A question in Baptist history: whether the Anabaptists in England practiced immersion before the year 1641?

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

II. Baptism In The Church Of England

IN the earliest times immersion prevailed in England as elsewhere. Apostolic teaching and practice had as yet experienced no marked corruption, in this direction at least. Baptism was frequently performed in rivers; beautiful stories are told by the Venerable Bede concerning the labors of Paul in us in the River Glen and the River Swale during the earlier portion of the seventh century.

The era of baptisteries had not yet arrived, but in due season a generation appeared who forsook the river and adopted this new convenience. Baptisteries were not so numerous nor so artistic in England as in Italy; yet they were in use there, and remains of some of them are claimed to be worthy of attention. (Robinson, History of Baptism, Boston, 1817, pp. 133-4).

To the age of the baptistery succeeded that of the font. The former was situated outside of the church, and sometimes a building was erected for its accommodation. Fonts were constructed inside the churches. Their dimensions were sufficient for the immersion of children, and the use of fonts instead of baptisteries would appear to indicate that the immersion of adults was gradually becoming an unusual observance. Infant baptism was apparently gaining ground against adult baptism, a tendency which it would be more difficult to resist as the years went on.

At first these fonts were fairly roomy structures, (Robinson, pp. 128-9). In the course of time they became more contracted, but throughout the Middle Ages they must have been always large enough for the immersion of newborn infants. At length, in the latter portion of the 13th century, there occurred in France a decided change of sentiment regarding the act of baptism. Both Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura. a number of years before their death in 1274, made concessions in favor of affusion and aspersion. (De Hoop Scheffer, Overzicht der Geschiedenis van den Doop bij Onderdompeling. Amsterdam, 1882, pp. 11, 12.)

The result of an expression of that kind on the part of the foremost leaders of theological thought became shortly apparent. There was wavering in various quarters. The Synod of Cologne in 1280 decreed that pouring would suffice where newborn children were in peril of immediate death; the Synod of Nismes in 1281 went a step farther in the same direction ; a synod in the Netherlands in 1287 opened the gate still wider, directing the officiating priest not to immerse the head of the child, at any time, but to avoid danger by pouring water three times upon the crown of his head; and in 1293 a like decree was passed by the Synod of Utrecht. (Burrage, Act of Baptism, Philadelphia, pp. 116-119). Here was perhaps the earliest instance where it was required to pour water on the head while the body was immersed.

This notable defection was followed in 1311 by the Council of Ravenna, which decreed that "baptism is to be administered by trine aspersion or immersion," giving preference to aspersion. The foundations were gradually breaking up. France, Germany, Holland and Italy were all more or less affected, and all more or less helpless in the current that had set against the primitive form of baptism. But England in her isolation was as yet practically untouched. Throughout the fourteenth century there is but one sign that she was sensible of the change that had been going forward on the other side of the •channel. Wyclif, who died in 1384, remarked in a discourse on baptism: "Nor is it material whether they be dipped once or thrice, or water be poured on their heads: but it must be done according to the ■custom of the place where one dwells." Dr. Wall, (History of Infant Baptism. Oxford, 1848. Yol. 2, p. 397,) endeavors to break the force of that statement, but without success. It is somewhat singular that only this one concession towards pouring or sprinkling has yet been found in the Church of England during so long a period of time. It has commonly been supposed that the coldest countries surrendered immersion the soonest, but exactly the opposite is the real state of the case.

Wyclif gave the first note of wavering in the England of the later Middle Ages. Since he was not in the odor of orthodoxy, his opinion was not taken up by a chorus of councils like that which greeted the utterances of Aquinas and Bonaventura in the thirteenth century, but the common sort of people must have received his words with some degree of sympathy. The work of Lyndewode, Dean of the Arches, in 1422, describing the English Constitutions, declares that the manner of baptizing infants is by dipping, and yet he adds a note to say that "This is not to be accounted to be of the essence of baptism: but it may be given also by pouring or sprinkling. And this holds especially where the custom of the church allows it." i Wall, Vol. 2, p. 396). Evidently some churches upon their own responsibility without the authority of any council or liturgy must have already undertaken to practice pouring or sprinkling for baptism.

