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The result of this long, dark struggle of the Baptists was that through this ‘silent’ but sincere man their radical principle of soul liberty for Christians found its way into the first compact of States since the foundation of Christianity. While this instrument was not a constitution, but only a compact, yet Motley says that it ‘became’ the foundation-stone of the Netherland Republic.’ [Motley, iii, p. 414] And that republic, says Motley, ‘became the refuge for the oppressed of all nations, whether Jews or Gentiles; Catholics, Calvinists, and Anabaptists prayed after their own manner to the same God and Father.’ [United Netherlands, iv, p. 532] In 1579, Article XIII of the Union of Utrecht declared: ‘Every one shall be free in the practice of his religious belief, and that, in accordance with the peace of Ghent, no one shall be held or examined on account of matters of religion.’ [Motley, iii, pp. 412,413,415]

Many of the Reformed clergy wore extremely restless under this provision, and some of them sought to turn the prince against the ‘Anabaptists’ in utter disregard thereof. But his answer was that, ‘To persecute them would justify the Catholics in the persecution of the Protestants.’ These transactions and especially the testimony of the prince to the true character of the ‘Anabaptists,’ serves to put them in their true light, despite all the conscienceless slanders of their enemies. He speaks of them as ‘Peaceful burghers, always perfectly willing to bear their part in all the common burdens.’ In governmental matters they held substantially to the views of the Society of Friends in Great Britain and the United States, but they were found amongst the most loyal and firm supporters of the government, in all that left their religious rights untouched. The thousand florins which they wrung from their poverty to speed the cause of civil and religions liberty are a thousand flat contradictions of the slanders which have been thrown in their faces, and the testimony of their prince should make any man blush to the ears who has the impudence to repeat them, and enter him on the list of false witnesses. Prince Maurice, his son and successor, showed the same noble spirit. Zeeland went on, still treating the ‘Anabaptists’ with severity by insisting that they should take the oath, although they were as loyal to the government without the oath as others who swore. They were also refused permission to print a book or hold a meeting, without the consent of their zealous and petty tyrants. Maurice came to their rescue and demanded that they should be let alone; nothing should be exacted of them which injured their consciences. Even after the victory for religious liberty at Middleburg, and regardless of all honorable obligations which the authorities had given to maintain it, in 1591, when a scurrilous edict was issued against the Baptists, he wrote thus: ‘Although the declaration of the Estates and of the prince, our father, of glorious memory, suffices to regulate your conduct toward the Anabaptists, nevertheless we have judged it necessary to write yon to observe the statutes and to let the Anabaptists alone, until the Estates pass some other order.’

The noble spirit of William lived after him; for in 1582 the magistrates of Leyden dared to use these words to the Estates of Holland: ‘We will tolerate no religious oppression whatever, in great or in small, nor receive any statutes or decrees that involve it. Our unanimous opinion is, not to trouble each other in matters of worship; and we will not be turned from this position by any synod’s decree. We will, by God’s grace, maintain this position to the death, for liberty ever consists in the freedom of every man to speak his opinion. We exhort the estates, therefore, to join hands with us, to bear in love each party in its peculiar beliefs, so far as they do not conflict with public security, and thus have a good-natured people united against the common enemy.’

Afterwards, the Articles of the Union of Utrecht were so interpreted and amended as to permit their persecution, but the names of William the Silent and his son will ever stand as the first amongst princes to advocate liberty of conscience. And all honor to Holland, which ever after remained a land of comparative safety, if not of comfort, for the men of all faiths. This was amongst the first of reasons which led to her speedy rise to a front rank amongst the nations; in commerce, wealth and learning, and opened her harbors to the noblest fugitives from all lands. For these blessings Baptists should give thanks to their simple preachers and their brethren, who cheered the grand prince in his darkest hours, and for whose sake he threw the shield of liberty over the heads of all hounded and hated men who love God. In addition to the pen of Motley, the above facts may be found in Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, J. G. De Hoop Scheffer, 1873; Ottii Annales, p. 158; Brandt, Hist. Reformation, i, p. 609; Schrock’s Hist. Ch. on Anab. in Holland; and Hist. des Anabaptistes, pub. by Desbordes, 1599, p. 244.

The Baptists of the Netherlands fell into many divisions on church discipline, about marriage, dross and social relations; they laid great stress on managing the members of their own congregations. Menno lodged the true marks of a Christian congregation in: The faithful preaching of God’s word, and obedience thereto; in the confession of Christ’s name by the observance of baptism and the Supper; in love toward men, a holy life and the endurance of persecution, if need be, for Christ’s sake.

