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A 
 SHORT HISTORY 
 
 or THE 
 
 BAPTISTS 
 
A 
 SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 BAPTISTS 
 
 HENRY C. VEDDER 
 
 JuDSON Press ® ''■ ^' |)^"""''',, 
 
 Valley Forge I'J 
 
Copyright, 1907, by 
 Thb Auericah Baptist Publication Society 
 
 Nineteenth Printing, 1978 
 International Standard Book No. S170-0162-X 
 
 The name JUDSON PRESS is registered as a trademark in the U.S. 
 Patent Office. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 As this preface was being written news was received of 
 the tragic death of Kenneth Scott Latourette, "dean of 
 American church historians" and loyal Baptist church- 
 man, at eighty-four years of age. A no more appropriate 
 time could have been chosen, therefore, than the departure 
 of this devoted scholar, for Judson Press to republish a 
 work of another Baptist historian, the late Henry Clay 
 Vedder. It is an undeserved but cherished honor to write 
 this preface for A Short History of the Baptists, for it 
 combines features in both quality of workmanship and 
 content which make its publication both justifiable and 
 desirable. 
 
 It is not that Baptists have not been writing more about 
 themselves in the last two decades; to the contrary. All 
 such books are useful; however, some deal with special 
 groups, areas, periods, or aspects of Baptist history; 
 others are written in a "popular" style, and are not suit- 
 able for texts. The most important one-volume history of 
 the Baptists is that of Robert G. Torbet, A History of the 
 Baptists, published by Judson in 1950 and revised in 1963. 
 Thorough and scholarly, it has attained wide acceptance, 
 but the continued popularity of Vedder reflects a need for 
 a briefer authoritative account of the people called Bap- 
 tists. Since the introduction of the revised publication of 
 A Short History of the Baptists, it has passed through 
 seventeen printings. For a half a century it was the un- 
 disputed and standard textbook for Baptist history in 
 colleges and seminaries. 
 
VI rRrsFAK^E* 
 
 When Dr. Vedder decided in 1897 to revise and enlarge 
 his book, originally published in 1892, an entire decade was 
 required for its completion. He made a thorough restudy 
 of the whole field, including months of travel, collection 
 of new materials, and "the careful rewriting of the entire 
 work and the addition of much new matter." Although 
 he added more than twice as much material as the original, 
 he still felt justified in retaining the original title. There- 
 fore, the present volume remains what it was in 1907, a 
 careful, scholarly, concise study of the history of Baptist 
 principles (Part I) and the growth and expansion of the 
 modern Baptist movement from the seventeenth through 
 the nineteenth centuries (Part II). 
 
 In fact, this presentation in some detail of the historical 
 development of Baptist principles constitutes one of the 
 important contributions of the book. In both content and 
 approach it provides a unique approach to Baptist his- 
 toriography and interpretation. On the one hand, it is a 
 sharp corrective to Landmarkism, a nineteenth century 
 Baptist movement of extreme sectarianism committed to 
 a Baptist "successionism" back to apostolic days which is 
 still found in stubborn pockets in the South and South- 
 west. Instead, Vedder interprets the struggles of earlier 
 groups holding certain principles common to modern Bap- 
 tists as the gradual renascence of evangelical Christianity 
 after its early suppression, but set in the general context 
 of Christian history. He blends an appreciation for the 
 contributions of these early "protestants'' with historical 
 objectivity, with no attempt to "maintain a thesis or min- 
 ister to denominational vanity." On the other hand, his 
 inclusion of this material, which Dr. Torbet was com- 
 pelled to cut drastically in his revised edition to include 
 contemporary material, is a wholesome reminder to some 
 current Baptists, who tend to ignore all tradition and 
 deny any rootage, that our denomination does share a 
 
i-KEFACE VU 
 
 heritage of "radical reformation." Indeed, the final chapter 
 of the book on the progress of Baptist principles reads 
 with the relevance of tomorrow's newspaper on the nature 
 of the church, religious liberty, and separation of church 
 and state. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking evidence of Dr. Vedder's 
 scholarship and "up-to-date" material is his analysis of the 
 Anabaptist movement. Although written over sixty years 
 ago, without the benefit of the veritable avalanche of ma- 
 terial available during the past quarter century, his ac- 
 count is remarkably accurate, contemporary, and incisive. 
 His unerring historical sense is seen in beginning that 
 story in Zurich with the Swiss Brethren, rather than south 
 Germany (Chapter X) with the Zwickau prophets. His 
 major conclusions on the entire movement have been vin- 
 dicated by modern scholarship. 
 
 The second part of the book, of the same high quality, 
 assumes a similar importance. The Baptists have experi- 
 enced tremendous growth, especially in America, and 
 have been a significant influence in the Free Church move- 
 ment. Dr. Vedder in his most optimistic moment could 
 not have dreamed his denomination today would number 
 thirty million in a worldwide fellowship ; some today could 
 not dream it was ever otherwise. The reader will find here 
 an inspiring and succinct record of the earlier struggles 
 for recognition and freedom, the evangelistic and mission- 
 ary spirit which has been the cause of its phenomenal 
 growth and the genius of its unity. 
 
 Its brevity and balance, accurate scholarship and his- 
 torical objectivity, as well as the importance of its subject 
 matter, all combine to give the book a wide appeal to in- 
 terested Baptists North and South as well as overseas, and 
 to non-Baptists who desire to know more about us. This 
 book should indeed receive a response "commensurate 
 with the favor that has been shown its predecessors." In a 
 
VUl 
 
 time of reevaluation of denominational traditions and per- 
 spectives this book will help the reader to understand the 
 particular contributions that Baptists make to the total 
 Christian fellowship. 
 
 James D. Hosteller 
 
 Professor of Church History 
 
 New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary 
 
 New Orleans, Louisiana 
 February, 1969 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQZ 
 
 PREFACE V 
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 PART I 
 HISTORY OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 
 
 Chapter I. The New Testament Churches — History. . 13 
 The Great Commission. The ingathering at Pentecost 
 Conversion of Saul. The gospel preached to Gentiles. 
 Antioch and the beginning of Christian missions. The 
 empire evangelized. 
 
 Chapter II. The New Testament Churches — Con- 
 stitution 24 
 
 Founded on believers' baptism. Baptism of infants 
 unknown. Ordinances and officers. Worship. 
 
 Chapter III. Christianity and the C^sars 35 
 
 Christians and the Roman law. Martyrdom of Perpetua 
 and Felicitas. Toleration granted. Attacks of heathen 
 philosophers. The Christian apologists. Defeat in victory. 
 
 Chapter IV. The Holy Catholic Church 44 
 
 Signs of degeneracy. Exaggerated ideas about unity. 
 Sacramental grace. Clinic baptism. Baptism of infants. 
 The catechumenate. Sacerdotalism. Growth of the 
 episcopate. Asceticism. 
 
 Chapter V. The Struggle for a Pure Church ... 57 
 Montanism. Novatians. Donatists. Arianism. 
 Athanasius and the triumph of orthodoxy. 
 
 Chapter VI. The Eclipse of Evangelical Christianity . 71 
 Patrick and the gospel in Ireland. Evangelical 
 Christianity in the East The Bogomils. 
 
 Chapter VII. Foregleams of the Dawn 80 
 
 Arnold of Brescia. Savonarola. Wicli£ Hus. 
 The Moravians. 
 
 ix 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 FACB 
 
 Chapter VIII. The Wrath of the Dragon 9S 
 
 Origin of persecution. Its theory. Effect of the 
 medieval heresies. The fourth Lateran Council The 
 Albigensian crusade: Rise of the Inquisition. Its 
 Methods. The lesson. 
 
 Chapter IX. The Old Evangelical Party no 
 
 Protestants before Protestantism. The Petrobrusians. 
 Henry of Lausanne. Waldo and the Waldensians. 
 Waldensian teachings. 
 
 Chapter X. Grebel and the Anabaptists 129 
 
 Their origin. Zwingli and the beginning of reform in 
 Zurich. Anabaptism introduced. Persecution of the 
 leaders. Zwingli' s responsibility. Anabaptists in Bern. 
 The Schleitheim Confession. 
 
 Chapter XI. Anabaptism in Germany 145 
 
 Unhistorical treatment of the party. The Zwickau 
 "prophets." Balthasar Hiibmaier. JohnDenck. Their 
 views of civil government. Persecution by all govern- 
 ments. 
 
 Chapter XII. The Outbreak of Fanaticism .... 167 
 Condition of German peasants. Decay of feudalism 
 and the social revolution. Thomas Miinzer and the 
 peasant uprising. Luther' s tracts against the peasants. 
 Hofmann and his teachings. The Munster uproar. 
 Savage persecution of th^ Anabaptists. 
 
 Chapter XIII. Menno Simons and his Followers . . 184 
 Menno' s life and labors. Toleration in the Nether- 
 lands. Baptism among the Mennonites. Their contro- 
 versies and divisions. Mennonites in England. Their 
 martyrs : Joan Boucher, Hendrik Terwoort, Edward 
 Wightman. 
 
 PART II 
 A HISTORY OF BAPTIST CHURCHES 
 
 Chapter XIV. The Early Days 201 
 
 John Smyth and his church at Amsterdam. His 
 baptism. Church removes to London. Growth of 
 General Baptists. Spurious claims of antiquity. Origin 
 
CONTENTS Xi 
 
 PAGk 
 
 of Particular Baptists. Introduction of immersion in 
 
 1641. Survival of affusion till 1653. Controversy with 
 
 Separatists. Confession of 1644. William Kiifen. 
 Hanserd KnoUys. 
 
 Chapter XV. The Struggle for Liberty 219 
 
 The Long Parliament and civil war. Presbyterian 
 intolerance. Baptists during the Protectorate. Opposed 
 to monarchy. Fifth Monarchy movement The Resto- 
 ration. General Thomas Harrison. John James. Act 
 of Uniformity and persecutions. John Bunyan. Bap- 
 tists under James II. Act of Toleration. Baptist 
 customs of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Chapter XVI. The Second Reformation and its 
 
 Consequences 237 
 
 The next fifty years. Confession of 1688. Decline 
 of General Baptists. First Associations. Hyper- 
 calvinism. John Gill. General declension of religion. 
 John Wesley and his work. Results on Church of 
 England. l!>an Taylor. Andrew Fuller. William 
 Carey and the missionary revival 
 
 Chapter XVII. The Nineteenth Century 256 
 
 Growth of churches. New missionary organizations. 
 Bible Translation Society. Robert Hall. Charles 
 Haddon Spurgeon. Open communion in England. 
 Education. Six-principle Baptists. Seventh-day Baptists. 
 
 Chapter XVIII. Baptists in the Greater Britain . . 269 
 Baptists in Wales : John Myles, Vavasor Powell 
 Recent history. Baptists in Scotland : Archibald Mc- 
 Lean, the Haldanes. Baptists in Ireland : Alexander 
 Carson. Baptists in Canada. Baptists in Australasia. 
 
 Chapter XIX. Baptists in the Colonies 287 
 
 Three periods of American Baptist history. Roger 
 Williams and the first Baptist church. John Clarke and 
 the Newport church. Henry Dunster. Whipping of 
 Obadiah Holmes. First church in Boston. William 
 Screven and the Charlestown church. Beginnings in the 
 Middle States. The Philadelphia Association. Baptist 
 churches in the South. 
 
 Chapter XX. The Period of Expansion 308 
 
 Worldliness invades. The Great Awakening. Heze- 
 kiah Smith. The Revolution. Morgan Edwards. 
 
XH CONTENTS 
 
 FAGB 
 
 Progress of the churches. Religious liberty attained. 
 The Westward movement The pioneer preacher. John 
 M. Peck and the Home Mission Society. The Judsons 
 and their work. Luther Rice and the Triennial 
 Convention. 
 
 Chapter XXI. The Days of Controversy 335 
 
 Unitarianism in New England. The American Bible 
 Society and the controversy about versions. Formation 
 of the American Bible Union. A long controversy. 
 The Saratoga Convention. The anti-Masonic excite- 
 ment Alexander Campbell and the Disciples. The 
 anti-slavery controversy and the division of Baptists. 
 
 Chapter XXII. Evangelism and Education 350 
 
 Periods of revivals. State and local work. Develop- 
 ment of educational institutions. James Manning and 
 Brown University. Newton Theological Institution. 
 The institutions at Hamilton. Other colleges and 
 seminaries. The American Baptist Publication Society. 
 
 Chapter XXI II. The Last Fifty Years 362 
 
 Baptist churches in 1850. Numerical growth of fifty 
 years. Progress in education. Growth of foreign 
 missions. Increase of home missions. Work of the 
 Publication Society. Comparative denominational 
 wealth. Counter currents. 
 
 Chapter XXIV. Baptists in the United States — 
 
 Irregular Baptist Bodies 384 
 
 Six-principle Baptists. Original Freewill Baptists. 
 Free Baptists. Separate Baptists. United Baptists. 
 General Baptists. Primitive Baptists. Two-seed-in- 
 the-Spirit Baptists. Baptist Church of Christ Seventh- 
 day Baptists. Winebrennerians. River Brethren. 
 Adventists. Christadelphians. Christian Connection. 
 Social Brethren. 
 
 394 
 
 Chapter XXV. Baptists in Other Countries .... 
 France. Germany. Sweden. Norway. Denmark. 
 Russia. Greece. Spain. Italy. 
 
 Chapter XXVI. Progress of Baptist Principles . . 410 
 The nature of the church. The baptismal controversy 
 ended. The communion question. Separation of Church 
 and State. Theological changes. The guarantee of the 
 future. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 lAOX 
 
 The Mamertine Prison, Rome following page 16 
 
 Where Paul and Peter (according to 'tradition) were 
 imprisoned. 
 
 The Three Fountains following page 16 
 
 The traditional scene of Paul's martyrdom. 
 
 Nero following page 48 
 
 From a photograph of the bust iii the CapitoHne Museum, 
 Rome. 
 
 Trajan following page 48 
 
 From the same source. 
 
 The Baptistery of St. John Lateran following page 48 
 
 From a photograph of the interior, showing the ancient 
 pool. 
 
 The Baptistery at Pisa following page 48 
 
 From a photograph of the interior, showing the raised 
 font. 
 
 The Old Catheihial at Bresoa following page 80 
 
 From a photograph of the exterior; the interior is now 
 an ecclesiastical museum. 
 
 xiii 
 
XIV ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Statue of Axnold following page 80 
 
 Erected by the municipality at Brescia. 
 
 Savonarola following page 112 
 
 From a photograph of the portrait by his disciple, Fra 
 Bartolommeo. 
 
 WicLiF following page 112 
 
 From the Luther Monument at Worms. 
 
 The Maktysdom of Hus following page 144 
 
 A contemporary picture. 
 
 Hus following page 144 
 
 From the Luther Monument at Worms. 
 
 Waldo following page 144 
 
 From the same. 
 
 HuLDREicH ZwiNGLi following page 144 
 
 The most authentic portrait of the Swiss reformer. 
 (By courtesy of the publisher, G. P. Putnam's Sons) 
 
 Zurich and the Limat following page 176 
 
 Here the Anabaptists were drowned. 
 
 (From a photograph by courtesy of the publisher, G. P. 
 
 Putnam's Sons) 
 
 Balthasar Hubmaier following page 176 
 
 From an old print 
 
 (By courtesy of the publisher, G. P. Putnam's Sons) 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Group of Radical Leaders following page 176 
 
 From engravings in an old history of Anabaptists. 
 
 MuNSTER — The Church of St. Lambert ... following page 176 
 
 From a photograph (the cages may be seen upon the 
 tower). 
 
 Menno Simons following page 208 
 
 From an engraving prefixed to his works. 
 
 William of Orange following page 208 
 
 From a portrait at the museum at Cassel, Germany. 
 
 William Kniffen following page 208 
 
 From a contemporary engraving. 
 
 Hansero Knollys following page 208 
 
 From a portrait prefixed to his "Parable of the Kingdom." 
 
 Oliver Cromwell following page 240 
 
 From the portrait by Sir Peter Lely, now in the Pitti 
 Palace, Florence. 
 
 John Bunyan following page 240 
 
 From a drawing by Robert White in the British Museum. 
 
 Andrew Fuller following page 272 
 
 From the portrait prefixed to his collected works. 
 
XVI ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FAGS 
 
 The Kettering House where the English Baptist Mis- 
 sionary Society Was Organized in 1792. 
 
 following page 272 
 
 Charles Haddon Spurgeon following page 304 
 
 From a photograph taken in middle age. 
 
 The Myles Memorial following page 304 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
 The First Baptist Meeting-House 
 
 IN Boston following page 304 
 
 From an old print. 
 
 John M. Peck following page 304 
 
 From a portrait in oil now at Shurtleff College. (By cour- 
 tesy of the "American Baptist Home Mission Monthly.") 
 
 Adoniram Judson following page 336 
 
 The best extant likeness. 
 
 The Haystack Monument following page 336 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The word Baptists, as the descriptive name of a body 
 of Christians, was first used in English Hterature, so far 
 as is now known, in the year 1644. The name was not 
 chosen by themselves, but was applied to them by their 
 opponents. In the first Confession of Faith issued by 
 the Particular Baptists in 1644, the churches that pub- 
 lished the document described themselves " as commonly 
 (but unjustly) called Anabaptists." While they repudi- 
 ated the name Anabaptist, they did not for some time 
 claim the new name of Baptists, seeming to prefer "Bap- 
 tized believers," or, as in the Assembly's Confession of 
 1654, "Christians baptized upon profession of their 
 faith." These names were, however, too cumbrous, and 
 they finally fell in with the growing popular usage. The 
 name Baptists seems to have been first publicly used by 
 one of the body in 1654, when Mr. William Britten pub- 
 lished "The Moderate Baptist." The first official use of 
 the name is in " The Baptist Catechism " issued by the 
 authority of the Assembly. The surviving copies of this 
 document are undated, and we only know that it was 
 prepared and printed " some years " after the Assembly's 
 Confession. 
 
 For the fact that the name Baptist comes into use at 
 this time and in this way, but one satisfactory expla- 
 nation has been proposed : it was at this time that Eng- 
 lish churches first held, practised, and avowed those prin- 
 ciples ever since associated with that name. There had 
 been no such churches before, and hence there was no 
 need of the name. The name Anabaptist had been well 
 known, and it described not unfairly from the point of 
 
 3 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 view of those who invented it, the principles and prac- 
 tices of a body that, under various names, had existed 
 from the eleventh century. The Anabaptists denied the 
 scripturalness of infant baptism, and insisted on a bap- 
 tism upon profession of faith. But the Anabaptists, for 
 the most part, were content to practise the rite of bap- 
 tism as they saw it in vogue about them ; that is to say, 
 sprinkling or pouring. They gave little attention to the 
 act of baptism, regarding the subjects of baptism as a 
 matter of far greater importance, as indeed it is. The 
 English Anabaptists seem, at the beginning of their his- 
 tory, to have differed not at all from the other branches 
 of the party in this respect ; but about the year 1640 the 
 attention of some among them was called to the question 
 of the fitting act of baptism according to the Scriptures, 
 and the introduction of immersion soon after followed. 
 The name Baptists came to be applied to them almost 
 at once as descriptive of their new practice. 
 
 The history of Baptist churches cannot be carried, by 
 the scientific method, farther back than the year 161 1, 
 when the first Anabaptist church consisting wholly of 
 Englishmen was founded in Amsterdam by John Smyth, 
 the Se-Baptist. This was not, strictly speaking, a Bap- 
 tist church, but it was the direct progenitor of churches 
 in England that a few years later became Baptist, and 
 therefore the history begins there. There were before 
 this time, it is true, here and there churches that might 
 fairly be described as Baptist. Such was the church at 
 Augsburg about 1525, commonly called Anabaptist, but 
 practising the immersion of believers on profession of 
 faith ; such were some of the Swiss Anabaptist churches, 
 apparently; such were some of the Anabaptist churches 
 of Poland. But we find such churches only here and 
 there, with no ascertainable connection existing between 
 them. Further research may establish such connection, 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 or may bring to light additional instances; but it must 
 be confessed that there is no great probability of such 
 result. At any rate, there are no materials for a history 
 in such facts as are now known. A history of Bap- 
 tist churches going farther back than the early years of 
 the seventeenth century would, therefore, in the pres- 
 ent state of knowledge, be in the highest degree un- 
 scientific. The very attempt to write such a history now 
 would be a confession of crass ignorance, either of the 
 facts as known, or of the methods of historical research 
 and the principles of historical criticism, or of both. 
 
 " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
 church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against 
 it." Such was the reply of our Lord when his ever-confi- 
 dent disciple answered the question, "Who say ye that 
 I am?" in the memorable words, then for the first time 
 uttered, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God." The Church of Rome points to this text as con- 
 clusive proof of her claims to be God's vicegerent on 
 earth, the true church, against which the gates of hades 
 shall not prevail. It further points to its unbroken suc- 
 cession, and a history which, if dim and uncertain 
 at the first, since the fourth century at least has 
 not a break, and not improbably extends back to the 
 apostolic era, if not to Peter himself. It challenges any 
 of the bodies that dispute its claim to show an equal an- 
 tiquity and a succession from the days of the apostles 
 as little open to serious question. Those that accept this 
 test and fail to meet it must confess themselves schis- 
 matics and heretics, resisters of God, and doomed to 
 overthrow here as well as condemnation hereafter. 
 
 Many Protestants make haste to accept Rome's chal- 
 lenge to battle on her chosen ground. Certain Angli- 
 can divines have great faith in a pleasing tradition that 
 the Church of England was founded by the Apostle Paul 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 during a third missionary tour hinted at in the New 
 Testament but not described ; and they flatter themselves 
 that they thus establish an antiquity not second to that 
 of Rome. Some Baptists have been betrayed into a 
 similar search for proofs of antiquity, misled by the idea 
 that such proof is necessitated by the promise that " the 
 gates of hades shall not prevail " against the true church. 
 If then, they reason, Baptist churches are true apostolic 
 churches, they must have existed from the days of the 
 apostles until now without break of historic continuity. 
 This exaggerated notion of the worth of antiquity as a 
 note of the true church is strengthened by the theory of 
 baptism held by some; namely, that no one is bap- 
 tized unless he is immersed by one who has himself 
 been immersed. This is to substitute for the apostolic 
 succession of "orders," which the Roman Church boasts, 
 an apostolic succession of baptism. The theory compels 
 its advocates to trace a visible succession of Baptist 
 churches from the days of the apostles to our own, or 
 to confess that proof is lacking of the valid baptism of 
 any living man. 
 
 But it is plain that in thus accepting the challenge of 
 Rome Protestants in general, the Baptists in particular, 
 commit as great an error in tactics as in exegesis. To 
 assume the necessity of an outward continuity in the life 
 of the church is gratuitously to read into the words of 
 our Lord what he carefully refrained from saying. 
 Rome, for her own purposes, assumes the only possible 
 import of the words to be that Christ's church will have 
 a historic continuity that can be proved by documentary 
 and other evidence. But this is by no m.eans the nec- 
 essary meaning of Christ's promise. The church that 
 he said he would build on the rock, to which he guar- 
 anteed victory against the gates of hades itself, is not 
 a visible body — that is the great falsehood of Rome 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 but the assembly of those in all the ages who truly love 
 God and keep the commandments of Christ. Of these 
 there has been an unbroken line, and here is the true 
 apostolic succession — there is no other. Through the 
 continuous presence of this church and not along any 
 chain of visible churches, the truth has descended to our 
 days. Christ's promise would not be broken though at 
 some period of history we should find his visible churches 
 apparently overcome by Satan, and suppressed; though 
 no trace of them should be left in literature; though 
 no organized bodies of Christians holding the faith in 
 apostolic simplicity could be found anywhere in the 
 world. The truth would still be, as he had promised, 
 witnessed somewhere, somehow, by somebody. The 
 church does not cease to be because it is driven into the 
 wilderness. 
 
 To Baptists, indeed, of all people, the question of 
 tracing their history to remote antiquity should appear 
 nothing more than an interesting study. Our theory of 
 the church as deduced from the Scriptures requires no 
 outward and visible succession from the apostles. If 
 every church of Christ were to-day to become apostate, 
 it would be possible and right for any true believers to 
 organize to-morrow another church on the apostolic 
 model of faith and practice, and that church would have 
 the only apostolic succession worth having — a succession 
 of faith in the Lord Christ and obedience to him. Bap- 
 tists have not the slightest interest therefore in wrest- 
 ing the facts of history from their true significance; 
 our reliance is on the New Testament, and not on an- 
 tiquity ; on present conformance to Christ's teachings, not 
 on an ecclesiastical pedigree, for the validity of our 
 church organization, our ordinances, and our ministry. 
 
 By some who have failed to grasp this principle, there 
 has been a distressful effort to show a succession of 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Baptist churches from the apostolic age until now. It 
 is certain, as impartial historians and critics allow, that 
 the early churches, including the first century after 
 the New Testament period, were organized as Baptist 
 churches are now organized and professed the faith that 
 Baptist churches now profess. It is also beyond ques- 
 tion that for fully four centuries before the Reforma- 
 tion there were bodies of Christians under various names, 
 who professed nearly — sometimes identically — ^the faith 
 and practice of modern Baptists. But a period of a 
 thousand years intervenes, in which the only visible 
 church of unbroken continuity was the Roman Church, 
 which had far departed from the early faith. 
 
 The attempt has been made, at one time or another, 
 to identify as Baptists nearly every sect that separated 
 from the Roman Church. It will not suffice to prove that 
 most of these sects held certain doctrines from which 
 the great body of Christians had departed — doctrines that 
 Baptists now hold, and that are believed by them to 
 be clearly taught in the New Testament — or that the 
 so-called heretics were often more pure in doctrine and 
 practice than the body that assumed to be the only or- 
 thodox and Catholic Church. This is quite different 
 from proving the substantial identity of these sects with 
 modern Baptists. Just as, for example, it is easily shown 
 that Methodists and Presbyterians hold a more biblical 
 theology and approach nearer to apostolic practice than 
 the Roman or Greek churches; while yet all know that 
 a considerable interval separates them from Baptists. It 
 is one thing to prove that the various heretical sects bore 
 testimony, now one, now another, to this or that truth 
 held by a modern denomination ; and quite another thing 
 to identify all or any of these sects with any one modern 
 body. This is equally true, whether the investigation be 
 confined to polity or to the substance of doctrine. 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 In thus emphasizing the divergences of the early and 
 medieval sects from the teaching of the Bible, as Bap- 
 tists have always understood that teaching, no denial is 
 implied of the excellent Christian character manifested 
 by the adherents of these erroneous views. In many in- 
 stances the purest life of an age is to be found, not in 
 the bosom of the Catholic Church, but among these de- 
 spised and persecuted sectaries. Not one of them failed 
 to hold and emphasize some vital truth that was either 
 rejected or practically passed by in the church that 
 called itself orthodox. God did not leave his truth with- 
 out witnesses at any time. Now a sect, now an indi- 
 vidual believer, like Arnold of Brescia or Savonarola, 
 boldly proclaimed some precious teaching, perhaps along 
 with what we must regard as pernicious error. But it 
 is impossible to show that any one person, or any one 
 sect, for a period of more than a thousand years, con- 
 sistently and continuously held the entire body of truth 
 that Baptists believe the Scriptures to teach, or even all 
 its vital parts. It is possible that with further research 
 such proof may be brought to light: one cannot affirm 
 that there was not a continuity in the outward and vis- 
 ible life of the churches founded by the apostles down 
 to the time of the Reformation. To affirm such a neg- 
 ative would be foolish, and such an affirmation, from 
 the nature of the case, could not be proved. What one 
 may say, with some confidence, is that in the present 
 state of knowledge no such continuity can be shown by 
 evidence that will bear the usual historic tests. Indeed, 
 the more carefully one examines such literature of the 
 early and medieval church as relates to the various 
 heretical sects, the stronger becomes his conviction that 
 it is a hopeless task to trace the history of the apostolic 
 churches by means of an unbroken outward succession. 
 A. succession of the true faith may indeed be traced, in 
 
lO INTRODUCTION 
 
 faint lines at times, but never entirely disappearing ; but 
 a succession of churches, substantially like those of our 
 own faith and order in doctrine and polity — ^that is a 
 will-o'-the-wisp, likely to lead the student into a morass 
 of errors, a quagmire of unscholarly perversions of fact. 
 The special feature of this history is that it attempts 
 frankly to recognize facts, instead of trying to maintain 
 a thesis or minister to denominational vanity. Begin- 
 ning with a survey of the history and constitution of the 
 New Testament churches, in which all Baptists profess 
 to recognize the norm of doctrine and polity, the process 
 by which these churches were perverted into the Holy 
 Catholic Church of the succeeding centuries is quite fully 
 traced. The story of the gradual suppression of evan- 
 gelical Christianity having thus been told, the next step 
 is to show the reverse process — the gradual renascence 
 of evangelical Christianity. This is the sum of Part I., 
 the history of Baptist principles. The second Part is de- 
 voted to the history of actual visible Baptist churches, 
 and every statement of fact made is carefully based on 
 documentary sources. For the important question is, not 
 how much may be guessed or surmised or hoped about 
 our history as Baptists, but how much may be known. 
 
PART I 
 HISTORY OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — HISTORY 
 
 "/'^O ye therefore, and make disciples of all the 
 V_T nations, baptizing them into the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching 
 them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you ; 
 and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world." In this parting injunction of the risen Lord to 
 his disciples, which the Duke of Wellington aptly called 
 the marching orders of the ministry, we have the office 
 of the Christian Church for the first time defined. In 
 obedience to this command the early Christians preached 
 the gospel, founded chflrches, and taught obedience to 
 Christ as the fundamental principle of the Christian life. 
 And though many of them could say with Paul that they 
 spent their days "in labor and travail, in watchings often, 
 in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and naked- 
 ness," they found it a faithful saying that their Lord 
 was with them alway. In so far as the church in all 
 ages has been obedient to Christ's command it has 
 experienced the truth of this promise. 
 
 It is significant that in his teaching Jesus mentioned 
 the church but twice, and then only toward the close of 
 his ministry. The distinctive feature of his teaching is 
 the setting up among men of the kingdom of God — a 
 kingdom not of this world, but spiritual, into which he 
 only can enter who has been born from above, who 
 is meek, childlike, spiritually minded. Being spiritual, 
 this kingdom is invisible, but it has an outward, bodily 
 manifestation, an institutional as well as an incorporeal 
 
 13 
 
14 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 existence. That manifestation is the church, the eccle- 
 sia, those "called out" from the world and gathered into 
 a society whose aim is the extension of the kingdom. 
 
 This church potentially existed from the day when two 
 disciples of John the Baptist followed Jesus and be- 
 lieved on him as the Messiah (John i : 35-4°) '> but of 
 actual existence as an organized society of believers dur- 
 ing the life of Jesus no trace appears in the four Gospels. 
 The day of Pentecost marks the beginning of the defi- 
 nite, organic life of the followers of Christ. The descent 
 of the Holy Spirit, according to the promise of the Lord, 
 was the preparation for the great missionary advance, 
 of which the conversion of three thousand on that one 
 day was the first fruits. Not only did this multitude hear 
 the word and believe, but on the same day they were 
 "added to the church," which can only mean that they 
 were baptized. It was once urged, as an objection to 
 the teaching and practice of Baptists regarding baptism, 
 that the immersion of so many people on a single day is 
 physically impossible. The missionary history of our 
 own time has silenced this objection forever, by giving 
 us a nearly parallel case. In 1879, at Ongole, India, 
 two thousand two hundred and twenty-two Telugu con- 
 verts were baptized on a single day by six ministers, two 
 administering the ordinance at a time ; the services being 
 conducted with all due solemnity, and occupying in all 
 nine hours. 
 
 The baptism of this great multitude on the day of 
 Pentecost was not only their public confession of faith in 
 Jesus as the Messiah, and their formal induction into 
 the company of believers, but the beginning of a new 
 life of Christian fellowship. For a time at least, this fel- 
 lowship took among the saints at Jerusalem the form of 
 virtual community of goods, and this so-called "Chris- 
 tian communism" is often held up as a model for the 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — HISTORY 15 
 
 life of Christians in all ages. "And the multitude of 
 them that believed," says the record, "were of one heart 
 and soul; and not one of them said that aught of the 
 things which he possessed was his own; but they had 
 all things in common. . . For neither was there 
 among them any that lacked, for as many as were pos- 
 sessed of lands or houses sold them, and brought the 
 price of the things that were sold, and laid them at the 
 apostles' feet; and distribution was made unto each ac- 
 cording as any one had need." It is evident to one who 
 reads the entire account that this was a purely voluntary 
 act on the part of the richer believers, prompted by a de- 
 sire to relieve those whom the peculiar emergency had 
 made specially needy. The optional nature of the sales 
 and gifts is evident from the words of Peter to Ananias, 
 who with Sapphira conspired to He to the Holy Spirit — 
 'Whiles it [the property Ananias had sold] remained, did 
 it not remain thine own? And after it was sold, was it 
 not it} thy power?" To sell all one's goods and distribute 
 unto the poor, though proposed by Jesus to the rich young 
 ruler as a test of his desire for eternal life, was not a 
 general condition of discipleship, even at this time and 
 place. But there is no reason to suppose that after the 
 temporary stress had been relieved, this community of 
 goods continued among even the Jerusalem brethren, 
 while there is every reason to believe that no other church 
 in the apostolic age practised anything of the kind. There 
 is entire silence on the subject in the Epistles and the 
 remainder of the Acts — a thing inconceivable if Chris- 
 tian communism had been a fundamental principle of 
 the apostolic churches. It is not wise or fair to draw a 
 sweeping conclusion as to present duty from premises so 
 narrow and uncertain. 
 
 The saints at Jerusalem had all been born and bred 
 IS Jews, and they had no idea that by becoming fol- 
 
l6 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 lowers of Christ they had ceased to be Jews. They were 
 daily in the temple, and scrupulously fulfilled all the 
 duties prescribed by the law of Moses. Nor did the 
 Jewish authorities regard them as adherents of a dif- 
 ferent religion; they were rather a sect or party among 
 the Jews than a separate body. This is not to say that 
 they were approved by the priests and the Sanhedrin; 
 on the contrary, very soon persecution of them began. 
 The Sadducees were the first to proceed against them, on 
 the avowed ground that the apostles "proclaimed in Jesus 
 the resurrection of the dead." The result of this persecu- 
 tion was a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a 
 new advance; a multitude of believers were added, until 
 the number of men alone became five thousand. The 
 Sadducees had the experience of persecutors in all ages, 
 that " heresy " is like a firebrand, and he who attempts 
 to stamp out either by violence only scatters the sparks, 
 until the little fire becomes a great conflagration. 
 
 About four years after Pentecost a fresh persecution 
 was begun. The stoning of Stephen was its first act, 
 and this was followed by a systematic and determined 
 effort to extirpate this new heresy. This time it was the 
 Pharisees who led the persecution, and prominent among 
 them was Saul of Tarsus. The disciples at Jerusalem 
 were dispersed, but they became preachers of the gospel 
 wherever they went. They had come to Jerusalem from 
 distant pieces, and had tarried there; now they would 
 naturally return to their homes and carry with them 
 their glad tidings of salvation through Jesus, the Christ. 
 Thus a persecution that at first seemed likely to be fatal 
 to the church at Jerusalem really ensured the perpetuity 
 of Christ's religion by scattering its adherents throughout 
 Asia Minor. 
 
 Shortly after this occurred an event, improbable, in- 
 credible even, if it were not certain, fraught with con- 
 
s 
 
 H 
 

 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — HISTORY 1/ 
 
 sequences most profound and far-reaching to Christi- 
 anity, nothing less than the sudden conversion of its 
 bitterest opponent. Saul, brought up at the feet of Gama- 
 liel and learned in the law, renowned for his zeal in per- 
 secuting the church of God — in which, like so many other 
 persecutors since, he verily believed he was doing God 
 a service — was stricken down and blinded on his way to 
 harry the saints at Damascus, by the appearance in the 
 heavens at midday of the Christ whom he persecuted. 
 Three days later, with sight miraculously restored, he 
 was baptized into the fellowship of Christ's followers, 
 and soon was as zealous in preaching the truth about the 
 Messiah to the Jews as he had formerly been in oppos- 
 ing those who held it. Persecuted by the Jews, dis- 
 trusted by the Christians, he had to pass through a long 
 and painful ordeal before he became fitted for the work 
 to which God had separated him from birth. Three 
 years were spent in seclusion in Arabia, and several other 
 years in obscure labors, before his fitness for a larger 
 service was recognized by his brethren. 
 
 In the meantime, Philip, one of the deacons of the 
 church at Jerusalem, seems for a time to have stepped 
 into the place made vacant by the death of Stephen. He 
 preached the gospel in Samaria, and wrought miracles; 
 many believed and were baptized, both men and women. 
 None of these converts, so far as appears, was a Gentile ; 
 and the eunuch shortly afterward baptized by Philip was 
 doubtless a Jewish prosel)rte. Slow of heart, indeed, 
 were the followers of Christ to admit that any but a 
 Jew could be saved through Christ. They still regarded 
 themselves as Jews; the gospel was a gospel for Jews; 
 salvation was for Jews. 
 
 The first recorded case of preaching the gospel to 
 a Gentile is that of the centurion, Cornelius, of Caesarea, 
 When Peter had gone to him in obedience to a vision; 
 7 
 
l8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 when he had preached Christ to him and his friends 
 and they all believed; when the Holy Spirit fell upon 
 them, so that they spoke with tongues and glorified God ; 
 the apostle felt that he had but one course, and he un- 
 hesitatingly baptized them. " Who was I that I could 
 hinder God," he said, in recounting the affair to the 
 church at Jerusalem on his return ; and they, though they 
 had at first doubted and criticised, were in turn convinced 
 that this was the work of God, and glorified him, saying : 
 " So then, to the Gentiles also God has given repentance 
 unto life." The conversion of Cornelius therefore marks 
 an era in the history of Christianity, since it was never 
 after questioned that the gospel was to be preached to 
 Gentile as well as to Jew; the religion of Christ was 
 not to be a mere Jewish cult, but one of the great 
 missionary religions of the world — the greatest of 
 them all. 
 
 This characteristic alone discriminates Christianity 
 from the Judaism whence it sprung. Judaism was essen- 
 tially narrow, exclusive, non-missionary; not in the pur- 
 pose of God, but as the religion was actually held and 
 practised. It was God's plan, indeed, that in Abraham 
 and his seed all the nations of the earth should be 
 blessed, but the Jews never took kindly to that idea. 
 The fundamental notion in their minds was separation 
 from the nations ; God had chosen them from all others 
 and made them his peculiar people. Power and do- 
 minion were to be given them, according to the prom- 
 ises of prophets, a kingdom more glorious than Sol- 
 omon's; and that others should share in these privi- 
 leges was a thought as bitter as wormwood to a Jew. 
 Though the Jews made proselytes of individuals from 
 time to time, the number of those thus added to them 
 was relatively insignificant, and of any general attempt 
 to convert the world to Judaism there is no trace in the 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — HISTORY Ip 
 
 Jewish literature of any age. If all the world were 
 Jews, where would be the special privilege and glory of 
 the Jew? But Christianity is nothing if not missionary. 
 It exists because its Founder said to his followers, " Go, 
 disciple," and it exists for no other purpose than this. 
 From the day of Pentecost until the day of Christ's 
 second coming, the history of Christianity has been — will 
 be — a history of missionary advance. 
 
 But when the world-wide scope of the gospel was ad- 
 mitted, there was still much question as to the status 
 of Gentiles when they had been converted and bap- 
 tized. The old notion that the Christian was also a Jew 
 was slow in giving way, and with great diligence the 
 task was continued of sewing the new patch of Chris- 
 tianity on the old, worn-out garment of Judaism, not- 
 withstanding Jesus had declared it to be impossible and 
 foolish. Still in bondage to the law of Moses, many 
 were unwilling that others should enjoy the liberty where- 
 with Christ has made men free. They demanded that 
 every Gentile convert should become not only a Christian, 
 but a Jew, and insisted that he should be circumcised 
 and become a debtor to the whole law. But there were 
 men like Paul, who, though bred as Jews, when they 
 had become converts to Christianity, comprehended its 
 significance. He, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, glorying 
 in his servitude to the law and his scrupulous observance 
 of all its requirements, strove long and violently against 
 the new faith and its adherents. But when he was en- 
 lightened by the Spirit of God, there fell, as it were, 
 scales from his eyes; thenceforth he discerned clearly 
 that Christianity differed profoundly from Judaism, in 
 that it was a religion of the spirit, not of the flesh. He 
 saw that in Christ the whole law had been fulfilled, and 
 that the believer in him is delivered from its bondage; 
 that a religion of types and external rites was now an 
 
30 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 anachronism, and must soon die out among those who 
 accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Therefore, to bind the 
 Gentile converts with this moribund law, to require spirit- 
 ual believers to live after fleshly ordinances, was not only 
 ridiculous and unjust, but was in fact to nullify the 
 preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles. 
 
 The crisis in this " irrepressible conflict " was reached 
 at Antioch about fourteen years after Pentecost. Paul 
 had preached for some years in Asia Minor, especially 
 at his native city of Tarsus, and at the invitation of 
 Barnabas he went to Antioch to take part in a prom- 
 ising work there. For a year they preached and taught, 
 and there the disciples were first called Christians. At 
 the instance of the Holy Spirit, Barnabas and Saul were 
 set apart for a special work of preaching in the regions 
 beyond, and the second great step forward was taken 
 in the history of Christianity. They made a tour of Asia 
 Minor, and the island of Cyprus, in which they prob- 
 ably spent two years, and on their return to Antioch 
 again abode there a long time. It was at this juncture 
 that certain men from Judea endeavored to persuade the 
 Antioch church that unless Gentiles were circumcised 
 after the custom of Moses, they could not be saved. No 
 little dissension followed, and it was finally decided that 
 " Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should 
 go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this 
 question." The proceedings and decision of this " coun- 
 cil " at Jerusalem are given fully in the fifteenth chapter 
 of the Acts of the Apostles. The meeting was the Get- 
 tysburg of the Judaizing party; the Gentiles were not 
 required to be circumcised and to live as Jews; and 
 although the struggle continued for some time, and 
 once again at Antioch became violent, these were only 
 the expiring throes of error. From this time onward 
 Christianity assumed a distinct character, and was no 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — HISTORY 21 
 
 longer confounded with Judaism. The settlement of this 
 question not only determined for that age the character 
 of Christ's religion, but prepared the churches for a 
 larger advance in missionary effort. 
 
 The details of the evangelization of the Roman empire 
 are only imperfectly known to us, though the fact of 
 such evangelization is amply attested by the New Testa- 
 ment documents, as well as by uniform Christian tra« 
 dition. We have a fairly complete account of the labors 
 of Paul, especially up to his imprisonment at Rome, clos- 
 ing about the year a. d. 63. Three missionary journeys 
 of his are described with considerable fulness of detail. 
 The first has already been mentioned; in its course the 
 gospel was preached in Salamis and Paphos, at Antioch 
 of Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, perhaps in other 
 places. Not less than three years must be allotted to 
 the second journey, during which the apostle preached 
 in Galatia, at Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and 
 Corinth, staying in the last-named city a year and a 
 half. The third journey occupied about four years, of 
 which over two were spent at Ephesus, and the rest in 
 Galatia and Phrygia, Greece (probably at Corinth), and 
 Troas. The story of these twelve years of Paul's life 
 is practically all that we know in any detail of the apos- 
 tolic labors through the Roman empire. For the rest 
 we must depend on vague hints and uncertain traditions. 
 It appears probable, however, that after a. d. 63 Paul 
 was acquitted and released, and labored four or five years 
 more, visiting Crete and Macedonia, Troas and Miletus, 
 and perhaps also Spain, before his final arrest, imprison- 
 ment, and martyrdom. This conclusion best explains 
 many passages in the so-called pastoral Epistles that are 
 otherwise puzzling, not to say inexplicable. 
 
 Regarding the labors of the other apostles, our in- 
 formation is even more scanty and less trustworthy. 
 
22 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Had John Mark performed for Barnabas and Peter the 
 service that Luke rendered to Paul ; had some disciple of 
 John made a record of his labors, our knowledge of the 
 apostolic era would have been vastly increased. We 
 know that the First Epistle of Peter was written from 
 Babylon and addressed to the Christians of five Asiatic 
 provinces; from this it is perhaps a fair inference that 
 Peter had previously preached in those provinces. That 
 he was ever in Rome does not appear from the New 
 Testament, but tradition is well-nigh unanimous that he 
 suifered martyrdom there. That he was bishop of the 
 Roman church for twenty-five years, according to Roman 
 claims, is a later and manifestly absurd invention. There 
 fs no reason to doubt the tradition that John lived to an 
 advanced age and died at Ephesus. The fourth Gospel 
 shows traces of Alexandrine thought that makes probable 
 a period of residence in the greatest of the Eastern cities 
 of the empire. All that we definitely know of him is 
 that for a time he was in banishment on the Isle of 
 Patmos; whether he had any personal connection with 
 the seven churches that he addresses in the Revelation 
 can only be conjectured. 
 
 Some few scattered traditions embody the beliefs that 
 were prevalent in the third century regarding the labors 
 of the other apostles. Andrew is said to have preached 
 in Scythia, Bartholomew in India, Thomas to have evan- 
 gelized Parthia, and Mark to have founded the church 
 at Alexandria. It is impossible to decide whether tales 
 like these are lingering echoes of the truth or the mere in- 
 ventions of a later time. Even regarding them as in- 
 ventions, however, they have this significance : they testify 
 to a general belief in the third century that the labors of 
 all the apostles were abounding and fruitful. There is 
 no doubt that the new leaven spread with a rapidity truly 
 wonderful throughout the Roman empire. In the earli- 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — HISTORY 23 
 
 est records of Christian literature in the second century 
 we find Christians literally everywhere. The well-known 
 letter of Pliny to the Emperor Trajan, written about 
 A. D. Ill, says that this "superstition" pervades not 
 only the cities of his province (Pontus and Bithynia), 
 but villages and even farms, so that the temples were 
 almost deserted, the sacred rites intermitted, and fodder 
 was no longer purchased for the animals to be sacrificed, 
 at which the farmers complained bitterly. Heathen and 
 Christian writers alike bear witness to the rapid spread 
 of Christianity throughout the empire. To account for 
 this phenomenon something more is necessary than what 
 we are told in the New Testament records; there is a 
 large amount of unwritten history of the apostolic period, 
 that must forever remain unwritten, but whose general 
 outlines we can vaguely see. It has been estimated, 
 though this must necessarily be pure guesswork, that 
 when John, the last of the apostles, passed away, near 
 the close of the first century, the number of Christians 
 in the Roman empire could not have been less than one 
 hundred thousand. In so brief a time the grain of 
 mustard seed had become a tree. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — CONSTITUTION 
 
 •"THHE church of the living God, the pillar and 
 1 ground of the truth," writes the Apostle Paul to 
 Timothy, his beloved son in the faith. Though in the 
 Gospels we find little about the church, as has already 
 been noted, in the other New Testament writings we 
 find much. The word ecclesia (assembly, church) is used 
 in these documents one hundred and fourteen times, and 
 in three different senses as applied to Christians: once to 
 denote the assembly of the saints in heaven (Heb. 12: 
 23) ; often to describe the one assembly of the saints, 
 the church universal, composed of all followers of Christ ; 
 but in the great majority of cases (eighty-five) to denote 
 a local assembly or congregation of the followers of 
 Christ. The church universal is not regarded in the 
 Epistles as a visible and organized body, but is wholly 
 spiritual, incorporeal, corresponding essentially to the 
 idea of the kingdom of God taught in the Gospels. The 
 only visible and organized body of Christians recognized 
 by the New Testament writers was the local assembly or 
 congregation. In other words, the apostles knew nothing 
 of a Church; they knew only churches. 
 
 These churches, though visible and organized, were 
 also spiritual. They were the outward embodiment of the 
 kingdom of God among men, and the means by which 
 that kingdom was to be extended. But the kingdom of 
 God is before all things spiritual. " Except a man be 
 born anew (anothen, from above) he cannot see the king- 
 dom of God," said our Lord to Nicodemus. And again 
 
 24 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — CONSTITUTION 2$ 
 
 he States the truth yet more emphatically, this time with 
 a reference to baptism, the symbol of the new birth: 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born 
 of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the king- 
 dom of God" (John 3: 1-21). This new birth, the work 
 of the Holy Spirit, is conjoined to "faith," "belief" in 
 Christ on the part of man, and as its result man is justi- 
 fied in the sight of God ( i Peter i : 5, 9 ; Rom. 5:1; 
 Gal. 2 : 20 ; Heb. 10 : 38 ; 1 1 : 6) . The necessity of a new 
 birth through faith in Christ is everywhere assumed in 
 the Epistles as a truth too familiar to be formally stated. 
 It is the postulate, without which the apostolic writings 
 cannot possibly be understood. 
 
 Hence the New Testament churches consisted only of 
 those who were believed to be regenerated by the Spirit 
 of God, and had been baptized on a personal confession 
 of faith in Christ. What was done on the day of Pente- 
 cost seems to have been the rule throughout the apostolic 
 period: the baptism of the convert immediately followed 
 his conversion. It is a distinct departure from New 
 Testament precedent to require converts to postpone their 
 baptism. It is true, that these converts were Jews, that 
 they only needed to be convinced that Jesus was the 
 promised Messiah, and to submit to him as Lord, to make 
 them fit subjects for baptism; as it is also true that, 
 with the prospect of persecution and even death before 
 them, there was no temptation to make a false profession. 
 This made possible and prudent a haste that in our day 
 might be dangerous; but the principle should be recog- 
 nized and admitted, as taught by all New Testament 
 precedent, that no more time should separate baptism 
 from conversion than is necessary to ensure credible 
 evidence of a genuine change of heart. 
 
 That all those added to the church at Jerusalem on the 
 day of Pentecost were capable of making, and did make, 
 
26 A SHORT HISTOKY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 intelligent personal confession of faith, is as certain as 
 words can make anything. Nor is there the slightest in- 
 dication in the New Testament writings that, during the 
 apostolic age, any were received into the church save 
 those who had come to years of personal responsibility 
 and understanding. No scholar pretends that the bap- 
 tism of infants is taught in the Scriptures ; they are abso- 
 lutely silent on the subject; yet from this silence certain 
 inferences have been made. It is sometimes assumed 
 that a continuity of life unites the Old Dispensation and 
 the New. As children were by birth heirs of the prom- 
 ise through Abraham, so they are assumed to be by birth 
 heirs of promise through Christ. In this view the New 
 Dispensation is organically one with the Old; baptism 
 merely replaces circumcision, the church replaces the 
 synagogue and temple, the ministry replaces the priest- 
 hood, while the spirit of all continues unchanged. It 
 appears to Baptists, on the other hand, to be clearly 
 taught in Scripture that the New Dispensation, though 
 a fulfilling and completion of the Old, is radically differ- 
 ent from it. Under the Old Dispensation a child was an 
 heir of promise according to the flesh, but under the 
 New Dispensation natural birth does not make him a 
 member of the kingdom of God; he must be born from 
 above, born of the Spirit. The church has for its founda- 
 tion principle a personal relation of each soul to Christ, 
 and not a bond of blood; a child might be born a Jew, 
 but he must be born again to become a Christian. 
 
 The more this silence of the Scriptures regarding the 
 baptism of infants is considered, the more significant it 
 becomes. Jesus took little children in his arms and de- 
 clared that of the childlike is the kingdom of God (Matt. 
 19: 14), but he nowhere authorized baptism save when 
 preceded by faith. The cases where whole households 
 were baptized do not fairly warrant the inference that 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — CONSTITUTION 2^ 
 
 they contained infants, as is now frankly admitted by all 
 scholars. Either they afford no positive ground for in- 
 ference of any kind (as in the case of Stephanas, i Cor. i : 
 i6; i6: 15), or they absolutely forbid the inference that 
 infants were among the baptized (as in the case of the 
 jailer at Philippi, where all who were baptized first had 
 the gospel preached to them, Acts 16 : 32, 33). The case 
 of Lydia and her household is often cited as one that 
 proves infant baptism, but it is impossible to infer from 
 the narrative (Acts 16 : 14, 15), anything certain, or 
 even probable, regarding Lydia's family. Whether she 
 was ever married, or whether she ever had children, or 
 whether her children were not all dead or grown up 
 are matters of pure conjecture. It is possible to guess 
 any of these things, and a dozen besides, but guesses 
 are not fair inferences, still less proofs. 
 
 Those who believe in a mixed church-membership, in- 
 cluding unregenerate and regenerate, often cite the par- 
 able of the Tares (Matt. 13 : 24-30). The field, they say, 
 represents the church, and as the tares and wheat were 
 to be suffered to grow together till the harvest, so the 
 regenerate and unregenerate are to be intermingled in the 
 church. It is a de'-isive objection to this plausible theory 
 that our Lord himself interpreted this parable to his dis- 
 ciples (Matt. 13: 36-43), and declared that the field rep- 
 resents, not the church, but the world; the tares being 
 separated from the wheat in the final judgment of 
 mankind. 
 
 If the church " consists of all those throughout the 
 world that profess the true religion, together with their 
 children," as the Westminr ter Confession declares, does 
 it not necessarily follow that children are equally entitled 
 with their parents to all the privileges of the church ? If 
 they are fit subjects for baptism, they are fit subjects for 
 the Lord's Supper. Whoso denies this certainly assumes 
 
Z8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the burden of proving the reasonableness of his position. 
 There is nowhere in Scripture any authority to give the 
 former ordinance, and to withhold the latter. The Greek 
 Church recognizes the fact that infant baptism logically 
 requires infant communion, and has the courage of its 
 logic ; but other Pedobaptist bodies save part of the truth, 
 at the expense of consistency, by denying participation in 
 the Lord's Supper to those baptized in infancy until these 
 have reached years of understanding, and have made a 
 public profession of faith. 
 
 The church at Jerusalem, composed of believers bap- 
 tized on profession of personal faith in Jesus Christ, 
 " continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fel- 
 lowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers." 
 There is no record in the New Testament that any joined 
 in the breaking of bread, which is the usual term for the 
 celebration of the Lord's Supper, without first having 
 been baptized. What is stigmatized, therefore, as 
 " close " communion is simply strict adherence to scrip- 
 tural order — an order that bodies forth the spiritual sig- 
 nificance of the two ordinances delivered to his church by 
 Christ: baptism, as the emblem of the new birth, fol- 
 lowing immediately upon that birth, and being admin- 
 istered but once ; the Lord's Supper, the emblem of union 
 with Christ, and spiritual partaking of his nature, coming 
 later and being often repeated. In coming to the table of 
 the Lord, who shall venture to add or to take from the 
 terms prescribed by himself and by apostolic example? 
 Precisely because the table is the Lord's, and not theirs, 
 his obedient followers are constrained to yield to his will. 
 
 Such was the first Christian church, as to constitution 
 and ordinances; and such, in these particulars, the 
 churches of Christ continyed to be to the close of the 
 apostolic era. There were no other ordinances in those 
 churches, for to constitute an ordinance three things are 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES — CONSTITUTION 39 
 
 needful: it must be a command of Christ himself; ad- 
 dressed not to individuals, but to Christians at large, and 
 obviously intended to be obeyed for all time; and there 
 must be evidence that the command was so understood 
 and obeyed generally in the apostolic churches. Only 
 baptism and the communion meet these conditions. The 
 laying on of hands after baptism, and in ordination, is 
 supported by Scripture precedent, but it is not an ordi- 
 nance, for it was not commanded by Christ. Washing 
 the feet of disciples is a command of Christ, but lackj 
 the element of universality, and was evidently not prac- 
 tised as a rite in the apostolic churches. On the othet 
 hand, the commands to baptize and to break bread are 
 accompanied by words indicating that these things were 
 to be observed perpetually by the followers of Christ. 
 
 Of organization there was at first none in the church 
 at Jerusalem. The apostles naturally took the lead and 
 oversight of the flock, and for a time the need of officers 
 was not felt. The first step was the appointment of dea- 
 cons, in order to relieve the apostles from the labor and 
 responsibility of distributing alms. These officers were 
 chosen by the entire church, which is thus seen to be 
 a democracy from the first, and set apart to their work 
 by prayer and laying on of hands — an apostolic precedent 
 that Baptists have not always been careful to follow. 
 The appointment of pastors to have oversight of the 
 churches, as their numbers increased, was the next step, 
 so that the apostles might be free to give themselves to 
 their specific work of evangelization. 
 
 We first learn definitely of this office some fourteen 
 years later, when Barnabas and Paul were returning to 
 Antioch from their first missionary journey, visiting the 
 churches they had founded: We read, "And when they 
 [Barnabas and Paul] had appointed for them elders in 
 every church, and had prayed with fasting, they com- 
 
30 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 mended them to the Lord, on whom they had believed." 
 The word translated " appoint " is conceded by all schol- 
 ars to signify " to stretch forth the hand," probably for 
 the purpose of voting. This is held to indicate that the 
 congregations chose each its own pastor, the apostles set- 
 ting apart the chosen ones with prayer, and, as is implied 
 in other passages, with the laying on of hands. With 
 the election of pastors, the organization of the church 
 became complete, and in the New Testament there is no 
 evidence of any further ecclesiastical machinery. 
 
 The chief officer of a New Testament church is called 
 by various titles, "bishop," " elder," " teacher," " pastor." 
 The latter two seem to describe functions rather than an 
 office, and the former two are interchangeable but not 
 synonymous. " Bishop " (episcopus) is a term of Greek 
 origin, and means overseer, president. It indicates the 
 duties of the office, which were executive. " Elder " 
 (presbuteros) is of Hebrew origin, and refers to the 
 honor paid this officer, as in the Jewish synagogue, an 
 honor that was doubtless originally due to the selection of 
 the older and wiser members for the office. It is admitted 
 by all scholars that in the apostolic times " bishop " and 
 " elder " were the same ; but some advocates of episco- 
 pacy hold the later bishops to have been the successors 
 of the apostles. Of this, however, there is no evidence, 
 either in the writings of the apostles themselves or in the 
 literature of the second century. 
 
 Not only was the New Testament bishop chosen by his 
 flock, and the officer of the single congregation, but he is 
 regarded as one of them and one with them. No idea of 
 a division into " clergy " and " laity " appears in the New 
 Testament. No priestly character or function is as- 
 cribed to either bishop or deacon, but the universal 
 priesthood of believers is unmistakably taught. Sacer- 
 dotal ideas are not found in the generation immediately 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES CONSTITUTION 3 1 
 
 succeeding the apostles, but are distinctly of a later 
 development, and are unmistakable marks of the 
 degeneracy and corruption of the churches. 
 
 In the churches of Asia Minor, if not generally in the 
 New Testament churches, there was a plurality of elders 
 in each church. This may have been due to the fact that 
 the churches of which we read most were in cities, and 
 soon became too large for the oversight of one man. It 
 is possible that in some cases, as at Jerusalem, they be- 
 came too large to assemble in any one place, and met 
 in separate congregations, each with its own elder. If 
 this conjecture is sound, it still remains unquestionable 
 that the several congregations were regarded as one, the 
 division being merely for convenience ; for while we read 
 of " the churches " of a province like Galatia, we always 
 read of " the church " at Corinth or Ephesus or Antioch 
 or Jerusalem. 
 
 Simple in organization and democratic in government, 
 the New Testament churches were independent of each 
 other in their internal affairs. There is no instance of 
 a single church, or of any body of churches, undertaking 
 to control the action of another, or of a church being 
 overruled by superior ecclesiastical authority. To the 
 teaching of apostles guided by the Spirit of God, they 
 did, indeed, defer much, and rightly; but not so much 
 to the apostolic office as to the Spirit of God speaking 
 through the apostle. The so-called council of Jerusalem, 
 the nearest approach to the control of local churches by 
 exterior authority (presbytery), had an authority rather 
 moral than ecclesiastical, and its decision was final rather 
 because it was felt to be the wisest solution of a grave 
 question than because it was imposed by ecclesiastical 
 powers and enforced by ecclesiastical discipline. 
 
 But though independent of external authority, th^ 
 churches were not independent of external obligations, 
 
32 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 The church, in the broadest sense of the term, in the 
 New Testament, includes all the regenerate living in 
 obedience to Christ. Hence, though for convenience of 
 administration divided into local congregations, independ- 
 ent of each other as to internal management, it is still the 
 one body of Christ. The several churches owed to their 
 fellow-Christians, both as individuals and as Christians, 
 whatever of loving service it was in their power to render. 
 They were bound to give counsel and help to sister 
 churches that had need of either, and frequent records 
 in the New Testament show that this obligation has been 
 acknowledged and fulfilled. The interdependence and 
 fraternity of the churches is a broader and more precious 
 truth than their independence. If the former, when 
 abused, leads to centralization and prelacy, the latter, 
 pushed to extremes, leads to disintegration, discord, and 
 weakness. The apostles urged upon churches as well as 
 upon individuals the duty of bearing one another's bur- 
 dens, comforting each other in trouble, assisting each 
 other in need, and generally co-operating to further the 
 interests of the kingdom of God. 
 
 The worship of the early Christians was simple and 
 spiritual. The public services consisted of prayer, praise, 
 and the preaching of the word, probably with reading of 
 the Old Testament writings, and of the New Testament 
 writings as they appeared and were circulated through 
 copies. In these respects the first churches, as was nat- 
 ural, no doubt followed the custom of the Jewish syna- 
 gogues, to which their members had been accustomed 
 from infancy. Music filled an important place in this wor- 
 ship, as we may infer from the apostle's reference to the 
 " psalms and hymns and spiritual songs " as in common 
 use. The chanting of psalms, antiphonal and otherwise, 
 was no doubt a marked feature of Christian worship 
 from the first, especially among those educated as Jews. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES CONSTITUTION 33 
 
 Traces of ritual are found in the New Testament, not 
 only in the Lord's Prayer and the doxologies, but in 
 rhythmical passages in the apostolic writings. But this 
 ritual was simple, plastic, voluntary; not a rigid and re- 
 quired service. Nothing is more marked in the spiritual 
 life of the early church, so far as it is disclosed in the 
 Acts and Epistles, than its spontaneity and freedom from 
 the bondage of formalism. This is, of course, more 
 markedly manifest in the informal gatherings, closely re- 
 sembling the modern prayer-meeting, that supplemented 
 the more public and general assemblies of the Lord's Day. 
 These, however, like the agapm, or love feasts, that for a 
 time accompanied the celebration of the Supper, were 
 liable to abuse, and against disorderly proceedings in them 
 we find the Apostle Paul warning the Corinthian church. 
 The distinctive day of worship among apostolic Chris- 
 tians was the first day of the week, the Lord's Day. The 
 disciples met on the evening of this day, on which the 
 risen Christ had manifested himself to some of them, and 
 he met with them. A week later they again assembled, 
 and again he met them. There is no reason to doubt that 
 the observance continued thereafter without a break. 
 Thus, while there is no definite precept for the observ- 
 ance of the Lord's Day, there is definite precedent, and 
 the example of the apostles, where it is clear and ex- 
 plicit, is tantamount to command. By the year a. d. 55 
 this first-day meeting of Christians seems to have become 
 a recognized custom (Acts 20 : 7; i Cor. 16 : 2) ; yet it 
 is not until the second century that we have positive proof 
 that the Lord's Day was universally observed among 
 Christians. For some time those who had been bred 
 Jews continued to observe the Sabbath in their usual man- 
 ner, and the matter even became a subject of contention 
 between Jew and Gentile (Rom. 16 : 5, 6; Col. 2 : 16) ; 
 but in the second century sabbatizing was condemned by 
 
34 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Christian writers. Neither in the New Testament nor 
 in the Christian literature of the first three centuries is 
 there any confounding of the Sabbath and the Lord's 
 Day, or any intimation that the fourth commandment has 
 anything to do with the observance of the Lord's Day. 
 On the contrary, the Sabbath is treated as typical and 
 temporary, like circumcision, and done away with as 
 were all the ordinances of the law. 
 
 There were doubtless other times of meeting in the 
 apostolic churches, besides the first day of the week. For 
 a brief time after the day of Pentecost, every day appears 
 to have been a day of worship, as it even now is with 
 churches during a season of special revival; and the 
 Lord's Supper was at this time celebrated daily. At a 
 later period it was celebrated, apparently, every Lord's 
 Day, though there is nothing to indicate that this was re- 
 garded as obligatory. Any Baptist church, however, that 
 should choose to spread the table of the Lord every 
 Lord's Day would have sufficient Scripture precedent to 
 justify it in so doing. The one thing for which no New 
 Testament precedent can be pleaded is the letting of 
 months go by without a celebration of the Communion. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE C^SARS 
 
 BEFORE the end of the apostolic age the followers 
 of Christ suffered severe persecution at the hands 
 of the Roman emperors. The first great persecution, 
 that of Nero, probably had no other origin than the 
 capricious cruelty of that infamous ruler. The perse- 
 cutions of his immediate successors were prompted by 
 passion rather than by principle; it is not till the reign 
 of Trajan that we find persecution for the first time 
 adopted intelligently and deliberately as a fixed imperial 
 policy. This emperor, in his letter to Pliny, governor of 
 Bithynia from 109 to 11 1, directed that Christians should 
 not be sought out nor proceeded against on anonymous 
 accusations; but when accused by a responsible person 
 they should be tried, and on conviction should be put to 
 death. 
 
 To understand these persecutions by the better of the 
 Roman emperors — and, as a rule, the higher an em- 
 peror's character the more severely he persecuted the 
 Christians — we must look at the Roman laws. Religion 
 was from the earliest times a matter of statecraft in 
 Rome. There was a State religion, and public wor- 
 ship of the State deities was conducted by the magis- 
 trates. The worship of foreign gods was prohibited on 
 pain of death by the Twelve Tables, the earliest code of 
 laws among the Romans, and for a time this prohibition 
 seems to have been absolute; but as other nations were 
 conquered and absorbed a liberal policy was shown 
 toward the religions of the conquered peoples. By act 
 
36 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of the Senate these national deities were given recog- 
 nition; temples in their honor could be established in 
 Rome, and their devotees had equal rights with Ro- 
 mans, but were forbidden to make proselytes. Until a 
 religion was thus formally recognized, it was forbidden 
 (religio illicitd), but on such recognition it became a 
 tolerated religion {religio licita). Christianity was at 
 first supposed to be a form of Judaism, which as a na- 
 tional religion was tolerated and even protected by the 
 emperors; and accordingly it was at first treated as 
 religio licita. Soon, however, its real nature came to be 
 known. It was found to be exclusive of all other re- 
 ligions; it not only made proselytes, but by its rapid 
 progress it threatened the overthrow of the State religion. 
 It was, therefore, religio illicita, and to embrace it was 
 a capital offense. 
 
 Moreover, Christians were suspected of disloyalty. 
 They avoided military service. Their conscientious re- 
 fusal to offer divine honors to the emperor — which was 
 done by throwing a little incense on the fire burning be- 
 fore his statue, to the Roman an act like the taking of 
 the oath of allegiance among us — was misconstrued into 
 political hostility. There were severe laws in the em- 
 pire against clubs, secret societies and the like; no as- 
 sociation was lawful unless specially licensed, and the 
 emperors were so jealous of these clubs, as affording 
 opportunities for conspiracy, that Trajan actually refused 
 to sanction a company of firemen in Nicomedia. The 
 Christian church was constructively an illegal secret so- 
 ciety, since it was an organization not sanctioned by the 
 emperor, that held frequent private meetings; and in 
 order to protect themselves, the Christians held these 
 meetings with great secrecy. 
 
 It was not mere wanton cruelty, therefore, that led 
 the emperors to persecute the Christians, but a fixed 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE C^SARS 37 
 
 State policy. But nevertheless, popular hatred at times 
 waxed hot against the Christians, and emperors occa- 
 sionally persecuted to gratify this hatred, based on ignor- 
 ance and slander. Public opinion is not without influ- 
 ence, even in a despotic government. A saying that 
 passed into a proverb was : Deus non pluit — due ad Chris- 
 tianas (the heavens do not rain — lead us against the 
 Christians). Tertullian probably exaggerates little when 
 he says : " If the Tiber overflow its banks, if the Nile 
 do not water the fields, if the clouds refuse rain, if the 
 earth shake, if famine or storms prevail, the cry always 
 is, ' Throw the Christians to the lions ! ' " 
 
 Ten persecutions are mentioned by the Christians of 
 this period and by many historians, of which three are 
 specially remarkable for bitterness and general prevalence 
 through the empire. In the second century persecution 
 was spasmodic and unmethodical, nevertheless the reign 
 of Marcus Aurelius is remembered as one of great suf- 
 fering by the Christians. It is not certain that he or- 
 dered persecutions or sympathized with them, but thou- 
 sands became martyrs. The first general and systematic 
 persecution throughout the empire was that begun by 
 Decius Trajan (249-251). The authorities were espe- 
 cially severe with the bishops, and Fabian of Rome, 
 Alexander of Jerusalem, and Cyprian of Carthage, are 
 some of those who perished in this persecution. Dio- 
 cletian began the last great persecution, which raged dur- 
 ing the years 303-311. His edicts required that all 
 Christian churches should be destroyed; all copies of the 
 Bible were to be burned ; Christians were to be deprived 
 of public office and civil rights, and must sacrifice to 
 the gods on pain of death. 
 
 The Christian literature of the first three centuries 
 records the heroic death of many devout believers, but 
 no story is more touching than the martyrdom of Per- 
 
38 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 petua and her companion Felicitas, as told by TertuUian. 
 Vivia Perpetua was a matron of Carthage, about twenty- 
 two years of age, and had an infant son. She was well- 
 born and well-educated. Of her husband the narrative 
 tells us nothing, but we may infer that he was, like her 
 father, a heathen. After being apprehended, her father 
 and brother used all their arts of persuasion to induce 
 her to recant, but in vain. When brought before the 
 procurator, he besought her thus : " Spare the gray hairs 
 of your father, spare the infancy of your boy, offer sac- 
 rifice for the well-being of the emperor." She replied: 
 " I will not do so." The procurator said : "Are you a 
 Christian ? " She replied : " I am a Christian." The 
 procurator then delivered judgment on the accused, Per- 
 petua among them, and condemned them to the wild 
 beasts. The story of the martyrdom, somewhat abridged, 
 follows in Tertullian's words: 
 
 " The day of tneir victory shone forth, and they pro- 
 teeded from the prison into the amphitheater, as if to 
 an assembly, joyous and of brilliant countenances. For 
 the young women the devil prepared a very fierce cow. 
 Perpetua is first led in. She was tossed and fell on her 
 loins ; and when she saw her tunic torn she drew it over 
 her as a veil, rather mindful of her modesty than her 
 suffering. So she rose up; and when she saw Felicitas 
 crushed, she approached and gave her her hand, and 
 lifted her up; and the brutality of the populace being 
 appeased, they were recalled to the gate. And when 
 the populace called for them into the midst, they first 
 kissed one another, that they might consummate their 
 martyrdom with a kiss of peace. The rest indeed im- 
 movable and in silence received the sword-thrust; but 
 Perpetua, being pierced between the ribs, cried out loudly, 
 and she herself placed the wavering right hand of the 
 youthful gladiator to her throat. Possibly such a woman 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE C^SARS 39 
 
 could not have been slain unless she herself had willed 
 it, because she was feared by the impure spirit. O most 
 brave and blessed martyrs! O truly called and chosen 
 unto the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ ! " 
 
 Early in tM%ourth century it became apparent that 
 Christianity was stronger than the Caesars, and could 
 not be destroyed. The long contest ended with the sur- 
 render of the emperors. In 311, an edict of toleration 
 was published, confirmed in 313, and with the triumph 
 of Constantine in 323 as sole emperor, Christianity be- 
 came practically the established religion of the empire. 
 In spite of the persecutions to which they had been 
 subjected, the Christians had come to number, accord- 
 ing to the most trustworthy estimates, about ten millions 
 in the Roman empire; or one-tenth of the entire popu- 
 lation. It was no empty boast of a rhetorician when 
 TertuUian wrote, a century before toleration was won: 
 " We are a people of yesterday, and yet we have filled 
 every place belonging to you — cities, islands, castles, 
 towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, com- 
 panies, palace, senate, forum! We leave you your 
 temples only. We count your armies ; our numbers in a 
 single province will be greater." 
 
 While the Christian faith was thus engaged in a life- 
 and-death contest with the imperial power, it was com- 
 pelled to defend itself against the hardly less dangerous 
 attacks of heathen adversaries. The emperors threat- 
 ened with destruction the external organization ; heathen 
 philosophers threatened to undermine the very founda- 
 tions of the faith. Pagan men of letters undertook to 
 bring to pass what imperial power had failed to do. The 
 terrors of the prison and the sword had proved of little 
 avail to hinder the progress of Christianity ; the question 
 was now to be tested whether the pen could cut deeper 
 than the sword, whether logic and rhetoric could over- 
 
40 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 come an obstinacy proof against death itself. The at- 
 tacks made upon the religion of Christ in the first three 
 centuries have never been surpassed in ability and force. 
 No keener-witted, no more learned, no more bitterly hos- 
 tile critics have searched the Scriptures with intent to 
 overthrow them than were found in these days. We 
 are authorized in saying this, though their works are 
 known to us only through the references made to them 
 by their Christian antagonists. Not only is this the gen- 
 eral repute of these critics, but the profuse quotations 
 from their words in the answers to them show the scope 
 and cogency of their arguments. Nearly all the latter- 
 day skeptical objections to Christianity are to be found 
 in these early anti-Christian writings. The new light that 
 modern opponents of evangelical religion profess to have 
 discovered is only the old darkness. 
 
 There were then, as now, two stock objections to the 
 religion of Christ — first, the incredibility of the Scrip- 
 tures as history; second, the absurdity of the doctrines 
 taught in the Scriptures. Then, as now, skeptics objected 
 to the miraculous element in the Bible, and sought to 
 overthrow men's belief in the book as inspired by point- 
 ing out its alleged contradictions. Then, as now, men 
 could not reconcile their human systems of philosophy 
 with the biblical teaching regarding the inherent sinful- 
 ness of man, the vicarious atonement, regeneration, 
 union with Christ, sanctification, and a resurrection unto 
 eternal life. But it was paganism, not Christianity, that 
 proved incredible when subjected to searching examina- 
 tion. The worship of the gods declined, while the wor- 
 ship of God and his Son, Jesus Christ, spread rapidly 
 through the Roman world. The attacks of the pagan 
 scholars and philosophers hardly retarded the process 
 perceptibly, though for a time they seemed to constitute 
 a serious danger. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE C^SARS 4I 
 
 These attacks were answered by Christian writers, so 
 completely, so conclusively, that later defenders of the 
 faith have had little to do but repeat, amplify, and re- 
 state their arguments. Among the ablest were Justin, 
 Tertullian, and Origen. Justin, the earliest, was a Pla- 
 tonist, and in his writings stood mainly on the defensive. 
 His two apologies, addressed to the Roman emperors, 
 were largely devoted to showing that Christians were 
 falsely accused by their enemies, that they were not to 
 be blamed for public calamities, and that in all things 
 they were good Romans and loyal subjects of the em- 
 peror. In addition he maintained that the Scriptures are 
 the only source of truth, the pagan mythologies abound- 
 ing in falsehoods and contradictions. In his dialogue 
 with Trypho, Justin attempts to answer the usual ob- 
 jections of the Jews to the Christian faith, and to prove 
 the Messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament. This 
 is almost the only trace, outside of the New Testament, 
 of controversy between Jews and Christians. Tertul- 
 lian defended the supernatural element in Christianity 
 with great skill. He is the most finished rhetorician 
 among the early Christian apologists, and seldom stood 
 on the defensive, but boldly carried the war into Africa. 
 He was a man of genius, but there was a strain of 
 enthusiasm or fanaticism in him that made him an un- 
 safe guide; nevertheless, his services as a defender of 
 the faith were great. 
 
 The culmination of this series of apologies was the 
 treatise of Origen against Celsus. He was born of Chris- 
 tian parents at Alexandria, in 185. The statement will 
 be found in many books of reference that he was bap- 
 tized in infancy, but as there is no record of his bap- 
 tism the statement can be nothing more than an infer- 
 ence from the fact that he advocated infant baptism 
 in later years. It is more probable that he was not bap- 
 
42 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 tized in infancy, since the custom was far from general 
 when he was born. He received a careful education 
 and as a boy knew whole sections of the Bible perfectly. 
 During the greater part of his life he was a teacher 
 at Alexandria — ^though he was at one time deposed from 
 the ofifice of presbyter, excommunicated and exiled — 
 and was in high repute as a scholar and writer. 
 
 Origen labored to reconcile Greek philosophy with 
 biblical theology, not with entire success, since his teach- 
 ings afforded some ground for the charges of heresy 
 brought against him. His doctrine concerning Christ 
 was the precursor of the later Arianism, and his denial 
 of eternal punishment has had a great influence on the 
 church in every succeeding century. His great work 
 against Celsus, valuable as it was in its time, had not 
 the same worth for the church of all time as his exe- 
 getical studies. He was the first commentator on the 
 Scriptures who seriously set himself, by grammatical 
 and historical study of the text, to ascertain what the 
 word of God really means. This was, in truth, his great- 
 est contribution to apologetics, though in form it was 
 not a defense of Christianity. Has it not been true in 
 all the ages since, that the religion of Christ has been 
 most successfully defended by those who have best set 
 forth its teachings to the world, not by those who have 
 ostensibly, not to say ostentatiously, gone about the 
 task of formal defense? The most effective refutation 
 of error is to teach the truth. 
 
 The victory of Christianity was no less complete in 
 controversy than in the civil conflict. About the time 
 the emperors were convinced that persecution was futile, 
 the philosophers saw the uselessness of criticism. The 
 triumph of Christianity was the survival of the fittest. 
 It won because truth must win when pitted against 
 error, since it has behind it all the power of God. In 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE C^SARS 43 
 
 these ages, as in many others, we can now see that the 
 opposition of pagan writers was a blessing to the church. 
 It compelled Christians to examine well the foundations 
 of their faith, to study the Bible and systematize its teach- 
 ings, to recognize the discrepancies and apparent con- 
 tradictions of the Scriptures and inquire how and how 
 far these might be harmonized. The result was that 
 Christianity emerged from its conflict with paganism re- 
 joicing in a faith greatly strengthened, and above all 
 more intelligent. The faith of the church in its Scrip- 
 tures as a divine revelation could never be seriously 
 shaken after the searching tests they had so triumphantly 
 encountered. 
 
 But the victory was in part a defeat also; as often 
 happens, the conquered overcame the conquerors. Chris- 
 tianity apparently vanquished heathenism, but heathen- 
 ism succeeded in injecting much of its superstition and 
 ritual into Christianity. In the long struggle with the 
 Caesars, Christianity had apparently won; but while ap- 
 pearing to gain all, by obtaining the patronage of Con- 
 stantine, it was in danger of losing all. The process of 
 degeneracy and corruption — in polity, in doctrine, in 
 spiritual life — had begun long before, but adversity had 
 kept the church comparatively pure. Now it became 
 rapidly assimilated to the world, and the increase of 
 the church in wealth, in numbers, and in worldly power 
 was accompanied by an equally marked decadence of 
 spiritual life, and a departure from the simplicity of the 
 apostolic doctrine and practice. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 
 
 BEFORE the last of the apostles had passed away, 
 there were unmistakable signs of degeneracy and 
 corruption in the Christian churches. Warnings against 
 heresies and false teachers, not as future dangers but as 
 present, are found in all of the later New Testament writ- 
 ings. From the very first, the preaching of the cross was 
 to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolish- 
 ness; and even when Jews and Greeks were converted 
 they endeavored to amalgamate the old religion with the 
 new. In spite of our Lord's assurance that the new wine 
 could not be put into the old bottles without the loss 
 of both, this attempt went on. Profoundly as the re- 
 ligion of the Jews differed from that of the Greeks and 
 of other heathen nations, yet all pre-Christian religions 
 had one element in common — they promised salvation to 
 those who would attain the scrupulous observance of ec- 
 clesiastical rites. The note of all religions before Chris- 
 tianity was salvation by works ; Christianity alone taught 
 salvation by faith. 
 
 The efforts of converts imperfectly converted to assim- 
 ilate Christianity to their former faith were only too suc- 
 cessful. They failed to grasp the fundamental principles 
 of the new religion, that each soul's destiny is the result 
 of a personal relation to Jesus Christ, that eternal life is 
 not the mere escape from retribution hereafter, but that 
 it begins here in an intimate and vital union with the 
 Son of God. They imagined that eternal destiny is set- 
 tled by outward act, that the wrath of God may be 
 44 
 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 45 
 
 averted by rites and ceremonies. The natural result was 
 the substitution of formalism for spirituality, devotion to 
 the externals of religion taking the place of living faith. 
 To this one root may be traced in turn every one of 
 the corruptions of the church, all of its aberrations of 
 doctrine and practice. So soon as the churches founded 
 by the apostles lost sight of the truth that man must be 
 born again, and that this new birth is always associated 
 with personal faith in Christ, the way was prepared for 
 all that followed. 
 
 In the earliest Christian literature, after the apostolic 
 period, we may trace three tendencies toward degenera- 
 tion, all proceeding from this common cause, developing 
 along lines parallel at first, yet distinct, afterward con- 
 verging, and at length constituting a logical, consistent 
 whole. These are: the idea of a Holy Catholic Church, 
 the ministry a priesthood, and sacramental grace. 
 
 Jesus prayed that his disciples might be one, and his 
 apostles taught that the church is the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, and therefore both one and holy. Early in the 
 second century, however, these ideas assumed a different 
 form from that of the New Testament. The churches 
 were conceived of as forming together one Church, not 
 spiritual merely, but visible, extending throughout the- 
 world, and therefore catholic (i. e., universal). Perse- 
 cution doubtless had much to do with emphasizing in the 
 minds of Christians their unity, but an exaggerated no- 
 tion of the value of formal oneness came to prevail, until 
 schism was reckoned the deadliest of sins a Christian 
 could commit. The preservation of outward unity thus 
 becoming the paramount consideration, it followed that 
 whatever error a majority in the church might come to 
 hold, the minority must accept it, rather than be guilty 
 of this deadly sin of schism. This ideal of a Holy 
 Catholic Church, outside of which was no salvation, unity 
 
46 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 with which was necessary to unity with Christ, prepared 
 the way for all the corruptions that were introduced. 
 
 Another parallel development downward in the second 
 century was the attribution of some mystical or magical 
 power to baptism. It must be confessed that there are 
 a few passages in the New Testament writings which, 
 if they stood alone, would favor this view. " Except a 
 man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter 
 into the kingdom of God " (John 3:3). " Which also 
 after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism "_ 
 ( I Peter 3 : 14) . " Arise and be baptized, and wash 
 away thy sins " (Acts 22 : 16) : If passages like these 
 stood alone, unmodified, we should be compelled to the 
 conclusion that faith alone, without baptism, does not 
 avail to save. By ignoring to a great degree those other 
 and relatively numerous passages in which the spirit is 
 exalted above the letter, and faith is made the vital prin- 
 ciple of the Christian life instead of ritual, the churches 
 soon made outward rites of more significance than in- 
 ward state. Baptism was regarded, not perhaps as ab- 
 solutely necessary to salvation, but as so necessary an 
 act that if it could not be performed precisely in accord- 
 ance with Christ's command and apostolic precedent, 
 some simulacrum of it must be substituted. 
 
 The Christians of that age were indeed justified in 
 laying great stress on the importance of obeying Christ 
 in baptism. It never seems to have occurred to them, as 
 it has occurred to Christians of recent times, to evade 
 this command, because to obey was inconvenient or dis- 
 tasteful; or on the avowed ground that something else 
 might be substituted for the act commanded that would 
 be more accordant with the delicate sensibilities of culti- 
 vated and refined people. Their obedience was implicit, 
 ready, complete. Its one fault was an excess of virtue — 
 an attempt to obey in cases where obedience was im- 
 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 47 
 
 possible. When water in sufficient quantities for immer- 
 sion was wanting, there could be no proper baptism ; but, 
 as baptism was now conceived to be so very important, 
 something must be done, and water was in such cases 
 poured upon the head thrice, in quantities as profuse as 
 possible, no doubt, thus counterfeiting immersion as 
 nearly as might be. The true principle was missed — 
 that where obedience is impossible God accepts the will- 
 ingness to obey for obedience itself; and the wrong 
 principle was adopted — that God can be obeyed by doing 
 something other than what he commands. 
 
 We see the first step in this process in the document 
 known as " The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," 
 which scholars assign to the first half of the second 
 century. The injunction regarding baptism is : " Now 
 concerning baptism, thus baptize ye : having first uttered 
 all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and 
 of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in running water. 
 But if thou hast not running water, baptize in other 
 water; and if thou canst not in cold, then in warm. 
 But if thou hast neither, pour water upon the head 
 thrice, into the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy 
 Spirit. But before the baptism let the baptizer and the 
 baptized fast, and whatsoever others can; but the bap- 
 tized thou shalt command to fast for two or three days 
 before." There is only a bare hint here of a sacramental 
 idea, but by the time of Justin Martyr (about a. d. 150) 
 the process of identifying the sign with the thing signi- 
 fied had made no little progress. He calls baptism " the 
 water-bath of regeneration." "Those who believe our 
 doctrine," he says, " are led by us to a place where 
 there is water, and in this way they are regenerated." 
 By the time of Tertullian (200) the idea of baptismal 
 regeneration is firmly established. That is to say, bap- 
 tism is no longer regarded as merely a t3rpe or symbol 
 
48 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of regeneration, but the means by which the Spirit of 
 God effected regeneration. In the writings of the Ante- 
 Nicene church Fathers, the use of "regenerate" to 
 mean " baptize " is so common as to be almost the rule. 
 For a time, doubtless, the usage was figurative, but the 
 figure was soon lost sight of, and baptism was accepted 
 as a literal means of regeneration. 
 
 One of the first practical consequences of this doctrine 
 regarding baptism was the usage known as " clinic " 
 baptism (from kline, a couch), or the baptism of those 
 supposably sick unto death. The first recorded case of 
 this kind, though others may have occurred before, is 
 that of Novatian (sometime before 250). Being very 
 ill, and supposed to be near death, yet desiring to be 
 baptized and wash away his sins, water was brought and 
 poured about him as he lay on his couch, immersion 
 being thus simulated as closely as possible under the 
 circumstances. Novatian recovered, however, or we 
 should probably never have heard of this case, and after- 
 ward entered the ministry, but the sufficiency of his clinic 
 baptism was from the first disputed. The question of 
 the validity of such baptisms was submitted to Cyprian, 
 bishop of Africa, and in one of the letters of that eccle- 
 siastic we have an elaborate discussion of the matter. 
 He was asked, he tells us, " of those who obtain God's 
 grace in sickness and weakness, whether they are to be 
 accounted legitimate Christians, for that they are not 
 to be washed, but afTused (non loti sunt, sed perfusi) 
 with the saving waters." His chief argument was one 
 since common among mutilators of the ordinance, that 
 a little water would answer as well as much. His con- 
 clusion was that "the sprinkling of water (aspersio), 
 prevails equally with the washing of salvation; and that 
 when this is done in the church, when the faith both of 
 receiver and giver is sound, all things hold and may be 
 
The Emperor Nero 
 
The Emperor Trajan 
 
The Baptistery of St. John Latehan 
 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 49 
 
 consummated and perfected by the majesty of the Lord, 
 and by the truth of faith." 
 
 It will be noted by the attentive reader of these words 
 that the decision rests wholly on the sacramental no- 
 tion that baptism conveys God's saving grace. It was 
 a natural conclusion by those who held this view that 
 God's grace could work with a little water as well as 
 with more. But it was long before Cyprian's view fully 
 prevailed in the church. It was agreed, to be sure, thar 
 clinic baptism would suffice for salvation, but it was felt 
 to be an incomplete and unsatisfactory form, and ordi- 
 nation was long refused those who had been subjects of 
 this mutilated ceremony. The idea that affusion would 
 serve as baptism in other than cases of extreme necessity 
 made its way very slowly in the church, and that form 
 of administration had no official sanction until the Synod 
 of Ravenna, in 131 1, decided that "baptism is to be 
 administered by trine aspersion or immersion." 
 
 The first clinic baptisms, as we have seen, were per- 
 formed by so surrounding the body of the sick person 
 with water that he might be said to be immersed in 
 water. It was, however, a short and easy step to dimin- 
 ish the quantity of water, and then to apply it to other 
 than sick persons. The practice of perfusion and affu- 
 sion gradually increased from the time of Novatian, 
 though for several centuries immersion continued to be 
 the prevailing administration of the ordinance. 
 
 Another consequence of the idea of baptismal regen- 
 eration was the baptism of infants. It logically followed, 
 if those unbaptized were unregenerate, that all who died 
 in infancy were unsaved. This was a conclusion from 
 which the Christian consciousness of the early cen- 
 turies revolted as strongly as that of our own day, which 
 utterly rejects the Westminster declaration that "elect 
 infants" are saved, with its logical corollary that non' 
 
50 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 elect infants are lost. The true solution of the difficulty 
 would have been found in a return to apostolic ideas of 
 the nature and function of baptism; but a contrary idea 
 having become too deeply settled in the church for such 
 a return, the only alternative solution was to baptize 
 infants, so that they might be regenerated and saved if 
 they died before reaching the years in which personal 
 faith is possible. 
 
 Just when infant baptism began is uncertain ; scholars 
 have disputed long over the question without arriving at 
 any decisive proof. The passages often quoted from the 
 writings of Justin and Irenseus are admitted by candid 
 Pedobaptist scholars to fall far short of proof that infants 
 were baptized in their times. It is tolerably certain, how- 
 ever, that by the time of Tertullian the practice was com- 
 mon, though by no means universal. We know, for ex- 
 ample, that Augustine, though the son of the godly 
 Monica, was not baptized in infancy, but on personal pro- 
 fession of faith at the age of thirty-three. Gregory of 
 Nazianzum and Chrysostom are two others. Similar 
 cases were frequent without a doubt, though from this 
 time on they became more rare, until after the sixth cen- 
 tury the practice of infant baptism was universal, or 
 nearly so. Nothing in the history of the church did so 
 much as this departure from apostolic precedent to pre- 
 pare the way for papacy. It introduced into the church 
 a multitude whose hearts were unchanged by the Spirit 
 of God, who were worldly in aims and in life, and who 
 sought for the worldly advancement of the church that 
 thus their own power and importance might be magnified. 
 This consummation was doubtless aided and hastened by 
 the rapid contemporary growth of the church in numbers 
 and its increase in worldly prosperity. 
 
 In the section concerning baptism, already quoted from 
 "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," the catechu- 
 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 51 
 
 menate is already recognized, at least in germ. Baptism 
 was no longer to be administered upon the mere confes- 
 sion of faith, but was to be preceded by a somewhat 
 elaborate instruction, for which the first six chapters of 
 the " Teaching " were originally devised. The catechu- 
 menate was not in itself a departure from the funda- 
 mental principles of the primitive churches. There was a 
 necessity, such as is felt by the missionaries in heathen 
 lands at this day, of instructing converts in the first 
 principles of the Christian faith. It is true now in 
 heathendom as it was then, that a sufficient knowledge 
 of the Christian faith for salvation may be gained in 
 a comparatively brief time, while the convert is in a 
 dense state of ignorance regarding all else that separates 
 Christianity from his heathen faith. Accordingly, our 
 own missionaries are compelled in some cases, perhaps 
 in all, to exercise caution in the reception of those heathen 
 who profess conversion, and to give them such prelim- 
 inary instruction in Christian doctrine as will enable them 
 intelligently to become disciples of Christ and members 
 of a Christian church. But it is evident that instruction 
 of this kind, prior to baptism, should be extremely simple 
 and elementary, and need not be greatly protracted. So 
 soon as the catechumenate was an established institu- 
 tion in the Catholic Church, its system of instruction be- 
 came elaborate and prolonged, and candidates were de- 
 layed in these schools of instruction for many months, 
 even for several years, before they were allowed to be 
 baptized. The tendency of such an institution was to 
 foster the idea that men might be educated into Christi- 
 anity, and to decrease the reliance of the church upon 
 the agency of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of men. 
 The practical result was to introduce many into the 
 church who had never been subjects of the regenerating 
 grace of God, but had simply been instructed in Chris- 
 
52 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 tianity as a system of theology or philosophy, and their 
 intellectual assent to its teachings was accepted as equiv- 
 alent to saving faith. What might have been and doubt- 
 less was at first an effective agency for good, became an 
 instrument for the corruption of the church. While it 
 endured and flourished, however (from the second to the 
 fifth centuries), the catechumenate was an evidence not 
 to be controverted of the general prevalence of adult 
 baptism. Its decline and the growth of infant baptism 
 were synchronous. 
 
 The idea of sacramental grace did not stop with the 
 corruption of the doctrine of baptism, but extended to 
 the Communion, or Eucharist, as it came to be generally 
 called from the second century onward. There are pas- 
 sages in the early Fathers that amply justify the later 
 doctrine known as the real presence and consubstantia- 
 tion, if they do not go to the extreme length of transub- 
 stantiation. With the decrease of vital faith the in- 
 crease of formalism kept pace, and the administration 
 of the Lord's Supper, from being a simple and spiritual 
 ceremony, became surrounded by a cloud of ritual and 
 finally developed into the mass of the Roman Church. 
 Laying as great a stress as Luther did later upon the mere 
 letter of Scripture, the church of the third and fourth 
 centuries insisted that the words " This is my body " 
 were to be accepted by all faithful Christians as a literal 
 statement of truth, and that Paul's words when he 
 says that the broken bread is the body of Christ do not 
 indicate a spiritual partaking of Christ's nature, but a 
 literal and materialistic reception of it and through the 
 bread and wine. 
 
