Christopher Blackwood

Christopher Blackwood received a learned education, and was probably trained up at one of our universities. He was beneficed in Kent, and possessed of a parochial charge in that county at the commencement of the civil wars. In the year 1644, Mr. Francis Com well, a zealous baptist, having preached a visitation sermon at Cranbrook in Kent; and having openly declared his sentiments upon the subject of baptism, Mr. Blackwood, who heard the sermon, and took it down in short-hand, became a proselyte to his opinions. Having changed his sentiments about baptism, he did not long continue in the established church. He was equally zealous against national churches, as against infant baptism. Upon his leaving the ecclesiastical establishment, he collected a separate congregation at Staplehurst in Kent; but his sentiments being Caltiiiistic, and contrary to those of the society, he afterwards left it to the pastoral care of Mr. Kiugsnorth. He was a zealous advocate for liberty of conscience, and as much opposed to the establishment of presbyterianism as episcopacy. In the first piece he published, he joined together infant baptism and compulsion of conscience, calling them "The two last and strongest garrisons of antichrist." He was accounted, by one who lived in those times, "among those worthy guides, in all respects well qualified for the ministry, who voluntarily left their benefices in the establishment." In the year 1653 he went into Ireland with the army under the command of General Fleetwood and Lieutenant Ludlow; and preached to a congregation in Dublin.t He lived till after the restoration, and signed the apology of the baptists in 1660, declaring against Venuer's insurrection.}

His Works.—1. The Storming of Antichrist in his two last and strongest Garrisons, Compulsion of Conscience and Infant-baptism, 1644.—2. A brief Catechism concerning Baptism, 1644.—3. Four Treatises. First, the Kxcellency of Christ Second, a Preparation

• Crosby's Baptists, -vol. Hi. p. 99.

y Thorloc's State Papers, vol. iii. p. 90.

J Croiby's Baptists, vol. i. p. 347—3A1.

for Death. Third, our Love to Christ. Fourth, our Love to our Neighbours, 1653.—i. A Treatise concerning Repentance, wherein the Doctrine of Restitution is largely handled, 1653.—5. A Soulsearching Catechism, 1653.—6. An Exposition of the ten first Chapters of Matthew, delivered in Sermons, 1659.—7. Apostolical Baptism; or, a sober Rejoinder to a Treatise of Mr. Blake's.