The Baptist Catechism (1693)
he Baptist Catechism, Commonly Called Keach’s Catechism: Or, a Brief
Instruction in the Principles of the Christian Religion. In 114 questions and
answers it teaches the doctrine of the Second London
Confession, and it became the standard catechism of Particular Baptists in England
and America.
Read the Catechism
The Baptist Catechism (1693) — full text »
All 114 questions and answers with their Scripture proofs, searchable, from the oldest
surviving edition.
Origin
In 1693 the General Assembly of Particular Baptists in London resolved that a catechism be drawn up, and asked “that Brother William Collins be desired to draw it up.” Collins was pastor at Petty France, and the earliest surviving copy, printed in 1695, is already called the fifth edition.1 Why it bears Benjamin Keach’s name is not certain. Bush and Nettles write that Keach “was assigned the task of producing a catechism on this confession,” while McGlothlin calls the name “sometimes erroneously” given. It is widely assumed that the two men worked together.2
Like the Second London Confession, the catechism did not invent new words where old ones served. Tom Ascol notes that “one hundred of the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s 107 questions and answers are copied identically.”3 It departs from Westminster where Baptists differed: on the subjects and mode of baptism, on church membership, and on who may come to the Lord’s table.
Q. 99. Are the infants of such as are professing believers to be baptized? A. The infants of such as are professing believers are not to be baptized, because there is neither command or example in the holy scriptures, or certain consequence from them to baptize such. The Baptist CatechismQuestion 99
In America the Philadelphia Association urged its churches to use it. McGlothlin calls it the “earliest and most widely used” catechism among American Baptists.4
The Smaller Catechisms Before It
The Baptist Catechism had forerunners. Between 1644 and 1689 several Baptist pastors wrote their own catechisms, often for children and often under persecution:
Earlier Baptist Catechisms
A Catechisme for Babes, or Little Ones (1652)
By Henry Jessey, whose London congregation, Crosby records, “became proselited to
the opinion of the Baptists.” It opens, “Who made you? God made
me.”5
The Child’s Instructor; or, a New and Easy Primer (1664)
Benjamin Keach’s primer taught that “believers, or godly men and women
only, who can make confession of their faith and repentance,” should be
baptized. For it Keach stood in the pillory, and the book was burned. No copy is known
to survive; the link gives the account of his trial with extracts.6
The Sufferer’s Catechism (1664) and A Scriptural Catechism
By the Welsh preacher Vavasor Powell, who died in the Fleet prison in 1670 “in the
eleventh year of his imprisonment.” Cramp judged the first “probably written
in jail.” No online text has been located; the link gives Cramp’s account
of Powell.7
Others could be added: Christopher Blackwood’s Soul-Searching Catechism (2nd ed., 1653), John Tombes’s Short Catechism about Baptism (1658), and Hercules Collins’s Orthodox Catechism (1680), a Baptist adaptation of the Heidelberg Catechism. The Baptist Catechism gathered what these had taught into one standard, owned by the churches together.
