In the past couple of years, a great deal of discussion has occurred regarding Baptist political theology. It has often focused on what Baptists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries taught on religious liberty and how Baptists today should approach religious liberty in post-Christian America. Some self-professed Baptists have even advocated for forms of Magisterial Protestantism, which is at odds with Baptist political theology altogether.
My personal interest in Baptist views on religious liberty (or religious toleration as they would often put it) has focused primarily on the seventeenth-century English General Baptists. In previous essays, I have considered the views of General Baptists such as Thomas Helwys and his associate and successor, John Murton, as well as the influence of Murton’s writings on the pivotal figure for religious liberty in the American context, Roger Williams.
One of the things I have tried to note in those essays is the way in which early Baptist arguments for religious liberty are interconnected with Baptist ecclesiology and Baptist covenant theology. That is, Baptists did not just stumble upon religious liberty by happenstance. Nor did they argue for religious liberty solely because they were a persecuted minority in England. And they certainly did not argue for religious liberty because they had imbibed Enlightenment ideals.[1] Early English Baptists, especially Helwys and Murton, argued for religious liberty as the natural conclusion of their ecclesiology (e.g., a believer’s church, regenerate church membership, believer’s baptism, and voluntary association).
This essay will consider some of the principles found in Helwys, Murton, and Williams, focusing especially on how their ideas find their way into the writings of an English Particular (Calvinist) Baptist, Samuel Richardson. Richardson was an important early Particular Baptist and a signer of the First London Confession of Faith (1644/46), the first Particular Baptist confession of faith. That the writings of a General Baptist figure such as Murton were used by a Particular Baptist might not sound surprising. However, some recent scholars have argued for minimal interaction between the two groups (General and Particular Baptists).[2] Others have argued that Helwys’s views on religious liberty had minimal reception in the generations immediately after him. Consequently, the appearance of Murton’s arguments in the writings of Samuel Richardson is significant.
This article will note several examples of Richardson’s use of Murton via Williams in his work The Necessity of Toleration in Religion (1647).
John Murton, Roger Williams, and Samuel Richardson’s Political Theology
Having spent a great deal of time reading English General Baptist writings on ecclesiology and political theology, I was excited to read the Particular Baptist Samuel Richardson’s The Necessity of Toleration in Religion this summer at the recommendation of Michael Haykin. When I began reading the work, I was almost immediately struck by how similar Richardson’s arguments were to those of Helwys, Murton, and Williams, particularly Murton and Williams. I began to think that Richardson had almost certainly read one or more of their writings.[3]
As I read, I marked section after section that sounded almost identical to material I had read in these other men’s writings. Then, as I neared the end of Richardson’s short work, I noticed that he referred to Williams’s The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), which had been published only three years prior to Richardson’s work. In a section where Richardson is questioning whether the ministers of the Church of England in London are “false priests,” he accuses them of being responsible for “the burning of the booke, entituled the Bloudy Tenant, because it was against persecution.”[4] This is, without question, a reference to Roger Williams’s seminal work.
Williams unquestionably read and made use of Murton’s writings on religious liberty in The Bloudy Tenent. Near the beginning of his work, Williams republished sections of Murton’s A Most Humble Supplication (1620/1) and referred to Murton as “a Witness of Jesus Christ, close Prisoner in Newgate, against Persecution in cause of Conscience; and sent some while since to Mr. Cotton.”[5] The “Mr. Cotton” Williams referenced was the American Puritan, John Cotton. Cotton was aware of Murton’s Humble Supplication and had even penned a point-by-point refutation of Murton in a letter. Williams republished Cotton’s letter in its entirety in Bloudy Tenet.
The significance of this point lies in the fact that Richardson, in reading Williams’s Bloudy Tenent, had also read the writings of the English General Baptist Murton, the close associate of and successor to Thomas Helwys.
Richardson’s Use of Murton and Williams
We will now consider three examples of Richardson’s use of Murton via Williams’s Bloudy Tenent. Multiple other examples of Richardson’s use of Murton could be added to the list. In some cases, Richardson uses Murton’s words almost verbatim. In other instances, the language is substantially the same.
First, an interesting line of thought that appears in Murton, Williams, and Richardson is that while the English have the Bible in their own language, they are unable to interpret the Bible in any way that contradicts the teachings of the Church of England. Whereas the Roman Catholics required that one’s beliefs confirm to the church’s teaching, they had not feigned neutrality or given the Bible to people in their own language. The Church of England, however, had given people the Bible in their own language but would not permit them to interpret the Bible for themselves. Consider this line of thought in Murton, Williams, and Richardson.
Murton, comparing the Church of England with Roman Catholicism, asked more than twenty-five years earlier, “will you doe that which is worse letting us reade the Scripture, whereby we may know the will of our heavenly Master, and have our consciences enlightened and convinced; but not suffer us to practice what we learn and know”?[6]
Along the same line, Williams wrote, “In vaine have English Parliaments permitted English Bibles in the poortest English housed, and the simplest man or woman to search the Scriptures, if yet against their soules perswasion from the Scripture, they should be forced (as if they lived in Spaine or Rome it selfe without the sight of a Bible) to believe as the Church believes.”[7]
Richardson asks, “Whether or not it be in vaine for us to have Bibles in English, if contrary to our understanding of them, we must believe as the Church believes, whether it be right or wrong?”[8]
A second example of Richardson’s use of Murton via Williams can be seen in a citation from James I against religious persecution. Of course, the whole thing is a bit ironic since James I was likely responsible for the imprisonment of Helwys and Murton at Newgate. Consider the only minor variations in their citation.
