The writings of David Crosley and Baptist identity in the eighteenth century

Abstract

This article examines the writings of David Crosley, an itinerant preacher in Yorkshire and Lancashire until called to the the Cripplegate congregation in London, Crosley is often considered, with his cousin William Mitchell, to have been the principal disseminator of Baptist principles in northern England in the post-Toleration years. His excommunication from Cripplegate on charges of excessive drinking, adultery and lying ensured that his name remained tainted with suspicions of Antinomianism. This article attempts to reassess Crosley by taking into account his printed work as well as his manuscript correspondence and tracts, arguing that Crosley was not only an orthodox Calvinist concerned with Church order but also a reluctant controversialist seeking to promote dissenting interest, godliness and discipline away from the sectarian partisanship that tore apart the early eighteenth-century Churches.