Back to History Reports

A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS

By Thomas Armitage

1890

[Note from the publisher. This valuable out-of-print book was scanned from an original printing and carefully formatted for electronic publication by Way of Life Literature. We extend a special thanks to our friend Brian Snider for his labor of love in diligently scanning the material so that it might be available to God's people in these days. For a catalog of other books, both current and old, in print and electronic format, contact us at P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, [e-mail] (e-mail), http://wayoflife.org/~dcloud (web site).]

[Table of Contents for "A History of the Baptists" by Thomas Armitage]

THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION

THE REFORMATION--ZWICKAU AND LUTHER

Amongst the so-called ‘Anabaptists’ there were three views as to civil government. A very small party, those of Münster, believed in establishing Christ’s kingdom by the sword at the cost of sedition and revolution. We have seen that the party represented chiefly by Hubmeyer, believed in government, paid all taxes and obeyed all ordinances that did not interfere with the free exercise of religion. But, as a magistrate must bind himself by civil oaths and use the sword, they held that a Christian should not be a magistrate, because the Apostles knew nothing of Church taxes imposed by the State, held no civil office and took no part in war. They thought that civil government was necessary for the wicked; but their foes either could not or would not understand them. Their modern enemies evince the same state of mind. Hence, in one breath they tell us that they were perverse, enemies of civil government, and would not touch the sword either for war or capital punishment. And, without blushing, in the next breath they tell us as coolly that they drew the sword, established theocratic magistrates and deluged Germany with blood. That is, they deliberately did what their first principles would not allow them to do, and suffered martyrdom for doing that which, in conscience, they refused to do.

The Sixth Article in the SCHLEITHEIM CONFESSION contains a clear and distinct recognition of the divine sanction of civil government, its legitimate powers, duties, and obligations. It as fully defines the absolute separation of Christian discipline and polity from the civil power--denouncing the use of the sword by Christian people for any purpose. It enjoins abstention from lawsuits in worldly disputes, and is so careful of the sphere of Christian action, as to advise exclusive devotion to Christian duty and refusal to assume the responsibilities of civil office. Whether we approve their views or not, we cannot readily misunderstand what they were. They had never known a government which did not require magistrates to persecute others for their religion; and it was but natural that they should shrink from any civil service which demanded such persecution as a duty to God and man.

HUBMEYER represented a third class, who believed in all the usual forms of civil government, in which all citizens should participate in common, including the proper use of the sword outside of persecution. These were called Swordsmen ‘by the other parties, and in 1528 two hundred dissidents withdrew from Hubmeyer at Nicolsburg, calling themselves ‘Staffsmen,’ to designate their non-resistant principles, because they would not touch the sword either in revolt or warfare. When, therefore, the Zwinglian and Catholic peasants of Switzerland arose against the authorities, the non-resistant Baptists refused to unite their fortunes with them, and Grebel denied that he ever entertained a thought of subverting the government. [Burrage, Siwss Anab., p. 110; Fusslin, ii, 249] Hubmeyer complained that his enemies, of whom he said that he had as many ‘as the old Dragon had scales,’ misrepresented him on this subject, and to put himself right he dedicated a tract on ‘The Sword’ to the Chancellor of Moravia, in which he thus speaks of the passage, ‘My kingdom is not of this world:’

‘There must be judges, or the Scriptures will fall to pieces which speak of their duties. "The power of the keys;" yes, that power belongs to the Church, but it is distinct from civil tribunals. So long as men will not obey God there must be courts. Let us be thankful for a just government, though our sins deserve an unjust one. "An eye for an eye;" yea, that was old-time revenge, but now courts execute penalty. "Our weapons are not carnal;" no, not the weapons of the Church, but the weapons of the State are. The two swords should not be opposed to each other. A Christian judge will be most apt to be just. Satan, depart and no longer mislead simple people. "Love your enemies;" yes, that is for the individual, but the government does not punish from envy, from hatred, but from justice, and is not referred to in the text.’

No Reformer of the sixteenth century holds the balance so exactly as this, in defining the relations of the State to its citizens and to the Church. He advocated civil government and the freedom of the Church from the State as clearly as any writer of our own day. Nor did Zwingli misunderstand the delicate distinction which this class of Baptists drew on that subject. Under the title of ‘Who gives occasion to disturbance’ he issued a challenge to them, in which he says: ‘They want to have a Church, but no government is to protect the preaching of the Gospel by any violent measures or interfere with the freedom even of heretical preachers.’

