Particular Baptists
Baptist · 1633–1644 · London; England and Wales
Calvinistic Separatists of London who concluded, congregation by congregation, that baptism belongs to believers and then that immersion is its scriptural mode; their 1644 confession protested they were 'commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists,' and the 1677/1689 Second London Confession aligned them with the Westminster family — Reformed Protestants by their own account.
Particular Baptists was formed between 1633 and 1644, as a process rather than a single event. Particular Baptists is a segment of the spine, a drawing convenience rather than a body that ended. Particular Baptists's institutional line runs back through Congregationalists, Church of England, Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.
Between the post-apostolic church and Particular Baptists stand 4 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- Between 1633 and 1644, as a process rather than a single event
- Family
- Baptist
- Region
- London; England and Wales
- Key figures
- John Spilsbury, William Kiffin, Richard Blunt, Henry Jessey
- Cause tags
- Doctrine
- Also known as
- Calvinistic Baptists; Strict Baptists (later usage)
What it separated from
- Separated from Congregationalists. The sources themselves call these origins 'a snarled fishing line in the dark' — the process range is deliberate.
Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: Triennial Convention.
On the tree
Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2.
Claimed lineage
What this tradition says about its own origin · remnant chain
An unbroken succession of true baptistic churches from the apostles, through groups such as the Cathari, Waldensians, and Anabaptists, to the Baptists (Landmarkism; 'The Trail of Blood').
Its own sources: G. H. Orchard, A Concise History of the Baptists (1838); J. R. Graves, Cotton Grove Resolutions (1851); Old Landmarkism (1880); J. M. Pendleton, An Old Landmark Re-Set (1854); J. M. Carroll, The Trail of Blood (1931).
The documented record: Scholarly consensus: 17th-century English Separatist origins; the 1644 First London Confession itself protested the churches were 'falsely called Anabaptists'; standard refutation J. E. McGoldrick, Baptist Successionism (1994).
In the explorer's claimed view this renders as a dashed line.
Scriptures
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.