The following are some of their acts of discipline. In 1538, at a conference at Bachold, they separated from every seditious remnant of the Minister fanatics, who were led by Battenburg. In 1554, at a conference held at Wismar, Menno’s home, they recommended the temporary exclusion of members who married outside the congregation and their restoration if they maintained their faith. But some insisted on the separation of husband and wife, in case of the exclusion of one of them. On these and other questions, they split up into numerous sects, disfellowshiping one another; some of them even required rebaptism of those coming to them from the other factions, and they called each other all the unlovely names that commonly disgrace quarreling Christians. Their divisions and subdivisions abounded in petty questions, such as the treatment of bankrupts, whether or not they should patronize the vessels of excluded members, and similar points, until, in the little city of Hoorn there were thirteen sorts of Baptist Churches. Their contentions became so perfectly disgraceful that Menno said: ‘My sadness was as bitter as death, and I knew not for grief what to do. Yea, if the gracious breath of the Almighty had not preserved me, I should have lost my senses.’ As to the question of immersion amongst the Motherland Baptists:

There is not conclusive evidence that they immersed as a rule, until after the middle of the sixteenth century. As sprinkling and pouring had commonly taken its place amongst all sects, they adopted the prevailing method, though often practicing immersion, as was still done by the Catholics. Yet that many of them clung to immersion is evinced by the fact that some of the followers of Menno pleaded that they could not immerse in prisons, nor always in their own houses, and so practiced pouring. Robinson says of Menno, that ‘he was dipped himself, and he baptized others by dipping.’ Dr. Angus, a critic in Mennonite lore, says that he ‘always laid great stress on immersion.’ Menno’s own words imply this: ‘After we have searched ever so diligently we shall find no other baptism besides dipping in water, which is acceptable to God, and maintained in his word. . . . Let who will oppose, this is the only mode of baptism that Jesus Christ instituted, and that the Apostles taught and practiced.’ [Mennonis Simonis, Opera, p. 24]

Most of the Church historians in Germany and the Netherlands accord to the Baptists of those countries a high antiquity, which they are able to trace by lines more or less distinct, but which they do not formulate into full and authentic record. For example, Mosheim says of the Dutch Baptists that their true origin ‘is hid in the remote depths of antiquity, and is, consequently, extremely difficult to be ascertained.’ Drs. Dermont and Ypeig, in reporting their historical investigations to the King of Holland, say that:

‘The Baptists, who were formerly called Anabaptists, and in latter times Mennonites, were the original Waldenses, and have long in the history of the Church received the honor of that origin. On this account the Baptists may be considered the only Christian community which has stood since the Apostles, and as a Christian society, which has preserved pure the doctrines of the Gospel through all ages.’

So Dr. Keller, in his recent work, which throws a flood of light upon the early history of the German Baptists, says, after describing their great numbers: ‘It would be a great mistake if one should believe that all these remarks have reference only to the period of the Münster kingdom; much rather can it be proved that in the lands mentioned Baptist Churches existed for many decades and even centuries.’ He also adds: ‘The more I examine the documents of that time at my command, the more I am astonished at the extent of the diffusion of Anabaptist views, an extent of which no other investigator has had any knowledge.’ Even Zwingli, who died in 1531, said: ‘The institution of Anabaptism is no novelty, but for thirteen hundred years has caused great disturbance in the Church.’ Yet, in the main, these writers do not trace the line beyond the statement of the countries and cities where they existed, of which Keller, who is possibly the most learned investigator of the subject now living, gives a long list, but adds that a perfect list of ‘Baptist Churches cannot be enumerated, for the reason that their existence was a profound secret.’

For the same reason it is difficult to trace the history of the COLLEGIANTS to their origin, but this, at least, is known, namely, that they were found in Holland as early as 1619, and can be traced down for about two hundred years, under the name of Collegiants, from their collegia, and Rheinsbergers, from the name of the village near Leyden, where they held their great assemblies. They are supposed to have received immersion from certain Baptists exiled from Poland. They laid out grounds and put up buildings at Rheinsberg, where they sunk a stone baptistry on their own premises and immersed their converts, the candidate kneeling in the water, his head being bowed forward and buried. Their Confession made the Bible their standard of faith and life, they required faith in Christ as the Son of God, before the reception of baptism and the Supper, they demanded a holy life, exercised the liberty of prophesying, defended the right of private judgment, and kept their piety active by prayer and conference meetings, when these were unknown elsewhere in Holland. They first organized into an Assembly, after the decree of the Synod of Dort, 1619, which removed two hundred Arminian pastors, for they were Arminian in doctrine, and were opposed to war and oaths. Their leaders were the brothers Van der Kodde, members of a devout family, which had suffered persecution for more than a hundred years, as Reformers. Their grandfather, William Jansoon, was a great Bible student, who kept the Scriptures hid for safety on his farm. His seven grandsons were good Latin scholars and one of them taught Hebrew in the high-school at Leyden. Prince Maurice said to D’Aubert, the French ambassador, one day as they rode through the Collegiant lands: ‘Our peasants can read Latin.’ He then summoned these brothers from their work in the field, and, to the astonishment of the diplomat, talked with them in Latin and French.

They established an orphan asylum, for which the widow of the clerk of Rotterdam gave them 10,000 gulden; they frequently raised 60,000 gulden a year to take care of their own poor, and when the dykes burst, in 1740, they commenced a subscription for repairs which readied 60,000 gulden. They had meetings in eighteen different towns in 1740, but their meetings ceased at Rheinsberg in 1787. At the beginning of the present century Hefele still traced some remains of the sect, but they divided into two parties, one of them running into Unitarian views. They built two places of worship at Rheinsberg, and continued the contest for thirty years; but at present the sect is about extinct, some of them being absorbed into the Mennonite and other bodies, from which originally they were entirely separate.

Dr. Angus kindly forwards the above picture of baptism as administered .in Rheinsberg by the Collegiants, and as representing the Mennonite baptism of those times.

