I. THE BAPTIST IN ENGLAND
A.
1. It is not quite certain just when the churches of this primitive order were first planted in England.
2. It is strongly believed by some that churches were gathered in Britain in the days of the apostles.
3. There are some that claim to have good ground for suspicion that Paul himself visited Britain on his last evangelistic tour, and many well-informed historians firmly believe that he did; but however, the Bible does not confirm that so I will simple give you what the historians present as evidence.
4. It is very evident that Paul contemplated a trip to Spain when he wrote his Epistle to the Romans.
(a). Rom. 15:24 Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.
(b).
Rom. 15:28 When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.5. It is thought by some students of ancient history that Paul made this contemplated tour into Spain between the times of his first and second imprisonment at Rome, and that he extended the tour into Gaul (now France) and across the English Channel into Britain.
6. Rev. Francis Thackeray, A.M., of Benbrooke College, Cambridge, England, says: "We have reasons to believe that Christianity was preached in both countries, Gaul and Britain, before the close of the first century. The results of my investigations on my own mind has been the conviction that about A.D. 60, in the time of St. Paul, a church existed in Britain," (Jarrel, page 317).
7. Bede, the British historian, who wrote his celebrated "Ecclesiastical History" in A.D. 731, says: "The Britons preserved the faith which they had received uncorrupted and entire in peace and tranquillity until the time of Emperor Diocletian." It appears that Diocletian died in A.D. 313. (See Bede's "Ecclesiastical History," Book II, Chapter 14).
8. Bede, speaking of this persecution, says: "When the storm of persecution ceased, the faithful Christians, who during the time of danger had hidden themselves in woods and deserts and secret caves, appearing in public, rebuilt the churches which had been leveled to the ground," etc.
9. Benedict gives a narrative from the Baptist Jubilee Memorial, at Kettering, of the fiftieth anniversary of the first Baptist missionary society, which contains the following statement: "England undoubtedly received the gospel in the days of the apostles; and its ecclesiastical history plainly proves that thousands were baptized according to the primitive mode. About the same time, or soon after, Wales was visited by Christian teachers; and when Austin visited this country, about the year A.D. 600, he found a society of Christians at Banger, consisting of twenty-one hundred persons, who were afterwards destroyed, because they refused to baptize infants, at the command of the pope. Austin was sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great for the purpose of promoting the subjection of the British to the papal see. He advanced the leading doctrines of the Romish Church, among which he ranked infant baptism, and exhorted the people implicitly to receive his dogmas. Some yielded to the influence which he exercised; but a goodly number resisted, among whom the Christians at Banger are numbered. Austin, therefore, has the credit of introducing infant baptism into England; for before that time it was unknown," (Page 302).
B. English Authors & Historians On English Baptist.
1. It is very evident from the English authors, of both sacred and profane history, that there have been Baptist Churches in England from the very days of the apostles.
2. Jarrel says: "There is no record of Baptists' having ever become nonexistent in England," (Page 318).
3. Benedict gives the following statement from Robinson: "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 Valdenses; to the Albigenses; and, I suppose, through Paulicians and others, to the apostles," (Page 309).
4. Those holy, inoffensive people, whose history is unparalleled by any other upon earth, can be traced, as it were, by their own blood through all the various countries where they have lived or traveled from the very days of the apostles till after the Reformation.
5. In all these ages their churches were scenes of bloodshed, and they were the objects of suffering and cruelty; and it was all because they would not forsake the pure and holy principles handed down to them by the apostles and which were necessary to preserve pure the order and identity of the apostolic church and for holding the simple doctrine that there is no authority to administrator the ordinances outside of the church of God; that God has but one church, and it exclusively has church authority.
6. "It shall not be left to other people" has cost them indescribable suffering and torture for a period of more than twelve hundred years.
7. This pure, scriptural doctrine has caused them to immerse anew all that came over to them from any other sect ever since there has been a plurality of denominations, which has been since A.D. 251.
8. This single practice of immersing all that joined them, even if they had been baptized by some other sect, has made them the derision of the popular religionists of all the succeeding ages; and, to drive them from that practice, they have suffered all the cruelties and bitter criticism that the ingenuity of proud religious bigots could invent for hundreds of years.
