The origins of the ‘montanist’ heresy are far from clear. This much is known, that it began in Phrygia (or Mysia) and that it must have originated before 172, when Montanus had his visions, and before 179, when the prophetess Maximilla is said to have died. It is also conjectured that ‘Montanism’, a name which does not occur before the fourth century, may have been a title attached to the heresy later, and that the earlier names ‘the New Prophecy’ and the ‘Phrygian or Kataphrygian heresy’ are more exact connotations for the movement. Of the two names I should prefer the first, for ‘the New Prophecy’ does not seem to have been a heresy in its beginnings: doctrinal aberrations came only in the later centuries. In view of these facts it is legitimate to ask whether ‘the New Prophecy’ was a Judeo-Christian group which broke off from the Church and still later became heretical, that is, that the movement existed in essence before the time of Montanus and his ladies but that it was only in his day that it became a separate movement.

For the first three hundred years or so of its existence after its refoundation in the mid-tenth century, the abbey of Abingdon was one of the most important Benedictine monasteries in England, comparable with Glastonbury, Bury St. Edmund's, St. Alban's and others of like standing. In the later middle ages its influence was much diminished, and its abbots were not on the whole distinguished for such virtues as reforming zeal, or for the cultivation of the arts and learning. Nevertheless, the written records show that this house, judged by the purely material standards of its net financial assets and of the extent and grandeur of its buildings, was still one of the great abbeys of the kingdom; in 1538, when it was dissolved, it was the sixth most wealthy monastery in England.

On 22 February 1546 Martin Luther's body was laid to rest in the church at Wittenberg. Fourteen years and two months later Philip Melanchthon was interred at his side. In the funeral oration at the bier of Luther, Melanchthon included a prayer. It reads (in John Bale's translation, printed already in 1546):

‘We thanke the omnipotent God, the eternal father of our lorde Jesus Christ, the onlye founder of thy true churche, togeyther with thy sonne vnto the coeternal, our lorde Jesus Christ, and the holye ghostye, wyse, good, mercyfull, rythouse, true, myghtye, and most liberall, that thu gatheryst vnto that sonne of thyne the promised herytage out of mankynde, and vpholdest the true mynysterye of thy Gospell, specyallye now that thu hast restored yt vnto vs by thy faythfull seruauvt Luther. The we most hartelye desyre, that from hens fourth thu wystaue to preserue and gouerne that true congregacyon of thyne, and that thu firmelye plante in vs the most sure doctyrne, lyke as Esaias desyered vnto hys dyscyples, and lighten our myndes with thy most holye sprete, that we maye both ryghtlye call vpon the, and also leade a godlye conuersacyon. Amen’.

In this Journal Dr. G. F. Nuttall has reviewed the records which he re-discovered of the Baptist Western Association 1653–8. Meanwhile, unknown to him, a MS. had come into the hands of Dr. E. A. Payne which reported the proceedings of a similar association centred in Berkshire for the period 1652–60 and which he deposited in the Angus Library at Regent's Park College, Oxford, where it has lain unused for some years past. Since, either in MS. or in print, there are now known to exist the records for five similar organisations during the period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, namely, the two already mentioned, together with those in Wales, the English Midlands and Ireland, the time seems appropriate for a study of the organisation of the Particular Baptists during this period in Britain as a whole. Whilst there are no similar records extant for the London congregations there is clear evidence, as it is hoped to show in this paper, that the churches of the capital did associate and that they initiated and fostered closer relations between themselves and those of the provinces.

‘War! That is the enduring condition of the Church on this earth. That is what the word means when we call her militant. And war means an enemy, an opposing spirit. You can have no warfare without there be two mutually opposing spirits’.

This makes an impressive opening to a sermon. It would have served as a summons to a Crusade. And, in a sense, so it was—at least in the mind of the preacher, John Neville Figgis, priest of the Community of the Resurrection, when he chose to startle the congregation of All Saints', Margaret Street, by portraying for them the likeness of Antichrist.