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A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS

By Thomas Armitage

1890

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

BAPTISTS OF GREAT BRITAIN

COMMONWEALTH AND RESTORATION

JOHN MILTON, the apostle of liberty and monarch of song, demands our notice, because, whether he was a Baptist or not, he expounded and defended certain elementary Baptist principles as few others have done. Milton was born in 1608, and educated at Cambridge. He was of a serious spirit, full of purity and courage and very modest withal. This soul dwelt in a temple as fair as Apollo’s, the picture of beauty and delicacy; so fine, indeed, that the coarser students nicknamed him ‘the lady of Christ’s College.’ As a liberator, he did for England what no man had yet done. He lived when all religions and political traditions were called in question, and all old institutions were being remodeled. Although his early design was to enter the Episcopal ministry, and his preparation was thorough, after examining the claims of Episcopacy, he said that to take orders he ‘must subscribe slave,’ and this he would do for no man. After seven years’ study he took his master’s degree, 1632; then retired for five years, studying the Bible, Greek and Roman writers, philosophy and literature, and laying plans for his great life-work. On the death of his mother, in 1638, he went to the Continent, intending to spend some years there. In Paris he became thoroughly acquainted with Grotius, and at Florence had much conversation with Galileo, in the Inquisition. When he heard of the disturbances in England, his patriotism was so stirred that he resolved to return, saying, ‘I considered it dishonorable to be enjoying myself at my ease in foreign lands, while my countrymen were striking a blow for freedom.’

At home, he was soon drawn into the front rank as a publicist, dealing with every fundamental principle of the English Constitution. Twenty-five controversial and political works were soon issued from his pen touching great practical questions of statesmanship; the rights of the people, of rulers, the freedom of the commonwealth, the relations of the Church to the State, of religious liberty, popular education, the laws of marriage and the freedom of the press. These aroused the whole nation as a giant from slumber. He spoke on all subjects with a deep conviction and an honest boldness worthy of a doctrinaire and philosophical civilian. Every point was presented with the clearness of a sunbeam; all could see that the love of liberty dominated him like an inspiration. His principles embodied a new and radical order of things, and a new set of political institutions must spring therefrom, so primal were they. In themselves they were a new creation, so to speak, which appealed to reason and conscience; in a word, the embryo of a free republic. Mark Pattison, no indulgent critic of Milton, is compelled to admit that these works were ‘all written on the side of liberty.’ He defended religious liberty against the prelates, civil liberty against the crown, the liberty of the press against the executive, liberty of conscience against the Presbyterians, and domestic liberty against the tyranny of canon law. Milton’s pamphlets might have been stamped with the motto which Seldon inscribed (in Greek) in all his books: ‘Liberty before every thing.’ In the depth of his nature he reverenced God, and used that reverence to ennoble England. While the seething excitement of his times marks his style, which is often rasping, even withering, and betrays that metallic spirit which will neither brook imposition nor cant; yet there was a light and refreshing newness in his temper, which told his foes that he knew what he was talking about, whether they did or not, and which brushed away their impudent assumptions and abuses like dust. His exact calmness of thought and clearness of language made his foes resentful. He was a perfect master of stinging candor, and his nervous invective made his vehemence calm by the truth which it couched.

The second marked period of his life brought his knowledge of the learned languages into great service. He honored his mother-tongue as a language of ideas, and his prose works will ever remain a monument to its terse greatness. But he wrote Latin as fluently as English, and was chosen Latin secretary to the government soon after the death of Charles I. This was the language of diplomacy at the time, and he filled this station till the reign of Charles II. His office brought him into daily contact with the forty-one who composed the Council of State, especially with the Committee for Foreign Affairs, amongst whom were Vane and Whitelock, Lords Denbigh and Lisle. In company with Cromwell, Fairfax and others, his daily task was to frame difficult dispatches to all nations, in harmony with the new state of things in England, to which, practically, the world was a stranger. In April, 1655, the Duke of Savoy horrified all Europe by the fiendish atrocities which made the valleys of Piedmont run with blood. When news of this savagery reached Protestant England she stood appalled, decreed it high time to stop such insane brutality, and sent Moreland to take the cut-throat of Savoy in hand. As representing a republic, Cromwell had omitted the title of his Royal Highness in the dispatches sent by Moreland to the duke, who proposed to return the demand of England under color of affront. The sober second thought, however, aided by a little common sense and Cardinal Mazarin, brought the butcher to his senses. France was required to stop this cowardly reign of fury, rape and murder. The correspondence which Milton conducted on this subject with the nations of Europe was so just, humane and simple, that it stands an honor to humanity. Its tone is severely moderate, becoming a Christian republic in diplomacy; firm, equitable, manly to deliciousness, and its effect is felt on the liberties of Europe to this day.