The history of the Netherland Baptists is a most exhilarating and sad one. As a body, they have largely faded away in their original testimony. Perhaps they did the great work which called them into existence and kept them alive so long, namely, the defense of Denk’s great principle, ‘that the civil magistrates should not use force in matters of faith.’ For this they suffered all that men can suffer. In the language of Froude: ‘On them the laws of the country might take their natural course, and no voice was raised to speak for them. For them no European agitated, no courts were ordered into mourning, no royal hearts trembled with indignation. At their death the world looked on complacently, indifferently, or exultingly. For them history has no word of praise.’

Menno Simon said that while their murderers were ‘saluted by all around as doctors, masters, lords, we are compelled to hear ourselves called Anabaptists;’ and so are treated as the pests of society.

‘What misery and anxiety have I felt in the deadly perils of persecution for my poor sick wife and little children! While others lie on soft beds and cushions, we must often creep away into secret corners. While others engage in festivities to the music of fife and trumpet, we must look around whenever a dog barks, fearing the spies are on our track. Yet those who suffered with Jesus then reign with him now.’

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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]

BAPTISTS OF GREAT BRITAIN

IMMERSION IN ENGLAND

From the introduction of Christianity into Britain, its baptism was immersion. Simpson says, in the preface to his Ancient Baptismal Fonts, of which he names 353 in England: ‘As immersion was practiced in this Church until the Reformation, and perhaps occasionally later, as will afterwards appear, all fonts were up to that period sufficiently large for the purpose.’ Grose also says of the baptisteries in the churches, that: ‘The basins were very large. There was an anteroom where the ceremony of immersion was performed.’ [Antiquities, i, p. 156] So Lingard, in his History of the Early English Church tells us: ‘When an adult solicited baptism, he was called upon to profess his faith in the true God, by the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, and to declare his intention of leading a life of piety. . . . He then descended into the font, the priest depressed his head below the surface, saying, I baptize thee,’ etc. The candidate ‘was plunged into the water, the mysterious words were pronounced, and he emerged a member of the Church.’ The same author says again, that when infant baptism had been introduced, ‘The priest himself descended into the water, which reached to his knees. Each child was successively delivered undressed into his hands, and he plunged it thrice into the water.’ [Antiq. Anglo Saxon Ch., p. 317] Gregory the Great is the authority for the statement that in 597 Austin and his missionaries baptized ten thousand in one day, to which Gocelin, Bede and others add that this baptism was in the river Swale. This river is in Kent, running between the Isle of Sheppy and the main land, and is navigable for ships of 200 tons burden. Green speaks of this scene, saying: ‘The Kentish men crowded to baptism in the river Swale.’ [Hist. Eng. People, p. 55] And Gocelin calls it ‘the river of holy baptism,’ adding: ‘All entered the dangerous depth of the river, two and two together, as if it had been a solid plain; and in the true faith, confessing the exalted Trinity, they were baptized one by the other in turns, the apostolic leader blessing the water. . . . So great a progeny for heaven born out of a deep whirlpool!’ [Patrologiae Latinae 80, v, pp. 79,80]

After the Venerable Bede has given an account of a large wooden baptistery hastily built at York, A.D. 627, for the baptism of Edwin, king of Northumberland, he describes the baptism of Paulinus in the Yorkshire river ‘Swale, which flows past the village of Cateract (Carrie); for as yet oratories or baptisteries, in the very beginning of the infant Church there, could not be built.’ Alcuin, when speaking of the immersion of the king and his nobles ‘in the sacred fountain,’ says that York remained illustrious: ‘Because in that sacred place King Edwin washed in the water.’ Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 669, enjoined triple immersion. Canon Ladains said: ‘If any bishop or presbyter does not perform the one initiation with three immersions, but with giving one immersion only, into the death of the Lord, let him be deposed.’ Brown’s History of York Minster marks the position of the wooden baptistory, ‘inclosing a spring, still remaining, which, according to Dr. Giles, was discovered while making repairs of the present cathedral.’

In gathering up these and other cases, Bede, who died A.D. 735, says: ‘For he truly who is baptized is seen to descend into the fountain, he is seen to be dipped in the waters, he is seen to ascend from the waters.’ The Council of Calichyth (Chelsea), held under Kenwolf, king of the Mercians, in 816, passed this canon: ‘Let the presbyters know when they administer sacred baptism, not to pour holy water upon the heads of the infants, but always to immerse them in the laver, after the example given by the Son of God himself to every believer, when he was three times immersed in the waters of Jordan.’ In the following century the baptism of Ethelred took place on this wise, according to William of Malmesbury: ‘When the little boy was immersed in the font of baptism, the bishops standing around, the sacrament was marred by a sad accident.’ Such immersion is in keeping with the ‘Sarum Use’ (Liturgy), which existed from 1087, and of which Dr. Wall remarks, that it did all along enjoin dipping, without any mention of pouring or sprinkling. Cardinal Pulis, a lecturer at Oxford and Paris, in a treatise published about 1150, writes: ‘Whilst the candidate for baptism in water is immersed the death of Christ is suggested; whilst immersed and covered with water the burial of Christ is shown forth; whilst he is raised from the waters the resurrection of Christ is proclaimed. The immersion is repeated three times.’