After the time of Lyndewode innovations began to spring up more rapidly, especially on the continent. In 1482 the Wurzburg Liturgy gave the priest a choice of thrice immersing or thrice washing the infant with water: in 1491 the Bamberg Liturgy prescribed pouring alone, and there had been even earlier instances in France where immersion was wholly left out of the account. Yet in the following century Erasmus in his remarks on Cyprian's Letter 76 to Magnus, declares not without a touch of contempt: "Infants are poured upon in our country; they are immersed in England." (Scheffer, Overzicht, p. 18). In 1533 Henry VIII. caused his infant daughter Elizabeth to be immersed at Greenwich, and in 1537 his infant son Edward was immersed at Hampton Court Chapel. Such a ceremony would have been possible at that time perhaps in few other royal households of Western Christendom.

However, outside pressure was becoming perceptible in England. The Reformers, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, while dispensing with many customs that had grown up in connection with baptism in the Catholic Church, yet made no change in the rite itself, as the same was practiced in the regions where they lived. Possibly Luther was the most conservative of the three, and would have been well pleased to restore immersion. In his Sermon on Baptism published in 1518 he expresses himself to that effect, and likewise in the work styled "The Babylonish Captivity," which appeared in 1520. The same is true of his Larger Catechism and of the baptismal formulas issued in 1523 and 1526.

But he found that the current was too strong, and in a small work entitled "How One Should Properly Baptize," etc., published in 1523, he prescribed that the administrator shall "pour water upon the candidate, and say I baptize thee," etc. Nearly all the liturgies of the Lutheran Church indicate that this form prevailed. (Scheffer, Overzicht, pp. 19, 20).

The Reformed or Presbyterian Church, with which the Church of England was for a season somewhat more closely allied, was less inclined to regard the demands of conservatism, and therefore was more inclined to favor pouring or sprinkling. The Strasburg Order of Baptism, issued in 1525, required pouring and ignored immersion; Zwingli in his book, Yon dem Touff, vom Widertouff uund vom Kindertouff, Zurich, 1525, referred to pouring or dipping as the general custom in 1525, (Burrage, pp. 133-4); and Zurich issued an Order of Baptism in 1535 enjoining the minister merely to pour water thrice upon the child, (Burrage, pp. 138-9). A few years later the same city was formally to forbid immersion and require that children should only be sprinkled thrice, (Robinson, History, p. 484).

Tyndale, in his Doctrinal Treatises, 1528, Parker Society, Cambridge, 1848, p. 277, indicates that it was not unheard of even in England for the priest to pour water upon the child's head, and that he himself approved this innovation. His words are as follows: "Behold how narrowly the people look on the ceremony. If aught be left out, or if the child be not altogether dipt in the water; or if, because the child is sick, the priest dare not plunge him into the water, but pour water on his head, how tremble they! how quake they! 'How say ye, Sir John,' (say they) 'is this child christened enough ? Hath it his full Christendom V They verily believe that the

child is not christened Now this is false

doctrine, verily."

But Henry VIII. had an iron hand, and there was apparently no official retrograde movement as long as he lived. Wall says of the period before Edward VI. (History, Vol. 2, p. 397), "The offices or liturgies for public baptism in the Church of England did all along, so far as I can learn, enjoin dipping without any mention of pouring or sprinkling." Yet the time of change had come, and two year& after the death of Henry, the Book of Common Prayer for the year 1549 required indeed the ancient usage of trine immersion, but allowed that if the child were weak it should suffice to pour water upon it. This is understood to have been the earliest official recognition of a practice that had been gaining headway for a long season.