DENK, whom Haller calls the ‘Apollo of the Anabaptists,’ held to the same principles. He says: ‘The Apostles treat earnestly that Christians must be subject to government. But they do not teach that they may be governors, for Paul says, "What have I to do to judge them that are without."’ He would have Christians withdraw from politics, and leave unconverted men to wield the sword of the civil and military ruler as a thing entirely separate from the Church. Denk took the ground, that all government must be sustained as the Apostles sustained it, namely: That in the Church Christ was King and held the spiritual sword for excommunication. That was the ‘only spiritual sword which he knew; but for the proper ends of civil government, the material sword was in the hands of the State, whose authority was from God. The other Reformers knew nothing about the distinction between civil and religious government on this broad and high plane. Keller draws this sharp distinction: ‘While Denk, with energy, defended the proposition that it was not becoming in civil magistrates to proceed against their subjects with force in matters of faith; both Luther and Zwingli taught that it was the duty of the civil magistrates to establish the true faith within their territorial limits, and to maintain it with the severest penalties.’ That discreet historian, Mosheim, recognizes these various classes of Baptists, and says: ‘They are called Anabaptists because they all denied that infants are proper subjects of baptism, and solemnly baptized over again those who had been baptized in infancy; yet, from the very beginning, just as at the present day, they were split into various parties, which disagreed and disputed about points of no small importance.’ He is too careful to make ‘Anabaptism’ and sedition convertible words, but says, that these Baptists,

‘Did not all suffer on account of their crimes, but many of them merely for the erroneous opinions which they maintained honestly, without fraud or crime. It is, indeed, true that many Anabaptists were put to death, not as being bad citizens or injurious members of civil society, but as being incurable heretics, who were condemned by the old canon laws, for the error concerning adult baptism. . . . I could wish there had been some discrimination made, and that all who believe that adults only are to be baptized, and that the ungodly are to be expelled the Church, had not been indiscriminately put to death.’ [Mosheim, Ecc. Hist., iii, p. 202-4]

But true history is bringing them its calm revenges of justification.

In the first quarter of the sixteenth century many Catholics were much stirred on the subject of Church reform, but the most earnest souls sought it mainly in the rise and growth of monastic orders, in which Saxony abounded. Their idea was, that withdrawal from the world was better than victory over it, that it were better to avoid temptation than to combat it, and to be a monk than to be a man. Pressed to this extreme, piety lapsed into senility on the one hand and into fanaticism on the other. In this atmosphere the mystics had sprung up amongst the pre-Reformers with much honor to Christianity. The forgotten doctrine of the Spirit, as an experimental fact, appeared in one direction and a sterner ritualistic system in another. The mystics threw aside the wild notion that baptism can cleanse the soul, and that the soul is sustained by a morsel of bread and a drop of wine, instead of by the indwelling Spirit. Tauler caught this doctrine from Eckart, his master, and while Luther was a monk, he embraced it from Tauler. But some mystics were deluded into that reflective method which associates the indwelling Spirit with direct revelations from God, and which lifts the soul above religions speculation or mistake.

The flourishing city of Zwickau was the home of many who held this view. It lay in Saxony near the borders of Bohemia. Silver mines were discovered there in 1491, the yield of which was so great that the ore could not be coined and fabulous fortunes were gathered. Many cloth-makers grew up under this wealth princely merchants, and in 1521, 300,000 pounds of wool were used and 10,000 pieces of cloth made. Amongst the well-to-do master-weavers was Nicholas Storck, probably a native of the city. He and his journeymen began to hold such meetings for prayer and praise as the Bohemian Brethren held.

Thomas Münzer was a friend of Luther’s and pastor of the Lutheran Church in Zwickau. At Easter he pronounced from the pulpit that Storck understood the Bible better than the priests and was possessed of the Holy Spirit. Storck soon set apart twelve apostles and seventy-two disciples, rejected infant baptism, and baptized believers only. Münzer stood by him, but not as stoutly as Cellaring and Stubner, two young scholars, friends of Melancthon, who came to the city about that time. Dr. Sella, another Lutheran, a member of Munzer’s congregation, was at the head of the city authorities as burgomaster and identified himself with the movement, which gained ground for about a year, without interference from the City Council. But he died April 10, 1521, and this opened a conflict.

