The Old General Baptists 1811-1915

Abstract

"W. T. Whitley concluded his magisterial edition of the minutes of the General Assembly of General Baptists in the year 1811, for the very good reason that that was the date when the second minute book of the Assembly was completed, and a third begun. No doubt Whitley argued that by this time the Old General Baptist cause was completely Unitarian and of no further interest to the Baptist historian. Their vagaries and antics afterwards elicited his scorn: they were one of the byepaths (or deadends) of Baptist history, of which he strongly disapproved. The year 1811 however, is without significance; a number of more satisfactory, alternative dates could be suggested which mark a really significant movement to Unitarianism on the part of the Old General Baptist body: the death of Gilbert Boyes, who hafl striven to keep the Old and New Connexions together, in 1800; the admission of William Vidler and his church to the· old body in 1801 or of Richard Wright and his church at Wisbeach in 1805; the formal withdrawal of Dan Taylor from the Assembly in 1803, or of John Deacon in 1806; the resolution of the New Connexion ministers in 1813, condemning "the baneful poison of Socinianism" and denying .their pulpits to the advocates of "that destructive system"2; the report of a special commission received by the Assembly of 1815 which declared roundly that "Unitarianism with the exception of baptism may surely be called the cause of the General Baptists"