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The fact is, that it was not the dipping of the Baptists which shocked their opponents so much as Smyth’s act with some of its consequences. The Anti-Baptists possessed a certain church and ministerial succession, and under this idea they regarded his course as profanity. They considered Baptists as mere interlopers, having no right to administer the ordinances in any way, as they had renounced that succession. The Baptists were regarded as ‘upstarts,’ and their ‘new dipping,’ looked at in any light, was but an innovation. Backus caught this distinction with great clearness, and says: ‘Being hardly accused with the want of valid administrators, moved seven Baptist churches, who met in London in 1643 to declare it as their faith that by Christ’s communion every disciple who had a gift to preach the Gospel had a right to administer baptism, even before he was ordained in any Church;’ much less that he should be required first to prove his regular descent by succession from the Apostles. [Backus, ii, p. 4] Whoever the Baptists immersed had, in the opinion of their foes, been baptized as babes, and so their after-dipping was new and unauthorized, especially when had in unconsecrated places, as rivers and streams; such as Old Ford River, near Bromley, in Middlesex, which Wilson, in his ‘Dissenting Churches,’ says ‘was much frequented’ for this purpose, nay their foes even professed themselves shocked with the bodily exertion of such immersions. John Goodwin, in semi-comic style, says of ‘the Baptist who dippeth’ that he ‘had need be a man of stout limbs, and of a very able and active body; otherwise the person to be baptized, especially if in any degree corpulent or unwieldly, runs a great hazard of meeting with Christ’s later baptism instead of his former.’

Baxter affected to be shocked, for it was reported to him that they baptized in the rivers, naked. Featley and others report the same, but none of them pretended to have been eye-witnesses of these reported indecencies. On the contrary, Baxter adds: ‘I must confess I did not see the persons baptized naked, nor do I take it to be lawful to defame any upon doubtful reports,’ words which imply honest doubt. But Richardson resented this imputation, saying: ‘We abhor it, and deny that any of us ever did so;’ then he challenged Featley ‘to prove it against us if he can.’ This the Doctor was careful never to attempt. Haggar declares that he had baptized and been at the baptizing of ‘many hundreds if not thousands, and never saw any baptized naked in his life, neither is it allowed nor approved of amongst any that I know of.’ Baxter lived near Tombes, his great Baptist disputant, and yet followed ‘common fame’ in this matter, instead of inquiring of him, thus allowing anonymous slanderers to fill his ears. He said that he was willing to commune with the Baptists, but he seems never to have taken one step to learn the truth of this charge against his dear brethren. Even had he found the charge true, he should not have been too much shocked that they copied the fanaticisms of the Fathers, whom he so much revered: Chrysostom, Augustine and Cyril, who stickled zealously for nude baptism. Besides, in England the children were baptized without clothing at that time. Dr. Wall says that ‘the wealthy people began to object to the stripping of their children naked, and the affrighted screams with which they received immersion.’ Bacon confirms this, saying that honesty and shamefacedness forbiddeth to uncover the body, and also the (weak) state of infants, for the most part, cannot away with dipping.’ Wall coolly adds that the Baptists need not to have made so great an outcry against Baxter’s charge of indecency, for that the primitive Christians baptized in entire undress. And for the same reason Baxter need not to have cried out against the Baptists, even if he could have proved that they followed this bad example of the primitive Christians; which, however, they seem to have avoided with all carefulness. Their confession of 1643 evinced their modesty, by requiring ‘convenient garments, both upon the administrator and subject, with all propriety, when they immersed.’

