why a layperson could not baptize or administer the Lord’s Supper. Early on, however, the more general view was that only ordained persons could administer the Lord’s Supper.11 The London Confession of 1644 reflects what was the minority view in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that baptism was “no where tyed to a particular Church, Officer, or person extraordinarily sent,” whereas the Second London Confession gives what was more widely held. It specifies that the officers of a church are