A note concerning the text, editions, and authorship of the 1660 Standard Confession of the General Baptists

Abstract

The, hitherto anonymous, Confession prepared by a General Baptist assembly in London in 1660 became the ‘Standard Confession’ of the denomination following its adoption at the General Assembly of 1663; re-issued by Thomas Grantham in 1678, and re-affirmed repeatedly by the General Assembly through the 1690s, it is unquestionably the most significant symbolic document of the English General Baptists. I argue on the basis of textual evidence that the standard editorial history is wrong: there were two editions in 1660, but no new edition in 1663. I further argue that there is good reason to assume that the authors of the Confession were Matthew Caffyn, Joseph Wright, and John Parsons, senior.