On the 14th Wildenauer, another Lutheran pastor, of haughty manners and loose habits, being denounced by Storck, made a stir. On the 16th the Council deprived Münzer of his parish, as one of the parties to the quarrel, and he left for Prague. Great excitement followed; fifty-five weavers were imprisoned in the Tower, and the magistrates called Storck to account for many things, amongst others, for teaching that children are not benefited by baptism. Keller quotes an old chronicle, which says that Storck was brought before the Council for teaching heretical Bohemian sentiments’ [Geschichte, p. 16] In fact, he is charged with introducing the Bohemian heresy into Zwickau; thus connecting the Bohemian Brethren with the German Baptists. One, who met Storck soon after, says of his person: ‘He was rather slim, wore a long gray coat without folds and a broad-brimmed hat. He conversed easily, pleasantly and humbly, and replied to answers in a manner as devout and holy, as if he had been an angel of God.’ [Storck, by R. Bachmann, Zwickau, 1880, p. 4] Then he, with Stubner and Cellarius, went to Wittenberg to consult with Melancthon, while Luther was still at the Wartburg. Stubner spent six months with Melancthon, who said that Storck ‘had the right understanding of the Bible.’ He was charmed by their devout manner and spirit, for he thought that their views were agreeable to reason and deserved examination, and wrote to the Elector: ‘I cannot tell how much I am moved by these men.’ The Elector answered: ‘We know not what God will accomplish through these plebeians; now and then he is wont to use obscure men in his service.’ But he advised Melancthon not to hold a disputation with them on baptism. He had better wait for Luther, for they quoted St. Augustine to prove that nothing could be brought in favor of infant baptism, except ecclesiastical custom. Up to this point all these parties were Lutherans.

Carlstadt, a man of deep convictions, who sacrificed much for the truth, and was a superior scholar to Luther, espoused their cause at Wittenberg, and, all together, they greatly moved the city. In the ensuing April, however, Luther returned, and met them in sharp controversy, or, as be expresses it, began ‘to rap these visionaries on the snout.’ He denounced them in the cathedral, and they went to preach elsewhere. He also denounced Carlstadt as a ‘fanatic’ because he rejected the doctrine of the Real Presence and destroyed images. In September, 1522, Storck returned from a preaching tour through Thuringia, and labored with Luther to drop infant baptism and make the Reformation thorough. But while translating the Bible, at the Wart-burg, Luther had determined to retain whatever practices it did not forbid. At first he had no light struggle on this subject of infant baptism. On other subjects he had been forced, against his will, step by step, to abandon the Fathers, the Councils and Catholic tradition, being driven to the authority of the Scriptures. But when he found no Bible authority for infant baptism, he assumed a new attitude. At that point he had a fiery contest with himself as to the true key of biblical interpretation, and he deliberately chose the negative turn. That is, he determined to abide by what the Scriptures did not forbid, instead of by what they enjoined, as the law of ordinances. He saw at a glance where his rule of interpretation on other subjects must inevitably lead him on this point; and he dared not venture one step further in free thought, for fear of invoking a complete moral revolution. To take one step more was to let infant baptism go and the State Church with it, so that a regenerate Church only would be left. But this was not the sort of Church that Luther wanted and he said: ‘Where they want to go I am not disposed to follow. God save me from a Church in which are none but the holy.’ Any man of discernment can see, with Plank, that Luther simply trifled with this truth. He says: ‘Luther treated the objections to infant baptism very superficially, and dismissed the whole matter as a very inopportune question.’ [Ges. Prot. Lehrbegriffs, ii, p. 53]

His embarrassment on this subject is clearly seen. Bellarmine, the great Catholic disputant, saw the utter insufficiency of Scripture to sustain infant baptism, and the absolute necessity of sustaining it as an unwritten tradition, which cannot be proved by Scripture. [De Verbo die ch. 4] Vilinar, also, reaches this conclusion: ‘If baptism does not regenerate, but is a mere symbol, then the symbol and regeneration must come together. The Baptists are profoundly logical.’ [Theology of Facts, p. 67] Calvin takes the same ground, but goes a step further. He says:

