Christian History Magazine Collection

by Roger Hayden, M.A., B.D. and the staff of Christian History from Christian History magazine no. 6

Baptism is accepted and practiced, and always has been, by just about every group in whatever place that has called itself Christian. Thus, it is somewhat ironic that a specific Christian group would emerge that would come to be identified as “Baptists.” The issue of baptism—who should be baptized and by what method—would become important enough to them that they would endure persecution, social ostracization, even death, if necessary, to maintain their convictions.

Where did the Baptists come from? Why did their movement arise? The traceable historical roots of the Baptists as we know them today are to be found in the English church of the early 17th Century. The chart entitled “Baptists Emerge…” cites some of the highlights of over 70 years of turmoil from the Act of Supremacy in 1534, and King Henry VIII’s separation from Roman Catholicism, to the Hampton Court Conference in England in 1604 when the hopes of the Puritans within the church were thwarted by King James I.

During that tumultuous 70-year period, the English church was inescapably intertwined with the shifting affairs of the state and monarchy. Intense and often violent struggles ensued as the reform movement progressed. Fundamental questions related to the nature of the church, its doctrine, polity, practice and relationship to the state were tested and debated in the crucible of a rapidly changing society. It was the English Baptists and the European Anabaptists that would put the church and its whole self understanding to the a more severe test than any other group as they embraced a collection of doctrines and principles that shattered the old world synthesis.

The Baptists originated among the Separatist movement. The Separatists themselves had come from the Puritans. The Puritans were loyal members of the established church and sought to advance the reform movement and “purify” the church from within.

The “Separatists” became impatient with the possibility of the established church ever being purified and called for a “separation” from the state church to form congregations that would pattern themselves after New Testament teaching and practice.

From the Separatists during the reign of James I would emerge the Pilgrim fathers who went to America, and the first Baptists. The two figures who can be identified as among the earliest Baptists are John Smyth (1570-1612) and Thomas Helwys (?-1616).

Smyth was an ordained Anglican priest who progressed through Puritan and Separatist stages. He studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge from 1586 and among his tutors was a later Separatist leader in Holland, Francis Johnson. In 1594 he was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln and was elected a Fellow at Christ’s College.

He became the leader of a group at Gainsborough, on the borders of Nottinghamshire in the English Midlands. Gainsborough had become a gathering place for a number of ministers who had been in trouble with the authorities for their Puritan beliefs.

This Gainsborough group, according to William Bradford (who would later come to America on the Mayflower), formed a covenanted church and “as the Lord’s free people joined themselves … in the fellowship of the Gospel, to walk in all his ways, made known or to be made known unto them (according to their best endeavors) whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them.” Most Puritans had high hopes for change when James VI of Scotland came to the English throne in 1603. But following the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, Puritan hopes were thwarted by the approval of a new set of canons and disciplines for the government of the church. The Puritans had hoped to persuade the Anglican bishops to reform the church. However, James himself presided over the conference and threatened to “make the Puritans conform or else harry them out of the land.” This strengthening of Anglicanism was felt at Gainsborough. After a year of meeting with great difficulty in 1607, the leadership decided that they should leave for Holland, as quickly as possible. The emigration took place in small parties, with Thomas Helwys playing a leading part in making arrangements for the momentous journey for Smyth’s congregation.

Little is known about the early life of Thomas Helwys except that he hailed from Nottinghamshire on an estate which had been in the family for several generations. Helwys received a good education at Gray’s Inn and after some years in London, he returned to his country home, Broxtowe Hall. From Puritan references it is known that Helwys’ home was a haven for early dissenters and Helwys himself probably aided their cause financially. At some point Helwys was introduced to John Smyth and with Mrs. Helwys joined the Separatist congregation at Gainsborough prior to 1607.

The relationship between Helwys and Smyth was very deep. Helwys reflected: “Have we not neglected ourselves, our wives, our children and all we had and respected him? And we confess we had good cause to do so in respect of those most excellent gifts and graces of God that did abound in him.” Even later, when Helwys and Smyth had parted, Helwys could write: “All our love was too little for him and not worthy of him.”

The voyage to Holland took place in 1608. When they arrived in Amsterdam, a welcome haven for 17th Century prisoners of conscience, they were given hospitality by the Mennonites and housed in the great bakehouse of Jan Munter. Here they were free to worship according to the dictates of their conscience as guided by the New Testament and also free, as one historian observed, to experience “all the evils of overcrowding, from exacerbated tempers to the plague.”

The congregation in exile energetically examined basic conceptions regarding the true nature of the church as set forth in the New Testament. Smyth came to the view that baptism should be administered only to believers. This led Smyth to baptize himself and then the rest of the group beginning with Helwys.

By this move, the group had removed themselves from the state church on the grounds that they had not been validly baptized as infants. It also marked a separation from their fellow Separatists. Indeed it would not be many years hence when William Bradford and his companions would decide in 1620 to emigrate to America where they would establish Plymouth Plantation on strict Separatist principles. About February 1610 Smyth and about 31 others came to the conclusion that they had been in error baptizing themselves and sought fellowship with the Mennonites in Holland.

Thomas Helwys and about a dozen others disagreed, rejecting totally the idea of any necessary succession in the Church of Christ. It was “contrary to the liberty of the Gospel, which is free for all men at all times and in all places: yea, so our Savior Christ doth testify—wheresoever, whosoever, and whensoever two or three are gathered in his name, there is he in the midst of them.”

Helwys and his small band became convinced that they had been wrong to leave England. Though parting with Smyth caused him great personal pain, Helwys believed that the “days of great tribulation spoken of by Christ” had now arrived. He must get back to England and appeal to James I to stop persecuting the faithful.