The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, first drafted in 1677 and formally adopted in 1689 by the assembly of Particular (Calvinistic) Baptist churches meeting in London after the Act of Toleration made such a gathering legal. Substantially the Westminster Confession of Faith with deliberate modifications — chiefly: (1) baptism changed from infants to believers by immersion; (2) Church polity changed from presbyterian to congregational; (3) a few adjustments on the civil magistrate reflecting Baptist distinctives on religious liberty. The confession became the doctrinal standard of Reformed Baptists worldwide and enjoyed a major 20th-21st century recovery as Reformed Baptist churches multiplied in America.
The 1689 signals that Reformed Baptists share virtually all of Reformed theology with Presbyterians and Continental Reformed — differing chiefly on the two points above. On Scripture, God, Trinity, Christ, salvation, justification, sanctification, and the last things, they are identical. On baptism, the 1689 confesses: "Those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus, are the only proper subjects of this ordinance" (ch. 29). On the Church, congregational government replaces presbyterian. On the civil magistrate, the 1689 removes Westminster's teaching on magistrate authority in calling church councils and over the church's doctrine — Baptists from the beginning had insisted on religious liberty, a position that took Presbyterian friends another three centuries to fully accept. The confession is currently the most widely subscribed Baptist confession of faith in the world.