The Baptists

Front matter

OCT 2{

I

T^he Story of the Churches

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. Who and What aee the Baptists? . . 7

II. The Histoeical Antecedents of the

Chapter I Who And What Are The Baptists?

Knowledge of the Baptists, even among well-informed people, is often confined to a single fact — they are a religious body that practice immersion. This is, to be sure, accurate knowledge as far as it goes, but it goes a very little way. It does not serve to distinguish Baptists from many other denominations. Not a few persons will hear with surprise that there are in the United States, besides the Baptists, at least ten religious bodies — some of them quite numerous— that uniformly practice immersion, and three others that practice it frequently. While it is true that the administration of 7 this rite has been the most striking characteristic of Baptists, from the time that they appeared as a separate people, early in the seventeenth century, they have from the first held a distinctive group of doctrines. To understand these is a necessary preliminary to a comprehension of their history.

The cardinal, the fundamental principle of Baptists is loyal obedience to Jesus Christ. This they conceive to be the essence of Christianity. To be a Christian is not to have had a certain ''experience,*' not to believe a certain creed, not to perform a prescribed round of rites and observances, but to obey Christ. "If ye love me, keep my commandments." Baptists therefore decline to recognize the distinctions sometimes made betv^een ''essentials" and "non-essentials" among Christ's commands. They hold every command to be essential, in the place and for the purpose commanded. And they deny the right of any human authority to abrogate or alter any command that Christ gave to his disciples to be observed for all time.

Because of the authority thus recognized in Jesus Christ, Baptists receive the Scriptures— the v\^ritten word of Christ — as the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice. No special theory of inspiration has acceptance among them ; they are committed to no views of the authorship and dates of the various books, and are free to accept the ultimate conclusions of sound scholarship. Their thought has never been better put than in the Philadelphia Confession — which is practically identical with the confession of the English Baptist Assembly of 1689, which again is the Westminster Confession slightly revised: "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the holy Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by a new revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of lO men." All creeds, all writings of the Fathers, all decisions of councils, are the opinions of fallible men, which must stand or fall as they agree with the Scriptures. The only authority to interpret these writings is the Spirit of God, promised to every believer that asks for his enlightening. It is not merely the privilege, it is the duty, of every Christian to interpret the Scriptures for himself; no one can relieve him from this responsibility, none should be suffered to rob him of this right.

Because they accept the Scriptures as an authoritative guide. Baptists hold that a church of Christ consists of those, and of those only, who have been baptized upon a credible profession of faith, and walk consistently in accord with such profession. They find no warrant, express or implied, in the New Testament for the baptism of infants. There is confessedly no command to baptize infants. Candid scholars, not Baptists, admit that there is no clear case of

Who the Baptists Are ii

infant baptism in apostolic times. But more than this: Baptists hold that the baptism of any but believers is contrary to the whole spirit of Christianity, and that it totally subverts the principle on v^hich the Church of Christ w^as founded. Judaism had been based upon natural descent, upon the lav^ of the flesh, but Jesus came to teach and establish the utterly new law of the spirit. " Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. . . . That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." To be a Christian is to enter into a new and spiritual relation to God, through faith in his Son.

This is to exalt the spiritual above the fleshly in Christ's Church, to put reality above form. It marks the sharp break between the religion of Christ and all other religions. In every other religion one has certain rights because of natural birth — the Jew, for example, was a Jew because he was a lineal descendant of Abraham. But no man is a Christian because his parents were Christians, he can be a Christian only if he has been spiritually born into the kingdom of God. Religion thus becomes, according to Christ's teaching, a matter between each human soul and God. There is no need of priestly mediation, there is no possibility of regeneration by a magical ''sacrament." To baptize one who has not believed is, in the eye of a Baptist, an empty form, but as the act of one who sees in it more than that, it is something worse: it is an impertinent interference with the personal rights of another soul, it is to nullify the fundamental principle of the gospel of Christ.

