Puritans, Anglicans, Separatists and Baptists

In 1644 seven London Particular Baptist churches signed the first London Baptist Confession of Faith, adapting and adding to the earlier 1596 Separatist Confession. The way Elizabeth I wanted to control the Anglican church involved a compromise. Some Puritans like Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, and later on William Perkins, tried to change the church from within. Others were convinced that in one way or another the Anglican church was too defiled to be a true church and therefore they saw no option except to leave and form new ‘gathered churches’ outside the parish system. It is out of Separatism and one particular Independent church founded by Henry Jacob in 1616 that the English Particular Baptists emerged, among them William Kiffin and Hansard Knollys.