The Last Book of John Smyth, Called the Retractation of His Errors and the Confirmation of the Truth
A short, unfinished piece in which John Smyth withdraws the harsher judgments of his earlier books and answers the charges of Thomas Helwys. It gives Smyth’s own account of why his congregation had baptized itself and why he no longer defended that.
Smyth writes that his purpose is to correct himself and not to condemn others, and that he has changed his mind before and is ready to do so again. Against Helwys he says that he never held it lawful for private persons to baptize where a true church and ministers exist from whom baptism can be had; what he held was that, knowing no church they could join with a good conscience, he and his people “might baptize our selves”.
The editor’s notes in the volume cited here say that the piece was printed, with a confession and an account of Smyth’s death, by members of his congregation, and that it breaks off in the middle of a sentence. The date given above is approximate: the text answers Helwys’s printed charges of 1611 and was published after Smyth died. It is cited in the First Baptist Congregations.
Cited in
- 1609, estimated date