© 1984 Adair

With characteristic vigour C H Spurgeon presents a brisk review of the evidence to show that baptistic independents kept the true faith in these islands long before the Reformation.

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We are convinced that the historic Baptist position, more than any other, preserves the ordinances of the Lord Jesus as they were ‘delivered unto the saints’. Those belonging to this body of believers have never been exalted into temporal power, or decorated with worldly rank, but have dwelt for the most part, as it were, in dens and caves of the earth, even being found ‘destitute, afflicted, tormented’, and have thus proved themselves to be of the house and lineage of the Crucified.

Their very existence under the insults and persecutions which they have endured in the past is a standing marvel, while their unflinching fidelity to the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, and their adherence to the simplicity of Gospel ­ordinances, is a sure indication that the Lord was with them.

It would not be impossible to show that the first Christians who dwelt in this land were of this faith and order. The evidence supplied by ancient monuments and baptisteries still surviving would be conclusive in their favour. We are content for present purposes to ­begin with a quotation from an ­adversary.

12th century martyrs

That Baptists are no novelty in England is admitted by those least likely to manufacture ancient history for them. That rampant ritualist, W J E Bennett of Frome, in his book upon The Unity of the Church Broken, says:­—

‘The historian Lingard tells us that 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 all over England; they rejected all Romish ceremonies, denied the authority of the Pope, and more particularly ­refused to baptise 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 (1158), and the historian Collier tells us that wherever this heresy prevailed the churches were either scandalously neglected or pulled down, and infants left unbaptised.’

We are obliged to Mr Bennett for this history which is in all respects authentic, and we take liberty to ­remark that if Baptists could trace their pedigree no further, the church of Thomas Cranmer could not afford to sneer at them as a modern sect.

Concerning the poor persecuted people who are referred to in this extract, it seems that under Henry II they were treated with those tender mercies of the wicked which are so notoriously cruel.

‘They were apprehended and brought before a council of the clergy at Oxford. Being interrogated about their religion, their teacher, named Gerard, a man of learning, answered in their name that they were Christians, and believed the doctrines of the apostles. Upon a more particular inquiry it was found that they denied several of the received doctrines of the Church, such as purgatory, prayers for the dead, and the invocation of saints; and refusing to abandon these damnable heresies, as they were called, they were condemned as incorrigible heretics, and delivered to the secular arm to be punished.

‘The king [Henry II] at the instigation of the clergy, commanded them to be branded with a red-hot iron on the forehead, to be whipped through the streets of ­Oxford, and, having their clothes cut short by their girdles, to be turned into the open fields, all ­persons being forbidden to afford them any shelter or relief, under the severest penalties.

‘This cruel sentence was executed with its utmost rigour; and it being the depth of winter, all these unhappy persons perished with cold and hunger.’

Induced, no doubt, to flee to this country from the Continent by the rumoured favour of Henry II to the Lollards, they found none of the hospitality which they expected, but for Jesus’ sake were accounted the off-scouring of all things. Little did their enemies dream that, instead of being stamped out, the so-called heresy of the Baptists would survive and increase till it should command a company of faithful adherents to be numbered by millions.

From Henry II

All along our history from Henry II to Henry VIII there are traces of such Baptists, who are usually mentioned either in connection with the Lollards, or as coming from Holland. Special mention is made of their being more conspicuous when Anne of Cleves came to this country as the unhappy spouse of that choice defender of the faith, the eighth Harry.

All along there must have been a great hive on the Continent of these ‘Reformers before the Reformation’, for despite their being doomed to die almost as soon as they landed, they continued to invade this country to the annoyance of the priesthood and hierarchy, who always seemed to know by ­instinct the people who are their enemies, and whose tenets are diametrically opposed to their sway.

Martyrs in Holland

It may not be known to our readers that the Baptists have their own martyrology, and are in no way behind the very first of the churches of Christ in sufferings endured for the Truth’s sake. A fine old volume in the Dutch language, illuminated with the most marvellous engravings, is in our possession. It is full of harrowing details of brutal cruelty and heroic endurance. From it we have taken the story of Simon the Pedlar, as a specimen of the firmness and endurance of the baptised believers in Flanders: one instance out of thousands:—

‘About the year 1553 at Bergen op Zoom in Brabant, there was a pedlar named Simon, standing in the market selling his wares. The priests with their idol — the host — passing by, the said Simon dared not show the counterfeit god any divine honour; but following the testimony of God in the Holy Scriptures, he worshipped the Lord his God only, and Him alone served.

