Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 2007

urch membership) from being a seal of God’s grace, which in itself is a rather passive concept, to being a more active declaration of entering into a covenant that had already been received. 4 1 Quoted in Roger Hayden, English Baptist History and Heritage, sec. ed. (Didcot: Baptist Union of Great Britain, 2005), p. 19. 2 Quoted by N.G. Wright, Free Church, Free State: The Positive Baptist Vision (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005), p. 56, emphasis added. 3 Ibid., p. 56. 4 See Hayden, English Baptist History and Heritage, p. 23. See also, p. 21. An understanding of covenanted church 7 The church as a covenant community, sharing God’s covenant love in Christ, understood itself to be accountable to the God of the covenant, and (as a natural corollary to this accountability) to each other in covenant relationship. According to Hayden, before adopting a General Baptist position, John Smyth’s understanding of the church was dominated by the covenant idea, defining it as ‘a visible community of saints’, that is, as ‘two or more joined together by covenant with God and themselves’. Consequently, Christians had what Smyth termed a ‘duty of love’ to each other as believers. 5 Indebted to the early Separatist, Francis Johnson, Smyth reduced the idea of the church to three primary, defining characteristics. Two of the characteristics that defined the church were that members were to be converted people (that is, in Smyth’s language, ‘saints only’), and that they shared ‘communion in all holy things and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the maintaining of that communion’. But, significantly, for the present study, the third characteristic was that ‘the true form’ of church was ‘the uniting of [members] together in the covenant’. 6 The London Confession (1644) appears to hold to the same covenant idea with a similar emphasis on mutuality and support. For example, it describes the church as: a company of visible Saints called and separated from the world ... joyned to the Lord, and each other, by mutuall agreement ... being fitly compact and knit together, according to the effectuall working of every part, to the edification of itselfe in love. 7 Similarly, the important Second London Confession speaks of the Lord calling out from the world those who join the church as members. It makes the causal statement that this is done, not only for worship, but also that they may ‘walk in obedience’, and ‘walk together ... for their mutual edification’. It says that they ‘willingly consent to walk together according to the appointment of Christ, giving up themselves, to the Lord and to one another by the will of God’. 8 Again, the emphasis is upon intentionality, the ecclesial centrality of Christ and a mutual sharing in fellowship created by covenant commitment. 5 Ibid., p. 21. 6 Hayden, English Baptist History and Heritage, p. 20. 1 The London Confession (1644), pp. XXXIII, XXXV. 8 The Second London Con