 The development of the sacerdotal idea was an equally 
 powerful agency in corrupting the church. Though the 
 idea of a priesthood, other than the priesthood of all be- 
 lievers, is not found in the New Testament, we find it 
 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 53 
 
 very early in the post-apostolic literature. Both Jews 
 and pagans were familiar with this idea of a priesthood, 
 and they naturally, almost inevitably, carried their old 
 religious ideas over into the religion that they had 
 adopted in their adult years. For a time the Fathers 
 seem to have used sacerdotal terms as they used sacra- 
 mental terms, with a figurative rather than a literal mean- 
 ing. When they speak of " sanctuary " and "altar," 
 of " priest " and " sacrifice," they do not at first mean 
 all that those words literally imply; but it was not long 
 before the figure of speech disappeared and the literal 
 meaning only remained. Qement of Rome was the first 
 writer to draw a parallel between the Christian ministry 
 and the Levitical priesthood, and is the first to speak of 
 the " laity " as distinct from the clergy. In Tertullian 
 and Cyprian we may trace the completion of the process, 
 and by the end of the third century or early in the 
 fourth, the idea was generally accepted that the clergy 
 formed an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal order, a priestly 
 caste completely separate from the laity. 
 
 So great a corruption in the idea of the functions of 
 the ministry could hardly be unaccompanied by a change 
 in its form; and the degeneration we have traced in the 
 practices of the church would naturally affect its polity. 
 What we might reasonably expect to happen did in fact 
 come to pass. In the New Testament we find presbyter- 
 bishops, one office with two interchangeable titles, but 
 early in the second century we find bishops and pres- 
 byters, two offices, not one, the bishop being superior to 
 the presbyters. Just how this happened is not known, 
 but it is supposed that in churches where a plurality of 
 elders was found, one of the presbyters became the 
 leader or president — whether by seniority, force of char- 
 acter or election can only be conjectured, and is unim- 
 portant. To him the title of bishop was gradually 
 
54 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 appropriated, so that from being at first only primus inter 
 pares he came, after a generation or two, to be re- 
 garded as superior to the presbyters. This is the state 
 of things that we find in the letters of Ignatius, written 
 about the year a. d. 115. But the bishop was as yet 
 bishop of a single church, though there may have been 
 several congregations, each with its presbyters. The 
 state of things was not unlike that which we find now 
 in some of our large cities, where a church has a pastor 
 and several assistants, ministers like himself, who have 
 charge of mission stations in various parts of the city. 
 If, now, we were to give to such a pastor the exclusive 
 title of bishop, and regard his assistants as presbyters 
 only, we should almost exactly reproduce the polity that 
 we find in Ignatius. 
 
 How and when this episcopate became diocesan we 
 do not exactly know. As the churches of the great 
 cities in the empire sent out preachers into the suburbs 
 and adjacent towns, and new churches were formed, they 
 would not unnaturally come under the authority of this 
 bishop. We find from Irenseus onward his jurisdiction, 
 originally described as his parish (paroikia), gradually 
 enlarging, until the third century sees the diocesan sys- 
 tem quite fully established. Cyprian goes so far as to 
 tall the bishop the vicegerent of Christ in things spiritual, 
 and almost to make him the church itself : " The church 
 is in the bishop, and the bishop is in the church, and 
 if any one is not with the bishop he is not in the church." 
 
 We may also trace in these early centuries the be- 
 ginnings of the characteristic doctrines and practices 
 that we associate with Romanism. " The church of the 
 first four centuries" is the shibboleth of many High 
 Churchmen, but they who adopt this motto must as- 
 suredly be wofully ignorant of the Fathers about whom 
 they talk so much. If ail roads do not lead te Rome 
 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 55 
 
 this one certainly does. Make antiquity the test of truth 
 and Rome has the argument— if by " antiquity " is meant 
 as is usually the case, the first four centuries of Chris- 
 tianity, exclusive of the evidence of the New Testament. 
 In those centuries we find the full doctrine of the mass, 
 the doctrine of penance, confession and priestly absolu- 
 tion, purgatory, the invocation of saints and the use of 
 images in worship. In short, we find all of Romanism 
 but its name and the pope. 
 
 We find another thing, not alone characteristic of Ro- 
 manism, though most prominent in that system, a growth 
 of asceticism resulting in the practice of clerical celibacy 
 and monachism. This likewise may be traced to the 
 root-idea of salvation by works. The Gnostic and Man- 
 ichaean heresies, though nominally rejected by the 
 Church, were in part accepted. Teaching an eternal 
 conflict between spirit and matter, and that the latter is 
 the source of all evil, this philosophy was easily recon- 
 ciled with the idea of salvation by works. Sin was held 
 to be the result of the union of man's spirit with a body, 
 and only by keeping the body under, mortifying the flesh 
 by fasting and maceration, could sin be overcome. The 
 contempt for marriage and the undue exaltation of vir- 
 ginity that appears in the Fathers, notably in Jerome, 
 not only gave impetus to monachism and the celibacy of 
 the clergy, with their vast train of evils, but laid the 
 foundation for the exaltation of Mary above her Son, and 
 the idolatries and blasphemies of Roman Catholicism. 
 
 It would be unprofitable to go further into the details 
 of this doctrinal and moral corruption of Christianity. 
 All its ramifications sprang from the one idea that sal- 
 vation is not the free gift of God through Christ, but 
 something to be earned by human effort or purchased 
 from a store of merits laid up by the saints. But it is 
 worth our while to note, in conclusion, that the rapidity 
 
56 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 with which the doctrine, ritual, and polity of the early 
 church degenerated, was directly proportioned to its 
 growth in wealth and worldly prosperity. There is no 
 lesson taught by the first centuries that needs to be 
 learned now by Baptists more than this. So long as the 
 church was feeble, persecuted, and poor, though in some 
 things it departed from the standard of the New Tes- 
 tament, it was comparatively pure in both doctrine and 
 life. Adversity refined and strengthened it; prosperity 
 weakened and corrupted it. What the persecutions of 
 Nero and Domitian were powerless to accomplish, the 
 patronage of Constantine and his successors did only too 
 well. Baptists have had their period of adversity, when 
 they inherited Christ's promise, " Blessed are ye when 
 men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all 
 manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." Will 
 they endure the harder test of prosperity, when they are 
 great in numbers, in wealth, in influence, so that all men 
 speak well of them? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR A PURE CHURCH 
 
 THIS degeneration in the church, whose stages w« 
 traced in the preceding chapter, was a gradual 
 process, whose completion occupied several centuries. It 
 did not occur without resistance, determined, pro- 
 longed, and frequently renewed. Many attempts were 
 made at a reformation of the church, a return to the 
 simplicity and purity of the apostolic churches. The 
 truth was not totally eclipsed at first, only obscured; 
 from time to time men taught anew the spiritual nature 
 of Christ's church, the necessity of regeneration in order 
 to membership in a church of Christ, salvation by grace, 
 and not by sacraments and penances. At times these 
 reactions promised to be successful, but they all in turn 
 failed to effect their object. Some failed by their own 
 inherent weakness, others were suppressed by force, and 
 in the end the Holy Catholic Church triumphed over 
 them all. It is instructive to consider the causes of the 
 partial success and the final failure of these attempts to 
 restore an evangelical Christianity. 
 
 The first of these protests against the corrupt teach- 
 ings and life that had come to be prevalent in the church, 
 even in the second century, was Montanism. Little is 
 positively known about the origin of the Montanists, 
 and even the existence of their reputed founder has been 
 denied. Montanus is said to have been a native of 
 Phrygia, a converted priest of Cybele, and began his 
 teachings about 150. He soon gathered about him many 
 followers, among whom were two women of rank, Maxi- 
 
 57 
 
58 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 milla and Priscilla (Prisca), who left their husbands to 
 become evangeHsts of the new sect, among whom they 
 were soon esteemed prophetesses. The new teaching 
 spread with great rapidity, and for a time met with 
 little opposition. We are more fortunate in regard to 
 the Montanists than in the case of many " heretical " 
 sects, for we are not dependent solely on their Catholic 
 opponents for a knowledge of their teachings; a large 
 part of the writings of Tertullian, their ablest adherent 
 and advocate, are also available for our instruction in 
 this matter. From these and other sources we gather 
 that the characteristic doctrines of Montanism were 
 three. 
 
 First, they clearly apprehended the fundamental truth 
 that a church of Christ should consist of the regenerate 
 only. As a result of the doctrine of sacramental grace, 
 large numbers were becoming members of the church 
 who, in the judgment of the most charitable, could not 
 be regarded as regenerate. This was true of the adults 
 baptized on profession of faith, and the case became 
 continually worse as the practice of infant baptism ex- 
 tended. Montanus advocated a return to the principle 
 of the New Testament — a spiritual church. His im- 
 mediate followers called themselves " spiritual " Chris- 
 tians, as distinguished from the " carnal " who were 
 found in the Catholic Church in great numbers. The 
 Spirit of God has not only regenerated every Christian, 
 they taught, but dwells in an especial manner in every 
 believer, even as Jesus promised the Paraclete (John 
 i6: 13). 
 
 So far the Montanists were strictly scriptural. But 
 they went on to teach that by virtue of this indwelling • 
 of the Paraclete the " spiritual " not only received an 
 illumination that enabled them to apprehend the truth 
 already revealed, but were given special revelations. The 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR A PURE CHURCH 59 
 
 gifts of prophecy and divine inspiration were therefore 
 perpetual in the church. The Montanistic prophets 
 spoke with tongues, with accompaniments of ecstasy and 
 trance. Montanus himself seems to have brought over 
 to his Christian faith not a few of his heathen notions. 
 Soothsaying and divination, accompanied by ecstasy and 
 trance, were characteristic of the Cybele cultus; and 
 though the Montanists rejected the soothsaying and div- 
 ination as Satanic, they believed the ecstasy and trance 
 to be marks of divine communications. The revelations 
 thus received by these prophets were held to be supple- 
 mentary, and in a sense superior, to Scripture. A spe- 
 cial sanctity was attributed to the sayings of Montanus, 
 Maximilla, and Prisca; but the few examples that have 
 been preserved seem in nowise remarkable. 
 
 This was perhaps the gravest departure of Montanism 
 from the model of New Testament Christianity on which 
 it professed to be formed. This single note shows a 
 complete separation in spirit between Montanists and 
 those whose fundamental belief is that in the canon of 
 Scripture we have a complete and authoritative revela- 
 tion from God, and that whatever contradicts the written 
 word is of necessity to be rejected as untrue. One may 
 trace a curious correspondence in many things between 
 this Montanistic teaching and the doctrine regarding the 
 " inner light " held by the Society of Friends ; and an 
 equally curious correspondence between the history of 
 Montanism and the rise in our own day of the sect 
 known as Irvingites, though they prefer to call them- 
 selves the Catholic Apostolic Church. It has often hap- 
 pened in the history of Christianity that a sect or party, 
 beginning with the object of restoring the doctrine and 
 practice of apostolic times, has fallen into fanaticism and 
 false teaching, because, like Montanism, it failed to keep 
 closely to the word of God, as the sole and sufficient rule 
 
60 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of faith and practice, not to be supplemented by pre- 
 tended new revelations any more than by the traditions 
 of men. The supreme authority of the New Testament 
 is the only safe principle for a reformation of religion; 
 if the history of the church teaches anything it teaches 
 that. 
 
 The second of the chief features in Montanism was 
 a belief in the speedy coming of Christ to reign with 
 his saints a thousand years. The fragmentary sayings 
 of their prophets that have come down to us, the writ- 
 ings of Tertullian, and the testimonies of the Catholic 
 writers against Montanism combine to make this certain. 
 This chiliastic doctrine was then, as often in the later 
 ages of Christianity, tinged with fanaticism. Wherever 
 it has been held by any considerable body of Christians, 
 it has been associated with grave errors and serious 
 disturbances. 
 
 This teaching regarding the second coming of Christ 
 doubtless gave a great stimulus to the ascetic spirit 
 among the Montanists, which was their third leading 
 characteristic. Their idea of a regenerate church nat- 
 urally necessitated a strict discipline, but by no means 
 discipline on an ascetic basis. The Scriptures teach the 
 need of self-control, temperance, subduing the lust of 
 the flesh, keeping the body under; but this victory is to 
 be won by spiritual, not by physical means. Keeping 
 the body under does not mean starving or macerating 
 the body. The New Testament honors the body, and 
 does not teach that it is the essential enemy of the spirit. 
 That is a heathen notion, probably derived from the 
 Manichaeans, or possibly from the Gnostics, who also 
 taught the essential evil of matter. 
 
 From some such source, certainly not from the Scrip- 
 tures, the Montanists obtained the notion that to mortify 
 the flesh is the road to heaven; and among them fasts 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR A PURE CHURCH 6l 
 
 and vigils were commended, if not commanded, as pro- 
 ductive of the bodily state most conducive to holiness. 
 In similar spirit they forbade the use of ornaments. 
 They exalted virginity above marriage, as a state of 
 greater purity, and forbade second marriage as equiva- 
 lent to adultery. Seven sins were regarded as peculiarly 
 deadly or mortal (pride, covetousness, lust, anger, glut- 
 tony, envy, sloth), which when committed after baptism, 
 might be forgiven by God, but should forever cut the 
 sinner off from communion with the church. 
 
 At first Montanism was rather a party than a sect, an 
 ecclesiola in ecclesia, and for a time it was tolerated by 
 the bishop of Rome and seemed likely to prevail in the 
 church. The Roman bishop finally rejected Montanism 
 as a heresy, and his already recognized primacy in the 
 West, at least, caused this decision to be generally ac- 
 cepted. Professor Moller ^ is simply just when he says : 
 
 Soon the conflict assumed such a form that the Montanists 
 were compelled to separate from the Catholic Church and form 
 an independent or schismatic church. But Montanism was, 
 nevertheless, not a new form of Christianity; nor were the 
 Montanists a new sect. On the contrary, Montanism was simply 
 a reaction of the old, the primitive church, against the obvious 
 tendency of the church of the day — to strike a bargain with the 
 world, and arrange herself comfortably in it. 
 
 Much nonsense has been written by historians about 
 Montanism, because they could not or would not grasp 
 this idea. The Montanists were in general rigidly or- 
 thodox, and no serious aberration from the Catholic 
 faith is alleged against them by their opponents. No 
 council formally condemned them, and they were treated 
 as schismatics rather than as heretics. For their schism 
 the Catholic Church was responsible; they did not go 
 out, they were driven out from the church. The church 
 
 ' Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, article " Montanism." 
 
62 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 at large resisted and rejected the reformation that Mon- 
 tanism attempted, but it adopted precisely those features 
 in Montanism that were least scriptural — namely, its 
 asceticism, and its belief that the written revelation ad- 
 mits of supplementary revelations. There is this differ- 
 ence, however, that Rome makes the Spirit dwell in the 
 church at large, not in each believer, so that his revela- 
 tions are made through the church, and especially 
 through its head, both church and pope being preserved 
 from error by this indwelling Spirit. 
 
 Of course the Montanists immersed — no other bap- 
 tism, so far as we know, was practised by anybody in 
 the second century. There is no evidence that they bap- 
 tized infants, and their principle of a regenerate church 
 would naturally require the baptism of believers only. 
 In their polity they seem not to have differed from the 
 Catholics; for, though Tertullian speaks as if the idea 
 of the priesthood of all believers was prevalent among 
 them, he also speaks of " bishop and clergy," and the 
 " ecclesiastical order." The only natural conclusion, 
 from his undoubtedly Montanistic writings, is that the 
 Montanist bishop was like the Catholic, an officer above 
 the presbyter in rank and authority. 
 
 Montanism declined rapidly after the fourth century, 
 though traces of it are found as late as the sixth. It 
 has seemed worth while to set down thus fully the ascer- 
 tained facts concerning this party, because many writers 
 have claimed that the Montanists were Baptists in all 
 but the name. Nothing has been said concerning them 
 except what is abundantly proved by their own litera- 
 ture; and every intelligent reader will be able to judge 
 for himself in what respects they held the views of 
 modern Baptists and how far they diverged from what 
 we hold to be the teachings of the Scriptures. 
 
 Another partial reformation of the church was at- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR A PURE CHURCH 63 
 
 tempted by the Novatians about the middle of the third 
 century. Novatian was the man whose clinic baptism 
 has already been described. He recovered from his sup- 
 posed mortal sickness and was ordained a presbyter by 
 Fabian, bishop of the church of Rome. When Fabian 
 died, in 250, there was a vacancy in the ofKce for about 
 a year. The terrible Decian persecution was then rag- 
 ing, and many Christians, overcome by the prospect of 
 death, denied the faith and sacrificed to the emperor. 
 The question soon arose, What should be done with these 
 faithless Christians (lapsi) when they afterward pro- 
 fessed penitence, and desired to be readmitted into the 
 church ? 
 
 Two views prevailed, and soon two rival parties in 
 the church advocated them. One party favored a strict 
 discipline; those who had lapsed had committed mortal 
 sin through their idolatry and should remain perpetually 
 excluded from the church — ^though even the stricter party 
 conceded that if one of the lapsed were sick unto death 
 he should be absolved. The other party held that per- 
 petual exclusion of the lapsed from the church and its 
 sacraments — in which alone salvation could be found — 
 was to anticipate the judgment of God. They, there- 
 fore would take a more merciful view of the infirmity 
 of those who had yielded under the stress of persecu- 
 tion, and would restore the lapsed to the communion of 
 the church, after a public confession and a period of 
 probation. 
 
 During the vacancy in the Roman episcopate, No- 
 vatian was the leading man in the church, and strongly 
 inclined toward the stricter discipline. The laxer party 
 seem, however, to have been in the majority, and in 251 
 they elected Cornelius as bishop. His election appears 
 to have been entirely regular, but the stricter party would 
 not acknowledge him, and chose Novatian, who was 
 
64 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 consecrated by three obscure Italian bishops. A S)mod 
 held at Rome, probably in October, 257, excommunicated 
 him and his followers. Thereafter they constituted a 
 separate sect, called by their opponents Novatians, but 
 themselves preferring the title of Cathari (the pure). 
 The Novatians were the earliest Anabaptists ; refusing to 
 recognize as valid the ministry and sacraments of their 
 opponents, and claiming to be the true church, they were 
 logically compelled to rebaptize all who came to them 
 from the Catholic Church. The party gained great 
 strength in Asia Minor, where many Montanists joined 
 it, and in spite of persecution, the Novatians survived 
 to the sixth or seventh century. In this case, as generally, 
 persecution stimulated what it would have destroyed. 
 
 The Donatist party in Africa, like the Novatians in 
 Rome, seemed to originate in a mere squabble over an 
 office. Two parties were formed in the church of 
 Carthage regarding the treatment of those who had sur- 
 rendered the sacred books to be burned during the Dio- 
 cletian persecution (303-311). These traditores, as they 
 were called, incurred great odium. When Caecilian was 
 elected bishop of Carthage in 311, it was as the repre- 
 sentative of those who favored the readmission of 
 traditores to the church on easy terms. He was conse- 
 crated bishop by Felix of Aptunga, instead of Secundas 
 of Tigisis, the primate of Numidia. This was irregular, 
 yet not in itself invalid; but the stricter party refused 
 to recognize Caecilian, on the ground that Felix was a 
 traditor, and even Caecilian himself was not above sus- 
 picion on this score. The real issue at stake was not 
 who should be bishop of Carthage, but what should be 
 the character of that church, and of the Christian 
 churches of Africa generally. Dr. Schaff says of the 
 controversy, writing with a candor and insight not 
 common among church historians: 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR A PURE CHURCH 65 
 
 The Donatist controversy was a conflict between separatism 
 and Catholicism; between ecclesiastical purism and ecclesiastical 
 eclecticism ; between the idea of the church as an exclusive com- 
 munity of regenerate saints and the idea of the church as the 
 general Christendom of State and people. It revolved around 
 the doctrine of the essence of the Christian church, and, in par- 
 ticular, of the predicate of holiness. . . The Donatists . . . 
 laid chief stress on the predicate of the subjective holiness or 
 personal worthiness of the several members, and made the catho- 
 licity of the church and the efficacy of the sacraments dependent 
 upon that. The true church, therefore, is not so much a school 
 of holiness, as a society of those who are already holy; or at 
 least of those who appear so ; for that there are hypocrites, not 
 even the Donatists could deny, and as Uttle could they in earnest 
 claim infallibility in their own discernment of men. By the tol- 
 eration of those who are openly sinful, the church loses her 
 holiness, and ceases to be a church.' 
 
 Unfortunately, the Donatists made one capital error: 
 they appealed to the civil power to decide the question 
 that was in its essence spiritual. Donatus himself, who 
 was chosen bishop of Carthage by the stricter party in 
 315, seems to have been opposed from the first to the 
 intermeddling of the emperor with religious questions, 
 but his party was not controlled by him in this matter. 
 Constantine referred the dispute first to a select com- 
 mittee of bishops, then to the synod of Aries, and finally 
 decided the question himself on appeal. All these de- 
 cisions were against the Donatists; and after the case 
 had irrevocably gone against them, they came out as 
 stanch defenders of religious liberty, and denied the 
 right of the civil power to meddle in matters of faith 
 and discipline. Their disinterestedness in taking this 
 stand would have been less open to suspicion if they had 
 professed it in the first instance and abstained from all 
 appeals to the imperial power against their opponents. 
 One who appeals to a court for redress is estopped in 
 
 1 " History of the Christian Church," Vol. III., p. 36s. 
 S 
 
66 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 honor, as well as in law, from afterward denying its 
 jurisdiction. 
 
 Like the Novatians, the Donatists were Anabaptists, 
 but their rebaptizing seems to have been based on a 
 false idea, namely, that in baptism the chief thing is 
 not the qualifications of the baptized, but those of the 
 baptizer. The Donatists and Novatians both rebaptized 
 those who came to them from the Catholic Church, not 
 because they did not believe these persons regenerate 
 when baptized, but because they denied the " orders " of 
 the Catholic clergy. These ministers had been ordained 
 by traditores, by bishops who were corrupt; they were 
 members of a church that had apostatized from the pure 
 faith, and therefore had no valid ministry or sacra- 
 ments; and for this reason their baptism could not be 
 accepted. 
 
 Neither of these attempted reformations was suf- 
 ficiently radical. Novatians and Donatists seem to have 
 shared the errors of the Catholic Church regarding sac- 
 ramental grace ; their episcopacy cannot be distinguished 
 from that of the Catholic Church, and was certainly far 
 from the simplicity of apostolic order. The Donatists, 
 at any rate, seem to have practised infant baptism; on 
 any other supposition the arguments of Augustine, in 
 refutation of their errors, are unintelligible. Both sects 
 grasped the great truth of the essentially spiritual nature 
 of the church, the necessity of regeneration and a godly 
 life to membership in it; but they failed to follow this 
 truth to its logical implications and to return to the New 
 Testament faith and practice in all things. 
 
 Many writers have treated this period as if the truth 
 were only to be found with the so-called heretics, as- 
 suming that the Catholic Church must necessarily be 
 always in the wrong. But such is by no means the case ; 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR A PURE CHURCH 6^ 
 
 we are, on the contrary, often compelled to admit that 
 as between the heretical sects and the Catholic Church 
 the truth was with the latter. Wrong doctrine and 
 practice were by no means uniformly triumphant. This 
 was especially evident in the notable controversies re- 
 garding the doctrine of the Person of Christ. Corrupt 
 as Christianity was fast becoming, it had kept close to the 
 Scripture in the fundamentals of Christian theology until 
 the beginning of the fourth century. Then Arius, a 
 presbyter, of Alexandria, taught a doctrine, the germs 
 of which may be found in the teachings of his pre- 
 decessors (notably, Origen), but was first fully elab- 
 orated by his logical and acute mind. His teaching was 
 that the Father alone is God, unbegotten, unchangeable. 
 The Son is the first of created beings, who existed be- 
 fore the worlds were and created them ; he is the Logos, 
 the perfect image of God, and may be called God in a 
 sense; but he is not eternal, for he had a beginning, 
 and is not of the same substance as the Father. Arius 
 was an adroit, fascinating man, and propagated his doc- 
 trine industriously. It obtained great currency in Pal- 
 estine and Nicomedia, and spread to all parts of the 
 empire, threatening to displace the orthodox faith. 
 
 This spread was accompanied by much bitter contro- 
 versy, and this fact moved Constantine to interfere. He 
 was anxious, for political reasons, to preserve the peace 
 and unity of the church, otherwise its value to him as an 
 instrument of governing was gone. He therefore sum- 
 moned a council of the bishops of the church, who, to the 
 number of more than 300, assembled at Nicsea in 325. 
 When he accepted Christianity, he made it the religion — 
 or, at least, a religion — of the State. The emperor was 
 the Pontifex Maximus of the old religion, its official head 
 and high priest; and though but a layman in the new 
 faith, he nevertheless aspired to a similar position of 
 
68 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 authority. Constantine, though at that time not even 
 baptized, presided in his robes of State at the council of 
 Nice, took an influential part in its business and greatly 
 influenced if he did not practically dictate its findings. 
 This council decided against the Arians and adopted the 
 orthodox creed that, with some later changes, still bears 
 its name. 
 
 Under Julian the apostate, orthodoxy suffered a re- 
 verse and Arianism again seemed about to triumph ; but 
 when Theodosius I. became emperor — he having been 
 trained under Nicene influences — he used all his power, 
 and successfully, to suppress the heresy. The conflict 
 was practically ended with the council of Constantinople 
 (381), which readopted the Nicene creed, and from that 
 time Arianism gradually disappears as a dangerous 
 heresy, though it often reappeared in later ages. For 
 a time, indeed, a form of semi-Arianism lingered in the 
 church. The orthodox maintained that the Son is of the 
 same substance with the Father (homo-ousion) ; the Ari- 
 ans that he is of a different substance (hetero-ousion) ; 
 the semi-Arians that he is of a like substance (homoi- 
 ousion). Like most compromises, semi-Arianism could 
 not be permanently acceptable to either party; to the 
 orthodox it seemed as objectionable as Arianism itself, 
 while to the Arians, though they were at first willing to 
 accept it as a compromise (indeed, it came near getting 
 into the Nicene creed), it seemed to concede too much 
 to orthodoxy. 
 
 Athanasius, the leader of the orthodox party, in its 
 struggle against Arianism, was born in Alexandria about 
 298, received a good education and entered the min- 
 istry. At the time of the council of Nice he was not 
 more than twenty-seven years of age, and only an arch- 
 deacon, but he was one of the most prominent of the 
 orthodox party and had a large share in the definition 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR A PURE CHURCH 69 
 
 of the creed adopted. A similar and even more remark- 
 able case of theological precocity is that of Calvin, who 
 published his immortal " Institutes " at the age of twenty- 
 seven. In June, 328, Athanasius was chosen bishop of 
 Alexandria, but was fiercely opposed from the first by 
 the party of Arius. Three times they succeeded in driv- 
 ing him from the city, twice by order of the emperor 
 and once by violence. At one time it seemed a case of 
 Athanasius contra mundum — this one man against the 
 world; but with the victory of the orthodox party, he 
 was suffered to return to Alexandria and there to pass 
 his remaining days. He died in May, 373, before the 
 council of Constantinople registered the final triumph of 
 the orthodox faith. 
 
 Athanasius saw clearly that a true doctrine of God 
 was the only foundation for the absoluteness of Chris- 
 tianity. He defended Christianity as truly divine, the 
 highest revelation, an absolute and final revelation ; clearly 
 seeing that, if the Arian doctrine were true, Christianity 
 could be merely relatively true, and might be superseded 
 by a more perfect revelation, or even by a higher human 
 philosophy. He rightly contended, therefore, that the 
 religion of Christ would be empty and meaningless if 
 he who is set forth in the Scriptures as the one who 
 unites God and man in real unity of being is not the 
 absolute God, but merely the first of created beings. 
 There could be no mediation between God and man by 
 such a being, and the heart is therefore taken out of 
 Christianity by Arianism. Athanasius was a doughty 
 champion of the truth. His exegesis of Scripture is 
 often faulty, but his dialectical skill was great, and in his 
 extant writings he shows the philosophic contradictions 
 and absurdities of the Arian system in a masterly way. 
 Selections from these writings have been translated into 
 English, and may be found in Vol. IV. of the " Nicene 
 
70 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 and Post-Nicene Fathers " (second series). The so-called 
 Athanasian creed, though long confidently attributed to 
 him, is certainly not his composition, and cannot be 
 positively traced to an earlier period than the eighth 
 century. This creed was expunged from the prayer- 
 book of the Episcopal Church in the United States in 
 1785, but it is still required to be said or sung thirteen 
 times a year in every parish of the Church of England. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ECLIPSE OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 FROM the close of the apostolic era, even beginning 
 in the days of the apostles, we have seen two 
 opposing tendencies struggling for the mastery in the 
 churches of Christ, which may be briefly described as the 
 spiritual and the worldly. Jesus and his apostles taught 
 salvation by faith, but almost immediately some Chris- 
 tians taught salvation by works. According to the former 
 teaching, baptism and the Lord's Supper were ordinances 
 to be observed by those regenerated by the Spirit of God ; 
 according to the other teaching baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper were sacraments, channels of divine grace, by 
 which men were made regenerate and confirmed in holi- 
 ness. The administration of such sacraments demanded 
 a priesthood. So step by step, and by an inevitable 
 process of evolution, the doctrine of salvation by works 
 produced what we know to-day as the Roman Catholic 
 Church, at its head an infallible pope, outside of which 
 church salvation is assured to none. Against this process 
 of development various bodies of Christians, as we have 
 seen, contended in vain during the first four centuries. 
 There were similar contentions throughout the process. 
 The truth was never quite crushed to earth; there were 
 always parties or sects, bitterly hated and persecuted by 
 Catholics, that held with more or less consistency to the 
 evangelical religion. These comparatively pure survivals 
 are found latest in the two extreme portions of the then 
 civilized Europe, in Britain and in Bulgaria. 
 Rome's most audacious theft was when she seized 
 
 71 
 
72 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 bodily the Apostle Peter and made him the putative head 
 and founder of her system; but next to that brazen act 
 stands her effrontery when she " annexed " the great mis- 
 sionary preacher of Ireland and enrolled him among her 
 " saints." In order to conceal the true character of the 
 transaction, Romanists have published lying biographies 
 of Patrick without number, until the real man has been 
 quite forgotten. Modern research has, however, brought 
 the truth to light once more. 
 
 Patrick was born about 360, probably near what is now 
 Dumbarton, Scotland. His father was a deacon and a 
 Roman civil officer. At the age of sixteen he was carried 
 away captive and sold into slavery in Ireland. Six years 
 after he escaped, and in later life he was moved to become 
 a Christian missionary to the people among whom he had 
 lived as a slave. These facts, and all other trustworthy 
 information about Patrick, we learn from two of his writ- 
 ings that have survived, his " Confession " or " Epistle to 
 the Irish," and an " Epistle to Coroticus." The date of 
 his death is as uncertain as that of his birth, but tradition 
 ascribes to him extreme old age. 
 
 From these writings of Patrick we learn that his teach- 
 ing and practice were, in many particulars at least, evan- 
 gelical. The testimony is ample that he baptized believ- 
 ers only. For example, he writes : " So that even after 
 my death I may leave as legacies to my brethren, and to 
 my sons whom I have baptized in the Lord, so many 
 thousand men." " Perhaps, since I have baptized so many 
 thousand men, I might have expected half a screpall [a 
 coin worth six cents] from some of them; tell it to me 
 and I will restore it to you." Not only is there no men- 
 tion of infants, but he uniformly speaks of "men," 
 " handmaidens of Christ," " women," and " baptized be- 
 lievers." It is inconceivable that he should not have 
 added " infants " had he baptized such. 
 
THE ECLIPSE OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY 73 
 
 Again, from all that we can learn, Patrick's baptism 
 was that of apostolic times, which was still general 
 throughout Europe, immersion. He does not speak ex- 
 plicitly on this point in his own writings, but the earliest 
 accounts of his labors agree that his converts were bap- 
 tized in fountains, wells, and streams. His baptism prob- 
 ably differed from the apostolic in being trine immersion, 
 since that was the form practised in the ancient British 
 church, and in practically the whole Christian world in 
 his day. 
 
 Patrick also pays great reverence to Scripture as the 
 supreme authority in religion. He never appeals to the 
 authority of church, or council, or prelate, or creed, but 
 to the word of God ; and in his extant writings, brief as 
 they are, no fewer than one hundred and thirteen passages 
 of Scripture are referred to or quoted. There is no trace 
 in his letters of purgatory, mariolatry, or submission to 
 the authority of pope. He did not oppose these things, 
 he was simply ignorant of them, it would appear, though 
 in some parts of the church they were fast gaining 
 ground. 
 
 The churches founded by Patrick, and those existing 
 in other parts of Britain, were not according to apostolic 
 pattern in some things. Patrick was himself a bishop, 
 and the three orders of the ministry seem to have been 
 already developed in the British churches of his day. 
 Though celibacy of the clergy was not required, there 
 was a strain of asceticism and monasticism in these 
 churches that became very pronounced in succeeding ages. 
 It is probable that few, if any, of these monasteries came 
 into existence during Patrick's life, and in their earlier 
 stages they were valuable educational and missionary 
 centers, not what they afterwards became. 
 
 The theology of these churches, up to the ninth century, 
 continued to be remarkably sound and scriptural. They 
 
74 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 taught original sin and the impossibility of salvation by 
 human merits or effort, Christ alone being the sinner's 
 righteousness. They taught the vicarious atonement, the 
 agency of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of men, 
 justification by faith, the intercession of Christ alone for 
 the saints, and held firmly to the administration of the 
 Lord's Supper in both kinds. Sacramentalism began 
 to make inroads soon after Patrick's time, however, for 
 we find such phrases as " a sacrificial mystery," " the holy 
 Eucharist," " the mysteries of the sacred Eucharist " and 
 the like used to describe the Supper. This is a long way 
 short of the mass ; and so late as the ninth century John 
 Scotus Erigena maintained that the bread and wine are 
 no more than the symbols of the absent body and blood 
 of Christ. These cjjarches too knew nothing of the doc- 
 trine of purgatory, but from Patrick onward for centuries 
 taught that the souls of the saints immediately after death 
 enter paradise and are with God. 
 
 The progress from the simplicity of the gospel to the 
 corruptions of Romanism was slower in Ireland and 
 Britain than in any other part of Europe. Primitive 
 doctrine and practice survived there, not in absolute but 
 in relative purity, long after they had vanished from the 
 continent. The inevitable end came at last, and these 
 churches also became Romanized; but it was not until 
 the twelfth century that the papacy succeeded in estab- 
 lishing, with tolerable completeness, its jurisdiction over 
 the churches of Great Britain and Ireland.* 
 
 In the East, as well as in the West, the corrupted form 
 of Christianity did not become supreme without a strenu- 
 ous and long-continued resistance on the part of a more 
 evangelical religion. This was especially true of the 
 
 1 For a fuller discussion of Patrick and his work see " Ancient British 
 and Irish Churches," Rev. William Cathcart, D. D. Philadelphia, 1894. 
 Also, Bury, " Life of St. Patrick and his Place in History." New York, 
 1905. 
 
THE ECLIPSE OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY 75 
 
 region now known as Bulgaria. From the fourth century 
 onward we find a group of sects in various parts of 
 Europe, having a practical continuity of belief, if not a 
 demonstrable historic connection. They are variously 
 known as Paulicians, Cathari, Albigenses, Bogomils, and 
 by half a score of other names. These sects have one 
 fundamental doctrine in common, derived from the Mani- 
 chseans. Manichseism is not properly a form of Christi- 
 anity, but a distinct religion, as distinct as Mohammedan- 
 ism. It originated in Persia, about A. D. 250, in the teach- 
 ings of Mani. Its distinctive feature is a theodicy, rather 
 than a theology, an explanation of the moral phenomena 
 of the universe by the hypothesis of the eternal existence 
 of two mutually exclusive principles or forces, one good, 
 and the other evil. These forces, conceived as personal, 
 and corresponding to the God and Satan of the Christian 
 theology, are in everlasting conflict, and neither can ever 
 overcome the other. In Manichaeism the good spirit was 
 represented as the creator of the world, but his work was 
 vitiated by the agency of the evil spirit, which introduced 
 sin and death. 
 
 The Paulicians, accepting this dualistic system, taught 
 that the world is the creation of the evil spirit, not of the 
 good. Manichaeism, as it advanced from Persia through 
 the Roman empire, came into contact with Christianity, 
 and borrowed from it some of the latter's features that 
 lent themselves most easily to such grafting, but it was 
 essentially an alien religion, and not a Christian heresy. 
 
 The Bogomils are a typical form of this party, more 
 Christian and less Manichsean than some others, and es- 
 pecially interesting because they survived all persecutions 
 down to the Reformation period. Various explanations 
 have been given of the name ; some say it means " friends 
 of God"; others trace the party to a Bulgarian bishop 
 named Bogomil. who lived about the middle of the tenth 
 
76 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 century. What is certain is that the thing is older than 
 the name ; that the party or denomination called Bogomils 
 existed long before this title was given to them. They 
 represented through the medieval period, as compared 
 with Rome, the purer apostolic faith and practice, though 
 mixed with some grotesque notions and a few serious 
 errors. 
 
 It ought always to be borne in mind, however, that for 
 the larger part of our information regarding those stig- 
 matized as heretics we are indebted, not to their own 
 writings, but to the works of their opponents. Only the 
 titles remain of the bulk of heretical writings, and of the 
 rest we have, for the most part, only such quotations as 
 prejudiced opponents have chosen to make. That these 
 quotations fairly represent the originals would be too 
 much to assume. With respect to the Bogomils, our 
 knowledge is exclusively gained from their bitter enemies 
 and persecutors. All such testimony is to be received 
 with suspicion, and should be scrupulously weighed and 
 sifted before we accept it. Where these prejudiced op- 
 ponents did not knowingly misstate the beliefs of " here- 
 tics," they often quite misunderstood them, viewing these 
 beliefs as they did through the distorting lenses of Roman 
 or Greek Catholicism. 
 
 We get our chief information about Bogomil doctrine 
 from the writings of one Euthymius, a Byzantine monk 
 who died in 1118, who wrote a learned refutation of these 
 and other "heresies" of his time. His account is gen- 
 erally accepted by historians as substantially correct — a 
 most uncritical conclusion. The Bogomil theology as set 
 forth by Euthymius was a fantastic travesty of the gospel, 
 with marked Manichzean elements. God had two sons, 
 the elder of whom, called Satanael, was chief among the 
 hosts of heaven and created the material universe. In 
 consequence of his ambition and rebellion he was driven 
 
THE ECLIPSE OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY "JJ 
 
 from heaven with his supporters among the angelic hosts. 
 Then God bestowed power on his younger son, Jesus, 
 who breathed the breath of life into man and he became 
 a living soul. Thenceforth there was constant conflict be- 
 tween Satanael and Jesus, but the former met with signal 
 defeat in the resurrection of Jesus, and is destined ulti- 
 mately to complete overthrow. There are also traces of 
 the docetic heresy in the theology of the Bogomils ; they 
 were said to deny that Jesus took real flesh upon himself, 
 but believed his body to be spiritual. 
 
 Euthymius charges the Bogomils with rejecting pretty 
 much everything believed by other Christians. They did 
 not accept the Mosaic wrtings as part of the word of 
 God, though they did accept the Psalms and New Testa- 
 ment; they rejected water-baptism, like the modern 
 Quakers ; they declared the Lord's Supper to be the sacri- 
 fice of demons, and would have none of it ; they thought 
 churches the dwelling-places of demons, and the worship 
 of the images in them to be mere idolatry ; the fathers of 
 the church they declared to be the false prophets against 
 whom Jesus gave warning ; they forbade marriage and the 
 eating of flesh, and fasted thrice a week. 
 
 Some of these charges clearly appear to be misap- 
 prehensions. Trine-immersion, the doctrine of baptismal 
 regeneration and infant baptism, were taught by the 
 Catholic Church. Denial of these may have been taken 
 by prejudiced prelates to be denial of baptism itself. 
 There is evidence that the Bogomils practised the single 
 immersion of adult believers. No doubt they did call the 
 mass "the sacrifice of demons," or something to that 
 effect ; but only to a bigoted and ignorant Catholic would 
 that imply rejection of the Lord's Supper, scripturally 
 celebrated. 
 
 The chief peculiarity of the Bogomils is said to have 
 been the division of their members into two classes : the 
 
78 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 credentes, or believers, and the perfecti, or pure ones — z 
 division characteristic of Manichsean sects generally, as 
 well as corresponding to the " novices " and " adepts " 
 of many orders and societies. Before admission among 
 the perfecti one must have passed a period of probation 
 and received the consolamentum, or rite of initiation, by 
 the laying on of hands. The perfecti were celibates — 
 women were admitted to this rank — and lived an ascetic 
 life, devoting themselves to the preaching of the gospel 
 and charitable works. It does not appear that mar- 
 riage was forbdden to the credentes. The perfecti re- 
 ceived the title of " elders," and were preachers to and 
 pastors of the congregations, as well as missionaries and 
 evangelists. There was a total absence of a hierarchy 
 among them. It is charged against them that they held 
 the perfecti to be above the law and incapable of sin — 
 the same error of antinomianism into which some 
 Calvinists, Baptists among them, fell later. 
 
 The most prominent man among the Bogomils toward 
 the close of the eleventh century was a venerable phy- 
 sician named Basil. He is sometimes described as their 
 " bishop " ; he was really one of the " elders " or perfecti, 
 and his preeminence was due to his learning and char- 
 acter, not to his official rank. The emperor Alexander 
 Comnenus I., was a bitter persecutor. He did not hesi- 
 tate to lay a trap for Basil by inviting him to the imperial 
 table and cabinet, and by pretending a deep interest in 
 the Bogomil's views drew from his victim a full expo- 
 sition of them. A scribe hidden behind tapestries took 
 it all down, and then the perfidious emperor arrested his 
 venerable guest and put him in prison. Basil was con- 
 demned and burned at the stake, to the last steadfast in 
 his faith and meeting his cruel death with unfaltering 
 trust in Christ. No charge was or could be brought 
 against him, but his " heresy." To the elevation of his 
 
THE ECLIPSE OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY 79 
 
 character and his life of good works even the daughter 
 of the emperor, who recorded her father's shame, bore 
 unwilling witness. We learn from her also that many 
 families of the highest rank had embraced the Bogomil 
 doctrines. At the height of their prosperity the cre- 
 dentes are said to have numbered two millions, and the 
 perfecti perhaps four thousand. 
 
 Through the early medieval times, therefore, down 
 to the eleventh century, we find evangelical Christianity 
 suppressed with virtual completeness throughout Europe, 
 Even those forms of Christianity that may, in comparison 
 with Rome, be called evangelical are far from bearing 
 a close resemblance to the doctrine and practice of the 
 apostles. No other conclusion can be drawn from a 
 careful and impartial survey of all the evidence. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 
 
 WHEN Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII., in 
 the eleventh century, the papacy reached a 
 height of pretensions and power of which the earlier 
 pontiffs had scarcely dreamed. His predecessors had 
 claimed supremacy in the church; it remained for him 
 to claim universal supremacy, not merely the guidance 
 of all believers in spiritual affairs, but a moral super- 
 intendence of the nations. Temporal interests are con- 
 fessedly inferior to spiritual; in claiming spiritual su- 
 premacy, therefore, Hildebrand held that supremacy in 
 temporal affairs was included. Adopting the principles 
 of feudalism, the papacy henceforth declared that all 
 princes and monarchs held their dominions as feofs of 
 the church. This theory the papacy has never since dis- 
 claimed. It is a right in abeyance, and it will be revived 
 and reasserted whenever in the future a pope judges 
 himself to be able to enforce the claim. Claims so ex- 
 travagant produced revolts, both political and religious; 
 some of these revolts partook of both characters to such 
 an extent that it is difficult to class them. They failed, 
 it is true, for the times were not yet ripe for thorough 
 reformation of the Church or State, but they were fore- 
 gleams of the dawn that was to break over Europe in the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 About the year 1130 a young priest began to attract 
 
 much attention by his preaching in Brescia, one of the 
 
 free cities of Northern Italy, and soon all Lombardy was 
 
 stirred. He was a native of that city, and we first hear 
 
 8a 
 
u 
 
 o 
 •-) 
 O 
 
Statue of Arnold 
 
FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 8l 
 
 of him as a lector in the church there. Then he studied 
 in Paris under Abelard, who was already more than 
 suspected of heresy, and not without reason. The Ro- 
 man Church was not unjust, from its own point of 
 view, in its subsequent condemnation of Abelard; for, 
 whether he were himself in strictness a heretic, he was 
 certainly the cause of heresy in others. The most seri- 
 ous revolts of the twelfth century against the church 
 are directly traceable to his lecture room. 
 
 Abelard's instructions had opened Arnold's eyes, 
 broadened his mind, and sent him to the Scriptures. The 
 result was a deepening of his spiritual life, and disgust 
 with the corrupt state of the church in Italy. He became 
 a reformer, and with fiery eloquence exhorted men to re- 
 pent and live according to the precepts of Christ. He 
 boldly attacked and unsparingly denounced the vices of 
 the clergy, their luxury and debauchery. From study of 
 the Scriptures he had imbibed the notion of a holy and 
 pure church, and he labored incessantly to restore the 
 church as he found it to the pattern of apostolic times. 
 This was the foundation of all his teachings — the ne- 
 cessity of a spiritual church, composed of true believers 
 living in daily conformity to the teachings of Christ. 
 
 This was closely coupled with another principle, which, 
 as we have seen, is a necessary corollary from this funda- 
 mental teaching of the Scriptures: the complete separa- 
 tion of church and State. The root of the evils that 
 beset the Church Arnold found in its wealth; and its 
 wealth was the result of an unholy alliance with the civil 
 power. Therefore he demanded that the clergy of his 
 day should imitate the apostles — renounce their worldly 
 possessions and privileges, give up secular business, and 
 set all men an example of holy living and apostolic sim- 
 plicity. He was himself self-denying to the verge of 
 asceticism, living a life of voluntary poverty and celibacy. 
 
82 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 The clergy, he taught, should not depend on tithes, but 
 accept for their support the voluntary offerings of their 
 people; and he conformed to his own teaching. 
 
 It does not appear that Arnold attacked directly either 
 the organization or the doctrine of the church, at least, 
 during this period of his life. His mind was severely 
 practical. Abelard had given him a strong spiritual im- 
 pulse, without imparting to his pupil any of his own 
 genius for speculation. Arnold was no theologian, but 
 a man full of zeal for a reformation of the church in 
 its life, rather than in its doctrine and organization. Ac- 
 cordingly he was not charged with heresy, but with being 
 a disturber of the church. His bishop laid the matter be- 
 fore the Second Lateran council in 1139, and he was con- 
 demned, banished from Brescia, and forbidden to preach. 
 He is said to have bound himself by an oath to obey, 
 but it seems certain that the terms were limited, for he 
 is not charged with breaking it in what he afterward did. 
 
 Banished from Brescia, Arnold went to France and 
 joined his teacher, Abelard, then at the height of his con- 
 troversy with St. Bernard. He zealously defended Abe- 
 lard, and shared with him the condemnation of the synod 
 of Sens, in 1140. His stay in France was but a few 
 months; he then found refuge in Switzerland, but Ber- 
 nard pursued him from place to place with the implacable 
 hatred of the religious zealot who is also a good man. 
 
 Arnold went to Rome after the death of Pope Inno- 
 cent II., to whom (according to Bernard) he had sworn 
 submission, and about 1145 began to preach there. His 
 views had meanwhile undergone a great alteration. He 
 still preached reform, but now it was a political reform, 
 not a spiritual. This may have been, in part, because 
 he found that the Romans had no afiSnity for his spiritual 
 teachings ; but there was a change in his whole spirit and 
 aim that can only partially be explained in this way. 
 
FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 83 
 
 In his view the State should be, not the empire at that 
 time regarded as the ideal earthly government, but a pure 
 republican democracy. Every city, he taught, should 
 constitute an independent State, in whose government no 
 bishop ought to have the right to interfere; the church 
 should not own any secular dominion, and priests should 
 be excluded from every temporal authority. This teach- 
 ing differed totally from the then prevailing notion of a 
 universal sacerdotium and imperium, the one ruling 
 spiritual affairs, the other temporal, the civil ruler receiv- 
 ing his authority from the spiritual, and in turn protecting 
 the latter with his sword and enforcing its decrees. 
 
 Under the leadership of Arnold the Roman people de- 
 nied the pope's supremacy in temporal affairs, and com- 
 pelled him to withdraw from the city. The people, and 
 Arnold himself, cherished wild dreams of the restoration 
 of ancient splendor and power, when the Roman Senate 
 and people should again rule the world. Attempts were 
 made to realize this dream of a new republic, but it was 
 soon rudely shattered. Pope Adrian IV., from his exile 
 at Orvieto, aimed a blow at Arnold and his nascent re- 
 public that proved fatal — he laid the interdict on the city 
 and put the leader under the ban. The blow was all the 
 more effective in that nobody could charge the pope with 
 exceeding his spiritual functions. It is hard for us to 
 realize in this day what the interdict meant to a people 
 who still believed that salvation was assured only in the 
 church, by means of sacraments administered by a duly 
 qualified priesthood. The doors of all churches were 
 closed ; no mass was said ; the living could not be joined 
 in marriage or shriven of their sins; the dead could be 
 buried only as one would bury a dog, with no priest to 
 say a prayer for him. In addition, when Arnold was 
 put under the ban, anybody who gave him shelter or food 
 thereby made himself liable to the severest censures of the 
 
84 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 church. The interdict was too much for human nature 
 to endure. By this terrible weapon, when all other 
 means failed them, the medieval popes again and again 
 brought the proudest monarchs of Europe to their knees, 
 to sue for pardon and absolution. 
 
 When the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was per- 
 suaded by the pope to undertake his cause and entered 
 Italy, he found it easy to procure Arnold's expulsion 
 from Rome. The fallen leader received protection for a 
 time among the nobility, but he was finally delivered up 
 to the pope, and the prefect of Rome hanged him, 
 burned his body and scattered the ashes in the Tiber. 
 Thus perished one of Italy's noblest martyrs, and with 
 his death ended the first struggle for reform of the 
 church. 
 
 Arnold has been claimed as a Baptist; but he is also 
 claimed by others as belonging to them — indeed, two of 
 his latest biographers are Roman Catholics, who hold 
 that he taught nothing inconsistent with the Catholic doc- 
 trine of his day, and was never condemned as a heretic. 
 His supposed affinity with Baptists has little evidence in 
 its favor save the statement made by Otto of Freisingen, 
 a contemporary historian, " He is said to have had un- 
 sound notions {non sane dicitur sensisse) regarding the 
 sacrament of the altar and the baptism of children." 
 This is given as a report merely; Bishop Otto, who says 
 everything unfavorable about Arnold that he can de- 
 vise, does not venture to state this positively. The only 
 other scrap of evidence that seems to connect him with 
 Baptists is the statement, apparently handed on from 
 writer to writer without re-investigation, that he was 
 condemned by the Lateran Council for his rejection of 
 infant baptism. The Second Lateran Council (1139) 
 condemned all who rejected " the sacrament of the body 
 and blood of the Lord, the baptism of children, priest- 
 
FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 8$ 
 
 hood and other ecclesiastical orders, and the bonds of 
 lawful marriage," but nobody is mentioned by name. 
 Some historians infer that this was a condemnation of 
 Arnold, but that begs the very question at issue, namely, 
 how many and which of these errors he taught. 
 
 Nobody has summed up the work of Arnold, and in- 
 dicated its significance, with more eloquence and insight 
 than Bishop Hurst: 
 
 To study the career of Arnold and its unhappy end one 
 would conclude that it was simply a revolutionary episode in the 
 turbulent age in which he lived. But we must take a broader 
 view. He greatly weakened the confidence of the people in the 
 strength of the papacy. He proved that it was possible for one 
 man, endowed with energy, to overthrow, at least for a time, the 
 temporal sovereigrnty of popes, introduce a new political hfe in 
 Rome itself, and mass the people to support his views. His most 
 bitter enemies could not find any flaw in his moral character. 
 His purity of life was in perfect harmony with the gospel which 
 he preached. His personal worth, and the temporary changes 
 which he wrought, were the great forces which continued to 
 work long after his martyrdom. In every later effort for re- 
 form, and even in the Reformation in Germany and other coun- 
 tries, the name of Arnold of Brescia was a mighty factor in aid- 
 ing towards the breaking of the old bonds. Even in these latest 
 times it has its historical value, for in the struggle of the Prot-- 
 estantism of New Italy for mastery over the thought of the 
 people, that name is a comfort to all who are endeavoring tc 
 bring in the new and better day, from the Alps down to Sicily.' 
 
 It was three centuries before Italy saw another serious 
 attempt to purify the church, and in the meantime the 
 papacy had lost much of its political power and descended 
 to the lowest depths of degradation. All that ancient 
 historians have related of the horrible crimes of Nero 
 and other emperors of Rome, and much besides, may 
 be truthfully told of Alexander VI., the father of Caesar 
 and Lucretia Borgia. His wickedness was colossal, sim» 
 
 ' " Short History of the Christian Church," p. 152. 
 
86 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 ony and murder being the least of his sins, and the worst 
 unnamable. Under him and his immediate predecessors 
 the corruption of the church became frightful; if there 
 were not the fullest proof of the facts they would be 
 incredible. A man who had murdered his two daughters 
 ■svas duly condemned to death, but on the very morning of 
 his execution was set at liberty for the payment of eight 
 hundred ducats. A high official of the papal court calmly 
 remarked : " God willeth not the death of a sinner, but 
 that he shall pay and live." In the monasteries, what 
 could be expected but notorious and almost universal un- 
 faithfulness to their vows of poverty and chastity? 
 Among the secular clergy the case was little better. Of 
 course there were devout and faithful souls in the midst 
 of all this wickedness, as there have been in every age 
 of the church, but the fifteenth century was a sink of 
 corruption. The moral tone of Christendom was never 
 lower. The rulers were despotic, cruel, oppressive; the 
 people were brutally selfish; both were dissolute and 
 knavish. Such is the picture of the times drawn by con- 
 temporary writers, loyal sons of the church. Nothing 
 but a root-and-branch reformation could save church 
 and society from utter dissolution. Was such a reforma- 
 tion — revolution rather — possible ? If so, could it proceed 
 from within? 
 
 About the time Columbus was setting forth on his first 
 voyage to America the people of Florence discovered that 
 a young Dominican monk in their city was one of the 
 great preachers of the age. Girolamo Savonarola was 
 born in Ferrara in 1452, of noble descent, and was 
 destined by his parents for the profession of medicine. 
 In his twenty-third year, becoming greatly anxious about 
 his soul, he forsook his home and entered a Dominican 
 monastery — an experience almost exactly duplicated by 
 Luther a generation later. He became an ardent student 
 
FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 87 
 
 of the Scriptures, of which he is said to have committed 
 nearly the whole to memory. He was a man of some- 
 what gloomy, melancholy nature, given to fasts and 
 vigils, ascetic in life, and in manner like one of the old 
 prophets. When he first began to preach his success was 
 meager, but suddenly at Brescia he preached as if a 
 new inspiration had come upon him; and from the tima 
 he went to Florence (1490) he attracted multitudes. His 
 favorite theme was the exposition of the apocalypse, and 
 in that book he found ample materials for heart-searching 
 sermons, laden with fierce denunciations of the sins of 
 the age. Savonarola began, as so many had begun be- 
 fore him, as Luther was to begin later, with an idea 
 simply of the moral regeneration of the church. He im- 
 agined that the rottenness of the church and society about 
 him could be cured by preaching, that the mere proclama- 
 tion of the truth was enough. He soon came to see, 
 however, that the evils he denounced were inseparably 
 bound up with the political system of his age, and his 
 efforts at reformation took a political turn. 
 
 For a time the eloquence of Savonarola seemed to 
 carry all before it. Lorenzo di Medici died, and his in- 
 competent son, Pietro, was soon driven from the city. 
 The government was reorganized on a theocratic basis, 
 with Savonarola as the vicegerent of God. The golden 
 age appeared to have returned to Florence, and, as a 
 contemporary writer said, "the people seemed to have 
 become fools from mere love of Christ." Emboldened 
 by his success, Savonarola attacked the papacy, in which 
 he rightly saw the chief source of the evils of the age. 
 Alexander VI. sought to buy his silence with the arch- 
 bishopric of Florence and a cardinal's hat, and failed. 
 Then the pope accepted the issue Savonarola had forced 
 upon him, and it became a life and death struggle 
 between these two. 
 
88 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Alexander first summoned the daring preacher to 
 Rome to answer for his alleged errors, but he was not 
 silly enough to comply. He was then forbidden to 
 preach for a time, and respected the prohibition until it 
 was removed. The old jealousy between the Franciscans 
 and Dominicans, however, broke out afresh, and this 
 quarrel was skilfully used by the pope to cause Savo- 
 narola's downfall. Alexander excommunicated his an- 
 tagonist in May, 1497, and later threatened to lay the 
 interdict upon the city if it did not surrender its favorite 
 preacher. But Florence stood by him, and might have 
 continued to do so, though it was wavering, had it not 
 been for an error of Savonarola's that was fatal to his 
 cause. A Franciscan preacher denounced him as a here- 
 tic, and challenged the reformer to undergo with him the 
 ordeal by fire. Savonarola did not approve of the or- 
 deal, and refused it for himself, but the pressure of opin- 
 ion induced him to permit one of his followers to accept 
 the challenge. It was a fatal move. The pyres were 
 lighted, and all Florence had assembled to see the trial. 
 The Franciscans managed to get up a bitter quarrel with 
 the Dominicans over the question whether the cross or 
 the host was to be carried through the flames ; and while 
 they contended a rainstorm came on and put out the 
 fires. The people, disappointed of their expected spec- 
 tacle, with the usual fickleness of the mob, visited all their 
 displeasure upon Savonarola, and from that day his in- 
 fluence declined so rapidly that he soon fell into the 
 power of Alexander's agents. Under torture he was 
 said to have confessed everything that his enemies de- 
 sired, but the reports are so garbled as to be utterly un- 
 worthy of trust; and it is certain that afterward he re- 
 tracted all that he had confessed. Not even torture and 
 garbling could make him out a heretic or guilty of any 
 capital offense, and he was finally condemned in defiance 
 
FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 89 
 
 of both law and justice. He was first hanged and then 
 burned, with two of his chief adherents, " in order that," 
 so ran the sentence, " their souls may be entirely sep- 
 arated from their bodies." The sentence was duly exe- 
 cuted, in the presence of a vast multitude. Savonarola 
 bore himself with composure and fortitude, and his last 
 words were, " O Florence, what hast thou done to-day? " 
 What, indeed! Nothing but postpone for almost four 
 centuries Italy's deliverance from the papal yoke. 
 
 Few men have been more variously estimated than 
 Savonarola. By one party he has been represented as 
 an inspired prophet, a saint, a miracle-worker ; by another 
 as ambitious, fanatical, even hypocritical. By one he is 
 called a patriot, by another a demagogue. He was not 
 a heretic ; to the last he believed in all the dogmas of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. Rome never condemned his 
 teachings as heresy, and though he has not yet been 
 canonized, there is no obstacle to his canonization at any 
 time, as his admirers in the church, in increasing num- 
 bers, demand. He resisted the pope politically, but ac- 
 knowledged him as the head of the church. Neverthe- 
 less, he had adopted principles that, if they had been 
 given an opportunity to work themselves out, would have 
 compelled his separation from Rome. The pope was 
 wiser in his generation than the reformer. 
 
 The next serious revolt against the papal supremacy 
 was in Bohemia. Early in the fifteenth century, that 
 kingdom was greatly stirred by the preaching of a Czech 
 scholar. John Hus (so he wrote the name, it being an 
 abbreviation of Hussinetz) was educated at the Uni- 
 versity of Prag, and after taking his Master's degree in 
 1396, began to lecture, with such success that in 1401 
 he was made dean of the philosophical faculty, and in 
 1403 rector of the university. In 1402 he was also made 
 pastor of the Bethlehem Chapel, where he preached in 
 
go A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the Czech language. He was a diligent student of the 
 Scriptures, but his theology was not mainly derived from 
 that source — or, rather, the writings of another had first 
 opened his eyes to the meaning of Scripture. 
 
 In the middle of the fourteenth century a professor at 
 Oxford had attracted much attention by the boldness and 
 novelty of his teaching. John Wiclif was a Protestant 
 before Protestantism, condemning and opposing in his 
 writings nearly every distinctive doctrine of Rome — a 
 man far more radical than Luther, though less violent 
 in his manner of utterance. Among his plain teachings, 
 all of which proceeded from the root-principle of the su- 
 preme authority of the Scriptures, were these: No writ- 
 ing, not even a papal decree, has any authority, save as 
 it is founded on the Scriptures ; transubstantiation is not 
 taught in the Bible, but by the popes; in the primitive 
 church there were but two orders in the ministry, bishops 
 and deacons; there is not good scriptural warrant for 
 confirmation and extreme unction; the clergy should not 
 interfere in civil affairs. In addition to this already long 
 list of heresies, Wiclif opposed the doctrine of indul- 
 gences, the mendicant orders and monks of all sorts, the 
 use of images and pictures in churches, canonization, pil- 
 grimages, auricular confession, and celibacy of the 
 clergy! But though he disowned and combated every 
 distinctive feature in the Roman Church of his day, 
 Wiclif was not condemned, and at length died peace- 
 fully in his bed. This was due partly to his distance 
 from Rome, and partly to the powerful protection he re- 
 ceived from English kings and nobles. His followers 
 (Lollards) were severely persecuted, but not extermi- 
 nated, and his teachings prepared England for a subse- 
 quent reformation. Especially did his translation of the 
 Scriptures, which was widely circulated, leave an indelible 
 impression on the English mind and character. 
 
FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 9I 
 
 Hus adopted nearly all of Wiclif's views, and may 
 fairly be called the disciple and follower of the great 
 English reformer. It need not surprise us that Wiclif's 
 doctrines thus found an acceptance in Bohemia hardly 
 obtained in England. His writings were chiefly in Latin, 
 then the common language of educated men everywhere ; 
 so that ideas then passed from England to Bohemia far 
 more easily than they do in the twentieth century. It 
 was, moreover, the custom of medieval students to mi- 
 grate from university to university, in order to hear some 
 renowned lecturer; and students from Oxford brought 
 Wiclif's writings to Prag and made them known to Hus. 
 But though a disciple, Hus was more than a mere echo of 
 Wiclif. He was content to follow where Wiclif led the 
 way — ^possibly because Wiclif's was the stronger, more 
 independent, more original mind — ^but he had gifts of elo- 
 quence that his master seems never to have possessed. 
 Wiclif was the scholar, the teacher, the retiring thinker, 
 while Hus was not merely scholar and teacher, but 
 apostle. 
 
 At first Hus undoubtedly believed in the possibility of 
 reforming the church from within. He had apparently 
 the confidence of his ecclesiastical superiors, and hoped 
 to accomplish great things. Not only did he industri- 
 ously spread abroad the doctrines of Wiclif, but as a syn- 
 odical preacher he exposed and denounced the sins of the 
 clergy with great faithfulness. Appointed to investigate 
 some of the alleged miracles of the church, he did not 
 hesitate to pronounce them spurious — and he bade all 
 believers cease looking for signs and miracles and search 
 the Scriptures. In 1409, the pope forbade the use of 
 Wiclif's writings, which precipitated a conflict between 
 Hus and his archbishop, the latter burning Wiclif's books 
 wherever he could find them, and Hus continuing to 
 preach with increasing boldness. In March, 141 1, he 
 
92 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 was excommunicated by the archbishop and Prag was 
 laid under the interdict, but Hus had the university and 
 the city with him so completely that no attention was 
 paid to the sentences. Hus and his sympathizers now 
 went much further; they declared that neither pope nor 
 bishop has the right to draw the sword ; that indulgences 
 are worthless, since not money but true repentance is the 
 condition of forgiveness; that the doctrine of the pope's 
 infallibility is blasphemous. 
 
 This was one of the questions that the Council of 
 Constance was expected to decide, and Hus had agreed 
 to submit himself and his teachings to the decision of a 
 general council. When the body met, in November, 
 1414, great things in the way of reform were expected 
 from it, and at first it seemed likely to realize at least a 
 part of the expectations. Pope John XXHL, one of the 
 worst scoundrels that ever disgraced the See of Rome — 
 and that is saying much — was deposed, and committees 
 were considering carefully liberal propositions concern- 
 ing the improvement of the church constitution, the ref- 
 ormation of abuses and extortions, and the eradication 
 of simony. The future of the church turned on one 
 point; whether the reformation or the election of a pope 
 should first be set about. The great mistake was made 
 of electing a pope first, and when Martin V. found him- 
 self in the papal chair, he was astute enough to frustrate 
 all attempts at reform and bring the council to a close 
 with nothing accomplished. The abuses for which re- 
 form was demanded were the very sources from which 
 pope and cardinals drew the greater part of their reve- 
 nues; and it was absurd to expect reform under such 
 circumstances if they were able to prevent it. The sequel 
 proved that they were able. 
 
 One of the things to which the Council of Constance 
 sji'eedily devoted its attention was the agitation in 
 
FOREGLEAMS OF THE DAWN 93 
 
 Bohemia, which had now become a matter of European 
 notoriety. Hus had never denied, but rather affirmed, the 
 authority of an ecumenical council. King Sigismund, of 
 Hungary (who was also the emperor), summoned Hus to 
 appear before the council and gave the reformer a safe 
 conduct. In June, 1415, he had his first public hearing, 
 and two other hearings followed ; in all of them he stood 
 manfully by his teachings and defended them as in ac- 
 cord with Scripture. During the rest of the month fre- 
 quent attempts were made to induce him to retract, but 
 he stood firmly by his faith. On July 6th condemnation 
 was finally pronounced, and it is said that, on this oc- 
 casion, the emperor had the grace actually to blush when 
 reminded of the safe conduct he had given. Hus was 
 then publicly degraded from the priesthood with every 
 mark of ignominy, and delivered, with Rome's customary 
 hypocrisy, to the civil power for execution. Thus the 
 church could say that she never put heretics to death! 
 When being tied to the stake he preached and exhorted 
 until the fire was kindled, when he began singing with a 
 loud voice, " Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on 
 me." This he continued until his voice was stifled by 
 smoke and flame, but his lips were seen to move for a 
 long time, as in prayer. When his body was consumed, 
 the ashes were cast into the Rhine, that the earth might 
 no more be polluted by him. 
 
 Never was it more clearly demonstrated that the blood 
 of the martyrs is in the seed of the church. The legiti^ 
 mate development of Hus' teachings was not through the 
 so-called Hussites, but through the Unitas Fratrum, an- 
 ciently known as the Bohemian Brethren, and in later 
 times as Moravians. Their organization began in a se- 
 cluded nook in Bohemia in 1457. The principles of Hus 
 were avowed in their confessions, and their growth was 
 rapid. By the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation 
 
94 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 they numbered four hundred parishes, with two hundred 
 thousand members, but by persecution and absorption they 
 almost disappeared. A remnant, however, was preserved, 
 a " hidden seed," and the order of bishops, originally de- 
 rived from the Waldensians, was continued in secret but 
 regular succession. Finally the survivors settled, in 1722, 
 and the following seven years, on the estate of Count 
 Zinzendorf, in Saxony, and there built a town called 
 Herrnhut ("watch of the Lord"). March 13, 1735, 
 David Nitschmann was consecrated the first bishop of 
 this revived Moravian Church, and a new era in its his- 
 tory began. Few things in the history of Christianity are 
 more full of romance and of encouragement to faith than 
 this story of the Moravians, their providential preserva- 
 tion for over a century, after their existence was sup- 
 posed to be ended, and their almost miraculous emergence 
 into a new life, to become the leaders of Christendom in 
 missionary enterprise. 
 
 How came it about that not only these attempts at 
 reform, but others that are still to be recounted, failed ? — 
 failed in spite of being founded on the Scriptures and 
 having the favor of the people. To tell that story is the 
 object of the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON 
 
 UNTIL Christianity conquered the Caesars and be- 
 came the religion of the Roman State, it had 
 been often persecuted, but never a persecutor. As if to 
 show that this was merely because it had lacked the 
 power, as if to prove that in this respect the religion of 
 the Christ was no better than the religions of the gods 
 that it displaced, the Holy Catholic Church almost im- 
 mediately began to persecute, thereby affording a con- 
 vincing demonstration that it was neither catholic nor 
 holy. Indeed, persecution was an inevitable consequence 
 of the union of Church and State under Constantine ; no 
 other result could reasonably have been looked for, with 
 the confusion of civil and ecclesiastical rights that 
 followed the promotion of Christianity to be a State 
 religion. 
 
 Let us strive to be just to Constantine, while true to 
 the facts of history. Let us remember that he was of 
 heathen birth and training ; that he was never a Christian, 
 in any proper sense of the term; that he delayed his 
 baptism until his death-bed, in the vain hope of thus wash- 
 ing away all his sins at one fell swoop, and entering the 
 new life regenerate and holy ; that during his lifetime he 
 never quite learned the difference between Christianity 
 and heathenism, or that there was any fundamental differ- 
 ence. How, indeed, should he suspect such a thing, in 
 view of the conduct and doctrines of the churchmen of 
 his day? Let us remember, furthermore, that as Im- 
 perator Constantine was Pontifex Maximus of the old 
 
96 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 . religion, and that he naturally imported into his 
 newly professed faith this same idea of imperial headship. 
 
 And finally, let us take his point of view. Constantine 
 was not a religious man, but he was a statesman, the 
 greatest of the Caesars after the greater Julius. He saw 
 in Christianity a marvelous force of conviction that had 
 made it triumph over the most cruel and persistent perse- 
 cutions. He saw in the church, spread throughout the 
 Roman empire, the greatest unifying agency of his day, 
 a society of men bound together in a solidarity to which 
 no other institution could compare. Upon his mind 
 broke the truth that here he had an instrument ready 
 to his hand by which he might consolidate his empire as 
 no predecessor had been able to do — ^that the civil ma- 
 chinery might be duplicated by the ecclesiastical in every 
 province and town of his domainsi A beautiful dream, 
 do you say ? But Constantine made it real, and by doing 
 it proved himself one of the great creative statesmen 
 of the world — a man who ranks with Caesar and 
 Charlemagne and Napoleon. 
 
 But it was essential to the realization of this dream 
 that the church should remain a unit. Heresy and 
 schism could not be tolerated, and accordingly Constan- 
 tine did not tolerate them. He persecuted, not as a 
 bigot, but as a ruler; not for religious, but for civil rea- 
 sons. At first he personally inclined towards Arius and 
 his followers, but he saw that the orthodox doctrine 
 would finally prevail in the church. He had no narrow 
 prejudices about such matters — orthodoxy and heresy 
 were all one to him — so he at once became the supporter 
 of orthodoxy and threw the whole weight of the imperial 
 power into the scale at the Council of Nice to secure a 
 condemnation of Arianism and a definition of the doctrine 
 of the Trinity as the only orthodox Christian teaching. 
 He was successful, and then set himself the task of 
 
THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON 97 
 
 persecuting the Arians out of existence ; and though some 
 of his successors in part undid his work, his poHcy was 
 crowned with ultimate success, a century or more after 
 his death. 
 
 Persecution therefore was introduced into the church 
 of Christ by a man who seems in reality to have been a 
 heathen, in accordance with a heathen theory of imperial 
 functions, and for purposes of State. The Holy Cath- 
 olic Church did not scruple to profit by the policy of 
 Constantine and even to give him sly encouragement, 
 but it did not at first dogmatically defend persecution. 
 Indeed, the reputable Fathers of the Nicene Church 
 shrank from the idea that one Christian should persecute 
 another. So late as 385, when the Spanish bishop Pris- 
 cillian and six of his adherents (accused of Manichaeism) 
 were tortured and beheaded at the instigation of Ithacus, 
 another bishop, Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours 
 made a memorable protest against this perfidious act and 
 broke off all communion with Ithacus. The church was 
 not yet ripe for the proclamation of the doctrine that 
 Christians were to slay one another for the glory of God. 
 
 But a distinguished convert whom Ambrose baptized, 
 Augustine of Hippo, did not shrink from giving a dog- 
 matic basis to what had come to be the practice of the 
 church, and even professed to find warrant for it in Scrip- 
 ture. " It is, indeed, better that men should be brought 
 to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment, 
 or by pain. But because the former means are better, 
 the latter must not therefore be neglected. Many must 
 often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, 
 by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attain the 
 highest grade of religious development. . . The Lord 
 himself orders that guests be first invited, then com- 
 pelled, to his great supper." And Augustine argues that 
 if the State has not the power to punish religious error, 
 
 G 
 
98 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 neither should it punish a crime like murder. Rightly 
 did Neander say of Augustine's teaching, that it " con- 
 tains the germ of the whole system of spiritual despotism, 
 intolerance, and persecution, even to the court of the 
 Inquisition." Nor was it long before the final step was 
 taken in the church doctrine of persecution. Leo the 
 Great, the first of the popes, in a strict sense of that 
 term, drew the logical inference from the premises al- 
 ready provided for him by the Fathers of the church, 
 when he declared that death is the appropriate penalty 
 for heresy. 
 
 Once more, let us be just : the Roman Church is right 
 in this conclusion if we grant its first premise, that sal- 
 vation depends not on personal faith in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as a result of which or in connection with which 
 the Holy Spirit regenerates the soul immediately, but 
 is to be attained only through the church and its sacra- 
 ments — baptism accomplishing the soul's regeneration, 
 and this new life being nourished and preserved through 
 the Eucharist and other sacraments. Granting this doc- 
 trine of sacramental grace, not only is Rome justified in 
 persecuting, but all who believe in sacramental grace are 
 wrong not to persecute. For if salvation is impossible 
 except through the church and its sacraments, every 
 heretic is, as Rome charges, a murderer of souls. Is it 
 not right to restrain and punish a murderer? From this 
 point of view it becomes the duty of the church to root 
 out heresy at all cost of human life — ^to make the world 
 a desert, if need be, but at any rate to ensure peace. And 
 all persecutors have been half-hearted in the work ex- 
 cept only Rome ; she has had the courage of her accursed 
 convictions. She alone has recognized that if you say 
 A you must say B, and so on, to the end of the alphabet ; 
 that if you once begin to persecute you must not tremble 
 at blood and tears, nor shrink from sending men to the 
 
THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON 99 
 
 rack, the gibbet, and the stake. The Inquisition is the 
 perfectly logical, the inevitable outcome of Roman doc- 
 trine, and the entire system of persecution is rooted in 
 this idea of sacramental grace. 
 
 After the theory of persecution was thus fully de- 
 veloped, it remained to put it consistently into practice. 
 This the Roman Church was slow in doing, partly for 
 lack of power, partly because the pressure of need was 
 not strongly felt until the twelfth century. Toward the 
 close of that century these causes of delay no longer ex- 
 isted. During the pontificate of Innocent III. (1198- 
 1216) the papacy rose to the zenith of its baleful au- 
 thority. This greatest of all the popes, save Hildebrand, 
 blasphemously appropriated to himself, as the pretended 
 vicar of Christ, the words of the risen Jesus, " All powei 
 is given unto me in heaven and earth," and strove to 
 realize them in Europe. To King John, of England, he 
 said, " Jesus Christ wills that the kingdom should be 
 priestly, and the priesthood kingly. Over all, he set me 
 as his vicar upon earth, so that, as before Jesus ' every 
 knee shall bow,' in like manner to his vicar all shall be 
 obedient, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 
 Pondering this truth, thou, as a secular prince, hast sub- 
 jected thy realm to Him to whom all is spiritually sub- 
 ject." This claim Innocent made good throughout the 
 greater part of Europe, here by skilful diplomacy, there 
 by aid of the sword, elsewhere by the spiritual censures 
 of the church. He humbled the pride of the kings of 
 France and Spain, made and unmade emperors, and com- 
 pelled England's most despotic monarch to bow the 
 knee, surrender his realms " to God and the pope," and 
 receive them back as a feudatory. 
 
 But while the pope was thus successfully asserting his 
 claim to be supreme, the dispenser and withholder of all 
 temnoral sovereignty, the church was menaced by an 
 
too A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 internal danger that threatened not merely its supremacy, 
 but its very existence. The twelfth century saw the be- 
 ginning of that tremendous uprising of the human spirit, 
 in its aspiration after greater freedom, which a few cen- 
 turies later produced the Renaissance, the Reformation, 
 and the Revolution. A reaction began against the des- 
 potism that had so long bound the spirit of man in the 
 fetters of absolute dogma. While the popes were tri- 
 umphing over emperors and kings, heresy was undermin- 
 ing the very foundations of the church. The teachings 
 of Arnold, of Savonarola, of Hus, though more than 
 once the church had believed these detested heresies 
 finally extirpated, had showed an astonishing persistence 
 and fruitfulness. The growth of these heretical sects 
 was doubtless due in part to the simplicity and scriptural- 
 ness of their teachings, but it is quite as much to be as- 
 cribed to the scandalous lives and corrupt practices of 
 the clergy. Men loathed a church in which the cure of 
 souls, from parish priest to pope, was bought and sold as 
 merchandise, when the highest ecclesiastics bartered bene- 
 fices with almost as little secrecy and quite as little shame 
 as a huckster displays in crying oranges or green peas 
 in our streets. Men instinctively rejected the ministra- 
 tions of priests known to be depraved in life, and more 
 than suspected to be unbelievers in the saving sacraments 
 they pretended to dispense. Language is inadequate to 
 describe the iniquity of a system in which the very popes 
 swore by the heathen gods and were atheists at heart, in 
 which monastic institutions were brothels, in which the 
 parish priests, though feared, were also hated and de- 
 spised for their ignorance, their pride, their avarice, and 
 their unclean lives. There is little danger that one who 
 attempts to paint the manners and morals of the medi- 
 eval clergy will overcharge his brush with dark color. 
 Words that a self-respecting man can address to men who 
 
THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON lOI 
 
 respect themselves are impotent to convey more than 
 tame and feeble hints of that monstrous, that horrible, 
 that unspeakable sink of iniquity, that abomination of 
 putrescence, that quintessence of all infamies thinkable 
 and unthinkable, known as the Holy Roman Catholic 
 Church of the Middle Ages. 
 
 In sharp contrast with such a church, these heretical 
 teachers preached the simple faith and practice of the 
 apostolic churches, and illustrated by the purity of their 
 lives the beauty of the gospel they taught. True, their 
 savage persecutors did not hesitate to charge upon these 
 sects horrible immoralities, but these transparent cal- 
 umnies never deceived anybody — unless we except a few 
 modern historians who ardently desired to be deceived. 
 What gave these heretics favor with the people was not 
 vices, in which they might have rivaled, but could not 
 hope to excel the priesthood, but virtues in which they 
 had few competitors among the clergy. The common 
 people of the Middle Ages were not much given to sub- 
 tlety of reasoning, but they judged the two trees by their 
 fruits. They looked at the church and beheld rapacity, 
 oppression, wickedness, from highest to lowest in the 
 hierarchy ; they looked at these heretical teachers and saw 
 them to be such as Jesus was when upon earth — ^poor, 
 humble, meek, pure, counting not life itself dear unto 
 them if they might by any means win some. And by 
 thousands and tens of thousands, men turned their backs 
 upon such a church and accepted the teachings of such 
 heretics. 
 
 And these teachings were nothing less than revolution- 
 ary. They denied that tradition has any authority, they 
 flung aside as rubbish all the writings of the Fathers, all 
 the decrees of councils, all the bulls of popes, and taught 
 that only the Scriptures, and especially the Scriptures 
 of the New Testament, are authoritative in questions of 
 
102 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 religion, whether of faith or of practice. They denied 
 the efficacy of the sacraments, maintaining that that 
 which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is 
 born of the Spirit is spirit; and therefore denying that 
 an inward spiritual change can by any possibility be pro- 
 duced by an outward physical act. They were Luther- 
 ans before Luther, in teaching justification by faith and 
 not by works; and more radical and consistent than 
 Luther in accepting the legitimate consequences of 
 their doctrine; for they rejected the baptism of infants 
 as alike unwarranted by Scripture, and absurd in itself, if 
 sacramental grace be denied. These are the distinctive 
 teachings of Baptists to-day, and the men who held 
 these truths from the twelfth century onward, under what 
 various nicknames it pleased their persecutors to give 
 them, were our spiritual ancestry, our brethren in the 
 faith. 
 
 But, alongside of these evangelical heresies of the 
 twelfth century was another type of heresy, as wide- 
 spread, as large in numbers, as threatening to the church, 
 yet widely different in fundamental ideas. This was the 
 sect known to the early church as Manichseans, one of 
 the first forms of heresy and the most persistent of all, 
 which under various names had endured from the age 
 immediately succeeding the apostles. In the East they 
 Were long known as Paulicians, in Italy as the Paterines, 
 in Bulgaria as Bogomils, in Southern France as Albi- 
 genses, and in all these places as Cathari. This last was 
 their own preferred name, and designated them as Puri- 
 tans — or those who, both in doctrine and in life, were 
 purer than the so-called Catholic Church. In this claim 
 they were doubtless justified, for, although they are 
 charged with gross immoralities, there is only too good 
 reason to reject the testimony against them; and their 
 doctrinal vagaries, opposed though they were to the 
 
THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON I03 
 
 gospel, were less gross than Rome's idolatrous worship of 
 the saints, the Host, the images. 
 
 Both classes of these heretics flourished during the 
 twelfth century in Southern France. The church was 
 not at all careful to distinguish between them, and they 
 were often included under the name of Albigenses in 
 one sweeping general condemnation. That name, how- 
 ever, does not properly denote the evangelical heretics, 
 who never confounded themselves with these dualistic 
 heretics, and indeed sympathized with them as little as 
 they did with Rome. But Rome hated both with an im- 
 partial and undying hatred ; and good reason she had for 
 her hatred, for toward the close of the twelfth century 
 it became a life-and-death struggle between the church 
 and these rapidly spreading heresies. In 1167 an Albi- 
 gensian synod was held at Toulouse. Little is known of 
 its proceedings, but the very fact that such an assemblage 
 could be held shows how powerless the church had be- 
 come in that region, and how imperative the need was, 
 from the Roman point of view, for active and effectual 
 measures of repression. Before this, recourse had been 
 had to mild measures without effect. Bernard, one of 
 the most eloquent men of his time, and a man of saintly 
 character, had gone on a mission among them. He re- 
 ports in his letters that the churches were deserted, the 
 altars falling into decay, and the priests starving. He 
 laments that the whole of Southern France seems given 
 over to heresy, and no doubt his grief was genuine. 
 
 In the year 1215 Innocent III. summoned the Fourth 
 Lateran Council. The power of the papacy was shown 
 then as never before or since in the history of Europe. 
 Emperors, kings, and princes sent plenipotentiaries as to 
 the court of a more powerful monarch. The pope did 
 not content himself with merely controlling the council; 
 he dominated it There was no pretense of deb^e. The 
 
I04 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 pope prepared and handed down such decrees as he 
 wished passed and the council obediently registered his 
 will. Among the decrees thus incorporated into the 
 canon law of the church were three relating to the treat- 
 ment of heretics : first, that all rulers should be exhorted 
 to tolerate no heretics in their domains; second, if a 
 ruler refused to clear his land of heretics at the demand 
 of the church, he should be deprived of his authority, his 
 subjects should be released from their allegiance, and if 
 necessary, he should be driven from his land by force; 
 third, to every one who joined in an armed expedition 
 against heretics the same indulgences and privileges 
 should be granted as to crusaders. These are still the 
 canon laws of the Holy Roman CathoUc Church. They 
 have never been repealed, and if they are not executed 
 to-day it is because Rome lacks the power or thinks it 
 not expedient to use it. The claim is there, ready to be 
 exercised whenever in the opinion of the infallible pontiff 
 the right moment has arrived. And yet Roman priests 
 in America would fain persuade us that Rome is really 
 in favor of liberty and tolerance, that the leopard has 
 changed his spots and the Ethiopian his skin. 
 
 Raymond of Toulouse, sixth of the name, at the close 
 of the twelfth century was the most powerful feudatory of 
 France, almost an independent sovereign, allied by mar- 
 riage and blood to the royal houses of Castile, Aragon, 
 Navarre, France, and England. Most of his barons and 
 the great majority of his people were heretics; and, 
 though he was nominally loyal to the church, his indiffer- 
 ence to the suppression of heresy was bitterly resented by 
 the pope. After many warnings, he was excommuni- 
 cated, and finally a crusade was declared against him. 
 Leaders were found, first in Simon de Montfort, Earl of 
 Leicester, and later in Louis of France; the power of 
 Raymond was broken and the Albigenses were crushed. 
 
THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON lOS 
 
 The war was carried on for twenty years; town after 
 town was captured; the inhabitants were massacred or 
 sold into slavery. A large part of the most fertile region 
 of France was left a smoking waste, without a green 
 thing or a human being in sight. That is Romanism in 
 its bright flower and full consummation : better desolation 
 and death than heresy. 
 
 But even then heresy was not suppressed — the snake 
 was scotched, but not killed. The " crusaders " could not 
 find and slay all the heretics, though they tried faith- 
 fully to do it. Some fled to other parts, others dis- 
 sembled or recanted and saved their lives. After the 
 crusade was over, it was found that heresy persisted 
 in secret, that the heroic remedies of fire and sword 
 were not sufficiently drastic to accomplish the desired 
 result. Organized and armed heresy had indeed ceased 
 to show its head, but a mailed knight on horseback could 
 not cope with secret heresy — that required the subtle in- 
 genuity and devilish malignity of a priest. This neces- 
 sity produced, by a natural evolution, the Holy Office 
 of the Inquisition. (One notes in passing the tendency 
 in the medieval church, wherever any institution or 
 practice arose, more than usually satanic in spirit and 
 administration, to dignify it by the epithet " holy.") 
 
 There was already in existence a system of episcopal 
 courts for the discovery and punishment of heresy. The 
 effectiveness of these courts depended on the intelligence 
 and energy of the bishop. Generally they were not very 
 effective, since the bishop would usually await popular 
 rumor or definite accusation before proceeding against 
 any one. This regular church machinery having proved 
 clumsy and ineffective, it remained to devise a better. 
 Precedent for this already existed in a custom, dating 
 from Charlemagne, of occasionally appointing papal com- 
 missioners for a special emergency in a particular 
 
I06 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 locality. It needed only to make such a commission per. 
 manent and to enlarge the scope of its labors until it 
 was co-extensive with the church. What the necessities 
 of the time demanded was a continuous process against 
 heresy directed by one mind. 
 
 An institution peculiar to the medieval church nat- 
 urally suggested the fitting agents for this work — the 
 mendicant orders, scattered over the whole of Europe, 
 not under the control of the bishops, independent of the 
 secular clergy, responsible only to the pope. Accord- 
 ingly, on April 20, 1233, Gregory IX. issued two bulls 
 making the prosecution of heresy the special function of 
 the Dominican order. From this time on the institution 
 rapidly developed, and by the close of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury had become the most terrible engine of oppression 
 that the mind of man or devil ever conceived, before 
 which kings on their thrones and prelates in their palaces 
 trembled. Inquisitors could not be excommunicated 
 while in the discharge of their duties, nor could any 
 legate of the pope interfere with them or suspend them 
 from office. While performing their duties they were 
 freed from all obligations of obedience to their own 
 generals, as well as to the bishops. Their jurisdiction 
 was universal, and any one who refused obedience to 
 their summons or opposed them became ipso facto 
 excommunicated. 
 
 What hope was there for one who, charged with 
 heresy, fell into the clutches of judges such as this sys- 
 tem provided? The arrest was usually secret; all that 
 the friends of the accused ever knew, in most cases, was 
 that he had disappeared. It was not considered con- 
 ducive to health to make any open inquiries about his 
 whereabouts ; it having been observed that such inquiries 
 were followed by the disappearance of the too curious 
 frquirer also. The accused was never permitted to have 
 
THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON I07 
 
 counsel; he was confronted by no accuser; he was not 
 required to plead to any precise indictment. He could 
 call no witnesses in defense; he was himself usually the 
 chief witness for the prosecution — all principles of juris- 
 prudence and all natural equity being set at naught by 
 requiring him to testify against himself. Everything 
 that human— no, everything that diabolical — ingenuity 
 could do to entrap him into damaging admissions and to 
 extract from him a confession of guilt was done. The 
 inquisitor played on the conscience, on the affections, 
 on the hopes and fears of his victim, with cynical dis- 
 regard of every moral law and inflicting the most ex- 
 quisite mental tortures, in the hope of securing a 
 confession. 
 
 Finally, if all other means failed, the inquisitors had 
 another device for encouraging (such was their grim 
 word) the accused to confess. That was physical tor- 
 ture — ^the rack, the thumbscrew, the boot, cautery in vari- 
 ous forms, every infernal machine that could be devised 
 to produce the most excruciating agony without unduly 
 maiming or killing. Sometimes solitary confinement in 
 a dungeon was tried, as a means more effective than 
 pain of breaking a stubborn will. Months lengthened 
 into years and years into decades, and still the Inquisi- 
 tion's victim might find himself unconvicted, but with 
 no better prospect of liberty than on the first day. The 
 Inquisition had all the time there was and was willing 
 to wait ; its patience never wearied. If a prisoner's reso- 
 lution gave way under torture or imprisonment, he had 
 to sign a statement that his confession was not made 
 because of love, fear or hatred of any one, but of his 
 own free will. If he subsequently recanted, the confession 
 was to be regarded as true, and the retraction as the 
 perjury of an impenitent and relapsed heretic, who 
 received condign punishment without further trial. 
 
I08 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Though no effort was spared to obtain a written con- 
 fession of heresy, the accused might in the last resort 
 be condemned without it. Only in one way could he be 
 certain of saving his life, and that was by a full con- 
 fession at once, accompanied by a recantation of his er- 
 rors and abject submission to the church. Then his life 
 would be spared, but more likely than not it would be 
 spent in some dungeon; only in rare cases was one who 
 once fell into the clutches of the Inquisition suffered to 
 return to his home and estate ; and in those rare cases he 
 was subject to life-long espionage and harassment. 
 
 When the process was completed and the accused was 
 found guilty of heresy — which was the normal ending of 
 a case — ^the inquisitors handed the heretic over to the 
 civil power for punishment, with a hypocritical recom- 
 mendation to mercy. But woe to the secular authority 
 that heeded the recommendation ! If a magistrate failed 
 for twelve months to put to death a condemned heretic, 
 the refusal itself constituted heresy, and he became sub- 
 ject to the kind offices of the Inquisition. Even if he 
 were excommunicated, the magistrate must do his duty. 
 The church, with characteristic evasion of the truth, 
 claims to this day that it has never put a heretic to 
 death. The claim is technically correct, if we except 
 those who died in its dungeons and torture-chambers; 
 but the church coerced the civil power into becoming its 
 executioner, and therefore its moral responsibility is the 
 same. When the heretic was dead, the vengeance of the 
 church was not sated. All his lands and goods were 
 confiscated, his blood was attainted, his family were beg- 
 gared, if they did not share his fate, and his name 
 was blotted out of existence — life, property, titles, all 
 disappeared. 
 
 We must not think of the Inquisition as the instru- 
 ment of wicked men solely, or even mainly, though its 
 
THE WRATH OF THE DRAGON IO9 
 
 Satanic origin seems to be stamped all over it. But 
 saintly Bernard was a more bitter persecutor than the 
 infamous Borgias; Innocent III., the purest of the me- 
 dieval popes, must be called the father of the Inqui- 
 sition. In fact, the more pious a medieval Catholic was, 
 the more he believed with all his heart and soul in the 
 church and her sacraments, the more he was impelled to 
 persecute. Such men hunted down heresy, not because 
 they hated the heretic, but because they loved the souls 
 of men, whose eternal salvation they believed to be en- 
 dangered. It is an awful warning to all the succeeding 
 ages of the fathomless iniquity into which a perverted 
 conscience may lead men whose greatest desire is the 
 glory of God. 
 
 The names of few of these martyrs have been pre- 
 served, but the complaints of their obstinacy and ob- 
 duracy that abound in the Catholic writings of the period 
 are the convincing testimony to their heroic constancy. 
 They saw the truth clearly and were loyal to it at every 
 cost. They were slain by tens of thousands ; a remnant 
 of them were driven into inaccessible mountain fast- 
 nesses, where they maintained themselves and their faith 
 for centuries ; they became a " hidden seed " in many 
 parts of Europe. By her system of vigor and rigor the 
 Roman Church won a temporary triumph: heresy was 
 apparently suppressed; the reformation of the church 
 was postponed for three centuries. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY 
 
 THERE were protestants before Protestantism, re- 
 formers before the Reformation — not only indi- 
 vidual protestants, as we have already seen, but prot- 
 estant bodies. The corruption of the primitive churches 
 and the development of Roman Catholicism was a logi- 
 cal process that extended over a period of centuries. As 
 the church diverged more and more widely from the 
 faith once delivered to the saints, as the papacy gradually 
 extended its power over all Europe, except where the 
 Greek Church successfully resisted its claims, it was in- 
 evitable that this tyranny should, from time to time, pro- 
 voke revolts; that against this apostasy there should be 
 periodic reactions toward a purer faith. From the be- 
 ginning of the twelfth century these uprisings within 
 the church became more numerous, until the various pro- 
 tests combined their forces, in large part unconsciously, 
 to form the movement since known as the Reformation. 
 It is a curious fact that each of these revolts against 
 the corrupt doctrine and life of the church had an 
 independent origin within the church itself. There may 
 have been, there doubtless was, some connection between 
 these various revolts, some connection also between 
 them and the earlier heresies and schisms, so called, in 
 the church. Though one may feel morally certain of 
 this fact, actual proof of it is not possible; all trace of 
 the connection has disappeared, and there is little reason 
 to hope that proofs will ever be recovered. 
 
