The Savoy Declaration and the London Confession compared with Westminster

The Westminster Confession of Faith had two English daughters within the same seventeenth century. The first is the Savoy Declaration (1658), of the Congregationalists; the second, the London Confession (1677, adopted in 1689), of the Particular Baptists. Neither of the two is a new confession: both take the text of Westminster and keep it almost entire, changing it only where their authors dissented. That is why they can be compared paragraph by paragraph, and why the comparison is so instructive: what changes is exactly what separated them.

The Savoy Declaration. In October 1658, representatives of more than a hundred independent churches of England met at the Savoy Hospital, in London. A committee of six divines, headed by Thomas Goodwin, who had been a member of the Westminster Assembly, and by John Owen, prepared in a few days a declaration in three parts: a preface, a confession of faith, which is that of Westminster revised, and a platform of church government in thirty articles. The preface gives notice of something that is commonly overlooked: the text they had before them was not the one which the Assembly delivered and Scotland approved, which is that of this site, but the one which the Parliament of England sanctioned in 1648, already without the chapters on censures and on synods, without paragraph IV of chapter XX and without a good part of the chapter on marriage. Several of the deletions of Savoy are not, then, its own: it inherited them from Parliament, and made them its own.

The London Confession. It was published in London in 1677, without names, in a time of persecution, and it was adopted in September 1689, the Act of Toleration being now in force, by the representatives of more than a hundred Baptist churches. It does not start from the text of Westminster, but from that of Savoy, and it says so: its authors explain in the preface that they wished to use "the very same words" as the two earlier confessions in everything in which they were agreed. This fact governs the whole comparison. Many of the differences between London and Westminster are not Baptist, but Congregationalist: Savoy made them, and London inherited them.

In the table that follows, each chapter of Westminster has beside it what Savoy did with it and what London did. "Same" means that the text is kept with no more difference than the spelling or some single word.

Chapter of Westminster	Savoy (1658)	London (1677/1689)
I. Of the Holy Scripture	Retouches paragraph X (the supreme judge)	Follows Savoy; adds an opening sentence on the sufficiency of Scripture
II. Of God, and of the Holy Trinity	Adds a sentence to paragraph III	Enlarges paragraphs I and III
III. Of God’s Eternal Decree	Same	Softens paragraph III; retouches V; deletes VII
IV. Of Creation	Same	Retouchings
V. Of Providence	Retouches paragraph IV	Retouchings
VI. Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof	Brings the covenant of works into paragraph I; enlarges III	Rewrites paragraph I; enlarges III; deletes VI
VII. Of God’s Covenant with Man	Merges paragraphs V and VI into a shorter one	Deletes paragraphs II and IV; rewrites III and the end
VIII. Of Christ the Mediator	Retouchings	Adds two paragraphs on the offices of Christ
IX. Of Free Will	Same	Same
X. Of Effectual Calling	Retouches paragraph IV	Enlarges II; retouches IV
XI. Of Justification	Specifies the active and passive obedience of Christ	Follows Savoy
XII. Of Adoption	Same	Same
XIII. Of Sanctification	Retouches paragraph I	Enlarges III
XIV. Of Saving Faith	Enlarges paragraph III	Follows Savoy; enlarges II
XV. Of Repentance unto Life	Rewrites the whole chapter	Follows Savoy
XVI. Of Good Works	Same	Same
XVII. Of the Perseverance of the Saints	Retouchings	Enlarges paragraph I
XVIII. Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation	Rewrites paragraph II	Retouches it again
XIX. Of the Law of God	Retouches paragraphs I to IV	Follows Savoy; removes from I "as a covenant of works"
(no equivalent)	Adds chapter XX, "Of the Gospel"	Keeps it
XX. Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience	Deletes paragraph IV	Follows Savoy
XXI. Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day	Rearranges paragraph V	Retouches paragraph V
XXII. Of Lawful Oaths and Vows	Merges the paragraphs on vows	Shortens III and IV; deletes "it is a sin to refuse an oath"
XXIII. Of the Civil Magistrate	Rewrites paragraph III	Deletes paragraph III; rewrites IV
XXIV. Of Marriage and Divorce	Deletes the end of paragraph IV and paragraphs V and VI	Follows Savoy
XXV. Of the Church	Rewrites paragraph II; deletes III and IV; adds one on the latter days. Separately, the platform of government	Rewrites the chapter with the Savoy platform abridged (fifteen paragraphs)
XXVI. Of the Communion of Saints	Deletes paragraph III	Recovers from it the clause on property
XXVII. Of the Sacraments	Retouches paragraph I	Replaces the chapter with two short paragraphs
XXVIII. Of Baptism	Retouches paragraph I; adds three words to IV	Rewrites the chapter: professors only, by immersion
XXIX. Of the Lord’s Supper	Retouchings	Retouchings
XXX. Of Church Censures	Deleted	Deleted
XXXI. Of Synods and Councils	Deleted	Deleted
XXXII. Of the State of Men after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead	Same	Same
XXXIII. Of the Last Judgment	Same	Same

The table says three things. The first, that the agreement is very great: in the doctrine of God, of Christ and of salvation, the three confessions say the same thing, and almost in the same words. The second, that the substantial differences are concentrated in one stretch: from chapter XX to chapter XXXI, that is, in the magistrate, the church and the sacraments. The third, that the greater part of those differences were introduced by Savoy; what is proper to London is the covenant, baptism, and little more.

The articles of this section go through those differences one by one, with the three texts in view. The last two deal with what the table cannot show: the relation of the English Baptists to the Anabaptists, and the principle that lies behind almost all the differences, the independent church.

What is written here is written from the standpoint of Westminster, and this is not concealed. But the difference from the section on the revisions is great, and it is well to state it: there the question was how the Confession came to be accommodated to the spirit of each age; here, it is of brethren of the same century and of the same faith, who read the same Scripture and came at some points to another conclusion. There is nevertheless a thread which joins the two sections: almost everything that the American Presbyterians removed from the Confession in 1788 had already been removed by the English Parliament in 1648, and was held to be well removed by the Independents in 1658 and by the Baptists in 1677.

Sources. The text of Westminster is that of this site. Those of Savoy and London have been collated in the tabular comparison of the three confessions by James N. Anderson, and are quoted in their original English. The preface of Savoy is quoted from its full text. The assessments are our own.