BAPTISTS IN ENGLAND IN THE 1500s

This chapter can scarcely be closed better than by showing that the so-called ‘Anabaptists’ of the realm had long practiced according to these views. There are traditions of Baptist Churches in England from the fourteenth century, but they are not well sustained by historical records. Collier speaks of many infants who were left unbaptized in the middle of the twelfth century. Robinson says that there was a Baptist church at Chesterton in 1459; and others mention ‘heretics’ all over England, who refused baptism for infants in various reigns down to Henry VIII. The law of the land demanded the baptism of all, but as we have no reliable records of Baptist churches it is fair to infer that these objectors were either English Lollards or foreigners driven from the Continent. We do not find the name ‘Anabaptist’ applied to English ‘heretics’ until the reign of Henry, 1509, nearly a century after all trace of the Lollards is lost, their chief relic then being the Lollard’s Tower, that of St. Gregory’s Church, contiguous to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which had been used as their prison. Fox records that in 1535, according to the registers of London, nineteen ‘Anabaptists’ were put to death in various parts of the realm, and that fourteen Hollanders were burnt in pairs in England. A History of the ‘Anabaptists’ of High and Low Germany was written in 1642, and is now amongst the ‘King’s Pamphlets.’ Its bitter author writes (p. 55): ‘All these are scions of that flock of Anabaptism that was transplanted out of Holland in the year 1535, when two ships laden with Anabaptists fled into England; . .. here it seemeth they have remained ever since’ (p. 48). Barclay also reports that in 1536 ‘Anabaptist’ societies in England sent a delegation to a great gathering of their brethren in Westphalia. It appears, therefore, that the origin of the English Baptists, as a distinct sect, is to be found amongst the Baptist refugees who were driven from the Netherlands.

The Lollards had prepared the way for the rapid spread of the principles of these Dutch Christians, and since 1535 Baptist witnesses for the truth have stood firmly on British soil, either as individuals or as organized churches. By 1536 their doctrines had so spread amongst English folk that a Church Convocation denounced them by name, requiring the people to repudiate their principles and practices, ‘as detestable heresies and utterly to be condemned.’ Dr. Wall, in recording this proceeding, says: ‘Some people in England began to speak very irreverently and mockingly about some of the ceremonies of baptism then in use;’ and he gives a catalogue of profane sayings that began to be handed about among people, as follows: ‘That it is as lawful to christen a child in a tub of water at home, or in a ditch by the way, as in a stone font in a church. Custom then immersed the child in the consecrated ‘font,’ not in unhallowed streams. Another ‘profane saying’ was: ‘That the hallowed oil is no better than the Bishop of Rome’s grease or butter.’ Again: ‘That the holy-water is more savory to make sauce with than the other (water), because it is mixed with salt; which is also a very good medicine for a horse with a galled back; yea, if there be put an onion thereto, it is a good sauce for a giblet of mutton.’ This kind-hearted divine resented such unreverential reflections of the English Anti-pedobaptists, and so did the king and Convocation. Still the good doctor thought that this threw no dishonor on infant baptism, but Henry and the Convocation saw disdain for the thing itself, in contempt for the ceremonies which attended it, and proceeded to read the nation a lecture, in six particulars. They declared baptism necessary to eternal life, that it belongs to infants, and makes them sons of God; that, being born in original sin, they cannot be saved but by the grace of baptism, etc. Then they discover the real animus of their action with their alarm for the mischief on the subject which the Baptists had already wrought in the public mind. They say to all Englishmen ‘that they ought to refute and take all the Anabaptists’ and Pelagians ‘opinions in this behalf for detestable heresies.’ Then Wall cites Fuller out of Stow to prove that in 1538 six Dutch Anabaptists were punished in London, ‘four bearing fagots at Paul’s Cross, and two being burnt in Smithfield.’ Again quoting from Fuller, he writes: ‘This year the name of this sect first appears in our English chronicles,’ and from Fox, that ten Dutch ‘Anabaptists’ were put to death in England in 1535, a year before these utterances of Convocation. The sixth article condemns this heresy in ‘other men,’ who were not of these prescribed bodies, alluding to the English Baptist infection; for the lower house complained to the upper, in its ‘catalogue of some errors that began to be handed about among some people,’ and which the united body sharply rebuked. The king published a proclamation, 1538, condemning all Baptist books; an Act of Grace was passed the same year from the benefits of which the Baptists were excepted, and the Bishops of the Southern Province issued a commission to seek out and punish them. Brand reports that in 1539 thirty-one ‘Anabaptists’ fled from England and were slaughtered at Delft, Holland; the men were beheaded and the women drowned.

