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3. All the same this is not an easy book, not even for the specialist audience to whom it is directed.
Wright assumes a great deal of prior knowledge and does not always write concisely or clearly.
Hence the explanations he offers of some tricky theological disputes and problematic sources
(notably transcripts of manuscripts made in 1711–12 by Benjamin Stinton) tend unfortunately to be
convoluted and, one suspects, confusing for those unfamiliar with the intricacies of the subject.
This may also explain why in organising his material he has chosen to include five appendices, the
most useful of which discusses Baptist groups in early 1645. These caveats aside, Wright’s study is a
significant contribution to several key debates in early Baptist historiography. Like older yet still
valuable studies such as Murray Tolmie’s The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of
London, 1616–1649 (Cambridge, 1977) and B.R. White’s The English Baptists of the 17th Century
(Didcot, 1996), one hopes that beyond the confines of this unfashionable corner of Protestant
nonconformist studies Wright’s arguments reach the far wider audience that they deserve—
particularly among scholars of English religious and political radicalism.
Notes
1
Stephen Wright received his Ph.D. from the University of London. He has been visiting lecturer at
the University of Hertfordshire and the University of North London.
2
Irvin Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieuwkoop: B.
de Graaf, 1972).
http://www.fupress.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/13675/12740