Milton’s perpetual labor in the cause of humanity cost him his eyesight. He said that his physicians predicted this when he took up his pen to write against the tyrannies of Charles, ‘yet, nothing terrified by their premonition, I did not long balance whether my duty should be preferred to my eyes.’ In 1650 the sight of his left eye was gone, and by 1652 the eight of his right eye was also quenched; so that at the age of forty-three he was totally blind, remaining so till his death, twenty-two years after. In another touching passage, which expresses his unyielding sense of responsibility, he says: ‘The choice lay before me, between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight. In such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if Esculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spoke to me from heaven. I considered with myself that many had purchased less good with worse ill, as they who give their lives to reap only glory; and I thereupon concluded to employ the little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was in my power to render.’

The third period of his life drew forth his highest and holiest genius. From 1660 to 1674 he produced his matchless ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Paradise Regained,’ and his ‘Samson Agonistes.’ He addressed himself to these as a prophet would devote himself to his holy office. Five and twenty years had been spent in the sternest self-culture and sacred purpose, so that he thought his epic ideal a schooling from God. He had conceived the first plan of his ‘Paradise Lost’ under the flush and daring imaginations of youth, but dared not touch the work without the chaste and ripe judgment of fifty, and then considered himself poorly equipped for its execution. He was not content to create an epic fiction, much less a romance, but would deal only in real poetic truth on foundations as firm as the eternal throne. But for all this he implored the help of heaven, as he believed that only close walk with God could give life and history to the imagery and feeling treasured in his soul. He said: ‘This is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends forth his seraphim with the hallowed lire of his altar, to touch and purify the life of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and gracious acts and affairs; till which in some measure compact, I refuse not to sustain this expectation.’ His blindness abandoned him to a sublime loneliness. Every thing material was banished from his fervid soul, while he sang to God the story of creation as ‘the morning stars’ sung it at first, and the greater story of redemption as it was sung by the advent angels. His soul was rapt because it breathed the air of a spiritual gospel and took the nourishment which a personal Christ imparts. His genius was overpowered by the sense of God’s help, and this inspired his grace of movement, his glow of adoration. One of His most careful biographers writes that ‘the horizon of "Paradise Lost" is not narrower than all space, its chronology not shorter than eternity; the globe of our earth a mere spot in the physical universe, and that universe itself a drop suspended in the infinite empyrean.’ Butler says: ‘It runs up into infinity.’ The gorgeous embroidery which adorns ‘Paradise Lost’ is wanting in ‘Paradise Regained,’ clearly because he curbed his imagination in deference to evangelic truth. He could not gild the atoning cross without making the Gospel blush for the artist. The supernatural existences of ‘Paradise Lost’ are made visible in their darkness by the aid of superhuman lights; but ‘Paradise Regained’ shines in the native splendor of plain gospel fact, it lives in the simplicity of Christ without bedecking, it extols the reign of grace without pomp. Christ is so fully its high art and argument, that Wordsworth pronounces it ‘the most perfect in execution of any thing written by Milton,’ and Coleridge, ‘the most perfect poem extant’ of its kind.