Murton wrote, “It is a sure rule of divinitie that God loves not to plant his church by violence & bloodshed.”[9]
Williams, directly referencing James I, wrote, “He saith, it is a sure Rule in divinity, that God never loves to plant his Church by violence and bloodshed.”[10]
Richardson asked, “Whether ever God did plant his Church by violence and blood-shed?”[11]
A third example is Richardson’s reference to Matthew 13 and Jesus’ teaching regarding the wheat and the tares. The passage was a common one that had been used by some in the Church of England to defend the mixed multitude of believers and unbelievers within a national church. Baptists consistently argued that the text was not speaking of a mixed multitude within the Church but rather a mixed multitude in the world. In this example, Richardson’s use of Murton via Williams is particularly striking.
Murton wrote, explaining why Jesus taught His disciples to bless those who curse them (Mt. 5): “The reason is, because they that are now tares may hereafter become wheat; they who are now blind may hereafter see; they that now resist him may hereafter receive him; they that are now in the Devil’s snare, in adverseness to the truth, may hereafter come to repentance; they that are now blasphemers, persecutors, and oppressors, as Paul was, may in time, become faithful as he; they that are now idolaters, as the Corinths once were, may hereafter become true worshippers as they; they that are now no people of God . . . may hereafter become the people of God.”[12]
Williams, citing Murton almost verbatim, wrote: “And the Reason seems to bee, because they who now are Tares, may hereafter become Wheat; they who are now blinde, may hereafter see; they that now resist him, may hereafter receive him; they that are now in the devils snare, in adversenesse to the Truth, may hereafter come to repentance; they that are now blasphemers and persecutors (as Paul was) may in time become faithfull as he; they that are now idolators as the Corinths once were ( I Cor. 6. 9.) may hereafter become true worshippers as they; they that are now no people of God . . . may hereafter become the people of God.”[13]
Richardson asked: “Whether tares may not become wheat, and the blinde see, and those that now oppose and resist Christ, afterwards receive him: and he that is now in the Divels [sic] snare, may get out, and come to repentance: and such as are idolaters, as the Corinthians were, may become true worshippers, as they that are strangers may become Gods people?”[14]
More examples of Richardson’s use of Murton via Williams could be added to the list. The point here is not that Richardson is plagiarizing Murton or Williams. It is rather that an English Particular Baptist had not only read and utilized Roger Williams’s Bloudy Tenent but that, in doing so, he had also directly drawn from and reproduced the arguments of the English General Baptist, John Murton, from more than twenty-five years prior.
Conclusion
Samuel Richardson’s use of John Murton via Roger Williams undermines claims that Particular Baptists essentially made no use of General Baptist writings as well as arguments that the writings of Murton and Helwys had little influence outside of their circles in the 1610s and 1620s. Murton was influenced by his predecessor and associate Thomas Helwys. Williams drew on the writings of Murton, and even republished some of his work in his famous book The Bloudy Tenent. The English Particular Baptist, Richardson, a signer of the First London Confession, made use of Murton’s work via his reading of Williams.
[1] For more on this, see my essay, “Thomas Helwys, Roger Williams, and Pre-Enlightenment Arguments for Religious Liberty.”
[2] Matthew Bingham, Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
[3] I recently discussed Richardson’s work, and his use of Murton and Williams, on a podcast I co-host with Jake Stone, entitled, “Generally Particular.” You can view that episode here: https://youtu.be/JWmvidF4gW8?si=FItlNUaBPU_hwsY8.
[4] Samuel Richardson, The Necessity of Toleration in Religion (London: 1647), 14.
[5] Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), [30].
[6] John Murton, A Most Humble Supplication (1621), 18.
[7] Williams, Bloudy Tenent, 13.
[8] Richardson, Necessity, 8.
[9] Murton, Objections Answered, [v].
[10] Williams, Bloudy Tenent, 31.
[11] Richardson, Necessity, 7.
[12] Murton, Most Humble Supplication, in Thomas Crosby, History of the English Baptists (London: 1739), Appendix, 2:36–37. Williams apparently worked from this edition of Murton’s work. According to Crosby, the work was published in 1620, and Crosby seems to have reprinted that edition. Presently, I have been able only to locate a 1621 edition, which is substantially the same but differs in wording at points and in overall layout.
[13] Williams, Bloudy Tenent, 30–31.
[14] Richardson, Necessity of Toleration, 7.
September 13, 2023
The problem with the claim that the early Baptists believed in religious liberty as a “natural conclusion of their ecclesiology” is that their ecclesiology is borrowed almost completely, with the sole exception of believer’s baptism, from the Congregationalists. Congregationalists also held to a believer’s church, regenerate church membership, and voluntary association. Since the Congregationalists in New England didn’t believe in religious liberty, there’s no theological reason to believe that Baptists needed to do so.
See: https://theopolisinstitute.com/congregational-theocracy-that-time-theocrats-ran-puritan-new-england%ef%bf%bc/