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Ping!

Baptist history, starting way back in the first century. Next post will see the Christian churches before they were infected by the Augustinian and Calvinist heresies.

Is this an history of much of the Baptists in America post mid-1700s? It must be because this

Adequate reasons might be assigned for all of this. Baptists have never had a common creed, and it is equally true that they have never recognized any authoritative creed. They desire no such standard. Their attitude toward free speech and liberty of conscience has permitted and encouraged the largest latitude in opinions.

isn't exactly true outside of Fudamental Baptists in America post 1750ish. I submit, for discussion:

The 1644 London Baptist Confession, the 1646 and 1677 revisions, and the final product in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. All were reformation reactions by Baptists to both the Roman Catholic Church and the Westminster Assembly.

One can track Baptists back to Justin Martyr, Iraneaus, et al... where references to the Apostles Creed are made. Since then, the London Assembly, Spurgeon, and many who have identified themselves as reformed Baptists from the time of the Reformation have held to the Apostles and Nicene Creed. Spurgeon on the Creeds:

Every Christian church should know what it believes, and publicly avow what it maintains. It is our duty to make a clear and distinct declaration of our principles, that our members may know to what intent they have come together, and that the world also may know what we mean. Far be it from us to join with the Broad Church cry, and furl the banners upon which our distinctive colors are displaced. We hear on all sides great outcries against creeds. Are these clamours justifiable? It seems to me that when properly analysed most of the protests are not against creeds, but against truth, for every man who believes anything must have a creed, whether he write it down and print it or no; or if there be a man who believes nothing, or anything, or everything by turns, he is not a fit man to be set up as a model. Attacks are often made against creeds because they are a short, handy form by which the Christian mind gives expression to its belief, and those who hate creeds do so because they find them to be weapons as inconvenient, as bayonets in the hands of British soldiers have been to our enemies. They are weapons so destructive to theology that it protests against them. For this reason let us be slow to part with them. Let us take hold of God’s truth with iron grip, and never let it go.
- From, The Church As She Should Be by Charles Spurgeon
No. 984 delivered at the Metropolitan Tabenacle, Newington

For future reference, doesn't "Next post will see the Christian churches before they were infected by the Augustinian and Calvinist heresies." automatically make this thread not ecumenical? I mean, it's your post and your reply. Calling Augustinian and Calvinist teachings heresy is necessarily speaking against them, provoking antagonism, and thus defeating the rules of the Ecumenic thread.

Just saying, I nearly was booted from an ecumenic thread I started for similar wording addressing Marian theology. Had to open the thread instead.

An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Newman

http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/

The book can be purchased at Amazon.

God Bless!