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Matthew Caffyn (christened 26 October 1628 – buried June 1714) was an English Baptist preacher and writer. Matthew Caffyn Oxford Biography Index entry for Matthew Caffyn. DNB subscription requiredThe Horsham Society : Matthew Caffyn, 'the Battle Axe of Sussex' by Brian Slyfield Matthew Caffyn, 'the Battle Axe of Sussex' Short History of the Baptists
Caffyn was several times prosecuted and fined under the Conventicle Act. By 1677 there was a separation, amicably managed, in a Baptist church at Spilshill, in the parish of Staplehurst, Kent, on account of a difference of opinion regarding the Trinity; a part of the members had embraced the controversial teaching of Caffyn. There was room for latitude in the treatment of this article among the Arminianism Baptists, for in their published Standard Confession of March 1660 neither the Trinity nor the Godhead of Christ is perfectly explained. Caffyn did not vent his views in print, but in his preaching he avoided 'unrevealed sublimities,' and in conversation he owned his disagreement with material points in the Athanasian creed. His views were at least susceptible of an Arian interpretation. Accordingly, Joseph Wright denounced him to the General Assembly of General Baptists in 1691 as denying both the divinity and the humanity of Christ, and moved for his excommunication. What Joshua Toulmin calls Caffyn's 'truly protestant and ingenious defence' satisfied the assembly. Wright returned to the charge in 1693, but again the assembly refused to excommunicate Caffyn. Wright withdrew and protested.
The matter was agitated outside the assembly, and at length the Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire churches demanded and re-demanded (1699) a further trial, and the assembly agreed to go into the case at Whitsuntide of 1700. They fulfilled this promise by appointing a committee of eight, including four of the complainants, to confer with Caffyn and draw up a healing resolution. The committee were unanimous in offering a declarationGiven in Toulmin, after Thomas Crosby which evaded rather than determined the points in dispute; and the assembly recorded its satisfaction with Caffyn's defence.
Just before the next assembly, Christopher Cooper published a reply to 'The Moderate Trinitarian,' &c., 1699, by Daniel Allen, whose work seems to have inspired the mediating policy of the assembly's committee. Cooper charges Caffyn with unsoundness respecting Adam's fall, Christ's satisfaction, and the soul's immortality; he quotes a description of Caffyn's opinions as 'nothing but a fardel of Mahometanism, Arianism, Socinianism, and Quakers.' At the same time he admits that Caffyn took pains to convert Socinians. He deplores the spread of Caffyn's errors 'in Kent, Sussex, and London, but especially in West Kent.' When an assembly met in 1701 the Northamptonshire churches complained that Caffyn had not been properly trained. The assembly, after debate, affirmed by a large majority that Caffyn's declaration, with his signature to 'the aforesaid expedient,' was sufficient and satisfactory.
The minority seceded, and formed a new connexion under the name of the 'General Association,' branding the majority as 'Caffinites.' But the two parties came together again in 1704; Joseph Wright died in 1703. This is the first deliberate and formal endorsement of latitudinarian opinions in the article of the Trinity by the collective authority of any tolerated section of English dissent.
For the future of the General Baptists, Antitriniarian heresies took possession of the churches in the south of England. The New Connexion of General Baptists was formed, chiefly in the Midlands, by Dan Taylor in 1770, as an offshoot against these heresies, including many Baptist churches that protested the embraced liberalism of the General Assembly. The Assembly arrived at Socinianism (in its modified English form) and became a small remnant. Caffyn's own church at Horsham ceased to be Baptist, and was known as 'Free Christian' from 1879.
Caffyn reiterated his charges against quaker theology in an appendix to his 'Faith in God's Promises the Saint's best weapon,' 1661, which was briefly answered by Humphrey Wollrich in 'One Warning more to the Baptists,' &c., 1661, and by George Whitehead in an appendix to 'The Pernicious Way, &c.,' 1662. A neighbouring Baptist minister, Joseph Wright of Maidstone, took part in this dispute with the quakers, publishing 'A Testimony for the Son of Man,' &c., 1661. The first to accuse Caffyn (though not by name) of error respecting the person of Christ seems to have been Thomas Monck, in 'A Cure for the cankering Error of the New Eutychians,' 1673.
In addition, Caffyn published: 1. ‘Envy's Bitterness corrected,’ 1674 (?). 2. ‘A raging Wave foaming out its own shame,’ 1675. 3. ‘The Great Error and Mistake of the Quakers.’ 4. ‘The Baptist's Lamentation.’
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