======================================================================== WRITINGS OF J T CHRISTIAN by J.T. Christian ======================================================================== A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by J.T. Christian, compiled for study and devotional reading. Chapters: 72 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 01.1.01. A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 2. 01.1.02. Preface 3. 01.1.03. Chapter 1 The New Testament Churches 4. 01.1.04. Chapter 2 The Ancient Churches 5. 01.1.05. Chapter 3 Struggle Against Corruption 6. 01.1.06. Chapter 4 Paulician and Bogomil Churches 7. 01.1.07. Chapter 5 Other Early Churches 8. 01.1.08. Chapter 6 The Waldensian Churches 9. 01.1.09. Chapter 7 Origin of the Anabaptists 10. 01.1.10. Chapter 8 Character of the Anabaptists 11. 01.1.11. Chapter 9 Reformers Bear Witness to the Baptist 12. 01.1.12. Chapter 10 Baptists in the Practice of Dipping 13. 01.1.13. Chapter 11 Baptists of Germany and Moravia 14. 01.1.14. Chapter 12 Practice of Dipping in Poland etc. 15. 01.1.15. Chapter 13 Peasant Wars and Munster 16. 01.1.16. Chapter 14 British Baptist Churches 17. 01.1.17. Chapter 15 Baptists in English Reformation 18. 01.1.18. Chapter 15 Continued 19. 01.1.19. Chapter 16 The Episode of John Smyth 20. 01.1.20. Chapter 17 The Particular Baptist Churches 21. 01.1.21. Chapter 17 Continued 22. 01.1.22. Chapter 18 A Great Debate on Baptism 23. 01.1.23. Chapter 18 Continued 24. 01.1.24. Chapter 19 Baptist Institutions and Customs 25. 01.1.25. Chapter 20 Achievements of the Eng. Baptists 26. 01.1.26. Chapter 20 Continued 27. 01.1.27. Chapter 21 Origin of American Baptist Churches 28. 01.1.28. Chapter 21 Continued 29. 01.2.00.0. Contents 30. 01.2.00.1. Preface 31. 01.2.01.0. The Colonial Period 32. 01.2.01.01. The First Baptists in America 33. 01.2.01.02. The Baptists in Rhode Island 34. 01.2.01.03. The Persecution of Baptists in Massachusetts 35. 01.2.01.04. The First Baptist Churches in Massachusetts 36. 01.2.01.05. The Baptists of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys 37. 01.2.01.06. The Baptists of Maine and South Carolina 38. 01.2.01.07. New York, Delaware, Connecticut and Vermont 39. 01.2.01.08. The Baptists in Maryland and New Hampshire 40. 01.2.01.09. Philadelphia Association, Brown University, 41. 01.2.01.10. The Great Awakening 42. 01.2.01.11. The Baptists of Virginia 43. 01.2.01.12. Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia 44. 01.2.02.00. The Period of the American Revolution 45. 01.2.02.01. The Baptists in the American Revolution 46. 01.2.02.02. The Baptists and the American Constitution 47. 01.2.02.03. Imprisonment and Strife in Virginia 48. 01.2.02.04. Baptists and Destruction of Establishment 49. 01.2.03.00. Period of Growth & Organization 50. 01.2.03.01. The Baptists in Kentucky 51. 01.2.03.02. The Baptists of the Ohio Valley 52. 01.2.03.03. The Baptists in Mississippi and Louisiana 53. 01.2.03.04. The Great Revival of 1800 54. 01.2.03.05. The Rise of Foreign Missions 55. 01.2.03.06. General Convention... 56. 01.2.03.07. The Anti-Effort Secession 57. 01.2.03.08. The Schism of Alexander Campbell 58. 01.2.03.09. A Number of Baptist Activities 59. 02.00. DID THEY DIP? 60. 02.000. Introduction 61. 02.01. A Statement of the Case 62. 02.02. The AnaBaptists of England 63. 02.03. Immersion in England 64. 02.04. The Anabaptists of the Continent 65. 02.05. John Smyth 66. 02.06. The Baptists of 1641 67. 02.07. The English Baptists Before 1641 68. 02.08. The Kiffin MS and Jersey Church Records 69. 02.09. Some Witnesses 70. 02.10. Other Witnesses 71. 02.11. A Challenge Accepted 72. 02.12. Roger Williams ======================================================================== CHAPTER 1: 01.1.01. A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS ======================================================================== A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS TOGETHER WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES JOHN T. CHRISTIAN, A.M. D.D. LL.D. Professor of Christian History in The Baptist Bible Institute, New Orleans, Louisiana. The Contents The Preface CHAPTER 1 THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES. The Great Commission. A Definition of a Church. A Voluntary Association. A Church Not National or General. The Officers of a Church. The Ordinances. The Proper Subjects of Baptism. The Form of Baptism. The Lord’s Supper. The Ordinances as Symbols. The Churches Missionary Bodies. The Continued Existence of the Churches. CHAPTER 2 THE ANCIENT CHURCHES. Early Conditions. Isaac Taylor. Epistola ad Diognetum. The Beginning of Dangerous Heresies. Baptismal Salvation. Metropolitan Bishops. Gregory the Great. The Baptism of Believers. The Fathers. The Early Councils and Infant Baptism. The Baptism of Adults Who Had Christian Parents. The First Law and The First Rule for Infant Baptism. The Testimony of Scholars. The Form of Baptism. Six Rituals on the Subject. The Christian Monuments. The Catacombs. The Baptisteries. Clinic Baptism. Religious Liberty. Tertullian, Justin Martyr and Lactatius. Constantine the Great Issues an Edict. Theodosius the Great Enforces Religion by Law. CHAPTER 3 THE STRUGULE AGAINST CORRUPTION. Incorruptible Churches. The Testimony of Bunsen. The Montanist Churches. The Anabaptism. The Spread of the Movement. The Novatian Churches. Robinson Traces Them to the Reformation. They Were Called Anabaptists. The Donatist Churches. Their Origin. Rejected Infant Baptism. Benedict. Lincoln. Augustine. Liberty of Conscience. Neander. Their Attitude Toward Liberty. Their Protest. CHAPTER 4 THE PAULICIAN AND BOGOMIL CHURCHES. The Sources of Information. The Greeks, The Armenians. "The Key of Truth.". The Apostolic Origin. They Rejected Other Communions. The Story of Constantine. The Connection of the Mohammedans. The Sabians. The Numbers of the Paulicians. Religious Liberty. The Free State of Teprice. Among the Albigenses in France. Persecuted. Conybeare on Baptist Succession. Justin A. Smith. Widely Scattered in Europe. the Paulicians not Manichaeans. Their Doctrines. The Synod of Arras. A Confession of Faith. The Adoptionists. The Form of Baptism. Macarius. The Oriental Church. The Bogomils. Brockett. Their Persecutions. The Form of Baptism. CHAPTER 5 THE ALBIGENSIAN, THE PETROBRUSIAN, THE HENRICIAN, THE ARNOLDIST, AND THE BERENGARLAN CHURCHES. The Origin and Spread of These Churches. Prof. Bury. Their History. Their Good Character. Their Writings Destroyed. They Were Not Manichaeans. Two Classes of Believers. In Southern France. The Crusades Against Them. Their Doctrines. Rejected Infant Baptism. Peter of Bruys. His Opinions. The Petrobrusians Accused of Being Anabaptists. Henry of Lanusanne. His Great Success. Held the Opinions of the Anabaptists. Arnold of Brescia. The Testimony of Otto Freising. The Arnoldist. Berengarius. His Troubled Career. CHAPTER 6 THE WALDENSLAN CHURCHES. The Alps as a Hiding Place. Peter Waldo. The Preaching Tour. Origin of the Waldenses. The Name. Roman Catholic Historians on Their Origin. Rainerio Sacchoni. Preger. The Statement of the Waldenses. The Noble Lessons. The Reformers. Beza. Later Writers. The Special Historians of the Waldenses. Faber. Moreland. Claudius Seisselius on Their Character. Their Manners and Customs. Their Principles. Infant Baptism. Their Change of Views in Regard to the Practice. Adult Baptism. Immersion. CHAPTER 7 THE ORGIN OF THE ANABAPTIST CHURCHES. The Anabaptist Movement. Mosheim. Sir Isaac Newton. Alexander Campbell. Robert Barclay. Von Usinger. Sacchoni. Cardinal Hosius. Luther. Zwingli. Anabaptism no New Thing. They Were Found in Many Lands. Different Leaders. Kinship to The Waldenses. Limborch. Keller. Moeller. Lindsay. The Waldenses and The Anabaptists Found in the Same Places. Waldensian Preachers Found Among the Anabaptists. Points of Agreement. The Anabaptists Claimed a Succession From Earlier Times. The Antiquity of the Netherland Baptists. The Swiss. Moravia. The Picards. Erasmus. Sebastian Frank. Schyn. Abrahamson. Ypeij and Dermout. CHAPTER 8 THE CHARACTOR OF THE ANABAPTISTS. Called by Many Names. Anabaptist. Catabaptists. The Popularity of the Movement. Not a Turbulent People. Lovers of Peace. Bayle. Cassander. Pastor of Feldsburg. The Swiss Baptists. Erasmus. Persecuted in Every land. Religious Liberty. Hubmaier. Their Appeal to The New Testament. The Baptismal Question. A Spiritual Church Their Aim. Hast. Infant Baptism. The Form of Their Organization. CHAPTER 9 THE REFORMERS BEAR WHITNESS TO THE BAPTISTS. The attitude of the Reformers to Infant Baptism. The History of Immersion in Germany, North and East. The Saxon Confession. Melanchthon. Pomerania. Sadoleto. Luther. John Bugenhagen. Zwingli. The Catabaptists. Erasmus. Melanchthon. William Farel. Martin Bucer. Baptisms in a Tub. Calvin. Baptism Not an Especial Discussion Between the Baptists and the Reformers. CHAPTER 10 THE BAPTISTS IN THE PRACTICE OF DIPPING. The Testimony of Fleury. "The Sum of the Ho]y Scripture". Conrad Grebel in Switzerland. A Moravian Chronicle. Its Doubtful Authority. Some Roman Catholic Converts May at First Have Practiced Sprinkling. Kessler. Ulimann Dipped in The Rhine. The Dippings at St. Gall. The Baptistery. The Baptisms in the Sitter River. Persecutions on This Account. The Dippings at Appenzell. John Stumpf. The Decrees Against the Baptisms of the Baptists. The Persecutions at Zurich. The Strong Arm of the Law. The Famous Decree of Zurich. Gastins. Felix Manz Drowned Because he Practiced Dipping. The Baptists in Vienna. The Italian Baptists CHAPTER 11 OTHER BAPTIST CHURCHES IN THE PRACTICE OF DIPPING. The Church in Augsburg. Hans Denck. The Leaders all in the Practice of Dipping. Baptisteries in the Houses and Cellars. Sender. The Augsburg Historian. Urbanus Rhegius. The River Lech. The Church at Strassburg. Melchior Hofmann. The Baptisms at Emden. Tubs Used for Baptismal Purposes. Dr. Winkler. Obbe Philips. The Words of Keller. Melchior Rink. "The Ordinance of God". The Moravian Churches. Baithasar Hubmaier. His Character and Work. Denies Infant Baptism. Adopts immersion. Zwingli and Hubmaier. Capito. Farel. John Fabricius. The Books of Hubmaier. Peter Reidermann. Erhard. CHAPTER 12 THE PRACTICE OF DIPPING IN THE NETHERLANDS, POLAND, LITHUANIA AND TRANSYLVANIA BAPTIST CHURCHES. The Waldenses in Holland. Religious Liberty. Remhrandt. Learned Men. Simon Menno. His Views of Baptism. "A Handful of Water". Luther on This Phrase. The Doop. Roman 6:3. Anabaptist Literature on The Subject. 1 Cor. 12:13. The Practice of Meno. Immersion in the Netherlands. Bastingius. Boltens. Dooreslaar. Stark. Schyn. The Change of Practice Among the Mennonites. The Collegiants of Rhynesburg. Poland and Silesian Baptists. Immersion. Sandius. Bock. The Unitarian Baptists. Their Great Learning and Culture. Peter Gonesius. Gregory Paulus. Their Numbers and Spirit. Socinus. Martin Czechovicus. The Racovian Catechism. The Lord of Cracow. CHAPTER 13 THE PEASANT WARS AND THE KINGDOM OF MÜNSTER. The trouble between the Peasants and the Nobility. Thomas Munzer. The Twelve Articles. The Battle of Schlatchtberg. Thomas Munzer Never a Baptist. The Responsibility of Luther. Grebel and Manz Disavow Munzer. His Views on Infant Baptism. The Munster Tumults. Largely a Political Affair. The Desire for Liberty. Polygamy. Marriage Sacred. The Anabaptists Did Not Originate the Tumults. The Leaders Were All Pedobaptists. Fair Minded Historians. Keller. D’Aubigne. Yepij and Dermout. Arnold. The "Common Man". The Act of Baptism at Munster. "The Confession of Both Sacraments". The Form of Baptism Dipping. Jesse B. Thomas. Keller. Heath. Cornelius. Rhegius. Fischer. John of Leyden. CHAPTER 14 THE BRITISH BAPTIST CHURCHES. The Statement of the Historians. Thomas Crosby. B. Evans. Adam Taylor. Robert Barclay. David Masson. The First Churches in Britain. Missionary Work. The Persecutions. The Early Britons Baptists. Crosby. Davis. Immersion. Richards on the Welsh Word. Bede and Other Historians. St. Patrick in Ireland. Immersion and The Lord’s Supper. Austin. The Saxons. An Attempt to Convert the Britons to Roman Catholic Views. The Differences. Infant Baptism. The First Instance of Infant Baptism. Laws Enacted on the Subject. The Paulicians in England. Hill Cliffe Church. Goadby. Walter Lollard. John Wyclif. His Views on Baptism. Thomas Walden. The Opinions of the Lollards. William Tyndale. CHAPTER 15 THE BAPTISTS IN THE REFORMATION PERIOD IN ENGLAND Henry VIII. The Persecution of the Baptists. The hatred of the King. The Opinions of the Baptists. Alice Grevill. Simon Fish A. Royal Proclamation Against Strangers. The Coming of the Dutch. The Baptists Burnt. Stowe. Froude. A Sensation. The Baptists Increase Daily. Their Numbers. Their Churches. Immersion. The Sum of the holy Scripture". Immersion Among the Baptists. The Donatists. Fuller. Featley. Edward VI. The Baptist Increase in Numbers. In London. In Kent and Elsewhere. In Essex. Baptists Burnt. The Influence of John Calvin. Joan of Kent. The Practice of Immersion. The Baptism of Adults. J. Bales. Giles Van Bellen. Robort Cooke and Dr. Turner. Queen Mary. She attempts to Reestablish Romanism. Philip II of Spain. Bishop Gardiner. Edward Bonner. The Baptists were Numerous. Shoals of Them from Abroad. immersion. The Martyrs. Queen Elizabeth. The Name Baptist. Their Churches. The coming From Over-Seas. The Heavy Hand of the Law. More Baptists Burnt. The Independents. Learn their Ideas From the Baptists. Immersion the Rule. Immersion Among the Baptists. James I. The Baptist Not Numerous in His Reign. The Burnning of Edward Wightman. A Petition to the House of Lords. An Humble Supplication to the King. An Appeal for Liberty of Conscience. Mark Leonard Busher. CHAPTER 16 THE EPISODE OF JOHN SMYTH. He Was an Unusual Man. The Material for his Life Rare and Complicated. Lincoln. Gainsborough. The Crowle Documents. Animosity Against Him. He is Baptized. His Great Ability. The Anabaptists in Holland. Baptist Succession. The Question of his Sec-baptism. The Poistion of Baptist Writers. His Own Words. His Immersion. No Difficulty to Obtain Immersion in Holland. Ashton. The Mennonites. B. Evans. Muller. Robert Barclay. P. B.. R. B.. Thomas Wall. Giles Schute. Crosby. Ivimey. Taylor. Masson. Bishop Hall. Clyfton. Baillie. J. H .. Mark Leonard Busher~Helwys. John Norcott. John Morton. I. Graunt. Smyth His Own Witness. Excluded From the Baptist Church. He Differs From the Mennonites. The Testimony of Helwys. Helwys Returns to England. CHAPTER 17 ORGIN OF THE PARTICULAR BAPTIST CHURCHES. The General Baptists Numerous. Calvinistic Views Among Baptists. The Rise of the Particular Baptists. The Independent Chuurch of Henry Jacob. Crosby. Uuderhill. Crosby Sometimes Misleading. The Opnion of Lewis. The MS. of William Kiffin. The Sending to Holland for Baptism. The Statement of Hutchinson. John Spilsbury. The Right to Begin Baptism. The Administrator of Baptism. The Continuance of Baptist Churches. William Kiflin. Daniel King. A Notable Introduction. Henry D’Anvers. The Confession of Somerset. Thomas Grantham. Joseph Hooke. Samuel Stennett. The Baptist Magazine. Thomas Pottenger. James Culross. The Story of Blount Going to Holland. The Mistakes of the So-called Kffin Manuscript. Two Kiffin Manuscripts. The So-called Practice of Sprinkling. Hanserd Knollys. The Jacob Church Often in Trouble on The Subject of Dipping. The Practice of Spilsbury. Of Eaton. Of Kiffin. Of Henry Jessey. The Church of Hubbard. John Canne. The Broadmead Church. Samuel Howe. Paul Hobson. Thomas Kilcop. The Practice of Dipping Called "New". The Answer of the Baptists. Samuel Richardson. Thomas Collier. Hanserd Knollys. Jolin Tombes. Jeffrey Watts. The Confession of 1643. The Form of Baptism Dipping. Jesse B. Thomas. The Practice of the General Baptists. Masson. Featley. CHAPTER 18 A GREAT DEBATE ON BAPTISM. Charles I. Brought Disaster. William Laud. The Prevalence of Baptists. Persecutions. Search For The Baptists. Lord Robert Brooke. The High Commission Court Destroyed. The Boldness of the Baptists. The Church of England Tries to Enforce Immersion. Articles to he Enquired of. Baptisteries. Thomas Blake. Walter Craddock. Daniel Featley. Denne. John Floyer. Schaff. Greek Lexicons. The Edinburgh Encyclopedia. William Wall. The Westminster Assembly. John Lightfoot. The Action of Parliament. The Book of Vellum. The Beginning of the Great Debate. The Practice of the Baptists. W. H. King. George C. Lorimer. Joseph Angus. Daniel Featley. Thomas Collier. Lewes Hewes. Thomas Lamb. John Goodwin. Edward Barber. William Jeifrey. Clem Writer. Goadby. Featley and Four Particular Baptists. Tombes and Henry Vaughan and John Cragge. William Russell and Samuel Chandler. CHAPTER 19 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF BAPTIST INSTITUTIONS AND CUSTOMS. Baptist Associations. They Originated With the Particular Baptists. The General Baptists the First to Organize. J. M. Davis. The Great Authority of the Association. Business. Number. Date. The Custom of Appeal. The Office of Messenger. The Organization of the Particular Baptists. A Letter From Ireland. The Midland Association. The Circular Letter. Objects of the Union. Support of the Ministry. Education. Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Bristol College. Mile End Academy. Pastor and Deacons. The Permanency of the Pastoral Relation. The Support of the Ministry. Ordination. Discipline. Amusements. Marrying. Laying on of Hands and Anointing of the Sick. Singing CHAPTER 20 THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS. Opportunity for Growth. Robert Baillie. Thomas Edwards. Daniel Featley. An Epitome of the Period. William R. Williams. The High Attainments of the Baptists. Dr. Hawes. Mackintosh. Hugh Price Hughes. Chalmers. The Price of Human Liberty. Persecutions. An Act of Parliament . The "Gag Law". The Cruelty of Infant Baptism . Oliver Cromwell. Prominent Baptist Preachers in Prison. Cromwell Casts His Influence Against the Baptist. Liberty of Conscience. Confession of the Particular Baptists. Of the General Baptists. John Milton. John Bunyan. William Kiffin. James II.. William and Mary. The Baptists Brought Liberty of Conscience. John Locke. Price. Charles Butler. Herbert S. Skeats. Phillip Schaff. A Time of Paralysis Antinomianism. John Gill. John Rippon. Baptist Publications. Abraham Booth. John Howard. Andrew Fuller. Moderate Calvinism. The Missionary Movement. William Carey. Joseph Hughes and the Bible Society. Sunday Schools. Robert Raikes. W. Fox. The Relation of the Baptists to the Young. Regents Park College. Great Authors and Able Preachers. Hymn Writers. CHAPTER 21 THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES. The Date of the First Baptists in America Uncertain. Many of the Early Settlers Baptists. Cotton Mather. Plymouth. Roger Williams and Samuel Howe. The Fear of Anabaptism. A Disturbance on Account of Immersion. Governor Winthrop. Governor Bradford . A Debate on Baptism. President Chauncey. Scituate. The Lathrop Church. Henry Dunster. Hanserd Knollys. The General Court of Massachusetts Takes Part. Weymouth. Lady Moody. Painter. Persecutions. Roger Williams. At Salem. At Providence. The Form of His Baptism Immersion. Richard Scott. William Coddington. Williams Himself Testifies. Joseph B. Felt. George P. Fisher. Philip Schaff. Williams Separates From the Baptists. Apostolic Succession. The Baptists Do not Derive Their Baptism From Williams. The First Democracy. The Provisions For the Charter of Rhode Island. Religious Liberty. Arnold. Hough. Bancroft. Judge Story. Gervinus. Straus. The Persecutions of the Baptists in Massachusetts. John Clark. Obadiah Holmes. Virginia a Battle Ground for Freedom. Severe Laws. Sir W. Berkeley. The Destruction of the Establishments. The Testimony of Hawks. James Madison. Thomas Jefferson. Bishop Meade. George P. Fisher Sums up the Case. The Revolutionary War. William Pitt. Fox. Burke. Robert Ryland. No Tories Among the Baptists. The Continental Congress. The Philadelphia Association. A Memorial to Congress. The Baptists in the Army. The Chaplains. James Manning. John Hart. Thomas Jefferson. John Leland. Safe-guarding the Liberty of the Land. The First Amendment to the Constitution. The Eulogy of the Baptist by George Washington. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 2: 01.1.02. PREFACE ======================================================================== A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS TOGETHER WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES JOHN T. CHRISTIAN, A.M. D.D. LL.D. Professor of Christian History in The Baptist Bible Institute, New Orleans, Louisiana. Preface IN ATTEMPTING to write a history of the Baptists no one is more aware of the embarrassments surrounding the subject than the author. These embarrassments arise from many sources. We are far removed from many of the circumstances under survey; the representations of the Baptists were often made by enemies who did not scruple, when such a course suited their purpose, to blacken character; and hence the testimony from such sources must be received with discrimination and much allowance made for many statements; in some instances vigilant and sustained attempts were made to destroy every document relating to these people; the material that remains is scattered through many libraries and archives, in many lands and not always readily accessible; often, on account of persecutions, the Baptists were far more interested in hiding than they were in giving an account of themselves or their whereabouts; they were scattered through many countries, in city and cave, as they could find a place of concealment; and frequently they were called by different names by their enemies, which is confusing. Yet it is a right royal history they have. It is well worth the telling and the preserving. It must be borne in mind that there are many sources of Church History. Broadly speaking we have Eastern and Western; and a want of discrimination in these sources, and frequently an effort to treat Eastern and Western churches as identical, has caused much confusion. A right understanding of these sources will clear up many dark corners. For example it is undoubtedly true that the Waldenses originated in the West and the Paulicans in the East, and that they had a different history. In later centuries they came in contact one with the other, but in origin they were diverse. Any effort to treat them as one and the same people is misleading. In my judgment both parties were Baptists. The above distinction will account for many minor differences, and even today these sources will be found coloring Baptist history. It may be thought by some that on account of its length the chapter on "The Episode of John Smyth" is out of proportion with the rest of the hook. It must be remembered, however, that any information in regard to the complicated history of the Nonconformists of that period is welcome. As a matter of fact, several subjects are here grouped; and as all of them require notice it is believed that unity of thought, as well as length of discussion, is preserved by the method here adopted. Many questions were then raised for the first time among English Baptists which find expression today among all schools of Baptists. The question has often been asked: "Were all of the ancient parties mentioned in these pages in absolute or substantial accord with all of the doctrines and customs of modern Baptists?" The question can be answered with unerring accuracy: certainly not. Nor is there anything strange in the reply. It is well known that Baptists, Mennonites, and Quakers in their history have much in common, but while they agree in many particulars there are essential differences. There are marked differences among modern Baptists. Even a superficial examination of the views and customs of Russian, English and American Baptists would reveal to an observer this fact. We need not go beyond the history of American Baptists for a convincing example. At first, Arminian doctrines largely prevailed in this country; at a later date, Calvinistic principles prevailed. Oftentimes the same persons have changed their opinion. Many of the Baptists in Virginia were Arminians, but after passing over to Kentucky some of them became rigid Calvinists. Inside the Baptist denomination today there are persons, and doubtless churches, who are Arminian, and there are other persons and churches who are Calvinists. There are also Unitarians and Higher Critics, as well as Evangelicals among Baptists. One who has a mind for such things could magnify these differences to an indefinite extent. Adequate reasons might be assigned for all of this. Baptists have never had a common creed, and it is equally true that they have never recognized any authoritative creed. They desire no such standard. Their attitude toward free speech and liberty of conscience has permitted and encouraged the largest latitude in opinions. Yet none of us would care to increase these differences or make more acute the variations. One who stops here would have only a superficial understanding of the history and polity of Baptists. Their ties of organization are so slender, their government so democratic in nature, and their hardy independence so universal, that it has been a wonder to some historians and a mystery inexplicable to those who have not understood their genius, how they have retained their homogeneity and solidarity. But holding as they have ever done the absolute and unconditional authority of the New Testament as the sole rule of faith and practice in religious matters, they have had with them from the beginning a powerful preventive to error, and a specific corrective when there has been an aberration from the truth. All of these things, and more, must be taken into account when we come to consider the various parties and persons discussed in the pages of this history. These parties were persecuted, scattered and often segregated. They lived in different lands and frequently had no opportunity to compare notes. There were great controversies, and frequently new roads were to be blazed out, intricate doctrinal problems to be solved, and complicated questions to be adjusted. In the insistence upon some great doctrine, it may have happened that some other doctrine of equal or relative importance did not sustain its proper position for a time. Wrong views were sometimes maintained, false doctrines introduced and defended. Much allowance must always be made, especially in considering the doctrinal views of Baptists, for the fact we are frequently indebted to a zealous and prejudiced enemy for much of our information. It is not safe without support to trust such testimony. Many examples might be introduced to show that some of these parties might not be recognized by some Baptists now-a-days. The Montanists, the Novatians, and the Donatists held diverse opinions, not only from each other, but from the teachings of the New Testament; but they stressed tremendously the purity of the church. It is possible that the Paulicians were Adoptionists. There have always been different views in regard to the birth of Jesus. Some of the Anabaptists held that Jesus was a man, and that he did not derive his manhood from Mary, but passed through her as a channel. The Adoptionists held that Jesus was endowed with divinity at his baptism. Most modern Baptists hold that Jesus became incarnate at his birth. There were some Baptists who held the vagaries of Hofmann and other Baptists who followed the more sane and rational course of Hubmaier. No effort is here attempted to minimize, or to dismiss as trivial, these variations. Perhaps absolute and unconditional uniformity is unattainable. Such uniformity was never, perhaps, more vigorously pressed than it was by Archbishop Laud, with a dismal failure and the tragic death to the prelate as the result. The wonder, however, is not that there were variations in these diverse conditions, but that there could be any homogeneity or unity. Through all of the variations, however, there has been an insistence upon some great fundamental truths. There has ever appeared the vital necessity of a regenerated life; a church pure and separate from the ungodly; believers’ baptism; a simple form of church government; the right of free speech and soul liberty; and the permanent and paramount authority of the New Testament. Whatever may have been the variations in any or all of these parties, on the above or kindred subjects, the voice of the Baptists has rung out clear and distinct. The testimony here recorded has been taken from many sources. I doubt not that diligent search would reveal further facts of the highest value. As a matter of fact I have a great accumulation of material which would extend into several volumes. In my judgment a Commission should he appointed with ample means to make a thorough search in the Archives of Europe. I am well aware of the imperfections of this book, but it presents much data never before found in a Baptist history. I have throughout pursued the scientific method of investigation, and I have let the facts speak for themselves. I have no question in my own mind that there has been a historical succession of Baptists from the days of Christ to the present time It must be remembered that the Baptists were found in almost every corner of Europe. When I found a connection between one body and another that fact is stated, but when no relationship was apparent I have not tried to manufacture one. Straight-forward honesty is the only course to pursue. Fortunately, however, every additional fact discovered only goes to make such connections probable in all instances. I have an expectant attitude toward the future. I heartily welcome every investigation, for truth has nothing to fear from the light. THE AUTHOR ======================================================================== CHAPTER 3: 01.1.03. CHAPTER 1 THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER I THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES AFTER our Lord had finished his work on earth, and before he had ascended into glory, he gave to his disciples the following commission: "All authority is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matthew 28:18-20). Under the terms of this commission Jesus gave to his churches the authority to evangelize the world. A New Testament Church is a company of baptized believers voluntarily associated together for the maintenance of the ordinances and the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The distinctive characteristics of this church are clearly marked in the New Testament. Such a church was a voluntary association and was independent of all other churches. It might be, and probably was, affiliated with other churches in brotherly relations; but it remained independent of all outward control, and was responsible to Christ alone, who was the supreme lawgiver and the source of all authority. Originally the teachers and the people conjointly administered the affairs of the church. In the New Testament sense of the church there can be no such an organization as a National or General Church, covering a large district of country, composed of a number of local organizations. The church, in the Scriptural sense, is always an independent, local organization. Sister churches were "united only by the ties of faith and charity. Independence and equality formed the basis of their internal constitution" (Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1.554. Boston, 1854). Gibbon, always artistic in the use of material, continues: "Such was the mild and equal constitution by which the Christians were governed for more than a hundred years after the death of the apostles. Every society formed within itself a separate and independent republic; and although the most distant of these little states maintained a mutual, as well as friendly, intercourse of letters and deputations, the Christian world was not yet connected by any supreme or legislative assembly" (Thid, 558). The officers of the church were first, pastors, indifferently called elders or bishops, and, secondly, deacons. These were the honorable servants of a free people. The pastors possessed no authority above their brethren, save that by service they purchased to themselves a good degree of glory. The more recent Episcopal writers, such as Jacob and Hatch, do not derive their system from the ancient Scriptural form of government, but always acknowledge the primitive congretional form of government, and declare that episcopacy is a later development In the New Testament, elder and bishop are different names to describe the same office. Dr. Lightfoot, the Bishop of Durham, in a very exhaustive discussion of the subject, says: It is clear, that, at the close of the Apostolic Age, the two lower orders of the three fold ministry were firmly and widely established; but traces of the episcopate, properly so-called, are few and Indistinct. The episcopate was formed out of the presbyterial order by elevation; and the title, which originally was common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the chief of them (Lightfoot, Commentary on Philippians, 1~276). Dean Stanley represents the same view. He says: According to the strict rules of the church derived from those early times, there are but two orders, presbyters and deacons (Stanley, Christian Institutions, 210). Bichard B. Rackliam (The Acts of the Apostles cii), A. D. 1912, says of the word bishop (episcopos): We may say at once that it had not yet acquired the definite sense which it holds in the letters of Ignatius (A. D. 115), and which it still holds today, viz., of a single ruler of a diocese. From Acts 20:28, Titus 1:6-7, and comparison with 1 Timothy 3:2 f., we should conclude that epescopus was simply a synonym for presbyter, and that the two offices were identical. Knowling (The Expositors Greek Testament, II. 435-437) reviews all of the authorities, Ilatch (Smith and Chcetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, 11.1700), Harnack (Gebhardt and Harnack, Clement of Rome, ed. altera, 5), Steinmetz, etc., and reaches the following conclusion: This one passage (Acts 20:28) is also sufficient to show that the "presbyter" and the "bishop" were at first practically identical. Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, reminds the bishops that they owe their elevation above the presbyters, not ac much to divine institution as to ecclesiastical usage; for before the outbreak of controversies in the church there was no distinction between the two, except that presbyter was a term of age, and bishop a term of official dignity; but when men, at the instigation of Satan, erected parties and sects, and, instead of simply following Christ, named themselves of Paul, of Apollos, or Cephas, all agreed to put one of the presbyters at the head of the rest, that by his universal supervision of the churches, he might kill the seeds of division (Hieron. Comm. ad Titus 1:7). The great commentators of the Greek Church agree with Jerome in maintaining the original identity of bishops and presbyters in the New Testament. Thus did Chrysostom (Hom. i. in Ep. ad Php 1:11); Theodoret (ad Php 1:1); Ambrosiaster (ad Ephesians 4:11); and the pseudo-Augustinian (Questions V. et N. T. qu. 101). There were two ordinances m the primitive church, baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Baptism was an outward confession of faith in Christ. It thus expressed a belief in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and a subsequent resurrection of all believers through the eternal Spirit. Only believers were baptized and that upon a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ. The church was composed of believers or holy persons. The members were called in the New Testament "beloved of God, called to be saints"; "sanctified in Christ Jesus"; "faithful in Christ"; "God’s elect, holy, and beloved." The conditions of membership were repentance, faith, righteousness, and the initiatory rite of baptism, which was symbolical of the changed life. In this connection it is interesting to note that all the Pedobaptist Confessions of Faith include only believers in the definition of the proper members of a church, The following definition of a church is taken from the Augsburg Confession of Faith of the Lutheran Church. It fairly represents all the rest. It says: To speak properly, the church of Christ is a congregation of the members of Christ; that is, of the saints, which do truly believe and rightly obey Christ. So universal is this definition of a church in all of the Confessions of Faith that Kostlin, Professor of Theology in Halle, say’s: "The Reformed Confessions describe the Church as the communion of believers or saints, and condition its existence on the pure preaching of the Word" (Kostlin, Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopaedia, I. 474). The above definition, consistently applied, excludes infant baptism, since infants are incapable of faith, which always, in the New Testament, is a prerequisite to baptism. The New Testament teaching is quite clear on this point. John the Baptist required that those who were applicants for baptism should experience repentance, exercise faith, make a confession of sin and live a righteous life (Matthew 3:2; Acts 19:4). Jesus first made disciples and then baptized them (John 4:1), and gave distinct commandment that teaching should precede baptism (Matthew 28:19). In the preaching of the apostles repentance antedates baptism (Acts 2:38): the converts were filled with joy, and only men and women were baptized (Acts 8:5, Acts 8:8, Acts 8:12). There is no account or inference implying the baptism of an infant by Jesus or his apostles. This is generally conceded by scholars. Dollinger, a Catholic scholar, Professor of Church History in the University of Munich, says: "‘There is no proof or hint in the New Testament that the apostles baptized infants or ordered them to be baptized" (John Joseph Ignatius Dollinger, The First Age of the Church, 11.184). Dr. Edmund de Pressense, a French Senator and Protestant, says: "No positive fact sanctioning the practice (of infant baptism) can be adduced from the New Testament; the historical proofs alleged are in no way conclusive" (Pressense, Early Years of Christianity, 376. London, 1870). Many authors of books treating directly on infant baptism affirm that it is not mentioned in the Scriptures. One writer only is here quoted. Joh. W. F. Hofling, Lutheran Professor of Theology at Erlangen, says: "The sacred Scriptures furnish no historical proof that children were baptized by the apostles" (Hofling, Das Sakrament der Taufe, 99. Erlangen, 1846. 2 vols.). A few of the more recent authorities will not be amiss on this subject. The "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics," edited by Professor James Hastings and Professor Kirsopp Lake, of the University of Leyden, says: "There is no indication of the baptism of children" in the New Testament. The "Real Encyklopadie fur Protestantiche Theologie und Kirche" (XIX. 403. 3rd edition), the great German encyclopaedia, says: The practice of infant-baptism in the apostolic and post-apostolic age cannot be proved. We hear indeed frequently of the baptism of entire households, as in Acts 15:32 f; Acts 18:8; 1 Corinthians 1:16. But the last passage taken, 1 Corinthians 7:14, is not favorable to the supposition that infant baptism was customary at that time. For then Paul would not have written "else were your children unclean." Principal Robert Rainy, New College, Edinburgh, Presbyterian, says: Baptism presupposed some Christian instruction, and was preceded by fasting. It signified the forgivenss of past sins, and was the visible point of departure of the new life under Christian Influence’ and with the Inspiration of Christian purposes and aims. Here it was the "seal" which concerned a man to keep inviolate (Rainy, Ancient Catholic Church, 75) The form of baptism was dipping, or an immersion in water. John baptized in the river Jordan (Mark 1:5); and he baptized in Aenon near to Salim "because there was much water there" (John 3:23). Jesus was baptized in the Jordan (Mark 1:9), and he "went into the water" and he "came up out of the water" (Matthew 3:16). The symbolical passages (Romans 6:3-4; Colossians 2:12), which describe baptism as burial and resurrection make it certain that immersion was the New Testament act of baptism. This, indeed, is the meaning of the Greek word baptizein. The word is defined by Liddell and Scott, the secular Greek lexicon used in all colleges and universities, "to dip in or under the water." In the lexicon of J. H. Thayer, the standard New Testament lexicon, the word is defined as an "immersion in water." All scholarship confirms this view. Prof. R. C. Jebb, Litt. D., University of Cambridge, says: "I do not know whether there is any authoritative Greek-English lexicon which makes the word to mean ‘sprinkle’ or to ‘pour.’ I can only say that such a meaning never belongs to the word in Classical Greek" (Letter to the author. September 23, 1898). Dr. Adolf Harnack, University of Berlin, says: "Baptism undoubtedly signifies immersion. No proof can be found that it signifies anything else in the New Testament, and in the most ancient Christian literature" (Schaff, The Teaching of the Twelve, 50). Dr. Dosker, Professor of Church History, Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, says: Every candid historian will admit that the Baptist. have, both philologically and historically, the better of the argument, as to the prevailing mode of baptism. The word baptizo means immersion, both in classical and Biblical Greek, except where it is manifestly used in a tropical sense (Dosker, The Dutch Anabaptists, 176 Philadelphia, 1921). Nothing is more certain than that the New Testament churches uniformly practiced immersion, The Lord’s Supper shows forth the death of the Saviour till he shall come again. It is a perpetual memorial of the broken body and the shed blood of the risen Lord. In the Scriptures the Lord’s Supper is always preceded by the act of baptism, and there is no account of any person participating in the Supper who had not previously been baptized. That baptism should precede the Lord’s Supper is avowed by scholars of all communions. Dr. William Wall sums up the entire historical field when he says: "For no church ever gave the communion to any persons before they were baptized. . . Since among all of the absurdities that ever were held, none ever maintained that any person should partake of the communion before he was baptized" (Wall, The History of Infant Baptism, I. 632, 638. Oxford, 1862). The Baptists have always insisted that the ordinances were symbols and not sacraments. Indeed this is the heart of their contention. President E. Y. Mullins has concisely stated the historical contention of Baptists in the following words: They have seen with great vividness and clearness of outline the central spiritual elements of Christianity. With a like vividness and clearness they have perceived the significance of the outward form,,. For them it has seemed as if the very life of Christianity depended upon keeping the spiritual and ceremonial elements in their respective places. Christian history certainly justifies them in their view. Forms and ceremonies are like ladders. On them we may climb up or down. If we keep them in their places as symbols, the soul feeds on the truth symbolized. If we convert them into sacraments, the soul misses the central vitality itself, spiritual communion with God. An outward religious ceremony derives its chief significance from the context in which it is placed, from the general system of which it forms a part. If a ceremony is set in the context of a spiritual system of truths, it may become an indispensable element for the furtherance of those truths. If it is set in the context of a sacramental system, it may and does become a means for obscuring the truth and enslaving the soul. It is this perception of the value of ceremonies as symbols and of their perils as sacraments which animates Baptists in their strenuous advocacy of a spiritual interpretation of the ordinances of Christianity (McGlothlin, Infant Baptism Historically Considered, 7). The early churches were missionary bodies. They were required to carry out the great commission given by our Lord. The obedience to the missionary program laid out by the divine Lord, the disciples in a few generations preached the gospel to the known world. The first church was organized by Jesus and his apostles; and after the form of this one all other churches should be modeled. The churches so organized are to continue in the world until the kingdoms of this earth shall become the kingdom of our Lord, even Christ. Prophecy was full of the enduring character of the kingdom of Christ (Daniel 2:44-45). Jesus maintained a like view of his church and extended the promise to all the ages. He said: "Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). The word church here is doubtless used in its ordinary, literal sense as a local institution; and in the only other passage where it is found in Matthew (Matthew 18:17) it must be taken with the same signification. The great mass of scholarship supports the contention that this passage refers to the local, visible church of Christ (Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Gospel of Matthew). The critical meaning of the word does not differ from this (Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 197). The word "church" was used by our Lord and the apostles not so much in contra-distinction to the Jewish Theocracy, as to the Jewish synagogue, and the synagogue was always local (Cremer, Biblico-Theological Lexicon of the New Testament Greek, 330, 331). The Roman Catholics have always denied the existence of a universal spiritual church (AIzog, Universal Church History, 1.108, 109). Until the German Reformation there was practically no other conception of a church. When Luther and others split off from the Roman Catholic Church, a new interpretation of this passage was adopted to suit the new views; so they held that Matthew 16:18 merely pointed to the ultimate triumph of Christianity. But manifestly this interpretation was remote from the meaning of the Lord. Paul gives a large promise: "Unto him be glory in the church of Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Ephesians 3:21). Ellicott translates the passage: "To all the generations of the ages of ages." The glory of Christ was to exist in all of the ages in the church. The church was, therefore, bound to exist in all of the ages. Even the redeemed in heaven are described in the Scriptures as a church. The author believes that in every age since Jesus and the apostles, there have been companies of believers, churches, who have substantially held to the principles of the New Testament as now proclaimed by the Baptists. No attempt is made in these pages to trace a succession of bishops, as the Roman Catholics attempt to do, back to the apostles. Such an attempt is "laboring in the fire for mere vanity," and proceeds upon a mistaken view of the nature of the kingdom of Christ, and of the sovereignty of God, in his operations on the earth. Jesus himself, in a reply to an inquiry put to him by the Pharisees (Luke 17:20-24), compares his kingdom to the lightning, darting its rays in the most sovereign and uncontrollable manner from one extremity of the heavens to the other. And this view corresponds to God’s dealings in the spiritual realm. Wherever God has his elect, there in his own proper time, he sends the gospel to save them, and churches after his model are organized (William Jones, The History of the Christian Church, xvii. Philadelphia. 1832). The New Testament recognizes a democratic simplicity, and not a hierarchical monarchy. There is no irregularity, but a perpetual proclamation of principles. There is no intimation that there was not a continuity of churches, for doubtless there was, but our insistence is that this was not the dominant note in apostolic life. No emphasis is put on a succession of baptisms, or the historical order of churches. Some of the apostles were disciples of John the Baptist (John 1:35), but there is no record of the baptism of others, though they were baptized. Paul, the great missionary, was baptized by Ananias (Acts 9:17-18), but it is not known who baptized Ananias. Nothing definite is known of the origin of the church at Damascus. The church at Antioch became the great foreign missionary center, but the history of its origin is not distinctly given. The church at Rome was already in existence when Paul wrote to them his letter. These silences occur all through the New Testament, but there is a constant recurrence of type, a persistence of fundamental doctrines, and a proclamation of principles. This marked the whole apostolic period, and for that matter, every period since that time. This recurrence of type is recognized even where error was detected. The disciples desired Jesus to rebuke a man who walked not with them (Mark 9:40), but this Jesus refused to do. The church at Corinth was imperfect in practice and life. The Judaizing teachers constantly perverted the gospel, and John the Evangelist, in his last days, combated insidious error, but the great doctrines of the atoning work of Christ, conversion and repentance, the baptism of believers, the purity of the church, the freedom of the soul, and the collateral truths, were everywhere avowed. At times these principles have been combated and those who held them persecuted, often they have been obscured; sometimes they have been advocated by ignorant men, and at other times by brilliant graduates Of the universities, who frequently mixed the truth with philosophical speculations; yet; always, often under the most varied conditions, these principles have come to the surface. Baptist churches have the most slender ties of organization, and a strong government is not according to their polity. They are like the river Rhone, which sometimes flows as a river broad and deep, but at other times is hidden in the sands. It, however, never loses its continuity or existence. It is simply hidden for a period. Baptist churches may disappear and reappear in the most unaccountable manner.. Persecuted everywhere by sword and by fire, their principles would appear to be almost extinct, when in a most wondrous way God would raise up some man, or some company of martyrs, to proclaim the truth. The footsteps of the Baptists of the ages can more easily be traced by blood than by baptism. It is a 1ineage of suffering rather than a succession of bishops; a martyrdom of principle, rather than a dogmatic decree of councils; a golden chord of love, rather than an iron chain of succession, which, while attempting to rattle its links back to the apostles, has been of more service in chaining some protesting Baptist to the stake than in proclaiming the truth of the New Testament. It is, nevertheless, a right royal succession, that in every age the Baptists have been advocates of liberty for all, and have held that the gospel of the Son of God makes every man a free man in Christ Jesus. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 4: 01.1.04. CHAPTER 2 THE ANCIENT CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER II THE ANCIENT CHURCHES The period of the ancient churches (A. D. 100-325) is much obscured. Much of the material has been lost; much of it that remains has been interpolated by Mediaeval Popish writers and translators; and all of it has been involved in much controversy. Caution must, therefore, be observed m arriving at permanent conclusions. Hasty generalizations that all Christians and churches were involved in doctrinal error must be accepted with extreme caution. Strange and horrible charges began to be current against the Christians. The secrecy of their meetings for worship was ascribed, not to its true cause, the fear of persecution, but to a consciousness of abominations which could not bear the light The Jews were especially industrious in inventing and propagating such stories. In this way discredit was brought on the Christian name. It is certain, however, in the early days following the death of the apostle John, that the Christians lived simple and zealous lives. Isaac Taylor, who especially wrote against a superstitious overvaluation of the patristic age, gives a fine picture of early Christian life. He says: Our brethren of the early church challenge our respect, as well as affection; for theirs was the fervor of a steady faith in things unseen and eternal; theirs, often, a meek patience under the most grievous wrongs; theirs the courage to maintain a good profession before the frowning face of philosophy, of secular tyranny, and of splendid superstition; theirs was abstractness from the world and a painful self-denial; theirs the most arduous and costly labors of love; theirs a munificence in charity, altogether without example; theirs was a reverent and scrupulous care of the sacred writings; and this one merit, if they had no other, is of a superlative degree, and should entitle them to the veneration and grateful regards of the modern church. How little do many readers of the Bible, nowadays, think of what it cost the Christians of the second and third centuries, merely to rescue and hide the sacred treasures from the rage of the heathen (Taylor, Ancient Christianity, I 37). A most beautiful and pathetic picture is given by the author of the Epistola ad Diognetum in the early part of the second century. He says: The Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, by language, nor by civil institutions. For they neither dwell in cities by themselves, nor use a peculiar tongue, nor lead a singular mode of life. They dwell in the Grecian or barbarian cities, as the case may be; they follow the usages of the country in dress, food, and the other affairs of life. Yet they present a wonderful and confessedly paradoxical conduct They dwell in their own native lands, but as strangers. They take part in all things, as citizens; and they suffer all things, as foreigners. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every native land is a foreign. They marry, like all others; they have children; but they do not cast away their offsprings. They have the table in common, but not wives. They are in the flesh, but do not live after the flesh. They live upon the earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the existing laws, and excel the laws by their lives. They love all, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and yet they are condemned. They are killed and made alive. They are poor and make many rich. They lack all things, and in all things abound. They are reproached, and glory in their reproaches. They are calumniated, and are justified. They are cursed, and they bless. They receive scorn, and they give honor. They do good, and are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice, as being made alive. By the Jews they are attacked as aliens, and by the Greeks persecuted; and the cause of the enmity their enemies cannot tell. In short, what the soul is to the body, the Christians are in the world. The soul is diffused through all the members of the body, and the Christians are spread through the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but it is not of the body; so the Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, invisible, keeps watch in the visible body; so also the Christians are seen to live in the world, for their piety is invisible. The flesh hates and wars against the soul; suffering no wrong from it, but because it resists fleshly pleasures; and the world hates the Christians with no reason, but they resist its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and members, by which it is hated ; so the Christians love their haters. The soul is enclosed in the body. but holds the body together; so the Christians are detained in the world as in a prison; but they contain the world. Immortal, the soul dwells in the mortal body; so the Christians dwell in the corruptible, but look for incorruption in heaven. The soul is the better for restriction in food and drink; and the Christians increase, though daily punished. This lot God has assigned to the Christians in the world; and it cannot be taken from them (Epist. ad Diognetum, C. 5 and 6 p.69 sq. Otto. Lips., 1852). Through all of this period there were doubtless many churches that remained true to the New Testament ideals. The more earnestly they adhered to Scriptural principles the less likely was mention made of them. It was the unusual and the heretical that attracted attention and was recorded in the histories of the times. For the first three centuries the Lord placed Christianity in the most unfavorable circumstances that it might display its moral power, and gain its victory over the world by spiritual weapons alone. Until the reign of Constantine it had not even a legal existence in the Roman empire, but was first ignored as a Jewish sect, then slandered, proscribed, persecuted, as a treasonable innovation, and the adoption of it made punishable with confiscation and death. Besides, it offered not the slightest favor, as Mohammedanism afterwards did, to the corrupt inclinations of the heart, but against the current ideas of the Jews and heathens it so presented its inexorable demand of repentance and conversion, renunciation of self and of the world, that more, according to Tertullian, were kept out of the new sect by love of pleasure, than by love of life. The Jewish origin of Christianity also, and the poverty and obscurity of a majority of its professors offended the pride of the Greeks and Romans. (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 1.148). In spite of these extraordinary difficulties Christianity made progress. The hindrances became helps in the providence of God. Persecution led to martyrdom, and martyrdom had attractions. Tertullian exclaimed to the heathen: "All of your ingenious cruelties can accomplish nothing; they are only a lure to this sect. Our number increases the more you destroy us. The blood of the Christians is their seed." The moral earnestness of the Christians contrasted powerfully with the prevailing corruption of the age, and while it repelled the frivolous and voluptuous, it could not fail to impress most strongly the deepest and noblest minds. This progress extended to every part of the empire. "We are a people of yesterday," says Tertullian, "and yet we have filled every place belonging to you-cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum. We leave you your temples only. You can count your armies our number in a single province will be greater." Nevertheless, even before the death of the last of the apostles many dangerous and grievous heresies had sprung up in the Christian churches. A constant tendency to separate from the truth, as proclaimed in the Scriptures, was manifested in some places. The trend from the Word of God has been noted by the apostle Paul, and in some of his Epistles he combated error. Shortly after the death of the last of the apostles some dangerous heresies crept into the churches, and were advocated by many learned and distinguished men. It is not to be understood that all, or even most of the doctrinal errors, which are found in later Roman Catholic history are to be found in this period. This is not the case. For example, the worship of Mary and of images, transubstantiation, the infallibility of the pope, and the immaculate conception are all of later date. The tendency was rather to lessen the demand for repentance and faith, the experimental in religion, and rather to emphasize external signs and symbols. It was imagined that the outward symbol could take the place of the inward grace. The point of departure probably had its largest expression in baptismal salvation, and the tendency of some churches toward episcopacy, and away from democratic simplicity. One of the very earliest voices lifted against the abuses was that of the Shepherd of Hermas. The Shepherd says: Customs have become worldly; discipline is relaxed; the Church is a sickly old woman, incapable of standing on her feet; rulers and ruled are all languishing, and many among them are corrupt, covetous, greedy, hypocritical, contentious, slanderers, blasphemers, libertines, spies, renegades, schismatics. Worthy teachers are not wanting, but there are also many false prophets, vain, eager after the first sees, for whom the greatest thing in life is not the practice of piety and justice, but the strife for the post of command. Now the day of wrath is at hand; the punishment will be dreadful; the Lord will give unto every one according to his works. One of the earliest and most hurtful errors was the dogma of baptismal regeneration. This error in one form or another has marred the life and colored the history of all of the Christian ages. It began early and the virus may be traced to this day not only among ritualists, but likewise in the standards of evangelical Christians. Tertullian was influenced by it to oppose infant baptism, and under other conditions it became the frightful origin of that heresy. Nevertheless, the churches continued to be free and independent. There were as yet no metropolitan bishops, and the office and authority of a pope was not yet known. Rome in those days had no great authority in the Christian world. "The see of Rome," remarks Cardinal Newman, "possessed no great mind in the whole period of persecution. Afterwards for a long time it had not a single doctor to show. The great luminary of the Western World is St. Augustine; he, no infallible teacher, has formed the intellect of Europe" (John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita sua, 4()7. London, 1864). Dean Stanley rightly adds: "There have been occupants of the sees of Constantinople. Alexandria, and Canterbury who have produced more effect on the mind of Christendom by their utterances than any of the popes" (Stanley, Christian Institutions, 241. New York, 1881). There was, however, a constant tendency towards centralization. As the pastor assumed rights which were not granted to him by the Scriptures, some of the metropolitan pastors exercised an undue authority over some of the smaller churches. Then the churches in some of the cities sought the patronage and protection of the pastors of the larger cities. Finally Rome, the political center of the world, became the religious center as well. In time the pastor in Rome became the, universal pope. All of this was of slow growth and required centuries for its consummation. Gregory the Great (A. D. 590-694) was "the first of the proper popes" and with him begins "the development of the absolute papacy" (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, I. 15). The growth of the papacy was a process of history. Long before this the bishops of Rome had made arrogant claims over other churches. Notably was this true of Leo I., A. D. 440-461. All of this is conceded by Hefele. He says: It is, however, not to he mistaken, that the bishops of Rome did not, everywhere, in all the West, exercise full patriarchal rights; that, to-wit, in several provinces, simple bishops were ordained without his cooperation (Hefele, I. 385). The line of the absolute Mediaeval popes began with Gregory. "Christianity in Rome," says Gregorovius, "became in a very short time corrupt; and this is not to be wondered at, because the ground in which the seed of its doctrine had been sown was rotten and the least apt of all other grounds to bring forth good fruit. . . The Roman character had not been changed from what it was of old, because baptism cannot change the spirit of the times" (Gregorovius, Storia della citta di Roma nel Medio Eve, I.155). Gregory objected to the title "universal bishop." "I do not esteem that an honor," he declares, "by which my brethren lose their honor. My honor is the solid strength of my brethren.. . . But no more of this: away with words which inflate pride and wound charity" (Gregory, Ep. 30.III. 933). Nevertheless, the conception of a local, independent church, by these and other means was partly overthrown; and much of the Christian world was called upon to suffer at the hands of a wicked and often ungodly hierarchy. Believers’ baptism continued to prevail in the churches. Notwithstanding the efficacy which was supposed to exist in baptism, infant baptism was of slow growth. Even after its first appearance it was opposed by many, and for a long time was not generally practiced. The writers known as the Apostolic Fathers, Clement, Barnabas, Ignatius and the Pastor of Hermas, all required faith on the part of the candidate baptized. Clement does not mention baptism in his Epistle to the Corinthians; but he does exhort parents to "let your children be partakers of the Christian training" (Migne, Patrologiae gr., I. 255). Barnabas says: "Mark how he has described at once both the water and the cross. For these words imply, blessed are they who, placing their trust in the cross, have gone down into the water; for, says he, they shall receive their reward in due time" (Migne, Patrologiae gr., II. 755). Ignatius writes to Polycarp as follows: "let your baptism be to you an armor, and faith as a spear, and love as a helmet, and patience as a panoply" (Ibid, V. 847). The order of baptism as well as the exhortation exclude infant baptism. And the Shepherd of Hermas speaks of those who "have heard the word, and wished to be baptized in the name of the Lord" (Ibid, Patrologiae gr., 11.906). The Apostolic Fathers require that faith shall precede baptism and hence they know nothing of infant baptism.. Dr. Charles W. Bennett, Professor of Historical Theology in Garrett Biblical Institute, Methodist, says: "The Apostolic Fathers contain no positive information relative to the practice of the church of their time respecting infant baptism" (Bennett, Christian Archaeology, 391. New York, 1889). Passing to the second generation of the Fathers, Justin Martyr, A. D. 114-168, has sometimes been quoted as favoring the practice of infant baptism. After relating the evils of human nature and the bad habits of men, Justin declares that, in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and ignorance, but may become the children of choice and of knowledge, and may obtain in water the remission of sins formerly committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has repented of his sins, Its name of God the Father and Lord of the universe; he who leads to the laver the person that is to be washed calling him by name alone (Migne, VI.419). It is now quite generally admitted that Justin knows only the baptism of adults, though he believed in baptismal regeneration. The celebrated passage from Irenaeus is as follows: For he came to save all through means of himself, all I say, who through him are born again to God-infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child, for children; thus sanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of youths, and thus sanctifying them to the Lord (Migne, VII. 783). This passage is probably spurious. There is no proof, however, that it refers to baptism at all. Dr. Karl R. Hagenbach, for fifty years professor in the University of Basel, says that this passage does not "afford any decisive proof. It only expresses the beautiful idea that Jesus was Redeemer in every stage of life; but it does not say that he redeemed children by the water of baptism" (Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, 200. New York, 1869). Origen, A. D. 185-254, is quoted in favor of infant baptism. His words are: To these considerations it can be added, that it may be enquired why, since the baptism of the church is given for the remission of sins, baptism is given according to the observance of the church. Even to children (parvulis) for the grace of baptism would seem superfluous if there was nothing in children requiring remission and indulgence (Migne, XII. 492) The same sentiment is found in his commentary on Romans. The original Greek of Origen no longer exists, and there remain of the words of Origen only translations by Rufinus and Jerome in Latin. These translations are notoriously unreliable, and it is admitted that the ideas of a later age are freely incorporated in the writings of Origen. The children mentioned are not "infants," for in the same work this word is used to describe Jesus at the age of twelve (Migne, XIII. 1849).All that can be claimed is that Origen refers to the baptism of children, not infants, as an apostolic tradition. This is not of much weight, when it is recalled that Origen refers to a number of things as of apostolic tradition which are not even mentioned in the Scriptures. The earliest clear evidence of infant baptism is found in Tertullian who opposed it (A. D. 185). The first direct evidence in favor of it is found in the writings of Cyprian, in the Council of Carthage, in Africa, A. D. 253. In writing to one Fidus, Cyprian takes the ground that infants should be baptized as soon as they are born (Epistle of Cyprian, LVIII. 2). This opinion, however, was not based upon the Scriptures, and did not meet with the approval of the Christian world. The early councils of the church were all against infant baptism. The Council of Elvira or Grenada, A. D. 305, required the delay of baptism for two years (Hefele, History of the Councils, 1.155. Edinburgh, 1871). The Council of Laodicaea held A. D. 360, demanded that those who are "to be baptized must learn the creed by heart and recite it" (Hefele, II.319). The Council of Constantinople decreed that persons should "remain a long time under Scriptural instruction before they receive baptism" (Ibid, II.368). And the Council of Carthage, A. D. 398, decreed that "catechumens shall give their names, and be prepared for baptism" (DuPin, Bibliotheque universelle, c. 4.282). Many of the most prominent Christians, though born of Christian parents, were not baptized in infancy. The number of such persons is so great, and the details are so many, that mention can he made of only a few of them. The list would include the celebrated historian Eusebius, the emperor Constantine the Great, Fphrem Syrus, and the great Augustine. Basil the Great was born in the year 329, in a wealthy and pious family, whose ancestors had distinguished themselves as martyrs. His mother and grandmother were Christians and four brothers and five sisters were well-known Christians. He was baptized when he was twenty-six years of age. In a remarkable passage, A. D. 380, he plainly indicates the drift of the times. He says: Do you demur and loiter and put off baptism? When you have been from a child catechized in the Word, and you are not yet acquainted with the truth? Having been always learning it, are you not yet come to the knowledge of it? A seeker all your life long. A considerer till you are old. When will you make a Christian? When shall we see you as one of us? Last year you were staying till this year; and now you have a mind to stay till next. Take heed, that by promising yourself a longer life, you do not quite miss of your hope. Do you not know what changes tomorrow may bring? (Migne, XXXI. 1514). All of this demonstrates that the early Christians continued to baptize upon a profession of faith; and that infant baptism had gained no permanent foothold till ages after the days of the apostles. Infant baptism was not of rapid growth. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo-Regius, North Africa (A. D. 353-430) was not the first to practice it; but he was, though not himself baptized in infancy, its first and ablest defender. He developed the theological argument in its favor. The Council of Mela, in Numidia, A. D. 416, composed of fifteen persons, and presided over by Augustine, decreed: Also, it is the pleasure of the bishops in order that whoever denies that infants newly born of their mothers, are to be baptized or says that baptism is administered for the remission of their own sins, but not on account of original sin, delivered from Adam, and to be expiated by the laver of regeneration, be accursed (Wall, The History of Infant Baptism, I. 265). It is a suggestive fact prophetic of the future that the first council favoring the practice of infant baptism also accompanied this by a curse against those who dissented from the opinions of the council. It furthermore shows there were opponents of infant baptism in those days, and that the infant rite was not the universal custom of those times. The first rule, to which reference is made as favoring infant baptism in Europe, was by the Spanish Council of Gerunda, A. D. 517. The Council was composed of seven men who subscribed to ten rules. The canon covering the point at issue here is Article V.: But concerning little sons lately born, it pleaseth us to appoint, that if, as is usual, they be infirm, and do not suck their mother’s milk, even on the same day in which they are born (if they be offered, if they be brought) they may he baptized. The rule was that ordinarily catechetical instruction should precede baptism. In the case of infants who were sick, because of the fear that they would be lost in case of death without baptism, they were to be baptized in infancy. No provision was made for the baptism of infants who were in good health. It has also been seriously doubted whether this Council was ever held. Charlemagne, A. D. 789, issued the first law in Europe for baptizing infants. He was engaged in a stubborn war with the Saxons, but their brave general Windekind, always found resources to defeat his designs. In the end his imperial majesty hit upon a method, which disheartened Windekind, by detaching his people from him, and which completely made an end of the war. This was by reducing the whole nation by a dreadful alternative; either of being assassinated by the troops, or of accepting life on the condition of professing themselves Christians by being baptized; and the severe laws still stand in the capitularies of this monarch, by which they were obliged, "on pain of death, to baptize themselves, and of heavy fines to baptize their children within the year of their birth." That this is a correct interpretation of the attitude of the early churches there is not the shadow of a doubt. All historians confirm, this contention. A few high authorities are here quoted. Dr. Adolph Harnack, of the University of Berlin, says of the post-apostolic period: There is no sure trace of infant baptism in the epoch; personal faith is a necessary condition (Harnack, History of Dogma, I. 20 note 2). He further says: Complete obscurity prevails as to the Church’s adoption of the practice of child-baptism, which, though it owes its origin to the idea of this ceremony being indispensable to salvation, is nevertheless a proof that the superstitious view of baptism had increased. In the time of Irenseus (II. 22, 4), and Tertullian (de bapt. 18), child-baptism had already become very general and was founded on Matthew 19:14. We have no testimony regarding it from earlier times (Ibid, II. 142). And finally he says that it was established in the fifth century as the general usage. Its complete adoption runs parallel with the death of heathenism (Ibid, IV. 284). Professor H. G. Wood, of the University of Cambridge, says: We are, as Harnack says. "in complete obscurity as to the Church’s adoption of the practice." The clear third century references to child-baptism interpret it in the lignt of original sin, and if the adoption of the practice is due to this interpretation, it is almost certainly a late second century development . . . References to original sin in Clement of Rome or other writers earlier than Cyprian cannot be held to imply a knowledge of the custom of infant baptism. Moreover, the idea that infants needed to be baptized for the remission of sin. is contrary to all that is known of early Christian feeling toward childhood. . . . Even in the third century infant baptism cannot he described as a Church custom. That the Church allowed parents to bring their infants to be baptized is obvious; that some teachers and bishops may have encouraged them to do so is probable, though there is no reason to suppose that Tertullian’s position was peculiarly his own. But infant baptism was not at this time enjoined, or incorporated in the standing orders of the Church (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, II.). Dr. F. C. Conybeare says that "the essential thing was that a man should come to baptism of his own free will." He further says: On such grounds was justified the transition of a baptism which began as a spontaneous act of self-consecration into an opus operandum. How long after this it was before infant baptism became normal inside the Byzantine church we do not know exactly. . . . The change came more quickly in Latin than in Greek Christendom, and very slowly indeed in the Armenian and the Georgian churches (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, Article on Baptism). Andre Lagarde says: Until the sixth century, infants were baptized only when they were in danger of death. About this time the practice was introduced of administering baptism even when they were not ill (Lagarde, Latin Church in the Middle Ages, 37). These facts are altogether against the idea that infant baptism was the practice of the ancient churches. In its introduction it met with the greatest opposition, and it was only under the anathema and by the point of the sword that infant baptism was pressed upon the unwilling Christians; and the same intolerance has followed its history to the present time. Of the form of baptism practiced in the ancient churches there is not a particle of doubt. It is certain that immersion was the universal rule, save in the case of a few sick persons. There are six elaborate descriptions or rituals of baptism which have come down to us. They were all well known in the churches and all of them prescribe immersion.. They are the so-called Egyptian Acts (Gebhardt and Harnack, Texts and Researches, VI. c 4 (28)); the Canon Hipolyte, the third century (Hipolyte, Bk. VII. (29)); the Apostolic Constitutions or Canons, in the Greek, the Coptic, and the Latin versions, A. D. 350-400; Cyril of Jerusalem, A, D. 286 (Migne XXXIII. 48); Ambrose of Milan, A. D. 397 (Bunsen, Analecta, II. 465), and Dionysius Areopagita, A. D. 450. These rituals were largely used in the churches and represent the universal practice of immersion. Of this practice of immersion there is proof in Africa, in Palestine, in Egypt, in Antioch and Constantinople and in Cappadocia. For the Roman use of immemion we have the testimony of eight hundred years. Tertullian bears witness for the second century (Tertullian, De Bapt., c. 4); Leo the Great in the fifth century (Fourth letter to the Bishop of Sicily); Pope Pelagius in the sixth century (Epist. ad Gaudent); Theodulf of Orleans in the eighth century; and in the eleventh century the Romans dipped the subject "only once" (Canisius, Lectiones Antiq., III 281). These examples settle the use of the Italians. There is also the testimony of the early Christian monuments. At first the Christians baptized in rivers and fountains. This, says Walafrid Strabo, was done with great simplicity (Migne, CXIV, 958). Later, on account of persecutions, the Christians hid themselves; and the Catacombs furnished many examples of baptisteries. Dr. Cote, who lived many years in Rome, and closely studied the baptismal question, says: "During the dark days of imperial persecutions the primitive Christians of Rome found a ready refuge in the Catacombs, where they constructed baptisteries for the administration of the rite of immersion" (Cote, Archaeology of Baptism, 151. London, 1876). Even a brief description of these baptisteries cannot be given here, but one who has not studied the subject carefully will be surprised at their number and extent. Afterwards when more liberty of worship was granted to the Christians many churches were erected. At first the baptistery was an independent structure, separate from the place of worship; but later it became the custom to place the baptistery in the church house itself. Such baptisteries were erected in almost every country where the Christian religion had spread. This was particularly true in Italy. Cote gives a list of not less than sixty-six baptisteries in that country alone (Cote, Baptisteries, 110). As late as the eighth and ninth centuries baptisteries continued to be in full use in Italy. Baptisteries were erected in Italy as late as the fourteenth century, while immersion continued in the Cathedral of Milan till the close of the eighteenth century. These baptisteries were decorated and naturally many of the emblems, mosaics and paintings were intended to illuminate the form of baptism. The so-called Christian Art was found in the Catacombe, on the interior of churches and on church furniture and utensils. The oldest pictures do not date before the time of the Emperor Constantine (Parker, The Archeology of Rome, XII. 11. Oxford, 1877); many of them have been constantly repaired, and some of the most famous ones have been so changed that they have lost their original character (Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in Italy, I. 22). No certain conclusions can be drawn from this source, but the teaching of all early art indicates immersion as the form of baptism. The pictures represent river scenes, the candidate stands in the water, and every circumstance points toward the primitive act of baptism. The unanimous opinion of the professors of archaeology in the great universities is that the ancient pictures, in the Catacombs and elsewhere, of baptism, represent the rite as administered by immersion (See Christian’s Baptism in Sculpture and Art. Louisville, 1907). Affusion for baptism was of slow growth. Possibly the earliest mention of affusion is found in the famous Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Bryennios, Didacha ton Dodeka Apostolon. Constantinople, 1883), which is variously claimed to be a production of the first to the seventh century. Novatian (A. D. 250) presents the first case of clinic baptism on record. He had water profusely poured upon him while sick in bed, but his baptism is distinctly called "an abridgment" or "compend" (Eusebius, The Church History, 289. New York, 1890). Affusion is a mere substitute for immersion. France was the first country where affusion was permitted to persons in the full enjoyment of health (Wall, The History of Infant Baptism, I. 576). The first law for sprinkling was obtained in the following manner: "Pope Stephen III., being driven from Rome by Astulphus, King of the Lombards, in 753, fled to Pepin, who, a short time before, had usurped the crown of France. Whilst he remained there, the monks of Cressy, in Brittany, consulted him, whether, in cases of necessity, baptism, performed by pouring water on the head of the infant, would be lawful. Stephen replied that it would" (Edinburgh Encyclopedia, III. 236). It was not, however, till A.D. 1311, that the Council of Ravenna decrecd: "Baptism is to be administered by trine aspersion or immersion" (Labbe and Cosasart, Sacrosancta Concilia, II. B. 2.1586. Paris, 1671). Soon after this sprinkling became customary in France. For the first thirteen centuries immersion was the normal practice of the Christian world. "Baptism by immersion says Dollinger, "continued to be the prevailing practice of the Church as late as the fourteenth century" (Dollinger, The History of the Church, II. 294. London, 1840-42). Immersion was practiced in some parts of Germany in the sixteenth century. In England immersion was the practice for sixteen hundred years. At the time of the birth of Jesus religious liberty was unknown in the world. Even the ancient republics never recognized it. Socrates, with all of his moral heroism, never arose above the assumption, that impiety should be punished with death. In his defense before his judges he says: My duty is to persuade you, if I can; but you have sworn to follow your own convictions in judging according to the law-not to make the laws bend to your partiality. And it is your duty so to do. Do not, therefore, require of me proceedings dishonorable in reference to myself and impious in regard to you, especially at a time when I am myself rebutting an accusation of impiety advanced by Miletus (Grote, History of Greece, VIII. 656) It was fully agreed by all Pagan nations that the state had a right to regulate all matters connected with religion; and the citizen was bound to obey. Early did the Christians avow and amplify religious liberty. The blood of persecution brought to the front this doctrine. Tertullian boldly tells the heathen that everybody has a natural and inalienable right to worship God according to his own conscience. His words are: However, it is a fundamental human right. a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions; one man’s religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is. assuredly no part of religion to compel religion-to which freewill and not force should lead us-the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing mind. You will render no real service to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice. For they can have no desire of offerings from the unwilling, unless they are animated by a spirit of contention, which is a thing altogether undivine (Tertullian, ad Scapulam9 c. 2). Justin Martyr affirmed similar opinions (Apol. I. C. 2. 4, 12), and later Lactantius says: Religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected. Torture and piety are widely different; nor is it possible for truth to be united with violence, or justice with cruelty. Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion (Lactantius, Instit. div. V. 20). Dr. Baur, commenting on these statements, says: It is remarkable how already the oldest Christian Apologists, in vindicating the Christian faith, were led to assert the Protestant principle of freedom of faith and conscience as an inherent attribute of the conception of religion against their heathen opponents (Baur, Gesch der Christl. Kirche, I. 428). Hase says: Thus did the church prove, in a time of unlimited arbitrary power, the refuge of popular freedom, and saints assumed the part of tribunes of the people (Hase, Church History, sec. 117, p. 161, 7th edition). This is hardly a Protestant doctrinal tenet, but it does belong to the Baptists. Protestants have been all too ready to persecute. When Constantine, after the victory of Milvian Bridge, on the Tiber, October 27, 312, became emperor he issued a decree of toleration. The famous edict of Milan was issued by Constantine and Licinius. It is of so much importance that the law is here transcribed in full. It is as follows: Perceiving long ago that religious liberty ought not to be denied, but that it ought to be granted to the judgment and desire of each individual to perform his religious duties according to his own choice, we had given orders that every man, Christians as well as others, should preserve the faith of his own sect and religion. But since in this rescript, in which much liberty was granted them, many and various conditions seemed clearly added, some of them, it may be, after a little retired from such observance. When I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinna Augustua, came under favorable auspices to Milan and took under consideration everything which pertained to the common weal and prosperity, we resoled among other things, or rather first of all, to make such decrees as seemed in many respects for the benefit of every one; namely, such as should preserve reverence and piety toward the deity. We resolved, that is, to grant both to the Christians and to all men freedom to follow the religion which they choose, that whatever heavenly divinity exists may be propitious to us and to all that live under our government. We have, therefore, determined, with sound and upright purpose, that liberty is to be denied to no one, to choose and to follow the religious observance of the Christians, but that to each one freedom is to be given to devote his mind to that religion which he may think adapted to himself, in order that the Deity may exhibit to us in all things his accustomed care and favor. It was fitting that we should write that this is our pleasure, that those conditions being entirely left out which were contained in our former letter concerning the Christians which was sent to your devotedness, everything that seemed very severe and foreign to our mildness may be annulled, and that now every one who has the same desire to observe the religion of the Christians may do so without molestation. We have resolved to communicate this most fully to thy care, in order that thou mayest know that we have granted to these same Christians freedom and full liberty to observe their own religion. Since this has been granted freely to them, thy devotedness perceives that liberty is granted to others also who may wish to follow their own religious observances; it being clearly in accordance with the tranquillity of our times, that each one should have the liberty of choosing and worshipping whatever deity he pleases. This has been done by us in order that we might not seem in any way to discriminate against any rank of religion. And we decree still further in regard to the Christians, that their places, in which they were formerly accustomed to assemble, and concerning which in the former letter sent to thy devotedness a different command was given, if it appear that any have bought them either from our treasury or from any other person, shall be restored to the said Christians, without demanding money or any other equivalent, with no delay or hesitation. If any happen to have received the said places as a gift, they shall restore them as quickly as possible to these same Christians; with the understanding that if those who have bought these places, or those who have received them, demand anything from our bounty, they may go to the judge of the district, that provision may be made for them by our clemency. All these things are to be granted to the society of Christians by your care immediately and without any delay. And since the said Christians are known to have possessed not only these places in which they were accustomed to assemble, but also other places, belonging not to individuals among them, but to the society as a whole, that is, to the society of Christians, you will command that all of these, in virtue of the law which we have above stated, be restored, without any hesitation, to these same Christians; that is, to their society and congregation; the above mentioned provision being of course observed, that those who restore them without price, as we have before said, may expect indemnification from our bounty. In all these things, for the behoof of the aforesaid society of Christians, you are to use the utmost diligence, to the end that our command may be speedily fulfilled, and that in this also, by our clemency, provision may be made for the common and public tranquillity. For by this means, as we have said before, the divine favor toward us which we have already experienced in many matters will continue sure through all time. And that the terms of this gracious ordinance may be known to all, it is expected that this which we have written will be published everywhere by you and brought to the knowledge of all, in order that this gracious ordinance of ours may remain unknown to no one (Eusebius. The Church History, X. 5). Of this decree Mason says: It is the very first announcement of that doctrine which is now regarded as the mark and principle of civilization, the foundation of solid liberty, the characteristic of modern politics. In vigorous and trenchant sentences it sets forth perfect freedom of conscience, the unfettered choice of religion (Mason, Persecution of Dioclesian, 327). A forced religion is no religion at all. Unfortunately, the successors of Constantine from the time of Theodosius the Great (385-395) enforced the Christian religion to the exclusion of every other; and not only so, but they enforced so-called orthodoxy to the exclusion of every form of dissent, which was punished as a crime against the State. Absolute freedom of religion and of worship is a fact logically impossible on the church-state system. The government of the Roman empire was too absolute to abandon supervision of religion, so that the edict of Constantine was only temporary. Further, the rising power of episcopacy fitted into the monarchial system. Many of the bishops and monks were "men in black clothes, as voracious as elephants, and insatiably thirsty, but concealing their sensuality tinder an artificial paleness." The first blood of heretics shed by a Christian prince was by Maximus, A. D. 385, in the Spanish city of Treves. This act was approved by the bishops, with a single exception, but the Christian churches recoiled from it with horror. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 5: 01.1.05. CHAPTER 3 STRUGGLE AGAINST CORRUPTION ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER III THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CORRUPTION AT first there was unity in fundamental doctrines and practices. Step by step some of the churches turned aside from the old paths and sought out many inventions. Discipline became lax and persons of influence were permitted to follow a course of life which would not have been tolerated under the old discipline. The times had changed and some of the churches changed with the times. There were those who had itching ears and they sought after novelties. The dogma of baptismal regeneration was early accepted by many, and men sought to have their sins washed away in water rather than in the blood of Christ. Ministers became ambitious for power and trampled upon the independence of the churches. The churches conformed to the customs of the world and the pleasures of society. There were, however, churches which remained uncorrupted, and there were faithful men who raised their voices against the departure from apostolic practice. An account will be given of some of the early reformers who offered their protest and called the people back to the simplicity of the gospel. Chevalier Christian Charles Bunsen, while Prussian ambassador to London, walking in the light and breathing in the atmosphere of a purer age. held holy communion with the early churches. He used these earnest words: Take away ignorance, misunderstanding, and forgeries, and the naked truth remains; not a spectre, thank God, carefully to be veiled; but an Image of divine beauty radiant with eternal truth! Break down the barriers which separate us from the communion of the primitive church-I mean, free yourselves from the letter of the later formulas, canons, and conventional abstractions-and you move unshackled in the open ocean of faith; you hold fellowship with the spirits of the heroes of Christian antiquity; and you are able to trace the stream of unity as it rolls through eighteen centuries in spite of rocks and quicksands (Bunsen, Hippolytus,4). The first protest in the way of separation from the growing corruptions of the times was the movement of the Montanist churches. This Montanus, the leader, was a Phrygian, who arose about the year A. D. 156. The most distinguished advocate of Montanism was Tertullian who espoused and defended their views. They held that science and art, all worldly education or gay form of life, should be avoided, because such things belonged to paganism. The crown of life was martyrdom. Religious life they held to be austere. Against a mortal sin the church should defend itself by rightly excluding him who committed it, for the holiness of the church was simply the holiness of the members. With such principles they could not fail to come in conflict with the popular Christianity of the day. The substance of the contentions of these churches was for a life of the Spirit. It was not a new form of Christianity; it was a recovery of the old, the primitive church set over against the obvious corruptions of the current Christianity. The old church demanded purity; the new church had struck a bargain with the world, and had arranged itself comfortably with it, and they would, therefore, break with it (Moeller, Montanism in Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 111.1562). Their contention was not so much one of doctrine as of discipline. They insisted that those who had "lapsed" from the true faith should be rebaptized, because they had denied Christ and ought to be baptized anew. On this account they were termed "Anabaptists," and some of their principles reappeared in Anabaptism (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, II. 427). Infant baptism was not yet a dogma, and we know that it was rejected by the Montanists. Tertullian thought only adults ought to be immersed. The Montanists were deeply rooted in the faith, and their opponents admitted that they received the entire Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments, and they were sound in their views of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Epiphanius, Hoer, XLVJII. 1). They rejected episcopacy and the right of the bishop’s claim to exercise the power of the keys. The movement spread rapidly through Asia Minor and North Africa, and for a time in Rome itself. It appealed very powerfully to the sterner moralists, stricter disciplinarians, and more deeply pious minds among all Christians. Montanism had the advantage of claiming divine revelation for stricter principles. Montanism had made so much stir in Asia Minor, before the close of the second century, that several councils were called against it, and finally the whole movement was officially condemned. But Montanism continued for centuries, and finally became known under other names (Eusebius, The Church History, 229 note 1 by Dr. McGiffert). In Phrygia the Montanists came in contact with, and probably in actual communion with, the Paulicians. We know that they were still in existence in the year 722 (Theophanes, 617. Bond ed.). The rise of the Novatian churches was another outcropping of the old strife between the lax and strict discipline. In the year 250 Novatian strenuously opposed the election of Cornelius as the pastor of the church in Rome. Novatian declared that he did not wish the office himself, but he pleaded for the purity of the church. The election of Cornelius prevailed, and Novatian carried many churches and ministers with him in his protest. The vast extent of the Novatian movement may be learned from the authors who wrote against him, and the several parts of the Roman empire where they flourished. These churches continued to flourish in many parts of Christendom for six centuries (Walch, Historic der Ketzereyen, 11.220). Dr. Robinson traces a continuation of them up to the Reformation and the rise of the Anabaptist movement. "Great numbers followed his (Novatian’s) example," says he, "and all over the Empire Puritan churches were constituted and flourished through two hundred succeeding years. Afterwards, when penal laws obliged them to lurk in corners, and worship God in private, they were distinguished by a variety of names, and a succession of them continued till the Reformation" (Robinson, Ecclesiastical Researches, 126. Cambridge, 1792). On account of the purity of their lives they were called the Cathari, that is, the pure. "What is still more," says Mosheim, "they rebaptized such as came over to them from the Catholics" (Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History 1.203. New York, 1871). Since they baptized those who came to them from other communions they were called Anabaptists. The fourth Lateran Council decreed that these rebaptizers should be punished by death. Accordingly, Albanus, a zealous minister, and others, were punished with death. They were, says Robinson, "trinitarian Baptists." They held to the independence of the churches; and recognized the equality of all pastors in respect to dignity and authority. The Donatists arose in Numidia, in the year 311, and they soon extended over Africa. They taught that the church should be a holy body. Crespin, a French historian, says that they held the following views: First, for purity of church members, by asserting that none ought to be admitted into the church but such as are visibly true believers and true saints. Secondly, for purity of church discipline. Thirdly, for the independency of each church. Fourthly, they baptized again those whose first baptism they had reason to doubt. They were consequently termed rebaptizers and Anabaptists. In his early historical writings David Benedict, the Baptist historian, wrote with much caution of the denominational character of the Donatists. He followed closely the statements of other writers in his history; but in his last days he went into the original sources and produced a remarkable book called a "History of the Donatists" (Pawtucket, 1875). In that book he recedes from his noncommittal position and classes them as Baptists. He quite freely shows from Augustine and Optatus, who were contemporaries, that the Donatists rejected infant baptism and were congregational in their form of government. Dr. Heman Lincoln dissented from some of the conclusions of Dr. Benedict and called them fanciful. But that they held some Baptist principles he did not doubt. He says: It is evident that the Donatists held, at some period of their history, many of the principles which are regarded as axioms by modern Baptists. In their later history, after a stern discipline of persecution, they maintained, as cardinal truths, absolute freedom of conscience, the divorce of church and state, and a regenerate church membership. These principles, in whose defense they endured martyrdom coupled with their uniform practice of immersion, bring them into close affinity with Baptists (Lincoln, The Donatists. In The Baptist Review, 358, July, 1880). This is the position of an extreme conservative. Perhaps Dr. Lincoln underestimated the coloring which the enemies of the Donatists gave to the controversy, and he certainly did not give due credit to what Augustine says on infant baptism in his opposition to them. It has been affirmed that some of the Donatists placed too much stress upon the efficiency of baptism and affirmed episcopacy. This however is a matter of controversy of no great interest, and does not here concern us. Governor Henry D’Anvers truly remarks: Augustine’s thIrd and fourth books against the Donatists demonstrated that they denied Infant baptism, wherein he maintained the argument for Infant baptism against them with great zeal, enforcing it with severe aruguments (D’Anvers, A Treatise on Baptism. 223, London, 1674). Augustine makes the Donatists Anabaptists (Migne, Patrologis Lat., XLII.). The form of baptism, according to Optatus, was immersion. Lucas Osiander, Professor in and Chancellor of the University of Tubingen, wrote a book against the Anabaptists, in 1605, in which he says: "Our modern Anabaptists are the same as the Donatists of old" (Osiander, Epist cent 16. p.175. Wittenberg, 1607). These rigid moralists, however, did not count themselves Anabaptists; for they thought that there was one Lord, one faith, one baptism and that their own (Albaspinae, Observat. In Optatus, i). They took no account of the baptism of others, and contended that they were wrongly called Anabaptists. The Donatists stood for liberty of conscience, and they were opposed to the persecuting power of the State Church, They were, says Neander, "the most important and influential church division which we have to mention in this period" (Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, III. 258). Neander continues: That which distinguishes the present case is, the reaction, proceeding out of the essence of the Christian church, and called forth, in this instance, by a peculiar occasion, against the confounding of the ecclesiastical end political elements; on which occasion, for the first time, the ideas which Christianity, as opposed to the papal religion of the state, had first made men distinctly conscious of, became an object of contention within the Christian church itself,-the ideas concerning universal, inalienable human rights; concerning liberty of conscience; concerning the rights of free religious conviction. Thus the Bishop Donatus, of Carthage, in 347, rejected the imperial commissioners, Paulus and Marcarius, with the acclamation: "Quid est imperatori cum eccleaia?" (Optatus, Milev., De Schismati Donat. 1. iii. c. 3). And truly indeed the emperor should not have had anything to do with the control of the church. The Donatist Bishop Petilian, in Africa, against whom Augustine wrote, appealed to Christ and the apostles who never persecuted. "Think you," says he, "to serve God by killing us with your hand? Ye err, if ye, poor mortals, think this; God has not hangmen for priests. Christ teaches us to bear wrong, not to revenge it," The Donatist bishop Gaudentius says: "God appointed prophets and fishermen, not princes and soldiers, to spread the faith." The position of these Christians was not only a protest but an appeal. It was a protest against the growing corruptions and worldliness of those churches which had sadly departed from the faith in doctrine and discipline; it was an appeal, since they were fervently called back to purity of life and apostolic simplicity. All through the days of darkness their voice was not hushed, and there was not wanting a people to stand before God. Maligned, they suffered with patience; reviled, they reviled not; and the heritage of these people is liberty of conscience to a world. All hail, martyrs of God. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 6: 01.1.06. CHAPTER 4 PAULICIAN AND BOGOMIL CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER IV THE PAULICIAN AND BOGOMIL CHURCHES IT is to be regretted that most of the information concerning the Paulicians comes through their enemies. The sources are twofold. The first source is that of the Greek writers, Photius (Adv. recentiores Manichaeans. Hamburg 1772) and Petros Sikeliotes (Historia Manichaeorum qui Pauliciani. Ingolstadt, 1604), which has long been known and was used by Gibbon in the preparation of the brilliant fifty-fourth chapter of his history. Not much has been added from that source since. The accounts are deeply prejudiced, and although Gibbon suspected the malice and poison of these writers, and laid bare much of the malignity expressed by them, he was at times misled in the facts. He did not have the completeness of information which was necessary for a full delineation of their history. The second source of information in regard to the Paulicians is Armenian in its origin and has recently been brought to light and illustrated. There was an old book of the Paulicians called the "Key of Truth," mentioned by Gregory Magistos, in the eleventh century. Fortunately, Mr. Fred C. Conybeare, M, A., formerly Fellow of University College, Oxford, was much interested in affairs in Armenia. He was a second time in that country, in 1891, in quest of documents illustrative of the history of the Paulicians. He fell upon a copy of the "Key of Truth" in the Library of the Holy Synod at Edjmiatzin. He received a copy of it in 1893; and the text with an English translation was printed by Mr. Conybeare in 1898. He also accompanied the text with important data received from Armenian histories and from other sources. As may be judged this is not only a new but a very important source of information. The Paulicians are at length permitted to plead, in a measure, for themselves. We are able, therefore, practically to reconstruct the Paulician history. The Paulician churches were of apostolic origin, and were planted in Armenia in the first century. "Through Antioch and Palmyra the faith must have spread into Mesopotamia and Persia; and in those regions become the basis of the faith as it is spread in the Taurus mountains as far as Ararat. This was the primitive form of Christianity. The churches in the Taurus range of mountains formed a huge recess or circular dam into which flowed the early Paulician faith to be caught and maintained for centuries, as it were, a backwater from the main for centuries" (Bury’s edition of Gibbon’s History, VI. 543). The earliest center of Christianity in Armenia was at Taron, which was the constant home and base of operations of the Paulicians. They claimed that they were of apostolic origin. "The Key of Truth" says: Let us then submit humbly to the holy church universal. and follow their works who acted with one mind and one faith and taught us. For still do we receive in the only proper season the holy and precious mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Heavenly Father:-to-wit, in the season of repentance and of faith. As we learned from the Lord of the universal and apostolic church, so do we proceed: and we establish in perfect faith those who (till then) have not holy baptism (Margin, That Is to say, the Latins, Greeks and Armenians, who are not baptized); nay, nor have tasted of the body or drunk of the holy blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore according to the Word of the Lord, we must first bring them into the faith, induce them to repent, and give it (Margin, Baptism) unto them (pp.76,77). Upon this point Adeney says: "Therefore, it is quite arguable that they should be regarded as representing the survival of a most primitives type of Christianity" (Adeney, The Greek and Eastern Churches, 217). He further says: "Ancient Oriental Baptists, these people were in many respects Protestants before Protestantism" (Adeney, The Greek and Eastern Churches, 219). The Paulicians did not recognize persons of other communions as belonging to the churches. "We do not belong to these," they said. "They have long ago broken connection with the church and have been excluded." Such is the testimony of Gregory Magistos, A. D., 1058, whose history is one of the chief sources of information. We can only lightly touch upon a few events connected with their history. The story of the conversion of Constantine, A. D. 660, is interesting. This young Armenian sheltered a Christian deacon who was flying from Mohammedan persecutions. In return for his kindness he received a copy of the New Testament. "These books became the measure of his studies and the rule of his faith; and the Catholics, who disputed his interpretation, acknowledged that his text was genuine and sincere. But he attached himself with peculiar devotion to the writings and character of Paul and the name of Paulicians is derived by their enemies from some unknown leader; but I am confident that they gloried in their affinity to the apostle to the Gentiles" (Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, V.386). Constantine felt that he was called upon to defend and restore primitive Christianity; being greatly impressed by the writings of Paul, he took the name of one of his followers, Silvanus; and the churches founded by him received names from the primitive congregations. The entire people were called Paulicians from the apostle. These statements of the apostolic simplicity of these devout Christians tell more of the manners, customs and doctrines than volumes of prejudiced accounts left by their enemies. With Paul as their guide, they could not be far removed from the truth of the New Testament. Professor Wellhausen, in his life of Mohammed (Encyclopedia Britannica, XVI. 571, 9th Edition), gives a most interesting account of the Baptists of the Syro-Babylonian desert. He says they were called Sabians, Baptists, and that they practiced the primitive forms of Christianity. Indeed, "Sabian" is an Arabized word meaning "Baptist" They literally filled with their members Syria, Palestine, and Babylonia (Renan, Life, of Jesus, chap. XII). They were off the line of the main advance of Christianity, and were left untouched in their primitive simplicity. From them Mohammed derived many of his externals. The importance of this must not be undervalued. "It can hardly be wrong to conclude," continues Prof. Wllhausen, "that these nameless witnesses of the Gospel, unmentioned in church history, scattered the seed from which sprung the germ of Islam." These Christians were the Paulicians. This bit of history will account for a fact that heretofore has been hard to understand. The emperors had determined to drive the Paulicians from their dominions. They took refuge "in the Mohammedan dominions generally, where they were tolerated and where their own type of belief never ceased to be accounted orthodox." This we learn from John the Philosopher. The Arabs had since the year 650 successfully challenged the Roman influence in Armenia. The same protection, probably, preserved the Paulician churches through many ages. It is certain that the Paulicians were true to the Arabs, and that the Mohammedans did not fail them in the hour of trial. The number of the Paulicians constantly increased, and they soon attracted the attention of their enemies. In the year 690 Constantine, their leader, was stoned to death by the command of the emperor; and the successor of Constantine was burned to death. The Empress Theodora instituted a persecution in which one hundred thousand Paulicians in Grecian Armenia are said to have lost their lives. The Paulicians, in the ninth century, rebelled against their enemies, drove out Michael III, and established in Armenia the, free state of Teprice. This is a well-known site, some seventy miles from Sivas, on the river Chalta. They gave absolute freedom of opinion to all of its inhabitants (Evans, Historical View of Bosnia, 30). From the capital of this free state, itself called Teprice, went forth a host of missionaries to convert the Slavonic tribes of Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Servia to the Paulician faith. This is positively stated by Sikeliotes. Great was their success-so great that a large portion of the inhabitants of the free state migrated to what were then independent states beyond the emperor’s control. The state of Teprice lasted one hundred and fifty years, when it was overcome by the Saracens. All around them were persecutions for conscience sake-they themselves had lost one hundred thousand members by persecutions in the reign of Theodora-yet here was a shelter offered to every creed and unbeliever alike. This is a striking Baptist peculiarity. The Baptists have always set up religious liberty when they had opportunity. Conybeare, speaking of the Paulicians, justly remarks: And one point in their favor must be noticed, and it is this, Their system was, like that of the European Cathars, in its basal idea and concepticn alien to persecution; for membership in it depended upon baptism, voluntarily sought for, even with tears and supplications, by the faithful and penitent adult. Into such a church there could be no dragooning of the unwilling. On the contrary, the whole purpose of the scrutiny, to which the candidate for baptism was subjected, was to ensure that his heart and intelligence were won, and to guard against the merely outward conformity. which is all that a persecutor can hope to impose. It was one of the worst results of infant baptism, that by making membership in the Christian church mechanical and outward, it made it cheap; and so paved the way of the persecutor (Conybeare, The Key of Truth, xli). In the year 970 the Emperor, John Tzimisces, transferred some of the Paulicians to Thrace and granted them religious liberty; and it is recorded to their credit that they were true to his interests. In the beginning of the eighth century their doctrines were introduced and spread throughout Europe, and their principles soon struck deep into foreign soil. It was in the country of the Albigenses, in the Southern provinces of France, that the Paulicians were most deeply implanted, and here they kept up a correspondence with their brethren in Armenia. The faith of the Paulicians "lived on in Languedoc and along the Rhine as the submerged Christianity of the Cathars, and, perhaps, also among the Waldenses. In the Reformation this Catharism comes once more to the surface, particularly among the so-called, Anabaptists and Unitarian Christians between whom and the most primitive church ‘The Key of Truth’ and the Cathar Ritual of Lyons supply us with the two great connecting links" (Key of Truth, x). They were persecuted by the popes; and all literary and other traces of them, as far its possible, were destroyed. But "the visible assemblies of the Paulicians, of Albigeois, were extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleeding remnant escaped by flight, concealment, or Catholic conformity. In the state, in the church, and even in the cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, and embraced the Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from all the visions of the Gnostic theology" (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, V.398). Many historians, besides Gibbon, such as Muratori and Mosheim, regard the Paulicians as the forerunners of the Albigenses, and, in fact, as the same people. One of the latest of these, already frequently quoted, is Professor Conybeare, one of the highest authorities in the world on Paulician matters. He affirms that the true line of succession is found among Baptists. He says: The church has always adhered to the idea of spiritual regeneration in baptism, although by baptizing babies it has long ago stultified itself and abandoned the essence of baptism. Indeed the significance of the baptism of Jesus, as it presented itself to St. Paul, and the evangelists was soon lost sight of by the orthodox churches. . . We hear much discussion nowadays of the validity of orders English, Latin, and oriental. The unbiased student of church history cannot but wonder that it has never occurred to any of these controversalists of the Church of England to ask whether they are not, after all, contending for a shadow; whether, in short, they have, say of them, real orders in the primitive sense in which they care to claim possession of them. The various sects of the Middle Ages which, knowing themselves simply as, Christians, retained baptism in its primitive form and significance, steadily refused to recognize as valid the infant baptism of the great orthodox or persecuting churches; and they were certainly in the right, so far as doctrine and tradition count for anything. Needless to say, the great churches have long ago lost genuine baptism, can have no further sacraments, no priesthood, and, strictly speaking, no Christianity. If they would reenter the Pale of Christianity, they must repair, not to Rome or Constantinople, but to some of the obscure circles of Christians, mostly in the East, who have never lost the true continuity of the baptismal sacrament. These are the Paulicians of Armenia, the Bogomil sect round Moscow whose members call themselves Christ’s, the adult Baptists (those who practice adult baptism) among the Syrians of the upper Tigris valley, and perhaps, though not so certainly, the popelikans, the Mennonites, and the great Baptist communities of Europe. This condemnation of the great and called orthodox churches may seem harsh and pedantic, but there is no escape from it, and we place ourselves on the same ground on which they profess to stand. Continuity of baptism was more important in the first centuries of the church than continuiity of orders; so important, indeed, that even the baptism of heretics was recognized as valid. If store was set by the unbroken succession of bishops, it was only because one function of the bishop was to watch over the integrity of the initiatory rite of the religion. How badly the bishops of the great churches did their duty, how little, indeed, after the third century they even understood it, is seen in the unchecked growth, from the year 300 A. D. onward, of the abuse of the baptismal rite, resulting before long in its entire forfeiture (Conybaere, The Hi8tory of Christmas. In The American Journal of Theology). Dr. Justin A. Smith, so long the scholarly editor of The Standard, Chicago, says of the Paulicians: The sum of all this is, that whether or not a succession of Baptist churches can, as some think, be traced through the centuries of the Middle Ages down to the time when our denominational history in its strict sense begins, we may at least say that our ancestry goes upward along a line of descent in which, if any where in the world, pure Christianity survived; and that among our Baptist progenitors, in this sense, were men and women who had the conspicuous honor to be maligned by those whom history proves to have been adepts in the two trades of murder and slander (Smith, Modern Church History, 227). One thing is certain, that in Italy, in France, and along the Rhine, the Paulicians and the Albigenses were found in the same territory, and there were no great differences between them in practice and doctrines. Writers go so far as to assert that there was a succession of churches and of interests. It is well attested, that in the middle of the eleventh century they were numerous in Lombardy and Isurbia, but especially in Milan, in Italy; and it is no less certain that they traveled through France, Germany and other countries, and by their sanctity they won large numbers of common people to their way of thinking. In Italy they were called Paternes and Cathari, and in Germany, Gazari. In France they were called Albigenses. They were called Bulgarians, particularly in France, because some of them carne from Bulgaria, and they were also known by the name of Boni Homines (Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, II. 200-202). Their enemies extolled their piety. A succession of them is found through the Middle Ages. The Paulicians were accused of being Manichaeans, and much prejudice has been excited against them on this account. "The Paulicians," says Adeney, "have been most egregiously libeled of all of the Christian sects" (The Greek and Eastern Churches, 216. New York, 1908). The Roman Catholics have always denounced the teachings of Marcion with singular hostility. It is now clearly known that the Paulicians were not Manichaeans. The Key of Truth settles this matter (p. 18). Modern Armenian scholars do not hesitate to correct this error (Ter Mkittsehain, Die Paulikianer im Byzantinischen in Armenien, Leipzig, 1893). Conybeare has no doubt on the subject. Turning to the doctrines and practices of the Paulicians we find that they made constant use of the Old and New Testaments. They had no orders in the clergy as distinguished from laymen by their modes of living, their dress, or other things; they had no councils or similar institutions. Their teachers were of equal rank. They strove diligently for the simplicity of the apostolic life. They opposed all image worship which was practiced in the Roman Catholic Church. The miraculous relics were a heap of bones and ashes, destitute of life and of virtue. They held to the orthodox view of the Trinity; and to the human nature and substantial sufferings of the Son of God. Baptist views prevailed among the Paulicians. They held that men must repent and believe, and then at a mature age ask for baptism, which alone admitted them into the church. "It is evident," observes Mosheim, "they rejected the baptism of infants." They baptized and rebaptized by immersion. They would have been taken for downright Anabaptists (Allix, The Ecelesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont. Oxford, 1821). Something of the opinions of the Paulicians is gathered from a Synod held in Arras, in the year 1025, by Gerard, Bishop of Cambray and Arras. One Gundulphus, a Paulician, was condemned. He had taught his doctrines in many places. It was found on examination that the Paulicians held: The law and discipline we have received from our Master will not appear contrary either to the Gospel or apostolic institutions if carefully looked into. This discipline consists in leaving the world, in bridling carnal concupiscence, in providing a livelihood by the labor of our hands, in hurting nobody, and affording our charity to all who are zealous in the prosecution of this our design. Concerning baptism they made reply: But if any man shall say, that some sacrament lies hid in baptism, the force of that is, taken off from three causes: the first is, Because the reprobate life of ministers can afford no saving remedy to the persons to be baptized. The second, Because whatsoever sins are renounced at the font, are afterwards taken up again in life and practice. The third, Because a strange will, a strange faith, and a strange confession do not seem to belong to, or to be of an advantage to a little child, who neither wills nor runs, who knows nothing of faith, and is altogether ignorant of his own good and salvation, in which there can be no desire of regeneration, and from whom no confession of faith can be expected (Allix, The Ecclesiastical Churches, 104). A better answer could not this day be given. There is a Confession of Faith which is attributed to the Paulicians, A. D. 1024, which declares: In the beginning of Christianity there was no baptizing ot children: and their forefathers practiced no such thing and we do from our hearts acknowledge that baptism is a washing which is performed in water, and doth hold out the washing of the soul from sin (Mehrning, Der heiligen Tauff Historie, II. 738). It is possible that the Paulicians were Adoptionists. This is the view of Conybeare (lxxxvii), but his views are often inferential (xiv). He further says: "My Suggestion that the European Cathars were of the Adoptionists origin also rests on mere inference" (xiv). The connection of this view with that of modern Baptists is set forth by Conybeare as follows: It is therefore a promising field of research to enquire whether the Paulicians were not partially responsible for many sects which at the Reformation made their appearance and exhibit, some more, some less, an affinity to Paulician tenets as set out in the Kev. This is not the place to embark on such an inquiry, which would require a separate work. Perhaps the data no longer exists which would enable one to trace the channels of communication. To do so would require in any case a vast amount of research; but it does seem probable that in at least two of the sects of the age of the Reformation we have a survival of the same ancient form of the Catholic Church which the pages of the Kev reveal to us. These two sects are the Anabaptists and the Unitarians, afterwards called Socinians from their great teacher Socinus. From the former are derived the great Baptist churches of England and America, and also the Mennonites of Germany. The arguments of the sixteenth century Baptists against Paedobaptism are the same as we have in the Key, and-what we might also expect-an Adoptionist view of Christ as a rule went with them in the past; though the modern Baptists, in accepting the current doctrine of the Incarnation, have both obscured their origin and stultified their distinctive observances. From the first ages Adoptionist tenets have as naturally and as indiasolubly been associated with adult baptism, as has infant baptism with the pneumatic Christology, according to which Jesus was from his mother’s womb and in his cradle filled with the Holy Spirit, a pre-existent Divine being, creator, and controller of the universe (Conybeare, The Key, ci, cli). Whatever may be the final conclusions in the matter, it is certain that the Adoptionist views of the Paulicians accentuated their opposition to infant baptism. The form of baptism was to dip the subject into the water once, while the Greeks dipped three times. There is much evidence that in Armenia the form of baptism was immersion. Macarius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, A. D. 331 to 335, writing to the Armenians, says that baptism was administered with triple immersion burying in the water of the holy font" (Library of the Mechitarist Fathers of Vienna. MSS. Cod. Arm. No. 100). There is an oration preserved out of the twelfth century ascribed to Isaac Catholicos of Armenia, which gives the practice of the Paulicians. John Otzun, A. D. 718, speaks of the Paulicians descending into the baptistery (Otzun, Opera, 25. Venice, 1834). And he further tells how the Mohammedans tried to prevent them from baptizing in the running rivers, for fear that they would bewitch the waters and render them unwholesome. The constant practice of the Oriental Church was immersion. Rev. Nicholas Bjerring says of its baptism: "Baptism is celebrated sometimes in the church and sometimes in private houses, as needs may be. It is always administered by dipping the infant, or adult, three times" (Bjerring, The Offices of the Oriental Church, xii. New York, 1880). And further on in the Liturgy he gives the ceremony of immersion. Thus did the Paulicians practice immersion as the Scriptures indicate. The Bogomils were a branch of the Cathari, or Paulicians, who dwelt in Thrace. Their name appears to have been derived from one of their leaders in the midst of the tenth century, though others declare that their name comes from a Slavic word which is defined, "Beloved of God." The Bogomils were repeatedly condemned, and often persecuted, but they continued to exist through the Middle Ages, and still existed in the sixteenth century. Their historians claimed for them the greatest antiquity Dr. L. P. Brockett, who wrote a history of them, says: Among these (historians of the Bulgarians) I have found, often in unexpected quarters, the most conclusive evidence that these sects were all, during their early history, Baptists, not only in their views on the subjects of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but in their opposition to Pedobaptism, to a church hierarchy, and to the worship of the Virgin Mary and the saints, and in their adherence to church independency and freedom of conscience in religious worship. In short, the conclusion has forced itself upon me that in these Christians of Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Armenia we have an apostolic succession of Christian churches, New Testament churches, and that as early as the twelfth century these churches numbered a converted, believing membership, as large as that of the Baptist churches throughout the world today (Brockett, The Bogomils of Bulgaria and Bosnia, 11, 12). Some Roman Catholic writers have affirmed that the Bogomils did not practice baptism, or observe theLord’s Supper; and, that further, they denied the Old Testament Scriptures. This probably means no more than that they rejected infant baptism, and quoted the New Testament as supreme and authoritative in the matter. The persecutions of the Bogomils, as of other Paulicians, were continuous and severe. Every effort was made to destroy them. "Yet it was not stamped out," says Conybeare, "but only driven under ground. It still lurked all over Europe, but especially in the Balkans, and along the Rhine. In these hiding places it seemed to have gathered its forces together in secret,. in order to emerge once more into daylight when an opportunity presented itself. The opportunity was the European Reformation, in which, especially under the form. of Anabaptism and Unitarian opinion, this leaven of the early apostolic church is found freely mingling with and modifying other forms of faith. In engendering this great religious movement, we feel sure that the Bogomils of the Balkan States played a most important part" (The Key of Truth, cxc vi). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 7: 01.1.07. CHAPTER 5 OTHER EARLY CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER V THE ALBIGENSIAN, THE PETROBRUSIAN, THE HENRICIAN, THE ARNOLDIST AND THE PERENGARIAN CHURCHES IT has already been indicated that the Paulicians came from Armenia, by the way of Thrace, settled in France and Italy, and traveled through, and made disciples in, nearly all of the countries of Europe. The descent of the Albigenses has been traced by some writers from the Paulicians (Encyclopedia Britannica, I. 454. 9th edition). Recent writers hold that the Albigenses had been in the valleys of France from the earliest ages of Christianity. Prof. Bury says that "it lingered on in Southern France," and was not a "mere Bogomilism, but an ancient local survival." Mr. Conybeare thinks that it lived on from the early times in the Balkan Peninsula, "where it was probably the basis of Bogomilism" (Bury, Ed. Gibbon, History of Rome, VI. 563). They spread rapidly through Southern France and the little city of Albi, in the district of Albigeois, became the center of the party. From this city they were called Albigenses. In Italy the Albigenses were known by various names, like the Paulicians, such as "Good Men," and others. It is difficult to determine the origin of all of the names; but some of them came from the fact that they were regarded as vulgar, illiterate and low bred; while other names were given from the purity and wholesomeness of their lives. It is remarkable that the inquisitorial examinations of the Albigenses did not tax them with immoralities, but they were condemned for speculations, or rather for virtuous rules of action, which the Roman Catholics accounted heresy. They said a Christian church should consist of good people; a church had no power to frame any constitutions; it was not right to take oaths; it was not lawful to kill mankind; a man ought not to be delivered up to the officers of justice to be converted; the benefits of society belong alike to all members of it; faith without works could not save a man; the church ought not to persecute any, even the wicked; the law of Moses was no rule for Christians; there was no need of priests, especially of wicked ones; the sacraments, and orders, and ceremonies of the church of Rome were futile, expensive, oppressive, and wicked. They baptized by immersion and rejected infant baptism (Jones, The History of the Christian Church, I. 287). They were decidedly anti-clerical. "Here then," says Dr. Allix, "we have found a body of men in Italy, before the year one thousand and twenty-six, five hundred years before the Reformation, who believed contrary to the opinions of the Church of Rome, and who highly condemned their errors." Atto, Bishop of Vercelli, had complained of such a people eighty years before, and so had others before him, and there is the highest reason to believe they had always existed in Italy (Ibid, I. 288). The Cathari themselves boasted of their remote antiquity (Bonacursus, Vitae haereticorum... Cathorum, ap. D’Archery, Scriptorum Spicilegiam, I. 208). In, tracing the history and doctrines of the Albigenses it must never be forgotten that on account of persecution they scarcely left a trace of their writings, confessional, apologetical, or polemical; and the representations which Roman Catholic writers, their avowed enemies, have given of them, are highly exaggerated. The words of a historian who is not in accord with, their principles may here be used. He says: It is evident, however, that they formed a branch of that broad stream of sectarianism and heresy which rose far away in. Asia from the contact between Christianity and the Oriental religions, and which, by crossing the Balkan Peninsula, reached Western Europe. The first overflow from this source were the Manichaeans, the next the Paulicians, the next the Cathari, who in the tenth and eleventh centuries were very strong in Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. Of the Cathari, the Bogomils, Patoreni, Albigenses, etc. . . were only individual developments (C. Schmidt, Schaff-Hersog, I. 47). That is to say, these parties were all of the same family, and this connection is rendered all the more forceful on account of the terms of reproach in which this writer clothes his language. It has already been indicated that the Paulicians were not Manichaeans, and the same thing may probably be said of the Albigenses. The Albigenses were oppressed on account of this sentiment, which accusation was also made against the Waldenses. Care must be taken at this point, and too prompt credence should not be given to the accuser. The Roman Catholic Church sought diligently for excuses to persecute. Even Luther was declared by the Synod of Sens to be a Manichaean. The celebrated Archbishop Ussher says that the charge "of Manichaeanism on the Albigensian sect is evidently false" (Acland, The Glorious Recovery of the Vaudois, lxvii. London, 1857). It would be difficult to understand the Albigenses from this philosophical standpoint. They were not a metaphysical people. Theirs was not a philosophy, but a daily faith and practice, which commended itself to the prosperous territory of Southern France. They held to the division of believers into two classes -- the perfect and the imperfect. This was the common classification of the Paulicians, Waldenses and Anabaptists. The most elaborate accounts are given of the initiation of the perfecti by a single immersion into the body of believers (Beausobre, Historic du Manichaeanism, II. 762-877). The Waldenses were also found in the city of Albi and they were also called Albigenses because they resided in that city (Martin Schagen, The History of the Waldenses, 110). It was from Italy that the movement extended to Southern France; and the soil was wonderfully well prepared for the seed. The country was the most civilized portion of France, rich, flourishing, and independent; the people gay, intellectual, progressive; the Roman Catholic Church dull, stupid and tyrannical; the clergy distinguished for nothing but superstition, ignorance, arbitrariness, violence and vice. Under such circumstances the idea of a return to the purity and simplicity of the apostolic age could not fail to attract attention. The severe moral demands of the Albigenses made a profound impression, since their example corresponded with their words. They mingled with their tenets a severe zeal for purity of life and were heard with favor by all classes. No wonder that the people deserted the Roman Catholic priests and gathered around the Boni Honiness. In a short time the Albigenses had congregations and schools and charitable institutions of their own. The Roman Catholic Church became an object of derision (Scliaff-Herzog. I. 47). This state of affairs greatly alarmed and aggravated the pope. In the year 1139 they were condemned by the Lateran Council; by that of Tours in 1163, and mission after mission was sent among them to persuade them to return to the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Henry, in 1180, employed force. Pope Innocent III. published a crusade against them. Says the Historian Hume: The people from all parts of Europe moved by their superstition and their passion for wars and adventures, flocked to his standard. Simon de Monfort, the general of the crusade, acquired to himself a sovereignty of these provinces. The Count of Toulouse, who protected, or perhaps only tolerated the Albigenses, was stript of his dominions. And these sectaries themselves, though the most inoffensive and innocent of mankind, were exterminated with the circumstances of extreme violence and barbarity (Hume, History of England, II. ch. xi). In the second crusade the first city captured was that of Braziers, which had some forty thousand inhabitants. When Simon de Monfort, Earl of Leicester, asked the Abbot of Ceteaux, the papal legate, what he was to do with the inhabitants, the legate answered: "Kill them all. God knows His own." In this manner the war was carried on for twenty years. Town after town was taken, pillaged, burnt. Nothing was left but a smoking waste. Religions fanaticism began the war; rapacity and ambition ended it. Peace was concluded in 1229, and the Inquisition finished the deadly work. The proof is overwhelming that the Albigenses rejected infant baptism. They were condemned on this account by a Council held at Toulouse, A. D. 1119 (Maitland, Facts and Documents Illustrative of the Albigenses, 90. London, 1832), and that of Albi in 1165 (Allix, The Ecclesiastical History of Piedmont, 150). The historians affirm that they rejected infant baptism. Chassanion says: "I cannot deny that the Albigenses, for the greater part, were opposed to infant baptism; the truth is, they did not reject the sacrament as useless, but only as unnecessary to infants" (Chassanion, Historie des Albigeois. Geneva, 1595). Dr. Emil Comba, of the Waldensian Theological College, Florence, Italy, the latest of the Waldensian historians, says that the Albigenses rejected "all the sacraments except baptism, which they reserved for believers" (Comba, History of the Waldenses, 17. London, 1889). The story is a pathetic one. "We live," says Everwin, of Steinfeld, "a hard and wandering life. We flee from city to city like sheep in the midst of wolves. We suffer persecution like the apostles and martyrs because our life is holy and austere. It is passed amidst prayer, abstinences, and labors, but every-thing is easy for us because we are not of this world" (Schmidt. Hist. et. Doct. de la secte des Cathares, II. 94). Dr. Lea, the eminent authority on the Inquisition, has said that no religion can show a more unbroken roll of victims who unshrinkingly sought death in its most abhorrent form in preference to apostasy than the Cathari. Peter of Bruys, a well-known Baptist preacher of those times, sought, about the year 1100, a restoration of true religion in Languedoc and Provence, France. He considered that the gospel ought to be literally understood and he demanded Scripture and not tradition from those who attempted to refute him. He was a pupil of the celebrated Abelard. Dollinger thinks he learned his doctrines from the Cathari and presents many reasons for his opinion. Others think that he presupposes the existence of the old evangelical life for several hundred years in Italy and Southern France. "There is much evidence," says Prof. Newman, "of the persistence in Northern Italy and in Southern France, from the early time, of evangelical types of Christianity" (Newman, Recent Researches Concerning Mediaeval Sects, 187). His principal opponent was Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugni, and it is from Peter’s book (Contra Petrobrusianos, Patrologia Let, CLXXXIX. 729) that we must judge of the doctrines of Peter of Bruys. He held that the church was a spiritual body composed of regenerated persons. "The church of God." says Peter of Bruys, "does not consist of a multitude of stones joined together, but in the unity of believers assembled." He held that persons ought not to be baptized till they come to the use of their reason. Thus be rejected infant baptism referring to Matthew 28:19 and ‘Mark 16:16. He denied that "children, before they reach the years of understanding, can be saved by the baptism of Christ [the Roman Catholic statement of his belief], or that another faith could avail those who could not exercise faith since, according to them (the Petrobrusians) not another’s but their own faith saves, according to the Lord’s word. He who shall believe and be baptized shall be saved, but he who shall not believe shall be condemned." "Infant," he continues, "though baptized by you [Roman Catholics], because by reason of age they cannot believe, are not saved [that is by baptism] and hence it is idle and vain at that time to plunge them in water, by which they wash away the filth of the body, and yet cannot cleanse the soul from sin. But we wait for the proper time, and when one can know and believe in him, we do not (as ye accuse us), rebaptize him who can never be said to have been baptized -- to have been washed with the baptism by which sins are washed away" [symbolically]. In respect to the Lord’s Supper he not only rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, but he also denied the sacramental character of the rite. On account of his great popularity he was with difficulty banished from Languedoc. He then appeared in the diocese of Narbonne and Toulouse, where he preached for twenty years with great success. In the year 1126 he was seized by the authorities and burnt at St. Gilles. He had a great company of followers, who after his death were called Petrobrusians. They held the same views on baptism that he did. Deodwinus, Bishop of Liege, writing to Henry I., of France, says of the followers of Peter of Bruys: "They as far as in them lies overthrow infant baptism" (Wall; The History of Infant Baptism, I. 478). It will be seen from the extracts given above that Peter of Bruys and his disciples rebaptized, and were, therefore, in the eyes of their opponents, Anabaptists. Jacquest Benigne Bossuet the distinguished Bishop of Meaux and the great Roman Catholic controversialist, 1704, complained of the followers of Calvin that they sought apostolic succession through the Waldenses. He says: "You adopt Henry and Peter of Bruys among your predecessors, and both of them, everybody knows, were Anabaptists." Faber says: "The Petrobrusians were only a sort of Antipedobaptists, who rejected not baptism itself, but who denied simply the utility of infant baptism" (Faber, The Vallenses and Albigenses, 174. London, l838). J. A. Fabricius says: "They were the Anabaptists of that age" (Fabricius, Bibliographia, c. xi. 388). Henry of Lausanne, A. D., 1116-1148, was a disciple of Peter of Brays, and was so successful in his work of reformation that he left a large number of followers who were called Henricians. He is described as "a man of great dignity of person, a fiery eye, a thundering voice, impetuous speech, mighty in the Scriptures." "Never was there a man known of such strictness of life, so great humanity and bravery," and that "by his speech he could easily provoke even a heart of stone to compunction." He came out of Switzerland to Mans and other cities of France. So great was his success that whole congregations left the churches and joined with him. When he had come, in 1148, to Toulouse, Pope Eugene III. sent Bernard of Clairvaux, the great heresy hunter, to that city to preach against him. Bernard describes the effect of Henry’s preaching, saying that the churches were deserted, "the way of the children is closed, the grace of baptism is refused them, and they are hindered from coming to heaven; although the Saviour with fatherly love calls them, saying, "Suffer little children to come unto Me." Henry was compelled to flee for his life. Within a short time he was arrested in his retreat, brought before the Council of Rheims, committed to a close prison in 1148, and soon afterwards finished his days in it. Like Peter of Bruys, he rejected infant baptism. Georgius Cassander, who, at the instance of the Duke of Cleves, wrote against the Anabaptists, says of Peter of Bruys and Henry of Lausanne: "They first openly condemned infant baptism, and stiffly asserted that baptism was fit only for the adult; which they both verbally taught, and really practiced in their administration of baptism" (Cassander, Do Baptismo infantium. Coloniaqqe, 1545). Arnold of Brescia was born in the beginning of the twelfth century and died about A. D. 1148. He was a student of Abelard, in Paris, and returned with lofty notions of reformation in Italy. From one country to another he was driven by persecution. He finally returned to Borne and led a patriotic attempt for the freedom of the country against the pope. He was taken prisoner, hanged, his body burned, and the ashes thrown into the Tiber. Otto Freising, the contemporary Roman Catholic bishop, remarks: "That he was unsound in his judgment about the sacraments of the altar and infant baptism" (Freising, De Gentis Frid., II. c. 20). So he was condemned by the Lateran Council under Innocent II., A. D., 1139. Dr. Comba, in making a record of his opinions, says: "With the Albigenses, he condemned the above mentioned superstitions, as that also of the salvation of children by the sprinkling of water" (Comba, History of the Waldenses, 16). Arnold had his followers, for he was very popular in Lombardy. "He founded," so his enemies said during his stay in Rome, "a sect of men which is still called the heresy of the Lombards" (Johannes Saresberensis, Historia Pontificalis. See Breyer, Arnold von Brescia). They had great congregations of laboring men which formed such an important feature of the work of the Waldenses and Anabaptists. The Arnoldists, like their leader, rejected infant baptism. Of these men, Guillaume Durand, A. D., 1274, says: "The Arnoldists assert that never through baptism in water do men receive the Holy Spirit, nor did the Samaritans receive it, until they received the imposition of hands" (Bull of Pope Lucius III. Hist. Pon. Prestz, 515). By the year 1184 the Arnoldists were termed Albigenses, a little later they were classed as Waldenses. Deickhoff, one of the German writers on the Waldenses, affirms: "There was a connection between the Waldenses and the followers of Peter of Bruys, Henry of Lausanne and Arnold of Brescia, and they finally united in one body about 1130 as they held common views." (Dieckhoff, Die Waldenser im Mittelalter, 167, 168. Gottingen, 1851). This is the general opinion of the authorities. M. Tocco does not hesitate to affirm that "the Poor of Lombardy (the Waldenses) descended in a direct line from the Arnoldists" (Tocco, L’Eresia nel medio Evo. Paris, 1884). Berengarius, who was born at Tours, and died in the adjacent island of St. Cosme, was accused of holding Baptist views. He was a representative of that craving for spiritual independence, and opposition to Roman Catholicism, which came to the surface all through the Middle Ages. In 1140 he became director of the Cathedral schools of Tours, but his departure from Romanism caused his condemnation by many councils until he closed his troubled career in deep solitude. HIS great learning both in the Fathers and in classical literature, together with his profound study of the Scriptures, led him to the conclusion that the doctrine of transubstantiation was false, and that it was necessary for him to distinguish between the symbol and the thing symbolized in the Lord’s Supper. Deodwinus, Bishop of Liege, a contemporary, states that there was a report out of France that the Berengarians "overthrew the baptism of infants." This view is accepted by quite all of the historians. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 8: 01.1.08. CHAPTER 6 THE WALDENSIAN CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER VI THE WALDENSIAN CHURCHES O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer lustre flings Than the Diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of kings; A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtues shall not decay, whom light shall be a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way. -Whittier IT is a beautiful peculiarity of this little people that it should it occupy so prominent a place in the history of Europe. There had long been witnesses for the truth in the A1ps. Italy, as far as Rome, all Southern France, and even the far-off Netherlands contained many Christians who counted not their lives dear unto themselves. Especially was this true in the region of the Alps. These valleys and mountains were strongly fortified by nature on account of their difficult passes and bulwarks of rocks and mountains; and they impress one as if the all-wise Creator had, from the beginning, designed that place as a cabinet, wherein to put some inestimable jewel, or in which to preserve many thousands of souls, who should not bow the knee to Baal (Moreland, History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valley of Piedmont, 5. London, 1658). Here a new movement, or rather an old one under different conditions, received an impetus. Peter Waldo, or Valdesius, or Waldensis, as he was variously called, was a rich and distinguished citizen of Lyons, France, in the closing decades of the twelfth century. Waldo was at first led to study the Bible and he made a translation of it which he circulated among the people. The reading of the Gospels led to an imitation of Christ. Waldo took the manner of his life from the Scriptures, and he soon had a multitude of disciples. They gave their property to the poor and began to preach in the city. When they refused to cease preaching they were expelled from Lyons. Taking their wives and children with them, they set out on a preaching mission. The ground was well prepared by the Albigenses and the Cathari, as well as by the insufficiency and immorality of the Roman Catholic clergy. They traveled two by two, clad in woolen garments, with wooden shoes or barefoot They penetrated Switzerland and Northern Italy. Everywhere they met with a hearty response. The principal seat of the Waldenses became the slopes of the Cottian Alps and East Piedmont, West Provence and Dauphiny. Their numbers multiplied into thousands. It is certain that in the beginning of his career Waldo was a Roman Catholic, and that his followers separated from their former superstitions. There has been much discussion in regard to the origin of the Waldenses. It is asserted on the one hand that they originated with Waldo, and had no connection with former movements. This view is held absolutely, probably by very few, for even Comba admits that "in a limited sense their antiquity must he admitted" (Comba, History of the Waldenses in Italy, 12); and he also states that the Waldenses themselves believed in their own antiquity. Those who hold this view now generally state that the Waldenses were influenced by the Petrobrusians. the Arnoldists and others. Others affirm that the Waldenses were only a part of the general movement of the dissent against Rome. They were of "the same general movement" which produced the Albigenses (Fisher, History of the Christian Church, 272. New York, 1887). The contention is that the name Waldenses is from the Italian Valdese, or Waldesi, signifying a valley, and, therefore, the word means that they lived in valleys. Eberhard de Bethune, A. D. 1160, says: "Some of them call themselves Vallenses because they live in the vale of sorrows or tears" (Monastier, A History of the Vaudois Church, 58. London, 1848). Bernard, an Abbot of a Monastery of the Remonstrants, in the Diocese of Narbonne, about 1209, says that they were called "Waldenses, that is, from a dark valley, because they are involved in its deep thick darkness or errors" (Migne, CCIV. 793). Waldo was so called because he was a valley man, and was only a noted leader of a people who had long existed. This view is ardently supported by most of the Waldensian historians (Leger, Histoire Generale des Vaudois. Leyden, 1669). It is certain that they were called by the names of every one of the ancient parties (Jones, History of the Christian Church, 308). Jacob Gretseher, of the Society of Jesus, Professor of Dogmatics in the University of Ingolstadt, A. D. 1577, fully examined the subject and wrote against the Waldenses. He affirmed their great antiquity and declared that it was his belief "that the Toulousians and Albigenses condemned in the year 1177 and 1178 were no other than the Waldenses. In fact, their doctrines, discipline, government, manners, and even the errors with which they had been charged show the Albigenses and the Waldenses were distinct branches of the same sect, or the former was sprung from the latter" (Rankin, History of France, III. 198-202). The most remote origin has been claimed for the Waldenses, admitted by their enemies, and confirmed by historians. "Our witnesses are all Roman Catholics," says Vedder, "men of learning and ability, but deeply prejudiced against heretics as men could possibly be. This establishes at the outset a presumption against the trustworthiness of their testimony, and is a warning to us that we must weigh it most carefully and scrutinize every detail before receiving it. But, on the other hand, our witnesses are men who had extraordinary opportunities for discovering the facts; some were inquisitors for years, and give us the results of interrogating a large number of persons" (Vedder, The Origin and Teaching of the Waldenses. In The American Journal of Theology, IV. 466). This is a very interesting source of information. Rainerio Saechoni was for seventeen years one of the most active preachers of the Cathari or Waldenses of Lombardy; at length he joined the Dominican order and became an adversary of the Waldenses. The pope made him Inquisitor of Lombardy. The following opinion in regard to the antiquity of the Waldenses was rendered through one of the Austrian inquisitors in the Diocese of Passau, about the year 1260 (Preger, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Waldesier, 6-8). He says: Among all the sects, there is no one more pernicious to the church than that of the Leonists (Waldenses), and for three reasons: In the first place, because it is the most ancient: for some say that it dates back to the time of Sylvester (A. D. 825); others to the time of the apostles. In the second place. because it is the most widespread. There is hardly a country where it does not exist. In the third place, because if other sects strike with horror those who listen to them, the Leonists, on the contrary, posses a great outward appearance of piety. As a matter of fact they lead irreproachable lives before men and as regards their faith and the articles of their creed, they are orthodox. Their one fault is, that they blaspheme against the Church and the clergy,-points to which laymen In general are known to be too easily led away (Gretscher, Contra Valdenses, IV.). It was the received opinion among the Waldenses that they were of ancient origin and truly apostolic. "They call themselves," says David of Augsburg, "successors of the apostles, and say that they are in possession of the apostolic authority, and of the keys to bind and unbind" (Preger, Der Tractat des David von Augsburg uber die Waldensier. Munchen, 1876). A statement of the Waldenses themselves is at hand. In a Waldensian document, which some have dated as early as the year 1100, in a manuscript copy which dates from 1404, may he found their opinion on the subject of their antiquity. The Noble Lessons, as it is called, says: We do not find anywhere in the writings of the Old Testament that the light of truth and holiness was at any time completely extinguished. There have always been men who walked faithfully in the paths of righteousness. Their number has been at times reduced to few; but has never been altogether lost. We believe that the same has been the case from the time of Jesus Christ until now; and that it will be so until the end. For if the cause of God was founded, it was in order that it might remain until the end of time. She preserved for a long time the virtue of holy religion, and, according to ancient history, her directors lived in proverty and humility for about three centuries; that is to say, down to the time of Constantine. Under the reign of this Emperor, who was a leper, there was a man in the church named Sylvester, a Roman. Constnntine went to him, was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and cured of his leprosy. The Emperor finding himself healed of a loathsome disease, In the name of Christ, thought he would honor him who had wrought the cure by bestowing upon him the crown of the Empire. Sylvester accepted it, but his companion, it is said, refused to consent, separated from him, and continued to follow the path of poverty. Then, Constantine, went away to regions beyond the sea, followed by a multitude of Romans, and built up the city to which he gave his name-Constantinople so that from that time the Heresiarch rose to honor and dignity, and evil was multiplied upon the earth. We do not believe that the church of God, absolutely departed from the truth; but one portion yielded, and, as is commonly seen, the majority was led away to evil; and the other portion remained long faithful to the truth it had received. Thus, little by little, the sanctity of the church declined. Eight centuries after Constantine, there arose a man by the name of Peter, a native, they say. of a country called Vaud (8ekmidt, Aktenstrucke, ap. Hist. Zeitschrift, 1852 a. 239. MSS. Cambridge University, vol. A, f, 236-238 and Noble Leizon, V.403. For the genuineness of the Noble Lessons see Brez, Histoire des Vaudois, 1.42. Paris, 1793). The great church historian, Neander, in commenting on this document, suggests that it may have been "of an elder origin than 1120. He further says: But it is not without some foundation of truth that the Waldenses of this period asserted the high antiquity of their sect, and maintained that from the time of the secularization of the church-that is, as they believed, from the time of Constantine’s gift to the Roman bishop Sylvester-such an opposition finally broke forth in them, had been existing all along. See Pilicdorf contra Waldenses, c. i. Bibl. patr. Ludg. T. XXV. f. 278. (Neander, History of the Christian Church, VIII. 352). Such was the tradition and such was the opinion of the Waldenses in regard to their origin. They held to a "secret perpetuity during the Middle Ages, vying with the Catholic perpetuity" (Michelet, Histoire de France, II. 402. Paris, 1833). Theodore Beza, the Reformer of the sixteenth century, voices the sentiment of his times, when he says: As for the Waldenses, I may be permitted to call them the very seed of the primitive and purer Christian church, since, they are those that have been upheld, as is abundantly manifest, by the wonderful providence of God, so that neither those endless storms and tempests by which the whole Christian world has been shaken for so many succeeding ages, and the Western part so miserably oppressed by the Bishop of Rome, falsely so called; nor those horrible persecutions which have been expressly raised against them, were able so far to prevail as to make them bend, or yield a voluntary subjection to the Roman tyranny and idolatry (Moreland, History of the Evangelical Churches, 7). Jonathan Edwards, the great President of Princeton University, in his "History of Redemption," says of the Waidenses: In every age of this dark time, there appeared particular persons in all parts of Christendom, who bore a testimony against the corruptions and tyranny of the church of Rome. There is no one age of antichrist, even in the darkest time of all, but eccleastica1 historians mention a great many by name, who manifested an abhorrence of the Pope and his idolatrous worship. God was pleased to maintain an uninterrupted succession of witnessess through the whole time, in Germany, France, Britain, and other countries, as historians demonstrate, and mention them by name, and give an account of the testimony which they held. Many of them were private persons, and many of them ministers, and some magistrates and persons of great distinction. And there were numbers in every age, who were persecuted and put to death for this testimony. Then speaking especially of the Waldenses, he says: Some of the Popish writers themselves own that that people never submitted to the church of Rome. One of the Popish writers, speaking of the Waldenses, says, the heresy of the Waldenses is the oldest heresy In the world. It is supposed, that this people first betook themselves to this desert, secret place among the mountains to hide themselves from the severity of the heathen persecutions, which were before Constantine the Great. The special historians of the Waldenses claim the most remote origin for them. For example, Mr. Faber says: The evidence which I have now adduced distinctly proves, not only that the Waldenses and Albigenses existed anterior to Peter. of Lyon,; but likewise, that at the time of his appearance in the latter part of the twelfth century, they were already considered two communities of very high antiquity. Hence it follows, that, even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Valensic churches were so ancient, that the remote commencement was placed, by their inquisitive enemies themselves, far beyond the memory of man. The best informed Romanists of that period pretended not to affix any certain date to their organization, They were unable to pitch upon any specific time, when these venerable churches existed not. All that they certainly knew was that they had flourished long since, that they were far more ancient than any modern sect, that they had visibly existed from a time, beyond the utmost memory of man (Faber, The Vallenses and Albigenses). Sir Samuel Moreland remarks that any lapse between Claudius of Turin and Waldo "would hinder the continual succession of the churches no more than the sun or moon cease to be when their light is eclipsed by the interposition of other bodies, or more than the Rhone or the Garonne lose their continual current because for some time they were underground and appeared not" (Acland, The Glorious Recovery of the Vaudois, xxxvi). Many pages might be used in describing the upright character of the Waldenses, but space is allowed for only a few statements from their enemies. To this end, the testimony of Olaudius Seisselius, the Archbishop of Turin, is interesting. He says: "Their heresy excepted, they generally live a purer life than other Christians. They never swear except by compulsion [an Anabaptist trait] and rarely take the name of God in vain. They fulfill their promises with punctuality; and live, for the most part, in poverty; they profess to observe the apostolic life and doctrine. They also profess it to be their desire to overcome only by the simplicity of faith, by purity of conscience, and integrity of life; not by philosophical niceties and theological subtleties" He very candidly admits: "In their lives and morals they were perfect, irreprehensible, and without reproach to men, addicting themselves with all their might to observe the commands of God" (Perrin, Hist. des Vaudois, I. v. Geneva, 1618). In the time of the persecution of the Waldenses of Merindol and Provence, a certain monk was deputed by the Bishop of Cavaillon to hold a conference with them, that they might be convinced of their errors, and the effusion of blood prevented. But the monk returned in confusion, owning that in his whole life he had never known so much Scripture as he had learned in these few days that he had been conversing with the heretics. The Bishop, however, sent among them a number of doctors, young men, who had lately come from the Sorbonne, which, at that time, was the very center of theological subtlety at Paris. One of these publicly avowed that he had understood more of the doctrine of salvation from the answers of the little children in their catechisms than by all the disputations which he had ever heard (Vccembecius, Oratie de Waldeflsibus et Albigensibus Christianis, 4). After describing the inhabitants of the valleys of Fraissiniere, he proceeds: Their clothing is of the skins of the sheep-they have no linen. They inhabit seven villages, their houses are constructed of flint stone, having a flat roof covered with mud, which, when spoiled or loosed by the rain, they again smooth with a roller. In these they live with their cattle, separated from them, however by a fence. They also have two caves set apart for particular purposes, in one of which they conceal their cattle, in the other themselves when hunted by their enemies. They live on milk and venison, being, through constant practice, excellent marksmen. Poor as they are, they are content, and live in a state of seclusion from the rest of mankind. One thing is very remarkable, that persons externally so savage and rude, should have so much moral cultivation. They know French sufficiently for the understanding of the Bible and the singing of Psalms. You can scarcely find a boy among them, who cannot give you an intelligent account of the faith which they possess. In this indeed, they resemble their brethren of other valleys. They pay tribute with a good conscience, and the obligations of the duty is peculiarly noted in their confessions of faith. If, by reason of civil war, they are prevented from doing this, they carefully set apart the sum, and at the first opportunity they send it to the king’s taxgathers (Thaunus, Hist. sul temporis, VI. 16). The first distinguishing principle of the Waldenses bore on daily conduct, and was summed up in the words of the apostle: "We ought to obey God rather than men." This the Roman Catholics interpreted to mean a refusal to submit to the authority of the pope and the prelates. All of the early attacks against them contain this charge. This was a positive affirmation of the Scriptural grounds for religious independence, and it contained the principles of religious liberty avowed by the Anabaptists of the Reformation. The second distinguishing principle was the authority and popular use of the Holy Scriptures. Here again the Waldenses anticipated the Reformation. The Bible was a living book, and there were those among them who could quote the entire book from memory. The third principle was the importance of preaching and the right of laymen to exercise that function. Peter Wnldo and his associayes were preachers. All of the early documents refer to the practice of the Waldenses of preaching as one of their worst heresies, and an evidence of their insubordination and arrogance. Alanus calls them false preachers. Innocent III., writing of the Waldenses of Metz, declared their desire to understand the Scriptures a laudable one, but their meeting in secret and usurping the functions in preaching as only evil. They preached in the highways and houses, and, as opportunity afforded, in the churches. They claimed the right of women to teach as well as men, and when Paul’s words enjoining silence upon the women was quoted, they replied that it was with them more a question of teaching than preaching, and quoted back Titus 2:3, "The aged women should be teachers of good things." They declared that it was the spiritual endowment, or merit, and not the church’s ordination which gave the right to bind or loose. They struck at the very root of the sacerdotal system. To the affirmation of these fundamental principles the Waldenses, on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount, added the rejection of oaths, the condemnation of the death penalty, and purgatory and prayers for the dead. There are only two ways after death, the Waldenses declared, the way to heaven and the way to hell (Schaff, History of the Christian Church. V. Pt 1.502-504). The Waldensian movement touched many people, through many centuries and attracted converts from many sources. Many Roman Catholics were won over and some of them doubtless brought some error with them. Moreover, the term Waldenses is generic, which some, having overlooked, have fallen into mistakes in regard to them. The name embraced peoples living in widely separate lands and they varied in customs and possibly somewhat in doctrines. There was a conference between the Poor men of Lombardy and the Waldenses. The Italian and French Waldensos probably had a different origin, and in the conferences they found that there were some differences between them. It is possible that some of the Italian Waldenses (so-called) practiced infant baptism (DbUinger, Sektengerchichte, II 52); There is no account that the French Waldenses, or the Waldenses proper, ever practiced infant baptism. As early as the year 1184 there was a union of the Poor men of Lyons, as some of the followers of Waldo were called, and the Arnoldists, who rejected infant baptism. The Confessions of Faith of the Waldenses indicate that they did not practice infant baptism. There is a Confession of Faith. which was published by Perrin, Geneva, 1619, the date of which is placed by Sir Samuel Moreland, i D. 1120 (Moreland, History of the Churches of Piedmont, 30). That date is probably too early; but the document itself is conclusive. The twelfth article is as follows: We consider the sacraments as signs of holy things, or the visible emblems of invisible blessings. We regard It as proper and even necessary that believers use these symbols or visible forms when it can be done. Not-withstanding which we maintain that believers may be saved without these signs, when they have neither place nor opportunity of observing them (Perrin, Histoire des Vaudois, I. xii., 53). In 1544 the Waldenses, in order to remove the prejudice which was entertained against them, and to make manifest their innocence, transmitted to the king of France, in writing, a Confession of Faith. Article seven says of baptism: We believe that in the ordinance of baptism the water is the visible and external sign, which represents to us that which, by virtue of God’s invisible operation, Is within us, the renovation of our minds, and the mortification of our members through (the faith of) Jesus Christ. And by this ordinance we are received into the holy congregation of God’s people, previously professing our faith and the change of life (Sleiden, ‘The General History of the Reformation, 347. London, 1689). Other writings of the Waldenses likewise convey no idea of infant baptism. There is a "Treatise concerning Antichrist, Purgatory, the Invocation of Saints, and the Sacraments," which Bishop Hurd makes of the thirteenth century. There is a passage which condemns the Antichrist since "he teaches to baptize children in the faith, and attributes to this the work of regeneration, with the external rite of baptism, and on this foundation bestows orders, and, indeed, grounds all of Christianity" (Moreland, Churches of Piedmont, 148). A Catechism emanating from the Waldenses of the thirteenth century makes no allusion to infant baptism. It says that the church catholic, that is, the elect of God through the merits of Christ, is gathered together by the Holy Spirit, and foreordained to eternal life (Gilly, Waldensian Researches, I. lxxii. London, 1825), which is not consistent with infant baptism. The Noble Lessons say: "Baptize those who believe in the name of Jesus Christ" (Moreland, Churches of Piedmont, 112). There is a Liturgy, of great antiquity, which was used by the Waldenses. The Office contains no Directory for the baptism of children. Robinson says of it that it has not: The least hint of pouring or sprinkling on the contrary, there is a directory for the making of a Christian of a pagan before baptism, and for washing the feet after. Thus the introductory discourse of the presbyter delivering the creed, runs thus: "Dear Brethren, the divine sacraments are not properly matters of investigation, as of faith, and not only of faith, but also of fear, for no one can receive the discipline of faith, unless he have a foundation, the fear of the Lord . . . You are about to hear the creed, therefore today, for without that, neither can Christ he announced, nor can you exercise faith, nor can baptism be administered." After the presbyter had repeated the creed, he expounded it, referring to trine Immersion, and closed with repeated observations on the absolute necessity of faith, in order to a worthy participation of baptism (Robinson, Ecclesiatical Researches, 473, 474). The Roman Catholics soon cams into conflict with the Waldenses on the subject of baptism. The Lateran Council, A. D. 1215, pointing to the Waldenses, declared that baptism "in water" was profitable as "well for children as adults" (Maitland, Facts and Documents, 499). There is a long list of such Roman Catholic authors. One of them said: "I paid great attention to their errors and defenses." Some of these authors are here quoteid.Enervinus of Cologne writes to St. Bernard a letter in which he says of the Waldenses: They do not believe in infant baptism: alleging that place in the Gospel, Whosoever shall believe and be baptized shall be saved (Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, 111. 473). Petrus Cluniacensis, A. D., 1146, wrote against them, and brought this charge: That infants are not to be baptized, or saved by the faith of another, but ought to be baptized and saved by thou own faith . . . And that those who are baptized In infancy, when grown up, should be baptized again. . rather rightly baptized (Hist. EccI. Madgeburg, cent. XII C. v.834). Eckbert of Sebonaugh says: That baptism does no good to infants, because they cannot of them-selves desire it, and because they cannot confess any faith (Migne, CXCV 15). Pictavius, A. D. 1167, says: That confessing with their months the being of God, they entirely make void all the sacraments of the Church-namely, the baptism of children, the Eucharist, the sign of the living cross, the payment of tithes and oblations, marriage, monastic institutions, and all of the duties of priests and ecciesiastics (D’Archery, Veterum aliquot Scriptorom Spicilegium, II.). Ermengard, A. D. 1192, says: They pretend that this sacrament cannot be conferred except upon those who demand it with their own lips, hence they infer the other error. that baptism does not profit infants who receive it (Migne, CCIV. 1255). Alanus, a monk of the Cistercian order, was a voluminous writer and his leaning and abilities obtained for him the title of Universalis. He died in the year 1201. He says that the Waldenses taught that: Baptism avails nothing before years of discretion are reached. Infants are not profited by it, because they do not believe. Hence the candidate is usually asked whether he believed in God, the Father omnipotent. Baptism profits an unbeliever as little as it does an infant. Why should those be baptized who cannot he instructed? (Migne, CCX. 346). Stephen de Borbone was a monk of the Dominican order. He died about the year 1261, but probably wrote the account here given about the year 1225. The manuscript of his book is in the Library of the Sorbonue and only a part of it is in print. He says: One argument of their error is that baptism does not profit little children to their salvation, who have neither the motive nor the act of faith, as it is said in the latter part of Mark (Dieckhoff, Die Waldenser im Mittelalter, 160). Moneta, a Dominican monk, who wrote before the year A. D. 1240, says: They maintain the nullity of the baptism of infants, and affirm that none can be saved before attaining the age of reason. Rainerio Sacehoni, A. D. 1250, published a catalogue of the errors of the Waldenses. He says: Some of them hold that baptism is of no advantage to Infants, because they cannot believe (Coussard, contna Waldenses, 126). One of the Austrian Inquisitors, A. D., 1260, says: Concerning baptism, some err in saying that little children are not to be saved by baptism, for the Lord says, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. Some of them baptize over again (Preger, Beitrage sur Geschlchte der Waldesier) David of Augsburg, A. D. 1256-1272, says: They say that a man is then truly for the first time baptized, when he is brought into this heresy. But some say that baptism does not profit little children, because they are never able actually to believe (Preger, Der Tractat des David von Augsburg die Waldesier). A more influential line of contemporary witnesses could scarcely be found. "It is almost superfluous to point out the striking agreement between these teachings of the Waldenses," says Professor Vedder, "and the sixteenth century Anabaptists. The testimony is unanimous that the Waldenses rejected infant baptism" (American Journal of Theology IV. 448). If the Waldenses were not Baptists there is no historical proof of anything. It is equally clear that, the form of baptism was immersion. This was, at the time, the practice of the whole Christian world. The great Roman Catholic writers affirm that immersion was the proper form of baptism. Peter the Lombard, who died A. D. 1164, declared without qualification for it as the proper act of baptism (Migne, CXCII. 335). Thomas Aquinas refers to immersion as the general practice of his day, and prefers it as the safer way, as did also Bonaventura and Duns Scotus. These were the great doctors of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle ages. Mezeray, the French historian, is correct as to the form of baptism when he says: "In baptism of the twelfth century, they plunged the candidate into the sacred font, to show what operation that sacrament had on the soul" (Mezeray, Histoire de France, 288). And the contemporary writers, Eberhard and Ermengard, in their work "contra Waldenses," written toward the close of the twelfth century, repeatedly refer to immersion as the form of baptism among the Waldenses (Saee Gretscher, contra Waldenses. In Trias seriptorum contra Waldenses, Ingoldstadt, 1614; also in Max. Bibl. Patr. XXIV. And finally in Gretscher’s Works XII.) Wall also remarks of these people: "As France was the first country in Christendom where dipping of children was left off; so there first antipaedobaptism began." (Wall, The History of Infant Baptism, I. 480). They denied infant baptism and practiced dipping. Mabillon, tlie great Roman Catholic historian, gives an account. at much this date, of an immersion which was performed by the pope himself, which occurred in the Church of St. John the Evangelist. It is said that the pope blessed the Water and then while all were adjusting themselves in their proper places, his Holiness retired into an adjoining room of St. John the Evangelist, attended by some acolothysts who took off his habits and put on him a pair of waxed trousers and surplice and then returned to the baptistery. There the children were waiting-the number usually baptized by the pope. After the pope had asked the usual questions he immersed three and came up out of the baptistery, the attendants threw a mantle over his surplice, and he returned" (Mabillon, Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti, I. 43). Even the pope in those times practiced dipping. Ever’ institution has its vicissitudes, and after progress comes decline. On the eve of the Reformation everything was on the decline-faith, life, light. It was so of the Waldenses. Persecution had wasted their numbers and had broken their spirit and tbe few scattered leaders were dazed by the rising glories of the Reformation. The larger portion had gone with the Anabaptist movement. Sick and tired of heart in 1530 the remnant of the Waldenses opened negotiations with the Reformers, but a union was not effected till 1532. Since then the Waldenses have been Pedobaptists. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 9: 01.1.09. CHAPTER 7 ORIGIN OF THE ANABAPTISTS ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER VII THE ORIGIN OF THE ANABAPTIST CHURCHES THE beginnings of the Anabaptist movement are firmly rooted in the earlier centuries. The Baptists have a spiritual posterity of many ages of liberty-loving Christians. The movement was as old as Christianity; the Reformation gave an occasion for a new and varied history. The statement of Mosheim who was a learned Lutheran historian, as to the origin of the Baptists, has never been successfully attacked. He says: The origin of the sect, who from their repetition of baptism received in other communities, are called Anabaptists, but who are also denominated Mennonites, from the celebrated man to whom they owe a large share of their present prosperity, is involved in much obscurity [or, is hid in the remote depths of antiquity, as another translator has it]. For they suddenly started up, in various countries of Europe, under the influence of leaders of dissimilar character and views; and at a time when the first contests with the Catholics so engrossed the attention of all, that they scarcely noticed any other passing occurrences. The modern Mennonites affirm, that their predecessors were the descendants of those Waldenses, who were oppressed by the tyranny of the Papists; and that they were of a most pure offspring, and most averse from any inclinations toward sedition, as well as all fanatical views. In the first place I believe the Mennonites are not altogether in the wrong, when they boast. of a descent from these Waldenses, Petrobrusians, and others, who are usually styled witnesses for the truth before Luther. Prior to the age of Luther, there lay concealed in almost every country of Europe but especially in Bohemia, MoravIa, Switserland and Germany, very many persons, in whose minds were deeply rooted that principle which the Waldenses, Wyclifites, and the Husites maintained, some more covertly and others more openly; namely, that the kingdom which Christ set up on the earth, or the visible church, is an assembly of holy persons; and ought therefore to he entirely free from not only ungodly persons and sinners, but from all institutions of human device against ungodliness. This principle lay at the foundation which was the source of all that was new and singular in the religion of the Mennonites; and the greatest part of their singular opinions, as is well attested, were approved some centuries before Luther’s time, by those who had such views of the Church of Christ (Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, III. 200). This opinion of Mosheim, expressed in 1755, of the ancient origin of the Baptists and of their intimate connection with the Waldenses, and of other witnesses of the truth, meets with the approval of the most rigid scientific research of our own times. Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest men who ever lived, declared it was "his conviction that the Baptists were the only Christians who had not symbolized with Rome" (Whiston, Memoirs of, written by himself, 201). William Whiston, who records this statement, was the successor of Newton in Cambridge University, and lectured on Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. He himself became a Baptist and wrote a book on infant baptism. Alexander Campbell, in his debate with Mr. Macalla, says: I would engage to show that baptism as viewed and practiced by the Baptists, had its advocates in every century up to the Christian era and independent of whose existence (the German Anabaptists), clouds of witnesses attest the fact, that before the Reformation from popery, and from the apostolic age, to the present time, the sentiments of Baptists, and the practice of baptism have had a continued chain of advocates, and public monuments of their existence in every century can be produced (Macalla and Campbell Debate on Baptism, 378, 379, Buffalo, 1824). Again in his book on Christian Baptism (p.409. Bethany, 1851), he says: There is nothing more congenial to civil liberty than to enjoy an unrestrained, unembargoed liberty of exercising the conscience freely upon all subjects respecting religion. Hence it is that the Baptist denomination, in all ages and in all countries, has been, as a body, the constant asserters of the rights of man and of liberty of conscience. They have often been persecuted by Pedobaptists; but they never politically persecuted, though they have had it in their power. Robert Barclay, a Quaker5 who wrote largely upon this subject, though not always free from bias, says of the Baptists: We shall afterwards show the rise of the Anabaptist took place prior to the Reformation of the Church of England, and there are also reasons for believing that on the Continent of Europe small hidden Christian societies, who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists, have existed from the times of the apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of Divine Truth, and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a lineage or succession more ancient than that of the Roman Church (Barclay, The Inner Life of the Societies of the Commonwealth, 11, 12. London, 1876). These statements might be worked out in circumstantial detail. Roman Catholic historians and officials, in some instances eye-witnesses, testify that the Waldenses and other ancient communions were the same as the Anabaptists. The Augustinian, Bartholomaeus von Usingen, set forth in the year 1529, a learned polemical writing against the "‘Rebaptizers," in which he says that "Anabaptists, or Catabaptists, have gone forth from Picardism" (Usingen, Contra Rebaptizantes. Cologne, 1529). The Mandate of Speier, April 1529, declares that the Anabasptists were hundreds of years old and had been often condemned (Kelle; Die Waldenser, 135. Leipzig, I 886). Father Gretacher, who edited the works of Rainerio Sacchoni, after recounting the doctrines of the Waldenses, says: "This is a true picture of the heretics of our age, particularly of the Anabaptists;" Baronius, the most learned and laborious historian of the Roman Catholic Church says: "The Waldenses were Anabaptists" (D’Anvers, Baptism, 258). Baronius has a heavy and unreadable chronicle, but valuable for reference to original documents. Cardinal Hosius, a member of the Council of Trent, A. D. 1560, in a statement often quoted, says: If the truth of religion were to be judged by the readiness and boldness of which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the opnion and persuasion of no sect can be truer and surer than that of the Anabaptist since there have been none for these twelve hundred years past, that have been more generally punished or that have more cheerfully and steadfastly undergone, and even offered themselves to the most cruel sorts of punishment than these people. That Cardinal Hosius dated the history of the Baptists back twelve hundred years, i.e. 360, is manifest, for in yet another place the Cardinal says: The Anabaptists are a pernicious sect of which kind the Waldensian brethren seem to have been altough some of them lately, as they testify in their apology, declare that they will no longer re-baptize, as was their former custom; nevertheless, it is certain that many of them retain their custom, and have united with the Anabaptists (Hosius, Works of the Heresatics of our Times, Bk. I. 431. Ed. 1584). From any standpoint that this Roman Catholic testimony is viewed it is of great importance. The Romian Catholics were in active opposition to the Baptists, through the Inquisition they had been dealinf with them for some centuries, they had every avenue of information, they had spared no means to inform themselves, and, consequently, were accurately conversant with the facts. These powerful testimonies to the antiquity of the Baptists are peculiarly weighty. The Baptists were no novelty to the Roman Catholics of the Reformation period. The testimony of Luther, Zwingli, and other Reformers, is conclusive. Luther was never partial to the Baptists. As early as 1522, he says: "The Anabaptists have been, for a long time spreading in Germany" (Michelet, Life of Luther, 99). The able and eloquent Baptist, the late Dr. E. T. Winkler, commenting on this statement says: "Nay, Luther even traces the Anabaptists back to the days of John Huss, and apologetically admits that the eminent Reformer was one of them. Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer, is more specific than Luther. From the beginning of his work he was under the necessity of dealing with the Anabaptist movement. He says: The institution of Anabaptism is no novelty, but for three hundred years has caused great disturbance in the church, and has acquired such strength that the attempt in this age to contend with it appears futile for a time. No definite starting place can be ascribed to the Baptists of the Reformation. For they sprang up in many countries all at once. It is impossible to trace them first of all to any one place, for they appeared in many countries at the same time (J.C. Fusslin, Beitrage zur schweizerischen Reformations geschichte, I. 190; II. 64, 65,265, 328; III. 323. Zurich, 1754). And Fusslin adds: ‘The Anabaptistst were not wrong, therefore, when they said that anabaptism was no new thing. The Waldensians had practiced it before them" (Ibid, II. 166). No one can certainly say whether they appeared first in the Netherlands, Germany or Switzerland, and their Ieaders were not confined to any one country, and seem to have had no especial connection with each other. No one leader impressed himself upon all of them. There was an independence and an individuality that made it impossible to express a complete system of their intellectual beliefs. There are three contemporary accounts which show the divergence of opinion among them-two from hostile and one from a sympathetic historian. Bullinger (Der Wiedertaufern Ursprung, Furgang, Secten. Zurich, 1650) attempts a classification of their different divisions, and mentions thirteen distinct sects within the Anabaptist circle; but they manifestly overlap in such a way as to suggest a very large amount of difference which cannot be distincly tabulated. Sebastian Frank notes all the varieties of views which Bullinger mentions, but refrains from any classification. "There are," he says, "more sects and opinions, which I do not know and cannot describe, but it appears to me that there are not two to be found who agree with each other in all points." Kessler (Sabbatta, St. Gall, 1902), who recounts the story of the Anabaptists of St. Gall, records the same variety of opinions. The seed had been sown by earlier Christians, in many lands, and the Baptists were the fruitage. They did not spring from any individual, hence the great variety and independence exhibited by Baptist churches. Through persecution they had not been permitted to hold conferences to frame their plea, probably they did not know of each other’s existence, hence there were dissimilarities in their views; but in the main there was unity in thought, since they had learned their heart lessons out of the same blessed Gospels, and had been taught by the same free Spirit. The Anabaptist movement was the continuation of the old evangelical faith maintained by the Waldenses and other Mediaeval Christians. Limborch, the historian of the Inquisition, says: To speak my mind freely, if their opinions and customs were to be examined without prejudice, it would appear that among all of the modern sects of Christians, they had the greatest resemblance to that of the Mennonites or Dutch Baptists (Limborch, The History of the Inquisition, 1.57.London, 1731). Dr. Allen, Professor in Harvard University, says: Side by side with the creed which has worked itself out into such shapes as these (referring to the Roman hierarchy) has come down the primitive, obstinate, heroic, anti-sacerdotal tradition, which has made the starting point of many a radical protest, from the Puritan Novatians of the third century down to the English Independents of the seventeenth. That tradition in its most logical form is not only Protestant, but Baptist. Dr. Ludwig Keller, a learned member of the Reformed Church, the Munster Archivist, and now in charge of the Archives in Berlin, says: It is not to be doubted also that in the process of scientific investigation still further traces will be brought to light . . Much rather can it be proved that in the lands mentioned Baptist churches existed for many decades and even centuries before the Reformation (The Baptist Quarterly, Review, VII. 28-31). In his last work Keller says: The "silent points of this mode of viewing history is that inside of the evangelical world an unbroken course of development and historical continuity reached far back beyond the sixteenth century is a matter of fact; and yet it equally repudiates the Catholic supposition that only since 1517 "an appalling apostasy from the true faith took place in the Western World," and that of Luther’s followers that with him the light of the Gospel first (since the apostasy) came into the world (Keller, Die Anfange der Reformation, iii, iv. Translated for The Western Recorder by Dr. Albert H. Newman). The statement of Dr. William Moeller, late Professor of Church History, in Kiel, is to the same effect. He says: The Baptists have often been called the most consistent and the most genuine sons of the Reformation, or it has been thought that they have been excellently characterized by the name of "Ultras" of the Reformation; but this view is supported only by the very extraneous circumstance that many of their numbers bad previously been adherents of Zwingli or Luther. and that the Swiss Reformation prepared the way for their doctrine of the eucharist and the Biblical radicalism. Even the attempt of Cornelius to explain their rise to the effect of the Bible in the hand of the ordinary man is only sufficient to account for certain formalities and singular eccentricities. To judge from their collective view of the world, measured by their motives and aims, they belonged not to the Reformation, but to Mediaeval Christianity, a continuation of the opposition (which grew up in the second half of the Middle Ages on Catholic soil) to the secularized Church (Moeller, History of the Christian Church, 90, 91). Dr. Thomas M. Lindsay, Principal of the Free Church Collage, Glasgow, A. D., 1906, says: To understand sympathetically the multiform movement which was called in the sixteenth century Anabaptism, it is necessary to remember it was not created by the Reformation, although it certainly received an impetus from the inspiration of the age. Its roots can be traced for some centuries, and its pedigree has at least two stems which are essentially distinct, and were only occasionally combined. The one stem is the succession of the Brethren, a Mediaeval anti-clerical body of Christians whose history is written only in the records of the Inquisition of the Mediaeval Church, where they appear under a variety of names, but are universally said to prize the Scriptures and to accept the Apostles’ Creed. The other exsisted in the continuous uprising of the poor peasants in rural districts and the lower classes In the towns against the rich, which was a feature of the latter Middle Ages (Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, II 235. New York, 1908). The statements of these writers have been dwelt upon since they exhibit the spirit of the new learning by experts who have applied the principles of investigation by the scientific method to the history of the Baptists. In those places where the Waldenses flourished there the Baptists set deep root. This statement holds good from country to country, and from city to city. Innumerable examples might be given. For long periods there were Waldenses in Cologne. The Beghards were spread all over the Flemish Netherlands; and in Switzerland, along the Rhine, and in Germany, where afterwards we meet the Baptists (Heath,, The Anabaptists and Their English Descendants. In Contemporary Review, 403. March 1891). Metz was a place of refuge for the Waldenses (Michelet, Histoire de France, 11. bk. iii); they spread through Austria-Hungary, as far as Transylvania; the Cathari were found in the heights of the Alps, iii Switzerland; they came to Bern (Chron.. of Justinger, . Ochsenhein, op. cit. 95); and they came to Freiberg (Ochsenbein, Der Inquisitions prozesz wider die Waldenser. Bern. 1881). They were found in Strassburg. In all of these places were the Waldenses in mediaeval times; in all of them were the Baptists in Reformation times. The ground along the banks of the Rhine was so well prepared that a Waldensian in the fifteenth century could readily travel from Cologne to Milan without spending the night with any but a fellow-believerr. It was precisely in these places that the Baptists flourished in great numbers. Many able preachers of the Waldenses became widely known as Baptist ministers. Such were the martyrs, Hans Koch, Leonard Meyster, Michael Sattler and Leonard Kaser, who were all renowned Baptist ministers (Mchning, Baptisma Historia, 748). Koch and Meyster were put to death in Augsburg, in 1594; Sattler in 1527, at Rotenburg, and Kaser was burnt August 18, the same year, at Sherding. At Augsburg, in 1525, was a Baptist church of eleven hundred members. Hans Denck was the pastor, and he was of Waldensian origin. Ludwig Hatzer was expressly called by a contemporary a Picard; and Hans Hut was an adherent of the "old Waldensian brethren" (Der Chronist Job. Salat. In Archiv. f. Schweiz. Ref. Gesch., I. 21). Leonard Scheimer and Hans Schaffer were Baptist preachers (Keller, Die Anfange der Refornaation, II. 38). There was also Thomas Hermann, who, in 1522, labored as a Waldensian minister but he was martyred, in 1527, as a minister of the congrregation of the Baptists (Beck, Die Geschichte Bucher der Wiedertaufer, 13). Conrad Grebel, the distinguished Baptist leatler of Switzerland, received his learning from the Waldenses. Many of the distinguished Baptist families of Hamburg, Altona and Emden were of Waldensian origin (B1aupot Ten Cate, A Historical Inquiry, in Southern Baptist Review October, 1857). Moreover, the trade unions and much of the weaving business which was originally in the hands of the Waldenses all became Baptist. There are many external points between the Anabaptists and Waldenses, which force themselves upon us. The peculiar attitude which the Waldenses, as well as the Anabaptists, took toward the historical books of the Old Testament (Keller, Johann von Staupitz, 101, 162, 166, 342). Leipzig, 1888), can by no means be accidental. The Waldenses translated the Bible into the Romance and Tentonic languages early in the thirteenth century, the Baptists retained these versions of the Bible two hundred years after Luther’s version. The oldest German Bible is of Baptist origin. in these versions alone the Epistle of Paul to the Laodiecans appears. The attitude of the two bodies toward the question of grave yards, the use in the worship of certain forms of prayers, the singing of the same hymns, of observing the Supper, the principles in church, buildings, the gray dress of the apostles, the itinerant preachers, in the form of asking a blessing and many other details mark the Waldenees and the Baptists as of the same origin. Professor S. Minocchi, in a valuable pamphlet on The Bible in the History of Italy, says: Nevertheless, among the Waldenses and others, versions of its most noted and precious books, such as the Psalms, the book of those who suffer, pray and hope, or the Proverbs and ecclesiastes, which are full of such deep wisdom and profound melancholy, were largely circulated. The New Testament was sought after, and was spread about; and in its pages were found the condemnation of the Church of Rome and its faulty clergy, and at the same time the hope of a religious revival among the people. The hook of Revelation, in the image of Babylon, gave them a picture of the horrors of the Church; in the New Jerusalem they viewed the Christian restoration, which they were longing for. The Epistles of St. Paul fascinated them by their deep religious feeling, their wisdom so profound, their thought so spiritually free, their description of customs so simple. The Acts of the Apostles gave them in the insuperable model of a poor, virtuous, and happy life, such as that of the primitive Christians with their simple rites and with their having all things in common. But it was the Gospel, above all, that showed them, in the poor and humble figure of Jesus, the perfect ideal of a true religious life, so different from that of the ostentatious pontiffs of Rome (Salvatore Minocchi, a Bibbia nella Storia d’Italia Firenze, 1904). According to Professor Minocchi, the thirteenth century versions of the Italian Bible "Sprang, like many of the other old versions, anonymously, from the people who required a means of affirming the religious ideas born in them by the change that had taken place in their minds and conscience. But if we consider its intimate relationship with the contemporary heretical translations of France, Provence, and Savoy, we may safely believe that the first Italian version had its origin in some centers of the sect called the ‘Poor of Italy,’ and if we consider its phraseology, we may even more definitely bold that it was issued by the Tuscan Patarenec" The Baptists of the Reformation claimed that they had an ancient origin arid went so far as to suggest a "succession of churches". This claim was put forth by them at the very beginning of the Reformation A. D. 1521. An old letter is in existence founding. "Successio Ana-baptistica." The letter bears its own date as "that of the Swiss brethren, written to the Netherland Anabaptists, respecting their origin, a year before, Anno 1522" (Suptibus Bernardi Gaultheri. Coloniae, 1663 and 1612). The letter is particularly important since it shows that the Baptists as early as 1521 claimed a succession. Van Gent, a Roman Catholic, quotes the letter and calls the Anabaptists "locusts," "which last, as apes of the Catholics, boasted as having an apostolic succession" (Van Gent, Grundliche Historie, 85. Moded, Grondich bericht von de erste beghinselen der Wederdoopsche Sekten). The author of the "Successio Anahaptistica," says of the Anabaptists: I am dealing with the Mennonites or Anabaptists, who pride themselves as having the apostolic succession, that is, the mission and the extraction from the apostles. Who claim that the true Church is found nowhere, except among themselves alone and their congregations, since with them alone remains the true understanding of the Scriptures. To that end they appeal to the letter of the S. S. and want to explain them with the S. S. And thus they sell to the simple folks glass rubies for precious stones. . . If one charges them with the newness of their sect, they claim that the "true Church" during the time of the dominion of the Catholic Church, was hidden in her (Cramer and Pyper,. Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica, VII. 510). The point of this inquiry is that the Swiss Baptists wrote a letter, in 1522, on the apostolic origin of their churches in reply to one they had received the year before from the Baptists of the Netherlands, and that a Roman Catholic condemned them on that account. We know also that at that date there were Baptists in the .Netherlands. John Huibrechtsz was sheriff, in 1518, and he protected the Anabaptists (Wagenaar, Description of Amsterdam, III, 6, 66). Upon the origin of the Netherland Baptists the scholarly Van Oosterzee remarks: They are peculiar to the Netherlands and are older than the Reformation, and must, therefore, by no means be confounded with the Protestantism of the sixteenth century, for it can be shown that the origin of the Baptists reaches further back and is more venerable (Herzog, Real Ecyclopaedie, IX. 846). There is a like claim to the antiquity of the Swiss Baptists. At Zurich the Baptists, in 1525, had many discussions with Zwingli and others, in the presence of the City Council. On November 30, 1525, Zwingli secured a rigorous edict against them. The beginning of the edict contains the following words: You know without doubt, and have heard from many. that for a long time, some peculiar men, who imagine that they are learned, have come forward astonishingly, and without any evidence of the Holy Scriptures, given as a pretext by simple and pious men, have preached, and without the permission and consent of the church, have proclaimed that infant baptism did not proceed from God, but from the devil, and, therefore, ought not to be practiced (Blaupot Ten Cate, Historical Enquiry). From this it appears that the Baptists of Zurich, and thereabouts, had already been known "a very long time." The former statement of Zwingli, already given, will be recalled. There is no doubt that Zwingli wrote this decree. Two or three years would not be "a very long time." The antiquity of the Baptists was claimed by themselves, and admitted in 1525 by their enemies. A notable proof of the antiquity of the Baptists of Moravia is here recorded. Johanna Schlecta Costelacius wrote a letter from Bohemia, October 10, 1519, to Erasmus, affirming that for one hundred years the Picards had been dipping believers, and that they rebaptized and were therefore Anabaptists. His words are: "Such as come over to their sect must every one be dipped in mere water (in aqua simplici repbaptizari)" (Pauli Colimesii, Opera Theologica, Critica et Historica No. XXX. 534, 535, Hamburg, 1469). These Picartis, Waldenses, were spread all over the Flemish Netherlands and in Germany. Thev were found in the places where the the Anabaptists flourished. Two of those persons about whom Costelacius wrote, waited on Erasmus, at Antwerp, and congratulated him on his bold stand for the truth. He declined their congratulations and reproached them with being Anabaptists (Robinson, Ecclesiastical researches, 506). They returned to tell their brethren: "They are averse to us because of our name, i. e. Anabaptists" (Camerarius, de Fccl. Fratrum, 125. Ivimey, history of the Baptists, I.70). Erasmus wrote of them: The Husites renounce all rites and ceremonies of the Catholic Church; they ridicule our doctrine and practice in both sacraments; they deny orders and elect officers from among the laity; they receive no other rule than the Bible; they admit none into their communion until they are dipped in water, or baptized: and they reckon one another without distinction in rank to be called brothers and sisters. Sebastian Frank, the father of modern German history, who wrote under the date of 1531, out of the chronicles of the Picards, of Bohemia, in 1394, says: "The Picards in Bohemia are divided into two, or some say three parties, the large, the small, the very small, who hold in all things with the Anabaptists, have all things common, and do not believe in the real presence" (Frank, Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichte, clxix. Strassburg, 1531). He tells many additional things concerning these Baptists of 1394. He says the Roman Catholics reported very shameful things in regard to them, but that the Bohemian historians tell otherwise. Ziska, a Bohemian king, tried to exterminate them, but later they increased greatly until they numbered eighty thousand. They were a pious, child-like and sincere people; and many of them suffered on account of their faith. These Baptists are still living, writes Frank, in Bohemia. Their fathers had to live in the forests and caves. They supported each other mutually. The Lord’s Supper they held in a house set apart for that purpose. They had no Articles of Faith other than the Bible. They accepted no interpretations of the fathers. They held the Scriptures to be the word of God. These statements are from contemporary authors. The fact is etablished that the Baptists had existed in Bohemia since the year 1394; that they practiced immersion and close communion; in no wise received infant baptism; and were in all points like the Anabaptists. The Dutch Baptist historians all claim apostolic origin for the Baptists. Such is the claim of Hermann Schyn (Historia Christianorum 134 A. D. 1723); of Galenus Abrahamzon (Verdediging der Christenen, 29); and J. H. Halbertsma affirms the Waldensian origin of the Baptists. "The Baptists," say. He, "existed several centuries before the Reformation" (Halbertsma, De Doopsgczinde). While Blaupot Ten Cate says: I am fully satisfied that Baptist principles have in all ages. from the times of the apostles to the present. prevailed over a greater or smaller portion of Christendom (Cate, Nederlandsche Doopagezinden in Friesland, 5). The claim of the Dutch Baptists to apostolic origin was made the object of a special investigation in the year 1819, by Dr. Ypeij, Professor of Theology in Gronigen, and the Rev. J. J. Dermout, Chaplain to the King of the Netherlands, both of whom were learned members of the Reformed Church. Many pages might be filled with the reports that they made to the King. In the opinion of these writers: The Mennonites are descended from the tolerably pure evangelical Waldenses, who were driven by persecution into various countries; and who during the latter part of the twelfth century fled into Flanders; and into the provinces of Holland and Zealand, where they lived simple and exemplary lives, in the villages as farmers, in the towns by trades, free from the charge of any gross immoralities, and professing the most pure and simple principles, which they exemplified in a holy conversation. They were, therefore, in existence long before the Reformed Church of the Netherlands. We have now seen that the Baptists who were formerly called Anabaptist, and in later times Mennonites, were the original Waldenses. and who have long in the history of the church received the honor of that origin. On this account the Baptists may be considered as the only Christian society which has stood since the days of the apostles, and as a Christian society which has preserved pure the doctrines of the Gospel through all ages. The perfectly correct external and internal economy of the Baptist denomination tends to confirm the truth, disputed by the Romish Church, that the Reformation brought about in the sixteenth century was in the highest degree necessary, and at the same time goes to refute the erroneous notion of the Catholics, that their denomination is the most ancient (Ypeij en Dermout, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Hervornude Kerk. Breda, 1819). This testimony from the highest authority of the Dutch Reformed Church, through a Commission appointed by the King of the Netherlands, is a rare instance of liberality and justice to another denomination. It concedes all that Baptists have ever claimed in regard to the continuity of their history. On this account State patronage was tendered to the Baptists, which they politely, but firmly declined. The claims here considered in regard to the Baptists are of the highest consideration. The best historical study and scientific scholarship all lean toward the continuous history of the Baptists. In the last twenty years there has been much patient investigation of the history of the Baptists, especially in Germany and Switzerland. Likewise many of the sources have been published, and the trend of scholarship favors the idea of the continuity of Baptists from very early and some say from apostolic times. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 10: 01.1.10. CHAPTER 8 CHARACTER OF THE ANABAPTISTS ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER VIII THE CHARACTER OF THE ANABAPTISTS It is amazing how many names were applied, in the period of the Reformation, to the Baptists. They called each other brethren and sisters, and spoke of each other in the simplest language of affection. Their enemies called them Anabaptists because they repeated baptism when converts came from other parties. This name Anabaptist is a caricature. It damns first by faint praise and then by distortion. "The opprobrious term ‘Anabaptist’ was and is a vile slander. It was invented to conceal thought. It shrouded in a fog the grand ideals of a people loving peace and truth. The term is even yet a pellet of wax on the object glass of a telescope. The tendency of history is to change front, but the most historiographers still look at the whole question through corrugated glass" (Griffis, the Anabaptists. In The New World, 648. December, 1895). They were called Catabaptists because they denied infant baptism and practiced immersion. The name Baptist dates from the earliest days of the Reformation. In contemporary literature they are generally called Baptists (Frank, Chronik, III. 198). It is an old and honored name. The extent of the Baptist movement in the sixteenth century can scarcely be exaggerated. "This malady of Anabaptism and fanaticism," says Dorner, "had, in the third and fourth decades," that is between 1520 and 1540, "spread like a hot fever through all Germany; from Swabia and Switzerland along the Rhine to Holland and Friesland; from Bavaria, Middle Germany, Westphalia and Saxony, as far as Holstein" (Dorner, Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, 132. Munich, 1867). Anabaptism represented in the sixteenth century the stream of popular thought, feeling and aspiration, which has not ceased to flow through the centuries. Had it not been for fierce persecutions, which from the beginning fell upon the Baptists, in all human probability the Reformation would have been distinctly a Baptist movement. In that event the character of the Reformation would have been far more thorough and spiritual, and the battle for human liberty would not have been delayed for ages. But the leaders of the Reformation feared for their prerogatives and the rulers for their thrones, and these two forces combined to defeat any show of human freedom. The masses of the people, however, were with the Baptists. The novelty and boldness of the doctrines of the Baptists literally filled with terror the rulers of the world. Many of the leaders were scholarly men well versed in Greek and Hebrew. The wholesale slaughter of the Peasants, in 1525, caused the spread of Anabaptism, in the next twenty-five yeas, all over Europe. Cities and districts which had been friendly to Luther went over to the Anabaptists, and thousands of trades-men were to be counted as their adherents. (Guy de Bres, Racine, Source et Fondement des Anabaptistes, 5. Ed. 1555). The Archbishop of Lund, Imperial Ambassador with the King of Rome wrote July 9, 1535, that while thousands of them had been killed "there is a great quantity of this sect in several parts of Germany" (State Papers of Venice, V.29). Albertus Hortensius writing, in 1548, affirms: "The Anabaptists have increased with marvelous rapidity in all places" (Hortensius, Tumultum Anabaptistarum). Thousands were baptized by Hubmaier, and other Baptist preachers in Switzerland, Moravia, Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries. Frank says: The course of the Baptists was so swift that their doctrine soon spread over the whole country, and they quickly obtained a great body of adherents, baptized many thousands and also drew to their side many well-meaning souls. They were thrown into prison. tortured with branding sword, fire, water, and divers imprisonments, so that, in a few years, some two thousand or more are estimated to have been put to death (Franck, Chronik, III. 198). So much has been said about the Baptists being turbulent and fanatical, that it is really a surprise to many when it is found, that they were the most peaceful of men. That there were many persons called Anabaptists who were fanatics there is no doubt. When it is remembered, however, that the worst of outrages were committed against them, and that they were hunted like wild beasts, that their women were outraged, that they were drowned in rivers and burnt at the stake, that every means of exasperation was used against them, we are only surprised that they were as moderate as they were. Had the cause of these revolutionists succeeded they would have been regarded as the most brilliant champions of liberty, and they would have been classed among the world patriots. Since they failed they have been counted the worst of reprobates. It has been shown also that most of the fanatics were not Anabaptists at all, and that the contention in which they were engaged was far more political than religious. The Baptists were peace lovers and did not believe in the use of the sword. This trait would probably describe the most of them. They were reviled and they reviled not again, they were persecuted and they pleaded for liberty of all. It is pleasing to note that their true worth has been appreciated. Pierre Bayle, 1648-1706, the learned encycloptedist, Professor of Philosophy at Rotterdam, tells of the mild character of the Baptists, and of their long list of martyrs. He says: Could it only produce those who were put to death for attempts against the government, Its bulky martyrology would make a ridiculous figure. But it is certain that several Anabaptists, who suffered death courageously for opinions, had never any intention of rebelling. Give me leave to cite an evidence, which cannot be suspected; it is that writer (Guy de Bres) who has exerted his whole force in refuting this sect. He observes that its great progress was owing to three things: The first was, ‘That its teaching deafened its hearers with numberless passages of Scriptures. The second, That they affected a great appearance of sanctity. The third, That their followers discovered great constancy in their sufferings and death. But he does not the least hint that the Anabaptist martyrs suffered death for taking up arms against the state, or stirring up rebellion (Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, I 287 note). Georgius Cassander, who lived in those times, and disputed with the Anabaptists and visited some of their ministers in prison, in his Epistle to the Duke of Cleves, gives a good reputation to the Baptists of Belgium and lower Germany. He says: They discover an honest and pious mind; that they erred from the faith through mistaken zeal, rather than from evil disposition that they condemned the outrageous behavior of their brethren of Munster; and that they taught that the kingdom of Jesus Christ was to be established only by the cross. They deserve, therefore, to be pitied and instructed, rather than to be persecuted (Cassander, Praefat. Tractet. de Baptismo Infantium). The Roman Catholic Pastor at Feldsberg, A. D. 1604, says: Among all of the sects none have a finer appearance and a greater external sanctity than the Anabaptist. Among themselves they call each other brother and sister; they curse not, they revile not, they swear not, they use no defensive armor, and at the beginning had no weapons. They never eat or drink immoderately, they use no clothes that would indicate worldly pride, they have nothing as individuals but everything in common. They do not go to law before the magistracy and endure every-thing in patience, as they pretend, in the Holy Spirit. Who then would believe that under these garments lurk pure ravening wolves? The character of the Swiss Baptists has the highest commendation of Erasmus. In the time of their persecution in Basel, Erasmus lived in that city. He remarked upon the persecuting desire of those who had themselves just escaped from danger and declared: They who are so very urgent that heretics should not be put to death. did yet capitally punish the Anabaptists, who were condemned for much fewer articles, and were said to have among them a great many who had been converted from a very wicked life, to one as much amended; and who, however, they doted on their opinions, had never possessed themselves of any churches, or cities, or fortified themselves by any league against the force of princes, or cast any one out of his inheritance or estate (Epistolarum de Erasmus, XXXI. 59. A. D. 1530). On account of these statements Bellarmine accused Erasmus, of being of the Baptist persuasion. No one could express a favorable opinion of the Baptists and escape abuse. Dr. Schaff has summed up his opinion of the entire movement of the Reformation. Luther, of all the Reformers, arouses his enthusiasm. With a patrotic interest he narrates the story of his countryman, Zwingli. For Calvin as a theological genius he had a high admiration, but he pronounced him to be "one who forbids familiar approach". To Dr. Kostlin he wrote (1888): "I am now working on the Swiss Reformation, but I cannot stir up as much enthusiasm for Calvin or Zwingli, although he is my countryman, as for Luther." About the same time he wrote to Dr. Mann: The Reformation everywhere had its defects and sins, which it is impossible to justify. How cruel was the persecution of the Anabaptists, who by no means were only revolutionary fanatics but for the most part simple, honest Christians and suffered and died for liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state. And how sad were the moral state and the rude theological quarrels in Germany. No wonder that Melanchthon longed for deliverance from the rabies theologorum. I hope God has something better and greater in store for His Church than the Reformation (Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff, 462). Earnest and evangelical as were the Baptists it would seem natural to suppose that they would at least be tolerated by the government. But their views were too radical, and their principles too far reaching, to fail to challenge the hatred of that persecuting era. The whole Christian world was organized upon lines of persecution. The only exception to the rule were the Baptists. They held that every man had a God-given right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience; and the larger right that other men had the same privilege. In this contention they stood absolutely alone; and standing alone they paid the price in human blood in order that every man might worship, or not worship, God according to the dictates of his own conscience. It was a costly sacrifice, but it was none too dear for the world’s redemption The entire Christian world was engaged in persecution. The Baptists, in all lands, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, were cruelly persecuted by imprisonment, exile, torture, fire and sword. The Baptists by thousands were martyred. They alone pleaded for liberty. "The principles from which the Anabaptists proceeded," says Emil Egli, "manifested a powerful grasp on original Christian ideas" (Egli, Die Zurischer Wiedcrtaufer, 94. Zurich, 1884). Their voice on the subject of liberty of conscience was clear and distinct. Halls Muller, of Medicon, when brought before the Zurich magistrates, said: Do not lay a burden on my conscience, for faith is a gift freely from God, and is not a common property. The mystery of God lies hidden, like the treasure in the field, which no one can find, but he to whom the Spirit shows it. So I beg you, ye servants of God, let my faith stand free (Egli, 76). Baithasar Hubmaier, in a tract published at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, included the Turks and atheists in his plea for the rights of conscience. He says: The burning of heretics cannot be justified by the Scriptures. Christ Himself teaches that the tares, should be allowed to grow with the wheat. He did not come to burn, or to murder, but to give life, and that more abundantly. We should, therefore, pray and hope for improvement in men as long as they live. If they cannot be convinced by appeals to reason, or the Word of God, they should be let alone. One cannot be made to see his errors either by fire or sword. But if it is a crime to burn those who scornfully reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ, how much more it is a crime to burn the true expounders and exemplars of the Word of God. Such an apparent zeal for God, the welfare of the soul, and the honor of the church. is a deception. Indeed to every one it must be evident that the burning of heretics is a device of Satan (Hubmaler, Von Ketzern und verbrennen. A. D. 1524). The Baptists appealed directly to the New Testament as the sole authority in matters of religion. They at once repudiated the traditions of the Fathers and appeals to earthly councils, and chose the Scriptures as the rule of faith and practice. They believed in the personal interpretation of the Word of God and that a man must walk according to the light which is in him. An important feature of the Baptist movement was its strange atmosphere of Bible reading, almost to the exclusion of other literature. This was also characteristic of the earlier evangelical movements, but not to the same extent as among the Baptists of the Reformation. There had been more than one translation of the Bible into German before Luther’s time. The Baptists used with great power their heritage of the Waldensian Bible, and they hailed with delight Luther’s translation of the Bible. Their own leaders, such as Hatzer and Denck, translated the Scriptures out of the originals into the vernacular of the people. Among the skilled artisans, journeymen and better situated peasants of the early sixteenth century, there were not a few who could read sufficiently to make out the text of the German Bible, whilst those who could not read would form a circle around those who could, and the latter, from the coigne of intellectual advantage, would not merely read, but would often expound the text after their own fashion to their hearers. These informal Bible readings became one of the chief functions among Baptists (Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, 163-165. London, 1903). The Baptist movement was radical in its nature, but the baptismal question was secondary in its importance. The movement involved the entire reconstruction of the State Church and of much of the social order. It was nothing less than revolutionary. The Reformers aimed to reform the. Roman Catho1ic Church by the Bible; the Baptists went directly to the apostolic age and accepted the Bible alone as their rule of faith and practice. The Reformers founded a popular State Church, including all citizens and their families; the Baptists insisted on the voluntary system and selected congregations of baptized believers, separated from the world and the State (Schaff, history of the Christian Church, VII. 72). They preached repentance and faith, they organized congregations, and exercised rigorous discipline. They were earnest and zealous, self-denying and heroic. They were orthodox in the articles of the Christian faith. Hast says: To realize regeneration among men was the Anabaptist aim, and if they failed, the noble and exalted thought which animated them, and for which they strove, must not be depreciated. They have deserved in this particular the respect f an unprejudiced later age, before a thousand others; and they seem in the choice of means to attain this end, to have been generally worthy of respect. It was not so much the advocacy of’. the doctrine of regeneration that was so noticeable and characteristic of them, but the that they held on so hard for its realization. They stood in their conscience much higher than the world about them, and, therefore, was not comprehended by it. (Hast, Geschichte der Wiedertaufer. 144. Munster, 1836). This meed of praise by the German historian is none too high. The nature of a church was the fundamental contention of the Baptist movement of the Reformation. The Baptists could find no trace of infant baptism in the Bible, and they denounced it as the invention of the pope and the devil. Baptism, they reasoned, presupposes instruction, faith and conversion, which is impossible in the case of infants. Voluntary baptism of adults and responsible converts is, therefore, the only valid baptism. They denied that baptism is necessary to salvation, and maintained that infants are, or may be, saved by the blood of Christ without water baptism (Augsburg Confession, Article IX). But baptism was necessary to church membership as a sign of conversion. From this conception of baptism followed, as a sequence, the rebaptism of those converts who wished to unite with the Baptists from other bodies. The two ideas, a pure church of believers and the baptism of believers only, were the fundamental articles of the Baptist creed. The administration of the affairs of the congregation was exceedingly simple. Through baptism one entered into the fellowship of the believers. Each congregation had its own leader called teacher or pastor who was elected by the congregation. If death or persecution removed him a new man was immediatly elected to take his place. Besides these there were persons selected to take care of the poor and competent persons were sent out as missionaries. The duties of the pastor were to warn, to teach, to pray in meetings, to institute the breaking of bread, and to represent the church in withdrawing the hand of fellowship. On Sunday the congregation came together to read the Word of God, to exhort one another and to build one another up in Christian doctrine. From time to time the Lord’s Supper, which they termed the breaking of bread, was celebrated (Cornelius, Geschichte des Munsterischen Aufruhrs, II. 49). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 11: 01.1.11. CHAPTER 9 REFORMERS BEAR WITNESS TO THE BAPTIST ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER IX THE REFORMERS BEAR WITNESS TO THE BAPTISTS THERE was a constant conflict between the Reformers and the Baptists on the proper subjects of baptism. At first the Reformers were disposed to take the Baptist side of the controversy and to deny the necessity of infant baptism. "The strength of the Baptist reasoning in regard to infant baptism," says Planck, the great German Protestant historian, referring to Melanchthon, "made a strong impression on his convictions." Planck continues: "The Elector, wishing to quell the controversy, dissuaded the Wittenberg theologians from discussing the subject of infant baptism, saying he could not see what benefit could arise from it, as it was not of much importance, and the rejection of it would create great excitement, since it had been so long hallowed in the Church by the influence of Augustine, its defender. Melanchthon agreed with the Elector. Whether it were right in him to be so quickly convinced, we leave it for theology to determine" (Planck, Geschichte der Entstehung, der Veranderungen und der Bildung unseres protestantisehen Lehrbegriffs. Leipsic, 1781-1800. 6 vols). When the Reformers for State and political reasons finally retained infant baptism, between them and the Baptists there was a constant controversy. On the form of baptism, however, by dipping, there was but slight conflict between the parties, since the Baptists and the Reformers held practically the same views. even when the Reformers practiced, or permitted, pouring or sprinkling, they generally affirmed that the primitive rite was by dipping. De Hoop Sheffer relates that in Germany "until 1400, there was no other method (of baptism) than immersion." The displacement of immersion after that date was not rapid. Dipping as the form of baptism, at the time of the Reformation, still existed in many parts of Germany "In the North and East of Germany," says Van Slee, "even as in England and the Northern kingdoms immersion still existed up to the breaking in of the Reformation period of the sixteenth century" (Van Slee, De Rijnsburger Collegianten, 376. Harlem, 1895). Dipping for baptism, in Germany, was practiced as late as 1560. The Archbishop of Metz, in 1549, called a provincial council, which published decrees that were not only applicable to that province, but also to Treves and Cologne. The Synod made no provision for sprinkling, it required the priest "to dip the child three times in water" (Sleiden, The General History of the Reformation, XXI. 481). In 1551, at Wittenberg, the Saxon Confession of Faith was adopted by the superintendents, pastors and professors, that it might be presented to the Council of Trent. The Confession was published by Melancthon, and contained the following reference to baptism: Baptism is an entire action: to-wit, a dipping (mersio) and a pronouncing of these words, I testify by this immersion (mersione) that thou art washed from sin, etc. In Pomerania, one of the Northern provinces of Prussia, the form of baptism in 1560 was immersion. They were required to baptize by the ritual of Luther, which was by immersion, and the following is added: While it is possible, we would much rather they be baptized naked, whether it be in Winter or Summer time. But where it is not, they can be baptized in their clothes. Still no one should take offense, for we baptize not the clothing, but the person. Not alone in the head, but the whole body as the ordinance of Christ and the words in baptism convey (Acta et Statuta Synodica Ecciesiarum Pomeranie Dormni, 1560). The Roman Catholic custom of the period is mentioned by the celebrated Jacopo Sadeleto, who was Secretary to Leo X., and was afterwards made a cardinal by Paul III. Writing in the year 1536, he says: Our trine immersion in water at baptism, and our trine emersion, denote that we are buried with Christ in the faith of the true trinity, and that we rise again with Christ in the same belief (Sadoleto, Pauli Epist. ad. Romanos commentar. cap. VI. 8). It is observed that in the North and East of Germany the form of baptism as practiced by the Baptists was not especially a matter of note. This was because that in the North and East of Germany immersion was the common practice and so the dippings of the Baptists did not seem an unusual thing. But in the South of Germany at Strassburg and Augsburg the practice of dipping was especially made a record of as peculiar to the Baptists, because there affusion was the common practice of the people. The Baptists stood out in this particular as acting contrary to the customs of the people. Had the Baptists of North and East Germany practiced sprinkling it would have been a matter of peculiar remark. That this was not done is a powerful intimation that the Baptists of those sections practiced dipping. Martin Luther did not differ substantially from the view expressed by the Roman Catholic Church on the form of baptism. The act of baptism was not an item of controversy at that time, for the Reformers either preferred immersion, as Luther, or held the act to be a matter of indifference, as Calvin. Luther at first followed the practice of his own country and insisted on immersion. It is not altogether impossible that Luther learned the practice of dipping from the Baptists of Bohemia, for in the early days of the Reformation he leaned heavily on the old evangelicals (Enders, Luthers Briefwechsel. II. 345, Nr. 280). Roman Catholics claimed that the Baptists received their views of baptism from Luther. This was the charge of John Eck, the old opponent of Luther (Eckius, Enchiridion Locitvni Communion, 226. Anverpiae, 1539). This charge greatly exasperated Luther. Robinson says: Luther bore the Zwinglian dogmatizing, but he could not brook a further Retormation in the hands of the dippers. What rendered the great man’s conduct more surprising is that he had himself, seven years before, taught the doctrine of dipping. . . . The Catholics tax Luther as being the father of the German dippers, some of the first expressly declare, they received their first ideas from him, and the fact seems undeniable, but the article of Reforming without him he could not bear. This is the crime objected against them, as it had been against Carlstadt. This exasperated him to the last degree, and he became their enemy, and notwithstanding all that he had said in favor of dipping, persecuted them under the title of re-dippers, re-baptizers, Anabaptists. It is not an improbable conjecture that Luther at first conformed to his own principles and dipped infants (Robinson, Ecclesiastical Researches, 542, 543). It is doubtless true that Luther began by dipping infants. That he taught immersion there can be no doubt. In his celebrated sermon on Baptism, date 1518, he says: First baptism is called in Greek baptismos, in Latin mersio, that is, when we dip anything wholly in water, that it is completely covered over. And although in many provinces it is no longer the custom (in other provinces it was the custom) to thrust the children into the font and to dip them; but they only pour water with the hands out of the font; nevertheless, it should be thus, and would be right, that after speaking aloud the word (baptize) the child or any one who is to be baptized, be completely sank down into the water, and dipt again and drawn out, for without doubt in the German tongue the word (taufe) comes from the word tief (deep), that a man sinks deep into the water, what he dips. That also the signification of baptism demands, for it signifies that the old man and sinful birth from the flesh and blood shall be completely drowned through the grace of God. Therefore, a man should sufficiently perform the signification and a right perfect sign. The sign rests, in this, that a man plunge a person in water in the name of the Father, etc., but does not leave him therein but lifts him out again; therefore it is called being lifted out of the font or depths. And so must all of both of these things be the sign; the dipping and the lifting out. Thirdly, the signification is a saving death of the sins and of the resurrection of the grace of God. The baptism is a bath of the new birth. Also a drowning of the sins in the baptism (Opera Lutheri, I. 319. Folio edition). In the judgment of Luther, in the year 1518, in Germany, taufen meant to dip. He is altogether a capable witness on this point. It is a significant fact that when the Ritual of Luther (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, VI. 578, 607, 608), in 1528, prescribed immersion there was no controversy on baptism between him and the Baptists. There is an account of how Luther caused dipping to be restored in Hamburg. John Bugenhagen found that only sprinkling was performed, and he reported the case to Luther. There was some confusion on the subject. Bugenhagen, A. D. 1552, says: At length they did agree among themselves, that the judgment of Luther, and of the divines at Wittenberg, should be demanded upon this point: which being done, Luther did write back to Hamburg that sprinkling was an abuse, which they ought to remove. Thus was plunging restored at Hamburg (Grosby, The History of English Baptists, I. xxii. London, 138). Luther affirmed that the Baptists were in the practice of dipping. In a familiar letter written to his wife he says: Dear Kate-We arrived here, at Halle, about 8 o’clock, but have not ventured to go to Eisleben, for we have been stopped by a great Anabaptist (I mean a flood) which has covered the road here, and has not threatened us with mere "sprinkling," but with "immersion," against our will, however. You may comfort yourself by being assured that we are not drinking water, but have plenty of good beer and Rhenish wine, with which we cheer ourselves in spite of the overflowing river. Halle, January 25, 1546. No other construction, save that the Baptists were in the practice of dipping can be applied to this language of Luther. We now turn to the testimony of Huldreich Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer. As early as June 15, 1523, he wrote to his friend, Wittenbach, that the bread and wine in the Eucharist are what the water is in baptism. "It would be in vain," he added, "for us to plunge a man a thousand times in water, if he does not believe" (D’ Aubigne’, History of the Reformation, III. 298). Zwingli published, at this date, a book which is most suggestive of the practice of the Baptists, and without point if they did not practice dipping. The book is Elenchus contria Catbaptistas, A Refutation of the Tricks of the Catabaptists or Drowners. Why should they be called "drowners" if they did not immerse? The title of such a book would be inappropriate to persons in the practice of sprinkling. The word "Catabaptist" essentially means a submersion, and not one who merely despises baptism. The idea of despising baptism is not inherent in the word, but only an implication from their rejection of infant baptism, or any part of the meaning of Catabaptist, for the word does not mean anything different from Submersion. Other words may be used in connection with it to indicate that the Baptists despised infant baptism, but the idea is not contained in the word Catabaptist, but in words which explain such hatred. Catabaptist is a Greek word which means one who submerges. The lexicons and the Greek language are all in accord with this use. Hence Ottius, under the year 1532, relates: Our churches are infested throughout the country by the Catabaptists whom it is not possible at this time to reproach with evil. We have tried by the Scripture to persuade them but with their convictions this is not possible. Silence was then placed upon them, the neglecting of which, it is deserving that the authorities should return to their pertinacities that they shall be immersed a second time and returning, be submerged from within deeply (Ottius, Annales anabaptistica, 55). The Baptists preferred the name Catabaptists to that of Anabaptists. Indeed, they always repudiated the word Anabaptist, since they did not consider that they practiced anabaptism. They simply baptized; never attempted to rebaptize. They did think they practiced catabaptism, namey, immersion. They never would have admitted the name as applicable to them if it meant despisers of baptism. They practiced baptism; they rejected infant baptism. "They naturally disowned," says Gieseler, the able historian, "the name Anabaptist, as they declared infant baptism invalid and called themselves Catabaptists" (Gieseler, A Compendium of Ecclesiastical History, V. 255, 256). The use of the word Catabaptist among Baptists may be found in Fusslin (III. 229); and as late as the time of Schyn, A. D. 1729, the name Catabaptist, even among the Mennonites, meant immersion. There had been before the days of Schyn changes among the Mennonites, and in his time many of them practiced affusion, yet the word Catabaptist still meant immersion. Schyn rejected the word Baptist as not appropriate to his people. "Yet some think," he continues, "that the name Catabaptist is more suitable; but because this word is of ambiguous meaning, and is used by adversaries in a bad sense, and more properly means immerse, and that rite is not in common use among Mennonites, nor is it esteemed necessary among all Mennonites, hence also the name does not suit all Mennonites" (Schyn, Historiae Mennonitarum Plenior Deductio, 35). Zwingli made many references to the immersions of the Catabaptists. A few instances are here cited. He says: "Since, therefore, you see that Catabaptism which you hope as from a fountain to derive all your counsel is proved by no Scripture," etc. Once more he says of his Baptist opponent: "What then if upon you, you raging wild ass (for I could not call him a man whom I think was baptized among the shades of the Phlegethon)," etc. This was one of the rivers of hell. He further says of his opponent: "Yet, as I have said, since the man now doubtless burns among the shades as much as he froze here through his Catabaptist washings, I have concluded to omit his name." He further tells of a whole family of Baptists who had been immersed and then made shipwreck of themselves. Desiderius Erasmus was the most brilliant representative of the humanistic culture of the sixteenth century. Writing out of England, in 1532, he says: "We dip children all over in water, in a stone font" (Erasmus, Coloquia Familiaria). His influence was very great upon the educated ministers among the Baptists of the lower Rhenish provinces, such as John Campanus, and others (Rembert, Die Wiedertaufer im Herzogtum Julich), and the Baptists often spoke of him as the ornament of the German nation (Beck, Die Geschichte Bucher der Wiedertaufer, 12 note). We certainly’ know that John Campanus was in the practice of dipping. Philip Melanchthon, the co-laborer with Luther, says: The immersion in water is a seal, the servant he who plunges signifies a work of God, moreover, the sinking down in that manner is a token of the divine will, with the form spoken, to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; as the apostles use to baptize in Acts, in the name of Christ. In which words the signification is plain. Behold, to what end we should plunge, that so ye may receive, and also to be made certain of favor toward thee in the divine testimony. . . A seal is made in baptism, for from this custom he may know that he is passing from death unto life. It is also the sinking down of the old Adam in death, and the coming forth of the new. This is why Paul calls it the bath of regeneration. This signification is easily perceived from the type (Melanchthon, ‘‘Communes rerum theologicarum, Part, De Baptismo A. D. 1521). William Farel, the Geneva Reformer and the friend of Calvin, wrote in 1528 in the defense of the Baptists. He had already written, September 7, 1527, a letter in appreciation of the position of the Baptists on the subject of baptism. He now compares their baptism by dipping to that of Christ. He says: It is not understood by many what it is to give one’s name to Christ to walk and preserve in the newness of life by the infusion of the Spirit with whom Christ dips his own, who, in His mind and by His grace wish to be dipped in water (intingi aqua) in the presence of the Christian congregation, that they may publicly protest that they believe in their hearts, that they may be dearer to the brethren and closer bound to Christ by his solemn profession, which is only rightly dispensed as that great John, and the greatest of all, Christ, commanded (Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs dans les pays de Ia langue francaise, II. 48). There is an instance of dipping on record from Henry Slachtcheaf. He wrote to Martin Bucer as follows: And this I desire to admonish thee, brother, no longer to impart baptism to infants. I see this by the Lord who has shown to me clearly by the Spirit, and not on that account to dare to dip our children in water. Hence it is cursed with the mother, it is cast out from place to place, etc. Hence my friend, I beseech you, do not oppose the truth. Vehemently and wickedly have the things of our Gospel suffered with many most of all about these two ordinances, the Supper and the baptism, but with the Lutherans very badly. With the Anabaptists that I know thus far baptism is observed literally (Cornelius, Die Geschichtquellen d. Bisthums Munster, I. 228, 229). Thus was immersion the literal practice of the Baptists. Slachtchaef baptized a child by dipping upon a profession of faith. Cornelius says of him: He preached in Hueckeihoven in the house of Godert Reinharts, and he dipped it in a bucket of water (er es eimer wasser taucht) (Ibid, 228). The vessel (eimer) was doubtless a tub used to hoist water out of the well. Whatever the vessel was the child was dipt into it. The ceremony was performed by a man who had written Bucer against infant baptism and stated that baptism was by dipping. This same vessel is elsewhere mentioned in the practice of dipping among the Baptists. There are two examples in the writings of John Calvin which go to show that the Baptists were in the practice of dipping. Calvin came in direct contact with the Baptists and well knew their opinions, for he married the widow of a Baptist preacher. In the first example, he defines, in a well-known passage the meaning of the word. He says: The word signifies to immerse, and it is certain that the rite of immersion was observed in the ancient church (Calvin, Institutes, Bk. IV. C. 15). Immediately following this statement he makes a reply to a Baptist who urged that Acts 19:3-5 taught rebaptism. Calvin says to the Baptist: That if ignorance vitiated the former baptism, so that another baptism is made to correct it; they were the first of all to be baptized by the apostles, who in all the three years after their baptism scarcely tasted a small particle of the measure of the sincere doctrine. Even now among us, where would there be sufficient rivers for a repetition of the dipping of so many, who in ignorance of the compassion of the Lord, are daily corrected among us (Ibid, c. 15. Sec. 18). Calvin thus speaking of his own times declares that if the opinions of the Baptists prevailed the rivers would not suffice suffice for their dippings. The second instance where Calvin refers to the dipping practiced by the Baptists is as follows: Truly so much ignorance deservedly requires another baptism, if for ignorance they should be rebaptized again. But what pertains to us it would be necessary always to have a lake or a river at our back, if so often as the Lord purge any error, we should be completely renewed from baptism (Calvin, Opuscula. Contra Anabaptists, II. 28. Geneva, 1547). Calvin was here discussing the relation of baptism to Acts 19:3-5 as expounded by the Baptists. He declared the Baptist needed a river or lake to carry out their idea of dipping. Diodati, the Geneva reformer and scholar, expressed himself, A. D. 1558, clearly on the subject of dipping. In speaking of the baptism of John, Matthew 3:6, he says: "Plunged in the water for a sacred sign and seal of the expiation and remission of sins" (Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations Upon the Holy Bible. London, 1648). When once the position of Luther and the other Reformers is understood, it is not surprising that the form of baptism was not a subject of discussion between the Reformers and the Baptist. The testimony of the Reformers is clear and distinct that the Baptists were in the practice of dipping. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 12: 01.1.12. CHAPTER 10 BAPTISTS IN THE PRACTICE OF DIPPING ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER X BAPTISTS IN THE PRACTICE OF DIPPING REFERENCE has already been made, in former pages, to the fact that the Waldenses practiced dipping; that this was at first the custom: of the Reformers; and some reliable testimony has been introduced to show the practice of the Baptists. The point of controversy between the Baptists and the Reformers on baptism was not dipping, but the necessity of infant baptism. There is much more available material on the form of baptism among the Baptists. That subject is now pursued further. L’Abbe Fleury, the great Roman Catholic historian, under date of 1523, gives an account of the Baptist practice. He says: This was called the heresy of the Anabaptists, because the name was attributed to this erroneous sect. for they baptized in a sacred fountain all those baptized in infancy, and they condemned baptism given to little children . . Neither did they detest baptism the less, and all, as many as gave name to their own fact1on,diped again in the sacred fountain; Whence they were called Anabaptists (Fleury, Historiae Ecclesiastiscs XXXIV. 282) These clear and circumstantial statements are confirmed by a book published in Dutch, as early as 1523, called the Sum of the Holy Scripture, which was translated by Simon Fish, in 1529, into English, and was for more than a generation the handbook of the English Baptists. The author of the old book says: The water of baptism taketh not away our sin for then it were a precious water. And then it behooved us daily to wash therein. Neither hath the water of the fountain more virtue in itself than the water that runneth in the River Rhine. For we may as well be baptized in the Rhine as in the font. . . . We be plunged under the water. . . . And this we promised to do when we be baptized and we signify even the same, when we be plunged under the water (Sum of Scripture, British Museum. 4401 b. 2), The subject was a believer, the act was immersion and the river Rhine was the place. The Rhine for the Baptists became a famous baptizing place. It is a significant fact that the most distinguished advocate of Baptist views in Switzerland, Conrad Grebel, dipped his converts upon a profession of faith. Associated with him was George Blaurock, a monk of Coire; on account of his eloquence called the "mighty George." The account which follows is given prominent place in some histories of the Baptists in Switzerland, and from it are deducted some remarkable conclusions as to the practice of sprinkling among Baptists. The representation is that the account is taken from an anonymous Moravian chronicle. The account is as follows: At one of the meetings of the "brethren" at Zurich, according to a Moravian chronicle, all bowed in prayer before God that he would grant them power to fulfill the divine will. Blaurock, thereupon, arose and asked Grebel to baptize him upon a confession of his faith. Again he fell to his knees, and Grebel baptized him. All the rest present were baptized by Blaurock. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper followed. At the house of Rudolf Thoman, at Zolikon, a like scene was enacted not long after. There was a meeting of the brethren there. After they had long read and conversed together, John Brubach, of Zurich, arose and wept loud, saying that he was a great sinner, and desired others to pray for him. Here upon Blaurock asked him if he desired the grace of God. He replied: "Yes" Then Manz arose and said: "Who will forbid me to baptize this person?" "No one," replied Blaurock. He then took a dipper of water and baptized him in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Then Hottinger arose and desired baptism (Cornelius, Geschichte des Munsterischen Aufruhrs, II. 26, 27). If the events described above took place, of which there is much doubt, it was at the time Grebel had first broken with Zwingli, and was still a Presbyterian, and Blaurock had just come from the Roman Catholic Church, and before either of them had embraced Baptist views. But did those things occur? The authority given is an anonymous Moravian chronicle. Why a "Moravian chronicle"? Would not a Swiss chronicle do better? This "Moravian chronicle" has been made to do good service. Who wrote the "Moravian chronicle?" What is its date, and where did it come from? Who has it now, and who ever saw it? There are too many of these anonymous "chronicles," and "manuscripts," and all of them unauthenticated. All of them are quoted by Pedobaptists in support of sprinkling among Baptists. Not much importance can be attached to such statements. All who mention this circumstance concerning Blaurook quote the "Moravian chronicle" as their authority. This was true of Fusslin (1740); Cornelius (1860), and Egli (1879)-all of them Pedobaptists. Not one of these writers claims to have seen the "Moravian chronicle," not one gives the date of it, not one mentions the year or even century in which it was written, not one gives the page. The face of the narrative is against the authenticity of the "Moravian chronicle." It was manifestly not written by the "Brethren," but by an enemy. The details are circumstantial enough for the writer to have been an eyewitness. It was from the nature of the case impossible for an enemy to have been present in these assemblies. These were dangerous times and no very accurate account could have been expected of the private meetings of the "Brethren." It is opposed to the spirit of the Baptists of the sixteenth century. It is said that Blaurock asked Brubach "if he desired the grace of God," referring to baptism. The Baptists did not call baptism "the grace of God." They were accused of despising baptism, and it is certain that they did not regard it as a means of grace. The language does not sound natural in the mouth of a Baptist of the sixteenth century, and it does have the flavor of Pedobaptist writers of a later time. It is contrary to the known fact that Grebel, a few days later, was in the practice of dipping, and that Manz practiced dipping, and that dipping was the act of baptism used at Zolikon. There is another version of this same affair (Hosek, Balthasar Hubmaier, ch. V.), which takes no account of affusion. The story is told in a different manner, the people are crossing themselves as Roman Catholics, and evidently they were not Baptists. All such anauthenticated documents should be received with caution. It must be remembered that in the early days of the Reformation men of every character, and of almost every opinion, were called Anabaptists. It was only needful that a man should assail Roman Catholicism in the interest of human freedom to be thus classed. The Roman Catholics did not closely discriminate when speaking of their opponents. They hastened to brand them with such epithets as appeared to be useful. There were those who practiced infant baptism who were called Anabaptists. It was an hour of revolution. Men today did not hold views they warmly advocated yesterday. Transition was every where. It is possible that some converts turning from Romanism practiced sprinkling; but it is equally true, a little later, that some of these persons were in the practice of dipping (Nitsche, Geschichte der Zuricher Reformation, 282. Zurich, 1879). The account given above as coming from a "Moravian chronicle" is described elsewhere as a trial before a court (Egli, Actensammlung zur Geschichte ver Zurischer Reformation, 282. Zurich, 1879). It is not certain that these persons were identified at this moment with the Baptist movement. It is certain that some of them were just turning from Romanism, and it is further certain at this time that dipping was the normal act of baptism among the Baptists (Kessler, Sabbatta, III. 266). At first they were probably followers of Luther or Zwingli from the Romanists. and they passed through several stages of thought before they became Baptists. In the, meantime, by their enemies, they were all classed as Anabaptists. There is no obscurity in the fact that Grebel practiced dipping. In March, 1525, Grebel baptized Ulimann by dipping him into the Rhine (Stark, Geschichte der Taufe, 184). The account is taken from Kessler, who says: Wolfgang Ulimann, on the journey to Schaffhausen, met Conrad Grebel who instructed him so highly in the knowledge of Anabaptism that he would not sprinkle out of a dish, but was drawn under and covered over with the waters of the Rhine (Kessler, Sabbatta, II. 266). Dipping is here declared, by this contemporary writer to be the distinctive Baptist practice. Kessler expressly says Grebel "instructed him (Ulimann) so highly in the knowledge of Anabaptism that he would not be sprinkled out of a dish," but was dipped in the waters of the Rhine. Dipping in the waters of the Rhine was, therefore, well instructed Anabaptist knowledge. Hence dipping was the normal act of baptism among the Baptists of Switzerland. The teaching of Grebel, and his associates, procured for them the name of Dippers or Baptists (Van Braght, Martyrology, I. 7). Therefore, according to this contemporary Lutheran Pastor Kessler, neither sprinkling nor pouring were well instructed Baptist doctrines. Grebel returned to St Gall, and when be learned that Kessler was allowed to preach in one of the churches, lie asked permission to do the same. Being refused, March 18, he announced a great meeting in the Weavers’ Hall, and further declared that he would preach in the Square, the Market Place, the Marsh and elsewhere. The people came to hear him from all parts of St. Gall, Appenzell and many other parts of the country. The success of his plea was instantaneous (Arx, Geschichte des Kantons St Gallen, II. 501. St. Gall, 1811). Great numbers of converts were made and dipped in a baptistery especially prepared for the purpose (Kessler, Sabbatta, 270). Daily the people from the surrounding country flocked to St. Gall inquiring for the baptistery. Augustus Naef, Secretary to the Council of St. Gall, in a work published in 1850, records the success of the Baptist movement. He says: "They baptized those who believed with them in rivers and lakes, and in a great Wooden cask in Butcher’s Square before a great crowd" (Naef, Chronik Stadt und Landschaft St Gallen, 1021). The number of converts grew with such rapidity that the baptistery was not sufficient for the immersions. Then it was that the Baptists sought the Sitter River. The Sitter River is two or three miles from St. Gall, and is gained by a difficult road. The only solution for the choice of the river is that it was a suitable place for Grebel to baptize his converts. For the success of the Baptist movement at St. Gall there is the testimony of Fredolin Sichers, a Roman Catholic eye-wittness. He says: The number of converts increased so that the baptistery could not contain the crowd, and they were compelled to use the streams of the Sitter River (Arx, Geschichte des Kantons St. Gallen, 501). One of the baptismal occasions was Palm Sunday, April 9, 1525. On that day Grebel led out to the Sitter River a great company of converts and baptized them (Kessler, Sabbatta, 267). The Baptist church at St. Gall soon had eight hundred members. The Bible was read, its divine lessons were earnestly and tenderly unfolded, and sinners were urged to flee from the wrath to come. It was a new gospel to thousands, and multitudes, with tears and repentance, asked the privilege of confessing Christ, and retired to some mountain stream to exclaim with the eunuch, "See here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized?" The solemn ordinance was administered, and coming forth from the water both the convert and the bearer of the glad tidings "went on their way rejoicing" (Burrage, Anabaptists, 108). When Grebel was forced by persecution to flee from St. Gall, Roggenacher, a skinner, and Eberle Polt, continued to teach and preach. The latter, Kessler says, was a pious, good-hearted man, practiced in the Scriptures, and of agreeable speech. He preached during the Eastertide in the Butcher’s Hall and on the Berlingsberg. Sichers says: Crowds came to be baptized in large vessels in the fields, and to each of the new baptized a new name was given (Sichers, Chronik, XX. 19). The Council induced the Burgomaster to invite Eberle to his house, and urged him to leave the city. He went on the following Friday, and eight days afterwards, May 29, he suffered martyrdom at Schwyz. It has already been recorded that the people of Appenzell came to St.Gall to be immersed by Conrad Grebel. In 1525 the Baptists had three places in this district where meetings were held. The largest was at Teuffen, with a second at Herisau, and a third at Brunnen. In all of these places the services were held under the open sky, while the converts were baptized in the neighboring brooks and streams. Indeed, these are the exact words of the Appenzell Chronicle (Appenzell, Chronik, Gabriel Walser, 440. St. Gallen, 1740). John Stumpf, who lived in the vicinity of Zurich, in the period under survey, was familiar with the Baptist contention in Switzerland. He is, therefore, a valuable witness. He says the early Baptists in Switzerland were "rebaptized in rivers and brooks" (Stumpf, Gemeiner Loblicher Eydgenossenschaft, 1722). This testimony is direct and of an authoritative character. The Council of St. Gall, at the instigation of Zwingli, it is alleged, determined to rid themselves of the "Dippers." As the Baptists dipped for baptism they were to be drowned for punishment. The edict is as follows: In order that the dangerous, wicked. turbulent and seditious sect of the Baptists may be eradicated, we have thus decreed: If any one is suspected of rebaptism, he is to be warned by the magistracy to leave the territory under penalty of the designated punishment. Every person is obliged to report those favorable to rebaptism. Whoever shall not comply with this ordinance is liable to punishment according to the sentence of the magistracy. Teachers of rebaptism, baptizing preachers, and leaders of hedge meetings are to be drowned. Those previously released from prison who have sworn to desist from such things, shall incur the same penalty. Foreign Baptists are to be driven out; if they return they shall be drowned. No one is allowed to secede from the (Zwinglian) church and to absent himself from the Holy Supper. Whoever flees from one jurisdiction to another shall be banished or extradited upon demand (Simler, Sammlung, I. ii. 449) The date of the decree is September 9, 1527. The decree did lot produce the desired effect, for upon March 26, 1530, another edict was put forth. It enjoined: All who adhere to or favor the false sect of the Baptists, and who attend hedge-meetings, shall suffer the most severe punishments. Baptist leaders, their followers, and protectors shall be drowned without mercy. Those, however, who assist them, or fail to report or to arrest them shall be punished otherwise on body and goods as injurious and faithless subjects. (Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, II. 287). Matters were worse in Zurich. Zwingli and the Council of Zurich knew no mercy towards the Baptists. At first Zwingli held debates with their leaders with indifferent success, then he evoked the strong arm of the law. The first Zurich decree, A. D., 1525, was as follows: We, therefore, ordain and require that hereafter all men, women, boys and girls forsake rebaptism, and shall not make use of it hereafter, and shall let infants be baptized; whoever shall act contrary to this public edict shall be fined for every offense, one mark; and if any be disobedient and stubborn they shall be treated with severity; for, the obedient we will protect; the disobedient we will punish according to his deserts, without fail; by this all are to conduct themselves. All this we confirm by this public document, stamped with the seal of our city, and given on St. Andrew’s Day, A. D., 1525). The decree went into effect at once. For the good name of Zwingli it could have been wished that he would never be more severe. There is preserved another official decree which indicates that the Baptists of Switzerland practiced immersion. On March 6, 1526, the Senate of Zurich decreed: Decrevit clarissimus Senatus aqua mergere, qui merscrit baptismo suo, qui prius emerserat (Zwingli, Elenchus contra Cantabaptistas. 115., 364). It is elsewhere written in shorter form. Qui mersus fuerit mergatur, that he who immerses shall be immersed (Starke 183). This is the official statement of the Senate of Zurich that the Baptists of Switzerland practiced immersion. The civil authorities of Zurich set an example of severity scarcely surpassed by Protestants, and of the deplorable execution of the sentence many examples are on record. The persecutors delighted to fit the penalty, as they cruelly judged it, to the fault, and so they put the Baptists to death by drowning. Upon the very day of the decree of the Senate, of Zurich against the Baptists, Zwingli, who evidently was greatly pleased with the action of the Senate,, wrote to Vadian: It has been decreed this day by the Council of the Two Hundred (of Zurich) that the leaders of the Catabaptists shall be cast into the Tower, in which they formerly lay, and allured by bread and water diet until either they give up the ghost or surrender. It is also added that he who after this is dipped shall be submerged permanently (qtti posthac tingatur, prossus mcrgatur) ; this is not published (Zwingli, Opera, vii. 477). Zwingli is even more explicit as to the form of baptism among the Baptists, for he further says of this decree: But the illustrious Senate decreed, after having come together, which without doubt has been the tenth time after others either publicly or private, to sink in water whoever should immerse in baptism him who before had emersed. This may be a somewhat disgusting thrust to your observant reader (Zwingli, Opera, 111.364). Persons, even Anabaptists, if there were such in Switzerland, who practiced sprinkling, were not included in this verdict;. Only those who immersed in baptism were to be drowned. The punishment was as ironical as it was terrible. Since the Baptists immersed in baptism they were drowned. Gastins, who was a contemporary, was quite sarcastic towards the Baptists. He refers to the decree of the Senate of Zurich, just quoted, in these words: "To immerse in water whoever should immerse in baptism him before was emersed," and adds: "They like immersion, so let us immerse them (aquis mergere, qui merserit baptismo eo, qui primus emerserit)" (Gastins, De Anabaptiami, 8. Basite, 1544). Gastins in another place enumerates the errors, as he calls them, of the Baptists, and one of them was that they "immersed in water (immergunter aquis)" (Ibid, 129, 130). The edict of March 7 was ratified November 19, 1526. The Baptists were to be delivered to the executioner, who should bind their hands, place them in a boat and throw them into the water to die. Great numbers of Baptists thus perished. So much was this true that it became a matter of international correspondence (Calendar of State Papers in Venice, IV. 35. A. D. 1532. Sannto Diaries, V. lvi. 380). Among the number thus imprisoned was Felix Manz, who was convicted, January 5, 1527. He was sentenced to death and drowned. Bullinger says of him: As he came down from the Wellingberg to the Fish Market and was led through the shambles to the boat. he praised God that he was about to die for the truth; for Anabaptism was right and founded upon the Word of God, and Christ had foretold that his followers should suffer for the truth’s sake. And the like discourse he urged much discussing with the preacher who attended him. On the way his mother and brother came to him and exorted him to be steadfast, and he persevered in his folly to the end. When he was bound upon the hurdle and was about to be thrown into the stream by the executioner, he sang in a loud voice, In menus tuas, Domine, eommendo spiritum meum, "In thy hands, Lord, I commend my spirit," and herewith was drawn into the water by the executioner and drowned (Bullinger, Reformations Geschichte, II. 382). In consequence of these terrible persecutions the Baptists fled to other lands. In many instances they were followed, captured, and put to death by drowning. "At Vienna many Anabaptists were so tied together in chains, that one drew the other after him into the river, wherein they were all suffocated" (Featley, The Dippers Dipped, 73). "Here you see the hand of God," continues Dr. Featley, "in punishing these sectaries some way answerable to their sin according to the observation of the wise man, quo quis peccat eo puniatur, they who drew others into the whirlpool of error, by constraint draw one an-other into the river to be drowned; and they who profaned baptism by a second dipping, rue it by a third immersion. But the punishment of these Catabaptists we leave to them that have the legislative power in their hands, who though by present connivance they may seem to give them line; yet, no doubt, it is that they may entangle themselves and more easily be caught". The neighboring Italian Baptists were likewise in the practice of dipping (Benrath, Wiedertaufer in Venetianischen. Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1885). The Reformation and the Baptists did not make as great gains in Italy as in other countries; but they did not keep themselves aloof from agitation. The Roman Catholic writer, Cantu, says: "Although the love for the new ideas did not carry away either the people or the princes, and although those who were anxious about the condition of their own belief were very few, compared with the number of those who lived believing without analyzing their creed, yet he who thinks that the Reformation had neither extension nor civil or political consequences on this side of the Alps, makes a great mistake" (Cantu, Gli eretici d’Italia. Quoted from McCrie). Cantu further remarks that "whilst the Reformation in Germany was associated with princes, and in France with the nobility, in Italy it principally touched the men of letters." This was practically true, but not exclusively so. It to a degree extended its influence among all classes. The sixteenth century was essentially a selfish one. The great historian of those times, Francesco Guicciardini wrote: "I do not know if there be a man more disgusted than I am with the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the priests nevertheless, my position at the Court of several popes made it necessary for me, in view of my own private interests, to love their greatness; had it not been for that reason, I should have loved Martin Luther dearly, not in order to be rid of the laws laid upon us by the Christian relgion as it is commonly interpreted and understood, but in order to see that pack of villains reduced to the point of being either without vices, or without authority" (Guicciardini, Opere inedite, Ricordo 28). The Baptist cause flourished only feebly in Italy, but even there some believed the faith once for all delivered to the saints. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 13: 01.1.13. CHAPTER 11 BAPTISTS OF GERMANY AND MORAVIA ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XI BAPTISTS OF GERMANY AND MORAVIA PRACTISE DIPPING A BAPTIST church was found in Augsburg, in 1525, where Hans Denck was pastor. In this city Denck was exceedingly popular, so that in a year or two the church numbered some eleven hundred members. Urbanus Rhegius, who was minister in that city at the time, says of the influence of Denck: "It increased like a canker, to the grievous injury of many souls," Augsburg became a great Baptist center. Associated with Denck at Augsburg were Balthasar Hubmaier, Ludwig Hatzer and Hans Hut. They all practiced immersion. Keller in his life of Denck says: The baptism was performed by dipping under (untertauchen). The men were in thus act naked, the women had a covering (Keller, Em Apostel der Wiedertaufer, 112). Schaff is particular to relate that the four leaders of the Anabaptists of Augsburg all practiced immersion. He says: The Anabaptist leaders Hubmaier, Derek, Hatzer, Hut, likewise appeared in Augsburg, and gathered a congregation of eleven hundred members. They had a general synod in 1527. They baptized by immersion. Rhegius stirred up the magistrates against them; the leaders were imprisoned and some were executed (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, VI. 578). Immersion was the practice of the Baptists of Augsburg. There is the testimony of a trusted eye-witness in the Augsburg Benedictine, Clemens Sender. This old historian says of the Baptists of Augsburg: In Augsburg in the gardens of the houses in 1527, men and women, servants and masters, rich and poor, more than eleven hundred of them were rebaptized. They put on peculiar garments in which to be baptized, for in their houses were their baptisteries where there were always a number of garments always prepared (Clemens Sender, Die Chronik, 186). Sender thus hears witness to the large number of persons immersed in Augsburg. It has sometimes been claimed that the baptisms which occurred among the Baptists in houses and cellars must have been by sprinkling. They had especially prepared baptisteries in their houses for immersions. When it was dangerous and inconvenient to go to the rivers and streams for baptismal purposes baptisteries were erected in private houses. This is the testimony of an eye-witness. Hubmaier is moreover associated with these immersions. Wagenseil, a historian of Augsburg, says: In the year 1527 the Anabaptists baptized none who did not believe with them; and the candidates were not merely sprinkled, but they were dipped under (Wagenseil, Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg, 1820). Urbanus Rhegius was likewise a witness to the practice of the Baptists of Augsburg. He was a resident of the city at the time. He was a learned man, a university student, honored by the Emperor Maximilian and a follower of Luther. In 1528 two letters were written by the Baptists of Augsburg. Rhegius answered these letters (Zwen wunderful zam sendbrieff zweyer Wiedertauffer, Augsburg, 1528). He discussed at length the position of the Baptists on infant baptism in regard to the form of baptism there is a picture on the title page that shows the Baptists in the practice of immersion. There is a large expanse of water, an ocean we judge by the appearance of a ship in the waters; and these waters are full of Baptists, nude, and practicing immersion. From one side of the stream the Baptists, in great numbers, are tumbling into the waters. From the other side flows a river which is washing the Baptists out of the sea into a flaming fire. The baptismal waters of the Baptists become the fires of hell, and there even stands one shaking a viper into the fire, while gaping multitudes approve. This is a prejudiced picture of their practice of immersion. Instances are related, and details given, in regard to the baptisms which took place in Augsburg. "The act of baptism," says Theodore Keim, in his article on Ludwig Hatzer, "was administered in the River Lech, the men being naked, the women wearing bathing trousers." He mentions the wife of the artist Adolf Ducher "who during the absence of her husband in Vienna three days in the Holy Week of 1527 opened her house, which was favorably situated on the River Lech, for the purpose of baptizing" (Jarbucker fur Deutsche Theologie, 278. Stuggart, 1856). At other times, as we have seen, baptisteries were erected in the houses and cellars. Many details of these immersions have recently been published from the original records (Zur Gesehichte der Wiedertaufer in Oberssohaben, von Dr. Friedrich Roth. In Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins fur, Schwaben und Neuberg. Augsburg, 1901). Heath, who has written much on the history of the Baptists, and has given particular study to the Continental Baptists, says of these immersions in Augsburg that "this fact, which seems well authenticated, would suggest that the mode was the same throughout South Germany, Switzerland and, and the Tyrol; since the Augsburg community was founded by the Walshuter Jacob Gross and the Tyrolese Ferber. Moreover Augsburg appears to have been the center most important for the Baptists of South Germany"(Heath, Anabaptists, 94). Strassburg was associated with Augsburg in the work of the Baptists. Denck came to Strassburg in 1526 and rendered valuable service there. Many of the most distinguished citizens joined the Baptist church. Baptism, at this date, among the Baptists of Strassburg was by dipping. Gerbert states that the baptisms occurred at this time "before the Butcher’s Gate, probably in a branch of the Rhine" (Gerbert, Straasburgischen Sectenbewegung, 93). Bertel and Essinger declare that these immersions among the Baptists were performed by a shoemaker (Rohrich, Die Strassburguechen Wiedertaufer, In Zeitschrift fur die historischen Theologie. 48. A- D. 186()) One of the best known Baptist preachers of those days was Melchoir Hofmann. On account of his peculiar views of prophecy he plunged himself and the Baptists into grief. His preaching caused much excitement. At Emden he organized a Baptist church. The probability is that having connected himself with the Baptists of Strassburg he practiced immersion exclusively. It has, however, been confidently affirmed that Hofmann, on a visit to Emden, practiced sprinkling; and by this rite three hundred persons in the great church at Emden were baptized. Such a supposition, however, is not based upon the facts in the case. It is a theory established by guesses. He came, as has been stated, from Strassburg. It is certain the Baptists of Strassburg practiced immersion. The claim that he practised sprinkling at Emden is based upon the statement of a late German writer, who reached that conclusion upon an inference. The inference was that since the baptism took place in a church house and was performed in a great tub therefore it was by sprinkling. Nothing is said in Cornelius (Geschichte des Munsterischen Aufruhrs, II. 222); and Hast (Geschichte des Wiedertaufers, 255) that a great tub was used in the baptism, while Frederich Otto zur Linden describes the baptism as taking place in the open air (Melchoir Hofmann ein Prophet der Wiedertaufer, 236). Why a great tub should be necessary for sprinkling has not yet been explained. The baptism of converts in tubs was no unusual thing. Otho, in the twelfth century, directs the Pomeranians to be immersed, and this was accomplished in the open air in wooden tubs or troughs. These tubs were let into the ground and filled with water. The candidates were immersed in the tubs (Henrici Canisii, Vita Ottonis. Inter Jacobi Basagii, II. vv. 60). This was in a neighboring country to Emden. Dr. Winkler made a study of these tubs and in an able article he published the results of his studies. He says: We can prove from ecclesiology and from the testimony of Luther himself that the pail or tub, such as Hoffmann used at Emden (a large pail) was the baptismal font of the Western Churches. There was even a certain sacredness connected with it. We find In Luther’s Table Talk (Bohn’s ed. p.165) the following incident. Dr. Menius asked Luther in what manner a Jew should be baptized? The Doctor replied: You must fill a large tub with water, and having divested a Jew of his clothes, cover him with white garments. He must then sit down in the tub and you must then baptize him quite under the water. This garb, added Luther, was rendered the more suitable from the circumstances that it was then, as now, the custom to bury people in a white shroud, and baptism, you know, is the emblem of our death. Here Luther alludes to these immersions which are very familiar to ecclesiologists. . . There is reason to believe that the baptismal fonts in early Europe were tubs. The ecclesiologist Poole (Structures, etc., of Churches, 45) says: The first defined shape which the font assumed in England is that of a circular tub-shaped vessel, some probably of Saxon, many of them of the Norman date, as the antique font of St. Martin’s Church, at Canterbury. Knight (Land We Live In. I. 261) says: "It is even supposed to have been built by Christians of the Roman army, A. D. 187. It was certainly one of the first ever made in England. It was about three feet high and capacious within. It has no stand; but rests upon the ground. The sculptures upon it are a sort of ornamental interlacings in low relief. It closely resembles the font delineated by the old illuminators in representing the baptism of King Ethelbert, and it is believed to be the first font in which the first of our Christian kings was baptized." Under this division, the tub fonts, Poole, an Episcopalian antiquarian, groups the font of Castle Frome, Herefordshire, that at Bride Kirk, in Cumberland, that at West Haddon, in Northamptonshire, and that in Thorpe Emald, in Leicestershire. And in regard to all of the ancient fonts of England he says: The role of the Church of England, however many the exceptions, and however accounted for, is to be baptized by immersion; and for this the ancient fonts are sufficiently capacious (Poole Structure, 59 note). We learn from Bourasse, a Catholic archaeologist, that the leaden font in the cathedral at Strassburg has a tub shape, and so has the baptismal font at Espanburg, Diocese of Beauvais. Both of these baptismal tubs are represented on the plates of Bourasse’s Dictionaire D’Archaologie Sacree. At Notre Dame, in Rouen, the font was made in the form of a coffin, with a covering of black wood. This sepulchral figure was the symbolical translalation of the words of Paul: We are buried with him by the Baptism into death (Dr. Winkier, in The Alabama Baptist, 1875). These circumstantial details and the actual examples. given show that the tubs were large enough for immersions, and that adults were immersed in them. It is not necessary to depend upon late German writers for the original narrative of the baptizings of Hofmann at Emden. It may be found in the writings of Obbe Philips. He says: Among these (German Baptists) there arose one Melchoir Hoffman He came to Emden from the High German country, and publicly (in the open air) baptized in the Church at Emden three hundred persons, both burgher and peasant, master and servant. The old count, to be sure, allowed this to he done, and it is said that the count was himself disposed toward the same faith (Philips, Bekentnisse, Bliji. Zur Linden, Hoffmann, 236). Hackenroth adds: As soon as the civil authorities learned that Melchoir begann to baptize (doopen, to dip) he and all those who adhered to the sect, who allowed themselves to be baptized (doopen, dipped) again, were banished out of East Friesland, and all belonging to the sect were obliged to leave (Hackenroth, 652). This is much like other Pedobaptist accounts of sprinkling among Baptists, the nearer the approach is made to the original sources, the more certainly do the signs of sprinkling recede. Philips does not mention the great tub; but he does declare that the baptism was performed in the open. The possibility is that the preaching took place in the church, and the baptism at some suitable place for the immersion. There is no reference to affusion or anything that would indicate that immersion was not the form of baptism used on the occasion. The direct testimony is at hand that Hofmann was, at this time, practicing immersion. He had just come from East Friesland to Emden; but in East Friesland he had been dipping converts (Linden, Melchoir Hofmann, 283) - Keller speaks of this as follows: It appears as if by the presence of Melchoir Rink, who, in 1524, dared to attack, and gave the first thrust. In a remarkable manner Rink dipped (tought) again in Friesland at the same time with Hofmann in the year 1580. According to some versions the same men had worked in common, from 1524 till 1539, in Sweden, Livonla, Holstein, etc. Both were furriers, both from Swabia. The question needs a closer inquiry whether we shall consider both of the Melchiors one or two persons (Keller, Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, 127). So far as the inquiry goes as to whether there were two Melchoirs or only one is of no interest in this place. If there were two Melchoirs then there were two preachers who practiced immersion; and if the two names indicate the same person then there was one Baptist who preached there practicing dipping. The form of baptism is not in dispute. It stands as a recorded fact that Melchoir Hofmann was dipping his converts in East Friesland before he came to Emden. If he dipped in East Friesland, there is no suggestion why he would have practiced sprinkling in Emden. Fortunately the practice of Melchior; or Rink, as he was sometimes called, in the form of baptism is not unknown. Justus Menius and F. Myconius wrote, in 1530, a book against the Baptists. The name of Rink is especially mentioned. Of the practice of the Baptists these authors say: First in regard to baptism which is, that man upon the command of Christ must be dipped into the water and lifted out again (inns wasser eingetaucht). That is a symbol of the forgiveness of Christ, though by nature a servant of sin and a child of condemnation, now saved from death and the devil, now eternally living under the grace of God as clearly shown under the Gospel and promised through Christ in the entire gospel in his own and he shall consider it his own for all time to come. To such the meaning of baptism is declared in its signification and to them all doubt will grow less (Menius and Myconius, Der Wiedertaufer Lure vnd gehemnig. Wittenberg, 1580). These writers, who were hostile to the Anabaptists, mention Rink, and bear witness to the practice of dipping. It was in the same year that Hofmann published his book, Die Ordinanz Gottes, The Ordinance of God. The book may be found in the Mennonite Library, at Amsterdam. In that book Hoffman says: Furthermore, it is commanded of the Lord to his messengers; after they have thus taught, called and admonished the people through the Word of God, they shall lead forth those who have given themselves to the Lord out of the kingdom of Satan and espoused them openly to Christ through the true sign of the covenant, through the baptism, that thereupon henceforth they completely put to death their own wills and am a bride to her beloved bridegroom to be obedient in all things. And thus also in these last times will the true Apostolic Messengers gather together the chosen band, and through the call of the Gospel and through the baptism espouse and bind them to the Lord . . Christ as an example for his own band permitted himself to he baptized by John the Baptist, and was then led of the Spirit of God into the wilderness, there to fast forty days and to suffer the temptations of Satan, but true to his Father unto the end he fought it through and overthrew Satan . . . But the sign of the covenant is established alone for those old enough to understand and for those who are of full age, and not one letter in the Old and the New Testament alludes to the infants. Woe unto those who willfully put lies instead of the truth, and charge against God, what in eternity he has not willed or commanded. God is the enemy of all liars and no one of them has a part in the kingdom, but their inheritance is the everlasting perdition. (Cramer and Pyfer Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica, VI). This extract from Hofmann is fully in accord with immersion. All of the allusions given above refer to immersion. The baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan by John, the putting to death of the will and the resurrection to a better life are symbolically set forth by immersion. Such references are never in harmony with the practice of sprinkling. A dispassionate statement of the facts leads to the conclusion that Hofmann practiced dipping. Moravia became an open field for the Baptists, and in that country the work prospered marvelously. Balthasar Hubmaier, or Hubnor, as he generally wrote his name, was the great apostle of the Baptists of Moravia. He was truly a remarkable man and a preacher of power. He had not the impulsiveness of Grebel, or the brilliancy of Hatzer, or the eloquence of Denck; but for calmness, soberness, logical clearness, and consistency, absolute devotion to truth, and freedom from important errors, he stands unrivaled by any man of the Reformation He approximated truth slowly. This is notable in his rejection of infant baptism. He had progressed so far that on January 16, 1525, he had doubts concerning infant baptism, and had a dedicatory service for children instead of the baptismal rite; but he still baptized children if the parents desired it. In the meantime he became so violently opposed to infant baptism that he broke the font which was used for that purpose (Muller, Geschichte der Eidgenossen, VII. 12 Zurich, 1829). When this act was followed by his book, Von dem christlischen der Glaubigen it was apparent to all that he had become a Baptist. He had, indeed, been baptized, with one hundred and ten others, on Easter Day, by William Roubli, one of the Swiss Baptists who had been pastor at Basel (Fusslin, Beytrage, I. 217). His view of the form of baptism was also a growth. It is quite certain that at the beginning of 1525 Hubmaier thought that believers’ baptism could be administered by pouring. In the book mentioned above he said: To baptize In water is to pour over (ubergiessen) the confessor of his sins external water, according to the divine command, and to inscribe him in the number of these separately upon his confession and desire. It is not evident at the time that he had given the form of baptism any consideration. He certainly wrote strongly in favor of believer’ baptism, and against infant baptism. In April, 1525, at Waldshut, it being Easter, "there assembled a strong party of adherents in that town," where Hubmaier "called his followers together on Easter eve in the year 1525, and, after having some water brought to him in a milk pail, solemnly rebaptized three hundred persons" (Sohm, Geschichte der Stadt pfarrie Waldshut ein Merkwurdeger, Beitrage zur Weidertaufer Geschichte). At this date, April, 1525, Hubmier practised pouring. At the same time he held foot-washing to be a Bible ordinance. Only a brief period before this he was dedicating children to the Lord and in the presence of obdurate parents he christened the children. This was a formative period in his life on the subject of baptism. While Huhmaier was in Waldshut he probably began practicing dipping. Dr. Paul Burckhard, a careful student of Baptist affairs in Germany, says, "that it is also possible that in Waldshut on the Rhine the people were baptized by Hubmaier in the Rhine" (Letter to the author, March 28, 1900). Hubmaier was found in 1527, in Augsburg, along with other Baptist leaders, practicing immersion (Sender, Die Chronik, 186. Leipzig, 1894). He had advanced from the practice of pouring in 1525 to that of immersion in 1527. This was no more sudden than many other changes which took place with him. Indeed, it was no more than could have been expected. Schaff, who is usually quite accurate on such points, is certain that Hubmaier, in 1527, practiced dipping. Zwingli is a witness to the fact that Hubmaier practiced immersion, He says: He posed like a fool in a carnival, who acts as though he is lifting nothing but straw. His adherents, the bath fellows, are geese who cackle in every direction, but do not know which way to fly; but he himself, the Doctor is clothed in magnificent apparel and, therefore, he considers it unbecoming to wash little children, as he sys himself; although it is not becoming in him, it is perfectly becoming for Jesus Christ and the humble preachers of Zurich (Hosek, Balthasar Hubmaier, ch. VI). This was November 6, 1526. He was the companion of "bath fellows." What could be the meaning of this if Hubmaier did not practice dipping? More than once Zwingli uses this term to describe immersion among the Anabaptists. There is another proof that in 1527 Hubmaier was an immersionist Capito writing to Zwingli, November 27. 