Modern British Heresy

Matthew Caffyn (1628-1714)   Memorial window to Caffyn in Horsham Unitarian Church   Matthew Caffyn inhabited a world very different from the literary, clerical and academic milieux of many others accused of heresy.  He was a general Baptist (denominational labels were somewhat less precise than they became in subsequent centuries). He was a doughty nonconformist and his theology was unitarian and Arminian . In 1645, aged 17, Caffyn was expelled from Oxford University for his refusal to accept a trinitarian faith.  He returned to Horsham, Sussex where he was to serve as minister to the general baptist congregation for over 60 years, while continuing to farm. He was not shy of altercation and crossed verbal swords with Quakers and Socinians, publishing four works against those with whom he disagreed ( WorldCat ). He was imprisoned  for unauthorised preaching and, in 1653, for his opposition to infant baptism. In 1673 Thomas Monk published ‘A Cure for the cankering Error of the New Eu