Froude mentions a number who were put to death for ‘being faithful to their conscience,’ and Stow tells us of four being burnt in Smithfield. These facts indicate their growing strength at that time. In a royal proclamation, issued in 1540, some of their so-called errors are thus enumerated, namely: ‘That infants ought not to be baptized, and that it is not lawful for a Christian man to bear office or rule in the commonwealth.’ But persecution only promoted their increase. Strype tells us that about 1548 ‘Anabaptist’ congregations had been gathered at Booking and Feversham, amongst whom are many English names. Sixty of their members were arrested; and Hart, Middleton, Coal and Brodbridge, four of their ministers, were made prisoners. Middleton was martyred in the reign of Edward, and when Archbishop Cranmer threatened him with death he replied: ‘Reverend sir, pass what sentence you think fit upon us. But that you may not say that you were not forewarned, I testify that your turn may be next;’ and twenty years afterwards his expectation was realized. Hooper wrote to his friend, Bullinger, 1549, that he was lecturing twice a day to great crowds, but that the ‘Anabaptists’ flocked to the place and gave him much trouble, another indication that these hearers of his were English born. And last of all, Latimer, in preaching before Edward VI, March 29, 1549, told the king that he had heard of many of them in the realm, of five hundred in one town, and that in many places they had been burnt, dying cheerfully for their faith, coolly adding: ‘Well, let them go.’ [Latimer himself was later burned by Queen Mary; thus the Protestants who burned the Baptists were themselves burned by the Catholics!]

The literature of the times is in keeping with these statements. In 1548 John Vernon translated and published Bullinger’s Holesome Antidote Against the Pestilent Sect of the Anabaptists. William Turner, a physician, 1551, issued a treatise called a ‘Triacle’ (remedy) ‘against the poyson lately stirred np agayn by the furious Secte of the Anabaptists.’ Philpots, in his sixth examination before Lord Riche, 1555, told him that every heretic would have a church to himself, ‘as Joan of Kent and the Anabaptists.’ The phrase ‘lately stirred up agayn’ in the title of Turner’s book, must have reference in the past, to the Act of Convocation and to the Commission of 1538, when Cranmer and eight others were appointed to persecute them with all severity. Henry had required every English justice to enforce the laws against them, and thus to scour the whole realm. This stringency was not needed to hunt out a few exiled foreigners in London, Essex and Norfolk. Everywhere there was a growing neglect of infant baptism. One of Bishop Ridley’s warrants of search, in 1550, demanded, ‘whether any speaketh against baptism of infants.’ Even Hooper was suspected on that question. Before he was nominated for the bishopric he held: ‘We may not doubt of the salvation of the infants of Christians that die before they be christened;’ showing that such opinions were no bar to public confidence. But Ridley had a mania for infant baptism, and in 1553 ordered that all the children in his diocese ‘be christened by the priest;’ and in his ‘Declaration of the Lord’s Supper’ we find him talking such superstition as this: ‘The bread indeed, sacramentally, is changed into the body of Christ, as the water in baptism is sacramentally changed into the fountain of regeneration, and yet the material substance thereof remaineth all one, as was before.’ A congregation of Baptists was found in London in 1575, twenty-seven of whom were imprisoned, and two burnt in Smithfield; and the sect can be traced by their blood all through the century, aided by the light of Burnet, Fuller and Fox.