 But if we may not trace, by unbroken historical 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY III 
 
 descent, a line of sects protesting against the corruptions 
 and usurpations of the Roman Catholic Church, and so 
 establish the antiquity of any one modern Protestant de- 
 nomination, it still remains an unquestioned historic fact 
 that these successive revolts constituted a gradual and 
 effective preparation for the general movement known 
 as the Reformation, and for the rise of modern evan- 
 gelical bodies. So convinced are some modern investi- 
 gators (not Baptists) of the substantial identity of these 
 various attempts at a reformation, from the twelfth cen- 
 tury onward, that thev treat these attempts as one con- 
 tinuous movement. Dr. Ludwig Keller, formerly State 
 archivist at Munster, gives to the various phases of this 
 revolt against Rome, the title of " The Old Evangelical 
 Party," and asserts its substantial unity and identity 
 for several centuries before the Lutheran Reformation. 
 By ingenious conjecture, rather than by valid historic 
 proofs, he makes out a plausible case, which further re- 
 search may, perhaps, fully confirm. An identity of 
 spirit, a substantial unanimity of teaching, he has shown, 
 and this is a fact of great significance. 
 
 The earliest of these protests that took definite form 
 grew out of the work of Peter of Bruys. Not much ia 
 known of the life of this teacher. It is said by some 
 that, like Arnold of Brescia, he was a pupil of Abelard, 
 but this is doubtful. He is found preaching in Southern 
 France soon after the beginning of the twelfth century, 
 where he labored for twenty years, and he was burned 
 as a heretic in the year 1126. His doctrines are known 
 to us chiefly through his bitter enemy and persecutor, 
 Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny, who wrote a book 
 against the heresy of the Petrobrusians. With due allow- 
 ance for the mistakes honestly made by this prelate, we 
 may deduce approximately the teachings of this body. 
 We find their fundamental principle to be the rejection 
 
112 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of tradition and an appeal to Scripture as the sole au- 
 thority in religion. The abbot complains in his treatise 
 that these heretics will not yield to tradition or the au- 
 thority of the church, but demand Scripture proof for 
 everything; because it would have been easy for him to 
 confute them by quoting any quantity of passages from 
 the Fathers, only these obstinate heretics would have 
 none of the Fathers. 
 
 In the preface to his treatise, the abbot sums up the 
 errors of the Petrobrusians under five heads, which he 
 then proceeds to answer at length. The first error is 
 their denial " that children, before the age of under- 
 standing, can be saved by the baptism of Christ, or that 
 another's faith avails those who cannot exercise faith 
 since, according to them [the Petrobrusians] not 
 another's, but one's own faith, together with baptism, 
 saves, as the Lord says, ' He who will believe and be 
 baptized shall be saved, but he who will not believe shall 
 be condemned.' " " Infants, though baptized by you 
 [Romanists], because by reason of age they neverthe- 
 less cannot believe, are by no means saved; [that is to 
 say, are not saved by baptism ; this is evidently what the 
 Petrobrusians taught, not a denial of the salvation of 
 infants; to a Romanist, denial of baptism was a denial 
 of salvation, but not so to the Petrobrusians] ; hence it 
 is idle and vain at that time to wet men with water, 
 by which ye may wash away the filth of the body after 
 the manner of men, but ye can by no means cleanse the 
 soul from sin. But we wait for the proper time, and 
 after a man is prepared to know his God and believe in 
 him, we do not (as you accuse us) rebaptize him, but 
 we baptize him who can be said never to have been 
 baptized — washed with the baptism by which sins are 
 washed away." 
 
 The second error charged was that these heretics said. 
 
Savonarola 
 
WiCLIF 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY II3 
 
 " Edifices for temples and churches should not be erected ; 
 that those erected should be pulled down; that places 
 sacred to prayer are unnecessary for Christians, since 
 equally in the inn and the church, in forum or temple, 
 before the altar or stable, if God is invoked he hears 
 and answers those who deserve it." Again, they are 
 quoted as saying, " It is superfluous to build temples, 
 since the church of God does not consist in a multitude 
 of stones joined together, but in the unity of the believers 
 assembled." 
 
 The third shocking error enumerated by the abbot 
 is that the Petrobrusians " command the sacred crosses 
 to be broken in pieces and burned, because that form or 
 instrument by which Christ was so dreadfully tortured, 
 so cruelly slain, is not worthy of any adoration, or ven- 
 eration or supplication, but for the avenging of his tor- 
 ments and death it should be treated with unseemly 
 dishonor, cut in pieces with swords, burnt in fire." 
 
 The fourth error, according to the same authority, was 
 that the Petrobrusians denied sacramental grace, espe- 
 cially the doctrine of transubstantiation, the keystone of 
 the sacramental system : " They deny, not only the truth 
 of the body and blood of the Lord, daily and constantly 
 offered in the church through the sacrament, but de- 
 clare that it is nothing at all, and ought not to be offered 
 to God." They say, "Oh, people, do not believe the 
 bishops, priests, or clergy who seduce you; who, as in 
 many things, so in the office of the altar, deceive you 
 when they falsely profess to make the body of Christ, 
 and give it to you for the salvation of your souls. They 
 clearly lie. For the body of Christ was made only once 
 by Christ himself in the supper before his passion, and 
 once for all at this time only was given to his disciples. 
 Hence it is neither made by any one nor given to any 
 one." These words convey an utter absurdity, that 
 
 H 
 
114 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Christ, while still in the flesh, made and gave his body to 
 his disciples; but the absurdity is doubtless one of the 
 abbot's blunders. What is certain is the repudiation by 
 the Petrobrusians of the sacrifice of the mass. 
 
 The fifth error is that " they deride sacrifices, prayers, 
 alms, and other good works by the faithful living for the 
 faithful dead, and say that these things cannot aid any 
 of the dead even in the least." Again : " The good deeds 
 of the living cannot profit the dead, because translated 
 from this life their merits cannot be increased or di- 
 minished, for beyond this life there is no longer place 
 for merits, only for retribution. Nor can a dead man 
 hope from anybody that which while alive in the world 
 he did not obtain. Therefore those things are vain that 
 are done by the living for the dead, because since they 
 are mortal they passed by death over the way for all 
 %sh to the state of the future world, and took with 
 them all their merit, to which nothing can be added." 
 
 From these statements of Peter the Venerable it is 
 plain that the Petrobrusians held that a true church is 
 composed only of believers; that faith should precede 
 baptism, and therefore the baptism of infants is a mean- 
 ingless ceremony. They held these things because they 
 found them taught in the Scriptures, and rejected the 
 authority of the church and of the Fathers to impose 
 terms of salvation on them beyond those imposed by 
 Christ and the apostles. Their apparent denial of the 
 salvation of infants is probably a misconception of the 
 abbot's, as was also his attributing to them the notion 
 that man may merit the favor of God by good works in 
 this life. The good Peter was so fully imbued with 
 Catholic ideas that he was incapable of comprehending 
 fully the teachings of the Petrobrusians, though he seems 
 to have tried to do it. 
 
 What shall we say to the opposition of the Petro- 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY II3 
 
 brusians to church buildings, crosses, the singing of 
 hymns — which the abbot mentions in the body of his 
 treatise — and the Uke? This merely: they had become 
 so accustomed to the misuse of these things, to seeing 
 them the concomitants of an idolatrous worship, that they 
 became unwise, extreme, fanatical, in their opposition to 
 them. It was a quite natural result of the vigor of their 
 reaction from the false teaching and false practice that 
 they found in the Catholic churches of their day. 
 
 It IS evident that the " errors " of the Petrobrusians 
 were what Baptists have always maintained to be the 
 fundamental truths of the Scriptures. Any body of 
 Christians that holds to the supremacy of the Scrip- 
 tures, a church of the regenerate only, and believers' bap- 
 tism, is fundamentally one with the Baptist churches of 
 to-day, whatever else it may add to or omit from its 
 statement of beliefs. Contemporary records have been 
 sought in vain to establish any essential doctrine taught 
 by this condemned sect that is inconsistent either with 
 the teaching of Scripture or with the beliefs avowed in 
 recent times by Baptists. With regard to the act of bap- 
 tism contemporary record says nothing. There was no 
 reason why it should, unless there was some peculiarity 
 in the administration of baptism among the Petrobru- 
 sians. It cannot be positively affirmed that they were 
 exclusively immersionists ; but if they were, the fact 
 would call for no special mention by contemporary 
 writers, since immersion was still the common practice 
 of the church in the twelfth century. 
 
 There were other preachers of a pure gospel, nearly 
 contemporary with Peter of Bruys and more or less 
 closely connected with him. Like him they came forth 
 from the Roman Church. The monastery of Clugny, 
 in Burgundy, was the most famous cloister of medieval 
 times. Founded early in the tenth century, it enforced 
 
II6 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the rule of Benedict with rigor, and was famous for the 
 piety and scholarship of its abbots and monks. At the 
 beginning of the twelfth century its discipline had been 
 greatly relaxed, and its internal management had become 
 scandalous. Chastity, sobriety, and piety were unmean- 
 ing words; they represented nothing in the life of the 
 inmates. Later, under the rule of Peter the Venerable, 
 the discipline was reformed and the ancient glories of 
 the cloister were more than equaled. 
 
 At a time when things were at their worst, a monk 
 named Henry became an inmate of Clugny. His birth- 
 place and date of birth are not certainly known; both 
 Switzerland and Italy are given for the former, and of the 
 latter all that can be said is that he was probably born 
 toward the close of the eleventh century. We know that 
 he was a man of earnest soul, to whom religion was not 
 a mere mockery, and that he was so disgusted with the 
 immoral lives of the Clugny monks that he could no 
 longer stay there. Renouncing his cowl and the cloister 
 life, he began to preach the gospel from place to place. 
 He never ceased to denounce the monks, and they, in 
 turn, followed him with calumnies. Even the saintly 
 Bernard speaks of Henry's shameless mode of life, but 
 gives no proofs ; and his letter is so tinged with bitterness 
 as to make his charges of no weight. 
 
 Henry is a somewhat vague figure. We can only 
 catch glimpses of him going up and down France, like 
 a flaming fire, rousing the people to detestation of the 
 monks, and to some degree of the secular clergy also. 
 He is described as a man of imposing appearance, whose 
 fiery eye, thundering voice, and great knowledge of the 
 Scriptures made him a preacher who swayed at will the 
 multitudes that listened to him. He does not appear to 
 have been a heretic, at least in the earlier part of his 
 career, but a would-be reformer. In 1116 he created a 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY II7 
 
 great commotion in the diocese of Mans, denouncing the 
 corruption of the clergy and preaching the truths of 
 Scripture until the bishop drove him away. Soon after 
 this he met Peter of Bruys and accompanied him in his 
 labors. It does not appear that at this time he avowed 
 sympathy with the doctrines of Peter, for when he was 
 arrested in 1134 by the bishop of Aries and brought be- 
 fore the Council of Pisa he was not condemned, as an 
 adherent of Peter would certainly have been, but soon 
 after released. No doubt he was considered indiscreet 
 in the things he had been saying about the clergy, but 
 evidently no ground was then discovered for treating 
 him as a heretic. 
 
 After this he repaired to Southern France, and con- 
 tinued his preaching. From this time there is good rea- 
 son to suppose that he adopted, in part at least, the opin- 
 ions of Peter of Bruys, especially the denial that infants 
 are scripturally baptized. One of Bernard's letters seems 
 to be conclusive on this point. Writing to the Count of 
 Toulouse, to warn him against this ravening wolf mas- 
 querading in sheep's clothing, he thus bears testimony to 
 the extent of Henry's influence and speaks of his 
 teachings : 
 
 The churches are without congregations, congregations without 
 priests, priests without their due reverence, and, worst of all, 
 Christians without Christ. Churches are regarded as synagogues, 
 the sanctuary of God is said to have no sanctity, the sacraments 
 are not thought to be sacred, feast days are deprived of their 
 wonted solemnities. Men are dying in their sins, souls are be- 
 ing dragged everywhere before the dread Tribunal, neither being 
 reconciled by repentance nor fortified by Holy Communion. The 
 way of Christ is shut to the children of Christians, and they are 
 not allowed to enter the way of salvation, although the Saviour 
 lovingly calls on their behalf, " Suffer little children to come unto 
 me." Does God, then, who, as he has multiplied his mercy, has 
 saved both man and beast, debar innocent little children from 
 
Il8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 this his SO great mercy? Why, I ask, why does he begrudge to 
 little ones their Infant Saviour, who was born for them? This 
 envy is of the devil. By this envy death entered into the whole 
 world. Or does he suppose that little children have no need of a 
 Saviour, because they are children? 
 
 It does not seem open to reasonable doubt, therefore, 
 that Henry of Lausanne, like Peter of Bruys and the 
 Waldenses, taught that only believers should be baptized, 
 and that the baptism of unconscious babes is a travesty 
 upon the baptism of the New Testament. 
 
 The end of Henry is sad. He was again arrested and 
 arraigned before the Synod of Rheims in 1 148, by which 
 body he was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. It 
 is not definitely known whether he was convicted of 
 heresy, probably not, or immediate death would have been 
 his portion. It is possible that under torture some kind 
 of retraction was wrung from him; and when a heretic 
 thus confessed, the church would sometimes merci- 
 fully (?) spare his life and let him drag out a miserable 
 existence in her dungeons. Nothing more is known of 
 his fate. From the oubliettes of the church none ever 
 returned, and the day of their death was never known. 
 We may hope, in the absence of all information, that 
 Henry of Lausanne continued to the last the faithful con- 
 fessor of the truth he had preached. He left behind him 
 numerous followers^ who took the name of Henricians 
 and were little other than Petrobrusians under a different 
 name. Like the Petrobrusians, they seem to have been 
 absorbed into the body known as Waldenses, and do not 
 long maintain a separate name and existence. 
 
 In the latter part of the twelfth century Southern 
 France was the scene of a still more energetic reaction 
 from the Church of Rome, which is remarkable in that 
 it was not at first a reform movement, and was not hos- 
 tile to the church until driven by it into hostility. The 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY IIQ 
 
 new party was called Poor Men of Lyons, Leonists, and 
 Waldenses, the last being perhaps their best-known 
 name. The origin alike of name and party is obscure, 
 but both seem to have originated with a citizen of Lyons 
 named Peter Waldo, or, more properly, Valdez (Latin, 
 Valdesius). This name probably indicates the place of his 
 birth — in the Canton of Vaud perhaps ; and as Peter of 
 the Valley he was distinguished from the numerous other 
 Peters of his day. We first gain sight of him about the 
 year 1150 when, already past middle life, he was a rich 
 merchant of Lyons, who had not been over-particular, it 
 is said, about the means by which he had acquired his 
 fortune. One day a friend fell dead at his side. Waldo 
 said to himself: If death had stricken me, what would 
 have become of my soul ? Other circumstances increased 
 his burden of mind, until he sought a master of theology 
 for the consolation that he was unable to find in the 
 round of fasts and penances prescribed by the church. 
 The theologian talked learnedly, and the more he talked 
 the greater became Waldo's perplexity. Finally he 
 asked, " Of all the roads that lead to heaven, which is 
 the surest ? I desire to follow the perfect way." "Ah ! " 
 answered the theologian, " that being the case, here is 
 Christ's precept : ' If thou wilt be perfect, go sell that 
 thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
 treasure in heaven; and come take up thy cross and 
 follow me.' " 
 
 Waldo returned home pondering these words. Had 
 he been a learned theologian he would at once have un- 
 derstood that the words were not to be understood lit- 
 erally, but contained some mystical or allegoricar mean- 
 ing; he was a plain man and knew no better than to 
 obey. First of all, he told his resolution to his wife. 
 She being of a worldly turn, and by no means alarmed 
 about her soul's salvation, was much vexed. At length 
 
I20 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Waldo said to her, " I am possessed of personal property 
 and real estate, take your choice." The real estate was 
 of no small value : including houses, meadows, vineyards, 
 woods, bake-houses, and mills, the rents of which brought 
 in a goodly income. The wife's choice was quickly 
 made; she chose the real estate, leaving to Waldo the 
 business and ready money. Closing out his business, 
 Waldo devoted a portion of his money to providing a 
 dowry for his daughters; and with other sums he made 
 reparation to such as he had treated unjustly in business. 
 
 Considerable money yet remained to him, and he de- 
 voted it to the relief of the poor in Lyons, where a famine 
 was then raging. He had been a man of business, and 
 his charity was managed in a business-like way. He 
 planned a distribution of bread, meat, and other pro- 
 visions, three times a week, beginning at Pentecost and 
 continuing until mid-August. Thus he did until his 
 money was exhausted, and he was fain to ask food of 
 a friend for himself. His wife heard of this and was 
 very angry. She appealed to the archbishop, and be- 
 sought Waldo himself in these words : " Husband, listen ; 
 if any one is to redeem his soul by the alms he gives you, 
 is it not best that it should be your wife rather than such 
 as are not of our household ? " The archbishop delivered 
 a homily on his extravagance and formally forbade him, 
 when he was in the city, ever to take food anywhere but 
 at his wife's table. 
 
 In the meantime, Waldo had been studying the Scrip- 
 tures. Finding the Latin hard to understand, he sought 
 out two ecclesiastics who were willing to translate it into 
 his vernacular, for a consideration. One wrote while 
 the other dictated, and in this way they made a transla- 
 tion of the Gospels, selections from the Epistles, and a 
 collection of maxims from the Fathers of the church. 
 This translation Waldo read and studied until it was 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY 121 
 
 indelibly engraved on mind and heart, and flowed spon- 
 taneously from his lips. From meditating on it himself 
 he began to repeat it to others. The wandering ballad- 
 singer was a popular institution in his time and country, 
 and he had little difficulty in persuading people to listen 
 to his stories from the Gospels, instead of a secular 
 ballad. And so Waldo became a preacher of the gospel, 
 little more than a reciter of its precepts at first, and with 
 no intention of revolting against Rome, wishing only 
 the privilege of telling to others the good news of sal- 
 vation that had been so precious to his own troubled 
 heart. Soon he gained disciples. These he taught as- 
 siduously, until they too could tell the simple gospel 
 story, and as they gained skill he sent them forth tb the 
 shops and market-places, to visit from house to house, 
 and preach the truth. These preachers literally obeyed 
 the instructions of Christ to the seventy ; they went forth 
 in voluntary poverty, anxious only to proclaim the king- 
 dom of God, and accepting such hospitality as was 
 voluntarily offered them. 
 
 Such a work as this could not go on long without the 
 cognizance of Roman ecclesiastics. The preachers were 
 becoming numerous and spreading apace. True, they 
 did not oppose the church in any way; they were not 
 known to teach any heresy; but the priesthood was 
 jealous of these unauthorized preachers and demanded 
 that they be silenced. Waldo was banished from the dio- 
 cese of Archbishop Guichard, and in 1177 he betook 
 himself to Rome to appeal to the pope, Alexander III. 
 But those were the days of triumphant clericalism, and 
 Waldo's appeal was fruitless. The pope received 
 Waldo kindly, as a good son of the church ; his vow of 
 poverty was a thing that every ecclesiastic approved. It 
 is even said that Alexander kissed Waldo's cheek, as a 
 sign of recognition of his holy repute. But in the matter 
 
122 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of preaching, the pope stood firm ; his answer was : " You 
 shall not, under any circumstances, preach except at the 
 express desire and under the authority of the clergy of 
 your country " — the men who had already silenced and 
 banished him. 
 
 This hard sentence was the parting of the ways to 
 Waldo and his followers. Should they obey God or 
 man? Should they choose church or Christ? They 
 were not long in making choice, and in making it they 
 became heretics, reformers, for they set themselves 
 against the church that they might have liberty to follow 
 Christ. In this treatment of Waldo, Rome showed her- 
 self less wise than afterward, when Francis of Assisi 
 sought similar tolerance for his order of preachers. Had 
 Pope Alexander III. been a little more astute there might 
 have been a new order of lay preachers in the Roman 
 Church, no sect of the Waldenses and, perhaps, no 
 Lutheran Reformation. 
 
 But though the Waldenses now became schismatics, 
 and were soon regarded as heretical, they did not cease 
 to multiply. Persecution had no effect in checking their 
 growth, at least for some time. This rapid growth of 
 the body cannot be explained wholly by the general pre- 
 paredness of the church for the preaching of a more 
 spiritual faith; or, rather, that state of feeling itself re- 
 quires explanation. In the scattered fragments of pre- 
 ceding sects, notably of the Petrobrusians, soil was found 
 most favorable for the propagation of the teachings of 
 Waldo. The Waldenses, in their earlier history, appear 
 to be little else than Petrobrusians under a different name. 
 For, though there is reason to suppose that Waldo him- 
 self owed nothing to Peter of Bruys, but arrived at the 
 truth independently, he at once became the spiritual heir 
 of his predecessor and namesake, and carried on the 
 same work. The doctrines of the early Waldenses are 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY I23 
 
 substantially identical with those of the Petrobrusians, 
 the persecutors of both being witnesses. For example, 
 Roman writers before 1350 attribute the following errors 
 to the Waldenses : 
 
 1. Regarding the Scriptures. Their enemies charge 
 the Waldenses with holding these errors : " They assert 
 that the doctrine of Christ and the apostles, without the 
 decrees of the church, suffices for salvation. They know 
 by heart the New Testament and most of the Old Testa- 
 ment in the vulgar tongue. They oppose the mystical 
 sense in the Scriptures. They say holy Scripture has 
 the same effect in the vulgar tongue as in the Latin. 
 Everything preached which is not to be proved by the 
 text of the Bible they hold to be fable." " They neither 
 have nor receive the Old Testament, but the Gospels, that 
 by them they may attack us and defend themselves; 
 saying that when the gospel came all old things passed 
 away." But this, if true at all, is true only of some of 
 the Waldenses, for nothing is better established than 
 that they translated the whole Bible and received it all 
 as authoritative. 
 
 2. Regarding baptism. " They say that a man is then 
 truly for the first time baptized when he is brought into 
 their heresy. But some say that baptism does not profit 
 little children (parvulos), because they are never able 
 actually to believe." " One argument of their error is, 
 that they say baptism does not profit little children to 
 salvation, who have neither the motive nor the act of 
 faith, because, as it is said in the latter part of Mark, 
 ' He who will not believe will be condemned.' " " Con- 
 cerning baptism they say that the catechism is of no 
 value. . . That the washing given to infants does not 
 profit. . . That the sponsors do not understand what 
 they answer to the priest. They do not regard 
 compaternity." t. e., the relation of sponsors. 
 
124 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 3. Concerning the church. " They say that the Roman 
 Church is not the church of Jesus Christ, but is a church 
 of wicked ones, and it [that is, the true church] ceased 
 to exist under Sylvester, when the poison of temporal 
 things was infused into the church. . . All approved 
 customs of the church of which they do not read in the 
 Gospels they despise, as the feast of candles, of palms, 
 the reconciliation of penitents, adoration of the cross, the 
 feast of Easter, and they spurn the feasts of the saints on 
 account of the multiplication of saints. And they say 
 one day is just like another, therefore they secretly work 
 on feast days." " The Roman Church is the harlot of 
 Babylon, and all who obey it are condemned. . . They 
 affirmed that they alone were the church of Christ and 
 the disciples of Christ. That they are the sucessors of 
 the apostles and have apostolic authority." . . 
 
 4. Concerning purgatory. " They say there is no 
 purgatory, but all dying immediately go either to heaven 
 or to hell. They assert that prayers offered by the 
 church for the dead do not avail; for those in heaven 
 do not need them, and those in hell are not at all as- 
 sisted. They say that the saints in heaven do not hear 
 the prayers of the faithful, nor the praises by which we 
 honor them. They argue earnestly that since the bodies 
 of the saints lie here dead, and their spirits are so far 
 removed from us in heaven, they can by no means hear 
 our prayers. They say also that the saints do not pray 
 for us, and therefore we ought not to implore their 
 prayers; because, absorbed in heavenly joy, they cannot 
 take heed of us or care for anything else." " Whenever 
 any sinner repents, however great and many the sins he 
 has committed, if he dies he immediately rises [t. e., to 
 heaven]. . . They assert that there is no purgatorial 
 fire except in the present, nor do the prayers of the 
 church profit the dead nor does anything done for them." 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY 125 
 
 5. Regarding the Mass. "They do not beHeve it to 
 be really the body and blood of Christ, but only bread 
 blessed, which by a certain figure is said to be the body 
 of Christ ; as it is said, ' But the rock was Christ,' and 
 similar passages. But this blessing, some say, can only 
 be ^performed by the good, but others say by all who 
 know the words of consecration. . . They observe 
 this in their conventicles, reciting those words of the 
 Gospels at their table and participating together as in 
 the supper of Christ." " Concerning the sacrament of 
 the Eucharist they say that priests in mortal sin cannot 
 make [the body of Christ] . They say that transubstan- 
 tiation does not take place in the hands of the unworthy 
 maker, but in the mouth of the worthy receiver, and can 
 be made on a common table. . . Again they say that 
 transubstantiation takes place by words in the vernacu- 
 lar. . . They say that the holy Scripture has the same 
 effect in the vulgar tongue as in the Latin, whence they 
 make [the body of Christ] in the vulgar tongue and give 
 the sacraments. . . They say that the church singing 
 is infernal clamor." 
 
 It seems evident, by comparing these reports, that some 
 of the Roman writers did not clearly comprehend the 
 Waldensian doctrine ; according to others, the Waldenses 
 did not believe in transubstantiation at all, but they did 
 believe that the Lord's Supper should be celebrated in the 
 vernacular. As for calling singing " infernal clamor," 
 the reference is evidently to the singing of the mass by the 
 priests, and to the use of Latin hymns, not an objec- 
 tion to singing per se. That the latter cannot be meant 
 is proved by the fact that the first literature of the 
 Waldenses took the form of hymns. 
 
 Other less serious heresies are alleged: as that the 
 followers of Waldo all preached without ordination ; that 
 they declared the pope to be the head of all errors ; that 
 
J 26 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 confession was to be made to God alone; that they ab- 
 horred the sign of the cross. Also we find attributed 
 to them certain tenets that were afterward characteristic 
 of the Anabaptists ; such as, " In no case, for any neces- 
 sity or usefulness must one swear " ; and " For no reason 
 should one slay." 
 
 In the face of all but unanimous testimony of Roman 
 authorities, it has been denied that the early Waldenses 
 rejected infant baptism. Stress is laid on the fact that in 
 the earliest of their literature that has come down to us 
 the Waldensians are Pedobaptists, or at least do not op- 
 pose infant baptism. It is also an unquestioned fact that 
 the later Waldensians — ^those who found a refuge in the 
 valleys of Savoy after the crusade of Simon de Montfort 
 in Southern France — are found to be Pedobaptists at the 
 earliest authentic period of their history. But all this 
 is not necessarily inconsistent with the accounts of the 
 sect as given us by contemporary Romanists. Nearly 
 three hundred years elapsed between the crusade and the 
 Reformation, and during these centuries the escaped 
 Waldenses dwelt among the high valleys of Eastern 
 France and Savoy, isolated and forgotten. Great ignor- 
 ance came upon them, as is testified by the literature that 
 has survived, and in time they so far forgot the doctrines 
 of their forefathers that many of the writers saw but 
 little difference between themselves and the Romanists. 
 Some of the old spirit remained, however, so that when 
 in 1532 a Pedobaptist creed was adopted at the Synod 
 of Angrogne, under the guidance of the Swiss reformers, 
 Farel and CEcolampadius, a large minority refused to be 
 bound by this new creed, declaring it to be a reversal 
 of their previous beliefs. That they were correct in this 
 interpretation is the verdict of modern scholars who have 
 thoroughly investigated the earlier Waldensian history. 
 
 The balance of evidence is therefore clearly in favor 
 
THE OLD EVANGELICAL PARTY 127 
 
 of the conclusion that the early followers of Waldo 
 taught and practised the baptism of believers only. Dr. 
 Keller, the latest and most candid investigator of the sub- 
 ject, holds this view : " Very many Waldenses considered, 
 as we know accurately, the baptism on [profession of] 
 faith to be that form which is conformable with the 
 words and example of Christ. They held this to be the 
 sign of the covenant of a good conscience with God, and 
 it was certain to them that it had value only as such." 
 This belief would logically exclude infant baptism, and 
 accordingly Dr. Keller tells us, " Mostly they let their 
 children be baptized [by Romish priests?], yet with the 
 reservation that this ceremony was null and void." Main- 
 taining these views, they were the spiritual ancestors of 
 the Anabaptist churches that sprang up all over 
 continental Europe in the early years of the Reformation. 
 The history of the Waldenses is a tale of bitter and 
 almost continuous persecution. Waldo himself is said to 
 have died in or about the year 1217, but if he lived so 
 long he must have seen his followers everywhere pro- 
 scribed, yet everywhere increasing. In 1183, at the 
 Council of Verone, Pope Lucian III. issued a decree of 
 perpetual anathema against various heretics, including 
 the Poor Men of Lyons. Innocent III., wiser than other 
 popes, attempted to win back the Waldenses. One Du- 
 rand, who had been, or pretended to have been, a Wal- 
 densian preacher, was persuaded at the Disputation of 
 Pamiers (in the territory of Toulouse) to submit to the 
 church. He and certain others submitted a confession 
 of their faith to the pope, who approved it and author- 
 ized them to form a religious order of Catholic poor. 
 The Roman ecclesiastics, in spite of Innocent's repeated 
 admonitions to them, never took kindly to this order, and 
 this reaction did not have the effect anticipated. Inno- 
 cent himself seems to have at length abandoned hope of 
 
128 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 reclaiming the Waldenses, and at the Fourth Lateran 
 Council, of 121 5, their final condemnation was pro- 
 nounced. In order to prevent the spread of this and 
 other heresies, the Synod of Toulouse (1229) forbade 
 laymen to read vernacular translations of the Bible, and 
 the Synod of Tarracona (1234) even extended this 
 prohibition to the clergy also. 
 
 It does not concern our present purpose to narrate at 
 more length the story of the cruel oppressions to which 
 the Waldenses were thenceforth subjected. Suffice it to 
 say that, except among the valleys of the Alps they were 
 eventually exterminated or driven to a secret life. But 
 in the Alps and Northern Italy they have survived until 
 the present day, and in many parts of Europe they leav- 
 ened the Roman Church so as effectually to prepare the 
 way for the later Reformation. And it is a curious and 
 instructive fact that the Anabaptist churches of the Ref- 
 ormation period were most numerous precisely where the 
 Waldenses of a century or two previous had most flour- 
 ished, and where their identity as Waldenses had been 
 lost. That there was an intimate relation between the 
 two movements, few doubt who have studied this period 
 and its literature. The torch of truth was handed on 
 from generation to generation, and though it often smol- 
 dered and was even apparently extinguished, it needed 
 but a breath to blaze up again and give light to all 
 mankind. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS 
 
 THE origin of the Anabaptists of Switzerland is ob- 
 scure. The testimony of contemporaries is that 
 they derived their chief doctrines from sects that ante- 
 dated the Reformation, and this testimony is confirmed 
 by so many collateral proofs as to commend itself to 
 many modern historians. Vadian, the burgomaster of 
 St. Gall, and brother-in-law to Conrad Grebel, says of 
 the Anabaptists, " They received the dogma of baptizing 
 from the suggestions of others." The industrious Fiisslin 
 reached this opinion : " There were before the Reforma- 
 tion people in Zurich who, filled with errors, gave birth 
 to the Anabaptists. Grebel was taught by them ; he did 
 not discover his own doctrines, but was taught by others." 
 In our own day impartial German investigators have 
 reached similar conclusions. Thus Dr. Heberle writes: 
 
 In carrying out their fundamental ideas, the party of Grebel 
 paid less attention to dogmatics than to the direction of church, 
 civil, and social life. They urged the putting away of all modes 
 of worship which were unknown to the church of the apostles, 
 and the restoration of the observance, according to their institu- 
 tion, of the two ceremonies ordained by Christ. They contended 
 against the Christianity of worldly governments, rejected the 
 salaries of preachers, the taking of interest and tithes, the 
 use of the sword, and demanded the return of apostolic 
 excommunication and primitive community of goods. 
 
 It is well known that just these principles are found in the 
 sects of the Middles Ages. The supposition is therefore very 
 probable that between these and the rebaptizers of the Reforma- 
 tion there was an external historical connection. The possibility 
 of this as respects Switzerland is all the greater, since just here 
 
130 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the traces of these sects, especially of the Waldenses, can be 
 followed down to the end of the fifteenth century. But a positive 
 proof in this connection we have not. . . In reality the ex- 
 planation of this agreement needs no proof of a real historical 
 union between Anabaptists and their predecessors, for the ab- 
 stract biblical standpoint upon which the one as well as the other 
 place themselves is sufficient of itself to prove a union of the 
 two in the above-mentioned doctrines.* 
 
 The utmost that can be said in the present state of 
 historical research is that a moral certainty exists of a 
 connection between the Swiss Anabaptists and their Wal- 
 densian and Petrobrusian predecessors, sustained by 
 many significant facts, but not absolutely proved by his- 
 torical evidence. Those who maintain that the Anabap- 
 tists originated with the Reformation have some diffi- 
 cult problems to solve, among others the rapidity with 
 which the new leaven spread, and the wide territory that 
 the Anabaptists so soon covered. It is common to regard 
 them as an insignificant handful of fanatics, but abun- 
 dant documentary proofs exist to show that they were 
 numerous, widespread, and indefatigable ; that their chief 
 men were not inferior in learning and eloquence to any 
 of the reformers; that their teachings were scriptural, 
 consistent, and moderate, except where persecution pro- 
 duced the usual result of enthusiasm and vagary. 
 
 Another problem demanding solution is furnished by 
 the fact that these Anabaptist churches were not gradu- 
 ally developed, but appear fully formed from the first — 
 complete in polity, sound in doctrine, strict in discipline. 
 It will be found impossible to account for these phe- 
 nomena without an assumption of a long-existing cause. 
 Though the Anabaptist churches appear suddenly in the 
 records of the time, contemporaneously with the Zwing- 
 lian Reformation, their roots are to be sought farther 
 back. 
 
 1 " Jahrb&cher fiir Deutsche Theologie," 1858, p. 276 seq. 
 
GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS I3I 
 
 At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Switzerland 
 was the freest country in Europe — a confederacy of thir- 
 teen cantons and free cities, acknowledging no alle- 
 giance to emperor or king. These cantons differed greatly 
 in speech, customs, and form of government; their chief 
 bond of union was, in fact, hatred of their common foe, 
 the House of Hapsburg. Zurich was governed by a 
 council of two hundred, and the ultimate power rested 
 with the various guilds to which the burghers belonged. 
 It was, in a word, a commercial oligarchy, maintaining a 
 republican form of government. Little could be under- 
 taken, certainly nothing of moment could be accom- 
 plished, without the approval of the council. 
 
 The Reformation in Switzerland was quite independent 
 of the Lutheran movement, though it occurred practi- 
 cally at the same time. Reuchlin had given instruction 
 in the classics at the University of Basel; and Erasmus 
 came to that city in 15 14, to get his edition of the New 
 Testament printed. The study of the original Scriptures 
 in Hebrew and Greek received a great impetus, and the 
 result could not long be doubtful. The Swiss people had 
 once been devoted adherents of the papacy, but knowl- 
 edge of the corruption of the church and the unworthy 
 character of prelates had penetrated even there and 
 greatly weakened the hold of the church on the people. 
 The clergy, though not so bad as in some localities, were 
 still far from illustrating the virtues they preached. The 
 Scripture seed fell into soil ready to receive it and give it 
 increase. 
 
 The leader in this reformation was Ulric Zwingli, born 
 in 1484, at Wildhaus, in the canton of St. Gall, edu- 
 cated at the University of Vienna, a teacher at 
 Basel and then pastor at Glarus in 1506, later at 
 Einsiedeln, and finally at Zurich. He was during 
 his earlier priesthood unchaste and godless, like many of 
 
132 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the clergy, but he was led to the study of the Greek 
 Testament, and God's grace touched his heart and made 
 a new man of him. His preaching became noted for 
 spiritual power and eloquence. As in Luther's case, he 
 was first brought into prominence by opposition to the 
 sale of indulgences. One Samson, a worthy companion 
 to the infamous Tetzel, came to Switzerland hoping to 
 conduct a brisk traffic in indulgences, and was roundly 
 rebuked by Zwingli : " Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has 
 said, ' Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest.' Is it not, then, most 
 presumptuous folly and senseless temerity to declare on 
 the contrary — ' Buy letters of indulgence, hasten to 
 Rome, give to the monks, sacrifice to the priests, and if 
 thou doest these things I absolve thee from thy sins?' 
 Jesus Christ is the only oblation, the only sacrifice, the 
 only way." 
 
 As the Roman Church had been established by law, 
 and its priests were largely paid out of the treasury, 
 it was the most natural thing in the world that, as the 
 reformation continued, the reformed church and min- 
 istry should also be an appanage of the State. Zwingli 
 was called to Zurich and was kept in his position there by 
 the council, and as the reform developed that body took 
 into its hands the direction of religious as well as civil 
 affairs. It probably occurred to few of the worthy 
 burghers that there was any impropriety in this. In 
 1520 the council issued an order that all pastors and 
 preachers should declare the pure word of God, and 
 Zwingli had announced as his principle the rejection of 
 everything in doctrine or practice not warranted by the 
 Scriptures. In a disputation held January 29, 1523, he 
 made his appeal on all points to the Scriptures — copies of 
 which in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin he had on a table be- 
 fore him. He vainly challenged his Catholic adversaries 
 
GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS 1 33 
 
 to refute him from the Scriptures, and the council re- 
 newed their order that all the preachers in the canton 
 should teach only what was found in the Scriptures. 
 
 Up to this time we find no trace of the Anabaptists, as 
 such. The reason evidently is that Zwingli and the 
 Zurich Council were virtually Anabaptists themselves. 
 They had adopted the most radical and revolutionary of 
 Anabaptist principles, that the Scriptures should be the 
 sole rule of faith and practice, and that whatever the 
 Scriptures do not teach must be rejected. Nor was 
 Zwingli unconscious of what he was doing, and he did not 
 at first shrink from the logic of his fundamental prin- 
 ciple. As he frankly confesses, he was for a considerable 
 time inclined to reject infant baptism, in obedience to 
 the fundamental principle he had adopted of accepting 
 the Scriptures as the only rule of faith and practice, and 
 rejecting everything that had no clear Scripture warrant. 
 He had but to go on consistently in this way to have 
 made the Zwinglian Reformation an Anabaptist move- 
 ment. But having put his hand to the plow, he suf- 
 fered himself to look back. He was in bondage to the 
 idea of a State Church, a reformation that should have 
 back of it the power of the civil magistrate, instead of 
 being a spiritual movement simply. But to fulfil this 
 ideal, infant baptism was a necessity. The moment the 
 church was made a body consisting wholly of the regen- 
 erate, it of necessity separated itself from the world. 
 The Zurich Council had supported the reform thus far, 
 but by no means all its members — possibly not the ma- 
 jority — were regenerate men. How far would they sup- 
 port a reform that would, as a first step, unchurch them 
 and deprive their children of the privilege (as they still 
 esteemed it) of baptism? Such a policy of reform 
 seemed to Zwingli suicide at the very beginning, for he 
 could see a possibility of success only through the support 
 
134 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of the civil power. In this conviction is to be found, 
 not only his reason for breaking with the Anabaptists, 
 but the secret of his other mistakes and the cause of his 
 untimely death. He gained, it is possible, for his ref- 
 ormation a more immediate and outward success, only to 
 establish it on a foundation of sand. 
 
 About the year 1523, therefore, Zwingli and some of 
 his fellow-reformers came to the parting of the ways. 
 Zwingli thenceforth developed conservative tendencies, 
 thought the reform had gone far enough, and endeavored 
 to restrain those who were impatient for more thorough 
 work. A division of sentiment rapidly developed among 
 the hitherto united reformers. A strong minority desired 
 to continue on the line already begun, to carry out con- 
 sistently the principle already avowed that the Scriptures 
 were to be the sole arbiter in all matters of faith and 
 practice. They pointedly declared that the Bible said no 
 more about infant baptism than it said about the mass, 
 fasts, the invocation of saints, and other popish abomina- 
 tions. The New Testament churches, they said, were 
 composed only of those who gave credible evidence of 
 regeneration. 
 
 Up to the time of their separation on this question of 
 infant baptism, those who afterward became Anabaptist 
 leaders were among the most active and trusted of 
 Zwingli's lieutenants. This was particularly true of Con- 
 rad Grebel. The son of one of the members of the Zurich 
 Council, he was socially a man of more importance than 
 Zwingli, whose father was a peasant farmer. In elo- 
 quence, he appears to have been little the inferior of his 
 leader, and he is described by Zwingli himself as " most 
 studious, most candid, most learned." He was born in 
 the last decade of the fifteenth century, and was educated 
 at the universities of Vienna and Paris. At both insti- 
 tutions he attained high rank among his fellows, but his 
 
GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS I3S 
 
 life was wild and dissipated. Some time before 1522 he 
 was converted, and from this time on his life was one of 
 perfect rectitude and piety. Though not a profound 
 scholar, he was a learned man for his time, and his views 
 regarding the church were derived from careful study of 
 the original Scriptures, especially of the Greek New 
 Testament. 
 
 Another of the Anabaptist leaders was Felix Mantz, 
 also a native of Zurich, the natural son of a canon, lib- 
 erally educated, and especially versed in the Hebrew 
 Scriptures. He was the firm friend and adherent of 
 Zwingli, until the latter gave up his early principle of 
 the supremacy of the Scriptures. Mantz could not chop 
 about so easily. Faithfully following the principle to its 
 necessary conclusions, he became convinced that the bap- 
 tism of infants is nowhere authorized in Scripture, but is, 
 on the contrary, excluded by the requirement of personal 
 faith as a precedent to baptism. 
 
 Other prominent men among the Anabaptists were 
 George Blaurock, a former monk, who for his eloquence 
 and zeal was known as a second Paul; Ludwig Hatzer, 
 a native of the canton of St. Gall, who had studied at 
 Freiburg and acquired a good knowledge of Hebrew, and 
 had the confidence of Zwingli before he became an Ana- 
 baptist ; and Balthaser Hiibmaier, of whose life and labors 
 a more particular account will be given in a subsequent 
 chapter. 
 
 By the beginning of 1525 the break between Zwingli 
 and his more radical associates in the work of reform 
 had become marked. Their opposition to infant baptism 
 became so vehement that at length the council appointed 
 a public disputation January 17th. Grebel and Mantz, 
 Hatzer and Blaurock, were present and represented the 
 radical party, but the council decided that the victory 
 was with Zwingli and issued an order that parents 
 
136 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 should have their children baptized at once, on pain of 
 banishment. 
 
 Thus far no reference is made in the contemporary 
 records to Anabaptism. The radicals had begun by sim- 
 ply opposing infant baptism and refusing to have their 
 own children christened. They did not at once see that 
 this contention of theirs invalidated their own baptism. 
 If faith must precede baptism, and for that reason they 
 could not conscientiously permit their infants to be bap- 
 tized, it necessarily followed that they themselves had 
 not been baptized. They were not long now in seeing 
 this, and from the summer of 1525 we read of rebaptisms. 
 At first affusion was practised, probably according to the 
 common usage of the Swiss churches of that day, but a 
 little later immersion was adopted by some as the baptism 
 prescribed by Scripture. The Swiss Anabaptists did not 
 arrive all at once at a full understanding of New Tes- 
 tament practice, but were led to it gradually, as they 
 were taught by the Spirit of God, and possibly by other 
 Christians. 
 
 Anabaptism spread with great rapidity. Zwingli and 
 the Council of Zurich became alarmed, and again hit 
 upon the expedient of a public discussion, on Novem- 
 ber 6. The Anabaptists came, but it is not likely that 
 they expected a victory, knowing that Zwingli was in- 
 flexibly opposed to them, and that his influence was all- 
 powerful with the council. Zwingli brought forward the 
 arguments of which later Pedobaptists have made so free 
 use, that the Abrahamic covenant is continued in the 
 New Dispensation, and that baptism replaces circum- 
 cision. The Anabaptists, like Baptists of to-day, argued 
 that there is no command or example for infant baptism 
 in the New Testament, and that instruction and belief 
 are enjoined before baptism. Incidentally, Zwingli re- 
 proached the Anabaptists for being separatists ; to which 
 
GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS I37 
 
 they made the unanswerable reply that, if they were such, 
 they had as good a right to separate from him as he had 
 to separate from the pope. The council, however, made 
 an official finding (published under date of November 
 30), to the effect that " each one of the Anabaptists hav- 
 ing expressed his views without hindrance, it was found, 
 by the sure testimonies of holy Scripture, both of the 
 Old and the New Testaments, that Zwingli and his fol- 
 lowers had overcome the Anabaptists, annihilated Ana- 
 baptism, and established infant baptism." So little confi- 
 dence had the council in this annihilation of Anabaptism, 
 in spite of their swelling words, that they proceeded to 
 do what they could to annihilate it by means of the civil 
 power. On this occasion they contented themselves with 
 ordering all persons to abstain from Anabaptism, and 
 baptize their young children. They added this grim warn- 
 ing: "Whoever shall act contrary to the order, shall, as 
 often as he disobeys, be punished by the fine of a silver 
 mark; and if any shall prove disobedient, we shall deal 
 with him farther and punish him according to his deserts 
 without further forgiveness." 
 
 That this was no light and unmeaning threat, the Ana- 
 baptists had immediate reason to know. Grebel, Mantz, 
 Blaurock, and others prominent in the movement, were 
 summoned before the council and commanded to retract 
 their errors; on refusal they were thrown into prison 
 loaded with chains, and kept there several months. Hiib- 
 maier, who had been compelled to seek a refuge in the 
 canton, was thrown into prison also ; and there sick and 
 weak, he yielded for the moment and consented to make 
 a public recantation. When brought into the pulpit, 
 however, his spirit reasserted itself, and instead of pro- 
 nouncing his recantation, he made an address declaring 
 his opposition to infant baptism and defending rebaptism. 
 His amazed and disappointed hearers unceremoniously 
 
138 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 hustled him back to his prison, and by prolonged im- 
 prisonment and tortures at length extracted from him 
 a written recantation. This was only a weakness of the 
 flesh, that is no more honorable to Zwingli and his fol- 
 lowers than to Hiibmaier. On his release, he resumed 
 his Anabaptism and remained faithful to his convictions 
 until his death. 
 
 It would be a painful and useless task to detail the 
 cruelties that followed. No persecution was ever more 
 gratuitous and unfounded. Some of its later apologists 
 have alleged that it was more political than religious, that 
 it was a necessary measure to protect the State from 
 seditious persons. It is sufficient to reply that contem- 
 porary records make no charge of sedition against the 
 Anabaptists. They were condemned for Anabaptism, 
 and for nothing else; the record stands in black and 
 white for all men to read. The Zwinglians found that 
 having once undertaken to suppress what they declared 
 to be heresy by physical force, more stringent remedies 
 than fines and imprisonments were needed. In short, if 
 persecution is to be efficient and not ridiculous, there is 
 no halting-place this side of the sword and the stake. 
 The Zwinglians did not lack courage to make their re- 
 pressive measures effectual. On March 7, 1526, it was 
 decreed by the Zurich Council that whosoever rebaptized 
 should be drowned, and this action was confirmed by a 
 second decree of November 19. Felix Mantz, who had 
 been released for a time and had renewed his labors at 
 Schaffhausen and Basel, was rearrested on December 3, 
 found guilty of the heinous crime of Anabaptism, and 
 on January 5 was sentenced to death by drowning. 
 
 This barbarous sentence was duly carried out. On the 
 way to the place of execution, says Bullinger (a bitterly 
 hostile historian), " his mother and brother came to him, 
 and exhorted him to be steadfast; and he persevered in 
 
GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS I39 
 
 his folly, even to the end. When he was bound upon 
 the hurdle and was about to be thrown into the stream by 
 the executioner, he sang with a loud voice, 'In manus tuas, 
 Domine, commendo spiritum meum' ('into thy hands, 
 O Lord, I commend my spirit') ; and herewith was drawn 
 into the water and drowned." No wonder Capito wrote 
 to Zwingli from Strasburg : " It is reported here that 
 your Felix Mantz has suffered punishment and died glori- 
 ously; on which account the cause of truth and piety, 
 which you sustain, is greatly depressed." 
 
 If anything could depress the Zwinglian movement, one 
 would think it would be this brutal treatment of those 
 whose only fault was that they had been consistent where 
 Zwingli himself had been inconsistent, in keeping close 
 to New Testament teaching and precedent. About two 
 years later Jacob Faulk and Henry Rieman, having firmly 
 refused to retract, but rather having expressed their de- 
 termination to preach the gospel and rebaptize converts 
 if released, were sentenced to death, taken to a little 
 fishing-hut in the middle of the river Limat, where, says 
 Bullinger, "they were drawn into the water and 
 drowned." 
 
 For these persecutions Zwingli stands condemned be- 
 fore the bar of history. As the burning of Servetus has 
 left an eternal stain on the good name of Calvin, in spite 
 of all attempts to explain away his responsibility for the 
 dark deed, so the drowning of Mantz is a damning blot 
 on Zwingli's career as a reformer. All the perfumes of 
 Arabia will not sweeten the hand that has been stained 
 with the blood of one of Christ's martyrs. If Zwingli 
 did not take an active part in the condemnation of Mantz, 
 if he did not fully approve the savage measures of the 
 council, he did approve of the suppression of Anabap- 
 tism by the civil power. There is no record of protest 
 of his, by voice or pen, against the barbarous cruelties 
 
X40 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 inflicted in the name of pure religion on so many of 
 Gk)d's people, though his influence would have been all- 
 powerful in restraining the council from passing their 
 persecuting edicts. He cannot be acquitted, therefore, of 
 moral complicity in this judicial murder. Though not 
 personally a persecutor, he stood by, like Saul at the 
 stoning of Stephen, approving by silence all that was 
 done. 
 
 Grebel was spared the fate of Mantz by an untimely 
 death. His fiery spirit made him a natural leader of 
 men, and at Schaflfhausen, at St. Gall, at Hinwyl, and at 
 many other places, he preached the gospel with great 
 power and gathered large numbers of converts into 
 churches. His labors continued little more than three 
 years, and his name appears in the Zurich records for 
 the last time early in March, 1526. All that we know 
 of him further is that he died, probably soon after, of 
 the pest. Had he lived a few years longer, his fitness 
 for leadership would have given him a large following 
 among his countrymen, the character of the Swiss Ref- 
 ormation might have been radically changed, and the 
 history of Switzerland turned into a new channel for all 
 time. Hubmaier was banished, to meet his martyrdom 
 elsewhere. Blaurock was burned at the stake at Claus- 
 sen, in the Tyrol, in 1529. Hatzer, driven out of Zurich, 
 went to Strassburg for a time, but being banished thence 
 made his way to Constance, where he was apprehended, 
 imprisoned for four months and then put to death. The 
 formal charge against him was bigamy. He is said in 
 some accounts to have had twenty-four wives, according 
 to others he had nineteen, while some content themselves 
 with saying vaguely " a great many." In the trial record 
 at Constance he is said to have confessed that he mar- 
 ried his wife's maid while his wife still lived. There is 
 not a line of confirmatory evidence in the correspondence 
 
GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS I4I 
 
 between Zwingli and his friends at Constance, nor in 
 a contemporary account of Hatzer's last moments by 
 an eye-witness. His death was after a godly manner, 
 and the account says : " A nobler and more manful death 
 was never seen in Constance. He suffered with greater 
 propriety than I had given him credit for. They who 
 knew not that he was a heretic and an Anabaptist could 
 have observed nothing in him. . . May the Almighty, 
 the Eternal God, grant to me and to the servants of his 
 word like mercy in the day when he shall call us home." 
 
 This is not the way in which adulterers and vulgar 
 scoundrels die. Dr. Keller pronounces the charge 
 against Hatzer " an unproved and unprovable statement." 
 Resting as it does on an [alleged] confession that is 
 wholly unconfirmed, the official charge is to be regarded 
 as a calumny invented to conceal the fact that there was 
 no fault found in him save that he was an Anabaptist. 
 
 Thus one by one the leaders were killed or driven 
 away or died by natural causes. By this means the per- 
 secutors at length attained their end. Though persecu- 
 tion at first increased the number of Anabaptists, they 
 were for the most part plain, unlettered folk, rich in 
 nothing else than faith, and little able to hold out un- 
 aided and unled against a persecution so bitter and de- 
 termined. Gradually the Anabaptists disappeared from 
 the annals of Zurich, but not without having left the 
 impress of their character on the people. 
 
 While the canton of Zurich was measurably successful 
 in suppressing the Anabaptist movement, it proved to 
 have a greater quality of permanence elsewhere. The 
 Anabaptists of Bern are less prominent during the time of 
 Zwingli than those of Zurich, perhaps because there was 
 no reformer at Bern of the ability and literary activity 
 manifested by Zwingli at Zurich and by (Ecolampadius 
 at Basel. There is even better reason than the history 
 
142 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of the Zurich movement discloses for supposing that 
 these Anabaptists were the direct descendants of the 
 Waldensian groups that for two or three centuries had 
 leavened parts of Switzerland with their influence. 
 
 Except that we have less explicit accounts of the 
 formal organization of the sect, the history of the Ber- 
 nese Anabaptists is precisely parallel with that of their 
 Zurich brethren, down to the disappearance of the latter. 
 There appears to be no essential difference in doctrine 
 and practice, if we except the fact that no evidence of 
 immersion is found in Bern. There is the same active, 
 relentless persecution by the council, but it does not ap- 
 pear that the death penalty was inflicted in this canton. 
 But the result of these persecutions was very different 
 from what we have found in Zurich. The Bern Ana- 
 baptists had less able leaders at first, and consequently 
 may have been less dependent upon leadership. What is 
 certain is that the Bernese authorities themselves regret- 
 fully recognized the impotence of their persecuting 
 measures to suppress the movement. Causes for the in- 
 crease of these people, rather than their diminution, were 
 found by contemporaries in the lax enforcement of the 
 laws by magistrates; in the lack of pious and godly liv- 
 ing among the ministers and people of the town ; and in 
 the failure of discipline in the churches. The Anabaptists 
 are acknowledged to be more sober. God-fearing, and 
 honest than others, and their preachers expounded the 
 Scriptures more faithfully. Nevertheless, it was believed 
 that such people as these were dangerous and should not 
 be tolerated. 
 
 Persecution of the Anabaptists in Bern continued dur- 
 ing the seventeenth century, and through the influence 
 of their fellow-believers in Holland, the Mennonites, the 
 Dutch government several times intervened to secure lib- 
 erty of conscience for these long-suffering people. There 
 
GREBEL AND THE SWISS ANABAPTISTS I43 
 
 were not wanting also Swiss Christians to protest against 
 the inhuman and un-Christian policy of the government. 
 Though these efforts were not immediately successful, 
 the persecutions grew less severe with each successive 
 generation and in the eighteenth century gradually 
 ceased. 
 
 In the meantime, however, large numbers of the Ber- 
 nese Anabaptists had emigrated in order to escape their 
 bitter persecutions. Not a few came to America. The 
 colony that settled in Lancaster County, Pa., from 1715 
 onward, though commonly called Mennonites, was com- 
 posed largely of these refugees from Bern. Others set- 
 tled in the Palatinate and other German States in which 
 some measure of toleration was allowed. But a consid- 
 erable number refused to leave their native land, endured 
 all the persecutions, and their descendants are found in 
 Bern to this day. Still called Wiedertduffer (Anabap- 
 tists) and sometimes simply Tduffer (Baptists), they 
 hold the precise doctrines of the medieval evangelicals, 
 and the practices of the sixteenth century Anabaptists. 
 They baptize only believers, but most of them still prac- 
 tise affusion, though the practice of immersion is said to 
 be spreading among them. They refuse to bear arms 
 and prohibit oaths. A part of them formed a separate 
 body in 1830, and are known as New Baptists, because 
 they practise immersion exclusively. Eight of the older 
 congregations are members of a Conference, or Asso- 
 ciation, which meets semi-annually, but there are some 
 other churches not members of this body. They publish 
 a paper called " Zion's Pilger," and there seems every 
 prospect that they will continue to increase in numbers 
 and influence. 
 
 The teachings of the Swiss Anabaptists are accurately 
 known to us from three independent and mutually con- 
 firmatory sources : The testimony of their opponents, the 
 
144 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 fragments of their writings that remain, and their Con- 
 fession of Faith. The latter is the first document of its 
 kind known to be in existence. It was issued in 1527 by 
 the " brotherly union of certain believing, baptized chil- 
 dren of God," assembled at Schleitheim, a little village 
 near Schaffhausen. The author is conjectured to have 
 been Michael Sattler, of whom we know little more than 
 that he was an ex-monk, of highly esteemed character, 
 who suffered martyrdom at Rothenberg in the same year 
 this confession was issued, his tongue being torn out,, his 
 body lacerated with red-hot tongs, and then burned. 
 
 The Confession is not a complete system of doctrine, 
 but treats the following topics: baptism, excommunica- 
 tion, breaking of bread, separation from abominations, 
 shepherds in the congregation, sword (civil government), 
 oaths. It teaches the baptism of believers only, the 
 breaking of bread by those alone who have been bap- 
 tized, and inculcates a pure church discipline. It for- 
 bids a Christian to be a magistrate, but does not absolve 
 him from obedience to the civil law ; it pronounces oaths 
 sinful. With the exception of the last two points — in 
 which the modern Friends have followed the Anabaptists 
 in interpreting the Scriptures — ^the Schleitheim Con- 
 fession corresponds with the beliefs avowed by Baptist 
 churches to-day. It is significant that what is opprobri- 
 ously called " close " communion is found to be the 
 teaching of the oldest Baptist document in existence. 
 
 With this Confession agrees the testimony of Zwingli 
 and other bitter opponents of the Anabaptists. The only 
 fault charged against them by their contemporaries, that 
 is supported by evidence, is that they had the courage 
 and honesty to interpret the Scriptures as Baptists to-day 
 interpret them. Of their deep piety there is as little doubt 
 as there is of the cruelty with which that piety was 
 punished as a crime against God and man. 
 
aiL?' ^''.J^dle^l:?i^i,:yTWcK wSuHHiS. 
 
 
 The Martyrdom of John Hus 
 
Hus 
 
Waldo 
 
HULDKEICH ZwiNGLI 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 THE name Anabaptist stands in the literature of the 
 Lutheran Reformation as a synonym for the ex- 
 tremest errors of doctrine, and the wildest excesses of 
 conduct. The Anabaptists were denounced by their con- 
 temporaries, Romanist and Protestant alike, with a rhet- 
 oric so . sulphurous that an evil odor has clung to the 
 name ever since. If one were to believe the half that he 
 reads about these heretics, he would be compelled to think 
 them the most depraved of mankind. Nothing was too 
 vile to be ascribed to them, nothing was too wicked to 
 be believed about them — nothing, in fact, was incredible, 
 except one had described them as God-fearing, pious folk, 
 studious of the Scriptures, and obedient to the will of 
 their Lord, as that will was made known. The masses 
 of the Anabaptists, as of the Lutherans, were uncultured 
 people; but among their leaders were men unsurpassed 
 in their times for knowledge of the original Scriptures, 
 breadth of mind, and fervidness of eloquence. Historians 
 of their own land and race are beginning to do these 
 men tardy justice. The day is not far distant when 
 historical scholarship will prepare a complete vindication 
 of the men so maligned. In the meantime, enough is 
 already known to set right many erroneous statements 
 that have been handed down from historian to historian 
 for centuries, and accepted as undoubtedly true without 
 re-investigation. 
 
 As in Switzerland, so in Germany, hardly had the Ref- 
 ormation begun when we find mention of Anabaptists. 
 r us 
 
146 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 But there is this difference: while the name in Swit- 
 zerland denoted a party essentially homogeneous in 
 faith and practice, the name Anabaptist is applied in 
 Germany to men of widely divergent views and acts. It 
 was, in fact, a convenient epithet of opprobrium, care- 
 lessly bestowed by the dominant party on those who 
 opposed them and so aroused their displeasure. Just as 
 now anybody who holds advanced views about the State 
 and its functions, thereby differing from the orthodox 
 political faith, is called by hasty and superficial people 
 " anarchist " or " socialist " (though he may repudiate 
 both titles), so then anybody who dissented from ortho- 
 doxy and would not conform to the State Church was 
 likely to be called " Anabaptist." Many who are called 
 by this title in Reformation literature were never Ana- 
 baptists, but practised Pedobaptism as consistently as any 
 Lutheran or Romanist of them all. Others who were 
 so far Anabaptists as to have rejected infant baptism, 
 had not grasped the principle on which rejection of infant 
 baptism properly rests, the spiritual constitution of the 
 church. 
 
 Even when the name Anabaptist is properly applied, it 
 does not necessarily connote evangelical beliefs and prac- 
 tice. Any Christians who have re-baptized, for what- 
 ever reason, may be called by that title. The Donatists 
 were Anabaptists, but they baptized those who came to 
 them because of a supposed defect in the " orders " of 
 the Catholic priesthood. Baptists have affinity only with 
 such Anabaptists as hold to the theory of a regenerate 
 church, reject infant baptism as a nullity, and re-baptize 
 on profession of faith those baptized in unconscious in- 
 fancy. These distinctions must be borne in mind by 
 one who would read intelligently about the German 
 Anabaptists. 
 
 The seemingly sudden appearance of the Anabaptists 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY I47 
 
 and their rapid growth in Germany is a remarkable phe- 
 nomenon — one of the strangest things in history if we re- 
 fuse to look below the surface. Some historians insist 
 that the Anabaptists had no previous existence ; that it is 
 in vain to look back of the first mention of them for 
 their origin. But this is to say that an event occurred 
 without an adequate cause. No sect or party in, the his- 
 tory of the world ever made such an extraordinary 
 growth as the Anabaptists made during the early years 
 of the Reformation unless it had a previous history. 
 We have seen in previous chapters how Central Europe 
 was leavened by evangelical teachings. The writings of 
 the medieval Fathers are full of complaints of the ex- 
 tent to which the various heresies had corrupted the 
 people. Making all due allowance for exaggeration 
 (where there was little temptation to exaggerate and 
 nothing whatever to be gained by it) the conclusion can- 
 not be resisted that the persistence of what the Catholic 
 Church pronounced heresy, but what we should call evan- 
 gelical truth, was complete throughout Central Europe 
 during the three centuries preceding the Reformation. 
 This truth was doubtless mixed with no little error, in 
 some cases, but error less deadly than that taught by 
 the Roman Church. For, with all their deviations from 
 the gospel truth, the heretical sects taught a spiritual 
 religion, not a religion of forms and ceremonies — ^they 
 were loyal to the idea of salvation by faith, not salvation 
 by works. The name Anabaptist we do not meet, as 
 applied to any of these sects before the Reformation; 
 but the Anabaptist party of the Reformation period had 
 its roots in these preexistent sects, and found in their 
 remnants the materials for its surprising growth. To 
 doubt this is, as before remarked, to assume that so 
 great a result — almost unparalleled in the history of 
 Christianity — had no adequate cause, which is irrational 
 
I/jS A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 It is commonly said that the first appearance of Ana- 
 baptism in Germany was in 1521, at Zwickau, on the 
 border of Bohemia. Certain "prophets" here made a 
 great stir. These prophets were Nicholas Storch, a 
 weaver, but a man of marked ability and well versed in 
 the Scriptures ; Marcus Stiibner, who had been a student 
 at Wittenberg; and Marcus Thoma, evidently a man of 
 some learning, since a letter written in Latin is extant, 
 in which he is addressed as "a learned man" {erudito 
 viro). Of Thomas Miinzer, the writer of the letter, 
 we shall see more hereafter; it suffices the present pur- 
 pose to say that he joined himself to these prophets for 
 ends of his own, and that though with them for a time, 
 he was never of them. 
 
 The prophets being driven out of Zwickau, made their 
 way to Wittenberg, where Carlstadt and Melanchthon 
 received them with favor; but Luther was greatly dis- 
 turbed by their ascendency, returned from his " cap- 
 tivity" at the Wartburg, and by preaching a series of 
 violent sermons recovered the direction of aifairs. The 
 prophets accordingly had to depart, and we hear little 
 more of them. Ever since it has been the fashion among 
 the church historians, following the lead of the Luther- 
 ans, to represent the Zwickau Anabaptists as a band of 
 fanatics and disturbers of the peace, misled by a belief 
 in their own prophetic inspiration and believing them- 
 selves endowed with a gift of tongues. The contem- 
 porary literature, however, gives no support to this view. 
 A strong tinge of mysticism is, indeed, found in their 
 reported teachings, but of fanaticism, or encouragement 
 of civil disorder, there is no trace. These prophets had 
 precisely such visions, opening to them (as they believed) 
 the secrets of the spiritual world, as Swedenborg and 
 George Fox enjoyed. They seem, indeed, to have been 
 the precursors of the modern Friends, so spiritualizing 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY I49 
 
 the church as to reject the priesthood, water baptism, 
 and all outward ceremonies of religion. They were not 
 Anabaptists, for they did not baptize, yet they were at 
 one with the Anabaptists in holding that the unregenerate 
 have no place in the church of Christ. 
 
 It is difficult, if not impossible, in the present state of 
 research, to set definite bounds for the beginning of 
 Anabaptist churches in Germany. What we know is 
 that two men were influential above others in promoting 
 the Anabaptist movement : Balthasar Hubmaier and John 
 Denck. 
 
 Hiibmaier was born about the year 1481, in Fried- 
 burg, Bavaria. The name of his birthplace (of which 
 the English equivalent would be Peacemont), sometimes 
 done into Latin after the fashion of the learned in those 
 days, furnished a surname often used by him in his writ- 
 ings — Friedburger or Pacimontanus. Nothing definite 
 is known of his family, whose name may be taken to 
 imply that they were small tenant-farmers.' The lad was 
 sent at an early age to the Latin school at Augsburg, 
 and thence he went to the University of Freiburg, where 
 he matriculated in 1503. His studies here were diligent 
 and successful, but were interrupted by his going to 
 Schaffhausen as a teacher, to earn means to prosecute 
 his work at the university. He returned and took the 
 master's degree in 151 1. So high was his proficiency 
 that he was regarded as a promising young man, and 
 was advised to study medicine, then a profitable career. 
 But he decided to devote himself to theology, saying: 
 " Her alone have I chosen, her before all others have I 
 selected, and for her will I prepare a cell in my heart." 
 
 At Freiburg he met two men who had much to do 
 with his subsequent career. John Heigelin, or Faber, 
 and John Meyer, better known as Eck. The former was 
 
 1 Hubmaier-Hubel (provincial for Hiigel) meier, " the farmer of the Wl" 
 
150 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 a fellow-Student, the latter his most influential teacher. 
 A dispute arose between Eck and the faculty of the 
 university, and Hiibmaier warmly espoused the cause of 
 his teacher and friend, and followed Eck to the Uni- 
 versity of Ingolstadt on his removal thither. Here Hiib- 
 maier's rise was rapid. He was given a chair of theology 
 and appointed university preacher, and finally (1515) 
 vice-rector of the university. 
 
 The crisis of his fate was now at hand. In 1516 he 
 was called to be pastor at the cathedral of Ratisbon. 
 This removed him from the overshadowing influence of 
 Eck and gave him chance for independent study and 
 growth of character. He seems, even thus early, to have 
 become an ardent and profound student of the Scrip- 
 tures. As a scholar he was the equal of Luther, 
 though not the peer perhaps of Melanchthon and Eras- 
 mus. He soon became renowned as one of the most elo- 
 quent preachers of his time. So far as we can know, he 
 led a pure life and was sincerely pious, though still in 
 error. With such talents there was no position in the 
 church to which he might not aspire. But when the 
 Reformation began, it seems to have appealed at once 
 to his mind, if not to his heart ; and it was not long before 
 a brilliant career in the church seemed less attractive than 
 +0 follow the truth. 
 
 Resigning his position, he went to Schaffhausen, where 
 he had formerly made friends, and here he possibly 
 hoped to take an active part in the Swiss Reformation. 
 Soon after we find him pastor at Waldshut, just over the 
 Swiss border in the province of Austria. He did not 
 for a time break with the Church of Rome, and observed 
 all the Catholic forms in his new parish. Whether he 
 had not yet become fully convinced of Romish errors. 
 2r hesitated to make a breach with the church, in the 
 3ope that it was capable of a gradual reformation, it 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY 15I 
 
 would be profitless to guess. There is a vacillation about 
 his conduct just at this part of his life that is difficult 
 to explain on any theory. He was even recalled to Ratis- 
 bon, to a new charge there, and accepted this invita- 
 tion in November, 1522, but without resigning Waldshut, 
 to which he returned the following March. From this 
 time on he seems definitely to have cast in his lot with 
 the reformers. 
 
 In May, 1523, Hiibmaier visited Zurich and formed 
 a close connection with Zwingli. The latter was in the 
 beginning of his career as a reformer, and inclined to go 
 to the full lengths demanded by his principle of making 
 the Scriptures the sole rule of faith and practice. Hiib- 
 maier clearly perceived that this necessitated the aban- 
 donment of infant baptism, and Zwingli assented. In his 
 writings and sermons of this period Zwingli did not hesi- 
 tate to make the same avowal. It was not, however, for 
 two years thereafter that Hiibmaier acted on that con- 
 clusion, and by that time Zwingli had begun to draw 
 back from it altogether. At the second Zurich disputa- 
 tion (October 26, 1523), Hiibmaier was, next to Zwingli 
 himself, the most prominent disputant; and having thus 
 avowed himself a full believer in the Reformation, he 
 became henceforth its firm and consistent supporter. 
 
 Hitherto his acts at Waldshut had been those of a 
 trimmer, or, at least, of one whose course was undecided. 
 On his return, he submitted to the clergy and deanery 
 of Waldshut eighteen articles of religion, in which he 
 upheld justification by faith alone, taught that the mass 
 is not a sacrifice, but simply a memorial of the death of 
 Christ, and denounced images, purgatory, celibacy of the 
 clergy, and other Roman errors. Only three of thirty 
 priests sided with him, but he had better success with 
 the citizens. He gradually began to change the service, 
 first reading the Epistles and Gospels in German, and 
 
152 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 later giving the cup to all communicants. Some oppo- 
 sition was roused, and just before Whitsunday he re- 
 signed his office, but was reelected pastor by the almost 
 unanimous votes of the parish. The Bishop of Con- 
 stance, hearing of these acts, summoned Hiibmaier be- 
 fore him, but no attention was paid to the summons, the 
 reformer saying, " It would be a little thing for me to 
 stand before that hypocrite." The Austrian Diet, out- 
 raged by these proceedings, demanded the surrender of 
 Hiibmaier, and though the citizens of Waldshut stoutly 
 refused to give up their pastor, he thought it better to 
 leave the city. 
 
 Accordingly, August i6, 1524, he sought refuge at 
 Schaffhausen, where he wrote his tract, "Heretics and 
 those who burn them," but in November he again re- 
 turned to Waldshut. It was about this time that he be- 
 came clearly convinced that infant baptism is contrary 
 to the Scriptures, as we learn from a letter written 
 by him to CEcolampadius, written January 16, 1525, 
 in which there is an elaborate argument against the 
 scripturalness of infant baptism. 
 
 About this time he married a daughter of a Waldshut 
 citizen, and during Lent he abolished the mass, which up 
 to that time he had celebrated in German, had all pictures 
 and altars removed from the churches, and the priests 
 discarded vestments and wore henceforth ordinary cloth- 
 ing. This was an imprudent step, no doubt, since it was 
 almost sure to rouse Austria to violent measures against 
 Waldshut, but fidelity to the truth seemed to Hiibmaier 
 and his followers to demand that it be taken. 
 
 A still graver step followed. Up to this time Hub- 
 maier had, indeed, been an Anabaptist in theory, but not 
 in practice. In the spring of 1525 William Reublin, who 
 had been compelled to leave Switzerland, came to Walds- 
 hut, and through his instructions Hiibmaier became 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY 1 53 
 
 convinced, not only that his baptism in infancy was a 
 nulHty, but that he ought to be baptized on personal 
 confession of faith. Others were convinced with him, 
 and at Easter Reublin baptized the Waldshut pastor and 
 others (one authority says sixty, another one hundred 
 and ten). Shortly after the pastor himself baptized three 
 hundred of his flock. 
 
 This action not only made Hubmaier's position in 
 Waldshut more difficult, by adding fuel to the flame of 
 Austrian hatred, but speedily embroiled him with the 
 Swiss reformers. The Anabaptists had become very 
 troublesome in Bern, and a public disputation with them 
 was held June 5, 1525. CEcolampadius claimed the vic- 
 tory and published his version of the debate. This did 
 so little justice to the arguments of the Anabaptists that 
 Hubmaier was impelled to enter the lists, which he did 
 by writing two tracts : the first, a dialogue " On the bap- 
 tism of infants " was not published until some time later, 
 when he had gone to Moravia ; but the other, " Concern- 
 ing the Christian baptism of believers," appeared at once, 
 and had a great effect. Zwingli retorted with great 
 vehemence, not to say bitterness, in his celebrated treatise 
 on " Baptism, Anabaptism, and infant baptism." From 
 this time on the Swiss reformers, who had been so 
 friendly to Hiibmaier, became his bitterest opponents. 
 
 Affairs in Waldshut grew steadily worse, and a strong 
 Catholic party was formed, which favored surrender of 
 the city to the Austrians. Hiibmaier finally saw that his 
 situation was an impossible one, and with forty-five of 
 his adherents sought safety in flight. December 5, 1525, 
 the city was captured by Austrian troops. Hubmaier 
 made his way to Zurich, not fully realizing how impla- 
 cable an enemy he now had in Zwingli, and soon after his 
 arrival was seized, imprisoned, and treated with great rig- 
 or. Grebel, Mantz, and Blaurock had already preceded 
 
154 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 him to the prison, and it was the evident intention 
 of the authorities to suppress Anabaptism by the most 
 vigorous measures. A show of fairness was, however, 
 still maintained. A public discussion was held December 
 21, at the close of which Zwingli succeeded in wringing 
 from the ill and enfeebled prisoner a promise to recon- 
 sider his views. Ambassadors from Austria demanded 
 the surrender of Hubmaier and, though Zurich refused, 
 a different decision was possible at any time. Besides, it 
 is now certain that torture was applied. At length a 
 written recantation was obtained, and, after a confine- 
 ment of several months, during which time he was loaded 
 with heavy chains, he was released (June 6, 1526), on 
 condition that he leave Switzerland. 
 
 He made his way to Constance, thence to his old resi- 
 dences of Ingoldstadt and Ratisbon, where friends re- 
 ceived him kindly. He could not hope for safety in 
 either of these towns, should his presence become gen- 
 erally known, and he determined to seek an asylum in 
 Moravia. About the end of June he arrived at Nikols- 
 burg, in the domains of the lords of Lichtenstein, nobles 
 who were known to be humane and tolerant. Here he 
 began the most fruitful part of his labors. Though they 
 occupied not more than fifteen months, their results were 
 astonishing. He was incessant in his work as evangelist. 
 Lord Leonhard of Lichtenstein himself soon became an 
 Anabaptist, and the sect grew with amazing rapidity. 
 An unfriendly historian estimates their numbers at this 
 time at twelve thousand. Moravia had been well-sown 
 with gospel truth by Waldenses and other evangelical 
 preachers and the field was white to harvest when 
 Hubmaier put in the sickle. 
 
 He was equally busy with the pen. Tract after tract, 
 not fewer than fifteen distinct writings in all, was written 
 and printed during this period, and some tracts previously 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY iJS 
 
 composed now found their way to the public. They 
 were scattered broadcast over Germany and Switzerland, 
 and had an influence that it would not be easy to over- 
 estimate. To this time belong his treatise on the Lord's 
 Supper, his reply to Zwingli, his " Book of the Sword," 
 "Form of Baptism," "Form of the Lord's Supper," 
 " Freedom of the Human Will," etc. These were dedi- 
 cated to the lords of Lichtenstein and other noble patrons, 
 which certainly did not hinder their circulation. 
 
 Though for a time there was no external opposition to 
 this work of Htibmaier, it was not without certain diffi- 
 culties from within. Hans Hut and Jacob Widemann 
 were to Hiibmaier what Hymenaeus and Alexander 
 were to Paul — messengers of Satan to buffet him, thorns 
 in the flesh. Hut was the more mischievous of the two. 
 Beginning as a sacristan, then an artisan, afterwards im- 
 bued with the spirit and teachings of Miinzer, he nar- 
 rowly escaped from Muhlhausen with his life, to become 
 a "prophet," a fanatic, a preacher of Chiliasm and the 
 gospel of the sword. He proclaimed the speedy end of 
 all mundane things, and first set as the date for this final 
 event the day of the summer feast in 1529. Hubmaier 
 stoutly resisted these men and preached and wrote 
 against their false and demoralizing doctrines. A disputa- 
 tion was held in the castle at Nikolsburg, but the re- 
 sult was not decisive; both sides, as usual, claiming the 
 victory. At length Hut was imprisoned by Lord Licht- 
 enstein in the castle, but made his escape and preached 
 his doctrines in various parts of Germany, especially at 
 Augsburg, where he was put to death in 1529. Not a 
 little of the responsibility for the growth of fanaticism 
 among the Anabaptists must be laid at his door. The 
 unity of the Nikolsburg church was fatally impaired, 
 and the way was prepared for the final catastrophe. 
 The Anabaptists in Moravia would never have been 
 
156 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 unmolested so long, but that the country was in a most 
 disorganized state. The Archduke Ferdinand had suc- 
 ceeded in making good his title as Margrave of Moravia, 
 and now determined to get possession of Hiibmaier. Ex- 
 actly how or when he accomplished his purpose we do 
 not know, but as there is no record that the lords of 
 Lichtenstein suffered any personal inconvenience it has 
 been inferred that they surrendered the Anabaptist 
 preacher to save themselves. Not later than September, 
 1527, Hiibmaier and his devoted wife were taken to 
 Vienna and tried for heresy. During the process he 
 asked for an interview with his old friend Faber, and the 
 latter reported that he had made a partial recantation. 
 On March 10, 1528, he was taken through the streets of 
 the city to the public square, and his body was burned. 
 So died one of the purest spirits of the Reformation. 
 Three days later his wife, who had exhorted him in his last 
 hour to endure steadfastly, was drowned in the Danube. 
 
 Hiibmaier was one of the Anabaptists against whom 
 his enemies bring no charge of immorality or unchristian 
 conduct. We may be sure they would have found or 
 invented such charges against him had it been possible. 
 He was eloquent, learned, zealous, a man in every way 
 the equal (to say no more) of Luther, Zwingli, and Cal- 
 vin. His name has been loaded with unjust reproaches ; 
 he has been accused of teaching things that his soul ab- 
 horred; but in spite of his weakness at Zurich he stands 
 out one of the heroic figures of his age. 
 
 Hubmaier was no mystic. He believed in no inner 
 light other than the illumination of the Spirit of God 
 that is given to every believer who walks close with God. 
 His appeal on all disputed points is not to this internal 
 witness of the Spirit, for which other voices might be 
 mistaken, but to the written word of God which cannot 
 err. To the law and the testimonY he referred everv 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY I57 
 
 doubtful question, and by the decision thus reached, he 
 loyally abided. 
 
 Another leader of this time, John Denck, was a man 
 of different mental cast. Singularly little is known of 
 his early history: the place and time of his birth are 
 uncertain, and of his parentage and family we can learn 
 as little — we cannot say definitely whether he had brother 
 or sister, wife or child. He is thought to have been a 
 native of Bavaria, about the year 1495. We first get 
 definite knowledge of him as an attendant on the lectures 
 of CEcolampadius at Basel, in 1523, where he took the 
 degree of Master of Arts. Shortly after he became head 
 master of the school of St. Sebald, in the free imperial 
 city of Nuremberg. He had evidently adopted evangelical 
 views before going to Basel, but he was from the first 
 neither a Zwinglian nor a Lutheran, but took a line of 
 his own. Nuremberg had, however, become a Lutheran 
 town under the lead of Osiander, and it was not long be-, 
 fore Denck's teachings were found to harmonize ill with 
 those of Luther, especially as to the freedom of the will. 
 He was summoned before the authorities, made a Con- 
 fession of Faith, and this was adjudged so heretical that 
 he was condemned to banishment. 
 
 This Confession has been recently discovered in the 
 archives of the city, and interpreted by Doctor Keller. It 
 plainly appears that Denck held the theological views 
 with which the name of Arminius became later identified. 
 He admits the existence of original or inherited sin, but 
 denies total depravity; on the contrary, he says, a germ 
 of good exists in man. Men are so far from being 
 utterly depraved that every man has in him a ray of the 
 divine light, which he could recognize and follow if he 
 would. To follow this light, to obey the divine will, is 
 the essence of faith, and by such faith alone is one justi- 
 fied. There is a working together of the divine and 
 
I $8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 human in salvation. Faith is not mere belief, but the 
 conformity of our will to the will of God. Scripture is 
 not the sole foundation for faith, for there were men of 
 faith before the Scriptures. Man must first of all be- 
 lieve in God as revealed in his own conscience, and then 
 he will believe in the external revelation, finding the two 
 to harmonize. The witness of the Spirit confirms the 
 witness of the Scriptures — ^this inner word testifying to 
 the truth of the external word — and only he who has the 
 illumination of the Spirit can understand the Scriptures. 
 
 It will be seen from this brief account of his teachings 
 that Denck's theology, as held at this time, was irrecon- 
 cilable with that of Luther in the fundamental doctrines 
 of human nature, freedom of the will, faith, and justifi- 
 cation, to say nothing of the authority of the Scriptures. 
 A city that had declared itself for Luther and his doctrine 
 could hardly be expected, in those times, to tolerate so 
 pronounced dissent from the official faith. 
 
 In June, 1525, we find Denck was at St. Gall. He was 
 not yet a professed Anabaptist; possibly up to this time 
 he had not heard of the doctrines of this party. He 
 could hardly fail to hear of them now and to be favorably 
 impressed by them. This would account for his going 
 next to Augsburg, which was already an Anabaptist 
 center. A visit of Hiibmaier to the city in the following 
 year decided him to become an Anabaptist, and he was 
 himself baptized by Hiibmaier. From this time the Ana- 
 baptists in Augsburg grew rapidly, until they are said 
 to have numbered eleven hundred, many of the prominent 
 people of the city joining them. The Augsburg Ana- 
 baptists, as we know from a contemporary eye-witness, 
 practised immersion. Their piety was acknowledged 
 even by their opponents and persecutors, though these 
 maintained that it was a work of the devil, and called it 
 " a sort of carnival-play of a holy apostolic life, fitted 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY 1 59 
 
 to make the gospel hateful." At a synod in this city, 
 held in the autumn of 1527, at which Denck presided, it 
 was decided that Christians ought not to obtain power or 
 redress of grievances by unlawful means, that is, by the 
 sword. 
 
 Partly urged by his restless spirit, partly compelled by 
 danger of imprisonment and death, Denck spent his last 
 years in rapidly moving from place to place. We find 
 traces of his presence at Strassburg, Worms, Zurich, 
 Schaffhausen, and Constance. His last days were passed 
 at Basel, where he died in the autumn of 1527, of the 
 plague. The exact time of his death and the place of his 
 burial are unknown. 
 
 His contemporaries unite in praising Denck's brilliant 
 talents and exemplary life. " In Denck, that distin- 
 guished young man," says Vadian, " were all talents so 
 extraordinarily developed that he surpassed his years, and 
 appeared greater than himself." He was of handsome 
 and imposing appearance, and hence was called " the 
 Apollo of the Anabaptists." His eloquence was cele. 
 brated, and his learning surpassed his eloquence. His 
 work as translator and author was of high quality. His 
 translation of the Hebrew prophets, made in connection 
 with Hatzer, preceded Luther's by several years, and was 
 freely drawn upon by the latter, which is one testimony 
 among many to its merit. Denck was, however, a mys- 
 tic ; his mental and spiritual affinities were with such men 
 as Tauler and Thomas a Kempis. He would have hailed 
 George Fox as a brother in the Lord. His belief in the 
 sufficiency and supremacy of the inner light not only led 
 him into some doctrinal vagaries, but had a very mis- 
 chievous effect upon his followers. The charge that he 
 did not believe in the divinity of Christ, Doctor Keller 
 thinks is unproved; but it is admitted that he believed 
 in the final restoration of mankind. Denck's writings art 
 
I50 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 remarkable for their mild polemics in an age when sav- 
 age denunciation and personal abuse of opponents too 
 often took the place of argument. He was one of the 
 most influential thinkers in Germany, and probably had 
 in the South and West a greater following than Luther, 
 in recognition of which fact his opponents not infre- 
 quently called him " the Anabaptist pope." The influence 
 of his work was felt for many years after his untimely 
 death. 
 
 Two views of civil government had been thus far con- 
 tending for the mastery among the Anabaptists. One is 
 that of the Schleitheim Confession, which defines the 
 sword as " an ordinance of God outside of the perfection 
 of Christ . . . ordained over the wicked for punish- 
 ment and death," and forbids Christians to serve as mag- 
 istrates. A very considerable part of the Anabaptists ad- 
 vocated those principles of non-resistance that have been 
 professed by the Friends of later date. Hubmaier and 
 Denck differed from this view in part. They held that the 
 Scriptures direct men to perform their duties as citizens ; 
 that Christians may lawfully bear the sword as magis- 
 trates, and execute the laws, save in persecution of others. 
 In his tract on the " Christian Baptism of Believers," 
 Hiibmaier says : " We confess openly that there should be 
 secular government that should bear the sword. This we 
 are willing and bound to obey in everything that is not 
 against God." In his treatise " On the Sword " he defines 
 and distinguishes civil and religious powers, pointing out 
 the true relations of Church and State, with a clearness 
 that a modern Baptist might well imitate, but could not 
 excel. " In matters of faith," said Denck, " everything 
 must be left free, willing, and unforced." Hubmaier de- 
 nounced persecution in his " Heretics and Those Who 
 Bum Them," written at Schaflfhausen before he had by 
 his rebaptism fully ranged himself with the Anabaptists: 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY l6l 
 
 Those who arc heretics one should overcome with holy knowl- 
 edge, not angrily but softly. . . If they will not be taught 
 by strong proofs, or evangeUcal reasons, let them be mad, that 
 those that are filthy may be more filthy still . . . This is the 
 will of Christ, who said, " Let both grow together till the harvest, 
 lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up also the wheat with 
 them ! " . . Hence it follows that the inquisitors are the great- 
 est heretics of all, since they against the doctrine and example 
 of Christ condemn heretics to fire, and before the time of harvest 
 root up the wheat with the tares . . . And now it is clear to 
 every one, even the blind, that a law to burn heretics is an 
 invention of the devil. Truth is immortal. 
 
 These disconnected sentences give an idea of the course 
 of thought through his brief tract, which is written with 
 a fire that may well have stirred to wrath the persecutors 
 whom it arraigned. 
 
 The Anabaptists of this period were the only men of 
 their time who had grasped the principle of civil and 
 religious liberty. That men ought not to be persecuted 
 on account of their religious beliefs was a necessary cor- 
 ollary from their idea of the nature of the church. A 
 spiritual body, consisting only of the regenerate, could 
 not seek to add to itself by force those who were unre- 
 generate. No Anabaptist could become a persecutor 
 without first surrendering this fundamental conviction; 
 and though a few of them appear to have done this, they 
 ceased to be properly classed as Anabaptists the moment 
 they forgot the saying of Christ, " My kingdom is not of 
 this world." 
 
 It remains to tell the disgraceful story of the treatment 
 of the German Anabaptists. Luther began his career as 
 a reformer with brave words in favor of the rights of 
 conscience and religious liberty. At Worms he said: 
 " Unless I am refuted and convicted by testimonies of 
 the Scriptures or by clear arguments (since I believe 
 neither the pope nor councils alone ; it being evident that 
 I. 
 
l62 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I 
 am conquered by the Holy Scriptures quoted by me, and 
 my conscience is bound in the word of God: I cannot 
 and will not recant anything, since it is unsafe and dan- 
 gerous to do anything against the conscience." But 
 later, when the Anabaptists took precisely this position, 
 Luther assails them with exactly the arguments brought 
 against him at Worms, which he so boldly rejected: 
 
 If every one now is allowed to handle the faith so as to intro- 
 duce into the Scriptures his own fancies, and then expound them 
 according to his own understanding, and cares to find only what 
 flatters the populace and the senses, certainly not a single article 
 of faith could stand. It is dangerous, yes terrible, in the highest 
 degree, to hear or believe anything against the faith and doctrine 
 of the entire Christian church. He who doubts any article that 
 the church has believed from the beginning continually, does 
 not believe in the Christian church, and not only condemns the 
 entire Christian church as an accursed heretic, but condemns 
 even Christ himself, with all the apostles who established that 
 article of the church and corroborated it, and that beyond 
 contradiction. 
 
 There was a similar change in Luther's opinions re- 
 garding the treatment proper for heretics. In his address 
 to the Christian nobility of Germany (1520) he said: 
 " We should overcome heretics with books, not with fire, 
 as the old Fathers did. If there were any skill in over- 
 coming heretics with fire, the executioner would be the 
 most learned doctor in the world ; and there would be no 
 need to study, but he that could get another into his 
 power could burn him." The same ideas are set forth 
 in the tract on Secular Magistracy (1523) : "No one can 
 command the soul, or ought to command it, except God, 
 who alone can show it the way to heaven. . . It is 
 futile and impossible to command or by force compel any 
 /nan's belief. . . Heresy is a spiritual thing that no 
 iron can hew down, no fire bum, no water drown. . . 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY 163 
 
 Belief is a free thing that cannot be enforced." Luther 
 even retained these sentiments, at least in the abstract, as 
 late as 1527, for in a treatise written in that year against 
 the Anabaptists, he said : " It is not right, and I am very 
 sorry, that such wrretched people should be so miserably 
 murdered, burned, and cruelly killed. Every one should 
 be allowed to believe what he pleases. If his belief is 
 wrong he will have sufficient penalty in the eternal fire of 
 hell. Why should they be made martyrs in this world 
 also? . . . With the Scripture and God's word we 
 should oppose and resist them; with fire we can 
 accomplish little." 
 
 Yet such excellent sentiments as these did not prevent 
 Luther from advising John, Elector of Saxony, to restrain 
 by force the Anabaptists from propagating their doctrines 
 within his domains. A decree issued by that prince in 
 1528, on the plea that the Anabaptists were seducing 
 simple-minded folk into disobedience to God's word, by 
 preachings and disputations, through books and writings, 
 commanded that " no one — whether noble, burgher, peas- 
 ant, or of whatever rank he may be, except the regular 
 pastors ... to whom is committed in every place 
 the care of souls and preaching — is permitted to preach 
 and baptize, or to buy and read forbidden books ; but that 
 every one who learns of such doings shall make them 
 known to the magistrate of the place where they occur, in 
 order that these persons may be brought to prison and 
 justice." It was made the duty of every one to seize 
 and deliver such offenders to the court; and whoever 
 should fail to do so, did it at peril of body and goods. 
 Whoever received such persons into their houses or gave 
 them any assistance, should be treated as abettors and ad- 
 herents. The Protestants are therefore entitled to the 
 distinction of beginning the persecution of the German 
 Anabaptists. 
 
164 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 We cannot wonder that the Catholics followed this ex- 
 ample. At the Diet of Speyer, in 1529, when the German 
 princes and representatives of the free cities presented 
 their famous protest, in which, in the name of religious 
 liberty they claimed the right to force the reformed faith 
 upon their unwilling Catholic subjects, while they spoke 
 also a faint-hearted plea for the Zwinglians, they had no 
 good word for the Anabaptists. The Diet at this session 
 passed a stringent decree against these people : "All Ana- 
 baptists and rebaptized persons, male or female, of ma- 
 ture age, shall be judged and brought from natural life 
 to death, by fire, or sword or otherwise, as may befit the 
 persons, without preceding trial by spiritual judges. . . 
 Such persons as of themselves, or after instruction, at 
 once confess their error, and are willing to undergo pen- 
 ance and chastisement therefor, and pray for clemency, 
 these may be pardoned by their government as may befit 
 their standing, conduct, youth, and general circumstances. 
 We will also that all of their children according to Chris- 
 tian order, usage, and rite shall be baptized in their 
 youth. Whoever shall despise this, and will not do it, 
 in the belief that there should be no baptism of children, 
 shall, if he persists in that course, be held to be an 
 Anabaptist, and shall be subjected to our above-named 
 constitution." 
 
