Innocency Vindicated

Abstract

"After the Revolution of 1688, the Baptists were often accused of having betrayed the cause of civil liberty in order to secure toleration. It was said that their leaders had exalted James II's dispensing power in language as adulatory as any used by the High Church party, and that some of them had accepted royal nomination to municipal office in defiance of statute in order to despoil the Anglicans. The General Baptists, most of whom lived quietly in remote villages and farmhouses, and abstained from civil contentions, were scarcely concerned in this controversy; but the first General Assembly of the Particular Baptists in 1689 deemed it necessary to reply to these charges in a declaration entitled Innocency Vindicated; or, Reproach wip'd off, a single folio sheet printed by J. Darby, of which the only accessible copy appears to be that in the Bodleian Library. This defence was also incorporated in the Narrative of the Assembly, subsequently published; it was reproduced almost in extenso by Crosby, and extracts were given by Ivimeyl! and Goadby.3 It appears advisable, however, to reprint the original text, to list and identify the signatories, and to consider to what extent they represented the denomination, and whether their view of the events of 1686-8 can be accepted."