9. But, in spite of the gibbet, the rack, the guillotine, the scald vat, the flame that blazed all along back on their pathway, and every other painful and shocking cruelty that the powers of darkness could originate, the Baptists have continued the practice to the present day, and have preserved pure the ordinance of baptism and church identity through all the ages of darkness to the present time.
II. The Different Names
A. The Waldenses In England.
1. Bishop Usher complains of the Waldensian heresy's corrupting all France, Italy, and England in A.D. 1080.
2. He speaks of its affecting England in the year A.D. 1100.
3. In about A.D. 1158 about thirty persons of the Waldensian sect came over into England to disseminate their doctrine.
4. We have a mention of them in England in A.D. 1182.
5. Bishop Usher mentions the order of the Friar Minorities coming into England in A.D. 1235 to suppress the Waldensian heresy.
B. The Lollards In England.
1. "In the time of King Edward II," says Jarrel, "about the year A.D. 1315, Walter Lollard, a German preacher, a man of great renown among the Waldenses, came into England.
2. He spread their doctrine very much in these parts; so that afterwards they went by the name 'Lollards,'" (Page 319).
3. Benedict and others give about the same account of Walter Lollard's visiting England.
4. The Baptists in England were frequently called "Lollards" by their enemies for more than a century after the visit of Walter Lollard.
5. They were generally among the common people, as their principles were held in mortal abhorrence by the clergy of the established religion.
6. Those who believed or advocated them had to do so privately, or suffer; yet they were of the purest character and had many learned men to espouse their cause and boldly advocate their doctrine.
7. When Walter Lollard visited England, his extensive learning and superior ability no doubt were the means of bringing many of the more distinguished people of England in contact with these holy principles; and to know them is to love them.
8. As a result, many who were occupying distinguished positions in the established church broke away from the tyranny of the established priest and breathed the pure spirit of the Lollards - such as John Wickliffe (or Wycliffe), who was professor in the University of Oxford, and who gave the first English translation of the Scriptures.
III. The Different People
A. John Wycliffe In England.
1. When he began to teach this pure doctrine of freedom of conscience and to instruct the people to read the Scriptures and make them their rule of faith and practice, he incurred the everlasting displeasure of the corrupt clergy, who saw that such measures would strike at the root of ignorance and superstition; and, as observed by Brown, "like the Ephesians of old, they trembled for their craft."
2. At length they obtained letters patent from the king, directing that Wickliffe should be expelled from the University of Oxford, and that all of his publications should be everywhere seized and destroyed.
3. When Wickliffe could no longer resist this flood of cruel intolerance, he gave up his professorship at Oxford and retired to Lutterworth.
4. No man in England has done more for the cause of Christ and the freedom of the people from the cruelties of ignorance and superstition than Wickliffe.
5. So great was his influence among the Lollards that they have been frequently called "Wickliffites;" but, as is so often the case, it took another generation to appreciate the inestimable value of the works of this great man and to do justice to his name.
6. "After his death, his bones were dug up and burned by his enraged enemies."
B. William Tyndale In England.
1. William Tyndale was another ripe scholar who embraced the faith of this poor, harassed, and much-persecuted people.
2. He may be said to stand next to Wickliffe in the noble work of giving the English-speaking people the Bible and freeing England from the slavery of papacy.
3. Tyndale was the first to translate the entire Bible into the English language.
4. You can tell by reading his translation, that it no doubt, was the main guide for the translation under King James.
5. Tyndale is said to have sown the seed that won the noble young Frith to the faith.
C. Frith In England.
1. Frith was a polished scholar. He assisted Tyndale in translating the Scriptures.
2. They both fled to Holland for safety, and there they dwelt together and labored in the noble cause of translating the Scriptures.
3. After spending quite a while in exile and poverty with Tyndale, Frith came secretly into England, it is supposed, to counsel and encourage these churches of the pious which were called "Lollards."
4. Frith had already brought down the vengeance of the clergy of the established church by his reply to Sir Thomas Moore, in which he defeated Moore's opinion on purgatory.
5. While among the churches, comforting and consoling their spirits, he was arrested; and after a long confinement in loathsome prisons, he was examined by the bishops, condemned, and taken to Smithfield and burned at the stake on July 4, 1533.
