"His hand won back the sea for England's dower; "From Cromwell's eyes the light of England's glance By grace of England held their hosts in trance. "The enthroned republic from her kinglier throne "Incarnate England in his warrior hand Smote, and as fire devours the blackening brand Made ashes of their strengths who wrought her wrong, "His praise is in the sea's and Milton's song; What praise could reach him from the weakling throng "There needs no clarion blast of broad-blown fame Parliament redeemed itself, however, in 1899, by voting a statue to the founder of English liberty and, with the exception of Alfred and Gladstone, the most progressive and most Christian of English statesmen. After the death of William of Orange in 1702 the Anglicans tried hard to take away the restricted liberties of the Congregationalists and other dissenters, but with the coming of the Hanover line of Protestants in 1714 it became impossible to carry through this pro gram. 2 1 Nineteenth Century, July, 1895, pp. 1, 2. CHAPTER VIII. THE BAPTISTS. ABSOLUTE It is one of the anomalies of history that principles for which a Church contends as for the essence of the Gospel sometimes form no part of its original testimony, and principles which at first were the breath of its life are at length abandoned, waived, or disregarded. The Roman, the Anglican, the Presbyterian, and the Congregational Churches are instances. The Baptists have regarded immersion as an essential part of their faith, and some of them have at times almost made it a requisite to salvation, but originally their founders did not hold it aloft on their standard. As immersion was the universal mode of baptism in mediæval Christendom-in large measure in ancient Christendom too-it might have been expected that when Christians returned to the old models they would have reinstated immersion. The fact that they did not ought to be taken as indicating their belief that the Scriptures did not make immersion essential. That immersion did not come in with the new life and revived biblical study which gave rise to the Protestant Churches is an instructive fact. Neither the English, Swiss, Austrian, Moravian, nor Dutch Baptists practiced immersion at the first, though it was practiced by them at St. Gall, Augsburg, Strasburg, and in Poland. As Professor Newman says, "the importance of immersion as the act of baptism seems to have been appreciated by few.”1 The opinion is common among Baptist writers in the Southern States of America that Baptists can trace their origin back to the apostolic age in a series of communities or churches or bands of godly men. As to the general theory of an evangelical succession through ancient and medieval Christianity, judgment has already been expressed.' As to the opinion of a Baptist succession, all impartial scholars of that denomination, like Professors Newman, Vedder, Whitsitt, and Dr. Norman Fox, repudiate it. A close study of the medieval sects shows that not until the twelfth century do we meet with distinctive Baptist views, and then these were often held with others unevangelical or heretical. Peter de Bruys 1 Hist. of the Baptists, p. 37. ? See above, i, 829. RISE OF and Henry of Lausanne rejected infant baptism, and it is probable that Arnold of Brescia did also. Peter Cheleicky, one of the fathers of the Bohemian Brethren (15th century), enunCONTINENTAL ciated many views which the Baptists of the sixteenth BAPTISTS. century embraced, such as, the Lord's Supper a commemorative feast; baptism does not regenerate; union of Church and State an evil; Christians must not hold office in the State, as all dominion or class distinctions are opposed to Christ's requirement of brotherly equality; the will is free; divine grace necessary; and oaths and capital punishment unchristian. As to baptism, he held it should succeed faith, but believed also that the children of Christians might be baptized. Some of the Bohemian Brethren, though apparently not many, rejected infant baptism. TYPES OF During the time of the Reformation on the Continent we find three types or kinds of Baptists: (1) revolutionary and socialistic, (2) unitarian, and (3) evangelical, though of course there were various degrees of truth and error among these. Full treatment of Baptist continental history would make a volume. BAPTISTS. Suffice it to say that Thomas Münzer at Zwickau, in Westphalia, represented the first kind, and their fanaticism and excesses covered the Baptist name with reproach, were the cause of great suffering to thousands of peace-loving and innocent people, and have impeded the Baptist cause in all Europe to this day. But the fanatical section was only a small segment of the great Baptist army. A large part, especially in Italy and Poland, was unitarian, and had other views of a liberal kind. The evangelical Baptistsmany of these being premillennialists-had large vogue in Germany, Switzerland, Moravia, Holland, and other lands, and had among them many great and noble Christians, like Hubmaier, Storch, Ascherham, Huther, Denk, Gross, Sattler, Roübli, Kautz, Marbeck, Reink, Hofmann, and Menno Simons, the founder of the Mennonites, all of whom are well worthy of study. Some of these were evangelists and preachers, others were scholars, and others devoted laymen. Professor Newman has summed up the testimony of the continental Baptists of the Reformation times and after, and we follow his conclusions.' NEWMAN ON CONTINENTAL 1. All parties, except some of the revolutionaries, agreed in aiming to restore primitive Christianity, in laying BAPTISTS. stress on the ethical teachings of Jesus, in rejecting the Augustinian and Calvinistic doctrinal system, in re 1 See his Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century, in History of the Baptists in the United States, pp. 36, 37. jecting oaths, war, the infliction of death for any cause, and the exercise of magistracy by Christians. Especially as to war and oaths they were at one with many of the post-Reformation sects-in that fresh morning light which arose with the newly opened Bible, men being simple enough to take the morality of the Nazarene at its face value. Hubmaier, however, differed as to some of these matters. 