The Portsmouth Disputation of 1699

Abstract

"The continuing baptismal controversy reminds us that Baptists ! have been so engaged, now vigorously, now fitfully, for over three centuries. Not always has it been conducted as it is today, however, and although there is, doubtless, room for further improvement, we can be thankful that the acrimony is gone that characterised the public debates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Of all these disputations, perhaps the best documented, at least on the Baptist side, is that held at Portsmouth in 1699. It has ,also the distinction of being the last held under Royal Licence,l although other unlicensed debates were subsequently held."