth-Century Baptist,” Baptist Quarterly 47:2 (2016), 44-64

[6] McBeth, Leon. The Baptist Heritage. Four Centuries of Baptist Witness. (Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1987), 156.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Carver, Alex. Ibid., p. 48

[9] Holmes, Stephen R. Baptist Theology, London: 2012. Kindle. Chap. 4.

[10] Monck, Thomas. A Cure for the Cankering Error of the New Eutychians. (London, 1673). Title page

[11] The Orthodox Creed. To The Judicious and Impartial Reader. 1679

[12] The Orthodox Creed (1679).

[13] Beale, David. Baptist History in England and America. Personalities, Positions, and Practices. Florida: 2018. Kindle. chap. 4.

[14] McBeth. Ibid. p. 157.

[15] McBeth. Ibid. p. 158.

[16] Dr. James Renihan used this term in his Symbolics class, 2015.

[17] Wellum, Stephen J. God the Son Incarnate. The Doctrine of Christ. (Illinois: Crossway, 2016), 238.

[18] Ames, William. The Marrow of Theology. XXI.4.

[19] Cole, Graham A. He Who Gives Life. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. (Illinois: Crossway, 2007), 155.

[20] Macleod, Donald. The Person of Christ. Contours of Christian Theology. (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 42.

[21] Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. (Michigan: Libros Desafío, 2009), 398.

[22] Wellum, Stephen J. Ibid. 239, n. 86.

[23] Calvin, John. Ibid

[24] Berkouwer, G. C. The Work of Christ. Translated by Cornelius Lambregste. (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965), 28.

[25] Berkouwer, G.C. The Person of Christ. Translated by John Vriend. (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1954), 223.

[26] Wellum, Stephen J. Ibid. 232, n. 61

[27] Belgic Confession (1561). Article XVIII.