confession

First London Baptist Confession of Faith (second edition)

1LCF · 1646 · 52 chapters, 52 paragraphs

API: GET /api/v1/documents/flcf1646

By

The seven Particular Baptist churches in London

Dates

first published 1646

Tradition

baptist, reformed

Also called

First London Confession (1646); 1646 Confession; A Confession of Faith of seven Congregations or Churches of Christ in London

Related

Revises First London Baptist Confession of Faith (1644)

Follows

A Confession of Faith Of seven Congregations or Churches of Christ in London, which are commonly (but unjustly) called Anabaptists, the second impression, corrected and enlarged, 1646 (London); Wing C5780, ESTC R200559 · the scan (PDF) , from Google Books

Transcribed

From EEBO-TCP A80328Checked against a copy at archive.org: the proofs, where A80328 is illegible or a reference doesn’t exist, by Claude, for cco3, 2026-10-28Checked against EEBO-TCP A80329: the proofs, where A80328 is illegible or a reference doesn’t exist, by Claude, for cco3, 2026-10-28Checked against the scan: all, word by word, every proof against the margin, and where each letter stands; the epistles, the conclusion and the subscribers for wording, by Claude, for cco3, 2026-10-28Checked against a copy at archive.org: Benjamin Cox’s appendix (`prose/cox-appendix`), from eebo-tcp:A80728, word by word, by Claude, for cco3, 2026-10-29

License

Public domain

Notes

The 1644 confession revised, “corrected and enlarged”, in 52 articles, with an epistle to Parliament (prose/dedication), one to the reader (prose/preface) and a conclusion (prose/the-conclusion), and subscribed for the seven churches and a French congregation, Hanserd Knollys and Benjamin Cox now among them. Printed by Matthew Simmons and sold by John Hancock (Thomason’s copy, E.319[13]). It adds articles on providence (5), on the magistracy and oaths (50) and on the resurrection (52); the 1644’s article on the King and Parliament (49) is now a note on article 48, and its last (53) is the conclusion. Each article relates to the 1644’s it revises. Imported from EEBO-TCP A80328 by scripts/import-tcp.mjs, its gaps first filled from the 1644 and the third impression (London, 1652, Wing C5787a), and then proofread against the scan, word by word: most of the TCP’s gaps and doubtful references read plainly there, and where the printing sets no letter in the text (articles 8, 17, 23, 26, 32, 38, 40, 42, 43, 45 and 52) the segments are joined. The references corrected are the printing’s own misprints (a verse that doesn’t exist) or the TCP’s misreadings of it; each is in the commits that made them. The printing has no page numbers: page is its signature (the confession runs B1r–C4v). The scan is Google’s, of the University of California, Berkeley’s copy (BX4933 .G7 A3 1646a; its loan slip and barcode are in the scan), of the same setting as Thomason’s (its title page, and A2r ending “to the Magistrate, who”, as A80328 has them); Google Books asks for a CAPTCHA before it gives the PDF. prose/cox-appendix is not this printing’s but a pamphlet of its own, published to go with it: An Appendix, to a Confession of Faith, or A more full Declaration of the Faith and Judgement of Baptized Beleevers, by Benjamin Cox, one of the subscribers (London, 1646; Wing C6713, Thomason E.364[1], dated by Thomason 30 November), which explains “A Confession of faith of seven Congregations … in 52 Articles”, this one, in twenty-two articles more. It is EEBO-TCP A80728, read word by word against EEBO’s film of Thomason’s copy on archive.org (its title page is left out); the TCP’s gaps are filled from the film (“Christ”, “to”, “unbeliefe”, “faith”, “baptized disciples”, “admitted”, “1 Tim. 6.1.”) and its misreadings corrected (“a seale” for “a feale”, “Acts 2.41.42.” for “2.4.42.”, “nor communicate” for “no”, “fellowship” for “followship”, “Rom. 13.8, 9, 10.” for “9.10.”), and the printing’s “eleerly” is “cleerly”, its “1 Cor. 4.40.” (the 1 broken) 14.40, and its “hu bands” “husbands”. SVRBC’s baptistconfession.org printed it, modernized, as the 1689 confession’s appendix; the 1677 printing’s own appendix, on baptism, is lbcf1677’s.

Download

flcf1646.json · 146 kB