ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



opinions of Matthew CafEn led to a secession and to the formation of a rival 

 General Association, which retained its existence alongside the General As- 

 sembly. The same train of intellectual movement which carried the Con- 

 gregationalists and the Presbyterians of the Old Dissent into Unitarianism 

 carried the General Baptists and the General Assembly into Unitarianism also. 

 As opposed to this, the General Association was Trinitarian. In the subse- 

 quent decHne of spiritual life the General Assembly atrophied slowly. To- 

 day it is represented only by a remnant of nineteen churches. None of these 

 are in Lancashire, and the General Assembly type of Baptist church seems 

 never to have been represented in the county Palatine at any time. For 

 a part of the eighteenth century the General Association also experienced a 

 decline, though not so fatally marked as in the case of the General Assembly. 

 But in 1770 a revival occurred which took the shape of the formation of a 

 New Connexion (of free-grace Baptists). Several churches in Yorkshire, the 

 Midlands, London, and Kent divided off from the General Association as a 

 protest against its doctrinal decline. In 1771 this New Connexion was divided 

 into two branches, a northern-midland and a southern one. The first meeting 

 of the northern-midland branch was held in 1772 at Loughborough, and it 

 was this branch of the New Connexion which invaded Lancashire. In 1780 

 some Baptists from Worsthorne in Yorkshire (which had itself sprung from 

 the Yorkshire mother church at BirchclifFe) started a church at Burnley, 

 towards the formation of which twenty-two members were dismissed from 

 BirchclifFe. In 1787 a chapel was built in Burnley Lane (now represented 

 by 'Ebenezer' in Colne Road). The second New Connexion Baptist church 

 in Lancashire sprang similarly from a derivative (Shore Church) of Birch- 

 clifFe. The work was started at Lidgate, near Todmorden, in 1795, and 

 there a church was formed in 18 16. There is a reference also to a shortlived 

 General Baptist church at Bacup some time about or before 1793. The church 

 at Stalybridge just over the border belongs to the same train of derivation, for 

 it started from BirchclifFe in 1804, though in a more unauthorized way. 



These churches represent the total of the original New Connexion General 

 Baptist churches in Lancashire. They are now all within the union. The 

 question naturally arises, how a union which sprang from a Particular Baptist 

 basis came to incorporate such General Baptist (New Connexion) churches. 

 The answer furnishes the key to later Baptist history. It is simply that, 

 under the irresistible influence of the spirit of the age, the Particular Baptist 

 churches have in great measure moved away from their eighteenth-century 

 Calvinism. There are comparatively few of them which are now genuinely 

 ' Particular ' in their creed, though there are still some in Lancashire which 

 refuse all intercourse with the rest. The broadening of the dogmatic basis 

 has therefore made it possible to achieve a union which could embrace 

 churches hitherto sharply sundered by dogmatic differences. Whatever their 

 difFerences, practically all the Baptist churches of Lancashire are now withm 

 the Union.*^''^' 



"^ In this section the writer has had the advantage of the assistance of the Rev. Dr. W. T. Whitley, who 

 is engaged on a history of the Baptist churches in the North of England. 



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