The First Baptist Congregations

In a book printed in 1609 John Smyth described his own course as a passage from Puritanism to “Brownism”, the Separatists’ rejection of the Church of England as a false church, and from there to “true Christian baptism” (Smyth, Character of the Beast, Epistle to the Reader (Works 2, pp. 564–567)). The title page states two propositions: that infants are not to be baptized, and that converts from “Antichristian” churches are to be admitted to the true church by baptism (Smyth, Character of the Beast, title page (Works 2, p. 563)). Anyone who rejects the Church of England as false, he wrote, must reject the baptism it gave as well (Smyth, Character of the Beast, Epistle to the Reader (Works 2, pp. 564–567)).

His congregation, which William Bradford places at Amsterdam (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 3 (p. 23)), therefore began again. John Robinson, pastor of another English Separatist congregation abroad, wrote in 1614 that he had heard from members of the group how it was done: they dissolved their former church, and Smyth baptized first himself, then Thomas Helwys, then the rest, each making a confession (Robinson, Of Religious Communion, Works 3, p. 168). Smyth defended the act against the charge that no one may baptize himself: if two or three may form a church where there is none, he argued, they may also recover baptism (Smyth, Character of the Beast, Works 2, pp. 659–660).

The group divided. Smyth came to hold that baptism should be sought from a true church where one exists; he wrote that they had baptized themselves only because they then knew no church they could join with a good conscience, and that Helwys accused him of sinning against the Holy Spirit by abandoning what he had once acknowledged (Smyth, Last Book, Works 2, pp. 756–757).

In 1611 a confession of twenty-seven articles was printed in the name of the “English people remaining at Amsterdam”; its editor attributes it to Helwys (Declaration of Faith (1611), title page and editor’s introduction (McGlothlin, pp. 84–86)). It defines the church as a company of faithful people joined to the Lord and to one another by baptism on their own confession of the faith and of sins, and says that baptism “in no wise” belongs to infants (Declaration of Faith (1611), art. 10, 13–14). It teaches that God would have all people saved and that believers may fall from grace (Declaration of Faith (1611), art. 5, 7). It calls magistracy a holy ordinance of God, allows magistrates to be church members, and charges Smyth with denying this (Declaration of Faith (1611), art. 24 and the charges against Smyth). The Swiss Brethren of the previous century had held that a Christian may not serve as a magistrate (Schleitheim Confession art. 6); see the First Anabaptists.

In 1612, in the reign of James I, Helwys published a book that speaks directly to “our lord the King” (Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, title page) (Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, p. 69). He argued that those who had fled persecution should come back to their own country (Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, pp. 205, 212), and in 1614 Robinson wrote of him and his people as being in London (Robinson, Of Religious Communion, Works 3, pp. 160, 162–163). The king, Helwys wrote, has authority in earthly matters only and none over consciences, those of Roman Catholics included: “Let them be heretikes, Turcks, Jewes, or whatsoever it apperteynes not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure” (Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, p. 69).