Benjamin Keach (1604-1704), Pioneer Baptist
Gerald L. PriestFervent preacher, prolific author (over 54 books), hymn writer, and defender of the faith, Keach was an outstanding early Baptist leader. He was born at Stoke Hammond, North Buckinghamshire, England, and christened as an infant in the parish church. Converted to Christ as a youth, Keach recognized from Scripture the invalidity of infant baptism. He joined the General Baptists at age 15 and began preaching three years later in the little town of Winslow.
With the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, Parliament began passing a series of acts directed against all who refused to conform to the practices of the Anglican Church. Baptists were constantly subjected to imprisonment, fines, beatings, and confiscation of property. It was during this time that the famous John Bunyan was imprisoned in Bedford for refusing to accept a ministerial license. Keach himself was arrested several times for preaching. Once he was almost trampled to death by soldiers’ horses.
In 1664, in the village of Aylsbury (near Winslow), twelve Baptists (ten men and two women) were meeting privately in a home for worship. They were seized, shamefully treated, but eventually released through the efforts of wealthy merchant and Baptist preacher, William Kiffin. That same year Keach wrote the first and probably the most famous of all his books, The Child’s Instructor. His purpose was to give his children a sound Christian education through this primer. Friends heard about it and asked for a copy. He sent it to London for printing, but no sooner had it been published than the constable seized all copies of it along with Keach himself and brought him before the magistrate. At the trial he was accused of heresy for preaching believer’s baptism and the premillennial return of Christ. He was also charged with sedition for writing that Christ, not the king, is the absolute monarch. The judge sentenced him to the stocks in the public square at Aylsbury and the following week at Winslow. Copies of his book were burned before his eyes. His son-in-law, Thomas Crosby, later described the prisoner’s resolute and courageous attitude.
“His head and hands were no sooner fixed in the pillory, but he began to address himself to the spectators….‘Good people, I am not ashamed to stand here this day, with this paper on my head [on which was written his crimes]; my Lord Jesus was not ashamed to suffer on the cross for me; and it is for His cause that I am made a gazing-stock. Take notice, it is not for any wickedness that I stand here; but for writing and publishing His truths, which the Spirit of the Lord hath revealed in the Holy Scriptures’” (History of the English Baptists, II:204).
In 1668, believing he could use his gifts more profitably in London, Keach left Winslow with his wife Susanna and their three children. On the forty mile journey, highwaymen robbed them of all they had, and so they arrived destitute. Fellow Baptists cared for them, and made him their pastor. A few years later Keach became a Particular or Calvinistic Baptist, and founded a church in the London suburb of Southwark; this was the forerunner of the famous Metropolitan (“Spurgeon’s”) Tabernacle.
Keach defended what Baptists hold dear. He advocated believer’s baptism against the Puritans, insisted on Sunday worship against the Seventh-Day Baptists, and pioneered in securing regular income for Baptist ministers. He also practiced and defended congregational hymn singing in his church, quite innovative for Baptists in that day! Keach’s hymnbook (1691) contained over 300 tunes.
Keach’s Baptist Catechism (1689) helped revive and extend the practice of using church covenants. In 1697, he and his only surviving son Elias, also a Baptist pastor, published a covenant used by their two churches in London. The first official confession by a group of Baptist churches in America, the Philadelphia Association Confession (1742), used parts of the Keach covenant dealing with laying on of hands and singing. Hence, congregational singing made its way into American Baptist churches through the efforts of an English Baptist! The Keaches’ contributions to Baptist history are an enduring memorial of God’s faithfulness to His church.
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