 This decree was formally binding on all the States of 
 the empire, Protestant as well as Catholic, but there was 
 of course great latitude in its practical enforcement. 
 Most of the Protestant princes, like the Elector of Sax- 
 ony and the Landgrave of Hesse, while greatly desirous 
 of suppressing the Anabaptists, had invincible scruples 
 against persecuting to the death those who, like them- 
 selves, claimed to be following conscience and Scrip- 
 ture. In such domains, fines, imprisonment, and banish- 
 ment were inflicted, but not death. The free cities were 
 
ANABAPTISM IN GERMANY l6S 
 
 Still less stringent, and seem to have moved against the 
 Anabaptists only when their numbers became so great as 
 to alarm the authorities. Indeed, these cities became the 
 chief refuge of the Anabaptists in the storm of persecu- 
 tion that raged against them after 1529. In the Catho- 
 lic States they were pursued with implacable severity, and 
 one chronicler (Sebastian Franck, d. 1542) estimates that 
 two thousand or more were put to death at this time. 
 In the Palatinate the persecution was not less severe 
 than in the Catholic States, for three hundred and fifty 
 are said to have perished there. 
 
 Cornelius, though writing as a Roman Catholic, yet 
 also as a conscientious historian, thus sums up the results 
 of these persecutions : 
 
 In Tyrol and Gorz, the number of the executions in the 
 year 1531 already reached one thousand; in Ensisheim, six hun- 
 dred. At Linz, seventy-three were killed in six weeks. Duke 
 William, of Bavaria, surpassing all others, issued the fearful de- 
 cree to behead those who recanted, to burn those who refused 
 to recant. Throughout the greater part of upper Germany the 
 persecutions raged like a wild chase. The blood of these poor 
 people flowed like water; so that they cried to the Lord for 
 help. But hundreds of them, of all ages and both sexes, suffered 
 the pangs of torture without a murmur, despised to buy their 
 lives by recantation, and went to the place of execution joyful 
 and singing Psalms.^ 
 
 Some of the recent apologists for these cruelties have 
 said that there was at least a partial justification for such 
 wholesale executions in the suspicion that the Anabap- 
 tists were not merely heretics, but traitors — revolution- 
 ists, advocates of sedition, as dangerous to the State as 
 to religion. It is perhaps a sufficient answer to this plea 
 to remark that none of the contemporary documents bring 
 this charge against the Anabaptists. In the preambles of 
 the various decrees issued against them, in the statement 
 
 > " Geschichte det ISHnsterischen Aufruhrs," Vol. II., p. 57 seg. 
 
l66 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of their offenses nothing is found but their errors in 
 religious faith and practice. If they were suspected of 
 being politically dangerous up to 1529, it is remarkable 
 that no trace of such suspicion should appear in any of- 
 ficial action taken against them. It may be properly 
 added that up to this time neither the acts nor the teach- 
 ings of the Anabaptists afforded a plausible pretext tor 
 the State to treat them as seditious. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM 
 
 PERSECUTION and oppression have a tendency to 
 develop manifestations of fanatical zeal in the op- 
 pressed and persecuted. History affords many instances 
 of this principle, and nowhere perhaps is its working bet- 
 ter illustrated than in Germany in the sixteenth century. 
 The movement that we call the Reformation was a com- 
 plex series of phenomena, social, political, and religious ; 
 and hardly had Luther begun his labors as a religious 
 reformer, when another group of men began to agitate 
 for far-reaching social reforms. These were the spokes^ 
 men of the peasants, the most miserable class of the 
 German people. 
 
 The condition of the peasantry of Germany was rapidly 
 changing for the worse during the sixteenth century. 
 This was owing to the complete social revolution then in 
 progress which we call the decay of feudalism. Many 
 causes had been at work to disintegrate the feudal system, 
 but none had been so powerful as the invention of gun- 
 powder. The day when foot-soldiers of the peasant class 
 were armed with muskets was the day of doom for feudal- 
 ism. The old superiority of the armored knight was 
 gone; battles were no longer contests of cavalry; once 
 more infantry came to the front. As the man with the 
 hoe, the peasant was still despised; as the man with the 
 gun he compelled respect. 
 
 The political and social supremacy of the nobles had 
 rested on their military power. So long as the armored 
 knight was able to contend single-handed against a score 
 
l68 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 and even a hundred ill-armed peasants in leather jerkins, 
 so long he was powerful both to punish and to protect. 
 The weak instinctively seek the protection of the strong, 
 even when a high price must be paid for the favor, for 
 it is better to give a part to one's overlord than to lose 
 all to another. The nobility had been tolerated and even 
 upheld because they were necessary to society. They 
 had been permitted to usurp much power, social privilege, 
 wealth, that in nowise belonged to them. But the tacit 
 condition on which these usurpations were condoned was 
 that the nobility should discharge their functions as pro- 
 tectors of social institutions, as preservers of peace and 
 order. 
 
 In the sixteenth century the power of the nobility was 
 broken. The knight ceased to be supreme in arms, and 
 as his political and social privileges depended on his 
 military prowess, he must now prepare himself to part 
 with these. This fact he could not and would not see. He 
 was no student of social science, he had no philosophy of 
 history, but he had the usual share of human selfishness, 
 and the disposition to hold on at all hazards to his pos- 
 sessions. The increase of royal power on the one hand, 
 and on the other his own growing poverty, began to 
 pinch him sorely. The ri.se of the merchant class, the 
 increase of manufactures and commerce, had done away 
 with the old system of barter, and introduced the use of 
 money. Of money the knight had little, of wants he 
 and his household had an increasing number. It was nat- 
 ural that he should turn to his only resource, the peasants 
 who tilled his soil, and try to wring from them the sums 
 that he needed. Thus began new and continually in- 
 creasing exactions from the peasants, until their condition 
 became intolerable. Discontent became everywhere rife, 
 and frequent insurrections showed that a violent social 
 revolution was imminent. 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM 169 
 
 The rise of the Lutheran Reformation was coincident 
 with this state of things. It was inevitable that the peas- 
 ants should be encouraged to expect betterment of their 
 condition from the religious movement thus begun, and 
 the early teachings of Luther must have fanned this hope. 
 The seething discontent finally broke out into a general 
 uprising throughout Southern Germany. The peasants 
 drew up twelve articles, in which they demanded what 
 seem now like very moderate measures of reform, such 
 as the right to elect their own pastors, the status of free- 
 men, restoration of the common rights to fish and game 
 and woodlands, just administration of the laws, and abo- 
 lition of fines and undue feudal services. In a tract that 
 he wrote on the articles, though he criticised the peasants 
 for resorting to forcible methods of obtaining redress, 
 Luther felt compelled to defend the substantial justice of 
 these demands, and exhorted the nobles to yield lest ruin 
 overtake them. 
 
 It is quite clear that we have no one upon earth to thank for 
 all this disorder and insurrection but you yourselves, princes 
 and lords, and you especially, blind bishops, insane priests and 
 monks, who, even to this very day, hardened in your perversity, 
 cease not to clamor against the holy gospel, although you know 
 it is just and right and good, and that you cannot honestly say 
 anything against it. At the same time, in your capacity as 
 secular authorities, you manifest yourselves the executioners and 
 spoilers of the poor, you sacrifice everything and everybody to 
 your monstrous luxury, to your outrageous pride, and you have 
 continued to do this until the people neither can nor will endure 
 you any longer. With the sword already at your throat, your 
 mad presumption induces you to imagine yourselves so firm in 
 the saddle that you cannot be thrown off. If you alter not, and 
 that speedily, this impious security will break your necks for 
 you. . . It is you, it is your crimes that God is about to 
 punish. If the peasants, who are now attacking you, are not the 
 ministers of his will, others, coming after them, will be so. You 
 may beat them, but you will be none the less vanquished; you 
 may crush them to the earth, but God will raise up others in 
 
170 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 their place; it is his pleasure to strike you, and he will strike 
 you/ 
 
 The leader of the peasants whose name has come down 
 to us as most notable was Thomas Miinzer. He was 
 born about 1490 at Stolberg, studied at several universi- 
 ties, becoming a bachelor of theology at Halle, and was 
 a man of considerable learning, unusual ability, and re- 
 markable eloquence. With all these gifts he showed him- 
 self from the beginning of his career to be one of those 
 hot-headed, unbalanced, fanatical men, who are born to 
 be troublers in Israel. In 1515 he was provost of a con- 
 vent at Trohsen, near Aschersleben, and in 15 17 became 
 a teacher in the gymnasium at Brunswick. In June, 
 1520, he became preacher of the chief church at Zwickau, 
 the city already leaning toward Lutheranism; and it is 
 more than suspected that he received the appointment 
 with Luther's knowledge and sanction. In his first ser- 
 mon he attacked the pope and clergy so furiously as to 
 make a marked sensation in the town, and soon great 
 crowds of people flocked in from the surrounding region 
 to hear this preacher, who, according to an enemy's 
 testimony, was " gifted with angelic eloquence." 
 
 It was by Luther's earlier writings that he had been 
 won to the reformation cause, and he took more seriously 
 than their author the ideas set forth in these writings. 
 Luther's course was a curious compound of radical opin- 
 ions and conservative action, but Miinzer was the kind 
 jf man to insist on making action correspond to avowed 
 •opinion. He therefore attempted to carry out consist- 
 rntly the principle avowed by Luther in his " Babylonian 
 Captivity," that the gospel should be the rule of political 
 as well as of Christian life. He also dissented from 
 Luther's forensic ideas about justification. That faith 
 
 iMichelet, "Life of Luther" (tr. by Htzlitt). pp. 167. 168. 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM 171 
 
 alone justifies he denied, calling this a " fictitious faith." 
 In short, the disciple showed a strong tendency to outrun 
 his master, in unsparing application of logic and Scripture 
 (as he understood the latter) to everyday life. 
 
 Finding the Council and more sober citizens opposed 
 to his radicalism, Miinzer thought to strengthen his po- 
 sition by attaching his fortunes to those of the " proph- 
 ets," Storch, Stubner, and Thoma, and together they be* 
 gan to announce the speedy end of the age and the setting 
 up of the kingdom of Christ. These prophecies soon 
 produced such disorders in Zwickau that the Council was 
 compelled to act. The " prophets " were thrown into 
 prison, and Miinzer was banished, going into Bohemia. 
 
 The " prophets " were released after a time, went to 
 Wittenberg, as already related, and then disappear from 
 history. Miinzer, unfortunately, did not disappear. 
 About 1523 he in some way became pastor at Alstedt, 
 where he married a former nun. Here he was as con- 
 servative as previously he had been radical. He pub- 
 lished a liturgy in German which is decidedly more Ro- 
 man than Lutheran in doctrine, and contains a form of 
 baptism for infants. In one of his tracts published he 
 says that infant baptism cannot be proved from Scripture, 
 which is probably the reason why he has been called an 
 Anabaptist, but he never abandoned the practice of 
 baptizing infants. 
 
 By the summer of 1524 he had made the town too hot 
 to hold him, and for some time he wandered from place 
 to place, visiting CEcolampadius at Basel, possibly Hiib- 
 maier at Waldshut, and making the acquaintance of the 
 Swiss Anabaptists. At the beginning of 1525 he came 
 to Miihlhausen. Before this time, in September, 1524, 
 learning what his views had come to be, and what was 
 likely to be their outcome, Grebel, Mantz, and Blaurock 
 addressed a letter of warning and remonstrance to 
 
172 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Miinzer which did not reach him, but still exists in the 
 archives at Schaffhausen to testify to the sound views of 
 its authors. " Is it true," Grebel asks, " as we hear, that 
 you preached in favor of an attack on the princes ? If you 
 defend war or anything else not found in the clear word 
 of God, I admonish you by our common salvation to 
 abstain from these things now and hereafter." It is im- 
 possible to say what eifect this fraternal reproof might 
 have had ; but not receiving it, Munzer went on his way, 
 and by his rash attempt to mingle civil and religious 
 reform, and enforce both by the sword, he forfeited his 
 life. 
 
 For when he reached Muhlhausen it was the storm- 
 center of Germany; the outbreak of the peasants had 
 already begun and the Peasants' War was on. The peas- 
 ants had a righteous cause, if ever men had one who 
 strove for liberty with the sword, and the justice and 
 moderation of their demands as made in their twelve ar- 
 ticles is conceded by every modem historian. Miinzer 
 gave himself out as the prophet of God, come for the 
 purpose of setting up the kingdom of heaven in the city, 
 and promising destruction of princes, community of 
 goods, and the gospel to be made the rule of life in all 
 things. 
 
 By such means he easily made himself the head of the 
 revolt, and thousands of the deluded peasants of South- 
 ern Germany flocked to his standard. The bubble was 
 pricked by the lances of the allied German princes at the 
 battle of Frankenhausen, May 15, 1525. The peasants 
 were defeated with great slaughter; Miinzer and other 
 leaders were captured and put to death ; and it is credibly 
 recorded of the " prophet " that before his death he re- 
 canted his errors, returned to the Catholic Church, re- 
 ceived the last sacraments, and died exhorting the people 
 of Miihlhausen to hold fast to the true (Catholic) faithJ 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM I73 
 
 Though the peasants had a good cause, they had not 
 always adopted good methods. Most of them were ig- 
 norant, all were exasperated, and some were maddened 
 by their wrongs. In their uprising some outrages were 
 committed; castles had been burned and plundered and 
 ruthless oppressors had been slain. These deeds were 
 now made the pretext for a retaliation whose cruelty has 
 rarely been surpassed in history. It is computed by his- 
 torians who have no motive to exaggerate, that fully a 
 hundred thousand were killed before the fury of the 
 princes and the knights was appeased. 
 
 Foremost among those who urged them on was Luther, 
 It would seem that he had become alarmed by the per- 
 sistence of those who had sought to make him and his 
 teachings responsible for the peasant war. His hope 
 was in the protection and patronage of the princes, to 
 whom the plain words he had spoken must have given 
 deep offense. So in the midst of the uproar he sent to 
 the press a second pamphlet, in which he turned com- 
 pletely about, and denounced the peasants as violently as 
 he had before rebuked the princes. 
 
 They cause uproar, outrageously rob and pillage monasteries 
 and castles not belonging to them. For this alone, as public 
 highwaymen and murderers, they deserve a twofold death of 
 body and soul. It is right and lawful to slay at the first oppor- 
 tunity a rebellious person, known as such, already under God 
 and the emperor's ban. For of a public rebel, every man is 
 both judge and executioner. Just as, when a fire starts, he who 
 can extinguish it first is the best fellow. Rebellion is not a vile 
 murder, but like a great fire that kindles and devastates a 
 country; hence uproar carries with it a land full of murder, 
 bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and destroys everything, 
 like the greatest calamity. Therefore whosoever can, should 
 smite, strangle, and stab, secretly or publicly, and should remem- 
 ber that there is nothing more poisonous, pernicious, and devilish 
 than a rebellious man. Just as when one must slay a mad dog; 
 fight him not and he will fight you, and a whole country with you. 
 
174 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Let the civil power press on confidently and strike as long 
 as it can move a muscle. For here is the advantage: the peas- 
 ants have bad consciences and unlawful goods, and whenever a 
 peasant is killed therefore he has lost body and soul, and goes 
 forever to the devil. Civil authority, however, has a clean con- 
 science and lawful goods, and can say to God with all security 
 of heart: "Behold, my God, thou hast appointed me prince or 
 lord, of that I cannot doubt, and hast entrusted me with the 
 sword against evil-doers (Rom. 13 : 4). . . Therefore I will 
 punish and smite as long as I can move a muscle; thou wilt 
 judge and approve." . . Such wonderful times are these that 
 a prince can more easily win heaven by shedding blood than 
 others with prayers. 
 
 Therefore, dear lords, redeem here, save here, help here; 
 have mercy on these poor peasants, stab, strike, strangle, whoever 
 can. Remainest thou therefore dead ? Well for you, for a more 
 pious death nevermore canst thou obtain. For thou diest in 
 obedience to God's word and to duty (Rom. 13: l), and in the 
 service of love, to deliver thy neighbor out of hell and the devil's 
 chains. 
 
 The charge brought against Luther was of course ab- 
 surd. There would have been a revolt of the peasants 
 had there been no Luther and no Reformation, though it 
 is possible that Luther and his teachings hastened the 
 outbreak and increased its violence. It is equally absurd 
 to charge the responsibility of the revolt upon the Ana- 
 baptists, and had not Miinzer been erroneously called an 
 Anabaptist by careless writers probably no connection 
 would have been suspected between movements that had 
 so little in common as the religious reformation sought 
 by the Anabaptists and the social revolution desired by 
 the peasants. Some few Anabaptists were doubtless con- 
 cerned in the revolt — it would be wonderful if such were 
 not the case — ^but not the sect as a whole, or even any 
 large proportion of them. One fact is decisive of this 
 question: the vengeance of the princes and nobles was 
 not directed against Anabaptists as such, on account of 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM 175 
 
 the peasant uprising. No contemporary charges the 
 Anabaptists with responsibility for the disorders at Muhl- 
 hausen or elsewhere during the revolt of the peasants. 
 That charge it was left for certain writers of the present 
 century to advance for the first time. 
 
 It was in Northern Germany, and some years after the 
 revolt of the peasants had been subdued, that the anar- 
 chistic and doctrinal vagaries of certain Anabaptists 
 found their fullest development. He who has been called 
 the leading spirit of the movement that culminated at 
 Miinster, never countenanced or taught the use of the 
 sword in the cause of religion. Melchior Hofmann was 
 a man of fervent piety, of evangelical spirit, of pure and 
 devoted life; but his mind was of the dreamy, mystical 
 type, and his lack of thorough knowledge of the Scrip- 
 tures in the original tongues, and his deficiency in general 
 mental culture made him an easy victim to speculations 
 and vagaries. Pure in life and mild in character as he 
 was, not a few of his teachings contained dangerous 
 germs of evil, and their development under his successors 
 brought great shame upon the Anabaptist cause. 
 
 Hofmann was born in Swabia, probably in the free im- 
 perial city of Hall, about 1490. He had only a slight 
 education, and was apprenticed to a furrier. He very 
 early embraced the Lutheran Reformation, but was by 
 nature a radical and an enthusiast, and could be expected 
 to remain permanently subject to no leader who halted 
 half-way in the work of reform. A disparaging refer- 
 ence to him in one of Zwingli's letters, written in 1523., 
 shows that he was then in Zurich, and later he went to 
 Livonia, where he was in no long time thrown into 
 prison and then banished. He was in Dorpat in the 
 autumn qi 3524, and succeeded in obtaining testimonials 
 from a number of scholars and influential men, including 
 Luther himself.- It was about this time that he began to 
 
176 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 develop his chiliastic notions, and as a lay preacher he 
 did not fail to advocate them. This would bring him into 
 no collision with the Lutherans, for Luther was himself 
 inclined to chiliastic notions, at least during this portion 
 of his career. About the beginning of 1526 Hofmann 
 went to Stockholm, where he published his first book, an 
 interpretation of the twelfth chapter of Daniel, in which 
 he gave free vent to his notions about the coming of 
 Christ's kingdom, and fixed the year 1533 for the end 
 of the age. 
 
 For the next two years he was in Denmark ; being still 
 attached to the Lutheran party, he had little difficulty in 
 obtaining the protection of the authorities, and even got 
 a living assigned him. His restlessness in speculation 
 soon made trouble for him with the Lutheran clergy, and 
 finally his avowal of Zwinglian ideas regarding the Eu- 
 charist procured his banishment. Thence he seems to 
 have gone to Strassburg, arriving there at the beginning 
 of 1529, or possibly a little before. 
 
 Up to this time there is no evidence that he had met 
 any Anabaptists or become acquainted with their views, 
 still less that he had any inclination toward them. At 
 Strassburg the Anabaptists were numerous, and the death 
 of Denck had left them without a recognized leader. 
 They differed from many German Anabaptists on several 
 points ; in particular, they were opposed to the use of the 
 sword, in spite of the authority of Hubmaier and Denck. 
 The ardor of Hofmann and the novelty of his teachings 
 naturally fitted him to step into the vacant leadership, 
 and in a very short time he was recognized as the head 
 of the Anabaptists of Strassburg. He wrote and taught 
 iiidefatigably, and made numerous missionary journeys 
 into surrounding regions. One of these, into Holland, 
 was fraught with momentous consequences, for in the 
 i-ourse of it he met, converted, baptized, and indoctrinated 
 
Balthasar Hubmaier 
 
A Group of Radical Leaders 
 
MuNSTER — The Church of St. Lambert 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM I77 
 
 with his notions, Jan Matthys, a baker of Haarlem, who 
 was to be his successor, and lead the Anabaptists into a 
 career of shame and overthrow. 
 
 After a time the magistrates of the city became 
 alarmed at Hofmann's growing influence, and he was ar- 
 rested in May, 1533, and thrown into prison. He had 
 before this predicted that the end of the age was at hand ; 
 that Strassburg was to be the New Jerusalem, and that 
 the magistrates would there set up the kingdom of God ; 
 that the new truth and the new baptism would prevail 
 irresistibly throughout the earth. He had set the very 
 year of his arrest as the time of consummation; and at 
 first his followers were not dismayed, for this persecu- 
 tion, they persuaded themselves, was also foretold. But 
 the years passed and Hofmann still languished in prison, 
 until death released him toward the close of 1543. 
 
 In the meantime another " prophet " had arisen and 
 his predictions were claiming the attention of the credu- 
 lous. Hofmann was discredited by the failure of his 
 prophecies, but none the less eagerly were those of Jan 
 Matthys received. He was one of these crack-brained 
 fanatics, half lunatic, half criminal, who never fail 
 to gain a large following, and as certainly lead their 
 dupes to destruction. About the time of Hofmann's im- 
 prisonment Matthys began to dream dreams and see vi- 
 sions ; proclaimed himself to be the Elias of the new dis- 
 pensation soon to begin, and sent out twelve apostles to 
 herald the coming of the kingdom of Christ. Among 
 other things he predicted the speedy overthrow of all ty- 
 rants and the coming of an age of gold. Converts were 
 made to this new gospel by the thousand in Holland and 
 Friesland. 
 
 Events just then occurring at the city of Miinster at- 
 tracted the attention of the Anabaptist leaders and caused 
 that city to become the center of operations. Miinster 
 X 
 
1^8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 was at that time a semi-free city, ruled by its council, but 
 situated in the territory of a prince-bishop who claimed 
 a certain suzerainty. The citizens had been struggling 
 to gain freedom from an ecclesiastical caste that insulted 
 and robbed them, and a famine that occurred in this 
 region in 1529 brought the city to the very verge of 
 revolution. 
 
 At this juncture Bernard Rothmann began to preach 
 the Lutheran doctrines there, and soon all the clergy of 
 the city sided with him. A revolution, half political, half 
 religious, ensued, and by the intervention of Philip of 
 Hesse a treaty was made with the prince-bishop, in which 
 Miinster was recognized as a Lutheran city. But Roth- 
 mann and his colleagues had no notion of stopping here ; 
 they issued a " Confession of Two Sacraments," in which 
 they strongly advocated believers' baptism, and defined 
 the ordinance as " dipping or completely plunging into 
 the water." 
 
 Just as affairs had come to this stage two of the 
 apostles of Matthys reached the city and began preaching 
 and baptizing. In eight days they are said to have bap- 
 tized fourteen hundred people. Two weeks later Jan 
 Matthys himself arrived, and in February the Anabaptists 
 had so increased that they had no difficulty in electing a 
 council from their own number, and so gained control 
 of the government of Miinster without striking a blow. 
 From this time they had supreme power in the town, 
 though the prince-bishop speedily laid siege to it and 
 confined them closely within. 
 
 The Anabaptist domination was celebrated by clearing 
 the Dom of all images, and driving from the city all who 
 would not join them. The council then established com- 
 munity of goods as the law of the town, and the orgy of 
 fanaticism and wickedness began. Daily visions and rev- 
 elations came to the leaders, some of whom were evi- 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM I79 
 
 dently sincere, while others appear to have been simply 
 devilish. Matthys was certainly one of the former, and 
 proved it by his death. In obedience to a vision he made 
 a sortie from the city with a few followers, and was 
 killed while fighting desperately. John Bockhold, of 
 Leyden, thereupon declared himself the successor, and 
 had no difficulty, in persuading the people to accept him 
 as the prophet appointed by God. Nothing seemed too 
 much for these credulous Munsterites to receive unques- 
 tioningly. When John of Leyden shortly afterward pro- 
 claimed that this was Mount Zion, that the kingdom of 
 David was to be re-established, and that he was King 
 David, nobody questioned him. The solemn farce was 
 played out to the end. Of course King David had to 
 have a harem, and polygamy was proclaimed as the law 
 of the new kingdom. Perhaps the fact that six times as 
 many women as men were now in the city had not a very 
 remote connection with this feature of the kingdom. 
 
 The farce was about ended; it was soon to become 
 bloody tragedy. The Munsterites, knowing that before 
 the siege began the surrounding country held thousands 
 who sympathized with them, were continually expecting 
 that an armed force of Anabaptists would come to their 
 aid. But the Anabaptists were overawed by the military 
 force, or disgusted by the fantastic doings in the city, and 
 no army came. The town was wasted by famine, weak- 
 ened at last by dissensions, and betrayed by traitors. 
 June 25, 1535, it fell, and Anabaptism in Germany fell 
 with it. .There was great slaughter in the town, and the 
 captured leaders, after tortures truly diabolical in their 
 cruelty, were hung up in cages to the tower of the church 
 of St. Lambert, in the chief market-place, to die of starva- 
 tion and exposure, and there they hung until quite recent 
 times, when for very shame the few remaining bones 
 were removed. The cages still hang there. 
 
l80 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 The entire responsibility for these disorders was at once 
 thrown upon the Anabaptists. There was this excuse for 
 so doing, that several of the ringleaders, and a consider- 
 able number of their followers, called themselves or were 
 called by that name. Yet the principles of Rothmann, in 
 his writings that remain, are totally opposed to his con- 
 duct at Munster. In none of the Anabaptist literature 
 of the time is there anything but horror and detestation 
 expressed for the Miinster doings ; and even before they 
 were made the scapegoats of this uprising, their writings 
 were full of reproofs spoken against any who would prop- 
 agate religion by the sword. Miinster was not more de- 
 cidedly contrary to the teachings of the reformers than 
 it was to the teachings of the Anabaptists generally. It 
 is no more fair to hold the Anabaptists as a whole respon- 
 sible for what occurred there, because Matthys and Bock- 
 hold were Anabaptists, than it is to hold the Lutherans 
 responsible because Rothmann was a Lutheran when he 
 began his evil career. Cornelius, the able and judicial 
 Roman Catholic historian of the Miinster uproar, says 
 justly: "All these excesses were condemned and opposed 
 wherever a large assembly of the brethren afforded an 
 opportunity to give expression to the religious con- 
 sciousness of the Anabaptist membership." Fiisslin, a 
 conscientious and impartial German investigator, says: 
 " There was a great difference between Anabaptists and 
 Anabaptists. There were those amongst them who held 
 strange doctrines, but this cannot be said of the whole 
 sect. If we should attribute to every sect vyhatever sense- 
 less doctrines two or three fanciful fellows have taught, 
 there is no one in the world to whom we could not ascribe 
 the most abominable errors." To which may be added 
 the conclusion of Ulhorn : " The general character of this 
 whole movement was peaceful, in spite of the prevailing 
 excitement. Nobody thought of carrying out the new 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM l8l 
 
 ideas by force. In striking contrast to the Miinzer up- 
 roar, meekness and suffering were here understood as the 
 most essential elements of the Christian ideal." 
 
 But though scholarly investigations, with substantial 
 unanimity, have now come to this conclusion regarding 
 the teachings and methods of German Anabaptists, this 
 was not the voice of contemporary opinion; that visited 
 the sins of the few upon the many, and pronounced all 
 Anabaptists alike to be enemies of society and worthy 
 of any punishment that could be devised. The most atro- 
 cious crimes were not avenged with a severity greater 
 than was visited on the members of this unfortunate sect. 
 The severities of former persecutions were far exceeded, 
 and only in the domain of the Landgrave of Hesse was 
 there anything like moderation or justice in the treatment 
 meted out to these people. This prince alone among the 
 Protestant rulers, while he favored the punishment of 
 those actually concerned in the Munster disorders, de- 
 clared that merely to be an Anabaptist was not a capital 
 crime : " To punish with death those who have done 
 nothing more than err in the faith, cannot be justified on 
 gospel grounds." 
 
 A gathering of Protestant authorities was held August 
 7, 1536, at Homburg, in Hesse, to consider the policy 
 proper to be pursued toward the Anabaptists. Eight rep- 
 resentatives of the nobility, seven delegates from five 
 cities, and ten divines were present. The divines sub- 
 stantially agreed with Melanchthon, whose judgment was : 
 "That the Anabaptists may and should be restrained 
 by the sword. That those who have been sent into ex- 
 ile, and do not abide by the conditions, are to be punished 
 by the sword." The representatives of the cities, particu- 
 larly of Ulm and Augsburg, were of the milder opinion 
 that death should not be inflicted as a punishment of 
 heresy, though other severities might be employed. Such 
 
l82 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of the nobles as spoke favored banishment, on pain of 
 death in case of return. This was the penalty finally 
 decided upon. 
 
 After the savage persecution following the downfall of 
 Munster, one might have expected the Anabaptists to 
 have been extirpated. Their prominent leaders, it is 
 true, disappeared, some being put to death, some dying 
 of hardships and excessive toils. They were not entirely 
 without leadership, however, and their dauntless fidelity 
 to the truth continued. In Moravia, about the middle of 
 the sixteenth century, there were seventy communities 
 of Anabaptists, prosperous farmers and tradesmen, ac- 
 knowledged to be among the most thrifty and law-abid- 
 ing element of the population. In Strassburg, in Augs- 
 burg, in Bohemia, and in Moldavia, they were also found 
 in large numbers, and wherever found they were marked 
 men by reason of their godly lives and good citizenship. 
 Fifty years later, however, persecution had done its work 
 only too well, and early in the seventeenth century we 
 find the Anabaptists disappear from the history of Ger- 
 many. They survived somewhat later in Poland, where 
 they became quite numerous, and a large section of them 
 adopted the Socinian theology. 
 
 The German Anabaptists committed the one sin that 
 this world never pardons : they attempted a radical revo- 
 lution, which would ultimately have transformed civil and 
 social as well as religious institutions and — ^they failed. 
 That is the real gist of their offense. Had they suc- 
 ceeded, the very men whom historians have loaded with 
 execrations would have been held up as the greatest and 
 noblest men of their age. The fame of Luther and 
 Zwingli and Calvin would have been eclipsed by that of 
 Grebel and Hubmaier and Denck, if the labors of the 
 Anabaptists had been crowned with success. The true 
 Reformation was that with which they were identified. 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF FANATICISM 183 
 
 The Reformation that actually prevailed in the sixteenth 
 century was a perversion of the genuine movement, re- 
 sulting from the unholy alliance with the State made by 
 those who are called " reformers." Two centuries were 
 required before the fruits of a real Reformation could 
 ripen for the gathering; and it was in America, not in 
 Germany, that the genuine Reformation culminated. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS 
 
 IF the disappearance of the Anabaptists from Germany 
 had been as complete in reality as it was in appear- 
 ance, it would furnish a curious historical problem to ex- 
 plain so sudden a cessation of evangelical teaching and 
 practice. But the student of history is not long in dis- 
 covering that the Anabaptists did not disappear; they 
 only took a different name. They had never chosen the 
 name Anabaptist, and had always maintained that it was 
 not properly applied to them. Now that the name had 
 come to be a synonym for all that was fanatical in creed 
 and immoral in conduct, they were only too glad to be 
 rid of the hateful title — as hateful to them as to their 
 oppressors. As before, so now and after, these people 
 called themselves simply " the brethren," but in common 
 speech a new name came to be applied to them about the 
 middle of the sixteenth century; they were known as 
 Mennonites. 
 
 Of Menno, surnamed Simons, we know little, save 
 what he himself has told us. He was born in Witmar- 
 son, Friesland, in 1496 or 1497. He was educated for 
 the priesthood, and in 1524 he undertook the duties of 
 a priest in his father's village, called Pingjum. A year 
 thereafter, while officiating at the altar, the thought oc- 
 curred to him that the bread and wine in the mass were 
 not the body and blood of Christ, but he put the idea 
 from him as a temptation of the devil. He feared to 
 study the Scriptures lest they mislead him. His life was 
 ; pdless and dissipated. After a time he began to study 
 18^ 
 
MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS 185 
 
 the Scriptures, and received some light from them, though 
 his heart was still unchanged. 
 
 While in this state of mind Menno heard of the martyr- 
 dom of one Sicke Freerks or Frierichs, more commonly 
 known by his surname of Snyder, which designated him 
 as a tailor. On the 30th of March, 1531, this faithful be- 
 liever was condemned, as the court record reads, "to be 
 executed by the sword; his body shall be laid on the 
 wheel, and his head set on a stake, because he has been 
 rebaptized and perseveres in that baptism " ; all of which 
 was duly done at Leeuwarden. The blood of that poor 
 tailor produced a host of followers to the Lord, for whom 
 he joyfully gave all that he had, even his life; for it led 
 Menno Simons, after a long and hard struggle, to 
 decisive action. 
 
 At first he was merely surprised to hear that this man 
 suffered on account of what was called a second baptism. 
 He studied the Scriptures, but could find in them nothing 
 about infant baptism. He consulted in turn Luther, 
 Bucer, and Bullinger, but they gave him no help, for he 
 saw that the arguments by which they supported the 
 practice had no foundation in the Scriptures. Though 
 he now came gradually to a fuller knowledge of God's 
 truth, and to some outward amendment of his life, he 
 still held back from what he knew to be his duty. He 
 was ambitious, and hesitated to break with the church, 
 in which he hoped for a career and fame. For a time 
 he attempted to compromise with his conscience, and 
 preached the truth publicly from the pulpit. Finally, he 
 says, after about nine months of such preaching, the Lord 
 granted him his Spirit and power, and he then renounced 
 all his worldly honor and reputation, separated himself 
 from the church and its errors, and willingly submitted 
 to distress and poverty. 
 
 This was about the year 1536, and it seems to have 
 
l86 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 been Menno's intention to lead the quiet life of a student 
 and writer. But about a year later, a small group of 
 believers came to him and urged him to remember the 
 needs of the poor, hungry souls, and make better use of 
 the talents he had from the Lord. Accordingly, he began 
 to preach the gospel, and continued to make known the 
 truth with voice and pen to the end of his life. 
 
 Though not without frequent interruptions, his labors 
 were practically continuous and very fruitful. At the 
 beginning, the Anabaptists were greatly divided, as well 
 as discouraged. One party still held to the views that 
 had been practically embodied at Munster ; they defended 
 polygamy, believed in the speedy second coming of Christ, 
 a second time incarnated to set up an earthly kingdom, 
 which his followers were to defend and extend by the 
 sword. The other party condemned polygamy and the 
 sword. The strife was keen, but the weight of Menno's 
 influence turned the scale in favor of purity and peace. 
 From the first he repudiated the ideas of Munster. In 
 his " Exit from Papacy " he wrote as follows : " Beloved 
 reader, we have been falsely accused by our opponents of 
 defending the doctrine of Miinsterites, with respect to 
 king, sword, revolution, self-defense, polygamy, and many 
 similar abominations; but know, my good reader, that 
 never in my life have I assented to those articles of the 
 Miinster Confession; but for more than seventeen years, 
 according to my small gift, I have warned and opposed 
 them in their abominable errors. I have, by the word of 
 the Lord, brought some of them to the right way. Miin- 
 ster I have never seen in all my life. I have never been 
 in their communion. I hope, by God's grace, with such 
 never to eat or drink (as the Scriptures teach), except 
 they confess from the heart their abominations and bring 
 forth fruits meet for repentance and truly follow tut 
 gospel." 
 
MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS 187 
 
 Menno was an apostle of the truth, preaching and 
 founding churches across the whole of Northern Europe, 
 from France to Russia. In spite of the severest edicts 
 and the bloodiest persecutions, he continued faithful to 
 his calling, and found willing hearers of the gospel 
 wherever he went. He enforced a strict standard of 
 morals, repressed all tendencies toward fanaticism, and 
 gradually molded his followers into the mild, peaceful, 
 and moral people that the Mennonites have ever since 
 been. His last years were spent in Holstein, where he 
 died January 13, 1561, in his sixty-sixth year. He was a 
 voluminous writer, and during his last decade he estab- 
 lished a printing-press and secured the wide circulation 
 of his writings. These are mostly in the Dutch language, 
 though some were originally written in " Oostersch " and 
 very badly translated into Dutch. The issue of his " Fun- 
 damental Book of the True Christian Faith," in 1539, es- 
 tablished his doctrinal teaching on solid grounds. It dif- 
 fered from the Reformed theology only in maintaining 
 the spiritual idea of the church, as a communion of true 
 saints, and the necessary consequence of this idea, the 
 rejection of infant baptism. 
 
 Menno owed his prolonged life and labors in part to 
 the fact that he was content to work very quietly and 
 obscurely, in part to the protection that he received at 
 various times from several princes and noblemen, who 
 were favorable to evangelical teachings. He had many 
 narrow escapes, some of which seem like special interpo- 
 sitions of Providence on his behalf. His daughter relates 
 that a traitor who had agreed without fail, for a certain 
 sum of money, to deliver him into the hands of his ene- 
 mies, after several failures one day met Menno, being 
 then in the company of an officer in search of the heretic 
 preacher. Menno was going along the canal in a small 
 boat. The traitor kept silence until Menno had passed 
 
1 88 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 them some distance, and had leaped ashore in order to 
 escape with less peril. Then the traitor cried out, " Be- 
 hold, the bird has escaped ! " The officer chastised him, 
 called him a villain, and demanded why he did not speak 
 in time, to which the traitor replied, " I could not speak, 
 for my tongue was bound." It is said the authorities 
 were so displeased with the man that, according to his 
 pledge, he had to forfeit his own head. 
 
 Certainly this servant of God was pursued with great 
 bitterness. The governor of Friesland issued a proclama- 
 tion, under date of December 7, 1542, in which it was de- 
 clared that any one who gave food or lodging, or any 
 assistance to Menno Simons, or should have any of his 
 books, should be liable to the penalties of heresy. This 
 was no empty threat; before this, in 1539, one Tjaert 
 Reyndertz or Reynderson, was arraigned for the offense 
 of lodging Menno in his house, was stretched on the 
 wheel and finally beheaded. These local persecutions and 
 edicts were doubtless inspired by the general edict of 
 Charles V., executed at Brussels, June 10, 1535, which 
 commanded that all Anabaptists or re-baptizers and their 
 abettors should be put to death by fire; those who sin- 
 cerely repented and renounced their errors should be be- 
 headed, and the women should be buried alive. Buckle, 
 in his " History of Civilization," estimates that by 1546, 
 thirty thousand persons had been put to death for Ana- 
 baptism in Holland and Friesland alone. And yet it is 
 held by many historians that this decree was never gen- 
 erally enforced. Had it been, one must think the country 
 would have been nearly depopulated. 
 
 In spite of such measures, the churches established by 
 Menno and his fellow-laborers increased in numbers rap- 
 idly. Their growth may be explained by two causes, of 
 which one has already been mentioned. The change of 
 name was greatly in their favor. To say " Anabaptist " 
 
MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS 189 
 
 produced much the same effect in those days that the cry 
 of " mad dog " does in ours. To say " Mennonite," at 
 most provoked a feeling of mild curiosity as to what this 
 new sect might be — so much is there in a name, Shakes- 
 peare to the contrary notwithstanding. A second thing 
 greatly in favor of this new development of the Anabap- 
 tists, was the fact that the Netherlands soon came to favor 
 a much greater measure of religious liberty than was 
 found anywhere else in Europe. In 1572 the Netherlands 
 revolted from the authority of the Spanish crown, and in 
 1579 formed a federal union, with the Prince of Orange 
 at its head. He was the most liberal-minded prince in 
 Europe, and was strongly opposed to all persecution on 
 religious grounds. To his influence chiefly the Menno- 
 nites owed their long immunity from active persecution, 
 for the clergy of the Reformed Church (which became 
 the established religion of the Netherlands) were gen- 
 erally opposed to toleration, and many times attempted 
 to stir up the government against the Mennonites. After 
 1581 the mild, peaceable, and law-abiding character of 
 this people gained for them a measure of toleration that 
 other Anabaptist bodies failed to enjoy; and with the in- 
 dependence of the Netherlands came religious freedom, 
 the Mennonites being formally recognized in 1672. This 
 is probably the reason why they alone, of the Anabaptist 
 parties of the Reformation, have survived to the present 
 day. 
 
 One branch of Menno's followers, those especially in 
 Lithuania, at the invitation of Empress Catherine II., 
 emigrated to Russia, and there founded flourishing agri' 
 cultural communities, especially in the Crimea. They 
 were for a long time treated with exceptional favor, 
 their faith not only being tolerated, but the male mem- 
 bers being exempted from military service on account of 
 their religious scruples against bearing arms. Their 
 
IgO A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 descendants abode there until, in 1871, an imperial decree 
 deprived them of this exemption, since when many of 
 them have emigrated to America, forming strong colonies 
 in several of our Western States. Many others have 
 come from Holland and elsewhere, and the majority of 
 Mennonites are now found on American soil. In the 
 census of 1890 twelve branches are reported, with slight 
 diflferences in polity and doctrine, aggregating a mem- 
 bership of forty-one thousand five hundred and forty-one. 
 
 There is good reason to believe that from the first, 
 affusion was generally practised for baptism by the Men- 
 nonites. Menno himself at times uses language that 
 would seem to imply immersion, as when he says, " We 
 find but one baptism in the water, pleasing to God, which 
 is expressed and contained in his word, namely, baptism 
 on the confession of faith. . . But of this other bap- 
 tism, that is, infant baptism, we find nothing." Yet that 
 he could have had an immersion in mind as the act of 
 baptism is irreconcilable with his speaking of it elsewhere 
 as " to have a handful of water applied." While he was 
 perfectly clear about the scriptural teaching regarding 
 the subject of baptism, he appears to have considered the 
 act as a relatively unimportant matter. He was content 
 to follow the prevailing practice of his time, and so were 
 his followers. 
 
 But while the Mennonites as a whole have doubtless 
 from the first practised affusion, there have been and are 
 some exceptions. The congregation at Rynsburg, known 
 as CoUegiants, adopted immersion in 1619, a fact that had 
 important relations to the Baptists of England, as we 
 shall see. One branch in the United States, that coming 
 from Russia, practises immersion exclusively, and another 
 branch immerses by preference, but affuses those who 
 prefer that form. 
 
 Neither their love of Christ nor their fear of persecu- 
 
MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS IQI 
 
 tion was able to keep the Anabaptists of the sixteenth 
 century from internal dissensions ; and this was especially 
 true of the followers of Menno. Since they had no 
 formal creeds and professed the Scriptures alone as their 
 standard of faith and practice, it was natural that con- 
 siderable differences should arise among them. They be- 
 came divided into High and Low (Obere and Untere). 
 The former held to vigorous discipline, or the "ban." 
 The Low party would reserve the " ban " for cases of 
 flagrant immorality. This division dates from the time 
 of Menno himself, who was inclined towards a more strict 
 use of the ban than many of his followers approved. A 
 synod or assembly of the brethren held at Strassburg in 
 155s, felt constrained to protest against what they be- 
 lieved to be Menno's excessive strictness, especially in 
 requiring a husband or wife to refuse cohabitation with 
 an excluded partner. 
 
 Some of the disputes that arose among the brethren 
 deserve a place in the curiosities of literature. Such is 
 the button controversy, which arose in this wise: The 
 traditional method of fastening the gowns of women and 
 the coats of men had been hooks and eyes. The Menno- 
 nites held views about soberness of dress and shunning 
 conformity to the fashions of the world similar to those 
 afterward associated with the Friends or Quakers. Ac- 
 cordingly, when buttons were invented and introduced, 
 the use of them on a garment was held to be the badge 
 of a carnal mind, it was a conformity to the spirit of this 
 world unworthy of a true Christian. This was the 
 ground on which this apparently trivial controversy was 
 fiercely fought for generations; and to this day some of 
 the descendants of the High party, even in this country, 
 fasten their coats with the old-fashioned hooks and eyes 
 and are popularly known as " Hook-and-eye Dutch." 
 In general, it may be said that the High party demanded 
 
192 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 a discipline extending far beyond Scripture precedent, 
 and concerning itself with the minutest details of daily 
 living. The Low party was in favor of a more rational 
 measure of Christian liberty. In some cases the High 
 party also insisted as an article of faith on letting the 
 beard grow, while the Low party denied that the use of 
 the razor was contrary to the word of God. 
 
 The Mennonite churches were not content, however, 
 with establishing general rules ; they undertook to regu- 
 late the daily lives of their members, and to interfere with 
 all manner of private concerns. The results produced by 
 this policy are well illustrated by the Bintgens case. 
 Bintgens was an elder in the Franecker church, and hav- 
 ing occasion to purchase a house for seven hundred 
 florins, permitted the seller to insert in the deed a valu- 
 ation of eight hundred florins. It was not charged that 
 Bintgens profited by the transaction or that anybody lost ; 
 but he had been a party to a deception, and that was 
 enough. When the matter was brought before the 
 church, Bintgens professed sorrow for his error, and his 
 statement was accepted. Later a party in the church 
 demanded his deposition from the eldership. Three suc- 
 cessive councils failed to effect a settlement, and neigh- 
 boring churches became involved in the matter. For 
 years the contest raged, some churches becoming hope- 
 lessly divided, others withdrawing fellowship from sister 
 churches whose attitude they did not approve, and great 
 scandal being brought upon the name of the brethren by 
 this bitter contentiousness over so slight a matter. " Be- 
 hold how great a forest is kindled by how small a fire." 
 
 Followers of Menno appeared in England in the six- 
 teenth century, as we learn from many historical docu- 
 ments. They fled thither to escape the persecutions that 
 then raged in Holland, but in this they were doomed to 
 disappointment, for England harried the Anabaptists no 
 
MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS I93 
 
 less than Holland, casting them into prison and burning 
 them at the stake. Our information regarding these 
 people is mainly confined to royal proclamations against 
 them, and to the records of their arrest, trial, and 
 punishment. 
 
 In 1534, after the Act of Supremacy made Henry VIH. 
 the supreme head of the Church of England, he issued 
 two proclamations against heretics, in which the Ana- 
 baptists were especially named. They were first warned 
 to leave the kingdom within ten days, and then severer 
 measures were taken against them. In the ten articles 
 published by royal authority in 1536, the error of the 
 Anabaptists regarding the baptism of children is singled 
 out for special reprobation. It is a matter of record that 
 in this same year nineteen Dutch Anabaptists were ar- 
 rested, and fourteen were burned. Ten are said to have 
 likewise perished in the preceding year. Bishop Latimer, 
 who was himself to suffer in like manner for the truth 
 a few years later, says of these executions : " The Ana- 
 baptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England, 
 as I heard of credible men, I saw them not myself, 
 went to their death even intrepide, as ye will say, without 
 any fear in the world, cheerfully; well, let them go." 
 
 In 1538 another proclamation was issued against here- 
 tics, who had in the meantime increased rapidly, and a 
 commission of Cranmer and eight bishops was appointed 
 to proceed against such by way of inquisition. Any who 
 remained obdurate were to be committed, with their her- 
 etical books and manuscripts, to the flames. Four Dutch 
 Anabaptists were burned in consequence at Paul's Cross 
 and two at Smithfield. 
 
 That these Anabaptists were really an inoffensive folk, 
 who were punished solely for religious offenses, is proved 
 by still another proclamation of Henry VIII., issued in 
 1540, in which their alleged heresies were thus enumer- 
 
194 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 ated : " Infants ought not to be baptized ; it is not lawful 
 for a Christian man to bear office or rule in the common- 
 wealth ; every manner of death, with the time and hour 
 thereof, is so certainly prescribed, appointed, and deter- 
 mined to every man by God, that neither any prince by 
 his word can alter it, nor any man by his wilfulness 
 prevent or change it." 
 
 In the sermons of Roger Hutchinson, published by 
 the Parker Society, is a discourse preached prior to 1560, 
 the following from which describes one tenet on which 
 the Anabaptists of that day laid special stress : 
 
 Whether may a man sue forfeits against regrators, forestallers, 
 and other oppressors? Or ought patience to restrain us from all 
 suit and contention? "Aye," saith master Anabaptist; "for 
 Christ our Master, whose example we must follow, he would 
 tiot condemn an advoutress woman to be stoned to death, ac- 
 cording to the law, but shewed pity to her, and said, ' Go and 
 sin no more ' (John 8) ; neither would he, being desired to 
 be an arbiter, judge between two brethren and determine their 
 suit (Luke 12). When the people would have made him their 
 king he conveyed himself out of sight, and would not take on 
 himself such office. Christ the Son of God would not have 
 refused these functions and offices if with the profession of a 
 Christian man it were agreeable with the temporal sword to 
 punish offenders, to sustain any public room, and to determine 
 controversies and suits; if it were lawful for private men to 
 persecute such suits, and to sue just and rightful titles. He 
 non est dominatus sed passus; would be no magistrate, no judge, 
 no governor, but suffered and sustained trouble, injury, wrong, 
 and oppression patiently. And so must we; for Paul saith, 
 'That those which he foreknew he also ordained before — ut 
 essent conformes imagini Filii sui — ^that they should be alike 
 fashioned into the shape of his Son.' " 
 
 By 1550 the growth of the Anabaptists, especially in 
 Kent and Essex, so disquieted those in power that a new 
 commission was issued in the name of the young king, 
 Edward VI., with special powers to discover and punish 
 
MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS I95 
 
 all Anabaptists. Cranmer, Latimer, and other notable 
 reformers were members of this body. It was by their 
 agency that Joan Boucher, of Kent, was burned for her- 
 esy. Her error was that she held a doctrine common 
 among the German Anabaptists, from the time of Mel- 
 chior Hofmann, and given further currency by the ad- 
 hesion of Menno Simons, that though Jesus was born 
 of Mary he did not inherit her flesh ; the idea being that 
 if he had, he must have shared her sinful human nature. 
 It was crude theology, but the harmless error of un- 
 trained minds. A wise church and one really moved by 
 the spirit of Christ would have winked at a matter that 
 so slightly concerned a godly life; but for this offense, 
 and the kindred crime of being an Anabaptist, Joan of 
 Kent suffered death at the stake. 
 
 Elizabeth was faithful to the traditions of her race, and 
 in 1560 she warned all Anabaptists and other sectaries 
 to depart from her realm within twenty-one days, on pain 
 of imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. This was a 
 peculiar hardship in the years immediately following, for 
 persecution was raging in the Netherlands, and England 
 was the natural refuge of the oppressed Anabaptists. 
 Later in her reign, Elizabeth's relations with the Prot- 
 estant States on the Continent led her to relax the rigors 
 of persecution, but in the meantime fleeing from Holland 
 to England was a leap from fire to fire. The year 1575 
 is memorable for a special persecution. Thirty Dutch 
 Anabaptists were arrested in London in the very act of 
 holding a conventicle. Most of them were finally re- 
 leased, after a long detention in prison, but Jan Pieters 
 and Hendrik Terwoort were burned for rejecting infant 
 baptism and the bearing of arms. A Confession of Faith 
 that Terwoort penned while in prison contains the first 
 declaration in favor of complete religious liberty made 
 on English soil: 
 
196 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Observe well the command of God: "Thou shalt love the 
 stranger as thyself." Should he then who is in misery, and 
 dwelling in a strange land, be driven thence with his companions, 
 to their great damage? Of this Christ speaks, "Whatsoever ye 
 would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them : for 
 this is the law and the prophets." Oh, that they would deal with 
 us according to natural reasonableness and evangelical truth, of 
 which our persecutors so highly boast! For Christ and his 
 disciples persecuted no one; on the contrary, Jesus hath thus 
 taught, " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you," etc. This 
 doctrine Christ left behind with his apostles, as they testify. 
 Thus Paul, " Unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, 
 and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling 
 place; and labor, working with our own hands; being reviled, 
 we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it." From all this it is 
 clear, that those who have the one true gospel doctrine and 
 faith will persecute no one, but will themselves be persecuted. 
 
 The writings of this period and the published sermons 
 of English divines (such as Latimer, Cranmer, Hutchin- 
 son, Whitgift, and Coverdale) are full of references to 
 the Anabaptists and their heresies. Occasionally some 
 light is thrown upon the question of their teachings. 
 Thus, in 1589, Doctor Some wrote " A Godly Treatise," 
 in which he charged the Anabaptists with holding the 
 following deadly errors : 
 
 That the ministers of the gospel ought to be maintained by 
 the voluntary contributions of the people; 
 
 That the civil power has no right to make and impose 
 ecclesiastical laws; 
 
 That people ought to have the right of choosing their own 
 ministers ; 
 
 That the high commiccion court was an anti-Christian 
 usurpation ; 
 
 That those who are qualified to preach ought not to be 
 hindered by the civil power, etc. 
 
 Traces of the presence in England of Anabaptists of 
 foreign origin continue during the reign of Elizabeth, but 
 
MENNO SIMONS AND HIS FOLLOWERS I97 
 
 with the decline of persecution on the Continent their 
 numbers dwindled, and they at length disappeared. They 
 may have converted to their views a few Englishmen here 
 and there, but they do not seem to have made any per- 
 manent impression on the English people, nor is the his- 
 torical connection clear between them and the later bodies 
 of Englishmen bearing the same name. 
 
 The last person burned at the stake in England, during 
 the reign of James I., Edward Wightman, was an Ana- 
 baptist. Almost nothing is known of him previous to 
 his arrest, except that he was a resident and probably a 
 native of Leicestershire. Whether he was a member of 
 an Anabaptist church, and if so, where the church met, 
 is not known. He was arrested in March, 1611, and the 
 proceedings against him occupied a whole year. In his 
 examination fourteen specific questions were propounded, 
 with the object of making clear his heresies. In reply to 
 these questions he declared that he did not believe in the 
 Trinity, that Christ is not of the same substance as the 
 Father, but only a man ; he denied that Christ took human 
 flesh of the substance of the Virgin Mary ; '■ he affirmed 
 that the soul sleeps in the sleep of the first death as well 
 as the body; he declared the baptism of infants to be an 
 abominable custom; he affirmed that there ought not to 
 be in the church the use of the sacraments of the Lord's 
 Supper to be celebrated in the elements of bread and wine, 
 and of baptism to be celebrated in the element of water, 
 as they are now practised in the Church of England ; but 
 only the sacrament of baptism, to be administered in 
 water to converts of sufficient age of understanding, 
 converted from infidelity to the faith. 
 
 From this it is evident that Wightman's views were 
 derived from the Continental Anabaptists, and apparently 
 
 1 The Hofmann heresy, for which Joan Boucher also suffered. This 
 clearly marks the connection of Wightman with the Continental Anabaptista 
 
198 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 from those who had come from Poland, or in some way 
 imbibed the teachings of Socinus. He may also have de- 
 rived from that source his idea about immersion, if his 
 language implies that, which is not quite certain. For 
 " baptism to be celebrated in the element of water " must 
 be read in connection with " Lord's Supper to be cele- 
 brated in the elements of bread and wine." And it seems 
 entirely probable that in the one case " in " has the force 
 of " with " as in the other, and has no reference to the 
 act — a conclusion made still more probable by the added 
 phrase " as they are now practised in the Church of Eng- 
 land." The practice of the Church of England then was 
 to celebrate baptism in the element of water by pour- 
 ing it upon the head of a babe. Wightman objected to 
 the babe; he does not make it clear that he objected to 
 the pouring. His death occurred April 11, 1612, and so 
 profound was the sensation caused that no further 
 «(fiCUticms for heresy occurred. 
 
PART II 
 A HISTORY OF BAPTIST CHURCHES 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE EARLY DAYS 
 
 WITH the first decade of the seventeenth century 
 we reach solid ground in Baptist history. Be- 
 fore that we must proceed by conjecture from one iso- 
 lated fact to another, and many of our conclusions are 
 open to doubt; but after 1610 we have an unbroken suc- 
 cession of Baptist churches, established by indubitable 
 documentary evidence. The most that we can say of the 
 various Anabaptist groups of the Continent, is that on 
 the whole certain of them seem to have held those views 
 of Scripture teaching that are fundamental in the Baptist 
 faith of to-day. But from about the year 1641, at latest, 
 Baptist doctrine and practice have been the same in all 
 essential features that they are to-day. Subsequent 
 changes have not affected the substance of faith or the 
 chief matters of practice in the denomination as a whole. 
 The history of English Baptists does not begin on 
 English soil, but in Holland. The leader in the r\ew 
 movement was the Rev. John Smyth. Much obscurity 
 hangs over his early life, and he has by many writers 
 been identified with several other men, bearing a name 
 then as now very common. He was a pupil and friend 
 at Cambridge University of Francis Johnson, larer one 
 of the Separatist leaders. As Johnson did not matricu- 
 late until 1579, it follows that this cannot have been the 
 John Smyth who matriculated as sizar in 1571. John 
 Sm3dh took his Master's degree in 1593, whence we 
 may conclude that he was born not later than 1570, and 
 possibly several years earlier. He is said to have been 
 
202 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 ordained by Bishop Wickham, of Lincoln, but he was 
 never, as has been frequently stated, vicar of Gains- 
 borough, as the records of that parish show. He was, 
 however, appointed lecturer or preacher in the city of 
 Lincoln, September 27, 1600; and though deposed as " a 
 facetious man " by vote of the Corporation, October 13, 
 1602, appears to have held the office until 1605. 
 
 He tells us himself that he passed through nine months 
 of doubt and study before deciding to leave the Church 
 of England, but by 1606 he had reached a decision and 
 joined himself to a company of Separatists in Gains- 
 borough, of whom he became the recognized " teacher " 
 — for they disliked " ministers " and all similar terms. 
 Thomas Helwys and John Murton were the leading 
 members of this group. A few miles distant, in the 
 manor of Scrooby, there was another group of Sep- 
 aratists, in close fellowship with the Gainsborough group. 
 Prominent among the Scrooby group were William Brad- 
 ford, William Brewster, and John Robinson, the last 
 being the " teacher." Scattered throughout the surround- 
 ing region were a score or more of adherents, who were 
 rapidly increasing in numbers. 
 
 This was the time when James I. was vigorously mak- 
 ing good his threat regarding sectaries in England: 
 " I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of 
 the land." Persecution became so violent that these Sep- 
 aratists despaired of maintaining themselves in England, 
 and Thomas Helwys, whose wife had been imprisoned 
 for her schism, induced the Gainsborough group to emi- 
 grate to Holland. They established themselves at Am- 
 sterdam, where they became the second English church, 
 and their teacher supported himself by practising 
 medicine. 
 
 The first English church was composed of Separatists, 
 mostly from London, who had come to Amsterdam at 
 
THE EARLY DAYS 2O3 
 
 various times from 1593 onward, and had as their pastor 
 Francis Johnson, who had been a tutor of Sm3rth at 
 Cambridge. Not long after the Gainsborough exodus, 
 the church of Scrooby fled to Holland, going first to 
 Amsterdam and thence to Leyden. Their pastor was 
 John Robinson. It was this congregation, with certain 
 additions, that afterward became the Pilgrims of the 
 Mayflower. 
 
 Our concern is, however, with the second church at 
 Amsterdam. Pastor Smyth here became acquainted, pos- 
 sibly for the first time, with the theology of Arminius, and 
 here, it is also reasonable to suppose, he learned the Men- 
 nonite theory of the nature of the church. If he had had 
 doubts before concerning infant baptism they were now 
 confirmed into conviction that it is not warranted by the 
 Scriptures, and that a scriptural church should consist 
 of the regenerate only, who have been baptized on a 
 personal confession of faith. He gave utterance to 
 these views in a tract called " The Character of the 
 Beast" (1609). Before this (1608) differences had 
 arisen over a question of comparatively slight importance 
 between the two English churches, and the result had 
 been an interruption of their communion. Now a still 
 more important step was taken : Smyth, Thomas Helwys, 
 and thirty-six others formed the first church composed 
 of Englishmen that is known to have stood for the 
 baptism of believers only. 
 
 Smyth is generally called the " Se-Baptist," which 
 means that he baptized himself. There can be no doubt 
 that such was the case, since an acknowledgment of the 
 fact still exists in his own handwriting. In this respect 
 he resembled Roger Williams. He held that the real 
 apostolic succession is a succession not of outward ordi- 
 nances and visible organizations, but of true faith and 
 practice. He therefore believed that the ancient, true 
 
204 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 apostolic succession had been lost, and that the only way 
 to recover it was to begin a church anew on the apostolic 
 model. Accordingly, having first baptized himself, he 
 baptized Helwys and the rest, and so constituted the 
 church. They soon after issued a Confession of Faith, 
 Arminian in its theology, but distinct in its claims that 
 a church should be composed only of baptized believers, 
 and that only such should " taste of the Lord's Supper." 
 
 It is also certain that the baptism of Sm)rth and his 
 followers was an affusion, for in a few months he became 
 dissatisfied with what he had done, confessed that his 
 Anabaptism was an error, and applied with some others 
 for admission into a Mennonite church. A committee 
 of Mennonite ministers was appointed to examine into 
 the doctrine and practice of the applicants, and in their 
 report they said : " We . . . also inquired for the 
 foundation and form^ of their baptism, and we have not 
 found that there was any difference at all, neither in the 
 one nor the other thing." Several Confessions — at least 
 four in all — were issued by Smyth and this church, in 
 which baptism is defined as " the external sign of the 
 remission of sins, of dying and being made alive," as 
 " washing with water," as " to be ministered only upon 
 penitent and faithful persons," and the like ; but nothing 
 is said in any of them of immersion as the form of 
 baptism. 
 
 Smyth died in 1612, but before that the church he had 
 been instrumental in founding, now reduced to some ten 
 members, had disappeared from Holland. Persecution 
 seems to have been less severe in England, and Thomas 
 
 * Some have been inclined (so Newman, " History of Anti-pedobaptism,*' 
 p. 387) to understand *' form of their baptism " not to refer " to the mode 
 of applying the water," but " rather to the words spoken in connection 
 with the administration of the ordinance." But this is directly contravened 
 by the authority of John Smyth himself. In his " Character of the Beast " 
 (p. 54) he clearly makes the distinction between the matter of baptism, ■> 
 )»4UevinK subject, and the form of baptism, a washing with water. 
 
THE EARLY DAYS 205 
 
 Helwys, John Murton, and others returned to London, 
 probably some time in 1611, and founded the first Ana- 
 baptist church composed of Englishmen known to have 
 existed on English soil. This church was also Arminian 
 in theology, and churches of this type came later to be 
 called General Baptists, because they held to a general 
 atonement for all men, while orthodox Calvinists then 
 held to a "particular" atonement, for the elect only. 
 By the year 1626 there were five such churches in Eng- 
 land, though all were small, and in the aggregate con- 
 tained about one hundred and fifty members. In 1644 
 they had increased to forty-seven churches, according to 
 their opponents; possibly there were more. Once they 
 had a fair opportunity to preach New Testament truth 
 among their countrymen, these churches throve rapidly in 
 England. 
 
 The fact must not be overlooked, however, that ten 
 Baptist churches in England claim an earlier origin than 
 this whose story has thus been told. Hill Qiflf (1522), 
 Eythorne, Coggeshall, Braintree (1550), Farringdon 
 Road (1576), Crowle, Epworth (1599), Bridgewater, 
 Oxford, Wedmore (1600). To substantiate these claims 
 there is little evidence but tradition, of no great antiquity. 
 Thomas Crosby, the earliest of our Baptist historians, 
 who sought with praiseworthy diligence for all accessible 
 facts, and was personally familiar with some of these 
 localities, had either never heard such traditions or did 
 not consider them even worthy of mention. In no case 
 is there the smallest scrap of documentary evidence for 
 such antiquity as is claimed. No title-deeds or records 
 extend back much over two hundred years, few extend 
 so far back. There is some archaeological evidence, in 
 one or two cases, to prove that a certain site was used 
 for religious services or as a burial-place, long before 
 the beginning of the seventeenth century. The gap 
 
206 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 between these slender premises of fact and the conclusion 
 sought to be drawn from them is so wide that only the 
 most robust faith could span it. One who is capable of 
 believing in the great antiquity of English Baptist 
 churches on evidence so slender is quite capable of be- 
 lieving on no evidence at all — ^which is the quickest and 
 safest way. Let us return, then, to the history. 
 
 The Calvinistic or Particular Baptists had a quite dif- 
 ferent origin. The account of that origin given by Bap- 
 tist historians generally, including the former editions of 
 this work, rests on the authority of Thomas Crosby, the 
 earliest historian of the Baptists. The documents on 
 which Crosby depended have been made accessible, and 
 show that he did not accurately follow his sources. As- 
 suming the credibility of the documents — ^the question can- 
 not be discussed here — ^the essential facts are as follows : 
 
 A congregation of Separatists, or Dissenters from the 
 Church of England, was gathered by the Rev. Henry 
 Jacob in London, in 1616. After some years Jacob went 
 to Virginia and John Lathrop became the pastor. Many 
 were added to them, and discussions rose whether the 
 parish churches could be regarded as true churches. In 
 1633 there was a peaceable division on this issue, and a 
 new church of seventeen persons was formed. This new 
 church was evidently what we should now call a church 
 of mixed membership; some of its members were cer- 
 tainly of Anabaptist views, for the record adds: "Mr. 
 Eaton, with some others [but not all], receiving a fur- 
 ther baptism." Mr. John Spilsbury soon became pastor 
 of this flock, which in 1638 received another secession of 
 six members from the Jacob church, this composed wholly 
 of Anabaptists. Not long after, this church seems to 
 have wholly adopted Baptist principles and practices, and 
 IS therefore entitled to be called the first Particular Baptist 
 church in England. 
 
THE EARLY DAYS 207 
 
 Returning now to the original church of Jacob and 
 Lathrop, we find that Mr. Lathrop also emigrated to 
 New England, leaving the flock again without a shep- 
 herd. The records of the church then go on to say : 
 
 1640. 3rd Mo: The Church became two by mutual! consent 
 just half being with Mr. P. Barebone, & ye other halfe with Mr. 
 H. Jessey. Mr. Richd Blunt wth him being convinced of Bap- 
 tism yt also it ought to be by dipping in ye Body into ye 
 Water, resembling Burial and riseing again Col. 2. 12, Rom. 6, 4 
 had sober Conferance about in ye Church, & then wth some of 
 the forenamed who also were so convinced; and after Prayer & 
 Conferance about their so enjoying it, none having then so 
 practiced it in England to professed Believers, & hearing that 
 some in and ye Nether Lands had so practiced, they agreed and 
 sent over Mr. ich'd Blunt (who understood Dutch) with Let- 
 ters of Commendation, and who was kindly accepted there, and 
 Returned wth Letters from them Jo: Batten a teacher there, 
 and from that Church to such as sent him. 
 
 1641. They proceed on therein, viz Those Persons yt 
 ware perswaded Baptism should be by dipping ye Body had mett 
 in two Companies, and did intend so to meet after this, all those 
 Agreed to proceed alike togeather: and then manifesting (not 
 by any formal Words) a Covenant (wch Word was Scrupled by 
 some of them) but by mutuall desires and agreement each Testi- 
 fied: Those two Companyes did set apart one to Baptize the 
 rest: so it was Solemnly performed by them. 
 
 Mr. Blunt baptized Mr. Blacklock yt was a Teacher amongst 
 them, and Mr. Blunt being baptized, he and Mr. Blacklock Bap- 
 tized ye rest of their friends yt ware so minded, and many being 
 added to them they increased much. 
 
 Another method of reviving immersion was taken by 
 the Baptists of this period, as their writings bear witness. 
 Thomas Crosby has stated it very accurately in these 
 words : 
 
 But the greatest number of the English Baptists, and the 
 more judicious, looked upon all this [Blunt's mission to Holland] 
 as needless trouble, and what proceeded from the old popish 
 
208 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 doctrine of right to administer the sacraments by an uninter- 
 rupted succession, which neither the Church of Rome nor the 
 Church of England, much less the modern dissenters, could prove 
 to be with them. They affirmed, therefore, and practised ac- 
 cordingly, that after a general corruption of baptism, an unbap- 
 tized person might warrantably baptize, and so begin a 
 reformation (l : 103). 
 
 This was apparently the method adopted by the Spils- 
 bury church, for its pastor strongly argued against the 
 theory of succession, and upheld the right of a church 
 of Christ by its own act to recover lost ordinances. 
 "Where there is a beginning," he pithily says, "some 
 must be first." 
 
 In these two ways the practice of immei ing believers 
 in Christ was introduced among those churches that a 
 few years later came to be known as Particular Baptists. 
 We have no such definite account of the introduction of 
 immersion among the Arminian churches, but we have 
 no sufficient grounds for supposing that they anticipated 
 their Calvinistic brethren. The only thing that points in 
 that direction is a passage in " Religion's Peace," a book 
 written by Leonard Busher in 1614. Busher may have 
 been at one time connected with the Helwys congrega- 
 tion at Amsterdam, and his book bears internal evidence 
 of having been written and published there, but we can- 
 not connect him more closely than this with the Baptists 
 in England. In his book he says: "And such as shall 
 willingly and gladly receive it [the gospel] he hath com- 
 manded to be baptized in the water; that is, dipped for 
 dead in the water." It is not a perfectly safe inference, 
 however, from this teaching that there was a correspond- 
 ing practice. That sort of logic would prove that both 
 Luther and Calvin were immersionists, and lead us into 
 all sorts of absurdities if it were consistently applied 
 throughout the history of the church. Nothing is 
 
Menno Simons 
 
William of Orange 
 
William Kiffen 
 
TRe^ true' (m£lAve^ '^^■vbs g^Z^Cf 
 
THE EARLY DAYS 209 
 
 commoner than to find lack of correspondence between 
 teaching and practice. 
 
 The churches afterwards known as General Baptists 
 had from the first maintained close relations with the 
 Mennonite churches of Holland. Their members, on 
 going to Holland, were received without question into 
 the Mennonite churches. Certain of their church dis- 
 putes were referred to the Mennonite churches for arbi- 
 tration. These facts indicate that they were agreed on 
 the practice of baptism, which we know to have been 
 aspersion among the Mennonites. But from the middle 
 of the seventeenth century, or a little before, all traces 
 of this union cease. The only reasonable explanation 
 of the facts is that given by Mennonite writers, namely, 
 the adoption of immersion by the English churches, 
 which thus practically pronounced their Mennonite 
 brethren unbaptized. 
 
 For many years we find that the question of baptism 
 was still debated among these English churches. Some, 
 who agreed with their brethren in all other things, had 
 not yet adopted the practice of immersion and were 
 called the Old Men, or Aspersi; while the others were 
 called the New Men, or Immersi, " because they were 
 overwhelmed in their rebaptization." ^ So late as 
 1653 we find the same difference of opinion still 
 persisting. A Baptist writer of that date complains 
 of what he calls a " 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 con- 
 gregations), who having long since discovered the true 
 way of baptism as to the subjects, namely: That pro- 
 fessing believers only, and not any infants, are to be bap- 
 tized, but remaining ignorant of the true way and form 
 of administering the ordinance, are fallen into the 
 
 ' &. Rynes, "MercurU^ Susticus," London, 1646, p. 21. 
 
210 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 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 for 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." ^ This is the last known 
 case of the kind, and from about this time it is certain 
 that all the Anabaptist churches of England adopted 
 immersion, and are thenceforth properly called Baptists. 
 A great mass of pamphlets and books relating to bap- 
 tism began to pour from the presses of England from 
 1640 onward. This revival of the practice of immersion 
 by the Baptist churches is the only and also the sufficient 
 explanation of this phenomenon. The controversy thus 
 precipitated also accounts for the importance thenceforth 
 assumed by the question of baptism in Baptist Confes- 
 sions and in polemical writings by the Baptists of this 
 period. Others had before this practised immersion, be- 
 ing convinced that it is taught by the Scriptures, without 
 teaching that immersion is essential to valid baptism. 
 The opposition of the other English sects to the novel 
 practice of immersion developed the Baptist doctrine rap- 
 idly. The other Separatists of the period with one ac- 
 cord attacked immersion as new-fangled, unnecessary, 
 immodest, dangerous to life, and the like. Baptists re- 
 torted by asserting that nothing else than immersion could 
 be accepted as baptism. When the Continental Anabap- 
 tists practised immersion, no special opposition was made 
 to their practice, and they were therefore never impelled 
 to lay any special emphasis upon its necessity. In this 
 one difference of circumstance is the full explanation of 
 the difference of doctrine obtaining between the 
 immersing Anabaptists and the modern Baptists. 
 
 ^ " Baby Baotism mere Babyum," by S. Fisher. London, 1653, p. 464. 
 
THE EARLY DAYS 211 
 
 By the year 1644 the number of Particular Baptist 
 churches had increased to seven. In that year these 
 seven churches united in issuing a Confession of Faith, 
 composed of fifty articles, which is one of the chief 
 landmarks of Baptist history. 
 
 The Confession, besides giving a brief exposition of 
 gospel truth according to the Calvinistic theology, pro- 
 nounces baptism "an ordinance of the New Testament 
 given by Christ, to be dispensed upon persons professing 
 faith, or that are made disciples ; who, upon profession of 
 faith, ought to be baptized, and afterward to partake of 
 the Lord's Supper." It then specifies : 
 
 That the way and manner of the dispensing this ordinance 
 is dipping or plunging the body under water; it being a sign, 
 must answer the thing signified, which is, that interest the saints 
 have in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ: and that 
 as certainly as the body is buried under water and risen 
 again, so certainly shall the bodies of the saints be raised by 
 the power of Christ in the day of the resurrection, to reign with 
 Christ. 
 
 And a note to this section adds: "The word baptizo 
 signifies to dip or plunge (yet so as convenient garments 
 be upon both the administrator and subject, with all mod- 
 esty) ." English Baptists were accused by their opponents 
 of baptizing converts in a state of nakedness, and doing 
 other scandalous things, hence the statement in paren- 
 theses was necessary, and the 165 1 edition of the Con- 
 fession adds these words: "Which is also our practice, 
 as many eye-witnesses can testify." 
 
 The Confessions issued before this time are not so 
 explicit in defining baptism as immersion, but they are 
 equally plain in placing baptism before participation in 
 the Lord's Supper. One of the fourfold Confessions is- 
 sued by the Smyth-Helwys church in Holland says : " The 
 Holy Supper, according to the institution of Christ, is to 
 
212 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 be administered to the baptized." Indeed, in the whole 
 history of Baptists not a Confession can be produced that 
 advocates the invitation or admission to the Lord's table 
 of the unbaptized. Nevertheless, some English Baptist 
 churches, being formed of Separatist elements, did from 
 the first claim and exercise liberty in respect to this 
 ordinance. 
 
 The Confession of 1644 is outspoken also in the advo- 
 cacy of religious liberty as the right, and of good citizen- 
 ship as the duty, of every Christian man. The following 
 article is worth quoting in full, as the first publication 
 of the doctrine of freedom of conscience, in an official 
 document representing a body of associated churches : 
 
 XLVIII. A civil magistracy is an ordinance of God, set up 
 by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of 
 them that do well; and that in all lawful things, commanded by 
 them, subjection ought to be given by us in the Lord, not only 
 for the wrath, but for conscience' sake; and that we are to 
 make supplications and prayers for kings, and all that are in 
 authority, that under them we may live a quiet and peaceable 
 life in all godliness and honesty. 
 
 The supreme magistracy of this kingdom we acknowledge to 
 be King and Parliament. . . And concerning the worship of 
 God, there is but one lawgiver. . . which is Jesus Christ . . 
 So it is the magistrate's duty to tender the liberty of men's con- 
 sciences (Eccl. 8: 8), (which is the tenderest thing unto all con- 
 scientioui men, and most dear unto them, and without which 
 all other liberties will not be worth the naming, much less the 
 enjoying), and to protect all under them from all wrong, injury, 
 oppression, and molestation. . . And as we cannot do anjrthing 
 contrary to our understandings and consciences, so neither can 
 we forbear the doing of that which our understandings and con- 
 sciences bind us to do. And if the magistrates should require 
 us to do otherwise, we are to yield our persons in a passive 
 way to their power, as the saints of old have done (James 
 5:4). 
 
 This is a great landmark, not only of Baptists, but of 
 the progress of enlightened Christianity. Those who 
 
THE EARLY DAYS 2I3 
 
 published to the world this teaching, then deemed revo- 
 lutionary and dangerous, held, in all but a few points of 
 small importance, precisely those views of Christian truth 
 that are held by Baptists to-day. For substance of doc- 
 trine, any of us might subscribe to it without a moment's 
 hesitation. On the strength of this one fact, Baptists 
 might fairly claim that, whatever might have been said 
 by isolated individuals before, they were the pioneer body 
 among modem Christian denominations to advocate the 
 right of all men to worship God, each according to the 
 dictates of his own conscience, without let or hindrance 
 from any earthly power. 
 
 Among the names signed to this Confession are two 
 of special significance in this early period of Baptist 
 progress in England — William Kiffen and Hanserd 
 Knollys. Kiffen was born in London, in 1616. His fam- 
 ily was of Welsh extraction. He lost his parents by the 
 plague that scourged London in 1625, and was taken 
 care of by relatives, whom he charged with misappropri- 
 ating his patrimony. They apprenticed him to " a very 
 mean calling" (brewer), and in his fifteenth year he 
 ran away from his master. While wandering aimlessly 
 about town, he saw people going into church and went 
 in with them. The sermon on the fifth commandment, 
 and the duties of servants to masters, caused him to 
 return to his master, and also provoked in him a desire 
 to hear other Puritan ministers. Soon he was convicted 
 of sin, and after an experience not unlike that which 
 Bunyan relates in his " Grace Abounding," he found 
 peace in believing. He joined himself to an independent 
 congregation (probably that church of Henry Jacob, of 
 which so much has already been said), and some time 
 afterwards left this to join the Baptist church of which 
 John Spilsbury had become pastor. Not long thereafter 
 he became pastor of a newly constituted Baptist church 
 
214 A SHORT fllSTOHY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 in London. This was certainly prior to 1644, but how 
 long we do not know. 
 
 About the same time that he became a Baptist preacher, 
 Kiffen also became a merchant. His first venture was 
 in a trading voyage to Holland, in 1643, and two years 
 later he engaged in business in that country with a 
 young man of his congregation, and he adds : " It pleased 
 God so to bless our endeavors, as from scores of pounds 
 to bring it to many hundreds and thousands of pounds." 
 This is his modest way of saying that he became one 
 of the wealthiest and most influential merchants of Lon- 
 don. He himself valued his success mainly because it 
 enabled him to preach the gospel with less hindrance, 
 and he used his large means generously to propagate 
 the truth as he understood it. To his shrewd liberality 
 the Baptists of England owed much of their progress 
 during the seventeenth century. 
 
 Kiffen's wealth exposed him to many persecutions, 
 but also, it is likely, obtained for him many favors from 
 those in power. He was the friend of kings and high 
 officials, and though he doubtless valued such favor, he 
 not infrequently found it costly. It is related that on one 
 occasion Charles II. requested of this rich subject a 
 " loan " of forty thousand pounds. Kiflfen's ready wit 
 did not fail him in this emergency. He answered, with 
 all respect, that he could not possibly lend so large a 
 sum, but he hoped his Majesty would honor him by ac- 
 cepting a gift of ten thousand pounds. His Majesty 
 was ever ready to bestow that particular form of honor 
 on anybody, and graciously accepted the offer. Kiffen 
 used to relate the story with glee in after years, and 
 declared that by his timely liberality he had saved thirty 
 thousand pounds. Full of years and labors and honors, 
 Kiffen died in 1701. 
 
 Hanserd Knollys, one of the most godly, learned, and 
 
THE £ARLY DAYS 21 5 
 
 laborious among the English Baptists of this time, was 
 born at Chalkwell, Lincolnshire. His parents were re- 
 ligious people, as well as possessed of some wealth. He 
 was prepared by a private tutor and then sent to the 
 University of Cambridge, where he took his degree in 
 due course. Having had a religious training from boy- 
 hood, he was in a condition of mind and heart to be 
 impressed by sermons that he heard while a student, and 
 he was converted. His piety while at the university 
 was marked, and in his after years this early promise 
 was quite fulfilled. 
 
 After graduation, he was master of a school at Gains- 
 borough for a while ; but in June, 1629, he was ordained 
 by the bishop of Peterborough, first deacon, then pres- 
 byter, of the Church of England. Not long after, the 
 bishop of Lincoln presented him to the living of Hum- 
 berstone, where he engaged most zealously in the work 
 of a parish minister. He ordinarily preached four times 
 on Sunday, and besides preached on every holiday. Both 
 his training and natural inclinations inclined him toward 
 the Puritan party in the church, and after some three 
 years of service, his conscientious scruples regarding the 
 wearing of the surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, 
 admitting to the Lord's Supper persons of notoriously 
 wicked lives, and the like, made his position untenable. 
 He had only to stifle his convictions, to compound with 
 his conscience, to retain his place of honor and comfort- 
 in the church, with fair prospects of promotion. Bu. 
 he could not do this, and he manfully resigned his living 
 to his bishop, frankly stating his reasons; and so much 
 was he respected for his honesty, that the bishop con- 
 nived at his continuing to preach in the diocese, without 
 wearing the surplice or reading the service, though such 
 procedure was strictly forbidden by law. 
 
 This was a position impossible to maintain long; 3 
 
n6 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 (nan who did this was neither one thing nor another. 
 Accordingly, about 1636, Knollys joined himself to the 
 Separatists, as those Puritans were called who had been 
 compelled by conscience to come out of the Qiurch of 
 England. This exposed him to active persecution, and 
 he determined to emigrate to New England, where he 
 understood that the Separatists had liberty. He landed 
 in Boston, in 1638, after a voyage of much hardship. 
 It is related of him, as showing how low his fortunes 
 had ebbed, that by the time he had embarked on ship- 
 board he had but six brass farthings left; but his wife 
 produced five pounds that she had saved in happier days, 
 and they were enabled to reach the new land. 
 
 Soon after his arrival he had an opportunity to go to 
 the new settlement of Piscataway (afterward called Do- 
 ver), in New Hampshire, which needed a pastor. We 
 have testimony to show that while here he opposed the 
 baptism of infants, and probably for this reason Cotton 
 Mather classes him among the Anabaptists. Mather, 
 however, bears testimony to the excellent character of 
 Knollys. 
 
 In 1641, Knollys was summoned home to England by 
 his aged father, and he was so little of a Baptist as yet 
 that he became a member of the Separatist congregation, 
 of which at that time Henry Jessey was pastor. The 
 records of that church inform us that in 1643 Knollys 
 was unwilling to have his infant child baptized, which 
 led to conferences on the subject and finally to a division, 
 sixteen members withdrawing and forming a Baptist 
 church. Whether it was this church or another that he 
 gathered is uncertain, but in 1645 he was formally or- 
 dained pastor of a Baptist church in London, and from 
 that time was known as one of the efficient leaders of 
 this people. 
 
 The Episcopal hierarchy had been abolished, and " lib- 
 
THE EARLY DAYS 217, 
 
 erty of prophesying " was now supposed to be enjoyed 
 by all godly ministers. But the Presbyterians were de- 
 termined on the ruins of the Church of England to 
 erect an establishment of their own, and to silence all 
 who did not agree with them. For a time Knollys 
 preached in the parish churches, but was summoned to 
 give account of himself before a committee of divines 
 at Westminster. They forbade him to preach, but he 
 only ceased to preach in the parish churches, gathering 
 a congregation in a house of his own at Great St. Helen's, 
 London. This was a sample of the " liberty " experi- 
 enced by our Baptist forefathers under the dominion of 
 the Presbyterians and the Long Parliament. 
 
 After the Restoration, Knollys suflfered long-continued 
 hardships for the sake of the gospel. His popularity as 
 a preacher was so great, and his influence so generally 
 acknowledged by Nonconformists, that to silence him 
 was a special object of the upholders of the Church of 
 England and the Act of Uniformity. He was imprisoned 
 many times; even in his eighty-fourth year he was in 
 jail for six months, an act of revenge on the part of 
 James II. because Knollys refused to use his influence 
 with Baptists and other Dissenters to gain their approval 
 for the illegal dispensations issued by that monarch. To 
 escape these persecutions, Knollys and his family were 
 obliged to change their residence often, and once he left 
 England and spent some time in Holland and Germany. 
 
 After a short illness, Knollys died in his ninety-third 
 year, having given an example of constancy to his con- 
 victions that is worthy of all admiration. A Puritan 
 to the core, somewhat narrow and stern according to our 
 notions to-day, he was yet a very lovable man, and com- 
 pelled the respect of even those who most widely differed 
 from him in matters of faith and practice. 
 
 Both William KiflFen and Hanserd Knollys are known 
 
2l8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 to have been buried in Bunhill Fields, London, where 
 also the mortal remains of John Bunyan rest. Bunyan's 
 tomb is still pointed out to the curious visitor, but all 
 trace of the others has disappeared. A stone once marked 
 the grave of Kiffen, and its inscription has been preserved 
 by a diligent local historian, and that is now his sole 
 memorial. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 
 
 THE contest between Charles I. and his people had 
 come to an acute crisis before the Confession of 
 1644 was printed. He had showed, under the tutelage 
 of Laud in the Church, the same imperious temper and 
 the same persecuting spirit that he showed under Straf- 
 ford's counsel in the State. It was all one to him 
 whether Hampden refused to pay ship-money, or the ob- 
 stinate Scots refused to accept his liturgy. Baptists fared 
 hard during the earlier years of his reign, but from the 
 meeting of the Long Parliament, in November, 1640, 
 they had peace, and increased rapidly in numbers. Al- 
 most to a man they were supporters of the Parliamentary 
 cause, which was the cause of liberty, religious as well 
 as civil. Large numbers of Baptists took service in the 
 armies of Parliament, some of whom rose to a high 
 rank, and were much trusted by the Lord Protector, 
 Cromwell. 
 
 The period of the civil war was thus one of com- 
 parative immunity for those who had been persecuted, 
 yet the toleration practically enjoyed by the Baptists was 
 not a legal status; they still had no civil rights that 
 their stronger neighbors were bound to respect; and it 
 was only the dire necessity of uniting all forces against 
 the king that led the Presbyterian Parliament to refrain 
 from active measures of repression. The leading West' 
 minster divines rebuked Parliament in sermons and 
 pamphlets for suffering the Baptists to increase, but po- 
 litical considerations were for a time paramount. A 
 
 ^19 
 
220 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 single incident illustrates the Presbyterian idea of lib- 
 erty of conscience at this time. In 1646, one Morgan, a 
 Roman Catholic, unable to obtain priests' orders in Eng- 
 land, went to Rome for them, and on his return, was 
 hanged, drawn, and quartered, for this heinous offense. 
 The unspeakable papist could not be tolerated on any 
 terms by the Presbyterian party. 
 
 Against a general toleration the Presbyterians pro- 
 tested vigorously. Thomas Edwards declared that 
 " Could the devil effect a toleration, he would think he 
 had gained well by the Reformation, and made a good 
 exchange of the hierarchy to have a toleration for it." 
 Even the saintly Baxter said : " I abhor unlimited lib- 
 erty and toleration of all, and think myself easily able 
 to prove the wickedness of it." Well might Milton, in- 
 censed by such teachings and by attempts in Parliament 
 to give them effect, break forth in his memorable pro- 
 test, moved by a righteous indignation that could not 
 find expression in honeyed words or courteous phrases: 
 
 Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword 
 
 To force our consciences, that Christ set free. 
 
 And ride us with a classic hierarchy? 
 
 And with bitter truth he added : 
 
 New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large. 
 
 Not in vain was his subsequent appeal to Cromwell 
 for protection from these wolves in sheep's clothing, who 
 had broken down one tyranny only to erect on its base 
 another more odious: 
 
 Peace hath her victories 
 No less renowned than war ; new foes arise, 
 Threat'ning to bind our souls with secular chains; 
 Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
 Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw. 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 221 
 
 Nothing but the overthrow of the Long Parliament, 
 and with it the Presbyterian domination, prevented a 
 more tyrannous and implacable persecution than any 
 that disgraces the fair page of England's annals. One 
 of the last acts of the Presbyterian party was to pass a 
 law ( 1648) making death the penalty for eight errors in 
 doctrine, including the denial of the Trinity, and pre- 
 scribing indefinite imprisonment for sixteen other errors, 
 one of which was the denial of infant baptism. 
 
 Fortunately for the Baptists, the furious extremists 
 among the Presbyterians were never able to do more 
 than occasionally annoy those whom they so cordially 
 detested. It is related of William Kiffen that on July 
 12, 1655, he was brought before the Lord Mayor, charged 
 with violation of the statute against blasphemies and 
 heresies, in that he had preached "that the baptism of 
 infants was unlawful." The accused merchant-preacher 
 was treated with great consideration by the mayor, who, 
 on the plea of being very busy, deferred further con- 
 sideration of the case. There is nothing to indicate 
 that Mr. Kiffen ever heard more about the matter. 
 Others, less powerful, were by no means so fortunate. 
 
 But the excesses of the Presbyterian party hastened its 
 downfall. The real power in the State was the army, 
 composed mainly of Independents, but containing many 
 Baptists. As the revolution proceeded, it inevitably be- 
 came a military despotism, the head of the army ex- 
 ercising the civil authority more or less under forms oi 
 law. 
 
 During the Protectorate a fair measure of religious 
 liberty prevailed. Cromwell himself came nearer than 
 any public man of his time to adopting the Baptist doc- 
 trine of equal liberty of conscience for all men. He 
 came, at least, to hold that a toleration of all religious 
 views — such as existed among Protestants, that is to 
 
222 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 say — was both right and expedient; though he seems to 
 have had no insuperable objections to a Presbyterian or 
 Independent Church, established by law and maintained 
 by the State. He was compelled to maintain a State re- 
 ligion, but he maintained it in the interest of no one sect. 
 He admitted all whom we now call evangelical Christians 
 to an equal footing in religious privileges, appointing a 
 committee of Triers, of different sects, to examine the 
 qualifications of incumbents and candidates. The only 
 standard these Triers were permitted to set up was god- 
 liness and ability to edify; no minister was to be either 
 appointed or excluded for his views of doctrine or polity. 
 Several Baptists served as Triers, and many others re- 
 ceived benefices during this time — a very inconsistent 
 course for Baptists to take, and one that it is not easy 
 *o pardon, for they sinned against light. 
 
 From time to time Baptists were accused of sedition, 
 tnd various pretexts were found to justify their per- 
 secution; but Cromwell could never be induced to move 
 against them. It has been reserved for writers of our 
 own day to press these stale slanders against a loyal and 
 upright people. By such it has been urged, with in- 
 sistence and bitterness, that the Baptists were not sincere 
 in their professions of zealous devotion to the principle 
 of liberty of conscience for all; or, at least, that the 
 declarations already quoted from their Confessions and 
 from their published writings did not represent the Bap- 
 tists as a whole — ^that there were Baptists as intolerant 
 and as desirous of persecuting their opponents as the 
 most zealous Presbyterian of them all. 
 
 The events of 1653 ^^e said to furnish full confirma- 
 tion of this view of the case. In that year the " Rump " 
 Parliament was dissolved, and Cromwell was proclaimed 
 Lord Protector, according to the provisions of an In- 
 "^trument of Government framed by a con\'ention he had 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 223 
 
 called for the purpose of devising a scheme to regulate 
 the affairs of the nation. It would seem that some of 
 the Baptists were ardent republicans, and in these pro- 
 ceedings of Cromwell they saw only the workings of his 
 ambition to be king. We know that four years later 
 certain Baptists protested against the proposition to con- 
 fer this title upon him, and that their protest had weight. 
 Some of them protested now; and the Rev. Vavasor 
 Powell denounced Cromwell from the pulpit at a meeting 
 in Blackfriars of certain Fifth Monarchy men. There 
 were fears also for a time of trouble in Ireland from the 
 Baptists, who were reported to be extremely disaffected 
 with the new government. On these facts a charge is 
 based that a part of the Baptists, at least, were disposed 
 toward a religious movement that must have resulted in 
 persecution. 
 
 The simple fact is that the Baptists, as a body, were 
 loyal to the Commonwealth and its head as the de facto 
 government of England; and the few who were disaf- 
 fected opposed Cromwell on civil grounds. Among these 
 was Gen. Thomas Harrison (who, however, did not be- 
 come a Baptist until 1657). This party was republi- 
 can and suspected Cromwell of kingly ambitions, and 
 hence opposed him. Certain of these men, notably Har- 
 rison, also believed that the time was drawing near for 
 the Fifth Monarchy. These were enthusiasts, misled by 
 the study of prophecy — as had happened in the former 
 ages of the church, among the medieval Anabaptists and 
 the earlier Montanists, for example — into a notion that 
 the last times were at hand, and that Christ was about 
 to set up an earthly kingdom and reign with his saints 
 a thousand years. Men's laws and traditions were to 
 be altogether swept away, and the world was to be ruled 
 by the law of Christ. This would, of itself, exclude the 
 idea of persecution when once this kingdom should have 
 
224 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 been established ; and before its establishment persecution 
 would not have been possible. It is not true that the 
 Fifth Monarchy men, as a body, believed in setting up 
 this kingdom by the sword, as their public declarations 
 clearly show. To prove that a Baptist was concerned 
 in these Fifth Monarchy demonstrations does not show 
 that he cherished any idea of punishing dissent by any 
 form of persecution; still less does it show that his 
 brethren sympathized with any persecuting notions. 
 