Other changes followed more rapidly. In 1552' a new Prayer Book appeared in which only a single immersion was enjoined, and pouring was again made optional in case of weakness. In the sad days of Queen Mary the ecclesiastical leaders of the country were scattered on the continent, and so were brought into closer contact with the sentiment and practices that prevailed there. Numbers of them were in touch with Calvin at Geneva who practiced pouring exclusively since 1536 and had openly published his Form of Administering the Sacraments in 1545, in which immersion was omitted. (Wall, vol. 2, p. 400.) By that means, and influenced through the atmosphere which existed almost everywhere beyond the Channel, these men were rendered impatient of the slower pace at which things were moving in their native country. To one who surveys the whole situation it seems a marvel that the Church of England should have held out so long and so stoutly. Still the limits of her power to resist had now been reached. At the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 the exiles returned and began the labor of innovation. The queen who had not traveled abroad naturally used her endeavors to resist them. In 1571 a book was issued under her auspices in which church wardens were instructed to see "that in every church there be a holy founte, />"/ a bason, wherein baptism may be ministered, and it be kept comely and clean." In 15S4 another book appeared in which a similar item is found to the effect that "the font be not removed, nor that the curate do baptize in parish churches in any basons, nor in any other form than is already prescribed," etc. (Robinson, pp. 114,115.)

The queen had an imperious will, but she could not stand against the movement that was now going forward. It had been started by Wyclif as early as

1384, and was practically completed after two centuries of struggle and delay. The fonts were removed from the churches in spite of Elizabeth's authority. Dr. Wall, History, vol. 2, p. 401, says that "in the latter times of Queen Elizabeth, and during the reigns of King James and of King Charles I., very few children were dipped in the font."

Thomas Blake, of Tamworth, indeed, writing in 1645 (Infants Freed from Anti-Christianism, p. 1), says: "I have been an eye-witness of many infants dipped." Here he seems to talk like an adept at special pleading, especially as on page 4 of the same work he declares in more moderate terms, "I have seen several dipped." (Wall, vol. 2, p. 402.) Perhaps the truth is stated by Dean Stanley, as cited by Dr. Armitage (History of the Baptists. New York, 1887, p. 434), who says that according to the annals of the English Church the last recorded instances of immersion before the Restoration were the dipping of three infant sons of Sir Robert Shirley, in the reign of Charles I.

The baptism of infants in the Church of England had long since crowded out the baptism of adult believers. The immersion of a grown-up person as a religious observance seems to have become to all intents a lost art. For a long time no provision appeared in the Prayer Book for the "Public Baptism of Such as are of Riper Years," until the year 1661. Two reasons are given for its introduction at that time; one that it had become necessary "by ye growth of Anabaptism, through ye Licentiousness of ye late Times crept in amongst us," and the other that it would "be allwaies usefull for ye baptizing of Natives in our Plantations, and others converted to ye Faith." (Dexter. True Story of John Smyth. Boston, 1881, p. 23. Cf. Wall, vol. 2, pp. 321-2.) Baptists were about that time making their influence felt; moreover, England had now become, what she had not been before, a commercial and colonizing nation.

Generally speaking, the Reformed or Presbyterian Church was indifferent, if not opposed, to immersion. It has been shown above how Strasburg decided against it in 1525, Zurich in 1535 and Geneva in 1545. When the Westminster Divines, who were preparing the Directory for Public Worship of God, came to discuss tins subject on the seventh of August, 1644, it was now their turn to reject immersion as their continental predecessors had done. This rite had long been disused among Presbyterians, and every member of the Assembly was agreed that sprinkling was the best mode of baptism. The question at issue before them was whether immersion should be tolerated as an alternate form of baptism and allowed to stand by the side of sprinkling. Numbers felt unwilling to go on record as rejecting a New Testament usage by formal action, and hence the vote was close. If they had allowed immersion to stand, it is likely that nobody in their communion would have employed it. But their sentiments were too decided even to allow it to stand. Twenty-five went against it, while only twenty-four were willing to concede that it was one of the modes by which baptism might be administered. (John Lightfoot's Works, London, 1824, Yol. 13, p. 300.) This was the most radical action against immersion which up to that time had ever been taken by one of the larger denominations of Christendom.