Milton’s religious views were Non-conformist, but there is no decisive proof that he was a communicant of any Church. He said, 1642, that he was ‘a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded, and whereof I had declared myself openly to be the partaker.’ Again, in his ‘Treatise on Christian Doctrine:’ ‘For my own part, I adhere to the Holy Scriptures alone. I follow no other heresy or sect. I had not even read any of the works of heretics, so called, when the mistakes of those who are reckoned for orthodox, and their incautious handling of Scripture, first taught me to agree with their opponents, whenever those opponents agree with Scripture.’ A State religion was abhorrent to him, and he demanded equal rights for all sects, except Roman Catholics. These he would not tolerate in England, on the ground that Catholicism was a political machine, which had destroyed the liberties of England once, and, he believed, would destroy them again if it recovered ascendency. He did not regard it as a religious but as a political system in a religious guise, directly opposed to civil freedom and, therefore, intolerable. Also, he was extremely jealous lest any sect should trench a hair’s-breadth upon his personal rights of conscience; hence, he chose to follow his own individual lines. He adopted the same course in his literary, political, and official life, holding no close intimacy with leading literary men or republicans, not even with Cromwell. He said, in 1657: ‘I have very little acquaintance with those in power, inasmuch as I keep very much to my own house, and prefer to do so.’ In this self-contained reserve he appears to have had no intercourse with the literati of the times, Waller, Herrick, Shirley, Davenant, Cowley, Gataker, Seldon, Usher or Butler, and seems not to have met most of them. The purely literary did not suit him, and with many of these he was in warm controversy.

Bishop Sumner states, that ‘during every period of his life, his Sundays were wholly devoted to theology.’ This was not merely a private exercise, for Buch shows that on Sundays he read a chapter of the Greek Testament, and gave an exposition of it to his pupils; and then, at his dictation, they wrote on divinity. This course not only nourished his own religious life, but made him a religious teacher to others, and he followed this order as well before he became blind as after. After 1660 he was so hated that the iron entered his soul, and he preferred to dwell in darkness; or as Macaulay forcibly expresses it: ‘After experiencing every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die.’

And still it stands good, that he defended roundly, openly and with his might every distinctive principle which the Baptists hold, and his foes ranked him with them. In his youth he held Trinitarian views and in his ‘Ode on Christ’s Nativity’ speaks of our Lord as, ‘Wont at heaven’s high council-table, To sit the midst of Trinal Unity.’ In later life he was tainted with Arianism; yet, with a strange inconsistency, he constructed his ‘Paradise Lost’ on the fundamental principle of Christ’s vicarious sacrifice, and maintains this truth without the least ambiguity or equivocation in his ‘Treatise on Doctrine,’ together with the co-related tenets of original sin, justification and regeneration. These were not distinctive Baptist doctrines in his day more than now; they were held in common by Baptist and Pedobaptist. He held views on divorce which the Baptists of his day did not hold, growing out of his conviction that while marriage itself is an appointment of God, it should be known in human law only as a civil contract, a sentiment which is now incorporated into the statute law of the American States. But on all the doctrines which distinguish Baptists from other religious bodies, he stands an open and firm Baptist writer.

1. As to the Rule of Faith. Usher, the most learned prelate of his day in all that concerned religious tradition, was seriously perplexed and compelled to abandon some of his positions in his controversy with Milton. Milton swept away all his patristic arguments at a stroke, charging that the archbishop was not ‘contented with the plentiful and wholesome fountains of the Gospel, as if the divine Scriptures wanted a supplement, and were to be eked out . . . by that indigested heap and fry of authors called antiquity.’ He then avows: ‘That neither traditions, councils, nor canons of any visible Church, much less edicts of any magistrate or civil session, but the Scripture only, can be the final judge or rule in matters of religion, and that only in the conscience of every Christian to himself.’ For this reason he refused to appeal to any authority but the Bible in his ‘Treatise on Doctrine.’ So rigidly did he adhere to his rule to ‘discard reason in sacred matters,’ that Bishop Sumner complains thus: ‘Milton has shown a partiality in all his works, even on subjects not immediately connected with religion, for supporting his argument by the authority of Scripture;’ and so the Bible was the mother of his prose and poetic literature. He took the exact Baptist ground of his day and ours, when be said: ‘I enroll myself among the number of those who acknowledge the word of God alone as the rule of faith.’