2. Baptists were pioneers in upholding liberty of conscience, Hubmaier writing a special treatise on the subject. 3. They all rejected infant baptism, though not many, as we have said, practiced immersion at first. 4. Some were unitarians, and others mixed various gross errors with their unitarianism. 5. The chiliasm of some was held in connection with violent and extravagant ideas and methods, and that of others in an evangelical and peaceful spirit. JOHN KNOX The English Baptists sprang spiritually from their Dutch brethren, whose influence and teaching worked most beneficently in their adopted island home. The fury of the Roman Catholics in the Netherlands had this compensation, that it helped to make England Protestant. As early as 1560 John Knox answered a Baptist writer who had pleaded for freedom of conscience and freedom of the will.' The Baptist made a bold protest against persecution. Speaking of the persecutors he says: "Be these, I pray you, the sheep whom Christ sent forth into the midst of wolves? Can the sheep persecute the wolf? Doth Abel Cain kill? Doth David, though he might, kill Saul? Shortly, doth he which is born of the Spirit kill him which is born of the flesh? Mark how ye be fallen into the most abominable tyranny, and yet ye see it not." Knox answered this in a bad spirit, calling the Baptists "You dissembling hypocrites," and threatening the writer that if ever the opportunity offered "I shall apprehend thee in any commonwealth where justice against blasphemers may be ministered, as God's word requireth.' Knox thought that the Old Testament method of punishing blasphemers and idolaters with death justified the Christian State in doing away with heretics. He says that the Baptist "assemblies, and all those that in despite of Christ's beloved ordinance do frequent the same, are accursed of God.” I Knox's book was called An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations written by an Anabaptist, an Adversary to God's Eternal Predestination. 2 See Underhill, Hist. Introduction to the Publications of the Hanserd Knollys Society, Lond., 1846-47. 2 OPPOSITION 1 Speaking of the beginning of Elizabeth's reign the intense Jewel wrote: "We found a large and inauspicious crop of Arians, Anabaptists, and other pests, which, I know not how, but as mushrooms spring up in the night and in darkness, so these sprung up in that darkness and unhappy night of the Marian times." In 1559, under a momentary influ ence of mercy (for what shall a man not give for his life?) it was proposed to establish a heretic convict station in some out-of-theway place in Wales for the imprisonment of "incorrigible Arians, Pelagians, or free-will men [Baptists], there to live of their own labor and exercise, and none other be suffered to resort unto them but their keepers." Yet, alas! this alternative was not to be theirs, but fire and imprisonment rather. In 1567-68 an effort was made to discover the Baptists, and in 1572 Whitgift published an account of the Peasants' War and Munster Kingdom, and tried to fasten their doings on the Baptists in general. This was the cause of their suffering vast injustice. In 1575 thirty Dutch Baptists were seized while holding service in a London suburb, and brought before the commission. Here are the questions and answers. 1. Did Christ take his flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary ? He is the Son of the Living God. Some of the Baptists and other Christians of that time had such an exaggerated conception of Christ's divinity that they denied his real humanity-holding that even in the flesh he was the Son of God. 2. Ought not little children to be baptized? No. 3. May a Christian serve the office of a magistrate? It did not oblige their consciences; but as they read they esteemed it an ordinance of God. This answer was ambiguous, but it seemed to indicate a more liberal attitude than that of most of their European brethren. 4. May a Christian, if needs be, swear? An oath also did not oblige their consciences, for Christ has said in Matthew, Let your word be Yea, yea; Nay, nay. Opinions such as these could not be tolerated. Some of the parties were imprisoned, loaded with chains; others were banished, including several women, and Jan Pieters and Hendrik Terwoort-the one a man of fifty with nine children, the other a young man of twenty-six-were burned at the stake, 1575. Foxe, the martyrologist, wrote a noble letter to the queen-noble for that age-in which, while he recognizes the right of the State to suppress obnoxious opinions, he pleads earnestly for a commutation of sentence." 1 Zurich Letters, i, 92. 2 Foxe says that such absurd and monstrous opinions are "by no means to be countenanced by a commonwealth, but in my opinion ought to be sup 2 |