DB

Lecture 18

Baptists, Independents and the Republic

St. Wilfrid’s Church, Scrooby

1. English Sectarianism

· English Puritanism was not naturally sectarian in its ethos. In fact, the very heart of their reforming instincts was to purify the national church, not to break away from it.

· The association with Anabaptism was always resented and rejected, and early on, puritans weren’t so much for religious toleration, as they were for religious uniformity: the whole church should be purified and rightly ordered along reformed ecclesiastical doctrines!

· The longer, however, that Seperatism struggled with the disappointments of Elizabeth, James and Charles, the more difficult it was, generation after generation, to hold out hope.

· One of the first to separate from the church of England and form a congregation that did not allow its members to join the tainted Anglican church was Cambridge educated Robert Browne.

· He had picked up Presbyterian ideals in his student days, and came to hold that the ministry of those ordained by bishops was no true ministry at all, and this, of course led him out of Puritanism into seperatism.

· After fleeing Norwich where he was a popular preacher, he wrote from Holland one of his most famous pamphlets: A treatise of Reformation without Tarrying for Any.

· In it, Browne claimed that the church had to obey scripture rather than man, and not wait for the authorities to reform the church, but to reform themselves, guided by scripture and not by passing laws.

· Browne also advocated the covenanted basis of church life, highlighting the seperatist ideal of voluntarism: true Christians were not so by the authority of the state, but by the compulsion of their consciences.

· Sadly, Browne’s radical ideas lead to division in his church in Holland, and after getting arrested in Scotland for attacking the Presbyterians, he eventually ended up a priest in rural parish, having recanted and returned to the Church of England.

· The last mark in history that he made was being arrested as an eighty year-old for attacking a constable.

· Browne’s Separatism was followed by Henry Barrow who was executed in 1593, and succeeded by Francis Johnson.

· In 1596 a group around Johnson issued a True Confession in which they articulated their Calvinist beliefs, but also their demands that the godly must come out from the corrupted church: ‘separating [themselves] from amongst the unbelievers, from idolatry, false worship, superstition, vanity, dissolute living’

· Johnson eventually had to flee with his congregation to Holland, where others joined, swelling the English ex-patriates to about 300 in size.

· However, dissent and division split the church along the lines of various leaders, some returning to England, other joining the dutch Mennonites, still others exploring the foundation of a new expression of Church.

2. Baptist Origins

· When John Smyth left for Holland with the Gainsborough and Scrooby Congregations, they were basically separatists of a Congregational stamp.

· Their key figures included Cambridge educated Smyth, John Robinson as well as well to do mercantile class elders such as William Brewster, who would eventually lead some of the congregation as pilgrims to New England, and Thomas Helwys, who would move back to England from Holland to found the first Baptist churches on English soil.

· However, while in Holland, the congregations were diffused and divided among the growing ex-patriate community there. At first many joined with the congregation of Francis Johnson, but his authoritarianism caused many to leave.

· John Robinson went on to found a congregational church in Leyden, but John Smyth withdrew a group and re-constituted themselves as baptists, undergoing re-baptism as a sign of this.

· Many of these Independents had wrestled with how to view the church in England.

· If it was a true church, legitimate in its priesthood, sacraments and doctrines, then why ought not they return to it, and seek to reform it?

· If it was not the true church of God, as many believed, then neither was its baptism or its priesthood legitimate. This led those in John Smyth’s group to undergo re-baptism, based on their belief that the Church in England was not the true church.

· Initially, they were not re-baptized based on the confessional stance of believer’s baptism, although this soon became an accepted theological addition, they did so because they simply believed a false church had baptized all of them illegitimately.

· Furthermore, replaced the priesthood with congregationalism, in which the congregation elected its own ministers and deacons, and ordered its affairs as it saw fit within the circumstances of their location.

· Smyth also argued that there should be no texts in the service, no read prayers, no hymns sung from a hymn book, and even the scriptures were to be interpreted orally, without recourse to the text.

· Smyth believed that worship needed to be pneumatic to be true, and that the dependence on liturgies and books was a remnant of popery.

· Smyth came from the covenantal tradition of the Congregationalists, but changed his mind about church membership in this regard.

· Whereas Congregationalists viewed the covenant as the sign of an individual’s belonging to the local church, Smyth believed that the true sign of church membership was baptism and repentance.

· This eventually led to the inclusion of adults only as members, since they alone could receive a baptism of repentance.

· Part of his rejection of infant baptism had to do with his Arminian theology, which rejected to the predestinarian views of the Calvinists, for whom baptism signified the new covenant ratification.

· Furthermore, Smyth believed that each congregation should appoint the two-fold leadership revealed in the Pastoral Epistles: Bishops/Elders, and Deacons.

· Smyth and his flock were casualties of the Erastian views of the times, that each state should choose and enforce its own religion. But persecution and exile had enlightened Smyth to the pointlessness of violence for inculcating belief.