Because they accept the Scriptures and not tradition as*authority. Baptists practice immersion only as baptism. No candid scholarship to-day professes to find anything but immersion in the New Testament, or in the practice of the Church for centuries. One great branch of the Catholie Church— the Greek — to this day recognizes no other practice. The old polemic literature of baptism is out of date and useless, and this is equally true of both sides of the controversy. Those who do not practice immersion have shifted their ground. They no longer deny, they rather frankly admit, that immersion was the apostolic practice and long continued to be the general, if not the universal, rule of the Church. But, they plead, *' other times, other manners.'' Christianity is a spiritual religion, and its followers are not in bondage to a rite, however ancient and expressive. In the wise exercise of discretion, the Church has seen fit to change the ancient form to one more suited to modern ideas, dress, customs. It is a triumph of good sense over narrow literalism! Baptists have found themselves unable to acquiesce in such a triumph; they hold fast to the command of Christ and the example of his apostles.

For a like reason, Baptists teach that the second Christian rite, the Lord's supper or eucharist, was instituted for the followers of Christ alone, that is, those who have believed in him and confessed their faith in baptism. The New Testament writings make this mutual relation plain, in regarding baptism as the beginning of the new life in Christ, the symbol of regeneration, while the supper is the symbol of the union of the believer with Christ, and the sustentation of the new life in him. This teaching of the Scriptures is so plain, so perfectly unmistakable, that for fifteen centuries, among all the vagaries of the swarming heretical sects, none ever proposed that the unbaptized should be admitted to the eucharist. It was reserved for Faustus Socinus first to teach that baptism is not necessary to Christian discipleship, that men may enter the church of Christ and enjoy all its privileges without baptism, but are under obligation to observe the eucharist.

Even at the present day, however, no denomination in its official standards authorizes the invitation of the unbaptized to the table of the Lord. What is known as "open " communion is the attempt — sometimes deliberate, but more often unconscious— to set aside, for considerations of sentiment, the historical consensus of Christendom as to the teaching of the New Testament upon this rite.

In the matter of church polity. Baptists also attempt to take the New Testament as their guide, and to follow the simplicity of apostolic times. In the apostolic period, the believers of any locality formed an assembly or church. There were no officers in these churches, except elders or bishops, and deacons. Each church enjoyed an absolute autonomy, and no external authority existed. In cases of need, a church called on others for help, and the other churches recognized their obligation to render aid. jn doubt and difficulty a church asked adi6 vice, and the other churches acknowledged their duty to give counsel. All believers, in every place and in all time, are sometimes spoken of as constituting one assembly or church; but this is an ideal, not an actual body. The idea of one universal visible Church, v^ith local branches here and there, is a conception foreign to the New Testament, the gradual evolution of the second and third centuries. So Baptists understand the Scriptures and history, and they shape their polity accordingly.

Because the religion of Christ is a strictly personal matter — a transaction between the soul and God, into which no third party can enter — Baptists hold that a State Church is an absurdity, as well as an intolerable wrong. God himself, by giving man freedom of choice, has put it beyond the scope of omnipotence to coerce men into his kingdom. Why should man attempt what is beyond the power of God? Absurdity could no further go. Nor can any wrong be more intolerable than interference with that most sacred of all rights, the right of each man to decide for himself what shall be his relation to God. To worship God according to one's own conscience, rather than according to another's, is the right men are least willing to surrender. But an established religion, a State Church, is a flat denial of that right. It cannot be anything else. True, under a State Church there may be toleration of all sects, but by what principle does one man ''tolerate" another in the exercise and enjoyment of that which is the equal right of both ? He who tolerates, because that is expedient, in so doing silently asserts the right to persecute, if that shall become expedient. For a long time Baptists were the only religious body to recognize these truths, to stand fast for equal religious liberty as the heritage of all men, and therefore to agitate for complete separation between Church and State. All America has come to agree with them, and l8 The Baptists

the whole world is moving toward the same goal.