‘This principle must always be adhered to, That baptism is not conferred on infants that they may be made children of God. But because now, in this place and degree they are reckoned with God, the grace of adoption is sealed in their flesh. Otherwise, the Anabaptists might justly exclude them from baptism. For unless the truth of the external sign applies to them, it will be mere profanation to call them into participation of the sign itself.’ [Calvin, Schyn. Hist. of Mennonites, p. 107]

But Luther stood with Augustine, and could not see that children could be ‘reckoned with God’ while they were in a state of original sin, and he christened them to wash it away, first baptizing them on the faith of others, and requiring them to be justified by their own personal faith afterward; and so, Strack’s words are as true on this point as on others: ‘Luther retracted some of his concessions to the people, out of fear of the Anabaptists. [Bilder, p. 2] And the Westminster Review, of 1870, presents the exact truth when it says, that he was ‘Terrified into inconsistency with his ultimate principles’ by the ‘Anabaptists.’ Melancthon, also, was disturbed on this subject, and in order to remove his doubts, Luther said:

‘What is not against the Scriptures is for the Scriptures, and the Scriptures for it,’ and demands in his own dogmatic way: ‘How can you prove that children cannot believe? Unless we insist on the presence in them of the faith of the Church, we cannot continue the right, but must simply reject infant baptism. You say, the examples of such faith are weak. I find nothing stronger. The Church has power not to baptize children at all, because there is no place in Scripture that compels us to believe that, as we do other articles.’ [Walch, Works of Luther, xv, 103]

Thus, he would do as a positive duty to God whatever the Scriptures did not prohibit his doing; as in the Supper, Carlstadt asked: ‘What Scripture have you for elevating the cup?’ to which Luther indignantly replied: ‘What Scripture is there against it?’ By the same answer he might have justified the offering of masses for the dead, auricular confession, purgatory, the infallibility of the pope, or any other absurdity which the Catholics practiced, but which the Scriptures had not positively forbidden by name. The mere mention of such a shallow but dangerous position lays bare its fallacy, and its practical bearings involved Luther at last in shocking inconsistency, as his conduct in the bigamy of Philip of Hesse shows.

Christina, the daughter of George of Saxony, had been Philip’s lawful wife for sixteen years, and was the mother of eight children. But her husband wished to add Margaret von der Saale as a second wife, and as if he desired to act on Luther’s principle of interpreting the Bible, he wrote to the Wittenberg theologians, reminding them that the Scriptures did not forbid him to have two wives! This practical test of Luther’s rule greatly troubled its author, yet, nothing daunted, on December 10th, 1539, he and Melancthon united in an answer, in which they boldly took the ground, that what Moses had allowed in regard to marriage the Gospel did not forbid: ‘Therefore,’ they say: ‘Your highness has not only our approbation in this case of necessity, but also our reflections upon it.’ [De Wette, Luther’s Briefe, Berlin 1825-28, 6, 239-44] This bigamous marriage took place at Rothenburg, March 4th, 1540, without divorcing his first wife, and on the next day the Landgrave wrote Luther, ‘with a cheerful conscience,’ thanking him for his counsel in the case. In Luther’s reply of April 12th, he says: ‘I notice that your highness is in glee about the advice given, which we like to be kept silent, otherwise the rough peasants will follow your example, alleging still more grievous causes. This would create a great deal of trouble.’ [Rommel, Philip, Landgraf von Hessen; Giessen, 1830; Lenz, cor. of Philip with Bucer, 361-3] And why should not Luther, on his negative system of interpreting the Bible, permit polygamy in the marriage of Margaret as readily as the baptism of Christina’s children in the name of the Trinity, if the Scriptures did not forbid either? The one position is as consistent as the other.

