med practice.
Baptist beliefs soon spread far beyond Holland and it was not long before Baptists became a significant presence in England so that the first English Baptist church was founded by Thomas Helwys in 1612. We must note two important milestones in the development of Baptist doctrine.
In the early 1630’s there arose a division between the Particular Baptists and the General Baptists. Particular Baptists arose one generation after the General Baptists, out of an Independent congregation in London (sometimes called the JLJ Church after the initials of three of its early pastors, Jacob, Lathrop, and Jessey) that had been influenced by Calvinistic theology. Some of the members began to feel that they were conforming too much to the church of England; they began to think deeply about baptism and apparently became baptistic around 1633. The result was the formation of a new church that was reformed in its soteriology but baptistic in its practice, though at this time Baptists practiced sprinkling rather than immersion. They were known as Particular Baptists because they held to the doctrine of Particular Redemption. The second milestone came just 5 years later. In 1638 John Spilsbury, a London Baptist, would solidify the doctrine of baptism by immersion as a permanent fixture in Baptist theology. So now, by 1638, there was a generation of Christians we would recognize today as Reformed Baptists.
Life was not easy for the Separatists. Until the passing of the Act of Toleration in 1689 it was illegal to be outside of the Church of England, so many Baptist churches met in remote locations such as that distant, wooded hillside that overlooks Axe Valley.
Some of the earliest history of Loughwood Meeting House has been lost to the mists of time, but historians are certain that a Baptist congregation began to meet in this spot as early as 1653, as this is the date the first church book commences. The building was erected in the late 1600’s or perhaps the very early 1700’s on land donated by Protestant Huguenots who had fled Roman Catholic persecution in France.
The surviving records provide an interesting glimpse at church life. Here is how the church would worship on the Lord’s Day:
The first day’s [i.e. Sunday’s] meetings be begun (as near as may be) aboute seaven in the morninge, and soe continue for the summer season. And the tyme employed as followeth. Vizt.
- In the tryall of gifts till 9 of the clocke. And that those 2 howers be improved by way of prayer.
- From 9 in the morninge till well towards 12 in a publique exercise.
- From one till 3 of the clocke in publique exercise.
- That after the dismission of those that are nott members the church spend one hower or 2 in communicatinge their experiences; inquiring after persons absent; trying the things heard and dutys neglected.
2. That the next first day seavennight the church breake bread.
If you were to visit the building today, you would see the church as it was renovated in the 1700’s. It is plain and unadorned. Box pews line the two sides of a central aisle, a plain pulpit rises high off the floor, and a baptismal pool waits beneath the pulpit. A small, rough table holds a couple of old and worn collection plates. The building is notable only for its simplicity and its historical significance. And yet it represents the very beginning of a movement that would expand rapidly and become a key part of the Protestant church.