It will be seen, therefore, that Baptists came to hold just these doctrines and no others by no mere accident. These principles are a logical whole, necessary corollaries of the fundamental tenet of loyalty to Christ and obedience to his word. Not one of them is superfluous, nor is it easy to suggest an addition. These are the principles that Baptists came into existence to maintain; it is these principles that justify their continued existence. They are vitally important, and they are held and consistently enforced in practice by no other body.

When Baptists came into existence as a separate people has been a hotly debated question. The answer depends mainly on the definition of the name. If by Baptist is meant a people called by that title, and holding in all important respects just the doctrines held by Baptist churches to-day, then it is vain to seek for such before the seventeenth century. But if by Baptist were meant any mediaeval sect that agreed with present-day Baptists in the fundamental matter of baptizing believers only, while practicing that form of baptism in common use about them (affusion), it would be possible to carry the history of Baptists back to the twelfth century, perhaps earlier still. No little confusion and dispute has been caused by this looser use of the name, and in this book it has seemed best therefore to confine the name to its well-established historic sense, as describing an offshoot of the English Separatists, who first achieved an independent existence early in the seventeenth century, adopted the exclusive practice of immersion, and in consequence received the name Baptists about 1644.

The earliest historians of the Baptists had learned the facts about the origin of their denomination, and set them forth properly. Later writers, who had made little or no investigation, and had not even read the earlier historians carefully, inspired by denominational pride and anxious to make good a claim of Baptists to antiquity, attempted to carry back the history to the earliest Christian times. It is now an article of faith, among the Baptists of a certain large region of the United States, that there have been churches of their order from the days of the apostles until now, and woe to him who denies a dogma none the less binding because it is unwritten. The holders of this new theory rely less on historic evidence than on exegesis for proof— which is wise, for facts are lacking, but exegesis is easily supplied. For example: Christ said that the gates of Hades should not prevail against his Church; but the churches of the New Testament times are such as Baptist churches are to-day, and no others; hence, if there had ever been a time when Baptist churches did not exist, the gates of Hades would have prevailed and Christ's promise would have lacked fulfilment. But that is unthinkable by a Christian — heaven and earth shall pass away, but not the word of Christ — hence there must always have been Baptist churches in existence. — Q. E. D.

This method of treating Baptist history is not only recent and provincial, but is opposed to the fundamental conception of the older writers. They attached no such importance to the proof of antiquity. They appealed for justification of teaching and practice, not to any traceable outward descent from the apostles, but to actual correspondence with the New Testament — the only kind of apostolic succession they esteemed worth having. They also recog-t-' nized the fact that if antiquity be made the test of truth, Rome has the judgment in her favor rendered in advance. On every account, therefore, they forebore factitious and ridiculous claims to an ancient origin, and, though often taunted with being a people of yesterday, they contented themselves with replying that their principles were the oldest form of the Christian faith.

All students of history are to-day trained in the rigorous application of the scientific method. And what the ordinary lay reader wishes to know of any religious body is, What are the well ascertained facts ? — facts established by documents of indubitable genuineness, facts witnessed by competent contemporary observers. To answer this question candidly and succinctly, so far as it relates to the Baptists, is the object of the succeeding pages. It will there be shown that a succession of principles, like those held by the Baptist churches of to-day, may be easily traced from the twelfth century onward to our own times. The tracing of these principles is a necessary and legitimate part of the history, for though Baptists are of late origin, they did not spring out of the ground and invent de novo the type of doctrine and practice associated with their name. Their roots go back many centuries before their definite origin and formal organization.

Chapter II The Historical Antecedents Of The Baptists

The immediate spiritual ancestors of the Baptists were the Mennonites, whose name was derived from a Roman Catholic priest, Menno Simons, who left the Roman Church about the year 1536 and became an independent evangelistic teacher. He had been led to this course, in part by persistent doubts concerning the teachings of the Church, but still more by his long and careful study of the Scriptures, in which he finally became well versed. He did not originate the doctrines and practices of the sect that came to bear his name, nor did he found the sect, but as the most prominent of its leaders he came in time to hold a place not less influential than that of founder. He at least refounded the body, 24 drawing together a scattered and disorganized people, and winning thousands of new converts.