This is the most vital point in connection with the Reformation, showing where Luther broke with the principle of absolute obedience to God’s word; and as the ablest writers of modern times locate his weakness here, we must stop to look calmly at his mistake. Goebel says: ‘As Luther, since 1522, so did Zwingli, in 1525, forsake the positive principle of depending on the Scriptures, for the negative stand-point, saying: "Infant baptism is nowhere forbidden in the Scriptures."’ [I, p. 158] The Romanists took advantage of his blunder at once. Fabri, their great doctor, asks: ‘How can you convince an Anabaptist out of the Scriptures that infants should be baptized? In what Gospel is it commanded? The Donatists demanded Scripture of Augustine for infant baptism, but he referred them to the tradition of the Apostles.’ He then says, that if the Lutherans would convert the Antipedobaptists from their error, you must ask help of the Catholic Church and her apostolic tradition, for she says with Augustine, ‘That must be observed which the Church observes.’ Mohler, another great Catholic authority, thinks that ‘Luther having connected the efficacy of the sacraments with faith only, it is not possible to understand why infants should be baptized. From the Reformer’s point of view, there was the utter want of an adequate ground for this ecclesiastical rite.’ [Symbolics] And Bayle says, that the Reformers were obliged to refute the Antipedobaptists: ‘By the arguments of the Papists against themselves.’ [Dic. Art. Anabaptists] Jorg fully agrees with all this, saying: ‘Infant baptism is the offspring and guide of an infallible Church. The Baptists, alone, carried out the idea of the Reformation. . . . Having abolished the authority of Rome, the Reformers proceeded to substitute for it their own.’ [Geschichte des Protestantismus, ii, 39] Cardinal Wiseman also teaches that infant baptism cannot be without an infallible Church to give it authority.

A few visionaries attempted to push Luther’s partial Reformation to a one-sided revolution by new revelations of the Spirit, and Luther swung to the other extreme of rejecting the healthful results of Bible teaching. Hess shows that the Baptists wished to strike the happy medium between these extremes. ‘Unable to rise to a higher stand-point, they wanted to restore the manner of life of the primitive Church.’ [Life of Zwingli, p. 209] They demanded that each person should be baptized upon his own faith. Luther built a Church on sacraments and enforced its tests of discipleship by State legislation, just as the Catholics had done. He held the doctrines of a universal priesthood of believers and of justification by faith alone, but he could not make infant baptism harmonize with either of them. He denied that baptism could avail any thing without faith, and so was obliged to ascribe to the infant ‘the faith of the Church,’ whatever that might mean. Thus, he found in the faith of the sponsor a quasi magical virtue, of which the Bible knows nothing; but which, ratified by the State law, made the babe a member of the Church. Beard, the able Oxford lecturer, puts this point thus:

‘When this distinction is clearly seen, it helps to liberate the mind from the influence of ecclesiastical usage, and to reveal the Scriptural justification of infant baptism in its real weakness and insufficiency.’

Of the Baptists he says:

‘Theirs were the truths which the Reformation neglected and cast out, but which it must again reconcile with itself, if it is ever to complete its work.’

And still again be says, of a baptized believer:

‘Here the conditions of a true sacrament are fulfilled; the grace of God, the outward sign, the operative faith, are all present. . . . It was, therefore, no dogmatic accident which made the mysticism of the Reformation assume the Anabaptist form. The word Anabaptist, as I have already pointed out, is used to cover very various phases of religious belief. But this one peculiarity was common to all Anabaptists.’ [Hibberd Lec., p. 188; do., Lec. vi]

Luther could see the bearings of baptism on the justifying faith of a believer, for justification by faith was a mystical doctrine; but when he came to the faith of sponsors for christened babes, he was at sea. The Baptists pushed Luther’s doctrine of a universal priesthood of believers to a wholesome application, by denying all Church authority to make, and all civil authority to say, without Bible direction, who were or were not believers. Luther said: ‘I am governed in this matter by the silence of the New Testament;’ the true Baptists replied: ‘The case must be decided not by the silence of the New Testament, but by its positive instructions.’ Here was the radical point of difference between them. Luther believed Scripture to be the word of God, but practically restricted its free interpretation by insisting on the binding force of its silence! Forsaking the direct instruction of Scripture to follow its silence, he landed in politico-ritualism; other extremists added to its positive instructions and landed in politico-fanaticism; the Baptists contented themselves with following its absolute requirements, and were branded by both the other parties as ‘heretics,’ fit only to be put to death for their obedience to Christ. Thus in the Reformation weak humanity swung from one extreme to another. The theological inconsistencies of Luther drove him to ultra-ritualistic ground; and belief in new revelations of the Spirit carried the Zwickau men into ultra-Quakerism on the doctrine of the Spirit. The true Baptists anchored themselves to the positive requirements of the word of God, and stood firmly there to their death. Dr. Keller, in his new book Die Waldenser sums up the whole case thus: ‘Two things characterize the Baptists: "The Lord has forbidden, and Christ meant what he said."’ [Page 149]

Back to History Reports

Back to the Way of Life Home Page

Way of Life Literature Online Catalog