Thus it will be seen that though England moved at some distance in the rear, she moved nevertheless. The immersion of infants was practically extinct in the Church of England by the year 1600. By the year 1611 the Presbyterians of England and Scotland had even traveled far enough to decide by a formal vote in the Assembly at Westminster that immersion was not a proper form in which to administer baptism, an extreme to which the Church of England has not yet advanced. The immersion of adults had become so far unknown that it could be stated without reservation in the Jessey Church Records for the year 1610 that "none had then so practiced in England to professed believers."

IV

BAPTISM AMONG THE ANABAPTISTS OF THE SIX- TEENTH AND EARLY PORTION OF THE SEVEN- TEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND.

ANABAPTISTS first appeared in England in the earlier portion of the sixteenth century. On the 25th of May, 1535, 19 men and 6 women, all of them from Holland, were arrested on the charge of being Anabaptists. (Stowe, Chronicle, p. 571.) The city of Muenster was at that moment under siege, and was captured a month later. In 1538 six others were taken, who were also from Holland. (Stowe, p. 576.) Fuller, in his Church History, intimates that they had come over in the hope of finding protection on account of the prospective marriage of Henry VIII. to Anne of Cleves. (Crosby. History of the English Baptists. London, 1738-40. Vol. 1, p. 39.) In 1539 16 men and 15 women, Anabaptists, were banished from England and went to Delft, Holland, where they were seized by the authorities and executed, the men being beheaded and the women drowned. (Crosby, vol. 1, p. 42.)

The Anabaptists of England in the sixteenth century were nearly all from Holland. Joan Boucher, of Kent, an English woman, was an exception, but there were very few others. The celebrated Mr. Fox, in a letter to Queen Elizabeth, in 1575, says: "I understand there are some (Anabaptists) here in England, tho' not English, but come hither from Holland, f * * and we have great reason to give God thanks on this account, that I hear not of any Englishman that is inclined to this madness." (Crosby, vol. 1, p. 71.)

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 Khynsburg, began to immerse in 1620.

In fact, few Anabaptists anywhere were immersionists. The Reformers, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, as we have seen, quietly accepted the usage of the Catholic Church and raised no contention at all about the act of baptism. Whatever custom was current regarding this point among the people where they labored, was embraced by them. Pouring and sprinkling were current almost everywhere, and they were accordingly adopted without scruple.

The same remark applies to the Anabaptists, who insisted upon baptism of believers only, rarely made any contention about the mode, and almost always practiced pouring or sprinkling. Dr. Balthazar Hubmeier, one of their most worthy and influential leaders, describes the act of baptism as follows:

"To baptize in water is to pour outward water over the confessor of his sins, in accordance with the divine command, and to inscribe him in the number of sinners upon his own confession and acknowledgement. So has John baptized." (Yon dem Christenlichen Tauff der gliiubigen durch Balthasarn Hiibmor, 1525, p. 5.) "In April, 1525, it being Easter, the customary season for baptism, Hubmeier called his followers together and hawing sent for a pail of water solemnly baptized three hundred persons at onetime." (Burrage, p. 131. i

Felix Mantz, another leader, also practiced pouring. Under date of February 7, 1525, George Schad, of Zollikon, near Zurich, testified, "that he had passed all his days in sin and blasphemy; that he had been greatly distressed on this account, and that he had prayed to God for grace and for conviction of sin, and God manifested his grace to him so that he was convicted of sin. Then God promised him if he should depart from sin that He would also forgive his sin. That promise moved him greatly, and he asked for the token of brotherly love, that he might do to his neighbor all the good that he did to himself. Then he submitted to have water poured upon him, and Felix Mantz was the person who baptized him." (Egli, Actensammlung zur Geschichte der Zuercher Reformation, Zurich, 1879, p. 283.) Another instance may be cited: "Hans Bruggbach, of Zumikon, stood up and cried out how great a sinner he was, and desired that they should pray to God for him. Then George Blaurock asked him whether he desired the grace of God. He replied, yes. Then Mantz stood up and said, Who shall hinder me from baptizing him? Then Blaurock answered, 'Nobody.' Thereupon Mantz took a dipper of water and baptised him in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. " (Egli, p. 284. Of. Burrage, p. 130.)

