The English Separatists and John Smith Revisted

Abstract

"That said, I must confess it took something of an effort to return yet again to the arguments and conclusions which I had published thirteen years ago and to an area which I have since retrodden with some extremely able research students, including Or Stephen Brachlow. On the face of it, some of the continuing debates seem somewhat sterile. Among them is that about the debt of the English Separatists or the English Baptists to the Elizabethan Puritans and to the continental Anabaptists. Yet on this issue, in his article 'Puritan Theology and General Baptist Origins', Or Brachlow does make some new points of real value. It seems very likely, as he suggests, tha t the Separatists may have drawn their 'mutualist' or 'conditional' covenant theology from their Puritan predecessors after all. "