· It was to Smyth’s pen that the first treatise appealing for religious toleration was penned, and a sign of its significance is the fact that he wrote it as an exile, suffering for his personal views as an Independent.

· Smyth wrote: ‘We believe that the magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion in matters of conscience, to force and compel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine: but to leave the Christian religion free to everyman’s conscience, and to handle only civil transgressions, injuries and wrongs of man against man, in murder adultery, theft, etc., for Christ only is King and Lawgiver of the Church and conscience’

· The first English Baptists date to 1609, but in Holland, and not in England.

· In 1612, Thomas Helwys and John Smyth disagreed about the drift of the congregation into anabaptism.

· Smyth was influenced by the Waterlander Mennonites, and wanted to merge their congregations.

· Helwys declined, and took about 40 of his members back to England in order to be a Baptist witness there. He founded a church in Spitalfields outside of London, and was soon arrested and imprisoned where he died in 1616 for his faith, as many other Baptists would, leaving a widow and children to survive him.

3. The rise of Independency and Revolution

· When James I became king, there were some hopes that the Anglicanism that had been oppressing the Independents and Separatists would be mitigated in some way.

· However, after the Hampton Court encounter between Presbyterians and the King, they were thrown together with all the other groups of Separatists and non-conformists in opposition to the king and the policies of his Archbishop Laud, who was promoting a ‘no bishop, no king’ politic that expressly excluded all but Anglicans from the church.

· Between 1620-1640 about 20,000 puritans left for New England where they sought to build a society where they could practice their faith freely, instead of officially separating from the church at home like separatists and independents were doing.

· The policies of James I and Laud were tailored to boil the frog in the kettle, and increasing preasures on the non-conformists made it clear that their only options were immigration to the colonies, or rebellion.

· James I was succeeded by his less diplomatic son, Charles I, who was a proponent of the ‘divine right of kings’.

· Charles continued to press the non-conformists into conformity, but his poor hand in politics got the best of him.

· Charles tried to enforce a prayer book on the Scottish church, and this led to rebellion.

· The Scots joined with the Presbyterians in England and made bound each other to cooperation through the Solemn League and Covenant.

· Charles had not called a Parliament in 11 years, but in order to raise an army against the Scots he needed money and was forced to call the short parliament, which ended up being a forum for all sorts of complaints that had been building up over the years.

· Eventually, England was divided between Royalists and Republicans, and through a series of battles Charles I was defeated, tried, and beheaded by the victories republicans.

· At this point, the Long Parliament began its tenure, and was dominated by Presbyterians who sought to model the church in England on the Genevan model where Church and State were united in a Presbyterian, as opposed to Episcopal structure.

· The Westminster Assembly was probably the most learned group of theologian and ministers called together at any one time in Europe, but their doctrinal productions were more successful than their ecclesiological ones.

· The Westerminster confession articulate the Presbyterian faith that they wished the Church of England to embrace.

· But ultimately, the Presbyterians were just as Erastian as the Anglicans, and simply wanted to have a reformed Anglican church on Presbyterian lines, and not a reformed Church that was free in its diverse expressions.

· The Independents, however, were wary of this trend and since most of the army was made up of Independents, Baptists, and Separatists, they joined with Cromwell in forming the Protectorate and calling a new parliament, or Rump parliament, as it was known due to the purges that Cromwell had instigated.

· For the first time in English history, religious toleration was experienced as all groups save the catholics were allowed to practice their faith in relative freedom.

· The only exception were those who belonged to the Quakers.

· Under Cromwell, the Independent ideal of local autonomy of congregations had a chance to be practiced with a degree of freedom unknown up to this time.

· The Presbyterians had failed in spite of their noble efforts in the Westminster Assembly in part because they too tried to compel conformity as the Anglicans had before them.

· This had the effect of sowing the seeds for the restoration of Charles II, as many people grew tired of the new oppressiveness of the Presbyterians, which was followed by the unexpected tends towards anarchy among the Independents, all of which led to the outrageous persecutions of Charles II, who broke all his promises upon his return in 1660.

· In 1661, the Act of Corporation was instituted which barred all non-conformists from public office, and in 1662, the Act of Uniformity required al clergy to be re-ordained and accept the Book of Common Prayer as ‘consistent in all things with God’s word’.

· This, of course, was unpalatable to many ministers, and the refusal of some 2000 out of 9000 clergy led to the great ejection, when many by matter of conscience lost their congregations and livelihood in the process.

· However, far from eliminating the non-conformists, this finally had the effect of creating a two-church environment in England, as a sizeable minority banded together to endure persecution.

· The Test Act in 1673 forbade non-conformists from serving in any branch of the government but only depleted England of its most capable and educated citizens, and leaving the church, and the universities, to enter a time relative sterility.

· Toleration came in 1689 with the “Glorious Revolution” and the enthronement of William III of Orange and his queen Mary.

· By this time, non-conformity had emerged as a purified and zealous breed, having been refined by persecution and setting the stage for two further revolutions that would transform the European world: the Evangelical Awakening, and the rise of Liberal Democracies.