1527, says: "What I have written lately concerning Balthasar on submersion, I have drawn from, letters from Feneston and Vienna" (Zwingli, Opera, VIII. 112). Hubmaier had been writing upon and practicing dipping. It is mentioned in another chapter where Farel, September 7, 1527, mentions Hubmaier, where he refers to baptism as dipping in water (Keller, Die Reformation, 386 note). Keller says that this defense of Hubmaier and Denck are not well known. It shows from a contemporary that Hubmaier practiced dipping. Another contemporary bears witness that in the last days of his life Huhmaier practiced dipping. This is John Fabricius, the learned Roman Catholic writer. In his book against Hubmaier, 1528, he says: Their leader and founder was a certain doctor Balthasar, who, though he used to write that he was the "mountain of peace," was an incessant recusant of wars and rebellions, he was, I say, a man of such lofty spirit that he boasted that in his learning he excelled and by far surpassed all the Zwinglians, Oecolampadius, and even Luther himself. He was not satisfied because that in Germany in many towns, and above all under the renowned house of Austria be incited horrible tumults and for a long time among the Ligurians, he denied an oath the delusion of rebaptism. He also condemned it, and under a curse he publicly asserted it. Immediately in Moravia the usage of the universal church having been repudiated he treasonably relapsed into the same heresy of the Catabaptists (dippers) as a dog does to his vomit, and the baptism of children having been rejected, he decreed that only old men, drybones, and almost toothless, ought to be baptized, or dipped, in the sacred fountain, concerning this thing he wrote books and tracts surely not a few, and this new and detestable abuse produced new conspiracies of the people, illicit unions in love, and other crimes of this kind almost limitless (Fabricus, Aversus Doctorum Balthasarum Pacimontanum). Hubmaier is himself a witness to the practice of immersion. In an early book he refers to baptism as a pouring; in later books he refers to it as performed in water. In one of the passages against his enemies who called him an Anabaptist he pithily answers: "Water is not baptism, else the whole Danube were baptism, and the fishermen and boatmen would be daily baptized." One of his books has the title: The Form of Baptism in Water. In another of his books, Von der Briederlichen straff , he gives an explanation of the celebrated passage in the sixteenth of Matthew. He not only says that baptism is a dipping but he explains the passage to refer to the ordinary congregation of believers, The passage is as follows: He commanded her to use them faithfully, according to his Word, when he said to Peter, Thou art a stone, and on this rock, meaning his public and uninterrupted confession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my church (he had just spoken of them as Christian churches), my company, my congregation, and the gates, of hell shalt not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Verily, I my unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. In saying "to thee," Christ sets forth the unity of the churches, as saying, "ye" he implies that many shall be assembled in this unity of the faith and Christian love. It was after the glorious resurrection that Christ committed the power of the keys to the church, bidding them preach the Gospel and thus gather a congregation of believers, and afterwards baptize them in water, and with the first key open the door of the Christian Church and admit them for the remission of sins (Hosek, Balthasar Hubmaier, ch. IX). Hubmaier always denied that he was an Anabaptist or that he practiced Anabaptism. He claimed that he practiced the baptism of believers, since infant baptism was no baptism at all. The Baptists of Moravia were not a unit on the form of baptism as they were not a unit on other things. There was published in the year 1545 a Confession of Faith, which was drawn up by Peter Riedermann who died in Pruzga, Hungary, December 1, 1556. In the section referring to the administration of baptism Riedermann says: Then the baptizer commands the candidate to humble himself with bended knees before God and his church, and take pure water and pour it upon him, and say, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Mittheillungen aus dem Antiquariate, I. 309). This was not the position of all of the Moravian Baptists. This may have been a private statement of Riedermann. How far the Baptists of Moravia agreed with him is not known. But Erhard, who was an eye-witness, wrote: "Would that Diogenes might see your baptism and make sport of your washings. You will sometimes be called Trito-Baptists, when you are immersed in the Strygian Lake" (Armitage, History of the Baptists, 381). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 14: 01.1.14. CHAPTER 12 PRACTICE OF DIPPING IN POLAND ETC. ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XII THE PRACTICE OF DIPPING IN THE NETHERLANDS, POLAND, LITHUANIA AND TRANSYLVANIA BAPTIST CHURCHES THE Waldenses entered Holland in 1182 and by the year 1233 Flanders was full of them. Many of them were weavers, and Ten Cate says that at a later date all of the weaving was in the hands of the Baptists. Ypeij and Dernmunt say: "The Waldenses scattered in the Netherlands might be called their salt, so correct were their views and devout their lives. The Mennonites sprang from them. It is indubitable that they rejected infant baptism, and used only adult baptism" (Ypeij en Dermount, Geechieddenis der Netherlandische Hervormde Kirk, I. 57, 141). The Reformation in the Netherlands was practically synonymous with the Baptist movement. Here, as everywhere, the Baptists were good citizens; paid taxes; and advocated liberty of conscience. The fires of persecution were frequently lighted in Holland. The Baptists had assisted the Prince of Orange in his struggle against Spanish tyranny; and he steadfastly resisted all efforts to persecute them. Two Baptists, J. Cortenbosch and Peter Bogaert, a minister, brought to him a considerable sum of money as an offering from the Baptists. They performed this task at the risk of their lives. The Prince assured them that they would be treated as equals (Ottii Annales, ad ann., 1572). Motley says of the Prince of Orange: He resolutely stood out against all meddling with men’s consciences or inquiring into their thoughts. While smiting the Spanish Inquisition into the dust, he would have no Calvinist Inquisition set up in its place. Earnestly a convert to the Reformed religion, but hating and denouncing only what is corrupt in the ancient church, he would not force men, with fire and sword, to travel to heaven upon his own road. Thought should be free. Neither monk nor minister should burn, drown, or hang his fellow-creatures when argument or expostulation failed to redeem them from error. It wan no small virtue, in that age, to rise to such a height We know what Calvinists, Zwinglians, Lutherans have done in the Netherlands, in Germany, In Switzerland, and almost a century later in New England. It is therefore, with increased veneration that we regard this large and truly catholic mind (Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, II. 362). In regard to his relations to the Baptists the historian continues: It was impossible for the Prince thoroughly to infuse his own ideas on the subject of toleration into the hearts of his nearest associates. He could not’hope to inspire his deadly enemies with a deeper sympathy. Was he not himself the mark of obloquy among the Reformers, because of his leniency to Catholics? Nay, more, was not his intimate counselor, the accomplished Saint Aldegonde, in despair because the Prince refused to exclude the Anabaptists from Holland? At the very moment when William was straining every nerve to unite warring sects, and to persuade men’s hearts into a system by which their consciences were to be laid open to God alone-at the moment when it was most necessary for the very existence of the Fatherland that Catholic and Protestant should mingle their social and political relations, it was indeed a bitter disappointment for him to see wise states-men of his own creed unable to rise to the idea of toleration. "The affair of the Anabaptists," wrote Saint Aldegonde, "has been renewed. The Prince objects to excluding them from citizenship. He answered me sharply, that their yea was equal to our oath, and that we should not press the matter, unless we were willing to confess that it was just for the Baptists to compel us to a divine service which was against our conscience." It seems hardly credible that this sentence, containing so sublime a tribute to the character of the Prince, should have been indited as a bitter censure, and that, too, by an enlightened and accomplished Protestant (Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, II. 206). But William of Orange held on his way. When the Union of Utrecht, the foundation of the Dutch Republic was formulated, it was expressly provided that "every individual should remain free in his religion, and that no man should be molested or questioned on the subject of divine worship" (Ibid, 11.412). It is interesting to note that Rembrandt, the greatest painter of Holland, was a Baptist. Professor H. Weizaeker, in his chapter on Holland (Protestantism in the Nineteenth Century, I. 295) says of him: "Little is known of the religious character of Rembrandt, but an Italian biographer of the seventeenth century says he was brought up a Baptist and belonged to their fellowship. How can we think him of such a community?" he asks. "His whole life was in the world. Yet he painted many portraits of preachers, some of his best. That of Sylvius, bending over the pulpit, Bible in hand, and that of Anseo, the Baptist pastor with the saintly face, are well known. In days of adversity, when his personal effects were sold, among them were found five hooks. One of these five books was a Josephus and another a copy of the Bible. When he died he left one book as an heirloom, and that was a Bible." Rembrandt was moved by the spirit of liberty. It must be borne in mind that in the beginning of the seventeenth century Holland had risen to a great power. Though not yet formally free from the Spanish yoke, she had broken the fetters by the heroic efforts of the former generation, and had entered on her grand career of national enterprise. Science and literature flourished in her universities, poetry and the stage were favored by her citizens. It was a time of new ideas. Old conventional forms in religion, philosophy and art had fallen away, and liberty was inspiring new conceptions. Here there was no church influence to fetter Rembrandt in the choice and treatment of his subjects, no academies to prescribe rules. He was thus left to himself to paint the life of the people among whom he lived. The legends of the Roman Church were no longer of interest; and the Bible was read and studied with avidity. Under such influences Rembrandt became "the Shakespeare of Holland." "During the seventeenth century it became evident," says Dosker, "that men of considerable talent were to be found among the rank and file of the Mennonites. And they were not confined to one learned profession or to one social stratum. There were physicians of more than local reputation: men like A. J. Roscius, doctor of medicine and preacher at Hoorn; the celebrated Bidloo brothers, one of whom was body-physician to Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, and the other similarly employed at the Court of Prince William III of the Netherlands. Another of these famous Mennonite doctors was Galenus de Haan. . . who was equally celebrated as preacher and practitioner of medicine at Amsterdam; and especially A, C. Van Dale, whose works on the science of healing made him a European celebrity. "Among the men of letters I mention J. P. Schabalje, preacher at Alkmaar, renowned as a scholar and poet. So far as is known he was the first to write a ’Life of Christ.’ "We find poets among them like J. A. van der Goes, celebrated by his Ystroom, and Karel van Mander, translator of Virgil and of the Iliad. "In the world of art they boasted a Mierevelt, espeeially Ruysdael, the greatest of the Dutch landscape-painters, and the greatest of all, perhaps, Rembrandt. For science they could claim, J. A. Leeghwater, who drew the plans for the reclamation of Haarlem lake, a marvelous engineering problem; and J. van der Heyden, who first undertook the illumination of the streets of Amsterdam, and who was the inventor of the prototype of the modern fire-engine" (Dosker, The Dutch Anabaptists, 244). In the second and third decades of the Reformation Simon Menno became the leader of the Baptists in that country. He was born in Friesland, in 1492, and died in Holstein, January 13, 1559. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest; but he became a convert to the Baptist faith when, in 1531, Seike Feerks or Sicke Snyder was burnt at the stake. On his conversion he at once preached Jesus and soon became a conspicuous leader among the Baptists. There is no record known of the manner of the baptizing of Menno. Judging from the tenor of his writings, he was baptized by immersion. In a great number of instances, in his writings, he refers to baptism as a dipping in water. In two or three instances in refuting his enemies reference is made to pouring. In answering a scorner he says: We think that these, and like commands, are more painful and difficult to perverse flesh which is naturally so prone to follow its own way, than to have a handful of water applied; and a sincere Christian must at all times be ready to do all of this; if not, he is not born of God; for the regeneration are of the mind of Christ (Mango, Opera Theologica, 224 Amsterdam, 1651). The other passages are to the same effect. Menno says these scorners were wrong in heart and "that a whole ocean of water" would not satisfy them. The man might have a handful of water cast on him, or he might he baptized in the ocean, if his heart was not clean he would be a miserable sinner. Water does not cleanse a man from sin. The handful of water did not represent the act of Menno, but the objection of the scorner of baptism. Menno was not expressing his own opinion, he was refuting his opponent, Menno could not have endorsed "a handful of water" as the proper act of baptism, since these were the very words the Baptists had long been accustomed to hurl at their opponents. To hold that such an act of baptism was valid would have been contrary to every Baptist argument of the times. The Baptists long before, and at the time of Menno, invariably taunted their opponents by calling infant baptism "a dog’s bath," "a handful of water," etc. That Menno applied such terms to his own act is incredible. A few instances where Baptists thus taunted their opponents are here given. Luther writing against the Baptists charged them with judging of his baptism from the abuse of the Roman Catholic Church. He says: But now are they In their madness thinking that baptism is like a thing such as water and salt consecrated, or as caps and leaves carried about; so from this they proceed to call it a dog’s bath, a handful of water, and many other such abominable words (Luther, Werke, XVII. 2865. Ed. 1740. J. G. Walsh). Again Luther remarks: For the devil knows well, that if the crazy mob should hear a pompeus slander word, that they stumble over it, and faith flies away. Ask no further ground or reason. As when they may hear it said, the baptism is a dog’s bath, and the baptizer is a false and villainous bath servant. Thus they conclude from hence; why, if so, let the devil baptize, and let God shame the false bath servant . . . Yes with me such things have been spoken, as these pompous slander words, dog’s bath, bath servant, handful of water, etc. (Ibid, 2686). Once more Luther says: In the second place, here is also the overthrow of the assertions of the Anabaptists and such like company. Who thus teach . . the beloved baptism to despise, as to be nothing more than plain common water, from hence they indulge to slander it: What can a handful of water help the soul (Luther, Kirchen Postill, 721). "A handful of water" was the term of reproach that the Baptists used toward their enemies. It is incredible to think that Menno would have used such a term to describe his own baptism. Baptism in the opinion of Menno was dipping. He refers to baptism as doop (dipping). There is no proof that Menno ever used this word in any sense other than to dip; and there is no proof that doop meant anything less in the time of Menno. Apart from the word doop Menno constantly uses other words to describe baptism by dipping. He devotes several chapters to the doop and never mentions pouring. The symbolic passage Romans 6:3-4 is mentioned and enforced more than one hundred times by Menno. In this passage the symbolism of baptism is given as a burial, an immersion, an emersion. He says: Observe all of you who persecute the word of the lord and his people, this is our instruction, doctrine and belief concerning baptism (doop),according to the instruction of the words of Christ, namely, we must first hear the word of God, believe it, and then upon our faith be baptized (gedoopt ; we are not seditious or contentious; we do not approve of polygamy; neither do we seek nor wait for any kingdom upon earth. Oh no! No! To God be eternal praise; we will know that the word of the Lord teaches us and testifies to, on the subject. The word of the Lord commands us that we, with sincere hearts, desire to die to sin, to bury our sins with Christ, and with him to arise to a new life, even as baptism (doop) is portrayed (Menno, Wercken, 17). The word "portrayed" represents a portrait, or photograph. As a picture is an exact image of a person so this burial and resurrection is an exact image of the act of baptism. But the exact image of a burial and resurrection is. an immersion in, and emersion out of the water. The citation of Bemans by Menno, as determining the form of baptism, is characteristic of the literature of the Baptists in the Reformation period. We find in the Protocol of Emden, 1578; in that of Franckenthal, 1571, where it is explained as meaning that "baptism is a symbol of death and a new life;" and in the Miunster Restitution (issued 1634) baptism is described as "the burial of the sinful flesh (begravinge unses sundtliken fleisches)." In the Borne Disputation, 1532, the Baptist says: "Baptism is always a symbol of a renewed man entombed (vergraben) into the death of Jesus Christ" (Dr. Jesse B. Thomas in The Western Recorder, 1897). Menno quotes 1 Corinthians 12:13 as sustaining the practice of immersion, He says: Moses believed the word of the Lord, and erected a serpent; Israel looked upon it and was healed, not through the virtue of the image, but through the power of the divine word, received by them through faith. In the same manner salvation is ascribed In scriptural baptism (doope) Mark 16:16; the forgiveness of sins, Acts 2:38; the putting on of Christ, Gal. 8:27, being dipped into (indoopinge) one body. 1 Corinthians 12:13 (Menno, Wercken, 14). There are direct passages where Menno mentions his own practice as dipping. For example he says: In short, had we forgiveness of sins and peace of conscience, through outward ceremonies and elements, so that we must have that true sinking down (ondergaen) and with his merits to yield and give way. Behold, this is the only true foundation of baptism (doop) maintained by the Scriptures, and none others. This we teach and practice though all the gates of hell rise up against us; for we know that this is the word of God, and the divine ordinance, from which we dare not take away, nor add thereto, lest we he found disobedient and false before God (who alone is the Lord and God of our consciences) for every one of the Lord is pure; he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him (Ibid, 15). Baptism is here described as a "sinking down," and thus portrays immersion. He further says, this "we teach and practice." Again he says: In the third place, we are informed by the historians, ancient and modern, also by the decrees, that baptism was changed both as to its mode and time of administering. In the beginning of the holy church, persons were dipped In common water (gedoopt in inbezworen water) on their first profession, upon their own faith, according to the Scriptures (Ibid, 16). It is not readily to be believed that a man who says that the mode and time of baptizing has been changed, and severely criticizes those who wrought the change, and calls the people back to the primitive practices, would be found in the use of affusion. Menno plainly says the Scriptures teach dipping, says the mode has been changed, and that men ought literally to obey the commandments of God. In passages too numerous here to mention Menno refers to baptism "as dipping in the water." Three instances are given where the word must mean immersion. He says: Again Paul calls baptism (doop) a water bath of regeneration, O Lord, how lamentably the word is abused. Is it not greatly to be lamented, that men are attempting, notwithstanding these plain passages, to maintain their idolatrous invention of infant baptism, and set forth that infants are regenerated thereby, as if regeneration was simply a thrusting into the water (induckinge in’t water) (Menno, Wercken, 18). Again O Lord, Father, how very broad, easy and pleasing to the flesh is the entrance into the miserable, carnal church; for it is all as if one said, no. matter who, or what, or how he is, it is all right, if he has been but sworn before the fountain, and washed and dipped in It (ende in de fonte gewaschen ende gedoopt is) (Ibid, 411). Once more: Do you think, most beloved, that the new birth consists in nothing but in that which the miserable world hitherto has thought that it consists in, namely, to plunge into the water (in te duycken in den water), or say thus: I baptize (doope) thee in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Ibid, 419). The Mennonites of our day reject infant baptism and practice believers’ baptism by affusion. Menno and his immediate followers were in the practice of dipping. but later the Mennonites did not strenuously insist upon this form of baptism. At length some practiced dipping and others sprinkling; and in the course of. time affusion became the normal act and immersion the exception among them. At the close of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth dipping was considered, in the Netherlands, as the meaning of the Greek word baptizein. There is an example of this found in the Commentary of Jeremiah, Bastingius on the Heidelberg Catechism which was then used in the Low Countries. He says: The word baptism is a Greek word, and cometh of baptizen, and signifieth properly dipping into water, etc. (Bastingius, An Exposition or Commentarie upon the Catechism, 138). The historian Backus explains the change of the Mennonites from immersion to affusion in the following manner: "The Mennonites are also from Germany and are of like behavior, but they are not truly Baptists now. Their fathers were so in Luther’s time, until confinement in prison brought them to pour water on the head of the subject, instead of immersion; and what was then done out of necessity is now done out of choice, as other corruptions are" (Backus, History of the Baptists). There were those in Holland, who, for a long time, continued in the practice of dipping. At the close of the sixteenth century full toleration was given to the church at Altona. The following account is taken from the "History of the Different Religious Denominations in Altona" by John Adrian Boltens, published in Altona, 1790: The free exercise of religion being now obtained in Altona, many Mennonites resorted thither, particularly prior to the breaking out of the thirty-years war in Holstein, as well as prior to that event. Thus their numbers kept continually increasing, to which increase the intolerant decrees of Hamburg did not a little contribute. In course of time a difference of opinion arose as to the mode of baptism. This was the cause of the Mennonites now in Altona, which were one church, separating into two interests. The one maintained the mode of pouring the other adopted that of immersion, and were, therefore, distinguished by the name of Immergenten. This separation continued until the year 1666, though efforts had been made towards a union, but without the desired effect. Of the two. the Immergenten were the most numerous, and a new church was erected by them out of the profits of the whale fishery, in which many of their members were engaged (The Baptist Magazine, XV. 290. September, 1823). There was in Friesland in the beginning of the year 1600 a party of Mennonites who would receive none but those who dipped. Of these people Stark says: Some of them have again introduced among themselves entire immersion; and on this account, they have been called immersers by other congregations. Still with most, only the pouring of water on the head lass been introduced (Stark, Geschichte der Tanfe and Taufgesinnten, II. 848). These statements are important in many respects. They show that the original form of baptism among the Mennonites was immersion, that in some instances it had been set aside in favor of pouring, that dipping was still used in some congregations, and that there were some Mennonite congregations who would not receive any form of baptism save immemion. There was a book printed in the year 1649 showing the differences between the Reformed Church of the Netherlands and the Baptist churches. Of baptism it said: As formerly the circumcision, so now is baptism a symbol of the spiritual uncleanness of man. For circumcision taught by taking away the foreskin, and baptism by immersion or sprinkling with water, that man is. unclean by nature and, therefore, guilty before God (Abraham Dooreslaar and Peter Jacobi Austro-Sylvium, Grondige ende lare Wertooninghe, 464). Even the Reformed Church in the Netherlands, in 1649, held that immersion was baptism. Indeed, immersion was preferred to sprinkling. Van Braght, who held to sprinkling, affirmed that immersion was the practice in the Netherlands, "Yes, to our present time," A. D. 1659 (Van Braght, Martyrs’ Mirror of the Baptists) Hooke, in 1701, says that immersion was practiced among the Baptists of the Netherlands (Hooke, A Necessary Apology for the Baptist Believers, 122, 133. London, 1701). The historian of the Mennonites, Schyn, points out that in his day, A. D. 1729, while sprinkling was the ordinary form of baptism among the Mennonites that immersion was also practiced. It was declared to be the primitive practice, but that it had been generally, but not completely superseded by "an abundant sprinkling." Another witness is Cornelius Ris, who says as late as 1776, the year of American Independence: What concerns the holy baptism, we thus understand thereby, one dipping in, or under, of the whole body in the water, or an abundant sprinkling of the same. Which last method in these Northern regions we almost generally hold to be more convenient, while the same facts may be signified thereby (Gornelius Ria, Von die Heilige Wasseer-Taufe, Art. 25. seC 96). About the year 1619 there had been a revival of immersion in Holland, under three brothers van der Kodde. These persons were called Collegiants, and they were organized into societies near Leyden at Rhynesburg. They practiced immersion having received it from the Silesian Baptists, who had it from the Swiss (Heath, The Anabaptists and their English Descendants, 390. The Contemporary Review, March, 1891). Van Slee (De Rijnsburger Collegianten, 371. Haarlem, 1891) shows all along, in the Netherlands, there had been a family by the name of Geesteranus which was in sympathy with the practices of the Poland Baptists. The presidency of the great Baptist school, at Cracow, was offered to a member of this family; and one of the first persons to be immersed at Rhynesburg was John Geesteranus. One of the members of the Collegiants gives a record of the procedure of baptism as follows: The candidate for baptism makes publicly his profession of faith on a Saturday in the morning, before an assembly of Rhynesburgers, held for that purpose; a discourse is pronounced on the excellency and nature of baptism; the minister and candidate go together to a pond, behind the house belonging to one of the number. In that pond the neophite, catechumen, is baptized by immersion; if a man, he has a waistcoat and drawers; if a woman, a bodice and petticoat, with leads at the bottom, for the sake of decency. The minister, in the same dress as the men wear, is also in the water, and plunges them in it, pronouncing at the same time, the form used by the most of the Christian communions. This being over, they put on their clothes, go back to the meeting, and hear an exhortation to perseverance in complying with the precepts of Christ. A public prayer is said, and canticles or psalms sung (Picart, Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the World. English Translation In 1787 in 6 volumes). The Baptists of Poland and Transylvania all held that "dipping in water and a personal profession of faith and repentance, are essential to baptism" (Catechesis Ecclesiarum Poloniarum, sec. vi. cap. iii). These Baptists received their form of baptism from Switzerland and transferred it to Poland. This origin is now quite generally admitted and all historians state that it was by immersion (Barclay, The Inner Life of the Common-wealth, 12 note). The testimony to the practice of immersion among the Baptists of Poland is quite satisfactory. Sandius, in his vindication of the Baptists of Poland, says that the Baptists of that country rejected infant baptism, and that believers, according to the symbolism of the primitive church, were baptized by immersion of the whole body in the water (Sandius, Bibliotheca Anti-Trinitatiorum, 268 note). There is an anonymous manuscript, written by one of the Baptists of Poland, which declares that there is no other baptism save that which is performed by immersion. The title may be consulted in Bock (Historia Anti-trinitaorum, I. Pt. 1. 19). Fock likewise states that the baptism of Poland was by immersion (Fock, Der Sociaismus, 588). These are the principal authorities on the conditions in Poland, and these writers are unanimous in the statement that the Baptists of that country practiced dipping. The Unitarian Baptists, as they have been called, originated, for the most part in Italy (Speculum Anabaptistica Furoris, 1808). They have frequently been called Socinians, deriving the name from the illustrious house of Sozini, which long flourished in Sienna, a noble city of Tuscany. There were a number of distinguished men born to this family. One of that number was Faustus Socinus who became a leader among the Baptists of Poland. The Unitarians were among the most cultured of men. The peculiar tone of the belles-lettres culture that followed upon the revival of learning was quite congenial with their opinions. They called in question the foundations of the state religions and were disposed to sift all creeds. There were not less than forty educated men at Vicenza who were united in a private association who held these views. These men were mostly banished from Italy, many of them fled to Switzerland, and afterwards found refuge in Poland. One of these, Blandrata, a learned physician, fled to Geneva, and afterwards became an influential propagator of Baptist principles in Poland. The Italian and Swiss Baptists sought refuge in Poland about A. D. 1550 and carried with them the idea of dipping from the earlier Baptists of Switzerland. The reason that the Baptists selected Poland as a place of refuge lay in the fact that Poland was so strongly attached to liberty in religious matters. Probably the first to introduce Baptist views into Poland was Peter Gonesius. He fell in with the Baptists of Moravia and was led to reject infant baptism (Lauderbach, Polnish Arianischen Socianismus). Baptist views rapidly spread among the people. The Synod of Wengrow, December 25, 1565, was composed of forty-seven ministers and eighteen noblemen, besides a great number of lesser people. It was acknowledged by the churches of a number of districts as far as the Carpathian mountains. The Synod declared in favor of adults as the subjects and immersion as the form of baptism. At this meeting Czechovicus baptized James Niemojawski by immersion (Count Valerian Krasinski, The Reformation in Poland, I. 361). Gregory Paulus was a noted Baptist and an immersionist. He was pastor at Cracow. On May 30, 1566, John a’ Lasco represented him as denying "that infants ought to be admitted to baptism as the fountain of life and the door of the church." He impressed men that baptism belonged to adults and not to crying children, and when he had done this he led "them to the river and immerses them." He claimed that these things were the first "rudiments of the ancient religion about to be restored" (Letter to Beza, May 30, 1556. In Museum Helveticum, Part XIV. 282). The Baptists of Poland and Siebenburgen, in 1574, were a numerous and aggressive people. In that year they issued a Catechism (Catechesis et Confessio fidei coetus per Poloniam congregati) which contains one hundred and sixty pages, but copies of it are now rare. The printer was Turobinus, and it was issued at Cracow. The writer of the Catechism was the celebrated George Schomann (Schomann, Testamentum. Jo. Adam Muller, de Unitatiorum, XXI. 758). Baptism is confined to adults and defined as "the immersion in water and the emersion of a person who believes the Gospel and repents, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or in the name of Christ only, whereby he publicly confesses that by the grace of God the Father, in the blood of Christ, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, he is washed from all his sins, in order that being inserted in the body of Christ he may mortify the old Adam, with the assurance that after the resurrection he will attain unto eternal life" (Roes, Racovian Catechism, LXXI). Stanislaus Farnovius, A. D. 1568-1614, held to adult baptism by immersion. George Schomann, mentioned above, was a great scholar among them. He was born at Ratibon in Silesia, in the year 1530. He was baptized by immersion at Chmelnik in 1572 and in 1573 he became the assistant of Gregory Paulus at Cracow (Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, II. 200). The famous Faustus Socinus also held to Baptist views and was a firm believer in the immersion of a converted man in water. He was born at Sienna, 1539, and died at Luclawice, Poland, in 1604. He attempted to unite with the Baptists of Poland but was refused except on condition that he be rebaptized. He refused to permit this since he said it was not necessary in his case. He was a firm believer in immersion (Socinus, De Baptismo Aquae, 716. Racoviae, 1613). Many Baptists of that period held lightly to all forms of externals since they. believed that the spiritual life was all that was essentially necessary (Otto Fock, Der Socianianismus, 586). The views of Socinus mightily impressed the Baptists of Poland, and he became a most influential leader among them. His noble birth, intellectual powers and polished manners commended him to the favor of the Polish nobles; and his influence was augmented by his marriage to a daughter of one of the nobility. Martin Czechovieus was a Lithuanian. The first heard of him was on September 16, 1661, when he was the bearer of a letter from Calvin to the Synod of Cracow. He contended that baptism by immersion was necessary in the case of all adult believers "whether those born of Christian parents1 or those converted of heathen nations." Simon Ronemberg was horn at Dantzic ou Christmas Day, 1540. He was christened when an infant by sprinkling in the Roman Catholic Church; then he was sprinkled as an adult, and lastly he was immersed when he united with the Baptists. Of this he gives a particular account in one of his hooks. His being baptized by immersion was regarded as a grievous offense; and being commanded by the Senate of Dantzic, August 17, 1552, to defend himself against this charge, and not choosing to deny what took place, or to recant, he was formally deprived of his office, and immediately left Dantzic with his wife and eight children (Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, II. 238). John Caper, Sr., after officiating as Pastor of the Evangelical Church of Meseritz for about twenty-eight years, changed his views late in life and went over to the Baptists. He was immersed in a pool at Smigel, on the last of July, 1588; on which occasion Valerius Herberger, a popular Evangelical minister, wrote some satirical verses. It is said that Caper presided as a Baptist minister over the church at Smigel, from the time of his conversion to his death; and that about the year 1606 he was drowned by a company of horsemen, probably in the very pond in which he had been immersed (Bock, Hist. Ant, 92, 93). The Racovian Catechism was written about 1590 but was first published in 1605. It superseded the old Catechism, which was rude and ill digested. It was corrected by some, enlarged by others and more ingeniously stated, and became the creed of the entire communion. The article on baptism is as follows: It does not pertain to infants since we have in the Scriptures no command for, or example of, infant baptism, nor are they yet capable, as the thing itself shows, of faith in Christ, which ought to precede this rite. In answer to the question: "What then is the thought of those who baptize infants?" It is replied, You cannot correctly say that they baptize infants. For they do not baptize them, since that cannot be done without immersion and ablution of the whole body in water; whereas they only lightly sprinkle their heads, this rite not only being erroneously applied to infants, but also through this mistake evidently changed. Speaking of a profession of faith the Catechism says: Declaring, and as it were representing by their very ablution, immersion and emersion, that they design to rid themselves with Christ, and, therefore, to die with him, and to rise to newness of life (The Racovian Catechism, 252, 253. London 1818). The highest prosperity was now obtained by the Baptists of Poland. James a Sienno, Lord of Cracow, in the year 1600, renounced the Reformed Church and came over to the Baptists, and two years after caused a famous school, intended for the Seminary of the churches, to be established in his own city which he made the metropolis of the Baptist movement (Wissowatius, Naratio Unitairorum a Reformatis, 214). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 15: 01.1.15. CHAPTER 13 PEASANT WARS AND MUNSTER ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XIII THE PEASANT WARS AND THE KINGDOM OF MUNSTER THERE has been reserved for this chapter an account of certain events which have been alleged against the Baptists, namely, the Peasant Wars and the tumult at Munster. Because of these the Baptists have been charged with the wildest vagaries and with instigating horrible tumults. The most searching investigation has failed to prove that Munzter, the leader of the riots in the Peasant Wars, was a Baptist, or that the Baptists were in anywise responsible for the uprisings. There had long been trouble between the peasants and the nobility. Many times and in different localities, during the preceding one hundred years, had the oppressed peasants in Central Europe attempted to throw off the yoke which their feudal lords had laid upon them. Heavy burdens had been placed upon the laboring classes by their lay and ecclesiastical masters. The forcible repression of evangelical doctrines was an added grievance. Leonard Fries, secretary of the city of Wurtzburg, who gathered the documentary evidence of that time, writing in the spirit of the age, calls the uprising a deluge. It cannot be doubted that many of these grievances called for redress. Now again the peasants were in revolt. The leader of the movement was Thomas Munzer, born at Stoltzberg, at the foot of the Hartz Mountains. He had been a, priest, but became a disciple of Luther, and was a great favorite of the Reformer. His deportment was remarkably grave; his countenance was pale; his eye was sunk as if absorbed in thought; his visage long, and he wore no heard. His talent lay in a plain and easy method of preaching to the country people, whom it would seem as an itinerant he taught almost throughout the Electorate of Saxony. His air of mortification won him the hearts of the rustics; it was singular then for a preacher so much as to appear humble. When he had finished his sermon in any village he used to retire, either to avoid the crowd or to devote himself to meditation and prayer. This was a practice so very singular and uncommon that the people used to throng about the door, peep through the crevices, and oblige him sometimes to let them in, though he repeatedly assured them that he was nothing; that all he had came from above, and that admiration and praise were due only to God. The more he fled from applause, the more it followed him. The people called him Luther’s curate, and Luther called him his Absalom, probably because he stole "the hearts of the men of Israel" (Robinson, Ecclesiastical Researches, ch. xiv). The peasants set forth their views in twelve articles. Some have said that the articles were written by Hubmaier, but there is no proof of this. It was an eloquent appeal for human liberty. When the peasants arrived in any village they caused the articles to be read. The articles, in brief, are as follows: 1. Every congregation shall be free to elect its own pastor. 2. The tithes shall be applied, as far as is necessary, to the support of the pastor; the remainder shall be given to the poor and to the common interests. 3. Vassal service shall he entirely abolished. 4. All privileges of the nobles and princes relating to the exclusive ownership of hunting and fishing grounds shall cease. 5. Forests that have been taken away from the commune by ecclesiastical or secular lords shall be restored. 6-8 All arbitrary and multiplying and increasing duties and rents shall cease. 9. The laws and penalties attached to them, shall be executed justly and impartially, according to unchangeable principles. 10 All fields and meadows which have been taken away from the commune shall he restored. 11 The right of the nobles to tax legacies at the unjust expense of widows and orphans shall be abolished. 12 They promised finally that they will willingly yield all these demands if it be proved to them that a single one of these articles is contrary to the Word of God (Hosek, Balthasar Hubmaier, ch. ii. Brunn, 1867.. Translated by Dr. W. W. Everts, Jr. In The Texas and Historical Magazine 1891, 1892). There were thousands of peasants who followed the standard of Munzer. On the approach of the armies of the nobles they entrenched themselves on a height above Frankenhausen, still called Schlachtberg. It is needless to say that Munzer was utterly defeated, and not less than five thousand peasants lost their lives on that day, May 15, 1525. This was an end of the Peasants’ War. That the peasants had cause for grievance there can be no dispute, and had their cause succeeded it would have been hailed in history as a cause worthy of the heroes of liberty. Thomas Munzer, the leader of the tumult, was never a Baptist, but all his life was a Pedobaptist dreamer. "Indeed, in no sense of the term," remarks Burrage, "and at no period of his career, was he an Anabaptist, though strangely enough he is often called the founder and leader of the Anabaptists" (The Baptist Quarterly Review, 140. April, 1877). More than any other man Luther was responsible for the bloody outbreak of the peasants. He stirred hopes within them with great smiting words, which fired the hearts of the peasants with their wrongs and a desire for better days. He made them ready to risk and dare, and led them to their fate. "When Luther’s enemies," says AIzog, "sarcastically taunted him with being an accomplished hand at kindling a conflagration, but an indifferent one at putting out the flames, he published a pamphlet against ’those pillaging and murdering peasants.’ ’Strike,’ said he to the princes, ’strike, slay, front and rear; nothing is more devilish than sedition; it is a mad dog that bites you if you do not destroy it. There must be no sleep, no patience, no mercy; they are the children of the devil.’ Such was his speech in assailing those poor, deluded peasants, who had done no more than practically carry out his own principles. They were to be subdued by the strong hand of authority, and to receive no sympathy, no mercy, from their victorious conquerors. It is computed that a hundred thousand men fell in battle during the Peasants’ War, and for this immense loss of life Luther took the responsibility. ’I, Martin Luther,’ said he, ’have shed the blood of the rebellious peasants; for I commanded them to be killed. Their blood is indeed upon my head; but,’ he blasphemously added, ’I put it upon the Lord God, by whose command I spoke’ (Luther, Table Talk, 276. Eisleben, edition)" (Aizog, Universal Church History, III, 221, 222. Dublin, 1888). Munzer once held a conference with Grebel and Manz, the Baptist leaders (Bullinger, Reformationgeschichte, I. 368); but no account of the proceedings has come down to us. There is an extant letter which Grebel wrote on the subject "As Grebel’s letter shows," says Burrage, "he and his associates were not agreed with Munzer in reference to baptism. They did not believe in the use of the sword as he did. Doubtless they found that they and the Saxon reformer widely differed. Munzer’s aims were social and political chiefly" (Burrage, The Anabaptists of Switzerland, 89). The Baptists distinctly disavowed the views of Munzer. Grebel in his letter to him, after stating his own position, offered to Munzer the following delicate hint: Since you have expressed yourself against that infant baptism, we hope that you do not sin against the eternal word, wisdom and command of God, according to which believers only are to be baptized and that you decline to baptize infants (Cornelius, Geschichte des Munserichen Aufruhrs, II. 240-247). Cornelius, who was a Roman Catholic, admits the Baptists were in unconcealed opposition to Munzer in cardinal points." Munzer, beyond doubt, was a Lutheran. There is positive proof, though he sometimes "played tricks with the sacraments," that he was never a Baptist (Erbkam, Geschichte der protestantischen Sekten, 494). Possibly he denied at one time the necessity of infant baptism, but he practiced that rite to the end of his life. There is no proof that he was ever rebaptized or in any way was ever connected with the Baptist movement. "He was not baptized," says Frank, "as I am trustworthily informed" (Frank, Chronik, 493b). In the year 1523 he put forth a book for the direction of God’s service (Munzer, Ordnung und berechnung des Teutschen, 6), and in this book he prescribes infant baptism. In 1525, in a letter to Oecolampadius he defends infant baptism and held to its practice (Herzog, Das Leben Job. Oekolampads, I. 302. Basel, 1843). That he was never a Baptist is quite plain (Sekendorf, Historia Lutheranismi, I. 192; II 13). Frank says: "He himself never baptized, as I am credibly informed" (Frank, Chronik, clxxiiib), and adds he was never a Baptist. With this statement modern scholars agree (Marshall, The Baptists. The Encyclopedia Britannica, III.370, Cambridge, 1910). It may be concluded that Munzer was a follower and friend of Luther; he practiced infant baptism to the close of his life; he was never in the practice of Anabaptism; he was opposed by the Baptist leaders; held doctrinal views radically different from the Baptists on the use of the sword; and he was never intimately associated with the Baptists. All parties seem anxious to rid themselves of the responsibility of the Munster affair. The Roman Catholics charge the Lutherans with the disturbances, and the Lutherans in return lay all the blame on the Anabaptists. It suited the purposes of each party to make the account of the disturbances as horrible as possible. This is only one more instance of how the dominant class of every age writes history in its own interest, and how it has hitherto succeeded not only in imposing its views on the average intelligence of its own time, but in passing it down to the second-hand historians of subsequent ages (Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, 173). The accounts given by the enemies of a party, are to be received with caution. This is doubly true in this instance, since the Lutherans were trying to shield themselves from the Roman Catholics, and were endeavoring to lay the blame on the Anabaptists. The Lutherans became the historians, and they wrote what they pleased, and there was no one to correct them. The insurrection of Munster had more to do with politics than it had with religion. The feudal system had long oppressed the common people. Thought was now awakened, principles which had long been dormant were revived. The common man saw his rights and he determined to possess them. Buck, much against his will, acknowledges this. He says: It must be acknowledged that the true rise of the insurrections of this period ought not to be attributed to religions opinions (Buck, A Theological Dictionary, 20, Article, Anabaptists). In the early sixteenth century, we may be quite sure, the revolt against feudalism was not ideal in all of its individual elements. It would be manifestly foolish to expect such to be the case with sections of a population more or less suddenly cast adrift from their social and economic moorings. But at the same time there can be no doubt in the mind of any person who has seriously studied the history of social movements, that the bulk of those who thronged the city of Munster in the year 1534, were infinitely more honest, and more noble characters in reality, than the unscrupulous ruffians of the moribund feudalism with whom they were at war (Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, 174). It should never be forgotten, as it frequently is, that during the whole period of the Anabaptist domination of Munster, that town was under-going the perils of a siege, and the military considerations had to be kept largely in mind. Nor should it be forgotten that during its existence the Bishop’s troops were murdering in cold blood every Anabaptist they could lay their hands on (Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, II. 460). Had the insurrection of Munster succeeded it would have been regarded as one of the most brilliant events in the history of human liberty. Had the United States failed in the Revolutionary War what would have been the consequences? Washington would have been called a rebel, and our struggle for liberty sedition. That there were wrongs and excesses at Munster no one denies, but what revolution has them not? Bancroft has beautifully referred to this. He says: The plebeian sect of the Anabaptists, the same of the Reformation, with greater consistency than Luther, applied the doctrines of the Reformation to the social relations of life, and threatened an end to kingcraft, spiritual dominion, tithes, and vassalage. The party was trodden under foot with foul reproaches and most arrogant scorn; and its history written in the blood of myriad. of the German peasantry; but its principles safe in their immortality, escaped with Roger Williams to Providence; and his colony is the witness that, naturally, the paths of the Baptists were paths of freedom, pleasantness and peace (Bancroft, History of the United States, II. 459). It has been charged that polygamy was instituted at Munster. It must not be forgotten by the conventional historian, who overflows with indignation at the wickedness of the Munsterites in instituting polygamy that such accredited representatives of orthodox Protestant respectability as Luther and Melanchthon had declared polygamy not contrary to Christianity. This, it is true, was said by the distinguished Reformers in question in order to secure the favor of Henry VIII., of England, and the Landgrave of Hesse, respectively, and they, together with their patrons, would have wished doubtless to keep it, as Kautsky has suggested, as a reserve doctrine for the convenience of the great ones of the earth on emergency (Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, 253). The Baptists never held to polygamy in any form. Archaeologists have exhumed a long list of the writings of the leaders in the Munster uprising, and it has been found that their teachings were often at variance with the Romanists and Lutheran doctrinal confessions, but they never varied from the moral life which all Christians are called upon to live. Their writings seldom refer to marriage; but when they do it is always to bear witness to the universal and deeply rooted Christian sentiment that marriage is a sacred and unbreakable union of one man with one woman. Nay, more, one document has descended to us which bears testimony to the teaching of the Anabaptists within the beleaguered city only a few weeks before the proclamation of polygamy. It is entitled Bekentones des globens und lebens gemein Christe zu Munster (Cornelius, Die Geschichte des Bisthums Munster, 445, 457, 458), and was meant to be an answer to calumnies circulated by their enemies. It contains a paragraph on marriage which is a clear and distinct assertion that the only Christian marriage is the unbreakable union of one man and one woman (Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, II. 464). Paul Kautsky, after giving certain reasons why polygamy was permitted at Munster, points out further: That prostitution was not tolerated within the walls of the New Jerusalem. The very communism of the brethren itself sufficed to render this difficult or impossible, so that women who wished to live by the sale of their bodies had no alternative but to seek the market outside of the walls amid the forces of law and order in the Bishop’s camp. In addition to this, one of the first edicts of the Twelve Elders was one of Draconian severity directed against adultery and seduction (Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, 203). No attempt is made to defend polygamy at Munster, or elsewhere, but the people of Munster were more consistent than Luther and Melanchthon, and they put every safeguard around the sanctity of the home. After all has been said of the Anabaptists they were not the prime movers of the rebellion of Munster. This is a mere episode in their history, and we hear of it only through poisoned sources. The doings of Bockhold and his followers were those of a small minority, and they were abhorred by a vast majority of the Baptists. Compared with the company within the walls of Munster, the number of the brethren, the Anabaptists so-called, were as thousands to units (Griffis, The Anabaptists. The New World, 657. December, 1895). No one denies that there were Anabaptists among the people of Munster, but the rebellion began with, and was led by Lutherans (Ten Cate, Gesch der Doopsg. in Holland. I, 11). Most of the leaders were Pedobaptists. Gregory and Ruter say: Nor is it just to charge all of the insurrections of those times, whether at Munster or other places, where the Anabaptists had societies, to that class of people. The first insurgents groaned under severe oppression, and took up arms in defense of their civil rights. The Anabaptists appear rather to have seized the occasion than to have been the prime movers (Gregory and Ruter, History of the Christian Church, 500). It is certain that the leaders in Munster differed essentially in principles from those who elsewhere bore the name of Baptists. The men of Munster wielded the sword; the Baptists were distinguished from other Christians by refusing to bear arms. The men of Munster dreamed of establishing a secular kingdom; the Baptists looked alone to the spiritual reign of Christ. Any one who will impartially study the history of Menno Simon and that of John of Leyden will not deny that the doctrines and spirit of the two men were wholly unlike; and more unlike are they for example, both in doctrine and in spirit than were Luther and the Roman Catholics. Bernhardt Rothmann, a ringleader, was a Pedobaptist, the Lutheran preacher at the Church of St. Maurice, in Munster. He had been early attracted by the teaching of Luther, as we learn from his Confession of 1532 (Detmer, Bernhardt Rothman, 41. Munster 1904), and he went to Wittenberg to make the acquaintance of Luther and Melanchthon. He led the movement at Munster before many Anabaptists appear to have been connected with it (Spanheim, Hist. Anab., 12). Read the following: It is certain that the disturbances in the very city of Munster were begun by a Pedobaptist minister, whose name was Bernhardt Rothmann; that he was assisted in his endeavors by ministers of the same persuasion, and that they began to stir up tumults; that is, teach revolutionary principles a year before the Anabaptist ringleaders, as they were called, visited the place. These things the Baptists knew. and they failed not to improve them to their own advantage. They uniformly insisted that Luther’s doctrines led to rebellion, and his disciples were the prime movers in the insurrections, and they also asserted that an hundred and fifty thousand Lutherans perished in the Rustic War (Fessenden. Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 77). A great many were Roman Catholics, and a still greater part had no religion principles whatever (Buck, A Theological Dictionary, 20). Some fair-minded and discriminating historians have distinguished between the Anabaptists of Minster and the Baptists. Dr. Ludwig Keller says: Whenever, at the present time, the name "Anabaptist" is mentioned the majority think only of the fanatical sect which, under the leadership of John of Leyden, established the kingdom of the New Jerusalem at Munster. The history of the religious ideas whose caricature appears in the communion of Minster, however, in no wise connects itself with the beginning and the end of the short episode. There were Baptists long before the Munster rebellion, and in all of the centuries that have followed, in spite of the severest persecutions, there have been parties which, as Baptists and Mennonites have secured permanent position in many lands. (Keller Preusache Jahrbucher, September, 1882). D’ Aubigue’ says: On one point it seems necessary to guard against misapprehension, Some persons imagine that the Anabaptists of the times of the Reformation, and the Baptists of our day, are the same. But they are as different as possible, there is at least as wide a difference between them as there was between the Episcopalians and the Baptists . . . So much for the historical affinity. As to the principles, it is enough to look at the social and political opinions of the Anabaptists, to see that the present Baptists reject such sentiments. The doctrine of the Mennonites themselves differ not essentially from that of other Protestant communions (Schyn, Historia Christianorum qul In Beiglo. Amsterdam, 1728). A popular American work (Fssenden’s Encyclopedia) states the difference. It says, article Anabaptists, The English and Dutch Baptists do not consider the word as applicable to their sect. And farther on, it is but justice to observe that the Baptists in Holland, England, and the United States, are to be considered as entirely distinct from these seditious and fanatical individuals above mentioned; and they profess an equal aversion to all principles of rebellion of the one and enthusiasm. of the other (D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation, I. 9 preface). Few writers have given the subject more thought than Drs. Ypeij and Dermout, who were especially appointed by the King of Holland to look into the facts and give a true report. They write on this theme at great length, They say: The fanatical Anabaptists, of whom we now speak, were originally from Germany, were under the bishoprick of Speiers, they, by a rebellion, had made known their displeasure at the oppression of the so-called feudal system. This was in the year 1491. Since that time they, by their revolt, have often caused anxiety, and have given the government no little trouble. This continued till the time of the Reformation; when these rebels sought in the new religion an augmented power, and made the most shameful misuse of it to the promotion of their harassing disturbances. These ought by no means to be considered as, the same as the Baptists. Let the reader keep this distinctly in mind in the statements in which we are now about to make. At much length they draw a distinction between the Baptists and the turbulent Anabaptists of Munster. John of Leyden is described, as are the Munster men. They declare that the Baptists and these turbulent Anabaptists were not the same. They proceed: We shall now proceed more at length to notice the defense of the worthy Baptists. The Baptists are Protestant Christians entirely different from the Anabaptists in character. They were descendants from the ancient Waldenses, whose teachings were evangelical and tolerably pure, and who were scattered by severe persecutions in various lands, and long before the time of the Reformation of the Church were existing In the Netherlands. In their flight they came thither in the latter part of the twelfth century. In this country and in Flanders, in Holland, and Zealand they lived as quiet inhabitants, not intermeddling with the affairs of Church and State, in the villages tilling the land, in the cities working at some trade or engaging in traffic, by which means each one was well supplied and in no respect burdensome to society. Their manner of life was simple and exemplary. No great crime was known among them. Their religious teaching was simple and pure, and was exemplified in their daily conduct (Ypeij, A. en Dermout, J. J., Geschledenis der Netherlandache Hervomke Kerk, 1819. Chapter on Baptists). Gottfried Arnold, born at Annaberg, Saxony, September 5, 1666, was Professor of History in Giessen. In his great book, which made an epoch in Church History, he says: It is true that these good testimonies (which had to be accorded to the Anabaptists for their doctrines and lives) do not refer to those who in the Munster sedition showed themselves so impious and seditious. Nevertheless it is manifestly evident from many public acknowledgments that the remaining Catabaptists were not only different from these (and had no part in their seditious doings) but also very greatly abhorred and always in the highest degree condemned and rejected these; just as their adversaries themselves from their writings confess and testify that they, especially the Mennonites, never agreed with the Munsterites (Arnold, Unparteischen Kirchen und Ketzer Historie, II. 479). The careful discrimination made by these authors is worthy of consideration. The Baptists, or the people ordinarily called Anabaptists, were entirely distinct from these furious persons who were likewise termed Anabaptists. They had nothing in common save that both parties practiced rebaptism. The Munster fanatics did not recognize the baptism of the Baptist churches, but rebaptized all alike. This likeness was the occasion of the Roman Catholics calling the Munster men Anabaptists; but they likewise laid the revolt at the door of the followers of Luther and Zwingli. The Lutherans seized upon the point of rebaptism, and in order to clear themselves, they placed the entire uprising on the Baptists. The Baptists had little to do with it. The Lutherans were the historians, and the Baptists have been to this day compelled to bear the blame. The Peasant Wars were attributed to the Baptists, although Munzer, the leader, practiced infant baptism to the close of his life The Munster insurrection was charged to the Baptists, although it was opposed to a fundamental tenet held by them, that under no condition should a Christian bear arms or in any way engage in a tumult. The Baptists held steadfastly to this view before the Munster insurrection. Grebel and Manz were called "false prophets" because they refused to engage in any entangling political alliances (Keller, Die Reformation und die alteren Reformationparteien, 40.) In a meeting of the Anabaptists, in January, 1535, at Sparendam, when the Munster riots were in full swing, they were condemned ten to one. In a large gathering at Bocholt, in Westphalia, in the summer of 1586, the Baptists repudiated the whole movement The Schleitheim Confession of Faith condemned the use of the sword by any Christian. The followers of Menno to this day do not hear arms. The evidence submitted shows that the Munster insurrection began previous to 1491 and grew out of political disturbances of the times; that it was the opposition of the "common man" to the old feudal system of bishops and nobles; that it was intended to be in the interest of human liberty; that most of the leaders were followers of Luther, and did not become Baptists; that there were many Roman Catholics and many of no religious faith in the movement; that those who were termed Anabaptists in Munster held views divergent from the ordinary tenets of regular Baptists of the period; that the so-called Anabaptists had no vital connection with the great Baptist movement; and had this insurrection succeeded gloriously, as it failed miserably, it would doubtless have been regarded as one of the greatest achievements of human liberty. The act of baptism practiced in Munster has been the occasion of no end of controversy. Since, as it has been seen this was not a representative Baptist movement, but one largely composed of Lutherans, the act of baptism in Munster was not necessarily the practice of the Baptists of the period. After a somewhat patient investigation it may safely be affirmed that the ordinary form of baptism in Munster was immersion. The evidence is set down impartially. The Bekentnesse van Beiden Sacramentem, The Confession of both Sacraments, which was subscribed to by Bernhardt Rothmann, John Klopries, Hermann Strapade, Henry Roll, Dionysius Vinne and Gottfried Stralen is especially significant, The Confession says: What the word doop means, Every German knows, of course, the meaning of doopen (to dip), and consequently also of doop and doopsel (dipping). Doopen is as much as to say dip or immerse in water, and doop is as much as to say a ducking or besprinkling with water. Now, this word doop, by reason of its natural signification, may be used of all and every kind of dipping. But in the Christian sense there is not much more than one sort of dipping in water that can be called (doop), which is when a person is dipped according to the command of Christ otherwise, if it be done in a manner, or with a different intent from what Christ and the Apostles practiced, it may literally or naturally be called (doop), but it can never be called doop in the Christian sense; for all dipping in water is in fact, and may be called doop, but only that which is done according to the command of Christ is the Christian doop. What the doop (baptism) is . . . it is a small matter that I be plunged into water. indeed, it is of no benefit to the soul that the filth of the flesh be put away; but the certain announcement of a good conscience the putting off of the old man. the laying aside the lust of sin, and endeavor henceforth to live in obedience to the will of God-on this salvation depends, and this is also that which in baptism is acquired. The dipping, as the Apostles write it, and also used the same, is to he performed with this understanding. They also who are dipped are therein to confess their faith, and, by virtue of this faith, to be disposed to put off the old man, and henceforth to live in a new conversation; indeed, it is on this condition that the dipping is to be received, by every candidate that he, with the certain announcement of a good conscience, renewed and born again through the Holy Ghost, will forsake all unrighteousness with all works of darkness, and will die to them. And, accordingly, the dipping is a burial of the old man and a raising up of the new man; likewise a door into the holy church, and a putting on of Jesus Christ. There are some who . . . make of the dipping a sign of grace; but this can be proved by no Scripture, that the dipping was intended to be the true token of grace . . . But, well, be it so: let the immersion in water be the sign; we hold, however, that the water does not bring anything more with it, but that it is an external sign. But we pray thee, then, what is the use of the sign, where the reality which is signified is not present? He who gives or receives the sign of anything without regard to the reality, is he not a traitor? The kiss is the sign of friendship. Judas gave the sign, and had not the reality; how did he fare? Likewise, when one receives a troth penny, accepts the right band of his friend in token of fidelity, if, in fact, he be found untrue, having not the reality of the sign (which is truth) in his heart, dear friend, what wouldst thou think of such a man? . . . and for what wouldst thou value such a sign? . . . Accordingly, whoever would rightly receive the external sign must assuredly bring the inward reality along with him; otherwise the sign is false, useless and unworthy of commendation. Well, then, to he brief, and to reach a conclusion as to what the doop is, we say that the dipping is an immersion in water, which the candidate desires and receives as a token that he has died to sin, has been buried with Christ, thereby risen to a new life, thenceforth to walk not in the lust of the flesh, but obediently according to the will of God. They who are thus minded and thus confess, the same should be dipped; and they are also rightly dipped, and thus assuredly receive forgiveness of sins in the dipping, and also admission into the holy church and the putting on of Christ. And this comes to the person dipped, not by virtue of the dipping, nor yet because of the formula employed, "I dip thee," etc., neither by reason of the faith of the fathers and of their uninvited vows and suretyship-it comes to him through his knowledge of Christ, his own faith, and because of his own free will and heart, through the Holy Ghost, he puts off the lusts of the flesh and puts on Christ. And this is briefly what doop is and to whom it should and may be usefully administered. After that this gateway was thus destroyed and opened to everybody, the holy church, was also desecrated and injured; and it is to be expected that the holy church itself also shall never be able to reach her glory unless the gateway be built up, and be judged and cleansed of all abominations (Bouterwek, Zur Literatur und Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, 6-8. Bonn, 1864). The original of the Confession is not at hand, and the point might profitably be raised whether the phrase "besprinkled with water" is a part of the original document. Such a phrase appears to be entirely out of harmony with the argument and spirit of the Confession and might be accounted for as a gloss. It is an interesting question and a comparison with the original manuscript, if it can be found, might throw light on the question. Much care needs to be taken in authenticating manuscripts; and none require more accurate consideration than those which treat of Anabaptist history. It is to be noted, however, that in the Confession, "besprinkle with water" is not "recognized side by side with immersion as valid baptism," but that the definition is given as a possible one for the doop then used. Only dipping is recognized by the Confession as the proper form of baptism among Christians. "We may say that the baptism is an immersion in water," runs the Confession, "which the one baptized requests and receives as a true token that he has died to sin." In speaking of the Confession, Dr. Jesse B. Thomas truly remarks: It seems incredible that the clear distinction between the broader etymological signification of the word doopen, and its single exclusive use, accompanied by so elaborately detailed explanation of its specific use could have been simultaneously repudiated by the voluntary substitution in practice of the illegitimate modifications condemned in it (The Western Recorder, 1898) On this point of dipping, Dr. Keller says: The dipping (eintauchung) in water was by all mean. a sign of the dying off of the old man. The very nature of baptism they could conceive to be nothing else; hence, to them, the baptism of unintelligent, thoughtless and speechless children, appeared to them as an abominable blasphemy, and the source of the destruction of all of the apostasy of the holy church (Keller, Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, 132). Heath, the English writer on the Anabaptists, is equally clear on this point. He says: The "Confession of both Sacraments" describes baptism as a dipping or plunging completely into water, for only under this form can it be spoken of as being buried with Christ (Heath, The Anabaptists, 147, 148) Cornelius, the Roman Catholic writer, says that Rothmann held: Baptism is the sign through which we exhibit the passage from death to life; as the passage through the Red Sea was unto the children of Israel of the grace of God so it is to us a sure sign of the grace of God to be baptized in the water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Cornelius, Geschichte des Munsterischen Aufrubrs, I. 132). Thus speak the scholarly students of the Anabaptists, and they hold that the practice of the Anabaptists of Munster was dipping. There is an instance on record of a baptism in Munster. Heath says: "On January 5, 1534, two Hollanders arrived at Munster, apostles sent out by Jan Matthysz. They used the words: ’Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ that they denounced the wrath of God on all tryrants and blood-shedders, that they called on the believers in Munster to be baptized and form a true community, in which they should be equal and have all things in common, can hardly be doubted. Rothmann, Klopries, Vinne and Stralen were baptized, and, with Roll, were appointed to baptize others. The rite was performed in Rothmann’s house, and, judging from the terms of the Confession, was probably by immersion. In eight days there were already 1,000 persons baptized in Munster. Of their state of mind they have left this record: ’In the day God awakened us so that we were faithful to be baptized, there was poured out a spirit, a brotherly love, rising to the floodtide.’ And of their consecration therein they say: ’Whatever we now find day by day that God wills among us, that will we do, cost what it may."’ (Heath, The Anabaptists, 160). We have seen elsewhere that the Anabaptists were accustomed to practice dipping in their houses. Dr. Urbanus Rhegius wrote a furious book, from Wittenberg, in 1535, against the Anabaptists of Munster. The Preface of the book was by Martin Luther. He designates the third article of the Anabaptists as an error. He says: III. The Munster error of holy baptism. In 1 Peter 3:1-22 we read that baptism saves, through which we obtain the covenant of good conscience toward God. This demands death of the flesh and all good works. Where no faith is there are no good work., the result is then that faith is necessary to baptism. Then it follows that only true believers can be baptized, Rom. vi. Galatians 3:1-29, 1 Peter 3:1-22, Acts 2:1-37, Acts 8:1-40, Acts 1:1-26, Acts 16:1-40, Acts 22:1-30. Conscientiousness and faith must precede, which is not true of children consequently they are not rightly baptized. Therefore one should be baptized right, if one understands and believes. Therefore they drag into ridicule holy baptism and they compare child’s baptism, though they plunge them into water (inns wasser stekt), to cat and dog baptism and say that it is mockery and child’s play (Rhegius, Widderlegung der Munsterischen newen Valentinaner. Wittenberg, 1585). Christopher Andreas Fischer, A. D., 16O7, commenting on this article of the Munster Confession, says: The baptism in water is nothing, but the baptism which is the death of the flesh saves. The child’s baptism is a cat and dog baptism, though they are plunged in the water (ins wasser steckt) and is a ridicule and child’s play (Fischer, Vier und Funffzig Exhebliacke warumb die Wiedertaufer, 7). The form of baptism which the enemies of tile Anabaptists practiced was dipping and the subjects were infants. The form of baptism among the Anabaptists was dipping and the subjects were adult believers. The Anabaptists spoke slightingly of the baptism of infants as no better than the baptism of a cat or dog. It will be noticed that the act of baptism was dipping. This was undoubtedly the form of baptism practiced by the Anabaptists of Munster. Nothing can be plainer than this. If, therefore, we can trust the statement given by Bouterweg, and the contemporaneous account of Rhegius, who gives the words of the Anabaptists, then the Anabaptists of Munster were in the practice of dipping. Rhegius argued that one thus baptized possessed the new birth, or water bath, and should, therefore, be baptized. And then follows the passage: It is God who regenerates us young and old. Our knowledge and work cannot accomplish it but the grace of the Holy Spirit, The same can work alike in the infant child as in the mature man as we see in John the baptist, Luke i. A child can have all that is necessary to baptism. One can dip it in the water (ins wasaer tuncke) at the same time quote the Word of God. The argument of Rhegius is forceful. As the Anabaptists claimed that only adults ought to be baptized in water; so he thinks baptism will bring the same blessing to children. This argument is unanswerable that immersion was the practice of Munster. Rhegius was quite willing that the Anabaptists should dip adults; if the Anabaptists would allow the dipping of children. The view of John of Leyden on the form of baptism has been preserved by Hermann Kerssenbrock. This writer knows only what is evil of the Anabaptists and only what is good of their opponents. But he directly says that John of Leyden practiced redipping (Kerssenbrock, Historia belli Monasteriensis, 15). The testimony establishes the fact that the so-called anabaptists of Munster were in practice of dipping. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 16: 01.1.16. CHAPTER 14 BRITISH BAPTIST CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XIV THE BRITISH BAPTIST CHURCHES THE existence of Baptist people and principles in England, extending back to remote periods, as related by the historians, is unusually clear and convincing. Thomas Crosby began the first volume of his history of the English Baptists in 1738, with the story of John Wyclif. This was the point where Neal had commenced his History of the Puritans. Crosby apparently had not, at the time he began to write, gone deeply into the subject. He had married a daughter of the celebrated Benjamin Keach, was a Baptist deacon, and taught a private school in Southwark. His brother-in-law, Mr. Benjamin Stinton, had gathered material for an English Baptist history. At the time of his death he had only finished the Introduction which was an account of foreign Baptists, in which he traced them back to the times of the Apostles. Mr. Stinton died and the material came into the hands of Mr. Crosby, who had no intention of writing a history. After vainly trying to induce others to undertake such a work Crosby wrote the history. The beginning by Crosby of his history of the English Baptists with Wyclif, and the statements he makes in regard to "the reviving of immersion," led to misapprehensions in the minds of some. There was much discussion among English Baptists in regard to the administrator of baptism, and Crosby gives an account of how certain English Protestants were in favor of reviving the ancient practice of immersion, in the time of James I., and again in 1633. All of this had a confusing effect upon some readers. His history was immediately attacked by the Pedohaptists and criticized by the Baptists. The Rev. John Lewis, a clergyman of the Church of England, in Kent, wrote against Crosby at great length. He published a volume entitled, "A Brief History of the English Anabaptists," and besides this he left in manuscript form, in many volumes, his researches concerning the Baptists in England (Rawlinson MSS. C. 409. Bodleian Library).He was violent and venomous, but he gathered much valuable information concerning the Baptists. Crosby replied to Mr. Lewis with spirit He says: "There were many Anabaptists and learned ones before the year 1600" (Crosby, A Brief Reply to the ’Rev. Mr. John Lewis, 20. London, 1738). These criticisms led Crosby to take up the entire subject, and to make some original investigations. These studies led to his second and subsequent volumes. If there was doubt as to the meaning of Crosby in the first volume there was none in the second. He is strong and clear. In the first volume he traces Baptists through foreign source’s to the Apostles, in the second volume he makes out an English line of succession. No advocate of church succession would require a stronger statement. He says: This great prophet John, had immediate commission from heaven, Luke 3:2, before he entered upon the actual administration of his office. And as the English Baptists adhere closely to this principle, that John the Baptist was by divine command, the first commissioned to preach the gospel, and baptize by immersion, those that receive it; and that this practice has ever since been maintained and continued in the world to this present day; so it may not be improper to consider the state of religion in this kingdom; it being agreed on all hands, that the plantation of the gospel here was very early, even in the Apost1es days (Crosby, A History of the Baptists, II. ii). Crosby gives a sketch of the preservation of immersion from the days of Christ to the beginning of the seventeenth century. He nowhere intimates that any Baptist church in England ever changed its practice from sprinkling to immersion. He assumes throughout that the Baptists had all along practiced immersion. He is at pains to point out that the Continental Anabaptists practiced immersion. He believed that immersion had been continuously practiced in England since the time "the gospel was preached in Great Britain soon after our Saviour’s death" (II. 9). He says, in speaking of the opinions of Wyclif: "I shall only further observe that the practice of immersion or dipping in baptism, continued in the church until the reign of James I., or about the year 1600" (II. xlvi). By church he evidently meant the Church of England, since he also says: "That immersion continued in the Church of England till about the year 1600." "Yet," he further says, "there were some who were unwilling to part with this laudable and ancient practice" (II. lii). He quotes with great approval Sir John Floyer, who says: "The age which has practiced sprinkling in England began 1644, and to the present year are 77 years" (Floyer, An Essay to Restore the Dipping of Infants, 61. London, 1722). Once more Floyer says: "Dr. Lightfoot wrote about 1644, near the time that sprinkling was introduced" (Ibid, 33). Such is the testimony of Crosby to the existence of Baptists in England. No less important is the statement of B. Evans, who wrote an important history of English Baptists. He says: The true origin of that sect which acquired the denomination of Anabaptists by their administering anew the rite of baptism to those who come over to their communion . . . is hid in the remote depths of antiquity, and is, of consequence, extremely difficult to be ascertained" (Mosheim, IV. cent, xvi. chap. iii. 429). No one conversant with the records of the past can doubt this. The whole facts of history place the truth beyond dispute. I have seen enough to convince me that the present English dissenters, contending for the sufficiency of Scripture, and for primitive Christian liberality to judge of its meaning, may be traced back in authentic manuscripts to the Nonconformists, to the Puritans, to the Lollards, to the Vallenses, to the Albigenses, and I suspect, through the Paulicians and others, to the Apostles (Robinson, Claude of Turin, II. 58).Dissidents from the popular church in the early ages, compelled to leave it from the growing corruption of its doctrines and morals, were found everywhere. Men of the apostolic life and doctrine contended for the simplicity of the church and the liberty of Christ’, flock, in the midst of great danger. What the pen failed to do, the sword of the magistrate effected. The Novatians, the Donatists, and others that followed them are examples. They contended for the independence of the church; they exalted the divine Word as the only standard of faith; they enaintained the essential purity of the church, and the necessity of a holy life springing from a renewed heart. Extinguished by the sword, not of the Spirit,-their churches broken and scattered,-after years of patient suffering from the dominant sect, the seed which they had scattered sprung up in other lands. Truth never dies. Its vitality is imperishable. In the wild wastes and fastnesses of Europe and Africa it grew. A succession of able and intrepid men taught the same great principles, in opposition to a corrupt and affluent state church, which distinguished modern English Non-conformists; and many of them taught those peculiar views of Christian ordinances which are special to us as Baptists. Beyond all doubt such views were inculcated by the Paulicians, the primitive Waldenses, and their brethren. Over Europe they were scattered, and their converts were very numerous, long before the Reformation shed its light in the darkness of Europe (Evans, The Early English Baptists, I. 1. 2). Adam Taylor, the historian of the English General Baptists, says: But we may be permitted to state a few facts, which will prove that, in all ages of the church, there have been Baptists, who have heartily joined with the first Baptist, John, in pointing sinners "to the Iamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (Taylor, History of the English General Baptists, I. 1.2). These are the most weighty historians who have written on English Baptist history. It is no less interesting to note that historians who are not Baptists give great antiquity to the Baptists of England. Barclay, a Quaker, who wrote a hook, in which he largely treats of the Baptists, says: As we shall afterwards show, the rise of the Anabaptiuti took place. long prior to the foundation of the Church of England, and these are also reasons for believing that on the Continent of Europe, small hidden societies, who held many of the opinions of the Anabaptist, have existed from the times of the Apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of divine truth and the true nature of spiritual religion, It seem, probable that these churches have a lineage of succession more ancient than the Roman Church (Barclay, The Inner life of the Religions Societies of the Commonwealth, 12). The testimony of Professor David Masson, of the University of Edinburgh, is important because he gave the matter critical attention. He says: The Baptists were by far the most numerous of the sectaries. Their enemies (Featley, Paget, Edwards, Baillie, etc.) were fond of tracing them to the anarchial German Anabaptists of the Reformation; but they themselves claimed a higher origin. They maintained, as Baptists still do, that in the primitive or apostolic church the only baptism practiced or heard of was an immersion in water; and they maintained further that the baptism of infants was one of the corruptions of Christianity against which there had been a continued protest by pure and forward spirits in different countries, in ages prior to Luther’s Reformation, including some of the English Wyclifites, although the protest may have been repeated in a louder manner, and with wild admixtures, by the German Anabaptists who gave Luther so much trouble (Masson, The Life of Milton, V. 146-149. London, 1871). Thus standard Baptist writers are reinforced by eminent historians who are not Baptists, but who have investigated the history of English Baptists. They all agree in giving great antiquity to the Baptists, and some of them assign an antiquity to them reaching to the days of the Apostles. The first churches planted in Great Britain were Baptist churches. "The prevalence of Baptists in Britain," says Dr. R B. C. Howell, "from the earliest times and in no small numbers, will be questioned by no one who is at all familiar with the religious history of the land of our fathers" (Howell, The Early Baptists of Virginia). The tradition is that the gospel was preached in Britain in the apostolic age (Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, I. 27); though it is difficult to ascertain who first carried it there. The Roman Catholic historian Lingard, who tries in every way to throw doubt upon the early progress of Christianity in Britain, is compelled to admit that in apostolic times "the Christian doctrines were silently disseminated among the natives" (Lingard, The Anglo-Saxon Church, I. 2. London, 1858). We see the light of the world shining, but we do not see who kindled it. Gildas, the most ancient British chronicler, says: "Meanwhile these islands, stiff with cold and frost, and in a distant region of the world, remote from the visible sun, received the beams of light, that is, the holy precepts of Christ, the true Sun, showing to the whole world his splendor, not only from the temporal firmament, but from the height of heaven, which surpasses everything temporal, as the latter part, as we know, of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, by whom his religion was propagated without impediment, and death threatened to those who interfered with its professors" (Gildas, The Works, 302). Missionaries multiplied rapidly. The superstitions of the people gave way and the common people gladly accepted the Word. At length, in the year 180, Lucius was converted. He was the first king to receive baptism (Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England, 10).He and his people were baptized upon a profession of their faith (Fox, Martyrology, I. 1381), It is generally agreed that at this period many pagan temples were turned into edifices for the worship of the true God. Religion had spread so wonderfully that Justin Martyr said: There is no nation; whether of Barbarians or of Greeks, or any other by what names soever they are called; whether they live in wagons, or without houses, or in tents, among whom prayers are not made, and thanks giving offered up, to the Father and Creator of all, through the name of the crucified Jesus. Under Diocletian, about the year 300, the British Christians suffered a fierce persecution. Their books and churches were burnt, and many of them put to death. "God, therefore, who wished all men to be saved, and who calls sinners no less than those who think themselves to be righteous, magnified his mercy toward us, and, as we know, during the above named persecution, that Britain might not be totally enveloped in the dark shades of night, he, of his own free gift, kindled up among us bright luminaries of holy martyrs, whose places of burial and martyrdom, had they not for our manifold crimes been interfered with and destroyed by the barbarians, who have kindled in the minds of the beholders no small fire of divine charity" (Gildas, The Works, 303). "Whom I must regard as Baptist martyrs," says Crosby, "till the Paedobaptists convince me to the contrary" (Crosby, History of the English Baptists, II. xiv). Were these early Christians Baptists? Crosby makes no qualifications. He says: Now In this inquiry, so much has occurred to me, as carries with it more than a probability, that the first English Christians were Baptists. I could not therefore pass by so material a fact in their favor. And because it cannot be placed where it belongs, I have fixed it by way of preface to this second volume (Crosby, II. To the Reader). Further on he says: The true Christian doctrine, and form of worship, as delivered by the Apostles, was maintained in England, and the Romish government and ceremonies, zealously withstood, till the Saxons entered into Britain, about the year 448. During which time there is no mention of any baptizing in England, but adult persons only. And from this silence of history, touching the baptizing of infants in England; from the Britons being said to keep so strictly to the holy Scriptures, in doctrine and in ceremonies; in which there is no mention of the baptizing of infants; and from the accounts of those who were baptized which expressly mention their faith and conversion, the English Baptists have concluded, that there was no such practice as baptizing of infants in England for the first three hundred years after it received the Gospel and certainly he would have a very hard task that should undertake to prove that there was (II. xii). Davis, the Welsh Baptist historian, says: Infant baptism was in vogue long before this time (A D. 600) in many parts of the world, but not in Britain. The ordinances of the Gospel were then administered exclusively there, according to the primitive mode. Baptism by immersion, administered to those who professed repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Welsh Christians considered the only baptism of the New Testament. That was their unanimous sentiment as a nation, from the time that the Christian religion was embraced by them, in 62, until a considerable time after 600 (Davis, History of the Welsh Baptists, 14). There is no question that baptism was performed by immersion. The original word among the Britons for baptize means to dip (Richards, A Plain and Serious Discourse Concerning Baptism. Lynn, 1793). An instance of baptism is given by the Roman Catholic historian Bede. He says: The holy days of Lent were also at hand, and were rendered more religious by the presence of the priests, inasmuch as the people being instructed by daily sermons, resorted in crowds to be baptized; for most of the army desired admission to the saving water; a church was prepared with boughs for the feast of the resurrection of our Lord, and so fitted up in that martial camp, as if it were a city. The army advanced, still wet with the baptismal water; the faith of the people was strengthened; and whereas human power had before been despaired of, the Divine assistance was now relied on (Bede, 31). For the space of forty years the noted St. Patrick, a Briton born, preached extensively among the Irish, Scotch and Britons. The time of his birth, even the century in which he was born, is unknown. It was probably the close of the fourth century. No certain data can be given concerning his beliefs. It can, however, be positively stated that he was not a Roman Catholic (Nicholson, St. Patrick. Dublin, 1868); and that he approximated in many things the doctrines of the Baptists. Cathcart (Ancient British and Irish Churches. Philadelphia, 1894) argues at length and with much ability that he was a Baptist. He did not hold to the Roman Catholic idea of church government, and he ordained one or more bishops in every church (Nennius, Historia Britorium, 3, 54). He did not believe in purgatory (Hart, Ecclesiastical Records of England, xxii). In regard to the form of baptism Patrick practiced immersion upon a profession of faith. During his life he is said to have immersed one hundred and twenty thousand people. He baptized Hercus, a king, in the fountain Loigles, and thousands of others on that day (Todd, life of Patrick, 449). His opinions on the subject of the Lord’s Supper were equally meritorious. Sedulius, an Irishman, who flourished in the fifth century, tells us (Commentary of 1 Cor. xi), that our lord left "the memorial unto us, just as a person going to a distance leaves a token to him whom he loves, and as often as he sees it he may call to his mind his benefits and friendship" (Hart, Ecclesiastical Records, xvii).He also speaks of the elements of the communion as "the sweet meat of the seed of wheat, and the lovely drink of the pleasant vine." The Lord’s Supper was taken in both kinds, and there was no mention of transubstantiation. In the year 597 Gregory the Great sent Austin, or, as he is sometimes called, Augustine, to Britain to convert the Saxons. Gregory when a monk had seen some fair-haired Saxon youths, and when he asked them from what country they came, they replied from the land of the Angles, but Gregory thought they should more appropriately be called angels. He was anxious to go on a missionary journey to this people, but he was so popular in Rome he was raised to the papal see. He did not, however, give up his cherished design to convert the Saxons. He could not go, but he persuaded Austin to undertake the mission, and Austin reached the country in the year indicated above. Austin was to offer them the most liberal terms, and allow them to retain all of their former practices, if they would submit to baptism. He was not to destroy the heathen temples; only to remove the images of their gods, to wash the walls with holy water, to erect altars and deposit relics in them, and so convert them into Christian churches; not merely to save the expense of new ones, but that the people might easily be prevailed upon to frequent those places of worship to which they had been accustomed. Gregory directed him further to accommodate the services of the Christian worship, as much as possible, to those of the heathen, that the people might not be startled at the change; and in particular, he advised him to allow the Christian converts, on certain festivals, to kill and eat a great number of oxen to the glory of God, as they had formerly done to the glory of the devil (Henry, The History of Great Britain, 111.194. London, 1800). Austin met with success; the king and great numbers of the people were converted to his views, and baptized. They came in so fast that he is said to have baptized ten thousand by immersion in one day in the River Swale (Fuller, Church History of Britain, I. 98). After his success with the Saxons Austin turned his attention to the British Christians to bring them, if possible, in subjection to the pope. The native Christians did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. They did not practice infant baptism. These and other questions greatly perplexed Austin. As he was not able to determine the questions, he wrote Gregory, who gave him the needed instruction (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 45). It was finally agreed that Austin should meet representatives of the Britons. In the conference which followed Austin said to them: You act in many particulars contrary to our custom, or rather the custom of the universal church, and yet, if you will comply with me in these three points, viz. to keep Easter at the due time; to administer baptism, by which we are again born to God, according to the custom of the holy Roman Apostolic Church; and jointly with us preach the word of God to the English nation; we will readily tolerate the other things you do, though contrary to our custom. They answered that they would do none of these things, nor receive him as their archbishop; for they alleged among themselves, "If he would not now rise up to us, how much more will he condemn us, as of no worth, if we begin to be under his subjection(Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 71). Austin affirmed that there were many differences between the Roman Catholics and the British Christians, and the Britons asserted that they were not subject to Austin and would not receive him as archbishop. They differed on the subject of baptism. The Britons did not baptize after the manner of the Roman Church. As there was no difference between them on the act of Baptism as all parties practiced immersion, it must have been on the subjects of baptism. There is no proof that the Britons practiced infant baptism. Fabyan, an old Roman Catholic writer, explains what Bede meant by "baptism according to the custom of the Holy Apostolic Church." Fabyan says of Austin: Then he said to the: Sins ye wol not assent to my hestes generally assent ye to me specially in iii. things. The first is, that ye kepe Ester’ day in due fourme and tyme an it is ordayned. The seconde, that ye geve Christendome to children. And the thyrde is, that ye preache unto the Anglis the worde of God, as afortimes I have exhorted you. And all the other deale I shall suffer you to amende and refourme within yourselves, but they would not receave of theyr brethren peace, they should recieve warre and wretche, the which was put in experience by Ethelfirdus, King of Northumberland (Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, I. 115. London, 1811). Austin was true to his threat, and he did bring war and wretchedness upon the Baptists of England. Roger de Wendover says that "all of this came to pass in every respect as he had foretold, through the working of God’s vengeance" (Roger de Wendover, The Flowers of History, 60).True to the principles of Roman Catholics, and Pedobaptism, an army was sent, with orders that the Britons should be slain, even though they bore no arms. About twelve hundred of them who came to pray are said to have been killed, and only about fifty escaped by flight. The facts in regard to Austin have been summed up as follows: "He found here a plain religion, (simplicity is the badge of antiquity), practiced by the Britons, living some of them in the contempt, and many more in the ignorance, of worldly vanities, in a barren country; and surely piety is most healthful in those places where it can least surfeit of earthly pleasure. He brought in a religion spun of a coarser thread, though guarded by a finer trimming, made luscious to the senses with pleasing ceremonies; so that many, who could not judge of the goodness, were courted with the gaudiness thereof. Indeed, the papists brag, that he was ’the apostle to the English,’ but not one in the style of St. Paul" (Fuller, The Church History of Britain, I. 101). The first instance of infant baptism on record in England occurred in the year 626.King Edwin promised Paulinus, the Roman Catholic archbishop, that he would believe in his God if he would give him the victory over his enemy Quichelm, "and as a pledge of his fulfilling his promise, he gave orders that his daughter should be baptized" (Roger de Wendover, Flowers of History, 67).In the following year Edwin was immersed in York by Paulinus. On going with the king to his country place, the zeal of the people was so great, that for thirty-six days, Paulinus, "from morning to night, did nothing else but instruct the people resorting from all the villages and places, in Christ’s saving word; and when instructed, he washed them with the water of absolution in the river Glen, which was close by" (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 96-98). In like manner he baptized great numbers in the river Swale. The Roman Catholics enforced infant baptism with great difficulty. The laws of the Northumbrians, A. D. 950, demanded: Every infant to be baptized within nine days, upon pain of six ores; and if the infant die a pagan (unbaptized) within nine days, let the parents make satisfaction to God without any lawful mulct; if after he is nine days old, let him pay twelve ores to the priest besides (Wilkins, Councils, I. 228). The 15th canon made in King Edgar’s time, A. D. 960, reads: That every infant be baptized in thirty-seven nights; and that no one delay too long to be confirmed by the bishop (Hart, Ecclesiastical Records, 196) The Constitutions of the Synod of Amesbury, A. D. 977, were drawn up by Oswald, and required children to be baptized in nine days of their birth. In commenting upon this decree Collier, the English Church historian, says: It is plain as will be shown farther, by and by, that the English Church used the rite of immersion. It seems that they were not at all discouraged by the coldness of the climate, nor thought the primitive custom impracticable in the northern regions; and if an infant would be plunged into the water at nine days old, without receiving any harm, how unreasonable must their scruples be who decline bringing their children to public baptism for fear of danger? How unreasonable, I say, must this scruple be when immersion is altered to sprinkling? (Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, I. 471). After the year 1000 the Paulicians began to make their appearance in England. In 1154 a body of Germans migrated into England, driven into exile by persecution. A portion of them settled in Oxford. William Newberry (Rerum Anglicarom, 125.London, 1667) tells of the terrible punishment meted out to the pastor Gerhard and the people. Six years later another company of Paulicians entered Oxford. Henry II ordered them to be branded on the forehead with hot irons, publicly whipped through the streets of the city, to have their garments cut short at the girdles, and be turned into the open country. The villages were not to afford them any shelter or food, and they perished a lingering death from cold and hunger (Moore, Earlier and Later Nonconformity in Oxford, 12). At an early date a Baptist church was located at Hill Cliffe, near Warrington, in Cheshire. English Baptists constantly mention this church as having had its origin far beyond the Reformation. The historian Goadby appears to give a fair representation of the facts. He says: We have reliable evidence that a Separatist, and probably a Baptist church, has existed for several centuries in a secluded spot of Cheshire, on the borders of Lancashire, about a mile and a half from Warrington. No spot could be better chosen for concealment than the site on which this ancient chapel stood. Removed from all public roads, enclosed by a dense wood, affording ready access into two counties, Hill Cliffe was admirably situated for the erection of a "conventicle", an illegal conventicle. The ancient chapel built on this spot was so constructed that the surprised worshippers had half a dozen secret ways of escaping from it, and long proved a meeting place suited to the varying fortunes of a hated and hunted people. Owing to the many changes inseparable from the eventful history of the church at Hill Cliffe, the earliest records have been lost. But two or three facts point to the very early existence of the community itself. In 1841 the old chapel was enlarged and modernized; and in digging for the foundation, a large baptistery of stone, well cemented, was discovered. How long this had been covered up, and at what period it was erected, it is impossible to state but as some of the tombstones in the graveyard adjoining the chapel were erected in the early part of the sixteenth century, there is some probability for the tradition that the chapel itself was built by the Lollards who held Baptist opinions. One of the dates on the tombstones is 1357, the time when Wyclif was still a fellow at Merton College, Oxford; but the dates most numerous began at the period when Europe had just been startled by Luther’s valiant onslaught upon the papacy. … Many of these tombstones, and especially the oldest, as we can testify from a personal investigation, look as clear and as fresh a. if they were engraved only a century ago . . . Hill Cliffe is undoubtedly one of the oldest Baptist churches in England,. . . The earliest deeds of the property have been irrevocably lost, but the extant deeds, which go back considerably over two hundred years, describe the property as being "for the Anabaptists" (Goadby, Bye Paths of Baptist History, 23). The latest book on the subject is by James Kenworthy. He says: "On the subject of baptism they have always followed the practice of the Christians of the New Testament and of the early churches - baptism by immersion or dipping" (Kenworthy, History of the Baptist Church at Hill Cliffe, 14). Walter Lollard, a Dutchman, of remarkable eloquence, came, according to Fuller, into England, in the reign of Edward III., "from among the Waldenses, among whom he was a great bard or pastor." His followers rapidly increased so that Abelard declared "our age is imperiled by heretics, that there seems to be no footing left for the true faith." Knighton, the English chronicler, says: "More than one-half of the people of England, in a few years, became Lollards" (Knighton, col. 2664). Hallam says in his History of the Middle Ages: "An inundation of heresy broke in the twelfth century over the church, which no persecution was able to repress, till it finally overspread half the surface of Europe." The Clergy were so alarmed that they dispatched the Arch-bishop of York and the Bishop of London, to the King in Ireland, to entreat him to immediately return to England, to protect the church which was in danger of destruction." As soon," says a contemporary historian, "as the king heard the representation of the commissioners, being inspired by the divine spirit, he hastened into England, thinking it more necessary to defend the church than to conquer kingdoms" (Walsingham, Historia Anglica, VIII. 213).This address of the commissioners was occasioned by the Lollards having affixed a number of theses to the church doors against the scandalous lives of the clergy and the received doctrines of the sacraments (Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, III. 213). At this period, A. D. 1371, Wyclif was the greatest man in England. He was educated at Oxford and none doubted his learning. Knighton, who was his enemy, described him as "second to none in philosophy, in scholastic discipline altogether incomparable." The popularity of the doctrines of Wyclif at Oxford is abundantly attested by the reiterated complaints of Archbishop Arundel, who affirmed that Oxford was a vine that brought forth wild and sour grapes, which, being eaten by the fathers, the teeth of the children were set on edge; so that the whole Province of Canterbury was tainted with novel and damnable Lollardism, to the intolerable and notorious scandal of the University." She who formerly was the mother of virtues, the prop of the Catholic faith, the singular pattern of obedience, now brings forth only abortive children, who encourage contumacy and rebellion, and sow tares among pure wheat" (Le Bas, The Life of Wyclif, 278). Thomas Walden, who had access to the writings of Wyclif, charges him with holding the following opinions: That it is a blasphemy to call any "head of the church" save Christ alone. That Rome is not the seat in which Christ’s vicar doth reside. That the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church of Rome, in matters of faith, is the greatest blasphemy of anti-Christ. That in the times of the Apostles, there were only two orders, namely, priests and deacons, and that of bishop doth not differ from a priest. That it is lawful for a clergyman to marry. That he defined the church to consist only of persons predestinated. That those are fools and presumptuous who affirm such infant,, not to be saved who die without baptism; and also, that he denied that all sins are abolished in baptism. That baptism does not confer, but only signifies grace, which was given before (Fuller, The Church History of Britain, I. 441). The above paragraph contains, as far as it goes, a satisfactory statement of doctrine. Upon the Lord’s Supper and other matters of belief Walsingham says: That the eucharist, after consecrations, was not the true body of Christ but only an emblem or a sign of it. That the Church of Rome is no more the head of all churches than any other church, and that St. Peter had no greater authority than the rest of the apostles. That the pope of Rome has no more jurisdiction in the exercise of the keys than a common priest. That the Gospel is a sufficient direction for the life and government of a Christian. That all other supplementary rules, instituted by holy men, and practiced in the monasteries, give no more improvement to Christianity than whiteness does to a wall. That neither the pope, nor any other prelate, ought to have prisons for the punishment of offenders against discipline; but every person ought to go at large, and have his liberty, both in notion and practice (Walsingham. Historia Anglicana, 191). It is evident that Wyclif made great advances in reform over the Roman Catholic Church of his day. Year after year marked a further departure from Rome and her dogma. In nothing was this more manifest than in infant baptism. In the early years Wyclif firmly believed in the efficacy of infant baptism, but in later years he appears to have greatly modified his views. Thomas Walden gees so far as to call him "one of the seven heads that came out of the bottomless pit for denying infant baptism, that heresy of the Lollards, of whom he was so great a ringleader." Walsingham says: "That damnable heretic, John Wyclif, reassumed the cursed opinions of Berangarius" (Walsingham, Ypod. Neust., 133), of which it is certain denying infant baptism was one. Collier expressly tells us "he denied the necessity" of infant baptism (Collier, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, III. 185).The statement of Collier is unquestioned. Wyclif did not deny infant baptism itself, but the necessity of it. He did not believe that a child dying unbaptized would be lost (Wall, History of Infant Baptism, I. 436, 437). This was greatly in advance of the age and marked Wyclif at once a heretic and "an enemy of the Church." There is no effort in this place to assign Wyclif to a position among Baptist martyrs, but there is no doubt he held firmly to many Baptist positions. Crosby, on the other hand, declared he was a Baptist and argues the question at great length. "I am inclined to believe that Mr. Wyclif," says he, "was a Baptist, because some men of great note and learning in the Church of Rome, have left it upon record, that he denied infant baptism." Among other authorities he quotes Joseph Vicecomes (De Bit. Bapt., lib. ii. chap. i). "Besides," continues Crosby, "they charged him with several of those which are called Anabaptistical errors; such as refusing to take an oath (art. 41. condemned by the Council of Constance), and also that opinion, that dominion is founded in grace (Fuller, Church History of Great Britain, 1.444, Art. 51). Upon these testimonies, some Protestant writers have affirmed that Wyclif was a Baptist, and have put him in the. number of those who have borne witness against infant baptism. And had he been a man of scandalous character, that would have brought reproach upon those of that profession, a less proof would have been sufficient to have ranked him among that sect" (Crosby, The History of English Baptists, I. 8, 9). No doubt the sentiments of Wyclif, on many points, were the same as those of the Baptists, but there is no document known to me that warrants the belief that he was a Baptist (Evans, The Early English Baptists, I. 13). It is certain that the Lollards, who had preceded Wyclif and had widely diffused their opinions, repudiated infant baptism (Neal, History of the Puritans, II. 354). The testimony of Neal is interesting. He says: That the denial of the right of infants to baptism was a principle generally maintained among Lollards, is abundantly confirmed by the historians of those times, (Neal, History of the Puritans, II. 354). The followers of Wyclif and Lollard united and in a short time England was full of the "Bible Men." "Tis, therefore, most reasonable to conclude," says Crosby, "that those persons were Baptists, and on that account baptized those that came over to their sect, and professed the true faith, and desired to be baptized into it" (Crosby, I. 17). The Lollards practiced believers’ baptism and denied infant baptism. Fox says one of the articles of faith among them was "that faith ought to precede baptism." This at least was the contention of a large portion of those people. The Lollard movement was later merged into the Anabaptist, and this was hastened by the fact that their political principles were identical (Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, VI. 123). The Lollards continued to the days of the Reformation. Mosheim says: "The Wyclifites, though obliged to keep concealed, had not been exterminated by one hundred and fifty years of persecution" (Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, III. 49). Davis (history of the Welsh Baptists, 21) claims that William Tyndale (A. D. 1484-1536) was a Baptist. He was born near the line between England and Wales, but lived most of the time in Gloustershire. "Llewellyn Tyndale and Hezekiah Tyndale were members of the Baptist church at Abergaverney, South Wales." There is much mystery around the life of Tyndale. Bale calls him "the apostle of the English." "He was learned, a godly, and a good-natured man" (Fuller, Church History of Britain, II. 91). It is certain he shared many views held by the Baptists; but that he was a member of a Baptist church is nowhere proved. He always translated the word eccleesia by the word congregation, and held to a local conception of a church (Tyndale, Works II. 13. London, 1831). There were only two offices in the church, pastor and deacons (1.400). The elders or bishops should be married men (I. 265). Upon the subject of baptism he is very full. He is confident that baptism does not wash away sin. "It is impossible," says he, "that the waters of the river should wash our hearts" (Ibid, 30).Baptism was a plunging into the water (Ibid, 287). Baptism to avail must include repentance, faith and confession (III. 179). The church must, therefore, consist of believers (Ibid, 25). His book in a wonderful manner states accurately the position of the Baptists. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 17: 01.1.17. CHAPTER 15 BAPTISTS IN ENGLISH REFORMATION ======================================================================== CHAPTER XV THE BAPTISTS IN THE REFORMATION PERIODS IN ENGLAND THE Reformation period was of long duration in England. It began with Henry VIII and really did not end till the Long Parliament which beheaded Charles I. During this formative time the Creed, the Liturgy, and the Practice of the Church of England were determined. Henry VIII (1509-1547) came to the English throne under the most favorable circumstances. He was young, cultivated, brilliant, and endowed with all those social and mental qualities which sent a thrill to the heart of the nation and inspired the most sanguine hopes for the future. He had a splendid coronation, for his father had left him ample means to gratify his love for display. He carried his deceased brother’s wife, Catherine of Spain, after a solemn repudiation of the lawfulness of the former contract. This was the beginning of his troubles, and the occasion of endless disputes and ultimately the separation of the Church of England from Rome. As much as Henry VIII hated the papal party, after he had broken with the Pope, he had still more hatred for the Baptists, at home and abroad. Neither threats nor cajolery prevented the spread of the Baptists. Like the Israelites in Egypt, "the more they were afflicted, the more they grew." The history of the Baptists of England, in the times of Henry VIII, is written in blood. He had scarcely come to the throne before proceedings were begun against them, and they were persecuted to the death. The chief agent of the king in these persecutions was William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. There appeared before him, at the Mansion at Knoll, May 2, 1511, a number of persons. "Then I say," says Crosby, "it is evident that they were opposers of infant baptism at that time, and then the rise of the Baptists is not of such late date as some would have it" (Crosby, The History of the Baptists, I. 30). They were required to renounce the following articles: 1. That in the sacrament of the altar is not the body of Christ, but material bread. 2. That the sacrament of baptism and confirmation are not necessary, or profitable for men’s souls. 3. That confession of sins ought not to be made to a priests. That there is no more power given by God to a priest than to a layman. 5. That the solemnization of matrimony (by a priest) is not profitable or necessary for the well of a man’s soul. 6. That the sacrament of extreme unction is not profitable or necessary to a man’s soul. 7. That pilgrimages to holy and devout places be not profitable, neither meritorious for man’s soul. 8. That images of saints are not to be worshipped. 9. That a man should pray to no saint, but only to God. 10. That holy water, and holy bread, be not the better after the benediction made by the priest, than before (Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England, I. 27). All were punished. Alice Grevill, who had been a Baptist for twenty-eight years, was condemned to death. Simon Fish and Tames Bainham, in the year 1525, belonged to a Baptist church, located in Bow Lane. Fish was a theologian and a pamphleteer. He was educated in Oxford, came to London and entered Gray’s Inn, about 1525. He was denounced as a damnable heretic, and in 1531 he died of a plague. His wife, who was suspected of heresy, married Bainham, who was burnt for heresy in 1532. He was a lawyer of high character and Burnet says "that for true generosity, he was an example to the age in which he lived." This is truly a remarkable testimony coming as it does from a bishop of the Church of England. Under examination he said that "the truth of the holy Scriptures was never these eight hundred years past so plainly and expressly declared to the people as, it had been within these six years." He demanded that only believers should be baptized in this militant church (Fox, Book of Martyrs, II. 329, 330). There was then an organized Baptist church, in London, in the practice of believers’ immersion in the year 1525. He died a triumphant death, at the stake, April 20, 1532, at Smithfield. The law against heretics was strengthened, in 1534-5. The most alarming letters were sent into England, by English foreign officials; as to the insubordination of the Anabaptists, on the Continent. Henry VIII was already interested in the extermination of the Baptists, and his zeal extended to foreign lands. He extended his help in exterminating the Baptists in Germany (Gardiner, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, VII. 167). The interest of the king was not confined to Germany. In the same year a royal proclamation was issued, in which it is said that many strangers are coming into this realm, who, "though they were baptized in their infancy, yet have, in contempt of the holy sacrament of baptism, rebaptized themselves. They are ordered to depart out of the realm in twelve days, under pain of death" (Wilkins, Concilia, III. 779). They did not return to the Continent and continued under the royal inspection (Cottonian MSS., Titus B. I. vol.415). This law was soon placed into operation. The old Chronicler Stowe, A. D. 1533, relates the following details: The 25th day of May were-in St. Paul’s Church, London-examined nineteen men and six women, born in Holland, whose opinions were, First, that Christ is not two natures, God and man; secondly, that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of the Virgin Mary; thirdly, that children born of infidels may be saved: fourthly, that baptism of children is of none effect, fifthly, that the sacrament of Christ’s body is but bread only, sixthly, that he who after baptism sinneth wittingly, sinneth deadly, and cannot be saved. Fourteen of them were condemned; a man and a woman were burnt at Smithfield; the other twelve of them were sent to other towns, there to he burnt. Froude. the English historian, gives a beautiful tribute to their fidelity. He says: The details are all gone, their names are gone. Poor Hollanders they were and that is all. Scarcely the fact seems worth the mentioning, so shortly is it told in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were ordered in mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their death the world looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting. Yet here, too, out of twenty-five poor men and women were found fourteen who by no terror of stake or torture could be tempted to say they believed what they did not believe. History has for them no word of praise; yet they, too, were not giving their blood in vain. Their lives might have been as useless as the lives of most of us. In their deaths they assisted to pay the purchase money for England’s freedom (Froude, History of England, II. 885). The burning of the Baptists caused a profound sensation. It became a matter of court correspondence throughout Europe. One who has not studied the subject in the light of recent revealed facts cannot appreciate the large place the Baptists occupied in the public mind in the sixteenth century. But the burnings continued to the end of the reign of this king. The Baptists died with the greatest fortitude. Of them Latimer says: The Anabaptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England as I have heard of credible men, I saw them not myself, went to their death, even intrepid, as ye will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully. Well, let them go (Latimer, Sermons, 1.148). The Landgrave of Hesse, in examining certain Baptists in Germany, found letters in their hands in regard to England. The letters showed that "the errors of that sect daily spread" in England. He wrote a violent letter to Henry and warned him against the Anabaptists. In October, 1538, the king appointed a Commission composed of Thomas Cranmer, the Arch-bishop of Canterbury, as President, with other distinguished men to prosecute the Anabaptists. The result was that the books of the Baptists were burnt wherever they were found. On November 16, following, the king issued a proclamation to the effect that none were "to sell or print ’any books of Scripture’, without the supervision of the king, one of the councils, or a bishop. Sacramentarians, Anahaptists, and the like, who sell books of false doctrine, are to be detected to the king or Privy Council" (Titus MSS. B. I. 527). All strangers who "lately rebaptized themselves" were ordered from the kingdom, and some Baptists were burnt at the stake. The thoughtful reader has doubtless frequently asked how many Baptists there were in England in the reign of Henry VIII. The question can only approximately be answered. There were probably more Baptists there at the period under survey than there were in America at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Ammonius, under date of November 8, 1531, writes to Erasmus of the great numbers of the Anabaptists in England. He says: "It is not astonishing that wood is so dear and scarce the heretics cause so many holocausts, and yet their numbers grow" (Brewer, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, I. 285). Erasmus replied that Ammonius "has reason to be angry with the heretics for increasing the price of fuel for the coming Winter" (Thid, 297). This was horrible jesting. It was regarded as a great feat to discover and break up "a bed of snakes," as their meetings were called. Erasmus, under date of February 28, 1528, wrote to Moore: "The heresy of the Anabaptists is much more widely diffused than any one suspects" (Brewer, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, IV. pt ii. 1771). The Bishop of Faenza, June 8, 1535, wrote to M. Ambrogio that the Anabaptists already have "a firm footing in England" (Gardiner, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, IX. 344) Hacket, an English official, places their number at 8,000 and daily increasing. He says: Said that the king’s justice and amiable and good entreating toward him subjects would preserve the realm against all adversity, and he marveled that those whose eyesight was so sharp as to see the fire that burns before their own doors, and the commotion of this new sect of rebaptizement, which now numbers 6,000, and is dally increasing (Brewer, Henry VIII, VIL 136). One town had more than 500 Baptists in it Latimer, who was a contemporary, says of their numbers: I should have told you of a certain sect (the margin says they were Anabaptists) of heretics that spake against their order and doctrine; they have no magistrates or judges on the earth. Here I have to tell you what I have heard of late, by the relation of a credible person and worshipful man, of a town in this realm of England that hath above five hundred of heretics of this erroneous opinion in it (Latimer, Sermons, V. 151. Parker Society). Petrus Taschius, under date of September 1, 1538, says: "In England the truth silently but widely is propagated and powerfully increases" (Corp. of the Reformation, 111.580). Immersion was the universal rule of baptism in the reign of Henry VIII. There are two elaborate’ rituals of the Church of England at this period. The one is: "A Declaration of the Seremonies to the Sacrament of Baptysm," A. D. 1537; and the other is the "Saulsbury Liturgy," 1541. The last is regarded, by some, as the most sacred Liturgy belonging to the Church of England. Both of these liturgies enforce immersion. Erasmus, writing from England in 1532, gives the English practice. He says: "We dip children all over in cold water, in a stone font" Every English monarch of the sixteenth century was immersed. Henry VIII and his elder brother Arthur, Elizabeth in 1533 and Edward VI in 1537 were all immersed. The form of baptism among the Baptists is equally clear. Simon Fish was compelled to flee beyond the seas and while there he translated the old Baptist book, The Sum of the Holy Scripture. This old Dutch book demanded the immersion of the believer and denied infant baptism. It was printed in England in 1529. Through the next fifty years many editions of the book appeared in England (Fish, The Sum of Holy Scripture. British Museum, C. 37 L Arber proper dialogues in Rede me and not Wroth. English Reprints, 1871), and it became the Baptist text book next to the New Testament. There were editions of the book printed in England in 1547, 1548 and 1550 (British Museum, C. 37 a). There are copies of two editions in the Library of the University of Cambridge. All of these editions exhibit the same bold language against the baptism of infants, and in favor of the immersion of believers as the only act of baptism. The book was secretly published in the face of the greatest hostility, condemned by the decrees of councils and persistently circulated by the Baptists (Ex. reg. Warham, 188). The quaint and queer old Church historian Fuller, in giving a reason for the coming of so many Dutch Baptists to England, also mentions something of their doctrines, their practice of immersion and activities. He says: A match being now made up, by the Lord Cromwell’s contrivance, betwixt King Henry and Lady Anne of Cleves, Dutchmen flocked faster than formerly into England. Many of them had active souls; so that whilst their hands were busied about their manufactures, their heads were also beating about points of divinity: Hereof they had many crude notions, too ignorant to manage themselves and too proud to crave the directions of others. Their minds had a by-stream of activity more than what sufficed to drive on their vocation: and this waste of their souls they employed in needless speculations, and soon after began to broach their strange opinions, being branded with the general name of Anabaptists. These Anabaptists for the main, are but "Donatists new dipt," and this year their name first appears in our English chronicles, etc, (Fuller, Church History of Britain, II. 27). Fuller was wrong in stating that these were the first Anabaptists who appeared in England. He was right, however, in declaring that they were in the practice of dipping. The "Donatists new dipt" and the allusion to the "by-streams," show, of course, that the Baptists practiced dipping. The statement is incapable of any other construction. Fuller was born in 1609 and wrote his history in 1654. He was an eye witness of much of the times through which Baptists passed in their persecutions, and this account is peculiarly valuable. There is another author who lived only a short distance from Fuller and published a book one year after the appearance of Fuller’s history. He is the author of the book "The Anabaptists Routed." He also refers to the Donatists in connection with the Anabaptists. In fact the Donatists seem to have been a current name by which the Baptists were called. What Fuller mentions in a figure of speech this author states in plain words. He declares: Anabaptists not only deny believers’ children baptism, as the Pelagians and Donatists did of old, but affirm that dipping the whole body under water is so necessary that without it none are truly baptized (as has been said) (The Anabaptists Routed, 171,172). Daniel Featley, D. D., the opponent of the Baptists, born in 1582, also declares that the Baptists of the reign of Henry VIII practiced dipping. He says: Let the punishment bear upon it the print of the sin, for as these sectaries drew one another into their errors, so also into the gulfe; and as they drown men spiritually by rebaptizing, and so profaning the holy sacrament, as also they were drowned corporally. In the year of our Lord 1539, two Anabaptists were burnt beyond Southwark (Featley, The Dippers Dipt). It will be noticed that Fuller says these Baptists were from Cloves, where the Baptists in 1534were numerous (Keller, Preussische Jahrbucher, September, 1882). The Baptists of this Dukedom practiced dipping in water (Rembert, Die Wiedertaufer in Hexogtum Julich, 253). The practice of immersion was universal in the reign of Henry VIIL It was the form of baptism of all parties and there is no known testimony to the contrary. The Church of England practiced immersion. The Catholics practiced immersion. The Baptists practiced immersion. In the reign of Edward VI (1547-1553) the laws against the Baptists were enforced, and the two persons burned at the stake in this reign were Baptists. Others were safe, had the protection of the laws, even criminals were pardoned, but to be a Baptist was a grave crime. This sterling young king, merciful to an astonishing degree, for his heart was peculiarly kind and tender, visited upon the Baptists a cruelty that reminded one of a wild beast. The Baptists steadily increased in numbers. They were found in the court, and among the common people, in the town and in the country. Bishop Burnet says: "There were many Anabaptists in many parts. of England" (Burnet, History of the Reformation, II. 110). Heylyn says: "And at the same time, the Anabaptists, who had kept themselves unto themselves in the king’s time, began to look abroad, and disperse their dotages" (Heylyn, History of the Reformation, I. 152). Bishop Fowler Short says: "Complaints had been brought to the Council of the prevalence of the Anabaptists . . . To check the progress of these opinions a Commission was appointed" (Short. History of the Church of England, VI. 543). These references had to do with the Baptists throughout the country. Their numbers in London were great. Bishop John Hooper wrote to Henry Bullinger, under date of June 25, 1549, as follows: "The Anabaptist flock to this place (London) and give me much trouble." (Ellis, Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, I. 65). In 1550 Ridley was Bishop of London. In "the articles to be enquired of", early in June, the clergy were ordered to ascertain: Whether any speak against infant baptism.. Whether any of the Anabaptists’ sect, or other, use notoriously any unlawful or private conyenticle (churches), whether they do use doctrine or administration of sacraments, separating themselves from the rest of the parish (British Museum C. 58 aa 11) Here is a direct official statement that there were Baptist conventicles, or churches, in London. Some of these churches were "notorious," and some of them more "private." These churches "do use doctrine," had "the administration of the sacraments," that is, they baptized and observed the Lord’s Supper, and they were separated from the parish churches. That is to say, there were fully organized Baptist churches in London in the year 1550. The information is equally positive that there were Baptist churches in Kent. Bishop John Hooper, June 26, 1550, writes regarding this district as follows: "That district is troubled with the frenzy of the Anabaptists more than any other part of the kingdom" (Ellis, Original Letters, I. 87). Strype says: "There were such assemblies [churches] in Kent" (Strype, Memorials, II. 266). Such congregations were in Feversham, Maidstone and Eythorne. The Baptists of Kent had a number of eminent ministers. Such was Cole of Feversham. Henry Hart began preaching in the reign of Henry VIII. He was strict and holy in life but hot in his opinions. He, with several others, was thrown into prison. Humphrey Middleton was another. When he was cast into prison he said to the Archbishop: "Well, reverend sir, pass what sentence you think fit upon us; but that you may not say that you were forewarned, I testify that your turn will be next." It accordingly came to pass that upon the release of Middleton the Archbishop was thrown into prison. Another preacher in Kent was John Kemp who "was a great traveler abroad in Kent, instructing and confirming the gospellers" (Strype, Annals of the Reformation, II. ii. 284). There is much important information in regard to the Baptist churches in Essex (Strype, Memorials Ecclesiastical, II. i. 369). There was an organized Baptist church at Bocking (Strype, Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, I. 334. Also Lansdowne MSS., 930. 95). "The Bocking-Braintree church book, which is still in existence, carries the authentic records of the church for more than two hundred years; but there is no question that the origin of the church dates back to the days of Edward VI" (Goadby, Bye Paths in Baptist History, 26-28). John Veron, in 1551, writing to Sir John Gates, says: For this our country of Essex, in which many of these libertines and Anabaptists are running in, "hoker moker," among the simple and ignorant people to incite and move them to tumult and insurrection to magistrates and rulers of this realm. Whence I trust if ye once know them, ye will soon weed out of this country to the great good and Quiet of the king’s subjects of the same county and shire (Tracts on the liberty of Conscience, cx). Only two Baptists were burnt during the reign of Edward VI, Burnet says there were two kinds of Anabaptists in the country. Says he: For the other sort of Anabaptists who only denied infant baptism, I find no severity used against them, but several books were written against them, to which they wrote some answers (Burnet, History of the Reformation, 11.112). The influence of John Calvin had begun to be felt in English affairs. His books had appeared in translations in England. He was responsible in a large measure for the demon of hate and fierce hostility which the Baptists of England had to encounter. He advised that "Anabaptists and reactionists should be alike put to death" (Froude, History of England, V.99). He wrote a letter to Lord Protector Somerset, the translation was probably made by Archbishop Cranmer (Calvin to the Protector, MSS. Domestic Edward VI, V. 1548)) to the effect: "These altogether deserve to be well punished by the sword, seeing that they do conspire against God, who had set him in his royal seat" The first to be burnt in this reign was Joan of Kent, who was probably a member of the church at Eythorne (Evans, The History of the English Baptists, I. 72 note). She was a pious and worthy woman, and a great reader of the Scriptures. She was arrested in the year 1548 on the charge of heresy and she was burnt April 30, the following year. The other Baptist who suffered martyrdom in this reign was George van Pare. He was by profession a surgeon. He could not speak English and had to plead his cause through an interpreter. Burnet says of his death: He suffered with great constancy of mind, and kissed the stake and faggots that were to burn him. Of this Pare I find a popish writer saying, that he was a man of most wonderful strict life, that be used to eat not more than once in two days, and before he would eat he would lie sometimes in his devotions prostrate on the ground (Burnet, History of the Reformation, II. i. 112). All parties in the reign of Henry VIII practiced immersion and there was but slight change in the reign of Edward VI. Twice was the Prayer Book revised during this period, and the form of baptism prescribed in both books was immersion, a slight concession was made in the last Prayer Book of Edward, possibly to the growing influence of Calvin, but more probably from a dread that children dying unbaptized would be lost, to the effect that if the child be weak it would suffice to pour water upon it. This was the first time that fine "clothes," or a desire for worldly show, was permitted to enter into the ceremony of baptism. In such instances pouring was permitted but it was performed with the greatest hesitation and doubt. Tyndale says If aught be left out, or if the child be not altogether dipped in water, or if, because the child is sick, the priest dare not plunge it into the water, but pour water upon its head,-How tremble they. How quake they. "How say ye, Sir John," say they, "is the child christened enough? Hath it full Christendom". They believe verily, that the child is not christened" (Tyndale, Works, III. 28). Instructions were further given to the archdeacons, in 1553, as follows: Whether there be any who will not suffer the priest to dip the child three times in the font, being yet strong and able to abide and suffer it in the judgment and opinion of discreet and expert persons, but will needs have the child in the clothes, and only be sprinkled with a few drops of water (Hart, Ecclesiastical Records, 87). Immersion was insisted upon in all cases where it could be performed. In the Catechismus, that is to say, a Short Instruction into the Christian Religion there is a Sermon on Baptism. There is a picture representing a number of adults being baptized by immersion. The Sermon further says: For what greater shame can there be, than a man to profess himself to be a Christian man, because he is baptized, and yet he knoweth not what baptism is, nor what strength the same hath, nor what the dipping in the water doth betoken . . . For baptism and the dipping into water doth betoken, that the old Adam, with all his sin and evil lusts, ought to be drowned and killed by daily contrition and repentance (Sermon on Baptism, ccxxiii). Provision was made for the baptism of adults and only immersion was allowed. The Catechism of Edward VI provided: Him that believeth in Christ, professeth the articles of the Christian faith, and mindeth (I speak now of them that are grown of ripe years) the minister dippeth in or washeth in pure clean water, in the name of, etc. In the very year that Edward came to the throne, A. D. 1547, J. Bales wrote a book against the Baptists (A breyfe and, plaine declaration. . . Anabaptists). He had been accused of holding Baptist principles and this book was a reply to the charge. He declares that they "that be of age" as well as infants "ought to be baptized" "in the fountain of. regeneration." He thought that grown people ought to be immersed upon a profession of faith. He says when he thus speaks of baptism he is called an Anabaptist. According to Bales an Anabaptist is one who immersed those that be of age in a fountain, Bales continues: If he speaks anything concerning the abuse of the ceremonies and sacraments: what exclamations do they make and how do they report him to be a sacramentary. If ye speak anything of baptisme declaring that neither the holiness of the water, neither the oil, can give the grace therein promised, and that the washing in the fount avayleth not them that observe not the profession they make there how detestable Anabaptists shall be counted. The opinion of the Anabaptists was that they did not believe that the water saves, but that an adult ought to be dipped in water on his profession of faith and live a holy life after that profession. The opinion of the Baptists on immersion is set forth in the trial of the Dutchman Giles van Bellan, in York. He said: Item, That no man can make any water holier than God made it; therefore the water in the font, or the holy water in the church, is no holier than the water in the river, for the water in the river is as holy as the water in the font, if a man be baptized in it, and the words of baptism be spoken over hi.m Item, That any man may baptize in water as well as a priest (Evans Early English Baptists, I. 243). He held to the baptism of immersion in water. These are the words almost literally condemned by Archbishop Warham as taken from the Sum of the Holy Scripture. Robert Cooke was a celebrated Baptist who lived during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, He was connected with the court for more that forty years. He was ardent in his opinions, full of debate, eloquent and well educated. He was probably the Baptist against whom John Knox wrote his celebrated book on the Anabaptists (Works of John Knox, V.16). Dr. William Turner also wrote a book against him (A Preservative, or triacle, against the poyson of Pelagius, lately renewed and styrred up in the furious sect of Anabaptists). Turner was described as a "noted and forward theologist and physician of his tine." On coming to the court he and Cooke would have debates in private. At length he preached a sermon against the Anabaptists which sermon was reported to Cooke and he answered it. Turner had already written something against the Anabaptists. A book had appeared in 1548 called the Sum Of Divinity by Robert Hutton. The introduction was written by Turner. In the chapter on baptism are found these words: Repentance and remission of sins, or, as Saint Paul sayeth a regeneration or new birth for the dipping into water signifieth that the man to be mortified with sin, the coming up again or deliverance out of the water signifieth the new man to be washed and cleansed and reconciled to God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The persons mentioned as dipped into the water were adults. A striking contrast is drawn by Dr. Turner. Cooke and his church dipped believers only; Turner and his church dipped infants. Both practiced the same form of baptism, dipping, but they differed in regard to the subjects. The position is stated by Dr. Turner in these words: And because baptism is a passive sacrament, and no man can baptize himself, but is baptized of another: and children may as well be dipped into the water in the name of Christ (which is the outward baptism as much as one man can give to another) even as old folks; and when as they have the promise of salvation, as well as the old folks and can receive the sign of the sacrament as well; there is no cause why the baptism of children shall be deferred (Turner, Preservative, 40). Turner says these Baptists practiced "over baptism, which is the dipping into water in the name of Christ," and he thinks infants should be dipped as well (Ibid, 43). He further says "that these water snakes" are everywhere. Mary Tudor, known in history as the "Bloody Mary," came to the throne July 6, 1553, and died in the early morning of November 17, 1558. Mary was an intense Roman Catholic at the time when Roman Catholicism was passing from England forever. "Catholicism had ceased to be the expression of the true conviction of sensible men on the relation between themselves and heaven. Credible to the student in the cloister, credible to those whose thoughts were but echoes of tradition, it was not credible any more to men of active and original vigor of understanding. Credible to the uneducated, the eccentric, the imaginative, the superstitious; credible to those who reasoned by sentiment, and made syllogisms of their passions, it was incredible then and ever more to the sane and healthy intelligence which in the long run commands the mind of the world" (Froude, History of England, VII. 10). When Mary came to the throne her first thought was to reestablish the Roman Catholic religion. She was literally consumed by her zeal. Henry VIII and Edward VI had both burnt the Baptists. Mary sought to burn all who were opposed to Romanism, Baptists and Reformers alike. There was intense opposition to the policy of the Queen, an opposition which finally worked her doom, but Mary was none the less determined on that account. "I have never seen," said Renard the Imperial Ambassador of Charles V, "the people as disturbed and discontented as now." Mary was determined that burning should be administered to heretics. She was ably seconded by several lieutenants. Philip II of Spain, the husband of Mary, was the leader in the punishment of heretics through the horrible Inquisition. Her chief agent and adviser was, Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester. Bishop Ponet gave the following description of him: The doctor had a smart color, hanging nose, frowning brows, eyes an inch within his head, a nose hooked like a buzzard’s; nostrils like a horse, ever snuffing in the wind; a sparrow mouth, great paws like the devil, talons on his feet like the grife, two inches longer than the natural toes, and so tied with sinews that he cannot abide to be touched (Froude, History of England, VI. 105, 197, 295, 298). Loyd said of him: His reserveness was such that he never did what he aimed at, never aimed at what he intended, never intended what he said, and never said what he thought; whereby he carried it so, that others should do his business when they opposed it, and should undermine theirs when he seemed to promote it. A man that was to be traced like a fox, and read like Hebrew, backward. If you would know what he did, you must observe what he did not; that whilst intending one thing, he professed to aim at the opposite; that he never intended what he said, and never did what be intended (Lodge, Illustrations of English History, I. 126). Another enemy of the Baptists was Edward Bonner the Bishop of London. The brutality of Bonner was notorious and unquestionable. A published letter was addressed to him by a lady in which he is called "the common cut throat and general slaughter slave of all the bishops of Engiand" (Godly Letter Addressed to Bonner. Fox, Acts and Monuments, VIL 611). These were the murderers of the Baptists. J. M. Stone is the latest writer on Mary. He is a Roman Catholic and an apologist. He is compelled to admit, after he had done all he could to explain her acts, that she persecuted. He says: But apart from all misrepresentations, exaggerations, distorted evidence and positive fiction, there remains the fact that a considerable number of persons did perish at the stake in Mary’s reign (Stone, History of Mary I., 371, 372). "That the Baptists were very numerous" says Crosby, "at this time, is without controversy; and no doubt many of the martyrs in Queen Mary’s days were, such, though historians seem to be silent with respect to the opinion of the martyrs about baptism; neither can it be imagined, that the papists would in the least favor any of that denomination which they so detested and abhorred" (Crosby, History of the English Baptists, I. 63). Investigations have confirmed the surmises of Crosby, and we know that many of the martyrs were Baptists. The historian Ivimey also declares that "the Baptists came in for their full share of suffering, and that many of the martyrs were of that denomination, which was then numerous" (Ivimey, History of the Baptists, I. 97). The exact number of the martyrs among the Baptists, at this period, probably will never be known, but the large majority of those who suffered were of this communion. William Clark recently investigated this subject and gave the following testimony: "A considerable proportion of those who suffered under Mary were Anabaptists" (Clark, The Anglican Reformation, 328). This conservative statement is borne out amply by the original documents. Nothing but immersion was permitted in England at this time, Bishop Bonner, of London, in his article to be enquired of demanded: Item: Whether there be any that will not suffer the priest to dip the child three times in the font, being yet strong, and able to abide and suffer it in the judgment and opinion of discreet and expert persons; but will needs have the child in the clothes and only be sprinkled with a few drops of water (Cardwell, Documentary Annals, I. 157). Trine immersion had long been the practice of the Church of England. There was a tendency in Mary’s time to practice one dipping (Wall, The History of Infant Baptism, I. 580). The testimony of Dr. Watson, the Bishop of Lincoln, is at hand. He says: Though the old and ancient tradition of the Church hath been from the beginning to dip the child three times, etc, yet that is not such necessity; but if he be once dipped in the water, it is sufficient, Yea, and in times of great peril and necessity, if the water be poured on his head, It will suffice. (Watson, Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne Concernynge the Seven Sacraments, 22, 23. London, 1558). There is no recorded exception to dipping among the Baptists. Elizabeth the second queen regnant of England, the last sovereign of the Tudor line, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, was born at the Palace of Greenwich, September 7, 1533, and died March 24, 1603. In her treatment of religion she was vacillating and could not be depended upon to pursue the same policy. Although the Roman Catholics were constantly plotting against her throne and even her life, she treated them with great leniency. With the Baptists it was not so. From the beginning she was their enemy, and her hostility continued with increasing violence to the end of her life. At best the distinction between the names Baptists and Anabaptists is technical; for the word Anabaptists is still used in England to designate the Baptists of today; and was long used in this country, even after the Revolution, in the same manner. It is now the legal name o£ the Baptists of New England. The word Baptists was used by a high official of the English government in the earlier days of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. That official was Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, then the Secretary of State and especial adviser of the Queen. The date is March 10, 1569. It is found in a remarkable sketch drawn up possibly for his own use, as his habit was, to look everything square in the face; but more probably that he might place before Elizabeth the dangers that beset her government. At any rate, it is an official memorandum of the highest officer of state, and easily the most influential man under Elizabeth. It is a long document, covering many pages, but in this instance we are interested in only one of the alleged dangers enumerated. Secretary Cecil says: The next imperfections are here at home, which be these: The state of religion many ways weakened by boldness to the true service of God; by increase of the number and courage of the Baptists, and the deriders of religion; and lastly by the increase of numbers of irreligious and Epicures. (A Collection of State Papers relating to the Reign of Elizabeth. Transcribed from original Letters and other authentic Memorials, left by William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, and now remaining at Hartfield House, in the Library of the Right Honorable the Present Earl of Saulsbury, by Samuel Haynes, M. A., London, 1740.1.585, 586). It is therefore scientifically correct to call these people Baptists. The Baptists had not been exterminated in the reign of bloody Mary. Under her many Baptists had suffered martyrdom, some fled to other lands, the most remained at home. It is certain that at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth England was full of Baptists. The opinion of Marsden, one of the calmest of the Puritans, may be of interest on this point. He says: But the Baptists were the most numerous, and for some time by far the most formidable opponents of the Church. They are said to have existed since the days of the Lollards, but their chief strength was more abroad (Marsden, 144). Evans, an unusually careful historian, says: Not only the existence, but the wide spread of Baptist principles during the reign of the royal Tudor lioness, is acknowledged on all hands (Evans, Early English Baptists, I. 147). There were at this time a number of Baptist churches in England and the Baptists had a great following. Three reasons may be offered for the multitude of the Baptists of England in the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. First, protection had been given to Dutch and French refugees. Churches were allowed to them in which divine worship, according to their own views, could be conducted. While none of these permitted churches were Baptist, yet many Baptists unawares to the authorities came in. Second, the state of the Netherlands supplied another cause. England under a Protestant Queen, appealed to them as a land of freedom, and many Baptists hoped there to find at least partial liberty of conscience. Third, there were also in England numbers of native Baptists. At the prospects of liberty they came from their hiding places where they had been sequestered. The native Baptists were reinforced by shoals of Baptists from abroad. The Bishop of London described these, exiles as "a marvelous colluvies of evil persons, for the most part facinorosi ebriosi et sectarii." Roger Hutchinson, a contemporary, thus speaks of them: Divers sectaries were crept in, under the cover and title of true religion, who through the persuasion of the devil hath sowed the devilish seed, as the . . . Anabaptists (Roger Hutchinson, Works, 214). Bishhop Jewel, who had just been consecrated Bishop of Saulsbury, wrote to Peter Martyr, November 6, 1560, as follows: We found at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, a large and inauspicious crop of Arians, Anabaptists, and other pests, which, I know not how, but as mushrooms spring up in the night and in darkness, so these sprung up in that darkness and unhappy night of the Marian times. These I am informed, and hope that it is the fact, have retreated before the light of pure doctrines, like owls at the light of the sun and are nowhere to be found (Zurich Letters, 91). Strype went over the subject and carefully recorded the facts as follows: There were so many of these strangers in London, even upon the first coming of the Queen to the crown, that in her second year she was fain to issue a proclamation for the discovery of them, and a command to transport them out of her dominions; or else expected to proceed against them according to the laws ecclesiastical or others (Strype, ’The Life of Archbishop Grindal, 180). The Queen being informed of the coming of these Baptists, issued letters, dated in May, to Archbishop Parker, to cause a visitation to be made. The Queen wrote: Forasmuch as we do understand that there do daily repair into this realm great numbers of strangers from the parts beyond the seas, otherwise than hath been accustomed and the most part thereof pretending the cause of their coming to be for to live in this realm with satisfaction of their Conscience in Christian religion, according to the order allowed in this realm, that are infected with dangerous opinions, contrary to the faith of Christ’s Church, as Anabaptists, and such other sectaries, etc. (Cardwell, Documentary Annals, I 307, 308). Bishop Aylmer says: The Anabaptists with infinite other swarms of Satanites, do you think that every pulpit nay well be able to answer them? I pray God that there may be many who can. And in these later days the old festered sores newly broke out, as the Anabaptists, the freewlllers, with infinite other swarms of God’s enemies. These ugly monsters, brooks of the devil’s brotherhood (Aylmer, Harborough of Faithful subjects, in Preface). Whitgift in 1572 Wrote a book against the Baptists, He came to the following conclusions: Only I desire you to be circumspect, and to understand, that Anabaptism, (which usually followeth the preaching of the Gospel) is greatly to be feared in the Church of England. It is indeed true that the Baptists usually "follow the preaching of the Gospel." There were many replies to Whitgift. In a large volume (The Defence) in reply to his oppouents he repeatedly denounced the Baptists One of their worst faults was, he says: They had their private and secret conventicles, and did divide and separate themselves from the Church, neither could they communicate with such as were not of their sect, either in prayers, sacraments, or hearing of the word (Whitgift, An Answer to a Certain libel). The Baptists had churches, observed the sacraments, and were of the stricter sort. Bishop Cox was also disturbed by the Baptists. In writing to Gaultner, June 12, 1573, he says: You must not grieve, my Gaultner, that sectaries are showing themselves to be mischievous and wicked interpreters of your most just opion. It cannot be otherwise but that tares must grow in the Lord’s field. and that in no small quantity. Of this kind are the Anabaptists and all other good for nothing tribes of sectaries (Zurich Letters, 285). Persecution was resorted to but the Baptists continued to multiply; foreigners continued to stream into the country, as many as 4,000 resided near Norwich, many of them were Baptists. Moreover churches were formed. Of those still existing it is alleged that Faringdon was founded in 1576; Crowle and Epworth both in 1597; Dartmouth, Oxford, Wedmore, Bridgewater, all in 1600. That is to say there were conventicles in at least nine counties outside of London, where churches still exist as their direct successors (Langley, English Baptists before 1602. London, April 11, 1902. In The Baptist). Some of these Baptists were foreigners but some of them were "even in England amongst ourselves and amidst our bowels" (Acta Regia, IV. 86). Dr. Some (A Godly Treatise, wherein are examined and Confuted many execrable fancies) not only tells of "the Anabaptistical conventicles in London, and other places," but he likewise affirms that many of the Anabaptists were educated in the universities. "The Anabaptists," says Burnet, "were generally men of virtue, and of universal charity" (Burnet, History of the Reformation of his own Time, 702). But no principle of toleration was to prevail toward them. The people of that generation, save the Baptists, never understood religious liberty. Least of all did Elizabeth understand it. On December 27, 1558, she commanded all preaching to cease; and February 4, 1559, the High Commission Court was established by Parliament. This was the beginning of unnumbered woes to the Baptists. The Baptists were to suffer most of all. Three things were undertaken against the heretics. The first was certain injunctions given by the Queen’s Majesty (British Museum, 698 h 20 (1)). One of the injunctions was: That no man shall willfully or obstinately defend or maintain heresies. errors, or false doctrine, contrary to the faith of Christ and his holy Scripture. Another was against "the printing of heretical and seditious books." The second, To follow these prohibitions with a search warrant, or a visitation, as it was called. When a royal visitation was to be made the kingdom was divided into circuits, to which was assigned a certain number of visitors, partly clergymen, partly laymen. The moment they arrived in any diocese the exercise of spiritual authority by every other person ceased. They summoned before them the bishop, the clergy, and eight, six or four of the principal householders from each parish, administered the oath of allegiance and supremacy, required answers upon oath to every question which they thought proper to put, and exacted a promised obedience to the royal injunctions. In this manner the search for heretics was pursued from parish to parish throughout the kingdom. The third step began February 28, in an Act for the Uniformity of Religion and came fully into operation December 17 of the same year. An Act of Parliament was obtained for one religion, for a uniform mode of worship, one form of discipline, one form of church government for the entire nation; with which establishment all must outwardly comply. This Act metamorphosed the Church of England into its present form, being the fourth alteration in thirty-four years. Elizabeth was anxious to do what she could to gratify Philip II, and she took an opportunity of showing him that the English for whom she demanded toleration from him, were not the heretics with whom they had been confounded. She had caught in her net some Dutch Anabaptists. These became the scapegoat for her diplomacy. "The propositions for which they suffered," says Froude, "with the counter propositions of the orthodox, have passed away and become meaningless. The theology of the government mischievous; but they were not punished in the service of even imagined truth. The friends of Spain about the Queen wished only to show Philip that England was not the paradise of heresy which the world believed" (Froude, History of England, 11.43, 44). Two noble men were carried to Newgate and burnt at Smithfield, July 22, 1575. One was a man of years with a wife and nine children; the other was a young man who had been married only a few weeks. The last years of Elizabeth were marked by special cruelty. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada she had time to press her ideas of conformity. After the death of Grindal she had chosen John Whitgift as Archbishop of Canterbury. Honest and well intentioned, but narrow minded to an almost incredible degree the one thought which filled his mind was the hope of bringing all men into conformity with the Church of England. Fletcher, the historian of the Independents, described him as follows: This man was thorough in all he did, especially if souls were to be snared, or persons of real piety to be punished. He seems to take a malicious delight in bending the laws over to the side of persecution; and when no law existed which could thus be used, he either made or sought to procure one. He was probably more feared and detested than any man of his day (Fletcher, History of Independency, II. 145). Whitgift choked the prisons with Baptists. He regarded the Baptists as heretics beyond any of his times. The doctrines of these men were fatal to the idea of a National Church. There could be no National Church if infants were not to be baptized, if priests did not by the magic of baptism make all children Christians. He made the ’pulpits ring against the Baptists. He preached in St. Paul, November 17, 1583, against the Anabaptists as "our wayward and conceited persons." The consequence was that some Baptists went to foreign lands, but the most hid themselves or under the cloak of conformity waited for better times. It has been sometimes stated that the Baptists originated with the Independents. The exact reverse is true. The Independents derived their ideas of religious liberty and independent form of government from the Baptists. Robert Browne was the father of the Independents or Congregationalists. It was in the year 1580 that he went to Norwich. This was the headquarters of the Dutch Baptists in England. There were "almost as many Dutch strangers as English natives inhabiting therein" (Fuller, Church History of Britain, III. 62). Collier says: At this time the Dutch had a numerous congregation at Norwich; many of these people inclining to Anabaptism, were the more disposed to entertain any new resembling opinions (Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, VII. 2). From these Dutch Baptists he learned some of his opinions, and so, in that city, in the year 1584, he organized the first Independent Church. Many of the foremost writers admit, as the circumstances indicate, that he copied from the Baptists. No one except the Baptists ever held these peculiar views of liberty of conscience and independence of church government; and the Congregationalists did not well learn these lessons. Weingarten makes this strong statement: The perfect agreement between the views of Browne and those of the Baptists as far as the nature of a church is concerned, is certainly proof enough that he borrowed this idea from them, though in his "True Declarations" of 1584 he did not deem it advisable to acknowledge the fact, lest he should receive in addition to all the opprobrious names heaped upon his, that of Anabaptists. In 1571 there were no less than 8,925 Dutch-men in Norwich (Weingarten, Revolutions Kirchen Englands, 20). Sheffer aays: Browne’s new ideas concerning the nature of the Church opened to him in the circle of the Dutch Baptists in Norwich. One of the most recent of the historians of the Congregationalists is Williston Walker, Professor in Hartford Theological Seminary. About the connection between Browne and the Anabaptists he makes the following statements: In many respects-in their abandonment of the State Church, in their direct appeal to the Word of God for every detail of administration, in their organization and officers-their likeness to those of the radical Refonners of the Continent is so striking that some affiliation seems almost certain. Nor is the geographical argument for probable connection with continental movements less weighty. These radical English efforts for a complete reformation had their chief support in the eastern counties, especially in the vicinity of Norwich and London These regions had long been the recipient of Dutch immigration; and the influence from the Netherlands had vastly increased during the early reign of Elisabeth, owing to the tyranny of Philip II. In 1562 the Dutch and Walloons settled In England numbering 30,000. By 1568 some 5225 of the people of London were of this immigration; and by 1587 they constituted more than half of the population of Norwich, while they were largely present in other coast towns. Now these immigrants were chiefly artisans, and among the workmen of Holland Anabaptist views were widely disseminated; and while it would he unjustifiable to claim that these exiles on English soil were chiefly, or largely, Anabaptists, there were Anabaptists among them, and an Anabaptist way of thinking may not improbably have been widely induced among those who may have been entirely unconscious of the source from which their impulse came. Certainly the resemblance between the Anabaptist movement of the Continent and English Congregationalism in theories of church polity, and the geographical possibilities of contact between the two, are sufficiently manifest to make a denial of relationship exceedingly difficult (Walker, A History of the Congregational Churches of the United States, 26). After tracing certain dissimilarities of the two bodies he says that Browne never acknowledged his indebtedness to the Anabaptists. He then further remarks: Though no trace of a recognition of indebtedness to Anabaptist thought can be found in Browne’s writings, and though we discover no Dutch names among the small number of his followers whom we know by name at all, the similarity of the system which he now worked out from that of the Anabaptists is so great in many respects that the conclusion is hard to avoid that the resemblance is more than accidental (p.86). In 1582 he emigrated, on account of persecutions, to Middleburg, Zealand. Here his church was broken up by dissensions. The Baptists were numerous here, and some of his people fell in with them (Brandt, History of the Reformation in the low Countries, I. 343, 443). Johnson, the Pastor of the Separatist Church, in Amsterdam, writing in 1606, says of these people who fled from England on account of persecution: A while after they were come hither, divers of them fell into the errors of the Anabaptists, which are too common in these countries, and so persisting, were excommunicated by the rest (Johnson, An Inquirie and Answer of Thomas White, 68). Immersion was the almost universal rule in Elisabeth’s reign. Gough, a learned antiquarian, of two centuries ago, states the condition of things in England under this queen. He quotes the original authorities to make good his words. He says: This (Immersion) In England was custom, not law, for, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the governors of the Episcopal Church in effect expressly prohibited sprinkling, forbidding the use of basins in public baptism. Last of all (the Church Wardens) shall see that in every Church there be an holy font, not a basin, wherein baptism may be administered, and it be kept comely and clean. Item, that the font be not removed, nor that the curate do baptize in parish churches in any basins nor in any other form than is already prescribed. Sprinkling, therefore, was not allowed, except in the Church of Rome, in cases of necessity at home (Archaeology , X. 207, 208). The authorities were particular that the law should be complied with. The first commentary upon the Book of Common Prayer was by Thomas Sparrow. He says on baptism as it was understood in his time: This baptism is to be at the font. What the font is everybody knows, but why is it so called. The rites of baptism in the first times were performed in fountains and rivers, both because their converts were many, and because of those ages were unprovided of other baptisteries; we have no other reminder of the rite but the name. For hence it is we call our baptisteries fonts; which when religion found peace, were built and consecrated for the more reverence and respect of the sacrament (Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer, 299). Bishop Horn writing to Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, in 1575, says of baptism in England: The minister examines them concerning their faith, and afterwards dips the infant (Zurich Letters, Second Series, 356). John Brooke, A. D. 1577, gives a glimpse of the form of baptism by immersion. He says: I believe that baptism ought to be administered (not with oil, salt, spittle, or such things) but only in pure and clean water, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Brooke, A brief and clean Confsssion of the Christian Fayth). Many of the Baptists were connected with the church of John a Lasco which was organized in London in 1550. This was a good hiding place for foreign Baptists. The practice of this church was dipping. Their Catechism prescribes: Q.-What are the sacraments of the church of Christ? A.-Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Q.- What is baptism? A.-It is a holy institution of Christ, in which the church is dipped in water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Denkleynen catechismus, oft kinder leere der Duytscher Ghmeynte van London. An. 1566). In this connection Robinson states that the Anabaptists practised dipping. He says: They found no fault with the ordinary mode of baptizing, for that was dipping, but their objections lie against the subject, a child (Robinson, The History of Baptism, 555). The year 1571 marks the appearance of a very important book (Reformation Legum Ecclesiasticarum), which was to have been sent forth by the authority of John Fox. It was prepared by Archbishop Cranmer and other Commissioners, and was probably written by Dr. Haddon. It was printed under the supervision of Bishop Parker in the 13th Parliament of Elizabeth. It makes clear that the Church of England required the candidates to be "plunged into the waters (in aquas demergitur) and rise again out of them." It is equally clear on the practice of dipping among the Baptists. After alluding to their denial of infant baptism it says: Likewise more errors are heaped up by others in baptism, which some so amazed look as if they believed that from that eternal element itself the Holy Spirit emerges, and that his power, his name, and his efficiency, out of which we are renewed and his grace and the remaining gifts proceeded out of it, swim in the very fonts of baptism. In a word, they wish our total regeneration to be due to that sacred pit which inveighs against our senses. The year 1578 affords an additional proof of immersion among the Baptists of England. The Rev. John Man, Merton College, Oxford, published in English, a translation and adaptation of the Common Places of the Christian Religion by Wolfgang Musculus. He says the word baptism comes from a Greek word which means in English, "dipping or drowning." He declares the form of baptism among the Baptists to be immersion. He continues: But some man will object. If the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ be all one, then the Apostles had no reason to baptize the twelve disciples in the manner of our Lord Jesus, who were baptized before of John. For what purpose was it to dip them twice in one baptism? Did not some of the fathers, and the Anabaptists of our days, take the foundation of their baptizing of this (Man, Common Places of the Christian Religion, 678). Wall particularity marks the correspondence between the decline of dipping in the Church of England and the growth of the Baptists. According to his position, Baptists thrive wherever Pedobaptists practice pouring or sprinkling. Dipping and the Baptists go together. The Dutch Baptists made no particular progress in England because the English practiced dipping. When pouring began to be the custom in the days of Elizabeth the Baptists made progress, and their great popularity in England was secured by the growth of sprinkling in the reigns of James I and Charles I. The statements of Wall are very interesting. He says: Germany and Holland afterwards had their share of trouble with this sect; but not till they also had, almost generally, left off the dipping of infants. England all this while kept to the old way. And though several times some Dutch Anabaptists came over hither during these times, endeavoring to make proselytes here; yet Foxe the historian in Queen Elizabeth’s time declares that he never heard of any Englishman that was perverted by them. So that antipaedobaptism did not begin here while dipping in the ordinary baptisms lasted. ’Then for two reigns pouring water on the face of the infant was most in fashion, and some few of the people turned antipaedobaptists, but did not make a separation for it. ’They never had any considerable numbers here, till the Presbyterian reign began. ’These men (out of opposition to the church of England I think) brought the eternal part of the sacrament to a less significant symbol than Calvin himself had done, (for he directs pouring of water on the face,) and in most places changed pouring to sprinkling. This scandalized many people. and indeed it was, and is really scandalous. So partly that, and partly the gap that was then set open for all sects that would, to propagate themselves, gave the rise to this: which I therefore think, as I said, would upon our return to the church of England way, case (Wall, The History of Infant Baptism, II. 464, 465). The reign of James I. (1603-1625) was in a wild time, an age of ceaseless conflict all around. The human mind, awakening from the sleep of Feudalism and the Dark Ages, fastened on all of the problems inherent in human society problems which even at the present day are not half solved. In England during the seventeenth century, men were digging down to the roots of things. They were asking, What is the ultimate authority in human affairs? Upon what does government rest? and, For what purpose does it exist? (Arber, The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, 6). But the Baptists and others were to win victories on constitutional and religious liberty hitherto unknown in England. The Baptist churches in the early part of the reign of James I were in the extremity of weakness, in the depths of obscurity, and in the midst of violent persecutions. The powers of the state and of the hierarchy were combined, and persistently directed to stamp them out of existence. Imprisoned, banished, or put to death, it was supposed for a time that they had almost become extinct; but they grew in secret, multiplied exceedingly, and were found in every part of England. It is said by Omerod, in 1605, that "so hold our Sectaries also conventicles in private houses, and in secret corners, which truth seldom seeketh," He continues: "And thus their plotting and plodding together they (being few in number at the first) are grown to such a multitude, as that one of their own preachers said openly in a pulpit, he was persuaded that there were 10,000 of them in England, and that the number of them increased daily in every place of all stations and degrees" (Omerod, The Picture of a Puritan. London, 1605). These doubtless were not all Baptists, but the Baptists were well represented among the Dissenters. Notwithstanding that Edward Wightman was burnt to death, the Baptists petitioned, in 1610, the House of Lords for wider liberty of conscience and greater privileges. The petition is preserved in the Library of the House of Lords, and is endorsed on the back "read and rejected." The petition is as follows: To the right Honorable assembly of the Commons House of Parliament. A most humble supplication of divers poor prisoners, and many others the King’s native loyal subjects ready to testify it by the oath of allegiance in all sincerity, whose grievances are lamentable, only for cause of conscience. Most humbly showing that whereas in the Parliament holden in the seventh year of the King’s majesty’s reign that now is, it was enacted that all persons whatsoever above the age of eighteen years of age, not coming to Church, etc. should take the oath of allegiance, and for the refusal thereof, should be committed to prison without bail, etc. By such statute the Popish Recusants upon taking the oath, are daily delivered from imprisonments: and divers of us are also set at Liberty when we fall under the hands of the Reverend Judges and Justices. But when we fall into the hands of the bishops we can have no benefit by the said oath, for they say it belongeth only to Popish Recusants and not to others; but kept have we been by them in lingering imprisonments, divided from wives, children, servants and callings, not for any other cause but only for conscience toward God, to the utter undoing of us, our wives and children. Our most humble supplication therefore to this high and Honorable Assembly is, that in commiseration of the distressed estate of us, our poor wives and children, it may be enacted in express words that other the King’s majesty’s faithful subjects, as well as the Romish Recusants may be freed from imprisonment upon taking the said oath. And we shall still (as we do day and night) pray that the God of heaven may be in your Honorable Assembly, for by him do princes decree justice. By his majesty’s faithful subjects ======================================================================== CHAPTER 18: 01.1.18. CHAPTER 15 CONTINUED ======================================================================== Most falsely called Anabaptists. Rejected by the Committee. The Baptists, in 1615, put forth an "humble supplication to the King’s majesty." It bore the title, "Persecution for Religion judged and condemned" (British Museum, 4108 de 30 (5)). It was reprinted by the Baptists in 1620 and 1622. In the Epistle to the king they pathetically say: Yet our most humble desire of our Lord the King, is, That he would not give his power to force his faithful subjects to dissemble to believe as he believes, in the least measure of persecution; though it is no small persecution to live many years in filthy prisons, in hunger, cold, idleness, divided from wife, family, calling, left in continual miseries and temptations, so as death would be to many less persecution; seeing that his majesty confesseth, that to change the mind must be the work of God. And of the lord bishops we desire, that they would a little leave off persecuting those that cannot believe as they, till they have proved that God is well pleased therewith, and the souls of such as submit are in safety from condemnation; let them prove this, and we protest that we will forever submit to them, and so will thousands; and therefore if there be any spark of grace in them, let them set themselves to give satisfaction by word of writing, or both. But if they will not, but continue their cruel courses as they have done, let them remember that they must come to judgment, and have the abominations set in order before them. This appeal is signed by "Christ’s unworthy witnesses, his majesty’s faithful subjects, commonly (but most falsely) called Anabaptists." So there were thousands of Baptists in England at this time and many of them had never been out of the country for they describe their condition as in prison and in persecution. They declare they were falsely called Anabaptists, and this appeal was long afterwards published by the Baptists in the hours of persecution as a suitable historical document setting forth their positioin. The supplication exposed by several excellent arguments the great sin of persecution; they rejected the baptism of infants, as being a practice which had no foundation in Scripture; and all baptisms received either in the Church of Rome, or the Church of England, they looked upon as invalid, because received in a false church and from antichristian ministers. They denied succession to Rome and declared succession not necessary to baptism. They affirmed: "That any disciple of Christ, in what part of the world soever, coming to the Lord’s way, he by the word and Spirit of God preaching that way unto others, and converting, he may and ought also to baptize them." They asserted that every man had a right to judge for himself in matters of religion and that to persecute on account of religion is illegal and antichristian. They acknowledged magistracy to be God’s ordinance, and that kings and such as are in authority ought to be obeyed in all civil matters, not only for fear, but also for conscience sake. They allowed the taking of an oath to be lawful; and declared that all of their profession were willing in faithfulness and truth to subscribe the oath of allegiance. They own that some called Anabaptists held several strange opinions contrary to them; and endeavored to clear themselves from deserving censure on that account, by showing, that it was so in some of the primitive churches; as some in the church of Corinth denied the resurrection of the dead; some in the church of Pergamos held the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and yet Christ and his Apostles did not condemn all for the errors of some. But that which they chiefly inveigh against is the pride, luxury and oppression of the lordly bishops, and the pretended spiritual power by which, they say, many of them were exposed to the confiscation of goods, long and lingering imprisonment, hanging, burning, and banishment "All of which," they say, "In our Confession of Faith in print, published four years ago." This is a memorable document. "The enlarged and accurate views which this pamphlet," says Price, "broached, evince an astonishing progress in the knowledge of religious freedom, and fully entitle its authors to be regarded as the first expounders and most enlightened advocates of this best inheritance of man. Other writers, of more distinguished name, succeeded, and robbed them of their honor; but their title is so good, and the amount of service they performed on behalf of the common interests of humanity is so incalculable, that an impartial posterity must assign to them due meed of praise. It belonged to the members of a calumniated and despised sect, few in numbers and poor in circumstances, to bring forth to the public view, in their simplicity and omnipotence, those immortal principles which are now universally recognized as of divine authority and universal obligation" (Price, History of Protestant Nonconformity in England, 1. 520, 523. London, 1836-1838). There was an event which happened in the year 1614 which was of more importance than all of the decrees of the bishops. It was a book written by an humble Baptist, a citizen of London. An old letter throws much light upon his history (in the Mennonite Library, Amsterdam). Mark Leonard Busher, the author, was in the prime of a ripe manhood, being at that date fifty-seven years of age. He wrote the first book which appeared in England advocating liberty of conscience. It cannot be read without a throb. The style is simple and rather helpless, but one comes upon some touching passages (Masson, The Life of Milton, III. 102). He was still living in 1641, in Leyden, poor, old, and forsaken. Whether he returned with Helwys and his church, or at another date, is not known, but he was in London in 1614. The probability is that on the publication of his book he was compelled to flee the country for at a later date he was again in Holland. The book was to receive no favor from the cruel and persecuting Church of England. The rigid Presbyterians and the Church of England would not tolerate the principles it contained. Nevertheless, the good seed was planted. In after years Locke and Milton heard the voice of Busher with rapture. The main contention of the book is "except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God"; that regeneration is the result of faith in Christ; and that no king or bishop is able to command faith. Persecution, therefore, is irrational, and must fail of its object; men cannot be made Christians by force. To this he adds another appeal: Even Turks, infidels, and the heathen tolerate those of other beliefs than their own. Therefore he says: How much more ought Christians, when as the Turks do tolerate them? Shall we be less merciful than the Turks? or shall we learn the Turks to persecute the Christians? It is not only unmerciful, but unnatural and abominable; yea, monstrous for one Christian to vex and destroy another for difference and questions of religion. He pleads for this liberty to be granted to the Romanists-the first Englishman who had the courage to do so-and argues that this could be done with entire safety to the state. This was an unheard of stretch of generosity. He also advocated the freedom of the press. He says: That for the more peace and quietness, and for the satisfying of the weak and simple, among so many persons differing in religion, it be lawful for every person or persons, yea, Jews and papists, to write, dispute, confer, and reason, print and publish any matter touching religion, either for or against whomsoever, always provided they allege no Fathers for proof of any point of religion, but only the holy Scriptures (Busher, Religious Peace: or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience, 51). Slowly but surely the debt to the Baptists for religious liberty is being acknowledged. Says Stoughton: The Baptists were foremost in the advocacy of religious freedom, and perhaps to one of them, Leonard Busher, citizen of London, belongs the honor of presenting, in this country, the first distinct and broad plea for liberty of conscience (Stoughton, Ecclesiastical History of England, II. 232). The Baptists from the beginning stood for liberty of conscience for all. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 19: 01.1.19. CHAPTER 16 THE EPISODE OF JOHN SMYTH ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XVI THE EPISODE OF JOHN SMYTH It is now necessary to return and consider a movement which has made a great noise in the world. It is a review of the Rev. John Smyth and his work in Holland, and the connection of the English Baptists with that work. John Smyth has been the occasion of many violent controversies. An episode in his life, for it can scarcely be called more than that, has been the provocation for the writing of many books and to this day authors find a perennial interest in his doings. Some assert that while he lived in Gainsborough, in 1606, he turned Baptist, and was baptized by John Morton in the river Don; others assert that the manuscript which gives this account is a forgery; some assert that, at a later date, in Holland, he baptized himself; others declare that he was baptized by Helwys; some say that the first General Baptist churches of England originated with him and his company; while others declare that there were Baptist churches in England long previous to this date. Such are some of the contradictions which arise in the investigation of the details of the life of this singular and gifted man. The date and place of his birth have not been ascertained. It is certain that he was educated at Cambridge. He entered the University, March 15, 1586, in Christ’s Collage, and graduated as Master of Arts, 1593 (Burgess, Smyth the Se-Baptist 42. London, 1911). He was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England by William Wickham, in 1594. He was elected preacher of the City of Lincoln, September 27, 1600 (Lincoln Records, f 5b) and ended his services there October 13, 1602. It is certain that while in this place he rejected the doctrines of the Anabaptists and believed the slanders alleged against them (Smyth, a paterne of true Praye, Works, 1.164. Cambridge, 1915). He remained in Lincoln till 1606, when he became pastor Of an Independent Church in Gainsborough. He remained there to some date preceding March, 1608, when he removed to Holland (Smyth, The Character of the Beast, 71. Bodleian Library, n p Pamp.). While he was pastor at Gainsborough a manuscript which purports to be the minutes of the Baptist Church at Epworth and Crowle (Dr. John Clifford, The General Baptist Magazine, London, July, 1879, vol. 81), was found. d. It records: 1606, March 24. This night at midnight Elder John Morton baptized John Smith, vicar of Gainsborough, in the River Don. It was so dark we were obliged to have torch lights. Elder Brewster prayed, Mr. Smith made a good confession; walked to Epworth in his cold clothes, but received no harm. The distance was over two miles. All of our friends were present. To the triune God be praise. The occasion for the publication of these extracts was the reopening of the chapel at Crowle, June 8, 1879. Many more of these records were printed at the time. On its publication this document was violently assailed in the United States as a forgery; because of the alleged immersion of Smyth by Morton. There are many things recorded in these minutes of Epworth and Crowle which are not easily understood, other things which are improbable, and still others which seem to be impossible. But when one remembers that there was a veil of secrecy thrown over all of the doings of the Separatists; that some of the most influential men secretly sympathized with and possibly belonged to them; the deeper one reads into the history of those times the more clearly he is convinced that dissent was widespread. When one remembers all of this he is not likely to be dogmatic in his assertions. It is possible that these minutes were compilations, but one had better not lean too heavily on unauthenticated manuscripts. Shortly after Smyth arrived in Holland he repudiated his former baptism. This was probably about the year 1609. He remained a Baptist a short time and was then excluded by the church which he had organized and Thomas Helwys became pastor and leader. At a later date Smyth applied to the Mennonites for membership, but after much discussion and disturbance among them, his application was rejected. It was the occasion of a great debate and much acrimony among the Mennonites. Letters were written by many parties and some of the Mennonite churches went so far as to formally condemn the union in severe terms. Two Mennonite preachers, Ris and Gerritz (L. F. Reus, Aufrichteige Nachrichten Mennoniten, 93, A. D. 1748), wrote Confessions which were favorable to the Mennonites and had Smyth and others to sign them. The Confessions only dissatisfied both parties and failed to bring union. of the forty-two English who signed one of them, eleven erased their names, and the gravest dissatisfaction arose over it among the Mennonites themselves. The result was that Smyth was not received by the Mennonites and the remnant of his company was only received after years of waiting, and then not without friction. The subject of Anabaptism was not new among the Separatists in Holland. Francis Johnson testified in 1606 that a little while after 1593, when his church emigrated "divers of them fell into the heresies of the Anabaptists (which are too common in these countries), and so persisting were excommunicated by the rest" John Payne (Payne, Royall Exchange, Haarlem, 1597) mentions the English Baptists bred in the Low Countries; and Henoch Clapham, the same year, had trouble with some Anabaptists in his Separatist church in Amsterdam (Clapham, Little tractate entitled the Carpenter, dated July 7, 1597). Extraordinary animosity has been developed by a discussion on the point whether Smyth baptized himself or was baptized by Helwys. He was surrranded by the Dutch Baptists but he did not apply to them for baptism. The Pedobaptist story goes that he first baptized himself, then Helwys, and then the remainder of the company. He has since been called a Se-Baptist. The story has been used with uncommon gravity by the opponents of Baptist principles, and replied to with no small amount of indignation as a calumny on the man (Hanbury, Historical Memorials, I. 179). Baptist writers have usually taken strong ground against Smyth having baptized himself. It is difficult to see what difference it makes whether Smyth baptized himself or was baptized by Helwys. It is certain that Smyth and his church thought they had the right to originate baptism among themselves and quoted the example of John the Baptist to sustain it. Their real trouble was not baptism, but church succession. Smyth was led to doubt whether there were any baptized churches in the world and hence any true succession. It may be of moment to remark that the baptism of Smyth did not affect the baptism of the Baptist churches of England. It has been affirmed that the General Baptist churches of England originated with this church of Smyth’s; that this was the mother church of Baptists; and even that the Baptist denomination originated here in the year 1609. After prolonged investigation, we are unable to find the evidence that any Baptist church grew out of this one. We are able to find that after Helwys settled with this church in London, some churches affiliated with it in a certain correspondence with some Mennonites in Holland; but that they had a common origin is nowhere manifest. If such proof exists it has escaped our attention. The Baptist historians of England are singularly unanimous on this point. "If he (Smyth) were guilty of what they charge with him," says Crosby, "’tis no blemish on the English Baptists; who neither approved any such method, nor did they receive their baptism from him" (Crosby, History of the English Baptists, 1.99). Ivimey had no such an opinion. Referring to the origin of the Particular Baptist churches in the reign of Charles I, he says: It was during this reign that an event took place among the Baptists, which has been commonly, but erroneously considered as the commencement of their history in this country. This was the formation of some churches in London, which many have supposed to be the first of this denomination in the kingdom. But could it be proved that there were no distinct Baptist churches till this period, it would not follow that there were no Baptists, which however has been confidently stated. We have shown that persons professing similar sentiments with these of the present English Baptists, have been found in every period of the English church and also that as early as the year 1589, from the testimony of Dr. Some, there were many churches of this description in London and in the country. During the reign of James, we have produced unexceptional proof that there were great numbers of Baptists who suffered imprisonment in divers counties, and that a petition to the king was signed by many of their ministers. It is thought that the General Baptist church in Canterbury has existed for two hundred and fifty years, and that Joan Boucher who was burnt in the reign of Edward the sixth was a member of it (Ivimey, A History of the English Baptists, I. 187, 188). Adam Taylor, who wrote the history of the General Baptists, has a chapter upon: "The History of the English General Baptists, from the Reformation to the commencement of the eighteenth cntury" (Taylor, A History of the General Baptists, I. 65). A little further on he says: "This (church of Smyth’s) appears to have been the first Baptist church composed of Englishmen, after the Reformation" (p.70). Taylor is doubtless wrong in this statement that this was the first church composed only of Englishmen. As to the General Baptists, Taylor affirms and traces their history from the Reformation. It has been assumed by some that Smyth was baptized by affusion. The point has been made that he was surrounded by the Dutch Mennonites, who invariably, it is claimed, practiced sprinkling, and that Smyth learned his practice from them. Smyth was not a Dutchman but an Episcopalian from the North of England. It was the Presbyterians, and not the Church of England, who, from Scottish influences, introduced sprinkling into England. At the very time, and before Smyth left England, the Church of England was using radical measures to prevent the growth of affusion in that country. Proof must be introduced to show that Smyth differed from his fellow Churchmen in this practice. Such proof is unknown. The difficulty in the mind of Smyth was not to obtain immersion in Holland, for there were those who immersed there, but the proper succession. The authors who have been the most persistently quoted to prove that Smyth was baptized by affusion are Ashton, the editor of the Works of John Robinson; Evans, the author of a History of the Baptists; Muller, a Mennonite, and Barclay, a Quaker. Ashton was a Congregationalist, a partisan for pouring, who invariably gave the worst reason for Smyth and the best for Robinson. Muller was a Mennonite who never passed an opportunity to justify pouring. Barclay was a Quaker, who did not believe in baptism at all, and his effort was to invalidate all baptism, especially as practiced by the Baptists. Evans is conservative and pronounces no decided opinion. Ashton offers no proof in favor of his position. He thinks there are "incidental allusions" which would indicate "that the baptism which Mr. Smyth performed on himself, must have been rather by affusion or pouring" than by immersion. This cautious statement of an author who advocated pouring, and who was dogmatic on most subjects, is a slender basis for any presumptive proof that Smyth was in the practice of sprinkling. It is curious, however, that those who have been so careful to quote Dr. Ashton in the above guarded statement that Smyth poured water on himself have been equally careful to pass over the strong statement that the Dutch Baptists, of the time of Smyth, practiced dipping. In one instance he speaks with uncertainty; in the other positively. The first fits the preconceived views of those who find pouring everywhere and is always quoted; the last is fatal to such views and is left unquoted. It is worth while to see what Ashton does say. His words are as follows: It is rather a singular fact as zealous as were Mr. Smyth and his friends for believers’ baptism, and earnest as were their opponents in behalf of infant baptism, the question of the mode of baptism was never mooted by either party. Immersion for baptism does not appear to have been practiced or pleaded by either Smyth or Helwys, the alleged founder of the General Baptist denomination in England. Nothing appears in these controversial writings to warrant the supposition that they regarded immersion as the proper and only mode of administering that ordinance. Incidental allusions there are, in their own works, and in the replies of Robinson, that the baptism which Mr. Smyth performed on himself, must have been rather by affusion or pouring. Nor is this supposition improbable, from the fact that the Dutch Baptists, by whom they were surrounded, uniformly administered baptism by immersion (Robinson, Works, 111.461). If silence was worth anything it would prove immersion as readily as pouring. An honest man ought not to quibble. An elaborate statement has been made that all of the Mennonites practiced pouring and that in 1612 immersion was unknown among them; that immersion began in Holland in 1619, among the Collegiants, at Rynsburg. Therefore, it is said, Smyth practiced pouring. As an argument, this is illogical. If Smyth desired to practice pouring, why did he not go to the Mennonites if they possessed the thing he wanted? Smyth was an Englishman, starting baptism on his own account, because he believed all succession was lost, and he did not go to the Dutch for baptism. It is further claimed: That when the company of Smyth, after it had been expelled by Helwys and the Baptist contingent, applied for membership among the Mennonites that the form of baptism was not raised; and that therefore Smyth performed pouring upon himself. A marvelous argument. Why should the Mennonites raise the question? Why raise the question if the Mennonites practiced pouring and Smyth had been immersed? There are those nowadays who practice affusion and they are quite content to receive persons who have been immersed into their fellowship and raise no questions. Generally, it is those who have been immersed who raise the question of’ the validity of pouring. As a matter of fact, the Mennonites did not receive Smyth into their church, and it was more than three years (1615) after his death, before the remainder of his company was received into that body. All of this was preceded by a violent controversy, which stirred the Mennonite body throughout Holland. If there was such harmony between Smyth and the Mennonites it would be difficult to explain this extraordinary proceeding. Ashton, as a witness, is not faithful to those who quote him. Evans has been quoted in the same manner, but he is cautious. On the existence of immersion in Holland, in 1608-1612, he is particularly clear. After quoting Ashton, he says on his own account: The remark of the editor is equally true of a considerable period of the controversy in this country (England). The all but universal practice in the English Church, rendered the discussion of the mode unnecessary. In Tombes’ replies to his many opponents, the claims of infants are the points in dispute. Upon the mode of Smyth’s baptism, we shall have more to say presently; and we only add that there was a portion of the Dutch Baptists who uniformly administered baptism by immersion (Evans, Early English Baptists, I. 203 note). On the same page he adds: There were Baptists in Holland, those who administered baptism by immersion, as well as those who adopted the mode at present practiced by our brethren of the Netherlands. It is clear from both Ashton and Evans that had Smyth desired immersion from the Mennonites there were those in the practice who could have immersed him. Smyth was probably immersed in infancy; if the Crowle Records be true, he was immersed in 1606; and was now immersed again. It was the validity of baptism over which he stumbled. Muller is freely quoted by Evans. He was a Mennonite. The Mennonite brethren are most excellent people, but they are nervous on the subject of baptism. They are unusually anxious to justify their practice of pouring. But even Muller says Smyth was immersed. He thought the Mennonites of the period were in the practice of affusion, but that Smyth immersed himself. Since Muller has been freely quoted, this declaration is of interest, He says: I, myself, add the following remarks: It appears to me that the persons mentioned in the memorial, who were not yet baptized, were admitted to the Wateriandere by the baptism not of immersion, but of sprinkling. This mode of baptism was, from the days of Menno, the only mode used among them, and still amongst us. The Waterlanders, nor any other of the various parties of the Netherlands Doopsgezinden, practiced at that time baptism by immersion. Had they made an exception, in that use, on behalf of the English, who in their country had not yet received baptism, it is more than probable that the memorial would have mentioned the alteration. But they cared only for the very nature of the baptism (as founded in full ages), and were therefore willing to admit those who were baptized by a mode different from theirs, just as they are wonted to do now-a-days (Evans, 1.224). The other witness is a Quaker, and Barclay always belittles baptism, and takes special delight in his endeavors to invalidate the claims of the English Baptists. He was compelled to admit that the question of the manner of baptism does not come up (Barclay, The Inner Life of the Societies of the commonwealth, 70). When Professor Masson was asked his opinion in regard to this book of Barclay’s, he said: Yes, I know the book well. I was much interested and read the book as soon as it came from the press. Robert Barclay belonged to a family which had long been connected with the religious history of England, and I was led to expect great things of his book; but I was disappointed. It seems to me that he failed to catch the trend of the religious life of the times of which he wrote. The work is in nowise equaled to the subject with which he deals; or with what we might have expected from him. I suppose he collected some useful information, but the work is not especially valuable. These are the witnesses and this is the testimony produced to prove that all of the Mennonites practiced sprinkling and that John Smyth was baptized by affusion. All of these are recent writers and they do not pretend that there is a word in the writings of Smyth, his friends, or even his enemies, that would prove that he practiced affusion. They all declare that the act of baptism never comes upon the boards. It is the old Pedobaptist argument of silence. But these authors do not sustain the position assumed. From one or the other of the authors it will be found that all of the Mennonites practiced dipping, some of them practiced dipping, and further that Smyth was dipped. The overwhelming majority, however, of the historians, including many who have given the subject most careful consideration, never intimate that Smyth was baptized in any other way save by immersion. Since Smyth did not apply to the Dutch Baptists for baptism, had no connection with them till a period after his baptism, and was never in their fellowship, the form of baptism as practiced by the Mennonites had no bearing on Smyth and his baptism. Therefore, at this place, though there is much material on the subject, the form of baptism among the Mennonites is not discussed at length. The two Mennonites with whom Smyth especially dealt were Hans de Ris and Lubbert Gerritz, who belonged to the Waterlander congregations. There are two witnesses at hand, Abram a Doorslaer, and Peter Jacob Austro-Sylvium, writing under date of 1649, by the authority of the North Holland Synod, mentions these persons by name and declares they practiced ’baptism by immersion or sprinkling with water" (Grondige ende Klare Wertooninghe vanhet oderscheydt in the voozamste Hooftstrucken, 464). This sets at rest the idea that the Waterlanders did not practice dipping; and Smyth could not have been immersed if he so desired. There is no date between Simon Menno and the year 1700 that immersion was not practiced by some of the Dutch Baptists and by some congregations exclusively. The trouble in the mind of Smyth was not immersion, but the succession of the churches. In the century in which the baptism occurred, the seventeenth, no writer mentions any form of baptism of Smyth other than immersion. Three authors who reflect the mind of the century are quoted. Beginning with the year 1641, there occurred a controversy on the subject of baptism. The Baptists after the arrest of Archbishop Laud and the destruction of the high Court of Commission came from their hiding places in great droves. It is not the purpose, in this place, to discuss that controversy only so far as it relates to the baptism of John Smyth. The boldness of the Baptists mightily stirred the Pedobaptists. In a measure liberty of speech had been granted to the Baptists and they took advantage of the privilege. Their enemies thought they must be crushed at once. The first to attack the Baptists was one P. B., who wrote, in 1641. Edward Barber, who printed his own book in that year, says that the work of P. B. came to his hand while his own was in press. P(raise God) B(arbon) says the Baptists were new, which R. B(arrow) (Briefe Answer to a discourse, lately written by one P. B. London, 1642. Library of Dr. Angus, Regents Park College) resented and said that their form of baptism was old. P. B. refers to some of the Baptists as those "who baptized themselves" "beyond seas" in "the Netherlands." Their trouble, he said, was the want of a proper administrator. He declared that they would not go to the Dutch Baptists, who did not practice "total dipping." He says: But now very lately some are mightily taken, as having found out a new defect in baptism, under the defection, which maketh such a nullity of baptism in their conceit, that it is none at all. and it is concerning the manner of baptizing, wherein they have espied such a default, as it maketh an absolute nullity of all persons’ baptism, but as have been so baptized, according to their new discovery, and so partly as before, in regard to the subject, and partly as regard to the great default in the manner… They want a dipper, that hath authority from heaven, as had John, whom they please to call a dipper, of whom it is said, that it. might be manifested his baptism was from heaven (P. B., A Discourse tending to prove the Baptisme in or under the Defection of Antichrist to be the Ordinance of Jesus Christ). Then the position of the Baptists on the subject of dipping is stated at length. A resume of these statements may be given. Smyth and his company rejected the Roman Catholic Church as Antichrist and would not go to it for baptism, though it practiced dipping; they were troubled on the subject of the succession of churches and held that rather than take any chances they would institute baptism among themselves, and claimed the authority of John the Baptist to begin the rite; they refused to be baptized by the Welsh, though they practiced dipping; they did not go to the Dutch Baptists, though they had a succession of more than an hundred years, because they did not always practice total dipping. Such is the testimony of Praise God Barbon to the baptism of Smyth. Barbon was answered by a number of Baptists who discussed the question of succession and the right to originate baptism, but not one in the remotest manner intimated that Smyth was not immersed. Thomas Wall, A.D. 1691, was an opponent of the Baptists. In examining the immersion of Smyth, he says: A third devise these people have found to deprive infants to water baptism, persuading people of years they were not baptized at all, if not dipped or plunged in water (Wall, Baptism Anatomized, 107). Giles Shute, in 1696, wrote in a venomous manner against the Baptists. He says: Now let the wise judge in what an abominable disorder they retain their baptism ever since from Mr. Smyth; and whether it stinketh not in the nostrils of the Lord ever since as the ministry of Corah and his company did. In his table of particulars, wherein this passage is directed to it, is queried, who began baptism by way of dipping among English people calling themselves Baptists? The answer is, John Smyth, who baptized himself. Thus you may see upon what a rotten foundation the principles of the Anabaptists are built and what door that anti-covenant doctrine came in among us in England; therefore it is of the earth, and but a human innovation, and ought to be abhorred and detested by all Christian people (Shute, A General Challenge to all Pedobaptists). The English Baptist historians mention immersion as the form of baptism of Smyth. Crosby refers to Smyth as "among the first restorers of immersion" (Crosby, the History of the English Baptists, I.97). Ivimey Says: Upon a further consideration of the subject, he saw reason to conclude that immersion was the true and proper meaning of the word baptize and that it should be administered to those only who were capable of professing faith in Christ (Ivimey, A History of the English Baptists, I.114). Taylor says: In reviewing the subject of the separation, Mr. Smyth discovered that he and his friends acted inconsistently in rejecting the ordination received from the Church of England, because they esteemed her a false church, and yet retained her baptism as a true baptism. This led him to examine the nature and ground of baptism; and he perceived, that neither infant baptism nor sprinkling had any foundation in Scripture. With his usual frankness he was no sooner convinced of this important truth than he openly professed and defended his sentiments (Taylor, The History of the English General Baptists, I.68). A long list of Pedobaptist writers could be quoted who state that Smyth was immersed, The following are thoroughly representative: Daniel Neal (History of the Puritans, II. 29. London, 1732); Thomas Price (The History of Protestant Non-conformity in England, I.495) Walter Wilson (history and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches, I. 29); Punchard (The History of Congregationalism from about the year 250 to 1616, 318, 319); Ashead (The Progress of Religious Sentiment, xix. London, 1852); and W. M. Blackburn (History of the Christian Church). Room must be given for the testimony of Prof. Masson, of the University of Edinburgh. This brilliant scholar, in the preparation of his great Life of Milton, carefully and laboriously went through the mass of material hearing on the subject He says: Smyth had developed his Separatism into the form known as Anabaptism, not only requiring the rebaptism of the members of the Church of England, but rejecting the baptism of infants altogether, and insisting on immersion as the proper Scriptural form of this rite (Masson, The Life of John Milton, II.540). In Professor David Masson, A. M., LL. D., we have an exceptional expert. He was Professor in Edinburgh University for thirty years, having previously served thirteen years as Professor in University College, London. He put in forty-three years in active service in the study of English Literature. Perhaps no English speaking scholar gave so much study to the period of the Civil Wars (A. D. 1640-1660), as he did. His great work on The Life of Milton cost him thirty years of exacting study. He has told something of his studies and processes of work in the British Museum. He say’s: Of the multiplicity and extent of the researches that were required, any general account may be tedious. Perhaps, however, I may allude specially to my obligations to the State Paper Office in London, where there were printed calendars of the State Papers; the task of consulting them is easy: Unfortunately, when I began my readings in the great national repository, the domestic papers of the period which most interested me-from 1640 to 1643-were utterly uncalendered. They had, therefore, to be brought to me in bundles and inspected carefully, lest anything useful should be skipped. In this way I had to persevere at a slow rate in my readings and note papers; but I believe I can now say for. much the greater part for the time embraced in the present volume1640 to 1643- there is not a single domestic document extant of those that used to be in the State Paper Office, which has not passed through my hands and been scrutinized (Masson, Life of Milton, Preface to Vol.III). He gave especial attention to the point of dipping among English Baptists. When he was visited at his home at Gowanlea, Juniper Green, Midlothian, he was asked the following question: Does your reading lead you to believe that the English Baptists before A.D. 1641, practiced immersion? or do you think they were in the practice of sprinkling, and about the date indicated changed their minds and are since immersionists? A. look of surprise came over his face and he queried: "Does any one believe anything like that?" Then he continued: Well. I am always open to new light. These gentlemen may know something that I do not in support of their theory; but all my reading is in the direction that the Baptists in England were immersionists in practice. Of course, among the early Anabaptists of Germany, when all kinds of people were called Anabaptists, and the term covered all sorts of religious beliefs, there may have been some who were called Anabaptists who practiced sprinkling, but I know no such in England. When a man puts forth a new opinion like this, no one it under the slightest obligation to believe it or to refute it unless it is supported by the most powerful reasons. All of the literature of the times is in favor of the dipping theory. When I wrote my book I tried to guard every point with ample authority. I had good reason for what I did, much has passed out of my mind. and is very dim to me now. At once he proceeded to mention many well-known authorities and to refer readily to the original sources. We now turn from the historians to a consideration of the facts concerning the baptism of Smyth gathered from himself and his contemporaries. The avowed enemies of Smyth affirm that the form of baptism. was immersion. Bishop Hall, who was an open opponent of Smyth, points to the form of baptism by immersion. In his Apology against the Brownists, he speaks of Smyth as one "who had washed off the font water as unclean"; and further on he says: "He had renounced our Christendom with our church, and has washed off his former water with new" (Hall, Works, IX. 384).. Bishop Hall, an Episcopalian, unquestionably refers to immersion. It is impossible to think that these allusions are to pouring, for he would not say that affusion would wash off a former baptism in a font. Such a figure of speech is impossible in the mouth of a Church of England bishop of that period. Hall was keen to catch a point; and was severe on the Brownists when they opposed Smyth. He says: You cannot abide a false church, why do you content yourself with a false sacrament? especially since your church, not being yet gathered to Christ, is no church, and therefore her baptism a nullity . . . He (Smyth) tells you true; your station is unsafe; either you must go forward to him, or back to us. All your rabbis cannot answer that charge of your rebaptized brother . If your baptism be good, then is your constitution good . . What need you to surfeit of another man’s trencher? …Show me where the Apostles baptized in a basin (Ibid, 25). These remarks of Bishop Hall to the Brownists in regard to Smyth as "your rebaptized brother" are significant. In scornful sarcasm he demands of the Brownists, "Show me where the Apostles baptized in a, basin." "What need you surfeit of another man’s trencher?" The point of the thrust implies that Smyth had dipped himself, contrary to their practice, and that he had apostolic precedent for his dipping. It further implies that the meat on Smyth’s trencher had nauseated them, because, like the Apostles, he had discarded the basin (Armitage, A History of the Baptists, 458). A statement has been quoted by Dr. Whitley from Joseph Hall to prove that Smyth was in the practice of sprinkling He says: Joseph Hall challenged Robinson next year. "If your partner, M. Smyth, should ever persuade you to rebaptize, your fittest gesture (or any other at full age) would be to receive that Sacramentall water, kneeling…Shew you me where the Apostles baptized in a Basin . . . as your Anabaptists now do (Common Apologie, XXXVI, XXXVII) (Whitley, works of John Smyth, I. xciv). Turning to the works of Bishop Hall (X., 69-71, Oxford, 1837), we are scarcely impressed that he said that the Anabaptists baptized in a basin. On page 69 is the following statement This, therefore, I dare boldly say that if your partner, M. Smyth. should ever, which God forbid, persuade you to rebaptize, your fittest gesture, or any others at full age, would be to receive that Sacramental water kneeling. Hall said Robinson (not Smyth) received the Lord’s Supper kneeling, and it would be well if he received baptism in like fashion. The remainder of the quotation from Dr. Whitley is removed more than two pages and further challenges the statements of Robinson. Bishop Hall further says: Show you me, where the Apostles baptized in a basin; or where they received women to the Lord’s Table; for you ho anthropos, 1 C or. xi. will not serve: shew me, that the Bible was distinguished into chapters and verses in the Apostles’ time: shew me, that they ever celebrated the Sacrament of the Supper at any other time than evening, as your Anabaptists now do: shew me, that they used one prayer before the Sermons always, another after; that they preached even upon a text; where they preached over a table; or lastly, show me where the Apostles used that, which you used before your last prophecy; and a thousand such circumstances. Nowhere in this passage is it intimated that John Smyth, or the Anabaptists, baptized in a basin, or practiced sprinkling. What is affirmed of the Anabaptists is that they celebrated the Lord’s Supper at other times than the evening. That and nothing more is said. And that is about as good proof as has ever been offered that Smyth practiced sprinkling. It is none at all. Clyfton, A. D., 1610, speaks of Smyth’s church "as a new washed company" (Clyfton, A Plea for Infants, Epistle to the Reader). This is not compatible with the idea of pouring. Clyfton practiced affusion and would not have used these words if Smyth had agreed with him. Robert Baillie, in speaking of the ease in which Brownists turned Anabaptists, alluded to Smyth and his company, "as turning into such as readily as snow and ice turn into water" (Baillie, Dissuasive, 30). This language is not consistent with pouring. I. H., in 1610, wrote a book against this congregation, in which he declares: "For tell me, shall every one that is baptized in the right form and manner (for which ye stand much on) upon the skin be saved?" (I. H., A Description of the Church of Christ, 27). The Baptists differed from their opponents upon "the form and manner" of baptism. The form of the Puritans was pouring; the form of the Baptists was immersion. He further asks: "Has the water of Holland washed ye all so clean?" (Ibid, 25). Such a question is inconsistent with pouring. Those associated with Smyth declare that the form of baptism was dipping. Mark Leonard Busher was in some wise connected with Smyth and was in Holland at the time. On the subject of dipping he is clear. He says: And therefore Christ commanded his disciples to teach all nations, and baptize them; that is, to preach the word of salvation to every creature of all sorts of nations, that are worthy and willing to receive it. And such as gladly and willingly receive, he has commanded to be baptized in the water; that is, dipped for dead in the water (Busher, Plea for Religious Conscience, 50). Such was the practice of the Amsterdam congregation "dipped for dead in the water" those who believed. Effort has been made to dissociate Busher from the Baptists, but Christopher Lawne bears witness that he was an Anabaptist (Lawne, Prophane Schisme, 56. A. D. 1612).. Another of this company, scarcely second to Smyth, was Thomas Helwys. In A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining in Amsterdam in Holland, printed in the year 1611 (York Minster Library, xxi. o 15), supposed to have been written by Helwys, Article 14, is the following language: The baptism of washing with water is the outward manifestation of dying unto sin, and walking in the newness of life. Romans 6:2-3. And therefore in no wise appertaineth to infants. The allusion to the burial and resurrection of Christ would indicate immersion; and affusion cannot be described as "a washing with water." There is a like expression which occurs in a letter written by Helwys and others, Amsterdam, March 12, 1610, which is as follows: And whosoever shall now be stirred up by the same Spirit to preach the same word, and men being thereby converted, may, according to John his example, wash them with water, and who can forbid? (MSS. in Amsterdam Library, No.1351). The evidence all points to the immersion of Helwys. The historians are quite unanimous in regard to his baptism. Brook says: Helwys received baptism by immersion (Brook, Lives of the Puritans, 11.279). Prof. Masson says: For this Helwys returning to England shortly after 1611, drew around him, as we saw, the first congregation of General or Arminian Baptists in London; and this obscure Baptist congregation seems to have become the depository for all England of the absolute principle of Liberty of Conscience expressed in the Amsterdam Confession as distinct from the more stinted principle advocated by the general body of the Independents. Not only did Helwys’ folk differ from the Independents on the subject of Infant Baptism and Dipping; they differed also in the power of the magistrate in matters of belief and conscience (Masson, The Life of Milton, II. 544). John Norcott was associated with Smyth; and he wrote a book to substantiate dipping. Many editions of this book were printed (Ivimey, History of the English Baptists. III. 299). He succeeded Spilsbury in the pastorate of Gravel-lane. He was associated with Hanserd Knollys, William Kiffin, and other heroes of those times. His funeral sermon was preached by Benjamin Keach. The book was dedicated to the church at Wapping. An edition of this book was edited and published by Charles H. Spurgeon. He used a reprint of the fifth London Edition. This edition has an introduction by Kiffin. The first edition has as yet escaped our attention. A portion of Chapter IV is as follows: 1. The Greek word baptizo means to plunge, to overwhelm. Thus Christ was plunged in water, Matthew 3:16. Thus he was plunged or overwhelmed in his sufferings, Luke 12:50. "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and now I am straightened till it he accomplished." 2. The Dutch translation reads, In those days came John the Dipper, Matthew 3:1. And in John 3:23, that version reads, John was dipping In Aenon because there was much water there. What need much water were it not for dipping. 3. They did baptize in rivers. They came to John, and were baptized in Jordan, Matthew 3:6. John was baptizing in Aenon because there was much water there, John 3:25. What need it be in a river, and where there was much water? Would not a little water in a basin serve to sprinkle the face? 4. Baptism signifies the burial of Christ. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, Romans 6:4. Buried with him in baptism, Colossians 2:12. Now we do not reckon a man buried when a little earth is sprinkled on his face, but he is buried when covered; we are buried in baptism. 5. Christ’s sufferings are called a baptism, Luke 12:50. I have a baptism to be baptized with; and now am I straightened till it be accomplished. When Christ suffered he was plunged into pains. Did his sufferings lie only on his head or his forehead? No, no; there was not one part free; he was from head to foot in pain; his head was crowned with piercing thorns, his hands and feet were nailed to the cress; and his whole person was so stretched on the cross that a man might have told all of his bones, Psalms 22:17. There was not one part free. Man hath sinned body, soul and spirit, therefore the whole Christ must suffer for sin. Christ was baptized into pain, plunged into sorrow, not any part free; this he called his baptism. Thus one baptized is plunged under water, to show how Christ was plunged into sorrow for our sakes. 6. Baptism is the putting on of Christ As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, Galatians 3:27. The text means as a servant wears his Lord’s livery, a garment which demonstrates him to be a servant to such a great personage, so in baptism we put our Lord’s livery on, and he himself clothes us from head to foot. It is thus that by baptism we put on Christ. 7. When Christ was baptized, he came up out of the water, Matthew 3:16. Was his baptism performed by having a little water thrown on his face? Then he had not been plunged in the water, and could not have come out of it; but because he was baptized in the water, therefore, being baptized he came up out of the water. Philip and the Eunuch went down into the water, (and being there in the water) Philip baptized the Eunuch. Both of them went up out of the water, Acts 8:39; but to what end had they gone down if Philip did merely sprinkle the Eunuch, or pour water upon his head? Thus you see the place where these persons were baptized was a river, or a certain water; their action was on this wise-they went down into the water, they were baptized. This was done in places where there was much water. The end was to show Christ’s burial; but now if there be not a burial under water to show Christ’s burial, the great end of the ordinance is lost; but burial is well set forth by dipping under water (Norcott, Baptism Discovered Plainly and Faithfully, according to the Word of Cod, 28-41). Then there follows sonic questions and answers to show that sprinkling is "strange fire" on the altar of God. John Morton was a member of this church and subscribed to many of the articles. He practiced dipping. Benjamin Brook says of him: John Morton was one of John Smyth’s disciples at Amsterdam from whom he received baptism by immersion. He afterwards came to England, was a zealous preacher of the sentiments of the General Baptists, etc. (Brook, The Lives of the Puritans, III.517). In the Bodleian Library is a copy of the book of E. Jessop and there are marginal notes supposed to have been made by John Morton. Jessop says: That the baptism of children neither is nor can be the mark of the Beast spoken of in Rev. XIII. 16, for that . . . is such a thing (in-deed) as young children are not capable of. To this Morton rejoins: (Ye) baptisme of Christ is (such a) thing whereof (infant)s are not capable. (If) it were (use)d and practised on them they wold (be dro)wned as many (have) been in historys (not)es thereof a new (mo)tion is found for them (name)ly to sprinkle theyr (head) Instead of dipping (which) ye word baptisme (signi)fieth (Burgess, John Smyth, the Se-Baptist, 827). John Robinson, the Pilgrim Father, in reply to Morton, affirms that the latter and his congregation practiced dipping. He says: In the next place they come to baptism, in which they think themselves in their element, as filth in water. And beginning with John’s baptism, etc. (Robinson, Defense of the Doctrine Propounded by the Synod of Dort, 147). Here is a positive assertion that Morton and his church practiced dipping. Morton testifies to his own belief. He declares that John baptized his disciples in the Jordan, and adds: This was indeed the practice of the primitive churches, It cannot be destroyed (Morton, A Description of what God hath wrought, 129. A. D. 1620). I. Graunt is another witness to the position of Morton. He declared that Morton differed from some on Free Grace, but he agreed with the rest of the Baptists on immersion. His words are in the form of a conversation. He says: Heres. But we have found a rule of truth in God’s word, plainly directing us to the making matter of the Church of Christ, none but such as are qualified by faith, are fit subjects of baptism, which faith is wrought by teaching and then baptism of dipping admits and gives entrance unto such believers to have communion in church fellowship with us in the holy ordinances of God; which church ordinances are not understood, but neglected and contemned of all the heretics you have named and conferred with before, therefore we are the true church, for we profess but one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. Ephesians 4:5. Truth. Sir, I perceive you are an Anabaptist, and therefore I shall speedily make good my late promise, and indeed, some thirty years since, Mr. Morton, a teacher of a church of the Anabaptists, in Newgate, then his confession comprehended all the errors of the Arminians which now of late, many that go under your name, in and around London dissent from, as seems to you (I. G(raunt), Truth’s Victory, 19). The affirmation is that Morton, in 1615, was in the practice of dipping. He differed with some on Free Grace, but not on the act of baptism. Smyth is himself a witness to the practice of dipping. The extract from the Confession, as quoted above from Helwys, described baptism as "a washing with water" and a burial and a resurrection was likewise signed by Smyth. In a Short Confession of Faith (MSS. in the Amsterdam Library, No. 1352), signed by Smyth, and some forty others, Article 30, he says of baptism: The whole dealing in the outward visible baptism of water, setteth before the eyes, witneseth and signifieth, the Lord Jesus doth inwardly baptize the repentant, faithful man, in the laver of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, washing the soul from all pollution and sin, by the virtue and merit of his bloodshead; and by the power and working of the Holy Ghost, the true, heavenly, spiritual, living water, cleanseth the inward evil of the soul, and maketh it heavenly, spiritual, living, in true righteousness or goodness. Therefore, the baptism of water leadeth us to Christ, to his holy office in glory and majesty; and admonisheth us not to hang only upon the outward, but with holy prayer to mount upward, and to beg of Christ the good thing signified. By no proper exegesis can this be interpreted to mean anything but immersion. In another Confession of Faith signed by Smyth (Amsterdam Library, No. 1348), he says: That baptism is the external sign of the remission of sins, of dying, and being made alive, and therefore does not belong to infants. In the Confession of himself and friends, published after his death, article 38, he says: That all men in truth died and are also with Christ buried by baptism into death (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12), holding their Sabbath with Christ in the grave. And article 40 says: That those who have been planted with Christ together in the likeness of his death and burial shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. These articles savor of immersion. In a book (Amsterdam Library, No. 1354), by John Smyth, not generally known, written in Latin, the following occurs: He preaches to deaf ears who sets forth to children the doctrine of the church. And thus he consults a blind man about colors, who washes children in baptismal waters . . Do they not misuse their labor who plunge (tingeat) infants in baptismal waters, before they instruct them in the knowledge of the church . . . Hence it is surely established that repentance is the condition of baptism, so thus a comparison between the sign and the thing signified is set forth, for repentance in the mind is the same thing as washing in water is of the body. Baptism cleanseth filth from the body, and so real repentance washes away sin. Baptism is the symbol of the remission, and destruction of sin, for as the washing of water taketh away the filth of the flesh, so the sin of the soul is purged, remitted, destroyed. He quotes Hebrews 10:22-23, and clearly distinguishes between the dipping of the body and the sprinkling of the heart. He says: Both the sign and the thing signified are coupled by the Apostle and in turn united in one another. The sign is the washing of the body, in the element of water, the thing signified is the sprinkling, that is, the cleansing of the heart from an evil conscience through the blood of Christ, where the comparison must be seriously observed, the analogy of the figure and of the truth, or of the sacrament and of the thing of the sacrament. This is a clear distinction. He further says: Baptism, however, does not signify the remission of another’s imputed sin, because not the filth of others, but their own filth is washed from the bodies of those baptized. Another statement (Amsterdam Library, No. 1364), says that "the critic casts into my teeth the proverb, He washes his garment of sin, he does wet it, says he." Surely this refers to dipping. There are two additional manuscripts (Nos. 1556A and 1556B), which have not been hitherto quoted. They were written by Smyth or some member of the company against infant baptism. If the writer did not understand immersion to be the form of baptism it is impossible to comprehend the argument he is making. Every reference is to immersion. The author is discussing original sin and that on that account the baptism of infants is not needed. He remarks that "water does not wash away the uncleanness of other persons from already cleansed bodies, but his own." "Cleansing by water belongs to baptism." "The washing softens." "Baptism is the symbol of communion with Christ, for God has not seen fit to baptize the babes but the adult believers, partly that he might lift them by this outward token, when~ they are so apt to fall into so many sins, that he might comfort them, that he might strengthen them for the struggle, partly to exhort them to surrender to sin considering baptism as a symbol of the washing of sin, partly because never does God do anything in vain, which they should have done, if they had imparted baptism to children, who do neither receive the token nor that which is signified, nor the meaning of it, nor the use nor the profit." That such passages refer to immersion is plain even to the casual reader. It has been vigorously asserted, as already noticed, that Smyth owed his change of views to the Mennonites, and that he was influenced by them to baptize himself by pouring, since the Mennonites practiced affusion. Very great emphasis has been placed upon this point by some writers. It has been regarded by some as eminently conclusive that Smyth practiced affusion. As a matter of fact, the Mennonites widely differed from Smyth in many things. If this had been true Smyth would have applied for baptism to the Mennonites in the first instance. Taylor says: There were indeed, many churches, in Holland who practiced immersion; but, as they differed widely in sentiment from him, he did not choose to receive baptism from them. This completely refutes Dr. Mosheim’s supposition that the English Baptists derived their origin from the German and Dutch Mennonites; and that in former times, they adopted their doctrines in all of its points (Taylor, The History of the English General Baptists, I 70). Taylor mentions many differences between Smyth and the Mennonites. Smyth himself indignantly denied that he learned his doctrines from Menno. Some persons of the Reformed Church had criticized Smyth and said that he imitated the doctrines of Menno. In a document (Amsterdam Library, No. 1364), not hitherto mentioned, he makes answer: In this article the opinion of Menno is presented to us as if we echoed the sentiments of any master you please. Perhaps the critic notes down our contradiction and opposition. Why are you Reformed ones unanimous in all of your dogmas? Is it not with them as many heads, so many senses. Is it right for us to depart from Menno, when Menno departs from the truth? Previous to his baptism, so far as the evidence goes, he never attracted the attention of the Mennonites. It was only after his baptism and a discussion had sprung up between Smyth and his opponents, Clyfton and Ainsworth, that the attention of the Dutch Baptists was directed to him. They were greatly pleased with his brilliant and scholarly defense of believers’ baptism, and after that they began to court his approval. Bradford says this in so many words. He says: But he (Smyth) was convinced of his errors by the pains and faithfulness of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Ainsworth and revoked them; but afterwards was drawn away by some of the Dutch Anabaptists, who finding him a good scholar and unsettled, the easily misled the most of the people, and others of them scattered away (Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 451). There were divisions, rather than harmony, in Amsterdam, among the many English people who were there. Every little group had its own opinions, and no two of them agreed. This could be illustrated at great length. Only two competent authorities are here quoted. Howell (Familiar Letters, 26. See Evans, Early English Baptists, II 24) says: I am lodged in a Frenchman’s house, who is one of the deacons of our English Brownist Church here. I believe in the street where I lodge there be well near as many religions as there be houses; for one neighbor knows not, nor cares not much, which religion the other is of: so that the number of conventicles exceed the number of churches here. Brereton (Travels, 1634, p. 13. Cheetham Society), says: Here also is a French church (Dort) ; Arminians, Brownists, Anabaptists, and Mennonites do lurke here and also swarm, but not so much tolerated here as at Rotterdam. The differences between the Baptists and Smyth on the one hand, and the Mennonites on the other, are set forth in a book probably written by Helwys (An Advertisement or Admonition unto the Congregations, which Men Call the Kew Fryerlings, in the Lowe Countries, written in Dutch, published in English and printed in 1611). The hook was addressed to Hans de Ris, Reynier Wybranson, and the Congregation whereof they are. The book forever dispels any illusion that the Baptists and Mennonites in Amsterdam were agreed. The whole book of about one hundred pages is taken up with the differences. Helwys says: Having long desired to publish our faith unto this nation and in particular unto the congregations which you are, (as we have formerly done to our nation) ; and also to make know,, the things wherein you, and we differ, and are opposite. We have now through the mercies of God, thus far, brought our desires to pass, being only unsatisfied for our own insufficiency that we are no better able to manifest your errors unto you. We have divers causes from good grounds to do this. First, because we are bound to discover the mystery of iniquity, by all good means that we can; and in the cup that she hath filled for us, to fill her the double. Secondly, that we might through the grace of God (if your willing minds be thereunto) be instruments of good in discovering divers of our errors unto us, which we acknowledge to the praise of God, and with thankful hearts to you. Now in that we do this by way of opposition and proof publicly, which you did by instruction privately; for our defense herein, we answer; You came publicly amongst us; and advanced your error of succession and order, from the proportion of the Scriptures, and have destroyed the faith of many thereby, who for sinister respects were willing to follow you we have dealt divers times with divers of you privately, but you have lightly regarded our loving admonitions esteeming all as nothing we have said; some of you going on in your sin seeking to make this people one with you, who are justly cut off from God and his people for their falling away from grace. We have written privately to the whole congregation. You are of them to prevent you in this evil, we have written particularly unto you H(ans) de R(is) but all in vain, in that you esteem the truth we profess, as us herein as vain. Thus we are constrained (for the defense of the truth of God we profess and that we may not seem to justify you in your evils, and to make it known unto all that we have good cause to differ from you) to publish these things in the number as we do; and that it may appear unto all, and to your consciences that we have strong grounds for these things wherein we differ from you, though we be weak in the maintaining of them If any shall oppose part or all that is here written, we desire this equal kindness, that it may be set over into English for all of your understandings, as we have caused this to be set over in Dutch for all yours, and if there be any cause of reply, we will by the assistance of God answer with all of the abilitywherewith God shall make us able. As troublesome as Smyth was to all parties he was conscientious. In the latter days of August he fell on sleep and was buried in the New Church, Amsterdam, September 1, 1612, as the records of that church show. After the exclusion of Smyth, in 1609, Helwys became pastor and leading man of the Baptist church in Amsterdam, There was no effort at reconciliation between Smyth and Helwys, for they considered their differences vital. Between Helwys and the Mennonites there was never an effort for union. Thomas Helwys, Elwes, Helwisse, Helwas, as the name was variously spelt, was probably the son of William Helwys. He seems to have been born about the year 1550, and was a man of some wealth. He had long been associated with Smyth. He had cared for Smyth when he was a young man. He worked with Smyth before he left England and accompanied him to Holland. He was by far the most active man among the Separatists (Robinson, Religious Communion, Works III. 159). Helwys became convinced that the English sectaries ought not to have left England for Holland to avoid persecution; and he returned to England late in the year 1611 or early in 1612, accompanied by a greater part of the church. He established his church in London (Flight in Persecution by John Robinson. Works, III.160). Shortly after his return he justified his course in a book which he wrote. The church met for worship in Pinner’s Hall. Helwys was extremely successful as a preacher, attracted large congregations and made many converts. This church has sometimes been called the first General Baptist congregation in England; but it has been abundantly shown that there were many Baptists in England before the return of this congregation to England. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 20: 01.1.20. CHAPTER 17 THE PARTICULAR BAPTIST CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XVII ORIGIN OF THE PARTICULAR BAPTIST CHURCHES THUS far only the history of the General Baptist churches of England has been considered. This body constituted by far the larger portion of the Baptists of that country, and their history runs on in an uninterrupted stream from generation to generation. On the subject of the administrator of baptism Baptists held, as has been seen, that they hid the power to originate baptism, but that it took at least two persons to begirt the act; and that these two could institute the rite. This was the method of Smyth and was the general theory held by them. To understand this history this position must be kept sharply in mind. They were mildly Arminian in their views, and forcefully impressed free will. It is now time to consider the history of another body of Baptists, who if not so numerous were at least highly influential. They were called Particular Baptists, since they held to Calvinistic views. Two views of the administrator of baptism prevailed among them. The first and oldest was that every Christian man could, without himself having been baptized, immerse a candidate upon a profession of faith. Later there were those who held that an administrator should have a succession from a previously baptized administrator. At times these views came into conflict and caused much troublesome discussion. The Particular Baptists had a wholly different origin from the General Baptists. It must not be thought that either of these parties were new. Crosby says: It may be proper to observe here, that there have been two parties of the English Baptists ever since the beginning of the reformation; those that have followed the Calvinistical scheme or doctrines, and from the principal points therein, personal election, and have been termed Particular Baptists: And those that have professed the Arminian or remonstrant tenets; and have also from the chief of those doctrines, universal redemption, been called General Baptists (Crosby, I. 173). There were likewise many Baptists in England who did not choose to assume either name, because they receive what they think to be truth, without regarding with what human schemes it agrees or disagrees" (Crosby, 1. 174). But some of the Particular Baptist churches originated in the Independent church of Henry Jacob. There is no proof that all of the seven Particular Baptist churches of London originated in this manner. "The Seven Churches of London, however," says Cutting, "are not to be supposed as comprising the whole of the Particular Baptist denomination at that time. There were certainly several churches besides these, and their increase at a period immediately succeeding was very rapid." Dr. Underhill, after years of investigation, very ably discusses the entire problem. He says: It has been seen that their (the Baptist) idea, the true archetypal idea, of the church, was the grand cause of the separation of the Baptists, as individuals and communities, from all the various forms of ecclesiastical arrangement adopted by the reformers and their successors. There could be no harmony between the parties; they were antagonistic from the first. Hence the Baptists cannot be regarded as owing their origin to a secession from the Protestant Churches; they occupied an independent and original position, one which unquestionably involved suffering and loss from its unworldliness, and manifested contrariety to the political tendencies and alliances of the reform movement (Underhill, The Records of the Church of Christ meeting in Broadmead, Bristol, 1640-1687). The first company went out from Jacob about the year 1688. A want of recognition of this origin, and just discrimination between these bodies, has caused much confusion and led to many erroneous conclusions. Crosby indeed states this fact, that he nowhere gives a separate history of the two bodies, and this is the chief fault of his invaluable history. In this he has unfortunately been followed by some other historians. The General and Particular Baptists were not only distinct in origin and in history, but were often in debate one with the other. Very many of the misunderstandings of Baptist history, in the reign of Charles I, have their basis in the confounding of the history of these distinct and separate Baptist bodies. The first statement that Crosby makes concerning the origination of the Particular Baptist church under the ministry of John Spilsbury is misleading, since it apparently ascribes to all Baptists, only what actually took place in the one congregation of Henry Jacob. The mistake of Crosby consists in making a general statement of a specific instance. He says: In the year 1683, the Baptists, who had hitherto been intermixed among the Protestant Dissenters, without distinction, and so consequently shared with the Puritans in all the Persecutions of those times, began now to separate themselves, and form distinct societies of those of their own persuasion (Crosby, The History of the English Baptists, I. 147). Lewis, a Church of England man, reviewed on its appearance Crosby’s History. After quoting the above statement he says: Here seems to me to be two nistakes-1-That the Anabaptists till 1633 were intermixed among Protestant Dissenters, viz., The Puritans, Brownists, Barrowists and Independents. Since they all disclaimed them. 2. That the English Anabaptists began in 1633 to separate themselves. The writer of this ignorant and partial history owns, etc. etc. (Rawlinson MSS., C 409) In his contentions Lewis was right and Crosby was wrong. Crosby continues: Concerning the first of which I find the following account collected from a manuscript of Mr. William Kiffin. "There was a congregation of Protestant Dissenters of the Independent persuasion in London, gathered in the year 1616, whereof Mr. Henry Jacob was the first pastor; and after him succeeded Mr. John Lathrop, who was their minister at this time. In this society several persons, finding that the congregation kept nor to their first principles of separation, and being also convinced that baptism was not to be administered to infants, but such only as professed faith in Christ, desired that they might he dismissed from that communion, and allowed to form a distinct congregation, in such order as was agreeable to their own sentiments. "The church considered that they were now grown very numerous and so more than could in these times of persecution conveniently meet together, and believing also that these persons acted from a principle of conscience, and not obstinacy, agreed to allow them the liberty they desired, and that they should be constituted a distinct church; which was performed the 12th of Sep. 1633. And as they believed that baptism was not rightly administered to infants, so they looked upon the baptism they had received in that age as invalid; whereupon most or all of them received a new baptism. Their minister was Mr. John Spilsbury. What number there were is uncertain, because in the mentioning of the names of about twenty men and women, it is added, with divers others. "In the year 1635, Mr. William Kiffin, Mr. Thomas Wilson, and others being of the same judgment, were upon their request, dismissed to the said Mr. Spilsbury’s congregation. "In the year 1639, another congregation of Baptists was formed, whose place of meeting was in Crutched Fryars: the chief promoters of which were Mr. Green, Mr. Paul Hobson, and Captain Spencer" (Crosby, I.149). Upon the organization of Spilsbury’s church the question of a lawful administrator of baptism came up. There were Baptists among these Dissenters already and it did not follow that they had received their baptism from Pedobaptist sources. But a line of action must be established. Two possible sources were open to them. Crosby says: The former of these was to send over to the foreign Anabaptists, who descended from the ancient Waldenses in France or Germany, that so one or more received baptism from them, might become proper administrators of it to others. Some thought this the best way and acted accordingly. After giving a quotation from Hutchinson, Crosby continues: This agrees with an account given of the matter in an ancient manuscript, said to be written by Mr. William Kiffin, who lived in those times, and was a leader among those of that persuasion. This relates, that several sober and pious persons belonging to the congregations of the dissenters about London were that believers were the only proper subjects of baptism, and that it ought to be administered by immersion, or dipping the whole body into the water, in resemblance of burial and resurrection, according to 2 Corinthians 2:12 and Romans 6:4. That they often met together to pray and confer about the matter, and consult what methods they should take to enjoy this ordinance in the primitive purity. That they could not he satisfied about any administrator in England, to begin this practice; because though some in this nation rejected the baptism of infants, yet they had not as they knew of, revived the ancient custom of immersion: But hearing that some in the Netherlands practiced it, they agreed to send over one Richard Blount, who understood the Dutch language: That he went accordingly, carrying letters of recommendation with him, and was kindly received both by the church there, and Mr. John Batte their teacher: That upon his return, he baptized Mr. Samuel Blacklock. a minister, and these two baptized the rest of the company, whose names are in the manuscript, to the number of fifty-three. So that those who followed this scheme did not derive their baptism from the aforesaid Mr. Smith, or his congregation at Amsterdam, it being an ancient congregation of foreign Baptists in the Low Countries to whom they sent. But the greatest number of English Baptists, and the more judicious looked upon all of this as needless trouble, and what proceeded from the old Popish doctrine of right to administer sacraments by an uninterrupted succession, which neither the Church of Rome, nor the Church of England, much less the modern dissenters, could prove to be with them. They affirmed (Persecution for religion judged and condemned, 41) therefore, and practiced accordingly, that after a general corruption of baptism, any unbaptized person might warrantably baptize, and so begin a reformation (Crosby, I. 100-103). John Spilsbury did not believe he was under obligation to send anywhere for baptism; but that he had a right to baptize like John the Baptist did. He had nothing to do with this Blount scheme. He says: And because some make it such an error, and so, far from any rule or example, for a man to baptize others who is himself unbaptized, and so think thereby to shut up the ordinance of God in such a strait, that none can come by it but through the authority of the Popedom of Rome; let the reader consider who baptized John the Baptist before he baptized others, and if no man did, then whether he did not baptize others, he himself being unbaptized. We are taught by this what to do upon like occasions. Further, I fear men put more than is of right due it, and so prefer it above the church, and all other ordinances besides; for they can assume and erect a church, take in and cast out members, elect and ordain officers, and administer the Supper; and all a-new, without any looking after succession, and further than the Scriptures: But as for baptism, they must have that successively from the Apostles, though it come through the hands of Pope Joan. What is the cause of this, that men do all from the Word but only baptism? (Spilsbury, Treatise on Baptism, 63, 65, 66). "Nor is it probable," says Crosby, "that this man should go over sea to find an administrator of baptism, or receive it at the hands of one who baptized himself?" (Crosby, I. 104). The position was defended with ingenuity by the Particular Baptists. John Tombes was one of the most learned men of his times; an unwearied opponent of infant baptism; and frequent1y in public debates with Baxter and others. He defended this position (Tombes Apology for two Treatise, 10), and such was likewise the view of Henry Laurence, Esq. (Laurence, Treatise on Baptism, 407). The position was finally assumed by the Particular Baptists as the correct one. Says Crosby: It was a point much disputed for some years. The Baptists were not a little uneasy at first about it; and the Paedobaptists thought to render all of the baptisms among them invalid, for want of a proper administrator to begin their practice : But by the excellent reasoning of these and other learned men, we see their beginning was well defended, upon the same principles on which all other Protestants built their Reformation (Crosby, I. 106). The position of the Particular Baptists meant that for an administrator of baptism they did not go beyond the authority of the New Testament. They declared that it was not necessary to prove a succession of Baptist churches. This body of Baptists have, however, been singularly clear in affirming the long continued existence of the Baptists of England, and elsewhere. They even claim, if it were at all necessary to prove it, that they have a succession more ancient and purer, if humbler than that of the Roman Catholic Church. The witnesses on this point are numerous and weighty. William Kiffin, A. D., 1645, wrote: It is well known to many, and especially to ourselves, that our congregations as they now are, were erected and framed according. to the rule of Christ before we heard of any Reformation, even at the time when Episcopacy was at the height of its vanishing glory. This was after the Confession of Faith of 1643 was written and published. Kiffin affirmed that their churches as they are now erected and framed preceded the Reformation of the Episcopacy. Mr. Joseph Richart, who says he wrote the queries to which Kiffin replied, affirmed that he understood the Episcopal and not the Presbyterian Reformation. "You allege," he says, "your practice, that your congregations were erected and framed in the time of Episcopacy, and before you heard of any Reformation" (Richart, A Looking Glass for Anabaptists, 6, 7. London. 1645). Here were Baptist churches, according to Kiffin, before the times of Henry VIII, and this fact was well known to the Baptists. Further on Kiffin makes the claim that the Baptists outdated the Presbyterians. He says, And for the second part of your query. That we disturb the great work of Reformation now in hand; I know not what you mean by this charge, unless it be to discover your prejudice against us in Reforming ourselves before you, for as yet we have not in our understanding, neither can we conceive any thing of that we shall see reformed by you according to truth, but that through mercy we enjoy the practice of the same already; ’tis strange this should be a disturbance to the ingenious faithful reformer; It should be (one would think) a furtherance ratter than a disturbance, and whereas you tell us of the work of Reformation now in hand, no reasonable men will force us to desist from the practice of that which we are persuaded is according to Truth, and wait for that which we know not what it will be; and in the meantime practice that which you yourselves say must be reformed (Kiffin, 12-14). The year 1650 marked the appearance of a distinguished book by Daniel King (A Way to Zion, sought out and found, for Believers to walk in; or, a Treatise, consisting of three parts). In the first part it is proved: 1. That God hath had a people on earth, ever since the coming of Christ in the flesh, throughout the darkest days of Popery, which he hath owned as saints, and as his people. Here is a distinct claim that the Baptists have existed since the days of Christ. King further says: 2. That the saints have power to re-assume and to take up as their right, any ordinance of Christ, which they have been deprived of by the violence and tyranny of the Man of Sin. This was the ordinary position of the Particular Baptists. In the third part King says: Proveth that outward ordinances, and among the rest the ordinance of baptism is to continue in the church, and this Truth cleared up from intricate turnings and windings, clouds and mists that make the way doubtful and dark. Four of the most prominent Baptists of those times, Thomas Patience, John Spilsbury, William Kiffin and John Pearson wrote an introduction for the book. These men declare that the assertion that "there are no churches in the world" and "no true ministers" has ’been of singular use in the hands of the Devil." These old Baptists carefully guarded every historical statement. A part of the introduction is as follows: The devil hath mustered all of his forces of late, to blind and pester the minds of good people, to keep them from the clear knowledge and practice of the way of God, either; in possessing people still with old corrupt principles; or if they have been taken off them, then to persuade them, that there are no true churches in the world, and that persons cannot come to the practice of ordinances, there being no true ministry In the world; and others they run in another desperate extreme, holding Christ to be a shadow, and all his Gospel and Ordinance like himself fleshy and carnal. This generation of people have been of singular use in the hand of the Devil to advance his kingdom, and to make war against the kingdom of our Lord Jesus. Now none have been more painful than there have been of late, to poison the city, the country, the army, as far as they could. Inasmuch as it lay upon some of our spirits as a duty, to put our weak ability for the discovering of these gross errors and mistakes; but it hath pleased God to stir up the spirit of our Brother, Daniel King, whom we judge a faithful and painful minister of Jesus Christ, to take this work in hand before us; and we judge he hath been much assisted of God in the work in which he hath been very painful. We shall not need to say much of the Treatise; only in brief: It is his method to follow the Apostles’ rule to prove everything by the existence of Scripture-light, expounding Scripture by Scripture, and God hath helped him in this discourse, in proving the truth of churches, against all such as that have gone under the name of Seekers, and hath very well, and with great evidence of Scripture-light answered to all, or most of their objections of weight, as also those above, or beyond ordinances. This is the endorsement of five of the leading Baptists in the world in their day, "that God hath a people on earth, ever since the coming of Christ in the flesh" They further believed that these people were the Baptists. Henry D’Anvers was a man of great celebrity among the Baptists. He was born about the year 1608. He was a colonel in the Parliamentary army and governor of Strafford. While governor he embraced Baptist principles and was baptized probably by Henry Haggar. He wrote a book on baptism, in which he greatly stirred up the Pedobaptists. It is a vigorous defense of believers’ baptism by dipping. He traces the history of the Baptists century by century back to the apostles. After referring to the existence of Baptists in England for long periods, he says: In the 16th year of King James, 1618, That excellent Dutch Piece, called A very plain and well-grounded Treatise concerning Baptism, that with so much authority both from Scripture and Antiquity, proves the baptizing of Believers, and disproves that of Infants, was printed in English. Since when (especially in the last 30 or 40 years) many have been the Conferences that have past, and many the Treatises that have been written Pro and Con upon that subject, and many have been the Sufferings both in old and new England, that people of that persuasion have under gone, whereby much Light hath broken forth therein, that not only very many Learned men have been convinced thereof, but very many Congregations of Baptists have been, and are daily gathered in that good old way of the Lord, that hath so long lain under so much obliquy and reproach, and been buried under so much Antichristian rubbish in these Nations (D’Anvers, A Treatise of Baptism, 308. London, 1674, second edition). He further says By all which you see by plentiful Evidence, that Christ hath not been without his Witnesses in every Age, not only to defend and assert the true, but to impugn, and to reject (yea, even to Death itself) the false Baptism. Insomuch that we are not left without good Testimony of a Series of Succession, that by God’s providence hath been kept afoot, of this great Ordinance of Believers-Baptism ever since the first times (Ibid., 821, 822). The Confession of Faith of several Congregations of Christ in the county of Somerset, and some churches in the counties near adjacent, A. D., 1656, has always been an important document. On this subject it is very clear. The Confession says: Article XXIX. That the Lord Christ Jesus being the foundation and cornerstone of the gospel church whereon his apostles built. Ephesians 2:20, Hebrews 2:3. He gave them power and abilities to propagate, to plant, to rule and order. Matthew 28:19, Luke 10:16. For the benefit of that his body, by which ministry he did shew forth the exceeding riches of his grace, by his kindness towards it in the ages to come, Ephesians 2:7, which is according to his promise. Article XXX. That the foundation and ministration aforesaid, is a sure guide, rule and direction, in the darkest time of the anti-christian apostasy, or spiritual Babylonish captivity, to direct, inform, and restore us in our just freedom and liberty, to the right worship and order belonging to the church of Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 3:14-15, 2 Timothy 3:15-17, John 17:20, Isaiah 59:21, Revelation 2:24, Isaiah 40:21, Revelation 2:5, 1 Corinthians 15:37 &C (Crosby, I 52, 58). Another mighty Baptist of this century was Thomas Grantham. He says: From all which testimonies (and many more that might be brought) it is evident, beyond all doubt, (our opposers being judges) that whether we respect the signification of the word baptize, that many of the learned have much abused in this age, in telling them the Anabaptists (i. e. the Baptized Churches) are of late edition, a new sect, etc. when from their own writings, the clean contrary is so evident (Grantham, Chrlstianiamus Primiutivus, 92, 98. London, 1678). Joseph Hooke, who styled himself "a servant of Christ and a lover of all men," was a noted Baptist of this century. He wrote with great fulness on the continuation of the Baptists through the ages. He says: The people to whom John Woodward is joined, called Anabaptists are not rightly so called, and are no new sect (Hooke, A Necessary Apology for the Baptized Believer; Title page. London, 1701). Again he says: Thus having shewed negatively, when this sect called Anabaptists did not begin; we shall shew in the next place affirmatively when it did begin; for a beginning it had, and it concerns us to enquire for the fountain head of this sect; for if it was sure that it were no older than the Munster fight . . . I would resolve to forsake it, and would persuade others to do so too. That religion that is not as old as Christ and his Apostles, is too new for me. But secondly, Affirmatively, we are fully persuaded, and therefore do boldly though humbly, assert, that this sect is the very same sort of people that were first called Christians in Antioch, Acts 11:26. But sometimes called Nazarenes, Acts 24:5. And as they are everywhere spoken against now, even as they were in the Primitive Times. And sometimes anciently they were called Anabaptists, as they have been of late times, and for the same cause, for when others innovated in the worship of God, and changed the subject in baptism, they kept on their way, and men grew angry, and for mending an error, they called them Anabaptists, and so they came by this name, which is very ancient …(Hooke, 66). Many more such statements occur in the book, but the following must end his testimony: But we think it sufficient, that we can prove all we teach by the infallible Records of God’s Word, and if all histories and monuments of antiquity had been overlaid, or burnt, as many have been, so that we had never been able to shew from any book but the Bible, that there were ever any of our persuasion in the world, till within a few years, yet we should think that book enough to prove the antiquity of our persuasion, that we are not a new sect, seeing that we can make it appear by that one hook, that our persuasion is as old as Christ and the Apostles. And on the contrary, if we could show from approved history, that multitudes of all ages and nations since the Apostles’ days have been of our persuasion, yet if we could not prove by the word of God, that our persuasion is true, it would signify very little. Therefore in the next place, we shall demonstrate that our doctrine is according to the Holy Scriptures, the Standard of Truth (Hooke, 32). Samuel Stennett was one of the most accomplished scholars of his day, and was for forty-seven years pastor of the Little Wild Street Baptist Church, in London. His father, grand-father and great-grandfather were all Baptist ministers. His great-grandfather was born before the Civil Wars. He was in position to judge of the claims of the Baptists to antiquity. On this point he says: And from these (Piedmont) we have traced the truth for which we contend, amidst the notable testimonies of renowned martyrs and confessors in favor of it, seven hundred years before the Reformation, down to the present times (Stennett, Answer to a Christian Minister’s Reasons, 295. London, 1775). The Baptist Magazine was founded in London in 1809. The very first number in this magazine, after the introduction, was "A Miniature History of the Baptists," in which it was claimed that the Baptists had always practiced, adult baptism by immersion. The Editor further says: The Baptists have no origin short of the Apostles. They arose in the days of John the Baptist, and increased largely in the days of the Apostles. and have existed, under the severest oppression; with intervals of prosperity, ever since. Again, in 1817, the same magazine says: The Baptists in England trace their origin, as a separate denomination, to the period of the Reformation, in the reign or Henry VIII; though there is good evidence that persons of the same sentiments, on the subject of believers’ baptism, were found among the Wickliffites and Lollards, who were the Protestant dissenters from the Church of Rome before that period; and also, that all of the British Christians, till the arrival of Austin at the close of the sixth century were ignorant of the practice of infant baptism (Baptist Magazine, IX. 411). One of the best posted English Baptists was Thomas Pottenger. Writing in 1845, of English Baptists, he says: Writers have stated, though erroneously, that the first Baptist church in England was formed at the commencement of the seventeenth century, soon after Charles I. ascended the throne. This is a mistake. It is contrary to facts. History tells another tale. Courts of justice, registers of prisons, annals of martyrdom, lead to a different conclusion. Centuries before this period Baptists lived in various parts of the land, though the ignorance and cruelty of the times did not permit them to enjoy a visible and denominational organization like their successors of the present day. Moreover, there were Baptist societies in the kingdom long before the light of the reformation dawned upon it, and those societies were composed of men and women who regarded immersion on a profession of faith in Christ essential to the due administration of baptism (Pottenger, The Early English Baptists. In The Baptist Magazine, XXXVII. 283. London, 1845). This is not an antiquated opinion among the English Baptists, for many of the most intelligent Baptists of that country believe that the Baptists date back to the Apostles. The Rev. George P. Gould, ex-President of Regents Park College, edited and published a series of Baptist Manuals, historical and biographical. In 1895 he published one on Hanserd Knollys, by James Culross, ex-President of Bristol Baptist College. Afterr stating that Knollys became a sectary in 1631, Culross says: Had Baptists thought anything depended on it, they might have traced their pedigree back to New Testament times, and claimed Apostolic succession. The channel of succession was certainly purer, if humbler, than through the apostate church of Rome. But they were content to rest on Scripture alone, and, as they found only believers’ baptism there, they adhered to that (Culross, Hanserd Knollys, 39 note). The story of the sending of Blount to Holland to obtain immersion is a blind account, and rests solely on the authority of the so-called Kiffin Manuscript. This is a document which has been shown to be utterly worthless (Christian, Baptist History Vindicated. Louisville, 1899). The Kiffin Manuscript has generally been discredited by Baptist authors. Crosby can only affirm that it "was said to be written by William Kiffin" (Crosby, History of the English Baptists, I. 101). Evans says: "This statement is vague. We have no date and cannot tell whether the facts refer to the Separatists under Mr. Spilsbury or to others" (Evans, Early English Baptists, II. 78). Cathcart says this transaction may have happened, but "we would not bear heavily on the testimony adduced by these good men" (Cathcart, Baptist Encyclopedia, I.521). Armitage says: A feeble but strained attempt has been made to show that none of the English Baptists practiced immersion prior to 1641, from the document mentioned by Crosby in 1738, of which he remarks it was "said to be written by William Kiffin." Although the Manuscript is signed by fifty-three persons, it is evident that its authorship was only guessed at from the beginning, It may or may not have been written by Kiffin (Armitage, History of the Baptists, 440) - Dr. Henry S. Burrage, who gave much time and attention to this subject, after a somewhat lengthy discussion of the Jersey Church Records and the Gould Kiffin Manuscript, is constrained to say: It will be noticed in our reference above to the Jessey Church Records, we say "if they are authentic." We have not forgotten the Crowle and Epworth records. These made their appearance about the same time as the Jessey Church Records, and it is now known that they are clumsy forgeries. The Jessey Church Records may be genuine, but their genuineness has not yet been established (Zion’s Advocate, September, 1896). Pedobaptist writers have rejected the Kiffin Manuscript, and pronounced its testimony untrustworthy. John Lewis, in his reply to Crosby, ridicules the Kiffin Manuscript. After quoting the story of Blount and Blacklock, taken from Crosby, he says: This is a very blind account I can’t find the least mention made anywhere else of these three names Batte, Blount and Blacklock, nor is it said in what town, city or parish of the Netherlands those Anabaptists lived who practiced this manner of baptizing by dipping or plunging the whole body under water (Rawlinson MSS. C 409. Bodleian Library). Lewis, in referring to this "ancient Manuscript," mentioned by Crosby, says: "How ignorant" (ibid.). Elsewhere he says: But it is pretty odd, that nobody should know in what place this ancient congregation (a congregation much about the same antiquity with the ancient manuscript) was, and that John Batte, their teacher, should never be heard of before or since (Rawlinson MSS). Again: Others say it (baptism) was first brought here by one Richard Blount, but who and what he was I don’t knew. Once more; But we have no authority for this account but a manuscript said to have been written by William Kiffin, The document was so untrustworthy that Dr. Dexter, though it was in line with his contention, rejected it. He says: On the other hand, had not Kiffin-as it is supposed-made the statement, it would be suspicious for its vagueness, and for the fact that none of the historians, not even Wilson, Calamy, Brook, or Neal, know anything about Blount, or Blacklock, beyond what is here stated (Dexter; True Story of John Smyth, 54). This manuscript, in which almost every statement in it can be shown to be false, which is rejected by the most of Baptists, and by controversial Pedobaptist writers, is the only authority to prove this story of Blount going to Holland, and that the Baptists were in the practice of sprinkling. Not one contemporary author mentions the journey of Blount, or the names of Blount or Blacklock. There is no proof that either man ever lived. Edwards does indeed mention a Blount who was a Baptist, but his given name is not mentioned and no circumstance connects him with Holland. The Blount mentioned by Edwards was a General and not a Particular Baptist. and could not have been connected with this enterprise. The first reference that has been found to the Baptists sending to Holland for baptism is in an account by Hutchinson, who wrote in 1676, and he declares the point of the trouble will not immersion, but a proper administrator. He says: When the professors of these nations had been a long time wearied with the yoke of superstition, ceremonies, traditions of men, and corrupt mixtures in the worship and service of God, it pleased the Lord to break these yokes, and by a very strong impulse of his Spirit upon the hearts of his people, to convince them of the necessity of Reformation. Divers pious, and very gracious people, having often sought the Lord by fasting and prayer, that he would show them the pattern of his house, the goings-out and the comings-in thereof, etc. Resolved (by the grace of God), not to receive or to practice any piece of positive worship which had not precept or example from the word of God. Infant baptism coming of course under consideration, after long search and many debates, it was found to have no footing in the Scriptures (the only rule and standard to try doctrines by) ; but on the contrary a mere innovation, yea, the profanation of an ordinance of God. And though it was proposed to be laid aside, yet what fears, tremblings, and temptations did attend them, lest they should be mistaken, considering how many learned and godly men were of an opposite persuasion. How gladly would they have had the rest of their brethren gone along with them. But when there was no hope, they concluded that a Christian’s faith must not stand in the wisdom of men; and that every one must give an account of himself to God; and so resolved to practice according to their light. The great objection was, the want of an administrator; which, as I have heard was removed by sending certain messengers to Holland, whence they were supplied (Hutchinson, A Treatise Concerning the Covenant and Baptism Dialoguewise. Epistle to the Reader. London, 1676). Hutchinson knows nothing of Blout, Blacklock or Batte. The people he mentions were all Pedobaptists, who had just been converted to Baptist views. This is hearsay testimony years after without any details. The first man mentioned, who was sent to Holland to get immersion, was John Spilsbury, but Crosby says this was not true. The date of the going of Blount to Holland is as mythical as the person of Blount A Baptist writer who published a history of the Baptists, supplementary to Neal’s History of the Puritans, says that Blount went to Holland in 1608. Barclay says he went in 1638. Other writers have been impressed with the date of 1640. One writer mentions three dates, 1640, 1641 and 1644. The Kiffin Manuscript mentions both 1640 and 1644. One date is just as good as another, for there is no authority to substantiate any of them. Not one prominent Baptist received his baptism from this source. William Kiffin, John Spilsbury, Samuel Richardson and Paul Hobson did not. We are confronted with the Amazing proposition that there were two Kiffin Manuscripts, differing from one another in most important respects. The one by Crosby has already been referred to; the other is known as the Gould edition. In the year 1860, Rev. George Gould had a lawsuit in regard to certain chapel property. After the suit was over Mr. Gould presented his side of the question to the public in a volume entitled: Open Communion and the Baptists of Norwich. He also left a volume of manuscripts. Through the kindness of Rev. George P. Gould, ex-President of Regents Park College, an opportunity was granted the author to examine these papers. There were some thirty documents, with other miscellaneous papers, copied into a large book, under the general title: Notices of the Early Baptists. These papers were copied into this book about the year 1860. It has recently been announced that these papers have been found; but what became of the originals is a mystery. Information was sought in vain. The Kiffin Manuscript as copied in this book differs in a radical manner from the quotations made by Crosby from the so-called Kiffin Manuscript. The Gould Kiffin Manuscript has been shown in almost every detail to be contrary to well authenticated records, such for example, as sworn depositions in the courts of the land. Some who were described as men were women, some who were pronounced alive were dead, soom who were declared to be in prison were free, etc, etc. Records in the book profess to be the minutes of the church of which Henry Jacob was pastor, and yet not one date or fact connected with his life is correctly given. Take a single incident from the minutes: About eight years H. Jacob was Pastor of ye said Church & when upon his importunity to go to Virginia, to which he had been engaged before by their consent, he was remitted from the said office, 1624, & dismissed ye congregation to go thither, where in after years, he ended his dayes. In the time of his Service much trouble attended that State and People within and without This is the so-called minute of the church, and yet every statement is contrary to the facts in the case. Mr. Jacob did not serve the church eight years, but only six years; he did not go to Virginia in 1624, but in 1622; and he did not die in Virginia, but he returned to England in 1624, and died there in April or May of that year, and was buried from St. Andrew Hubbard’s Parish, Borough of Canterbury. All of this is found in the last will and testament of Henry Jacob, which may he consulted at Somerset House, London. The will was probated by his wife, Sarah Jacob. From the Gould Kiffin Manuscript, of 1860, the following is taken: 1640.3rd. Mo: The Church became two by mutuall consent half being with Mr. P. Barebone, & ye other halfe with Mr. H. Jessey. Mr. Richard Blunt with him being convinced of Baptism yt ought to be by dipping in ye body into ye water, resembling Burial and rising again. 