 But we have abundant testimony that the great body of 
 the Baptists had no sympathy with the chiliastic ideas 
 that lay at the basis of the Fifth Monarchy movement; 
 that they utterly condemned all conspiracies against the 
 de facto government; and that they exhorted all their 
 brethren to follow their example in rendering loyal 
 obedience to the powers that be. An extant letter from 
 William Kiffen and others to the Baptists in Ireland 
 gives interesting evidence as to the feeling of the English 
 Baptists. The writers express sorrow that " there -is 
 raised up in many amongst you (the Baptists in Ireland) 
 a spirit of great dissatisfaction and opposition against 
 this present authority," and exhort them to think bet- 
 ter of their determination to protest publicly against 
 Cromwell. They say : 
 
 And this we are clearly satisfied, in that the principles held 
 forth by those meeting in Blackfriars, under pretense of the 
 Fifth Monarchy, or setting up the kingdom of Christ, to which 
 many of those lately in power adhered, had it been prosecuted, 
 would have brought as great dishonor to the name of God, and 
 shame and contempt to the whole nation, as we think could have 
 been imagined. 
 
 The letter closes with a solemn appeal in these words: 
 
 We do therefore beseech you for the Lord's sake and for the 
 truth's sake, that it be not evil spoken of men, seriously weigh 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 225 
 
 these things; for surely if the Lord gives us hearts we have a 
 large advantage put into our hands to give a public testimony 
 in the face of the world. That our principles are not such as 
 they have been generally judged by most men to be; which is, 
 that we deny authority and would pull down all magistracy. And 
 if any trouble should arise, either with you or us, in the nation, 
 which might proceed to the shedding of blood, would not it all 
 be imputed and charged upon the baptized churches? And what 
 grief and sorrow would be administered to us, your brethren, to 
 hear the name of God blasphemed by ungodly men through your 
 means? This we can say, that we have not had any occasion 
 of sorrow from any of the churches in this nation with whom 
 we have communion; they, with one heart, desiring to bless 
 God for their liberty, and with all willingness to be subject to 
 the present authority. And we trust to hear the same of you, 
 having lately received an epistle written to us by all the churches 
 amongst you, pressing us to a strict walking with God, and warn- 
 ing of us to take heed of formality, the love of this world; that 
 we slight not our mercy in the present liberties we enjoy. 
 
 Whether to this appeal or to the sober second thought 
 is to be attributed the subsequent quiet of the Irish Bap- 
 tists is not quite certain, but a letter in Thurloe's " State 
 Papers " informs us that there was no further trouble : 
 
 As to your grand affairs in Ireland, especially as to the Ana- 
 baptist party, I am confident they are much misconceived in 
 England. Upon the change of affairs here was discontent 
 enough, but very little animosity. For certainly never yet any 
 faction, so well fortified by all the offices, military and civil, 
 almost in the whole nation, did quit their interest with more 
 silence. 
 
 The Baptists were conscious that toleration was not 
 likely to continue long unless the principle were incor- 
 porated in the law of the land. They continued in their 
 writings and Confessions, therefore, to urge the duty of 
 all Christians to tolerate those who differed from them 
 in religious belief. With this they uniformly coupled a 
 disclaimer of any such doctrine of liberty as implied 
 
 3 
 
226 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 license, and enforced the duty of the Christian to render 
 obedience to the civil magistrate in all secular affairs. 
 
 In the year 1660 Charles Stuart was brought back with 
 great rejoicing to the throne of his fathers. The Bap- 
 tists must have seen in this event the death blow to their 
 hopes of religious liberty, yet it does not appear that 
 they raised voice or hand against the new king, though 
 they were far from trusting his smooth words and prom- 
 ises of toleration. He was hardly seated on his throne 
 when one Thomas Venner and a band of Fifth Mon- 
 archists and other irreconcilables made an insurrection, 
 whose object was the dethronement of the new monarch 
 and the setting up of the kingdom of Christ on earth. 
 The slanders of the time accuse the Baptists of complicity 
 in this disturbance. Beyond the repetition of these stale 
 slanders there is not a particle of evidence producible 
 that any Baptists took part in the insurrection. Con- 
 clusive evidence that they did not we have in their pro- 
 test made at the time, and in the verdict of every candid 
 Pedobaptist historian who has carefully gone over the 
 facts. Venner himself was a Pedobaptist, and it is not 
 known that a single Baptist was among his followers. 
 Nevertheless, persecution on account of alleged disloyalty 
 and heresies was active and bitter. 
 
 The death of Thomas Harrison cannot, however, be 
 called a case of persecution. His case stands by itself. 
 The difference between a patriot and a rebel has been 
 defined somewhat as follows : " The man who succeeds 
 is a patriot; the man who fails is a rebel." If George 
 Washington had failed, he would have been hanged like 
 Robert Emmet, and schoolboys would now be reading 
 books in which his treason would be appropriately con- 
 demned. Thomas Harrison failed at last, after a period 
 of complete success, and he went to his grave so loaded 
 down with ignominy that few have had courage since 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 227 
 
 to plead his cause. He deserves a rehearing in the court 
 of the world's justice. 
 
 He was born in Cheshire, and his father was a butcher ; 
 hence, as Mrs. Hutchinson sneeringly remarked in her 
 "Memoirs," he was "a mean man's son." Nor does 
 Mistress Lucy fail to record several anecdotes, illustrating 
 his love of display and fine clothes, as a foil to the per- 
 fections of Colonel Hutchinson. Nevertheless, when the 
 pinch came, Harrison, the " mean man's son," played 
 the Christian hero, while the well-born colonel played the 
 coward and meanly truckled to save his life — and 
 succeeded, but lost his honor forever. 
 
 Little is known of Harrison's early life. He must have 
 had a fair education, and became clerk to a solicitor. 
 Early in the struggle between Charles L and his Parlia- 
 ment he enlisted in the parliamentary army, beginning 
 as cornet, the equivalent of a second lieutenant of cavalry. 
 By bravery and fidelity he was advanced to the rank of 
 captain, and having attracted the notice of Cromwell, was 
 made a colonel of cavalry after the remodeling of the 
 army. It was the policy thereafter to promote officers 
 who, besides military capacity, were men of piety and 
 intelligence, and Harrison rose fast, until he became 
 major-general and ranked next to Cromwell himself in 
 the respect of the army. By various means, in none of 
 which do his enemies charge him with any dishonor, he 
 acquired a considerable estate, and lived in a manner be- 
 coming the second man in England. It is this rapid pro- 
 motion and access of power that doubtless roused the 
 jealousy of the Hutchinsons and that explain the ref- 
 erences to Harrison in pious Mrs. Lucy's " Memoirs." 
 
 When the war was over and Charles I. was a prisoner, 
 the question rose what to do with him. The army was 
 tired of fighting, and demanded summary measures. This 
 demand was resisted until it was discovered that Charles 
 
228 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 was plotting for further uprisings on his behalf, and then 
 his fate was sealed. By vote of Parliament, a high court 
 of justice was appointed to try the king. Harrison was 
 one of the most prominent members of the court, and 
 his name was signed in bold characters to the death war- 
 rant of Charles I. The verdict of history is that while 
 Charles Stuart richly deserved his fate, it was a political 
 blunder thus to make of him a martyr ; but that Harrison 
 could not be expected to see at the time. His act was 
 that of patriot who did what he believed to be best for 
 his country. It is difficult to read with patience what 
 has been written by many historians concerning the death 
 of a king who plunged his country into civil war because 
 he neither could nor would keep his word, and who 
 deserved forty deaths by his perfidy and cruelty. 
 
 But Harrison had no mind to have King Noll substi- 
 tuted for King Charles; he had had enough of kings, 
 and was for a republic. So was the army. Cromwell's 
 doings were regarded with great suspicion; his title of 
 Lord Protector was looked upon as a preliminary to 
 assuming a higher title; his government was more arbi- 
 trary and despotic than that of the Stuarts. Harrison 
 and the army were uneasy and became estranged from 
 their former leader. So near to an open breach did they 
 come that twice, as a matter of precaution, Cromwell im- 
 prisoned Harrison for a time, without any warrant but 
 his sword, with no accusation, and finally released him 
 without trial. At length Cromwell was compelled to give 
 a definite refusal to the request, doubtless made with his 
 own connivance and at his desire, that he would assume 
 the title and state of king. The refusal was made with 
 many sighs, but the army was hopelessly opposed, and 
 Harrison in this matter represented the army. It was 
 due to his firmness that the house of Cromwell did not 
 succeed the house of Stuart on the throne of England. 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 229 
 
 General Harrison and his wife were baptized in 1657, 
 in the dead of winter, when it was so cold that the ice 
 had to be broken for the immersion. This was but three 
 years before his death, and he was never so identified 
 with Baptists as has been commonly supposed, though 
 he had rather inclined toward that despised body of 
 Christians for years before he joined them. 
 
 After the restoration, Harrison well knew that he 
 could expect no mercy. The regicides, as the judges of 
 Charles I. were called, were expressly excepted from 
 all proclamations of amnesty. Nevertheless, he refused 
 either to fly or to truckle, but remained quietly at hom^, 
 calmly awaiting the worst. He had not long to wait. 
 He was arrested, sent to the Tower, and soon after tried. 
 He was permitted to make no defense, and an executioner 
 stood at his side in the dock with a halter in his hand. 
 His condemnation was inevitable, but English courts of 
 justice were never so disgraced, even in the days of the 
 brutal Jeffreys, as by the means taken to secure it. 
 
 The sentence of death was carried out with equal bar- 
 barity. We have accounts of it from two eye-witnesses, 
 Samuel Pepys and General Ludlow. Both agree that Har- 
 rison bore himself with calmness and fortitude. He was 
 first hanged, then cut down while still living, his bowels 
 cut out and thrown into the fire before his eyes ; then his 
 head was cut off, his body divided into quarters, and these 
 gory members displayed in public places. And this in 
 Christian England, in the year 1660! No wonder that, 
 as Ludlow says, Harrison's bearing throughout his trial 
 and execution was such " that even his enemies were as- 
 tonished and confounded." They alleged nothing dis- 
 creditable in his life, and his death was as honorable to 
 him as it was disgraceful to the people of England. 
 
 Nor was the case of John James one of persecution 
 in form, though there is every reason to believe it was 
 
230 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 such in fact. He was arrested while preaching to his 
 flock, a Seventh-day Baptist church in London, and 
 brought to trial on the charge of treason. The evidence 
 against him seems to be rank perjury, attributing to 
 him such sayings as that " the king was a bloody tyrant, 
 a bloodsucker, a bloodthirsty man," that " he much feared 
 they had not improved their opportunity when they had 
 the power in their hands ; that it would not be long before 
 they had power again, and then they would improve it 
 better." Every effort was made to induce some of the 
 congregation to confirm these charges, but they unani- 
 mously maintained that they never heard such words. 
 But there was no great difficulty in suborning wretches 
 to swear away the life of a Dissenting preacher, and he 
 was speedily found guilty. On the 26th of November 
 he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, and his 
 head was placed on a pole near his meeting-house in 
 Whitechapel. 
 
 It is probably unjust to hold Charles II. responsible 
 for the persecutions that disgraced his reign. There is 
 no good reason to suppose him insincere in his Breda 
 declaration of " a liberty to tender consciences, and that 
 no man shall be disquieted or called in question for dif- 
 ferences of opinion in matters of religion, which do not 
 disturb the peace of the kingdom." The good faith of 
 his promise, in the same declaration, to approve any 
 measure of toleration that his Parliament might pass 
 cannot be questioned, for he was anxious that such a 
 measure might be enacted, so that the Roman Catholics 
 of England might enjoy toleration. 
 
 But the first Parliament of Charles was composed 
 largely of young men, not old enough to remember the 
 misrule of the first Charles and his ministers, but dis- 
 tinctly remembering the harshness and insolence of the 
 Puritan rule. Vindictive legislation was certain to be 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 23 1 
 
 enacted by such a body, and neither the king nor his 
 advisers could do much to restrain these anti-Puritan 
 legislators. A new Act of Uniformity reenacted the 
 prayer-book of Elizabeth, with a few modifications, and 
 required that every minister who had not received Epis- 
 copal ordination should procure such orders before Au- 
 gust 24, 1662. On that day, the anniversary of the mas- 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew, two thousand of the most 
 learned and godly ministers in England were driven from 
 their pulpit's — a loss from which the Church of England 
 has never recovered to this day. 
 
 A series of laws was now passed against those who 
 refused conformity to the Established Church and its 
 rites. In 1663 the Conventicle Act forbade all religious 
 meetings in private houses of more than five persons 
 not belonging to the family. In 1665 the Five Mile Act 
 prohibited any Dissenting minister from going within five 
 miles of any borough or corporate town. In 1673 the 
 Test Act excluded from all public offices every one who 
 could not produce a certificate from a clergyman that 
 he had within a year partaken of the communion accord- 
 ing to the rites of the Church of England. By these 
 laws, those who refused, for conscience' sake, to con- 
 form to the church established by law were deprived of 
 all their religious and a great part of their civil rights. 
 
 Doubtless Charles II. had promised more than any 
 mortal could have performed; doubtless, also, he might 
 have performed more had he cared to do it. These were 
 not laws after his heart — they bore too hard on Ro- 
 manists for that — ^but as he was powerless to protect 
 them, he cared little that all other Dissenters from the 
 ChurcTi of England were harshly treated. Baptists did 
 not fare harder than many others. If they kept perfectly 
 quiet they were not molested; but if they assembled for 
 relieious meetin^rs thev became violators of law. and the 
 
232 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 man who preached to them was reasonably certain of a 
 long incarceration, if he did not receive stripes and the 
 stocks as well. Yet in spite of this persecution, Baptists 
 increased in numbers rapidly. Britons are a sturdy folk, 
 and rather disposed to sympathize with one who is hit 
 hard; so the more Baptists were forbidden to meet, the 
 more people flocked to their meetings. 
 
 The typical Baptist preacher of the time ^yas John 
 Bunyan, a man of the common people, a tinker by trade, 
 one who knew little literature but his English Bible, but' 
 who knew that from lid to lid as few know it in these 
 days. We learn of his early life only from his own ac- 
 count : that he was wild, irreligious, fonder of sports than 
 of the church, is plain ; but his self-accusations of desper- 
 ate wickedness we may discount heavily. When a man 
 calls himself the vilest of sinners he always uses the words 
 in a strict theological sense, and would quickly resent 
 being charged with actual vileness, as Bunyan did, when 
 he hotly denied the charge that he had been unchaste. 
 After a long conflict of soul, in which he more than 
 once gave himself up as eternally lost, Bunyan was at 
 length soundly converted. He was never a very orthodox 
 Baptist; he seems to have had his children christened 
 in the Established Church, and it is uncertain whether 
 he was himself ever baptized on profession of faith; he 
 repudiated the name Anabaptist or Baptist as the badge 
 of a sect, and desired to be called merely a Chris- 
 tian; he vigorously promulgated and defended the prac- 
 tice of communing with the unbaptized; yet in spite 
 of these vagaries his fundamental notions were those 
 of a Baptist. As a preacher he had great influence in 
 his day, but his chief work was done with the pen. It 
 is one of the marvels of literature that a man of such 
 antecedents and training should have written books that 
 from the day of publication took an undisputed rank 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 233 
 
 among the classics of our language. The "Pilgrim's 
 Progress," the hardly less popular " Holy War," and 
 " Grace Abounding," are a trio not to be matched in the 
 history of Christianity. 
 
 This achievement of Bunyan's we probably owe to the 
 fact that his active evangelical work, was interrupted by 
 a long imprisonment, amounting with several short in- 
 tervals to about thirteen years. His crime was the preach- 
 ing of the gospel, nothing more; but he would have 
 been released much sooner had he been willing to pledge 
 himself not to offend again. This the sturdy preacher 
 would not do; if he had the opportunity again he must 
 preach, and so he avowed; consequently in prison he 
 stayed until the administration of the law was greatly 
 relaxed, and he was set free with a multitude of others 
 in like case. 
 
 It is to his third and last imprisonment that we owe his 
 immortal allegory — a book rendered into more languages 
 than any other save the Bible itself; a book which, next 
 to the Bible, has been the most effective teacher of 
 peasant and prince; which has been the never-failing 
 delight of childhood, has comforted our weary hours 
 in manhood, and will be our treasure in old age. As 
 our experience broadens and deepens we shall see new 
 beauties in it, for it is a book of which it may be truly 
 said that it " was not of an age, but for all time." 
 
 How many of us have taken the journey with Chris- 
 tian, not in imagination merely, but in sober fact. We 
 have borne the same intolerable burden, have entered, 
 like him, the little wicket-gate at Evangelist's bidding — 
 falling perchance, by the way, into the Slough of Des- 
 pond, or misled by Mr. Worldly Wiseman's bad ad- 
 vice — and have, like him, lost our heavy load at the foot 
 of the cross. We have had to climb the Hill Difficulty, 
 and not a few of us have been seduced into By-path 
 
234 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Meadows, only to fall into the clutches of Giant De- 
 spair, and to be cast into Doubting Castle. We have 
 been tempted by the gay shows of Vanity Fair, and 
 have passed through the dangers of the Enchanted 
 Ground. We have been cheered on our way by Hopeful 
 and Faithful, instructed by Interpreter, and entertained 
 at the House Beautiful. On one day we have caught 
 glimpses of the Delectable Mountains, only on the next 
 to enter the Valley of Humiliation, and fight for our 
 lives with ApoUyon. We have seen one and another of 
 our companions pass through the dark river, whose 
 waters our feet must soon enter, and happy are we to 
 whom a vision has been granted of the Shining Ones, 
 conducting them into the gates of the City which, when 
 we have seen, we have wisht ourselves among them. 
 
 The events of the reign of James H. were favorable 
 to the development of a spirit of toleration among Prot- 
 estants, who were driven into a closer political and re- 
 ligious alliance by the fear of Roman Catholic suprem- 
 acy. The king in some cases exercised his pretended 
 power of dispensation to protect Baptists from the exe- 
 cution of their laws; but while they accepted the im- 
 munity thus offered, they gave no approval to the high- 
 handed proceedings of the monarch. In pursuance of 
 his policy of securing Nonconformist support, the king 
 appointed William Kiffen alderman of the ward of Cheap. 
 Mr. Kiflfen was much disturbed, but as counsel advised 
 him that refusal might entail a fine of thirty thousand 
 pounds, he reluctantly qualified for the office. He suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining his discharge, however, nine months 
 later. The project was a failure. Neither Baptists nor 
 any other Nonconformists were to be hoodwinked, nor 
 could they be flattered or bribed into approval of the 
 overriding of the laws of England by royal prerogative, 
 even though those laws might press hard on themselves. 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY 23S 
 
 The king's persistence could not overcome the opposition 
 of the people, but it could and did lose him his crown. 
 
 The revolution that overthrew James placed on the 
 throne the Prince of Orange, the descendant of that 
 heroic leader of the Netherlands in their long struggle 
 to throw ofif the yoke of Roman Catholic Spain, the first 
 ruler in modern history who was statesman enough and 
 Christian enough to incorporate the principle of religious 
 liberty into his country's laws. Thanks to William III., 
 the Act of Toleration was passed in 1689, which, though 
 a mass of absurdities and inconsistencies when carefully 
 analyzed, was yet a measure of practical justice to the 
 majority, and of great relief to all. The penal laws 
 against dissenters from the Church of England were 
 not repealed, but Baptists and most other Protestant 
 Dissenters were exempted from their operation. Roman 
 Catholics and Jews were left still subject to the penal 
 laws, and men so enlightened and liberal-minded as 
 Tillotson and Locke protested against granting tolera- 
 tion to them. From that day the grosser forms of per- 
 secution ceased forever, as regarded all Protestant bodies, 
 though the principle of complete religious liberty has 
 never yet found general acceptance in England. 
 
 The Baptists of the seventeenth century had many curi- 
 ous customs, some of which were borrowed from them 
 by the Friends, and survive among the latter body to 
 this day. The quaint garb of the Quaker is that of the 
 seventeenth century Baptist. In public worship men and 
 women sat on opposite sides of the house, both partici- 
 pating in the exhorting and " prophesying," as the 
 " Spirit moved." Whether singing was an allowable 
 part of worship was fiercely disputed, and a salaried or 
 "hireling" ministry was in great disfavor. The im- 
 position of hands was practised, in the ordination not 
 only of pastors, but of deacons, and in many churches 
 
230 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 hands were laid on all who had been baptized, an act 
 that has given place among American Baptists, at least, 
 to the " hand of fellowship." Fasting was a common ob- 
 servance, feet-washing was practised by many churches, 
 though its obligation was earnestly questioned, and the 
 anointing of the sick was so common as to be almost 
 the rule. Pastors and deacons were often elected by the 
 casting of lots, and love feasts before the Lord's Supper 
 were a common practice. 
 
 The supervision of members' lives was strict. Marry- 
 ing out of meeting, as among the Friends, was followed 
 by excommunication, and the amusements that might be 
 indulged in were carefully limited. Disputes between 
 husbands and wives, between masters and servants, were 
 made subjects of church discipline and adjudication, and 
 such offenses as covetousness, slander, and idleness were 
 severely dealt with. To the Baptists of to-day this kind 
 of discipline seems a meddlesome interference with per- 
 sonal rights and private affairs, and it has fallen into 
 disuse in all but a few localities. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 
 
 FEW people have borne the ordeal of persecution 
 better than the English Baptists ; but for a century 
 after the passage of the Act of Toleration it seemed that 
 they were unable to bear freedom. In the history of 
 Christianity it has often happened that the people of God 
 have grown marvelously in spite of opposition and per- 
 secution, but have languished in times of comparative 
 prosperity — ^that a sect that fire and sword could not 
 suppress has degenerated and disintegrated or finally dis- 
 appeared when every external hindrance to prosperity 
 had been removed. The English Baptists were to furnish 
 another instance of this kind. After 1689 they were 
 given a measure of toleration such as they had never 
 known in England — since it was toleration secured and 
 clearly defined by law, not given by the arbitrary will of 
 one man. There was no external obstacle to their mak- 
 ing rapid, continuous, and solid growth. Every indica- 
 tion pointed toward a career of uninterrupted progress 
 and prosperity. Yet fifty years after the passage of 
 the Act of Toleration, the Baptists of England were 
 scarcely more numerous than they were at the accession 
 of William III., while as to spiritual power they had 
 dwindled to a painful state of deadness and inefficiency. 
 At first, indeed, they appeared likely to grow with 
 unusual rapidity. The Confessions issued by them at 
 about this time show how quickly they felt the impulse 
 of hope, and how rapid, for a season, was their develop- 
 ment. In 1677, the Particular churches published a modi- 
 
 237 
 
238 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 fied form of the Westminster Confession, which they 
 reissued in 1688. This still forms the basis of the Eng- 
 lish Confessions, and, under the name of the Philadelphia 
 Confession, is the system of doctrine approved by a large 
 number of Baptist churches of our Southern and South- 
 western States. The General Baptist brethren issued 
 their Confession in 1678, and it is noticeable that its 
 Arminianism is of a type that can hardly be distinguished 
 from the milder forms of Calvinism. But while the im- 
 mediate effect of toleration was stimulating, its later re- 
 sult was unfavorable to sound growth. Centralizing 
 tendencies manifested themselves, false doctrine crept in, 
 and there was a marked decline of spirituality. 
 
 The centralizing tendencies were strongest among the 
 General Baptists. By 1671, a General Assembly had been 
 organized. This body from the first undertook to exer- 
 cise powers incompatible with the independence of the 
 churches. Not content with such legitimate activities 
 as proposing plans of usefulness, recommending cases 
 requiring pecuniary support, and devising means for the 
 spread of the gospel, it undertook the reformation of in- 
 consistent or immoral conduct in ministers and private 
 Christians, the suppression of heresy, the reconciling of 
 differences between individuals and churches, and giving 
 advice in difficult cases to individuals and churches. 
 Some Baptists of our own day, who lament the lack of 
 a " strong government," will find this something closely 
 approaching their ideal. 
 
 But mark the sequel. One Matthew Caff)m, a Sussex 
 pastor of undoubted piety and alleged (but doubtful) 
 learning, was charged with unsound views concerning 
 the nature of Christ. There is little doubt that his the- 
 ology, if sound at first, came to be Arian. He denied 
 the Deity of Christ, though calling him " divine " — a 
 fine-spun distinction that some modern Unitarians also 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 239 
 
 make. Two parties sprang up in the Assembly, and the 
 body was finally divided in 1689, when Caffyn's views 
 were pronounced heretical. A new Assembly was formed, 
 and by 1750 the major part of the General Baptists had 
 become Unitarian in their beliefs. This was followed by 
 worldliness, lax discipline, the superficial preaching of 
 mere morality, and the members fell away in large num- 
 bers. In a petition that he presented to Charles II., 
 Thomas Grantham declared that there were twenty 
 thousand General Baptists in England; in the days of 
 George II. there were probably not half that number; 
 and of these a large part had the form of godliness 
 without the power. The " strong government " had 
 miserably failed to repress heresy or to prevent schism. 
 
 The Particular Baptists organized the first Associations ; 
 the Somerset, in 1653, which became extinct about 1657; 
 and the Midland, formed in 1655 and reconstructed in 
 1690, which still exists. Their General Assembly was 
 organized in 1689, by the agency of the London churches, 
 and this body also still lives. At its fourth meeting, in 
 1692, the Association had in its fellowship one hundred 
 and seven churches. Warned by the experience of their 
 General brethren, they " disclaimed all manner of su- 
 periority or superintendency over the churches." They 
 were willing to give advice in regard to queries, but had 
 no notion of becoming a court of appeals to settle church 
 quarrels and try heretics. This was not for lack of 
 heretics to try, for the Particular churches had their 
 difficulties at this time with certain troublers in Israel, 
 who professed Antinomian doctrines and complete sancti- 
 fication, the results of which teachings were disputes and 
 divisions that caused a great decline. 
 
 Hyper-Calvinism was developed in one section of the 
 Particular churches, and everywhere proved a blighting 
 doctrine. The London Association, formed in 1704 by 
 
240 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 delegates from thirteen churches, deemed it necessary to 
 condemn the Antinomian perversion of Calvinism — re- 
 garding its action, however, not a judicial decision, but 
 the deliberate opinion of a representative body of Baptists, 
 The ablest and most learned of the Baptists of this time, 
 John Gill, cannot be absolved from responsibility for 
 much of this false doctrine. He was the son of a Dis- 
 senting minister and a native of Northamptonshire (bom 
 at Kettering, 1697). As a Dissenter he could not be 
 matriculated at either of the Universities, but, pursuing 
 his education under private tutors, he became a great 
 scholar — ^in the classics, in biblical studies, and in rabin- 
 nical lore h^ was the equal of any. His vigorous mind 
 was not weighed down by his erudition. Though not 
 eloquent as a preacher, he was an industrious writer of 
 books highly esteemed in their day and very influential. 
 His " Commentary " on the Bible is more learned than 
 perspicuous, and Robert Hall once characterized it as 
 " a ebntinent of mud, sir." If this be regarded as a 
 hasty and unjust criticism, the praise of Toplady must 
 be acknowledged to go to the other extreme : " If any 
 man can be supposed to have trod the whole circle of 
 human learning, it was Doctor Gill. . . It would per- 
 haps try the constitutions of half the literati in England, 
 only to read with care and attention the whole of what 
 he said. As deeply as human sagacity, enlightened by 
 grace, could penetrate, he went to the bottom of 
 everything he engaged in." 
 
 Doctor Gill's " Body of Divinity," published in 1769, 
 was a great treatise of the rigid supralapsarian type of 
 Calvinism, and long held its place as a theological text- 
 book. This type of Calvinism can with difficulty be dis- 
 tinguished from fatalism and antinomianism. If Gill did 
 not hold, as his opponents charged, that the elect live in 
 a constant state of sanctification (because of the imputed 
 
Oliver Cromwell 
 
John Bunyan 
 
THE SEX:OND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 24I 
 
 righteousness of Christ), even while they commit much 
 sin, he did hold that because of God's election Christians 
 must not presume to interfere with his purposes by in- 
 viting sinners to the Saviour, for he will have mercy on 
 whom he will have mercy, and on no others. This is 
 practically to nullify the Great Commission; and, in con- 
 sequence of this belief, Calvinistic Baptist preachers 
 largely ceased to warn, exhort, and invite sinners ; hold- 
 ing that, as God will have mercy on whom he will have 
 mercy, when he willed he would effectually call an elect 
 person, and that for anybody else to invite people to 
 believe was useless, if not an impertinent interference 
 with the prerogatives of God. What wonder that a 
 spiritual dry-rot spread among the English churches 
 where such doctrines obtained! Could any other result 
 be reasonably expected as the fruits of such a theology? 
 
 It must, however, in justice be said that this was a time 
 of general decline in religion among Englishmen, which 
 began with the Restoration, and became marked from 
 the beginning of the Hanoverian period. Many causes 
 combined to bring religion to this low estate. In the 
 desire to avoid Romanism on the one hand and Puritan- 
 ism on the other, the Established Church had fallen into 
 a colorless, passionless, powerless style of teaching. The 
 clergy were estranged from the House of Hanover, and 
 the whole church system was disorganized. By suc- 
 cessive withdrawals of its best men, the Church had been 
 seriously weakened, while the Dissenting bodies had not 
 been correspondingly strengthened. Deism had made 
 great strides among people and clergy, and Christianity 
 was but half believed and less than half practised. 
 
 Here, indeed, was the great secret of the religious 
 collapse that had overtaken England. There was a seri- 
 ous deterioration in the moral fiber of the people, the 
 cause of which is not far to seek. This deterioration 
 Q 
 
242 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 plainly had its source in that general and widespread 
 corruption of the highest orders of society that began 
 with the reign of Charles II. and had continued ever 
 since. During the reign of the Stuarts the body of the 
 poeple continued, as to moral character and religious 
 ideas, substantially what they had been. After a genera- 
 tion or two, however, the example of the higher classes 
 was not without its effect. When king and courtiers 
 made a scoff of religion, when they lived in open lewd- 
 ness and ostentatious impiety, the ideals of the people 
 could not fail to be greatly affected though the change 
 might be slow. The corruptions sown during the Stuart 
 period were bearing abundant fruit in church and society 
 long after the Stuarts had lost the throne of England 
 forever. Phillimore, a historian of English jurispru- 
 dence, sums up the matter in saying : " The upper classes 
 were without refinement; the middle, gross without 
 humor; and the lower, brutal without honesty." 
 
 But it was through the clergy that the effects of the 
 Restoration chiefly made themselves felt on the religious 
 life of the nation. In the Established Church the man- 
 ners and morals of the clergy, as depicted in contem- 
 porary literature, were frightful. The drunken, lecher- 
 ous, swearing, gaming parson is a familiar character in 
 the plays and romances of the period, and survives even 
 to the beginning of the present century. Preferment in 
 Church depended upon subserviency to those who were 
 masters in State, and the clergy took their tone from the 
 court. Not only was personal piety a bar to advance- 
 ment rather than a recommendation, but virtual infidelity 
 in the State bred rationalism in theology. The clergy 
 became timid, apologetic, latitudinarian in their teaching, 
 and the people became like unto them. Religion never 
 Sink to so low an ebb in England as during the first 
 half of the eighteenth century. 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 243 
 
 Lest this should be thought too black a picture, painted 
 by an unfriendly hand, let an English churchman be 
 heard. Bishop Ryle says : " From the year 1700 till about 
 the era of the French Revolution, England seemed bar- 
 ren of all good. . . There was darkness in high places 
 and darkness in low places; darkness in the court, the 
 camp, the Parliament, and the bar; darkness in the 
 country and darkness in town; darkness among rich, 
 and darkness among poor — a gross, thick, religious and 
 moral darkness ; a darkness that might be felt." 
 
 But a man had been raised up for just this emergency, 
 and by a long and peculiar experience he had been pre- 
 pared to cope with the powers of darkness. John Wes- 
 ley was the son of an English clergyman, educated at 
 Oxford, in his youth an ardent believer in High Church 
 principles and full of self-righteousness. Going on a 
 mission to the new colony of Georgia, he fell into com- 
 pany with some Moravians, and received his first in- 
 struction in the true meaning of the gospel. On his 
 return to England, he sought out others of this people; 
 and it was in the year 1738, at the meeting of a Mo- 
 ravian Society in London, that John Wesley felt, as he 
 tells us, for the first time : " I did trust in Christ, Christ 
 alone, for salvation ; and an assurance was given me that 
 he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me 
 from the law of sin and death." Soon England was 
 shaken by the preaching of the new birth and immediate 
 justification by faith, and the second Reformation had 
 begun. Driven from the pulpits of the Established 
 Church — of which he was, and remained to the day of 
 his death, a presbyter in full standing— Wesley began, 
 though with fear and trembling, to preach in the fields. 
 In this he had been preceded by George Whitefield, a 
 fellow-student at Oxford, and a member also of a smali 
 religious club that had been nicknamed " Methodists." 
 
244 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Whitefield was the greater preacher, Wesley the greater 
 organizer and leader. Together, and powerfully aided 
 by other helpers only less eloquent and less able, they 
 accc«nplished the greatest religious revolution of modern 
 times. 
 
 Not only did they call into being societies all over 
 the kingdom, which, at John Wesley's death numbered 
 one hundred thousand members; but, as has been well 
 said, the Methodists themselves were the least result of 
 the revival. A great wave of religious zeal swept over 
 the entire English nation, and left permanent results 
 upon the national character, institutions, laws. Upon the 
 Church of England itself the effect was most marked, 
 possibly because here reformation was most needed. The 
 clergy were roused from their lethargy ; the whole spirit 
 of the church was transformed and permanently altered 
 for the better. Skepticism was checked, and religion 
 became once more respectable among the titled and the 
 rich. An " Evangelical " party arose, which ruled the 
 Church of England for the next fifty years, and included 
 among its members some of the most godly ministers 
 and laymen that church has ever possessed. A new 
 moral enthusiasm was roused in the nation, as was 
 manifest in the changed attitude of the people toward 
 all policies in which ethical issues were involved. The 
 abolition of the slave trade may be directly traced to 
 the revival, as well as the new philanthropy that from 
 this time forward became a national trait. In short, in 
 the throes of this movement, England was born again, 
 and the new life on which she then entered has endured 
 to the present hour. 
 
 It is superfluous to say that the Baptists of England 
 participated in the benefits of this second Reformation. 
 With it begins a new era in their history, an era of 
 growth, of zeal, of missionary activity, which gave them 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 245 
 
 a leading place among the Nonconformists of England. 
 While this is true regarding all the Baptist churches, 
 perhaps the most immediate and striking results of the 
 Wesleyan movement may be traced in the growth of the 
 General Baptists. 
 
 Among the early converts of the Wesleyan revival was 
 a youthful Yorkshireman, the son of a miner, himself 
 a worker in the mines from his fifth year. Dan Taylor 
 was of sturdy frame and great native intelligence, 
 though his education was naturally of the slightest. Soon 
 after his conversion, he began to visit the sick and lead 
 prayer-meetings with the zeal not unusual in new con- 
 verts, but with an ability so unusual that his brethren 
 encouraged him to attempt preaching. His first sermon 
 was preached in a dwelling-house near Halifax, in Sep- 
 tember, 1761. The leading Methodists of Yorkshire en- 
 couraged his efforts and urged him to visit Mr. Wesley 
 and be enrolled in the ranks of the regular Wesleyan 
 preachers; but there were things in the discipline and 
 doctrine of the societies that he did not approve, and 
 about midsummer, 1762, he withdrew finally from all 
 connection with the Methodists. 
 
 At this time there were a few Christians in the village 
 of Heptonstall, not far from Halifax, who had done the 
 same. They invited Taylor to preach to them. For 
 some months he preached to them in the open air, under 
 a tree. The prospect was discouraging, the country wild, 
 and the people rough and unpolished, yet he determined 
 to remain and preach the gospel to them. On the ap- 
 proach of winter, they obtained a house to meet in, taking 
 up part of the chamber floor and converting the rest into 
 a gallery. The house was duly registered under the 
 Act of Toleration, and during the week Taylor taught 
 a school in it, to eke out his support. These people had 
 left both the Church of England and the Methodists, 
 
246 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 but had joined no other body. They began to study the 
 New Testament, with a view to determining some plan 
 of church order and some principles of doctrine. Taylor 
 diligently used such books as he could obtain, and the 
 result of his investigations was to convince him that 
 believers' baptism is the only thing warranted by the 
 Scriptures. There were Particular Baptists about Halifax, 
 but they were bitterly hostile to all who held the Arminian 
 theology; and since Taylor persisted in holding that 
 Jesus Christ had tasted death for every man and made 
 propitiation for the sins of the whole world, they would 
 not help him to obey Christ — though several expressed 
 their firm persuasion that he was a genuine Christian, 
 and were even well satisfied of his call to the ministry. 
 He learned at length that in Lincolnshire there were 
 Baptists of sentiments like his own, and with a friend 
 he set out to travel a distance of one hundred and twenty 
 miles on foot. They found, however, a congregation of 
 General Baptists at Gamston, Nottinghamshire; and 
 though they were received rather coolly at first, after a 
 conference of three days they were baptized in the river 
 near-by, February 16, 1763. 
 
 Returning, Taylor and his people organized a General 
 Baptist church, the only one at that time in Yorkshire, 
 and in the autumn he was ordained to the ministry, at 
 Birchcliff, At first they connected themselves with the 
 Lincolnshire churches of like faith, but speedily became 
 aware of the great degeneracy that had occurred. Many 
 of the General Baptists had come to deny the atonement, 
 justification by faith alone, and regeneration by the Holy 
 Spirit. As Taylor made the acquaintance of General 
 Baptists in the midland counties, he found them more 
 evangelical. A preliminary conference was held at Lin- 
 coln about Michaelmas, 1769, and a formal organization 
 was effected in London, June 7, 1770, of " The Assembly 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 247 
 
 of the Free Grace General Baptists," commonly known 
 as the " New Connexion." Two Associations, a North- 
 ern and a Southern, were also formed at once. The 
 Northern consisted in 1772 of seven churches and one 
 thousand two hundred and twenty-one members, which 
 by 1800 had increased to twenty-two churches and two 
 thousand six hundred members. The Southern AssO' 
 ciation never showed much vitality. In Yorkshire, as we 
 have seen, there was but one church at the beginning, 
 but at the end of fifteen years there were four. 
 
 The progress of the New Connection was due almost 
 wholly to Dan Taylor. He was the life and soul of the 
 movement. Everything that he set his hand to pros- 
 pered; when he took his hand away things languished. 
 His mind was naturally vigorous, and he found means 
 to cultivate its powers and make of himself a fairly edu- 
 cated man. His body seemed incapable of fatigue and 
 his labors were herculean. If anything demanded doing, 
 he was ready to do it. Did an Association wish a cir- 
 cular letter to the churches, he wrote it; was a minister 
 in demand for a sermon, a charge, or any other service, 
 from Berwick-on-Tweed to Land's End, Dan Taylor 
 was on hand. He led in the establishment of the fund 
 for the education of ministers, in 1796, and was principal 
 of the academy — or, as we should say nowadays, theo- 
 logical seminary — established for the purpose in 1798. 
 He edited the " General Baptist Magazine " ; he traveled 
 up and down England, traversing, it is said, twenty-five 
 thousand miles, mostly on foot. And he preached con- 
 stantly; a sermon every night and three on Sunday was 
 his ordinary allowance, and on special occasions he 
 preached several times a day. Even the labors of John 
 Wesley are equaled, if not surpassed, by this record. 
 
 One story has been preserved that well illustrates a 
 trait of his character, his indomitable energy. At one 
 
248 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 time in his life he had some difficulty with his eyes and 
 feared he might lose his sight. He was at first appalled 
 by the prospect, as anybody would naturally be; then he 
 determined that he would learn the whole Bible "by 
 heart," so that when his eyesight was gone he might 
 still be able to preach the gospel. He began his task, 
 and had actually accomplished a good part of it when 
 his trouble left him, and he desisted. No wonder that 
 such a man was a successful evangelist; such determina- 
 tion and pluck will make a man successful in any calling ; 
 and qualities of this kind, as well as the anointing of the 
 Holy Spirit, are needed, if one is to be a great evangelist. 
 God makes no mistakes ; he never selects for a great work 
 the lazy, half-hearted, weak-willed man, but one who has 
 energy and grit and perseverance, as well as piety. It 
 is impossible to bore through granite with a boiled carrot ; 
 it requires a steel drill. 
 
 Dan Taylor fell asleep in his seventy-eighth year, and 
 the phrase almost literally describes his end, for suddenly, 
 without a groan or sigh, he expired while sitting in his 
 chair. His work was well done, and English Baptists 
 still feel the result of his manly piety and zealous labors. 
 
 The change that gradually came over the Particular 
 Baptists is not, to so great an extent, identified with 
 the character and labors of a single man. It is still true, 
 however, that to the influence of Andrew Fuller such 
 change is largely due, especially the modification of the 
 Baptist theology, that was an indispensable prerequisite 
 to effective preaching of the gospel. Fuller was born in 
 Cambridgeshire in 1754, and at the age of fourteen be- 
 came deeply convicted of sin. It was long before the 
 way of life became clear to him, but at length he reached 
 a faith in Christ from which he never wavered. The 
 witnessing of a baptismal service in March, 1770 — until 
 then he had never seen an immersion — wrought immediate 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 249 
 
 conviction in his mind that this was the only form 
 of obedience to the command of Christ, and a month 
 later he was himself baptized. In the spring of 1775 
 he was ordained to the ministry, and in 1782 became 
 pastor of the church at Kettering, which he served until 
 his death, in 1815. He was a sound and edifying 
 preacher, but not a great orator ; nevertheless, few pulpit 
 orators have had so wide a hearing, or so deeply 
 influenced their generation. 
 
 Fuller was, first of all, mighty with his pen. He was 
 mainly self-educated, and never became a real scholar, 
 but he had a robust mind capable of profound thought, 
 and he learned to express himself in clear, vigorous 
 English. The result was to make him one of the most 
 widely read and influential theological writers of Eng- 
 land or America. Large editions of his writings were 
 sold in both countries, and they bid fair to be still " in 
 print " when much-vaunted works of a later day are 
 forgotten. Fuller boldly accepted and advocated a doc- 
 trine of the atonement that, until his day, had always 
 been stigmatized as rank Arminianism, viz., that the 
 atonement of Christ, as to its worth and dignity, was 
 sufficient for the sins of the whole world, and was not an 
 offering for the elect alone, as Calvinists of all grades 
 had hitherto maintained. Along with this naturally went 
 a sublapsarian interpretation of the " doctrines of grace," 
 and this modified Calvinism gradually made its way 
 among Baptists until it has become well-nigh the only 
 doctrine known among them. 
 
 But Fuller was also great as an organizer and man 
 of affairs. He became secretary of the missionary so- 
 ciety of the Baptists, and in pursuance of his duties trav- 
 eled from one end of England to another many times; 
 five times he traversed Scotland for the same object, 
 and once he made a like tour of Irelarvd. He was a man 
 
2SO A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of splendid physique, tall and strongly built, and eyes 
 deep-set under bushy brows lighted up a massive face 
 that was a good index of his character. To his sturdy 
 mind, enlightened zeal, and indefatigable labors, the Bap- 
 tist cause in England, and in America as well, owes a 
 debt that can hardly be acknowledged in words too 
 emphatic. 
 
 But the most important of those results that may be 
 directly or indirectly traced to the Wesleyan revival, re- 
 mains to be described. The man destined to do more 
 than any other toward the regeneration of English Bap- 
 tists, and to be an inspiration to all other Christians, 
 was some years younger than Andrew Fuller. This was 
 William Carey. He was born in 1761, not of Baptist 
 parentage; on the contrary, his father was an old-school 
 Churchman, and bred his son in holy horror of all " Dis- 
 senters." But Carey heard the gospel preached, he was 
 convicted of sin, and converted, and like most young 
 converts, took to reading his Bible with new zest. The 
 New Testament speaks for itself to any one who will 
 honestly read it to learn what it teaches, and Carey soon 
 learned what a Christian church ought to be and what 
 a converted man ought to do. He not only saw his duty, 
 but did it, though it required him to join himself to cer- 
 tain of the despised Dissenters. He was baptized on 
 profession of faith, in the river Neu, on October 5, 1783, 
 by Dr. John Ryland. Little did Doctor Ryland know 
 that he was performing the most important act of his life, 
 and as little did he guess that this humble youth was to 
 become a great man. " This day baptized a poor jour- 
 neyman shoemaker " is the curt entry in the good doctor's 
 diary. 
 
 It was evident, however, from the beginning that Carey 
 was a young man of promise. He became a member of 
 the Baptist church at Olney, of which Rev. John Sutcliffe 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 25 1 
 
 was pastor. He showed gifts in exhortation that war- 
 ranted his pastor and friends in urging him to preach, 
 and he was not long in making his fitness for the min- 
 istry evident. In 1787 he was called to the pastorate of 
 a little Baptist church at Moulton, and ordained. He 
 already had a wife and two children, and the Moulton 
 church was so poor that he could be paid only seventy- 
 five dollars a year. He was obliged, therefore, during 
 the week to work as a cobbler for the support of his 
 family. At the same time he had a thirst for learning, 
 and as he worked his custom was to keep by him a book 
 for study. In this way he is said in seven years to have 
 learned to read five languages, including Greek and He- 
 brew. If young men and women whose educational ad- 
 vantages have been limited would but take a tithe of the 
 pains to utilize their odd minutes that Carey took, they 
 might do anything they chose. It is true Carey had a 
 remarkable gift for acquiring languages, but even more 
 remarkable than this was his determination to learn, in 
 spite of difficulties. It is that determination which is 
 lacking in most, more than ability to learn. 
 
 Carey not only studied text-books, but read all good 
 books that he could borrow, and among these was a copy 
 of Captain Cook's voyages. He also kept a school after 
 a time, and of course had to teach the children geog- 
 raphy. In these ways his mind was turned toward the 
 destitute condition of the heathen and their need of the 
 gospel. But when he began to talk to others about it, 
 he met with little encouragement, and it is said that once 
 when he began in a Baptist gathering to speak of a mission 
 to the heathen. Doctor Ryland exclaimed : " Sit down, 
 young man; when the Lord gets ready to convert the 
 heathen he will do it without your help or mine ! " It 
 is not recorded whether Carey sat down or not, but he 
 certainly did not give up advocating missions to the 
 
252 A SHOE* HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 heathen. Apart from the hyper-Calvinism disclosed by 
 Doctor Ryland's remark, it is not wonderful that Carey 
 received so little encouragement at first. English Bap- 
 tists were poor, and so great an enterprise might well 
 have seemed to them beset with unsurmountable diffi- 
 culties. But Carey wisely declined to consider the matter 
 of possibilities; he looked only at the question of duty. 
 The Duke of Wellington replied to a young clergyman 
 who asked if it were not useless to preach the gospel to 
 the Hindus : " With that you have nothing to do. Look 
 to your marching orders, ' Go, preach the gospel to every 
 creature.' " The soldier was right and the preacher 
 stood justly rebuked. 
 
 With difficulty Carey got together money to print and 
 circulate a tract called " An Enquiry into the Obliga- 
 tions of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of 
 the Heathens." Not long after this came from the press 
 his great opportunity arrived — he was appointed to 
 preach the sermon at the meeting of his Association at 
 Nottingham, May 30, 1792. He chose as his text Isaiah 
 44 : 2, 3, and announced as the " heads " of his dis- 
 course : " Expect great things from God ; attempt great 
 things for God." It was one of the days on which the 
 fate of denominations and even of nations turns. It roused 
 those who listened to a new idea of their responsibility 
 for the fulfilment of Christ's commission. Even then, 
 nothing might have come of it but for an impassioned 
 personal appeal of Carey's to Andrew Fuller, not to let 
 the meeting break up without doing something. A reso- 
 lution was passed, through Fuller's influence, that a plan 
 be prepared for establishing a missionary society, to be 
 presented at the next ministers' meeting. 
 
 That meeting was held in Andrew Fuller's study, at Ket- 
 tering, October 2, and then and there " The English Bap- 
 tist Missionary Society " was organized. Its constituent 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 253 
 
 members were twelve, and out of their poverty they 
 contributed to its treasury the sum of thirteen pounds 
 two shillings and six pence. What a sum with which 
 to begin the evangelization of the world! The history 
 of this society is an instructive commentary on the Scrip- 
 ture, " For who hath despised the day of small things." 
 The London churches, the richer churches among Bap- 
 tists, stood aloof from this movement. It was the poorer 
 country churches that finally raised enough money to 
 send out in June, 1793, Carey and a Baptist surgeon 
 named Thomas, who had previously been in India and, 
 as he had opportunity, had preached the gospel as a 
 layman and a physician. 
 
 The British East India Company was bitterly opposed 
 to the preaching of the gospel in India, fearing that the 
 natives might be provoked to rise against the govern- 
 ment. It is not exaggerating to say that Christianity 
 has done more than any other thing, more than strong 
 battalions, to maintain England's rule in India. But the 
 directors could not foresee this. One said he would see 
 a band of devils let loose in India rather than a band 
 of missionaries. Englishmen who survived the Sepoy 
 rebellion were rather less anxious to see devils let loose 
 in India, and much more favorably disposed toward mis- 
 sionaries. For a time Carey, and the next missionaries 
 sent — Marshman and Ward — established themselves at 
 Serampore, a Danish settlement not far from Calcutta. 
 Here a missionary press was set up, and Doctor Carey 
 did the great work of his life in translating and printing 
 the Scriptures in the various Indian languages. He had, 
 as we have seen, a special aptitude for the acquisition 
 of languages. He had shown this before leaving Eng- 
 land, but he lemonstrated it more clearly after he reached 
 India. The rapidity and ease with which he acquired 
 the various languages spoken there have never been sur- 
 
254 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 passed, and he became in a short time one of the world's 
 greatest Oriental scholars. 
 
 To every man his gifts. Others could preach the gos- 
 pel to the heathen as well as Carey, or better, for he 
 never seems to have developed special power as a 
 preacher. But no one could equal him as scholar, 
 translator, writer. He wisely spent his time and strength 
 in translating the Scriptures and other Christian litera- 
 ture into the Indian languages and dialects, in making 
 grammars, and the like. Thus he not only did a great 
 work for his own generation, but one that will last for 
 all time, or so long as these languages shall be spoken. 
 Before his death, there had been issued under his super- 
 vision, he himself doing a large part of the work, versions 
 of the Scriptures in forty different languages or dia- 
 lects, spoken by a third of the people on the globe; and 
 of these Scriptures two hundred and twelve thousand 
 copies had been issued. 
 
 In his later years, men like Sydney Smith ceased to 
 sneer at the " consecrated cobbler," and Carey was hon- 
 orded as a man of his learning, piety, and exalted charac- 
 ter deserved. In 1801 he was made professor of Bengali in 
 Lord Wellesley's new College of Fort William, at Cal- 
 cutta; and titles and honors were showered upon him 
 toward the close of his life. The learned societies of 
 Europe recognized him as one of the greatest scholars 
 of his age. But he was to the last a humble missionary 
 of the religion of Christ. He is justly regarded as the 
 father of modern missions, for though Baptists were not 
 the first in modern times to engage in this work, it was 
 Carey and his work that drew the attention of all Chris- 
 tians to it, that quickened the Christian conscience, and 
 that gave the missionary cause a great forward impulse 
 which it has never since lost. 
 
 From the first the mission thus established prospered. 
 
THE SECOND REFORMATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 2SS 
 
 in spite of the obstacles thrown in its way by British of- 
 ficials and the fire of ridicule kept up in the rear by men 
 who ought to have been in better business. The first 
 secretary of this body was Andrew Fuller, to whose in- 
 defatigable labors was due much of its growth in financial 
 strength and missionary zeal. The society has several 
 times extended its operations, and in addition various 
 enterprises have been conducted by churches and indi- 
 viduals in Africa and Italy. In this work, and in many 
 other forms of service, the General and Particular 
 Baptists united, prior to their formal union. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 OF the English Baptist churches now in existence, 
 but one hundred and twenty-three were estabhshed 
 before the Act of Toleration, and during the next half- 
 century only sixty-eight more were added to the number. 
 From 1750 onward, as the effects of the Wesleyan move- 
 ment began to be felt, the growth was more rapid, and 
 in the second half of the eighteenth century one hundred 
 and sixty-five Baptist churches were constituted, of which 
 more than one hundred belong to the last two decades. 
 From this time, seven decades of the nineteenth century 
 show a rapid and ever-increasing rate of progress. The 
 first half of the century saw an addition of seven hundred 
 churches; the second half exceeds even this growth, 
 showing a total number of nine hundred and sixty-one 
 churches established. The last two decades are less re- 
 markable for increase in the number of churches, but 
 on the other hand, they show a gratifying advance in 
 the strength and efficiency of the churches already 
 founded. 
 
 It does not seem fanciful to trace a close connection 
 between this growth of the churches and the development 
 of organization that followed the Carey movement. The 
 first step was taken by the formation of the Baptist 
 Home Mission Society in 1779, followed by the Baptist 
 Union in 1832. Both societies did much to unite the 
 churches in evangelistic efforts, but the older society was 
 more distinctively missionary in its aims and methods. 
 In 1865 the society was united with the Irish Missionary 
 256 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 257 
 
 Society (formed in 1814) to form the British and Irish 
 Baptist Home Mission, and now for some years this has 
 been merged in the Baptist Union for Great Britain and 
 Ireland, which became an incorporated body in 1890. 
 The General Baptists had established a missionary so- 
 ciety in 181 6, and other societies of various kinds at 
 other times; but in 1891, the General Baptists united with 
 the Particular Baptists, and now all the various mission- 
 ary and benevolent societies of both bodies are admin- 
 istered as departments of the Baptist Union. The dis- 
 tinctions of doctrine anciently maintained by these two 
 wings of the denomination long since practically dis- 
 appeared, and it was proper that distinctions in 
 administration should no longer be maintained. 
 
 The missionary movement begun by Carey and his 
 coadjutors had a stimulating effect by no means coniined 
 to his own denomination. Missionary societies were 
 speedily formed by other bodies of Christians, and even 
 the Church of England was stirred to do something for 
 the evangelizing of heathen lands. And this new 
 activity was not limited to strictly missionary effort. 
 The great work of Carey, as we have seen, was the 
 translation of the Scriptures into the Eastern tongues, 
 and a multitude of others followed in his footsteps. In 
 1804 a large number of evangelical Christians, of some 
 ten or more different denominations, formed the British 
 and Foreign Bible Society, for the circulation of the 
 Scriptures in all lands, without note or comment. It was 
 due to the activity of Rev. Joseph Hughes, a Baptist min- 
 ister of Battersea, that this society was formed, and he 
 was its first secretary. Baptists generally were active 
 in the support of the society, and for a generation grants 
 were freely made from its treasury to aid the printing 
 of Carey's translations. This was done with full knowl- 
 edge of the fact that Carey and others translated all 
 
258 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 words, including baptizo and its cognates — official corre- 
 spondence left no question possible regarding this point. 
 In 1835 Messrs. Yates & Pearce had ready for publi- 
 cation a revised copy of Carey's Bengali Bible, and ap- 
 plied to the British and Foreign Bible Society for aid 
 in printing it. This application was refused, unless they 
 would guarantee that " the Greek terms relating to Bap- 
 tism be rendered, either according to the principle 
 adopted by the translators of the authorized English 
 version, by a word derived from the original, or by such 
 terms as may be considered unobjectionable by other de- 
 nominations composing the Bible Society." The demand 
 was, in plain English, either that the Baptist missionaries 
 should not translate baptizo and its cognates at all, or that 
 they should make a wrong translation ! 
 
 More than six hundred Baptist ministers presented to 
 the society, in 1837, a protest against its unjust, un- 
 catholic, and inconsistent action; and in January, 1840, 
 a final remonstrance was addressed to the society by the 
 Baptist Union. Nothing, of course, came of these pro- 
 tests, and therefore on March 24, 1840, the Baptists of 
 England formed the Bible Translation Society, in order 
 to " encourage the production and circulation of com- 
 plete translations of the holy Scriptures, competently au- 
 thenticated for fidelity, it being always understood that 
 the words relating to the ordinance of baptism shall be 
 translated by terms signifying immersion." This society 
 is still in existence, and enjoys the distinction of having 
 printed and distributed over six million copies of the 
 Scriptures, at a cost of one million five hundred thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 Two of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury came from the ranks of the English Baptists. The 
 first, Robert Hall, belongs in part to the preceding 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 259 
 
 century. He was born near Leicester, in 1764, the young- 
 est child of a family of fourteen, weak in body, and pre- 
 cocious in mind. He was an accomplished theologian at 
 the tender age of nine, having then mastered (among 
 other works) " Edwards on the Will " and Butler's 
 " Analogy." Notwithstanding such precocity, he did not 
 prove to be a fool, but was one of the few " remarkable 
 children " who turn out really remarkable men. In his 
 fifteenth year he began his series of studies for the min- 
 istry at Bristol College, where his progress in learning 
 was rapid; but as a preacher he seemed likely to be a 
 failure. On his first public trial he repeatedly broke 
 down, through an excessive sensibility that made public 
 speech an agony to him, almost an impossibility. He 
 mastered this weakness, however, and thenceforth stead- 
 ily increased in power as an orator. Four years spent at 
 King's College, Aberdeen, where he was first in all his 
 classes, brought him to his majority. His pastorates 
 were at Cambridge, Leicester, and Bristol, and in each 
 city his ministry was greatly successful. Many of his 
 sermons were printed and had a wide circulation. No 
 preacher of his time was more highly esteemed by the 
 leaders of thought in Great Britain. Hall was master 
 of an ornate and stately kind of eloquence long extinct 
 in the pulpit, much esteemed in its day and perhaps too 
 little esteemed now. To the present generation his sen- 
 tences seem cumbrous, his style is pronounced affected 
 and stilted, his tropes frigid. Indeed, the reader of to- 
 day is at a loss to understand how his sermons could 
 ever have won such encomiums as they received. Yet 
 at his death, in 1831, it was universally agreed that one 
 of the greatest lights of the pulpit had been extinguished. 
 The other preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, was 
 a man of quite different mold. His father and grand- 
 father had been Congregationalist preachers, and from 
 
26o A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 his birth, in 1834, he was predestined to the same career. 
 This did not become clear to him, however, until his 
 conversion in his seventeenth year. He felt it his duty 
 to unite with a Baptist church, and soon after his bap- 
 tism began to preach. He had received a fair educa- 
 tion, about equal to that given by a good American 
 academy, and was already a teacher in a private school. 
 His success as a preacher led him to forego any further 
 training, and from his eighteenth year until his death, in 
 1892, he was constantly engaged in what was to him the 
 most delightful and the most honorable of all callings. 
 It was a dangerous experiment; only one man of a 
 thousand could have escaped disaster, but Spurgeon was 
 that man. In the autumn of 1853 he was called to the 
 Southwark Baptist Church, where his predecessors had 
 been such men as Keach, Gill, and Rippon, and there he 
 spent the rest of his life. 
 
 The success of the young preacher was immediate and 
 wonderful. During the rest of his life Spurgeon had 
 continuously the largest congregations of any preacher 
 in the world, and soon his sermons were printed and 
 scattered broadcast, until through the press he spoke 
 weekly to more than half a million people. But he was 
 more than a voice crying in the wilderness ; he bears the 
 supreme test of greatness that can be applied to a 
 preacher — he not only gained a great reputation for elo- 
 quence, but proved himself a builder. His church grew 
 to more than five thousand members — ^the largest Baptist 
 church in the world. He founded the Pastors' College 
 for the education of ministers, and hundreds of gradu- 
 ates attest by godly living and fruitful ministry the worth 
 of what he thus did. He established the Stockwell Or- 
 phanage, in which more than five hundred children have 
 been maintained and educated annually for nearly thirty 
 years. A Colportage Association, a Book Fund, and a 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 26l 
 
 successful religious magazine were among his other prac^ 
 tical achievements. And when he was called to his re- 
 ward, all these institutions went on, with little impair- 
 ment of their efficiency; what he had built was so solidly 
 built that the shock of his death could do it no serious 
 harm. 
 
 During the latter part of Spurgeon's life there was, as 
 he believed, a great declension in theology among the 
 English Baptists. By diligent study through life he had 
 become, if not exactly a great theologian, a well-read, 
 well-trained minister, especially versed in the Scriptures 
 and the writings of the great Puritan divines. From first 
 to last he was the unfaltering advocate of the pure gos- 
 pel of Christ. A moderate Calvinist as to theology, he 
 preached an atonement for the whole world and salva- 
 tion through Christ's blood to every one who will believe. 
 He stood like a rock against the advancing tide of lax 
 teaching and lax practice, and at least retarded, if he 
 did not check, the movement that he described as " the 
 down grade." This led him to sharp controversy with 
 many of his brethren, and finally induced him to 
 withdraw from the Baptist Union. 
 
 Besides Hall and Spurgeon, the Baptist pulpit of Eng- 
 land produced other great preachers during the last 
 century, two of whom at least are still living — ^Alexander 
 McLaren, the eloquent Manchester divine (born at Glas- 
 gow, 1825), and John Clifford (born 1836), everywhere 
 known as one of the most scholarly, able, and polished 
 preachers of his time. Nor have there been lacking lay- 
 men of equal eminence — to mention three examples 
 only — Major-General Havelock, the hero of the Indian 
 Mutiny (1795-1857); Thomas Spencer Baynes, ll.d. 
 (1823- 1 887), long professor of logic and metaphysics at 
 the University of St. Andrews, and a writer of world- 
 wide repute; and Sir Robert Lush (1807-1881), one of 
 
262 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the foremost men at the bar, and Lord-Justice of the 
 High Court of Appeals. It would be easy, but also un- 
 profitable, to make a long catalogue of distinguished 
 names, only less worthy of mentioning than these. 
 Enough has been said, however, to show that Baptists 
 have been by no means an obscure and feeble folk in 
 England for the last hundred years or more. 
 
 The English Baptists began the century just closing 
 not differing greatly in numbers from their brethren in 
 America; but their rate of increase has been much 
 smaller. Why so marked a difference of growth? Amer- 
 ican Baptists are accustomed to answer, To the difference 
 in the effective maintenance of Baptist principles. The 
 Baptists of America have been consistent and united, 
 while their English brethren have been divided and in- 
 consistent. The answer may be far from satisfactory, 
 it may ignore many important elements of the problem, 
 and yet it may be at least a partial explanation of the 
 unquestionable fact. 
 
 As we have already seen, from the beginning there 
 were so-called Baptist churches of mixed membership — 
 that is to say, not exclusively Baptist, but composed in 
 part of Pedobaptists. This is due to the circumstances 
 of their origin. In nearly every case which is matter 
 of record, the early Baptist churches of the seventeenth 
 century were formed from previously existing Separatist 
 churches of the Congregational order. The separations 
 between those who had come to hold to believers' baptism 
 only and those who still held to Pedobaptism were gen- 
 erally peaceful, frequently friendly. In some cases there 
 was no formal separation, the majority holding to be- 
 lievers' baptism and tolerating Pedobaptism in the 
 minority. In other cases a church was organized on the 
 principle of permitting full liberty in the matter of bap- 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 263 
 
 tism, both as to subjects and form. That churches so 
 tomposed should remain in full fellowship with Pedo- 
 baptist churches is nothing surprising; why should they 
 not commune with Pedobaptist churches, since they ad- 
 mitted Pedobaptists to membership in their own churches, 
 which, of course, carried with it the privilege of com- 
 munion ? To admit some Pedobaptists to the Lord's table 
 and exclude others would have been inconsistency too 
 ridiculous. 
 
 From the first, therefore, there was a division of 
 sentiment and practice. Baptists like William KifJen, 
 John Spilsbury, and Hanserd Knollys, stood for the con- 
 sistent Baptist position that the church should be com- 
 posed of baptized believers only, and that only such are 
 warranted or invited by New Testament precept and ex- 
 ample in coming to the table of the Lord. On the other 
 hand. Baptists like Henry Jessey, John Tombes, and John 
 Bunyan, favored the laxer practice of communing with 
 all Christians, while Jessey and Bunyan at least were pas- 
 tors of churches of mixed membership. There was hot 
 debate over this question of open communion, as any one 
 may see who will take the trouble to examine a copy of 
 Bunyan's " Complete Works," of which there are many 
 editions. Words decidedly warm passed between Bunyan 
 and Kiffen, and of course neither party was convinced 
 by the arguments of the other. Mixed churches and 
 open communion remained the practice of a considerable 
 part of the English Baptists, and had the advocacy of 
 some of the ablest men in the denomination. 
 
 The natural result, one that might have been predicted 
 from well-known principles of human nature, was that 
 the growth of English Baptists was relatively slow, even 
 in times when their piety and zeal were high. Baptist 
 growth has always been in proportion to the stanchness 
 with which Baptist principles have been upheld and prac- 
 
264 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 tised. So it ever has been with all religious bodies. 
 Nothing is gained by smoothing oif the edges of truth 
 and toning down its colors, so that its contrast with error 
 may be as slight as possible. On the contrary, let the 
 edges remain a bit rough, let the colors be heightened, 
 so that the world cannot possibly mistake the one for 
 the other, and the prospect of the truth gaining accept- 
 ance, is greatly increased. The history of every relig- 
 ious denomination teaches the same lesson : progress 
 depends on loyalty to truth. Compromise always means 
 decay. 
 
 The present century has witnessed the most rapid 
 change among the Baptists of England with regard to 
 the communion. The most powerful factor in producing 
 this twofold defection was Robert Hall. Starting from 
 premises that Socinus would have heartily approved, he 
 reached the conclusion that the neglect of baptism is to 
 be tolerated by the churches as an exercise of Christian 
 liberty (a Christian at liberty to disobey Christ !), and that 
 sincerity rather than outward obedience is the test that 
 the " genius of Christianity " proposes. Under the in- 
 fluence of such teachings, large numbers of Baptist 
 churches became " open." This change has been followed 
 by its logical result — a result inevitable wherever " open " 
 communion is adopted and given full opportunity to work 
 itself out — ^the formation of churches of mixed member- 
 ship. In many of these, the trust-deeds distinctly specify 
 that Baptists and Pedobaptists shall have equal rights, 
 and it is not uncommon for such a church to have a 
 Pedobaptist pastor. In many other so-called Baptist 
 churches of England the ordinance of baptism is seldom 
 or never administered; Pedobaptists are received to 
 membership on equal terms with the baptized; they are 
 chosen to office, and even to the pastorate. In short, so 
 effectually is the church disguised as frequently to be 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 265 
 
 reckoned by both Baptists and Independents in their 
 statistics.* 
 
 Spurgeon's attitude towards these questions has very 
 often been misunderstood. He did not absolutely agree 
 with the practice of the American Baptists regarding the 
 communion, but he did very nearly, and it is an abuse 
 of terms to call him an " open communionist." He did 
 not advocate or practise the promiscuous invitation of 
 all Christians to the table of the Lord. The communion 
 service was held on Sunday afternoon in the Tabernacle, 
 and admission was by ticket only. Members of the 
 church, of course, were furnished with tickets. Any per- 
 son not a member, desiring to attend and partake of the 
 Supper, must satisfy the pastor or deacons that he was 
 a member in good standing of an evangelical church, 
 when he would receive a ticket. At the end of three 
 months he would be quietly told that he had had an op- 
 portunity to become acquainted with the church, and 
 they would be glad to have him present himself as a 
 candidate for membership; otherwise he would do well 
 to go elsewhere, where he could conscientiously unite. 
 This is a more restricted communion than is practised 
 by most Baptist churches in America, for in large num- 
 bers of our churches Pedobaptists occasionally partake 
 of the communion without any such careful safeguards. 
 Spurgeon did not believe in mixed membership; he ab- 
 horred it. No one could be a member of the Metropolitan 
 Tabernacle church unless he was a baptized beUever — 
 credibly a believer, and certainly baptized. From our 
 point of view, it was very unfortunate that he gave the 
 approval of his example to even occasional communion 
 with those whom he believed unbaptized. His practice 
 
 * Thirty-four such churches are set down among the Baptist churches of 
 England in the " Baptist Handbook," and of these six had Congregational 
 pastors in 1901. 
 
266 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 was to this extent illogical and inconsistent, and some- 
 what weakened the general healthfulness of his influence. 
 He frankly admitted this in private conversations, on 
 many occasions, and explicitly said that were he a pas- 
 tor in America he should conform to the practice of 
 American Baptists. Compared, however, with the " open 
 communion" Baptists of England, he was strongly 
 orthodox and rigidly conservative. 
 
 Among the ministers who established the first Baptist 
 churches in England was a large proportion of men 
 who had been educated at Oxford and Cambridge for 
 the Church of England, but there were also from the first 
 men whose early education had been very slight. Among 
 these latter, such preachers as Kiffen and Bunyan were 
 certainly not a whit inferior to the better-trained men. 
 Nevertheless, it was not long before the Baptist churches 
 felt the importance of establishing schools for the edu- 
 cation of their ministry. These are always called " col- 
 leges " in England, but differ from the colleges of Amer- 
 ica in being not schools of arts, but schools of theology. 
 The oldest of these schools now surviving is Bristol 
 College, founded in 1770 by the Northern Baptist Edu- 
 cation Society. There are usually twenty-five students 
 in attendance. They have opportunity to pursue studies 
 in arts in Bristol University College, and some of the 
 students take their degrees at London University. 
 Another college was instituted in 1797 in London, and 
 has had numerous habitations since then, but is now lo- 
 cated at Midland, Nottingham. Thirteen students is a 
 good attendance for this institution. Rawdon College, 
 near Leeds, in Yorkshire, was founded by the Northern 
 Baptist Education Society, in 1804, and has been in its 
 present home since 1859. The best known of these 
 colleges is perhaps that established in 1810 at Stepney, but 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 267 
 
 removed in 1856 and since then known as the Regents' 
 Park College. Dr. Joseph Angus was for many years 
 its honored head. The two last-named schools have an 
 annual attendance of from twenty-five to thirty, and from 
 Regents' Park some five hundred ministers in all have 
 gone forth. The Pastors' College, founded by Mr. Spur- 
 geon, in 1856, has about sixty students. The strict-com- 
 munion churches established a college, now located at 
 Manchester, in 1866, which has an attendance rarely or 
 never exceeding twenty students. 
 
 The other parts of the United Kingdom are not with- 
 out similar provision. The Welsh Baptists at present 
 have two theological schools: Cardiff College, founded 
 in 1897, and formerly located at Pontypool ; and Bangor 
 College, instituted at Llangollen, in 1862. An annual at- 
 tendance of about twenty students is reported from both 
 colleges. A single theological college is maintained by 
 Baptists at Glasgow. It furnishes strictly theological 
 education to students who have taken the arts course in 
 a Scottish University, leading to the degree of m. a. 
 A college at Dublin, with six students, is also reported 
 by the Baptists of Ireland. 
 
 Besides the General and Particular Baptists, there have 
 been and still are several organizations in England, hold- 
 ing Baptist principles in general, but adding to them 
 SQme distinguishing peculiarity of faith or practice. 
 
 The Six-principle Baptists were so called from the 
 stress they laid on the " six principles " enumerated in 
 Heb. 6 : i, 2: Repentance, faith, baptism, laying on of 
 hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life. Of 
 these, the fourth is the only one really peculiar to this 
 body — the laying of hands on all after baptism, as a token 
 of a special impartation of the Spirit. In March, 1690, 
 the churches holding these views formed an Association. 
 
268 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 This continued with varying fortunes for some years; 
 at its strongest, numbering but eleven churches in Eng- 
 land, though there were others in Wales when the Cal- 
 vinistic Baptists withdrew, and the rest of the churches 
 were gradually absorbed into the General body. 
 
 The Seventh-day Baptists (so called from their ob- 
 servance of the seventh day of the week for rest and 
 worship, instead of the first) were founded in 1676 by 
 the Rev. Francis Bampfield, a graduate of Oxford, and 
 at one time prebend of Exeter Cathedral. This has al- 
 ways been a small body, and at the present time but one 
 church survives, the Mill Yard, in Whitechapel, London. 
 This church was, a few years ago, reduced to a member- 
 ship of about half a dozen, and could secure no pastor 
 of its own faith in England. The property being very 
 valuable, special efforts were made in behalf of the 
 church, a pastor was sent to them from America, and 
 they became more prosperous than for many years before. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 
 
 THERE are traditions among the Welsh Baptists ol 
 an ancient origin, and some of their historians have 
 not hesitated to claim for them an antiquity reaching 
 back to the days of the apostles. When such claims are 
 submitted to the ordinary tests of historic criticism, how- 
 ever, they vanish into thin air. Baptist history in Wales, 
 as distinguished from tradition, begins with the period 
 of the Commonwealth. The most moderate and judicious 
 of the Welsh Baptist writers. Rev. Joshua Thomas, says 
 that the oldest church in the principality is one formed 
 at or near Swansea, in Glammorganshire, in 1649.^ B"* 
 one church now in existence, the Wrexham, in Denbigh- 
 shire, claims an earlier date, 1630; and as a few years 
 ago it was content with the year 1635 as the true date 
 of its origin, it is probable that neither is matter of record. 
 The honor of organizing this first Baptist church in 
 Wales belongs to John Myles. He was born about 1621, 
 and matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1636. 
 Whether he ever took orders in the Church of England 
 is not positively known, but it is probable that he did. 
 At any rate, he began to preach the gospel about 1645, 
 and by 1649 was so highly esteemed as to be named one 
 of the Triers for Wales during the Protectorate. In that 
 year, a few baptized believers were gathered, and they 
 continued to increase until the Restoration, when Myles 
 
 'There is a tradition of an earlier church of Welsh Baptists at Olchon, 
 in Herefordshire (1633), but no record survives to prove that such a church 
 ever existed 
 
270 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 and most of the church emigrated to the colony of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 The man to whom the Baptist cause in Wales owes 
 most in its early years is Vavasor Powell. He was bom 
 in 1617, and was descended from a Radnorshire family 
 of great antiquity and distinction. It is not known where 
 he received his education, but it is certain that he be- 
 came a scholar of notable attainments and that he early 
 obtained preferment in the Established Church. He was 
 led to entertain Puritan sentiments by intercourse with 
 some of that persuasion, and by the reading of their 
 literature, and in 1642 came to London and joined the 
 Parliamentary party. He was for a time settled at Dart- 
 mouth, in Kent, where his ministry was very fruitful, 
 but calls from his native Wales led him to return thither, 
 which he did in 1646, bearing with him the highest 
 testimonials as to his piety and gifts, signed by Charles 
 Herte, prolocutor, and seventeen other divines of the 
 Westminster Assembly. 
 
 Precisely when Powell became a Baptist is not known, 
 but it must have been before 1655, for in that year Thur- 
 loe speaks of him as " lately rebaptized." ^ It is prob- 
 able that most or all of the churches he established were 
 of mixed membership. He favored the practice of 
 open communion also. From these lax practices the 
 Welsh Baptists were soon emancipated, and became 
 what they still are, notable for the consistency and zeal 
 with which they advocate and maintain the distinctive 
 principles of their denomination. The zeal and eloquence 
 of Powell exceeded his consistency; he was a most la- 
 borious and successful evangelist throughout the princi- 
 pality, and by the Restoration he had established some 
 twenty churches, of which some had from two hundred 
 to five hundred members. He died in 1670. He has been 
 
 1 " State Papers," IV., 373. 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 27I 
 
 called the Whitefield of Wales, and his abundant and 
 fruitful labors seem well to merit such a title. 
 
 But eight of the existing churches of Wales were 
 founded in the seventeenth century, and before the Act 
 of Toleration only thirty-one were added to the number. 
 From the passage of that Act, however, the growth of 
 Baptists in the principality has been rapid, especially 
 since 1810. The formation of Associations began in 
 1799, and the Baptist Union of Wales was organized in 
 1867. 
 
 More potent than the influence of organization in 
 the promotion of this growth has been a succession 
 of godly and eloquent Baptist preachers. One of the 
 most celebrated of these was Christmas Evans, so named 
 because he was born on the 25th of December, 1766. In 
 spite of poverty and many difficulties, he obtained s 
 good elementary education, and shortly after his conver' 
 sion and baptism was ordained to the ministry at the 
 age of twenty-two. We may judge of the state of affairs 
 in Wales at the time, when we are told that after he had 
 been nearly ten years in the ministry and was highly 
 esteemed, he was paid by two churches that he served, 
 the salary of seventeen pounds a year ! Nevertheless, he 
 continued to labor, not only as pastor of churches, but 
 as evangelist in general to Wales, until he rested from 
 his labors in 1838. In a ministry of half a century he 
 had preached all over his native country, with great 
 power, and with equal eloquence and originality. 
 
 Through the efforts of such men, the Baptist cause 
 has made rapid progress in Wales throughout the nine- 
 teenth century, which saw at its close eight hundred and 
 thirty-five churches and a membership of one hundred 
 and six thousand five hundred and sixty-six (including 
 Monmouthshire). Though for a time Arminian doctrines 
 threatened to make serious inroads, the Welsh Baptists 
 
Zyz A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 have as a whole remained ardent Calvinists down to the 
 present time. Of their churches two hundred and fifty- 
 nine maintain services in the English language, and of 
 these quite a proportion — some say nearly half — ^have 
 adopted the open communion practices of their neighbors 
 in England. This is especially true of churches in the 
 large towns. The churches that adhere to their native 
 language also adhere to the well-established principles 
 and practices of the faith. 
 
 The Baptist churches of Scotland do not pretend to 
 any great antiquity. The oldest church now existing 
 was founded in Keiss, in Caithnesshire, in 1750. It was 
 formed upon the estate of Sir William Sinclair, who was 
 immersed in England, and became a preacher of the 
 truth on his return. The next oldest churches are in 
 Edinburgh. The Bristo-place church was constituted in 
 1765, by Rev. Robert Carmichael, originally of the Church 
 of Scotland, then a Glasite and later an Independent 
 preacher, who finally rejected the doctrine and practice 
 of infant baptism, and going to London for the purpose, 
 was baptized by Doctor Gill. The other church owes 
 its origin to Archibald McLean, who also began his 
 career in the Scotch church and then became a Glasite, 
 having been at one time a member of Mr. Carmichael's 
 church. Not long after his former pastor, he also became 
 a convert to Baptist views, and sought baptism on per- 
 sonal profession of faith. Besides these churches, one in 
 Glasgow claims the date of 1768 for its foundation, and 
 two in Paisley are said to have been organized in 1795. 
 There are no other Baptist churches in Scotland formed 
 earlier than 1803. 
 
 Archibald McLean almost deserves to be called the 
 founder of the Scotch Baptist churches. He was bom 
 i" 1733. received the rudiments of a classical education. 
 
Andrew Fuller 
 
H 
 
 a 
 
 M 
 
 aw 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 273 
 
 from which he afterwards advanced by his own exertions 
 to considerable learning, and became a printer at Glas- 
 gow. He had in early life been much influenced by the 
 preaching of Whitefield, and was finally constrained him- 
 self to become a preacher. He was even more influential 
 by pen than by voice, and his collected writings in six 
 volumes are still a monument to his industry and solidity 
 of mind. His membership for a time in a Glasite or 
 Sandemanian church had important consequences. It 
 was the special endeavor of that peculiar sect to re- 
 turn as far as possible to apostolic simplicity, and to 
 make the churches of to-day an exact reproduction of 
 those of the New Testament. From many of his Sande- 
 manian notions McLean never freed himself, and the 
 Baptist churches of Scotland have perpetuated not a few 
 of these notions, such as insisting on having a plurality 
 of elders in every church, on the weekly celebration of 
 the Lord's Supper, and the like. Later investigations of 
 the New Testament period have disclosed the fact, ap- 
 parently not suspected by McLean and men of his time, 
 that no single form of organization was common to all 
 the churches of that period, and that it is unsafe to 
 assert a practice found in a single church to be nec- 
 essarily the norm for all other churches through all time. 
 Next to McLean, possibly the Baptists of Scotland 
 owe most to the brothers Haldane, Robert (1764- 1842) 
 and James Alexander (1768-1851). Both were educated 
 for the navy and served for some years with distinction. 
 Robert inherited a large fortune and retired to his es- 
 tate at Airthrey, where he became much interested in 
 religion, and finally sold his estate, that he might have 
 means to carry out his projects. James likewise be- 
 came interested in religion, and retired from service to 
 become a preacher. In 1799 he was ordained pastor 
 of an Independent church in Edinburgh, for which 
 
274 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 his brother built him in 1801 a fine edifice, known as 
 the Tabernacle. Other congregations were established, 
 in Glasgow, Dundee, and other cities. 
 
 The Haldanes had been bred in the Church of Scotland, 
 but these churches were Independent or Congregational, 
 and this movement was watched with great interest by 
 the English Independents. There was much dissatisfac- 
 tion at this time with the State church system in Scot- 
 land, and the prospects of Congregationalism seemed 
 bright. In 1808, however, both brothers became con- 
 vinced that infant baptism is not scriptural, and resolved 
 to teach and maintain believers' baptism. This was the 
 signal for the temporary disruption of their movement, 
 but James continued his work in Edinburgh and evangel- 
 istic tours throughout the kingdom, while his brother's 
 purse ^ was at his service always. For fifty years this 
 eloquent preacher held his own with the great pulpit 
 lights of Edinburgh, and during his time of service 
 thirty-eight Baptist churches were founded — about one- 
 third of the total number in Scotland at the present time. 
 The formation of the Baptist Home Mission Society for 
 Scotland in 1816 must be credited with a part of this 
 growth, no doubt, though its work has been chiefly in 
 the highlands and among the islands. In 1856 the Scot- 
 tish churches united in the Baptist Association of Scot- 
 land, which was dissolved in 1869, when the Baptist 
 Union of Scotland took its place. 
 
 There were, at the beginning of this century, one hun- 
 dred and twenty-two Baptist churches in Scotland, having 
 sixteen thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine members. 
 
 We can fix the beginning of Baptist churches in Ire- 
 land within a few years. The oldest church there was 
 
 •Within fifteen years he is known to have given away $350,000; and it 
 •« said that durioE Ki; Kfe he edtwated 349 ministers, at a cost of $ioo,oao. 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 275 
 
 formed in Dublin by Thomas Patience, assistant pastor 
 to Kiffen in London. It claims the date of 1640 for its 
 birth, but this is obviously absurd, since Kiffen became 
 pastor of the newly formed church in Devonshire Square, 
 London, in that year. There is no reason to suppose that 
 the church antedates the conquest of Ireland by Crom- 
 well in 1649, aiid in f^ct our earliest knowledge of such 
 a church is 1653. There are but two other churches 
 now existing which date back to the seventeenth century, 
 and but one other that is so old as the closing decade of 
 the eighteenth — for one hundred and forty-three years 
 not a single church seems to have been formed, at least 
 not one that is now in existence. Comment is almost 
 needless. 
 
 Baptist churches have ever found Ireland an uncon- 
 genial soil ; and after more than two centuries of struggle 
 there are little more than two dozen churches of the faith 
 in the island. To have produced the illustrious scholar, 
 Alexander Carson, is the chief contribution to Baptist 
 progress of our Irish brethren, and one of which a larger 
 body might be proud. He was born in County Tyrone, 
 in 1776. Early in life he became a believer in Christ, 
 and later was graduated with the first honor at the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow. He became pastor of a Presbyterian 
 church at Tubbermore, Ireland, and while in that service 
 came to see from his study of the original Scriptures 
 that the churches of the New Testament were congrega- 
 tional, not presb)rterial, in polity; and that they were 
 composed of baptized believers only. There were few 
 Baptist churches in Ireland, there was no society to 
 which he could appeal for support; of his salary of one 
 hundred and forty pounds he received one hundred 
 pounds from the royal treasury. If he became a Baptist 
 he must not only sever all connection with old friends, 
 but risk starvation. He did what he felt to be clearly 
 
2^6 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 his duty, was baptized, and began to preach to such as 
 would listen. He soon gathered a church, and lived to 
 see it grow to five hundred members, many of whom 
 walked from seven to ten miles in order to attend its 
 services. 
 
 Doctor Carson was an industrious student, and became 
 a great scholar; but for his inability to sign the Confes- 
 sion of Faith he might have been professor of Greek in 
 the University of Glasgow. His work on baptism was a 
 complete reply to all the objections that had been raised 
 by the ignorant and prejudiced against the teaching 
 and practice of Baptists regarding this ordinance of 
 Christ. Every contention of his has since been amply 
 sustained by the scholarship of the world — not by Baptist 
 scholarship alone, but by Pedobaptist. 
 
 There were in Ireland at the close of the nineteenth 
 century thirty-one Baptist churches, with two thousand 
 six hundred and ninety-six members. 
 
 The capture of Quebec, in 1759, marks the beginning 
 of Protestant conquest in Canada. Baptists were among 
 the first to profit by the new order of things under the 
 Baptist rule. In the following year Shubael Dimock 
 emigrated from Connecticut and settled in Nova Scotia. 
 He had separated from the churches of the Standing 
 Order, and for holding unauthorized religious meetings 
 had suffered both corporal punishment and imprisonment. 
 His son Daniel had gone even further and denied the 
 scripturalness of infant baptism. These new settlers were 
 accompanied by a Baptist minister, the Rev. John Sutton, 
 who remained in the province about a year, baptizing 
 Daniel Dimock and some others. Daniel Dimock baptized 
 his father about 1775, but so far as is known no Baptist 
 church was organized. A visit to the province in 1761 
 by the Rev. Ebenezer Moulton, of Massachusetts, is said 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 27J 
 
 to have been followed by conversions and baptisms ai 
 Yarmouth and Horton, a church being formed at tht 
 latter place about 1763, of both Baptists and Congrega 
 tionalists. This minister was the ancestor of Mrs 
 McMaster, the founder of Moulton College. 
 
 It was in 1763 that the first real foothold was gained 
 in Canada by the Baptists. Members of the Second 
 Church in Swansea, Mass., and of two or three neigh- 
 boring churches, to the number of thirteen, constituted 
 a Baptist church, chose the Rev. Nathan Mason as their 
 pastor, and emigrated in a body to Sackville, then in 
 Nova Scotia, but since 1784 in the province of New 
 Brunswick. They remained for eight years, during which 
 time their numbers had increased to sixty; then, for 
 some reason, the original immigrants returned to Massa- 
 chusetts, and the church became scattered and finally 
 ceased to exist. A new organization was, however, 
 formed in the same place in 1799. 
 
 Up to the year 1775, therefore, the net progress of the 
 Baptists had been small ; there was a handful of believers, 
 scattered here and there, but not a single church had 
 been able to maintain an existence. In that year Henry 
 Alline was converted and became an evangelist of the 
 Whitefield type, traveling up and down Nova Scotia and 
 preaching the gospel with great power. He was a Con- 
 gregationalist, and many of his converts formed churches 
 of that order, but in a number of instances Baptist 
 churches trace their origin to this revival of religion. 
 
 The first of these was constituted of ten members, Oc- 
 tober 29, 1778, at Horton, and remains to this day not 
 only the oldest but one of the strongest churches in 
 the province. The Rev. Nicholson Pearson was chosen 
 pastor, and in the two following years fifty-two were 
 added to the church. This growth in numbers, however, 
 was in part accomplished by the adoption of open com- 
 
278 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 munion and mixed membership. Congregationalists 
 being admitted to full fellowship on equal terms with 
 baptized believers. It was not until 1809 that the Horton 
 church became what we understand by the phrase, a 
 Baptist church. The practice of mixed membership, or 
 at any rate of open communion, was general among the 
 Baptist churches of this province until the early years 
 of the last century, they having gradually felt their way 
 toward their present position. The Horton church is 
 notable for having had but three pastors in the first 
 century of its existence: Rev. Nicholas Pearson, from 
 1778 to 1791 ; Rev. Theodore Seth Harding, from 1795 
 to 1855, when he was succeeded by Rev. Stephen W. 
 De Blois, who was still pastor at the celebration of the 
 centenary. Churches were organized rapidly between 
 1780 and 1800, including those of Lower Granville, Hali- 
 fax (179s), Newport (1799), Sackville (1799), as well 
 as Annapolis and Upper Granville, Chester, Cornwallis, 
 Varmouth, and Digby, the dates of whose organizations 
 are unknown. Of these churches the First Halifax seems 
 to have been the only one that admitted to membership 
 only baptized believers; and it is doubtful whether even 
 that church practised restricted communion during this 
 period. In this respect the early history of the Baptists 
 of Canada differs widely from that of the first Baptist 
 churches in the United States. 
 
 The first Baptists of Lower Canada seem to have arisen 
 among a settlement of American Tories, not far from 
 the Vermont line. Elders John Hebbard and Ariel Ken- 
 drick, missionaries of the Woodstock Association, of 
 Vermont, visited them in 1794, and their preaching was 
 followed by an extensive revival. A few years later, 
 Rev. Elisha Andrews, of Fairfax, Vt., visited these people 
 at their request, baptized about thirty converts, and 
 organized the Eaton church. A number of other churches 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 279 
 
 were soon afterward formed in this region, several of 
 which were for a time affiliated with the Richmond 
 Association, of Vermont. The Domestic Missionary So- 
 ciety of Massachusetts, and other like New England or- 
 ganizations, paid much attention to this field, frequently 
 sending missionaries thither. 
 
 The beginnings in Upper Canada seem to have been 
 practically simultaneous, but quite without concert, with 
 those in the lower province. In 1794 Reuben Crandall, 
 at that time a licentiate, settled on the northern shore 
 of Lake Ontario, in what is now Prince Edward County, 
 and the following year he had gained converts enough to 
 organize the Hallowell church. Of this body there now 
 remains no authentic record, but another church formed 
 at Haldimund in 1798 proved more permanent, and is 
 now in its second century of vigorous life. Other min- 
 isters from " the States " followed, and other churches 
 were gathered in like manner. About the year 1800, 
 Titus Fitch, another licentiate, located in Charlotteville 
 township, where his labors resulted in the formation 
 of a church of thirty members in 1804. It appears to 
 have been the fashion in those days when a young licen- 
 tiate was not called by a church, for him to go out in 
 the region beyond and call a church — a fashion that may 
 be commended to the rising ministry of our day for their 
 imitation. 
 
 It will therefore be seen that the first Baptist churches 
 of Canada, in all its provinces alike, for the most part 
 owe their origin either to colonies from the United States 
 or to the labors of missionaries from this country. The 
 most marked exception is found in the group of churches 
 that compose the Ottawa Association that, together with 
 their pastors, were largely composed of Scotch immi- 
 grants, and trace their line of descent as Baptists to the 
 labors in Edinburgh of the brothers Haldane. Baptist 
 
280 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 growth was slow up to 1830, and has never been rapid 
 in Quebec, whose population is so largely French and 
 Catholic. It was likewise retarded unduly by various in- 
 ternal disagreements, chief of which was the question of 
 close or open communion. The great majority of Ca- 
 nadian Baptists have, for a generation, belonged to the 
 Regular or strict-communion wing of the denomination, 
 
 Alexander Crawford, a Scotchman, and one of the 
 Haldane missionaries, was the first (1814) to preach and 
 baptize according to the New Testament order in Prince 
 Edward's Island, and the first churches adhered rigidly 
 to the practice of the Scotch Baptists. In 1826 the first 
 church was formed at Bedeque that was from the begin- 
 ning associated with the churches of the Maritime Prov- 
 inces, though most of the others fell into line eventually. 
 The differences between the churches of Scotch origin 
 and the other Baptists of the provinces were numerous; 
 the former insisted strenuously on a plural eldership, on 
 the weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper, and es- 
 pecially that members of the church should not marry 
 those who belonged to other denominations. A domestic 
 and foreign missionary society was formed in 1845, and 
 the Island Baptist Association in 1868. The latter or- 
 ganization was especially useful in promoting denomina- 
 tional advance. From thirteen churches and six hundred 
 members it has grown to twenty-five churches and over 
 two thousand members. 
 
 The first union of these Baptist churches was formed 
 in 1800, at Granville, by ten churches, under the title of 
 the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick Baptist Associa- 
 tion. In one respect it differed from other bodies of 
 this kind, though in the main it pretended to " no other 
 powers than those of an advisory council " ; for more 
 than a quarter of a century it assumed the function of 
 examining and ordaining candidates for the ministry — 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 281 
 
 the sole instance of the kind, it is believed, in the 
 history of Baptists. In 1809 the practice of open com- 
 munion was discontinued by the associated churches. Four 
 churches withdrew from fellowship with the others for 
 a time, but afterwards returned. By 1821 the growth 
 of this body led to its division, for greater convenience, 
 into two Associations, one for each province. The Nova 
 Scotia Association, in turn, was divided, in 1850, into the 
 Eastern, Central, and Western Associations. The New 
 Brunswick Association, in 1847, divided into Eastern 
 and Western Associations; a Southern Association was 
 organized in 1850; and in 1868 the Prince Edward's 
 Island Association assumed an independent existence. 
 These successive developments of organization are land- 
 marks of denominational growth, indicating, better than 
 statistics, the progress of the churches in numbers and 
 spiritual efficiency. At present these Associations repre- 
 sent three hundred and ninety-nine churches, with forty- 
 four thousand eight hundred and forty-one members. 
 