In 1200, the Council of London enjoined immersion; that of Sarum in 1217, and that of Oxford in 1222, did the same: while the Synod of Worcester, 1240, decreed that ‘In every church where baptism is performed, there shall be a font of stone of sufficient size and depth for the baptism of children. . . . And let the candidate for baptism always be immersed.’ Two Councils held at Perth, 1242, 1296, by canon instructed the minister what to do before immersion, and in the days of Wallace and Bruce, a barbarous custom prevailed in the clanish feuds, amongst the border countries, which left the right hands of male children undipped in baptism, in order that they might with this unsanctified hand deal the more deadly blows upon their foes, as one of our great poets embodies the sentiment: ‘And at the sacred font the priest through ages left the master hand unblest, To urge with keener aim the blood-incrusted spear.’

Sir Walter Scott refers to this custom in his notes on the minstrelsy of the border, and says, that it existed in Ireland also. The Percy Society’s poems of Wm. de Shorham, vicar of Seven Oaks, gives an exposition of baptism about 1313, in which he says, that men may dip in warm water ‘in whaut’ (winter) and in the ‘salt sea.’ But he forbids dipping at baptism in wine, ‘sither’ (cyder), ‘ne in pereye,’ also in ale and ‘other liquor that changeth water’s kind,’ a practice which prevailed to some extent. Water only must be used, but he allowed ice to be melted, for the purpose of procuring water. Pope Stephen allowed baptism in wine, if death impended, and water could not be had, and several cases are on record, in the Irish Church, where children were immersed in milk. They had water enough at hand anywhere for the purpose of aspersion, but immersion in some fluid was indispensably necessary in the absence of water, even if rarer and more expensive than water.

Before this time, however, as these many injunctions show, aspersion was made an exceptional method of administering the rite, in consequence, no doubt, of the permissive decree of the Council of Ravenna, 1311, before which it had no sanction. But the exceptions were few for a long period. Arthur, the eldest brother of Henry VIII, and Margaret his sister, were immersed in the years 1486 and 1502 with elaborate ceremonies. Leland describes at length the new font made for the baptism of the prince at Winchester, lined with cloth to prevent the cold sides touching the child, and says, that ‘the prince was put into the font.’ The same writer describes the baptism of Margaret, grandmother to Mary Queen of Scots, at Westminster Abbey: ‘As soon as she was put into the font all the torches were lighted.’ He gives similar accounts of the dipping of Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth, showing that the royal family was immersed as well as the common people, according to the ecclesiastical requirements of the times.

It is clear enough that dipping continued as the normal form of the rite all through Edward’s reign (1547-52), but Walker says, ‘Sprinkling was sometimes used.’ Indeed, the first Church permission found in England for any thing but immersion is in the Prayer-Book of 1549, which says, that ‘If the child be weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it.’ With this exception the rubric demanded that the priest shall ‘take the child in his hands,’ and ‘shall dip it in the water thrice. First dipping the right side: second the left side: the third time dipping the face.’ In 1552 the word ‘thrice’ was dropped from the book, together with the directions for the dipping to the right, left, etc., and the instruction was simply, ‘shall dip it in water.’

But this gradual change met with great resistance. William Tyndale, in his Doctrinal Treatise, 1528, writes:

‘Ask the people what they understand by their baptism or washing? And thou shalt see, that they believe, how that the very plunging into the water saveth them. . . . Behold how narrowly the people look on the ceremony! If aught be left out, or if the child be not altogether dipped 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" [a common name for a priest], say they: "Is this child christened enough, hath it full Christendom?" They believe verily that the child is not christened.’

Again he says: ‘Tribulation is our right baptism, and is signified by plunging into the water.’ So the people were gradually robbed of the only symbol which gave the right import of their baptism, which was made what he quaintly calls: ‘A turn-again lane unto them, which they cannot go through, nor make three lines agree together. . . . The sentences of the Scripture are nothing but very riddles unto them, at the which they guess as the blind man doth at the crow and expound by guess, a hundred doctors by a hundred ways.’

In his Obedience of a Christian Man he says, that ‘The plunging into the water signifieth that we die and are buried with Christ, and the pulling out again signifieth that we rise again with Christ in a new life.’

And in his Prologue to John’s first Epistle he adds:

‘Now, we be all baptized; but, alas! not one, from the highest to the lowest, ever taught the profession or meaning thereof. And, therefore, we remain all blind generally, as well our great rabbins, for all their high learning which they seem to have, as the lay people. Yea, and so much the more blind are our great clerks (the learned), that where the lay people, for a great number of them are taught nothing at all, they be all wrong taught, and the doctrine of their baptism is all corrupt unto them with the leaven of false glosses, ere they come to read the Scripture; so that the light which they bring with them, to understand the Scripture withal, is utter darkness, and as contrary unto the Scripture as the devil unto Christ.’