‘He was therefore seized by the advocates of the Romish Antichrist, and examined as to his faith. This he boldly confessed. He rejected infant baptism as a mere human invention, with all the commandments of men, holding fast the testimony of the Word of God; he was therefore condemned to death by the enemies of the Truth.

‘They led him outside the town, and for the testimony of Jesus committed him to the flames. The astonishment of the bystanders was greatly excited when they saw the remarkable boldness and steadfast­ness of this pious witness of God, who, through grace, thus obtained the crown of everlasting life.

‘The bailiff, who procured his condemnation, on his return home from the execution, fell mortally sick, and was confined to his bed. In his suffering and sorrow he continually exclaimed, “Simon, Simon!” The priests and monks sought to absolve him; but he would not be comforted. He ­speedily expired in despair, an instructive and memorable example to all tyrants and persecutors.’

Baptists and the Reformation

During the Reformation and ­after it, the poor Baptists continued to be victims. Excesses had been committed by certain fifth-­monarchy men who happened also to be Anabaptists, and under cover of putting down these wild extremists, Motley tells us that thousands and tens of thousands of virtuous, well-disposed men and women, who had as little sympathy with anabaptistical as with Roman depravity, were butchered in cold blood, under the sanguinary rule of Charles, in the Netherlands.

The only restraint of persecution in the low countries was contained in a letter of Queen Dowager Mary of Hungary: ‘care being only taken that the provinces were not entirely depopulated’.

Luther and Zwingli, though themselves held to be heretics, were scarcely a whit behind the ­Papists in their rage against the Anabaptists, Zwingli especially ­uttering that pithy formula — Qui iterum mergit mergatur, thereby counselling the drowning of all those who dared to immerse believers on profession of their faith.

The time will probably arrive when history will be rewritten, and the maligned Baptists of Holland and Germany will be acquitted of all complicity with the ravings of the fanatics, and it will be proved that they were the advance-guard of the army of religious liberty, men who lived before their times, but whose influence might have saved the world centuries of floundering in the bog of semi-popery if they had but been allowed fair play.

As it was, their views, like those of later Baptists, so completely laid the axe at the root of all priestcraft and sacramentarianism, that violent opposition was aroused, and the two-edged sword of defamation and extirpation was set to its cruel work, and kept to it with a relentless perseverance never excelled, perhaps never equalled.

Intolerable to Romanists

All other streams of Christians may be in some degree borne with, but Baptists have proved utterly intolerable to priests and Popes.

We will leave the continental hive, to return to our brethren in England. Latimer, who could not speak too badly of the Baptists, nevertheless bears witness to their numbers and intrepidity:—

‘Here I have to tell you what I heard of late, by the relation of a credible person and a worshipful man, of a town in this realm of England, that hath about five hundred of heretics of this erroneous opinion in it.

‘The Anabaptists that were burnt here, in divers towns of England (as I have heard of credible men, I saw them not myself), met their death even intrepid, as you will say, without any fear in the world.

‘Well, let them go. There was, in the old times, another kind of poisoned heretics, that were called Donatists, and those heretics went to their execution as they should have gone to some jolly recreation and banquet.’

Latimer would learn

Latimer had, before long, to learn for himself where the power lay which enabled men to die so cheerfully. We do not wonder that he discovered a likeness between the Baptists and the Donatists, for quaint old Thomas Fuller draws at full length a parallel between the two, and concludes that the Baptists are only ‘the old Donatists new dipped’. We can survive even such a comparison as that.

Bishop Burnet says that in the time of Edward VI, Baptists became very numerous, and openly preached this doctrine, that ‘children are Christ’s without water’.

Protestantism nominally flourished in the reign of Edward VI, but there were many unprotestant doings. The use of the reformed liturgy was enforced by the pains and penalties of law. Bishop Ridley (himself a martyr in the next reign) was a member of a commission with Gardiner (afterwards notorious as a persecutor of Protestants) to root out Baptists. Among the ‘Articles of Visitation’, issued by Ridley in his own diocese, in 1550, was the following matter to be investigated:—

‘Whether any of the Anabaptists’ sect, and others, use notoriously any unlawful or ­private conventicles, wherein they do use doctrines or ­administration of sacraments, separating themselves from the rest of the parish?’

It may be fairly gathered from this article of visitation that there were many Baptist churches in the kingdom at that time.

This truth is also clear from the fact that the Duke of Northumberland advised that Mr John Knox should be invited to England, and made a bishop, that he might aid in putting down the Baptists in Kent.

Marsden tells us that in the days of Elizabeth ‘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 early days of the Lollards.’

…to be continued

Sword & Trowel 2006, NO 2