 In Ontario and Quebec the growth has been equally 
 marked. The first organization of the churches of Upper 
 Canada was the Thurlow Association (afterward the 
 Haldimand), formed in 1803; the Eastern and Grand 
 River Associations followed, in 1819 ; and others at fre- 
 quent intervals thereafter. In Quebec the progress was 
 slower; the earliest churches, as we have seen, remained 
 affiliated with Vermont Associations. It was not until 
 1830 that a Baptist church was established in Montreal, 
 and not till 1835 that the Ottawa Association was formed- 
 In 1845, the Montreal was formed from the Ottawa. 
 The Baptist churches of these provinces now number 
 four hundred and thirty, with forty thousand two hun- 
 dred and seventy members, and report three thousand 
 five hundred and eight baptisms for 1900. In the 
 last decade these churches have increased in membership 
 
282 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 twenty-eight per cent., while those of the Maritime 
 Provinces in the same period have gained less than ten 
 per cent. If these rates are maintained another decade, the 
 churches of Ontario and Quebec will be considerably 
 Stronger, numerically, at least, than their elder sisters. 
 
 Early in their history the Baptists of the Maritime 
 Provinces acknowledged the obligations of the Great 
 Commission, and to the best of their power fulfilled them. 
 A missionary society was formed as early as 1815 in 
 Nova Scotia, and a similar organization followed in New 
 Brunswick in 1820. Both of these societies vigorously 
 prosecuted work at home and abroad for many years. 
 In 1846 these societies were consolidated into one, known 
 as " The Baptist Convention of the Maritime Provinces." 
 Each Association in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and 
 Prince Edward's Island is entitled to send two delegates 
 to each meeting of this body, and each contributing 
 church may send one member. Two Boards for Home 
 and Foreign Missions direct the Convention's aggressive 
 work, in addition to which there are Boards for Min- 
 isterial Education and Ministerial Relief; while close re- 
 lations are maintained with Acadia College by nom- 
 inating every three years six new members of its Board 
 of governors. 
 
 The Canada Baptist Missionary Society was organized 
 in June, 1837, through the agency of the Ottawa Asso- 
 ciation, and its headquarters were in Montreal. After 
 some years of checkered existence, it finally succumbed 
 to the stress of the communion controversies. In spite 
 of its disclaimers, it was suspected of being too friendly 
 to open communion, and lost the support of the strict 
 communionists. The latter finally formed the organiza- 
 tions in which they could have more confidence: the 
 Western Canada Baptist Home Mission Society, in 1854, 
 and the Foreign Mission Society of Ontario and Quebec, 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 283 
 
 in 1866. The latter was for the first seven years of its 
 life an auxiliary of the American Baptist Missionary 
 Union, but since 1873 has been independent, and main- 
 tains a flourishing mission among the Telugus. Home 
 mission work among the Indians has been a special 
 feature of the Canadian Baptist missionary enterprises. 
 The Grand Ligne Mission among the French Catholics, 
 founded in 1835, was for a time undenominational and 
 independent, but for more than fifty years has been car- 
 ried on under Baptist auspices, though Pedobaptists have 
 also, to some extent, promoted the work. It is said that 
 more than five thousand have been brought to the knowl- 
 edge of the truth through this mission, many of whom 
 are unofficial missionaries among their own people in 
 Canada and New England. 
 
 In 1888 a bill was passed by the Dominion Parliament 
 consolidating all the previously existing societies (except 
 the Grand Ligne Mission), including some not named 
 above, into " The Baptist Convention of Ontario and 
 Quebec." Five Boards — Home Mission, Foreign Mis- 
 sion, Ministerial Superannuation and Widows' and Or- 
 phans', Publication, Church Edifice — conduct the work 
 formerly done by these various societies, and the churches 
 thus have direct relations with a single delegated body, 
 which is their agent in all general denominational work. 
 This seems to be almost an ideal method of organization, 
 and must be a powerful promotive of denominational 
 unity and efficiency. Since 1881 Manitoba and the 
 Northwest has had a separate Convention. 
 
 In 1828, when the Baptists of Nova Scotia had but 
 twenty-nine churches and one thousand seven hundred 
 and seventy-two members, they established an academy 
 at Horton; in 1838 they established Acadia College; and 
 in 1861 a seminary for young women. The three institu- 
 tions are still prosperous, and have together about three 
 
284 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 hundred and thirty students. The institutions are 
 governed by a Board of trustees appointed by the Con- 
 vention of the Maritime Provinces. The New Brunswick 
 Baptists established an academy at Frederickton, which 
 ceased to exist some years ago; it had a successor at 
 St. Martins, with better prospects of permanence for a 
 time, but that has also succumbed. The Baptists of Que- 
 bec were unfortunate in their sole educational venture, 
 that of establishing a college at Montreal. It was founded 
 in 1838, and after a few years erected a fine stone building, 
 which proved too costly an enterprise. After struggling 
 vainly with debts for some years, in 1849 it was found 
 necessary to sell the property, liquidate the debts, and let 
 the college perish. Many causes contributed to its 
 downfall, its location being perhaps the chief. 
 
 The Baptists of Ontario have been more fortunate, 
 in part perhaps by reason of greater prudence. They 
 established a college at Woodstock about 1860, with both 
 an arts and a theological department. Many of the most 
 useful ministers of the Dominion, and some in the United 
 States, received their training there. In 1880, the liber- 
 ality of the late William McMaster founded the To- 
 ronto Baptist College, a theological seminary at first, to 
 which the theological department of Woodstock was 
 transferred. The new institution was enlarged later into 
 McMaster University, an arts department being estab- 
 lished in connection with the theological, and Woodstock 
 being voluntarily reduced to the grade of an academy and 
 feeder of the university. A college for women, known 
 as Moulton College, has since been established by Mrs. 
 McMaster (nee Moulton), and is afifiliated with the uni- 
 versity. The result of these new enterprises has been a 
 great stimulus of interest in education among Canadian 
 Baptists. The new century opened with an enrollment of 
 over four hundred students in the three institutions. The 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE GREATER BRITAIN 285 
 
 gross assets amount to about nine hundred thousand 
 dollars, making available for the three schools an income 
 of about forty thousand dollars. 
 
 But little material is accessible for the history of the 
 Baptists of Australasia. Rev. John Saunders, a Baptist 
 minister, who had established two churches in London, 
 became very desirous of preaching to the convicts and 
 planting a Christian church at Botany Bay. He formed 
 the Bathurst Street Church, Sidney, in 1834. His ardu- 
 ous labors finally broke his health, but a worthy successor 
 was found in Rev. James Voller, by whose effort an As- 
 sociation was formed, that in 1891 reports twenty-six 
 churches and one thousand four hundred and sixty-one 
 members. The Baptist church in Melbourne, Victoria, 
 was organized in 1845 by Rev. William Ham, and the 
 cause has prospered continuously. There are now forty- 
 four churches and four thousand five hundred and fifty- 
 eight members. In South Australia the first Baptist 
 church to be established was the Hinders Street Chapel 
 of Adelaide, which dates from 1861. Progress here has 
 been hindered by an excess of the spirit of independency 
 and too little co-operation, but there are fifty-two churches 
 and three thousand six hundred and sixty-five members. 
 The Wharf Street Chapel in Moreton Bay, Queensland, 
 was built in 1856, after Rev. B. G. Wilson had preached 
 there for several years, and from this the Baptists of the 
 colony have increased to twenty-seven churches and two 
 thousand one hundred and seventy members. During 
 the past few years there has been a slight loss here. 
 
 From New Zealand are reported twenty-eight churches 
 and two thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight mem- 
 bers; and besides the work among the white people a 
 mission is maintained among the Maoris, of whom there 
 are still about fifty thousand. The Baptist cause here 
 
286 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 owes its present prosperity largely to the labors of Rev. 
 D. Dolomore, who went thither in 1851. The first church 
 was organized in 1854, and from that time growth was 
 steady, especially in the southern section. A Baptist 
 Union was formed about 1880, which has been a great 
 help to the churches, especially in uniting them in mis- 
 sionary efforts. Work was begun by the Baptists in 
 Tasmania in 1834, but there have been meager results 
 here, in spite of many years of hard labor, there being 
 at present but nine churches and five hundred and 
 seventy-four members. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 
 
 THE history of American Baptists naturally divides 
 into three periods or movements. The first coin- 
 cides nearly with the colonial period of our secular na- 
 tional history. It is marked by faithful witness to the 
 truth on the one hand, and by bitter persecution on the 
 other. The second period also corresponds with an era 
 of secular history, the time of territorial expansion, and 
 is marked by unexampled growth and missionary activity 
 (1776-1845). The third period, extending from about 
 the time of the Mexican War to our own day, may be 
 called the period of evangelism and education. These 
 divisions are largely arbitrary, of course, and there are 
 no well-marked lines of division, the periods designated 
 overlapping each other. The division has, however, a 
 certain mnemonic value ; and as we proceed the character- 
 istics attributed to each period will be seen to be justified 
 by the facts. 
 
 The historians of Puritan New England assert that 
 among the early immigrants to their colony were some 
 tainted with Anabaptism. One of those suspected of this 
 offense was Hanserd Knollys. Of the details of his stay 
 in America little is known save that it was barely three 
 years. He arrived at Boston in 1638, and very soon 
 after became pastor of a church at Piscataway (now 
 Dover), N. H. There is no evidence that Knollys held 
 Baptist views at this time; as we have already seen (p. 
 216), he was ordained pastor of a Baptist church in Lon- 
 don (England) in 1645, and all the circumstances of his 
 
 287 
 
288 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 life up to that time compel the conclusion that he had only 
 recently become a Baptist. While he was pastor at Piscat- 
 away his church was rent by a dispute regarding infant 
 baptism (this we know from an Episcopalian visitor to 
 the colony in April, 1641), which warrants the conclu- 
 sion that though there were people of Baptist sentiments 
 in the church it was not a Baptist church. To escape 
 persecution the church in large part removed in 164 1 to 
 Long Island, and thence to New Jersey, where they 
 formed a Baptist church (probably in 1689) and gave to 
 it the same name the New Hampshire colony had borne. 
 This is the story of the origin of the oldest Baptist 
 church but one (Middletown, formed in 1688) in New 
 Jersey. If we conclude that Knollys and his church were 
 not Baptist, then the first Baptist church organized in 
 America was that of Providence. But before speaking 
 of that we must consider the previous history of its 
 founder. 
 
 Much obscurity hangs over the early life of Roger 
 Williams, but he was probably the son of a merchant 
 tailor of London, James Williams, and his wife Alice. 
 He was born about 1607, and Sir Edward Coke, the 
 great English lawyer, attracted by his promise, secured 
 for him entrance to Sutton's Hospital. Here he completed 
 his preparatory studies and then entered the University 
 of Cambridge, where he took his bachelor's degree in 
 1627. He was offered several livings in the Church of 
 England, but it does not appear that he was ever actually 
 beneficed. He was apparently ordained, since he is de- 
 scribed on his arrival at Boston as " a godly minister." 
 He embraced Puritan principles, and it is even probable 
 that he was a Separatist in principle before leaving Eng- 
 land. He determined to leave England, and in 1631 
 landed in Boston, where he hoped to find greater religious 
 freedom. He found the Puritans fully as intolerant as 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 28g 
 
 Laud, and was by no means satisfied with the half-way 
 reformation that they were disposed to make. He saw 
 the inconsistency of the New England theocracy, in which 
 the functions of the Church and State were so inter- 
 blended that the identity of each was in danger of being 
 lost. He had grasped the principle that the Church and 
 the State should be entirely separate and independent 
 each of the other. It is not at all probable that Williams 
 had imbibed these notions from the English Baptists, or 
 that he even knew of their holding such doctrines. At 
 this time he was not, at any rate, an Anabaptist. He 
 found no fault with the Congregational doctrine or dis- 
 cipline, but denounced the principle of a State Church, 
 and upheld the right of soul liberty on natural and 
 scriptural grounds alike. 
 
 In spite of his heterodoxy, Williams was called to be 
 minister to the church at Salem, where he was highly 
 esteemed for his zeal and eloquence. The Salem church 
 had acted against the will of the Massachusetts authori- 
 ties, and to prevent trouble Williams went for a time to 
 Plymouth. He returned to Salem as pastor again, but 
 was soon summoned before the court in Boston and 
 condemned to banishment. The first (and no doubt the 
 chief) charge against him was, " That the magistrate 
 ought not to punish the breach of the first table, other' 
 wise than in such case as did disturb the civil peace.'" 
 This was also stated in the decree of banishment as the 
 chief cause : " Whereas, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the 
 elders of the church of Salem, hath broached and di- 
 vulged new and dangerous opinions against the author- 
 ity of magistrates." Nothing can be clearer, as a matter 
 of historical record, than that the chief cause of the 
 banishment of Roger Williams was his teaching with 
 regard to religious liberty, that the magistrate has no 
 right to punish breaches of the first table of the law— 
 
2gO A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 those commandments, namely, that relate to the worship 
 of God. 
 
 After his banishment, Williams made his way, in the 
 dead of winter, to Narragansett Bay. While at Plymouth 
 he had learned something of the Indian dialects, and he 
 was kindly received. At what is now Providence he 
 founded a settlement, many of his former Salem charge 
 removing to this place. The original settlers in 1638 en- 
 tered into a compact reading thus : " We whose names are 
 hereunder written, being desirous to inhabit in the town 
 of Providence, do promise to submit ourselves in active 
 and passive obedience to all such orders or agencies as 
 shall be made for the public good of the body in an 
 orderly way, by the major consent of the present in- 
 habitants, masters of families, incorporated together into 
 a township, and such others whom they shall admit into 
 the same, only in civil things." A similar agreement was 
 signed in 1640; the principle was embodied in the code 
 of laws adopted by the colony in 1647, ^"^ was finally in- 
 torporated in the royal charter given by Charles II. in 
 1663 : " Our royal will and pleasure is, that no person 
 within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be 
 in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in 
 question, for any differences of opinion in matters of 
 religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of 
 the said colony." Thus was founded the first govern- 
 ment in the world, whose corner-stone was absolute 
 religious liberty. 
 
 It is true that a few other countries had before this, and 
 for periods more or less brief, tolerated what they re- 
 garded as heresy; but this was the first government or- 
 ganized on the principle of absolute liberty to all, in such 
 matters of belief and practice as did not conflict with the 
 peace and order of society, or with ordinary good morals. 
 And though this government was insignificant in point of 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 2gX 
 
 numbers and power, it was the pioneer in a great revo- 
 lution, its principle having become the fundamental law 
 of everyi American State, and influenced strongly even 
 the most conservative European States. Though he did 
 not originate the idea of soul liberty, it was given to 
 Roger Williams, in the providence of God, to be its stand- 
 ard-bearer in a new world, where it should have full 
 opportunity to work itself out, and afford by its fruits 
 a demonstration that it is of God and not of man. 
 
 Up to this time Williams was not a Baptist; but his 
 continued studies of the Scriptures led him to the belief 
 that the sprinkling of water on an unconscious babe 
 does not constitute obedience to the command of our 
 Lord, " Be baptized." Having arrived at this conviction, 
 he wished to be baptized; but in this little colony, sep- 
 arated from other civilized countries by an ocean or a 
 wilderness, where was a qualified administrator to be 
 found ? In the meantime, other converts to the truth had 
 been made, whether by his agency or by independent 
 study of the word. They resolved to follow the precept 
 and example of Christ in the only way possible to them. 
 Some time about March, 1639, therefore, Williams was 
 baptized by Ezekiel Holliman, who had been a member 
 of his church at Salem ; and thereupon Williams baptized 
 ten others, and the first Baptist church on American 
 soil was formed. It is highly probable, though not con- 
 clusively established, that this baptism was an immersion. 
 No other baptism is known to have been practised, in a 
 single instance, by American Baptists. There are a num- 
 ber of other instances in the history of American Baptists 
 of the formation of a church after this manner — ^the con- 
 stituent members either being ignorant that there were 
 other Christians who agreed with them, or being so far 
 distant from any other Baptists that the procurement of 
 an administrator was out of the question. 
 
292 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Williams was, however, one of the most erratic and 
 unstable men of his time ; and a few months later he came 
 to the conclusion that this baptism by one who had not 
 himself been baptized in an orderly manner was not 
 valid baptism. He withdrew himself from the church, 
 and for the rest of his life was unconnected with any 
 religious body, calling himself a " seeker." He seems 
 to have been misled by an idea that, if logically carried 
 out, would unchurch every church, by making all 
 administration of ordinances invalid. 
 
 Whether the present First Baptist Church of Provi- 
 dence is the lineal successor of this church founded by 
 Roger Williams is a difficult historical question, about 
 which a positive opinion should be expressed with diffi- 
 dence. Tradition maintains that the line of succession 
 has been unbroken; but the records to prove this are 
 lacking. The facts appear to be that after the departure of 
 Williams, one of those whom he had baptized, Thomas 
 Olney, became the head of the church, to which was 
 added soon after a number of new-comers, chief among 
 which were William Wickendon, Chad Brown, and Greg- 
 ory Dexter. The original members were of Puritan an- 
 tecedents and Calvinists; the new-comers appear to have 
 been Arminians, and inclined to make the laying on of 
 hands after baptism an article of faith. It has been 
 conjectured that the three men named were associated 
 with Olney in a plural eldership, but all these matters are 
 doubtful since the earliest records of the Providence 
 church begin with the year 1775,^ and back of that we 
 have only tradition and conjecture. All that is certain 
 is that controversy began and continued until it reached 
 the acute stage in 1652, when the church was divided. 
 A part, the smaller, apparently, adhered to the original 
 faith of the church, and remained under the pastoral 
 
 »Callendar, " R. I. Hist. Coll.," Vol. IV., p. 117. 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 293 
 
 care of Thomas Olney. This wing of the church became 
 extinct somewhere about 1720. The larger part of the 
 members adhered to Wickendon, Brown, and Dexter, and 
 became a Six-principle church, remaining such until a 
 comparatively late time. In 1771, through the influence 
 of President James Manning, the majority adopted a 
 Calvinistic creed, whereupon the Six-principle minority 
 seceded. Both these branches still survive, the former 
 now bearing the title of the First Baptist Church of 
 Providence. 
 
 There is another church that disputes with this the 
 honor of being the oldest Baptist church in America. 
 Its founder. Dr. John Clarke, is one of the most inter- 
 esting characters of his time, but his early history is 
 much involved in dispute and obscurity ; the true date of 
 his birth even is unknown. According to one authority, 
 perhaps the best, he was born in Suffolk, England, Oc- 
 tober 8, 1609. We know that he was a scholar in his 
 manhood, with a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew such 
 as men seldom gained in England outside of the uni- 
 versities ; but which university he attended, and what de- 
 gree he took, are facts not as yet discovered by investi- 
 gation. An extant legal document bearing date of March 
 12, 1656, is almost the only relic of his life in England; 
 in that he describes himself as a physician of London. 
 There seems no room for doubt that he was of the Puri- 
 tan party, and that he left England to escape persecution 
 and enjoy the greater freedom of the new world. 
 
 When he reached Boston, in November, 1637, it must 
 have seemed to him that he had truly jumped from the 
 frying-pan into the fire. There had been trouble among 
 the Puritans there, and Sir Henry Vane and others had 
 been deprived of their arms and ordered to leave the 
 colony. Clarke became the leader of certain of these in 
 establishing a colony elsewhere. A constitution was 
 
394 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 drawn up and signed in March, 1638, which made the 
 law of Christ the law of this new community. An ex- 
 periment was made in New Hampsl^ire, but the climate 
 was thought too cold, and a location was sought farther 
 south. This led to the purchase from the Indians of the 
 island of Aquidneck, which was renamed Rhode Island. 
 Two settlements were formed, the northern one called 
 Portsmouth and the southern Newport. The original 
 code of laws has not been preserved, but in 1641 it was 
 " Ordered that none be accounted a delinquent for doc- 
 trine, provided that it be not directly repugnant to the 
 government or laws established." The Providence com- 
 pact limiting the authority of the magistrate to civil things 
 was made in 1639, and is the older instrument, but 
 Newport divides with Providence the honor of first 
 establishing this principle in civil government. 
 
 In the same year in which the colony was founded, a 
 church was organized in Newport, and Mr. Clarke became 
 its teaching elder, apparently from the first. What sort 
 of a church this was we do not positively know.^ There 
 is no evidence at present known to exist by which the 
 religious opinions and practices of Clarke up to this time 
 may be determined. He may have been imbued with 
 Baptist doctrine before coming to America, but there is 
 nothing in his conduct inconsistent with the theory that 
 he came here simply a Puritan Separatist, like Roger 
 Williams. Our first definite knowledge of this church 
 comes from the report made in March, 1640, by the 
 commissioners from the church in Boston. Of the faults 
 they allege, Anabaptism is not one, whence it seems a 
 safe conclusion that at this time this was not a Baptist 
 church. When and how it became such we do not know. 
 The date 1644 is purely traditional, and the first positive 
 
 •A majority had been members of Cotton's church in Boston. Winthrop's 
 /oamal shows that from September, 1638. Clarke was their preacher. 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 295 
 
 knowledge we have is October, 1648, when we know ^ 
 that a Baptist church existed in Newport, having fifteen 
 members. In 1654 or 1656 a controversy arose in this 
 church, as in that in Providence, and with a Hke result — 
 a Six-principle church was constituted, under the leader- 
 ship of William Vaughn, who had previously received 
 the rite of laying on of hands from Wickendon and 
 Dexter at Providence. 
 
 Doctor Clarke retained his connection with the church 
 he founded until his death, though much of his time 
 was absorbed by public duties. In the autumn of 1651 
 he was sent by the colonists to England, to obtain a new 
 and better charter. He remained there twelve years, 
 finding it impossible to gain his end during the Pro- 
 tectorate. Shortly after his arrival he printed his " 111 
 News from New England," which shares with Roger 
 Williams' " Bloody Tenet of Persecution," the praise of 
 advocating liberty of conscience at a time when that doc- 
 trine was decried even by those who called themselves 
 friends of liberty. Finally, what he could not procure 
 from the Cromwells he succeeded in obtaining from 
 Charles II., who on July 9, 1663, set his hand to a charter 
 that secured civil and religious liberty to the colony of 
 Rhode Island — a charter under which the State was 
 governed until the year 1843. 
 
 Returning to Newport in 1664, Clarke became one of 
 the chief citizens of the colony. He was deputy gov- 
 ernor in 1669, and again in 1671, having declined the 
 office in 1670. Soon after he retired to private life, and 
 died suddenly April 20, 1676. His services to his State, 
 and to the cause of liberty, were quite as great as those 
 of the better known Williams. But for him the charter 
 of 1663 would never have been obtained; and there is 
 good reason to infer, from internal evidence, that a good 
 
 iCallendar, " R. I. Hist Coll.," IV., 117. 
 
296 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 part of that instrument was drawn by him. He was the 
 most eminent Baptist of his time in New England, and 
 his name deserves to be held in the highest honor. 
 
 The formation of Baptist churches in Massachusetts 
 was greatly impeded by the resolute opposition of the 
 colonial authorities. A theocratic government had been 
 established, in which all rights of citizenship were denied 
 to those who were not members of the churches of the 
 Standing Order.^ From the first there were individuals 
 who came into collision with this government, by reason 
 of their Anabaptist convictions. These the magistrates 
 proceeded to deal with sharply. In 1644^ 0"^ Thomas 
 Painter, of Hingham, refused to have his child baptized, 
 and stoutly protested against such a ceremony as " an 
 anti-Christian ordinance," whereupon he was tied up and 
 whipped. In the same year, and for several years fol- 
 lowing, there are records of several presentments to the 
 Salem court of men who withheld their children from 
 baptism or argued against infant baptism. These men 
 were proceeded against on general principles, without 
 authority of law, but in November, 1644, the General 
 Court enacted a statute that whoever " shall either openly 
 condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about 
 secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use 
 thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at 
 the ministration of the ordinances, or shall deny the 
 ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful right and au- 
 thority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches 
 of the first table, and shall appear to the court wilfully 
 and obstinately to continue therein after due time and 
 means of conviction, every such person or persons shall 
 be sentenced to banishment." 
 
 ^ Order of the General Court, quoted by Wood, "History of the First 
 Baptist Church of Boston," p. 6. 
 
 ' Backus (Vol. I., p. 93) shows there was an attempt to organize a church 
 at Weymouth in 1639. 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 297 
 
 The most prominent among the violators of this law 
 was Henry Dunster. A native of Lancashire (born about 
 1612), he was educated at Magdalen College, Cambridge, 
 where he took his bachelor's degree in 1630 and the 
 master's in 1634. He probably took orders in the Church 
 of England, but his advancement was made impossible 
 by his adoption of Separatist ideas, and he decided to 
 seek a career in the new world. He arrived at Boston 
 toward the end of the summer of 1640, and in the fol- 
 lowing year he was chosen, almost by acclamation, to 
 be the president of the new college established by the 
 Massachusetts colony. For this post his learning, his 
 piety, and his skill in affairs combined to make him 
 an ideal occupant, and for twelve years he discharged 
 the duties connected with his important office with 
 universal satisfaction and applause. 
 
 In the year 1653 the birth of a fourth child brought 
 to an issue doubts that he appears to have entertained 
 for some time regarding infant baptism. He now defi- 
 nitely made known his conviction that only believers 
 should be baptized, and set forth his reasons in several 
 sermons. Great excitement was at once provoked by 
 this procedure of Dunster's, and no wonder. The denial 
 of infant baptism was a blow at the very foundations of 
 the Puritan theory of Church and State, and Dunster 
 had become a dangerous enemy of the Commonwealth. 
 Either he must be suppressed or the whole social fabric 
 of Massachusetts must be remodeled. We need not be 
 surprised that the former alternative was chosen. Dun- 
 ster was virtually compelled to resign the presidency of 
 the college, but it is possible that no further proceedings 
 would have been taken against him save for his own in- 
 discretion. He insisted on being heard during a service 
 of the Cambridge church, and set forth his views at 
 length. For the offense of thus disturbing worship. 
 
298 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 he was indicted, tried, and condemned to receive an 
 admonition from the General Court. He was also pre- 
 sented for refusal to have his child baptized, and required 
 to give surety for his further appearance in court at 
 Boston, in September, 1657. No record of further pro- 
 ceedings against him remains, and his death in 1659 
 removed him from the jurisdiction of the General Court 
 of Massachusetts. 
 
 What he thus escaped may perhaps be inferred from 
 the treatment of John Clarke, the founder of the New- 
 port church, and Obadiah Holmes, who was destined to 
 be Clarke's successor. While they were spending the 
 Lord's Day with a brother who lived near Lynn, it was 
 concluded to have religious services in the house. Two 
 constables broke in while Mr. Clarke was preaching from 
 Rev. 3 : 10, and the men were haled before the court. 
 For this offense they were sentenced to pay, Qarke a 
 fine of twenty pounds, and Holmes one of thirty pounds, 
 in default of which they were to be " well whipped." A 
 friend paid Clarke's fine, and he was set at liberty whether 
 he would or no; but on September 6, 165 1, Holmes was 
 " whipped unmercifully " (the phrase is Bancroft's) in 
 the streets of Boston, for the atrocious crime of preaching 
 the gospel and of adding thereto the denial of infant 
 baptism. 
 
 These repressive measures were quite unavailing ; Ana- 
 baptist sentiments continued to increase among the Puri- 
 tans, and in addition, immigrants began to come who 
 had been Baptists in the old country. John Myles, who, 
 as we have seen, was the founder of the first Baptist 
 church in Wales, was one of the victims of the Act of 
 Uniformity, and soon after it went into effect he and 
 a number of the members of the Ilston church came to 
 the new world and at first settled at Rehoboth. Here, in 
 1663, they organized a Baptist church, which was, in 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 299 
 
 1667, removed to a new settlement, named Swansea, in 
 memory of the city near which they had dwelt in Wales. 
 This church, the first formed in the Massachusetts col- 
 ony, has had an uninterrupted existence to this day. As 
 became its origin, it was a strongly Calvinistic body, but a 
 second Swansea church was formed in 1685 that was 
 as strongly Arminian. 
 
 The time was now ripe for an organized protest against 
 the errors of the Puritan churches, by the formation of 
 a Baptist church in Boston itself. The leader of this enter- 
 prise was Thomas Goold, or Gould, a friend of Presi- 
 dent Dunster, a resident of Charlestown. Influenced, no 
 doubt, by his friend's teaching and example, Goold re- 
 fused, ia 165s, to present an infant child for baptism, and 
 was duly admonished therefor by the Charlestown elders. 
 A course of warning, expostulation, and discipline con- 
 tinuing for ten years so far failed to convince Thomas 
 Goold of his error, that on May 28, 1665, a Baptist 
 church was organized in his house, where meetings of 
 Baptists had been held more or less regularly for sev- 
 eral years. A storm of persecution at once broke upon 
 this little band of nine, of whom two were women. The 
 Swansea church, being situated on the borders of Rhode 
 Island, was comparatively undisturbed ; not so the church 
 in Boston. At the time of its organization the Puritan 
 churches were torn by the dissensions that finally re- 
 sulted in the adoption of the Half-way Covenant ; but, as 
 in all family quarrels, both parties to the contest were 
 ready to pounce upon any intruder. Such they consid- 
 ered this new Baptist church to be, and a determined 
 effort was made to suppress it. Shortly after its organi- 
 zation the members were summoned before the court and 
 ordered to " desist from such theire meeting, & irre- 
 ligious practises, as they would Answer the contrary at 
 theire peril." 
 
^OO A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 They were not the desisting kind, however, and per- 
 sisted in teaching their " damnable errors," and holding 
 meetings, whereupon nearly all of them were at one time 
 or another, and several more than once, imprisoned or 
 fined, or both. Thomas Goold, who had become the first 
 pastor of the church, was the severest suiferer, though 
 he had several companions ; and his health was so broken 
 by his frequent and long imprisonments that he died in 
 October, 1675. In 1670 he removed to Noddle's Island, 
 and the church met in his house there, coming from 
 Boston, Woburn, and other places for the purpose. 
 
 In the latter part of the year 1678 the church began 
 to build a meeting-house in Boston, on what is now Salem 
 Street, a modest frame building, on ground owned by 
 two of the members. This was indeed flying in the face 
 of the Puritan State, and by order of the General Court 
 the marshal nailed up the doors and posted the following 
 notice upon them: 
 
 AH Psons are to take notice yt by orde of ye Court ye dores 
 of this howse are shutt up & yt they are Inhibitted to hold 
 any meeting therein or to open ye dores thereof, without lishence 
 from Authority, till ye gennerall Court take further order as they 
 will answer ye Contrary att theire p'ill, dated in boston 8th 
 march 1680, by orde of ye Councell 
 
 Edwabd Rawson Secretary. 
 
 This was, however, the last serious persecution of the 
 church. The court did not venture to enforce its order 
 beyond a single Sunday ; on the following Lord's Day the 
 doors were found open, and there was no further inter- 
 ference with the worship of the church. Before 1671, 
 while the persecution was at its height, twenty-two 
 (including eight women) had united with the church. 
 After persecution ceased the growth was naturally still 
 more rapid. Much indignation had been caused, both in 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 30I 
 
 the colony itself and in England, by the Puritan persecu- 
 tions of Baptists and Quakers — the latter suffering even 
 more than Baptists, some even to death — and there was 
 great danger that the charter would be lost. This, in 
 fact, befell a few years later. The Puritan theory had 
 broken down — a theocracy had been proved an impossible 
 form of government in New England. In 1691 a new 
 charter was given by William and Mary ; Plymouth and 
 Massachusetts Bay were consolidated into the one col- 
 ony of Massachusetts, and the charter assured " liberty 
 of conscience to all Christians, except Papists." Baptists 
 were henceforth exempt from persecution, but not from 
 taxation to support a State church. 
 
 For a long time the growth of Baptists in New Eng^ 
 land continued to be slow. The next church to be es- 
 tablished was that at Kittery, Me., the Province of Maine 
 then being part of the Massachusetts colony. Two set- 
 tlers at that place, William Screven and Humphrey 
 Churchwood, came to hold Baptist views, made their way 
 to Boston, and were baptized into the fellowship of the 
 church on June 21, 1681. Mr. Screven was licensed to 
 preach, and on his return to Kittery, organized a church. 
 He was imprisoned and fined ten pounds by the provin- 
 cial authorities for pronouncing infant baptism " no or- 
 dinance of God, but an invention of men." Finding that 
 there was no prospect of their being permitted to serve 
 God in peace, the little church of seventeen made prep- 
 arations for removal. They settled near the site of the 
 present city of Charleston, S. C, and reorganizing in 
 1684, established the First Baptist Church of that town. 
 Not for more than fourscore years was another attempt 
 made to plant a Baptist church in Maine. 
 
 Aside from a church formed among the Indians at 
 Chilmark, in Martha's Vineyard (1693), these were the 
 only Calvinistic Baptist churches formed in New Eng- 
 
302 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 land during the seventeenth century.* There were, how- 
 ever, two churches of the Arminian or Six-principle 
 order in Rhode Island— the North Kingston (1665), and 
 the Tiverton (1685). There was also a Seventh-day 
 church in Newport that had been founded in 1671. In 
 all, therefore, there were ten small churches, with prob- 
 ably not more than three hundred members, in the year 
 1700. 
 
 The only direction in which any considerable progress 
 was made for about half a century was in Connecticut. 
 There some Baptists, probably removed from Rhode 
 Island, were found early in the eighteenth century, and a 
 church was organized in 1705, at Groton, of which Val- 
 entine Wightman became the pastor. This was a Six- 
 principle church. But the churches formed at New Lon- 
 don (1710), Wallingford (1731), Southington (1738), 
 and North Stonington (1743) were either Calvinistic 
 churches from the beginning or soon became such." 
 
 This slow progress is by no means surprising. The 
 atmosphere of New England was not favorable to spirit- 
 ual vigor in the first half of the eighteenth century, and 
 the policy pursued toward Baptists there had prevented 
 immigrants of that faith from turning their faces in that 
 direction. 
 
 In the Middle States the conditions of growth were, 
 on the whole, more favorable. The only persecution ex- 
 perienced was in the colony of New York, and that was 
 for a brief time under the governorship of Peter Stuy- 
 vesant. Misled by the liberal promises of the Dutch 
 West India Company a number of Baptists had settled on 
 
 ^ There were but eight, all told» in Massachusetts at the beginning of the 
 Great Awakening (1740). 
 
 *How Connecticut felt toward Baptists may be seen from this early 
 statute: " Nor shall any persons neglect the public worship of God in 
 some lawful Congregation, and form themselves into separate companies in 
 private Houses, on Penalty of Ten Shillings for every such Offense each 
 person shall be guilty of." (" Colony Law Book," b- 139.) 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 303 
 
 Long Island, in what are now Gravesend and Flushing. 
 One of the most prominent was John Bowne, who had 
 come to this country from England in 1635, first settling 
 at Salem, Mass. He may not have been a Baptist at 
 this time, but he was a dissenter both from the Church of 
 England and the Established Church of Massachusetts. 
 He offended the Dutch authorities by his tenderness 
 towards the " abominable people called Quakers," who 
 were then being punished in New Amsterdam with little 
 less severity than was shown in New England. Bowne 
 was arrested and fined for giving aid and shelter to these 
 people, and on his refusal to pay his fine, he was banished 
 and sent by ship to Holland. 
 
 He at once appealed to the directors of the company, 
 and they promptly condemned their agent. The Dutch 
 were too hearty lovers of religious liberty, and had ex- 
 perienced too much of the horrors of the Inquisition, to 
 play for any length of time the role of persecutors. The 
 choleric and tyrannical Peter soon received orders from 
 Holland : " Let every man remain free, so long as he is 
 modest, moderate, his political conduct irreproachable, 
 and so long as he does not offend others or oppose the 
 government." But before the policy could be thus changed, 
 Baptists had suffered considerably, and later under the 
 English rule the same difficulty was experienced. The 
 first Baptist minister to labor in New York City, so far 
 as is known, was Rev. William Wickendon, of Provi- 
 dence, in 1656 ; and for these labors he was heavily fined, 
 but after an imprisonment of some months, being too poor 
 to pay the fine, he was released and banished from tht 
 colony. Whether he had succeeded in gathering a church 
 is uncertain, but if he did, it was soon scattered by per- 
 secution, for an ordinance of 1662 imposed a severe fine 
 on anybody who should even be present at an illegal 
 conventicle. 
 
304 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 The next trace of Baptists in this colony is at Oyster 
 Bay, L. I., where one William Rhodes, a Baptist minister 
 from Rhode Island, began to preach and baptize con- 
 verts about 1700. By 1724 a church had been organized, 
 and Robert Peeks was ordained pastor. Before this, 
 however, a Baptist church had been organized in New 
 York, where Rev. Valentine Wightman began to preach 
 about 171 1. One of his converts was Nicholas Eyres, a 
 wealthy brewer, in whose house the meetings were held. 
 He was baptized in 1714, a church was formed, and Eyres 
 soon became its pastor, at the same time continuing in 
 business. In spite of some persecutions and many dis- 
 couragements, they continued to flourish until internal 
 dissensions wrecked them, and not long after 1730 the 
 church became extinct. 
 
 The most important and influential of the early Baptist 
 centers was the group of churches in the vicinity of 
 Philadelphia. In 1684 Thomas Dungan gathered a 
 church at Cold Spring, Pa., but it became extinct about 
 1702. In 1688 the church at Pennepeck (Lower Dublin) 
 was organized. This church, of twelve members at the 
 beginning, had as its first pastor Elias Keach, son of the 
 well-known Baptist minister of London, Benjamin Keach. 
 The First Church of Philadelphia was founded in the 
 following year, but its members were connected wi'th 
 the Lower Dublin Church until 1746, when they were 
 formally constituted a separate and independent church. 
 The Welsh Tract Church was constituted in 1701. 
 
 The liberal offers of complete religious liberty in New 
 Jersey drew Baptists to that colony as early as 1660. 
 The first church organized was that at Middletown in 
 1688, composed mainly of those who had fled from per- 
 secution in New York and other colonies. Piscataway 
 (1689), Cohansey (1690), Cape May (1712), and Hope- 
 well (1715), were the pext to follow. Congregations 
 
Charles Haddon Spurgeon 
 
^ ..^## I *^ 
 
John M. Peck 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 30S 
 
 were also gathered at Salem, Burlington, Scotch Plains, 
 and other places, that in later years were constituted 
 separate churches. 
 
 The nucleus of each of these churches, so far as their 
 history is known, appears to have been a few men and 
 women who had been Baptists before coming to this 
 country. Others had held Baptist beliefs for some 
 years, but had never before connected themselves with 
 a Baptist church, possibly for lack of opportunity in 
 their old homes. The major part of these people were 
 English; in and about Philadelphia there were many 
 Welsh Baptists; a few came from Ireland. The affilia- 
 tions of American Baptists are thus directly with our 
 brethren of Great Britain. It is the fashion in some 
 quarters to call the church founded by Roger Williams 
 " the venerable mother of American Baptist churches." 
 She is then that anomaly in the world, a mother who 
 never bore children, for no church now existing can be 
 shown to have been established by her labors prior to 
 1800, if thereafter. The part played by Roger Williams 
 and his church in the history of American Baptists is 
 ludicrously small, when the facts are compared to the 
 ink that has been shed on the subject. 
 
 All these churches last described were in intimate fel- 
 lowship, the Philadelphia group being by common con- 
 sent the center of interest. For their mutual convenience 
 and edification, almost from their origin, a custom grew 
 up of holding " general meetings " from time to time for 
 the ministry of the word and the gospel ordinances. 
 From being held once a year, these meetings came to be 
 semi-annual, in the months of May and September. 
 These were for many years what their name implied — 
 general meetings — being attended by as many as could 
 make it convenient, and were wholly devotional and 
 evangelistic. In 1707 the meeting was for the first time 
 
3C36 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 a delegated body, five churches appointing delegates, and 
 this is the beginning of the Philadelphia Association. 
 From the first the New Jersey churches were members, 
 and as the body increased in age and strength it at- 
 tracted to itself all the Baptist churches within traveling 
 distance of it, having as members churches in southern 
 New York and Virginia. Its adoption of a strongly Cal- 
 vinistic Confession in 1742 (or possibly earlier) was a 
 turning-point in the history of American Baptists, as it 
 ensured the prevalence of that type of theology. Up to 
 this time the Arminian Baptists had been the stronger 
 in New England, and the colonies of New York and 
 New Jersey, and it was at one time probable that they 
 would control the development of the denomination. It 
 was the Philadelphia Association that turned the tide, and 
 decided the course of American Baptist history. The 
 Association speedily became the leading body among 
 American Baptists — a position it has not wholly lost to 
 this day. Pretty much everything good in our history, 
 from 1700 to 1850, may be traced to its initiative or active 
 co-operation. 
 
 During this early period little progress was made in 
 the founding of Baptist churches in the South. The 
 story of the origin of the First Church of Charleston 
 has already been told. In 1733 a schism in this church 
 caused the organization of a General Baptist church — 
 the original body being Calvinistic — and in 1736 a church 
 was formed at Ashley River, which, while a symptom of 
 growth, still further depleted the strength of the mother 
 church. In 1737 some members of the Welsh Tract 
 church went southward and established the Welsh Neck 
 church. Here, then, was a promising little group of 
 churches in one Southern colony. 
 
 The only other region where promise of growth had 
 been manifest was in Virginia. There were probably 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE COLONIES 2P7 
 
 some Baptists, certainly some people opposed to the bap- 
 tism of infants, early in the history of the colony, for 
 as early as 1661 the Assembly provided that a fine of 
 two thousand pounds of tobacco should be imposed on 
 parents who refused to have their children baptized. 
 By 1714 there had come to be a number of this persua- 
 sion in the southeastern part of the State, probably Eng- 
 lish immigrants and probably General Baptists in their 
 old home, since they appealed to this body in England 
 for help. Two ministers were sent out to them from 
 England, one of whom lived to reach the colony and 
 founded a church at Burleigh. Another church is known 
 to have existed before 1729 in Surrey County. 
 
 In the neighboring colony of North Carolina, a church 
 was formed by Rev. Paul Palmer in 1727, consisting of 
 thirty-two members, at a place called Perquimans, in 
 Chowan County. 
 
 In all, therefore, there were forty-seven Baptist 
 churches, of which we have certain knowledge, before 
 the Great Awakening, of which all but seven were north 
 of Mason and Dixon's line. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 
 
 DURING the first century of their history, American 
 Baptists did not escape the effect of that spirit 
 of worldliness which nearly paralyzed the churches of 
 the Standing Order. They were firm in adherence to 
 the true scriptural principle that the church should be 
 composed of the regenerate only, but they lived in com- 
 munities where it was hard even to get a hearing for 
 this idea. The New England community was a the- 
 ocracy, and the privileges of citizenship were enjoyed 
 only by those who were members of the church. The 
 theory of imperium and sacerdotium was not more firmly 
 insisted on, and not half so consistently followed, in 
 the relations between the medieval Church and the Holy 
 Roman Empire, as in the connection of Church and 
 State in New England. They were like the obverse and 
 reverse of a coin, two aspects of one indivisible entity. 
 The certain result of such a polity in modern Christianity, 
 as in ancient Judaism, must be to corrupt the spiritual 
 body — to destroy all distinction between regenerate and 
 un regenerate. 
 
 The adoption of the Half-way Covenant, in 1662, was 
 at once the natural result and an aggravation of the 
 state of things that had come to pass. This covenant 
 provided that those baptized in infancy were to be re- 
 garded as members of the church to which their parents 
 belonged, although not to be admitted to the communion 
 without evidence of regeneration. Such persons were 
 allowed to offer their children for baptism, provided they 
 108 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 309 
 
 publicly professed assent to the doctrine of faith, and 
 were not scandalous in life. It was not long before min- 
 isters declared that sanctification was not a qualification 
 for the Lord's Supper, but saw in it a converting ordi- 
 nance and a means of regeneration. Consequently, per- 
 sons who had been baptized in infancy, and were not 
 charged with scandalous conduct or heresy, were 
 regarded as entitled to full communion with the church. 
 
 Against this worldly condition of the church a reac- 
 tion was certain to come. It manifested itself in the Great 
 Awakening that began at Northampton, in 1734, under 
 the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, and gradually ex- 
 tended throughout the towns of Massachusetts and Con- 
 necticut. The visit of Whitefield to this country, in 1739, 
 gave a new impulse to this revival of true religion, ex- 
 tending it far beyond the bounds of New England. With 
 this second revival began a new era in the spiritual life 
 of American Christians. The leaven did not spread 
 without opposition, and among Baptists two parties were 
 formed — the " Regulars," who adhered to the old ways 
 and disparaged revivals, and the " New Lights," or 
 " Separates," who adopted the methods of Whitefield. 
 The literature of the times is full of this controversy, and 
 shows that the newer and more scriptural method of 
 preaching did not win its way to its present general 
 acceptance without bitter opposition. 
 
 Nevertheless, from this time the growth of Baptists 
 became rapid. In Massachusetts, for example, there had 
 been only eight Baptist churches organized before the 
 Great Awakening; between 1740 and 1775, when the war 
 of the Revolution began, twenty-seven new churches had 
 been formed, and in 1784 the total number had increased 
 to seventy-three, with a membership of three thousand 
 and seventy-three. Extension to the regions beyond was 
 also begun. 
 
3IO A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 The most active agent in this new advance was Heze- 
 kiah Smith. He was born on Long Island, in the town 
 of Hempstead, in 1737, but while he was still young his 
 parents removed to Morris County, N. J. Rev. John 
 Gano, at that time pastor of the church at Morristown, 
 preached at several stations near-by, and relates the fol- 
 lowing : "At one of these places there was a happy instance 
 of a promising youth (by name Hezekiah Smith), who 
 professed to be converted, and joined the church — who 
 appeared to have an inclination for education, to which 
 his parents objected. His eldest brother joined me in 
 soliciting his father, who finally consented to his receiv- 
 ing an education." Young Smith became a pupil at the 
 Hopewell Academy, the first educational institutibn es- 
 tablished among American Baptists, of which Rev. Isaac 
 Eaton was principal. He then went to Princeton 
 College, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1762. 
 
 Directly after graduation he made an evangelistic tour 
 through the Southern States — ^possibly with something 
 of a young man's desire to see the world, but still more 
 to try and improve his gifts in preaching. During this 
 fifteen months he traveled on horseback four thousand 
 two hundred and thirty-five miles, and preached one 
 hundred and seventy-three sermons. It must be admitted 
 that he was not idly traveling for pleasure. He returned 
 North to find that the Philadelphia Association had re- 
 solved to found an institution of higher learning; and 
 had selected Rhode Island as the most eligible location 
 for a college, and James Manning, Smith's classmate at 
 Princeton, as the head of the new institution. Smith 
 threw himself into this project with all the enthusiasm 
 and energy of his nature, and he was energetic and en- 
 thusiastic beyond most men, while cool-headed and ju- 
 dicious at the same time. He was successful in winning 
 the support of many who might otherwise have held 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 3 II 
 
 aloof, and was at all times the right-hand man of 
 President Manning in his laborious and difficult task. 
 
 Smith had been ordained to the ministry at Charles- 
 ton, during his Southern tour, but had accepted no pas- 
 toral charge there, and for some years he held none in 
 the North. He rather itinerated among the churches of 
 New England, preaching with much acceptance wherever 
 he went. During his journeys he visited the town of 
 Haverhill, Mass., and the pulpit of the Congregational 
 church being vacant, he was asked to preach. He re- 
 mained some weeks, and the people would gladly have 
 had him for their pastor, but he was too stanch a Bap- 
 tist for that. After he left, he was solicited to return by 
 people in the town, and when he did so a Baptist church 
 was organized, of which he was recognized as pastor 
 in 1766. It was the only pastorate of his life, and at 
 his death, in 1805, the church had become one of the 
 strongest in New England, and is now the oldest 
 surviving Baptist church north of Boston. 
 
 He was more than the faithful pastor of this church; 
 he was a missionary to the regions beyond. At that time 
 there was a great religious destitution in the newer towns 
 of New Hampshire and Maine, and the few Baptists scat- 
 tered here and there were as sheep without a shepherd. 
 Up to the outbreak of the Revolution, Mr. Smith made 
 many horseback tours through these regions, preaching 
 the gospel and gathering converts ; and it is said that at 
 least thirteen of the churches organized in those States 
 owed their existence to his labors and counsels. In his 
 later years, as well as his strength permitted, he was 
 equally earnest and effective as an evangelist. At this 
 time there were no missionary organizations among Bap- 
 tists, and what evangelizing was done was carried on in 
 this independent way. Hezekiah Smith was a whole 
 State mission society in himself, and doubtless his labors 
 
312 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 had no little to do with the organizing of the first society 
 of that kind, the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary So- 
 ciety. He was one of the most active agents in forming 
 this organization two years before his death. 
 
 We have still to consider one of the most honorable 
 episodes in Mr. Smith's history. On the outbreak of 
 the Revolution, he offered his services and was appointed 
 brigade-chaplain, with the pay and rations of a colonel. 
 Six of the twenty-one brigade-chaplains in the service 
 are known to have been Baptists ; and we have it on the 
 authority of Washington himself that Baptists were 
 " throughout America, uniformly and almost unani- 
 mously, the firm friends to civil liberty, and the perse- 
 vering promoters of our glorious Revolution." Mr. 
 Smith was in service with the army of Gates during the 
 Burgoyne campaign, and was afterward stationed at 
 various points along the Hudson with the army of Wash- 
 ington. He gained the confidence and esteem of his gen- 
 eral, as is abundantly shown by the fact that Washington 
 corresponded with him after the war. He was not a 
 fighting chaplain, but he repeatedly exposed his life in 
 order to give help and consolation to the wounded and 
 dying. His service in keeping up the morale of the army 
 was equal to that of any officer, and was so esteemed 
 by all military authorities. 
 
 Returning to Haverhill and resuming his pastoral du- 
 ties, revivals followed in the community that increased 
 the membership of the church to nearly two hundred. 
 There were then but three larger churches in New Eng- 
 land. No preacher was in more demand for services of 
 all kinds, and none was more influential in denominational 
 councils. Mr. Smith took a leading part in the organi- 
 zation of the Warren Association, the first union of Bap- 
 tist churches in New England, in the rehabilitation of 
 the Rhode Island College (soon to be known as Brown 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 3I3 
 
 University), and all other denominational enterprises. He 
 was cut off by paralysis in the midst of his usefulness, 
 having preached with unusual power on the preceding 
 Sunday, leaving behind him the memory of a man who 
 had been faithful in all things, stainless in character, and 
 foremost in all good works. 
 
 Though there had been churches formed earlier in 
 New Hampshire (Newton, in 1750, and Medbury, in 
 1768), they had proved short-lived, and Hezekiah Smith 
 established the first enduring organization in 1771 at 
 Brentwood. Other churches sprang up rapidly, and by 
 1784 there were twenty-five churches and four hun- 
 dred and seventy-six members. The church at Ber- 
 wick, Me., was organized in July, 1768, of members 
 whom Mr. Smith had baptized into the fellowship of 
 his church at Haverhill, and who had been dismissed to 
 form the new body. 
 
 The earliest churches in Vermont seem to have owed 
 their origin in part to people from the other New Eng- 
 land colonies, and in part to people from New York. 
 The oldest church now existing is Wallingford, formed 
 February 10, 1780. An older church, the Shaftesbury 
 (1768), was disbanded in 1844. By the close of the cen- 
 tury there were thirty-two churches and the membership 
 had reached one thousand six hundred. In 1784, the 
 entire strength of New England Baptists was one hun- 
 dred and fifty-one churches and four thousand seven 
 hundred and eighty-three members. Of course, these 
 figures are only approximate, though as to the number 
 of churches they are probably very nearly accurate. 
 
 The Revolution interrupted for a time the rapid prog- 
 ress that Baptists began to make after the Great Awaken- 
 ing. The results were most disastrous, as might be 
 expected, where the British occupation was longest — in 
 and about New York and Philadelphia, and through 
 
314 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 " the Jerseys." The Baptists as a whole were patriots, 
 and many of their preachers served as chaplains with 
 the American troops, as the work in their churches could 
 not be carried on with regularity. There was, however, 
 one noted exception : Scholarly, laborious, warm-hearted, 
 eccentric, choleric Morgan Edwards, one of the most in- 
 teresting of the early Baptist ministers of our country 
 and one of those most deserving of honor. His very 
 faults had a leaning toward virtue's side, and in good 
 works he was exceeded by none of his day, if indeed 
 by any of any day. 
 
 Edwards was born in Wales in 1722, and received his 
 training for the ministry at the Baptist college at Bristol, 
 England, after which he began to preach at Boston, 
 Lincolnshire. Seven years he ministered to a little flock 
 there, and then went to Cork, Ireland, where he was or- 
 dained in 1757. He remained there nine years, and then 
 returned to England. While preaching there the Baptist 
 church in Philadelphia sent to their English brethren a 
 request for a pastor. By advice of his brethren, Morgan 
 Edwards responded to this appeal, made the voyage to 
 America, visited the Philadelphia church, and became its 
 pastor for nine years (1761-1770). He was an able 
 preacher and a good man, but not always an easy man 
 to get on with. He had a trait characteristic of Welsh 
 people (and some others), which they call firmness and 
 others sometimes call obstinacy, and at various stages 
 of his career this trait got him into trouble with people 
 who were also " firm." 
 
 Before he had been in the country much more than 
 a year, Morgan Edwards induced the Philadelphia As- 
 sociation to do one of the things that most honor its 
 history. Mention has already been made of the found- 
 ing of Rhode Island College and the work of Manning 
 and Smith in connection with that enterprise. The 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 315 
 
 pioneer in the movement was Edwards. He saw at once 
 on his arrival that the weakness of American Baptists 
 was their deficiency in educational advantages. They 
 would not have been reduced to send to England for 
 him if they had had schools of their own. Others 
 agreed with him; and when he proposed the founding of 
 a college, at the meeting of the Philadelphia Association 
 in 1762, his resolution was carried without difficulty. He 
 took hold of the project with his usual ardor, and the 
 success of the project was no less due to him than to 
 Manning and Smith. He was most influential of the 
 three in enlisting the sympathies of Baptists generally 
 in favor of the college and obtaining funds for its endow- 
 ment. He made a voyage to England for the purpose 
 and brought back a large sum of money. He interested 
 his Welsh Baptist brethren especially, and one of them, 
 Doctor Richards, bequeathed to the college his library of 
 one thousand three hundred volumes. Brown University 
 has to-day, in consequence, probably the finest collection 
 of books in the Welsh language to be found in America. 
 Moreover, Edwards traveled all over the States, through 
 many years, preaching and collecting for the college. 
 
 These labors were interrupted by the war of the Revo- 
 lution, and thereby hangs a tale that is to us amusing 
 but was most vexatious to his contemporaries. You have 
 to get at some distance from things sometimes to see 
 their funny side, and this is one of those cases. Edwards, 
 it will be remembered, had not been " caught young " ; 
 he was nearly forty when he came to this country, and 
 the troubles that led to the Revolution were already 
 begun. He had not been here long enough to be really 
 Americanized when Lexington and Bunker Hill gave the 
 signal for a general rebellion against King George and 
 his tyranny, and his sympathies were naturally with the 
 country and flag of his birth rather than with the land 
 
3l6 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of his late adoption. He was almost, if not quite, the 
 only Tory among the Baptist clergy during the Revolu- 
 tion, and so found himself isolated among his brethren. 
 Not only so, but as he did not hesitate to express his 
 sentiments with his usual freedom and vigor, he soon 
 found himself the object of suspicion, not to say hostility. 
 Finally his brethren in the ministry took the matter up 
 with vigor on their side, and others joined them; and 
 Edwards was finally persuaded or intimidated into sign- 
 ing a " retraction," in which he admitted that he had 
 spoken unadvisedly, asked the forgiveness of the public, 
 and promised to avoid like offense in future. The prom- 
 ise is said to have been ill kept, however; the Welsh fire 
 would break out from time to time in spite of all promises 
 or efforts to repress it. 
 
 Such loyalty to king and country did honor to the 
 heart, if not to the head, of Edwards ; and after the in- 
 dependence of the colonies was achieved, he seems to 
 have seen a great light and became as loyal to the new 
 country as he had been to the old. He then resumed 
 his journeyings and labors, continuing them until his 
 death in 1795. 
 
 Tljese journeyings had another object besides preach- 
 ing the gospel and collecting funds for Rhode Island 
 College. Edwards was a born antiquarian, and soon 
 after coming to this country began to collect memorials 
 of the past, especially facts relating to Baptist history. 
 In his goings up and down the land — ^he visited pretty 
 nearly every one of the thirteen colonies — he made re- 
 searches among contemporary records and gathered up 
 facts from living men who recollected Baptist beginnings, 
 and Uttle by little collected his Materials toward a History 
 of the Baptists. Two volumes were printed during his 
 lifetime, and slight portions have been printed since ; but 
 a large part still remains in MS. 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 317 
 
 The first Calvinistic Baptist church in the colony of 
 New York was formed about 1740, at Fishkill, Dutchess 
 County, and from 1753 a small company of Baptists held 
 meetings in a private house. Not strong enough to 
 form a church, they became members of the church at 
 Scotch Plains, N. J., and were not constituted a separate 
 church until 1762. By this time they had become twenty- 
 seven in number, had built themselves a small house of 
 worship in Gold Street, and had called the Rev. John 
 Gano to be their pastor. Other churches were formed 
 in the Dutchess region and its vicinity, to the number of 
 ten in all, prior to 1780. From this time onward prog- 
 ress was quite rapid in the eastern and central counties 
 of the State. For a time most of these churches sought 
 and obtained membership in the Philadelphia Association, 
 and it was not until 1791 that they felt themselves strong 
 enough to form an Association of their own. 
 
 In the Southern colonies, while progress was greatly 
 interrupted by the Revolution, there was less actual dis' 
 integration of the churches, since most of these were in 
 more rural communities and were less affected by the 
 fortunes of war. After the conclusion of peace, more- 
 over, the most rapid growth of Baptists was in this 
 region. Along the Atlantic coast as far as Charleston, 
 many Baptist churches were founded by missionaries of 
 the Philadelphia Association, and were for a time mem- 
 bers of that body. Four churches thus constituted — 
 Opekon (1743, reconstituted in 1752), Ketokton (1751), 
 Smith's Creek (1756), Broad Run (1762) — formed the 
 Ketokton Association in 1766, with the full approval of 
 the mother body. A year earlier the Kehukee Associa- 
 tion had been organized by several General Baptist 
 churches in Virginia and North Carolina, but they soon 
 adopted a modified form of the Calvinistic faith. 
 
 In 1754 a company of settlers from New England 
 
3l8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 settled in Virginia and began to propagate their views 
 with vigor and great success. They were " New Lights," 
 or adherents of Whitefield and his evangeHstic methods. 
 Prominent among them were two preachers of unusual 
 gifts, Shubael Stearns and Daniel Marshall. The churches 
 founded by them became known as Separate Baptists, 
 and they grew like Jonah's gourd. The earliest of all, 
 the Sandy Creek Church, in seventeen years was instru- 
 mental in establishing forty-two others, from which one 
 hundred and twenty-five preachers were sent forth. 
 Others were only less prolific ; no wonder then that Bap- 
 tists increased greatly in the Southern States. Their 
 growth was much promoted by the healing of their di- 
 visions in 1787, Regulars and Separates uniting, on the 
 basis of the Philadelphia Confession, to form "the 
 United Baptist Churches of Christ in Virginia." 
 
 We can no longer trace the history of churches; we 
 can only mark the progress of the body now by the 
 formation of new groups of churches into Associations; 
 and soon these too became too numerous to be followed 
 in detail. The Philadelphia, as we have seen, is the 
 venerable mother of all such bodies, but her first four 
 daughters were born in the South — the Charleston 
 (1751), Sandy Creek (1758), Kehukee (1765), and Ke- 
 tokton (1766).^ The New England Associations began 
 with the Warren (1767), followed by the Stonington 
 (1772), and Shaftesbury (1780). The formation of As- 
 sociations went rapidly on, until by 1800 there were forty- 
 eight, of which thirty were in the Southern States, and 
 eight beyond the AUeghenies — six of these last being in 
 Kentucky.* 
 
 ^ This is leaving out of account a " yearly meeting " of the Arrainian 
 Baptists of New England, begun previous to 1729, and afterwards 
 developing into an Association. 
 
 'At the beginning of the Revolution American Baptists numbered less 
 than 10,000, but even approximate iigures are lacking. In 1792, according 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 319 
 
 If the figures given below are substantially accurate, 
 and for good reasons they are believed to be, the period 
 of greatest actual and relative advance among American 
 Baptists was the last quarter of the eighteenth century. 
 Several causes contributed to this result, chief among 
 them being the granting of religious liberty in all the 
 States, the missionary activity of the pioneer preachers, 
 and the harmony between the democratic spirit of the 
 people and the congregational polity of the Baptist 
 churches. Though subsequent growth has not reached 
 these unexampled figures, it has continually exceeded the 
 rate at which population increases, and that in spite of 
 the immense influx of foreign peoples, on many of whom 
 Baptists have not yet succeeded in making any perceptible 
 impression. 
 
 With the attainment of civil liberty came a spirit that 
 made men see in religious persecution the tyranny and 
 shame that it was. Virginia led the way, as became the 
 colony that first made persecuting laws, and had equaled 
 all others in the bitterness of her intolerance, if indeed she 
 had not surpassed all. In 1629 the Assembly forbade 
 any minister lacking Episcopal ordination to officiate in 
 the colony, and this rule was enforced by severe pen- 
 alties up to the Revolution. Baptists were also taxed 
 for the support of the Episcopal Church and their prop- 
 erty was seized and sold to pay such taxes. At length, 
 however, they found champions in such men as Thomas 
 Jefferson and Patrick Henry; the latter, though a mem- 
 ber of the Established Church, being too genuine a lover 
 of liberty to have any part in persecution. The first 
 
 to Dr. Rufus Babcock, there were 471 churches, 424 ministers, and 3S,ioJ 
 members. By 1800 they had increased to an estimated number of 100,000. 
 In 1850 the numbers had risen to 815,212, of whom 686,807 were " Regu- 
 lar " Baptists. In other words, in 1776 Baptists were about i to 264 of 
 the population; in 1800 they were i to 53, and in 1830 they had become 
 z in 29. 
 
320 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 patriot legislature, which met in 1776, repealed the penal 
 laws, and taxes for the support of the clergy were re- 
 pealed in 1779. It was not until January, 1786, that the 
 legislature passed an " Act for establishing religious free- 
 dom," drawn by Jefferson and powerfully advocated by 
 James Madison. 
 
 The other States more or less rapidly followed the 
 lead of Virginia. The spirit of intolerance lingered long- 
 est in New England, and it was not until 1833 that the 
 last remnant of proscriptive laws was swept from the 
 statute book of Massachusetts. And even so good and 
 wise and great a man as Lyman Beecher thought the 
 bottom had dropped out of things when his State (Con- 
 necticut) no longer compelled his unwilling Baptist 
 neighbor to contribute to his support. 
 
 The disabilities removed, the Baptist churches grew 
 apace. The secret of this growth was incessant evan- 
 )jelization. There were no missionary societies, national, 
 State, or even local. Some of the Associations did a 
 work of this kind. Thus, soon after the organization of 
 the South Carolina Association, they sent North for a 
 missionary preacher, and secured the Rev. John Gano, 
 afterward pastor of the First Baptist Church of Nev/ 
 York, and a man of note in his day. His labors in the 
 interior of the State resulted in the establishment of sev- 
 eral churches and the organization of the Congaree As- 
 sociation. But for the most part this evangelization 
 Was the work of men who were not sent forth, but went 
 forth to preach in obedience to a divine call. Many Bap- 
 tist preachers spent at least a part of their lives, if not 
 the whole of them, as itinerant preachers; and to their 
 labors was due the growth of Baptist churches in the 
 closing quarter of the eighteenth century. 
 
 As the population extended over the Alleghenies into 
 the new regions of the great West, the missionary zeal 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 32 1 
 
 of the churches kept step with the colonizing enterprise 
 of the people. Without societies or other means of or- 
 ganizing their scanty resources of men and money, they 
 pushed out boldly into the regions beyond. Many Bap- 
 tists from North Carolina and Virginia were among the 
 first settlers of Kentucky and Tennessee, and in the lat- 
 ter State their churches were organized as early as 1765. 
 By 1790 there were eighteen churches and eight hundred 
 and eighty-nine members in the State. In 1782, Baptist 
 churches were formed in Kentucky; and in 1790 there 
 were forty-two churches and three thousand and ninety- 
 five members. Baptists were among the first to enter 
 Ohio as settlers and religious workers, a church having 
 been organized at Columbia (five miles above Cincinnati) 
 in 1790,' and the Miami Association being formed by 
 four churches in 1797. In Illinois, Baptists from Virginia 
 were the first Protestants to enter and possess the land, 
 a number settling there not later than 1786. In the fol- 
 lowing year a Kentucky pastor preached there, but the 
 first church was not formed until May, 1796, at New 
 Design, St. Clair County. The first sermon on the site 
 of what is now the great city of Chicago was preached 
 October 5, 1825, by the Rev. Isaac McCoy, then a Baptist 
 missionary to the Indians of Michigan. 
 
 Many men of God went forth into this wilderness not 
 knowing where they should find a night's lodging or their 
 next meal, willing to suffer untold privations if they 
 might only point some to the Lamb of God. It is im- 
 possible to estimate too highly or to praise too warmly 
 the services of these men of strong faith and good works. 
 Their hardships were such as we of the present day can 
 hardly imagine. They traveled from little settlement to 
 settlement on horseback, with no road save an Indian 
 
 1 This chuich changed its place of worship in 1808, and was thencefortb 
 known as the Duck Creek Church. 
 
322 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 trail or blazed trees, fording streams over which no 
 bridges had been built, exposed to storms, frequently 
 sleeping where night found them, often prostrated by 
 fevers or wasted by malaria, but indomitable still. If 
 they did not wander " in sheepskins and goatskins," like 
 ancient heroes of faith, they wore deerskins ; and home- 
 spun took the place of sackcloth. Their dwelling was 
 " all out o' doors." Living in the plainest manner, shar- 
 ing all the hardships of a pioneer people, the circuit 
 preacher labored in a parish that, as one of them said, 
 " took in one-half of creation, for it had no boundary 
 on the west." One of them writes in 1805 : " Every day 
 I travel I have to swim through creeks or swamps, and 
 I am wet from head to feet, and some days from morn- 
 ing to night I am dripping with water. . . I have rheu- 
 matism in all my joints. . . What I have suffered in 
 body and mind my pen is not able to communicate to 
 you. But this I can say: While my body is wet with 
 water and chilled with cold my soul is filled with heavenly 
 fire, and I can say with St. Paul : ' But none of these 
 things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, 
 so that I might finish my course with joy.' " 
 
 In general, the preacher was kindly received, often 
 with tears of joy. The people who were running a neck- 
 and-neck race with death by starvation or freezing had 
 not much to give the itinerant minister. Even to offer 
 him food and shelter meant sacrifice, but in nearly every 
 case he was welcome to his share of whatever comforts 
 the pioneer family possessed. In the wilderness, like 
 Paul, he passed through perils many — perils by the way, 
 perils from savage beasts, perils from the savage In- 
 dians, perils from godless and degraded men hardly less 
 savage than either beast or Indian. But God, who closed 
 the mouths of the lions, was with his servant, the pioneer 
 preacher. Many died prematurely of privation and dis- 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 323 
 
 ease in this hard life, but there is no record of one who 
 died of violence. 
 
 The houses of worship in which these preachers held 
 their services were generally God's own temples — ^the 
 woods and prairies. Their libraries consisted of a Bible 
 and a hymn-book, carried in their saddle-bags. They 
 did not read polished essays from a manuscript, as their 
 degenerate successors so often do. The rough back- 
 woodsman had no use, as he phrased it, " for a preacher 
 who couldn't shoot without a rest." The preaching was 
 of a rough-and-ready sort, not always scrupulous of the 
 king's English, strongly tinged with the good, old 
 doctrines of grace — eminently evangelistic, to use our 
 modern phrase, and was richly blessed of God to the con- 
 version of their hearers. These men, uncouth as they 
 would seem now, unwelcome as they would be to the 
 pulpit of any fashionable Baptist church in our cities, 
 led multitudes to the cross of Christ, founded churches 
 in all the new communities of the West, laid the founda- 
 tions of denominational institutions, on which a magnifi- 
 cent superstructure has since been built. Let us honor 
 as he deserves the pioneer preacher of the West. We 
 who have entered into the labors of such men are noble 
 indeed if we are worthy to unloose the latchet of their 
 shoes. Time would fail to tell of such men as Ebenezer 
 Loomis, the Michigan evangelist; of James Delaney, the 
 Wisconsin pioneer; of Amory Gale, who preached over 
 one hundred thousand miles of Minnesota ; of " Father " 
 Taggart, of Nebraska; and of scores of others equally 
 worthy of undying honor. Their record is on high; 
 their names are written in the book of God's remem- 
 brance. " And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of 
 hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels." 
 
 But a still greater opportunity was before American 
 Baptists. When Thomas Jefferson became president, in 
 
324 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 1801, the United States included an area of eight hun- 
 dred and twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and forty- 
 four square miles, all to the east of the Mississippi River. 
 In 1803, Jefferson, with noble inconsistency setting aside 
 all his past record as a strict constructionist of the Con- 
 stitution, bought from France for fifteen million dollars 
 a strip of territory that more than doubled the area of 
 his country. This Louisiana purchase, as it was called, 
 added to the national domain one million one hundred 
 and seventy-one thousand nine hundred and thirty-one 
 square miles. From this territory were afterward formed 
 the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kan- 
 sas, Nebraska, Wyoming, the two Dakotas, Montana, 
 the Indian Territory, and Oklahoma, besides a con- 
 siderable part of the States of Minnesota and Colorado. 
 
 Settlement of this new region necessarily proceeded 
 very slowly for some time. The Indians were hostile and 
 threatening on the north, and the possession of the south- 
 ern part was menaced by the British. The energies of 
 the country were too much absorbed by the war of 1812, 
 the struggle to preserve the independence so hard won 
 in the Revolution, to have much surplus energy for col- 
 onization. At the battle of Tippecanoe, in 181 1, General 
 Harrison broke the power of the Indians, who were never 
 formidable again east of the Mississippi ; while " Old 
 Hickory," by his defeat of the British at New Orleans in 
 1815, forever assured the integrity of our possessions 
 against any foreign attack. Peace soon came to crown 
 these victories, and then the great westward movement 
 of population began. In a half-century the face of this 
 continent was transformed as no similar expanse on the 
 earth's surface was ever transformed in so short a time. 
 
 The unsystematic system that had been so undoubtedly 
 effective for a time was outgrown; something else must 
 be devised. Highly privileged is the man who becomes 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 32$ 
 
 an agent of God's providence in the founding of a great 
 and beneficent institution. There were many men who 
 had an honorable part in the founding of the American 
 Baptist Home Mission Society ; but if one must be chosen 
 from them who was preeminent, that one can be no other 
 than John M. Peck. He was born in Litchfield, Conn., 
 in 1789, was converted at the age of eighteen, and joined 
 the Congregational church. In 1811 he removed with 
 his wife to Windham, N. Y., and there a careful study 
 of the Bible made him a Baptist. He was almost immedi- 
 ately licensed to preach, and was ordained to the ministry 
 at Catskill in 1812. 
 
 From the first he was a missionary, his only pastorate 
 being of not much over a year's duration, at Amenia, 
 N. Y. Becoming acquainted with Luther Rice, when the 
 latter was telling abroad the story of Judson and the 
 work in India, effectually determined his bent in that 
 direction; only it was home missions, not foreign, that 
 appealed most strongly to him. In 1817 the Triennial 
 Convention commissioned him as a missionary to the 
 region west of the Mississippi, and the rest of his life was 
 spent in that work. It was a journey of one thousand two 
 hundred miles to an unknown country, almost as heathen 
 as Burma and far less civilized, that he and his then 
 took. Let us make no mistake, John M. Peck was quite 
 as heroic as Judson or Boardman. 
 
 From his arrival at St. Louis he became the apostle 
 of the West. His labors were incredible in extent and 
 variety, and though he had a constitution of iron, they 
 made an old man of him by the time he was fifty. Dur- 
 ing his first three years he had organized several 
 churches, secured the establishment of fifty schools, in- 
 troduced a system of itinerant missions, projected a col- 
 lege, and undertaken part of the support of Rev. Isaac 
 McCoy, missionary to the Indians. It was bad enough 
 
326 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 to contend with poverty, ignorance, and irreligion, but 
 in Peck's case perils from false brethren were added to 
 all the other perils of the wilderness. Anti-mission Bap- 
 tists were strong at that time in Kentucky, and began to 
 make their way into Missouri and Illinois — old high- 
 and-dry Calvinists like those with whom Carey had to 
 contend, who held that it was flying in the face of Divine 
 Providence to plead with men to come to Jesus, and such 
 new-fangled things as missionary societies were of the 
 devil. To the everlasting shame of the Triennial Con- 
 vention, it permitted itself to be influenced by the com- 
 plaints that came to it from such sources, and in 1820, 
 or soon after, all support was withdrawn from this West- 
 ern enterprise. No appeals or remonstrances served to 
 secure a reconsideration of the question, and Peck was 
 compelled to look elsewhere for help. He could not think 
 in any case of deserting the work to which God had 
 called him — a work whose importance became more clear 
 to him each year. 
 
 Had it not been for this unfaithfulness to its duty on 
 the part of the Triennial Convention, this disgraceful de- 
 sertion of a true and tried man, the Home Mission So- 
 ciety would doubtless never have been formed. Peck 
 turned first to the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary 
 Society, which made him its missionary at the munificent 
 salary of five dollars a week — no doubt all that it had to 
 give at the time. He resumed his work with fresh 
 courage and was unwearied in it, traveling all over the 
 States of Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. Then he took 
 a brief — not rest, but change of labor, by making a 
 tour of the Eastern States to interest them in Western 
 missions, returning with over one thousand dollars 
 pledged for a seminary at Rock Spring, 111., which forth- 
 with began, with him as professor of theology. Th^ 
 he added to his other enterprises the publication of a 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 327 
 
 newspaper, The Pioneer, in 1829. No wonder that his 
 health quite broke down in 1831, and he was compelled 
 to rest from his labors for a time. 
 
 Even then he was not idle — such a man could not be 
 idle. He could think and plan, if he could not actively 
 work. At just this time Elder Jonathan Going was sent 
 West by the Massachusetts Baptists to look over the field 
 and report on its needs; for three months he and Peck 
 traveled over the new States of the West, and before 
 they separated, so an entry in Peck's journal informs us, 
 they had agreed on the plan of the American Baptist 
 Home Mission Society. These two were the founders 
 of that organization. For the practical execution of the 
 plan, Going was the very man, and it was not more than 
 six months after his return before the Society was an 
 assured fact. On April 27, 1832, the new Society was 
 formed in New York, where its headquarters have since 
 remained. The motto selected for the Society was an 
 assurance that no local interests should be permitted to 
 circumscribe its sympathies or activities. 
 
 Its first work was in the Mississippi Valley. This was 
 the far West of that day; the outposts of civilization 
 were just beginning to push beyond that barrier of na- 
 ture. Here a great battle was to be fought. The popu- 
 lation of the Louisiana purchase was almost exclusively 
 Roman Catholic. We can see now that the question of 
 the supremacy of this continent, for which the Protestant 
 Saxon race and the Catholic French race long contended, 
 was fought out and settled on the plains of Abraham, in 
 1759, when Wolfe defeated Montcalm and captured the 
 stronghold of Quebec. But this was not so clear at the 
 time. Rome is an antagonist that does not know when 
 she is beaten. She recognized, indeed, that she had re- 
 ceived a severe check in the New World, but could not 
 believe it a final defeat. She dreamed that in the valley 
 
328 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 of the Mississippi, with the great advantage she already 
 had, not only all her losses might be regained, but a 
 victory might be won far surpassing her apparent defeat. 
 And who shall say that this was all dream ? As we look 
 back it seems a not unreasonable forecast, from the real- 
 ization of which only a merciful Providence saved us. 
 The fruits of Wolfe's victory might have been lost but 
 for the fact that just at the critical hour God raised 
 up such missionary and evangelizing agencies as the 
 American Baptist Home Mission Society. 
 
 During its earliest years. Elder Peck was the Home 
 Mission Society in the West — its visible embodiment, its 
 chief adviser, and local executive. Time and space would 
 fail to tell of the variety and extent of his labors. He 
 was foremost in organizing the Illinois Educational So- 
 ciety, in founding and endowing Alton Seminary and 
 Shurtleflf College; the churches, educational institutions, 
 societies of all kinds, that owe their life to him — ^their 
 name is legion. And he was not merely active; he was 
 wise, far-seeing, shrewd. He made few mistakes, and 
 his previsions of the greatness that would come to these 
 Western communities failed only in being far short of 
 the reality, daring as they seemed to his contemporaries. 
 The Baptist cause in the Middle West owes what it is 
 to-day to the work of John M. Peck more than to any 
 other score of men that can be named. 
 
 In 1856 he died, a man worn out by his labors before 
 his due time ; for though he had reached the age of sixty- 
 six — a good length of years for many men — his consti- 
 tution should have made him good for twenty years more. 
 But if other men have lived longer, few have lived 
 lives more useful or that have left greater results. If we 
 adopt Napoleon's test of greatness — what has he done? — 
 there has been no greater man in the history of American 
 Baptists than John M. Peck. 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 329 
 
 Into the New West of the " thirties " the new Society 
 moved, at first with but slender resources, yet with a 
 dauntless spirit. It became the great pioneer agency of 
 the denomination. One of its first missionaries was the 
 Rev. Allen B. Freeman, who in 1833 gathered the First 
 Baptist Church of Chicago — the first church of the de- 
 nomination to be established in what was then the North- 
 west. Call the roll of the great cities of the West — 
 St. Paul, Minneapolis, Omaha, Denver, Los Angeles, 
 San Francisco, Portland — what would the Baptist cause 
 have been in them but for this Society? In nearly all of 
 these cities, not only was the first Baptist church estab- 
 lished by this organization, but most of the Baptist 
 churches existing in them to-day owe their birth and 
 continued existence to its fostering care. Call the roll 
 of our great Western commonwealths — Illinois, Wiscon- 
 sin, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Kan- 
 sas, Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Cali- 
 fornia, Oregon, Washington — ^in every one of these this 
 Society has been the pioneer agency of the denomination 
 by from two to twenty years. 
 
 In 1845 the Society began the evangelization of the far 
 West by the sending of Rev. Ezra Fisher and Rev. Heze- 
 kiah Johnson from Iowa to Oregon. Their hardships on 
 the way were great, but they reached their destination 
 safely, and the foundations of Baptist churches were speed- 
 ily laid in that State. In 1848, before the discovery of 
 gold in California was announced in the East, Rev. O. C. 
 Wheeler was sent to San Francisco, via the Isthmus of 
 Panama; and later Rev. H. W. Read was sent overland 
 to the same destination; but on reaching New Mexico 
 he was so impressed with the importance and destitution 
 of that field that he asked and obtained the consent of 
 the Board to remain there. In the other States, mission 
 work was begun as fast as men and mean§ could be found 
 
330 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 to extend operations westward. In Kansas the Society 
 had a missionary as early as 1854, and one was sent into 
 Nebraska in 1856. The troublous times just before and 
 during the Civil War brought this advance to a tem- 
 porary standstill, but in 1864 it was again resumed, en- 
 trance having been made in that year into two States 
 — Dakota and Colorado. In 1870 Washington and 
 Wyoming were occupied, and in 1871 Montana and Utah. 
 
 What have been the results on the denominational 
 growth? They are difficult to compute. In the year 
 1832, when the Home Mission Society was organized, 
 there were in its peculiar field — ^the West — nine hundred 
 churches, a large part of them feeble and pastorless, 
 since there were but six hundred ministers, and the total 
 membership was but thirty-two thousand. In 1896 the 
 Baptist denomination in that field, and in the farther 
 West that is still more distinctively missionary territory, 
 had seven thousand four hundred and seventy churches 
 and five hundred and eighty-one thousand members. 
 
 Though the work of home missions was thus first in 
 point of time and in pressing necessity, it was not the 
 first to be organized on a permanent basis. Long before 
 this had come about, a clear providential summons had 
 come to Baptists to fulfil the Great Commission, and 
 preach the gospel to every creature. This was accom- 
 plished through Adoniram Judson, the son of a Congre- 
 gational minister of Massachusetts, who was educated 
 at Brown University and Andover Theological Seminary. 
 Through the influence of Judson and some other students 
 at Andover, the American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions was organized; and in 1812 several 
 missionaries were sent out to India, among whom were 
 Adoniram Judson and his wife, Ann Hasseltine Judson. 
 Their destination was Calcutta, where they knew some 
 English Baotist missionaries to be laboring. It seemed 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 33 1 
 
 probable to the Judsons that they would be called upon 
 to defend their own doctrines and practice in the matter 
 of baptism against these Baptists, and Mr. Judson began 
 to study the question on shipboard with his usual ardor. 
 
 The more he sought to find in the Scriptures authority 
 for the baptism of infants and for sprinkling as baptism, 
 the more convinced was he that neither could be found 
 there. Mrs. Judson also became much troubled. After 
 landing at Calcutta they sought out the English Baptist 
 missionaries, and continued their study with the help of 
 other books procured. Finally both were convinced that 
 the Baptist position was right, that they had never been 
 baptized, and that duty to Christ demanded that they 
 should be baptized. Accordingly, they were immersed 
 in the Baptist chapel at Calcutta by Rev. William Ward, 
 September 6, 1813. Shortly after, Luther Rice, another 
 appointee of the same Board, who had sailed by another 
 ship, landed at Calcutta, having undergone a precisely 
 similar experience. He too was baptized. The question 
 then arose, what were they to do? By this act, though 
 they had obeyed Christ, the.y had cut themselves off from 
 connection with the Board that had sent them forth, and 
 were strangers in a strange land, without means of future 
 support. It was resolved that Mr. Rice should return to 
 America, tell the Baptists there what had happened, and 
 throw the new mission upon them — for of abandoning 
 the work of preaching the gospel to the heathen, to which 
 they felt that God had called them, the Judsons seem 
 never to have thought. 
 
 Mr. Rice reached Boston in September, 1813 and told 
 his story. The Baptists of Boston and vicinity at once 
 became responsible for the support of the Judsons, but 
 they saw that the finger of Providence pointed to a larger 
 undertaking than this. They advised Mr. Rice to visit 
 the Baptist churches at large and try to interest them in 
 
332 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 this work. To their honor be it written, the Baptists 
 of that day did not hesitate for an instant. They were 
 poor and scattered, and the country was just beginning 
 Its second struggle for independence. No time could have 
 been less propitious for the launching of a new enter- 
 prise, especially one projected on so large a scale as this. 
 But our fathers were men of faith and prayer and good 
 works ; they obeyed the voice of God and went forward. 
 With great enthusiasm they responded to the appeals of 
 Mr. Rice ; considering their relative poverty, the contribu- 
 tions were liberal ; missionary societies sprang up all over 
 the land ; the denomination for the first time had a com- 
 mon cause, and became conscious of its unity and its 
 power. 
 
 The need was at once felt of some one central organi- 
 zation that would unite these forces in the missionary 
 cause, and after mutual counsel among the officers of 
 several existing bodies, a meeting was called for the or- 
 ganization of a national society. This meeting was held 
 at Philadelphia in May, 1814, and resulted in the forma- 
 tion of " The General Convention of the Baptist Denomi- 
 nation in the United States for Foreign Missions." The 
 constitution declared the object to be to direct "the 
 energies of the whole denomination in one sacred effort 
 for sending the glad tidings of salvation to the heathen, 
 and to nations destitute of pure gospel light." From the 
 circumstance of its meeting once in three years, this 
 body was popularly known as the " Triennial Conven- 
 tion," though that was never its official title. It con- 
 tinued to be the organ of the denomination for its foreign 
 work until 1845. 
 
 The Baptist churches of the entire country were rep- 
 resented in its organization and conduct and support. 
 Its first president was Richard Furman, of South Caro- 
 lina. There was, however, considerable opposition, not 
 
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 333 
 
 by any means confined to any one section, to this new mis- 
 sionary movement. Many Baptist churches held a form 
 of Calvinistic doctrine that was paralyzing to all evangeli- 
 cal effort. Their doctrine of the divine decrees was 
 practically fatalism : when God was ready to convert the 
 heathen, he would do so without human intervention; 
 and to send out missionaries for this purpose was an 
 irreverent meddling with the divine purposes, as repre- 
 hensible as Uzzah's rash staying of the ark of God when 
 it seemed about to fall. Consequently, from this time 
 onward the Baptists of the United States became di- 
 vided into two parties, missionary Baptists and anti- 
 missionary Baptists. The latter were at first equal, if 
 not superior, in numbers to the former; in some districts 
 the anti-mission Baptists were largely in the majority. 
 But a doctrine and practice so discouraging of practical 
 effort for the salvation of men produced its legitimate 
 results in a generation or two, by reducing the number 
 of anti-mission Baptists to nearly or quite the vanishing 
 point in the greater part of the United States. Remnants 
 of the sect still survive, and in a few Southern States 
 the churches are still quite strong. Their total number 
 has for years been given at about forty thousand in 
 denominational statistics, but the census of 1890 states 
 their total membership as one hundred and twenty-one 
 thousand three hundred and forty-seven. Though they 
 long since practically disappeared from the Northern 
 States, they have a few churches in almost every State 
 of the Union, except the newer ones beyond the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 The first mission established by the General Convention 
 was in Burma, whither the Judsons went in 1813, because 
 the intolerance of the British East India Company de- 
 nied them the privilege of laboring in India, the land 
 of their first choice. The work began at Rangoon in 
 
334 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 July, 1813, but it was not until July, 1819, that the first 
 convert, Moung Nau, was baptized. The war between 
 England and Burma broke out just as the work began to 
 prosper, and for three years Judson and his devoted wife 
 suffered incredible tortures of body and spirit. After 
 the war the mission came under British protection and 
 prospered. Doctor Judson continued to preach and teach 
 until his death, and gave the Burmans the Scriptures 
 in their native tongue. 
 
 The work in Burma has not been so prosperous among 
 the Burmans as among the Karens, a people living in 
 the hill districts. Among them the gospel has made 
 great progress from the establishment of the mission by 
 Rev. George Dana Boardman, in 1828. A mission in 
 Arracan was established in 1835, and one in Siam in 
 1833. In 1834 Rev. William Dean began a mission at 
 Bangkok among the Chinese of that city. In 1842 Mr. 
 Dean left on account of his health, and began a mission 
 in Hong Kong. A mission was established in Assam in 
 1836, and in 1821 two Negro missionaries were sent out 
 to Liberia. These were practically all of the missions 
 among the heathen begun and carried on during the 
 history of the General Convention. Several European 
 missions, however, belong to this period — ^the missions 
 to France, Germany, Denmark, and Greece. Of these, 
 something more will be said in another chapter. 
 
 These beginnings of foreign missionary work by Ameri- 
 can Baptists were largely blessed in the extension of the 
 work among the heathen ; but it may be doubted whether 
 the reflex blessing on the Baptist churches of this country 
 was not the larger blessing of the two. Never was the 
 Scripture better illustrated than in the history of Baptists 
 in the United States : " There is that scattereth and yet 
 increaseth; there is that withholdeth more than is meet, 
 but it tendeth to poverty." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 
 
 PAUL the apostle enumerates "perils among false 
 brethren " as not the least of the trials that befell 
 him in preaching the gospel. So Baptists found it in the 
 first half of the nineteenth century. One controversy 
 fraught with peril to their churches began in New Eng- 
 land before the century opened. It was, indeed, the nat- 
 ural, almost the necessary, result of the Great Awaken- 
 ing. Just as the Reformation of Luther produced the 
 counter-reformation of Loyola, so the Edwards-White- 
 field revival produced the Unitarian reaction — ^produced 
 in the sense of precipitating, not in that of original causa- 
 tion. Unitarianism had, for some time, been in solution 
 in New England, and the revival caused it to crystallize 
 into visible form. What had been a tendency became 
 a movement; a mode of thinking became a propaganda; 
 the esoteric doctrines of a few became the openly avowed 
 basis of a sect. We can only glance at this interesting 
 topic as we pass by, its place in this survey of Baptist 
 history being justified merely by the fact that the New 
 England Baptists stood as a chief bulwark against the 
 heresy. In 1800 two of the six orthodox churches left 
 in Boston were Baptist, while eight Congregational 
 churches and one Episcopal church had gone over bodily 
 to Unitarianism. Samuel Stillman and Thomas Baldwin 
 were the pastors of these two churches during these 
 troublous times, and no two men did more than they 
 to resist false doctrines by preaching the truth. In- 
 deed, throughout New England it is said that not one 
 
 335 
 
336 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Baptist church forsook the faith, and not one Baptist 
 minister of note became a Unitarian. This stanch or- 
 thodoxy of the Baptists had a profound effect on the 
 history of American Christianity, as will be pointed out 
 in another connection. 
 
 A controversy more serious in its results upon the 
 denomination was that which grew out of the question 
 of the circulation of the Scriptures. In the year 1816, 
 the American Bible Society was formed by delegates rep- 
 resenting seven denominations of Christians. There had 
 been local Bible Societies previous to this time. This 
 organization was intended to be a national society, in 
 which all American Christians might co-operate. Its 
 formation was due to the success of the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society, the organization of which in 1804 
 was directly owing to the agency of Rev. Joseph Hughes, 
 an English Baptist. The Baptists of America were active 
 in the work of the Society from the first, and contrib- 
 uted generously to its treasury. The object of the So- 
 ciety was avowed, at the time of its organization, to be 
 "the dissemination of the Scriptures in the received 
 versions where they exist, and in the most faithful where 
 they are required." In accordance with this principle, 
 for the first eighteen years of its existence the Society 
 appropriated money from its funds for the printing and 
 circulation of versions of the Scriptures in many lan- 
 guages, made by missionaries of various denominations. 
 
 Perhaps Doctor Judson's greatest service in the cause 
 of missions was the translation of the entire Bible into 
 the Burmese language. It was his life-work, and remains 
 to this day the only version of the Scriptures in that 
 tongue.* All competent witnesses have borne testimony 
 
 ' It is true that in recent years copies of the Scriptures have been put 
 in circulation in Burma in which baptizo and its cognates are transliterated 
 or mistranslated; but these are not independent versions, only Fedobaptist 
 revisions of the Judson Bible. 
 
\1'V 
 
 Adoniram Judson 
 
The Haystack Monument 
 
THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 337 
 
 from the first to the faithfulness and elegance of his 
 translation. The New Testament was printed at Moul- 
 mein in 1832, and the Old Testament two years later. 
 Appropriations for this purpose were made by the Ameri- 
 can Bible Society. It wao well understood on all hands, 
 through official communications and otherwise, that the 
 missionaries sent out by the American Baptists, in all 
 their versions of the Scriptures endeavored to ascertain 
 the precise meaning of the original text and to express 
 that meaning as exactly as possible, transferring no 
 words into the vernacular for which a proper equivalent 
 could be found. In accordance with this principle. Doctor 
 Judson's version rendered baptizo and its cognates by a 
 Burman word meaning to immerse, or dip. During this 
 same period appropriations were voted for the circula- 
 tion of other missionary versions, made by other than 
 Baptist missionaries, yet made on the same principle of 
 translation, though they did not agree with Judson as 
 to the meaning of baptiso. In 1835 the propriety of 
 this course was for the first time questioned. In that 
 year application was made to the Society for an appro- 
 priation to aid in printing and circulating a version of the 
 Scriptures in Bengali, made on the principle of Doctor 
 Judson. 
 
 This application was discussed in committee and in 
 the full Board for many months. The Baptist members 
 of the Board vainly urged that the Society had already 
 appropriated eighteen thousand dollars for the circula- 
 tion of Doctor Judson's version, with full knowledge of 
 its nature; that this was the only version in Burmese 
 in existence, and that the alternative was either to cir- 
 culate this or deprive the Burmese of the gospel; and 
 that the adoption of another rule introduced a new and 
 necessarily divisive principle into the Society's policy. At 
 length, by a vote of twenty to fourteen, the managers 
 
338 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 rejected the application and formulated for the guidance 
 of the Society a new rule regarding versions — that they 
 would " encourage only such versions as conformed in 
 the principle of their translation to the common English 
 version, at least, so far that all the religious denomina- 
 tions represented in this Society can consistently use and 
 circulate said versions in their several schools and com- 
 munities." At its next annual meeting in May, 1836, the 
 Society approved the action of the managers. 
 
 Of course this decision made it impossible for Baptists 
 to co-operate with the Society except at the sacrifice of 
 their self-respect. In April, 1837, a convention was held 
 in Philadelphia, composed of three hundred and ninety 
 delegates from twenty-three States, and the American 
 and Foreign Bible Society was organized. Doctor Cone 
 being elected president. Dr. Charles G. Sommers, of 
 New York, was the first corresponding secretary, and 
 William Colgate the first treasurer. From the first there 
 was difference of opinion among the supporters of this 
 Society on one question, namely, the making of a new 
 Version of the Scriptures in English. Baptists were prac- 
 tically a unit in maintaining that all new versions into 
 foreign languages should faithfully render every word 
 of the original by the corresponding word of the ver- 
 nacular. But many Baptists doubted the expediency, and 
 still more questioned the necessity, of making a new 
 version in our own tongue. The discussion of this ques- 
 tion went on until May, 1850, when, after long and 
 warm debate, the Society voted to circulate only received 
 versions in English, without note or comment. 
 