It was with all this and much more in view that Watson, Bishop of London, 1558, wrote: ‘Though the old and ancient tradition of the Church hath been from the beginning to dip the child three times, etc., yet that is not of such necessity, but that he is but once dipped in the water, it is sufficient, yea, and in time of great peril and necessity, if the water be but poured on his head it will suffice.’ [Doct. of Baptism, chap. x, p. 147] So stern was the resistance, however, to this innovation, that Middleton, Bishop of St. David’s, issued an ‘injunction’ in 1582, forbidding triune immersion in baptism. [Lee, Ch. under Elizabeth, i, 248] The second Prayer-Book of Edward VI, 1552, enjoins only a single immersion, and that of Elizabeth, 1560, made no change in this rubric. This is still the law in the English Church. But, so far as appears, the word ‘sprinkle’ first took rank in an English ritual, in the Catechism of 1604. In answer to the question, ‘What is the outward visible sign or form of baptism?’ it replies, ‘Water, wherein the person baptized is dipped or sprinkled with it.’ This was followed by the Westminster Directory, 1644, which decided, that ‘It is not only lawful, but also sufficient and most expedient, to be by pouring or sprinkling water on. the face of the child.’ Thus, in less than a century, what had been the general rule was reversed, and what had been the rare exception became the rule; yet, in 1660, dipping had not become entirely extinct, as it was common in 1644. Lord Brooke, in his Treatise on Episcopacy, 1641, charges, that the ‘Anabaptists’ refuse baptism to their children till they come to years of discretion, ‘but in other things they agree with the Church of England.’ His subject is baptism, and his ‘other things’ must relate to this subject, for in doctrine and government they were wide apart. Blake, of Tamworth, says, in 1644 ‘I have been an eyewitness of many infants dipped, and I know it to have been the constant practice of many ministers in their places for many years together. Those that dip not infants do not yet use to sprinkle them, there is a middle way between these two. I have seen several dipped; I never saw or heard of any sprinkled, or (as some of you use to speak) rantized. Our way is not by aspersion, but perfusion; not sprinkling drop by drop, but pouring on at once all that the bowl contains.’ Dr. Wall attributes the change to the Puritan clergy, whose deference to Calvin’s authority led them to adopt sprinkling in accordance with his own form, adopted 1545.

Walter Cradock, preacher at All Hallows, and one of the sweetest spirits of his day, preached before the House of Commons, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, July 21, 1646, in which sermon he exhorts Parliament not to establish ‘any outward external’ for a test of church fellowship, as: ‘Baptizing this way or that way, I mean by dipping or sprinkling, or by conjunction of opinion on some controverted point. . . . Therefore, when I have communion with a saint, I must not look so much whether he have taken the covenant, or have been baptized once or twice or ten times.’ And in a marginal note he adds: ‘I speak not this as if my opinion were for rebaptizing or against the baptizing of infants of believers, the contrary appears by my practice." [Pages 27,28]

The value of his testimony is found in the fact that he gives no hint whatever that immersion was a new thing in England, but the implication runs all through his writings that it was very prevalent, and the public were as familiar with it as with the ‘covenant’ or any other ‘controverted point’ of that period. Besides, if immersion had been introduced amongst the ‘Anabaptists’ in 1641, it would have been simply preposterous for a learned clergyman to be exhorting Parliament, five short years after, not to make ‘baptizing this way or that way, by dipping or sprinkling,’ the foundation of church fellowship. Nothing could be more far-fetched, or even impertinent, than such an appeal. Fortunately, he throws much light upon the general subject two years later, 1648, in his ‘Gospel-libertie, its Extensions and Limitations,’ from which the following passages are taken:

‘Saith Christ, Baptize all nations, that is, go and use water for their washing, for whatever men find in the word, I speak not of now. . . . If Christ had tied men to go into Jordan, as in that country it was so hot, they might go with a great deal of comfort; but if Christ had made baptism such an ordinance as that in all climates and countries and regions they must go over head and ears in a river, we know in some climates it would have been present death. As with us in this climate, at some times of the year to be put over head and ears in the Thames, it would be death, at others not.’ [Pages 23,24]

It is refreshing in the bitterness of the seventeenth century, side by side with Featley, to find a man who had the candor to apply his own logic on this subject and stand by it to its legitimate conclusions. Thus, on the Supper he says, p. 24:

‘The Lord took bread and wine, and blessed, and broke and gave them; and the drift of all the business is to show the breaking of his body, and the shedding of his blood. Now, he hath bound us that we should break bread and drink wine, that may represent the thing; but he hath not bound us to bread so properly called, or to wine properly so called; for there are some countries that have neither bread nor wine, but only roots that they call bread, and they have water for their drink. Now, if Christ had said it must be true bread, and true and real wine, that must do the deed, these people could never have the Supper of the Lord.’

Like Baxter, he was very nervous about the health of the English nation, and had little love for cold water to that end, but he never charges the Baptists with being the authors of a new style of homicide. He does think, however, that they laid too much stress on dipping, and says on p. 26:

‘Of dipping over head and ears, because the word bapto signifies over head and ears sometimes, and because the preposition em signifies to go into, from that they bind all the saints all the world over, to go into rivers, so that if a man be not dipped, but only sprinkled, because of the preposition em, that makes a nullity of the Church, that it is no church, and so, consequently, there shall be no church at all.’

Still, with a charity far in advance of his age, he cannot bear to have the Baptists abused, especially in nick-naming them. and several times he rebukes this sharply, as on page 40, thus:

‘I see the devil gets much advantage by nick-names, by calling men Presbyterians, and Antinomians, and Anabaptists, and I know not what. Therefore, I beseech you, beware how you use those names, though I say not it is unlawful, yet there be mistakes, let us call them as gently as we can, that are generally among us.’

