The Regular Baptists in the Middle States originated from Wales; and in several instances, churches already organized came over as colonists. They settled mostly in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and a corner of Delaware and Maryland, towards the close of the seventeenth, and during the eighteenth centuries, previous to the American revolution. At a later period, the descendants of these early colonists removed south, and formed the nucleus of churches in Virginia, and even in North and South Carolina. The doctrines they taught, as they interpreted the Scriptures, may be found in a little book commonly called the “Philadelphia Confession of Faith,” because it was revised, adopted and published by the Philadelphia Baptist Association in 1742.[32]
All true Baptists take the word of God, the inspired writings, as their _sole rule_ of faith and practice. There were some diversities among the Regular Baptists about certain doctrinal principles, as there were also among the Separates. These diversities in some localities prevented for a time cordial union, correspondence and coöperation, chiefly because they misunderstood each other in their modes of explanation. The differences in all the parties consisted in the way each party reasoned on abstruse points. Each put that construction on the language employed by the other that accorded with the peculiar technical meaning he attached to the same words.
The “Separate Baptists” originated in Virginia and the Carolinas from two leading ministers who, with their adherents, came from New England about 1754. The leaders were Shubael Stearns and Daniel Marshall. These men were Congregationalists, and belonged to a party that _separated_ from the old Puritan Congregationalists of New England; being less Calvinistic in doctrine, and believing that such men as had grace, gifts, and a “call of God” to the ministry, ought to preach the Gospel if they had no collegiate education. This party were at first Pædobaptists; that is, they believed and practiced infant baptism on the faith and the covenant relation of the parents; but gradually they gave up this practice, and in the end most of the ministers and members of this party joined the Baptist churches.