THE FIRST RECORDED BAPTIST CHURCH IN HISTORY

I.    WHEN AND WHERE WAS THE FIRST RECORDED BAPTIST CHURCH IN HISTORY

A.    Benedict in his history of the Baptists states that the Gospel was preached in Britain within sixty years of the Lord’s return to heaven.

1.    These churches appear to have been baptistic and remained sound until Austin, the Catholic monk brought Catholicism to the Isles in 597 AD.

2.He states that there were Baptists in England 1400 AD. a)He mentions a man named William Sawtre, who was identified as a Lollard and Baptist, was the first person burned at the stake after Henry IV’s 1400 AD decree to burn heretics. b)Benedict states that the English Roman Catholics in 1535, put to death twenty two Baptists for heresies. c)In 1539 thirty one more who had fled to Holland were apprehended and martyred there. d)He states that five hundred others who were identified as AnaBaptists were also killed in England during this period.

3.The line of English churches that can be traced, who called themselves Baptists, began in 1610 in Holland. a)This is not to say there were no Baptists in Britain earlier, but that this began a line of churches whose history can be traced. b)It began with a man named John Smyth who was a bishop in the Church of England.

(1)    In 1606, after nine months of soul searching and study of the New Testament he was convinced that the doctrines and practices of the Church of England were not Biblical, and thus he resigned his position as priest and left the church.

(2)    Because of persecution by the Anglican church of all who disagreed with it and who refused to submit to its authority, John Smyth had to flee England.

(3)    In Amsterdam, he along with Thomas Helwys and thirty six others formed the first Baptist church of Englishmen known to have stood for baptism of believers only.

(4)    Smyth believed that the only real apostolic succession is a succession of Biblical New Testament truth, and not of outward ordinances and visible organization such as the Church of England or the Roman Church.

(5)    He believed the only way to recover was to form a new church based on the Bible.

(6)    He then baptized himself (which is not biblical) and then the others of his congregation.

(7)    In only a few years however, the church had lost all but ten members to the Mennonites and other groups in Holland. Smyth died in 1612, and the church ended in Holland shortly thereafter with Helwy, Thomas and John Murton returning to England as persecution there had lessened.

(i)    History records that the members of this Baptist church went back to England or remained in Holland and joined Mennonites.

(ii)    It did not produce a succession of other churches, but those who founded it went on to establish other Baptist churches in England.

4.    These first Baptist churches formed in England were Armenian in theology, which taught that all men could be saved.

5.    The Calvinistic or Particular Baptists were a different group and believed in limited atonement in which only the elect could be saved.

6.    Particular Baptist had their beginnings around 1616, when some "dissenters" left the Church of England and were lead by the Rev. Henry Jacob.

7.    By 1644, these congregations grew to seven churches.

B.    About this time the Puritans were also becoming strong in England. The Puritans were dissenters from the Church of England.

1.    They wanted to bring reform to the Church of England. Although they were a great deal more piteous than the Church of England they still practiced most of its beliefs including infant baptism.

2.    Anyone who differed from the practices of the State church were subject to great persecution.

Puritans and Baptists alike, in order to escape persecution, migrated to the New World.