2 Corinthians 2:12, Romans 6:4 had sober conference about in ye Church, & then with some of the forenamed who also were so convinced; and after prayer & conference about their so enjoying it, none having then so practiced it in England to professed Believers & having heard that some in ye Netherlands had so practiced they agreed and sent over Mr. Richard Blunt (who understood Dutch) with letters of Commendation, and who was kindly received then; and returned with letters from them Jo: Batte & Teacher there and from that Church to suoh as sent him. They proceed therein, viz. Those persons that were persuaded Baptism should be by dipping ye body had met in two Companies, and did intend so to meet after this, all those agreed to proceed alike togeather And then manifesting not any formal words (A Covenant) Wch word was scrupled by some of them, but by mutual desires each Testified: Those two Companies did set apart one to Baptize the rest; so it was solemnly performed by them. Mr. Blunt baptized Mr. Blacklock yt was a teacher amongst them and Mr. Blunt being baptized, he and Mr. Blacklock baptized ye rest of their friends that were so minded, and many being added to them, they increased much. Upon these eleven words "none having then so practiced it in England to professed Believers" treatises have been written to prove that the English Baptists did not practice immersion before 1641. If his document were genuine it would prove no such fact. All that could be claimed for it is, that so far as the writer knows, there had been no practice of believers’ immersion previous to that date. The document does not say they received baptism in Holland from Batte, but that they received letters and Blunt baptized Blacklock and Blacklock baptized Blunt and they baptized the rest. All this took place in England and not in Holland. In 1850 Charles H. Spurgeon did not know that any one in England practiced immersion. It was a surprise and joy to him to find that there were in England, those whose existence he had not anticipated, who observed the New Testament teaching in regard to baptism. He proceeded to become one of than, and soon filled the world with his fame (Spurgeon, Sermon on God’s Pupil. Psalms 71:17). Because a certain man, who was not a Baptist, did not know of the practice of believers’ immersion in 1640, no more proves that such a baptism was not practiced than the want of knowledge in 1850, on Spurgeon’s part proved that no believers then immersed in England. Besides they had facilities of information in 1850 far beyond what they had in 1640. But Crosby leaves out these words altogether. If these words were in the Kiffin Manuscript then he deliberately falsified the record to suit his purpose and left out the most important words in the manuscript. He did this with the full knowledge of the fact that he had loaned this manuscript to Mr. Neal, who in several instances quoted from it, and could easily have exposed Crosby. Crosby stands above reproach in candor and honesty. Whoever compiled the Gould manuscripts, repeatedly, in the thirty documents, recorded these eleven words in connection with documents which do not naturally mention baptism in any form. It was a pet phrase of the compiler of the Gould Kiffin Manuscript. how did these words get into the Gould Kiffin Manuscript? No.18 of the Gould collection is an example of how the compiler made use of these words. Effort has been made to prove that the Gould collection was made by Edward Bampfield, but this is a failure since this number was written after Bampfleld was dead, and his autobiography is mentioned. He died in 1683. This collector believed that the Baptists obtained immersion from somewhere, so he puts it in all of the documents. Therefore we read in No. 18: An account of ye methods taken by ye Baptists to obtain a proper administrator of Baptism by Imersion, when that practice had long been disused, yt then was no one who had been so baptized to be found. The same statement is found in document No.4. How did these statements get into the Gould Kiffin Manuscript? They are not in Crosby’s edition. They are in a number of the documents in the Gould collection. There is not a single instance known in this period, where a Baptist church practiced sprinkling, or where any Baptist church changed its practice. Fortunately it is not necessary to turn to a confused and misleading manuscript for an account of the organization of the Particular Baptist Churches. Hanserd Knollys was one of the principal actors of those times, and he gives an account of their organization. He rejected infant baptism in 1631 (John Lewis, Appendix to the History of the Anabaptists. Rawlinson MSS. CCCCIX, 62), and probably became a Baptist in the same year (Kiffin, Life and Death of Hanserd Knollys, 47. London, 1812). He tells in simple language (A Moderate Answer unto Dr. Baswick’s Book. London, 1645), the story of the planting of these churches in the days of persecution before 1641. He relates: I shall now take the liberty to declare, what I know by mine own experience to be the practice of some Churches of God in this City. That so far both the Dr. and the Reader may judge how near the saints who walk in the fellowship of the Gospell, do come to their practice, to those Apostolicall rules and practice propounded by the Dr. as God’s method in gathering churches, and admitting Members. I say that I know by mine own experience (having walked with them), that they were thus gathered; viz. Some godly and learned men of approved gifts and abilities for the Ministry, being driven out of the Coutries where they lived by the persecution of the Prelates, came to sojourn in this great City, and preached the word of God both publicly and from house to house, and daily in the Temple, and in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ; and some of them having dwelt in their own hired houses, and received all that came unto them, preached the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ. And when many sinners were converted by the preaching of the Gospel, some of them believers consorted with them, and of professors a great many, and of the chief women not a few. And the condition which those Preachers, both publicly and privately propounded to the people, unto whom they preached, upon which they were to be admitted into the Church was by Faith, Repentance, and Baptism, and none other. And whosoever (poor as well as rich, bond as well as free, servants as well as Masters), did make a profession of their Faith in Jesus Christ, and would be baptized with water, in the Name of the Father, Sonne. and Holy Spirit, were admitted Members of the Church: but such as did not believe, and would not be baptized, they would not admit into Church communion. This hath been the practice of some Churches of God in this City, without urging or making any particular covenant with Members upon admittance, which I desire may be examined by the Scripture cited in the Margent, and when compared with the Doctor’s three conclusions from the same Scriptures, whereby it may appear to the judicious Reader, how near the Churches some of them come to the practice of the Apostles rules, and practice of the primitive churches, both in gathering and admitting members. This is a rational, genuine, straightforward account of the organization of the Particular Baptist churches. The Independent church, of which Henry Jacob was the first pastor and of which Mr. Lathrop was the second, was often troubled on the subject of immersion. In 1638, during the pastorate of Mr. Lathrop, there was a division in the church on the subject of dipping, and a Baptist church was organized under the pastorate of John Spilsbury. This church of Spilsbury’s practiced dipping. Spilsbury immersed Sam Eaton between the dates of April 14, 1634, and May 5, 1636. Eaton also became a preacher and immersed others. This information was given by John Taylor, who put in rhyme as follows: Also one Spilsbury rose up of late, (Who doth or did dwell over Alderagate) He rebaptiz’d in Anabaptist fashion One Eaton (of the new found separation) A zealous button maker, grave and wise, And gave him orders others to baptize: He was so apt to learn that in one day, He’d Do’t as well as Spilsbury weigh’d Hay. This true Hay-lay man to the Bank side came And there likewise baptized an impure dame. This book was written, in 1638 (Tayic; A Swarme of Sectaries, and Schismatiques). It is interesting to note Spilsbury’s idea of immersion. He says: As is recorded by the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures of God; even so it is the judgment of the most and best learned in the land, so far as I have seen, or can see by any of their writings. As in all of the common dictionaries, which with one joint consent affirm, that the word baptize or baptizo, being the original word, signifies to dip, wash, to plunge one into the water though some please to mock and deride, by calling it a new fangled way, and what they please. Indeed it is a new found way, in opposition to an old grown error; and so it is a new thing to such, as the Apostles doctrine was to the Athenians (Spilsbury, A Treatise concerning the Lawful Subject of Baptism. London, 1653). In regard to the enemies calling baptism "a new fangled way," Spilsbury remarks: "Yet truth was before error." He evidently thought immersion was the old way. The Lathrop church had continual trouble on dipping. A book called "To Zion’s Virgins," was written by an ancient member of the congregation. An edition was printed in 1644, but it had been in use for several years and was in fact a Catechism. The date can be approximated. It was written after September 18, 1634, for it declared that Mr. Lathrop was now pastor in America. It was before 1637 when Mr. Jessey was called as pastor, for the church was engaged in prayer for a pastor. The date was then. between 1634 and 1637. The church at that date had already experienced disturbances on the subject of believers’ immersion. The writer exhorts the members that they avoid "that that makes divison and continues: I desire to manifest in defense of the Baptisme and forme we have received, not being easily moved, but as Christ will more manifest himself, which I cannot conceive to bee in the dipping of the head, the creature going in and out of the wateer, the forme of baptism doth more or lesse hold forth Christ. And it is a sad thing that the citizens of Zion, should have their children born foreigners and not to be baptized, &c. Again: Then sayes such as be Called Anabaptists, &c. This answer is given in part: Wherefore let such as deny infants baptisme, as goe into the water and dip down the head and come out to show death and buriall, take heede they take not the name of the Lord in vaine, more especially such as have received baptisme in their infancy, This ancient member of the Independent church testifies directly to the immersion of believers, and the date was before 1637. Spilsbury immersed Eaton; and Eaton immersed others. Moreover Eaten had been a member of Lathrop’s church, and so Spilsbury did not recognize the baptism administered by Lathrop. The date of the baptism of Lathrop can be approximately fixed by the records of the High Court of Commission. Eaton died in prison August 25, 1639 (Calendar of State Papers, CCCCXXVII. 107). He was in jail from May 5, 1636, continuously to his death, therefore he was immersed before 1636; and he was likewise a preacher and practiced immersion before that date, The Court Records show that April 29, 1632, he was a member of Lathrop’s church. He continued in jail until April 24, 1684, when he was released from prison under the same bond that Lathrop was (Ibid., CCLXI. 182). After that date and before May 5, 1636, he joined the Baptist church and was dipped by Spilsbury. At a later date he was again cast into prison (Ibid., CCCXXIV. 18), and while in prison he attacked the baptism of the Churchmen (Ibid., CCCCVL 64). He died on Sunday, August 25, 1689 (ibid., C(YCCXXXWL 107), and not less than two hundred persons accompanied the corpse to the grave. There was another secession from the Jacob church in 1638, when William Kiffin and five others united with the church of Spilsbury. (Ivimey, The Life of William Kiffin, 16, London 1883). Of this event Goadby says: Five years after the above date (i.e. 1638), a further secession from the original church strengthened their hands. Among the seceders were William Kiffin and Thomas Wilson. Kiffin, to whose pen we are endebted for the account of the origin of the first Calvinistic Baptist church of England, thus speaks of the reasons which led him to join Mr. Spilsbury-- I used all of my endeavors, by converse with men as were able, also by diligently searching the Scriptures, with earnest desire to God that I might be directed in a right way of worship; and, after some time, concluded that the safest way was to follow the footsteps of the flock, namely, that order laid down by Christ and his Apostles, and practiced by the primitive Christians in their time, Which I found to be, after conversion they were baptized, added to the church, and continued in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and breaking of bread and prayers (Goadby ByePaths in Baptist History 851). Spilsbury was in the practice of immersion; but Kiffin was more strict in his views than was his pastor. Spilsbury permitted pulpit affiliation; Kiffin would have none of it. He believed that only an immersed man should occupy a Baptist pulpit. Crosby gives this account of Kiffin: He was first of an Independent congregation, and called to the ministry among them; was one of them who were concerned in the conferences held in the congregation of Mr. Henry Jessey: by which Mr. Jessey and a greater part of the congregation became proselytes to the opinions of the Baptists. He joined himself to the congregation of Mr. John Spilsbury, but a difference arising about permitting persons to preach amongst them that had not been baptized by immersion, they parted by consent (Crosby, History of the English Baptists, III. 3, 4). Kiffin, in the year 1639, or 1640, withdrew from the church of Spilsbury and organized the Devonshire Baptist Church, of London, on a strict immersion line. This honored church has continued to this day. After the organization of the church under Spilsbury, the subject of dipping still troubled the Independent church of Lathrop. He removed to America in 1634 with a part of his church, which brought on a great debate on baptism in this country. We are not yet done with this church of Jacob’s for one of its most distinguished pastors, Rev. Henry Jessey, became a Baptist. He was one of the most noted men of his times. He was born September 3, 1601, entered Cambridge University in 1622, and became a minister in 1626, and became pastor of the Jacob church in 1637. The frequent debates on baptism soon unsettled his mind. In 1642 be freely declared to the church his convictions on the subject of dipping, and proposed that those baptized in the church thereafter he baptized by that form. In 1644 he held frequent debates on the subject of infant baptism, and in June, 1645, he was baptized by Hanserd Knollys. This Independent church, organized by Jacob, had a most wonderful record for making Baptists, and encouraging the practice of dipping. There were repeated secessions from it on that account. Out of it came a number of the great leaders of the Particular Baptists, all of whom were in the practice of dipping. Henry Jessey received his baptism from Hanserd Knollys, who had been a Baptist since 1631. Eaton was immersed by John Spilsbury, and Eaton in turn dipped others. William Kiffin was the strictest of them all and would not permit those who had not been immersed to preach in Baptist pulpits. Even those who emigrated to America precipitated a great debate on the subject of dipping. There was another Independent church which at least had two distinguished pastors who were Baptists. It was organized by Mr. Hubbard, about the year 1621. He was a Pedobaptist minister, but the immediate successors in the pastorate were Baptists. The church worshipped at Deadman’s Place, and contained many Baptists in its membership. It is probable that by 1640 a majority of its members were Baptists and had been immersed. They were arrested in January, 1640, and brought before the House of Lords. So greatly did Baptist sentiment prevail among them that they were called Anabaptists (Journal of the House of Lords, IV. 133). There were more than sixty-six of them. The House of Lords, on the 16th of January, reprimanded them. This action on the part of the House of Lords directed much sympathy to the church. Some of the persons before the House of Lords on this occasion signed the great Confession of Faith of 1643. Just when John Canne became minister is not known certainly, but he resigned and went to Holland in 1633. He was in Amsterdam in 1634, at which time he wrote his celebrated book: "The Necessity of Separation," which had a wide circulation with important results. At that time he was an Anabaptist (Brereton, Travels, 65). Stovell makes it perfectly plain that while pastor of the Hubbard church he was a Baptist. He was still, in 1638, in Amsterdam and heavily fined for his activities (Evans, Early English Baptists, II. 108). He probably returned in that year to London, where he labored with success. He went, in 1640, larger liberty being granted of preaching, to Bristol, where he preached in public places, at other times in the open air, and founded a church. Being a Baptist, he was described as a "baptized man," meaning an immersed man. Already, in 164o a Baptist was known as an immersed man. The Broadmead Records give an account of his arrival and work in that city. The Records say: At this juncture of time (1640) the providence of God brought to this city one Mr. Canne, a baptized man; and it was this Mr. Canne that made notes and references upon the Bible. He was a man very eminent in his day of godliness, and for reformation in religion, having great understanding in the way of the Lord (Broadmead Records. 18, 19). Mr. Canne attempted to preach in a suburb of the city and a wealthy woman placed some obstructions in his way. The Broadmead Records say: The obstruction was by a very godly great woman, that dwelt In that place who was somewhat severe in the profession of what she knew, hearing that he was a baptized man, by them called Anabaptists, which was to some sufficient cause of prejudice, because the truth of believers’ baptism had been for a long time buried, yea, for a long time by popish inventions, and their sprinkling brought in room thereof. And (this prejudice existed) by reason (that) persons in the practice of that truth by baptism were by some rendered very obnoxious; because, about one hundred years before, some beyond sea, in Germany, that held that truth of believers’ baptism, did, as some say, some very singular actions; of whom we can have no true account what they were but by their enemies; for none but such in any history have made any relation or narrative of them (ibid., 19, 20). Canne, in 1640, was a baptized man, such a man was called an Anabaptist, and there is no record that any time since his conversion he had changed his mind on the subject of baptism. The third pastor of the Hubbard church was Samuel Howe, a Baptist He died about 1640, while pastor of the church. He had been pastor about seven years. He was much lamented. He was persecuted, denied Christian burial, and was finally interred at Agnes-la-cleer. He wrote a famous book, called Howe’s Sufficiency of the Spirit’s Teaching. His contemporaries bore high praise to his ability and zeal for his work. It was Samuel Howe who greatly impressed Roger Williams; and it was probably from Howe that Williams learned some of his lessons of soul liberty and dipping in. baptism (Howe, Sermon, xii. xiii). It has been shown that Taylor aid Spilsbury practiced dipping. He bears the same testimony to Howe. Taylor says the Baptists of England date back to the "reign of Henry 8," and affirms that "in these, our days, the said Anabaptisticall sect is exceeding rife, for they do swarm here and there without fear of either God or man, law or order" (Taylor, A Cluster of Coxcombes. London, 1642). Here follows the relation of the preaching cobler, Sam Howe: This reverend translating brother (Howe) Puts both his hands unto the spiritual-plow, And the nag’s head, near the Coleman-Street, A most pure crew of Brethren there did meet, Where their devotions were so strong and ample, To turn a sinful Tavern to a Temple, They banished Bacchus then, and some small space The drawers and the Bar-boy had some grace (Taylor, A Swarme of Sectaries, 8). Taylor makes Howe a Baptist and a dipper. He represents him in the title page standing in a tub filled with water as a pulpit. and marks the picture "Sam How." This was in 1638. The above book of Taylor’s was answered by Henry Walker. Of the tub in which Howe was standing, Walker says: Of the picture in the title of his book. I did first conceive that fellow in the tub to be John Taylor the Poet, having stayed so long with the Bishop of Canterbury, until at last he saw one vessel of sack drawn dry, and then break out the head of the tub tumble in and fallen asleep was almost stilled in the lees; crying to Sam the vinter’s boy in the Tower. to help him; crying Sam Howe come and help me out, and all the people flocked about him. See how he stands like a drowned mouse (Henry Walker, An Answer to a foolish Pamphlet entitled a Swarme of Sectaries end Schismaticks, 3, 4. London, 1641). Taylor thereupon reads a lecture and pronounces Walker also an Anabaptist. He likewise represents Walker as standing in a tub and makes him an Anabaptist dipper (Taylor, A seasonable Lecture). Thus were John Canne and Samuel Howe, the pastors of this Independent church, both practicing dipping. Both of these were Baptists. Two other parties connected with this church, Thomas Gunn and John Webb, were Baptists, who signed the Confession of Faith of 1643. Thus can the opinions of the most of the Baptists be accounted for. There is yet another Baptist who signed the Confession of Faith of 1643, for whose practice we can give an account His name was Paul Hobson. Of him Ivimey says: He is, mentioned among the rejected ministers, Dr. Calamy supposed he was chaplain of Eaton College, and that he had a place of command in the army; but observes, that if he had conformed afterwards it would have made some atonement, as was the case in other instances. In addition to these circumstances, we find that he was engaged as early as 1639, as one of the chief promoters of founding a Baptist church in London, He was one of the pastors who signed the Confession of Faith of the seven churches in London in 1644 (Ivimey, History of the English Baptists, I.88). The above statements in regard to Paul Hobson are confirmed by Edwards (Edwards, Gangrena, I. 33), who was a contemporary. Edwards wrote in 1645, and he says that Hobson had been a tailor, but was now in the army. He had been a great while a Baptist preacher. An Anabaptist in the mouth of Edwards was always one who immersed. Thomas Kilcop was another of the Baptists who signed the Confession of Faith of 1643. He had long been a Baptist minister. when Praise God Barbon. in 1641, attacked the Baptists he was answered by Edward Barber for the General Baptists; and by Thomas Kilcop for the Particular Baptists. This Barbon had been a member of the church of Jacob, and had become pastor of an Independent organization of his own. He was a rabid Pedobaptist, and is variously described as a leather seller and a politician. He became a distinguished member of the Long Parliament and his Parliament was called the Praise God Barbon Parliament, He was born, probably, in 1596, and died in 1679. Like many of the members of Jacob’s church, he became a Baptist The date we do not know, but in the "Declaration" of the Baptists, issued in 1654, twenty-two names signified to it as "of that church which walks with Mr. Barbon" (National Dictionary, III. 151). The book of Kilcop appeared early in 1641. On the subject of immersion, he said: By baptism is meant the baptism of water, John 8:22, John 8:28. Baptism is a Greek word, and most properly signifies dipping In English, and therefore the parties baptized are said to be baptized not at but in Jordan, Mark 1:5, Mark 1:9-10, and In Aenon, John 3:23, Acts 8: 88, 89. Matthew 3:16. Then note that the baptizing of dipping belongs to Christ’s disciples, and none else (Kilcop, A Short Treatise of Baptisme. London, 1641). There is no intimation that he ever recognized any other form of baptism save immersion. on the subject of succession he held the views of the other Particular Baptists of his times. Those who have read the literature of the seventeenth century cannot fail to have been impressed with its harsh controversial tone. This is true on well nigh all subjects. The remark especially applies to those who wrote on the form and subjects of baptism. The harshest of the opponents of the Baptists were the Presbyterians. They had separated more widely from the New Testament practice, and they felt called upon to justify the acts of the Westminster Assembly; and their radical changes in the fundamental law of England in enacting affusion. Naturally their most determined opponents were the Baptists. What the Presbyterians lacked in argument they made up in assertion. They never tired. of calling the Baptist practice of dipping "new fangled, a novelty of recent occurrence, and soured leaven." An illustration could be secured from almost any year of the century. For example, Richard Burthogge, A. D., 1684, says of the Baptists: "Your opinion is but a novelty" (Burthogge, An Argument for Infant Baptism, 122). Richard Baxter, A. D. 1670, says: "These and many more absurdities follow upon this new conceit" (Baxter, The Cure of Church Divisions, 49). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 21: 01.1.21. CHAPTER 17 CONTINUED ======================================================================== The word "new," however, in the mouth of writers of the period was a relative term and meant from one to sixteen hundred years. In the main they meant to deny the affirmation of the Baptists that immersion was "the good old way" and had the mark of "antiquity upon it" (Watts, A Scribe, Pharisee and Hypocrite, iv. London, 1657). Samuel Richardson is a good witness. He answered Daniel Featley, in the year 1645, who had affirmed that the Baptists were new. Richardson says: The Papists pretend antiquity, and brag of their universality against the truth. We know error is ancient; and spreading: but truth was before error, and baptizing by dipping was before baptizing by sprinkling; he may name to us as many as he pleaseth, but he must tell us where it is written in the Scripture, as we may read it, before we shall believe them (Richardson, Some Brief Considerations, 14). William Allen, another Baptist, writing in 1655, says to call it "new baptism," as the enemies call it, is to "miscall it, being indeed the old way of baptizing" (William Allen, An Answer to J.G., his XL Queries, 72). Thomas Collier, a famous Baptist, A. D., 1651, affirms that dipping was the old practice. He says: Sir, you are maliciously mistaken, and the ignorance is in yourself in calling them Anabaptists, for the practicing baptism, according to the Scripture, that grieve you it seems; but you have learnt a new way, both for matter and manner, babies instead of believers; for manner, sprinkling at the holy font, instead of baptizing in a river: you are loth to go in with your long gowns, you have found a better way than ever was prescribed or practiced; who now sir are the ignoramuses (Collier, Pulpit Guard Routed, 89). Hanserd Knollys, in answer to John Saltmarsh, a Quaker, who affirmed that immersion was new (Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 16. London, 1646), declares that immersion is not new. He says: Paul’s doctrine was called new, although he preached Jesus and the resurrection Acts 17:19. Also when our Saviour preached with authority, and confirmed his doctrine with miracles, they questioned among themselves saying, What new thing is this? What new doctrine is this? (Knollys, The Shining of a Flaming Fire in Zion, or a Clear Answer to 13 exceptions, against the ground of the New Baptism; so-called in Mr. Saltmarsh’. Book, 1. London, 1646). John Tombes answered the charge of Mr. Marshall, that he was "itching after new opinions." Of this, Mr. Tombes says: As for Master Marshall’s reasons. they are not convincing to me, nor is the holding of rebaptization such a new opinion as he would make it (Tombes, An Apology or Plea for the two Treatises, 58. London, 1646). The announcement from a Baptist that immersion was the good old way, and as ancient as the times of the Apostles, brought a violent outbreak from Jeffrey Watts. He says: Only, I wonder at the iron brow, and brazen face of novel impudence, and new light, that whereas it is every seventh day at least, in its chimney house conventicles, prating against the old, laudable, and ancient practices of this our, and other Reformed Churches, it dares to pretend to antiquity (so contradicting itself) and glory of it in this point of their immerging and dipping, (calling it the old way), who scorn it, and scoff at the same, and all old light, in their other tenets and opinions (Watts, A Scribe, Pharisee and Hypocrite, v) The Baptists claimed to have "the good old way" when they practiced immersion; Watts calls it "a new way" since he affirmed that immersion was not taught in the New Testament. He mentioned two things the Baptists did which he pronounced new. The first was that in 1642 or 1648, they immersed nude women in the rivers. "I hope," said he, "you see, that your dipping of women in their clothes, is a new business in the church" (Ibid., 19). He takes up much time in elucidating the old slander. The second thing he affirms about dipping is that it is not found in the Scriptures. He said that it had been of long continuance in England and gives many examples, and then he affirms that it is new among Baptists, since they had practiced it only since 1524. He says: And thus (as I said) in your purest and perfected Western churches, for these five or sir hundred years last past (I think, I am rather within, than without my compass) there have been none dipped or immerged, no not in the old, once good way of the former times, publicly, authoritatively nay scarce presumptuously; until those Africans (I will not say monsters) new men; for (Africa semper aliquid aportat nove) who were your progenitors and predecessors, the first dippers and immergers in the West (the very place where they are you arose), is another argument to prove their and your business of dipping, a novelty, a new thing, as coming from Africa originally. I say until those Africans new men, those Egyptian frogs, that love to be paddling and dipping in rivers and ponds, began to spread themselves and slip up and down to bring forth rivers and ponds (as the rivers and ponds brought forth them) or rather to bring their perverts to ponds and rivers to be baptized. The which bold and presumptuous attempt, against the constant and uniform custom of the Western Church, began in the year 1524, and so is not above an hundred and two and thirty years since, which is time enough, and little enough to make it novelty in comparison of antiquity (Watts, A scribe, 63). According to Watt, the Baptists of England had been in the practice of immersion one hundred and thirty-two years. John Goodwin took precisely the same view. He called the immersions of the Baptists new. He said it had only been in existence among Baptists since the time of Nicholas Storch. His words are: That that was a case of necessity, wherein Nicholas Storch (with his three comrades) in Germany about the year 1521, or whoever he was that first, himself being in his own judgment and conscience unbaptized, presumed to baptize others after that exotique mode in this nation (Goodwin, Water Dipping no Firm Footing for Church Communion, 40. London, l653). The Particular Baptists, in 1643, prepared a Confession of Faith, which was published the following year. The XL Article of the Confession of Faith of those churches which "are commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists" is as follows: That the way and manner of dispensing this ordinance Is dipping or plunging the body under water; it being a sign, must answer the thing signified, which is, that interest the Saints have in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ: and that as certainly as the body is buried under water, and rises again, so certainly shall the bodies of the saints be risen by the power of Christ in the day of the resurrection, to reigne with Christ. There is a note appended, as follows: The word baptizo signifies to dip or plunge yet so as convenient garments be both upon the administrator and subject, with all modesty Perhaps in a Confession of Faith, it would be impossible to state the practice of the Baptists more plainly. It has been asserted that this Confession of 1643, was the declaration of their change of doctrine on the subject; and that this Confession of Faith was the first Baptist document which affirmed immersion. As a matter of fact, according to all psychological principles and all history, this Particular Baptist Confession, of 1643, was simply the expression of the doctrines this body of Baptists had held all of the time. If one will read the Confession he will find that not only did the Baptists not change their doctrines, but they further declared that they had long groaned under persecution; and that only from the meeting of the Long Parliament, in 1640, had they had any redress. All of this and more is stated in Article L, which is as follows; And if God should provide such a mercy for us, as to incline the magistrates hearts so far as to tender our consciences, as that we might be protected by them from wrong injury, oppression and molestation, which long we have formerly groaned under by the tyranny and oppression of the Prelatical Hierarchy, which God through his mercy hath made this present King and Parliament wonderfully honorable, as an instrument in his hand, to threw down and we thereby have had more breathing time, we shall, we hope. look at it as a mercy beyond our expectation and conceive ourselves further engaged for ever to bless God for it. They looked into the future as they had a retrospect of the past. The persecutions of the past, they say in Article LI, inspired them with the courage for the future. They expressed themselves as willing to give up all and that they did not count their lives dear that they might finish their course with joy. They had endured persecution in the past, they were willing to suffer affliction in the future. The God of our fathers had been true to us in the past he will not forsake us now. This is a heroic statement. It is impossible to conceive that men of a mould like this would change their minds on a fundamental doctrine over night. Professor J. B. Thomas, late Professor of Church History, in Newton Theological Institution, concisely states the argument, when he says: Let it be noted that the first edition of "the Confession of the Seven Churches" was issued in 1643, affirming immersion to be the only true baptism. Now Baillie, a jealous and sagacious contemporary witness, affirms that this Confession expressed the already matured faith of forty-six churches "as I take it, in and about London." Featley an important figure in this discussion, reckoned them, as I remember, at fifty-.two, and Neal distinctly affirms that there were at the date, "54 congregations of English Baptists in England who confined Baptism to dipping," their illiterate preachers going about the country, and "making proselytes of all who would submit to their immersion." We are required then to believe, either that one congregation of "immersers" organized in 1641, there had grown this great company in two years, or that in the same time fifty or more existing Baptist congregations had simultaneously repudiated a custom to which they were traditionally attached and which was in universal use, in behalf of another custom which nobody among them had ever practiced or even heard of: they without any newly assigned or intelligent motive, suddenly ceased wholly to do what they had always and uniformly been accustomed to, and began exclusively to do what they had never done at all. So toppling a hypothesis surely needs massive support. I am not persuaded that this support has been furnished. I recognize no important evidence that was not apparently accessible to Crosby in his day, and see no satisfactory reason for abandoning his opinion that immersion in England long preceded the date named by Neal, and now (that is in 1643) reaffirmed (Western Recorder, December 17, 1896). The Confession of Faith was equally clear on the proper administrator of baptism. The view of Spilsbury prevailed. He held that if baptism was lost, any disciple could begin it again, and quoted John the Baptist in proof of his position. They declared it was not necessary to send anywhere for an administrator. Article XLI is as follows: The person designed by Christ to dispense baptism, the Scriptures hold forth to be a disciple, or a person extraordinarily sent, the commission enjoining the administration, being given to them who were considered disciples, being men able to preach the Gospel. The Baptists of 1643 did not have an "agent extraordinarily sent" to Holland to obtain baptism. They believed in and practiced no such thing. The Confession of Faith was made by the representatives of seven churches and was signed by the following persons: William Kiffin, Thomas Patience, John Spilsbury, George Tipping, Samuel Richardson, Thomas Skippard, Thomas Munday, Thomas Gunn, John Mabhatt, John Webb, Thomas Kilcop, Paul Hobson, Thomas Goare, Joseph Phelpes and Edward Heath. The Confession of Faith was clear and orthodox enough to allay suspicion, and ought to have saved the Baptists from further annoyance and persecution, The impartial Masson says of it: In spite of much persecution continued even after the Long Parliament met, the Baptists of these congregations propagated their opinions with such zeal that by 1644 the sect had obtained considerably larger dimensions. In that year they counted seven leading congregations in London, and forty seven in the rest of England, besides which they had many adherents in the army. Although all sorts of impieties were attributed to them on hearsay, they differed in reality from the Independents mainly on the subject of baptism. They objected to the baptism of infants, and they thought immersion or dipping under water the proper mode of baptism; except in these points and what they might involve they were substantially at one with the Congregationalists. This they made clear by the publication, in 1644, of a Confession of their Faith in 52 Articles, a document which, by its orthodoxy in all essential matters shamed the more candid of their opponents (Masson, The Life of John Milton, II. 585). Their adversaries took no such view of the Confession of Faith. They could not be satisfied or induced to give the Baptists credit for common honesty. It was greeted by an outburst of passion from the Pedobaptist world. Dr. Featley, who wrote with no small prejudice, says: If we give credit to this Confession, and the preface thereof, those who among us are branded with that title, are neither heretics nor schismatics, but tender hearted Christians, upon whom, through false suggestions, the hand of authority fell heavily whilst the hierarchy stood; for they neither teach free will, nor falling from grace, with the Arminians; nor deny original sin, with the Pelagians, nor disclaim magistracy, with the Jesuites; nor maintain plurality of wives, with the Polygamists: nor community of goods, with the Apostles; nor going naked, with the Adamites; much less ever the mortality of the soul, with Epicures and Psychopannychists (Featley, Dippers Dipt, 177). Nevertheless, the Confession of Faith exerted a powerful and favorable influence for the Baptists. It was orthodox, evangelical and free from objectionable errors. "The Baptists never did anything that more effectually cleared them from the charge of being dangerous heretics, than did this" (Crosby, I., 170). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 22: 01.1.22. CHAPTER 18 A GREAT DEBATE ON BAPTISM ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XVIII A GREAT DEBATE ON BAPTISM THE reign of Charles I, AD 1625-1649, brought almost unlimited disaster upon England. The claim that the king was above law came in with the Stuarts. "He had inherited from his father," says Macaulay, "political theories, and was much disposed to carry them into practice. He was like his father, a zealous Episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had never been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist much better than a Puritan" (Macaulay, History of England, I., 64). Dr. Humphrey Gower, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, accurately stated the contention. He says: We still believe and maintain that kings derive not their titles from the people; but from God. That to him only they are accountable. That it belongs not to subjects, either to create or to censure; but to honor and obey their Sovereign; who comes to be so by a fundamental hereditary Right of Succession; which no religion, no law, no fault or forfeiture, can alter or diminish. Account must be taken of another person who was the most intelligent, unscrupulous, and tyrannical enemy that the Baptists of England ever had. Abbot, at the beginning of the reign, was Archbishop of Canterbury; but he was to be succeeded by William Laud the growing Churchman of the times. Macaulay says of him: Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed farthest from the principles of the Reformation, and drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holy days, vigils, and sacred places, his ill-concealed dislike for the marriage of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even if he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his ends. But his understanding was narrow, and his commerce with the world had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel his own dignity, slow to sympathize with the suffering of others, and prone to the error, common in superstitious men, of making his own peevish and malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute inspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotions of private families could not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigor inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church. which festered in innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and his order, the bishops of several extensive dioceses were able to report that not a single dissenter was to he found within his jurisdiction (Macaulay, I. 68). By persecution and imprisonment Laud was to press his views till the whole country was brought into a state of insurrection and the King and Laud were both to lose their lives in the conflict. Every year, in the former reign, marked the growth of the Baptists in England. This is likewise true of this reign. "The prevalence of Baptist principles," says Evans, "and the moral heroism of many who held them in the past reign, have already been noticed, yet only glimpses of their organization can be gathered from the records of those times. Their existence is certain, but beyond this we can scarcely affirm" (Evans, Early English Baptists, II. 20). There are more instances than Evans supposed (Evans, II. 54). The names of some of the Baptist churches are: Ashford, Maidstone, Biddenden and Eythorne, and probably others in Kent (Taylor, History of the General Baptists, I. 281, 283); in London there were probably several; Lincoln, Sarum, Coventry, Tiverton (Amsterdam Library, No.1372); Newgate, Stoney Stratford (Evans, II. 54); Amersham, in Buckinghamshire (Taylor, I. 96); and certainly one in Southwark. Dr. Angus adds the following churches to this list: Braintree, Sutton, Warrington, Crowle and Epworth, Bridgewater, Oxford and Sadmore. Here are the names of twenty-one General Baptist churches in existence ill 1626. In 1683 we can add the following churches: King, Stanley, Newcastle, Kilmington (Devonshire), Bedford, Cirencester, Commercial Street (London), Dorchester and Hamsterly. Such is the statement of Dr. Angus. A small Baptist church was supposed to have been organized in Olchon, Wales, in this year (Thomas, History of the Baptists in Wales, 3). Early in his reign Laud gave the Baptists a taste of his cruelty. Three of their most popular ministers in Kent, Thomas Brewer, Turner and Fenner were arrested and placed in prison, where Brewer remained no less than fourteen years. Two years later, 1627, Laud mentions to the King these persons in prison and says: I must give your Majesty to understand, that at about Ashford, in Kent, the Separatists continue to hold their conventicles, notwithstanding the examination of so many of them as have been discovered. They are all of the poorer sort, and very simple, so that I am utterly to seek what to do with them (History of the Troubles and Trials of William Laud. Written by himself, 535). The King endorsed the above with his own hand and wrote: "Keep these particular persons fast, until you think what to do with the rest." The malignant hatred of the Baptists almost surpasses belief. "If I hate any," says a courtier of these times, "it is those schismatics that puzzle the sweet peace of the church; so that I could be content to see an Anabaptist go to hell on a Brownist’s back" (Howell, Letters, 270). Search was everywhere made for them, Complaint was made, A.D. 1631, that: All God’s true children had continual cause of lamentation and fear, In respect of the daily growing and far spreading of the false and blasphemous tenets of the Anabaptists against God’s grace and providence, against the godliest assurance and perseverance, and against the merits of Christ himself (Life of Sir D’ Ewes, II. 64). There were in London alone eleven congregations. Bishop Hall writing to Archbishop Laud, June 11, 1631, says: I was bold last week to give your lordship information of a busy and ignorant schismatic lurking in London; since which time, I hear to my grief, that there are eleven several congregations (as they call them) of Separatists about the city, furnished with their idle-pretended pastors, who meet together in brew houses and such other meet places of resort every Sunday (Letter in State Paper Office). Repeated inquiries revealed the presence of the Baptists throughout the kingdom. Many of them were in prison and others vehemently suspected. Credible information was given that there were present in London and other parts Baptists who refuse on Sundays and other festival days to come to their parish churches, but meet together in great numbers on such days, and at other times, and in private houses, and places, and there keep conventicles and exercises of religion, by the laws of this realm prohibited. For remedy whereof, taking with him a constable and such other assistance as he shall think meet, he is to enter into any house where such private conventicles are held, and search for such sectaries, as also for unlawful and unlicensed books and papers; and such persons, papers, and books so found, to bring forthwith before the writers to be dealt with as shall he thought fit (Calendar of State Papers, Febry 20, 1635-1636. Lambeth, CCCXIV. 242, 243). That the Baptists of 1641 were hated and persecuted cannot be doubted. They were called "devilish and damnable." it is refreshing in the midst of all of this scandal to find one high authority who spoke well of them. Lord Robert Brooke says: I will not, I cannot, take on me to defend that men usually call Anabaptism: Yet, I conceive that sect is twofold: Some of them hold free will; community of all things; deny magistracy; and refuse to baptize their children. Truly such are heretics (or Atheists) that I question whether any divine should honor them so much as to dispute with them, much rather sure should Alexander’s sword determine here, as of old the Gordian knot, where it requires this motto, Qusa solvere no possum, dissecabo. There is another sort of them, who only deny baptism to their children, till they come to years are of discretion; and then they baptize them but in other things they agree with the Church of England. Truly these men are much to he pitied; and I could heartily wish, that before they be stigmatized with the opprobious brand of schismatic, the truth might be cleared to them. For I conceive, to those that hold we may go farther than Scripture, for doctrine or discipline, it may be very easy to err in this point in hand; since the Scripture seems not to have clearly determined this particular (Lord Robert Brooke, A Discourse opening the Nature of the Episcopacie, which is Exercised in England, II. 99, 100. London, 1641). There was now a turn for the better. Soon after the convocation of the Long Parliament, early in January, 1640, Archbishop Land was impeached for high treason. Parliament June 24, 1641, put down the High Commission Court of the Star Chamber. With the impeachment and final execution of their greatest enemy in the person of Laud; and the abolishment of the infamous courts which had so sorely pressed them the Baptists appeared in England in incredible numbers. The year 1641 was the year of liberty. Previous to this date they had been hunted and persecuted, and in every way possible they concealed their numbers and meeting places. Now they sprang into publicity with amazing rapidity, they had so many preachers, and won converts with such ease, their baptisms in the rivers were so frequent and so open, their preaching was such a novelty, and their boldness so daring, that their enemies were thrown into consternation. They made mention of the baptizing as a novelty, their doctrine as sour leaven, their pretentions as impudence, and their numbers as nothing less than a public calamity. Heretofore they had suppressed them with the sword, by the stake and the High Commission Court; now as these were abolished, they made up in the fury of their declarations what they had formerly expressed in blood. The enemies of the Baptists literally filled the world with sound. The incredible number of books and pamphlets which were hurled against them was only surpassed by the horrible things said about them. Controversies raged and England was turned into debating clubs. To a complete understanding of the great debate on baptism which began in 1641 it will be necessary to trace the history of the form of baptism from the accession of Charles I. Even the Puritans provided for the baptism of adults. A work for the Wisely Considerate (pp.24, 25), in 1641, has a form "for the administration of the sacrament of baptism." It provides that "the persons of years to be baptized are noted to be such as believe and repent." Provision was made by these Pedobaptists equally for adults and infants. The Church of England everywhere tried to enforce the rite of immersion. The bishops were diligent in rooting out the basins which were substituted in some places instead of the font. The font was for immersion; the basin was used for affusion. The inquiries were for the purpose of obtaining information on any departure front the custom of the Church, and on no point were they more particular than this. The Bishop of London, 1627, inquired concerning the clergy: Whether your minister baptize any children in any basin or other vessel than in the ordinary font, being placed in the church or doth put any basin into it? Concerning the Church he esquires: whether have you in your church or chapel a font of stone set up in the ancient usual place? Like inquiries were made by the Bishop of Exeter, in 1638; the Bishop of Winchester, in 1639; the Bishop of London, in 1640; and the Bishop of Lincoln, in 1641. The activity of the bishops put fonts in nearly all of the church houses in England, and vast numbers of these fonts and baptisteries may be seen to this day in these churches. Take for example the City of Canterbury. The Church of St. George the Martyr has the ancient octagonal font, the basin being upheld by eight small shafts and a thick center one. The Church of St. Magdalene and St. Thomas, the Roman Catholic Church, both have beautiful baptisteries. St. Martin’s Church was the place of the immersion of ten thousand converts at one time. There is an imniense baptistery in St. John’s. In 1636 this baptistery was in ruins and the want of a font in the Cathedral was regarded as a scandal. Bishop Warner presented one to the Church with great ceremony (The Antiquity of Canterbury, by William Sumner. London, 1840), and when it was destroyed in the troublesome times of 1641 it was rebuilt in 1660. Several persons were baptized by immersion in this font from 1660 to 1663 (Archaeology, XI. 146, 147). These fonts were large enough for immersion (Paley, Illustrations of Baptismal Fonts, 31). Samuel Carte says of the fonts of England: "Give me leave to observe, that anciently at least the font was large enough to admit of an adult person being dipped or immersed therein." The bishops of the Church of England stood squarely against the innovation of affusion in the reign of Charles I. They accounted it a bad practice. There are those who mention the practice of dipping in those days. Thomas Blake writing in 1645 relates: I have been an eye witness of many infants dipped and know it to have been the constant practice of many ministers In their places, for many years together (Blake, Infants Baptisms Freed from Antichristianisme, 1,2). Another witness is Walter Craddock who organized in 1638, in Llanvaches, Wales, an Independent Church. Joshua Thomas in his history of the Welsh Baptists says that "the history of this church says that it was composed of Independents and Baptists mixed, but that they united in the communion, and that it had two ministers, and that they were co-pastors, Mr. Wroth an Independent and Mr. William Thomas a Baptist (J. Spinther James, History of the Welsh Baptists). Craddock himself was not a Baptist. On July 21, 1646, he preached before the House of Commons, at St. Margaret’s, Westminister. In that sermon he gives valuable information to the practice of immersion in England. He says: There is now among good people a great deal of strife about baptism; as for divers things, so for the point of dipping, though in some places in England they dip altogether. How shall we end the controversy with those godly people, as many of them are. Look upon the Scripture; and them you shall find bapto (to baptize), it is an ordinance of God, and the use of water in the way of washing for a spiritual end, to resemble some spiritual thing. It is an ordinance of God, but whether dipping or sprinkling, that we must bring the party to the river, or draw the river to him, or to use water at home, whether it must be in head and foot, or be under the water, or the water under him, it is not proved that God laid down an absolute rule for it. Now what shall we do? Conclude on the absolute rule that God hath laid down in Scripture, and judge of the rest according to expediency (Craddock, Sermon, 100). Daniel Featley is also a good witness (Clavis Mystica, 1636). He says: Our font Is always open, or ready to be opened, and the minister attends to receive the children of the faithful, and to dip them in the sacred laver. William Walker, a Pedobaptist, who wrote in 1678, says: And truly as the general custom now in England is to sprinkle, so in the fore end of this century the general custom was to dip (Walker, The Doctrines of Baptism., 146 London, 1678). Rev. Henry Denne, who was one of the foremost Baptist preachers of the century, is a good witness of the practice of immersion in England previous to 1641 for he mentions that date. In a discussion with Mr. Gunning, A.D. 1656, he says: Dipping of infants was not only commanded by the Church of England, but also generally practiced in the Church of England till the year 1600; yea, in some places it was practiced until the year 1641 until the fashion altered . . . I can show Mr. Baxter, an old man in London who has labored in the Lord’s pool many years; converted by his ministry more men and women that Mr. Baxter has in his parish; yea, when he hath labored a great part of the day in preaching and reasoning, his reflection hath been (not a sackporrit or a candle), but to go into the water and baptize converts (Denne, A Contention for Truth, 40. London, 1656). Sir John Floyer, a most careful write; says: That I may further convince all of my countrymen that immersion in baptism was very lately left off in England, I will assure them that there are yet persons who were so immersed; for I am so informed by Mr. Berisford, minister of Sutton, that his parents immersed not only him but the rest of the family at his baptism (Floyer, The History of Cold Bathing, 182. London, 1722). Alexander Balfour says: Baptizing infants by dipping them in fonts was practiced in the Church of England, (except in cases of sickness or weakness) until the Directory came out in the year 1614, which forbade the carrying of children to the font (Balfour, Anti-Pedobaptism Unvailed, 240. London, 1327). Dr. Schaff, himself a Presbyterian, says: In England immersion was the normal mode down to the middle of the seventeenth century. It was adopted by the English and American Baptists as the only mode (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, VII. 79), All of these writers affirm that immersion was the common practice in England; they mention many persons who were immersed and that affusion did not prevail till the introduction of the Directory in 1644. The most splendid English divines spoke out in no uncertain words. The bishops by their visitation articles were opposing the innovation, as sprinkling was called, and the English scholars by their writings were sustaining them, They were opposed by "the love of novelty, and the niceness of parents, and the pretense of modesty." With these facts in mind the authorities here presented may be interpreted. The Greek lexicons used in England in the first half or the seventeenth century were Scapula, Stevens, Micaeus and Leigh. These all define baptizein as dipping or submerging. A Greek lexicon is unknown prior to 1644 which gives sprinkle as a definition of baptizein; and the few that have since given such definitions appear to have been under the influence which shaped the action of the Westminster Divines. Joseph Mede, A. D., 1586-1638; a learned divine, says: There was no such thing as sprinkling in rantism in baptism in the Apostles’ days, nor many ages after them (Mede, Diatribe on Titus 3:2). Henry Smith, of Husbands, Borneswell, A.D., 1629, preached a sermon at the installation of Mr. Brian Cane, high sheriff of Leicestershire. He said: First the word baptism according to the true meaning of the Greek text. Baptism doth signify not only a dipping, but such a dipping in water as doth cleanse the person dipped; and for it the primitive church did it to put the party quite under the water . . . Baptism is called a regeneration, and yet baptism is a dipping of our bodies in water; but regeneration is the renewing of our minds to the image wherein we are created. Dr. John Mayer, Pastor of the Church in Reydon, Suffolk, says: The Lord was baptized, not to get purity to himself, but to purge the waters for us, from the time he was dipped in the waters, the waters washed the sins of ail men (Mayer, A Commentary on the Four Evangelists, V.76). An important book of the times was written by Daniel Rogers, a Church of England man. He says: Touching what I have said of sacramental dipping to explain myself a little about it; I would not be understood as if schismatically I would instill a distaste of the Church into any weak minds, by the act of sprinkling water only. But this (under correction) I say; That ought to be the churches part to cleave to the institution, especially it being not left arbitrary by our Church to the discretion of the minister, but require to dip or dive the infant more or less (except n cases of weakness), for which allowance in the Church we have cause to be thankful; and suitably to consider that he betrays the Church (whose officer he is) to a disordered error, If he cleaves not to the institution; to dip the infant in water. And this I do aver, as thinking it exceedingly material to the ordinance and no slight thing; yea, with both antiquity (though with some slight addition of a threefold dipping; for the preserving of the impugned Trinity entire) constantly without exception of countries cold or hot, witnesseth unto: and especially the constant word of the Holy Ghost, first and last, approveth, as a learned critic upon Matthew 3:11, hath noted, that the Greek tongue wants not words to express any other act as well as dipping, if the institution could bear it (Rogers, A Treatise of the two Sacraments of the Gospel, Baptisme and the Supper of the Lord, 71. London, 1633). The Baptists never failed to quote Rogers in support of their practice of dipping. Stephen Denson, 1634, says: The word translated baptizing doth most properly signify, dipping over head and ears, and indeed this was the most usual manner of baptizing In the primitive church; especially in hot countries, and after this same manner was Christ himself baptized by John (Denson, The Doctrine of both Sacraments, 39, 40. London, 1634). A little in advance he had said of the Baptists: And the use of all that hath been spoken serves especially for the condemning of the practice of such as turn to Anabaptism, who though they know and do not deny, but that they were once baptized in the Church of England, or other where; yet require to be baptized again, making no better than a mockery of their first solemn baptism. Edward Elton, 1637, says: First in sign and sacrament only, for the dipping of the party baptized in water, and abiding under the water for a time, doth represent and seal unto us the burial of Christ, and his abiding in the grave; and of this all are partakers sacramentally (Elton, An Exposition of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Colossians, 293. London, 1637). John Selden was regarded as the most learned Englishman of his times. He says: The Jews took the baptism wherein the whole body was not baptized to be void (Selden, De Jure Nat, c. 2). Bishop Taylor, 1613-1677, says: If you would attend to the proper signification of the word, baptism signifies plunging into the water or dipping with washing (Taylor, Rule of Conscience, 1.3, c. 4). There is no great amount of evidence of the practice of the Catholics of England on the subject of dipping, but that which is at hand is singularly interesting and clear. Thomas Hall, in an attack which he made on a Baptist preacher AD 1652, by the name of Collier, declared that Anabaptism is "a now invention not much above an hundred years old," and then he declared that the Catholics themselves were great dippers. his words are: If dipping be true baptizing, then some amongst us that have been dipped, should be rightly baptized. The Papists and the Anabaptists like Samson’s foxes, their heads look and lie different ways, yet they are tied together by the tails of dipping (Hall, The Collier in his Colours, 116; also, Hall, The Font Guarded, 116. London, 1652). It was the Presbyterians who changed the practice of dipping in England. The rise of sprinkling for baptism in England is traced by Dr. Schaff who was a Presbyterian. He says: King Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth were immersed. The first Prayer Book of Edward VI. (1549), followed the Office of Sarum, directs the priest to dip the child in water thrice: "first, dipping the right side; secondly, the left side; the third time, dipping the face toward the fonte." In the second Prayer Book (1552) the priest is simply directed to dip the child discreetly and warily and permission is given, for the first time in Great Britain, to substitute pouring if the godfathers and godmothers certify that the child is weak. "During the reign of Elizabeth," says Dr. Wall, "many fond ladies and gentlewomen first, and then by degrees the common people, would obtain the favor of the priests to have their children pass for weak children too tender to endure dipping in water." The same writer traces the practice of sprinkling to the period of the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly. "This change in England and other Protestant countries from immersion to pouring, and from pouring to sprinkling, was encouraged by the authority of Calvin, who declared the mode to be a matter of no importance; and by the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-1652), which decided that pouring and sprinkling are "not only lawful, but also sufficient." The Westminster Confession declares: ’Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person (Schaff, Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 51, 52). It was largely through the authority of Calvin that sprinkling came into general use in England. Sir David Brewster is unquestioned authority. His account is as follows: During the persecution of Mary, many persona, most of whom were Scotchmen, fled from England to Geneva, and there greedily imbibed the opinions of that church. In 1556 a book was published in that place containing "The Form of Prayer and Ministration of the Sacraments, approved by the famous and godly learned man, John Calvin," in which the administrator is enjoined to take water in his hand and lay it upon the child’s forehead. These Scotch exiles, who had renounced the authority of the Pope, implicitly acknowledged the authority of Calvin; and returning to their own country, with Knox at their head, in 1559, established sprinkling in Scotland. From Scotland this practice made its way in the reign of Elizabeth, but was not authorized by the established Church. In the Assembly of Divines, held at Westminster in 1643, it was keenly debated whether immersion or sprinkling should he adopted: 25 voted for sprinkling, and 24 for immersion; and even this small majority was obtained at the earnest request of Dr. Lightfoot, who had acquired great influence in that Assembly. Sprinkling is therefore the general practice of this country. Many Christians, however, especially the Baptists, reject it. The Greek Church universally adheres to immersion (Edinburgh Encyclopedia, III, 286). Wall says of the Presbyterians who introduced affusion into England: So (parallel to the rest of their reformations) they reformed the font into a basin. This learned assembly could not remember that fonts to baptize in had always been used by the primitive Christians, long before the beginning of popery, and ever since churches were built: but that sprinkling for the common use of baptizing, was really introduced (in France first, and then in other popish countries) in times of popery (Wall, History of Infant Baptism, I. 583). He also says: For sprinkling, properly so called, it seems that it was in 1645 just then beginning, and used by very few. It must have begun in the disorderly times after 1641; for Mr. Blake had never used it, nor seen it used. For a long time a revolution had been brewing in England, and it came with the Civil Wars of 1641. The result of the war was not only the overthrow of the King and Laud, but it overthrew the Church of England as well. The Presbyterians took charge of the ecclesiastical affairs of the kingdom. They set out to reform everything. The Westminster Assembly convened and put forth the Confession of Faith and the Form of Church Government which bears that name. One of the things which they reformed was baptism, and they substituted sprinkling for immersion as the law of the land. The Reformed Churches of Calvin practiced pouring, and so must the Reformed Church of England. They took hold of the matter with a bold band and in time succeeded. Thus pouring, through the Westminster Assembly, triumphed for a time in England. With all of the prestige of Calvin it was no easy task to accomplish. There was stubborn opposition, and whet a vote was taken for the exclusion of dipping there was a tie vote, and Dr. John Lightfoot. who had acquired great influence in the Assembly, secured the deciding ballot. There was no particular sentiment in England in favor of affusion outside of the Westminster Assembly in 1645. Dr. Lightfoot gives an interesting account of the debate in the Westminster Assembly. He says: Then we fell into the work of the day, which was about baptizing "of the child, whether to dip him or to sprinkle." And this was the proposition, "It is lawful and sufficient to besprinkle the child," had been canvassed before our adjourning, and was ready now to vote; but I spake against it, as being very unfit to vote; that it is lawful to sprinkle when every one grants it. Whereupon it was fallen upon, sprinkling being granted, whether dipping should be tolerated with it. And here fell we upon a large and long discourse, whether dipping were essential, or used in the first institution, or in the Jews’ custom. Mr. Coleman went about, in a large discourse, to prove tbilh to be dipping overhead. Which I answered at large. After a long dispute it was at last put to the question, whether the Directory should run thus, "The minister shall take water, and sprinkle or pour it with his hand upon the face or forehead of the child;" and it was voted so indifferently, that we were glad to count names twice; for so many were so unwilling to have dipping included that the votes came as an equality within one; for the one side were twenty four, the other 25, the 24 for the reserving of dipping and the 25 against it; and there grew a great heat upon it, and when we had done all, we concluded upon nothing in it but the business was recommitted. Aug. 8th. But as to the dispute itself about dipping. it was thought safe and most fit to let it alone, and to express it thus in our Directury: "He is to baptize the child with water, which, for the manner of doing is not. only lawful, but also sufficient, and most expedient to be by pouring or sprinkling of water on the face of the child, without any other ceremony (Lightfoot, Works, XIII 299. London, 1824). On this particular 7th day of August, when this matter of pouring was introduced, complaints were brought into the Assembly of the increase of the Anabaptist conventicles in divers places" (Baillie, Journal, II. 215). This was an opportune item to the anti-dippers in the Assembly. The action of the Westminster Assembly was followed by acts of Parliament which fully confirm the contention of Wall that sprinkling began in England "in the disorderly times of 1641," and that in 1645 it was "used by very few." The Presbyterians were not satisfied with an ecclesiastical law to govern the church, hut now as they had authority they followed it with the laws of Parliament to control State action. These acts of Parliament have been summed up by Rev. J. F. Bliss as follows: The original law of 1534 enforced immersion, and those who were not baptized were to be treated as outlaws. The law was passed when the Roman Catholic Church was abandoned and the present Established Church inaugurated in its stead. However, this law was repealed by an act of Parliament in 1644, at least so much of the old law as enforced immersion. and they passed an act enforcing sprinkling in its stead, and left the original penalty annexed to outlaws, being deprived of the inheritance of the state, the right of burial, and in short, of all of the rights to other sprinkled citizens of the realm . . After 1648 immersion was prohibited and for many years made penal (Bum, Letters on Christian Baptism). The laws that the Presbyterians enacted to exclude immersion and to establish pouring are exceedingly strong. They may be found in Scobell’s Collection of Acts of Parliament, Anno 1644. It was decreed that "the Book of Common Prayer shall not henceforth be used, but the Directory for Public Worship." The Book of Common Prayer prescribed immersion; the Directory prescribed pouring. It was ordered that under penalty the Directory should be used throughout the United Kingdom. In order that none might escape and no other form of baptism be used it was decreed that "a fair Register Book of vellum, to be kept by the minister and other officers of the Church; and that the names of all children baptized, and of their parents, and of the time of their birth and baptizing, shall be written and set down by their minister," etc. This infamous law was intended as a check upon every Baptist in the land, and all that was needed for a conviction was to turn to the Register Book. That there might be no mistake in the form of baptism it was decreed: Then the minister is to demand the name of the child, which being told him, he is to say (calling the child by name) I baptize thee in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As he pronounceth the words, he is to baptize the child with water; which for the manner of doing it is not only lawful but sufficient and most expedient to be, by pouring or sprinkling of the water on the face of the child, without adding any other ceremony. This law directly replaced immersion by pouring and it was passed January 3, 1644-45. It was not, however, till 1648, that the Presbyterians were enabled to enact the "gag law." They had already substituted pouring for dipping, but they went further and enacted a law to punish the Baptists as "blasphemers and heretics." It was enacted that any person who said "the baptism of infants is unlawful, or such baptism is void, or that such persons ought to be baptized again, or in pursuance thereof shall baptize any person formerly baptized," shall be placed in prison and remain there until they "shall find two sufficient sureties" that "they shall not publish the same error any more." Under this infamous law four hundred Baptists were thrown into prison. This was the triumph of pouring in England, and reached its culmination in 1648. Pouring began in 1641, became ecclesiastical law in 1648, civil law in 1644-45, and was vigorously pushed in 1648; and those who held to dipping were punished as heretics and blasphemers. Thus did pouring prevail in England. This law was repealed with the fall of the Presbyterians, and the old law for immersion was reenacted by the Church of England. The Presbyterians brought in with their reforming two novelties. One was that baptism came in the room of circumcision and hence that an infant ought to be baptized on the faith of its parent. The other was that pouring was baptism, and that it was commanded by the Scriptures. This was a novelty. The Baptists forthwith replied that immersion only was taught in the New Testament. They did not change their position but they did change the accent. Previous to this time there had been no occasion for this emphasis. They were practical men, and only combated error when it appeared. It is remarkable how speedily they detected this new error of the Presbyterians. There grew up in the reign of Charles I one of the most tremendous debates on baptism known in history. It raged continuously from about the year 1641 to the close of the century. ~The Presbyterians had brought in the innovation of pouring, and the Baptists, now for the first time permitted legally to speak, answered boldly. It has been sometimes said that the Baptists had just adopted immersion, but the evidence is to the contrary. There is no proof that in those days one English Baptist was in the practice of sprinkling. What really happened was that an occasion occurred, in the judgment of the Baptists, for a discussion of the act of baptism, and the Baptists seized the opportunity. The views of some experts on the practice of the Baptists is here given. Dr. W. H. King, London, who made an extensive investigation of the pamphlets in the British Museum, says: I have carefully examined the titles of the pamphlets in the first three volumes of this catalogue, more than 7,000 in number, arid have read every pamphlet which has seemed by its title to refer to the subject of baptism, or the opinions and practices of the Baptists, with this result: that I can affirm, with the most unhesitating confidence, that in these volumes there is not a sentence or a hint from which it can be inferred that the Baptists generally, or any section of them, or even any individual Baptist, held any other opinion than that immersion is the only true and Scriptural method of baptism, either before the year 1641 or after it. It must be remembered that these are the earliest pamphlets, and cover the period from the year 1640 to 1646 (The Western Recorder, June 4, 1896). Dr. George C. Lorimer, who gave much attention to Baptist history, said in an address September 14, 1896, before the students of Newton Theological Institution: I insist that it is due our Baptist churches and their action on the world’s progress should not be ignored. As a rule they do not receive the recognition they deserve. Dr. Dexter in his True Story of John Smyth has, let us believe unintentionally, put them in an entirely false light; and his representation that Edward Barber originated the practice of immersion in England, and that before the publication of his book (1641) the Baptists poured and sprinkled, is, to put it mildly, incorrect. I have just returned from the British Museum, where I went over the documents which are supposed to substantiate such a view, and I solemnly declare that no such evidence exists. Dr. Joseph Angus, former President of Regents Park College, London, member of the committee who translated the Revised Version of the Bible, says: During this period, very little is said about immersion, and the silence of the writers on the mode is said to be deeply significant. But it is overlooked that in that age immersion was the generally accepted mode of baptism in England. The Prayer Book has all along ordered the child "to be dipped warily" in the water. The practice of dipping was familiar in the days of Henry VIII., and both Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth were dipped in their childhood. In that century it was not necessary to lecture on the meaning of the word, or to insist on the mode of baptizing, which is still described in the English service as "dipping." . . . That there was no such delay in forming Baptist churches as our American friends have supposed, is proved by the dates of the formation of a number of them. Churches were formed, chapels built and doctrines defended long before 1641, and others, down to the end of the century, owing probably to the discussions of that year (The Western Recorder, October 22, 1896). Daniel Featley states that the Baptist churches were in the practice of dipping. He was born at Charlton, Oxfordshire, March 15, 1582, and died at Chelsea, April 17, 1645. He had, in 1641, a debate in Southwark with four Baptists. Shortly afterwards he published an account of the debate in his book "The Dippers Dipt." In the Dedication to the Reader he says: "I could hardly dip my pen in anything but gall." He was a personal witness to the acts of the Baptists of that period. He says for twenty years writing in 1644, they had lived near his residence and had been in the practice of dipping. The words of Featley are especially significant. He spoke of the Baptists from personal knowledge, and there are no reasons to believe that he exaggerated the facts. However loosely he may have used the phrase, twenty years, it would refer to about the years 1621-4. He nowhere intimates that the Baptists or the form of baptism by dipping were a novelty. In his Epistle Dedicatory he says: Now, of all the heretics and schismatics, the Anabaptists in three regards ought to be most carefully looked into, and severely punished, if not utterly exterminated and banished out of the church and kingdom. His reasons are as follows: First, In regard to their affinity with many other damnable heretics, both ancient and later, for they are allied into, and may claim kindred with. . . Secondly, In regard to their audacious attempts upon the Church and State, and their insolent acts committed in the face of the sun, and in the eye of the High Court of Parliament. Under this second head he says: They preach, and print, and practice their heretical impieties openly and hold their conventicles weekly in our chief cities, and suburbs thereof, and there prophesy in turns; and (that I may use the phrase of Tertullian) aedificantur in ruinam, they build one another in the faith of their Sect, to the ruin of their souls; they flock in great multitudes to their Jordans, and both sexes enter the river, and are dipt after their manner, with a kind of spell containing the heads of their erroneous tenets, and their engaging themselves in their schismatical covenants, and (if I may so speak) combination of separation. And as they defile our rivers with their impure washings, and our pulpits with their false prophesies, and fanatical enthusiasms, so the presses sweat and groan under the load of their blasphemies. For they print not only Anabaptism, from whence they take their name; but many other most damnable doctrines, tending to carnal liberty, Familism, and a medley and hodge-podge of all religions. Thirdly, In regard to the peculiar malignity this heresy hath to magistrates, etc. He then proceeds to say that he had known these heretics near his own home for twenty years. His words are: As Solinus writeth, that in Sardinia there is a venomous serpent called Solifuga, (whose biting is present death) there is also at hand a fountain, in which they who wash themselves after they are bit are presently cured. This venomous serpent (vera. Solifuga) flying from, and shunning the light of God’s word, is the Anabaptist, who in these later times first shewed his shining head and speckled skin, and thrust out his sting near the place of my residence for more than twenty years. He distinctly says the Baptists had practiced immersion near his residence for more than twenty years. This was first said in the debate with Kiffin in 1641. A little later he traces the Baptists to Germany in the time of Storch at the Reformation; that this man was a blockhead and kindled the fires from the chips of the block; that the fire burned in England in the times of Elizabeth and other sovereigns; and lately the fires burned very brightly. This Southwark church was located in the borough where Spurgeon’s church is found. It has always been a great Baptist center. It is in the old district called Horsleydown. It is here the debate occurred. The Baptists had here a great baptizing place (Wall, History of Infant Baptism, II. 459). A baptisterion was finally erected here for the use of a number of Baptist churches, and it registered according to an act of Parliament, in the year 1717 (Crosby, History of the English Baptists, IV. 189). Manning and Bray (History of Surrey, III.613) speaking of the early and later history of this place say: It seems that the Anabaptists had fixed themselves here in considerable numbers. In the year 1775 there were four meeting houses of that persuasion. Featley not only affirms there had been Baptists long in England but he connects them with the Baptists of 1641. He says: Of whom we may say, as Irenaeus sometime spake of the heretic Ebon, the father of the Ebonites, his name in the Hebrew signifies silly, or simple and such God wat he was: So we may say, the name of the father of the Anabaptists signifieth in English a senseless piece of wood or block, and a very blockhead was he; yet out of this block were cut those chips that kindled such a fire in Germany, Halsatia, and Swabia that could not be fully quenched, no not with the blood of 150,000 of them killed in war, or put to death in several places by magistrates. This fire in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James and our gracious sovereign, till now, was covered in England under the ashes; or if it brake out at any time, by the care of the ecclesiastical and civil magistrate, it was soon put out. But of late since the unhappy distractions which our sins have brought upon us, the temporal sword being in other ways employed, and the spiritual locked up fast in the scabbard, this sect among others, hath so far presumed upon the patience of the state that it hath held weekly conventicles, rebaptized hundreds of men and women together in the twilight in rivulets, and some arms of the Thames and elsewhere, dipping them over head and ears. It hath printed divers pamphlets in defense of their heresy, yea and challenged some of our preachers to disputation. Now although my bent hath been hitherto against the most dangerous enemy of our Church and State, the Jesuit, to extinguish such balls of wild fire as they have cast in the bosom of the Church, yet seeing this strange fire kindled in the neighboring parishes and many Nadab’s and Abihu’s offering it to God’s altar, I thought it my duty to cast the waters of Siloam upon it to extinguish it. In another place he calls the rebaptizing of the Baptists "a new leaven," and that their position "is soured with it," but this is to be read not as a detached statement, but in the light of what is said about it. He explains there are two kinds of old Anabaptists and one kind of new Anabaptists. These new Anabaptists began in 1525. This he fully explains: They first broached their doctrine about the year 250 which was this: That all of those who had been baptized by Novatus, or any other heretics, ought to be rebaptized by the orthodox pastors of the church. The second broached theirs about the year 380, which was this: That none were rightly baptized but those that held with Donatus, and consequently, that all others had received baptism in the Catholic Church, by any other save those of his party, ought to be rebaptized. The third broached theirs in the year 1525, which was this: ’That baptism ought to be received by none, but such as can give a good account of their faith; and in case any have been baptized in their infancy, that they ought to he rebaptized after they come to years of discretion, before they are to be admitted to the church of Christ The first tenet which he says is "peculiar to this new sect," which had their origin in 1525, was "that none are rightly baptized but who are dipped." Featley declares there were Baptists in his neighborhood prior to 1625 that they had existed in England during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, James I; and of his own personal knowledge they had dipped in rivers for more than twenty years previous to 1644. There is a fine statement made by William Ames who was a Brownist. He had a controversy with Bishop Morton. In the year of his death, 1683, he wrote a book (A Fresh Suit against Ceremonies in God’s Worship), which made a Nonconformist out of Richard Baxter. In his hook he points out the attitude of the Baptists toward dipping. He says: I will easily grant the Catabaptists, and confess that the strife which they made about baptism, hath been not altogether without benefit; for hence it comes to pass that those things which the foolish superstition of human reason had added thereto, being brought into question, are now become vain and unprofitable. Christ Jesus who instituted baptism with such simplicity and purity as knowing better than all men; what arrogance to add, alter or detract, on the part of man. Dipping is preferred to sprinkling for dipping is not a human ceremony. Calvin’s devise of a new washing, was an idle vanity, he added to the washings which God had set. In vain do they worship me teaching the doctrines and precepts of men i.e., such things as men set up themselves against the commandment of God. Christ is the only teacher of his church, therefore there may be no means of teaching or admonishing but such as be ordered. When Christ himself instituted baptism he required it to he used; Is it a very hard question whether it be lawful for men to add other than the above. As if what Christ himself prescribed were not fit enough. In divine institutions as we must take nothing from, so we must not alter, so we must add nothing to them. What rites he would have used he himself appointed. Sprinkling of water upon the people for baptism, an Apist imitation. The Anabaptists hold fanatically about rites and formalities (they say) it is not lawful to worship God with other external worship save that which is in Scripture prescribed us. And human inventions without warrant from God in Scripture are to be reprehended. It is well known that Anabaptists have certain times and places of meeting for worship; certain order of preaching and praying; may in baptizing of grown-men, as even bishops can scarce be ignorant of. One of the foremost Baptists of those times was Thomas Collier, of Whitley, in the parish of Godalming. He was described by his enemies as of obstinate demeanor, refusing to pay all tithes into the Church where his estate lies (Calendar of State Paper; January, 1635. CCLXXXII. 82). He preached through the counties of West England in Surrey and Hampshire. He wrote books, traveled as a missionary, and immersed many converts (Edwards, Gangraena, III.41. London, 1646). For more than twelve years he had labored in this field and prospered under the fiercest persecutions. He was an intense Baptist and held firmly to the faith in 1646 as he had previously done in 1635. He linked the word Anabaptists with "Baptized Christians," which was understood in those days to mean immersed believers. His words are: "They, these persecutors, would say as much of the Anabaptists, or rather of the baptized Christians of this nation." He further remarks that these "persecutors are maliciously mistaken," and show their ignorance "in calling them Anabaptists, for the practicing baptism, according to Scripture, that grieves you it seems; but you have learnt a new way, both for matter and manner, babies instead of believers; for manner, sprinkling at the font, instead of baptizing in a river; you are loth to go with your long gowns, you have found a better way than was ever prescribed or practiced; who now Sir are the Ignoramuses?" Lewes Hewes, who describes himself as a minister of God’s Word, attacked the follies of infant sprinkling, affirms adult baptism by immersion, addressed, A.D. 1640, to the Parliament on the abuses of Popery introduced into religion. The book is in the form of a dialogue between a Minister and a Gentleman. Souse of the passages are: Gent. Many do say, that the manner of administering the holy sacrament of baptism prescribed in the Service Book is very absurd, and full of Popish errors, and so ridiculous as that they cannot but laugh at it. I pray you tell me, what do you find in it so absurd and ridiculous, as they cannot but laugh at it? Min. The interrogatories ministered to infants that have no understanding and the answers of the godfathers are so absurd and ridiculous. as they cannot but laugh at them: as first, the minister must first examine the infant and ask him, if he doth forsake the devil and his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, the covetous desires of the same, the carnal desires of the flesh, so as he will not follow nor be led by them; he must also ask him, if he doth believe all the Articles of the Christian faith, and if he will be baptized in that faith. Gent. Were not these interrogatories administered to infants in the primitive church? Min. No, these or the like were then administered to such as were of years, when they were converted and came to be baptized, and afterwards commanded by the Pope to be administered to infants. In another prayer thanks is given to God for regenerating the infant with the Holy Spirit, that the children of God do receive the Spirit of God to regenerate them, not by sprinkling of water in baptism, but by having the Gospel preached, 2 Corinthians 3:8, Acts 10:44 (Lewes Hewes, Certain Grievances, well worthy of the serious consideration of the right honorable and High Court of Parliament, 12-13, London, 1640). One of the striking Baptist preachers of those times was Thomas Lamb. His occupation was that of a soap boiler. He was an active minister from the earliest days of Charles I (Wood, History of the Baptists, 109). After he came to London he was pastor in Bell-alley, Coleman Street. He was soon cast into prison and he was released on bail June 25, 1640 (Acts of the High Court of Commission, CCCCXXXI. 434), with the injunction "not to preach, baptize or frequent any conventicle." About October 15, of the same year, he was in Gloucestershire preaching and immersing his converts. The people of that section had largely departed from the Church of England and the Baptists had a great following (Wynell, The Covenants Plea for Infants, Oxford, 1642). Here he was opposed by Mr. Wynell the rector. It was from this congregation that Richard Baxter, about 1639, became acquainted with the Baptists, and the practice of dipping greatly shocked him (Baxter, Life and Time, I. 41). As a result of the controversy the Baptists had sent to London for Mr. Lamb. He came and baptized many converts in the River Severn. He brought with him Clem Writer, who was also a Baptist preacher. Wynell says Lamb held his services in a private house "and by preaching there he subverted many, and shortly afterwards in an extreme cold, and frosty time, in the night season, diverse men and women were rebaptized in the great River Severn in the City of Gloucester." These immersions took place in the early winter of 1640. John Goodwin was one of the most interesting men in London. He was rector of St. Stephen’s Church, Coleman Street, and was a near neighbor of Thomas Lamb, of Bell-alley. One of Goodman’s members, Mr. William Allen, turned Baptist and united with Lamb’s Church. This made Goodwin furious and he attacked the "new mode of dipping." Allen replied (An Answer to Mr. S. G.) and affirmed that dipping was the old form. Lamb took up the quarrel and expressed indignation at the attack of Goodwin. He had himself been for some years in the practice of dipping. His opinion of Goodwin’s book was expressed in Vigorous English (Truth Prevailing, 78. London, 1655). Mr. Goodwin in the meantime had opportunity for reflection and he wrote another book (Water Dipping no Firm Footing for Church Communion) and apologized for his "grasshopper expression" calling dipping new. He, in this new place, says the Baptists had practiced dipping since the Reformation of Luther. His language is: First we understand by books and writings of such authority and credit; that we have no ground at all to question their truth that that generation of men, whose judgments have gone wandering after dipping and rebaptizing, have from the very first original and spring of them since the late Reformation. Edward Barber was a merchant tailor of London, a gentleman of great learning, at first a minister of the Church of England, but long before the Civil Wars he became a Baptist (National Biography, III. 146). He was the agent in convincing many that infant baptism had no foundation in Scripture. He soon gathered a numerous congregation which met in Spital in Bishopgate Street. In his book (A Small Treatise on Dipping) he says he was cast into prison for "denying the sprinkling of infants" He was cast into prison in 1639 and on Wednesday, June 20, of that year, he appeared before the King’s Commission (Tanner MSS. LXVII. 115. Bodleian Library). So that Edward Barber denied infant sprinkling before 1639. While in prison in 1639 Barber discussed immersion with Dr. Gouge who was a prominent man in the Church of England, and Barber made him admit that sprinkling "was a tradition of the Church" (Blackewell, Sea of Absurdities concerning Sprinkling driven back, 6. London, 1650). This corresponds with the statement of Wall that sprinkling did not prevail till 1644 and began as a policy of the government in the troublesome times of 1641. Dr. Gouge discussed the subject of immersion with Barber. The latter affirmed that immersion was the proper act of baptism, and Gouge admitted that sprinkling was only a tradition. This corresponded exactly with the statement of Barber that he was imprisoned for denying the sprinkling of infants. This date was before June 20, 1639. Barber makes it perfectly plain in his book that the Baptists had long been in the practice of dipping. Among other objections urged was that the Baptists immersed women and that the clothes were immersed as well as the person. Barber answered that these objections did not avail since immersion had long been the practice. He said he was chosen of God to divulge immersion. The word "divulge" in those days simply meant to publish without reference to the order of time. For example, Henry Denne, who was baptized in 1643, and from that date was a preacher, was sent on a special mission by the church at Fenstanton, October 28, 1653, and it was said of him: "On that day he was chosen and ordained, by imposition of hands, a messenger to divulge the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (Taylor, History of the General Baptists, I.150). Barber was a great preacher and he divulged the Gospel of Immersion. William Jeffery was born of pious parents in the year 1616, in the parish of Penhurst, and afterwards lived in Bradbourn, Seven Oaks, Kent, where he and his brother David were great supporters of a meeting (Crosby, The History of English Baptists, III. 97). It is probable that he was engaged in the propagation of the Baptist faith several years prior to the Civil Wars (Taylor, History of the General Baptists, 1. 109). He was a minister of a congregation about Orpington which increased greatly under his ministry. He was a successful, and unwearied supporter of the Baptist interest, and suffered with great patience. He had several debates with men of the Church of England, and also with the Independents and Quakers. He was much valued for steady piety and universal virtue. Clem Writer, or A. R(itter), was a prominent Baptist in London. He originally came from Worcester and was formally a member of the Church of England. He became a Baptist about the year 1637. He was a man of education, attended public meetings, and on several occasions drew up petitions to Parliament and transacted other business. Edwards abused him on all occasions, and even pronounced him an atheist. He "is now an arch-heretic," says Edwards, "and fearful apostate, an old wolf, and a subtle man, who goes about corrupting and venting his errors" (Edwards, Gangraena, I. 27). His works on the Vanity of Childish Baptism are the most scholarly of all the books written on the baptismal controversy of 1641. The first volume was written against the position of the Church of England, in 1641, and the next year, the second volume appeared against the position of the Independents. On the subject of dipping he states his position in words that imply that it had always been the Baptist practice. He says: The institution of Christ requireth that the whole man be dipped all over in water . . . The Greek authors account bapto and baptizo to signify that the Latins use mergcre, immergere (tasgere immergendo) (that is to say) to dip, to plunge, to douse overhead or under water (A. R., A Treatise on the Vanity of Childish Baptisme, I.10). He concludes that for a thousand years there was no other practice except dipping in the Christian world. Among Baptists it had been the practice since Luther’s time. Says he: And if any shall think it strange and unlikely that all of the godliest divines and best churches should be, thus deceived on this point of baptism for so many yeares together, let him consider that all Christendom (except here and there one, or some few, or no considerable number) was swallowed up in grosse Popery for many hundred yeares before Luther’s time, which was not until about 100 yeares agone. This scholarly Baptist had an opponent. It is really interesting to note how closely his antagonist resembles the Pedobaptist controversialist of to.day. The Baptists of the middle part of the seventeenth century were controversialists. They were compelled to debate. The Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Brownists and Independents agreed with each other only in one particular of hating the Baptists. "Various methods were adopted," says Goadby, "for removing this general dislike, and answering the wicked accusations made against them. They issued pamphlets in defence of their opinions. They subscribed to numerous Confessions of Faith. They were ready, in season and out of season, to meet their opponents. They challenged them to public disputations; now in London, now in the country. Ordinary buildings proved too small and inconvenient for the excited and eager crowds who attended these disputations; and the largest accommodation being afforded by the parish church, to the parish church they commonly hurried. The occasion of these discussions was often fierce opposition of local clergymen, but was sometimes the uneasy consciences on the subject of baptism of some members of the congregations. The victory, as in all such public discussions, was usually claimed by both sides. The disputations themselves illustrate the habits and the ferment of a former age" (Goadby, By-Paths in Baptist History, 139). The report of the debates were usually published by the opponents of the Baptists. There was large room for partiality and unfairness. These one sided accounts were published often with marginal commentaries, and one at least published a scandalous frontispiece which depicted fifteen different sorts of Anabaptists. The first of these debates occurred in 1641 between Dr. Featley and four Particular Baptists. It was "somewhere in Southwark," probably in the parish church. Sir John Lenthall was present, "with many knights, ladies and gentlemen." There were also present some of the illiterate sort, Upon whom Dr. Featley looked with disdain. The discussion was held in the year that Charles I. had broken with Parliament. Two months before it began the royal standard was unfurled at Nottingham, and a week after it had closed Charles fought his first battle. The disputants were hardly fairly matched. Dr. Featley was a veteran debater, and had won many encounters with the Jesuits. His intimate friend had said the Catholics "contemned him for that he was low of stature, yet admired him for his ready answers and shrewd distinctions." Yet this friend of thirty-seven years had found him "meek, gracious, affable, merciful." This would not be suspected from reading this debate. In European seminaries he was regarded as "the Sagacious and Ardent" Doctor. His opponents were four Baptists. One of them was described as "a Scotchman," another was called "Cuffin." This was none other than William Kiffin, for two years past the pastor of Devonshire Baptist Church. He was now only thirty six years of age, and yet had before him fifty-nine years of pastoral and checkered life. Of the other two disputants there is no information. The version of the debate as given by Featley is a long drawn out rambling discussion on baptism. Featley was insulting, but not convincing. At the conclusion, says Featley, "it grew late, and the Conference broke off." Featley was self-complacent. He says: The issue of the Conference was, first, the Knights, ladies and gentle men gave the doctor great thanks, secondly, three of the Anabaptists went away discontented, the fourth seemed in part satisfied, and desired a second meeting; but the next day, conferred with the rest of that sect, he altered his resolution, and neither he, nor any other of that sect ever since that day troubled the doctor, or any other minister in this borough with a second challenge. Featley’s version of the debate was published two years and one-half after the debate under the title: The Dippers Dipt, or, the Anabaptists duck’d and plung’d over head and ears. at a Disputation in Southwark, London, 1645. The debate was not printed until Featley was in prison suspected of being a spy. The most exciting political events had in the meantime taken place, and all recollection of the debate had passed from the mind of "the auditors." While in prison he had a debate with Henry Denne, who was there for preaching the word. He arid Denne debated the issues at stake in baptism. The result was that on January 10, 1644, Featley printed his book. In a little less than a month Denne had his reply under the title of Antichrist Unmasked. Samuel Richardson took up the challenge and gave Featley a severe handling in a book entitled: Some Brief Considerations on Dr. Featley’s Book. With a chuckle Richardson says: ======================================================================== CHAPTER 23: 01.1.23. CHAPTER 18 CONTINUED ======================================================================== The knights and ladies thanked him, but he cannot say he deserved it. The Anabaptists went away discontented and grieved. It seems they were sorrowful to see his great blindness and hardness of heart. He saith, none of them ever after that troubled him; it seems they could do him no good, and so they resolved to leave him to GOD till he should please to open his eyes. Many and notable were the debates of the period. The Presbyterians now being in power tried to dismiss the subject of baptism. But debates would not down. A great debate, between Richard Baxter and John Tombes occurred at Bewdley, January 1, 1649. The debate continued throughout the day until intermission until the disputants were exhausted. Both sides claimed the victory; but Wood declares: "That all the scholars then and there present who knew the way of disputing and managing arguments, did conclude that Tombes got the better of Baxter by far." Tombes had a more celebrated debate in 1653, in St. Mary’s Church, Abergavenney, with Henry Vaughn and John Cragge. The writer who records the discussion, speaks in no very complimentary terms of the Baptists. "They inveigled the poor, arid simple people especially. "Women, and inferior tradesmen, which in seven years can scarce learn the mystery of the lowest profession, think half seven years enough (gained from their worldly employments) to understand the mysteries of divinity, arid whereupon meddle with controversy, which they have no more capacity to pry into than a bat to look into the third heaven." The writer also gives his version of the public discussions of Tombes elsewhere. "The disputes at Bewdley, Hereford, and Ross, have been successful to astonishment; and in the last, at Abergavenney (though tumultuary, and on a sudden), hath appeared the finger of God. He hath, with spittle and clay, opened the eyes of the blind, overthrown the walls of Jericho with the second ram’s horns; with these weak means hath wrought strong effects, that no creature may glory in an arm of flesh". Mr. Tombes had been heard with much amazement. Some persons were highly offended. Others were "staggered or scrupled; and some, not knowing what to think of their own, their childrens’, or their ancestors’ salvation." Many well learned, heard Mr. Tombes, and heard with amazement. Among them were Vaughan, "schoolmaster of the town, formerly fellow of Jesus College, Oxford," and Mr. Bonner, an aged clergyman of the neighborhood. No one spoke after the service in answer to the challenge of Tombes; but Bonner "closed with him on the way to his lodging." "That night, and especially the next morning, the Anabaptists triumphed, saying, Where are your champions now?" The next day excitement ran high. Cragge, Vaughn and Bonner went to the house where Tombes was staying, and a public debate was arranged. The church house was overflowing with people. Bonner was preparing "to give an onset," but he was dissuaded "lest in his aged and feeble state he should impair his health." The debate continued with much beat for six hours. The century closed with a famous debate at Portsmouth. Mr. Samuel Chandler, a Presbyterian minister of Fareham, established a lectureship at Portsmouth. In the course of his lectures he defended infant baptism. His remarks were reported to Mr. Thomas Bowes, the General Baptist minister. He conferred with Mr. Webber, the Particular Baptist minister of the town. A debate was arranged between the parties. William Russell, M.D., the well-known General Baptist minister of London, was chosen to defend the Baptist cause. With Dr. Russell in the position of "junior counsel" and "moderator," were John Williams, of East Knowle, and John Sharpe, of Frome, both Particular Baptist ministers. The Presbyterians selected Samuel Chandler, Mr. Leigh, of Newport, and Mr. Robinson, of Hungerford. The debate occurred in the Presbyterian meeting house February 22, 1698-9. The assembly was worthy of the debate. The governor and lieutenant-governor, the mayor and magistrates of’ Portsmouth were all present. The military were also there. The debate continued nine hours. The debate came to an end between six and seven o’clock. A few days after the discussion an article appeared in the Postman newspaper, from the pen of Colonel John Gibson, the Lieutenant-Governor, as follows: Portsmouth, Feb. 23.-Yesterday the dispute between the Presbyterians and the Anabaptists was held in the Presbyterian meeting-house. It began at ten o’clock in the morning, and continued till six in the afternoon, without intermission. The theme of the dispute was, the subject of baptism, and the manner in which it is to be performed. Russell and Williams were the opponents for the Anabaptists, and Mr. Chandler and Mr. Leigh for the Presbyterians; Mr. Sharpe was moderator for the former, and Mr. Robinson for the latter, Mr. Russell opposed infant baptism with all the subtlety and sophistry of the schools; and it was answered with good reason and learning. Upon the whole, it was the opinion of all the judicious auditory, the Presbyterians sufficiently defended their doctrines, and worsted their adversaries, when they came to assume the place of opponents. Another article appeared in the Flying Post, which was one sided and unfair. Dr. Russell published an account of the debate which brought an answer from the Presbyterians. The debate and these various articles and replies brought on much bitterness. All of the Baptist historians record their pleasure that this was the last debate of the kind that ever occurred in that country. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 24: 01.1.24. CHAPTER 19 BAPTIST INSTITUTIONS AND CUSTOMS ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XIX THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF BAPTIST INSTITUTIONS AND CUSTOMS The formation of Baptist Associations may be traced to the period of the Civil Wars and they were developed in the last half of the seventeenth century. They formed a source of healthful and pleasant intercourse to many. The Baptists were persecuted, the churches were often weak and widely separated, and intercourse was not easy. Roads existed more in name than in fact. No means of public transit existed, and commerce called individuals but rarely from their homes, or only to the next market town. These annual gatherings of the brethren were hailed as seasons of holy festivity. Men of note, both of piety and of action, were brought together, and by their counsel and preaching greatly aided the churches of God (Evans, Early English Baptists, II. 223). It must be carefully remembered that the Particular and General Baptists did not act in concert nor did they always hold the same views on organization. The idea of an association seems to have originated with the Particular Baptists. The London Confession of Faith of 1643, article XLVII seems to anticipate an association. At least the germinal idea is there. That document says: And although the particular Congregations be distinct (1 Corinthians 4:17. & 1 Corinthians 4:14, 1 Corinthians 14:38, 1 Corinthians 14:3 & 1 Corinthians 16:1) and severall Bodies, every one a compact and knit Citie (Matthew 28:20) in itself; yet are they all to walk by one and the same (1 Timothy 3:15. & 1 Timothy 6:18, 1 Timothy 6:14) Rule, and by all means convenient to have the counsell (Revelation 22:18-19) and help one of another in all needful affairs of the (Colossians 2:6, Colossians 2:19, Colossians 4:16) Church, as members of one body in the common faith under Christ their onely head. The day this was declared was the birthday of the modem association. The distinctiveness of the idea is seen in the fact that church order is made to rest on the principle of voluntariness under the authority of Christ, the only Head. But the times were too changeable and threatening for organization. The power of Charles I had been bridled but the Presbyterians were in power and they were as hostile to the Baptists as ever the Episcopalians had been. In 1649 Charles I was put to death, and the Baptists under Cromwell had an extension liberty. So the time was ripe for the organization of associations. But while the idea of associations originated with the Particular Baptists, the General Baptists were the first to organize. They were not connected with the Independents or Brownists. Many of the General Baptists were royalists and favored a strong government. There was incorporated in their early meetings an authority invested in associations which would not now be tolerated among Baptists. Says Professor J. M. Davis, of The Baptist College, Cardiff, Wales: The General Baptists, like the Particular Baptists, held the idea of the Independency of the Churches, but their General Conference was more Presbyterian in its legislation. By their connection with the Anabaptists and the Mennonites of the Continent, and their stay at Amsterdam, they obtained knowledge of the Presbyterian Synods of the churches of Luther and Calvin. Also they acknowledged an order of officers, which they called "Messengers," corresponding to the apostolic order, which they supposed continued partly in the church. "The Messengers" were appointed by the General Conference. Their work was to plant new churches and to confirm those that were already in existence; ordain ministers and visit churches to advise them and to confirm them, and to report their condition to the General Conference. They were a kind of "Baptist Bishops," with power of superintendency. They differed from the Bishops of the Church of England in that they were appointed by the General Conference and were under their authority. At first their power was moderate, but it was enlarged from the end of the 17th century on. (The Western Recorder, September 21, 1916. Translation by J. T. Griffith). Many of the ideas of strong government and of church order were incorporated into the early associations of America. As a reaction from this monarchical idea many Baptists in this country favored the idea of a convention, where no power was lodged with the general body savve that of voluntariness. It has., therefore, followed in this country that many Baptist general bodies have taken the name and form of conventions rather than that of associations, and where the associational name has been retained the idea of organization is not far removed from that of a convention. The conception of a convention appeals to a liberty loving people rather than the stronger idea of an association. Generally the older bodies, from custom, have retained the name of association, while the newer organizations have adopted the name convention. Gradually, in England, these objectionable features have been eliminated. The Particular Baptists, on the other hand, were more conservative, more independent of authority, more jealous of delegated rights, and consequently were much slower in forming associations. Adam Taylor (The History of the English General Baptists, I. 457) gives the origin of associations among General Baptists and his account is here mainly followed. As soon as any number of General Baptist churches were gathered, in any county or district, they united to support a periodical meeting, to consult for the common welfare. Such a meeting was called an Association, and was usually held at the principal place of the district, quarterly, half yearly, or annually, according to the convenience of the congregations supporting it. It was composed of two or more representatives from each church in the district, elected to this office by the church which sent them. The messenger or elder was more frequently chosen, and was joined to one or more respectable private brethren, who had equal rights with the ministers to deliberate and vote. The business usually transacted at these Associations was-the reformation of inconsistent or immoral conduct, whether in ministers or private Christians-the prevention or suppression of heresy-the reconciling of differences between members and churches-the giving of advice in difficult cases, whether respecting individuals or societies-the proposing of plans of usefulness-the recommending of cases that required pecuniary support-and, in short, the devising of the most effectual means of promoting the prosperity of religion in the world at large, but especially in their own churches. The first four of these particulars would scarcely come under the purview of an Association today. They occupied a large place in the proceedings of those early days. It is not easy to ascertain the number of Associations into which the English General Baptists were divided; new unions bring frequently formed, and old ones dissolved. During this period there are found traces of Buckinghamshire, Cambridge, Dorsetshire, the Isle of Ely, the Kentish, the Lincolnshire, the London, the Northamptonshire, the Western and Wiltshire Associations. These all existed at the close of the seventeenth century; and appear then to have been, in a greater or less degree, flourishing. Several of them were composed of a considerable number of prosperous churches. These Associations in different parts of the nation, maintaining only a local union, a more general cooperation became desirable. To effect this, occasional meetings were held, usually in London, as the center of the kingdom, which they styled General Assemblies. They were composed of representatives of the various Associations, and from such churches as chose to send deputies; which might be either ministers or private brethren. It is not easy to ascertain the exact date of the first introduction of General Assemblies among these churches; but it can be placed with great probability, under the Protectorate. Mr. Grantham, in 1671, speaks of them as generally established and approved (Grantham, Sigh of Peace, 130-132); and, in 1678, having mentioned the assembly recorded in Acts fifteen, he says: According to this precedent, the baptized churches in this age and nation have kept an Assembly-general for many years, for the better sett1ement of the churches to which they are related (Granthain, Christianismus Primitivus, 137. London, 1678). This system of Associations and General Associations gave rise to a custom of Appeal from the decisions of churches. When any member thought himself aggrieved by the proceedings of his church, he might appeal to two or more neighboring churches, and require them to judge and hear the case. If the appeal was received, a meeting of deputies from: each of the societies to which the appeal was made was appointed; and, both parties having been heard at length, judgment was given. But if either party remained dissatisfied, the business might be brought before the Association to which they belonged; and have another investigation. And from the decision of the Association, there yet lay a final appeal to the General Assembly. For some time, the discontented persons appear to have been considered as having a right to claim a hearing; but this was found to protract altercations, and nourish a captious spirit. The Assembly therefore resolved, that no case of this nature should be received by them, without the mutual consent and request of all the parties concerned (Minutes of the General Assembly for 1711, I.113. London, 1909). Furthermore they introduced an officer into their system whom they called a bishop or messenger. He was generally chosen by an Association of the representatives of the churches; and was ordained of those of his own order with great solemnity. Sometimes a particular church chose a messenger, but in that instance his business was to preach the gospel and regulate the churches which he founded. "They were appointed," says Jeffrey, "for the gathering of churches, and the establishment of them." At the Lincoinshire Association, held at Coningsly, May 30, 1775, the office is thus defined: The messenger, who is chosen by the unanimous consent and approbation of the churches which stand in a close connection together, hath full liberty and authority, according to the gospel, to freely enquire into the state of the churches respecting both pastor and people, to see that the pastors do their duty in their places, and the people theirs; he is to exhort, admonish, and reprove both the one and the other, as occasion calls for. In virtue of his office, he is to watch over the several flocks committed to his care and charge-to see that good order and government be carefully and constantly kept up and maintained in the churches he is called and appointed to look after and to watch over; to labor and to keep out innovations in doctrine, worship, and discipline, and to stand up in the defense of the gospel. This right of appeal and appointment of messengers for the government of the churches was inconsistent with the independence of a church which these Christians strenuously asserted. The question was constantly raised: how far agreements made by a General Assembly do obligate the churches concerned by their representatives? Grantham answers as follows: To ascribe infallibility to any Assembly since the Apostles’ days, must in nowise be allowed, Wherefore, though we ought to consider with great respect what is concluded by a general council of Christ’s true ministers: yet we may lawfully doubt of what they deliver; unless they confirm it by the word of the Lord (Grantham, Christianismus, 139). The General Baptists were then in an experimental state in regard to organization and have long since discarded these views. Although the Particular Baptists were slower in organizing Associations than the General Baptists, they had, as we have seen, in 1643, anticipated such a union. The especial cause for the organization of the first Particular Baptist Association occurred some ten years later. The churches in Ireand wrote a special letter to the churches in London. In this letter they say: That their beloved and faithful brother, John Vernon, the bearer of the letter, will, through the blessing of God, be suddenly with you . . . His conversation hath been with zeal and faithfulness: the Lord having put it into the hearts of all his congregations in Ireland to have a more revived correspondence with each other by letter and loving epistles, in which practice we found great advantage, not only by weakening Satan’s suggestions and jealousies, but it hath brought a closer union and knitting of heart; and, which is not an inferior consideration, we have hereby been enabled feelingly and knowingly to present each others wants and conditions before God. In the same manner, we shall be enabled to answer our duty towards you, and you towards us, and so hear each others burdens, and fulfill the law of Christ in our very near, relation. We hereby earnestly request the same brotherly correspondence with you and from you; and, by your means, with all of the rest of the churches in England, Scotland, and Wales, whom we trust will be provoked to the same things, which we hope may be mutually obtained once in three months. The same letter asks for a "perfect account of the churches of Christ owned in communion with them;" and offers "one request more," "if it hath not been lately practised," namely: That they would send two or more faithful brethren, well acquainted with the discipline and order of the Lord’s house, able to speak seasonable words, suited to the necessities of the people, to visit, comfort, and confirm all the flock of our Lord Jesus, that are, or have given up, their names to be under his rule, and government in England, Scotland and Ireland. This letter greatly moved the Particular Baptist churches of England and doubtless resulted in the organization of the London Baptist Association. The circular letter sent out was the occasion, in November following, of an Association of Particular Baptist churches in the west of England. One of the questions of debate was: Whether laying on of hands on baptized believers was an ordinance of Christ? The majority agreed that there was no warrant for it, and that the question should not disturb the communion of the churches. The circular letter was signed by Thomas Collier, one of the many Baptist ministers singled out for abuse by Edwards. "He is a master-sectary," says Edwards, "and a man of great power amongst them. He had emissaries under him, whom he sends abroad to several parts." In other words he was the general superintendent and messenger of the churches. The Midland Association of Particular Baptist Churches was formed, in 1655, at Warwick. After adopting a Confession of Faith of sixteen articles, after the manner of the Confession of 1643, the Association determined the objects of the union They were as follows: The churches were to he helpful to each other: first, in giving advice, after serious consultation and deliberation, in matters and controversies remaining doubtful to any particular church, according to the plain example of the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. (Acts 15:23 &c.) Secondly, in sending their gifted brethren to use their gifts for the edification of the churches that need the same, as they shall see it to be reasonable, as the Church at Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch. Acts 15:22. Thirdly, in giving and receiving also, in case of the poverty and want of any particular church, as plainly doth appear in the approved and due acting of the Churches of the Gentiles towards the Church at Jerusalem. Romans 15:20. Fourthly, in a joint carrying on of any part of the work of the Lord, as is commanded to the churches, as they shall have opportunity to join therein, to the glory of God. See 2 Corinthians 8:19-23. Fifthly, in watching over each other and considering each other for good, in respect of purity of doctrine, exercise of love and good conversation, being all members of the same body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12), who, therefore, ought to have care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:25) especially considering how the glory of God is concerned in their standing and holy conversation.The churches now associated are desired to take these things into consideration, and to signify by their messengers, at their next meeting, how far they close with the same, and what they judge expedient to be further considered and done, for the glory of Cod and the good of the people. The first General Assembly of the Particular Baptist Churches, the greatest of the Assemblies, as Marlow calls it, was the one called by a letter from the London churches, the year after the landing of William of Orange. The meeting was called to assemble in London, 1689, "of two principal brethren of every church of the same faith with us, in every county respectively." Letters of acceptance of this invitation were to be sent to H. Knollys or W. Kiffin. "Brother Kiffin lives in White’s Alley, Little Moorfields." The Assembly continued its sittings for eight or nine days, was pervaded by a solemn, earnest and united spirit, and transacted business of real importance to the welfare and prosperity of the churches. The first day was spent in humbling themselves before the Lord. The second day they agreed upon certain preliminaries, as the foundation or rules of their Assembly, in order to guard against any misapprehensions in the minds of the members of their respective churches, declaring that "they disclaimed all manner of superiority, or superintendency over the churches, having no authority or power to prescribe or impose anything upon the faith or practice of any of the churches of Christ, their whole intendment being to be helpers together of one another, by way of counsel and advice." Differences in individual churches "in point of communion" were to be left undisturbed; and differences between one church and another were not allowed to be debated, "until the rule that Christ had given in the matter (Matthew 18:15) be first answered." Even their advice is regarded as not binding "to any one church till the consent of that church be first had, and they conclude the same among themselves." Moreover, "all things offered by way of counsel and advice were to be proved out of the Word of God, and the (particular) Scripture annexed." The "breviates" of the meeting were to be transcribed and sent to every particular church, with a letter. Each person was to present to the Assembly his letter of recommendation from the church to which he belonged, and none were to be permitted to speak without the general consent of the Assembly. After the letters from the several churches were read, and prayer offered, the meeting adjourned (Goadby, Bye Paths of Baptist History, 203). Out of these meetings particular and general as devised and organized by Thomas Grantham, Thomas Collier, William Kiffin, Benjamin Keach, and others, have grown, with additions and subtractions and modifications, Baptist organizations. They have assumed their peculiar form on account of the fundamental conception that each church is an independent body, and its connection with other churches of the same faith and order, or general bodies was purely optional. It was recognized that some form of union and cooperation was desirable. At first there were cross-currents of opinion arising out of the fact that the Baptists while holding democratic principles were citizens of a monarchy. They were feeling after liberty. It is remarkable with their surroundings, with limited experience, under persecution, that they devised a system of organizations that not only became the bulwark of freedom but presented a method of cooperation and effective work. It has frequently been assumed that the General Baptists did not encourage the support and education of the ministry. Most of the General Baptist ministers had secular employments and made their own living. But it is true that they did take steps to support and educate their ministry. Joseph Hooke, an elder among them in the last days of Charles II says of human learning: It is nowhere said in the Word of God, "Let a bishop be an academic, a rhetorician, a logician, a graduate;" but it is said, "A bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God, vigilant, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, &c." And when we find them thus qualified according to the mind or God, we choose them to the ministry, whether they have or not been bred in the University . .. Let none mistake me, as though I should despise human learning, as some have done in a passionate zeal, because of its abuses, and others through sottish ignorance, being themselves strangers to it. No! I love and honour human learning, and give it my approbation; only, I would not have more ascribed to it than is due; nor, by any means, that it should be preferred above Divine learning, but only attended upon as a servant (Hooke, Necessary Apology, 58-62). At first the ministers only received traveling expenses, and then often on the narrowest scale. Afterwards, in 1656, it was decreed that the churches should defray the charges of their families. and "that our beloved brethren shall have ten shillings a week for themselves and their families." This was to cover their own traveling expenses, and the cost of their families’ maintenance during their absence (Goadby, 225). Francis Stanley, who long labored among the General Baptists, "without being chargeable to any," tells of his own knowledge: That some ministers had spent the greater part of their outward substance in the service of the churches; some their all; and some more than their all, many being reduced to the affecting straight, either to neglect the worthy work of the Gospel, or else to be reputed worse than infidels (1 Timothy 5:8). Thomas Grantham took up the charge of Stanley and gently suggested: Let the baptized churches be exhorted to consider that, whilst others have exceeded, they have been too short, in caring for their minister’s, who, though they have generally with great cheerfulness served them in the Gospel of God freely, yet that will not justify the churches’ neglect of their duty. And besides, the ministry are rendered, by this neglect, less capable to serve them, being generally much diverted by worldly employments from that serious study and exercise of reading which ordinarily conduces much to the furtherance of the Gospel, in the more ample preaching thereof. The General Assembly gave the matter a practical turn in 1704. The churches in Kent said to the Assembly that "they were in a sinking and languishing condition;" and one reason assigned was, "the want of making provision for a Gospel ministry." The Assembly therefore advised: That able and gifted persons be chosen and appointed to inform the churches in general of the duty, according to the Scriptures, to make provision for a Gospel ministry, and that the ministers be strictly enjoined in their respective churches to be diligent in this work. That every congregation choose and appoint a person, or persons, to collect or gather at his, her, or their discretion, such moneys as shall be given for the use aforesaid, once a month, or as often as convenient. That all such moneys so collected shall be delivered into the hands of a treasurer, or treasurers, as are chosen by the Association, or other churches distinct, according as they think convenient; and that such a treasurer or treasurers, by and with the consent and direction of the aforesaid Association, or churches distinct, shall apply or dispose of the said moneys for encouraging and supporting a Gospel ministry, as aforesaid, and to no other uses whatsoever; and that the said collections shall not hinder or prevent raising a stock to be brought to the General Assembly, for the messengers, or traveling ministers (Minutes of the General Assembly, 1). The Particular Baptists were explicit on this subject. In the first General Assembly of the Particular Baptists, in 1689, it is affirmed of the pastors: It is incumbent on the Churches to whom they Minister, not only to give them all due respect, but also to communicate to them of all their good things according to their ability, so as that they may have a comfortable supply, without being themselves entangled in Secular Affairs; and this is required by the Law of Nature, and by the Express order of our Lord Jesus, who hath ordained that they that preach the Gospel, should live of the Gospel. They provided a fund which was to be devoted to the following purposes: To help the weaker churches in the maintenance of their ministers, so that they (the ministers) might give themselves wholly to the preaching of the Gospel. To send ministers that are ordained, or at least solemnly called to preach, both in city and country, where the Gospel hath, or hath not been preached, and to visit the churches. Such ministers were to be selected by at least two churches in London or the country. The fund was further devoted to: Assist those members that shall be found in any of the churches that are disposed for study, have an inviting gift, and are sound in fundamentals, in attaining to the knowledge and understanding of the languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In replying to a number of questions it was affirmed that it was an unquestionable advantage: For our brethren now in the ministry, to obtain a competent knowledge of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin tongues, that they may be the better capable of defending the truth against opposers, Already had the Baptists anticipated the action of the Particular Baptist Assembly in 1689. Many of their ministers had been educated in the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 1675 the Baptist ministers of London invited their brethren throughout the country to meet in the following May in the metropolis with a view to form "a plan for providing an orderly standing ministry who might give themselves to reading and study and so become able ministers of the New Testament." Four years later, or in 1679, Edward Terrell, who was an elder in the Broadmead Church, Bristol, executed a deed to considerable property, in trust to the pastor of that church, under the following conditions: Provided he be a holy man, well skilled in the Greek and Hebrew tongues, in which the Scriptures were originally written; and devote three afternoons in the week to the instruction of any number of young students, not exceeding twelve, who may be recommended by the churches, in the knowledge of the original languages, and other literature (Ivimey, History of the English Baptists, II. 389). This fund became available in 1717 and since that date Bristol College, the oldest of Baptist institutions of learning, in England, has had an honorable career. After the New Connection of General Baptists was formed, June 6, 1770, steps were taken to organize an academy. A manuscript found among the papers of Dan. Taylor, under date of 1779, is entitled a plan for assisting in studies of preachers. The writer adds: "The design has annually obtained credit and reputation, since it was first begun by a poor blind brother in Wadsworth church and myself. As the churches increased in number and respectability, the necessity for such an institution became more apparent: the subject, therefore, became the frequent topic of conversation among individuals, and on public occasions. The Boston Association in 1796, recommended the churches to adopt measures for facilitating the design, and to open subscriptions for the purpose. This recommendation prepared the churches for the consideration of the subject at the ensuing Association. At that meeting funds were established and the books were opened for subscriptions. In January, 1798, an Academy was opened under the superintendence of Dan. Taylor at Mile End, London. It is thus manifest that both the General and Particular Baptists of England fostered education. They differed in methods, details and ideals; but they did not differ in regard to the necessity of education. The primary, and at first the only reason for fostering schools among the English Baptists, was the education of the ministry. Their insistence was that a minister should be an educated man. It was furthermore determined that this education should include a knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The earliest Confessions of both sections of the Baptists recognized only two officers in the churches-ministers and deacons. The Confession of Faith of certain English People, living in Amsterdam, contained, Article 76, the following statement: That Christ hath set in his outward church two sorts of ministers: viz., some who are called pastors, teachers or elders, who administer in the word and sacraments, and others who are called Deacons, men and women: whose ministry is, to serve tables and wash the saints feet (Acts 6:2-4, Php 1:1, 1 Timothy 3:2-3, 1 Timothy 3:8, 1 Timothy 3:11 and 1 Timothy 5:25). The London Confession, Article XXX VI., says: That being thus joyned, every Church has power given them from Christ for their better well-being, to choose to themselves, meet persons Into the office of Pastors, Teachers, Elders, Deacons, being qualified according to the Word, as those which Christ has appointed in his Testament, for the feeding, governing, serving, and building up of his Church, and that none other have power to impose them, either these or any other. In many churches two, or even four, ministers were associated. In fact a plurality of pastors was very common among the General and Particular Baptists in the time of the Stuarts. when such a union was once formed between an elder and a church, it was regarded as indissoluble as marriage, and only to be severed by death, or the apostasy of the preacher. The following resolution was passed in the Lincolnshire General Baptist Association in 1696: That there is nothing which we can justly fix upon that can warrant an elder to forsake his people; nor can any elder, who has gone away from his own people, be established as an elder over another people in another place (Goadby, 22:1). An Elder might be displaced from a church on account of an erring life, or false teaching. The wife of the elder must likewise be a member of the church. The church looked out young men with appropriate gifts, and often arranged meetings where they could exercise their gifts for preaching. The deacons were "helps in government," and they were to assist in the spiritual development of the church and to care for the poor. Such was the declaration of Grantham (Christianimus Primitivus, 126). Many of the. churches had deaconnesses. The Broadmead Church, in 1678-9, elected four sisters who were widows as deaconesses (Broadmead Records, 187, 188). Grantham claimed for "the baptized churches" "the only true ordination" both of bishops and deacons; since "they only have true baptism;" and "they only have due election of officers;" they only have "the true form or order, of ordination." The right of the people to elect their officers, he says, has been invaded "by great personages and magistrates," and "by the rich and strong." But now this privilege is restored and maintained in the baptized churches, where none are elected messengers, bishops or deacons without the free choice of the brotherhood where such elections are made. And after such election of persons of known integrity and competent ability, we proceed to ordination, with fasting, and prayer, and the laying on of hands all which apostolic practices are religiously observed in the baptized churches, without any devised adjuncts or ceremonies of our own or others (Grantham, 129). The discipline of the churches was strict and persistent. "Their general conduct," says Goadby, "their domestic life, their business, their connections in civil society, their recreations, and even their dress, were all deemed legitimate subjects for the strictest supervision." They were required to be strictly orthodox. A pertinent example is that of a man who had been treasurer of the General Assembly who was expelled from the Petty France Church, London. The account is as follows: Mr. Robert Eristow was rejected and cast out of the communion, after much patience exercised towards him, and strenuous endeavors used to recover him out of dangerous errors he was fallen into; namely, the renunciation of the doctrine of the Trinity, and particularly the deity of Christ, and of the holy Spirit, and so rooting up the very foundation of the Christian religion. A certain Mr. Irigello, one of the early pastors of the Broadmead Church, Bristol, "offended divers members of his congregation with his flaunting apparel; for he, being a thin, spare, slender person, did goe very neate, and in costly trimm, and began to exceed in some garments not becoming ye Gospel, much lease a minister of Christ." He was accordingly dealt with. One John Bowes, a minister, attended a foot ball game, which was adjudged "a great evil" and was accordingly dealt with by the church. This did not end the matter. The brethren resolved: Some debate was had about the matter that seeing he had, first, dishonored the Lord: secondly, grieved the people of God; thirdly, given great occasion to the adversaries to speak reproachfully, he should not be suffered to preach, until further fruits meet for repentance did appear. The General Assembly of the Particular Baptists, 1689, answered the query: "Whether it were not necessary to take note of those excesses that were found in their members, men and women, with respect to their apparel" affirmatively. Their sober reply was: It is a shame for men to wear long hair, or long perriwigs, and especially ministers (1 Corinthians 11:14), or strange apparel. That the Lord reproves the daughters of Zion for their bravery, haughtiness, and pride of their attire, walking with stretched out necks, wanton eyes, mincing as they go (Isaiah 3:16). as if they effected tallness, as one observes of their stretched-out necks; though some in these times seem, by their high dresses. to outdo them in that respect. Great stress was laid on marrying "in the society." A solemn meeting was held in the Cambridge Church, 1655, to determine an answer to the query: "Whether, or no, it is lawful for any member of the congregation to marry with any one out of. the congregation?" The query provoked debate, but the church adhered to the answer that "it was not." The records of the churches of those times contains all kinds of charges preferred against members. Some of them were "for beating his wife," drunkenness, not keeping a promise, not speaking the truth, borrowing money and making no sign of paying it again," "backbiting and idleness." Dr. Wall commends their discipline in the highest manner. This is all the more complimentary when his well-known dislike for the Baptists is taken into account. He says: They have their way of adjusting differences that arise among themselves on account of trespasses, dues, or other money matters; which I recite as being worthy of imitation. If any one of them does wrong to another, or refuse to do or to pay what is equitable in any case; if he will not be brought to reason by a private arguing of the matter, nor by the verdict of two or three neighbors added; the plaintiff brings the case before the congregation, when they with their elder are assembled in the nature of a vestry. And in difficult cases, there lies an appeal from a particular congregation, to some fuller meeting of their church under a messenger. And he of the two that will not stand to the ultimate determination of the assembly by their usage appointed, is no longer acknowledged by the rest as a brother. And this is very much according to our Saviour’s and Paul’s direction in such cases; so I have been told that it has the good effect to prevent abundance of lawsuits, and end many quarrels; very few of them offering to withstand the general verdict and opinion of all of their brethren. And there is no reason to doubt but that a like course would, if it were put in practice have a like good effect among other societies of Christians. The discipline (of renouncing brotherhood) they use against such of their communion as are known to be guilty of any such immorality, as is a scandal to the Christian profession of a sober and godly life; for which care of their members there is no man but will commend them (Wall, History of Infant Baptism, I. 560). For a period the imposition of hands upon the baptized, fasting as a religious duty, washing the feet of the disciples and anointing of the sick were practised in some congregations. It was their custom in the election of officers, pastors and deacons, to cast lots. Their marriage and funeral Services were of the simplest character. The Baptists were much divided on the subject of singing. They were not altogether a songless people. They were opposed to "human composures," and the strictness of their ideas on church membership caused a reluctance in having congregational singing. But singing slowly prevailed in the congregations. Benjamin Keach introduced singing into his church at Horselydown. Isaac Marlow was much distressed and published, in 1690, a Discourse Concerning (against) Singing. Very gravely and soberly does Kach, his picture would indicate, that he had no sense of humor, answer Marlow. He says there are various kinds of voices; "namely, (1) a shouting noise of the tongue; (2) a crying noise; (3) a preaching voice, or noise made that way; (4) a praying, or praising noise; and (5) lastly, a singing voice." "All of these are distinct from each other. Singing is not a simple heart singing, or mental singing; but a musical melodious modulation, or tuning of the voice. Singing is a duty performed always with the voice, and cannot be done without the tongue" (Keach, Breach Repaired in God’s Worship; or, Singing Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, proved to be an holy ordinance of Jesus Christ). There was a long discussion on singing. But singing soon became the custom in all Baptist churches. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 25: 01.1.25. CHAPTER 20 ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE ENG. BAPTISTS ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XX THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS THE troubled times of the Civil Wars gave the Baptists an opportunity to make great growth. This is affirmed by all parties. Robert Baillie, who was an enemy to them, says: Under the shadow of Independency, they have lifted up their heads and increased their number above all sects in the land. They have forty-six churches in and about London: they are a people very fond of religious liberty, and very unwilling to be brought under bondage of the judgment of any other. Thomas Edwards says, in 1646, that the Anabaptists stand "for a toleration of all religions and worship." He says: "They have grown to many thousands in the city and country," "keep open meetings in the heart of the city," and that "they increase and grow daily" even while Parliament is in session (Edwards, Gangraena, I. Epistle Dedicatory). Dr. Featley, their opponent, accuses them of holding the following opinions: That it is the will and command of God, that since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Anti-Christian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all Nations and Countries; that Civil States with their Officers of justice are not Governors or Defenders of the Spiritual and Christian state and worship: That the doctrine of Persecution in case of Conscience (maintained by Calvin, Beta, Cotton, and the Ministers of the New England Churches) is guilty of the blood of the souls crying for vengeance under the Altar (Featley, The Dippers Dipt. The Epistle Dedicatory). In the margin he continues their plea: That the Parl. will stop all proceedings against them, and for future provide that as well particular and private congregations as publike, may have publike protection, that all statuetes against the Separatists be reviewed and repealed; that the Presse may bee free for any man that writes nothing scandalous or dangerous to the State: and this Parliament prove themselves loving Fathers to all sorts of good men, bearing respect unto all, and so inviting an equall assistance and affection from all. A dissatisfied officer wrote to Cromwell: Have they not filled your towns, your cities, your provinces, your islands, your castles, your navies, your tents, your armies, your courts? Your very council is not free: only we have left your temples for you to worship in. So strongly were they attached to liberty that when Cromwell made himself Protector, and intimated his intention of removing all Baptists from his army, one of the officers, a Baptist, said to him: I pray do not deceive yourself, nor let the priests deceive you, for the Baptists are men that will not be shuffled out of their birthright as free born people of England (Baptist Magazine, XXXV. 295, A. D. 1843). Probably the best epitome which has appeared of this period was written by Dr. William R. Williams, of New York. He says: To the Baptists then, the age . . is a memorable one. The period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate was the season in which our distinguishing sentiments, heretofore the hidden treasures of a few solitary confessors, became the property of the people. Through weary years they had been held by a few in deep retirement, and at the peril of their lives; now they began rapidly working their way and openly into the masses of society. The army that won for Cromwell his "crowning mercies," as he called those splendid victories which assured the power of the Parliament, became deeply tinged with our views of Christian faith and order. "They were not, as military bodies have so often been, a band of mercenary hirelings, the sweepings of society, gleaned from the ale-house and the kennel, or snatched from jail and due to the gallows; but they were composed chiefly of substantial yeomanry, men who entered the ranks from principle rather than for gain, and whose chief motive for enlistment was that they believed the impending contest one for religious truth and for the national liberties, a war in the strictest sense pro aris et focis. Clarendon himself allows their superiority, in morals and character, to the royalist forces. In this army the officers were many of them accustomed to preach; and both commanders and privates were continually busied in searching the Scriptures, in prayers, and in Christian conference. The result of the biblical studies and free communings of these intrepid, high-principled men was that they became, a large portion of them, Baptists. As to their character, the splendid eulogy they won from Milton may counterbalance the coarse caricatures of poets and novelists, who saw them less closely, and disliked their piety too strongly, to judge dispassionately their merits. Major General Harrison one of their most distinguished leaders was a Baptist. He was long the bosom friend of Cromwell; and became alienated from him only on discovering that the Protector sought triumph, not so much from principle, as for his own personal aggrandizement. Favorable to liberty, and inaccessible to flattering promises of power, he became the object of suspicion to Cromwell, who again and again threw him into prison. On the return of the Stuarts, his share in the death of Charles I among whose judges he had sat, brought him to the scaffold, where his gallant bearing and pious triumph formed a close not unsuitable to the career he had run. Others of the king’s judges, and of the eminent officers of the army, belonged to the same communion. Some of these sympathized only, it is true, with their views of freedom, and seem not to have embraced their religious sentiments. Among this class was Ludlow, a major-general under Cromwell, an ardent republican, and who, being of the regicides, sought a refuge, where he ended his days, in Switzerland. He was accounted the head, at one time, of the Baptist party in Ireland. Such was their interest, that Barter complains, that many of the soldiers in that kingdom, became Baptists, as the way to preferment. (Orme, I. 135), The chancellor of Ireland under Cromwell was also of our body: Lilburne, one of Cromwell’s colonels, and brother of the restless and impracticable John Lilburne, was also of their number. Overton, the friend of Milton, whom Cromwell in 1651 left second in command in Scotland, was also ranked as acting with them, as also Okey and Alured. Col. Mason, the governor of Jersey, belonged to the Baptists, and still others of Cromwell’s officers. Penn, one of the admirals of the English navy, but now better known as the father of the celebrated Quaker, was a Baptist. Indeed, in Cromwell’s own family their influence was formidable: and Fleetwood, one of his generals and his son-in-law, was accused of leaning too much to their interests as a political party. The English matron, whose memoirs form one of the most delightful narratives of that stirring time, and who in her own character presented one of the loveliest specimens of Christian womanhood, Lucy Hutchinson, a name of love and admiration wherever known, became a Baptist. She did so, together with her husband, one of the judges of Charles I. and the governor of Nottingham Castle for the Parliament, from the perusal of the Scriptures. Of no inferior rank in society, for Hutchinson was a kinsman of the Byrons of Newstead, the family whence sprung the celebrated poet, their talents, and patriotism, and Christian graces, and domestic virtues, throw around that pair the lustre of a higher nobility than heralds can confer. and a dignity, compared with which the splendor of royalty, and the trappings of victory are poor indeed. The ministry of our denomination comprised, too, men of high character; some, unhappily, but too much busied in the political strife of the age, but others whose learning and talent were brought to bear more exclusively on their appropriate work. Tombes, the antagonist of Baxter, Bampfield, Gosnold, Knollys, Denne and Jessey, all Baptist preachers had held priestly orders in the English established church; Gosnold being one of the most popular ministers in London, with a congregation of 8,000; and Jessey, a Christian whose acquirements and talents, piety and liberality won him general respect. Kiffin, a merchant whose wealth and the excellence of his private character had given him influence among the princely traders of London, and introduced him to the court of the Stuarts, was pastor of a Baptist church in that city. Cox, another of our ministers at this time, is said by Baxter to have been the son of a bishop; and Collins, another pastor among us, had in his youth been a pupil of Busby. De Veil, a convert from Judaism, who had, both with the Romish church of France, and in the Episcopal church of England, been regarded with much respect, and, in the former, been applauded by no less a man than the eloquent and powerful Bossuet, became a Baptist preacher, and closed his life and labors in the bosom of our communion, Dell, a cbaplain of Lord Fairfax, and who was, until the Restoration, head of one of the colleges in the university of Cambridge, was also a Baptist minister. Although they deemed literature no indispensable preparation for the ministry (nor did the church of the first six centuries), the Baptists under Cromwell, and the Stuarts, were not destitute of educated men. Out of the bounds of England, Vavasor Powell, the Baptist, was evangelizing Wales with a fearlessness and activity that have won him, at times, the title of its apostle; and, on our own shores, Roger Williams, another Baptist, was founding Rhode Island, giving of the great doctrine of religious liberty, a visible type. Our sentiments were also winning deference from minds that were not converted to our views. Milton, with a heresy ever to be deprecated and lamented, had adopted most fully our principles of baptism. Jeremy Taylor, a name of kindred genius, in a work which he intended but as the apology of toleration, stated so strongly the arguments for our distinguishing views, that it cost himself and the divines of his party much labor to counteract the influence of the reasonings: while Barlow, afterwards also a bishop, and celebrated for his share in the liberation of Bunyan, addressed to Tombes a letter strongly in favor of our peculiarities. Such progress in reputation and influence was not observed without jealousy. Baxter laments that those who, at first, were but a few in the city and the army, had within two or three years grown into a multitude (Works, xx. 297) and asserts that they had so far got into power as to seek for dominion, and to expect, many of them, that the baptized saints should judge the world, and the millennium to some. And Baillie, a commissioner from Scotland to Westminster Assembly, a man of strong sense, and the ardor of whose piety cannot be questioned, though he was a bitter sectarian, complained that the Baptists were growing more rapidly than any sect in the land; while Lightfoot’s diary of the proceedings of the same assembly proves that similar complaints were brought before that venerable body. Some would naturally, as in the history of the early Christians, be attracted to a rising sect, who were themselves unprincipled men. Lord Howard, the betrayer of the patriotic Russell, was said to have been at one period of his shifting and reckless course, a Baptist preacher. Another whose exact character it is difficult to ascertain, perverting, as royalist prejudices did, even his name for the purposes of ridicule, Barebones, the speaker of Cromwell’s parliament, is said to have been a Baptist preacher in London. Others, again, of the body were tinged with extravagances; some joined with other Christians of the time in the confident expectation of what they termed the Fifth Monarchy, Christ’s personal reign on the earth. In the changes of the day, and they were many and wondrous, they saw the tokens of Christ’s speedy approach to found a universal empire, following in the train of the four great monarchies of the prophet’s vision. It is to the credit of Bunyan, that he discerned and denounced the error. Then, as in all ages of the church, it was but too common for the interpreters of prophecy to become prophets. Others, again, were moved from their steadfastness by Quakerism, which then commenced its course: while others adopted the views of the Seekers, a party who denied the existence of any pure and true church, and were waiting its establishment yet to come. rn this In this class of religionists was the younger Sir Henry Vane, the illustrious patriot and statesman so beautifully panegerized in a sonnet of Milton, and from his talents dreaded alike by Cromwell and the Stuarts, and the friend of Roger Williams. ’The founder of Rhode Island seems himself, in later life, to have imbibed similar views. Yet with all of these mingled disadvantages, and they are but such heresies and scandals as marked the earliest and purest times of Christianity, that era in our history is one to which we may turn with devout gratitude, and bless God for our fathers. In literature, it is honor enough that out sentiments were held by the two great men who displayed, beyond all comparison, the most creative genius in that age of English literature, Milton and Bunyan. In the cause of religion and political freedom, it was the lot of our community to labor, none the less effectively because they did it obscurely, with Keach, doomed to the pillory, or, like Delaune, perishing in the dungeon. The opinions, as to religious freedom, then professed by our churches, were not only denounced by statesmen as rebellion. but by grave divines as the most fearful heresy. Through evil and through good report they persevered, until what had clothed them with obloquy became, in the hands of later scholars and more practiced writers, as Locke, a badge of honor and a diadem of glory. Nor should it be forgotten, that these views were not with them, as with some others, professed in the time of persecution, and virtually retracted when power had been won. Such was, alas, the course of names no less illustrious than Stillingifeet and Taylor. But the day of prosperity and political influence was, with our churches, the day of their most earnest dissemination Their share. in storing up the falling liberties of England, and in infusing new vigor and liberality into the constitution of that country, is not yet generally acknowledged. It is scarce even known. The dominant party in the church and in the state, at the Restoration, became the historians; and "when the man, and not the lion, was thus the painter," it was easy to foretell with what party all the virtues, all the talents, and all the triumphs, would be found. When our principles shall have won their way to more general acceptance, the share of the Baptists in the achievements of that day will be disinterred, like many other forgotten truths, from the ruins of history. Then it will, we believe, be found, that while dross, such as has alloyed the purest churches in the best ages, may have been found in some of our denomination, yet the body was composed of pure and scriptural Christians, who contended manfully, some with bitter sufferings, for the rights of conscience, and the truth as it is in Jesus: that to them English liberty owes a debt it has never acknowledged: and that among them Christian freedom found its earliest and some of its staunchest, its most consistent, and its most disinterested champions. Had they continued ascending the heights of political influence, it had been perhaps disastrous to their spiritual interests; for when did the disciples of Christ long enjoy power of prosperity, without some deterioration of their graces? He who, as we may be allowed to hope, loved them with an everlasting love, and watched over their welfare with a sleepless care, threw them back, in the subsequent convulsions of the age, into the obscure lowly stations of life, because in such scenes he had himself delighted to walk, and in these retired paths it has ever been his wont to lead his flock (Life and Times of Baxter. The Christian Review VIII. 5-11. March, 1843). It is generally admitted that these Baptists possessed the highest attainments and the most exalted character. The opinions of a few competent authorities, and certainly they were not prejudiced in favor of the Baptists, are here quoted. Dr. Hawes says: Whoever properly estimates the doctrines and practices of the Baptists, must allot them a place among the faithful, notwithstanding their views of baptism. In all other things they are united with their reforming brethren. They are exemplary in their zeal for the salvation of souls, and exhibit respectable specimens of those who follow Christ as their example. The historian Mackintosh says: The Baptists are a simple and pious body of men, generally unlettered, obnoxious to all other sects for their rejection of infant baptism, as neither enjoined by the New Testament, nor consistent with reason. These suffered more than any other persuasion under Charles II. They had publicly professed the principles of religious liberty (Mackintosh, ch. VI. 167). Some years ago Hugh Price Hughes, the foremost Methodist preacher of England, said: I assert with a full sense of the responsibility, that I believe that the great battle of the twentieth century will be the final struggle between the Jesuit Society in the full Possession of the authority of Rome and the individual human conscience; and when, like Oliver Cromwell, I look around to see where I shall find Ironsides, who will vindicate the rights of the human conscience, my eyes fall upon the Baptists. The anvil on which the Jesuit hammer will break to pieces is the Baptist conscience. I should like all the world through to pit the Baptist conscience against the Jesuit. One other quotation will be given in this place. It is from the celebrated Dr. Chalmers. He says: Let it never be forgotten of the Particular Baptists of England, that they form the denomination of Fuller and Carey and Ryland and Hall and Foster; that they have originated among the greatest of all missionary enterprises; that they have enriched the Christian literature of our country with authorship of the most exalted piety. as well as of the first talent and the first eloquence; that they have waged a very noble and successful war with the hydra of Antinomianism; that perhaps there is not a more intellectual community of ministers in our island, or who have put forth to their number a greater amount of mental power and mental activity In the defence and illustration of our common faith; and, what is better than all the triumphs of genius or understanding, who, by their zeal and fidelity and pastoral labour, among the congregations which they have reared, have done more to swell the lists of genuine discipleship in the walks of private society-and thus to uphold and to extend the living Christianity of our nation (Chalmers, Lectures on Romans, 76). The price of human liberty in England was the blood of the Baptists. They stood ever for soul liberty. They struggled for it through blood and fire. At the beginning of the Civil Wars the animosity against the Baptists was very great. Edwards, who fairly represented the hostility of those times against the Baptists, says: I here declare myself, that I could wish there were a public Disputation, even in the point of Paedobaptisme and of Dipping, between some or the Anabaptists, and some of our Ministers; and had I an interest in the Houses to prevaile to obtaine it (which I speak not as to presume of any such power, being so meane and weak a man) it should be one of the first Petitions I would put up to the Honorable Houses for a public Disputation, as was at Zurick, namely, that both Houses would give leave to the Anabaptists to chuse for themselves such a number of their ablest men, and the Assembly leave to chuse an equall number for them, and that by Authority of Parliament publike Notaries sworne, might be appointed to write down all, some Members of both Houses’ present to see to the Peace kept, and to be Judges of the faire play and liberty given the Anabaptists, and that there might be severall dayes of Disputation, leave to the utmost given the Anabaptists to say what they could, and if upon such faire and free debates it should be found the Anabaptists to be in the Truth, then the Parliament only to Tolerate them, but to Establish and settle their way throughout the whole Kingdome, but if upon Disputation and debate, the Anabaptists should be found in Error (as I am confident they would) that then the Parliament should forbid all Dipping, and take some severe course with all Dippers, as the Senate of Zurick did after the ten severall Disputations allowed the Anabaptists (Edwards, Gangraena, III.177). Plainly the advice of Edwards was to drown the Baptists. The Presbyterian party, which was now fully in the saddle, did something more than use words. Various petitions, from many sources, were sent up to Parliament asking that severe laws should be enacted against all sectaries who would not come into the Presbyterian establishment. The first law passed by Parliament in this direction was an ordinance silencing all preachers who were not ordained ministers either of the English or of some Foreign Church. It bore date April 26, 1645, and was as follows: It is this day ordained and declared by the Lords and Commons assembled in parliament, that no person be admitted to preach, who is not ordained a minister, either in this or some other reformed church, except such, as intending the ministry, shall be allowed for the trial of their gifts, by those who shall be appointed thereunto by both houses of parliament (Crosby, History of the Baptists, I.193). The law was ordered printed, that it should be enforced in the army as well as elsewhere, and due punishment inflicted upon any who violated it. It was found however upon the test that many of the Baptists had formerly been ordained, when they belonged to the State Church, and the magistrates could make little out of the matter. Another ordinance was therefore passed December 26, 1646, to the following effect: The commons assembled in parliament do declare, that they do dislike and will proceed against all such persons as shall take upon them to preach, or expound the scriptures in any church, or chapel, or any other public place, except they may be ordained, either here or in some other reformed church, as it is already prohibited in an order of both houses of the 26th of April, 1045, and likewise against all such ministers, or others, as shall publish or maintain, by preaching, writing, or any other way, any thing against, or in derogation of church government which is now established by authority of both houses of parliament; and all justices of the peace, sheriffs, mayors, bayliffs, and other head officers of corporations, and all officers of the army, are to take notice of this declaration, and by all lawful ways and means, to prevent offenses of this kind, and to apprehend the offenders, and give notice thereof to this house, that thereupon course may be speedily taken, for a due punishment to be inflicted on them (Crosby, I 195). This law would have given the Baptists great trouble only the disturbed condition of the country directed the officers to other tasks. There seems to have been a favorable turn toward the Baptists for on March 4, 1647, a declaration was published by the lords and Commons to the following effect: The name of Anabaptism hath indeed contracted much odium, by reason of the extravagant opinions and practices of some of that name in Germany, tending to the disturbance of the government and peace of all states, which opinions and practices we abhor and detest: But for their opinion against the baptism of infants, it is only a difference about a circumstance of time in the administration of an ordinance, wherein in former age; as well as this, learned men have differed both in opinion and practice. And though we could wish that all men would satisfy themselves, and join with us in our judgment and practice in this point; yet herein we held it fit that men should be convinced by the word of God, with great gentleness and reason, and not beaten out of it with force and violence (Crosby, I. 196). This promised well, but this very Parliament, the next year, May 2, 1648, enacted: An ordinance of the lords and commons assembled in parliament, for the punishing of blasphemies and heresies (Crosby, I.197). It was one of the worst and most cruel laws passed since the early days of the Reformation. Heresy, in some instances was classed with felony, and was to be punished with the pains of death, without benefit of clergy. others were subject to conviction before two justices of the peace and to be imprisoned upon conviction. Such a person was required to give surety that he would not any longer maintain such errors. Among the errors mentioned was the following: That the baptizing of infants is unlawful, or that such baptism is void, and that such persons ought to be baptized again, and in pursuance thereof shall baptize any person formerly baptized: That the church government by presbytery is antichristian or unlawful. Infant baptism has always led its advocates to persecute. Thus did the Presbyterians carry out their cruel ideas. The ordinance would have produced much more suffering than it did, but the Baptists and other sectaries were in such numbers, and were increasing so rapidly, that it was not always convenient to execute such a law. One John Bidle was arrested, tried and convicted before a magistrate. Cromwell could not afford to have him punished too strenuously, so he was banished for three years. It was a good occasion for the Baptists to protest against the violation of conscience, and so they petitioned the Protector for the privilege of soul liberty. Among other things they said: That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ (tho’ differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship or discipline publickly held forth) shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected in the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion, &c. Art 37. That all laws, statutes, ordinances, &c. to the contrary of the aforesaid liberty, shall be esteemed as null and void. Art 38. The persecutions, however, as might have been expected, were more particularly directed against the Baptists, since they denied the necessity of infant baptism. Almost every prominent Baptist preacher was sooner or later committed to prison. The Presbyterians were now supreme in Parliament, and they favored the administering of the laws for persecution. But Cromwell perceived that the Long Parliament was odious to the people, so he put, without ceremony, an end to their power, April 20, 1653. Cromwell owed much to the Baptists. After he became Protector, the Baptists on account of their views of religious liberty, were not in his favor. But it was under the profligate Charles II and James II that they suffered most of all. The Baptists were the outspoken advocates of liberty of conscience. In their letter to Charles II, dated A. D. 1655, presented to him at Bruges, they call upon him to pledge his word "that he will never erect, nor allow to be erected, any such tyrannical, popish, and antichristian Hierarchy (episcopalian, presbyterian, or by what name soever called) as shall assume power over, or impose a yoke upon, the conscience of others; but that every one of his subjects should be at liberty to worship God in such a way as shall appear to them agreeable to the mind and will of Christ" (Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, III.359). The same spirit animated them during the reign of James II. The Confession of the Particular Baptists, 1689, Article XXI says: God alone is Lord of the Conscience, and hath left it free from the Doctrines and Commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or not contained in it. So that to Believe such Doctrines, or to obey such Commands out of Conscience, is to betray true liberty of Conscience; and requiring of an implicit Faith, and absolute and blind Obedience, is to destroy Liberty of Conscience, and Reason also. The General Baptists also in An Orthodox Creed, 1679, Article XLV, of the Civil Magistrates, say: And subjection in the Lord ought to be yielded to the magistrate. in all lawful things commanded by them, for conscience sake, with prayers for them, &c. In Article XLVI, Of Liberty of Conscience, it is said: And the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute blind obedience, destroys liberty of conscience, and reason also, it being repugnant to both, and that no pretended good end whatsoever, by any man, can make that action, obedience, or practice, lawful and good, that is not grounded in, or upon the authority of holy scripture, or right reason agreeable thereunto. The most rigid laws were enacted against the Baptists, and executed with terrible severity. The jails were filled with them. They could be convicted by one magistrate, without trial by jury; and the law forbade their meetings in their conventicles. It was the battle of the fire and faggot against liberty of conscience. It brought to the fore great men. The two original minds of the century were essentially Baptist-John Milton and John Bunyan. Lord Macaulay says: We are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim’s Progress (Macanlay, Critical and Historical Essay; 140. Boston, 1879). Of the ability of John Milton there is no question. Macanlay says of him: We turn for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of English literature (Ibid., 2). Macaulay places him as one of the greatest of the poets. It is not probable that Milton belonged to a Baptist church. In his last days he did not appear to be connected with any religious society. In all distinguishing views he was in accord with the General Baptists of his day. He had a powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Like the Baptists, he professed to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest of Scriptural texts is certainly one of the best that has appeared. No Baptist writer of any age has more thoroughly refuted infant baptism (Milton, Christian Doctrines, II. 115). Many of the biographies of Milton, however, class him with the Baptists. Featley gives this slant to both Roger Williams and John Milton (Featley, The Dipers Dipt The Epistle Dedicatory). John Lewis quotes Featley and numbers Milton as a Baptist (Lewis, A Brief History of the Rise and Progress of Anabaptism in England, 87). John Toland, who wrote the first life of Milton, 1699, says: Thus lived and died John Milton, a person of the best accomplishments, the happiest genius and the vastest learning which this nation, so renowned for producing excellent writers, could ever yet show . . . In his early days he was a favorer of those Protestants then opprobriously called by the name Puritan. In his middle years he was best pleased with the Independents and Anabaptists, as allowing of more liberty than others and coming the nearest to his opinion to the primitive practice. But in the latter part of his life he was not a professed member of any particular sect among Christians; he frequented none of their assemblies, nor made use of their peculiar rites in his family. Whether this proceeded from a dislike of their uncharitable and endless disputes, and that love of dominion or inclination to persecution, which, he said, was a piece of popery inseparable from all Churches, or whether he thought one might be a good man without subscribing to any party, and that they had all in some things corrupted the institutions of Jesus Christ, I will by no means adventure to determine; for conjectures on such occasions are very uncertain, and I have never met with any of his acquaintanc who could he positive in assigning the true reasons for his conduct (Toland, Life of Milton, 152, 153). He was persecuted to the grave. There is no sadder picture than that of Milton in his last days. Macaulay says of him: If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, they might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equitable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful, Such as was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, after having experienced every. calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die (Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, 13). The other original mind of the century was John Bunyan. "The history of Bunyan," says Macaulay, "is the history of a most excitable mind in the age of excitement" The Pilgrim’s Progress, next to the Bible, has been read by more people than any other book. Macaulay says of it: That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the Pilgrim’s Progress. That work was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrim’s Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pilgrim’s Progress is a greater favorite than Jack the Giant-killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imagination of one mind should become the personal recollection of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought (Macaulay, 134). For denying infant baptism and being "a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the disparagement of the Chinch of England," he was, in 1660, committed to prison, where he remained twelve year; or till 1672. Bunyan says of his imprisonment: I found myself a man encompassed with infirmities: the parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of my flesh; and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my poor family was likely to meet with, should I be taken from them; especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all besides. Oh the thoughts of the hardships my poor blind one might undergo. would break my heart to pieces. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou to have for my portion in this world. Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow on thee. But yet, recalling myself, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. In describing his sufferings, Macaulay says: It may be doubted whether any English Dissenter has suffered more severely under the penal laws than John Bunyan. Of the twenty-seven years which have elapsed since the Restoration, he had passed twelve in confinement He still persisted in preaching; but, that he might preach, he was under the necessity of disguising himself like a carter. He was often introduced into meetings through back doors, with a smock frock on his back, and a whip in his hand. If he had thought only of his own ease and safety, he would have hailed the Indulgence with delight. He was now, at length, free to pray and exhort in open day. His congregation rapidly increased; thousands hung upon his words; and at Bedford1 when he ordinarily resided, money was plentifully contributed to build a meeting-house for him. His influence among the common people was such that the government would willingly have bestowed on him some municipal office but his vigorous and stout English heart were proof against all delusion and all temptation. He felt assured that the proffered toleration was merely a bait intended to lure the Puritan party to destruction; nor would he, by accepting a place for which he was not legally qualified, recognize the validity of the dispensing power. One of the last acts of his virtuous life was to decline an interview to which he was invited by an agent of the government (Macaulay, The History of England, II.177, 178). The place of Bunyan is secure. "Bunyan is, indeed," says Macaulay, "as decidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakespeare the first of dramatists." The most widely known and the most beloved Baptist of the times was William Kiffin, the merchant preacher. At this time he was about seventy-five years of age, and he lived unto the last year of King William’s reign. His portrait does not bear out the once current impression concerning the Baptists of that age. With skullcap and flowing ringlets, with mustache and "imperial", with broad lace collar and ample gown, he resembled a gentleman cavalier rather than any popular ideal of a sour-visaged and discontented Anabaptist. Though one of the cleanest men he was called to suffer for his religions convictions. Macaulay has recorded something of his sufferings. He says: Great as was the authority of Bunyan with the Baptists, That of William Kiffin was still greater. Kiffin was the first man among them in wealth and station He was in the habit of exercising his spiritual gifts at their meetings: but he did not live by preaching. He traded largely; his credit on the Exchange of London stood high; and he had accumulated an ample fortune. Perhaps no man could, at that conjuncture, have rendered a more valuable service to the court. But between him and the court was interposed the remembrance of one terrible event. He was The grandfather of the two Hewlings, those gallant youths who, of all the victims of the Bloody Assizes had been the most generally lamented. For the sad fate of one of them James was in a peculiar manner responsible. Jeffreys had respited the younger brother. The poor lad’s sister had been ushered by Churchill into the royal presence, and had begged for mercy; but the king’s heart had been obdurate. The misery of the whole family had been great; but Kiffin was most to be pitied. He was seventy years old when he was left destitute, the survivor of those who should have survived him. The heartless and venal sycophants of Whitehall, judging by themselves, thought that the old man would be easily propitiated by an alderman’s gown, and by some compensation in money for the property which his grandson had forfeited, Penn was employed in the work of seduction, but to no purpose. The king determined to try what effect his own civilities would produce. Kiffin was ordered to attend at the palace. He found a brilliant circle of noblemen and gentlemen assembled. James immediately came to him, spoke to him very graciously, and concluded by saying, "I have put you down, Mr. Kiffin, for an Alderman of London." The old man looked fixedly at the king, burst into tears. and made answer, "Sir, I am worn out; I am unfit to serve your Majesty or the City. And, sir, the death of my poor boys broke my heart. That wound is as fresh as ever. I shall carry it to my grave." The king stood silent for a minute in some confussion, and then asked, "Mr. Kiffin, I will find a balsam for that sore." Assuredly James did not mean to say any thing cruel or insolent; on the contrary, he seems to have been in an unusually gentle mood. Yet no speech that is recorded of him gives so an unfavorable a notion of his character as these few words. They are the words of a hard-hearted and low-minded man, unable to conceive any laceration of the affections for which a place or a pension would not be a full compensation (Macaulay. The History of England, II.178, 170). The happy succession of William and Mary to the throne of England, February 13, 1689, and the passage of the Toleration Act, on May 24 following, secured comparative liberty to the Baptists. They were tolerated but still under the power of the State. Great had been their sufferings; but they had remained consistent in their advocacy of the rights of conscience. Their views had prevailed at tremendous sacrifice. "The Baptists were the first and only propounders of absolute liberty," says the celebrated John Locke, "just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty" (Locke, Essay on Toleration, 31, 4th ed.). The part the English Baptists played in obtaining soul liberty is now conceded by the historians. Price says: It belonged to the members of a calumniated and despised sect, few in numbers and poor in circumstances, to bring forth to public view, in their simplicity and omnipotence, those immortal principles which are now universally recognized as of Divine authority and of universal obligation. Other writers of more distinguished name succeeded, and robbed them of their honor; but their title is so good, and the amount of service they performed on behalf of the common interests of humanity is so incalculable, that an impartial posterity must assign to them their due meed of praise (Price, History of Protestant Nonconformity, I.222). Chines Butler, Roman Catholic, says: It is observable that this denomination of Christians-now truly respectable, but in their origin as little intellectual as any-first propagated the principles of religious liberty (Butler, Historical Memoirs respecting the English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics, I. 325. London, 1819). Herbert S. Skeats says: It is the singular and distinguished honour of the Baptists to have repudiated, from their earliest history, all coercive power over the consciences and actions of men with reference to religion. No sentence is to be found in all their writings inconsistent with those principles of Christian liberty and willinghood which are now equally dear to all the free Congregational Churches of England. They were the proto-evangelists of the voluntary principle (Skeats. A History of the Free Churches of England, 24. London, 1869). In a foot note he says he is not connected with the Baptist denomination and therefore, "perhaps, greater pleasure in bearing this testimony to undoubted historical fact" belongs to the author. Dr. Schaff says: For this change of public sentiment the chief merit is due to the English Non-conformists, who in the school of persecution became advocates of toleration. especially to the Baptists and Quakers, who made religious liberty (within the limits of the golden rule) an article of their creed, so that they could not consistently persecute even if they should have a chance to do so (Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1.802, 803). The period which followed was not one of prosperity for Baptists. There was a world reaction which had set in against Christianity. Infidelity for the next one hundred years was to occupy a large place in the world, This general spirit of unrest and unbelief wrought havoc in empires as well as in individuals. No just history of these times can be written that does not take into account this trend in human affairs. It was a period of stagnation. Worldliness was common in the churches, and piety was at a low ebb. There were moreover internal troubles among the Baptists. The General Baptists were paralyzed by dissensions and alienations. The Particular Baptists had made their Confession on the lines of the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterians. There was a constant tendency in the discussion of election and predestination toward hyper-Calvinism, and in the debates which arose over the doctrines of Wesley many Baptist preachers became Antinomians. There was a blight upon the churches and much of their religion took a most repulsive form. John Gill was by far the ablest man among the Baptists. He was born in Kettering, in 1879, and became a superior scholar in Greek, Latin and logic. After many years of study he became a profound scholar in the Rabbinical Hebrew and a master of the Targam, Talmud, the Rabboth and the book of Zohar, with their ancient commentaries. He was a prolific writer as is attested by his Body of Divinity, his Commentary on the Bible ,and many other works. Toplady, who was his intimate friend, gives the following just estimate of him: If any man can be supposed to have trod the whole circle of human learning, it was Dr. Gill. . . It would, perhaps, try the constitutions of half the literati in England, only to read with care and attention the whole of what he said. As deeply as human sagacity enlightened by grace could penetrate, he went to the bottom of every thing he engaged in.. . . Perhaps no man, since the days of St. Austin, has written so largely in defense of the system of grace, and, certainly, no man has treated that momentous subject, in all its branches, more closely, judiciously and successfully. He was also a great controversialist as well as a great scholar. On this subject Toplady adds: What was said of Edward the Black Prince, that he never fought a battle that he did not win; what has been remarked of the great Duke of Marlborough, that he never undertook a siege which he did not carry, may be justly accommodated to our great philosopher and divine. Toplady further says: So far as the doctrines of the gospel are concerned, Gill never besieged an error which he did not force from its strongholds; nor did he ever encounter an adversary to truth whom he did not baffle and subdue. His doctrinal and practical writings will live and be admired, and be a standing blessing to posterity, when their opposers are forgotten, or only remembered by the refutations he has given them. While true religion and sound learning have a single friend remaining in the British Empire, the works and name of John Gill will be precious and revered. With all of his learning, while he did not intend it, he fell little short of supralapsarianism. He did not invite sinners to the Saviour, while preaching condemnation, and asserted that he ought not to interfere with the elective grace of God. When his towering influence and learning are taken into account, some estimate may be formed of the withering effect of such a system of theology. There were forces at work, already which meant a revolution in Baptist affairs. These forces were finally to culminate in the great foreign mission work of Carey. The preaching of Wesley and Whitefield had profoundly stirred the nation. The Arminian theology of Wesley was opposed by Toplady and Gill, nevertheless the people felt a great quickening power. It may properly be said that while the Arminian theology could not withstand the sledge-hammer blows of Gill, the result was that practical religion resolved itself into a matter of holy living rather than into a system of divinity. Dr. Gill was succeeded in the pastorate by Dr. John Rippon. Rippon filled the same pastorate as Gill had done in London for sixty-three years, or until 1832. His preaching was full of affection and power. He compiled a hymn hook and founded the Baptist Annual Register, a monthly, from 1790 to 1802. In 1809 The Baptist Magazine was established. These were the first distinct Baptist newspapers. During the Commonwealth several newspapers, such as The Faithful Post, The Faithful Scout, Murcurius Politicus, and others, had Baptist editors and contributors, but they were political rather than religious papers. The Baptists, previous to the founding of The Baptist Magazine, had maintained a friendly correspondence in the columns of the Evangelical Magazine. This was unsatisfactory. On account of controverted points which needed ample discussion and the growing importance of the mission work in India, Booth, Ryland, and others, felt a Baptist periodical was imperative. The Baptists were likewise active in writing books and pamphlets. Among such books was the famous Pedobaptism Examined by Abraham Booth. Booth was for thirty-seven years pastor of the Prescott street Church, London. He was a prolific writer, end was justly reputed as one of the greatest scholars of his day. His Grace Abounding is today read with delight. Dr. Newman, a personal friend, says of him: As a divine he was a star of the tint magnitude, and one of the brightest ornaments of the Baptist denomination to which he belonged. Firm in his attachment to his religions principles, he despised the popular cant about charity, and cultivated genuine candor, which is alike remote from the laxity of latitudinarians and the censoriousness of bigots. Another movement which must have had a beneficial effect upon the Baptists was prison reform under John Howard. He was born September 2, 1726. At first he was a Congregationalist, but later became a Baptist. He was made sheriff of Bedfordshire. He visited the prison where Bunyan was incarcerated for twelve years. Everything in it was shocking, and appealed to his whole humanity to remove the horrid evils that reigned all over the place. From that moment he seems to have concentrated himself to fight prison abuses and the powers of the plague throughout the world. How he traveled, how he suffered, how he labored with kings, emperors, empresses, parliaments, and governors of jails; how he gave his money to relieve oppressed prisoners and victims of the plague; how he risked his life times without number, it is not here possible to tell. The eloquent Edmund Burke says of him: "He visited all Europe and the East, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur; nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art; not to collect medals, or to collate manuscripts; but to dive into the depth of dungeon-to plunge into the infection of hospitals-to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain-to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt-to rememher the forgotten-to attend to the neglected-to visit the forsaken, and to compare and to collate the distresses of men of all countries. His plan is original, and as full of genius as it is of humanity" (Baptist Magazine, IX. 54, 55. London, 1817). It is sufficient to say that the name of Howard stands high above every other philanthropist to whom our race has given birth. The Howard Associations of all lands show the extent and duration of his fame. At the time of his death he had long been a member of the Little Wild Street Baptist Church, London, The great prison reform movement had its origin in the imprisonment of a Baptist preacher and was carried out by another great Baptist His funeral sermon was preached by the famous Dr. Samuel Stennett Dr. Stennett, in that discourse, said of his friend: Nor was he ashamed of those truths be heard stated, explained, and enforced in this place. He had made up his mind, as he said, upon his religions sentiments, and was not to be moved from his steadfastness by novel opinions obtruded on the world. Nor did he content himself with a bare profession of these divine truths. He entered into the spirit of the gospel, felt its power, and tasted its sweetness. You know, my friends, with what seriousness and devotion he attended, for a long course of years, on the worship of God among us. It would be scarcely decent for me to repeat the affectionate things he says, in a letter writ me from a remote part of the world, respecting the satisfaction and pleasure he had felt in the religions exercises of this place (Stennett, Works, III., 295. London, 1829). The entire letter is printed in the same volume (p. 459). In it he expresses his adherence to the faith. He says: But, Sir, the principal reason of my writing is most sincerely to thank you for the many, many pleasant hours I have had in reviewing the notes I have taken of the Sermons I had the happiness to hear under your ministry; these, Sir, with many of your petitions in prayer, have been, and are, the songs in the house of my pilgrimage. With unabated pleasure I have attended your ministry; no man ever entered more into my religious sentiments, or more happily expressed them. It ever was some little disappointment when any one occupied your pulpit; oh, Sir, how many Sabbaths have I ardently longed to spend in Wild Street; on those days I generally rest or if at sea, keep retired in my little cabin. It is you that preach; and I bless God I attend with renewed pleasure; God in Christ is my rock, the portion of my soul. I have little more to add, but, accept my renewed thanks. There was another great force working for the betterment of the Baptist denomination. It was represented by Andrew Fuller. He was horn February 6, 1754. His spiritual struggles if less interesting than John Bunyan were equally deep. He was long under conviction. He says of himself: In March, 1770, I witnessed the baptizing of two young persons. having never seen that ordinance administered before, and was considerably affected by what I saw and heard. The solemn immersion of a person, on a profession of faith in Christ, carried such a conviction with it, that I wept like a child on the occasion. . . I was fully persuaded that this was the primitive way of baptizing, and that every Christian was hound to attend to this Institution of our blessed Lord. About a month after this I was baptized myself, and joined the church at Soham, being then turned of sixteen years (Fuller, Works, I. 7) October, 1788, he became pastor at Kettering, and there he spent the remainder of his useful life. He was a determined opponent of error in all forms. He entered the lists "a mere Shamgar, as it might seem, entering the battlefield with but an ox-goad against the mailed errorists of his island," but he produced an impression that his enemies could not overcome. In appearance he was "tall, broad-shouldered, and firmly set. His hair was parted in the middle, the brow square and of fair height, the eyes deeply set, overhung with large bushy eyebrows. The whole face had a massive expression". The man who encountered him generally bore the marks of a bludgeon. He was the determined foe of hyper-Calvinism. He said in his strong way "had matters gone on but a few years the Baptists would have become a perfect dunghill." His work entitled: "The Gospel worthy of all Acceptation: or, The Obligation of Men fully to credit, and cordially to approve, whatever God makes known; wherein is considered the Nature of Faith in Christ, and the Duty of those where the Gospel comes in that matter," was an epoch making book. The book provoked a controversy, but the result of the controversy was that it cleared the ground and opened up the way for the preaching of the gospel to the whole world. Fuller became the first great Missionary Secretary of modern times. Dr. Joseph Belcher gives the following description and estimate of him: Imagine a tall and somewhat corpulent man, with gait and manners, though heavy and unpolished, not without dignity, ascending the pulpit to address his fellow mortals on the great themes of life and salvation. His authoritative look and grave deportment claim your attention. You could not be careless if you would; and you would have no disposition to be so, even if you might. He commences his sermon, and presents to you a plan, combining in a singular manner the topical and textual methods of preaching, and proceeds to illustrate his subject, and enforce its claim on your regard. You are struck with the clearness of his statements; every text is held up before your view so as to become transparent; the preacher has clearly got the correct sense of the passage, and you wonder that you never saw it before as he now presents it; he proceeds, and you are surprised at the power of his argument, which appears to be irresistible. You are melted by his pathos, and seem to have found a man in whom are united the clearness of Barrow, the scriptural theology of Owen, and the subduing tenderness of Barter and Flavel. Andrew Fuller was providentially raised up at a period when coldness benumbed some parts of the Christian church, and errors obscured the glory of others. Untaught in the schools, he had to work his way through all kinds of difficulty; to assume the attitude of a controversialist even against his own section of the church, as well as against the enemies of the common faith; and to contend against prejudices of every sort, that truth might spread, and Christian zeal be roused into action. The wonder rather is, that one short life should have accomplished so much, than so little was effected (Fuller, Works, I. 107 note). This missionary movement really began in 1784 in a conference for prayer established by Carey. Only two years previous to this date Carey and Fuller became acquainted; when the latter, "a round headed, rustic looking" young man preached "On being men in Understanding" and heard him read a circular letter at the association on "The Grace of Hope." Carey had fasted all day "because he had not a penny to buy a dinner." He enjoyed the sermon and the two men became fast friends. At a meeting held in Kettering, October 2, 1792, the Baptist Missionary Society was formed, and the first collection for its treasury amounting to £18 2s 6d, was taken up. Mr. Fuller was appointed the first Secretary, and while others nobly aided, Andrew Fuller was substantially the Society till he reached the realms of glory. Speaking of the mission to India, he says: Our undertaking to India really appeared to me, on its commencement, to be somewhat like a few men, who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mine, which had never before been explored. We had no one to guide us, and while we were deliberating, Carey, as it were, said, "Well, I will go down if you will hold the rope." But before he went down he, as it seemed to me, took no oath from each of us at the mouth of the pit, to this effect, that while "we lived, we should never let go the rope" (Ivimey, History of the English Baptists, IV. 529). Carey perhaps had the greatest facility of learning languages of any man who ever lived. In seven years he learned Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French and Dutch. Carey and Thomas. a Baptist surgeon of India, were appointed missionaries. They first attempted to sail in the Earl of Oxford, but were prevented by the East India Company. Carey finally sailed in the Danish East Indianman, the Kron Princessa Maria, June 13, 1793. On his missionary work in India it is not necessary, in this place, to linger. He prepared grammars, dictionaries and most of all translated the Scriptures. Of his books it is said: The versions of the Sacred Scriptures, in the preparation of which he took an active and laborious part, including Sanscrit, Hindu, Brijbbhassa, Mahrratta, Bengali, Oriya, Telinga, Karnata, Maldivian, Gurajattee, Bulooshe, Pushtoo, Punjabi, Kashmeer, Assam, Burman, Pali, or Magudha, Tamul, Cingalese, Armenian, Malay. Hindostani, and Persian. In six of these tongues the whole Scriptures have been translated and circulated; the New Testament has appeared in 23 languages, besides various dialects in which smaller portions of the sacred text have been printed. In thirty years Carey and his brethren rendered the Word of God accessible to one third of the world. Even that is not all; before Carey died 212,000 copies of the Scriptures were issued from Serampore in forty different languages, the tongues of 330,000,000 of the human family. Dr. Carey was the greatest tool maker for missionaries that ever labored for God, His versions are used today by all denominations of Christians throughout India. Carey, Marshman and Ward gave during their stay in India nearly $400,000.00 for the spread of the gospel. Frederick VI, of Denmark, sent them a gold medal as a token of appreciation for their labors. At the death of Carey the learned societies of Europe passed the most flattering resolutions. Dr. Southey says of Carey, Marshman and Ward: These low-born, low-bred mechanics have clone more to spread the knowledge of the Scriptures among the heathen than has been accomplished, or even attempted, by all the world beside. William Wilberforce said in the House of Commons of Carey: He had the genius as well as the benevolence to devise the plan of a society for communicating the blessings of Christian light to the natives of India. To qualify himself for this truly noble enterprise he had resolutely applied himself to the study of the learned languages; and after making considerable proficiency in them, applied himself to several of the oriental tongues, and more especially to the Sanscrit, in which his proficiency is acknowledged to be greater than that of Sir William Jones, or any other European. With the defeat of Antinomianism, and under the impulse of the missionary propaganda, there was a renewed desire to read and study the Bible. With this there began another movement which was destined to exercise the most beneficial influence upon the human race in every part of the globe. Towards the close of the eighteenth century a great want of Welsh Bibles was felt by ministers of religion in that country. Few families wore in possession of a single copy of the Holy Scriptures. So urgent was the need, of a supply, that the Rev. Thomas Charles came to London to place the matter before some religious people. Having been introduced to the committee of the Religious Tract Society, of which Rev. Joseph Hughes, a Baptist Minister was Secretary, that there might be a similar dearth in other parts of the country, and that it would be desirable to form a society for the express purpose of circulating the Scriptures. Inquiries were made throughout England, as well as upon the Continent, and it was found that the people everywhere were destitute of the Bible. The result was the formation of The British and Foreign Bible Society. Mr. Hughes was elected secretary. "I am thankful for my intimacy with him," said his friend Leifchild. "My esteem of him always grew with my intercourse. I never knew a more consistent, correct, and unblemished character. He was not only sincere, but without offense, and adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. His mind was full of information, singularly instructive, and very edifying; and while others talked of candor and moderation, he exemplified them" (Leifchild, Memoir of the Rev. J. Hughes, 148) Mr. Hughes prepared a prize essay on: "The Excellency of the Holy Scriptures, an Argument for their more General Dispersion." The circulation of this essay led to the formation of the Society, May 4, 1804, at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street. Mr. Hughes originated the Society, gave it a name, and became its first secretary. At this meeting it was agreed: (1) A Society shall be formed with this designation, The British and Foreign Bible Society, of which the sole object shall he to encourage a wider dispersion of the Holy Scriptures. (2) This Society shall add its endeavors to those employed by other Societies for circulating the Scriptures through the British dominions, and shall also, according to its ability, extend its influence to other countries, whether Christian, Mahometan, and Pagan, &c. The institution was thus established and more than seven hundred pounds were subscribed for its maintenance. The first historian, John Owen, says: Thus terminated the proceedings of this extraordinary day, a day memorable in the experience of all who participated in the transactions by which it was signalized; a day to which posterity will look back, as giving to the world, and that in times of singular perturbation and distress, an institution for diffusing, on the grandest scale, the tidings of peace end salvation; a day which will be recorded as peculiarly honorable to the character of Great Britain, and as fixing an important epoch in the history of mankind (Owen, The History of the Origin and First Ten Years of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1.16, 17 London, 1816). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 26: 01.1.26. CHAPTER 20 CONTINUED ======================================================================== The institution of Sunday Schools also dates from this period. It was the year 1780 that Robert Raikes, the proprietor and editor of the Gloucester Journal, had his attention drawn to the ignorance and depravity of the children of Gloucester. The streets of the lower part of the town, he was informed, were filled on Sunday with "multitudes of these wretches, released on that day from employment, spent their time in noise and riot playing at chinck, and cursing and swearing." Raikes at once conceived the idea of employing persons to teach these children on Sunday. The idea was carried into execution, and at the end of three years he wrote to a friend: It is now three years since we began; and I wish you were here, to make inquiry into the effect. A woman who lives in a lane, where I had fixed a school, told me, some time ago, that the place was quite a heaven on Sundays, compared with what it use to be. The numbers who have learned to read, and say their catechism, are so great that I am astonished at it. Upon the Sunday afternoon the mistresses take their scholars to church, a place into which neither they nor their ancestors ever entered with a view to the glory of God (Watson, History of the Sunday School Union, 5, 6). The school of Raikes was not a Sunday School, but a school which taught reading and catechism of the Church of England and marched the children to Church on Sunday. Mr. Raikes does not appear to have expected that his system would be generally adopted. William Fox, a Baptist deacon, of London, had the honor of giving universality to the Sunday School. He became interested in the movement and proposed the Sunday School Society. "I am full of admiration at the great," writes Mr. Raikes to Mr. Fox, "and the noble design of the society you speak of forming. If it were possible that my poor abilities could be rendered in any degree useful to you, point out the subject, and you will find me not inactive" (Baptist Magazine, XIX. 251. London, 1827). The Sunday School Society, which has been of such signal use in England, was organized in the Prescott Street Baptist Church, London, September 7, 1785. Fox placed the Sunday School under voluntary instead of paid teachers, and had the Bible taught instead of secular studies. The modern Sunday School in its development originated with a Baptist. It has sometimes been said that on account of their opposition to infant baptism the position of the Baptists included a harsh attitude toward the young. But they are not indifferent to the conversion of their children. The covenants of Baptist churches as far back as they can be traced, pledge each member to bring up his offspring in "the nurture and admonition of the Lord" This was manifested in the lives of these English Baptists. Benjamin Keach (born 1640) suffered at the pillory by order of the judges for writing and publishing a book entitled "The Child’s Instructor," and he was placed in prison for two months and forced to pay a fine of one hundred pounds. He was converted at eighteen and was pastor in London at the age of twenty-eight. John Gill (born 1607), the great commentator, was converted when he was twelve years of age, and at twenty-three was the successor of Keach. John Rippon (born 1751), the successor of Gill was converted when he was sixteen, was a licensed preacher in Bristol College when he was seventeen, and was chosen to succeed the great Gill at twenty years of age. John Ryland (born 1755) was converted when he was fourteen and ordained when be was eighteen. Joseph Stennett (born 1692), was converted at fifteen and was ordained as pastor of Little Wild Street when he was twenty-two. Samuel Stennett (born 1727), son and successor of the above, was converted and baptized when he was quite young. Robert Hall (born 1764), was converted at nine years of age, began to preach at fifteen and was assistant pastor of Broadmead Church, Bristol, before he reached his majority. Andrew Fuller (born 1754) was converted at fourteen years of age, baptized at sixteen, and ordained at twenty-one." This list of distinguished Baptist preachers, converted when young, could be indefinitely extended. Out of the same general awakening Stepney College, now Regents Park College, owes its origin. Its foundation is due entirely to Abraham Booth, No institution has done more service for the Baptists of England than has this one. For more than thirty years the celebrated Joseph Angus was its president. He was a profound scholar, a forceful writer and a member of the Committee that Revised the New Testament. At the age of twenty-two he was pastor of the church honored by the ministrations of Dr. Gill and Rippon, and that was in later days to receive additional fame from the ministry of Charles H. Spurgeon. The work of Revision occupied much of his best thought and labor for ten years (1870-1880), and to the enthusiasm which so congenial a task inspired was added the delight of intercourse with scholars from almost every section of the religious community. He was always distinctively a Baptist Besides Bristol and Midland Colleges, the foundation of which have already been mentioned, the Baptists of England have Rawdon College, A. D. 1804, the Pastors College, 1861, and Manchester College, 1866. English Baptists have abounded in able authors. Note can be made of only two or three here. John Foster was a writer of essays. Sir James Mackintosh declares that he was "one of the most profound and eloquent writers that England has produced." Aubrey, in his "Rise of the English Nation" makes this reference to John Foster: "The Eclectic Review for a length of time swayed literary and political opinions; mainly through the splendid articles, nearly 200 in number, contributed by John Foster. His famous essays showed their author to be, according to Mackintosh, one of the most profound and eloquent writers that England has produced. His "Life and Correspondence" by Ryland ranks among the classics. No song book would be complete that did not contain "Blest be the tie," by John Fawcett; and "How Firm a Foundation," by George Keith. The English Baptists have always had able, cultured and eloquent preachers. They have produced three of the greatest preachers of all time. Robert Hall has been pronounced the greatest preacher that ever used the English tongue. And no generation will forget Charles H. Spurgeon and Alexander Maclaren. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 27: 01.1.27. CHAPTER 21 ORIGIN OF AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES ======================================================================== A History of the Baptists CHAPTER XXI THE ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES THE exact date of the arrival of the first Baptists in America, and their names are uncertain. There are traces of immersion and the rejection of infant baptism at an early date. Governor Winslow wrote of the Baptists, in 1646, "We have some living among us, nay, some of our churches, of that judgment." Cotton Mather states that "many of the first settlers of Massachusetts were Baptists, and they were as holy and watchful and faithful and heavenly people as any, perhaps in the world" (Mather, Magnalia, II.459). He further says: Some few of these people have been among the Planters in New England from the beginning, and have been welcome to the communion of our Churches, which they have enjoyed, reserving their particular opinions unto themselves. But at length it came to pass, that while some of our churches used it, it may be, a little too much of cogency towards their brethren, which would weakly turn their backs when infants were brought forth to be baptized, in the congregation there were some of these brethren who in a day of temptation broke forth into schismatical practices, that were justly offensive unto all of the churches in this wilderness (Ibid, II. 459. Hartford, 1820). Speaking of these statements of Mather the Baptist historian Crosby says: "So that Antipaedobaptism is as ancient in those parts as Christianity itself" (Crosby, I. 111). Baptist news were broached at Plymouth. Roger Williams came in 1631. He had attended the preaching of Samuel Howe, the Baptist preacher in London who practiced immersion. Williams himself paid a high tribute to Howe. It is not certain that Wil1iams, at this time, had fully adopted Baptist principles. "When it is recollected," says Ivimey, "that so early as the year 1615, the Baptists in England pleaded for liberty of conscience as the right of all Christians, in their work entitled, ’Persecution judged and condemned:’-and this appears to have been the uniform sentiment of the denomination at large, and that Mr. Williams was very intimate with them at a very early period, which is evident from the manner in which he speaks of Mr. Samuel Howe of London: It is highly probably that these principles which rendered him such a blessing to America and the world were first maintained and taught by the English Baptists (Ivimey, A History of the English Baptists, I.219, 220). It is probable that Williams already believed in immersion and rejected infant baptism. In 1633 he was "already inclined to the opinions of the Anabaptists" (Publications of the Narragansett Club, I. 14). For on requesting his dismissal to Salem in the autumn of 1633, Elder Brewster persuaded the Plymouth Church to relinquish communion with him, lest he should "run the same course of rigid Separation and Anabaptistery which Mr. John Smith, the Se-Baptist of Amsterdam had done" (Publications of the Narragansett Club, I. 17). Anabaptism was a spectre which haunted the imaginations of the early American settlers. The word possessed a mysterious power of inspiring terror, and creating odium. It "can be made the symbol of all that is absurd and execrable, so that the very sound of it shall irritate the passions of the multitude, as dogs have been taught to bark, at the name of a neighboring tyrant." William Gammell, after stating the immersion of Roger Williams, further says: The very mention of the name of Anabaptism called up a train of phantoms, that never failed to excite the apprehensions of the early Puritans. Hence it was, that when Mr. Brewster suggested even the remotest association of Roger Williams with this heresy, the church at Plymouth was easily induced to grant the dismission which he had requested. A considerable number of its members, however, who had become attached to his ministry were also dismissed at the same time, and removed with him to Salem (Gammell, Life of Roger Wil11ams, 27. In Sparks’ American Biography, IV). There was an Anabaptist taint about Plymouth. There is therefore this singular circumstance that the Rev. Charles Chauncy, who was an Episcopal clergyman and brought with him the doctrine of immersion, made for Plymouth, Felt says he arrived "a few days before the great earthquake on the 1st of June," 1639. The account of the disturbance on account of immersion is related by two governors who were eye witnesses. Governor Winthrop of the Colony of Massachusetts, under date of 1639, says: Our neighbors of Plymouth had procured from hence, this year, one Mr. Chancey, a great scholar, and a godly man, intending to call him to the office of a teacher; but before the fit time came, he discovered his judgment about baptism, that the children ought to be dipped and not sprinkled; and, he being an active man, and very vehement, there arose much trouble about it. The magistrates and the other elders there, and most of the people, withstood the receiving of that practice, not for itself so much, as for fear of worse consequences, as the annihilation of our baptism, &c. Whereupon the church there wrote to all the other churches, both here and in Connecticut, &c., for advice, and sent Mr. Chancey’s arguments. The churches took them into consideration, and returned their several answers, wherein they showed their dissent from him, and clearly confuted all his arguments, discovering withal some great mistakes of his about the judgment and practice of antiquity (Winthrop, History of New England, I.390, 331). Governor Bradford of Plymouth Colony took up the matter likewise and showed that not only Chauncy was an immersionist but that the whole of New England was agitated on the subject of immersion. Thus there is the record of two governors on the subject. Governor Bradford says: I had forgotten to insert in its place how ye church here had invited and sent for Mr. Charles Chansey, a reverend, godly and very learned man, intending upon triall to chose him pastor of ye church hear, for ye more comfortable performance of ye ministrie with Mr. John Reinor, the teacher of ye same. But ther fell out some difference aboute baptising. he holding that it ought only to be by dipping, and putting ye whole body under water, and that sprinkling was unlawful. The church yeelded that immersion, or dipping, was lawfull, but in this could countrie not so conveniente. But they could not nor drust not yeeld to him in this, that sprinkling (which all ye churches of Christ doe for ye most Parte at this day) was unlawfull & humane invention, as ye same was prest; but they were willing to yeel to him as far as they could, & to the utmost; and were contented to suffer him to practise as he was perswaded; and when he came to minister that ordinance he might so doe it to any yt did desire it in yt way, provided he could peacably suffer Mr. Reinor, and such as desired to have theirs otherwise baptized by him, by sprinkling or powering on of water upon them; so ther might be no disturbance in ye church hereaboute. But he said be could not yeeld hereunto. Upon which the church procured some other ministers to dispute ye pointe with him publickly; as Mr. Ralfe Patrick, of Duxberie, allso some other ministers within this governmente. But he was not satisfied; so ye church sent to many other churches to crave their help and advise in this matter, and with his will & consente, sent them his arguments written under his owne hand. They sente them to ye church at Boston in ye Bay of Massachusetts, to be communicated with other churches ther. Also they sent the same to ye churches of Conightecutt and New-Haven, with sundrie others; and received very able & sufficient answers, as they conceived, from them and their larned ministers, who all concluded against him. But himself was not satisfied therwth. Their answers are too large hear to relate. They conceived ye church had done what was meete in ye things, so Mr. Chansey having been ye most parte 3 years here, removed himself to Sityate, wher he now remaines a minister to ye church ther (Bradford, Of Plimoth Plantation, 382, 384). This was the first debate on the American continent on the subject of immersion. This was possibly before there was a Baptist church in this country, certainly before there was more than one, namely, the First Providence. The whole of New England was agitated on the subject of immersion. The Church at Boston and other churches returned answers (Bradford, History of New England, I.). As much as Chauncy was admired at Plymouth the church did not employ him on account of his views on the subject of immersion. This is set forth by Hooker in a letter to his son-in-law, Shepherd, November 2, 1640. He says: I have of late had intelligence from Plymouth. Mr. Chauncy and the church are to part, he to provide for himself, and they for themselves. At the day of fast, when a full conclusion of the business should have been made, he openly professed he did as verily believe the truth of his opinion as that there was a God in heaven, and that he was as settled in it as that the earth was upon the center. If such confidence find success I miss my mark. Mr. Humphrey, I hear, invites him to providence, and that coast is most meet for his opinions and practice (Felt, Ecclesiastical History, I. 443). It will be seen from this letter of Hooker’s that Mr. Chauncy was invited on leaving Plymouth to go to Providence, for "that coast is most meet for his opinions and practice." That is to say the Providence men believed in immersion. It cannot mean anything else since Chauncy still believed in infant baptism. This is perfectly plain for Felt says of Chauncy, July 7, 1642: Chauncy at Scituate still adheres to his practice of immersion. He has baptized two of his own children in this way. A women of his congregation who had a child of three years old, and wished it to receive such an ordinance, was fearful that it might be too much frightened by being dipped as some had been. She desired a letter from him, recommending her to the Boston church, so that she might have the child sprinkled. He complied and the rite was accordingly administered (Felt, Ecclesiastical History, I. 497. See also Winthrop, History of New England, 11.72). So there was no difference between the Providence men and Chauncy on the form of baptism. So Chauncy settled at Scituate. But the practice of dipping had long been known in that town. In 1684 after Spilsbury had drawn out of the Jacob Church, in London, and he was in the practice of dipping, Lathrop, then pastor of that church and some of his followers, removed from London, and settled at Scituate, Massachusetts. Even after the removal the old question of immersion would not dawn. Deane, who was an able historian and editor of the publications of the Massachusetts Historical Society, says: Controversy respecting the mode of baptism had been agitated in Mr. Lathrop’s church before he left England, and a part had separated from him, and established the first Baptist (Calvinistic) church in England in 1633. Those that came seem not all to have been settled on this point, and they found others in Scituate ready to sympathize with them. Lathrop remained in Scituate till 1639. The immersion trouble still pursued him, and in 1639 he and the portion or the church that practiced sprinkling, who were in the minority, removed to Barnstable. Deane further says that a majority of those left in Scituate believed in immersion, but "nearly half the church were resolute in not submitting to that mode." One party "held to infant sprinkling; another to adult immersion exclusively; and a third, of which was Mr. Chauncy, to immersion of infants as well as adults." So when Chauncy came to Scituate he found a people of his own mode of thinking. Dr. Henry S. Burrage asks: How came Mr. Chauncy to hold such an opinion, if immersion was unknown among the Baptists of England until 1641? And certainly if Mr. Chauncy in 1638 rejected sprinkling and insisted upon immersion as scriptural baptism, why may not Roger Williams and his associates at Providence have done the same in the following year? [or the year before]. Not only did all the churches consider and respond to the appeal of the Plymouth church to its position on the question of immersion, but almost every man who could wield a pen, seems to have used it against the prevailing Anabaptist errors. John Lathrop, in 1644, published "A Short Form of Catechisme of the Doctrine of Baptisme. In use in these Times that are so fun of Questions". In the same year, Thomas Sheppard went to press, urged by the "increase of the Anabaptists, rigid Separatists, Antinomians and Familists." In 1645, George Phillips, of Watertown; in 1647, John Cotton of Boston and Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich; in 1648, Thomas Cobbett, of Lynn; and in 1649, Thomas Hooker, all published treatises dealing with the question of baptism and its proper candidates, and aimed at the Anabaptists, in which the severest epithets were employed. And these are but samples which have been preserved of a vigorous literature, called forth by the supposed exigencies of the times" (King, The Baptism of Roger Williams, 52. Providence, 189?). In 1654 Chauncy was elected President of Harvard University. Consistent with his former position, he still held to immersion. Pierce, the historian of Harvard, says: The town to which President Dunster retired after his resignation had the singular fortune to supply the college with a successor in the person of the Rev. Charles Chauncy. He "was of the contrary extreme as to baptism from his predecessor; it being his judgment not only to admit infants to baptism, but to wash or dip them all over" (Pierce, History of Harvard University, 18. Cambridge, 1833). The third pastor of Scituate was Henry Hunster. He was the first President of Harvard. He came to America in 1640 and was immediately elected President of the College. Hubbard says of him: Under whom, that which was before but at best schola illustra, grew to the stature and perfection of a College, and flourished in the profusion of all liberal sciences for many years. And Prince says: For a further improvement it (The New England Psalm Book) was committed to the Rev. Mr. Henry Dunster, president of Harvard College; one of the great masters of the oriental languages, that hath been known in these ends of the earth (Prince, Preface to New England Psalm Book). He had brought the College to the highest standard of usefulness. He was present in Boston at the trial of Clarke, Holmes and Crandall for worshipping God. He had long had scruples on the subject of infant baptism and now he was convinced that it was wrong. He boldly preached against the same in the church at Cambridge. This greatly frustrated Mr. Jonathan Mitchell, the pastor of the church. He said: I had a strange experience; I found hurrying and pressing suggestions against Pedobaptism, and injected scruples and thoughts whether the other way might not be right, and infant baptism an invention of men, and whether I might with good conscience baptize children, and the like. And these thoughts were darted in with some impression, and left a strange confusion and sickliness upon my spirit (Mitchell’s Life, 69,70). This action against infant baptism, in 1653, forced his resignation as President of Harvard, Quincy, the historian of Harvard, says: Dunster’s usefulness however was deemed to be at an end and his services no longer desirable, In consequence of his falling in 1653, as Cotton Mather expresses it, "into the briars of anti-paedobaptism," and of having borne "public testimony in the church at Cambridge against the administration of baptism to any infant whatever". . . Indicted by the grand jury for disturbing the ordinance of infant baptism on the Cambridge church, sentenced to a public admonition on lecture day, and laid under bonds for good behaviour, Dunster’s martyrdom was consummated by being compelled in October, 1654, to resign his office as President (Quincy, History of Harvard University, I, 15-18). He now goes to Scituate as pastor and Chauncy went to Harvard as President. Thus did Baptist sentiments prevail. The opposition was strongest against their views of infant sprinkling. Hanserd Knollys arrived in Boston, in 1638, and in a brief time moved to Dover, then called Piscataway, New Hampshire. There has been much dispute as to whether he was at the time a Baptist. He died September 19, 1691. On his return to England in 1641 he was certainly a Baptist. Mather, who was a contemporary, and evidently acquainted with his opinions in America says he was a Baptist. He says: I confess there were some of these persons whose names deserve to live in our book for their piety, although their particular opinions were such as to be disserviceable unto the declared and supposed interests of our churches. Of these there were some godly Anabaptists; as namely Mr. Hanserd Knollys (whom one of his adversaries called Absurd Knowles), of Dover, who afterwards moved back to London, lately died there a good man, In a good old age (Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, I. 243. Hartford, 1855). However that is he was apparently pastor of a mired congregation of Pedobaptists and Baptists at Dover. There was nothing strange about this for even Isaac Backus, the Baptist historian, was once pastor of such a church before he became a regular Baptist. There was soon in the church a disturbance on the subject of infant baptism. Mr. Leckford, an Episcopalian, visited Dover in April, 1641, and he describes a controversy between Mr. Knollys and a ministerial opponent about baptism and church membership. "They two," says he, "fell out about baptizing children, receiving of members, etc." The Baptists, taught by Knollys, in order to escape persecution removed, in 1641, to Long Island. After Long Island fell into the power of the Episcopalians they moved again to New Jersey and called their third home Piscataway. This has long been a flourishing Baptist church. Manifestly the Anabaptist peril was regarded as great so the General Court of Massachusetts, March 3, 1636, ordered: That all persons are to take notice that this Court doth not, nor will hereafter, approve of any such companies of men as shall henceforth join in say pretended way of church fellowship, without they shall first acquaint the magistrate and the elders of the greater part of the churches in this jurisdiction with their intentions, and have their approbation therein. And further it is ordered, that no person being a member of any such church which shall hereafter be gathered without the approbation or the magistrates and the greater part of the said churches, shall be admitted to the freedom of this commonwealth (Massachusetts Records). In 1639, it seems, there was an attempt to found a Baptist church at Weymouth, a town about fourteen miles southeast of Boston. This was frustrated by interposing magistrates. The crime charged was: That only baptism was the door of entrance into the visible church; the common sort of people did eagerly embrace his opinion (Lenthal), and labored to get such a church on foot, as all baptised ones might communicate in, without any further trial of them (Massachusetts Records). John Smith, John Spur, Richard Sylvester, Ambrose Morton, Thomas Makepeace, and Robert Lenthal, were the principal promoters of the design. They were all arraigned before the General Court at Boston, March 13, 1639, where the most of them were fined (Benedict, History of the Baptists, I.356. Boston, 1813). The same year in which Mr. Chauncy came over, a female of considerable distinction, whom Governor Winthrop calls Lady Moody, and who, according to the account of that statesman and historian, was a wise, amiable, and religions woman, "was taken with the error of denying baptism to infants" (Winthrop, II. 123, 124). She had purchased a plantation at Lynn, ten miles Northeast of Boston, of one Humphrey, who had returned to England. She belonged to the church in Salem, to which she was near, where she was dealt with by many of the elders and others; but persisting in her error, and to escape the storm which she saw gathering over her head, she removed to Long Island and settled among the Dutch. "Many others infested with Anabaptism removed thither also." Eleven years after Mrs. Moody’s removal (1651), Messrs. Clarke, Holmes, and Crandall, went to visit some Baptists at Lynn, by the request of an aged brother. This circumstance makes it probable, that although many Anabaptists went off with this lady, yet there were some left behind (Benedict, A General History of the Baptist Denomination, I. 358). In 1644, we are informed by Mr. Hubbard, that "a poor man, by the name of Painter, was suddenly turned Anabaptist, and having a child born would not suffer his wife to carry it to be baptized. He was complained of for this to the court, and enjoined by them to suffer his child to be baptized. But poor Painter had the misfortune to dissent from the church and the court. He told them that infant baptism was an antichristian ordinance, for which he was tied up and whipt. He bore his chastisement with fortitude, and declared that he had divine help to support him. The same author who records this narrative, intimates that this poor sufferer, "was a man of very loose behavior at home." This accusation was altogether a matter of course; it need no further facts to substantiate it; for was it possible for a poor Anabaptist to be a holy man? Governor Winthrop tells us he belonged to Hingham, and says he was whipt "for reproaching the Lord’s ordinance" (Winthrop, II. 174, 175). Upon which Mr Backus judicially enquires: "Did not they who whipped this poor, conscientious man, reproach infant sprinkling, by taking such methods to support it, more than Painter did?" (Backus, I. 857, 358). By this time Winthrop tells us the "Anabaptists increased and spread in Massachusetts" (Winthrop, II. 174). This is confirmed in many ways. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut wrote to Thomas Sheppard of Cambridge as follows: I like those Anabaptists and their opinion every day worse than the other. . . unlesse you he very watchful you will have an army in the field before you know how to prepare or to oppose. When John Wilson, the colleague of John Cotton, was near his end, he was asked for what sins the land had been visited by God’s judgments, and his answer was, "Separatism, Ana-baptism and Korahism." Persecutions had begun against the Baptists in 1635, and were inflicted subsequently in the name of the law in many places, in Dorchester, Weymouth, Rehobeth, Salem, Watertown, Hingham, Dover, N. H., and Swampscott. So numerous were the offenders thaton November 13, 1644, the General Court, passed a law for the Suppression of the Baptists. The law was as follows: Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully and often proved, that since the first rising of the Anabaptists, about one hundred years since, they have been the incendiaries of the commonwealths, and the infectors of persons in main matters of religion, and the troublers of churches in all places when they have been, and that they who have held the baptizing of infants unlawful, have usually held other errors or heresies together therewith, though they have (as other heretics use to do) concealed the same till they spied out a fit advantage and opportunity to vent them, by way of question or scruple; and whereas divers of this kind have since our coming into New England appeared amongst ourselves, some whereof (as others before them) denied the ordinance of magistracy, and the lawfulness of making war, and others the lawfulness of magistrates, and their inspection into any breach of the first table; which opinions, if they should be connived at by us, are like to be increased amongst us, and so must necessarily bring guilt upon us, Infection and trouble to the churches, and hazard to the whole commonwealth; it is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons, within this jurisdiction, shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the ministration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful right and authority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches of the first table, and shall appear to the court willfully and obstinately to continue therein after due time and means of conviction, every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment (Backus, History of the Baptists In New England, I.359, 860) Speaking of this law, Hubbard, one of their own historians says: But with what success is hard to say; all men being naturally inclined to pity them that suffer, how much soever they are incensed against offenders in general. Natural conscience and the reverence of a Deity, that is deeply engraven on the hearts of all, make men more apt to favor them that suffer for religion, true or false (Massachusett Record’s, 373). The next year in March an effort was made at a General Court "for suspending (if not abolishing) a law against the Anabaptists the former year." It did not prevail for "some were much afraid of the increase of Anabaptism. This was the reason why the greater part prevailed for the strict observation of the aforesaid laws, although peradventure a little moderation as to some cases might have done very well, if not better." Roger Williams was born about the year 1600. He was educated in the University of Cambridge under the patronage of the celebrated jurist, Sir Edward Coke. He was sorely persecuted by Archbishop Laud, and on that account he fled to America. He arrived in Boston, February, 1681. He was immediately invited to become pastor of that church, but he found that it was "an unseparated church" and he "durst not officiate to" it The Salem church extended him an invitation to become pastor, but he was prevented from remaining in that charge by a remonstrance from Governor Bradford. He was gladly received at Plymouth, but he gave "vent… to divers of his own singular opinions," and he sought "to impose them upon others." Hence he returned to Salem in the Summer of 1683 with a number of persons who sympathized with his views; and in 1684 he became pastor of that church. There had already been a good deal of discussion on certain phases of infant baptism. He was finally banished from that colony in January, 1686. His radical tenets demanded the separation of the church and state, and that doctrine was unwholesome in Salem. Alter many adventures in passing through the trackless forests in the midst of a terrific New England winter, he arrived in Providence with five others, in June of the same year. In 1688 many Massachusetts Christians who had adopted Baptist views, and finding themselves subjected to persecution on that account, moved to Providence (Winthrop, A History of New England, I.269). Most of these had been connected with Williams in Massachusetts and some of them were probably Baptists in England. Williams was himself well acquainted with Baptist views, and had already expounded soul liberty. Winthrop attributed Williams’ Baptist views to Mrs. Scott, a sister of Ann Hutchinson. Williams was acquainted with the General Baptist view of a proper administrator of baptism, namely that two believers had the right to begin baptism. On his adoption of Baptist views, previous to March, 1639 (Winthrop says in 1638, I. 293), Williams was baptized by Ezekiel Holliman, and in turn Williams baptized Holliman and some ten others. At this time there was not a Baptist preacher in America unless Hanserd Knollys was such a man. The form of baptism on the occasion was immersion (Newman, A History of Baptist Churches in the United States, 80. New York, 1894). In a footnote Dr. Newman says: Contemporary testimony is unanimous in favor of the view that immersion was practiced by Williams. As the fact is generally conceded, It does not seem worth while to quote the evidence. That evidence is clear and explicit. Reference has already been made to the immersion views of Chauncy, and that on November 2, 1640, at Providence, "that coast is most meet for his opinion and practice." In the person of Richard Scott there was an eye witness of the baptism of Roger Williams. He was also a Baptist at the time. He says: I walked with him in the Baptists’ way about three or four months, in which time he brake from the society, and declared at large the ground and reason of it; that their baptism could not be right because it was not administered by an apostle. After that he set about a way of seeking (with two or three of them that had dissented with him) by way of preaching and praying; and there he continued a year or two, till two of the three left him (Scott, Letter in George Fox’s answer to Williams. Backus, History of the Baptists of New England, 1.88). This was written thirty-eight years after the baptism of Williams. Scott had turned Quaker. There is no question that the "Baptists’ way" was immersion; and there is no intimation that the Baptists had ever changed their method of baptizing. There was another contemporary witness in the person of William Coddington. He had likewise turned Quaker and could not say too many things against Williants. In 1677 he wrote to his friend Fox, the Quaker, as follows: I have known him about fifty years; a mere weathercock; constant only in inconsistency; poor man, that doth not know what should become of his soul, if this night it should be taken from him. . One time for water baptism, men and women must be plunged into the water (Backus, History of the Baptists of New England, I. 333). The testimony of Williams to the form of baptism is singularly clear. He declares that it is an immersion. In a tract which for a long time was supposed to be lost, "Christenings Make not Christians," 1645, he says: Thirdly, for our New-England parts, I can speake uprightly and confidently, I know it to have been easie for myselfe, long ere this, to have brought many thousand. of these Natives (the Indians), yea the whole country, to a far greater Antichristian conversion then was ever yet heard of in America. I have reported something in the Chapter of their Religion, how readily I could have brought the whole Country to have observed one day in seven; I adde to have received a Baptisme (or washing) though it were in Rivers (as The first Christians and the Lord Jesus himselfe did) to have come to a stated church meeting, maintained priests and forms of prayer, and the whole forme of antichristian worship in life and death (p.11). In a letter which is found among the Winthrop papers, dated Narragansett, November 10, 1649, Willams says: At Seekonk a great many have lately concurred with Mr. John Clark and our Providence men about the point of new baptism, and the manner by dipping, and Mr. John Clark hath been there lately, (and Mr. Lucar), and hath dipped them. I believe their practice comes nearer the first practice of the great Founder Christ Jesus, then any other practices of religion do (Publications of the Narragansett Club). A great many Baptist writers could be quoted to prove that Williams practiced immersion, A statement from a few Pedobaptist writers is sufficient. Joseph B. Felt says: Having become an Anabaptist, through the influence of a sister to Mrs. Hutchinson and wife to Richard Scott, he went to live at Providence the preceding year, Williams, as stated by Winthrop, was lately immersed. The person who performed this rite was Ezekiel Holliman, who had gone to reside there from Salem. Williams then did the same for him and ten others, and thus they formed a church (Felt, Ecclesiastical History of New England, 1.402). Professor George r. Fisher, Yale University, says: At Providence, in 1639, a layman named Holliman baptized him by immersion, and then Williams in turn baptized Holliman, and "some ten more." This was not a strange step, for Roger Williams had been anticipated in his favorite tenet of "soul liberty" by the Baptists, who were pioneers in the assertion of the doctrine of religious freedom (Fisher, History of the Christian Church, 472). Professor Fisher further says: In 1638 Williams was immersed by an Anabaptist named Holliman and ten others. There was thus constituted the first Baptist church In America (Fisher, The Colonial Era, 123). Dr. Philip Schaff says: In 1638 he became a Baptist; he was immersed by Ezekiel Holliman and in turn immersed Holliman and ten others (Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 1.851). The act of baptism by immersion never seemed to trouble Williams. He had doubts in regard to any authorized administrator of baptism on account of the corruption in the world, there being no valid church. He continued only three or four months in connection with the Providence church, and then he departed from them and turned Seeker. Under this point Governor Winthrop, under date of June or July, 1639, says: At Providence, matters went on after the old manner. Mr. Williams and many of his company, a few months since, were in all haste rebaptized. and denied communion with all others, and now he has come to question his second baptism, not being able to derive the authority of it from the apostles, otherwise than by the ministers of England, (whom he judged to be ill authority) so as he conceived God would raise up some apostolic power. Therefore he bent himself that way, expecting (as was supposed) to become an apostle; and having a little before, refused communion with all, save his own wife, now he would preach to and pray with all comers. Whereupon some of his followers left him and returned back from whence they went (Winthrop, I. 307). Having been an Episcopalian, apostolic succession was the rock upoon which he split. Cotton Mather says of him: Upon the sentiment of the court, Mr. Williams with his party going abroad (as one says) to "seek their providences," removed into the Southern part of New England, where he, with a few of his own sect, settled a place called Providence. Then they proceeded not only into the gathering of a thing like a church, but into the renouncing of their infant-baptism; and at this further step, of separation they stopped not, but Mr. Williams quickly told them, "that being himself misled, he had led them likewise out or the way," he was now satisfied that there was none upon earth that could administer baptism, and so that their last baptism, as well as their first, was a nullity, (or the want of a called adminiatrator; he advised them thereupon to forego all, to dislike everything, and wait for the coming of a new apostle: whereupon they dissolved themselves, and became that sort of sect that we term Seekers, &c. (Mather, Magnalia, 1.498). A very curious sidelight is thrown on this subject by Hornins, a contemporary writer of Holland. There was a very close religious and political relation between Holland, England and American at this time. This Dutch writer (Georgil Hornii, Historia Eccies, Ludg. Bat., 1665, p.267) directly mentions Roger Williams, and traces the origin of "the Seekers" to America. As to the English Baptists, he bears a testimony of which their descendants need not he ashamed He says: "That of the Anabaptists there were two classes. The first holding the Free Will and a community of goods, and denying the lawfulness of magistracy and infant baptism. Of these there were at that time in England few or none. The second class were orthodox in all but their denial of infant baptism." As a matter of fact, he remained a Baptist in principle all of his life. Mather says "The church came to nothing." On this point there has been much debate, and the authorities are divided. The church has no records for more than one hundred years after 1639, they being probably burned in King Philip’s War, and its history on this account is incomplete. Benedict admits that "the more I study on this subject, the more I am unsettled and confused" (Benedict, A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America, 443. See king, The Mother Church in America, 1896). It is a matter, however, of no particular moment to the general historian. Nothing depends on it. In any event, the Baptists of America did not derive their origin from Roger Williams. Benedict (p. 364) mentions the names of fifty-five Baptists churches, including the year 1750, in America, not one of which came out of the Providence church. "From the earliest period of our colonial settlements," says J. P. Tustin, "multitudes of Baptist ministers and members came from Europe, and settled in different parts of this continent, each becoming the center of an independent circle wherever they planted themselves" (Tustin, A Discourse delivered at the Dedication of the Baptist Church and Society in Warren, R I., 38). Mr. Tustin continues: "It is a fact generally known, that many of the Baptist churches in this country derived their origin from the Baptist churches in Wales, a country which has always been a nursery for their peculiar principles. In the earlier settlements of this country, multitudes of Welsh emigrants, who left their fatherland, brought with them the seeds of Baptist principles, and their ministers and members laid the foundation of many Baptist Churches in New England, and especially in the middle states." The churches, therefore in this country, were for the most part made up of members directly from England and Wales. James D. Knowles (Memoir of Roger Williams, 169 note. Boston, 1834), has raised this question and answered it as follows: The question which has been asked, with some emphasis, as if it vitally affected the Baptist churches in this country; "By whom was Roger Williams baptized?" has no practical importance. All whom he immersed were, as Pedobaptists must admit, baptized. The great family of Baptists in this country did not spring from the First Church in Providence. Many Baptist ministers and members came, at an early period, from Europe, and thus churches were formed in different parts of the country, which have since multiplied over the land. The first Baptist church formed in the present State of Massachusetts, is the church at Swansea. Its origin is dated in 1663, when the Rev. John Myles came from Wales, with a number of the members, of a Baptist church, who brought with them its records. Of the 400,000 communicants now in the United States, a small fraction only have had any connection, either immediate or remote, with the venerable church at Providence, though her members are numerous, and she has been honored as the mother of many ministers. This was the beginning of the settlement of Rhode Island. The first declaration of democracy, in America, was here formulated March, 1641. The Author of the History of American Literature says: It was ordered and unanimously agreed upon, that the government which this body politic doth attend unto in this island and the jurisdiction thereof, in favor of our prince, is a Democracy, or popular government; that is to say, it is in the power of the body of freemen, orderly assembled, or major part of them, to make or constitute just laws, by which they will be regulated, and to despute from among themselves such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man. And the following acts secured religious liberty there: It was further ordered, by the authority of this present Court, that none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine, provided, it be not directly repugnant to the government or laws established On September, 1641, it was ordered: That the law of the last Court made concerning liberty of conscience in point of doctrine, be perpetuated. It was decreed at Providence, in 1641, that since: Our charter gives us power to govern ourselves, and such other as come among us, and by such a form of civil government as by the voluntary consent, etc., shall be found most suitable to our estate and condition: It is agreed by this present Assembly thus incorporate, and by this present act declared, that the form of government established in Providence Plantations is Democratical; that is to say, a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all of the greater part of the free inhabitants (Rhode Island State Papers). The state was not to dictate to or disturb the church. In the charter the word "civil" everywhere defines the jurisdiction of the Court. Religion and the State were divorced, Arnold says: The use of the word civil is everywhere prefixed (to the charter) to the terms "government" or "laws" wherever they occur... to restrict the operation of the charter to purely political concerns. In this apparent restriction there lay concealed a boon of freedom such as men had never known before. They (the Rhode Islanders) held themselves accountable to God alone for their religious creed, and no earthly power could bestow on them a right which they held from heaven. . . At their own request their powers were limited to civil matters (Arnold, History of Rhode Island, I 200). Hough, commenting upon the provisions of the charter of Rhode Island, says: This broad and liberal grant of liberty of opinion in matters of religions faith is among the earliest examples of that toleration which now prevails in every stare in the American Union but at the time it was asked and obtained, it formed a striking and honorable contrast with the custom and laws of the neighboring colonies (Hough, American Constitutions, II. 246. Lauer, Church and State in New England, 48. Tenth Series, II., III. Johns Hopkins University Studies. Baltimore, 1892). The service that the Baptists have rendered to the world in bringing religions liberty to this continent has been fully acknowledged by the greatest authorities in the world. Only the statements of a few representative men are here given. Bancroft, the historian of the United States, says of Williams: He was the first person in modern Christendom to assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law... Williams would permit persecutions of no opinion, of no religion, leaving heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes, ... We praise the man who first analyzed the air, or resolved water into its elements, or drew the lightning from the clouds; even though the discoveries may have been as much the fruits of time as of genius. A moral principle has a much wider and nearer influence on human happiness; nor can any discovery of truth be of more direct benefit to society, than that which establishes a perpetual religions peace, and spreads tranquillity through every community and every bosom. If Copernicus is held in perpetual reverence, because, on his deathbed, he published to the world that the sun is the center of our system; if the name of Kepler is preserved in the annals of human excellence for his sagacity in detecting the laws of the planetary motion; if the genius of Newton has been almost adored for dissecting a ray of light, and weighing heavenly bodies in the balance-let there be for the name of Roger Williams at least some humble place among those who have advanced moral science, and made themselves the benefactors of mankind (Bancroft, History of the United States, 1. 375-377). Judge Story, the eminent lawyer, says: In the code of laws established by them in Rhode Island, we read for the first time since Christianity ascended the throne of the Caesars, the declaration that conscience should he free, and that men should not be punished for worshipping God in the way they were persuaded he requires. The German Philosopher, Gervinus, says: In accordance with these principles, Roger Williams insisted, in Massachusetts, upon allowing entire freedom of conscience, and upon entire separation of the Church and State. But he was obligated to flee, and in 1636, he formed in Rhode Island, a small and new society, in which perfect freedom in matters of faith was allowed, and in which the majority ruled in all the civil affairs. Here, in a little state, the fundamental principles of political and ecclesiastical liberty practically prevailed, before they were ever taught in any of the schools of philosophy in Europe. At that time people predicted only a short existence for these democrarical experiments-Universal suffrage: universal eligibility to office; the annual change of rulers ; perfect religious freedom-the Miltonian doctrine of schisms. But not only have these ideas and these forms of government maintained themselves here, but precisely from this little State, have they extended themselves throughout the United States. They have conquered the aristocratic tendencies in Carolina and New York, the High Church in Virginia, the Theocracy in Massachusetts, and the monarchy in all America. They have given laws to a continent, and formidable through their moral influence, they lie at the bottom of all the democratic movements which are now shaking the nations of Europe (Gervinus, History of the Nineteenth Century. Introduction). He not only sought liberty for his own people, but to all persons alike. Hitherto the Jews had been proscribed, He especially plead for them. No persons have more fully recognized the worth of religious liberty than have the Jews; and they have paid eloquent tribute to his memory, In this direction Straus says: The earliest champion of religious freedom, or "soul liberty," as he designated that most precious jewel of all liberties, was Roger Williams….To him rightfully belongs the immortal fame of having been the first person in modern times to assert and maintain in its fullest plenitude the absolute right of every man to "a full liberty in religions concernments," and to found a State wherein this doctrine was the key-stone of its organic laws (Straus, Origin 0f Republican Form of Government in the United States, 47-50, New York, 1885. See Religious Liberty of Henry M. King, 1903). It is now time to return to the persecutions of the. Baptists in the other colonies. Note has already been taken of the activity of the Massachusetts colony against the Baptists, and the persecuting laws that they passed and executed. On October 18, 1649. this Colony urged drastic measures against the Baptists of Plymouth. The General Court wrote to the Plymouth brethren as follows: Honored and beloved Brethren We have heard heretofore of divers Anabaptists arisen up in your jurisdiction, and connived at: but being but few, we well hoped that it might have pleased God, by the endeavors of yourselves and the faithful elders with you, to have reduced such erring men again into the right way. But now, to our great grief, we are credibly informed that your patient bearing with such men hath produced another effect, namely, the multiplying and increasing of such errors, and we fear may be of other errors also, if timely care be not taken to suppress the same. Particularly we understand that within this few weeks there have been at Sea Cunke thirteen or fourteen persons rebaptized ( a swift progress in one town), yet we hear not if any effectual restriction is intended thereabouts (Massachusetts Colonial Records, III. 173). This Sea Cunke (now Swansea and Rehoboth), was to be the location of the third Baptist church in America, under the pastoral care of the Rev. John Myles. The persecuting spirit of Massachusetts was soon further put to the test. John Clarke was the pastor of the Newport Baptist church, founded somewhere between 1638 and 1644. This John Clarke was the father of American Baptists. He had much to do, in connection with Roger Williams, with procuring the second charter of Rhode Island in 1668. There was at Lynn, Massachusetts, an aged disciple by the name of William Witter. He had been cut off from the Salem church, June 24, 1651, "for absenting himself from public ordinances nine months or more and for being rebaptized" (Felt, Ecclesiastical History of New England. II. 25-46). He had previously become a member of the church in Newport. On July 19, 1651, John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall, "being the representatives of the Baptist church in Newport, upon the request of William Witter, of Lynn, arrived there, be being a brother in the church. who, by reason of his advanced age, could not undertake so great a journey as to visit the church" (Newport Church Papers). While they were expounding the Scriptures they were arrested by two constables. They were watched over that "night (in the ordinary) as Thieves and Robbers," by the officers, and on the second day they were lodged in the common jail in Boston. On July 31 they were brought to public trial in Boston, without trial by jury and at the will of the magistrates. Governor Endicott charged them with being Anabaptists. Clarke replied he was "neither an Anabaptist, nor a Pedobaptist, nor a Catabaptist." At this reply the Governor stepped up: And told us we denied infant baptism, and being somewhat transported, told me I had deserved death, and said he would not have such trash brought into his jurisdiction. Moreover he said, You go up and down and secretly insinuate into those that are weak, but you cannot maintain it before our ministers. You may try and dispute with them (Clarke, Narrative). Clark was about to make reply when he was remanded to prison. Holmes says: What they laid to my charge, you may here read in my sentence, upon the pronouncement of which, as I went from the bar, I expressed myself in these words:- I bless God, I am counted worthy to surfer for the name of Jesus. Whereupon John Wilson (their pastor, as they call him) struck me before the judgment seat, and cursed me, saying, The curse of God or Jesus go with thee (Backus, History of the Baptists in New England, I.189). From the prison Clarke accepted the proposition to debate the subjects involved and suggested by the Governor (Massachusetts Archives, X. 212). It was supposed that John Cotton would represent the ministers. But the Governor allowed the debate to come to naught, though he had proposed it. Clarke and Crandall were not long afterward rleased "upon the payment of their fines by some tender-hearted friends" without their consent and contrary to their judgment. Holmes not accepting the deliverance was publicly whipped. He said: The man striking with all his strength (yea spitting in (on) his hands three times as many affirmed) with a three corded whip, giving me therewith thirty strokes. When he had loosed me from the post, having joyfulness in my heart, and cheerfulness in my countenance, as the spectators observed, I told the magistrates, You have struck me as with roses (Backus, I.192), The whipping was so severe that Governor Jenekes says: Mr. Holmes was whipt thirty stripes, and in such an unmerciful manner, that in many days, if not some weeks, he could take no rest, but as he lay on his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon he lay (See Summer Visit of Three Rhode Islanders, by Henry M. King, 1890). The trial and whipping of Holmes was the occasion of the conversion of Henry Dunster, the President of Harvard, to the Baptists. The immediate cause of the organization of the church in Boston was a sermon Dunster preached there on the subject of infant baptism. The church was much delayed in its organization, but this finally took place May 28, 1665. The magistrates required them to attend the Established Church. The General Court disfranchised them and committed them to prison, and pursued them with fines and imprisonments for three years (Backus, I. 300). In May, 1668, the General Court sentenced Thomas Gould, William Turner, and John Farnum to be banished; and because they would not go, they were imprisoned nearly a year; and when petition for a release of the prisoners was presented to the General Court, some who signed the petition were fined for doing so, and others were compelled to confess their fault for reflecting on the Court. The complete separation of Church and State was not guaranteed by the Constitution of Massachusetts until 1833. Virginia was the great battle ground for religious freedom. The Colony was founded by members of the Church of England, and none others were tolerated in its jurisdiction. The charter, 1606, provided: The presidents, councils and ministers should provide that the true word and service of God should be preached and used according to the rites and doctrines of the Church of England. The bloody military code of 1611, the first published for the government of the Colony, required every man and woman in the Colony, or who should afterwards arrive, to give an account of their faith and religion to the parish minister, and if not satisfactory to him, they should repair often to him for instruction; and if they refuse to go, the Governor should whip the offender for the first offense; for the second refusal to be whipped twice and to acknowledge his fault on the Sabbath day in the congregation; and for the third offense to be whipped every day till he complied (Howell, Early Baptists of Virginia, 38. Laws, &c., Strasbury. London, 1812). The tyrannical Sir W. Berkeley had passed, December 14, 1662, the following law: Whereas many schismatical persons out of their averseness to the orthodox established religion, or out of new fangled conceits of their own heretical inventions, refused to have their children baptized. Be it therefore enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that all persons that, in contempt of the divine sacrament of baptism, shall refuse when they may carry their child to a lawful minister in that country to have them baptized shall be amersed two thousand pounds of tobacco, half to the publique (Henning, Statutes at Large, Laws of Virginia, II. 165). These statutes were put into execution. The Baptists were democrats from principle and naturally did not love the Establishment. Hawks, the historian of the Episcopal Church of Virginia, says: No dissenters in Virginia experienced, for a time, harsher treatment than did the Baptists. They were beaten and imprisoned; and cruelty taxed its ingenuity to devise new modes of punishment and annoyance. The usual consequences followed; persecution made friends for its victims; and the men, who were not permitted to speak in public, found willing auditors in the sympathizing crowds who gathered around the prisons to hear them preach from grated windows (Hawks, Contributions to Ecclesiastical History in the United States, I. 121. New York, 186-9). He further says: Persecution had taught the Baptists not to love the Establishment, and they now saw before them a reasonable prospect of overturning it entirely. In their Association they calmly discussed the matter, and resolved on their course; in this course they were consistent to the end; and the war which they waged against the Church, was a war of extermination. They seem to have known no relentings, and their hostility never ceased for seven and twenty years. They revenged themselves for their sufferings by the almost total ruin of the Church; and now commenced the assault, for, inspired by the ardours of patriotism which accorded to their interests. . . they addressed the convention, and informed that body that the religious tenets presented no obstacle to their taking up arms and fighting for the country; and they tendered the services of their pastors in promoting the enlistment of the youth of their persuasion. . A complimentary answer was returned to their address; and the order was made that the sectarian clergy should have the privilege of performing divine service to their respective adherents in the army, equally with the chaplains of the Established Church. This, it is believed, was the first steps towards placing the clergy of all denominations, upon an equal footing in Virginia (p.138). The intense opposition to the Baptists in Virginia, in 1772, may be gathered from a letter written by James Madison to a friend in Pennsylvania. He says: That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages among some; and to their eternal infamy the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such purposes. There are at this time, in the adjacent county, not less than five or six well meaning men in close jail for publishing their religious sentiments, which, in the main, are very orthodox. In 1775 the Baptists of Virginia met in regular session in their General Association. "This was," says their historian, Robert Scmple, "a very favorable season for the Baptists. Having been much ground under the British laws, or at least by the interpretation of them in Virginia, they were, to a man, favorable to any revolution by which they could obtain freedom of religion. They had known from experience that mere toleration was not a sufficient check, having been imprisoned at a time when the law was considered by many as being in force. It was therefore resolved at this session, to circulate petitions to the Virginia Convention or General Assembly, throughout the State, in order to obtain signatures. The prayer of these was, that the church establishment should be abolished, and religion left to stand upon its own merits; and, that all religions societies should be protected in the peaceable enjoyment of their own religious principles." Accordingly, in 1776, the Baptists were enabled to place upon their records that the bill had been passed and in their judgment that religious and civil liberty were duly safeguarded. This simply suspended the old laws of persecution. An Assessment Bill was passed, in 1784, by the General Assembly of Virginia, through the influence of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. The bill provided that a tax be levied upon all persons for the support of religion, and the money be divided among the leading sects. The Baptists would come in for a large share of the patronage. The legislature declared that "a general assessment for the support of religion ought to be extended to those who profess the public worship of the Deity" (Journal of the House of Delegates, October,1784, 32). Madison, writing of this struggle, under date of April 12, 1785, says: The Episcopal people are generally for it (the tax) . . The Presbyterians seem ready to set up an establishment which is to take them in as they were to pull down that which shut them out. . .I do not know a more shameful contrast than might be found between their memorials on the latter and the former occasion (Rivers, Life and Times of Madison, I. 630). In this contest the Baptists stood alone and won. They were supported by individuals of all denominations. "It is a matter of record," says Howell, "in their proceedings that when, in 1785, they had repeated their Declaration of Principles, the General Committee placed them in the hands of Mr. Madison, with the request that he would employ them in their behalf, in a memorial to the legislature, praying for the passage of the law" (Howell, Early Baptists of Virginia 92). His voice and that of Jefferson sounded the sentiments which were victorious. Mr. Jefferson prepared the "Act for Religious Freedom" which passed the General Assembly of Virginia in the year 1786. The Acts says: Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor sall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare the act irrevocable, would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such an act will be an infringement of natural rights (Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 379, 382). Thus was liberty of soul secured in Virginia by the Baptists. The Establishment was finally put down. Dr. Hawks says: The Baptists were the principal promoters of this work, and in truth aided more than any other denomination in its accomplishment (Hawks, Ecclesiastical Contributions, 152). Bishop Meade, another Episcopalian, says: The Baptist Church in Virginia took the lead in dissent, and was the chief object of persecution by the magistrates and the most violent and persevering afterward in seeking the downfall of the Establishment (Meade, Old Parishes and Churches in Virginia, I. 52. Philadelphia, 1872). And He again says: The warfare begun by the Baptists, seven-and-twenty years before was now finished: The Church was in ruins, and the triumph of her enemies complete (Meade, II. 449, 450). In the period ending with the Revolutionary War religious tests were everywhere. They were consistently, opposed by the Baptists. As a result the Baptists were persecuted and came under the heavy hand of the law. Only in Rhode Island was liberty of conscience maintained. The Baptists in bringing liberty of conscience to a Continent had undertaken a supreme task, but they were equal to the occasion. Professor George P. Fisher, has given a fine statement of the case. He says: At the beginning of the American Revolution, the Episcopal Church was established in the Southern colonies. In New Jersey and New York, it enjoyed the special favor of the government officials. In Massachusetts and Connecticut there had never been an establishment, in the strict sense of the term. Every town was obliged to sustain public worship and support a minister. There was an assessment upon the inhabitants for this purpose. As the people were for a long time almost exclusively Congregationalists, the worship was of this character. As other denominations arose, the laws were so modified as to allow the tax to be paid by each of the organizations to the support of its own worship. Such an act was passed in Connecticut in reference to the Episcopalians in 1727, shortly after the founding of Christ Church in Stratford, for their first religious society in the State; and in 1729 the same right was extended to Quakers and Baptists. In places where no congregations had been gathered by dissidents from the prevailing system, individuals, whatever their religions beliefs might be, were compelled to contribute to the support of the Congregational worship there existing. This requirement was more and more counted a hardship. It is believed that in all the colonies there were religious tests in some form. Even in Pennsylvania and Delaware, none could vote save those who professed faith in Christ. When the revolutionary contest began, it was natural that there should spring up movements to abolish the religions inequalities which were a heritage from the pest. The Baptists, who were outnumbered by none of the religious bodies except the Congregationalists, and who had felt themselves especially aggrieved, at once bestirred themselves in Massachusetts and Virginia to secure the repeal of obnoxious restrictions. A Baptist committee laid their complaints before the Massachusetts delegates in the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia. The support which the Baptists lent to the patriotic cause, and the proclamation of human rights which was made on every hand, won a hearing for their demands, and rendered them, after tedious delays, successful. In Virginia, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and Madison enlisted in their favor. In 1785, the statute of religious freedom was adopted, of which Jefferson deemed it a great honor to hare been the author, by which intervention in matters of faith and worship was forbidden to the State. All denominations were put thus on a level, and none were taxed for the support of religion. In New England, the release from this last requirement, or from the payment of a tax for a particular form of religion to be chosen by the citizen, was accomplished later. It took place in Connecticut in 1818; and the last of the provision. of this character did not vanish from the statute-book In Massachusetts until 1833, when Church and State were fully separated. In that State, from 1780 to 1811, a religious society had to be incorporated in order to have its members exempted from taxation for the parish church (Fisher, History of the Christian Church, 559, 560). Up to this date, as has been seen, the Baptists had been persecuted in the colonies, and their labors had been directed toward the overthrow of the iniquitious laws. The Revolutionary War opened up possibilities to overthrow the entire system of persecution. The Baptists were not slow to seize and improve the opportunity thus presented. They were everywhere the friends of liberty. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 28: 01.1.28. CHAPTER 21 CONTINUED ======================================================================== The American War was brought on by the Episcopal Party in England who were opposed to freedom. The soldiers who fought against this country were mainly Irish Catholics. The foremost British statesmen thought the War unjustifiable. William Pitt, May 30, 1788, said in the House of Commons: The American war was conceived in injustice, and matured in folly, and that it exhibited the highest moral turpitude and depravity, and that England had nothing but victories over men struggling in the holy cause of liberty, or defeat which filled the land with mourning for the loss of dear and valuable relations slain in a detested and impious quarrel. Six months after this date, when the surrender of Cornwallis was published in England, in the House of Commons, Fox adopted the words of Chatham, uttered at the beginning of the Revolution, and said: Thank God that America has resisted the claims of the mother country (Hume, Smollett and Farr, History of England, III.155, 182). Burke and other noted Englishmen expressed themselves in the same manner. The Baptists of England were on the side of America. When Robert Hall was a little boy, he heard Rev. Robert Ryland, the commanding Baptist preacher of Northampton, say: If I were General Washington I would summon all the American officers; they should form a circle around me, and I would address them. and we would offer a libation in our own blood, and I would order one of them to bring a lancet and a punch-bowl; and he should bleed us all, one by one, into this punch-bowl; and I would be the first to bare my arm: and when the bowl was full, and we had all been bled, I would call upon every man to consecrate himself to the work, by dipping his sword into the howl, and entering into a solemn covenant engagement by oath, one to another, and we would swear by him that sits upon the throne, and liveth forever and forever, that we would never sheath our swords while there was an English soldier in arms in America (Hall, ’Works, IV. 4849. New York, 1844). The opinion of the English Baptists is set forth in a letter from, Dr. Rippon, the London Baptist preacher, to President Manning of Brown University. He says: I believe all of our Baptist ministers in town, except two, and most of our brethren in the country, were on the side of the Americans in the late dispute. . . We wept when the thirsty plains drank the blood of your departed heroes, and the shout of a King was amongst us when your well-fought battles were crowned with victory. And to this hour we believe that the Independence of America will for a while secure the liberty of this country; but that if the continent had been reduced, Britain would not have long been free (Guild and Manning, Brown University, 824. Boston, 1864). There was not a tory among the Baptists of America. Rhode Island was largely Baptist. "The Baptists have always been more numerous," says Morgan Edwards, "than any other sect of Christians in Rhode Island; two thirds of the inhabitants, at least, are reputed Baptists. The governors, deputy-governors, judges, assemblymen and officers, civil and military, are chiefly of that persuasion" (Collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society, VI. 304). May 4, 1776, just two months before the Declaration of Independence, Rhode Island withdrew and repudiated the rule of George III. This was thirty-two days before Virginia renounced allegiance (Howison, History of Virginia, II. 138). In large numbers they sent their sons to the army. Bancroft speaks of Rhode Island at the Revolution "as enjoying a form of government, under its charter, so thoroughly democratic that no change was required beyond a renunciation of the king’s name in the style of its public acts" (Bancroft, History of the United States, IX 563). When the Constitution of the United States was adopted Rode Island had long enjoyed freedom. Arnold says: Rhode Island for more than a century and a half has enjoyed a freedom unknown to any of her compeers, and through more than half of that period her people had been involved with rival Colonies in a struggle for political existence and for the maintenance of those principles of civil and religious freedom which are now everywhere received in America (Arnold, History of Rhode Island, II.563). The Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, September 5, 1774, and in eight days there was a Committee of Baptists, headed by Rev. Isaac Backus, who solemnly recognized its authority. They bore the following memorial from the Warren Association of the Baptist churches of New England: Honorable Gentlemen: As the Antipedobaptist churches of New England are most heartily concerned for the preservation and defence of the rights and privileges of the country, and are deeply affected by the encroachments upon the same, which have lately been made by the British parliament, and aft willing to unite with our dear countrymen, vigorously to pursue every prudent measure for relief, so we would beg leave to say that, as a distinct denomination of Protestants, we conceive that we have an equal claim to charter-rights with the rest of our fellow subjects; and yet have long been denied the free and full enjoyment of those rights, as to the support of religious worship. Therefore we, the elders and brethren of twenty Baptist churches met in Association at Medfield, twenty miles from Boston, September 14, 1774, have unanimously chosen and sent unto you the reverend and beloved Isaac Backus as our agent, to lay our case, in these respects, before you, or otherwise to use all the prudent means he can for our relief. John Gano, Moderator. Hezekiah Smith, Clerk. The Philadelphia Baptist Association, the oldest in America, likewise sent a Committee to assist the appeal from New England. Dr. Samuel Jones, in a Centenary Sermon, in 1807, before the Philadelphia Association, says: When Congress met in this city, I was one of the committee under the appointment of your body, that, in company with the late Rev. Isaac Backus, of Massachusetts, met the delegates in Congress from that State, in yonder State house, to see if we could not obtain some security for that liberty, for which we were then fighting and bleeding by their side. It seemed unreasonable to us, that we should be called upon to stand up with them in the defence of liberty if, after all, it was to be liberty for one party to oppress another (Minutes of the Philadelphia Association, 459, 460). The constant plea of the Baptists was for liberty of conscience. To this memorial Congress gave a faithful hearing and a sympathetic reply as follows: In provincial Congress, Cambridge, December 9, 1774. On reading the memorial of the Rev. Isaac Backus, agent to the Baptist churches in this government, Resolved: That the establishment of civil and religious liberty, to each denomination in the province, is the sincere wish of this Congress. But being by no means vested with the power of civil government, whereby they can redress the grievances of any person whatsoever, they therefore recommend to the Baptist churches, that when a General Assembly shall be convened in this colony, they lay the real grievances of said churches before the same, when and where their petition will most certainly meet with all that attention due to the memorial of a denomination of Christians so well disposed to the public weal of their country. By order of Congress, John Hancock, President. A true extract from the minutes. Benjamin Lincoln, Secretary. (Backus, II. 202). John Adams had said: "We might as well expect a change in the solar system, as to expect they would give up their establishment" The Baptists did not at this tine gain their cause but progress was made toward true liberty. The Baptists everywhere existed in the army. The Baptist General Association notified the Convention of Virginia that they had considered what part it would be proper to take in the unhappy contest, and had determined that they ought to make a military resistance to Great Britain in her unjust invasion, tyrannical oppression, and repeated hostilities" (Headly, Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution, 250. New York 1864). They proclaimed that "they were to a man favorable to any revolution, by which they could obtain freedom of religion" (Sample, History of Virginia Baptists, 62. Richmond, 1890). Baptist preachers became chaplains in the army. The Baptist General Association sent, in 1775, Rev. Jeremiah Walker and John Williams to preach to the soldiers. These were the most popular Baptist preachers in the Old Dominion. McClanahan raised a company chiefly of Baptists whom he commanded as captain and preached to as chaplain. Rev. Charles Thompson son of Massachusetts served as chaplain three years and Rev. Hezekiah Smith was from the same State. Rev. Samuel Rogers of Philadelphia was one of the foremost preachers of the day. He was appointed chaplain of a brigade by the Legislature. Rev. David Jones followed Gates through two campaigns. Rev. John Gano had great mental powers and as "a minister he shone like a star of the first magnitude in the American churches" (Sprague, Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, 66). He was the foremost chaplain in the army. Headley says of him: In the fierce conflict on Chatterton’s Hill he was continually under fire, and his cool and quiet courage in thus fearlessly exposing himself was afterwards commented upon in the most glowing terms by the officers who stood near him (Headley, Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution, 255). Other Baptists served the Revolutionary cause in many ways. James Manning, the President of Brown University, was the most popular man in Rhode Island. He filled for the government many delicate positions and was elected unanimously to Congress. John Hart, a member of the old Hopewell Baptist church, was one of the signers of The Declaration of Independence. Col. Joab Houghton was a valuable officer in the army. It was thought by many that the Baptists were too patriotic. For their patriotic endeavors they received the highest praise. Thomas Jefferson, writing to the Baptist church, of Buck Mountain, Albemarle County, Virginia, neighbors of his, in reply to a letter which they had sent him, says: I thank you, my friends and neighbors, for your kind congratulations on my return to my native home, and on the opportunity it will give me of enjoying, amidst your affections, the comforts of retirement and rest Your approbation of my conduct is the more valued as you have best known me, and is an ample reward for my services I may have rendered. We have acted together from the Origin to the end of the memorable Revolution, and we have contributed, each in a line allotted us, our endeavors to render its issue a permanent blessing to our country. That our social intercourse may, to the evening of our days, be cheered and cemented by witnessing the freedom and happiness for which we have labored, will be my constant prayer. Accept the offering of my affectionate esteem and respect (Jefferson, Complete Works, VIII. 168). In his complete works there are replies to congratulatory addresses from the Danbury, Baltimore and Ketocton Associations; and from the representatives of six Baptist Associations which met at Chesterfield, VA, November 21, 1808. The last body was the General Meeting of the Baptists of Virginia. To them he says: In reviewing the history of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction than that which presents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom with which they were crowned. We have shown, by fair trial, the great and interesting experiment whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason (Jefferson, Complete Works, VIII. 139). When the Constitution of the United States was presented to the States for ratification it was doubtful whether it would pass. Massachusetts and Virginia were the pivotal States. Massachusetts was evenly divided and it was only through the labors of Manning, Stillman and Backus that the Constitution was adopted by that State. The majority was nineteen votes. There were 187 yeas and 168 nays on the last day of the session, and "before the final question was taken, Governor Hancock, the president, invited Dr. Manning to close the solemn invocation with prayer. The prayer was one of lofty patriotism and every heart was filled with reverence." The vote of Virginia was equally in doubt John Leland, the Baptist preacher; and James Madison were candidates, in Orange County for the Legislature. Orange was a Baptist county and the probabilities were that Leland would be elected. He withdrew in favor of Madison, and Madison was elected and in the legislature he was just able to save the Constitution. J. S. Barbon; of Virginia, in 1857 in an eulogy of James Madison said: That the credit of adopting the Constitution of the United States properly belonged to a Baptist clergyman, formerly of Virginia, by the name of Leland. . . If Madison had not been in the Virginia Convention, that Constitution would not have been ratified by the Stare, and as the approval of nine States was required to give effect to this instrument, and as Virginia was the ninth. if it had been rejected by her, the Constitution would have failed (the remaining States following her example), and that it was by Elder Leland’s influence that Madison was elected to that Convention (Sprague, Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit, 179). One thing more must be done to secure soul-liberty in this country beyond peradventure. There was an open question whether the Constitution in the form adopted safeguarded liberty. A General Committee of the Baptists of Virginia met in Williams’ meeting-house, Goochland County, March 7, 1788. The first question discussed was: Whether the new federal constitution, which had now lately made its appearance in public, made sufficient provision for the secure enjoyment of religions liberty on which, it was argued unanimously, that, in the opinion of the general committee it did not (Semple, History of the Virginia Baptists, 76, 77). Upon consultation with Mr. Madison the Committee addressed General Washington. The next year, within four months after Washington had become President, this address was formally presented, in which they expressed the fear "that our religious rights were not well secured in our new Constitution of government." They solicited his influence for proper legislation, and he returned a favorable answer. As a result, an amendment to the Constitution was made the next month, September 25, which says: Congress shall make no law, establishing articles of faith, or mode of worship or prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition to the general government for a redress of grievances. No more fitting conclusion can be had to this volume than to quote the language of the Father of his Country. The days of persecution, of blood and of martyrdom were passed. Civil and soul liberty, the inalienable rights of man, enlargement, benevolent operations. educational advantages, and world wide missionary endeavor,-all had been made possible by the struggles of the past. George Washington had been consulted by the Baptists to assist in securing freedom of conscience, and he replied: I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience. While I recognize with satisfaction, that the religious society of which you are members have been throughout America, uniformly and almost unanimously the firm friends to civil liberty, and the persevering promoters of our glorious revolution, I cannot hesitate to believe, faithful supporters of a free, yet efficient general government. Under this pleasing expectation, I rejoice to assure them, that they may rely on my best wishes and endeavors to advance their prosperity (Sparks, Writings of George Washington, XII. 155. Boston, 1855). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 29: 01.2.00.0. CONTENTS ======================================================================== Contents THE PREFACE I. The Colonial Period CHAPTER I The First Baptists in America. First Settlers—Separatists and Puritans—The Difference in the Parties—The Puritan a Church of England Man—Reformed—Character of the Puritans—Religious Intolerance—Frothingham—Neal—Ruffini—The Theocracy—The First Baptists—Their Character—Statistics. CHAPTER II The Baptists in Rhode Island. Baptists Organize—Roger Williams—Relations to Sir Edward Coke—Arrival in New England—How Recognized—Estimates of Him—Pastor in Salem—Interference of the Magistrates—Plymouth—Returns to Salem—Before the Court in Boston—The Attitude of the People of Salem—His Banishment—His Popularity in Salem—Revocation of the Order of Banishment—Roman Catholics—Organization of the Church in Providence—The Baptism of Williams—The Form of Baptism—Abandons the Church Apostolic Succession and the Administration of Baptism—Irregularity—John Spilsbury—Further History of the Church—Pardon Tillinghast—Williams on Liberty—His Character—The Church at Newport—John Clarke—His Character—Recognition of Charles II—A New Charter—Rhode Island Persecuted by Other Colonies—Better Opinion of the State—Prosperity of the Baptists. CHAPTER III The Persecutions of the Baptists in Massachusetts. Charter Rights—A Christian State—Violations of the Charter—Peter Oliver—Episcopal Worship not Allowed—The Browns—The Rise of the Baptists—The Baptists Denounced—Petitions Against Them—Lady Moody—William Witter—Thomas Painter—The Governor Acts—A Severe Law—Baptists Punished—The Law Explained—Goodman Johnson—Letters on Severity—Letter to Plymouth Colony—The Persecution of the Quakers—Dissenters Forced to Pay Taxes—The Opinion of Ruffini. CHAPTER IV The First Baptist Churches in Massachusetts. The First Church in the State—Swansea—Prosecutions of the Church—A Grant of Land—The Conditions of the Grant—The Church in Boston—Richard Mather—John Clarke—Obadiah Holmes and Crandall—They Are Arrested—The Whipping of Holmes—Letter to Kiffin—The Conversion of Henry Dunster—History of the Case—Removed as President of Harvard—Thomas Gould—The Church Formed—The Action of the Congregational Church—Persecutions—The Action of the Court—The Place of Meeting—The General Spirit of the Puritans—House of Worship—Some Changes in Sentiment—Their Punishment—The Witches Burned—The Opinion of the Baptists—William Melbourne—Robert Calef—The Power of the Theocracy Broken—The Later Laws. CHAPTER V The Baptists of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys. William Penn—The "Frame of Government"—"The Great Law"—Liberal Provisions in Religion—Baptists from Rhode Island—Thomas Dungan—Cold Springs—Pennepek—Baptists from Wales, Ireland and England—Elias Keach—The Keithian Quakers—Mennonites—Baptists in Philadelphia—Jersey Baptists—Emigrants from Many Countries—The Congregationalists in Newark—A Curious Incident. CHAPTER VI The Baptists of Maine and South Carolina. Baptists in Kittery—The Letter of Humphrey Churchwood—William Screven—Before the Grand Jury—The Account of Joshua Millet—Screven Convicted of Contempt—Fined—His Character—Screven in South Carolina—The Opinion of His Enemies—Joseph Lord Writes to the Governor—The Settlement of Charleston—The Established Church—The Different Religious Sects—The First Baptists There—Lady Blake—Religious Conformity Demanded—No Other Baptist Church in the State—The Euhaw and Other Churches. CHAPTER VII The Baptists in New York, Delaware, Connecticut and Vermont. The Baptists in New York—Dutch Settlers—The Reformed Church—The Baptists Conventicles Suppressed—Lady Moody—Baptists in Flushing—Francis Doughty—Laws—Fines—Valentine—Wightman—The Various Sects—Governor Andros—Governor Hunter—First Baptist Church, New York—Nicholas Eyres—Fines—The Baptists in Central New York—Delaware—The Settlement of the State—The Welsh Tract Church—Elijah Baker and Philip Hughes—The Sounds Baptist Church—Connecticut—The Severity of the Laws—Early Baptist—The Slow Progress—Vermont—The Rise of the Baptists. CHAPTER VIII The Baptists in Maryland and New Hampshire. Maryland—Claims of the Roman Catholics—Bishop Gilmour—Cardinal Gibbons—Lord Baltimore—His Views of Liberty—A Forced Baptism of Infants—The Protestant Charter—Rufuni—De Courcey—Religious Provisions of the Charter—The Testimony or Dr. Brownson—An Attempt to Establish the Roman Catholic Religion in l638—The Famous Act of l649—The Political Fortunes of Baltimore at the Time—Population Mostly Protestant—The Opinion of the Historians—The Law a Compromise Measure Between Roman Catholics and the Puritans—Governor Stone a Protestant—No Liberty of Conscience Allowed—Roman Catholic View—The Terrible Penalties—The Virgin Mary—The Sabbath—Imprisonment and Public Whippings—The Baptists in Maryland—New Hampshire—The Baptist Church at Newton—Other Baptist Churches. CHAPTER IX The Philadelphia Association, Brown University, and Baptist Customs. Organization of the Philadelphia Association—Quarterly Meetings—The Early Churches of the Body—Other Associations—Powers of an Association—The Declaration of the Association—The Separate Association in Virginia—John L. Waller—Discipline—Trouble in the Pennepek Church—The First Church, Charleston, S. C—Requirements to Unite With a Church—Ministerial Education—Thomas Hollis and Harvard College—Scholarships for Baptists—Abel Morgan—The Academy at Hopewell—Missions—Oliver Hart—John Gano—Circular Letter on Education—Isaac Eaton—Brown University—James Manning—Dr. Ezra Stiles—The Charter—The First Commencement of Brown—The College Suspended—Resolutions on Temperance—Early Customs of the Baptists. CHAPTER X The Great Awakening. Baptists in Massachusetts—Position of the Puritans— Reaction Against the Standing Order—Thirteen Evils—The Account of Jonathan Edwards of Conditions—A Minister in New Hampshire—The Historian Trumbull—The Drink Habit—The Half Way Covenant—The Burning of Witches—The Awakening in Northampton—The Sermons of Edwards—The Revival Begins—The Effects of the Revival—George Whitefield—The Estimate of Benjamin Franklin—Manner of Preaching of Whitefield—Calvinism—The Baptists Calvinistic—Disorders—Persecutions of the Standing Order—Edwards Ejected from His Church—The Boston Gazette—Opposition of the Episcopalians—Action of the Connecticut Legislature—The New Lights—The New Lights Become Baptists—Bacon’s Account—Great Growth of the Baptists. CHAPTER XI The Baptists of Virginia. The First Settlers of Virginia—The Episcopalians—Contrasts with New England—First Efforts of the Baptists—The Church of England Established by Law—The Virginia Charter—No Toleration Allowed—The Bloody Laws—"Neck and Heels" in Jail for Not Attending Church—The First Act of Parliament—The Salary of the Clergy Paid in Tobacco—Dissenters Must Depart the Colony—Whippings and Brandings—Ordination from the Church of England Demanded—Quakers and Baptists in Virginia—Infant Baptism—Presbyterians Tolerated for a Strange Reason—Baptists Slow in Entering the State—Marvelous Growth—Dr. Hawks—Bishop Perry—The Statement of Semple—The First Baptists from England—Robert Norden—Collection of Money in England for the Baptist—Church at Burley—Churches in Berkeley and Loudon Counties—The Statement of John Gano—David Thomas. CHAPTER XII The Baptists in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. The Third Company of Baptists in Virginia—The Separatist—Shubea1 Stearns—Daniel Marshall—Stearns Unites with the Baptist—North Carolina Settled—Individual Baptist—Paul Palmer—William Sojourner—Kehukee Association—Vanhorn and Miller—The Preaching of the Separatists—The Character of Stearns—History of the Movement—Many Notices of the Growth of the Baptist—Baptists in Georgia—Nicholas Bedgewood—Benjamin Stark—Botsford—Gano—Marshall Arrested—Kiokee Church—Samuel Harris—Elijah Craig—The Election of Bishops by the Baptists. II. The Period of the American Revolution CHAPTER I The Baptists in the American Revolution. The Thirteen Colonies— The Policy of England—The Discovery of the Valley of the Ohio—The Population of the Country—The Social, Political and Religious Conditions—Political and Religious Freedom—The Forces Against America—George Ill—The Attitude of Pope Pius VI—John Adams on the situation—The Position of Canada—The Quebec Act—The Roman Catholics of Great Britain—The Attitude of America Toward the Roman Catholics—The Mercenaries from Germany—The Roman Catholics of Ireland—Of America—The Clergy of the Established Church of England—Rev. Charles Inglis—Foreign Born Citizens— A Conspiracy Against Washington—William Pitt—The Baptists of England—Dr. Rippon—The Baptists of America—The Warren Association—The Philadelphia Association—An Appeal to the Continental Congress—Rhode Island Favors Independence—The Baptists of Virginia—A Memorial to Congress—Soldiers—Chaplains in the Army—Oliver Hart—John Hart. CHAPTER II The Baptists and the American Constitution. The Constitution—The Ratification—Two Objections to the Constitution—Liberty not Sufficiently Guarded—Massachusetts—James Manning—Virginia—James Madison and John Leland—J. S. Barbour—Governor Briggs on Leland—Patrick Henry Against the Constitution—John Adam—And Religious Liberty—Thomas Jefferson—First Amendment to the Constitution—The Baptists of Virginia Propose the Amendment—The Forces Working for Liberty—Leonard Bacon—Ruffini. CHAPTER III The Period of Imprisonment and Strife in Virginia. The Persecutions in Virginia— Imprisonments—Spotsylvania—Lewis Craig—Letter of John Blair—Waller forty—three Days in Jail—The Members of the Establishment Enraged—Others Imprisoned—William Fristoe on Persecutions—The Baptists Greatly Increase in Number—James Madison Writes Letters—The Action of the House of Burgesses—The Baptists Present Petitions—The Baptists Attack the Establishment. CHAPTER IV The Baptists and the Destruction of the Establishment. The Evils of the Establishment in Virginia—The Baptists Render Service to the Country—Dr. Hawks on the Situation—The Convention at Williamsburg—Petition of the Clergy—Terrible Charges Against the Baptists—The Statement of Fristoe—The Tax Law Suspended—Counter Memorials—The Law Repealed—The Statement of Rayner—The Historians Speak—The Glebe Lands—The General Assessment Proposed—The Presbyterians—The Reasons the Baptists Opposed the Measure—The Bill Examined and Rejected—The Bill of Thomas Jefferson—Bishop Perry on the Baptists—Jefferson and the Baptists—The Union of the Regular and Separate Baptists—The Terms of The Union—The Revival. III. The Period of Growth and Organization CHAPTER I The Baptists in Kentucky. The Ohio Valley—Kentucky—John Finlay—Hunters from North Carolina—Daniel Boone—Lexington—The Customs of the People—The County of Fincastle—Baptists the Pioneers—John Lythe holds "Divine Service" at Harrodsburg—Bishop Smith on the Baptists—Thomas Tinsley and William Hickman—John Taylor—William Marshall—Severn’s Valley Church—Cedar Creek Church—The Traveling Church—Lewis Craig—Other Famous Preachers—The Negro Servant Peter—The Land and Water Routes to Kentucky—Calvinistic and Separate Churches—Religious Conditions—The Revivals—John Gano—The Elkhorn Association—Foot Washing—United Baptists—Augustine Eastin and James Garrard—Cooper Run Church—A Horrible Murder—The Unitarian Movement—The Universalists. CHAPTER II The Baptists of the Ohio Valley. The Ohio Valley—The Conditions—George Rogers Clark—The American. Settlers—The French Settlers—The First Churches in Ohio—John Smith and James Lee—The Indians—The Miami Association—Illinois—J. M. Peek—Indiana—Isaac McCoy and George Waller—Judge Holman—Missouri—Hardships—Bethel Church—Fee Fee Church—Tennessee—Middle Tennessee—Alabama—Revivals in Alabama. CHAPTER III The Baptists in Mississippi and Louisiana. Spanish America—The Inquisition—Florida—New Mexico—The French Occupy Louisiana—The Conditions—The Mississippi Country—The Claim of Great Britain—The Uprising Against Spain—Emigrants in the Natchez Country—Richard Curtis—Journey by Flatboats—Religious Liberty—Salem Church—Meetings Held at Night—The Spanish Officers—The Flight of Curtis—In South Carolina—The Return of Curtis—The Dissensions of the Salem Church—The Baptists Enter Louisiana—Mills and Smith—The Conditions in Louisiana—Persecutions—Bailey E. Chancy—Half Moon Bluff Church—Baptists in New Orleans. CHAPTER IV The Great Revival of 1800. The Deplorable Conditions of the Country—Low State of Morals—Terrible Practices—Deistical Opinions of the French and Indian Wars—Alliance of America and France—The Effects of French Infidelity—Thomas Paine—Infidel Clubs—Illuminism—Want of Religious Instruction—Baptist and Presbyterian Ministers—Dull Preaching—Conditions in the Colleges—Kentucky and Tennessee—Logan County—The Great Revival—James McGready—His Sermons—The Camp Meeting at Casper River—The Account of McGready—The Meeting Described—Barton W. Stone—Other Meetings—Extravagance—Lorenzo Dow—The Jerks and Other Violent Exercises—Disorders—Such Meetings Continued for Years—The Revival Did Great Good—Testimonies—Results Among the Baptists—Effects Felt Throughout the United States. CHAPTER V The Rise of Foreign Missions Among American Baptists. The Opinion of Southey—The Baptists of the United States Missionary—Had not Undertaken Foreign Mission Work—The Appeals of Carey and Others—The Contributions to India—Early Missionary Enterprises—No General Organization—The Spirit of the Times—The Congregationalists—The American Board of Commissioners—Young Men in the Andover Theological Seminary—Hall, Mills, Judson, Nott and Luther Rice—Americans Seek to Be Sent from England—The Missionaries Ordained—They Sail for Foreign Lands—Adoniram Judson—Studies the Subject of Baptism—Becomes a Baptist—Informs the American Board—Appeals to the Baptists—Accepted by the Baptists—Judson in Burmah—The Return of Luther Rice. CHAPTER VI The General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States. Luther Rice—His Character—Kingsford’s Account—Note in His Journal—Before the American Board—Appeal to the Baptists—The Savannah Baptist Society—Organization of the Triennial Convention—The Numbers of the Baptists Small—The Messengers—The Constitution—Dr. Furman Preaches the Sermon—Judson Accepted as Missionary—Hough and Wife Sent to India—Domestic Missions—The Program—Indian Missions—Isaac McCoy—Rice Visits the Churches—A Great Crisis—A Resume of the Work. CHAPTER VII The Anti-Effort Secession from the Baptists. The Rise of the Division—The Rancor of the Discussions—The Misunderstandings—Opposition to Missions—To Education—Masonry—Drinking—"Old School Baptists"—The Opposition Widespread—Bebee in The Signs of the Times—Tennessee.—Arkansas—Kentucky—Hill Grove Church—Otter Creek Association—Georgia—Hepziban Association—Yellow River—Flint River—Alabama—Virginia—Reasons for the Divisions— State of Religion—John Taylor—Samuel Trott—Daniel Parker—Illinois—Peck and Parker—Indiana—Texas—Sad Results. CHAPTER VIII The Schism of Alexander Campbell. Rise of the "Current Reformation"—Calvinism—Arminianism—Alexander Campbell—In Pennsylvania—A Presbyterian—Unites with the Baptists—Described by Archbishop Purcell—Debate with John Walker—Barton W. Stone and the Reformation—Campbell and Stone Unite Their Forces—The Ten Articles—The Debate with McCalla—Immense Crowds—Peculiar Views—A Great Sensation—Prominent Ministers—His Great Talent in Debate—His Views Slowly Introduced—Baptism for the Remission of Sins—Call to the Ministry—Paid Ministry—Poorly Prepared Ministers—The Separation—Action of the Associations—The Account of Dr. W. C. Buck—The Increase of the Baptists. CHAPTER IX A Number of Baptist Activities. Alien Immersions—J. L. Reynolds—Crosby—Philadelphia Association—The Case of James Hutchinson—Jesse Mercer—The Christian Review—Benedict—Education—Colombian College—The Triennial Convention on Education—An Address—The Effect of the Revolutionary War—The Charleston Association—Baptist Education Society in the Middle States—The Massachusetts Education Society—A School of Theological Instruction in Philadelphia—Washington, D. C.—The Progress of the Colombian College—President Monroe—The Resignation of Rice—Newton Theological Institution—Hamilton College—The Education Society in South Carolina and Georgia—Mercer College—Other Colleges—State Conventions—The General Convention of Western Baptists—Home Missions in the West—Sunday Schools—Baptist Publication Society—Newspapers and Periodicals—Conclusion. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 30: 01.2.00.1. PREFACE ======================================================================== Preface In the three periods of American history under survey in this treatise, there were no worldly inducements for a person to unite with the Baptists. Slanders of the most horrible character were circulated against them. It was alleged that they held the tenets of the Mad Men of Munster; and that their doctrines of liberty of conscience. were abominable and would work the ruin of Christianity. They were driven by persecution from province to province; they were imprisoned, whipped and ostracized. All through the Colonial. Period they were regarded as anarchists, and indignities were heaped upon them. They were denied the common rights of citizenship. For years after the American Revolution, on account of unjust state laws, they were compelled to pay taxes and suffer imprisonments on account of their opposition to the union of Church and State. The wonder is not that in numbers the Baptists increased slowly, but that they survived the shock of this terrible opposition. Men of wealth and position sought diligently to make them a stench in the nostrils of decent people. They increased, in spite of persecutions, and in time became influential. The story of their accomplishments, under the conditions, is really marvelous. Roger Williams and John Clarke preached human liberty, which was regarded as fanaticism; but it became the great American principle of inalienable rights of man. Cotton Mather and his contemporaries burned witches; but William Milburne, a Baptist minister, opposed the measure by circulating petitions against the delusion, and Robert Calif, a member of the First Baptist Church in Boston, wrote the book which destroyed it. Obadiah Holmes was unmercifully whipped because he was a Baptist, but this led Henry Dunster, President of Harvard, to embrace Baptist principles. This was one of the most notable events in all Colonial history. By the time of the American Revolution the Baptists had grown sufficiently in numbers and influence to command recognition. There were no Tories among the Baptists. Their men entered the American army and none were more patriotic. They gave of their money to the cause of the Colonists. Their ministers preached the gospel to the soldiers. They supported the adoption of the Constitution of the United States; and proposed the First Amendment to that Constitution in support of the liberty and rights of man. The War of the Revolution practically broke up all of the existing Baptist centers. The Baptist church in New York City was reduced from a membership of some two hundred and fifty to less than fifty members. The same conditions prevailed in other churches. It had, however, the wholesome influence of scattering Baptist principles throughout all the States and Territories. Great numbers of Baptist ministers emigrated from Virginia to Kentucky, planted the cause in that section, and in turn became the pioneers in frontier Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Missouri. The Baptists of North and South Carolina traveled west and planted churches in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee. Many of the Baptist preachers of those days were unlearned men; but they were schooled in the hardy life of pioneers. They were unpaid for their services, often crude, but they preached a mighty gospel that met with a hearty response. Often missionaries were sent forth, who remained from home for months at a time. John Gano preached all the way from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. Nearly seventy years passed from the founding of the first Baptist church in this country to the organization of the Philadelphia Association, the first in the United States. It was one hundred and seventy-five years before they organized the first General Convention. This Triennial Convention, as it was generally called, was brought into existence by the conversion of Adoniram Judson to Baptist principles. This event was followed by the founding of missionary societies, colleges, newspapers, and indeed practically all of the general Baptist enterprises. Unfortunately, no sooner was this movement inaugurated than opposition arose from two extremes. There had been much preaching on election and predestination. There had developed in some quarters a system of hyper-Calvinism which paralyzed all effort. This led to the anti-mission, or anti-effort secession. On the other hand there were many loose views of doctrine and practice prevalent. This led to the secession of Alexander Campbell and his followers. Not only was the denomination rent asunder by these factions; but there remained behind a spirit of controversy which did not always add to the spiritual life of the churches. There were other factors at work which were equally serious. About the year 1836 began those political debates and animosities which were to occasion the Civil War. These factional differences were manifested in religious affairs. They ultimately led to the division of the Baptists of the North from those of the South. It may, therefore, conservatively be said that up to the Civil War, and for some years following, the Baptists of the United States had no favorable opportunity of expansion. The periods under observation, in this volume, are rather a history of persecutions, hardships and trials. It is to the honor of the fathers that they heroically met these conditions and laid the foundation of future success. The references contained in the body of this book will sufficiently attest the sources and authorities used. Every effort has been used for accuracy. It would be too much, however, in a survey covering as much as does this volume, to claim that no inaccuracies have crept in. The origin of the Baptists in some States is not traced became they were lust, or their affairs were not sufficiently advanced to admit of definite treatment. The development of the history in such States necessarily falls under a later period. The Author ======================================================================== CHAPTER 31: 01.2.01.0. THE COLONIAL PERIOD ======================================================================== The Colonial Period CHAPTER I The First Baptists in America. First Settlers—Separatists and Puritans—The Difference in the Parties—The Puritan a Church of England Man—Reformed—Character of the Puritans—Religious Intolerance—Frothingham—Neal—Ruffini—The Theocracy—The First Baptists—Their Character—Statistics. CHAPTER II The Baptists in Rhode Island. Baptists Organize—Roger Williams—Relations to Sir Edward Coke—Arrival in New England—How Recognized—Estimates of Him—Pastor in Salem—Interference of the Magistrates—Plymouth—Returns to Salem—Before the Court in Boston—The Attitude of the People of Salem—His Banishment—His Popularity in Salem—Revocation of the Order of Banishment—Roman Catholics—Organization of the Church in Providence—The Baptism of Williams—The Form of Baptism—Abandons the Church Apostolic Succession and the Administration of Baptism—Irregularity—John Spilsbury—Further History of the Church—Pardon Tillinghast—Williams on Liberty—His Character—The Church at Newport—John Clarke—His Character—Recognition of Charles II—A New Charter—Rhode Island Persecuted by Other Colonies—Better Opinion of the State—Prosperity of the Baptists. CHAPTER III The Persecutions of the Baptists in Massachusetts. Charter Rights—A Christian State—Violations of the Charter—Peter Oliver—Episcopal Worship not Allowed—The Browns—The Rise of the Baptists—The Baptists Denounced—Petitions Against Them—Lady Moody—William Witter—Thomas Painter—The Governor Acts—A Severe Law—Baptists Punished—The Law Explained—Goodman Johnson—Letters on Severity—Letter to Plymouth Colony—The Persecution of the Quakers—Dissenters Forced to Pay Taxes—The Opinion of Ruffini. CHAPTER IV The First Baptist Churches in Massachusetts. The First Church in the State—Swansea—Prosecutions of the Church—A Grant of Land—The Conditions of the Grant—The Church in Boston—Richard Mather—John Clarke—Obadiah Holmes and Crandall—They Are Arrested—The Whipping of Holmes—Letter to Kiffin—The Conversion of Henry Dunster—History of the Case—Removed as President of Harvard—Thomas Gould—The Church Formed—The Action of the Congregational Church—Persecutions—The Action of the Court—The Place of Meeting—The General Spirit of the Puritans—House of Worship—Some Changes in Sentiment—Their Punishment—The Witches Burned—The Opinion of the Baptists—William Melbourne—Robert Calef—The Power of the Theocracy Broken—The Later Laws. CHAPTER V The Baptists of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys. William Penn—The "Frame of Government"—"The Great Law"—Liberal Provisions in Religion—Baptists from Rhode Island—Thomas Dungan—Cold Springs—Pennepek—Baptists from Wales, Ireland and England—Elias Keach—The Keithian Quakers—Mennonites—Baptists in Philadelphia—Jersey Baptists—Emigrants from Many Countries—The Congregationalists in Newark—A Curious Incident. CHAPTER VI The Baptists of Maine and South Carolina. Baptists in Kittery—The Letter of Humphrey Churchwood—William Screven—Before the Grand Jury—The Account of Joshua Millet—Screven Convicted of Contempt—Fined—His Character—Screven in South Carolina—The Opinion of His Enemies—Joseph Lord Writes to the Governor—The Settlement of Charleston—The Established Church—The Different Religious Sects—The First Baptists There—Lady Blake—Religious Conformity Demanded—No Other Baptist Church in the State—The Euhaw and Other Churches. CHAPTER VII The Baptists in New York, Delaware, Connecticut and Vermont. The Baptists in New York—Dutch Settlers—The Reformed Church—The Baptists Conventicles Suppressed—Lady Moody—Baptists in Flushing—Francis Doughty—Laws—Fines—Valentine—Wightman—The Various Sects—Governor Andros—Governor Hunter—First Baptist Church, New York—Nicholas Eyres—Fines—The Baptists in Central New York—Delaware—The Settlement of the State—The Welsh Tract Church—Elijah Baker and Philip Hughes—The Sounds Baptist Church—Connecticut—The Severity of the Laws—Early Baptist—The Slow Progress—Vermont—The Rise of the Baptists. CHAPTER VIII The Baptists in Maryland and New Hampshire. Maryland—Claims of the Roman Catholics—Bishop Gilmour—Cardinal Gibbons—Lord Baltimore—His Views of Liberty—A Forced Baptism of Infants—The Protestant Charter—Rufuni—De Courcey—Religious Provisions of the Charter—The Testimony or Dr. Brownson—An Attempt to Establish the Roman Catholic Religion in l638—The Famous Act of l649—The Political Fortunes of Baltimore at the Time—Population Mostly Protestant—The Opinion of the Historians—The Law a Compromise Measure Between Roman Catholics and the Puritans—Governor Stone a Protestant—No Liberty of Conscience Allowed—Roman Catholic View—The Terrible Penalties—The Virgin Mary—The Sabbath—Imprisonment and Public Whippings—The Baptists in Maryland—New Hampshire—The Baptist Church at Newton—Other Baptist Churches. CHAPTER IX The Philadelphia Association, Brown University, and Baptist Customs. Organization of the Philadelphia Association—Quarterly Meetings—The Early Churches of the Body—Other Associations—Powers of an Association—The Declaration of the Association—The Separate Association in Virginia—John L. Waller—Discipline—Trouble in the Pennepek Church—The First Church, Charleston, S. C—Requirements to Unite With a Church—Ministerial Education—Thomas Hollis and Harvard College—Scholarships for Baptists—Abel Morgan—The Academy at Hopewell—Missions—Oliver Hart—John Gano—Circular Letter on Education—Isaac Eaton—Brown University—James Manning—Dr. Ezra Stiles—The Charter—The First Commencement of Brown—The College Suspended—Resolutions on Temperance—Early Customs of the Baptists. CHAPTER X The Great Awakening. Baptists in Massachusetts—Position of the Puritans— Reaction Against the Standing Order—Thirteen Evils—The Account of Jonathan Edwards of Conditions—A Minister in New Hampshire—The Historian Trumbull—The Drink Habit—The Half Way Covenant—The Burning of Witches—The Awakening in Northampton—The Sermons of Edwards—The Revival Begins—The Effects of the Revival—George Whitefield—The Estimate of Benjamin Franklin—Manner of Preaching of Whitefield—Calvinism—The Baptists Calvinistic—Disorders—Persecutions of the Standing Order—Edwards Ejected from His Church—The Boston Gazette—Opposition of the Episcopalians—Action of the Connecticut Legislature—The New Lights—The New Lights Become Baptists—Bacon’s Account—Great Growth of the Baptists. CHAPTER XI The Baptists of Virginia. The First Settlers of Virginia—The Episcopalians—Contrasts with New England—First Efforts of the Baptists—The Church of England Established by Law—The Virginia Charter—No Toleration Allowed—The Bloody Laws—"Neck and Heels" in Jail for Not Attending Church—The First Act of Parliament—The Salary of the Clergy Paid in Tobacco—Dissenters Must Depart the Colony—Whippings and Brandings—Ordination from the Church of England Demanded—Quakers and Baptists in Virginia—Infant Baptism—Presbyterians Tolerated for a Strange Reason—Baptists Slow in Entering the State—Marvelous Growth—Dr. Hawks—Bishop Perry—The Statement of Semple—The First Baptists from England—Robert Norden—Collection of Money in England for the Baptist—Church at Burley—Churches in Berkeley and Loudon Counties—The Statement of John Gano—David Thomas. CHAPTER XII The Baptists in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. The Third Company of Baptists in Virginia—The Separatist—Shubea1 Stearns—Daniel Marshall—Stearns Unites with the Baptist—North Carolina Settled—Individual Baptist—Paul Palmer—William Sojourner—Kehukee Association—Vanhorn and Miller—The Preaching of the Separatists—The Character of Stearns—History of the Movement—Many Notices of the Growth of the Baptist—Baptists in Georgia—Nicholas Bedgewood—Benjamin Stark—Botsford—Gano—Marshall Arrested—Kiokee Church—Samuel Harris—Elijah Craig—The Election of Bishops by the Baptists. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 32: 01.2.01.01. THE FIRST BAPTISTS IN AMERICA ======================================================================== Chapter 1 – The First Baptists in America First Settlers—Separatists and Puritans—The Differences in the Parties—Puritan a Church of England Man—Reformed—Character of the Puritans—Religious Intolerance—Frothingham—Neale-Ruffini—The Theocracy—The First Baptists—Their Character—Statistics. The first Baptists on this continent were found in New England. That portion of the country was settled by the Separatists and the Puritans. The first named of these parties established Plymouth Colony and were known as the Pilgrim Fathers; the Puritans at a later date occupied Massachusetts Bay. One point must be kept clearly in mind. In what is nor called Massachusetts, there were in the early days two colonies, two centers of life and influence, very distinct one from the other. There was the little colony of Plymouth, beginning in 1620, and the larger colony of the Massachusetts Bay, beginning in 1628, which centered around Salem, Boston and Charleston. These colonies were about forty miles apart, a wilderness separated them by the land route, so that the principal intercourse was by water. But they were not so far separated by distance and physical difficulties as their general ideas and ways of looking at the great questions which were then up for consideration. So these two little confederacies, for a time, lived much to themselves. The people at Plymouth were called Pilgrims; the people in the Bay were called Puritans. The people at Plymouth were called Separatists, and those at the Bay were Non-Conformists, and these words conveyed entirely separate ideas (Increase N. Tarbox, Plymouth and the Bay, The Congregational Quarterly Magazine, April, 1875, XVII. pp. 239, 241). Most of the Separatists were North of England men. They denounced the Church of England as corrupt and they wholly separated from its communion. When the heavy hand of persecution fell on them they migrated to Holland. The surroundings in the Netherlands were not favorable to them. The language was harsh, the climate undesirable, and their environments were not satisfactory in many directions. So they crossed the seas and established themselves at Plymouth as “the forerunners of an innumerable host.” The Puritans on the other hand did not break with the Church of England. They dissented from many of its tenets but did not separate from it. They thought that the church ought to be reformed and remodeled. When the Puritans met with no success in this direction they likewise sought a home in. the New World. Rev. Francis Higginson, on leaving England, in 1629, is reported to have said: “We will not say, as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of England: Farewell, Babylon I Farewell, Rome! But we will say, Farewell, dear England, and all the Christian friends there. We do not go to New England as separatists from the Church of England; though we cannot but separate from the corruptions of it. But we go to practice the positive part of church reformation; and propagate the gospel in America” (Cotton Mather, Magnalia, Lib. III. sec. 1) . Governor Winthrop likewise said: We esteem it an honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot part from our native land, where she especially resides, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes. For acknowledging that such hope and faith as we have obtained in the common salvation we have received in her bosom and sucked it from her breasts, we leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were. nourished there; but, blessing God for parentage and education as members of the same God, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her, and, while we draw breath, sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of her bounds in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The Puritan was an Anglo-Saxon with an infusion of Norman blood—his northern imagination inflamed by the oriental imagery of the Old Testament, and his intellect submissive to a creed drawn from the New. and shaped by the logic of Geneva. The Cavaliers were Normans with some Saxon blood, full of haughty passions and the love of pomp, attached by sentiment and memory to the monarchy and the hallowed forms of old religion, but drunk with the new-born liberty, because they loved its license. The Huguenots were crusaders, divested of the steel-clad armor of the thirteenth century, and clothed in the full panoply of the ideas of the sixteenth. The Hollanders were men of quiet, sent among us apparently for the purpose of showing how much may be accomplished by sitting still—a perpetual reproach upon the fussy activities of some of their more volatile neighbors. Much of the ridicule heaped upon the Puritans was caused by their external peculiarities. “The Puritans were the most remarkable body of men,” says the Edinburgh Review, “perhaps which the world ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and the stage, at a time when the press and the stage were the most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were as a body unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The unostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches the subject should carefully guard against the influence of their potent ridicule which has already misled so many excellent writers” (Edinburgh Review, Milton’s Treatise on Christian Doctrine). The first settlers came to this country with an earnest purpose. “The early settlements of the English colonies,” says McMahon, “within what are now the limits of the United States, were, in general, similar in the causes and circumstances of their establishment. It was not the mere spirit of enterprise, the thirst for gain, nor the love of novelty, which impelled the early emigrants to forsake their native land, and to sever all the ties which bound them to the homes of heir fathers. It was not from these alone, that they were content to go forth as wanderers from the scenes of their infancy, and the allotments of their youth. It was not for these alone, that they took up their abode in the wilderness; made their dwelling with the savages; and encountered with cheerfulness and alacrity, all the privations and dangers of a country not yet rescued from the rudeness of nature These causes may have contributed, and no doubt did operate in peopling these colonies, but we must look elsewhere for the primary causes of their establishment, and the true source of their rapid increase in wealth and population. This, their new home, had other charms for them; and the history of the times and the language of the emigrants tell us what these were. They sought freedom from the religious and civil shackles, and oppressive institutions, of their parent country; and here they found, and were content to take it, with all of its alloy of hardship and danger. Too inconsiderable to attract attention, or to provoke the indignation of the parent government; too remote to be narrowly observed in their transactions, or to be reached by the speedy arm of power; here, unharassed by the old and corrupt establishments of their native land, yet cherishing all of the genuine principles of English liberty, might they spring up to consequence and happiness. Here, unchecked in their infant operations by the jealousies of the parent, they might be permitted to lay, broad and deep, the foundations of their civil and religious liberties; and here they might‘ hope to transmit to their posterity, in all their freshness and purity” (McMahon, A Historical View of the Government of Maryland, 1. 190. Baltimore, 1831) . Yet it was no easy life they had chosen. “Men who had to covet, miserly, the kernels of corn for their daily bead, and till the ground, staggering through weakness from the effect of famine, can do but little in setting the metaphysics of faith, or in gauging the exercises of their feelings. Grim necessity of hunger looks morbid sensibility out of countenance” (Cheever, Edition of the Journal of the Pilgrims, 112. 1848). The Separatists have been described as men with their “hearts full of charity, kindliness, and toleration; their minds broadened by experience in a land where religion was free to all men.” The Puritans had no such ideas. They desired liberty for themselves and perfect toleration; but they were not willing to grant this liberty to others. “Their chief crime was their uncharitableness,” says Neale, “in unchurching the whole Christian. world, and breaking off all manner of communion in hearing the Word, in public prayer, and in the administration of the sacraments, not only with the Church of England, but with the foreign Reformed churches, which though less pure. ought certainly to be owned as churches of Christ” (Neale, History of the Puritans, I.). Neale elsewhere says: It is not pretended, that the Puritans were without their failings; no, they were men of like passions and infirmities with their adversaries; and while they endeavored to avoid one extreme, they might fall into another; their seal for their platform of discipline would, I fear, have betrayed them into the imposition of it upon others, if it had been established by law. Their notions of the civil and religious rights of mankind were narrow and confused, and derived too much from the theocracy of the Jews, which was now at an end. Their behaviour was severe and rigid, far removed from the fashionable freedoms and vices of the age; and possibly they might have been too censorious, in not making those distinctions between youth and age, grandeur and mere decency; and the nature and circumstances of things would admit; but with all their faults, they were the most pious and devout people in the land; men of prayer, both in secret and in public, as well as in their families; their manner of devotion was fervent and solemn, depending on the assistance of the divine Spirit, not only to teach them how to pray, but what to pray for as they ought (Neale, L). Howe tries to excuse the persecutions of the Puritans, but his explanation brings a terrible indictment against practically all of the colonies. He says: In justice to the Puritans we should bear in mind that most of the other American colonies, no matter by whom settled or controlled, were equally intolerant. The Quakers were persecuted almost everywhere except in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. So late as 1860, a law of Maryland styled Quaker preachers “vagabonds,” and authorized them to be apprehended and whipped. Baptists fared little better anywhere than did the Quakers. They were persecuted in all of the colonies and enjoyed no freedom except in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware. New York and most of the colonies had laws against the Catholics. In 1664 we find the Maryland Assembly, in a law against blasphemy, including in a general sweep, “Schismatic, Idolater, Puritan, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist,” etc. (Dillon, Oddities of Colonial Legislation; Hildreth, History of the United States, L; Howe, The Puritan Republic of the Massachusetts Bay.) Religious intolerance was universal in all of these parties. In a sermon preached by N. L. Frothingham, Boston, August 29, 1830, he said: Two hundred years ago there was no such thing as toleration. In practice it was unknown, save of a few mild spirits; and even in open theory it was derided and condemned. “He that is willing,” says a writer (Ward) whom I have already quoted, “to tolerate any religion or discrepant way of religion, besides his own, or is not sincere in it. There is no truth but one, and of the persecution of true religion and toleration of false, the last is far the worst. It is said that men ought to have liberty of conscience, and that it is persecution to debar them from it. I can rather stand amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment that the brains of men should be parboiled in such impious ignorance.” Another thus expresses himself (President Oakes, Century sermon, 1673. Also Higginson, Election Sermon, 1663; Shephard, Election Sermon, 1672) “The outcry of some for liberty of conscience. This is the great Diana of the Libertines of this age. I look upon toleration as the first born of all iniquities. If it should be brought forth amongst us, you may call it Gad, a troop cometh, a troop of all manner of abominations.” Most of the Puritans of this period thought it impossible that different sects should exist peaceably together in the same community, and even when oppressed themselves they exclaimed against universal toleration (The Commemoration of the First Church in Boston, on November 18, 1880, p. 82. Boston, 1881). “The cause of this disagreement was as follows,” says Ruffini. “So resolutely and blindly did the Presbyterians profess the principles of the rigid Calvinism, that they became absolutely irreconcilable with any other religious denomination and as belligerent as the most implacable Catholic. Their supreme ideal was the realization of the kingdom of Christ on earth. Consequently the system of relations between the civil and ecclesiastical power at which they aimed was naturally a great deal more exclusive than the episcopalian system, since it was a pure theocracy. whey had, therefore, taken arms against the episcopal constitution, which they accused of having fallen headlong into popery, solely in order that their form of constitution might be imposed upon the country—a constitution which, according to them, was more in conformity with the pure principles of Protestantism. But nothing was more foreign to their ideas, nothing more remote from their intentions, than the principle of toleration and the proposal to substitute it for the old regime of episcopal coercion. They would have greatly preferred the latter to the former, if nothing else was to be had. Indeed, one of them said, ‘If the devil were given the choice of re- establishing in the kingdom the episcopal or granting toleration, he would certainly declare in favor of the latter.’ And another added, ‘I would rather find myself buried in the grave than live to see this intolerable toleration”’ (Ruffini, Religious Liberty). A resume of the laws and punishments for religion in New England is interesting. “It might have been expected, that those emigrants who made New England their asylum from what they deemed civil tyranny and ecclesiastical persecution, would have guarded against every degree of oppression and persecution in that form of government they were about to establish among themselves. This, however, was far from being the case. Some of the first laws savor of a degree of persecution and intolerance unknown in the most despotic governments of Europe; and those who fled from persecution became the most bitter persecutors. Those who were fond of dancing or drank were ordered to be publicly whipped, in order to deter others from such practices. The custom of wearing long hair was deemed immodest, impious and abominable. All who were guilty of swearing rashly might purchase an exemption from punishment for a shilling; but those who should transgress the fourth commandment were to be condemned by banishment, and such as should worship images, to death. Children were to be punished with death for cursing or striking their father or mother. Marriages were to be solemnized by magistrates; and all who denied the coercive authority of the magistrate in religious matters, or the validity of infant baptism, were to be banished. Blasphemy, perjury, adultery, and witchcraft, were all made capital offences. In short, we may challenge the annals of any nation to produce a code of laws more intolerant than that of the first settlers of New England. Unlimited obedience was enjoined to the authority of the magistrate, by the same men who had refused such submission in England, and fled from their native country because it was demanded” (B. R. Carroll, Historical Collections o f South Carolina, 1. 36, 37, New York, 1836; Hewatt, A Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina, I. 34. London, 1779). The tragedy is, that those who came to America, on account of being persecuted in their own land, should here persecute others. This was true of all parties except the Baptists and the Quakers. “That mutual intolerance,” says Dr. Bacon, “of differences in religious belief which, in the seventeenth century, was, throughout Christendom, coextensive with religious earnestness had its important part to play in the colonization of America. Of the persecutions and oppressions which gave direct impulse to the earliest colonization of America, the most notable are the following: (1) the persecution of the English Puritans in the reigns of James I and Charles I, ending with the outbreak of the civil war in 1642; (2) the persecution of the English Roman Catholics during the same period; (3) the persecution of the English Quakers during the twenty-five years of Charles II. (1660-85); (4) the persecution of the French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) ; (5) the disabilities suffered by the Presbyterians of the north of Ireland after the English Revolution (1688) ; (6) the ferocious ravaging of the region of the Rhenish Palatinate by the armies of Louis XIV in the early years of the seventeenth century; (7) the cruel expulsion of the Protestants of the arch episcopal duchy of Salzburg (1731) “ (Bacon, History of American Christianity). The Congregationalists of New England formed their government on the theory of a theocracy. “What they wished was a State, which they could enjoy in common as an ordinance of God. But the State was to unfold within the church. As they regarded the government as God’s servant, so likewise all citizens, as such, were to serve God.” John Davenport, as quoted by Cotton, says: The Theocracy, that is, God’s government, is to be established as the best form of government. Here the people, who choose its civil rulers, are God’s people, in covenant with him, they are members of the churches; God’s laws and God’s servants are enquired of for counsel (Collection of Original Papers). “From these declarations,” says Uhden, “it is, manifest, that the government was theocratic. The settlers whose aim it was to derive all of their institutions from the Word of God, here also universally appealed to the Jewish code. It is from this point of view that we must contemplate those peremptory measures for the expulsion of every opposite tendency, which threatened to disturb the unity of the Church and State governments, or but to cripple the expediency of the latter. But here we must especially call attention to that peculiarity of the theocratic constitution, by which no one was permitted to exercise a civil office, or even to enjoy full civil rights, unless he were a member of some regular Church, established and ordered in accordance with the principles of the Independents. In the case of State Churches elsewhere, whether of past or present time, membership is conferred by birth, and n6 one, while conforming to existing usages, and to the preponderating influence of the older members, is excluded for some explicit avowal contrariety of opinion. But in New England, one could not thus silently pass into the membership of the Church. He was only admitted on the development in the individual of a definite conscious need for fellowship for the Church, and when, after being examine( by the minister and elders, he had publicly made confession of his faith before the Church, and had given evidence of his religious state as that of a regenerate man. Thus was the State also, as well as the Church, to be a community of Believers.” (Uhden, The New England Theocracy, 75, 76. Boston, 1859. Also Sherman, Sketches of New England Divines, John Cotton, 17. New York, 1860). Out of this civilization, with all of its defects, there came a type of life and character, self-dependent, God-fearing, industrious, capable and highly conscientious. Bishop Creighton’s judgment, the judgment of a trained historian but not an ecclesiaatical sympathizer, was hardly an exaggeration of the facts, when he said that this movement “stamped upon the early colonies of America the severe morality and patient industry which have trained a nation.” And the late Lord Acton, also a trained historian, and even less than Creighton an ecclesiastical sympathizer, paid this ungrudging tribute to the Puritans in general and the Independents in particular, when he said: “The idea that religious liberty is the general principle of civil, and that civil liberty is the necessary condition of religious, was a discovery reserved for the seventeenth century . . . . That great political idea . . . has been the soul of what is great and good in the progress of the last two hundred years” (The Religious History of New England). The idea of religious liberty is distinctly a Baptist contribution. It was among these first settlers in New England that the Baptists were found. There is no certainty that any of the Pilgrim Fathers were Baptists (Millet, A History of the Baptists in Maine, 21. Portland, 1845) ; but there was from the first a Baptist taint about Plymouth. Cotton Mather states that “many of the first settlers of Massachusetts were Baptists, and that they were as holy and faithful and heavenly people as any, perhaps in the world” (Mather, Magnalia, II.). “As our brethren in the mother country,” says Benedict, “had been much intermixed with the dissenting pedobaptists, it is highly probable that the early emigrants of this class in the infant colony, continued to do so for the first years of their settlement here. And while they continued in this state of quiescence or concealment, they met with no trouble or opposition, Upon all of the principles which the colonists had advanced in the commencement of their undertaking at home, and after their arrival in their new and wilderness location, they should have remained unmolested—freedom of conscience to all who united in the hazardous enterprise, should have been invariably maintained. Dissent or toleration were terms which ought to have had no place in their chronicles or vocabularies. Whatever were their dogmas or their rites, they were all on a level” (Benedict). But no such an attitude was taken. The Baptists were not associated in churches of their own; and when children were christened they would turn their beads and look in another direction (Middlesex Court, Original Papers). This was a favorite method, at this period, of expressing dissent at the practice of infant baptism. To stand in the assembly with one’s back turned toward the minister when he administered the ordinance, was an emphatic statement, without words, of the dissenter’s opinion of the ordinance. Sometimes the dissenter would arise and walk out in no unmistakable manner so that all knew what he meant to signify. This was especially irritating to the members of the standing order. The Puritans were by nature and practice an emphatic folk, and the dissenters, who were of the same English stock and training, did not lose any of their emphatic peculiarities because of the dissent: STATISTICS It is interesting to give the statistics of the denomination in the period under consideration. The following is a list of the first fifty-eight Baptist churches in this country, together with the dates of their organization according to Benedict: Providence, R. I. 1639 Middletown, N. J. 1688 1st Newport, R. I. 1644 Lower Dublin, Pa . 1689 2nd Newport, R. I. 1656 Piscataway, N. J. 1689 1st Swansea, Mass. 1663 Charleston, S. C. 1690 1st Boston, Mass. 1665 Cohansey, N. J. 1691 North Kingston, R. I. 1665 2nd Swansea, Mass. 1693 7th Day Newport, R. I. 1671 1st Philadelphia, Pa . 1698 South Kingston, R. I. 1680 Welsh Tract, Del. 1701 Tiverton, R. I. 1685 Groton, Conn. 1705 Smithfield, R. I. 1706 7th Day, Piscataway, N. J. 1707 Hopkinton, R. I. 1708 Southinton, Conn. 1738 Great Valley, Pa. 1711 West Springfield, Conn. 1740 Cape May, N. J. 1712 King Wood, N. J. 1742 Hopewell, N. J. 1715 2nd Boston, Mass. 1743 Brandywine, Pa. 1715 North Stonington, Conn. 1743 Montgomery, Pa. 1719 Colchester, Conn. 1743 New York City, N. Y. 1724 East Greenwich, R. I. 1743 Scituate, R. I. 1725 Euhaw, S. C. 1745 Warwick, R. I. 1725 Heights Town, N. J. 1745 Richmond, R. I. 1725 South Hampton, Pa. 1746 French Creek, Pa. 1726 Scotch Plains, N. J. 1747 New London, Conn. 1726 King Street, Conn. 1747 Indian Town, Mass. 1730 Oyster Bay, N. Y. 1748 Cumberland, R. I. 1732 Sturbridge, Mass. 1749 Rehoboth, Mass. 1732 Bellingham, Mass. 1750 Shiloh, N. J. 1734 Killingby, Conn. 1750 South Brimfield, Mass. 1736 Westerly, R. I. 1750 Welsh Neck, S. C. 1738 Exeter, R. I. 1750 Leicester, Mass. 1738 Thompson, Conn. 1750 (Benedict, A General History o/ the Baptist Denomination in America, pp. 384, 365. New York, 1848.) “These are all the churches,” continues Benedict, “which acquired any durability that arose in these United States in a little more than a century after the Baptists began their operations.” According to Morgan Edwards, in 1786, there were in the United States and Nova Scotia 137 churches. These were distributed throughout the country as follows: Nova Scotia 2 New Jersey 15 New Hampshire 1 Pennsylvania 10 Massachusetts 30 Maryland 1 Connecticut 12 Virginia 10 Rhode Island 36 North Carolina 8 New York 4 South Carolina 8 Total 137 John Asplund, in his first Register, in 1790, makes the following exhibit: MINISTERS STATE CHURCHES ORDAINED LICENSED MEMBERS New Hampshire 32 23 17 1,732 Massachusetts 107 95 31 7,116 Rhode Island 38 37 36 3,502 Connecticut 55 44 21 3,214 Vermont 34 28 15 1,610 New York 57 53 30 3,987 New Jersey 26 20 9 2,279 Pennsylvania 28 26 26 1,231 Delaware 7 9 1 409 Maryland 12 8 3 776 Virginia 207 157 109 20,157 Kentucky 42 40 21 3,105 Western Territory 1 30 North Carolina 94 86 76 7,742 Deceded Territory 18 15 6 889 South Carolina 68 48 28 4,012 Georgia 42 33 39 3,184 Nova Scotia 4 Total 872 722 449 64,975 Benedict in 1812 reckoned the following statistics: Churches, 2,633; ordained ministers, 2,142; members, 204,185; and 111 associations. Allen, in his Triennial Register for 1836, makes for the United States and the British possessions in America the following statistics: associations, 372; churches, 7,299; ministers ordained, 4,075; licensed, 966; and membership, 517,524. Books for further reference: Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists; traced in their Vital Principles and Practices, from the Time of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to the Year 1886. New York, 1887. David Benedict, A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America and other parts of the World. Boston, 1813. 2 volumes. David Benedict, A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America and other parts of the World. New York, 1848. John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists together with some account of their Principles and Practices. Nashville, 1922. Richard B. Cook, A Story of the Baptists in all Ages and Countries. Baltimore, 1888. J. M. Cramp, Baptist History: from the Foundation of the Christian Church to the close of the Eighteenth Century. Philadelphia. J. Chaplin, The Pilgrims and the Puritans, The Baptist Quarterly, VII. pp. 129-148, 274-292. Philadelphia, 1873. T. J. Conant, The Puritan Exodus, The Baptist Quarterly, IX. pp. 225-234. Philadelphia, 1875. Joseph M. Atkinson, The Puritans, The Southern Presbyterian Review, XV. pp. 230-255. Columbia, S. C., 1863. Newell Dwight Hillis, The Pilgrim Fathers and the Message of the Puritans, Bibliotheca Sacra, LV. pp. 342-356. Oberlin, 1898. Louis Martin Sears, The Puritan and his Anglican Allegiance, Bibliotheca Sacra, LXXIV. pp. 533-580. Oberlin, 1917. John T. Christian, The Pilgrim Fathers, The Review and Expositor, XVIII. pp. 20-31. Louisville, 1921. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 33: 01.2.01.02. THE BAPTISTS IN RHODE ISLAND ======================================================================== Chapter 2 – The Baptists in Rhode Island Baptists Organize—Roger Williams—Relations to Sir Edward Coke—Arrival in New England—Howe Recognized—Estimates of Him—Pastor in Salem—Interference of the Magistrates—Plymouth—Returns to Salem—Before the Court in Boston—The Attitude of the People of Salem—His Banishment—His Popularity in Salem—Revocation of the Order of Banishment—Roman Catholics—Organization of the Church in Providence—The Baptism of Williams—The Form of Baptism—Abandons the Church—Apostolic Succession and the Administrator of Baptism—Irregularity—John Spilsbury—Further History of the Church—Pardon Tillinghast—Williams on Liberty—His Character—The Church at Newport—John Clarke—His Character—Recognition of Charles II—A New Charter—Rhode Island Persecuted by Other Colonies—Better Opinion of the State—Prosperity of the Baptists.The first sign of organization of Baptists in the United States was in Rhode Island under Roger Williams and John Clarke. Williams was one of the most notable men among the colonists. He was born in London (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July 1889, p. 291 f), of Welsh extraction, and died in Providence, Rhode Island, March, 1684. He was the son of James Williams, a merchant tailor, of whom Henry Fitz Waters wrote: His house was in Cow lane, opposite a public house or tavern called the Harrow, which he owned. This lane starts at Snow hill, near its intersection with Cock lane, famous for its ghost, and sweeps around in a curve to the north, ending, I think, in Smithfield market, near the place where John Rogers and other famous religious martyrs were burned at the stake. It was in the parish of St. Sepulchre’s and between the church of that name, and Charter house where young Roger got his schooling and was fitted for the ministry of Cambridge. He was born about the year 1600. He became a student at Charter House June 25, 1621, and obtained a scholarship in that school July 9, 1624 (Parley, The History of Salem, Massachusetts, I., pp. 227, 228. Salem, 1824). When he was a mere boy he attracted the attention of Sir Edward Coke, while taking shorthand notes in the Star Chamber. Coke became his patron, and he graduated from Pembroke College, in 1626. Before he left England he refused to join in the Liturgy of the Church "because he durst not join with them in their use of common prayer" (Publications of the Narragansett Club, IV). He and his young wife arrived on the ship Lyon, at Nantucket, February 5, 1631. "The truth is," said he late in life, "from my childhood, now about three score years, the Father of lights and mercies touched my heart with a love to himself." When he arrived in Boston, early in February, 1631, six months after the death of Francis Higginson, he was already a resolute non-Conformist. He was recognized by Winthrop as a "Godly minister"; and Edward Winslow characterized him as "a man lovely in his carriage." The later historians have been the most pronounced in their tributes of appreciation. As there has been much misunderstanding of the character of Roger Williams, a few of the more recent tributes are here given. The language of Professor Moses Coit Tyler would probably be generally accepted by most students of Colonial history. He says: From his early manhood, even down to his old age, Roger Williams stands in New England a mighty and benignant form, always pleading for some magnanimous idea, some tender charity, the rectification of some wrong, the exercise of some sort of forbearance toward men’s bodies or souls (Tyler, History of American Literature, p. 31. New York, 1878). Richman gives him the following character: Although by nature—in all that touched not what he deemed the vitals of morals and religion—of all men most charitable, and forgiving, he was equally by nature—in all that touched those vitals—of all men the most uncompromising and stern. Richman gives a contrast between Williams and John Winthrop, the greatest of the New England leaders: Against the somber background of early New England, two figures above the rest—John Winthrop and Roger Williams. The first—astute, reactionary, stern-represented Moses and the law. The second—spontaneous, adaptable, forgiving—representing Christ and the individual. It is needless to say with which lay the promise of the dawn. James Bryce, the distinguished ex-Ambassador to the United States from Great Britain, says: Roger Williams was the founder of Rhode Island in a clearer and ampler sense than any other single man-scarcely excepting William Penn-was the founder of any other American colony; for he gave it a set of principles which, so far as the New World was concerned, were peculiarly his own . . . he and his community deserved to be honored by those who hold that one of the chief services which the United States has rendered to the world consists in the example set there of a complete disjunction of religious worship and belief from the machinery of civil government. Edward Eggleston asserts: Here at the very outset of his American life we find that Williams had already embraced the broad principles that involved the separation of church and state, and the most complete religious freedom, and had characteristically pushed this principle to its logical result some centuries in advance of the practice of his age. And he further remarks: In the seventeenth century there was no place but the wilderness for such a John the Baptist of the distant future as Roger Williams. He did not belong among the diplomatic builders of churches like Cotton, or the political founders of states like Winthrop. He was but a babbler to his own times, but the prophetic voice rings clear and far, and even clearer as the ages go on. Secretary Oscar Straus, once a Cabinet officer of the United States, says: The time, let us hope, is not far distant when the civilized people, in the remotest corners of the world, will recognize the truth and power of the principles which throw around the name of Roger Williams a halo of imperishable glory and fame. Chief Justice Durfee, at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Providence, used these glowing words: The great idea here first politically incorporated and showed forth in lively experiment, has made the circuit of the globe, driving bigotry like a mist and superstition like a shadow before it, and sowing broadcast, among men and nations, the fruitful seeds of peace and progress, of freedom and fraternity. The little wisp of glimmering light, which hung, like a halo, over the cradle of infant Providence, has brightened and expanded until it irradiates the world. This is and will be forever the unique glory of our beloved city. Williams was invited to settle as pastor with the church in Boston, but he declined because they were not "an unseparated people" (Letter to John Cotton, March 25, 1671). On the April following he became co-pastor with Mr. Skelton of the Salem church, since that church acted "on principles of perfect and entire independence of every other ecclesiastical body." But the governor and magistrates interfered and made such spirited opposition that he was induced to leave Salem before the close of the summer. They protested on the ground: "That whereas, Mr. Williams refused to join with the congregation at Boston, because they would not make a public declaration of their repentance for having communion with the churches of England, while they lived there; and besides, had declared his opinion that the magistrate might not punish the breach of the Sabbath, nor any other offense that was a breach of the first table; therefore, they marveled they would choose him without advising the Council; and withal desiring that they would forbear to proceed till they had conferred about it." He further urged that the royal patent could give them no title to their lands without a purchase from the natives. Open, bold and ardently conscientious, as well as eloquent and highly gifted, it cannot be surprising that he should have disturbed the magistrates by divulging such opinions, while he charmed the people by his powerful preaching, and his amiable, generous, and disinterested spirit. It is noticeable that one of the charges alleged against him was liberty of conscience. After a short time, for the sake of peace, he withdrew to Plymouth, beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay, and became assistant to Ralph Smith in the ministry. "He was friendly entertained according to their poor ability, and exercised his gifts among them, and after some time was admitted a member of the church, and his teaching well approved, for the benefit whereof I still bless God, and am thankful to him even for his sharpest admonitions and reproofs, so far as they agree with truth" (Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, Collection Massachusetts Historical Society, III. p. 310). But the people of Plymouth, to use the words of Elder Brewster, were afraid he would "run the same course of Separation and Anabaptistery which Mr. John Smith, the Se-Baptist at Amsterdam, had done." After laboring among the people at Plymouth about two years, with great acceptance and usefulness, he asked a dismission, in 1633, upon being invited by the church at Salem to return to them as assistant to Mr. Skelton. He returned accordingly, and during Mr. Skelton’s lifetime labored with him in great harmony and affection, and after his death, was sole minister of the church till November, 1635. At this time the opposition of the magistrates was renewed, and this opposition was strengthened by a treatise which he had written against the patent. He was summoned to appear before the Court in Boston for teaching that a magistrate ought not to tender an -oath to an unregenerate man. Governor Winthrop remarks that "he was heard before all the ministers and clearly refuted. He was called upon to answer the following tenets which he was alleged to hold: 1. That the magistrate ought not to punish the breach of the first table, otherwise than in such case as did disturb the civil peace. 2. That he ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate man. 3. That a man ought not to pray with such, though they might be wife, children, etc. 4. That a man ought not to give thanks after sacrament, nor after meals; and that the other churches were about to write to Salem to admonish him of these errors, understanding that the church had called him to the office of teacher." "These sad opinions," said Governor Winthrop, "were adjudged by all .the magistracy and ministers—who were desired to be present—to be erroneous and very dangerous, and the calling of him to office. at that time was judged a great contempt of authority" (Winthrop, History of New England, I.). "The conduct of Williams on the occasion to the magistrates," says Elton, one of his biographers, "and clergy was mild and conciliatory; and although he did not retract his opinions, he offered to burn the offensive book, and furnish satisfactory evidence of his loyalty" (Elton, Life of Roger Williams, p. 25. London, 1842). Consequently, Dr. Elton regarded the sentence passed against him as "cruel and unjustifiable." The people of Salem were, however, steadfast in their allegiance to him. "They adhered to him long and faithfully," says Upham, "and sheltered him from all assaults. And when at last he was sentenced by the General Court to banishment from the colony, on account of his principles, we cannot but admire the fidelity of that friendship which prompted many members of his congregation to accompany him in his exile, and partake of his fortunes when an outcast upon the earth." There have been repeated efforts, without much success, to prove that Williams was banished solely on account of his political opinions. John Quincy Adams says: Can we blame the founders of Massachusetts colony for banishing him from within their jurisdiction? In the annals of religious persecution is there to be found a martyr more gently dealt with by those against whom he began the war of intolerance? (Adams, Address before the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1843, The Congregational Quarterly, XV., p. 401. July, 1873). Few, however, accept this verdict. In fact he was banished on account of his religious opinions. "The offender had propagated," says Field, "certain opinions which said the clergy were ‘subversive of the framework of government.’ And so they were, but subversive of the religious, and not the political framework" (Edward Field, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the end o f the Century, I., p. 27. Boston, 1902) . Charles Francis Adams states the case thus: "The trouble with the historical writers who have taken upon themselves the defense of the founders of Massachusetts is that they have tried to sophisticate away the facts . . . In Spain it was the dungeon, the rack and the fagot; in Massachusetts it was banishment, the whip and the gibbet. In neither case can the records be obliterated. Between them it is only a question of degree—one may be in color a dark drab, while the other is unmistakably a jetty black. The difficulty is with those who, expatiating with great force of language on the sooty aspect of the one, turn and twist the other in the light, and then solemnly asseverate its resemblance to driven snow. Unfortunately for those who advocate this view of the Old and the New World records, the facts do not justify it" (Adams, Massachusetts: Its Historians and Its History, p. 34. 1893). That Williams was popular in Salem there can be no doubt. Mr. Bently, in his History of Salem, writes as follows: In Salem every person loved Mr. Williams. He had no personal enemies under any pretense. All valued his friendship: Kind treatment could win him, but opposition could not conquer him. He was not afraid to stand alone for truth against the world; and he always had address enough, with his firmness, never to be forsaken by the friends he had ever gained. He had always a tenderness of conscience, and feared every offense against moral truth. He breathed the purest devotion. He was ready in thoughts and words, and defied all his vaunting adversaries to public disputation. He had a familiar imagery of style, which suited his times, and he indulged, even in the titles of his controversial papers, to-wit upon names, especially upon the Quakers. He knew men better than he did civil government. He was a friend of human nature, forgiving, upright and pious. He understood the Indians better than any man of his age. He made not so many converts, but he made more sincere friends. He knew their passions and the restraints they could endure. He was betrayed into no wild expensive projects respecting them. He studied their manners, and their customs, and passions together. His vocabulary also proves that he was familiar with the words of their language, if not with its principles. It is a happy relief, in contemplating so eccentric a character, that no sufferings induced any purpose of revenge, for which he afterwards had great opportunities; that great social virtues corrected the first errors of his opinions; and that he lived to exhibit to the natives a noble .example of generous goodness, and to be the parent of the independent .State of Rhode Island. The General Court pronounced sentence of banishment upon him, October, 1635. Hooker, who had been appointed to dispute with him, "could not reduce him from any of his errors." The sentence of banishment was as follows: WHEREAS, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the church of Salem, hath broached and divulged new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates; and also writ letters of defamation, both of the magistrates-and church here, and that before any conviction, and yet maintaineth the same without any retraction; it is therefore ordered that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks now next ensuing, which, if he neglect to perform, it shall be lawful for the Governor and two of the magistrates to send him to some place out of this jurisdiction, not to return any more without license from the court. It is interesting to note that on March 31, 1676, thirty-one years afterwards, this order of banishment was revoked. The revocation is in these words: WHEREAS, Mr. Roger Williams stands at present under a sentence of restraint from coming into this Colony, yet considering how redyly and freely at all tymes he hath served the English interest in this time of warre with the Indians and manifested his particular respects to the Authority of this Colony in several services desired of him, and further understanding how by the last assault of the Indians upon Providence his House is burned and himself, in his old age, reduced to uncomfortable and disabled state. Out of compassion to him in this condition The Council doe Order and Declare that if the sayd Mr. Williams shall see cause and desire it, he shall have liberty to repayre into any of our Towns for his security and Comfortable abode during these Public Troubles. He behaving himself peaceably and inoffensively and not disseminating and vesting any of his different opinions in matters of Religion to the dissatisfaction of any (Plymouth Colony Records, X., p. 6. Massachusetts Archives, X., p. 233). This belated recognition was a grudging tribute to the worth of the man. Driven from among white men he became a missionary to the Indians. No missionary ever possessed a more self-denying spirit, or was actuated by a more Christian-like motive; and no heathen were ever more repulsive in appearance and habits. One writer describes them as "naked slaves of the Devil." Williams says: "God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit-to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes, even while I lived in Plymouth and Salem, to gain their tongue." And again he says: "And to these Barbarians, the Holy God knows some pains I took uprightly, in the mainland and the islands of New England, to dig into their barbarous rockie speech, and to speak something of God into their souls." "And yet it is to Williams," says Sherman, "more than to any other man of that age, that American republicanism is indebted for its free, full, broad expression; for its wide and beneficent relation over the extended continent. He was an original, exemplar man, unfolding from his own soul the truths that should shape a whole age; that should rule whole generations of men, leaving their lengthened traces along the strata of all history" (Sherman, Sketches of New England Divines). The statement has been made that Williams excluded Roman Catholics from office. This has been denied by many authors. Hon. Samuel Eddy, for many years Secretary of State for Rhode Island, says: "I have formerly examined the records of the State, from its first settlement, with a view to historical information, and lately from 1663 to 1719, with a particular view to this law excluding Roman Catholics from the privileges of freedmen, and can find nothing that has reference to it, or anything that gives preference or privileges to men of one sect of religious opinions over those of another, until the session of 1745" (The Evening Transcript, August 31, 1853). Knowles, the biographer of Williams commenting on the above statement of Eddy, says: This testimony might alone be sufficient to disprove the allegation, though it is possible that such an act might be passed, and not be recorded. But it is not probable, and when the uniform policy of the colony from the beginning, and other circumstances, are considered, it becomes morally certain, that no such act received the sanction of the Legislature of Rhode Island (Knowles, The Memoir of Roger Williams, p. 321. Boston, 1833). The first sign of organization among the Baptists of America was some time prior to March, 1639. There had, however, been preaching and church services two years before this date. There had long been promulgated in Providence Baptist views. Winthrop, in his Journal, March, 1638-9, had said, "for a sister of Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of one Scott, being infected with Anabaptistery, and going last year to live in Providence, Mr. Williams was taken (or rather emboldened) by her to make open profession thereof, and accordingly was rebaptized by one Holyman, a poor man late of Salem. Then Mr. Williams rebaptized him and ten more. They also denied the baptizing of infants, and would have no magistrates." Even before the eloquence of Mrs. Scott was exerted to elucidate the "Anabaptist" point of view as to "certain perplexing theological questions," "the Devil was not idle," if we may quote the incisive words of Winthrop. He proceeded to relate that "at Providence . . . men’s wives and children daring to go to all religious meetings tho’ never so often, or . . . upon week days; and because one Verin refused to let his wife go to Mr. Williams, so often as she was called for, they required to have him censured." And censured he was by his fellow townsmen, at the conclusion of a spirited debate on liberty of conscience versus the scriptural injunction, to obey their husbands. The general sense of the community seemed to be that it was, to say the least, inexpedient to "restrain their wives." There is reason to think Joshua Verin in question did not enjoy an unqualified reputation for discretion, or piety. He is described by Williams as "a young man boisterous and desperate, who refused to hear the word with us," and his treatment of his wife was such that "she went into danger of her life." This turbulent pioneer shortly withdrew from the Providence Plantation and returned to Salem, "clamoring for justice" (Gertrude Selwyn Kimbell, Providence in Colonial Times, pp. 26, 27. Boston, 1912). Williams was immersed by Ezekiel Holliman and in turn he baptized Holliman and some "ten others" (Felt, The Ecclesiastical History of New England, I., p. 402. 1855-62). As to the form of baptism used on the occasion there can be no doubt. Richard Scott, who was a Baptist at the time, and an eye witness of the ceremony, says: I walked with him in the Baptists’ way about three or four months, in which time-he brake from the society, and declared at large the ground and reason for it; that their baptism could-not be right because it was not administered by an apostle. After that he set about a way of seeking (with two or three of them that had dissented with him) by way of preaching and praying; and there he continued a year or two, till two of the three left him (Scott, Letter in George Fox’s answer to Williams. Backus, History of the Baptists of New England, I., p. 88. Newton, Mass., 1871). This was written thirty-eight years after the baptism when Scott had turned Quaker. There is no doubt that "the Baptist way" was immersion. Coddington was also a contemporary witness, and he likewise turned Quaker. He could not say enough against Williams. In 1677 he wrote to his friend George Fox, as follows: I have known him about fifty years; a mere weathercock; constant only in inconsistency; poor man, that doth not know what should become of his soul, if this night it should be taken from him . . . One time for water baptism, men and women must be plunged into the water (Backus, I.). Williams is himself a witness to his own practice. In a book which was a long time lost, he says: Thirdly, for our New-England parts, I can speak uprightly and confidently, I know it to have been easie for myselfe, long ere this, to have brought many thousands of these Natives (Indians), yea the whole country, to a far greater Antichristian conversion then was ever yet heard of in America, I have reported something in the Chapter of their Religion, how readily I could have brought the whole Country to have observed one day in seven; I adde to have received a Baptisme (or washing though it were) in Rivers (as the first Christians and the Lord Jesus himselfe did) to have come to a stated church meeting, maintained priests and forms of prayer, and the whole forme of antichristian worship in life and death (Williams, Christianing Makes not Christians). In a letter found among the Winthrop papers, dated Narragansett, November 10, 1649, Williams says: At Seekonk a great many have lately concurred with Dr. John Clarke and our Providence men about the point of new baptism, and the manner by dipping, and Mr. John Clarke hath been there lately, (and Mr. Lucar), and hath dipped them. I believe their practice comes nearer the first practice of the great Founder Christ Jesus, than any other practices of religion do (Publications of the Narragansett Club). It is certain that in 1639 the Baptists of Providence would not conform to the liturgy of the Church of England (Felt, I.). Williams remained in communion with his church only a few months. He had doubts in regard to the validity of his baptism, and that of his associates, on account of the absence of an "authorized administrator." "I walked with him," said Richard Scott, after he became a Quaker, "in the Baptists’ way about three or four months, in which time he brake away from the society, and declared at large the grounds and reasons for it, that their baptism could not be right, because it was not administered by an apostle. After that he set up a way of seeking (with two or three of them that had deserted with him) by way of preaching and praying, and then he continued a year or two, till two of these left him" (Felt, I.). "For him," says Dr. S. L. Caldwell, "there was no church and no ministry left. The apostolic succession had ceased. It was the baptizer, and not the baptism, about which he doubted. He was a high church Anabaptist. He went out of the church, left the little congregation behind, preached when and where he could, and became a ‘seeker’ the rest of his days. And during the rest of his days he never came to a ‘satisfying discovery’ of a true church or ministry." He never surrendered his Baptist views. Much has been written and said in regard to the irregularity of the baptism of Roger Williams. As Baptist church polity is now interpreted it was certainly irregular; but it is necessary to understand the viewpoint of those times. Williams was an intelligent university man, had come up under the tutelage of Sam Howe, a Baptist minister of London, and he appears in his baptism to have strictly followed the most approved standards of English Baptists. Both the General and Particular Baptists of England were sticklers for regularity; but they held that, in case no administrator could be had, it was lawful for two believers to begin baptism, and they quoted the Scriptural authority of John the Baptist. John Spilsbury is sufficient authority to establish that this was the Baptist position, and Williams, when no administrator was available, carried out their injunctions. Spilsbury says: And because some make it such an error, and so far from any rule or example for a man to baptize others, who is himself unbaptized, and so think thereby to shut up the ordinance of God in such a strait, that none can come by it but thro’ the authority of the Popedom of Rome; let the reader consider who baptiz’d John the Baptist before he baptized others, he himself being unbaptized. We were taught by this what to do upon like occasions (Crosby, The History o/ the English Baptists, I., pp. 103, 104. London, 1738). Williams strictly followed the Baptist program laid down by the foremost Baptists of his day. "Neither Pedobaptists nor Baptists," says Dr. Babcock, "can, with any propriety, object to this procedure. Not the former, for on their principles Mr. Williams was already an authorized administrator of the ordinances of Christ’s house, and his acts strictly valid. Not the latter, for they have ever rejected as of no avail a claim to apostolic succession through the corruption and suicidal perversions of the papacy. Nor, indeed, has any prelatical hierarchy of any kind ever found favor in their eyes; since each body of believers meeting in any place for the worship of Christ, and the discipline which his institution requires, they believe to be the highest source of Christian authority on earth and when acting and deciding according to the Scriptures, they doubt not, has the approval of the only Head of the Church" (The Baptist Memorial and Monthly Chronicle, January, 1842. I., p. 1). The trouble in the mind of Williams was not that he had failed to follow Baptist polity, but whether there was any true succession in the world, and so he turned seeker. What would be the advice or policy of Baptists in this day, if a similar condition were to arise, is another question. This baptism of Williams has been the occasion of much heat and strife; but it is difficult for one to understand what significance it has in Baptist history. So far as known not one Baptist church, or minister, came out of the Providence church, of this period, or was in anywise affected by the baptism of Williams. Dr. Caldwell continues his story: After Mr. Williams "the ministry of the word fell to men of less genius, of less education, of more sobriety of mind than Mr. Williams had. They were his friends, and to a certain extent his followers. They had come after him into the wilderness, but could not follow him into the thicket of speculation where he had wandered. They were satisfied with the new baptism they had found, and such ministry as their own choice and the Holy Spirit. had supplied. By necessity and probably by conviction, it was an unpaid ministry, and was exercised by those who in character and gifts of ‘prophesying,’ were marked for it." But the church survived, chose other leaders, and slowly increased with the community. This little group of worshipers "in the Baptist way" were joined by others of "the company." One of these was Chad Brown, the company’s surveyor. His "home lot" became the site of Brown University. Another was Thomas Olney, who, after Williams withdrew from the church, administered to that "part of the church who were called Five-Principle Baptists." Gregory Dexter, who was formerly a stationer and printer in London, had been given a proprietor’s lot on the Town Street, at the extreme north end. He did not arrive at the settlement till 1640. Roger Williams’ characterization of him as "a man of education, and of noble calling, and versed in militaries," who "might well be moderator or general deputy or general assistant," but "who made a fool of conscience," is well known. The same eminent authority speaks of him elsewhere as an "intelligent man . . . and conscionable . . . he has a lusty team, and lusty sons, and a very willing heart (being a sanguine cheerful man)." He was a preacher before he came to America. Pardon Tillingham was born in Sussex, England, lived in Newport for a period of time, and finally appeared in Providence. Although his career as a man of business was marked both by enterprise and success, he is most conspicuously remembered for his connection with the Baptist Church in Providence, where the recollection of his services and benefits has been gratefully cherished. He was a firm believer in the rite known as "Laying on of Hands," which formed the distinguishing tenet of the so-called "Six-Principle Baptists, and missed no opportunity to testify to the truth." Like all elders in the Baptist communion, Tillingham received no pay for his services. The ministers of those days were not judged unworthy of hire, but superior to it. In the present instance the modern procedure was reversed; and instead of Pardon Tillingham receiving a salary from the members of his church, he presented his little flock with their first meeting house. In 1711 he deeded "his house called the Baptist meeting house, situated between the Town Street and salt water, together with the lot whereon the said meeting house standeth, to the church for the Christian love, good will and affection which I bear to the church of Christ in said Providence." This building is described by tradition as being "in the shape of a hay cap, with a fire place in the middle, the smoke escaping from a hole in the middle." Crude as this sounds, it may well be believed that the comfort of this primitive structure far surpassed some elaborate meeting houses of a later day (Kimbell). The church endured later schisms, exercised no voice in the civil conduct of the community, and entirely repudiated the Puritan prophecy that no Christian could exist under religious liberty. The position of Williams on liberty was much discussed and often maligned. It was a new thought in the world, little understood in principle or practice. He gives a vivid description of his views symbolized by a ship on a voyage. He says: That I should ever speak or write a title that tends to such an infinite liberty, is a mistake, and which I have ever disclaimed and abhorred. To prevent such mistakes, I shall at present only propose this case: There goes a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or society. It has fallen out sometimes, that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship. Upon which supposal, I do affirm that all the liberty of conscience, that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges, that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks, be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship; nor, secondly, compelled from their own particular prayers, or worship, if they practice any. I further add, that I never denied, that, notwithstanding this liberty, the commander of this ship ought to command the ship’s course; yea, and also to command that justice, peace, and sobriety be kept and practiced, both among the seamen and all the passengers. It any of the seamen refuse to perform their services, or passengers to pay their freight; if any refuse to help in person or purse, toward the common charges of defense; if any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship, concerning their common peace and preservation; if any shall mutiny, and rise up against their commanders and officers; if any shall preach or write that there ought to be no commanders nor officers, because all are equal in Christ, therefore no masters nor officers; no laws nor orders; no corrections nor punishments-I say, I never denied but in such cases, whatever is pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors, according to their deserts and merits. This if seriously and honestly minded, may, if so please the Father of Lights, let in some light to such as willingly shut not their eyes. I remain studious of our common peace and liberty. John Fiske has admirably characterized the character of Williams, and his great contribution to religious and political thought, which led Bancroft to class him with Newton and Kepler as a benefactor of mankind. The judicial and comprehensive paragraph of Fiske is as follows: Among all the Puritans who came to New England there is no more interesting figure than the learned, quick-witted, pugnacious Welshman, Roger Williams. He was over fond of logical subtleties anal delighted in controversy. There was scarcely any subject about which he did not wrangle, from the sinfulness of persecution to the propriety of women wearing veils in churches. Yet with all this love of controversy there never lived a more gentle and kindly soul. Within five years from the settlement of Massachusetts this young preacher had announced the true principles of religious liberty with a clearness of insight quite remarkable in that age . . . . The views of Williams, if logically carried out, involved the entire separation of church from State, the equal protection of all forms of religious faith, the repeal of all laws compelling attendance on public worship, the abolition of tithes and all forced contributions to the support of religion. Such views are today quite generally adopted by the more civilized portions of the Protestant world, but it is needless to say that they were not the views of the seventeenth century in Massachusetts or elsewhere (Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, pp. 114, 115. 1889). About this time a church was organized in Newport, Rhode Island, by John Clarke. "Massachusetts and Connecticut," says Richard Knight, "both passed laws, that no persons, except members of the established churches, should be admitted freemen, within their jurisdiction. The Baptist churches being settled in Providence and Newport, in 1644, the Massachusetts government was so fearful that their principles would spread into their colony, that they passed a law in November following, that if any person or persons should within their colony openly condemn or oppose infant baptism, or seduce others from the approbation thereof, or should leave the Meeting House purposely at the performance of the ordinance, every such person or persons, shall be sentenced to banishment" (Knight, History of the General or Six-Principle Baptists). This intolerance led Clarke and his associates to select Newport as a proper place for a church of their own. Felt places the organization of this church in the year 1644 (Felt, I. 556). Dr. John Clarke, the founder of this church, was a Baptist minister before he came to America (Bicknell, The Story of Dr. John Clarke). He was educated in the University of Leyden, Holland. "It is also reasonable to assume," says Dr. Bicknell, "that he was a member of or in fellowship with the Baptists of Holland, who had, as early as 1611, affirmed the right of all men to religious liberty and the duty of obedience to lawful government. One of Dr. Clarke’s biographers states that ‘he attained high repute for ability and scholarship in languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, law, medicine and theology.’ In theology Dr. Clarke accepted and taught the doctrines of the Particular or Calvinistic Baptists, in opposition to Arminian Baptists" (Bicknell). He had been conducting services in Newport since 1638. He was a man of lofty character. "He was a faithful and useful minister," says Callender, "courteous in all the relations of life, and an ornament to his profession, and to the several offices which he sustained. His memory is deserving of lasting honor, for his efforts toward establishing the first government in the world, which gave to all equal civil and religious liberty. To no man is Rhode Island more indebted than to him. He was an original projector of the settlement of the island, and one of its ablest legislators. No character in New England is of purer fame than John Clarke" (Edward Peterson, History of Rhode Island, p. 77. New York, 1853). The colony of Rhode Island was the first to recognize Charles II, and by means of Clarke, who had been left behind in England by Williams as the representative of the colony, he immediately endeavored to obtain from the sovereign a new charter in which its liberties, and, before everything else, liberty of religion, should be safeguarded. The petition thus laid before the king is a very touching document. "We have it much at heart," the colonists said, "to demonstrate by means of an efficacious experiment that there can be a very flourishing civil state, and, indeed, that it can be better maintained, with complete liberty in matters of religion." The king replied benignantly, saying that he would permit the colonists to continue in the enjoyment of their liberty, and that he would not allow them to be compelled to submit themselves to the Church of England. And, in fact, in 1663 a charter was granted in which the most complete toleration was sanctioned: "No one in this colony shall henceforth be molested, punished, disturbed, or brought to trial on account of any differences of opinion in the matter of religion . . . but each one, at the same time shall be able freely and lawfully to hold to his own judgment and his own conscience in what concerns religious questions . . . so long as he does not violate peace and quietness, and does not abuse this liberty in a licentious and profane manner." The noble stand taken by the Baptists of Rhode Island on liberty of conscience was long the occasion of hostility from other colonies. One of the first laws enacted by that State was: "Every man who submits peaceably to civil government in this colony, shall worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, unmolested." In 1656, the Massachusetts, Plymouth, Hartford, and New Haven colonies pressed them to relinquish this point, and unite with them in crushing and driving the Quakers from New England, and preventing any more coming hither. They nobly answered: "We shall strictly adhere to the foundation principles on which this colony was first settled." Wherefore, the persecuted Quakers found protection in this asylum of safety, while persecution and destruction followed them elsewhere. On either side, the colonies were enforcing their religious tenets by coercive laws, and could not endure the liberal system of this colony, which discarded the bigoted intolerance of their neighbors; who, finding they could not prevail on the little State of Rhode Island to act in concert with them, endeavored to swallow her up, and Massachusetts took possession of a large portion of it on the east, and Connecticut on the west; but not being able to hold possession of these forcible entries, the Indians were influenced to commit depredations upon them, in the loss of some lives and much property. They sowed discord among the subjects, and endeavored to excite a contempt of their rulers, and labored hard to raise a party in this colony, sufficient to turn the scale of government, and to establish by law their system of parish worship and taxes. They were represented by writers of other colonies, as a set of vagabonds that had deserted them, and almost destitute of religion, civility and sense of learning. Dr. Cotton Mather, of Massachusetts, in 1695, said that Rhode Island "was occupied by Antinomians, Anabaptists, Quakers, ranters, and every thing but Roman Catholics and Christians—and if any man had lost his religion, he might find it again in this general muster of opinionists—in this gwazzin of New England-the receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem, and the outcasts of the land. But for fertility of soil, etc," he says, "the island is the best garden of all the colonies and were it not for the serpents, I would call it the Paradise of New England." He adds the old proverb, Bona terra, malla gens—a good land, but a bad people—and says that "our ministers offered to preach the gospel to this wretched people, gratis, but they refused" (Knight, History of the General Baptists; Mather, Magnalia, bk. VII.). Later, in 1718, Mather was led to say: "Calvinists with Lutherans, Presbyterians with Episcopalians, Pedobaptists with Anabaptists, beholding one another to fear God and work righteousness, do with delight sit down together at the same table of the Lord" (I Massachusetts Historical Society Collection, I. 105). Ed Randolph, an officer of the State of North Carolina, petitioned the Chief Justice, November 10, 1696, in regard to Providence: "’Tis necessary that place be taken care of and put under a regular Government, the present pretenders to govern being either Quakers or Anabaptists" (Colonial Records of North Carolina, I. 469). This persecution was kept up for many years. A letter addressed to the inhabitants of Providence, October 21, 1721, by an association of Presbyterians of Massachusetts, desiring to send missionaries among them to correct their errors, was received. This letter, in return, received a sharp answer. The following is one paragraph in the reply: We admire at your request, or that you should imagine or surmise that we should consent to either, inasmuch as we know that (to witness for God) your ministers, for the most part, were never set up by God, but have consecrated themselves and have changed his ordinances; and for their greediness after filthy lucre, some you have put to death; others you have banished, upon pain of death; others you have barbarously scourged; others, you have imprisoned, and seized upon their estates: and at this very time, you are rending in pieces, and ruining the people, with innumerable charges, which make them decline your ministry, and fly for refuge to the Church of England, and others to dissenters of all denominations; and you, like wolves, pursue, and whenever you find them within your reach, you seize upon their estates. And all of this is done, to make room for your ministers to live in idleness, pride, and fulness of bread. Shall we countenance such ministers? Nay, verily: these are not the marks of Christ’s ministry, but are a papal spot, that is abhorred by all pious Protestants. And since you wrote this letter, the constable at Attleborough has been taking away the estates of our dear friends and pious dissenters, to maintain the minister. The like has been done in the town of Mendon. Is this the way of peace? (Knight). In the course of time a better opinion was held of Rhode Island. George Beverly, afterwards bishop of Cloye, an intellectual man, visited Providence in 1729-30, and made the following observation: "The inhabitants are of a mixed kind consisting of many sorts and subdivisions of sects. There are four sorts of Anabaptists, besides Presbyterians, Quakers, Independents, and many of no profession at all. Notwithstanding so many differences, here are fewer quarrels about religion than elsewhere, the people living peaceably with their neighbors of whatever profession" (Fisher, Works of Beverly, IV.). The first seventy years of the eighteenth century witnessed a marked growth in the number of Baptist churches in Rhode Island. From 1706 to 1752 at least ten churches were founded, respectively, in Smithfield, Hopkinton, North Kingstown, Scituate, Warwick, Cumberland, East Greenwich, Exeter, Westerly and Coventry. In 1764 a new church, formed chiefly of members from the First Baptist of Providence, was established in Cranston, and another, still so vigorous in the middle of the next century, at Warren, with the distinguished Dr. Manning as one of its constituents and its earliest pastor. The following year, 1765, gave birth to churches in North Providence and Foster, and in 1771 to one in Johnston-a branch of the First Baptist Church in Providence, with some differences in order. In 1774-75 there occurred a potent revival of religious interest and large numbers were led to confession and sought membership in the churches. During the Revolutionary period and immediately following, on account of the excitement occasioned by the war, there was a great spiritual decline; but it was followed by a renewal of interest and in 1790 there were in the State thirty-eight Baptist churches, thirty-seven ordained ministers, and 3,502 members (Field, II.). Books for further reference: Henry C. Vedder, A Short History o/ the Baptists. Philadelphia, 1897. A. H. Newman, A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States. Philadelphia, 1898. Samuel Green Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. From the Settlement of the State, 1658, to the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 1790. New York, 1860. 2 volumes. C. E. Barrows, Dr. John Clarke, The Baptist Quarterly, VI., pp. 482-502. Philadelphia, 1872. S. L. Caldwell, Roger Williams as an author, The Baptist Quarterly, VI., pp. 385-407. John C. C. Clarke, The Pioneer Baptist Statesman (Roger Williams), The Baptist Quarterly, X., pp. 180-204, 257-281. Philadelphia, 1876. C. E. Barrows, As to Roger Williams, The Baptist Quarterly, X., pp. 353-361. Philadelphia, 1876. The Influence of the Baptist Denomination on Religious Liberty, The Christian Review, III., pp. 333-342. Boston, 1838. John Dowling, Soul Liberty, The Christian Review, XVIII., pp. 22-50. New York, 1858. Franklin C. Clark, Rise of the Toleration Movement, Bibliotheca Sacra, LXVI., pp. 249-305. Oberlin, 1908. A. H. Newman, Baptist Pioneers in Liberty of Conscience, The Review and Expositor, VI., pp. 239-255. Louisville, 1909. Henry M. King, John Eliot and Roger Williams. The Review and Expositor, XIV., pp. 340-347. Louisville, 1917. W. J. McGlothlin, The Struggle for Religious Liberty, The Review and Expositor, VIII., pp. 378-394. Louisville, 1911. George B. Eager, Calvin and Roger Williams in Relation to Religious Liberty, The Review and Expositor, XVII., pp. 341-348. Louisville, 1920. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 34: 01.2.01.03. THE PERSECUTION OF BAPTISTS IN MASSACHUSETTS ======================================================================== Chapter 3 - The Persecutions of the Baptists in Massachusetts. Charter Rights—A Christian State—Violations of the Charter—Peter Oliver—Episcopal Worship not Allowed—The Browns—The Rise of the Baptists—The Baptists Denounced—Petitions Against Them—Lady Moody—William Witter—Thomas Painter—The Governor Acts—A Severe Law—Baptists Punished—The Law Explained—Goodman Johnson—Letters on Severity—Letter to Plymouth Colony—The Persecution of the Quakers—Dissenters Forced to Pay Taxes—The Opinion of Ruffini. The chartered rights of the Massachusetts Bay colony have been variously interpreted. The position has been taken that it was a mere commercial transaction; while others have placed much emphasis upon the spiritual bearings of the charter. Some hold that its intention was the foundation of a Christian State. Perhaps both parties have too far pressed their conclusions. President Styles, in 1783, said: It is certain that civil dominion was but the second motive, religion the primary one, with our ancestors in coming hither and settling this land. It was not so much their design to establish religion for the benefit of the State, as civil government for the benefit of religion, and as subservient, and even necessary, for the peaceable enjoyment and unmolested exercise of religion—of that religion for which they fled to these ends of the earth. They understood that the charter under Charles left them on the basis pointed out by Governor Matthew Craddock, July 28, 1629, namely, "with the transfer of the government of the plantation to those who shall inhabit there," as well as with liberty of conscience, so they could be as liberal as they pleased in religious matters. They neither were nor could be chartered as a purely civil nor as a purely spiritual body, but all that related to the rights of man; body and soul, was claimed and enjoyed by them under their charter. John Cotton understood that the colony possessed all the rights of a "body politic," with its attendant responsibilities. He says: By the patent certain select men, as magistrates and freemen, have power to make laws, and the magistrates to execute judgment and justice amongst the people according to such laws. By the patent we have power to erect such a government of the Church as is most agreeable to the word, to the estate of the people, and to the gaining of natives, in God’s time, first to civility, and then to Christianity. To this authority established by this patent, Englishmen do readily submit themselves; and foreign plantations, the French, the Dutch, the Swedish, do willingly transact their negotiations with us, as with a colony established by the royal authority of the State of England (Armitage, A History of the Baptists). However the charter may be explained, there is no question that the government as organized had embedded in it religious persecution. There are those who hold that this was contrary to the charter rights. On this line Peter Oliver says: I have thus sketched, in outline, a glowing picture, wherein the whip, the pillory, and the gallows are exhibited as weapons of defence in the hands of the elders of Massachusetts. I have explored the long silent recesses of the Puritan Inquisition, and repeopled its dungeons with the victims of a narrow and austere faith. I have exhibited those great principles of intolerance, which our ancestors recorded in their histories and enrolled among their laws. And, regarded simply in a legal view, it is a startling fact, that every execution was a murder; every mutilation, a maiming; every whipping, a battery; every fine, an extortion; every disfranchisement, an outrage; and all were breaches of the charter. There were no laws in England for hanging, or mutilating, or flogging the king’s subjects because they did not profess the Puritan faith; while to disfranchise a member of the corporation for any case unconnected with the objects for which the charter was given, was a clear violation of justice and authority (Bagg’s Case, 11 Co., 99, a. Tedderly’s Case, 1 Sid. Rep., 14. 1 Burn. Rep., 517. Kent, Commentaries, 297. Willcox, Mun. Cer., 271, 272). Unless then, we lay aside abstract right and wrong, and disregard the nature of the charter, the liberty of the subject, the supremacy of parliament, the jurisdiction of the royal courts, the authority of the law, and the prerogative of the king, we cannot consider the persecutions of the elders of Massachusetts merely as an act of intolerance. They were, in any proper legal sense, violations of, and crimes against, the laws of England. For the king did not bestow upon the grantees of the charter the power of removing from the kingdom his ‘loving subjects,’ in order that they might deprive them of their ears, or their liberties, for refusing to conform to a sectarian religion. Nor was the Famalist, or the Quaker, or the Anabaptist, so much to blame as those who persecuted a royal and sacred franchise to purposes which were hostile to the best interests of the empire. And, above all, it should be remembered that the Puritan Church is chiefly responsible for the guilt of those proceedings. The state was merely particeps criminis. For all the doubts, and she maintained many as to her authority to act under the charter, she even applied to the elders for counsel, and the elders uniformly supported her claims and removed her indecision (Oliver, The Puritan Commonwealth, an Historical Review of the Puritan Government of Massachusetts, pp. 227, 228. Boston, 1856). One of the first acts of the colony and of the church was a violation of the rights of conscience. John Endicott, who had previously been in the Bay, was chosen the first governor and, with a company, soon set out for Salem, where he organized the colony in 1628. Five councilors were chosen in England, and the remaining eight were to be subsequently chosen. In June, 1629, several vessels reached Salem bearing a company of emigrants, among whom were the ministers Higginson and Skelton. On July 20 they were chosen ministers of the congregation. On the heads of these ministers "the hands of three or four grave members were laid, with solemn prayer." August 6 the church was formed of thirty persons, and the ministers were again "ordained." This church instituted great reforms in the ritual and practices of the Church of England. Among the five councilors chosen in England to associate with Endicott were two brothers, John Brown and Samuel Brown, the one a merchant and the other a lawyer. These men were of the highest character. At the close of a long and important document sent by Governor Craddock, President of the Company in England, these brothers were particularly commended to the regard of Governor Endicott. The brothers were not impressed with the changes made in the church, and with some others they met and read the Book of Common Prayer. They were immediately summoned by the governor and the ministers. The Browns expressed the opinion that the church and ministers were "separatists," and would become "Anabaptists." The ministers declared they had not separated from the church, but only left off its corruptions. "The governor and council, and the generality of the people," says Morton, "did not approve the answer of the ministers." It was, however, decided that what the Browns had done "tended to mutiny and faction," and they were sent home on the returning ships. Such was the early act of oppression. This act of the governor and the ministers brought letters of caution from England. "It is possible some undigested councells have too sodainely bin put in execucon . . . in introducing any lawes or comands which may render yourself or us distasteful to the state here." They also expressed their fears that the ministers have "overshot themselves" by "attempting some inovacons" (Massachusetts Records, I., p. 407). At an early date in the Massachusetts colony attention began to be taken of the rise of the Baptists, or, as they were invariably caked by their enemies, Anabaptists. A few of these early notices are here transcribed. Hubbard, speaking of the year 1638, remarks: Amongst those, who at this time that removed from about Boston, divers inclined to rigid separatism, and favored Anabaptism, and they removed to Providence to join Mr. Williams and those of his company (A General History of New England, I., p. 336. Boston, 1815). E. Z. Rogers wrote to Governor Winthrop, Rowly, December 8, 1839, as follows: We have certainly many Anabaptisticall spiritts among us, and other base persons, who would diligently yet secretly be searched out (The Winthrop Papers. The Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Fourth Series, VII., p. 210). Richard Bellingham, of Boston, wrote to the governor of the Bay, 1, 28, 1642, as follows: We have had some experience here of some of their undertakings, who have lately come amongst us, and have made public defiance against magistracie, ministrie, churches, church covenants, c. as antichristian; secretly also sowing the seeds of Familisme, and Anabaptistrie, to the infection of some, and danger of others, so we are not willing to joyne with them in any league or confederacie at all, but rather that you would consider advise with us how we may avoyd them, and keep ours from being infected by them (Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation. Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society, Fourth Series, III., pp. 386, 387). In 1643 a petition was presented to the General Court to repeal the cruel laws against the Baptists, which was flatly rejected (Publication of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, III., p. 161). The records of the Suffolk county Court, 1643, make mention of the prosecutions of the Anabaptists (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, III., p. 323). The frequent references to the Baptists in sundry communities would indicate something of their activities. Their views were "secretly" promulgated, and there was much danger of "infection" to many persons. One of these instances was Lady Moody, an eminent woman of the colony, and widely known. She was cited to appear before the Quarterly Court of Salem, December 14, 1642, along with others. The record is: "The Lady Deborah Moody, Mrs. King, and the wife of John Tilton were presented for holding that the baptizing of infants is noe ordinance of God" (Lewis and Newhall, History of Lynn). Winthrop mentions the case of Lady Moody as follows: "The Lady Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church at Salem (whereof she was a member); but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch, against the advice of all of her friends. Many others infected with anabaptism removed thither also. She was afterward excommunicated" (Ellis, The Puritan Age and Rule in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, p. 381. 1888). She played a considerable part in the introduction of Baptist views in New York. The mother of David Yale, the father of the founder of Yale College, and the wife of Governor Theophilus Eaton, was tried by the New Haven Church for "divers scandalous offences." "By toying with the Anabaptist doctrines she had come to entertain scruples which interfered with conformity in church practices" (Publication of the Colonial Records of Massachusetts, XXI., p. 27) . One William Witter was arraigned, February 28, 1644, before the Salem Court. The record of the case is as follows: "For entertaining that the baptism of infants was sinful, now coming to Salem Court, answered humbly and confessed his ignorance, and his willingness to see light, and (upon Mr. Morris, our Elder, his speech) seemed to be staggered." It was said he called "our ordinance of God a badge of the whore." The sentence was that "on some lecture day, the next fifth day being a public fast, to acknowledge his fault . . . and enjoined to be here next Court at Salem." William Witter did not change his opinions so the record of a later Court reads: "At the Court at Salem, held the 18th of the 12th month, 1645, William Witter of Lynn, was presented by the grand jury for saying that they who stayed whiles a child is baptized do worship the devil. Henry Collins and Nat. West dealing with him thereabouts, he further said that they who stayed at the baptizing of a child did take the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in vain, broke the Sabbath, and confessed and justified the former speech" (Records of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, III., p. 67) . He was sentenced to answer at another session of the Court. Also on June 24, 1651, he was again before the Court "for absenting himself from the public ordinances nine months or more, and for being rebaptized" (Felt, II.). Several years later he will appear in this history. Thomas Painter, of Hingham, who had lived in several other places, had become a Baptist. He would not suffer his wife, a member of the church, to have his child baptized. He was presented, and required to cease from such opposition. But "still refusing and disturbing the church," and asserting that the baptism of the colony was antichristian, and affirming the same before the court, they sentenced him to be whipped, because not able to pay a fine. Winthrop adds: That this punishment was "not for his opinion, but for reproaching the Lord’s ordinance, and for his bold and evil behaviour both at home and in the court" (Felt, I.). Hubbard adds: "It may be, that some others at that time came down from Providence and Rhode Island, and entered into the assemblies in some places in Massachusetts, would in time of singing keep on their hats, as it were to brave it out with them, and so occasion disturbance, and breach of the peace. If any such have by that means been brought to suffer corporal punishment, they will certainly in the account of all indifferent and prudent people have cause to find no fault with any thing but their own obstinacy and folly" (Hubbard, I.). These instances and other activities of the Baptists stirred up the governor of the province. "Mr. Endicott began to be a sovereign against all the sects," says William Bentley, "and as a magistrate did not bear his sword in vain . . . Persons addicted to the tenets of the Anabaptists were deprived of personal liberty, by being confined to town, or by being under severe prohibitions. The whole number did not exceed nine. Mr. Norris never appeared active in such proceedings; and the comparative tranquility of the town, during his ministry, is an evidence of his moderation. The alarm against the Anabaptists had been so great, that, in 1644, a law had been made against them" (Bentley, A Description and History of Salem, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, VI., p. 255). The following is the law passed against the Baptists in Massachusetts, November 13, 1644: Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully and often proved that since the first arising of the Anabaptists, about a hundred years since, they have been the incendiaries of commonwealths, and the infectors of persons in maine matters of religion, and the troublers of churches in all places where they have bene, and that they have held the baptizing of infants unlawfull, have usually held other errors in heresies together therewith, though they have (as other hereticks use to do) concealed the same, till they spied out a fair advantage and opportunity to vent them, by way of question or scruple, and whereas divers of this kind have, since our coming into New England, appeared amongst ourselves, some whereof have (as others before them) denied the ordinance of magistracy, and the lawfulness of making warr, and others the lawfulness of magistrates, and their inspection into any breach of the first table, which opinions, if they should be connived at by us, are like to be increased amongst us, and so must necessarily bring guilt upon us, infection and trouble to the churches, and hazard to the whole commonwealth. It is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall either openly condemne or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from their approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful right or authority to make warr, or to punish the outward breaches of the first table, and shall appear to the Court wilfully and obstinately to continue therein after due time and meanes of conviction, every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment (Records of the Colony of Massachusetts, II. 85). As might be expected, the enactment of such a law produced conflicts of opinion. There were various petitions presented to the Court for and against its enforcement. To give a view of the situation some of these petitions and opinions are here recorded. A petition to the General Court, October 18, 1645, is as follows: In answer to the petition of Em. Douning, Nehe. Bourne, Robt. Seducke, Thos. Foule, with others, for the abrogation or alteration of the lawes against the Anabaptists, and the law that requires speciall allowance for new comers residing here, itt is ordered, that the lawes in the petition mentioned shall not be altered or explayned at all (Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, III., p. 51. Boston, 1854). The Robert Foule mentioned above is described by the General Court as a church member who "will be no freeman" since "he likes better to be eased of that trouble and charge" (Hutchinson Papers, I., p. 239) . He was truly an advocate of liberty of conscience, or at least of a large toleration (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXI., p. 23) . John Josselyn, Gentleman, writing under date of 1646, says: Anabaptists they imprison, fine and weary out (Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New England, second edition, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, III., p. 331). The following law was enacted in 1646: That if any Christian within this jurisdiction, shall go about to subvert and destroy the Christian faith or Religion, by broaching and maintaining any Damnable Heresies; as denying the immortality of the soule, or resurrection of the body, or any sin to be repented of in the regenerate, or any evil done by the outward man to be accounted sin, or denying that Christ gave himselfe a ransom for our sins, or shall affirm that we are not justified by his death and righteousness, but by the perfection of our own works, or shall deny the morality of the fourth commandment, or shall openly condemn or oppose the Baptizing of Infants, or shall purposely depart the Congregation at the administration of that Ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or the Lawful Authority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches of the first commandment, or shall endeavor to seduce others to any of these errors or heresies above mentioned, every such person continuing obstinate therein, after due meanes of conviction, shall be sentenced to Banishment (Colonial Laws, 1660-1672, p. 154). May 6, 1646, the following is taken from the Records of Massachusetts: In answer to a petition, subscribed by seventy-seven inhabitants of this colony, humbly requesting all dew strengthening and keeping in force such laws as has binn made by this Court, for the preventing the increse of many dangerous errors, Anabaptists, Antinomians, c., as also for the dew punishment thereof, the Court gratefully accepts of their acknowledgement, granting their request in the continuance of those wholesome lawee (Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, III., p. 64). There came also a petition from Roxbury, Dorchester and other points, dated May 13, 1646, praying that the laws against the Baptists might be strengthened. The petition says: As the prevaylinge of errors and heresies is noted by our Saviour in the gospel, and elsewhere in the Scriptures, as a forerunner of God’s judgments, and in as much as the errors of the Anabaptists, where they do prevayle, are not a little dangerous to church and commonwealth, as the lamatable tumults in Germany, when the said errors were grown into a height, did too manifestlie witnesse, and such good laws or orders are enacted amongst us, against such persons havinge alreadie bene, as we are informed, a special meanes of discouraging multitudes of erroneous persons from comminge over into this countrie, which wee account noe small mercie of God unto us, and one sweet and wholesome fruite of the sayd lawes, it is therefore our humble petition to this honorable court, that such lawes or orders as are in force amongst us against Anabaptists or other erroneous persons, whereby to restraine the spreadinge and divulginge of their errors amongst people here, may not be abrogated and taken away, nor any waise weakened, but may still be continued. As might have been expected the law of 1644 brought about many reactions. "This enactment bore severely," says Felt, "upon a denomination whose subsequent precept and example manifested that they were, in general, far from indulging in the reckless and ruinous notions of German adherents of Stuber and Jack of Leyden, though honestly suspected of such indulgence by most of the leading men of New England. The authors and abettors of it were desirous to tolerate religious freedom, as far as they deemed best for the highest good of the commonwealth, They, however, found this, as Christian legislators ever have, a very difficult point to be settled. They felt, as many do now, that they must bound their toleration short of atheism and infidelity; but where to fix the line exactly, they were not fully satisfied" (Felt, 1.). Whatever may have been the pressure brought to bear the General Court, November 4, 1646, made the following explanation The truth is, the great trouble we have been putt unto and hazard also by Famalisticall and Anabaptisticall spirits, whose conscience and religion bath been only to sett forth themselves and raise contentions in the country, did provoke us to provide for our safety by a lawe that all such should take notice how unwelcome they should be to us either coming or staying. But for such as differ from us only in judgment in point of baptism or some other points lease consequence, and live peaceably among qs without occasioning disturbance . . . such have no cause to complaine, for it hath never beene as yet putt in execution against any of them, although such are knowne to live among us (Hutchinson Papers). Goodman Johnson, writing about this time, gives the reasons for the enactment of this law. He says: To the end that the laws might be the most agreeable with the rules of Scripture, in every county there were appointed members of the committee two magistrates, two ministers and two able persons from among the people. In the year 1648 these laws were printed, so that they might "be seen of all men," and that none might plead ignorance; and that all persons intending to transport themselves to the colonies might know exactly what to expect: "For it is no wrong to any man, that a people, who have spent then estates, many of them, and ventured their lives for to keep the faith and a pure conscience (should) use all means, that the word of God allows, for maintenance and continuance of the same." Still further, these colonists "have taken up a desolate wilderness to be their habitation, and not deluded any by keeping their profession in huggermug, but print and proclaim to all the way and course they intend (God willing) to walk in;-If any will, yet notwithstanding, seek to jostle them out of their own right, let them not wonder if they meet with all the opposition a people put to their greatest straights can make (Goodman Johnson, Wonder-working Providence in Zion’s Saviour in New England). Probably these explanations were brought about by much opposition to the law. There is evidence that friends of New England felt that the harshness against the Baptists, and others, was bad for the colony. On March 1, 1644-45, Stephen Winthrop wrote to his brother, John: "Here is great complaint against us for our severity against Anabaptists. It doth discourage many people from coming to us for fear they should be banished if they dissent from us in opinion" (Winthrop Papers, IV., p. 200). On September 4, 1646, Hugh Peter wrote to the younger Winthrop: "None will come to us because you persecute" (Ibid, p. 109); and Coddington refers to this remark in a letter November 11, 1646: "Mr. Peters writes in that you sent to your son that you persecute" (Deans, Some Notices of Samuel Gorton, p. 41, Boston, 1850). Giles Firmin wrote to the elder Winthrop, July 1, 1646, with regard to Hugh Peter: "I could wish he did not too much countenance the Opinionists, which we did so cast out of N. England. I know he abhors them in his heart, but he hath many hang upon him; being a man of such use" (Winthrop Papers, II., p. 277). Cotton says: "Surely the way that is practiced in New England cannot justly be taxed for too much connivance at all kinds of sects; wee here rather hear ill for too much rigour" (Cottons, The Way of Congregational Church Cleared, p. 22. London, 1648. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXI., p. 30 note). The law was not relaxed on account of these criticisms; but rather enforced with more rigor. One of the deputies of the Court at Dover was fined for three weeks’ absence. The Court in October, 1648, "being informed of great misdemeanor committed by Edward Starbuck, of Dover, with profession of Anabaptistery for which he is to be proceeded against, set the next court of assistance if evidence can be prepared by that time" (Records of the Colony of Massachusetts, II. 253). The far-famed Cambridge Platform, 1648, declared: It is the duty of the magistrate to take care of matters of religion, and to improve his civil authority for the observing of the duties commanded in the first as well as the second table. The end of the magistrate’s office is not only the quiet and peaceable life of the subject in matters of righteousness and honesty, but also in matters of Godliness. Idolatry, blasphemy, heresy . . . are to be restrained and punished by the civil authority. Massachusetts was not satisfied with persecution on its own account; but wrote the Plymouth Colony to join them in this practice. The following letter was written by the Court of Massachusetts Bay, October 18, 1649, to the Colony of Plymouth: Honnored and beloved Brethren: We have heretofore heard diverse Anabaptists, arisen up in your jurisdiction, and connived at; but being but few, wee well hoped that it might have pleased God, by the endeavors of yourselves and the faithful elders with you, to have reduced such erring men againe into the right way. But now, to our great griefe, wee are credibly informed that your patient bearing with such men has produced another effect, namely, the multiplying and encreasing of the same errors, and wee feare of other errors also, if timely care be not taken to supresse the same. Particularly wee understand that within a few weeks there have binne in Sea Cuncke thirteen or fourteen persons rebaptized (a swift progress in one towne; yett wee heare not of any effectuall restriction is entended thereabouts). Lett it not, wee pray you, seem presumption in us to mind you heereof, nor that wee earnestly intreate you to take care as well of the suppressing of errors, as the maintenance of the truth, God equally requiring the performance of both at the hands of Christian magistrates, but rather that you will consider our interest is concerned therein. The infection of such diseases, being so near us, one likely to spread into our jurisdiction; tunc tua res agitur paries cum proximeus ardet. Wee are united by confoedaracy, by faith, by neighborhood, by fellowship in our sufferings as exiles, and by other Christian bonds, and wee hope that neither Sathan nor any of his instruments shall, by thes or any other errors, disunite us of our so neere conjunction with you, but that wee shall both aequally and zealously uphold all the truths of God revealed, that wee may render a comfortable account to Him that hath sett us in our places, and betrusted us with the keeping of both tables, of which will hoping, wee cease you further trouble, and rest, Your-very loving Friends and Brethren, (Records of the Colony of Massachusetts, III. 173, 174). Comment upon this frightful letter is not necessary. Not satisfied with excluding persons from its own territory, persecution was urged upon a neighboring colony. E. Downinge, Salem, March 7, 1651, wrote to John Winthrop, Jr., as follows: There is an act to punishe all heresyes with death that raise foundations, and all Anabaptists to be banished, and if they retorne to England to be hanged unless they recant (The Winthrop Papers, Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Fourth Series, VI., p. 78). The Quakers first appeared in New England in 1656. The government, both in Massachusetts and Plymouth, set itself instantly in the attitude of intolerance. Massachusetts took the lead. In the year 1656, the General Court urged the General Commissioners to recommend to the several colonies the adoption of severe measures against the Quakers, and itself began a course of barbarous legislation, which extended through several years, for imposing a heavy fine for bringing in Quakers, "the cursed sect of hereticks," and ordering that every Quaker who arrived should be sent to the House of Correction, severely whipped and kept in hard labor, no person being allowed to have any intercourse with him; also imposing a fine of five pounds for bringing in, spreading, or concealing Quaker books or "writings concerning their devilish opinions"; a fine of forty shillings for receiving such books or embracing their sentiments, the penalty for the second offense being four pounds; and for further persistence, confinement in the House of Correction, and banishment. The next year a fine of forty shillings was imposed for every hour of entertainment of a Quaker, and imprisonment until the fine was paid; and any Quaker who came into the jurisdiction was to have one ear cut off and put to work in the House of Correction, the penalty to be repeated for the second offense. Any Quaker who had before "suffered the law" and returned, was to be severely whipt and sent to the House of Correction, and for the third offense his tongue was to be bored with a hot iron, besides his being imprisoned. The next year a fine of ten shillings was imposed upon any one professing Quakerism, or meeting with the Quakers; for speaking in their meetings a fine of five pounds. A little later it was enacted that every Quaker found within the jurisdiction, and any person who defended Quaker doctrines, was to be committed to prison, and if found guilty, after trial by special jury, to be banished on pain of death; and every "inhabitant" who should favor Quakers was to be imprisoned one month and banished on pain of death. In carrying out the sentence of banishment, even women, stripped to the waist, and tied to a cart’s tail, were whipped from town, to town, and carried on a two days’ journey into the wilderness, among wolves and bears. To cap the climax of intolerance, Quakers were hanged in 1659, 1660, and 1661. Governor Endicott was among the most vindictive enemies of these "hereticks," and when in 1661 the Court hesitated to pass sentence of death, he said: "You will not consent, record it; I thank God I am not afraid to give judgment." He had previously said to certain Quakers: "Take heed ye break not our ecclesiastical laws, for then you are sure to stretch by halter" (J. Chaplin, The Pilgrim and the Puritans, The Baptist Quarterly, July, 1873. VII. pp. 286, 287) . The laws of Plymouth were equally severe, only no Quaker was executed. One of the chief grievances of the Baptists, and other dissenters, was that the people were taxed to support the ministry of the standing order. At first there did not appear to be much difficulty in regard to the support of the ministry, but as time wore on there were serious objections in many quarters. The remark of Johnson, in his "Wonder-working Providence," that "it is as unnatural for a right New England man to live without an able ministry, as a smith to work ‘his iron without fire," is still true; but there are those coming in who differ very considerably from the "right New England man." Antinomians, Anabaptists, Quakers-a few individuals bearing these names have lately appeared, and are zealously entering upon their vocation of crying down the standing order, and their hireling priesthood. Faint whispers, swelling into audible words, and growing by degrees into ranting tirades, against learned and pious divines, began at length to operate on a certain class of otherwise well disposed persons, who could see no objection to a "freer-gospel," if that would quiet the newcomers and cause the disturbance to cease. As these views spread, contributions naturally fell off, and the deacons’ labor to make up the deficit increased. About 1654 ministers began to leave the country, so the General Court of Massachusetts appointed a commission to investigate the matter, which resulted in passing the order That the civil court in every shire, shall, upon information given them of any defect or any congregation or township within the shire, order and appoint what maintenance shall be allowed to the ministers of that place, and shall issue out warrants to the selectmen to assess, and the constable of the said town to collect the same, and to distraine the said assessment upon such as shall refuse to pay (Massachusetts Colonial Records. IV., pt. ii., p. 199). The first law bearing on ministerial support in the Plymouth colony was passed the same year, and the same reason for it is given in its preamble, namely, "railing and renting." The law was not seriously enforced until 1657 (The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1859, I., pp. 160, 161) . Thus was added an additional grievance against the Baptists. Some of the things recorded in this chapter are almost incredible. That men should be whipped, imprisoned, banished, ears cut off, tongue bored with a hot iron and put to death in a barbarous manner; that women should be tied to the tail end of a cart, dragged from town and whipped along the way, stripped to the waist, and finally carried into the wilderness and left among wolves and bears to die, all for some religious belief, now held by most of men to be harmless, all happening in this country in the last three hundred years, requires the fullest confirmation. Yet the facts are not disputed. The situation has well been summed up by the Italian writer, Ruffini. "If the intolerance of these earliest Puritan colonists," says Ruffini, "becomes indubitably apparent from the extremely severe dispositions which they adopted against the Baptists, the Quakers, the Catholics, and even against the members of the Anglican Church, who were put into a boat by the colonists of Massachusetts and sent back to England, the close union between the civil and ecclesiastical powers is shown by these not less evident signs. In 1631 the Court of Massachusetts explicitly ordained that the quality of a free man, that is to say, the enjoyment of full rights, should not be granted except to the members of one of the churches of the colony. The same exclusivism prevailed, if not everywhere as a written law, still less as a custom in the other colonies. The civil affairs of the community were settled in the congregations of the faithful (Masson, Life of Milton, II., p. 552). In the fundamental ordinances of the colony of New Haven, Connecticut (1639), it is laid down as a supreme principle that the Government must conform in everything to the Word of God. The colony, as Bancroft observes, thus adopted the Bible as its fundamental statute. Moreover, the compulsion of conscience and the confusion of the two powers blemished those colonial laws which imposed serious punishments upon citizens who did not scrupulously fulfill their religious duties and punctually pay the contributions belonging to the church and its ministers" (Ruffini, pp. 256, 257). Books for further reading: Isaac Backus, A History of New England, with Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists. Newton, Mass., 1871. 2 volumes. Daniel Neale, The History of New England containing an Impartial Account of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Country to the Year of our Lord, 1700. London, 1720. 2 volumes. Benjamin Franklin Bronson, Palfrey on Religious Intolerance in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, The Baptist Quarterly, VI., pp. 147-180, 280-300. Lucius E. Smith, The New England Ecclesiastical Legislation, The Baptist Quarterly, I., pp. 81-101. Philadelphia, 1871. Norman Fox, George Fox and the Early Friends, The Baptist Quarterly, XI., pp. 433-453. Philadelphia, 1877. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 35: 01.2.01.04. THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCHES IN MASSACHUSETTS ======================================================================== Chapter 4 - The First Baptist Churches in Massachusetts. The First Church in the State—Swansea—The Origin of the Church—John Myles—Persecutions of the Church—A Grant of Land—The Conditions of the Grant—The Church in Boston—Richard Mather—John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and Crandall—They are Arrested—The Whipping of Holmes—Letter to Kiffin—The Conversion of Henry Dunster—Character of Dunster—History of the Case—Removed as President of Harvard—Thomas Gould—The Church Formed—The Action of the Congregational Church—Persecutions—The Action of the Court—The Place of Meeting—The General Spirit of the Puritans—House of Worship—Some Changes in Sentiment—Their Punishment—The Witches Burned—The Opinion of the Baptists—William Melbourne—Robert Calef—The Power of the Theocracy Broken—The Later Laws. For more than forty years after the landing of the Pilgrims there was no Baptist church in Massachusetts. The first Baptist church constituted in that State was at Swansea, on the south side, near the Rhode Island line. The beginning of this movement, and of many other Baptist churches in this country was in Wales. "But as God had preserved his scattered and hidden people in Piedmont and Holland," says Tustin, "and as thousands were found in every age, who formed an uninterrupted succession of witnesses to the Truth, so now in Wales, multitudes of these sequestered people, unbroken in spirit, formed a regular chain of true and faithful witnesses to that gospel which they had received from their Christian ancestors of former centuries, and which they have preserved amid their quiet and fertile valleys, shut up by lofty mountains from the rest of the world, as if God had designed these mountain fastnesses as the barriers of protection for his chosen and faithful people, against the corruptions and assaults of the papal hierarchy. And it seems to have been a part of the wise arrangement of Providence for their preservation, that they should be kept in obscurity, and that obscurity makes it now very difficult to trace their history. What is chiefly found concerning these Welsh Christians in the Ecclesiastical and Secular Histories of their later contemporaries, are but scattered fragments, which their enemies in the Church and State of England, would have gladly thrown into obscurity and contempt" (Tuskin, A Discourse delivered at the Dedication of the New Church Edifice of the Baptist Church and Society in Warren, R. I., May 8, 1845, pp. 57, 58. Providence, 1845) . Tuskin further says: "It is a fact generally known, that many of the Baptist churches in this country derived their origin from the Baptist churches in Wales, a country which has always been a nursery for their peculiar principles. In the earlier settlements of this country, multitudes of Welsh emigrants, who left their fatherland, brought with them the seeds of Baptist principles, and their ministers and members laid the foundation of many Baptist churches in New England, and especially in the Middle States" (Tuskin, pp. 31, 32). This was certainly true of the first Baptist church in Massachusetts. The beginning of this movement was in Wales at Ilston, Glamorganshire, where a Baptist church was organized, October 1, 1649. The beginning is described in their records as follows: We cannot but admire at the unsearchable wisdom, power and love of God, in bringing about his own designs, far above, and beyond the capacity and understanding of the wisest of men. Thus, to the glory of his great name, hath he dealt with us; for when there had been no company or society of people, holding forth and professing the doctrine, worship, order and discipline of the gospel, according to the primitive institution, that ever we heard of in Wales, since the apostacy, it pleased the Lord to choose this dark corner to place his name in, and honor us, undeserving creatures, with the happiness of being the first in all these parts, among whom was practiced the glorious ordinance of baptism, and here to gather the first church of baptized believers (Backus, I.). The pastor of this church was John Myles. He was born at Newton, in Herefordshire, about 1621, and was a student in Oxford in 1636. The next spring John Myles and Thomas Proud visited the Baptist church at the Glass-house, Broad street, under the care of William Cossett and Edward Draper. They were joyously received by the brethren in London, and probably received material assistance. By the year 1660 the church in Wales had prospered greatly and had two hundred and sixty-three members. Myles became one of the testers under Cromwell, but upon the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, Myles was ejected along with two thousand ministers (Calamy, Abridgment, I., II.). Upon which he and some of his friends came to this country, and brought their church records with them. At Rehoboth, in 1663, John Myles, elder, James Brown, Nicholas Tanner, Joseph Carpenter, John Butterworth, Eldad Kingsley and Benjamin Allby, joined in a solemn covenant together. The church was then located in Plymouth colony. Newman, the minister who persecuted Holmes, died that year and for four years the church had peace. At that time the following record of the Court explains itself At the Court holden at Plymouth the 2nd of July, 1867, before Thomas Prince, Governor, John Alden, Josiah Winslow, Thomas Southworth, William Bradford, Thomas Hinckley, Nathaniel Bacon, and John Freeman, assistants . . . Mr. Miles, and Mr. Brown, for their breach in order, in setting up a public meeting without the knowledge and approbation of the Court to the disturbance of the peace of the place, are fined each of them five pounds, and Mr. Tanner the sum of one pound, and we judge that their continuance at Rehoboth, being very prejudicial to the peace of that church and that town, may not be allowed; and do therefore order all persons concerned therein, wholly to desist from the said meeting in that place or township, within this month. Yet in case they shall remove their meeting unto some other place, where they may not prejudice any other church, and shall give us any reasonable satisfaction respecting their principles, we know not but they may be permitted by this government to do so. Accordingly on October 30 following, a grant of land was given them at Swansea where they made their settlement. The following proposals were made in the grant: 1. That no erroneous persons be admitted into the township either as an inhabitant or sojourner. 2. That no man of an evil behaviour or contentious person be admitted. 3. That none be admitted that may become a charge to the place. This grant was accepted and became the location of the church with the following explanations: That the first proposal relating to the non-admission of erroneous persons be only understood under the following explanations, viz.: of such as hold damnable heresies, inconsistent with the faith of the gospel; as, to deny the Trinity, or any person therein; the deity or sinless humanity of Christ, or the union of both natures in him, or his full satisfaction to the divine justice of all his elect, by his active and passive obedience, or his resurrection, ascension into heaven, intercession, or his second coming personally to judgment; or else to deny the truth or divine authority of the Scriptures, or the resurrection of the dead, or to maintain any merit of works, consubstantiation, transubstantiation, giving divine adoration to any creature, or any other antichristian doctrine directly opposing the priestly prophetical or kingly offices of Christ, or any part thereof; (2) or such as hold such opinions as are inconsistent with the well being of the place, as to deny the magistrate’s power to punish evil-doers as well as to encourage those that do well, or to deny the first day of the week to be observed by divine institution as the Lord’s day or Christian Sabbath, or to deny the giving of honor to whom honor is due, or to oppose those civil respects that are usually performed according to the laudable customs of our nation each to other, as bowing the knee or body, c., or else to deny the office, use or authority of the ministry or a comfortable maintenance to be due them from such as partake of their teachings, or-to speak reproachfully of any of the churches of Christ in the country, or of any such other churches as are of the common faith with us or them. We desire that it be also understood and declared that this is not understood of any holding any opinion different from others in any disputable point, yet in controversy among the godly learned, the belief thereof not being essentially necessary to salvation; such as paedobaptism, antipaedobaptism, church discipline or the like; but that the minister or ministers of the said town may take their liberty to baptize infants or grown persons as the Lord may persuade their consciences, and so also the inhabitants take their liberty to bring their children to baptism or to forbear (Backus, I., pp. 285, 286). Often in the days of persecution lie preached to the church in Boston. At length lie grew "very aged and feeble" but he continued the pastoral oversight of the Swansea church trill his death, which occurred February 3, 1683. The First Church, Boston, Massachusetts, was organized under peculiar conditions (A Short History of the First Baptist Church in Charleston, Boston, 1852; History of the Covenant and Catalogue First Baptist Church Charleston, Boston, 1823). The activity of the Baptists in disseminating their belief that none but adults should hold membership in the church, rendered the supporters of the opposite opinion more aggressive in maintaining their own practice. Richard Mather addressed a friend as follows: My thoughts have been this long time, that our churches in general do fall short in their practice of that, which the Rule requires in this particular, which I think ought to be thus, via.: that the children of church members, submitting themselves to the discipline of Christ in the church, by an act of their own, when they are grown to men’s and women’s estate, ought to be watched over as other members, and have their infants baptized, but themselves not to be received to the Lord’s Table, nor to voting in the church, till by the manifestation of faith and repentance, they shall approve themselves to be fit for the same. But we have not yet thus practiced, but are now considering of the matter, and of sending to other churches for advice. Help us, I pray you, with your prayers, that we may have grace to discern, and to do the Lord’s mind and will herein (Mather, First Principles o/ Vein England). Under these existing conditions John Clarke and two of his disciples had gone to Lynn to hold a service with an aged Christian, William Witter, who has already been mentioned in these pages. While he was expounding the Scriptures in the house to a little company that had gathered, two constables came in and arrested the three. They were watched "over that night as Theeves and Robbers" by the officers, and shortly afterwards were lodged in jail. When they were brought to trial Governor Endicott charged them with being Anabaptists, to which Clarke made reply that he was "neither an Anabaptist, nor a Pedobaptist, nor a Catabaptist." "In the forenoon we were examined," says he, "in the afternoon, without producing either accuser, witness, or jury, law of God or man, we were sentenced." Clarke was fined twenty pounds, or to be well whipped. Crandall was fined "five pounds or to be well whipped." Holmes was "fined thirty pounds or to be well whipped." This trial excited much attention (Felt, II.). Clarke gives the following account of his arrest and detention: While I was yet speaking, there come into the house where we were two constables, who, with their clamorous tongues, made an interruption in my discourse, and more uncivily disturbed us than the persuivants of the old English bishops were wont to do, telling us that they were come with authority from the magistrates to apprehend us. I then desired to see the authority by which they thus proceeded, whereupon they plucked forth their warrant, and one of them with a trembling hand (as conscious he might have been better employed) read it to us; the substance whereof was as follows: By virtue hereof, you are required to go to the house of William Witter, and so to search from house to house, for certain erroneous persons, being strangers, and then to apprehend, and in safe custody to keep, and tomorrow morning by eight o’clock to bring before me Robert Bridges. When he read the warrant, I told them, Friends, there shall not be, I trust, the least appearance of resisting of that authority by which you come unto us; yet I tell you, that by virtue hereof you are not so strictly tied, but if you please you may suffer us to make an end of what we have begun, so may you be witnesses either to or against the faith and order which we hold. To which they answered they could not; then said we, Notwithstanding the warrant, or anything therein contained, you may . . . They apprehended us, and carried us away to the ale-house or ordinary, where (after) dinner, etc. Clarke and Crandall were not long afterwards released "upon the payment of their fines by some tender hearted friends without their consent and contrary to their judgment." But Obadiah Holmes could not be persuaded to accept such deliverance. He would neither pay the fine nor allow it to be paid, and was kept in prison till September. Then he was whipped unmercifully with a corded whip. When he was released he said to the magistrate: "You have struck me as with roses." In a long letter to William Kiffin, in London, he gives an account of his imprisonment and sufferings. Of his imprisonment he said: Not long after these troubles I came upon occasion of business into the colony of Massachusetts, with two other brethren, as brother Clarke being one of the two can inform you, where we three were apprehended, carried to (the prison at) Boston, and so to the Court, and were all sentenced. What they laid to my charge, you may here read in my sentence, upon the pronouncing of which I went from the bar, I expressed myself in these words: I bless God, I am accounted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus. Whereupon John Wilson (their pastor, as they call him) struck me before the judgment seat, and cursed me, saying, The curse of God or of Jesus go with you. So we were carried to the prison, where not long after I was deprived of my two loving friends, at whose departure the adversary stepped in, took hold of my spirit, and troubled me for the space of an hour, and then the Lord came in, and sweetly relieved me, causing to look to himself; so was I stayed, and refreshed in the thought of my God. The story of his whipping is pathetic: And as the man began to lay the strokes upon my back, I said to the people, Though my flesh should fail, and my spirit should fail, yet my Grad would not fail. So it pleased the Lord to come in, sad so to fill my heart and tongue as a vessel full, and with an audible voice I broke forth praying unto the Lord not to lay this sin to their charge; and telling the people, that now I found that he did not fail me, and therefore now I should trust him forever who faileth me not; for in truth, as the strokes fell upon me, I had such a spiritual manifestation of God’s presence as the like thereof I never had nor felt, nor cap with fleshy tongue express; and the outward pain was so removed from me, that indeed I am not able to declare it to you, it was so easy to me, that I could well bear it, yea and in a manner felt it not although it was grievous as the spectators said, the man striking with all his strength (yea spitting in his hand three times as many affirmed) with a three-corded whip, giving me therewith thirty strokes. When he loosed me from the post, having joyfulness in my heart, and cheerfulness in my countenance, as the spectators observed, I told the magistrates, You have struck me with roses; and said moreover, Although the Lord hath made it easy to me, yet I pray God it may not be laid to your charge. On account of this terrific whipping Holmes was not able to lie in bed on his back. This experience immediately bore fruit in the conversion of President Dunster of Harvard College to Baptist views. He had witnessed the heroic conduct of Holmes in his punishment and his testimony convinced Dunster that infant baptism was wrong. "The most significant event in early Baptist history," says Platner, "next to the work of Roger Williams, was the conversion of President Dunster, of Harvard College, about the year 1650. Dunster’s withdrawal from Congregational fellowship, and his acceptance of Baptist principles, startled the adherents of the standing order, and greatly encouraged the few struggling representatives of the Baptist cause. To allay public alarm, and refute the threatening ‘errors,’ Jonathan Mitchell, pastor of the church in Cambridge, ‘preached more than half a score of ungainsayable sermons’ in defense of the ‘comfortable truth’ of infant baptism. But not even these ten discourses, or the open opposition of the authorities, sufficed to prevent the gathering of the first Baptist church in Boston a few years later" (Platner, Religious History of New England). Dunster brought to the college a high character and great ability. He was a profound scholar, especially in the Oriental languages, and an attractive preacher and seemed to happily combine decision of character with suavity of disposition. Johnson gave the opinion generally held of him when he said: "Mr. Henry Dunster is now President of the Colledge, fitted from the Lord for the work, and by those who have skill that way reported to be an able Proficient in both Hebrew, Greek and Latine languages, an Orthodox Preacher of the truths of Christ, very powerful through his blessing to move the affections" (Johnson, Wonder Working Providence). Thomas Shepard, pastor at Cambridge during the first nine years of Dunster’s administration, speaks of him as a "man pious, painful, and fit to teach, and very fit to lay the foundations of the domesticall affairs of the College; whom God hath much honored and blessed" (Young, Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 552. 1841) . In a letter to John Winthrop the high esteem in which Shepard held Dunster is manifested: "Your apprehensions agaynst reading and learning heathen authors, I perswade myselfe were suddenly suggested, and will easily be answered by H. Dunster, if you should impart them to him" (Massachusetts Historical Collection, Fourth Series, VII.). The conversion of Dunster to Baptist views was sensational. Alexander McKenzie, the historian of the church at Cambridge, gives the following account of the defection of Dunater: "Henry Dunster, President of the College, and a member of this church, was, to use the language of Cotton Mather, ‘unaccountably fallen into the briars of antipaedobaptism; and being briar’d in the scruples of that persuasion, he not only forebore to present an infant of his own unto the Baptism of our Lord, but also thought himself under some obligation to bear his testimony in some sermons against the administration of baptism to any infant whatsoever.’ This seems to have been in the year 1653; of course this made a great excitement in the church and community. The brethren of the church were somewhat vehement and violent in the expression of their dissatisfaction with the position by one so eminent. They thought that for the good of the congregation, and to preserve abroad the good name of the church, he should cease preaching until ‘he had better satisfied himself in the point doubted by him.’ The divine ordinance which he opposed was held in the highest veneration by our fathers. It had come to them from the earliest days of the church, and was sanctified before them by all the early associations of life. It connected them with God by his ancient covenant. It was a heavenly boon to the child upon whom parental faith and fidelity bestowed it. Its meaning, value and authority, had been carefully taught by their first ministers, of blessed memory. With the boldness and decision with which they set themselves against all wrong, all encroachment on religious ordinances, they lifted up their voice against one who presumed to contradict what the church had always held, and to deny where Shepard affirmed; and not even his sacred calling, nor his lofty official position could shield him from censure" (McKenzie, Lectures on the History of the First Church in Cambridge, pp. 102, 103. Boston, 1873) . Neale, one of the early historians of New England, gives the following account of his removal as President: The overseers were uneasy because he had declared himself an Anabaptist, fearing lest he should instill those Principles into the Youth that were under his Care; but the President no sooner understood their Minds, but he feely resigned his Charge, and retired to Scituate, where he spent the Rest of his Days in Peace (Neale, The History of New England, I.). And Cotton Mather makes the following comment: Among those of our fathers, who differed somewhat from his brethren, was that learned and worthy man, Mr. Henry Dunster . . . Wonderfully falling into the errors of Antipaedobaptism, the overseers of the College became solicitous that the students there might not be unawares ensnared in the errors of the President. Wherefore they labored with an extreme agony either to rescue the good man from his own mistake, or to restrain him from imposing them upon the hope of the flock, of both which, fording themselves to despair, they did as quietly as they could, procure his removal, and provide him a successor in Mr. Charles Chauncy (Mather, Magnalia, Bk. III). After a conference of the ministers in which nothing was accomplished the General Court, May 3, 1654, passed the following order: Forasmuch as it greatly concerns the welfare of this country that the youth thereof be educated, not only in good literature. but sound doctrine, this Court doth therefore commend it to the serious consideration and special care of the Overseers of the College and the selectmen in the several towns, not to admit or suffer any such to be continued in the office or place of teaching, educating, or instructing the youth or child, in the college or school, that have manifested themselves unsound in the faith, or scandalous in their lives, and not giving due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ (The Records of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, III., p. 397). Dunster accepted this statement and sent in his resignation as President of the College, June 10, 1654. He graciously says: I here resign up the place wherein hitherto I have labored with all my heart (Blessed be the Lord who gave it) serving you and yours. And henceforth (that you in the interim may be provided) I will be willing to do the best I can for some weeks or months to continue the work, acting according to the orders prescribed to us; if the Society in the interim fall not to pieces in our hands; and what advice for the present or for the future I can give for the public good, in this behalf, with all readiness of mind I shall do it, and daily by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, pray the Lord to help and counsel us all. From the Court, on the 25th of the same month, he received only this curt answer: In answer to the writing presented to this Court by Mr. Henry Dunster, wherein amongst other things he is pleased to make a resignation of his place as President, this Court doth order that it shall be left to the care and discression of the Overseers of the College to make provision, in case he persist in his resolution more than one month (and inform the Overseers) for some meet person to carry on and end that work for the present (The Records of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, III., p. 353). It was in this manner that Henry Dunster, the President of Harvard College, became a Baptist. The hero of the Baptist Church in Boston was Thomas Gould. He refused in 1665 to. bring his child to baptism. The Elder then remarked: "Brother Gould, you are to take notice, that you are admonished of these things, withholding the child from baptism, irreverent carriage in time of administering baptism, and not complying with your word" (Willard’s Answer to Russell, Backus, I.). He was frequently admonished. "Hence, after much time spent, the brethren consenting, he was admonished for making way from the church in the way of schism." Such discipline was continued several years, until he was finally excommunicated (Felt, II.). The .result was that a church was organized in Charleston, May 28,1665, Thomas Gould, Thomas Osborne, Edward Drinker and John George were baptized, and these joined with Richard Goodall, William Turner, Robert Lambert, Mary Goodall, and Mary Newel "in a solemn covenant, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to walk in fellowship and communion together, in the practice of all the holy appointments of Christ, which he had, or should further make known to them." Goodall came from Kiffin’s church in London; Turner and Lambert from Dartmouth; Gould and Osborne separated from the church in Charleston; and Drinker and George had long lived in the country, but had been unaffiliated. The church in Cambridge demanded of Gould and the others why they had "embodyed themselves in a pretended church way"; and in July 9, 1665, Gould stated to the church that he "has nothing more to do with them" (Felt, II.). So it followed upon the 30th day of the same month he was excluded "for their impenitency in their schismatical withdrawing from this church and neglecting to hear the church." This was by no means the first action of the church against him. The following record is under date of June 6, 1858: Upon the 6th of 4th, 1658. Brother Thomas Gould, according to the agreement of the church the Lord’s day before, was called forth to give an account of his long withdrawing from the public ordinances amongst us, on the Lord’s day. It wag asked brother Gould, whither he had any rule from God’s word so to do? or whither, it were not a manifest breach of rule and order of the gospel? His answer several times was to the effect that he had not turned from any ordinance of God, but did attend the word in other places. It was then asked him, whither he did not own church covenant, as an ordinance of God, and himself in covenant with the church? He answered he did, but we had cut him off, or put him away by denying to him the Lord’s Supper, when only he had been admonished, so now had no more privilege than an Indian, and therefore he looked now not at himself as a member of our church, but was free to go any whither? He was likewise blamed, that having so often expressed his desire to attend any light that might help him in his judgment and practice, about children’s baptism; that yet he should forbear, and stay away, when he could not but know, that his pastor was speaking largely on the subject. He confessed that his wife told him of it, and being asked how he could in faith partake of the Lord’s Supper, whilst he judges his own baptism void and null? He owned that it was so, as administered to him as a child; but since God had given him grace, he now came to make use of it, and get good by it. It being replied that a person owned by all, as gracious, and (fit) for the Supper, is not yet to be admitted to it, till baptized; he said little or nothing to it, but spoke divers things generally offensive to the brethren, and would own no failing. Hence after much time spent, the brethren consenting, he was admonished for breaking away from the church, in way of schism, never having used any means to convince the church of any irregular proceeding, but continuing peremptorily and contumaciously to justifie his schism. This transaction was speedily after the acting thereof truly recorded by the then only elder of this church; Zech. Symmes, Mr. Green, the ruling elder, dying a little before (Buddington, The History of the First Church, Charleston, pp. 56, 57. Boston, 1845). Of the formation of the Baptist church and the reasons for it Gould himself gives an account. A small section of his narrative is here transcribed as follows: "Now after this, considering with myself what the Lord would have me to do; not likely to join with any of the churches of New England, and so to be without the ordinance of Christ; in the meantime God sent out of Old England some who were Baptists; we, consulting together what to do, sought the Lord to direct us, and taking counsel of other friends who dwelt among us, who were able and godly, they gave us counsel to congregate ourselves together; and so we did, being nine of us, to walk in the order of the gospel according to the rule of Christ, yet knowing that it was a breach of the law of this country; that we had not the approbation of magistrates and ministers, for that we suffered the penalty of that law, when we were called before them. After we had been called into two courts, the church understanding that we were gathered into church order, they sent three messengers of the church to me, telling me that the church required me to come before them the next Lord’s day" (Callender Papers, Backus, I.). The organization of this Baptist church caused a great noise throughout New England. Mather says: Our Anabaptists formed a church . . . not only with a manifest violation of the laws of the Commonwealth, relating to the orderly manner of gathering a church, but also with a manifold provocation unto the rest of our churches, by admitting into their own society such as our churches had excommunicated for moral sandals, yea, and employing such persons to be administrators of the two sacraments among them (Mather, Magnalia, Bk. VII. Vol. II.). The organization of this church was the occasion of much persecution. The rise of the Baptists and the demands of the English government "made this a strenuous time for the officers" (Publications of the Colonial Society of, Massachusetts, VII., p. 285). The English commissioners were in New England at the time and on this account the authorities for a time were compelled to go slow in persecutions. But as soon as this danger was past "the church tried persecution," says Nathan N. Wood, "the court tried coercion; but both alike vain. The church proposed argument and excommunication; the Court proposed fines and imprisonment; but no proposal proved persuasive with the indomitable spirit of Thomas Gould, the Baptist pastor." The following September they were called before the Court of Assistants; and they were commanded to desist from their schismatical practice. Not obeying the orders of this court October 11, 1665, they appeared in the General Court, when the following action was taken: WHEREAS, at the late Court of Assistants, Thomas Gould and his company, sundry of them were openly convicted of a schismatical rending from the communion of the churches here and setting up a public meeting in opposition to the ordinances of Christ, here publicly exercised, and were solemnly charged not to persist in such pernicious practices. Yet, this notwithstanding (as this Court is informed), they do still persist in condemning the authority here established. It is therefore ordered, that the aforesaid Gould and company be summoned before this Court, to give an account of such, their irregular practices with their celebrating the Lord’s Supper by an excommunicated person. A warrant being sent for the accused, they appeared. As they professed "their resolution yet further to proceed in such their irregular practices, thereby as well contemning the authority and laws here established for the maintenance of godliness and honesty, as continuing in the profanation of God’s holy ordinances. This Court do judge meet to declare, that the said Gould and company are no orderly church assembly, and that they stand jointly convicted of high presumption against the Lord and his holy appointments, as also the peace of this Government, against which this Court do account themselves bound to God, his Truth, and his Churches here planted, to bear their testimony; and do therefore sentence the said Gould, Osborne , Drinker, Turner and George, such as are Freemen, to be disfranchised, and all of them upon conviction before any one magistrate or Court, of their further proceeding herein, to be committed to prison until the General Court shall take further order with them (Felt, II.). The next year, for not complying with these requirements, they were again fined and committed to prison and finally sentenced to banishment. They refused to depart and held their meetings on Noodle’s Island. It is related. that the town and country were much troubled by these meetings of the Baptists. Many desired that they should be dismissed but the Governor thought otherwise. By the summer of 1674 they met in Boston, in a hired house; because "some of the magistrates will not permit any punishment to be inflicted on heretics, as such" (Felt, II.). "In circumstances like these," says Neale, in an address on the two hundredth anniversary, "for over a half a century they stood alone, and bore the responsibilities and the whole weight of theological odium which rested upon the Baptist name and cause in the Colony of Massachusetts. They must have had, and did have, during the first seventy years of their experience, a painful sense of isolation. They were separated from their brethren in England. No sister churches were in the neighborhood. No Baptist associations, as now, with letters and delegates, pleasant countenances, and kindly words to cheer and sustain them. Rev. John Myles, who had recently emigrated with a remnant of his flock, from Wales, was at Swansea, and occasionally made a visit to Boston; and sometimes a good brother or two would come up from Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations; but in general, our brethren were shut out from public sympathy, and lived in constant dread of the emissaries of the government. They met in houses of the different members of the church at Charleston, Noodle’s Island, and Back street, now Salem street, until the erection of their first sanctuary in 1679" (Robert Heber Neale, An Address delivered at the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the First Baptist Church, Boston, June 7, 1865, pp. 17, 18. Boston, 1865). The occasional ministry of Myles in Boston was accompanied with much persecution. Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, wrote to Dr. Increase Mather, November 29, 1677: I hear Mr. Miles still preaches in Boston, I fear it will be a means to fill that town, which is already full of unstable persons, with error; I look upon it as a great judgment . . . let all due means be used to prevention (Massachusetts Historical Collection, VIII. Mather Papers). The general spirit of the severer class of the Puritans, of this period, may be better understood in the light of some of their utterances: "Anabaptism is an engine framed to cut the throat of the Infantry of the Church." . . . "’Tis Satan’s policy to plead for an indefinite and boundless toleration." "Anabaptism we shall find hath ever been looked at by the Godly Leaders of this people as a Scab" (Thomas Shepard, Election Sermon (1672), pp. 24, 25). "Protestants ought not to persecute any, yet the Protestants may punish Protestants; and as the case may be circumscribed, a Congregation of such as may call themselves Protestants cannot be rationally denied" (Increase Mather, Introduction, Ne Sutor Ultra Crepidam). "Experience tells us that such a rough thing as a New England Anabaptist is not to be handled over tenderly. It was toleration that made a world Antichristian" (Samuel Willard, Ne Sutor Ultra Crepidam). The Lord keep us from being bewitched with the whore’s cup, lest while we seem to detest reject her with open face of profession, we do not bring her in by any back door of Toleration" (John Cotton, Bloody Tenet Washed). "Separation and Anabaptism are wonted intruders,. and seeming friends, but secret fatal! Enemies to Reformation" (Jonathan Mitchell, Election Sermon, A.D. 1667) . The Baptist schism was the most dreaded of all with which the colony was threatened, and no epithets were too opprobrious to be hurled at its adherents. The ministers were insistently urging the civil magistrates to use coercive measures and to punish heretics. "To purge New England of heresie," was the favorite appeal, and was the open door through which the civil courts let loose the fierce hordes of fines, imprisonments, and banishments (Wood, History of the First Baptist Church of Boston). The most terrible fake accounts were published against the Baptists. A pamphlet was published in London entitled: Mr. Baxter Baptis’d in Bloud, or a Sad History of the unparalleled Cruelty of the Anabaptists in New England. Faithfully relating the Cruel, Barbarous and Bloudy Murther of Mr. Baxter an Orthodox minister who was killed by the Anabaptists and his skin most cruelly flead off from his body, with an Exact Account of all the Circumstances and Particularities of this barbarous Murther. Published by his Mournful Brother, Benjamin Baxter, living in Fen church street, London (Felt, II.). The pamphlet was sold on the streets and created much excitement. The author asks: "Dares any man affirm that Anabaptists to be Christians! For how can they be Christians who deny Christianity, deride Christ’s Institution of Baptism, and scoffingly call it, Baby sprinkling, and in place thereof Booby dipping" (p. 1). "These wicked Sectarians deny this Sacrament and compel their adherents to renounce their Baptism, and to be dipt again in their prophane waters" (p. 3). The author represents his brother as having removed to New England and circumstantially describes how the Baptist flayed the man before his wife and children. It was proved that there had been no such minister in Boston, and no such a man as Baxter lived in Fen Church Street. It is alleged that Dr. Parker, the Chaplain to the Bishop of London, was the author, and published it because of his hatred to the Baptists. But their troubles were not over. The Baptists of Boston erected a house of worship, and on February 15, 1679, it was opened for services. In the meantime Governor Severet died and persecutions were renewed. There was no law to prevent their using the house, and so the Court, the following May enacted a law to the effect: That no person should erect or make use of a house for public worship, without license from the authorities, under the penalty, that the house and land on which it stood should be forfeited to the use of the county, to be disposed of by the county treasurer, by sale, or demolished, as the court that gave judgment in the case should order. The matter passed through various proceedings until the king interfered and decreed: Requiring that liberty of conscience should be allowed to all protestants, so that they might not be discountenanced from sharing in the government, much less, that no good subject of his, for not agreeing in the Congregational way, should by law be subjected to fines and forfeitures, or other incapacities for the same, which, said his majesty, is a severity more to be wondered at, whereas liberty of conscience was made-a principal motive for your transportation into these parts. They were permitted to assemble three or four times when they were again called before the Court to answer for their offense. They found that the doors of their house had been nailed up, and a paper attached to the effect: All persons are to take notice, that by order of the court, the doors of this house are shut up, and they are inhibited to hold any meetings, or to open the doors thereof without license from the authority, till the General Court take further order, as they will answer the contrary at their peril. Dated at Boston, 8th March, 1680. EDWARD RAWSON, Secretary. Five days later Increase Mather recorded in his diary: The Council ordered the Doors of the meeting house which the Anabaptists have built in Boston, to be shut up. They took away their doors (blank) boards were nailed. So perverse were they that they would not meet in a private house, but met this Sabbath out of doors (blank) their meeting house (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1899-1900, p. 408). The congregation erected a cover and met in the church yard. The Court, June 11, 1680, upon a petition from the church, admonished them "for their offense, and so granted them their petition so farr as to forgive their offense past, but still prohibited them as a society of themselves, to meet in that publick place they have built, or any other publick house, except such as are allowed by publick authoritie" (The Records of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, V., p. 272). It is comforting to know that at a later date these acts were recognized as vicious, and some apology extended. Certain it is that the majority of the people of Massachusetts were opposed to the rigorous measures against the Baptists and the Quakers (Daniel Waite Howe, The Puritan Republic of the Massachusetts Bay, p. 252. Indianapolis, 1899). It is said that Winthrop upon his death bed, when pressed by some to sign an order for the banishment of some heterodox person, refused, saying that he "had done too much of that work already" (Hutchinson, I., p. 142. Boston, 1764). Cotton Mather, in 1717, preached the ordination sermon of a Baptist minister in Boston upon "Good Men United." It contained a frank confession of repentance for the persecutions of which the Boston churches had been guilty. He said: Good men, alas 1 have done such ill things as these. New England also has in former times done some of this aspect which would not now be so well approved; in which, if the brethren in whose house we are now convened met with anything too unbrotherly, they now with satisfaction hear us expressing our dislike of everything which looked like persecution in the days that have passed over us (Vose, Congregationalism in Rhode Island). There was a constant correspondence kept up for years between the ministers of New and Old England, much of which bore upon the subject of the Baptists. Often it was suggested that the Baptists should receive more lenient treatment. In a letter which Thomas Cobbet wrote to Increase Mather, 1681, he said: "And as you will say concerning toleration of Antipedobaptists in general, here in New England, as they are in Old, they might soon flock over hither thereupon so many as would sink our small vessel; whereas in that greater ship of England, there is no such danger of those multitudes to founder the same" (The Mather Papers. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Fourth Series, VIII. 291, 292). The bitterness against the Baptists had no appreciable diminution.. The General Court assembled in Boston, May 27, 1674. Samuel Torrey of Weymouth preached the sermon from Revelation 2:5. The Introduction was by Increase Mather, who says: We may conclude that the Lord meant some great thing, when he planted these heavens and laid the foundations of this earth, and said unto New England (as sometimes to Zion), Thou art my people. And what should that be, if not that so a Scripture pattern of the Reformation as to civil, but especially in ecclesiastical respects, might be here erected, m a first fruits of that which shall in due time be accomplished the whole world throughout, in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one over all of the earth. The first design of New England was purely religious, but now we begin to espouse and are eagerly pursuing another, even a worldly interest. Torrey, in his sermon, gives his views of the Baptists as follows: Such I take to be the transgression of those who do grossly and scandalously profane any of the holy ordinances of Christ, in the administration; but much more of those who do both professedly and practically deny most, if not all fundamentals, both of faith and order, and are known and acknowledged so to do by all the reformed churches in the world (Felt, II.). With such impressions he supposed the Baptists ought not to be tolerated by law in their deviations from the Congregational order. He urges as a means of reformation, "the full and faithful discharge of duty to the children of the Covenant." Cotton Mather, in the year 1689, published a book "Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft, with an Introduction by Richard Baxter." He afterwards expressed his opinion on the subject as follows: The houses of good people are filled with shrieks of children and servants who have been torn by invisible hands with tortures altogether preturnatural. The recent extreme measures for witchcraft are justified. The devil exhibits himself ordinarily as a small black man. He has his sacraments; he scratches, bites and sticks pins in the flesh; he drops money before sufficient spectators out of the air; he carries witches over trees and hills. Twenty persons have confessed that they signed a book which the devil showed them. The influence of this book was very great. Sibley says: The tendency of his books was to extend and increase the excitement. He was credulous, superstitious, and fond of the marvelous. Previous to the witchcraft trials he possessed more power and wielded greater influence than any other individual ever did in Massachusetts. After this his influence declined until at length he became the object of public ridicule and open insult (J. L. Sibley, Sketches of Harvard Graduates, III.). At that time the jails of Salem and the adjoining towns were filled with prisoners who accused lying children of bewitching them. The question was, what should be done with these prisoners, many of them already condemned or awaiting trial, and this is the answer written by Cotton Mather and signed by twelve pastors: "We cannot but recommend unto the government the speedy and vigorous punishment of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious according to the directions given under the laws of God and the wholesome statutes of the English nation for the destruction of witchcraft. We hope that some of the accused are yet clear from the great transgression laid to their charge." "The people stood poised upon the panic’s brink," says Adams, "and their pastors lashed them in. The Salem trials left a stain upon the judiciary of Massachusetts that can never be effaced" (Brooks Adams, Emancipation of Massachusetts). Drake says: "Some say it was worse in other countries and long after. Yes, ignorance and superstition prevailed to a great, if not. a greater, degree in Europe than in New England. Mental darkness was as dense in Old England as in New" (Drake, History of Witchcraft, Preface XXX.). A later writer has shown that Drake was wrong so far as Old England was concerned, for the last execution of a witch in that land occurred ten years before the tragedy took place in Salem (Moore, Notes on Witchcraft). It was Montague, the skeptic, whose voice was raised almost alone among the writers of Europe against the nefarious inquisition. "It is rating our opinions high to roast other people alive for them," he said. But Mather rode horseback to the execution, exhorting the people to their duty. It is everlastingly to the credit of the Baptists that they opposed this procedure. On June 25, 1692, William Milburne, a Baptist preacher, was summoned before the Court for reflecting upon the administration of public justice. His crime was the circulation of a petition for signatures of persons who opposed the further prosecution of suspected witches or specter testimony." "The innocent will be condemned," he said, "a woeful chain of consequences will follow, inextricable damage will be done this province. Give no more credence to specter testimony than the Word of God alloweth." George H. Moore says: William Milburne, upon examination having owned that he wrote the papers and subscribed his name to them, was ordered to be committed to prison or give bond of $200 with two securities to answer at the next session of the Superior Court for framing, contriving, writing and publishing the said seditious and scandalous papers or writings. William Milburne was a brother of Jacob Milburne and the prosecuting attorney was Thomas Newton, who had secured the execution of Jacob the year before in New York. The magistrates and ministers of 1692 who engineered the witchcraft business were trusted leaders of the people (George H. Moore, Notes on Witches; Final Notes on Witchcraft). The effective book was that of Robert Calef, a member of the Baptist church in Boston. It was entitled: "More Wonders from the Invisible World"; was finished in 1697, but there was no publisher in Boston who dared to issue it. It finally appeared in England in 1700. It created a sensation in Boston. Among many other things he says: I hope I understand my duty better than to imitate Mr. Mather in retorting his hard language. If his report stands in competition with the glory of God, His truth, and His people’s welfare, I suppose these to be too valuable to be trampled on for Mr. Mather’s mistake. This country will be likely to be afflicted again if the same notions are still entertained. "God has implanted in our consciousness to judge a miracle," Cotton Mather says: It seems the light within is here our guide and not the Scripture. Such ridiculous and brutish stuff as "turning men to cats and dogs," "riding on a pole through the air," Mather calls Baxter’s book, "The World of Spirits," "an ungainsayable book but the Bible." What mean these specters that none can see but those that have not the use of their rcason and senses? Plastic spirit? What’s that? Some ink-horn term. So hardy and daring are some men, though without one word of Scripture proof of it. Sound reason is what I have long been seeking for in this country in vain. You forbade my making a copy of the four pages that you let me read. I am not surprised at your caution in keeping from the light the crude matters and imperfect absurdities that are found there. My task is offensive, but necessary. I would rather expose myself to censure than that it should be omitted. I took it to be a call from God to vindicate his truth. The principal actors in these tragedies are far from defending their action now, but they do not take due shame to themselves. It was bigoted zeal stirring up blind and bloody rage against virtuous and religious persons. No one of them has testified as the case required against the doctrine and practice though they have brought a stain and lasting infamy upon the whole country, if not entailing upon themselves all the blood of the righteous. I cannot believe that there are several Almighties. My letter to Mr. Mather remains unanswered, so that I suppose he regards it as either orthodox or unanswerable. What he says about a thunder storm breaking into his house savors too much of enthusiasm. He magnifies the devil’s power beyond and against the Scripture. Not bringing Scripture to prove his positions shows that there are none. If I err I hope you will let me see it by Scripture. What do you find in Scripture for your structure? If you are deficient in that warrant, the more eminent the architect the more dangerous he is. I pray that you may be an useful instrument in the removal of this popish and heathen superstition. It may be asked what need is there of raking up coals that lie buried in oblivion, but Satan would like to drag us through the pond again by the same cat. This is an affliction far exceeding all that this country has ever labored under. Those who oppose such a torrent know that they will meet with opposition from magistrates, ministers and people, and the name of Sadducee, atheist, witch, will be cast against them. God is able to protect those who do their duty herein against all opposers. Mr. Mather’s language sounds more like that of a Manichee or a heathen than like that of an orthodox believer. The witchcraft delusion and this book probably broke the power of the Theocracy. When the book reached Boston, November 5, 1700, Cotton Mather spent the day in fasting. For the fifth month, the second day, 1701, he writes: "The enemies of the churches are set with implacable enmity against myself, and one vile fool, Robert Calef, is employed by them to go on with more of his filthy scribling." Increase Mather, then President of Harvard College, took what he called "the wicked book" and had it burned in front of Stoughton Hall. Calef was driven out of Boston, and settled at Roxbury, where he was more highly esteemed than in the vicinity of the Mathers. Samuel, the son of Cotton Mather, wrote in 1728: "There was a certain disbeliever in witchcraft that wrote against my father’s book, but the man is dead, and his book died long before him." This was not a fact for four editions of the book were printed. Whether the book of Calef produced a reaction, or simply brought to a head the opposition to Increase Mather, the fact remains that in a few weeks he was dismissed as President of Harvard. An author makes the assertion that the "descendants of Calef rank as high as those of the Mathers, since Warren, the hero of Bunker Hill, was a descendant of Calef (W. W. Everts, Robert Calef and Cotton Mather, The Review and Expositor, April, 1916. XIII., p. 232). The government of Massachusetts was slow in recognizing the claims of the Baptists. Between the years 1727 and 1733 there were 28 Baptists, two Quakers and two Episcopalians imprisoned in Bristol, Massachusetts (now Rhode Island) for the ministerial tax (Benedict, 443). The first act 1728-1729 was passed recognizing the religious scruples of the Baptists. This was limited to five years, exempted the poll only of Baptists and Quakers, from being taxed for the support of the ministers and their bodies from being taken in execution for collecting such taxes. The next year (1729) an act, in addition to the act of previous year, was passed extending the exemption to the real and personal estates of the Anabaptists, as they were called. In 1751, Mr. Moulton was arrested for preaching Baptist sentiments at Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and, by public authority, shut up in prison, and finally banished as a vagrant and vagabond, and his deacon, risk, and his brethren, John Corey, Jeremiah Barstow, John Perry, and John Draper, were imprisoned in the Worcester jail. The following property belonging to that Baptist church was taken and sold by authority to pay the salary of Caleb Rice, a Congregational preacher: Cash, $.36; 7 cows, 1 heifer, 2 steers, 2 oxen, a flock of geese, 20 pewter plates, 1 tankard, 1 saddle, a trammel and books, shovels, tongs and andirons, 1 pot, 1 kettle, 1 warming pan and 1 broad axe (Benedict). The laws were reenacted for limited periods until 1752, when an act was passed "to relieve the Anabaptists by establishing rules for identifying their members and ministers. In 1770 the objectionable name of Anabaptist was replaced by Antipaedobaptist (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, I., pp. 142-144. Boston, 1895). But in this same year about 400 acres of land, belonging to members of the Baptist Church in Ashfield, were sold at auction to pay the ministerial tax (Benedict). At the beginning of the Revolution the status of the Baptists was regulated by the provincial law of 1770. This act exempted them from the payment of religious taxes upon giving certificates to the town assessors, signed by their minister and three other Baptists, that they regularly and conscientiously attended Baptist worship (Hovey, A Memoir of the Life and Times of Isaac Backus, p. 180. Boston, 1858). Though more tolerant than earlier legislation, this act did nothing to relieve isolated Baptists who could attend no meeting of their denomination, nor did it fully protect against local tyranny and intolerance those who fully complied with the law. Three such were arrested in Clemford, although one was infirm, another the sole support of his family and the third over eighty years of age, and lodged in jail at Concord, January, 1773 (Hovey). Some of the more conscientious refused to fill out the exemption certificates required by law, deeming such an act "an implicit acknowledgment of a power assumed by man, which in reality belongs to God" (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1916-1917, I., pp. 373, 374). The constitution of 1780 did not improve the position of the Baptists. In reality the article on religion was reactionary. It not only continued the religious system of the province but exalted it to a fundamental law, out of reach of ordinary legislative enactment. The provincial system, which was sill in force in 1780, may be described as compulsory support of at least one Congregational church in every town, by public taxation on all polls and estates, with official exemptions for Baptists, Quakers and members of the Church of England, under certain conditions. This new article on religion was even less liberal than the old system, for instead of exempting members of dissenting sects from religious taxation, it merely gave them the privilege of paying their taxes to their pastors. Unbelievers, non-churchgoers and dissenting minorities too small to obtain ministers, had to contribute to the Congregational worship. The whole article was so loosely worded that it resulted in innumerable lawsuits. One may say that the ecclesiastical history of the Commonwealth during the next fifty years was one of vexations and lawsuits (Ibid, L., p. 371). Books for further reading: Henry S. Burrage, A History of the Baptists in New England. Philadelphia, 1894. Daniel Neale, The History of the Puritans; or Protestant Nonconformists; from the Reformation in 1517 to the Revolution in 1688: Comprising an Account of their Principles, their attempt for a further Reformation of the Church; their sufferings; and the Lives and Characters of their most considerable Divines. London, 1822. 5 volumes. John Jones, John Myles and his Times, The Baptist Quarterly Review, X., pp. 30-46. New York, 1888. R. D. C. Robbins, Cotton Mather and the Witchcraft Delusion, Bibliotheca Sacra, XXXIV., pp. 473-512. Andover, 1877. Joshua Thomas, A History of the Baptist Association in Wales, from the Year 1660, to the Year 1790. Shearing the Times and Places of their Annual Meetings, whether in Wales, London, or Bristol, c., including several other interesting Articles. J. Davis, History of the Welsh Baptists. From the year sixty-three to the Year one thousand seven hundred and seventy. Pittsburgh, 1835. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 36: 01.2.01.05. THE BAPTISTS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND THE JERSEYS ======================================================================== Chapter 5 - The Baptists of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys. William Penn—Pennsylvania—The "Frame of Government" —"The Great Law"—Liberal Provisions in Religion—Baptists from Rhode Island—Thomas Dungan—Cold Springs—Pennepek—Baptists from Wales, Ireland and England—Elias Keach—The Keithian Quakers—Mennonites—Baptists in Philadelphia—Jersey Baptists—Emigrants from Many Countries—The Congregationalists in Newark—A Curious Incident. The accession by Great Britain of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys from the Swedes and the Dutch brought many Quakers, and at a later date Baptists, into this section. William Penn, whose father was a Baptist, acquired the territory of Pennsylvania. "This day (March 5, 1681) my country," says Penn, "was confirmed to me under the great seal of England, by the name of ‘Pennsylvania."’ He had proposed to name it New Wales, "being as this is a pretty, hilly country"; and when this was objected to, he suggested Sylvania. "They added Penn to it," he continues, "and though I much opposed it and went to the king to have it struck out, he said it was past, and would take it upon him; nor could twenty guineas move the under Secretary to vary the name; for I feared it would be looked on as a vanity in me and not in respect to the king, as it truly was, to my father." The first "Frame of Government" was a compound of feudal, monarchial, aristocratic and democratic elements. The proprietor was the lord paramount of the soil and all the colonists were his tenants; he claimed the right not only to appoint the judges; but to organize the courts; the assembly had the power to assent to or to reject proposed laws, but the initiative in legislation as well as supreme judicial and administrative authority were vested in the council, which was thus a copy, in miniature of the House of Lords and Privy Council rolled into one. The assembly chafed under the restrictions placed upon its action; and it was finally modified into a liberal government. Penn, at the beginning of his legislation in Pennsylvania, had passed by the Assembly the "Great Law," the first section of which had regard to religious matters; and, among other things, provided: That no person, now, or at any time hereafter, Living in this Province, who shall confess and acknowledge one Almighty God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World, and who confesses him, or herself, Obliged in Conscience to Live peaceably and quietly under the civil government, shall in any case be molested or prejudiced for his or her Conscientious persuasion or practice. Nor shall hee or shee at any time be compelled to frequent or Maintain anie religious worship, place, or Ministry whatever, Contrary to his, or her mind, but shall fully and freely enjoy his or her Christian Liberty in that respect, without any interruption or reflection. And if any person shall abuse or deride any other for his, or her, different persuasion and practice in matters of religion, such a person shall be looked upon as a Disturber of the peace, and be punished accordingly (Charter and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, 1682-1700, pp. 81-99. Harrisburg, 1879). The provisions in Chapter VI. are as follows: That all officers and persons Commissionated and employed in the service of the government of this Province, and all Members and Deputies elected to serve in the Assembly thereof, and all that have a Right to elect such Deputies, shall be such as profess and declare they believe in Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, And that are not Convicted of ill-fame, or unsober and dishonest Conversation, and that are of twenty-one years of age at Least (Ibid, 108). The law was liberal but departed widely from religious liberty. No unbeliever in Jesus, infidel or Jew, had any rights under its provisions. In 1696, William Markham being governor, a new Frame of Government was enacted, in which a property qualification for electors and deputies was substituted for the religious, and the guarantee of freedom of conscience was omitted. By the first code of March 1, 1664, it was enacted that all ministers must present certificates of episcopal ordination, and were to be paid out of the common treasury. It does not appear that this law was ever effective. The charter contained liberal provisions. "It is one of the marvels of history;" says Dr. Newman, "that such a king as Charles II. should have sold to such a man as William Penn so large and valuable territory as Pennsylvania on terms so highly favorable to civil and religious freedom, and with the certainty that it would be used for the freest development of what was then regarded as one of the most radical forms of Christianity" (Newman, History of the Baptists in the United States). The first company of Baptists to settle in the State came from Rhode Island, in 1684. This was three years after Penn had received his patent, and one year after the death of Roger Williams. Morgan Edwards, in his history of Pennsylvania Baptists, makes the following statement: "In 1684, Thomas Dungan removed from Rhode Island and settled in a place called Cold Springs, in Bucks county, between Bristol and Trenton." Probably there were other Baptists who came with him. "Of this venerable father," says Edwards, "I can learn no more than that he came from Rhode Island, about the year 1684; that he and his family settled at Cold Spring, where he gathered a church, of which nothing remains but a grave yard and the names of the family which -belonged to it; . . . that he died in 1688, and was buried in said graveyard; that his children were five sons and four daughters . . . To mention the name, alliance and offspring of these would tend toward an endless genealogy. Sufficeth that Rev. Thomas Dungan, the first Baptist minister in the province, now (1770) existeth in a progeny of five or six hundred" (Edwards, Material for a Baptist History of Pennsylvania, note). The second company of Baptists were Welsh emigrants who settled in Pennepek, or Lower Dublin, in 1686. There were already a number of persons in this Community from Wales, England and Ireland. The place they selected for their residence must have exhibited a most inviting aspect to these early emigrants. Though the hand of cultivation has marred the native beauties of the scenery, even yet there is much to invite the eye of him who loves to gate upon nature’s loveliness. Along the banks of the Pennepek there is a sweetness and a silence which invites contemplation. Many native trees of the forest, which the indulgence of an importunate cultivation has yet spared, there interweave their hospitable branches and cover with pleasant shade the green margin by which the laboring current softly meanders. A flat rock, which projects into the stream at a certain point, and leaves an easy slope into the water, has been for a series of years the platform on which the administrator of baptism has stood to propound the way of truth to the surrounding multitude, and from which he has conducted into the yielding elements below him, the placid forms of the new converts. The records of the church state that "by the good Providence of God, there came certain persons out of Radnorshire in Wales, over into this Province of Pennsylvania, and settled in the Township of Dublin, in the County of Philadelphia, viz.: John Eatton, George Eatton and Jane, his wife, Samuel Jones, and Sarah Eatton, who had all been Baptized upon Confession of Faith and Received into Communion of the Church of Christ meeting in the Parishes of Llandewi and Nantmel, in Radnorshire, Henry Gregory being Chief Pastor. Also John Baker who had been Baptized and was a member of a congregation of Baptized believers in Kilkenny, in Ireland, Christopher Blackwell, pastor, was in the providence of God settled in the township aforesaid. In the year 1687 there came one Samuel Vaus out of England, and settled near the aforesaid Township and went under the denomination of a Baptist and was so taken to be." The next year Elias Keach came from London and baptized some persons. Twelve entered into church relations and chose Mr. Keach as pastor. Soon after, a few Baptists from this province and West Jersey joined them, also some persons baptized at the Falls, Cold Spring, Burlington, Cohansey, Salem, Penn’s Neck, Chester, Philadelphia and elsewhere united with the church. These were all in one church, and Pennepek was the center of the union, where as many as could met to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Quarterly meetings were held in other places to accommodate the members there. From this church went out many others. They were orthodox according to the Baptist faith; but at times they were disturbed by such subjects as absolute predestination, laying on of hands, distributing the elements, singing psalms, seventh-day Sabbath and other ecclesiastical fevers (Horatio Gates Jones, The Baptists in Pennsylvania. Being a sketch of the Pennepek or Lower Dublin Baptist Church. The Historical Magazine, August, 1868. New Series, IV., p. 76). Elias Keach, the first minister of the church, was a son of the celebrated Benjamin Keach of London. He came to this country about the year 1686, and was then a very wild youth. On his landing he dressed in black and wore a band in order to pass as a minister. The project succeeded to his wishes, and many persons resorted to hear the young London divine. He performed well enough till he advanced pretty far in the sermon, then, stopping short, he looked like a man astonished. The audience concluded that he was seized by some disorder; but, on asking what the matter was, received from him a confession of imposture, with tears in his eyes and much trembling. Great was his distress, though it ended happily; for from this time he’ dated his conversion. He visited Dungan, was instructed, baptized and ordained. He traveled through the wilderness of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, preaching the gospel with great success. He became the chief apostle of the Baptists in this country. With his family he finally returned to London and became a most successful minister (Morgan Edwards, Materials Toward a History of the Baptists of Pennsylvania, p. 9-11. Philadelphia, 1770). The third company of the Baptists originated from the Keithian Quakers, called after their leader, George Keith. On account of some differences they separated from the main body of the Quakers and published reasons for their separation. They were prosecuted in the courts by the Quakers. Morgan Edwards remarks: Whether these complaints be just or not, is neither my business nor inclination to determine. If just, the Quakers have also shown: "That every sect would persecute if they had the power." I know but one exception to this satirical remark, and that is the Baptists; they have had the civil power in their hands in Rhode Island government for an hundred and thirty-six years, and yet have never abused it in this manner, their enemies themselves being judges. And it is remarkable that John Holmes, Esq., the only Baptist magistrate in Philadelphia at the time referred to, refused to act with the Quaker magistrates, against the Keithians, alleging, "That it was a religious dispute, and therefore not fit for a civil court." Nay, he openly blamed the court, held at Philadelphia, December 6-12, 1692, for refusing to admit the exceptions, which the prisoners made to the jury. However the Keithian Quakers soon declined; their head deserted them, and went over to the Episcopalians. Some followed him thither; some returned to the Penn Quakers; and some went to other societies. Nevertheless others persisted in the separation, particularly the Upper Providence; at Philadelphia; at Southampton; and Lower Dublin. These, by resigning themselves to the guidance of Scripture, began to find water in the commission; bread and wine in the command; community of goods, love feast, kiss of charity, right hand of fellowship, annointing the sick for recovery, and washing the disciples’ feet; and were therefore determined to practice accordingly (Edwards, pp. 56, 57). There were other companies of Keithian Quakers who arrived at the same conclusion. Edwards continues: Thus have we seen that the Keithian Quakers ended in a kind of transformation into Keithian Baptists; they were also called Quaker Baptists, because they still retained the language, dress and manners of Quakers. We have seen also, that the Keithian or Quaker Baptists ended in another kind of transformation into seventh-day Baptists, though some went among the first-day Baptists and other societies. However, these were the beginning of the Sabbatarians in Pennsylvania. A confession of faith was published by the Keithian Baptists in 1697; it consisted chiefly of the articles in the Apostles’ Creed. The additions are articles which relate to baptism by immersion, the Lord’s Supper; distinguishing days and months by numerical names, plainness of language and dress, not swearing, not fighting, etc. (Edwards, pp. 59, 60). There came, in 1692, companies of Mennonites from the Dutch settlements in New York. They were found mostly in the neighborhood of Germantown and Frankfort. There also came into the country a company of persons from Germany who became Tunkers or Dunkers. They were from Schwartzenau, Friesland. With but one exception these people had been bred Presbyterians. They consorted together to read the Bible and edify one another in the way they had been brought up, for as yet they did not know that there were any Baptists in the world. "However, believers’ baptism," says Edwards, "and a congregational church soon gained upon them, insomuch they had determined to obey the gospel in these matters. They desired Alexander Mack to baptize them; but he, deeming himself in reality unbaptized, refused. Upon which they cast lots to find who should be administrator. On whom the lot fell hath been carefully concealed. However, baptized they were in the river Eder, by Schwartzenau, and they formed themselves into a church, choosing Alexander Mack to be their minister. Persecution drove them from Holland. "Thus we see that all the Tunker churches in America sprang from the churches at Schwartzenau in Germany; that the church began in 1708, with only seven souls, and that in a place where no Baptist had been in the memory of man, nor any now are. In 62 years that little one has become a thousand, and the small one a great nation" (Edwards, pp. 65, 66). There were Baptists in Philadelphia in 1686, but for forty-six years the church had no settled pastor. It was regarded as a branch of the church at Pennepek. The church was formally constituted May 15, 1746. New Jersey was at first settled by the Dutch and the Swedes. It soon passed under the control of England; and finally came into the possession of Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. The proprietors February 10, 1664-5, issued certain "Concessions and agreements of the Lord Proprietors of New Jersey to and with all and every one of the adventurers and all such as shall settle and plant there." It distinctly provides: That no person qualified as aforesaid within the said Province at any time shall be anyways molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any difference in opinion or practice in matters of religious concernment, who does not actually disturb the civil peace of the said Province; but that all and every such person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their judgments and consciences in matters of religion throughout the said Province (Whitehead, New Jersey Under the Proprietors, p. 27. 1846). However, the Assembly of the Province was authorized to appoint as many ministers as should be thought proper, and to provide for their maintenance (Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of the United States, III.). Benedict calls it a "mild shade of religious toleration" (Benedict). Some towns enacted statutes which were oppressive. The following is from Newark: None shall be admitted freemen or free burgesses, within our town upon Passaick River in the Province of New Jersey, but such planters as are members of some or other of the Congregational churches; nor shall any but such be chosen to magistracy . . . or to any chief military trust or office. Nor shall any but such church members have any vote in any such elections (Henry F. Smith; Celebration of the twenty-fifth Anniversary of the First Baptist Church of Bloomfield, N. J.). One of the celebrated Baptist churches of this section was the Welsh Tract church from Pembrokeshire, Wales. It emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1701, and their pastor, Thomas Griffith, came with them. They received in 1703 a large grant of land on the Delaware, known as Welsh Tract. They greatly prospered, furnished many able ministers to the denomination and sent forth a strong colony to South Carolina. Morgan Edwards declares that this church "was the principal, if not the sole, means of introducing singing, imposition of hands, and . by 1712" all the ministers in Jersey "had submitted to the ordinance." The State of New Jersey from ancient times had strong and respectable Baptist churches in its borders. Edwards gives the following general account of the origin of the Jersey Baptist churches: "In the year 1675, and afterwards, emigrants arrived in the Delaware from England and settled in the parts adjoining the river, since distinguished by the name West Jersey; some of these were also Baptists. About 1683, a company of Baptists from the county of Tipperary, in Ireland, arrived at Amboy; they proceeded toward the interior parts. In the fall of 1729, about thirty families of the Tunker Baptists from Holland (but originally from Schwartzenau in Germany) arrived in Philadelphia; some of whom, in 1733, crossed the river Delaware and settled in Amwell in Hunterden county. In 1734 the Rogerene Baptists arrived from Connecticut and settled near Schoolymountain, in the county of Morris. Thus it appears that among the first Jersey settlers some were of the Baptist denomination; the present Baptists are, partly, the offspring of those adventitious Baptists; and, partly, such as have been proselyted to their way" (Edwards, Materials Toward a History of the Baptists in New Jersey, p. 10. Philadelphia, 1792) . Most of these churches were from Wales, but Cohansy originated in Ireland. Obadiah Holmes, who suffered as a Baptist in Massachusetts, came in 1664-5 into New Jersey with other Baptists and some Quakers and settled in Monmouth county. John Bray was pastor in 1707. The following, taken from the records of the court of that date, shows something of the trials and perplexities of the Baptists: Court of Sessions begun and held at Shrewsbury for the county of Monmouth on the third Tuesday in September, Anno Dom. 1707. WHEREAS, Mr. John Bray, minister of the Baptists of the county of Monmouth, made application to the Court of Sessions, held last month, that he might be permitted to qualify himself as the law directs in the behalf, and the Court there ordered the further consideration thereof should be referred and now said John Bray appearing in open sessions, being presented by several of the said congregation, viz.: Lawrence, John Garret Wall, Jacob Troax, Jr., James Bolen, in behalf of themselves and the rest of their brethren, and accordingly the said John Bray had qualified himself as the law in the case directs, viz.: he did take the oath made in a statute, made in the first year of her majesty’s reign, entitled an act for removing and preventing all disputes concerning the assembly of that Parliament and did make and subscribe the declaration mentioned in the statute made in the thirtieth year of the reign of King Charles II, entitled an act to prevent Papists from sitting in either house of Parliament and also did declare his approbation of and did subscribe the articles of religion mentioned in the statute made in the thirtieth year of the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth, except the 34, 35, 36 and those words of the 20th article, viz.: the church hath full power to decree rites and ceremonies and authority in matters of faith and that part of the 27th article concerning infant baptism, all of which are entered on record. According to the direction of another act of Parliament entitled, an ‘act for exempting her majesty’s Protestant subjects, dissenting from the Church of England from the penalty of certain laws. Such were some of the restrictions thrown around Baptist preachers. For long periods many of these churches were destitute of settled pastors. Most of these early churches were endowed. Some of these endowments were lost, by what Morgan Edwards denominated "that sacraligious thing called continental money." An interesting occurrence happened in one of the churches. A zealous Pedobaptist was desirous of having his first child initiated into the church according to established forms. His wife was averse to the measure, and would not consent until some plain passage of scripture could be adduced in its favor. He repaired to his minister, who frankly admitted that there was no such scripture, but showed him how the proofs were made out. On hearing of this Robert Calver inserted an advertisement in the newspaper offering twenty dollars reward to any one who would produce a text proving infant baptism. Rev. Samuel Harker took him up and carried a text to the advertiser; Calver would not allow that infant baptism was in it; Harker sued him; the Court was of Calver’s mind and Harker had the costs to pay. Calver then offered forty dollars for such a passage, but no one accepted his challenge. The historian of the times made this quaint remark: "It does not appear that the Court had any bias in favor of Baptist sentiments; their decision was, no doubt, made according to the law and evidence, and as what is wanting cannot be numbered, no other verdict could be rendered." Books for further reading: Thomas S. Griffiths, A History of the Baptists of New Jersey. Hightstown, 1904. Henry C. Vedder, A History of the Baptists to the Middle States. Philadelphia, 1898. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 37: 01.2.01.06. THE BAPTISTS OF MAINE AND SOUTH CAROLINA ======================================================================== Chapter 6 – The Baptists of Maine and South Carolina Baptists in Kittery—The Letter of Humphrey Churchwood—William Screven—Before the Grand Jury—The Account of Joshua Millet—Screven Convicted of Contempt—Fined—His Character—Screven in South Carolina—The Opinion of his Enemies—Joseph Lord Writes to the Governor—The Settlement of Charleston—The Established Church—The Different Religious Sects—The First Baptists There—Lady Blake—Religious Conformity Demanded—No Other Baptist Church in the State—The Euhaw and Other Churches. The history of the Baptists in Maine is widely connected with other sections of the country, especially with South Carolina. The first information at hand concerning the presence of Baptists in Kittery is contained in a letter which Humphrey Churchwood, a member of the Baptist church in Boston, but a resident of Kittery, addressed to his brethren in Massachusetts Bay; January 3, 1662. The letter is as follows: Humphrey, a servant of Jesus Christ, to the church which is at Boston; grace be with you, and peace, from God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comforts, who comforteth us in all our tribulations that we maybe able to comfort them that are in trouble, as we are comforted of God. Most dearly beloved brethren and friends, as I am, through free grace, a member of the same body, and joined to the same head, Christ Jesus, I thought it my special duty to inform you that the tender mercies of God in and through Jesus Christ, hath shined upon us by giving light to them that sit in darkness, and to guide our feet in the way of peace; for a great door, and effectual, is opened in these parts, and there are many adversaries, according to 1 Corinthians 16:9. Therefore, dearly beloved, having a desire to the service of Christ, which is perfect freedom, and the propagating of his glorious gospel of peace and salvation, and eyeing that precious promise in Daniel 12:3 : "They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever"; therefore I signify to you that here (are) a competent number of well established people whose hearts the Lord hath opened insomuch that they have gladly received the word and do seriously profess their hearty desire to the following of Christ and to partake of all of his holy ordinances, according to his blessed institutions and divine appointments; therefore I present my ardent desire to your serious consideration, which is, if the Lord see it fit, to have a gospel church planted here in this place; and in order hereunto, we think it meet that our beloved brother, William Screven, who is, through free grace, gifted and endued with the spirit of utterance to preach the gospel, being called by us, who are visibly joined to the church. When our beloved brother is ordained according to the sacred rule -of the Lord Jesus, our humble petition is to God that he will be pleased to carry on his good work to the glory of his holy name, and to the enlarging of the kingdom of his beloved Son, our Redeemer, who will add daily to his church such as shall be saved; and we desire you in the name of the Lord Jesus not to be slack in this great work, believing verily that you will not, and that you are always abounding in the work of the Lord, and we humbly crave your petitions for us to the throne of grace, and we commend you to God and to the good work of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among them that are sanctified. This William Screven had already "presentments" by the Grand Jury before the County Court, at York, July 6, 1675, for not attending the church of the standing order. The following are the citations: We’ll present William Scrivine for not frequenting the publique meeting according to the Law on the Lord’s days (Early Records, III. 396). This person presented is remitted because in evidence it appears that he usually attends Mr. Mowdy’s meeting on Lord’s days (Early Records, III. 315). At a Court held in Wells, July 4, 1676, Screven was appointed a constable for "ye lower part of the River." In 1678 and in 1680 he was appointed to serve on the grand jury, and at the General Assembly, held at York, June 30, 1681, he took his seat as a deputy from Kittery. It is evident from these records, as well as from the letter of Churchwood, that in his religious views Screven was not in harmony with the standing order. He was nevertheless esteemed as a citizen, and was rapidly advanced to positions of official trust. Joshua Millet gives a full account of the rise of these Baptists in Kittery. That account is here transcribed, with some authorities added which sustain every word of this careful historian. He says: "Baptist sentiments first appeared in Maine in 1681. At this time, there was peace and prosperity in the province. The war whoop was not heard; disputation and wrangling about claims and titles were at an end; and Massachusetts and Maine moved under the same form of government. Massachusetts had spread over the Province, not only her laws, but her spirit of religious intolerance. This spirit had already erected her battlements against the ‘wild fanaticism’ of all sects who did not bow to its authority (William D. Williamson, The History of the State of Maine, I.). "Kittery, the oldest town in the Province, incorporated 1647, was selected as the place first to raise a Baptist standard. The first avowal of Baptist sentiments tested the spirit of charity in other sects. As in Massachusetts, so in Maine, the Congregationalists were recognized by law as ‘the Standing Order.’ They viewed the Baptists in the light of religious fanatics and regarded their doctrines and influences as deleterious to the welfare of both religion and society (Benedict, I.). "It was soon known, that in Kittery, there were several persons professing to be Baptists. From where they came, is now unknown. In the course of events, an opportunity offered to them the privilege of-church communion, agreeable to their own theological views. The nearest Baptist church was at Boston, Mass., over which Rev. Isaac Hull (Ibid, I.) then presided. At the advice of Mr. Hull, these Baptists in Kittery united with his church. "William Screven, an emigrant from England (Williamson, I.), was one of their number. Being a man of more than common talents, and devoutly pious, he officiated as leader of their worship (Boston Church Records). The brethren in Kittery and in Boston were satisfied that the Great Head of the Church had designed and called him to preach the gospel of Christ. He was accordingly licensed by the church in Boston, to ‘exercise his gifts in Kittery, or elsewhere, as the providence of God may cast him’ (Boston Church Records). "The Baptists in Kittery being now blessed with a minister, and situated at so great a distance from Boston, deemed it expedient for their own spiritual advantage, and for the cause of Christ in the new settlements, to unite in a separate church. But their desire was at once disappointed by the violence of opposition. "Moved by the same spiritual despotism which had disturbed the Baptists in Massachusetts, Mr. Woolbridge, the minister, and Mr. Huck, the magistrate, awakened prejudice and hatred against these conscientious disciples. in Kittery. Slanderous abuses and legalized tyranny-were now to be endured by them. Church members suffered not alone; but those who assembled with them for worship were repeatedly summoned before the magistrate, and by him threatened with a fine of five shillings for every such offence in the future (Backus, I.). "Humphrey Churchwood, a man worthy of respect and esteem, for exercising his liberty of conscience, and encouraging the baptism of some of his friends, was conveyed before Mr. Huck and Woolbridge, to answer for abuses against the established order. But it doffs not appear that much was done but to revile and ridicule the Baptists. "Alarmed at the success which attended these incipient and feeble efforts of the Baptists, the General Assembly of the Province took the business of oppression in their own hands. At the August session of the council, 1682 (Maj. B. Pendleton was then Deputy-President of the Province), Mr. Screven was tried and placed under bonds for good behaviour. The following is a copy of the records made by Edward Bishworth: Mr. Screven appearing before this court, and being convicted of contempt of his majesty’s authority, and refusing to submit himself to the sentence of the court, prohibiting his public preaching; and upon examination before the court, declaring his resolution still to persist therein; the court tendered him the liberty to return home to his family in case he would forbear such turbulent practices, and amend for the future; but he refused, the court sentenced him to give bonds for his good behaviour, and to forbear such contentious behaviour for the future; and the delinquent stand committed until the judgment of this court be filed. Varia Copia transcribed, and with the records compared this 17th of August, 1882. E. B., Recorder. (Early Records, IV. 237. August 17, 1688). "Mr. Screven, regarding the precepts and examples of Christianity the only just rule of conduct, did not comply with the requisitions of the court. A fine of ten pounds was therefore imposed upon him. He was, moreover, threatened with the infliction of the penalties of the law for each and every future offence against the established order. This treatment constituted another part of the important business of the same session: The court having considered the offensive speeches of Mr. Screven, viz.: his rash and inconsiderate words tending to blasphemy, do adjudge the delinquent for his offence, to pay ten pounds into the treasury of the court or Province. And, further, the court doth forbid and discharge the said Screven under and pretence, to keep any private exercise at his own house or elsewhere, upon the Lord’s day, either in Kittery, or any other place within the limits of this Province; and he is enjoyned for the future to observe the public worship of God in our public assemblies upon the Lord’s days, according to the laws established in this Province, upon such penalties as the law requires upon such neglect in the premises (Early Records, IV. 261). "Neither these terrific proceedings of a provincial court, nor the slander and abuse of the clergy could crush the spirit and zeal of Screven, or prevent the embodiment of a Baptist church in Kittery. By the assistance of Rev. Isaac Hull, of Boston, the following persons were recognized, September, 1682, as a church of Christ in gospel order, they having been previously baptized. Win. Screven, minister; Humphrey Churchwood, deacon; Robert Williams, John Morgandy, Richard Cutts, Timothy Davis, Leonard Brown, Win. Adams, Humphrey Azell, George Litter, and several females (Benedict, I.). Storm and violence, fines, and imprisonments were now experienced by this little band of disciples. As a result of a long-cherished and well-organized religious intolerance venting itself in vehement and impassioned persecution, these humble Christians became disheartened and overcome. In less than one year from its organization, the church was dissolved and the members ‘scattered like sheep upon the mountains’ (Benedict, I.). "To avoid the embarrassments of clerical opposition and further litigations, to shun the evils of slander and calumny, Mr. Screven, accompanied with his family, and some of his suffering brethren, left the Province, removed to South Carolina, where he gathered a Baptist church, which subsequently, became a flourishing society (Backus, II.). "Mr. Screven was a native of England,—born in 1629. Soon after his residence in Kittery, he married Bridget Cutts, and was, with her, blessed with eleven children (Williamson, I.). His talents were above mediocrity. Though favored with but a partial literary competency, yet, a brilliant and energetic imagination, a fervent heart, enlivened by the genial influences of Christianity, wonderfully supplied that literary deficiency (Backus, I.) . He was beloved by his brethren, his ministrations were listened to with delight, and received with edification and profit (Backus, III.). He was eminent for devoted piety and religious usefulness. Mr. Screven died near Charleston, S. C., at the age of eighty-four years, leaving a respectable posterity to bear witness to his worth…. "From the dissolution of the church in Kittery, no Baptists appeared publicly in Maine for an interval of eighty-five years" (Millet, History of the Baptists in Maine; Greenleaf, Sketches of the Ecclesiastical History of the State of Maine, 243. Pourtsmouth, 1821). It is not at all strange that under these conditions William Screven, now fifty-eight years of age, and his Baptist company removed to Cooper Creek, South Carolina, not far from the present site of Charleston. He called his home Somerton, after his residence in England. Charleston was then not even a village (McCrady, Edward, The History of South Carolina, 325, 326. New York, 1897). The hatred of the New England clergy followed him in South Carolina. Rev. Joseph Lord wrote to Governor Thomas Hinkley from Dorchester, February 21, 1698-99, as follows: When I came to Dorchester, I found that a certain Anabaptist teacher (named Scriven), who came from New England, had taken advantage of my absence to insinuate into some of the people about us, and to endeavor to make proselytes, not by public preaching up his own tenets, nor by disputations, but by employing some of his most efficient and trusty adherents to gain upon such as they had interest in, and thereby to set an example to others that are too apt to be led by anything that is new. And he had like to have prevailed; but Mr. Cotton’s and my coming has a little obstructed them; one woman being recovered and convinced of the error of that way,—for whose rebaptization a day was appointed, and another (a neighbor of ours, the wife of Major Broughton; by which you may perceive that they enter into the houses, and lead captive silly women) is in a way (I hope) to be convinced of it, though she was almost prevailed on to be rebaptized by plunging (The Hinckley Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Fourth Series, V. 305). The surroundings of the new church were favorable. They had left a region which but recently, in 1675, had been devastated in King Philip’s War, the most fearful of the early struggles of the natives. It had spent its fury in the region of Piscataqua. Though these emigrants from Maine were still in the region of the wild Indians, they were not molested by them. Most of the members of the Baptist colony had, before 1693, removed to Charles Town. At first their meetings were held in the house of William Chapman in King Street. In 1699 William Eliott, one of the members, gave the church the lot of land on which the First Baptist Church, in Charleston, now stands, and a house of worship was erected on this lot in that or the following year (Tupper, History of the First Baptist Church). Since then this church has erected two buildings (Shecut, Essays). Early in 1670, the first colony which made permanent settlement in South Carolina arrived. They were under the charge of William Sayle, of Burmuda, as Governor. He is described by the old narrator somewhat unkindly, as a "Puritan and Nonconformist, whose religious bigotry, advanced age and failing health promised badly for the discharge of the task before him." After many adventures, losing some of their ships, they finally made settlement on the banks of the Ashley. There they laid the foundations of the old Charleston, which was named in honor of King Charles. On the 19th of April Sir John Yeamens entered upon his duties as Governor of the province. He brought with him from the Barbadoes the first negro slaves seen in South Carolina. Mayor Courtenay has given a graphic description of these early settlers—"pioneers in the settlement of an immense hunting ground, filled with wild animals, overgrown with forests, partly covered by swamps, and roamed over rather than inhabited by a great number of savage tribes, subsisting by the chase, and accustomed to war among themselves. In the midst of such conditions, these colonists laid the foundation, and their descendants reared this noted city, enduring hardships, facing the Indian and the wild beast and at times pestilence and famine. They were plain, earnest, hard-working people, who had left native land and crossed the ocean, their compelling motive the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, their hope to secure a large opportunity of life and work for themselves and their children." There came settlers, in 1674, from New Amsterdam, or New York, as the English called it, because they were dissatisfied with their own masters. In course of time they blended with the other colonists. While a majority of the Proprietors were of the Established Church of England, the larger part of the immigrants were from the beginning dissenters. "The first settlers of South Carolina were. of different religious persuasions. None had any particular connection with government; nor had any sect legal preeminence over another. "This state of things continued for twenty-eight years. In that early period of the province divine service was seldom publicly performed beyond the limits of Charleston, with the exception of an independent church formed near Dorchester in 1696. The inhabitants of the province were nevertheless kept in a state of social order; for they generally believed in God, a future state of rewards and punishments, the moral obligations of the decalogue, and the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. The first two acts of the legislature which have been found in the records of the secretary’s office enjoined the observance of the Lord’s day, commonly called Sunday.; and prohibited certain gross immoralities, particularly ‘idleness, drunkenness, and swearing.’ Thus far the government aided religion in the infant colony. In the year 1698, one step further was taken by an act ‘to settle a maintenance on a minister of the Church of England in Charleston.’ This excited neither suspicion nor alarm among dissenters, for the minister in whose favor the law operated was a worthy good man; and the small sum allowed him was inadequate for his services. The precedent thus set by the legislature being acquiesced in by the people, paved the way for an ecclesiastical establishment. In the year 1704, when the white population of South Carolina was between 5,000 and 6,000, when the episcopalians had only one church in the province and the dissenters three in Charleston and one in the country, the former was so favored as to obtain a legal establishment (Ramsay, A History of South Carolina, II., 1, 2. Charleston, 1809). Ramsay further says: Liberty of conscience, which was secured to every one by the charter, proved a great encouragement to emigration. The settlement commenced at a period when conformity to the Church of England was urged with so high a hand as to bear hard on many good men. Dissenters labored under many grievances. These felt much and feared more. "The toleration," says Oldmixon, "appears so firm in this charter, that we wonder that any Palatine could presume to break in upon it" (Oldmixon, The History of Carolina, I. London, 1708). "But it was inevitable that Old World’s animosities must needs sometime break out among the various people. They had indeed been alive from the very planting of the colony" (McCrady). "With respect to religion," says Carroll, "three terms of communion were fixed: first, to believe that there is a God; secondly, that he is to be worshiped; and thirdly, that it is lawful, and the duty of every man when called upon by those in authority, to bear witness to the truth. Without acknowledging which, no man was to be permitted to be a freeman, or to have any estate or habitation in Carolina. But persecution for observing different modes and ways of worship was expressly forbidden, and every man was to be left full liberty of conscience, and might worship God in that manner which he in his private judgment thought most conformable to the divine will and revealed Word" (Carroll, Historical Collections of South Carolina, I.). It was not without violence that the Church of England was established by law. Lord Granville "the palatine was a bigoted zealot for his mode of ecclesiastical worship and government; the governor was strongly attached to it. It was not, however, without some difficulty and considerable struggle that the keen opposition raised by the dissenters, who now plainly perceived their design, and who had an irreconcilable aversion to Episcopacy, could be overcome. By an undue influence and violence the governor and his adherents gained their point, and secured a majority in the house; so that a species of corruption had now infected the great fountain of liberty, the election of representatives. "It would appear that some of the colonists at this period had distinguished themselves by loose principles and licentious language, and had treated some of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion with the ridicule and contempt of professed infidelity. To bring an odium upon this class of dissenters, and to discourage such licentious practices, a bill was brought into the new assembly for the suppression of blasphemy and profaneness; by which bill, whoever should be convicted of having spoken or written anything against the Trinity, or the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments, by the oath of two or more credible witnesses, was to be made incapable of being a member of assembly, or of holding any office of profit, civil or military, within the province; and whoever should be, convicted of such crimes a second time, was also to be disabled from suing or bringing any action of information in any court of law or equity, from being guardian to any, child, executor or administrator to any person; and without bail suffer imprisonment for three years. Which law, notwithstanding its fine gloss, savored not a little of an inquisition, and introduced a species of persecution ill calculated to answer the end for which it was intended" (Carroll, I.; also Hewatt, I.). Manifestly these acts did not bring peace to the province. "If Christian magistrates and ministers would forsake their Quarrels," says Governor Archdale in 1707, "for Poor Triffies and barren Opinions, and encourage each other to plant substantial practical Truths, they may now sail East or West, and meet with people to make a plentiful harvest on, both in a Temporal and Spiritual respect, which would redound more to their glory and Advantage than all the unchristian Quarrels and Practices to promote unfruitful Doctrines that are computed to have shed more Christian Blood than all the Heathenish Ten Persecutions. I hope the Reader will not think this mixture of Spirituals with Temporals improper and impertinent, since the original Design of the Patent was the promotion of both" (John Archdale, A Description of that Fertile and Pleasant Province o f Carolina. London, 1707) . Thus it happened that South Carolina received a considerable number of its early settlers from men who sought the prospect of securing religious liberty. Though not allowed to live in peace in Britain, they were from motives of policy encouraged to emigrate to the colonies, and were promised freedom and protection there—a promise which was not faithfully kept. They sometimes met with annoyance. Their friends protested earnestly against the intolerance. "Cannot dissenters," said they, "kill wolves and bears as well as churchmen, and also fell trees, and clear ground for plantations, and be as capable of defending them as churchmen?" The argument availed, so far at least as to allow their coming freely, though not to secure them the grants of land bestowed on the favorites of the royal family, or to obtain for them entire equality of privileges. Grahame, an English writer of high character, says: Strong symptoms of mutual jealousy and dislike began to manifest. themselves between the Dissenters and the Puritans on the one hand, who were the most numerous party in the colony, and the Cavaliers and Episcopalians on the other, who were favored by the proprietaries in the distribution of land and official power and emoluments; and although the firmness and prudence of Governor West prevented the discord of these parties from ripening into strife and confusion, it was beyond his power to eradicate the evil, or to restrain his own Council, which was composed of the leading Cavaliers, from treating the Puritans with insolence and contempt. The Cavalier party was reinforced by all those persons whom debauched habits and broken character and fortune had conducted to the province, not for a cure, but a shelter of their vices, and who regarded the austere manners of the Puritans with as much dislike as the Cavaliers entertained for their political principles. The adversaries of the Puritans, finding that it was in their power to shock and offend them by a social behavior opposed to their own, affected an extreme of gay and jovial license. Each party considered its manners as the test of its principles and emulously exaggerated the distinctive features of its appropriate demeanor; and an ostentatious competition ensued in which the ruling party gave countenance and encouragement to practices and habits very unfavorable to the prevalence of industry and the acquisition of wealth (Grahame, Colonial History o/ the United States, I. 389. London, 1827). "If the complaint of the dissenters that Episcopacy," says a North Carolina historian, "had waited till the colony had increased in wealth and numbers, and there had come much of the spirit of proselytism and dictation, as the natural and favored church (Howe, History of the Presbyterian Church, 172), was not altogether without foundation, it must, on the other hand, be remembered that the founder of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina was but providentially cast upon the shores of the province, his coming having been neither of his own will nor in the instance of the members of his church. So, too, the Baptist minister had come as an exile driven from New England, seeking the religious indulgence promised in the Royal charter to those who could not conform to the church and thereby established. It remains, however, to the honor of the dissenters in the province, that, though themselves taxed to support the established church, they maintained their own churches by voluntary offerings in addition to the tax for religious purposes imposed by the government" (McCrady). The years 1682 and 1683 were marked by considerable immigration. One body came from Ireland under Ferguson, another from Scotland, which was groaning under the barbarous administration of Lord Lauderdale. "But," says Mr. Grahame, "the most valuable addition to its population, which the colony now received, was supplied by the immigration of a considerable number of pious and respectable Dissenters from Somersetshire in England. This band of emigrants was led by Humphrey Blake, the brother and kin of the renowned Admiral Blake.…Humphrey Blake was a worthy, conscientious and liberal man; and willingly devoted his fortune to facilitate the retirement of a number of Dissenters, with whom he was connected, from the persecutions they endured in England, and the greater calamities they apprehended from the probable accession of the Duke of York to the throne" (Grahame, I.). Among this number of "substantial persons," as they were called by Hewatt (History of South Carolina and Georgia, I. 140. London, 1779), was also Joseph Blake, the nephew of the Admiral, and the friend and trustee of Lord Berkeley, one of the Lord’s Proprietors. His wife, Lady Blake, and her mother, Lady Axtell, were valuable accessions to the infant Baptist church, and it is likely that Screven was a neighbor of theirs in England. Joseph Blake himself, if not a communicant, at least entertained the sentiments of the Baptists and favored their cause. He was twice subsequently Governor of the province; and his sister was the wife of Governor Morton, and the mother of Joseph Morton, who was a friend of liberty and voted against the establishment of the Church of England as the religion of the State (Hewatt, I.). Joseph Blake, together with Paul Grimball, a Baptist, and five other persons, was a committee for revising the "Fundamental Constitutions" prepared by John Locke. It was during his second administration as Governor that the French Huguenot refugees, who had come in large numbers, in consequence of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685, and the renewal of Roman Catholic persecution, received equal rights with those born of English parents. The conflict upon the establishment of the Episcopal Church culminated in 1704, in the enactment of two laws. By one of these the dissenters were deprived of all civil rights; and the other was the Court of High Commission to try all ecclesiastical causes, and to enforce religious conformity in South Carolina. An appeal was made to Queen Anne and the House of Lords praying for a repeal of the obnoxious laws, and the punishment of the authors of them, affirming that "the law for forcing conformity to the Church of England in Carolina is an encouragement to atheism and irreligion, destructive to trade, and tends to ruin and depopulate the province." Whereupon the Queen issued an order declaring the laws null and void. From that period (1706) the dissenters had not the equality they had been led to expect, but simple toleration. In 1707 an act was passed for the establishment of religious worship according to the forms of the Church of England, the province was divided into ten parishes, and provision was made for building a church in each parish and for the endowment of its minister (Basil Manly, History of the First Baptist Church of Charleston). In the year 1700 the Baptists of Charleston entered their new house of worship. At the same time they adopted their creed from that of the London creed ,of 1689. The introduction is as follows: We, the Ministers and Messengers of, and concerned for, upwards of one hundred baptized congregations in England and Wales (denying Arminianism) being met together in London from the third of the seventh month till the eleventh of the same 1889, to consider some things that might be for the glory of God, and the good of these Congregations, have thought meet (for the satisfaction of all other Christians that differ from us on the point of baptism) to recommend to their perusal the Confession of our Faith; printed for and sold by John Marshall, at the Bible in Grace Church Street. Which Confession we own, as containing the doctrine of our faith and practice; and. do desire that the members of our churches respectively do furnish themselves therewith. For half a century after the founding of the church in Charleston, that body stood alone, so far as any historic facts have been revealed in the South Colony. Their influence was felt. A letter has come to light which casts information on the situation. It is as follows, from William Orr, St. Paul’s Parish, September 30, 1742: If the Society thought, proper to send me some few of Mr. Wall’s abridgement of the History of Infant Baptism and the best answer to Barclay’s Apology (if cheap and to be had on easy terms) to be distributed among the people, I believe they might be of great use. For as this country was at first settled in a great measure by Baptists and Quakers, so then descendants (tho’ they come to church now and then) yet they still retain, and are more or less under the influence of their Father’s Principles (Colonial Records of North Carolina, IV. 609). There were in 1770, in all the province in addition to Charleston, but six other Baptist churches: Ashley River, Welsh Neck, Euhaw, Pipe Creek, Coosawatchie and Fairforest. By 1790 there were 66 churches with 46 ordained and 27 licensed preachers. This was principally owing to the labors of the New Light and Separate preachers from New England. For sixty years Euhaw was a branch of the Charleston church. It was loath to give up this connection but in May, 1746, it was organized into an independent body. The first pastor was Francis Pelot, a man of ample fortune. He was a native of Switzerland, at first a Pedobaptist, but after he came to South Carolina he embraced Baptist principles. He became a distinguished man among South Carolina Baptists. "So far back as the year 1685," says Thomas Curtis in a fine resume of the Baptists in Charleston, "William Screven, an ancestor of the respectable family of that name connected with the Baptist church in Liberty county., Georgia, driven from England by persecution, became the first pastor of the Charleston Church. Before the year 1700, he laid the foundation of the Old Church, on the site which the place of worship of the First Baptist Church now occupies. At this period, there was but one clergyman of the Church of England, and one of the established Church of Scotland, officiating in the city. To secure purity of doctrine, the Church subscribed what was called the Century Confession of the English Baptists—an outline of faith and practice which has expressed the principles of our body to the present day. Good William Screvin’s injunction to the people was, that they should remain ‘orthodox in the faith, and of blameless life’ (Be this perpetually the motto of both churches). Through six generations this body has freely chosen its own pastors; generally, and with increased liberality, maintained them, and voluntarily assumed all its pecuniary burdens. It has yielded a Botsford and a Stillman of Boston to other Churches, and many more than its own number of pastors to the State. It has once asserted a right to remove a minister for heresy, and a full and independent power always to discipline its own members. Blessings on the parent stock (we must pray in parting)-that has produced such, and so much fruit! It has survived, you see, the government and monarchy of England here; the war of the Revolution, by which it severely, for a time, suffered; all the wars of party spirit in Church and State, and the establishment of several more modern churches. Surely, its helper has been God. But without illiberality to other Church organizations, I would observe, here has been a long trial of the Voluntary System in religion!" (The Baptist Memorial and Christian Chronicle, 61, 62. February, 1844.) Books for further reference: Joshua Millet, History of the Baptists in Maine. H. A. Tupper, Two Centuries of the First Baptist Church of South Carolina, 1883-1888. Baltimore, 1889. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 38: 01.2.01.07. NEW YORK, DELAWARE, CONNECTICUT AND VERMONT ======================================================================== Chapter 7 - The Baptists in New York, Delaware, Connecticut and Vermont. The Baptists in New York—Dutch Settlers—The Reformed Church—The Baptists—Conventicles Suppressed—Lady Moody—Baptists in Flushing—Francis Doughty—Laws—Fines—Valentine Wightman—The Various Sects—Governor Andros—Governor Hunter—First Baptist Church, New York—Nicholas Eyers—Fines—The Baptists in Central New York—Delaware—The Settlement of the State—The Welsh Tract Church—Elijah Baker and Philip Hughes—The Sounds Baptist Church—Connecticut—The Severity of the Laws—Early Baptists—The Slow Progress—Vermont—The Rise of the Baptists. The Dutch, who first settled New York, set up the Reformed Religion, according to the Acts of the Synod of Dort, and the colonial clergy were commissioned by the Classis of Amsterdam. No formal constitutional restriction was enacted until 1640, when the East India Company, which then controlled the colony, decreed that "no other religion shall be publicly admitted," "except the Reformed Church" (Documents of Colonial History of New York, I. 123). In a description of the New Netherlands, in 1644, by Father Isaac Jogues, a Jesuit missionary, is found the following statement: No religion is publicly exercised but the Calvinist, and orders are to admit none but Calvinists, but this is not observed, besides Calvinists in the Colony are Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, here called Menestes, c. (Documentary History of New York, IV. 22. Albany, 1851). There were, therefore, Baptists in New York preceding 1644; but their location is not indicated. A grant of worship had been given the town of Flushing for sectaries. It was soon discovered that the Lutherans and other dissenters were using these privileges, and the authorities became alarmed. "In the meantime we already have the snake in our bosom." These persons were required to abstain from all "church services or holding any meetings." On February 1, 1656, the authorities decreed that all "conventicles and meetings" held in the province, "whether public or private," should be "absolutely and expressly forbidden"; and that "only the Reformed Divine service, as this is observed and enforced according to the Synod of Dortrecht," should be held, Under the penalty of one hundred pounds Flemish, to be forfeited by all those who, being unqualified, take upon themselves, either on Sundays or other days, any office, whether of preacher, reader or singer, in such meetings differing from the customary and legal assemblies, and twenty-five like pounds to be forfeited by every one, whether man or woman, married or unmarried, who is found at such meetings. A noted woman called Lady Moody bought a plantation near Lynn, Massachusetts. "She soon embraced Baptist principles, and suffered therefor. And divers of those at Aquidneck turned professed Anabaptists" (Backus, I.) . She was on this account compelled to leave Lynn. For a period she was in New Haven where she is reported to have brought over to her views Mrs. Eaton, the wife of the governor of the province and the daughter of an English bishop. This brought much distress to the Congregational pastor. She finally settled at Gravesend, near New Amsterdam. She took out, December 19, 1645, a patent of land, which, among other things, guaranteed "the free libertie of conscience according to the custom of Holland, without molestation or disturbance from any magistrate or magistrates, or any other ecclesiastical minister that may pretend jurisdiction over them." Without regard to her patent the authorities were not always amicable. Many others of like sentiments gathered around her, "with liberty to constitute themselves a body politic as freedmen of the Province and town of Gravesend." James W. Gerard says: "The settlers at Gravesend seem to have been generally affected with Anabaptist views, and to have had no settled church" (Gerard, Discourse Before the New York Historical Society, May, 1880, 28). There were likewise Baptists in Flushing where some toleration had been granted. George Gardyner, in his description of America, remarks that the Northeast part of Long Island is inhabited by "some English, who have been thrust from New England for their judgment. The most of them holding the Christian Tenet of confession before baptism" (Felt, II.). The following is the old record: The four villages on Long Island viz.: Gravesend, Middleburg, Vlissingen Meemstede were established by the English. Those of Gravesend are reported Menonists; yea, they, for the most part, reject Infant Baptism, the Sabbath, the office of Preacher, and the Teachers of God’s word, saying that through these have come all sorts of contention into the world. Whenever they meet together the one or the other reads something for them. At Flushing they heretofore had a Presbyterian Preacher who conformed to our church, but many of them became endowed with divers opinions and it was with them quot homines tot sententia. They absented themselves from preaching, nor would they pay the Preacher his promised stipend. The said preacher was obliged to leave the place to repair to the English Virginias" (Documentary History of New York, III.). Clearly the preacher referred to above was Francis Doughty, who "had fled from troubles in England, and found that he got out of the frying pan into the fire." In Massachusetts he denied "baptism to infants." He was the first pastor in Flushing, but in 1656 he went to Virginia. "He was unquestionably the first religious teacher in Flushing, and had adopted Baptist views on baptism" (Prime, History of Long Island; Mandeville, Flushing Past and Present). The documentary narrative continues: Last year a fomenter of error came here. He was a cobbler from Rhode Island in New England stated that he was commissioned by Christ. He began to preach at Flushing and then went with the people into the river and dipped them. This becoming known here, the Fiscaal proceeded thither and brought him along. He was banished from the province. This cobbler was none other than William Wickenden, the pastor of the church in Providence. He was one of the foremost men in Rhode Island, and had served the State in various important positions. In 1656 he visited Flushing, dipped his converts in the river and administered the Lord’s Supper. O’Callagan, under date of November 9, 1656, gives an account of these occurrences. "The Baptists at Flushing," says he, "were the next to feel the wrath of the law. William Hallett, sheriff of the place, ‘had dared to collect conventicles in his house, and to permit one William Wickendam (Wickenden) to explain and comment on God’s Holy Word, and to administer sacraments, though not calling thereto by any civil or clerical authority.’ He had, moreover, assisted at such meetings and afterward, ‘accepted from said Wickendam’s hands the bread in the form and manner of the Lord’s Supper as usually celebrated.’ For this violation of the statute Hallett was removed from office and fined fifty pounds, and failing to pay he was to be banished" (O’Callagan, Laws and Ordinances o f the New Netherlands, 1634-1678; Broadhead, History of the State of New York). When the Council was informed that he was a very poor man, "with a wife and many children, by profession a cobbler, which trade he neglects, so that it will be impossible to collect anything from him," the costs of the fines were remitted. He was condemned November 11, "to immediate banishment, under condition if ever he be seen again in the province of New Netherland he shall be arrested and kept in confinement till the fine and costs are paid in full" (Albany Records, VIII.). These Baptists, in 1653, elected officers. The record is: "The English do not only enjoy the right of nominating their own magistrates, but some of them usurp the election and appointments of such magistrates, as they please, without regard to their religion. Some, especially the people of Gravesend, elect libertines and Anabaptists, which is decidedly against the laws of the Netherlands" (Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, 1. 318. Albany, 1901). The laws were more severe as time went on. The authorities September 21, 1662, say that because they Find by experience that their hitherto issued proclamations and edicts against conventicles and prohibited assemblies are not observed and obeyed as they ought, therefore, by these presents, they are not only renewed but enlarged in manner following. Like as they have done heretofore, so they prohibit and interdict as yet, that besides the Reformed worship and service no conventicles and meetings shall be kept in this province, whether it be in homes, barns, ships, barks, nor in the woods nor fields, upon forfeiture of fifty guldens for the first time, for every person, whether man or woman or child that shall have been present at such prohibited meetings, and twice as much for every person, whether it be man or woman or child, that has exhorted or talked in such prohibited meetings, or shall have lent his house, barn, or any place to that purpose; for ye second time twice as much, for the third time four times as much, and arbitrary punishment besides (O’Callagan, Laws and Ordinances of the New Netherlands, 1638-1670). From time to time in the records there were various notices of the Baptists and others. Governor Dongan reported, in 1684, as follows: Here be not many of the Church of England; few Roman Catholicks; abundance of Quakers preachers men and women especially; singing Quakers; Ranting Quakers; Sabbatarians; Some Anabaptists; some Independents; some Jews; in short all sorts of opinions there are some, and the most part, of none at all (Ecclesiastical Records, II. 880). Governor Andros had made inquiries, in 1678, in regard to New York. The following answer was given in regard to the Baptists There are religions of all sorts, one Church of England, several Presbyterians and Independents, Quakers and Anabaptists, of several sects, some Jews, but Presbyterians and Independents most numerous and substantial (Ecclesiastical Records of New York, 1. 709). The friends of Governor Hunter, in 1717, addressed the Bishop of London, as follows: My Lord, we believe it is not unknown to your Lordship, in what manner this Province is on all sides surrounded by New England, Connecticut, Road Island, and other places, all which are chiefly inhabited by professed Dissenters from the Church of England; a set of men whose forefathers had a high hand in that wicked rebellion which at the same time destroyed the Church and Monarchy of England; and that they still retain the very same principles; and profess the many various religions, of their Ancestors; the Presbyterian, the Anabaptist, the Independent and the Quaker have each a large lot in this Continent, and such seems to be the combination among them, (however they may differ in other matters), that they doe not willingly suffer any other plants to take root here. My Lord, these Sectarys have spread themselves so widely, and grown so numerous in North America, and are so firmly seated, that wee of the Communion of the established church seem strangers in the land, and as if our worship were of such a foreign growth that it alone wanted the support of the royal hand. Neither my Lord is this Province begirt only with Colonies and Commonwealths of those men, but they grow up and thrive in the very midst of Her (Colonial Records of New York, III. 2015). The Dutch ministers of New York, August 15, 1728, wrote to the Classis of Amsterdam, as follows: Your Rev. Body must not conceive of us in any other light, as living among all sorts of errorists, as Independents, Puritans, Anabaptists, the New-born, Saturday folks, yea, as living among some of the most dreadful heretics, etc. (Ecclesiastical Records, IV. 2429). Valentine Wightman, of Groton, Connecticut, began to hold meetings in Broad Street, New York, in 1711. He preached in the house of Nicholas Eyers. Under his ministry many became serious and, in 1714, twelve persons were baptized. Wightman baptized, for fear of the mob, five women at night, and seven men stood ready to be baptized. The following text dropped into Mr. Eyers’ mind: "No man doeth anything in secret, when he himself seeketh to be known openly." Accordingly he and his brethren put off their design till morning, when Eyers waited on the governor (Burnet)-told the case, and solicited protection, which the governor promised, and was as good as his word, for he and many of the gentry came to the water side, and the rite was performed in peace. The governor, as he stood by, was heard to say, "This was the ancient way of baptizing, and in my opinion much preferable to the practice of modern times" (Benedict, 541; John Dowling, Sketches of New York Baptists, The Baptist Memorial, 112, 113. 1849). This church was said to have been Arminian in sentiment. Some of its members embraced Calvinistic doctrines, but the church continued only about eight years. The remnant became a part or arm of the Scotch Plains, New Jersey, church. In 1762 it became independent and settled John Gano as pastor. The severity of the laws against the Baptists; the difficulties in which their houses of worship were licensed; the annoyances incident to their meetings; and the general difficulties attending their surroundings are all well illustrated by the documents here presented. These documents show the red tape and almost impossible legal barriers thrown around them. The following papers are taken from the Documentary History of New York: BAPTISTS To His Excellency William Burnet Esquire, Capt Generall Governor in chief of the province of New York New Jersey and the Territories depending on them in America and Vice-Admirall of the same. The humble petition of Nicholas Eyers brewer a baptist teacher in the City of New York. Sheweth unto Yor Excellency that on the teusday of ffebry 1715 At a General quarter sessions at the peace held at the city of New York the hired house of Yor peticioner acituate in the broad street of this City between the house of John Michel Eyers and Mr. John Spratt was registred for an anabaptist meeting house with this City. That the peticioner has ti certifyed under the hands of sixteen inhabitants of good faith and credit that he has been a public preacher to a baptist congregaeon within this City for four years and some of them for less. That (he) has it certified by the Honble Rip Van Dam, Esqr., one of his Majestyes Council for the province of New York to have hired a house in this City from him January first 1720 only to be a public meeting house for the Baptists, which he still keeps and as he has obtained from the Mayor and Recorder of this City an ample Certificate of his good behaviour and innocent conversacon. He therefore publicly prays May it please yor Excellency To grant and permitt this peticoner to Execute ministeriall function of a minister within this City to a baptist congregacon and to give him proteccon therein according to His Majesty’s gracious indulgence extended towards the protestants dissenting from the established church he being willing to comply with all what is required by the Act of toleracon from dissenters of that perswasion in great Britain being owned for a reverend brother by other baptist teachers And as in duty bound the peticoner shall ever pray, c. Nicholas Eyers. Those may Certify all whom it may Concern that Nicholas Eyers of this City of New York Brewer hired a House of me January ye 1st 1720 only to be a publick Meeting Place of the Baptists therein to Worship Almighty God and the sd Nicholas Eyres was their Preacher. In testimony whereof I have hereunto my Hand January 19, 1721 In the Eighth Year of his Majesties Reign King George, c. Rip Van Dam. City of New York. These are to certify unto all whom it shall come or may concern that Nicholas Eyers brewer an inhabitant of the City of New York during all of the time of his residence in said City hath behaved himself well as becometh a good subject And that to the best of our Knowledge and understanding he is blameless and free from any notorious and publick slander and vice has gained himself the good name and reputation of his neighbors of being a sober just and honest man And is said to be an anabaptist as to his profession in religion In testimony whereof We the Mayor, Recorder Aldermen of the City of New York whose names are hereunto subscribed have signed to these presents this thirteenth day of January in the eighth year of the reign of Our Sovereign Lord George by the grace of God of Great Britain ffrance and Ireland Defender of the faith c annoq Domini 1721-2. R. Walter. Davis Jamison. Wm Burnet c. To all whom these presents shall come or may concern WHEREAS Mr. Nich. Eyres Brewer and Inhabitant of ye City of New York pretending to be at present a Teacher or preacher of a Congregation of Anabaptists wch has had its beginning about five Years ago within this City and has so continued hitherto, and yt at quarter sessions of the Peace their House or Place of Meeting within this City has been Registered having a Certificate of his past good behaviour I have thought fit to grant unto said Nicholas Eyres that he may enjoy the Privilege, benefits and advantages which dissenting Ministers may enjoy in great Britain by .virtue of a Statute made and Enacted at Westminster Ent an Act for Exempting their maties Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penaltys of Certain Laws in the first Year of King Wm and Queen Mary Provided always that he shall comply with all the Rules and orders or directions mentioned Expressed in the same statute with Regard to Anabaptists or such Dissenting Protestants who scruples the Baptizing Infants as far as can be and so long as he shall continue of the good behaviour towards (our) Lord the King and his Lege People in Witness c dat ye 23d of January 1721-2. W. Burnet. By his Excellencys Command Is: Bodin D : Sec’ry. (Ecclesiastical Records of New York, III. 2187-2189). The First Baptist Church of New York was organized June 10, 1762. ,The year previous sixteen Baptists emigrated from England and, not securing religious liberty in Massachusetts, purchased Block Island and settled there. Through John Clarke and Roger Williams, Block Island enjoyed liberty through the charter of Rhode Island. The king granted "that no person within the said colony at any time hereafter shall be in any way molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any difference in opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of the said colony." A Baptist church was formed in Warwick, in 1776, on the west side of the Hudson, fifty-four miles north of New York City, by the labors of James Benedict, of Ridgefield, Connecticut, who continued pastor till his death. From this church soon after several others were formed. Still further north on the east side of the river, in Dutchess county, there were Baptist churches at an earlier date than this. In Fishkill there was a church previous to 1745, which had a pastor by the name of Holstead. William Marsh, of New Jersey, in 1755, gathered a church in the township of Dover. He was succeeded by Samuel Waldo, who served the churches as pastor for thirty-five years. Simon Dakin, who had been a Newlight preacher, gathered a church in the northeast. On the eastern borders of the State still further north many churches were organized (The Christian Review, June, 1839. IV. 217). The Baptists in Central New York did not begin until 1773. The first church organized was Butternuts, out of which finally grew the Ostego Association. The old historian gives the following interesting story of the beginning of this church: In the month of June, A. D. 1773, Ebenezer Knop and Increase Thurstin, removed with their families and settled on the Butternut Creek about fourteen miles from its mouth where it empties into the Undella river, about thirty miles southeast from the head of Susquehannah river. At the time there was no English settlement to the westward of them nearer than Niagara in the province of Upper Canada, which is upwards of two hundred miles distance, the immediate space was filled with several tribes of the aborigines nor any inhabitant with sixteen miles. A few more persons came on the same summer, and made some improvements, but in the winter they returned (except Benjamin Lull, jun., who had married Elizabeth the daughter of Ebenezer Knop and lived in the family with him) and these two families lived alone through the winter. Ebenezer Knop and his wife were members of the Baptist church in Warwick under the care of Rev. James Benedict. These persons notwithstanding their local situation, and their distance from civilized people, were not unmindful of the duties of religion; but upon their arrival in this inhospitable wild they set up a religious meeting, which was held in. the house of Ebenezer Knop, in which they attended to singing and praying (A. Hosmer and J. Lawton, A View of the Rise and Increase of the Churches Composing the Ostego Association, Whitestown, 1800, The Historical Magazine, June, 1871. Second Series, IX, 391). In 1773 there were in New York twelve Baptist ministers who had congregations, some of them pretty large, and some but small. There were four vacant congregations, but no one of them very large (A Brief View of the State of Religious Liberty in the Colony of New York. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Second Series, V. 141. Boston, 1814). In 1790 there were thirty-four Baptist churches in the State. It was early in the eighteenth century that William Penn granted to David Evans and William Davis thirty thousand acres of land, to be divided and deeded to settlers from South Wales, some of whom had at that time settled in Radnor township, Chester county, Pennsylvania. This grant ever afterwards was known as "The Welsh Tract." It is located partly in Pecadur Hundred, New Castle county, Delaware, and partly in Cecil county, Maryland. Prominent among the original settlers upon the Welsh Tract were the founders of the Baptist meeting, who, with Thomas Griffith as their first minister, came from Pembroke and Carmarthenshire, South Wales, in 1701, and soon after erected a log meeting house in which they worshiped until the present structure was built in 1746. This was the third Baptist meeting house founded in America. The first house occupied the same location as the present one. The house constructed in 1746 is built of brick, and is said to contain some of the material used in the first building. The bricks were brought from England, and transported from New Castle, where they were landed in panniers upon mules. It is reported as still in a good state of preservation, regular services are held there, with a stated minister. The following, "Our Beginnings as a Church," is taken from the old church records: In the year 1701 some of us (who were members of the church of Jesus Christ in the countys of Pembroke and Carmathen, South Wales, in Great Britain, professing believers baptism; laying-on-of-hands; elections; and final perseverance in grace) were moved and encouraged in our own minds to come to these parts, viz.: Pennsylvania. and after obtaining leave of the churches it seemed good to the Lord and to us, That we should be formed into a church order, as we were a sufficient number; and as one of us was a minister: that was accomplished and, withal letters commendatory were given us, that if we should meet with any congregations of christian people, who held the same faith with us, we might be received by them as brethren in Christ. Our number was sixteen; and, after bidding farewell to our brethren in Wales, we sailed from Milford-haven in the month of June, the year above mentioned, in a ship named James and Mary; and landed in Philadelphia the eighth of September following. After landing, we were received in a loving manner (on account of the gospel) by the congregations meeting in Philadelphia and Pennepek who held the same faith with us (excepting the ordinance of laying on of bands on every particular member) with whom we wished much to hold communion at the Lord’s Table; but we could not be in fellowship with them in the Lord’s Supper; because they bore not testimony to God touching the fore mentioned ordinance. There were some among them who believed in the ordinance; but it was neither preached up, nor practiced in that church, for which cause we kept separate from them for some years. We had several meetings on this account, but could not come to any agreement; yet were in union with them (except only in the Lord’s Supper, and some particulars relative to a church). After our arrival we lived much scattered for about a year and a half, yet kept up weekly and monthly meetings among our selves; during which time it pleased God to add to our number about twenty members, in which time we and many other Welsh people purchased a tract of land in New Castle county, on Delaware, which was called Welshtract; in the year 1703 we began to get our living out of it, and to set our meeting in order, and build a place of worship which was commonly known by the name of the Baptist meeting house by the Ironhill. In the year 1706 we, and the congregation (meeting in Philadelphia and Pennepek) appointed a meeting to come together once more, in order to try at union in the good ways of the Lord setting up our prayers and supplications on this great occasion and purposing to do as the Lord would give us light. The following considerations induced us to come to the above appointment: (1) Because they and we were so desirous of union in the privileges of the gospel. (2) Because we were not like to gain them by keeping asunder from them. (3) Because they without were taking occasion to mock because of so much variance among Baptists. (4) Because some of our members were far from us, and near them; and some of theirs near us and far from them; and that these members might sit down in the meetings next to them. (5) Because, as we all came to the yearly meetings, we might have a general union at the Lord’s table. In the said meeting (after seeking God by prayers and supplication) we came to the following conclusion, viz.: That they with us and we with them might hold transient or occasional communion; but that we might not be obliged to receive into membership any that were not under laying on of hands. This agreement was set down in writing as follows: At the house of Richard Miles in Radnor, Chester County, and province of Pennsylvania July 22, 1706. The agreement of many persons met together from the congregation under the care of brother Thomas Griffith, and others, from the congregation (late under the care of our brother John Watts meeting at Pennepek, both congregations holding believer’s baptism) to converse together on the subject of union and brotherly love, and occasional communion. After making our supplication to God for a blessing, we came to the following resolutions, viz.: For as much as we are of the same faith and judgment in all things (as far as we understand one another, except in relation to the ordinance of laying on of hands), we have agreed in the following particulars: (1) With regard to them who believe in the ordinance of laying on of hands on every believer. That they are to enjoy all liberty, within, the bounds of brotherly love, to preach on the subject, and to practice according to their belief. (2) And in regard to them who do not think it duty to practice the ordinance, that they be left to their liberty. (3) And further it was agreed, That neither of the parties were to make opposition in any mixed assembly, but that the members of either church might enjoy occasional communion one with the other (Records of the Welsh Tract Meeting Pencadur Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware, 1701-1828, 3-10. Historical and Biographical Papers, IV. Wilmington, 1904). The gospel was preached in this meeting in Welsh until 1800; and for several years the records were kept in the Welsh language. There came from Virginia into Delaware, at the close of 1778, Elijah Baker, and in the spring of 1779 he was followed by Philip Hughes of the same State. They labored together as evangelists for about twelve months, preaching at Broad Creek, Gravelly Branch, and other places. Many converts "were baptized on profession of faith and repentance." They prepared material and resolved to build churches. At first they were known as Separate Baptists, but shortly afterwards the distinction was dropped. They were not only well received but were assisted in their efforts, by ministers and laymen, in organizing churches and ordaining ministers. These men were instrumental in founding twenty-two churches in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, and spent much time in "visiting them, as fathers do their children." The Salisbury Association was organized by them. It takes its name from a town in Maryland near the Delaware line, where this association was formed. Baker died at the home of Dr. Robert Lemon, who was for years the moderator of this association. He testified to his exalted character, the faithfulness and power of his preaching, and his triumph in the hour of his death, which seemed to be a translation rather than a painful dissolution. Morgan Edwards gave an interesting account of how Baker came to leave Virginia, where he was born in 1742, and was baptized by Samuel Harris, in 1769. He suffered much for the cause of the truth. He came into Delaware upon "an invitation from Thomas Batston, Esq., who had heard him preach through the grates in Accomack jail about the year 1777. The rude Virginians, in order to get rid of him, put him on board a privateer, where he suffered much abuse, but he continued to sing, and pray, and exhort notwithstanding, till the crew was tired, and then let him alone, saying, ‘He is not worth a curse’; but the privateer being detained in the harbor by contrary wind, the crew suspected the cause was that preaching fellow, and therefore put him on board another vessel; but the wind continued contrary, that vessel began to be of the same mind with the privateer, and therefore shifted him to a third, and the third put him ashore. When Jonah found himself on dry land he complied with Squire Batston’s invitation." And be it said to the credit of Delaware that she had no prison, like Virginia, or whipping post, like Massachusetts, for Baptists, who were left undisturbed in their views and practices. The account which Edwards gives of his co-laborer is not without interest: Rev. Philip Hughes shares in the praise of Mr. Baker, as they were fellow laborers in most of the good that was done in this and other States. He was born in Colver county, November 28, 1750, bred a Churchman, avowed his present sentiments, August 10, 1773, when he was baptized by Rev. David Thompson, called to the ministry in Rowanty church, was ordained at an Association held in Virginia, August 13, 1978. He published a volume of hymns in 1782, many of which are of his own composing; also an answer to a Virginia clergyman on the subject of baptism in 1784. He was also obliged twice to appear on the stage to dispute on the subject—once in Fouling Creek in Maryland in 1782. His antagonist was a Methodist preacher of the name of Willis. Victory was announced by both parties, but facts varied much, for after the dispute three class leaders and many others were baptized by Mr. Hughes. The other dispute was held near the mouth of the Potomac, in Virginia, in the year 1785. Mr. Hughes’ challenger was one Coles, another Methodist preacher. Here the victory was decisive, for twenty-two of the audience were baptized the next day, and soon after as many more by Rev. Lewis Lunsford (Morgan Edwards, Materials for a Baptist History of Delaware, 247, 248. Cook, The Early and Later Delaware Baptists, 22-24. Philadelphia, 1880). The Sounds Baptist Church was the second church organized in Delaware, and was one of the constituent churches of the Salisbury Association. It was formed August 12, 1779, with twenty-one members. During the first thirteen years six preachers came from this body (Scharf, History of Delaware, II. 1342. Philadelphia, 1888) . The laws of Connecticut were rigid against all sectaries. The following law was enacted by the General Court, in October, 1656: That no town within this jurisdiction shall entertain any Quakers, Ranters, Adamites, or such like notorious heretics, nor suffer them to continue in them above the space of 14 days, upon the penalty of five pounds. In 1658, the Court of New Haven made a similar law increasing the penalties and prohibiting all conversation of the common people with any heretics (Quakers, Baptists, etc.) and of all persons giving them any entertainment upon penalty of five pounds (Trumbull, History of Connecticut, I. 299, 300). The following is the enactment of May, 1723: And it is further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that whatsoever person not being a lawfully allowed (Congregational) minister of the gospel shall presume to profane the holy sacraments by administering them to any person or persons whatsoever, and being thereof convicted before the County Court, in such County where such an offence shall be committed, shall incur the penalty of ten pounds for every such an offence, and suffer corporeal punishment by whipping, not exceeding thirty stripes for each offence (Records of the State of Connecticut, V. May, 1723. Trumbull, II. 38) . In December, 1740, John Merriman, pastor of the Baptist church at Wallingford, invited Rev. Philemon Robbins, pastor of the Congregational Church in Bradford, to preach for him. Mr. Robbins accepted the invitation and preached to the Baptist Church in Willingford, January 6, 1741; for this offense, the New Haven Congregational Association laid Mr. Robbins under censure, and finally deposed him from the ministry. A majority of the church in Bradford decided with the pastor rather than with the New Haven Association, renounced the Saybrook and adopted the Cambridge platform; for this act the New Haven Association held the Bradford church under censure till 1748 (Trumbull, II.). In 1741, Rev. Mr. Humphreys, of Derby, a Congregational minister, preached to a Baptist church, and on that account was soon after deprived of a seat in the New Haven Association (Trumbull, II.). In February, 1744, fourteen persons were arrested in Sayville for holding a Baptist meeting; the charge brought against them was, "for holding meeting contrary to law, on God’s holy Sabbath day." They were arraigned, tried, fined, and driven on foot, through a deep mud, to New London jail, a distance of twenty-five miles, where they were thrust into prison, without food, fire, or beds, and kept in dreadful sufferings for several weeks, and probably would have perished had not some Baptist brethren, residing in New London, Great Neck, carried them provisions. One of the imprisoned was an infant, who afterwards became the wife of Mr. Stephen Webb, of Chester. Another was an unconverted man by the name of Job Buckley; the prayers and Christian patience with which these Christians bore their sufferings in jail were blessed to his conversion; when they were released they formed a church in Sayville, placed his name first on the list of constituent members (Trumbull, II.). The earliest operations of the Baptists in Connecticut were commenced by a small colony from Rhode Island, in the year 1705. It was in New London county, in the southeast part of the State. This part of the State was a distinguished resort for the advocates of the standing order. A great excitement was raised on account of the baptisms, and the Legislature was asked to suppress the innovations. At this time no Baptist church was formed, and the believers under this strong opposition united with a church in Rhode Island. Here, however, at a later date, Baptist churches multiplied and sent out branches in various directions; and here were revivals great and powerful. The first church organized in the colony was planted at Groton in 1705, by Valentine Wightman. The second was organized at Waterford, then a part of New London, about the year 1710. The third was gathered at Wallingford, in 1735, with Timothy Waters as pastor, who was succeeded by John Merriman. Three were established in 1743: one in Stonington, one in Lyne, and one in Clochester. A seventh was gathered at Saybrook in 1744. Their progress at first was extremely slow, and much embarrassed; they had to work their way against the deep-rooted prejudices of a people who had always been taught that the Baptists were the descendants of the mad men of Münster; that they propagated errors of a pestilential and dangerous kind; that they were aiming to subvert all the established forms of religion in the land, and by their disorganizing and heretical principles to ruin all the Pedobaptist churches in the land; and for the people to hear them preach, or for the magistrates to permit them to meet, was an enormous crime. These were only shadowy obstacles compared with the severity of the laws with which the Connecticut rulers had fenced their ecclesiastical establishment. In the New Light stir, the foundations of this establishment were sensibly shaken; many ministers opposed this extraordinary revival as the fruit of fanaticism and the devil; divisions ensued; Baptist principles almost everywhere prevailed; separate meetings were set up in towns and parishes; and many of the New Lights became Baptists. By 1789, there were in the State about thirty Baptist churches, and twenty ministers. From that date the denomination increased much more rapidly than it had formerly; so that in 1795 the number of churches amounted to sixty, the ministers about forty, and the communicants a little over three thousand five hundred. Baptist churches were found in almost every township in the State. In 1842 there were over one hundred churches and sixteen thousand members. "The first Baptist church in Vermont was organized at Shaftsbury in the latter part of August, 1768, at a time when the inhabitants were greatly excited over the contentions between New Hampshire. and New York, both claiming jurisdiction over the New Hampshire Grants. These grants had suddenly risen in importance, and a very strong current of immigration had set toward them for eight years previous. "The earliest records of this pioneer church have been carefully preserved, and, in quaint language, tell the story of its origin, and incidentally of the other Shaftsbury churches. They reveal, too, somewhat clearly the character of the founders of this early church, and the course of their church life. The first entry in the old church records is as follows: Shaftsbury in the year, 1768. 1ly. A number of Christians, that had before Covenanted to watch over one another for Good, had much labour about the Doctrins of Christ and the form of his house. Some of them hold that the Doctrin of laying on of hands is to be Imposed on Common believers, others hold not. Finally a Number held That laying on of hands Should not hinder Our building together in Church State, Not holding it as a Term of Communion. 2ly. we had a dispute about Telling Experiences. Finally we agreed that Telling of Experiences of a work of Grace upon the heart of those who offer themselves to the Church, is in the general, Essential Steps toward admitting members Into the Church. August ye latter End a number of Christians being met Together after labor upon points forementioned we proceeded into the Following order: Cyprian Downer, John Millington, Samuel Waters, Icabod West, Reuben Ellis, Thomas Matteson, Lydia Barr, Join together in a most Solemn Covenant as a Church of Christ to watch over one another in the fear of and to walk in all the Laws and ordinances of the Lord as members of Christ’s church, depending upon God for Grace. "That the church prospered in its earlier years is evident from the fact that, in August, 1774, they wrote that they had thirty-nine members, twenty of whom were men. Thomas Mattison, one of the original members, was one of the first settlers in the town, and its first town clerk, a position which he held for more than forty years. "For twelve years the first church in Vermont was without a pastor. There were two members, with recognized ministerial gifts, whose record was interwoven with that of the church, and illustrative of its life (Crocker, History of the Baptists of Vermont, 15, 16. Bellows Falls, Vt., 1913). Books for further reading: Barnas Sears, The New York Baptist Missionary Convention, The Christian Review, IV. 217-243. Boston, 1839. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 39: 01.2.01.08. THE BAPTISTS IN MARYLAND AND NEW HAMPSHIRE ======================================================================== Chapter 8 – The Baptists in Maryland and New Hampshire Maryland—Claims of the Roman Catholics—Bishop Gilmour—Cardinal Gibbons—Lord Baltimore—His Views of Liberty—A Forced Baptism of Infants—The Protestant Charter—Ruffini—De Courcey—Religious Provisions of the Charter—The Testimony of Dr. Brownson—An Attempt to Establish the Roman Catholic Religion in 1638—The Famous Act of 1649—The Political Fortunes of Baltimore at the Time—Population Mostly Protestant—The Opinion of the Historians—The Law a Compromise Measure Between Roman Catholics and the Puritans—Governor Stone a Protestant—No Liberty of Conscience Allowed—Roman Catholic View—The Terrible Penalties—The Virgin Mary—The Sabbath—Imprisonments and Public Whippings—The Baptists in Maryland—New Hampshire—The Baptist Church at Newton—Other Baptist Churches. The most extravagant claims have been made by Roman Catholics in regard to the introduction of religious liberty into Maryland. Bishop Gilmour says: Seeing how the world writes and speaks of Catholics, you will hardly be prepared to believe that the Catholics in Maryland were not only the first, but the only people who, uninfluenced of their own free will, ever did proclaim religious freedom in these United States (Gilmour, Catholic National Series, Sixth Reader, 467). Cardinal Gibbons says: Turning to our own country, it is with no small degree of satisfaction that I point to the State of Maryland as the cradle of civil and religious liberty, and "the land of the sanctuary." Of the thirteen original American colonies, Maryland was the only one settled by Catholics. She was also the only ove that spread aloft over her fair lands the banner of liberty of conscience and invited the oppressed of other colonies to seek an asylum beneath its shadow (Gibbons, Faith of our Fathers). For other Roman Catholic claims see Contemporary Review, September, 1876. Cardinal Gibbons does not appear to understand liberty of conscience. For further on he remarks: "The church is, indeed, intolerant in this sense, that she can never confound truth with error; nor can she admit that any man is conscientiously free to reject the truth when its claims are convincingly brought home to his mind" (Gibbons). The facts are that religious liberty did not exist in Maryland in colonial days, and that Maryland did not carry a single one of its institutions into the national life. These statements are upheld by all of the great Maryland authorities, and even the toleration extended to alien faiths came through Protestant legislative enactment. Maryland was settled by Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic. James I, who gave him the charter, was a bigoted member of the Church of England. "James is precisely the historical prodigy, to whom a reflecting mind would suppose the horrors of his parentage naturally gave birth. In royal chronology he stands between two axes,—the one that cleft the ivory neck of his beautiful mother—the other that severed the irresolute but refined head of his son and heir. His father, doubtless, had been deeply concerned in the shocking murder of his mother’s second husband. Cradled on the throne of Scotland; educated for kingship by strangers; the ward of a regency; the shuttlecock of ambitious politicians; the hope and tool of two kingdoms, James lived during an age in which the struggle of opinion and interest, of prerogative and privilege, of human right and royal power, of glimmering science and superstitious quackery, might well have bewildered an intellect, brighter and calmer than his" (Brantz Mayer, Calvert and Penn; or the Growth of Civil and Religious Liberty in America, 25, 26. Philadelphia, 1852). James would not tolerate a convert to the Roman Catholic religion; but he promoted the old Catholic families to high political honors (Von Raumer, History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, II.). He was, in 1611, mad against heretics and at this date Calvert was his trusted lieutenant. How much Calvert had to do with the burning of Edward Wightman and Bartholomew Legate is not known; but he was at Royston when Wightman was arrested by the king (Neill, Terra Mariae). The king was greatly agitated against Vorstius, a heretic of Holland. He wrote a book against the heresies of Vorstius and desired "to remand to hell such doctrines" (Wilhelm, Sir George Calvert; Maryland Historical Society Publications, No. 20) . The author of a part of this book was Calvert (Domestic State Papers, James I. 1611-18, III.). As a result the books of Vorstius were publicly burned. Calvert wrote a tract entitled: "The Answer to Tom Tell Troth, the Practice of Princes and the Lamentations of the Kirk." Concerning the Independents he says: "I write not to confute these learned scribblers (more worthy to be contemned than answered), but to advertise your highness of them, that by an obsta principiis, you may upon such smoke prepare all things needful to quench such a fire, when it shall flame and first break out, which it may do when you least look for it; for by nature these spirits are fiery hotspurs, and fitter for anything than that they most profess, Piety and Patience" (Streeter, Maryland Two Hundred Years Ago). Baltimore has been summed up in the following manner: "With reference to Lord Baltimore, the fact is patent that he was not a religious zealot, but a shrewd man of affairs; that, while he was more than willing to furnish an asylum for the people of his own persuasion in religion, he was much too wise to risk his own interest and theirs by adopting a policy that would raise against him the opposition of Protestant princes and people, whereby his charter would be sure to slip out of his grasp. His life, spent wholly in England, was one long struggle so to conform his administration to the revolutions in the superior government there, that he should not loose cast in the court, and so loose his plantation in the New World. Both James I, from whom the charter originated, and Charles I, by whom it was maintained, were violent defenders of the Protestant faith. They could readily confer privileges upon a favorite, even though he went beyond High Church all the way to Rome, but only in case he did not allow his ecclesiastical connection to influence his course as a public man and lord proprietor. Fortunate for his fame, fortunate for his church, which has scarcely another such an instance of leniency and liberality to show, fortunate alike for the Romanists and Protestants of Maryland at that day, that so singular an anomaly occurred" (Edwin John, Maryland Congregationalists Two Hundred Years Ago, The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1868. X. 202, 203). Lord Baltimore in the colony, in 1628, forced the baptism of a Protestant child against the wish and protest of the father. The record is as follows: Lord Baltimore, arrived in the colony about the 23d July, 1627, and with the two seminary priests Longvyll and Anth. Smith, but left for England with Longvyll, and returned with another priest named Hackett and about forty Papists. Every Sunday, mass and all the ceremonies of the Church of Rome are performed. The child of one William Pool, a Protestant, was baptized into the Church of Rome contrary to the, will of his father (Colonial State Papers). The bulwark of the liberties of Maryland rested in its Protestant charter. It was the grant of a Protestant king, of an intensely Protestant government. The laws of England were at this time very stringent toward Roman Catholics. The zeal against Roman Catholicism was so intense that the residence of the Spanish minister was watched to see who went there for mass. "The glory of Maryland toleration," says Kennedy, "which has been so fruitful a theme of panegyric to American historians, is truly the charter, not to the celebrated act of 1649. There is more freedom of conscience, more real toleration, a hundred fold, in the charter of a Protestant prince to a Catholic nobleman, than in that act so often called to our remembrance" (Kennedy, George Calvert). Ethan Allen says: This charter made all the English emigrants English subjects, with all the rights and privileges of such. It gave them also, together with Lord Baltimore, authority to make all needful local or provincial laws, without reference to the king or parliament, not conflicting with the English law, and providing that no interpretation of the charter should be made by which God’s holy rites of worship and the true Christian religion should in anywise suffer change, prejudice, or diminution. All churches to be built were to be consecrated according to the laws of England (Allen, The History of Maryland, II. Philadelphia, 1866). The position of James may be easily understood. "Toward the Catholics, however, from the time of his first speech to the Parliament," says Ruffini, Professor in the University of Turin, "he promised mildness, and that promise he kept in the application of the laws passed against them by his predecessors. But he did not abolish those laws; indeed, the jealous control of the Puritans compelled him to maintain the so-called laws of conformity even in regard to the Catholics. The latter, who expected something different from the son of Mary Stuart, turned against him, and some of the more fanatical of them entered into the conspiracy known as the Gunpowder Plot, the purpose of which was to blow up the king and Parliament (1605). For this incredible outrage the whole body of Catholics had to suffer. The laws against them were sharpened, and they all had to take the oath of allegiance. They had to swear to recognize James as their legitimate sovereign, to acknowledge that the Pope had no power to depose the king or to absolve his subjects from their oath of fealty, and to repudiate the Jesuitical doctrine—then in full flower—which justified regicide. The Popes—Paul V (1606) , Urban VIII (1626) , and Innocent X (1648) (whose decree, however, was not published)—prohibited the taking of this oath under pain of excommunication, but the majority of English Catholics had to obey. Thereby they secured for themselves a certain amount of toleration which, under Charles I, principally owing to the queen, who was French and a Catholic, increased to such an extent as to become not the least of the charges which the Protestant dissenters brought against the crown" (Ruffini, Religious Liberty, 150, 151. New York, 1912). It was under these conditions that the charter of Maryland was granted, under the protection of a Protestant king. De Courcey, an eminent Roman Catholic author, frankly avows that this liberty came through the Protestant charter. He says: When a State has the happiness of possessing unity of religion, and that religion the truth, we cannot conceive how the government can facilitate the division of creeds. Lord Baltimore had seen too well how the English Catholics were crushed by the Protestants, as soon as they were the strongest and most numerous; he should then have foreseen that it would have been so in Maryland, so that the English Catholics, instead of Ending liberty in America, only changed their bondage. Instead, then, of admiring the liberality of Lord Baltimore, we prefer to believe that he obtained this charter from Charles I only on the formal condition of admitting Protestants on an equal footing with Catholics (De Courcey, The Catholic Church in the United States, 30. Edited by Shea. New York, 1879). There are two provisions in the charter looking toward religious matters. The first is a general one, which is found in most of the English charters, that he "being animated with a laudable and pious zeal for extending the Christian religion" (Bozman, History of Maryland, II., 9. Baltimore, 1837). The other provision is a distinct check on the Roman Catholics. The charter provided that the colony should be governed on Protestant lines. The words of the charter are: And furthermore the patronages and avowsons of all the churches which (with the increasing worship and religion of Christ), within the said religion, islands, islets, and limits aforesaid, hereafter shall happen to be built; together with license, and faculty of erecting and founding churches, chapels and places of worship, in convenient and suitable places, within the premises, and of causing. the same to be dedicated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of England (Bowman, II). Baltimore was no democrat and had no sympathy with the common people. "For instead of being a leader of men by gentleness," says Mereness, "sympathy, and persuasive appeal, he was cold, stern, and was not over scrupulous as to his choice of measures for immediate triumph over the opposition" (Newton D. Mereness, Maryland as a Proprietory Province, 33, 24. New York, 1901). "Baltimore had not the slightest sympathy," says Neill, "with popular government, and he viewed with displeasure the firm and manly opposition of the Parliament to the arrogant demands of the King." "An analysis of the charter proves it to be destitute of a single democratic element. By it he and his heirs were created true and absolute Lords and Proprietaries of the region; with free, full, and absolute power to ordain, make, and enact laws; with the advice, assent, and approbation of the freemen of the provinces, and with authority to appoint all judges, justices and constables. "The freemen could only meet in Assembly with his permission, and the eighth section expressly provides that he may make wholesome ordinances from time to time, to be kept and observed, on the ground that it might be necessary, before the freeholders of the said provinces could be convened for the purpose. As he could not, by the laws of England, make the Church of Rome the established church, a check was held on all religious denominations, by securing the patronage of all churches that might be built" (Neill, Terra Mariae, 54, 56. Philadelphia, 1867). Dr. Brownson, himself a Roman Catholic, says: But the first government of Maryland was not founded on the distinctive principles of American freedom. It was a feudal government; and the charter instituting it provided for a colonial aristocracy by subinfeudation. It recognized religious toleration; but toleration is not a principle of American freedom. The American principle is religious liberty, not religious toleration (Brownson, Quarterly Review, 253. A. D., 1856). Streeter, in his address before the Maryland Historical Society, in 1852, says: The policy of Lord Baltimore, in regard to religious matters in his colony, has, in some particulars at least, been misapprehended, and therefore misstated. The assertion has long passed uncontradicted, that toleration was promised to the colonists in the first conditions of plantations; that the rights of conscience were recognized in a law passed by the first Assembly held in the colony; and that the principal officers, from the year 1636 or 7, bound themselves by oath not to molest, on account of his religion, any one professing to believe in Jesus Christ. I can find no such authority for any one of these statements. Lord Baltimore’s first and earliest conditions breathe not a word on the subject of religion; no act recognizing the principles of toleration was passed in the first or following Assembly, until fifteen years after the first settlement, at which time a Protestant had been appointed governor, and a majority of the Burgesses were of the same faith; and when, for the first time, a clause involving a promise not to molest any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ; and "particularly a Roman Catholic" (Streeter. Also Mereness. Joseph Bangard, Tragic Scenes in the History of Maryland, 54. Boston, 1866). Upon the charter Edwin D. Neill says: When we examine the Maryland charter it is found to contain neither the elements of civil or religious liberty, but to be just such an instrument as the friend of James and his son Charles would wish (Neill, Lord Baltimore and Maryland Toleration, The Contemporary Review, September, 1876, p. 620). The General Assembly, at St. Mary’s, on March 19, 1638, attempted to establish the Roman Catholic religion as that of the State. "Holy Church within this province shall have all her rights and liberties safe, whole and inviolable in all things" (Proceedings of the Acts of the Assembly of Maryland, I. 40). The reason Holy Church was not made the establishment is obvious. "It is probable," says Bozman, "however, that they felt themselves checked in carrying these intentions into execution by the reflection of their being still under the superintending domination of the Protestant hierarchy of the mother country, and therefore they permitted heretics to become colonists among them; though it does not appear that these heretics or Protestants enjoyed any immunity than a mere toleration of residence and a security in the protection of their persons and property" (Bozman, II.). It is certain Protestants were annoyed and had few or no privileges. Many instances of this kind could be cited. The action of the Roman Catholic priesthood may be thus illustrated: "A certain one altogether to us unknown, but zealous in the religion of the Protestants, and staying with a host more fervent than himself, being bitten by a snake, expected death every instant. One of our people understanding this, having taken a surgeon with him to the sick man, who was now said to be deprived of his senses, was anxious for his soul, that he might in a measure heal it also. But his host perceiving the thing, interrupted his pious endeavors. And when the priest could think of no other opportunity, he resolved to spend the night with the sick man. But the host threw an impediment in the way of this also, and lest by night access might be granted to the priest, he set a watch who could sleep in a bed opposite to the door of the chamber. Nevertheless, the priest taking advantage of every means, at an unseasonable hour of the night, when he supposed the guard most oppressed with sleep, without his being aroused, found a way of entrance to the sick man, and admitted him into the Church as he desired it" (Allen). Not a Protestant minister, at this time, had been in Maryland. Much has been said of the famous act of 1649. Lord Baltimore was in dire straits on account of affairs in England. The king had been beheaded, and Baltimore was compelled to accede to the demands of the Parliament. The following facts are related by Streeter that upon "March 26, 1642, Lord Baltimore was brought before the House of Lords on charges, the precise nature of which is not now known, but in consequence of which he was placed under heavy bonds not to leave the kingdom. "It is possible that these charges had something to do with his Lordship’s management of his colony. Certain it is, that, from this time, he manifested great anxiety to avoid every act which would expose him to the charge of contravening, by his colonial policy, the established laws of the realm. His firmness in this particular, and his watchfulness in regard to compromising his proprietary rights, even placed him in opposition to the Jesuit missionaries in the colony, to whose aid he for a time refused to allow others to be sent, unless they would pledge themselves to make their practices conformable to the policy of the English government, and leave him to the full exercise of his prerogatives" (Streeter, Maryland, Two Hundred Years Ago, 29, 30. Baltimore, 1852) . Under this pressure, August 17, 1648, Stone was appointed governor of the province. He was an intense Protestant, of the Parliamentary party, from Northampton county, Virginia (Allen, History of Maryland); so were his secretary and a majority of the Council. The population, on account of a rebellion, was mostly Protestant. The Assembly, April 21, 1649, wrote a letter to Baltimore in which mention is made of the rebellion "in which time most of your lordship’s loyal friends here were spoil3d of their whole estate and sent away as banished persons out of the province. Those few that remained were plundered and deprived in a manner of all livelihood and subsistence" (Bozman, II. 665). Ingle had banished the Roman Catholics from Maryland and as Hammond truly says, only "a few Papists" were left (Hammond, Leah and Rachael, 22. London, 1656). That state of affairs continued throughout the century. Dr. Hawks says: "It is indeed true that at this time, 1692, from the testimony of an eye witness, there were thirty Protestants to one Papist in the province" (Hawks, Maryland Ecclesiastical Contributions), Dr. Bray, in a Memorial to the House of Bishops, in 1700, says: "The Papists in this province appear to me not to be above the twelfth part of the inhabitants." This fact was recognized by Lord Baltimore. "Witness the fact of so large a portion of the first Colonists being Protestants; his invitation to Captain Fleet; his invitation to Puritan Colonists of Massachusetts to come and reside in the Colony in 1643 (Hawks, Maryland); his constituting Colonel Stone his Governor in 1648, who was a Protestant, and was to bring in five hundred Colonists; his admitting the Puritans of Virginia in the same year; and in the year following creating a new County for Robert Brooke, a Puritan, and his Colonists" (Allen, Maryland Toleration; or, Sketches of the Early History of Maryland to the year 1660, 36. Baltimore, 1855) . James McSherry, who was a Roman Catholic, admits that "hitherto, the most of those appointed to office by the lord Proprietary were Catholics, as were a majority of the early settlers; but now, the Puritans being triumphant at home, he hoped by this measure to propitiate them, at the same time, that, by the oath of office, he secured to all Christians the full toleration which had hitherto been observed" (McSherry, History of Maryland, 65. Baltimore, 1849). The act seems to have been a compromise measure between the Puritans and Lord Baltimore as a protection for the latter, in this critical period. However, for many months after its passage the act was not approved by Lord Baltimore (The Record Book. Annapolis Manuscripts). This is the general view. For example, Browne says: In the wording of this act we see evident marks of a compromise between the different sentiments of the Assembly. It was not such an act as a body of zealous Catholics or of zealous Protestants would have passed, nor, in all probability, did not come up, to Baltimore’s ideas of toleration (Browns, Maryland the History of a Palatinate). "My investigation into the origin of these laws," says Streeter, "has convinced me that they originated primarily neither with Lord Baltimore nor the Assembly; that their provisions sprang from no congenial principles at that day active in either the Catholic or Protestant divisions of the church; that they were drawn up in deference to the progressive doctrines and increasing political strength of the Independents in England, as well as to meet the wants of the mixed population of the province; and their adoption was an act prompted far less by feelings of religious benevolence than by civil necessity" (Streeter). Charles F. Mayer says: The Protestant population appears to have been largely predominant, and it is therefore to be inferred that such was the prevailing religious cast of the Delegates, the Burgesses, when the Legislature paved the Act (Mayer, First annual Discourse before the Maryland Historical Society, 31. Baltimore, 1844). Hawks, who lauds Lord Baltimore on all occasions, concedes that the famous law was created by Protestants. He says: It has commonly been supposed, that the merit of having thus early made an escape from the spirit of bigotry and intolerance, belongs almost exclusively to the Roman Catholics; but from this testimony a contemporary, such would appear not to have been the fact. There doubtless were Roman Catholics in the legislature to share the honor with their companions in that body; but our authority informs us, that divers others had moved into the colony, every possible encouragement had been given for such removals, by the Lord Proprietor (Francis L. Hawks, A Narrative of Events Connected with the Rise and Progress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland, 34, 35. New York, 1839). The Act (Bozman, II. 661) allows liberty of conscience to none, and toleration to some. "Toleration is not liberty," asserts Brownson, "and the act of the Maryland Assembly does not assert religious liberty. It tolerates all Christian denominations holding the divinity of our Lord, and belief in the ever adorable Trinity; but it does not recognize this liberty as a right prior to and independent of the civil power. The civil power grants or confers the right; and it does not recognize it as an existing right which the State cannot take away, and which it is bound to respect and protect for each one and all its citizens. In this respect, the Puritans of Massachusetts really went further in the assertion of religious liberty than the Catholics of Maryland (Brownson, Quarterly Review, 1856, p. 255) . "The competency of the State in spirituals," he continues, "was a fundamental principle with the old Puritans; and this is the fundamental principle of that religious freedom, not granted, but recognized by the American people in their institutions. It is the Puritan doctrine of the spiritual incompetency of the State and the freedom and independence of the church, rather than the doctrine of toleration of the Maryland Assembly, that has prevailed and become incorporated in the fundamental institutions of the country." "The pretense that religious liberty was first understood and applied by Lord Baltimore and his colonists, we look upon as ridiculous, notwithstanding it was supported by names we cannot but respect" (Ibid, 257). The following is the first section enacted: That whatever person or persons within this province and the islands thereto belonging shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, or the Godhead or any of the said three persons of the Trinity or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachful speeches, words or language concerning the said Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons, shall be punished with death, and confiscation or forfeiture of all of his or her lands and goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heirs. A person who denied, or made speeches in regard to, the "Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour" or the holy Apostles or Evangelists shall be fined twenty-five pounds; in case he has no money, to be publicly whipped; for the second offense he shall be whipped and imprisoned; and for the third his good shall be forfeited and he shall forever be banished from the province. This law discriminates against the high and against the poor. Other portions of the charter provide for fines, imprisonment and public whippings for religious beliefs. A Roman Catholic sums up the acts in the following words: The assumption that the Maryland Colony was "The Day Star of American Freedom" (New York, 1855), enables the author (Mr. Davis) to give a poetical title to his volume, but it has very little historical foundation. We should not make that assumption exclusively for any one of the colonies, and, least of all for a colony which, however respectable in itself, exerted no leading influence on its sister colonies. Never in our colonial days was Maryland the heart and soul of the Anglo-American colonies. We have a high esteem for the first settlers of Maryland, and in the elevation of character, nobility of sentiment, and private and domestic virtues, they were unsurpassed, if not unrivaled, by the first settlers of any colony; but we cannot learn from history that they were propagandists, that they sent out missionaries and teachers to the other colonies, or that they were induced by their efforts or example to adopt the free institutions they had founded. Even if Maryland had the advantage of priority of time, we cannot award her the claim Mr. Davis sets up in her behalf. The leading colonies—those which exerted the greatest influence in moulding others, and determining the character of the American institutions—were unquestionably Virginia and Massachusetts. Maryland in her general colonial action, followed Virginia, and even now belongs to the Virginia family of States. We say not this in disparagement of Maryland, to which we are attached by the strongest of ties, but in vindication of simple historical truth (Brownson, Quarterly Review, 1856, 252, 253). Gambrall further sums up the law as follows: "The whole animus of the law, legitimate but not exalted, is expressed in the words ‘for the more quiet and peaceable government of the province and the better to preserve mutual love and unity amongst the inhabitants here.’ The whole is a matter of policy, good policy, it is true, but policy; the more quiet and peaceable government. No recognition of a man’s inherent and inalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. He must profess to believe in Jesus Christ; so far must he be orthodox. A Jew might be placed under the ban; a Unitarian was liable to be punished with death and confiscation of goods, and family left in poverty, the goods to go to the proprietary. There was no protection for such. By the first clause of the Act they were liable to punishment and by this clause they might be molested, disturbed at pleasure. "And this is all there is of this much vaunted law. Surely it must be of a general poverty of claims that so much is made of this one instance. There was no religion in it whatever, no recognition of inherent human rights, only a wise adaptation to an emergency by a shrewd and observant man, who felt that the whole drift of the times and the powers of numbers were against him and the general policy of his administration. He on the one side and the colonists on the other, each of free will considered the other, and united to establish by statute what had been from the beginning the common practice of the province, a practice always rendered necessary by imperative circumstances" (Theodore C. Gambrall, History of Early Maryland, 117, 188. New York, 1893). The Quakers were, in 1659, persecuted in Maryland. In carrying out their practices they were accused of disturbing the government. "They were all, therefore, ordered to leave the province, before the 5th of the following month, under the penalty of being treated as rebels and traitors." When they paid no attention to this decree they were ordered to be "banished and it was directed that if found in the province again they should be whipped thirty lashes at every constable’s till they were out of it; no person was allowed to harbor or conceal them, upon a pain of a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco" (Allen). Charles Calvert visited England in 1675 and there he met a serious criticism against his government. A letter had been written by the Rev. Mr. Yeo, of Patuxent, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, presenting a picture which it must be confessed was hideous enough. "The province of Maryland," thus he wrote, "is in a most deplorable condition for want of an established ministry. Here are ten or twelve counties, and in them at least twenty thousand souls; and but three Protestant ministers of the Church of England. The priests are provided for, and the Quakers take care of those who are speakers; but no care is taken to build up Churches in the Protestant religion. The Lord’s day is profaned; religion is despised, and all of the notorious vices are committed; so that it has become a Sodom of uncleanness and a pest house of iniquity" (Hawks). In this territory and under these conditions the Baptists were slow to enter. There were doubtless some Baptists in Maryland in 1649. "The language of this enactment," says Hawks, "furnishes us some evidence, of the mixed character of the population, in the enumeration of those terms of personal reproach which were made punishable; we find mention among them, ‘Heretic, Schismatic, Idolater, Puritan, Independent, Presbyterian, Popish priest, Jesuit, Jesuited papist, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, and Separatist’; and it is not improbable, that the individual application which had been made to these several terms, led to their specific enumeration; it is to be supposed therefore, that there were some belonging to most of the classes above named" (Hawks). The church at Chestnut Grove was founded in 1742. A layman by the name of Henry Sator, a General Baptist from England, settled here in 1709. He frequently requested pastors to preach and at length he had sufficient following to gather a church. Their covenant, which was presented to the Governor of the Court, in order to have the right of worship granted to them, is practically a confession of faith and an expression of their intentions in regard to the obedience of the laws of the government. The covenant is as follows: We, the humble professors of the Gospel of Christ, baptized upon a declaration of faith and repentance, believing the doctrine of general redemption (or the free grace of God to all mankind), we do hereby seriously, and solemnly, in the presence of the Searcher of all hearts, and before the world, covenant, agree, bind, and settle ourselves into a church, to hold, abide by, and contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, owned by the best reformed churches in England, Scotland, and elsewhere, especially as published and maintained in the forms and confessions of the Baptists in England and Scotland, except in infant baptism, church government, the doctrine of absolute reprobation, and some ceremonies We do also bind ourselves hereby to defend and live up to the Protestant religion, and abhor and oppose the whore of Rome, pope and popery, with all her Antichristian ways. We do also engage, with our lives and fortunes, to defend the down and dignity of our gracious sovereign, King George, to him and his i1sue forever; and to obey all the laws, humbly submitting ourselves to all in authority under him and giving custom to whom custom, honor to whom honor, tribute to whom tribute is due. We do further declare that we are not against taking oaths, nor using arms in defense of our king and country, when legally called thereto; and that we do approve and will obey the laws of the Province. And further, we bind ourselves to follow the patterns of our brethren in England, to maintain order, government, and discipline in our church, especially that excellent director Rev. Francis Stanley, entitled, "The Gospel Honor and Church Ornament," dedicated to the churches in the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, and Cambridge. We also engage that all persons, upon joining our society, shall yield consent to and subscribe this our solemn league and covenant. Subscribed by us whose names are underwritten, this the 10th day of July, 1742 (Benedict). Very slowly did the Baptists grow in this province. Outside of the Tunkers and the Mennonites, in 1772, there were reported only two Baptist churches; but in 1792 there were seventeen churches with 1,300 members. The Baptist Church at Newton is the oldest in the State of New Hampshire. It was organized in 1755 (Lawrence, The New Hampshire Churches, 105. Claremont, 1856). This was in a period that foretold a dreadful struggle. Bancroft thus characterizes the times in the opening passage of the chapter describing the history of 1755. "Anarchy lay at the heart of the institutions of Europe; the form of political life was struggling for its development in the people of America. While doubt was preparing the way of destruction in the old world, faith in truth and in the formative power of order were controlling and organizing the free and expanding energies of the new. The world could not watch with indifference the spectacle—but yet the world could not see its deep significance. Those thirteen colonies were feeble settlements along the coast of a vast continent, and separated from among the civilized nations of the earth by a broad ocean, and yet in them was involved the future of our race." It was exactly at this date the Baptists entered New Hampshire. The church dates back to 1755 but the first record on its books is twelve years later, October 1, 1767. It presents in a striking light some of the features of the times, and the vexations with which the fathers had to contend. It is supposed to be the earliest record extant of a Baptist church in New Hampshire. The record is as follows: October 1, 1767. A Society meeting was called at the Baptist meeting house in Newton. 1. John Wadleigh was chosen moderator. 2. Joseph Welch was chosen Clerk. 3. Voted, To carry on Mr. Stewart’s and Mr. Carter’s law suits which are now in the law on account of rates imposed on them by the standing order. 4. Voted, To give Mr. Hovey for the year ensuing for his labors with us fifty pounds of lawful money in such things as he wants to live on. 5. Voted, That Andrew Whittier, John Wadleigh, and Joseph Welch be chosen to say what each man’s part shall be of what was promised to give Mr. Hovey. 6. Voted, That these men shall take the province rates for their rate and do it as light as they can. 7. Voted, That these men are to abate such men as they think are not able to pay their parts with the rest. 8. Voted, That those who will not pay their equal proportion according as these men shall tag them, their punishment is this, that they shall have no help from us to clear them from paying rates other where. Joseph Welch, Clerk. William Lamson, of Portsmouth, in his centennial address, says of the history of this church and the early Baptist movement in New Hampshire: "There is something deeply interesting in this old record of a meeting once held in this ancient town (of Newton), and not far from the very spot on which we are now assembled. It is significant of much. It is an opening in the veil which conceals the past through which we can look back and trace some of its marked features. It is a veritable record, of a meeting actually held by the Baptist society of Newton, and the first of the kind, of which we have any record, ever held in the State. It was a meeting for business, and business was done. We see the old standing order, with its stern inflexible countenance and its commanding mien, peering out upon us from the background of this rough sketch. Mr. Steward and Mr. Carter are there, and they are in trouble, already in the law, and they must not be left alone. The standing order has them in its iron grasp, and they must have help such as the Baptist society of Newton can give, they shall have. Sympathy and substantial aid are voted—the cause is a common one—and all must help to sustain it. One hopes, as he reads the record, that Mr. Steward and Mr. Carter and the Baptist society of Newton were the successful party in the litigation. His sympathies, whoever he may be, now all flow in that direction. "This business disposed of, the question of the support of the ministry, that question which is even now an annually recurring one, and sometimes a very troublesome one, comes up. Mr. Hovey is to preach the gospel for one year which is to come, and must have things to live on. It is decided that he will need these things to the amount of fifty pounds lawful money. That sum is voted. Then Andrew Whittier and John Wadleigh, and Joseph Welch must see that this money is raised, and that every man bears his proportion. But there may be those—when or where have not such been—who would be glad to shift this responsibility of paying the minister. Some punishment must be devised by us—the Baptist society at Newton before we separate, by which these men may be deterred from pursuing so mean a course. Their punishment shall be this—we will not help them get out of the grasp of the standing order. This done and duly recorded by Joseph Welch, the clerk, the Baptist society at Newton adjourns. One imagines that there were some earnest words, as the members repair to their homes, spoken around the hearthstones of these homes after the meeting broke up that night—and he hopes that some believing petitions ascended to God. Plans are now settled, and things are in a fair way till next October, before which it is hoped that the lawsuit against Mr. Steward and Mr. Carter will have been carried to a successful issue. But this lawsuit proved to have been as lawsuits generally are, a protracted as well as a vexatious affair. Nearly three years after the date of this meeting, in which the whole business of this lawsuit pertained, we have the record of the same lawsuit: June 25, 1770. A meeting was legally holden at the Antipedobaptist meeting house. 1. Chose John Wadleigh, moderator. 2. Voted, To choose a Committee to proportion the whole costs of the lawsuits of Mr. Stuart and Mr. Carter from the first to the last as has before been voted. Ebenezer Noys, John Wadleigh, and Abraham Kimball, were chosen a Committee to examine the accounts and settle what is honest and right. "How this lawsuit, which after three years was brought to a close, terminated, we are not informed. But it is gratifying to know that the Baptist society redeemed its pledge and paid the whole cost from first to last. "Such records as these let us into the heart of those distant times, and are worth more than whole chapters of rhetorical descriptions. These were brave men, fighting seriously for right, for what they believed God had given them—the right to worship and practice his ordinances as they understood them. "Of this church what remains to be said may be compressed into a small compass. The records of its early history are very few. They are mostly the records of their litigations to avoid the payment of the obnoxious taxes of the standing order. These were continued, but with diminishing frequency, until by a change of the laws permanent relief was obtained. In 1782, March 1, we have the record of a meeting at the house of Noah Johnson, which was opened by solemn prayer to Almighty God, on matters of experience, in which Asaph Harriman and six others relate their Christian experience. Walter Powers was the first pastor of the church, and since its formation it has had, for a longer or shorter time, the labors of seventeen pastors. In the year 1767, an obligation to observe the ordinances and to sustain the ministry of the gospel according to the faith and order of the Baptist church, was drawn up and signed by seventy-five men—all of whom have long since passed away. "This covenant which was drawn up and signed eighty-eight years ago, does not seem to have been a church covenant, but was, as I suppose, simply an agreement to sustain Baptist preaching in this place. It was as follows: We whose names are hereunto subscribed by studying the Holy Scriptures believe the faith and order of the Antipedobaptists to be agreeable thereto, do honestly covenant and agree, and engage to uphold and maintain and support each man his equal proportion towards the support of the gospel ministry all the necessary charges arising relative thereunto in witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands. "From the year 1755, the date of the organization of the church, there is little to be found in the history of the denomination, for sixteen years. I find it stated on one authority that during these years there was only one other church organized, and that at Marbury in 1768. From another source, in which there is no mention of the church in Marbury, we learn that a church was organized at Weare, in 1768. It is probable therefore that in 1770, fifteen years after the origin of the first church in the State, there were three feeble Baptist churches in New Hampshire; one at Newton, another at Marbury, and the third at Weare. Unquestionably the constant persecutions and repeated litigations to which the Baptists were subjected in those years had much to do in retarding their growth. The standing order believed that they were the church of God, and that they were truly serving God in compelling the Baptists and other Separatists into conformity, as they were in the prayers of the closet or in the Worship of the sanctuary. Scattered over the State there may have been many of our faith who were longing and praying for the time when they should be permitted to worship God and obey his ordinances, with none to molest or make them afraid. But the difficulty, under the circumstances, of sustaining churches, deterred them from becoming organized. They were as sheep not having a shepherd" (Lamson, a Centennial Discourse delivered at the one hundredth Anniversary of the formation of the Baptist Church, Newton, N. H., October 18, 1855, 24-30. Portsmouth, 1856). Books for further reference: Ethan Allen, Maryland, Toleration, or Sketches of the Early History of Maryland to the Year 1650, The Church Review, VII. 617; VIII. 264-293. New Haven, 1856. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 40: 01.2.01.09. PHILADELPHIA ASSOCIATION, BROWN UNIVERSITY, ======================================================================== Chapter 9 - The Philadelphia Association, Brown University, and Baptist Customs Organization of the Philadelphia Association—Quarterly Meetings—The Early Churches of the Body—Other Associations—Powers of an Association—The Declaration of the Association—The Separate Association in Virginia—John L. Waller—Discipline—Trouble in the Pennepek Church—The First Church, Charleston, S. C. —Requirements to Unite with a Church—Ministerial Education—Thomas Hollis and Harvard College—Scholarships for Baptists—Abel Morgan—The Academy at Hopewell—Missions—Oliver Hart—John Gano—Circular Letter on Education—Isaac Eaton—Brown University—Tames Manning—Dr. Ezra Stiles—The Charter—The First Commencement of Brown—The College Suspended—Resolutions on Temperance—Early Customs of the Baptists. The organization of the Philadelphia Association, in 1707, is one of the most far-reaching events connected with the Baptist denomination. The church at Pennepek has the following record: "Before our general meeting, held in Philadelphia, in the seventh month, 1707, it was concluded by the several congregations of our judgment, to make choice of some particular brethren, such as they thought most capable in every congregation, and those to meet at the yearly meeting, which began the 27th of the seventh month, on the seventh day of the week, agreed to continue the meeting till the third day following in the work of the public ministry. It was then agreed that a person that is a stranger, that has neither letter of recommendation, nor is known to be a person gifted, and of good conversation, shall not be permitted to preach, nor to be entertained as a member in any of the Baptist congregations in communion with each other. "It was also concluded, that if any difference shall happen between any member and the church he belongs to, and they cannot agree, then the person so grieved may, at the general meeting, appeal to the brethren of the several congregations, and with such as they shall nominate, decide the difference; that the church and the person so grieved do fully acquiesce in their determination" (Minutes of the Philadelphia Association). Before the formation of the Association the churches had a general meeting for preaching and administering the ordinances, which was held in different places. The first was at Salem, New Jersey, in 1688; this was about three months after the Lower Dublin Church was constituted. The next was held at the latter church, the next in Philadelphia, and the fourth at Burlington. Other meetings were held at various places. The people with whom the brethren met called the gatherings a yearly meeting because it met with them but once a year, but those who attended all of the sessions spoke of it as a quarterly meeting. The association was designed to differ from the yearly meeting chiefly in this, that it was to be a body of delegates representing churches, and the yearly meeting had no representative character. The brethren who constituted the association came from Lower Dublin (Pennepek), Middletown, Piscataqua, Cohansey, and Welsh Tract. The Philadelphia congregation, though giving its name to the association, is not represented as a constituent member, because it was regarded as a branch of the Lower Dublin church. Morgan Edwards mentions with evident satisfaction that, though the Association was formed of but five churches, "it has so increased since as to contain thirty-four churches (in 1770), exclusive of those that have been detached to form another association." The influence of the Philadelphia Association in shaping Baptist modes of thinking and working has been greater than any other body in existence. The Philadelphia Association was followed by the Charleston, South Carolina. Wood Furman, the historian, gives the following account of this important transaction: The settlement of Mr. Hart in Charleston is an important event in the annals of these churches. His unexpected arrival while the church was destitute of a supply, and immediately after the death of the excellent man who had occasionally officiated for them, was believed to have been directed by a special providence in their favour. He undertook the pastoral office with much seriousness, and soon entered on an extensive field of usefulness. His ardent piety and active philanthropy, his discriminating mind and persuasive address, soon raised him high in the esteem of the public, and gave him a distinguished claim to the affections of his brethren. Between him and the Rev. Mr. Pelot, actuated by the same principles and possessing very respectable talents, a cordial intimacy commenced. Mr. Hart had seen, in the Philadelphia Association, the happy consequences of union and stated intercourse among Churches maintaining the same faith and order. To accomplish similar purposes, an union of the four Churches before mentioned was contemplated and agreed upon. Accordingly on the 21st of October 1751 Delegates from Ashley River and Welch Neck met those of Charleston in the said City. The Messengers from Euhaw were prevented from attending. It was agreed that an annual meeting should thenceforward be holden on Saturday preceding the 2d Sabbath of Nov. to consist of the Ministers and messengers of the several Churches; that the two first days should be employed in public worship, and a Sermon introductory to business preached on the Monday following at 11 o’clock. The object of the union was declared to be the promotion of the Redeemer’s kingdom, by the maintenance of love and fellowship, and by mutual consultations for the peace and welfare of the churches. The independency of the churches was asserted, and the powers of the Association restricted to those of a Council of Advice. It was agreed to meet again in Charleston, Nov. 1752. At that time the delegates from Euhaw attended, and the proceedings of the first meeting ratified. The instrument of Union bears the following signatures: John Stephens, Oliver Hart, Francis Pelot, John Brown, Joshua Edwards, Ministers; James Fowler, William Screven, Richard Bedon, Charles Barker, Benjamin Parmenter, Thomas Harrison, Philip Douglass, and John Mikell, Messengers (Furman, A History of the Charleston Association of Baptist Churches in the State of South Carolina, with an Appendix, 8, 9. Charleston, 1811). By the year 1800, forty-eight associations had been organized as follows: Philadelphia (1707); Charleston (1751); Sandy Creek, N. C. (1758); Kehukee, N. C. (1765); Ketocton, Va. (1766); Warren, R. I. (1767); Rapidan, Va. (1770); Congaree, S. C. (1771, recognized as Bethel in 1789); Stonington, Conn. (1772); Redstone, Pa. and Strawberry, Va. (1776); Shaftesbury, Vt. (1780); Holston, Tenn. (1781); Salisbury, Md. (1782); Woodstock, Vt., Dover, Va., and Middle District, Va. (1783); Georgia, (1784); New Hampshire (1785, though 1776 is also given as a date. It was later called the York, Me.); Vermont, Elkhorn, Ky., South Kentucky, and Salem, Ky. (1785); Bowdoinham, Me. (1787); Roanoke, Va. (1788); Portsmouth, Va., and Yadkin, S. C. (1790); New York and Warwick, N. Y. (1791); Baltimore, Goshen, Va., and Shiloh, Va. (1792); New River, Va., and Tates Creek, Ky. (1793) ; Hepzibah, Ga., and Neuse, N. C. (1794); Ostego, N. Y. (1795); Rensselaerville, N. Y., New District, Tenn., Chemung, Pa., and Fairfield, Vt. (1796); Miami, Ohio (1797); Delaware (before 1798); Mayo, N. C., Mountain, N. C., Sarepta, Ga., Green River, Ky., and Cumberland River, Ky. (1790). The powers of an association and its relation to the churches, to ministers and members, were much debated. The attitude of the Cayuga Association fairly represents the situation. "A diversity of opinions prevailed in the churches," says their historian, "in relation to forming an association, and were expressed, both by their delegates, and in the letters to the body. Many, ever watchful against any infringement of individual rights, and ever vigilant in their defense of Baptist views of unrestricted liberty of conscience, and church independence, expressed their fears that an associated body might become corrupt, and assume an unwarranted control of the actions and discipline of the churches. In their letters to the body, they express, in most definite terms, their belief ‘that Christ and not an associated body of any kind, is Lawgiver and Head of the church"’ (Belden, History of the Cayuga Baptist Association, 8. Auburn, N. Y., 1851). At first more authority was claimed by associational bodies than was finally granted to them. The following is from the Minutes of the Philadelphia Association, in 1749, in an elaborate statement in reference to churches, which has usually been accepted: At our annual Association, met September the 19th, 1749, an essay, on the power and duty of an association of churches, was proposed to the consideration of the Association; and the same, upon mature deliberation, was approved and subscribed by the whole house, and the contents of the same was ordered to be transcribed as the judgment of the Association, in order to be inserted in the Association book, to the end and purpose that it may appear what power an Association of churches hath, and what duty is incumbent on an Association; and prevent the contempt with which some are ready to treat such an assembly, and also to prevent any future generation from claiming more power than they ought-lodging over the churches. After broadly stating the independency of the churches the Association in this essay says: Such churches there must be, agreeing in doctrine and practice, and independent in their authority and church power, before they can enter into a confederation, as aforesaid, and choose delegates or representatives to associate together; and thus the several independent churches being the constituents, the association, council, or assembly of their delegates, when assembled, is not to be deemed a superior judicature, or having a superintendency over the churches, but subservient to the churches, in what may concern all the churches in general; or any one church in particular, and, though no power can regularly arise above its fountain from where it rises, yet we are of an opinion that an Association of the delegates of associated churches have a very considerable power in their hands respecting those churches in their consideration; :or if the agreement of several distinct churches, in sound doctrine and regular practice, be the first, motive, ground and foundation or basis of their confederation, then it must naturally follow, that a defection in doctrine or practice in any church, in such confederation, or any party in any such church, is ground sufficient for an Association to withdraw from any such church or party deviating or making defection, and to exclude such from them in some formal manner, and to advertise all the churches in confederation thereof, in order that every church in confederation may withdraw from such in all acts of church communion, to the end that they may be ashamed, and that all the churches may discountenance such, and bear testimony against such defection. The first Separate Baptist Association, held at Craig’s Meeting House, Orange County, Virginia, in 1771, adopted the following article in their constitution: We believe we have a right to withdraw ourselves from any church unsound in doctrine or irregular in practice. On this article Semple makes the following comment: It is worthy of note, that one of the constitutional articles disclaims all power over the churches. Yet the next declares a right in the Association to withdraw from delinquent churches in certain cases. Nothing less can be meant by this article than that the Association, in behalf of all orderly churches in her correspondence, would discountenance all disorderly ones. It is then a question, whether a church, discountenanced by the Association, can any longer be considered a part of the Baptist Society? Would it not be deemed disorderly for any other church to continue their fellowship towards one that could not meet in the same Association? Churches may not only become disorderly in practice, but heterodox in doctrine. To give an association power to deal with, and finally to put such out of their connection, must be proper, and, indeed, must be what is designed by the above article. By no other means could a general union be preserved. The following comments on the power of associations by John L. Waller, of Kentucky, have met with favor: First, Does a church sustain the same relation to an association that an individual member does to the church? Second, If so, is it Baptist custom for an association to receive a church contrary to the wish and votes of another church or churches in the same association? We answer the first question emphatically, that a church does not sustain the same relation to an association that an individual member doer to a church. The relation between the member and the church is a divine ordinance—was instituted by Jesus Christ—and is regulated by the precepts and principles of the New Testament. But the relation between the church and the association has its origin solely in Christian polity and expediency, claiming no more warrant in the word of God than missionary societies, and other benevolent institutions. The association is formed by a compact between churches, for the purpose of correspondence and acquaintance, and the promotion, by devotional exercises and mutual consultation, of their own and common welfare of Zion. As the churches are sovereign and independent, they sustain no relation to each other, except by agreement, and are bound in nothing, except by express stipulation. Whatever they have not covenanted to do by the terms of association, is of no force or obligation. Of course, it would be something new under the sun, if a church should be dealt with according to the 18th chapter of Matthew for private or individual offenses; or in any way arraigned and excluded for moral delinquency like a member of a church Our doctrine is, that a church is the highest ecclesiastical tribunal on earth; and when assembled in the name of Christ, he, the Great Head, is in her midst. But if our association can exclude a church, as a church can exclude a member, then associations might do what the gates of hell cannot do, prevail against the church. In short, an affirmative to the question, would be to regard a Baptist association, which we are wont to call a mere advisory council, as something beyond a Presbyterian Synod and a Methodist Conference an ecclesiastical body supreme over supremacy, and controlling in cringing subserviency, independent sovereignties! But the supposition is too absurd to be entertained. The plain, common sense of the case is simply this: When a church violates the compact upon which she agreed to meet in association with her sister churches, she forfeits her rights under that compact, and may, and ought to be denied the privileges of the association. But. so long as she adheres to the terms of compact, she has a right to be regarded as a member. She can commit no offense over which the association can exercise jurisdiction, except a plain and obvious violation of the terms of compact; and when dropped from correspondence and association, she is still as much a church as she ever was. Connection with an association is not essential to the existence of a church; but piety, purity of doctrine, and walking in all the ordinances of the Lord blameless. So the New Testament teaches, so the Baptists believe. The second question may be more summarily disposed of. But we beg leave to premise that we have given very little study to that code of discipline, held in high esteem by some brethren, called "Baptist custom," or "Baptist usage,"—a kind of ecclesiastical common law, found in tradition touching the practices of the churches in Virginia, the Carolinas, or New England; or else of the churches fifty years ago. We hope the brethren will avoid the yoke of "custom" and "usage" as much as possible. For ourselves, we have no more respect for Baptist than for Papistical "usage," unless it is sustained by the Bible, or supported by sound Christian expediency. But to the question. The reception of a church by unanimity or by majority is a matter solely to be settled by the constitution or compact of the association. In the associations of our acquaintance, both modes obtain—by unanimity generally. It seems to us better not to receive a new church at the expense of the feelings of one already in connection. Fellowship ought to be preserved if possible. But when an objection is made, the reasons for it may be demanded; and then it is entirely competent for the association to determine whether these reasons are good and sufficient. If good, let the church applying be rejected. If not good, then the objectors ought to be required to yield, or else to be dismissed from the association. This seems to us to be a wise and prudent course; and some of our oldest and most intelligent associations pursue it. These are the principles which generally govern Baptist associations in the United States. The associations and churches were especially strict on the subject of discipline. An instance of this kind came up in the Philadelphia Association in the year 1712. One Thomas Selby made a disturbance and rupture in the churches at Philadelphia and Pennepek. The Association nominated persons to hear and determine concerning the differences; and they brought in their judgment and determination, confirmed under their hands, as follows: With respect to the difference between the members and others, sometime belonging to the Baptist Church in Philadelphia, as it hath been laid before us, persons chosen by both sides, they having referred the whole of their differences to our determination; we, doing what within us lies for the glory of God, and the peace of the whole church, in regard to the transactions past, and what may be best for the future, for the interest of the gospel, upon due consideration of what hath been laid before us, as followeth, viz.: We do find the way and manner of dealing and proceeding with each other hath been from the rule of the gospel, and unbecoming Christians in many respects, and in some too shameful here to enumerate the particulars. And first, we judge it expedient in point of justice, that Mr. Thomas Selby be paid the money subscribed by him by the members of this church, and he discharged from any further service in the work of the ministry; he being a person, in our judgment, not likely for the promotion of the gospel in these parts of the country; and considering his miscarriages we judge he may not be allowed to communion. And secondly, as to the members of this congregation, we do apprehend the best way is, that each party offended do freely forgive each other all personal and other offences that may have arisen on this occasion, and that they be buried in oblivion; and that those who shall for future mention or stir up any of the former differences, so as to tend to contention, shall be deemed disorderly persons, and be dealt with as such. And thirdly, that those who exempted themselves from their communion on this account, except as above, be allowed to take their places orderly without contention, and such as refuse to be deemed disorderly persons. "Let it be noted, that the said Thomas Selby, though he and his party referred to above said, yet he appeared afterwards very outrageous while he stayed in the province, and some of his adherents joined other denominations, and never returned to seek their places in the church, and the church did accordingly exclude them. But the greatest, part took their places personally" (Minutes of the Philadelphia Association). A notable illustration of the care with which members were received and discipline administered is found in the rules adopted by the First Baptist Church, Charleston, South Carolina: The rules were as follows: 1st. When a person desires to join the church, the desire shall be made known to the Pastor a sufficient length of time before the communion season, to allow of conversation and acquaintance; and for further satisfaction, the Pastor may appoint the deacons, or any other of the brethren he may think proper, to visit the Candidate, for the purpose of obtaining all needful information concerning his or her experience and faith, character and life. 2d. The Pastor, and those he may have sent to visit and converse with the Candidate, shall meet together, at such a place as he may appoint, to consider the qualification of the Candidate, and after which conference, the Pastor shall give such advice to each as may appear suitable. In the meantime, any of the members may visit the Candidate or Candidates, for the purpose of forming acquaintance, and obtaining fellowship, before the period of their reception into the church. 3d. If the Candidate or Candidates be thought to possess those qualifications which may entitle them to a participation of the privileges of God’s house, they shall appear before the church; which (as it is a garden enclosed) shall be privately convened for said purpose, and none but the members to be present, and each Candidate will then relate the reason for his or her hope, and give such answers to questions respecting their Christian knowledge, repentance and faith, as may afford consistent evidence of a gracious state; after which, satisfaction being obtained, they shall be baptized, and admitted to all the privileges of the church. 4th. After each Candidate has been examined before the church, he or she shall be requested to retire to the vestry, while the church considers the case; which done, the Candidate shall be called in and the Pastor shall make known the decision of the church, which if favorable, they shall be kindly received; but if there should appear to be any deficiency in the knowledge and experience of the Candidate, and it may be thought advisable to wait sometime longer, or in order to get better information, the Pastor will, in a kind, affectionate and encouraging manner, present this advice. 5th. In case of Candidates coming from the country, or under any peculiar providential circumstances, where the above course cannot be ,pursued, the Pastor, and those he may consult, must act as may seem most for the glory of God, and the welfare of the church (Rules for the Admission of Members into the Baptist Church in Charleston, 1828). A series of elaborate and searching questions was asked of the candidate preceding baptism. He was then requested to sign the church covenant. One of the many provisions of the covenant was to the effect. that "we promise to contribute in a reasonable manner, according to our ability, for the support of public worship, and the relief of the poor in the church; and to use our influence to forward and promote the interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom in. the world." There are no traces of any systematic efforts in regard to ministerial education, until about the year 1752. The denomination had, however, been decidedly friendly to an educated minister, from the beginning, and they had as great a degree of learning as perhaps any since that time. The churches, it must be remembered, were exceedingly few; as late as 1700, the number was not more than fourteen. The connection with the mother country was most intimate; indeed, many of the pastors had been educated in England. Thomas Hollis, a business man of England and a Baptist., was a liberal supporter of education in America. In 1720 he founded a professorship of Divinity in Harvard College, and in 1720 a professorship of Mathematics and Experimental Philosophy, and sent over apparatus that cost one hundred and fifty pounds. These professorships were endowed with a salary of eighty pounds a year. Likewise ten pounds each were allowed to ten scholarships, four of which were to be for Baptists. "The aggregate of his donations," says Pierce in his History of the University, "was not much, if at all, short of two thousand pounds sterling. So large an amount was never given to the college before by any individual; and when it is considered that all of this came from a stranger in a distant land, from one of the then poor, despised Baptists, during the lifetime of the donor, and at a time when the value of money was vastly greater than it is now, what breast does not glow with grateful admiration! Some idea may be formed of the difference in the value of money then and now by considering that, the salary of a professor was at first only twenty-six pounds sterling, and that, this was then called an honorable stipend. The total amount of the benefactions of this family ‘exceeded,’ says Quincy, "six thousand pounds currency of Massachusetts, which, considering the value of money at that period, and the disinterested spirit by which their charities were prompted; constitutes one of the most remarkable instances of continued benevolence upon record." In a letter which Hollis wrote to Rev. Ephraim Wheaton, Swanzey, Massachusetts, he refers to these scholarships and says that he had made provisions for "Baptist youth to be educated for the ministry, and equally regarded with Pedobaptists," and requests Mr. Wheaton to inform him of any duly qualified young men for the first vacancy (Massachusetts Missionary, Magazine, I.). He likewise corresponded with the Philadelphia Association on the subject. That body, in 1722, proposed to the churches "to make inquiry among themselves, if they have any young persons hopeful for the ministry, and inclined to learning; and if they have, to give notice of it to Mr. Abel Morgan before the first of November, that he might recommend such to the academy of Mr. Hollis, his account" (Minutes of the Philadelphia Association, 27). This provision of Mr. Hollis, however, proved of little avail to the Baptists, in consequence of the growing unfriendliness exhibited toward them throughout. most of the New England States. The Philadelphia Association, in 1731, sent a letter of salutation to the various churches represented in that body. The Association, among other things, said: The harvest is great and the laborers are few; pray mightily for more, and treat honorably the few you have left. Your neglect of hearing them may provoke the Master of the vineyard to call home from you those laborers you have, as he hath of late many of our reverend brethren. See what gifts you have among you; if there be any hopeful youths, let them exercise themselves, and be kind to them and tender to them; take heed that you do not discourage them you have, lest you should be made to lament your imprudent and inconsiderate management (Minutes, 32). Isaac Eaton, who was the pastor of the church at Hopewell, New Jersey, from 1748 to 1772, set up a school for the education of youth for the ministry as well as other callings, in 1756, and kept it for eleven years. To him belongs the honor of being the first American Baptist to establish a seminary for the literary and theological training of young men. For this work his natural endowments of mind, his varied attainments of knowledge, and his genuine piety happily qualified him. In the welfare and progress of this academy, the Philadelphia and Charleston Associations ever manifested a lively interest. They appointed trustees, had some oversight and liberally supplied funds. Some of the most distinguished men in the country were there educated. The following extract from a letter, addressed to the Particular Baptist ministers of London, by the Philadelphia Association, in 1762, has an allusion to the academy at Hopewell: Our numbers in these parts multiply; for when we had the pleasure of writing you in 1754, there were but nine churches in our association; yet now, there are twenty-nine all owning the Confession of Faith put forth in 1689. Some of the churches are now destitute; but we have a prospect of supplies, partly by means of a Baptist academy, lately set up. There follow some very interesting statements from the Charleston Association. "In 1755, the Association taking into consideration the destitute conditions of many places in the interior settlements of this and neighboring States (then provinces), recommended to the churches to make contributions for the support of a missionary to itinerate in those parts. Mr. Hart was authorized and requested, provided a sufficient sum should be raised, to procure if possible a suitable person for the purpose. With this view he visited Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the following year, and prevailed with Rev. John Gano to undertake the service; he attended the annual meeting and was cordially received. The Association requested Mr. Gano to visit the Yadkin first and afterwards to bestow his labors wherever Providence should appear to direct. He devoted himself to the work; it afforded ample scope for his distinguished piety, eloquence and fortitude; and his ministrations were crowned with remarkable success. Many embraced and professed the gospel. The following year he received from the Association a letter of thanks for his faithfulness and industry in the mission. At the same time, the expediency of raising a fund to furnish suitable candidates for the ministry with a competent share of learning, was taken into consideration, and it was recommended to the churches generally to collect money for the purpose. The members present engaged to furnish one hundred and thirty-three pounds to begin the fund; and Messrs. Stephens, Hart, and Pelot were chosen trustees. In 1759, Mr. Evan Pugh was proposed by Mr. Gano as a candidate for the ministry. He was examined, approved, and put on a course of studies. Having gone through them, he preached before the Association in 1762 with acceptance, and was soon afterward ordained. "The general contribution from the churches was not so great as wished. But a society instituted in Charleston in 1755, which was called ‘the Religious Society’ and flourished many years, was highly useful in aiding the Association in its benevolent design. Several young men were furnished by it with the means of pursuing studies preparatory to the ministry. Of this number were Messrs. Samuel Stillman and Edmund Botsford, both from the church in Charleston. The former was ordained there February 26, 1759; and in 1807 finished in Boston a long life distinguished by fervent piety, shining talents and eminent usefulness. The latter survives as the eminent pastor in George-Town" (Wood Furman, A History of the Charleston Association of Baptist Churches in the State of South Carolina, 11, 12. Charleston, 1811). The Circular Letter of this association, for 1786, contains this beautiful statement: It is our ardent desire that the members of our churches be well established in the evidence, as well as the necessity and importance of Christianity; and that the reasonableness and consistency of its particular doctrines be well understood. We recommend therefore that a thirst for divine knowledge, together with a laudable desire to excel in every grace and virtue, be entertained in all our breasts. Pay particular attention to the education of your children with this in view; and where it has pleased God to call any of his young servants to the work of the ministry, let the churches be careful to introduce them in the line of study and improvement; and make suitable exertions to furnish them with the necessary means for this end (Furman, 19). Rhode Island College, now known as Brown University, originated in the Philadelphia Association and was likewise intimately connected with the Warren Association. On October 12, 1762, the Association with twenty-nine churches, met at the Lutheran church building, in Fifth street, Philadelphia. Rev. Morgan Edwards was chosen moderator, and Abel Morgan clerk. At this meeting, says Backus, "the Association obtained such an acquaintance with the affairs of Rhode Island, as to bring themselves to an apprehension that it, was practicable and expedient to erect a college in the colony of Rhode Island, under the chief direction of the Baptists, in which education might be promoted, and superior learning obtained, free from any sectarian tests" (Backus, II. 137). The principal mover in this matter was Morgan Edwards, to whom, with the Rev. Samuel Jones, the business in general appears to have been entrusted. This gentleman, who had but recently settled in Philadelphia, was a native of Wales, having come to this-country upon the recommendation of Dr. Gill and other prominent ministers in London. He had been bred an Episcopalian, but in 1738 he embraced the sentiments of the Baptists, He received his academic education in Bristol, and in his sixteenth year entered upon the work of a Christian minister. Possessing superior abilities, united with great perseverance and zeal, he became the leader in various denominational enterprises, devoting to them his time and talents, and thereby rendering essential service to the cause. Many of his sermons, treatise, and historical works have been published. In one of them entitled ‘Materials toward a History of the Baptists in Pennsylvania,’ he speaks of himself as having ‘labored hard to settle a Baptist, college in Rhode Island Government, and to raise money to endow it’; which he deems the greatest service he has done or hopes to do for the Baptist interest." He died on January 28, 1795, in the seventy-third year of his age. The first president of the college was James Manning, who had been a student in Hopewell Academy. He was now twenty-five years of age, of a fine, commanding appearance, pleasing manners, and polished address. "His person," says a writer, "was graceful, and his countenance handsome and remarkably expressive of sensibility, dignity and cheerfulness. He possessed a voice of extraordinary compass and harmony, to which, in no small degree, may be ascribed the vivid impression which he made upon our minds. In his manners, which seemed to be the natural expression of dignity and grace, he combined ease without negligence, and politeness without affectation. Blest with an amiable disposition, and possessing versatile colloquial powers, he was most engaging and instructive as a companion. And when to all these gifts and accomplishments is added sterling good sense, for which he was preeminently distinguished, and superior learning, it will be readily perceived that he was well fitted to act as a pioneer in the general educational work before him." The history of the enterprise from this point may be best given in the language of Manning, which is as follows: In the month of July, 1763, we arrived at Newport, and made a motion to several gentlemen of the Baptist denomination—whereof Col. Gardner, the Deputy Governor, was one—relative to a seminary of polite literature, subject to the government of Baptists. The motion was properly attended to, to which brought together about fifteen gentlemen of the same denomination at the deputy’s house. who requested that I would draw up a sketch of the design, against the day following. The day came; and the same gentlemen, with other Baptists, met in the same place, when a rough draught was produced and read,—the tenor of which was, that the institution was to be a Baptist one, but that as many of other denominations should be taken in as was consistent with the said design. Accordingly, the Hon. Josiah Lyndon and Col. Job Bennet were appointed to draw up a charter to be laid before the next General Assembly with a petition that they should pass it into a law. But the said gentlemen pleading unskillfulness touching an affair of this kind, requested that their trusty friend, the Rev. Ezra, now Dr. Stiles, might be solicited to assist them. This was opposed by me as unwilling to give the Doctor trouble about an affair of other people; but they urged that his love of learning and catholicism would induce him readily to give his assistance. Accordingly their proposition was assented to, and his assistance obtained; or, rather, the draughting the charter was entirely left to him, after being told that Baptists were to have the lead in the institution, and the government thereof, forever; and that no more of other denominations were to be admitted than would be consistent with that. The charter was drawn, and a time and place were appointed for the parties concerned to meet and read it. But the vessel in which I was to sail for Halifax going off that day, prevented my being present with them long enough to see whether the original design was secured; and as the corporation was made to consist of two branches, Trustees and Fellows, and these branches to sit and act distinct and separate powers, it was not easy to determine, by a transient hearing, what those powers might be. The Trustees were presumed to be the principal branch of authority; and as nineteen out of thirty-five were to be Baptists, the Baptists were satisfied, without sufficient examination into the authority vested in the fellowship, which afterwards appeared to be the soul of the institution, while the trusteeship was only the body. Placing, therefore, an entire confidence in Dr. Stiles, they agreed to join in a petition to the Assembly to have the charter confirmed by authority. The petition was proffered, and cheerfully received, and the charter read; after which the vote was called for, and urged by some to pass into law. But this was opposed by others, particularly by Daniel Jencks, Esq., member for Providence, who contended that the Assembly required more time to examine whether it was agreeable to the design of the first movers of it, and therefore prayed the house to have the perusal of it, while they adjourned for dinner. This was granted, with some opposition. Then he asked the Governor, who was a Baptist, whom they intended to invest with the governing power in said institution. The Governor answered, "The Baptists by all means I" Then Mr. Jencks showed him that the charter was so artfully constructed as to throw the power into the Fellows’ hands, whereof eight of the twelve were Presbyterians, usually called Congregationalists, and that the other four might be of the same denomination, for aught that appeared in the charter to the contrary. Convinced of this, Governor Lyndon immediately had an interview with Dr. Stiles, the Presbyterian minister of Newport, and demanded why he had perverted the design of the charter. The answer was, "I gave you timely warning to take care of yourselves, for that we had done so in regard to our society"; and finally observed, that "he was not a rogue." When the Assembly was convened again, the said Jencks moved that the affair might be put off to the next session; adding that the motion for the college originated with the Baptists, and was intended for their use, but that the charter in question was not at all calculated to answer their purpose; and since the committee entrusted with this matter by the Baptists professed that they had been misled, not to say imposed upon, it was necessary that the Baptists in other parts of the colony should be consulted previous to its passing into a law, especially as few, if any of them except himself, had seen it; and he prayed that he might have a copy for the said purpose, which he promised to return. All which was granted. When the charter came to be narrowly inspected, it was found to be made by no means answerable to the design of agitators and the instructions given to the committee. Consequently, application was made to the Philadelphia Association, where the thing took its rise, to have their mind on the subject, who immediately sent two gentlemen hither to join with the Baptists of this colony in making such alterations and amendments as were to them specified before their departure. When they arrived, Dr. Eyres of Newport, was added to the committee, and they happily draughted the present charter, and lodged it, with a new petition, in proper hands. The most material alterations were, appointing the same number of Baptists in the fellowship that had been appointed by the Presbyterians, by Dr. Stiles; setting the presidency in the Baptist society; adding five Baptists to the Trustees, and putting more Episcopalians than Presbyterians in the corporation (Guild, Life and Times of James Manning and the Early History of Brown University). The college required rigid examinations in the classics for entrance. Some of the orations at the commencement were delivered in Latin. For subjects chosen, modes of presentation, and the customs of the times, the following account of the first commencement is interesting: On Thursday, the seventh of this instance (1789), was celebrated at Warren the first commencement in the college of this colony; when the following young gentlemen commenced Bachelor of Arts; namely, Joseph Belton, Joseph Eaton, William Rogers, Richard Stites, Charles Thompson, James Mitchell Varnum and William Williams. About ten o’clock, A. M., the gentlemen concerned in conducting the affairs of the college, together with the candidates, went in procession to the meeting house. After they had taken their seats respectively, and the audience composed, the President introduced the business of the day with prayer; then followed a salutatory in Latin, pronounced with much spirit, by Mr. Stites, which produced him great applause from the learned part of the assembly. He spoke upon the advantages of liberty and learning, and their mutual dependence upon each other; concluding with proper salutations to the Chancellor of the college, Governor of the colony, etc., particularly expressing the gratitude of all the friends of the college to the Rev. Morgan Edwards, who has encountered many difficulties in going to Europe to collect donations for the institution, and has lately returned. To which succeeded a forensic dispute, in English, on the following thesis, namely, "The Americans, in their present circumstances, cannot, consistent with good policy, affect to become an Independent State." Mr. Varnum ingeniously defended it, by cogent arguments handsomely dressed; though he was subtly but delicately opposed by Mr. William; both of whom spoke with emphasis and propriety. As a conclusion to the exercises of the forenoon, the audience were agreeably entertained with an oration on benevolence, by Mr. Rogers; in which, among many other pertinent observations, he particularly noticed the necessity which that infant seminary stands in of the salutary effects of that truly Christian virtue. At three o’clock P. M., the audience being convened, a syllogistic dispute was introduced on the thesis: "Materia cogitate non potest" Mr. Williams the respondent; Messieurs Belton, Eaton, Rogers and Varnum the opponents,—in the course of which dispute, the principal arguments on both sides were produced toward settling the critical point. The degree of Bachelor of Arts was then conferred on the candidates. Then the following gentlemen (graduated in other colleges) at their own request received the honorary degree of Master of Arts; namely, Rev. Edward Upham, Rev. Morgan Edwards, Rev. Samuel Stillman, Rev. Hezekiah Smith, Hon. Joseph Wanton, Jun. Esq., Mr. Jabez Bowen, and Mr. David Howell, Professor of Philosophy in said college. The following gentlemen, being well recommended by the Faculty for literary merit, had conferred on them the honorary degree of Master in the Arts; namely, Rev. Abel Morgan, Rev. Oliver Hart, Rev. David Thomas, Rev. Samuel Jones, Mr. John Davis, Mr. Robert Strettle Jones, Mr. John Stites, Rev. James Bryson, Rev. James Edwards, Rev. William Boulton, Rev. John Ryland, Rev. William Clark, Rev. Joshua Toulmin, and Rev. Caleb Evans. A concise, pertinent, and solemn charge was then given to the Bachelors by the President, concluding with his paternal benediction, which naturally introduced the valedictory orator, Mr. Thompson, who, after some remarks upon the excellences of the oratorical art, and expressions of gratitude to the patrons and officers of the college, together with a valediction to them, and all present, took a most affectionate leave of his classmates. The scene was tender, the subject felt, and the audience affected. The President concluded the exercises with prayer. The whole was conducted with a propriety and solemnity suitable to the occasion. The audience (consisting of the principal gentlemen and ladies of the colony), though large and crowded, behaved with the utmost decorum. In the evening, the Rev. Morgan Edwards, by particular request, preached a sermon, especially addressed to the graduates, from Php 3:8 : "Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ my Lord"; in which (after high enconiums on the liberal arts, and sciences) the superior knowledge of Christ, or the Christian science, was clearly and fully illustrated in several striking examples and similes; one of which follows: "When the sun is below the horizon, the stars excel in glory; but when his orb irradiates our hemisphere, their glory dwindles, fades away, disappears." Not only the candidates, but even the President, were dressed in American manufactures. Finally, be it observed, that this class are the first sons of that college which has existed for more than four years; during all which time it has labored under great disadvantages, notwithstanding the warm patronage and encouragement of many worthy men of fortune and benevolence; and it is hoped, from the disposition which many discovered on that day, and other favorable circumstances, that these disadvantages will soon, in part, be happily removed (The Providence Gazette and County Journal). The performances of the day excited universal attention. "We can readily imagine," says one, "how the beautiful and benevolent face of President Manning was radiant with smiles on this occasion; with what joy he beheld the first fruits of his anxieties; and labors and prayers; with what glowing eloquence he poured forth, at the throne of grace, the pious effusions of a grateful heart, invoking the blessing of God upon the future efforts of the friends of the infant institution, and filling every heart with emotion, if not every eye with tears, as, with the affection of a friend and the solicitude of a father, he commended to the care of heaven those who were about to depart from him, and, at a period of no ordinary moment, to enter a world of temptation and trial." The college continued in successful operation till 1776, when, in consequence of the war, which had now deeply engrossed the attention of the whole country, the students were all dispersed. The college edifice was occupied by the French and American soldiery as a hospital and barracks from December, 1776, to June, 1782, at which time study was again resumed. These were days of trial, in which every muscle and sinew of the American people were put in requisition. The students of this then infant institution left the walls of science for the duties of the camp. The President, meanwhile, occupied an honorable seat in the American Congress. The Philadelphia Association was among the first, if not the very first, ecclesiastical body in America, it is believed, which took a stand on the subject of temperance. The following is from the minutes of the year 1788: This Association, taking into consideration the ruinous effects of the great abuse of distilled liquors throughout the country, take this opportunity of expressing our hearty concurrence with our brethren of several other religious societies, in discountenancing the use of them in the future; and earnestly entreat our brethren and friends to use all of their influence to that end, both in their own families and neighborhood, except when used as a medicine (Minutes, 239) The manners and customs in worship were primitive and often rude. "Behold now the congregation as it assembles on the Sabbath. Some of them are mounted on horses, the father with his wife or daughter on a pillion behind him, and perhaps also his little boy astride before him. They ride up to the stone horseblock and dismount. The young men and maidens, when not provided with horses, approach on foot. They have worn their everyday shoes until just before coming into sight and have exchanged them for their clean calfskins or morocco, having deposited the old ones in some unsuspected patch or breaks or some sly hole in the wall. They carry in hand a rose, a lilac, a pink, a peony or a pond lily (for this was the whole catalogue of flowers then known in the country towns), or, what was still more exquisite, a nice bunch of caraway seed. Instead of this in winter they bare a tin foot-stove containing a little dish of coals, which they have carefully brought from home or filled at some neighboring house; and this was all the warmth they were to enjoy during the two long hours of the service. In winter they come a long distance on ox-sleds, or perhaps skim over the deep untrodden snow on snow shoes. They enter the house stamping the snow from their feet and tramping over the uncarpeted aisles with their cow-hide shoes. "Let us enter with them. The wintry blast howls around and shrieks among the loose clap-boards; the half-fastened windows clatter; and the walls re-echo to the thumping of thick boots as their wearers endeavor to keep up the circulation in their half-frozen feet, while clouds of vapor issue from their mouths; and the man of God, as he raises his hands in his long prayers, must needs protect them with shaggy mittens. So comfortless and cold—it makes one shudder to think of it. In summer, on the contrary, the sun blazes in, unscreened by window curtains; the sturdy farmer, accustomed to labor all day in his shirt sleeves, takes the liberty to lay aside his coat in like manner for the more serious employments of the sanctuary" (History of a Hampshire Town). Books for further reference: Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association from A. D. 1707, to A. D. 1807; being the first One Hundred Years of its Existence. Edited by A. D. Gillette, A.M., Pastor of the Eleventh Baptist Church, Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 1851. Reuben Aldridge Guild, Life, Times and Correspondence of James Manning, and the Early History of Brown University. Boston, 1864. Reuben A. Guild, Charter of Brown University, The Baptist Quarterly, IX. 165-187. Philadelphia, 1875. A. H. Newman, History of Baptist Organization, The Review and Expositor, VIII. 353-362. Louisville, 1911. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 41: 01.2.01.10. THE GREAT AWAKENING ======================================================================== Chapter 10 – The Great Awakening Baptists in Massachusetts—Position of the Puritans—Reaction Against the Standing Order—Thirteen Evils—The Account of Jonathan Edwards of Conditions—A Minister in New Hampshire—The Historian Trumbull—The Drink Habit—The Half-Way Covenant—The Burning of Witches—The Awakening in Northampton—The Sermons of Edwards—The Revival Begins—The Effects of the Revival—George Whitefield—The Estimate of Benjamin Franklin—Manner of Preaching of Whitefield—Calvinism—The Baptists Calvinistic—Disorders—Persecutions of the Standing Order—Edwards Ejected from His Church—The Boston Gazette—Opposition of the Episcopalians—Action of the Connecticut Legislature—The New Lights—The New Lights Become Baptists—Bacon’s Account—Great Growth of the Baptists. At the time of the Great Awakening in Massachusetts there were nine Baptist churches. After the Great Awakening, and as a result of it before the Revolution, there were organized in the State twenty-seven other Baptist churches. From these beginnings the Baptists spread, in the course of time, through all of the New England States. The Great Awakening began in 1734 with the third generation of the Puritans. With the origin of this revival the Baptists had nothing to do; but from it they reaped great results. The churches of the Puritans, or the standing order, were intensely religious in their theory and organization. The connection between Church and State was close; and they confidently asserted that they were led of God in all of the affairs of life. They believed that the Scriptures prescribed not only grace for salvation, but laws for the government of the community. These laws were derived from Moses rather than from Christ. In the first twenty years about one hundred ministers came over from England. They were of a highly intellectual character and they were constantly consulted by governors and magistrates. Their advice was freely given, sometimes before it was asked; yet it was never unwelcome. In 1635 Rev. John Cotton drew up, for the use of the General Court, a law code based upon "Moses, his judicials"; and capital punishment was long continued for offenses specified in the book of Leviticus. From necessity there came a reaction against the standing order. Men could not be made pious by law. Non-church members were not permitted to participate in the government. Until a profession of religion was made even the children of such unbelievers were barred from all the privileges of the church. There was a general lapse in morals. The General Court called, in 1679, a Reforming Synod to consider the evils of the day. After a careful consideration of these problems thirteen evils were specified as being the cause of the disasters and calamities which had come upon them. They were as follows: decay of godliness on the part of professed Christians; pride and extravagance in dress; neglect of baptism and church fellowship together with a failure to testify against Quakers and Baptists; profanity and irreverent behaviour in the sanctuary; absence of Sabbath observance; lack of family government and worship; backbitings, censures, revilings, and litigations between church members; intemperance, tavern haunting and putting the bottle to the lips of the Indians, besides adultery, lustful dress and behaviour, mixed dancings, gaming and idleness; covetousness and a love of the world; opposition to reformation and leniency toward sin; a want of public spirit in causing schools and other common interests to languish; and finally a general unfruitfulness under means of grace and a refusal to repent. Jonathan Edwards, writing concerning the year 1730, when he succeeded his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, as the pastor of the church in Northampton, says: It seemed to be a time of extraordinary dullness in religion; licentiousness for some years greatly prevailed among the youth of the town; they were many of them very much addicted to night walking, and frequenting the tavern, and lewd practices wherein some by their example exceedingly corrupted others. It was their manner very frequently to get together in conventions of both sexes, for mirth and jollity, which they called frolicks; and they would often spend the greater part of the night in them, without any regard to order in the families they belonged to; and indeed family government did not much prevail in the town. It was become very customary with many of our young people to be indecent in their carriage at meeting, which doubtless would not have prevailed to such a degree, had it not been that my grandfather, through his great age (though he retained his powers surprisingly to the last) was not able to observe them. There had also prevailed in the town a spirit of contention between two parties, into which they had for many years been divided, by which was maintained a jealousy one of the other, and they were prepared to oppose one another in public affairs (Edwards, Narrative of Surprising Conversions. Works, III.). A minister in the capital town of New Hampshire says of the state of the churches at this time: No serious Christian could behold it without a sad heart, and scarce without a weeping eye; to see the solid, substantial piety, for which our ancestors were justly renowned, having long languished under sore decays, brought so low, and seemingly just ready to expire and give up the ghost. How did not only Pelagianism, but Arianism, Socinianism, and even Deism, and what is falsely called Free-Thinking, here and there prevail! The instituted means of salvation, in many places, were but lightly esteemed, and a horrid contempt was put upon the ministry of the word (Shurtliff, Defence of Whitefield). Trumbull, the historian of Connecticut, speaking of the year 1734, says: The forms of religion were kept up, but there appeared but little of the power of it. Both the wise and foolish virgins seemed to slumber. Professors appeared too generally to become worldly and lukewarm. The young people became loose and vicious, family prayer and religion were greatly neglected, the Sabbath was lamentably profaned; the intermissions were spent in worldly conversation. The young people made the evenings after the Lord’s day, and after lectures, the times for their mirth and company keeping. Taverns were haunted; intemperance and other vices increased; and the Spirit of God appeared to be awfully withdrawn. It seems also to appear that many of the clergy, instead of clearly and powerfully preaching the doctrines of original sin, or regeneration, justification by faith alone, and the other peculiar doctrines of the gospel, contented themselves with preaching a cold, unprincipled and lifeless morality; for when these great doctrines were perspicuously and powerfully preached, and distinctions were made between the morality of Christians, originating in evangelical principles, faith and love, and the morality of heathen, they were offended, and became violent opposers (Trumbull, History of Connecticut, II.). And of the year 1739 he says: But few persons offered themselves to the communion of the churches. It was also observed that those who did offer themselves gave no account of any previous convictions which they had obtained of their great sin and misery by nature and practice. It does not appear that ministers in general, at that time, made any particular enquiry of those whom they admitted to communion, with respect to their internal feelings and exercises. The Stoddardian opinion generally prevailed at this period, that unregenerate men could consistently covenant with God, and when moral in their lives, had a right to sealing ordinances (Trumbull, II.). The drink habit had frightfully increased. "It is easy to praise the fathers of New England," says Theodore Parker, "easier to praise for virtues they did not possess than to discriminate and fairly judge those remarkable men . . . . Let us mention two facts. It is recorded in the probate office that in 1678, at the funeral of Mrs. Mary Norton, widow of the celebrated John Norton, one of the ministers of the first Church in Boston, fifty-one and a half gallons of the best Malaga wine were consumed by the mourners. In 1685, at the funeral of Rev. Thomas Cobbett, minister of Ipswich, there were consumed one barrel of wine and two barrels of cider; and, as it was cold, there were ‘some spice and ginger for the cider.’ You may easily judge of the drunkenness and riot on occasions less solemn than the funeral of an old beloved minister. Towns provided intoxicating drinks at the funeral of their paupers. In Salem, in 1728, at the funeral of a pauper, a gallon of wine and another of cider are charged as ‘incidentals’; the next year six gallons of wine on a similar occasion. In Lynn, in 1728, the town furnished ‘half a barrel of cider for the widow Despau’s funeral.’ Affairs had come to such a pass that in 1742 the General Court forbade the use of wine and rum at funerals" (Parker, Speeches, Addresses and Occasional Sermons). The year 1662 marks a transitional point in the churches of New England. The adoption of the celebrated half-way covenant that year opened the door for worldliness, formality, and dangerous errors. In 1670 a decay in spirituality was very apparent. Rev. Samuel Danforth, of Roxbury, spoke of "the temper, complexion, and countenance of the churches as being strangely altered" and "a cold, careless, dead frame of spirit" as having "grown steadily" upon them. In 1678 Increase Mather spoke of "conversions" as "rare." "The body of the rising generation is a poor, perishing, unconverted, and, except the Lord pour down his Spirit, an undone generation. Many are profane, drunkards, lascivious, scoffers at the power of godliness." In 1683 Rev. Samuel Torry, of Weymouth, spoke: "Of the many symptoms of death that are upon our religion!" "As converting work doth cease, so doth religion die away; though more insensibly, yet more irrevocably. How much is religion dying in the hearts of sincere Christians!" In 1702 Increase Mather said: "Look into our pulpits and see if there is such a glory there as there once was. Look into the civil State. Does Christ reign there as he once did? How many churches, how many towns are there in New England over which we may sigh and say, the glory is gone!" (Dorchester, Christianity in the United States). The burning of the witches greatly lowered the religious tone of the country. New England suffered the consequences of a delusion which was at this period dying out in Europe. In the year previous witches had occasionally been tried and executed; but in 1692, processes of this kind commenced, especially in Salem, on such a scale that by degrees towards one hundred persons were brought to trial. The accusers represented themselves as tormented by these persons in a very singular manner, and as having seen and watched their secret conclaves with evil spirits. Not one of the number confessed his guilt. It was not until the accusers had impeached many persons of blameless character and members of distinction that the public opinion turned against the accusers. The cause of religion, however, was irretrievably injured (Uhden, The New England Theocracy, 222. Boston, 1859) . There had been some manifestations of a better state of affairs. Theodore Frelenhuyson, a Dutch Reformed minister, near New Brunswick, New Jersey, was afflicted with a serious illness. After his recovery he seriously called sinners to repentance. "Which method," he said, "was sealed by the Holy Spirit in the conviction and conversion of a considerable number of persons at various times and in different places in that part of the country as appeared by their acquaintance with experimental religion and good conversation" (Tracy, The Great Awakening). The Great Awakening, however, properly began in Northampton, Massachusetts, about the year 1734. The honor belongs to Jonathan Edwards. As a child he was precocious. At six he commenced the study of Latin, at ten he wrote an essay denying the materiality of the soul, and at thirteen he entered Yale College, from which he graduated in September, 1720, before he had quite reached the age of seventeen. During his second year in college he read Locke on the "Human Understanding," with which he said he was inexpressibly pleased and entertained; more so than the greedy miser, when gathering a handful of silver and gold from some newly-discovered treasure. After graduation he remained two years in college, studying and preparing himself for the gospel ministry to which he had already committed himself. A genealogical study of the descendants of Edwards reveals very interesting facts. It has been computed that among them are presidents of eight colleges, about one hundred college professors, more than one hundred lawyers, sixty physicians, thirty judges, eighty holders of important public offices, twenty-five officers in the army and navy, and numberless clergymen and missionaries (Winship, The Human Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, The World’s Work, October, 1903). With Edwards began a new period of American religious history, a period characterized on the one hand by revivalism and on the other by the appearance of theological parties and the growth of denominationalism. After his settlement at Northampton he began preaching sermons on justification by faith, the justice of God in the damnation of sinners, the excellency of Christ, and the duty of pressing into the kingdom of God. These sermons greatly deepened the religious impressions of his hearers. In these sermons the doctrine of God’s sovereignty was strongly insisted upon. Through the fall of Adam man had lost God’s favor and henceforth had no claim upon his mercy. Man is a sinner by birth as well as by choice and is possessed of no moral power of his own wherewith he may turn to God or please him. God is under no obligation to save any one. "His sovereignty is involved in his freedom to take whom he pleases, and to leave whom he pleases to perish." Special grace is communicated to such as he has chosen to salvation, but all others are left to die in their sins. Satisfaction must be made for the sins of those who are foreordained to eternal life. Such satisfaction was made in the vicarious sacrifice on the cross by Jesus Christ, who suffered thereby a penalty equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the elect, and thus their debt was literally paid. By the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer soul salvation was effected (Beardsley, A History of American Revivals). Under this preaching some persons were converted. Among these was a frivolous young woman, who it was feared would bring disrepute upon the gospel, but these fears were not realized. "Presently upon this," wrote Edwards, "a great and earnest concern about the great things of religion, and the eternal world, became universal in all parts of the town, and among persons of all degrees, and all ages; the noise among the dry bones waxed louder and louder; all other talk but about spiritual and eternal things was soon thrown by; all the conversation in all companies, upon all occasions, was upon these things only, unless so much as was necessary for people carrying on their ordinary secular business. Other discourse than on the things of religion, would scarcely be tolerated in any company. The minds of the people were wonderfully taken off from the world; it was treated amongst us as a thing of very little consequence; they seemed to follow their worldly business, more as a part of their duty, than any disposition they had to it; the temptation now seemed to lie on that hand, to neglect worldly affairs too much, and to spend too much time in the immediate exercise of religion; which thing was exceedingly misrepresented by reports that were spread in distant parts of the land, as though the people here had wholly thrown by all worldly business, and betook themselves entirely to reading and praying, and such like religious exercises. "But though the people did not ordinarily neglect their worldly business, yet there was the reverse of what commonly is; religion was with all sorts the common concern, and the world was a thing only by the way. The only thing in their view was to get the kingdom of heaven, and everyone appeared pressing into it; the engagedness of their hearts in this great concern could not be hid; it appeared in their very countenances. It was then a dreadful thing amongst us to lie out of Christ, in danger every day of dropping into hell; and what persons’ minds were intent upon was to escape for their lives, and to fly from the wrath to came. All would eagerly lay hold of opportunities for their souls; and were wont very often to meet together in private houses for religious purposes; and such meetings, when appointed, were wont greatly to be thronged. "There was scarcely a single person in the town, either old or young, that wag left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Those that were wont to be vainest, and loosest, and those that had been disposed to think and speak slightly of vital and experimental religion, were now generally subject to great awakenings. And the work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner, and increased more and more; souls did, as it were, come by flocks to Jesus Christ. From. day to day, for many months together, might be seen evident instances of sinners brought out o f darkness into marvelous light, and delivered out of an horrible pit, and from the miry clay, and set upon a rock, with a new song of praise to God in their mouths" (Edwards, III.). The effects of the revival were far reaching; but the labors of George Whitefield greatly augmented the results. "The life of Whitefield reads like a romance. He was born in Bell Inn, in the city of Gloucester, England, December 16, 1714. His father, who had been a wine merchant and afterwards an inn keeper, died when the future evangelist was but two years of age. Notwithstanding her limited resources his mother determined to give him every advantage within her power. As a youth he was sent to the Grammar School of St. Mary de Crypt, and at the age of eighteen he entered Oxford University, where he secured a position as servitor in Pembroke College. With the assistance thus afforded and through the kindness of friends he was enabled to reach the end of his three years’ residence at college with but twenty-five pounds indebtedness." At first he was reckless, but after he gave himself to the ministry he lived an austere life. He was an orator of unusual power. Of his first sermon it was reported that he had driven fifteen persons mad. Repeatedly he visited America and preached in every section of the country. In Philadelphia he spoke from the gallery of the Court House, on Market Street. It was said that "his voice was distinctly heard on the Jersey shore, and so distinct was his speech that every word was understood on board of a shallop at Market street wharf, a distance of upward of four hundred feet from the court house. All the intermediate space was crowded with his hearers" (Gillies, Memoirs of Whitefield). "He seems to have no regard," says Prince, "to please the eyes of his hearers with agreeable gesture, nor their ears with delivery, nor their fancy with language; but to aim directly at their hearts and consciences, to lay open their ruinous delusions, show them their numerous, secret, hypocritical shifts in religion, and drive them out of every deceitful refuge wherein they made themselves easy with the form of godliness without power" (Tracy, The Great Awakening). On the effects of the visit to Philadelphia Benjamin Franklin said: The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous, and it was a matter of speculation with me to observe the influence of his oratory on his hearers and how much they respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them, assuring them that they were naturally half beasts and half devils. It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of the inhabitants. From being thoughtless and indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world was growing religious; so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms in different families in every street (Billingsley, Life of Whitefield). The manner of his preaching is thus described by a contemporary: "He loudly proclaims all men by nature to be under sin, and obnoxious to the wrath of God. He maintains the absolute necessity of supernatural grace to bring men out of this state. He asserts the righteousness of Christ alone to be the cause of the justification of a sinner; that this is received by faith; that faith is the gift of God; that where faith is wrought it brings the sinner under the deepest sense of unworthiness, to the footstool of sovereign grace to accept of mercy as the free gift of God only for Christ’s sake. He asserts the absolute necessity of the new birth; that this new production is solely the work of God’s blessed spirit; that wherever it is wrought it is a permanent, abiding principle, and that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it" (Dunning, Congregationalists). The trend of the preaching was decidedly Calvinistic. The sovereignty of God was the central theme about which all else revolved. Jonathan Edwards wrote: I think I have found that no discourses have been more remarkably blessed, than those in which the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty with regard to the salvation of sinners, and his just liberty, with regard to the answering the prayers, or succeeding the pains of mere natural men, continuing such, have been insisted on (Edwards, Works, III.). On the subject of a "Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God" President Edwards says: God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise, to keep any natural man out of hell one moment.... The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow for one moment from being drunk with your blood ....The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked ....You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment. The preaching of some Baptists was equally Calvinistic in tone. Ezra Stiles, in a letter to Chauncy Whittlesey, March 6, 1770, describes one Dawson, a Baptist minister of Newport, as follows: He preaches that it is sinful for an unregenerate to pray at all; to use the Lord’s Prayer in particular, for if they said the truth, they would say…."Our Father which art in Hell," our Father, the Devil; that unregenerate are to use no means at all, there are no means appointed for them;…they are more likely, or at least as likely, to be seized by grace, not using than using means. Particularly, as to attending his preaching, he asked them what they came there for, he had nothing to say to them, only to tell them that they were heirs of damnation, and that would do them no good nor hurt....None but saints were the subjects of his preaching or ordination; and (he) forbid at length the promiscuous congregation to sing with them, or to pray with them,—and only a dozen or so now sing .... So that he does the thing thoroughly,—he makes no pauses or reservations. Now this, at this time, is a very wonderful looking glass (Stiles, Diary, I.). Naturally there were many disorders which accompanied these revival services. A writer in the Boston Gazette, May 31, 1743, suggested that a convention be held to "consider whether they are not called upon to give an open, conjunct testimony to an event so surprising and gracious, as well as against those errors in doctrine and disorders in practice, which, through the persistent agency of Satan, have attended it, and in some measure blemished its glory and hindered its advancement." Such a meeting was held July following. After deliberation sixty-eight persons signed a manifesto. In part the ministers expressed themselves in these words. With respect to a number of those who have been under the impressions of the present day, we must declare there is no good ground to conclude that they have become real Christians; the account they give of their conviction and consolation agreeing with the standard of the holy scriptures, corresponding with the experience of the saints, and evidenced by the eternal fruits of holiness in their live; so that they appear to those who have the nearest access to them, as so many epistles of Christ, written, not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, attesting to the genuineness of the present operation, and representing the excellency of it. Indeed, many who appeared under conviction, and were much altered in their external behaviour, when this work began, and while it was most flourishing, have lost their impressions, and are relapsed into their former manner of life; yet of those who were judged hopefully converted, and made a public profession of religion, there have been fewer instances of scandal and apostasy than might be expected. So that, so far as we are able to form a judgment, the face of religion is lately changed much for the better in many of our towns and congregations; and together with a reformation observable in divers instances, there appears to be more experimental godliness, and lively christianity, than most of us can remember we have ever seen before. The conduct of Whitefield sometimes savored of fanaticism. His Journal abounds in descriptions of the emotional effects of his preaching. "Shrieking, crying, weeping, and wailing were to be heard on every corner." "In almost every part of the congregation somebody or another began to cry out, and almost all melted into tears." "Some were struck pale as death, others wringing their hands, others were lying on the ground, and most lifting their eyes toward heaven, and crying to God for mercy." He was greatly influenced by impulses and impressions. There were many protests from the State Churches which finally led to the organization of Separate or New Light churches. There are many examples of this kind. Ebenezer Frothingham, of Middletown, gives an account of conditions, in 1767, in Connecticut. He says: I myself have been confined in Hartford prison near five months, for nothing but exhorting and warning the People, after the public Worship was done and the Assembly dismissed. And whilst I was there confined, three more persons were sent to prison; one for exhorting, and two for worshipping God in a private house in a Separate meeting. And quick after I was released by the Laws being answered by natural Relations unbeknown to me, then two brethren were committed for exhorting and preaching, and several others afterwards for attending the same duties; and I myself twice more was sent to prison for the Minister’s rates (Frothingham, A Key to Unlock the Door that leads in to take a Fair View of the Religious Constitution established by Law in the Colony of Connecticut, 51. Printed 1767). He further informs us the Baptists were persecuted for the same reasons: Young Deacon Drake, of Windsor, now in Hartford prison, for the Minister’s rates and building their meeting house, altho’ he is a baptist;…is accounted a harmless, godly man; and he has plead the privilege of a baptist, through all the courts, and been at great expense, without relief, till at last the assembly has given him a mark in his hand, and notwithstanding this, they have thrust him to prison for former rates, with several aggravations, which I shall omit. But as to what the Constitution does to relieve the poor Deacon, he may there die, and the cry of blood, blood, go up to the ears of a just God (Frothingham). To prevent Whitefield from visiting Connecticut, and to prejudice the people against him, the General Association of Churches of Connecticut, June, 1745, passed the following resolution: That, WHEREAS, there has of late years been many errors in doctrine and disorders in practice, prevailing in the Churches in this land, which seem to have a threatening aspect upon the Churches; and WHEREAS, Mr. George Whitefield has been the promoter, or at least the faulty occasion of many of these errors and disorders; this Association think it needful for them to declare, that if the said Mr. Whitefield should make his progress through this government, it would by no means be advisable for any of our ministers to admit him into their pulpits, or for any of our people to attend his administrations (Frederic Denison, Notes of the Baptists, and Their Principles in Norwich, Conn., from the Settlement of the Town to 1850). Even Jonathan Edwards was ejected from his church at Northampton. An ecclesiastical council, "convened not without elements of unfairness," voted "that it is expedient that the pastoral relation between Mr. Edwards and his church be immediately dissolved, if the people shall persist in desiring it." The action of the council was ratified by the church by a majority of two hundred and fifty votes. July 1, 1750, he preached his farewell sermon. For sometime he preached occasionally, until prohibited to do so by the town meeting. The Episcopalians were likewise in opposition to Whitefield and the revival. This did much toward the unpopularity of that denomination in the American Revolution. Dr. Colman of the Battle Street Church invited Whitefield to Boston. Dr. Cutler, meeting him on the street, said to him frankly: "I am sorry to see you here"; to which Whitefield replied: "So is the Devil." Dr. Cutler described Whitefield’s visit in a letter to a friend, as follows: Whitefield has plagued us with a witness. It would be an endless attempt to describe the scene of confusion and disturbance occasioned by him; the divisions of families, neighborhoods and towns; the contrariety of husbands and wives; the undutifulness of children and servants; the quarrels among the teachers; the disorders of the night; the intermission of labor and business; the neglect of husbandry and the gathering of the harvest.... In many communities several preaching, and several exhorting and praying, at the same time, the rest crying, or laughing, yelping, sprawling or fainting. This revel in some places has been maintained many days and nights together. When Mr. Whitefield first arrived here, the whole town was alarmed. He made his first visit to church on Friday, and canvassed with many of our clergy together, and belied them, me especially, when he was gone. Being not invited into our pulpits, the Dissenters were highly pleased, and engrossed him; and immediately bells rang, and all hands went to lecture. This show kept up all the while he was here. The town was ever alarmed; the streets were filled with people with coaches and chairs, all for the benefit of that holy man. The conventicles were crowded; but he rather chose the Common, where multitudes might see him in all his awful postures; besides, in one crowded conventicle, six were killed in a fight before he came in; but he ever anathematized the Church of England, and that was enough. After him came one Tennant, a monster, impudent and noisy, and told them they were all Damned! damned! damned! This charmed them, and, in the most dreadful winter I ever saw, people wallowed in the snow, night and day, for the benefit of this beastly brayings. In order to correct these alleged evils the Connecticut legislature, in 1742, passed an act forbidding any minister or licentiate to preach in any church not his own, without the consent of its pastor and the major portion of the membership, under penalty of forfeiting the right to collect his legal salary, if a resident of the colony, and liability of expulsion from the colony if not. The Great Awakening "was begun and carried on almost wholly by Pedobaptists, from which denomination their fathers had suffered much, most of the Baptists were prejudiced against the work, and against the Calvinian doctrine by which it was prompted" (Backus, II. 41) . Those who were converted in the Great Awakening found most of the churches of the standing order chilly and uncongenial and as a result became Separatists, or New Lights, founding churches of their own. The Separate churches organized in this movement continued to exist many years. Much complaint was urged against them because they were accused of being Americans (Reuben Fetcher, The Lamentable State o f New England, Boston, 1771) . The explanation of how these New Light churches became Baptist churches in many instances is thus given by Bacon: "An even more important result of the Awakening was the swift and wide extension of Baptist principles and churches. This was altogether logical. . The revival had come, not so much in the spirit and power of Elijah, turning to each other the hearts of the fathers and of children, as in the spirit of Ezekiel, the preacher of individual responsibility and duty. The temper of the revival was wholly congenial with the strong individualism of the Baptist churches. The Separatist churches formed in New England by the withdrawal of revival enthusiasts from the parish churches in many instances became Baptists. Cases of individual conversion to Baptist views were frequent, and the earnestness with which the new opinion was held approved itself not only by debating and proselyting, but by strenuous and useful evangelizing. Especially in the South, from Virginia to Georgia, the new preachers, entering into the labors of the annoyed and persecuted pioneers of their communion, won multitudes of converts to the Christian faith, from the neglected populations, both black and white, and gave to the Baptist churches a lasting prominence in numbers among the churches of the South" (Bacon, A History of American Christianity). Thus the Baptists greatly profited by the Great Awakening. "At this period," says Baron Stow, "the Baptist denomination on this continent was exceedingly limited, numbering only thirty-seven churches, and probably less than three thousand members. The preaching of Mr. Whitefield and others who caught from heaven the same hallowed fire, and the great awakening consequent upon their sanctified labors, gave currency to the principles which wrought undesired changes, and conducted to results which were neither anticipated nor desired. Little did those men of God who were such efficient agents in the ‘New Light Stir,’ as it was opprobriously called, and who pushed their measures with almost superhuman vigor, amidst a tempest of opposition and obloquy, imagine that they were breaking up the fallow ground of their own ecclesiastical system, and sowing seed from which a sect that was everywhere spoken against, would reap a bountiful harvest. "The converts who received the name of ‘Separatists,’ were taught to throw aside tradition, and take the Word of God only as their guide in all matters of religious faith and practice. This was in perfect coincidence with all Baptist teaching, and, as was predicted by the most sagacious among the opposers of the revival, ultimately led thousands, among whom were many ministers, to embrace our views and enter our churches." The method by which these Separate churches became Baptists may be illustrated by the history of the Sturbridge church, Massachusetts. "This church was in its origin one of those which claimed vital and practical godliness to be indispensable qualification for membership in a church of Christ. This principle was the whole ground of separation, in this case, as well as in many others. "At first, the church believed in and practiced infant sprinkling. The fact that this is not an ordinance of scripture, probably, had never entered their minds. But still, the other principles which they had adopted, especially that of making the scriptures the supreme arbiter in religion, prepared the way for their giving up this unscriptural ceremony. Accordingly, some of the members soon began to entertain strong doubts of the correctness of their practice, and in this respect, and, soon after, openly to call in question the validity of infant sprinkling. Although a number of the members of the church became fully convinced that the scriptures point out no other baptism than that of believers, and no other mode than that of immersion. In May, 1749, thirteen of the members submitted to this ordinance, administered according to apostolic direction and practice. The ordinance was administered by Rev. Mr. Moulton of Brimfield. About fifty of the members were soon afterward baptized, including with those before mentioned the Pastor, the Deacons and the Ruling Elders. From the time of the first baptism, when the thirteen mentioned above were baptized, the sprinkling of infants, like the house of Saul, waxed weaker; while the baptism which the scriptures require, waxed stronger and stronger; till at length, the baptism of believers, as held and practiced by Baptist churches, at the present day, gained the complete victory. "It will be seen by these statements, that this church was originally a Pedobaptist church….The Presbyterian form of church government was the model by which the discipline of this church, in its early history, was conducted….And it is presumed, that by tacit consent, the form of government in the church became congregational" (Joel Kenney, Historical Sketch of the Baptist Church in Sturbridge, The Baptist Memorial and Monthly Record, 201, 202. June, 1844). This is a fair illustration of how many of the Separate became Baptist churches. Books for further reference: The Works of President Edwards in four volumes. New York, 1849. Frank Grenville Beardsley, A History of American Revivals. New York, 1912. Warren A. Candler, Great Revivals and the Great Republic. Nashville, 1904. John T. Perry, In the Footsteps of Whitefield, The Baptist Review, VII. 13-27. Cincinnati, 1885. J. D. Knowles, Life and Times of Whitefield, The Christian Review, III. 264-271. Boston, 1838. A. P. Marvin, Three Eras of Revival in the United States, Bibliotheca Sacra, XVI. 279-301. Andover, 1859. Joseph F. Thompson, Jonathan Edwards, his Character, Teaching and Influence, Bibliotheca Sacra, XVIII. 809-839. Andover, 1861. Increase N. Tarbox, Jonathan Edwards, Bibliotheca Sacra, XXVI. 243-267. Ezra Hoyt Byington, Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening, Bibliotheca Sacra, LV. 114-127. Oberlin, 1898. Arthur W. Cleaves, The Significance of Whitefield, The Review and Expositor, XII. 577-594. Louisville, 1915. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 42: 01.2.01.11. THE BAPTISTS OF VIRGINIA ======================================================================== Chapter 11 – The Baptists of Virginia The First Settlers of Virginia—The Episcopalians—Contrasts with New England—First Efforts of the Baptists—The Church of England Established by Law—The Virginia Charter—No Toleration Allowed—The Bloody Laws—"Neck and Heels" in Jail for not Attending Church—The First Act of Parliament—The Salary of the Clergy Paid in Tobacco—Dissenters Must Depart the Colony—Whippings and Brandings—Ordination from the Church of England Demanded—Quakers and Baptists in Virginia—Infant Baptism—Presbyterians Tolerated for a Strange Reason—Baptists Slow in Entering the State—Marvelous Growth—Dr. Hawks—Bishop Perry—The Statement of Semple—The First Baptists from England—Robert Norden—Collections of Money in England for Baptists—Church at Burley—Churches in Berkeley and Loudon Counties—The Statement of John Gano—David Thomas. Virginia is famous for being the oldest State in the Union; in early days it contained the largest number of inhabitants, and produced many distinguished men. "The first settlers of the country were emigrants from England, of the English Church, just at a point of time, when it was flushed with complete victory over the religions of all other persuasions." Possessed as they became of the power of making, administering, and executing the laws, they showed intolerance to all other religious beliefs. "The Episcopalians retained full possession of the country about a century. Other opinions began to creep in; and the care of the government to support their own church, having begotten an equal degree of indolence in its clergy, two-thirds of the people had become dissenters at the commencement of the Revolution. The laws indeed were still oppressive on them; but the spirit of the one party had subsided into moderation, and on the other, had arisen to a degree of determination which commanded respect" (Morse, Geography, I.). There were strange contrasts which prevailed between the conditions in New England and Virginia; but in the fierceness of persecutions of Baptists there were no differences. Baptists here, as everywhere else, met with the keenest opposition. "The endeavor to found Baptist churches in Virginia was in its earlier stages an extraordinary and unique religious movement, unparalleled elsewhere in the history of Christianity on the American continent, and the like of which, it is not supposed, will ever occur again. The cause of this may be traced in the origin and history of the colony of Virginia, the successful undertaking of which found its most zealous and effective advocate in a prebendary of the Established Church of England, whose pen drafted the rules of government under which the first expedition sailed. Priests of the church accompanied the earliest and most important voyages, and formally signalized their landings on James river with their prayers. Among the earliest buildings reared at Jamestown was one consecrated to the services of the church. The most zealous care of the Colonial Assembly for more than a century after the settlement was to cement the union between the government and the church, and to make the claims and officers of the latter as binding as possible upon the people. Thus legalized, the church anticipated the birth of the children of the colony, and did not forsake them in their death. It offered its blessings on the natal hour in prayer ‘for all women in the perils of child birth.’ It sealed their tender infancy with its baptismal sacrament, under rubrics which provided: ‘The priest shall take the child in his hands, and naming the child, shall dip it in the water "discreetly and warily."’ It published the bands of matrimony on its church doors, and solemnized the rite with its formula. It enforced Sabbath worship in accordance with its ritual and creed, and under heavy penalties for its neglect; and the obsequies of the dead it directed after its own impressive burial service. Even its church yards were made by law cemeteries, so that the Establishment which nursed its children so closely in life, ceased not to covet them with its shadows in death" (Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia). The charter of the colony made the Church of England an established part of the law of the land. The first charter granted by James I, April 10, 1608, was for a time the organic law. That part of the charter which relates to religion is as follows: We do especially ordain, and require the said Presidents, and Councils, and the Ministers of the said several colonies respectively, within their limits and precincts, that they with all diligence, care and respect do provide that the true word and service of God, and Christian faith, be preached, planted, and used, not only within every one of the said several colonies and plantations, but also as much as they may among the savage people which do or shall adjoin unto them, according to the doctrine, rites and religion now professed, and established within our realm of England; and that they shall not suffer any person or persons, to withdraw and of the subjects or people inhabiting or shall inhabit within any of the said several colonies and plantations from the same, or from their due allegiance to us and our heirs and successors, as their immediate sovereign under God; and if they shall find within the said colonies and plantations any person or persons so seeking to withdraw any of the subjects of us, our heirs or successors, or any of the people of these lands or territories within the precincts aforesaid, they shall with all diligence, him or them so offending cause to be apprehended, arrested and imprisoned, until he shall fully and thoroughly reform himself; or otherwise, when the cause so requireth, that he shall with all convenient speed, be sent into the realm of England, here to receive condign punishment for his or their said offence or offences (Hening, Statutes at Large, being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature, I. 68. New York, 1823). This charter was granted upon the principle of intolerance and persecution. There was at no time any intention of recognizing human liberty. This was never a part of the creed of the Stuarts. "Toleration in the forms of religion," says Foote, "was unknown in Virginia in 1688. From the commencement of the colony, the necessity of the religious element was felt. The company knew not how to control the members composing the colony but by religion and law" (Foots, Sketches of Virginia Historical and Biographical, I. 25. New York, 1850). The provisions of the charter were further strengthened by "The Code of Sir Thomas Dale," of 1611. This code carried the following terrible enactments relating to religion: There is not one man nor woman in this colony, now present nor hereafter to arrive, but shall give an account of his or their faith and religion, and repair unto the minister, that by his conference with them, he may understand and gather whether they have been sufficiently instructed and catechised in the principles and grounds of religion; whose weakness and ignorance, the minister finding, and advising them in love and charity to repair often to him, to receive therein a greater measure of knowledge, if they shall refuse to repair unto him, and he, the minister, give notice thereof to the governor, or the chief officers of that town or fort, wherein he or she, the parties so offending shall remain, the governor shall cause the offender for the first time of refusal, to be whipped; for the second time, to be whipped twice, and to acknowledge his fault upon the Sabbath day in the congregation; and for the third time, to be whipped every day, until he hath made the same acknowledgment, and asked forgiveness for the same, and shall repair unto the minister to be further instructed as aforesaid; and upon the Sabbath when the minister shall catechise, and demand any question concerning his faith and knowledge, he shall not refuse to make answer, upon the same peril (Laws, c. Strachey. London, 1612. Howison, History of Virginia, II. 148). Captain Argall, who became governor, in 1617, decreed "that every person should go to Church, Sundays and Holidays, or lye Neck and Heels that Night, and be a Slave to the Colony the following week; for the second offence he should be a Slave for a month; and for the third, a year and a day" (Stith). "These were times when religion was to be taught with the whip," says Howison, "when the heart was to be affected with the punishment of the body, and when prayer was the only means of escaping the gibbet. This code was too cruel to be rigidly enforced, yet we have reason to believe it was not entirely a dead letter. When Argall became governor, he took special delight in reviving it, and many Colonists learned in sadness that the Church was the occasion of stripes, rather than freedom and happiness" (Howison, II.). No wonder that Bishop Perry, of Iowa, calls this code "impolitic and inhuman," "stern and inhuman" (Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, I). The historian Stith says of these laws: "These were very bloody and severe, and no ways agreeable to a free people and the British Constitution; neither had they any Sanction or Authority from the Council and Company of England. However, Sir Thomas Dale, being sadly troubled and pester’d with mutinous Humors of the People, caused them to be published, and put into Execution with the utmost Rigor. And altho’ the Manner was harsh and unusual to Englishmen, yet had not these military laws been so strictly executed at this time, there were little Hopes or Probability of preventing the utter subversion of the Colony" (Stith, The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, 122, 123. Williamsbourg, 1747). Dale’s Code has been chiefly remembered because of the penalty for blasphemy, which was the thrusting of a bodkin through the blasphemer’s tongue. Sabbath observance was enforced by whipping, and speaking against the Trinity or the Christian religion by death (H. J. Eckenrode, Separation of Church and State in Virginia, 6. Richmond, 1910). By the first Act of Parliament of 1623 it is provided that in every plantation or settlement there shall be a house or room set apart for the worship of God. But it soon appears that this worship was only to be according to the Church of England, to which a strict uniformity was enjoined. A person absenting himself from divine service on Sunday without a reasonable excuse, forfeited a pound of tobacco; and he that absented himself a month, forfeited fifty pounds. Any minister who was absent from his church above two months in a year, forfeited half his salary; and he who absented himself four months, forfeited the whole. Whoever disparaged a minister whereby the minds of his parishioners might be alienated, was compelled to pay 500 pounds of tobacco and ask the minister’s pardon publicly in the congregation. No man was permitted to dispose of any of his tobacco till the minister was satisfied under penalty of forfeiting double his part of the minister’s salary (Hening, I.). The first allowance made to the ministers was ten pounds of tobacco and a bushel of corn for each tithable; and every laboring person, of what quality or condition, was bound to contribute. In the year 1631 the Assembly granted to ministers, besides the former allowance ten pounds of tobacco and a bushel of corn, the twelfth calf, the twentieth kid and the twentieth pig (Semple). To preserve the purity of doctrine and unity of the church, it was enacted in 1643 that all ministers should be conformable to the orders and constitution of the Church of England, and that no other persons be permitted to preach publicly or privately. It was further provided that the governor and council should take care that all non-conformists departed the colony with all conveniency (Semple). Accordingly this came to pass: "In 1643, Sir William Berkeley, Royal Governor of Virginia," says Hassell, "strove, by whippings and brandings, to make the inhabitants of that colony conform to the Established Church, and thus drove out the Baptists and Quakers, who found a refuge in Albermarle county of North Carolina, a colony which ‘was settled,’ says Bancroft, ‘by the freest of the free—by men to whom the restraints of other colonies were too severe’" (Hassell, Church History). After the restoration of Charles II, May, 1660, heavier burdens were laid upon Dissenters in Virginia. No minister was permitted to preach unless he had received ordination from some bishop in England; and the rites of matrimony must be celebrated by a minister of the Established Church according to the ceremony prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. About this time the Quakers and Baptists came into Virginia in numbers. This greatly aroused the authorities so that in 1661-2 the following act was passed: WHEREAS many schismatical persons, out of their averseness to the orthodox established religion, or out of the newfangled conceits of their own heretical inventions, refuse to have their children baptized; be it, therefore, enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that all persons that, in contempt of the divine sacrament of baptism, shall refuse, when they may carry their child (children) to a lawful minister in that country to have them baptized, shall be emerced two thousand pounds of tobacco, half to the informer, half to the public (Hening, II. 165, 166). Upon the accession of William and Mary to the throne of England, the Act of Toleration was, in 1689, passed; but in Virginia the provisions of this act were not recognized for ten years later. It was not published in that State and the terms were obscured. It was never interpreted in Virginia as giving any liberty to Dissenters. "The people are generally of the Church of England," explains Beverley, "which is the religion established by law in the country, from which there are few dissenters. Yet liberty of conscience is given to all other congregations pretending to Christianity, on condition they submit to all parish duties" (Beverley, History of the Present State of Virginia, 226. London, 1722). There arose at this date, a strange condition of circumstances, accompanied by a stranger reason for the toleration of certain Presbyterians in Virginia. Francis Makemie made application for a license to preach, which was granted. Beverley explains this as follows: They (dissenters) have no more than five conventicles amongst them—namely: three small meetings of Quakers and two of Presbyterians. Tis observed that those counties where the Presbyterian meetings are produce very mean tobacco, and for that reason can’t get an orthodox minister to stay among them. Upon this action Foote, the Presbyterian historian, makes the following quaint remarks: It appears on account of the poorness of the tobacco the established clergy left some counties, although in 168 their salary had been fixed at sixteen thousand pound weight of that commodity. If this statement be true, we can more easily understand why Makemie had not been molested. We suppose he took his residence in Accomac soon after his marriage. There was no Episcopal minister to complain of him, and many of the inhabitants preferred to hear Makemie to passing silent Sabbaths, and many others were true Presbyterians (Foots, Sketches of Virginia, I.). From 1732 to 1738 Presbyterian families had been moving into the Valley of Virginia. They asked for the privilege of preaching and Governor Gooch granted the request. Foote explains it in the following manner: Poverty and intolerance drove them (the Presbyterians) from their mother country, and the necessity of providing a frontier line of brave people west of the Blue Mountains compelled Virginia to relax her rigor and open her borders....The reasons that actuated Governor Gooch to promise protection in the exercise of their religious forms, in a State whose laws for uniformity were precise and enforced with rigor, were two: let. He wished a frontier line at a greater distance from Williamsburg; if possible, west of the great mountains. 2d. He knew these people to be firm, enterprising, hardy, brave, good citizens and soldiers. To form a complete line of defense against the savage inroads, he welcomed these Presbyterian emigrants, the Quakers, and colonies from the different German States to the beautiful and luxuriant prairies of the great Valley of the Shenandoah, on the head waters of the James, and along the Roanoke. At so great a distance from the older settlements, he anticipated no danger or trouble to the established church of the colony; perhaps he never seriously considered the subject in the probable influence of the necessary collision of religious opinions (Foots; also Gillet, The Presbyterian Church in the United States, I.). These were remarkable reasons for toleration. In some counties the tobacco was too poor to pay an Episcopal rector to live among the people; and in others brave men were needed to defend the borders of Virginia from the Indians. In none of these provisions was there any toleration extended toward the Baptists. Baptists had existed in Virginia from early times, but they had left no impression on the unpropitious seventeenth century. In 1714 a colony settled in the southeast part of the State but it did not flourish (Eckenrode); and nearly thirty years afterwards another body came from Maryland, and occupied a place in one of the northern counties, then thinly inhabited. These were the Regular Baptists, and though they were not without zeal, they were speedily eclipsed by more enthusiastic brethren (Howison, II.). The first New Light Baptist church, in Virginia, was organized August, 1760; but soon the number of such churches greatly increased. It is certain from this date they greatly flourished. Fervent declamation distinguished them; the prominent motives of the gospel were presented in language made strong by earnestness; the joys of heaven and the torments of hell were opened to the eyes of the hearers, and men were urged to immediate repentance, faith and baptism. The practice of immersion forcibly addressed the senses, and gave something more substantial upon which to dwell than the simple rites of other churches. The people heard the Baptists gladly; day after day added fresh accessions, -and it was apparent that they could no longer be without weight in the counsels of the colony (Howison, II.). Several causes account for their progress. When people are persecuted there always follows in their favor a reaction. Likewise the colonists were greatly disturbed on account of the French and Indian wars; and in religion they sought consolation. The Baptist preacher was a plain man, with a message, and he had a great appeal to these distressed people. A Mr. Wright, a Presbyterian preacher, in the frontier county of Cumberland, August 18, 1755, makes this statement: People generally begin to believe the divine government, and our judgments are inflicted for our sins. They now hear sermons with solemnity and attention; they acknowledge their wickedness and ignorance, and believe that the new light clergy and adherents are right (Foote, I.). This feeling became quite universal. The Episcopal clergy developed a most distressing moral and religious situation. Unless fully attested one could hardly credit how low the clergy of the Established Church, at this time, had fallen. The testimony, however, comes from the most reliable sources; and so far as known has not been questioned. This situation was of long standing. Few men of ability would leave England for the colony; those who came were usually inferior in ability and perhaps in character. "The ministers and publick dispensers of the Gospel which were sent into that Plantation, are for the most part, not only far short of those qualifications required of ministers, but men of opposite qualities and tempers, such as either by their loose lives, and un-Gospel becoming conversation, or by their known weakness and insufficiency of understanding and parts, do not only not gain or win upon those that are without, the Indian heathen, but cause more to go astray, and lose, many, very many of those that pretend to be within the English Christians . . . . The ministers of Virginia, too many of them, are very careless and negligent in dispensing God’s words and sacraments, as also indecent and slovenly in their manner of dispensing them….There are not a few of the ministers, whose wicked and prophane lives cause the worship of God, not only to be slighted, but to be little less than abhorred, when they officiate therein" (Public Good Without Private Interest (1657), 3, 14, 15). The Bishop of London, in 1743, said to Doddridge in a letter: Of those who are sent from hence, a great part are the Scotch or Irish, who can get no employment at home, and enter into the service more out of necessity than choice. Some others are willing to go abroad to retrieve either lost fortune or lost character. Dr. Hawks remarks: They could babble in a pulpit, roar in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissoluteness destroy than feed the flock (Hawks, A Narrative of Events connected with the Rise and Progress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia, 65. New York 1836). Even the General Assembly of Virginia, in the year 1776, passed the following law: Be it further enacted by this Grand Assembly, and by the authority thereof, that such ministers as shall become notoriously scandalous by drunkenness, swearing, fornication, or other heinous and crying sins, and shall thereof be lawfully convicted, shall, for every such their heinous crime and wickedness, etc. (Hening, Statutes, II.). Bishop Perry sums up the situation in the following words: It was in 1779, during the darkest days of the war, that the "establishment" in Virginia "was finally put down" (Hawks, I. 152). In the language of the annalist of the religious body to which this result was chiefly due, "the Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Deists, and the covetous had all prayed for this" (The Virginia Baptist Chronicle, by John Leland in Hawks, I. 139). To prayers had been added untiring and most energetic labor. Taking advantage of existing and acknowledged evils, growing out of the utter want of ecclesiastical discipline in restraining delinquent clergymen, and the lack of men of devout life and conspicuous ability among the incumbents of the vacant parishes, these sectaries had multiplied on every side. It was but natural that men of earnest convictions and inward spirituality should turn from those possessing only the form of godliness to hang upon the lips of the wandering evangelists and lay preachers whose sincerity and devotion could not be gainsaid, and who introduced and propagated dissent in various forms throughout the length and breadth of the land. It was not to be expected that men whose shining parts and exemplary character made them sought after at home would leave their comfortable livings in England to put themselves at the mercy of sordid and ignorant vestries in a distant colony where the "livings" yielded only a precarious support, and there was little hope of preferment (Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, II.). However this may be explained it gave the Baptists of Virginia their opportunity. "The great success and rapid increase of the Baptists in Virginia," says Semple, "must be ascribed primarily to the power of God working with them; yet it cannot be denied but there were subordinate, and cooperating causes, one of which, and the main one, was the loose and immoral deportment of the Established clergy, by which the people were left almost destitute of even the shadow of true religion. ‘Tis true, they had some outward forms of worship, but the essential principles of Christianity were not only not understood among them, but by many never heard of. Some of the cardinal precepts of morality were disregarded, and actions plainly forbidden by the New Testament were often proclaimed by the clergy as harmless and innocent, or at worst, foibles of but little account. Having no discipline, every man followed the bent of his own inclination. It was not uncommon for the rectors of parishes to be men of the loosest morals. The Baptist preachers were, in almost every respect, the reverse of the Established clergy. The Baptist preachers were without learning, without patronage, generally very poor, very plain in their dress, unrefined in their manners, awkward in their address, all of which, by their enterprising zeal and unwearied perseverance, they either turned to advantage or prevented their ill effects. On the other hand, most of the ministers of the Establishment were men of classical and scientific education, patronized by men in power connected with great families, supported by competent salaries, and put into office by the strong arm of the civil power. Thus pampered and secure, the men of this order were rolling on the bed of luxury when the others began their extraordinary career. Their learning, riches, power, etc., seemed only to hasten their overthrow by producing an unguarded heedliness which is often the prelude to calamity and downfall" (Semple). The Baptists of Virginia originated from three general sources. As has been indicated, the first came from England, about 1714. Some of these Baptists wrote letters to England asking for assistance. The Assembly of the General Baptists sent, in the same year, Robert Norden, of Warbleton, who was already an ordained minister, and Thomas White, who died Upon the journey. The order of the Assembly was as follows: To Stir them Up for Some Assistance for Robt. Norden and Thos. White who are Appointed Approved by this Assembly to go to Virginia to propagate the Gospel of truth (The Minutes of the General Assembly of the General Baptist Churches in England, I.). For a period collections were taken in Kent to sustain this enterprise. In 1724 Norden wrote to the Assembly and the next year the question was raised whether he should return to England to solicit funds. The action of the Assembly was as follows: Agreed by this Assembly that Bror Norden being sent for Home from Virginia if he be Disposed to Returne be to Bror Henry Miller Bror Robt. Mesers who are Impowered by this Assembly to Act in that Affair as they Shall Judge Necessary Call Such Assistance from other Churches as they may think proper (Minutes, I.). Norden gathered a church at a place called Burley, in the county of the Isle of Wight. He was faithful in his labors and died in the year 1725. Two years after his death Casper Mintz and Richard Jones, two ministers, came over from England, and Jones became pastor of the church. The following additional information is given by Paul Palmer in a letter to John Comer, in 1729: There is a comely little church in the Isle of Wight county, of about thirty or forty members, the elder of which is one Richard Jones, a very sensible old gentleman, whom I have great love for. We see each other at every yearly meeting, and sometimes more often. There is another church in Surry county, where my brother Jones lives, I suppose of about thirty more. This church by 1756 embraced Calvinistic sentiments. The Church at Burley wrote the Philadelphia Association the following letter: The church of Jesus Christ, in Isle of Wight county, holding adult. baptism, c., to the Reverend and General Assembly or Association at Philadelphia, send greeting: We, the above mentioned church, confess ourselves to be under clouds of darkness, concerning the faith of Jesus Christ, not knowing whether we are on the right foundation, and the church much unsettled: wherefore we desire alliance with you, and that you will be pleased to send us helps to settle the church, and rectify what may be wrong, and subscribe ourselves, your loving brethren in Christ, Casper Mintz, Richard Jones, Randall Allen, Joseph Mattgum, Christopher Atkinson, David Atkinson, Thomas Cafer, Samuel Jones, William Jordan, John Allen, John Powell, Joseph Atkinson. Dec. 27, 1756 (Benedict). These churches were not persecuted. Probably they were too obscure to attract much attention. It is also likely they secured a license to preach. It was not long till they ceased to exist. The next appearance of the Baptists was in the counties of Berkeley and Loudon. Several churches were organized, of which Opeckon Creek seems to have been the most prominent. A number of the members of the General Baptist Church, at Chestnut Ridge, Maryland, in 1743, removed to Virginia. Soon after their minister followed them and he baptized several persons. He was soon excluded from the church on account of immorality. On this account the church was broken up and afterwards a Particular Baptist church was organized in its stead. Many churches in this section of the country were loosely constituted, and serious trouble existed among them. On request the Philadelphia Association sent a committee composed of James Miller and David Thomas to settle their difficulties. This course was often pursued by that association. The committee was accompanied by John Gano, who was destined to become a most distinguished preacher. The account of Gano is as follows: We examined them, and found they were not a regular church. We then examined those who offered themselves for the purpose, and those who gave us satisfaction we received, and constituted a church. Out of the whole who offered themselves, there were only three received. Some openly declared they knew they could not give an account of experiencing a work of grace, and therefore need not offer themselves. Others stood ready to offer if the church was formed. The three before mentioned were constituted, and six more were baptized, and joined with them. After the meeting ended, a number of old members went aside and sent for me. They expressed their deplorable state, and asked me if I would meet with them that evening, and try to instruct them. They were afraid the ministers blamed them. They had been misled, but it was not their fault, and they hoped I would pity them. I told them I would with all my heart, and endeavored to remove their suspicion of the ministers. They met, and I spoke to them from these words: "They being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God." I hope I was assisted to speak to them in an impressive manner, and they to hear, at least some of them, so as to live. They afterwards professed and became zealous members, and remained so, I believe, until their death (Benedict). It was not long until David Thomas became connected with this company of Baptists. He was a tower of strength. He was born August 16, 1732, at London Tract, Pennsylvania, and had his education at Hopewell, New Jersey, under the celebrated Isaac Eaton. He received his Master’s degree from Rhode Island College. He had often made missionary excursions to the State under the direction of the Philadelphia Association, He removed to this section in 1760. His experiences well illustrated the trials of the Baptist ministry of northern Virginia. "Mr. Thomas is said to have been a minister of great distinction in the prime of his days. Besides the natural endowments of a vigorous mind, and the advantages of a classical and refined education, he had a melodious and piercing voice, a pathetic address, expressive action, and above all a heart filled with love for God and his fellow men. But for a few of his first years in Virginia, he met with much persecution. He was frequently assaulted both by individuals and mobs. Once he was pulled down while he was preaching, and dragged out of the house in a barbarous manner. At another time, a malevolent fellow attempted to shoot him, but a bystander wrenched his gun from him and thereby prevented the execution of this wicked purpose. The slanders and revilings he met with, says Mr. Edwards, were innumerable; and if we judge of a man’s prevalency against the devil by the rage of the devil’s children, Thomas prevailed like a prince. But the gospel had free course; and Broad Run Church, of which he was pastor, within six or eight years from its establishment, branched out and became the mother of five or six others. "Elder Thomas traveled much, and the fame of his preaching drew the attention of the people throughout an extensive circle, so that in many instances they came fifty and sixty miles to hear him. It is remarkable about this time, there were multiplied instances in different parts of Virginia of persons, who had never heard anything like evangelical preaching, but who were brought, through divine grace, to see and feel their want of vital godliness. Many of these persons, when they heard Mr. Thomas and other Baptist preachers, would travel great distances to hear them, and to procure their services as ministers of the gospel. By this means the gospel was first carried into the county of Culpepper. Mr. Allen Wyley, a man of respectable standing in that county, had been thus turned to God, and not knowing of any preacher in whom he had confidence, he had sometimes gathered his neighbors, read the Scriptures, and exhorted them to repentance; but being informed of Mr. Thomas, he, with some of his friends, traveled to Farquier to hear him. As soon as he heard, he knew the joyful sound, submitted to baptism, and invited him to preach in his house. He also preached in the county of Orange, and, in company with Elder Garrard, carried the Word of life through all the upper counties of the Northern Neck. "Elder Thomas ultimately removed to Kentucky. He lived to an advanced age, and sometime before his death was nearly blind" (Taylor, Lives of Virginia Baptist Ministers, Series One). Books for further reference: Robert B. Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia. Richmond, 1810. A New Edition by Beale. Philadelphia, 1894. B. F. Riley, A History of the Baptists in the Southern States East of the Mississippi. Philadelphia, 1898. Foote, William Henry, Sketches of Virginia Historical and Biographical. Philadelphia, 1850. 2 volumes. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 43: 01.2.01.12. VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, AND GEORGIA ======================================================================== Chapter 12 - The Baptists in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia The Third Company of Baptists in Virginia—The Separatists—Shubeal Stearns—Daniel Marshall—Stearns Unites with the Baptists—North Carolina Settled—Individual Baptists—Paul Palmer—William Sojourner—Kehukee Association—Vanhorn and Miller—The Preaching of the Separatists—The Character of Stearns—History of the Movement—Many Notices of the Growth of the Baptists—Baptists in Georgia—Nicholas Bedgewood—Benjamin Stark—Botsford—Gano—Marshall Arrested—Kiokee Church—Samuel Harris—Elijah Craig—The Election of Bishops by the Baptists. The third company of Baptists which came to Virginia extended their labors into North Carolina and Georgia. "North Carolina, in the days of her colonial dependence," says one of her historians, "was the refuge of the poor and the oppressed. In her borders the emigrant, the fugitive, and the exile found a home. Whatever may have been the cause of leaving the land of their nativity—political servitude—tyranny over conscience,—or poverty of means, with the hope of bettering their condition,—the descendants of these enterprising, suffering, afflicted, yet prosperous people, have cause to bless the kind Providence that led their fathers, in their wanderings, to such a place of rest" (Foote, Sketches of North Carolina Historical and Biographical, illustrative of the principles of a portion of her Early Settlers. New York, 1846). The exact date of permanent settlement in the present limits of North Carolina has not been clearly ascertained. The first Assembly that made laws for the State convened in the fall of 1669. "Here was a colony of men," says Bancroft, "scattered among forests, hermits with wives and children resting on the bosom of nature, in perfect harmony with the wilderness of their gentle clime. The planters of Albermarle were more led to the choice of their residence from a hatred of restraint. Are there any who doubt man’s capacity for self-government? Let them study the history of North Carolina. Its inhabitants were restless and turbulent in their imperfect submission to a Government imported from abroad; the administration of the colony was firm, and tranquil when they were left to take care of themselves. Any government but one of their own institution was oppressive. North Carolina was settled by the freest of the free. The settlers were gentle in their tempers, of serene minds, enemies of violence and bloodshed. Not all the successive revolutions had kindled vindictive passions; freedom, entire freedom was enjoyed without anxiety as without guarantees. The charities of life were scattered at their feet like the flowers of their meadows" (Bancroft, History of the United States, II.). No freer country was ever organized by man. Freedom of conscience, exemption from taxation, except by their own consent, gratuities in land to every emigrant, and other wholesome regulations claimed the prompt legislative action of the infant colony. "These simple laws suited a simple people, who were as free as the air of their mountains; and when oppressed, were as rough as the billows of the ocean" (Wheeler, Historical Sketches of North Carolina, I. 30. Philadelphia, 1851). This Baptist movement into North Carolina originated with the Separatists of Connecticut. It was led by Shubeal Stearns and Daniel Marshall. This Shubeal Stearns was a remarkable man. He was a product of the Whitefield revival, and in 1745 united with the New Lights. Immediately afterwards, his mind became impressed with the obligation to preach the gospel, and, accordingly he entered upon this responsible work. He continued with the Pedobaptists till 1751, when examining the Word of God, he became convinced that in failing to submit to the ordinance of immersion he had neglected a most important command of his Redeemer. The futility of infant baptism was also discovered, and he determined to take up his cross, be baptized, and unite himself with the Baptists. This he accordingly did and was immersed by Wait Palmer, at Toland, Connecticut, May 20, 1751. For two or three years he continued his labors in New England; but he became impressed that he must preach the gospel to more destitute sections of the country. He pursued a southwesternly direction scarcely knowing where he was going. In the course of time he arrived at Opeckon Creek, where, as has been am, there was already a Baptist church. Here he met his brother-in-law, Daniel Marshall. This church under the influence of this new preaching became very warm and much animated in their religious exercises. They soon went such lengths in the New Light career that some of the less engaged members preferred charges against them in the association. The matter was finally adjusted favorably to the Separatists and the work continued to prosper. It was not long till Stearns settled in Guilford county, North Carolina. Here he permanently remained. The great spiritual destitution which prevailed seems to have induced his removal to that section. Such was the anxiety to hear the gospel preached that people frequently traveled a day’s journey to hear it. He began his labors by building a house of worship and constituting a church of sixteen members. There had been individual Baptists in the State as early as 1695. On May 2, 1718, there was one who pretended to "be a physician, fortune teller and conjurer, always chosen Burgess, for that precinct and a leading man in our assemblies" who was an Anabaptist (Colonial Records of North Carolina, I. 304). William Orr, the Episcopal rector, says he had "one convert from the sect of the Anabaptists" (Ibid, IV. 608). Clement Hall, 1745, baptized one "brought up an Anabaptist" (Ibid, IV. 753). Hall likewise rejoiced at Edenton, May 19, 1752, that he baptized four "brought up in anabaptism and Quakerism" (Ibid, VI. 1315). Mr. Reed likewise baptized the Honorable Chief Justice of the Province, July 2, 1771. "He was bred and born an Anabaptist, but had never been baptized, and as I suspected that he might still retain a particular liking for Anabaptism, I offered to baptize him by total immersion. But he refused and said his prejudices were vanished, that he regarded the moral more than the mode" (Ibid, IX. 6). Such are some of the examples. The first church was gathered by Paul Palmer, about the year 1727, at a place called Perquimans, on Chowan river, in the northeast part of the State. William Sojourner, an excellent man and minister, removed in 1742 from Berkeley, ,in Virginia, and settled at Kehukee Creek. Most of these Baptists came from the Burley church. Lemuel Burkit and Jesse Reed give the following account of some of these Baptists: "Some of the churches which at first composed the Kehukee Association were, the church at Toisniot, in Edgecomb county; the church at Kehukee, in Halifax county; the church at the Falls of Tar River, in Edgecomb county; the church on Fishing creek, in Halifax county; the church at Reedy creek, in Warren county; the church at Sandy Run, in Birtie county; and the church in Camden county, North Carolina. Most of these churches, before they ever formed an Association, were General Baptist, and held to the Arminian tenets. We believe they were descendants of the English General Baptists, because we find from some original papers that their Confession of Faith was subscribed by certain Elders, and Deacons, and Brethren, in behalf of themselves and others, to whom they belonged, both in London, and several counties in England, and was presented to King Charles the second. "They preached, adhered to the Arminian, or FreeWill doctrines, and their churches were first established upon this system. They gathered churches without requiring an experience of grace previous to their baptism; but baptized all who believed in the doctrine by immersion, and requested baptism of them. The churches of this order were gathered by Elders Paul Palmer and Joseph Parker, and were succeeded by a number of ministers whom they had baptized; and of whom we have no reason to believe were converted when they were baptized, or first began to preach. We cannot learn that it was customary with them to hold an Association at all; but met at yearly meetings, where matters of consequence were determined. "This was the state of these churches until divine providence disposed the Philadelphia Baptist Association to send Mess. Vanhorn and Miller, two ministers belonging to that Association, who lived in New Jersey, to travel into the southern colonies, and visit the churches and preach the gospel. It appears that this effort was attended with a happy effect. When they came into North Carolina, some of the members belonging to these churches seemed to be afraid of them, as they were styled by most people New Lights; but by the greater part of the churches they were cordially received. "Their preaching and conversation seemed to be with power, the hearts of the people seemed to be open, and a very great blessing seemed to attend their labors. "Through their instrumentality many people were awakened, many of the members of these churches were convinced of their error, and were instructed in the doctrines of the gospel; and some churches were organized anew; and established upon the principles of grace. These churches newly constituted adopted the Baptist confession of faith published in London in 1639, containing 32 articles, and upon which the Philadelphia and Charleston associations are founded. And it is customary for churches thus formed, at their first constitution, to have a church covenant, in which they solemnly agree to endeavor to keep up the discipline of the church" (Burkitt and Read, A Concise History of the Kehukee Association). John Gano was appointed by the Philadelphia Association to travel in the Southern States. He visited these churches about the year 1754, arid his report to the association led to the visit of Miller and Vanhorn the following year and in the reorganization of these churches. The visit of Gano has been described as follows by Morgan Edwards: Mr. Gano, on his arrival, sent to the ministers, requesting an interview with them, which they declined, and appointed a meeting among themselves to consult what to do. Mr. Gano hearing of it, went to their meeting, and addressed them in words to this effect: "I have desired a visit from you, which, as a brother and a stranger, I had a right to expect, but as ye have refused, I give up my claim and come to pay you a visit." With that, he ascended into the pulpit and read for his teat the following words: "Jesus 1 know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" The text he managed in such a manner as to make some afraid of him, and others ashamed of their shyness. Many were convinced of errors touching their faith and conversion, and submitted to examination. One minister hearing this (who stood well with himself), went to be examined, and intimated to his people, he would return triumphant. Mr. Gano heard him out, and then turning to his companion, said, "I profess, brother, this will not do; this man has the one thing needful to seek." Upon which, the person examined ‘hastened home, and upon being asked how he came off, replied, "The Lord have mercy on me, for the northern minister has put a mene tekel upon me. The coming of Shubeal Stearns brought a new day to the Baptists of North Carolina. He was in every respect an extraordinary man. He "was a man of small stature, but of good natural parts, and sound judgment. Of learning, he had but little share, yet he was pretty well acquainted with books. His voice was musical, and strong, and he managed it in such a manner, as one while to make a soft impression on the heart, and fetch tears from the eyes in a mechanical way; and anon, to shake the very nerves; and to throw the animal system into tumults and perturbations. All the Separate Baptists copied after him in tones of voice, and actions of body; and some few exceeded him. His character was indisputably good, both as a man, a Christian and a preacher. In his eyes was something very penetrating; there seemed to be a meaning in every glance. Many stories have been told of the enchantment of his eyes and voice." Tidence Lane, who was afterwards himself a minister, tells of the curious effect Stearns had on him. "When the fame of Mr. Stearns’ preaching," said he, "had reached the Yadkin, where I lived, I felt a curiosity to go and hear him. Upon my arrival, I saw a venerable old man sitting under a peach tree with a book in his hand, and the people gathered about him. He fixed his eyes on me immediately, which made me feel in such a manner as I had never felt before. I turned to quit the place, but could not proceed far. I walked about, sometimes catching his eye as I walked. My uneasiness increased, and became intolerable. I went up to him, thinking that a salutation and shaking hands would relieve me; but it happened otherwise. I began to think that he had an evil eye, and ought to be shunned; but shunning him I could no more effect, than the bird can shun the rattlesnake, when it fixes its eyes upon it. When he began to preach, my perturbations increased, so that nature could no longer support them, and I sunk to the ground." If the appearance of Stearns was singular, his methods were even more so. "The natives around the little colony of Baptists, although brought up in the Christian religion, were grossly ignorant of its essential principles. Having the form of godliness, they knew nothing of its power. "The doctrine of Mr. Stearns and his party was consequently quite strange. To be born again appeared to them as absurd as it did to the Jewish doctor, when he asked if he must enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born again. Having always supposed that religion consisted in nothing more than the practice of outward duties, they could not comprehend how it should be necessary to feel conviction and conversion: But to be able to ascertain the time and place of one’s conversion was, in their estimation, wonderful indeed. These points were all strenuously contended for by the new preachers. "But their manner of preaching was, if possible, much more novel than their doctrines. The Separates in New England had acquired a very warm and pathetic address, accompanied by strong gestures and a singular tone of voice. Being often deeply affected themselves while preaching, correspondent affections were felt by their pious hearers, which were frequently expressed in tears, trembling, screams, shouts and acclamations. The people were greatly astonished, having never seen things on this wise before. Many mocked, many trembled, but the power of God attended them. In process of time some of the natives became converts, and bowed obedience to the Redeemer’s scepter. These, uniting their labors with the chosen band, a powerful and extensive work broke out. From sixteen, Sandy Creek church soon swelled to six hundred and six members, so mightily grew the work of God" (Semple). There was not always harmony between the Regular and Separate Baptists. When a church had been formed at Abbott’s Creek there was a call for Daniel Marshall as pastor. When he was to be ordained Stearns was the only Separate preacher in the community; the Regulars would have nothing to do with the ordination, so a Mr. Ledbetter, from South Carolina, was called upon to sit in the council. Something of the differences in origin and opinions existing between the Regular and Separate Baptists is expressed by Burkitt and Read. Some years after the Kehukee "Association was established on its original plan, in Virginia, and some parts of North Carolina, the Separate Baptists (as they were then called) increased very fast. The Separates first arose in New England, where some pious ministers and members left the Presbyterian, or Standing Order, on account of their formality and superfluity, viz.: 1. Because they were too extravagant in their apparel. 2. Because they did not believe their form of church government to be right. But chiefly because they would admit to the ministry only men of classical education, and many of their ministers apparently seemed unconverted. They were then called Separate Newlights. Some of them were baptized and moved into the southern provinces, particularly Elders Shubeal Stearns and Daniel Marshall, whose labors were wonderfully blessed in Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. Many souls were converted, and as the work of the Lord progressed many churches were established in Virginia and some in North Carolina. Their preachers were exceedingly pious and zealous men, and their labors were wonderfully blessed; and such a work appeared among the people, that ‘some were amazed and stood in doubt, saying what means this.’ "The distinction between us and them was, that they were called Separates, and the Philadelphia, the Charleston, and the Kehukee Associations were called Regular Baptists" (Burkitt and Read). There were from the accounts of the day many evidences that the Baptists were aggressive. The Pedobaptist preacher at Edenton, March 26, 1766, was disturbed, for he called for "tracts that may be effective for the confutation of dissenters and Skeptics in general. as that Parish abounds with such, especially those of the Quaker and Anabaptist kind; and some proper kinds of tracts distributed among the Parishioners would, I hope, be very prevalent for Exploding their Heterdox and Skeptical Tenets as their prejudices dont permit them to come to hear sermons preached by orthodox ministers" (The Colonial Records of North Carolina, VII. 192, 193). Governor Tryon, March 20, 1769, complained "that the parish is full of quakers and anabaptists, the first no friend, the latter an avowed enemy to the mother church. It is certain the preeminence of the Church of England has been obtained over the sectaries by legislative authority and has drawn upon her their jealousies. The disturbances in the provinces have inspired no religious sentiments among us, and the difficulty in raising the taxes for a want of medium to pay them, makes many parishes very slack to encourage public worship" (Colonial Records, VIII. 14) . Alex. Stewart, of St. Thomas’ Bath Town, October 10, 1760, writing to the Secretary of his Church, says: "When I mentioned I baptized a person by immersion I should be sorry that it should be thought by the society that it was either through affectation or singularity. I assure you, sir (tho’ I know that it is conformable to our Rubric, to the practice of the primitive Christians of the Apostles and of the Jews before the coming of our Saviour, generally to Baptize in that way) that it is only to keep people from falling off from the Church, that these persons and some others not mentioned, have been baptized that way by me, for of late years this province is overrun with a people that at first called themselves anabaptists, but having now refined upon that scheme, have run into so many errors and have so bewildered and, I may say also, bewitched the minds of people, that scarcely will they listen to anything that can be said in defense of the church we belong to. As far as my capacity and abilities would admit I have done my best endeavors to confute their errors" (Colonial Records, VI. 316). Mr. Woodmason, in 1766, gives the following account of the Baptists: "The most zealous among the sects to propagate their notions and form establishments are the anabaptists....For the Anabaptists of Pennsylvania, resolving themselves into a body and determined to settle their principles in every vacant quarter, began to establish meeting houses also on the Borders. So that the Baptists are now the most numerous and formidable body of people which the Church has to encounter within the interior and back parts of the Province....But the Baptists have great prevalence and footing and have taken such deep root there in North Carolina that it will require a long time and pains to grub up their layers" (Colonial Records, VII. 287, 288). John Reed, of Newbern, June 20, 1760, gives the following account: There are a "great number of dissenters of all denominations come and settled amongst us from New England, particularly, Anabaptists, Methodists, Quakers and Presbyterians. The Anabaptists are obstinate, illiterate, censorious and uncharitable; the Quakers, rigid; but the Presbyterians are pretty moderate except here and there a bigot or rigid Calvinist" (Colonial Records, VI. 265) . There were Baptists in North West Parish, April 12, 1735, so John Boyd says to the Bishop of London: "We are very happy in having no different sects or opinions in this part of the country, but I have great reason to complain of a Laodicean luke warmness immorality. But lower down in the country there are a great many Quakers and Anabaptists. In my last journey I had a great many of them as Auditors" (Colonial Records, IV. 7). Mr. Reed said that on the arrival of Mr. Morton, July 20, 1766, at Brunswick, "he was very creditably and, I believe, very timely informed, that the inhabitants of the County evaded the Vestry Act by electing the most rigid dissenters for vestrymen who would not qualify; that the County abounded with Dissenters of various denominations and particularly with Covenanters, Seceders, Anabaptists and New Lights; that he would meet with a very cold, if any reception at all and have few or no hearers and lead a very uneasy life" (Colonial Records, VII. 241). C. E. Taylor, August 25, 1772, reports from North Hampton country: "In my last, I acquainted you there were being a great many Dissenters in this part of the country. I don’t know what they call themselves, some term them Anabaptists, some New Light Baptists, and others Baptists. I have talked with some of their preachers, who are surprisingly ignorant, and pretend to Illumination and assurance, they are so obstinately and wilfully ignorant themselves and teach their fellows to be so too, that they will hearken to no reason whatever, but are obstinately bent to follow their own absurd Notions. They increase surprisingly in Virginia, and in some parts of Carolina, but I bless God they rather decrease in my parish" (Colonial Records, IX. 326). Thodore S. Drage, reports from St. Luke’s Parish, Salisbury, February 28, 1771, as follows: "The Dissenters countenance any fellow who will stand up and preach in any part of the Parish, but in their settlements in order to distract and make confusion amongst the rest of the people. This under the name of Anabaptists and to what they in part apply for under protection of Law, they have and do practice against the Laws which are in force at present, marry of their own Justices and Itinerate preachers, bidding me defiance and paying no marriage Fees. The Courts of Law are open to me, and the Penalty five pounds but they would represent me as litigious, and it might submit me to peculiar insult" (Colonial Records, VIII. 505) . The Church Warden of Hanover county, October 1, 1759, says: "He is obliged to attend 6 different places, in order to render the benefits of his preaching more diffusive, and curb (if possible) an Enthusiastic sect who call themselves anabaptists which is numerous and daily increasing in this parish and which we affirm has already received a check from his labors" (Colonial Records, VI. 59). There was an uprising in North Carolina in 1771 in which the Baptists were charged by Governor Tyron with having a part. Morgan Edwards makes the following curious remarks in regard to the battle: "Next to Virginia Southward is North Carolina, a poor and unhappy province where superiors make complaints of the people, and the people of the superiors, which complaints, if just, show the body politic to be like that of Israel in the house of Isaiah, ‘from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head without any soundness, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.’ These complaints rose to hostilities at Almance Creek May 10th, 1771, where about 6,000 appeared in arms and fought each other 4,000 Regulators killed three Tyronians and 2,000 (Tyronians) killing twelve Regulators besides lodging in the trees an incredible number of balls which the hunters have since picked out and killed more deer and Turkies than they killed of their antagonists." The historian goes on to relate the part the Baptists had in the affair: "Governor Tyron is said to have represented a faction of Quakers and Baptists who aimed at overturning the Church of England. If the Governor said as here suggested he must be misinformed for I made it my business to inquire into the matter and can aver that among the 4,000 Regulators there were but 7 of the denomination of the Baptists; and these were expelled from the societies they belonged unto, in consequence of the resolve of the Baptist Association held at Sandy Creek the Second Saturday in Oct. 1769, ‘If any of our members shall take up arms against the legal authority or aid and abet them that do so, he shall be excommunicated, c. When this was known abroad, one of the four chiefs of the Regulators with an armed company broke into the assembly and demanded if there was such a resolve entered into by the Association. The answer was evasive, for they were in bodily fear. This checked the design much; and the author of the Impartial Relation, page 16, ‘There in (Sandy Creek) the scene met with some opposition on account that .it was too hot and rash and in some things not legal; c. One of the 7 Baptists by the name of Merrill was executed; and he, at the point of death, did not justify his conduct, but bitterly condemned it and blamed two men (of very different religion) for deceiving him into the rebellion" (Colonial Records, VIII. 655, 656). John Barnett, Northampton, September 15, 1770, writes: "Last Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, two, three and four New Light Baptist teachers attended our service with many of their people; the teachers, I am informed, have since delivered themselves in more respectful terms of the Church of England than they were before accustomed. That sect has very much increased in the country among us; however, I am in great hopes that frequent weekly Lectures will fix the wavering, and draw back many of those who have strayed from us" (Colonial Records, VIII. 228, 229). James Moir, Edgecomb county, November 22, 1748, writes: "When I was preparing to leave this province in the Spring, many of our communion told me they thought it my duty to continue not only because they were pleased with my labors, but more especially because a great number in County had turned Baptists for want of a clergyman" (Colonial Records, IV. 878). Governor Richard Everard writes to the Bishop of London, from Edenton, October 12, 1729, as follows: "When I find Quakers and Baptists flourish among the No Carolinians, it behooved me that as the Gov here to enquire and look into the Original cause, which on the strictest examination and nicest scrutiny I can make, find it owing to the want of Clergymen amongst us. We in this great Province have never a one, and truly my Lord both Quakers and Baptists in this vacancy are very busy making Proselytes and holding meetings daily in every Part of this Govt. Indeed one new County next Virginia is well supplied by the Indefatigible Paines and industry of the Revd Mr. Jones of Nansemond who has the Character of a Pious, Good’ and Worthy man but he is old and infirm. My Lord, when I came first here, there were no Dissenters but Quakers in the Govt and now by the means of one Paul Palmer the Baptist Teacher, he has gained hundreds and to prevent it, tis impossible," c. (Colonial Records, III. 48). Jas. Macarthey, Granville county and Parish, October 28, 1769, writes: "There are likewise many Baptists here, who are great Bigots; but be well assured, Reverend Sir, that I will (from a sense of my Duty and gratitude to the Society) take every prudent method I am capable of to abolish Dissention and make converts to the Church" (Colonial Records, VIII. 86). John Barnett, Brunswick Cape, February 3, 1766, writes: "New Light baptists are very numerous in the southern points in this parish. The most illiterate among them are their Teachers, even Negroes speak in their meetings. They lately sent to one to offer the use of their meeting house when I propose to officiate in two months" (Colonial Records, VII. 164) . There is no question from these Colonial Records, representing hostile accounts, that the Baptists were numerous; growing with great rapidity; and that they were giving the rectors of the Church of England much uneasiness. Effort was made at this time to unite the Separate and Regular Baptists, but as yet this did not succeed. The Whitefield revival was the occasion of introducing Baptists into Georgia. The first account of the appearance of Baptists in Georgia was in the year 1757. Mr. Nicholas Bedgewood, who was employed in the capacity of agent to the Orphanage of Whitefield, near Savannah, had several years previously been convinced of Baptist sentiments. In that year he went to Charleston, and was baptized by Oliver Hart, the pastor of the Baptist church in that city. He was soon licensed to preach, and his ordination to the ministry took place in 1759. In 1763, he baptized several persons in and about the Orphan House, among whom was Benjamin Stirk, who afterwards became a minister of the gospel. To these persons, who probably formed a branch of the Charleston church, Bedgewood administered the Lord’s Supper, the first Baptist communion ever held in the province. Stirk appears to have been a man of good learning, fine natural parts, and eminent for piety and zeal. As there was no Baptist church in Georgia, he united with the Baptist church at Euhaw, South Carolina. He soon began to preach, and set up places of meeting, at his house, and at Tuckaseeking, twenty miles higher up in the country, where there were a few Baptists, who constituted a branch of the Euhaw church. But of the useful labors of this servant of Christ they were soon deprived, as he was called to his reward in the year 1770. This is the second sign of a Baptist church in the State; indeed, it is not certain that it ever became a regular church. In the meantime Botsford, a young licentiate of the Charleston church, while on a visit to the Euhaw church, received an invitation to come over and help this feeble church and destitute field. Encouraged by the mother church, and accompanied by the pastor, he came and preached to them his first sermon, June 27, 1771. His labors were highly acceptable, he yielded to their solicitations and remained with them for more than a year. His anxious spirit would not permit him to remain in one place. He traveled extensively, preached in all the surrounding country; and toward the close of the next year, he went still higher up the river and commenced an establishment at what was first called New Savannah, but now Botsford’s Old Meeting House, about twenty-five miles below Augusta. Here he had the pleasure of seeing the work of the Lord prosper in his hands. The following incident, which is characteristic of the times, is related of Botsford: In parts of Georgia where he labored the inhabitants were a mixed multitude of emigrants from many different places; most of whom were destitute of any form of religion, and the few who paid any regard to it were zealous Churchmen and Lutherans, and violently opposed to the Baptists. He preached in the court house in Burk county. The assembly at first paid decent attention; but, toward the close of the sermon, one of them bawled out with a great oath, "The rum has come." Out he rushed; others followed; the assembly was soon left small; and, by the time Botsford got out to his horse, he had the unhappiness to find many of his hearers intoxicated and fighting. An old gentleman came up to him, took his horse by the bridle, and in a profane dialect most highly extolling him and his discourse, swore he must drink with him, and come and preach in his neighborhood. It was now no time to reason or reprove; and as preaching was Botsford’s business, he accepted the old man’s invitation, and made an appointment. His first sermon was blessed in the awakening of his host’s wife; one of his sons also became religious, and others in the settlement, to the number of fifteen, were in a short time brought to the knowledge of the truth, and the old man himself became sober and attentive to religion, although he never made a profession of it. A little previous to the coming of Botsford to Tuckaseeking, Daniel Marshall, with other Baptist emigrants, arrived and settled at Kiokee Creek, about twenty miles above Augusta. He began forthwith to preach in the surrounding country. His principal establishment was on the Big Kiokee, and from this circumstance it received the name of the Kiokee Meeting House. It was located on the site now occupied by the public buildings of Columbia county, called Applington. The following record is given of one of his services: "The scene is in a sylvan grove, and Daniel Marshall is on his knees making the opening prayer. While he beseeches the Throne of Grace, a hand is laid on his shoulders, and he hears a voice say: ‘You are my prisoner.’ "Rising, the sedate, earnest minded man of God, whose sober mien and silvery locks indicate the sixty-five years which have passed since his birth, finds himself confronted by the officer of the law. He is astonished at being arrested, under such circumstances, ‘according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England.’ Rev. Abraham Marshall, in his sketch of his father, published in the Analytical Repository, 1802, says that the arrested preacher was made to give security for his appearance in Augusta on the following Monday to answer for this violation of the law, adding: ‘Accordingly, he stood trial, and after his meekness and patience were sufficiently exercised, he was ordered to come no more to Georgia.’ The reply of Daniel Marshall was similar to that of the Apostles under similar circumstances, ‘Whether it be right to obey God or man, judge ye’; and, ‘consistently with this just and spirited replication, he pursued his luminous course’" (History of the Baptists in Georgia, 13, 14. Atlanta, 1881). Daniel Marshall was born at Winsor, Connecticut, in 1706, of Presbyterian parents. He was a man of great natural ardor and holy zeal. Becoming convinced that it was his duty to assist in converting the heathen, he went, with his wife and three children, and preached for three years to the Mohawk Indians, near the headwaters of the Susquehannah river, at a town called Onnaquaggy. War among the savage tribes compelled his removal, first to Connogogig in Pennsylvania, and then to Winchester, Virginia, where he became a convert to Baptist views, and was immersed at the age of forty-eight. His wife also submitted to the ordinance at the same time. He was soon licensed by the church with which he united and, having removed to North Carolina, he built up a flourishing church, of which he was ordained pastor by his two brothers-in-law, Rev. Henry Ledbetter and Shubeal Stearns. From North Carolina he removed to South Carolina, and from South Carolina to Georgia, in each State constituting new and flourishing churches. On January 1, 1771, he settled in what is now Columbia county, Georgia, on Kiokee Creek. He was a man of pure life, unbounded faith, fervent spirit, holy zeal, indefatigable in religious labors, and possessing the highest moral courage. Although Marshall was neither profoundly learned nor very eloquent as a preacher, yet he was fervent, the Lord was with him, and he soon had the happiness of seeing many converts baptized. These with the emigrant Baptists were constituted into a church, in the year 1772. This was the first church constituted in Georgia. At this time he was the only ordained Baptist preacher in the State; but there were several licentiates including Abraham Marshall. By these the word was proclaimed in all the upper country, and many were in the remote forests. The following is the act of incorporation of this ancient church at Kiokee: The Act of incorporating the Anabaptist church on the Kioka, in the county of Richmond. WHEREAS, a religious society has, for many years, been established on the Kioka, in the county of Richmond, called and known by the name of "The Anabaptist church of Kioka"; Be it enacted, That Abraham Marshall, William Willingham, Edmund Cartledge, John Landers, James Simms, Joseph Ray and Lewis Gardener be, and they are hereby, declared to be a body corporate, by the name and style of "The Trustees of the Anabaptist church of Kioka." And be it further enacted, That the Trustees (the same names are here given) of the said Anabaptist church, shall hold their office for the term of three years; and, on the third Saturday of November, in every third year, after the passing of this Act, the supporters of the Gospel in said church shall convene at the meeting house of the said church, and there, between the hours of ten and four, elect from among the supporters of the Gospel in said church seven discreet persons as Trustees, c. Seaborn Jones, Speaker. Edward Telfair, Governor. Nathan Brownson, President Senate. December 23d, 1789. It was, however, in Virginia that the Separates succeeded in the most marked degree. They were here persecuted more vigorously than elsewhere, but they also met with the greatest success. "Here they pushed forward their operations with an ardor approaching the primitive times, amidst all that kind of vexations, ill-bred, ill-natured, and tantalizing hostility, which the minions of a declining hierarchy with but the shadow of power were able to maintain." Stearns and Marshall remained in Virginia only a comparatively brief period. But "the power of God was effectual in the conversion of Samuel Harris, a man of great distinction in those parts. Besides being burgess of the county and colonel of the militia, he held several other offices. Upon being honored of God, he laid aside all his worldly honors and became a laborer in the Lord’s vineyard" (Semple). His conversion was effected by two illiterate preachers, Joseph and William Murphy, and he was baptized by Daniel Marshall. It was a rare thing, in those times, for men of his worldly distinction to unite with the people who were, in the fullest sense of the passage, everywhere spoken against. His expansive benevolence in the use of his abundant means for doing good; the childlike simplicity which he always displayed after his conversion; his freedom of intercourse with the people of all conditions among his new and, for the most part, poor and despised associates; his blameless life; and, finally, his pious and irrepressible ardor in the ministerial service had a tendency to bind him to the denomination by strong and lasting ties. He was the evangel for the entire State. He gave up all for Christ. "Being in easy circumstances," says Semple, "when he became religious, he devoted not only himself, but almost all his property, to religious objects. He had begun a large new dwelling house, suitable to his former dignity; which, as soon as it was finished, he appropriated to the use of public worship, continuing to live in the old one. After maintaining his family in a very frugal manner, he distributed the surplus income to charitable purposes." In labors he was abundant. "He was destined of God to labor more extensively in Virginia than in any other State. Having done much good in the circumjacent parts, the time was now arrived for him to lengthen his chords. In January, 1765, Allen Wyley, an inhabitant of Culpeper, and who had been baptized by David Thomas, hearing of the Separate Baptist preachers, traveled from Culpeper to Pittsylvania in order to get one or more of them to come and preach in Culpeper. He traveled on, scarcely knowing whither he went. An unseen hand directed his course. He providentially fell into one of Mr. Harris’ meetings. When he came into the meeting house Mr. Harris fixed his eyes on him, being impressed previously that he had some extraordinary message. He asked him whence he came, and Mr. Wyley told him his errand. Upon which, after some deliberation, believing him to be sent of God, Mr. Harris agreed to go. Taking three days to prepare, he started with Wyley, having no meetings on the way, yet exhorting and praying in every house where he went. "Arriving at Culpeper, his first meeting was in Wyley’s own house. He preached the first day without interruption, and appointed for the next. He the next day began to preach, but the opposers immediately raised violent opposition, appearing with whips, sticks, clubs, c., so as to hinder his labors; in consequence of which he went that night over to Orange county, and preached with much effect. He continued many days preaching from place to place, attended by great crowds and followed throughout the meeting by several persons, who had been lately converted or seriously awakened under the ministry of the Regular Baptists, and by many who had been alarmed by his own labors. When Mr. Harris left them he exhorted them to be steadfast, and advised some (in whom he discovered talents) to commence the exercise of their gifts to hold meetings among themselves. "In this ministerial journey Mr. Harris sowed many good seed, yielding afterwards great increase. The young converts took his advice and began to hold meetings every Sabbath, and almost every night in the week, taking a tobacco house for their meetings. After proceeding in this way for some time they applied to Mr. David Thomas, who lived somewhere north of the Rappahannock, to come and preach for them, and to teach them the ways of God more perfectly. He came, but in his preaching expressed some disapprobation of the preaching of such weak and illiterate persons. This was like throwing cold water upon their flaming zeal. They took umbrage, and resolved to send once more for Mr. Harris. "Sometime in the year 1766, and a short time after Mr. Thomas’ preaching, three of the parties, viz.: Elijah Craig and two others, traveled to Mr. Harris’ house in order to procure his services in Orange and the adjacent parts to preach and baptize the new converts. They found to their surprise that he had not been ordained to the administration of the ordinances. To remedy this inconvenience he carried them about sixty miles into North Carolina to get James Read, who was ordained" (Semple). It was in this manner that the Separates labored and won converts. Harris was not persecuted to the degree that some of the other Baptist preachers were; but he was called upon to suffer for the glory of God. He was once arrested and carried into court as a disturber of the peace. In the court he was vehemently accused as a vagabond, a heretic and a disturber of the peace. On one occasion, in Orange County, he was pulled down as he was preaching and dragged about by the hair of his head, and sometimes by a leg. His friends rescued him. On another time he was knocked down by a rude fellow while he was preaching But he was not dismayed by these, or any other difficulties. A singular thing connected with the Baptists of Virginia was that Col. Harris, and some others were elected and served as bishops. Many of these Baptists were of the General type from England who were strongly monarchial and prelatical. It may readily be perceived, with the democratic principles of the Baptists of Virginia, that such a plan would not ultimately succeed. The whole procedure is thus explained by Semple: At this Association the query respecting the proper interpretation of Ephesians 4:11-13, was again debated, and by an almost unanimous vote, three excepted, it was resolved that the said offices are now in use in Christ’s church, and the said three submitted to the majority. It was further resolved that the said offices be immediately established, by the appointment of certain persons to fill them, provided any possessed of such gifts be found among them. They then proceeded to the choice of an apostle, by private poll, and the lot fell, by unanimous consent, upon Elder Samuel Harris. For the discipline of this high officer, the following rule is entered in the minutes, viz.: If our messenger or apostle shall transgress in any manner, he shall be liable to dealing in any church where the transgression is committed, and the said church is instructed to call helps from two or three neighboring churches, and, if by them found a transgressor, a general council of the churches shall be called to restore or excommunicate him. They then proceeded to ordain him, according to the following method: The day being set apart as a fast day, we immediately proceeded to ordain him, and the hands of every ordained minister was laid on him. Public prayers were made by John Waller, E. Craig, and John Williams. John Waller gave a public charge, and the whole Association gave him the right hand of fellowship. His work was to pervade the churches; to do, or at least to see to, the work of ordination, and to set in order things that were wanting, and to make report to the next Association. The discussion on this subject caused no little warmth on both sides. Jeremiah Walker first agitated it, and it was supported by most of the preachers of popular talents, not without suspicion of vanity and ambition. The opposition was headed by Reuben Ford, followed by a numerous party in the Northern District. Walker wrote a piece upon the subject, entitled Free Thoughts, etc., in which, as also in his arguments, both in Associations and private companies, he very ingeniously maintained that all the offices mentioned in the above texts were still in use. Mr. Ford also wrote a pamphlet in answer to Mr. Walker’s in which he rebutted the arguments with considerable ability. Both of these were read before the Association. The majority favored Mr. Walker’s system and an experiment was made. At an Association holden for the Northern District this fall, John Waller and E. Craig were appointed apostles for the north side of the river. It is sufficient to inform our readers that this scheme did not succeed. Either the spirit of free government ran too high among the churches to submit to such an officer or the thing was wrong in itself, and, not being from God, soon fell. These apostles made their report to the next Association, rather in discouraging terms, and no others were ever appointed. The judicious reader will quickly discover that this is only the old plan of bishops, etc., under a new name. In the last decision it was agreed that the office of apostles, like that of prophets, was the effect of miraculous inspiration and did not belong to ordinary times (Semple). Books for further reference: J. M. Campbell, Georgia Baptists: Historical and Biographical. Macon, 1874. Charles B. Williams, A History of the Baptists in North Carolina. Raleigh, 1901. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 44: 01.2.02.00. THE PERIOD OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ======================================================================== The Period of the American Revolution ======================================================================== CHAPTER 45: 01.2.02.01. THE BAPTISTS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ======================================================================== Chapter 1 – The Baptists in the American Revolution The Thirteen Colonies—The Policy of England—The Discovery of the Valley of the Ohio—The Population of the Country—The Social, Political and Religious Conditions—Political and Religious Freedom—The Forces Against America—George III—The Attitude of Pope Pius VI—John Adams on the Situation—The Position of Canada—The Quebec Act—The Roman Catholics of Great Britain—The Attitude of America Toward the Roman Catholics—The Mercenaries from Germany—The Roman Catholics of Ireland—of America—The Clergy of the Established Church of England—Rev. Charles Inglis—Foreign Born Citizens—A Conspiracy Against Washington—William Pitt—The Baptists of England—Dr. Rippon—The Baptists of America—The Warren Association—The Philadelphia Association—An Appeal to the Continental Congress—Rhode Island Favors Independence—The Baptists of Virginia—A Memorial to Congress—The Baptists Favor the Revolution—Soldiers—Chaplains in the Army—Oliver Hart—John Hart. The thirteen colonies were feeble settlements in the wilderness, scattered along the coast of a continent, little connected with each other, and almost unknown to the world. Their affairs were superintended by a Board of Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. This Board had no representative in the cabinet or access to the king, hence there was always confusion. The Duke of Bedford was the Secretary at the time- a man of inflexible honesty and good will to his country, untainted by duplicity or timidity- of considerable ability though not brilliant- fearless, positive, uncompromising, energetic, without sagacity, stubborn, and with a narrow range of thought. In a short while plans were laid for the taxation of the colonies, and in 1748 a convention was held at Albany with the ostensible purpose of providing against the French and Indian incursions, but the officers made known their desire to tax the colonies. The Governor of New York, followed by others, resisted this proposition. While these plans were being put into execution the Valley of the Ohio had been discovered. This vast wilderness with broad prairies, giant forests and cloud- piercing mountains was soon to be open to colonization. The great question was, would it be English or French? The English cabinet became enlisted and sent George Washington to the French commander. This ultimately brought on the war. At the time of this convention at Albany the following estimate is given by the historian Bancroft of the population of this country: They (the thirteen colonies) contained at this date (1754) about one million, one hundred and sixty- five thousand white inhabitants, and two hundred and sixty thousand negroes; in all, one million four hundred and three thousand in Connecticut; in New England, therefore, four hundred twenty- five thousand souls. Of persons of European ancestry perhaps fifty thousand dwelt in New Hampshire, two hundred and seven thousand in Massachusetts, thirty- five thousand in Rhode Island, and one hundred and twenty- five thousand. Of the middle colonies, New York may have had eighty- five thousand; New Jersey, seventy- three thousand; Pennsylvania, with Delaware, one hundred and ninety- five thousand; Maryland, one hundred and four thousand; in all, not far from four hundred and fifty- seven thousand. For the Southern Provinces, where the mild climate invited emigrants to the inland glades- where the crown lands were often occupied on warrants of surveys without patents, or even warrants- where the people were never assembled but at musters, there was room for glaring mistakes in the enumerations. To Virginia may be assigned one hundred and sixty- eight thousand white inhabitants; to North Carolina, scarcely less than seventy thousand; to South Carolina, forty thousand; to Georgia not more than five thousand; to the whole country south of the Potomac, two hundred and eighty- three thousand. The white population of any of five, or perhaps even of six of the American Provinces was greater singly than that of all Canada, and the aggregate in America exceeded that in Canada fourteen fold. Of persons of the African lineage their home was chiefly determined by climate. New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine may have had three thousand negroes; Rhode Island, four thousand five hundred; Connecticut, three thousand five hundred; all New England, therefore, about eleven thousand. New York alone had not far from eleven thousand; New Jersey, about half of that number; Pennsylvania, with Maryland, eleven thousand; the central colonies collectively, seventy- one thousand. In Virginia there were not less than one hundred and sixteen thousand; in North Carolina, perhaps, more than twenty thousand; in South Carolina, full forty thousand; in Georgia, about two thousand; so that the country south of the Potomac may have had one hundred and seventy-eight thousand. The following is a condensed account of the social, religious and political condition of the country at the time: Of the Southern group, Georgia, the chosen asylum of misfortune, had been languishing under the guardianship of a corporation, whose benefits had not equaled the benevolence of its designs. South Carolina prospered and was happy. Its fiery people had increased their power by every method of encroachment on the executive and every claim of legislative self- direction. The love for rural life prevailed universally. The frugal planter enjoyed the undivided returns of his enterprise, doubling his capital in three or four years; while the thrifty mechanic exchanged his workshop, and the merchant left the risks of the sea, to cultivate estates of their own. North Carolina had not one considerable village. Its rich swamps near the sea produced rice; its alluvial lands teemed with maize; free labor, little aided by Negroes, drew turpentine and tar from the pines of its white, sandy plains; a hardy, free and increasing people lay scattered among the fertile uplands. Careless emigrants occupied lands without an owner. Their swine had the range of the forests; the open greenwood was the pasture of their herds; their young men trolled along the brooks for fish, or trapped the beaver, or with, gun and pouch lay in wait for the deer, as it slaked its thirst in the running stream; while they reposed from their toils in pleasant sleep under the forest tree. In Virginia, the country within its tide water was divided among planters, who, in the culture of tobacco, were favored by British legislation. Insulated on their estates, they were cordially hospitable. In the quiet solitude of their life, unaided by an active press, they were philosophers, after the pattern of Montaigne, without having heard of him, learning from nature to bound their freedom of mind only by self- circumscribed limits. The horse was their pride, the county courts their holidays; the race course their delight. Maryland enjoyed unbroken quiet, furnished no levies for the army, and small contributions of money. The scattered planters led in their delightful climate as undisturbed and as happy a life as was compatible with the prevalence of Negro slavery and the limitations on popular power by the privileges of Lord Baltimore, as prince palatine. The laws established for Pennsylvania complete enfranchisement in the domain of thought. But New York was the central point of political interest. Its position invited it to foster American union. Having the most convenient harbor on the Atlantic, with bays expanding on either hand, and a navigable river penetrating in the interior, it held the keys of Canada and the lakes. Crown Point and Niagara, monuments of French ambition, were encroaching upon its limits. Its unsurveyed island frontier, sweeping round on the north. disputed with New Hampshire the land between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut, and extended into unmeasured distances in the West. Within its bosom, at Onondaga, burned the council fire of the Six Nations, whose irregular bands had seated themselves near Montreal, on the northern shore of Ontario, and on the Ohio; whose hunters roamed over the northwest and west; whose war parties had for ages strolled to Carolina. Here were concentrated by far the most important Indian relations, round which the great idea of a general union was shaping itself into reality. It was to still the hereditary warfare of the Six Nations with the Southern Indians, that South Carolina and Massachusetts first met at Albany; it was to confirm friendship with them and their allies, that New England, and all the Central States but New Jersey, had assembled in Congress. But a higher principle was needed to blend the several colonies under one sovereignty; that principle existed on the banks of the Hudson, and the statesmen of New York clung perseveringly and without wavering to faith in a united American Empire. New York had been settled under large patents of lands to individuals; New England under grants of towns; and the institution of towns was its glory and its strength. Yet in these democracies, the hope of independence, as a near event, had not dawned. The inhabitants of New England clung to the land of their ancestry, the people of their kindred, and the nationality of their language. They were of homogeneous origin, nearly all tracing their descent to English emigrants of the reigns of Charles the First and Charles the Second. They were a frugal and industrious race. Along the sea side, wherever there was a good harbor, fishermen, familiar with the ocean, gathered in hamlets; and each returning season saw them with an ever increasing number of mariners and vessels, taking the cod and the mackerel, and sometimes pursuing the whale into the icy labyrinths of the Northern seas; yet loving home, and deeply attached to their modest freeholds. In the settlements which grew up in the interior, on the margin of the greenwood, the plain meeting house of the congregation for public worship was everywhere the central point; near it stood the public school, by the side of the very broad road, over which wheels enough did not pass to do more than mark the path by ribbons in the sward. The snug farm houses, owned as freeholds, without quitrents, were dotted along the way; and the village pastor among his people, enjoyed the calm raptures of devotion, “appearing like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year, low and humble, on the ground, standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of the flowers round about; all, in like manner, opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun.” In every hand was the Bible; every home was a house of prayer; in every village all had been taught, many had comprehended, a methodical theory of the divine purpose of creation, and of the destiny of man. The great dominating idea of America at this time was political liberty. They understood to a less degree the liberty of the human conscience, and do not fully grasp that conception even now. They were approximating the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The contest was certain to be long continued; and would demand exertions and sacrifices beyond anything the colonies had hitherto experienced. The forces arrayed against them at home and abroad were formidable, George III had allied himself with many persons and nations opposed to liberty. He was on good terms with pope Pius VI. Two of the brothers of George III, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince Edward Augustus, were received by the pope with great honor in 1777. He wrote to the Roman Catholic bishops, vicars- apostolic, in that kingdom, to include obedience to that monarch. “The good will of George III,” said the pope, “makes this virtue a goodness. He is the best of sovereigns; his authority is full of mildness to Catholics. They do not bear so hard and heavy a yoke; they have been delivered from a part of the severe laws and hard conditions to which they were subjected. They now possess privileges; our brethren may serve in the army, and have obtained Catholic schools for youth. Nor has the beneficent monarch shown his goodness only to Catholics of his kingdom; he has favored and supported them in the vast Indian realms subject to his authority” (Chevelier Artant de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, II). The pope was likewise opposed to republics and favored monarchies. “Monarchy,” says he, “is the most natural form of government,” and “the populace . . . follow no wisdom and no counsel, and has no understanding of things.” The appointment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Great Britain was made by Cardinal York, who was a kinsman of George III. The hostility of the pope was well understood by the Americans. John Adams, afterwards President of the United States, writing to the President of Congress, in an official manner, August 4, 1770, says: The Court of Rome, attached to ancient customs, would be one of the last to acknowledge our independence, if we were to solicit it. But Congress will probably send a Minister to his Holiness, who can do them no service, upon condition of receiving a Catholic legate in return; or, in other words, an ecclesiastical tyrant, which, it is to be hoped, the United States will be too wise ever to admit into their territories (Adams, Works, VII). The reasons for Roman Catholic hostility were manifest. Practically all of the colonies had severe anti- papal laws on- their statute books. Likewise, the House of Bourbon had banished the Jesuits from France, and the French favored the claims of the United States. “The rancor of the Jesuits,” says Bancroft, “against the house of Bourbon for exiling them from France and Spain was relentless. The Roman Catholic clergy in the insurgent British colonies had been superintended by a person who resided in London; and during the war they were directed by Jesuits who favored the British” (Bancroft, History of the Constitution, I). Marbois, the French Minister, wrote to Rayneval, from Philadelphia, August 15, 1784, as follows: “The Catholics, always directed by the Jesuits in the country, have been illdisposed to the Revolution, they are not better disposed toward us” (Bancroft, I.). It was hoped by some that Canada would make the fourteenth State in the American Union. The Quebec Act was passed by Parliament, June, 1774, the effect of which was to make Canada a Roman Catholic province. Some of the wisest and best men in England opposed this measure. The spirit of the opposition to the Act in England may be seen in the attitude of Sergeant Glynn, backed by many other members of Parliament. He represented Middlesex and was the Recorder of London. Lord Chatham described him as being “a most ingenius, solid, pleasing man, and the spirit of the constitution itself” (Chatham, Correspondence, III). Mr. Glynn said: Considering, therefore, Sir, that the laws about to be given to the Canadians are the French laws; that the religion, as far as it becomes a subject of legal attention, is to be the Roman Catholic religion; that the Protestant religion is no wise taken notice of than as being one that ought to be tolerated; and that, whatever the disposition of the governor from whom they receive those laws may be, the government will be as absolute as any king of France could make it, and that without an irresistible necessity. I am persuaded that no gentleman, who carefully attends to the subject, and reflects upon the consequences, can, as a friend to the British Constitution, give his consent to the bill now before us (Cavendish, Debates in the House of Commons, A.D., 1774). Perhaps there was not a prominent Roman Catholic in Great Britain who did not endorse the war against America. There is an important paper to that effect called “an Address of the Roman Catholic Peers and Commons of Great Britain,” to the king, dated May 2, 1776, published in the London Gazette. It expresses their appreciation of the constitution and their loyalty to it. And that for years “their conduct has been irreproachable,” they are going to stand by the king in “public danger,” and are “perfectly ready, on every occasion, to give proofs of our fidelity.” The address further says: We beg to assure your majesty, that our dissent from the legal establishment, in matters of religion, is purely conscientious; that we hold no opinions averse to Your Majesty’s government, or repugnant to the duties of good citizens. And we trust that this has been shown decisively by our irreproachable conduct for many years past, under circumstances of public discountenance and displeasure, than it can be manifested by any declaration whatever. In a time of public danger, when Your Majesty’s subjects can have but one interest, and ought to have but one wish and one sentiment, we humbly hope it would not be deemed improper to assure Your Majesty of our unreserved affection to your government, of our unalterable attachment to the cause and welfare of this our common country and our utter detestation of the designs and views of any foreign power, against the dignity of your Majesty’s crown, and safety and tranquility of Your Majesty’s subjects. The delicacy of our situation is such that we do not presume to point out the particular means by which we may be allowed to testify our zeal to Your Majesty, and our wishes to serve our country; but we entreat leave faithfully to assure Your Majesty, that we shall be perfectly ready, on every occasion, to give such proofs of our fidelity, and the purity of our intentions, as Your Majesty’s wisdom, and the sense of the nation, shall at any time deem excellent (Almon, The Remembrancer, VI, 133- 135). This Address was signed by two hundred and five Peers and Commoners, all Roman Catholics. The acts of the British government were followed by the most solemn protests from all parts of the country; the crown was asked not to sign the Quebec Act; and there were many riots. The American Congress, October 21, 1774, sent an Address to the people of Great Britain. It not only gives the attitude of the Americans in general; but in particular is clear upon the religious side of the controversy. Altogether it is a fearless and plainspoken expression of convictions. It was signed by George Washington and many others. At the risk of length some of the statements are here quoted: We think the legislature of Great Britain is not authorised, by the constitution, to establish a religion, fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of government, in any quarter of the globe. Those rights we, as well as you, deem sacred; and yet, sacred as they are, they have with many others, been repeatedly and flagrantly violated. At the conclusion of the late war—a war rendered glorious by the abilities and integrity of a Minister to whose efforts the British Empire owes its safety and its fame: At the conclusion of the war which was succeeded by an inglorious peace, formed under the auspices of a Minister of principles and of a family unfriendly to the Protestant cause and inimical to liberty: We say, at this period and under the influence of that man, a plan for the enslaving of your fellow subjects in America was concerted, and has been ever since pertinaciously carried into execution. Nor mark the progression of the ministerial plan for enslaving us. Well aware that such hardy attempts to take our property from us, to deprive us of that valuable right of trial by jury, to seize our persons and to carry us for trial to Great Britain, to blockade our ports, to destroy our charters, and to change our form of government, would occasion great discontent in the Colonies, which might produce opposition to these measures, an act was passed to protect, indemnify and screen from punishment, such as might be guilty even of murder, in endeavoring to carry their oppressive edicts into execution; and by another act the Dominion of Canada is to be extended, modeled and governed, as by being disunited from us, detached from our interests, by civil as well as religious prejudices, that by their numbers daily swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by their devotion to administration so friendly to their religion, they might become formidable to us, and on occasion be fit instruments, in the hands of power, to reduce the free Protestant Colonies to the same state of slavery with themselves. This was evidently the object of the act; and in this view, being extremely dangerous to our liberties and quiet, we cannot further forbear complaining of it, as hostile to British America. Superadded to these considerations we cannot help deploring the unhappy condition to which it has reduced the many English settlers, encouraged by the royal proclamation, promised the enjoyment of all of their rights, have purchased estates in that country. That they are now the subjects of an arbitrary government, deprived of trial by jury, and when imprisoned, cannot claim the benefit of the habeas corpus act, that great bulwark and palladium of English liberty. Nor can we suppress our astonishment, that a British Parliament can ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world. This being a true state of facts, let us beseech you to consider what end they lead (Journal of Congress, 1774, I, 27, 30). The mercenaries sent over from Germany by Great Britain to fight the Americans were the soldiers of a Roman Catholic prince, Frederich II, Landgrave of Hesse- Cassel. “This prince,” says Lowell, “was the Catholic ruler of a Protestant country. His first wife had been an English princess, a daughter of George II. She had separated herself from the Landgrave on his conversion to Catholicism, and returned to Henau, with her precious son. “Frederich had led a merry life of it at Cassel. He had taken to himself a cast- off mistress of the Due de Bullion, but he set up no pretentions to fidelity, and is said to have had more than one hundred children. A French theater, with a corp de ballet, was maintained. French adventurers, with good letters, obtained a welcome, and even responsible positions of State” (Lowell, The Hessians). The Roman Catholics of Ireland were mustered into the service as soldiers. The methods used by the priests and others to induce them to enlist in the army are very interesting. At first many of the Irish Catholics of America enlisted in the colonial army; but under the pressure of the priesthood many of them deserted and went over to the enemy. In reply to Dr. Shea, a Roman Catholic author, who said: “The Catholics spontaneously, universally and energetically give their adhesion to the cause of America, and, when the time came, to American independence” (Shea, Catholics and Catholicity in the Days of the American Revolution). Martin I. Griffin, a very able Roman Catholic, wrote as follows: Every sentence is an error. When we know how Catholics had fared at the hands of their fellow colonists, and remember the deep anti-Catholic hostility to “Papists” in the early days of the Revolution, as we will find in the neat Researches fully set forth, we regard it to the credit of the Catholics who were Tories, rather than an ignominy. Think of how they were reviled, even in Pennsylvania, where, “alone their rights were recognized” by law, and think if possible that all would ally themselves with the haters of their faith; just as probable that Catholics of our day would do so with the church burners of 1844, or the Know Nothings of later or present days. Then apart from the religious aspect, but viewing the contest politically, why should Catholics have been all on one side? Could none have honestly thought the demands of the Colonists unfounded in law or justice? Could none have honestly declined to be approvers of the many outrages which were committed and which were sought to be excused because “much must be pardoned in the spirit of liberty?” Were no Catholic subject to British official or personal influence and moved to no self- interest to take the side of Britain? If it is such a glory to have been “a Whig” that it is eternal infamy to have been a Loyalist, then the Catholics of Canada, who by the authority of the clergy were kept loyal, must now merit execration for their obedience, as they suffered by excommunication for assisting “the Bostonians” (American Catholic Historical Researches, VI). Likewise consideration must be taken of the attitude of the clergy of the Established Church of England. Some of the people adhered to the mother country, but that number was not large. At the close of the Revolutionary War scarcely an Episcopal clergyman remained in the country. That church was completely destroyed. At the beginning of the struggle a large number of the clergy at once assumed a position on the side of England, and against the liberty of the colonies. They brought the subject into their pulpits; they denounced the people as insurrectionists and traitors; and commanded them to abandon the rebellion, and submit, without resistance, to their legitimate rulers. So offensive were the sermons of some of them, that the citizens felt themselves insufferably outraged. On one occasion at least, a clergyman, after a Sunday’s vaporing in the pulpit, was seized by the congregation, carried into a neighboring forest, fastened to a tree, and there received thirty- nine lashes vigorously administered. Another, to avoid a like fate, carried his pistols into the pulpit, and laying them by the side of his prayer book, in the presence of the assembly, told the congregation that he should proceed with the service; that England had a right to govern them; that he would read all the prayers for the king, the royal family, and the government; and that he would shoot any man who attempted to restrain him. Not many of the clergy, however, were so intrepid. The fearful and the fainthearted, therefore, fled with all practical haste (Howell, The Early Baptists of Virginia). The attitude of the clergy of the Episcopal Church is well illustrated by the extract given below from a letter written from New York by Rev. Charles Inglis, Rector of Trinity Church, under date of October 31, 1776, addressed to Dr. Hind, of England. The present rebellion is certainly one of the most causeless, unprovoked, and unnatural that ever disgraced any country; a rebellion with peculiarly aggravated circumstances of guilt and ingratitude... The (Episcopal) clergy, amidst this scene of tumult and disorder, went on steadily with their duty; in their sermons, confining themselves to the doctrines of the Gospel, without touching on politics; using their influence to allay our hearts and cherish a spirit of loyalty among their people. This conduct, however harmless, gave great offence to our flaming patriots, who laid it down as a maxim, “That those who were not for them were against them.” Thus matters continued; the clergy proceeding regularly in the discharge of their duty where the hands of violence did not interfere, until the beginning of last July, when Congress thought proper to make an explicit declaration of independency, by which all connection with Great Britain was to be broken off, and the Americans released from any allegiance to our gracious sovereign...The only course which they (the clergy) could pursue, was to suspend the public exercise of their function, and shut up their churches. This was accordingly done. It was very remarkable that although the clergy of those provinces I have mentioned did not, and, indeed, could not, consult each other on this interesting occasion, yet all fell upon the same method in shutting up their churches (The Congregational Quarterly, July, 1880, II, 312). Surrounded as the patriots were by Tories and opposed by foreign armies yet they had friends in England. When William Pitt stated in the House of Commons, May 30, 1781, that “the American war was conceived in injustice and nurtured in folly, and that it exhibited the highest moral turpitude and depravity, and that England had nothing but victories over men struggling in the holy cause of liberty, or defeats which filled the land with mourning for the loss of dear and valuable relatives slain in a detested and impious quarrel”; and when six months later, in the same assembly, and two days after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown had been published in England, the eloquent Fox adopted the words of Chatham, uttered at the beginning of the Revolution, and said: ‘Thank God that America has resisted the claims of the mother country!’ (Hums, Smollett and Farr, History of England, III); and Burke and others in the same legislature, spoke words of kindred import, full of peril to themselves, they expressed the sentiments of the Dissenters of England, and especially those of the Baptists. When Robert Hall, the future eloquent preacher, was a little boy, he heard John Ryland, of Northampton, a man of commanding influence among the Baptists, say to his father: If I were Washington I would summon all the American officers, they should form a circle around me, and I would address them, and we would offer a libation in our own blood, and I would order one of them to bring a lancet and a punch bowl, and we would bare our arms and be bled; and when the bowl was full, when we all had been bled, I would call on every man to consecrate himself to the work by dipping his sword into the bowl and entering into a solemn covenant engagement by oath, one to another, and we would swear by Him that sits upon the throne and liveth forever and ever, that we would never sheathe our swords while there was an English soldier in arms remaining in America (Robert Hall, Works, IV.). Dr. Rippon, of London, in a letter written to President Manning, of Rhode Island College, May 1, 1784, says: I believe all of our Baptist ministers in town, except two, and most of our brethren in the country were on the side of the Americans in the late dispute...We wept when the thirsty plains drank the blood of our departed heroes, and the shout of a king was among us when your well fought battles were crowned with victory; and to this hour we believe that the independence of America will, for a while, secure the liberty of this country, but if that continent had been reduced, Britain would not have long been free (Backus, II). So great was the peril and the uncertainty of the actions of foreign born persons that the generals in the army could only trust native born citizens. General Gates issued the following orders from headquarters, Cambridge, July 7, 1775: The General has great reason, and is highly displeased with the negligence and inattention of those officers who have placed as sentries at the outposts men with whose characters they are not acquainted. He therefore orders that for the future no man shall be appointed to these important stations who is not a native of this country, or has a wife and family in it, to whom he is known to be attached. This order is to be understood as a standing one, and the officers are to give obedience to it, at their peril (American Archives, 4th Series, II, 1834). The next day the General gave orders for the enlistment of men as follows: You are not to enlist any person who is not an American born, unless such a person has a wife and family, and is a settled resident of this country (American Archives, II, 1368). After the great conspiracy on the life of Washington the life guard was reorganized, April 30, 1777. Washington was then at Morristown, New Jersey. He sent to the commanders the following confidential letter: Sir: I want to form a company for my guard. In doing so I wish to be extremely cautious, because it is no more than probable that in the course of the campaign my baggage, papers and other matter of great public import may be committed to the sole care of these men. This being promised, in order to impress you with proper attention in the choice, I have to request that you will immediately furnish me with four men of your regimant; and as it is my further wish that this company should look well, and be nearly of a size, I desire that none of the men shall exceed in stature 5 feet 10 inches, nor fall short of 5 feet 9 inches—that possesses the pride of appearing neat and soldier like—am satisfied that there can be no absolute security for the fidelity of this class of people, but yet I think it most likely to be found in those who have family connections in the country. You will, therefore, send me none but natives. I must insist in making the choice you will give no intimation of my preference for natives, as I do not want to create any invidious distinction between them and foreigners (Philadelphia Ledger, December 14, 1896, from the New York Sun). These statements give a good insight into the perils which surrounded the Americans in the period of the Revolutionary War. They were surrounded with enemies from without; and Tories and traitors within. The most careful watchfulness was demanded. Only patriots could be trusted; and true men with the American spirit and liberty were imperatively demanded. The Baptists were such men. They were accustomed to a hardy life; had long. been trained in the rugged school of experience; were loyal and trusted citizens; and above all were endued with the spirit of wisdom and liberty. Not a man of them proved a traitor. They cast their united strength into the American cause. The Baptists were among the first of the religious bodies to recognize the authority of the Continental Congress. The Warren Association of New England recognized the Congress as the highest civil resort. A Convention in the county of Suffolk, at this time the head county in Massachusetts, gave countenance to the Congress, in these words: “This county, confiding in the wisdom and integrity of the Continental Congress, now sitting in Philadelphia, will pay all due respect and submission to such measures as may be recommended by them to the colonies, for the restoration and establishment of our just rights, civil and religious.” These resolves were carried by Backus to the Continental Congress and were as follows, as represented by the Warren Association: To the Honorable Delegates of the several colonies in North America, met in a general Congress in Philadelphia Honorable Gentlemen: As the Antipedobaptist churches in New England are most heartily concerned for the preservation and defense of the rights and privileges of the country, and are deeply affected by the encroachments of the same, which have lately been made by the British parliament, and are willing to unite with our dear countrymen, vigorously to pursue every prudent measure for relief, so. we would beg leave to say that, as a distinct denomination of Protestants, we conceive that we have an equal claim to charter rights, with the rest of our fellow subjects; and yet have long been denied the free and full enjoyment of those rights, as to the support of religious worship. Therefore we, the elders and brethren of the twenty Baptist churches met in Association in Medfield, twenty miles from Boston, September 14, 17’44, have unanimously chosen and sent unto you the reverend and beloved Isaac Backus as our agent, to lay our case, in these respects, before you, or otherwise to use all the prudent means he can for our relief. John Gano, Moderatos, Hezekiah Smith, Clerk. (Backus, A History of New England with particular reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists, II). All kinds of indignities were cast upon the Baptists. It is related that on one occasion they met in a field by the river side, where prayers were made, and a sermon begun, when the chief officers of the town, with many followers, came and interrupted their worship. The owner of the field warned them to depart out of it if they would not peaceably; but they refused to go. The Baptist ministers desired them to act like men, if they would not act like Christians; and reminded them of the liberty of conscience which is generally allowed, and even by the powers with which we were at war, and began to open the divine warrant therefor, upon which an officer said: “Don’t quote Scripture here!” Another of them, who was a communicant in their church, cast the odious name, Tory, upon one of those candidates for baptism. And he no sooner attempted to discover the injustice thereof, than the officer said, “Hold your tongue, I’ll beat your teeth down your throat!” And a dog was carried into the river and plunged, in evident contempt of our sentiments. A gentleman of the town then invited the Baptists to hold their meetings at his house, which was near another river. They accepted the invitation, and so went through with their worship; at the close of which a man was hired with a bowl of liquor to go into the river, and dip another two or three times over; where also two or three more dogs were plunged after which three officers of the town came into the house where the Baptist ministers were, and advised them immediately to depart out of the town for their own safety. Being asked whether their lives would be in danger if they did not depart, no answer was returned. But seeing their temper, the Baptists agreed to disperse, and to meet at a different place of water; which was done, and those six persons were decently baptized, though further abuse was offered at the close of it. The grievances in the Philadelphia Association were likewise severe. That Association, in 1774, stated: The case of our brethren suffering under ecclesiastical oppression in New England, being taken under consideration, it was agreed to recommend to our churches to contribute to their necessities, agreeable to the pattern of the primitive churches, who contributed to the relief of the distressed brethren in Judea. And that the money raised for them be remitted to Mr. Backus, in conjunction with the committee of advice in said colony, distributed to the brethren. The case of our brethren above considered induced us to appoint a committee of grievances, who may from time to time receive accounts of the sufferings and difficulties of our friends and brethren in the neighboring colonies; and meet as often as shall appear needful in the city of Philadelphia, to consult upon and to prosecute such measures for their relief, as they shall judge most expedient; and may correspond with the Baptist committee in the Massachusetts Bay, or elsewhere (Minutes of the Philadelphia Association, 141, 142). On that committee, among others, was appointed Rev. Samuel Jones, who cooperated with Backus in presenting the Baptist petition to the Continental Congress. In the year 1807 he preached the “Century Sermon” before the Association. He made the following remarks: When the first Congress met in this city, I was one of the committee under the appointment of your body, that, in company with the late Rev. Isaac Backus, Massachusetts, met the delegates in the Congress from that State, in yonder State House, to see if we could not obtain some security for that liberty, for which we were then fighting and bleeding by their side. It seemed unreasonable to us, that we should be called upon to stand up with them in defence of liberty, if, after all, it was to be liberty of one party to oppress the other. But our endeavors availed us nothing. One of them told us that if we meant to effect a change in their measures, respecting religion, we might as well attempt to change the course of the sun in the heavens (Minutes, 459, 460). The Continental Congress made the following reply to the petition of the Baptists: In Provincial Congress, Cambridge, December 9, 1774. On reading the memorial of the Reverend Isaac Backus, agent of the Baptist churches in this government Resolved, That the establishment of civil and religious liberty, to each denomination in the province, is the sincere wish of this Congress. But being by no means vested with powers of civil government, whereby they can redress the grievances of any person whatever, they therefore recommend to the Baptist churches, that when a General Assembly shall be convened in this colony, they lay the real grievances of said churches before the same, when and where their petition will most certainly meet with all that attention due to the memorial of a denomination of Christians so well disposed to the public weal of their country. By order of Congress. John Hancock, President. A true extract from the minutes. Benjamin Lincoln, Secretary. (Backus, II). The first colony to take an official stand against Great Britain was Rhode Island (Benjamin Cowell, The Spirit of ‘76 in Rhode Island, 42, Boston, 1850). This was twenty- two days before Virginia acted. However reluctant other portions of the continent may have been to entertain the idea of a final separation from the Mother Country, in this colony the desire for absolute independence was early conceived and steadily followed. The democratic character of Rhode Island enabled the legislature to represent fairly and fully the will of the people, and their will was, at all hazards, to preserve that charter, albeit at the expense of their former loyalty. “The Baptists have always been,” says Morgan Edwards, “more numerous than any other sect of Christians in Rhode Island; two- fifths of the inhabitants, at least, are reputed Baptists. The governors, deputy- governors, judges, assembly men and officers, civil and military, are chiefly of that persuasion. “The first work of the Rhode Islanders after their incorporation in 1644, was to make a law that ‘Every man who submits peaceably to civil government in this Colony shall worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience without molestation”’ (Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, VI. 304) . The date of the withdrawal of the colony from Great Britain was May 4, 1776, two months before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The matter came up on an act to repeal an act entitled: “An act for the more effectually securing to his Majesty the allegiance of his subjects, in his colony and dominion of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” and altering the forms of commissions, of all writs and processes in the Courts, and of the oaths prescribed by law. The following recital of the misdeeds of George III is included in the act: WHEREAS, in all States, existing by compact, protection and allegiance are reciprocal, the latter being only due in consequence of the former; and, WHEREAS, George the Third, King of Great Britain, forgetting his dignity, regardless of the compact most solemnly entered into, ratified and confirmed to the inhabitants of this colony, by his illustrious ancestors, and, till of late, fully recognized by him, —and entirely departing from the duties and character of a good king, instead of protecting, is endeavoring to destroy the good people of this Colony, and of all the United Colonies, by sending fleets and armies to America, to confiscate our property, and spread fire, sword, and desolation throughout our country, in order to compel us to submit to the most debasing and detestable tyranny; whereby we are obliged by necessity, and it becomes our highest duty, to use every means which God and nature have furnished us, in support of our invaluable rights and privileges, to oppose that power which is exerted only for our destruction (Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island, II). The people were tremendously in earnest. They immediately removed the artillery from the royal fort to be used by the colonists. When the Declaration of Independence was announced they were enthusiastic with shouts of “Liberty o’er and o’er the globe.” “The Rhode Islanders were such ardent patriots,” says Farr, “that after the capture of the island by Sir Peter Parker, it required a great body of men to be kept there, in perfect idleness for three years to retain them in subjection” (Hume, Smollett and Farr, History of England, III). Governor Green, in a dispatch to General Washington, says that “some times every fencible man in the State, sometimes a third, other times a fourth part, was called out for duty” (Collections of Rhode Island Historical Society, VI, 290) . The Baptists in Virginia took a bold stand. “The Baptists,” says Dr. Hawks, “were not slow to discover the advantageous position in which the political troubles of the country placed them. Their numerical strength was such as to make it important to both sides to secure their influence. They knew this, and therefore determined to turn the circumstance to their profit as a sect. Persecution had taught them not to love the Establishment, and they now saw before them a reasonable prospect of overturning it entirely. In their Association, they had calmly discussed the matter, and resolved upon their course; in this course they were consistent to the end, and the war which they waged against the church was a war of extermination” (Hawks, Contributions to Ecclesiastical History). The Baptists of South Carolina likewise took a noble stand. Richard Furman, a young man, was pastor in Charleston. “He was an ardent advocate of rebellion. Everywhere, on stumps and in barns, as well as in pulpits, he preached resistance to Britain. Pursued by the Tories, young Furman fled to the American camp, and there by his prayers and eloquent appeals so reassured the patriots that Cornwallis is said to have remarked that ‘he feared the prayers of that godly youth more than the armies of Sumter and Marion’” (McCrady, History of South Carolina under the Royal Government, 456, New York, 1899) . The colonists did not decide on a final resistance to England till 1776. The Baptists, in 1775, anticipated this action by a year. In a Memorial to the House of Burgesses soldiers were promised; the overthrow of the Establishment suggested; and the parity of all ministers requested. The Memorial is quite informing and is as follows: To the Hon. Peyton Randolph, Esq., and the several delegated Gentlemen, convened at Richmond, to concert Measures conducive to the Good and Wellbeing of this Colony and Dominion, the humble Address of Virginia Baptists, now Associated in Cumberland, by Delegates from the several Churches. Gentlemen of the Convention—While you are (pursuant to the important Trust reposed in you) acting as the Guardians of the Rights of your Constituents, and pointing out to them the Road of Freedom, it must needs afford you an exalted satisfaction to find your Determinations not only applauded, but cheerfully complied with by a brave and spirited people. We, however, distinguished from the Body of our Countrymen by appellatives and sentiments of a religious nature, do nevertheless look upon ourselves as Members of the same Commonwealth, and, therefore, with respect to matters of a civil nature, embarked in the same common Cause. Alarmed at the shocking Oppression which in a British Cloud hangs over the American Continent, we, as a Society and part of the distressed State, have in our Association consid’d what part might be most prudent for the Baptists to act in the present unhappy Contest. After we had determined “that in some Cases it was lawful to go to War, and also for us to make a Military resistance against Great Britain, in regard to their unjust Invasion, and tyrannical Oppression of, and repeated Hostilities against America,” our people were all left to act at Discression with respect to inlisting, without falling under Censure of our Community. And as some have inlisted, and many more likely to do so, who will have earnest Desires for their Ministers to preach to them during the Campaign, we therefore delegate .and appoint our well beloved Brethren in the Ministry, Elijah Craig, Jeremiah Walker and John Williams, to present this address and to petition you that they may have free Liberty to preach to the Troops at convenient Times without molestation or abuse; and we are conscious of their strong attachment to American Liberty, as well as their soundness in the principles of the Christian Religion, and great usefulness in the Work of the Ministry, we are willing that they may come under your examination in any Matters you may think requisite. We conclude with our earnest prayers to Almighty God for his Divine Blessing on your patriotic and laudable Resolves, for the good of Mankind and American Freedom, and for the success of our Armies in Defence of our Lives, Liberties and Properties. Amen. Sign’d by order and in behalf of the Association the 14th of August, 1775. Sam’1 Harries, Moderator. John Waller, Clerk. (American Archives, Fourth Series, 1775, III, 383). In reply the Convention passed the following resolution: Resolved, That it be an instruction to the commanding officers of the regiment or troops to be raised, that they permit dissenting clergymen to celebrate divine worship, and to preach to the soldiers, or to exhort from time to time, as the various operations of the military service may permit, for the ease of such scrupulous consciences as may not choose to attend divine service as celebrated by the chaplain (Journal of the Convention of 1775, 17). The growing influence of the Baptists and their unanimity made them most formidable in elections. “The influence of the denomination,” says Howison, “was strong among the common people, and was beginning to be felt in high places. In two points they were distinguished. No class of people in America were more devoted advocates of the principles of the Revolution; none more willing to give their money and goods to their country; none more prompt to march to the field of battle, and none more heroic in actual combat than the Baptists of Virginia. Secondly, in their hatred of the church Establishment” (Howison, History of Virginia, II, 170. Richmond, 1848). Thoughtfully “they had considered what part it would be proper to take in the unhappy contest, and had determined that they ought to make a military resistance to Great Britain in her unjust invasion, tyranical oppression, and repeated hostilities” (Headley, Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution, 250. New York, 1864) . They proclaimed that to “a man they were in favor of the Revolution” (Semple). Several Baptist preachers did great service in the army as chaplains. The Baptist General Association of Virginia sent, in 1775, Jeremiah Walker and John Williams to preach to the soldiers. These were the most popular preachers in the Old ‘Dominion. McClanahan raised a company chiefly composed of Baptists, whom he commanded as captain and preached to as chaplain. Charles Thompson, of Massachusetts, served as chaplain three years, and Hezekiah Smith was from the same State. J. M. Peck gives the following interesting account of Hezekiah Smith: Dr. Smith was full six feet high, of an erect gate, and majestic aspect. His manners were uncommonly bland and courteous, and his noble heart full of love to God and man. When he went to Haverhill, the Congregational church had just divided upon the subject of new and old light. One of the parties, supposing Mr. Smith to be a Pedobaptist minister, invited him to preach. They were all delighted with him, and wished to settle him as their minister “right off.” But he informed them that he was a Baptist, and this soon turned the tide of affairs; their admiration gave way to contempt, and their love to hatred. They could not even bear his presence, and the selectmen of the town commissioned an officer to warn him out of the place. The poor man who was sent to read the notice was so awed by Mr. Smith’s dignified presence that he could not read it, but tremblingly stammered out, “I- I- warn you off God’s earth” “Why man,” said the Doctor, “where shall I go?” “To the Isle of Shoales, if you have a mind to,” replied the man and then ran off. Mr. Smith did not obey the lordly mandate of his Pedobaptist inquisitors, but continued to preach the gospel—treated every one with kindness and courtesy, treated the opposition in the spirit of Christian love, and finally overcame it. He was never known to say an unkind word, or meet the abusive conduct of his enemies except with generous allowance and compassion. He was chaplain in the Revolutionary Army, and gained the esteem of officers and men. His preaching was truly evangelical, rich and impressive. He was a great friend to ministerial education, and advocated the doctrine of giving pastors and preachers an adequate support—sentiments exceedingly unpopular in those days. He never disputed or contended about his opinions, but would state them calmly, deliberately and kindly, quoting the words of God as his authority, and then leave them to produce their effect. He was preeminently a godly man. There was a heavenliness in his conversation which at once interested and delighted. His labors were greatly blessed in the conversion of souls. He died A. D. 1804, universally beloved and lamented (The Baptist Banner and Pioneer, June 27, 1839. IV, 2). Rev. Samuel Rogers of Philadelphia was one of the foremost preachers of his day. He was appointed chaplain of a brigade by the legislature. David Jones followed Gates through two campaigns. John Gano was the foremost chaplain of the American Revolution. “As a minister of Christ he shone like a star of the first magnitude in the American churches, and moved in a widely extended field of action.” He was a Huguenot by extraction. He was born in Hopewell, New Jersey, July 22, 1727. “He was in person,” says Dr. Furman, “below the middle stature, and, when young, of a slender form; but of firm, vigorous constitution,. well fitted for performing active service with ease, and for suffering labors and privations with constancy. In the more advanced stages of life, his body tended to corpulency; but not to such a degree as to burden or render him inactive. His presence was manly, open and engaging. His voice strong and commanding, yet agreeable and capable of all those inflections which are suited to express either the strong or tender emotions of an intelligent, feeling mind. In mental endowments and acquired abilities he appeared highly respectable; with clear conception and penetrating discernment, he formed, readily, a correct judgment of men and things. His acquaintance with the learned languages and science did not commence till he arrived at manhood, and was obtained chiefly by private instruction; but under the direction of a clerical gentleman, well qualified for the office. To the refinements of learning he did not aspire- his chief desire was such a competent acquaintance with its principles as would enable him to apply them with advantage to purposes of general usefulness in religion, and the most important uses of society; and to this he attained” (Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, VI). Such was the trusted friend of Washington. He was brave and true, and made an indelible impression on the soldiers with whom he was associated. There were several other Baptists who served in conspicuous positions in various capacities. Oliver Hart was one of the foremost pastors in South Carolina. He was useful not only as a minister, but as a citizen, and especially in connection with the events of the Revolution. In 1775, he was appointed by the Council of Safety, which then exercised the executive authority in South Carolina, to travel, in conjunction with Hon. William H. Drayton and the Rev. William Tennent, into the interior of the State, to enlighten the people in regard to their political interests, and reconcile them to certain Congressional measures of which they were disposed to complain. He was very impressive in his personality. “In his person he was somewhat tall, well proportioned and of graceful appearance; of an active, vigorous constitution, before it was impaired by close application to his studies and by abundant labors. His countenance was open and manly, his voice clear, harmonious and commanding; the powers of his mind were strong and capacious, and enriched by a fund of useful knowledge; his taste was elegant and refined” (Sprague, VI). Of his usefulness as a citizen there is no doubt, Dr. Furman says of his actions as a citizen: To all of which may be added his usefulness as a citizen of America. Prompt in his judgment, ardent in his love of liberty, and rationally jealous for the rights of his country, he took an early and decided part in those measures which led our patriots to successful opposition against the encroachments of arbitrary power, and brought us to possess all the blessings of our happy independence. Yet he did not mix politico with the Gospel, nor desert the duties of his station to pursue them; but, attending to each in its proper place, he gave weight to his political sentiments, by the propriety and uprightness of his conduct; and the influence of it was felt by many (Sprague, VI.). The story of John Hart, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, is pathetic. “The father of Mr. Hart,” says Cathcart, “was a man of courage and patriotism; he raised a company of volunteers, which was led to Quebec, and with them he fought bravely on the Plains of Abraham against the French. The son inherited his spirit, and was universally regarded as one of the best men in New Jersey. He was well informed on Colonial and European questions, and thoroughly understood the inalienable rights of mankind. He was held in such high esteem that he was generally selected to settle the disputes of the neighbors, who spoke of him affectionately as ‘Honest .john Hart.’ In the social relations of life he was a man of great modesty and benevolence, and his highest ambition was to serve God and promote the best interests of his countrymen. He had no taste for political life, and in the conventions of his fellow citizens he expressed himself by brave deeds rather than by eloquent speeches. When he entered the Continental Congress of 1774 he was about sixty years of age. He resigned from Congress in 1775, and became Vice- President of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey. He was again elected in 1776 and took his place among the patriots and heroes who sent forth the immortal Declaration. It was issued July 4, 1776. When first published it had only the name of John Hancock as President and Charles Thompson as Secretary. Two days before it was given to the world the British landed a powerful army on Staten Island, and to impart greater weight to the Declaration it was signed on the 2nd day of the month after its adoption by all the members and circulated extensively throughout the colonies. Mr. Hart had passed beyond the age of ambition and vigorous activity, and the period of life when men voluntarily make sacrifices and even imperil their property or safety, but he considered nothing but his country’s liberty. He owned a valuable farm, grist, saw and fulling mills; he had a wife and family whose happiness and security were dear to him; his residence was on the highway of the enemy and his signature was sure to bring down vengeance in a week or two; he knew that everything which he owned except the soil would be destroyed, his dear ones scattered, and his life taken if by the providence of the Evil One he was captured, and yet he did not hesitate to sign the Declaration of Independence, though it might prove his own death warrant, and though it could hardly fail to inflict the heaviest losses and the most painful sufferings on him and his. The enemy soon found out his patriotism and the happy home of Mr. Hart. His children fled, his property was wasted, and though an old man heavily laden of years he was compelled to leave his residence and conceal himself. He was pursued with unusual fury and malice, and could not with safety sleep twice in the same place. One night he had the house of a dog for a shelter and its owner for his companion. Added to the intensity of the bitterness of his persecutions, he was driven from the couch of his dying wife, whose anguish he was not permitted to assuage” (Cathcart, The Baptists and the American Revolution). He built the Baptist meeting house at Hopewell and gave it the burying ground. A shaft of Quincy marble now marks his resting place, which was dedicated by the Governor of the State. Books for further reference: Robert Boyle C. Howell, The Early Baptists of Virginia. Philadelphia, 1867. John A. Broadus, The American Baptist Ministry of one hundred years ago, The Baptist Quarterly, IX, 1- 20. Philadelphia, 1875. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 46: 01.2.02.02. THE BAPTISTS AND THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION ======================================================================== Chapter 2 – The Baptists and the American Constitution The Constitution—The Ratification—Two Objections to the Constitution—Liberty not Sufficiently Guarded—Massachusetts—James Manning—Virginia—Tames Madison and John Leland—J. S. Barbour—Governor Briggs on Leland—Patrick Henry Against the Constitution—John Adams—and Religious Liberty—Thomas Jefferson—First Amendment to the Constitution—The Baptists of Virginia Propose the Amendment—The Forces Working for Liberty—Leonard Bacon—Ruffini At the close of the war a congress of representatives from the States was called to draft a Constitution for the United States. The new Constitution was submitted for ratification by the various States September 17, 1787. There was much opposition to the proposed Constitution, especially as it determined that there should be no religious tests. For a long time it seemed doubtful if the Constitution would be ratified. The issue hung upon the action of two States, Massachusetts and Virginia. In each of these States the Baptists held the balance of power. There were two currents of thought against the article on religion, the one finding it excessive and dangerous, the other insufficient and maimed. It was feared by some of the opponents of the articles that the power might pass into the hands of the Roman Catholics, the Jews or infidels; “even the Pope of Rome,” one horrified delegate exclaimed, “might become President of the United States.” The opposition was particularly strong in Massachusetts, where the liberal ideas were combated by the legislature. Other States were unable to find in the article a sufficiently wide and certain guarantee of religious liberty, and therefore they proposed amendments. January 9, 1788, a convention of delegates assembled in Boston, Massachusetts, from all parts of the State. The debate was long; and the issue uncertain. Some of the Baptists looked upon the Constitution with suspicion as not giving full guarantee of freedom. James Manning, President of Rhode Island College, was an earnest advocate of the adoption of the Constitution and he had much influence in the body. He fully believed that on the adoption of that measure the future well- being of the country was suspended. Being aware that several Baptist ministers were members of the convention, and that they generally looked upon the proposed Constitution with a jealous eye, he went to Boston with a view to exert whatever influence he could to disarm his brethren of their prejudices, and to bring them to act as he fully believed the interest of the nation required. In this effort he was seconded by his intimate friend, Dr. Samuel Stillman, who was himself a member of the body, with two or three other very influential ministers. The question of ratification was finally carried by a majority of nineteen. Just before the final vote, Governor Hancock, the President of the Convention, called upon Dr. Manning to pray; and, though the request took him by surprise, he fell upon his knees, and offered a prayer in which patriotism and piety were most delightfully blended, and which left an extraordinary impression upon the whole assembly. On his return to Providence, after the Convention had closed its sessions, he met his friends with the warmest congratulations, and could scarcely find language strong enough to express his sense of the importance of the result which had been reached (Sprague, VI.). The opposition to the Constitution in Virginia was led by strong and popular men. The people were about equally divided on the measure. The Convention met in Richmond, in June, 1788. The Baptists in Williams meeting house, Goochland county, March 7, had canvassed the Constitution and reached the following conclusion: Whether the new Federal Constitution, which had now lately made its appearance in public, made sufficient provision for the secure enjoyment of religious liberty; on which, it was agreed unanimously that, in the opinion of the General Committee, it did not (Semple). The leader in favor of the Constitution was James Madison, and opposed to it was Patrick Henry. Madison had been absent in Philadelphia, and the candidate for Orange county was John Leland. It was a great Baptist county and the probabilities were that Leland would be elected. Madison called on Leland, spent half a day with him, and Leland came down from the race and supported Madison. He believed Madison would properly represent the cause. The celebrated lawyer, J. S. Barbour, in an eulogy upon Madison, said that “the credit of adopting the Constitution of the United States properly belonged to a Baptist clergyman, formerly of Virginia, by the name of Leland; and he reached his conclusion in this way—he said that if Madison had not been in the. Virginia Convention, the Constitution would not have been ratified by that State; and, as the approval of nine States was required to give effect to this instrument, and as Virginia was the ninth State, if it had been rejected by her, the Constitution would have failed; and that it was by Elder Leland’s influence that Madison was elected to the Convention.” Governor Briggs, of Massachusetts, who was a great friend of Leland, gives the following account of the affair: Soon after the Convention, which framed the Constitution of the United States, had finished their work, and submitted it to the people for their action, two strong and active parties were formed in the State of Virginia, on the subject of its adoption. The State was nearly equally divided. One party was opposed to its adoption, unless certain amendments, which they maintained that the safety of the people required, should be incorporated into it, before it was ratified by them. At the head of this great party stood Patrick Henry, the Orator of the Revolution, and one of Virginia’s favorite sons. The other party agreed with their opponents said as to the character and necessity of the amendments proposed, but they contended that the people should have the power, and could as well incorporate these amendments into the Constitution after its adoption as before; that it was a great crisis in the affairs of the country, and if the Constitution, then presented to the people by the Convention, should be rejected by them, such would be the state of the public mind, that there was little or no reason to believe that another would be agreed upon by a future Convention; and, in such an event, —so much to be dreaded, —the hopes of constitutional liberty and a confederated and free Republic would be lost. At the head of this party stood James Madison. The strength of the two parties was to be tested by the election of County Delegates to the State Convention. That Convention would have to adopt or reject the Constitution. Mr. Madison was named as the candidate in favor of its adoption for the County of Orange, in which he resided. Elder Leland, also, at that time, lived in the County of Orange, and his sympathies, he said, were with Henry and his party. He was named as the candidate opposed to adoption, and in opposition to Mr. Madison. Orange was a strong Baptist county; and his friends had an undoubted confidence in his election. Though reluctant to be a candidate, he yielded to the solicitations of the opponents of the Constitution, and accepted the nomination. For three months after the members of the Convention at Philadelphia had completed their labors, and returned to their homes, Mr. Madison, with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, had remained in that city for the purpose of preparing those political articles that now constitute The Federalist. This gave the party opposed to Madison, with Henry at their head, the start of him, in canvassing the State in his absence. At length, when Mr. Madison was about ready to return to Virginia, a public meeting was appointed in the County of Orange, at which the candidates for the Convention, —Madison on the one side, and Leland on the other, —were to address the people from the stump. Up to that time he had but a partial acquaintance with Mr. Madison, but he had a high respect for his talents, his candor, and the uprightness and purity of his private character. On his way home from Philadelphia, Mr. Madison went some distance out of his direct road to call upon him. After the ordinary salutations, Mr. Madison began to apologize for troubling him with a call at that time; but he assured Mr. M. that no apology was necessary—“I know your errand here,” said he, “it is to talk with me about the Constitution. I am glad to see you, and to have an opportunity of hearing your views on the subject.” Mr. Madison spent half a day with him, and fully and unreservedly communicated to him his opinions upon the great matters which were then agitating the people of the State and Confederacy. Then they separated to meet again very soon, as opposing candidates before the electors, on the stump. The day came, and they met, and with them nearly all the voters of the County of Orange, to hear their candidates respectively discuss the important questions upon which the people of Virginia were so soon to act. “Mr. Madison,” said the venerable man, “first took the stump, which was a hogshead of tobacco, standing on one end. For two hours, he addressed his fellow citizens in a calm, candid and statesman- like manner, arguing his side of the case, and fairly meeting and replying to the arguments which had been put forth by his opponents, in the general canvass of the State. Though Mr. Madison was not particularly a pleasing or eloquent speaker, the people listened with respectful attention. He left the hogshead, and my friends called on me. I took it—and went in for Mr. Madison; and he was elected without difficulty. “This,” said he, “is, I suppose, what Mr. Barbour alluded to.” A noble Christian patriot I That single act, with the motives which prompted it, entitled him to the respect of mankind (Sprague, VI). When the Convention assembled, Patrick Henry spoke against the Constitution with a vehemence never surpassed by himself on any occasion in his whole life, and with a power that sometimes was overwhelming. Once, while this matchless orator was addressing the Convention, a wild storm broke over Richmond; the heavens were ablaze with lightning, the thunder roared, and the rain came down in torrents; at this moment Henry seemed to see the anger of heaven threatening the State, if it should consummate the guilty act of adopting the Constitution, and he invoked celestial witnesses to view and compassionate his distracted country in this grand crisis of its history. And such was the effect of his speech on the occasion; that the Convention immediately dispersed (Howison, II). But Madison and his party prevailed. The Convention, when the final vote of ratification was taken, only gave a majority of ten in favor of the Constitution. Eighty- nine cast their votes for it, and seventy- nine against it (Howe, Virginia Historical Collections, 124. Charleston, 1846). In this manner the Constitution of the United States was adopted. Already, it has been seen that the Baptists did not think that the Constitution secured religious liberty. Imperfect as it was considered, through Mr. Madison and the Baptists, the Constitution had been ratified. There was large opposition to any amendments. Many noble men were in favor of the union of Church and State. Massachusetts was wedded to an establishment. John Adams, her favorite son and afterwards President of the United States, was indignant that the Baptists addressed the Congress in Philadelphia praying for religious liberty. He wrote as follows to Benjamin Kent: I am for the most liberal toleration of all denominations, but I hope Congress will never meddle with religion further than to say their own prayers...Let every Colony have its own religion without molestation (Adams, Works by Charles Francis Adams, IX.). As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a dream of a State Church. Thomas Jefferson, writing to Benjamin Rush, says: The successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion (of a State Church) on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it secures the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorable hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every met believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the minds of men (Jefferson, Writings, X, 174, 175. Washington, 1904). Massachusetts did not ratify the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States (Backus, II). The suggested amendment came from the Baptists. “Denominationally,” says Cathcart, “no community asked for this change in the Constitution but the Baptists. The Quakers probably would have petitioned it, if they had thought of it, but they did not. John Adams and the Congregationalists did not desire it; the Episcopalians did not wish it; it went too far for most Presbyterians in Revolutionary times, or in our days, when we hear so much about putting the divine name in the Constitution. The Baptists asked it through Washington; the request commended itself to his judgment and to the generous soul of Madison; and to the Baptists, beyond a doubt, belongs the glory of engrafting its best articles on the noblest Constitution ever framed for the government of mankind” (Cathcart, Centennial Offering). On account of his well- known views there was much opposition to Madison in Virginia. Through the influence of Patrick Henry he was defeated for the United States Senate. The Congressional Districts were so gerrymandered that it was thought he could not be elected to the House of Representatives. Here again, the Baptists, believing in his integrity, threw their influence to him and he was elected to Congress. On the general subject of amendments to the Constitution Madison, in a speech delivered June 8, 1789, said: I will state my reasons why I think it proper to propose amendments, and state the amendments themselves, so far as I think they ought to be proposed. If I thought I could fulfill the duty I owe to myself and my constituents, to let the subject pass over in silence, I would most certainly not trespass on the indulgence of the House. But I cannot do this, and am, therefore, compelled to beg a patient hearing to what I have to lay before you...It appears to me that this House is bound by every motive of prudence not to let the first session pass over without proposing to the State Legislature some things to be incorporated into the Constitution that will render it acceptable to the whole people of the United States as it has been found acceptable to a majority of them. I wish, among other reasons why something should be done, that those who have been friendly to the adoption of the Constitution may have the opportunity of proving to those who were opposed to it that they were as sincerely devoted to liberty and a republican government as those who charged them with wishing the adoption of this Constitution in order to lay the foundation of an aristocracy or despotism. It will be a desirable thing to extinguish from the bosom of every member of the community any apprehensions that there are those among his countrymen who wish to deprive them of the liberty for which they valiantly fought and honorably bled. And if there are amendments desired of such a nature as will not injure the Constitution, and they can be engrafted so as to give satisfaction to the doubting part of our fellow citizens, the friends of the Federal Government will evince the spirit of deference and concession for which they have been hitherto distinguished...It cannot be a secret to the gentlemen of this House that, notwithstanding the ratification of this system of government by eleven of the thirteen United States, in some cases unanimously, in others by large majorities, yet still there is a great number of our constituents who are dissatisfied with it, among whom are many respectable for their talents and patriotism, and respectable for the jealousy they have for their liberty, which, though mistaken in its object, is laudable in its motive. There is a great body of the people falling under this description, who at present feel much inclined to, join their support to the cause of Federalism, if they were satisfied on this point...But perhaps there is a stronger motive than this for one going into a consideration of the subject. It is to provide those securities for liberty which are required by a part of the community. I allude in a particular manner to those two States (Rhode Island and North Carolina) that have not thought fit to throw themselves into the bosom of the confederacy. It is a desirable thing, on our part as well as theirs, that a reunion should take place as soon as possible...But I will candidly acknowledge that, over and above all of these considerations, I do conceive that the Constitution may be amended; that is to say, if all powers of the general Government may be guarded against in a more secure manner than it is now done, while no one advantage arising from the exercise of that power shall be damaged or endangered by it. We have in this way something to gain; and, if we proceed with caution, nothing to lose (Annals of Congress, I). Upon the advice of Madison the subject was presented to Washington. The petition was prepared by John Leland and is as follows: Address of the Committee of the United Baptist Churches of Virginia, assembled in the city of Richmond, August 8, 1789, to the President of the United States of America Sir, —Among the many shouts of congratulation that you receive from cities, societies, States and the whole world, we wish to take an active part in the universal chows, in expressing our great satisfaction in your appointment to the first office in the nation. When America, on a former occasion, was reduced to the necessity of appealing to arms to defend her natural and civil rights, a Washington was found fully adequate to the exigencies of the dangerous attempt; who, by the philanthropy of his heart and the prudence of his head, led forth her untutored troops into the field of battle, and, by the skillfulness of his hands, baffled the projects of the insulting foe and pointed out the road to independence, even at a time when the energy of the Cabinet was not sufficient to bring into action the natural aid of the confederation, from its respective sources. The grand object being obtained, the independence of the States acknowledged, free from ambition, devoid of the thirst of blood, our hero returned, with those he commanded, and laid down the sword at the feet of those who gave it to him. “Such an example to the world is new.” Like other nations, we experienced that it requires as great valor and wisdom to make an advantage of a conquest as to gain one. The want of efficiency in the confederation, the redundancy of laws, and their partial administration in the States, called aloud for a new arrangement in our systems. The wisdom of the States for that purpose was collected in a grand convention, over which you, sir, had the honor to preside. A national government, in all its parts, was recommended as the only preservation of the Union, which plan of government is now in actual operation. When the constitution first made its appearance in Virginia, we, as a society, had unusual struggles of mind, fearing that the liberty of conscience, dearer to us than property or life, was not sufficiently secured. Perhaps our jealousies were heightened by the usage we received in Virginia under the regal government, when mobs, fines, bonds, and prisons were our frequent repast. Convinced, on the one hand, that without an effective national government the States would fall into disunion and all the consequent evils, and on the other hand, fearing that we would be accessory to some religious oppression, should any one society in the union predominate over the rest; amidst all these inquietudes of mind our consolation arose from this consideration, via.: the plan must be good, for it has the signature of a tried, trusty friend, and if religious liberty is rather insecure in the Constitution, “the Administration will certainly prevent all oppressions, for a Washington will preside.” According to our wishes, the unanimous voice of the Union has called you, sir, from your beloved retreat, to launch forth again into the faithless seas of human affairs, to guide the helm of States. May the divine munificence which covered your head in battle make you yet a greater blessing to your admiring country in time of peace! Should the horrid evils that have been so pestiferous in Asia and Europe—faction, ambition, war, perfidy, fraud and persecution for conscience sake, ever approach the borders of our happy nation, may the name and administration of our beloved President, like the radiant source of day, scatter all those dark clouds from the American hemisphere. And, while we speak freely the language of our hearts, we are satisfied that we express the sentiments of our brethren whom we represent. The very name of Washington is music in our ears, and, although the great evil in the States, is the want of mutual confidence between the rulers and the people, yet we have the utmost confidence in the President of the States; and it is our fervent prayer to Almighty God that the Federal Government, and the governments of the respective States, without rivalship, may cooperate together as to make the numerous people over which you preside the happiest nation on earth, and you, sir, the happiest man, in seeing the people whom, by the smiles of Providence, you saved from vassalage by your valor and made wise by your maxims, sitting securely under their vines and fig trees, enjoying the perfection of human felicity. May God long preserve your life and health for a blessing to the world in general, and the United States in particular; and when, like the sun, you have finished your course of great and unparalleled services, and go the way of all the earth, may the Divine Being, who will reward every man according to his works, grant unto you a glorious admission into the everlasting kingdom, through Jesus Christ. This, sir, is the prayer of your happy admirers. By order of the Committee. Samuel Harris, Chairman. Reuben Ford, Clerk (Leland, Works). Washington made the following reply: To the General Committee, Representing the United Baptist Churches in Virginia: Gentlemen—I request that you will accept my best acknowledgments for your congratulations on my appointment to the first office of the nation. The kind manner in which you mention my past conduct equally claims the expression of my gratitude. After we had, by the smiles of Divine Providence on our exertions, obtained the object for which we contended, I retired at the conclusion of the war, with the idea that my country could have no further occasion for my services, and with the intention of never again entering public life. But when the exigencies of my country seemed to require me once more to engage in public affairs, my honest conviction of duty superceded my former resolution, and became my apology for deviating from the happy plan which I had adopted. If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed by the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you that none will be persuaded, that none will be more zealous than myself to establish effective barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny and every species of religious persecution; for you doubtless remember I have often expressed my sentiments, that any man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his oven conscience. While I recollect with satisfaction that the religious society of which you are members, throughout America, uniformly and almost unanimously were the firm friends of civil liberty, and the persevering promoters of our glorious revolution, I cannot hesitate to believe that they will be the faithful supporters of a free, yet efficient, general government. Under this pleasing expectation, I rejoice to assure them that they may rely upon my beat wishes and endeavors to promote their prosperity. In the meantime, be assured, gentlemen, that I entertain a proper sense of your fervent supplications to God for my temporal and eternal happiness. I am, Gentlemen, your most obedient servant, George Washington. (Sparks, Writings of Washington, XII). One of the first things Madison proposed on entering Congress, June 8, 1789, was the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. The Baptists felt secure under this new provision of the Constitution. Long afterwards, March 2, 1819, Madison wrote to Robert Walsh, from Montpelier, as follows: It was the universal opinion of the century preceding the last that civil government could not stand without the prop of a religious establishment, and that the Christian religion itself would perish, if not supported by a legal provision for its clergy. The experience of Virginia conspicuously corroborates the disproof of both opinions. The civil government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State. The forces which worked for liberty have thus been summed up by Bacon: “In the establishment of the American principle of the non- interference of the State with religion, and the equality of all religious communions before the law, much was due, no doubt, to the mutual jealousies of the sects, no one or two of which were strong enough to maintain exceptional pretensions over the rest combined. Much also is to be imputed to the indifferentism and sometimes the anti- religious sentiment of an important and numerous class of doctrinaire politicians of which Jefferson may be taken as a type. So far as this work was a work of intelligent conviction and religious faith, the chief honor of it must be given to the Baptists. Other sects, notably the Presbyterians, had been energetic and efficient in demanding their own liberties; the Friends and Baptists agreed in demanding liberty of conscience and worship, and equality before the law, for all alike. But the active labor in this cause was mainly done by the Baptists. It is to their consistency and constancy in the warfare against the privileges of the powerful ‘Standing Order’ of New England, and of the moribund establishments in the South, that we are chiefly indebted for the final triumph, in this country, of that principle of the separation of church and state, which is one of the largest contributions of the New World to civilization and the church universal” (Bacon, A History of American Christianity). Ruffini has summed up the provisions of this amendment in the following discriminating manner: “By this the United States solemnly promised that they would never elevate any one form of belief to the rank of the official religion of the Confederation, but that, on the contrary, equal liberty would be conceded to all the churches. It was, therefore, the most absolute separation of the two powers which the United States, at the moment of constituting themselves into a Republic, placed at the basis of their relations with Churches, and to that separation they entrusted the guarantee of the fullest religious liberty. “There is, however, one thing that must be especially noted. The Constitution of the United States did not abolish the union between the State and the Church within those particular States in which the separation had not already taken place. Now, no separation had been effected, nor was it realized for a whole century, in the New England States. Again, the Constitution did not guarantee full religious liberty except in federal relationships, and it did not remove those restrictions in the internal relations of single States...Some of them (the States), however, still remained intolerant in spite of and after the Federal Constitution” (Ruffini). Books for further reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson containing his Autobiography, Notes on Virginia, Parliamentary Manual, Official Papers, Messages and Addresses, and other Writings Official and Private. Andrew A. Lipscomb, Editor in Chief, Albert Ellery Bergh, Managing Editor. 18 volumes. The Writings of George Washington being the Correspondence, Addresses, Messages and other Papers, Official and Private by Jared Sparks, Boston, 1838. 12 volume. J. T. Smith, Life and Times of Rev. John Leland, The Baptist Quarterly, V, 230- 256. Philadelphia, 1871. Reuben A. Guild, The Denominational Work of President Manning, The Baptist Review, III, 74- 85. Cincinnati, 1881. John T. Christian, The Religion of Thomas Jefferson, The Review and Expositor, XVI, 295- 307. Louisville, 1919. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 47: 01.2.02.03. IMPRISONMENT AND STRIFE IN VIRGINIA ======================================================================== Chapter 3 – The Period of Imprisonment and Strife in Virginia The Persecutions in Virginia-Imprisonmente—Spotsylvania—Lewie Craig—Letter of John Blair—Waller Forty-Three Days in Jail—The Members of the Establishment Enraged—Others Imprisoned—William Fristoe on Persecution—The Baptists Greatly Increase in Numbers—James Madison Writes Letters—The Action of the House of Burgess—Baptists Present Petitions—The Baptists Attack the Establishment. Heretofore, as has been seen, the Baptists were much persecuted. At their baptisms they were annoyed, and on one occasion a clergyman of the Establishment rode into the water and badgered them. They had been whipped, branded and banished. Now there was a systematic effort made to entirely overthrow them. "The first instance of actual imprisonment," says Semple, "we believe, that ever took place in Virginia, was in the county of Spotsylvania. On the 4th of June, 1768, John Waller, Lewis Craig, James Childs, c., were seized by. the sheriff and hauled before three magistrates, who stood in the meeting-house yard, and who bound them in the penalty of one thousand pounds, to appear in court two days after. At court they were arraigned as disturbers of the peace; on their trial, they were vehemently accused, by a certain lawyer, who said to the court, ‘May it please your worships, these men are great disturbers of the peace; they cannot meet a man upon the road, but they must ram a text of Scripture down his throat.’ Mr. Waller made his own and his brethren’s defense so ingeniously that they were somewhat puzzled to know how to dispose of them. They offered to release them if they would promise to preach no more in the county for a year and a day. This they refused; and, therefore, were sent into close jail. As they moved on, from the court house to the prison, through the streets of Fredericksburg, they sung the hymn, ‘Broad is the road that leads to death, c.’ This had an awful appearance. After four weeks’ confinement, Lewis Craig was released from prison and immediately went to Williamsburg to get a release for his companions. He waited on the deputy governor, the Hon. John Blair, stated the case before him, and received the following letter, directed to the King’s attorney in Spotsylvania: Sir, —I lately received a letter, signed by a good number of worthy gentlemen, who are not here, complaining of the Baptists; the particular of their misbehavior are not told, any further than the running into private houses and making dissentions. Mr. Craig and Mr. Benjamin Waller are now with me and deny the charge; and tell me that they are willing to take the oaths as others have; I told them I had consulted the attorney general, who is of opinion that the general court only have a right to grant licenses, and therefore I referred them to the court; but, on their application to the attorney general, they brought me his letter, advising me to write to you. That their petition was a matter of right, and that you may not molest these conscientious people so long as they behave themselves in a manner becoming pious Christians and in obedience to the laws till the court, when they intend to apply for license, and when the gentlemen who complain may make their objections and be heard. The act of toleration (it being found by experience that persecuting dissenters increases their numbers) has given them a right to apply, in a proper manner, for licensed houses for the worship of God, according to their consciences; and I persuade myself that the gentlemen will quietly overlook their meetings till the court. I am told they administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, near the manner we do, and differ from our church in nothing but in the fact of baptism, and in their renewing the ancient discipline; by which they have reformed some sinners and brought them to be truly penitent. Nay, if a man of theirs is idle and neglects to labor and provide for his family as he ought, he incurs their censures, which have had good effects. If this be their behaviour, it were to be wished we had more of it among us. But at least, I hope all may remain quiet till the court. I am, with great respect, To the gentlemen, c. Your humble serv’t John Blair. Williamsburg, July 16, 1768 (Campbell, History of the Colony of the Ancient Dominion of Virginia, p. 554. Philadelphia, 1860). "When the letter came to the attorney he would have nothing to say in this affair. Waller and the others continued in jail forty-three days, and were discharged without conditions. While in prison they constantly preached through the gates. The mobs without using every exertion to prevent the people from hearing, but to little purpose. Many heard, indeed, upon whom the Word was in power and demonstration. "After their discharge, which was a kind of triumph, Waller, Craig, and their compeers in the ministry, resumed their labors with redoubled vigor, gathering fortitude from their late sufferings, thanking God that they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ and his Gospel. Day and night, and indeed almost every day and night, they held meetings in their own and adjacent neighborhoods. The spread of the Gospel and Baptist principles was equal to all of their exertions; insomuch that in a few sections of Virginia did the Baptist cause appear more formidable to its enemies and more consoling to its friends than in Spotsylvania; and we may add, so it is to this day" (Semple). The outcome of this affair seems to have further enraged the members of the Establishment. They everywhere attempted to strengthen their cause. A petition was presented by them to the House of Burgesses, May 5, 1769, to the following effect: A petition was presented from the "minister and sundry inhabitants of the parish of Hamilton," praying for a division of the parish into two, the reasons being that the parish was "so large that many of the inhabitants reside so far from their parish churches that they can but seldom attend public worship; from which causes, dissenters have opportunity and encouragement to propagate their pernicious doctrines." The persecutors were exceedingly active. At Middlesex, William Webber, John Waller, James Greenwood, and Robert Ware were thrown into a filthy jail "which swarmed with fleas." Untold indignities were placed upon the men. "On September the 10th they were allowed the prison bounds, by which they were much relieved; yet they were frequently under the necessity of resorting to the jail to avoid the rage of the persecutors. The Lord daily opened the hearts of the people; the rich sent many presents-things calculated to nourish them in their sufferings and to alleviate their sorrows. William Webber fell sick. This excited the sympathy of their friends in a higher degree; they paid him great attention. The persecutors found that the imprisonment of the preachers tended rather to the furtherance of the Gospel. They preached regularly in prison; crowds attended; the preaching seemed to have double weight when coming from the jail; many viewed it with superstitious reverence, so that their enemies became desirous to be rid of them. Accordingly, on the 26th day of September, after having been thirty days in close confinement and sixteen days in the bounds, they were liberated upon giving a bond for good behavior. "The rage of persecutors had in nowise abated; they seemed, sometimes, to strive to treat the Baptists and their worship with as much rudeness and indecency as was possible. They often insulted the preachers in time of service, and would ride into the water and make sport when they administered baptism; they frequently fabricated and spread the most groundless reports, which were injurious to the character of the Baptists. When any Baptist fell into any improper conduct, it was always exaggerated to the utmost extent. On one occasion when Robert Ware was preaching, there came one Davis and one Kemp, two sons of Belial, and stood before him with a bottle, and drank, offering the bottle to him, cursing him. As soon as he closed his service they drew out a pack of cards and began to play on the stage where he had been standing, wishing him to reprove them that they might beat him" (Semple). In regard to these persecutions William Fristoe says: The enemy, not content with ridicule and defamation, manifested their abhorrence to the Baptists in another way. By a law then in force in Virginia, all were under obligation to go to Church several times in the year; the failure subjected them to a fine. Little notice was taken of the omission, if members of the Established Church; but so soon as the "Newlights" were absent, they were presented by the grand jury, and fined according to law...Soon they began to take other steps to deter the Baptist preachers and obstruct the progress of the gospel, by objecting to their preaching until they obtained license from the General Court, whose place of sitting at that time was old Williamsburg. Until such times that license was obtained, they were exposed to be apprehended and imprisoned...When persecutors found that religion could not be stopped in its progress by ridicule, defamation, and abusive language, the resolution was to take a different step and see, what would do; and the preachers in different places were apprehended by magisterial authority, some of whom were imprisoned and some escaped. Before this step was taken, the parson of the parish was consulted (in some instances, at least), and his judgment confided in. His counsel was that the "Newlights" ought to be taken and imprisoned, as necessary for the peace and harmony of the old church. As formerly the high priest took the ‘lead in persecuting the followers of Christ, in like manner the high priests have conducted in latter days, and seldom there has been a persecution but that a high priest has been at the head of it. (Fristoe, History of the Ketocton Association). The results of the persecution were inevitable. "Religious tyranny produced its accustomed effects; the Baptists increased on every side. If one preacher was imprisoned, two arose to take his place; if one congregation was dispersed, a larger assembled on the next opportunity. Twenty years before the Revolution, few of this sect could have been found in the Colony, and yet, in 1774, the Separates alone, had thirty churches south of the James river, and twenty-five on its north, and the Regulars, though not so numerous, had grown with rapidity. The influence of the denomination was strong among the common people, and was beginning to be felt in higher places. In two points they were distinguished. First in their love of freedom. No class of the people of America were more devoted advocates of the principles of the Revolution; none more willing to give their money and goods to the country; none more prompt to march to the field of battle, and none more heroic in an actual combat, than the Baptists of Virginia. Secondly, in their hatred of the Church establishment. They hated not :w ministers, but its principles. They had seen its operation and had felt its practical influence. Common sense pointed out its deformities, and clamored against its injustice. To a man they were united in the resolve never to relax their efforts until it was utterly destroyed" (Howison, II). These harsh measures brought many petitions to the House of Burgesses for relief. Such petitions did not bring liberty to the Baptists. The state of affairs is well pictured by James Madison in a letter to his friend Bradford, of Philadelphia, January 24, 1774, when he says: I very believe that the frequent assaults that have been made on America (Boston especially) will in the end prove of real advantage. If the Church of England had been the established and general religion in all the Northern colonies, as it has been among us here, an uninterrupted harmony had prevailed throughout the continent, it is clear to me that slavery and subjection might and would have been gradually insinuated among us. Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence, and ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects...I want again to breathe your free air. I expect that it will mend my constitution and confirm my principles. I have, indeed, as good an atmosphere at home as the climate will allow, but have nothing to brag of as to the state and liberty of my country. Poverty and luxury prevail among all sorts; pride, ignorance and knavery among the priesthood, and vice and wickedness among the laity. This is bad enough; but it is not tire worst I have to tell you. That diabolical hell conceived principle of persecution rages among some, and, their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such purposes. There are at this time in an adjacent county not less than five or six well meaning men in close jail for publishing their religious sentiments, which, in the main, are very orthodox. I have neither patience to hear, talk, or think any thing relative to this matter; for I have squabbled and scolded, abused and ridiculed so long about it, to little purpose, that I am without common patience. So I must beg you to pity me, and pray for liberty of conscience for all (Rives, Life and Times of Madison, I). On April 1, 1774, he again writes to Bradford as follows: Our Assembly is to meet the 1st of May, when it is expected that something will be done in behalf of the dissenters. Petitions, I hear, are already forming among the persecuted Baptists, and I fancy that it is in the thought of the Presbyterians also to intercede for greater liberty in matters of religion. For my own part, I cannot help being very doubtful of their succeeding in the attempt. The affair was on the carpet during the last session; but such incredible and extravagant stories were told in the House of the monstrous effects of the enthusiasm prevalent among the sectaries, and so greedily swallowed by their enemies, that I believe they lost footing by it. And the bad name they still have with those who pretend to such contempt to examine into their principles and conduct, and are too much devoted to ecclesiastical establishment to hear of the toleration of the dissentients, I am apprehensive, will be made again a pretext for rejecting their requests...The sentiments of our people of fortune and fashion on this subject are vastly different from what you have been used to. That liberal, catholic, and equitable way of thinking, as to the rights of conscience, which is one of the characteristics of a free people, and so strongly marks the people of your province, is little known among the zealous adherents of our hierarchy. We have, it is true, some persons in the Legislature of generous principles, both in religion and politics; but number, not merit, you know, is necessary to carry points there. Besides, the clergy are a numerous and powerful body, have great influence at home by reason of their connection with and dependence on the bishops and crown, and will naturally employ all of their arts and interests to depress their rising adversaries; for such they must consider dissentients, who rob them of their good will of the people, and in time endanger their livings and security (Rives, I). In the meantime a tremendous struggle had been going on to secure the passage of a law of toleration in the House of Burgesses. The movement in favor of such a law began in 1769. The Baptists, irritated at their ill treatment, complained and the Assembly awakened to the fact that it would be advisable to confirm the Toleration Act of 1699. "The attempt to prevent the spread of dissent, which fell so heavily on the Baptists from the year 1768 onwards convinced the more thoughtful Episcopalians that some degree of restricted toleration must be granted to the citizens of Virginia, or society must be shaken to its foundation. To appease the agitated community a bill was proposed granting privileges to the dissenters" (Foote, I). The House of Burgesses ordered, May 11, 1769, "that it be an Instruction to the Committee, for Religion, that they prepare and bring in a Bill for exempting his Majesty’s Protestant Dissenters from the Penalties of certain Laws" (Journal of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1766-1769, p. 205. Richmond, 1906); but the bill was not introduced. For a second time it was ordered, November 10, 1769 (Ibid, p. 252), but again it was not presented. Petitions began to come in from various Baptist churches. "A Petition of several Persons of the County of Luenburg, whose names are thereunto subscribed, was presented to the House, and read; setting forth that the Petitioners, being the Society of Christians, called Baptists, find themselves restricted in the Exercise of their Religion, their Teachers imprisoned under various Pretences, and the Benefits of the Toleration Act denied them, although they are willing to conform to the spirit of that Act, and are loyal and obedient Subjects; and therefore praying that they may be treated with the same kind Indulgence, in religious matters, as Quakers, Presbyterians, and other Protestant Dissenters, enjoy" (Journal of the House, 1770-1772, pp. 160, 161). February 2, 1772, the Baptists of the county of Mecklenburg presented the same petition (Ibid, pp. 182, 183); and on March 14, the Carolina Baptists (Ibid, p. 245) presented their petitions. There was likewise a petition of several persons of the county of Amelia "whose names are thereunto subscribed, setting forth, that the Petitioners, being of the Community of Christians who worship God under the Denomination of Baptists, are restricted in their religious Exercises; that, if the Act of Toleration does not extend to this Colony, they are exposed to severe Persecution; and, if its does extend hither, and the Power of granting Licenses to Teachers be lodged, as is supposed, in the General Court alone, the Petitioners must suffer considerable Inconveniences, not only because that Court sits not oftener than twice in the year and then at a Place far remote, but because the said Court will admit a single Meeting House and no more in one County; and that the Petitioners are loyal and quiet Subjects, whose Tenets in no wise affect the State; and therefore praying a Redress of their Grievances, and the Liberty of Conscience may be secured to them (Journal, pp. 185, 186). These petitions were referred to a committee which reported back, February 25, that "so far as they relate to allowing the petitioners the same Toleration in matters of Religion, as is enjoyed by his Majesty’s dissenting Protestant Subjects of Great Britain, under different Acts of Parliament, is reasonable" (Ibid, p. 188) . It was ordered that the committee on Religion "do inquire into the state of the established Religion in this Colony and Report the same, as it shall appear to them, to the House" (Ibid, p. 189). An amended bill on the subject of toleration was presented to the House and engrossed March 17 (Ibid, p. 249). This bill was not satisfactory to the Baptists, so on May 12, 1774, they protested that "not admitting public Worship, except in day time, is inconsistent with the laws of England, as well as the Practice and Usage of the Primitive Churches, and even of the English Church itself," that the night season may be sometimes better spared by the Petitioners from the necessary duty of their callings; and that they wish for no indulgences which may disturb the Peace of the Government; and therefore praying the House to take their Case into Consideration, and to grant them suitable redress (Ibid, p. 102). The bill did not become a law. A Revolution was on and now the Baptists boldly and effectively attacked the Establishment itself, and won the victory for liberty of conscience. Books for further reference: George E. Dabney, Religious Persecutions in Virginia, The Christian Review, XXIII. pp. 49-74, 199-218. Baltimore, 1858. William Thomson Hanzsche, Church and State in the American Colonies before the Revolution, Bibliotheca Sacra, LXXXII, pp. 23-48. St. Louis, 1925. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 48: 01.2.02.04. BAPTISTS AND DESTRUCTION OF ESTABLISHMENT ======================================================================== Chapter 4 - The Baptists and the Destruction of the Establishment The Evils of the Establishment in Virginia—The Baptists Render Service to the Country—Dr. Hawks on the Situation-The Convention at Williamsburg—Petition of the Clergy—Terrible Charges Against the Baptists—The Statement of Fristoe—The Tax Law Suspended—Counter Memorials—The Law Repealed—The Statement of Rayner—The Historians Speak—The Glebe Lands—The General Assessment Proposed—The Presbyterians—The Reasons the Baptists Opposed the Measure—The Bill Examined and Rejected—The Bill of Thomas Jefferson—Bishop Perry on the Baptists—Jefferson and the Baptists—The Union of the Regular and Separate Baptists—The Terms of Union—A Revival. Another phase of the liberty of conscience must now be recorded. Already the persecutions of the past, the enlistment of soldiers in the army, the struggles of the War of the Revolution, the adoption of the Constitution and the first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States have been considered. In all these measures the Baptists had an honorable part. There was proceeding at the same time another conflict which was scarcely less intense. Several of the States had establishments of religion incorporated into the government by law. The most oppressive of these was in Virginia. The laws supporting this Establishment were exacting and had been administered with severity. Dissenters were loaded with taxes to support a system of religion for which they had no love; the marriage laws were unsatisfactory; the glebe lands belonging to the Church brought in rich revenues which were a constant menace to the peace of the people, and, indeed, there were many vexatious things which disturbed the public welfare Entrenched as was the Establishment in the laws of the land, endorsed by the aristocracy and by many time servers, it was a tremendous problem to overthrow such an institution. It was this task that the Baptists, together with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other noble heroes, undertook to accomplish. Something toward this end, by 1776, had been accomplished. Persecutions had greatly added to the numbers and determination of the Baptists. They were patriotic and hearty supporters of the Revolution. This brought them into favor with Washington and assisted their cause. Their ministers were officially permitted to preach among the soldiers; and thus, so far as the army was concerned were on a level with the others. Dr. Hawks sums up the matter as follows: No dissenters in Virginia experienced, for a time, harsher treatment than did the Baptists. They were beaten and imprisoned, and cruelty taxed its ingenuity to devise new modes of punishment and annoyance; but the men, who were not permitted to speak in public, found willing auditors in the sympathizing crowds who gathered around the prisons to hear them preach from grated windows. Persecution had taught the Baptists not to love the Establishment, and they now saw before them a reasonable prospect of the overturning it altogether. In their Association they had calmly discussed the matter and resolved on their course; in this course they were constant to the end; and the war which they waged against the Church was a war of extermination. They seemed to know no relentings, and their hostility never ceased for seven and twenty years. They revenged themselves for their sufferings by the almost total ruin of the Church; and now commenced the assault, for, inspired by the ardor of patriotism, which accorded with their interests, they addressed the convention, and informed that body that their religious tenets presented no obstacle to their taking up arms and fighting for their country; and they tended the services of their pastors in promoting the enlistment of the youth of their persuasion. A complimentary answer was returned, and the ministers of all denominations, in accordance with the address, placed on an equal footing. This, it is believed, was the first step toward religious liberty in America (Hawks, Contributions to Ecclesiastical History in the United States, I. p. 121. New York, 1836-1839). The Convention at Williamsburg, June 12, 1776, passed a Declaration of Rights, of which Article 16, is as follows: That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, that all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other (Rives, Life and Times of James Madison, I. p. l42). This action incorporated the rights of conscience in the fundamental law of the State. There is interest in the viewpoint of the contestants. A petition of certain of the clergy of the Establishment was presented, November 8, 1776, to the legislature, which is as follows: A memorial of a considerable number of the clergy of. the Established Church was presented, November 8, 1776, to the legislature, which was as follows: A memorial of a considerable number of the clergy of the Established Church of Virginia was presented to the House and read: setting forth that, having understood that various petitions have been presented to the Assembly praying the abolition of the Established Church in the State, wish to represent that, when they undertook the charge of parishes in Virginia, they depended on the public faith for receiving that recompense for their services during life or good behavior which the laws of the land promised, a tenure which to them appears of the same sacred nature as that by which every man in the State holds, and has secured to him his private property, and that such of them as are not yet provided for entering into holy orders expecting to receive the several emoluments which such religious establishment offered; that from the nature of their education they are precluded from gaining a tolerable subsistence in any other way of life, and that therefore they think it would be inconsistent with justice either to deprive the present encumbents of parishes of any right or profits they hold or enjoy, or to cut off from such as are now in orders and unbeneficed those expectations which originated from the laws of the land, and which have been the means of disqualifying them for any other profession or way of life; also, that, though they are far from favoring encroachments on the religious rights of any sect or denomination of men, yet they conceive that a religious establishment in a State is conducive to peace and happiness; they think the opinions of mankind have a very considerable influence over their practice, and that it, therefore, cannot be improper for the legislative body of a State to consider how such opinions as are most consonant to reason and of the best efficiency in human affairs may be propagated and supported; that they are of the opinion the doctrines of Christianity have a greater tendency to produce virtue amongst men than any human laws or institutions, and that these can be best taught and preserved in their purity in an established church, which gives encouragement to men to study and acquire a competent knowledge of the scriptures; and they think that, if these great purposes can be answered by a religious establishment, the hardships which such a regulation might impose on individuals, or even bodies of men, ought not to be considered, etc. (Journal of the House of Deputies, for 1776, p. 47). Likewise terrible charges were brought against the Baptists and others for their preaching and methods. The following is a fair sample of some of the charges made by members of the Establishment "setting forth that they are greatly alarmed at the progress which some of the dissenters from the church as by law established are daily making in various parts of the country by persuading the ignorant and the unwary to embrace their erroneous tenets, which the petitioners conceive to be not only opposite to the doctrines of Christianity, but subservient of the morals of the people and destructive of the peace of families, tending to alienate the affection of slaves from their masters, and injurious to the happiness of the public; that while such attempts are making to pull down all the barriers which the wisdom of our ancestors has erected to secure the church from the inroads of the sectaries, it would argue a culpable lukewarmness tamely to sit still and not to make known their sentiments, so contrary to such innovations; that all of these bad effects have been already experienced in their country, and the parts adjacent, to the dismal consequences of the doctrines of these new teachers; that through their means they have seen, with grief, great discontent made between husbands and their wives; and there have been nightly meetings of slaves to receive the instructions of these teachers, without the consent of their masters, which have produced very bad consequences; that the petitioners, not actuated by the narrow and bloodthirsty spirit of persecution, wish to see a well-regulated toleration established; by which these conscientious brethren, who, from principle, cannot join with the church, may be permitted to serve God in their own way, without molestation. But they wish, also, that nightly meetings may be prohibited under severe penalties, and that those who, after due examination of their morals, shall be found worthy may be authorized to preach, and that only in such public meeting-houses as it may be thought proper to license for the purpose; that they apprehend those purposes may be answered without destroying those gentle and wholesome restraints which the wisdom of ages and the policy of our laws have established; and praying that the church may be maintained in all its legal rights, and that the sectaries may be indulged with such a regulated toleration as shall be thought reasonable, and that the clergy of the Established Church may be made accountable for their conduct, and removable for misbehavior." The Baptists were, however, unrelenting in their warfare upon the Establishment. They were criticized that during the Revolutionary War they pursued their opposition to the Church. They felt now that above all other periods they were likely to secure their rights. "The Baptists having labored under oppression for a long time," says Fristoe, "inclines them to seek redress as soon as a favorable opportunity offered. In the year 1776, they united in a petition to the Assembly of Virginia, stating the several grievances they labored under, requesting a repeal of all such laws as might occasion an odious distinction among citizens." "This position the Baptists were determined to persevere in presenting to the Assembly till such times they were attended to and they were rescued from the hand of oppression, and their just liberties were secured to them. And it appeared at this juncture the most favorable opportunity offered that had ever been—a time when the nation was struggling for civil liberty and casting off British tyranny—a time of aiming to support their independence and relieving themselves from monarchial usurpation. It became a common saying about this time, ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ There was a necessity for a unanimity among all ranks, sects, denominations of people, when we had to withstand a powerful nation and expel her by force of arms or submit to her arbitrary measures, and the State Legislature became sensible that P: division among the people would be fatal to this country; but the Assembly being chiefly of the Episcopalian order, and being in the habit heretofore of governing with rigor, it was with great reluctance they could pass a law favorable to dissenters and raise them upon a level with themselves. What inclined dissenters to be more anxiously engaged for their liberty was that, if time passed away and no repeal of these injurious laws, and the nation to whom we belonged succeeded in supporting their independence, and our government settled down with these old prejudices in the hearts of those in power, and an establishment of religion survive our revolution, and religious tyranny raise its banner in our infant country, it would leave us to the sore reflection: What have we been struggling for? For what have we spent so much treasure? Why was it from sentiment we united with our fellow citizens in the cause of liberty, girded on our sword or took our musket on our shoulder, endured the hardships of a tedious war? Why clash to arms? Why hear the heart affecting shrieks of the wounded and the awful scene of garments enrolled in blood, together with the entire loss of many of our relations, friends, acquaintances, fellow citizens, and, after all of this, to be exposed to religious oppression and the deprivation of the rights of conscience in discharge of the duties of religion, in which we are accountable to God alone, and not to man? The consideration of these things stimulated and excited the Baptists in Virginia to use every effort and adopt every measure embracing the particular crisis as the fittest time to succeed, which, if past by, might never offer again, and they and their posterity remain in perpetual fetters under an ecclesiastical tyranny" (Fristoe). The only point gained by the Baptists, in the Legislature of 1776, was that the law taxing dissenters for the support of the clergy of the Establishment was "suspended." Jefferson sums up the proceedings of that Legislature as follows: Against this inactivity (of the clergy), the zeal and industry of sectarian preachers had an open and an undisputed field; and by the time of the revolution a majority of the inhabitants had become dissenters from the established church, but were still obliged to pay contributions to support the pastors of the minority. This unrighteous compulsion, to maintain teachers of what they deemed religious errors, was grievously felt during the regal government, and without a hope of relief. But the first republican legislature, which met in 78, was crowded with petitions to abolish this spiritual tyranny. These brought on the severest contests in which I have ever been engaged. Our great opponents were Mr. Pendleton and Robert Carter Nicholas; honest men, but zealous churchmen. The petitions were referred to the committee of the whole house on the state of the country; and, after desperate contests in that committee, almost daily from the 11th of October to the 5th of December, we prevailed so far only, as to repeal the laws which rendered criminal the maintenance of any religious opinions, the forbearance of repairing to the church, or the exercise of any mode of worship; and further, to exempt dissenters from the contributions to the support of the established church; and to suspend, only unto the next session, levies on the members of that church for the salaries of their own incumbents. For although the majority of the citizens were dissenters, as has been observed, a majority of the legislature were churchmen. Among these, however, were some responsible and liberal men, who enabled us, on some points, to obtain feeble majorities. But our opponents carried, in the general resolutions of the committee of November 19, a declaration that religious assemblies ought to be regulated, and that provisions ought to be made for continuing the succession of the clergy, and superintending their conduct. And, in this bill now passed, was inserted an express reservation of the question, whether a general assessment should not be established by law, on every one, to the support of the pastor of his choice; or whether all should be left to voluntary contributions; and on this question, debated at every session, from 76 to ‘79, (some of our dissenting allies, having now secured their particular object, going over to the advocates of a general assessment), we could only obtain a suspension from session to session until 79, when the question against a general assessment was finally carried, and the establishment of the Anglican church entirely put down (Jefferson, Writings, I.). It is mentioned by Jefferson in the above extract that Edmund Pendleton was a determined opponent of the Baptists, and a most ardent churchman. The following letter from him will show something of his zeal and methods: Caroline, Sepr. 25, 1777. Revd. Sir;—Understanding that the Baptists and the Methodist Societies, encouraged by something which passed last Session, mean to push their application, for the sale of the Glebes and Churches, to the Assembly at the next. It may be necessary to meet them by Counter memorials, which induced me to throw upon paper my thoughts on the subject as annexed; which though in the form of a memorial, was rather intended as a historical statement of the laws and facts on the Subject, from whence to form one, and therefore I have not attempted to shorten or correct it, but left it, imperfect as it is for your consideration. My reason for taking the liberty of enclosing it to you, besides a wish to have it correct, is that it occurred to me that you might, after perfecting one, think proper to have a copy struck off and forwarded to each parish, to preserve uniformity of sentiments, which might otherwise Clash and do mischief; but this is as you .please, if not approved, I will thank you to forward me a corrected copy; Or if you judge it best to leave each Parish to its own mode, and reserve yourself for a Conventional one, be pleased to return mine, and excuse the trouble I shall have given you, when I will endeavor to correct and have it subscribed. As I have never been present at Public discussions of the Subject, nor heard it much Canvassed in private, from a recluse life, my Sentiments are drawn chiefly from contemplation, and may not meet their grounds, your information may supply and correct this. The distinction between it being a Public of parochial claim, seems to me to be well founded, and to be very important in the decision. With sentiments of much respect and esteem, I am sir, Your Mo. Obt. Servt Edmd. Pendleton. (Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1908-1909, XLII. pp. 346, 347). The final vote on the measure came December 13, 1779, when the law enforcing the Established Church was repealed. This destroyed the Establishment in Virginia. "We are not to understand," says Semple, "that this important ecclesiastical revolution was effected wholly by the Baptists. They were certainly the most active; but they were also joined by other dissenters. Nor was the dissenting interest, all united, by any means at that time, equal to the accomplishment of such a revolution. We must turn our eyes to the political state of the country to find adequate causes for such a change. "The British yoke galled to the quick; and the Virginians; as having the most tender necks, were among the first to wince. Republican principles had gained much ground, and were fast advancing to superiority. The leading men of that side viewed the Established clergy and the Established religion as inseparable appendages of monarchy-one of the pillars by which it was supported. The dissenters, at least the Baptists, were republicans from interest as well as principle; it was known that their influence was great among the common people; and the common people of every country are, more or less, republicans. To resist the British oppressions effectually, it was necessary to soothe the minds of the people by every species of policy. The dissenters were too powerful to be slighted, and they were too watchful to be cheated by any ineffectual sacrifice. There had been a time when they would have been satisfied to have paid their tithes if they could have had liberty of conscience; but now the crisis was such that nothing less than a total overthrow of all ecclesiastical distinctions would satisfy their sanguine hopes. Having started the decaying edifice, every dissenter put to his shoulder to push it into irretrievable ruin. The revolutionary party found that the sacrifice must be made, and they made it. "It is said, however, and probably not without truth, that many of the Episcopalians who voted for the abolishing of the Establishment did it upon an expectation that it would be succeeded by a general assessment. And considering that most of the men of wealth were on that side, they supposed that their funds would be lessened very little. This, it appeared in the sequel, was a vain expectation. The people having once shaken off their fetters, would not again permit themselves to be bound. Moreover, the war now rising to its height, they were in too much need of funds to permit any of their resources to be devoted to any otherpurpose during that period; and we shall see that when it was attempted, a few years after the expiration of the war, the people set their faces against it" (Semple, 44, 45) . The historians all agree to the share the Baptists had in the passing of this measure. Hawks says: The Baptists were the principal promoters of this work, and in truth aided more than any other denomination in its accomplishment (Hawks). Bishop Meade says: They took the lead in dissent, and were the chief objects of persecution by the magistrates, and the most violent and persevering afterward in seeking the downfall of the Establishment (Meade, Old Churches of Virginia, 1.). Campbell says: The Baptists, having suffered persecution under the Establishment, were of all others the most inimical to it, and the most active in its subversion (Campbell, History of Virginia). Tucker says: In the two following years, the question of providing for the ministers of religion by law, or leaving it to individual contributors, was renewed; but the advocates of the latter plan were only able to obtain at each session a suspension of those laws which provided salaries for the clergy—the natural progress in favor of liberal sentiments being counterbalanced by the fact that some of the dissenting sects, with the exception of the Baptists, satisfied with having been relieved from a tax which they felt to be both unjust and degrading, had no objection to a general assessment, and on this question voted with the friends of the church. But the advocates of religious freedom finally prevailed, after five suspended acts, the laws for the support of the clergy were, at the second session of 1779, unconditionally repealed (Tucker, Life of Jefferson, I.). Randall says: This was the best arrangement the Anglican church could now hope for, and most of the dissenters, it would seem (the Baptists being said to be the only exception, as a church), were ready to join the former on this ground and unite in a strenuous effort in favor of the measure (Randall, Life of Jefferson, I.). 270 A History o f the Baptists Rayner says: This question, the last prop of the tottering hierarchy, reduced the struggle to one of pure principle. The particular object of the dissenters being secured, they deserted the voluntary champion of their cause, and went over in troops to the advocates of the general assessment. This step, the natural proclivity of the sectarian mind, showed them incapable of religious liberty upon an expansive scale, or broader than their own interests, as schismatics. But the defection of the dissenters, painful as it was, only stimulated his desire for total abolition, as it developed more palpably the evidence of its necessity. He remained unshaken at his post, and brought on the reserved question at every session from 1776 to 1779, during which time he could only obtain a suspension of the levies from year to year, until the session of 1779, when, by his unwearied exertions, the question was carried definitely against a general assessment, and the establishment of the Anglican church was entirely overthrown (Rayner, Life of Jefferson). The bill cut the purse strings of the Establishment, so that the clergy were no longer supported by taxation. But they still obtained possession of the rich glebes, and enjoyed a practical monopoly of marriage fees. It was at this session of the legislature that the famous bill of Jefferson on Religious Freedom was introduced. The bill attracted both favorable and unfavorable notice. It was reported to the house June, 1779, just after Jefferson was elected governor to succeed Patrick Henry. Several years elapsed before it became a law. A complete victory was not yet won. The period which followed the Revolution was favorable to a renewal of an Establishment upon a more liberal basis than formerly; and it came dangerously near a passage. Various petitions were sent up by religious bodies asking for such an Establishment. The Baptists alone stood firm. The "Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of Religion," otherwise known as the "General Assessment Bill," was reported to the legislature December 3, 1784. The preamble was as follows: WHEREAS the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices, and preserve the peace of society, which cannot be effected without a competent provision for learned teachers, who may be thereby enabled to devote their time and attention to the duty of instructing such citizens as from their circumstances and want of education cannot otherwise attain such knowledge; and it is judged that such provision may be made by the legislature, without counteracting the liberal principle heretofore adopted and intended to be preserved, by abolishing all distinctions of preeminence amongst the different societies or communions of Christians. The bill passed its third reading but was finally postponed until the fourth Thursday, November, 1785. With the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and others supporting it the passage seemed inevitable. Foote, the Presbyterian historian, explains the relation of the Presbyterians to the measure. He says: When the bill for a general assessment was brought forward, with such an advocate as Patrick Henry, and with the Episcopal church to support it, it was generally supposed that it would certainly become a law. To those who had been paying to support their own church and another, foreign to it, this bill proposed relief; they were to pay only for the rapport of the church of their choice. As it was a relief from their former burdens, and as the Presbyterian congregations would not be called on to pay more for the support of their own ministers than they would cheerfully give by voluntary subscription, Mr. Graham was agreed with his brethren to send up a memorial which gives their sentiments on the subject of support of religion, disclaiming all legislative interference, and, under the conviction that the law would in some form pass, proposed the least offensive form in which the assessment could be levied (Foots, Sketches of Virginia, I.). The Baptists on the other hand "considered themselves under the necessity of appearing again on the public theater and expressing their disapprobation of the above proposition, and using their influence to prevent its passage into a law." The Baptists opposed the bill for the following reasons: First, it was contrary to their principles and avowed sentiments, the making provision for the support of religion by law; that the distinction between civil and ecclesiastical governments ought to be kept up blending them together; that Christ Jesus has given laws for the government of his kingdom and direction of his subjects, and gave instruction concerning collections for the various purposes of religion, and therefore needs not legislative interferences. Secondly, Should a legislative body undertake to pass laws for the government of the church, for them to say what doctrines shall be believed, in what mode worship shall be performed, and what the sum collected shall be, what a dreadful precedent it would establish; for when such a right is claimed by a legislature, and given up by the people, by the same rule they decide in one instance they may in every instance. Religion in this is like the press; if government limits the press, and says this shall be printed and that shall not, in the event it will destroy the freedom of the press; so when legislatures undertake to pass laws about religion, religion looses its form, and Christianity is reduced to a system of worldly policy. Thirdly, it has been believed by us that that Almighty Power that instituted religion will support his own cause; that in the course of divine Providence events will be overruled and the influence of grace on the hearts of the Lord’s people will incline them to afford and contribute what is necessary for the support of religion, and therefore there is no need for compulsory measures. Fourthly, it would give an opportunity to the party that were numerous (and, of course, possessed the ruling power) to use their influence and exercise their art and cunning, and multiply signers to their own party, and last, the most deserving, the faithful preacher, who in a pointed manner reproved sin and bore testimony against every species of vice and dissipation, would, in all probability, have been profited very little by such a law, while men-pleasers, the gay and the fashionable, who can wink at sin, and daub his hearers with untempered mortar, saying, "Peace, peace," when there is no peace, who can lay out his oratory in dealing out smooth things mingled with deception, the wicked, it is clear, would like to have it so; and it follows the irreligious and carnal part of the people would richly reward them for their flattery, and the undeserving go off with the gain (Fristoe, History of the Ketocton Association). The bill was printed and circulated throughout the various counties of the State. A reaction took place among the people upon the examination of the provisions of the bill. Madison wrote to Monroe, May 29, 1785, that "the adversaries of the assessment begin to think the prospect here flattering to their wishes. The printed bill has excited great discussion, and is likely to prove the sense of the community to be in favor of the liberty now enjoyed. I have heard of several counties where the representatives have been laid aside for voting for the bill, and not a single one where the reverse has happened. The Presbyterian clergy, too, who were in general friends to the scheme, are already in another tone, either compelled by the laity of that sect or alarmed at the probability of further interference of the Legislature, if they begin to dictate matters of religion" (Rives, I.). So that it came to pass on October 17, 1785, the bill died in committee. The bill of Jefferson was again introduced and on December 17, 1785, was passed and upon January 19, 1786, was signed by the Speaker. It is as follows: Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever; nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. Bishop Perry describes the attitude of the Baptists and the results of their enmity upon the Established Church. "The most unrelenting opposition to the Church," says the Bishop, "as an establishment came from the Baptists, who, in the decade preceding the opening of the war of the Revolution had grown from an inconsiderable sect to a body of numerical strength sufficient to make their influence and support worth any price when the question of loyalty or revolution was to be settled. They had not been slow to take advantage of the position in which they found themselves at the opening of the war. Remembering the harsh treatment that had been ‘meted out to them by the royal authorities, their ministers being ‘imprisoned and the disciples buffeted,’ as their chronicles describe it, they readily embraced the opportunity of weakening the ‘establishment’ as well as opposing the crown. Thus their dislike of the church and state was gratified at the same time. Conscious that a large part of the clergy, influenced by the ties of birth and the obligations of their oaths of allegiance, had espoused the cause of the king, they showed themselves to be ‘inspired by the ardors of a patriotism which accorded with their interests,’ and ‘were willing to avail themselves of a favorable opportunity to present an advantageous contrast to a part of the church.’ Consequently they formally addressed the Convention of the delegates to the Virginia Legislature, which succeeded the last royal assembly ever convened in the ‘Old Dominion,’ with a proffer of their cordial support. Their tenets placed no hindrance in the way of their members taking up arms for their country, and their preachers professed their readiness to further the enlistment of their young men. They accompanied this tender of service with a petition ‘that they might be allowed to worship God in their own way without interruption; that they might be permitted to maintain their own ministers, separate from others; that they might be married, buried, and the like, without paying the clergy of other denominations.’ This was the beginning of a series of assaults against the ‘establishment’ and the Church itself in which all the dissenters, with the exception of the Methodists, who had not at this time formally separated from the Church, united with zeal and untiring energy till the end was gained, and the ‘establishment’ was destroyed. "The result was such as had been anticipated by those who had strenuously opposed the act of the Legislature. Deprived of their livings, the clergy, many of whom were politically, if not personally, obnoxious to the majority of their parishioners, found themselves reduced to the necessity of abandoning their calling, in the exercise of which they could no longer hope for support. Many left the country; the sacraments were no longer administered in the parishes thus abandoned, and, although a few faithful priests traveled over large circuits for the purpose of administering baptism and the holy communion, they could not supply the lack of the constant and regular services and administrations which had been of old. The churches, deserted and uncared for, went rapidly into decay. Often required for public uses in the necessities of the State arising from the struggle then going on; more frequently despoiled and desecrated by the hands of the sacrilegious and sordid, who coveted and appropriated for their private uses the very materials of the fabric of the Church of God; there was every prospect that the Church, whose officers were first celebrated on Virginia soil, would be utterly uprooted and destroyed. The gates of hell had prevailed against her" (Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, II.). The undermining of the State Church was a long process. "Upheld by the law of the seventeenth century," says Jennings Cooper Wise, "it was not until a later date, when the state as well as the church had been honeycombed by free thinker, that the old structure fell and the masses, who had long supported the religion of the minority, asserted their doctrinal independence. As we follow the history of the Eastern Shore, we find the Puritan from New England and New Netherlands, the Quaker, and the Presbyterian, each in turn seeking the shores of the remote peninsula as a resting place, where unmolested the new sects might hatch out their doctrines. The effect upon the people of such a process of religious incubation among them cannot be overestimated, and as we take the history of the peninsula in the following century, we shall see how the Baptists and Methodists also prospered upon these shores" (Wise, Ye Kingdom of Accawmacke or the Eastern Shore of Virginia, pp. 250, 251. Richmond, 1911) . Jefferson was the statesman of the Revolution, Washington the general and Franklin the sage. The attitude of Jefferson toward liberty and the Establishment brought upon him much obloquy. He was thoroughly hated by that class and especially the New England clergy. They called him an infidel and an atheist. As a matter of fact ha was an Episcopalian with Unitarian tendencies. On the other hand the Baptists loved and supported him. His views on liberty were so closely united with theirs that they were his devoted friends. When he was elected President the church at Cheshire, Massachusetts, made a cheese, which weighed fourteen hundred and fifty pounds, and sent it to Washington to Jefferson, in 1801, by the celebrated John Leland, their pastor, as an expression of the warm regard they entertained for their great leader in the battle of freedom. John Leland was a man of singular ability, independence, frankness, humor and piety. He wrote for the Baptists to the State papers. Jefferson associated with the Baptists. They admired him, and he admired them. A few of his statements in regard to them are here recorded. A letter addressed to Levi Lincoln, the Attorney General, January 1, 1802, was the occasion of the following comment on the general position of the Baptists: The Baptist address, now enclosed, admits of a condemnation of the alliance between Church and State, under the authority of the Constitution. It furnishes an occasion, too, which I have long wished to find, of saying why I do not proclaim Fastings and thanksgivings, as my predecessors did. The address, to be sure, does not point at this, and its introduction is awkward. But I foresee no opportunity of doing it more pertinently. I know it will give great offense to the New England clergy; but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them (Jefferson, Writings, X.). He addressed the members of the Baltimore Baptist Association, October 17, 1808, as follows: I receive with great pleasure the friendly address of the Baltimore Baptist Association, and am sensible how much I am indebted to the kind dispositions which dictated it. In our early struggle for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object. All men felt the right, and a just animation to obtain it was exhibited by all. I was only one among the many who befriended its establishment, and am entitled but in common with others to a portion of that approbation which follows the fulfillment of duty. Excited by wrongs to reject a foreign government which directed our concerns according to its own interests, and not to ours, the principles which justified us were obvious to all understandings, they were imprinted in the breast of every human being; and Providence ever pleased to direct the issue of our contest in favor of that side where justice was. Since the happy separation, our nation has wisely avoided entangling itself in the systems of European interests, and has taken no side between its rival powers, attached itself to none of its ever changing confederacies. Their peace is desirable; and you do me justice in saying that to preserve and secure this, has been the constant aim of my administration. The difficulties which involve it, however, are now at their ultimate term, and what will be their issue, time alone will disclose. But be it what it may, a recollection of our former vassalage in religion and civil government, will unite the zeal of every heart, and the energy of every hand, to preserve that independence in both which, under the favor of Heaven, a disinterested devotion to the public cause first achieved, and a disinterested sacrifice to private interest will now maintain. I am happy in your approbation of my reasons for determining to retire from a station, in which the favor of my fellow citizens has so long continued and supported me; I return your kind prayers with supplications to the same Almighty Being for your future welfare and that of our beloved country (Jefferson, XVI.). He addressed the members of the Ketockton Baptist Association, October 18, 1808, as follows: The views you express of the conduct of the belligerent powers are as correct as they are afflicting to the lovers of justice and humanity. Those moral principles and conventional usages which have heretofore been the bond of civilized nations, which have so often preserved their peace by furnishing common rules for the measure of their rights, have now given way to force, the law of Barbarians, and the nineteenth century dawns with Vandalism of the fifth. Nothing has been spared on our part to preserve the peace of our country, during this distempered state of the world (Jefferson, XVI.). The remainder of the above letter is the same as that addressed to the Baltimore Association. The following letter was written to the General Meeting of Correspondence of the Six Baptist Associations represented at Chesterfield, Virginia, November 21, 1808: Thank you, fellow citizens, for your affectionate address, and I receive with satisfaction your approbation of my motives for retirement. In reviewing the history of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction, on reflection, than that which presents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom, and the success with which they were crowned. We have solved by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government, and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason, and the serious convictions of his own inquiries. It is a source of great contentment to me to learn that the measures which have been pursued in the administration of your affairs have met with your approbation. Too often we have had but a choice among difficulties; and the situation characterizes remarkably the present moment. But, fellow citizens, if we are faithful to our country, if we acquiesce, with good will, in the decisions of the majority, and the nation moves in mass in the same direction although it may not be that which every individual thinks best, we have nothing to fear from any quarter. I thank you sincerely for your kind wishes for my welfare, and with equal sincerity implore the favor of a protecting Providence for yourselves (Jefferson, XVI. pp. 320, 321). On his return from Washington he received a letter of congratulations from the Baptist church of Buck Mountain, Albemarle county. In reply, April 13, 1808, he says: Your approbation of my conduct is the more valued as you have best known me, and is an ample reward for my services I may have rendered. We have acted together from the origin to the end of a memorable revolution, and we have contributed, each in the line allotted us, our endeavors to render its issue a permanent blessing to our country. These persecutions and victories drought about a very desirable union between the Regular and Separate Baptists. In origin, and frequently in methods, they were diverse; while in doctrines there were variations, yet in some points substantial agreement. It was felt that the union of the two parties was desirable. The actual union was slow of accomplishment. The first public movement was inaugurated in 1767 but received no definite form. Three years afterwards the Ketockton a Regular, or Calvinistic Association in Northern Virginia, addressed the Sandy Creek, a Separate, or Arminian Association, in Southern Virginia, but mostly in North Carolina, on the subject. They said in their letter: Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ The bearers of this letter (Garrett, Mager, and Saunders) will acquaint you with the design of writing it. Their errand is peace, and their business is a reconciliation, if there is any difference subsisting. If we are all Christians, all Baptists, all New Lights, why are we divided? Must the little appellatives, Regular and Separate, break the golden band of charity, and set the sons and daughters of God at variance? Behold how good and how pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity! But how bad and how bitter is for them to live asunder and in discord! To indulge ourselves in prejudice is surely disorder, and to quarrel about nothing is irregularity with a witness. Oh, dear brethren, let us endeavor for the future to avoid this calamity. The messengers were cordially received, the address was read, and the subject entertained and mutually considered. It was allowed that some details remained to be adjusted. The Sandy Creek Association, which then embraced large districts in Virginia, North Carolina, and western South Carolina, was soon divided into other associations and the project failed. The Kahukee Association, in 1772, occupied a part of South Carolina, and all the region of Virginia south of the James river. To this body the General Association, which was composed of both parties, addressed themselves and sent Samuel Harris, Elijah Craig, John Waller and David Thompson, to treat with them. At the meeting of the General Association there was much excitement. There were two meetings but in contiguous places. The Regulars asked the assent of the Separates on two propositions, that "salvation is of the special electing grace of God," and that "salvation is without merit on the part of the creature." The Separates, after consultation, sent the following reply: Dear Brethren: A study union with you makes us willing to be more explicit in our answer to your terms of reconciliation proposed. We do not deny the former part of your proposition, respecting particular election of grace, still retaining our liberty with regard to construction. And as to the latter part, respecting merit in the creature, we are free to profess that there is none. To this reply the Regulars sent the following answer: Dear Brethren: Inasmuch as your Christian fellowship seems nearly as dear to us as our lives, and seeing our difficulties concerning your principles with respect to merit in the creature, particular election, and final perseverance of the saints are in hopeful measure removing, we do willingly retain your fellowship, not raising the least bar, but do heartily wish and pray that God in his kind providence in his own time may bring it to pass, when all Israel shall be of one mind, speaking the same things. The decision of the General Association was generally received with much joy. When, however, some years afterwards the General Association was dissolved and the General Committee, composed of chosen messengers from all of the associations in the State, was instituted to take its place, much solicitude was felt on the subject. At a meeting of the General Committee on Saturday, August 5, 1786, the whole subject of union was taken up. "The schism which took place among the Regulars and Separate Baptists soon after their rise in Virginia had never been, as yet, entirely removed, although a very friendly intercourse had been occasionally kept up among them." The time was now at hand when all differences and party spirit were about to be forever wiped off. The Ketockton or Regular Baptist Association sent delegates to this General Committee, and they were received upon equal footing with those of the other Associations. This gave rise to the following recommendation: It is recommended to the different Associations to appoint delegates to attend the next General Committee for the purpose of forming an union with the Regular Baptists. Upon Friday, August 10, 1787, "agreeable to appointment the subject of the union of the Regular and Separate Baptists was taken up, and a happy and effectual reconciliation was accomplished. "The objections on the part of the Separates related chiefly to matters of trivial importance. On the other hand, the Regulars complained that the Separates were not sufficiently explicit in their principles, having never published or sanctioned any confession of faith; and that they kept within their communion many who were professed Arminians, etc. To these things it was answered by the Separates that a large majority of them believed as much in their confession of faith as they did themselves, although they did not entirely approve of the practice of religious societies binding themselves too strictly by confessions of faith, seeing there was danger of their finally usurping too high a place; that if there were some among them who leaned too much toward the Arminian system they were generally men of exemplary piety and great usefulness in the Redeemer’s kingdom, and they conceived it better to bear with some diversity of opinion in doctrines than to break with men whose Christian deportment rendered them amiable in the estimation of all true lovers of genuine goodness. Indeed, that some of them had now become fathers in the Gospel, who, previous to the bias which their minds had received, had borne the brunt and heat of persecution, whose labors and sufferings God had blessed, and still blessed to the great advantage of his cause. To exclude such as these from their communion would be like tearing the limbs from the body. "These and such like arguments were agitated both in public and private, so that all minds were much mollified before the final and successful attempt. at union. "The terms of the union were entered in the minutes in the following words, viz.: The committee appointed to consider the terms of union with our Regular brethren reported that they conceive the manner in which the Regular Baptist confession of faith has been received by a former Association is the ground work for such a union. "After considerable debate as to the propriety of having any confession of faith at all, the report of the committee was received with the following explanation: To prevent the confession of faith from usurping a tyrannical power over the conscience of any, we do not mean that every person is bound to the strict observance of everything therein contained; yet that it holds forth the essential truths of the Gospel, and that the doctrine of salvation by Christ and free, unmerited grace alone ought to be believed by every Christian and maintained by every minister of the Gospel. Upon these terms we are united; and desire hereafter that the names Regular and Separate be buried in oblivion, and that, from henceforth, we shall be known by the name of the United Baptist Churches of Christ in Virginia (Semple). Semple, the Virginia Baptist historian, in 1809, says that "this union has now continued upwards of twenty-two years without an interruption. The bonds of union are apparently much stronger than at first. It is quite pleasing sometimes to find that members and even ministers of intelligence among Baptists have manifested a total unacquaintance with the terms Regular and Separate, when they have been occasionally mentioned in their company. From this it is plain that all party spirit is now laid aside, and that it was a union of hearts as well as parties. "It is worthy of remark that this conjunction of dissevered brethren took place at a time when a great revival of religion had already commenced, and not far from the time when it burst ,forth on the right hand and left throughout the State. Some of our reflecting readers will impute this to .a providential interference of God, disposing the hearts of the people to love and peace in order to prepare them for the day of his power. Others may say rather the work already having begun, a revival of true religion always tends to open the hearts of the friends of God and make them stretch the robe of charity so as really to cover a multitude of faults. Whether to one or the other, or to both these causes may be ascribed the accommodating temper of the two parties, certain it is that nothing could be more salutary." The results of this union were far-reaching in their effects. The war, though very propitious to the liberty of the Baptists, had an opposite effect upon the life of religion among them. As if persecution was more favorable to vital piety than unrestrained liberty, they seem to have abated their zeal, upon being unshackled from their manacles. They had been much engrossed with thoughts and schemes for effecting the revolution. They had much engaged in political strife. The opening of free trade by peace served as a powerful bait to entrap professors. There were many wild speculations in lands. From whatever cause, certain it was that there was a wintry season. With exceptions the declension was general throughout the country. The love of many waxed cold. Iniquity greatly abounded. Associations were thinly attended, and the business was badly conducted. Fortunately, about the year 1785, a revival began. It was not general but it covered many sections of the country. John Taylor had a season of refreshing in Clear Creek Church, Woodford county, Kentucky. In Virginia "thousands were converted and baptized, besides many who joined the Methodists and Presbyterians." The revival, however, did not produce many young preachers. John Leland says: In the late great additions that have been made to the churches, there are but few who have engaged in the work of the ministry. Whether it is because the old preachers stand in the way, or whether it is because the people do not pray the Lord of the Harvest to thrust out laborers, or whether it is not rather a judgment of God upon the people for neglecting those who are already in the work, not communicating to them in all good things, I cannot say. The revival continued in many places until 1792; but in its effects it was limited. Books for further reference: Charles F. James, Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Virginia. Lynchburg, Va., 1900. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 49: 01.2.03.00. PERIOD OF GROWTH & ORGANIZATION ======================================================================== III. The Period of Growth and Organization ======================================================================== CHAPTER 50: 01.2.03.01. THE BAPTISTS IN KENTUCKY ======================================================================== Chapter 1 – The Baptists in Kentucky The Ohio Valley—Kentucky—John Finlay—Hunters from North Carolina—Daniel Boone—Lexington—The Customs of the People—The County of Fincastle—Baptists the Pioneers—John Lythe Holds "Divine Service" at Harrodsburg—Bishop Smith on the Baptists—Thomas Tinsley and William Hickman—John Taylor—William Marshall—Severn’s Valley Church—Cedar Creek Church—The Traveling Church—Lewis Craig—Other Famous Preachers—The Negro Servant Peter—The Land and Water Routes to Kentucky—Calvinistic and Separate Churches—Religious Conditions—The Revival—John Gano—The Elkhorn Association—Foot Washing—United Baptists—Augustine Eastin and James Garrard—Cooper Run Church—A Horrible Murder—The Unitarian Movement—The Universalists.The discovery and occupation of the Ohio Valley was a matter of the greatest political and religious importance. The issue was, should it be French and Roman Catholic, or English and Protestant? The settlement of Kentucky was the key to this vexed problem. So the occupation of Kentucky became a question of international moment. The delightful country of Kentucky, with its majestic rivers, from time immemorial had been the resort of wild beasts and of men no less savage, when in the year 1767 it was visited by John Finlay, and a few wandering white men, from the British colony of North Carolina, lured to the wilderness by a love for hunting, and the desire of trading with the Indians, who were then understood to be at peace. "The country once seen," says Marshall, one of the earliest Kentucky historians, "held out abundant inducements to be revisited, and better known. Among the circumstances best adapted to engage the attention, and impress the feelings of the adventurous hunters of North Carolina, may be selected the uncommon fertility of the soil, and the great abundance of wild game, so conspicuous at this time. And we are assured that the effect lost nothing of the cause. Forests those hunters had seen—mountains they had ascended—valleys they had traversed—deer they had killed-and bears they had successfully hunted. They had heard the howl of the wolf, the whine of the panther, and the heartrending yell of the savage man with corresponding sensations of delight, or horror. But these were all lost to memory, in the contemplation of Kentucky; animated with all the enchanting variety, and adorned with all the magnificent grace and boldness of nature’s creative energy. To nature’s children, she herself is eloquent, and affecting. Never before had the feelings of those rude hunters experienced so much of the pathetic, the sublime, the marvelous" (Marshall, The History of Kentucky, I. 4. Frankfort, 1824). Finlay was the pilot of Daniel Boone, and 1769 is the memorable date of the latter’s arrival in Kentucky. He was not encumbered with worldly goods; had no local attachments; he possessed only high health and vigorous constitution, supported by great muscular strength and nervous activity. With the exception of a few traders who had passed the Cumberland Gap "and viewed with delight the landscape that stretched away toward the setting sun like an undulating sea of verdure" (Finlay, Topographical Description of the Western Territory), this whole sweep of country bordering on the Ohio, was entirely unknown. There were no permanent settlers in this region and in it no particular interest. This was a momentous period in American history. These early emigrants came during the struggle and triumphs of civil and religious liberty in America. On April 17, 1775, occurred the famous battle of Lexington, near Boston, Massachusetts. About two months afterwards "a party of hunters had kindled their evening fire and were seated on their buffalo robes around a cheerful blaze, deliberating, as may be supposed, about the name by which they should designate the newly settled site, when the news arrived of the momentous battle fought in Massachusetts on the 17th of April, 1775. In the enthusiasm of the moment the spot was called Lexington, to commemorate the event" (Flint, History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley, I. 356. Cincinnati, 1833). Such was the land of Kentucky. The customs of the people who settled this country were not less noteworthy. An intelligent observer who was reared under the conditions then existing has described them as follows: It is no reproach to the first settlers of the country, to say, that they were enured to danger, to labor, and to rough living-they were chiefly from the frontier settlements, or had recently been such, in Virginia, or the neighboring States-and had served an apprenticeship, to their condition in Kentucky, before they came here. Indeed, it is of such, that new countries are made. For who else has that sort of Spartan virtue, necessary to conquer nature, in her most obdurate forms? But Kentucky was destined to ameliorate their condition. And this history, faithful to the transitory pictures of real life, will exhibit the contrast, of what they were and what they are, after the lapse of forty years. Then, the women did the offices of the household—milked the cows—cooked the mess—prepared the flax—spun, wove, and made the garment, of linen, or linsey; the men hunted, and brought in the meat—they planted, ploughed, and gathered in the corn—grinding it into meal, at the hand mill, or pounded it into hominy, in the mortar, was occasionally the work ‘of either; or the joint labor of both. The men exposed themselves alone to danger; they fought with the Indians; they cleared the land; they reared the hut, or built the fort—in which the women were placed for safety. Much use was made of the skin of deer, for dress, while the buffalo, the bear skins, were consigned to the floor, for beds, and covering. There might accidentally be a few articles, brought to the country for sale, in a private way; but there was no store for supply. Wooden vessels, either turned or coopered were in common use, as table furniture. A tin cup was an article of delicate luxury; almost as rare as an iron fork. Every hunter carried his knife; it was no less the implement of a warrior. Not unfrequently the rest of the family was left with but one, or two, for the use of all. A like workmanship, composed the table, and the stool, a slab, hewed with the axe-and sticks of a similar manufacture, set in, for legs, supported both. When the bed was by chance, or refinement, elevated above the floor, and given a fixed place, it was often laid on slabs, placed across poles, supported on forks, set in the earthen floor; or where the floor was puncheons-the bedstead, was hewed pieces, pinned on upright posts, or let into them by auger holes. Other utensils and furniture, were of corresponding description-applicable to the time. These facts depict the condition, and circumstances of the country; therefore they merit notice (Marshall, I.). Virginia under favorable royal patents had vast possessions. The territory of Kentucky was included in the county of Fincastle, and shortly afterwards it was constituted into the county of Kentucky. Virginia had furnished many soldiers in the French and English wars on the Continent, and at the close of the Revolution the soldiers were paid in Landscript and were permitted to settle four hundred acres of land in Kentucky. These grants, along with favorable reports of the country, brought immense numbers of people to the territory, especially at the close of the Revolutionary War. Says Lewis Collins: "No country was settled by men of more distinct character from the great mass, and the infusion of those traits was so common to the population of the early emigrants, that it will take centuries to eradicate it from their descendants. More of the gallant officers of the American Revolution, and no less gallant soldiers, found a retreat in Kentucky than in any other part of America, and they brought with them to the West the young men of enterprise, talent and courage, who like Sidney, were to find how to make a way to distinction" (Collins, History of Kentucky, 308. First edition). The Baptists were the pioneers of religion in Kentucky. They came with the earliest permanent settlers. Such is the statement of Collins (p. 108) . The Rev. John Lythe, an Episcopal clergyman, was a member of the legislative assembly, in Transylvania, May 23, 1775 (Perrin, History of Kentucky), and on Sunday, May 27, he held "divine service the first time" (Judge Richard Henderson, Journal of a Trip to Kentucky and of events at Boonesborough). He is not elsewhere mentioned and there is no evidence that he preached in Kentucky. The old antagonisms were transferred from Virginia to Kentucky, and the Episcopal Church found no encouragement in the new settlements. It was known only as "an organized body of Arminians enlisted in the service of despotism" (Perrin). Humphrey Marshall, himself an Episcopalian and thoroughly conversant withthe facts, says: There were in the country, and chiefly from Virginia, many Episcopalians; but who had formed no church—there being no parson, or minister, of that denomination to take charge of it. Persons of that description seem not to like new countries; or to be deficient in seal, were it not cherished, by parish or tithes—as was the case in Kentucky (Marshall, I.). Of Methodists and Presbyterians at this period there is no mention. Previous to the year 1781 there was not a Baptist church in the State. There were, however, many Baptists in Kentucky. There were several Baptist preachers who had emigrated to the State, and the story of the eight years of beginnings is intensely interesting. After mentioning that the Baptists were the first settlers, Bishop B. B. Smith, the celebrated Episcopal Bishop of Kentucky, in an annual address in 1863, says of these early Kentucky Baptists: Many of these Baptist dogmas rung like a tocsin in the ears of the poor white people. An unlettered clergy, nor haughtily superior to the poor; a laborious unpaid clergy, shared in the daily-.toils, and thankful for the rough hospitality of the poorest farmer; forms of religion, which made the wild wood and the mountain stream, ever dear to the heart of the backwoodsman the most fit and welcome temple of Jehovah, and in their estimation, the only consecrated font of baptism. No stately altars, no dignified vestments, no costly sacramental vases, no pompous dignitaries, no far fetched ministerial commission, no sober forms of prayer for them. Their sons and brothers, in everyday attire, often in their shirt sleeves, and with their own home-spun modes of speech, rich in the embroidering of inspired sentences, and eloquent with all the ardor of impassioned earnestness, preached to them the unsearchable riches of Christ, and labored for them freely as their servants in the gospel for Jesus’ sake. Add to this, the stern enthusiasm of the Calvinistic creed, the fond allurements of a republican form of government, and the prestige of an imposing primitive rite, administered in a mode plainly consonant with the Scripture, and who can wonder that they carried all before them. It was a bright Sunday in April, 1776, that the sound of a horn called the little settlement of Harrodsburg to worship. The whole population of Kentucky at the time numbered less than one hundred. The meeting was held near the spring under an expanding elm tree. The preacher was Thomas Tinsley, assisted by William Hickman, who was not yet ordained as a minister. Not much is known of Tinsley, but he was described as a "son of thunder." Hickman filled a large place in Kentucky Baptist history. John Taylor says "this man had a great range in Kentucky for. nearly forty years." "Though now about seventy-six years old," continues Taylor, "he walks and stands as erect as a palm tree, being at least six feet high, rather of lean texture, his whole deportment solemn and grave, and like Caleb, the servant of the Lord of old, at four score years of age, was as capable of going to war as when he was young" (Taylor, A History of the Ten Churches). John Taylor was himself a man of great power. He labored hard on his farm. After mentioning a certain day’s work which he had accomplished that seemed to be impossible, he remarked: "I name this day’s work that it may be accounted for how I cleared nearly four hundred acres of land in the heavy forests of Kentucky, besides making other improvements." He then remarks We had to pack corn forty miles, and then send a mile to grind it at a handmill, before we could get bread; as to meat, it must come from the woods, and myself no hunter; I would at times go out with hunters and they with the common generosity of hunters would admit me a share in the profits so far as meat went. Soon after I settled in my little cabin (sixteen feet square, with no floor except the natural earth, without table, bedstead or stool) I found that an old buck had his lodge a few hundred steps from my cabin among the nettles, high as a man’s shoulders, and interlocked with pea vines; those nettles, the next winter we found to be very useful, in getting the lint and with the help of buffalo wool, made good clothing for our black people—however, I went every morning to visit the old buck lodge, hoping to get a shot at him, I could sometimes see him—but I at length got a fire at him and accidentally shot him through the heart, this was a greater treat for my family than the largest bullock I have ever killed since, for he was large and fat (Taylor). He was equally laborious as a minister. George Stokes Smith was a "man of great responsibility, a doctrinal preacher of simplicity and plainness." William Marshall was the first permanent preacher in the State. "His tall, graceful form, dark piercing eye and engaging manners made him the pride of the circle in which he moved." There were six Baptist preachers in Kentucky as early as 1780, but there were no churches. The Severn’s Valley Church, the first in Kentucky, was organized, June 18, 1781. It is now known as Elizabethtown. The ministers present were Joseph Barnett, John Whitaker and John Gerrard. Gerrard was called as pastor and ordained to the ministry. He was the first pastor of a church in Kentucky. His was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The church was organized under a green sugar tree. There were eighteen members, three of whom were colored, in the constitution of the church. The Cedar Creek Church, five miles from Bardstown, was organized July 4, 1781. This was the second church in Kentucky. It was probably from patriotic motives that the church was constituted on Independence Day. This was while the Revolutionary War was still in progress. The church was gathered by Joseph Barnett and he was assisted by John Gerrard. Barnett was pastor for some years. Two of the members, Judge James Slaughter and James Rogers, were members of the Danville Convention. The famous Traveling Church worshiped for the first time at Gilbert’s Creek, Lincoln county, the second Lord’s day in December, 1781 (Ford, History of Kentucky Baptists, The Christian Repository, March, 1856). This story dates far back in Virginia history, as has already been seen, when Craig had fallen under the heavy hand of the Established Church. Craig was far from possessing a cultivated mind, but being a sensible man, and having a very musical voice, with agreeable manners, and, especially going forth under the constraining influence of the love of Christ, he excited much interest among the people whom he addressed. He traveled continually, and under his pungent preaching, and impassioned earnestness he won multitudes of converts. The Baptist church organized, between the James and the Rappahannock rivers, called Lower Spotsylvania, afterwards Craig’s, was the fruit of his labor. He became pastor and the church greatly prospered. He was continually annoyed by members of the Establishment and more than once imprisoned. The time had come for Craig and his church to emigrate to Kentucky. It was perhaps on the church meeting day, September 2, 1781, that he announced his purpose. An appointed day was set when all who would go to "a foreign land" would meet at the church house. Many were the ministers who assembled on the set day. Among them were Elijah Craig, who had eaten rye bread in prison; Ambrose Dudley, who had often labored with him; William E. Waller and the aged shepherd William Ellis; and John Waller, the most picturesque of the early Baptist ministers of Virginia, was also there. These men of God embraced and parted, some of them, forever. The feelings of Waller were expressed in rude poetry. About two hundred of the members agreed to go into the wilderness land. This left but few behind. Preachers were not lacking in the expedition itself. Joseph Bledsoe of the Wilderness Church and father of the afterwards noted Senator James Bledsoe of Kentucky; Joseph Craig "the man who laid down in the road"; William Cave and Simeon Watson were four of a number of preachers who accompanied it. So the church, the pastor and the clerk with the old church book started upon the journey. It was in the month of October. The church had been constituted in 1767 by Read Harris and Dutton Lane. This was the most considerable company that had yet gone to Kentucky. The old historian calls Kentucky "the vortex of Baptist preachers." Semple adds: "It is questionable with some whether half of the Baptist preachers raised in Virginia have not emigrated. to the Western country." This exodus was no small affair for its day and generation. The moving train included church members, their children, negro slaves, and other emigrants, who, for better protection, had attached themselves to an organized expedition, between five and six hundred souls (Ranck, The Traveling Church, 13. Louisville, 1891). The women rode on horseback carrying the children; the men walked probably the entire distance of more than six hundred miles. On arriving at Gilbert’s Creek, William Marshall preached on Sunday. Craig had anticipated the needs of his church. Early the year before his removal he had sent his old Negro servant, Peter, to go to the new place and make a crop of corn. Peter was a member of the Spotsylvania Church and a very effective preacher. With a two-horse wagon, and farming implements, he had gone through the wilderness. In the spring he planted a crop of corn, but about the time the corn tasseled an excursion of Indians laid all to waste. Discouraged, the Negro returned and arrived in Virginia about the time the church began to move. Peter became the guide of the church to its new home. He was long a faithful preacher among his people. The fort was built and the people became settled in their new home. Finally the church removed north of the river and organized South Elkhorn Church. One can hardly appreciate the sufferings and sacrifices of these early Baptists. There were two routes open to Kentucky, one by land, the other by water. It is difficult to say which was the more dangerous and toilsome. Lewis Craig traveled by land, John Taylor by water. He landed on his way to Craig’s station in December, 1783, at Bear Grass, near Louisville. Taylor says of his journey: It was a gloomy thing at that time of day, to move to Kentucky—but I had seen the place, and when I found a growing family to provide for, this overweighed all, and without a single friend or acquaintance to accompany me, with my young helpless family, to feel all the horrors that then lay in the way to Kentucky—we took water at Redstone, and for want of a better opening, I paid for a passage, in a lonely ill-fixed boat of strangers—the River being low, this lonesome boat, was about seven weeks before she landed at Beargrass; not a soul was then settled on the Ohio between Wheeling and Louisville, a space of five or six hundred miles, and not one hour, day or night, in safety. Though it was not winter, not a soul in all Beargrass settlement was in safety but by being in a fort—I then meditated about traveling about eighty miles, to Craig’s station on Gilbert’s Creek, in Lincoln county; we set out in a few days-nearly all I owned was then at stake, I had three horses, two of them were packed, the other my wife rode, with as much lumber besides as the beast could bear; I had four black people, one man and three smaller ones. The pack horses were led, one by myself, the other by my man—the trace, what there was, being so narrow and bad, we had no chance but to wade through all the mud, rivers and creeks we came to. Salt River, with a number of its large branches we had to deal with often; those waters being flush, we often must wade to our middle, and though the weather was very cold, the ice was not very troublesome, those struggles often made us forget the danger we were in from the Indians—we only encamped in the woods one night, where we could only look for protection from the Lord, one Indian might have defeated us, for though I had a rifle, I had very little use of it; after six days painful travel of this kind, we arrived at Craig’s Station, a little before Christmas and about three months after our start from Virginia. Through all of this rugged travel my wife was in a very helpless state, for about one month after our arrival my son Ben was born (Taylor). The three churches organized in Kentucky in 1781 were all Calvinistic or the Regular Baptists. The Regular Baptist preachers were Barnett, Whitaker, Marshall, Lewis Craig, and probably Richard Cave and George Stokes Smith. All of these except the first two were Separate Baptists in Virginia. The Separate Baptists as yet had organized no churches. In the whole country there were but three churches and nine preachers. There were probably two churches organized the next year and both were of the Separate order. At the close of the year 1784 there were eight small churches in the State, and not one house of worship. The winter of this year was unprecedented for coldness and many of the inhabitants were forced to eat dead carcasses. The religious condition of the. people was even worse than their temporal affairs. John Taylor says of this period: Embarrassed as my worldly circumstances were, the face of things, as to religion, gave me more pain of mind; there were a number of Baptist scattered about, but we all seemed cold as death. Everybody had so much to do that religion was scarcely talked of, even on Sundays. All our meetings seemed only the name of things, with but little of the spirit of devotion (Taylor). There is likewise the testimony of David Rice, a Presbyterian minister. He had previously visited the State, and he moved there in October, 1783. The Presbyterians had become numerous and he says of them: After I had been here some weeks, and had preached at several places. I found scarcely one man, and but few women, who supported a credible profession of religion. Some were grossly ignorant of the first principles of religion. Some were given to quarreling and fighting, some to profane swearing, some to intemperance, and perhaps the most of them totally negligent of the forms of religion in their own houses. I could not think that a church formed of such materials as these could properly be called a church of Christ. With this I was considerably distressed, and made to cry, Where am I? What situation am I in? Many of these produced certificates of their having been regular members in full communion and good standing in the churches from whence they had emigrated, and this they thought entitled them to what they called Christian privileges here. Others would be angry and raise a quarrel with their neighbors if they did not certify, contrary to their knowledge and belief, that the bearer was a good moral character. I found indeed very few on whose information I could rely respecting the moral character of those who wished to be church members (Rice, Memoirs). The year 1785 brought a fruitful revival among the churches of Kentucky. The good work spread into many communities and churches. The revival drew the churches and pastors closer together. At the close of this year there had been constituted in Kentucky, eighteen churches, eleven of Regular Baptists, and seven of Separate Baptists. There were in Kentucky at the same time nineteen Baptist preachers (Spencer, History of Kentucky Baptists, I.) Of the first twenty-five Baptist preachers who settled in Kentucky, twenty are known to have been Separate Baptists in Virginia and North Carolina; of the other five, only Joseph Barnett is known to have been a Regular Baptist. Yet, after they settled, eighteen of the twenty-five subscribed to the Philadelphia Confession of Faith and identified themselves with the Regular Baptists. The Separate Baptists organized most of the churches on the south side of the Kentucky river, constituted previous to the year 1786, and two on the north side of that stream. The Regular Baptists had two churches on the south side of that river (Spencer I.). The revival having drawn the Baptists of Kentucky together, and the need of organization being acknowledged by all, it was hoped that all could unite in one body. But though the doctrinal differences were not great, and the methods not radically different, harmony was not at this time attained. The Separates were not willing to form an association; but the Regular Baptists, in 1785, constituted two associations, the Elkhorn and the Salem. The Elkhorn Association had thirteen churches and five hundred and fifty-nine members. A writer in Rippon’s Register for 1790 reports the meeting of the Association at Lexington as follows: The increase since the last meeting amounted to 222, and their whole number was 1,383. There has been a considerable addition to some of our churches since the association. The Calvinistic system prevails much; we have a number of General Baptists in Kentucky, some Presbyterians, a few of the Church of England, with a variety of other sects. Liberty of conscience is unlimited among us. I never remember the ministers of Christ more strengthened to preach the truth, than they are of late… The Rev. John Gano was surely sent hither by Providence; he is a blessing to our new country; he and his family are in health. He is a valuable preacher. The coming of John Gano was indeed a blessing. It was very fitting upon the sitting of the first Legislature of Kentucky, in Lexington, Monday, June 4, 1792, he was chosen chaplain of both houses. The history of the organization of the South Association of Separate Baptists is involved in obscurity. It would appear that a preliminary meeting was held in October, 1787, and in May, 1788, the organization was completed. Asplund in his Register for 1790 says of them: Adopted no articles of faith, only the Bible; they hold to general provision. Correspond only with the General Committee, by letter, and sometimes delegates. Their annual meeting is held on the second Thursday in October, and besides this, they have two occasional associations in May and August, hold three days. In 1792 they reaffirmed their principles as follows: 1. What was the Separate Baptists first constituted upon, in Kentucky? Ans. The Bible. 2. How did we become united with the Baptists of Virginia, called United Baptists? Ans. On a letter the Committee of Baptists in Virginia, in Richmond, directed to be written to us, in Kentucky, bearing date, October 2, 1788, from under the signature of Reuben Ford and William Webber. 3. Did those terms oblige us to receive any part of the Philadelphia Confession of Faith? Ans. No. 4. Do we agree to abide by the constitution and terms of union with the United Baptists of Virginia? Ans. We do. The South Kentucky Association decided against all creeds and accepted the Bible alone as their confession of faith. They decided in favor of foot washing. At their preliminary meeting the following decisions were published: 1. Declared that they thought that all ministerial difficulties should be settled by a company of ministers, and that, if any minister was supposed to preach any unsound doctrine, two ministers might suspend or atop him from preaching, until he could be tried by a sufficient number of ministers; and it was provided also, that the churches should have power to cite anyone, suspectedof preaching unsound doctrine, before the ministers, in order for trial. 2. They also defined what power there was in a gospel church, viz.: To receive into her communion, and expel from it, such members as she may choose, according to the gospel discipling ; also to choose their own pastor, to refuse him, when it shall appear that he is no longer their pastor; also to excommunicate him for immoral conduct, as any other member. The union between these two parties was not effected till the year 1801. By this time those little party asperities, which had unhappily prevailed, were much mollified and diminished; their cold and indifferent charity for each other was inflamed; and with the most of them their notion of doctrine was found to be not so different as they had supposed. A union was now proposed in earnest, and soon effected with ease. Both associations had become large, containing together some seven or eight thousand members. Committees were appointed by both sides to confer on the subject of union, and after mature deliberation agreed upon the following terms: 1. That the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the infallible Word of God and the only rule of faith and practice. 2. That there is only one true God, and in the Godhead or Divine Essence there are Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 3. That by nature we are fallen and depraved creatures: 4. That salvation, regeneration, sanctification and justification are by the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. 5. That saints will persevere through grace to glory. 6. That believers’ baptism, by immersion, is necessary to receive the Lord’s Supper. 7. That the salvation of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked will be eternal. 8. That it is a duty to be tender and affectionate to one another, and to study the happiness of the children of God in general; to be engaged singly to promote the honor of God. 9. That preaching Christ tasted death for every man shall be no bar to communion. 10. And that each church may keep up their association and church government as to them may seem best. That a free correspondence and communion be kept up between the churches thus united. Unanimously agreed to by the joint committee. Ambrose Dudley David Ramsey John Price Thomas J. Chilton Joseph Redding Moses Bledsoe Robert Elkin Samuel Johnson. Thus were the names Regular and Separate no longer used and the name assumed was that of United Baptists. A harsh note of discord was heard just as the sweet melody of the revival and brotherly love began to subside, and before they had ceased. It originated in the Cooper Run Church, Bourbon county, near the present site of Paris. This was an old and honored church, having been constituted in 1787, and was probably gathered by Augustine Eastin and James Garrard. The church had been organized in the midst of privations and dangers, the contemplation of which still chills the blood. The following incident is recorded of the church: On the night of the 11th of April, nine months after the establishment of the church, a widow, named Shanks, a member of Cooper Run church, lived in a lonely cabin in a lonely part of the country. Two sons, a widowed daughter, with an infant at her breast, and three unmarried daughters, composed the pious, but bereaved family. At midnight, hurried steps were heard, succeeded by sudden knocks at the door, and accompanied by the usual exclamation, "Who keeps house here?" The lady at once recognized the Indian accent, and springing from her bed, waked her sons. Efforts were made to force the door; but the discharge of the young men’s rifles obliged the Indians to shift the attack to a less exposed point. The three girls were in another part of the humble cabin. The door was discovered and soon forced from its hinges, the oldest daughter tomahawked, the second made a prisoner, whilst the youngest fled in confusion, and ran around the cabin, wringing her hands with imploring cries. The mother and brothers within heard her cries, and would have attempted to save her; but a scream, a moan, and all was silent. They knew she had fallen under the hatchet of the merciless foe. Soon the other end of the cabin was in flames. Rapidly they spread, revealing to the helpless inmates the smile of triumph on the dark countenances of their murderers. All was lost. A brief prayer went up from the aged widow, expressing her trust in him to whom her spirit would soon return. They unbarred the door; and as she reached the style, amid the bright blaze of the burning cabin, she fell dead. The youngest son defended his endeared sister and babe, and they escaped, while his corpse lay beside that of his mother; and the older brother, wounded, and bleeding, after displaying the most intrepid valor, also escaped. These three survivors, and the five who fell, were members of the Cooper Run church (Ford, History of Kentucky Baptists, The Christian Repository, 362. July, 1856). It was in such a church as this honored by martyrs, and having a highly intellectual membership, that the trouble began. James Garrard was elected Governor of Kentucky. Marshall says of this event: General B. Logan, and James Garrard, Esq., perhaps, he should be styled, "Reverend—" as he had recently been, or was then a preacher in the Baptist society; were the candidates, for the office of governor. Both were thought to be sufficiently democratic; and the votes were nearly equal; Garrard was certified to be governor. The first of June, he entered into the office, and chose for his secretary, Harry Toulmin, who had been a follower of Dr. Priestly in England, and recently a preacher, of the Unitarian sort. Hence they preached no more—and applied themselves to the more immediate duties of their respective offices; which they discharged to general satisfaction (Marshall, II.). Toulmin, who was a polished Unitarian preacher, was appointed Secretary of State by Governor Garrard for both terms in which he served as governor. He had come to the State with complimentary letters from Thomas Jefferson. He was received as a Baptist preacher, but he was in reality a Unitarian in his beliefs. He had an elevated character, and was highly regarded for his learning and piety. Toward the close of his second term Toulmin converted Garrard to his opinions. At a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Transylvania University, February 5, 1794, Toulmin was elected by a majority vote President of that institution. This election was the signal for open warfare upon the University by the Presbyterians and others. Dr. Davidson says: The Presbyterian members of the Board strongly remonstrated against this procedure, and exerted all their influence to prevent its mischievous consequences; but they were overruled by a mad and misguided majority, and a fatal blow was thus given to the prosperity of the school (Robert Peter, The History of Transylvania University, Filson Club Publications). He was also opposed by Ambrose Dudley. There was constant trouble in the University till he resigned in April, 1796. About the year 1802 Governor Garrard and Augustine Eastin began to promulgate Arian, or rather Socinian sentiments. The majority of the church, and several neighboring churches to which Eastin preached; espoused the doctrines of Garrard and their minister. The introduction of Arian doctrines in this manner was no small affair among the Baptists of Kentucky. James Garrard was one of the most intellectual, influential and popular men in Kentucky (Butler, History of Kentucky). He was born January 14, 1749, in Virginia, and served as an officer in the militia in the War of the Revolution, and later he was elected to the Virginia legislature. Semple says of him: While in Virginia he was distinguished by his fellow citizens, and elected to the Assembly and military appointments. After he moved to Kentucky he began to preach, and was thought to possess talents for the pulpit. He continued to preach until he was made governor. For the honors of men he resigned the office of God. He relinquished the clerical robe for the more splendid mantle of human power. The prophet says to Asa: "If ye forsake God, he will forsake you." It is not strange that Colonel Garrard, after such a course, should fall into many foolish and hurtful snares. Let it be tried a thousand times, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases it will be found that preachers who aim at worldly honors will be completely ruined or greatly depreciated as preachers. It is due to Governor Garrard to say that his conduct has been orderly and, indeed, gentlemanly, and that he has honored every other character which he has ever assumed, except the one which, of all others, he ought to have valued (Semple, 407). To him, however, belongs much of the honor of securing religious freedom in the Virginia Legislature. Collins says: "He contributed by his zeal and prudence, as much, or perhaps more than any other individual, to the passage of the famous act securing religious freedom" (Collins, Historical Sketches of Kentucky) Collins continues: He was an early emigrant to Kentucky, and was exposed to all the perils and dangers incident to the settlement and occupation of the country. He was repeatedly called ‘by the voice of his fellow citizens to represent their interests of the State; and finally, by two successive elections, was elected to the chief magistracy of the commonwealth, a trust which, for eight years, he discharged with wisdom, prudence and vigor. As a man, Governor Garrard had few equals; and, in the various scenes and different stations of life, he acted with firmness, prudence and decision. At an early age, he embraced and professed the religion of Christ, giving it, through life, the preference over all sublunary things. In the private circle he was a man of great practical usefulness, and discharged with fidelity and tenderness the social and relative duties of husband, parent, neighbor, master. He died on the 19th of January, at his residence, Mount Lebanon, in Bourbon county, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. For ten years he served the Elkhorn Association as moderator. He was not a ready public speaker but he never declined to address his fellow men on the subject of religion. The defection of such a man was of no small moment. Augustine Eastin was likewise a man of note. He was the only pastor Cooper Run Church had ever had. He came from Goochland county, Virginia, and for a time he was in Chesterfield jail for his religious convictions. But he was unstable in his ways. Semple says of him: Augustine Eastin, who removed to Kentucky, and who, though a man of some talent, was never any credit to the cause of truth. He appears always to have been carried away with the opinions of others whom he wished to imitate. Sometimes he was a professed and positive Calvinist; and then shifting about he becomes warm as an Arminian. And then to the right about again he is reconvinced that Calvinism is the only true way. Having removed to Kentucky he finds some professors of high standing in civil life who lean to the Arian scheme. Mr. Eastin soon became their champion, and even writes a pamphlet in defense of Arianism. This last change has made much noise among the Baptists of Kentucky… Mr. Eastin’s moral character has not been impeached. On this head he and his coadjutors are men of high respectability (Semple). Every effort was made to reclaim these individuals and churches. A committee consisting of David Barrow, John Price, Ambrose Dudley, Joseph Redding and Carter Tarrant was appointed by the Elkhorn Association to visit Cooper Run Church, Flat Lick, Indian Creek and Union Churches and try to convince them of their error on the subject of the Trinity. The Association in the meantime reaffirmed the old articles of faith on the subject. The attempt at reclamation was unsuccessful and the Association reluctantly dropped them from connection and correspondence. For some time, the minds of many were much agitated by these new subjects of speculation; and the. eminence and ability of the men by whom they were propagated excited fearful apprehensions of their extensive prevalence. It may be recorded to the credit of the Baptists, that although Garrard and Eastin were much beloved, and of powerful influence, yet they could but take a very inconsiderable faction with them, which declined gradually and noiselessly away. Unitarianism never obtained favor with the Baptists of Kentucky (Benedict, II. 231). From this date on the Baptists consistently opposed Unitarianism. When Dr. Holley, a Unitarian minister, from Boston, was elected President of Transylvania University he was "deserted by the three leading denominations of Christians, the Baptists, the Methodists and the Presbyterians, and the (school) was sinking and must perish without a change" (The Western Luminary, a weekly Presbyterian paper, published from June 14, 1824, to July 6, 1825, p. 403. April). He was opposed among the Baptists by Dr: James Fishback, and whatever may have been his vagaries, which subjected him to much adverse criticism, he was an avowed opponent of Unitarianism. He said that Dr. Holly was "a natural religionist" and claimed that "whatever Christianity contained in distinction to natural religion was useless and false" (Davidson, History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky). This incident will suggest the attitude of the Baptists toward the Unitarians. About this time, in the South Kentucky Association of Separate Baptists, a popular minister, John Bailey, embraced the sentiments of the Restorationists or universalists. He was generally believed to be a pious man, and a majority of the association was devotedly attached to him; and insisted, although he had preached this doctrine, that he did. it in a manner not to offend the most delicate ear (Collins). On this account the association was miserably rent asunder. "Hell Redemption," as it was called, first came up in the association in 1791. Bailey had been preaching the doctrine and William Bledsoe also embraced it. The association took action as follows: Query. Whether the Association will hold a member in society, that propagates the doctrine of Restoration from hell? Agreed, they would not. Bailey voted in the affirmative and two others were neutral. A, presbytery was appointed to examine Bailey and demand of him his credentials if it was thought fit. James Smith, one of the Committee, was accused of saying that he believed that all men, for whom Christ died, would be saved. This accusation was proved. But upon his examination the association agreed that he did not teach Redemption from Hell. At this juncture, the body saw fit to agree "to abide by the plan upon which the churches of our union were constituted in October, 1787, and May, 1788." The way was opened in 1799 for the return of Bailey without enquiring into his private sentiments, provided he lived an orderly life. He was a brilliant orator and a popular man. There were many divisions and much strife. The associations of the State ceased correspondence with them. The association entertained many loose opinions and finally went off with the anti-missionary movement. Books for further reference: History of Kentucky, by the late Lewis Collins, revised, enlarged fourfold, and brought down to the year 1874 by his son, Richard H. Collins. Covington, 1878. 2 volumes. Robert McNutt McElroy, Kentucky in the Nation’s History. New York, 1909. J. H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists from 1769 to 1885, including more than 800 Biographical Sketches. Printed for the Author, 1886. 2 volumes. William Dudley Nowlin, Kentucky Baptist History 1770-1922. Louisville, 1922. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 51: 01.2.03.02. THE BAPTISTS OF THE OHIO VALLEY ======================================================================== Chapter 2 – The Baptists of the Ohio Valley The Ohio Valley—The Conditions—George Rogers Clark—The American Settlers—The French Settlers—The First Churches in Ohio—John Smith and James Lee—The Indians—The Miami Association—Illinois—T. M. Peck—Indiana—Isaac McCoy and George Waller—Judge Holman—Missouri—Iowa Hardships—Bethel Church—Fee Fee Church—Tennessee—Middle Tennessee—Alabama—Revivals in Alabama.The settlement of Kentucky brought vast changes in other sections of the Ohio Valley. The movements here involve almost the entire early history of this country. At first the territory was largely under the influence of the French Roman Catholics. The Jesuit missionary was often in advance of even the explorer and the fur trader, and while he was eagerly seeking to make converts of the Indian tribes, the missions planted by him became centers of Roman Catholic colonization. While such adventurers as La Salle, Joliet, and Nicolet, were extending westward and southward the limits of discovery, Marquette and his associates were no less active, and with no less of daring and self sacrifice, in preparing the way for what was meant should be a definite and permanent settlement in the country. "Soldiers and fur traders," says Parkman, "followed where these pioneers of the church led the way. Forts were built here and there throughout the country, and the cabins of the settlers clustered about the mission houses." The "new colonists, emigrants from Canada or disbanded soldiers of French regiments," however wild in their habits of life, were devout Catholics, and wherever a little community of them gathered there was a center of the Roman faith. The missionaries were animated, no doubt, in the main by intense desire for the conversion of the native tribes. "While the colder apostles of Protestantism labored on the outskirts of heathendom, these champions of the cross, the forlorn hope of the army of Rome, pierced to the heart of its dark and dreary domain, confronted death at every step and were well repaid for all, could they but sprinkle a few drops of water on the forehead of a child, or hang a golden crucifix round the neck of some warrior, pleased with the glittering trinket" (Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, II.). None the less they were the instruments of designs far more secular in character. As intimated in the first words of the above extract, Protestantism found no such fervid championship. The day was to come when a different form of effort for conversion of the natives should be made by ministers of a truer faith and with better results than those just described. At this time, Protestantism was represented simply in the person of the American pioneer, seeking a home farther and farther in the depths of the western wilderness, perhaps with his religious instructor and guide sharing with him the rude conditions of the wilderness life, perhaps not, yet. in either case representative of ideas which must mean in western development something far different from all that appeared in the Jesuit missionary of the Canadian settler (Smith, A History of the Baptists in the Western States East of the Mississippi). Under such conditions collisions were inevitable. As French adventurers and colonization moved westward by way of the great lakes, and southward and westward to the Ohio and the Mississippi, they found after a time their right of occupancy disputed. Meantime, while French and English were contending on battlefields in Europe, it could not fail to happen that wherever representatives of those two nationalities should meet in the new world, it must be as enemies, not as friends. The conquest of the country by General George Rogers Clark, in 1778, and the organization of a civil government by Virginia, opened the way for an American emigration. "All that rich domain northwest of the Ohio was secured to the public at the peace of 1783, in consequence of the prowess of Clark" (Appleton, Cyclopedia of American Biography. Article, George Rogers Clark). These early American settlers have been thus described by Hon. John Moses: The larger proportion of these first American settlers came from Virginia and Maryland. While a few had received a rudimentary education, and had lived among communities which may be said to have been comparatively cultured, the most of them were hardy, rough, uncultivated backwoodsmen. They had been accustomed only to the ways of the frontier and camp. Many of them had served in the war of the Revolution, and all of them in the border wars with the Indians. While they were brave, hospitable, and generous, they were more at ease beneath the forest bivouac than in the "living room" of the log cabin, and to swing a woodsman’s axe among the lofty trees of the primeval forest was a pursuit far more congenial to their rough nature and active temperament than to mingle with society in settled communities. Their habits and manners were plain, simple, and unostentatious. Their clothing was generally made of die dressed skins of the deer, wolf, or fox, while those of the buffalo and elk supplied them with covering for their feet and hands. Their log cabins were destitute of glass, nails, hinges, or locks. Their furniture and utensils were in harmony with the primitive appearance and rude character of their dwellings, being all home made, and here and there a few pewter spoons, dishes and iron knives and forks. With muscles of iron and hearts of oak, they united a tenderness for the weak and a capability for self-sacrifice worthy of an ideal knight of chivalry, and their indomitable will, which recognized no obstacle as insuperable, was equaled only by integrity which regarded dishonesty . as an offense as contemptible as cowardice (Moses, Illinois, Historical and Statistical). Over and against these were the French settlers. Parkman thus describes the colony at Kaskaskia, Illinois: The Creole of the Illinois, contented, light-hearted, and thriftless, by no means fulfilled the injunction to increase and multiply, and the colony languished in spite of the fertile soil. The people labored long enough to gain a bare subsistence for each passing day, and spent the rest of their time in dancing. and merry making, smoking, gossiping, and hunting. Their native gayety was irrepressible, and they found means to stimulate it with wine made from the fruit of the wild grapevines. Thus they passed their days, at peace with themselves, hand and glove with their Indian neighbors, and ignorant of all the world besides. Money was scarcely known among them. Skins and furs were the prevailing currency, and in every village a great portion of the land was held in common (Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, II.). The religious conditions of this section of the country have been well described by Thomas Flint. He says of the religious character of the Western people: An experiment is making in this vast country, which must ultimately contain so many millions of people, on the broadest scale on which it has ever been made, whether religion, as a national distinction of character, can be maintained without any legislative aid, or even recognition by the government. If there be any reference to religion, in any of the constitutions and enactments in the western country, beyond the simple, occasional granting of a distinct incorporation, it manifests itself in a guarded jealousy of the interference of religious feeling, or influence with the tenor of legislation. In most of the constitutions, ministers of the Gospel are expressly interdicted from any office of profit or trust, in the gift of the people. In none of the enactments are there any provisions for the support of any form of worship whatever. But if it be inferred from this, that religion occupies little or no place in the thoughts of the people, that there are no forms of worship, and few ministers of the Gospel, no inference can be wider from the fact. It is the settled political maxim of the west, that religion is a concern entirely between the conscience and God, and ought to be left solely to his guardianship and care. Ministers are not settled. Except among the Catholics, there are few settled pastors, in the sense in which that phrase is understood in New England and the Atlantic cities. Most of the ministers, that are in some sense permanent, discharge pastoral duties, not only in their individual societies, but in a wide district about them. The range of duties, the emolument, the estimation, the fact, the whole condition of a western pastor, are widely different from an Atlantic minister. There are prejudices against contracts between pastors and people. The people are generally averse to binding themselves by any previous legal obligations to a pastor for services stipulated to be performed. It is the general impression, that he ought to derive his support from voluntary contribution after services performed, and uninfluenced by any antecedent contract or understanding. There are many towns and villages, where other modes prevail; but such is the general standing feeling of the west. The west is not destitute of religious instruction. It has been a hundred times represented, and in every form of intelligence, in the eastern religious publications, that there were but few preachers in the country, and that whole wide districts had no religious instruction, or forms of worship whatever. We believe from a survey, certainly very general, and we trust, faithful, that there are as many preachers, in proportion to the people, as there are in the Atlantic country. A circulating phalanx of Methodists, Baptists, and Cumberland Presbyterians, of Atlantic missionaries, and of young elders of the Catholic theological seminaries pervades this great valley with its numerous detachments, from Pittsburg, the mountains, the lakes, the Missouri, to the gulf of Mexico. The ministers are generally itinerants. There are stationary preachers in towns, particularly in Ohio. But in the rural congregations through the western country beyond Ohio, it is seldom a minister is stationary for more than two months. Nine-tenths of the Religious instruction of the country is given by the people, who itinerate, and who are, with very few exceptions, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, men of great zeal and sanctity. A description of Camp Meetings. Suppose the scene to be, where the most frequent camp meetings have been, during the past two years, in one of the beautiful and fertile valleys among the mountains of Tennessee. On the appointed day, coaches, chaises, wagons, carts, people on horseback, and multitudes traveling from a distance on foot, wagons with provisions, mattresses; tents, and arrangements for the stay of a week, are seen hurrying from every point toward the central spot. It is in the midst of a grove of those beautiful and lofty trees natural to the valleys of Tennessee, in its deepest verdure, and beside a spring branch, for the requisite supply of water. The line of tents is pitched; and the religious city grows up in a few hours under the trees, beside the stream. Lamps are hung in lines among the branches; and the effect of their glare upon the surrounding forest, is as of magic. By this time the moon, for they take thought to appoint the meeting at the proper time of the moon, begins to show its disk above the dark summits of the mountains, and a few stars are seen glimmering through the intervals of the branches. The whole constitutes a temple worthy of the grandeur of God. An old man, in a dress of the quaintest simplicity ascends a platform, wipes the dust from his spectacles, and in a voice of suppressed emotion, gives out the hymn of which the whole assembled multitude can recite the words,-and an air in which every voice can join. We should deem poorly of the heart that would not thrill, as the song is heard like the "sound of many waters," echoing from among the hills and mountains. The hoary orator tells of God, of eternity, a judgment to come, and all that is impressive beyond. He speaks of his experiences; his toils and travels, his persecutions and welcomes, and how many he has seen in hope, in peace and triumph, gathered to their fathers; and when he speaks of the short space which remains to him, his only regret is, that he can no more proclaim, in the silence of death, the mercies of his crucified Redeemer. The effects of Camp Meetings. Notwithstanding all that has been said in derision of these spectacles, so common in these regions, it cannot be denied, that the influence, on the whole, is salutary, and the general bearing upon the great interests of community, good. The gambling and drinking shops are deserted; and the people that used to congregate there, now go to the religious meetings. The usefulness of Methodist and Baptist ministers, missionaries from the East. The Methodists, too, have done great and incalculable good. They are generally of a character, education, and training, that prepare them for the element upon which they are destined to operate. They speak the dialect, understand the interests, and enter into the feelings of their audience. They exert a prodigious and incalculable bearing upon the rough backwoodsmen, and do good, where more polished and trained ministers would preach without effect. No mind but his for whom they labor can know how many profane they have reclaimed, drunkards they have reformed, and wanderers they have brought home to God. The Baptists, too, and the missionaries from the Atlantic country, seeing such a wide and open field before them, labor with great diligence and earnestness, operating generally upon another class of community (Thomas Flint, The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley. Second Edition. Cincinnati, 1832). The Baptists were the first to enter this territory and to organize a church. The first church was planted in Ohio, called Columbia, now Cincinnati, in 1790. This company has been thus described: It was on the 18th of November, 1788, that a company of twenty-three men, some of them hardly grown, three women and two children, (the oldest only five years of age) landed from the flat boat on which they had floated from Pittsburgh and began to erect the cabins in which they proposed to spend the winter, awaiting the arrival of other relatives-fathers and mothers, and wives and children-in the spring. Most of these people had come from Essex county, New Jersey, and several of them had been members of the old Scotch Plains Baptist Church, from which the First Baptist Church of New York City had been organized, and of which Rev. John Gano, noted for having been among the most efficient and influential chaplains in the army of the Revolution had been pastor. The leader of that company of Pioneers was Major Benjamin Stites, who later became very prominent in this church. There was also General John Gano and wife (The Journal and Messenger, July, 1889). Rev. Stephen Gano, of Providence, Rhode Island, visited this little band, in 1790, baptized three persons and organized the church. The next May the church chose John Smith to be their pastor. He was a Virginian, a very able, talented man, an excellent orator, whose voice could be heard at a great distance in the open air, and thus admirably adapted to a new country. He was everywhere heard gladly. For several years he was very useful, till he became involved in politics, the great mistake of his life, as he himself admitted. He was a member of the Convention for the adoption of a State Constitution for Ohio, and one of the first senators in Congress. He became intimately acquainted with Aaron Burr, and entertained him for a week or more at his home in Cincinnati. When Burr was suspected of treason, suspicion also fell on Smith. He was tried in the Senate, and although not proved guilty, there were so many against him, that he resigned. In 1808 he left Cincinnati for Louisiana, where he lived in obscurity for fifteen or sixteen years till his death. Some of his enemies were bitter persecutors, but those who knew him best had great confidence in him. Associated with John Smith was James Lee of Virginia. He was a man of marked personality. He has been thus described: He could not read even when of age, but seemed evidently called of God to preach the gospel. He had hardly heard a sermon till his majority but was soon after licensed to preach by some church in Kentucky. In an excursion through the Miami country he called upon Elder Smith on Saturday, and on his way to church Sunday morning, Elder Smith learned that he was a preacher, and urged him to preach, though having been traveling for several weeks he was in no condition to appear in the pulpit. But he yielded to entreaty and ventured to speak to the people both morning and evening. This was God’s introduction for his servant to some twenty-five years of usefulness in the Miami Association. These and other ministers were assisted by distinguished lay. men. Two of these were Judge Francis Dunlevy and Judge Matthias Corwin. Judge Dunlevy "was one of the early Baptists of the Northwestern Territory, and in the pioneer history of the territory actively shared. He became a member of the Columbia Church in 1792; was one of the conference which took the first steps toward organizing the Miami Association and, it was said long after, drew up the articles of faith agreed upon by the Association. He continued an active member of the church in Miami Valley until his death, November 6, 1839, a period of forty-seven years, and had been a member of the Baptist church some five or six years previous to his uniting with the Columbia Church" (A. H. Dunlevy, History of the Miami Association.). Judge Matthias Corwin had likewise held important political positions. "When at home he was always at his post; and so constant was his attendance upon the meetings of the church that if he was missed at any time, when at home, it was known that something unusual had detained him. He was frequently one of the messengers of the church in the association, often a messenger of the association to some corresponding body, and on several occasions was appointed to prepare circular and corresponding letters of the association as well as the letters of his own church" (Dunlevy). "This settlement was made in perilous times," says Benedict. "The Indians made every exertion to cut them off and prevent their settlement. They tried many stratagems to decoy them ashore on their passage down the river; and after they settled they were continually lurking to destroy them. They were obliged, for a number of years, to live mostly in forts and blockhouses; but, notwithstanding all of their precautions a number of the first settlers fell victims to the rage of their savage neighbors" (Benedict). The Miami Association was founded in 1797, of four churches, with about one hundred members in all. In 1805 the Scioto Association was formed from this one, with four churches, and three years afterwards six other churches were dismissed from the Red Stone Association and formed into a new organization. The emigration to Ohio, being principally from those parts of New England where Baptists were few, did not increase in proportion to the population. About 1825 a great revival was experienced in all the Baptist churches of the State. The beginnings followed the powerful preaching of Jeremiah Vardeman, then of Kentucky, who held a series of meetings in Cincinnati with great success, several hundred being converted under his ministry in the course of a few weeks. The revival spread through the churches adjacent, and the organization of the Ninth Street Church, Cincinnati, was one of the results (S. H. Ford, Planting and Progress of Baptist Churches in the Valley, The Christian Repository, October, 1875. XVII. 241). The Baptists were the first, after the Roman Catholics, to enter the territory of Illinois. The following narrative of their introduction into this State is largely taken from the account of J. M. Peck, who was more conversant with the facts than any other man: About the year 1786 a number of families had settled in the American Bottom, and in the hill country of what is now called Monroe county. They came chiefly from western Virginia and Kentucky. In 1787, James Smith, a Baptist minister, whose name is found in the first table of Kentucky, made them a visit, and preached the gospel with good effect. A few families from their first settlement had been in the habit of keeping the Sabbath, governing their children, and holding meetings for religious purposes. At that period there were none who had been members of churches. Their method of observing the Sabbath was to meet, sing hymns, and one would read a chapter of the Scriptures, or a sermon from some author. No public prayer was made until after the visit of Smith, and some had professed to be converted. It deserves to be noted that the descendants of these families are now exceedingly numerous, that a very large proportion are professors of religion, that are marked for industry, sobriety and good order in their families, and in one of the families there are five ministers of the gospel. James Smith visited the settlements in Illinois three times. The Indians made frequent depredations, and on one occasion, they captured Smith, and conveyed him prisoner to their town on the Wabash. The people of Illinois, though extremely poor, raised the ransom of one hundred and seventy dollars. In January, 1794, Josiah Dodge, originally from Connecticut, but one of the pioneers of Kentucky, visited Illinois and in February baptized four converts. One of those baptized was James Lemen, Sr., who became a preacher, and left four sons who were preachers. No church was organized on this occasion. In the spring of 1796 David Badgley removed his family from Virginia to this territory, preached among the people for several weeks, baptized fifteen persons, and with the aid of Joseph Chance, organized the New Design Baptist Church of twenty-eight members. The work prospered and shortly afterwards, in 1798, the two men organized another church of fifteen members in the American Bottom. The churches in Illinois soon became sadly divided on the subject of slavery and other causes. These Baptists of Illinois lived a genuinely pioneer life. "Many a family," says one who was associated with these heroes of the faith, "long after the New Design was settled, was exterminated, tomahawked, and scalped by the Indians. The cougar, the coyote, the bear, the Indian, had to be met in those days, by one class of men, while another class turned the sod, tilled the soils reaped the grain, and still another had to plant, build and sustain the churches. All of these onerous duties were often performed by one and the same class. The man went to the place of worship clad in a suit of dressed buckskin, with moccasins on his feet, shot pouch swung to his side, and the ever present rifle on his shoulder, and preached the gospel to the few neighbors gathered inside the log cabin while others were stationed as pickets." In this company of pioneers J. M. Peck was a mighty man. Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1789, a descendant of one of those by whom the New England colonies were planted, with imperfect advantages of early education, reared as a Congregationalist, but becoming a Baptist through independent study of the New Testament, ordained at Catskill, New York, in 1813, after a brief pastorate in Amenia, in that State, he removed in 1816 to Philadelphia, where he studied theology under Dr. Stoughton, and having later caught the missionary spirit from Luther Rice, devoted his life thenceforth to missionary services in the West. His home was at first in St. Louis and St. Charles, Missouri, but after some years he fixed it finally at Rock Spring, Illinois. From this time on he became a principal figure in Illinois Baptist history, until his death in 1858. "He was," says Sprague, "undoubtedly one of the most remarkable self-made men of his day." He was among Baptists in Home Mission work in the West what Judson was to then in Foreign Work. After a long and tiresome trip he reached St. Louis, which for a time was the base of his operations. In this new country he had assumed a most discouraging task, and his Journal sets forth the extreme difficulties which he encountered. "The people," said he "throughout these extreme frontier settlements were quite ignorant; few could read, and fewer families had Bibles. They knew not the name of a single missionary on earth, and could not comprehend the reasons why money should be raised for the expenses, or why ministers should leave their own neighborhoods to preach the gospel to the destitute. They manifested the same apathy in their worldly business. A small corn field and a truck patch were the height of their ambition. Venison, bear meat, and hog meat dressed and cooked in the most slovenly and filthy manner, with cornbread baked in form of a pone, and when cold as hard as a bricket, constituted their provisions. Coffee and tea were prohibited articles amongst this class; for had they possessed these articles, not one woman in ten knew how to cook them. Not a school had existed. A kind of half-savage life appeared to be their choice. Doubtless in a few years, when the land came into market, this class of ‘squatters’ cleared out for the frontier range in Arkansas." His directions for spending a comfortable night in the open are interesting. He says: The first thing is to select the right place in some hollow or ravine protected from the wind, and if possible behind some old forest giant which the storms of winter have prostrated. And then, reader, don’t build your fire against the tree, for this is the place for your head and shoulders to lie, and around which the smoke and heated air may curl. Then don’t be so childish as to lie on the wet or cold frozen earth, without a bed. Gather a quantity of grass, leaves, and small brush, and after you have cleared away the snow, and provided for protection from the wet or cold earth, you may sleep comfortably. If you have a piece of jerked venison, and a bit of pone with a cup of water, you may make out a splendid supper, provided you think so, "for as a man thinketh so he is." He was never a great speaker but he was a great organizer. He saw in the new country the need of schools. On a visit to the Bethel Association in Missouri he put in operation a plan of a society which worked wonders. When he was called on by the association "to speak upon the subject of missions he presented a copy of the annual report of the Board, and then enlarged at length upon the value of missionary work, and the opportunities which were opening for large and successful undertakings by the denomination. He also suggested that the association through its corresponding secretary enter into a correspondence with the Board of Foreign Missions. Then he outlined the plan of a proposed society to embrace all Baptist churches in Missouri and Illinois which should desire to affiliate with it. He submitted for discussion a carefully prepared Constitution. According to its provisions the objects of the new society were to be two-fold,-to aid the Western Mission in spreading the gospel and in providing common schools in the western part of America, both among the whites and the Indians. A person of good moral character could become a member on payment of an annual fee of five dollars. Each Baptist association contributing to the work could send two missionaries to the annual meeting. "One of the matters particularly emphasized was the consideration of means whereby prospective school teachers and ministers could be aided in obtaining an education. It was not the purpose of the founders to use any of the funds of the society to pay the salaries of teachers amongst the white settlers. This would be done by the local communities. But the society was to aid worthy young people to prepare for the ministry or for a profession; and it was also to be on the lookout constantly for good teachers, to import them from the East, if deemed advisable, and to introduce them to the. schools. In other words, it was to combine, in this department of activity, the functions of a Teachers’ Recruiting Station, a Board of Education and a Teachers’ Agency. "In spite of the opposition of two visiting preachers from the Boone’s Lick Country, who were anti-mission and anti-everything, the Bethel Association voted heartily to endorse the plan embodied in the Constitution which had been submitted. It was formally adopted by the Illinois Association on October 10th, and by the Missouri Association October 24th. Following its adoption by the latter body the organization of the society was completed; and, under the vigorous leadership of Mr. Peck, it began operation almost immediately. It was the first society of any denomination to be organized west of the Mississippi for philanthropic purposes. "It is natural for ardent natures to dream dreams. It is easy and fascinating to form plans and to translate them into constitutions and by-laws. The new society was a vision and an ambition. Was it anything more? The provisions already outlined, for instance, with regard to the oversight of teachers and the improvement of educational facilities sound impressive, and rather statesmanlike, but were they workable? Distances were great; facilities for travel were at a minimum; the churches were poor and widely scattered; the preachers were ignorant; the sentiment against schools and education was strong; the people were occupied with the immediate tasks of clearing the land and making a livelihood; all the conditions of life were primitive; immorality was prevalent and religious indifference was almost universal. How was the strong and positive influence of a new educational system to be made effective? It is difficult to say just how it was done; but that it was really accomplished is shown by the facts. Within three years after the formation of the new society more than fifty schools were established in Missouri and Illinois, where common nuisances, with drunken, with illiterate Irish Catholics at their head, had before existed. This seems startling, almost inconceivable, yet the fact stands" (Austen Kennedy de Blois, John Mason Peck, 34, 35. New York, 1917). Out of this movement came Shurtleff College. About the year 1800 the immense stretch of country from the Ohio to the Lakes, and thence to the Mississippi, was known as the Northwest Territory. It was divided into seven counties. Wayne county included the whole of Michigan, and Knox county the most of Indiana and a part of Illinois. When the settlers in this wilderness began to clear small patches of ground, William McCoy, of Shelby county, Kentucky, made frequent visits to Indiana, and preached the gospel with good results. He was the father of Isaac McCoy, who became the apostle to the Indians in this section. As a result of these visits he organized a church about the year 1798 called Silver Creek. There has been some dispute in regard to this church for it appears to have been at times likewise called "Owen’s Creek, Knox county." He had a son, Isaac McCoy, who was associated with George Waller of Kentucky. Together they explored the wilderness of the Indian Territory as far as Vincennes, preaching wherever they could gather a few persons in cabins and in the woods. Through their instrumentality a church was organized eight miles north of Vincennes, in 1806, and the same year a church called Bethel, further down the Wabash. These were followed by the organization of Patoka, Salem, Moriah and Pigeon Creek churches. These six churches with six ministers, Alexander Devens, James Martin, Isaac McCoy, and Stephen Strickland, were formed into an association called Wabash. It met in the Bethel meeting house, Knox county, and the sermon was preached by George Waller. The churches numbered one hundred and thirty-three communicants. This was three years before the organization of the Silver Creek Association, whose churches were planted earlier. The remoteness of the Wabash from other associations doubtless hastened the organization. The Silver Creek Association was formed in 1812 from churches mostly dismissed from the Long Run Association, in Kentucky. These associations were followed by others in this section (J. M. Peck, Historical Sketches, The Baptist Memorial and Monthly Chronicle, 197, 198. July, 1842). In the southwestern portion of the State a few Baptists settled in 1809. George Hume, from Campbellsburg, Kentucky, made repeated visits to the Laughrey, a stream which empties into the great Miami a few miles below Cincinnati. His labors were blessed, and in 1811, a revival followed, in which a great number were baptized. Thus, the Laughrey Church was formed, and built the first house of worship, costing three hundred dollars. This was the first church house in this district. An association was soon formed. The two foremost men were John Watts and Jesse Holman. Watts was a man of great gifts, but gave up the ministry to become a United States Senator. Holman was born near Danville, Kentucky. He became the Supreme Judge of the State and afterwards a Federal Judge. He did not give up the ministry and was a tower of strength for the Baptist cause. The following story of the removal of Judge Holman to Indiana was published after his death and will give some idea of the sacrifices and hardships of these early settlers. He says: I sent my household furniture, a very small stock, by water, in time to reach Verdestan before my arrival. The weather had been remarkably fine for several days, and on Monday evening, when we crossed the river into Indiana, there seemed to be a fair prospect of its continuance, but about the time we started on Tuesday morning it commenced snowing, and the snow continued to fall all day. My wife’s health was still delicate, and her babe but two months old, yet we persevered in our journey. In fact, there was but little prospect of doing better, as there were very few families living on the road, and not much promise of accommodation, in any of them. When we reached our cabin, we were cold, hungry, and fatigued—and what a prospect was presented! The eye of civilized woman scarcely ever looked upon a more lonely, dreary, desolate habitation. The men who had charge of my furniture had not arrived; no mark of human feet—no, nor the feet of any animal—had disturbed the smooth surface of the snow. All was still—as uniform—as unbroken, as if no living thing had ever been there, or had long since departed. The inside of the but was as chilling and cheerless as the prospect without. The snow had drifted through the crevices in the roof, and down the open chimney, and covered the floor, and in some places was as deep as it was without. There was no fire, and it was more than a mile down the long river hill to the nearest dwelling, and night was. setting in. And there we were—myself weary—my wife sinking with exhaustion, chilled and shivering with cold—our sweet, tender infant—it was no time for thought, but for action. Not that we don’t think in such emergencies; but thoughts rush in such rapid succession that scarcely a moment is employed in thinking. I had a small feather bed and some blankets which I had used while preparing my habitation. I scraped the snow from a part of the floor, and there laid the bed, and folded my wife and baby in the blankets, then laid them on the bed, and wrapped it over them—cheered and encouraged the dear woman with the assurance that she should have all the comforts it was in my power to give-gave her lips and heart all the warmth my kisses could impart—and then secured my horses and sought the nearest habitation. There are very few who can outrun me when I put forth my utmost speed, and never had I such a motive for such speed before. I had run when I thought the Indian’s tomahawk just behind me—I had run from the fangs of the surly bear and the ferocious wolf—but I never before ran to prevent my wife and child from perishing with cold. Seldom, if ever, was such a distance traversed by man in so short a time. The strides I made in descending the hill could afterwards be seen in the snow, and they were prodigious; but I could have run no further. I instantly dispatched two men, inspired with something of the energy with which I was nerved. I had to pause and breathe a few minutes myself, but my wife and child were too dear to me to let me linger while I was able to move. I returned, however, much slower than I came. My two neighbors, with a zeal and diligence for which I shall always feel grateful, had built up a large blazing fire, and swept the snow from the floor, and my wife with a bright countenance was soon seated before the fire, on one of the few stools which were my only seats. Our neighbors having rendered all the assistance we needed, returned home. I had a coffee pot and some tin cups, in which we made and drank our tea, not the most palatable to refined tea drinkers; but we were thankful for it-after which I read a chapter in the Bible, and we for the first time in our lives, knelt down together and gave thanks to God for the mercies we had enjoyed, and committed ourselves to his paternal case. There is not much of this world’s goods that are absolutely necessary to happiness, and we laid down that night on our very humble couch with feelings as cheerful as we had ever enjoyed when surrounded with all the comforts, the luxuries, and the splendors of life. So it was with me, and so I believe it was with my wife. She was far less accustomed to privations than I was; but she always said, and I believe she said truly, that she could be happy with me in any situation. But she was now and for a long time put severely to the test. Our furniture did not arrive; we looked for it day after day, but it came not; we were suffering for the want of it; and our neighbors were too few, too far distant, and too destitute themselves to lend us any, and there was none to be purchased. I borrowed a single chair, and one or two trifling articles, and with these we lived for about a week. I was compelled to go out several times among the neighbors, in order to procure the means of subsistence, and we had few nearer than three or four miles. On these occasions Betsey was left alone with the infant in a solitary wild, where no human beings were to be seen, and she knew not where to be found in case she needed assistance or protection. Transported at once from a populous region, swarming with inhabitants; from the border of a highway, along which a stream of passengers was incessantly flowing, to an unpeopled wilderness, which the retiring savages had recently given up to the wild beasts and a few backwoods Americans, her imagination had full room for dreary pictures and dark apprehensions. Everything tended to invite gloom and foreboding. My presence insured protection; my smile lightened the solitary scenery; but in my absence, all was startling loneliness (The Banner and Western Pioneer, 1842). From 1731 to 1803, the condition of the governmental affairs of the province of Louisiana, which then included what is now the State of Missouri, was far from being settled. The question of Spanish or French rule was not arranged to the satisfaction of the people. Yet for years the "Upper Territory" was under the control of a Spanish governor whose headquarters were at Cape Girardeau. Here he ruled with the pomp and severity of an oriental prince. He was never without a retinue of priestly advisers. Influenced by these vassals of the pope, he at one time issued an order that all the people who resided within a distance of fifteen miles from his mansion, should, on a certain day, attend "mass" at Cape Girardeau. The few Baptists then in the province, and residing in the district named in the order, dared to disobey the command. And it was only by what the priests termed "the neglect of the governor," that they narrowly escaped the penalties of their heretical insubordination (Dunean, A History of the Baptists of Missouri.). During the Franco-Spanish period some Baptists ventured to leave their homes under the protection of the Stars and Stripes and take up residence in the wilds of Missouri. It appears that the Baptists were the first non-Roman Catholics among the whites who settled in this territory. These were found in 1796 a few miles south of where the town of Jackson, in Cape Girardeau county, is now located. These adventurous Christians made their homes in the forests. Besides these few settlers there were in that immediate section no other human beings except the savage red man. The institutions of Christianity had not found a home in the forest, and the few Baptists assembled only occasionally to read the Scriptures, and have song and prayer in their lonely cabins. But in 1799 an aged Baptist preacher named Thomas Johnson came among them. He was from the State of Georgia where he had been a missionary among the Cherokee Indians. He was on a voluntary missionary tour at his own charges and at the risk of his life. His preaching was in violation of the established government of the country, but his preaching was a great comfort to these poor people. He was the first to administer baptism in the State of Missouri. The subject was Mrs. Ballow who was baptized in Randall’s Creek (Pope Yeaman, A History of the Missouri Baptist General Association). The first church organized in the State was in the Tywappity Bottom under the preaching of David Green, a native of Virginia, who had spent much time in preaching in North Carolina and had early gone to Kentucky. After preaching here for a period he returned and fixed his home in Cape Girardeau county. This Tywappity church was a feeble body from the beginning and became extinct after a few years. These settlers suffered most distressing hardships for many years. As late as November 15, 1817, an eye-witness describes the conditions existing among them as follows: When we left Shawneetown, there was not half a barrel of flour in the place, and it was by special favor that we got two loaves of bread. We had laid in a supply of fresh beef, and the captain had a small stock of hard sea biscuit. A supply of eatables of some sort must be had at the first settlement, and this proved to be Tywappity Bottom, on Sunday at 12 o’clock. Here I found two Baptist families, learned some important facts about the state of religion and schools in this part of the territory, but no milk and no meal could be had. We obtained a few ears of damp corn from the field, and a bushel of potatoes. The mills, such as then existed, were out of repair, and no family enjoyed the benefit of corn dodgers. Hominy was the substitute for bread. Bethel church, the second in the territory, was organized July 19, 1806, in the same county. David Green, the minister, and deacons George Lawrence and Henry. Cockerham officiated in the constitution. The first house of worship erected in Missouri, save by the Roman Catholics, was erected not long after its organization by the Bethel church. It was constructed mainly of very large yellow poplar logs well hewn. The building was about twenty by thirty feet. Several churches were organized out of this one, notably the one in Jackson. J. M. Peck, who visited the church in 1818, gives the following description: "On the 7th of November—Saturday—I met the church in Bethel meeting house. Eld. William Street, who had come from a settlement down the St.. Francois, had preached before my arrival. The church sat in order and transacted business. I then preached from Isaiah 53:1, and Eld. James P. Edwards followed me from John 14:6. The people tarried through all of these exercises with apparent satisfaction. Custom and common sense are the best guides in such matters. Dinner was never thought of on meeting days. The Cape Girardeau Society, auxiliary to the United Society, had already been formed in this vicinity, and there were more real friends and liberal contributors to missions in this church than in any other in the territory. Yet in a few years, from the formation of Jackson and a few other churches from this, the death of some valuable members, and the removal of others of a different spirit, Bethel church had ‘Ichabod’ written on her doors. It became a selfish, lifeless, and anti-mission body." The first Baptists of St. Louis county formed three settlements, the Spanish Pond, Bridgeton and Fee Fee’s Creek. For several years these emigrants were destitute of preaching. Finally, in 1798, came John Clark, the first "preacher, other than Roman Catholic, that ever set foot on the western shore of the Mississippi River." He was born in Scotland, November, 29, 1758. His family connections for many generations had been strict Presbyterians. He had received a liberal education in the common branches. In 1787 he removed to Georgia and settled on the banks of the Savannah River, where he was ordained a Methodist deacon by Bishop Asbury. Having become dissatisfied with the episcopal form of government of that church, he severed his connection with it. About the year 1803 he became a Baptist in the following singular manner: He was intimate with an independent Methodist minister by the name of Talbot. Both were dissatisfied with their baptism. A meeting was appointed. Talbot baptized Clark, who in turn baptized Talbot and several others. "At the next meeting a month later, Mr. Clark baptized two or three others of his society… It was ten or twelve years after this before he became regularly connected with the Baptist denomination." Clark was the pioneer preacher of Missouri. His mode of travel was on foot, for there were no railroads or steamboats in those days. At length some friends furnished him with -a pony, saddle, bridle and saddle bags and induced him to ride. He was much troubled lest the pony would either hurt him or itself. Whenever he came to a creek or a muddy slough, he would dismount, throw his saddle bags over his shoulder, take off his nether garments, and carefully lead his horse through mud and water, often to the depths of three feet. His thoughts were so distracted by the pony that on his return home, he entreated his friends to take back the horse which interfered with his religious duties. He would travel through heat and cold, wet and dry, rather than miss an appointment. On one occasion he traveled all night to reach his destination. He was soon afterwards followed by Thomas R. Musick who was the first permanent Baptist preacher in Missouri. The first sermon preached in Iowa was by a Baptist, John Logan, of McDonough county, Illinois, in a rude cabin, the home of Noble Housley, Des Moines county, October 19, 1834. Among the first settlers in this part of the Territory were a few Baptists from Illinois and Kentucky, who desired to be organized into a church, and so they invited two ministers, Logan and Bartlett, to visit them. After a sermon on the next day by Logan, eleven persons were enrolled as a church. The articles of faith adopted had been copied by William Manly, one of the members, from the Brush Creek Baptist Church, Green county, Kentucky. The church was named the Regular Baptist Church of Long Creek, and is now known as the Danville Baptist Church. At the time of the organization Iowa was a vast wilderness, and what is now known as the city of Burlington was a village of a half-dozen rude log huts. There was no minister of any denomination in all this country, and no religious service of any kind. Logan continued his visits to this little flock for about eighteen months. The records of the church show that there were baptisms in 1838, but no mention is made of the administrator. The first mention of a pastor is in June, 1840. The minutes of the meeting read: Called Eld. A. Evans for one year, for which the church agreed to contribute for the support $75.00. Eld. Evans labored as pastor about four years, and was succeeded by Eld. H. Burnett. Of the success attending the early labors of these brethren, Eld. R. King, the present pastor writes: One peculiar feature of the early history of the church, is the gradual and constant increase. Conversions seem to take place through the entire year, and baptisms are reported at twenty-three regular meetings, during a period of four years and ten months. Two other churches, Rock Spring and Pisgah, were formed in 1838, and the three numbered at this time ninety members. In August; 1839, in a grove near Danville, the Iowa Baptist Association was formed. There were ten messengers present from the three little churches, and the ministers were J. Todd, A. Evans and H. Johnson. Todd was chosen moderator, and the other nine sat on a log while he stood before them resting on the back of a chair; and thus they transacted business. In 1842 the Davenport Association was organized, and the name of the body was changed to Des Moines, to denote better its location. Later it was divided into other associations. In June, 1842, twenty-six brethren met in Iowa City and organized the Iowa General Association. Some of these persons walked seventy-five miles to attend this meeting. The object of the organization was stated to be: "To Promote the Preaching of the Gospel, Ministerial Education, and all the General Objects of Benevolence throughout the Territory (George W. Robey, Planting and Progress of the Baptist Cause in Iowa; The Christian Repository, December, 1876. XXII. 410). After the Revolutionary War Tennessee was called The Deceded Territory of North Carolina. There was an attempt made in 1754 by North Carolinians to settle in Tennessee, but they were driven off by the Indians. Following the waters of the Holston and Clinch rivers, they located near Knoxville as early as 1756, and were soon followed by a few others. The Baptists were the first to plant churches in the State. Baptist churches were organized as early as 1765 in East Tennessee on the above rivers. They were broken up by the Indian War of 1774, but they were soon reinforced by new settlers. One on Clinch river, by the name of Glad Hollow, was reorganized the next year. "Amidst these scenes of disorder and violence," says Ramsey, "the Christian ministry began to shed its benign influence. Tidence Lane, a Baptist preacher, organized a congregation this year, 1779. A house of public worship was erected on Buffalo Ridge" (Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee). The historian Benedict gives the following account: "But the beginning of the first churches, which have had a permanent standing, was in the following manner: about the year 1780, William Murphy, James Keel, Thomas Murrell, Tidence Lane, Isaac Barton, Mathew Talbot, Joshua Kelby, and John Chastain, moved into what is called the Holston country, when it was a wilderness state, and much exposed to the ravages and depredations of the Indians. These ministers were all Virginians, except Mr. Lane, who was from North Carolina. They were accompanied by a considerable number of their brethren from the churches which they left, and were followed shortly after by Jonathan Mulky, William Reno, and some other ministers and brethren, and among other emigrants there was a small body, which went out in something like a church capacity. They removed from the old church at Sandy creek in North Carolina, which was planted by Shubeal Stearns; and as a branch of the mother church, they emigrated to the wilderness and settled on Boon’s creek" (Benedict). Next year six churches had been organized, which held semiannual conferences, until 1786, when the Holston Association was organized, with seven churches and six ministers. Revivals of religion were enjoyed, converts were multiplied, and in 1793 the Holston Association included sixteen churches, twelve ordained ministers, and 1,033 communicants. The Baptists of East Tennessee, were a mixture of Regulars and Separates, though the Calvinistic principles prevailed in the Association. The settlements in Middle Tennessee were not commenced till a number of years after those in East Tennessee had become large and flourishing. In the year 1780, a party of about forty families, invited by the richness of the Cumberland country, under the guidance and direction of Gen. James Robertson, passed through a wilderness of at least three hundred miles to the French Lick, and there founded the city of Nashville, on the Cumberland, and commenced settlements in that vicinity. There were some few Baptists in this company of emigrants. Several churches were gathered and an association organized, called Mero District, in 1796. By 1801 the association had increased to 18 churches, 16 ordained ministers, and about 1,200 members (J. M. Peck, Baptists in the Mississippi Valley, The Christian Review, October, 1852. XVII. 489). In 1810 there was one church belonging to the South Kentucky Association. It was located at "the forks of Sulphur and Red rivers; John Grammar, pastor; number of members 30, constituted in 1786." This church became extinct, and "they must have been an adventurous set of people to settle in such a remote region, where they were continually exposed to distractive depredations of the Indians." This church was constituted by preachers from the Elkhorn Association in Kentucky. This is now Robertson county. Another church was soon after located at the head of Sulphur Fork. It was constituted in North Carolina as a traveling church, and settled near Fort Station. Other churches followed—Mill Creek and Richland Creek, near Nashville. An association was formed of fifteen churches in 1803, and in three years increased to thirty-nine churches, with 1,900 members. Soon after the Red River Association was formed, embracing the churches south of the Cumberland and along the Kentucky line. Concord Association was organized in 1810, and included the churches in and around Nashville. Three associations were organized early in the nineteenth century between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers—Forked Deer, Central and the Big Hatchie. The settlement of Alabama was of comparative late date. Perhaps Hosea Holcombe gives the best account of the rise of the Baptists in this State. He says: "The northern part of the State, i.e., north of the Tennessee river, particularly Madison county, which is a beautiful and fertile county, was settled many years before any other part of the state, except a small section on the Tombigbee River, about St. Stephens. In the first settling of Madison county there were some Baptists. Elder John Nicholson, who became pastor of the first church constituted in Madison county, John Canterbury and Zadock Baker, were, as we learn, among the first Baptist ministers, who labored in this wilderness. The beauty of the country—fertility of the soil—the excellent springs of water, combined with many other advantages, soon drew a dense population into this region, and in the course of a few years, a number of Baptist churches were formed. Worldly inducements brought a number of ministers into this region; some of whom died in a short time; and others removed; and although there were those who stood high in the estimation of the people, yet, as we have mentioned in the history of the Flint River Association, it appears that they labored in vain. The hearts of preachers and people were fixed too much on the fleeting things of time and sense. It was easy to accumulate wealth, and professors of religion as well as others, gave themselves up to the flattering prospects of gain. Elders R. Shackleford, W. Eddins, and Bennet Wood, were among the early ministers in this country; men, whose names will live long in the recollections of many; others settled about the same time, among whom were Jeremiah Tucker, George Tucker, John Smith, J. C. Latta, and J. Thompson, all of whom have since died, or left the country. "About the year 1808, or earlier, some Baptists were found in the southern part, near the Tombigbee river, in Clarke and Washington counties. Wm. Cochran, a licensed preacher from Georgia, is said to have been the first in Clarke county, and a Mr. Gorham, who died in a short time, the first in Washington county. The last named county lies on the west side of the river, and Clarke on the east. In the latter, a church was organized in 1810, by Eld. J. Courtney, Elder Joseph McGee, who was highly esteemed as a minister of Christ, settled here shortly after. There was no great increase of Baptists in this country until after Jackson’s purchase was made. In 1815 and 1816 the tide of emigration began to flow into this Indian country, and on until 1820; and after that there was a continual flood, pouring in from almost every State in the Union. From the Tennessee river to Florida; and from the Coosa to the Tombigbee, there was scarcely a spot but what was visited by emigrants, or those who wished to be such. Churches were formed in almost every part of the State, and a number of laborious, and indefatigable ministers of the gospel, came in and settled this country. "Houses for the worship of God were scarce for several years after the writer .came to this country in 1818; and many of those which were erected, were more like Indian wigwams than anything else; only they were, more open and uncomfortable. It was common in those days when the weather was favorable, for the minister to take his stand under some convenient shady bower, while the people would seat themselves around him on the ground. In many instances, large congregations would assemble; and they were far more attentive to the Word than they are at this time in many comfortable places, as in some instances a hard shower of rain would disperse them" (Holcombe, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Alabama). Holcombe gives an account of the revival services held, which soon became common in the South. "The first camp meeting," says he, "perhaps, ever known in Alabama, was held with the church, where the writer has his membership. This meeting took place about the first of October, 1831 it continued for five or six days, and twelve or fifteen families tented on the ground. Here the Lord made bare his arm, and displayed his power in the salvation of many precious souls. The groans and cries of repenting sinners, the songs and prayers, the shouts and praises of Christians, formed an awful, and yet delightful harmony. At this meeting there commenced the greatest general revival ever known at that time, in middle Alabama; it continued over twelve months; during which period there were near 500 baptized in three or four churches. One of the happiest seasons of the life of the author was the cold winter of 1831, and ‘32; during which he baptized over 150. From that time camp meetings became common among the Baptists in different parts of the State; yet some churches disapproved of the course. That there were extravagances at some of those meetings, we think few will deny; yet there was much good done. ‘It was not unusual to have a large portion of the congregation prostrated on the ground; and in some instances they appeared to have -lost the use of their limbs. No distinct articulation could be heard; screams, cries, shouts, notes of grief, and notes of joy, all heard at the same time, made much confusion,-a sort of indescribable concert. At associations, and other great meetings, where there were several ministers present, many of them would exercise their gifts at the same time, in different parts of the congregation; some in exhortation, others in prayer for the distressed; and others again, in argument with opposers. A number of the preachers did not approve of this kind of work; they thought it extravagant. Others fanned it as a fire from heaven.’ When the winnowing time calve on, it was clearly demonstrated that there was much good wheat; notwithstanding, there was a considerable quantity of chaff" (Holcombe, 45, 46) . Books for further reference: Justin A. Smith, A History of the Baptists in the Western States East of the Mississippi. Philadelphia, 1896. R. S. Duncan, A History of the Baptists in Missouri, embracing an Account of the Organization and Growth of Baptist Churches and Associations; Biographical sketches of Ministers of the Gospel and other Prominent Members of the Denomination; the founding of Baptist Institutions, Periodicals, c. Saint Louis, 1882. W. Pope Yeaman, A History of the Missouri Baptist General Association. Columbia, Mo., 1899. Hosea Holcombe, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Alabama. Philadelphia, 1840. B. F. Riley, A Memorial History of the Baptists of Alabama, being an Account of the Struggles and Achievements of the Denomination from 1808 to 1923. Philadelphia, 1923. J. M. Peck, Baptists in the Mississippi Valley, The Christian Review, XVII. 481-514. New York, 1852. J. M. Peck, Religious Progress of the Mississippi Valley, The Christian Review, XIX. 570-590. B. B. Edwards, Obligations of the Eastern Churches to the Home Missionary Enterprise, The Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review, II. 621-636. New York, 1845. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 52: 01.2.03.03. THE BAPTISTS IN MISSISSIPPI AND LOUISIANA ======================================================================== Chapter 3 - The Baptists in Mississippi and Louisiana Spanish America—The Inquisition—Florida—New Mexico—The French Occupy Louisiana—The Conditions—The Mississippi Country—The Claim of Great Britain—The Uprising Against Spain—Emigrants in the Natchez Country—Richard Curtis—Journey by Flatboats—Religious Liberty—Salem Church—Meetings Held at Night—The Spanish Officers—The Flight of Curtis—In South Carolina—The Return of Curtis—The Dissensions of the Salem Church—The Baptists Enter Louisiana—Mills and Smith—The Conditions in Louisiana—Persecutions—Bailey E. Chaney—Half Moon Bluff Church—Baptists in New Orleans.The story of the Spanish occupation of America is romantic and cruel. Spain at the time of the discovery of this country was dominated by a blind religious fanaticism, the expression of which was the Inquisition. The very year, 1492, that Columbus discovered America the Inquisition in Spain had done its fiercest work. Isabella afterwards expressed herself as follows: "For the love of Christ and the virgin mother I have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms." "The discovery of America by Columbus," says Goodspeed, "opened to Spain an opportunity such as never again fell to the lot of that ignorant and expiring nation. She had passed the summit of her glory, had sanctioned the barbarities of innumerable conquests, and had witnessed the moth-like delight of her fawning nobles; but with fatuous blindness had wholly disregarded the call of the scythe and the grateful peans of the plow. Her civilization had sprung from the gospel of the Inquisition, from the creak of the rack, from the expulsion of learning, from the death chants of burning heretics, and from the nightmare of distorted, brutal and barbarous Christianity. The husbandman and his family were classed with the swine that root in the ground. He was kicked, cowed, cursed and robbed by court and church, by state and supernumerary. The glory of Spain had become the exile and degradation of labor and the enthronement and deification of caste, ignorance and priest-craft. The blasting stupidity of the priests perverted the religion established by the Almighty and proclaimed to all mankind by Jesus of Nazareth. The priestly orders gave their consent to murderous conquest, crime for gold and the unprincipled splendors of church and state. The wealth of the nation in rippling fields of grain, homes of intelligent and happy children, the reign of liberty’s beneficent laws, the nobility of labor, and the piety of perpetual peace, were undreamed of and unknown to the swaggering grandees, who thronged the fair Spanish cities and jeered at the laborer rooting in the adjacent soil. The nation that took delight in the hideous spectacle of the Spanish bull fights could not be expected to emblazon ‘Kindness’ on its bloody banner. A people who regarded all persons other than Catholics as heretics fit only for the rack or the stake found an easy excuse for the deliberate slaughter of the Indian heretics of the New World. In the name of God—Jesus—Mary—the glittering Toledo blades of De Soto’s grandees and Coronado’s cavaliers drank the blood of the natives with the sanction of the priests, just as the Inquisition destroyed other unbelievers in Old Spain. The religion of Castile and Aragon was the murder of heretics; and murderous conquest was the Spanish colonial policy. So the golden opportunity of adding to this miserable civilization a splendid realm of domestic happiness and industrial wealth was wholly unappreciated by the priests and the nobility who dominated the Spanish court. She passed blunderingly by a magnificent empire, which later shone in the West like a star, inviting wise men of the East to come here to worship at the shrine of domestic happiness and a just Christianity. But her wise men were wanting. They had overridden their camels of conquest and were lost in the desert of their own crimes. She was doomed to decadence from the inherited evil festering in her own cruel and ignorant heart." (Goodspeed, The Province and the States, A History of the Province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the Territories and States of the United States formed therefrom, I. 17, 18. Madison, Wis., 1904) . The same awful conditions were transferred to the Spanish possessions in America. A vast system of government was set up on these lines from Florida to the Dakotas, everywhere characterized by cruelty. The occupation of Florida by the Spanish had every appearance of success. For one hundred and fifteen years Spain and the Spanish missionaries had exclusive possession of Florida, and it was during this period that those imposing results were achieved. In 1680 a settlement of Scotch Presbyterians at Port Royal in South Carolina seemed to menace the Spanish domination. It was wholly characteristic of the Spanish colony to seize the sword at once and destroy its nearest Christian neighbor. It took the sword and perished by -the sword. The war of races thus inaugurated went on, with intervals of quiet, until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, when Florida wag transferred to the British crown. No longer sustained by the terror of the Spanish arms and by subsidies from the Spanish treasury, the whole fabric of Spanish civilization and Christianization, at the end of a history of almost two centuries, tumbled at once to complete ruin and extinction (Bacon, A History of American Christianity). When the Spaniards left Florida, the English found little to possess but the country. "The whole number of its inhabitants," says Bancroft, "men, women, children and servants, was three thousand; and of these the men were nearly all in the pay of the Catholic king. The possession of it had cost him nearly two hundred and thirty thousand dollars annually; and now, as a compensation for Havana, he made over to England the territory which occasioned this fruitless expense. Most of the people received from the Spanish treasury indemnity for their losses, migrated to Cuba, taking with them the bones of their saints and the ashes of their distinguished dead, leaving in St. Augustine their houses of stone, and even the graves without occupants" (Bancroft, History of the United States, III. 403. Centennial Edition). The same thing happened in New Mexico and all the West. Louisiana and a part of Mississippi came under the same domination. Thomas O’Gorman, of the Catholic University at Washington, recounts the extraordinary successes and failures of this Spanish regime. He says: "Over an hundred thousand of the aborigines were brought to the knowledge of Christianity, and introduced, if not into the palace, at least into the antechamber of civilization. It was a glorious work, and the recital of it impresses us by the vastness and success of the toil. Yet, as we look around to-day, we can find nothing of it that remains. Names of saints in melodious Spanish stand out from maps in all that section where the Spanish monk trod, toiled and died. A few thousand Christian Indians, descendants of those they converted and civilized, still survive in New Mexico and Arizona, and that is all" (O’Gorman, A History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United ,States). The French in a most brilliant series of exploits sought to occupy America. Large sums of money were used to subsidize their expeditions, only finally to meet with failure. Their system of colonization was not a success. There was a want of men and permanent population. This was the condition in Louisiana. "Such was Louisiana for more than half a century," says Bancroft, "after the first attempt of colonization by La Salle. Its population may have been five thousand whites and half that number of blacks. Louis XIV had fostered it with pride and liberal expenditures; an opulent merchant, famed for his successful enterprise, assumed the direction; the company of the Mississippi, aided by boundless but transient credit, had made it the foundation of their hopes, and, again, Fleury and Louis XV had sought to advance its fortunes. Priests and friars, dispersed through nations, from Biloxi to the Dakotas, propitiated the favor of the savages. But still the valley of the Mississippi was a wilderness. All its patrons—though among them it counted kings and ministers of state—had not accomplished for it, in half a century, a tithe of the prosperity which, within the same period, sprung naturally from the benevolence of William Penn to the peaceful settlers on the Delaware" (Bancroft, History of the Colonization o f the United States, III.). The whole of the Mississippi country had come under the domination of Spain. The conviction of the settlers was that the country belonged to Great Britain. In April, 1782, there was an uprising against Spain in favor of the control of England. As might have been expected, Spain put down the revolt. The harsh treatment of the French malcontents, in New Orleans, by Governor O’Reilly was then recalled Many fled the country precipitately, taking with them their families as best they could. Few incidents in the early history of Mississippi caused more suffering or distress than the flight of the men and women of that day. Claiborne gives the following pathetic account of the sufferings of it large number of fugitives: A more precipitate and distressing exodus never occurred. Leaving their homes, which they had made comfortable by severe toil, their property, which had been accumulated by patient industry; with no transportation but a few pack horses, with no luggage but their blankets and some scanty stores, they gathered their wives and children and struck into the wilderness. Fearful of pursuit, fearful of ambush, dogged by famine, tortured by thirst, exposed to every vicissitude of weather, weakened by disease, more than decimated by death, the women and children dying every day, this terrible journey makes the darkest page of our record. But the courage and perseverance they evinced, the uncomplaining patience and fortitude of refined and delicate women, and the period of suffering and peril, shed a glow of sunshine over the story, and their descendants, still numerous in Mississippi, will read it with mingled pity and admiration (Claiborne, Mississippi as a Province, Territory and State, I.). Fortunately, those who remained were treated better by the Spanish governor than might have been expected. Speaking of the Spanish governors Claiborne says: The successive commandants at Natchez, and the governor-general of Louisiana, were accomplished gentlemen, trained to arms, stately but courteous, punctilious, fond of etiquette and pomp, but hospitable, generous and forbearing. They were Catholics, of course, and such was the religion of the kingdom and its provinces, and those who emigrated to the country came with a full knowledge of the fact. A large majority of the settlers were Protestants, and enjoyed their faith and the right of private worship. No attempt was made to proselyte or proscribe them, nor was there any official interference unless the parties in their zeal, or under indiscreet advisors, became offensively demonstrative (Claiborne, I.). This language of Claiborne is guarded, and has in it a number of limiting clauses. A little further on he justifies the action of the Spanish governors by contrasting their actions with those of some of the Protestants in New England. So far as Baptists are concerned the point holds good. They no more escape the wrath of the Roman Catholics in Mississippi and Louisiana than they did that of the Puritans of New England. "It was a community of Protestants," says Lowry and McCardle, "under a strictly Catholic dynasty, in an age of intolerance" (Lowry and McCardle, A History of Mississippi). And that probably relates the story. It was under conditions like these that in the spring of 1780, a number of emigrants left South Carolina for the Natchez country. In this company there were ten or twelve Baptists. There was Richard Curtis, Sr., who was the father of a large family and a deacon; Richard Curtis, Jr., who had a small family and was a licensed preacher; John Courtney, John Stampley, Daniel and William Ogden, and Mr. Perkins, friends and neighbors. Richard Curtis, the preacher, was from Virginia, and had settled previous to the War of Independence, in South Carolina, on the Great Pedee river, some sixty miles from Charleston. During the war the elder Curtis and his sons were soldiers in the command of General Francis Marion. They remained in the service until their homes and their substance were destroyed by the British and the Tories. Exposed as they were to the constant attacks of the enemy they saw that their only hope was to emigrate to the Wee.; (Charles H. Otkin, Richard Curtis in the Country of the Natchez, The Mississippi Historical Society Publications, III: 148-153. Oxford, 1900). After enduring hardships incident to a journey through an unbroken forest, the company reached the Holston river in the year 1780. Here they halted to make needed preparation for the voyage by water. When this had been accomplished, three flatboats started down the Holston river. When toward the close of the year the waters of the Holston river had attained a sufficient depth for navigation, they embarked in their boats, and committed themselves to the protection of God. The Rev. J. G. Jones, who was a member of the Mississippi Conference of the M. E. Church, South, and a lineal descendant of one of these pioneers, gives a graphic description of the journey. He says: Such were the natural difficulties in the way of navigation in those early times that it was, at best, a hazardous undertaking to descend the Holston, Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers in such water craft as they were then able to construct; but what made it doubly hazardous was the belligerent stand which the Cherokee Indians had taken against all emigration through their country. They often availed themselves of the narrows, shoals and sudden turns in the Holston and Tennessee rivers to attack immigrant boats. Our voyagers being fully aware of that fact, went as well prepared for it as their limited resources would allow, and kept a constant watch for the approach of their stealthy foe. We who have, until lately, generally had "peace and truth in our days," think it strange that our pious forefathers would thus not only peril their own lives, but also the lives of their wives and little ones; but they had already become inured to the horrors and dangers of war, and viewed such adventures very differently from what we do. These emigrants, for the sake of mutual protection, had agreed to float as near each other as they conveniently could. The foremost boat contained Richard Curtis, senior, and his immediate family, and his own sons and daughters with their families. The second boat contained two brothers by the name of Daniel and William Ogden, and a man by the name of Perkins, with their families, most of whom were Baptists. We have no record of the names of those in the third boat. They seem to have fallen in with the others for the sake of protection in descending to Natchez. The voyagers in the last boat had in some way contracted the smallpox and, to prevent the contagion from spreading to the other boats, they were required to float a few hundred yards in the rear and to occupy a different landing at night. After floating unmolested for several days, the hostile savages espied the boats somewhere near the mouth of Clinch river, and fixed on a short bend in the Tennessee river, near the northwestern corner of Georgia, as the place of attack. Having to float near the shore to keep in the channel, the foremost boat was violently assailed by the lurking Cherokees. All hands on board commenced a vigorous and well directed defense. That her husband might be released to use his rifle on the assailants, Mrs. Jones put her eldest son, William, then in his twelfth year, at the oar, while she held up a thick, poplar stool between him and the bullets; and it was well she did, for it was pierced by one of the Indian leaden missiles. After the danger was all over, Mrs. Jones laughingly remarked that "the guns were weak, as they did not make a deep impression on her stool." Another lady heroically took the steering oar from her husband that he might ply his rifle on the foe, and, with unfaltering courage, guided the boat until disabled by a wound in the back. Hannah Courtney was grazed on the head by a ball, and Jonathan Curtis was slightly wounded on the wrist, but, so far as the writer knows, no life was lost. While the attention of the assailants was directed to the first boat, the second floated by the point of attack unharmed. The excited and bloodthirsty savages now directed their whole force to the capture of the third and last boat, and as it was passing through the narrows they boarded it full force and massacred all on board except one lady, whom they retained as captive about three years, until, by treaty, she was restored to her friends. But this was a dearly bought victory to the Cherokees, for, either from the captured lady, or the clothing and other articles taken from the boat, they contracted the smallpox, which passed through their villages like the destroying angel, until multitudes of them died. When suffering from the raging fever and thirst occasioned by the terrible epidemic, they sought relief by lying in the waters of the Tennessee, which only made it the more fatal. Their descendants have, to this day, a traditional horror of that terrible pestilence. It was impossible, from the slow and unwieldly movements of their flatboats, for those who had escaped to round to and land enough to afford the captured boat any assistance, even if they had not been so far outnumbered as to render the attempt worse than fruitless; so, with gratitude to God for their deliverance, and sadness and lasting sorrow for their lost fellow voyagers they pursued their dangerous way until they landed in safety at the mouth of Cole’s Creek, about twenty miles above Natchez by land (Jones, A Concise History of the Introduction of Protestantism into Mississippi and the Southeast, 25-27. St. Louis, 1866). They settled some ten miles from the river. For several years they endured many hardships and deprivations incident to a new country, which was but poorly supplied with the necessities of life. They were a people of sound morals. Richard Curtis, Jr., was their instructor in religion. It was said that there was not a cabin in the community in which the Bible was not read, and from which prayers did not ascend to God. Firm in their convictions, they neither prescribed nor proscribed creeds. The idea of religious liberty. had taken deep root in the thoughts of this people. This community was called the Salem Baptist Church; but it was constituted, not only without a presbytery of ministers, but without the presence of a single ordained minister. "They simply agreed to meet together statedly," says Bond, "and worship God according to his Word, and to exercise good discipline over one another, and called Elder’ Curtis to preach to them, whose labors were greatly blessed eventually. This course was a matter of necessity with them, and it seemed that the Lord owned and blessed their efforts; and in process of time sinners were converted to God, and professed hope in the Saviour, and desired baptism" (Bond, A Republication of the Minutes of the Mississippi Association from its Organization in 1806 to the Present Tine, 3, 4. New Orleans, 1849). This brought up in the minds of these pioneer workmen in the Lord’s vineyard a very interesting question for solution. Who could administer the ordinance of baptism according to the faith and order of the church? Curtis was only a licentiate, and was not authorized, according to the polity of Baptist churches, to administer baptism, and yet there were persons desiring the ordinance, who exhibited the usual evidences of conversion. The matter was postponed until by letter they could consult the parent church in Carolina. The church in that State on receiving this interesting communication from the "Natchez Country," took the matter under consideration and returned the answer: "That there was no law against necessity, and under the present stress of circumstances the members ought to assemble and formally appoint one of their number, by election, to baptize the converts." This advice was acted upon and Richard Curtis baptized the converts. Thus the first church in Mississippi was organized without a presbytery of ordained ministers. From this period to 1793, Bond informs us, little is known about the church, only that it continued to exist and increase in numbers. Other emigrants had come in, among whom were some Baptists. At this time is found the name of William Chaney, an ordained deacon, among them, from South Carolina; also, Bailey Chaney, who was a preacher, but not ordained, also a man by the name of Harigail, Barton Hannan, and William Owen, all of whom, it appears, preached, but none of them was ordained, as far as can be learned; and it is not known whether they began preaching here, or came here as licensed preachers. To avoid the detection of the Spanish Catholics, on at least one occasion baptism was administered by torch light. About this time there was an occurrence which greatly incensed the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. Stephen De Alvo renounced the Catholics and united with the Baptists. The opposition of the Catholics broke into a blaze of persecution, and the Baptists were peremptorily ordered to "desist from their heretical psalm-singing, praying and preaching in public of they would be subjected to sundry pains and penalties." This coercive act was followed by another, in 1795, through Don Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, the Spanish Commandant at Natchez, the tenor of which was that "if nine persons were found worshiping together except according to the forms of the Roman Catholic Church, they should suffer imprisonment." It was at this time that the Spanish governor wrote an "expostulatory letter to Mr. Curtis demanding that he should desist from what was considered violative to the laws of the province, and against the peace and safety of the country" (Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Arkansas. 335. III. 149). To this letter Curtis replied with bluntness, and informed him that he intended to do his duty. The immediate arrest of Curtis was now ordered, and on April 6, 1795, he stood a prisoner before Governor Gayoso. He was given to understand that if he did not desist from preaching publicly he would be sent with Hamberlin, De Alvo, and others to the mines in Mexico. For some two or three months only night meetings were held. About this time Curtis married a couple and this further inflamed the authorities. "The officers of the provincial government," says Jones, "instigated by the priesthood, made diligent inquiry as to the time and place of holding their meetings for exhortation, prayer and Christian intercourse, and devised plans for the capture of Messrs. Richard Curtis, William Hamberlin and Stephen De Alvo." Orders for their arrest were secretly issued on or just previous to the 23rd of August, 1795. The 23rd of August was a quiet Sabbath, with all of its holy associations inviting the devout worshipers to assemble at the house of prayer. It was the private residence of one of their number, in what was then and is still known as "Stampley’s Settlement" on the south fork of Cole’s Creek. "The pickets had been promptly posted or. all the roads, and the little persecuted fraternity of Baptists were, in subdued tones, conducting their worship, when the sentinel on the Natchez road came in hurriedly and announced the appearance of five men whom he took to be a Spanish officer and his posse. The religious exercises closed immediately, and Messrs. Curtis, Hamberlin and De Alvo hastened to a neighboring thicket to conceal themselves, knowing that they were particularly obnoxious to the hierarchy at Natchez. The others adjusted themselves with apparent carelessness about the house and yard, when the unwelcome visitors rode up, with characteristic self-importance, inquired, ‘What are you all doing here?’ They replied: ‘We are not harming anybody; we always suspend our secular avocations on the Sabbath, and either rest at home or spend our time in such intercourse with each other as suits us.’ ‘We wish to see Dick Curtis, Bill Hamberlin and Steve De Alvo—either one or all of them; where are they to be found this morning?" authoritatively enquired this embodiment of papal intolerance, to which an evasive answer was given, such as, ‘We don’t know exactly, somewhere in the neighborhood, w e suppose.’ The officer then announced that he had come with orders from Governor Gayoso to arrest those three rebels, preparatory to their being sent to the mines to work the remainder of their lives, and if any man should be found aiding and abetting either their concealment or escape, he should suffer the like penalty. "It therefore became necessary that for security these men should leave the country. They were provided with horses. But no man must be found ‘aiding and abetting’ them in their escape. ‘Who will take their supplies to their place of concealment, on Bayou Pierre?’ The problem was solved by a daring woman of the neighborhood, Cloe Holt. ‘If the men in the neighborhood,’ said she, ‘are so faint hearted that not one of them can be prevailed upon to take Dick Curtis and his companions in exile their promised supplies, in order to secure their escape from the clutches of these gospel-hating Catholics, if they will furnish me with a good horse surmounted with a man’s saddle, I will go in spite of the Spaniards, and they can catch me if they can.’ All things being ready, she made her appearance, dressed in a man’s clothes, she mounted her horse and boldly dashed off. "In due process of time Curtis and his companions reached the Great Pedee, in South Carolina, where they remained for two years and one-half. In the meantime Curtis was an active and acceptable preacher, and was ordained to the gospel ministry by Elders Benjamin Horseley and Matthew Cullins. The Natchez country had in the meantime passed under the control of Georgia, and was recognized as United States territory. While this much desired event was verging to maturity, the Baptist community in the Natchez were not idle spectators. They resumed their meetings for public worship. They had written to their long banished brethren in South Carolina to return home, and expectation was on tiptoe to hail their arrival. "The return of Curtis and his companions was most affecting. With light hearts and buoyant hopes they commenced their homeward journey. Now they could sing... On Saturday night they were in a half day’s journey home. At early dawn they resumed their journey, thinking it no harm to travel a little on Sunday under such circumstances. They separated, and each was making for his home, when Mr. Curtis fell in with cheerful companions of former acquaintances on their way to the ‘House of Prayer.’ They assured him that he would not find his wife and children at home, for by that hour they were certainly on their way to the Church, so he turned with the company to the house of God. When they arrived at Church Mrs. Curtis, with her household, had not yet made their appearance, but he was assured that all were well, and that they certainly would be there; and as the hour for the preaching had come the brethren insisted on his going immediately into the pulpit and preaching them a sermon. He submitted, and while, with his head depressed below the book board, he was turning to his hymn and text, his wife came in, unobserved by him, and quietly took her usual place by the wall. The congregation being mostly within doors—and waiting one for another—no one gave her an intimation of the presence of her long exiled husband. When he arose she looked at the pulpit to see who was going to officiate, and seeing that it was her own beloved, long lost, but now restored husband, it was more than her womanly heart could endure. She shrieked and swooned away, and was borne from the house in an unconscious state. Cold ablutions were resorted to, and consciousness soon returned; and the cordial greetings and soothing words of her husband soon quieted her nerves. All returned to the Church, and Elder Curtis preached an appropriate sermon" (Jones). The story had an happy ending. "Within the year," continues Jones, "preceding the evacuation of the Natchez district by the Spanish government, and pending the negotiations between the representatives of the United States and those of the Court at Madrid, there was a great deal of ill feeling between the adherents of the two governments, and also between the Protestants and the Catholics. Believing the day of their freedom from Papal rule to be near at hand, the Baptists began to rally theft forces and to demand the re-establishment of their public worship. The state of affairs brought to light several prominent members and licensed preachers of the Baptist church not hitherto known in its history. Among them we find the names of William and Bailey Chaney, from South Carolina. William Chaney had been ordained a deacon in the Church, and several persons desiring baptism before the return of Elder Curtis, he was appointed by the members to administer the ordinance, from which we infer that he was a man of gifts as well as grace. Bailey Chaney was a licensed preacher, and probably preached the first sermon in Natchez after the Spanish Government was superseded by that of the United States. Soon after the Spaniards left, the Americans erected a large bush arbor and supplied it with a temporary pulpit and seats, and invited Mr. Cheney to preach them a sermon under the ‘Stars and Stripes,’ which he did to an immense congregation." The Salem Church had a troubled career and finally on account of internal dissensions dissolved. The church made a request of the United States Government for a grant of land. President Madison rejected this petition. In a letter dated June 3, 1811, addressed to some churches in North Carolina, he gives his reason for this action in the following words: I have received, fellow citizens, your address approving my objection to the bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist church at Salem meeting house, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between religion and civil government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not otherwise have discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself. Among the various religious societies in our country, none has been more vigilant and consistent in maintaining that distinction than the society of which you make a part; and it is an honorable proof of your sincerity and integrity that you are ready to do so in a case favoring the interest of your brethren, as in other cases. It is but just, at the same time, to the Baptist church at Salem meeting house to remark that their application to the national legislature does not appear to have contemplated a grant of the land in question, but on terms that might be equitable to the public as well as to themselves. Other churches were speedily gathered, and so in 1806 five churches sent messengers to Cole’s Creek Church and the Mississippi Baptist Association was organized. This association became the mother of all the other associations in Mississippi and Louisiana. North Mississippi, or the Chickasaw countries, was not opened to settlers till the fourth decade of the century. The government land office was at Pontatoc. People poured into the country with amazing rapidity. The Pontatoc Union, in February, 1838, gives the following account of the growth in North Mississippi: At the Governor’s election, two years ago, there were less than five hundred votes polled in the whole Chickasaw nation, now subdivided into twelve counties. At the late election the returns so far as received dis. close four thousand eighty-seven votes polled for Governor in nine of those counties, showing the astonishing and unparalleled increase in our population of one thousand per cent, in two years! We do not believe there is, in the history of the United States, an instance of the peopling of a country, just emerging from the domain of savage, with the same rapidity. We attribute this to climate unsurpassed on the American continent—to a soil of universal and inexhaustible fertility—well watered, and presenting the means of enjoying all the blessings of life in as great perfection and profusion as can fall to the lot of man. Through the Natchez country of Mississippi the Baptists entered into Louisiana. This territory was ceded to the United States by France April 30, 1803. Previous to that date, and long afterwards, the religious condition of the State was distressing. There is some very interesting information written from New Orleans, under date of April 8, 1815, by Messrs. Mills and Smith, to the Massachusetts Bible Society. They were agents of that organization and presented the following "View of Louisiana": We left Natchez on the 12th of March, and went on board of a flat-bottomed boat, where our accommodations were indifferent. The weather was generally pleasant, and we arrived in New Orleans on the 19th. The distance is three hundred miles. For 100 miles above New Orleans the banks of the river were cleared, and in descending the river you pass many elegant plantations. The whole of this distance the banks appear like one continued village. The greater part of the inhabitants are ignorant of almost everything except what relates to the increase of their property; destitute of schools, Bible and religious instruction. In attempting to learn the religious state of the people we were frequently told that they had no Bibles and that the priest did not allow of their distribution among them. An American who had resided two or three years at a place which had the appearance of being a flourishing settlement, informed me that he had not seen a Bible during his stay at the settlement. He added that he had heard that a woman from the State of New York had lately brought one into the place (Publications of the Louisiana Historical Society, 1916). Mr. Mills, accompanied by the Rev. Daniel Smith, made a second missionary journey to Louisiana, in 1816. He says: There are American families in that part of the country who never saw a Bible nor heard of Jesus Christ. It is a fact that ought not to be forgotten that so late as March, 1815, a Bible in any language could not be found for sale, or to be given away, in New Orleans (Ibid, 64). These gentlemen likewise give the following information in regard to the State: In 1810 Louisiana contained 76,556 inhabitants, 34,600 were slaves. Since that time its population is doubtless considerably increased; but to what extent, we are unable to say. The principal settlements, out of New Orleans, and above the northermost boundary of the State, are almost wholly occupied by Frenchmen, Acadians and Germans who speak the French language. The settlements in the counties of Attakapas and Opelousas are very considerable and have a mixture of French and American inhabitants. There are in the State two Methodist circuits, but there is no Baptist preacher, as we could ascertain, out of New Orleans, no Presbyterian minister. A very large portion of the State has never, as we could learn, been visited by a Presbyterian preacher. Many of the American inhabitants were originally Presbyterians and very many would rejoice to see a respectable missionary among them. It is, therefore, of immense importance that one should be sent to explore the country and learn its moral and religious state, and introduce, as far as possible, the institutions of the gospel. Such a man might not only be useful to the Americans; he might exert a salutary influence on the French also. He would doubtless promote the farther distribution of the French Scriptures. Religious tracts in that language, might be very soon circulated among the people. And a prudent and diligent use of such means, we have reason to hope, would result in happiest con. sequences (Publications of the Louisiana Historical Society, IX. 69, 70). The country had been under the complete control of the Roman Catholics. Protestantism was not tolerated in the Province. The Spanish authorities were on the alert for the appearance of heresy in the Louisiana Territory. Baron de Cardondelet had been succeeded as governor by Don Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, a brigadier general of the royal armies. In the month of January, 1799, he issued, among other regulations, the following: 6. Liberty of conscience is not to be extended beyond the first generation; the children of the emigrant must be Catholic; and emigrants not agreeing to this must not be admitted, but removed, even when they bring property with them. This is to be explained to settlers who do not profess the Catholic religion. 7. It is expressly recommended to commandants to watch that no preacher of any religion but the Catholic comes into the province (Martin, History of Louisiana). These regulations were not new and they did not prevent Baptist preachers from entering the province. They had suffered too long and cruelly to be deterred by such threats as these. No more heroic men ever lived than these early preachers in Louisiana and Mississippi. The first Baptist preacher, indeed the first Protestant preacher, was Bailey E. Chaney. During the persecution of Curtis he remained in concealment. He had removed from South Carolina, about the year 1790, and settled near Natchez. In 1799 he visited an American settlement near Baton Rouge and preached. He was arrested by the authorities and released upon the promise not to preach any more. He was not able to organize a church, but he did have the honor of being the first Baptist preacher in Louisiana. The first Baptist church in Louisiana was organized in Washington parish, near Bogue Chitto river, and was known a$ the Half Moon Bluff Church. It was constituted October 12, 1812. This church is now extinct. The Calvary Baptist Church, Bayou Chicot, St. Landry parish, was organized November 13, 1812. The centennial of these two churches was observed in 1912 with fitting ceremonies. The following record is made of that notable event: We call attention to this, the centennial year of the history of Louisiana Baptists. In the early years of the nineteenth century, missionaries from other States entered this territory. The first Baptist church organized in this State was the Half Moon Bluff Baptist Church in Washington parish in 1812. This church had a brief life and recently the brethren celebrated its birth over its grave near Franklington. The first Baptist church organized west of the Mississippi river and the oldest living Baptist church in the State is the Calvary Baptist Church at Bayou Chicot, St. Landry parish. It was organized November 13th, 1812, and has had a continuous history up to this good hour. It was this church, with a few others that went out from it, that organized the Louisiana Association. We gathered on this historic spot and thanked God for the preservation of this church and for the pioneer servants of Jesus Christ who laid the foundation for our Baptist cause in Louisiana (Minutes o/ the Louisiana Convention, 1912, pp. 77, 78). The Baptist cause was slow of beginning in New Orleans. The first Baptist missionary to New Orleans was James A. Raynoldson. He was a messenger from North Carolina to the Triennial Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May, 1814. He came to New Orleans in the winter of 1816-17 as a missionary from that body. The Baptist cause passed through many vicissitudes in that city. The first Baptist church there was organized December 28, 1843. Florida was discovered by Ponce de Leon, 1512, on the festival occasion of Pascua de Flores, hence it is known as the land of flowers, or Florida. It was purchased by the United States from Spain in 1819 by treaty, which was formally signed in 1822, constituted into a colony in 1825, admitted into the Union as a State in 1845. Since the peninsula was settled by the Spanish the religion was the Roman Catholic. A number of priests accompanied the army of occupation and preached to the aborigines. It was under the French flag that Protestantism was introduced into Florida by the Huguenots, in 1562. They were of the Reformed or Calvinistic order. They landed near the mouth of the St. Johns river, raised the French flag at Fort Caroline. An army of Spaniards came down from St. Augustine, fell upon !,he French and massacred the entire colony. Later the British occupied the country. Baptist work began in this State early in the nineteenth century. A number of Christian men came into Florida, in 1812, as a part of the army to suppress the Indian uprisings. The War Department, in Washington, records the march of General John McIntosh Houston against these offenders in 1812. With this company was Wilson Conner, probably the first Baptist preacher in Flordia. General David Blackshers, who was sent to aid General McIntosh, says of him: "The Rev. Wilson Conner was a roan of magnificent stature, fine features and voice, with a commanding personality. While uneducated, he was a man of great vigor, of sympathetic personality, very spiritual, and having a fine delivery." Later he was followed by other Baptist ministers. Bethlehem, the first Baptist church in Florida, was constituted in an oak grove on the red hills of West Florida, Jackson county, March 12, 1825. The record is as follows: West Florida, Jackson County, March 12, 1825. Pursuant to a resolution of the church of Christ at Bethlehem in said county, in conference this day, for the better government and union of the Church and for the glory of God, we believe it to be expedient for us to adopt Constitution, covenant and decorum. WHEREAS we have reason to believe that God in his goodness has made known the riches of his grace to a number of our souls to be formed into a church. We therefore called our beloved brethren, Jeremiah Kimbril and E. H. Calloway and they have inquired into our faith and manner of life, thought proper to constitute us into a church upon an equal footing with other churches of the same faith and order. Articles of faith were recorded, and the church covenant signed by: Sexton Camp Elizabeth Daniel John Beasley Lucy Chason Ephraim Chambless Miller Brady Nancy Phillips Richard Lonchaten Elizabeth Taylor W. Peacock Martha Peacock Sarah Brady Benjamin Hawkins Martha Parker James Chason Sarah Williams Clark Jackson March 13th, 1825. The church being constituted, met in conference, appointed Brethren James Chason and Clark Jackson, deacons of the church. Brethren Jeremiah Kimbril and E. H. Calloway were called upon by the church to ordain the two deacons, which was done by them. Appointed Brother William Brady, Church Clerk, and chose Brother E. H. Calloway pastor of the church. Opened the doors of the church, received Brother E. H. Calloway and Sister Elizabeth Calloway by letter. Sister Elizabeth Owens was taken under the watchcare of the church. Conference adjourned. Miller Brady, Clerk. The second church was constituted at Indian Springs in Leon county, in 1828. Other churches were constituted in rapid succession (S. B. Rogers, A Brief History of Florida Baptists, 1825-1925). It is not certain who was the first Baptist preacher, but one of the pioneers was John Young Lindsey, who held services in the northern part of the State before Arkansas Territory was organized. His father, Caleb Lindsey, came to Arkansas in 1815, and settled in that part of Lawrence county now Randolph. He was a surveyor and an educated man. One of the earliest schools in that section of the State was taught by Caleb Lindsey in a cave, Without pay or thought of pay. It was told of John Young Lindsey that he would preach sometimes for two hours and then invite the entire congregation to go over to his house for dinner. Later, some of the congregation sometimes invited the minister home with them for dinner. Benedict says: "At what point or by what men the sentiments of the Baptists were first propagated in Arkansas, I have found it difficult to ascertain. Rev. David Orr appears to have been the instrument of planting a considerable number of the first church of which I have gained any information; contemporary with Mr. Orr, or perhaps a short time before him on this ground, were Benjamin Clark, Jesse James and J. P. Edwards. The first church of our order in this then territory of Arkansas was at Fouche a Thomas, in Lawrence county." (Benedict.) The first house of worship in Little Rock was built in 1825 by the Baptists. It stood on the south side of Third street between Main and Scott. Silas Toncray was the pastor from 1824 to 1829. This church was disrupted by the followers of Alexander Campbell; the few that remained faithful afterwards organized the present First Baptist Church. Spring River, the oldest association, soon dissolved. The White River Association was organizer) in 1840. Books for further reference: Z. T. Leavell and T. J. Bailey, A Complete History of Mississippi Baptists from the Earliest Times. Jackson, Mississippi, 1904. 2 volumes. W. E. Paxton, A History of the Baptists of Louisiana, from the earliest Times to the Present. St. Louis, 1888. John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists of Louisiana. Shreveport, 1923. John M. Peck, The Annexation of Louisiana, The Christian Review, XVI. 555-580. New York, 1861. Dallas T. Herndon, Centennial History of Arkansas. Little Rock, 1922. 3 volumes. Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas. St. Louie, 1890. Weston Arthur Goodspeed, The Province and the States. A History of the Province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the Territories and States of the United States formed therefrom. Madison, Wis., 1904. 7 volumes. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 53: 01.2.03.04. THE GREAT REVIVAL OF 1800 ======================================================================== Chapter 4 – The Great Revival of 1800 The Deplorable Condition of the Country—Low State of Morals—Terrible Practices—Deistical Opinions in the French and Indian Wars—Alliance of America, and France—The Effects of French Infidelity—Thomas Paine—Infidel Clubs—Illuminism—Want of Religious Instruction—Baptist and Presbyterian Ministers—Dull Preaching—Condition in the Colleges—Kentucky and Tennessee—Logan County—The Great Revival—Tames McGready—His Sermons—The Camp Meeting at Gasper River—The Account of McGready—The Meeting Described—Barton W. Stone—Other Meetings—Extravagances—Lorenzo Dow—The Jerks and Other Violent Exercises—Disorders—Such Meetings Continued for Years—The Revival Did Great Good—Testimonies—Results Among the Baptists—Effects Felt Throughout the United States.At the close of the eighteenth century the prospects of Christianity in the United States were most deplorably unfavorable. All parties testified to this state of affairs. The Revolutionary War had brought about a great deal of license, and all classes of witnesses testify to the low state of morals. George Mason wrote, in 1783; to Patrick Henry as follows: "With some few exceptions, the declension was general throughout the State" (Rowland, Life of Mason, II). Dr. William Hill said: "The demoralizing effects of the war left religion and the church in a most deplorable condition" (Foote, I.). Semple says: "The war, though very propitious to the liberty of the Baptists, had the opposite effect upon the life of religion among them" (Semple). Richard Henry Lee said: "Refiners may weave reason into as fine a web as they please, but the experience of all times shows religion to be the guardian of morals; and he must be a very inattentive observer in our country who does not see that avarice is accomplishing the destruction of religion for want of legal obligation to contribute something to its support" (Lee, Richard Henry Lee, II.). A general declension of religion followed the earlier revivals, and a low standard of religion and morals prevailed. Family worship was neglected, and little attention was paid to the training of youth in the fear of God. The Indian wars having terminated, an immense tide of immigration poured into the older settlements. The protracted wars with the Indians had exerted a demoralizing influence to a wide extent; but the introduction and manufacture of alcoholic liquors followed, and their use, in almost every family, was frightfully destructive. Brandy was distilled from the peach, and wine fermented from the grape, and beer from the persimmon. As early as 1783 whisky had been distilled from corn, and that was now in use daily as mint julep or as grog or toddy. Those who could afford it had Madeira wine and Jamaica rum on their tables, but the ordinary drink was whisky. The Green River Country, as the southern part of Kentucky was called, became famous for vicious practices. Universal cupidity prevailed over the whole country, stimulated by boundless opportunities for its gratification. Speculators were eager to invest their capital in lands, hoping to realize princely fortunes thereby. Many of the pioneers who had located lands lost all their possessions on account of imperfect titles. Land jobbing feuds and heart burnings retarded the moral improvement of the country. Deistical opinions were really introduced into America during the French and Indian wars (1754-1763) . In these wars American citizens were brought into close relations with English officers and soldiers who had accepted deistical sentiments. "Most of their American companions had never heard the divine origin of the Scriptures questioned, and their minds were, of course, unprovided with answers even to the most common objections. To such objections as were actually made was added the force of authority. The British officers were from the mother country -a phase of high import-until after the commencement of the Revolution. They came from a country renowned for arts and arms, and regarded by the people of New England as the birthplace of science and wisdom. These gentlemen were also, at the same time, possessed of engaging manners; they practiced all those genteel vices which, when recommended by such manners, generally fascinated young men of gay, ambitious minds, and are often considered as conferring an enviable distinction on those who adopt them. Many of the Americans were far from being dull proficients in this school. The vices they loved, and soon found the principles necessary to quiet their consciences. When they returned home they had drunk too deeply of the cup to exchange their new principles and practices for the sober doctrines of their countrymen. The means that had been pursued to corrupt them they now employed to corrupt others. From the prima mali labes the contagion spread, not indeed through the great multitudes, but in little circles surrounding the individuals originally infected. As these amounted to a considerable number, and lived in a general dispersion through the country, most parts of it shared in the malady" (Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, IV). The alliance of America with France likewise brought a low state of morals, which menaced the nation with political destruction. Collins, the historian of Kentucky, thus describes the situation: Early in the spring of 1793, circumstances occurred which fanned the passions of the people into a perfect flame of dissatisfaction. The French Revolution had sounded a tocsin which reverberated throughout the whole civilized world. The worn out despotisms of Europe, after standing aghast for a moment, in doubtful inactivity, and awakened at length into ill-concerted combinations against the young Republic, and France was engaged in a life and death struggle, against Spain, Britain, Prussia, Austria and the German principalities. With this war the United States had, strictly, nothing to do, and the best interests of the country clearly required a rigid neutrality; which President Washington had not only sagacity to see, but firmness to enforce by a proclamation, early in 1793. The passions of the people, however, far outran all consideration of prudence or interest, and displayed themselves in favor of France, with a frantic enthusiasm which threatened perpetually to involve the country in a disastrous war with all the rest of Europe. The terrible energy which the French Republic displayed, against such fearful odds, the haughty crest with which she confronted her enemies and repelled them from her frontier on every point, presented a spectacle calculated to dazzle the friends of democracy throughout the world. The horrible atrocities which accompanied these brilliant efforts of courage were overlooked in favor of a passionate sympathy, or attributed, in part, to the exaggerations of the British press. The American people loved France as their ally in the Revolution, and now regarded her as a sister republic contending for freedom against banded despots (Collins, Historical Sketches of Kentucky). French infidelity threatened to sweep away every trace of Christianity. Our country had innumerable difficulties with England, which had resulted from the cruel Indian wars. France had been our friend in the War of Independence. The very name of liberty was dear to every American heart, and in the mystery of Providence, infidelity and liberalism were combined against despotism. Infidelity became prevalent in high places, and was identical in the public mind with liberal principles in government. "It was the general opinion among intelligent Christians, toward the close of the century, a majority of the population were either avowedly infidels or skeptically inclined. There were but few men in the profession of law and physics who would avow their belief in Christianity. Amongst the less informed classes the ‘Age of Reason’ was a most popular book, and obtained extensive circulation, while Bibles were obtained with difficulty, and found a place only in religious families" (J. M. Peck, Baptists in Mississippi Valley, The Christian Review, XVII. 500. October, 1852). Of Thomas Paine much has been written. He is thus described by McMaster: We doubt whether any name in our Revolutionary history, not excepting that of Benedict Arnold, is quite so odious as that of Thomas Paine. Arnold was a traitor, Paine was an infidel.… Since the day when the Age of Reason came forth from the press the number of infidels has increased much more rapidly than it did before that book was written. The truth is, he was one of the most remarkable men of ,his time. It would be a difficult matter to find anywhere another such compound of baseness and nobleness, of goodness and badness, of greatness and littleness, of so powerful a mind left unbalanced and led astray by the worst of animal passions.… Of all the human kind he is the filthiest and nastiest, and his disgusting habits grew upon him with his years. In his old age, when the frugal gifts of two States which remembered his good work and placed him beyond immediate want, he became a sight to behold. It was rare that he was sober; it was still rarer that he washed himself, and he suffered his nails to grow till, in the language of one who knew him well, they resembled the claws of birds. What gratitude was he did not know (McMaster, History of the United States, I. 150. New York, 1884). The Age of Reason was introduced into this country about the close of the century. There was great activity manifested by the infidels of Europe in disseminating their views in the new country. In the year 1800 John Adams, then President of the United States, received a letter from Germany, proposing to introduce into the United States "a company of school-masters, painters and poets, etc., all the disciples of Thomas Paine." Adams replied: I had rather countenance the introduction of Ariel and Caliban with a troupe of spirits the most mischievous from the fairy land (Adams, Life and Works, IX.). Politico-infidel clubs were organized throughout the United States, and so great was the threatened danger that President Adams referred to them in a public proclamation. A society was formed in this country called the Illuminati set on foot by the Grand Orient of France. The facts are set forth as follows: Illuminism had been systematically embraced by various bodies of men who associated for its propaganda. President Adams, in a proclamation in which he briefly disclosed the dangers that threatened the country, had said: "The most precious interests of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious arts of a foreign nation (France), as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles subversive of the foundations of religious, moral and social obligations, that have produced mischiefs and misery in other countries." The violent assaults which were made upon this passage of the proclamation proved the truth and accuracy of the sentiment. Enraged at this public disclosure of their plans the whole faction attacked it (Memoir of Thomas Jefferson, 1809). The extent to which these infidel clubs went is now almost unbelievable. "The Tree of Liberty" and "the Cap of Liberty" were everywhere popular. "It is scarcely credible to what extent the absurdities, devised and practised by the French demagogues to influence the passions of the mob, were adopted and applauded by multitudes of the hitherto staid and reflecting citizens of the United States" (Jay, Life of the Hon. John Jay, 319. New York, 1832). William Jay further says: Posterity will with difficulty believe the prostituted state to which Genet (the French Ambassador) and his satellites, the democratic societies, had brought the public feeling. By a variety of those artifices which familiarized the heart to cruelty, they had enured the multitude to the contemplation of bloodshed and to habitual ferocity. At a dinner in Philadelphia, at which Governor Miffin and his friend Dallas were present, a roasted pig was introduced as the representative of the unfortunate Louis XVI. It was the joyful celebration of the anniversary of his murder. The head, being severed from the body, was carried round to each at the table, who, after putting on the liberty cap, pronounced the word "Tyrant!" and gave the head a chop with his knife (Memoirs of Hon. Thomas Jefferson, Progress of French Influence and French Principles in the United States, I.). In America as well as in France the most atrocious villainies were maintained to be patriotic acts. Robbery was held to be moral and correct justice; murder was maintained to be laudable; and those most execrable of all crimes, treason and rebellion, were dignified by the name of national justice, because Jacobinized France gave the fashion to the morals and the opinions of this country, and fidelity to her, under her new rulers, was best asserted by treason to every other country (Ibid). The object of these societies was to destroy Christianity and to revolutionize governments. The belief in a God, the immortality of the soul, moral obligation, civil and domestic government, marriage, chastity and decency were the objects of their hatred and conspiracy. Wherever they prevailed the most gross and brutish manners and shameless immorality followed (Dorchester). Dr. Peck further says: The only Bibles in the country were those brought by immigrants. If a young couple, who were Christian professors, had formed the domestic relationship in a log cabin in the West, they had no Bible to read perchance, after many months waiting, some kind friend brought one in his saddle bags, across the mountains, from the old states. A manuscript volume of hymns is in our possession, compiled by one of the pioneer preachers of Kentucky for his own use as an itinerant, and it bears marks of being well thumbed by the preacher. Nor were tracts then circulated; and few religious books of any kind had found their way into the Valley. And what strength had the Christian ministry to cope with such an enemy, learned, proud, philosophical, speculative and subtle? The Baptists had ninety-five preachers of every grade, not one of whom was a classical scholar, or had the skill, or understood the tactics of the opponents of the Scripture. They had never been trained in, nor could they put on the armor of, the "schools of the prophets." They had no pretentions to the arts of the logician in debate. There were about a dozen Methodist preachers in the Valley, equally deficient in education, and unskilled as casuists. Of the Presbyterian ministers, there were about forty, all of whom made some claim to a classical and collegiate education. In reality the Presbyterians were far worse off in ministers than were the Baptists. Their historian, Dr. Davidson, has in no manner exaggerated the picture. He says: Had they all been men of marked ability, devoted piety, and unblemished reputation, the salutary influence they might have exerted in moulding the character and institutions of the growing West would have been incalculable. Unhappily, with two or three shining exceptions, the majority were men barely of respectable talents, and a few above mediocrity; and so far from being patterns of flaming zeal and apostolic devotion, a dull formality seems to have been their general characteristics (Davidson, History of the Presbyterian Church is Kentucky). The Presbyterian General Assembly, in 1798, describes the existing condition of the country in these terms: Formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe threaten destruction to morals and religion. Scenes of devastation and bloodshed unexampled in the history of modern nations have convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with similar calamities. We perceive with pain and fearful apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and practice among our fellow citizens, and a visible and prevailing impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of debauchery and loose indulgence abound. There is no question that throughout the country there was much dull preaching. Extreme Calvinism had brought coldness and a decline in religious life. There was some warmth among the Methodists, which brought their preaching in sharp contrast with some others. At this time Jesse Lee was their great evangelist. He began preaching in North Carolina, but was especially drawn to New England. Dr. Joseph B. Clark, a Congregational historian, describes him as follows:. In his doctrinal teaching, Jesse Lee, the pioneer of Methodism in these parts, suited such as were of Arminian tendencies; in his fervent style of address he was acceptable to many warm hearted Calvinists tired of dull preaching! The wild enthusiasm of the Quakers had long since dis. appeared, and their numbers were diminishing. The martyr spirit which animated the first generation of Baptists had subsided with the removal of their civil disabilities, and their religious zeal suffered a proportionate decline. If Jesse Lee had not come into Massachusetts, some one else pressed in spirit, like Paul at Athens, "when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry," would have found utterance, and would have had followers. These conditions affected every section of the country. The condition of New England is set forth by Lyman Beecher, in 1795, on the accession of President Dwight to Yale College. He says: Before he came the college was in a most ungodly state. The college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were kept in many rooms; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were common. I hardly know how I escaped .... Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to do, read Tom Paine and believed him; I read and fought him all the way. ; never had any propensity to infidelity. But most of the class before me were infidels, and called each other Voltaire, D’Alembert, c. (The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, I.). The religious condition of Kentucky and Tennessee was particularly deplorable. Infidel clubs were organized, and their evil influences extended far and wide. The character of the people was described as: "Politically they were violent and dogmatic; morally they were corrupting; and, in respect of religion, they were utterly infidel." The legislature dispensed with a chaplain, and the university was turned over to infidel management. The autobiography of that famous pioneer preacher, Peter Cartwright, gives a lively picture of Kentucky society, in 1793, as he remembered it in his old age. He says: Logan county, when my father moved into it, was called "Rogues’ Harbor." Here many refugees from all parts of the Union fled to escape punishment or justice; for although there was law, yet it could not be executed, and it was a desperate state of society. Murderers, horse thieves, highway robbers, and counterfeiters fled there, until they combined and actually formed a majority. Those who favored a better state of morals were called "Regulators." But they encountered fierce opposition from the "Rogues," and a battle was fought with guns, pistols, dirks, knives and clubs, in which the "Regulators" were defeated (Autobiography of Peter Cartwright). At this juncture, when hope was ready to expire, an unlooked for and an astounding change suddenly took place. The event was the great revival of 1800, so called for its wide extent and influence. This extraordinary excitement was called the revival of 1800 because its remarkable developments occurred mostly at that date, though its influence covered two or three years. This revival began in Virginia, but broke out almost simultaneously in many sections of the country. The movement originated among and was largely forwarded by the Presbyterians. In Kentucky the excitement began in the Presbyterian congregation at Gasper River and extended thence to the congregations at Muddy and Red river’s, in Logan county, under the pastoral care of Rev. James McGready. This James McGready is described as one of the Sons of Thunder, a Boanerges both in manner and matter, and an uncompromising reprover of sin in every shape. The curses of the Law lost none of their severity in falling from his lips; and, like Mirabeau, the fierceness of his invectives derived additional terror from the hideousness of his visage and the thunder of his tones. He had left a congregation in Orange county, North Carolina, but a few months since, in consequence of the odium which his unsparing censures had drawn upon him from the ungodly. Some of his former hearers having removed to Kentucky, and forwarded him an invitation to become their pastor, he resolved to accept the call; and accordingly arrived in the fall of 1796, being now about thirty-three years of age, and full of fiery zeal (Davidson). It was not long until the effects of his .impassioned preaching were visible. Regeneration, repentance and faith were his favorite topics; and an anxious and general concern were awakened among his hearers on the subject of experimental religion. The language of his sermons was often lurid. The following extracts from his sermon on "The Character, History and End of the Fool" will give some idea of his message: Time would fail me to pursue the history of the fool through middle life, and on to old age. I must pass over a variety of occurrences in his life; how he obtained the victory over his conscience; how the Holy Spirit gave him his last call; and, when this was resisted, how he left him forever; how the Lord Jesus Christ sealed his heart under the curse, so that all the powers of heaven and earth could not open it; how he went on from sin to sin with horrid rapidity, till his cup of wrath was full to the brim, and he was ripe for hell. On these particulars I cannot dwell, I would, therefore, hasten to the end. And suffice it to say, he died accursed of God when his soul was separated from the body, and the black flaming vultures of hell began to encircle him on every side; his conscience awoke from its long sleep, and roared like ten thousand peals of thunder; then all the horrid crimes of his past life stared him in his face in all their glowing colors; then the remembrance of misimproved sermons and sacramental occasions, flared like streams of forked lightning through his tortured soul; then the reflection that he had slighted the mercy and blood of the Son of God; that he had despised and rejected him, was like a poisoned arrow piercing his heart; when the fiends of hell dragged him into the infernal gulf he roared and screamed and yelled like a devil; when, while Indians, Pagans, and Mohametans, stood amazed, and upbraided him, falling, like Lucifer, from the meridian blaze of the Gospel and the threshold of heaven, sinking into the liquid boiling waves of hell, and accursed sinners of Tyre, and Sidon, and Sodom, and Gomorrah, sprang to the right and the left, and made way for him to pass them, and fall lower down even to the deepest caverns in the flaming abyss—here his conscience, like a never dying worm, stings him and forever gnaws his soul, and the slightest blood of the Son of God communicates ten thousand hells in one. Now through the blazing flames of hell he sees that heaven he has lost; that exceeding great and eternal weight of glory he has sold for the devil’s pottage. in those pure regions he sees his father and mother, his sisters or brothers, and those persons who sat under the same means of grace with him, and whom he derided as fools, fanatics and hypocrites. They are far beyond the impassable gulf; they shine brighter than the sun when shining in his strength, and walk the golden streets of the new Jerusalem; but he is lost and damned forever (The Posthumous Works of the Reverend and Pious James M’Gready, late Minister of the Gospel in Henderson, Ky., 148, 149. Nashville, Tenn., 1837). Under such preaching as this it is no wonder that men were stirred to the depths of their souls. Among the means adopted by this zealous pastor to awaken the flock was a written covenant binding all who appended their signatures to observe a monthly fast, a twilight concert of prayer, and a sunrise concert. The year 1799 witnessed a renewal of the excitement, but it reached its height in 1800 and 1801. In a letter to a friend, dated Logan County, Kentucky, October 23, 1801, M’Gready gives a "Narrative of the Commencement and Progress of the Revival of 1800." In the interest of historical accuracy, though a little long, the letter is here recorded, and is as follows: But I promised to give you a short statement of our blessed revival; on which you will at once say, the Lord has done great things for us in the wilderness, and the solitary place has been made glad; the desert has rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. In the month of May, 1797, which was the spring after I came to this country, the Lord graciously visited Gasper River Congregation (an infant church then under my charge). The doctrines of Regeneration, Faith and Repentance, which I uniformly preached, seemed to call the attention of the people to a serious inquiry. During the winter the question was often proposed to me, Is Religion a sensible thing? If I were converted would I feel it, and know it? In May, as I said before, the work began. A woman, who had been a professor, in full communion with the church, found her old hope false and delusive—she was struck .with deep conviction, and in a few days was filled with joy and peace in believing. She immediately visited her friends and relatives, from house to house, and warned them of their danger in a most solemn, faithful manner, and plead with them to repent and seek religion. This, as a means, was accompanied with divine blessing to the awakening of many. About this time the ears of all that congregation seemed to be open to receive the word preached and almost every sermon was accompanied with the power of God, to the awakening of sinners. During the summer, about ten persons in the congregation were brought to Christ. In the fall of the year a general deadness seemed to creep on apace. Conviction and conversion work, in a great measure, ceased; and no visible alteration for the better took place, until the summer of 1798, at the administration of the sacrament of the supper, which was in July. On Monday the Lord graciously poured out his Spirit; a very general awakening took place; perhaps but a few families in the congregation could be found who, less or more, were not struck with an awful sense of their lost estate. During the week following but few persons attended to worldly business, their attention to the business of their souls was so great. On the first Sabbath of September, the sacrament was administered at Muddy Creek (one of my congregations). At the meeting the Lord graciously poured forth his spirit, to the awakening of many careless sinners. Through these two congregations already mentioned, and through Red River, my other congregation, awakening work went on with power under every sermon. The people seemed to hear, for eternity. In every house, and almost in every company, the whole conversation with people, was about the state of their souls. About this time the Rev. J. B. came here, and found a Mr. R. to join him. In a little while he involved our infant churches in confusion, disputation, c., opposed the doctrines preached here; ridiculed the whole work of the revival; formed a considerable party, c., c. In a few weeks this seemed to have put a final stop to the whole work, and our infant congregation remained in a state of deadness and darkness from the fall, through the winter, and until the month of July, 1799, at the administration of the sacrament at Red River. This was a very solemn time throughout. On Monday, the power of God seemed to fill the congregation; the boldest, daring sinners in the country covered their faces and wept bitterly. After the congregation was dismissed, a large number of the people stayed about the doors, unwilling to go away. Some of the ministers proposed to me to collect the people in the meeting house again, and to perform prayer with them; accordingly we went in, and joined in prayer and exhortation. The mighty power of God came amongst us like a shower from the everlasting hills—God’s people were quickened and comforted; yea, some of them were filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Sinners were powerfully alarmed, and some precious souls were brought to feel the pardoning love of Jesus. At Gasper River (at this time under the care of Mr. Rankin, a precious instrument in the hands of God) the sacrament woo administered in August. This was one of the days of the son of Man, indeed, especially on Monday. I preached a plain gospel sermon on Heb. 11 and 18. The better country. A great solemnity continued during the sermon. After sermon Mr. Rankin gave a solemn exhortation-the congregation was then dismissed; but the people all kept their seats for a considerable space, whilst awful solemnity appeared in the countenances of a large majority. Presently several persons under deep convictions broke forth in a loud outcry—many fell to the ground and lay powerless, groaning, praying and crying for mercy. As I passed through the multitude, a woman, lying in awful distress, called me to her. Said she, "I lived in your congregation in Carolina; I was a professor, and often went to the communion; but I was deceived; I have no religion; I am going to hell." In another place an old grey headed man lay in an agony of distress, addressing his weeping wife and children in such language as this: "We are all going to hell together; we have lived prayerless, ungodly lives; the work of our souls is yet to begin; we must get religion, or we will all be damned." But time would fail me to mention every instance of this kind. At Muddy Creek the sacrament was administered in September. The power of God was gloriously present on this occasion. The circumstances of it are equal, if not superior, to those of Gasper River. Many souls were solemnly awakened; a number, we hope, converted—whilst the people of God feasted on the hidden manna, and, with propriety, might be said to sing the new song. But the year 1800 exceeds all that my eyes ever beheld on earth. All that I have related is only, as it were, an introduction. Although many souls in these congregations, during the three preceding years, have been savingly converted, and now give living evidences of their union to Christ; yet all that work is like only to a few drops before a mighty rain, when compared with the wonders of Almighty Grace, that took place in the year 1800. In June, the sacrament was administered at Red River. This was the greatest time we had ever seen before. On Monday multitudes were struck down under awful conviction; the cries of the distressed filled the whole house. There you might see profane swearers, and sabbath breakers pricked to the heart, and crying out, "what shall we do to be saved?" There frolicers, and dancers crying for mercy. There you might see little children of ten, eleven and twelve years of age, praying and crying for redemption, in the blood of Jesus, in agonies of distress. During this sacrament, and until the Tuesday following, ten persons we believe, were savingly brought home to Christ. In July, the sacrament was administered in Gasper River Congregation. Here multitudes crowded from all parts of the country to see a strange work, from the distance of forty, fifty and even a hundred miles; whole families came in their wagons; between twenty and thirty wagons were brought to the place, loaded with people, and their provisions, in order to encamp at the meeting house. On Friday, nothing more appeared during the day, than a decent solemnity. On Saturday, matters continued in the same way, until in the evening. Two pious women were sitting together, conversing about their exercises; which conversations seemed to affect some of the bystanders; instantly the divine flame spread through the whole multitude. Presently you might have seen sinners lying powerless in every part of the house, praying and crying for mercy. Ministers and private Christians were kept busy during the night conversing with the distressed. This night a goodly number of awakened souls were delivered by sweet believing views of glory, fullness and sufficiency of Christ, to save to the uttermost. Amongst these were some children-a striking proof of the religion of Jesus. Of many instances to which I have been an eye witness, I shall only mention one, viz., a little girl. I stood by her whilst she lay across her mother’s lap almost in despair. I was conversing with her when the first gleam of light broke in upon her mind—She started to her feet, and in an ecstasy of joy, she cried out, "O he is willing, he is willing-he is come, he is come—O what a sweet Christ he is—O what a precious Christ he is—O what a fullness I see in him—O what a beauty I see in him—O why was it I never could believe! that I never could come to Christ before, when Christ was so willing to save me?" Then turning around, she addressed sinners, and told them of the glory, willingness and preciousness of Christ, and plead with them to repent; and sill this in language so heavenly, and at the same time, so rational and scriptural, that I was filled with astonishment. But were I to write you every particular of this kind that I have been an eye and ear witness to, during the two past years, it would fill many sheets of paper. At this sacrament a great many people from Cumberland, particularly from Shiloh Congregation, came with great curiosity to see the work, yet prepossessed with strong prejudices against it; about five of whom, I trust, were savingly and powerfully converted before they left the place. A circumstance worthy of observation, they were sober professors in full communion. I was truly affected to see them lying powerless, crying for mercy, and speaking to their friends and relations, in such language as this: "Oh, we despised the work we heard of in Logan; but, oh, we were deceived-I have no religion; I know now that there is a reality in these things; three days ago I would have despised any person that would have behaved as I am doing now; but, oh, I feel the very pains of hell in my soul." This was the language of a precious soul, just before the hour of deliverance came. When they went home, their conversation to their friends and neighbors, was the means of commencing a glorious work that has overspread all the Cumberland settlements to the conversion of hundreds of precious souls. The work continued night and day at this sacrament, whilst the vast multitude continued upon the ground till Tuesday morning. According to the best computation, we believe, that forty-five souls were brought to Christ on this occasion. Muddy River sacrament, in all its circumstances, was equal, and in some respects superior, to that of Gasper River. This sacrament was in August. We believe about fifty persons, at this time, obtained religion. At Ridge Sacrament, in Cumberland, the second Sabbath in September, about forty-five souls, we believe, obtained religion. At Shiloh Sacrament, the third Sabbath in September, about seventy persons. At Mr. Craighead’s Sacrament, congregation, in Logan county, in October, eight persons. At Little Muddy Creek Sacrament, in November, about twelve persons. At Montgomery’s Meeting House, in Cumberland, about forty. At Hopewell Sacrament, in Cumberland, in November, about twenty persons. To mention the circumstances of more private occasions, common days preaching, and societies, would swell a letter to a volume. The present season has been a blessed season likewise; yet not equal to last year in conversion work. I shall just give you a list of our sacraments, and the number, we believe, experienced religion at each, during the present year, 1801. Here follows a list of the sacraments, and the statement that 144 persons professed religion. He then continues: I would just remark that, among the great numbers in our country that professed to obtain religion, I scarcely know an instance of any that gave comfortable ground of hope to the people of God, that they had religion, and have been admitted to the privileges of the church, that have in any degree, disgraced their profession, or given us any ground to doubt their religion. Were I to mention to you the rapid progress of this work, in vacant congregations, carried on by means of a few supplies and by praying societies—such as Stone’s River, Cedar Creek, Goose Creek, the Red Banks, the Fountain Head, and many other places—it would be more than time, or the bounds of a letter would admit of. Mr. M’G. and myself administered the sacrament at the Red Banks, on the Ohio, about a month ago—a vacant congregation, nearly an hundred miles distant from any regular organized society, formerly a place famed for wickedness, and a perfect synagogue of Satan. I visited them twice at an early period; Mr. R. twice, and Mr. H. once. These supplies the Lord blessed, as a means to start his work and their praying societies were attended with the power of God, to the conversion of almost whole families. When we administered the sacrament among them, they appeared to be the most blessed little society I ever saw. I obtained ten elders among them, all precious Christians; three of which, two years ago were professed deists, now living monuments of Almighty Grace. James M’Gready. (The Posthumous Works of James M’Gready, vii-xi). The first regular Camp Meeting, as has been seen, was held at Gasper River, July, 1800. Much pains was taken to advertise the meeting, and it was announced that people were expected to come and encamp on the grounds; and the whole community, and ministers especially, were earnestly invited to attend and witness the wonderful scene that was anticipated (Methodist Episcopal Herald, II.). Impelled by curiosity, a great concourse assembled, from distances as far as one hundred miles. A regular encampment was formed. Some occupied tents, while others slept in covered wagons. The whole was arranged to form a hollow square, the interior of which was fitted up for public worship. Near the center was the stand, a rude platform or temporary pulpit, constructed of logs, and surmounted by a hand rail. The meeting lasted four days and pungent conviction for sin was followed by relief through faith in Christ. Barton W. Stone, then a Presbyterian minister, who was present at this meeting in Logan county, describes it as follows: There, on the edge of a prairie in Logan county, Kentucky, the multitudes came together and continued a number of days and nights encamped on the ground, during which time worship was carried on in some part of the encampment. The scene was new to me and passing strange. It baffled description. Many, very many, fell down as men slain in battle, and continued for hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless state, sometimes for a few moments reviving and exhibiting symptoms of life by a deep groan or piercing shriek, or by a prayer for mercy fervently uttered. After lying there for hours they obtained deliverance. The gloomy cloud that had covered their faces seemed gradually and visibly to disappear, and hope, in smiles, brightened into joy. They would rise, shouting deliverance, and then would address the surrounding multitude in language truly eloquent and impressive. With astonishment did I hear men, women, and children declaring the wonderful works of God and the glorious mysteries of the gospel. Their appeals were solemn, heart-penetrating, bold, and free. Under such circumstances many others would fall down into the same state from which the speakers had just been delivered. Two others of my particular acquaintances from a distance were struck down. I sat patiently by one of them, I knew to be a careless sinner, for hours, and observed with critical attention everything that passed, from the beginning to the end. I noticed the momentary revivings as from death. The humble confession of sin, the fervent prayer, and the ultimate deliverance; then the solemn thanks and praise to God, and affectionate exhortation to companions and the people around to repent and come to Jesus. I was astonished at the amount of gospel truth displayed in the address. The effect was that several sank down into the same appearance of death. After attending to many such cases, my conviction was complete that it was a good work-the work of God; nor has my mind wavered since on the subject. Much did I see then, that I considered to be fanaticism; but this should not condemn the work. The devil always tries to ape the works of God, to bring them into disrepute; but that cannot be a Satanic work which brings men to humble confession, to forsaking sin, to prayer, fervent praise and thanksgiving, and a sincere and affectionate exhortation to sinners to repent and come to Jesus the Saviour. Camp meetings once introduced, the plan spread like wild fire. One after another was held in rapid succession. The woods and paths seemed alive with people, and the number reported attending is almost incredible. The laborer quit his task; age snatched his crutch; youth forgot his pastime; the plow was left in the furrow; the deer enjoyed a respite in the mountains; business of all kinds was suspended; dwelling houses were deserted; whole neighborhoods were emptied; bold hunters and noble matrons, young women, maidens and little children, flocked to the common center of attraction; every difficulty was surmounted, every risk ventured, to be present at the Camp Meeting (McNemar, History of the Kentucky Revival). The meetings were often protracted till two o’clock in the morning. Everything was done to produce boiling heat, and the "singing ecstasy" assisted in adding fuel to the fire. The number of persons who fell is estimated at 3,000. Among the most zealous advocates of the new measure, were Matthew Houston, Barton W. Stone and Robert Marshall. These men had always inclined to a fervent and excited style of preaching, and their peculiarities had gained them great popularity, and a reputation for extraordinary zeal. Houston was constitutionally of a warm and sanguine temperament; Marshall was a bold and stern enthusiast; Stone differed from them both in cooler sagacity, an appearance of tender feeling, and a bland, insinuating address; all were calculated to be leaders, as they equally loved influence and the stimulus of thronged assemblies. It is not wonderful, therefore, that, aided by the enthusiasm of the times, they succeeded in stealing the hearts of the people, even captivating by great appearance of devotion. To men so predisposed, the Camp Meeting presented precisely such a theater of operation as they desired, and everything was accordingly to their purposes. The extravagances witnessed under animal feeling were far beyond anything ever known before and opened a new chapter in the history of the human mind. They have merited both the attention of the physician and the psychologist. These bodily exercises and the new light were of an extraordinary character. The performances have been divided into seven exercises as follows: The falling, jerking, rolling, running, dancing, barking, and visions and trances. "I have passed a meeting house," says the eccentric Lorenzo Dow, "where I observed the undergrowth had been cut for a camp meeting, and from fifty to an hundred saplings were left breast high on purpose for persons who were ‘jerked’ to hold on to. I observed where they had held on they had kicked up the earth as a horse stamping flies... I believe it does not affect those naturalists who wish to get it to philosophize about it; and rarely those who are the most pious; but the lukewarm, lazy professor is subject to it. The wicked fear it and are subject to it; but the persecutors are more subject to it than any, and they have sometimes cursed and sworn and damned while jerking." After a rousing exhortation or during spirited singing, when the body was exhausted by copious weeping, one or another in the audience, sometimes to the number of scores, would suddenly fall prostrate to the ground, and swoon away. No sex or age was exempt; the young and the old, men as well as women, fell; even large, robust men, of the age of twenty, and in one instance all who fell were men. This would be accompanied by piercing shrieks. In this condition the person would lie from fifteen minutes to three hours, it is recorded in one instance that a woman did not eat or speak for nine days. During the syncope, even when conscious and speaking of religious subjects, the patient was free from pain. Swoons and convulsive fallings have not been without precedent, but what is known as the jerks was altogether unprecedented in Christian lands. The person was instantaneously seized with spasms or convulsions in every muscle, nerve, and tendon. The head was jerked and thrown from side to side with such rapidity that it was impossible to distinguish the visage, and the most lively fears were awakened lest the neck be dislocated or the brains dashed out. Those who mocked often were stricken down. Men would double up with their head and feet together, and roll over and over like a wheel, or turn swiftly over and over sidewise like a log. Another would take a sudden start and run with amazing swiftness as if in a race till his strength was exhausted. The dancing exercise was a later improvement; "the privilege of exhibiting by a bold faith, what others were moved to by blind impulse" (McNemar). The barks frequently accompanied the jerks, though of later origin. The exercise consisted of an individual taking the position of a dog, moving about on all fours, snapping the teeth, and barking, with such exactness of imitation to deceive any one whose eyes were not directed to the spot. The persons frequently affected were the most cultivated and refined. Those affected by trances and who saw visions were innumerable. Unfortunately the greatest disorders accompanied the meetings. "At first appearance," says McNemar, "these meetings exhibited nothing to the spectator but a scene of confusion that could scarcely be put into human language" (McNemar). Mr. Lyle says that "he never saw a more confused, careless audience since the world began" (Lyle, Diary). Stone’s people, he says, "were wild and disorderly more than was needful." No wonder, for Stone was the ring leader in some of these meetings. While Mr. McPheeters was preaching Mr. Stone got down on his knees and began to pray, while the people observing, caught the flame, and began to pray also. In ten minutes the noise was so great that the preacher had to cease. They kept up the praying till nine o’clock. The rest of the congregation left the place in disgust (Lyle). Meetings of this character continued for many years, and extended throughout the entire country. The following description is of a Methodist meeting in Philadelphia by an eye witness: I went at 8 o’clock in the evening. The door was locked; but the windows being open, I placed myself at one of them, and saw that the church within was crowded almost to suffocation. The preacher indulged in long pauses, and occasionally of loud elevations of voice, which were always answered by the audience with deep groans. When the prayer which followed the sermon had ended, the minister descended from the pulpit, the doors were thrown open, and a considerable number of the audience departed. Understanding, however, that something was yet to follow, with considerable difficulty I obtained admission. The minister had departed, the doors were again closed, but about four hundred persons remained. One (apparently) of the leading members gave out a hymn, then a brother was called upon to pray; he roared and ranted like a maniac; the male part of the audience groaned, the females shrieked; a man sitting next to me shouted; a youth standing before me continued for half an hour bawling, "O Jesus l come down, come down. Jesus t my dear Jesus, I see you, bless me, O Jesus! Oh! Oh! Oh! come down, Jesus!" A small space further on, a girl about 11 years of age was in convulsion: an old woman, whom I concluded was her mother, stood on a seat, holding her up in her arms, that her ecstasies might be visible to the whole assembly. In another place there was a convocation of holy sisters, sending forth most awful yells... A brother addressed them with a voice which might almost rival a peal of thunder, the whole congregation occasionally joining responsive to his notes. The madness now became threefold increased, and such a scene presented itself as I could never have pictured to my imagination, and as I trust, for the honor of true religion and of human nature, I shall never see again. Had the inhabitants of Bedlam been let loose, they could not have exceeded it. From forty to fifty were praying aloud and extemporaneously at the same moment of time; some were kicking, many jumping, all clapping their hands, and crying out in chorus, Glory (Fearson, Narrative of a Journey). There were not sufficient salutary influences thrown around these meetings, it is certain. Davidson says of the meetings in Kentucky: The late hours that were kept no doubt aided the tendency to a morbid excitement of the nervous system. They continued up, sometimes till two, sometimes till four o’clock in the morning. It was no uncommon thing to spend the whole night in these orgies. To compensate for this loss of sleep, they would deliberately spread their great coats and take a nap during the sermon. The truth seems to be, that there were no regular hours for anything, nor regular intermissions for eating and sleeping; there were no stated hours for public worship, and the meeting might be said to last day and night. Cooking, eating, sleeping and the like processes, were all going on simultaneously with the religious services. Tradition whispers in an undertone of wild fellows from adjoining towns frequenting the camp to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the prevailing license and disorder, just as they would at a masquerade. That dissolute characters of both sexes resorted thither can easily be gathered from those who have written upon the revival. The question has been raised by earnest and serious men, did the revival do more good than harm? That there were evil results that came from it is beyond doubt. Aside from any disorderly elements which may be mentioned, there were sown doctrinal differences and schisms which have not been healed to this day. Out of the revival came acrimonious debates and criticisms which have not been easy to allay. There can be no question that there were numbers of genuine conversions. It slew infidelity in Kentucky. Dr. George A. Baxter, an eminent Presbyterian minister and President of Washington Academy, came to Kentucky to look into the effects of the revival. His report was most favorable: He says: On my way to Kentucky I was informed by settlers on the road that the character of Kentucky travelers was entirely, changed; that they were now as remarkable for sobriety as they had formerly been for dissoluteness and immorality. And, indeed, I found Kentucky, to appearances, the most moral place I had ever seen. A profane expression was hardly ever heard. A religious awe seemed to pervade the country; and some deistical characters had confessed that, from whatever cause the revival might proceed, it made the people better. Its influence was not less visible in promoting a friendly temper among the people .... Some neighborhoods visited by the revival were formerly notorious for private animosities and contentions; and many petty lawsuits had commenced on that ground. When the parties in these quarrels were impressed with religion, the first thing was to send for their antagonists, and it was often very affecting to see their meeting. They had both seen their faults, and both contended they ought to make the acknowledgement, till at last they were obliged to request one another to forbear all mention of the past, and to receive each other as friends and brothers for the future (Baxter, The Great Revival in Kentucky, The Connecticut Evangelical Magazine, II. 354. March, 1802, Hartford). Dr. Richard Furman, of South Carolina, was more conservative in his statement. In a letter which he wrote to Dr. Rippon, London, England, he says: I hope the direct good obtained from these meetings will much more than counterbalance the incidental evil (Benedict, History of the Baptists, II.). The extravagances above related and illustrated prevailed among the Presbyterians and with such assistance as the Methodists could afford. The Baptists profited greatly by the revival, but had little or no connection with the excitement. Lewis Collins, the historian of Kentucky, relates: The Baptists almost entirely escaped these extraordinary and disgraceful scenes produced by the jerks, the rolling and barking exercises, etc., which extensively obtained among some other persuasions of those days. The work among the Baptists was deep, solemn and powerful; but comporting with that decency so emphatically enjoined by the scriptures (Collins, Historical Sketches of Kentucky). The Baptists were great gainers by the revival and multitudes were added to the churches. "This great revival (among the Baptists) in Kentucky," says Benedict, "began in Boone county on the Ohio River, and in its progress extended up the Ohio, Licking and Kentucky rivers, branching out into the settlements adjoining them. It spread fast in different directions, and in a short time almost every part of the State was affected by its influence. It was computed that about ten thousand were baptized and added to the Baptist churches in the course of two or three years. This great work progressed among the Baptists in much more regular manner than people abroad generally supposed. They were indeed zealously affected, and much engaged. Many of their ministers baptized in a number of neighboring churches from two to four hundred each. And two of them baptized about five hundred each in the course of the revival. But throughout the whole they preserved a good degree of decorum and order" (Benedict, II.). Collins gives a good deal of detailed information on this point. He says: "During the revival, large additions were made to the churches in every quarter of the State. The Elkhorn Association, at its annual meeting in 1801, reported an addition of 3,011 members by baptism during the current year; and in 1802, an accession of twelve churches was reported, making the whole number of members 5,300." To the South Kentucky, the accessions were almost equal to those of the Elkhorn Association. "The Tate’s Creek Association reported in 1801, the addition of 1,148 members by baptism, The Salem Association also shared largely in the blessings of the revival. It received upwards of 2,000 members." Dr. Spencer, the Kentucky Baptist historian, thus sums up the situation: "Among the Baptists in Northern Kentucky, where they were by far the most numerous, the revival began, and continued to its close, in a decorous, orderly manner. In the upper Green River country and East Tennessee, where the Separate Baptists were most numerous, there was more excitement, and some falling and jerking. In Middle Tennessee (then called West Tennessee), ‘the strange exercises’ did not prevail among the Baptists. In the lower Green River country, there were but few Baptists at the beginning of the revival, and we hear of no disorder among them. It is certain that the Baptists of Kentucky were generally exempt from the excesses of the great revival of 1800, that so sorely afflicted the Presbyterians. And instead of it resulting an discord, it healed the only schism there was among them. "The revival had an especially happy effect on the Baptists, in disposing them to make more efforts to heal some unhappy divisions that existed among them, and in enlarging the spirit of missions. Hitherto their missionary operations had been confined to sending their ministers to look after their destitute brethren in Kentucky, and in the adjacent borders of Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. But, in 1801, at the meeting of the Elkhorn Association, which comprised one-third of the Baptists in the State, and probably more than two-thirds of their wealth and influence, a request came up from the South Elkhorn. church, ‘to send missionaries to the Indian nations"’ (Spencer, History of Kentucky Baptists, I.). The revival was, however, not confined to this section, but extended to every part of the Union. To the Minutes of the Georgia Association for 1803, Jesse Mercer appended the following note: Doubtless there is a glorious revival of the religion of Jesus. The wicked of every description have been despoiled of their boasted coat of mail; even deists, who stood in the front of the battle, have had their right arm broken, their hopes disappointed, and their prognostications metamorphosed into falsehood. As the fruit of this work there have been added to the churches of the Georgia Association, more than 1,400; to those of the Sarepta, more than 1,000 a year ago, and we doubt not that number has greatly increased by this time (actually 375 had been added to the Sarepta during 1803; while for the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, there were added to the churches of the Sarepta Association, 1,803 by baptism). To those of Bethel (a South Carolina Association) more than 2,000. There is and continues a great work in some of the churches in the Hephzibah and Savannah (Associations), and is kindly in others. More than one hundred have been added to one church in the Charleston Association. We are authorized to say that, in six Associations in Kentucky, there are at least 10,000 young converts. To all of which we add that other accounts from different distant parts, verbally received, state that the Lord is doing excellent things in the earth. There was a great awakening in the First Baptist Church, of Boston, under the pastoral care of Samuel Stillman. In the Baptist Magazine of 1804-5 this work is thus described: A special seriousness made its appearance in both Baptist churches early in 1803. Its first indications were a solemn stillness, and a deep, fixed attention on the Sabbath. The work gradually continued to extend from week to week, through two or three years. It has been unusual, during the fall, winter and spring months, while the evenings were sufficiently long, for the people to tarry after the blessing, and frequently some minister present has again addressed them. Sometimes two or three have spoken and prayed. The custom seems to arise out of the feelings of the people. They appeared loth to leave the place. There is no doubt that they would have tarried until midnight, had the exhortations been continued. The number gathered into the First Church was 127; into the second, 185. Although these two societies have been the principal sharers in this work it has not been confined to them. Persons from almost every society in town, and numbers from adjacent towns, have frequently attended on our lectures; and we have reason to believe that many have reaped saving advantages. The work was still, and without confusion. The gospel preached was principally blessed, almost everything seemed to preach. The converts generally had a deep sense of the depravity of their own hearts; of the infinite evil of sin, as committed against a holy God. It reclaimed the profane swearer, the gambler, and the Sabbath breaker. It made the young men sober minded. Great revivals were experienced throughout New England. Bennett Tyler says: Within a period of five or six years, commencing with 1797, not less than one hundred and fifty churches in New England were visited with "times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord" (Tyler, New England Revivals). Ebenezer Porter, Professor in Andover Theological Seminary says: The day dawned which was to succeed a night of more than sixty years. As in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision, there was a great shaking. Dry bones, animated by the breath of the Almighty, stood up new born believers. The children of Zion beheld with overflowing souls, and with thankful hearts acknowledged "this is the finger of God." The work was stamped conspicuously with the impress of the Divine author, and its joyful effects no other than the agency of Omnipotence. Edward D. Grin says: I could stand in my door at New Hartford, Litchfield county, Connecticut, and number fifty or sixty contiguous congregations laid down in one field of Divine wonders, and as many more in different parts of New England (Sprague, Lectures on Revivals, Appendix). The Cayuga Association, New York, reported, in 1802, that every church in the Association received additions to their number. There were many notable conversions. Among this number was Samuel Mills who had much to do with the beginning of missionary operations in this country (American Quarterly Register, 1840, I. 346). "Taken altogether the revival period at the close of the last (eighteenth) century and the beginning of the present (nineteenth) furnishes ample materials for a long and glorious chapter in the history of redemption" (Humphrey, Revival Sketches). This revival brought on the great missionary era among Baptists. Books for further reference: McNemar, History of the Kentucky Revival. Sprague, Lectures on Revivals o/ Religion. Boston, 1835. Porter, Letters on Religious Revivals about the Beginning of the Present Century. Boston, 1858. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 54: 01.2.03.05. THE RISE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS ======================================================================== Chapter 5 - The Rise of Foreign Missions Among American Baptists The Opinion of Southey—The Baptists of the United States Missionary—Had Not Undertaken Foreign Mission Work—The Appeals of Carey and Others—The Contributions to India—Early Missionary Enterprise—No General Organization—The Spirit of the Times—The Congregationalists—The American Board of Commissioners—Young Men in the Andover Theological Seminary—Hall, Mills, Judson, Nott and Luther Rice—Americans Seek to Be Sent Out from England—The Missionaries Ordained—They Sail for Foreign Lands—Adoniram Judson—Studies the Subject of Baptism—Becomes a Baptist—Informs the American Board—Appeals to the Baptists—Accepted by the Baptists—Judson in Burmah—The Return of Luther Rice. The rise and progress of the missionary spirit," says the celebrated Dr. Southey, "which is at this time prevailing throughout the Protestant world, will be one of the most remarkable features in the history of the present age. It has not been sudden and violent, like that of the Crusades; and yet it may be doubted whether the impulse whereby that great movement was produced extended so widely through all classes of society, or was felt with equal force. Its rise was so obscure as hardly to be noticed. Little attention had been excited by the Danish missionaries; scarcely any by what the Dutch had effected in their Asiatic possessions; and the labors of the Moravians would hardly have been known beyond the bounds of their own little community, if it had not been for Crantz’s account of their extraordinary exertions in Greenland, and the entire success of that painful mission. By that book this singular labor of love was made known to a few general readers, and to what was then the still smaller number of persons who felt a religious interest in such subjects. But no general feeling was excited. The honor of giving the first impulse to public feeling belongs to the English Baptists" (London Eclectic Review, January, 1830). This impulse was felt by the Baptists of the United States. The Baptists of the United States had always been missionary in their tendencies and practices. The old Philadelphia Association, and other associations in all sections of the country, had sent out missionaries: The moral purpose of the denomination was behind missionary operations and frequently money had been collected for such purposes. Missionaries duly accredited had traveled hundreds of miles, and in their long journeys had remained for months from home. As yet the Baptists of America had not undertaken, on their own account, any foreign mission tasks. They had no general organization, for the district association was their only unit of procedure. They had been a scattered and feeble folk, just emerging from dire persecutions, and hence had not mobilized for foreign service. But when William Carey entered India from England as a missionary there was an intense response from many Baptists in America (S. Pearce Carey, William Carey, New York, 1923). Some of his best friends and most ardent supporters were in this nation. The letters and appeals of Carey, Ward, and Marshman were widely circulated, and read with deepening interest in this country. "The Star of the East," preached and published in England, in 1808, by Claudius Buchanan, the Scottish chaplain of the East India Company, who gave to the world, in 1804, the first translation of the New Testament in Persian and Hindostanese, had also stirred the souls of the lovers of Jesus all over the land. As early as 1802, the Massachusetts Missionary Society was organized to preach the gospel in new settlements of the United States, "and further if circumstances ‘should render it proper." "Mite Societies" for missions were formed in many of the larger churches. In November, 1811, the Boston Association of Baptist ministers recommended contributions to the "Eastern Translations"; and offered to transmit funds contributed for the object. In 1812, $4,650 was given for this purpose in Boston and Salem alone (Tupper, Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention). Some of the associations immediately responded to the Foreign Mission call. The Cayuga Association, New York, in 1814, is an example. Says Belden: At an earlier date, a strong and heartfelt sympathy for the perishing heathen had been awakened by the news which had reached this country, of the success which had crowned the efforts of "The English Baptist Missionary Society" in Bengal. In their circular addressed to the churches in 1813, one year previous to the formation of the American Board of Foreign Missions, they say, —"A flame of love seems to have been enkindled among our brethren in England, for the souls of the poor benighted Hindoos; and God in his boundless mercy, hath crowned their labors with astonishing success; hundreds, yea thousands of those poor pagans, have, through their instrumentality, become the hopeful heirs of salvation. These will eternally sing the triumphs of sovereign grace, and adore God for sending the gospel among them. These things animate us, and we wish to enquire what we have done to send the gospel among our destitute brethren." Thus God was preparing the hearts of his people to receive the news of those singular providences which established an American Baptist Mission in Burmah, and furnished the means which have been so successfully employed and so signally blessed in the salvation of heathen souls. And when that news arrived, Cayuga Association was among the first to offer to the Board of the General Convention, her cooperation in the great and glorious work of sending to the heathen the preached gospel (Belden, History of the Cayuga Association). Robert Rallston, Esq., of Philadelphia, at one time remitted to the Baptist mission at Serampore, for himself and others, three thousand three hundred and fifty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents. Dr. Carey acknowledged the receipt of six thousand dollars from American Christians during the years of 1806 and 1807. The interest of the churches in missions to the East was also, from time to time, quickened by the arrival of missionaries from England, on their way to India, or on their return home. Dr. Francis Wayland has given a fine summary of this period in Baptist missions. "The same spirit," says he, "to a considerable degree, animated the Baptist churches, though their numbers were small, and their means but feeble. The Baptist Missionary Society of Massachusetts was formed in 1802. The next year, Dr. Baldwin, at the request of the society, commenced the publication of the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine. This periodical had an extensive circulation throughout the Northern States. It was principally occupied by the journals of missionaries in our frontier settlements, narratives of revivals in our churches, and missionary intelligence from abroad. Dr. Baldwin was a correspondent of Dr. Carey, of Fuller, and of Ryland; and, being imbued with their spirit, he delighted to cooperate with them in spreading before his brethren the accounts which they furnished of the triumphs of the cross. "In the year 1812, the Salem Bible Translation and Foreign Mission Society was formed, under the fostering care of the late Dr. Bolles. This society, until the establishment of the Baptist General Convention, contributed its collections in aid of the Baptist missions in the East Indies. Nor would it be just to omit, in this place, the name of Rev. William Stoughton, D. D., pastor of the Samson Street Church, Philadelphia, and afterwards secretary of the Baptist General Convention. He had been, when in England, the friend and associate of the most efficient friends of missions there. He was in frequent correspondence with all of them and was, perhaps, the most direct channel by which their spirit was diffused among our churches. Distinguished for eloquence, varied accomplishments, and most animating views of the progress of the gospel, the triumph of the cross was always a favorite theme in his discourses. Many of our most successful ministers were his students in theology; and they imbibed in a happy degree his characteristic sentiments. "Of course, I do not assume that the missionary spirit was at this time universal. Far from it. It is by no means universal now. Men of enlarged views, steadfast faith, and ardent piety, in various denominations, had become, to a good degree, interested in the subject of missions, and their influence was diffusing itself among the less favored brethren. The beams of the sun had only fallen upon the top of the mountains; they had not as yet rested upon the hillsides; much less had they penetrated into the valleys. But the mountain tops testified that the sun had risen. "As yet, no general organization had been formed for carrying the gospel to the heathen. Nor is this to be wondered at. It was much less easy to form general organizations then than at present. That was not the age of steamboats, railroads, or telegraphs. Besides this, our national character has greatly changed in the course of forty or fifty years. We were then by no means conscious of our strength. There were then comparatively few things in which we had tried what we could do. This want of national confidence affected all of our public decisions, and it, of course, had its effect on our views of what was practicable in the missionary enterprise. "In this state of public feeling, all that was wanted was the occurrence of some event which would impose the necessity of immediate action. Such an event was found in the application of the young men at Andover, to the General Association of Massachusetts, for an appointment as missionaries to the heathen" (Wayland, Memoir of the Life and Labors of Adoniram Judson, I. 46-48. New York, 1860). God was preparing in a wonderful way an opening for Baptist missions in foreign lands. The conversion of Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice to Baptist doctrines and practices was one of the most phenomenal events in all the history of missions. This foreign mission enterprise, in the United States, did not originate with the Baptists, but with the Congregationalists. How this work began in a prayer meeting of young men, how a missionary society was organized to send them out, how the money was secured for their equipment, how they were ordained, how they were called to India, and how Judson and Rice became Baptists, is one of the most thrilling stories ever told. A part of this history has been recorded by the Congregational Board and is as follows: "The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had its origin in a desire of several young men in the Andover Theological Seminary to preach the gospel to a heathen world. The four names appended to the memorial to the General Association of Massachusetts, which was the immediate occasion of forming the Board, were Adoniram Judson, Samuel Nott, Samuel J. Mills, and Samuel Newell. Mills is known to have come under a written pledge to engage in a mission to the heathen as early as September, 1808. He was a member of Williams College; and then and there a society was formed, through his agency, called ‘The Brethren,’ which had for its object ‘to effect, in the person of it members, a mission or missions to the heathen.’ This society was transferred, with its constitution and records, to the Seminary at Andover, in the year 1809, or early in 1810, and has continued to the present time. It is distinct from the ‘Society of Inquiry respecting Missions,’ though its members are of course connected with that well known and useful body. The memorialists were each from a different college; Judson being a graduate of Brown, Nott of Union, Newell of Harvard, and Mills of Williams. There is good reason for the belief that the hallowed flame in each of these brethren had not its origin in man. Mr. Nott distinctly avers that the ‘starting point and early progress’ of the movement in his mind, was ‘without any knowledge of the existence’ of those who were so soon to be his associates. He spent only one year at Andover, going thither in November, 1809. Hall, Judson, Newell, and Nott were of the class that finished its course in 1810, which was the earliest class except one in the institution. Mills was in the class of 1812. Hall was there during only a part of the last year, coming about the time of the General Association; which is presumed to be the reason his name was not on the memorial. When Judson came to Andover in 1808, he had not attained even to a confirmed belief in Christianity; but his mind was in an inquiring state, and he soon united himself heartily with the people of God. The reading of Buchanan’s ‘Star of the East,’ in 1809, led him to reflect upon his duty to the heathen, and in February of the next year he resolved to devote his life to a foreign mission; not then knowing that there were others in the Seminary, or even in the country, who had come to the same resolution. The memorial to the General Association was drawn up by Mr. Judson; and his standing as a scholar and great energy of character made it quite certain that he exerted a leading influence in the measures which gave occasion to the formation of the Board at this time. But the fact that the name of Mills was attached to the memorial, though he was then in the Junior class, shows that he also was acknowledged by his brethren as a leader in this movement. Such was his shrinking from the public eye, that we may believe his name was there, and third on the list, only at the earnest solicitation of all of his associates. The names of Luther Rice and James Richards were appended to the paper, but happening to stand last, ‘they were struck off,’ as we learn from Dr. Judson ‘at the suggestion of Dr. Spring, for fear of alarming the Association with too large a number.’ Rice was in the class of 1811. Richards had subscribed the pledge in Williams College as early as 1808, and was in the class of Mills both at college and at Andover. Hall was one of the ablest missionaries from the American churches. His graduation at Williams College—as was Judson’s at Brown—was with the highest honors of his class. Mills was two years the junior of Hall in college; but, upon the conversion of the latter, in the third year of his course, the sagacity of that remarkable man singled him out for a ,foreign missionary; and so strong were Mills’ convictions, that he declared Hall to be ‘ordained and stamped a missionary by the sovereign hand of God.’ "In the autumn of 1809, Hall received a call to become pastor of a church in Connecticut. ‘Then,’ says Dr. Ebenezer Porter, who was his theological teacher in Connecticut, ‘then the heart of the missionary came out. Then was revealed the secret so long cherished between himself and his beloved brother Samuel J. Mills. These kindred spirits, associated in college, often interchanged visits afterward, mutually enkindled that holy flame which nothing but death could extinguish in their own bosoms, and which has since extended its sacred influences to so many thousands of other hearts. The general purpose of these devoted young men was fixed. Sometimes they talked of ‘cutting a path through the moral wilderness of the West to the Pacific.’ Sometimes they thought of South America; then of Africa. Their object was the salvation of the heathen; but no specific shape was given to their plans till the formation of the American Board of Foreign Missions. Before this period the churches were asleep. Even ministers were but half-awake. To many it seemed a visionary thing in Mr. Hall, that he should decline an invitation to settle, attended by so many attractive circumstances, and so much prospect of usefulness. But I can never forget with what a glistening eye and firm accent this youthful pioneer of foreign missions, full of faith in the Holy Ghost, said, ‘No, I must not settle in any parish in Christendom. Others will be left, whose health or engagements require them to stay at home; but I can sleep on the ground; can endure hunger and hardship; God calls me to the heathen; woe to me if I preach not the gospel to the heathen.’ He went; and the day of judgment, while it tells the results of his labors, will rebuke the apathy with which others have slumbered over the miseries of dying pagans. "The institution of the Andover Seminary, at the time the Holy Spirit was interesting the minds of graduates from different colleges in the work of foreign missions, is worthy of grateful notice. It was the only way in which they could be brought into circumstances favorable to personal acquaintance, and for associating and acting together. Nor should we omit to notice the important fact, that the missionary spirit should have been enkindled in the hearts of such men as Worcester, Spring, Evarts, and the Professors of Andover. The Seminary brought the young men where they could combine their action; and these fathers—for such they now seem, though most of them were then in the very prime of life—responded at once and cordially to their appeals. Hence the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was instituted at Bradford, by the General Association of Massachusetts, on the 29th of June, 1810. These young men and their memorial were the occasion that gave rise to the Board, but the idea and plan of it arose in other minds. The idea would seem first to have occurred to Dr. Worcester, on Wednesday morning, June 27, as he and Dr. Spring rode together in a chaise from Andover to Bradford; and the plan of it was discussed between them as they rode along. But the whole was of God, and to him be the glory. "The Rev. Kiah Bayley, writing to the Secretaries of the Board from Vermont in the year 185, being then eighty-five years old, communicated the following incidents, which are worthy of preservation. He says: ‘A short time before my ordination at Newcastle, Maine, in 1797, the Rev. Alexander McLain of Bristol, had received from his friends in Scotland the sermons delivered in London by Dr. Hawies and others at the formation of the London Missionary Society. He was charmed with them, and lent them to me. I took the pamphlet to my wife, who was then at Newburyport, and she lent it to her friends, who read it with great avidity. A subscription paper was immediately issued, and a printer engaged. The work was soon in circulation. Dr. Samuel Spring And others in Newburyport caught the sacred flame. I know not that there was any other reprint of those sermons in America. Thus I have pointed out one little rill from which your society rose. There were others, no doubt, but I believe this was the leader. The sermons preached in London were sent to Scotland, and from Scotland to Maine, and from Maine to Newburyport. There the seed germinated, and the fruit will yet shake Lebanon.’" "Messrs. Hall, Judson, Newell, and Nott completed their theological course in September, 1810, but were not able to proceed on their mission until 1812. Meanwhile, it is well known, Mr. Judson visited England to see if the London Missionary Society would arrange with the Board for a joint support of the mission; an embassy which happily failed of success. The London Directors rightly judged that two controlling powers, so widely separated, could not act with unity and decision. They also expressed the hope that as soon as the American churches became properly informed, they would furnish the means of sustaining ‘not only four, but forty missionaries.’ Those were times of non-intercourse, embargo, and commercial embarrassments in this country, and the terrible Napoleon conflicts shook the civilized world. As a passage to India seemed not likely to occur soon, Messrs. Hall and Newell went to Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1811, to pursue their medical studies. Mr. Nott has shown us two letters from Mr. Hall, setting forth the feelings of himself and associates in view of the contemplated foreign mission. The first was written on the 9th of January, 1812, and contains the following: All hands upon deck! The Lord seems to be opening the door for us to enter speedily upon the mission. This evening I providentially fell in with Captain Cumming, of the ship Amiable, of this city, who told me that his vessel would be the first to sail for India, and at the middle of April at the furthest. . .It is currently reported that a messenger has arrived in this country from England, with a proposal to rescind the Order in Council on a certain easy condition, to which it is said to be ascertained that our government will readily assent. But if this good news should not prove to be true, it is almost universally believed that, at any rate, the offending order will expire as soon as February, and the intelligent merchants here confidently believe that our commerce will be revived early in the spring. This is Mr. Ralston’s opinion; he thinks we should get away in the spring. The prospect is such that no time should be lost. What will our Commissioners do? We shall immediately communicate this to Mr. Worcester and brother Judson. Let us bless the Lord and rejoice, but with trembling. On the 13th of January he thus wrote: I have seen Mr. Ralston today. The good man’s hopes in our favor are strengthened. He has some fears. He will see the owner of the ship Amiable. Under present circumstances, we cannot tell when we shall return to New England. If possible, I shall remain here until the lectures are closed, which will be the last of February. We must continue here till we learn more about a voyage to India. We should not be surprised to find that the Commissioners were not able to support us, and ourselves cast on the London Society. We have too long been in suspense." "The suspense was relieved sooner than they expected. The Harmony, Captain Brown, proposed sailing on short notice, from Philadelphia to Calcutta, and could take the missionaries as passengers. The narration will be continued from the statement of the Prudential Committee to the Board at its next annual meeting in September." "‘In the latter part of January the resolution was taken. The ordination of the missionaries was appointed to be on the Thursday of the next week—the latest day which would leave time for them to get to Philadelphia in season. Notice was immediately given to the friends of the mission in the vicinity, and means were out in operation with all possible activity, and to as great an extent as the limited time would allow, for raising the requisite funds.’" "‘In the meantime, Mr. Luther Rice, a licentiate preacher from the Theological Institution at Andover, whose heart had long been engaged in the missionary cause, but who had been restrained from offering himself to the Board by particular circumstances, presented himself to the Committee with good recommendations, and with an earnest desire to join the mission. The case was a very trying one. The Committee was not invested with full powers to admit missionaries, and they still felt a very heavy embarrassment from the want of funds. In view of all the circumstances, however, they dared not to reject Mr. Rice, and they came to the conclusion to assume the responsibility, and admit him as a missionary, to be ordained with the four other brethren, and sent out with them.’" "‘While the preparations were making, it came to the knowledge of the Committee, that the brigantine Caravan, of Salem, was to sail to Calcutta in a few days, and could carry three or four passengers; and after attention to the subject, it was deemed advisable that two of the missionaries, with their wives, should take passage in that vessel. This lessened the great risk, and was attended with several advantages.’" "‘According to appointment, on the 6th of February, the missionaries were ordained at the Tabernacle in Salem. A season of more impressive solemnity has scarcely been witnessed in our country. The sight of five young men, of highly respectable talents and attainments, and who might reasonably have promised themselves very eligible situations in our churches, forsaking parents, and friends, and country, and every alluring prospect, and devoting themselves to the privations, hardships, and perils of a mission for life, to people sitting in darkness and in the region and shadow of death, in a far-distant land and unpropitious clime, could not fail deeply to affect every heart not utterly destitute of feeling. Nor less affecting were the views which the whole scene was calculated to impress of the deplorable condition of the pagan world, of the riches of divine grace displayed in the gospel, and of the obligations on all on whom this grace is conferred, to use their utmost endeavors in making the gospel universally known. God was manifestly present; a crowded and attentive assembly testified, with many tears, the deep interest which they felt in the occasion; and not a few remembered the scene with fervent gratitude, and can say, it was good to be there’" (Memorial Volume of the First Fifty Years o f the American Board o f Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 39-44. Boston, 1862). Such was the genesis of the foreign mission movement in the United States. Up to this date the Baptists were not connected with the affair. But on the passage Judson availed himself of this period of leisure to investigate the scriptural authority for infant baptism. He was prompted to this course by two considerations. In the first place, he looked forward to the time when he should be surrounded by converts from heathenism. How should he treat children and servants, and did he have authority to baptize such persons? Besides this, he was going in the first instance to Serampore, to reside for a time with the Baptist missionaries. He felt the necessity of re-examining the subject, as he expected to be called upon by them to defend his belief. In this latter respect, however, he found himself singularly disappointed; for the missionaries in Serampore made no reference of the subject to their guest. The result of the investigation was that Judson became a Baptist. Mrs. Ann Hasseltine Judson, wrote, from the Isle of France, February 14, 1813, to her parents, explaining the situation as follows: I will now, my dear parents and sisters, give you some account of our change of sentiment, relative to the subject of baptism. Mr. Judson’s doubts commenced on our passage from America. While translating the New Testament, in which he was engaged, he used frequently to say that the Baptists were right in their mode of administering the ordinance. Knowing that he should meet the Baptists in Serampore, he felt impelled to attend to it more closely, to be able to defend his sentiments. After our arrival in Serampore, his mind for two or three weeks was much taken up with missionary inquiries and our difficulties with government, as to prevent his attending to the subject of baptism. But as we were awaiting the arrival of our brethren, and having nothing in particular to attend to, he again took up the subject. I tried to have him give it up, and rest satisfied with his old sentiments, and frequently told him, if he became a Baptist, 1 would not. He, however, said he felt it his duty to examine closely a subject on which he had so many doubts. After we removed to Calcutta, he found in the library of our chamber many books on both sides, which he determined to read candidly and prayerfully, and to hold fast, or embrace the truth, however mortifying, however great the sacrifice. I now commenced reading on the subject, with all my prejudices on the Pedobaptist side. We had with us Dr. Worcester’s, Dr. Austin’s, Peter Edward’s, and other Pedobaptist writings. But after closely examining the subject for several weeks, we were constrained to acknowledge that the truth appeared to lie on the Baptists’ side. It was extremely trying to reflect on the consequences of our becoming Baptists. We knew that it would wound and grieve our dear friends in America-that we should lose their approbation and esteem. We thought it probable that the commission would refuse to support us; and, what was more distressing than anything, we knew we must be separated from our missionary associates, and go alone to some heathen land. These things were very trying to us, and caused our hearts to bleed for anguish. We felt that we had no home in this world, and no friend but each other. Our friends at Serampore were extremely surprised when we wrote them a letter requesting baptism, as they had known nothing of our having had any doubts on the subject. We were baptized on the 6th of September, in the Baptist chapel in Calcutta. Mr. J. preached a sermon at Calcutta, on that subject, soon after we were baptized which, in compliance with the request of a number who heard it, he has been preparing for the press. Brother Rice was baptized several weeks after we were. It was a very great relief to our minds to have him join. us, as we expected to be entirely alone in a mission. Nothing remained for Judson to do but to inform the American Board of Foreign Commissioners for Foreign Missions of his change of sentiments. At the same time he addressed letters to some Baptist ministers in Boston and Salem. The following letters will explain his position: To the Rev. Dr. Baldwin, of Boston. Calcutta, August 31, 1812. Rev. and Dear Sir: I write you a line to express my grateful acknowledgments to you for the advantage I have derived from your publications on baptism; particularly from your "Series of Letters"; also to introduce the following copy of a letter which I forwarded last week to the Baptist missionaries at Serampore, and which you are at liberty to use as you think best. I am, sir, with much affection and respect, Your obliged friend and servant, Adoniram Judson, Jr. Calcutta, August 27, 1812. To the Rev. Messrs. Carey, Marshman, and Ward: As you have been ignorant of the late exercises of my mind on the subject of baptism, the communication which I am about to make may occasion you some surprise. It is about four months since I took the subject into serious and prayerful consideration. My inquiries commenced during my passage from America, and after much laborious research and painful trial, which I shall not now detail, have issued in entire conviction, that the immersion of a professing believer is the only Christian baptism. In these exercises I have not been alone. Mrs. Judson has been engaged in a similar examination, and has come to the same conclusion. Feeling, therefore, that we are in an unbaptized state, we wish to profess our faith in Christ by being baptized in obedience to his sacred commands. Adoniram Judson, Jr. Calcutta, September 1, 1812. Rev. Sir: After transmitting to the Rev. Dr. Worcester a copy of the above letter to the Baptist missionaries, I have, under date of this day, written him as follows: Rev. and Dear Sir: My change of sentiments on the subject of baptism is considered by my missionary brethren as incompatible with my continuing their fellow laborer in the mission which they contemplate on the Island of Madagascar; and it will, I presume, be considered by the Board of Commissioners as equally incompatible with their continuing their missionary. The Board, undoubtedly, feel as unwilling to support a Baptist missionary as I feel to comply with their instructions, which particularly direct us to baptize "credible believers with their households." The dissolution of my connection with the Board of Commissioners, and a separation from my dear missionary brethren, I consider most distressing consequences of my late change of sentiments, and indeed, the most distressing events which have befallen me. I have now the prospect before me of going alone to some distant island, unconnected with any society at present existing from which I might be furnished with assistant laborers or pecuniary support. Whether the Baptist churches in America will compassionate my situation, I know not. I hone. therefore, that while my friends condemn what they deem a departure from the truth, they will at least pity me and pray for me. With the same sentiments of affection and respect as ever, I am, sir, your friend and servant, Adoniram Judson, Jr. Rev. Dr. Worcester, Corresponding Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. You will receive a letter from Dr. Marshman, accompanying thin Should there be formed, in accordance with the ideas therein suggested a Baptist society for the support of a mission in these parts, I shall be ready to consider myself their missionary; and remain, dear sir, Your obliged friend and servant, Adoniram Judson, Jr. To the Rev. Dr. Bolles, Salem, Mass. Calcutta, September 1, 1812. Rev. Sir: I recollect that, during a short interview I had with you in Salem, I suggested the formation of a society among the Baptists in America for the support of foreign missions, in imitation of the exertions of your English brethren. Little did I then expect to be personally concerned in such an attempt. Within a few months, I have experienced an entire change of sentiments on the subject of baptism. My doubts concerning the correctness of my former system of belief commenced during my passage from America to this country; and after many painful trials, which none can know but those who are taught to relinquish a system in which they had been educated, I settled down in the full persuasion that the immersion of a professing believer in Christ is the only Christian baptism. Mrs. Judson is united with me in this persuasion. We have signified our views and wishes to the Baptist missionaries at Serampore and expect to be baptized in this city next Lord’s day. A separation from my missionary brethren, and a dissolution of my connection with the Board of Commissioners, seem to be necessary consequences. The missionaries at Serampore are exerted to the utmost of their ability in managing and supporting their extensive and complicated mission. Under these circumstances I look to you. Alone, in this foreign heathen land, I make my appeal to those whom, with their permission, I will call my Baptist brethren in the United States. With the advice of the brethren in Serampore, I am contemplating a mission in one of the eastern islands. They have lately sent their brother Chater to Ceylon, and their brother Robinson to Java. At present, Amboya seems to present the most favorable opening. Fifty thousand souls are there perishing without the means of life; and the situation of the island is such that a mission there established might, with the blessing of God, be extended to the neighboring island in those seas. But should I go thither, it is a most painful reflection that I must go alone, and also uncertain of the means of support. But I trust in God. He has frequently enabled me to praise his divine goodness, and will never forsake those who put their trust in him. I am, dear sir, Yours, in the Lord Jesus, Adoniram Judson, Jr. The following is an extract from a letter of Dr. Marshman, of Serampore, to Dr. Baldwin, of Boston, September 1, 1812: A note which brother Judson sent to brother Carey last Saturday has occasioned much reflection among us. In it he declares his belief that believers’ baptism alone is the doctrine of the Scriptures, and requests to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. This unexpected circumstance seems to suggest many ideas. The change in the young man’s mind, respecting the ordinance of Christ, seems quite the effect of divine truth operating on the mind. It began when no Baptist was near (on board of ship), and when he, in the conscientious discharge of his duty, was examining the subject in order to maintain what he then deemed truth on his arrival in Bengal. And so carefully did he conceal the workings of his mind from us, on his arrival, that he scarcely gave us a hint respecting them before he sent the note to brother Carey. This was not indeed very difficult for him to do, as we make it a point to guard against obtruding on missionary brethren of different sentiments any conversation relative to baptism. This change then, which I believe few who knew brother Judson will impute to whim, or to. anything besides sincere conviction, seems to point out something relative to the duty of our Baptist brethren with you, as it relates to the cause of missions. It can scarcely be expected that the Board of Commissioners will support a Baptist missionary, who cannot, of course, comply with their instructions, and baptize whole households on the parents’ faith; and it is certain that the young man ought not to be left to perish for want, merely because he loved the truth more than father and mother; nor be compelled to give up missionary work for want of support therein. Now, though we should certainly interfere to prevent a circumstance like this happening, particularly as we have given our Pedobaptist brother Newell, gone to the Isle of France, an order to draw upon us should he be in distress, yet, to say nothing of the missionary concerns already lying on us, and constantly enlarging. it seems to us, though Providence itself were raising up this young man, that ydu might at least partake of the zeal of our Congregational missionary brethren around you. I would wish, then, that you should share in the glorious work, by supporting him. Let us do whatsoever things are becoming, and whatsoever things are lovely, and have the reverse of these for others. After God has thus given you a missionary of your own nation, faith, and order, without the help or knowledge of man, let me entreat you, and Dr. Messer, and brethren Bolles and Moriarty, humbly to accept the gift. To you I am sure I need add no more than to beg you to give my cordial love to all our brethren around you. I may probably write you again soon, and in the meantime remain yours, in the Lord. It was in this manner that foreign missions was thrust upon the Baptists of the United States. After many leadings the mission was established under Judson in Burmah. What the celebrated Earl of Shaftesbury said of another mission was equally true of this one. "I do not believe," said he, "that in the whole history of missions, I do not believe in the history of diplomacy, or in the history of any negotiations carried on between man and man, we can find anything to equal the wisdom, the soundness, and the pure evangelical truth of the body of men who constituted the American mission. I have said it twenty times before, and I will say it again, —that they are a marvelous combination of common sense and piety. . .There they stand, tested by years, tried by their works, and exemplified by their fruits; and I believe that it will be found that those American missionaries have done more toward upholding the truth and spreading the gospel of Christ in the East than any other body of men in this or any other age." There must be a home base, and there was a man admirably prepared to do this work. Luther Rice had already been severely attacked with disease of the liver, and his health had become quite precarious. The views of the Baptists in this country were unknown to the missionaries, and it seemed desirable that some direct intercourse might be commenced between the parties at present personally unknown to each other. It was probable, however, that the labors of Rice might be eminently useful in awakening a missionary spirit among the churches at home. With the hope of recovering his health, and at the same time accomplishing these objects, it was deemed wise for him to return to this country. He sailed March 15, 1813, for New York by the way of St. Salvador (Wayland, I.). Books for further reference: S. Pearce Carey, William Carey. New York, 1923. Memorial Volume of the first Fifty Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Boston, 1862. Wayland, Francis, Memoir of the Life and Labors’ of Rev. Adoniram Judson. Boston, 1853. 2 volumes. N. M. Williams, Theodore Parker and Adoniram Judson, Bibliotheca Sacra, XXVI. 290-314. Letters of Dr. John Ryland to Dr. Stephen West, Bibliotheca Sacra XXX. 178-186. Andover, 1873. Edward Warren Capen, The Significance of the Haystack Centennial, Bibliotheca Sacra, LIII. 703-721. Oberlin, 1906. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 55: 01.2.03.06. GENERAL CONVENTION... ======================================================================== Chapter 6 - The General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States Luther Rice—His Character Kingsford’s Account—Note in His Journal—Before the American Board—Appeal to the Baptists—The Savannah Baptist Society—Organization of the Triennial Convention—The Number of Baptists Small—The Messengers—The Constitution—Dr. Furman Preaches the Sermon—Judson Accepted as Missionary—Hough and Wife Sent to India—Domestic Missions—The Program—Indian Missions—Isaac McCoy—Rice Visits the Churches—A Great Crises—A Resume of the Work. As yet the Baptists of the United States had not organized any general meeting. There were many hindrances in the way of such a gathering. The distances were great; much of the country was sparsely settled; the roads were often impassable; the modes of travel were slow and often dangerous; and as yet there was no commanding motive for such a body. The conversion of Judson furnished the motive, and the opening of a mission in Burma the inspiration. Under these conditions the General Convention of the Baptist denomination in the United States, generally known as the Triennial Convention, was organized. Luther Rice, who returned to America to arouse the Baptists to the support of Judson and foreign missions, was a most remarkable man. He was not without faults, he made mistakes, but his virtues and zeal outshone them all. He has been described as follows: By nature he was endowed with many of the essential attributes of an effective speaker. His appearance was highly prepossessing, Above the ordinary height, with a robust and perfectly erect form, there was at once produced on the mind of the beholder a most favorable impression. None could fail to entertain respect, for it was demanded by s peculiar dignity of appearance and manner. Especially was thin true, when he arose in the pulpit. With a full face, and comparatively small eyes, there was sometimes rather a dull and heavy teat of countenance, which immediately changed when he became animated by speaking; his voice was clear and melodious. He had but little action, which, however, was appropriate and graceful. He was, at all times, whey he addressed an assembly, remarkable for self possession. Nothing seemed capable of discomposing his mind. Perhaps few speakers have bean apparently leas affected by external circumstances; whatever might be the character of the congregation, whether large or small, intelligent or ignorant, whether in the city or country, he was always distinguished for the same dignity and readiness of utterance . . . The style of Mr. Rice’s sermons was, in many respects, superior. A refined, critical taste, could, perhaps, have discovered, at times, a redundancy of words and phrases; but thin was no more than might have been expected from discourses which were always extemporaneous, especially when it is known that the multiplicity of other duties allowed but little time for preparation . . . The moment he began to speak, attention was roused, and uniformly the interest thus awakened was kept up throughout the services. The clearness of his conceptions, the accuracy and force of his language, and the solemn dignity of his manner, all contributed to render him one of the moat interesting public speakers of our land. Occasionally, his eloquence was overpowering, particularly when he advocated the more sublime doctrines of our holy religion. Indeed, in the discussion of such topics, he may be regarded as having been moat felicitous. There seems to have been a coincidence between the operations of his own mind, and those truths which, in their very nature, are vast and grand. The terribleness of Jehovah’s wrath, the severity of his justice, and the rectitude of all of his decisions, were themes which gave ample scope to his vigorous intellect, and is the discussion of which, he was not only instructive, but exceedingly impressive (Taylor, Memoir of Luther Rice, one of the First American Missionaries of the East, 271-273. Baltimore, 1841). A most interesting account of Rice is given by Edward Kingsford, Augusta, Georgia, December 31, 1840, describing his courage and perseverance. He says: "Nothing but absolute necessity ever prevented him from accomplishing any purpose which he had formed in his mind, or from fulfilling an engagement be had previously made. In his numerous journeys in the South, he had frequently to cross deep and rapid streams, yet he appeared never to have been disconcerted by the threatened impediment, or deterred from making the passage, however dangerous. At one time, on approaching a stream, he perceived by the turbid state of the water, that it could not be forded without some danger, he left the horse and sulky on the bank, and plunged into the river. Just as the water reached his neck, he found himself approaching the opposite shore; he then returned and with his horse and carriage, dashed through. the foaming flood. At another time, on a similar occasion, discovering that he could not keep his books, papers, and other baggage dry, if he swam his horse and sulky through the water, he disengaged his horse from the vehicle, and with portions of his books, crossed the stream thirteen times, and then, wet as he was, pursued his journey. Once, when he came to a very deep and rapid river on which stood a mill, he called to the miller to help him over. ‘Help you over?’ said the man, with astonishment, ‘you will not be able to cross that river today.’ ‘Yes, I shall,’ said Rice, ‘if you will help me.’ Immediately alighting, he commenced operations. He first took one wheel off the sulky and carried it through the mill; he took off the other, and transported it in the same way. Afterwards, by the aid of the miller, he carried the body of the sulky through. By a number of successive trips, he conveyed over the harness and the baggage, then mounting his horse he swam him through the river, and then went on his way to secure the object to which he had devoted his life. Upon another occasion, a friend sent him in a carriage to a place where he was to be met by another; but the latter failed to meet him, he pursued his journey carrying a small trunk. A part of his journey was pursued through a long and dreary swamp. Being asked by friends, sometime after, if he did not feel afraid while passing through the swamp on foot and alone; he replied, ‘I thought of nothing except the object that was before me"’ (The Baptist Banner and Pioneer, February 16, 1841) . Such was the man American Baptists sent forth to represent their cause. While on his voyage home, March 25, he entered the following note in his journal: "This day I am thirty years old. I renewedly give myself to the Lord, renewedly devote myself to the cause of missions, and beg of God to accept me as his, and particularly as devoted to the missionary service." After spending two months in the city of St. Salvador, where he remarks, "the Catholic superstition was entirely predominant, forming a state of heathenism as bad as any other," he obtained passage to New York. On September 15, in Boston, he appeared before the American Board of Commissioners. He laid before that body a verbal and written account of his change of sentiments and the reasons for them. He was courteous and kind but received scant recognition in return. From henceforth Rice entered into a new relation; engaged in new, important and very laborious and responsible endeavors to awaken the Baptist churches in the United States to the desirableness and practicability of combining their energies in. the cause of missions. Everywhere the movement took form and societies for the promotion of foreign missions were constituted. The appeal of the Savannah Association, Georgia, written by Dr. W. T. Brandy, Sr., is characteristic of many others, and is sufficient, in this place, to show the spirit of the Baptists: THE SAVANNAH BAPTIST SOCIETY FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS To the Inhabitants of Georgia, and the adjacent parts of South Carolina: Friends and Brethren—As the great family of man are connected together by the same fraternal bond, it is the high duty and interest of all of its members to use the best means in their power for the benefit of the whole. Of all those means which have been employed for that great end, none have been found so effectual as the preaching of the everlasting gospel. The obligations to contribute to its extension, therefore, must be proportionately binding. The gospel of Christ exhibiting the moat important truths and furnishing the moat exalted motives for action, accurately delineating the path to pure, unalloyed happiness, and deriving its authority from Jehovah himself, produces, in its diffusion, results in relation to the benefit of man, which human sages, lawgivers and kings have for ages labored in vain to effect. Alienated from his God by sin, deprived of the favor of his Creator by apostasy, man wanders in the earth a wretched object, a forsaken rebel, a child of hell. No ray of light, no gleam of hope issues from his dark abode to point out the way to restoration, happiness sad glory. No human efforts can relieve his hopeless condition. But in the gospel of Christ the sun of righteousness is seen rising with healing under his wings. His divine rays, wherever they penetrate, scatter the mists which overwhelm man in despair. These discover to him the way of deliverance and joy, and lead to the portals of bliss. On a great part of the earth, these rays have fallen with happiest effect, illuminating the extensive regions, turning their inhabitants from darkness to light, and preparing them for immortal felicity. But a far greater part of the earth remains unvisited by these beams, and consequently continues in darkness, and sees no light. But this part waits their appearance, and shall not wait in vain. The time approaches when those who have long eat in the region and shadow of death, shall have light to spring up unto them. The sun of righteousness shall diffuse among them the beams of light, and the whole earth shall be full of his glory. Late events in divine providence prove, with convincing testimony, that this time fast approaches. Ware and rumors of wars, the overturning of nations, the rapidly increasing destruction of the Man of Sin, and the growing spread of divine truth-events predicted by the prophets, and represented by them as preclusive to the general diffusion of the gospel clearly show that the universal triumph of Christ, the King of Zion, is sot far distant. What deserves particular notice in this view, is the missionary spirit which, within a few years peat, has been kindled with enthusiastic ardor in Europe, at the altar of divine love. Under its influence great things have been attempted and performed in idolatrous nations. America, catching the same hallowed spirit, has been animated to similar exertions. Besides many societies formed for missionary efforts in this country, one, to the immortal honor of our Congregational and Presbyterian brethren, has been organized by them, of considerable extent and importance. Under their patronage, missionaries have been sent out for the purpose of effecting establishments in the East, for the diffusion of the gospel among the heathen tribes. That our brethren of these denominations should not be alone, in this great work, God, in the arrangement of infinite wisdom, hoe been pleased to bring some of their missionaries over to the Baptist persuasion. These, still desirous of pursuing then’ generous, disinterested career, for the benefit of the heathen, now present themselves to the American Baptists for support. And shall they present themselves in vain? Fiends and brethren, can the finger of divine providence, so evidently marking out the path for us, be mistaken? Can the Lord’s will, so clearly made known in this dispensation, be misinterpreted? Surely not! It cannot be! If then, it be the high duty and interest of the great family of man to promote each other’s happiness, Bind the benefit of the whole, and that it cannot be denied; and if the diffusion of the gospel of Christ be the most effectual means of securing those objects—a truth that must be admitted; then it is undoubtedly our duty and our interest to embrace the present suspicious moment, and engage is joyful haste and determined energy in the great work of evangelizing the poor heathen. Since the secession of our dear brethren, Rice, Judson and lady, the individuals alluded to above, several missionary societies have been formed by the Baptists of America. These societies have for their object tie establishment and support of foreign missions; and it is contemplated that delegates from them all will convene in some central situation in the United States for the purpose of organizing an efficient and practicable plan, on which the energies of the whole Baptist denomination, throughout America, may be elicited, combined and directed, in one sacred effort for sending the word of life to idolatrous lands. What a dime spectacle will the convention present l A numerous body of the Lord’s people, embracing in their connection from 100,000 to 200,000 souls, all rising in obedience to their Lord, and meeting by delegation, in one august assembly, solemnly to engage in one sacred effort for effectuating the great command: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" What spectacle can more solemnly interest the benevolent heart! What can be more acceptable to our heavenly Father! We invite you, dear friends, and brethren-we affectionately and cordially invite you-to embrace the privilege of uniting in so glorious a cause, so divine a work. God has put great honor upon us in giving us so favorable an opportunity of coming up "to the help of ‘the Lord against the mighty." In doing so, he has conferred on us a distinguished privilege. Shall we be insensible to the honor? Shall we disregard the privilege? God forbid l Living in a country whose generous soil yields, with moderate industry, more than a sufficiency of the comforts of life, and professing, in great numbers, to be redeemed from our iniquities, our obligations to exert ourselves for the benefit of our race and the glory of God, are great indeed. O let us feel, impressively feel, the force of these obligations and act correspondingly with them l And we trust, in our attempt to act is this manner, no sectarian views, no individual prejudices, no party considerations, will have leave to operate any unfriendly influence upon a design conceived in disinterested benevolence, and having for its object the good of man and the honor of his Creator. Connected with this address to you, friends and brethren, is the constitution on which our society is organized. According to this, you may either become members with us, or donors, or both. In either character we will cheerfully receive your aid; and, in both, we hope to have the pleasure of ranking great numbers of you. Wishing you grace, mercy and peace, we remain affectionately, your servants in the gospel, for Christ’s sake. William B. Johnson, President, William T. Brantly, Corresponding Secretary. Savannah, 17th December, 1813. A meeting of a few leading brethren was held in Boston early in the autumn of 1813, to consult on the best course to pursue. At first, it was thought advisable to make the Boston society—formed in consequence of Judson’s change of sentiments, under the broad name of "The Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel in India and other Foreign Parts," and which had already assumed the support of the Judsons—the parent institution, to which all others should become auxiliary (Daniel Sharp, Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Triennial Convention, The Baptist Memorial and Monthly Record, February, 1842. I. 33). Rice succeeded, however, in modifying this plan to the effect that a meeting of delegates from all parts of the country should be called at some central point as soon as practicable, to form an organization for conducting missionary operations on a more enlarged scale. With the concurrence of the brethren in the vicinity of Boston he devoted himself, during the remainder of the autumn and the ensuing winter and spring, to preparing the way for the contemplated meeting. For this purpose he visited successively New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Charleston and Savannah, together with most of the prominent towns in the southern States especially, and met with encouraging success. The brethren whom he consulted were almost unanimously desirous of a denominational movement and organization in favor of missions. Isis personal labors, and very extensive correspondence, resulted in the meeting of delegates from eleven States and the District of Columbia, in Philadelphia, on May 18, 1814; where, after mature deliberation, The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States was duly organized, to be regularly convened once in three years. On this account it was called the Triennial Convention (Barnas Sears, Memoir of Luther Rice, The Christian Review, VI. 337, 338. September, 1841). In 1814, there were known to exist, in the United States, less than 120 Baptist associations, containing about 2,000 churches, 1,500 ministers, and 160,000 communicants. There were in 1820 a population in this country of 9,637,119. Of this important general organization, the first among the Baptists of America, Richard Furman, of South Carolina, was chosen President, and Thomas Baldwin, of Massachusetts, Secretary. The following delegates were enrolled, the "geographical situation" being kept in view: State of Massachusetts— Rev’d Thomas Baldwin, D.D. Revd Lucius Bones, A.M. State of Rhode Island— Rev’d Stephen Gano, A.M. State of New York— Rev’d John Williams. Mr. Thomas Hewett. Mr. Edward Probyn. Mr. Nathaniel Smith. State of New Jersey— Rev’d Burgisa Allison, D.D. Rev’d Richard Proudfoot. Rev’d Josiah Stratton. Rev’d William Boswell. Rev’d Henry Smalley, A.M. Mr. Matthew Randall. Mr. John Sisty. Mr. Stephen Uatick. State of Pennsylvania— Rev’d William Rogers, D.D. Rev’d Henry Holcombe, D.D. Rev’d William Stoughton, D.D. Rev’d Wm. White, A.M. Rev’d John Peckworth. Rev’d Horatio G. Jones, A.M. Rev’d Silas Hough. Rev’d Joseph Mathias. Stale of Delaware— Rev’d Daniel Dodge. State of Maryland— Rev’d Lewis Richards. Rev’d Thomas Brooke. District of Columbia— Rev’d Obadiah Browns (not present). Rev’d Wm. Pilmore (not present). Rev’d Luther Rice. State of Virginia— Rev’d Robert B. Semple. Rev’d Jacob Grigg. Rev’d John Bryce (not present). State of North Carolina— Rev’d James A. Ranaldaon. State of South Carolina— Rev’d Ricard Forman, D.D. Hon. Matthias Tallmadge. State of Georgia— Rev’d W. B. Johnson. The Constitution was discussed at great length and was finally adopted as follows: We the delegates from Missionary Societies, and other religious Bodies of the Baptist denomination, in various parts of the United States, met in Convention, for the purpose of carrying into effect the benevolent Intentions of our Constituents, for organizing a plan for eliciting, combining and directing the Energies of the whole Denomination in one sacred effort, for sending the glad tidings of Salvation to the Heathen and to nations destitute of pure Gospel light, do agree to the following Rules of fundamental Principles, viz.: I. That this body shall be styled "The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America, for Foreign Missions." II. That a triennial Convention shall, hereafter, be held, consisting of Delegates, not exceeding two in number, from each of the several Missionary Societies, and other religious bodies of the Baptist Denomination, now existing, or which may be hereafter formed in the United States, and which shall each, regularly contribute to the general Missionary Fund, a sum, amounting to at least one hundred Dollars, per annum. III. That for the necessary transaction and dispatch of business, during the recess of the said Convention, there shall be a Board of twenty-one Commissioners, who shall be members of the said Societies, Churches, or other religious bodies aforesaid, triennially appointed, by the said Convention, by ballot, to be called the "Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States"; seven of whom shall be a quorum for the transaction of all business; and which Board shall continue in office until successors be duly appointed; and shall have power to make sad adopt by-laws for the government of the said Board, and for the furtherance of the general objects of the Institution. IV. That it shall be the duty of this Board, to employ Missionaries, and, if very, to take measures for the improvement of their qualifications; to fin on the ‘Field of their Labours, and the compensation to be allowed them for their services; to superintend their conduct, and dismiss them, should their services be disapproved; to publish accounts, from time to time, of the Board’s Transactions, sad as annual Address to the public; to call a special meeting of the Convention on any extraordinary occasion, and, in general, to conduct the executive part of the missionary concern. V. That such persons only as are is full communion with some regular Church of our Denomination, and who furnish satisfactory evidence of genuine Piety, good Talent, and fervent Zeal for the Redeemer’s Cause, are to be employed as Missionaries. VI. That the Board shall choose by ballot, one President, two Vice Presidents, a Treasurer, a Corresponding, and a Recording Secretary. VII. That the president, or in case of his absence or disability, the senior vice-president present, shad preside in all meetings of the Board, and when application shall be made is writing, by any two of the members, shall call a special meeting of the Board, giving’ due notice thereof. VIII. That the treasurer shall receive and faithfully account for all the moneys paid into the treasury, keep a regular account of receipts and disbursements, make a report thereof to the said Convention, whenever it shall be is session, sad to the Board of Missions annually, and as often as by them required. He shall also, before he enters on the duties of the office, give competent security, to be approved by the Board, for the stock cad funds that may be committed to his care. IX. That the corresponding secretary shall maintain intercourse by letter with such individuals, societies, or public bodies, as the interest of the institution may require. Copies of all communications made by the particular direction of the Convention or Board, shall be by him handed to the recording secretary, for record and safe keeping. X. That the recording secretary shall, ex-officio, be the Secretary of the Convention, unless some other be by them appointed in his stead. He shall attend all the meetings of the Board, and keep a faithful record of their proceedings, and of the transactions of the Convention. XI. That in the case of the death, resignation, or disability of any of its officers, or members, the Board shall have power to fill such vacancy. XII. That the said Convention shall have power, and is the interval of their meeting the Board of Commissioners, on the recommendation of any one of the constituent bodies belonging to the Convention, shall also have power, to elect honorary members of piety and distinguished liberality, who, on their election, shall be entitled to a seat, and take part is the debates of the Convention; but it shall be understood that the right of voting shall be confined to the delegates. XIII. That in the case any of the constituent bodies shall be unable to send representatives to the said Convention, they shall be permitted to vote by proxy, which proxy shall be appointed by writing. XIV. That any alterations which experience may dictate from time to time, may be made is these Articles, at the regular meeting of the Convention, by two-thirds of the members present. Three of the delegates were from New England, twenty-one from the Middle States, seven from the Southern States, and Luther Rice from the District of Columbia. Dr. Furman preached the sermon from Matthew 28: 20. A Board of twenty-one members was selected, and Dr. Baldwin became its president. Luther Rice was "appointed, under the patronage of this board, as their Missionary, to continue his itinerate services, in these United States, for a reasonable time; with s view to excite the public mind more generally, to engage in Missionary exertions; and to assist in organizing Societies, or Institutions, for carrying the Missionary design into execution" (Minutes of the Meeting). Joseph Mathias, a messenger to the initial meeting of the Triennial Convention, has left some interesting reminiscences. He says: As it was my province to preach the introductory sermon at the opening of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, in October, 1813, by previous appointment, I went early to the city and called upon Dr. Holcomb, the pastor of the first Baptist church (at whose meeting house the association was to assemble), and while there, brother Luther Rice came in, an entire stranger, presented to Dr. H. some letters of introduction from brethren in Boston, New York, c., by which he was recognized and fraternally received. He accompanied us to the meeting, was introduced to the brethren, and at a suitable time addressed the association, stating the change of his views, with respect to the ordinance of baptism, as well as those of his brother Judson and wife; his motives for returning from the East, which were particularly to elicit the patronage of the Baptists in the United States in the cause of Foreign Missions, and to take immediate measures for sustaining brother Judson, and wife in the foreign field, c. His address was listened to with deep interest, and his pungent appeal was not made in vain. A large committee was appointed, of whom your correspondent was one, to adopt measures to facilitate the formation of a Society for Foreign Missions. That committee noon met, a society was auspiciously formed, and delegates were appointed to meet delegates from other societies in a convention, that was expected soon to be called. It is among my happy reminiscences, that I was numbered among the delegates of that Convention, which met May 18th, 1814. I saw the first movements of that body in the appointment of the President and Secretary; the selection appeared to augur favorably; that brethren from the South and North, and whose spheres of labor were near a thousand miles apart, should be unanimously called, and with one consent should sit so near together, as the united organ of that body. Assemblages of people are generally adjudged to be large or small by comparison. At that period, so many ministering and other brethren, from eleven different states, meeting together to adopt measures and to mature plans relating to the interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom, was reckoned large and propitious; but convocations of a more recent date, consisting of four or five hundred, and in some instances of a thousand and upwards, from a score or more of these United States, having in view the moral and religious state of the community, gives to that meeting rather a withering appearance; but when we consider, that though it was, in its incipient state; its deliberations, resolutions, and subsequent action, awoke many from their slumbers, and has elicited the prayers, the concentrated energies and talents, as well as the liberality of thousands in the great and noble enterprise; we may therefore contemplate that Convention as the pivot upon which the great wheel has revolved, grasping within its extensive circle, both by its centripetal and centrifugal effects, an influence and sympathy that has already astonished even the most sanguine, and which, under the blessing of God, shall continue to revolve through succeeding generations, until every nation, "who see the light and feel the sun," shall be brought under the sweet and benign influence of the irradiating beams of the Son of Righteousness, through the instrumentality of the blessed gospel, "which brought life and immortality to light, and which shall be published in every land." At the morning session of the first day, Dr. Furman was requested to preach that evening upon the occasion. He complied. His text was Matthew 27:20— "And, to l I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (The Baptist Memorial and Monthly Chronicle, 191, 192. June, 1842). The following interesting table illustrates the progress of the Triennial Convention: Place Date Pres. States Rep. Convention Sermon Philadelphia 1814 33 11 Dr. Furman Philadelphia 1817 40 13 Dr. Baldwin Philadelphia 1820 53 13 O.B. Brown Washington 1823 51 10 Dr. Stoughton New York 1828 72 12 Dr. Mercer Philadelphia 1829 66 11 Dr. Sharp New York 1832 122 15 Dr. Wayland Richmond 1835 119 21 Dr. S.H. Cone New York 1838 163 16 B. Stow Baltimore 1841 261 21 R. Fuller Philadelphia 1844 460 21 Dr. S.W. Lynd It was also determined that Adoniram Judson, "now in India, be considered as a Missionary, under the care and direction of this Board; of which he shall be informed without delay: That provision be made for the support of him and his family accordingly; and that one thousand dollars be transmitted to him by the first safe opportunity: That the Secretary of the Particular Baptist Society, for Missions in England, be informed of this transaction; and that this Board has assumed the pledge given by the Boston Mission Society, to pay any bills which may be drawn on them, in consequence of advances made in favor of Mr. and Mrs. Judson" (Minutes of the Meeting of the Baptist Board, 13). Burma was chosen as the field of operation and "Mr. Rough, who was twenty-eight years of age, a native of Winsor, Vt., and a member of the Baptist church at Pawtucket, R. I.," was sent out to assist Judson in the mission (The First Annual Report of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States, 28. Philadelphia, 1815) . At the time this report was made the Board had not as yet heard from Judson. A very timely caution is given in the second annual report as follows: An error against which it becomes the friends of missions carefully to guard, is the expectation that their plans and contributions shall immediately produce great and animating effects. A language, and in some instances a very difficult one, is to be acquired, before a Missionary can begin his labors; when they are commenced, it is merely the seed time, not the harvest. A minister of Jesus introduced among the heathen, is placed in circumstances peculiarly delicate. When he observes their attachment to superstitions which have obtained sanction in the minds of idolaters by the approbation of ages, and of thousands of their populace, their priests and their philosophers; a sense of his own insufficiency, the temptations of the adversary, and the occasional assaults of unbelief, to which the beat of men are subject may often originate despairing sentiments. Should he at any time express them, the sympathies of the disciples of Christ ought to be called into exercise. It were foolish and cruel to conclude a station untenable, or an adventure abortive, because existing aspects may have created temporary dismay; and still more so to censure a Missionary for having not done what God alone can accomplish. The kingdoms of this world moat become the Lord’s. Burma shall se assuredly bow to the Messiah se shall the United States, or Europe, or Hindoostan. God, in his providence, opens channels for the diffusion of his gospel; and in ways, transcending all human calculations, levels mountainous impedimenta into plains. The Moravian Missionaries laboured long without any visible fruit. At the expiration of six years the Baptist Missionaries in Bengal were not satisfied that s solitary native had been converted to Christ (The Second Annual Report of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions, 69, 80. Philadelphia, 1818). At first the duties of this Board were confined to foreign missions; but at the Convention of 1817 the following provision was added in regard to Domestic Missions: That the Board of Foreign Missions for the United States, have full power at their discretion to appropriate a portion of the funds to domestic missionary purposes, in such parts of the country where the seed of the Word may be advantageously cast, and which mission societies on a small scale do not effectively reach (Minutes of the Convention for 1817, 131). As a result of this action of the Convention the following program was inaugurated by the Board in the appointment of a number of missionaries: Resolved, That the Board contemplates, with deep concern, the miserable condition of the various tribes of Indians on our continent; that they regard a .favorable indication in Providence, the anxious solicitude which many, particularly is the neighborhood of the Indians, manifest for introducing the Gospel among them; that the Board will avail itself of the earliest opportunity, when any suitable person or persons shall offer for the service, to make a vigorous effort in relation to some of the tribes; and that, pursuant to this determination, the Corresponding Secretary be instructed to write to the Rev. Humphrey Poesy, from whom some interesting information has been already received, to learn of him still further views, particularly in relation to the Cherokees, in whose neighborhood he has resided, whether he would be willing to labour among them, and if so, what plan of operation would he suggest as most eligible, and what support would be requisite.—Also, that the Corresponding Secretary be instructed to write to the Corresponding Secretary of the Sarepta Mission Society on this subject, and to any others from whom he may judge important information may be obtained. Application was made on the part of the Rev. Messrs. John M. Peck, and James E. Welsh, for an appointment to a Western mission, having reference ultimately to the Western Indians. This application was accompanied with a statement by their tutor, the Rev. Dr. Stoughton, much in favor of their religious character and deportment while members of his family; and of their talents and acquirements for the sacred ministry, which was highly satisfactory to the Board. Resolved, unanimously, That the said brethren, James E. Welsh and John M. Peck, be accepted as missionaries of this Board; that they be instructed to proceed, as soon as convenient, to the westward, with a view to commence their labors at St. Louis, or rte vicinity, in the Missouri Territory; that 1,000 dollars be placed in their hands, to assist them in going with their families to St. Louis, and to support them in the commencement of their missionary exertions; that they be authorized and requested to make collections of money, and of books, as opportunities offer, with a view of aiding the Western mission, and give an account of the same to the Board; that they be instructed also to make inquiries, after arriving in the missionary field, relative to the native tribes in that quarter; and that, on the ensuing Sabbath, they be solemnly set apart to the service of the said Western mission. Resolved, That the Corresponding Secretary be instructed to write to the Rev. Isaac McCoy, informing him of the designation of the two brethren to missionary service in St. Louis, and the surrounding country, for which station they have been for a considerable time preparing; that his application has been received by the Board with emotions of pleasure and satisfaction; and that they request him to inform them whether there is not in that quarter, and perhaps nearer to Vincennes than is St. Louis, some other station in which a missionary is equally needed, and in which he would be willing to labor. Also, that the Corresponding Secretary be requested to write to the Rev. John Young, of Kentucky, in reply to his letters, informing him, that on applying to the committee for the Western section of our country, appointed for the examination of applicants for missionary service, should he think proper to do so, they will make such a representation of the case to the Board as their piety and prudence may dictate, and to which the Board will find pleasure in paying the earliest attention. A letter from the Rev. James A. Ranaldson at New Orleans, in which he signifies a willingness to accept a missionary appointment in that quarter, where, it appears, an extensive field for missionary labour calls for the hand of cultivation, was taken into consideration. The case of Mr. Ranaldson was also recommended by a letter from the Rev. William B. Johnson. Resolved, unanimously, That the Rev. Mr. Ranaldson be employed as a missionary of this Board in New Orleans and its vicinity; and that he be requested to visit such of the Indian tribes in that quarter se he has referred to in his letter, and others if he can; and inquire into the practicability of establishing schools among them; and that 500 dollars be forwarded to his assistance (Minutes of the Convention for 1817, 140, 141). In this manner the Convention began labor among the Indians and the whites on both sides of the Great River. The home work done by the Board was never quite satisfactory. In the Life of Spencer H. Cone, by his two sons, McCoy has been thus described: "Isaac McCoy was one of the most lovable men we ever had the happiness to be acquainted with. Living his whole life among the wild Indian tribes, and wilder frontiersmen; living a life of exposure, vicissitude and hardships scarcely to be described; always in the saddle or the camp, and every day risking life and limb to preach the gospel amongst those whom all the rest of the world seemed to conspire to destroy or forget—his mind and manners, instead of becoming rude or hard in these rough uses and associations grew, all the while, softer, holier, and more loving. Nothing could be finer than his manners. Never familiar, and carrying in his quiet eye an indescribable something which prevented anyone from ever being familiar with him, he never repelled. On the contrary, he attracted; children loved him. Men were compelled to feel, in his company, that they were near something good, kind and noble. The warm coloring of the heart tinged his words and manners, quiet as they were, in everything he did or said. If you had done anything true or good you knew he loved you for it. When he looked at you, you felt that there was no selfish thought or scheme working in his mind; but that he was thinking what he could do for your benefit or happiness, or for the benefit of some poor soul that was in need of others’ help and kindness" (Walter N. Weyth, Isaac McCoy and Early Indian Missions, 233, 234. Philadelphia, 1895). For the poor Indians he did a monumental work. For a whole year after the formation of the Convention Rice visited the churches, associations, and missionary anniversaries in the northern and eastern States. At the same time he carried on an active correspondence with leading brethren throughout the country. The next year, 1815-16, he spent in a similar manner in the southern and western States. From his annual report to the Board in 1817, a single sentence will show his toil: "In fifteen weeks, besides traveling more than 3,300 miles and attending the North Carolina General Meeting of Correspondence, a yearly meeting in Virginia, a meeting of the Kentucky Baptist Mission Society, and assisting the formation of a mission society in Tennessee; a kind Providence has enabled me to visit fifteen associations, spread through Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi Territory, the Carolinas and Georgia, securing at each association a public collection to aid the missionary funds, and the adoption of a plan of regular intercourse and correspondence with the Board." In ten months his collections had amounted to more than ten thousand dollars. The receipts of the Board for that year were about double their expenditures; and looking at their position with the advantage of all the light it would have been deemed best for Rice to have returned to India (The Christian Review, VI.). By the year 1824 the missionary enterprise reached a crisis; and the Board was critically involved in debt. Its affairs were badly entangled with those of Colombian College. The Convention in 1826 cut loose from the college. The Board had already been removed to Boston, and avowedly determined to pursue work only among the heathen. Some of the difficulties are thus recorded in the report of the Board for 1826 to the Triennial Convention: The Committee to whom was entrusted, since October, 1824, the care of the Foreign Missions, entered upon their duties without delay, and they trust, with a measure of prayerful dependence upon divine aid. They found, as they expected, from the state of your treasury, the spirit of Missions in the churches, very low. They forbear to go into detail of the circumstances which have contributed to this result, and will rather dwell on the measures adopted to remedy the evil. These have been limited in their application, not of choice, but of necessity. But a few of the means of which they wished to avail themselves, were in their power. They could secure but little of the aid which is derivable from discreet and active Agents. They could not at once address themselves to all those whose cooperation was desired, by means of periodical publications, for by many of them these were neither taken nor read. They were not sure of the concurrence of even their ministering brethren, for some of them yet remain to be satisfied of their duty to be workers together with Christ, in sending the gospel to the heathen, But by these considerations your Committee was not discouraged. If they could not accomplish all that was desirable, they were willing to attempt what was practicable. They were also willing to exercise patience and charity toward their brethren, who took no part in the benevolent operations of the day, believing that when more information of the actual state of things was diffused among them, they would come up to the help of the Lord. As then they could make but limited efforts, they deemed it their duty to direct these first, to places nearest to them, and as effectually as possible, to secure the grounds passed over. They digested and caused to be-printed, a plan for the information of Societies, such as they thought would prove convenient in all parts of the country. Upon this plan they have acted in their own country. Upon this plan they have acted in their own churches, and have been seconded with the best effect by many ministers and churches in Massachusetts. The same has been done and with similar success in the State of Maine, and they indulge the hope that the system may prevail through the country. By these measures, together with sums which have come into the treasury from older establishments, they have been able to meet the wants of the Missions abroad, and have ascertained to their satisfaction, that provided the moneys be discreetly and faithfully applied, the churches will be disposed to furnish all that will be necessary to a vigorous prosecution of the objects in hand (Minutes of the Convention for 1826, 8, 9). The foreign work and liabilities of the Baptist General Convention, April 1, 1846, were as follows: Missions, 16; stations and out-stations, 143; missionaries and assistants, 99, of whom 42 are preachers; native preachers and assistants, 155; churches, 82; members of churches, 5,373, including 604 baptized the previous year; schools, 54; and pupils in attendance, 2,000. Receipts, $100,219.94, including $29,203.40 toward the debt. Remainder old debt, $10,985.09. Total liabilities, $34,835.09. Two hundred fifty-seven missionaries had been sent into the field, 213 from the north and west, and 23 from the south; the others, not of this country. The contributions to the Triennial Convention from 1814 to 1845 were $874,027.92. The Memorial of August, 1846, referring to the south, used this language: "In thirty-three years of the operations of our Foreign Mission organization, the slave holding States have paid into the common treasury $215,856.28, or less than one-fourth of what has been contributed for this object." Books for further reference: Proceedings of the General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States at their various meetings. The Annual Reports of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions of the United States. The Latter Day Luminary; by a Committee of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States. February 18, 1818, to November, 1825. 6 volumes, Isaac McCoy, History of Baptist Indian Missions: embracing remarks on the former and present Condition of the Aboriginal Tribes; their Settlement within the Indian Territory, and their future Prospects. Washington, 1840. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 56: 01.2.03.07. THE ANTI-EFFORT SECESSION ======================================================================== Chapter 7 - The Anti-Effort Secession from the Baptists The Rise of the Division—The Rancor of the Discussions—The Misunderstandings-Opposition to Missions—To Education-Masonry—Drinking— ‘Old School Baptists"—The Opposition Widespread—Bebee in The Signs of the Times—Tennessee-Arkansas—Kentucky—Hill Grove Church—Otter Creek Association—Georgia—Hepzibah Association—Yellow River—Flint River—Alabama—Virginia—Reasons for the Divisions—State of Religion—John Taylor—Samuel Trott—Daniel Parker—Illinois—Peck and Parker—Indiana—Texas—Sad Results.Contemporaneous with the formation of the Triennial Convention there began among some Baptists an aggressive campaign against missions, education, Sunday schools, and indeed almost everything that organization fostered. The history of the Baptists of that period would be incomplete which did not give an account of the anti-effort secession variously called anti-missions and hardshellism. One can hardly, in this day, understand the rancor of speech which prevailed for years in many of the churches, and most of the early associations. This was largely true of all parties. For example, Rockwood Giddings, who was, at one time, President of Georgetown College, said of the editor of The Signs of the Times, the anti-effort publication: "His examination was published in the Signs of the Times; a paper which is read by but few respectable people, and still fewer who are capable of appreciating sound arguments, when they are presented to them. Indeed, Mr. Trott, in that paper reminds me forcibly of a rather factious couplet which Mr. Wesley’s clerk is said to have read to the congregation, with the old-cast-off-wig of his master on his head— ‘Like an owl in ivy bush, That fearsome thing I am’ I have therefore no disposition to enter the ‘bush’ with him; and shall for the present dismiss him and his writings with a few remarks" (The Baptist Banner, January 9, 1838. IV. 2). This is rather a mild sample of things which were said. Ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstandings were the fruitful source of many of these denominational dissensions. The following is a fair representation of many other letters written by William Hays, Weakley county, Tennessee, in 1838, and published in The Old Baptist Banner: I am certainly glad of the alternative of your paper, as I think it will be of benefit to some of us Old School Baptists in the west, where the floodgates of iniquity and Arminianism are open; and the hideous roar of the lion of the tribe of serpents is heard; together with the missionary éclat which is so clearly adverse to the gospel and the church of God; and whose operations have been simultaneous since their model was set up at Mill Creek in this State. But modernism, in these days, especially in theology, has become most desirable with many, notwithstanding the opposition of such things so fully and clearly developed in the book of God, according to my understanding; as such, I am opposed to any, and all such errors, for the following reasons: Phantasm is not to be depended on in matters of indemnity, though preponderance of authority may, c. While there was great opposition to missions, which gradually augmented as time went on, there was, if possible, a more bitter opposition to education, and to the establishment of Baptist colleges. The expressed opposition to these benevolent enterprises, as they were designated, was a conviction that they were human institutions, inventions and schemes, and contrary to the simplicity of the instructions enunciated in the New Testament for the spread of the gospel. There were also, of course, lower considerations, such as that preachers would not receive their support if mission collections were pressed, and some dissatisfaction because some preachers failed to receive appointments which they desired. Others feared that educated men would take their places. The Holy Spirit instructed preachers what to say, and therefore human learning was unnecessary. So missions and mission societies, Sunday schools, colleges and education, paid ministers, and temperance societies were denounced as contrary to the Word of God and human liberty. Masonry was violently denounced by the anti-mission Baptists. But this was contrary to the former position of Baptists. For example, the Charleston Association, in 1798, answered the following query: Query.—Is it consistent with the principles and conduct of a Christian, for a person to join himself to a lodge of free-masons? The following was the reply: Answer.—As the essential part of the masonic constitution is secrecy, the Association find themselves greatly disqualified for giving a decided answer to the query. The universal benevolence professed by members of that body; the acts of kindness and liberality actually performed in many instances by them; and the existence of persons professing Christianity in that connection make in favor of it; but on the other hand, engagements to secrecy, before he can receive the necessary information to enable him to form a regular and conscientious judgment on the necessity a person is laid under, to bind himself by the most solemn subject, and which, should he finally disapprove of it, must prove the most embarrassing nature, appears to be so inconsistent both with reason and religion, that it would seem, at least, advisable for serious Christians to avoid the connection; especially as we are amply furnished with directions, and aided by the most powerful and sublime motives to the purest benevolence, in the scheme of our holy religion, and as the principles of all the useful branches of science are open to the freest access. Yet we think the subject so intimately connected with the rights of private judgment, that a person should be left to his own conscientious determination respecting it (Minutes of the Charleston Association for 1798). Most of the anti-mission Baptists were opposed to Temperance Societies, and advocated the drinking of intoxicating liquors as a beverage. Joshua Lawrence, the leader of the anti-missionary forces on the East, in a sermon preached July 4, 1830, in Tarborough, North Carolina, thus defends the drinking of liquors: "Much is said about the Temperance Society—but if I am rightly informed those who join are not to drink one drop—if so, it has the wrong name, for it ought to be called the Abstaining Society. Does such a society agree with Scripture? Drink no longer water says Paul to Timothy, but use a little wine-and of deacons he said, not given to much wine-and the Saviour drank wine. And because some men make a storehouse of their belly, I must eat none-because some men have burnt up their kettles, I must not hang mine on the fire-and because some men have been killed by medicine, I must not use it prudently. What sophistry of priests!" (The Colombian Star, October 9, 1830). The name by which they designated themselves was Primitive, or Old School, Baptists; and they claimed that all Baptists were originally of their contention, which certainly was not the fact. "They arrogate to themselves," says J. M. Peck who was a contemporary, "the name of Old School Baptists because they reprobate all these measures (missions, education and Sunday schools, etc.), and declare non-fellowship with all Baptists who have anything to do with missionary work or any of those forms of active benevolence, and with all who hold correspondence with or fellowship missionary Baptists. In this charitable act they cut themselves off from at least nineteen-twentieths of all our Baptists in the United States, unless we can admit that a mere fragment of a party can exclude a vast majority" (J. M. Peck, Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer, July 4, 1839). This conflict became nation-wide but prevailed more widely in the Southern and Western States, although it extended to the Middle and New England States. It began somewhere about the year 1814 and increased in violence until 1835 to 1842, when many of the churches and associations were rent asunder. The following suggestions were made by Mr. Beebe, in The Signs of the Times, in 1838, and had much to do with the divisions which speedily obtained: We believe that missionary exertions in modern days are carried on to a considerable pitch of extreme, and, therefore, cause considerable disturbance in churches and associations, which is an evil which ought to be guarded against; therefore, we will not correspond with, nor fellowship, any association or church which holds it as a principle of right. We believe that the institution of free-masonry is a great evil, and a work of midnight darkness; we, therefore, will not either directly or indirectly, correspond with or fellowship any church or association which holds fellowship with free masons that have not withdrawn from the lodge. As an outgrowth of this controversy there were many unpleasant, and often violent, situations produced. Churches were rent asunder, associations divided, and there were many personal alienations. A few examples of this kind out of the many which are typical are here recorded: I. J. Roberts writes of Tennessee as follows: The unpleasant part particularly relates to the division of the church. The Baptists are divided into four shades of difference, viz.: 1. The Regular Baptists, such as live in Georgia and S. Carolina, c., so called by way of distinction. 2. The Separate Baptists, so-called from having separated from the Regulars on Arminian principles; they are sometimes called freewill Baptists. 3. The Campbellite Baptists; so called from having adopted the sentiments of Alexander Campbell of Virginia. None of these commune together. 4. The seed Baptists: Their preachers sometimes, by way of emphasis, are called snake preachers; because they preach that a part of the human family are the Seed of Adam, and under the law, for whom Christ died; and that a part of the Seed of the Serpent, are not under the law, for whom Christ never did die. They quote this text, with others, in proof of their doctrine: "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law." Daniel Parker of Illinois, has published a book vindicating this doctrine, and seems to be at the head of the party in the west. These still commune with the Regular Baptists. Of these four the Regular Baptists are the most numerous. Another matter of grief in the west, is the abundant ignorance which prevails among the preachers and people. None are learned except in their partyisms; and consequently far from being liberal minded. I think I am acquainted with from thirty to one hundred Baptist preachers in Tennessee, of whom very few are enlightened. I think one cause of so much neglect in the cultivation of their minds, is the entire omission of the churches to support their pastors. An unsupported and, unenlightened ministry are inseparable companions everywhere (The Columbian Star and Christian Index. October 9, 1830). The condition of affairs in Arkansas was thus described: In relation to the general condition of the denomination in Washington Association, which embraces so large a territory in this frontier State, we have the following facts:—The brethren and the churches in the aggregate are of the High-Calvinistic cast in their doctrine. In relation to benevolent efforts which characterize our times, they have not much information, and a majority of them may, therefore, be set down as opposed. The ministers are generally good men, laborious and self-denying, but of limited attainments and moderate talents (The Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer, January 30, 1840). In Kentucky there were many resolutions offered in churches and associations on the subject, some of which were passed and some rejected. The following was presented in the Hill Grove Church, Hardin county, July, 1839, and was rejected: Resolved that the church has taken into consideration the corruptions of the United Baptists of Kentucky in faith and practice in the supporting of the Arminian doctrine and all those societies that money buys membership contrary to the Bible and our articles of faith answer. Resolved, that we se a church believe that the Voice of God and of truth in saying come out of her my people that ye be not partakers of her sins and receive not her plagues feel it our duty to withdraw from the United Baptists and stead on Original ground and as we were constituted a Regular Baptist church and feel it Our duty to invite all Our brethren churches and individuals to Union and correspondence with us and hope Our dear Brethren whom we love in the truth both ministers and members will visit us and preach with and pray for us (The Baptist and Pioneer, December 5, 1839. IV. 2). The following extracts are from the minutes of the Licking Association, the largest anti-missionary body in the State: The Licking Association has noticed with deep regret the various efforts which have been made to involve the memory of several valued ministers of the gospel, who lived and died members of her body, in the modern missionary institutions of the day. Some are curious to know why the Elkhorn Association has not introduced Peter, James and John, the Master, or some other inspired witness, to sustain her missionary operations, instead of Ambrose Dudley, Joseph Redding, John Price, and others who make no pretensions to being inspired? A solution of the question is not difficult, when it is known that the Bible is as silent as death on that subject . . . Suppose some of our aged brethren had given countenance to missionary operations; we ask, is the church justified thereby (in absence of Bible authority), in giving her support to an institution which it is believed has done, and is doing more to corrupt her, than, perhaps, any other?" The Circular Letter of the Panther Creek Association gives the following advice: We further say to the churches, have nothing to do with the Bible Society, for we think it dangerous to authorize a few designing men to translate the holy Bible. Stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ has set you free, and be not entangled with the yoke of bondage. The Otter Creek Association was organized from fragments of churches, October, 1839, in Meade county, Kentucky. The following report was given at the time of the members of this body: The preachers of this association are remarkably illiterate, and are not too well supplied with common understanding. They are, however, as vain of their ignorance, and boast more of it, than any scholar ever did of his highest honors of the first universities in the world l But they claim to be possessed of a species of inspiration, which more than supplies the place of common sense and cultivated intellect. They were called to the ministry almost as miraculously an was Paul, and were invented of the priestly office as wan Aaron. But their chief characteristic consists in their rampant opposition to all benevolent institutions of the day. This association holds in utter abomination everybody who would give the Bible to the heathen, preach the gospel to sinners, or refuse to drink drama! They are deadly hostile to all who belong to, or in anywise favor, or rather who will not disfellowship Bible, Missionary, and especially Temperance Societies (The Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer, February 27, 1840). One of the first acts on record in Georgia, which may be considered hostile to benevolent institutions, is that of the Hepzibah Association, in 1817, when the Circular Letter for the year, written by Charles J. Jenkins, appointed at the preceding session, was rejected because it took strong grounds in favor of missions. Things in the association went from bad to worse for the missionary cause, so that Jenkins wrote to Dr. Sherwood, January 2, 1823, as follows: My situation is a lamentable one, and claims largely the commiseration and prayers of my brethren. I am in a land of darkness and cruelty, excluded from the privileges of the sanctuary, and from the society of Christians; and, indeed, I am destitute of any society at all. But, hitherto, the Lord has helped me to be resigned to his will. I sometimes have a refreshing from his presence, and then my soul doth magnify his name; but, when I am in darkness, it is distressing indeed. I beg you to remember me at a throne of grace. Pray the Lord that I may possess my vessel in patience; and that I may not be permitted to do anything which may cause a reproach on the name of the Saviour whom I have espoused. By the year 1835 divisions in churches and associations became common. A few illustrations are given to show the spirit of the times. The Yellow River Association, in Georgia, in 1838, adopted the following non-fellowshipping resolution: That the institutions of the day, called benevolent, to-wit: the Convention, Bible Society, Sunday School Union, Tract Society, Temperance Society, Abolition Society, Theological Seminary, and all other institutions tributary to the missionary plan, now existing in the United States, are unscriptural, and that we, as an Association, will not correspond with any Association that has united with them; nor will we hold in our communion or fellowship any church that is connected with them. These meetings were often violent and sometimes disgraceful. Rev. A. T. Holmes wrote that "the Flint River Association adjourned on Tuesday last, after the most stormy and unpleasant session I ever witnessed. On Monday, the body presented-the most disgraceful aspect that I ever witnessed in a religious meeting. It did more harm, and r have no doubt had a worse effect on the community, than it will ever do good. Other denominations looked on with wonder and astonishment, and even regret, to see the Baptists so much divided; and even the world was pointing the finger of scorn and saying, ‘See how these professors hate, and are trying to devour each other"’ (The Christian Index, October 21, 1837). In Alabama the same violence was manifested in some of the associations. The Flint River Association, in 1838, denounced missionary operations; and declared that such activities were deleterious to the peace and harmony of the churches; therefore, it was resolved "by this Association, that she declares unfellowship with the Missionary Society and all auxiliaries, together with all and every’ person who are joined with or in anywise connected with any of these institutions; and that all of those churches, ministers or otherwise, within her chartered limits who shall adhere to the principles of their constitution, in connection with the Association, will be regarded by her as members of her body, and that she will sustain and defend all those rights and privileges reckoned to them by their respective church covenants, so far as association compact is concerned." The estimate of the numbers of the Anti-Mission Baptists in Virginia, in 1839, according to The Religious Herald, was as follows: There are in Virginia over 500 Baptist churches, and about 60,000 members. The Old School Baptists have therefore not quite one-fifth of the churches, and about one-eighth of the white members. The Old School churches are generally small, and not on the increase. Within the last year they have had but few additions; the number baptized in five churches in the Dover Association was greater than in the whole of their churches in this State. The Regular Baptist churches, on the contrary, are steadily, though slowly, increasing, and the disproportion betwixt the two bodies, in point of numbers, will every year become greater. Indeed we expect that in another generation they will have become extinct. Many reasons may be given for these divisions. The Baptist denomination, at this time, was not consolidated or unified. The Baptists until recently had been few and scattered, the churches were often located far apart, they had preaching very seldom and no local pastor, the associations met only once a year and were frequently turned into debating societies, there were few Baptist newspapers and they only had a small circulation, and the Triennial Convention had just been organized, and was perhaps the occasion for the attack. There was as yet no common rallying point. The methods of work were new and untried. The anti-missionary newspapers, The Signs of the Times and The Primitive Baptist, were widely circulated and from every standpoint attacked the new institutions. Many of the charges preferred were unjust but they produced the desired results. The state of religion, in this period, the country over, was very low. It was a time of chaos and confusion, of bitter animosity and dissension, and of course religious conditions were deplorable. The Circular Letter written in 1831 by Jesse Mercer to the Georgia Convention says: That the standard of Christian morality is deplorably low among the ministry and churches of our denomination, is too obvious to be concealed. Are there not many professors among us whose spirit, life and conversation, filly becomes the gospel of Christ—worldly in their views and mercenary in all they do, so if they were not seen in the church meeting, or at the Lord’s table, they could not be told from worldlings? And yet do they not go unreproved? Are there not many who, to the entire neglect of all family religion, seldom attend church meeting, and habitually live irreverently, if not immorally? And are they not suffered to go undisciplined? And others there are, who, in the plainest sense, are drunkards, and though no drunkard hath any place in the Kingdom of God and Christ, yet do they not, by some means—by feigning repentance or empty and vain resolves—continue from youth to old age in the church, frequently, if not habitually, drunk? Are there not many such cases? And more; is it not common that mere negative goodness is all that is requisite to constitute a member in good standing, and to recommend him, as such, to a sister church? And, moreover, is there not evidently a want of union and concert among both ministers and churches of our denomination? Have not instances occurred in which some churches have disciplined their members for what others have winked at, or even commended, in theirs? And have not censured, and even excluded members of some, been received and nurtured by other churches? And have not ministers gotten into heated and hurtful controversies with one another, breathing toward each other the most cruel asperities and cruel animosities? And is it not true that one has preached what another, in and to the same congregation, has contradicted and exposed as unsound and dangerous, by which questions which engender strife have abounded? And has not all this passed off, without any effort to correct the evil or to reconcile these inconsiderate brethren? The Anti-Mission movement had a curious beginning. Samuel J. Mills was the leading spirit in organizing the celebrated Haystack Prayer Meeting at Williams College. It was from this prayer meeting that Adoniram Judson became the missionary to India. Mr. Mills, with a companion, was on a missionary tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Natchez settlement to New Orleans. While in Kentucky he went sixty miles out of his way to visit John Taylor. Taylor was a man of great influence and had seen much of service in building the early churches in that State; but he was a man of limited education and high prejudices. He speaks of his visitors as "respectable looking young men, well-informed, and zealous in the cause in which they were employed . . . I have no doubt these young men meant friendship to me and to preachers in general." The two missionaries were, however, unfortunate enough to arouse Mr. Taylor’s prejudices by trying to show him that for a pastor to secure missionary contributions meant to increase liberality all along the line, and especially in regard to pastoral support. "They became quite impatient with my indolence, assuring me that if I would only stir up the people to missions and Bible society matters, I should find a great change in money affairs in favor of the preachers; urging by questions like this: ‘Do you not know that when sponges are once opened they will always run? Only,’ said they, ‘get the people in the habit of giving their money for any religious use, and they will continue to appropriate for all sacred purposes."’ Mr. Taylor comments upon this as follows: "Surely it will not be thought uncharitable to say that I did begin strongly to smell the New England rat." As a result he wrote the first of the books in the anti-mission schism. One of the leaders in this reaction was Samuel Trott. He "was for many years," says J. M. Peck, "in connection with the Regular Baptist denomination, first in New Jersey, and afterwards in Kentucky. Then he professed and acted with the denomination on missions, ministerial education, and other benevolent operations. He was always rather ultra in doctrine, verging toward Antinomian fatality, rather narrow in his views and tinged with a little bigotry. While in Kentucky he was connected with the Kentucky Missionary Society and, for a time, served as agent to collect funds. Whether his salary and expenses exceeded his collections; or his dogmatical-Calvinistic style of preaching dissatisfied the brethren, we never learned. They discontinued his agency. His preaching never proved very attractive, interesting, or useful anywhere. Some years since he migrated to Virginia. When the antinomian and anti-missionary party in that quarter, a few years ago, formed the Black Rock Convention, broke from the denomination, and sent forth their harmless anathemas against the whole Baptist phalanx, as missionary operators, Trott found himself amongst this little ‘sect.’ He had always found a peculiar itching to be a great man, and as greatness is comparative, and, doubtless, recollecting the adage, ‘better be the head of the dog than the tail of the lion,’ he is now nearly in the front rank" (The Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer, June 27, 1839. IV. 1) . It was Daniel Parker, however, who was the originator of the system. "Daniel Parker, in the west, and Joshua Lawrence in the east, are in truth and fairness, the fathers and founders of this sect" (J. M. Peck, The Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer, July 4, 1839. IV. 1). "These two worthies—one in Texas and the other in North Carolina—are the two heads of the party." Parker was an enigma; and his system was a strange rehash of the old Gnostic philosophy. Peck, who knew him well, describes him in the following language: Mr. Parker is one of those singular and extraordinary beings whom Divine Providence permits to arise as a scourge to his church, and as a stumbling block in the way of religious effort. Raised on the frontier of Georgia (by others he is spoken of as a native of Virginia) without education, uncouth in manner, slovenly in dress, diminutive in person, unprepossessing in appearance, with shriveled features and a small piercing eye, few men for a series of years have exercised a wider influence on the lower and less educated of frontier people. With a zeal and enthusiasm bordering on insanity, firmness that amounted to obstinacy, and perseverance that would have done honor to a good cause, Daniel Parker exerted himself to the utmost to induce churches to declare non-fellowship with all Baptists who united themselves with any of the benevolent (or, as he called them, "newfangled") societies. His mind, we are told, was of a singular and original sort. In doctrine he was antinomian. He believed himself inspired, and so persuaded others. "Repeatedly have we heard him when his mind seemed to soar above its own powers, and he would discourse for a few moments on the divine attributes, or on some devotional subject, with such brilliancy of thought and correctness of language as would astonish men of education and talents. Then again, it would seem as if he were perfectly bewildered in a maze of abstruse subtleties" (Smith, A History of the Baptists in the Western States East of the River, 123, Baptist Memorial and Monthly Chronicle, 198. July, 1842). Parker extended his labors from North Carolina through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and from Indiana to Texas. The extraordinary spread of anti-mission sentiment in Tennessee, and elsewhere is well explained by Dr. R. B. C. Howell. He says: "About this time the noted Daniel Parker began to attract attention. He was, as is well known, the author of the ‘Two Seed doctrine;’ as it is usually called, and then, and for sometime after, resided in Middle Tennessee; from whence he removed to Illinois, and finally to Texas, where, last autumn, he paid the debt of nature. Several circumstances combined to give him and his doctrine extraordinary influence. Our Methodist brethren had, from the first settlement of the country, been very numerous and strong. Here the Cumberland denomination arose, and swept over the land like a whirlwind. Both those classes of Christians were ultra-arminian, and they and the Baptists were perpetually at war. It is not surprising that, in these circumstances, the Baptists became insensibly ultra-predestinarian. Of this doctrine Parker was the champion, and therefore, the general favorite. In his person, dress, and manners, he was plain, approximating to vulgarity. This also added to his popularity, And, withal, he was a man of astonishing ability and untiring industry. It may be supposed that the repugnance of his system would have destroyed his influence, but this was not the case. So ingeniously did he interweave it with Baptist doctrines, as then understood and preached, which was a kind of antinomianism, that it required much discrimination to separate them, and make them appear in contrast, with satisfactory distinctness. His views met with a spirited resistance from a few men, such as McConico, Whitsitt, and Wiseman; but the prevailing feeling was, that if he erred, it was on the safe side—in favor of the divine sovereignty, and in opposition to Arminianism. "Mr. Parker set in motion the means that overthrew missions in Tennessee, and to which he was induced by the following considerations.—He was ambitious to be a writer, and sought, as the medium of his communications with the public, the columns of the Columbian Star, then published in Washington City. His essays, setting forth his peculiar opinions, were rejected by that paper, and his doctrines ridiculed as equally immodest and preposterous. This was too much for a man of his unbounded pride and self-confidence tamely to endure. The offense given him was unpardonable. The conductors of the Star he knew to be associated in the conduct of the missionary enterprise, and of ministerial education. From that hour he conceived the moat implacable hatred against the men and all their pursuits. Seldom did he preach a sermon in which he did not give them a thorough dressing. He also commenced the publication of a series of pamphlets, which he continued for a year or two, giving expressions of his doctrine. In these, as well as his sermons, he appeals successfully to the sympathies of his Tennessee brethren. His own, with other pamphlets and books, such as those by Joshua Lawrence, of N. Carolina, and James Osborne, of Baltimore, were constantly carried and sold by him and his associates until the land was deluged by them in all its length and breadth. Religious newspapers, tracts, and books (except their own) were denounced as unscriptural, and designed to supersede the Bible; ministerial education was reviled as consisting of the manufacture of graceless and lazy young men into preachers, and therefore supremely abominable; and missions were worse than all, since they were nothing less than a combination of their pretended managers, not to preach the gospel to the heathen, which they could not do, because they did not themselves know the gospel, but to get the people’s money, with which they were represented as purchasing immense estates, and living like princes. All of this was believed by a surprising number of people. Why should they not believe it? They knew human nature to be very depraved; they possessed little general information, and they were assured of its truth by ministers, in whose veracity they had the fullest confidence. "Meanwhile, no agent, or other friend of missions, visited the state, who might have corrected these false impressions, and set all these matters, and missions particularly, in the proper light. No Baptist paper existed in the South, and none was taken, except, perhaps, by one in a thousand of our brethren. Moreover, some of the prime friends of missions became converts to Mr. Alexander Campbell’s system and joined him. Thus missions became beyond measure odious. The current of prejudice had. gradually swollen, until now no one dared to resist it. Not a man ventured to open his mouth in favor of any benevolent enterprise or action. The missionary societies were dissolved, and the associations rescinded all of their resolutions, by which they were in any way connected with these measures, and, in this respect the stillness of death rested upon the whole people! Subsequently, and until the present time, this state of things has been kept up wherever it was possible., by the same means, and by industriously circulating in addition such papers as The Old Baptist Banner, of Tennessee, and The Primitive Baptist of North Carolina, and Signs of the Times, of New York" (R. B. C. Howell, Missions and Anti-Missions in Tennessee, The Baptist Memorial and Monthly Record, 306, 307. November, 1845). Peck speaks of his work in Illinois as follows: "In 1820, Daniel Parker, then a resident of Crawford county, and connected with the Wabash District Association, published his book against the ‘Principles and practice of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions,’ which was circulated petty extensively among western Baptists. We wrote a pamphlet to correct Parker’s misrepresentations, but suppressed it after it was in the hands of the printer, for fear that it might give Parker’s book more notoriety and influence than-it otherwise possessed. Parker was indefatigable in introducing a query into as many Associations as he could through the West, that would produce an answer condemnatory to missionary operations, and he really deserves the credit, not only of that monstrous abortion of purblind theology, The Two Seeds, but as the most active and persevering opposer of missionary and other benevolent societies in the West. Most. of his argument and objections are founded upon misrepresentation, or whimsical sophisms, but there is one objection more plausible and formidable than our brethren who are not well acquainted with western Baptists imagine. It may be stated in the following form: "That missionary societies, not being formed and sustained by the authority of the churches of Jesus Christ, not under their control, but based upon the principle of the payment of a definite sum of money by individuals, acting independent of the churches, and who, by appointing the managing committee, exercise entire control, and thus take the appropriate work of the churches out of their hands. That in assuming to appoint missionaries, and designate the fields of their labor, without any direct responsibility to the churches, they usurp another of the church’s prerogatives, in controlling a portion of the ministry." J. M. Peck twice met Daniel Parker in debate in Indiana. The first was in June, 1822, in Gibson county, at a special session of the Wabash District Association. The contest lasted the entire day and was decided by vote of thirty-five to five in favor of missions. In 1825, the second debate occurred before the White River Association in which the association unanimously voted against Parker. In 1824 the Sangamon Association was formed, and it was charged that missionary work was rejected through clandestine methods by a vote of a majority of one. The following article was adopted: "It shall be the duty of the Association to bar from a seat any United Baptist who is a member of a missionary society" (The Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer, December 26, 1839). This action was the occasion of much strife among the churches, litigations, remonstrances and confusion. The remonstrances were in vain, though at one time nine churches called for a change in this rule, and it was only changed in 1826 by a convention called to remodel the constitution. Dr. Peck records the following terrible results of this agitation in this association: We need not inform our readers that these movements, hostile to missions, were an effectual barrier to religious efforts of every kind in the churches connected with these Associations—that the spirit of God fled from such scenes of strife and confusion—that revivals of religion were withheld from such churches—that a majority of the churches then have ceased to exist—that an unusual number of the preachers have turned out to be drunkards and profligates—and that so far as religion is concerned other churches and Associations cover this field. God has spoken in his Providence, in terms too plain and fearful to be misunderstood—"O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself." Referring to these events Dr. De Blois, the biographer of John M. Peck, describes these scenes as follows: Peck "visited various churches and associations, and met the famous (or infamous) Daniel Parker, politician, theologian, reactionary and propagandist. This shrewd and able man embodied the whole devilish spirit of the anti-mission crusade, and had a smooth tongue, considerably eloquent, and a genius for a persistent proselytism. "In the light of present-day world-wide ideas it is hardly possible to understand the bitter opposition to all of the higher forma of Christian service which characterized the people of the smaller churches in the New West one hundred years ago. At the Association in New Princeton, Indiana, Mr. Peck was refused a seat in the body and treated as $n outcast, because of his seal in missionary enterprises. Mr. Parker, on the other hand, was welcomed joyously, and applauded at his rabid opposition to every form of missionary activity. Mr. Peck, great hearted and noble, says in his diary: ‘In my interview with Brother Parker, I alluded to his address about missions, and told him I could cheerfully give him my hand, as a conscientious and well-meaning though greatly mistaken brother.’ "Describing the latter sessions of the Association he says: ‘The subject of missions came up. This was occasioned by one church having charged another with having supported missions.’ This constituted a serious grievance. Mr. Parker arose and delivered a fiery address, denouncing all missionary effort in lurid and forceful terms. Mr. Peck obtained leave to speak and defended the missionary enterprises of the denomination with great fervor. It was s memorable occasion. Two of the most noteworthy leaders of religious thought and feeling that the 19th century produced were present, face to face, at the meeting of a few humble and insignificant churches. They spoke mightily, the discussion lasted for five hours. Mr. Peck must have appreciated the vigor of his antagonist for he says: ‘I never before met with so determined opposer to missions in every aspect.’ But the virile and eloquent Parker, State Senator, splendid man of affairs, religious leader, founder of a sect and stalwart reactionary in all that concerned the kingdom of Christ, received a startling rebuff; for the very Association which had declined to recognize the missionary and had refused him a seat three days before, voted heartily to sustain the cause of missions, and resolved, by formal vote, to support the church which had raised a contribution for the great cause" (De Blois, 48, 49). Thus did the terrible conflict rage for nearly thirty years. A large number of members withdrew and formed new churches and associations; the morale of the denomination was weakened; the minds of the people were turned from missionary endeavor and directed to contentions; and altogether the results were most discouraging. This contention was accompanied by another schism in which more people were probably alienated from the churches than in this one. Books for further reference: B. H. Carroll, Jr., The Genesis of American Anti-Missionism. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 57: 01.2.03.08. THE SCHISM OF ALEXANDER CAMPBELL ======================================================================== Chapter 8 – The Schism of Alexander Campbell The Rise of "The Current Reformation"—Calvinism—Arminianism—Alexander Campbell—In Pennsylvania—A Presbyterian—Unites with the Baptists—Described by Archbishop Purcell—Debate with John Walker—Barton W. Stone and the Reformation-Campbell and Stone Unite Their Forces-The Ten Articles—The Debate with McCalla—Immense Crowds—Peculiar Views—A Great Sensation—Prominent Ministers—His Great Talent in Debate—His Views Slowly Introduced—Baptism for the Remission of Sins—Call to the Ministry—Paid Ministry—Poorly Prepared Ministers—The Separation—Action of the Associations—The Account of Dr. w. C. Buck—The Increase of the Baptists. Practically simultaneous with the rise and progress of the Anti-Mission movement, already described, came the tremendous shock to the Baptists occasioned by the Rev. Alexander Campbell, known as "The Current Reformation." The center of this conflict was Kentucky, though it had large following in Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and it affected largely many other states. The Baptists were fortunate in having three commanding men to oppose these doctrines, in the persons of Jeremiah Bell Jeter, of Virginia, Silas M. Noel, of Kentucky, and A. P. Williams, of Missouri. The advent of Campbell into Kentucky Baptist affairs was under the most favorable conditions possible for the promulgation of his peculiar views. There was no general organization among the Baptists in the states, and consequently no room for counsel and united action. They had but few schools and colleges, and, consequently, few trained ministers. In a technical sense there were none. There were a few struggling Baptist newspapers, but none of commanding influence. The strenuous preaching of hyper-Calvinism had produced, in many quarters, a reaction toward Arminianism and in some sections there was even a favorable consideration of Arianism. The denomination from the first had been divided upon the subject of creeds. Some perhaps had stoutly accentuated their importance, and others had magnified their evil tendencies. The agitations against missions, Bible societies and theological schools had just begun. Indeed, there was a tendency to looseness of views which was a portend of danger. The Presbyterians were aggressive, and possibly sometimes arrogant, and it was felt that a Baptist champion who could combat them would be welcome. All things worked together for the coming of Mr. Campbell. Of all of the men of that day none was more conspicuous than Alexander Campbell. Born in Ireland, descended through his mother from the French Huguenots who fled to Scotland on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, educated in the University of Glasgow and an American from choice, he was in every way a unique character. He had been associated in Scotland with the reform movement of Robert and James Haldane. Educated, fearless in his investigations, encyclopedic in his learning, with great natural ability and a comprehensive command of English, be was a debater of unusual power. He landed in the United States in September, 1809, and settled in Washington, Pennsylvania. He gave a brief account of himself subsequently as follows: I arrived is this country with credentials is my pocket from a sect of Presbyterians known by the name of Seceders. These credentials certified that I had been, both is Ireland, in the Presbytery of Market Hill, and in Scotland, in the Presbytery of Glasgow, a member of the Secession Church, is good standing. My faith in creeds and confessions of human device was considerably shaken while in Scotland, and I commenced my career, is this country, under the conviction that nothing that was not as old as the New Testament should be made an article of faith, a rule of practice, or a term of communion among Christians (The Christian Baptist, II). He continued to preach among the Presbyterians till June, 1812, when he was baptized by Mathias Luce, in the presence of Elder Henry Spears, and as a result the Brush Run Church was organized. "I had no idea of uniting with the Baptists," says Mr. Campbell, "more than with the Moravians or the mere Independents." He continues: I had unfortunately formed a very unfavorable opinion of the Baptist prey there as then introduced to my acquaintance, as narrow, contracted, illiberal, and uneducated men. This indeed, I am sorry to say, is still my opinion of the ministry of that Association at that day; and whether they ass yet much improved, I am without satisfactory evidence. The people, however, called Baptists, were much more highly appreciated by me than their ministry. Indeed, the ministry of some sects is generally in the aggregate the worst portion of them. It was certainly so in the Redstone Association thirty years ago. They were little men in a big office. The office did not fit them. They had a wrong idea, too, of what was wanting. They seemed to think that a change of apparel-a black coat instead of a drab—broad rim on their hat instead of a narrow one—a prolongation of the face, and a fictitious gravity-a longer and more emphatic pronunciation of certain words, rather than scriptural knowledge, humility, spirituality, zeal, and Christian affection, with great devotion and great philanthropy were the grand desiderata . . . I confess, however, that I was better pleased with the Baptist people than with any other community. They read the Bible, and seemed to care but little for anything else in religion than "conversion" and "Bible doctrine." . . . They pressed me from every quarter to visit their churches, and, though not a member, to preach for them. I consented through much importunity, and during the year I often spoke to the Baptist congregations for sixty miles around. They all pressed us to join the Redstone Association. We laid the matter before our church is the fall of 1813. We discussed the propriety of the measure. After much discussion and earnest desire to be directed by the wisdom which cometh from above, we finally concluded to make an overture to that effect, and to write out s full view of our sentiments, wishes, and determination on that subject. We did so. Some eight or ten pages of large dimensions, exhibiting our remonstrance against all human creeds as bonds of union or communion among Christian churches, and expressed a willingness, on certain conditions, to cooperate or unite with that Association; provided only, and always, that we should be allowed to preach and teach whatever we learned from the Holy Scriptures, regardless of any creed or formula in Christendom. A copy of this document, we regret to say, was not preserved; and when solicited from the Clerk of the Association, was refused. The proposition was discussed at the Association; and, after much debate, was decided by a considerable majority in favor of our being received. Thus was union formed. But the party opposed, though small, began early to work, and continued with a perseverance worthy of a better cause (The Millennial Harbinger, V. No. 1, Third Series; 345-347. Bethany, Va., 1848). In this manner Mr. Campbell was received into a Baptist association. He soon removed to Buffalo, now Bethany, West Virginia, and farmed, taught school and preached. Archbishop Purcell, who afterwards debated with Mr. Campbell, gives an account of his journeys. He says: It was his habit occasionally to peas through the southern portions of Ohio and Indiana and Illinois, and through the fine blue grass region of Kentucky and the rich farming sections of the Missouri River, where the farmers are and always have been exceedingly intelligent and hospitable. Perhaps there is not a finer set of people on the face of the globe. These interesting pilgrimages began somewhere about 1824, or perhaps a little earlier than 1820—that era, and lasted perhaps a quarter of a century with some intervals. His discourses attracted vast crowds of people, who came from distant points and who listened to every word that fell from his lips and felt in their heart of hearts all the burning seal of Peter the Hermit. At that time the religious propensities of the people were very strong, and there were but few churches in the country and no places of amusement. People would ride fifty miles to attend a large baptizing, a camp meeting or a religious debate. Mr. Campbell was regarded as a kind of religious Goliath, and was met at every cross road and every toll gate by well intentioned, half informed preachers of the different denominations and challenged to produce his credentials, to enter into a discussion in defense of his original and peculiar views. Our hero was nothing loth to do so. Such opportunities were precisely what he desired. A vast audience would gather together to hear what to them was vastly more attractive than a great battle to the death between two celebrated gladiators. These debates were brief and decisive. Campbell floored his opponents in a few moments. Their arguments fell to pieces as if they had no more strength than a potter’s vessel. So quickly was all this accomplished that they could hardly realize their discomfiture. The people saw all of this and it made Campbell thousands of proselytes; and their children and their children’s children have to this day stuck to his church like grim death, and they will stick for generations to come. It was upon one of these excursions that he met John Walker, a Presbyterian minister of the Seceder Church, at Mt. Pleasant, Jefferson county, Ohio. The debate occurred on June 19 and 20, 1820. It was practically a one-sided affair. This gave Campbell much reputation. As yet he had preached nothing heretical. Most of his views, as announced later, were not new in Kentucky. As an organized system they dated back to the days of the Great Revisal. This system originated, in the most part, with Barton W. Stone, who was the leader of the revival in Upper Kentucky. He broke off from the Presbyterian Church and preached practically all of the doctrines later advocated by Campbell. He and his associates were suspended from the Presbyterian Synod on September 1~, 1803, and the next day they informed the Synod that they had organized another Presbytery. "Yet from this period," says Stone, "I date the commencement of that reformation, which has progressed to this clay" (Rogers, The Biography of Barton W. Stone). John A. Gano, in preaching the funeral sermon of Stone, said: The first churches planted and organized since the great apostasy, with the Bible as the only creed or church book, and the name Christian as the only family name, was organized in Kentucky in the year 1804 (Rogers). After the adoption of his singular ideas Mr. Stone was much pleased at the coming of Campbell to Kentucky. He says: When he came into Kentucky, I heard him often in public and in private. I was pleased with his manner and matter. I saw no distinctive feature between the doctrine he preached and that which we had preached for many years, except on baptism for the remission of sins. Even this I had once received and taught, as before stated, but had strangely let it go from my mind, till Brother Campbell revived it afresh. I thought then he was not sufficiently explicit on the influences of the Spirit, which led many honest Christians to think he denied them. Had he been as explicit then, as since, many honest souls would have been still with us, and would have greatly aided the good cause. In a few things I dissented from him, but was agreed to disagree (Rogers). The ultimate union of the two parties became a foregone conclusion. After the union Stone thus expresses himself Their aid gave a new impetus to the Reformation which was in progress, especially among the Baptists of Kentucky; and the doctrine spread and greatly increased in the West. The only distinguishing doctrine between us and them was, that they preached baptism for the remission of sine to believing penitents. This doctrine had not generally obtained among us, though some few had received it, and practiced accordingly. They insisted also upon weekly communion, which we had neglected. It was believed by many, and feared by us, that they were not sufficiently explicit on the influences of the Spirit. Many unguarded things were spoken and written by them on this subject, calculated to excite the suspicions and fears of the people, that no other influence was needed than in the written word; therefore to pray to God for help was vain. The same thing had been objected to us long before; for we also had been unguarded in our expressions. In private conversation with these brethren our fears were removed, for our views were one (Rogers). After stating ten articles which were held by Campbell, John Rogers, the biographer of Stone, remarks: Such were the capital positions of A. Campbell and those with him. It is scarcely necessary to say, what is so palpably, from the extracts already presented, and others that might be made, that father Stone and those with him occupied substantially the same ground. Of course, therefore, a union might be expected. Now then, let us call before us the local positions of the parties, as well as their religious relations. In the year 1828 there were great religious excitements among the various denominations in Kentucky, but especially among the Baptist Churches. Hundreds and thousands were immersed among them, in the north of Kentucky, principally by those preachers who were very much under the influence of A. Campbell. Their converts, of course, were under the same influence. In and about the year ‘29 or ‘30, the Baptists, in this part of Kentucky, took a very decided stand against A. Campbell, and those who stood with him. The consequence was, many were separated from them and forced to set up for themselves. Here, then, were the parties in the field, living is the same neighborhoods and villages, and occupying, religiously, very similar grounds. We were mutually teaching the same great truths,—telling the world that Christians ought to be one—that human creeds were among the great causes of division—that to believe with all the heart, that Jesus is the Christ, and to put ourselves under his government, were the only requisites to church membership; that subsequently to speak of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, and all other matters of useless controversy, in the language of Scripture, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in the present world, are the only requisites of the continued enjoyment of church fellowship here, and place in the church triumphant hereafter. We could not then keep asunder but by unsaying all that-we had said, sad undoing all we had done. Father Stone and John T. Johnson are to be regarded as the prime movers of this good work. Speaking is refereaoe to it, B. W. Stone says: "Among other Baptists who received and advocated the teaching of A. Campbell, was J. T. Johnson, than whom there is not a better man. We lived together in Georgetown, sad labored and worshiped together. We plainly saw that we were on the same foundation, in the same spirit, and preached the same gospel. We agreed to unite our energies to effect a union between our different societies. This was easily effected in Kentucky; and in order to confirm this union, we became co-editors of The Messenger. This anion, irrespective of reproach, I view as the noblest act of my life (Rogers). Mr. McCalla, a Presbyterian for some years, had been preaching in Kentucky on baptism and kindred subjects. He repeatedly challenged the Baptists for a debate. The Baptists accepted the challenge and the debate between him and Campbell was duly arranged. It was held in the town of Washington, a few miles back of Maysville, in the old Baptist meeting house. It was the first discussion of any prominence that had ever taken place in Kentucky between a Baptist and a Pedobaptist. Thousands of interested and excited visitors, from almost every portion of northern Kentucky, witnessed the battle, and were cheered or dismayed by its results. Baptists and Baptist preachers felt profoundly thankful that the advocacy of their cause was committed to the hands of a giant. His victory over McCalla was complete. In grateful pride, the Baptists of Kentucky hailed, with unanimous voice, his triumph (The Christian Repository, January, 1858, p. 36). In this debate Mr. Campbell said little or nothing which differed from the ordinary views of the Baptists on the design of baptism. Of the Baptism of Paul he said: The blood of Christ, then, really cleanses us who believe from all sin. Behold the goodness of Gad in giving us a formal proof and token of it, by ordaining a baptism expressly "for the remission of sins." The water of baptism, then, formally washes away our sins. The blood of Christ really washes away our sine. Paul’s sins were really pardoned when he believed, yet he had no formal pledge of the fact, no formal acquittal, no formal purgation of his sine, until he washed them away in the waters of baptism (Campbell and McCalla Debate). In little or nothing did this differ from the view of the Baptists. It was very different from the later statement where he said "that sins are actually forgiven in the act of immersion" (The. Christian Baptist). Mr. Campbell was surrounded by a great company of Baptists. Jeremiah Vardeman, the successful, the eloquent, was his moderator, and he was easily the most influential Baptist in the State. A man of warm and enthusiastic temperament, he became the devoted friend and to some extent the follower of Campbell. Jacob Creath was there. He was the associate of Vardeman; and they traveled and preached together, and in their mode of operation and general views were alike. He had an earnest sweeping eloquence and was superior in management, in shrewdness, in tact. He was already at the head of a powerful faction and he became one of the first disciples of the new order of things. Walter Warder, the pastor, was there. He was the most beloved Baptist in the State. He had been the agent under God of winning thousands of souls to Christ in Mason, Fleming, Bracken and Bourbon counties. He had longed for more union, more intelligence, and more piety among the ministers, and more seal and liberality in the membership. It seemed to him that God had raised up Alexander Campbell for such a time as this. The debate being concluded Campbell passed through all of the principal towns of Northern Kentucky preaching everywhere he went to vast multitudes. Never in the history of Kentucky had a religious teacher created such a sensation or attracted such attention. To the city of Lexington came Baptist preachers to hear the new champion. The previous night, as they gathered in the city, they "held a candle light prayer meeting." They met at sunrise for the same object, after which they went early to the meeting house, "to meet and receive the new brother." The ministers sat in the pulpit, awaiting with anxiety his arrival; and when he entered the house, crowded as it was to overflowing, they "invited him to the pulpit, and welcomed him to the services of the day." For full three hours he spoke on the great commission. Among those who listened to that discourse, and met, after the service, beneath the hospitable roof of Dr. James Fishback, were John Taylor, Silas M. Noel, Jeremiah Vardeman and the elder, Jacob Creath. Here the startling and dogmatic views of Campbell were questioned, modified, or freely discussed. The leading preachers of the State were grouped around the preacher. On his influence over the minds of these strong and fearless men depended the triumph or defeat of his plans and hopes. Enlisted under his standard, battling beneath the guidance of his eye, success was certain. United in their opposition, his Reformation must have perished at its birth (The Christian Repository, February, 1858, p. 86) . Out of this company Campbell won outright Jacob Creath; Jeremiah Vardeman apparently acquiesced; and Fishback was neutral. There were two men in the company who were never shaken. They were Silas M. Noel and John Taylor. The former in mental power was the equal of Mr. Campbell; in learning not much his inferior, and in clearness of mental vision and logical acumen his superior. John Taylor was not an educated man, but he did have a thorough knowledge of the Bible, strong common sense and an integrity incorruptible. "The night after preaching," says Taylor, "we sat up very late, and had much conversation, as also next morning. Noel and myself slept together that night—we exchanged thoughts about the new preacher—we strongly suspected he was deeply tinctured with Unitarianism, in which we became more confirmed by the friendship between him and Stone, and all of Stone’s followers. I heard a number of things from Campbell which made me stare; in some of which I withstood him. Elder Chilton was speaking of a good work going on—sinners weeping and crying for mercy. I saw Mr. Campbell raise his hand, and with a loud crack of his finger, and a scornful look at Chilton, say: ‘I would not give that for it; if a sinner weeps when I preach, I know that in some way I have deceived him."’ If Campbell had won Creath he had lost the equally influential Taylor. Noel accompanied Campbell to Shelbyville and Louisville. From the latter appointment Noel returned home sad but determined. Campbell had failed to convince the two most forceful leaders, Taylor and Noel. He carried with him a faction but not the Baptists of Kentucky. He returned to Virginia apparently well satisfied. Stone, J. T. Johnson and Creath had enlisted in his cause; Vardeman, the Warders, Joseph and William, and Silas M. Noel were presumed to be neutral; John Taylor, with George and Edmund Walter, had shown signs of opposition. There were many things which contributed to the spread of the peculiar views of Mr. Campbell among the Baptists of Kentucky. His personal popularity in the overthrow of the Pedobaptists has been mentioned. In this debate he displayed more talent and learning than had ever been known in this State. The manner in which he performed the part not only pleased the Baptists, but gave them triumphant satisfaction. Many of them considered Campbell as the greatest living man. Thus the McCalla debate opened the way for the dissemination of his religious views among the Baptists. Never did a Reformer commence his work under more flattering auspices. The publication of The Christian Baptist was begun in 1823, and the little "Monthly" soon secured a large circulation. This paper greatly assisted his cause (J. M. Pendleton, Campbellism Examined, in The Southern. Baptist Review, February and March, 1855, p. 85). Another reason for his success was that his system was slowly developed, and his views gradually expressed. In process of time he came to the position that the Christian church was buried under rubbish for ages, and that it was his mission to dig it out. He says: If the Christians were, and may be the happiest people that ever lived under the moat gracious institution ever bestowed on men. The meaning of this institution has been buried under the rubbish of human traditions for hundreds of years. It was lost in the dark ages, and has never been, till recently, disinterred. Various efforts have been made, and considerable progress attended them; but since the Grand Apostasy was completed, till the present generation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has not been laid open to mankind in its original plainness, simplicity sad majesty. A veil in reading the New Institution has been on the hearts of Christians (Campbell, The Christina System). A man could hold any opinion he chose but it must be regarded as private property. The belief of one fact-that Jesus Christ was the Messiah—and the submission to one institution—baptism, was all that was required (Ibid). The consequences were, says Mr. Campbell: We have had a very large portion of this unhappy and mischievous influence to contend with. Every sort of doctrine has been proclaimed, by almost all aorta of preachers, under the broad banners and with the supposed sanction of the begun Reformation (The Millennial Harbinger, VI). He wrote in terms of ridicule of what is designated as a call "to the ministry," and made the impression that it was as much the duty and privilege of one Christian brother as another to preach the gospel. This was peculiarly grateful to the feelings of those who wished to preach and were destitute of the qualifications considered requisite to the gospel ministry. Such men saw that they could not be preachers as long as preachers constituted a small and select class. The only hope for them consisted in enlarging the class by lowering the grade of qualifications in those who might wish to enter it. He was also understood to advocate the management of church affairs so as to supersede the necessity of pecuniary contributions. The salary of "the clergy" had called forth some of his most satirical effusions. The inference was promptly drawn, that it was wrong to compensate ministerial labor. The idea of a "cheap gospel" was especially palatable to the lovers of money. It was also understood that he was opposed to Bible, Missionary and Tract Societies, Sunday schools and other institutions of this kind. The conclusion, therefore, was that no applications would be made for money to promote the objects of these organizations. For this reason many of the covetous were favorably disposed to the views of the Reformer. Knowing the blessings of salvation "without money and without price," they tried to persuade themselves that there should be no expenditures for religious purposes. The Baptists on the other hand were filly prepared to meet error. They had no general body, save the Triennial Convention, which was new and met only every three years, upon which they could consolidate their interests, or even meet for counsel. They had only a few weak and uninfluential newspapers. There were only a few Baptist preachers who had read through the New Testament in Greek or were capable of making a Greek criticism. They were not accustomed to polemical discussions. Their preaching was confined principally to experimental and practical topics while controversy was repudiated. Those who followed the lead of Mr. Campbell became exceedingly aggressive. In northern Kentucky thousands of people were immersed for the forgiveness of sins. In the meantime he had discontinued The Christian Baptist and founded The Millennial Harbinger. The Harbinger Extra on "Remission of Sins" was published July 5, 1830, and this appears to have been the signal for a separation between the Baptists and the Reformers. When the Extra declared unequivocally that "immersion is the converting act"—that "immersion and regeneration are two Bible names for the same act"—the Baptists thought the time had come for them to protest against such teaching. They protested not only verbally but practically. The method of procedure between the parties was very different. The Baptists, whether in the majority or the minority, were in favor of a separation. The followers of Mr. Campbell, unless in the majority, were generally opposed to separation. As a specimen of the procedure of other bodies the action of the Dover Association, of Virginia, is here recorded. This was, at the time, the largest association of Baptists in the world. In the autumn of 1832, this body convened at Four Mile Creek meeting house, in Henrico county, Virginia, not far from the city of Richmond. The Reformation excitement had reached its height. Several of the churches belonging to the body had been split asunder, and others were in a distracted and unhappy condition. All eyes were turned to the Association for advice in this time of trial. The subject was referred to a select committee, consisting of Revs. John Kerr, James B. Taylor, Peter Ainslie, J. B. Jeter, and Philip Montague. The committee in due time made the following report: The select committee appointed to consider and report "what ought to be done in reference to the new doctrines and practices which have disturbed the peace and harmony of some of the churches composing this association," met at the house of Elder Miles Turpin, and having invited and obtained the aid and counsel of Elders Andrew Broaddus, Eli Ball, John Micou, William Hill, Miles Turpin, and brother Erastus T. Montague, after due deliberation, respectfully report the following preamble and resolution for the consideration and adoption of the association. This association having been from its origin, blessed with uninterrupted harmony, and a high degree of religious prosperity, has seen with unspeakable regret, within a few years past, the spirit of speculation, controversy and strife, growing up among some of the ministers and churches within its bounds. This unhappy state of things has evidently been produced by the preaching, and writings of Alexander Campbell, and his adherents. After having deliberately and prayerfully examined the doctrines held, and propagated by them, and waited long to witness their practical influence on the churches, and upon society in general, we are thoroughly convinced that they are doctrines not according to godliness, but subversive of the true spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ—disorganizing and demoralizing in their tendency; and, therefore, ought to be disavowed and resisted, by all the lovers of truth and sound piety. It is needless to specify, and refute the errors held and taught by them; this has been often done, and as often have the doctrines, quoted from their writings, been denied, with the declaration that they have been misrepresented or misunderstood. If after more than seven years’ investigation, the most pious and intelligent men in the land are unable to understand what they speak and write, it surely is an evidence of some radical defect in the things taught, or in the mode of teaching them. Their views of sin, faith, repentance, regeneration, baptism, the agency of the Holy Spirit, church government, the Christian ministry, and the whole scheme of Christian benevolence, are, we believe, contrary to the plain letter of the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour. By their practical influence, churches long blessed with peace and prosperity, have been thrown into wrangling and discord—principles long held sacred by the best and most enlightened men that ever lived or died, are vilified and ridiculed as "school divinity," "sectarian dogmas," c. Ministers, who have counted all things but lose, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, are reprobated, and denounced as "visionary dreamers," "mystifiers," "blind leaders of the blind," "hireling priests," c., c. The church in which many of them live, and from which they call it persecution to be separated, is held up to public scorn as "Babylon the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth." The most opprobrious epithets are unsparingly applied to principles which we think clearly taught in the Word of God, sad which we hold dear to our hearts. While they arrogate to themselves the title of "Reformers," it is lamentably evident, that no sect in Christendom needs reformation more than they do. While they boast of superior light and knowledge, we cannot but lament, in their life and conversation, the absence of that "wisdom that is from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." In fine, the writings of Alexander Campbell, and the spirit and manner of those who profess to admire his writings and sentiments, appear to us remarkably destitute of "the mind that was in Christ Jesus," of that divine love "which suffereth long, sad is kind, envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil." Whenever these writings sad sentiments have to any extent, been introduced into our churches, the spirit of hypercriticism, "vain janglings and strife about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers," have chilled the spirit of true devotion, and put an end to Christian benevolence sad harmony. If the opprobrious epithets, and bitter denunciations, so liberally heaped upon us by Mr. Campbell and his followers, are deserved, they, as pious and honorable men, cannot desire to live in communion with us; and if they are undeserved, and designedly slanderous, this of itself would forbid our holding them in Christian fellowship. If, indeed, they have found the long lost key of knowledge, and are the only persons, since the days of the apostles, who have entered and explored the divine arcanum, it is due to themselves—to purblind Christendom—to the world—to truth—to God, that they should, in obedience to the divine command, clothed in the shining garments of truth and righteousness, walk out of "Babylon," and concentrating their light, exhibit a true sample of the "ancient order of things"; and diffuse around them a blare of "love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Until they do this, grave and thinking men, whose hearts are sickened with the depravity of the times, and who mourn a sad and general departure from truth and holiness, would voluntarily come out from "the present corrupt order of things," and holding sweet communion with one another, and with their God, let their light so shine that others seeing their good works, might be induced to glorify their Father in heaven; but, alas) they appear to be a strange anti-sectarian, dogmatical sect, who live only is the fire of strife and controversy, and seek to remain in connection with the existing churches, that they may with the greater facility obtain materials for feeding the disastrous flame. In every aspect of the case then, a separation is indispensably necessary. The cause of truth and righteousness requires it—the beat interests of all the parties concerned demand it. We, therefore, the assembled ministers, and delegates of the Dover Association, after much prayerful deliberation, do hereby affectionately recommend to the churches in our connection, to separate from their communion all such persona as are promoting controversy and discord, under the specious name of "Reformers" That the line of distinction may be clearly drawn, we feel it our duty to declare, that whereas Peter Ainslie, John Du Val, Matthew W. Webber, Thomas M. Henley, John Richards and Dudley Atkinson, ministers within the bounds of this Association, have voluntarily assumed the name of "Reformers," in party application, by attending a meeting publicly advertised for that party, and by communing with, and otherwise promoting the views of the members of that party, who have been separated from the fellowship and communion of Regular Baptist churches—therefore Resolved, That this Association cannot consistently, and conscientiously receive them, nor any other ministers maintaining their views, as members of their body; nor can they in future act in concert with any church, or churches that may encourage or countenance their ministrations. The report was adopted by the Association without discussion and with but few dissenting votes. Dr. W. C. Buck, gives the following history of the situation and the reasons for the rise and progress of this schism among the Baptists of Kentucky: In order that we may be able to see things as they now are, let us look back to the state of things as they were in 1832, when the friends of effort began to agitate the plan of a Baptist State Convention, as the only expedient which then appeared practicable, to save the denomination from utter anarchy sand ruin; and what do we see? Previous to that tremendous shock which the Campbellistical heresy inflicted upon the denomination in the west, and by which one-half of the churches in this State were rived asunder, and a large proportion of the ministry subverted, the denomination in Kentucky numbered somewhere about 400 churches, contained between 25 and 30,000 members, who were nerved by about 250 to 300 preachers. This we suppose to be about the statistical condition of the denomination, in 1828 and ‘30, when Campbellism broke out in our churches; and had they been united, properly instructed and disciplined, that schism never would have occurred; but they were deficient in all these respects. They were generally descendants from Virginia Baptists, and had been cradled and schooled in settled aversion to clerical distinction and clerical support, by legal enactment, as it was in the State before the Revolution; but they had suffered these correct opinions to degenerate into an entire, practical neglect of the ministry, and with a large proportion this degeneracy had become sentimental; so that they did not only deny the right of earthly potentates and national hierarchies to control their consciences, and gather tax by law to the support of the Episcopal clergy, whom they did not acknowledge as the ministers of Christ; but they proceeded farther to deny the authority of Christ, to demand a support for those whom they acknowledged to be chosen and sent by him, as his ambassadors. They averred that they were under no obligation to support the gospel, and regarded their contributions to the ministry (if they ever made any), as mere acts of charity. And so prevalent was this sentiment, that it was selected as a popular topic for the pulpit by the ministry,’ and many have rode into popular favor upon this hobby. No preacher, therefore, who wished to keep his credentials, dared to oppose the popular current and tell the churches their duty. The consequence was, the preachers had to engage in secular employments, for support, deprive themselves of study, and preach when they could; so that there was not, even five years ago, one settled pastor in Kentucky, nor one minister supported, and not one that performed pastoral labor, except in the Louisville church. A very few churches had preaching twice a month; once a month was thought to be the rule of perfection, and beyond this few aspired, while a large proportion were entirely destitute; and yet if you would attend one of those monthly Sabbath meetings, you would see from one to half a dozen ordained and licensed preachers, assembled to avail themselves of the stated preacher’s popularity, in calling out an assembly, in order to show their talent in preaching; and often have the moat patient assemblies imaginable, been drilled half to death by this system of ministerial polygamy, when all the country for miles around was left in perfect destitution. We will venture to assert that not more than a third of the ministry were employed, taking one Sabbath with another, the year around. And yet, if this miserable state of things had been all, the trouble would not have been half so great; but, alas( the fever of faction raged in all the violence of embittered personal strife. The controversy between Elkhorn and Licking Associations, had been insinuating its poison into the vitals of society for years, and when the cause of personal pique was worn threadbare, the original pugilists forced it into a doctrinal difference, and the whole denomination was kept in agitation and turmoil upon the subject. Nothing was heard from the pulpit but the extremes of these opposite sentiments; nothing was Gospel to the different parties, but what favored their side of the question in the most ultra forms; and nothing error but what opposed it; so, that one wide and deep line divided the denomination and every church in it; giving all on one aide to Calvinism, and all on the other aide to Arminianism; neither party as such deserved the appellation bestowed upon it by the other, but still as perfectly separated upon these lines, as are the antipodes; and the spirit of war was rife among them, as when their fathers and the red man battled on the Bloody Ground. All the ties of Christian fellowship were sundered, the order of society broken up, and little else was talked about in social or religious circles but these matters of party strife and feud; and thus were the materials prepared for the convulsion which ensued. A volcanic fire burned to the very center of the denomination; which finally burst out in one widespread and ruinous disruption, by which the extremes of those parties were thrown off at opposite poles; the ultras on one side to Campbellism, and those on the other to antinomian-particularism. Few churches in the State escaped unscathed by this avalanche of error, and not one wholly untainted with the spirit of jealousy, captiousness, and discord which it engendered, and from which the denomination has not yet recovered; and hence the suspiciousness and jealousy manifested toward those who are engaged in efforts to do good. The spirit of antinomian-particularism, has not yet fairly worked off, and is still throwing up its murky fires, and threatening some of our churches with anarchy and disunion: Not so with Campbelliem; it rode upon the passion of its votaries with the speed of a dromedary, and did its work of destruction in a hurry, by which the denomination in Kentucky was reduced to something like 20,000, with perhaps near 200 preachers, while the number of churches remained undiminished. We appeal to the candor of every one, whether friend or foe, who has any personal acquaintance of those times, for the truth of the statements here made, and also for the gentleness which we have evinced in coloring the drapery (The Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer, April 30, 1840). This schism together with that of the Anti-Mission separation brought untold disaster to the Baptists. "This was by far the greatest schism," says Allen, "that ever occurred in the church; but still the Baptists retained their usual ratio to the population of the State, which was about one to twenty of the inhabitants. In 1832 when the storm of the schism had spent its fury, they had thirty-three associations in Kentucky, four hundred and eighty-four churches, two hundred and thirty-six ordained ministers, and thirty-four thousand one hundred and twenty-four members. The increase since then has been unprecedented; in the succeeding ten years they had doubled their numbers" (Allen, A History o f Kentucky, 179, Louisville, 1872) . Books for further reference: B. B. Tyler, A History of the Disciples of Christ. New York, 1900. Richardson, Robert, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell. Philadelphia, 1888-70. 2 volumes. Rogers, John, Biography of Barton Warren Stone. Cincinnati, 1847. R. L. Dabney, An Examination of the Leading Points of the System of Alexander Campbell, The Southern Presbyterian Review, XXXI. 371-413. Columbia, S. C., 1880. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 58: 01.2.03.09. A NUMBER OF BAPTIST ACTIVITIES ======================================================================== Chapter 9 – A Number of Baptist Activities Alien Immersions—J. L. Reynolds—Crosby—Philadelphia Association—The Case of James Hutchinson—Jesse Mercer—The Christian Review—Benedict—Education—Colombian College—The Triennial Convention on Education—An Address—The Effect of the Revolutionary War—The Charleston Association—Baptist Education Society in the Middle States—The Massachusetts Education Society—A School of Theological Instruction in Philadelphia—Washington, D. C.—The Progress of the Colombian College—President Monroe—The Resignation of Rice—Newton Theological Institution—Hamilton College—The Education Society in South Carolina—and Georgia—Mercer College—Other Colleges—State Conventions—The General Convention of Western Baptists—Home Missions in the West—Sunday Schools—Baptist Publication Society—Newspapers and Periodicals—Conclusion. In all this period of strife and schism the Baptists were slowly groping their way into a place of purpose and action. These troubles had a unifying effect. The controversies in a measure proved a blessing. There were great and unnecessary losses but these were not without compensations. The subjects of alien immersions and the proper administrator of baptism often arose among the Baptists of this period. This was especially accentuated by the defection of the anti-mission forces and the followers of Alexander Campbell. After the American Civil War it sometimes became acute. There have always been differences of opinion on this subject; but among early American Baptists, perhaps, the vast majority rejected such baptisms and accounted them as invalid. Only a few instances and expressions can here be quoted, but they are sufficient and authoritative enough to indicate the general trend of the thinking of the denomination. Professor J. L. Reynolds, D. D., Professor in Columbia College, South Carolina, formerly President of Georgetown College, Kentucky, and once Professor in the Theological Department of Mercer University, Georgia, says of rebaptism: In Africa the question attracted attention at an early period and received a prompt decision . . . The ground on which the validity of heretical baptism was denied, that there could be no real baptism out of the true church. He further says: The Novatians, dissatisfied with the lax discipline of the Church of Rome, seceded from it, A. D. 251, and organized themselves on the most rigid principles. Claiming to be the true church they baptized, without distinction, all who were admitted to their communion. Applicants from other churches, were of course, rebaptized. They were the first Puritans—Cathari—and there is little doubt that they were opposed to infant baptism . . . The ground assumed by those separatists, as well as those who succeeded them, was that the Catholic Church (so-called) was become corrupt and antichristian. Again: In all cases of rebaptism to which I have referred, the principle of action was the same-out of the true church there was no baptism. This was a point on which all, whether heretics, or Catholics, seem to have agreed. He further says: The Mennonites (so called from Menno, who died 1571) rebaptized all who were admitted into their communion. Thin is the statement of Neudecker, Lebrd. Dogmende, 621. Once more: The vast body of the Mennonites adhered to the ancient practice which they had received from the earlier Anabaptists (The Christian Index, May 26 and June 16, 1843). Thomas Crosby, speaking of the Baptists in London, in 1615, says: They rejected the baptism of infants as being a practice which had no foundation in Scripture; and all baptisms received either in the Church of Rome or England, they looked upon to be invalid, because received in a false church, and from antichristian ministers (Crosby, The History of the English Baptists, I. 273. London, 1738). The Philadelphia Association, the oldest among the Baptists of America, in the year 1788, decided against the validity of baptism administered by persons who had not been lawfully baptized and ordained. They assigned four reasons for the decision. The fourth is as follows: Because such an administrator has no commission to baptize, for the words of the commission were addressed to the apostles and their successors in the ministry, to the end of the world, and these are such whom the church of Christ appoint for the whole work of the ministry. Reference may also be made to similar decisions of this Association in 1729, 1732, 1744, 1749 and 1758. The Richmond Association, in 1809, decided: Three things are required to make gospel baptism, viz.: a gospel mode, s gospel subject and administrator (Benedict, A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America, II. 472. Boston, 1813). In 1791 a case was brought before the Ketockton Association which produced considerable agitation. James Hutchinson, who was born in New Jersey, but raised in Loudon county, Virginia, had gone to Georgia, and there first became a Methodist, and then a Baptist preacher. Previous to his joining the Baptists, he had been baptized by a Methodist. When he offered to join the Baptists of Georgia, it was made a question whether his baptism, being performed by an unbaptized person, was valid! The Georgia Baptists decided that it was valid. In the year above mentioned Mr. Hutchinson came to Virginia to see his relations in Loudon county. While he was there, his preaching became effectual to the conversion of many. Mr. Hutchinson baptized them. These things stirred up the question in Ketockton Association, whether the baptism of Hutchinson and his disciples was valid. The decision here was just the reverse of the decision in Georgia. They determined not to receive him or those baptized by him, unless they should submit to be rebaptized. After some time they consented, and the ordinance was readministered (Semple, History of Virginia Baptists). Jesse Mercer, in a Circular Letter adopted and published by the Georgia Association, in 1811, assigns "the reasons, briefly, which lead us to deem Pedobaptist administrations, though in the proper mode, invalid." The first reason assigned is: The apostolic church, continued through all ages to the end of the world, is the only true gospel church. After laying down several propositions he proceeds: From these propositions, thus established, we draw the following references, as clear and certainly true; That all churches and ministers, ,and not successively to them, are not in gospel order; therefore, cannot be acknowledged as such. Again he says in the same Circular: Our reasons for rejecting baptism by immersion when administered by Pedobaptist ministers are I. That they are connected with churches clearly out of the apostolic succession, and therefore clearly out of the apostolic commission. II. That they have derived their authority, by ordination, from the Bishops of Rome, or from individuals who have taken it on themselves to give it. III. That they hold a higher rank in the churches than the apostles did, are not accountable to it, and consequently not triable by the church; but are amenable to of among themselves. Further on he remarks: The Pedobaptists by their own histories, admit that they are not of it (the true line of the succession of the churches). But we do not; sad shall think ourselves entitled to the claim until the reverse is shown clearly. And should any man think that authority derived from the Mother of Harlots sufficient to qualify to administer a gospel ordinance, they will be so charitable as not to condemn us from preferring that derived from Christ . . . If any think the administration will suffice which has no pattern in the Gospel, they will suffer us to act according to the Divine order with impunity. The Christian Review, Boston, 1846, in a long article on Rebaptism, says: We next consider the case of those who, though adults, baptized in the proper mode and form, yet at that time held grossly heretical doctrines; of adherence to which their baptism was a profession to the world: such as Unitarians, who deny the faith of the Trinity;—Universalists, who deny all future punishment; Campbellites, whose acknowledgement that Jesus is the Son of God implies neither a belief in the divinity nor vicarious sufferings of Christ, nor a profession of a change of heart. Even the Mormons, it is said, baptize in the name of Jesus. When persons who may have been baptized in a profession in any of these forms of error, are afterwards brought to the truth as it is in Jesus, is it their duty to be rebaptized? In such cases, the first baptism, is surely to be regarded rather as a profession of disbelief, than of belief in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. It should therefore be esteemed quite invalid, and be repeated by those who embrace orthodox doctrines. Nor can their subsequent faith make good their former baptism (The Christian Review, July, 18l6. XI. 198, 199). David Benedict, the historian, probably held a more extensive correspondence with the Baptists of America in his day than any other man. He was doubtless correct when he summed up the situation as follows: "I have ascertained by my extensive correspondence, that by far the greatest part of our denomination both rebaptize and reordain all who join them, from whatever churches they come" (Benedict). Much attention was turned to educational matters. The origin of the Columbian College was one of the general results of the Triennial Convention. The necessity of well-educated missionaries and the need of an enlightened ministry at home were keenly felt. There was at that time no institution in this country connected with the Baptists for the education of young ministers in theological learning. Individuals, like Dr. Stoughton and others, had given private instruction with ability and zeal. The time had arrived when more enlarged and systematic measures were necessary. The Convention justly concluded that one of the urgent needs was the training of young ministers. In the Constitution of the Convention it is stated that it is the duty of the Board to "employ missionaries, and, if necessary, to take measures for the improvement of their qualifications" (Art. IV.). A Committee consisting of Drs. Furman, Baldwin and Stoughton, was appointed "to prepare an address on the subject of Foreign Missions, and the general interest of the Baptist denomination." After a fervent appeal to the churches for the support of foreign missions, the following is added: The efforts of the present Convention have been directed chiefly to the establishment of a foreign mission; but it is expected that when the general concert of their brethren and sufficient contributions to a common fund shall furnish them with proper instruction and adequate means, the promotion of the interests of the churches at home will enter into the deliberations of future meetings. It is deeply to be regretted that no more attention is paid to the improvement of the minds of pious youth, who are called to the gospel ministry. While this is neglected, the cause of God must suffer. Within the last fifty years, by the diffusion of knowledge and attention to liberal science, the state of society has become considerably elevated. It is certainly desirable, the information of the minister of the sanctuary should increase in an equal proportion. Other denominations are directing their attention, with signal ardor, to the instruction of their youth for this purpose. They are assisting them to peruse the sacred writings in. their original languages, and supplying other aids for pulpit services, which, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, may become eminently sanctified for the general good. While we avow our belief, that a refined or liberal education is not an indispensable qualification for ministerial service, let us never loose sight of its real importance, but labor to help our young men, by our contributions, by the organization of education societies, and if possible, by a general theological seminary, where some, at least, may claim all the advantage which learning and mature studies can afford, to qualify for acting the part of men who are set for the defense of the gospel. Improvement of this nature will contribute to roll away from the churches the reproach of neglecting to support the ministry of the word. They will be unwilling to receive for nothing that which coat their ministers much (Minutes of the Convention, 42, 43). The Revolutionary War came nigh destroying all educational work among the Baptists. They had entered into the struggle for independence with ardor. Their most useful ministers were chaplains; and most of the male members bore arms in defense of the country. The result was a universal dispersion, which practically broke up the local habitation of the denomination. For example, the First Church, New York, which at the beginning of the war had over two hundred members, had been reduced to thirty-seven at the close of the struggle. The tendency was to destroy all of those institutions formed and sustained by combinations—such were the institutions of learning and plans for the education of the ministry. The compensation came with the universal dissemination of the truth. These faithful men went everywhere preaching the Word throughout the United States, and thus the Baptists were exceedingly multiplied. Comparatively little was effected in behalf of education in the denomination for nearly a half century after the commencement of the Revolution. In addition to their dispersion through the wilderness of an almost illimitable extent, a taste had been acquired and habits formed, which were totally adverse to these pursuits. Many, during this period, through necessity, entered the ministry without any literary preparation, the tendency of which was to diminish, in all, a sense of its importance. The circumstances, added to the depressed condition of the country, arising from the long continuance and severity of the war, and, subsequently, from a depreciation of the currency, rendered a recommencement of these efforts for the education of the ministry exceedingly difficult. The Charleston Association had, in 1789, put in operation a plan to establish a permanent fund for the education of ministers, and in 1792 the committee was incorporated by the legislature of South Carolina. So that by the year 1810 the committee had approximately received for this fund ten thousand dollars; and had educated thirteen young men for the ministry. Among this number were Jesse Mercer and W. T. Brantly. The Warren Association followed the Charleston Association in making, in 1791, similar plans. Three years later the society was incorporated by the legislature of Massachusetts. The Baptist Education Society, of the Middle States, was formed in 1812, at Philadelphia: Its object is thus expressed: Its avowed and explicit object is, with a divine blessing, the assisting of pious young mea in obtaining such literary and theological aid as shall enable them, with greater ease to themselves, to fulfill the public duties of the Christian ministry (The Christian Review, June, 1837. II. 269) . At the next Convention, May, 1817, Dr. Furman "placed before the body, in a speech of considerable length and great interest, the very serious and religious importance of a well informed ministry." The following article was added to the Constitution: That when competent and distinct funds shall have been received for the purpose, the board, from these, without resorting at all to mission funds, shall proceed to institute a classical and theological seminary, for the purpose of aiding pious young men, who, in the judgment of the churches of which they are members, and of the board, possess gifts and graces suited to the gospel ministry (Art. XIV. Minutes of the Convention for 1817, p. 139). Through an arrangement with the Education Society of Philadelphia a school of theological instruction was opened in that city in a private house, and a number of young men were received as pupils. W. S. Stoughton was principal and Irah Chase one of the professors. So that by the meeting of the Convention, in 1820, "a General Education Plan," was adopted (The Latter Day Luminary, II). The Constitution was again amended as follows: When the Convention shall have located an institution for education purposes, it shall be the duty of the board, under the direction of this body, and exclusively from education funds, to erect or procure suitable buildings, for the accommodation of the students, and to pursue such measures se may be found most conducive to the progress and prosperity of the institution. They shall also judge of the qualifications of persons approved by the churches as possessing suitable gifts, and called of God to the work of the gospel ministry, who shall apply for admission as beneficiaries of the board. They shall have power to appoint suitable instructors in the different departments of education, and determine on the compensation to be allowed them for their services, and superintend, generally, the affairs of the institution. The question of the proper site for the institution was one of great importance, and had for sometime occupied much attention. Philadelphia had strong attractions, but a location further south was deemed advisable. A location had been provided at Washington by Rice and others. April 26, 1820, he had written as follows: It has afforded me no small pleasure to find it convenient, incidentally to other matters in hand, to bestow some attention to the object of providing at Washington a site for the institution to promote the education of the ministry, and ultimately for the foundation of a college, under the direction of the general Convention. These premises were offered to the Convention, consisting of forty-six and one-half acres, together with a building erected for the purpose. The following resolutions came before the Convention 1. Resolved. That the institution for the education of gospel ministers be located in the city of Washington, or in its vicinity, in the District of Columbia; and that the board be directed to cause its removal thither, whenever suitable preparations shall be made for its reception in that place, and when, in their opinion, such a removal shall be expedient. 2. Resolved. That this Convention accept of the premises tendered to them for the site of an institution for the education of gospel ministers, and for a college, adjoining the city of Washington; and that the board be directed to take measures, as soon as convenient, for obtaining a legal title to the same; and that the board be further directed to keep the institution, already in a state of progress, first in view, and not to incur expenses beyond the amount of funds which may be obtained for the establishment of the institution (The Latter Day Luminary, II. 128). These resolutions were adopted. For a period the college prospered greatly. President James Monroe warmly commended the enterprise as follows: Its commencement will be under circumstances very favorable to its success. Its position north of the city, is remarkably healthy. The act of incorporation is well digested, looks to the proper objects and grants the powers well adapted to their attainment. The establishment of the institution within the federal district, in the presence of Congress, and of all of the departments of government, will secure to the young men who may be educated in it many important advantages; among which the opportunity which it will afford them of hearing the debates in Congress, and in the Supreme Court, on important subjects, must be obvious to all (The Latter Day Luminary, II). But debt occurred and the board loaned the college ten thousand dollars of mission funds (Ibid, II. 363). At length things went from bad to worse. In 1826 the Convention passed the following resolutions: Resolved, That no charge against Luther Rice as to immoral conduct has been substantiated. Resolved. That many imprudences are properly attributed to him, for which, however, the urgent embarrassments of the College furnish at least a partial apology. Resolved, That from the various developments it appears that Mr. Rice is a very loose accountant, and that he has very imperfect talents for the distribution of money (Minutes of the Convention for 1826, 18). In April, 1827, the entire faculty resigned, and the students were dispersed. For a year there was no school. Rice was compelled to resign as agent and treasurer though he never ceased to labor for the college during his life. At a later period when he was led candidly to consider the affairs of the institution he said: Four unfortunate errors produced, in the first instance, the embarrassment of the institution, viz.: going in debt,—too much cost and parade of faculty,—incautiously crediting students, and supporting beneficiaries without means,—and by remaining so much of my time at the college to assist in managing its affairs, instead of being constantly out collecting funds. This erroneous course was fallen into more readily, because, at the time, funds were circulating freely through the community, and subscriptions and collections were easily obtained. But when debts were contracted, an over proportion of faculty employed, students largely indulged on credit, with beneficiaries on hand, a great change took place in the financial condition of the whole country; still, hoping the state of things would prove only temporary, the correction was not immediately applied, as it ought to have been, and serious embarrassment, at length, began to be felt. However deplorable was the situation "the most searching investigations of his conduct, in connection with the embarrassment of the college leave not the shadow of suspicion on his integrity. In his whole history as agent, he sought not his own; and for years actually toiled without fee or reward beyond his personal expenses." He fell on sleep September 25, 1836, in Edgefield District, South Carolina. A large marble slab with a full inscription was placed over his grave by the Baptist State Convention of South Carolina. His only earthly possessions were an old horse, a worn out buggy, and a spotless reputation which he dedicated to Columbian College (Knowles, History of Columbian College, The Christian Review, III. 115. Also VI. 321. Sears, Memoir of Luther Rice). Unfortunately the college had a troubled history from its inception. The Newton Theological Institution was founded by the Massachusetts Education Society, at Newton Centre. A beautiful and elevated site of seventy acres was secured for the institution. Under the direction of Irah Chase the school was opened November 28, 1825. There were present three students. The Society made the preliminary arrangements, in 1825, for the founding of the Institution. The incipient measures are thus recorded: May 26, 1825. Thursday morning, met at Dr. Baldwin’s, according to adjournment. The Board took into consideration the establishment of a theological seminary in the vicinity of Boston; when the following preamble and resolutions, proposed by brother Sharp, were unanimously adopted: Whereas, it appears to be the earnest desire of influential brethren in our denomination, that there should be a theological institution in the vicinity of Boston, therefore, 1. Resolved, That it is highly expedient, that the Board take immediate measures to accomplish thin important object. 2. Resolved, That Rev. Dr. Baldwin, Rev. Mr. Sharp, and Rev. Mr. Wayland, be a committee to draw up a plan for a theological institution, and recommend such place or places for its location, as they deem proper. 3. Resolved, That Rev. Dr. Bolles, Deacon Heman Lincoln, Rev. Mr. Going, Rev. Mr. Sharp, Mr. N. R. Cobb, and Deacon Levi Farwell, be a committee to solicit subscriptions to aid is the establishment of the institution aforementioned. The first meeting of the New York Education Society met in Hamilton, May, 1817; and as a result the Hamilton Institution, now Colgate University, was founded in 1819. "It appears that in 1817," says Joseph Belcher, "when three flourishing colleges were sustained within the State, there were but three Baptist ministers in all the State west of the Hudson, who had enjoyed the advantages of a collegiate education. A general diminution of influence was the inevitable consequence, and the attention of sagacious brethren began to be drawn to the subject. In May, 1817, (at the very time the venerable Dr. Baldwin, of Boston, was urging the claims of ministerial education before the general convention assembled at Philadelphia) five or six individuals (not knowing of the meeting at Philadelphia) met at the house of deacon Samuel Payne, in Hamilton, to converse and pray over the same subject. Thirteen brethren, after mature and prayerful deliberation, proceeded to organize the Baptist Education Society !of the State of New York, subscribing one dollar each" (Joseph Belcher, Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, The Baptist Memorial and Monthly Record, 153. May, 1844). Many of the ministers of Maine were conscious of their poor equipment for their work. In a Circular Letter prepared in 1807, for the Bowdoinham Association, Rev. Sylvanus Boardman characterized the ministry of the district as it was very largely at that time, when in a plea for the support of those whom the churches had called to preach, he spoke of "their want of education, not understanding their mother tongue, compelled to devote their time to study, even to obtain a knowledge of the English language sufficient to qualify them to acquire knowledge of logic, mathematics or philosophy." Three years later the association organized a plan of an institution to promote literary and theological knowledge. Colby College was finally located at Waterville, and a charter obtained February 27, 1813. The Cincinnati Domestic Missionary Society was formed in 1824 and one of its objects was: "To promote the cause of gospel missions, and the education of ministers, called, chosen and faithful." From this movement the Granville College, now benison University, was organized, at Granville, Ohio, December 13, 1831, with thirty-seven students, the oldest among them being thirty-seven years of age, the youngest eight. Twenty-seven of them were from Granville, and all but two, William Whitney and Giles Peabody, were from Ohio. There were five preachers among them. John M. Peck founded the Rock Springs Academy in Illinois. Several years later he gives the following account of the enterprise: In 1826, when not a single academy or boarding school of any kind (except the Catholic seminaries) existed in Illinois or Missouri, I went to the Atlantic States, "on my own hook" (to use a western figure), to obtain aid in the establishment of a seminary. Next year, 1827, the building and institution known as Rock Spring Seminary was started . . . During that season (1826) I visited every prominent institution, college, high school, etc., in my range of travel, to learn all I could of their system of management. The following interesting incident is recorded: One day a young Presbyterian minister, Rev. John M. Ellis, a graduate of Andover Theological Seminary, and who had then recently come to Illinois, was riding on horseback through "the Sangamon Country," as the region here in question was called. As he was making his way over the lonely prairies, interspersed here and there with patches of timber, he came to a small clearing in the midst of hassle and black-jacks, and was arrested in his progress by the sound of an axe. Observing the woodsman more nearly, he called to him with the question, "What are you doing here, stranger?" "I am building a theological seminary." "What, in these barrens?" "Yes, I am planting the seed." This was Dr. J. M. Peck, founder of the Seminary at Rock Springs. Mr. Ellis was afterwards active in originating the Illinois University at Jacksonville. This led to the organization and ultimately to the founding of Shurtleff College, at Upper Alton, Illinois (Baptist Memorial anal Christian Chronicle, 204. July, 1842). An education society was organized in Indiana, in 1834, and in 1835, there appeared in The Cross and Journal, in Cincinnati, a number of articles on such subjects as the following: "What influence ought the Baptist denomination to exert upon the religious and literary world?" "What influence do we exert upon the religious and literary world?" "The importance of religious education in the formation of the character of youth?" There were discussed many more subjects of like character. The result of the agitation was that a Manual Labor Institute was opened in Franklin, in 1837, and became Franklin College, in 1844. The Kalamazoo Literary Institute, Michigan, was chartered March 21, 1837. It was at first conducted as a branch of the State University, at Ann Arbor, and was partly supported by appropriations from the treasury of that institution. This anomalous state of affairs terminated at about the close of 1846, when the branches were all given up, and the resources and energies of the university were concentrated at Ann Arbor. The Baptists of Kentucky selected Georgetown as the site of their college, and a charter was obtained for the institution January 15, 1829. William Stoughton was selected as President of the new institution, but died en route to Georgetown to take up his duties. Joel S. Bacon was elected president June 11, 1830. He struggled manfully with the embarrassment occasioned by the lack of funds, by suits and injunctions, and controversies over the management of the property. There was formed in 1817 "the Baptist Society in South Carolina and Georgia, for the education of pious young men, designed for the ministry." The following extract is taken from an address sent forth on the occasion: By our constitution, you will be informed of the designs which we entertain, of the principles which are to guide our operations, and of the methods which will define our proceedings. To the formation of this union, we have been induced by several considerations. The increasing demand in several parts of our country for Baptist ministers with suitable qualifications; the progress of general literature in all classes of society, requiring a proportionate improvement in those who exercise the sacred office; the frequent instances which bring to our view young men of piety and promise, destitute of the requisite means for improving their talents, and a sincere hope, that with the Divine blessing, our cooperation in the proposed measure might contribute to the increase and extension of genuine piety are some of the motives which have excited us to the course into which we now affectionately invite your benevolent activity. Such motives are so true in fact, and so obvious to common inspection, that they must necessarily disturb the repose of the indolent, and assail the observation of the inconsiderate. In the field, brethren, which we propose to cultivate, there is an impressive call to united zeal and diligence. So far are we from wishing to arrogate to ourselves the merit of originality in this scheme, that we take pleasure in alleging the example of brethren in other places, as an additional incentive to ardor, in a pursuit where they have led the way. In different parts of the United States are societies united for the accomplishment of designs, in all respects like those for which we solicit your favorable regard. Such examples inspire us with the greatest confidence. But admitting that no other association resembling that which we have contemplated had been formed, is there any want of evidence in favor of its claims? Do not the circumstances of many young brethren, eager to break through opposing difficulties, and stand forth as the ambassadors of Christ, make an affecting appeal to our piety and exertion. Do not Christians of all denominations, combining their energies in order to give greater prevalence to the Word of Life, invite our endeavors to something that may accord with the spirit and animation of the present times? Does not that extensive union for missions, which promises to embody the strength of our denomination in this country, demonstrate the expediency of such methods as might augment the number of laborers for a field of action so widely diffused? Reverend Silas Mercer, in 1793, employed a teacher to, open a classical school in his residence. Jesse Mercer attended this school. It could not be called a theological seminary, but was designed to furnish instruction to such ministers as cared to avail themselves of its advantages. This school continued three years. A conference of ministers and others was held at Powelton, in May, 1801, and in 1803 the "General committee of Georgia Baptists" was formed. Itinerant preaching and a school in the Creek nation were the leading objects. It was determined the next year, at Kiokee, that measures be taken to establish "the Baptist College of Georgia." An attempt was made to obtain a charter from the legislature, but this was refused because it was alleged that it would injure the State University. An academy was opened at Mount Enon, near Augusta, in 1807, which flourished for a period and then declined. Mr. Pennfield, of Savannah, in 1829, bequeathed twenty-five hundred dollars for educational purposes on the condition that the Convention raise a like amount, which was quickly done. In January, 1833, a manual labor school was opened, seven miles north of Greensborough, with thirty pupils, a few of whom were licentiates. In the first and second year a powerful revival was experienced, and a large number professed conversion. The village was called Pennfield and the school was named Mercer Institute, in honor of Jesse Mercer, who has been called "the most influential minister of the denomination ever reared in the State" (The Christian Index, July 21, 1832). Out of this general movement grew Furman University of South Carolina. The formation of a school in the State had long been agitated. Consequently, in 1826, the Furman academy was established in Edgefield Court House. It was not of long life, but the theological department was preserved. After many struggles in 1851 Furman University was organized. The Wake Forest College, North Carolina, was established in 1834. At first the institution was to be a manual labor school. So a large farm of 600 acres in Wake Forest county, near Raleigh was purchased and Dr. Wait became president. The school passed through a long period of debt and perplexities before it reached its present large usefulness (The Christian Index, September 8, 1832). The beginnings of the Virginia Baptist Seminary are recorded in an appeal that the Virginia Education Society, through a committee composed of Eli Ball and William ands, made to the Baptist churches of that State. The methods pursued accurately describe conditions of other similar institutions of learning of those times. The committee says: This Society has now been formed about two years; its object is to aid pious young men, recommended by their respective churches, in improving themselves for the ministry. None are received except members of a Baptist church, of good report, blameless deportment, and who give evidence of an aptitude to teach. The great object of the Society is, to enable those who have determined to consecrate themselves to this most responsible office, to become qualified by a course of study and mental discipline, for discharging with faithfulness and ability their duties. Eleven young brethren are now under the care of the Society; the greater portion of them under the care of bro. Edward Baptist, and three of them are with bro. Ball. Others are waiting to place themselves under the patronage of the Society, as soon as the institution shall be ready to receive them. The Society has hitherto encountered much difficulty and labored to great disadvantage for want of a building where the students could be collected together, and placed under the superintendence of a teacher whose whole time could be devoted to the work of instruction. This difficulty has been removed by the purchase of a farm well adapted to the purpose the Society had in view. The farm contains over 200 acres of land, the improvements are sufficiently commodious, with a little expense, to accommodate 30 or 40 students. The situation is pleasant and perfectly healthy. It is situated in a Northern direction from Richmond, about four and a half miles distant, and about one-half mile West of the Brooke Turnpike. It has already been intimated that it is the intention of the Society to connect manual labor with the instruction of the students. They have two objects in view in this course;—to lessen the expense and to improve the health of the students. The greatest economy will be introduced into every department of the Institution; the Society having solely in view the important object of effecting the greatest possible good with the smallest possible expense. They know and feel sensibly the great destitution of our churches, and the necessity of supplying that destitution as speedily as possible, and this knowledge will govern them in all their expenditures. A majority of the board are practical business men, who have been taught by long experience to expend nothing uselessly. The property has been secured to a body of trustees; men well known and esteemed in their churches. Every precaution has been taken to guard the Institution from falling into the hands of individuals not members of a regular Baptist church. In case of a departure from the principles of those churches, they are bound to surrender their trust. A teacher, possessing the confidence of the brethren, Elder Robert Ryland, has been appointed and daily expected. As possession of the farm will be given on the 1st of July, the school will then be ready to receive additional students, and will go into immediate operation. It is not intended to have a summer vacation. The purchase of the farm, with the growing crop, has cost the Society $4,500. One-third of this sum will be wanted immediately, as the first installment will be due on the first of next month. This payment will be met by some of the brethren in this city, but we trust that our brethren in the country will not suffer them to bear this burden long. It is very desirable, that at least ten thousand dollars should be obtained this year. The whole of the purchased money should be paid without delay; and a very considerable expense must be incurred in the purchase of a library, c.—furniture and provisions for the family;—altering and repairing the buildings;—providing stock for the farm, implements of husbandry, mechanical tools, c.—as well as the salary of the Principal. Our friends who have funds on hand, or who can furnish them in a short time, are requested to forward them without delay (The Christian Index, July 7, 1832). A charter was obtained in 1842 and it became Richmond College. Approximating the close of the period now under survey several other important schools were founded. In this list is included Mississippi College; the Judson in 1838 and the Howard, in Alabama; the Union, 1842, in Tennessee. In all of these states where these schools are located there were many preliminary efforts leading to their formation. The Colombian College delayed some of these organizations; and after they were formed they weakened the influence of that institution. American policies have run largely on state lines. It was apparent to all Baptists who had studied the situation that something was lacking in their organization. The association had been the unit of their counsel and missionary operations. The Triennial Convention was made up of missionary societies and such other bodies as cared to cooperate. To remedy this manifest defect State Conventions, or General Associations, were formed in various states. These gave a medium of communication, a rallying place for all of the interests in the bounds of the state, and a method of coordinating the work of the several states. These conventions brought compactness and unity of purpose to the churches of the denomination. By the year 1832 there were fourteen state organizations as follows: New York and South Carolina, 1821; Virginia and Georgia, 1822; Connecticut and Alabama, 1823; Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, 1824; New Hampshire and Rhode Island, 1825; and New Jersey and North Carolina, 1830. The Triennial Convention was constituted preeminently in the interests of foreign missions; and while it had given some attention to home missions, many persons felt that this was only a secondary consideration. This feeling was especially true in the vast territory of the new states of the West. A numerously attended General Meeting of the Western Baptists in Cincinnati, was held November 6, 1833. As a result of this preliminary gathering the Convention of Western Baptists, assembled in the same city, November 5, 1834. It was declared that "the business of this Convention shall be to encourage and promote, by all lawful means the following objects, to-wit: Missions, both domestic and foreign; ministerial education, for such as have first been licensed by the churches; Sunday schools, including Bible classes; religious periodicals; tract and temperance societies, as well as all others warranted by Christ in the gospel. The following statements were made in regard to domestic. missions: In the Report upon Home Missions presented to this body last year, we had a general exhibition of the disorganized and inefficient condition of the Baptist denomination in years gone by, particularly in the western states, together with some of the natural causes of so deplorable a state of things; also, a brief outline of our home missionary operations in the different states, and the abundant success with which God has crowned these efforts. Your committee deem it unnecessary, at so early a period, to survey the, same ground again. According to the report above named, regularly organized associations for missionary purposes were in successful operation in four of the western states, viz.: Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. In Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and some of the states further South, the work was going on through the agency of the Baptist Home Mission Society with increasing success, and local societies were forming for the carrying on of the good work in a more systematic and efficient manner. To these statements we need only add, that the Illinois Baptist convention has been organized, and in Missouri the brethren have taken measures for a similar organization (Proceedings of the fist Anniversary of the General Convention of Western Baptists, at Cincinnati, 7. Cincinnati, 1835). Sunday schools had made no great progress; and those who favored such schools were usually on the defensive. There was much opposition manifested from many sources. While they had not attained the efficiency and popularity of later times, they had begun to fill a large place in Christian instruction. "There are many individuals of our denomination in the West," says J. M. Peck, "and sometimes whole churches, who are opposed to Sunday schools. The cause is from misunderstanding the design and plan of such institutions among Baptists. They imagine that Sunday-school teaching by others is to instill into the minds of children sentiments, and form habits, not in accordance with their views of divine truth; or else to teach children head religion merely, and leave the heart unaffected; and that their tendency will be eventually to exclude the Spirit of God in conversion. If these brethren could be convinced that this is not the design, nor the tendency of these institutions, they would not only approve, but cordially cooperate in sustaining them. We pretend not but some unwise persons may have spoken of Sunday-school instruction in an unguarded manner, and produced the impression of this tendency. But let our brethren look at this subject without prejudice, make themselves acquainted with the facts pertaining to it, distinguish properly between the good, the imperfect, and the wrong modes of instruction, and they will perceive that their fears, distrust and jealousies are without foundation. "The committee pretend not to advocate, or even approve all schools taught on the Lord’s day, and which may be denominated Sunday schools, or of all things that may be taught in such institutions. They wish their brethren, as they do themselves, to make due discrimination. They advocate Sunday schools and Bible class instruction on the same broad principles as they do public preaching, and instruction from house to house. No one approves all kinds of preaching, nor all that is preached even by good men; no one approves all kinds of Sunday schools, nor of all that may be taught therein. And it would be just as unwise and unfair to oppose all preaching, as to oppose all kinds of Sunday-school instruction" (Report on Sunday Schools and Bible Classes, November 7, 1834. Proceedings of the First Anniversary of the General Convention of Western Baptists, 19. Cincinnati, 1835). Such was the spirit and temper of the times in regard to Sunday schools, and these opinions prevailed not only in the Vest but in many other sections of the country. The American and Foreign Bible Society was formed by the ^cession of members of the Baptist denomination from the American Bible Society, in 1836, because the Board declined to render aid in printing the Bengalee Scriptures translated on the principle adopted by the American Baptist missionaries in Burmah, involving the translation of the word baptizo. The seceding parties organized the American and Foreign Bible Society May 12, 1836. Its efforts were expended chiefly in foreign fields, in the missions of the Baptist denomination (Baird, The Christian Retrospect anal Register). The first local Baptist Publication Society was formed in New England in 1811, under the name of the Evangelical Tract Society. It was "not, however, strongly denominational, never became vigorous, and has long since ceased to exist except in name. The necessity of some means for the publication of Baptist tracts was very generally felt in different sections of the country. John S. Meehan and the students for the ministry under the care of Dr. Stoughton, in Philadelphia, as early as 1820, discussed the question of organizing a society for this purpose. But Mr. Meehan’s sudden removal to Washington, D C., prevented the consummation of their plan. Rev. Samuel Cornelius, of Virginia, and others seriously contemplated a movement in this direction. It was reserved in the providence of God for Rev. Noah Davis’, a young minister ordained at Saulsbury, Maryland, December 21, 1823, to take the first effectual steps toward the organization of a tract society. Very soon after his ordination he wrote a letter on the subject to Mr. J. D. Knowles, his former class mate, a student at Colombian College, Washington, D. C., and editor of The Colombian Star. The letter was the occasion of much conversation, and led to a meeting on the 25th of February, 1824, at the house of Mr. George Wood, in Washington, for the purpose of organization. It was originated "as a national society, a center round which the Baptists of every section of the country might rally, a fountain from which should go out streams of blessing to every corner of the land. Its support, however, for the first few years came almost exclusively from southern Baptists." Of the $1,010.33 received the first two years, all but $133.73 came from the southern States. "About six weeks after the Society’s organization a few tracts were printed, and the first Depository was opened April 2, 1824, in the office of The Colombian Star, Washington, D. C. At first it was under the care of Mr. John S. Meehan, afterwards in charge of Mr. Baron Stow, then a student in Colombian College. On November 14, 1826, a special meeting of the Society was held in Washington, at which it was resolved to transfer the headquarters of the Society to Philadelphia. This was done that better facilities for shipping to southern cities and elsewhere might be secured. A committee of brethren residing in Philadelphia was appointed to act in behalf of the Board, and on the 25th of December of the same year that committee convened in the house of Dr. J. L.. Dagg. The first meeting of the Society in that city was held January 7, 1827, Dr. Dagg acted as chairman and Dr. Howard Malcolm as secretary" (Fiftieth Annual Report of the American Baptist Publication Society, 7-12). The first religious periodical published by the Baptists in this country was The American Baptist Magazine, established in 1814. The Western New York Baptist Magazine was edited and published by the Hamilton Baptist Missionary Society. The Latter Day Luminary was commenced by a committee of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions, in Philadelphia, 1818. For the first four years it was published every three months, in 1822 it was removed to Washington and appeared monthly. The Christian Watchman, a weekly paper, was established in Boston, in the beginning of the year 1820. The Religious Intelligencer, a weekly paper, was published in Providence, Rhode Island, in May 1820. The Colombian Star, began in February, 1822. On the same day The Christian Secretary began in Hartford, Connecticut. About the same time The Waterville Intelligencer was printed in Waterville, Maine. In the year 1836 the following Baptist newspapers were published in the United States: Zion’s Advocate, Maine, Adam Wilson, Editor; The Eastern Baptist, Maine; The New Hampshire Baptist Register, Edmund Worth, Editor; The Vermont Telegraph, Orson S. Murray, Editor; The Sabbath School Treasury, Boston, J. H. Purkitt, Editor; The Christian Review, James D. Knowles, Editor;. The Baptist Register, Utica, New York, Alex. M. Beebe, Editor; The American Baptist, Jonathan Going, Editor; The Mothers Journal, Utica, New York, Mrs. M. Kingsfort, Editor; The Perennial Register, Philadelphia, I. M. Allen, Editor; The Monthly Tracts, Philadelphia; The Monthly Paper, I. M. Allen, Editor; The Witness, Pittsburgh, Samuel Williams, Editor; The Religious Herald, Richmond, William Sands, Editor; The Biblical Recorder, Newbern, North Carolina, Thomas Meredith, Editor; The Southern Baptist, Charleston; The Christian Index, Washington, Georgia, Mercer and Stokes, Editors; The Jackson. vine Register, Alabama, William Wood, Editor; The Baptist, Nashville, R. B. C. Howell, Editor; The Baptist Banner, Shelbyville, Kentucky, John L. Walter, Editor; The Cross and Baptist Journal, Cincinnati, J. Stevens, Editor; The Baptist Advocate, Cincinnati, J: Stevens, Editor; The Pioneer, Upper Alton, Illinois, J. M. Peck, Editor; The Baptist Memorial, New York, was established January, 1842, Rufus Babcock and J. C. Choules, Editors. The oldest Journal West of the Alleghany Mountains was The Gospel Herald, 1813, published at Frankfort, Kentucky, by Silas M. Noel (Henry C. Vedder, Journalism in the Baptist Church in the United States, The Chautauquan, August, 1895. XXI. 602) . There were many other institutions established among the Baptists which were to attain mighty proportions. Such were Sunday schools, temperance societies, and others of like character, but they were either just beginning or had not as yet attained prominence. Books for further reference: Henry M. King, Education among the Baptists of this Country during the last One Hundred Years, The Baptist Quarterly, X. 445-466. Philadelphia, 1876. Alvah Hovey, Progress of a Century, The Baptist Quarterly, X. 467-489. E. Thresher, An Address prepared for the Semi-Centennial of Denison University, The Baptist Review, III. 572-592. Cincinnati, 1881. James D. Knowles, History of the Columbian College, District of Columbia, The Christian Review, II. 115-136. Boston, 1837. Ministerial Education in Georgia, The Christian Review, II . 579-584. Philip Schaff, Progress of Christianity in the United States, The Princeton Review, LX. 209-252. New York, 1879. James David Butler, American Pre-Revolutionary Bibliography, Bibliotheca Sacra, XXXVI. 72-104. Andover, 1879. Daniel C. Stevens, The American Baptist Publication Society. One Hundred years of Service and Growth, The Review and Expositor, XXI. 397-407. Louisville, 1924. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 59: 02.00. DID THEY DIP? ======================================================================== DID THEY DIP? ..OR.. AN EXAMINATION INTO THE ACT OF BAPTISM AS PRACTICED BY THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BAPTISTS BEFORE THE YEAR 1641.BY JOHN T. CHRISTIAN, M. A., D. D., Pastor EAST BAPTIST CHURCH, LOUISVILLE, KY., And Author of Immersion, the Act of Baptism," "Close Communion; or, Baptism as a Prerequisite to the Lord’s Supper," "Americanism or Romanism, Which?" "Four Theories of Church Government," "Heathen and Infidel Testimonies to Jesus Christ," etc. WITH ANINTRODUCTIONBYT. T. EATON, D. D., LL. D., BAPTIST BOOK CONCERN, Louisville, KY ======================================================================== CHAPTER 60: 02.000. INTRODUCTION ======================================================================== INTRODUCTION. DR. CHRISTIAN has shown a remarkable talent for gathering and arraying authorities. For more than twenty years he has been studying the history of immersion and has spared no time nor expense to supply himself with original documents. I do not suppose there is a Baptist in the land who has anything like such an array of original documents on this subject as has Dr. Christian. In many cases he has the original editions, while in others he has official copies made at the British museum and elsewhere. He has examined more than forty books which. Dr. Dexter-does not mention in his bibliography of the subject, and which, it is reasonable to believe, Dr. Dexter never saw. Dr. Christian is also singularly accurate in his use of authorities. I have read this book through and have not detected a single inaccuracy. Many of the quotations I have personally verified and have found them correct, and though I have not verified them all, yet I have no doubt of the absolute correctness of every one. He courts investigation, however, and he will gladly welcome the detection of any mistake in the book. The most unpleasant thing in connection with replying to Dr. Whitsitt’s "Question in Baptist History" is calling attention to his unauthorized use of documents, owing largely to his misplaced confidence in Dr. Dexter. And yet whoever replies to any book must needs call attention to its misuse of authorities where such misuse exists. When, for example, such great stress is laid on the supposed testimony of the "Jessey Church Records," it is needful in replying to point out that what is quoted as "Jessey Church Records" really belongs to an "ancient manuscript said to have been written by Mr. William Kiffin." In all this Dr. Christian has not gone beyond the limits of honorable controversy. Indeed he is not so severe on Dr. Whitsitt as the latter is on Dr. Clifford. When a man enters the lists of controversy he must expect his statements to be challenged. It should be constantly borne in mind that not till the year 1641 were the Baptists in England free to speak and write their views. It was on August 1, 1641, that the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber went out of existence. Then, and not till then, could Baptists come from their hiding places and preach openly. Of course their doctrines and practices were new to a great many people. To find instances, therefore, after 1641, where Baptists were called "new" does not at all prove that they began to exist in 1641. Indeed the fact that they were then heard from so vigorously, and spread so rapidly, itself proves they were in existence, though in hiding, before. Just so soon as it was safe for them to show themselves they are seen here, there and everywhere, to the great annoyance of the state clergy, who call them "new, upstart sectaries," etc. The fact that in 1644 immersion had such a strong hold on the divines composing the Westminster Assembly that after a long and bitter debate they voted it down by only one majority is decisive proof that immersion did not begin in England in 1641. Then Dr. Joseph Angus, our great British scholar, has called attention to a number of Baptist Churches in England which trace their history to times long before 1641, e. g., Braintree, Eythorne, Sutton, Warrington, Bridgewater, Oxford and Sadmore. All the Baptists of England, so far as I know, believe that their fathers practiced immersion before 1641. Dr. Whitsitt’s contention is that from 1509 to 1641 the Anabaptists of England practiced affusion, and in that year they began to practice immersion. And yet he has not cited a single instance where any Anabaptists in England practiced affusion, not a single case where any Anabaptist Church adopted immersion. The "Jessey Church" was not an Anabaptist Church, and an anonymous manuscript which has been lost, and whose date nobody knows, is the only evidence that this church began to practice immersion. Richard Blount is said to have gone over to Holland to get baptism in the true succession, and to have returned and baptized Blacklock, yet neither Blount nor Blacklock show themselves afterwards. When in 1644 the Baptists of London put forth their Confession of Faith, the names of Blount and Blacklock are significantly absent from the list of signatures. While before 1641 in England Baptists were obliged to hide and to speak with bated breath, yet we are not left in the dark concerning their practices. Outsiders told of them, and so we have direct testimony concerning them. Dr. Christian gives a good deal of this, and if any of it at all be valid Dr. Whitsitt’s thesis is overthrown. Take for example John Fox’s testimony in his Book of Martyrs, published in 1562: There are some Anabaptists at this time in England who came from Germany. Of these there were two sorts; the first only objected to the baptising of children and to the manner of it by sprinkling instead of dipping. The other held many opinions anciently condemned as heresies; they had raised a war in Germany, and had set up a new king in Munster; but all these were called Anabaptists, from their opposition to infant baptism, though it was one of the mildest opinions they held.—Fox’s Book of Martyrs, Alden ed., p. 338. Thus it appears that both sorts of Anabaptists opposed infant baptism and sprinkling, but the first class "only objected to "these things, while the second class in addition to that "held many opinions anciently condemned as heresies." Fox’s Book of Martyrs has long been an English classic; and no one has impeached its truthfulness. What motive could Fox have had for misrepresentation; and what possible reason exists for impeaching his testimony? . And yet his testimony has got to be entirely set aside, or else Dr. Whitsitt’s thesis falls. Ten thousand men saying after 1641 that immersion was "new" to them would not offset John Fox’s testimony that he knew of immersion in England in 1562. But Fox is only one of many. One great good to come from this discussion is that Baptists will be better informed in regard to their history than ever before. Whatever may be the final outcome of the controversy, it must be admitted that Dr. Whitsitt has stirred up the Baptists in regard to their history as nobody else has ever done, and as nobody else is likely ever to do. Of all people, the Baptists are the last to be afraid of the truth on any subject. T. T. EATON. LOUISVILLE, KY., October 22, 1896. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 61: 02.01. A STATEMENT OF THE CASE ======================================================================== CHAPTER I: A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. Dr. William H. Whitsitt wrote the follo article, which appeared as an editorial in The Independent, New York, September 2, 1880: The Congregationalist speaks of "the well-known immersion of Roger Williams by the unimmersed Ezekiel Holliman." We are somewhat surprised that our greatly learned contemporary should be betrayed into the assertion that Roger Williams was immersed by Ezekiel Holliman. To be sure all the Baptists of America so assume, but the editor of The Congregationalist is more accurately acquainted with the origins of Baptist history than any of the Baptists themselves, and we expected that its statements would be more accurate. As we understand it, Roger Williams never was a Baptist in the modern sense—that is, never was immersed, and the ceremony referred to was anabaptism, rebaptism by sprinkling, and not "catabaptism," or baptism by immersion. The baptism of Roger Williams is affirmed by Governor Winthrop to have taken place in March, 1639. This, however, was at least two years prior to the introduction of the practice of immersion among the Baptists. Up to the year 1641 all Baptists employed sprinkling and pouring as the mode of baptism. Now, is it reasonable to suppose that Mr. Williams, in joining the Baptists, should have made use of a form of baptism which they had never practiced or thought of? To us it seems an historical anachronism. We admit that there are no positive historical statements as yet discovered concerning the mode of Mr. Williams’ baptism; but as it took place in the year 1639, we assume, as a matter of course, that sprinkling or pouring was the method, since no other was at that time in use among the Baptists. The burden of proof rests entirely upon those who assert that Williams was immersed. Has The Congregationalist any positive testimony to that effect? If so, we shall be glad to receive it. We are inclined to believe that no case of immersion took place among the American Baptists before the year 1644. It seems likely that Roger Williams, on his return from England in that year, brought the first reliable news concerning the change which had taken place in the practice of the English Baptists, three years before, and that it was then that the American Baptists first resolved to accept the innovation. At any rate, our reading has not yet furnished us with anything that looks like an authenticated instance of immersion earlier than the year 1644. But The Congregationalist is far better instructed on these topics than ourselves, and we shall be grateful for some further "light and leading" with regard to the point at issue from it, or from Zion’s Advocate, which is the only Baptist paper we know of that seems to have any knowledge of Baptist history. This was followed by another editorial from him on September 9, 1880, as follows: The proofs which are demanded by Zion’s Advocate of our recent assertion that immersion was not practiced in England before a period as late as 1641 are so abundant that one is embarrassed to know where to begin. We shall mention, in the first instance, the silence of history. This is absolute and unbroken. Tho’ a number of works were written by Smyth, Helwys, Merton and other Baptists prior to 1641, and tho’ these were replied to by opponents such as Clifton, Robinson, Ainsworth and Johnson, it is nowhere intimated that the Baptists were then in the practice of immersion. Nay, more, the earliest Baptist Confessions of Faith all contemplate sprinkling or pouring as the act of baptism. We, refer, in proof of this, to the Confession of Faith, in twenty articles, which is subscribed by John Smyth, and may be found in the Appendix to Volume I of Evan’s "Early English Baptists." We refer also to the Helwys Confession, entitled "A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam Holland," printed 1611. We also refer to the "Propositions and Conclusions Concerning the Christian Religion," which were published after his death, by "the remainders of Mr. Smyth’s company." It was not until the year 1644, three years after the invention of immersion that any Baptist confession prescribes "dipping or plunging the body in water as the way and manner of dispensing this ordinance" ("London Confession of 1644," Article 40). He then quotes some authors in support of his position. Of Edward ’ Barber he says: Happily for us, however, the above assertion is confirmed by the authority of Edward Barber, the founder of the rite of immersion among the Baptists. In the preface to his "Treatise of Baptism, or Dipping," London, 1641, the earliest book in the English language, to assert that immersion is essential to baptism, Mr. Barber praises God that he, "a poore tradesman," was raised up to restore this truth to the world. He then concludes the editorial as follows: Here is the highest Baptist testimony to the effect that there were no immersionists in England, and that the rite was first fetched from Holland by Mr. Richard Blount. The John Batten who administered immersion to Mr. Blount was a collegiant minister, the successor of the Brothers Van der Codde. This community was founded and immersion was introduced by them into Holland in the year 1619. It is not known whence they obtained the practice. These editorials naturally caused a good deal of comment in Baptist circles. It was taken for granted they were written by some Pedobaptist writer, and a number of persons wrote The Independent for the name of the author. The Independent kept well its own secret. It was only after Dr. Whitsitt’s articles appeared in Johnson’s New Encyclopedia that he revealed that he was also the author of these Independent editorials. Among other things the Encyclopdia article says: Some have fancied that the new title was claimed and maintained because of the change in the form of administering baptism, which is alleged was substituted in the place of sprinkling and pouring. If these had been retained it would have been as impossible for them to shake off the name of Anabaptists as it was in the case of the Anabaptists in Germany. After the adoption of immersion it was easy to insist that those who practiced it were alone "baptized people," emphasis being laid not only on the subjects as formerly, but also on the mode of baptism. This latter emphasis was indicated by the name Baptist. * * * The earliest organized Baptist Church belongs to the year 1610 or 1611. * * * Ezekiel Holliman baptized Williams and the rest of the company. The ceremony was most likely performed by sprinkling; the Baptists of England had not adopted immersion, and there is no reason which renders it probable that Williams was in advance of them. Dr. Whitsitt wrote three articles for the papers to defend this position: One in The Examiner, April 23, 1896; one in the Religious Herald, May 7, and the last a Statement, which was published in several papers. His book, "A Question in Baptist History," was published September 17, 1896. He reaffirms the foregoing position on p. 133: In view of the foregoing body of materials, I candidly consider that my proofs are sufficient. This opinion has been confirmed and strengthened by the renewed investigations which I have lately undertaken in order to set forth these proofs. Whatever else may be true in history, I believe it is beyond question that the practice of adult immersion was introduced anew into England in the year 1641. That conclusion must be recognized more and more by scholars who will take pains to weigh the facts presented in the above discussion. It is sure to become one of the common places of our Baptist teaching, and in the course of time men will be found to wonder how any could ever have opposed it. Few other facts of history are capable of more convincing demonstration. THE DISCOVERY. Dr. Whitsitt appears to have frequently changed his mind as to how much he discovered. In The Examiner he makes a wide claim, but in his book it sinks to almost nothing at all. In The Examiner he claims Dr. Dexter as "his learned and distinguished convert," but in the book Sept. 17, 1895, Dr. Dexter plays an entirely different part. THE TWO VIEWS Dr. Whitsitt in The Examiner April 23, I896: During the autumn of 1877, shortly after I had been put in charge of the School of Church History at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in preparing my lectures on Baptist History, I made the discovery that, prior to the year 1641, our Baptist people in England were in the practice of sprinkling and pouring for baptism. I kept it to myself until the year 1880, when I had the happiness to spend my summer vacation at the British Museum. There I assured myself, largely by researches among the King George’s pamphlets, that my discovery was genuine, and established it by many irrefragable proofs from contemporary documents. * * * * Apparently Dr. Dexter was interested by my explanations and proofs, for he shortly found his way to the British Museum where he also convinced himself that my view was correct and my citations authentic. As a fruit of these researches he issued, near the close of 1881, more than a twelve month after my discovery had been declared in The Independent, the well known volume entitled "John Smyth the Se-Baptist," wherein he adopted my thesis, defended it by many citations, and entirely ignored my discovery as set forth in The Independent. Naturally I was glad to gain such a learned and distinguished convert, and took little or no care of my rights in my discovery. * * * This discovery is my own contribution to Baptist history, and when my brethren heap reproaches upon me it is nothing but right that I should defend my property. Nobody can relish being sneered at as a copyist, when it is beyond any question that he is himself the original authority and the first discoverer. My heart is wae to be compelled to make these claims on my own behalf, but I remember that the blessed Paul, when sneers were heaped on him at Corinth, did not hesitate to boast that he "was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles," and I make bold, under the existing stress, to imitate his example. Dr. Whitsitt in his book, Sept. 17, 1896: Another investigator was Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, D. D., of Boston, Mass., one of the foremost authorities for original research in the department of church history that has yet appeared in America. He spent "some days" at the Museum for this purpose in the winter of 1880-81, and gathered the fruits of his labors into a volume entitled, "The True Story of John Smyth, the Se Baptist, told by Himself and his Contemporaries." This work, which appeared in the month of December, 1881, is of the highest importance. Though I had reached the conclusion that immersion was introduced into England in the year 1641, and publicly announced the same in September, 1880, I cheerfully concede the high merits of Dr. Dexter. He uniformly exhibits the best kind of learning, great thoroughness and patient accuracy. Moreover, at the time when he gave himself to this particular labor, he had enjoyed wide experience in the business of original historical research, and his acquaintance with the library of the British Museum was extensive and valuable. Numbers of the citations which I had sought out in the year 1880, and which I still retain in manuscript form, I found reproduced in an independent fashion by Dr. Dexter in 1881. Likewise he fell upon a good many passages that I had not seen. More than two months, that is in July, 1880, before Dr. Whitsitt wrote his articles in The Independent Dr. Dexter had written for his paper, The Congregationalist, an editorial on "Affused Baptists," in which he quoted many authorities; and fully took the. position that was afterwards held in his book on John Smyth, viz.: that Baptists practiced affusion in England in the early part of the 17th century. The book, "The True Story of John Smyth, the Se-Baptist," was published in December, 1881. But neither Dr. Dexter nor Dr. Whitsitt was the "discoverer" of this theory. So far as I am able to judge that position belongs to Robert Barclay, an English Quaker. His book, "Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth," was published in 1876, and it contains almost all that has so far been advanced on the subject. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 62: 02.02. THE ANABAPTISTS OF ENGLAND ======================================================================== CHAPTER II. THE ANABAPTISTS OF ENGLAND. At the dawn of the Reformation there were those in England who held Baptist views. This statement can be abundantly proved from many writers. Some trace the Anabaptists to the Lollards. W. Carlos Martyn, an eminent Pedobaptist historian, says: "The Anabaptists are an innocent and an evangelical sect, had long been the most hunted and hated of reformers. Not a nation in Europe but that had anathematized them. Their distinctive tenet was the denial of baptism to infants. They were indeed often charged with holding various dangerous doctrines, but their peculiar idea of baptism was of itself sufficient to bring upon them grievous punishment. The Anabaptists were among the earliest dissenters. The disciples of their creed were found among the Lollards as well as among the martyrs of the English Reformation." (A History of the English Puritans, p. 166. New York, 1867). I shall content myself with giving the words of a few writers. Barclay, a very strong writer and not a Baptist, says: "As we shall afterwards show, the rise of the ’Anabaptists’ took place long prior to the foundation of the Church of England, and there are also reasons for believing that on the Continent of Europe, small hidden societies, who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists, have existed from the times of the Apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of divine truth and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a lineage or succession more ancient than the Roman Church." (Barclay’s Inner Life of Religious Societies, P. 12). W. J. E. Bennett, of Frome, a ritualistic Episcopalian, says: "The historian Lingard tells us there was a sect of fanatics who infested the north of Germany, called Puritans; Usher calls them Waldenses; Spelman, Paulicians (the same as Waldenses). They gained ground and spread over all England. They rejected all Romish ceremonies, denied the authority of the Pope, and more particularly refused to baptize infants. Thirty of them were put to death for their heretical doctrines near Oxford, but the remainder still held on to their opinions in private until the time of Henry II. (1558), and the historian, Collier, tells us that wherever the heresy prevailed, the churches were either scandalously neglected or pulled down and infants left unbaptized." (The Unity of the Church Broken, Vol. II., P. 15). Robinson, who has long been a standard, says: I have seen enough to convince me that the, present English Dissenters, contending for the sufficiency of Scripture, and for primitive Christian liberty to judge of its meaning, may be traced back in authentic manuscripts to the Nonconformists, to the Puritans, to the Lollards, to the Vallenses, to the Albigenses, and, I suspect, through the Paulicians and others to the Apostles." (Robinson’s Claude, Vol. II., p. 53). Evans, who is a very careful writer, says: "Dissidents from the popular church in the early ages, compelled to leave it from the growing corruption of its doctrines and morals, were found everywhere. Men of apostolic life and doctrine contended for the simplicity of the church and the liberty of Christ’s flock, in the midst of great danger. What the pen failed to do, the sword of the magistrate effected. The Novatians and Donatists, and others that followed them, are examples. They contended for the independence of the church; they exalted the Divine Word as the only standard of faith; they maintained the essential purity of the church, and the necessity of a holy life springing from a renewed heart. Extinguished by the sword, not of the Spirit—their churches broken and scattered—after years of patient suffering from the dominant sect, the seed which they had scattered sprang up in other lands. Truth never dies. Its vitality is imperishable. In the wild waste and fastnesses of Europe and Africa it grew. A succession of able and intrepid men taught the same great principles, in opposition to a corrupt and affluent State church, which distinguish modern English Nonconformists; and many of them taught those peculiar views of Christian ordinances which are special to us Baptists."(History Early Eng. Baptists, Vol. I., pp. 1, 2). The learned President Edwards says: "In every age of this dark time there appeared particular persons in all parts of Christendom who bore a testimony against the corruptions and tyranny of the Church of Rome. There is no one age of Anti-Christ, even in the darkest times of all, but ecclesiastical historians mention a great many by name who manifested an abhorrence to the Pope and his idolatrous worship, and pleaded for the ancient purity of doctrine and worship. God was pleased to maintain an uninterrupted succession of witnesses through the whole time, in Germany, France, Britain and other countries; as historians demonstrate and mention them by name, and give an account of the testimony which they held. Many of them were private persons, and some magistrates, and persons of great distinction. And there were numbers in every age who were persecuted and put to death for this testimony." (Edward’s Works, Vol. I., P. 460.) The claim is distinctly made by the above writers that there has been a succession of witnesses from the days of the Apostles to the present day. I have, however, not undertaken to trace such a succession, but in the space at my command, to set forth one of our peculiar principles as held by persons or churches in England since the Reformation. Oftentimes we have only scant information furnished from persecuting edicts, and now and then from other sources. Thus before the time of the Reformation in England Baptist principles were held by many people, and in many parts of the country. At the very dawn of the Reformation Baptist principles began to stir the wrath of Henry VIII. In 1511 several persons were tried by Archbishop Warham for holding Anabaptist opinions. These men held, so it was charged, that the sacrament of baptism and confirmation is not necessary nor profitable for a man’s soul." (Collier’s Eccl. Hist. Vol. IV., P. 4). In 1529-1534 the Anabaptists are distinctly traceable in England. John Henry Blount, an Episcopalian, says: "In England the Anabaptists are not distinctly traceable before the year 1534, although much similarity is to be observed between their principles and those of sectarians spoken of by the bishops in 1529 as ’certain apostates, friars, monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds and lewd idle fellows of corrupt intent,’ who ’have embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany.’" Froude’s Hist. of England, Vol. I., p. 211. Dictionary of Sects, p. 26). Blount further says: "In A. D. 1534, however, a royal proclamation was issued, in which it was said that many strangers are come into this realm, who, though they were baptized in their infancy, yet have, in contempt of the holy sacrament of baptism, rebaptized themselves. They are ordered to depart out of the realm in twelve days, under pain of death." (Wilkins’ Council III., 779. Dictionary of Sects, P. 26. London, 1874). It is certain that they did not return to the Continent and did remain in England. Cromwell left this memorandum in his pocket: "First, touching the Anabaptists and what the king will do with them." (Ellis’ Orig. Let. II., 120). The old chronicler Stowe, 1535, gives the following details: "The 25th day of May were—in St. Paul’s Church, London—examined nineteen men and six women, born in Holland, whose opinions were: First, that in Christ is not two natures, God and man; secondly, that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of the Virgin Mary; thirdly, that children born of infidels may be saved; fourthly, that baptism of children is of none effect; fifthly, that the sacrament of Christ’s body is but bread only; sixthly, that he who after baptism sinneth wittingly, sinneth deadly, and cannot be saved. Fourteen of them were condemned; a man and a woman were burnt in Smithfield; the other twelve of them were sent to other towns, there to be burnt." Froude says of them: "The details are gone, their names are gone. Poor Hollanders they were, and that is all. Scarcely the fact seemed worth the mention, so shortly is it told in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were ordered into mourning, no Papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their death the world looked on complacent, indifferent or exulting. Yet here, too, out of twenty-five poor men and women were found fourteen who by no terror of stake or torture could be tempted to say they believed what they did not believe. History has for them no word of praise; yet they, too, were not giving their blood in vain. Their lives might have been as useless as the lives of the most of us. In their deaths they assisted to pay the purchase-money for England’s freedom." (Froude’s History of England, Vol. II., P. 365). In some articles put forth in 1536 it is declared; "That the opinions of the Anabaptists and Pelagians are to be held for detestable heresies." (Strype’s Memorials of Archbishop Cramner, Vol. I., p. 85. Oxford Ed. 1848). The Penny Encyclopaedia says: "Little is known of the Baptists of England before the sixteenth century. Their name then appears among the various sects which were struggling for civil and religious freedom. Their opinions at this early period were sufficiently popular to attract the notice of the national establishment, as is evident from the fact that at a convocation held in 1536, they were denounced as detestable heretics, to be utterly condemned. Proclamations to banish the Baptists from the kingdom were allowed, their books were burnt, and several individuals suffered at the stake. The last person who was burnt in England was a Baptist." (Penny Ency., Vol. III., pp. 416, 417). Goadby thus speaks of the reign of Henry VIII. and his persecutions of the Baptists: "Bitterly as he hated the Papist party, after he had broken with Rome it was not long before he revealed a still more bitter hatred of all Baptists, English and Continental." "But neither threats nor cajolery prevented the spread of Baptist opinions. Like the Israelites in Egypt, ’the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied and grew.’" (Goadby’s Bye-Paths of Baptist History, pp. 72-74). Strype,1538, says of the king: "The sect of the Anabaptists did now begin to pester this church; and would openly dispute their principles in taverns and public places; and some of them were taken up. Many also of their books were brought in and printed here also; which was the cause that the king now sent out a severe proclamation against them and their books. To which he joined the Sacramentarians, as lately with the others come into the land, declaring, ’that he abhorred and detested their errors; and those that were apprehended he would make examples.’ Ordering that they should be detected and brought before the king or his council; and that all that were not should in eight or ten days depart the kingdom." (Strype’s Memorials, Vol. p. 155). After condemning their books the king decreed: "The king declares concerning Anabaptists and other Sacramentarians lately come into the realm, that he abhorred and detested their errors, and intended to proceed against them that were already apprehended, according to their merits; to the intent his subjects should take example by their punishments not to adhere to such false and detestable opinions, but utterly to forsake and relinquish them. And that wheresoever any of them be known, they be detected, and his majesty and council be informed with all convenient speed, with all manner abettors and printers of the same opinions. And his majesty charged the same Anabaptists and Sacramentarians not apprehended and known, that they within eight or ten days depart out of the realm, upon pain of the loss of their life and forfeiture of their goods." (Strype’s Memorials, Vol. I., PP, 410-412. Collier’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. IX., pp. 161, 162). A few months later also an act of Parliament was passed (32 Henry VIII., cap. 49), granting a general pardon to all the king’s subjects excepting those who said: "That infants ought not to be baptized, and if they were baptized that they ought to be rebaptized when they came of lawful age." A Declaration of Faith was then drawn up endorsing the action of the king in his persecutions of the Anabaptists. One section reads: "Englishmen detest the Anabaptists, ’Sacramentaries,’ and all other heresies and errors, and with great reverence do solemnize holy baptism, the sacrament of the blessed body and blood of Christ, and other sacraments and sacramentalls, as they have done in times past, with all the laudable ceremonies and daily masses; and do the other service of God in their churches, as honorable and devoutly, paye their tithes and offerings truely as ever they did, and as any men do in any part of Christendom," etc., (Collier’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. IX., p. 163). Some of these were burned. (Stowe’s Chronicle, p. 579). Latimer says: "The Anabaptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England (as I have heard of credible men, I saw them not myself), went to their death, even intrepide, as ye will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully. Well let them go."(Sermons of Hugh Latimer, Vol. pp. 143, 144). Latimer says again: "I should have told you here of a certain sect of heretics that spake against their order and doctrine; they will have no magistrates nor judges on the earth. Here I have to tell you what I have heard of late, by the relations of a credible person and a worshipful man, of a town of this realm of England that hath about 500 of heretics of this erroneous opinion in it." The margin says they were Anabaptists. (Sermons, p. 151. Parker Society, Vol. V.). Collier says: "Some few days before, four Dutch Anabaptists, three men and a woman, had faggots tied to their backs at Paul’s Cross, and one man and a woman, of the same sect and country, were burnt in Smithfield. Cranmer, upon the first of October, with some others, had a commission from the king to try some Anabaptists, which, by comparing the dates of the commission with that of the execution, we may conclude the trial passed upon the persons above mentioned." (Eccl. Hist. Vol. IV., P. 429). Bishop Burnet, 1547, informs us: "There were many Baptists in several parts of England." (Neal’s Hist. Puritans, Vol. II., pp. 354, 355). Of the Baptists of the reign of Edward VI., 1547-1553, Goadby says: "In the first year of Edward’s reign, Ridley and Gardiner united together in a commission to deal with two Baptists in Kent. A Protestant Inquisition was established, with Cranmer at its head. They were to pull up ’the noxious weeds of heresy.’ Their work was to be done with the forms of justice and in secret. They might fine, imprison, torture, and, in all cases of obstinate heretics, hand them over to the civil power to be burnt. Four years later this commission was renewed, and in the same year Baptists were a second time excluded from a general pardon. It was this inquisition that condemned Joan Bucher and scattered, or tried to scatter, the congregations of Baptists gathered in Kent. Still their numbers increased. Strype tells us that their opinions were believed by many honest meaning people; and another writer affirms that the articles of religion, issued just before the king’s death, ’were principally designed to vindicate the English Reformation from that slur and disgrace which Anabaptists’ tenets had brought upon it,’ a clear proof that Baptists were, at that period, neither few nor unimportant." (Goadby’s Bye-Paths of Baptist History, pp. 74, 75). In 1549 an act was passed against the Anabaptists by the Parliament of Edward VI. (3 Edward VI., C. 24). London, June 25, 1549, Bishop John Hooper in a letter to Henry Bullinger says: "The Anabaptists flock to the place and give me much trouble." (Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, Vol. I., p. 65. Cambridge Ed. 1846). Bishop Vowler Short says: "Complaints had been brought to the council of the prevalence of Anabaptists. * * * * To check the progress of these opinions a commission was appointed." (Short’s Hist. Church of England, Vol. VI., P. 543). Dr. Hase says: "In general, Anabaptism required that those who came over to it should be possessed of the strict heroic morals of the early Christians, the same contempt for the world and its pleasures and pains, and even its outward forms. By baptism a renunciation was made of the devil, the world and the flesh; and a vow taken to do nothing but the will of God. Any willful sin of an Anabaptist would not be pardoned, and entailed on its perpetrator hopeless expulsion from the community, and a loss of the grace of God. It was exactly on this account that the heresy was so dangerous, for the greater part of its adherents could appeal to the sanctity of their mode of life." (Dr. Hase’s Neue Propheten. Apud Madden, Phantasmata, Vol. II., pp. 439, 440). "An ecclesiastical Commission in the beginning of this year was issued out for the examination of the Anabaptists and Arians, that began now to spring up apace and show themselves more openly." (Strype’s Life of Sir Thomas Smith, p. 37). London, June 29, 1550, Bishop John Hooper writing to Henry Bullinger in regard to Essex and Kent says: "That district is troubled with the frenzy of the Anabaptists more than any other part of the kingdom." (Original Letters, Vol. I., p. 87). Strype says: There were such assemblies in Kent." (Memorials, Vol. II., P. 266). Bishop Ridley’s Visitation Articles required: "Whether any of the Anabaptists’ sect, or other, use notoriously any unlawful or private conventicles, wherein they do use doctrine or administration of sacraments, separating themselves from the rest of the parish? "Whether any speak against infant baptism?" (Cardwell’s Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England, Vol. I., p. 91). Strype gives us additional information: "In January 27th a number of persons, a sort of Anabaptists, about sixty, met in a house on a Sunday in the parish of Bocking, in Essex, where arose among them a great dispute, ’Whether it were necessary to stand or kneel, bare headed or covered, at prayers? And they concluded the ceremony not to be material, but that the heart before God was required, and nothing else.’ Such other like warm disputes there were about Scripture. There were, likewise, such assemblies now in Kent. These were looked upon as dangerous to church and state, and two of the company were thereof committed to the Marshallsea, and orders were sent to apprehend the rest."(Memorials of Cramner, Vol. I., p. 337). The Parliament of 1551 exempted the Anabaptists from the pardon which was granted to those who took part in the late rebellion. During the reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603, England was full of Anabaptists. Marsden, one of the calmest of the Puritan historians, says: "But the Anabaptists were the most numerous, and for some time by far the most formidable opponents of the church. They are said to have existed in England since the days of the Lollards, but their chief strength was more abroad," etc. (Marsden, p. 144). Marsden, further says: In the judgment of the church party, and not a few of the Puritans, Anabaptists were heretics of the worst kind, and those who denied the necessity or validity of infant baptism, however orthodox on other points, are constantly classed ’by writers of that period with Donatists, infidels, and atheists." (Marsden, p. 65). Bishop Cox writing to Gaulter, says: "You must not grieve, my Gaulter, that sectaries are showing themselves to be mischievous and wicked interpreters of your most just opinion. For it cannot be otherwise but that tares must grow in the Lord’s field, and that in no small quantity. Of this kind are the Anabaptists, Donatists, Arians, Papists, and all other good for nothing tribes of sectaries." (Bishop Cox to Gaulter, Zurich Letters, 285). Bishop Aylmer: "The Anabaptists, with infinite other swarms of Satanistes, do you think that every pulpit may will be able to answer them? I pray God there may be many that can," (Bishop Aylmer’s Harborough for Faithful Subjects. Maitland, p. 216). "And in these latter days, the old festered sores newly broke out, as the Anabaptists, the freewillers, with infinite other swarms of God’s enemies. These "ugly monsters,’ ’brodes of the devil’s brotherhood.’"(p. 205). Dr. Barker, in declining the Archbishopric of Canterbury, says in his letter: "They say that the realm is full of Anabaptists, Arians, libertines, free-will men, etc., against whom I only thought ministers should have need to fight in unity of doctrine." (Burnet’s Reformation, Vol. II., p. 359). Jewel, in his correspondence with the Swiss divines, complains: "We found, at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, a large and inauspicious crop of Arians, Anabaptists, and other pests, which, I know not how, but as mushrooms spring up in the night and in darkness, so these sprung up in that darkness and unhappy night of the Marian times. These, I am informed, and hope it is the fact, have retreated before the light of pure doctrines, like owls at the light of the sun, and are nowhere to be found." (Works of Bishop Jewel, Vol. IV., p. 1240). Greenwood says: "I am not an Anabaptist, thank God." A letter was addressed to the "Dutch Church," in London, 1573, rebuking them for sowing discord among English people. (Strype’s Annals Ref., Vol. IV., P. 520). On Easter day a private conventicle was discovered near Aldersgate Bar, and twenty-seven were apprehended. Four recanted; but "eleven of them were condemned in the Consistory of the St. Paul’s to be burnt, nine of them were banished, and two suffered the extremity of the fire in Smithfield, July 22, 1575." (Neal’s Hist. Puritans, Vol. I., p. 340. Ed. 1732. Strype’s Annals Ref., Vol. III., p. 564. Ed. 1824). Collier says: "To go back a little: On Easter day this spring a conventicle of Dutch Baptists was discovered at a house without the bars at Aldgate." (Collier’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. VI., P. 543). Fuller says: "Now began the Anabaptists wonderfully to increase in the land; and as we are sorry that any countryman should be seduced with that opinion, so we are glad that (the) English as yet were free from that infection. For on Easter day, April 3, was disclosed a congregation of Dutch Anabaptists without Aldgate in London, whereof seven and twenty were taken and imprisoned; and four, bearing faggots, at Paul’s-Cross solemnly recanted their dangerous opinions." (Fuller’s Church Hist. Britain, Vol. II., p. 506). Collier, 1589, says: "This provision was no more than necessary; for the Dutch Anabaptists held private conventicles in London and perverted a great many."’ (Collier’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. VI., P. 452). Dr. Some admits the same fact in his reply to Barrowe. He affirms that "there were several Anabaptisticale conventicles in London and other places. "They were not all Dutchmen, for he further says: "Some persons of these sentiments have been bred at our universities." The Baptists of England from this date to 1641 underwent severe persecutions, but they increased in numbers. After the abolition of the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber in 1641, when they were able to assert themselves, there were a surprising number of them in London and throughout England. Dexter himself gives the names of eleven churches in England as early as 1626. (The True Story of John Smyth, p. 42). Herbert S. Skeats, a Pedobaptist, says: "It has been asserted that a Baptist Church existed in England in A. D. 1417. (Robinson’s Claude, Vol. II., p. 54). There were certainly Baptist Churches in England as early as the year 1589 (Dr. Some’s reply to Barrowe, quoted in Guiney’s Hist., Vol. I., p. 109); and there could scarcely have been several organized communities without the corresponding opinions having been held by individuals, and some churches established for years previous to this date."(Hist. Dissenting Churches of England, p. 22). Neal says that in 1644 there were 54 Baptist Churches in England. (Neal’s Hist. Puritans, Vol. III., p. 175). Baillie said in 1646: "Hence it was that the Anabaptists made little noise in England, till of late the Independents have corrupted and made worse the principles of the old Separatists, proclaiming for errors a liberty both in Church and State; under this shelter the Anabaptists have lift up their head and increased their numbers much above all other sects of the land. (Anabaptism the True Fountaine, ch. i.). There is no proof whatever that these churches came from Smyth’s or Blount’s, or that they ever practiced sprinkling for baptism. They evidently were Baptist Churches. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 63: 02.03. IMMERSION IN ENGLAND ======================================================================== CHAPTER III. IMMERSION IN ENGLAND. I have not space, nor has the busy reader time to read, a complete history of immersion in England. It began with Christianity in England, continued as the general practice till the seventeenth century and is even now the theory of the Established Church. France was the first country that tolerated sprinkling for baptism in the fourteenth century. Although the climate, in England was cold, immersion did not give place to sprinkling till long after. Scotland under the influence of Calvin and Knox, soon after the Reformation, began to practice sprinkling and pouring, but it had but little effect upon England. These facts are fully set forth by the historians, but I shall take space for the words of but a few of them. Dr. Wall, an Episcopalian, says: "One would have thought that the cold countries should have been the first that should have changed the custom from dipping to affusion, because in cold climates the bathing of the body in water may seem much more unnatural and dangerous to the health than in the hot ones (and it is to be noted, by the way, that all of those countries of whose rites of baptism, and immersion used in it, we have any account in the Scriptures or other ancient history, are in hot climates, where frequent and common bathing both of infants and grown persons is natural, and even necessary to the health). But by history it appears that the cold climates held the custom of dipping as long as any; for England, which is one of the coldest, was one of the latest that admitted this alteration of the ordinary way." (Wall’s Hist., Vol. I., p. 575). I will let Dr. Schaff tell something of the universality of immersion in England: King Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth were immersed. The first Prayer Book of Edward VI. (1549) followed the Office of Sarum, directs the priest to dip the child in water thrice: "first, dipping the right side; secondly, the left side; the third time, dipping the face toward the font." In the second Prayer Book (1652) the priest is simply directed to dip the child discreetly and warily; and permission is given, for the first time in Great Britain, to substitute pouring if the godfathers and godmothers certify that the child is weak." During the reign of Elizabeth," says Dr. Wall, "many fond ladies and gentlewomen first, and then by degrees the common people, would obtain the favor of the priests to have their children pass for weak children too tender to endure dipping in the water." The same writer traces the practice of sprinkling to the period of the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly. This change in England and other Protestant countries from immersion to pouring, and from pouring to sprinkling, was encouraged by the authority of Calvin, who declared the mode to be a matter of no importance; and by the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-1652), which decided that pouring and sprinkling are "not only lawful, but also sufficient." The Westminster Confession declares: " Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person." (Teach., pp. 51, 52). Sir David Brewster says: During the persecution of Mary, many persons, most of whom were Scotchmen, fled from England to Geneva, and there greedily imbibed the opinions of that church. In 1556 a book was published in that place containing "The Form of Prayer and Ministration of the Sacraments, approved by the famous and godly learned man, John Calvin," in which the administrator is enjoined to take water in his hand and lay it upon the child’s forehead. These Scotch exiles, who had renounced the authority of the Pope, implicitly acknowledged the authority of Calvin; and returning to their own country, with Knox at their head, in 1559, established sprinkling in Scotland. From Scotland this practice made its way into England in the reign of Elizabeth, but was not authorized by the Established Church. In the Assembly of Divines, held at Westminster in 1643, it was keenly debated whether immersion or sprinkling should be adopted: 25 voted for sprinkling and 24 for immersion; and even this small majority was obtained at the earnest request of Dr. Lightfoot, who had acquired great influence in that assembly. Sprinkling is therefore the general practice of this country. Many Christians, however, especially the Baptists, reject it. The Greek Church universally adheres to immersion. (Edin. Ency., Vol. III., p. 236). I shall give but one other authority in this connection and that is the scholarly Dean Stanley. He says: We now pass to the changes in the form itself. For the first thirteen centuries the almost universal practice of baptism was that of which we read in the New Testament, and which is the very meaning of the word baptize; that those who were baptized were plunged, submerged, immersed into the water. That practice is still, as we have seen, continued in Eastern Churches. In the Western Church it still lingers among Roman Catholics in the solitary instance of the Cathedral of Milan; amongst Protestants in the numerous sect of the Baptists. It lasted long into the Middle Ages. Even the Icelanders, who at first shrank from the water of their freezing lakes, were reconciled when they found that they could use the warm water of the geysers. And the cold climate of Russia has not been found an obstacle to its continuance throughout that vast empire. Even in the Church of England it is still observed in theory. The Rubric in the public baptism for infants enjoins that, unless for special causes, they are to be dipped not sprinkled. Edward VI. and Elizabeth were both immersed. But since the beginning of the seventeenth century the practice has become exceedingly rare. With the few exceptions just mentioned, the whole of the Western Churches have now substituted for the ancient bath the ceremony of letting fall a few drops of water on the face. (Christian Institutions, pp. 17, 18). Many events of English history show how deeply imbedded in the English mind was the idea of immersion. In the year 429 the Britons won a great battle over the Saxons. The following events then occurred; "The holy days of Lent were also at hand and were rendered more religious by the presence of the priests, insomuch that the people being instructed by daily sermons, resorted in crowds to be baptized; for most of the army desired admission to the saving water; a church was prepared with boughs for the feast of the resurrection of our Lord, and so fitted up in that martial camp as it were in a city. The army advanced, still wet with the baptismal water; the faith of the people was strengthened, and whereas human power had before been despaired of, the Divine assistance was now relied upon. The enemy received advice of the state of the army, and not questioning their success against an unarmed multitude, hastened forward, but their approach was, by the scouts, made known to the Britons, the greater part of whose forces being just come from the font, after the celebration of Easter, and preparing to arm and carry on the war, Germanus declared he would be their leader." (Bede’s Eccl. Hist., B. I. c. XX.). One of the most notable events of English history was the baptism, A. D. 596, of ten thousand Saxons in the river Swale. Fabyan, the old chronicler, thus speaks of the success of the work of Augustine: "He had in one day christened xm. of Saxons or Anglis in ye west ryur, yt is called Swale." (Fabyan’s Chronicle, Vol. I., p. 96). Pope Gregory in a letter to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, informs him of this great success of Augustine’s. He says: "More than ten thousand English, they tell us, were baptized by the same brother, our fellow bishop, which I communicate to you to announce to the people of Alexandria, and that you may do something in prayer for the dwellers at the ends of the earth." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. LXXVII, p. 951). Gregory understood this baptism to be an immersion. He said: "We baptize by trine immersion." (Patrol. Lat., Vol., LXXVII, p. 498). Gocelyn, in his life of Augustine, says: "He secured on all sides large numbers for Christ, so that on the birthday of the Lord, celebrated by the melodious anthems of all heaven, more than ten thousand of the English were born again in the laver of holy baptism, with an infinite number of women and children, in a river which the English call Sirarios, the Swale, as if at one birth of the church from the womb. These persons, at the command of the divine teacher, as if he were an angel from heaven, calling upon them, all entered the dangerous depths of the river, two and two together, as if it had been a solid plain; and in true faith, confessing the exalted Trinity, they were baptized one by the other in turns, the apostolic leader blessing the water. * * * So great a prodigy from heaven born out of the deep whirlpool." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. LXXX, p. 79). It is also reported that Paulinus, A. D. 629, baptized ten thousand in the same river. Camden says the Swale was accounted sacred by the ancient Saxons, above the ten thousand persons, besides women and children, having received baptism in it in one day from Paulinus, Archbishop of York, on the first conversion of the Saxons to Christianity. (Britannia, Vol. III., P. 257). Alcuin says of King Edwin and his Northumbrians: "Easter having come when the king had decided to be baptized with his people under the lofty walls of York, in which by his orders, a little house was quickly erected for God, that under its roof he might receive the sacred water of baptism. During the sunshine of that festive and holy day he was dedicated to Christ in the saving fountain, with his family and nobles, and with the common people following. York remained illustrious, distinguished with great honor, because in that sacred place King Edwin was washed in the water." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. CI., p. 818). Bede, referring to a period shortly following the baptism of the king, says: "So great was there the fervor of the faith, as is reported, and the desire of the washing of salvation among the nations of the Northumbrians, that Paulinus at a certain time coming with the king and queen to the royal country seat, which is called Adgefrin, stayed with them thirty-six days, fully occupied in catechizing and baptizing; during which days, from morning till night, he did nothing else but instruct the people, resorting from villages and places, in Christ’s saving word; and when instructed, he washed them with the water of absolution in the river Glen, which is close by." (Bede’s Eccl. Hist., B. II. c. xiv.). Bede also tells us of the baptism of the Deiri: "In that of the Deiri also, when he [Paulinus] was wont often to be with the king, he baptized in the river Swale, which runs by the village Cateract; for as yet oratories, or fonts, could not be made in the early infancy of the church in these parts." (B. II. c. xiv.). Bede says that a priest, A. D. 628, by the name of Deda told him that one of the oldest persons had informed him, that he himself had been baptized at noonday, by the Bishop Paulinus, in the presence of King Edwin, with a great number of people, in the river Trent, near the city, which is called in the English tongue Tiovulfingacestir. (B. II. c. xvi.). Alcuin states that after the death of Penda, Osway the king of the Mercians caused them to be washed in the consecrated river of baptism. (Patrol. Lat., Vol. Cl., p. 824). The Venerable Bede, A. D., 674-735, gives this testimony: " For he truly who is baptized is seen to descend into the fountain—he is seen to be dipped into the waters; but that which makes the font to regenerate him can by no means be seen. The piety of the faithful alone perceives that a sinner descends into the font, and a cleansed man ascends; a son of death descends, but a son of the resurrection ascends; a son of treachery descends, but a son of reconciliation ascends; a son of wrath descends, but a son of compassion ascends; a son of the devil descends, but a son of God ascends." (In John Evan. Ex. 3:5. Patrol. Lat., Vol. XCII., pp. 668, 669). Alcuin tells of the baptism of Caedwalla, the king of the West Saxons, at Rome. He says: "Whilst the happy king was deemed worthy to be immersed in the whirlpool of baptism." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. CL, p. 1310). The Council of Cealchythe, held under Wulfred, A. D. 816, says: "Let presbyters also know, that when they administer baptism they ought not to pour the consecrated water upon the infants’ heads, but let them always be immersed in the font; as the Son of God himself afforded as example unto all believers, when he was three times immersed in the river Jordan." (Hart’s Eccl. Records, p. 197. Cambridge, 1846). Collier, the English Church historian, says of this canon: "By enjoining the priests not to sprinkle the infants in baptism shows the great regard they had for the primitive usage; that they did not look upon this as a dangerous rite, or at all impracticable in those northern climates; not that they thought this circumstance essential to the sacrament, but because it was the general practice of the primitive church, because it was a lively instructive emblem of the death, burial and resurrection of our Saviour; for this reason they preferred it to sprinkling." (Collier’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. I., p. 354). Hastine, the Dane, A. D. 893, gave his two sons hostages to Alfred, king of England, with the as understanding if "he wished he might imbue them with the sacraments of faith and baptism," and the boys soon afterwards were "regenerated in the sacred font." (Roger de Wendover’s Flowers of History, p. 228). Fridegod, a monk of Canterbury, about A. D. 900, says in his life of Wilfred: "He showed that those to be saved should be immersed in the clear waters." And elsewhere he says: Common people seeking holy baptism are immersed." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. CXXXIII., pp. 993, 1003). The Constitution of the Synod of Amesbury, 977, was drawn up by Oswald and required: "All children to be baptized in nine days after their birth." Collier remarks upon this canon: "It is plain, as will be shown further, by and by, that the English Church used the rite of immersion. It seems that they were not at all discouraged by the coldness of the climate, nor thought the primitive custom impracticable in the northern regions; and if an infant could be plunged into the water at nine days old without receiving any harm, how unreasonable must their scruples be who decline bringing their children to public baptism for fear of danger? How unreasonable, I say, must this scruple be when immersion is altered to sprinkling?" (Eccl. Hist., Vol. I., p. 474). William Malmesbury, A. D. 979-1009, says of the baptism of king Ethelred: "When the little boy was immersed in the font of baptism, the bishops standing round, the sacrament was marred by a sad accident which made St. Dunstan utter an unfavorable prophecy." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. CLXXIX., p. 1131). Roger Wendover gives an account of Sweyn, king of the Danes, and Anlaf, king of the Norwegians, coming against London in 994. They were repulsed but over-ran the provinces so that king Ethelred had to pay them a bounty. Wendover continues: "King Ethelred dispatched at this time Elfege, Bishop of Winchester, and Duke Athelwold to King Anlaf, whom they brought in peace to the royal vill where King Ethelred was, and at his request dipped him in the sacred font, after which he was confirmed by the bishop, the king adopting him as his son and honoring him with royal presents; and the following summer he returned to his own country in peace." (Flowers of History, p. 272). Lanfranc, the thirty-fourth archbishop of Canterbury, 1005-1089, was born in Italy and came to England by way of Normandy. Commenting on Php 3:20 he says: "For as Christ lay three days in the sepulcher, so in baptism let there be a trine immersion." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. CL., P. 315). Cardinal Pullus, 1144, was born in England, became a professor in Paris, and was highly honored of the Pope. In his book on Divinity he says: "Whilst the candidate for baptism in water is immersed, the death of Christ is suggested; whilst immersed and covered with water, the burial of Christ is shown forth; whilst he is raised from the waters, the resurrection of Christ is proclaimed. The immersion is repeated three times, out of reverence for the Trinity and on account of the three days’ burial of Christ. In the burial of the Lord the day follows the night three times; in baptism also trine emersion accompanies immersion." (Patrol. Lat., Vol. CLXXXVI., p. 843). The Synod of Cashel, A. D. 1172, was held under Henry II.: "It was ordained that children should be brought to the church and baptized in clear water, being thrice dipped therein, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (Roger de Wendover’s Annals, p. 352). We have an account of the baptism of Arthur, the oldest son of Henry VII. He married Catherine of Aragon, who after his death became the wife of Henry VIII. Leland says of the baptism of Arthur: "The body of all the cathedral church of Westminster was hung with cloth of arras, and in the middle, beside the font of the said church, was ordained and prepared a solemn font in manner and form of a stage of seven steps, square or round like, an high cross covered with red worsted, and up in the midst a post made of iron to bear the font of silver gilt, which within side was well dressed with fine linen cloth, and near the same on the west side was a step, like a block, for the bishop to stand on, covered also with red saye; and over the font, of a good height, a rich canopy with a great gilt ball, lined and fringed without curtains. On the north side was ordained a traverse hung with cloth of arras, and upon the one side thereof, within side, another traverse of red scarsnet. There was fire without fumigations, ready against the prince’s coming. And without, the steps of the said font were railed with good timber. * * * And Queen Elizabeth was in the church abiding the coming of the prince. * * * Incontinent after the prince was put into the font the officers at-large put on their coats, and all their torches were lighted." (Lelandi Collectanea, Vol. IV., pp. 204-206.London, 1774). Leland also gives a description at great length of the baptism of Margaret, the sister of Arthur, 1490, and of Queen Elizabeth, 1533. The royalty were all immersed. Walker says of baptism during the reign of Edward VI., 1537-1553: "Dipping was at this time the more usual, but sprinkling was sometimes used." (Doctrine of Baptism, Ch. X., p. 147. London, 1678). The prayer book of Edward VI. provides: "Then the priest shall take the child in his hands and ask the name; and naming the child shall dip it in the water thrice. First dipping the right side; second, the left side; the third time dipping the face toward the font; so it be wisely and discretely done; saying, I baptize, &c. And if the child be weak, it shall suffice to pour upon it, saying the words." (Collier’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. II., P. 256). The Sarum or Saulsbury Liturgy, 1541, according to Collier, provides: "Upon Saturday, Easter-even, is hallowed the font, which as it were vestigium, or a remembrance of baptism, that was used in the primitive church; at which time, and Pentecost, there was used in the church two solemn baptizings, and much concourse of people came into the same. "The first was at Easter, because the mystery of baptism agrees well to the time. For like as Christ died and was buried, and rose again the third day, so by putting into the water is signified our death to sin, and the immersion betokens our burial and mortification to the same; and the rising again out of the water declares us to be risen to a new life, according to the doctrine of St. Paul. (Rom. vi.) "And the second solemn baptizing, i. e., at Pentecost, was because there is celebrated the feast of the Holy Ghost, which is the worker of that spiritual regeneration we have in baptism. And therefore the churches used to hallow the font also at that time." (Eccl. Hist., Vol. II., p. 196). We select a part of the ceremony omitting the explanations: "Then follow the questions to the godfathers and godmothers, as representatives of the child. Forsakest thou the devil? Ans. I forsake him. All his works? Ans. I forsake them. And all his pomps and vanities? Ans. I forsake them. Satisfied with these, the minister then anoints the child with holy oil upon breast and betwixt the shoulders. Questions to ascertain the orthodoxy of the child- are propounded. Then follows another series: For example, to the child the minister says: What asketh thou? Ans. Baptism. Wilt thou be baptized? Ans. I will. Satisfied with these replies the minister calling the child by name, baptizes it in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (putting it into the water of the font and taking it out again, or else pouring water upon it.) Hist., Vol. II., Pp. 192, 193. Note A.). In 1553 instructions were given to the archdeacons as follows: "Whether there be any who will not suffer the priest to dip the child three times in the font, being yet strong and able to abide and suffer it in the judgment and opinion of discreet and expert persons, but will needs have the child in the clothes, and only be sprinkled with a few drops of water." (Hart’s Eccl. Records, p. 87). Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, 1558, says: "Though the old and ancient tradition of the Church hath from the beginning to dip the child three times, etc., yet that is not such necessity; but if he be once dipped in the water, it is sufficient. Yea, and in times of great peril and necessity, if the water be poured on his head, it will suffice." (Holsome and Catholic Doctrine Concerning the Seven-Sacraments, Pp. 22, 23. London, 1558). The baptism of James I., King of England was by immersion. He was born in the Castle of Edinburgh, 1556. Of his baptism it is said: "At convenient time you are to present her the font of gold, which we send with you. You may pleasantly say that it was made as soon as we heard of the prince’s birth, and then it was big enough for him; but now he being grown, he is too big for it. Therefore it may be better used for the next child, provided it be christened before it outgrow the font." (Turner, Vol. IV., P. 86, note). James refers to "the font wherein I was christened." (Works, London, 1616). Bishop Horn, of England, in writing to Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, in 1575, says of baptism in England: "The minister examines them concerning their faith, and afterwards dips the infant in the water." (Zurich Letters, Second Series, Parker Society, P. 356). The Greek lexicons used in England in the first half of the seventeenth century were Scapula, Stephens, Mincaeus, Pasor and Leigh. These all define baptizo as dipping or submerging. Dr. Joseph Mede, 1586-1638, was a very learned English divine. He says: "There was no such thing as sprinkling or rantism used in baptism in the Apostles’ days, nor many ages after them." (Diatribe on Titus iii.2). Henry Greenwood in 1628 published "A Joyful Tract of the most blessed Baptism that ever was solemnized." It is printed in black letter. When I first read it I was led to think that it was by an Anabaptist preacher, but after further examination I found that he was of the Episcopal Church. He says of the baptism of Jesus : "The place where he baptized Christ was in the River Jordan * * * A duplicate River, so-called, because it was composed of two Fountains, the one called Jor, the other Dan, and therefore the river hath this name Jordan: In which River Naaman was washed and cleansed from his leprosy 2 Kings 5:14; which River Elijah and Elisha divided with their cloak, 2 Kings 2:8, 2 Kings 2:13. In this Jordan did John baptize our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." (pp. 7, 8.) Daniel Rogers, 1633, published A Treatise of the two Sacraments of the Gospel Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. He was an Episcopalian. He says: "Touching what I have said of Sacramental dipping to explain myself a little about it; I would not be understood as if schismatically I would instill a distaste of the Church into any weak minds, by the act of sprinkling water only. But this (under correction) I say: That it ought to be the churches part to cleave to the Institution, especially it being not left arbitrary by our Church to the discretion of the minister, but required to dip or dive the Infant more or less (except in cases of weakness), for which allowance in the church we have cause to be thankful; and suitably to consider that he betrays the Church (whose officer he is) to a disordered error, if he cleaves not to the institution; To dip the infant in water. And this I do so aver as thinking it exceeding material to the ordinance, and no slight thing: yea, which both Antiquity (though with some addition of a threefold dipping: for the preserving of the doctrine of the impugned Trinity entire) constantly and without exception of countries hot or cold, witnesseth unto: and especially the constant word of the Holy Ghost, first and last, approveth: as a learned Critique upon chap.3, verse ii, hath noted, that the Greek tongue wants not words to express any other act as well as dipping, if the institution could bear it." (p. 77. London, 1633). It is a very significant fact that Daniel Rogers was quoted by the Baptists of 1641 as having upheld their opinion. This could not have been if the Baptists of that period had been in the practice of sprinkling. Stephen Denson, 1634, says: "Bee Baptized. The word translated baptizing doth most properly signify dipping over head and ears, and indeed this was the most usual manner of baptizing in the primitive Church: especially in hot countries, and after this manner was Christ himself baptized by John. Matthew 3:16. For there is said of him, that when he was baptized he went out of the water; Which doth imply that in his baptizing he went under the water, and thus all those that were baptized in rivers they were not sprinkled but dipped." (The Doctrine of Both Sacraments, pp. 39, 40. London, 1634). Edward Elton, 1637, says: "First, in sign and sacrament only, for the dipping of the party baptized in the water, and abiding under the water for a time, doth represent and seal unto us the burial of Christ, and his abiding in the grave; and of this all are partakers sacramentally." (An Exposition of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Colossians, p. 293. London, 1637), John Selden, 1584-1654, was regarded as the most learned Englishman of his time. He says: "The Jews took the baptism wherein the whole body was not baptized to be void." (De Jure Nat., C. 2). Bishop Taylor, 1613-1677 says: "If you would attend to the proper signification of the word, baptism signifies plunging into water, or dipping with washing." (Rule of Conscience, I., 3, c. 4). The Rev. Thomas Blake, who lived in Tamworth, Staffordshire, A. D. 1644, says: "I have been an eye witness of many infants dipped, and I know it to have been the constant practice of many ministers in their places for many years together." (The Birth Privilege, p. 33. London, 1644). Alexander Balfour says: "Baptizing infants by dipping them in fonts was practiced in the Church of England (except in cases of sickness or weakness) until the Directory came out in the year 1644, which forbade the carrying of children to the font." (Anti-PedoBaptism Baptism Unveiled, p. 240. London, 1827). Wall is even more definite. He says of the Westminster Assembly of Divines: "So (parallel to the rest of their reformations) they reformed the font into a basin. This learned Assembly could not remember that fonts to baptize in had been always used by the primitive Christians, long before the beginning of popery, and ever since churches were built; but that sprinkling as the common use of baptizing was really introduced (in France first, and then in other popish countries) in times of popery." (Hist. Inst. Bapt., Vol. II., p. 403). And in another place he remarks: "And for sprinkling, properly called, it seems that it was at 1645 just then beginning, and used by very few. It must have begun in the disorderly times of 1641." (Hist. Inst. Bapt., Vol. II., p. 403). Sir John Floyer, one of the most careful writers, says: "I have now given what testimony I could find in our English authors, to prove the practice of immersion from the time the Britons and Saxons were baptized till King James’ days; when the people grew peevish with all ancient ceremonies and through the love of novelty and the niceness of parents, and the pretense of modesty, they laid aside immersion, which never was abrogated by any canon, but is still recommended by the present rubric of our church, which orders the child to be dipped discreetly and warily." (History of Cold Bathing, p. 61). But dipping was not then left off, for Floyer further says: "That I may further convince all of my countrymen that Immersion in Baptism was very lately left off in England, I will assure them that there are yet Persons living who were so immersed; for I am so informed by Mr. Berisford, minister of Stutton in Derbyshire, that his parents Immersed not only him but the rest of his family at his Baptism." (P. 182 London, 1722). Walter Cardiac preached a sermon before the House of Commons at St. Margaret’s, July 21, 1646. Among other things he said: "There is now among good people a great deal of strife about baptism; as for divers things, so for the point of dipping, though in some places in England they dip altogether." (P. 100). From the testimony introduced above we reach the conclusion from the introduction of Christianity in Britain to 1650 immersion was common in England, and was the prevailing practice among all Christian denominations. It is manifest that dipping was the prescribed order of The Catholics. The Catholic ritual in use in England in 1641 was not opposed to immersion. In fact, the Roman Church never has been opposed to immersion. The Episcopalians. The Episcopal prayer book and ritual prescribed immersion as the ordinary act of baptism then as now. But there was the difference that immersion was often administered in the Episcopal Church of that day, as is not the case now. The Presbyterians. We have already seen that sprinkling, or rather pouring, was introduced in Scotland by John Knox and his followers from Calvin. But it did not prevail in England among Presbyterians until the Westminster Assembly excluded immersion by a vote of 25 to 24, Dr. Lightfoot, the president, casting the deciding vote. This was only done after the most heated debate. Dr. Lightfoot himself gives this. account: Then we fell upon the work of the day, which was about baptizing "of the child, whether to dip him or to sprinkle." And this proposition, "It is lawful and sufficient to besprinkle the child," had been canvassed before our adjourning, and was ready now to vote; but I spoke against it, as being very unfit to vote; that it is lawful to sprinkle when every one grants it. Whereupon it was fallen upon, sprinkling being granted, whether dipping should be tolerated with it. And here fell we upon a large and long discourse, whether dipping were essential, or used in the first institution, or in the Jews’ custom. Mr. Coleman went about, in a large discourse, to prove tbilh to be dipping overhead. Which I answered at large. After a long dispute it was at last put to the question, whether the Directory should run thus, "The minister shall take water, and sprinkle or pour it with his hand upon the face or forehead of the child;" and it was voted so indifferently, that we were glad to count names twice; for so many were so unwilling to have dipping excluded that the votes came to an equality within one; for the one side were 24, the other 25, the 24 for the reserving of dipping and the 25 against it; and there grew a great heat upon it, and when we had done all, we concluded upon nothing in it, but the business was recommitted. Aug. 8th. But as to the dispute itself about dipping, it was thought safe and most fit to let it alone, and to express it thus in our Directory: "He is to baptize the child with water, which, for the manner of doing is not only lawful, but also sufficient, and most expedient to be by pouring or sprinkling of water on the face of the child, without any other ceremony." But this lost a great deal of time about the wording of it. (Works, Vol. XIII., p. 299. London 1824). Sir David Brewster is regarded as high authority. He says: "In the Assembly of Divines, held at Westminster in 1643, it was keenly debated whether immersion or sprinkling should be adopted: 25 voted for sprinkling, and 24 for immersion; and even that small majority was obtained at the earnest request of Dr. Lightfoot, who had acquired great influence in that assembly." (Edinburgh Ency., Vol. III., p. 236). All this took place three years after the alleged "invention"of immersion by the Baptists. 4. The Baptists. In this connection I only wish to say that if the Baptists between 1509 and 1641, in England, were not in the practice of immersion, they hold the world’s record for dissent. Here are all denominations who recognize and practice immersion and the Baptists alone standing out against them all. As soon as the other denominations adopt sprinkling as their custom, all of a sudden, the Baptists change their practice from sprinkling to immersion. There is no reason for all of this. For my part I do not believe any such charge, and, I think, the following pages will demonstrate, that they did no such thing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 64: 02.04. THE ANABAPTISTS OF THE CONTINENT ======================================================================== CHAPTER IV. THE ANABAPTISTS OF THE CONTINENT. Dr. Whitsitt makes the broadest claims that all of the Anabaptists of Germany and Holland practiced sprinkling. His words are: "But none of the Anabaptists of Holland, or of the adjacent sections of Germany, were immersionists. So far as any account of them has come to light, they were uniformly in the practice of pouring or sprinkling for baptism, excepting the Collegiants, who, at Rhynsburg, began to immerse in 1620." (Page 35). Again: "The Anabaptists of Holland appear to have been, without exception, engaged in the practice of pouring and sprinkling." (Page 42). Here is the affirmation of a universal negative, which would require omniscience to prove. He would be compelled to know every circumstance of every baptism which took place among many thousands of persons scattered over many countries for more than one hundred years. If just one Anabaptist was immersed, his thesis falls to the ground. Beyond the impossibility of sustaining such a position, two considerations will answer all that Dr. Whitsitt has said in regard to the Anabaptists of Holland and Germany practicing sprinkling: 1. All who were called Anabaptists were not Anabaptists. It was a general name for many classes of people, and the true Anabaptists had to suffer much for the sins of others. Many who went under this name, were Lutherans and other Pedobaptists, who had embraced certain fanatical opinions, and were denounced as Anabaptists. In reality they never embraced the Anabaptist faith at all. Fuslin very properly remarks: "There was a great difference between Anabaptists and Anabaptists. There were those among them who held strange doctrines; but this cannot be said of the whole sect. If we should attribute to every sect whatever senseless doctrines two or three fanciful fellows have taught, there is not one in the world to which we could not ascribe the most abominable errors." Beytrage Vol. II). It is certain, that many persons who were called Anabaptists were never such in reality; and it is also certain that many such practiced sprinkling. 2. It must be remembered that this was a time of revolution. Men were constantly changing their minds. The opinion of a man yesterday would not be the opinion of the same man today. On no point was this more true than on the subject of baptism. The ranks of the Anabaptists were constantly augmented from the ranks of the Catholic and Reformed Churches. The investigation of the word of God was a new thing, and some arrived at the truth slowly. This was eminently true of the act of baptism. Men came out of the Reformed Churches and for a time held on to sprinkling and pouring, and they were termed Anabaptists, but this was not Anabaptist doctrine, any more than it is Baptist doctrine today. This may be illustrated by Grebel, one of the most noted Anabaptist preachers of his day. It is said of Mantz, to whom Dr. Whitsitt refers that "he fell upon his knees, and Grebel baptized him." (Cornelius, Geschichte des Munsterischen Aufrouhrs, Leipsig, 1860. Vol. II., s. 26, 27). And yet shortly after that Grebel became a full Anabaptist and only practiced immersion. This will explain some apparent cases where sprinkling seemed to be practiced among the Anabaptists. The normal mode of baptism among the early Anabaptists was immersion, and I shall point out an abundance of testimony to confirm this proposition. Dr. Henry S. Burrage, very beautifully says on this point: "The Bible was read, its divine lessons were earnestly and tenderly unfolded, and sinners were urged to flee from the wrath to come. It was a new gospel to thousands, and multitudes with tears of repentance asked the privilege of confessing faith in Christ, retiring to some mountain stream to exclaim with the Eunuch, ’See here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?’ The solemn ordinance was administered, and coming forth from the water both the convert and the bearer of the glad tidings ’went on their way rejoicing."’ (The Anabaptists of Switzerland, p. 108, Philadelphia, 1882). We are not at all shut up to a negative view of this question. Fortunately we have much positive evidence that the Anabaptists did practice dipping. Luther was a firm believer in dipping, and understood the Anabaptists to be dippers. Indeed some charge that the Anabaptists took the cue for their immersions from Luther himself. Robinson says: "Luther bore the Zuinglians dogmatizing; but he could not brook a further reformation in the hands of the dippers. What renders the great man’s conduct the more surprising is, that he had himself, seven years before, taught the doctrine of dipping. * * * The Catholics tax Luther as being the father of the German dippers, some of the first expressly declare, they received their first ideas from him, and the fact seems undeniable, but the article of reforming without him he could not bear. This is the crime objected against them, as it had been against Carolostadt. This exasperated him to the last degree, and he became their enemy, and notwithstanding all he had said in favor of dipping, persecuted them under the title of re-dippers, re-baptizers, or Anabaptists. It. is not an improbable conjecture, that Luther at first conformed to his own principles, and dipped infants in baptism." (Ecclesiastical Researches, pp. 542, 543. Cambridge, 1792). The translator of Luther’s Controversial Works, speaking of Luther’s sermon on baptism says: "The sermon and letters are directed principally against the Anabaptists, a fanatical sect of reformers who contended that baptism should be administered to adults only, not by sprinkling, but by dipping." Zuingle, 1527, entitles his great work against the Anabaptists, Elenchus contra Catabaptistas. (Zuinglii Operum, Vol. II., pp. 1-42. Ed. 580).8o). He gives an early Confession of Faith of the Anabaptists. He upbraids his opponents as having published these articles, but declares that there is scarcely any one of them that has not a written copy of these laws which have been so well concealed. The articles are in all seven. In reality it is the Schleitham Confession of Faith. The first, which we give in full, relates to baptism: "Baptism ought to be given to all who have been taught repentance and change of life, and who in truth believe that through Christ their sins are blotted out, and the sins of all who are willing to walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and who are willing to be buried with him into death, that they may rise again with him. To all, therefore, who in this manner seek baptism, and of themselves ask us, we will give it. By this rule are excluded all baptism of infants, the great abomination of the Roman pontiff. For this article we have the strength and testimony of Scripture; we have also the practice of the apostles; which things we simply and also steadfastly will observe, for we are assured of them." Zuingle makes all manner of fun of the Anabaptists, calling them " immersionists, dying people, re-dying them, plunging them into the darkness of water to unite them to a church of darkness, they mersed," etc. In 1525 Zuingle calls the Anabaptists "bath (I should have said) Baptist, companions." (Zuingle’s Works, Vol. II., s. 240). It will be seen from the above that not only does Zuingle declare the Anabaptists to be dippers, but he calls them Catabaptists. This term will be found in many places in this book, and so I wish to have a definition of the term. My first witness as to the meaning of the word Catabaptist shall be Dr. Whitsitt. When Dr. Whitsitt is writing under constraint and trying to establish a case, Catabaptist means "against baptism," but when he was writing without constraint the word meant "a dipper." Dr. Whitsitt in The Independent, 1880: The ceremony referred to was anabaptism, rebaptism by sprinkling and not "catabaptism," or baptism by immersion. Dr. Whitsitt in his book, 1896: It used to be said that the word Kata baptist, so often applied to Anabaptists by their opponents during the Reformation period, contained indisputable proof that they were immersionists. The preposition kata, in its primary or local usage, means down, and so, it was argued, Katabaptist must have been one who baptized downwards, that is, immersed. But just as ana, meaning primarily up,came to be used in the sense of again,so kata, in several technical terms, means against. Which statement of Dr. Whitsitt shall we believe? The first of course, for that is in accord with all scholarship. Liddell and Scott, the great Greek lexicographers, in their seventh edition, say: Katabaptizo to dip under water, to drown. Katabaptistas, one who drowns. Dr. K. R. Hagenbach says of the Anabaptists: "’Since,’ says Bullinger, ’kindness was of no avail with them, they were put into the high tower in the lower town, the one called the Witches’ or New Tower. There were fourteen men and seven women of them. There they were fed on bread and water, to see whether it was possible to turn them from their error.’ The threat of drowning was even administered in barbarous irony, for ’he who dips,’ it was declared, ’shall himself be dipped."’ (History of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, Vol. II., p. 33). That the Anabaptists, or Mennonites, of Holland immersed we have many proofs. One of Dr. Whitsitt’s principal witnesses is Baillie, and I show, in the chapter on English Baptists, that he admits that the Mennonites were dippers. Another one of Dr. Whitsitt’s witnesses is Robinson. He is clear enough on this point. Robinson says: "Menno, the father of the Dutch Baptists, says, ’after we have searched ever so diligently, we shall find no other baptism beside dipping in water (doopsel inder water) which is acceptable to God and maintained in his word.’ (Mennonis Simonis, Opera, 1539, page 24). Menno was dipped himself, and he baptized others by dipping; but some of his followers introduced pouring, as they imagined through necessity, in prison, and now the practice generally prevails." (History of Baptism, pp. 694, 695. Nashville, 1860). I now introduce an authoritative witness. It is Gerard Brandt, the brilliant historian of the Low Countries. This work was first published in 1671. He says: "The Reformation exclusive of Infant-baptism, was set on foot in Switzerland about the year 1522, by the zeal of Conrad Grebel and Felix Mans, both men of learning, who fell out with Zuinglius, about the said opinion. Upon-account of this difference was the first Edict against Anabaptists published at Zurich; in which there was a Penalty of a Silver Park (or two Guilders, Dutch money) set upon all such as should suffer themselves to be Re-baptized, or should withhold Baptism from their Children. And it was further declared, That those who openly opposed this Order, should be yet more severely treated. Accordingly the said Felix was drowned in Zurich upon the sentence pronounced by Zuinglius, in these four words: *Qui iterum mergit, mergatur; that is, he that rebaptizes with water, let him be drowned in the water. This happened in the year 1526; but about the same time, and since, there were more of them put to death: A procedure which appeared very strange to some: The Zuinglians, they said, were scarce got out of the reach of Persecution themselves, and saw those fires in which their fellow-believers were burnt, still daily smooking most of them condemned the putting hereticks to death, where it came home to themselves, where they were uppermost. Thus doing to others what they would not have done to them. Others abused fire, they water. Those who knew better things ought to have done better. Neither *Those who immerse again, shall be immersed. were they acted by a good spirit, they could lead the Wanderer into the ditch, instead of setting him in the right way; they could drown the infected instead of washing and cleansing him; or burn the Blind instead of restoring him to the light. "The first Anabaptists so far as I can gather from their own Writings, that were put to death for their persuasions in Holland, during the reign of Popery, were John Wadon, and two of his fraternity of Waterlandt; and all of these three were, with a slow fire, rather roasted than burnt to death in the Hague, in the year 1527. At Brussels the Dean of Louvain, Inquisitor of Brabrant, Holland, and the neighboring Counties, condemned partly and partly received as Penitents, about sixty persons. At the same time the Provost of the Regular Canons of Typres was Inquisitor in Flanders, and the parts adjacent, and the Provost of the Scholars of Mons in Hainault, was Inquisitor in that district." (The History of the Reformation in the Low Countries, Vol. I., P. 57. London, 1720). Two things are evident from the above quotation from Brandt: First, the Anabaptists were dippers, and secondly the Anabaptists were of the same "persuasion in Holland." On November 19, 1526, the Council of Zurich confirmed the edict of March 7, that Anabaptism should be punished by drowning, and that the man should be delivered to the executioner, who should bind his hands, place him in a boat and throw him bound into the water, there to die. (Fusslin, Beytrage, I., s. 271. Engli, Actensammlung, 5 14, Nr. 107). Mantz, who had become an immersionist, received this sentence January 5, 1527. It was carried into execution. Bullinger says: "As he came down from the Wellenberg to the fish market and was led through the shambles to the boat, he praised God that he was about to die for his truth; for Anabaptism was right and founded upon the word of God, and Christ had foretold that his followers would suffer for the truth’s sake. And the like discourse he urged much, discussing with the preacher who attended him. On the way his mother and brother came to him and exhorted him to be steadfast, and he persevered in his folly even to the end. When he was bound upon the hurdle and was about to be thrown into the stream by the executioner, he sang with a loud voice: In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum. ’Into thy hands, 0 Lord, I commend my spirit;’ and herewith was drawn into the water by the executioner and drowned." (Reformationsgeschchte, II., s. 382. Frauenfeld, 1838). The reason for this punishment by drowning was that the penalty might be according to the offense. This is fully explained by many writers. The Anabaptists were immersionists therefore they should be drowned. The senate of Zurich decreed that any one immersing a candidate in baptism—qui merserit baptismo—should be drowned is a significant hint. (Zuingli, Opera, III., s. 364). John Stumpf, who during the period under survey, lived in the vicinity of Zurich and was familiar with the Anabaptist movement, says that generally the early Anabaptists of Switzerland were "rebaptized in rivers and streams." (Gemeiner Loblicher Eydgenossenschaft). Gastins, sarcastically, used to say, as he ordered the Anabaptists drowned: "They like immersion so much let us immerse them." In Appenzell, 1525, the Anabaptists had three places where meetings were held. The largest was Teufen, with a second at Herrisau, and the third at Brunnen. In all of these places the services were under the open sky, while the converts were baptized in the neighboring brooks and streams. (Burrage, p. 119). Sender, an old historian of Augsburg, says of the Anabaptists of 1525-30: "The hated sect in 1527 met in the gardens of houses, men and women, rich and poor, more than 1,100 in all, who were rebaptized. They put on peculiar clothes in which to be baptized, for in their houses where their baptisteries were, there were a number of garments always prepared." Wagenseil, a later historian of Augsburg, says: "In 1527 the Anabaptists baptized none who did not believe with them; and the candidates were not merely sprinkled with water but wholly submerged." In the Bekenntniss von beiden Sacramenten, which at Minster, October 22, 1533, was subscribed by Rothman, Klopriss, Staprade, Vienne, and Stralen, and was made public on the 8th of November following, occurs this statement: "Baptism is an immersion in water, which the candidate requests and receives as a true sign that, dead to sin, buried with Christ, he rises to a new life, henceforth to walk, not in the lusts of the flesh, but obedient to the will of God." We have many instances of immersion at St. Gall’s. It is said that Kessler, the pastor of the church in St. Gall, in 1523, was expounding the book of Romans. When he reached the sixth chapter, and was considering the significance of the ordinance of baptism, Hochrutiner interrupted him, saying, "I infer from your words that you are of the opinion that children may be baptized." "Why not?" asked Kessler. Hochrutiner appealed to Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," and added that to baptize a child was the same as dipping in water any irrational creature. (Burrage, pp. 116, 117. Kessler, Sabatta, s. 264). In March, 1525, Grebel baptized Ulimann by immersion. The account of the baptism is taken from Kessler, who says: "Wolfgang Ulimann, on the journey to Schaffhausen, met Conrad Grebel, who instructed him so highly in the knowledge of Anabaptism that he would not be sprinkled out of a dish, but was drawn under and covered over with the waters of the Rhine." (Sabbata, Vol. I., s. 266). It is plain that immersion is here declared to be a distinctive view of the Anabaptists. He was "instructed" in Anabaptism, therefore he would not be sprinkled but was dipped. "Wolfgang Ullmann, on his return to St. Gall, after his baptism at Shaffhausen by Grebel, gave a new impulse to the Anabaptist movement. Grebel soon followed—probably late in March, 1525—and on Palm Sunday, April 9, he baptized a large number in the Sitter river. The St. Gall Anabaptists now withdrew from the churches, leaving them almost empty, and holding religious services in private houses, and in open fields. In a short time the Anabaptist Church numbered eight hundred members." (Burrage, pp. 117, 118. Kessler, Sabbata, s. 267). Dr. Howard Osgood, who was at St. Gall in 1867,says: "A mountain stream, sufficient for all sprinkling purposes, flows through the city; but in no place is it deep enough for the immersion of a person, while the Sitter river is between two and three miles away, and is gained by a difficult road. The only solution of this choice was, that Grebel sought the river, in order to immerse candidates." Kessler tells us that at St. Gall’s the Anabaptists had a (Taufhaus), or baptistery. (Sabbata, s. 270). Sicher, a Roman Catholic eye-witness, says: "The number of the converted (at St. Gall) increased so that the baptistery could not contain the crowd, and they were compelled to use the streams and the Sitter River." (Arx, Geschichte d. Stadt, St. Gallen, II., s. 500. August Naef, secretary of the Council of St. Gall, in a work published in 1850, on p. 1021 says, speaking of the Anabaptists of 1525: "They baptized those who believed with them in rivers and lakes, and in a great wooden cask in the butchers’ square before a great crowd." Dr. Burrage gives a resume of the subject in these words: "Now we know that immersion was practiced among the Swiss Anabaptists two years before. How do we know? Not from the controversial writings of the period, but from the diary of John Kessler, the ZwInglian pastor at St. Gall, who, fortunately, one day recorded the immersion of Wolfgang Uliman by Conrad Grebel in the Rhine, at Schaffhausen, in April, 1525, and of others a little later, in the Sitter River, near St. Gall. And so the fact has come to us. Were it not for that diary, inasmuch as Zwingle did not publish his ‘Contra- Catabaptists’ until 1527, and inasmuch as the decree of the Council of Zurich against the Anabaptists, in which occur the words qui iterum mergat mergatur, was not issued until 1527, the Independent might claim that the Baptists of Switzerland did not practice immersion before 1627." (Early English and American Baptists, by Henry S. Burrage, Independent, October 21, 1880). It was claimed by the Baptists of the sixteenth century in most all of their controversies that the Dutch translation of the New Testament rendered the word baptizo by doop, which meant to dip. Many instances were given of the use of this word doop. I could well nigh fill a book with citations from Baptist authors on this point. I shall give a letter written to Dr. William Russell to this effect. He had made this statement in a public debate, and he presents this letter in confirmation of his statement. The letter reads: "Sir, I have read your narrative of the Portsmouth Disputation with some ministers of the Presbyterians, and have also seen another book published by your adversaries intitled An Impartial Account of the Portsmouth Disputation by Samuel Chandler, William Leigh, Benjamine Robinson, wherein I find such unchristian reflections and wrong done you that suites not with the Profession they make of true Religion, but greatly demonstrates the badness of their cause. And I wonder at their Impudence in putting so plain a cheat upon the World as I find in pag. 79, in these words, viz., whether he might not have spared all his Dutch? Seeing Doop in that language signifies only to wash, and is used when they only pour on water. That this account of the word Doop is notoriously false appears from the common use of the word, and the account of it which is given in their Dictionaries. One I have by me, which I believe is the largest and best in that Tongue, it being a double Dictionary of Dutch and English, and English and Dutch, with Grammars to each of them: by Hendrick Hexham and Daniel Manly and printed at Rotterdam, 1675 and 1678, wherein the English word Dip is render’d Doop: as, to dip in a sauce, Doopen in een sausse; to dip to the bottom, Doopen tot den grondt Zoe: Dipped Gedoopt; a dipping, een doopinge; and Doop, Doopfel Baptism; Doopen to baptize, Dooper, baptizer, Doop dagh the day of Baptism; Doopen onder her water, to duck or dive under water. I also find that to wash or rinse is in Dutch, wasschen ofte sprolen; to sprinkle, stroyen spreyden sprencken; and also Besprengen is to sprinkle, besprinkle or to strow: to pour is in, Dutch Gietenor spocten; poured upon, Opgegoten ofte op Gestort. Now seeing that there is nothing of truth in what thae say in contradiction to you of the word Doop, but that it undeniably appears from the Dutch Dictionary to signify to dip, to duck or dive, and that it has nothing in its signification on either to sprinkle or wash by pouring water, which things are render’d by other Dutch words: I know not how they can clear themselves from the guilt of a wilful Lie to cheat the People of the true form of gospel Baptism which, in my opinion, is a greater sin than to cheat them of their money, and its greatly to be lamented that any professing Godliness should so grossly stain their Religion for the sake of Infant-sprinkling, a meer human Tradition, which has neither Command nor Example for it in the holy Scriptures. Sir, I was willing to communicate this unto you, that if you need the- Evidence of this Dictionary and have not already met with it, you may have recourse unto it, and so heartily wishing you the increase of true wisdom and Christian courage for the defence of the truth of Christ, which you are engaged in, I rest your loving Christian Friend and Brother. Leominster, Nov. 17, 1699. "ISAAC MARLOW." This claim was urged as late as early in the eighteenth century. Thomas Davye says: "And the Dutch Translators almost everywhere translate the Words Baptize and Baptism, to dip or dipping.Mat. 3-1. ’John the dipper.’ And Matthew 3:6. ’Dipp’d in Jordan.’ And Matthew 3:16. ’Jesus being dipp’d (climb’d or) came up out of Ike Water.’ And Matthew 28:19. ’Instruct all People, dipping them in the Name of the Father, etc. And Acts 8:36. ’What hinders me to be dipped?’ And Acts 8:38. ’And he dipp’d him.’ And Acts 8:12. ’They were dipp’d both Men and Women.’ And Romans 6:3. ’Know ye not that so many of us as were dipp’d into Christ Jesus were dipp’d into His death.’ (The Baptism of Adult Believers, p. 113. London, 1719). If the Anabaptists of Holland sprinkled it is strange that the Baptists of England knew nothing of it. Joseph Hooke, who wrote an able book on baptism, says: "What Mr. Erratt hath placed in the margin concerning the Anabaptists so-called in Holland, I cannot credit; I never heard that they only pour water upon, or dip the head as he affirms, yet I was well acquainted with a Baptist Preacher that lived some years there, who never gave me an account of any such thing. Besides a credible author signifies that some tender persons of his acquaintance, being desirous to be rightly Baptized, have had water warmed for that use in the Netherlands." (A Necessary Apology for the Baptized Believers, pp. T12, 113. London, 1701). I shall now introduce some general historians and writers Who have examined the subject, and they are unanimous in their opinion that the true Anabaptists were dippers. Blackburn says: "The Anabaptists (rebaptizers, generally by immersion) were of almost every sort, from the wildest fanatics to the later and more sober Christians, who came to be called Baptists, the Mennonites from the second race of Anabaptists." (History of the Christian Church, p. 4 16). Gieseler says: "They naturally disowned the name of Anabaptists, as they declared infant baptism invalid, they rather called themselves Catabaptists. (Fussli III., 229)." (A Compendium of Eccl. Hist., Vol. V., pp. 355, 356,). William Robertson, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, says: "The most remarkable of their religious tenets related to the sacrament of baptism, which, as they contended, ought to be administered only to persons grown up to years of understanding, and should be performed not by sprinkling them with water, but by dipping them in it; for this reason they condemned the baptism of infants and rebaptizing all whom they admitted into their society, the sect came to be distinguished by the name of Anabaptists. To this peculiar notion concerning baptism, which has the appearance of being founded on the practice of the church in the apostolic age, and contains nothing inconsistent with the peace and order of human society, they added other principles of a most enthusiastic as well as dangerous nature." (The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V., p. 246. New York, 1829). Gregory and Ruter say: They first made their appearance in the provinces of upper Germany where the severity of the magistrates kept them under control. But in the Netherlands and Westphalia they obtained admittance into several towns, and spread their principles. The most remarkable of their religious tenets related to the sacrament of baptism, which, as they contended, ought to be administered only to persons grown up to years of understanding, and should be performed, not by sprinkling them with water, but by dipping them in it. For this reason they condemned the baptism of Infants, and rebaptizing all whom they admitted into their society, the sect came to be distinguished by the name of Anabaptists."(A Concise History of the Christian Church, p. 345. New York, 1834). Schaff very fully discusses the act of baptism among the Anabaptists. He says: "The Anabaptist leaders, Hubmaier, Denck, Hatzer, Hut, likewise appeared in Augsburg and gathered a congregation of eleven hundred members. They held a general synod in 1527. They baptized by immersion." Schaff makes it very clear that these Anabaptists, or Catabaptists, or dippers, were the same in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and were gathered by the same leaders. He says: "All the Reformers retained the custom of infant baptism, and opposed rebaptism (Wiedertaufe) as a heresy. So far they agreed with the Catholics against the Anabaptists, or Catabaptists, as they were called, although they rejected the name, because in their view the baptism of infants was no baptism at all. "The Anabaptists, or Baptists (as distinct from Pedobaptists), sprang up in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and organized independent congregations. Their leaders were Hubmaier, Denck, Hatzer, and Grebel. They thought that the Reformers stopped half way, and did not go to the root of the evil. They broke with the historical tradition, and constructed a new church of believers on the voluntary principle. Their fundamental doctrine was, that baptism is a voluntary act, and requires personal repentance and faith in Christ. They rejected infant baptism as an anti-scriptural invention. They could find no trace of it in the New Testament, the only authority in matters of faith. They were cruelly persecuted in Protestant as well as Roman Catholic countries. We must carefully distinguish the better class of Baptists and the Mennonites from the restless revolutionary radicals and fanatics, like Carlstadt, Munzer and the leaders of the Munster tragedy. The mode of baptism was not an article of controversy at that time; for the Reformers either preferred immersion (Luther’), or held the mode to be a matter of indifference (Calvin). "Luther agreed substantially with the Roman Catholic doctrine of baptism. His Taufbuchlein of 1523 is a translation of the Latin Baptismal service, including the formula of exorcism, the sign of the cross and the dipping." (History of the Christian Church, Vol. VI., pp. 578, 607, 608). Dr. William R. Williams, one of our very best Baptist historians, very closely connects the Baptists of the Continent, and especially those of Holland, with the Baptists of England. He had no doubt that the Anabaptists of Holland and the Baptists of England practiced immersion. He says: "But there were Anabaptists and Anabaptist martyrs in Holland before Menno himself had yet left the Roman communion. That some of these professed and practiced immersion, we infer from the fact that their persecutors, who delighted in fitting the penalty, as they cruelly judged it, to the fault, put many of them to death by full immersion, swathing the sufferers in large sacks with confined arms and feet, and then huddling the sacks with their living contents into huge puncheons, where the victims were drowned. So the Swiss Anabaptists, some of them at least, immersed in rivers. This appears from the work Sabbata of Knertz, a contemporary Lutheran. The Dunkers, too, on our shores, who were driven from a Swiss or a German source, are immersionists in their own fashion. "A small, but in its day a very distinguished, branch of the Mennonites, too, were on principle immersionists. These were the Collegiants, or Rhynsburgers. * * * "In times later than these, in the following century, this same community of Holland immer-sionists received the accession of Wagenaar, one of the historians of Holland, whose work, in numerous volumes, is still consulted. The body has nearly ceased to exist. Some funds for orphans that it possesses are still applied by the other branch of the Mennonites to youths, who have the choice of baptism by the method of the Collegiants or that of the Mennonites. "Thus in people so distinct in some periods of their history, and so clearly allied at other eras, as the nations of Holland and Britain, it has been seen that God’s free Bible, in the hands of a free church, has not been without its approximating effects in the judgments to which it has led its students." (Lectures on Baptist History, pp. 246-248). Dr. J. B. Thomas, Newton Theological Seminary, says: "Usually they insisted upon immersion as the only baptism." In a recent and very ably written book, William E. Griffis, says: "The Nederlanders who first claimed the right of free reading and interpretation of the Bible demanded the separation of the church and state, and filled their country full of ideas hostile to all state churches, were called the Anabaptists, or rebaptizers, because they believed in the baptism of adults only, and usually by immersion." (Brave Little Holland, p, 135. Boston, 1894). This question, however, only incidentally con-cerns the Baptists of England. It has never been shown that all of the English Baptists received their baptism from Holland. It is absolutely certain that the English Baptists did not all originate with John Smyth, and according to Dr. Whitsitt’s theory John Smyth baptized himself. His baptism was not therefore from Holland. And his contention is that Richard Blount’s baptism was by immersion. Neither has it been shown that all of the English Baptists of the sixteenth century came from Holland, for we know from many sources that many of them were natives of England. And there is not a line of proof that the Dutch Baptists who did conic practiced sprinkling. Dr. Whitsitt is not only under obligation to prove that some Dutch Baptists were sprinkled, but that every one who came to England had been sprinkled. He has assumed a universal negative, and the best he has attempted is to show that some persons who were called Anabaptists, were sprinkled, and I have shown that some of these afterwards became immersionists. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 65: 02.05. JOHN SMYTH ======================================================================== CHAPTER V. JOHN SMYTH. I can but feel that entirely too much importance has been given to the so-called se-baptism of John Smyth. It is a matter of little moment whether he dipped himself or was baptized by another. Crosby says that his ’baptism did not affect the baptism of the Baptist Churches of England. His words are: "If he were guilty of what they charge him with, ’tis no blemish on the English Baptists; who neither approved of any such method, nor did they receive their baptism from him." (Hist. English Baptists, Vol. I., pp. 99, 100). It is sufficient to say of the personal history of John Smyth that he was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, that he was born some time in the sixteenth century and died in 1611. There are two theories of his baptism. 1. Dr. Dexter’s theory, the one followed by Dr. Whitsitt, and the one generally followed by Pedobaptists, is that he was baptized in 1608. (The true story of John Smyth, p. 10). After a long dissertation, in which Dr. Dexter tries to prove that sprinkling was the general form of baptism apparently from the earliest days of the church, he says of Smyth: "Thus gathered together, after quietly waiting until all with one consent had laid the duty of beginning upon himself, I conceive of Mr. Smyth—disrobed sufficiently to allow of the easy washing of the upper portion of his body by himself—as walking into the stream, lifting handsful of water and pouring them liberally upon his own head, shoulders and chest, until clean and white they glistened under the purifying streams, solemnly repeating as he did so that formula which the Saviour bequeathed to his people to the end of time. Then turning, I imagine as receiving his associates, Helwys, Murton, Pygott, Seamer, Overton, Bromhead, Jessop, Hodgkins, Bywater, Grindal, Halton, and the others, not forgetting Mary Smyth, Ann Bromhead, Ursula Bywater, the Dickens sisters, and the rest, and, one by one, after the same manner, reinitiated each into the earthly kingdom of God. And I have ventured here to introduce, as possibly with considerable exactitude pictorially representing the service performed by Mr. Smyth upon himself, a tracing from an ancient engraving representing the selfbaptism in earlier days of a ’Hermobaptist."’ (pp. 30, 31 ). This description is manifestly absurd. Nobody but an enemy of the Baptists ever presented a baptism in this manner. If the nude picture given by Dr. Dexter teaches anything, it is that John Smyth was immersed. And there is not one whit of testimony presented by Dr. Dexter himself to prove that Smyth was sprinkled. It is purely "from fancy which may be truth "(p. 31), from which he draws his conclusions. The fact is that the whole account as given by Dr. Dexter is full of guesses, uncertainties, and nowhere is there a definite statement that John Smyth did actually baptize himself. Every one of his witnesses may be explained away without difficulty. No one who was an eye-witness has described the baptism according to this account, and we are left to conjecture as to whether it was by Smyth baptizing himself or by some one else baptizing him. Dr. Whitsitt gives no authorities which are not found in Dexter, and not one of them intimates that Smyth was sprinkled. Barclay, who holds to the affusion view, was compelled to admit that "the question of the manner of baptism does not come up." (Inner Life of the Religious Societies, p. 70). Thomas Price, D. D., one of the very best writers on this subject, gives us some very important data. We must remember that Smyth’s enemies are responsible for this history, and that Is not always trustworthy. Dr. Price says: "Much has been said about Mr. Smith having baptized himself. Ainsworth, Jessop, and some others of his opponents charge him with having done so, and make use of the alleged fact to awaken the ridicule of their readers, or to invalidate his administration of the ordinance. I confess that the matter does not appear to me to be of so much importance as some Baptist authors deeem it; nor do I think it so easy to determine the truth or falsity of the statement as the writers on both sides conclude it to be. The mere fact that such a statement was made by the contemporaries of Smith, and that no direct denial of it has come down to us, gives it some appearance of truth. But, on the other hand, it must be remembered that the parties making the statement were angry controversialists, who spared no invective or abuse, but seemed to think that every epithet appropriate and every assertion lawful, by which they could injure the reputation, or render ridiculous the proceedings of their opponent. Mr. Smith’s defenses of himself are not known. His enemies adduce long quotations from his writings, but no one of them admits the fact with which he was charged, or attempts to justify it. He doubtless must have referred to it, and had he, in doing so, made the slightest admission, they would readily have retailed his language. It is a further confirmation of this view of the case that contemporaneous writers, referring to the baptismal controversy amongst the Brownists, and that with no friendly design, make no reference to such a fact." (The History of Protestant Nonconformity, Vol., p. 497). It will be worth while to note that Jessop, a backslider and renegade, and Ainsworth both wrote books to sustain infant baptism and to overthrow the position of believers-baptism as held by Smyth. A close reading of these books would easily convince any one that they had no love for Smyth nor the doctrines that he held. Wilson says: "His principles and conduct soon drew upon him an host of opponents, the chief of whom were Johnson, Ainsworth, Robinson, Jessop and Clifton. The controversy began in 1606, about the time Smyth settled in Amsterdam. Soon afterwards he removed with his followers to Leyden, where he continued to publish various books in defence of his opinions, till his death in the year 1610." (The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches, Vol. I., p. 30). I will further refresh the memory of the reader by reminding him that this company which persecuted Smyth were those who settled in New England. They fled from persecution in England and Holland, and were hardly settled in New England until they were burning witches and whipping Anabaptists. I do not think that Smyth and his opinions met with much justice at their hands. 2. There is another account given in certain church records of the Baptist Churches of Epworth and Crowle in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, England. The church Covenant, dated January 4, 1599, is recorded in these words: We, this church of Christ, meeting at Epworth, Crowle and West Butterwick, in the county of Lincolnshire, whose names are underwritten, give up ourselves to the Lord and one to another according to the will of God. We do promise and covenant in the presence of Christ, to walk together in the laws and ordinances of baptized believers according to the rules of the Gospel through Jesus Christ, so helping us. James Rayner, John Morton, Henry Helwise, William Brewster, William Bradford, elders of ye church. There are appended thirty-two names, some with the X. It is further stated that William Bradford was "baptized in the old river Don below Epworth town at midnight, 1595." There is also a record that the church desired to leave for Holland, "where we hear there is freedom for all men." It is further recorded: 4. It affirms that John Smith, vicar of Gainsborough enquired about baptism in February 4, 1604, was convinced of its truth May 7th and "at midnight on the 24th of March, 1606, he was baptized by Elder John Morton in the river Don, and walked to Epworth, a distance of two miles, in his wet clothes." And the document also records that "John Smith, John Morton (who immersed him), Henry Helwise and others held a meeting in regard to removing the church to Holland." This was the 4th of April, 1609. The authenticity of these records has been violently assailed by Dr. Whitsitt. He says: A generation has passed away since 1862, and yet the only English production in Baptist history that has come to the attention of the general public has been the fraud at Epworth, Crowle and West Butterwick, that brings blushes to the cheeks of intelligent Baptist people in all parts of the world. (p. 15). On pp. 62, 63, Dr. Whitsitt uses many words of censure on these documents. He calls them "a fabulous statement," "fabrication," "no sadder humiliation has ever been inflicted upon our Baptist name and cause," "fill up the cup of our mortification," etc. Dr. Whitsitt is very severe against Dr. Clifford who published these records. Dr. Whitsitt always praises those who praise him. He cannot say enough of Prof. Hoop Scheffer, of Amsterdam, who complimented him and agrees with him (p. 17). But Dr. Clifford and the English Baptist historians generally, who ought to know something of this subject, all differ with Dr. Whitsitt, and so their investigations reflect "a painful light upon the condition of studies among Baptists in England." (p. 63). My position holds good that John Smyth was immersed irrespective of these records, but it is absolutely essential for Dr. Whitsitt to prove that these records are false. I would also suggest that both of these theories might be true. It might be true that Smyth was baptized in the Don river and afterwards baptized himself. The Baptists of that generation were much disturbed on the subject of a proper administrator of baptism, and were often rebaptized. If Smyth was the visionary man that Dexter declares him to be, nothing would be more probable than that he should do this very thing. It is a strong fact that cannot be overcome that the historians declare that Smyth was immersed. The array of writers who affirm this is a very formidable one, I shall give some of them. Joseph A. Adshead, Manchester, says: "Mr. Smyth (who had been a Brownist) and his followers settled in Amsterdam in 1608. He was led to RENOUNCE. INFANT SPRINKLING and came to the conclusion that immersion was the true and proper manner of baptism; and that it should be administered only to those who are capable OF PROFESSING FAITH IN CHRIST." (The Progress of Religious Sentiment, p. xix. London, 1852). George Punchard says: "Mr. Smyth proceeded first to rebaptize himself, by immersion, and then to immerse Mr. Helwise, his associate, and several others, his followers." (The History of Congregationalism, p. 319. Salem, 1841). W. M. Blackburn, D. D., Methodist, says: "Among the English Separatists in Holland was Rev. John Smyth, who, probably immersed himself, felt so adverse to liturgies that he thought that the Bible ought not to be read publicly in churches, nor psalms sung from a printed page, gave an Arminian shape to his vague theology and at Amsterdam (1608-9) gathered a flock of English Baptists, who began to be more clearly distinguished from the Anabaptists." (History of the Christian Church, p. 553. Cincinnati, 1879). Ivimey, the Baptist historian, says: "Upon a further consideration of the subject, he saw reason to conclude that immersion was the true and proper meaning of the word baptism and that it should be administered to those only who were capable of professing faith in Christ." (A History of the English Baptists, Vol. I., p. 114). David Masson, M. A., LL. D., Professor of English Literature in the University of Edinburgh, spent a great deal of time in the British Museum gathering material for his great life of Milton. He gives an interesting account of his work. He says: Of the multiplicity and extent of the researches that were required, any general account would be tedious. Perhaps, however, I may allude specially to my obligations to the State Paper Office in London, where there were printed calendars of the State papers; the task of consulting them is easy. Unfortunately, when I began my readings in the great national repository, the domestic papers of the period of most interest to me—from 1640 to 1643—were utterly uncalendared. They had, therefore, to be brought to me in bundles and inspected carefully, lest anything useful should be skipped. In this way I had to persevere at a slow rate in my readings and note papers; but I believe I can now say for much the greatest part of the time embraced in the present volume (III— 1640 to 1643—there is not a single domestic document extant of those that used to be in the "State Paper Office," which has not passed through my hands and been scrutinized. (Preface to Vol. Ill.). Masson said: Now Smyth, adhering to the tenet, had pushed it to a logical consequence not ventured on by the Separatists before him. If the ordination of the Church of England were rejected, so that her ministers had to be reordained when they became pastors and teachers of Separatist congregations, why was the baptism of the Church. of England accounted valid; why were not members of the Church rebaptized when they became Separatists? Through the prosecution of this query, aided by other investigations, Smyth had developed his Separatism into the form known as Anabaptism, not only requiring the rebaptism of members of the Church of England, but rejecting the baptism of infants altogether, and insisting on immersion as the proper Scriptural form of the rite." (The Life of John Milton, Vol. II., p. 540. London, 1871). Daniel Neal, M. A., the standard Puritan historian, says: He was for refining upon the Brownist scheme, and at last declared for the Principles of the Baptists; upon this he left Amsterdam, and settled with his disciples at Leyden,where, being at a loss for aproper administrator of the Ordinance of Baptism, he plunged himself, and then performed the ceremony upon others, which gained him the name of Se-Baptist." (The History of the Puritans, Vol. II., p. 29. London, 1732). Thomas Price says: "But his views on the subject of baptism were still more obnoxious, and awakened an angry and fierce controversy, in which the sacredness of character and the charity of the gospel were alike disregarded. His sentiments on this latter point were substantially as those now held by the English Baptists; and the mode in which he arrived at them was as follows, etc." (The History of Protestant Nonconformity in England, Vol. I., p. 495). Taylor, the historian of the General Baptists of England, says; In reviewing the subject of separation, Mr. Smyth discovered that lie and his friends acted inconsistently in rejecting the ordination received from the Church of England, because they esteemed her a false church, and yet retained her baptism as true baptism. This led him to examine the nature and ground of baptism and he perceived, that neither infant baptism nor sprinkling had any foundation in Scripture. With his usual frankness he was no sooner convinced of this important truth than he openly professed and defended his sentiments. He urged the inconsistency of their practice on his former associates so clearly that the bishop before mentioned tells Mr. Robinson, ’There is no remedy; you must go forward to anabaptism or come back to us; all of your Rabbins cannot answer the charge of your rebaptized brother (Mr. Smyth). If we be a true church, you must return; if we be not (as a false church is no church of God), you must rebaptize. If our baptism be good, then is our ordination good. He tells you true: your station is unsafe; either you must forward to him or back to us."(Hall’s Works, Vol. IX., pp. 384,400. The History of the English General Baptists, Vol. I., p. 68). Walter Wilson, who is one of the best of the Puritan historians, says: Upon a further consideration of the subject he saw grounds to consider immersion as the true and only meaning of the word baptism, and that it should be administered to those alone who were capable of professing their faith in Christ." (The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches, Vol. I., p. 29). Thomas Wall, 1691, was a very bitter opponent of the Baptists. In explaining the immersion of John Smyth he says: "A third Devise these People have found to Deprive Infants of their Rights to Water Baptism, perswading People of years they were not Baptized at all, if not Dip’d or Plung’d in Water." (Baptism Anatomized, p. 107. London, 1691). Giles Shute, in writing against the Baptists in 1606, was very bitter. He says: "Now let the wise judge in what abominable disorder they retain their Baptisme ever since from Mr. Smyth; and whether it stinketh not in the nostrils of the Lord ever since as the ministry of Corah and his company did. In his Table of particulars wherein this passage is directed to it, is querqed, who began Baptisme by way of Dipping among English People that call themselves Baptists? The answer is, John Smith, who Baptized himself. Thus you may see upon what a rotten foundation the Principles of the Anabaptists is built and at what Door that Anticovenant Doctrine came in among us in England; therefore it is of the Earth, and but a Human Innovation, ought to be abhor’d and detested by all Christian People." (A General Challenge to all Antipedobaptists). I think that we may easily reach the conclusion, which ever of these two theories we hold, that John Smyth was immersed. I know not a line of original testimony which teaches the contrary. The very best in favor of sprinkling is some strained inferences. The historians are unanimous in favor of immersion, and as I have shown from Pedobaptist writers of the seventeenth century, it was the concurrent opinion of that century. Dr. Whitsitt makes a labored argument to prove that John Smyth baptized himself (p. 64) but he does not produce a line of proof that the baptism was performed by sprinkling. He only infers that the Mennonites practiced sprinkling, therefore Smyth was sprinkled. But Smyth’s baptism was in no wise connected with the Mennonites. It is possible that Smyth received his views in regard to immersion from the New Testament. I am sure there is no proof that Smyth was an affusionist. Smyth appears to have remained pastor of this congregation till his death in 1611 "when he was succeeded by a Thomas Helwisse, one of the oldest members, a plain man, of pragmatic notions, .and quite self taught." (Masson’s Life of Milton, Vol. II, p. 540). But Masson does not leave us in doubt as to the views of this new pastor. He says: "Now, this Helwisse, returning to England shortly after 1611, drew around him, as we saw, the first congregation of General or Arminian Baptists in London; and this obscure Baptist congregation seems to have become the depositary for all England of the absolute principle of Liberty of Conscience expressed in the Amsterdam Confession as distinct from the more stinted principle advocated by the general body of the Independents. Not only did Helwisse’s folk differ from the Independents generally on the subject of Infant Baptism and Dipping; they differed also on the power of the magistrate in matters of belief and conscience." (Life of John Milton, Vol. II., p. 544). Leonard Busher appears to have been a noted member of this congregation of Helwise’s. "It was," says Masson, "in short, from their little dingy meeting house, somewhere in Old London, that there flashed out, first in England, the absolute doctrine of religious liberty. ’Religious Peace: or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience,’ is the title of a little tract first printed in 1614, and presented to King James and the English Parliament, by ’Leonard Busher, citizen of London.’ This Leonard Busher, there is reason to believe, was a member of Helwisse’s congregation and we learn from the tract itself that he was a poor man, laboring for his subsistence, who had his share of persecution. He had probably been one of Smyth’s Amsterdam flock who had returned with Helwisse. The tract is certainly the earliest known English publication in which full liberty of conscience is openly advocated. It cannot be read now without a throb. The style is simple and rather helpless, but one comes on some touching passages." Masson’s Life of Milton, Vol. III., p. 102). His testimony on the subject of dipping is clear and concisive, Busher says: "And therefore Christ commanded his disciples to teach all nations, and baptize them; that is, to preach the word of salvation to every creature of all sorts of nations that are worthy and willing to receive it. And such as shall willingly and gladly receive, He has commanded to be baptized in the water; that is, dipped for dead in the water." - (Plea for Liberty of Conscience, p. 50). From this tract it is certain that Busher held three distinctive Baptist doctrines: 1. Liberty of conscience; 2. Immersion or dipping, and 3. Believers’ baptism. In order to break the force of this clear and unequivocal testimony Dr. Whitsitt makes the surprising declaration that there is no proof that Busher was a Baptist. Mr. Leonard Busher, a citizen of London, published in 1614 the well known "Plea for Liberty of Conscience." He may have been a Baptist, but there is no proof of it. He believed in immersion, which the Baptists had not then revived, and describes it as "being dipped for dead in the water;" but it has not been shown that he ever put this tenet into practice. If he did the Baptists of 1641 had never been informed of it. (Religious Herald, May 7, 1896). But in his book (pp. 69, 70) Dr. Whitsitt changes his mind and Busher is declared to be an Anabaptist. But with the declaration of Busher before him that dipping was baptism Dr. Whitsitt says: It is sometimes too confidently assumed that this passage proves Mr. Busher to have been an immersionist in practice as well as in principle, but we know too little regarding him to venture distinct assertions on that point. * * * The act of baptism observed by him would in that case become a question for Dutch archaeologists. But either Dutch or English archaeologists, founding on the mere fact that he was an immersionist in principle, must jump a long distance to the conclusion that he was also an inimersionist in practice. In brief words, Mr. Busher is a shadowy figure, and it is entirely uncertain whether be spent his last years in England or Holland. Therefore we are not entitled, for the present at least, to establish any definite conclusions regarding him or his people, except that if he had practiced immersion at Amsterdam in 1611 we should have been likely to hear a good deal more about him than has been brought to light hither to. * * * The most that can be safely claimed for Mr. Busher is that he was an advance herald of genuine Baptist principles in Holland, that were shortly to be reduced to practice in England. We have the surprising declarations that Busher was an Anabaptist, was a believer in, and advocate of immersion, and yet that he did not practice it. This is only on a line with much of the rest of this remarkable book. . Every effort is made to discredit all who practice immersion and to explain away the facts, and a like effort is made to exalt all who practice sprinkling and to magnify the number of such examples among Anabaptists. I know of no Pedobaptist author who denies that Busher was a Baptist; and with the exception of Dr. Whitsitt, there is no difference of opinion on this subject among Baptist authors. I give the testimony of a few Pedobaptist writers: Barclay says: "In 1614, Leonard Busher, who is believed to have been a member of Helwys’ and Morton’s church, presented to King James and the Parliament his petition for liberty of conscience, which was published in 1614." (The Inner Life of Religious Societies, p. 98). Rev. A. H. Drysdale, M. A., a Presbyterian historian, says: "Unquestionably it was the Baptists who first repudiated, clearly and strongly, all coercive power whatever in religion. (see especially Leonard Busher’s Religious Peace; or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience, 1614); and they were constant to this principle throughout." (History of the Presbyterians in England, p. 353, note). John Stoughton says: The Baptists were foremost in the advocacy of religious freedom, and perhaps to one of them, Leonard Busher, citizen of London, belongs the honor of presenting in this country the first distinct and broad plea for liberty of conscience. It is dated 1614, and is prefaced by an epistle to the Presbyterian reader; and a very remarkable epistle it is, deserving a renown which it has never acquired." (Ecclesiastical History of England, p. 231). Hanbury says: "’Religious Peace; or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience,’ by Leonard Busher, a citizen of London, and a Baptist, 1614." (Memorials, Vol. I., p. 224, note). The Baptists have been equally as explicit as the Pedobaptists in declaring that Leonard Busher was a Baptist. B. Evans, (Early English Baptists, Vol. I., pp. 229-231); Richard B. Cook, (The Story of the Baptists, pp. 86, 87); George B. Taylor, (Religious Freedom, p. 32); and Armitage, (History of the Baptists, PP. 440, 441), all so affirm. I shall quote some words from Prof. Vedder, of Crozer Seminary, whom Dr. Whitsitt claims sustains his position. He has made two declarations on the subject. The first (Baptists and Liberty of Conscience, p. 18. Cincinnati, 1884) was before this controversy began, and the second in The Examiner, May 21, 1896. I quote from the latter. Prof. Vedder says: "That honor belongs, as far as known, to Leonard Busher, who wrote a tract in favor of liberty of conscience in 1614, called Religion’s Peace. Dr. Whitsitt indeed says that there is no proof that he was a Baptist. I can only mildly express my surprise that it takes so much Proof to convince the good doctor of some things, and so little to convince him of others. It seems to me that nobody who reads the book of Busher can be in any real doubt as to who and what he was. If Edward Barber was a Baptist, Leonard Busher was a Baptist; and the latter wrote: ’And such as gladly receive it [the Gospel] he hath commanded to be baptized in water; that is, dipped for dead in the water.’ We do not find such a sentiment, outside Baptist literature, in the first half of the seventeenth century." It does not seem to me that anything could be clearer than that Busher was a Baptist. No man save a Baptist, in the early part of the seventeenth century, held such views on liberty of conscience and baptism. If we had no other authority, this statement of Busher’s alone ought to settle the question of dipping among the English Baptists. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 66: 02.06. THE BAPTISTS OF 1641 ======================================================================== CHAPTER VI.THE BAPTISTS OF 1641. Dr. Whitsitt says: I have often declared it to be my opinion that the immersion of adult believers was a lost art in England, from the year 1509, the accession of Henry VIII., to the year 1641, following the imprisonment of Archbishop Laud. Western Recorder, July 9, 1896). This statement is neither true in reference to the Episcopalians nor the Baptists. In regard to the Episcopalians we have direct testimony. The Catechism of Edward VI., A. D. 1553, has: "Master: Tell me (my son) how these two sacraments be ministered: baptism, and that which Paul calleth the supper of the Lord. "Scholar: Him that believeth in Christ; professeth the articles of the Christian Religion; and mindeth to be baptized (I speak now of them that be grown to ripe years of discression, sith for young babes their parents’ or the Church’s profession sufficeth), the minister dippeth in or washeth with pure and clear water only, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and then commendeth him by prayer to God, into whose Church he is now openly as it were enrolled that it may please God to grant him his grace whereby he may answer in belief and life agreeably to his profession." (P. 516, The Two Liturgies, 1549 and 1552. Parker Society, Cambridge, I844). I shall give a more extended statement of the Baptists. The Baptists of this period had been greatly persecuted. They seldom dared to write anything, and to keep church records would only endanger their lives. They were banished, imprisoned and burned. For an account of the Anabaptists we must for the most part look to their enemies, and we must remember the bitter malignity of these enemies. The persecutions Of Laud were scarcely more severe than those which went before. Laud had almost absolute authority. He was suspected of trying to restore Romanism, and there is no doubt that he possessed the Roman Catholic spirit of persecution. In order to carry out his designs he was compelled to silence all opposers. William Lee says of him: "The fact now referred to is of itself sufficient; and it is hardly necessary to go into the question, how, under Laud’s rule, the repression of the nonconformists was carried out. He is said to have preferred persuasion to force; but it is not denied that, when necessary, the most horrible severities were employed under his sanction to enforce conformity. The cases of Leighton, Prynnes, Bostwick and Burton are well known, with hundreds of cases of dissenters, who, if not shockingly mutilated and condemned to perpetual imprisonment, were silenced and compelled to seek liberty of conscience beyond seas, or, worse than all, to violate their own sense of duty, and lose their spiritual, in seeking to save their bodily, life and well-being. Nor is it disputed that of the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission, by which these men were condemned, Laud was the moving spirit; nay, that if, in these courts, any voice was for more than ordinarily severe measures, it was sure to be his. (Gardiner: Personal History, I., 6). But perhaps the worst charge against Laud in this connection is the alleged fact, that to gain the power of suppressing the nonconformists and otherwise securing the restoration of a pure and catholic church according to his own ideal, Laud did not hesitate to encourage in the king those absolute principles, which, if he had prevailed, instead of the Parliament, would have been fatal to the liberties of the English people." (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Vol. II., pp. 1284, 1285). Under such conditions the Baptists, the most despised of all the people of England, could not be expected to preserve records. Their doctrines were misrepresented and maligned. Here is a sample: "To these doctrines you may join their practice. The seditious pamphlets, the tumultuous rising of rude multitudes threatening blood and destruction; the preaching of the cobblers, feltmakers, tailors, grooms and women; the choosing of any place for God’s service but the church; the night meetings of naked men and women; the licentiousness of spiritual marriages without legal form; these things if they be not looked into will bring us in time to community of wives, community of goods, and destruction of all." (A Short History of the Anabaptists of High and Low Germany, pp. 55,56. London, 1642). It is to be observed, however, that very soon after there was liberty of conscience, or rather toleration, some Calvinistic Baptist Churches of London adopted one of the most famous Confessions of Faith in the world. It stands only second to the Westminster Confession in importance among the Dissenting Churches of England. Formulas of like those contained in this confession are matters of growth. The presumption is that these doctrines had long lived in the hearts of these people before they were expressed in this formal manner. There is no indication from this confession and its history of any change of mind on the subject of baptism. There is not a trace of information, from friend or foe, that during the adoption of this confession there was any discussion on the subject of dipping. We know that the Presbyterians, in their assembly, were badly divided on the subject of dipping. But if there were such dissensions among the Baptists it is passing strange that we have no intimation of them, nor were there any protests. These seven churches presented this as their unanimous opinion to Parliament, and published it broadcast to the world. The presumption is altogether in favor of the supposition that the Baptists had long been immersionists, and that this was the honest expression of their sentiments, and it will take powerful arguments, which have not been presented, to set aside these convictions. I give the XL. Article of the "Confession of Faith of those Churches which are commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists:" "That the way and manner of dispensing this ordinance is dipping or plunging the body under water; it being a signe, must answer the thing signified, which is, that interest the Saints have in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ: and that as certainly as the body is buried under water, and rises again, so certainly shall the bodies of the Saints be raised by the power of Christ in the day of the resurrection, to reigne with Christ." (P.20). There is a note appended, as follows: "The word Baptizo signifies to dip or plunge yet so as convenient garments be both upon the administrator and subject, with all modesty." It is necessary for Dr. Whitsitt to prove that these eight Baptist Churches of London that signed the confession of 1644 and the 54 Baptist Churches in England that Neal and other authors mention all originated with John Smyth or with the Jessey Church. This has never been proved, and Dr. Whitsitt attempts no proof. If the Jessey records are a forgery, as I think, and if John Smyth was immersed, there is absolutely no foundation for this theory, If I should admit the authenticity of the Jessey Church records, which I do not, and that John Smyth was sprinkled, of which there is not a line of proof, even then Dr. Whitsitt’s case is in no wise made out. He must prove that every one of these churches originated from one or the other of these sources. The one which did not so originate might have practiced immersion, and as Dr. Whitsitt has affirmed a universal negative this would be fatal to his argument. As a matter of fact, he has not proved that even one of the London churches had such an origin, much less any of the other churches of England. But we have positive testimony against this theory. William Kiffin, who certainly knew declared: "IT IS WELL KNOWN TO MANY, AND ESPECIALLY TO OURSELVES, THAT OUR CONGREGATIONS WERE ERECTED AND FRAMED ACCORDING TO THE RULE OF CHRIST, BEFORE WE HEARD OF ANY REFORMATION." As this was Written in 1645, no one can doubt that Kiffin was an immersionist, and this statement puts the question forever at rest. As far back as 1589 Some, who wrote at that date, declares there were Anabaptist Churches in London. They doubtless had existed long before this. The words of Some are: "To preach without an external calling, is Anabaptisticall. The consequents of such preaching are the deprauing of the holy scriptures, abusing of the Auditors, disturbing both of Church and commonwealth. The Anabaptisticall conventicles in London, and other places, are sufficient proof of this." (Chapter 7). These Anabaptists of whom Some was writing were not Dutch or Germans, but native born. Some says: "If any shall reply, that many Papists, Anabaptists, etc., haue bene bredde in our Universities: my answere is, that the goodliest gardens haue some weedes in them. Cham was in Noahs arke, as well as Sem; Ismael in Abrahams house, as wel as Isaac: Judas in Christes companye as well as Peter: and yet Noahs arke, Abrahams house, and Christes companie were singularlie to bee accounted of. The wheate field may not be destroyed, because of the tares: Nor the vine, because of a few wilde grapes; nor the garden, because of the weedes. The tares, wilde grapes, and weedes, are wisely to be remoued by the husbandman and gardener," etc. But I have still other testimony as to the origin of these churches. Hanserd Knollys knew all about the origin of these London churches. He was intimately connected with the Baptists, or Anabaptists. I have before me a book, which seems to have escaped the eye of all other writers on this subject. It knows nothing about Blount nor Blacklock, nor the trip to Holland, nor the introduction of immersion. It tells in simple language the story of the planting of these London Baptist Churches in the days of persecution before 1641. The title of this book is: ’A Moderate Answer Unto Dr. Bastwick’s Book Called ’Independency Not God’s Ordinance.’ Wherein is declared the manner how some Churches in this city were gathered, and upon what tearmes their members were admitted; that so both the Dr. and the Reader may judge how near some Believers who Walk together in the Fellowship of the Gospell do come in their practice to the Apostolicall rules which are propounded by the Dr. as God’s Method in gathering Churches and Admitting Members. By Hanserd Knollys. London, 1645." Of course, such a book is authoritative and worth a thousand guesses. Knollys says: "I shall now take the liberty to declare, what I know by mine own experience to be the practice of some Churches of God in this City. That so far both the Dr. and the Reader may judge how near the Saints, who walk in the fellowship of the Gospell, do come to their practice, to these Apostolicall rules and practice propounded by the Dr. as God’s method in gathering churches, and admitting Members, I say that I know by mine own experience (having walked with them), that they were thus gathered, viz.: Some godly and learned men of approved, gifts and abilities for the Ministrie, being driven out of the Countries where they lived by the persecution of the Prelates, came to sojourn in this great City, and preached the word of God both publikely and from house to house, and daily in the Temple, and in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ: and some of them have dwelt in their own hired houses, and received all that name in unto them, preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ. And when many sinners were converted by their preaching of the Gospell, some of them believers, consorted with them, and of professors a great many, and of the chief women not a few. And the condition which those Preachers, both publikely and privately propounded to the people, unto whom they preached, upon which they were to be admitted into the Church was Faith, Repentance, and Baptism, and none other. And whosoever (poor as well as rich, bond as well as free, servants as well as Masters), did make a profession of their Faith in Christ Jesus, and would be baptized with water, in the Name of the Father, Sonne, and Holy Spirit, were admitted Members of the Church; but such as did not believe, and would not be baptized, they would not admit into Church communion. This hath been the practice of some Churches of God in this City, without urging or making any particular covenant with Members upon admittance, which I desire may be examined by the Scripture cited in the Margent, and then compared with the Doctor’s three conclusions from the same Scriptures, whereby it may appear to the judicious Reader, how near the Churches some of them come to the practice of the Apostles rule, and practice of the primitive churches, both in gathering and admitting members." (Pp. 24, 25). Nothing can be plainer than that these London churches were not organized on the plan indicated by Dr. Whitsitt. As to the practice of dipping among the Anabaptists of England there has been no difference of opinion among historians, till of late, a few controversial writers have affirmed that they practiced sprinkling. I will let the historians speak for themselves. Neal, in whose hands the Baptists placed their gathered material for a history, says: "Their confession consisted of 52 articles and is strictly Calvinistical in the doctrinal part, and according to the independent discipline, it confines the subjects of baptism to grown Christians and the mode to immersion. The advocates of this doctrine were for the most part of the meanest of the people; the preachers were generally illiterate and went about the country making proselytes of all who would submit to immersion. The people of this persuasion were most exposed to the public resentments, because they would hold communion with none but such as had been dipped. All must pass under the cloud before they could be received into their churches; and the same narrow spirit prevails too generally among them to this day." (History of the Puritans, Vol. III., pp. 174-176). Prof. Vedder says: "Furthermore, though this Confession is the first to define baptism in explicit terms as immersion, this was not a novel idea among the Baptists. Indeed the practice of immersion had not yet died out of the English Church, though it was rapidly becoming uncommon." (Short History of the Baptists, p. 116). And again he says: "Dr. Whitsitt, as I pointed out in my article in the Examiner some weeks ago, seemed to me to make a broader inference than his facts warranted when he said in effect that no English Baptists immersed before 1641. I think he will see that he must modify that statement." (Western Recorder, Sept. 24, 1896). The Rev. W. H. Pinnock, LL. D., an Episcopalian, in speaking of the English Anabaptists of this whole period, says: "They rebaptized their disciples, whence their name; and taught that the baptism of infants was invalid; they also rejected aspersion, holding immersion to be the only valid form of baptism. From these sprang shortly after the sect of the Baptists." (History of the Reformation of the English Church, p. 153. London, 1857). Henry M. Mason, M. A., says: "The Baptists of England were derived from, and originally adopted the doctrine of, the German and Dutch Anabaptists. They declined, however, in process of time, from the principles of their ancestors, and hold, in common with them, only the administration of baptism by immersion and the refusal of that rite to any but adults." (A Compend of Ecclesiastical History, P. 337). J. B. Marsden, M. A., says: "Baptists, or Anabaptists, so called (from Gr. ana, again, and baptizo, to wash or plunge) because they again baptize those adults who, in their infancy, have once received baptism. But they deny the validity of infant baptism (on which account they are also termed, sometimes, Antipaedo-Baptists).and, therefore, reject the charge of anabaptism, and consider the word itself reproachful. By the older writers they are occasionally designated Cata-Baptists, an epithet of nearly similar import. They themselves adopt the name of Baptists. "They differ from other Christian Churches upon two points: First, as to the mode in which baptism ought to be administered; and, secondly, as to the persons who are qualified for the reception of the rite. Of these, however, the second is by far the most important question." (History of the Christian Churches and Sects from the Earliest Ages of Christianity, Vol. I., p. 77). Robert Howard, M. A., says: "In point of church polity, the Baptists remained Independents. But they held that they were justified in forming themselves into a separate communion on these grounds: First, for the stricter maintenance of Calvinistic doctrines; secondly, for the exercise of a stricter discipline; and, thirdly, for the practice of a mode of baptism in stricter accordance with the words of Scripture and the practice of the Apostolic age." (The Church of England and Other Religious Communions, P. 42). David Bogue, D. D., and James Bennett, D. D., say: "It is sufficiently manifest by their name, that this denomination of Dissenters differ from others on the subject of baptism. They believe, that the original word, which the New Testament employs to express this rite, conveys the idea of immersion, or plunging the whole body under water: hence they conclude that sprinkling, affusion, or pouring of water, is not baptizing. To this distinguishing sentiment and practice concerning the mode, they add one which relates to the proper subjects of baptism." (The History of Dissenters, Vol. I., p. 183). W. J. E. Bennett, vicar of Froome-Selwood, says: "Wherein then, proceeding from this, do the Anabaptists raise their cry of objection to the Church, and separate from her? They raise it upon this ground, that it is not lawful in any case to baptize otherwise than by immersion. The Anabaptists say, all persons ought to be immersed. The Church says the same; but the Church goes on to say, but in case of children being weak, it shall suffice to pour the water. No, rejoin the Anabaptists; it does not suffice. Both agree upon the principle. But the one separates from the other on the ground of permitting a certain exception. The whole question then narrows itself into this: Is it permissible to baptize by pouring water, or does such an act invalidate baptism altogether? In other word, it is as much the essence of the baptism, that it should be performed by immersion, as it is that the water should be used at all?" (The Church’s Broken Unity. Anabaptism, Vol. II., p. 63). Mr. Bennett devotes large space to a general discussion of the Anabaptists, going very fully into their history and doctrines, but he nowhere intimates that any of them ever practiced sprinkling. Masson says: "In spite of much persecution, continued even after the Long Parliament met, the Baptists of these congregations, propagated their opinions with such zeal that by 1644 the sect had attained considerably larger dimensions. In that year they counted seven leading congregations in London, and forty-seven in the rest of England, besides which they had many adherents in the army. Although all sorts of impieties were attributed to them on hearsay, they differed in reality from the Independents mainly on the subject of baptism. They objected to the baptism of infants, and they thought immersion or dipping under water the proper mode of baptism; except in these points and what they might involve they were substantially at one with the Congregationalists. This they made clear by the publication, in 1644, of a Confession of their Faith in 52 Articles, a document which, by its orthodoxy in all essential matters, seems to have shamed the more candid of their opponents." (Life of John Milton, Vol. II., p. 585). W. M. Blackburne, D. D., Methodist, says: "The Baptists were differentiated from the Dissenters early in the seventeenth century by holding that immersion is essential to baptism, and that believers and not infants are the proper subjects of it. They rebaptized believers who had not been immersed." (History of the Christian Church, p. 622). Alexander Balfour, Edinburgh, gives a very full account of the Baptists and Anabaptists of England. He says: "The Particular Baptists are those who entertain no more of the tenets of the ancient Anabaptists than the administration of the ordinance of baptism by immersion and the refusal of it to infants; in everything else they resemble the religion of other Calvinists." (Anti-Pedobaptism Unveiled; or, An Inquiry into the Origin and Progress of the Baptists, p. 87). Dr. W. H. King, London, who has made a very extensive investigation of the pamphlets in the King George collection, says: "In connection with this, controversy I have carefully examined the titles of the pamphlets in the first three volumes of this catalogue, more than 7,000 in number, and have read every pamphlet which has seemed by its title to refer to the subject of baptism, or the opinions and practices of Baptists, with this result: that I can affirm, with the most unhesitating confidence, that in these volumes there is not a sentence or a hint from which it can be inferred that the Baptists generally, or any section of them, or even any individual Baptist, held any other opinion than that immersion is the only true and Scriptural method of baptism, either before the year 1641 or after it. It must be remembered that these are the earliest pamphlets, and cover the period from the year 1640 to 1646." (The Western Recorder, June 4, 1896). Dr. Schaff says: "The mode of baptism was no point of dispute between Anabaptists and Pedobaptists in the sixteenth century. The Roman Church provides for immersion and pouring as equally valid. Luther preferred immersion and prescribed it in his baptismal service. In England immersion was the normal mode down to the middle of the seventeenth century. It was adopted by the English and American Baptists as the only mode." (History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII., p. 79). He then goes on to discuss the Anabaptists of the Continent, to which we refer in another place. J. Rawson Lumby says: "The first notice of the Anabaptists (afterwards known as Baptists) as a distinct communion is about the time of Luther. The sect had its origin in Germany, and, as its name implies, differed from the other reformed churches in the opinions held by its members on the subject of baptism. The Anabaptists maintained that only those who personally professed their faith in Christ were proper recipients of that sacrament, and they also considered that baptism should be administered not by sprinkling, but by immersion. In most of the other points of their teaching the Anabaptists were exactly at one with the Independents, but they did not make Independency the most prominent feature of their doctrines." (Compendium of English Church History, p. 16). Mosheim, one of the oldest and most reliable historians, has much to say of the Anabaptists. He says: "The origin of the sect, which, from their repetition of the baptism received in other communities, are called Anabaptists but who are also denominated Mennonites, from the celebrated man to whom they owe a large share of their present prosperity, is involved in much obscurity." He calls them "Catabaptists" or "incurable heretics." He then goes on to say of the English Baptists: "They have almost nothing in common with the other Anabaptists except they baptize only adults and immerse totally in the water whenever they administer the ordinance." (Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. Ill., pp. 198-221). E. T. Hiscox, D. D., the scholarly Baptist author, says: "It is precisely as I had supposed and had said and publicly stated, namely, that Dr. Whitsitt was mistaken as to his sources of information in the famous pamphlets. It is no sin to be mistaken; but this mistake will doubtless somewhat shake public confidence in Dr. Whitsitt’s reliability as a student of history. And the peculiar and unaccountable way in which the Doctor has reached this point through an Encyclop?ia and a Pedobaptist journal, rather than through Baptist channels, and without conference with Baptist brethren, makes his friends marvel, and is yet to be explained." (Western Recorder, June 18, 1896). Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Rochester Theological Seminary, says: "There is in the article a good deal more of this conjectural history. Dr. Whitsitt seems sometimes to be indebted to his imagination for his facts." (The London Freeman, April 17, 1896). Dr. George C. Lorimer, who has given much attention to Baptist history, said in an address Sept. 14, 1896, before the students of Newton Theological Institution: "I insist that it is due our Baptist Churches that their action on the world’s progress should not be ignored. As a rule, they do not receive the recognition they deserve. Dr. Dexter in his "True Story of John Smythe" has, let us believe unintentionally, put them in an entirely false light; and his representation that Edward Barber originated the practice of immersion in England, and that before the publication of his book (1641) the Baptists poured and sprinkled, is, to put it mildly, incorrect. I have just returned from the British Museum where I went over the documents which are supposed to substantiate such a view, and I solemnly declare that no such evidence exists. It cannot be made out from the pamphlets of Edward Barber, Praise-God Barebones, Dr. Featly, or of those signed A. R., or by Thomas Killcops. In the title page of the first we have the design of the treatise thus announced: "Of Baptism or dipping, wherein is clearly shewed that the Lord Christ ordained dipping for those only that profess repentance and faith." Here is the key to the whole controversy, and to the misapprehensions that exist. These writers were either assailing or defending infant baptism, and the newness of the ordinance to Englishmen was not the mode but the subject; though Dexter observes this by introducing into of the citations the word "dipping which is not in the original. Dr. Featly, in his rancorous pamphlet in which he reports a controversy with the Anabaptists held at Southwark in 1642, admits that they immerse, and writes about it not as something new, and declares that they have been showing their "shining head and speckled skin" near his residence for more than twenty years. I accuse no man of misrepresentation, but I am sure many rush to a conclusion and pain multitudes of good people by their garbled quotations. I, at least, may be allowed to express my dissent: The Baptists of England did immerse before 1641, even as they did on the Continent. This I claim on the authority of the George III. pamphlets in the British Museum, arid from the fact that even the Church of England, in young King Edward’s time, directed that babes should be dipped. These humble people deserve to be faithfully dealt with, for they have been history makers of no mean importance. They dared the face of kings and taught the world the right of men to worship God according to the dictates of conscience; they turned their face against oppression of every kind, and were the harbingers of this age. Dr. Joseph Angus, President of Regents Park College, London, England, a very scholarly Baptist, says: During this period, it is objected, very little is said about immersion, and the silence of the writers on the mode is said to be deeply significant. But it is overlooked that in that age immersion was the generally accepted mode of baptism in England. The Prayer Book has all along ordered the child "to be dipped warily" in the water. The practice of dipping was familiar in the days of Henry VIII., and both Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth were dipped in their childhood. In that century it was not necessary to lecture on the meaning of the word, or to insist on the mode of baptizing, which is still described in the English service as "dipping." I remember a clergyman who resolved to carry out the instructions of the Rubric. The child was stripped and dipped. "I did it once," he reported, "but I resolved never to do it again!" Once change a positive institution in one particular, and the whole may be robbed of its force and beauty. That there was no such delay in forming Baptist Churches as our, American friends have supposed, is proved by the dates of the formation of a number of them. Churches were formed, chapels built and doctrines defined long before 1641, and others, down to the end of that century, owed nothing probably to the discussions of that year. The following churches formed in the years mentioned still remain Braintree, Eythorne, Sutton, all in 1550; Warrington, 1522; Crowle and Epworth, both 1,597; Bridgewater, Oxford, and Sadmore, 1600; Bristol (Broadmead), 1640; King, Stanley, Newcastle, Kilmington (Devon), Bedford, Sutton, Cirencester, Commercial-street (London), Lincoln, Dorchester, and Hamsterley, 1633; Lyme Regis, Chipping Sodbury, Upottery, Boston, etc , 1650 to 1658. Many others that belong to similar dates have since become extinct through change of population and other causes. Most of these churches hold the common faith, and most of them have received it without special reference to the creed of 1641. Dates and particulars of more churches may be seen in any recent number of the Baptist Handbook, published by the Baptist Union. But there is another kind of evidence even more decisive, showing that "the immersion of believers" was the common faith and practice of our fathers. I refer to the books published by them and against them in the century to which 1641 belongs. The unanimous testimony of these historians is a powerful argument for dipping. Commencing with the earlier portion of the seventeenth century, and to some extent during the sixteenth century, a great controversy sprung up in England on the subject of baptism. For the most part, infant baptism was the question involved. Beginning with 1641 to the end of the century, I suppose fifty times more was written on the subject of infant baptism than there was on the subject of dipping. Frequently whole books were written on baptism, and dipping was not mentioned, and often in these books on infant baptism dipping was taken for granted. Usually when the act of baptism was discussed it had reference to infant sprinkling as an innovation. Waiving at present, for special discussion, some of the strongest statements in favor of immersion, I shall refer to certain writers who lived in those times, in proof that dipping was received among the Baptists as the act of baptism. This will appear from the writings of both Baptists and Pedobaptists. The first book I quote is "An Anabaptist Sermon which was preached at the Re-baptizing of a Brother at the new or holy Jordan, as they call it, near Bow, or Hackney River; together with the manner how they used to perform their Anabaptisticall Ceremonies. London, 1643." It is worth while to note that this report was written by an enemy, who refers to the Anabaptists as "they." It will also be noted that it describes a past event, and that the baptism was at some considerable time before 1643, for the writer says that it was "the manner they use to perform their Anabaptisticall ceremonies." This baptism by dipping was not a new thing, according to this enemy, for it was their’ "manner" or custom. Indeed, he mentions former persecutions which undoubtedly took place before 1641. The account says: "Some say our Religion is cleane contrary to the Protestant profession, but such are cleane out of the way, but if we should be persecuted againe by bishops as formerly we have bin, and would run cleane out of England unto Amsterdam, but we are all cleane people, full of purity of the Spirit; our sins are but motes in God’s eyes, but our brothers sinnes are beams that have so put out the sight of his Divine justice, that He cannot or will not see our small iniquities." He takes dipping as a matter of course. He says: "For it is impossible to wash them white or cleane; but wee that are brethren of the elect; we may wash ourselves in a River from the spots of our Carnality in every River, as Bow River, Hackney River, and other Rivers are to us a cleane Jordan, wherein we may baptize one another as we meane to do this day our late lost brother." (P. 2). We have a book before us, "The Summe of a Conference at Terling in Essex. Januarie ii.1643," which was held between three "ministers "and two "Catabaptists." This book is edited by John Stalham, one of the ministers. He says of the Anabaptists: "The Catabaptists excuses, that the chiefe Respondent was too weake, for such an encounter. * * * Secondly then, my request is: That the practice of Antiquitie may fully be cleared, and laid before them: what it was, touching this subject of Baptisme, and what therein was agreeable to the rule of the Scripture, what not, for they have boasted much; as if they had all Antiquitie on their side." (Pp. 4-7). The Baptists were called in this one-sided discussion Catabaptists, or dippers; and it is clear that this dipping was not regarded as a novelty, because it is nowhere so designated, and the Anabaptists "boasted" that "they had all Antiquitie on their side." John Ollyffe, Rector of Almer, 1644, says: "Thus I hope I have made out that there is no necessity of baptizing by Dipping to be proved by Scripture. And nobody pretends, as I know, the Necessity of any particular determinate." (A Brief Defence of Infant Baptism, with an Appendix, wherein is shewed that it is not necessary that Baptism should be administered by Dipping. P. 67). Then he gives a number of "inferences" why he thinks sprinkling may be sustained against the Anabaptists, but not one to the effect that dipping is "a new invention." Ch. Blackwood, 1644, was a Baptist. He says: "I prove the proposition that the Baptisme of Christ is dipping, three waies: "1. From the Greek lexicon. "2. From the difference twixt Baptizing and Sprinkling in Scripture. "3. That Baptisme signifies no other thing than Dipping, appeares from the proportion and lively resemblance twixt dipping into the water and rising up again; Dipping signifieth death, and Buriall with Christ, and rising up above the water, Resurrection with Christ. Romans 6:3-4." (The Storming of Antichrist, pp. 1, 2)., Blackwood had never heard of dipping as a new thing. Thomas Edwards, 1645, published some very scandalous books against the Baptists. They are full of bitterness. While some of the statements are infamous they demonstrate that the Baptists were dippers. I could quote many places from his books in proof of this declaration, but one is sufficient. Edwards says: "I here declare myself, that I could wish with all my heart there were a publike Disputation, even in the point of Pedobaptism and of Dipping, between some of the Anabaptists and some of our Ministers; and had I an interest in the Houses to prevaile to obtaine it (which I speak not as to presume of any such power, being so meane and weak a man), it should be one of the first Petitions I would put up to the Honorable Houses for a publike Disputation, as was at Zurich, namely, that both Houses would give leave to the Anabaptists to chuse for themselves such a number of their ablest men, and the Assembly leave to chuse an equall number for them, and that by Authority of Parliament publike Notaries sworne, might be appointed to write down all, some members of both Houses present to see to the Peace kept, and to be judges of the faire play and liberty given the Anabaptists, and that there might be severall dayes of Disputation leave to the utmost given the Anabaptists to say what they could, and upon such faire and free debates it should be found the Anabaptists to be in the Truth, then the Parliament not only to Tolerate them, but to Establish and settle their way throughout the whole Kingdome, but if upon Disputation and debate, the Anabaptists should be found in an Error (as I am confident they would.) that then the Parliament should forbid all Dipping, and take some severe course with all Dippers, as the Senate of Zurich did after the ten severall Disputations allowed the Anabaptists." (The Third Part of Gangraena, p. 177). Here is the double admission that the Anabaptists of Zurich and of England were dippers. John Brinsley, 1645, violently opposed "that spreading Gangrene of Anabaptism, which, unless timely prevented, may prove fatall to the whole body both of the Church and State." (The Doctrine and Practice of Pedobaptism Asserted and Vindicated, preface). Their dipping was a matter of course. He says of them: "The maine businesse we have to deale with, and that which I chiefly aimed at, when I fell upon this subject, is touching the Baptisme of Infants; whether they, or, any of them, may be baptized. Here the Anabaptists and we are at variance. We allow it to some; they deny it to all. Whence it is that they are called by the name both of Anabaptists and Catabaptists; because they oppose the Baptisme of all Infants, as a thing not onely inconvenient, but unlawfull; and in case any of them bee baptized in their infancie, they looke upon that Baptisme as a nullity, and so impose upon them a Rebaptization when they come to yeares of discression." (P. 9). Fredericke Spanhenius, 1646, wrote a history of the Anabaptists from 1521 to the date of his book. It was written in English for the English people. His testimony on dipping is conclusive. He says: "And I shall consider this division, not their opinions alone, which all the Anabaptists or Catabaptists have anciently maintained, or which all of them doe maintaine at this day; but those also which many of them, or at least some of them, have anciently, or do at present defend; that so the partition may be the more perfect, and that I may present the Reader with the whole body of their Errors, which they have also erred, and yet do erre." (P. 27). Mr. Richardson, 1647, in his reply to Featley, says: "We confess that when any one is to be rebaptized at the water’s side the administrator goeth to prayer suitable to the occasion, and after both go into the water and useth the words, Matt .28, part of the 19th verse; and coming forth again they go to prayer, and also return thanks to God." (Some Brief Considerations, P. 4). John Tombes, B. D., one of the best posted men of his day, says: "But now instead of it [believer’s baptism], there is used the corrupt innovation of infant sprinkling, a fruitless or rather pernicious rite to the souls of many who are hardened in deadly presumption, as thereby sufficiently made Christians, and of all influence on the Church of God, by taking ignorant and unclean persons, even the dregs of a nation, to be church members. * * * The most eminent opposition to the work of restoring the right use of water baptism, necessary to the orderly forming of Christian Churches, hath been by their learned men, who maintain still by their agency, and colabored pretenses, still the corrupt innovations of infant baptism." (Anti-Pedobaptism, The Introduction). Richard Baxter wrote a great number of controversial. books. After having looked over the most that he has written on the subject of baptism, I find that he was violently opposed to the Anabaptists; that he opposed their dipping in many ways; that he declared that it was a breach of the commandments; but he does not say that it was a new thing. He says: "My sixth argument shall be against the usual manner of their baptizing, as it is by dipping over head in a river or other cold water. This is known to be the ordinary way of the Anabaptists." (Plain Scripture Proofs, pp. 134-137). Richard Carpenter, 1653, wrote "The Anabaptist Washt and Washt, and Shrunk in the Washing," in which he says: Because God looked upon the End in every practicall touch of his Power, which End is the chiefein all the course, and the first intentionally though executively the last: and Grace, the Gift of God, is an attendant upon the Thing signified And therefore, Baptism given with a threefold Emmersion, doth not more justify, than Baptism conferred by one Immersion or Inspersion: and yet the first is more expresse and visible signe of Sacramentall Grace; because it washeth more perfectly; and furthermore, adumbrates the most blessed Trinity, in whose most blessed Name the Baptisme is given." (Page 80). He not only does not say that baptism by dipping was a new thing, that the former Anabaptists were sprinklers, but he goes so far as to admit their baptism to be most impressive. John Reading, B. D., 1655, in his book "Anabaptism Routed," says: Anabaptists not only deny believers’ children baptism, as the Pelagians and Donatists did of old, but affirm, That dipping the whole body under water is so necessary, that without it none are truly baptized (as hath been said)." (Pp. 171, 172). John Cragge, 1656, gives an account of a discussion between Henry Vaughn, M. A., and John Tombes. Tombes boldly claimed sprinkling an innovation and this was admitted by his opponent. I read: "T. Here Mr. Tombes interrupted me, and desired the people to take notice of my ingenious confession, that baptism was then practiced by plunging. He read also a passage out of Casaubons Annot. on the New Test. where he saith that baptizein denoteth a plunging of the whole body, etc. Had he read out the passage he might have found how that great scholar affirmes this to be a slender Argument against such as only sprinkle at Baptisme: for, saith he, the vertue and efficacie of Baptisme consistes not in that, meaning the manner of washing. "V. I shall satisfie the audetours herein anon; in the meantime I desire Answer to my Argument, the Analogie between circumcision and baptism being so evident in this place; but receiving none, I addressed myself to the people, according to promise, saving, that indeed it seemed to me that for some centuries of years that baptism was practiced by plunging. For sprinkling was first brought in use by occasion of the Clinicks (as Cyprian Epist. a Magnum states), being men which deferred their baptism till some extremitie of sickness, who then in such case were only sprinkled with water lest the plunging of their bodies might over offend them in that feeble desperate condition. "T. Here take notice that sprinkling took its rise from a corrupt custom. "V. Though plunging be confessed the most ancient way, yet is this no ground for this overuncharitable speech of yours, in your sermon yesterday: That our baptism, meaning of infants, and by sprinkling, was but a nullitie, and mockery, which concludes ourselves, and all our Ancestours, even all in the Western Church for 1,500 years, under damnation. "For the Church hath power upon the sight of any inconvenience, and for order and decencies sake, to alter the circumstances and externalls of any ordinance." (The Arraignment and Conviction of Anabaptism, pp. 5, 6). If immersion had been so recent a novelty such a discussion could hardly have taken place without some mention of it. Denne said in a discussion in 1656, with Mr. Gunning: Dipping of infants was not only commanded by the Church of England, but also generally practiced in the Church of England till the year 1600; yea, in some places it was practiced until the year 1641 until the fashion altered, * * * I can show Mr. Baxter an old man in London who has labored in the Lord’s pool many years; converted by his ministry more men and women than Mr. Baxter hath in his parish; yea, when he hath labored a great part of the day in preaching and reasoning, his reflection hath been (not a sackporrit or a candle), but to go into the water and baptize converts." (A, Contention for Truth. P. 40). Here are fourteen writers who were all alive in 1641, and, for many years before, who wrote in fifteen years and less of that date, some of them only a year or two away, all of them engaged in the controversy and wrote books or tracts. Some of them were friends and some of them were enemies. They were thoroughly posted on the subject and several of them engaged in public debates on the subject. It is certain that if immersion had been an invention of recent date some of those men would have made a powerful point against their opponents on this subject. And it is equally certain that we would have found some defense in the writings of these Baptists. These opponents did bring serious charges against dipping; they said it was opposed to the sixth and seventh commandments, but never that it was a new invention. This is a strong argument when we remember that these men were eye witnesses and participants in the discussion of baptism. There is not a line, which I have discovered in English literature, written before 1641, which will go to prove that the English Anabaptists ever practiced sprinkling. The literature is not very abundant, but what there is of it is all on one side. I will present the testimony at hand and the reader may judge for himself. This will be the subject of the next chapter. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 67: 02.07. THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS BEFORE 1641 ======================================================================== CHAPTER VII. THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS BEFORE 1641. We have already seen that the Baptists before 1641, while numerous, suffered greatly from persecutions. They did not leave much literature, and so we must largely depend upon their enemies for references to them. We have enough proof, however, to show that they practiced dipping. A book was published in 1523 by the Anabaptists in Holland, and translated and widely circulated in England, called the Sum of the Holy Scriptures. On baptism the author says: "So we are dipped under as a sign that we are, as it were, dead and buried, as Paul writes, Romans 6:1-23 and Colossians 2:1-23. The life of man is a battle upon the earth, and in baptism we promise to strive like men. The pledge is given when we are plunged under the water. It is the same to God whether you are eighty years old when you are baptized, or twenty; for God does not consider how old you are, but with what purpose you receive baptism. He does not mind whether you are Jew or heathen, man or woman, nobleman or citizen, bishop or layman, but only he who with perfect faith and confidence comes to God, and struggles for eternal life, attains it as God has promised in the Gospel." (Armitage’s History of the Baptists, P. 409). The old English Church Historian Fuller, telling of November 24, 1538, declares the Anabaptists to be dippers. He says: "A match being now made up, by the Lord Cromwell’s contrivance, betwixt King Henry and Lady Anne of Cleves, Dutchmen flocked faster than formerly into England. Many of them had active souls; so that, whilst their hands were busied about their manufactures, their heads were also beating about points of divinity. Hereof they had many rude notions, too ignorant to manage themselves and too proud to crave the direction of others. Their minds had a byestream of activity more than what sufficed to drive on their vocation; and this waste of their souls they employed in needless speculations, and soon after began to broach their strange opinions, being branded with the general name of Anabaptists. These Anabaptists, for the main, are but ’Donatists new dipped’; and this year their name first appears in our English Chronicles; for I read that four Anabaptists, three men and one woman, all Dutch, bare faggots at St. Paul’s Cross, Nov. 24th, and three days after a man and a woman of their sect were burned in Smithfield." (Church History of Britain, Vol. II., p. 97). In 1551 William Turner, "Doctor of Physick," devysed" "A Preservative or triacle, agaynst the poyson of Pelagius, lately renued, & Styrred up agayn, by the furious secte of the Anabaptistes." This book undoubtedly settles the question that the Anabaptists of England practiced immersion. He repeatedly calls them Catabaptists. (See pp. 19, 27, 28, 49). The Anabaptist in making his argument for believers’ immersion is represented as saying: "That such a lyke costome was once in our most holye relygyon, as was in colleges and in orders of relygyon, wher as none were admitted, before they had a year of probation, wher unto ye put this that they that came to be baptized, demanded, and desyred to be received to fellow ship of the Christians after dewe proofe of unfayned repentance and thereby were called competentes. Yonge men, and wymen requyrynge baptysme: and then were taught the principles of the Christian faith and were fyrst called Catechumeni. And after those principles learned, were upon certayne solemne dayes, at two tymes of the yeare approved, therefore baptysed: which was upon Easter even, and Whit Sunday even: promysyng for themselves the observance of Gods law, with the renouncyng of the devell and the worlde in theys owne person without God-father or God-mother, seven score yeares longe: tyll Ignius, Byshop of Rome ordered to baptyse an infante, a god-father and god-mother answeryng for hym. "Where as ye say the lyke maner was in our most holy religion, as the scolers and religious men had: that none should be admitted, until they had been proved a yeare, and first called competentes, and then catechumeni. I marvayl what religion ye meane of: whether ye meane of the Popes religion, or Christes religion, or of the Catabaptistes relygion, which is your religion indede." (Pp. 6, 7). There are two very significant statements in these passages; (I)The Anabaptist quotes against his opponent the well known practice of immersing on the two days of Easter and Whit Sunday. (Schaff’s Hist. Christian Church, Vol. II., p. 252). And (2) he says of the Anabaptist "of the Catabaptistes [dippers] religion, which is your religion indede." This shows that they were certainly dippers, The following is conclusive: "And because baptism is a passive sacrament, & no man can baptise himselfe, but is baptised of another: & childes may be as wel dipped in to the water in ye name of Christ (which is the outward baptysm and as myche as one man can gyve another) even as olde folke: and when as they have the promise of salvation, as well as olde folkes & can receive the signe of the same as wel: there is no cause why that the baptyme of childes should be differed." (Pp. 39, 40). Here he says that the "olde folke" that the Anabaptist baptized are dipped. This is certainly sufficient. The Rev. John Fox, the distinguished author of the Book of Martyrs, was born in England, A. D. 1517, and died April 15, 1587. The first complete English edition appeared in 1563. There is no doubt as to his testimony. He says: "There were some Anabaptists at this time in England, who came from Germany. Of these there were two sorts; the first only objected to the baptizing of children, and to the manner of it, by sprinkling instead of dipping. The other held many opinions, anciently condemned as heresies; they had raised a war in Germany, and had set up a new king at Munster; but all these were called Anabaptists, from their opposition to infant baptism, though it was one of the mildest opinions they held." (Alden Edition, P. 338). John Penry, who was well known in England, became a Baptist preacher, in 1586.and had been a very acceptable preacher before this in both of the Colleges, at Cambridge and Oxford. The Welsh historian says of him: He was noted for piety, ministerial gifts, and zeal for the welfare of his countrymen. He was a native of Brecknockshire, and the first who publicly preached the gospel among the Baptists in Wales, after the reformation; which implied that the gospel was, more or less privately preached among the Baptists, on the Welsh mountains, during the whole reign of popery. He also wrote and published two books. Mr. Anthony Wood, an Episcopalian Minister, says that John Penry was the worst enemy the Church of England had through the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth." (J. Davis’ History of the Welsh Baptists, pp. 25, 26). David Davies makes this statement: "The religious condition of Wales at this time was deplorable. The light which John Penry, the young Apostle of Wales in the sixteenth century, also a Baptist, who had been hanged like a criminal at Thomas-a-Watering, old Kent Road, on May 29th, 1593 at the early age of thirty- four, twenty-four years before the birth of Powell, had been almost extinguished, although traditions of his heroism lived on, as indeed they do to this day." (Vavasor Powell, The Baptist Evangelist of Wales in the seventeenth century, by David Davies, p. 14. London, 1896). Davies continues in a foot note: "Of John Penry the Rev. Joshua Thomas writes: ’Possibly he was the first that preached believers’ baptism openly and publicly to his countrymen since the Reformation. I am strongly inclined to think that he was the first that administered that ordinance by immersion upon a profession of faith in and about Olchon.’ He also adds: ’A word in Ath. Oxon. * * * speaks out plainly that Penry was a notorious Anabaptist, of which party he was the Corypheus. * * * Strype owns that Mr. Penry expressed a great concern for his native country, and yet charged him with Anabaptistry.’" (History of the Baptist Churches in Wales, p. 43, MS. copy in the Library of the Baptist College at Bristol). But this is not all the information we have in regard to Penry, though this would be sufficient for our purposes. Robert Some, 1589, says of him: "Master Penry, jumpeth with the Anabaptistical recusants in this Argument; his words are these. Where there is no true Christ whereunto men can be engraffed by Baptisme, there true Baptisme as touching the substance, cannot be gotten: for what baptisme is that, which is not ingraffing into the true Christ? but in Poperie there is no true Christ, whereunto men may be ingraffed, &c. I haue answered this and such like Arguments of Master Penries, Chap. 23 of my last Treatise: I rest in those answeres." (Chapter 12). Some goes on with details of the Anabaptists, of their churches in London, and of their connection with the universities. When we consider together this testimony it is strong and striking. There were in 1589 Anabaptist English speaking churches, with graduates from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, with many members, in London and elsewhere. All of these details are associated with John Penry, who was an immersionist, and there is nothing to indicate any difference of opinon on this subject between the churches and Penry; indeed, the proof all points to their practicing immersion. John Smyth was associated with John Norcott on the subject of baptism on March 24th, 1609. This baptism was certainly by immersion, for we find Norcott writing a book to substantiate dipping. This book of Norcott was edited and reprinted by Chas. H. Spurgeon. I give a portion of Chapter IV.: "1. The Greek word Baptizo means to plunge, to overwhelm. Thus Christ was plunged in water, Matthew 3:16. Thus he was plunged or overwhelmed in his sufferings, Luke 12:50. ’I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straightened till it be accomplished.’ "2. The Dutch Translation reads, In those days came John the Dipper, Matthew 3:1. And in John 3:23, that version reads, John was dipping in AEnon because there was much water there. What need much water were it not for dipping? 3. They did baptize in rivers. They came to John, and were baptized in Jordan, Matthew 3:6. John was baptizing in AEnon because there was much water there, John 3:23. Why need it be in a river, and where there was much water? Would not a little water in a Bason serve to Sprinkle the Face? "4. Baptism signifies the Burial of Christ. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, Romans 6:4. Buried with him in Baptism, Colossians 2:12. Now we do not recon a man buried when a little earth is sprinkled on his Face, but he is buried when covered; thus you are buried in Baptism. "5. Christ’s sufferings are called a Baptism, Luke 12:50. I have a Baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straightened till it be accomplished! When Christ suffered he was plunged into pains. Did his sufferings lie only on his Head or on his Forehead? No, no; there was not one part free; he was from head to foot in pain; his head was crowned with piercing Thorns, his hands and feet were nailed to the Cross; and his whole person was so stretched out on the Cross that a man might have told all his bones, Psalms 22:17. There was not one part free. Man hath sinned, Body, Soul and Spirit, and therefore the whole Christ must suffer for sin. Christ was baptized into pain, plunged into sorrow, not any part free: this he called his Baptism. Thus one baptized is plunged under water, to show how Christ was plunged into sorrow for our sakes. "6. Baptism is a putting on Christ. As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, Galatians 3:27. The text means that as a servant wears his Lord’s Livery, a Garment which demonstrates him to be a Servant to such a great Personage, so in Baptism we put on our Lord’s Livery, and he himself clothes us from head to foot. It is thus that by Baptism we put on Christ. "7. When Christ was baptized, he came up out of the Water, Matthew 3:16. Was his baptism performed by having a little Water thrown on his Face? Then he had not been in the Water, and could not have come out of it; but because he was baptized in the Water, therefore being baptized he came up out of the Water. Philip and the Eunuch went down both into the Water, (and being there in the Water) Philip baptized the Eunuch. Both of them came up out of the Water, Acts 8:39; but to what End had they gone down if Philip did merely Sprinkle the Eunuch, or Pour water upon his head ? "Thus you see the place where these various persons were baptized was a River, or a certain water; their Action was on this wise—they went down into the Water, then, being in the Water, they were baptized. This was done in places where there was much water. The end was to show forth Christ’s Burial; now if there be not a Burial under water to show Christ’s Burial, the great end of the Ordinance is lost: but Burial is well set forth by Dipping under Water." (Baptism Discovered Plainly and Faithfully, according to the Word of God. Pp. 28-31.London, 1885). Then there follow some questions and answers to show that sprinkling is "strange fire "on the altar of God. Edmond Jessop had been an Anabaptist, and had departed from the faith. In 1623 he published "A Discovery of the Errors of the English Anabaptists." This book was on infant baptism, but in referring to the position of the Anabaptists he mentions their use of Romans 6:1-23. While dipping is not mentioned it is plain that Jessop assumes it in relation to the Anabaptists. Jessop says: "In which words (I say) he setteth downe expresly that the baptisme which saueth, the baptisme whereby we put on Christ, the baptisme whereby our hearts are purged and sanctified, and the sinnes of our flesh done away, whereby we are buried with Christ, and doe rise with him, euen that which is through the faith and operation of the Spirit, is one and the same, with the circumcision of the heart, which he therefore calleth, the circumcision made withou thands, the circumcision of Christ, whereby also it appeareth clearly, and beyond all contradiction, that the circumcision, or the cutting of the foreskin of the flesh, was a signe and a true representation of the doing away of their sinnes, of the cleansing of the heart by faith (as the now doing away of the filth of the flesh with the baptism of water is); for which vse and end, it was also given to Abraham at the first, as this Apostle also declareth in another place," etc. (P. 62). Vavasor Powell is a brilliant instance of a man baptized by immersion upon a profession of his faith before 1641. Davis says of him: "He was inclined to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than to proceed in the ways of sin and folly. Soon afterwards he was baptized on a profession of his faith, and became a very popular preacher among the Baptists in Wales in the year of our Lord in 1636. He was one of the most zealous and useful preachers in the Principality. He often preached throughout Wales and in many parts of England. Being a man of liberal education, he was remarkably fluent in both languages." (History of the Welsh Baptists, p. 28. Pittsburg, 1835). Powell himself is very clear upon the act of baptism. He says: "Water baptism is a solemn, significant dipping into, or washing with water the body in (or into) the name of the Father, &c. (Matthew 28:19). It signifies the death, the burial and resurrection of Christ, also the spiritual cleansing and washing of justification and regeneration or sanctification." (Life, Pp. 35-41). Edward Barber refers to the Independents in these words: "Again, others who pretend to come neerest in that way in separating, yet hold the baptisme they there received though on no ground; for if they were truly baptised into that Church I conceive with submission to better judgments, they ought to continue, and to separate for corruptions, as is clearly proved by B. Hall, in his Apology against the Brownists, shewing that either they must goe forward to baptisme, or come backe again to the Bishops and Church." (A Small Treatise of Baptisme, Preface, sec. 6. London, 1641). The work of Bishop Hall to which reference is here made is called: "A common apologie of the Church of England against the unjust challenges of the over just sect commonly called Brownists." The title page shows that this book was written in 1610. Barber always understood baptism to be an immersion, and quotes Bishop Hall in support of his position that the Brownists must go back to Episcopacy or forward to baptism. Barber would not have quoted Hall as sustaining his immersion views unless he had strong reasons for so doing. This reference will carry the practice of immersion back among Baptists till 1610, at any rate. Indeed, there is no doubt about the concession of Bishop Hall, for I find in the work of A. R., 1642, the first part of "The Vanity of Childish Baptism," P. 34, a very striking passage from Bishop Hall. The Bishop called the Anabaptists Catabaptists, or dippers. I quote from A. R.: "Yea and much lesse in the judgment of Bishop Hall, who in this point expresses himselfe in these words (viz) I am for my heart so confident of the Divine Institution of the majority of Bishops above Presbyters, that I dare boldly say, that there are weighty points of faith which have not so strong evidence in holy Scripture, (and there be instanceth in two particulars). The power by sacred orders given to the ministers alone for the Consecration and distribution of the holy Eucharist, and the receiving of Infants to holy Baptisme, which (saith he) is a matter of so high consequence, that we justly brand the Catabaptists with heresie for denying it, yet let me with good assurance, say, that the evidences of this truth come farre short of that which the Scriptures have afforded us for the superiority of some Church Governor even those who otherwise indeed, in a sole respect of their Ministerial Function, are equall; and then he shuts up the point in these very words (viz) He therefore that would upon pretence of want of Scripture quarrell at the Divine institution of Bishops might with much better colour cavill at these blessed Ordinances of God." (P. 35). Here is undoubted contemporaneous evidence in 1610 that the Baptists were immersionists. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 68: 02.08. THE KIFFIN MS AND JERSEY CHURCH RECORDS ======================================================================== CHAPTER VIII. THE KIFFIN MS. AND THE JESSEY CHURCH RECORDS. The foundation upon which Dr. Whitsitt builds his entire superstructure is the so-called Kiffin manuscript. The authority, authenticity and clearness of the application of this document to the Baptists must be put beyond question. He must have "irrefragable proofs "to sustain this manuscript. There must be no mistake or doubt on a vital point like this. It is upon this manuscript that he gets his date of 1641. It is from this manuscript that he establishes immersion from the Dutch through Blount. It is from this manuscript that he traces his line of succession, and indeed it is from this manuscript that he gets all the details of his theory. It is the only Baptist document that he quotes that is at all vital to his position. What we demand of Dr. Whitsitt just here is clear, certain and unequivocal proof. At this vital point he fails and the testimony is against him. After quoting from Hutchinson, Crosby says: "This agrees with an account given of the matter in an ancient manuscript, said to be written by Mr. William Kiffin, who lived in those times, and was a leader among those of that persuasion: "This relates that several sober and pious persons belonging to the Congregations of dissenters about London were convinced that believers were the only proper subjects of baptism and that it ought only to be administered by immersion or dipping the whole body into water in resemblance of burial and resurrection according to 2 Corinthians 2:12, and Romans 6:4. That they often met together to pray and confer about this matter and consult what methods they should take to enjoy the ordinance in its primitive purity. That they could not be satisfied about any administrator in England to begin this practice, because though some in this nation rejected the baptism of infants yet they had not as they knew of revived the ancient custom of immersion. But hearing that some in the Netherlands practiced it, they sent over one Hr. Richard Blount, who understood the Dutch language; That he went accordingly, carrying letters of recommendation with him, and was kindly received both by the church there and by Mr. John Batte, their teacher; That on his return he baptized Mr. Samuel Blacklock, a minister; and those two baptized the rest of the company, whose names are in the manuscript, to the number of fifty-three."(Crosby I., 101-2). Dr. Whitsitt was led to see that this testimony from the so-called Kiffin manuscript was not conclusive, so he cast around to find something to sustain it. He virtually confesses that the Kiffin manuscript is not authoritative p. 83). He thinks he finds this confirmation in the Rev. George Gould’s account of the Norwich Chapel case in England. The book is entitled "Open Communion and the Baptists of Norwich," by Rev. George Gould, and was published in 1860. This new evidence that Dr. Whitsitt discovers is called the "Jessey Church Records." He says of them: These singularly valuable records, which must be still in existence since Gould had them in his possession in 1860 (Open Communion, Introduction, p. cxxiii), ought by all means to be published in fac-simile, and whoever accomplishes that task will render an important service to Baptist history. Mr. Gould prints only "certain entries" found in them (Introduction, p. cxxii), and these do not quite cover all the ground occupied by the so-called Kiffin manuscript. To facilitate comparison both documents will be found printed in parallel columns below, the one under the title of "Jessey Church Records "and the other as the so-called Kiffin manuscript (P. 81). He devotes a whole chapter to these "Genuine Ancient Records." And throughout the remainder of the book he makes the greatest use of them, referring to them no less than 28 times. He quotes them on all important occasions, and indeed without the "Jessey Church Records" his case goes to the wall. They are the keystone in the arch. Here is where he gets his 1641, and this is the extent of his discovery. Here are Dr. Whitsitt’s parallel columns: JESSEY CHURCH RECORDS. 1633. There having been much discussing, These denying Truth of ye Parish Churches, and ye Church being now become so large yt it might be prejudicial, These following desired dismission, that they might become an Entire Church, and (2) further ye Communion of those Churches in Order amongst themselves, wch at last was granted to them, and performed Sept. 12, 1633, viz.: HenryParker & wife. Jo. Milburn. Widd. Fearne. Arnold. [Green] Hatmaker. Mr. Wilson. Mark Luker. Tho. Allen. Mary Milburn. To These Joyned Rich. Blunt, Tho. Hubert, Rich Tredwell, and his Wife Kath., John Trimber Wm. Jennings and Sam Eaton, Mary Greenway, (3) Mr. Eaton with some others receiving a further baptism. Others Joyned to them. 1638. These also being of ye same judgment with Sam Eaton, and desiring to depart and not be censured, our intrest in them was remitted, with Prayer made in their behalf, June 8, 1638. They haveing first forsaken Us, and Joyned with Mr. Spilsbury, viz. Mr. Peti Ferrer, Wm. Batty, Hen. Pen, Mrs. Allen (died 1639), Tho. Wilson, Mr. Norwood. Gould, Open Communion and the Baptists of Norwich, Intro., p. cxxii. 1640. 3d Mo. [May]. The Church [whereof Mr. Jacob and Mr. John Latborp had been Pastors], became two by mutual consent, just half being with Mr. P. Barebone, and ye other halfe with Mr. H. Jessey. (8.) Mr. Richd. Blunt wth him, being convinced of Baptism, yt also it ought to be by diping ye Body into ye Water, resembling Burial and riseing again. (Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:4): had sober Conferance about it in ye Church, and and then with some of the forenamed, who also were so convinced: And after Prayer and Conferance about their so enjoying it, none having then so Practiced in England to Professed Believers, and hearing that some in the Nether Lands had so practiced, they agreed and sent over Mr. Rich’d Blunt (who understood Dutch), with Letters of Comendation, who was kindly accepted there, and Returned with Letters from them, Jo. Batten a Teacher there, and from that Church to such as sent him. 1641. They proceed on therein, viz.: Those persons yt ware perswaded Baptism should be by dipping ye Body, had mett in (9) two Companies, and did intend so to meet after this: all these agreed to proceed alike together: and then Manifesting (not by any formal Words) a Covenant (wch Word was Scrupled by some of them), but by mutual desires and agreement each testified: These two Cornpanyes did set apart one to Baptize the rest, so it was Solemnly performed by them. Mr. Blunt baptized Mr. Blacklock, yt was a Teacher amongst them, and Mr. Blunt being baptized, he and Mr. Blacklock Baptized ye rest of their friends yt ware so minded, and many being added to them they increased much. Gould, Open Communion and the Baptists of Norwich, Intro., pp. cxxiii, cxxiv. SO-CALLED KIFFIN MANUSCRIPT. There was a congregation of Protestant Dissenters of the independent Persuasion in London, gathered in the year 1616, whereof Mr. Henry Jacob was the first pastor; and after him succeeded Mr. John Lathorp, who was their minister at this time. In this society several persons finding that the congregations kept not to their first principles of separation, and being also convinced that (1) baptism was not to be administered to infants, but such only as professed faith in Christ, desired that they might be dismissed from that communion, and allowed to form a distinct congregation in such order as was most agreeable to their own Sentiments. The church considering that they were now grown very numerous, and so more than could in these times of persecution meet together, and believing also that those persons acted from a principle of conscience, and not obstinacy, agreed to allow them the liberty they desired, and that they should be constituted a distinct church, which was performed the 12th of September, 1633. And as they believed that baptism was not rightly administered to infants, so they looked upon the baptism they had received in that age as invalid; whereupon most or all of them received a new baptism. (5) Their minister was Mr. John Spilsbury. What number they were is uncertain, because in the mentioning of the names of about twenty men and women it is added, with divers others. In the year 1638 Mr. William (6) Kiffin, Mr. Thomas Wilson, and others being of the same judgment, were upon their request, dismissed to the said Mr. Spilsbury’s congregation. (7) In the year 1639 another congregation of Baptists was formed, whose place of meeting was in Crutched—Fryars; the chief promoters of which were Mr. Green, Mr. Paul Hobson and Captain Spencer. Crosby, Vol. I., pp. 148-9. For in the year 1640, this church became two by consent; just half, says the manuscript, being with Mr. P. Barebone, and the other half with Mr. Henry Jessey. Crosby, Vol. III, p. 41. Several sober and pious persons belonging to the Congregations of the dissenters about London were convinced that believers were the only proper subjects of baptism, and that it ought to be administered by immersion or dipping the whole body into the water, in resemblance of a burial and resurrection according to Colos. 11., 12, and Romans 6:4. That they often met together to pray and confer about this matter, and to consult what methods they should take to enjoy this ordinance in its primitive purity: That they could not be satisfyed about any administrator in England to begin this practice; because tho’ some in this nation rejected the baptism of infants, yet they had not as they knew of revived the ancient custom of immersion: But hearing that some in the Netherlands practiced it, they agreed to send over one Mr. Richard Blunt, who understood the Dutch lanuage; that he went accordingly, carrying letters of recommendation with him and was kindly received both by the church there and Mr. John Batten, their teacher. That upon his return he baptized Mr. Samuel Blacklock, a minister, and these two baptized the rest of their company [whose names are in the manuscript to the number of fifty-three.] Crosby, Vol. I., pp. 101-2. Dr. Whitsitt divides these "Jessey Church Records" into two parts. The first part contains the two paragraphs under "Jessey Church Records," under the dates of 1633 and 1638. These two paragraphs contain nothing on the subject of baptism and are of no importance in this discussion. These "Jessey Church Records" are introduced by Gould with these words: "Amongst the MSS. of H. Jessey, who in 1637 became pastor of the Church from which these persons had seceded, are ’The Records of an Antient Congregation of Dissenters from Wch many of ye Independent and Baptist Churches in London took their rise,’ and there I find these entries:" Then follows all that is found above under the dates of 1633 and 1638. The second part is under the dates of 1640 and 1641. Of this second division Dr. Whitsitt says: The second division of the Jessey Church Records, beginning with the disruption of Jessey’s church in 1640, is perhaps the most important. (P. 85). This contains all that is said on the subject of baptism. In it is found the quotation he has made so many times in the body of the book, "none having then so practiced in England to professed believers. "If this is overthrown all is gone. His book is gone, for this is the keystone of the whole superstructure. I now assert on the authority of Gould himself, from whom Dr. Whitsitt quotes, that there is nothing of this sort in the "Jessey Church Records" at all. The records make no such reference to the years 1640 and 1641. No such words are found in them. How Dr. Whitsitt came to place these two paragraphs in the "Jessey Church Records" I cannot attempt to explain. It is sufficient to say that they are not there. And Gould, from whom he quotes, does not place them there. So all of this ado about the "Jessey Church Records" goes into thin air. From whence, then, did Dr. Whitsitt get these two Paragraphs? They have no connection with the Jessey Church Records whatever, but are another version of the Kiffin Manuscript, and Gould so quotes them. Gould widely separates these paragraphs from the Jessey Records and distinctly says that these paragraphs are from the Kiffin Manuscript. His words are: "Crosby appeals for confirmation of Hutchinson’s account to ’an antient manuscript by Mr. William Kiffin,’ and of which he proceeds to give the substance. As I have the same document lying before me, I shall allow the writer to tell his own tale." (Open Communion and the Baptists of Norwich, p. cxxiii). And then he proceeds to give the words Dr. Whitsitt put under the "Jessey Church Records" dated 1640 and 1641. Here, then, Dr. Whitsitt has placed in the Jessey Church Records things which are contained in the Kiffin Manuscript. This not only destroys all reference to the Jessey Church Records as authority, but likewise weakens the Kiffin Manuscript. Which one of these versions are we to believe? Crosby gives one and Gould gives another. If Dr. Whitsitt had read even Armitage he would have found that Armitage gives this exact quotation and properly ascribes it to Kiffin. (Armitage’s History of the Baptists, P. 441). But in order that I may be perfectly clear on this point, at the risk of repeating somewhat, I give the entire statement of Gould. A comparison of Gould with the statement of Dr. Whitsitt is all that is necessary to prove that Dr. Whitsitt has placed words in the Jessey Church Records which belong to the Kiffin Manuscript. Gould says: AMONG THE MSS. OF MR. H. JESSEY, WHO IN 1637 BECAME PASTOR OF THE CHURCH FROM WHICH THESE PERSONS HAD SECEDED, ARE "THE RECORDS OF AN ANTIENT CONGREGATION OF DISSENTERS, FROM WCH MANY OF YE INDEPENDENT AND BAPTIST CHURCHES IN LONDON TOOK THEIR FIRST RISE," AND THERE I FIND THESE ENTRIES:* *Capitals mine.-C. 1633. There having been much discussing. These denying Truth of ye Parish Churches, and ye Church being now become so large yt it might be prejudicial. These following desired dismission, that they might become an Entire Church, and further ye Communion of those Churches in Order amongst themselves, wch at last was granted to them, and performed Sept. 12,1633, viz.: Henry Parker and wife, Jo. Milburn, Widd. Fearne, Arnold, (Green) Hatmaker, Mr. Wilson, Mark Luker, Tho. Allen, Mary Milburn. To These Joyned Rich. Blunt, Tho. Hubert, Rich. Tredwell, and his wife Kath., John Timber, Wm. Jennings and Sam Eaton, Mary Greenway. Mr. Eaton with some others receiving a further baptism. Others Joyned to them. 1638. These also being of ye same judgment with Sam Eaton, and desiring to depart and not be censured, our interest in them was remitted, with Prayer made in their behalf, June 8, 1638. They having first forsaken Us, and Joyned with Mr. Spilsbury, viz.: Mr. Peti Ferrer, Wm. Batty, Hen Pen, Mrs. Allen (died 1639), Tho. Wilson, Mr. Norwood. From these minutes I infer that Mr. Spilsbury, believing that baptizedness is not essential to the administrator," felt no difficultie in administering the rite of baptism to "Sam Eaton with some others." This would account for his vindication of such a course in the following terms as quoted by Crosby: "And because some make it such an error, and so far from any rule or example for a man to baptize others, who is himself unbaptized, and so think thereby to shut up the ordinance of God in such a Strait, that none can come by it but thro’ the authority of the Popedom of Rome; let the reader consider who baptized John the Baptist, before he baptized others, and if no man did, then whether he did not baptize others, he being himself unbaptized. We are taught by this what to do upon like occasions. "Further, says he, I fear that men put more than is of right due to it, that so prefer it above the church, and all other ordinances besides; take in and cast out members, elect and ordain officers, and administer the supper, and all anew, without any looking after succession, any further than the Scriptures. But as for baptism, they must have that successfully from the Apostles, though it comes thro’ the hands of Pope Joan. What is the cause of this, that men can do all from the Word but only baptism?" It is evident, therefore, that some persons scrupled the correctness of Mr. Spilsbury’s conduct. Edward Hutchinson, in his "Treatise concerning the Covenant and Baptism," incidentally confirms this conclusion, for he says that, when several persons resolved to practice the baptism of believers according to their light: "The great objection was the want of an administrator, which, as I have heard, was removed by sending certain messengers to Holland, whence they were supplied." Crosby applies for confirmation of Hutchinson’s account to "an ancient manuscript, said to have been written by Mr. William Kiffin," of which he proceeds to give the substance. AS I HAVE THE SAME DOCUMENT NOW LYING BEFORE ME, I SHALL ALLOW THE WRITER TO TELL HIS OWN TALE:* *Capitals mine.-C. "1640, 3d Mo. (May). The Church [whereof Mr. Jacob and Mr. John Lathrop had been Pastors], became two by mutual consent, just half being with Air. P. Barebone and ye other halfe with Mr. H. Jessey. Mr. Rich’d Blunt with him being convinced of Baptism, yt also it ought to be by dipping ye Body into ye Water, resembling Burial and riseing again, Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:4; had sober Conference about it in ye Church, and, then with some of the forenamed, who also were so convinced: And after Prayer and Conference about their so enjoying it, none having then so Practiced in England to Professed Believers, and hearing that some in the Nether Lands had so practiced, they agreed and sent over Mr. Rich’d Blunt (who understood Dutch) with Letters of Commendation, who was kindly accepted there, and returned with Letters from them, Jo Batten a Teacher there, and from that Church to such as sent him. "1641. They proceed on therein, viz.: Those persons yt ware perswaded Baptism should be by dipping ye Body, had mett in two Companies, and did intend so to meet after this; all these agreed to proceed alike together; and then Manifesting (not by any formal words) a Covenant (Word wch was Scrupled by some of them) but by mutual desires and agreement each testified: These two Companyes did set apart one to Baptize the rest, so it was Solemnly performed by them. "Mr. Blunt baptized Mr. Blacklock, yt was a Teacher among them, and Mr. Blunt being baptized, he and Mr. Blacklock baptized ye rest of their friends yt ware so minded, and many being added to them they increased much." But there is another consideration which I have not as yet mentioned. Are the Jessey Church Records a forgery? Dr. Henry S. Burrage is constrained to admit: "It will be noticed that in our reference above to the Jessey Church Records, we say ’if they are authentic.’ We have not forgotten the ’Crowle and Epworth’ records. These made their appearance about the same time as the Jessey Church Records, and it is now known that they are clumsy forgeries. The Jessey Church Records may be genuine, but their genuineness has not yet been established." (Zion’s Advocate, Sept. 30, 1896). We have no external proof of the genuineness of these Records. They stand wholly unauthenticated. Before we accept them we must have undoubted proof of their genuineness. Outside of the fact that we have not one iota of external evidence that these Records are genuine, the internal evidence is all against them. Examine the title "The Records of an antient Congregation of Dissenters from wch many of ye Independent and Baptist Churches took their rise." This title is enough to forever condemn these Records as a forgery. Allow me to point out a few considerations: 1. This was not, in 1640,. an ancient congregation. At that time this church had been organized less than twenty-five years, and in that land of ancient churches no man would have called this Jessey Church an "antient Congregation." 2. In 1640 "many of ye Independent Churches " had not taken "their rise" from it. 3. In 1640 it was not the Mother of "many" Baptist Churches. 4. The name "Baptist Churches "was not then in use, and conclusively proves these Records a fraud. The term "Baptist" was not used till some years after this period. Thus Dr. Whitsitt’s principal authority has no existence in fact. His whole book is founded upon this error. As much has been said about the so-called Kiffin Manuscript, I will now proceed to review it. It is scarcely worth while, after this remarkable exploit with the Jessey Church Records, but I desire to give a complete review of the subject. This theory, as presented from the so-called Kiffin Manuscript, presents insuperable difficulties: 1. Dr. Whitsitt presents no proof, and none has been found, that Kiffin wrote this Manuscript. Crosby, who wrote his history about one hundred years after this event, is said to have happened, ventured to say: "This agrees with an account of the matter in an ancient manuscript said to have been written by Mr. Wm. Kiffin, who lived in those times." (Crosby, Vol. I, p. 100). Cathcart, a Baptist writer, says this transaction of Blount’s may have happened, but he further remarks: "We would not bear heavily on the testimony adduced by these good men." (Baptist Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 572). 2. There is no proof that the Manuscript was written by anyone near the year 1641. Dexter, upon whom Dr. Whitsitt has constantly relied, gives up this Manuscript. He says: "Crosby says he derived his information from an ’antient manuscript said to be written by Mr. William Kiffin, who lived in those times, and was a leader among those of that persuasion.’ Conceding the genuineness of this manuscript, and its value in testimony—both of which might be open to question—let us note its exact words as to the point before us." (The True Story of John Smyth, P. 43). Again: "On the other hand, had not Kiffin—as it is supposed—in made the statement, it would be suspicious for its vagueness, and for the fact that none of the historians, not even Wilson, Calamy, Brook, or Neal, know anything about either Blount or Blacklock, beyond what is here stated." (P. 54). Armitage says of the entire transaction: "A feeble but strained attempt has been made to show that none of the English Baptists practiced immersion prior to 1641, from the document mentioned by Crosby in 1733, Of which he remarks that it was ’said to be written by Mr. William Kiffin.’ Although this manuscript is signed by fifty-three persons, it is evident that its authorship was only guessed at from the beginning, it may or may not have been written by Kiffin." (History of the Baptists, P. 440). 3. No authoritative copy of this manuscript is known to be in existence and no Baptist historian, unless we may call Gould such, appears to have ever seen it. Crosby does not quote it, nor does he say he ever saw it, but he only makes general statements from it without quoting the exact words. Dr. Whitsitt makes no claim of having seen this manuscript. His reference is to Crosby. 4. The statements in the quotation are vague and uncertain. It only speaks of "several sober and pious persons belonging to the Congregations of the dissenters about London." There is nothing to prove that these persons ever organized a Baptist Church. There is no proof that Blount or Blacklock were Baptist preachers. Their names are not appended to the Confession of Faith of 1644, which almost certainly would have been the case had they organized the first Baptist Church of England and introduced immersion among them. No record of such an event was kept, and the only reference I have found in the century to it is in the words of Hutchinson, 1676, or thirty-one years later, who reports on hearsay that "certain messengers went to Holland." The dates are as conflicting as the so-called facts. Barclay, who was the first to discover the "invention" of immersion among the Baptists, says Blount went to Holland in 1633. Newman puts the date 1640 and Dr Whitsitt 1641. Evans says : "This statement is vague. We have no date and cannot tell whether the fact refers to the Separatists under Mr. Spilsbury or to others." (History Early English Baptists, Vol. II., p. 78). Dr. A. H. Newman, who has been so industriously quoted, says: "A few remarks seem called for by the obscurity of some of the statements quoted above. It is not possible out of the material that has thus far come to the light to trace in detail the evolution of the seven churches that signed the confession of 1644. The statement quoted from the so-called ’Kiffin Manuscript’ with reference to the division of 1640 involves a number of difficulties. P. Barebone, with whom half of the church withdrew, has commonly been regarded by Baptist writers as a Baptist. Yet in 1642 he published ’A Discourse tending to prove the Baptism in, or under, the Defection of Antichrist to be the Ordinance of Jesus Christ, as also that the Baptism of Infants or Children is Warrantable and Agreeable to the Word of God,’ and in 1643 and 1644 he published other polemical tracts against Antipedobaptism. If in 1641 he was the leader of the Antipedobaptists and immersionist half of the divided congregation he must soon after have abandoned his position. This is, of course, possible. From the construction of the sentence Jessey might be taken to be the leader of the Baptist half, but it appears that Jessey did not become a Baptist till five years later. This difficulty seems inexplicable without further material." (A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States, pp. 52, 53). It is altogether possible that these "dissenters" may not have known that there were immersionists in London, and that such persons may have lived on the same square with them. Under the persecutions of the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber it was not safe for one to announce himself a Baptist. 6. The account that Hutchinson gives is very different from the so-called Kiffin Manuscript. He makes no mention of dipping, but declares that the trouble was in regard to an administrator. The edition of Hutchinson from which I quote bears date, London, 1676. He says: "When the professors of these nations had been a long time wearied with the yoke of superstitions, ceremonies, traditions of men, and corrupt mixtures in the worship and service of God, it pleased the Lord to break these yokes, and by a very strong impulse of his Spirit upon the hearts of his people, to convince them of the necessity of Reformation. Divers pious, and very gracious people, having often sought the Lord by fasting and prayer, that he would show them the pattern of his house, the goings-out and comings-in thereof, &c. Resolved (by the grace of God), not to receive or practice any piece of positive worship which had not precept or example from the word of God. Infant baptism coming of course under consideration, after long search and many debates, it was found to have no footing in the Scriptures (the only rule and standard to try doctrines by); but on the contrary a mere innovation, yea, the profanation of an ordinance of God. And though it was proposed to be laid aside, yet what fears, tremblings, and temptations did attend them, lest they should be mistaken, considering how many learned and godly men were of an opposite persuasion. How gladly would they have had the rest of their brethren gone along with them. But when there was no hopes, they concluded that a Christian’s faith must not stand in the wisdom of men; and that every one must give an account of himself to God; and so resolved to practice according to their light. The great objection was, the want of an administrator; which, as I have heard, was remov’d by sending certain messengers to Holland, whence they were supplied." (A Treatise Concerning the Covenant and Baptism Dialogue-wise. Epistle to the Reader. London, 1676). There is no question about the authenticity of this work of Hutchinson and the question of "dipping does not come upon the boards." The whole question hinged upon the lawfulness of infant baptism and a proper administrator. 7. There is nothing in this manuscript to prove that there were not other Baptists in England who had nothing to do with this transaction. We have shown that there were many such churches. Crosby says: "But the greatest number of English Baptists looked upon all of this as needless trouble, and what proceeded from the old Popish Doctrine of right to administer sacraments by an uninterrupted succession which neither the Church of Rome, nor the Church of England, much less the modern Dissenters, could prove to be with them." (Vol. I., P. 103). The voice of Kiffin himself is against any such interpretation of this manuscript, for he would not have contradicted himself. Kiffin certainly said: "IT IS WELL KNONW TO MANY, ESPECIALLY TO OURSELVES, THAT OUR CONGREGATIONS WERE ERECTED AND FRAMED ACCORDING TO THE RULE OF CHRIST, BEFORE WE HEARD OF ANY REFORMATION." (A Brief Remonstrance, p. 11). I do not think it possible with an unauthenticated, vague statement like the one contained in this manuscript to revolutionize Baptist history. Neither is there anything new in all this, for it was recorded long ago by Crosby, and has been before the Baptists more than two hundred years. Dr. Whitsitt is the only man who has drawn from it such startling conclusions. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 69: 02.09. SOME WITNESSES ======================================================================== CHAPTER IX. SOME WITNESSES. Of Mr. Praise-God Barebones, Dr. Whitsitt makes great use. He wrote, if indeed he is the author, two books, under the initials P. B., which appeared in 1642-3. Dr. Whitsitt claims that while he was not a Baptist, as some other writers supposed, he was very friendly to them. He says: It is true that The Bapitist Encyclopaedia has blundered in claiming Mr. Barebone as a Baptist minister, yet it was not a very great blunder. There was some reason for this conclusion, for he was closely connected with the Baptists, having been a member of the Jessey Church prior to the year 1640. (P. 102). Dr. Whitsitt further says that he was answered by R. B., whom he claims to be Richard Blunt, of which, however, there is no proof. After reading this eulogy of P. B., I turned to his book called "A Reply to the Frivolous and impertinent Ansvver of R. B., to the discourse of P. B.," and I did not find it friendly to the Baptists. It was altogether hostile. I can only give a few of his phrases: "Boaster," "liar," "bray a fool," "evil dealing," "willing to deceive," "he deals as the Divell dealt with the Lord, keeps back a mayne part, and so the shewing the mind to smother the truth and keep it in unrighteousness," etc., etc. These are only samples that are found all through this abusive writer. And yet this enemy is one of Dr. Whitsitt’s principal witnesses. I charged, through The Western Recorder, that Dr. Whitsitt copied from Dexter his quotation from P. B., as found in The Religious Herald, May 7, 1896. This is admitted, for in the book he uses an entirely different form of the quotation, as follows: "But now very lately some are mightily taken as having found out a new defect in the Baptisme under the defection, which maketh such a nullitie of Baptisme in their conceit that it is none at all, and it is concerning the manner of Baptizing wherein they have espyed such default as it maketh an absolute nullity of all person’s Baptisme but such as have been so Baptized according to their new discovery; and so partly as before in regard of the subject and partly in regard of so great default in the manner: They not only conclude as is before sayd a nullity of their present Baptisme, And so but addresse themselves to be Baptized a third time after the true way and manner they have found out, which they account a precious truth. The particular of their opinion and practice is to Dip, and that persons are to be Dipped, all and every part to be under the water, for if all the whole person be not under the water then they hold they are not Baptized with the Baptisme of Christ. As for sprinkling or pouring water on the face it is nothing at all as they account, and so measuring themselves by these new thoughts as unbaptized they addresse themselves to take it up after the manner of Dipping: but truly they want [lack] a Dipper that hath authority from heaven, as had John whom they please to call a Dipper, of whom it is sayd that it might be manifested his Baptisme was from heaven. A man can receive nothing, that is, lawful authority or power to Baptize, unlesse it be given from heaven, which I desire they would be pleased to mind and they will easily see their third baptism is from the earth and not from heaven, as John’s was. And if this case be further considered it will appeare at the most to be but a defect in the manner and a coming short in the quantity of the Element. It is a wonderful thing that a nullity should thereof follow forthwith, of which more may be seen in the same case before. Againe that the substance of an Ordinance of so high a nature and great concernment should be founded in the criticknesse of a word and in the quantity of an element is no lesse marveilous, to say no more. Oh, but Baptismeisa is a Buriall as it is written, We are buried with him in Baptisme, etc., and we are raised up also to newness of life. This Buriall and resurrection only Dipping can import and hold forth . . . But inasmuch as this is a very new way, and the full growth of it and settling is not yet known, if it be to themselves, yet not to me and others: I will forbeare to say further to it." (Pp. 12, 13, 15). The extract taken from Dexter had been terribly garbled. Sentences had been taken from different parts of the book and pieced together, and sometimes the sentences did not even stop with a comma. The exact form of the quotation as given above may be found in The Independent, Oct. 7, 1880. The article appeared as an editorial, and the author’s name does not appear; but Dr. Whitsitt very closely follows the line of proof and quotations in that editorial and some dozen others which may be found in The Independent from June 24, 1880, to Dec. 13, I883. But this quotation does not sustain Dr. Whitsitt’s contention, for P. B. was not discussing the newness of dipping, but a proper administrator and rebaptism. And he taunts his opponent in "A Reply, To the Reader," London, 1643, with: "A man that had a minde to come to R. B. in his third Baptisme, before a yeare or two spent in the serious weighing of the matter, would find happily that R. B. had left his third Baptisme, and taken up a church." But P. B. did not think dipping was a new thing. In the quotation as given are found some dots. Those dots indicate the omission of a significant statement. P. B. there declares that dipping was not a new thing. He says: "The Romanists, some of them, and some of the poor ignorant Welsh do use dipping." And in A Reply he asks whether they learned dipping from the Romanists or the Welsh? 1. I do not regard this anonymous author, P. B., as of any weight. One of the officials of the British Museum wrote me: "The book is not considered here as of any particular value, only an ordinary controversial pamphlet." His name, Praise-God Barebones, is enough to condemn him. It is said his two brothers assumed the names, respectively, of "Christ came into the World to save Barebones" and "If Christ had not Died Thou hadst been Damned Barebones." I am surprised that any one would quote such an author as decisive on any point. Yet this man is one of Dr. Whitsitt’s chief witnesses. 2. It is perfectly apparent that the words of. P. B. have been wofully misused. It leads us to suspect that all the authors that Dr. Whitsitt has quoted need further light thrown on them. Even as quoted by Dexter, P. B. does not sustain Dr. Whitsitt’s theory; and the original is certainly against him. 3. "Praise-God Barebones" defended sprinkling, but he nowhere says dipping was a new thing. That it was practiced in the days of the apostles, that it was used in hot countries, that "the Romanists, some of them, and some of the poor ignorant Welsh do use dipping." He was a Pedobaptist, and believed in sprinkling, and so tried to refute the opinion of the Anabaptists on dipping; but he does not declare that dipping or a denial of infant baptism to be a new thing. "The new way of Baptizing," or as it is called here "the new dipping," because the act had been repeated, over and over again, in his book he declares to be rebaptizing, or denying the perpetuity of the Roman Catholic Ch119, 130. By Edward Barber. Printed in the yeare 1641." I give a few extracts from Barber, and many more might be added: "The thesis that Christ ordained dipping for those only that profess repentance and faith’ is mentioned under four heads; viz.: ’1. Proved by Scriptures. 2. By Arguments. 3. A Parallel betwixt circumcision and Dipping. 4. An Answere to some objections by P. B. Psal. 119. 130.’" * I quote from the original, but a reprint may be had from the Baptist Book Concern, Louisville. Ky., for 10 cents. "But the dipping of beleevers is that good old way of Christ, and infants is not." (P. 14). "But for infants’ dipping there is no expresse description of the persons, condition, time, whereas true dipping, which is that one dipping Ephesians 4:5, which is the dipping of repentance for remission of sinnes, Mark 1:4 it is most evidently and faithfully set down for persons, conditions and times, viz.," etc. (P. 15). "Thus for true dipping there is a certain time appointed as was for circumcision, Acts 8:37 yea commanded, Acts 10:48." (P. 16). So that this covenant standeth between God and man, manifested by Holy Writ is: That as there is but one Lord; one Faith; and one Dipping, Ephesians 4:5 which is the Dipping of Repentance for Remission of sinnes, Mark 1:4 so there is but one way of entrance into the Covenant under the Gospel," etc. (P. 18). "Quest. 5. But what is the true ordinance of the dipping of Christ, and wherein doth it differ from childrens Dipping, which is the best way to show the truth; and what benefit doth Beleevers receive by it." (P. 19). "Eighthly, that the Beleever may in that day roll away all the reproach of Egypt, or Antichristianisme, renouncing the marke of the Beast in our right hands, by holding or fighting for him, or in our forehead. Revelation 13:14, by dipping of Infants, that false Constitution of Rome to beget grece, thus it is cleere: who are the true subjects of Dipping, And who are not." (P. 21). "In short, all these holy ends that God aimed at in true dipping, are wholly made voide, and of no effect in the dipping of Infants, which the Lord Christ commanded not. Jeremiah 7:3, Revelation 22:18, Matthew 28:19-20. nor came into his heart." (P. 22). "6. If the dipping of Infants be God’s Ordinance, Christ was not so faithfull over his House a sonne, as Moses a servant was; For Moses made and set out all things, according to the patterne, Hebrews 8:5 but if Christ received any patterne for dipping infants, he hath left no rule for it, by precept, or example."(P. 23). "But the dipping of Infants was never heard of in all the Institutions of Christ, or preachings of the Apostles," etc. (P. 30). The book nowhere intimates that there were ever any Baptists who practiced sprinkling, or that the immersion of believers was a new thing. Dr. Whitsitt makes the following quotation from Barber: Beloved Reader, it may seem strange that in these times when such abundance of Knowledge of the Gospell is professed in the World, that there should notwithstanding be generally such ignorance, especially in and amopping of repentance for remission of sinnes, Mark 1:4 it is most evidently and faithfully set down for persons, conditions and times, viz.," etc. (P. 15). "Thus for true dipping there is a certain time appointed as was for circumcision, Acts 8:37 yea commanded, Acts 10:48." (P. 16). So that this covenant standeth between God and man, manifested by Holy Writ is: That as there is but one Lord; one Faith; and one Dipping, Ephesians 4:5 which is the Dipping of Repentance for Remission of sinnes, Mark 1:4 so there is but one way of entrance into the Covenant under the Gospel," etc. (P. 18). "Quest. 5. But what is the true ordinance of the dipping of Christ, and wherein doth it differ from childrens Dipping, which is the best way to show the truth; and what benefit doth Beleevers receive by it." (P. 19). "Eighthly, that the Beleever may in that day roll away all the reproach of Egypt, or Antichristianisme, renouncing the marke of the Beast in our right hands, by holding or fighting for him, or in our forehead. Revelation 13:14, by dipping of Infants, that false Constitution of Rome to beget grece, thus it is cleere: who are the true subjects of Dipping, And who are not." (P. 21). "In short, all these holy ends that God aimed at in true dipping, are wholly made voide, and of no effect in the dipping of Infants, which the Lord Christ commanded not. Jeremiah 7:3, Revelation 22:18 Matthew 28:19-20 nor came into his heart." (P. 22). "6. If the dipping of Infants be God’s Ordinance, Christ was not so faithfull over his House a sonne, as Moses a servant was; For Moses made and set out all things, according to the patterne, Heb. 8. 5. but if Christ received any patterne for dipping infants, he hath left no rule for it, by precept, or example."(P. 23). "But the dipping of Infants was never heard of in all the Institutions of Christ, or preachings of the Apostles," etc. (P. 30). The book nowhere intimates that there were ever any Baptists who practiced sprinkling, or that the immersion of believers was a new thing. Dr. Whitsitt makes the following quotation from Barber: Beloved Reader, it may seem strange that in these times when such abundance of Knowledge of the Gospell is professed in the World, that there should notwithstanding be generally such ignorance, especially in and amongst those that professe themselves Ministers thereof, of that glorious principle True Baptisme or Dipping, Ephesians 4:5, Instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ, which all that look for life and salvation by him ought to be partakers of; it being that onely which was received by the Apostles and Primitive Churches, and for a long time unviolably kept and practiced by the Ministerie of the Gospel in the planting of the first Churches, and that the Lord should raise up mee a poore Tradesman to devulge this glorious Truth, to the World’s Censuring. (Pp. 112, 113). , Even if Barber had said that believers’ immersion was a new thing in England that would not have made it so. Prof. Vedder makes answer to this point: "But a thing is not necessarily true because Barber says it; he was—as he frankly confesses, and his treatise attests it—an unlearned man, and was not acquainted with the history or literature of his own people. We positively know that he was not the first to ’devulge this glorious truth."’ But I can reply more directly in two ways: 1. The word devulge does not mean to make known a thing for the first time. It does not mean that Barber was a discoverer. The word means only to publish a thing, according to Webster, and it may or may not have been known before. Henry Denne, who was baptized in 1643, and had been since that date a preacher, was sent on a special mission, by the Baptist Church at Fenstanton, October 28, 1653, and it is said of him: "On that day he was chosen and ordained, by imposition of hands, a messenger to divulge the Gospel of Jesus Christ." (Adam Taylor’s History General Baptists, Vol. I., p. 150). No one would fail to know that the word meant in this passage simply to proclaim. 2. The thing that Barber was to divulge, and his whole treaty shows it, was not dipping, but believers’ baptism. He had been imprisoned for denying infant baptism and his release gave him an opportunity for affirming believers’ baptism. His words are: By Edward Barber, Citizen, and Merckant- Taylor of London; late Prisoner, for denying the sprinkling of Infants, and requiring tithes now under the Gospel to be Gods Ordinance." There is not a word in this entire book which could by any possible construction be forced to mean that immersion was a new thing. Indeed, in the very passage that Dr. Whitsitt quotes Barber claims: "Instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ, which all that look for life and Salvation by him ought to be partakers of, it being that onely which was received by the Apostles and Primitive Churches, and for a long time unviolably kept and practiced by the ministerie of the Gospel in the planting of the first Churches." But what about Barber himself? Crosby declares that he was baptized long before 1641, and thus we have another witness to immersion before 1641. Crosby says: "Mr. Edward Barber, a gentleman of great learning, was first a minister in the established church, and embraced the principles of the Baptists, long before the breaking out of the civil wars. He was the means of convincing many that infant baptism had no foundation in Scripture, and soon gathered a numerous congregation."(Vol. III., p. 3). A very scholarly Baptist of those times was A. R., 1642, who wrote two books on the Vanity and Childishness of Infants Baptisme. The first book was against infant baptism as held in the Episcopal Church and the second as held by Dissenters. A. R. readily refers to the Greek language. In the first part, in the beginning, there is a discussion of dipping. There is no intimation that it is a new thing. Indeed, every argument presented by A. R. might be profitably used by a Baptist author of today. But Dr. Whitsitt makes a characteristic mistake. He says: The work of A. R., which comes under notice in this place, is entitled: The Second Part of the Vanity and Childishness of Infants Baptisme, London, 1642. On Page 29 of this Second Part Dr. Dexter has found the following quotation, which demonstrates that A. R. did not take immersion for granted. (p. 119). Dr. Whitsitt here copies Dexter, mistake and all, and without any apparent effort to verify the passage. There is no such quotation in "the second part" of A. R.’s book. This so-called quotation is found in the first part. This goes to show that Drs. Dexter and Whitsitt are not accurate, and that they cannot be depended upon. But as a matter of fact words have been placed in this quotation which change the meaning of the author. Dr. Whitsitt’s version, 1896: If any shall thinke it strange and unlikely that all the godliest Divines and best churches should be thus deceived on this point of baptisme for so many yeares together [i. e., as never before to know that true baptism is dipping and dipping alone true baptism); let them consider that all Cristendome (except here and there one, or some few, Or no considerable number) was swallowed up in grosse Popery for many hundred yeares before Luther’s time, which was not until about 100 yeares agone. (Dexter, True Story, p. 49). A. R.’s Words, 1642: And if any shall think it strange and unlikely that all the godliest Divines and best churches should be thus deceived on this point of baptism for so many yeares together, let him consider that all Christendome (except here and there one, or some few, or no considerable number) was swallowed up in grosse Popery for many hundred yeares before Luther’s time, which was not until about 100 yeares agone. You will notice that the words have been added: ["i. e., as never before to know that true baptism is dipping and dipping alone true baptism."] There is not a word about dipping in this quotation from A. R. nor for pages near it. The author has been made to say things he did not say. A. R. is singularly clear on dipping, but he did not have dipping under discussion at this time. This is manufactured testimony. A. R. met with a very bitter opponent by the name of William Cooke; Although he called his book a "Learned and Full Answer to a Treatise Intitled; the Vanity of ChiIdish Baptisme" it is very certain he knew little of the Baptists and that he was a very bitter enemy, I give in full his third and fourth reasons against dipping as practiced by the Baptists: "Thirdly, this dousing over head, and under water that A. R. pleads for, as essential to baptisme, seems directly against the Sixth Commandment, and exposeth the person baptized to the danger of death. For first, suppose the party be fit for baptism (as they account) in the sharpe Winter as now beleeving, professing, &c. He must immediately be taken to the river (as his tenet seems to hold) and there plunged in over head and eares, though he came forth covered with yce. But if he escaped perishing with cold; how can he escape being choaked and stiffled with the water, to signifie his buriall: and, thirdly, be taken up, as this Disputer seems to reason? But whatsoever be the danger of freezing, or suffocation; it seems this he holds the onely baptisme, and must not therefore be swerved from." Then follows the fourth reason which Dr. Whitsitt partly quotes; but he omits matters which are necessary to a complete understanding of this fourth reason. I will place side by side the original and Dr. Whitsitt’s version. William Cooke’s words, 1644 : Fourthly, will not this their new manner of dipping be found also against the Seventh Commandment in the Decalogue? For I would know with these new. dippers, whether the parties to be dowsed and dipped, may be baptized in a garment or no? If they may, then happily the garment may keep, the water from some part of the body, and then they are not rightly baptized; for the whole man, say they, must be dipped. Againe, I would aske what warrant they have for dipping, or baptizing garments, more than the Papists have for baptizing Bells? Therefore belike the parties must be naked, and multitudes present as at John’s baptisme, and the parties men and women of ripe yeares, as being able to make confession of their faith and repentance: yet though they both sinne against the Sixth Commandment, indangering life, and against all common honestie and civilitie, and Christian modestie required in the Seventh Commandment, they must have this way observed, because they fancie it the onely baptisme. Shall we thinke this way the baptisme of John, Christ and his Apostles?" (Pp. 21, 292). Dr. Whitsitt’s version, 1896: Fourthly, will not this their manner of dipping be found also against the Seventh Commandment in the Decalogue? For I would know with these new dippers whether the parties to be dowsed and dipped may be baptized in a garment or no? If they may then happily the garment may keep the water from some part of the body, and then they are not rightly baptized; for the whole man, say they, must be dipped. Againe, I would aske what warrant they have for dipping or baptizing garments, more than the Paptists have for baptizing Bells? Therefore belike the parties must be naked and multitudes present as at John’s baptisme, and the parties men and women of ripe yeares, as being able to make a confession of their faith and repentance,"etc. (Pp. 21, 22). And this is the witness? An enemy, a man who must sustain his position by slander, and manifestly betrays ignorance. If his information had been equal to his knowledge his testimony would have been conclusive. Any one would know that these slanderous statements are justified by no facts. And even this witness does not sustain Dr. Whitsitt. He says nothing about 1641, and while he calls dipping new he likewise makes the assertion that the Scriptures teach sprinkling. This is the only date he mentions. Does he mean that dipping is "new," since it was not taught in the Scriptures? And then dipping might have been "new" to him, and with his knowledge of the Baptists it may have been practiced among them for a long time. He manifestly was ignorant of their rites and ceremonies. The Baptists in 1641 had a resolute and violent opponent in the person of Daniel Featley. He was born in 1582, and died in 1645. He was long the determined opponent of the Baptists. In 1642 he held a discussion with four Baptists in Southwark. His account of the discussion is to be found in "The Dippers Dipt; or, the Anabaptists Duckt and Plunged Over Head and Ears at a Disputation at Southwark." I have examined the first three and the sixth editions of this work. He was so bitter that he declared: "I could hardly dip my pen in any thing but gall." He nowhere intimates that the Baptists or dipping were novelties. In the Epistle Dedicatory, Featly says: "Now, of all Hereticks and Schismaticks, the Anabaptist in three regards ought to bee most carefully looked ’ into, and severely punished, if not utterly extermmated and banished out of the Church and Kingdom." His reasons are as follows: "First. In regard of their affinity with many other damnable Heretiques, both Ancient and Later, for they are allyed unto, and may claim kindred with." And then he gives a catalogue of all manner of heretics: "Secondly. In regard of their audacious attempts upon Church and State, and their insolent acts committed in the face of the Sun, and in the eye of the high Court of Parliament." Under this second heading Featley says: "They preach, and print, and practise their Hereticall impieties openly, and hold their Conventicles weekly in our chief Cities, and Suburbs thereof, and there prophesie by turnes; and (that I may use the phrase of Tertullian) aedificantur in ruinam, they build one another in the faith of their Sect, to the ruine of their souls; they flock in great multitudes to their Jordans, and both Sexes enter into the River, and are dipt after their manner, with a kind of spell containing the head of their erroneous Tenets, and their eugageing themselves in their Scismaticall Covenants, and (if I may so speake) combination of separation. And as they defile our Rivers with their impure washings, and our Pulpits with their false Prophecies, and Phanaticall Enthusiasmes, so the Presses sweat and groane under the load of their blasphemies. For they print not only Anabaptisme, from whence they take their name; but many other most damnable doctrines, tending to carnall liberty, Familisme, and a medley and hodge-podge of all Religions. "Thirdly. In regard to the peculiar malignity this heresie hath to magistracy," etc. He then proceeds to say that "with these Hereticks I enter into Lists in the ensuing Tractate." He then proceeds to tell us that he has known these "new upstart sectaries" for twenty years near his own home. His words are: "As Solinus writeth, that in Sardinia where there is a venemous serpent called Solifuga, (whose biting is present death) there is also at hand a fountain, in which they who wash themselves after they are bit, are presently, cured. This venemous serpent (vere Solifuga) flying from, and shunning the light of Gods Word, is the Anabaptist, who in these later times first shewed his shining head and speckled skin, and thrust out his sting near the place of my residence for more than twenty yeers." Here we have the explicit testimony of Featley that the Baptists were dippers as far back as 1620. Prof. Vedder very truthfully says: "These words of Dr. Featley are specially significant. He professes to speak of Baptists from personal knowlege, and though he was bitterly prejudiced, there is no reason why he should exaggerate in such a particular. Since he wrote in 1644, his ’twenty years,’ however carelessly he used the phrase, evidently carry the date of immersion far back of 1641." There is also a conclusive passage in The Preface to the Reader. By leaving off some sentences Dr. Whitsitt makes Featley give a date to the introduction of immersion in England which Featley does not give. Featley begins with the Anabaptists in Germany in the time of Stock; that he was a blockhead and kindled a fire out of the chips from this block, that this fire was in England in the time of Elizabeth and other sovereigns, and that lately it has burned very brightly. This is a very different thing from what Dr. Whitsitt makes Featley say. I give the two versions in parallel columns. Featley’s words, 1644: Of whom we may say, as Irenaeus sometime spake of the Heretick Ebon, the Father of the Ebonites, his name in the Hebrew signifyeth silly, or simple, and such God wat was he: So we may say, the name of the father of the Anabaptists signifieth in English a senselesse piece of wood or block and a very blockhead was he: Yet out of this block were cut those chips that kindled such a fire in Germany, Halsatia, and Suevia that could not be fully quenched, no not with the bloud of 150,000. of them killed in war, or put to death in severall places by Magistrates. This fire in the reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James and our gracious Sovereign, till now, was covered in England under the ashes; or if it brake out at any time, by the care of the Ecclesiasticall and Civil Maglistrate, it was soon put out. But of late since the unhappy distractions which our sins have brought upon us, the Temporall Sword being other ways employed, and the Spirituall locked up fast in the scabberd, this sect, amon others, hath so far Presumed upon the Patience of the State that it hath held weekly Conventicles, re-bapitized hundreds of men and women together in the twilight in Rivilets, and some arms of the Thames and elsewhere, dipping them over head and ears. It hath printed divers pamphlets in defense of their heresie, yea and challenged some of our Preachers to disputation. Now although my bent hath been hitherto against the most dangerous enemy of our Church and State, the Jesuit, to extinguish such balls of wildfire as they have cast in the bosome of our Church, yet seeing this strange fire kindled in the neighbouring parishes, and many Nadabs and Abihu’s offering it on God’s Altar, l thought it my duty to cast the waters of Siloam upon it to extinguish it. Dr. Whitsitt’s version, 1896: But of late, he says, since the unhappy distractions which our sins have brought upon us, the Temporall Sword being, other ways employed and the Spirituall locked up fast in the Scabbard, this sect among others hath so far presumed upon the patience of the State that it hath held weekly Conventicles rebaptized hundreds of men and women together in the twilight, in Rivelets and some arms of the Thames and Elsewhere, dipping them over head and ears. There is still another proof from Featley that the Baptists dipped and that dipping was the practice of the Anabaptists on the Continent and in England from the time of Henry VIII. Featley was answering a tract, which we quote in another place, written by A. R. The title of this book was the Vanity of Childrens Baptisme, in which the author declares dipping to be the only act of baptism. Featley does not deny that this was the way the Anabaptists performed this act nor does he say that it was a new thing, but rather affirms what the author says and goes on to declare that the Anabaptists always dipped. You will remember that A. R. wrote in the year 1642, and here is the answer that Featley makes to this English Baptist: "At Zurick after many disputations between Zuinglius and the Anabaptists, the Senate made an Act, that if any presumed to rebaptize those that were baptized before, they should be drowned. At Vienna many Anabaptists were so tyed together in chains, that one drew the other after him into the river, wherein they were all suffocated. (Vide Supra, p. 61). "Here you may see the hand of God in punishing these sectaries some way answerable to their sin according to the observation of the wise man (Gastius, p. 18), quo quis peccat eo puniatur, they who drew others into the whirl-pool of errour, by constraint draw one another into the river to be drowned; and they who prophaned baptisme by a second dipping, rue it by a third immersion. But the punishment of these Catabaptists we leave to them that have the Legislative power in their hands, who though by present connivence they may seem to give them line: yet, no doubt, it is that they more entangle themselves and more easily bee caught. For my part, I seek not the confusion of their persons, but the confusion of their errours, two whereof A. R. undertaketh strenuously to defend." (P. 73). The two "errours" which A. R. "strenuously defended" were immersion and believers’ baptism. Featley declares that these were the common errors of the Anabaptists in England and elsewhere. Featley in another place, after quoting the law as given above, says: "Let the punishment bear upon it the print of the sin: for as these sectaries drew one another into their errors, so also into the gulfe; and as they drowned men spiritually by re-baptizing, and so prophaning the holy sacrament, so also they were drowned corporally. In the year of our Lord, 1539, two Anabaptists were burned beyond Southwark, in Newington; and a little before them, five Dutch Anabaptists were burned in Smithfield." (P. 57). Here is a direct admission that the Anabaptists of England, as early as 1539, were dippers. Dr. Featley quotes the article on dipping, which is given elsewhere, from the Confession of 1644 and then says: "This Article is wholly sowred with the new leaven of Anabaptisme: I say new leaven, for it cannot be proved that any of the antient Anabaptists maintained any such position, there being three wayes of baptizing, either by dipping, or washing, or sprinkling, to which the Scriptures alludeth in sundry places: the Sacrament is rightly administered by any of the three; and whatsoever is here alleged for dipping, we approve of, so farre as it excludeth not the other two." (P. 182). Dr. Whitsitt quotes this passage with evident delight. Unhappily for Dr. Whitsitt, and "happily for us," the passage is perfectly clear when we consult Featley, and know exactly what he did say. It is very evident from this passage that there were two classes of Anabaptists, the "antient" and the "new." Featley divided the Anabaptists into three classes, two ancient and one "new." He says: "The first broached their Doctrine about the year 250, which was this: That all those who had been baptized by Novatus, or any other hereticks, ought to be rebaptized by the orthodox Pastors of the Church. "The second broached theirs about the year 380, which was this: That none were rightly baplized but those that held with Donatus, and consequently, that all others who had received Baptisme in the Catholic Church, by any other save those of his party, ought to be rebaptized. "The third broached theirs in the year 1525, which was this: That Baptisme ought to be administered by none, but such as can give a good account of their Faith; and in case any have been baptized in their Infancy, that they ought to be rebaptized after they come to years of discression, before they are to be admitted to the Church of Christ." (P. 28). Now it is clear that Featley regards the "new as dating back to 1525, or 126 years before 1641. And in giving an account of the tenets of these Anabaptists since the Reformation he says the first tenet, which is "peculiar to their sect," is "that none are rightly baptized but those who are dipped."(P. 36). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 70: 02.10. OTHER WITNESSES ======================================================================== CHAPTER X. OTHER WITNESSES. In 1644 an anonymous author wrote a tract called the Loyall Convert. Of this tract Dr. Whitsitt says: The first of these belongs to the year 1644 and is entitled "The New Distemper,’ written by the author of the "Loyal Convert." Dr. Dexter, who appears to be the only person that has examined this pamphlet, reports that the whole book takes its name as an attack upon the ’prophanations’ of these dippers." ("True Story," page 50, with note). Dipping being for the author a "new distemper,’ it is manifest that he did not take it for granted, but was perfectly aware of the change from pouring or sprinkling to immersion, which took place in the year 1641. (Pp. 134, 135). I did not have this tract in hand, so I wrote to the British Museum in regard to it. The reply was: "There is nothing in this tract, either on dipping or infant baptism or rebaptism. It is simply on the subject of church government and reforming the Liturgie." 1. Knutton wrote a book, 1644, against the Baptists called Seven Qvestions abovt the Controversie betweene the Chvrch of England and the Separatists and Anabaptists. Dr. Whitsitt thus refers to him: "In that place (p. 23) Mr. Knutton had said, ’this opinion [of rebaptizing by dipping] being but new and upstart, there is good reason they should disclaim it and be humbled for it.’ (Dexter, True Story, p. 50). No finer opportunity was ever presented to deny a charge with indignation if it had been untrue." (P. 123). Knutton said no such thing. Here are his words in answer to query 5.: "Whether it is lawful to be baptized or no? When they heard this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid his hands upon them the Holy Ghost came on them and they spake with tongues and prophesied. So that there is no ground for rebaptization. Wherefore Separatist does very ill opposing our baptizing of infants, as, proved before Lydia with all her household were baptized; likewise we find no negative precept against paedobaptism. Then such as oppose it do ill; for they follow those pestilent heretics called Anabaptists in Germany, who sprang up there (when the light of the gospel began to shine) not very long since, being but new and upstart, there is good reason they should disclaim it and be humbled for it." There is not a word in regard to dipping in this quotation. And the words "new and upstart" have reference to "Luther’s time," and not to 1641. Ephraim Pagett, 1645, is Dr. Whitsitt’s next witness. He declares there were fourteen kinds of Anabaptists, and following his method of enumeration he could have numbered a thousand kinds just as well. John Stoughton in his Ecclesiastical History of England, From the opening of the Long Parliament to the death of Oliver Cromwell, says of Pagett: "Certain parties under the Commonwealth had the habit, and the fashion still exists, of exagger-ating the number of religious denominations. Ephraim Pagitt in his ’Heresiography,’ published in 1654, gives a list of between forty and fifty the historical worth of which enumeration we may estimate, when we observe that he distinguishes between Anabaptists and plunged Anabaptists, between Separatists and Semi-Separatists, between Brownists and Barrowists and then proceeds to specify three orders of Familists." (P. 365). It is very certain that Stoughton has no very high regard for the authority of "Old Ephraim," as Pagett was contemptuously called. Masson’s description of "Old Father Ephraim" is rich. He says: "A well-known personage in London, of humbler pretensions than Featley was a certain Ephraim Pagett (or Pagit), commonly called ’Old Father Ephraim,’ who had been parson of the church of St. Edmund, in Lombard Street, since 1601, and might therefore have seen and been seen by Shakespeare. Besides other trifles, he had published in 1635 a book called ’Christianographia,’ or a descriptive enumeration of the various sorts of Christians in the world out of the pale of the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps because he had thus acquired a fondness for the statistics of religious denominations, it occurred to him to write, by way of sequel, a ’Heresiography; or a Description of the Heretics and Sectaries of these later times.’ It was published in 1645, soon after Featley’s book, from which it borrows hints and phrases. There is an Epistle Dedicatory to the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city of London very similar in its syntax and punctuation, and containing this touching appeal: ’I have lived among you almost a jubilee, and seen your great care and provision to keep the city free from infection, in the shutting up of the sick and in carrying them to your pest houses, in setting warders to keep the whole from the sick, in making of fires and in perfuming the streets, in resorting to your churches, in pouring out your prayers to Almighty God, with fasting and alms, to be propitious to you. The plague of heresy is greater, and you are now in more danger than when you buried five thousand a week.’ Then after an epistle to the reader, signed ’Old Ephraim Pagit,’ there follows the body of the treatise in about 160 pages. The Anabaptists are taken first and occupy 55 pages; but a great many other sects are subsequently described, some in a few pages, some in a single paragraph. There is an engraved title page to the volume, containing small caricatures of six of the chief sort of sectaries, Anabaptism being represented by one plump, naked fellow dipping another, much plumper, who is reluctantly stooping down on all-fours. The book, like Featley’s, seems to have sold rapidly. In the third edition, published in 1646, there is a postscript in which the poor old man tells us that it had cost him much trouble. The Sectaries among his own parishioners had quarreled with him on account of it, and refused to pay him his tithes; nay, as he walked in the streets he was hooted at and reviled, and somebody had actually affirmed ’Doctor Featley’s devil to be transmitted into Old Ephraim Paqet.’ This seems to have cut him to the quick, though he avows his sense of inferiority in learning to the great Doctor. In short, we can see Father Ephraim as a good old silly body, of whom people make fun." (Life of John Milton, Vol. III., p. 139). This picture is not overdrawn. My edition, 1647, in the Postscript, tells plainly that the "Sectaries," even of his own congregation, would not pay tithes because, they said, he had slandered them. Here is a book confessedly repudiated by the Anabaptists, and yet this very book is one of Dr. Whitsitt’s principal testimonies. Surely we are not to believe the enemies of the Anabaptists when they directly say that they are slandered. Certainly we would not expect this from a Baptist! Dr. Whitsitt makes this quotation under Pagett: Yea at this day they have a new crochet come into their heads, that all that have not been plunged nor dipt under water, are not truly baptized, and these also they rebaptize: And this their error ariseth from ignorance of the Greek word Baptize, which signifieth no more then washing or ablution, as Hesychus, Stephanus, Scapulae, Budeus, great masters of the Greek tongue, make good by many instances and allegations out of many authors. (P. 30). But this quotation, as it stands, out of its connection, does not properly reflect the mind of Pagett. He had been discussing fourteen kinds of Anabaptists, and declared they were constantly changing their minds. He now comes to the Anabaptists who originated in the times of Luther, and these Anabaptists had taken up this "new crotchet." He then proceeded to argue that sprinkling was permitted in the Scriptures and sometimes it had been permitted in practice. But he declares that both dipping and sprinkling were allowed in his church. His words are: "And both are allowed by our church; and sprinkling hath been rather used among us, by reason of the coldness of our climate, and the tenderness of our infants." (P. 31). He emphatically declares that dipping was then in practice, and that it was not a new thing. The trouble with the Anabaptists is that they would not recognize sprinkling. That was the contention of Pagett. He mentions no date and says nothing about 1641. He contends that "true baptism to be as well by sprinkling as by dipping." (P. 31). But the Anabaptists did not think,: so, and so Pagett proceeds to say: Of their manner of rebaptizing, and other rites. They flock in great multitudes to their Jordans, and both Sexes enter into the River and are dipt after their manner with a kind of spell, containing the heads of their erroneous Tenets, and their ingaging themselves schismaticall Covenants and combination of separation. In the Thames and Rivers, the Baptizer and the party baptized goe both into the Rivers, and the parties to be baptized are dipt or plunged under water." (Pp. 32, 33). The careful reader will at once recognize these as the words of Dr. Featley. Such was Ephraim Pagett. Dr. Whitsitt introduces as a witness Robert Baillie, 1646, a violently prejudiced Scotchman. He had some opportunities for observation, and had he been less prejudiced and more honest his testimony would have some weight. He says in the margin: "The pressing of dipping and the exploding of sprinkling is but an yesterday conceit of the English Anabaptists." And his statement in the body of the book is: Among the new inventions of the late Anabaptists, there is none which with greater animosity they set on foot, then the necessity of dipping over head and cars, then the nullity of affusion and sprinkling in the administration of baptisme. Among the old Anabaptists, or those over the sea to this day so farre as I can learn, by their writs or any relation that yet has come to my ears, the question of dipping and sprinkling came never upon the table. As I take it, they dip none, but all whom they baptize they sprinkle in the same manner as is our custome. The question about the necessity of dipping seems to be taken up only the other year by the Anabaptists in England, as a point which alone they conceive is able to carry their desire of exterminating infant baptisme; for they know that parents upon no consideration will be content to hazard the life of their tender infants by plunging them over headand ears in a cold river. Let us, therefore, consider if this sparkle of new light have any derivation from the lamp of the Sanctuary, or the Sun of righteousnesse, if it be according to Scripturall truth or any good reason." (Anabaptism, the True Fountaine of Independency, &c., p. 163. London, 1646). Upon these words Dr. Whitsitt puts forward this argument: Baillie in the above passage expressly declares that dipping was "a new invention of the late Anabaptists," "an yesterday conceit of the English Anabaptists,’ "taken up onely the other year," ’a sparkle of new light." He does not indicate the precise year in which it was introduced, but these expressions agree to a nicety with the position that this event took place only about five years before he published his book. Every word of his testimony confirms the deliverance of the Jessey Church Records to the effect that prior to the year 1640 "none had so practiced in England to professed believers," while he in the year 1641 the change from pouring and sprinkling to immersion was duly inaugurated. But Baillie’s testimony and Dr. Whitsitt’s claims are open to several very serious drawbacks, viz.: 1. Baillie nowhere says the Baptists began dipping in 1641. It might have been an hundred years before this, for the word "new," as we have seen, is a very flexible one on the pen of this class of controversialists. 2. Baillie is very guarded in his language. He does not speak positively, for he only says that seems to be taken up," "so far as I can learn," that has come to my ears," "as I take it," etc. He does not say that dipping is a new thing, but the pressing of dipping and the exploding of sprinkling is a yesterday conceit. Yet it is upon these evasive statements that Dr. Whitsitt founds one of his principal arguments. 3. Baillie distinctly holds and maintains with the same process of guarded words that infant sprinkling is taught in the Word of God. Indeed, this very passage says that dipping is not recent "but a sparkle of new light," because it is not Scriptural. Baillie says: Consider farther, that we doe not oppose the lawfulnesse of dipping in some cases, but the necessity of it in all cases: Neither do they impugn the expediency of sprinkling in some cases, but the lawfulnesse, of it in any case. So both their doctrine and practice makes the state of the question to be this; Whether in Baptisme it be necessary to put the whole baptized person over head and ears in the water or if it be lawfull and sufficient, at least in some cases, to poure o r sprinkle the water upon the head of the person baptized? For the lawfulnesse of the sprinkling and against the necessity of dipping. I reason thus. First, that action which the Spirit of God in divers Scriptures expresses formally by the name of baptisme is lawfull and expedient to be used in baptism. But sprinkling and pouring out of water upon the party baptized without any dipping is by the Spirit of God in divers Scriptures formally expressed by the name of baptisme." (P. 164). 4. Baillie on this very point of dipping among the Anabaptists contradicts himself. Baillie here says that it is "a yesterday conceit," and that it is the "new invention of the late Anabaptists." But elsewhere in this book he declares that the Anabaptists practiced dipping. In Chapter I. he says: "Who are pleased to read the late little accusate and learned treatise of Clopenburgh may perceive that the Mennonist dippers do oppose the truth of Christ’s human nature." Here is a direct refutation, from Dr. Whitsitt’s principal witness, of the position that he has taken that Mennonites practiced sprinkling. In Chapter II. Baillie says: "For the stricter ingagement of the Saints and godly party their adherents, and for the clearer distinction of them from the prophane multitude of all other congregations they thought meet to put upon them the mark and character of a new Baptisme, making them renounce their old as null, because received in their infancy, and in a false church. At the beginning this rebaptization was but a secondary and less principall doctrine among them, for Muncer himself was never rebaptized, neither in his own person did he re-baptize any, yet, thereafter it became a more essential note of a member of their church, and the crying down of infants baptism came to be a most principall and distinctive doctrine of all in their way. Unto their new gathered churches of rebaptized and dipped saints they did ascribe very ample privileges," etc. (P. 32). In Chapter IV. Baillie says of the Anabaptists: "Sixthly, they esteem sprinkling no baptism at all; they will have the whole body to be plunged over head and ears in the water; this circumstance of plunging they account so necessary and essential to baptism, that the change thereof into sprinkling makes the baptism to be null." (P. 91). And in Chapter V. he says: "Although many of the Tenets mentioned in the former chapter may be dissembled and denied by divers of this sect, yet all of them will acknowledge as their own, whatever almost is practiced either by the Independents or Brownists, and besides, two Tenets more, Antipedobaptism and Dipping. All who carry the name of Anabaptisme, though, through ignorance, they know not; or through better instruction they dissent from many positions of their brethren, yet will avowedly, and oft with passion, professe their mind against the sprinkling of infants, pedorantisme, to all of them I ever heard of is an abomination." (Page 137) Here in the same book, by the same author, are found a passage which declared the Anabaptists practiced sprinkling and four which say they practiced dipping. I am not responsible for this contradiction. Yet this is Dr. Whitsitt’s witness. 5. We can prove by the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1644 that Baillie was guilty of slander. That Confession declared: "The word baptizo signifies to dip or plunge (yet so as convenient garments be both upon the Administrator and subject, with all modesty)." This same declaration was made by other Baptists. Mr. Richardson, a very able Baptist, whom Baillie quotes in his book, is pleased to say of nude baptism, as charged by Dr. Featley: "But saith the Doctor, they goe men and women together stark naked into their Jordans (Pp. 36 and 203). Wee answer, wee abhor it, and deny that ever any of us did so, and challenge him to prove it, against us, if he can; and if he cannot, it is fit, he should be known for a slanderer, if he deserve no punishment for it." (Some Brief Considerations, p. 11. London, Feby. 25, 1645). In the face of these denials Baillie affirms: "As for chastity, must it not be a great scandall, in the face of all the Congregation where alone, Sacraments can be duly celebrated, for men and women to stand up naked, as they were born; and naked men to go into the water with naked women, holding them in their arms till they have plunged them into the water? " (Ch. VII). Here Baillie manifestly bore false witness against the Anabaptists. If we do not believe Baillie in this matter, why should we in the other? 6. Baillie attacked the motives of the Anabaptists, and called them liars. In the margin of the chapter from which Dr. Whitsitt takes his quotation are these words: "The lying spirit of Anabaptisme." (Page 163). If you will notice the extract which Dr. Whitsitt gives, you will see that Baillie attacks the motives of the Anabaptists. He says: "The question about the necessity of dipping seems to be taken up only the other year by the Anabaptists in England, as a point which alone, as they conceive, is able to carry their desire of exterminating infant baptism; for they know that parents, upon no consideration, will be content to hazard the life of their tender infants by plunging them over head and ears in a cold river." How did Baillie know, that the Anabaptists were not honest in the belief that they were following the Scriptures, and that their only motive in dipping was to "exterminate infant baptism? " Baillie goes further, and charges the Baptists with hypocrisy, and that they did not believe the Confession of 1644, and that it was only put forth to mislead. His words are: "Their ways as yet are not well known; but a little time it seems will discover them, for their singular zeal to propagate their way will not permit them long to lurk; only the Confession of faith, which the other year seven of their Congregations did put forth, and late again in a second corrected Edition, have set out with a bold preface to both the Houses, of Parl.; may no more be taken for the measure of this faith, then that Confession, which the Elder brethren in Holland did not long ago in the name of all their company." Surely no one will endorse this prejudiced onslaught and slander of Baillie’s; and yet this is the man whom we are asked to follow. 7. Baillie was the bitter enemy of the Anabaptists and desired their destruction. The passages which I have taken from his writings to this effect are so numerous that I cannot give them all. A few selections must suffice. He says: "We have ended our directorie for baptism. Thomas Goodwin one day was exceedinglie confounded. He, has undertaken a publicke lecture against the Anabaptists; it was said, under pretence of refuting them, he betrayed our cause to them; that if the Corinthians, our chief ground for the baptisme of infants, ’Your children are holy,’ he expounded of reall holiness, and preached down our ordinarie and necessare distinction of reall and foederall holiness. Being passed hereupon he could no wayes cleare himselfe, and no man took his part. God permits these gracious men to be many wayes unhappie instruments; as yet their pride continues; but we are hopefull the Parliament will not own their way so much as to tolerate it, if once they found themselves masters. For the time they are loath to cast them off, and to put their partie, lest they desert them." (The Letters and journals of Robert Baillie. 1637-1662, Vol. II., p. 218). "Our next worke, to give our advyce what to doe for the suppressing of the Anabaptists, Antinomians, and other sectaries. This will be a hard work; yet so much as concerns us will be quicklie dispatched, I hope in one sessioheir divisions among themselves, are so many that to set them down distinctly and in good order, is a task which I dare not undertake; much less can I give assurance what is common to them all, and what proper to their several sects.’ (P. 29). It will help to expose the political ground of his hostility by his nationality, thus: ’This immoderate love of licentiousness * * * puts them upon a high degree of hatred and indignation against the Solemn League and Covenant, against the Scottish nation whence it came; as two great impediments to their quiet enjoying of that self-destroying and God-provoking liberty which, so passionately, they lust after. Though for fear and other base respects, many of them have swallowed down the Covenant in such equivocal senses as are evidently contrary both to the express words and known intentions of the States which enjoin it; yet since the time their strength and hopes are increased, these of them who pretend to ingenuity and courage do not only with bitterness reject it, but it is now become the object of their public invectives as the most unhappy plague that did ever come to England. (P. 57).’" (Historical Memorials, Vol. III., p. 223). Thus Hanbury continues at some length. When we consider this mixture of political hatred and religious intolerance I do not think from the writings of Robert Baillie that we would be justified in reaching the conclusion that dipping was an "invention" among the Baptists about 1641. Another authority quoted by Dr. Whitsitt is J. Saltmarsh. He was a Quaker, and opposed to all baptism. Dr. Whitsitt says: Dr. Dexter also brings forward the performance of J. SaItmarsh, entitled, "The Smoke in the Temple, Wherein is a Design for Peace and Reconciliation of Believers of the several Opinions of these Times about Ordinances, to a Forbearance each other in Love, and Meeknesse, and Humility," etc. London, 1645. Mr. Saltmarsh here pp. 15,16, speaks of "the dipping them in the water . . . . as the new baptism." (True Story, p. 50), showing that he was entirely aware of the recent change, from pouring and sprinkling, to immersion. (Page 135). I am amazed at this quotation. I give parallel columns: John Saltmarsh, 1646: 5. That the form by which they baptize, viz.: I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is a form of man’s devising—a tradition of man, a new consequence drawn from supposition and probability—and not a form left by Christ, to say over them at the dipping them in the water: If Christ had said, when you baptize them, say this over them, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and unless Jesus Christ had left this form thus made up to their hands, they practice a thing made up by them selves, and drawn or forced out of Jesus Christ’s words, in Matt. 28,18. (Pp. 15,16). Dr. Whitsitt’s version, 1896: "the dipping them in the water, . . . as the new baptism." One-half ofnd. (P. 57).’" (Historical Memorials, Vol. III., p. 223). Thus Hanbury continues at some length. When we consider this mixture of political hatred and religious intolerance I do not think from the writings of Robert Baillie that we would be justified in reaching the conclusion that dipping was an "invention" among the Baptists about 1641. Another authority quoted by Dr. Whitsitt is J. Saltmarsh. He was a Quaker, and opposed to all baptism. Dr. Whitsitt says: Dr. Dexter also brings forward the performance of J. SaItmarsh, entitled, "The Smoke in the Temple, Wherein is a Design for Peace and Reconciliation of Believers of the several Opinions of these Times about Ordinances, to a Forbearance each other in Love, and Meeknesse, and Humility," etc. London, 1645. Mr. Saltmarsh here pp. 15,16, speaks of "the dipping them in the water . . . . as the new baptism." (True Story, p. 50), showing that he was entirely aware of the recent change, from pouring and sprinkling, to immersion. (Page 135). I am amazed at this quotation. I give parallel columns: John Saltmarsh, 1646: 5. That the form by which they baptize, viz.: I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is a form of man’s devising—a tradition of man, a new consequence drawn from supposition and probability—and not a form left by Christ, to say over them at the dipping them in the water: If Christ had said, when you baptize them, say this over them, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and unless Jesus Christ had left this form thus made up to their hands, they practice a thing made up by them selves, and drawn or forced out of Jesus Christ’s words, in Matt. 28,18. (Pp. 15,16). Dr. Whitsitt’s version, 1896: "the dipping them in the water, . . . as the new baptism." One-half of the sentence used by Dr. Whitsitt from Saltmarsh I was able to find; but I read diligently for the phrase, "as the new baptism." If it is in Saltmarsh’s book, it is certainly nowhere near the other words, "the dipping them in the water." This is marvelous in my eyes. I have been somewhat more successful with the next authority of Dr. Whitsitt, viz.: J. Parnell, 1655. I parallel Dr. Whitsitt’s quotation with the author’s words: The words of J. Parnell, 1655: Now within these late yeers the Light of Christ, beginning to stir peoples hearts, so that they come to see themselves in much darkness and ignorance of these things which they read of in the scripture, and also the corrupted of the Priests and Teachers, and what at Reprobates they were concerning the faith, and that they profited not the people at all, but they had heard them so long, and still minds not being directed to the light, which showed them this, and should have led them out of this condition, upon which they should have waited for direction to have found the way of truth, but they run without to the Letter in their own wils and wisdome, and so would find out a way by their own wisdome and imagination, and so went out to search the scripture, but with a wrong eye, giving their own meanings upon the scripture, and one cries this is my judgment, and thus they are confounded and divided into their several judgments and opinions, yet all still in one life and one nature, but onely confounded and divided in their judgments of what the Prophets meant, and Christ meant, and which the Apostles meant, but it is as a Book sealed, both to the learned and the unlearned, and none is found worthy to open the seals, who is the light wherein lies the ministrie; as this is the cause why they whose mindes are from the light, are so divided and scattered in their judgments and opinions, and one sets up a forme in his imagination, and another sets up a forme in his imagination and one runs abroad into the world with his wisdome, and he will go preach up his form and judgment to be the truth, and another he will cry down that form for delusion, and preach up his form for a truth, and so many deceivers and false spirits, are entered into the world, and one cries, lo here is Christ if you can believe and be baptized you shall be saved; so they that can say that is the way, and that they believe Christ dyed for them, then they must be dipped in the water, and that they call baptizing of them, and then they are of their church, and they call themselves Saints, though they are still in the old nature. (Pp. 16, 17). Dr. Whitsitt’s version, 1896: "Now within these late yeares . . . . . . they (the Anabaptists) say . . . . . they must be dipped in the water, and that they call baptizing." (True Story, p. 51). From the above it will appear that I have been able to find the first phrase now within these late yeers," and the last phrase they must be dipped in the water, and that they call baptizing," but the middle phrase "they (the Anabaptists) say" does not appear. Did anyone ever see such garbling? And when we really find what the author did say there is nothing about 1641 or dipping being a new thing. This garbling was done by Dr. Dexter from whom Dr. Whitsitt took the quotation, without ever reading the original. These are but samples of many other cases that could be cited. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 71: 02.11. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED ======================================================================== CHAPTER XI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. The challenge has been put forth to name three individual believers who were dipped before 1641. I accept the challenge and answer it in three ways: 1. There existed in England whole churches of baptized believers before 1641. I refer to another chapter for the existence and number of Baptist churches in England before 1641. In this connection I mention the names of only three churches. Goadby, who has written an able Baptist history, and the facts of which, so far as I know, have never been disputed, says: "But the three churches we have mentioned—Hill Cliffe, Eythorne and Bocking—deservedly rank as the most ancient Baptist churches in England." (Goadby’s Bye-Paths in Baptist History, p. 28. London, 1871). In regard to the Hill Cliffe Church, Rev. D. 0. Davies, Rochdale, England, who attended the sessions of the Southern Baptist Convention, at Birmingham, gives an interesting account. He says: "The oldest Baptist church in the country is Hill Cliffe, in Cheshire, but on the borders of Lancashire. The old church was built in a secluded spot, far removed from public roads and enclosed by a thick wood, Tradition declares that the church is five hundred years old. A tombstone was recently discovered in the burial ground of the place, bearing date 1357. In digging the foundation to enlarge the old chapel, a large baptistery was discovered which was made of stone and well cemented. The baptistery must have belonged to a previous chapel. Oliver Cromwell worshipped at this church, and one of his officers occupied the pulpit. It is one of the pre historic churches, and a regular Baptist church." (Shackleford’s Compendium of Baptist History, P. 274. Louisville, 1892). Here are some of the statements that I take from Goadby in reference to this church: "We have reliable evidence that a Separatist, and probably a Baptist church, has existed for several centuries in a secluded spot of Cheshire, on the borders of Lancashire, about a mile and a half from Warrington. No spot could be better chosen for concealment than the site on which this ancient chapel stood. Removed from all public roads, enclosed by a dense wood, affording ready access into two counties, Hill Cliffe was admirably suited for the erection of a ’conventicula illicita,’ an illegal conventicle. The ancient chapel built on this spot was so constructed that the surprised worshippers had half a dozen secret ways of escaping from it, and long proved a meeting place suited to the varying fortunes of a hated and hunted people. Owing to the many changes inseparable from the eventful history of the church at Hill Cliffe, the earliest records have been lost. But two or three facts point to the very early existence of the community itself. In 1841 the then old chapel was enlarged and modernized; and in digging for the foundation, a large baptistery of stone, well cemented, was discovered. How long this had been covered up, and at what period it was erected, it is impossible to state; but as some of the tombstones in the graveyard adjoining the chapel were erected in the early part of the sixteenth century, there is some probability for the tradition that the chapel itself was built by the Lollards who held Baptist opinions. One of the dates on the tombstones is 1357, the time when Wickliffe was still a fellow at Merton College, Oxford; but the dates most numerous begin at the period when Europe had just been startled by Luther’s valiant onslaught upon the papacy. Many of these tombstones, and especially the oldest, as we can testify from a personal examination, look as clear and as fresh as if they were engraved only a century ago. * * * * Hill Cliffe is undoubtedly one of the oldest Baptist churches in England. * * * * The earliest deeds of the property have been irrecoverably lost, but the extant deeds, which go back considerably over two hundred years, described the property as being for the Anabaptists."’ (Goadby’s Bye Paths, pp. 21 23). These facts are also confirmed by Cramp. To show how deep seated is the conviction among English Baptists that this Church reaches into great antiquity I give an extract from The Baptist, London, June 5, 1896. The writer says: "One fact, however, and one of some importance, seems to stand out with sufficient clearness, viz.: that so far as England is concerned the Church at Hill Cliffe is the link—not, of course that there are no others, for these there are, as Mr. Compton’s article shows, but this is a material and tangible link of historic continuity between the Baptist Churches of the present and those of the Pre-Reformation period. Here, at any rate, we get away from the miserable and truculent negatives, ’Nonconformity’ and ’Dissent,’ and reach an altitude where our position is not weighed and measured by its relation to a ’Church’ which, however imposing politically and socially, is one to which we owe no kind of allegiance whatever, and with which we have nothing to do." I will now turn to the Church at Eythorne, Kent. If the reader will turn to a former chapter he will find much in regard to the Baptists in Kent. Without repeating these statements I shall relate some additional facts as given by Goadby. He says: "The Church at Eythorne, Kent, owes its origin to some Dutch Baptists, who settled in this country in the time of Henry the Eighth. They were, doubtless, tempted to make England their home by the brisk trade that sprang up between this country and Holland, soon after the marriage of Henry with Anne of Cleves (1540). * * * In the Calendar of State Papers (Domestic Series, 1547-1580), under the date of October 28th, 1552, we have this entry: ’Northumberland, to Sir William Cecill. Wishes the King would appoint Mr. Knox to the Bishopric of Rochester. He would be a whetstone to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a confounder of the Anabaptists lately sprung up in Kent.’ * * * One singular fact, perhaps without a parallel, in the history of this ancient General Baptist Church at Eythorne, deserves to be mentioned; the names of the pastors, from the close of the Sixteenth Century to the last quarter of the Seventeenth Century, were John Knott. The first John Knott became the pastor of Eythorne somewhere between 1590 and 1600, and the last John Knott removed to Chatham in 1780." (Bye Paths in Baptist History, pp. 23-26) Dr. Howard Osgood, the eminent Baptist scholar, makes this comment: "If we would make the first Baptist church to appear under Helwise, in 1614, then we must deny the historical evidence of the conventicles of Baptists in the previous century. If we make the church founded in London in 1633 the first Calvinistic Baptist Church in England, we assume that all the Baptists and Baptist churches of the sixteenth century were Arminian in their views, which has never been shown, and is contrary to all probability. Baptists were found in the north and west but principally in the east of England. Under the dreadful persecution of the Tudors, the churches knew little of each other, unless they were situated near together. We hear more of the Calvinistic church formed in 1633, because it was situated in London and performed an important work in the following years. Joan Bucher, who was a member of the Baptist church in Eythorne, Kent, burned by order of Henry VI., held this doctrine." (The Standard, 1875, Chicago). Goadby is equally confident of the history of the church at Bocking and Braintree, Essex. He says: "In Strype’s Ecclesiastical Memorials we find these words, under date 1550: ’Sectaries appeared now in Essex and Kent, sheltering themselves under the profession of the Gospel, of whom complaint was made to the Council. These were the first that made separation from the Church of England, having gathered congregations of their own.’ They were the first, that is, of which Strype had heard. The congregation in Essex was mentioned to be at Bocking; that at Kent was at Faversham, as I learnt from an old register. From whence I also collect that they held the opinions of the Anabaptists and the Pelagians; that there were contributions among them for the better maintaining of their congregations; that the members of the congregation in Kent went over with the congregation in Essex, to instruct and join with them; and that they had their meetings in Kent, and in divers places besides Faversham.’ In other words, the Kent churches at Eythorne, Faversham, Sandwich, Canterbury, perhaps, and other places, helped to build up, if they did not actually originate, the church at Bocking.’ "Bocking and Braintree are two parishes divided by the main road, and the whole is now known as Braintree. The ’complaints’ by whomsoever made, against the Baptists at Bocking, led to their being watched, and about sixty persons were in the house when the sheriff interrupted their assembly. They confessed to the Council that they had met to talk the Scriptures, and that they had not communed at the parish church for two years. Some were fined and set at liberty, others were imprisoned, and remained until Queen Mary came to the throne, when they were released, only to be taken into custody, and by and by to the stake. * * * "The Bocking Braintree church book, still in existence, carries back the authentic records of the church for more than two hundred years; but there is no question that the origin of the church itself dates back to the days of Edward the Sixth." (Bye Paths in Baptist History, pp. 26-28). Here is an answer that is sufficient, if we had no other. We present not three believers but three Baptist churches which had existed long before 1641. 2. I mention as three believers who were immersed before 1641, William Kiffin, Hanserd Knollys, and John Canne. William Kiffin seceded from the Independents in 1638. Of this Goadby says: Five years after the above date (1638), a further secession from the original church strengthened their hands. Among the seceders were William Kiffin and Thomas Wilson. Kiffin, to whose pen we are indebted for the account of the origin of the first Calvinistic Baptist church in England, thus speaks of the reasons which led him to join Mr. Spilsbury:—’I used all of my endeavours, by converse with such as were able, also by diligently searching the Scriptures, with earnest desires to God that I might be directed in a right way of worship; and, after some time, concluded that the safest way was to follow the footsteps of the flock, namely, that order laid down by Christ and his Apostles, and practiced by the primitive Christians in their time, which I found to be, after conversion they were baptized, added to the church, and continued in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and breaking of bread, and prayers."’ (Bye-Paths in Baptist History, p. 351). This Independent church to which Mr. Kiffin belonged was organized in 1616. Mr. Henry Jacob was its first pastor and Mr. John Lathrop was the second. In 1633, during the pastorate of Mr. Lathrop, there was a division on the subject of immersion and a Baptist church was organized under the leadership of Mr. Spilsbury. Lathrop in 1634 removed to America with part of his church, where he still had trouble with his church on the subject of immersion. Dean, who was a very able historian and editor of a number of the works of the Massachusetts Historical Society, says: "Controversy respecting the mode of baptism had been agitated in Mr. Lathrop’s church before he left England, and a part had separated from him and established the first Baptist (Calvinistic) church in England in 1633. Those that came seem not all to have been settled on this point, and they found others in Scituate ready to sympathize with them." It was to this church that Kiffin united. Indeed so greatly was Kiffin in favor of immersion that he soon left Spilsbury’s church because they occasionally admitted ministers to preach for them who had not been immersed. Crosby says: "He was first of an Independent congregation, and called to the ministry among them; was one of them who were concerned in the conferences held in the congregation of Mr. Henry Jessey; by which Mr. Jessey and the greatest part of the congregation became proselyted to the opinion of the Baptists. He joined himself to the church of Mr. John Spilsbury, but a difference arising about permitting persons to preach amongst them that had not been baptized by immersion, they parted by consent." (History of the Baptists, Vol. III., p. 3-4). All of this took place before 1641. Ivimey’s History of the Baptists, Vol. II., p. 297). This settles the fact Kiffin was baptized before 1641. I now refer to Hanserd Knollys. M’Clintock and Strong say: "A few years before (1635), though unknown to Williams, a Baptist preacher of England, Hanserd Knollys, had settled in New Hampshire and taken charge of a church in Dover; but he resigned in 1639 and returned to England." (Encyclop?ia Biblical Theology and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. I., p, 654). To confirm this statement we have contemporaneous evidence. Cotton Mather mentions a number of Baptists among the first planters of New England, and that some ministers of that persuasion came over He says of Hanserd Knollys: "Of them there were some godly Anabaptists; as namely, Mr. Hanserd Knollys (whom one of his adversaries called absurd Knowles), of Dover, who afterwards moved back to London, lately died there, a good man, in a good old age." (Magnalia Christi Americana, Vol. I., p. 243. Hartford, 1855). He wrote an autobiography of himself, which was edited and completed by William Kiffin. Knollys died September 19, 1691, and from the words of Kiffin it is probable that he became a Baptist as early as 1631. Kiffin’s words are: "The author of these ensuing experiences was that ancient and faithful servant of God, Mr. Hanserd Knollys, who departed this life in the ninety third year of his age, having been employed in the works and service of Christ, as a faithful minister, for above sixty years; in which time he labored without fainting under all the discouragement that attended him, being contented in all conditions, though never so poor in this world; under all persecutions and sufferings, so that he might therein serve his blessed Lord and Saviour. I have myself known him for above fifty-four years, and can witness to the truth of many things left by him under his own hand."(Life and Death of Hanserd Knollys, p. 47. London, 1812). The Rev. George P. Gould, M. A., a learned Baptist scholar of England, is now editing and bringing out a series of Baptist Manuals, historical and biographical. In 1895 he published one on Hanserd Knollys by James Culross, M. A., D. D., president of Bristol Baptist College. After stating that Hanserd Knollys became a sectary, probably in 1631, he declares: "Had Baptists thought anything depended on it, they might have traced their pedigree back to New Testament times, and claimed apostolic succession. The channel of succession was certainly purer, if humbler, than through the apostate church of Rome. But they were content to rest on Scripture alone, and, as they found only believers’ baptism there, they adhered to that. (P. 39, note). The Rev. John Canne, author of the marginal references of the Bible was an eminent minister of those times. When he became a Baptist is uncertain but it was certainly before 1640. He was found in Bristol in 1640, preaching in "public places" and was declared to be a "baptized man," or an immersed man as that phrase was used. I give a conclusive statement from the Broadmead Records. These Records say: "Anno, 1640. And thus the Lord led them by His Spirit in a way and path that they knew not, having called them out of darkness into his marvelous light by Jesus Christ our Lord. So that in the year of our ever blessed Redeemer, the Lord Jesus (1640), one thousand six hundred and forty, those five persons, namely, Goodman Atkins, of Stapleton, Goodman Cole, a butcher of Lawford’s Gate, Richard Moone, a farrier in Wine street, and Mr. Bacon, a young minister, with Mrs. Hazzard, at Mrs. Hazzard’s house, at the upper end of Broad street, in Bristol, they met together, and came to a holy resolution to separate from the worship of the world and times they lived in, and that they would go no more to it. And with godly purpose of heart (they) joined themselves in the Lord, only thus covenanting, that they would in the strength and assistance of the Lord come forth of the world, and worship the Lord more purely, persevering therein, to their end." (Broadmead Records, pp., 17, 18). The Records continue: "At this juncture of time the providence of God brought to this city one Mr. Canne, a baptized man; it was that Mr. Canne that made notes and references upon the Bible. He was a man very eminent in his day for godliness, and for reformation in religion, having great understanding in the way of the Lord." Mrs. Hazzard, who was the wife of the parish priest, found him and fetched him to her home. Then the Records say: "He taught the way of the Lord more perfectly, and settled them in church order, and showed them the difference betwixt the church of Christ and anti-Christ, and left with them a printed book treating of the same; and divers printed papers to that purpose. So that by this instrument Mr. Canne, the Lord did confirm and settle them; showing them how they should join together, and take in members." (Pp. 18, 19). Mr. Canne then attempted to preach in a suburb of the city and a wealthy woman placed some obstructions in his way. The Records say: "The obstruction was by a very godly great woman, that dwelt in that place, who was somewhat severe in the profession of what she knew, hearing that he was a baptized man, by them called Anabaptists, which was to some sufficient cause of prejudice, because the truth of believers baptism had been for a long time buried, yea, for a long time by popish inventions, and their sprinkling brought in room thereof. And (this prejudice existed) by reason (that) persons in the practice of that truth by baptism were by some rendered very obnoxious; because, about one hundred years before, some beyond the sea, in Germany, that held that truth of believers baptism, did, as some say, did some very singular actions; of whom we can have no true account what they were but by their enemies; for none but such in any history have made any relation or narrative of them." (P. 19, 20). "For good measure " I will also mention Paul Hobson. Ivimey says of him: "He is mentioned among the rejected ministers. Dr. Calamy supposes that he was chaplain of Eaton College, and that he had a place of command in the army; but observes, that if he had conformed afterwards it would have made some atonement, as was the case in other instances. In addition to these circumstances, We find that he was engaged as early as 1639, as one of the chief promoters of founding a Baptist church in London. He was one of the pastors who signed the Confession of faith of the seven churches in London in 1644." (History of the English Baptists, Vol. I., p. 88). This statement of Ivimey that Paul Hobson was a preacher is confirmed by Edwards. Edwards who was a contemporary says that he had been an Anabaptist preacher "a long time." This was written in 1645, and an Anabaptist in the mouth of Edwards was always a "dipper." Edwards’ words are: "There is one Paul Hobson a taylor, who comes out of Buckinghamshire and is now a Captain, having been in the Armies, who hath been a Preacher a great while. This man when he was in the Army, where ever he came he would Preach publikely in the Churches, where he could get pulpits, and privately to the Souldiers; the subject matter of his Sermons was much against Duties, and of Revelations, what God had revealed to him; he was a means to corrupt some precious hopeful young men who went out of London; and preaching one time against Holy Duties (as an understanding man who heard him, related to me and other company), he spake thus. "Then this further statement is volunteered: This Paul Hobson is one of those whose hand is subscribed to the Confession of Faith of the Anabaptists, set forth last Winter." (Gangraena, p. 33. London, 1645) Here is positive contemporaneous proof that Paul Hobson was an immersionist in 1639, for he was engaged in forming a Baptist church, and the inference is that he had been a Baptist many years before this. The Reader will also call to mind that in the chapter "On the Baptists before 1641 "I give an account of a number of persons who were dipped before 1641 in England. 3. The proof is positive that noted Baptists after 1641, who were certainly dippers, positively state that Baptist Churches, as they were then organized, had long existed in England. The first witness is William Kiffin. He makes this declaration in a book called "A Briefe Remonstrance of the Reasons and Grounds of those people commonly called Anabaptists, for their separation," etc. A Mr. Poole had addressed to him certain Queries for an answer. The second Query was: "By what Scripture Warrant doe you take upon you to erect new framed congregations, separated to the disturbance of the great Worke of Reformation now in hand? To this Kiffin replied: "Ans. This querie hath in it these two parts. 1. That we erect new framed separate congregations. 2. Wee do by this disturbe the great Worke of Reformation now in hand." He then says: "To the first, it is well knowne to many, especially to ourselves; that our congregations were erected and framed according to the rule of Christ, before wee heard of any Reformation, even at that time when Episcopacie was in the height of its vanishing glory." He further states: "And for the second part of your querie That we disturb the great Worke of Reformation now in hand; I know not what you meane by this charge, unless it be to discover your prejudice against us, in Reforming ourselves before you, for as yet we have not in our understanding, neither can we conceive anything of that we shall see reformed by you according to truth, but that through mercie wee enjoy the practice of the same already; tis strange this should be a disturbance to the ingenious faithful Reformer; it should bee (one would think) a furtherance rather than a disturbance, and whereas you tell us of the work of Reformation now in hand, no reasonable men will force us to desist from the practice of that which we are perswaded is according to Truth, and waite for that which we knowe not what it will be; and in the meantime practice that which you your selves say must be reformed." (Pp. 12 14. London, 1645). Here is a declaration by one of the most intelligent Baptists of the times, whose sources of information were of the best, who declares inside of four years of 1641 "that our congregations were erected and framed according to the rule of Christ, before we heard of any Reformation;" and then he goes on to defend at length that these congregations possessed the whole Truth. I do not see how a statement could be more conclusive. We are not shut up to this statement. Daniel King, 1650, only nine years after 1641, wrote a treatise called "A Way to Zion, Sought Out, and Found, for Believers to Walk In." This startling proposition in the first part is proved, "1. That God hath had a people on earth, ever since the coming of Christ in the flesh, throughout the darkest times of Popery, which he hath owned as Saints and as his people." The third part "Proveth that Outward Ordinances, and amongst the rest the Ordinance of Baptism, is to continue in the Church, and this Truth cleared up from intricate turnings and windings, clouds and mists that make the way doubtful and dark." Certainly that would be a very arrogant claim if the Baptists of England only began in 1641. And what is more, this book of King’s is indorsed by Thomas Patient, John Spilsbury, William Kiffin, and John Pearson. These men declared that the assertion that "there are no true churches in the world" and "no true ministers" has been of "singular use in hands of the devil." I quote a portion of their words: "The devil hath mustered up all his forces of late to blind and pester the minds of good people, to keep them from the clear knowledge and practice of the way of God, either in possessing people still with old corrupt principles; or if they have been taken of them, then to perswade with them that there are no Churches in the world, and that persons cannot come to the practice of Ordinances, there being no true ministry in the world; and others they run in another desperate extreme, holding Christ to be a shadow, and all his Gospel and Ordinances like himself, fleshy and carnall. This generation of people have been of singular use in the hand of the Devil to advance his kingdom, and to make war against the kingdom of our Lord Jesus. Now none have been more painfull than these have been of late, to poison the City, the Country, the Army, so far as they could; inasmuch as it lay upon some of our spirits as a duty to put out our weak ability for the discovering of these grosse errors and mistakes; but it hath pleased God to stir up the spirit of our Brother, Daniel King, whom we judge a faithfull and painfull minister of Jesus Christ, to take this work in hand before us; and we judge he hath been much assisted of God in the work in which he hath been very painfull. We shall not need to say much of the Treatise; only in brief, it is his method to follow the Apostles’ rule, prove everything by the evidence of Scripture light, expounding Scripture by Scripture, and God hath helped him in this discourse, we judge beyond any who hath dealt upon this subject that is extant, in proving the truth of Churches, against all such that have gone under the name of Seekers, and hath very well, and with great evidence of Scripture light answered to all, or most of their Objections of might, as also those above, or beyond Ordinances." Henry D’Anvers was one of the most influential and best informed Baptists of the seventeenth century. He was a distinguished colonel in the Parliamentary army and Governor of Stafford. He wrote the most powerful book of the century on baptism. He makes the most positive claims of the long continuance of Baptists in England, and that the Baptists had continued in "the good old way." I quote two paragraphs: "In the sixteenth year of King James, 1618, that excellent Dutch piece, called A very plain and well grounded Treatise concerning Baptism, that with so much authority both from Scripture and Antiquity, proves the baptizing of Believers and disproves that of Infants, was printed in English. "Since when (especially in the last thirty or forty years) many have been the conferencesthat have past, and many the Treatises that have been written pro and con upon the subject, and many have been the sufferings both in old and new England, that people of that perswasion have undergone, whereby such light hath broken forth therein that not only very many learned men have been convinced thereof, but very many congregations of Baptists have been, and are daily gathered in that good old way of the Lord that hath so long lain under so much obloquy and reproach, and been buried under so much Antichristian rubbish in these nations." (A Treatise on Baptism, p. 308. London, 1674). Thomas Grantham was one of the greatest Baptist writers of the seventeenth century. Under date of 1678 he wrote: "That many of the learned have much abused this age, in telling them that the Anabaptists (i. e. the Baptized Churches) are of a late edition, a new sect, etc., when from their own writings the clean contrary is so evident." (Christianismus Primitivus, pp. 92, 93. London, 1678). I shall give the words of a Baptist, who closed the century with a book on baptism. He speaks with no uncertain sound. Joseph Hooke had read largely on the subject, and his book shows that he was scholarly. He claims a succession from the days of the apostles. Mr. Hooke says: "Thus having shewed negatively, when this sect called Ana-Baptists did not begin: we shall shew in the next place affirmatively, when it did begin; for a beginning it had, and it concerns us to enquire for the Fountain Head of this Sect; for if I was sure that it were no older than the Munster-Fight that Mr. Erratt puts in mind of, I would Resolve to forsake it, and would persuade others to do so too. "That religion that is not as old as Christ and his apostles, is too new for me. "But secondly, affirmatively, we are fully perswaded, and therefore do boldly, tho’ humbly, assert, that this Sect is the very same sort of People that were first called Christians in Antioch, Acts 11:26. But sometimes called Nazarenes, Acts 24:5. And as they are every where spoken against now, even so they were in the Primitive Times. Acts 28:22." (A Necessary Apology for the Baptists, London, 1701, p. 19). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 72: 02.12. ROGER WILLIAMS ======================================================================== CHAPTER XII. ROGER WILLIAMS. I have read, and re-read, Dr. Whitsitt’s chapter upon "The Baptism of Roger Williams" with increasing surprise. He argues at great length in favor of sprinkling and then ends the chapter with this remarkable concession: In the present state of information it would be unwise to pronounce with certainty any conclusion regarding this question. However, within the limits of the uncertainty which is freely acknowledged, the weight of evidence apears to incline very clearly towards the view that Roger Williams was sprinkled and not immersed at Providence in 1639. (P. 164). Dr. Whitsitt nowhere intimates that there is an author who States that Williams was sprinkled. His argument rests wholly upon inferences and those inferences are not well grounded. His inferences are: 1. That the Baptists of England were in the practice of sprinkling, and therefore Roger Williams was sprinkled. His words are: Is there any a priori reason for supposing that he was in advance of them in this regard? It has been suggested that he was a person of unusual independence of mind, but has any proof ever been given to show that his independence was employed in this particular direction? (P. 150). We demand proof for the very thing he takes for granted. I have already shown that this inference is false, and that the Baptists of England were not in the practice of sprinkling. And 2. Williams was not dominated by the English Baptists. Williams was an independent man, and appears to have been controlled by his own impressions of the teachings of the New Testament. Dr. Whitsitt has declared that it was "probable" that William’s was sprinkled. All the world has believed, and still believes, that he was immersed. The burden of proof rests upon Dr. Whitsitt. He must present proof to establish his position. This he has utterly failed to do. All that he has attempted is to explain away the force of certain authors, and to quibble over the meaning of the word wash. Then he admits that he does 41 not positively settle the question regarding the act employed." (P. 151). I invite attention to some of the evidence in favor of immersion. Every contemporary who mentions his baptism, Williams himself included, and all the later writers, declare that the act was an immersion. I shall first give some side lights on the subject. Dr. Whitsitt dismisses the fact of Mr. Chauncy practicing immersion with this, remark: But nobody has shown that Mr. Williams regarded the view of Chauncy with any sort of favor at the time when it was advanced. For aught we know to the contrary he may have felt a prejudice both against the man and his contention. (P. 149). But Mr. Chauncy cannot be dismissed so lightly. There is a clear connection between the immersions of Mr. Chauncy and the Providence men. I shall give the explicit testimony of Governor Bradford, then governor of Plymouth Colony. He shows not only that Chauncy was an immersionist but that the whole of New England was agitated on the subject of immersion. He says: I had forgotten to inserte in its place how ye church here had invited and sent for Mr. Charles Chansey, a reverend, godly and very larned man, intending upon triall to chose him pastor of ye church hear, for ye more comfortable performance of ye ministers with Mr. John Reinor, the teacher of ye same. But ther fell out some difference aboute baptising, he holding that it ought only to be by dipping, and putting ye whole body under water, and that sprinkling was unlawfull. The church yeelded that immersion, or dipping, was lawfull, but in this could countrie not so conveniente. But they could not nor durst not yeeld to him in this, that sprinkling (which all ye churches of Christ doe for ye most parte at this day) was unlawfull & an humane invention, as ye same was prest; but they were willing to yeeld to him as far as yey could, & to ye utmost; and were contented to suffer him to practise as he was perswaded; and when he came to minister that ordnance he might so doe it to any yt did desire it in yt way, provided he could peacably suffer Mr. Reinor, and such as desired to have theirs otherwise baptized by him, by sprinkling or powering onof water upon them; so as ther might be no disturbance in ye church hereaboute. But he said he could not yeeld hereunto. Upon which the church procured some other ministers to dispute ye pointe with him publikly; as Mr. Ralfe Patrick, of Duxberie, allso some other ministers within this governmente. But he was not satisfied; so ye church sent to many other churches to crave their help and advise in this matter, and, with his will & consente, sent them his arguments wiitten under his owne hand. They sente them to ye church at Boston in ye Bay of Massachusetts, to be communicated with other churches ther. Also they sent the same to ye churches of Conightecutt and New Haven, with sundrie others; and received very able & sufficient answers, as they conceived, from them and their larned ministers, who all concluded against him. But him selfe was not satisfied therwth. Their answers are too large hear to relate. They conceived ye church had done what was meete in ye things, so Mr. Chansey having been ye most parte of 3 years here, removed himself to Sityate, wher he now remaines a minister to ye church ther. (Of Plimoth Plantation by William Bradford, pp. 382, 384). These extracts show that the whole of New England was agitated on the subject of immersion before the baptism of Roger Williams. The churches took action on the matter. We learn from Keyne’s MS. that the Boston Church returned answer to the Plymouth Church, June 21, to "whether it be lawful to use sprinkling in baptism, or rather dipping; Mr. Chauncy being of the mind, that it is a violation of an ordinance to use sprinkling instead of dipping." (Bradford’s Hist. N. E., Vol. I., p. 331, note). But as much as Chauncy was admired at Plymouth the church did not employ him, on account of his views on the subject of immersion. This is set forth by Hooker in a letter to his son-in-law, Shepherd, November 2, 1640. He says: I have of late had intelligence from Plymouth. Mr. Chauncy and the church are to part, he to provide for himself, and they for themselves. At the day of fast, when a full conclusion of the business should have been made, he openly professed he did as verily believe the truth of his opinion as that there was a God in heaven, and that he was as settled in it as that the earth was upon the center. If ever such confidence find success I miss my mark. Mr. Humphrey, I hear, invites him to Providence, and the coast is most meet for his opinions and practice. (Felt’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. I., p. 443). It will be seen from this letter of Hooker that Mr. Chauncy was invited on his leaving Plymouth to go to Providence, for "that coast is most meet for his opinions and practice." That is to say, they believed in immersion at Providence. It cannot mean anything else, for Chauncy still held to infant baptism. This is perfectly plain, for Felt says of Chauncy, July 7, 1642: Chauncy at Scituate still adheres to his practice of immersion. He bad baptized two of his own children in this way. A woman of his congregation who had a child of three years old, and wished it to receive such an ordinance, was fearful that it might be too much frightened by being dipped as some had been. She desired a letter from him, recommending her to the Boston Church, so that she might have the child sprinkled. He complied and the rite was accordingly administered. (Felt’s Eccl. Hist., Vol. I., P. 497). So there is no difference between Chauncy and the Providence men on the act of baptism. This will also turn light on the banishment of Roger Williams in 1633 from Plymouth. He held Anabaptist opinions, which meant that he rejected infant baptism and believed in immersion. The more you look into this the more probable it becomes. I can only briefly present the facts. In 1633 he was "already inclined to the opinions of the Anabaptists." (Publications of the Narragansett Club, Vol. I., p. 14). For on requesting his dismissal back to Salem in the autumn of 1633, we find the elder, Mr. Brewster, persuading the Plymouth Church to relinquish communion with him, lest he should "run the same course of rigid Separation and Anabaptistery which Mr. John Smith, the Se Baptist of Amstersdam had done." (Pub. Nar. Club, Vol. I., p. 17). Win. Gammel, after stating that Williams was immersed, says very truthfully: The very mention of the name of Anabaptism called up a train of phantoms, that never failed to excite the apprehensions of the early Puritans. Hence it was when Mr. Brewster suggested even the remotest association of Roger Williams with this heresy, the church at Plymouth were easily induced to grant his dismission which he requested. A considerable number of its members, however, who had become attached to his ministry, were also dismissed at the same time and removed with him to Salem. (Gammel’s Life of Roger Williams, p. 27). Thus we are duly prepared for the statement of Governor Winthrop, March 16, 1639: At Providence things grew worse; for a sister of Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of one Scott, being infected with Anabaptistery, and going last year to live at Providence, Mr. Williams was taken (or rather emboldened) by her to make open profession thereof, and accordingly was rebaptized by one Holliman, a poor man late of Salem. Then Mr. Williams rebaptized him and some ten more. They also denied the baptizing of infants, and would have no magistrates. (Winthrop’s Hist. N. E., Vol. I., p. 293). Putting all of these facts and side lights together, it would prove that the Providence men practiced immersion and that Roger Williams was immersed. We are not shut up to side lights but we have positive testimony. We have just given the statement of Governor Winthrop. The argument of Dr. Guild, the learned Librarian of Brown University, upon this statement of Winthrop’s is conclusive. He says: "Perhaps Prof. Whitsitt makes the point that re-baptism was not immersion. It has always been so regarded in these parts from the beginning. Williams himself has placed himself on record as a believer in dipping." This argument cannot be overturned by mere suppositions, and nothing has yet been offered to upset it. Coddington, who appears to have been an eye witness, is conclusive. Coddington was governor of Rhode Island and had an opportunity to know what he was stating. He says: "I have known him about fifty years; a mere weather cock, constant only in inconsistency. * * * One time for water baptism, men and women must be plunged into the water, and then threw it all down again." (Letter to Scott, 1677). Prof. A. H. Newman, D. D., LL. D., says of Coddington’s testimony: "It seems highly probable that Roger Williams was immersed, though I once was of the contrary opinion; Coddington, who seems to have witnessed the ceremony, described it some time afterward as immersion." Prof. Vedder after giving the testimony of Williams and Coddington remarks: "I quite agree with my friend, Dr. Newman, that this cannot be explained as other than a reference to the baptism of Williams and others by Ezekiel Holliman, nor do I see how Coddington’s knowledge of the facts can be successfully questioned. Taken in connection with the negative testimony of silence—that we have, in all the contemporary literature, not the slightest hint of any change of method among American Baptists—this seems to me virtually to settle the question in favor of immersion in the case of Roger Williams. While I would not affirm positively that he was immersed, I feel that the balance of probability is decidedly on that side. In fine, anybody who asserts that anything but immersion has been practiced from the beginning among American Baptists assumes the burden of proof; and ingenious guesses about Mark Lukar and things of that sort are not proofs. They may satisfy the guesser, but he cannot fairly ask that anybody else should be satisfied with them." (The Examiner, May 21, 1896). Richard Scott, who appears to have been an eye witness of this baptism, for a time a Baptist himself, and afterwards a Quaker, writing against Williams thirty eight years afterwards, says: "I walked with him in the Baptists’ way about three or four months * * * in which time he broke from his society and declared at large the ground and reason for it; that their baptism could not be right because it was not administered by an apostle. After that he set upon a way of seeking, with two or three of them that had dissented with him, by way of preaching and praying; and then he continued a year or two till two of them left him. * * * After his society and he in a church way had parted he went to England." (Appendix to Fox’s Firebrand Quenched, p. 247). Scott makes no mention of a change of opinion of the Baptists on the subject of dipping, for it is very certain that the Baptists at the time Scott wrote this practiced dipping. Williams’ own opinion on the subject of baptism was always singularly clear. He declares that it is immersion. In a tract which was supposed for a long time to be lost, but which is now in the British Museum, called "Christenings Make not Christians," 1645, he says: "Thirdly, for our New England parts, I can speake uprightly and confidently, I know it to have been easie for my selfe, long ere this, to have brought many thousands of these Nations, yea the whole country, to a far greater Antichristian conversion then was ever yet heard of in America. I have reported something in their Chapter of their Religion, how readily I could have brought the whole Country to have observed one day in seven; I adde to have received a Baptisme (or washing) though it were in Rivers (as the first Christians and the Lord Jesus himself did) to have come to a stated Church meeting, &c." (P. 11). In a letter which we find among the Winthrop papers, dated Narragansett, 9, 10, 1649, Williams says: "At Seekonk a great many have lately concurred with Mr. John Clarke and our Providence men about the point of a new baptisme, and the manner by dipping, and Mr. John Clarke hath been there lately, and Mr. Lucar, and hath dipped them. I believe their practice comes nearer the first practice of our great founder Christ Jesus than any other practices of religion do." (Massachusetts Historical Collections, Fourth Series, Vol. VI., p. 274). There is absolutely no proof that Williams thought anything but immersion was baptism. All writers and authorities, till recently, have taken the ground that Williams was immersed. I shall add a few of these witnesses. John Callender, 1706-1738, says: "But to take things in their order, Mr. R. Williams is said, in a few years after his sitting in Providence, to have embraced the opinions of the people called (by way of reproach) Anabaptists in respect to the subject and mode of baptism; and to have formed a church there, in that way, with the help of one Ezekiel Holliman."(Historical Discourse on Rhode Island, pp. 109, 110). Felt says: "Williams as stated by Winthrop, was lately immersed." (Eccl. Hist., Vol. I., p. 402). Dr. A. H. Newman says: "Contemporary testimony is unanimous in favor of the view that immersion was practiced by Williams. As this fact is generally conceded, it does not seem worth while to quote the evidence." Dr. George P. Fisher, Professor of Church History, Yale University, says: "Roger Williams was baptized by immersion." (History of the Christian Church, p. 472). Bishop John F. Hurst, Methodist, says: "Williams was immersed." (Short History of Christian Church, p. 516). The Watchman, Boston, May 14, 1896, says: "When he affirms that the re-baptism of Roger Williams was by sprinkling, he states what has not been proved by historical evidence, and the presumptions are altogether against such a statement." Dr. Newman says of Dr. Dexter: "Knowing that Dr. Dexter was master of the literature pertaining to Roger Williams, and supposing that his inclination would be wholly in favor of the non-immersion view, I sought his opinion on the question. His answer was entirely in accord with my own conclusion. He expressed the opinion that, in the absence of contemporary evidence against immersion, Coddington’s statement must be accepted as probably correct. In matters of this kind an ounce of fact is worth a ton of conjecture." (The Examiner, May 21, 1896). Schaff says: "In 1638 he became a Baptist; he was immersed by Ezekiel Holliman and in turn immersed Holliman and ten others." (Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I., p. 851). Against the inferences of Dr. Whitsitt that Williams was sprinkled, I put the solid facts that he was immersed. "An ounce of fact is worth a ton of conjecture." Thus goes to pieces the last proof of Dr. Whitsitt’s theory. ======================================================================== Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-j-t-christian/ ========================================================================