Tradition connects the name of ANNE ASKEW with the Baptists. She was a thorough Protestant, a firm friend of Joan Boucher, and a helper to her in circulating the Bible and other religious books privately in the palace. She was the youngest daughter of Sir William Askew, was thoroughly educated, being as delicate and gentle a spirit as ever ascended from Smithfield to paradise. She was intimate with Queen Catharine Parr, and so fell a victim to Bishop Gardiner’s craft, he expecting to attaint her majesty of heresy through Anne, who was but four and twenty years of age. Much of her time, day and night, was spent in prayer; she reveled in the freshness of the Gospel, and her frank, meek, unsuspecting simplicity won the queen’s heart. She was arrested and thrown into the Tower on the charge that she rejected the mass. There she was put to the rack, but her clear and calm mind would neither criminate herself nor Catharine. Hence, when Bishop Gardiner and Chancellor Wriothesley saw that their policy was to be thwarted, the chancellor demanded that Sir Anthony Knevett should torment her further. This the lieutenant of the Tower refused, when Wriothesley threw off his gown, and drew the rack so severely that he almost tore her body to pieces. She endured this with such firm trust in God and such lofty courage that she seems like an angel of light amongst her tormentors. She had various hearings, in which her harmless wit overpowered her foes. The lord mayor demanded of her: ‘Sayest thou that the priests cannot make the body of Christ?’ She answered: ‘I say so, my lord; for I have read that God made man, but that man can make God I have never yet read.’ Qu. ‘What if a mouse eat of the bread after the consecration? What shall become of the mouse, thou foolish woman? Ans. ‘What shall become of her say you, my lord?’ He replied: ‘I say that that mouse is damned! ‘She artlessly rejoined, to his lordship’s chagrin: ‘Alack, poor mouse!’ When condemned to be burnt, her torture forbade her to walk to the stake, and she was carried in a chair. There a written pardon was offered to her from the king if she would recant. She calmly turned her eyes away, and fell in the flames a sacrifice to Jesus, 1546, before she was five and twenty. Shaxton, the apostate, preached at her burning, and a disgusting scene followed. The chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, the lord mayor, and other dignitaries feasted their eyes on her and the three who perished with her, seated on a bench under the shadow of St. Bartholomew’s church. A rumor spread that benevolent hands had put gun-powder about the martyrs to shorten their misery. These cravens were filled with terror for their own safety, lest the powder should cast the fagots where they sat. They could gloat upon the heroine, whose love for Christ was reducing her to ashes, but sat trembling lest the brands should touch them. Jesus, rising from his throne, welcomed her to a security which these selfish cowards could never disturb again.

Four years afterwards, under Edward VI, we have the fearful martyrdom of JOAN BOUCHER, of Kent, probably of Eythorne, near Canterbury, where there was a Baptist assembly. She was a lady of note, possessing large wealth, and was well known at the palace in the days of Henry and Edward. With her friend Anne Askew she was devoted to the study and circulation of Tyndale’s translation, which had been printed at Cologne, 1534. Strype says that she carried copies of this prohibited book under her clothing on her visits to the court; and very likely to the prisons also, which she often visited, using her wealth to relieve those who suffered for Jesus’ sake. She was charged with various heresies, and was arrested, May, 1549. Amongst other things, she denied that the Virgin Mary was sinless by nature, insisting that like other women she needed to rejoice ‘in God her Saviour,’ as she herself said. Joan neither denied the proper humanity of Jesus nor that be was Mary’s son. But she held, with many others of her day, that he became man of her ‘faith,’ not of her flesh, lest he should inherit her sinful taint; yet, she believed in Christ’s miraculous incarnation, and in him as ‘that holy thing’ born of Mary. Her idea was a mere speculation, or, as Vaughn expresses it, ‘a subtle fancy,’ not in itself half so weak as the notion of Mary’s own immaculate conception, manufactured to meet the conclusion which Joan wished to avoid, namely, the peccability of Christ’s humanity. On this frivolous quiddity [a quibble] was this noble woman kept a year and a half under the hair-splitting batteries of Cranmer, Ridley, Whitehead, Hutchinson, Cecil, Lord Chancellor Riche, and others of the Protestant Inquisition; more is the pity that they had no better business. She was examined and cross-examined, entreated and threatened, all to no purpose. Neal, Burnet and Philpot have affected to treat her as ‘weak,’ ‘vain’ and ‘fanatic,’ charges which their manliness had better have applied to her learned tormentors; for her recorded examinations show more of these infirmities in them than in her. They did not evince one thoroughly amiable trait in the whole transaction, while she displayed an acute and powerful mind, moved by a warm and impulsive heart.