6. While in the flames, Frith smiled and prayed for those who railed on him.
7. "Thus died - not yet thirty years old - one of the most brilliant, accomplished, and virtuous of English youths," (See "History of the English Translations of the Bible").
8. Three years later the wise and good Tyndale suffered a like death.
9. His last words were : "Lord, open the eyes of the king of England."
10. "Thus perished, a victim to priestcraft, the purest of England's patriots and the crown of its martyrs, the best and the greatest man of his times," (Conant).
IV. BAPTIST PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND
A. Persecutions Of The Lollards (Baptist) By Law In England.
1. Benedict mentions special laws being made for the punishment of the Lollards by death in A.D. 1400, during the reign of Henry IV.
2. The same author recites a narrative, from Robinson's "Dissertation," of a church of this kind at Chestertown, in A.D. 1457, that privately assembled for divine worship and had preachers of its own. Six of them were accused of heresy, and were made to do penance half naked in the public market place. (See Benedict, page 309.)
3. "In A.D. 1536 the national clergy met in convocation and declared the sentiments of the Baptists to be detestable heresies, utterly to be condemned."
4. "In A.D. 1538 a commission was given to Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and others, to proceed against the Baptists and burn their books.
(a). On November 16, in the same year, a royal proclamation was issued against them.
(b). Instructions were sent to the justices throughout England, directing them to see that the law against the Baptists were duly executed.
(c). Several were burned to death in Smithfield," etc., (Benedict, page 303).
5. "Such was the furious bigotry with which they were pursued that when King Edward passed an Act to pardon papists and others, the Baptists were excepted (excluded).
6. In the following year (A.D. 1547) a fresh commission was issued to the archbishop to search after all Baptists; and under that commission the celebrated Joan of Kent, who was a Baptist, was burned on May 2, A.D. 1549. Several others shared the same fate," (Benedict, page 303).
7. A very distressing scene of persecution (in A.D. 1575) of some German Baptists who had fled to London from Flanders is mentioned by Benedict, Fuller, and Crosby.
B. A Hated People.
1. The general hatred and cruelty toward the Baptists upon the part of those of the established religion was shown by excepting (excluding) the Baptists from the general Acts of pardon published in A.D. 1538, A.D. 1540, and A.D. 1550.
2. All those who hold that infants ought not to be baptized were excluded from the benefit.
3. It appears that "thieves and vagabonds shared the king's favor, but Baptists were not to be tolerated," (see Jarrel's "Baptist History," page 325; see also Cramp).
4. During the reign of Mary "a man named 'David George,' a Dutchman, was disinterred in St. Lawrence's Church, three years after his death, and his body was burned, because it was discovered that he had been a Baptist," (Benedict, page 303).
5. "William Sawtree was the first (A.D. 1401) who in this country (England) suffered at the stake for his religious opinions and who was supposed to deny infant baptism; and Edward Wightman, a Baptist, of Burton-on-Trent, was the last that suffered this cruel kind of death in England. So this denomination has the honor of both leading the way and bringing up the rear of all the martyrs who were burned alive in England," (Brown's "Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge").
6. In some parts of the world the Baptists in every age, from the apostles' day till about the close of the fifteenth century, have meekly walked up to the stake and paid the price of the liberty of conscience.
7. It has been the lot of the Baptists to suffer; their doctrine is not of this world, and these of a worldly religion have always hated it and all who taught it.
8. The devil has always hated with a perfect hatred those whom he had no prospect of winning.
9. The Baptists have suffered martyrdom at the hands of both the Catholics and the Protestants.
10. To maintain the purity and simplicity of their God-loving, self-denying, and world-sacrificing religion, the Baptists have suffered in the flames at the hands of pagan Rome, papal Rome, and I might say, Protestant Rome.
C. The English Baptist Persecuted Because Of Their Bible.
1. Nothing was sweeter to this truth-loving people than the Holy Scriptures brought to them in their own language, for which they were indebted to the ever-faithful labors of Wickliffe.
2. They gave enormous prices for small portions of the sacred writings.
3. One man is mentioned by Mrs. Conant, in her "History of the English Translations of the Bible," as having given a load of hay for a few chapters of one of Paul's Epistles.