The fundamental principle of the Mennonites was that the Scriptures alone are to be received as authority, and for Christian practice only the New Testament is authoritative. It was plain to them that the Scriptures teach the baptism of believers only, and contain no warrant, whether of precept or example, for the baptism of infants. It did not appear equally plain to them that baptism is immersion only, and for the most part they have always been content with practicing that form of baptism in vogue about them. To this rule there have been a few exceptions. A congregation at Rhynsburg introduced the practice of immersion in 1619, and a branch of the Mennonites that settled in Russia also became immersionists. The great majority, however, are affusionists to this day.

A curious people, in many ways, were these followers of Menno. A^tendency to over-literal interpretation of the Scriptures early manifested itself among them, and led to the adgptjon of some practices that later became distinguishing features of the followers of George Fox. They forbade all oaths, even judicial oaths, and refused to bear arms, even in self-defence. They enforced plainness of dress and general nonconformity to worldly customs, and in their church discipline they supervised the details of business, family and personal conduct to a degree that most folk would reckon tyrannous as well as inquisitorial. That, notwithstanding these peculiarities, they were a mild, peace-loving, law-abiding, industrious, virtuous people, is the reluctant yet admiring testimony of their bitterest foes and persecutors.

These virtues, and the simplicity of their teaching, won favor for the Mennonites through a large part of the Continent of Europe. Throughout Holland, Denmark,

G^OB^ny and Western Russia, Menno and his fellow-missionaries went, amid constant privations and dangers, preaching the gospel and everywhere baptizing converts. Only the most stringent measures of repression kept the sect from making rapid growth in every place. In Holland, where alone they enjoyed a fair measure of toleration, they did increase to the number of many thousands. But for the most part, their history is to be traced by the records of bloody martyrdoms, with which the archives of those times abound. Many of these records have been recovered and published, and the result is a story of patient endurance of wrong, of heroic perseverance in the face of certain anguish and death, such as may indeed be paralleled but cannot be surpassed in all the history of Christianity.

From time to time, companies of these Mennonites found their way to England. We find traces of them early in the reign of

Henry^^yill, and these continue throughout the Tudor dynasty. The sect may be traced by the royal proclamations in which their_e||prs were denounced, and by the rjgcords of their arrest and punishment. It was the policy at times of the Tudor monarchs to encourage immigration from Holland, for the building up of certain English manufactures; and such immigrants, dwelling in certain specified towns, were perjTiitted to enjoy their own religious customs, with little or no molestation. With these exceptions, Mennonites who came to England were likely Jo find that they had gone further and fared worse.

In England, theses . people were seldom or never called Mennonites, but Anabaptists. They remained, to all appearance, a separate people, not making any considerable impression on the English. We know from the official records that some men and women of English birth joined the sect, but there is no_trust\yprthy account of Anabaptist churches composed of Englishmen during this period. Of the individual English Anabaptists known to us, the most note^worthy is Joan Boucher, or Joan of Kent, who was burned for heresy in 1550, the story of whose martyrdom is known to all readers of Fox's Book of Martyrs. The last man to suffer at the stake in England, Edward Wightman, who was burned in 161 1, was also an Anabaptist. At least, the two chief errors alleged against him were denial of the Trinity, and of the baptism of infants. The first tenet was by no means characteristic of Anabaptists, but was held by a few who had been influenced by the writings of Socinus. Between Joan of Kent and Wightman many witnessed to the truth with their lives, to say nothing of those still larger numbers that suffered the minor penalties of fines and imprisonment, whippings and banishment. But even though these Anabaptists, speaking a foreign tongue and dwelling clannishly by themselves, did not make converts of Englishmen on any great scale, and apparently left no English churches of their order, their sojourn in England was not v^ithout effect upon that country. They certainly did something toward preparing the soil, and to some extent they sowed the seed, for the later growth of English Baptists.