True, she rejected their notion of Mary’s sinlessness and demanded Scripture for their teaching, while they had none to give; then, she gave none for her own speculations, and that was about all of consequence between them, on this issue. The whole farce was a small and mean business for men of their cast and cloth, and if she were an empty-headed woman, as they pretended, they honored themselves but little in spending eighteen months of their time and labor on her figment, for she well held her own with the whole learned and malignant crowd of them. Lord Riche says, that he kept her at his own house for ‘a fortnight,’ and had Cranmer and Ridley visit and reason with her daily. Ridley bent all his eloquence upon her mind, but could not shake her convictions. Her judges called her every thing but the lady which her parentage, position and character demanded, and they felt terribly grieved when her insulted patience told them the plain truth, in more polite language than their own. ‘Marry,’ said she, ‘it is a goodly matter to consider your ignorance. It is not long ago since you burned Anne Askew for a piece of bread, and yet you came yourselves soon after to believe and profess the same doctrine for which you burned her. And now, forsooth, you will burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end you will come to believe this also.’ Did Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley remember her true words in the flames, and did they help to light them through the fire? Fox tried hard to save her, and to induce John Rogers to help him. Rogers refused, thought that she ought to be burnt, and spoke lightly of death by burning, but then he did not dream of being chained to the stake himself. Fox, pitying her, seized the hand of his friend Rogers and replied: ‘Well, it may so happen that you yourself will have your hands full of this mild burning.’ Whether he had or not, his poor wife proved the force of Fox’s prophetic apprehension when she stood with her eight children and saw her husband consumed to ashes, five years later.

Joan Boucher suffered amongst the fagots, May 2, 1550, to the eternal disgrace of all concerned. Common decency might have spared her the mockery of having Bishop Scorey preach to her while at the stake and vilify her there, under pretense of pious exhortation. Yet, possibly, her last act did him a service which he much needed, and which had never been done to him before. Her sermon to him is immortal, while his to her has long since been forgotten. Listening to him just as her soul ascended to heaven in the flame, she said in reply: ‘You lie like a rogue. Go read the Scriptures!’ Much needless ink has been shed on an attempt to show that Edward stained her death-warrant with tears when he signed it, because Cranmer clamored for her life. But Hallam long since said that this royal tear-scene should be dropped from history; though detailed by Burnet. And the young Tudor well sustains Hallam from his private journal, which is any thing but tearful. With his own hand he wrote: ‘Joan Boucher, otherwise called Joan of Kent, was burnt for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary, being condemned the year previous, but kept in hope of conversion; and the 30th of April the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Ely were to persuade her, but she withstood them and reviled the preacher that preached at her death.’ So much for his Journal, but there is no proof that Edward signed her death-warrant at all. This was seldom done by the monarch, and in her case it was issued by the Council to the Lord Chancellor. On the authority of Bruce, editor of the works of Hutchinson, Parker Society edition, the following is taken from a minute of the Council itself, dated April 27, 1550. ‘A warrant to the L. Chancellor to make out a writt to the shireff of London for the execution of Joan of Kent, condemned to be burned for certain detestable opinions of heresie.’

HENDRICK TERWOOKT, a Fleming by birth, and of a fine mind, another Baptist martyr of note, was burned in Smithfield, June 22, 1575. He was but five and twenty, had rejected infant baptism, and held that a Christian should not make oath or bear arms. While in prison he wrote a Confession of Faith, in which he said: ‘We must abstain from willful sins if we would be saved, namely, from adultery, fornication, witchcraft, sedition, bloodshed, cursing and stealing, . . . hatred and envy. They who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.’ He also set forth that the ‘Anabaptists’ ‘believe and confess that magistrates are set and ordained of God, to punish the evil and protect the good,’ that they pray for them and are subject to them in every good work, and that they revere the ‘gracious queen’ as a sovereign. He sent a copy to Elizabeth, but her heart was set against him and his people, as hard as the nether millstone, and this young son of God must die because he would not make his conscience her footstool. Bishops Laud and Whitgift hated him and the Baptists, the latter dealing in this heartless slander: ‘They give honor and reverence to none in authority, they seek the overthrow of commonwealths and states of government, they are full of pride and contempt, their whole interest is schismatic and to be free from all laws, to live as they list; they feign an austerity of life and manners, and are great hypocrites.’ When he comes to the dangerous method of specification, he virtually admits his slander. He berates them for complaining: ‘That their mouths are stopped, not by God’s word, but by the authority of the magistrate. They assert that the civil magistrate has no authority in ecclesiastical matters, and ought not to meddle in cases of religion and faith, and that no man ought to be compelled to faith and religion; and lastly, they complain much of persecution, and brag that they defend their cause not with words only, but by the shedding of their blood.’

