ABSTRACT
There is unavoidable artificiality in attempting to treat doctrine, polity and liberty seriatim, for Baptist polity has been determined by the Baptist doctrine of the Church, doctrine which has required liberty for its articulation and expression, and implies a theory of church-state relations. In fact, the organs of polity, Church Meeting, Association, have stated those doctrines believed and required to be believed. With the passage of time the General Baptists, apart from evangelical Arminians who joined Dan Taylor's New Connexion of 177039, inclined more and more to Unitarianism, so that by the year 1846 Beard could note twenty-four Unitarian Baptist churches among the 'Anti-Trinitarian Congregations and Ministers in England, Scotland', and Wales. Under challenge from the Quakers, the Baptists wished to demonstrate that their doctrine was Calvinistic and not out of accord with that of the framers of the London Confession of 1644, as well as to dissuade those who forsook sound doctrine 'under glorious notions of spiritualness and holiness'.