It used to be said that the word Katabaptist, 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, and Prof. Scheffer has fully shown that in the usage of con temporary authors this was its meaning in the word under consideration, and that Zwingli and others in styling them Katabaptists meant only that they were "against" the commonly accepted baptism. (Overzicht, pp. 24-26.) Thus the same persons were called Anabaptists, or Rebaptizers, because they baptized on profession of faith those who had been christened in infancy, and Katabaptists, or opponents of infant baptism. While~ the great body of Anabaptist believers practiced pouring or sprinkling for baptism, there were a few exceptions in favor of immersion. John Kessler, in his Chronicle of the Reformation in St. Gall, called Sabbata (vol. 1, p. 262), says: "Wolfgang Uolman encountered Conrad Grebel on the journey to Schaffhausen, and while with him was so highly impressed with Anabaptism that he would not simply be poured upon with water out of a dish, but, being entirely naked, he was pressed down and covered over in the Rhine." (Scheffer, Overzicht, p. 23.)

Prof. Scheffer allows himself to assert in this connection that the example of Uolman was followed by no other person, but that is perhaps an extreme position. The people of St. Gall whom Grebel baptized in the Sitter River on Palm Sunday of 1525 it is likely were immersed. Scheffers reason for calling this in question (Overzicht, p. 23) is that Grebel, with his associates and successors in the Anabaptist faith, from that day to the present, have always baptized by a handful of water merely, and, therefore, that he could not have employed immersion on this occasion. One naturally hesitates to challenge the conclusions of a Mennonite scholar of so much ability and distinction: but it is admitted that Grebel immersed Uolman in the Rhine, and it is possible that he also immersed numbers of people who followed him from St. Gall to the Sitter River. Prof. Scheffer replies to this by pointing out that immersion is expressly described where Uolman was baptized in the Rhine, and that it cannot be conceded on the banks of the Sitter River without a like definite statement. Yet it is not easy to discover any other reason why Grebel and his friends should journey as far as the river over a difficult road and hold their worship in the open air upon its banks.

The Benedictine monk Clement Sender, an eyewitness, describes the usage of the Anabaptists of Augsburg in this regard, and Dr. Theodore Keim, in his paper on Ludwig Hetzer (Jahrbuecher fur Deutsche Theologie, Stuttgart, 1856, p. 278), reproduces the substance of his testimony. "The act of baptism," he says, "was administered in the River Lech, the men being naked and the women wearing bathing-trousers; or in times of persecution it was administered simply by sprinkling the forehead in cellars and barnyards." In this connection he mentions the wife of a stonemason, Adolf Ducher, "who during the absence of her husband at 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."

No sufficient reason appears for calling in question the authority of Sender. If it be allowed to stand then we must conclude that the Anabaptists of Augsburg at the most flourishing moment of their existence, when their church numbered 1100 members, practiced immersion as well as sprinkling. Frof.

Scheffer is not able to understand why Sebastian Franck, who Jived not far away at Ulm, and described in his Chronicles (1536) with the greatest detail a number of Anabaptist sects should not have heard of such an unusual occurrence as immersion at Augsburg (Overzicht, p. 27). The argument from silence is not always conclusive. The testimony of Sender must be allowed to stand until some better reasons shall be advanced to overthrow it. If my view is sustained it must follow that immersion was practiced at two points at least by the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, namely, at St. Gall, in Switzerland, and Augsburg, in Bavaria. The question has been mooted as to what proportion of the whole number of Anabaptist believers were immersionists, but the data for a correct conclusion are not satisfactory. Some would say that possibly one in twenty of them may have been immersionists, whilst others would establish the proportion as no greater than one in a hundred.