2. He took the highest Baptist ground on the constitution and government of a Gospel Church. He demanded that it must be a ‘communion of saints,’ a ‘brotherhood professing the faith,’ and that ‘such only are to be accounted of that number as are well taught in Scripture doctrine, and capable of trying by the rule of Scripture and the Spirit any teacher whatever, or even the whole collective body of teachers.’ Such a Church, he says, ‘however small its numbers,’ is an independent body: ‘In itself an integral and perfect Church, so far as regards its religions rights nor has it any superior on earth, whether individual or assembly or convention, to whom it can be lawfully required to render submission.’ Its offices, he held, are presbyters and deacons, and ‘the choice of ministers belongs to the people.’ This excludes all infant membership, on any plea. He protests of infants, that ‘they are not to be baptized; inasmuch as they are incompetent to receive instruction, or to believe, or to enter into a covenant, or to promise or answer for themselves, or even to hear the word. For how can infants, who understand not the word, be purified thereby, any more than adults can receive edification by hearing an unknown language? For it is not that outward baptism, which purifies only the filth of the flesh, that saves us, but the answer of a good conscience, as Peter testifies, of which infants are incapable. . . . Baptism is also a vow, and as such can neither be pronounced by infants nor be required of them.’ No Baptist writer, of any period, more thoroughly refutes the doctrine of infant baptism than does Milton.

3. As to the order of baptism itself, he holds it to be an ordinance under the Gospel: ‘Wherein the bodies of believers, who engage themselves to pureness of life, are immersed in running water, to signify their regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and their union with Christ, in his death, burial and resurrection.’ It is in vain: alleged by those, who, on the authority of Mark 7:4, Luke 11:38, have introduced the practice of affusion in baptism instead of immersion, that to dip and to sprinkle mean the same thing; since in washing we do not sprinkle the hands, but immerse them.’ His writings abound in this sentiment. In ‘Paradise Lost’ (Book xii) he teaches that after Christ’s resurrection he commissioned his Apostles ‘To teach all nations what of him they learned, And his salvation; them who shall believe Baptizing in the profluent stream, the sign Of washing them from guilt of sin to life Pure, and in mind prepared, if so befall, For death like that which the Redeemer died.’

4. As we have already seen, he was a thorough Baptist on all that related to soul liberty, excepting in the case of the Roman Catholics. His ‘Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes’ teaches: ‘That for belief or practice in religion, no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force upon earth whatsoever.’ Again, in his ‘Christian Doctrine:’ ‘The civil power has dominion only over the body and external faculties of man; the ecclesiastical is exercised exclusively on the faculties of the mind, which acknowledge no other jurisdiction.’ He went further than Locke, who excluded atheists from toleration; for while he repudiated all union of Church and State, he held to a union between the State and religion, as such. With this one abatement of Catholic toleration, Milton stood with the Baptists on the liberty of conscience. Dr. Stoughton writes: ‘The Baptists multiplied after the Revolution, and continued what they had been before, often obscure, but always stanch supporters of independence and voluntaryism. In this respect they differed from Presbyterians, and often went beyond Independents.’

For these reasons, many of Milton’s biographers have classed him with Baptists. Mark Pattison tells us, that ‘every Philistine leveled the contemptuous epithet of Anabaptist against Milton most freely. He says of himself, that he now lived in a world of disesteem. Nor was there wanting to complete his discomfiture the practical parody of the doctrine of divorce. A Mistress Attaway, lace-woman in Bell Alley and she-preacher in Coleman Street, had been reading Master Milton’s book, and remembered that she had an unsanctified husband, who did not speak the language of Canaan. She further reflected that Mr. Attaway was not only unsanctified, but was also absent with the army, while William Jenney was on the spot, and, like herself, also a preacher.’ This slant of the modern author accords exactly with the abuse of Milton by Featley, on the same subject, in 1644. In his ‘Dippers Dipt,’ he first attends to the case of Roger Williams, who had just issued his ‘Bloody Tenet,’ ranking him with the ‘Anabaptists,’ because he taught that ‘it is the will and command of God, that since the coming of his Son, the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries. That civil States with their officers of justice are not governors or defenders of the spiritual and Christian state and worship. That the doctrine of persecution in case of conscience, maintained by Master Calvin, Beza, Cotton and the ministers of the New England Churches, is guilty of the blood of the souls crying for vengeance under the altar.’ On the same page, and in the next sentence, he couples Milton with Williams as an ‘Anabaptist’ by the title of his book, saying: ‘Witness a "Tractate of Divorce," in which the bonds of marriage are let loose to inordinate lust, and putting away wives for many other causes besides that which our Saviour only approveth, namely, in cases of adultery.’