It has already been said that Menno did not originate the sect that took his name. There were Mennonites before Menno, but they had been called Anabaptists. He found ready to his hand, though disorganized and scattered, a people already holding and practicing what he had by his studies discovered to be the teaching of the Scriptures. Indeed, we are told that it was the constancy of one of their number when persecuted for his faith, even to the death, which had been one of the chief means of opening his own eyes and promoting his complete enlightenment. It was after he had become a preacher of the truth that the

Anabaptists rallied under his leadership, and under the new name renewed their existence, which had been threatened with extinction. For these Anabaptists were the most hated and despised and bitterly persecuted folk of the Reformation period, with what reason the reader shall judge when he has read their history and teachings.

The Anabaptists appear in the early years of the Reformation, almost simultaneously in both Germany and Switzerland — appear with a suddenness, and in so many places at once, as to compel the conclusion that they too (like the Mennonites) were not then and there originated, but are the reappearance of an older party under a new name. One difficulty in studying their history is due to the fact that contemporary writers used the name ''Anabaptist very loosely, it having become a term of contumely, and as such was applied to persons to whom it did not properly belong — to anybody whom the dominant religious party esteemed dangerous heretics or pestilent fellows.

The Anabaptists do not appear a§,.a rate party in the first stages of the Reformation, but this is sufficiently explained by the fact that the reformers at first professed strictly evangelical and radical ideals and purposes. The refusal. af Xuth^ particularly from the Leipzig disputation of the summer of 15 19, to accept anything but the Scriptures as authority in either faith or practice, was all that the most radical evangelical asked or desired. He only demanded the faithful, the consistent application of this principle to all questions, as they arose in turn and demanded solution. Zwingli also, from the very beginning of the reform at Zurich — long before the citizens were aware that the reform had begun, in fact — had avowed the same principle again and again, in the strongest possible words. Both reformers spoke most explicitly in favor of the rights of the individual conscience, the universal priesthood of believers, the duty of each Christian to interpret the Scriptures for himself, and Luther at least had denpunced the wickedness of persecution for the sake of religion. Here was doctrine as radical as the Anabaptists ever proclaimed. How were those who really held these as cardinal beliefs to know that the reformers only half held them — held them only in the strictly modified sense, that nobody else was to go further and faster than they in the practical application of these principles ? As the real meaning of the reformers became clear, the Anabaptists stood forth as a separate party.

This is especially true of the reform in Switzerland. In the first public disputation at Zurich (January 29, 1523), which marks the formal beginning of the reform movepient, the council ordered that the disputants should *'use the holy divine word in the German tongue and speech,'* and promised that the decision should be "according to what shall prove itself to be consonant with Holy Scripture and truth/' Throughout the discussion Zwingli refused, with the approval of the council and his auditors, to listen to any argument not founded on the Scriptures. Although his chief opponent, Faber, was very anxious to quote Fathers and councils against Zwingli's doctrines, he could not oppose them by the text of Scripture; and the council therefore decided that Zwingli had won the victory, and ordered him to go on proclaiming the pure gospel. The people of Zurich generally approved this decision— there were no dissidents save those inclined still to adhere to the Roman Church.

Already the question had been raised in Zurich whether the Scriptures justified the baptism of infants. Zwingli, Oekolampadius, and others prominent among the reformers, recognized that no direct command or clear precedent can be cited from the Ne>Aj^ Testament for this traditional practice, and they were much inclined at first to give up a custom so ill supported. But before they had fully decided on their course, difficulties arose. The radicalgroup at Zurich insisted not merely on the surrender of infant baptism, but on the total reorgajokation of the church, in accord with the New Testament. There we find, said they, churches consisting only of believers, those who have not only made a sincere and credible profession of faith in Christ, bjit^attest the profession to be true by a godly life.