There were immersing Anabaptists in Poland, ' Silesia, Lithuania and Pomerania (Scheffer, Overzicht, p. 32 i. The common impression is that these were derived from St. Gall, in Switzerland. Scattered by persecution the Swiss Anabaptists were forced to travel into many countries, and it is conceivable that some of them found their way to the countries mentioned. But Scheffer in the work already cited has assumed a new position on that subject, declaring that baptism of no kind was practiced among the Polish believers until they introduced immersion in 1575. In the previous year a catechism, the first on record in Poland that required this rite for professed believers, was published at Cracow. Martin Czechowitz, pastor at Wilna and later at Lublin, he represents to have been responsible for this change. (Overzicht, p. 31.) He likewise affirms that Czechowitz was induced to prefer immersion as the act of baptism solely for the reason that the immersion of infants was still customary among Catholics and Protestants alike, because the countries in question were in the neighborhood of the Greek Church, where it was the only form of administering the ordinance. (Overzicht, p. 33.) The Unitarians of Poland, who had discontinued theuse of baptism, were also influenced by these conditions so far as to come out in favor of immersion in their catechism of 1609, which was reprinted in 1659' and 1680. (Overzicht, p. 37.)

Several of these statements have not yet been completely established by proofs. It is just possible that immersionists may have existed in Poland before the appearance of the Catechism at Cracow in 1574, and that they may have obtained their practice from Switzerland rather than from the Greek Church. This view appears to have about as firm historical support as the one set forth above.

In general, then, it may be declared that the very small number of immersing Anabaptists on the continent of Europe were confined to regions remote from Holland whence it has been shown that the Anabaptists of England during the sixteenth century were derived.

The Anabaptists of Holland appear to have been, without exception, engaged in the practice of pouring and sprinkling. Melchior Hoffman was understood and represented among them as their "Father." It was due to his activity that anabaptism was transplanted from Southern to Northern Germany, (Keller, Geschichte der Wiedertauf er, etc. , Muenster, 1880, p. 121), and Hoffman practiced pouring. Cornelius (Geschichte des Muensterischen Aufruhr's, Leipzig, 1855, vol. 2, p. 222,) says that "in the sacristy of the Great Church at Emden Hoffman could venture openly to administer baptism in the year 1530." Hast (Geschichte der Wiedertaeufer, Muenster, 1836, p. 255, ) asserts upon the authority of the anabaptist Ubbo Philipps that 300 persons were baptized by Hoffman out of a large bucket on this occasion. The act of baptism could not have been immersion, in this case.

The "Confession of the Two Sacraments" that was composed by Bernard Rothmann and issued at Muenster on the 8th of October, 1537, is in some respects a singular performance. It seems to partake of the indecision that was the bane of Rothmann's character, and which probably more than anything else was the cause of the disaster at Muen-

(iter. He talks as bravely as could be desired about "plunging into the water," "plunging under the water," "thrusting into the water," and yet he turns about and disappoints every expectation as follows: "to baptise signifies to plunge into the water, to immerse in water, and baptism signifies an immersion or sprinkling with water. , " (De Hoop Scheffer, Overzicht, pp. 26-7). Baptizing and sprinkling were in his view synonymous terms. Scheffer (Overzicht, p. 27,) also directs attention to the circumstance that he describes as a "thrusting into the water" the baptism of the Evangelicals, who throughout Lower Germany employed no other rite than sprinkling and pouring.

No baptisms were performed at Muenster or elsewhere under the "Confession of the Two Sacraments" and hence it is of no special consequence in this history. Before Rotlmiann could make up his mind to go forward and begin the work of rebaptizing the reins had slipped from his hands and Jan Mathys, of Holland, the Prophet, had obtained control of the Anabaptist movement at Muenster. Two of his emissaries appeared there on the 5th of January, 1534, and baptized Rothmann himself together with the rest of the preachers. As the work was begun and prosecuted in Rothmann 's house, (Cornelius, vol. 2, p. 234,) the /ite was probably administered by pouring; at least that was the case in all later instances where one can obtain any distinct view of the ceremony.

For example, on Friday the 27th of February, 1535, all who remained in the city were required to submit to baptism, and an eyewitness describes the proceedings as follows: "There stood upon the market place three or more preachers and baptized the people. The preachers said to the people whom they baptized that they should turn from their sins and work righteousness; and they had a pail of water standing before them, and the people went upon their knees before the preachers, and the preachers baptised the people with three handfulls of water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." (Cornelius, Berichte der Augenzeugen ueber das Muensterische Wiedertaeuferreich. Muenster, 1853, p. 20).