The Confession's Charismatic Confession part 1

The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689..

This is a link to the Baptist confession of 1689. It is also a good educational tool. Feel free to read it. It is doctrinally sound. There are many equivalent passages that are taken directly from the Westminister confessional. (The sectons in the BCL are strictly plagerized everywhere but in a few places.)

When I read through it, I noted two things very carefully in the first section.
If we take this as a microcosm of Puritan belief. [These sections read identical in the Westminister Confessional.] It seems that this declaration affirms cessationism. This is hardly the case. Some may have embraced cessationism but this was not the order of business for all the signers back then.

I.1"Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in divers manners to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased."

I.6"The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word;"

For the small group of puritans known as baptists at the time to take up cessationism would be very odd. The churches that signed this confession did not believe this as I shall show. It would be odd because many baptists like Bunyan accepted spiritual gifts like prophecy. Bunyans autobiography makes it blatantly clear! Bunyan would have certainly been the most memorable baptist to date. Many of the earliest baptists were somewhat Charismatic. This is a throw back to their fading Anabaptist roots. Furthermore, Later baptists like Spurgeon did not go out of their way to deny that these things happened. Spurgeon even had instances of calling people out based on a prophetic revelation. He did not attribute them to the devil like some of his age. Although it was not a common practice as we understand it. Most occurances were behind the scenes. It may not have been a common practice solely because the puritans sought the greater spiritual gifts first. Conversion and piety. There was little room for seeking anything else. They sought the ordinary means that were far surpassing the extraordinary gifts. There is certainly something amiss here to allow cessationism a foothold. The puritans were not close to believeing it.