Radical
Baptist
The one large body that reached the Anabaptist conclusion on baptism from inside the English Reformed tradition rather than from the continental radical one.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
The Second London Confession of 1689 is the best short account of what this separation was about, because it is Westminster kept almost intact. The doctrine of God, the decree, justification — retained, in many places clause for clause. The chapters on the church and on baptism are rewritten. A reader can therefore see the disagreement isolated, which is rare on this chart and worth having.
On the questions this section asks it is a cessationist body with a congregational polity, which is the combination that leaves the least room for the practice: no office to license it and no expectation that the gifts continue for it to draw on.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Separated from
Congregationalist · 1609Baptism. A separatist congregation in exile concluded that the baptism of infants is no baptism, and rebaptised itself.
The same questions asked of every body
What it holds
Are the gifts still given?
Described from a text the corpus holdsCeased, following the confession it kept.
The 1689 confession retains Westminster's first chapter, including the clause about the former ways of revealing being ceased, in a body that changed the chapters it disagreed with and left this one standing.
The Second London Baptist Confession · 1677; published 1689
Who may act?
Not established here. The first thing a rite settles, usually in its opening rubric, and the sharpest divide between an office and a gift.
What counts as evidence?
Not established here. Where a tradition decides it is dealing with a spirit rather than an illness, a grief, or nothing at all.
Where is the spirit?
Not established here. All four inherit gospel scenes in which spirits are in people. What each adds beyond that is the largest difference between them.
Whom do the words address?
Not established here. A formal difference a reader can check by counting clauses rather than by weighing tone.
What restraint is written in?
Not established here. Every one of these traditions knows the practice can harm. What each does about that is what popular accounts leave out.
What closes the matter?
Not established here. Whether the encounter ends, and who declares it, separates a rite from an ongoing practice.
This page records what a body holds and where that is written down. It takes no position on whether any of it is true, and nothing here is instruction — the rites are described by what they contain, never as something to follow.