 In the following June the American Bible Union was 
 organized. Its object was declared to be " to procure 
 and circulate the most faithful versions of the Scriptures 
 in all languages throughout the world." The principle 
 of translation adopted by the Union was to render 
 
THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 339 
 
 every word of the original Scriptures into the vernacular 
 word which would most nearly represent its meaning 
 as determined by the best modern scholarship. This work 
 was prosecuted with much energy, and revised versions 
 of the Scriptures were printed and circulated in Spanish 
 and Italian, Chinese, Siamese, and Karen. The Union 
 also issued a version of the New Testament in English, in 
 1865, which has since passed through several careful 
 revisions and is a most faithful, accurate, and idiomatic 
 translation. It may still be had of the American Baptist 
 Publication Society, and every Baptist should possess a 
 copy; for, however much the King James' version may 
 commend itself for use in public and private devotions, 
 this more literal rendering is of the greatest service to 
 one who would understand exactly what the New Testa- 
 ment teaches. From time to time parts of the Old Testa- 
 ment also have been published, and eminent scholars are 
 now completing a translation, with notes, of the remain- 
 ing books, under the auspices of the American Baptist 
 Publication Society.^ 
 
 Fierce denominational conflicts resulted from this di- 
 vision of effort among Baptists regarding the Bible work. 
 Many continued from the first to co-operate with the 
 American Bible Society, especially in the circulation of 
 the received English versions. The remainder who took 
 any interest in Bible work were divided in their affec- 
 tions between two organizations, and the participants 
 of each waged a hot warfare against the others. At every 
 denominational gathering the strife broke out. The 
 newspapers of the denomination were full of it, and in 
 time the churches became heartily tired and showed their 
 sentiments by discontinuing their contributions. As the 
 receipts dwindled and the work contracted, efforts were 
 
 ^The work at tbis time (igo6) is being pushed forward, and it is hoped 
 that another year will vitness Jts completion. 
 
340 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 made from time to time toward a reunion of the Ameri- 
 can and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible 
 Union, and one or both Societies tried to effect a union 
 with the American Baptist Publication Society. These 
 efforts, which continued from 1869 to 1880, and even 
 afterward, proved complete failures. 
 
 Finally, the whole question of Bible work, as done by 
 the Baptists, was referred to a Bible convention, in which 
 the denomination at large should be represented; and 
 such a convention was held at Saratoga in May, 1883. 
 It was unanimously decided to recommend both the ex- 
 isting Bible Societies practically to disband, and to com- 
 mit the Bible work on the home field to the American 
 Baptist Publication Society, while that on the foreign 
 field should be done by the American Baptist Missionary 
 Union. This was felt on all hands to be a happy decision 
 of the vexed question, and since that time the denomina- 
 tion has enjoyed a season of peace, at least as regards 
 the question of its Bible work. 
 
 To one reviewing the controversy after this interval 
 of time it seems tolerably plain that while the course 
 taken in 1836 was the only one that could have been ex- 
 pected under all the circumstances, it would have been 
 better for the peace of the denomination and the effect- 
 iveness of its Bible work in the long run if a separate 
 denominational Bible society had never been undertaken. 
 There is not sufficient interest among Baptists in the 
 translation and circulation of the Scriptures — probably 
 there is not in any single denomination — ^to sustain a 
 society that exists for that sole purpose. The project of 
 circulating a denominational version of the Scriptures in 
 English has been tested once for all and proved to be a 
 disastrous failure. The version was successfully made 
 and possesses many merits, but it could not be circulated ; 
 Baptists could neither be forced nor coaxed to use it 
 
THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 34 1 
 
 They were greatly the losers and are still by reason of 
 this apathy, but we must take the facts of human nature 
 as we find them; and one fact now unquestioned is that 
 the attachment of English-speaking Christians to the ver- 
 sion of the Scriptures endeared to them by long use and 
 tender association has proved to be too strong for the 
 successful substitution of any other. 
 
 No controversy was more disastrous to the Baptist 
 churches of the Middle States than the anti-Masonic 
 struggle between the years 1826 and 1840. One William 
 Morgan, a Mason, who had published a book purporting 
 to expose the secrets of the order, suddenly disappeared 
 in 1826, and was believed to have been foully dealt with. 
 A body was discovered and identified as his, though the 
 identification has always been regarded as doubtful. Ex- 
 citement against the Masons, and secret fraternities gen- 
 erally, rose high, until the dispute became a political issue 
 in State and even national elections, and the churches 
 took the matter up. In a large number of Baptist 
 churches the majority opposed secret fraternities, declar- 
 ing them to be unscriptural and dangerous to the peace 
 and liberties of the Commonwealth. In many cases the 
 minority were disfellowshiped, and not a few flourishing 
 churches were crippled, or even extinguished, while the 
 growth of all was much retarded. The lessons of that 
 period have taught American Baptists to be chary of 
 interfering through church discipline with questions not 
 strictly religious, and to beware of attempting to settle 
 by an authoritative rule questions of conduct which it is 
 the right and duty of each Christian man to decide for 
 himself. Thus, while at the present time, the majority 
 of Baptists strongly favor total abstinence as a rule of 
 personal conduct, and prohibition as a practical policy, 
 in very few churches is either made a test of fellowship. 
 
 The Baptist churches of the South and West were 
 
342 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 much disturbed during the second quarter of this century 
 by the agitation that culminated in the establishment of 
 the Disciples as a separate body. Up to that time the 
 churches of these regions, to a considerable extent, held 
 a hyper-Calvinistic, almost antinomian, theology. The 
 preaching was largely doctrinal, and was not edifying 
 to the majority of the hearers, however much it might 
 be enjoyed by a few. Since the revival of 1800, religious 
 experiences in this region had been attended with much 
 emotional disturbance. Christians professed to see vis- 
 ions, to hear heavenly voices, and to experience great 
 extremes of grief and joy. Undue importance came to be 
 attached to experiences of this type, and the relation of 
 a series of vivid and emotional phenomena approaching 
 the miraculous was considered an almost indispensable 
 requisite before the acceptance of a candidate for baptism. 
 
 About the year 1815 certain preachers in Western 
 Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky began to preach what 
 they called a reformation. The professed object was to 
 return to the simplicity of the New Testament faith and 
 practice. The Scriptures alone were to be the authority 
 in this reformation, whose motto was, " Where the 
 Scriptures speak, we speak; where they are silent, we 
 are silent." All human creeds were rejected, candidates 
 for baptism were not required to relate any experience, 
 but merely to profess faith in Christ, a faith that was 
 little, if anything, more than a mere assent of the intellect 
 to the facts narrated in the Scriptures concerning the 
 historic Christ. On such profession the candidate was 
 baptized " for remission of sins," the teaching 'being that 
 only in such baptism could he receive the assurance that 
 his sins had been pardoned. 
 
 The foremost leader in promoting this reformation 
 was Alexander Campbell, of Scotch ancestry and train- 
 ing, at first a Presbyterian of the Seceder sect, who had 
 
THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 343 
 
 been baptized on profession of faith by a Baptist minister 
 in 1812, and from that time onward maintained for some 
 years a nominal connection with the Baptist denomina- 
 tion. Very early, however, he manifested marked differ- 
 ences of opinion from the views then and since held by 
 the majority of Baptists; and it soon became evident 
 either that the faith and practice of the denomination 
 must undergo a remarkable change, or Mr. Campbell 
 and those who agreed with him must withdraw. 
 
 When in 1827, through the influence of Rev. Walter 
 Scott, the practice of baptism " unto remission of sins " 
 became a recognized feature in the reformation, Baptists 
 who saw in this nothing but the old heresy of baptismal 
 regeneration, promptly bore testimony against it. The 
 Mahoning Association, of Ohio, was so deeply perme- 
 ated by the new teaching that it disbanded, and the 
 churches followed Messrs. Campbell and Scott almost in 
 a body. The Redstone Association, of Western Pennsyl- 
 vania, withdrew fellowship from Mr. Campbell and his 
 followers in 1827. Two years later the Beaver Associa- 
 tion, of the same region, issued a warning to all Baptist 
 churches against the errors taught under the guise of a 
 reformation, and in 1832 the Dover Association, of Vir- 
 ginia, advised Baptist churches to separate from their 
 communion " all such persons as are promoting contro- 
 versy and discord under the specious name of reform- 
 ers." This advice was given on the ground that the 
 doctrines taught were " not according to godliness, but 
 subversive of the true spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, 
 disorganizing and demoralizing in their tendency, and 
 therefore ought to be disavowed and resisted by all the 
 lovers of sound truth and piety." Twenty years after, 
 Rev. Jeremiah B. Jeter, one of the ablest Baptist op- 
 ponents of the Disciple movement, and one of the authors 
 of this resolution, published it as his belief that the 
 
344 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 report adopted by the Dover Association contained " some 
 unguarded, unnecessarily harsh expressions," and par- 
 ticularly acknowledged that this characterization of the 
 doctrines of Campbell as " demoralizing in their tend- 
 ency " was unjust. After the action of the Dover Asso- 
 ciation those who sympathized with Mr. Campbell either 
 voluntarily withdrew from the Baptists or were disfel- 
 lowshiped by them, and in a decade the separation was 
 complete. 
 
 The effect of this separation was very great. The new 
 reformation had been started, ostensibly at least, with 
 the desire of uniting all Christian denominations. Its 
 practical result was the addition of another to the already 
 long list of sects. The Baptist churches in the West 
 and Southwest were rent in twain by the schism. Large 
 numbers of Baptist churches went over to the reforma- 
 tion in a body. Many others were divided. A period of 
 heated and bitter controversy followed, the results of 
 which have not yet passed away. Tht Baptist churches 
 succeeded in separating themselves from what they 
 rgarded as dangerous heresy, but at a tremendous 
 cost; and in our own day the Baptists and the Disciples 
 (as the followers of Mr. Campbell prefer to be called) 
 have so nearly approached agreement that the sons of 
 the men who fought hardest on either side are already 
 discussing the question whether terms of reunion are not 
 possible, without either party sacrificing any real 
 principle.^ 
 
 But perhaps the most bitter controversy of all, cer- 
 tainly that which left behind it the deepest scars and 
 most permanent alienations, was that which arose over 
 the question of slavery. This was not an experience 
 
 ^ It must be said, however, that thus far the discussion of this question 
 has thrown no great light upon the possibility of a reunion, and that the 
 immediate occurrence of such an event cannot be predicted with 
 hopefulness. 
 
THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 345 
 
 peculiar to Baptists; nearly every religious body in 
 America was rent by the same contentions, and in most 
 cases permanent schisms were the result. 
 
 When the General Convention was organized, this was 
 by no means a burning question. Slavery had been orig- 
 inally common to all the colonies, and the people of New 
 England had done their full share toward introducing 
 and perpetuating the system. Perhaps the eyes of North- 
 ern people were more readily opened to the iniquities of 
 slavery because the system never proved profitable in the 
 North. Whether owing to this or other causes, an anti- 
 slavery sentiment spread through the Northern States to 
 an extent sufficient to induce them to emancipate their 
 slaves early in the nineteenth century. About the year 
 1825 the new anti-slavery sentiment in the North, de- 
 manding immediate emancipation, became prominent, and 
 from January i, 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison is- 
 sued his first number of the " Liberator," this sentiment 
 rapidly spread. It met with much opposition, and soon 
 the Garrisonian anti-slavery agitation placed itself in di- 
 rect antagonism to the Christian churches of the North. 
 Nevertheless, there was a growing sentiment among the 
 churches, and especially among the Baptist churches, that 
 a Christian man ought not to be a holder of slaves. This 
 agitation became the cause of division even among the 
 Baptist churches of the Northern States, and naturally 
 threatened the peace and unity of the denomination as 
 a whole. 
 
 Differences of opinion regarding the slavery question 
 appear in the minutes of the General Convention for 
 several years before the final break. These appeared to 
 reach the culminating point in the year 1844. The ques- 
 tion of the relation to slavery of Baptist churches repre- 
 sented in the Convention came up during the meeting 
 of that year for thorough discussion, and after careful 
 
346 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 consideration the Convention almost unanimously adopted 
 the following: 
 
 Resolved, That in co-operating together as members in this 
 Convention in the work of foreign missions, we disclaim all 
 sanctions either expressed or implied, whether of slavery or 
 anti-slavery; but as individuals we are free to express and to 
 promote elsewhere our views on these subjects in a Christian 
 manner and spirit. 
 
 This certainly was the only possible method of treat- 
 ing the question if denominational unity was to be pre- 
 served. Had the terms of that resolution been fairly 
 adhered to, it is possible that the peace and unity of the 
 Baptist churches might have been preserved, at least 
 until the outbreak of the Civil War. But its terms were 
 not respected. Up to this time the rule for the appoint- 
 ment of missionaries by the Board of the Convention 
 was to approve " such persons only as are in full com- 
 munion with some church in our denomination, and who 
 furnish satisfactory evidence of genuine piety, good tal- 
 ents, and fervent zeal for the Redeemer's cause." This 
 was certainly the only proper rule to be adopted by an 
 institution representing all the Baptist churches of the 
 United States — the only rule under which all those 
 churches could unite in its support. The Executive Board 
 had received a mandate from the Convention in 1844 to 
 preserve this attitude of neutrality. Nevertheless, in the 
 following December, in response to a question addressed 
 to it by a Southern body, the Executive Board made the 
 following reply, which was, in fact, the adoption of a 
 new rule : " If any one who should offer himself for a 
 missionary, having slaves, should insist on retaining them 
 as his property, we could not appoint him. One thing 
 is certain, we can never be a party to an arrangement 
 which would imply approbation of slavery." 
 
THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 347 
 
 No doubt the Board was actuated by conscientious 
 motives in making such a reply, but it is easy now to 
 see that they misjudged their duties as Christian men. 
 They were the agents of the body that appointed them, 
 and were under moral obligation to obey its commands. 
 In making this rule they flagrantly disobeyed. If they 
 felt as Christian men that obedience to the higher law of 
 God forbade them to carry out their instructions, their 
 honorable course was to resign. There is no adequate 
 defense of their conduct in thus disobeying the plain 
 mandate they had received from the Convention only a 
 few months before. At its meeting in April, 1845, the 
 American Baptist Home Mission Society, moved by 
 a similar conflict of sentiment and the majority of its 
 attendants being Northern men, adopted resolutions de- 
 claring it to be " expedient that the members now form- 
 ing the Society should hereafter act in separate organiza- 
 tions at the South and at the North in promoting the 
 objects which were originally contemplated by the So- 
 ciety." These two acts on the part of Northern Baptists 
 rendered the maintenance of denominational unity 
 impossible. 
 
 In May, 1845, in response to the call issued by the 
 Virginia Foreign Mission Society, three hundred and 
 ten delegates from the Southern churches met at Au- 
 gusta, Ga., and organized the Southern Baptist Conven- 
 tion. Its constitution was precisely that of the original 
 General Baptist Convention : " For eliciting, combining^ 
 and directing the energies of the whole denomination in 
 one sacred effort for the propagation of the gospel." 
 It established two Boards, one for foreign missions, lo- 
 cated in Richmond, and one for domestic missions, at 
 Marion, Ala. Since that time the Southern Baptist 
 churches have done their missionary work through this 
 organization. During the Civil War the need was greatly 
 
348 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 felt of some means of effectually prosecuting Sunday- 
 school work and a Sunday-school Board was established 
 at Greenville, S. C. In 1872 this was consolidated with 
 the Home Mission Board. 
 
 The division thus caused has remained until the pres- 
 ent time. There have been occasional propositions for 
 a reunion between Northern and Southern Baptists, but 
 they have met with little favor either North or South. 
 The opinion has been general that more and better work 
 is accomplished between the two organizations than could 
 be accomplished by a single Baptist Convention for the 
 whole United States. But Northern and Southern Bap- 
 tists are not, as some apparently delight to say, two sep- 
 arate denominations. The churches, both North and South, 
 hold substantially one system of doctrine, agree in all im- 
 portant points of practice, receive and dismiss members 
 from each other without question, and are in full, unre- 
 stricted, uninterrupted intercommunion. The old cause 
 of bitterness and disunion, the question of property in 
 slaves, has disappeared. The generation that caused the 
 breach of denominational unity has nearly disappeared. 
 Those who are now the leaders of the Baptist hosts, both 
 North and South, are largely men who have been born 
 since the Civil War or were too young to have a vivid 
 recollection of it, and they have little part in or sym- 
 pathy with the ante-bellum controversies, misunder- 
 standings, and bitterness. Such causes of estrangement 
 as still remain are diminishing with every year, and if 
 separate organizations are maintained or shall hereafter 
 be formed for any kind of denominational work, it will 
 be not because of mutual hostility and narrow sectional 
 feeling, but because, in the judgment of cool-headed and 
 judicious men, the work of our Lord may be more ad- 
 vantageously and efficiently accomplished by such division 
 of labor. 
 
THE DAYS OF CONTROVERSY 349 
 
 After the Southern Baptists withdrew from the General 
 Convention, acts of legislature were obtained in Penn- 
 sylvania and Massachusetts, authorizing the changing of 
 its name to the American Baptist Missionary Union, and 
 fixing its headquarters at Boston. The Union is now 
 composed of delegates appointed by the churches on a 
 fixed basis. The most important business is transacted 
 by a Board of Managers (of whom one-third are elected 
 at each annual meeting), and an Executive Committee 
 chosen by this Board. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 EVANGELISM AND EDUCATION 
 
 AS was pointed out before, the line of demarcation 
 between the periods of American Baptist history is 
 uncertain, and dates cannot be positively fixed. Over- 
 lapping the period of rapid growth and missionary ex- 
 tension, ending at the latest about the year 1850, is a 
 movement of another sort, manifesting itself in the 
 spiritual quickening and edification of the churches. For 
 nearly a half-century after the Great Awakening there 
 had been no marked revivals of religion. Then a great 
 revival wave, beginning in New England about the year 
 1790, swept over the whole country within the next ten 
 years. In the Southwest it was marked by a fanaticism 
 and a series of remarkable physical phenomena that 
 tended to bring revivals into disfavor with the sober- 
 minded and judicious. Thereupon ensued another period 
 of inaction, lasting about a generation. It was broken 
 by the revivals of Finney, through whose agency in the 
 ten years following 1825 there were added fully one 
 hundred thousand persons to the Northern Presbyterian 
 churches. The year 1857 saw an even more remarkable 
 wave of revival, from the influence of which no part of 
 the country was exempt, and a half-million are said to 
 have been converted in a single year. 
 
 Since then the norm of church life seems changed. 
 No longer do we have periodic waves of intense religious 
 excitement, with intervening periods of coolness and in- 
 difference, but a slowly rising tide of spiritual power. 
 Progress is no longer by occasional leaps, but by a steady 
 3SP 
 
EVANGELISM AND EDUCATION 35 1 
 
 advance. Evangelism is not less genuine now than in 
 the days when a Finney or a Knapp stirred whoje com- 
 munities as they never were stirred before, but now an 
 evangelist preaches weekly from nearly every pulpit. The 
 type of preaching has changed; it is simple and direct; 
 it aims more consciously at the conversion of men. It 
 is more intelligently adapted to reach the will through 
 the intellect and affection, and to produce an immediate 
 decision for or against Christ. Whether the change is 
 permanent it would be rash to pronounce. The names 
 of Moody and Sam Jones, unfitting as it is in other 
 ways for them to be pronounced together, testify to the 
 fact that both at the North and at the South it is still 
 possible to interest great crowds in religion, and that 
 occasional revivals may be expected rivaling all that we 
 read of in past years. 
 
 The large place filled by local and State work during 
 the past fifty years should be by no means overlooked, 
 for it is one of the chief factors in Baptist progress. 
 The State Conventions or general Associations now or- 
 ganized in every State are missionary bodies, whose use- 
 fulness it would be difficult to overrate. In the Baptist 
 Missionary Convention of the State of New York, one 
 of the oldest and most active of these bodies, will be 
 found a good type of all. The object of this Convention 
 is declared in its constitution to be " To promote the 
 preaching of the gospel, and the establishment and main- 
 tenance of Baptist churches in the State of New York; 
 to encourage the common educational interests of the de- 
 nomination within the State, the general care and en^ 
 couragement of denominational Sunday-school work, to 
 promote denominational acquaintance, fellowship, and 
 growth." Forty-three local Associations are found in 
 the territory of this Convention. Many of the local As- 
 sociations — which in the oldest States usually follow 
 
3 52 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 county lines — do a similar work, and often on a scale not 
 inferior to that of the State organization, though in a 
 field more circumscribed. Of these the Southern New 
 York Association is a good type. Organized for " The 
 cultivation of fraternal sympathy, the promotion of each 
 other's spiritual welfare, and the establishment and 
 strengthening of Baptist churches within its bounds," its 
 churches have long maintained efficient city mission work 
 in the metropolis, to which is largely due the past and 
 present growth of the New York Baptists. 
 
 Another chief distinguishing feature of American Bap- 
 tist history is the remarkable development of educational 
 work. Almost from the first. Baptists felt the necessity 
 of a better education for their children, and especially 
 for the rising ministry. An academy was established by 
 the Rev. Isaac Eaton, at Hopewell, N. J., in 1756, and 
 continued its work for eleven years. It even obtained 
 a small endowment through the aid of the Philadelphia 
 and Charleston Associations, which was, however, lost 
 during the Revolution through the depreciation of Con- 
 tinental money. During the continuance of its work, one 
 of its pupils was James Manning ; his conversion occurred 
 while he was at the academy, and is to be ascribed under 
 God to his teacher. If the Hopewell Academy had done 
 nothing more than give the world James Manning, it 
 would be entitled to the gratitude of Baptists for all time. 
 But it also gave us a man only less distinguished and 
 useful than he, Hezekiah Smith, and many other eminent 
 ministers and laymen were among its pupils. Similar 
 private schools of a like grade were established in other 
 places by Baptists; among them one at Lower Dublin 
 (now in Philadelphia) by Dr. Samuel Jones, one in New 
 York by Doctor Stanford, and one at Bordentown, N. J. 
 by Dr. Burgess Allison. 
 
 About 1750 some Baptists in the Philadelphia Associa- 
 
EVANGELISM AND EDUCATION 353 
 
 tion began to consider seriously the project of founding 
 a higher institution of learning. Few Baptist students 
 could avail themselves of the advantages offered by the 
 existing colleges, which were besides strongly anti-Bap- 
 tist in sentiment and often in teaching. For various 
 reasons it was difficult to obtain a charter for such an 
 institution from the legislatures of New York, New Jer- 
 sey, or Pennsylvania. Consequently, though the project 
 for the new college originated in the Philadelphia As- 
 sociation, the eyes of the brethren were turned toward 
 Rhode Island as the State most likely to grant the Bap- 
 tists a liberal charter for a college. They looked about 
 for a suitable head of such an institution, and found it 
 in James Manning, who had gone in 1758 from Hope- 
 well Academy to Princeton College, and was graduated 
 four years later with the second honors of his class. 
 Shortly after his graduation he married Margaret Stites, 
 the daughter of a ruling elder of the Presbyterian church 
 in Elizabethtown, who proved " an help meet for him " 
 indeed. Ar-year was spent in travel through the country, 
 and when Manning returned he found his life-work ready 
 for him. 
 
 Manning was a young man to take the lead in such an 
 enterprise, it is true, but was greatly esteemed for his 
 prudence and good sense, of fine presence and good re- 
 pute as a scholar, in every way fitted to be an educational 
 leader. He met the Baptists of Rhode Island, or some 
 of their representative men, at Newport, in July, 1763. 
 He unfolded his plan, and it met with their acceptance. 
 A charter was drafted, and after some legislative pitfalls 
 were successfully avoided, it was enacted in February, 
 1764. It provided that the president, twenty-two trus- 
 tees, and eight fellows were forever to be Baptists, but 
 the remaining trustees of the thirty-six were to be of the 
 different denomina,tions then represented in the State: 
 
354 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 while four fellows were to be elected " indifferently of 
 any or of all denominations." To all positions in the fac- 
 ulty save that of president, and to all other honors and 
 advantages, persons of all religious denominations were 
 to be freely admitted. Such a charter, while it gave to 
 the denomination that founded the institution perpetual 
 control of it (as was but right), was in perfect harmony 
 with the spirit of religious liberty that had characterized 
 the colony of Rhode Island from the first. 
 
 The college began giving instruction in Warren in 
 1766, Mr. Manning being president and professor of lan- 
 guages; and that year the institution had one student. 
 The college celebrated its first commencement September 
 7, 1769, when the degree of bachelor of arts was con- 
 ferred on seven young men. In 1770 the people of 
 Providence subscribed four thousand two hundred dol- 
 lars for the erection of University Hall, and the college 
 was removed to that city. In 1776 the capture of the 
 city by the British made necessary the suspension of in- 
 struction, which was not resumed until 1780, the college 
 building being used much of the time by the British as 
 a barracks. Doctor Manning continued his labors as 
 president until his death, in 1791. During the greater 
 portion of the time he was also pastor of the First Bap- 
 tist Church of Providence. In 1804 the name of the 
 institution (at first Rhode Island College) was changed 
 to Brown University, in honor of Nicholas Brown, its 
 generous benefactor. This, the oldest and best-known 
 Baptist institution of learning, has a long and distin- 
 guished roll of alumni and a property valued at two and 
 a half million dollars, besides an endowment of nearly 
 three millions. 
 
 Very soon the need of more distinctively theological 
 education was felt, but for some time nothing was done. 
 Th^ Newton Theological Institution owes its origin to a 
 
EVANGELISM AND EDUCATION 355 
 
 meeting of ministers and laymen held in Boston, 1825. 
 Its early years were marked by difficulties and debt, but 
 at length a permanent endowment was secured. It has 
 graduated or instructed over eight hundred students, and 
 among its alumni are many of the most useful and dis- 
 tinguished preachers and teachers of the denomination. 
 Another New England institution is Waterville College, 
 Maine, which was founded in 1818 by the Rev. Jeremiah 
 Chaplin, as the outcome of a private school maintained 
 by him at Danvers. The collegiate charter was granted 
 in 1820. The early history of the institution was one of 
 continual struggle with adversity, but of late years it has 
 found generous friends. In recognition of the benefac- 
 tions of one of these, Gardner Colby, the name was 
 changed, in 1867, to Colby University; and still later the 
 ambitious name of university was changed into the more 
 modest and truthful title, college. 
 
 New England Baptists have been wiser in their day 
 than those of most other sections, by providing liberally 
 for secondary or academic education. Thus Colby has 
 three Maine academies closely connected with it as feed- 
 ers, while New Hampshire and Vermont have each a 
 flourishing academy. Worcester Academy, in Massa- 
 chusetts, and the Suffield Literary Institute, in Connecti- 
 cut, care for the Baptist youth of those States, and are 
 among the principal sources whence Brown University 
 derives students. The educational system of New Eng- 
 land Baptists therefore stands on a solid foundation; 
 they have not committed the error of resting the pyramid 
 on its apex. 
 
 In the Middle and Western States, and to some extent 
 in the South, there has not been this unity of action in 
 educational matters. Early in the present century a new 
 development of interest in education was manifest among 
 the Baptists which took form in the organization of 
 
356 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 education societies. One of the first of these was formed 
 at Hamilton, N. Y., in 1817, and the following year 
 Jonathan Wade was admitted a student of the new in- 
 stitution. President Garfield said once that his idea of 
 a college was Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and a 
 young man at the other. That was about how the Ham- 
 ilton Literary and Theological Institution began; at one 
 end was Daniel Hascall, at the other Jonathan Wade. 
 The second student to join this infant institution was 
 Eugenio Kincaid. Soon others came, and in 1820 the 
 institution was opened to the public and formal instruction 
 began. 
 
 Another institution that belongs to this early period 
 is the Columbian College, at Washington. It owes its 
 origin, like so many of our best denominational agencies, 
 to the Philadelphia Association. As far back as 1807, 
 Dr. William Staughton began to receive students into his 
 household. He continued this work for a series of years, 
 partly on his own account, partly as an appointed " tutor " 
 of the Baptist Education Society of the Middle States. 
 Finally, at the instance of the Rev. Luther Rice, the 
 General Convention took the matter up, and undertook 
 the establishment of a higher institution of learning, es- 
 pecially for the training of ministers. This movement 
 resulted in the chartering of the Columbian College (now 
 University) in 1821, and the removal of Dr. Staughton's 
 school to Washington as the " theological department " 
 of the new college. The hope of establishing a school 
 at Washington for the training of ministers proved futile, 
 and this theological department was finally transferred 
 to Newton, at its establishment in 1825. 
 
 The school at Hamilton, in 1834, developed into the 
 Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution. In 1846, 
 the literary department was chartered as a university, 
 its name being changed to Madison University, the 
 
EVANGELISM AND EDUCATION 357 
 
 theological seminary being maintained as a separate insti- 
 tution, but in harmony with the college. The village of 
 Hamilton was thought by many Baptists to be an unsuit- 
 able site for a denominational school, and in 1847 an 
 effort was made to remove it to a better location. 
 
 The city of Rochester offered special inducements, and 
 was decided upon as the new site. But a party rallied 
 to the defense of the old site, discussions grew warm, 
 passionate feelings were excited, and the end was a di- 
 vision — part of the faculty and supporters going to found 
 a new institution, since known as the University of 
 Rochester. The new institution opened its doors to stu- 
 dents in 1850. April 6, 1853, Martin Brewer Anderson 
 was chosen president, and filled the office with conspicu- 
 ous ability until 1888. David J. Hill, then president of 
 Bucknell University, was elected his successor, and 
 resigned in 1895. After an interregnum of several years. 
 Prof. Rush Rhees, of the Newton Theological Institution, 
 was chosen president, and assumed his duties in 1900. 
 
 The Rochester Theological Seminary was an outgrowth 
 of the same movement, but had a separate existence from 
 the first, though for a time it had quarters in the Uni- 
 versity buildings, and some men taught in both faculties. 
 The Seminary was founded in 1850 by the New York 
 Baptist Union for Ministerial Education, and in 1853, 
 Dr. Ezekiel G. Robinson was elected president. At his 
 resignation, in 1872, Rev. Augustus Hopkins. Strong was 
 chosen to be his successor. A German department was 
 organized in 1854, and has ever since been triaintained. 
 
 In the meantime the friends of the institution at Hamil- 
 ton rallied to its support and gradually increased its 
 endowment. The family of William Colgate have repeat- 
 edly been its munificent benefactors, and in honor of 
 them the institution was named Colgate University in 
 1890. Thus, out of seeming misfortune has come some 
 
358 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 good. Still this division of the New York institution 
 has been marked by a corresponding division among the 
 churches, part of which have supported the one and part 
 the other. The old bitterness has somewhat subsided of 
 late years, but it is in the highest degree unfortunate 
 that the present generation should seem willing to 
 perpetuate divisions caused by the unwisdom and 
 contentiousness of their fathers. 
 
 This experience has been duplicated in several West- 
 ern States, and rival institutions have been founded in 
 excess of educational needs, with the result of making 
 all poor and inefficient, where a single strong institution 
 might have been established. So serious had become the 
 lack of unity, and the consequent waste of money and 
 labor, that there was organized at Washington, in May, 
 1888, an American Baptist Education Society, under 
 whose leadership it is to be hoped that the mistakes of 
 the past may be avdided. Its great achievements thus 
 far have been assisting the Southern and Western insti- 
 tutions to add to their endowments, and the founding of 
 the new University of Chicago, through the liberality 
 of Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Though established so re- 
 cently as 1890, this university has already property 
 amounting to nearly or quite ten millions and an endow- 
 ment of nearly equal amount. This accomplishment in 
 so short a period may be justly termed phenomenal. 
 
 We can do little more than name the principal schools 
 of learning founded by Baptists during the last half- 
 century ; if it were attempted to give even a brief sketch 
 of the career of each, these chapters would stretch out 
 to quite unwieldy proportions. The following should 
 at least be named : Baptist Union Theological Seminary, 
 Morgan Park, 111. (1867);^ Crozer Theological Sem- 
 inary, Upland, Pa. (1868) ; Southern Baptist Theological 
 
 ^ Since 1890 the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. 
 
EVANGELISM AND EDUCATION 359 
 
 Seminary, Louisville, Ky. (1858); Bucknell Univer- 
 sity, Lewisburg, Pa. ( 1846) ; Columbian University, 
 Washington, D. C. (1821); Richmond College, Rich- 
 mond, Va. ( 1832) ; Denison University, Granville, Ohio 
 (1832). Vassar College, founded in 1861, at Pough- 
 keepsie, N. Y., by the beneficence of Matthew Vassar, is 
 the best endowed college for women in the world. The 
 omission of other names does not imply that institutions 
 equally worthy and doing excellent work do not exist in 
 many parts of our land. 
 
 One of the most striking things in the recent religious 
 history of America has been the development of work 
 among and for the young. The Sunday-school was es- 
 tablished as a department of church work early in the 
 present century, and from about the year i860 societies 
 for young people began to be formed almost simultane- 
 ously in most of the evangelical churches. There was 
 nothing like a concerted movement, however, for another 
 twenty years. 
 
 In the Williston Congregational Church, of Portland, 
 Me., a society was formed February 2, 1881, to which 
 the name was given of " The Society of Christian En- 
 deavor." It attempted to organize the young people in 
 a closer relation to the church than had been general, and 
 to train them for Christian service. The idea was catch- 
 ing, and societies of this kind were rapidly organized 
 in many localities and among various denominations. 
 
 Not a few Baptist pastors desired a society that should 
 be more distinctively denominational in character, and 
 have a denominational name; and for a time there was 
 much discussion and even prospect of serious trouble in 
 the denomination. In October, 1889, at the meeting of 
 the Nebraska State Convention, the Nebraska Convention 
 of Baptist Young People was organized, and all societies 
 of Baptist young people in the State were invited to 
 
360 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 affiliate with it, without giving up the name or form of 
 organization that they preferred. At the instance of the 
 American Baptist Publication Society a conference of 
 friends of the work was held in Philadelphia, April 22, 
 1 89 1, as a result of which this policy was commended to 
 the Baptist churches at large. Accordingly, at Chicago, 
 on July 8 of the same year, the Baptist Young People's 
 Union of America was organized on a basis so broad 
 that any society of young people in a Baptist church, 
 or the young people of a Baptist church who have no 
 organization, are entitled to all its privileges. 
 
 The distinctive work of this organization is educational. 
 In its organ, " Service," it publishes every year three 
 courses of study on the Bible, missions, and denom- 
 inational teachings and history. These Christian Cul- 
 ture Courses are now pursued by many thousands of 
 young Baptists, the number of students increasing every 
 year, and several of the courses of study have been pub- 
 lished in permanent book form. It is the hope and ex- 
 pectation that the coming generation of Baptists will be, 
 as a result of this educational work, more intelligent, 
 consistent, and loyal Baptists, and not less catholic Chris- 
 tians. Several other denominations have watched this 
 work with growing interest, and are planning something 
 of a similar nature for their own young people. 
 
 Chief among the educational institutions of the de- 
 nomination may be reckoned the American Baptist Pub- 
 lication Society. Beginning at Washington, D. C, in 
 1824, as the Baptist General Tract Society, its transfer 
 to Philadelphia was voted in November, 1826. In 1840 
 its name was changed to the American Baptist Publica- 
 tion and Sunday-school Society (the word Sunday-school 
 being dropped in 1844), and the purposes of the organi- 
 zation were enlarged, being now defined as " to promote 
 evangelical religion by means of the printing-press. 
 
EVANGELISM AND EDUCATION 361 
 
 colportage, and the Sunday-school." In 1856 the Society 
 acquired by purchase the " Young Reaper," and from that 
 time added other Sunday-school periodicals to its list, un- 
 til it has reached its present proportions and immense cir- 
 culation. In the earlier years of the Society, its work of 
 publication was necessarily confined in the main to books 
 and papers for Sunday-schools; but it was never a part 
 of its plan thus to restrict the field of its operations. 
 As early as 1844, the publication of books for the de- 
 nomination at large was begun by the issue of an Ameri- 
 can edition of the writings of Andrew Fuller, the first 
 of a long list of books of the highest value and of many 
 varieties. Contrary to a general impression for many 
 years, the bulk of the Society's issues has been in this 
 field of general literature, not in Sunday-school publica- 
 tions. With the increase of capital and the gathering of 
 a corps of authors, the Society has come to take an hon- 
 orable and prominent place among the great publishing 
 houses of the United States, as estimated by the size and 
 value of its annual literary output ; while the enlargement 
 and improvement of its mechanical facilities has enabled it 
 to vie with the foremost of American publishers in all that 
 constitutes good book-making. The query, " Who reads 
 a Baptist book ? " has become as obsolete as that other 
 question, once so provocative of wrath, " Who reads an 
 American book?" Besides its colportage work in this 
 country, the Society has from time to time engaged in 
 foreign colportage, men like Oncken, Wiberg, and Bickel 
 having been aided in this way to carry on missionary 
 work in Europe. Since 1862 this work has been con- 
 ducted by a missionary department, with separate offices 
 and separate accounts. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 
 
 IN order to appreciate the Baptist history of the past 
 fifty years, we must first of all gain as vivid and accu- 
 rate a picture as we may of the state of the Baptist 
 churches of America at the middle of the nineteenth 
 century. Naturally our first resort is to statistics, but we 
 speedily discover that no really trustworthy figures are 
 accessible.^ The only statistics of the denomination for 
 the year 1850 are taken from the Baptist Almanac for 
 the following year, and are as follows : 
 
 CHURCHES MINISTERS MEMBERS 
 
 Northern 3,557 2,665 296,614 
 
 Southern 4,849 2,477 390,807 
 
 Total 8,406 5,142 687,421 
 
 These figures are open to much suspicion. In a table, 
 many times republished, which first appeared in the Bap- 
 tist Year-Book for 1872, the following totals are given 
 for the year 1851 : Churches, nine thousand five hundred 
 and fifty-two; ministers, seven thousand three hundred 
 and ninety-three; members, seven hundred and seventy 
 thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine. So great an 
 increase in a single year as is shown by a comparison 
 of these figures, particularly in the number of churches 
 and ministers, appears quite improbable. We may, how- 
 
 ' Until 1868, when the American Baptist Publication Society began issuing 
 the " Year Book." nothing like official denominational statistics were known, 
 and it is only in an accommodated sense that the ** Year Book " figures 
 since that date may be called " official." 
 16" 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 363 
 
 ever, take seven hundred thousand as approximately the 
 number of Baptists in the United States in 1850. The 
 census of that year returned the total population as 
 twenty-three million one hundred and ninety-one thou- 
 sand eight hundred and seventy-six. There was at that 
 time, therefore, one Baptist to about thirty-two persons 
 in the population — reckoning only those in full denomina- 
 tional fellowship. If we had included all the varieties of 
 Baptists in our computation, the total number would be- 
 come not fewer than eight hundred thousand (the Baptist 
 Almanac gives eight hundred and fifteen thousand two 
 hundred and twelve), and the proportion would be about 
 one in twenty-nine of the population. This was a very 
 marked increase from the year 1800, when the propor- 
 tion is supposed to have been one Baptist to every fifty- 
 three persons, or thereabouts. It is further to be noted 
 that in making these comparisons, only actual reported 
 members of Baptist churches are included. If we com- 
 puted " adherents," at the rate of three for each member, 
 it would probably be true that in 1850 one person in 
 each eleven of the population was a Baptist in esse or 
 in posse. 
 
 But even if one could trust these numerical results as 
 precisely accurate, they would give us a most inadequate 
 idea of the condition of Baptists in 1850. We need to 
 know many facts besides mere numbers. What was the 
 measure of the piety and intelligence of these people? 
 How did they compare in evangelistic and missionary zeal 
 with other Christian bodies? Were they united in their 
 efforts or disorganized by heresy and faction? The an- 
 swer to such questions as these will go further to decide 
 the strength of a denomination than an array of figures, 
 however imposing. This is what some have meant by 
 saying that a denomination must not only be counted, but 
 weighed. 
 
364 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Perhaps the most striking fact, as we survey the de- 
 nomination in 1850, is that it had just emerged from a 
 period of prolonged and bitter controversies, which had 
 resulted in a number of schisms. In spite of these con- 
 tests, Baptists had continued to increase with wonderful 
 rapidity, far outstripping the growth of population, and 
 surpassed in numerical increase by the Methodists alone 
 of all American Christians. This growth was not due to 
 immigration, as in the case of many religious bodies; 
 nor to proselytism, as in the case of certain others; but 
 to the making of converts among the native population. 
 
 As to the state of piety and intelligence among Bap- 
 tists in 1850, it is not easy to speak in general terms that 
 will be at once accurate and just. In intelligence, they 
 may be conceded to have been inferior to some other 
 denominations, notably to the Presbyterians, inferior to 
 the standard that now obtains among themselves. It 
 would be shame to them if it were not so. If all the 
 educational advantages enjoyed by this generation have 
 not set them above their fathers, then those fathers toiled 
 and sacrificed in vain for unworthy children. The stand- 
 ard of piety was high among the Baptist churches of 
 1850. The fathers believed heartily in the fundamental 
 Baptist principle of a regenerate church; and candidates 
 for membership were subjected to a thorough and search- 
 ing examination of the grounds of their belief that they 
 had been born again. And in most cases, the fathers in- 
 sisted strenuously that a profession of regeneration should 
 be avouched by a godly walk and conversation. Dis- 
 cipline was not one of the lost arts among Baptist 
 churches in the " fifties." 
 
 Most important of all — at any rate, most striking of 
 all things that may be said of the Baptists of 1850 — is 
 the fact that they had unconsciously come to the begin- 
 ning of a new order of things. Up to this time, or near 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 365 
 
 it, Baptists had been the sect everywhere spoken against 
 — the Ishmael among denominations, every man's hand 
 against it, and to a certain extent its hand against every 
 man. Before this, Baptists had everywhere been few in 
 numbers, composed chiefly of what are contemptuously 
 called "the common people," often persecuted, always 
 despised, frequently unlearned. Now they had become 
 the largest Protestant body but one in the United States ; 
 they surpassed most other bodies in the scope and ef- 
 fectiveness of their missionary operations; they were 
 rapidly increasing in wealth, intelligence, and social con- 
 sequence. In a word, it was actually becoming respect- 
 able to be a Baptist. Only those who have carefully 
 studied the beginnings of the denomination, in our own 
 country and elsewhere, can fully comprehend how much 
 that means. Some can remember communities where, 
 since 1850, it was not quite respectable to be a Baptist— 
 where to be a member of that denomination was to incur 
 a social stigma of which most who live to-day have had 
 no personal experience. 
 
 Fifty years of history — what have they brought forth 
 for the Baptists of America? We are to consider the 
 half-century most wonderful for the rapidity of its ma- 
 terial development in the history of mankind, and the 
 country in which this development has been unmatched 
 elsewhere on the globe. To these five decades belongs 
 almost wholly the growth of the mighty West, with its 
 fourteen new Commonwealths containing a greater popu- 
 lation to-day than the whole United States could boast 
 in 1810. Nor is the religious development of this vast 
 region one whit less wonderful. How far have Baptists 
 kept pace with both? 
 
 Again let us have recourse to statistics, as a beginning. 
 The actual population of the United States in 1900 
 was seventy-four million six hundred and ten thousand 
 
366 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 five hundred and twenty-three, or, including all the 
 Territories, seventy-six million three hundred and three 
 thousand three hundred and eighty-seven. The denom- 
 inational statistics shovi^ that four million one hundred 
 and eighty-one thousand six hundred and eighty-six per- 
 sons were members of regular Baptist churches — or one 
 Baptist to every eighteen of the population. If we add 
 those churches which, though not in full fellowship, may 
 be fairly said to hold and practise Baptist principles, the 
 proportion is about one in sixteen. If we add " adher- 
 ents " — ^those connected with Baptist families, congre- 
 gations, Sunday-schools — one person in every seven or 
 eight of the entire population may be reckoned a Baptist 
 in sentiment. 
 
 In the way of numerical increase, what could be more 
 gratifying to a religious body? The population has in- 
 creased about three and one-third fold during the last 
 half-century, while, in the same time. Baptists have in- 
 creased in numbers almost sixfold — nearly twice as fast 
 as the population. 
 
 This is the counting; now for the weighing. Has the 
 increase in piety, in intelligence, in wealth, in missionary 
 zeal, kept pace with this growth of numbers ? In many of 
 these particulars, if not in all, it is possible to answer 
 the question with an emphatic " yes." It is, in truth, 
 speaking soberly, to say that the numerical increase of 
 Baptists during the last fifty years is the least striking 
 feature of their history. To present the subject with any 
 approach to adequate fulness would require a volume; 
 but it is possible, even within the limits of this chapter, 
 to indicate the facts that warrant this assertion. 
 
 Consider then, in the first place, the progress in edu- 
 cation made by the denomination in fifty years. In 1850 
 Baptists had in the East five institutions of collegiate 
 grade: Brown University (1764), Waterville College, 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 367 
 
 now Colby (1818), Madison University, now Colgate 
 (chartered in 1846, but really founded in 1819), Colum- 
 bian University (1821), and Lewisburg University, now 
 Bucknell (1846). Most of these names were prophecies, 
 which have not yet been fulfilled; there was not then, 
 anywhere in the United States, an institution that de- 
 served the name university. The combined buildings 
 and endowments of the five institutions named would be 
 considered in these days not too large a " plant " for 
 one good academy. There were, in addition, two theo- 
 logical seminaries — that at Hamilton (1817), and the 
 Newton Theological Institution (1825). In the West 
 and South there were sixteen other institutions ^ of nom- 
 inally collegiate grade (several of which were not in re- 
 ality above academic), all struggling to keep the breath 
 of life within them, all practically unendowed. Possibly 
 I have overlooked some institution that then had a name 
 to live, but had little else, and soon ceased to have even 
 that. There are no statistics of these schools, but it is 
 hazarding little to say that the total invested funds of all 
 would not have exceeded five hundred thousand dollars. 
 There was at this time no theological institution in the 
 West, but a theological department was maintained at 
 several of the colleges for the instruction of candidates 
 for the Baptist ministry.^ 
 
 The provision for academic education was even more 
 scanty in 1850. It is true that of existing Baptist acade- 
 mies, nine were established prior to that year, and that an 
 unknown number had been begun and had come to an 
 
 1 These are: Baylor College and Baylor University (both 1845), Denison 
 (1831), Franklin (1834), Georgetown (1829), Howard (1841), Kalamazoo 
 (1833), Limestone (S. C, 1845), Mercer (1837), Richmond (1832), Shurt- 
 leff (1827), Southern Female College (two of same name, both Ala., 1842, 
 1843), Southwestern Baptist University (Tenn., 1845), Wake Forest (1843), 
 William Jewell (1849). 
 
 'These have all been discontinued except the one at ShurtleS, but a 
 new one has been lately established at Baylor. 
 
368 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 untimely end before that date, but in their beginnings 
 at least most of these academies were private schools, 
 and are not at the middle of the century to be reckoned 
 among denominational facilities for education. 
 
 The year 1850 marks the beginning of a really great 
 work in the foundation and equipment of schools of learn- 
 ing by Baptists. The following decade saw the estab- 
 lishment of twenty-three colleges and two theological 
 seminaries, beginning with the two institutions at Roch- 
 ester. In the " sixties " three more seminaries were 
 founded, thus completing the denominational provision 
 for theological education, but only eight colleges were 
 added, three of which were schools for the freedmen, 
 established after the close of the Civil War. The last 
 three decades have been the period of most rapid increase 
 in educational facilities. The " seventies " saw the ad- 
 dition of fourteen colleges, of which six were for the 
 freedmen ; in the " eighties " twelve colleges were es- 
 tablished, only one of which was for the Negro race; 
 and fifteen colleges have been added during the last ten 
 years, including the greatest of all Baptist institutions — 
 the University of Chicago. 
 
 But here again weighing is no less necessary than 
 counting, for the mere multiplying of institutions is not 
 necessarily educational progress. It is not needful to 
 deny, rather would one affirm, that good judgment has 
 not always been characteristic of those who brought 
 these schools into being. But whatever lack of wisdom 
 Baptists have shown in the founding of denominational 
 colleges, the one thing that is not shown is lack of ap- 
 preciation of the value of higher education. And there- 
 fore, on the whole, a Baptist has no reason to be ashamed 
 of the record. The zeal to found has in most cases been 
 followed by the zeal to endow. Of the ninety-two schools 
 of collegiate grade now existing, it is true that fifty-three 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 369 
 
 are wholly without endowment; but on examination it 
 proves that these are mainly of three classes: schools 
 very recently founded, schools for the Freedmen, and 
 Southern schools for young women — which last have al- 
 ways depended for support on the tuition fees received 
 from their patrons, like the " seminaries " for young 
 women in the North. All but about half a dozen of the 
 unendowed colleges come under one of these heads. 
 
 But it is still true that the movement to secure ade- 
 quate endowment for these institutions has been com- 
 paratively recent. The earliest educational statistics are 
 found in the Baptist Year-Book for 1872. According to 
 this table, there were then nine theological schools (two 
 of them departments in colleges), with endowments 
 amounting to one million sixty-nine thousand dollars 
 (an average of over one hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
 lars each for the seminaries proper), and other prop- 
 erty worth eight hundred and twenty-three thousand dol- 
 lars. There were twenty-eight colleges, with a total en- 
 dowment of two million three hundred and seventeen 
 thousand nine hundred and fifty-four dollars (an average 
 of less than one hundred thousand dollars each), and 
 other property valued at two million six hundred and 
 sixty-four thousand dollars. There is no report of aca- 
 demic institutions, but such a report appears the fol- 
 lowing year (1873). Thirty-one institutions are named 
 (some of which have since been transferred to the col- 
 legiate list), of which three had endowments aggregating 
 but sixty-five thousand dollars, and the rest were utterly 
 unendowed ; the whole number reporting property valued 
 at one million two hundred and three thousand seven 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 The statistics for 1880 show an advance that is highly 
 gratifying, but hardly surprising. There are now re- 
 ported eight theological schools, with endowments of one 
 
370 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 million three hundred and thirty-seven thousand eight 
 hundred and twenty-six dollars, and property amounting 
 to one million seven hundred and fifty-one thousand two 
 hundred and four dollars ; thirty-one colleges, with three 
 million two hundred and forty-three thousand six hun- 
 dred and forty dollars in endowments, and other prop- 
 erty valued at seven million three hundred and thirty-six 
 thousand and seventy-four dollars; forty-nine schools of 
 academic grade, with four hundred and twenty-two thou- 
 sand two hundred and thirty-five dollars endowment, and 
 two million five hundred and seventy thousand one hun- 
 dred dollars in other property. In the next decade the 
 advance is yet more notable. In 1890 the tables show 
 seven seminaries with endowments almost double those 
 of 1872 (two million sixty-nine thousand eight hundred 
 and one dollars), while the other property very little ex- 
 ceeded that reported in 1872 (nine hundred and forty-six 
 thousand one hundred and thirty-four dollars). This 
 last rather surprising item proves, on analysis, to be due 
 to more conservative estimates of the value of the prop- 
 erty. For example, Newton reported buildings and other 
 property to the value of four hundred thousand dollars 
 in 1872, but in 1890 these are sjet down at only one hun- 
 dred and twenty-six thousand three hundred dollars. 
 There are also tabulated returns from thirty-one colleges, 
 with endowments of five million five hundred and ninety- 
 six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one dollars, and 
 other property worth four million eight hundred and 
 thirty-one thousand eight hundred dollars; thirty-two 
 schools for women only, having six hundred and sixty- 
 eight thousand five hundred and seventy-seven dollars in 
 endowment, and two million seventy-one thousand and 
 thirty-eight dollars in general property; forty-six acad- 
 emies with seven hundred and fifty-eight thousand six 
 hundred dollars endowments and one million eight 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 37 1 
 
 hundred and sixty thousand nine hundred and eighteen 
 dollars in property; besides seventeen schools for the 
 Freedmen and Indians, with only nominal endowments, 
 amounting in all to fifty-four thousand six hundred dol- 
 lars, and other property valued at eight hundred and two 
 thousand three hundred and twenty-five dollars. 
 
 But it is in the last ten years that the really surprising 
 progress has been made. The endowment of the sem- 
 inaries has reached two million five hundred and eighty- 
 six thousand and sixty-five dollars, and their other prop- 
 erty is valued at two million two hundred and forty-four 
 thousand and fifty-one dollars. Here the greatest in- 
 crease has been in providing adequate material facilities, 
 in buildings, libraries, etc. The universities and colleges 
 now report endowments of fourteen million four hundred 
 and forty-two thousand eight hundred and seven dollars, 
 and other property to the amount of fifteen million two 
 hundred and forty-nine thousand and fifty-eight dollars. 
 Even subtracting the large sums credited to the Uni- 
 versity of Chicago, it is found that both endowments and 
 other property have been just about doubled during the 
 past decade. The academies now have endowments of 
 one million four hundred and fourteen thousand four 
 hundred and seventy-three dollars, and other equipment 
 worth three million four hundred and fourteen thousand 
 four hundred and seventy-three dollars — sums inadequate, 
 it is true, but marking an immense advance. 
 
 It would be less than just not to point out that a chief 
 factor in this progress has been the agency of the Ameri- 
 can Baptist Education Society, organized in 1888, and 
 the grants made through this society by a single Baptist, 
 Mr. John D. Rockefeller. What he has given personally, 
 and what his gifts have impelled others to contribute, 
 together constitute the major part of the increased 
 endowments of the past decade. 
 
372 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Altogether, American Baptists have to-day invested in 
 their educational institutions the enormous sum of forty- 
 four million dollars, of which fully half is in productive 
 endowments, and almost the whole of which is the ac- 
 cumulation of the last fifty years. But not only has there 
 been this great material development, the standard of 
 education has also risen proportionately; educational 
 ideals and educational methods are far higher than Ji 
 generation ago — so much higher that work that made a 
 man a valedictorian when some of us were students would 
 not insure his graduation to-day. In all that constitutes 
 a liberal education, as well as professional and technical, 
 Brown University in the East and the University of 
 Chicago in the West must now be reckoned as standing 
 among the very first American universities. And Bap- 
 tist colleges, attempting the less ambitious task of giving 
 to young men only that course in the arts and sciences 
 that is crowned by the baccalaureate degree, are to-day, 
 as they have been from the first, fully abreast of the 
 more famous institutions. Man for man, these colleges 
 have always sent out graduates in every way as well 
 equipped as those that have gone from the most re- 
 nowned halls of learning; and in the hard push of life it 
 has not often been their alumni who have gone to the wall. 
 
 How far have the people taken advantage of these 
 facilities ? This may be quickly answered. In 1872 there 
 were in all Baptist schools two thousand four hundred 
 and fifty-seven students; in 1873 there were also four 
 thousand two hundred and forty-seven academic students 
 — ^making a total of six thousand seven hundred and four. 
 In 1880 there were nine thousand five hundred and 
 twenty-four; in 1890 the number had risen to twenty 
 thousand five hundred and forty-one, while in 1900 it is 
 reported as thirty-eight thousand and twenty. Nothing 
 can be more gratifying than to see the eagerness of the 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 373 
 
 youth of our denomination, and outside of it, to take ad- 
 vantage of the increased facilities for education that have 
 been provided. If so much space has been given to edu- 
 cational development, it is because this is really the most 
 impressive thing in the Baptist history of the past fifty 
 years. 
 
 It is time to give our attention to the advance in mis- 
 sionary zeal that has marked the same period. Let us 
 first consider the progress of foreign missions, so far as it 
 is marked by definite results. In 1850 there were in Bap- 
 tist Asiatic missions sixty-nine churches, with seven thou- 
 sand five hundred and twenty-one members ; by i860 they 
 had increased to two hundred and seventy-eight churches, 
 with fifteen thousand six hundred and fourteen members ; 
 in 1870 these had become three hundred and seventy-two 
 churches, and eighteen thousand seven hundred and forty 
 members; in 1890 there were seven hundred and forty- 
 three churches and seventy-five thousand eight hundred 
 and forty-four members — a rate of increase seldom, if 
 ever, paralleled in the history of the denomination; and 
 for 1900 the figures are: churches, eight hundred and 
 forty-four; members, one hundred and fifteen thousand 
 nine hundred and twenty-nine. In recent years African 
 missions have been added, with twelve churches and one 
 thousand nine hundred and twenty-five members. This 
 survey does not include missions to the nominally Chris- 
 tion lands of Europe. In 1850 there were in such mis- 
 sions fifty-nine churches and three thousand and thirty- 
 eight members, of which number two thousand eight hun- 
 dred were in Germany, where ten times that number of 
 Baptists are now reported — ^viz., twenty-eight thousand 
 six hundred and forty-one. Since that time there have 
 been many fluctuations in the fortunes of these missions, 
 some having been abandoned altogether, others pursued 
 fitfully, so that comparison by decades would be 
 
374 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 misleading without elaborate explanation of the figures. 
 Suffice it to say, that in 1900 there are reported in con- 
 nection with European Baptist missions nine hundred and 
 fifty-one churches and one hundred and five thousand one 
 hundred and seventeen members. 
 
 If we consider the advance in the annual gifts of the 
 denomination for this work, as a practical mark of in- 
 crease in zeal, results are not greatly different. In 1850 
 the total receipts of the A. B. M. U. were eighty-seven 
 thousand five hundred and thirty-seven dollars; in i860 
 they had risen to one hundred and thirty-two thousand 
 four hundred and twenty-six dollars; in 1870 they were 
 one hundred and ninety-six thousand eight hundred and 
 ninety-seven dollars ; and in 1880, two hundred and fifty- 
 two thousand six hundred and seventy-seven dollars. 
 Then there was a great leap to four hundred and fifteen 
 thousand one hundred and forty-four dollars in 1890, 
 which has become six hundred and twenty-six thousand 
 eight hundred and forty-four dollars in 1900. 
 
 In five decades, therefore, the members of these mis- 
 sionary churches have doubled nearly four times, and the 
 income of the Society has doubled three times. In the 
 same period the supporters of the Society have hardly 
 doubled twice. The growth of the denomination in mis- 
 sionary zeal, and in the fruitfulness of its work, has far 
 outstripped its progress in mere numbers. It is doubt- 
 less true that much more might have been accomplished, 
 but the bitter reproaches of their denomination in which 
 writers and speakers sometimes indulge might well be 
 softened in view of these facts. 
 
 If now we turn to home missions, we meet the initial 
 difficulty that it is not possible to compute numerically 
 the results of this work on the growth of the denomina- 
 tion, because the churches established by the agency of 
 this Society have soon taken their places in the regular 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEAKS 375 
 
 Statistical column of the denomination, and have no longer 
 been reckoned separately. We can for the most part 
 only apply the financial tests, and assume a fairly con- 
 stant rate of fruitfulness. In 1850 the total income of the 
 American Baptist Home Mission Society was twenty- 
 five thousand two hundred and one dollars; by i860 it 
 had nearly doubled — forty-four thousand six hundred and 
 seventy-eight dollars; but after the Civil War a great 
 advance was made, largely on account of the new in- 
 terest felt in the freedmen's work, and the income became 
 one hundred and forty-four thousand and thirty-two dol- 
 lars. Since then a constant and large rate of increase 
 has been maintained: in 1880 the income rose to two 
 hundred and seventeen thousand and ninety-three dollars ; 
 by 1890 it became three hundred and seventy-five thou- 
 sand two hundred and fifty-four dollars, and in 1900 it 
 is returned at four hundred and sixty-one thousand eight 
 hundred and one dollars. In 1850 there were one hun- 
 dred and ten laborers employed, a number that has grad- 
 ually risen to one thousand and ninety-two. In the fifty 
 years just closed, four thousand six hundred and five 
 churches have been organized by the agents of this So- 
 ciety — nearly one-tenth of the net increase of Baptist 
 churches in the whole United States during that period. 
 The special work of Baptist women for missions has 
 been a development of the last thirty years. In 1871 
 the Women's Baptist Foreign Missionary Societies were 
 organized, one for the East, with headquarters at Bos- 
 ton; one for the West, with headquarters at Chicago. 
 Both societies have sustained auxiliary relations with the 
 Missionary Union — ^the women nominating missionaries 
 and designating funds, the Union appointing the mis- 
 sionaries and disbursing the funds. Similar relations to 
 the Home Mission Society are sustained by the Women's 
 Baptist Home Mission Society of the East, formed in 
 
37& A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 1877, with headquarters at Boston; but the like society 
 for the West, formed the same year, and having its head- 
 quarters at Chicago, has from the first maintained a com- 
 plete independence, making its own appointments and 
 managing its own affairs. This last society maintains a 
 missionary training school. It was prophesied that the 
 formation of these separate societies for women would 
 divide missionary interest and divert funds from the 
 older societies. Experience shows that whatever may be 
 accomplished in this direction finds ample compensation 
 in the general increase of intelligent interest in missions, 
 and the consequent growth of contributions to all causes. 
 
 Thus far facts have been given relating only to the op- 
 erations of our Northern societies. Similar facts are not 
 accessible regarding the work done by the Southern Bap- 
 tist Convention. No statistics regarding foreign missions 
 have been discovered prior to 1890, in which year there 
 were one thousand three hundred and thirty-eight mem- 
 bers reported, which have increased in a single decade 
 to five thousand three hundred and forty-seven. The 
 receipts of the Foreign Mission Board regularly increased 
 up to 1890, when they reached one hundred and forty- 
 nine thousand five hundred and eighty-four dollars ; since 
 then there has been a decided falling off every year (one 
 hundred and nine thousand two hundred and sixty-seven 
 dollars reported in 1900). The Home Mission Board re- 
 ported contributions of sixteen thousand two hundred 
 dollars in 1880, sixty-nine thousand three hundred and 
 ninety-eight dollars in 1890, and sixty-one thousand two 
 hundred dollars in 1900. Inasmuch as the work only 
 began in 1850, and was not vigorously prosecuted before 
 1880, the ratio of increase in the missionary operations 
 of the Southern churches shows an excess over that of 
 the Northern societies. 
 
 This has been a period also of expansion, in many 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 377 
 
 directions, in the Society's work. In 1852 the church edi- 
 fice department was established, at first with the object 
 of making loans exclusively to churches in the West, but 
 since 1881, gifts outright have been made in the larger 
 number of cases. By the close of the century, over two 
 thousand churches had been aided, about seventeen hun- 
 dred of these within the past twenty years. The growth 
 of educational work among the freedmen since the Civil 
 War has already been described. The eleven schools con- 
 trolled by the Society have buildings and equipment val- 
 ued at over a million dollars, and productive endowment 
 amounting to over two hundred and eighty-six thousand 
 dollars. Missions have been established and are main- 
 tained among our various foreign-born citizens, those es- 
 pecially flourishing being among the French of New Eng- 
 land, the Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, and Spanish. 
 A mission to Mexico was begun in 1870, which has had a 
 fair degree of success and promises to accomplish much 
 more. The acquisition of Porto Rico and our intimate 
 relations with Cuba opened new and interesting fields just 
 as the century closed, which the twentieth century will see 
 occupied and developed. 
 
 Though the American Baptist Publication Society was 
 founded as a tract society as early as 1824, and reorgan- 
 ized as a general publishing house in 1840, almost the 
 whole of its labors belong to the period under considera- 
 tion. The active history of the Society begins with its ac- 
 quisition of a building in Arch Street, Philadelphia, in 
 1850, and the election of Benjamin Griffith as secretary 
 in 1857 marks a further step forward. Thenceforward 
 progress was rapid. In 1869 the prosperity of the busi- 
 ness warranted the establishment of branches in the prin- 
 cipal cities, to which others have since been added. Other 
 events of great importance were the beginning of the 
 chapel-car work in 1891, the erection of the new printing 
 
378 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 house in 1896, and the completion of the fine main build- 
 ing in 1898.^ There have been over two thousand eight 
 hundred publications issued by the Society, of which 
 eight hundred and twelve million copies have been 
 printed. From the profits of the business, two hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars has been paid to the missionary 
 department, which has received and expended altogether 
 three million three hundred and forty-three thousand dol- 
 lars. The colporters and missionaries thus employed 
 have been instrumental in the organizing of eleven thou- 
 sand five hundred and sixty-one Sunday-schools and one 
 thousand three hundred and fifteen churches. The total 
 assets of the Society have increased during the fifty years 
 from almost nothing to a million and a half, and its an- 
 nual transactions amount to little short of a million 
 dollars. 
 
 Has the denomination increased in wealth as rapidly as 
 in numbers during the half-century? We have inade- 
 quate means of answering this question with the definite- 
 ness desirable, since facts of the sort required were not 
 recorded until a comparatively late day. The first at- 
 tempt to gather and tabulate the general financial statistics 
 of the denomination was made in the Year-Book for 
 1880. A good measure of the increase of denominational 
 wealth is the valuation of church property. In 1885 this 
 was twenty-six million six hundred and eighty-five thou- 
 sand nine hundred and fifty-nine dollars; in 1890 the 
 figures rose to fifty-eight million one hundred and sixty- 
 two thousand three hundred and sixty-seven dollars — part 
 of which increase was doubtless due to the better gath- 
 ering of the facts. In 1900 there is reported eighty- 
 six million six hundred and forty-eight thousand nine 
 
 'This building has since been sold, at a large profit to the Society, and 
 a new structure will be erected in the near future, still better adapted to 
 the business and missionary needs of the Society. 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 379 
 
 hundred and eighty-two dollars. Another fair measure 
 is the annual expenditure in maintaining public worship. 
 This in 1885 was four million seven hundred and two 
 thousand three hundred and eighty-one dollars; in 1890 
 it was six million nine hundred thousand two hundred 
 and sixty-six dollars; and for 1900 the figures are nine 
 million six hundred and twenty-two thousand and sixty- 
 six dollars. Another measure of wealth, as well as of 
 zeal, is the total contributions for missionary purposes: 
 in 1885, six hundred and sixty-one thousand one hundred 
 and sixty-six dollars; in 1890, one million ninety-two 
 thousand five hundred and seventy-one dollars; and in 
 1900, one million one hundred and twenty-three thousand 
 eight hundred and thirty-nine dollars. The totals of con- 
 tributions for all purposes will be regarded by many as the 
 most satisfactory test of relative ability to give. In 1885 
 these were six million five hundred and seventy-nine thou- 
 sand eight hundred and seventy-two dollars; in 1890, ten 
 million one hundred and ninety-nine thousand two hun- 
 dred and fifty-nine dollars ; and in 1900, twelve million 
 three hundred and forty-eight thousand five hundred and 
 twenty-seven dollars. Allowing for the imperfect gath- 
 ering of facts at first, it would appear that the property 
 of the denomination has tripled within fifteen years, while 
 its annual contributions for all purposes have more than 
 doubled. In the same time the membership has increased 
 about sixty per cent. Applying every practicable test, 
 we come to the conclusion that the denomination has 
 increased in wealth fully twice as fast as in numbers. 
 
 The close of this half-century sees Baptists not only 
 greater, richer, wiser, better organized, but more united, 
 than at any previous time in their history. It sees them 
 also enjoying greatly improved relations with other de- 
 nominations — convictions respected, distinctive principles 
 better understood, and in cases not a few, tacitly admitted 
 
380 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 or even accepted. Controversy has nearly disappeared, 
 jealousy is less frequently manifested. Mutual respect, 
 comity, co-operation, are the rule; and if the organic 
 union of all Christians, of which some have prophesied, 
 must be regarded by the sober-minded as " such stuff as 
 dreams are made on," some form of federation in evan- 
 gelistic and missionary effort is certainly one of the 
 possibilities of the present century. 
 
 Certain counter-currents ought not to be overlooked in 
 this study of Baptist progress. The unity of the denom- 
 ination in its doctrinal and practical teaching has been 
 the boast of its members and the wonder of others. Ap- 
 parently a rope of sand, each church independent of every 
 other in theory, and to a great extent in practice, it has 
 not been the inferior in coherence of bodies that have 
 a strong centralized government. The reason of this is 
 not far to seek: it has been the close adherence of the 
 Baptist churches to their understanding of the teaching 
 of the Scriptures, and their loyal acceptance of this teach- 
 ing as the supreme authority in all matters of religion. 
 It is not putting it too strongly to say that Baptists from 
 the beginning of their separate history have been fully 
 conscious that they had no justification for a separate 
 existence except this loyalty to what they believed the 
 Scriptures to teach, and their conviction that the teach- 
 ing of the Scriptures must be followed at all cost. But 
 the last decades of the closing century have seen a very 
 considerable weakening among them of this conviction, 
 some important modifications of their understanding of 
 what the Scriptures are and what they teach. If this 
 weakening should become general, there cannot fail to be 
 a great denominational disintegration. The historian can 
 only record what has been and what is ; to tell what shall 
 be is the office of the prophet. 
 
 As has already been implied, there has been a decKne 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 38 1 
 
 in the discipline maintained among Baptist churches, as 
 serious as it is great. In the majority of churches in 
 the cities, exclusions are practically unknown except for 
 some notorious wickedness. Even in cases of notorious 
 wickedness, there is often complete immunity for the of- 
 fender. Little serious attempt is made to exercise over- 
 sight of the lives of members, and to hold them to account- 
 ability for departures from even a moderate standard of 
 Christian ethics. The place of exclusion has been taken 
 by a new practice, called " dropping," by which is meant 
 the simple erasure of a name from the roll of member- 
 ship, no stigma of any kind attaching to the person so 
 dropped, with no inquiry, no charges, and of course no 
 examination or trial. This growing practice threatens to 
 become universal in much less than another half-century, 
 with results on the spiritual efficiency of the churches 
 and the personal piety of their members that cannot fail 
 to be most disastrous. Nothing can explain such disuse 
 of discipline but a general weakening of moral fiber. 
 This is an alarming phenomenon, and goes far to oflfset 
 all that has been recorded of material and spiritual 
 progress. 
 
 There has been a notable change in the character of 
 preaching, and in the methods of church work, during the 
 past fifty years. In these things, however. Baptists are in 
 no way peculiar ; they have but shared in the change that 
 has come over American Christianity as a whole, and it is 
 only the conservative that views all change with alarm 
 who will see necessary evil in this change. One impor- 
 tant result is, however, worthy of specific mention. Owing 
 to the increasing infrequency of revivals, and the decline 
 of the older evangelism, the majority of the converts are 
 now received into the churches through the Sunday- 
 school and the young people's society ; the conversion of 
 adults becomes with every decade increasingly rare. It 
 
382 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 is yet too soon to measure the effects of this great change 
 upon denominational Hfe and character. 
 
 Another striking result of the past fifty years has been 
 the great development of the denominational societies. 
 These, nominally the creatures and servants of the 
 churches, have become in fact great independent corpora- 
 tions that control the churches, so far as their united 
 efforts in missionary and educational enterprises are con- 
 cerned. The annual meetings of these societies are in 
 theory composed of delegations from the supporting 
 churches; in fact, they are mass meetings composed of 
 any who care to attend. The officials seldom have any 
 trouble in directing such a meeting into any channel 
 agreeable to them. The officials are men of high char- 
 acter and practical wisdom, and the affairs of the corpora- 
 tions have been most wisely managed; but the inevitable 
 result of the system has been a growing estrangement 
 of the churches from the societies and the work that they 
 represent. Year by year the difficulty becomes greater, 
 and just how it is to be surmounted is the greatest prob- 
 lem the Baptist denomination has at present to solve. 
 A sentiment is growing in favor of the unification of 
 Baptist societies into something resembling the old Tri- 
 ennial Convention, and the making of this Convention 
 a strictly delegated body, so that all the denominational 
 enterprises shall be once more, in fact and not in theory 
 only, subordinated to the churches. Whether this senti- 
 ment will prevail is one of the questions that the 
 twentieth century must be left to decide. 
 
 What manner of men ought they to be who have en- 
 tered upon the great opportunities of the twentieth cen- 
 tury, the inheritors of such a history? What boundless 
 possibilities of growth, of achievement, lie before them! 
 How much Baptists may and should do to hasten the 
 coming of the kingdom of God! How great will be 
 
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS 383 
 
 their condemnation if, having this wealth of opportunity 
 in their hands, they squander it selfishly, or slothfuUy 
 fail to make of the ten talents intrusted to them other 
 ten that they may present with ioy to their Lord at his 
 coming 1 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 BAPTISTS IN THE UNITED STATES — IRREGULAR BAPTIST 
 BODIES 
 
 THUS far we have considered only the " Regular " 
 Baptists in the United States. There are numerous 
 other bodies that agree with these " Regular " Baptists 
 in their fundamental doctrine of the constitution of the 
 church and the nature of baptism. Any Christian body 
 that practises believers' baptism — meaning by " baptism " 
 immersion, and by " believer " one who gives credible 
 evidence of regeneration — is fundamentally Baptist, by 
 whatever name it may be called, or whatever may be its 
 oddities of doctrine or practice in other respects. 
 
 The earliest of the irregular Baptist bodies — and the 
 term " irregular " is used simply as a distinguishing 
 epithet, with no idea of disparagement — are various or- 
 ganizations that differ somewhat among themselves, but 
 agree in holding an Arminian theology. The first of 
 these to become definitely organized were the Six-prin- 
 ciple Baptists. They have existed in Rhode Island from 
 1639, some of the original members of the church founded 
 at Providence by Roger Williams seemingly having been 
 of that persuasion. From 1670 they have held a definite 
 standing, and, as we have seen, their yearly meeting in 
 New England was the second organization of the kind 
 to be formed. A second yearly meeting or Association 
 was afterward formed in Pennsylvania, where it still ex- 
 ists, with a membership of five churches. In all, this 
 body has but eigrhteen churches and not a thousand 
 members. 
 384 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE UNITED STATES 385 
 
 In 1729 a number of Baptist churches in North Caro- 
 lina that held Arminian notions joined in an Association. 
 Some of these afterward became " Regular," and the rest 
 were popularly known as " Freewillers." This name was 
 accepted after a time as a fitting one, and still later, to 
 distinguish themselves from other bodies of like name, 
 they called themselves Original Freewill Baptists. Their 
 Confession of Faith is distinctly Arminian, not merely in 
 asserting that Christ tasted death for every man, but that 
 all men, at one time or another, are found in such ca- 
 pacity as that, through the grace of God, they may be 
 eternally saved. They also hold that God has not de- 
 creed the salvation or condemnation of any " out of re- 
 spect or mere choice," but has appointed the godly unto 
 life and the ungodly who die in sin unto death. They 
 practise the washing of the saints' feet and the anoint- 
 ing of the sick with oil, as perpetual ordinances of the 
 gospel. A plural eldership is also a feature of their 
 churches. There are three annual conferences, which 
 have more power than the regular Association, since they 
 can try and " silence " preachers and settle difficulties 
 between the churches. They had in 1890 in the two 
 Carolinas one hundred and sixty-seven churches and 
 eleven thousand eight hundred and sixty-four members. 
 
 The body better known as Freewill Baptists dates, as 
 a separate organization, from 1780, when Benjamin Ran- 
 dall organized the first church of this order at New 
 Durham, N. H. He had been converted under the preach- 
 ing of Whitefield, and was at first a Congregationalist, 
 but adopted Baptist views and joined a Regular Baptist 
 church. Before this he had begun to preach the gospel 
 with much acceptance and power. In his preaching he 
 declared that God was not willing that any should perish, 
 that a full atonement had been made for the sins of all, 
 and that every man might, if he would, come to Christ — 
 
386 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 such doctrine as every successful evangelist has preached. 
 But the Baptists of his time and region were of the 
 straitest sect of Calvinism and would have none of this 
 theology. In a brief time Mr. Randall found himself 
 practically disfellowshiped, though he was never formally 
 excluded by his church. In 1780 he was ordained by two 
 Baptist ministers who shared his views, and the new de- 
 nomination began. It rapidly extended in New Eng- 
 land, and in 1841 the Free-communion Baptists of New 
 York united with this body. Before this, in 1827, a Gen- 
 eral Conference had been organized, which formerly met 
 triennially, but of late years holds biennial meetings. 
 During the anti-slavery agitation the Freewill Baptists 
 took strong ground in favor of abolition, and declined 
 overtures for union made by about twelve thousand Bap- 
 tists of Kentucky, because the latter favored slavery. 
 The Freewill Baptist Foreign Mission Society was or- 
 ganized in 1833, and has a vigorous mission in India. 
 A Home Mission Society was formed in 1834, and an 
 Education Society in 1840. The denomination sustains 
 Hillsdale College, in Michigan; Bates College, in Maine; 
 besides numerous schools of academic grade. It also has 
 a publishing house, formerly located at Dover, N. H., 
 but now at Boston, Mass. The official name of the body 
 was changed some years ago to Free Baptists, though 
 they are still usually called by the old and better-known 
 name. Their numbers are now under ninety thousand. 
 The old asperities of theological difference have been 
 greatly softened, and many suggestions have been made 
 in recent years for the union of the Free and " Regular " 
 Baptists. Thus far possibly the chief barrier against 
 such union has been the teaching of the Free Baptists 
 that participation in the Lord's Supper is the " privilege 
 and duty of all who have spiritual union with Christ," 
 and " no man has a right to forbid these tokens to the 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE UNITED STATES 387 
 
 least of his disciples." No other Christian body has, in 
 its official confessions, declared that the unbaptized have 
 either right or duty to participate in the Lord's Supper. 
 
 The rise of the Separate Baptists, in connection with 
 the Whitefield revivals, has already been told. They 
 were also known as Free-communion Baptists. In the 
 Northern States they have been largely absorbed by the 
 Free Baptists, and in the South most of them reunited 
 after a time with the Regular Baptists. Two Associa- 
 tions in the South, which still retain the name Separate, 
 are counted with the Regular Baptists, but a single As- 
 sociation in Indiana still refuses any fellowship with the 
 Regular Baptist churches. There are twenty-four 
 churches in this Association, which had one thousand 
 five hundred and ninety-nine members in 1890. When 
 the " Separates " and " Old Lights " united in the South 
 they assumed the name of United Baptists at first. For 
 the most part this name was gradually dropped, and the 
 United Baptists became simply Baptists and are reckoned 
 with the " Regulars." But in a number of States (Ala- 
 bama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee) there 
 are still churches and Associations that retain the name 
 United and hold aloof from all other organizations. In 
 1890 there were two hundred and four churches of this 
 order and thirteen thousand two hundred and nine mem- 
 bers. The terms of the union provided that the teaching 
 of a general atonement should be no bar to communion, 
 but most of the United Baptists are Calvinistic in the- 
 ology. They hold that feet-washing should be practised 
 by all believers. 
 
 In 1824 an Association called the Liberty was organ- 
 ized in Kentucky, composed of churches holding Ar- 
 minian views, but practising strict communion. In 1830 
 they adopted the practice of open communion, and in 
 1845 s° revised their articles of faith as to make them 
 
388 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 more unmistakably Arminian. Churches of this order 
 were rapidly organized in the neighboring States, es- 
 pecially Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, and everywhere 
 bore the name of General Baptists. The connection of 
 this body with those of the same name in England is 
 shadowy, if not impossible to trace. In 1870 a General 
 Association was formed that represents three hundred 
 and ninety-nine churches in seven Western and Southern 
 States, with a membership of twenty-one thousand three 
 hundred and sixty-two. 
 
 There are also a number of Calvinistic Baptist bodies 
 that for one reason or another decline fellowship 
 with the Regular Baptists. A considerable number 
 of Baptists in the early part of this century sep- 
 arated from the other churches on account of doctrinal 
 and practical differences. Holding a hyper-Calvinistic 
 theology, they were opposed to missions, Sunday-schools, 
 and all " contrivances which seem to make the salvation 
 of men depend on human effort." These differences 
 may have been latent from an earlier time, but they first 
 began to manifest themselves actively about 1830, and 
 from 1835 onward they produced schisms in many 
 churches and Associations. They call themselves Primi- 
 tive Baptists, and have been called by others "Anti- 
 mission," "Old School," and "Hard-shell" Baptists. 
 Their Associations decline fellowship with any church 
 that supports any " missionary, Bible, tract, or Sunday- 
 school union society or advocates State Conventions or 
 theological schools." Washing of the saints' feet they 
 hold to be an ordinance of the' gospel to be continued 
 until Christ's second coming. They have churches in 
 twenty-eight States, and are strong in the country dis- 
 tricts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Kentucky, 
 and Tennessee. There has been an impression until late 
 years that they had become a feeble body, rapidly on the 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE UNITED STATES 389 
 
 way to extinction. Such is undoubtedly the case in the 
 North, but in the South they seem to be not merely 
 holding their own, but increasing. In 1890 they had three 
 thousand two hundred and twenty-two churches and one 
 hundred and twenty-one thousand three hundred and 
 forty-seven members. 
 
 Even more fiercely Calvinistic are the Old Two-seed- 
 in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists, who are said to owe 
 their origin to the curious theology of Elder Daniel 
 Parker, a Baptist minister who labored in the States of 
 Tennessee and Illinois from 1806 to 1836. Parker taught 
 that part of Eve's offspring were the seed of God and 
 elect to eternal life ; part were the seed of Satan and fore- 
 ordained to the kingdom of eternal darkness. By the 
 divine decree all events whatever, from the creation to the 
 final consummation, were foreordained, so that nothing 
 can interfere with or change his plans. Many of these 
 Baptists object to a paid ministry, and they agree with the 
 Primitive Baptists in reprobation of all " modern insti- 
 tutions," including theological schools. They practise 
 feet-washing. In 1890 they had four hundred and sev- 
 enty-three churches and twelve thousand eight hundred 
 and fifty-one members, distributed through twenty-four 
 States. They are strongest in Kentucky, Arkansas, and 
 Texas. 
 
 The Baptist Church of Christ seems to have originated 
 in Tennessee, where the oldest organizations were formed 
 in 1808, and where more than half the membership is 
 still found. From this center they have spread to six 
 other States, and in 1890 had one hundred and fifty-two 
 churches and eight thousand two hundred and fifty- 
 four members. They are mildly Calvinistic and practise 
 feet-washing. 
 
 The Seventh-day Baptists had their origin in Rhode 
 Island, a church being founded at Newport in 1671 by 
 
390 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Stephen Mumford, who had been a Sabbatarian Baptist 
 in England. A General Conference was organized early 
 in the present century, which has met triennially since 
 1846. They formed a foreign missionary society in 1842, 
 and support a tract and publishing house. Their head- 
 quarters are at Alfred Center, N. Y. Here they maintain 
 a college, while another is located at Milton, Wis. They 
 have one hundred and twelve churches, and over nine 
 thousand members. German immigrants, settling at what 
 is now Germantown, Pa., in 1723, formed the first Ger- 
 man Seventh-day Baptist church. According to the 
 census of 1890, there were then one hundred and six 
 churches of this order in twenty-four States, and nine 
 thousand one hundred and forty-three members. The 
 Seventh-day Baptists are strongest in New York, one- 
 fourth of the churches and one-third of the members 
 being found in that State. 
 
 Thus far all of the irregular Baptist bodies that we have 
 considered embody the word Baptist in their official titles. 
 There are a number of other bodies, called by various 
 names, that accept the fundamental principle of believers' 
 baptism. The most important of these is a body that 
 calls itself simply " The Brethren," but is usually called 
 Dunkards, sometimes Tunkers, and occasionally " Ger- 
 man Baptists " ; but they are not to be confounded with 
 the regular German Baptists. The Dunkards originated 
 in Schwartzenau, Germany, about 1708. To escape per- 
 secution they emigrated to Pennsylvania, where they set- 
 tled in considerable numbers from 1719 to 1730, and 
 have prospered greatly in numbers and wealth. They 
 hold in the main the same doctrines as the " Regular " 
 Baptists, but add some peculiarities of practice, chief 
 among which is trine immersion. The candidate kneels 
 in the water, and is immersed forwards at the naming of 
 each person of the Trinity in the baptismal formula. 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE UNITED STATES 39I 
 
 They have an ordained ministry, but pay ministers no 
 salary, regarding even the receiving of fees with great 
 disfavor. They oppose Sunday-schools and secret so- 
 cieties; practise feet-washing as a religious ordinance; 
 interpreting literally the words of the apostle in i Cor. 
 16 : 20, they " greet one another with a holy kiss." They 
 bore consistent testimony against slavery, and are now 
 active advocates of total abstinence. They were for a 
 time inclined to regard higher education as conforming 
 to the world, but they have now several colleges and high 
 schools in which co-education is practised. They still 
 oppose the establishment of theological schools and sem- 
 inaries, but some of their ministers are educated in other 
 institutions. Owing to differences of various kinds, 
 chiefly about matters of discipline, they have become 
 broken into four separate bodies, one of which observes 
 the seventh day. In 1890 there were nine hundred and 
 eighty-nine churches. 
 
 The Winebrennerians, or " Church of God," owe their 
 origin to the labors of Rev. John Winebrenner, who in 
 the year 1820 was settled as pastor of the German Re- 
 formed Church at Harrisburg, Pa. A great revival of 
 religion began among his people, and the work aroused 
 much opposition in the church, which looked unfavorably 
 upon such manifestations of abnormal excitement (as 
 they viewed revivals). After five years of conflict, Mr. 
 Winebrenner and his people separated from the German 
 Reformed Church and formed an independent congrega- 
 tion. About this time similar revivals occurred in the 
 surrounding towns, and resulted in the organization of 
 new churches. In the meantime, Mr. Winebrenner had 
 been studying the Scriptures, and came to the conclusion 
 that neither in doctrine nor in discipline did the German 
 Reformed Church correspond to the apostolic model, 
 which he now conceived to be independent churches. 
 
39-* A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 composed only of believers, and without any human 
 creed or laws, the Scriptures alone being accepted as the 
 rule of faith and practice. In October, 1830, a meeting 
 was held at Harrisburg, at which a regular system of 
 co-operation was adopted by the churches sympathizing 
 with these views, and Mr. Winebrenner was elected 
 speaker of the Conference. This body now meets annu- 
 ally, and fourteen other Conferences or annual elderships 
 have since been organized, besides a general eldership that 
 meets triennially. The Church of God has an itinerant 
 ministry, the appointments being made by the respective 
 elderships ; they practise feet-washing as a religious ordi- 
 nance, recognize only immersion of believers as baptism, 
 and hold that the Lord's Supper should be administered 
 to Christians only, in a sitting posture, and always in the 
 evening. The church has a publishing house at Harris- 
 burg, an academy at Bosheyville, Pa., and a college at 
 Findlay, Ohio. In 1890 they had four hundred and 
 seventy-nine churches and twenty-two thousand five hun- 
 dred and eleven members, and were represented in fifteen 
 States. 
 
 The River Brethren, probably of Mennonite origin, 
 settled in eastern Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna 
 River, about 1750; from their baptizing in that river they 
 gained their name. They practise trine immersion and 
 f eet- washing ; and in the doctrines of non-resistance and 
 non-conformity to the world they resemble the Friends 
 as well as the Mennonites. There are now three divisions 
 of the River Brethren. In 1890 there were one hundred 
 and eleven churches and three thousand four hundred 
 and twenty-seven members, and they have spread from 
 Pennsylvania into eight other States. 
 
 Several other bodies practise adult immersion, though 
 they are not in all cases scrupulous about requiring evi- 
 dence of regeneration. The Adventists arose from the 
 
BAPTISTS IN THE UNITED STATES 393 
 
 teachings of William Miller, before described, and are al- 
 ready broken into six sects or groups, with a total 
 strength of over sixty thousand. The Christadelphians 
 have some affinity with Adventists, but reject the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, though believing Christ to be the Son of 
 God. They are a small body of about twelve hundred 
 members. The Christians or Christian Connection orig- 
 inated about 1806, in several independent movements, and 
 are very like the Disciples of Christ in doctrine and prac- 
 tice. They have no formal creeds, but practise immersion 
 of believers only ; and while no one type of theology pre- 
 vails among them, their teachers nearly all oppose Cal- 
 vinism. Their polity is mainly congregational, though 
 they have annual Conferences, composed of ministers 
 and lay delegates, which receive and ordain their preach- 
 ers. A General Convention, meeting every four years, 
 has charge of their missionary and educational work. 
 In 1890 there were seventy-five conferences, one thousand 
 two hundred and eighty-one churches, and ninety thou- 
 sand seven hundred and eighteen members. The Social 
 Brethren is a body that originated in Arkansas and 
 Illinois about 1867, from Baptist and Methodist churches, 
 and partakes of the peculiarities of both denominations. 
 These Brethren reject infant baptism, but agree with the 
 Methodists in permitting a candidate to choose between 
 immersion, pouring, and sprinkling. It is said that im- 
 mersion is chosen in the majority of cases. In 1890 they 
 had twenty churches and nine hundred and thirteen mem- 
 bers. These last-named bodies are mentioned, less be- 
 cause they have genuine affinity with Baptists than to 
 answer questions continually coming to the author from 
 readers of this history, about the doctrines and practices 
 of these denominations. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 
 
 MEN still living can remember the beginning of a 
 new Baptist history in Europe. In 1832 the Tri- 
 ennial Convention established a mission in France, under 
 the direction of Prof. Irah Chase, of the Newton Theo- 
 logical Institution. A Baptist chapel was opened in Paris 
 by Rev. J. C. Rostan, a Frenchman who had for some 
 years been a resident of the United States. He died of 
 cholera the following year, and Rev. Isaac Willmarth, 
 a recent graduate of Newton Theological Institution, was 
 sent out to take charge of the work. Before the coming 
 of these men, there were a few earnest persons who had 
 learned the truth from the New Testament and sought to 
 follow its teachings, ignorant that any people in the 
 world held similar views. A church was organized in 
 1835, of six members, and the following year the first 
 native pastor, Rev. Joseph Thieffry, was ordained. He 
 labored in the north of France until his death, at an 
 advanced age, choosing that field of labor because there 
 were in existence there churches holding substantially the 
 principles of Baptists, though often defective in organiza- 
 tion, and holding various errors of doctrine. By 1838 
 there were seven churches and one hundred and forty-two 
 members connected with the mission. 
 
 When the mission was begun, the opportunity was 
 thought to be especially favorable. The revolution that 
 had placed Louis Philippe on the throne had done much 
 to lessen the hold of the Church of Rome on the French 
 people, it was believed. But it soon turned out that 
 394 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 395 
 
 the " citizen king " was as thoroughly priestridden as any 
 Bourbon, and the Baptists met with continued and bitter 
 persecution. At Genlis, where a member had built a 
 church on his own estate, the magistrate would not per- 
 mit it to be opened for eleven years. Every preacher or 
 colporter was liable to arrest, and punishment by fine or 
 imprisonment; and against many of them the law was 
 rigorously enforced. The legislative chambers made it a 
 penal offense for any association of more than twenty 
 persons to meet for religious worship without the con- 
 sent of the government, and punished any one who per- 
 mitted his house to be used for such an assemblage, by 
 a fine of sixteen to two hundred francs. Wealthy friends 
 in New York paid these fines, and for several years it 
 was found expedient to print reports from the mission 
 with blank spaces for names and places, to spare these 
 brethren persecution. The revolution of 1848 drove 
 Louis Philippe from the throne and established a re- 
 public. The new constitution declared religious liberty, 
 though this principle was qualified by the proviso that 
 such liberty could be allowed only to organizations rec- 
 ognized by law. Toleration, however, speedily became 
 an accomplished fact, and serious persecution has never 
 since been known. 
 
 The church first formed in Paris was scattered during 
 these times of civil turmoil and religious persecution. It 
 was reorganized by Rev. T. T. Devan in 1850 with four 
 members, and in spite of many obstacles, continued to 
 grow until, in 1863, it numbered eighty-four members. 
 In 1872 the church built, with generous assistance from 
 England and America, a neat and commodious chapel. 
 Mr. Devan also organized a church in Lyons, in 1852, 
 and other churches were gradually added. The estab- 
 lishment of the McAll mission in France greatly helped 
 the growth of the Baptist churches, and at length one of 
 
396 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the best workers of that mission. Rev. Reuben Saillens, 
 withdrew and devoted himself to the Baptist ministry. 
 The second church in Paris was founded by him, and his 
 evangelistic labors in many parts of the country have 
 been and still are very fruitful. 
 
 The only American workers since 1856 have been those 
 connected with the establishment of the theological 
 school in Paris, which was begun in 1879 by Rev. Edward 
 C. Mitchell, and continued after 1883 by Rev. Henri An- 
 dru. Quite a number of the younger French Baptist min- 
 isters are graduates of this school, and their labors should 
 be of the greatest aid in the future growth of the Bap- 
 tists of France. In the last report available there are 
 said to be forty-five churches, with thirty-five ordained 
 ministers, and two thousand and forty-eight members; 
 and two hundred and eighty were baptized during the 
 year. 
 
 The name Baptist has been an epithet of scorn and 
 contempt in Germany for centuries. The German people 
 have never been able or willing to forget the disorders 
 at Mulhausen and Munster during the sixteenth century, 
 the blame for which was unjustly laid upon the Anabap- 
 tists of that period. For a man to profess himself a 
 Baptist in that country is, therefore, to suggest that he 
 is Ukely to believe in propagating the kingdom of Christ 
 by the sword, in communism, polygamy, and various 
 other horrifying things. In spite of this deep-seated 
 prejudice, Germany is precisely the country of Europe 
 where Baptists have during the past century made 
 their most rapid, most healthful, and most permanent 
 advances. This is because the movement originated on 
 German soil and with German people — not by the agency 
 of a foreign missionary. 
 
 The leader in this work was Johann Gerhardt 
 Oncken. who was born at Varel. in Oldenburg, in 1800. 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 397 
 
 In his fourteenth year a Scottish merchant took him to 
 Great Britain, and there he was converted, after which 
 he joined a Congregational church. The Continental 
 Society was founded in London in 1819, for the propa- 
 gation of evangelical religion in Europe. Mr. Oncken 
 had a great desire to preach the gospel among his own 
 people, and in 1823 he was sent to Germany as a mis- 
 sionary of this Society. He began to preach the gospel 
 in Hamburg and Bremen with great success. Many were 
 converted, but the bitter hostility of the State Church 
 was aroused against him and his work. 
 