Here is no ‘Gangraena’ nor vulgar slang, but a Christian scholar, and more, a Christian gentleman, who understands the times in which he lives, and knows how to talk about decent people with whom he differs on serious questions. On p. 100 he says: ‘There is now among good people a great deal of strife about baptism; as for divers things, so for the point of dipping, though in some places in England they dip altogether. How shall we end the controversy with those godly people, as many of them are. Look upon the Scriptures, and there you shall find that bapto (to baptize), it is an ordinance of God, and the use of water in way of washing for a spiritual end, to resemble some spiritual thing. It is an ordinance of God, but whether dipping or sprinkling, that we must bring the party to a river, or draw the river to him, or use water at home, whether he must be in head and foot, or be under the water, or the water under him, it is not proved that God hath laid down an absolute rule for it. Now, what shall we do? conclude on the absolute rule that God hath laid down in Scripture, and judge of the rest according to expediency. . . . Let us judge whether sprinkling or dipping be more expedient, and then there would be no strife. For there is scarce a man in this place that if he were persuaded that dipping were not an absolute rule, but it were to be judged according to expediency, he would rather have in a modest way the use of water, than to have men and women, and weak people, it may be in the winter time, over head and ears into the river; he would rather make use of water in a more civil and safe and less dangerous way.’

He neither charges upon the Baptists that their practice was unscriptural, new, nor a change from their former practice. On the contrary, he asks: ‘How we shall baptize, whether by sprinkling or going into a river, because it is probable that some of them did;’ as to the English practice he says: ‘In some places in England they dip altogether. How shall we end the controversy with those godly people, as many of them are.’ He then frankly intimates his honest opinion that the controversy was as old as Christ’s command to baptize, for he says, on p. 16, that when Christ sent his disciples to baptize he gave the command. ‘And there was an end. They might ask a hundred questions. Shall we do it in a river or in a brook? to young or to old? in winter or in summer? . . . But Christ lays down the sum of the doctrine, and the end of it, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and there is no more of it.’ The only new thing that he hints at in this whole question of dipping, is his great concern for the life of the dipped. For centuries those opposed to them had been devising every conceivable method of getting rid of them, by fire and fagot, as in England and Holland, and by drowning outright, as in Switzerland and Austria. But now, one tender-hearted opponent springs up, who cannot bear the thought even of having their feet wet. Compassion was a new thing in their case, they were sickly and ‘weak,’ and to think of taking such ‘feeble folk’ into the ‘Thames’ and other rivers or brooks and wetting their ‘ears,’ and that in winter too, was a moving thought for kind-hearted Walter Cradock. Yet as the Baptists would not stop this old, uncivil, unsafe and ‘dangerous way,’ he says, page 108:

‘I speak not that you may persecute godly people, or that it is altogether unlawful for the saints to meet in another place. . . . Or thus, suppose in this country or in a colder that people did go and baptize in rivers, whereas this is not an absolute command. But only the using of water, lay down that, and by that means divers subjects die, and lose their lives, suppose this were real, herein for aught I know the magistrate may determine a course, and take another way, because herein is prejudice to His subjects.’

This last is the passage referred to by Baxter in his Plain Scripture Proof, pp. 134-137, in evidence that dipping is a violation of the Sixth Commandment, and should be stopped by the magistrate. His words are:

‘As Mr. Cradock shows in his book of Gospel Liberty, the magistrate ought to restrain it, to save the lives of his subjects. That this is flat murder, and no better, being ordinarily and generally used, is undeniable to any understanding man.’

Certainly, Cradock’s words will bear no such construction as Baxter put upon them, and that be meant no such thing is clear not only from the words themselves, but from the kind manner in which he uniformly treated those who bad been ‘dipped over head and ears in the river.’ He saw a slight tendency to suicide in such conduct, and he thought such people were too good to ‘die and lose their lives,’ and for aught he knew to the contrary ‘the magistrate may determine a course, and take another way.’ He could not bear him to lose such ‘subjects,’ he had too few of them now, but he hardly knew how to prevent it, for he says: ‘I speak not, that you may persecute godly people,’ who are dipped as they were altogether, ‘in some places in England.’

The reader may want to know somewhat more of this open-hearted, honest Walter Cradock, who, according to Baxter, thought Baptists guilty of murder. Joshua Thomas states that he was a Welshman of a reputable family in. Monmouthshire, who, when a student at Oxford, visited his friends in Wales, and while there heard Mr. Wroth, the rector of Llanfaches, preach, and was converted. The next news we have of him is through Archbishop Laud, in 1634, to whom the Bishop of Landaff had reported that Walter was preaching as curate in St. Mary’s in Cardiff; but that ‘being a bold, ignorant young fellow, he had suspended him, and taken away his license.’ Then Neal tells us that in 1634-35 he was cited to London and condemned as a schismatic, so that he was compelled to leave the Establishment and preached all through Wales with great power. One of Laud’s most serious charges against him was that he said in the pulpit, ‘that God so loved the world, that for it he sent his Son to live like a slave, and die like a beast.’ Brooks tells us, that this earnest Puritan formed an Independent Church at Llanfaches in 1639, and Orme, in his Life of Baxter, writes that about 1635, Baxter and Cradock became acquainted in Shrewsbury, when a strong affection was formed between them. But the Broadmead Records inform us that in 1643 he and his church were obliged to fly from Wales to Bristol before the king’s army; they took refuge in Bristol, which was held by the ‘Parliament’s army.’ Then Cradock was glad to find a home amongst those who had been dipped head over ears in the river Frome, and as they had no pastor he administered the Supper to them: ‘First at ye Dolphin, in ye greate Roome, then afterwards sometime at a baker’s house, upon James’ Back, who was a Member of ye Church.’ When the king’s army captured Bristol, these Welsh Independents and the Bristol Baptists fled together to London, and there ‘Did commonly meet at Greate Allhallows for ye most parte. Only those professors that were Baptized before they went up, they did sitt downe with Mr. Kiffen and His Church in London, being likewise Baptized.’ [Broadmead Records, pp. 25,26] In 1646 we have his great sermon before Parliament, while preacher at All Hallows, and in 1648 his Gospel Liberty, which Baxter uses to such poor account; and not least of all his statement that in some parts of England dipping was used altogether; with his request, in 1646, that Parliament would not make this a test of Church fellowship. He died about 1660.