Featley’s design was to lampoon the Baptists, and if Milton was not understood to stand on their distinctive principles as well as Williams, why did be run the risk of classing them all together and denouncing them in the same breath as Baptists? This furious writer hated both of them as well as their doctrine of soul-liberty, and the law of association led him to denounce them both as symbolizing with those who held this as a divine truth. Other men, whom he hated as much as these, had written books as distasteful to him, but he did not, therefore, class them with Baptists, merely to throw additional contempt upon them as a body; for even Featley had some sense. Milton’s widow was a Baptist and a member of the Church at Nantwich, Cheshire, but it is not known when she entered its fellowship. Her body rests in the meeting-house of that Church, and she appointed Samuel Creton, its pastor, her ‘loving friend,’ as one of her executors. Perhaps this sketch cannot better be finished than by giving the following from John Tolland, who wrote the first ‘Life of Milton,’ published in London, 1699: ‘Thus lived and died John Milton, a person of the best accomplishments, the happiest genius and the vastest learning which this nation, so renowned for producing excellent writers, could ever yet show. . . . In his early days he was a favorer of those Protestants then opprobriously called by the name of Puritans. In his middle years he was best pleased with the Independents and Anabaptists, as allowing of more liberty than others and coming the nearest to his opinion to the primitive practice. But in the latter part of his life he was not a professed member of any particular sect among Christians; he frequented none of their assemblies, nor made use of their peculiar rites in his family. Whether this proceeded from a dislike of their uncharitable and endless disputes, and that love of dominion or inclination to persecution, which, he said, was a piece of popery inseparable from all Churches, or whether he thought one might be a good man without subscribing to any party, and that they had all in some things corrupted the institutions of Jesus Christ, I will by no means adventure to determine; for conjectures on such occasions are very uncertain, and I have never met with any of his acquaintance who could be positive in assigning the true reasons for his conduct.’

Few men amongst the Baptists ranked higher at this period than BENJAMIN KEACH. He was born in 1640, was immersed on his faith in Christ at the age of fifteen, and began to preach at eighteen; then, in 1668, at the age of twenty-eight, he became pastor of the Baptist Church in Horsleydown, London. For the high crime of publishing a small work on fundamental Baptist principles he was indicted in 1664, and brought before Chief-Justice Hyde. This judge descended to the meanness of browbeating his prisoner. The indictment being long, Keach asked for a copy, that he might confer with counsel. This right of every English man was refused; and the judge, in a towering passion, demanded that he should first plead, or he would take his silence as confession, and so pronounce judgment. He pleaded ‘Not Guilty,’ when the judge gave him a copy and an hour’s time to consider objections. This he declined as insufficient. When he proceeded to his defense the Court said: ‘You shall not speak any thing here, except to say whether you wrote the book or not.’ The jury found a technical error in the indictment, but the Court forced a verdict of guilty, despite the law. The judge then sentenced him to prison for two weeks, and to stand in the pillory in the market-place at Aylesbury, with a paper upon his head inscribed: ‘For writing, printing and publishing a schismatical book, entitied "The Child’s Instructor; or, A New and Easy Primmer."’ At the same time he was to pay a fine of £20, to give sureties for his appearance at the next assize, to recant his doctrines, and his book was to be burnt before his eyes in the pillory by the hangman. When in the pillory the crowd treated him with great respect, and, instead of hooting and pelting him with eggs, as was common, listened eagerly to his exhortations. The sheriff, in a great rage, threatened to gag him, but he exhorted the people out of the Bible. On the following Saturday he stood in the pillory at Winslow and his book was burnt. He was often in prison for preaching the Gospel, and had great contests with Baxter, Burkitt and Flavel on Baptist peculiarities. For many years his Church was compelled to meet in private houses but under the Declaration of Indulgence, 1672, they built their first house of worship, which was frequently enlarged until it held a thousand hearers.