This was an altogether different ideal from that cherished by Zwingli, who was a gatrigL-a& well as a Christian, not more preacher than he was politician. He did not believe it possible thus to separate the Church from the world, and it appeared to him suicidal to enter on a policy that, if successful, would certainly lose the reformers the support of the Zurich council. Reform, not by the power of the truth alone, but by the authority of the government; a Church, not composed of the regenerate only, but of all the community who were not openly vicious and irreligious; a Church, not depending on voluntary gifts for its support, but supported by the State, and in some measure therefore controlled by the State; in short, a reform not purely religious, but in part political — this was the ideal of Zwingli and most of his coworkers.

Nor should it surprise us that they were not ready to accept the programme of the radicals. That was vague and not a little alarming, theirs was precise, definite and safe. There had been no demonstration as yet of the possibility of a Church dissociated from State support and State control. Voluntaryism seemed a frightful risk to a clergy accustomed to draw sure stipends from a well-filled treasury; it seemed a frightful certainty of disorder, heresy and trouble to the politician, accustomed to the legal regulation of ecclesiastical affairs. And therefore, when it became clear to the reformers that there was a close and necessary connection between a State Church and infant baptism, Zwingli and the majority of his coworkers reconsidered the question, and without much difficulty found arguments frpm thp Scriptures for the retention of infant baptism.

The radicals, however, not only held fast to their contention, but followed out the logi^c^ of their ^ p^^ If they were

right in maintaining that infant baptism was not warranted by the Scriptures, that it was therefore a void and meaningless form, what followed? Why, that they had never been baptized at all, and the command of Christ had not been obeyed by them. Obviously, if the only real baptism was a baptism of a believer, on his own confession of faith in Christ, it was their duty to confess him and be baptized at once. Early in 1525 such baptisms on confession began among them, and in a short time all the radicals had submitted to this new baptism. The method employed in these first cases was affusion— it is distinctly recorded that persons were baptized from a basin or bowl. Later, in some cases, immersion was practiced; but while this method was more and more used, it seems never to have become an exclusive practice, as it did later in England. Nor did it become a cause of division or dispute.

It.was because this group of radical reformers thus insisted on administering baptism, by whatever method, to adults who hgd (as all others believed) been baptized in infancy, that their opponents began to cjJl them Anabaptists, or Wiedertaufifer, both of which mean r^-baptizers. And it was because this act challenged not only the validity of their opponents' baptism, but the validity of their whole church order — in effect declaring the State Church to be no church — that severe measures of repression were^immedjately un The Ana-

baptist henceforth was held to be not merely a heretic, but a rebel; he not only set up a practice different from that which satisfied others, but he questioned the authority of the council, and declared its measures wrong. It is not altogether wonderful that the Zurich authorities found this intolerable.

The leaders of the Anabaptists in Zurich were a group of men well worthy to be compared" with Zwingli himself. They were such men as Conrad Grebel, son of a Zurich councillor, educated at the Universities of Vienna and Paris, greatly esteemed for his ability and learning; Fdix Ma^^^^ the natural son of a Zurich canon, also liberally educated and a fine Hebrew scholar, which Zwingli was not; George Blaurock, a former monk, less famed for learning than for eloquence, in which he was unsurpassed; Ludwig Hatzer, from the canton of St. Gall, educated at Freiburg, also an eminent Hebrew scholar. These men were fully the equals of Zwingli in learning and eloquence, some of them were his superiors in social position, but the chief preacher of Zurich and the trusted adviser of the council was stronger than all of them. Pubjic^disputations were appointed by the cpuncil for the discuj§$jon of the points at issue, and were duly held, but the result was, under the circumstances, a foregone conclusion — no matter what the relative skill of the disputants, or the strength of the various arguments adduced, the decision of the council was certain to be in Zwingli's favor. And such a decision having been rendered, it was equally certain that the council would, that the council must, proceed to enforce it upon the defeated party. With the ideas prevalent in Jhat age, religious liberty, toleration even of opponents, was not to be thought of by the powerful or looked for by the weak. Repression by heavy penalties, in the last resort by death itself, was the policy immediately pursued by the council.