Amongst the opponents of the new practice of sprinkling, some of the Baptists were found in stout resistance; notably, as early as 1614, Leonard Busher, the author of Religious Peace, wrote thus:

‘It is well worthy consideration, that as in the time of the Old Testament the Lord would not have his offerings by constraint, but of every man whose heart gave it freely: so now, in the time of the Gospel, he will not have the people constrained, but as many as receive the word gladly, they are to be added to the Church by baptism. And therefore Christ commanded his disciples to teach all nations, and baptize them; that is, to preach the word of salvation to every creature of all sorts of nations, that are worthy and willing to receive it. And such as shall willingly and gladly receive it, he hath commanded to be baptized in the water; that is, dipped for dead in the water.’ [Plea for Liberty of Conscience, Hans. Knollys. Soc. Tracts, p. 59]

S. Fisher also, in his Baby Baptism Mere Babyism, resists the innovation bravely. On July 29, 1649, he held a controversy at Ashford, with several clergymen, and in 1653 published his book, in which he devotes 159 pages to show that sprinkling cannot be called baptism without perversion. He says: ‘Having raised the rotten basis of your Babyism, I come now to reckon with your Rantism, and to examine whether our manner of baptizing, which is by dipping, is the baptism which was instituted by Christ.’ He closes page 464 as follows:

‘Thus have I done with both parts of that subject of rantizing, which partly at the motion of your Ashford disputants I was engaged in, and partly by that mere demi-reformation that is made on this point on a party of men in Lincolnshire and elsewhere (of whom I suppose there are several congregations), who having long since discovered the true way of baptism as to the subjects, namely: That professing believers only and not any infants are to be baptized, but remaining ignorant of the true way and form of administering the ordinance, are fallen into the frivolous way of sprinkling believers,’ which to do is as much no baptism at all as to dip infants is no baptism of Christ’s ordaining. Which people, for whose sakes as well as others I write this, will be persuaded, I hope, in time, to be as to the outward form, not almost only, but altogether Christians, and rest no longer in that mere midway, mongrel Reformation.’

Baxter said in 1650; ‘I may say, as Mr. Blake, that I never saw a child sprinkled, but all that I have seen baptized had water poured on them, and so were washed.’ From that time onward, sprinkling pushed pouring out of the way so fast that Selden, who died in 1654, remarks sarcastically in his Table Talk:

‘The baptizing of children with us does only prepare a child, against he comes to be a man, what Christianity means. In the Church of Rome it has this effect, it frees children from hell. . . . In England, of late years, I ever thought the parson baptized his own fingers, rather than the child.’

This is substantially what Featley had said in 1644: ‘The minister dippeth his hand into the water, and plucketh it out when he baptizeth the infant.’ [Dipper’s Dipt., p. 70]

So fast did the exception become the rule, that in the opening of the eighteenth century Dr. Wall tells us that he had heard of two persons then living who had been dipped in the font; also of one clergyman then living who had so baptized infants, and that at the request of the parents he had himself administered baptism in the same way. He further states that during the reigns of James and Charles I all christened children were carried to the font, which act said: ‘The minister is ready to dip the child if the parents will venture the health of it.’ Dean Comber, in his work on the Common Prayer, 1688, said of the baptismal rite: ‘Because the way of immersion was the most ancient, our Church doth first prescribe that, and only permits the other where it is certified the child is weak, although custom has now prevailed to the laying of the first wholly aside.’ To this day, however, as Dean Stanley says: ‘In the Church of England immersion is still observed in theory. . . . The rubric in the public baptism for infants enjoins that unless for special causes they are to be dipped, not sprinkled, but in practice it gave way from the beginning of the seventeenth century.’ Occasionally it is used now, but according to the annals of that Church [of England] the last recorded instances of immersion, before the Restoration were in dipping three infant sons of Sir "Robert Shirley, in the reign of Charles I. This agrees with Gale’s answer to Wall, that dipping continued till Queen Elizabeth’s time, ‘and then fell into total disuse, within a little more than a hundred years, and sprinkling, the most opposite, was introduced in its stead.’

