Seventh Day Baptists rest on Saturday as a sign of obedience in a covenant relationship with God and not as a condition of salvation.

In general, federations maintain good relations with other Baptist churches and Protestant denominations as well as establishing links with other Christian institutions and unions worldwide.

English Baptists date back to the 17th century dissent movement, in which many saw no hope of further reforming the Church of England and withdrew to form other congregations.

These started in London, where one of the "Seventh-Day Men", a tailor and self-taught Bible student called Hamlet Jackson, converted a Minister couple, John & Dorothy Traske, to the observance of the seventh day (Saturday).

In 1616 John and Dorothy were arrested but Hamlet's Ministry was able to establish the Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church in London in 1617.

John Traske was accused of writing two scandalous letters to the king and sentenced by the authorities to prison on June 19, 1618, for "…aspiring to be the leader of a Jewish faction".

When Christmas, Easter and Pentecost were banned in 1643/4 leading to a number of riots, a variety of "independent" churches sprang up supporting the Seventh-Day Baptists' right to dissent.

Then in 1645 Henry Jessey converted into a Seventh Day Baptist arguing in 1647 that the seventh-day was "[Christ's] Sabbath which he blessed and sanctified".

Subsequently the new independent churches began to be tolerated and enjoyed relative religious and political freedom from 1649 under the republican rule of the Commonwealth of England.

In 1650, Brabourne's pupil, James Ockford, published in London the book The Doctrine of the Fourth Commandment, Deformed by Popery, Reformed & Restored to its Primitive Purity, which was the first writings of a Baptist defending Sabbath observance.

[2] The first official Seventh Day Baptist service in London took place at the Mill Yard Church in 1651,[6] led by Peter Chamberlen.

The first pastor to be officially considered responsible for the congregation was William Saller, who among other activities, wrote eleven books and a booklet, in addition to an appeal to magistrates reporting concern over laws imposing rest on Sunday.

[10] In 1660 with the end of the republican government and the restoration of the monarchy in England, relative religious freedom was again restricted mainly to English dissidents, forcing Seventh Day Baptists to increasingly unite in specific locations.

Edward Stennett wrote in 1668 for Seventh Day Baptists in Newport in the American Colony of Rhode Island that there were in England approximately nine or ten churches that observed the Sabbath.

[11] He was one of the first to propose an association that encompassed England's seventh day Baptist churches and their colonies in North America, technical best biblical instruction for children and ministers, as well as strategies for method conversion.

[12] Seventh Day Baptist individuals and groups continue to appear in Britain; however, they did not achieve much growth compared to North America.

The organization of the American colonies conferred more religious freedom than in the territory of the British Isles, which provided the development and solidification of different Protestant groups and churches.

[2][13] The services took place in a building in Green End (address) but it grew small with the growth of the church, land was then purchased on Barney Street and the new temple built in 1730.

[2] The course of expanding the Seventh Day Baptist churches and increasing the territorial distance between them culminated in the organization of a General Conference.

[15] In September 1802, the majority of the eight Seventh Day Baptist churches voted in favor of the proposal, with the result that the General Conference was founded.

The service conference for carrying out missionary works, promoting unity and a great growth in the number of members and locations.

Undertook most of the mission fields of the Seventh Day Baptists and through these they were instituting and spreading the churches and conferences in several other countries of the world.

[2] In 1857 the Seventh Day Baptist Church finally obtained a license and the Department of Theology was created at the then Alfred University.

[2] A school was founded in Salem, West Virginia, after the Eastern Seventh Day Baptist Association decided to build an academy in the area.

The state granted a permit in December 1888 to build what was called the Academy of Salem, specifying that the institution was subject to the regulations and decisions of the Society of Seventh Day Baptist Education.

One family, the Cottrells, looked favorably upon William Miller's Second Advent message but did not join the movement prior to 1844 because it did not acknowledge the seventh-day Sabbath.

[16][3] Seventh Day Baptists consider liberty of thought under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be essential to Christian belief and practice.