Writing the biography of William Kiffen
When Joseph Ivimey (1773–1834), the nineteenth-century Baptist historian, published the life of William Kiffen (1616-1701) in 1833, he did so in the conviction that the seventeenth-century Baptist leader was “one of the most extraordinary persons whom the [Calvinistic Baptist] denomination has produced, both as to the consistency and correctness of his principles and the eminence of his worldly and religious character.” Ivimey especially hoped that his account of Kiffen’s life and ministry would spur his younger Baptist contemporaries to take Kiffen as “a pattern of piety and integrity.”[1]
To what degree this hope was realized cannot be pursued here. But, in the nearly two centuries between Ivimey’s day and the present, Kiffen’s remarkable life has been known mostly by scholars studying the origins and rise of the Baptists in seventeenth-century England.
And we still do not have a critical biography of Kiffen. We have the resources unearthed by the leading Kiffen expert in the world, namely, Prof Larry Kreitzer of Oxford in the form of a fabulous series of studies of texts relating to Kiffen (the cover of volume 1 cited above).
But someone needs to be weld all of this together into a standard, definitive biography.
[1] The Life of Mr. William Kiffin (London, 1833), xi, ii. This work is an annotated and edited version of Kiffen’s autobiography. For the spelling of Kiffen’s name, I am following the leading authority on the life and ministry of Kiffin, Dr. Larry Kreitzer of Regent’s Park College, Oxford University.