 After some years of this work, Mr. Oncken, by a faith- 
 ful study of the Scriptures, became convinced that the 
 baptism of believers only is taught in the New Testament 
 or was practised in apostolic times, and that the only 
 baptism known to the Scriptures is immersion. Con- 
 cerning this experience he has himself said the following : 
 
 It was about this time [1828] that I became fully convinced 
 from the study of the Scriptures (for I was entirely unac- 
 quainted with the sentiments of the Baptists) of the truth of 
 believers' baptism and the nature of a Christian church. I and a 
 few of the converts who had also seen the same truth now only 
 waited for some one who, having himself followed the Lord in 
 his ordinance, should be qualified to baptize us and form us into 
 a church. But for this we had to wait five long years, though 
 we applied to both England and Scotland. . . In 1834 [April 
 22] a little company of seven believers were rowed across our 
 beautiful Elbe, in the dead hour of night, to a little island, and 
 there descending into the waters, were buried with Christ in bap- 
 tism. . . The next day we were formed into a church, of 
 which I was appointed the pastor.' 
 
 The man who was led by divine providence to the per- 
 forming of this service was the Rev. Barnas Sears, then 
 professor in the Hamilton Literary Institution, who was 
 
 • From " Triumphs of the Gospel," a tract by Oncken, published at 
 Hamburg (no date). 
 
398 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 spending some time in Germany in study and had become 
 known to Mr. Oncken as an American Baptist. This 
 was the first Baptist church on German soil in modern 
 times. Two helpers were soon won to the cause. The 
 first, Julius Kobner, a Danish Jew, formerly an engraver, 
 became the poet and hymn-writer of the German Baptists, 
 as well as an ardent preacher. Gottfried Wilhelm Leh- 
 mann was the second co-worker; he and five others were 
 baptized by Oncken at Berlin, May 13, 1837, ^"^ so the 
 second church was constituted. The memory of this trio 
 of preachers — they have all now gone to their reward — 
 will always be precious to German Baptists, among whom 
 they are known as " the clover-leaf." 
 
 In the following September the Triennial Convention 
 employed Mr. Oncken as a missionary, and the Baptist 
 cause began to make steady, and at times rapid, progress 
 in Germany. He also became agent for the Edinburgh 
 Bible Society, and his colporters went throughout Ger- 
 many selling Bibles and preaching the truth. By 1838 
 the Hamburg church had grown to seventy-five members, 
 and three other churches had been established. This 
 success aroused the ire of the Lutheran clergy, and they 
 complained to the Hamburg Senate, who directed the 
 police to suppress the Baptist meetings. For a time Ger- 
 man Baptists suffered severe persecution. Mr. Oncken 
 was several times imprisoned and fined. In May, 1840, 
 he was imprisoned four weeks, and on his release all his 
 household goods were sold to pay his fine and costs. He 
 was forbidden to hold religious services at which any ex- 
 cept members of his own household attended ! Members 
 of Baptist churches were required by law to bring their 
 children to Lutheran ministers for so-called baptism, on 
 pain of imprisonment or fine. Their property was liable 
 to confiscation, and in general they were treated as men 
 who had no rights that others were bound to respect. 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 399 
 
 These cruelties provoked many indignant remonstrances 
 from England and America, and such expressions of en- 
 lightened Christian sentiment were not without their 
 effect on the Hamburg Senate. A great fire in 1844 de- 
 stroyed a great part of the city, and the efforts of the 
 Baptists to relieve the distress of the suffering caused a 
 great change in public opinion and official action. From 
 this time Oncken and his church were unmolested, but 
 in other parts of Germany the Baptists were less fortu- 
 nate. The revolution of 1848 brought about changes for 
 the better in most of the German States. The new con- 
 stitution adopted in Prussia in 1850 provides, in article 
 12 : " Freedom of religious confession, of meeting in re- 
 ligious societies, and of the common exercise of religion 
 in private and public is guaranteed." It was not until 
 1858, however, that the Hamburg church was recognized 
 by the State as a religious corporation. Even yet the 
 Baptists do not enjoy complete toleration throughout 
 Germany, though interference with them becomes more 
 rare with each successive decade. 
 
 In spite of all difficulties, remarkable progress was 
 made from the first. Baptist churches sprang up in all 
 the principal cities, while in the smaller towns they spread 
 even more rapidly. They organized themselves into As- 
 sociations, after the American plan, and in 1849 the five 
 Associations then existing formed a general Triennial 
 Conference, which since 1855 has been known as the 
 German Baptist Union, and has held annual meetings. 
 Another great advance was taken when Dr. Philip Bickel, 
 a German by birth, who had been educated in the United 
 States, went to Hamburg in 1878 to take charge of the 
 publication house, begun in 1838 by Mr. Oncken as a 
 private enterprise, and turned over to the German Bap- 
 tist Union. This has since been removed to Cassel. The 
 jubilee of the German mission and the death of its 
 
400 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 founder both fell in the year 1884. The seven members 
 with which it began fifty years before had grown into 
 nearly thirty-two thousand, and have since increased to 
 about fifty thousand. These are not all in Germany 
 proper; the German Baptists have been mindful of 
 the Great Commission, and have sent out missionaries 
 to Denmark, Finland, Poland, Holland, Switzerland, Rus- 
 sia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Africa. Some twenty-three 
 thousand of the members they now report have been 
 gathered as the result of these missionary operations. 
 Their most important enterprise of recent years has been 
 the establishment, in 1880, of a theological school at Ham- 
 burg, in part by the aid of American Baptists. In 1888 
 a new and commodious building was dedicated, that had 
 been erected for the use of the seminary in a suburb of 
 Hamburg. The course of study occupies four years, and 
 the institution is doing much for the training of the 
 German Baptist ministry. 
 
 The Baptists of Sweden, in a sense, owe their origin 
 to American Baptists, yet no American Baptist has been 
 directly concerned in the work. A Swedish sailor, Gustaf 
 W. Schroeder, who had been converted in some Metho- 
 dist meetings at New Orleans in April, 1844, a few months 
 later found his way into the Mariners' Baptist Qiurch, 
 New York, and on the third of November of that year 
 was baptized in the East River, at the site of the present 
 Corlear's Hook Park. The following year he met Fred- 
 erick O. Nilsson, also a Swedish sailor, who had been 
 converted in New York in 1834, and then was a col- 
 porter. Led by Captain Schroeder to inquire into the 
 subject of baptism, Nilsson was brought to a knowl- 
 edge of the truth, and was baptized in August, 1847, by 
 Oncken in the Elbe, near Hamburg. In September of the 
 following year the first five Swedes who were baptized 
 were, with Mr. Nilsson, constituted a church with the 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 4OI 
 
 aid of Rev. Mr. Forster, a Danish Baptist minister, and 
 the following year Nilsson was ordained in Hamburg, 
 and began to preach in Sweden. His success was marked, 
 but the persecution that followed was bitter; and in 1851 
 he was banished from the country. After a short stay at 
 Copenhagen, he headed a colony of emigrants to this 
 country, who settled in the State of Minnesota. This 
 is not to be confounded with another colony, sent to this 
 country in 1870 by Captain Schroeder, which went across 
 the State of Maine, " poled in canoes " up the upper St, 
 John, and planted a Baptist church at a place which they 
 named New Sweden, in Aroostook County. 
 
 A successor to Nilsson was found in Andreas Wiberg, 
 a Lutheran minister, educated at the University of Up- 
 sala who, in 1849, became unable to remain longer with 
 good conscience in the Lutheran Church, where he waa 
 obliged to administer the communion to converted and 
 unconverted alike. Meeting Mr. Oncken, and being led 
 to the study of the New Testament anew, he embraced 
 Baptist views. At this time he fell dangerously ill, and 
 partly for the recovery of his health, partly in hope of 
 enlisting the aid of American Baptists, he decided to 
 make a voyage to the United States. The vessel was de- 
 tained for two days at Copenhagen, and Wiberg sought 
 out Nilsson and was baptized in the Baltic Sea, July 23, 
 1852. His visit to the United States was successful; 
 much interest in the cause in Sweden was aroused, and 
 he returned to his native land as a colporter of the 
 American Baptist Publication Society, in 1855. From 
 this time onward the work progressed rapidly. The press 
 was free in Sweden, and much was done for the spread 
 of the truth by the circulation of books and tracts. 
 
 In 1861, Captain Schroeder returned to Sweden and 
 soon after bought a lot and built at his own expense a 
 house of worship for the Baptist church at Gothenburg— 
 
 24 
 
402 SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 the first edifice of the kind in the country. Baptists had 
 been accused of doing their works in holes and corners, so 
 Captain Schroeder had a large signboard put along the 
 front of the house, with the legend, " Baptist Meeting 
 Hall." The pastor of this church was Rev. F. O. Nilsson, 
 who by royal grace had been permitted to return from his 
 banishment. Both he and Captain Schroeder were sum- 
 moned, at the instigation of Bishop Bjorck, to appear 
 at the police court, after the first public service, and the 
 Captain was fined a sum that with costs finally amounted 
 to fifty dollars. The shame and disgrace of the trial, 
 however, so reacted on the prosecutors that the church 
 was molested no further. 
 
 In other places, however, the Baptists were less fortu- 
 nate. Fines and imprisonments and distraint of prop- 
 erty were common. Babes were forcibly taken from their 
 parents and baptized in Lutheran churches. One of their 
 hiinisters was summoned before the courts sixteen times, 
 ■was imprisoned six times, and once was shackled for 
 many days and compelled to pay a large fine. These 
 persecutions, in most cases instigated by the State clergy, 
 and in all cases approved by them, aroused much sym- 
 pathy and indignation in Sweden itself, and also in other 
 Countries. Strong representations were made by the 
 Evangelical Alliance; petitions for liberty of worship 
 poured in upon the government; remonstrances were 
 formally made by representatives of England and the 
 United States, and gradually these severities were re- 
 laxed. Such persecutions were the more intolerable, in 
 that they were wholly illegal. The Constitution of 
 Sweden, adopted in 1809, declares: "The king shall not 
 coerce anybody's conscience or allow it to be coerced, but 
 protect every one in the free exercise of his religion, 
 provided the peace of the community is not disturbed or 
 general scandal caused thereby." In the midst of the 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 4O3 
 
 persecutions, King Oscar I. declared, in his opening 
 speech to the Diet, October 17, 1856: "Toleration, 
 founded on individual, immovable conviction, and respect 
 for the religious faith of others, belongs to the essence 
 of the Protestant Church, and ought to be accepted 
 among a people whose heroic king, Gustavus Adolphus, 
 by brilliant victories and the sacrifice of his life, laid the 
 foundation of freedom of thought in Central Europe. 
 Those laws, therefore, which hinder religious liberty and 
 freedom of worship ought to be abolished, and the gen- 
 eral law be brought into agreement with the sixteenth 
 section of the constitution" [already quoted above]. 
 These were brave words, yet both the king and his courts 
 went on in the work of persecution, though the king fre- 
 quently used his royal authority to soften its bitterness. 
 Baptists do not yet enjoy complete toleration. A law 
 was made in behalf of Dissenters in i860 and amended in 
 1873 ; but the provisions of this law are so obnoxious and 
 offer so slight advantages that few Baptist churches have 
 ever availed themselves of it. For the most part they 
 continue to be nominally members of the State Church. 
 As such they are conceded the right to meet together, so 
 long as they do not teach anything that may be considered 
 as leading to separation. The enforcement of this 
 restriction has been dropped by general consent. 
 
 For ten years the work in Sweden went on under the 
 direction of the Publication Society, and then it was 
 transferred to the Missionary Union. From nine churches 
 in 185s they grew by the end of the century to five hun- 
 dred and sixty>four, and from four hundred and seventy- 
 six members to forty thousand seven hundred and fifty- 
 nine — a truly wonderful increase, which takes no account 
 of their missionary growth. In 1867 they began to 
 preach the truth in Norway, where a church was or- 
 ganized the following year. Progress has been slow in 
 
404 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 comparison with the work in Sweden, but the century 
 closed with thirty-two Baptist churches and two thou- 
 sand six hundred and seventy one members in that 
 country. A mission in Finland was begun in 1868, as 
 a result of which thirty-one churches and two thousand 
 and thirty members greeted the twentieth century. 
 
 The Conference of Swedish churches was formed in 
 1857, and has done much to promote Baptist progress. 
 It has greatly stimulated the missionary spirit. Through- 
 out their history the Swedish Baptists have been in the 
 forefront of all Christian enterprise. They were the first 
 to establish Sunday-schools in that country, not one being 
 known in 1855, while in 1857 ^^- Wiberg reported eight 
 among the Baptists, with three hundred and thirty-nine 
 scholars. The first Christian Endeavor Society in Swe- 
 den was organized in the Baptist church at Orebo, and 
 in work for the young people Baptists are in advance of 
 all other Christians. 
 
 In October, 1866, the Bethel Theological Seminary was 
 established in Stockholm, under the care of Rev. Knut 
 O. Broady, D. d., and has since been doing a work of 
 great importance in the education of the Swedish min- 
 istry. In 1883 it entered a commodious building erected 
 for its use in Stockholm, and has been more prosperous 
 and useful since that date than before. Baptists have 
 done much to sustain this, as well as the German mission, 
 in the way of contributions of money from time to time ; 
 but they have received their reward already. It is said, 
 and doubtless with truth, that ten per cent, of the con- 
 verts made by Baptists in Sweden go to swell the mem- 
 bership of Baptist churches in this country, and that an 
 equal proportion of the graduates of their seminary 
 become pastors of Swedish churches in America. 
 
 The Baptist cause in Denmark, as has already been 
 said, is the result, not of anything done by American 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 40S 
 
 Baptists, but of the missionary enthusiasm of our German 
 brethren. A Baptist church was organized in Copen- 
 hagen near the close of the year 1839, eleven being then 
 baptized by Mr. Oncken, and ten in July of the following 
 year, when P. C. Moenster was ordained as pastor of 
 the church. Another church of eight members was 
 formed by Mr. Oncken in September, 1840, at Lange- 
 land; and in the following October a third church of 
 ten members was formed at Aalberg by Moenster. Rig- 
 orous persecutions were almost immediately begun by 
 the government, then an absolute monarchy. King Chris- 
 tian V. promulgated the following law : " That religion 
 alone shall be allowed in the king's lands and realms 
 which agrees with the Holy Scriptures, the Apostolic and 
 Nicene creeds, the Athanasian creed, and the Augsburg 
 Confession, and with Luther's Minor Catechism." Pastor 
 Moenster was imprisoned from about the first of De- 
 cember, 1840, until November of the following year. 
 His brother, Adolph, who took his place, shared his fate 
 in May, 1841. In 1842 Moenster was imprisoned a sec- 
 ond time, from January to July. Drs. Horatio B. 
 Hackett and Thomas J. Conant, acting in behalf of 
 American Baptists, visited the Denmark brethren in 1843, 
 and attempted to alleviate their condition. High Danish 
 officials, both in Church and in State, bore witness to the 
 blameless character of these persecuted Baptists, and 
 gradually the severities practised against them were 
 relaxed. 
 
 It was, however, not before 1850 that they began to 
 enjoy much toleration; and added to this difficulty they 
 lost many of their members by emigration to a land of 
 greater liberty. They began to form Associations of 
 their churches in 1849, and in 1887 withdrew from the 
 German Baptist Union and formed a union of their own, 
 They had not been unmindful of missionary obligations. 
 
406 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 and have missionaries on the Congo field. The Danish 
 Baptists now number over four thousand. 
 
 One of the most interesting of the German Baptist 
 missions is that in Russia. There were already Menno- 
 nites in the southern region who were virtually Baptists, 
 while the Stundists and other native sects have close 
 affiliation with Baptist beliefs and practices. But the 
 planting of Baptist churches has gone on steadily for 
 quite a generation. The work began among the numer- 
 ous German colonies, but has extended among the Rus- 
 sians themselves. There are now some twenty-five thou- 
 sand members of Baptist churches in Russia proper, and 
 the number would have been greatly increased but for 
 the severe persecutions they have experienced, in common 
 with all dissenters from the State church. Russia pro- 
 fesses to grant complete religious liberty, the imperial 
 decree reading as follows : " All the subjects of the Rus- 
 sian empire not belonging to the Established Church, 
 both native Russians and those from abroad who are in 
 the service of the State, are permitted at all times openly 
 to confess their faith and practise their services in ac- 
 cordance with the rite. This freedom of faith is assured 
 not only to Christians of foreign confessions, but also to 
 the Jews, Mohammedans, and heathen, so that all the 
 peoples in Russia may worship God, the Almighty, with 
 different tongues, according to the laws and confessions 
 of their fathers so that they may bless the government of 
 the Russian tsar, and pray for his welfare to the Cre- 
 ator of the world." This seems like a very liberal pro- 
 vision for freedom of conscience, but most of the con- 
 cession is interpreted away by other acts. Liberty of 
 worship is secured to men in the faith of their fathers, 
 but they have no liberty to change their religion except by 
 adopting that established by law. Nobody must persuade 
 an orthodox Russian to join another church. He 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 407 
 
 who does so is guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor, 
 forfeits all his legal and civil rights, and is punishable 
 by bjmishment to Siberia. Thousands of our Baptist 
 brethren are said to have suffered this penalty — in some 
 cases whole churches and their pastors having been de- 
 ported. Any Russian who leaves the orthodox com- 
 munion to become a Baptist may be put under the juris- 
 diction of the ecclesiastical courts. This means that 
 guardians will be appointed for his children, and an 
 administrator for his estates, until his return to the 
 orthodox faith; his obstinate refusal to return makes 
 these penalties permanent. In spite of such laws and their 
 rigid enforcement, the Baptist cause has continued to 
 prosper in Russia. 
 
 A mission to Greece was begun in 1836 by the Ameri- 
 can Baptist Missionary Union, but very small results fol- 
 lowed many years of hard labor. The chief convert of the 
 mission became its leading minister, Rev. Demetrius 
 Z. Sakellarios. The mission was suspended in 1856, but 
 was resumed in 1871, and finally discontinued in 
 1886. A recent historian of our missions sums up the 
 history of the mission thus : " While the Greeks are of 
 high intelligence and have great interest in religious sub- 
 jects, they are not open to that influence of religious 
 truth which will enable them to endure separation from 
 their own people and church for the sake of a purer 
 gospel and a more living faith." ^ 
 
 A Baptist mission founded in Spain by Rev. W. I. 
 Knapp, has had a history but little more encouraging. 
 At one time it was nearly extinct, but it was revived by 
 the sending of a missionary from this country. There 
 are now several vigorous Baptist churches and active 
 pastors, and it is possible that the Baptist cause in Spain 
 has a future more encouraging than its past. 
 
 1 Merriam, " History of American Baotist Missions," p. 201. 
 
408 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 The Southern Baptist Convention has maintained a 
 mission in Italy, with varying success, since the year 
 1870. An independent mission was also for a time main- 
 tained in Rome by Rev. W. C. Van Meter, with the help 
 of Baptists and others, but the Missionary Union has 
 never established an Italian mission. Rev. George B. 
 Taylor, d. d., was the efficient superintendent of the 
 Southern Baptist missionary operations for many years. 
 Thirty years of labor have established sixty-four Baptist 
 churches in the kingdom, from the Alps to the island of 
 Sicily, with one thousand four hundred and thirty mem- 
 bers. There has been a good deal of sentimentalism 
 connected with this mission; the idea of having a Bap- 
 tist church under the very shadow of the Vatican has 
 been most captivating to many minds. As was said at 
 Balaklava, " It is magnificent, but it is not war." That 
 sort of thing may gratify the remnant of the old Adam 
 in us, but it is not evangelizing the world. 
 
 The only cases in which our European work has proved 
 prosperous, or even had the capacity of permanent life, 
 are those in which there has been a self-originating body 
 of Baptists, whom their American brethren have simply 
 aided by counsel and money. Where we have sent out 
 missionaries from this country, or where the work has 
 not been from the first carried on mainly by native Bap- 
 tists, there has been a succession of mortifying failures. 
 Nor is it difficult to see why this should be the case. 
 Europe is not a pagan country. Its people already have 
 the religion of Christ — in a perverted form, it is true; 
 yet not so perverted but that multitudes find in it the 
 way of salvation. It is inevitable that such people should 
 look with coldness upon foreigners who come to teach 
 them, not a different religion, but what they have been 
 bred to consider a heretical form of their own. 
 
 The belief has therefore become of late years very 
 
BAPTISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 409 
 
 general that it is unadvisable for American Baptists to 
 maintain missions in European countries by direct sup- 
 port of missionaries or pastors. So soon as churches 
 are formed it is believed to be best that they support their 
 own pastors. Help may well be given from this country 
 for the education of a native ministry, and occasionally 
 for other exceptional forms of work. Whatever is done 
 beyond that, experience seems to show, does not tend to 
 the ultimate stability of the churches or the permanent 
 growth of the cause. Churches, like men, are the better 
 for being self-reliant, and early learning to stand alone. 
 It is an open question whether aiding churches in our own 
 country has not too frequently resulted, like indiscrim- 
 inate giving to beggars, in pauperizing a large number of 
 bodies that if properly stimulated to self-help might long 
 since have become robust. But this is to leave the domain 
 of the historian and enter that of the social philosopher. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 PROGRESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 
 
 AS we have seen, the number of Baptists at the end 
 of the nineteenth century had come to be more than 
 five millions. But a denomination that has nothing better 
 upon which to congratulate itself than mere numbers 
 is to be pitied. Numbers alone are not strength. Be- 
 fore our worth to the world can be duly estimated, it 
 becomes necessary to ask and answer the question, What 
 have Baptists contributed to the religious thought and life 
 of the world, and what is the value of that contribution? 
 
 It may be sufficient to reply to this question that the 
 value of Baptist contribution to Christian life and thought 
 is sufficiently proved by the fact that nearly all the prin- 
 ciples for which Baptists have contended are now the 
 common property of Christendom. This may seem a 
 sweeping if not a rash statement. Let us proceed to 
 justify it in detail. 
 
 The chief of these distinctive principles of Baptists, as 
 has been set forth in a previous chapter, relates to the 
 nature of the church. Baptists have always contended 
 that the church is not a worldly, but a spiritual body — 
 spiritual, not in the sense of lacking a local organization 
 or visible identity, but because organized on the basis of 
 spiritual life. In other words, the church should consist 
 of the regenerate only — that is, of persons who have 
 given credible evidence to the world that they have been 
 born again of the Spirit of God. This principle of Bap- 
 tists, which was scouted at first and for centuries, has 
 now won its way to general acceptance among nearly all 
 410 
 
PROGRESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 4 II 
 
 Protestant denominations, such bodies as call themselves 
 evangelical. In Europe, where State churches still exist, 
 the principle has, it is true, made comparatively little 
 progress. Where citizenship and church-membership are 
 practically identical terms, it is evident that the church 
 cannot insist upon regeneration as a condition of mem- 
 bership. Every one who is born into the State and upon 
 whom some form of so-called baptism has been practised, 
 must be presumed to be regenerate, and therefore to be 
 a fitting person for all the privileges of church-fellowship, 
 unless by a notoriously immoral and profligate life he 
 negatives the assumption and warrants the State-sup- 
 ported minister or priest in refusing him communion. 
 In many of the New England towns during the early 
 period, church-membership was essential to the full en- 
 joyment of the rights of citizenship, the State being in 
 fact and almost in form a theocracy. It was natural, 
 therefore, that persons who lacked spiritual qualifications 
 for church-membership should yet desire a formal mem- 
 bership, in order to avail themselves of the accompanying 
 civil privilege. How this pressure brought about the 
 " Half-way Covenant," with its disastrous effects on the 
 churches, has already been told. It was for vehemently 
 protesting against these evils that Jonathan Edwards was 
 driven from his pastorate at Northampton, and sent forth 
 like Abraham, " not knowing whither the Lord should 
 lead him." 
 
 The Baptist churches, as we have seen, through insist- 
 ence upon a regenerate membership, were a bulwark 
 against the rising tide of anti-scriptural doctrine that 
 for a time- threatened to overwhelm evangelical religion 
 in New England. The influence of these facts was potent, 
 not only among the Congregationalists, but among Pres- 
 b)^erians and other Protestant bodies. The necessity was 
 clearly seen of a reform that should separate the worldly 
 
412 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 from the spiritual elements in the church. Gradually but 
 surely, without outward change in their formularies or 
 an avowed alteration of practice, these bodies came virtu- 
 ally to adopt the Baptist principle of a regenerate mem- 
 bership. They still to a certain extent vitiate the principle 
 by maintaining the unscriptural practice of infant baptism, 
 but they are quite rigid in the requirement that those 
 thus baptized in unconscious infancy shall, on reaching 
 years of maturity, make a public and personal profession 
 of religion before they are received into full member- 
 ship. And in many churches. Congregational, Presby- 
 terian, Methodist, if not in all, this profession is not a mere 
 form of words, but care is taken by the officers of the 
 church to secure credible evidence of regeneration before 
 the candidate is received. In many cases the examination is 
 quite as careful and searching as that to which candidates 
 for baptism are subjected in Baptist churches. While, 
 therefore, we regret that our evangelical brethren of other 
 faiths do not see the truth as we see it and that they 
 are yet, as we believe, rendering an imperfect obedience 
 to the commands of Christ, we have reason to rejoice that 
 Baptist example has so far borne fruit that these brethren 
 have in so large measure adopted, as their rule of church 
 order, the cardinal distinctive principle of Baptists. 
 
 We may note as a second contribution of Baptists to 
 Christian thought the fact that what is known as the bap- 
 tismal controversy is now practically at an end. The issue 
 has been decided and the verdict of scholarship is ren- 
 dered. It is true that there are some Pedobaptists who 
 imagine that the war is still going on, just as there are 
 said to be mountaineers in Tennessee who still imagine 
 that Andrew Jackson is a candidate for the presidency. 
 But Andrew Jackson is not more unmistakably dead and 
 buried than the baptismal controversy. No scholar of 
 world-wide repute would risk his fame by denying that 
 
PROGRESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 413 
 
 the primitive baptism was immersion, and immersion 
 only. Not more than one or two Greek lexicons ever 
 printed give any other meaning for the word baptizo 
 than " immerse " or " dip " or their equivalents in other 
 languages.^ No exegete of the first rank attributes any 
 other meaning than this to the word wherever it occurs 
 in the New Testament. No church historian of the 
 first rank has put his name to any other statement than 
 that in apostolic times baptism was always the immer- 
 sion of a believer. The admissions to this effect from 
 Pedobaptist scholars of all countries during the last three 
 centuries are numbered by scores, even by hundreds. 
 There is no voice to the contrary except from men of 
 scant scholarship, and the question is no longer disputed 
 by anybody who is worth the attention of a serious 
 person. 
 
 The candid Pedobaptists have entirely changed their 
 ground. They no longer engage in pettifogging about 
 the meaning of baptizo and the force of certain Greek 
 prepositions; they boldly acknowledge, with Dean Stan- 
 ley, that " there can be no question that the original form 
 of baptism — the very meaning of the word — was com- 
 plete immersion in the deep baptismal waters," but that 
 such immersion is " peculiarly unsuitable to the tastes, 
 the convenience, and the feelings of the countries of the 
 North and West." This argument ignores, to be sure, 
 the historical fact that sprinkling originated in the warm 
 South, and immersion lingered longest in a cold country 
 like England ; but never mind that. The triumphant con- 
 clusion is fine — ^this quite unauthorized substitution of 
 sprinkling for immersion, though it " has set aside the 
 larger part of the apostolic language regarding baptism, 
 
 * The secondary meaning, " to dye," recognized in most lexicons, cannot 
 be called another meaning, since it expresses a mere modification of the 
 root signification of the word — the dyeing is performed by dipping. 
 
414 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 and has altered the very meaning of the word," is never- 
 theless to be regarded as "a striking example of the 
 triumph of common sense and convenience over the 
 bondage of form and custom." 
 
 To meet their opponents on this changed ground, Bap- 
 tists have but to stand by their cardinal principle that the 
 authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, as expressed to us 
 through the Scriptures, is paramount with a true follower 
 of Christ. When he says, Do this, whatever it may be, 
 his loyal follower has no choice but to obey. And he 
 cannot long persuade himself or persuade the world that it 
 is obedience to do something quite different, under the 
 plea that " it will do just as well." Nothing will do as 
 well as unquestioning, exact, glad obedience to Christ's 
 lightest word. 
 
 It would be flattering to denominational pride to say 
 that a third Baptist contribution to Christian thought is 
 the doctrine as to the place of the Lord's Supper among 
 the ordinances of Christ; but to say this would not be 
 true. The Baptist doctrine in this respect has never been 
 peculiar, though opponents have sometimes made strenu- 
 ous efforts to represent it as such. There is not — ^there 
 never has been — a Christian body whose standards author- 
 ized its clergy to administer the communion to the un- 
 baptized. Individual ministers have stretched church law 
 to cover their own wrong practice in this regard. It is 
 not uncommon, for example, for Episcopal clergymen to 
 admit to the communion practically all who present them- 
 selves and are not known to them to be persons of im- 
 moral life, and they sometimes invite people whom they 
 know to be Christians not in fellowship with their church. 
 
 These things are, however, done in spite of the rubric, 
 which says, "And there shall none be admitted to the 
 Holy Communion until such time as he be confirmed or 
 be ready and desirous to be confirmed." If Episcopal 
 
PROGRESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 415 
 
 ministers here and there violate the well-established rule 
 of their own church, that cannot be regarded as altering 
 the rule. This principle applies equally to pastors of 
 Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches 
 that on their own authority invite to the Lord's table 
 other than baptized Christians. Their church formularies 
 authorize no such invitation. 
 
 Only the exceptionally ignorant or the exceptionally 
 unscrupulous now reproach Baptists because of their 
 " close " communion, since intelligent and candid Pedo- 
 baptists know and acknowledge that we stand precisely 
 where all Christendom stands, and where all Christendom 
 always has stood from the days of the apostles until now, 
 with regard to the qualifications for communion. All that 
 Baptists can claim to have done in this matter is to have 
 cleared away the mass of sophistries with which op- 
 ponents had beclouded this question, until no excuse for 
 ignorance and no apology for misrepresentation are 
 possible. 
 
 But if Baptists cannot properly claim the honor of 
 contributing this principle to Christian thought, they can 
 honestly claim to have added another principle, namely, 
 that the union of Church and State is contrary to 
 the word of God, contrary to natural justice, and de- 
 structive to both parties to the union. Next to a regen- 
 erate church-membership, this has been the principle for 
 which Baptists have most strenuously contended and with 
 ffhich they have been most prominently identified. For 
 this teaching they were from the time of the Reformation 
 until a period within the memory of men now living, de- 
 spised and rejected of men, loaded with opprobrium, re- 
 viled, persecuted, put to death. Toleration was a byword 
 and a hissing among all parties of Christians, and re- 
 ligious liberty was an idea that apparently never entered 
 men's minds until it was professed, defended, and 
 
4l6 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 exemplified by Baptists. It is difficult for Americans, liv- 
 ing in an atmosphere of perfect religious liberty, where 
 no law restrains any man from worshiping God in any 
 way that his conscience dictates, or compels him to con- 
 tribute of his substance to the support of any worship 
 that he does not approve — it is hard for us even to im- 
 agine a state of society in which the majority determined 
 what the community should believe, how men should 
 worship God, and repressed all dissent with savage laws 
 ^nd penalties that did not stop short of the stake and the 
 scaffold. 
 
 The once despised teaching of a few Baptists has be- 
 come a commonplace of thought in our country, a funda- 
 mental principle of law, and he would be laughed at 
 who should propose its overthrow or even its modifica- 
 tion. But to appreciate what change has been wrought 
 by this idea in American religious and civil life, an 
 American must study the institutions of Europe, where 
 there is no State that has not its established church, 
 where dissent from the established religion is punished 
 more or less severely by civil and social disabilities, if 
 not by imprisonment and fines ; and where, even if un- 
 molested, those who dissent from the established religion 
 are, nevertheless, heavily taxed for its support. This was 
 the principle that prevailed during the colonial period 
 in our own land. This would be the system under which 
 we should now be living had not this despised principle 
 of the Baptists become incorporated into the very spiritual 
 and moral fiber of the American people. 
 
 There is still reason why Baptists should continue to 
 bear their testimony in favor of this principle. It is gen- 
 trally acknowledged and professed, but not always 
 obeyed. The separation of Church and State is not yet ab- 
 solutely complete. Appropriations are made from Federal 
 and State funds for the support of sectarian institutions on 
 
PROGRESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 417 
 
 one plausible pretext or another ; a certain denomination is 
 recognized as having almost a monopoly of chaplain- 
 ships in the army and navy, and its form of worship is 
 generally maintained in both services; in some States 
 inoffensive people who conscientiously observe the seventh 
 day are prosecuted and punished by fines or imprison- 
 ment for quietly laboring in the fields on the first day of 
 the week. And it is a fair question for debate whether 
 the exemption of church property from taxation is not 
 a relic of the old idea of church establishments. Here 
 are still opportunities for Baptists to lift up the voice in 
 behalf of their cherished principle, to cry aloud and spare 
 not, until it is not only acknowledged to be abstractly 
 true, but is concretely obeyed. 
 
 The Baptist principle of the independence of each 
 church has also won its way to a very considerable de- 
 gree of acceptance among churches of all orders. Among 
 the Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Methodist churches, 
 although in theory there is a more or less centralized and 
 hierarchical government, the independence of the local 
 church is practically unquestioned. The Methodist bishop 
 still retains his theoretical power of ordering any man to 
 any church, but it somehow happens that where a church 
 desires a certain pastor, and the pastor desires to settle 
 with that church, the bishop makes that identical ap- 
 pointment. The Episcopal bishop has, in theory, large 
 powers; in practice, every Episcopal church chooses its 
 own rector as absolutely as though there were no bishop. 
 In theory, no Presbyterian church can call a pastor, and 
 no pastor can be dismissed, without the concurrence of 
 presbytery; but where both parties have made up their 
 minds, presbytery always concurs. 
 
 Baptists have also contributed their share to the world's 
 advancement by their interest in missions, in education, in 
 Sunday-schools, and in general philanthropic movements. 
 
4l8 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 The facts that justify this claim have been given in 
 detail in previous chapters of this history, and only this 
 statement needs to be made here, by way of giving com- 
 pleteness to this brief summary. Though not, strictly 
 speaking, pioneers in most of these forms of religious 
 activity, our churches have helped to bear the heat and 
 burden of the day. 
 
 Though Baptists have thus powerfully influenced other 
 bodies of Christians, it would be a mistake to infer that 
 they have themselves escaped modifications in belief and 
 practice through the influence of other Christian brethren. 
 Mr. Spurgeon was reported, some years ago, as proudly 
 remarking that he had never changed an opinion, and that 
 he then preached precisely what he did when he began 
 his ministry. The remark is probably not authentic, and 
 was certainly not true ; and if it had been true, it would 
 be a reflection on the intelligence of a man who could 
 spend fifty years in the ministry without learning any- 
 thing. Mr. Spurgeon's admirers, and their name is legion, 
 cannot think so meanly of him. If a great preacher can- 
 not live and labor a half-century without having his be- 
 liefs modified, still less can a large body, composed of 
 many elements, some of them discordant, exposed to 
 numerous hostile and disintegrating influences, and sub- 
 ject to those laws of development and growth that affect 
 all social organisms. Change was inevitable, but change 
 is not necessarily deterioration. Whether the modifica- 
 tion is for the better may be left for the decision of 
 theologians; the historian merely records the fact. 
 
 Modifications in Baptist faith and practice during the 
 last two centuries may be noted (i) in the character of 
 public worship, (2) in a less rigidly Calvinistic theology, 
 (3) in a change of emphasis that marks the preaching 
 of our day. 
 
 The feeling has gained ground among Baptist pastors 
 
PROGRESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 419 
 
 of late years that the public worship of our churches 
 lacks elements of color and variety and richness that it 
 should have, and that it has departed from the scrip- 
 tural method in practically giving over the public 
 worship of God to two hired functionaries — ^the minister 
 and the choir. The introduction of congregational sing- 
 ing and the use of the Psalter, as well as certain ancient 
 forms of devotion that are the common heritage of 
 Christendom and not the property of any church, has 
 followed close on the conviction. Something like a gen- 
 eral tendency in this direction is now observable, but how 
 far it will proceed it were vain to speculate. 
 
 That both Calvinism and Arminianism have been so 
 modified as to bear little relation to the systems once 
 passing under these names is so well understood, and 
 so little likely to be questioned, that it is not worth while 
 to waste space in more than a statement of the fact. 
 Each has reacted on the other, and between the latest 
 statements of the two opposing systems a critical stu- 
 dent can discern little more than a difference of empha- 
 sis. Both assert the sovereign election and free grace of 
 God as the ground of the sinner's salvation ; both admit 
 that the will of man, free as regards all external con- 
 straint, accepts God's proffered grace ; the Calvinist laying 
 the greater stress on the former idea, the Arminian on 
 the latter. 
 
 This matter of a changed emphasis has not been con- 
 fined to theological circles alone; it has affected every 
 pulpit. Any one who will read the published discourses 
 of a century ago and compare them with those of the 
 present day must be struck by this fact. The same doc- 
 trines are professed and believed as then, but how differ- 
 ent the mode of presentation. The eternity of future 
 punishment is still an article of faith, but the preacher no 
 longer threatens sinners with a hell of material fire. 
 
420 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS 
 
 Retribution is conceived as something at once more spirit- 
 ual and more terrible than physical torture. The infinite 
 love of God as shown in the redemption of a lost world; 
 the atonement a satisfaction for its sins; salvation not a 
 thing of the future life, but beginning here and now, not 
 a mere rescue from hell, but the consecration of a life to 
 God — these are the ideas that are most emphasized in the 
 best preaching of to-day. To note the change is not to 
 pronounce judgment on either the past or the present. 
 
 Another change is at present in progress among Bap- 
 tists, but it is too soon to attempt to record its history. 
 Two parties are in process of formation in the denomina- 
 tion, one who call themselves Progressives, another com- 
 monly called Conservatives. The names are not very 
 happily chosen, but they are convenient, and their appli- 
 cation is generally understood. These parties differ on 
 questions of speculative theology, of history, of literary 
 criticism, of denominational policy, of church order. At 
 times there are symptoms that their opposition may break 
 out into an open warfare ; at times a peaceful issue seems 
 not only hopeful, but certain. 
 
 In the judgment of men of other faiths, the most char- 
 acteristic fact in the history of the Baptists during the 
 last two centuries has been, not their rapid growth in 
 numbers, but their marvelous continuity of belief, their 
 orthodoxy of doctrine. It is the wonder of many mem- 
 bers of other churches having elaborate written stand- 
 ards, and an ingenious system of checks and devices to 
 prevent and punish heresy, that a denomination without 
 a creed, without a government, with no central authority 
 or other human device for preserving unity, with each 
 local organization a law unto itself and responsible to 
 none save Christ — ^that such a rope of sand should hold 
 together at all, much less sustain a strain that the 
 strongest bodies have borne none too well. 
 
PROGRESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES 42 1 
 
 But one cause can be plausibly assigned for this phe- 
 nomenon, and that is, Baptist loyalty to their fundamental 
 principle, the word of God the only rule of faith and 
 practice. The Scriptures are easily " understanded of the 
 people," even the unlettered who approach them with 
 open minds desiring to know the will of God. Such 
 may not become great biblical scholars, but they will learn 
 everything that it is important for them to know for 
 their eternal salvation and daily guidance. They may 
 not become profound theologians, but they will learn 
 the cardinal truths of the Christian faith, and learn them 
 more accurately in their right relations than the student 
 of some human system is likely to learn them. 
 
 Loyalty to this principle has been the strength of 
 Baptists in the past, and as they are loyal to it in future 
 they may expect increase in numbers, in strength, and 
 in unity. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abelard, teacher of Arnold, 80, 
 
 Act of Toleration : effect on English 
 Baptists, 256 ; effect in Wales, 271. 
 
 Academies: Hopewell, 352; in New 
 England, 355; Horton (N. S.), 283; 
 recent progress of, 369, 371. 
 
 Adventists, origin of, 3^3. 
 
 Affusion : among Swiss Anabaptists* 
 136 ; among Mennonites, 190 ; prac- 
 tised by John Smyth, 204. 
 
 Albigenses : numerous in Southern 
 France, 103 ; crushed by crusade, 104. 
 
 Allison, Doctor Burgess, 352. 
 
 Aiiine, Henry, evangelist, 277. 
 
 Amsterdam, first Baptist church in, 4, 
 203. 
 
 Anabaptists : name misapplied to Eng- 
 lish believers, 3 ; English vs. Conti- 
 nental, 4 ; Novatians and Donatists 
 so named, 66 ; relation to Waldenses, 
 laS, 130; origin of Swiss, 129; become 
 separate party, 136 ; persecution in 
 Zurich, 138, 140; disappear, 141; in 
 canton of Bern, 142 ; emigrate to 
 America, 143 ; teachings of, 144 ; 
 many varieties in Germany, 146 ; their 
 sudden appearance, 148 ; opposed to 
 persecution, 161 ; persecuted every- 
 where, 161 ; Sebastian Franck on, 165; 
 Miinzer not of them, X74; discredited 
 by disorders at Miinster, 170-181 ; 
 Melanchthon on persecution of, x8i ; 
 in Moravia, 154, 182 ; disappearance 
 of, 184 ; number of martyrs among, 
 188; Henry VIII. persecutes, 193; 
 Joan of Kent burned, 195; Edward 
 Wightman burned, 197. 
 
 Anderson, Martin B., 357. 
 
 Anderson, Rev. Elisha, 278. 
 
 Andru, Rev. Henri, 396. 
 
 Angus, Rev. Joseph, 267. 
 
 Angrogne, Synod of, xa6. 
 
 Anti-mission Baptists, 326, 333, 3B8. 
 
 Antioch, crisis at, 20. 
 
 Antinomianism : among Bogomils, 78 ; 
 in England, 240. 
 
 Arius and his teachings ; condemned by 
 Council of Nice, 67 ; favored by Julian, 
 68. 
 
 Arnold of Brescia : his evangelical 
 teaching, q_; life and labors, 80-85. 
 
 Arminius : nis theology, 303-205 ; his 
 teachings modified, 4x9. 
 
 Asceticism, growth of, SS* ^• 
 
 Aspersion, first recognized, 49- 
 
 Associations : first formed in England, 
 339; General Baptist, 247; Six-prin- 
 
 ciple, 267 ; in Nova Scotia, 280 ; in 
 New Brunswick, 281 ; in the United 
 States: Philadelphia, 306, 310, 314; 
 Kehukee, 317; Mahoning, Redstone, 
 Dover, 343. 
 
 Athanasius and his teaching, 68-70. 
 
 Augsburg, Anabaptists of, 4, 158, 
 
 Augustine: his adult baptism, 50; op- 
 poses Donatists, (£ ; defends perse- 
 cution, p7. 
 
 Australasia, Baptists in, 285. 
 
 Baptism : act of, 4 ; immediately fol' 
 lowed belief, 25 ; clinic, 48 ; regarded 
 as sacrament, 46 ; and the catechu- 
 menate, 51; "for remission of sins,'' 
 343 : Dean Stanley on, 413. 
 
 Baptism of believers : the original prac- 
 tice, 4; continued for centuries, 50; 
 practised by Patrick, 72 ; by Bogomils, 
 77 ; by Petrobrusians, 114 ; by Hen- 
 ricians, 118; by Waldenses, 123,126; 
 by Anabaptists, 136; the distinctive 
 Baptist principle, 146 ; practised by 
 Smyth's church, 204. 
 
 Baptism of infants : not found in Ne^ 
 Testament, 26 ; how and when intro' 
 duced, 49, 50; practised by Donatists, 
 66 ; denied by medieval sects, 102 ; 
 rejected by Henry of Lausanne, 118; 
 by Waldenses, 123, 126 ; opposed by 
 Miinzer, 171 ; rejected by Mennonites, 
 X90; questioned by Dunster, 297. 
 
 Baptists : name first given, 3, 4 ; first 
 church of, 4, 203; and apostolic suc- 
 cession, 6-xo ; beginnings of, soi ; 
 origin of General, 204 ; false claims ol 
 antiquity of, 205 ; origin of Particular, 
 S05; growth of, 21X ; relations of, to 
 Mennonites, 209 ; on side of Parlia* 
 ment, 219; under Cromwell, 222; and 
 Fifth Monarchy, 224 : under James 11., 
 234; curious customs of English, 235: 
 slow growth of, 237; General Assembly 
 of, 238; first Associations of, 239; 
 Hyper-Calvinism among, 240 ; declint 
 of, 241 ; effect of Wesleyan movement 
 on, 245 : Dan Taylor joins General, 
 246 ; comparative growth of, 262 ; pe- 
 riods in history of American, 287 ; in 
 New York, 302 ; in Pennsylvania and 
 New Jersey, 304 ; in South Carolina, 
 306 ; in Virginia, 307 ; in North Caro- 
 lina, 307 ; slow growth of in New Eng- 
 land, 308 ; in New Hampshire and Ver- 
 mont, 313 ; their period of greatest 
 advance, 3x9 ; pioneers in Middle Wes^ 
 423 
 
424 
 
 INDEX 
 
 331 ; condition in x8^( 36s ; growth in 
 last fifty years, 366 ; increase of wealth 
 among, 379 ; secret of their growth, 380, 
 421 ; oppose Unitarians, 4x1 ; two par- 
 tics among, 420. 
 
 Baptists in Australasia, 285 ; in France, 
 394, seq. : in Germany, 396, seq. ; in 
 Sweden, 400, seq, 1 in Norway, 403 : 
 in Russia, 406. 
 
 Baptists, minor varieties of: Six-prin- 
 ciple, 267, 384; Seventh-day, 268, 390; 
 Free, 385, seq. ; Original Freewill, 385 ; 
 Separate, 387 ; United, 387 ; Primitive, 
 
 §38 ; Two-seed-in-Spirit, 389, 
 aptist Almanac," quoted, 363. 
 Baptist Church of Christ, 389. 
 Baptist Union : organization, 25G ; Spur- 
 
 feon withdraws from, z6x. 
 aptist Year-Book," quoted, 362, 369, 
 378. 
 Barnabas, work at Antioch, 30. 
 Basil the Bogomil, 78. 
 Baxter, abhors toleration, 220. 
 Baynes, Thomas Spencer, 361. 
 Beecher, Rev. Lyman, 320. 
 Bern : Anabaptists of, 141 ; disputation 
 
 at. 5t53- 
 
 Bernard of Clairvaux : opposes Abelard 
 and Arnold, 82 ; his bitterness as per- 
 secutor, Z09 ; writes against Henry of 
 Lausanne, 1x7. 
 
 Bible, versions of: Carey's, 354, 257; 
 Judson's, 236 ; Yates and Pearce s, 
 258. 
 
 Bible societies: British and Foreign, 
 257 ; Bible Translation, 258 ; Ameri- 
 can, 33G ; American and Foreign,'338 ; 
 American Bible Union, 338. 
 
 Bickel, Rev. Philip, 361, 399. 
 
 Bintgens case, among Mennonites, 192. 
 
 Bishop: origin of name, 30; how sepa- 
 rate office of, developed, 53; Ignatius 
 on, 54; Irenasus and Cyprian on, 54; 
 in Patrick's time, 73. (See Elders.) 
 
 Blaurock, George : Swiss Anabaptist, 
 135 ; imprisoned at Zurich, 137 ; burned, 
 140. 
 
 Blunt, Richard, baptism of, so?. 
 
 Bockhold (" John of Leyden ' ) and his 
 doings in Munster, 179. 
 
 Bogomils : origin of, 76 ; doctrines of, 77. 
 
 Bohemia, revolt against Rome, 89, seq. 
 
 Bohemian Brethren (see Moravians). 
 
 Bowne, John, banished, 303. 
 
 Braintree Church, 205. 
 
 Brescia: Arnold preaches in, 80; Savo- 
 narola's preaching at, 87. 
 
 Bridgewater Church, 205. 
 
 British East India Company, opposes 
 missions, 253. 
 
 Britten, William, 3. 
 
 Boardman, Rev. George Dana, 334. 
 
 Brown, Chad, "elder' in Providence, 
 292. 
 
 Brown, Nicholas, 354. 
 
 Buckle, on persecution of Anabaptists, 
 188. 
 
 Bulgaria and the Bogomils, 75. 
 
 Banyan, John : his "Grace Abounding," 
 
 213 ; not an orthodox Baptist, 233 ; his 
 writings, 233; advocates open com- 
 munion, 263 ; as a preacher, 366. 
 Busbar, Leonard, so8. 
 
 Caecilian, bishop of Carthage, 64. 
 
 Caffyn, Matthew, 338. 
 
 Calvin, and the burning of Servetus, 139. 
 
 Calvinism : among Particular Baptists, 
 340; modified, 419. 
 
 Campbell, Alexander, and his followers, 
 342, seq. 
 
 Canada, Baptists in, 376, seq, 
 
 Carey, William : a great linguist, 951, 
 354 ; life and labors of, 259, seq. ; 
 opposed by Hyper-Calvinists, 336. 
 
 Carson, Alexander, life and work of, 375, 
 376. 
 
 Carmichael, Robert, becomes Baptist, 
 272. 
 
 Catechumenate, history of, 51. 
 
 Cathari, 64, 75, 102. 
 
 Celsus, confuted by Origen, 41. 
 
 Chaplin, Rev. Jeremiah, 355. 
 
 " Character of the Beast, John Smyth's 
 book, 203. 
 
 Charles I., and his contest with his 
 people, 2x9, 227, 328. 
 
 Charles II. : and Kiffen, 214 ; and the 
 Act of Uniformity, 2x7, 231 ; resto- 
 ration of, 926 : favors toleration, 230 ; 
 Grantham's petition to, 239 ; influence 
 of his reign, 242 ; grants charter to 
 Rhode Island, 295. 
 
 Charles V. and the Edict of Brussels, 
 188. 
 
 Chase, Rev. Irah, 394, 
 
 Chiliasm : among Montanists, 60 ; among 
 Anabaptists, 155, 171, 176, 179 ; in 
 England, 223-226 ; in America, 303. 
 
 Christianity: its early Jewish ideals, x6; 
 becomes differentiated from Judaism, 
 18; crisis in its history, 20; propagated 
 through empire, 2x ; legal status under 
 Roman law, 35, seq. : attacks on and 
 apologies for, 39-41 ; corrupted by 
 prosperity, 43, 56. 
 
 Christian v., king of Denmark, favors 
 persecution, 405. 
 
 Christian Endeavor, Society of, 359, seq' 
 
 Christians or Christian Connection, 393. 
 
 Christadelphians, 393. 
 
 Church: continuity of, 5; the invisible, 
 7 ; but twice mentioned by Jesus, 13; 
 relation to kingdom, 14, 34 ; consists 
 of regenerate only, 26, 114, 134, 146, 
 X49, 410 ; officers of, 29-31 ; inde- 
 pendence of, 31, 4x7; worship of, 32, 
 i3 ; idea of Holy Catholic, 44, seq. ; 
 (nntanist theory of, 58 ; Arnold's 
 teachings about, 8x ; Roman concep- 
 tion of, 86, 100: Petrobrusian theory 
 of, XX4 ; radical theory of, in Zurich, 
 146 ; Menno's teaching concerning, 
 187. 
 
 Church of God (see Winnebrenner). 
 
 Church and State: union under Con- 
 stantine, 95; Arnold demands sepa- 
 ration of, 81, 83 ; separation begun in 
 
INDEX 
 
 425 
 
 United States, 310, seg. ; not yet fully 
 accomplished, 4x6. 
 
 Church of £nglaud : baptism in, xoS : 
 dissenters from, 906, 231, 235 (see also 
 Separates^ ; and Archbishop Laud, 
 919 ; under Cromwell, asa ; under 
 Charles II., 331 ; hostile to Wesley, 
 343 : effect of Wesleyan movement on, 
 244 ; undertakes missionary work, 257. 
 
 Churches : Southwark, 260 ; Swansea, 
 36c), S99 ; Piscataway, 387, 388, 304 ; 
 Middletown, 388, 304: Providence, 292; 
 Newport, 394; Boston, 300; Charles- 
 town, 30X, 306 ; Pennepack, 304 ; Hav- 
 erhill, 3x1 ; New York, 317; Chicago, 
 330. 
 
 Clarke, Br. John: early life of 393; 
 "elder" at Newport, 3^4; procures a 
 charter, 395 ; arrested m Boston, 398. 
 
 Clement of Rome, uses sacerdotal terms, 
 53- 
 
 Clergy, not a New Testament word, 30. 
 
 Clerical celibacy, 55. 
 
 Clifford, Rev. John, 361. 
 
 "Close" communion : practised by 
 Swiss Anabaptists, 14^4; by Smyth's 
 church, 304 : by English Baptists, six ; 
 in Canada, 280 ; principle of, generally 
 approved, 415. 
 
 Clugny, monastery of, 115. 
 
 Coggeshall Church, 205. 
 
 Colby University (college), 355. 
 
 Colgate, William, 357. 
 
 Columbian University, 356. 
 
 Communion : apostolic practice in, 38 ; 
 regarded as a sacrament, 53 ; qualifi- 
 cations for, 414. (See "Close' com- 
 munion and "Open" communion.) 
 
 Communism, at Jerusalem, 14. 
 
 Conant, Rev. Thomas J., 405. 
 
 Cone, Dr. Spencer H., 338. 
 
 Confession : the Assembly's, 3 ; Schleith- 
 eim, X44 : of 1644, 3x1; of 1677, 237; 
 others, 238. 
 
 Constance, bishop of, 153. 
 
 Constance: Hus burned at, 93 ; Hatzer's 
 death at, 140, X4X. 
 
 Constantine : effect of his policy, 56 ; 
 decides against the Donatists, 65 ; 
 calls Council of Nice, 67. 
 
 Controversy : baptismal in England, 209, 
 2x0 ; on Bible versions in England, 358 ; 
 on communion, 263; "down grade," 
 961 ; Unitarian, 335 ; Bible Society, 336, 
 sea.; Anti-masonic, 34X, se^. : Camp- 
 beilite or Disciple, 342; anti-slavery, 
 344 ; baptismal in America, 412 ; com- 
 munion, 4x4. 
 Colleges : Canadian, 283, seg. ; other, 
 355* 359f seq.: development of, in recent 
 years, 367, seq. 
 
 Convention: Saratoga, 340; Southern 
 
 Baptist, 347 : Triennial, 333, 349. 
 Conventicle Act, 231. 
 Cornelius, conversion of. 18, 
 Cornelius, chosen bishop of Rome, 63. 
 Cornelius (historian) : on persecution of 
 Anabaptists, 165; on Miinster uproar, 
 z8o. 
 
 Council : Jerusalem, 20, 31 ; at Nice, 96 ; 
 Ravenna, 49 ; Second Lateran, 82 ; at 
 Sens, 82 ; at Constance, 93, 93 ; ar 
 Rheims, xx8 ; Fourth Lateran, 104 
 X28; Toulouse, 138; Tarracona, X28. 
 
 Crandall, Reuben, 279. 
 
 Cranmer and Anabaptists, 193. 
 
 Crawford, Alexander, 280. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver : Baptists trusted by, 
 3x9, 220 ; his ideas of toleration, 221 ; 
 his Triers, 222 ; ambition of, 323, 228. 
 
 Crosby, Thomas, Baptist historian, 205, 
 206, 207. 
 
 Crowle and Epworth Church, 205. 
 
 Cyprian : on bishops, 34; becomes mar- 
 (yi*/ 37 ; on clinic baptism, 48. 
 
 Dean, Rev. William, 334. 
 Deacons, first appointed, 29. 
 Decius, persecution of, 37. 
 De Blois, Rev. Stephen, 278. 
 Deism in England, 241. 
 Delaney, Rev. James, 323. 
 Denmark, Baptists in, 404, seq. 
 Denck, John, Anabaptist leader : life of 
 
 X57; his theology, 158; his last years, 
 
 X59 ; on civil government, 176. 
 Devan, T. T., 395. 
 Devonshire Square Church, 275. 
 Dexter, Gregory, " elder " at Providence, 
 
 392. 
 Diet of Speyer, its edict, X64. 
 Dimocks, the, Baptist preachers, 976. 
 Diocletian and his persecution, 37. 
 Disciples, origin of, 342. seq. 
 Discipline : among Mennonites, 11/2 ; 
 
 among English Baptists, 336 ; recent 
 
 decline of, 381. 
 Dolomore, Rev.^D., 286. 
 Domestic Missionafy~~-Society (Mass.), 
 
 279. 
 Donatists-: origin of, 64 ; appeal to the 
 
 emperor, 65 ; practise infant baptism, 
 
 66 ; called Anabaptists, 146. 
 "Dropping," growth of practice, 38X 
 Dungan, Rev. Thomas, 304, 
 Dunster. Henry, opposes baptism of 
 
 infants, 297. 
 
 Eaton. Rev. Isaac, 352. 
 
 Eck, John, X49. 
 
 Education : among English Baptists, 
 266 ; among American Baptists, 350, 
 seq.f 366, seq. (See Colleges, Semina- 
 ries, etc.) 
 
 Edwards, Morgan, life and labors of, 
 
 314- 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 411. 
 
 Elders: origin of, 29; plurality of, 31. 
 (See Bishops.) 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, persecutes Anabap- 
 tists. ZQ5. 
 
 English Baptist Missionary Society, 252. 
 Erasmus : his New Testament, 131 ; rank 
 
 of, as scholar, X50. 
 Eucharist (see Communion). 
 Euthymius, his account of Bogomils, ?6. 
 Evans, Christmas, and the Baptists of 
 
 Wales, 27X. 
 
426 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Evangelical party, the Old : protesting 
 against Rome, zzz; Doctor Keller on, 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Eyres, Nicholas, 304. 
 Eythorne Church, 205. 
 
 Faber, John, 149. 
 
 farel (William), at Angrogne, 126. 
 Farringdon Road Church, 205. 
 Fau/k, Jacob, drowned at Zurich, 139. 
 Feet-washing: not an ordinance, 28; 
 
 practised as an ordinance, 385, 387, 389, 
 
 392. 
 Ferdinand, Archduke, arrests Hilbmaier, 
 
 156. 
 Fifth Monarchy men, in England, 223, 
 
 224, 226. 
 Finney, Charles G., 350. 
 Fisher, Rev. Ezra, 329. 
 Fitch, Titus, 279. 
 Five-mile Act, 231. 
 Florence, Savonarola's career at, 87, 
 
 seq. 
 Fox, George, 148. 
 
 fVanciscans : their founder, Z22 ; over- 
 throw Savonarola, 88. 
 France, Baptists in, 394, seq. 
 Frankenhausen, battle of, 172. 
 Franck, Sebastian, on Anabaptists, 165. 
 Frederick Barbarossa, 84. 
 tree Baptists, 385, seq, 
 Freerks, Aqabaptist martyr, 185. 
 Freeman, Rev. Allen B., 329. 
 Friends, affinity for Mennonites, 191. 
 Friesland, converts in, 177. 
 Fuller, Rev. Andrew : life and labors of, 
 
 248 ; theology of, 249 ; works of, 361 ; 
 
 leader in missions, 252, 255. 
 Furman, Rev. Richard, 3)2. 
 Fiiaslin, on origin of Anabaptists, 129. 
 
 Gainsborough, John Smyth at, 202, 
 
 Gale, Rev. Amory, 323. 
 
 Gano, Rev. John, 310, 317, 330. 
 
 Garfield, President, 356. 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 345. 
 
 General Baptists : origin and growth 
 of, 204, seq. ; General Assembly of, 
 238 ; decline of, 23^ ; New Connexion 
 formed, 247 ; unite with Particular 
 Baptists, 357 : in America, 388. 
 
 General Court (of Massachusetts) : con- 
 demns Baptists, 296 ; case of Dunster, 
 2gS ; its treatment of Clarke and 
 Holmes, 298 ; nails up doors of First 
 Baptist Church, 300. 
 
 ' General meetings," 305. 
 
 General Convention of Baptists : origin 
 of, 332 : divided on account of slavery, 
 346. 
 
 Gentiles, gospel first preached to, z8, 
 
 Germany : condition of peasants in, 167; 
 social revolution in, z68 ; Baptists in, 
 yjlfSeq,: Anabaptists in, 145, seq.: 
 persecution the law of, 161, seq. 
 
 "German Baptists" (see Dunkards). 
 
 Gill, Rev. John: theology of, 240; bap- 
 dzes Robert Carmichael, 272. 
 
 Gnosticism, 55, 60. 
 
 Going, Rev. Jonathan, founds American 
 
 Baptist Home Mission Society, 327. 
 Goold, Rev. Thomas : opposes infant 
 
 baptism, 299 ; pastor First Baptist 
 
 Church, Boston, 300. 
 "Grace Abounding," 2x3. 
 Grantham, Thomas, 239. 
 Great Commission : first given, 13 ; the 
 
 ministry's " marching orders," 252 ; 
 
 practically nullified, 241. 
 Great Awakening, 309, 313. 
 Grebel, Conrad : taught by predecessors, 
 
 129; early life of, 134; his last labors 
 
 and death, 140; letter of, to MUnzer, 
 
 172. 
 Greece, Baptist mission to, 407. 
 
 Hackett, Horatio B., 405. 
 Half-way Covenant, 308, 411. 
 Haldane Brothers, 273, seq. : 279. 
 Hall, Robert : on Gill's commentary, 
 
 240 ; a great preacher, 259 ; favors open 
 
 communion, 264, 
 Ham, Rev. William, 285. 
 Hamburg, senate : persecutes Baptists, 
 
 398 ; grants toleration, 399. 
 Hamilton, institutions at, 356. 
 Harding, Rev. Seth, 278. 
 Harrison, Gen. Thomas : life, services, 
 
 and death of, 226-229 ; his opposition 
 
 to Cromwell, 223, 228. 
 Harrison, Gen, William Henry, 324. 
 Hascall, Rev. Daniel, 356. 
 Hatzer, Ludwig : Anabaptist leader, 135; 
 
 punished at Zurich, 137 ; his death at 
 
 Constance, 140 ; his translation of 
 
 prophets, 159. 
 Havelock, General, 261, 
 Heberle, on Anabaptists, 129. 
 Hebbard, Rev. John, 278. 
 Helwys, Thomas, English Baptist leader, 
 
 202-20C. 
 
 Henry, Patrick, advocates religious lib- 
 erty, 310. 
 
 Henry VlII., proclamations of, against 
 heretics, 193. 
 
 Henry of Lausanne, xi6, xxS. 
 
 Hesse, Landgrave of, dislikes persecu- 
 tion, 164. 
 
 " High " and " Low" Mennonites, 191. 
 
 Hildebrand (see Popes). 
 
 Hill, David J., 357. 
 
 Hill Cliflf Church, 205. 
 
 Hofmann, Melchior : early life of, 175; 
 leader of Anabaptists, 176 ; his impris- 
 onment and death, 177 ; his doctrine 
 of Christ's person, 195. 
 
 Holmes, Obadiah, whipped at Boston, 
 298. 
 
 Holland: Hofmann's labors in, 176; 
 grants toleration, 189 ; English Baptists 
 in, 201. 
 
 Hopkins, Mark, 356. 
 
 Holy Spirit : descent of, at Pentecost, 
 14 ; Montanist doctrine of, 58 ; com- 
 
 Eared to Friends*, 59. 
 [oly War," Bunyan's, 233, 
 Horton Church, 277. 
 Hiibmaier, Baithasar : Anabaptist leader. 
 
INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 153: imprisoned at Zurich, 137; eariy 
 years of, 149 ; at Ratisbon and Wald- 
 shut, 150; friend of Zwingli, 151; his 
 tracts, 153; labors of, at Nikolsburg, 
 154-156; death of, 156; his "Heretics 
 and those who burn them," 161 ; his 
 relation to Miinzer, 171. 
 
 Hughes, Rev. Joseph, 257, 336. 
 
 Hurst, Bishop, on Savonarola, 85. 
 
 Hus, John : early career of, 89 ; disciple 
 of Wiclif, 91 ; burned at Constance, 93. 
 
 Hut, Hans, 155. 
 
 Hutchinson, Roger, on Anabaptists, 194. 
 
 Ignatius, on bishops, 54. 
 
 Immersion : practised by some Anabap- 
 tists, 4 ; no provable succession of, 6 ; 
 the apostolic practice, 14 ; the practice 
 of, modified, 47 : in Britain, 73 ; among 
 Swiss Anabaptists, 136 ; at Augsburg, 
 158 ; at Rhynsburg, 190 ; re-intro- 
 duced into England, 207 ; advocated by 
 Leonard Busher, 208; controversies 
 about, 209; among Continental Ana- 
 baptists, 2ZO ; first defined, 2x1; of 
 General Harrison, 229 ; trine, 390, 
 
 3Q2. 
 Independence of churches, 31, 
 Indulgences, Samson's sale of, 132. 
 Interdict, effect of, 83. 
 Inquisition ; origin of, X05 ; organization 
 
 of, X06 ; its process, 107 ; its lesson, 
 
 X09. 
 Irenscus, on bishops, 54. 
 Ireland : Patrick preaches gospel in, 72, 
 
 seq. ; not quickly Romanized, 74. 
 Irvingites (Catholic Apostolic Church), 
 
 compared to Montanists, 59, 
 Italy, Baptist mission in, 408. 
 
 Jacob, Rev. Henry, 206, 207, 213. 
 Jackson, Andrew, his victory at New 
 
 Orleans, 324. 
 James, Rev. John, unjust execution of, 
 
 330. 
 James I., persecutes Separatists, 302. 
 James II.: his "dispensations," 334; 
 
 his persecution of Knollys, 2x7. 
 Jefferson, Thomas : advocates religious 
 
 liberty, 3x9; makes Louisiana pur- 
 chase, 324. 
 
 Jerome, influence of, 55. 
 erusalem : church of, scattered, x6 ; 
 
 Council of, 31 ; communism at, X4 ; 
 
 immersion of three thousand at, ihid. 
 Jessey, Henry : English Separatist and 
 
 Baptist, 2x6; favors open communion, 
 
 263. 
 Jeter, Rev. J. B., 343. 
 Joan of Kent, Anabaptist martyr, 195. 
 Tones, Dr. Samuel, 352. 
 John, King of England, 99. 
 John, Elector of Saxony, 163. 
 Johnson, Francis, 301, 203. 
 Johnson, Rev. Hezekiah, 329. 
 Judaism, characteristics of, x8. 
 Judson, Adoniram : becomes Baptist, 
 
 330, 331 ; mission of, to Burma, 334 ; his 
 
 version of the Bible, 334* 33^. 
 
 Julian (the Apostate) favors Arianism, 
 
 68. 
 Justin : his apology, 4X ; on baptism, 47. 
 
 Keach, Rev. Elias, 304. 
 
 Keller, Dr. Ludwig : on Old Evangelical 
 party, xix ; on Hatzer, X41. 
 
 Kendrick, Rev. Ariel, 278. 
 
 Kiffen, William : his life and works, 213, 
 214, 218 ; accused of blasphemy, 221 ; 
 letter to Irish Baptists, 224; appointed 
 alderman, 234 ; favors close commun- 
 ion, 263 : as preacher, 266 ; pastor in 
 London, 275. 
 
 Kincaid, Rev. Eugenio, 356. 
 
 Kingdom of God : burden of Christ's 
 teaching, 23 ; relation to church, 24. 
 
 Knapp, Rev. W. I., 407. 
 
 Knollys, Hanserd : his life and works, 
 2x5-2x8 ; advocates close communioi^ 
 263 ; residence of, in America, 287. 
 
 Kobner, Julius, 398. 
 
 Lapsi, question of their treatment, 63. 
 
 Laying on of hands, 29. 
 
 Lathrop, John, 206, 307, 2x3, 
 
 Latimer, bishop, against Anabaptists, 193, 
 
 Lehmann, Rev. G, W., 398. 
 
 Lichtenstein : lords of, become Anabap> 
 tists, X54 ; surrender Hiibmaier, X56. 
 
 Uncoln, John Smyth at, 202. 
 
 Locke, John, on toleration, 235. 
 
 Lollards, 90. 
 
 Long Parliament, 219. 
 
 Loomis, Rev. Ebenezer, 323. 
 
 Lord's Supper : in New Testament, 28 y 
 when celebrated, 34. 
 
 Lord's Day : observed from apostolic 
 times, 33 ; not confounded with Sab- 
 bath, 34. 
 
 Louisiana purchase, 324. 
 
 Louis Philippe, sanctions persecution, 
 394- 
 
 Lower Canada, Baptists in, 378. 
 
 Ludlow, General, on Harrison's death, 
 
 22Q. 
 
 Lush, Sir Robert, 26X. 
 
 Luther : his doctrine of the eucharist, 
 52 ; compared to Savonarola, 86, 87 ; 
 inconsistency of, X02 ; as a scholar, 
 150 ; his brave words at Worms, 161 ; 
 against Anabaptists, 162 ; advice of, 
 to Elector, 163 ; his tract on the peas- 
 ants, X69 ; opposed by Munzer, X70; 
 his second tract on peasants, 173. 
 
 Lyons. and Waldenses, XX9. 
 
 McAll mission, 395. 
 
 McCoy, Rev. Isaac : preaches first ser- 
 mon in Chicago, 321 ; missionary to 
 Indians, 325. 
 
 McLaren, Alexander, 261. 
 
 McLean, Archibald, 262, 263. 
 
 McMaster, William, founds a university 
 284. 
 
 McMaster, Mrs. (Moulton), 277, 284. 
 
 Madison University, 356. 
 
 Magistracy, English Baptists on, ai 
 (see Sword). 
 
428 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mftnl and his teachings, 75. 
 
 Manichaean sects, 55, 60, 75, xoa. 
 
 Manning, James : pastor of Providence 
 Church, 293 ; college president, 310, 
 314 ; pupil at Hopewell Academy, 353 ; 
 life and labors of, 353. 
 
 Mantz, Felix : Swiss Anabaptist, 135 ; 
 imprisoned at Zurich, 137 ; drowned, 
 139: letter to Miinzer, 171. 
 
 Maoris, mission to, 985. 
 
 Marshall, Rev. Daniel, 3x8. 
 
 Mary, Virgin, exaltation of, 55. 
 
 Mason, Rev. Nathan, 377. 
 
 Mass (seeTransubstautiation). 
 
 Massachusetts : General court of, con- 
 demns Baptists, 396 ; Baptists in the 
 colonyof, thid.: Baptists' rapid growth 
 in, after Great Awakening, 309 * char- 
 ter of X69X, 301 ; religious liberty in, 320, 
 
 Matthys, Jan : disciple and successor of 
 Hofmann, x/x ; goes to Miinster, 178 ; 
 his death, X79. 
 
 Maximilla, Montanist prophetess, 57, 59. 
 
 Melanchthon : reception of the Zwickau 
 prophets by, 148 ; as a scholar, 150 ; on 
 persecution, x8x. 
 
 Menno Simons: his early life, 184 ; con- 
 version of, 185 ; repudiates Miinster- 
 ites, x86 ; extensive labors of, 187. 
 
 Mennonites : the so-called, in Lancaster 
 County, 143 ; origin of, X84 ; tolerated 
 in Holland, 189 ; practise affusion, 190 ; 
 dissensions among, 191 ; seventy of 
 their discipline, 193 ; go to England, 
 X93, seq, ; Doctor Seme on, x^ ; rela- 
 tions of, with John Smyth, 204; with 
 General Baptists, 209 ; in the United 
 States, 393 ; in Russia, 406. 
 
 Methodists : origin of name, 243 ; growth 
 of, 244. 
 
 Miller, William, and his teachings, 393. 
 
 Milton, rebukes Presbyterians, 220. 
 
 Missions, first Christian, 202. 
 
 Missionary Societies (Foreign) : Baptist 
 Union, 256 ; Canadian Baptist, 382 ; 
 Conference of Swedish churches, 404 ; 
 Danish Baptist Union, 3^ ; English 
 Missionary, 253 ; English Home Mis- 
 sion, 356 ; German Baptist Union, 300 ; 
 Grande Ligne, 283 ; Irish Home Mis- 
 sion, ibid. ; Maritime Provinces, 282. 
 
 Missionary Societies (American) : Gen- 
 eral Convention, 325, 332 ; Home Mis- 
 sion, 327, 329, 330, 347, 375 ; Mission- 
 ary Union, 349, 374, 377 ; Massachu- 
 setts, 3x3; Southern Baptist Conven- 
 tion, 347: Women's, 375. 
 
 Mitchell, Rev. Edward C, 396. 
 
 Mixed membership of Baptist churches, 
 264. 
 
 Moenster, Rev. P. C., 405. 
 
 Monachisin, origin of, 55. 
 
 Montanus and his teachings, 57, 58. 
 
 Montanists : origin of, 57; doctrines of, 
 58-60; their idea of prophecy, 59; 
 chiliasm among, 60 ; condemned by 
 bishop of Rome, 6x : decline, 63 ; prac- 
 tise immersion, iSid, 
 
 Moravians, origin of, 93, teg. 
 
 Morgan, English priest, execution of^ 
 
 330. 
 
 Morgan, William, mysterions disappear- 
 ance of,3^x. 
 
 Moulton, Eoenezer, 376, 
 
 Mtihlhausen, disorders at, X71, X73, 396. 
 
 Miinster : beginning of reforms at, X78; 
 disorders in and capture of, X79 ; Cor- 
 nelius on, x8o * Ulhom on, i6id, ; 
 doings of, repudiated by Menno, x86 ; 
 still a byword, 396. 
 
 Miinzer, Thomas : in Zwickau, 148 ; 
 early labprs of, 170 ; expelled from 
 Zwickau, 171 ; opposes infant baptism, 
 ibid. : defeat and death of, 173 ; not an 
 Anabaptist, 174. 
 
 Myles, John ; founds church in Wales, 
 369 ; emigrates to America, 398. 
 
 Mysticism: Denck's, X59; taught by 
 Zwickau prophets, X48. 
 
 Netherlands : revolt of, 189 ; toleration 
 
 in, ibid. 
 New Hampshire, first Baptists in, 3x3. 
 New Jersey, first Baptist churches of, 
 
 304. 
 '•New Lights,'* 30Q, 318. 
 New Orleans, battle of, 334. 
 Newton Theological Institution, 354. 
 New York, early Baptists of, 303, seq. 
 New Zealand, Baptists in, 385. 
 Nilsson, F. O., 400, 40X. 
 Nitzschmann, David, 94. 
 Non-resistance, X44, xw>. 
 North Carolina, first Baptists in, 307. 
 Norway, Baptists of, 403. 
 Novatian, his clinic baptism, 48, 63. 
 Novatians, origin and history of, 6^ 
 
 seg. 
 Nova Scotia, Baptists in, S76, 377, aeq, 
 Nuremberg, Denck at, 157. 
 
 GEcolampadius : at Angrogne, X26 \ friend 
 of Hiibmaier, 152 ; defends infant bap 
 tism, 153 ; teacher of Denck, 157 
 visited by Miinzer, 17X. 
 
 "Old Lights," 387. 
 
 Olney, Thomas, successor of Rogei 
 Williams, 292, 293, 
 
 Oncken, J. G. : colporter, 361 ; his lif( 
 and works, 39^* baptizes Nilsson, 400* 
 baptizes Danish converts, 405. 
 
 Ongole, notable baptisms at, 14. 
 
 Ontario and Quebec, Baptists in, 381, 
 seq. 
 
 'Open" communion: in England, axa; 
 controversies about, 362; in Wales, 
 373 ; in Nova Scotia, 378. 
 
 Orainances, how many, 39. 
 
 Origen, reply of, to Celsus, 4X. 
 
 Original Freewill Baptists, 385. 
 
 Osiander, work at Nuremberg, 157, 
 
 Oscar I., King of Sweden, favors relig- 
 ious liberty, 403. 
 
 Oxford Church, S05, 
 
 Painter, Thomas, opposes infant bap* 
 
 tism, 396. 
 Particular Baptists: origin of, so5;firsf 
 
INDEX 
 
 429 
 
 Confession of, sii ; Hyper-Calvinism 
 among, 340; change in theology of, 
 348 ; prevail in United States, 306. 
 
 Pastors College, 360, 367. 
 
 Patrick, apostle to Ireland, 73, sea. 
 
 Paul, Apostle : conversion of, 17 ; oroad- 
 ened ideas of, 19 ; missionary labors 
 of, 31. 
 
 Paulicians, 75. 
 
 Peck, Rev. John M., life and labors of, 
 335, **?• 
 
 Pearson, Rev. Nicholas, 377, 378. 
 
 Peasants : condition in Germany, 167 ; 
 twelve articles of, 169 ; defeat of, at 
 Frankenhausen, 173 ; Luther's tracts 
 against, 269, X73. 
 
 Pennsylvania : first Baptists of, 304. 
 
 Pepys account of Harrison's death, 339, 
 
 Pentecost, and the gift of the Spirit, 14. 
 
 Person of Christ, controversies about, 
 67, j*y. 
 
 Feqpetua, martyrdom of, 38. 
 
 Persecution : the first, x6 ; the Neronian, 
 35 ; Tertullian on, 37 ■ the Diocletian, 
 63 ; result of uniting Church and State, 
 95; Fathers on, 97 ; fundamental prin- 
 ciple of, p^, 98 ; of Albigenses, 104 ; by 
 the Inquisition, Z05, sea.; of Waldenses, 
 137 ; opposed by Anabaptists, 161 ; of 
 Anabaptists in Switzerland, 137, se^. ; 
 of German Anabaptists, 161, se^. ; 
 Cornelius on, 165 ; causes fanaticism, 
 167 ; Philip of Hesse on, x8x ; in the 
 Netherlands. 188; by Henrv VIII., 
 Z93 ; under Edward VI., X94 ; oy Eliza- 
 beth, 195 ; by Presbyterians, 330, 331 ; 
 under Charles II., 331 ; of French Bap- 
 tists, 395 ; of German Baptists, 398 ; of 
 Baptists in Sweden, 403, seq. : of^Dan- 
 ish Baptists, 405 ; of Baptists in Russia, 
 406. 
 
 Peter, Apostle : his confession, 5 ; his re- 
 buke of Ananias, 15 ; preaches to Cor- 
 nelius, 17, z8 ; never bishop of Rome, 
 33 ; Rome's audacious theft of, 73. 
 
 Peter of Bruysand his work, zix. 
 
 Peter the Venerable, his treatise against 
 the Petrobrusians, zzz-zz5. 
 
 Peter Waldo, history of, ZZ9-Z33. 
 
 Petrobrusians, their alleged errors, zx9- 
 ZZ5. 
 
 Philadelphia Association : origin of, 
 306 ; adopts Confession, 338, 306 ; early 
 strength of, 3x7 ; leader in organiza- 
 tion, 332 ; founds college in Rhode Is- 
 land, 353; founds Columbian Ui.iver- 
 
 »i<y» 356- 
 
 Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, z8x. 
 Phjlip, deacon and apostle, X7. 
 Phillimore on Stuart period, 343. 
 " Pilgrim's Progress, 333. 
 Piscataway: (N. H.), Hanserd KnoUys 
 at, 3x6; (N. J.), church formed at, 
 
 Plmy, letter to Trajan, 33, 35. 
 
 Popes : Adrian IV., 83 ; Alexander III., 
 
 xai, 132 ; Alexander VI., 85, 86, 87; 
 
 Gregory VII., 80; Innocent II., 83; 
 
 Innocent III., 99, 103, X09; John I 
 
 XXIII., 93 ; Leo the Great, 98 ; Lucian 
 
 III., X27; Martin V., 93. 
 Poland, Anabaptists of, 189. 
 Powell, Vavasor, life and work of, 370 
 
 seq. 
 Prag, scene of Hus's labors, 89. 
 Presbyterians, oppose toleration, 3x9^ 
 
 33Z. 
 
 Priesthood (see Sacerdotalism). 
 
 Primitive Baptists, 388. 
 
 Prince Edward's Island, Baptists In, 
 
 380. 
 Priscilla, Montanist prophetess, 58, 59. 
 Priscillian, persecution of, 97. 
 Prophecy, among Montanists, 59. 
 Purgatory : rejected by Petrobrusians, 
 
 X14 ; by Waldenses, X34. 
 
 Randall, Rev. Benjamin, 385. 
 Ratisbon (Regensburg), Hiibmaier at, 
 
 150, 154. 
 Raymond of Toulouse, X04. 
 
 Read, Rev. H. W., 339. 
 
 Reformation : preceded by evangelical 
 movements, xzo ; coincides with sociaf 
 revolution, 169 ; the true, x8n ; an 
 alleged, 34s. 
 
 Regeneration : taught to Nicodemus, 34, 
 25 ; should precede baptism, 35 ; an 
 unwelcome truth, 44 ; in baptism, 46 ; 
 condition of church-membership, 41X. 
 
 Religious liberty : advocated by Dona* 
 tists, 65; Luther on, 163 ; advocated by 
 Terwoort, X96 ; in Confession of 1644, 
 3X3; established in Rhode Island, 290; 
 in Virginia, 3x9; triumphof the princi- 
 ple of, 4x6, seq. 
 
 Restoration (of the Stuarts), 926, 34X. 
 
 Retribution, doctrine of, 420. 
 
 Reublin, William, baptizes Hiibmaier, 
 153. 
 
 Revelation of John, 33. 
 
 Revivals, decline of, 35Z, 38Z. 
 
 Revolution : effect on Baptist churches, 
 3Z3 ; Morgan Edwards in, 3x5. 
 
 Rhees, Rush, 357. 
 
 Rhode Island ; colony founded, sgo; es- 
 tablishes religious liberty, ibid.; ob- 
 tains charter, 395 ; Six-principle Bap- 
 tists in, 303. 
 
 Rhode Island College : founded, 3x0 ; 
 Edwards promotes, 3Z5; plan for, 353. 
 
 Rhodes, William, 304. 
 
 Riemann, Henry, Anabaptist, drowned 
 at Zurich, 139. 
 
 Rice, Luther : becomes Baptist, 33X ; 
 returns to America, ibid. ; tour of 
 churches, 333 ; connection with Colum- 
 bian University, 356. 
 
 River Brethren, 392. 
 
 Robinson, John, 202, 203. 
 
 Robinson, Dr. E. G., 357. 
 
 Rockefeller, John D., and his gifts to 
 education, 358, 371. 
 
 Romanism : beginnings of, 54 ; rejected 
 by Waldenses, X34. 
 
 Rostan, Rev. J. C, 394. 
 
 Rothmann, Bernard, Lutheran preacher 
 at MUnster, X78. 
 
430 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Russia : Baptists in, 406 ; laws on religion, 
 
 ibiii. 
 Ryland, Dr. John ; baptizes Carey, 250 ; 
 
 his Hyper-Calvinism, 351, 
 Ryle, Sishop, on Church of England, 
 
 343. 
 
 Sacerdotalism, origin of, 46, 59, seq, 
 
 Sacramentalism : origin of, 46, 53, seq. ; 
 in Britain, 74 ; denied. 103. 
 
 Saillens, Rev. Reuben, 396. 
 
 St. Gall, Denck at, 158. 
 
 Sakellarios, Rev. D. Z., 407. 
 
 Samaria, Philip preaches in, 17, 
 
 Samson, his sale of indulgences, 133. 
 
 Sandemanlans or Glasites, 373, 373. 
 
 Saratoga Convention, 340. 
 
 Savonarola : evangelic teaching by, 9 ; 
 birth and education of, 86 ; his great 
 work at Florence, 87 : overthrow of, 
 88 ; varying estimates of, 89. 
 
 Sattler, Michael, 144. 
 
 Sears, Rev. Rarnas, 397. 
 
 Seminaries, theological : Hamilton, 356 ; 
 Hamburg, 400 : Rochester, 357 ; Stock- 
 holm, 404 ; other, 356 ; growth of, 369, 
 seg. 
 
 Separatists ; English, 301, 303, 306, 310, 
 3x6 ; relation of, to early Baptists, 363. 
 
 " Separates," 309, 318. 
 
 Separate Baptists, 387. 
 
 Servetus, burning of, 139. 
 
 Seventh-day Baptists, 330, 367, 390. 
 
 Schaffhausen, 144, 150, 151. 
 
 Schleitheim, confession of Baptists at> 
 144. 
 
 Schroeder, G. W., 400, 401, 403. 
 
 Scott, Walter, introduces baptism " for 
 remission of sins," 343. 
 
 Scotland, Baptists in, 273, seg, 
 
 Screven, Rev. William, 301. 
 
 Scriptures, only rule of faith and practice, 
 I03, 133, ^34- 
 
 Scrooby and the Separatists, 303, 303. 
 
 Sinclair, Sir William, becomes Baptist, 
 373. 
 
 Six-principle Baptists : in England, 367 ; 
 in Providence, 393, 305 ; in Newport, 
 995 ; in Rhode Island, 303 ; present 
 condition of, 384. 
 
 Smith, Sydney, critic of missions, 254. 
 
 Smith, Rev. Hezekiah : life and labors 
 of, 310-312 ; pupil at Hopewell, 353. 
 
 Smyth, John: his church, 4; his early 
 life, 30I ; becomes Separatist, 203 ; bap- 
 tizes himself, 303 ; death of, 304. 
 
 Societies : American Bible, 336 ; Ameri- 
 can Bible Union, 337 ; American and 
 Foreign Bible, il>id. ; Baptist Young 
 People's Union, 360. (See also Mis- 
 sionary Societies.) 
 
 Societies, problem of their relation to the 
 churches, 382. 
 
 Social Brethren, 393. 
 
 Social revolution : in Germany, x68 ; re- 
 lation to it of Anabaptists, 174. 
 
 Some, Doctor, his " Godly Treatise," 196. 
 
 Sommers, Dr. Charles G., 338. 
 
 Southern Baptist Convention : its organ- 
 
 ization, 347 ; its work, 348, 376 ; mission 
 of, in Italy, 408. 
 
 South Carohna, first Baptists in, 306. 
 
 Spain, Baptist mission in, 407. 
 
 Speyer, Diet of, 164. 
 
 Spilsbury, John: Baptist preacher, 206; 
 favors close communion, 263. 
 
 Spurgeon, Charles H. : his life and work, 
 359, seg. ; on the communion question, 
 265 ; " never changed an opinion," 418. 
 
 Stanley, Dean, on baptism, 413. 
 
 State Conventions, aim and work of, 351, 
 
 Staughton, Dr. Wm., 356. 
 
 Stearns, Rev. Shubael, 318. 
 
 Stephen, stoning of, 16, 
 
 Stockwell Orphanage, 260. 
 
 Strassburg : Hofmann at, 176 ; Mennonite 
 synod at, 191. 
 
 Strong, Rev. Augustus H., 357. 
 
 Sttlbner, Marcus, 148. 
 
 Stundists, of Russia, 406. 
 
 Stuyvesant, Peter, governor of New 
 York, 302, 303. 
 
 Succession: Roman theory of, 5; Bap- 
 tist theory of, 69, seg. : the true apos- 
 tolic, 7. 
 
 Sunday-schools, growth of, 359. 
 
 Swansea Baptist Church : in Wales, 269; 
 in Massachusetts, 299. 
 
 Sweden, Baptists in, 400, seg, 
 
 Swedenborg, 148. 
 
 Switzerland, condition of, in sixteenth 
 century, X31. 
 
 Sword : Anabaptist doctrine of, 144, 160 ; 
 not advocated by Hofmann, 175 ; Hiib- 
 maier and Denck on, 176. 
 
 Taggart, " Father," 393. 
 
 Tasmania, Baptists in, 986. 
 
 Taylor, Dan, life and labors, 345. 
 
 Taylor, Dr. G. B., 408. 
 
 "leaching of the Twelve Apostles," 47, 
 50. 
 
 Tertullian : on persecution, 37 ; on Per- 
 petua and Felicltas, 38 ; on number of 
 Christians, 39 ; his apology, 41 ; on 
 baptism, 47 ; on bishops, 62. 
 
 Terwoort, Hendrik, Anabaptist martyi* 
 
 ^ 195. 196. 
 
 Test Act, 931. 
 
 Thieffrey, Rev. Joseph, 394, 
 
 Thoma, Marcus, 148, 
 
 Thomas, Joshua, on Baptists in Wales, 
 369. 
 
 Thurloe: his "State Papers" quoted, 
 225 ; on Vavasor Powell, 970. 
 
 Tippecanoe, battle of, 324. 
 
 Toleration: Constantine's edict of, 39; 
 opposed in Holland, 189 ; rejected by 
 Presbyterians, 219, seg, ; favored by 
 Cromwell, 991 ; promised by Charles 
 II., 230; Act of, 235, 237» 945; in 
 France, 395 ; granted in Hamburg, 
 399 ; in Sweden, 403 ; in Denmark, 405. 
 
 Tombes, Rev. John, favors open com- 
 munion, 303. 
 
 Toplady, encomium on Gill, 240. 
 
 Toulouse : Albigenses at, 103 ; couDCtl 
 at. X38. 
 
INDEX 
 
 431 
 
 Traditores, and the church, 64. 
 
 Trajan : correspondence of, with Pliny, 
 
 23; his persecution of Christians, 35. 
 Transubstantiation : rejected by Petro- 
 
 brusians,^ 113 ; by Waldenses, 125. 
 Triennial Convention : origin of, 332 ; its 
 
 home missions, 325; abandons Peck, 
 
 326 ; divided, 347. 
 Trine immersion, 390, 392. 
 Tunkers (see Dunkards). 
 Two-secd-in-Spirit Baptists, 389. 
 
 Ulhorn, on MiJnster uproar, 180. 
 
 Unitas Fratrum (see Moraviaiis). 
 
 United Baptists, 387. 
 
 Unitarian defection, 411, 
 
 Universities : Basel, 131, 157 ; Brown, 
 354» 372 (see Rhode Island College) ; 
 Cambridge, 201, 215 ; Chicago, 368, 371, 
 372 ; Columbian, 356 ; Freiburg, 149 ; 
 Ingolstadt, 150; McMaster, 284 ; Mad- 
 ison (Colgate), 357; Rochester, 357. 
 
 Upper Canada, Baptists in, 279. 
 
 Vadian : on origin of Anabaptists, Z29 ; 
 
 on Denck, 159. 
 Van Meter, Rev. W. C, 408. 
 Vane, Sir Henry, 293. 
 Vaughn, Rev. William, 295. 
 Venner, Thomas, 226. 
 Vermont, first Baptists in, 313. 
 Virginia, Baptist beginnings in, 307. 
 Voller, Rev. James, 385. 
 
 Wade, Rev. Jonathan, 356. 
 
 Wales, Baptists in, 269 seq. 
 
 Waldenses : origin of, no, seg. / teach- 
 ings of, 123, seq. : aflifiations of, 126, 
 seq. ; relations of, to Anabaptists, 128. 
 
 Ward, Rev. William, baptized the Jud- 
 sons, 331. 
 
 Wedmore Church, 305. 
 
 Wellington, Cuke of, on the minister's 
 "marching orders," 252. 
 
 Wesley, John, life and labors of, 243-245. 
 
 Wesleyan revival, effect on Baptist 
 growth, 256. 
 
 Wheeler, Rev. O. C, 329. 
 
 Whitefield, Genrge, evangelist, 343, 309. 
 
 Wiberg, Rev. Andreas, 361, 401. 
 
 Wiclif, John, his teachings, 90. 
 
 Wickendon, William : " elder " at Prov- 
 idence, 292, 293 ; preaches in New 
 York, 303. 
 
 Widemann, Jacob, 155. 
 
 Wightman, Edward, Anabaptist martyr, 
 197. 
 
 Wightman, Rev. Valentine, 304. 
 
 William of Orange, his tolerance, 189. 
 
 William III. and toleration, 235. 
 
 Williams, Roger: and John Smyth, 203; 
 early life of, 288 ; his banishment from 
 Massachusetts, 289; founds Provi- 
 dence, 290 ; baptism of, 291 ; com- 
 pared to Doctor Clarke, 394 ; his 
 " Bloody Tenet," 295 ; small effect of, 
 on Baptists, 304. 
 
 Willmarth, Rev, Isaac, 394. 
 
 Wilson, Rev. B. G., 385. 
 
 Winnebrenner, Rev. John, and his fol- 
 lowers, 391. 
 
 Wittenberg, Zwickau prophets at, 148. 
 
 Wolfe, General, victory of, at Quebec, 
 
 327- 
 Woman's Missionary Societies, 375. 
 Worship in early churches, 33, 33. 
 
 Yates and Pearce, their Bengali version, 
 
 358. 
 Young people's work, 359, seq, 
 
 Zinzendorf, Count, 94. 
 
 Zurich : government of, 131 ; first dis- 
 putation at, 132; council sustains re- 
 form, 133 ; second disputation at, 135, 
 151 ; third disputation at, 136 ; council 
 condemns Anabaptism, 137 ; decrees 
 drowning, 138 ; suppresses Anabap- 
 tists, 141. 
 
 Zwickau : prophets of, 148, 171 ; Miinzer 
 at, 170. 
 
 Zwingli, Ulric : his early life, 131 ; 
 preaches pure gospel, 133 ; avows radi- 
 cal principals, 133 ; becomes conserva- 
 tive, 134 : breaks with radicals, 135 ; 
 argues for baptism of children, 136 ; re- 
 sponsible for persecutions, 139 ; friend 
 of Hiibmaier, 151.