Thomas Helwys’s (1550-1616) “A Declaration of Faith” is the earliest English Baptist confession. Published in Amsterdam in 1611, that claim is defensible, but reflects a complicated and controversial time in English Baptist origins. The church Helwys led parted ways with their founder, John Smyth, over doctrinal conflict and also faced scrutiny from other congregations as to their orthodoxy. This context of controversy produced the clearest statement of Baptist doctrine to date and served as this the mission statement for the congregation’s return to England, despite certain persecution upon arrival.
While the events that produced “A Declaration of Faith” are well-documented, they are in need of reexamination due to the recent availability of the extant text in digital form. Housed in the York Minister Library, the original manuscript has been examined by few scholars. As such, the scholarship to date relies on the early 20th century work of Walter Burgess (1911). As Burgess did not reproduce “A Declaration of Faith” in full, the examination of the original York Minister copy, available just in 2019 through the Early English Books Online database, reveals a significant addendum that sheds new light on the context and content of the first English Baptist confession.
This paper will revisit the historical context that led to the publication of “A Declaration of Faith” by consulting primary source correspondence and other confessional statements. Against that setting, the paper will then interact with and organize the theological content, especially seen in the addendum material not previously published or engaged.
In total, this paper aims to argue that Thomas Helwys played a far more stabilizing role in the preservation of early English Baptist development and that the controversies of his day allowed him to both define and defend early English Baptist doctrine to a degree not before examined.