Terwoort was not an English subject, but, persecuted in his own land for his love to Christ, he fled and asked protection of a Protestant queen, the head of the English Church, and she roasted him alive for his misplaced confidence. Nor was his a singular case. Bishop Jewel complains of a ‘large and unauspicious crop of Anabaptists’ in Elizabeth’s reign, and she not only ordered them out of her kingdom, but in good earnest kindled the fires to burn them. Sir James Mackintosh says that no Catholic was martyred in Edward’s reign, and happy had it been could he have written that the virgin Queen also avoided a Baptist holocaust. Marsden thinks that the Baptists were the most numerous dissenters from the Established Church in her reign, and Camden affirms that she insisted on their leaving the kingdom on pain of imprisonment and confiscation of property. Yet even this did not satisfy her implacable hate, as a real Tudor. She pursued them more and more, until they were driven in all directions, some being put to death; but the large part of them fled to Holland, where at this time they enjoyed more toleration. Dr. Some, however, an English clergyman of note in his day, informs us that they had several secret ‘conventicles’ in London, and that several of their ministers had been educated at the universities. In 1580, he wrote a treatise, attacking them and their faith. His charges against the Baptists were: That they insisted on maintaining all ministers of the Gospel by the voluntary contributions of the people; that the civil power has no right to make and impose ecclesiastical laws; that the people have the right to choose their own pastors; that the High Commission Court was an anti-Christian usurpation; that those who are qualified to preach ought not to be hindered by the civil power; that though the Lord’s Prayer is a rule and foundation of petition, it is not to be used as a form, for no form of prayer should be bound on the Church; that the baptism of the Church of Rome is invalid; that a Gospel constitution and discipline are essential to a true Church; and that the worship of God in the Church of England is, in many things, defective. For these views they were accounted ‘heretics,’ and suffered so severely that from 1590 to 1630 we find but plight trace of Baptists in England.

About 1579 Archbishop Sandys declared both of the Brownists and Baptists: ‘It is the property of froward sectaries, whose inventions cannot abide the light, to make obscure conventicles,’ and he would compel them to attend the Established Church. He was the more disturbed because so many ‘heretical’ exiles from Holland had sought refuge in England, for it is said that in 1571 there were nearly 4,000 Dutch and other foreigners in Norwich alone, many of them Dutch Baptists, from whom Weingarten thinks that Brown borrowed his best ideas of a Gospel Church. Robert Brown, chaplain to the Duke of Norfolk, and Robert Harrison, the master of a grammar school, were Puritans, and went to Norwich in 1580. There they mingled with these exiles, and formed an independent Church, but the Bishops had no rest till Brown was banished. He, with Harrison and about fifty others, in 1581, fled to Middleburg, in Zealand, and formed a Church, which became extinct because of divisions, and Brown returned to the Church of England. Elizabeth was especially set against the Separatists, and in 1597, Francis Johnson, pastor of their Church in London, with some of his flock, escaped to Amsterdam.

On the accession of James I, 1603, the four sects of England were, the Roman Catholic, the Church of England, divided into the Puritans, who conformed in some things, and others who conformed in all, the Brownists, afterwards known as Separatists and Independents, and a few Baptists, who were disowned of all. The Gospel seed sown by Brown in his own country took root, and notwithstanding his return to the English Church, Sir Walter Raleigh said, in 1592, that there were 20,000 Brownists in England. John Robinson, a firmer and more steady mind, went to Norwich, then to Scrooby, 1600-1604, cast the Brownists in a healthier mold, and they became known as Independents.

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