By the beginning of the twentieth century, only four known copies of the book survived. Now, thanks to the careful work of Richard Groves, Helwys's "The Mystery of Iniquity" is available in a reader-friendly edition. Groves's introduction sets the document in context, not only as an important and influential historical event but as shedding yet more light on whence we have come.

This title offers a comprehensive analysis of Baptist theology. Embracing in one common trajectory the major Baptist confessions of faith, the major Baptist theologians, and the principal Baptist theological movements and controversies, this book spans four centuries of Baptist doctrinal history. Acknowledging first the pre-1609 roots (patristic, medieval, and Reformational) of Baptist theology, it examines the Arminian versus Calvinist issues that were first expressed by the General Baptists and the Particular Baptists; that dominated English and American Baptist theology during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from Helwys and Smyth and from Bunyan and Kiffin to Gill, Fuller, Backus, and Boyce; and, that were quickened by the 'awakenings' and the missionary movement. Concurrently there were the Baptist defense of the Baptist distinctives vis-a-vis the pedobaptist world and the unfolding of a strong Baptist confessional tradition. Then during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the liberal versus evangelical issues became dominant with Hovey, Strong, Rauschenbusch, and Henry in the North and Mullins, Conner, Hobbs, and Criswell in the South even as a distinctive Baptist Landmarkism developed, the discipline of biblical theology was practiced and a structured ecumenism was pursued. Missiology both impacted Baptist theology and took it to all the continents, where it became increasingly indigenous. Conscious that Baptists belong to the free churches and to the believers' churches, a new generation of Baptist theologians at the advent of the twenty-first century appears somewhat more Calvinist than Arminian and decidedly more evangelical than liberal.

This book traces the story of the English Calvinistic Baptists from the death of John Gill in 1771 to that of Charles Haddon Spurgeon in 1892. It deals not only with the well-known digures in this community's history'theological giants like John Gill, Andrew Fuller, Wiliam Gadsby, and Charles Spurgeon'but also with lesser-known lights, men like the hymn writer Benjamin Beddome, the eccentric John Collett Ryland, Abraham Booth, and John Stevens. 'Wide and deep reading in the writings of these men has given Dr. Robert Oliver an excellent grasp of thier various theological perspectives...a...masterfull book." (Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin)

The Baptist Heritage: Four Century of Baptist Witness H. Leon McBeth's 'The Baptist heritage' is a definitive, fresh interpretation of Baptist history. Based on primary source research, the book combines the best features of chronological and topical history to bring alive the story of Baptists around the world.