Various controversies were rife amongst the Baptists of his day, this with others: Whether or not they should sing in public worship? Many Churches were much distracted on this subject. The Presbyterians sung certain cast-iron botches, called the translation of Sternhold and Hopkins, but these were denounced as ‘human composures;’ a self-evident truth. Even Beza’s translation of David’s Psalms was irreverently called, by both Baptists and Independents, ‘Geneva Jiggs.’ The Broadmead Records tell us that in 1675 it was proposed that Gifford’s Church, at Bristol, with the Presbyterians and Independents, should all meet together for worship in trying times; but some of Gifford’s flock, to show their dislike of metrical versions, reserved the right to ‘keep on their hatts, or going forth’ during this part of the service. Their brethren, however, would not sanction such disorder, and agreed that those who ‘would not keep off their hatts and sitt still, should be desired to stay away.’ The press groaned with pamphlets and books on this controversy. The contest was not as to whether the congregation should sing instead of a choir, but, at first, whether they would have any singing at all; and, secondly, if yes, whether the saints should do it alone or the wicked should join in and help them. Keach was drawn into this controversy, and in 1691 published a book on the subject. He demonstrated his gravity of character by keeping a straight face while he solemnly proceeded to show ‘that there are various kinds of voices; namely, (1) a shouting noise of the tongue; (2) a crying noise; (3) a preaching voice, or noise made that way; (4) a praying or praising voice; and (5) a singing voice.’ He then declares in downright earnest that ‘singing is not a simple heart singing, or mental singing; but a musical, melodious modulation or tuning of the voice. . . . That singing is a duty performed always with the voice, and cannot be done without the tongue, etc.’ He resolved to introduce singing into his Church, cost what it might. But he met with great opposition; and as his was the first Church amongst the Baptists to introduce singing, so far as now appears, it is interesting to know that it was first used at the Lord’s Supper about 1673, and confined to communion occasions for about six years. Then the practice was extended to days of public thanksgiving, which practice continued about fourteen years. After about twenty years the Church, with some dissent, was persuaded to sing every Lord’s day. But even then the brethren agreed only to sing at the close of the prayer after the sermon; and so tender were they of the consciences of the minority, that they passed a vote not to censure those who went out and stood in the chapel-yard, if they could not conscientiously stay in and hear the singing. Yet all this care made no matter. The anti-singing party left the Church, and established another body in every respect like the old Church, except as to singing. This was known then, and is now, as the Maze Pond Church. February 9th, 1693, Luke Leader, living in Tooley Street, Southwark, with six brethren and thirteen sisters, met to spend the day in fasting and prayer without a song in their mouth, ‘and to settle themselves in a Church state.’ When they were gone Keach and his Church resolved to ‘let their songs abound,’ and on the 1st of March actually passed a vote ‘that they who are for singing may sing as above said.’ This new congregation continued songless until 1739, when Abraham West refused to become their pastor unless they would introduce singing into public worship, which they did. And now few congregations in London sing better or more lusty songs of praise than that on Old Kent Road, when a thousand people lift their voices high, in their new edifice, which cost them £13,000, and was dedicated by Dr. Landels. Other London Churches had hot conflicts on this singing question, the custom being, according to Taylor, ‘for a long time,’ for the discontented to go out of the congregation ‘when the singing commenced.’ And Dr. Russell says of the practice, in 1696: ‘This way of singing has a tendency to your ruin, having begun already to diminish your numbers, and for two congregations to unite into one, to keep up their reputation and supply that deficiency which singing in rhyme has made in their numbers. Nay, further, a great part of your members that remain are so dissatisfied, that, as soon as you begin to tune your pipes, they immediately depart like men affrighted.’ Possibly, with good reason, too.