We fall into a mistake, however, if we suppose that the Baptists were the only people who resisted this change. Becon tells us that in the reign of Elizabeth there was contention on the subject in the Established Church. Wall treats of this at great length, and of the efforts made by many to restore dipping, not only, as Rogers expresses it to D’Anvers, ‘in order to the peace of the Church,’ but also to conciliate the Baptists, ‘by your reunion with it, and the saving of your souls by rescuing you from under the guilt of schism, I could wish the practice of it retrieved into use again.’ Indeed, Daniel Rogers went so far as to say: ‘I believe the ministers of the nation would be heartily glad if the people would desire or be but willing to have their infants dipped, after the ancient manner, both in this and in other churches; and bring them to baptism in such a condition as that they might be totally dipped.’ Walker, Towerson and other divines took the same ground. Sir Norton Knatchbull, one of the most learned men of his day, was of the opinion, ‘That it would be more for the honor of the Church, and for the peace and security of religion, if the old custom could conveniently be restored.’ And Sir John Floyer, whom Wall pronounces ‘a learned physician,’ wrote a History of Cold Bathing, Ancient and Modern, in which he showed its healthiness and blessings, without regard to climate, adding, that he could not ‘advise his countrymen to any better method for preservation of health, than the cold regimen, to dip all their children in baptism,’ and ‘to wash them often afterwards, till three quarters of a year old.’ By ‘wash’ here he evidently means dip. He thought, also, that ‘the approbation of physicians would bring in the old use of immersion in baptism.’ [Wall’s Inf. Bap., ii, pp. 406-14] The strange medley into which Baxter fell on the subject may throw light upon Sir John Floyer’s position. The Kidderminster divine had become deeply concerned on this matter of immersion as affecting the national health, and had said, in 1650, that it was ‘A plain breach of the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."’ So far then from being an ordinance of God, he denounced it ‘as a most heinous sin,’ and thought that ‘the magistrate ought to restrain it, to save the lives of his subjects.’

This seemed to afford amusement for the ablest physicians of that period but in the nineteenth century, when the bath is accounted a constant necessity to health, what an edification it must be to the bathers at Newport, Long Branch, and Gape May to hear the pious author of The Saint’s Everlasting Rest declaim thus, in depicting the terrible calamities which follow immersion. He says:

‘Apoplexies, lethargies, palsies, and all other comatose diseases would be promoted by it. So would cephalalgies, hemicranies, phthises, debility of the stomach, crudities, and almost all fevers, dysenteries, diarrhœas, colics, iliac passions, convulsions, spasms, tremors, and so on. All hepatic, splenetic, and pulinonic persons, and hypochondriacs, would soon have enough of it. In a word, it is good for nothing but to dispatch men out of the world that are burdensome, and to ranken churchyards. I conclude, if murder be a sin, then dipping ordinarily over head in England is a sin; and if those who would make it men’s religion to murder themselves, and urge it upon their consciences as their duty, are not to be suffered in a commonwealth, any more than highway murderers; then judge how these Anabaptists, that teach the necessity of such dipping, are to be suffered. . . . If the minister must go into the water with the party, it will certainly tend to his death, though they may escape that go in but once. . . . I am still more confirmed that a visible judgment of God doth still follow anabaptizing wherever it comes.’ [Plain Scripture Proof, pp. 134,135]

Baptists of our day ought not to be more severe on Baxter than to quote his own well-weighed words, for when he got over these occasional Anti-Baptist fits, he contended earnestly that he ought to take the Lord’s Supper with his Baptist brethren, and then ‘Richard was himself again.’ We have room for gratitude that he lived not in this age, or not a man of us could have obtained a Life Insurance Policy. Perhaps all the suffering that he deserved was meted out to him by Dr. John Owen, in these words:

‘I verily believe that if a man who had nothing else to do should gather into a heap all the expressions which, in his late books, confession and apologies, have a lovely aspect towards himself, as to ability, diligence, sincerity, on the one hand, with all those which are full of reproach and contempt toward others, on the other. The view of them could not but a little startle a man of so great modesty, and of such eminency in the mortification of pride, as Mr. Baxter is.’

With a change in the ordinance itself, there naturally came in a change of the name by which it was known, namely, a ‘washing.’ From the most ancient times, washing had been spoken of as the result or consequence of dipping, as in the case of Naaman, who washed in the Jordan seven times, having dipped himself that number of times. To wash does not necessarily now mean to dip, yet, as the less is contained in the greater, so he that is dipped is washed. After his seventh dipping, Naaman was ‘clean.’ So Meyer, on Mark 7:4: ‘Except they wash is not to be understood of washing the hands, but of immersion, which the word in classic Greek and in the New Testament everywhere means; here, according to the context, to take a bath.’ Plumptre, on the same passage, says: ‘The Greek verb (that to wash) differs from that in the previous verse, and implies the washing or immersion (the word is that from which our word baptize comes to us) of the whole body, as the former does of a part.’ Beza, on the same text, says that ‘baptizein does not signify to wash, except by consequence. For it properly means to immerse.’ Lightfoot describes unclean persons amongst the Jews as ‘washed in some confluence of waters, in which so much water ought to be as may serve to wash the whole body at one dipping.’ For centuries the word wash was not used as a synonym for baptism, but was commonly used to express the cleansing effect of baptism, as an immersion. Cyprian says of clinics, that they were not washed but perfused by the saving water;’ evincing that in his judgment perfusion was not to be accounted as washing in the same sense as immersion. [Ep. lxix]