Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

Many of the early English Baptists also rejected the dominant Calvinist beliefs of the Separatists, including predestination and limited atonement (the idea that Christ died only for those predestined for salvation), in favor of the theology of a general atonement (the idea that Christ died for everyone). They probably picked up this new doctrine from Continental Anabaptists.9 The “General” Baptists, as they came to be called, believed that all people could be saved, in contrast to the “Particular” Baptists, who believed that only the chosen elect of God could be saved. The first English Baptist church in Holland was founded by Separatist pastor John Smyth. Educated at Cambridge, in 1600 Smyth began serving as a priest of the Church of England in Lincoln, in northeast England. Even though local officials knew of his Puritan leanings when they hired him, Smyth’s preaching earned him powerful enemies. Two years later Smyth was removed from his pastorate for “undue teaching of matters of religion,” and for attacks on elite residents of the town. Smyth became a minister of a Separatist congregation in nearby Gainsborough.