In this installment, we focus on the major Baptist figure present at the debate, William Kiffin (1616–1701). He is worthy of attention, first because he was a central figure in the debate between Featley and the Baptists, but also because he was, as a nineteenth-century Baptist historian wrote, “FATHER OF THE PARTICULAR BAPTISTS. He played a “significant role” in the drafting of the London Confession of Faith (1644) and was the second signatory to the Second London Baptist Confession (1677) in 1689. A nineteenth-century historian called Kiffin an “extraordinary” person in the Particular Baptist tradition. One anonymous writer called him the “ordained Mufti of all heretics and sectaries. Continue reading →

In this series I intend to consider what was perhaps the earliest Reformed response to the Particular Baptist movement, a treatise by the Anglican theologian and Westminster Divine, Daniel Featley (1582–1645), which recounts a disputation (think of a debate) between Featley, an . . . Continue reading →