4. They frequently met under the cover of night to read the scriptures, for it was punishable by death to be found in possession of the Scriptures or to read them.
5. Mrs. Conan says: "So sweet was the refreshing to their spirits that sometimes the morning light surprised them with its call to a new day of labor ere they had thought of sleep."
6. The monks of these times, cursed with ignorance and superstition, made themselves conspicuous by the zeal of their opposition to the use of the Bible, declaring from their pulpits that "there was now a new language invented, called 'Greek,' of which the people should beware as the source of all heresies; that in this language had come forth a book, called the 'New Testament,' which was now in everybody's hands and was full of thorns and briers; that there was also another language started up, which they called 'Hebrew,' and that they who learn it were turned Jews," ("History of the English Translations of the Bible," page 121).
7. The same author says: "One Christopher Shoomaker, burned at Newberry, was accused of having gone to the house of John Say and read to him out of a book the words which Christ spoke to his disciples," (Page 117).
8. William Sawtree was another example of a minister in high standing embracing this pure religion of Christ and for which he gave his life.
V. LOOKING AT THE EARLY ENGLISH BAPTIST
A. The Characteristics And Leaders Of The Early English Baptist.
1. The Baptists of England maintained all the characteristics of this ancient order which have distinguished them from all other sects in all ages:
(a). Independent form of church government;
(b). Baptism by immersion upon a profession of faith;
(c). They baptized anew all that came to them from any other sect;
(d). They refused baptism to infants;
(e). They were predestinarians;
(f). They taught freedom of conscience;
(g). They opposed the union of church and State;
(h). They acknowledge no rule of faith and practice but the Scriptures.
2. The names of some of the prominent ministers and authors who were the exponents of the Baptist principles in England from the time that Walter Lollard visited England (A.D. 1315) until the first church of English Baptists was planted in America were...
(a). John Wickliffe,
(b). Thomas Bodby,
(c). John Claydon,
(d). William Sawtree,
(e). David George,
(f). Thomas Mann,
(g). Christopher Shoomaker,
(h). William Tyndale,
(i). And John Frith.
B. The English Baptist Confession Of Faith.
1. In A.D. 1643 the English Baptists drew up a "Confession of Faith,"
2. It was afterwards revised and published in A.D. 1689.
3. It contained all the doctrinal and practical features of all the former "Confessions of Faith" put forth by the Baptists.
(a). It has ever stood as an accepted expression of faith of all true Baptists everywhere from then till the present time.
(b). This "Confession of Faith" was first written seven years after the first church of English Baptists was established in America.
C. The General Baptist.
1. There were two branches of Baptists in England.
2. Besides the "Particular Baptists," as they are sometimes called, there were the General Baptists, who originated from John Smyth.
3. Smyth was a minister of the Church of England (Episcopalian), at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.
4. When he became dissatisfied with some things in the discipline and ceremonies of the church, he quit his living at Gainsborough and joined the Brownists, or Separatists.
5. He soon raised a dispute with them as to the validity of their baptism, and they excluded him.
6. This was after he and his friends had fled to Holland, in A.D. 1606.
7. Now this is when all the Protestants, many Southern Baptist and far too many Independents, will tell you that the Baptist "denomination" began.
8. Smyth soon converted a great many of the Separatists to his views, and formed them into a church in about A.D. 1607.
9. He was rather puzzled, it seems, as to how to obtain authentic baptism.
10. He was acquainted with the Mennonists (Dutch Baptists), but he differed so materially from them on some points that he would not receive baptism at their hands.
11. He rejected the doctrine of personal and unconditional election, and taught a very lax system of Arminianism.
12. There is some dispute as to how Smyth was baptized.
13. Some claim that he baptized himself; but this is disputed by Mr. Taylor, the General Baptist historian, who conjectures that the church appointed two persons to do the baptizing, and that after they had baptized each other they baptized the rest of the church.
14. At any rate, these people did not have proper Baptism and therefore were not true Baptist.
15. The Particular and Primitive Baptist have always held views of doctrine which are now called "Calvinism," while the General Baptists have always been Arminians.